And, in the company of idle errand-boys and indolent police-sergeants, Monsieur Bergeret would watch the navvies digging deep into the soil of the famous quay, and once again he would tell himself:
“Here I see a vision of the city of the future, whose noblest buildings are as yet indicated only by deep excavations, which would suggest, to a shallow mind, that the labourers who are toiling to rear the city which we shall never behold are merely excavating abysmal pits, when in reality they may be laying the foundations of a prosperous home, the abode of joy and peace.”
Thus did Monsieur Bergeret, who was a man of goodwill, look with a favouring eye upon the building of the ideal city; but he was much less at home amid the building operations of the real city, seeing that at every step he risked falling, through absence of mind, into a pit.
Nevertheless he continued to go house-hunting, but he did so in a whimsical fashion. Old houses pleased him, in that their stones had for him a tongue. The Rue Gît-le-Cœur had a particular attraction for him, and whenever he saw beside the keystone of a gateway or on a door which had once been flanked by a wrought-iron railing a notice to the effect that there was a flat to let, he would mount the stairs, accompanied by a sordid concierge, in an atmosphere that reeked of countless generations of rats, which was aggravated from floor to floor by the smell of cooking from poverty-stricken kitchens. The workshops of bookbinders or box-makers enriched it at times with the horrible odour of sour glue, and Monsieur Bergeret would depart filled with sadness and discouragement.
Home again, he would tell his sister and daughter, at the dinner-table, of the unfavourable results of his inquiries; Mademoiselle Zoe would listen calmly to his story. She had made up her mind to seek and to find a house herself. She regarded her brother as a superior person, but as one quite incapable of reasonable ideas concerning the practical affairs of life.
“I went over a flat to-day on the Quai Conti. I don’t know what you would think of it. It looks out on a courtyard with a well, some ivy, and a statue of Flora, moss-grown, mutilated, and headless, perpetually weaving a garland of flowers. I also saw a small flat in the Rue de la Chaise. That looks out on a garden with a great lime-tree, one branch of which, when the leaves have grown, would enter my study. There is a big room that Pauline could have; she would make it charming with a few yards of coloured cretonne.”
“What about my room?” demanded Mademoiselle Zoe. “You never think of my room. Besides—”
She did not finish her sentence, as she took no particular notice of her brother’s reports.
“We may be obliged to move into a new house,” said Monsieur Bergeret, for he was a sensible man accustomed to subject his desires to reason.
“I’m afraid so, papa,” said Pauline. “But never mind, we will find you a tree reaching up to your window, I promise you.”
She followed her father’s investigations with perfect good nature, but without much personal interest, as a young girl undismayed by change, who vaguely feels that her fate is not yet determined, and lives the while in a species of anticipation.
“The new houses are better fitted up than the old ones,” continued Monsieur Bergeret, “but I do not like them, perhaps because I am more conscious, in the midst of a luxury that one can measure, of the vulgarity of a straitened life. Not that the mediocrity of my fortune distresses me, even on your account. It is the banal and commonplace that I detest.... But you will think me absurd.”
“Oh, no, papa.”
“What I dislike in new houses is the precise sameness of their arrangement. The structure of the apartment is only too visible from the outside. For a long while dwellers in cities have been accustomed to live one above another, and as your aunt won’t hear of a small house in the suburbs I am quite willing to put up with a third or fourth-story flat, and that is precisely why I cannot but regret giving up the idea of an old house. The irregularity of old houses makes the piling of flat upon flat more endurable. When I walk down a new street I find myself thinking that this superposition of households in modern buildings is, in its uniformity, ridiculous. The small dining rooms perched one above the other with the same little windows and the self-same copper gaselier lighted every evening at exactly the same time; the same tiny kitchens with larders looking on the yard, the same extremely dirty maidservants; the same drawing-rooms, with their pianos one over the other. To my mind, the precision of modern houses reveals the daily functions of the creatures enclosed in them as plainly as though the floors and ceilings were of glass. And all these people who dine one above another, play the piano one above another, and go to bed one above another, in a perfectly symmetrical fashion — when one thinks of it, they offer a spectacle both comical and humiliating.”
“The tenants themselves would hardly think so,” said Mademoiselle Zoe, who had quite decided to settle in a new house.
“It is true,” said Pauline thoughtfully, “it is true, it is comical.”
“Of course, here and there, I see rooms that I like,” continued Monsieur Bergeret. “But the rent is always too high. And that makes me doubt the truth of a principle laid down by the admirable Fourier, which assures us that our tastes are so diverse that if only we lived in harmony with one another hovels would be as much in demand as palaces. It is quite true that we do not live in harmony; or we should all possess prehensile tails, so that we could hang suspended from the trees. Fourier has expressly said so. Another man of equal merit, the gentle Prince Kropotkin, has assured us more recently that some day we shall live rent-free in the mansions on the great avenues, for their owners will abandon them when they can no longer procure servants to keep them up. In those days, says the benevolent prince, they will be delighted to hand them over to the worthy women of the working-classes who will not object to a kitchen in the basement. In the meanwhile, the question of a house is both arduous and difficult. Zoe, please come with me to see that suite of rooms on the Quai Conti of which I told you. — It is rather dilapidated, having served for thirty years as a chemical warehouse. The landlord won’t do any repairs as he expects to let the place as a warehouse. The windows are oval dormer-windows, but from them you see an ivy-covered wall, a moss-grown well and a headless statue of Flora which still seems to smile. Such things are not easily found in Paris.”
CHAPTER IV
IT is to let,” said Mademoiselle Zoe, as they stopped before the gate. “It is to let, but we will not take it. It is too big. Besides—”
“No, we will not take it, but will you look over it? I should be interested to see it again,” said Monsieur Bergeret timidly.
They hesitated a moment. It seemed to them that in entering the deep dark vaulted way they were entering the region of the shades.
Scouring the streets in search of a flat, they had chanced to cross the narrow Rue des Grands-Augustins, which has preserved its old-world aspect, and whose greasy pavements are never dry. They remembered that they had passed six years of their childhood in one of the houses in this street. Their father, a professor at the University, had settled there in 1856, after having led for four years a wandering and precarious existence, ceaselessly hunted from town to town by an inimical Minister of Instruction. And, as witnessed the battered notice-board, the very flat in which Lucien and Zoe had first seen the light of day, and tasted the savour of life, was now to let.
As they passed down the path which led under the massive forefront of the building, they experienced an inexplicable feeling of melancholy and reverence. The damp courtyard was hemmed in by walls which since the minority of Louis XIV had slowly been crumbling in the rains and the fogs rising from the Seine. On the right as they entered was a small building, which served as a porter’s lodge. There, on the window-sill, a magpie hopped about in a cage, and in the lodge, behind a flowering plant, a woman sat sewing.
“Is the second floor on the courtyard to let?”
“Yes, do you wish to see it?”
“Yes, we should like to see it.”
Key in
hand, the concierge led the way. They followed her in silence. The gloomy antiquity of the house caused the memories which the blackened stones evoked for the brother and sister to recede into an unfathomable past. They climbed the stone stairs in a state of sorrowful eagerness, and when the concierge opened the door of the flat they remained motionless upon the landing, afraid to enter the rooms that seemed to be haunted by the host of their childish memories, like so many little ghosts.
“You can go in; the flat is empty.”
At first they could find nothing of the past in the wide empty rooms, freshly papered. They were amazed to find that they had become strangers to things which had formerly been so familiar.
“Here is the kitchen,” said the concierge, “and here are the dining-room and the drawing-room.” A voice cried from the courtyard:
“M’ame Falempin!”
The concierge looked out of the window, apologized, and grumbling to herself went down the stairs with feeble steps, groaning. Then the brother and sister began to remember. Memories of inimitable hours, of the long days of childhood, began to return to them.
“Here is the dining-room,” said Zoe. “The sideboard used to be there, against the wall.”
“The mahogany sideboard, ‘battered by its long wanderings,’ as our father used to say, when he and his family and his furniture were ceaselessly hunted from north to south and from east to west by the Minister of the 2nd of December. It remained here a few years, however, maimed and crippled.”
“There is the porcelain stove in its old corner.”
“The flue is different.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes, Zoe. Ours had a head of Jupiter Trophonius upon it. In those far-off days it was the custom of the stove-makers in the Cour du Dragon to decorate porcelain flues with a head of Jupiter Trophonius.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure. Don’t you remember a crowned head with a pointed beard?”
“No.”
“Oh, well that is not surprising; you were always indifferent to the shapes of things. You don’t look at anything.”
“I am more observant than you, my poor Lucien; it is you who never notice things. The other day, when Pauline had waved her hair, you didn’t notice it. If it were not for me—”
She did not finish her sentence, but peered about the empty room with her green eyes and sharp nose.
“Over there in that corner near the window, Mademoiselle Verpie used to sit with her feet on her foot-warmer. Saturday was the sewing-woman’s day, and Mademoiselle Verpie never missed a Saturday.”
“Mademoiselle Verpie,” said Lucien with a sigh: “how old would she be to-day? She was getting on in life when we were children. She used to tell a story about a box of matches. I have always remembered that story and can repeat it now word for word just as she used to tell it. ‘It was when they were placing the statues on the Pont des Saints Pères. It was so cold that my fingers were quite numb. Coming back from doing my marketing, I was watching the workmen. There was a whole crowd of people waiting to see how they would lift such heavy statues. I had my basket on my arm. A well-dressed gentleman said to me, “Mademoiselle, you are on fire.” Then I smelt a smell of sulphur and saw smoke pouring out of my basket. My threepenny box of matches had caught fire.’ That was how Mademoiselle Verpie related the adventure,” added Monsieur Bergeret. “She often used to tell us of it. Probably it was the greatest adventure of her life.”
“You’ve forgotten an important part of the story, Lucien. These were Mademoiselle Verpie’s exact words: ‘A well-dressed gentleman said to me, “Mademoiselle, you are on fire.” I answered “Go away and leave me alone.”
“Just as you like, Mademoiselle.” Then I smelt a smell of sulphur.’”
“You are quite right, Zoe. I was mutilating the text and omitted an important passage. By her reply, Mademoiselle Verpie, who was hump-backed, showed that she was a virtuous woman. It is a point that one should bear in mind. I seem to recollect, too, that she was very easily shocked.”
“Our poor mother,” said Zoe, “had a mania for mending. What an amount of darning used to be done!”
“Yes, she was fond of her needle. But what I thought so charming was that before she sat down to her sewing she always placed a pot of wallflowers or daisies or a dish of fruit and green leaves on the table before her just where the light caught it. She used to say that rosy apples were as pretty as roses. I never met any one who appreciated as she did the beauty of a peach or a bunch of grapes. When she went to see the Chardins at the Louvre, she knew by instinct that they were good pictures, but she could not help feeling that she preferred her own groups. With what conviction she would say to me: ‘Look, Lucien, have you ever seen anything so beautiful as this feather from a pigeon’s wing?’ I think no one ever loved nature more simply and frankly than she.”
“Poor Mother,” sighed Zoe, “and in spite of that her taste in dress was dreadful. One day she chose a blue dress for me at the Petit-Saint-Thomas. It was called electric blue, and it was terrible. That frock was the burden of my childish days.”
“You were never fond of dress, you.”
“You think so, do you? Well, you are mistaken. I should have loved to have pretty dresses, but the elder sister had to go short because little Lucien needed tunics. It couldn’t be helped.”
They passed into a narrow room, more like a passage.
“This was Father’s study,” said Zoe.
“Hasn’t it been cut in two by a partition? I thought it was much larger than this.”
“No, it was always the same as it is now. His writing-desk was there, and above it hung the portrait of Monsieur Victor Leclerc. Why haven’t you kept that engraving, Lucien?”
“What! do you mean to say that this narrow room held his motley crowds of books and contained whole nations of poets, orators and historians? When I was a child I used to listen to the silent eloquence that filled my ears with a buzz of glory. No doubt the presence of such an assembly pressed back the walls. I certainly remember it as a spacious room.”
“It was very overcrowded. He would never let us tidy anything in his study.”
“So it was here that our father used to work, seated in his old red arm-chair with his cat Zobeide on a cushion at his feet. Here it was that he used to look at us with the same slow smile that he never lost all through his illness, even up to the very last. I saw him smile gently at death itself, as he had smiled at life.”
“You are mistaken in that, Lucien. Father did not know he was going to die.”
Monsieur Bergeret did not speak for a moment, then he said:
“It is strange. I can see him now, in memory, not worn out and white with age, but still young as he was when I was quite a little child. I can see his slight, supple figure and his long black wind-tossed hair. Such mops of hair, that seemed as though whipped up by a gust of wind, crowned many of the enthusiastic heads of the men of 1830 and’48. I know it was only a trick of the brush that arranged their hair like that, but it made them look as though they lived upon the heights and in the storm. Their thoughts were loftier and more generous than ours. Our father believed in the advent of social justice and universal peace. He announced the triumph of the Republic and the harmonious formation of the United States of Europe. He would be cruelly disappointed were he to come back among us.”
He was still speaking although Mademoiselle Bergeret was no longer in the study. He followed her into the empty drawing-room. There they both recalled the arm-chairs and sofa of green velvet, which as children, in their games, they used to turn into walls and citadels.
“Oh, the taking of Damietta!” cried Monsieur Bergeret. “Do you remember it, Zoe? Mother, who allowed nothing to be wasted, used to collect all the silver paper round the bars of chocolate, and one day she gave me a pile which pleased me as much as if it had been a magnificent present. I gummed it to the leaves of an old atlas and made it into helmets and cuirasses. One day when Cousin Paul cam
e to dinner I gave him one of these sets of armour, a Saracen’s, and put the other on myself: it was the armour of St. Louis. If one goes into the matter, neither Saracens nor Christian knights wore such armour in the thirteenth century, but such a consideration did not trouble us, and I took Damietta.
“That recollection reminds me of the cruellest humiliation of my life. As soon as I had made myself master of Damietta, I took Cousin Paul prisoner and tied him up with skipping-ropes; then I pushed him with such enthusiasm that he fell on his nose, uttering piercing shrieks in spite of his courage. Mother came running in when she heard the noise, and when she saw Cousin Paul bound and prostrate on the floor she picked him up, kissed him and said: ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Lucien, to hit a child so much smaller than yourself.’ And as a matter of fact Cousin Paul, who never grew very big, was then very small. I did not say that it had happened in the wars. I said nothing at all, and remained covered with confusion. My shame was increased by the magnanimity of Cousin Paul who said, between his sobs, ‘I haven’t hurt myself.’
“Ah our beautiful drawing-room,” sighed Monsieur Bergeret. “I hardly know it with this new paper. How I loved the ugly old paper with its green boughs! What a gentle shade, what a delicious warmth dwelt in the folds of the hideous claret-coloured rep curtains! Spartacus with folded arms used to look at us indignantly from the top of the clock on the mantelpiece. His chains, which I used idly to play with, came off one day in my hand. Our beautiful drawing-room! Mother would sometimes call us in there when she was entertaining old friends. We used to come here to kiss Mademoiselle Lalouette. She was over eighty years of age; her cheeks were covered with a mossy growth and her chin was bearded. One long yellow tooth protruded from her lips. They were spotted with black. What magic makes the memory of that horrible little old woman full of an attractive charm for me now? What force compels me to recall details of her queer far-away personality? Mademoiselle Lalouette and her four cats lived on an annuity of fifteen hundred francs, one half of which she spent in printing pamphlets on Louis XVII. She always had about a dozen of them in her hand-bag. The good lady’s mania was to prove that the Dauphin escaped from the Temple in a wooden horse. Do you remember the day she gave us lunch in her room in the Rue de Verneuil, Zoe? There, under layers of ancient filth, lay mysterious riches, boxes full of gold and embroideries.”
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 166