Clochemerle

by Gabriel Chevallier

  In addition to these outbreaks, there was a constantly growing crop of private scandals, in which people in both camps were involved; and this only served to augment the general disquiet and uneasiness of mind. Some account of it must now be given.

  While these varied incidents were taking place in crowded and headlong succession, upsetting family life and destroying old and well-worn customs which had been the joy of Clochemerle for three-quarters of a century past, love was wreaking havoc in a youthful, unsuspecting heart. Love’s victory was a resounding one; far and wide it resounded, for the social position of his victim was considerable. It is something of a tragedy for young girls of good family that they cannot carry on a love affair in a simple, straightforward way, in secret, below their station if need be, as do their sisters of humble origin, who can place their affections wherever they wish without risk of misdirecting a family fortune or making “a bad match.”

  We must give our attention for a moment to the tender figure of a young girl, as fresh-looking and modest as you could wish; she has all the vivacity and all the melancholy that are associated with her age, moments of great exaltation and excitement alternating with fits of deep depression, which come from within herself and are independent of outward circumstances; she has no real sorrow nor has she hope, but she remains charming always, despite her moods which are transient as a changing sky: nay more, she has that fleeting grace, that fatal charm, that gentle radiance which are to be seen in those who, destined to give their whole hearts in love, and unconsciously bearing within themselves a timid submissiveness that is liable to change to violent revolt, are quickly responsive to the call of destiny when they first behold the being whom, by an infallible presentiment, they foresee as their life companion. Such was Hortense Girodot at the age of twenty, ready to die for love. And she had beauty too, not skin-deep only, but a beauty of devotion which remained a permanent discovery.

  To find this charming girl, this dreamer of dreams, this sensitive, highly strung nature in such an environment may well be a cause for wonder, especially when one considers what Hyacinthe Girodot and his wife were like. Their personal appearance conveyed the inevitable impression that the mere fact of their having ventured on parenthood had conferred dishonor on the whole human race. The notary’s wife (née Philippine Tapaque, of the Tapaque-Dondelle family, holders of a monopoly of the grocery trade at Dijon) was an arrogant woman, with a blotchy face resulting from an incurable intestinal inaction of thirty years’ standing, thin, lifeless hair, dull eyes, hairy lips, rough skin, and a mouth as engaging as the peephole of a prison cell. Her interests in life were her privileges, her dowry, her convictions, the family portraits in her drawing room, her piano playing, and her poker work. She was a tall, gawky creature of truly distressing appearance, whose leanness defied all possibility of spontaneous advances of an amorous nature, and was discouraging even to marital enterprise.

  She was a good head taller than the notary, a paltry little fellow and her deplorable accomplice in procreation, whose sole claim to dignity, with his thin bowlegs and narrow chest, lay in his imposing paunch, whose appearance, on a frame such as his, was so odd that it suggested a cancerous growth rather than a normal stomach. His colorless, mawkish countenance was apparently composed of a species of soft putty, which disappeared into his solemn stand-up collar in the form of flabby dewlaps that looked as though they had been taken from the gray hide of some pachyderm. But his yellow eyes, hard and deceitful, showed a steely penetration which enabled him to discover, in everyone he met, what pecuniary profit he could extract from them. This ruling passion was Lawyer Girodot’s substitute for character and his invariable basis of procedure in business. The law, as manipulated by clever and highly respected rascals, still remains the best avenue for a career of honorable and leisurely plunder. He knew every law inside out, and excelled in literal interpretations of conflicting enactments, and in effecting such tangles and confusion amid the contradictions in which the law abounds, that it was more than the experts could do, in examining his documents, to extricate themselves from the maze.

  How the pure and charming Hortense could ever have been begotten by these two monsters of ugliness, accentuated in one case by a stupid middle-class pretentiousness, and in the other by all too successful knavery, one cannot undertake to explain. One may suggest some sprightly humor on the part of atoms, or a revenge taken by cells which, too long the victims of immoral unions and weary of assembling in hateful Girodots, had blossomed one fine day into an adorable Girodot. These mysterious alternations are evidences of a law of equilibrium whereby the world is enabled to endure without falling into a state of utter debasement. On the manure heap of degeneracy, covetousness, and the lowest instincts of man, exquisite plants are sometimes seen to sprout. Unknown to herself, and unrealized by those around her, Hortense Girodot was one of those works of fragile perfection, like the outspread rainbow, which Nature may sometimes insert in horrible surroundings as a pledge of her fantastic friendship for our pitiful race.

  In the matter of beauty, no comparison between Hortense Girodot and Judith Toumignon would have been possible. They were never thought of as rivals, for their fields of action were entirely distinct, and the special reasons for the reputation they enjoyed were wholly different. Each was a personification of woman at two different stages of her life: one was destined to be at her zenith in the rôle of the young fiancée; the other, without any intermediate period, had passed from adolescence to a queenly and fully developed maturity which was strangely enthralling to men. The showy, rich beauty of Judith made an immediate and irresistible appeal to the senses, without any of the equivocations of sentiment, while the more subtle beauty of Hortense required patience for its proper appreciation and called for some exercise of the imagination. The one suggested nudity with brazen welcome; the other had some indefinable quality which checked all unbridled flights of fancy.

  This contrast is perhaps the best description of Hortense Girodot. Picture her, then, as supple, delicate, still slender despite a newly acquired fullness of figure, a little pensive, with a trusting smile, with her dark auburn hair, which preserved her alike from the too fragile appearance of a blonde and the aloofness of a brunette. She was in love.

  She loved a poet, Denis Pommier by name, a lazy young idler, but gay and full of enthusiasm, though given to wild fancies. He was the despair of his family, which is the usual function in the time of their youth, of poets, artists, and even geniuses, when their talents are slow to appear. This young man published, at long intervals and in short-lived magazines, poems of the oddest description, the typographical arrangement of which, fanciful to the last degree, was their most pleasing feature. This he made no attempt to deny, saying that he wrote for the eye; his dream was to found a suggestionist school. Discovering, however, that poetry is not the best method of stirring the masses, he had decided to change his weapons. He had ambition, fervor, and great powers of persuasion; and he knew how to interest women. When a very young man, he had set himself a time-limit for making a reputation which was to expire with the twenty-fifth year of his life; but having just entered his twenty-sixth, he had decided to grant himself an extension to last till he was thirty. In his opinion, a man who has not won glory at about that age has no further reason for lingering on in this world. Acting on this principle, he worked simultaneously at several great compositions, a cyclic romance of which the number of volumes had yet to be decided, a tragedy in verse, and three comedies.

  Denis Pommier displayed intellectual activity of a very special kind. On the covers of several exercise books he had written the titles of his different works, and as he took his walks in the country he awaited the moment at which they should come gushing forth from him. He considered that a work of art should be written at the dictation of the gods, almost without erasure, and in an effortless manner which alone could preserve its flavor.

  Having stayed for a long time at Lyons under pretense of study, Denis Pommier had bee
n living at Clochemerle for the past eighteen months: and there, ostensibly for the purpose of literary work, he was living with his family as a surplus member of it, while they looked on him as a good-for-nothing young man destined to bring dishonor to a hard-working family of small landed proprietors. He had had ample opportunity for approaching Hortense Girodot and overwhelming her with poetical letters which made a deep impression on her tender nature.

  When the time comes for a young man to open his heart to her, even the least deceitful of maidens finds herself a sudden possessor of unlimited resource. In her own home, Hortense had on various occasions introduced the name of Denis Pommier into the conversation. The indignation with which this was received by all the members of her family made it clear to her that she must give up all hope of being allowed to marry this boy; indeed, pressure was soon brought to bear on her to marry Gustave Lagache, the son of a friend of her father’s, in whom Girodot saw a possible collaborator whom he would have molded to his own methods. Hortense, in despair, spoke to the young man whom she regarded as her fiancé and told him of her troubles.

  Difficulties had no meaning for a poet who was on terms of intimacy with the gods and took liberties with the Muses; he felt himself to be the master of his own future, never doubting that a great destiny awaited him. His family announced that they were prepared to sacrifice a sum of ten thousand francs to enable him to seek his fortune in Paris, and wished him good riddance. This sum, combined with what Hortense could procure by the sale of some jewelry, was sufficient to cover the initial expenses of an adventure which he conceived as an enchanted road to fame.

  He decided to kidnap Hortense, and broke down her last shred of resistance by depriving her of her maidenhood unawares, at a moment when, by his reading of certain romances of tender passion, chosen with discernment, she had gradually fallen into a state of rapture which left her defenseless. It all happened in a moment, in a rural setting, on a day when the notary’s daughter was on her way to Villefranche for her piano lesson. The all too trusting Hortense bade farewell to her virginity with the handle of her music case, which had saved her from all apprehension, still on her wrist. And as her feelings of bashfulness, which had been too late aroused, were powerless to undo what had already been accomplished, and all reparation seemed impossible, she decided to bow to the inevitable, and laid her cheek lovingly on Denis Pommier’s shoulder. The latter laughingly assured her that he was very happy and very proud and, by way of rewarding her, recited his last poem for her benefit. He informed her that this lack of ceremony was in the Olympian tradition, the best of all traditions for poets and their ladyloves, whose behavior differs from that of the common run of mortals.

  As Hortense was only too anxious to believe this, she had no difficulty in doing so—with her eyes closed—a circumstance of which the young scoundrel took advantage for the purpose “of proving to himself that he had not been dreaming,” as he charmingly remarked. Hortense, on the point of fainting, was wondering whether she too were not dreaming. Later, as she returned home alone, she was filled with wonder at the thought that the destiny of young girls may thus be determined without forewarning, and that young people like herself may encounter so sudden a revelation of a mystery of which their mothers speak in such dread terms. She realized from that moment that her own life was now henceforth inseparably linked with that of her bold lover, who was so thoroughly prepared to take an initiative and accept the consequences with an air of reassuring unconcern. A word from him, a mere gesture, and she would follow him to the ends of the earth.

  On a certain night in September, the upper town was awakened by the sound of a gunshot, followed shortly by an uproar from the exhaust of a motorcycle starting off at a breakneck speed. The inhabitants who had had time to get their windows partly open saw a machine with sidecar careering dangerously down the main street with flames spurting from it, the noise arousing long-drawn-out echoes down in the valley. Some brave spirits, armed with sporting guns, started out to reconnoiter. They found the notary’s house lighted up, and it seemed to them that there was some disturbance within. They called out:

  “Was it you, Monsieur Girodot, let off that shot?”

  “Who is there, who is there?” replied a voice charged with emotion.

  “Don’t you be frightened, Monsieur Girodot! It’s us, Beausoleil, Machavoine, and Poipanel. What’s happened?”

  “Is it you, my friends, is it you?” Girodot answered briskly, and in a tone of exceptional kindness. “I’ll come and let you in.”

  He received them in the dining room; and in such a state of distraction was he that he poured out into their glasses three-quarters of a bottle of Frontignan reserved for guests of special distinction. He explained that he had heard the gravel of the courtyard crunching beneath footsteps, and had distinctly seen a shadowy form stealing away, not far from the house. By the time he had put on his dressing gown and seized his gun the figure had disappeared. As no one answered his challenge, he had fired at random. In his opinion it was undoubtedly a case of burglars. The idea of burglars gave Girodot no peace at night, his safe always containing large sums of money.

  “There are so many ruffians about nowadays!” he said.

  He was thinking of the soldiers who had returned from the war in a dangerous frame of mind, and especially of those with pensions and Government allowances, which gives them plenty of time for working out crimes.

  “Burglars, I hardly think so,” Beausoleil replied. “Trespassers, more likely. You have the finest pears in Clochemerle in your garden. People may well envy them.”

  “My gardener costs me a pretty penny!” Girodot answered. “One can’t find anybody nowadays to take on that job. And the men who do come want this and that. . . .”

  At that moment a cry of anguish was heard. The door was pushed open sharply, and Mme. Girodot appeared on the threshold. This irreproachable lady displayed herself in night attire as worn by all the good women of the Tapaque-Dondelle family, who prided themselves on never having been loose women—not even where their husbands were concerned. Her curlpapers and her angular face made an absurd picture. A loose bodice with sleeves covered her flat chest; her lower limbs were encased in a shabby petticoat. At that moment her face showed a ghastly pallor. Terror accentuated her ugliness.

  “It’s Hortense,” she cried, “she’s gone!”

  Seeing the visitors, she broke off.

  “Hortense! . . .” Girodot echoed feebly, checking himself, aghast.

  The three townspeople, scenting a mystery which they would be the first to hear—a rare windfall—were burning to learn more. Machavoine put out a feeler.

  “Perhaps Mademoiselle Hortense only just came downstairs for a bit? Girls after they’re grown up, sometimes it happens they can’t sleep, they get ideas running through their heads . . . thinking it’s high time their turn came. . . . They’ve all been through it. That’s so, isn’t it, Madame Girodot? That’s what may have happened to your young lady, don’t you think?”

  “She’s sound asleep,” declared Girodot, who never entirely lost his presence of mind. “Come along, my friends, it’s high time for us all to go to bed. Thank you again for coming.”

  He showed them out to the gate, very disappointed.

  “I’d better make my report, Monsieur Girodot, hadn’t I?” Beausoleil asked.

  “No, no, leave it, Beausoleil,” the notary replied, sharply. “We can see tomorrow if there are any traces. Don’t let us attach too much importance to this business. Perhaps, after all, there was nothing in it.”

  This guarded attitude increased their suspicions, and also their sense of grievance. Machavoine avenged himself by saying, just as they left:

  “That motor bike that kicked up such a row—it couldn’t have spat more fire if it’d been carrying off a treasure—it certainly couldn’t!”

  “A fine show—good enough for the movies!” Poipanel put in.

  And the murmur of their ungracious comments was lost in the n
ight.

  It was in very truth his own daughter upon whom the alarmed Girodot had fired. Happily, his aim had been poor. This manufacturer of unintelligible documents was entirely ignorant of the use of firearms; with him, docketed papers were surer weapons of assassination. But though he had missed his daughter, he had nevertheless scored a bull’s-eye so far as the already damaged reputation of the Girodots was concerned. This nocturnal alarm had the effect of concentrating attention on his house and upon Hortense’s disappearance, which coincided with that of Denis Pommier, the owner of a motorcycle of American pattern which was never seen again at Clochemerle.

  Hortense herself was blindly happy, making for Paris in the clattering sidecar, which was continually stopping for kisses that made her oblivious of all else. Even as she sped along, she could scarcely take her eyes off Denis Pommier’s profile. She held him with the melting gaze of a girl in love, while he himself was only too pleased when the speedometer registered 60 m.p.h. In the hands of this young poet, with Love seated at his side, the motorcycle became an implement of the Muses.

  There is something relentless about the serenity of Nature which has a crushing effect on the human mind. The lavish splendor of her phases, which completely ignores human strife, fills the race of men with the sensation of their own ephemeral insignificance and drives them mad. While vast masses of human beings are tearing each other to pieces in hatred, Nature, with sublime indifference, sheds her brilliance over all these horrors and, during the short breathing spaces which the combatants allow themselves, by some evening of magic loveliness or morning of festive beauty reveals the absurdity of all this raging madness. But all that beauty, which should help to reconcile mankind, is expended to no purpose. Its only effect is to incite them to still greater energy in their ruthless activities, fearing that they may vanish from sight and leave no trace, and unable to conceive any more impressive and lasting monument than wholesale destruction.