“We must ask him for his shirt,” said Quatrefeuilles in a low voice to Saint-Sylvain. “I expect it is as good as that of the Cure Miton.”
“I expect so,” said Saint-Sylvain.
At the moment they were thus speaking a rider came down through the Chamois-feet, and stopped, sad and silent, before the travellers.
Recognizing one of his farm hands, the young master said:
“What’s the matter, Ulric?”
Ulric made no reply.
“Has some misfortune happened? Speak!”
“Sir, your wife was anxious to see you again, and came down to meet you. The wooden bridge broke, and she was drowned in the torrent with both children.”
Leaving the young mountaineer mad with grief, they went on to Monsieur Miton, and were received at the presbytery, in a room that served the cure both as parlour and as library. There were here a thousand volumes on pine shelves, and against the whitewashed walls hung old engravings of landscapes after Claude Lorrain and Poussin. Everything pointed to a culture and a habit of mind not usually encountered in a village presbytery.
Monsieur Miton, a middle-aged man, had a kind, intelligent air.
To his two visitors, who pretended that they were desirous of settling in the country, he praised the climate, and the fertile beauty of the valley. He offered them white bread, fruit, cheese, and milk. He then led them into his kitchen garden, which was delightfully fresh and tidy. On the wall which received the sun the espaliers extended their branches with geometrical precision. The distaffshaped fruit-trees stood at equal distances from one another, very regular and well laden.
“You are never bored, Monsieur le cure?” asked Quatrefeuilles.
“The time appears short between my garden and my library,” answered the priest. “Quiet and peaceful as it is, my life is none the less active and laborious. I celebrate the offices, I visit the poor and sick, and I confess my parishioners. The poor creatures have not many sins to relate; can I complain of that? But they take a long time telling them. I have to set aside a certain amount of time to prepare my sermons and catechisms; catechisms, in particular, give me a lot of trouble, although I have been doing them for twenty years. Talking to children is such a serious matter; they believe everything they are told. I have also my hours of amusement; I go for walks; they are always the same, and they are infinitely varied. A landscape changes with the seasons, the days, the hours, and the minutes; ‘it is always different and always new. In bad weather I pass the long evenings pleasantly with old friends, the chemist, the schoolmaster, and the magistrate. We indulge in music. My servant, Morine, excels in cooking chestnuts: we feast on them. What tastes better than chestnuts, with a glass of white wine?”
“Sir,” said Quatrefeuilles to the good priest, “we are on His Majesty’s service. We have come to ask you to make a statement, which will be of the greatest consequence to the country, and to the whole world. It is a matter of the King’s health, and perhaps of his life. For this reason, we beg of you to excuse our question, strange and indiscreet as it may appear, and to answer without any concealment or reservation whatever. Monsieur le cure, are you happy?”
Monsieur Miton took Quatrefeuilles’ hand, pressed it, and said in a voice so low as to be hardly audible:
“My life is a torture. I live a perpetual lie. I do not believe.”
Two tears rolled down from his eyes.
CHAPTER XIV AND LAST. A HAPPY MAN
HAVING travelled through the country for a year in vain, Quatrefeuilles and Saint-Sylvain returned to the Chateau of Fontblande, whither the King had gone to enjoy the coolness of the woods. They found him in a state of prostration which was alarming the Court.
The guests did not lodge at the Chateau de Fontblande, which was hardly more than a hunting-box. The secretary and the equerry had taken lodgings in the village, and every day they walked through the woods to visit their Sovereign. On the way they often met a little man who lived in a great hollow plane-tree in the forest. His name was Mousque, and he was far from handsome, with his pug face, prominent cheek-bones, and large nose with round nostrils. But his square teeth, which his red lips often uncovered in laughter, gave his wild face an appearance of brightness and cheeriness. How he had taken possession of the great hollow plane-tree no one knew; but he had made himself a very tidy room there, furnished with all that he required. Truth to tell, he needed little. He lived on the forest and the lake, and he lived very well. The irregularity of his condition was overlooked, because he made himself useful, and knew how to please people. When the ladies at the chateau drove in the forest, he would offer them, in baskets of osier plaited by himself, sections of honey, wild strawberries, or the tart, sweet fruit of the wild cherry. He was always ready to put his shoulder to the wheel of a cart foundered in the mire, and would help to fetch in the hay if the weather was threatening. He would do more than others without getting tired. His strength and activity were extraordinary. He could break a wolf’s jaw-bone with his hands, run down a hare, and climb trees like a cat. To amuse the children he made reed flutes, little windmills, and Hieron’s fountains.
Quatrefeuilles and Saint-Sylvain often heard it said in the village: “Happy as Mousque.” This proverb impressed their minds, and one day, passing the hollow plane-tree, they saw Mousque playing with a young puppy, and apparently as happy as the dog. It occurred to them to ask whether he was happy.
Mousque was unable to answer, not having reflected on the subject of happiness. They explained generally and very simply what it meant. After thinking it over for a moment he answered that he possessed it.
At this reply, Saint-Sylvain called out impetuously:
“Mousque, we will get you everything that you can want, gold, a palace, new shoes, anything that you would like: but give us your shirt.”
His kindly face expressed neither regret nor disappointment, which he was quite incapable of feeling, but a great surprise. He made a sign that he could not give what they asked of him. He had not a shirt.
THE END
CHILD LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
CONTENTS
FANCHON
THE FANCY-DRESS BALL
THE SCHOOL
MARIE
THE PANDEAN PIPES
ROGER’S STUD
COURAGE
CATHERINE’S “AT HOME”
LITTLE SEA-DOGS
GETTING WELL
ACROSS THE MEADOWS
THE MARCH PAST
DEAD LEAVES
SUZANNE
FISHING
THE PENALTIES OF GREATNESS
A CHILD’S DINNER PARTY
FANCHON
I
FANCHON went early one morning, like Little Red Riding-Hood, to see her grandmother, who lives right at the other end of the village. But Fanchon did not stop like little Red Riding-Hood, to gather nuts in the wood. She went straight on her way and she did not meet the wolf. From a long way off she saw her grandmother sitting on the stone step at her cottage door, a smile on her toothless mouth and her arms, as dry and knotty as an old vine-stock, open to welcome her little granddaughter. It rejoices Fanchon’s heart to spend a whole day with her grandmother; and her grandmother, whose trials and troubles are all over and who lives as happy as a cricket in the warm chimney-corner, is rejoiced too to see her son’s little girl, the picture of her own childhood.
They have many things to tell each other, for one of them is coming back from the journey of life which the other is setting out on.
“You grow a bigger girl every day,” says the old grandmother to Fanchon, “and every day I get smaller; I scarcely need now to stoop at all to touch your forehead. What matters my great age when I can see the roses of my girlhood blooming again in your cheeks, my pretty Fanchon?”
But Fanchon asked to be told again — for the hundredth time — all about the glittering paper flowers under the glass shade, the coloured pictures where our Generals in brilliant uniforms are overthrowing their enemies, the
gilt cups, some of which have lost their handles, while others have kept theirs, and grandfather’s gun that hangs above the chimney-piece from the nail where he put it up himself for the last time, thirty years ago.
But time flies, and the hour is come to get ready the midday dinner. Fanchon’s grandmother stirs up the drowsy fire; then she breaks the eggs on the black earthenware platter. Fanchon is deeply interested in the bacon omelette as she watches it browning and sputtering over the fire. There is no one in the world like her grandmother for making omelettes and telling pretty stories. Fanchon sits on the settle, her chin on a level with the table, to eat the steaming omelette and drink the sparkling cider. But her grandmother eats her dinner, from force of habit, standing at the fireside. She holds her knife in her right hand, and in the other a crust of bread with her toothsome morsel on it. When both have done eating:
“Grandmother,” says Fanchon, “tell me the ‘Blue Bird.’”
And her grandmother tells Fanchon how, by the spite of a bad fairy, a beautiful Prince was changed into a sky-blue bird, and of the grief the Princess felt when she heard of the transformation and saw her love fly all bleeding to the window of the Tower where she was shut up.
Fanchon thinks and thinks.
“Grandmother,” she says at last, “is it a great while ago the Blue Bird flew to the Tower where the Princess was shut up?”
Her grandmother tells her it was many a long day since, in the times when the animals used to talk.
“You were young then?” asks Fanchon.
“I was not yet born,” the old woman tells her.
And Fanchon says:
“So, grandmother, there were things in the world even before you were born?”
And when their talk is done, her grandmother gives Fanchon an apple with a hunch of bread and bids her:
“Run away, little one; go and play and eat your apple in the garden.”
And Fanchon goes into the garden, where there are trees and grass and flowers and birds.
II
HER grandmother’s garden was full of grass and flowers and trees, and Fanchon thought it was the prettiest garden in all the world. By this time she had pulled out her pocket-knife to cut her bread with, as they do in the village. First she munched her apple, then she began upon her bread. Presently a little bird came fluttering past her. Then a second came, and a third. Soon ten, twenty, thirty were crowding round Fanchon. There were grey birds, and red, there were yellow birds, and green, and blue. And all were pretty and they all sang. At first Fanchon could not think what they wanted. But she soon saw they were asking for bread and that they were little beggars. Yes, they were beggars, but they were singers as well. Fanchon was too kind-hearted to refuse bread to any one who paid for it with songs.
She was a little country girl, and she did not know that once long ago, in a country where white cliffs of marble are washed by the blue sea, a blind old man earned his daily bread by singing the shepherds’ songs which the learned still admire to-day. But her heart laughed to hear the little birds, and she tossed them crumbs that never reached the ground, for the birds always caught them in the air.
Fanchon saw that the birds were not all the same in character. Some would stand in a ring round her feet waiting for the crumbs to fall into their beaks. These were philosophers. Others again she could see circling nimbly on the wing all about her. She even noticed one little thief that darted in and pecked shamelessly at her own slice.
She broke the bread and threw crumbs to them all; but all could not get some to eat. Fanchon found that the boldest and cleverest left nothing for the others.
“That is not fair,” she told them; “each of you ought to take his proper turn.”
But they never heeded; nobody ever does, when you talk of fairness and justice. She tried every way to favour the weak and hearten the timid; but she could make nothing of it, and do what she would, she fed the big fat birds at the expense of the thin ones. This made her sorry; she was such a simple child she did not know it is the way of the world.
Crumb by crumb, the bread all went down the little singers’ throats. And Fanchon went back very happy to her grandmother’s house.
III
WHEN night fell, her grandmother took the basket in which Fanchon had brought her a cake, filled it with apples and grapes, hung it on the child’s arm, and said: “Now, Fanchon, go straight back home, without stopping to play with the village ragamuffins. Be a good girl always. Goodbye.”
Then she kissed her. But Fanchon stood thinking at the door.
“Grandmother?” she said. “What is it, little Fanchon?” “I should like to know,” said Fanchon, “if there are any beautiful Princes among the birds that ate up my bread.”
“Now that there are no more fairies,” her grandmother told her, “the birds are all birds and nothing else.”
“Good-bye, grandmother.”
“Good-bye, Fanchon.”
And Fanchon set off across the meadows for her home, the chimneys of which she could see smoking a long way off against the red sky of sunset.
On the road she met Antoine, the gardener’s little boy. He asked her:
“Will you come and play with me, Fanchon?”
But she answered:
“I won’t stop to play with you, because my grandmother told me not to. But I will give you an apple, because I love you very much.”
Antoine took the apple and kissed the little girl.
They loved each other fondly.
He called her his little wife, and she called him her little husband.
As she went on her way, stepping soberly along like a staid, grown-up person, she heard behind her a merry twittering of birds, and turning round to look, she saw they were the same little pensioners she had fed when they were hungry. They came flying after her.
“Good night, little friends,” she called to them, “good night! It’s bedtime now, so good night!”
And the winged songsters answered her with little cries that mean “God keep you!” in bird language.
So Fanchon came back to her mother’s to the sound of sweet music in the air.
IV
FANCHON lay down in the dark in her little bed, which a carpenter in the village had made long ago of walnut-wood and carved a light railing alongside. The good old man had been resting years and years now under the shadow of the church, in a grass-grown bed; for Fanchon’s cot had been her grandfather’s when he was a little lad, and he had slept where she sleeps now. A curtain of pink-sprigged cotton protects her slumbers; she sleeps, and in her dreams she sees the Blue Bird flying to his sweetheart’s Castle. She thinks he is as beautiful as a star, but she never expects him to come and light on her shoulder. She knows she is not a Princess, and no Prince changed into a blue bird will come to visit her. She tells herself that all birds are not Princes; that the birds of her village are villagers, and that there might be one perhaps found amongst them, a little country lad changed into a sparrow by a bad fairy and wearing in his heart under his brown feathers the love of little Fanchon. Yes, if he came and she knew him, she would give him not bread crumbs only, but cake and kisses. She would so like to see him, and lo! she sees him; he comes and perches on her shoulder. He is a jack-sparrow, only a common sparrow. He has nothing rich or rare about him, but he looks alert and lively. To tell the truth, he is a little torn and tattered; he lacks a feather in his tail; he has lost it in battle — unless it was through some bad fairy of the village. Fanchon has her suspicions he is a naughty bird. But she is a girl, and she does not mind her jack-sparrow being a trifle headstrong, if only he has a kind heart. She pets him and calls him pretty names. Suddenly he begins to grow bigger; his body gets longer; his wings turn into two arms; he is a boy, and Fanchon knows who he is — Antoine, the gardener’s little lad, who asks her:
“Shall we go and play together, shall we, Fanchon?”
She claps her hands for joy, and away she goes.... But suddenly she wakes and rubs her eyes. Her sparro
w is gone, and so is Antoine! She is all alone in her little room. The dawn, peeping in between the flowered curtains, throws a white, innocent light over her cot. She can hear the birds singing in the garden. She jumps out of bed in her little nightgown and opens the window; she looks out into the garden, which is gay with flowers — roses, geraniums, and convolvulus — and spies her little pensioners, her little musicians, of yesterday. There they all sit in a row on the garden-fence, singing her a morning hymn to pay her for their crumbs of bread.
THE FANCY-DRESS BALL
HERE we have little boys who are conquering heroes and little girls who are heroines. Here we have shepherdesses in hoops and wreaths of roses and shepherds in satin coats, who carry crooks tied with knots of riband. Oh! what white, pretty sheep they must be these shepherds tend! Here are Alexander the Great and Zaire, and Pyrrhus and Merope, Mahomet, Harlequin, Pierrot, Scapin, Blaise and Babette. They have come from all parts, from Greece and Rome and the lands of Faëry, to dance together. What a fine thing a fancy ball is, and how delicious to be a great King for an hour or a famous Princess! There is nothing to spoil the pleasure. No need to act up to your costume, nor even to talk in character.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 386