A SIMPLE SOUL
CHAPTER I
FELICITE
For half a century the housewives of Pont-l'Eveque had envied
Madame Aubain her servant Felicite.
For a hundred francs a year, she cooked and did the housework,
washed, ironed, mended, harnessed the horse, fattened the poultry,
made the butter and remained faithful to her mistress--although
the latter was by no means an agreeable person.
Madame Aubain had married a comely youth without any money, who
died in the beginning of 1809, leaving her with two young children
and a number of debts. She sold all her property excepting the
farm of Toucques and the farm of Geffosses, the income of which
barely amounted to 5,000 francs; then she left her house in
Saint-Melaine, and moved into a less pretentious one which had
belonged to her ancestors and stood back of the market-place.
This house, with its slate-covered roof, was built between a
passage-way and a narrow street that led to the river. The
interior was so unevenly graded that it caused people to stumble.
A narrow hall separated the kitchen from the parlour, where
Madame Aubain sat all day in a straw armchair near the window.
Eight mahogany chairs stood in a row against the white wainscoting.
An old piano, standing beneath a barometer, was covered with a
pyramid of old books and boxes. On either side of the yellow marble
mantelpiece, in Louis XV style, stood a tapestry armchair. The clock
represented a temple of Vesta; and the whole room smelled musty, as
it was on a lower level than the garden.
On the first floor was Madame's bedchamber, a large room papered
in a flowered design and containing the portrait of Monsieur
dressed in the costume of a dandy. It communicated with a smaller
room, in which there were two little cribs, without any
mattresses. Next, came the parlour (always closed), filled with
furniture covered with sheets. Then a hall, which led to the
study, where books and papers were piled on the shelves of a
book-case that enclosed three quarters of the big black desk. Two
panels were entirely hidden under pen-and-ink sketches, Gouache
landscapes and Audran engravings, relics of better times and
vanished luxury. On the second floor, a garret-window lighted
Felicite's room, which looked out upon the meadows.
She arose at daybreak, in order to attend mass, and she worked
without interruption until night; then, when dinner was over, the
dishes cleared away and the door securely locked, she would bury
the log under the ashes and fall asleep in front of the hearth
with a rosary in her hand. Nobody could bargain with greater
obstinacy, and as for cleanliness, the lustre on her brass
saucepans was the envy and despair of other servants. She was most
economical, and when she ate she would gather up crumbs with the
tip of her finger, so that nothing should be wasted of the loaf of
bread weighing twelve pounds which was baked especially for her
and lasted three weeks.
Summer and winter she wore a dimity kerchief fastened in the back
with a pin, a cap which concealed her hair, a red skirt, grey
stockings, and an apron with a bib like those worn by hospital
nurses.
Her face was thin and her voice shrill. When she was twenty-five,
she looked forty. After she had passed fifty, nobody could tell
her age; erect and silent always, she resembled a wooden figure
working automatically.
CHAPTER II
THE HEROINE
Like every other woman, she had had an affair of the heart. Her
father, who was a mason, was killed by falling from a scaffolding.
Then her mother died and her sisters went their different ways; a
farmer took her in, and while she was quite small, let her keep
cows in the fields. She was clad in miserable rags, beaten for the
slightest offence and finally dismissed for a theft of thirty sous
which she did not commit. She took service on another farm where
she tended the poultry; and as she was well thought of by her
master, her fellow-workers soon grew jealous.
One evening in August (she was then eighteen years old), they
persuaded her to accompany them to the fair at Colleville. She was
immediately dazzled by the noise, the lights in the trees, the
brightness of the dresses, the laces and gold crosses, and the
crowd of people all hopping at the same time. She was standing
modestly at a distance, when presently a young man of well-to-do
appearance, who had been leaning on the pole of a wagon and
smoking his pipe, approached her, and asked her for a dance. He
treated her to cider and cake, bought her a silk shawl, and then,
thinking she had guessed his purpose, offered to see her home.
When they came to the end of a field he threw her down brutally.
But she grew frightened and screamed, and he walked off.
One evening, on the road leading to Beaumont, she came upon a
wagon loaded with hay, and when she overtook it, she recognised
Theodore. He greeted her calmly, and asked her to forget what had
happened between them, as it "was all the fault of the drink."
She did not know what to reply and wished to run away.
Presently he began to speak of the harvest and of the notables of
the village; his father had left Colleville and bought the farm of
Les Ecots, so that now they would be neighbors. "Ah!" she
exclaimed. He then added that his parents were looking around for
a wife for him, but that he, himself, was not so anxious and
preferred to wait for a girl who suited him. She hung her head. He
then asked her whether she had ever thought of marrying. She
replied, smilingly, that it was wrong of him to make fun of her.
"Oh! no, I am in earnest," he said, and put his left arm around
her waist while they sauntered along. The air was soft, the stars
were bright, and the huge load of hay oscillated in front of them,
drawn by four horses whose ponderous hoofs raised clouds of dust.
Without a word from their driver they turned to the right. He
kissed her again and she went home. The following week, Theodore
obtained meetings.
They met in yards, behind walls or under isolated trees. She was
not ignorant, as girls of well-to-do families are--for the animals
had instructed her;--but her reason and her instinct of honour
kept her from falling. Her resistance exasperated Theodore's love
and so in order to satisfy it (or perchance ingenuously), he
offered to marry her. She would not believe him at first, so he
made solemn promises. But, in a short time he mentioned a
difficulty; the previous year, his parents had purchased a
substitute for him; but any day he might be drafted and the
prospect of serving in the army alarmed him greatly. To Felicite
his cowardice appeared a proof of his love for her, and her
devotion to him grew stronger. When she met him, he would torture
her with his fears and his entreaties. At last, he announced that
he was going to the prefect himself for information, and would let
her know everything on the following Sunday, between eleven
o'clock and midnight.
When the time drew near, she ran to meet her lover.
But instead of Theodore, one of his friends was at the
meeting-place.
He informed her that she would never see her sweetheart again;
for, in order to escape the conscription, he had married a rich
old woman, Madame Lehoussais, of Toucques.
The poor girl's sorrow was frightful. She threw herself on the
ground, she cried and called on the Lord, and wandered around
desolately until sunrise. Then she went back to the farm, declared
her intention of leaving, and at the end of the month, after she
had received her wages, she packed all her belongings in a
handkerchief and started for Pont-l'Eveque.
In front of the inn, she met a woman wearing widow's weeds, and
upon questioning her, learned that she was looking for a cook. The
girl did not know very much, but appeared so willing and so modest
in her requirements, that Madame Aubain finally said:
"Very well, I will give you a trial."
And half an hour later Felicite was installed in her house.
At first she lived in a constant anxiety that was caused by "the
style of the household" and the memory of "Monsieur," that hovered
over everything. Paul and Virginia, the one aged seven, and the
other barely four, seemed made of some precious material; she
carried them pig-a-back, and was greatly mortified when Madame
Aubain forbade her to kiss them every other minute.
But in spite of all this, she was happy. The comfort of her new
surroundings had obliterated her sadness.
Every Thursday, friends of Madame Aubain dropped in for a game of
cards, and it was Felicite's duty to prepare the table and heat
the foot-warmers. They arrived at exactly eight o'clock and
departed before eleven.
Every Monday morning, the dealer in second-hand goods, who lived
under the alley-way, spread out his wares on the sidewalk. Then
the city would be filled with a buzzing of voices in which the
neighing of horses, the bleating of lambs, the grunting of pigs,
could be distinguished, mingled with the sharp sound of wheels on
the cobble-stones. About twelve o'clock, when the market was in
full swing, there appeared at the front door a tall, middle-aged
peasant, with a hooked nose and a cap on the back of his head; it
was Robelin, the farmer of Geffosses. Shortly afterwards came
Liebard, the farmer of Toucques, short, rotund and ruddy, wearing
a grey jacket and spurred boots.
Both men brought their landlady either chickens or cheese.
Felicite would invariably thwart their ruses and they held her in
great respect.
At various times, Madame Aubain received a visit from the Marquis
de Gremanville, one of her uncles, who was ruined and lived at
Falaise on the remainder of his estates. He always came at
dinner-time and brought an ugly poodle with him, whose paws soiled
the furniture. In spite of his efforts to appear a man of breeding
(he even went so far as to raise his hat every time he said "My
deceased father"), his habits got the better of him, and he would
fill his glass a little too often and relate broad stories.
Felicite would show him out very politely and say: "You have had
enough for this time, Monsieur de Gremanville! Hoping to see you
again!" and would close the door.
She opened it gladly for Monsieur Bourais, a retired lawyer. His
bald head and white cravat, the ruffling of his shirt, his flowing
brown coat, the manner in which he took his snuff, his whole
person, in fact, produced in her the kind of awe which we feel
when we see extraordinary persons. As he managed Madame's estates,
he spent hours with her in Monsieur's study; he was in constant
fear of being compromised, had a great regard for the magistracy
and some pretensions to learning.
In order to facilitate the children's studies, he presented them
with an engraved geography which represented various scenes of the
world: cannibals with feather head-dresses, a gorilla kidnapping a
young girl, Arabs in the desert, a whale being harpooned, etc.
Paul explained the pictures to Felicite. And, in fact, this was
her only literary education.
The children's studies were under the direction of a poor devil
employed at the town-hall, who sharpened his pocketknife on his
boots and was famous for his penmanship.
When the weather was fine, they went to Geffosses. The house was
built in the centre of the sloping yard; and the sea looked like a
grey spot in the distance. Felicite would take slices of cold meat
from the lunch basket and they would sit down and eat in a room
next to the dairy. This room was all that remained of a cottage
that had been torn down. The dilapidated wall-paper trembled in
the drafts. Madame Aubain, overwhelmed by recollections, would
hang her head, while the children were afraid to open their
mouths. Then, "Why don't you go and play?" their mother would say;
and they would scamper off.
Paul would go to the old barn, catch birds, throw stones into the
pond, or pound the trunks of the trees with a stick till they
resounded like drums. Virginia would feed the rabbits and run to
pick the wild flowers in the fields, and her flying legs would
disclose her little embroidered pantalettes. One autumn evening,
they struck out for home through the meadows. The new moon
illumined part of the sky and a mist hovered like a veil over the
sinuosities of the river. Oxen, lying in the pastures, gazed
mildly at the passing persons. In the third field, however,
several of them got up and surrounded them. "Don't be afraid,"
cried Felicite; and murmuring a sort of lament she passed her hand
over the back of the nearest ox; he turned away and the others
followed. But when they came to the next pasture, they heard
frightful bellowing.
It was a bull which was hidden from them by the fog. He advanced
towards the two women, and Madame Aubain prepared to flee for her
life. "No, no! not so fast," warned Felicite. Still they hurried
on, for they could hear the noisy breathing of the bull close
behind them. His hoofs pounded the grass like hammers, and
presently he began to gallop! Felicite turned around and threw
patches of grass in his eyes. He hung his head, shook his horns
and bellowed with fury. Madame Aubain and the children, huddled at
the end of the field, were trying to jump over the ditch. Felicite
continued to back before the bull, blinding him with dirt, while
she shouted to them to make haste.
Madame Aubain finally slid into the ditch, after shoving first
Virginia and then Paul into it, and though she stumbled several
times she managed, by dint of courage, to climb the other side of
it.
The bull had driven Felicite up against a fence; the foam from his
muzzle flew in her face and in another minute he would have
disembowelled her. She had just time to slip between two bars and
the huge animal, thwarted, paused.
For years, this occurrence was a topic of conversation in
Pont-l'Eveque. But Felicite took no credit to herself, and
probably never knew that she had been heroic.
Virginia occupied her thoughts solely, for the shock she had
sustained gave her a nervous affection, and the physician, M.
Poupart, prescribed the saltwater bathing at Trouville. In those
days, Trouville was not greatly patronised. Madame Aubain gathered
information, consulted Bourais, and made preparations as if they
were going on an extended trip.
The baggage was sent the day before on Liebard's cart. On the
following morning, he brought around two horses, one of which had
a woman's saddle with a velveteen back to it, while on the crupper
of the other was a rolled shawl that was to be used for a seat.
Madame Aubain mounted the second horse, behind Liebard. Felicite
took charge of the little girl, and Paul rode M. Lechaptois'
donkey, which had been lent for the occasion on the condition that
they should be careful of it.
The road was so bad that it took two hours to cover the eight
miles. The two horses sank knee-deep into the mud and stumbled
into ditches; sometimes they had to jump over them. In certain
places, Liebard's mare stopped abruptly. He waited patiently till
she started again, and talked of the people whose estates bordered
the road, adding his own moral reflections to the outline of their
histories. Thus, when they were passing through Toucques, and came
to some windows draped with nasturtiums, he shrugged his shoulders
and said: "There's a woman, Madame Lehoussais, who, instead of
taking a young man--" Felicite could not catch what followed; the
horses began to trot, the donkey to gallop, and they turned into a
lane; then a gate swung open, two farm-hands appeared and they all
dismounted at the very threshold of the farm-house.
Mother Liebard, when she caught sight of her mistress, was lavish
with joyful demonstrations. She got up a lunch which comprised a
leg of mutton, tripe, sausages, a chicken fricassee, sweet cider,
a fruit tart and some preserved prunes; then to all this the good
woman added polite remarks about Madame, who appeared to be in
better health, Mademoiselle, who had grown to be "superb," and
Paul, who had become singularly sturdy; she spoke also of their
deceased grandparents, whom the Liebards had known, for they had
been in the service of the family for several generations.
Like its owners, the farm had an ancient appearance. The beams of
the ceiling were mouldy, the walls black with smoke and the
windows grey with dust. The oak sideboard was filled with all
sorts of utensils, plates, pitchers, tin bowls, wolf-traps. The
children laughed when they saw a huge syringe. There was not a
tree in the yard that did not have mushrooms growing around its
foot, or a bunch of mistletoe hanging in its branches. Several of
the trees had been blown down, but they had started to grow in the
middle and all were laden with quantities of apples. The thatched
roofs, which were of unequal thickness, looked like brown velvet
and could resist the fiercest gales. But the wagon-shed was fast
crumbling to ruins. Madame Aubain said that she would attend to
it, and then gave orders to have the horses saddled.
It took another thirty minutes to reach Trouville. The little
caravan dismounted in order to pass Les Ecores, a cliff that
overhangs the bay, and a few minutes later, at the end of the
dock, they entered the yard of the Golden Lamb, an inn kept by
Mother David.
During the first few days, Virginia felt stronger, owing to the
change of air and the action of the sea-baths. She took them in
her little chemise, as she had no bathing suit, and afterwards her
nurse dressed her in the cabin of a customs officer, which was
used for that purpose by other bathers.
In the afternoon, they would take the donkey and go to the
Roches-Noires, near Hennequeville. The path led at first through
undulating grounds, and thence to a plateau, where pastures and
tilled fields alternated. At the edge of the road, mingling with
the brambles, grew holly bushes, and here and there stood large
dead trees whose branches traced zigzags upon the blue sky.
Ordinarily, they rested in a field facing the ocean, with
Deauville on their left, and Havre on their right. The sea
glittered brightly in the sun and was as smooth as a mirror, and
so calm that they could scarcely distinguish its murmur; sparrows
chirped joyfully and the immense canopy of heaven spread over it
all. Madame Aubain brought out her sewing, and Virginia amused
herself by braiding reeds; Felicite wove lavender blossoms, while
Paul was bored and wished to go home.
Sometimes they crossed the Toucques in a boat, and started to hunt
for seashells. The outgoing tide exposed starfish and sea-urchins,
and the children tried to catch the flakes of foam which the wind
blew away. The sleepy waves lapping the sand unfurled themselves
along the shore that extended as far as the eye could see, but
where land began, it was limited by the downs which separated it
from the "Swamp," a large meadow shaped like a hippodrome. When
they went home that way, Trouville, on the slope of a hill below,
grew larger and larger as they advanced, and, with all its houses
of unequal height, seemed to spread out before them in a sort of
giddy confusion.
When the heat was too oppressive, they remained in their rooms.
The dazzling sunlight cast bars of light between the shutters. Not
a sound in the village, not a soul on the sidewalk. This silence
intensified the tranquillity of everything. In the distance, the
hammers of some calkers pounded the hull of a ship, and the sultry
breeze brought them an odour of tar.
The principal diversion consisted in watching the return of the
fishing-smacks. As soon as they passed the beacons, they began to
ply to windward. The sails were lowered to one third of the masts,
and with their foresails swelled up like balloons they glided over
the waves and anchored in the middle of the harbour. Then they
crept up alongside of the dock and the sailors threw the quivering
fish over the side of the boat; a line of carts was waiting for
them, and women with white caps sprang forward to receive the
baskets and embrace their men-folk.
One day, one of them spoke to Felicite, who, after a little while,
returned to the house gleefully. She had found one of her sisters,
and presently Nastasie Barette, wife of Leroux, made her
appearance, holding an infant in her arms, another child by the
hand, while on her left was a little cabin-boy with his hands in
his pockets and his cap on his ear.
At the end of fifteen minutes, Madame Aubain bade her go.
They always hung around the kitchen, or approached Felicite when
she and the children were out walking. The husband, however, did
not show himself.
Felicite developed a great fondness for them; she bought them a
stove, some shirts and a blanket; it was evident that they
exploited her. Her foolishness annoyed Madame Aubain, who,
moreover did not like the nephew's familiarity, for he called her
son "thou";--and, as Virginia began to cough and the season was
over, she decided to return to Pont-l'Eveque.
Monsieur Bourais assisted her in the choice of a college. The one
at Caen was considered the best. So Paul was sent away and bravely
said good-bye to them all, for he was glad to go to live in a
house where he would have boy companions.
Madame Aubain resigned herself to the separation from her son
because it was unavoidable. Virginia brooded less and less over
it. Felicite regretted the noise he made, but soon a new
occupation diverted her mind; beginning from Christmas, she
accompanied the little girl to her catechism lesson every day.
CHAPTER III
DEATH
After she had made a curtsey at the threshold, she would walk up
the aisle between the double lines of chairs, open Madame Aubain's
pew, sit down and look around.
Girls and boys, the former on the right, the latter on the
left-hand side of the church, filled the stalls of the choir; the
priest stood beside the reading-desk; on one stained window of the
side-aisle the Holy Ghost hovered over the Virgin; on another one,
Mary knelt before the Child Jesus, and behind the altar, a wooden
group represented Saint Michael felling the dragon.
The priest first read a condensed lesson of sacred history.
Felicite evoked Paradise, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the
blazing cities, the dying nations, the shattered idols; and out of
this she developed a great respect for the Almighty and a great
fear of His wrath. Then, when she listened to the Passion, she
wept. Why had they crucified Him who loved little children,
nourished the people, made the blind see, and who, out of
humility, had wished to be born among the poor, in a stable? The
sowings, the harvests, the wine-presses, all those familiar things
which the Scriptures mention, formed a part of her life; the word
of God sanctified them; and she loved the lambs with increased
tenderness for the sake of the Lamb, and the doves because of the
Holy Ghost.
She found it hard, however, to think of the latter as a person,
for was it not a bird, a flame, and sometimes only a breath?
Perhaps it is its light that at night hovers over swamps, its
breath that propels the clouds, its voice that renders church-bells
harmonious. And Felicite worshipped devoutly, while enjoying the
coolness and the stillness of the church.
As for the dogma, she could not understand it and did not even
try. The priest discoursed, the children recited, and she went to
sleep, only to awaken with a start when they were leaving the
church and their wooden shoes clattered on the stone pavement.
In this way, she learned her catechism, her religious education
having been neglected in her youth; and thenceforth she imitated
all Virginia's religious practises, fasted when she did, and went
to confession with her. At the Corpus-Christi Day they both
decorated an altar.
She worried in advance over Virginia's first communion. She fussed
about the shoes, the rosary, the book and the gloves. With what
nervousness she helped the mother dress the child!
During the entire ceremony, she felt anguished. Monsieur Bourais
hid part of the choir from view, but directly in front of her, the
flock of maidens, wearing white wreaths over their lowered veils,
formed a snow-white field, and she recognised her darling by the
slenderness of her neck and her devout attitude. The bell tinkled.
All the heads bent and there was a silence. Then, at the peals of
the organ the singers and the worshippers struck up the Agnus Dei;
the boys' procession began; behind them came the girls. With
clasped hands, they advanced step by step to the lighted altar,
knelt at the first step, received one by one the Host, and
returned to their seats in the same order. When Virginia's turn
came, Felicite leaned forward to watch her, and through that
imagination which springs from true affection, she at once became
the child, whose face and dress became hers, whose heart beat in
her bosom, and when Virginia opened her mouth and closed her lids,
she did likewise and came very near fainting.
The following day, she presented herself early at the church so as
to receive communion from the cure. She took it with the proper
feeling, but did not experience the same delight as on the
previous day.
Madame Aubain wished to make an accomplished girl of her daughter;
and as Guyot could not teach English nor music, she decided to
send her to the Ursulines at Honfleur.
The child made no objection, but Felicite sighed and thought
Madame was heartless. Then, she thought that perhaps her mistress
was right, as these things were beyond her sphere. Finally, one
day, an old _fiacre_ stopped in front of the door and a nun
stepped out. Felicite put Virginia's luggage on top of the
carriage, gave the coachman some instructions, and smuggled six
jars of jam, a dozen pears and a bunch of violets under the seat.
At the last minute, Virginia had a fit of sobbing; she embraced
her mother again and again, while the latter kissed her on her
forehead, and said: "Now, be brave, be brave!" The step was pulled
up and the _fiacre_ rumbled off.
Then Madame Aubain had a fainting spell, and that evening all her
friends, including the two Lormeaus, Madame Lechaptois, the ladies
Rochefeuille, Messieurs de Houppeville and Bourais, called on her
and tendered their sympathy.
At first the separation proved very painful to her. But her
daughter wrote her three times a week and the other days she,
herself, wrote to Virginia. Then she walked in the garden, read a
little, and in this way managed to fill out the emptiness of the
hours.
Each morning, out of habit, Felicite entered Virginia's room and
gazed at the walls. She missed combing her hair, lacing her shoes,
tucking her in her bed, and the bright face and little hand when
they used to go out for a walk. In order to occupy herself she
tried to make lace. But her clumsy fingers broke the threads; she
had no heart for anything, lost her sleep and "wasted away," as
she put it.
In order to have some distraction, she asked leave to receive the
visits of her nephew Victor.
He would come on Sunday, after church, with ruddy cheeks and bared
chest, bringing with him the scent of the country. She would set
the table and they would sit down opposite each other, and eat
their dinner; she ate as little as possible, herself, to avoid any
extra expense, but would stuff him so with food that he would
finally go to sleep. At the first stroke of vespers, she would
wake him up, brush his trousers, tie his cravat and walk to church
with him, leaning on his arm with maternal pride.
His parents always told him to get something out of her, either a
package of brown sugar, or soap, or brandy, and sometimes even
money. He brought her his clothes to mend, and she accepted the
task gladly, because it meant another visit from him.
In August, his father took him on a coasting-vessel.
It was vacation time and the arrival of the children consoled
Felicite. But Paul was capricious, and Virginia was growing too
old to be thee-and-thou'd, a fact which seemed to produce a sort
of embarrassment in their relations.
Victor went successively to Morlaix, to Dunkirk, and to Brighton;
whenever he returned from a trip he would bring her a present. The
first time it was a box of shells; the second, a coffee-cup; the
third, a big doll of ginger-bread. He was growing handsome, had a
good figure, a tiny moustache, kind eyes, and a little leather cap
that sat jauntily on the back of his head. He amused his aunt by
telling her stones mingled with nautical expressions.
One Monday, the 14th of July, 1819 (she never forgot the date),
Victor announced that he had been engaged on merchant-vessel and
that in two days he would take the steamer at Honfleur and join
his sailer, which was going to start from Havre very soon. Perhaps
he might be away two years.
The prospect of his departure filled Felicite with despair, and in
order to bid him farewell, on Wednesday night, after Madame's
dinner, she put on her pattens and trudged the four miles that
separated Pont-l'Eveque from Honfleur.
When she reached the Calvary, instead of turning to the right, she
turned to the left and lost herself in coal-yards; she had to
retrace her steps; some people she spoke to advised her to hasten.
She walked helplessly around the harbour filled with vessels, and
knocked against hawsers. Presently the ground sloped abruptly,
lights flittered to and fro, and she thought all at once that she
had gone mad when she saw some horses in the sky.
Others, on the edge of the dock, neighed at the sight of the
ocean. A derrick pulled them up in the air and dumped them into a
boat, where passengers were bustling about among barrels of cider,
baskets of cheese and bags of meal; chickens cackled, the captain
swore and a cabin-boy rested on the railing, apparently
indifferent to his surroundings. Felicite, who did not recognise
him, kept shouting: "Victor!" He suddenly raised his eyes, but
while she was preparing to rush up to him, they withdrew the
gangplank.
The packet, towed by singing women, glided out of the harbour. Her
hull squeaked and the heavy waves beat up against her sides. The
sail had turned and nobody was visible;--and on the ocean,
silvered by the light of the moon, the vessel formed a black spot
that grew dimmer and dimmer, and finally disappeared.
When Felicite passed the Calvary again, she felt as if she must
entrust that which was dearest to her to the Lord; and for a long
while she prayed, with uplifted eyes and a face wet with tears.
The city was sleeping; some customs officials were taking the air;
and the water kept pouring through the holes of the dam with a
deafening roar. The town clock struck two.
The parlour of the convent would not open until morning, and
surely a delay would annoy Madame; so, in spite of her desire to
see the other child, she went home. The maids of the inn were just
arising when she reached Pont-l'Eveque.
So the poor boy would be on the ocean for months! His previous
trips had not alarmed her. One can come back from England and
Brittany; but America, the colonies, the islands, were all lost in
an uncertain region at the very end of the world.
From that time on, Felicite thought solely of her nephew. On warm
days she feared he would suffer from thirst, and when it stormed,
she was afraid he would be struck by lightning. When she harkened
to the wind that rattled in the chimney and dislodged the tiles on
the roof, she imagined that he was being buffeted by the same
storm, perched on top of a shattered mast, with his whole body
bent backward and covered with sea-foam; or,--these were
recollections of the engraved geography--he was being devoured by
savages, or captured in a forest by apes, or dying on some lonely
coast. She never mentioned her anxieties, however.
Madame Aubain worried about her daughter.
The sisters thought that Virginia was affectionate but delicate.
The slightest emotion enervated her. She had to give up her piano
lessons. Her mother insisted upon regular letters from the
convent. One morning, when the postman failed to come, she grew
impatient and began to pace to and fro, from her chair to the
window. It was really extraordinary! No news since four days!
In order to console her mistress by her own example, Felicite
said:
"Why, Madame, I haven't had any news since six months!"--
"From whom?"--
The servant replied gently:
"Why--from my nephew."
"Oh, yes, your nephew!" And shrugging her shoulders, Madame Aubain
continued to pace the floor as if to say: "I did not think of
it.--Besides, I do not care, a cabin-boy, a pauper!--but my
daughter--what a difference! just think of it!--"
Felicite, although she had been reared roughly, was very
indignant. Then she forgot about it.
It appeared quite natural to her that one should lose one's head
about Virginia.
The two children were of equal importance; they were united in her
heart and their fate was to be the same.
The chemist informed her that Victor's vessel had reached Havana.
He had read the information in a newspaper.
Felicite imagined that Havana was a place where people did nothing
but smoke, and that Victor walked around among negroes in a cloud
of tobacco. Could a person, in case of need, return by land? How
far was it from Pont-l'Eveque? In order to learn these things she
questioned Monsieur Bourais. He reached for his map and began some
explanations concerning longitudes, and smiled with superiority at
Felicite's bewilderment. At last, he took his pencil and pointed
out an imperceptible black point in the scallops of an oval
blotch, adding: "There it is." She bent over the map; the maze of
coloured lines hurt her eyes without enlightening her; and when
Bourais asked her what puzzled her, she requested him to show her
the house Victor lived in. Bourais threw up his hands, sneezed,
and then laughed uproariously; such ignorance delighted his soul;
but Felicite failed to understand the cause of his mirth, she
whose intelligence was so limited that she perhaps expected to see
even the picture of her nephew!
It was two weeks later that Liebard came into the kitchen at
market-time, and handed her a letter from her brother-in-law. As
neither of them could read, she called upon her mistress.
Madame Aubain, who was counting the stitches of her knitting, laid
her work down beside her, opened the letter, started, and in a low
tone and with a searching look said: "They tell you of a--misfortune.
Your nephew--."
He had died. The letter told nothing more.
Felicite dropped on a chair, leaned her head against the back and
closed her lids; presently they grew pink. Then, with drooping
head, inert hands and staring eyes she repeated at intervals:
"Poor little chap! poor little chap!"
Liebard watched her and sighed. Madame Aubain was trembling.
She proposed to the girl to go see her sister in Trouville.
With a single motion, Felicite replied that it was not necessary.
There was a silence. Old Liebard thought it about time for him to
take leave.
Then Felicite uttered:
"They have no sympathy, they do not care!"
Her head fell forward again, and from time to time, mechanically,
she toyed with the long knitting-needles on the work-table.
Some women passed through the yard with a basket of wet clothes.
When she saw them through the window, she suddenly remembered her
own wash; as she had soaked it the day before, she must go and
rinse it now. So she arose and left the room.
Her tub and her board were on the bank of the Toucques. She threw
a heap of clothes on the ground, rolled up her sleeves and grasped
her bat; and her loud pounding could be heard in the neighbouring
gardens. The meadows were empty, the breeze wrinkled the stream,
at the bottom of which were long grasses that looked like the hair
of corpses floating in the water. She restrained her sorrow and
was very brave until night; but, when she had gone to her own
room, she gave way to it, burying her face in the pillow and
pressing her two fists against her temples.
A long while afterward, she learned through Victor's captain, the
circumstances which surrounded his death. At the hospital they had
bled him too much, treating him for yellow fever. Four doctors
held him at one time. He died almost instantly, and the chief
surgeon had said:
"Here goes another one!"
His parents had always treated him barbarously; she preferred not
to see them again, and they made no advances, either from
forgetfulness or out of innate hardness.
Virginia was growing weaker.
A cough, continual fever, oppressive breathing and spots on her
cheeks indicated some serious trouble. Monsieur Poupart had
advised a sojourn in Provence. Madame Aubain decided that they
would go, and she would have had her daughter come home at once,
had it not been for the climate of Pont-l'Eveque.
She made an arrangement with a livery-stable man who drove her
over to the convent every Tuesday. In the garden there was a
terrace, from which the view extends to the Seine. Virginia walked
in it, leaning on her mother's arm and treading the dead vine
leaves. Sometimes the sun, shining through the clouds, made her
blink her lids, when she gazed at the sails in the distance, and
let her eyes roam over the horizon from the chateau of Tancarville
to the lighthouses of Havre. Then they rested in the arbour. Her
mother had bought a little cask of fine Malaga wine, and Virginia,
laughing at the idea of becoming intoxicated, would drink a few
drops of it, but never more.
Her strength returned. Autumn passed. Felicite began to reassure
Madame Aubain. But, one evening, when she returned home after an
errand, she met M. Boupart's coach in front of the door; M.
Boupart himself was standing in the vestibule and Madame Aubain
was tying the strings of her bonnet. "Give me my foot-warmer, my
purse and my gloves; and be quick about it," she said.
Virginia had congestion of the lungs; perhaps it was desperate.
"Not yet," said the physician, and both got into the carriage,
while the snow fell in thick flakes. It was almost night and very
cold.
Felicite rushed to the church to light a candle. Then she ran
after the coach which she overtook after an hour's chase, sprang
up behind and held on to the straps. But suddenly a thought
crossed her mind: "The yard had been left open; supposing that
burglars got in!" And down she jumped.
The next morning, at daybreak, she called at the doctor's. He had
been home, but had left again. Then she waited at the inn,
thinking that strangers might bring her a letter. At last, at
daylight she took the diligence for Lisieux.
The convent was at the end of a steep and narrow street. When she
arrived about at the middle of it, she heard strange noises, a
funeral knell. "It must be for some one else," thought she; and
she pulled the knocker violently.
After several minutes had elapsed, she heard footsteps, the door
was half opened and a nun appeared. The good sister, with an air
of compunction, told her that "she had just passed away." And at
the same time the tolling of Saint-Leonard's increased.
Felicite reached the second floor. Already at the threshold, she
caught sight of Virginia lying on her back, with clasped hands,
her mouth open and her head thrown back, beneath a black crucifix
inclined toward her, and stiff curtains which were less white than
her face. Madame Aubain lay at the foot of the couch, clasping it
with her arms and uttering groans of agony. The Mother Superior
was standing on the right side of the bed. The three candles on
the bureau made red blurs, and the windows were dimmed by the fog
outside. The nuns carried Madame Aubain from the room.
For two nights, Felicite never left the corpse. She would repeat
the same prayers, sprinkle holy water over the sheets, get up,
come back to the bed and contemplate the body. At the end of the
first vigil, she noticed that the face had taken on a yellow
tinge, the lips grew blue, the nose grew pinched, the eyes were
sunken. She kissed them several times and would not have been
greatly astonished had Virginia opened them; to souls like these
the supernatural is always quite simple. She washed her, wrapped
her in a shroud, put her into the casket, laid a wreath of flowers
on her head and arranged her curls. They were blond and of an
extraordinary length for her age. Felicite cut off a big lock and
put half of it into her bosom, resolving never to part with it.
The body was taken to Pont-l'Eveque, according to Madame Aubain's
wishes; she followed the hearse in a closed carriage.
After the ceremony it took three quarters of an hour to reach the
cemetery. Paul, sobbing, headed the procession; Monsieur Bourais
followed, and then came the principal inhabitants of the town, the
women covered with black capes, and Felicite. The memory of her
nephew, and the thought that she had not been able to render him
these honours, made her doubly unhappy, and she felt as if he were
being buried with Virginia.
Madame Aubain's grief was uncontrollable. At first she rebelled
against God, thinking that he was unjust to have taken away her
child--she who had never done anything wrong, and whose conscience
was so pure! But no! she ought to have taken her South. Other
doctors would have saved her. She accused herself, prayed to be
able to join her child, and cried in the midst of her dreams. Of
the latter, one more especially haunted her. Her husband, dressed
like a sailor, had come back from a long voyage, and with tears in
his eyes told her that he had received the order to take Virginia
away. Then they both consulted about a hiding-place.
Once she came in from the garden, all upset. A moment before (and
she showed the place), the father and daughter had appeared to
her, one after the other; they did nothing but look at her.
During several months she remained inert in her room. Felicite
scolded her gently; she must keep up for her son and also for the
other one, for "her memory."
"Her memory!" replied Madame Aubain, as if she were just
awakening, "Oh! yes, yes, you do not forget her!" This was an
allusion to the cemetery where she had been expressly forbidden to
go.
But Felicite went there every day. At four o'clock exactly, she
would go through the town, climb the hill, open the gate and
arrive at Virginia's tomb. It was a small column of pink marble
with a flat stone at its base, and it was surrounded by a little
plot enclosed by chains. The flower-beds were bright with
blossoms. Felicite watered their leaves, renewed the gravel, and
knelt on the ground in order to till the earth properly. When
Madame Aubain was able to visit the cemetery she felt very much
relieved and consoled.
Years passed, all alike and marked by no other events than the
return of the great church holidays: Easter, Assumption, All
Saints' Day. Household happenings constituted the only data to
which in later years they often referred. Thus, in 1825, workmen
painted the vestibule; in 1827, a portion of the roof almost
killed a man by falling into the yard. In the summer of 1828, it
was Madame's turn to offer the hallowed bread; at that time,
Bourais disappeared mysteriously; and the old acquaintances,
Guyot, Liebard, Madame Lechaptois, Robelin, old Gremanville,
paralysed since a long time, passed away one by one. One night,
the driver of the mail in Pont-l'Eveque announced the Revolution
of July. A few days afterward a new sub-prefect was nominated, the
Baron de Larsonniere, ex-consul in America, who, besides his wife,
had his sister-in-law and her three grown daughters with him. They
were often seen on their lawn, dressed in loose blouses, and they
had a parrot and a negro servant. Madame Aubain received a call,
which she returned promptly. As soon as she caught sight of them,
Felicite would run and notify her mistress. But only one thing was
capable of arousing her: a letter from her son.
He could not follow any profession as he was absorbed in drinking.
His mother paid his debts and he made fresh ones; and the sighs
that she heaved while she knitted at the window reached the ears
of Felicite who was spinning in the kitchen.
They walked in the garden together, always speaking of Virginia,
and asking each other if such and such a thing would have pleased
her, and what she would probably have said on this or that
occasion.
All her little belongings were put away in a closet of the room
which held the two little beds. But Madame Aubain looked them over
as little as possible. One summer day, however, she resigned
herself to the task and when she opened the closet the moths flew
out.
Virginia's frocks were hung under a shelf where there were three
dolls, some hoops, a doll-house, and a basin which she had used.
Felicite and Madame Aubain also took out the skirts, the
handkerchiefs, and the stockings and spread them on the beds,
before putting them away again. The sun fell on the piteous
things, disclosing their spots and the creases formed by the
motions of the body. The atmosphere was warm and blue, and a
blackbird trilled in the garden; everything seemed to live in
happiness. They found a little hat of soft brown plush, but it was
entirely moth-eaten. Felicite asked for it. Their eyes met and
filled with tears; at last the mistress opened her arms and the
servant threw herself against her breast and they hugged each
other and giving vent to their grief in a kiss which equalized
them for a moment.
It was the first time that this had ever happened, for Madame
Aubain was not of an expansive nature. Felicite was as grateful
for it as if it had been some favour, and thenceforth loved her
with animal-like devotion and a religious veneration.
Her kind-heartedness developed. When she heard the drums of a
marching regiment passing through the street, she would stand in
the doorway with a jug of cider and give the soldiers a drink. She
nursed cholera victims. She protected Polish refugees, and one of
them even declared that he wished to marry her. But they
quarrelled, for one morning when she returned from the Angelus she
found him in the kitchen coolly eating a dish which he had
prepared for himself during her absence.
After the Polish refugees, came Colmiche, an old man who was
credited with having committed frightful misdeeds in '93. He lived
near the river in the ruins of a pig-sty. The urchins peeped at
him through the cracks in the walls and threw stones that fell on
his miserable bed, where he lay gasping with catarrh, with long
hair, inflamed eyelids, and a tumour as big as his head on one
arm.
She got him some linen, tried to clean his hovel and dreamed of
installing him in the bake-house without his being in Madame's
way. When the cancer broke, she dressed it every day; sometimes
she brought him some cake and placed him in the sun on a bundle of
hay; and the poor old creature, trembling and drooling, would
thank her in his broken voice, and put out his hands whenever she
left him. Finally he died; and she had a mass said for the repose
of his soul.
That day a great joy came to her: at dinner-time, Madame de
Larsonniere's servant called with the parrot, the cage, and the
perch and chain and lock. A note from the baroness told Madame
Aubain that as her husband had been promoted to a prefecture, they
were leaving that night, and she begged her to accept the bird as
a remembrance and a token of her esteem.
Since a long time the parrot had been on Felicite's mind, because
he came from America, which reminded her of Victor, and she had
approached the negro on the subject.
Once even, she had said:
"How glad Madame would be to have him!"
The man had repeated this remark to his mistress who, not being
able to keep the bird, took this means of getting rid of it.
CHAPTER IV
THE BIRD
He was called Loulou. His body was green, his head blue, the tips
of his wings were pink and his breast was golden.
But he had the tiresome tricks of biting his perch, pulling his
feathers out, scattering refuse and spilling the water of his
bath. Madame Aubain grew tired of him and gave him to Felicite for
good.
She undertook his education, and soon he was able to repeat:
"Pretty boy! Your servant, sir! I salute you, Marie!" His perch
was placed near the door and several persons were astonished that
he did not answer to the name of "Jacquot," for every parrot is
called Jacquot. They called him a goose and a log, and these
taunts were like so many dagger thrusts to Felicite. Strange
stubbornness of the bird which would not talk when people watched
him!
Nevertheless, he sought society; for on Sunday, when the ladies
Rochefeuille, Monsieur de Houppeville and the new habitues,
Onfroy, the chemist, Monsieur Varin and Captain Mathieu, dropped
in for their game of cards, he struck the window-panes with his
wings and made such a racket that it was impossible to talk.
Bourais' face must have appeared very funny to Loulou. As soon as
he saw him he would begin to roar. His voice re-echoed in the yard,
and the neighbours would come to the windows and begin to laugh,
too; and in order that the parrot might not see him, Monsieur
Bourais edged along the wall, pushed his hat over his eyes to hide
his profile, and entered by the garden door, and the looks he gave
the bird lacked affection. Loulou, having thrust his head into the
butcher-boy's basket, received a slap, and from that time he
always tried to nip his enemy. Fabu threatened to wring his neck,
although he was not cruelly inclined, notwithstanding his big
whiskers and tattooings. On the contrary, he rather liked the bird
and, out of deviltry, tried to teach him oaths. Felicite, whom his
manner alarmed, put Loulou in the kitchen, took off his chain and
let him walk all over the house.
When he went downstairs, he rested his beak on the steps, lifted
his right foot and then his left one; but his mistress feared that
such feats would give him vertigo. He became ill and was unable to
eat. There was a small growth under his tongue like those chickens
are sometimes afflicted with. Felicite pulled it off with her
nails and cured him. One day, Paul was imprudent enough to blow
the smoke of his cigar in his face; another time, Madame Lormeau
was teasing him with the tip of her umbrella and he swallowed the
tip. Finally he got lost.
She had put him on the grass to cool him and went away only for a
second; when she returned, she found no parrot! She hunted among
the bushes, on the bank of the river, and on the roofs, without
paying any attention to Madame Aubain who screamed at her: "Take
care! you must be insane!" Then she searched every garden in
Pont-l'Eveque and stopped the passers-by to inquire of them:
"Haven't you perhaps seen my parrot?" To those who had never seen
the parrot, she described him minutely. Suddenly she thought she
saw something green fluttering behind the mills at the foot of the
hill. But when she was at the top of the hill she could not see
it. A hod-carrier told her that he had just seen the bird in
Saint-Melaine, in Mother Simon's store. She rushed to the place.
The people did not know what she was talking about. At last she came
home, exhausted, with her slippers worn to shreds, and despair in
her heart. She sat down on the bench near Madame and was telling
of her search when presently a light weight dropped on her
shoulder--Loulou! What the deuce had he been doing? Perhaps he had
just taken a little walk around the town!
She did not easily forget her scare, in fact, she never got over
it. In consequence of a cold, she caught a sore throat; and some
time afterward she had an earache. Three years later she was stone
deaf, and spoke in a very loud voice even in church. Although her
sins might have been proclaimed throughout the diocese without any
shame to herself, or ill effects to the community, the cure
thought it advisable to receive her confession in the vestry-room.
Imaginary buzzings also added to her bewilderment. Her mistress
often said to her: "My goodness, how stupid you are!" and she
would answer: "Yes, Madame," and look for something.
The narrow circle of her ideas grew more restricted than it
already was; the bellowing of the oxen, the chime of the bells no
longer reached her intelligence. All things moved silently, like
ghosts. Only one noise penetrated her ears: the parrot's voice.
As if to divert her mind, he reproduced for her the tick-tack of
the spit in the kitchen, the shrill cry of the fish-vendors, the
saw of the carpenter who had a shop opposite, and when the
door-bell rang, he would imitate Madame Aubain: "Felicite! go to
the front door."
They held conversations together, Loulou repeating the three
phrases of his repertory over and over, Felicite replying by words
that had no greater meaning, but in which she poured out her
feelings. In her isolation, the parrot was almost a son, a lover.
He climbed upon her fingers, pecked at her lips, clung to her
shawl, and when she rocked her head to and fro like a nurse, the
big wings of her cap and the wings of the bird flapped in unison.
When clouds gathered on the horizon and the thunder rumbled,
Loulou would scream, perhaps because he remembered the storms in
his native forests. The dripping of the rain would excite him to
frenzy; he flapped around, struck the ceiling with his wings,
upset everything, and would finally fly into the garden to play.
Then he would come back into the room, light on one of the
andirons, and hop around in order to get dry.
One morning during the terrible winter of 1837, when she had put
him in front of the fire-place on account of the cold, she found
him dead in his cage, hanging to the wire bars with his head down.
He had probably died of congestion. But she believed that he had
been poisoned, and although she had no proofs whatever, her
suspicion rested on Fabu.
She wept so sorely that her mistress said: "Why don't you have him
stuffed?"
She asked the advice of the chemist, who had always been kind to
the bird.
He wrote to Havre for her. A certain man named Fellacher consented
to do the work. But, as the diligence driver often lost parcels
entrusted to him, Felicite resolved to take her pet to Honfleur
herself.
Leafless apple-trees lined the edges of the road. The ditches were
covered with ice. The dogs on the neighbouring farms barked; and
Felicite, with her hands beneath her cape, her little black sabots
and her basket, trotted along nimbly in the middle of the
sidewalk. She crossed the forest, passed by the Haut-Chene and
reached Saint-Gatien.
Behind her, in a cloud of dust and impelled by the steep incline,
a mail-coach drawn by galloping horses advanced like a whirlwind.
When he saw a woman in the middle of the road, who did not get out
of the way, the driver stood up in his seat and shouted to her and
so did the postilion, while the four horses, which he could not
hold back, accelerated their pace; the two leaders were almost
upon her; with a jerk of the reins he threw them to one side, but,
furious at the incident, he lifted his big whip and lashed her
from her head to her feet with such violence that she fell to the
ground unconscious.
Her first thought, when she recovered her senses, was to open the
basket. Loulou was unharmed. She felt a sting on her right cheek;
when she took her hand away it was red, for the blood was flowing.
She sat down on a pile of stones, and sopped her cheek with her
handkerchief; then she ate a crust of bread she had put in her
basket, and consoled herself by looking at the bird.
Arriving at the top of Ecquemanville, she saw the lights of
Honfleur shining in the distance like so many stars; further on,
the ocean spread out in a confused mass. Then a weakness came over
her; the misery of her childhood, the disappointment of her first
love, the departure of her nephew, the death of Virginia; all
these things came back to her at once, and, rising like a swelling
tide in her throat, almost choked her.
Then she wished to speak to the captain of the vessel, and without
stating what she was sending, she gave him some instructions.
Fellacher kept the parrot a long time. He always promised that it
would be ready for the following week; after six months he
announced the shipment of a case, and that was the end of it.
Really, it seemed as if Loulou would never come back to his home.
"They have stolen him," thought Felicite.
Finally he arrived, sitting bolt upright on a branch which could
be screwed into a mahogany pedestal, with his foot in the air, his
head on one side, and in his beak a nut which the naturalist, from
love of the sumptuous, had gilded. She put him in her room.
This place, to which only a chosen few were admitted, looked like
a chapel and a second-hand shop, so filled was it with devotional
and heterogeneous things. The door could not be opened easily on
account of the presence of a large wardrobe. Opposite the window
that looked out into the garden, a bull's-eye opened on the yard;
a table was placed by the cot and held a washbasin, two combs, and
a piece of blue soap in a broken saucer. On the walls were
rosaries, medals, a number of Holy Virgins, and a holy-water basin
made out of a cocoanut; on the bureau, which was covered with a
napkin like an altar, stood the box of shells that Victor had
given her; also a watering-can and a balloon, writing-books, the
engraved geography and a pair of shoes; on the nail which held the
mirror, hung Virginia's little plush hat! Felicite carried this
sort of respect so far that she even kept one of Monsieur's old
coats. All the things which Madame Aubain discarded, Felicite
begged for her own room. Thus, she had artificial flowers on the
edge of the bureau, and the picture of the Comte d'Artois in the
recess of the window. By means of a board, Loulou was set on a
portion of the chimney which advanced into the room. Every morning
when she awoke, she saw him in the dim light of dawn and recalled
bygone days and the smallest details of insignificant actions,
without any sense of bitterness or grief.
As she was unable to communicate with people, she lived in a sort
of somnambulistic torpor. The processions of Corpus-Christi Day
seemed to wake her up. She visited the neighbours to beg for
candlesticks and mats so as to adorn the temporary altars in the
street.
In church, she always gazed at the Holy Ghost, and noticed that
there was something about it that resembled a parrot. The likeness
appeared even more striking on a coloured picture by Espinal,
representing the baptism of our Saviour. With his scarlet wings
and emerald body, it was really the image of Loulou. Having bought
the picture, she hung it near the one of the Comte d'Artois so
that she could take them in at one glance.
They associated in her mind, the parrot becoming sanctified
through the neighbourhood of the Holy Ghost, and the latter
becoming more lifelike in her eyes, and more comprehensible. In
all probability the Father had never chosen as messenger a dove,
as the latter has no voice, but rather one of Loulou's ancestors.
And Felicite said her prayers in front of the coloured picture,
though from time to time she turned slightly toward the bird.
She desired very much to enter in the ranks of the "Daughters of
the Virgin." But Madame Aubain dissuaded her from it.
A most important event occurred: Paul's marriage.
After being first a notary's clerk, then in business, then in the
customs, and a tax collector, and having even applied for a
position in the administration of woods and forests, he had at
last, when he was thirty-six years old, by a divine inspiration,
found his vocation: registrature! and he displayed such a high
ability that an inspector had offered him his daughter and his
influence.
Paul, who had become quite settled, brought his bride to visit his
mother.
But she looked down upon the customs of Pont-l'Eveque, put on
airs, and hurt Felicite's feelings. Madame Aubain felt relieved
when she left.
The following week they learned of Monsieur Bourais' death in an
inn. There were rumours of suicide, which were confirmed; doubts
concerning his integrity arose. Madame Aubain looked over her
accounts and soon discovered his numerous embezzlements; sales of
wood which had been concealed from her, false receipts, etc.
Furthermore, he had an illegitimate child, and entertained a
friendship for "a person in Dozule."
These base actions affected her very much. In March, 1853, she
developed a pain in her chest; her tongue looked as if it were
coated with smoke, and the leeches they applied did not relieve
her oppression; and on the ninth evening she died, being just
seventy-two years old.
People thought that she was younger, because her hair, which she
wore in bands framing her pale face, was brown. Few friends
regretted her loss, for her manner was so haughty that she did not
attract them. Felicite mourned for her as servants seldom mourn
for their masters. The fact that Madame should die before herself
perplexed her mind and seemed contrary to the order of things, and
absolutely monstrous and inadmissible. Ten days later (the time to
journey from Besancon), the heirs arrived. Her daughter-in-law
ransacked the drawers, kept some of the furniture, and sold the
rest; then they went back to their own home.
Madame's armchair, foot-warmer, work-table, the eight chairs,
everything was gone! The places occupied by the pictures formed
yellow squares on the walls. They had taken the two little beds,
and the wardrobe had been emptied of Virginia's belongings!
Felicite went upstairs, overcome with grief.
The following day a sign was posted on the door; the chemist
screamed in her ear that the house was for sale.
For a moment she tottered, and had to sit down.
What hurt her most was to give up her room,--so nice for poor
Loulou! She looked at him in despair and implored the Holy Ghost,
and it was this way that she contracted the idolatrous habit of
saying her prayers kneeling in front of the bird. Sometimes the
sun fell through the window on his glass eye, and lighted a great
spark in it which sent Felicite into ecstasy.
Her mistress had left her an income of three hundred and eighty
francs. The garden supplied her with vegetables. As for clothes,
she had enough to last her till the end of her days, and she
economised on the light by going to bed at dusk.
She rarely went out, in order to avoid passing in front of the
second-hand dealer's shop where there was some of the old
furniture. Since her fainting spell, she dragged her leg, and as
her strength was failing rapidly, old Mother Simon, who had lost
her money in the grocery business, came every morning to chop the
wood and pump the water.
Her eyesight grew dim. She did not open the shutters after that.
Many years passed. But the house did not sell or rent. Fearing
that she would be put out, Felicite did not ask for repairs. The
laths of the roof were rotting away, and during one whole winter
her bolster was wet. After Easter she spit blood.
Then Mother Simon went for a doctor. Felicite wished to know what
her complaint was. But, being too deaf to hear, she caught only
one word: "Pneumonia." She was familiar with it and gently
answered:--"Ah! like Madame," thinking it quite natural that she
should follow her mistress.
The time for the altars in the street drew near.
The first one was always erected at the foot of the hill, the
second in front of the post-office, and the third in the middle of
the street. This position occasioned some rivalry among the women
and they finally decided upon Madame Aubain's yard.
Felicite's fever grew worse. She was sorry that she could not do
anything for the altar. If she could, at least, have contributed
something toward it! Then she thought of the parrot. Her
neighbours objected that it would not be proper. But the cure gave
his consent and she was so grateful for it that she begged him to
accept after her death, her only treasure, Loulou. From Tuesday
until Saturday, the day before the event, she coughed more
frequently. In the evening her face was contracted, her lips stuck
to her gums and she began to vomit; and on the following day, she
felt so low that she called for a priest.
Three neighbours surrounded her when the dominie administered the
Extreme Unction. Afterwards she said that she wished to speak to
Fabu.
He arrived in his Sunday clothes, very ill at ease among the
funereal surroundings.
"Forgive me," she said, making an effort to extend her arm, "I
believed it was you who killed him!"
What did such accusations mean? Suspect a man like him of murder!
And Fabu became excited and was about to make trouble.
"Don't you see she is not in her right mind?"
From time to time Felicite spoke to shadows. The women left her
and Mother Simon sat down to breakfast.
A little later, she took Loulou and holding him up to Felicite:
"Say good-bye to him, now!" she commanded.
Although he was not a corpse, he was eaten up by worms; one of his
wings was broken and the wadding was coming out of his body. But
Felicite was blind now, and she took him and laid him against her
cheek. Then Mother Simon removed him in order to set him on the
altar.
CHAPTER V
THE VISION
The grass exhaled an odour of summer; flies buzzed in the air, the
sun shone on the river and warmed the slated roof. Old Mother
Simon had returned to Felicite and was peacefully falling asleep.
The ringing of bells woke her; the people were coming out of
church. Felicite's delirium subsided. By thinking of the
procession, she was able to see it as if she had taken part in it.
All the school-children, the singers and the firemen walked on the
sidewalks, while in the middle of the street came first the
custodian of the church with his halberd, then the beadle with a
large cross, the teacher in charge of the boys and a sister
escorting the little girls; three of the smallest ones, with curly
heads, threw rose leaves into the air; the deacon with outstretched
arms conducted the music; and two incense-bearers turned with each
step they took toward the Holy Sacrament, which was carried by
M. le Cure, attired in his handsome chasuble and walking under a
canopy of red velvet supported by four men. A crowd of people
followed, jammed between the walls of the houses hung with white
sheets; at last the procession arrived at the foot of the hill.
A cold sweat broke out on Felicite's forehead. Mother Simon wiped
it away with a cloth, saying inwardly that some day she would have
to go through the same thing herself.
The murmur of the crowd grew louder, was very distinct for a
moment and then died away. A volley of musketry shook the
window-panes. It was the postilions saluting the Sacrament.
Felicite rolled her eyes and said as loudly as she could:
"Is he all right?" meaning the parrot.
Her death agony began. A rattle that grew more and more rapid
shook her body. Froth appeared at the corners of her mouth, and
her whole frame trembled. In a little while could be heard the
music of the bass horns, the clear voices of the children and the
men's deeper notes. At intervals all was still, and their shoes
sounded like a herd of cattle passing over the grass.
The clergy appeared in the yard. Mother Simon climbed on a chair
to reach the bull's-eye, and in this manner could see the altar.
It was covered with a lace cloth and draped with green wreaths. In
the middle stood a little frame containing relics; at the corners
were two little orange-trees, and all along the edge were silver
candlesticks, porcelain vases containing sun-flowers, lilies,
peonies, and tufts of hydrangeas. This mound of bright colours
descended diagonally from the first floor to the carpet that
covered the sidewalk. Rare objects arrested one's eye. A golden
sugar-bowl was crowned with violets, earrings set with Alencon
stones were displayed on green moss, and two Chinese screens with
their bright landscapes were near by. Loulou, hidden beneath
roses, showed nothing but his blue head which looked like a piece
of lapis-lazuli.
The singers, the canopy-bearers and the children lined up against
the sides of the yard. Slowly the priest ascended the steps and
placed his shining sun on the lace cloth. Everybody knelt. There
was deep silence; and the censers slipping on their chains were
swung high in the air. A blue vapour rose in Felicite's room. She
opened her nostrils and inhaled it with a mystic sensuousness;
then she closed her lids. Her lips smiled. The beats of her heart
grew fainter and fainter, and vaguer, like a fountain giving out,
like an echo dying away;--and when she exhaled her last breath,
she thought she saw in the half-opened heavens a gigantic parrot
hovering above her head.
CHAPTER I
FELICITE
For half a century the housewives of Pont-l'Eveque had envied
Madame Aubain her servant Felicite.
For a hundred francs a year, she cooked and did the housework,
washed, ironed, mended, harnessed the horse, fattened the poultry,
made the butter and remained faithful to her mistress--although
the latter was by no means an agreeable person.
Madame Aubain had married a comely youth without any money, who
died in the beginning of 1809, leaving her with two young children
and a number of debts. She sold all her property excepting the
farm of Toucques and the farm of Geffosses, the income of which
barely amounted to 5,000 francs; then she left her house in
Saint-Melaine, and moved into a less pretentious one which had
belonged to her ancestors and stood back of the market-place.
This house, with its slate-covered roof, was built between a
passage-way and a narrow street that led to the river. The
interior was so unevenly graded that it caused people to stumble.
A narrow hall separated the kitchen from the parlour, where
Madame Aubain sat all day in a straw armchair near the window.
Eight mahogany chairs stood in a row against the white wainscoting.
An old piano, standing beneath a barometer, was covered with a
pyramid of old books and boxes. On either side of the yellow marble
mantelpiece, in Louis XV style, stood a tapestry armchair. The clock
represented a temple of Vesta; and the whole room smelled musty, as
it was on a lower level than the garden.
On the first floor was Madame's bedchamber, a large room papered
in a flowered design and containing the portrait of Monsieur
dressed in the costume of a dandy. It communicated with a smaller
room, in which there were two little cribs, without any
mattresses. Next, came the parlour (always closed), filled with
furniture covered with sheets. Then a hall, which led to the
study, where books and papers were piled on the shelves of a
book-case that enclosed three quarters of the big black desk. Two
panels were entirely hidden under pen-and-ink sketches, Gouache
landscapes and Audran engravings, relics of better times and
vanished luxury. On the second floor, a garret-window lighted
Felicite's room, which looked out upon the meadows.
She arose at daybreak, in order to attend mass, and she worked
without interruption until night; then, when dinner was over, the
dishes cleared away and the door securely locked, she would bury
the log under the ashes and fall asleep in front of the hearth
with a rosary in her hand. Nobody could bargain with greater
obstinacy, and as for cleanliness, the lustre on her brass
saucepans was the envy and despair of other servants. She was most
economical, and when she ate she would gather up crumbs with the
tip of her finger, so that nothing should be wasted of the loaf of
bread weighing twelve pounds which was baked especially for her
and lasted three weeks.
Summer and winter she wore a dimity kerchief fastened in the back
with a pin, a cap which concealed her hair, a red skirt, grey
stockings, and an apron with a bib like those worn by hospital
nurses.
Her face was thin and her voice shrill. When she was twenty-five,
she looked forty. After she had passed fifty, nobody could tell
her age; erect and silent always, she resembled a wooden figure
working automatically.
CHAPTER II
THE HEROINE
Like every other woman, she had had an affair of the heart. Her
father, who was a mason, was killed by falling from a scaffolding.
Then her mother died and her sisters went their different ways; a
farmer took her in, and while she was quite small, let her keep
cows in the fields. She was clad in miserable rags, beaten for the
slightest offence and finally dismissed for a theft of thirty sous
which she did not commit. She took service on another farm where
she tended the poultry; and as she was well thought of by her
master, her fellow-workers soon grew jealous.
One evening in August (she was then eighteen years old), they
persuaded her to accompany them to the fair at Colleville. She was
immediately dazzled by the noise, the lights in the trees, the
brightness of the dresses, the laces and gold crosses, and the
crowd of people all hopping at the same time. She was standing
modestly at a distance, when presently a young man of well-to-do
appearance, who had been leaning on the pole of a wagon and
smoking his pipe, approached her, and asked her for a dance. He
treated her to cider and cake, bought her a silk shawl, and then,
thinking she had guessed his purpose, offered to see her home.
When they came to the end of a field he threw her down brutally.
But she grew frightened and screamed, and he walked off.
One evening, on the road leading to Beaumont, she came upon a
wagon loaded with hay, and when she overtook it, she recognised
Theodore. He greeted her calmly, and asked her to forget what had
happened between them, as it "was all the fault of the drink."
She did not know what to reply and wished to run away.
Presently he began to speak of the harvest and of the notables of
the village; his father had left Colleville and bought the farm of
Les Ecots, so that now they would be neighbors. "Ah!" she
exclaimed. He then added that his parents were looking around for
a wife for him, but that he, himself, was not so anxious and
preferred to wait for a girl who suited him. She hung her head. He
then asked her whether she had ever thought of marrying. She
replied, smilingly, that it was wrong of him to make fun of her.
"Oh! no, I am in earnest," he said, and put his left arm around
her waist while they sauntered along. The air was soft, the stars
were bright, and the huge load of hay oscillated in front of them,
drawn by four horses whose ponderous hoofs raised clouds of dust.
Without a word from their driver they turned to the right. He
kissed her again and she went home. The following week, Theodore
obtained meetings.
They met in yards, behind walls or under isolated trees. She was
not ignorant, as girls of well-to-do families are--for the animals
had instructed her;--but her reason and her instinct of honour
kept her from falling. Her resistance exasperated Theodore's love
and so in order to satisfy it (or perchance ingenuously), he
offered to marry her. She would not believe him at first, so he
made solemn promises. But, in a short time he mentioned a
difficulty; the previous year, his parents had purchased a
substitute for him; but any day he might be drafted and the
prospect of serving in the army alarmed him greatly. To Felicite
his cowardice appeared a proof of his love for her, and her
devotion to him grew stronger. When she met him, he would torture
her with his fears and his entreaties. At last, he announced that
he was going to the prefect himself for information, and would let
her know everything on the following Sunday, between eleven
o'clock and midnight.
When the time drew near, she ran to meet her lover.
But instead of Theodore, one of his friends was at the
meeting-place.
He informed her that she would never see her sweetheart again;
for, in order to escape the conscription, he had married a rich
old woman, Madame Lehoussais, of Toucques.
The poor girl's sorrow was frightful. She threw herself on the
ground, she cried and called on the Lord, and wandered around
desolately until sunrise. Then she went back to the farm, declared
her intention of leaving, and at the end of the month, after she
had received her wages, she packed all her belongings in a
handkerchief and started for Pont-l'Eveque.
In front of the inn, she met a woman wearing widow's weeds, and
upon questioning her, learned that she was looking for a cook. The
girl did not know very much, but appeared so willing and so modest
in her requirements, that Madame Aubain finally said:
"Very well, I will give you a trial."
And half an hour later Felicite was installed in her house.
At first she lived in a constant anxiety that was caused by "the
style of the household" and the memory of "Monsieur," that hovered
over everything. Paul and Virginia, the one aged seven, and the
other barely four, seemed made of some precious material; she
carried them pig-a-back, and was greatly mortified when Madame
Aubain forbade her to kiss them every other minute.
But in spite of all this, she was happy. The comfort of her new
surroundings had obliterated her sadness.
Every Thursday, friends of Madame Aubain dropped in for a game of
cards, and it was Felicite's duty to prepare the table and heat
the foot-warmers. They arrived at exactly eight o'clock and
departed before eleven.
Every Monday morning, the dealer in second-hand goods, who lived
under the alley-way, spread out his wares on the sidewalk. Then
the city would be filled with a buzzing of voices in which the
neighing of horses, the bleating of lambs, the grunting of pigs,
could be distinguished, mingled with the sharp sound of wheels on
the cobble-stones. About twelve o'clock, when the market was in
full swing, there appeared at the front door a tall, middle-aged
peasant, with a hooked nose and a cap on the back of his head; it
was Robelin, the farmer of Geffosses. Shortly afterwards came
Liebard, the farmer of Toucques, short, rotund and ruddy, wearing
a grey jacket and spurred boots.
Both men brought their landlady either chickens or cheese.
Felicite would invariably thwart their ruses and they held her in
great respect.
At various times, Madame Aubain received a visit from the Marquis
de Gremanville, one of her uncles, who was ruined and lived at
Falaise on the remainder of his estates. He always came at
dinner-time and brought an ugly poodle with him, whose paws soiled
the furniture. In spite of his efforts to appear a man of breeding
(he even went so far as to raise his hat every time he said "My
deceased father"), his habits got the better of him, and he would
fill his glass a little too often and relate broad stories.
Felicite would show him out very politely and say: "You have had
enough for this time, Monsieur de Gremanville! Hoping to see you
again!" and would close the door.
She opened it gladly for Monsieur Bourais, a retired lawyer. His
bald head and white cravat, the ruffling of his shirt, his flowing
brown coat, the manner in which he took his snuff, his whole
person, in fact, produced in her the kind of awe which we feel
when we see extraordinary persons. As he managed Madame's estates,
he spent hours with her in Monsieur's study; he was in constant
fear of being compromised, had a great regard for the magistracy
and some pretensions to learning.
In order to facilitate the children's studies, he presented them
with an engraved geography which represented various scenes of the
world: cannibals with feather head-dresses, a gorilla kidnapping a
young girl, Arabs in the desert, a whale being harpooned, etc.
Paul explained the pictures to Felicite. And, in fact, this was
her only literary education.
The children's studies were under the direction of a poor devil
employed at the town-hall, who sharpened his pocketknife on his
boots and was famous for his penmanship.
When the weather was fine, they went to Geffosses. The house was
built in the centre of the sloping yard; and the sea looked like a
grey spot in the distance. Felicite would take slices of cold meat
from the lunch basket and they would sit down and eat in a room
next to the dairy. This room was all that remained of a cottage
that had been torn down. The dilapidated wall-paper trembled in
the drafts. Madame Aubain, overwhelmed by recollections, would
hang her head, while the children were afraid to open their
mouths. Then, "Why don't you go and play?" their mother would say;
and they would scamper off.
Paul would go to the old barn, catch birds, throw stones into the
pond, or pound the trunks of the trees with a stick till they
resounded like drums. Virginia would feed the rabbits and run to
pick the wild flowers in the fields, and her flying legs would
disclose her little embroidered pantalettes. One autumn evening,
they struck out for home through the meadows. The new moon
illumined part of the sky and a mist hovered like a veil over the
sinuosities of the river. Oxen, lying in the pastures, gazed
mildly at the passing persons. In the third field, however,
several of them got up and surrounded them. "Don't be afraid,"
cried Felicite; and murmuring a sort of lament she passed her hand
over the back of the nearest ox; he turned away and the others
followed. But when they came to the next pasture, they heard
frightful bellowing.
It was a bull which was hidden from them by the fog. He advanced
towards the two women, and Madame Aubain prepared to flee for her
life. "No, no! not so fast," warned Felicite. Still they hurried
on, for they could hear the noisy breathing of the bull close
behind them. His hoofs pounded the grass like hammers, and
presently he began to gallop! Felicite turned around and threw
patches of grass in his eyes. He hung his head, shook his horns
and bellowed with fury. Madame Aubain and the children, huddled at
the end of the field, were trying to jump over the ditch. Felicite
continued to back before the bull, blinding him with dirt, while
she shouted to them to make haste.
Madame Aubain finally slid into the ditch, after shoving first
Virginia and then Paul into it, and though she stumbled several
times she managed, by dint of courage, to climb the other side of
it.
The bull had driven Felicite up against a fence; the foam from his
muzzle flew in her face and in another minute he would have
disembowelled her. She had just time to slip between two bars and
the huge animal, thwarted, paused.
For years, this occurrence was a topic of conversation in
Pont-l'Eveque. But Felicite took no credit to herself, and
probably never knew that she had been heroic.
Virginia occupied her thoughts solely, for the shock she had
sustained gave her a nervous affection, and the physician, M.
Poupart, prescribed the saltwater bathing at Trouville. In those
days, Trouville was not greatly patronised. Madame Aubain gathered
information, consulted Bourais, and made preparations as if they
were going on an extended trip.
The baggage was sent the day before on Liebard's cart. On the
following morning, he brought around two horses, one of which had
a woman's saddle with a velveteen back to it, while on the crupper
of the other was a rolled shawl that was to be used for a seat.
Madame Aubain mounted the second horse, behind Liebard. Felicite
took charge of the little girl, and Paul rode M. Lechaptois'
donkey, which had been lent for the occasion on the condition that
they should be careful of it.
The road was so bad that it took two hours to cover the eight
miles. The two horses sank knee-deep into the mud and stumbled
into ditches; sometimes they had to jump over them. In certain
places, Liebard's mare stopped abruptly. He waited patiently till
she started again, and talked of the people whose estates bordered
the road, adding his own moral reflections to the outline of their
histories. Thus, when they were passing through Toucques, and came
to some windows draped with nasturtiums, he shrugged his shoulders
and said: "There's a woman, Madame Lehoussais, who, instead of
taking a young man--" Felicite could not catch what followed; the
horses began to trot, the donkey to gallop, and they turned into a
lane; then a gate swung open, two farm-hands appeared and they all
dismounted at the very threshold of the farm-house.
Mother Liebard, when she caught sight of her mistress, was lavish
with joyful demonstrations. She got up a lunch which comprised a
leg of mutton, tripe, sausages, a chicken fricassee, sweet cider,
a fruit tart and some preserved prunes; then to all this the good
woman added polite remarks about Madame, who appeared to be in
better health, Mademoiselle, who had grown to be "superb," and
Paul, who had become singularly sturdy; she spoke also of their
deceased grandparents, whom the Liebards had known, for they had
been in the service of the family for several generations.
Like its owners, the farm had an ancient appearance. The beams of
the ceiling were mouldy, the walls black with smoke and the
windows grey with dust. The oak sideboard was filled with all
sorts of utensils, plates, pitchers, tin bowls, wolf-traps. The
children laughed when they saw a huge syringe. There was not a
tree in the yard that did not have mushrooms growing around its
foot, or a bunch of mistletoe hanging in its branches. Several of
the trees had been blown down, but they had started to grow in the
middle and all were laden with quantities of apples. The thatched
roofs, which were of unequal thickness, looked like brown velvet
and could resist the fiercest gales. But the wagon-shed was fast
crumbling to ruins. Madame Aubain said that she would attend to
it, and then gave orders to have the horses saddled.
It took another thirty minutes to reach Trouville. The little
caravan dismounted in order to pass Les Ecores, a cliff that
overhangs the bay, and a few minutes later, at the end of the
dock, they entered the yard of the Golden Lamb, an inn kept by
Mother David.
During the first few days, Virginia felt stronger, owing to the
change of air and the action of the sea-baths. She took them in
her little chemise, as she had no bathing suit, and afterwards her
nurse dressed her in the cabin of a customs officer, which was
used for that purpose by other bathers.
In the afternoon, they would take the donkey and go to the
Roches-Noires, near Hennequeville. The path led at first through
undulating grounds, and thence to a plateau, where pastures and
tilled fields alternated. At the edge of the road, mingling with
the brambles, grew holly bushes, and here and there stood large
dead trees whose branches traced zigzags upon the blue sky.
Ordinarily, they rested in a field facing the ocean, with
Deauville on their left, and Havre on their right. The sea
glittered brightly in the sun and was as smooth as a mirror, and
so calm that they could scarcely distinguish its murmur; sparrows
chirped joyfully and the immense canopy of heaven spread over it
all. Madame Aubain brought out her sewing, and Virginia amused
herself by braiding reeds; Felicite wove lavender blossoms, while
Paul was bored and wished to go home.
Sometimes they crossed the Toucques in a boat, and started to hunt
for seashells. The outgoing tide exposed starfish and sea-urchins,
and the children tried to catch the flakes of foam which the wind
blew away. The sleepy waves lapping the sand unfurled themselves
along the shore that extended as far as the eye could see, but
where land began, it was limited by the downs which separated it
from the "Swamp," a large meadow shaped like a hippodrome. When
they went home that way, Trouville, on the slope of a hill below,
grew larger and larger as they advanced, and, with all its houses
of unequal height, seemed to spread out before them in a sort of
giddy confusion.
When the heat was too oppressive, they remained in their rooms.
The dazzling sunlight cast bars of light between the shutters. Not
a sound in the village, not a soul on the sidewalk. This silence
intensified the tranquillity of everything. In the distance, the
hammers of some calkers pounded the hull of a ship, and the sultry
breeze brought them an odour of tar.
The principal diversion consisted in watching the return of the
fishing-smacks. As soon as they passed the beacons, they began to
ply to windward. The sails were lowered to one third of the masts,
and with their foresails swelled up like balloons they glided over
the waves and anchored in the middle of the harbour. Then they
crept up alongside of the dock and the sailors threw the quivering
fish over the side of the boat; a line of carts was waiting for
them, and women with white caps sprang forward to receive the
baskets and embrace their men-folk.
One day, one of them spoke to Felicite, who, after a little while,
returned to the house gleefully. She had found one of her sisters,
and presently Nastasie Barette, wife of Leroux, made her
appearance, holding an infant in her arms, another child by the
hand, while on her left was a little cabin-boy with his hands in
his pockets and his cap on his ear.
At the end of fifteen minutes, Madame Aubain bade her go.
They always hung around the kitchen, or approached Felicite when
she and the children were out walking. The husband, however, did
not show himself.
Felicite developed a great fondness for them; she bought them a
stove, some shirts and a blanket; it was evident that they
exploited her. Her foolishness annoyed Madame Aubain, who,
moreover did not like the nephew's familiarity, for he called her
son "thou";--and, as Virginia began to cough and the season was
over, she decided to return to Pont-l'Eveque.
Monsieur Bourais assisted her in the choice of a college. The one
at Caen was considered the best. So Paul was sent away and bravely
said good-bye to them all, for he was glad to go to live in a
house where he would have boy companions.
Madame Aubain resigned herself to the separation from her son
because it was unavoidable. Virginia brooded less and less over
it. Felicite regretted the noise he made, but soon a new
occupation diverted her mind; beginning from Christmas, she
accompanied the little girl to her catechism lesson every day.
CHAPTER III
DEATH
After she had made a curtsey at the threshold, she would walk up
the aisle between the double lines of chairs, open Madame Aubain's
pew, sit down and look around.
Girls and boys, the former on the right, the latter on the
left-hand side of the church, filled the stalls of the choir; the
priest stood beside the reading-desk; on one stained window of the
side-aisle the Holy Ghost hovered over the Virgin; on another one,
Mary knelt before the Child Jesus, and behind the altar, a wooden
group represented Saint Michael felling the dragon.
The priest first read a condensed lesson of sacred history.
Felicite evoked Paradise, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the
blazing cities, the dying nations, the shattered idols; and out of
this she developed a great respect for the Almighty and a great
fear of His wrath. Then, when she listened to the Passion, she
wept. Why had they crucified Him who loved little children,
nourished the people, made the blind see, and who, out of
humility, had wished to be born among the poor, in a stable? The
sowings, the harvests, the wine-presses, all those familiar things
which the Scriptures mention, formed a part of her life; the word
of God sanctified them; and she loved the lambs with increased
tenderness for the sake of the Lamb, and the doves because of the
Holy Ghost.
She found it hard, however, to think of the latter as a person,
for was it not a bird, a flame, and sometimes only a breath?
Perhaps it is its light that at night hovers over swamps, its
breath that propels the clouds, its voice that renders church-bells
harmonious. And Felicite worshipped devoutly, while enjoying the
coolness and the stillness of the church.
As for the dogma, she could not understand it and did not even
try. The priest discoursed, the children recited, and she went to
sleep, only to awaken with a start when they were leaving the
church and their wooden shoes clattered on the stone pavement.
In this way, she learned her catechism, her religious education
having been neglected in her youth; and thenceforth she imitated
all Virginia's religious practises, fasted when she did, and went
to confession with her. At the Corpus-Christi Day they both
decorated an altar.
She worried in advance over Virginia's first communion. She fussed
about the shoes, the rosary, the book and the gloves. With what
nervousness she helped the mother dress the child!
During the entire ceremony, she felt anguished. Monsieur Bourais
hid part of the choir from view, but directly in front of her, the
flock of maidens, wearing white wreaths over their lowered veils,
formed a snow-white field, and she recognised her darling by the
slenderness of her neck and her devout attitude. The bell tinkled.
All the heads bent and there was a silence. Then, at the peals of
the organ the singers and the worshippers struck up the Agnus Dei;
the boys' procession began; behind them came the girls. With
clasped hands, they advanced step by step to the lighted altar,
knelt at the first step, received one by one the Host, and
returned to their seats in the same order. When Virginia's turn
came, Felicite leaned forward to watch her, and through that
imagination which springs from true affection, she at once became
the child, whose face and dress became hers, whose heart beat in
her bosom, and when Virginia opened her mouth and closed her lids,
she did likewise and came very near fainting.
The following day, she presented herself early at the church so as
to receive communion from the cure. She took it with the proper
feeling, but did not experience the same delight as on the
previous day.
Madame Aubain wished to make an accomplished girl of her daughter;
and as Guyot could not teach English nor music, she decided to
send her to the Ursulines at Honfleur.
The child made no objection, but Felicite sighed and thought
Madame was heartless. Then, she thought that perhaps her mistress
was right, as these things were beyond her sphere. Finally, one
day, an old _fiacre_ stopped in front of the door and a nun
stepped out. Felicite put Virginia's luggage on top of the
carriage, gave the coachman some instructions, and smuggled six
jars of jam, a dozen pears and a bunch of violets under the seat.
At the last minute, Virginia had a fit of sobbing; she embraced
her mother again and again, while the latter kissed her on her
forehead, and said: "Now, be brave, be brave!" The step was pulled
up and the _fiacre_ rumbled off.
Then Madame Aubain had a fainting spell, and that evening all her
friends, including the two Lormeaus, Madame Lechaptois, the ladies
Rochefeuille, Messieurs de Houppeville and Bourais, called on her
and tendered their sympathy.
At first the separation proved very painful to her. But her
daughter wrote her three times a week and the other days she,
herself, wrote to Virginia. Then she walked in the garden, read a
little, and in this way managed to fill out the emptiness of the
hours.
Each morning, out of habit, Felicite entered Virginia's room and
gazed at the walls. She missed combing her hair, lacing her shoes,
tucking her in her bed, and the bright face and little hand when
they used to go out for a walk. In order to occupy herself she
tried to make lace. But her clumsy fingers broke the threads; she
had no heart for anything, lost her sleep and "wasted away," as
she put it.
In order to have some distraction, she asked leave to receive the
visits of her nephew Victor.
He would come on Sunday, after church, with ruddy cheeks and bared
chest, bringing with him the scent of the country. She would set
the table and they would sit down opposite each other, and eat
their dinner; she ate as little as possible, herself, to avoid any
extra expense, but would stuff him so with food that he would
finally go to sleep. At the first stroke of vespers, she would
wake him up, brush his trousers, tie his cravat and walk to church
with him, leaning on his arm with maternal pride.
His parents always told him to get something out of her, either a
package of brown sugar, or soap, or brandy, and sometimes even
money. He brought her his clothes to mend, and she accepted the
task gladly, because it meant another visit from him.
In August, his father took him on a coasting-vessel.
It was vacation time and the arrival of the children consoled
Felicite. But Paul was capricious, and Virginia was growing too
old to be thee-and-thou'd, a fact which seemed to produce a sort
of embarrassment in their relations.
Victor went successively to Morlaix, to Dunkirk, and to Brighton;
whenever he returned from a trip he would bring her a present. The
first time it was a box of shells; the second, a coffee-cup; the
third, a big doll of ginger-bread. He was growing handsome, had a
good figure, a tiny moustache, kind eyes, and a little leather cap
that sat jauntily on the back of his head. He amused his aunt by
telling her stones mingled with nautical expressions.
One Monday, the 14th of July, 1819 (she never forgot the date),
Victor announced that he had been engaged on merchant-vessel and
that in two days he would take the steamer at Honfleur and join
his sailer, which was going to start from Havre very soon. Perhaps
he might be away two years.
The prospect of his departure filled Felicite with despair, and in
order to bid him farewell, on Wednesday night, after Madame's
dinner, she put on her pattens and trudged the four miles that
separated Pont-l'Eveque from Honfleur.
When she reached the Calvary, instead of turning to the right, she
turned to the left and lost herself in coal-yards; she had to
retrace her steps; some people she spoke to advised her to hasten.
She walked helplessly around the harbour filled with vessels, and
knocked against hawsers. Presently the ground sloped abruptly,
lights flittered to and fro, and she thought all at once that she
had gone mad when she saw some horses in the sky.
Others, on the edge of the dock, neighed at the sight of the
ocean. A derrick pulled them up in the air and dumped them into a
boat, where passengers were bustling about among barrels of cider,
baskets of cheese and bags of meal; chickens cackled, the captain
swore and a cabin-boy rested on the railing, apparently
indifferent to his surroundings. Felicite, who did not recognise
him, kept shouting: "Victor!" He suddenly raised his eyes, but
while she was preparing to rush up to him, they withdrew the
gangplank.
The packet, towed by singing women, glided out of the harbour. Her
hull squeaked and the heavy waves beat up against her sides. The
sail had turned and nobody was visible;--and on the ocean,
silvered by the light of the moon, the vessel formed a black spot
that grew dimmer and dimmer, and finally disappeared.
When Felicite passed the Calvary again, she felt as if she must
entrust that which was dearest to her to the Lord; and for a long
while she prayed, with uplifted eyes and a face wet with tears.
The city was sleeping; some customs officials were taking the air;
and the water kept pouring through the holes of the dam with a
deafening roar. The town clock struck two.
The parlour of the convent would not open until morning, and
surely a delay would annoy Madame; so, in spite of her desire to
see the other child, she went home. The maids of the inn were just
arising when she reached Pont-l'Eveque.
So the poor boy would be on the ocean for months! His previous
trips had not alarmed her. One can come back from England and
Brittany; but America, the colonies, the islands, were all lost in
an uncertain region at the very end of the world.
From that time on, Felicite thought solely of her nephew. On warm
days she feared he would suffer from thirst, and when it stormed,
she was afraid he would be struck by lightning. When she harkened
to the wind that rattled in the chimney and dislodged the tiles on
the roof, she imagined that he was being buffeted by the same
storm, perched on top of a shattered mast, with his whole body
bent backward and covered with sea-foam; or,--these were
recollections of the engraved geography--he was being devoured by
savages, or captured in a forest by apes, or dying on some lonely
coast. She never mentioned her anxieties, however.
Madame Aubain worried about her daughter.
The sisters thought that Virginia was affectionate but delicate.
The slightest emotion enervated her. She had to give up her piano
lessons. Her mother insisted upon regular letters from the
convent. One morning, when the postman failed to come, she grew
impatient and began to pace to and fro, from her chair to the
window. It was really extraordinary! No news since four days!
In order to console her mistress by her own example, Felicite
said:
"Why, Madame, I haven't had any news since six months!"--
"From whom?"--
The servant replied gently:
"Why--from my nephew."
"Oh, yes, your nephew!" And shrugging her shoulders, Madame Aubain
continued to pace the floor as if to say: "I did not think of
it.--Besides, I do not care, a cabin-boy, a pauper!--but my
daughter--what a difference! just think of it!--"
Felicite, although she had been reared roughly, was very
indignant. Then she forgot about it.
It appeared quite natural to her that one should lose one's head
about Virginia.
The two children were of equal importance; they were united in her
heart and their fate was to be the same.
The chemist informed her that Victor's vessel had reached Havana.
He had read the information in a newspaper.
Felicite imagined that Havana was a place where people did nothing
but smoke, and that Victor walked around among negroes in a cloud
of tobacco. Could a person, in case of need, return by land? How
far was it from Pont-l'Eveque? In order to learn these things she
questioned Monsieur Bourais. He reached for his map and began some
explanations concerning longitudes, and smiled with superiority at
Felicite's bewilderment. At last, he took his pencil and pointed
out an imperceptible black point in the scallops of an oval
blotch, adding: "There it is." She bent over the map; the maze of
coloured lines hurt her eyes without enlightening her; and when
Bourais asked her what puzzled her, she requested him to show her
the house Victor lived in. Bourais threw up his hands, sneezed,
and then laughed uproariously; such ignorance delighted his soul;
but Felicite failed to understand the cause of his mirth, she
whose intelligence was so limited that she perhaps expected to see
even the picture of her nephew!
It was two weeks later that Liebard came into the kitchen at
market-time, and handed her a letter from her brother-in-law. As
neither of them could read, she called upon her mistress.
Madame Aubain, who was counting the stitches of her knitting, laid
her work down beside her, opened the letter, started, and in a low
tone and with a searching look said: "They tell you of a--misfortune.
Your nephew--."
He had died. The letter told nothing more.
Felicite dropped on a chair, leaned her head against the back and
closed her lids; presently they grew pink. Then, with drooping
head, inert hands and staring eyes she repeated at intervals:
"Poor little chap! poor little chap!"
Liebard watched her and sighed. Madame Aubain was trembling.
She proposed to the girl to go see her sister in Trouville.
With a single motion, Felicite replied that it was not necessary.
There was a silence. Old Liebard thought it about time for him to
take leave.
Then Felicite uttered:
"They have no sympathy, they do not care!"
Her head fell forward again, and from time to time, mechanically,
she toyed with the long knitting-needles on the work-table.
Some women passed through the yard with a basket of wet clothes.
When she saw them through the window, she suddenly remembered her
own wash; as she had soaked it the day before, she must go and
rinse it now. So she arose and left the room.
Her tub and her board were on the bank of the Toucques. She threw
a heap of clothes on the ground, rolled up her sleeves and grasped
her bat; and her loud pounding could be heard in the neighbouring
gardens. The meadows were empty, the breeze wrinkled the stream,
at the bottom of which were long grasses that looked like the hair
of corpses floating in the water. She restrained her sorrow and
was very brave until night; but, when she had gone to her own
room, she gave way to it, burying her face in the pillow and
pressing her two fists against her temples.
A long while afterward, she learned through Victor's captain, the
circumstances which surrounded his death. At the hospital they had
bled him too much, treating him for yellow fever. Four doctors
held him at one time. He died almost instantly, and the chief
surgeon had said:
"Here goes another one!"
His parents had always treated him barbarously; she preferred not
to see them again, and they made no advances, either from
forgetfulness or out of innate hardness.
Virginia was growing weaker.
A cough, continual fever, oppressive breathing and spots on her
cheeks indicated some serious trouble. Monsieur Poupart had
advised a sojourn in Provence. Madame Aubain decided that they
would go, and she would have had her daughter come home at once,
had it not been for the climate of Pont-l'Eveque.
She made an arrangement with a livery-stable man who drove her
over to the convent every Tuesday. In the garden there was a
terrace, from which the view extends to the Seine. Virginia walked
in it, leaning on her mother's arm and treading the dead vine
leaves. Sometimes the sun, shining through the clouds, made her
blink her lids, when she gazed at the sails in the distance, and
let her eyes roam over the horizon from the chateau of Tancarville
to the lighthouses of Havre. Then they rested in the arbour. Her
mother had bought a little cask of fine Malaga wine, and Virginia,
laughing at the idea of becoming intoxicated, would drink a few
drops of it, but never more.
Her strength returned. Autumn passed. Felicite began to reassure
Madame Aubain. But, one evening, when she returned home after an
errand, she met M. Boupart's coach in front of the door; M.
Boupart himself was standing in the vestibule and Madame Aubain
was tying the strings of her bonnet. "Give me my foot-warmer, my
purse and my gloves; and be quick about it," she said.
Virginia had congestion of the lungs; perhaps it was desperate.
"Not yet," said the physician, and both got into the carriage,
while the snow fell in thick flakes. It was almost night and very
cold.
Felicite rushed to the church to light a candle. Then she ran
after the coach which she overtook after an hour's chase, sprang
up behind and held on to the straps. But suddenly a thought
crossed her mind: "The yard had been left open; supposing that
burglars got in!" And down she jumped.
The next morning, at daybreak, she called at the doctor's. He had
been home, but had left again. Then she waited at the inn,
thinking that strangers might bring her a letter. At last, at
daylight she took the diligence for Lisieux.
The convent was at the end of a steep and narrow street. When she
arrived about at the middle of it, she heard strange noises, a
funeral knell. "It must be for some one else," thought she; and
she pulled the knocker violently.
After several minutes had elapsed, she heard footsteps, the door
was half opened and a nun appeared. The good sister, with an air
of compunction, told her that "she had just passed away." And at
the same time the tolling of Saint-Leonard's increased.
Felicite reached the second floor. Already at the threshold, she
caught sight of Virginia lying on her back, with clasped hands,
her mouth open and her head thrown back, beneath a black crucifix
inclined toward her, and stiff curtains which were less white than
her face. Madame Aubain lay at the foot of the couch, clasping it
with her arms and uttering groans of agony. The Mother Superior
was standing on the right side of the bed. The three candles on
the bureau made red blurs, and the windows were dimmed by the fog
outside. The nuns carried Madame Aubain from the room.
For two nights, Felicite never left the corpse. She would repeat
the same prayers, sprinkle holy water over the sheets, get up,
come back to the bed and contemplate the body. At the end of the
first vigil, she noticed that the face had taken on a yellow
tinge, the lips grew blue, the nose grew pinched, the eyes were
sunken. She kissed them several times and would not have been
greatly astonished had Virginia opened them; to souls like these
the supernatural is always quite simple. She washed her, wrapped
her in a shroud, put her into the casket, laid a wreath of flowers
on her head and arranged her curls. They were blond and of an
extraordinary length for her age. Felicite cut off a big lock and
put half of it into her bosom, resolving never to part with it.
The body was taken to Pont-l'Eveque, according to Madame Aubain's
wishes; she followed the hearse in a closed carriage.
After the ceremony it took three quarters of an hour to reach the
cemetery. Paul, sobbing, headed the procession; Monsieur Bourais
followed, and then came the principal inhabitants of the town, the
women covered with black capes, and Felicite. The memory of her
nephew, and the thought that she had not been able to render him
these honours, made her doubly unhappy, and she felt as if he were
being buried with Virginia.
Madame Aubain's grief was uncontrollable. At first she rebelled
against God, thinking that he was unjust to have taken away her
child--she who had never done anything wrong, and whose conscience
was so pure! But no! she ought to have taken her South. Other
doctors would have saved her. She accused herself, prayed to be
able to join her child, and cried in the midst of her dreams. Of
the latter, one more especially haunted her. Her husband, dressed
like a sailor, had come back from a long voyage, and with tears in
his eyes told her that he had received the order to take Virginia
away. Then they both consulted about a hiding-place.
Once she came in from the garden, all upset. A moment before (and
she showed the place), the father and daughter had appeared to
her, one after the other; they did nothing but look at her.
During several months she remained inert in her room. Felicite
scolded her gently; she must keep up for her son and also for the
other one, for "her memory."
"Her memory!" replied Madame Aubain, as if she were just
awakening, "Oh! yes, yes, you do not forget her!" This was an
allusion to the cemetery where she had been expressly forbidden to
go.
But Felicite went there every day. At four o'clock exactly, she
would go through the town, climb the hill, open the gate and
arrive at Virginia's tomb. It was a small column of pink marble
with a flat stone at its base, and it was surrounded by a little
plot enclosed by chains. The flower-beds were bright with
blossoms. Felicite watered their leaves, renewed the gravel, and
knelt on the ground in order to till the earth properly. When
Madame Aubain was able to visit the cemetery she felt very much
relieved and consoled.
Years passed, all alike and marked by no other events than the
return of the great church holidays: Easter, Assumption, All
Saints' Day. Household happenings constituted the only data to
which in later years they often referred. Thus, in 1825, workmen
painted the vestibule; in 1827, a portion of the roof almost
killed a man by falling into the yard. In the summer of 1828, it
was Madame's turn to offer the hallowed bread; at that time,
Bourais disappeared mysteriously; and the old acquaintances,
Guyot, Liebard, Madame Lechaptois, Robelin, old Gremanville,
paralysed since a long time, passed away one by one. One night,
the driver of the mail in Pont-l'Eveque announced the Revolution
of July. A few days afterward a new sub-prefect was nominated, the
Baron de Larsonniere, ex-consul in America, who, besides his wife,
had his sister-in-law and her three grown daughters with him. They
were often seen on their lawn, dressed in loose blouses, and they
had a parrot and a negro servant. Madame Aubain received a call,
which she returned promptly. As soon as she caught sight of them,
Felicite would run and notify her mistress. But only one thing was
capable of arousing her: a letter from her son.
He could not follow any profession as he was absorbed in drinking.
His mother paid his debts and he made fresh ones; and the sighs
that she heaved while she knitted at the window reached the ears
of Felicite who was spinning in the kitchen.
They walked in the garden together, always speaking of Virginia,
and asking each other if such and such a thing would have pleased
her, and what she would probably have said on this or that
occasion.
All her little belongings were put away in a closet of the room
which held the two little beds. But Madame Aubain looked them over
as little as possible. One summer day, however, she resigned
herself to the task and when she opened the closet the moths flew
out.
Virginia's frocks were hung under a shelf where there were three
dolls, some hoops, a doll-house, and a basin which she had used.
Felicite and Madame Aubain also took out the skirts, the
handkerchiefs, and the stockings and spread them on the beds,
before putting them away again. The sun fell on the piteous
things, disclosing their spots and the creases formed by the
motions of the body. The atmosphere was warm and blue, and a
blackbird trilled in the garden; everything seemed to live in
happiness. They found a little hat of soft brown plush, but it was
entirely moth-eaten. Felicite asked for it. Their eyes met and
filled with tears; at last the mistress opened her arms and the
servant threw herself against her breast and they hugged each
other and giving vent to their grief in a kiss which equalized
them for a moment.
It was the first time that this had ever happened, for Madame
Aubain was not of an expansive nature. Felicite was as grateful
for it as if it had been some favour, and thenceforth loved her
with animal-like devotion and a religious veneration.
Her kind-heartedness developed. When she heard the drums of a
marching regiment passing through the street, she would stand in
the doorway with a jug of cider and give the soldiers a drink. She
nursed cholera victims. She protected Polish refugees, and one of
them even declared that he wished to marry her. But they
quarrelled, for one morning when she returned from the Angelus she
found him in the kitchen coolly eating a dish which he had
prepared for himself during her absence.
After the Polish refugees, came Colmiche, an old man who was
credited with having committed frightful misdeeds in '93. He lived
near the river in the ruins of a pig-sty. The urchins peeped at
him through the cracks in the walls and threw stones that fell on
his miserable bed, where he lay gasping with catarrh, with long
hair, inflamed eyelids, and a tumour as big as his head on one
arm.
She got him some linen, tried to clean his hovel and dreamed of
installing him in the bake-house without his being in Madame's
way. When the cancer broke, she dressed it every day; sometimes
she brought him some cake and placed him in the sun on a bundle of
hay; and the poor old creature, trembling and drooling, would
thank her in his broken voice, and put out his hands whenever she
left him. Finally he died; and she had a mass said for the repose
of his soul.
That day a great joy came to her: at dinner-time, Madame de
Larsonniere's servant called with the parrot, the cage, and the
perch and chain and lock. A note from the baroness told Madame
Aubain that as her husband had been promoted to a prefecture, they
were leaving that night, and she begged her to accept the bird as
a remembrance and a token of her esteem.
Since a long time the parrot had been on Felicite's mind, because
he came from America, which reminded her of Victor, and she had
approached the negro on the subject.
Once even, she had said:
"How glad Madame would be to have him!"
The man had repeated this remark to his mistress who, not being
able to keep the bird, took this means of getting rid of it.
CHAPTER IV
THE BIRD
He was called Loulou. His body was green, his head blue, the tips
of his wings were pink and his breast was golden.
But he had the tiresome tricks of biting his perch, pulling his
feathers out, scattering refuse and spilling the water of his
bath. Madame Aubain grew tired of him and gave him to Felicite for
good.
She undertook his education, and soon he was able to repeat:
"Pretty boy! Your servant, sir! I salute you, Marie!" His perch
was placed near the door and several persons were astonished that
he did not answer to the name of "Jacquot," for every parrot is
called Jacquot. They called him a goose and a log, and these
taunts were like so many dagger thrusts to Felicite. Strange
stubbornness of the bird which would not talk when people watched
him!
Nevertheless, he sought society; for on Sunday, when the ladies
Rochefeuille, Monsieur de Houppeville and the new habitues,
Onfroy, the chemist, Monsieur Varin and Captain Mathieu, dropped
in for their game of cards, he struck the window-panes with his
wings and made such a racket that it was impossible to talk.
Bourais' face must have appeared very funny to Loulou. As soon as
he saw him he would begin to roar. His voice re-echoed in the yard,
and the neighbours would come to the windows and begin to laugh,
too; and in order that the parrot might not see him, Monsieur
Bourais edged along the wall, pushed his hat over his eyes to hide
his profile, and entered by the garden door, and the looks he gave
the bird lacked affection. Loulou, having thrust his head into the
butcher-boy's basket, received a slap, and from that time he
always tried to nip his enemy. Fabu threatened to wring his neck,
although he was not cruelly inclined, notwithstanding his big
whiskers and tattooings. On the contrary, he rather liked the bird
and, out of deviltry, tried to teach him oaths. Felicite, whom his
manner alarmed, put Loulou in the kitchen, took off his chain and
let him walk all over the house.
When he went downstairs, he rested his beak on the steps, lifted
his right foot and then his left one; but his mistress feared that
such feats would give him vertigo. He became ill and was unable to
eat. There was a small growth under his tongue like those chickens
are sometimes afflicted with. Felicite pulled it off with her
nails and cured him. One day, Paul was imprudent enough to blow
the smoke of his cigar in his face; another time, Madame Lormeau
was teasing him with the tip of her umbrella and he swallowed the
tip. Finally he got lost.
She had put him on the grass to cool him and went away only for a
second; when she returned, she found no parrot! She hunted among
the bushes, on the bank of the river, and on the roofs, without
paying any attention to Madame Aubain who screamed at her: "Take
care! you must be insane!" Then she searched every garden in
Pont-l'Eveque and stopped the passers-by to inquire of them:
"Haven't you perhaps seen my parrot?" To those who had never seen
the parrot, she described him minutely. Suddenly she thought she
saw something green fluttering behind the mills at the foot of the
hill. But when she was at the top of the hill she could not see
it. A hod-carrier told her that he had just seen the bird in
Saint-Melaine, in Mother Simon's store. She rushed to the place.
The people did not know what she was talking about. At last she came
home, exhausted, with her slippers worn to shreds, and despair in
her heart. She sat down on the bench near Madame and was telling
of her search when presently a light weight dropped on her
shoulder--Loulou! What the deuce had he been doing? Perhaps he had
just taken a little walk around the town!
She did not easily forget her scare, in fact, she never got over
it. In consequence of a cold, she caught a sore throat; and some
time afterward she had an earache. Three years later she was stone
deaf, and spoke in a very loud voice even in church. Although her
sins might have been proclaimed throughout the diocese without any
shame to herself, or ill effects to the community, the cure
thought it advisable to receive her confession in the vestry-room.
Imaginary buzzings also added to her bewilderment. Her mistress
often said to her: "My goodness, how stupid you are!" and she
would answer: "Yes, Madame," and look for something.
The narrow circle of her ideas grew more restricted than it
already was; the bellowing of the oxen, the chime of the bells no
longer reached her intelligence. All things moved silently, like
ghosts. Only one noise penetrated her ears: the parrot's voice.
As if to divert her mind, he reproduced for her the tick-tack of
the spit in the kitchen, the shrill cry of the fish-vendors, the
saw of the carpenter who had a shop opposite, and when the
door-bell rang, he would imitate Madame Aubain: "Felicite! go to
the front door."
They held conversations together, Loulou repeating the three
phrases of his repertory over and over, Felicite replying by words
that had no greater meaning, but in which she poured out her
feelings. In her isolation, the parrot was almost a son, a lover.
He climbed upon her fingers, pecked at her lips, clung to her
shawl, and when she rocked her head to and fro like a nurse, the
big wings of her cap and the wings of the bird flapped in unison.
When clouds gathered on the horizon and the thunder rumbled,
Loulou would scream, perhaps because he remembered the storms in
his native forests. The dripping of the rain would excite him to
frenzy; he flapped around, struck the ceiling with his wings,
upset everything, and would finally fly into the garden to play.
Then he would come back into the room, light on one of the
andirons, and hop around in order to get dry.
One morning during the terrible winter of 1837, when she had put
him in front of the fire-place on account of the cold, she found
him dead in his cage, hanging to the wire bars with his head down.
He had probably died of congestion. But she believed that he had
been poisoned, and although she had no proofs whatever, her
suspicion rested on Fabu.
She wept so sorely that her mistress said: "Why don't you have him
stuffed?"
She asked the advice of the chemist, who had always been kind to
the bird.
He wrote to Havre for her. A certain man named Fellacher consented
to do the work. But, as the diligence driver often lost parcels
entrusted to him, Felicite resolved to take her pet to Honfleur
herself.
Leafless apple-trees lined the edges of the road. The ditches were
covered with ice. The dogs on the neighbouring farms barked; and
Felicite, with her hands beneath her cape, her little black sabots
and her basket, trotted along nimbly in the middle of the
sidewalk. She crossed the forest, passed by the Haut-Chene and
reached Saint-Gatien.
Behind her, in a cloud of dust and impelled by the steep incline,
a mail-coach drawn by galloping horses advanced like a whirlwind.
When he saw a woman in the middle of the road, who did not get out
of the way, the driver stood up in his seat and shouted to her and
so did the postilion, while the four horses, which he could not
hold back, accelerated their pace; the two leaders were almost
upon her; with a jerk of the reins he threw them to one side, but,
furious at the incident, he lifted his big whip and lashed her
from her head to her feet with such violence that she fell to the
ground unconscious.
Her first thought, when she recovered her senses, was to open the
basket. Loulou was unharmed. She felt a sting on her right cheek;
when she took her hand away it was red, for the blood was flowing.
She sat down on a pile of stones, and sopped her cheek with her
handkerchief; then she ate a crust of bread she had put in her
basket, and consoled herself by looking at the bird.
Arriving at the top of Ecquemanville, she saw the lights of
Honfleur shining in the distance like so many stars; further on,
the ocean spread out in a confused mass. Then a weakness came over
her; the misery of her childhood, the disappointment of her first
love, the departure of her nephew, the death of Virginia; all
these things came back to her at once, and, rising like a swelling
tide in her throat, almost choked her.
Then she wished to speak to the captain of the vessel, and without
stating what she was sending, she gave him some instructions.
Fellacher kept the parrot a long time. He always promised that it
would be ready for the following week; after six months he
announced the shipment of a case, and that was the end of it.
Really, it seemed as if Loulou would never come back to his home.
"They have stolen him," thought Felicite.
Finally he arrived, sitting bolt upright on a branch which could
be screwed into a mahogany pedestal, with his foot in the air, his
head on one side, and in his beak a nut which the naturalist, from
love of the sumptuous, had gilded. She put him in her room.
This place, to which only a chosen few were admitted, looked like
a chapel and a second-hand shop, so filled was it with devotional
and heterogeneous things. The door could not be opened easily on
account of the presence of a large wardrobe. Opposite the window
that looked out into the garden, a bull's-eye opened on the yard;
a table was placed by the cot and held a washbasin, two combs, and
a piece of blue soap in a broken saucer. On the walls were
rosaries, medals, a number of Holy Virgins, and a holy-water basin
made out of a cocoanut; on the bureau, which was covered with a
napkin like an altar, stood the box of shells that Victor had
given her; also a watering-can and a balloon, writing-books, the
engraved geography and a pair of shoes; on the nail which held the
mirror, hung Virginia's little plush hat! Felicite carried this
sort of respect so far that she even kept one of Monsieur's old
coats. All the things which Madame Aubain discarded, Felicite
begged for her own room. Thus, she had artificial flowers on the
edge of the bureau, and the picture of the Comte d'Artois in the
recess of the window. By means of a board, Loulou was set on a
portion of the chimney which advanced into the room. Every morning
when she awoke, she saw him in the dim light of dawn and recalled
bygone days and the smallest details of insignificant actions,
without any sense of bitterness or grief.
As she was unable to communicate with people, she lived in a sort
of somnambulistic torpor. The processions of Corpus-Christi Day
seemed to wake her up. She visited the neighbours to beg for
candlesticks and mats so as to adorn the temporary altars in the
street.
In church, she always gazed at the Holy Ghost, and noticed that
there was something about it that resembled a parrot. The likeness
appeared even more striking on a coloured picture by Espinal,
representing the baptism of our Saviour. With his scarlet wings
and emerald body, it was really the image of Loulou. Having bought
the picture, she hung it near the one of the Comte d'Artois so
that she could take them in at one glance.
They associated in her mind, the parrot becoming sanctified
through the neighbourhood of the Holy Ghost, and the latter
becoming more lifelike in her eyes, and more comprehensible. In
all probability the Father had never chosen as messenger a dove,
as the latter has no voice, but rather one of Loulou's ancestors.
And Felicite said her prayers in front of the coloured picture,
though from time to time she turned slightly toward the bird.
She desired very much to enter in the ranks of the "Daughters of
the Virgin." But Madame Aubain dissuaded her from it.
A most important event occurred: Paul's marriage.
After being first a notary's clerk, then in business, then in the
customs, and a tax collector, and having even applied for a
position in the administration of woods and forests, he had at
last, when he was thirty-six years old, by a divine inspiration,
found his vocation: registrature! and he displayed such a high
ability that an inspector had offered him his daughter and his
influence.
Paul, who had become quite settled, brought his bride to visit his
mother.
But she looked down upon the customs of Pont-l'Eveque, put on
airs, and hurt Felicite's feelings. Madame Aubain felt relieved
when she left.
The following week they learned of Monsieur Bourais' death in an
inn. There were rumours of suicide, which were confirmed; doubts
concerning his integrity arose. Madame Aubain looked over her
accounts and soon discovered his numerous embezzlements; sales of
wood which had been concealed from her, false receipts, etc.
Furthermore, he had an illegitimate child, and entertained a
friendship for "a person in Dozule."
These base actions affected her very much. In March, 1853, she
developed a pain in her chest; her tongue looked as if it were
coated with smoke, and the leeches they applied did not relieve
her oppression; and on the ninth evening she died, being just
seventy-two years old.
People thought that she was younger, because her hair, which she
wore in bands framing her pale face, was brown. Few friends
regretted her loss, for her manner was so haughty that she did not
attract them. Felicite mourned for her as servants seldom mourn
for their masters. The fact that Madame should die before herself
perplexed her mind and seemed contrary to the order of things, and
absolutely monstrous and inadmissible. Ten days later (the time to
journey from Besancon), the heirs arrived. Her daughter-in-law
ransacked the drawers, kept some of the furniture, and sold the
rest; then they went back to their own home.
Madame's armchair, foot-warmer, work-table, the eight chairs,
everything was gone! The places occupied by the pictures formed
yellow squares on the walls. They had taken the two little beds,
and the wardrobe had been emptied of Virginia's belongings!
Felicite went upstairs, overcome with grief.
The following day a sign was posted on the door; the chemist
screamed in her ear that the house was for sale.
For a moment she tottered, and had to sit down.
What hurt her most was to give up her room,--so nice for poor
Loulou! She looked at him in despair and implored the Holy Ghost,
and it was this way that she contracted the idolatrous habit of
saying her prayers kneeling in front of the bird. Sometimes the
sun fell through the window on his glass eye, and lighted a great
spark in it which sent Felicite into ecstasy.
Her mistress had left her an income of three hundred and eighty
francs. The garden supplied her with vegetables. As for clothes,
she had enough to last her till the end of her days, and she
economised on the light by going to bed at dusk.
She rarely went out, in order to avoid passing in front of the
second-hand dealer's shop where there was some of the old
furniture. Since her fainting spell, she dragged her leg, and as
her strength was failing rapidly, old Mother Simon, who had lost
her money in the grocery business, came every morning to chop the
wood and pump the water.
Her eyesight grew dim. She did not open the shutters after that.
Many years passed. But the house did not sell or rent. Fearing
that she would be put out, Felicite did not ask for repairs. The
laths of the roof were rotting away, and during one whole winter
her bolster was wet. After Easter she spit blood.
Then Mother Simon went for a doctor. Felicite wished to know what
her complaint was. But, being too deaf to hear, she caught only
one word: "Pneumonia." She was familiar with it and gently
answered:--"Ah! like Madame," thinking it quite natural that she
should follow her mistress.
The time for the altars in the street drew near.
The first one was always erected at the foot of the hill, the
second in front of the post-office, and the third in the middle of
the street. This position occasioned some rivalry among the women
and they finally decided upon Madame Aubain's yard.
Felicite's fever grew worse. She was sorry that she could not do
anything for the altar. If she could, at least, have contributed
something toward it! Then she thought of the parrot. Her
neighbours objected that it would not be proper. But the cure gave
his consent and she was so grateful for it that she begged him to
accept after her death, her only treasure, Loulou. From Tuesday
until Saturday, the day before the event, she coughed more
frequently. In the evening her face was contracted, her lips stuck
to her gums and she began to vomit; and on the following day, she
felt so low that she called for a priest.
Three neighbours surrounded her when the dominie administered the
Extreme Unction. Afterwards she said that she wished to speak to
Fabu.
He arrived in his Sunday clothes, very ill at ease among the
funereal surroundings.
"Forgive me," she said, making an effort to extend her arm, "I
believed it was you who killed him!"
What did such accusations mean? Suspect a man like him of murder!
And Fabu became excited and was about to make trouble.
"Don't you see she is not in her right mind?"
From time to time Felicite spoke to shadows. The women left her
and Mother Simon sat down to breakfast.
A little later, she took Loulou and holding him up to Felicite:
"Say good-bye to him, now!" she commanded.
Although he was not a corpse, he was eaten up by worms; one of his
wings was broken and the wadding was coming out of his body. But
Felicite was blind now, and she took him and laid him against her
cheek. Then Mother Simon removed him in order to set him on the
altar.
CHAPTER V
THE VISION
The grass exhaled an odour of summer; flies buzzed in the air, the
sun shone on the river and warmed the slated roof. Old Mother
Simon had returned to Felicite and was peacefully falling asleep.
The ringing of bells woke her; the people were coming out of
church. Felicite's delirium subsided. By thinking of the
procession, she was able to see it as if she had taken part in it.
All the school-children, the singers and the firemen walked on the
sidewalks, while in the middle of the street came first the
custodian of the church with his halberd, then the beadle with a
large cross, the teacher in charge of the boys and a sister
escorting the little girls; three of the smallest ones, with curly
heads, threw rose leaves into the air; the deacon with outstretched
arms conducted the music; and two incense-bearers turned with each
step they took toward the Holy Sacrament, which was carried by
M. le Cure, attired in his handsome chasuble and walking under a
canopy of red velvet supported by four men. A crowd of people
followed, jammed between the walls of the houses hung with white
sheets; at last the procession arrived at the foot of the hill.
A cold sweat broke out on Felicite's forehead. Mother Simon wiped
it away with a cloth, saying inwardly that some day she would have
to go through the same thing herself.
The murmur of the crowd grew louder, was very distinct for a
moment and then died away. A volley of musketry shook the
window-panes. It was the postilions saluting the Sacrament.
Felicite rolled her eyes and said as loudly as she could:
"Is he all right?" meaning the parrot.
Her death agony began. A rattle that grew more and more rapid
shook her body. Froth appeared at the corners of her mouth, and
her whole frame trembled. In a little while could be heard the
music of the bass horns, the clear voices of the children and the
men's deeper notes. At intervals all was still, and their shoes
sounded like a herd of cattle passing over the grass.
The clergy appeared in the yard. Mother Simon climbed on a chair
to reach the bull's-eye, and in this manner could see the altar.
It was covered with a lace cloth and draped with green wreaths. In
the middle stood a little frame containing relics; at the corners
were two little orange-trees, and all along the edge were silver
candlesticks, porcelain vases containing sun-flowers, lilies,
peonies, and tufts of hydrangeas. This mound of bright colours
descended diagonally from the first floor to the carpet that
covered the sidewalk. Rare objects arrested one's eye. A golden
sugar-bowl was crowned with violets, earrings set with Alencon
stones were displayed on green moss, and two Chinese screens with
their bright landscapes were near by. Loulou, hidden beneath
roses, showed nothing but his blue head which looked like a piece
of lapis-lazuli.
The singers, the canopy-bearers and the children lined up against
the sides of the yard. Slowly the priest ascended the steps and
placed his shining sun on the lace cloth. Everybody knelt. There
was deep silence; and the censers slipping on their chains were
swung high in the air. A blue vapour rose in Felicite's room. She
opened her nostrils and inhaled it with a mystic sensuousness;
then she closed her lids. Her lips smiled. The beats of her heart
grew fainter and fainter, and vaguer, like a fountain giving out,
like an echo dying away;--and when she exhaled her last breath,
she thought she saw in the half-opened heavens a gigantic parrot
hovering above her head.
