The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes)

by Henri Alain-Fournier

  That is where Augustin and I got together on the evening of that same winter’s day.

  In no time, I had taken off all my clothes and thrown them in a heap on a chair at the head of my bed, but my friend started to undress slowly and in silence. I was already in my iron bed with its cretonne curtains in a vine-leaf pattern, and from there I watched him.

  At times, he would sit down on his low, curtainless bed; at others, he would get up and walk up and down, still taking off his clothes. The candle that he had placed on a small wicker table made by the gypsies cast his gigantic shadow on the wall as he went back and forth.

  Unlike me, he was folding and stacking his school clothes carefully, but with an absent-minded, sour look. I can see him laying out his heavy belt on a chair, folding his black smock (which was extraordinarily creased and stained) over the back of the same chair and taking off a kind of short, dark-blue jacket that he wore under this smock, then leaning over with his back turned towards me as he spread it out on the foot of his bed… But when he stood up and turned towards me I saw that, instead of the little waistcoat with bronze buttons that we were meant to wear under our jackets, he had a strange, silk waistcoast, very open, which fastened at the bottom with a tight row of little mother-of-pearl buttons. It was a delightfully quaint garment, of a kind that might have been worn by the young men who danced with our grandmothers at a ball around 1830.

  I can remember the tall, peasant boy as he was then, bare-headed – because he had carefully placed his cap on top of his other clothes – his face – so young, so brave and already so hardened. He resumed his pacing across the room and started to unbutton this mysterious item from a wardrobe that did not belong to him. And it was strange to see him, in his shirtsleeves, with his too short trousers and his muddy shoes, fingering this aristocratic waistcoat.

  As soon as he touched it, he was startled out of his daydream and looked round at me anxiously. I felt like laughing. He smiled at the same time as I did, and his face lit up.

  ‘Do tell me about it,’ I said quietly, encouraged by this. ‘Where did you get it?’

  But he immediately stopped smiling. He ran a heavy hand twice over his short hair and suddenly, like someone giving in to an irresistible urge, put his jacket back on and buttoned it down over the elegant waistcoat, then put on his smock. After that, he paused for a moment, looking sideways at me. Finally, he sat down on the edge of his bed, took off his shoes, letting them fall noisily on to the floor and, fully dressed like a soldier on alert, lay back on his bed and blew out the candle.

  Some time in the middle of the night, I woke up with a start. Meaulnes was standing in the middle of the room with his cap on, looking for something on the clothes rail – a cape, which he put on… The room was very dark, without even the glimmer of light that you sometimes get with snow. An icy, dark wind was blowing in the dead garden and across the roof.

  I sat up and said, softly, ‘Meaulnes! Are you off again?’

  He did not answer; so, quite distraught, I went on: ‘Right, then, I’m coming with you. You must take me.’ And I jumped down from my bed.

  He came over, took my arm and, forcing me to sit on the edge of the bed, he told me, ‘I can’t take you, François. If I knew the way properly, you could come with me, but first of all I have to find it myself on the map, or I won’t get there.’

  ‘So you can’t go either?’

  ‘That’s right, it’s no use,’ he said, dejectedly. ‘Come on, go back to bed. I promise not to go without you.’

  He started to walk up and down the room again. I didn’t dare say anything. He would walk, then stop, then set off again faster, like someone looking for memories or going over them in his head, comparing and contrasting, calculating, then suddenly thinking he has the solution… Then, once more, he loses the thread and starts looking again…

  This was not the only night when, woken by the sound of his footsteps, I found him like that, walking up and down the room and the attics at around one o’clock in the morning – like those sailors who cannot get used to not doing the night watch and who, in their houses in Brittany, get up and dress at the appointed hour to go and keep watch over the night on shore.

  Two or three times, in this way, in January and the first fortnight of February, I was woken from sleep. The Great Meaulnes was there, upright, fully equipped, his cape over his shoulders, ready to leave; and every time, on the frontier of this mysterious country into which he had already once escaped, he paused, hesitating… Just as he was about to lift the latch of the door to the stairs and slip out through the kitchen door (which he could have opened easily without my hearing), he shrank back once more… Then through the long hours in the middle of the night, he would stride feverishly through the abandoned attics, racking his brains.

  Finally, one night, around 15 February, he decided to wake me himself by gently putting a hand on my shoulder.

  It had been a day of upsets. Meaulnes, who had entirely abandoned all the games of his former friends, had spent his time during the last break of the day sitting on a bench, entirely absorbed in drawing up some mysterious little plan by following a route, and making long calculations, on a map of the département of Cher. There was constant coming and going between the yard and the classroom. Clogs clattered and boys chased each other around from one table to the next, leaping over the benches and the master’s platform in a single jump… They knew that it was not a good idea to go up to Meaulnes when he was working like that, yet towards the end of the recreation, two or three village lads crept up to him as a dare and looked over his shoulder. One of them was reckless enough to push the others on to Meaulnes. He slammed his atlas shut, hid his sheet of paper and grabbed hold of the last of the three lads while the other two managed to get away.

  The unlucky one was the fractious Giraudat, who started to whine, tried to kick and was finally thrown out by The Great Meaulnes, shouting furiously, ‘You big coward! I’m not surprised they’re all against you and want to pick a fight with you!’ And then a shower of insults, to which we responded, without exactly knowing what he had been trying to say. I was the one who shouted loudest, because I had taken Meaulnes’ side; from now on, there was a sort of pact between us. His promise to take me with him, without telling me as everyone else did that ‘I wasn’t up to walking’, had bound me to him for ever. I was constantly thinking about his mysterious journey and had convinced myself that he must have met a girl. Of course, she would be infinitely more beautiful than any in our village, more beautiful than Jeanne, whom we used to see in the convent garden through the keyhole, and more than Madeleine, the baker’s daughter, all pink and blonde. And more than Jenny, the daughter of the lady of the manor, who was splendid, but mad and kept indoors all the time. He was surely thinking about a girl in the night, like the hero of a novel. And I had decided to pluck up my courage and talk to him about it, next time he woke me up.

  The evening after this latest battle, from four o’clock onwards, we were both busy bringing the tools in from the garden – spades and picks that had been used for making holes – when we heard shouting from the road. It was a gang of young lads and kids, marching four abreast, at the double, just like a well-drilled company of soldiers, under the command of Delouche, Daniel, Giraudat and another boy whom we did not know. They had spotted us and were hooting loudly. So the whole village was against us and they were organizing some military game from which we were excluded.

  Meaulnes, without a word, put back in the shed the spade and the pick that he was carrying over his shoulder… But, at midnight, I felt his hand on my arm and woke up with a start.

  ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘We’re going.’

  ‘Do you know the road now all the way?’

  ‘I know a good stretch of it. We’ll just have to find the rest!’ he said, through clenched teeth.

  ‘Listen, Meaulnes,’ I said, sitting upright. ‘Listen to me. There’s only one thing to do and that’s for us both to look for it in daylight and,
using your plan, find the missing bit of road.’

  ‘But that bit is a very long way away.’

  ‘Well, we can take the trap, this summer, when the days are longer.’

  There was a lengthy silence, which meant that he had agreed.

  ‘Since we are both going to try and find the girl that you love, Meaulnes,’ I said finally, ‘tell me who she is. Talk to me about her.’

  He sat down on the foot of my bed. In the darkness, I could see his bent head, his crossed arms and his knees. Then he took a deep breath, like someone who has had a full heart for a long time and who is at last about to share his secret…

  VIII

  THE ADVENTURE

  That night, my friend did not tell me all that had happened to him on the road. And even when he did make up his mind to tell me everything, during some days of unhappiness that I shall describe later, it was to remain the great secret of our adolescent years. But today, now it is all over, now that nothing is left but dust

  of so much ill, of so much good,

  I can describe his strange adventure.

  At half-past one in the afternoon, on the Vierzon road, in that freezing weather, Meaulnes was driving his horse along at a good pace, knowing he was not ahead of time. At first, to amuse himself, he thought only of how surprised we would all be when, at four o’clock, he brought Grandfather and Grandmother Charpentier back in the trap – because, at that moment, this was certainly all he intended.

  After a while, as the cold chilled him, he wrapped his legs in a blanket which he had refused at first, but which the people at La Belle-Etoile had insisted on putting into the cart.

  At two o’clock, he went through the village of La Motte. He had never before been through a small village like this at school time and was amused to see it so deserted and sleepy. Only a curtain or two, from time to time, lifted to reveal the face of an inquisitive old woman.

  Leaving La Motte, he paused at a crossroads just after the schoolhouse and thought he could remember that you had to turn left for Vierzon. There was no one to ask. He roused the mare to a trot on the road which was now narrower and badly surfaced. For a time, it ran beside a wood of fir trees, and at last he met a carter: cupping his hands around his mouth, he asked him if he was on the right road for Vierzon. The mare pulled at its reins and trotted on while the man, who probably didn’t understand the question, shouted something, with a vague wave of the hand. Taking a chance, Meaulnes carried on.

  All around him, once more, was the vast, frosty plain, featureless and lifeless except for the occasional magpie which flew up, frightened by the cart, and settled a little way off, on the stump of an elm. The traveller had wrapped his large blanket around his shoulders, like a cape. Leaning against one side of the cart, with his legs outstretched, he must have fallen asleep for quite a long while…

  And then, because of the cold, which was now getting through the blanket, Meaulnes came to his senses and saw that the landscape had changed. No longer were there the distant horizons and great white sky as far as the eye could see, but little fields, still green, with high fences. To right and left, in the ditches, water was running under the ice. Everything suggested that he was coming to a river. And between the high hedges, the road was now just a narrow, rutted lane.

  The mare had slowed to a walk some time before. Meaulnes gave her a flick of the whip to speed her up, but she continued to walk on very slowly, and the tall boy, looking to one side over the front of the cart, saw that she was lame in one of her rear legs. He immediately got down, full of anxiety.

  ‘We’ll never get to Vierzon in time for the train,’ he said, under his breath.

  He didn’t admit that what really worried him was that he might have taken a wrong turning and that he was no longer on the Vierzon road.

  He looked carefully at the animal’s hoof and could see no sign of a wound. The mare was quite timid. She raised her leg as soon as Meaulnes touched it and scraped her heavy, clumsy hoof along the ground. Eventually, he realized that she had simply got a stone in her shoe. Being an expert at dealing with animals, he bent down, and tried to take her right hoof in his left hand and put it between his knees, but the trap was in his way. Twice, the mare broke loose and moved ahead a few steps. The running board hit him on the head, and the wheel bruised his knee, but he kept on and in the end managed to control the nervous animal. However, the pebble was so deeply embedded that he had to use his peasant’s knife to get it out.

  When he had finished and finally looked up, dazed by the blow and with a mist in front of his eyes, he was amazed to see that night was falling…

  Anyone but Meaulnes would immediately have turned back: that was the only way to avoid getting even more lost. But it occurred to him that by now he must be a long way from La Motte. In addition to that, the mare seemed to have taken a side road while he was asleep. And, in any case, this road must eventually lead to some village or other… Add to all that the fact that when this impulsive fellow got up on the running board, while the impatient animal was already tugging at the reins, he was irritated by a growing desire to achieve something and to reach somewhere, despite the obstacles in his path!

  He whipped the mare, which shied and set off at a quick trot. It was getting darker. Now, in the sunken lane, there was just room for the cart. From time to time, a dead branch from the hedge got caught in the wheel and broke with a dry snap… When it was quite dark, Meaulnes felt a pang as he suddenly thought of the dining room at Sainte-Agathe, where all of us must be gathered at that time. Then he felt anger, then pride – and a profound sense of joy at having, unwittingly, broken free…

  IX

  A PAUSE

  Suddenly, the mare drew up, as if it had stumbled against something in the dark. Meaulnes saw her head go down, then up, twice; then she stopped dead, her nostrils to the ground as if she were sniffing something. Around the animal’s hooves, you could hear a lapping sound, like running water. There was a stream across the lane. In summer, there must be a ford here, but in this weather the current was so strong that ice had not been able to form, and it would have been dangerous to go on.

  Meaulnes pulled gently on the reins to bring the horse back a few steps and, very unsure of what to do, stood up in the cart. This is when he saw, between the branches, a light: it must only have been a few feet away from the lane.

  The boy got down from the cart and led the mare back, talking to her, to calm her and stop her from anxiously tossing her head: ‘Come now, old girl! Come, now! We won’t go any further. We’ll soon find out where we’ve ended up.’

  Pushing the half-open gate of a little meadow beside the lane, he led the horse into it. His feet sank into the soft grass. The cart was juddering silently and Meaulnes’ head was next to that of the mare: he could feel her warmth and the rasping of her breath. He led her right to the far side of the meadow and put the blanket over her back. Then, parting the branches that lay across the further gate, he once more saw the light, which belonged to an isolated house.

  Even so, he had to cross three fields and jump over a deceptive little stream in which he almost landed with both feet. Finally, after a last jump from the top of a bank, he was in the courtyard of a cottage. A pig was grunting in its sty. At the sound of his footsteps on the frozen earth, a dog started to bark furiously.

  The top flap of the door was open, and the light that Meaulnes had seen came from a wood fire burning in the fireplace. This was the only light in the room. A woman, sitting inside, got up and came over to the door, not seeming to be very much alarmed. At that moment, the upright clock struck for the half hour at half-past seven.

  ‘Excuse me, my dear lady,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid that I’ve trodden on your chrysanthemums.’

  Pausing with a bowl in her hand, she examined him.

  ‘It’s so dark in the yard,’ she agreed, ‘you can easily miss your way.’

  There was a silence, during which Meaulnes, still standing, looked at the walls of the room, w
hich were papered with cuttings from magazines, like an inn, and the table, on which there was a man’s hat.

  ‘The master isn’t here?’ he said, sitting down.

  ‘He’ll be back soon,’ said the woman, more confidently. ‘He’s gone to fetch some wood.’

  ‘It’s not that I need him,’ the young man went on, bringing his chair up to the fire. ‘We’re out hunting and I just came to ask you for a bit of bread.’

  The Great Meaulnes knew that with country people, especially in an isolated farmhouse, one had to proceed with considerable discretion, even diplomacy, and most of all to avoid revealing that one was not from the region.

  ‘Bread?’ she said. ‘We haven’t any to give you. The baker comes by every Tuesday, but he didn’t come today.’

  Augustin, who had briefly hoped that he was somewhere near a village, was alarmed at this.

  ‘The baker from where?’ he asked.

  ‘Why, the baker from Le Vieux-Nançay,’ the woman replied, in astonishment.

  ‘And just how far is Le Vieux-Nançay from here?’ Meaulnes inquired, with growing anxiety.

  ‘By the road, I couldn’t rightly tell you, but across country, it’s three and a half leagues.’6

  She started to tell him how her daughter was in service there and how she went by foot to see her on the first Sunday of the month and how her employers…

  But Meaulnes, who was entirely bewildered by now, interrupted her to ask if Le Vieux-Nançay was the nearest village to there.

  ‘No, that’s Les Landes, five kilometres away. But there’s no shop there or a baker. There’s just a little fair every year on Saint Martin’s Day.’

  Meaulnes had never heard of Les Landes. He realized that he was so completely lost that it was almost funny. But the woman, who had been busy washing her bowl at the sink, turned round, curious in her turn, and said slowly, looking directly at him: ‘Does that mean that you’re not from hereabouts, then?’