Part 14

I only went to town when it was absolutely necessary to replenish my store of provisions and news, and when I was there I carefully avoided my sons, having given out that I had gone on a journey. They may not have thought this story literally true, but it would have been disrespectful to contradict a report started by their father, so we kept on playing our little game of hide-and-go-seek until Martine upset it all.

We had not taken her sufficiently into our calculations, and, like most of her sex, she had no idea of playing fair, and being besides thoroughly up to all my tricks, she found me without much trouble. She is anyhow a great stickler for duty, family feeling, and all that sort of thing. One evening when I was working in the garden, I caught sight of my daughter coming up the hill; I made one jump into the house, and, locking the door, lay down against the wall. In a minute or two I heard her steps, and then she tried the door, shook it, knocked, and called out to me; I lay there like a dead leaf, holding my breath, though I had a tickling in my throat and wanted dreadfully to cough. (I don’t know why, but it always happens like that.) It was not so easy to get rid of her, however; she kept battering at the door and window, and calling, “Father, let me in! I know you are there; let me in!”

“What a minx it is!” I said to myself. “I should have no chance at all if that door gave way.”

I had half a mind to open it myself and give her a good hug, but I hate to yield about anything, so I lay still and after a little while she got tired and stopped her pounding; then I could hear her walking slowly down the path. I came out of my corner and began to laugh, and cough and laugh again till I was nearly choking, and when I got over the fit, and stopped to wipe my eyes, I heard a voice behind me saying, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

It nearly knocked me flat, but I turned my head and there on top of the wall was Martine looking at me.

“I’ve got you now, you old joker!” she cried.

“I’m caught, sure enough,” said I, and we both laughed to our hearts’ content.

As soon as I had let her in she stood sternly before me, then grabbed me by the beard. “Say you’re sorry,” she cried.

You know how it is at confession; you repent, meaning to do it again the next opportunity, so I replied meekly, “_Mea culpa!_”

But she kept pulling me to and fro, declaring that it was a disgrace for an old white-beard like me to have no more sense than a baby; finally she gave me a last pull and tap on the cheek, and threw her arms round my neck saying, “Why didn’t you come to me, Father, when you know how much I want you?”

“My dear little girl, I will explain all about it.”

“You can explain as we go along, you are coming home with me this minute.”

“Martine, you must give me time to pack up my things.”

“I’ll do your packing,” cried she, and with that she threw an old cloak over my shoulders, jammed my hat on my head, picked up my bundle, and told me to come along. I sat down on the step and said there was no hurry, which made her furiously angry.

“Why do you object to coming to my house?” said she.

“I don’t object, I know sooner or later I shall have to do it.”

“That’s a pretty way to talk,” said she. “I don’t believe you care anything about me!”

“You know very well how much I love you, darling! but you are dearer to me in my own house, than in an outsider’s!”

“Do you mean to say I am an outsider?”

“You are half one, you see!”

“Nothing of the sort! I am just myself, as you know perfectly well; his wife, of course, just as he is my husband, and I go his way as long as he goes mine, but you can set your mind at rest, he will be perfectly charmed to have you in the house, or else I will know the reason why!”

“I’ve had plenty of lodgers of that sort,” said I, “when our Lord of Nevers billeted them on us, but I had rather not be one my own self.”

“You will have to learn,” said she. “Come, I am waiting.”

“Agreed; but on condition that you will take me in on my own terms.”

“You are a perfect old tyrant! but there, I promise!”

“On your honor?”

“Yes, yes, now that’s enough talking, I won’t wait another minute,” and she seized my arm in such a grip that I had to go willy-nilly.

When we got to her house, she showed me with pride the room she had arranged for me behind the shop, all warm and comfortable and directly under her eye, as if I were a child of a year old. I was touched to see how the dear girl had made up the bed with her best linen sheets and comforter, and had put a nosegay on the table; it made me laugh too when I thought how furious she would be. “This won’t do at all,” said I, so though vexed enough she showed me the other rooms downstairs, but I would have none of them, and finally chose a little nook under the mansarded roof.

In spite of everything she could say, I declared that she might take it or leave it, that if she would not let me have the room I liked, I would go back to my hut, so she had to give in, but every day and all day long she kept at me about it.

“That’s not a fit place for you, Father, the other room is much more comfortable,--why in the world don’t you like it?”

“Because I don’t,” I would say and then she would go into a rage, and swear that I would drive her crazy, that she knew why I behaved so, it was just because I was too stuffy and proud to be beholden to any of my children, even to her.

“I should like to box your ears!” she would cry, and then I would tell her that would be the only way to make me accept something from her gratis.

“You don’t love me, Daddy.”

“Now, my little girl, my own sweet baby!”

“Let me alone! Don’t you dare to touch me! You can’t make up to me like that, old fraud that you are! And all the time you are just laughing at me. I can see your mouth twitching.”

“You’re laughing yourself, Martine,” and I put my finger on her cheek, which broke into a smile.

“All the same, I am really angry,” said she, “even if you do make me laugh with your nonsense, but in my heart I think you are a horrid old thing! You have lost your house and you are too stuck-up to let your daughter help you; it is nothing but wicked pride, and you have no right to behave so!”

“It is the only right that is left to me,” said I.

But that did not end the matter and there was never any lack of sharp words between two people like us, who both of us had a fine edge to our tongues; but, luckily, a joke could always make us laugh in the midst of our discussions and so the storm would blow over.

One evening when her tongue had been going like a clapper, and I had long ceased to listen, I told her at last it was time to stop, and wait for the rest till the next day.

“Very well then,” she said. “Good-night! But won’t you change your mind, old Peacock?”

“Listen, dear, I am proud as a peacock, if you choose to say so, but, frankly now, in my place what would you do?”

“Pretty much the same thing.”

“Well, then, you see! Now give me a kiss for good-night.”

She did kiss me but I could hear her muttering to herself that it was hard luck for her to have two such wooden heads in one family.

“Well, pound the other one as much as you please, but leave me in peace.”

“He will get his share, never fear, and you too,” she answered; and then the next day it began all over again, so that I really thought on the whole I had more than was due to me.

For the first few days I was in clover, and every one petted and spoiled me; even Florimond, who overwhelmed me with attentions greater than I desired or deserved, for I saw that Martine was keeping her eye on him. Glodie was always twittering around me; I had the most comfortable chair; I was helped first at table, and when I spoke every one listened in respectful silence.

It was all perfectly delightful, but I felt that I could not stand much more; it made me restless, and I kept going up and down stairs all day long to and from my garret. This, naturally, got on everybody’s nerves, and Martine, who is by no means the most patient of women, was nearly beside herself when she heard the stairs creak for the hundredth time under my feet. If it had been summer, I should have gone out and roamed about the country, but as it was I had to do my roaming indoors. It was a cold early autumn, the fields were damp and misty, and it rained from morning till night; so I was shut up in the house, and not my house, Heaven help me!

I hated all the furniture and ornaments, for Florimond’s taste in such things is stupid and pretentious, and it made me so uncomfortable that my fingers fairly itched to move things round, or alter them, but of course, that would never do with the master of the house standing by, and the slightest criticism was a mortal offense. In the dining-room there was a ewer decorated with a simpering lady, her tiresome lover and two cooing doves which made me ill whenever I looked at it. I told Florimond it made the victuals stick in my throat, and begged him to take it away at mealtimes; but his notion of art was ornamented confectionery and he greatly admired this piece, so he refused, as, of course, he had a perfect right to do; but the faces I made amused the whole household.

What was to be done? Laugh at me for an old fool? By all means; but at night, in my garret, when the rain was on the roof, I turned and twisted in my bed, not daring to shake the house by walking up and down with my heavy tread. One night as I sat up there, bare-legged, meditating on these things, a thought came into my head that sooner or later, by hook or by crook, I must rebuild my house, and after that I felt happier; but I kept my little plan to myself and did not breathe a word of it to my children, for I knew what they would say.

“Where was the money to come from?”

Alas! we are no longer in the times of Orpheus and Amphion, when stones built themselves into walls as if to the sound of music; there is no such charm to raise them now unless it be the chink of money bags, and that was always faint with me and now completely inaudible.

I resolved to have recourse to my friend Paillard, though, if the truth were told, he had never offered to lend me money; but since I took a sincere pleasure in asking him, why should he not find equal delight in giving me what I needed?

Arguing in this way, I took advantage of a comparatively fine day and went to Dornecy. Everything spoke of sadness; the dark hovering clouds, the muddy ground, the damp gusts of wind swooping like the wings of a great bird, tearing the yellow leaves from the trees and scattering them over the fields.

Paillard could hardly wait to let me get out my first sentence before he interrupted me to complain of the hard times, the falling off of his business, the bad debts he had, lack of money, et cetera, till I pulled him up short by asking him if he would like me to lend him a penny piece?

It would be hard to say which of us was the more irritated and hurt by this little passage at arms, but we kept up the conversation for a while longer, talking in a stiff unnatural way of the weather and the crops. I could see that he was sorry for his meanness; the poor old boy is good-hearted at bottom and genuinely attached to me, and I knew that he would have been delighted to lend me money, if he had been certain that he would lose nothing by it, and what is more he would have yielded if I had pressed the point; but he was not to blame, after all; he had centuries of miserly blood in his veins, and though there may be small householders in his position who are also open-handed,--I say there is a legend that such people do exist,--when you lay a finger on the purse of a man like that, his first instinct is to say “No!”

At that very moment Paillard would have loved to reconsider his refusal, but here my pride came in, and I would make no further advances; my friend ought to have been glad to help me out of my difficulties, and if he thought otherwise, so much the worse for him!

There we sat sulky and unhappy; he asked if I would not stay to lunch, but I refused somewhat curtly, though I could see it nearly broke his heart, and he followed me to the door with a hang-dog expression; but as my foot was on the threshold, something came over me; I put my arm around his old neck and embraced him; he did the same to me, and there we stood without a word for a minute or two.

At last he said timidly, “Colas, I could let you have a little.”

“Say no more about it,” I answered, for I am an obstinate devil.

“Well,” he said, “you will at least stay to luncheon?”

So we sat down and ate heartily enough, but nothing would have induced me to borrow of him now; I am made like that, and if I suffered for it this time, why so of course did he.

The question for me now was how to rebuild my house without money or workmen,--but when I get an idea in my head!

I ruminated over it as I walked back to Clamecy, and the first thing I did was to go over the ruins of my house, carefully sorting out everything that might be of use, from the half-burnt beams to the rusty hinges and black tottering walls.

One day I stole off to Chevroches to see what I could find in the quarries among the great stone blocks like the bones of our earth with their red veins. On my way through the forest, I am afraid I helped some old oaks to sink into their final repose; an illegal act perhaps, but one would not get far in this world if one only did what the law allows. The wood belonged to the town, and therefore to me, in part at least, and of course I should not have dreamed of taking more than my just share; but the thing was, how to get it home? And here the neighbors came to my assistance. One lent me his cart, another his oxen, and a third his tools, or rather his hands, which cost nothing. A man will lend anything in these parts, except his wife or his money, and I feel that way myself, for money means the future; it is hope, all that we have, the rest is only the present, which scarcely belongs to us.

At last Robinet and I began to put up the first scaffolding, but by that time it was cold weather, and every one thought I was out of my mind. I was urged to wait at least until spring, while my children made such a pother that my life was a burden to me.

In spite of all this I persisted in going on with my work, partly because I like to rub people up the wrong way, and then, though of course I knew that I could not build a house all by myself in the depths of winter, I really meant only to put up a mere shed, a sort of rabbit hutch, where I could live alone. I am sociable enough, but I like to choose my own time and place, and I am also a talker, but sometimes Breugnon seems to me the best companion in the world, and I would walk ten miles to get at him. It was, therefore, for the sake of enjoying my own charming society that I was obstinately bent on building, in spite of the opinion of the world and the remonstrances of my children.

Unluckily, I was not to have the last word, for, one frosty morning at the end of October, when the roofs of the town and the pavements were all covered with a thin glare of ice, I slipped on one of the rungs of my ladder and the next thing I knew I was lying on the ground.

“He has killed himself!” cried poor Binet, as he ran to pick me up.

“I did it on purpose,” said I and tried to rise, but I could not stand as my ankle was broken.

They fetched a stretcher and carried me home, Martine and most of her neighbors by my side, wringing their hands and bewailing my sad fate. It was like an Entombment by an early master, with the Marys surrounding the body and making noise enough to wake Him.

I pretended to be unconscious so as to escape the flood of pity and reproaches, but though I lay still, with my head thrown back, and my beard pointing to Heaven, within me I was in a proper rage, in spite of this calm exterior.

XIII

PLUTARCH’S LIVES

October 30th.

I was much depressed by my accident, as may be imagined. If only the Lord had been pleased to break any other bone in my body, I thought, but here I was pinned by the leg! It is true that I should have grumbled somewhat if I had broken an arm or a rib; but now, I was ready to curse Him for His cruelty; (Praise be to His Holy Name!) and to swear that He had picked out the very thing that would vex me the most.

He knows well that my hard-won liberty, child not of gods, but of men, is to me as the breath of my nostrils; dearer than gold and silver, food and drink; and that is why He must laugh to Himself when He sees me lying here on my back like a beetle, staring at the beams and spider’s webs of my garret ceiling. All the same, there is some fight left in me, though I am tied and trussed up here like a fowl on the spit. My body cannot stir an inch, it is true; but how about the spirit? My free fancies fly away on strong wings, with not a broken bone among them; and he had need to be swift who would catch and stop them.

For the first day or two I was in an execrable humor, and made good use of my tongue as the only weapon I had with which to hit out at every one, right and left; so that it was hardly safe to come near me. The worst of all was that in my heart I knew that my accident was entirely my own fault; and what made it harder to bear was that every one I saw dinned the same thing into my ears; telling me that a man of my age had no business to be climbing up ladders, like a fly on a wall; reminding me that I had had ample warning, and lamenting that I had such an obstinate nature that good advice was thrown away on me. The moral drawn, of course, was that I richly deserved my fate.

All this naturally was extremely consoling to me,--as if it was not bad enough to be in my miserable condition, without being told that I was a fool into the bargain. Martine and her husband, and all my friends and neighbors seemed to have agreed among themselves to harp on the same string whenever they came to see me, while I had to lie and listen to it all, like a helpless wild creature caught in a trap; until I lost all patience one day, when even my little Glodie began to sing the same tune: “You were a naughty Grandad to climb up ladders!”

I tore my nightcap off my head and threw it at her. “Get out of this, you little beast!” I yelled; and then I was alone, and found that, after all, I did not like that much better.

After a while my daughter proposed, like the good girl that she is, to carry my mattress down into the room behind the shop; but I was just perverse enough to say no, again, because I had said it before; though by this time I was dying to give in. On the other hand, I hated to have strangers see me in such a state, and then Martine kept at me like a fly, (or a woman,) and could not understand that she talked too much about it, and so injured her own cause. I knew also that if I yielded I should never hear the last of it; so I told her to let me alone, and that is what it finally came to: they all went away and left me to myself, as I had wished; so surely I had nothing to complain of.

I had not been willing to tell my real reason, which was, that being a dependent in that house, I hated to give any more trouble than was necessary; but for a man who wanted people to love him, the stupidest thing I could have done was to drive them all away from me; for they took me at my word and soon forgot me,--“Out of sight, out of mind,”--and no one came to see me any more, not even Glodie, though I could hear her laughing downstairs, and smiled at the sound of it; and then sighed, because I could not go and join in the fun as I used to do.

“Ungrateful little puss,” I thought, but I knew that I should have done the same in her place, so I blew a kiss towards the stairs. “Have a good time, my pretty one!”--Job lay on his dunghill, you know, and railed at his fate, and I was somewhat in the same position by this time.

One day while I was thus agreeably occupied, old Paillard came in; he had a package in his hand, and sat down awkwardly enough, on the foot of my bed; while I received him in a rather crusty manner. He began to talk of one thing and another, but I contradicted every word he said; till at last he was completely put out of countenance, and sat there, clearing his throat, and tapping on the footboard of the bed. I begged him to stop, in an icy tone, and after that he simply did not dare to move a finger. I could hardly help laughing, and thought: “He reproaches himself because he knows that if he had lent me money, I should not have tried to build the wall, and so break my leg. If it had not been for his meanness, none of all this would have happened.” And he did not know what to say, and I would not speak, we kept silence for some time, till at last I broke out, “Why don’t you say something? Any one would think that I was actually at the last gasp; but there’s no use in sitting staring at me like a stuck pig! If you can’t talk, go home! You do not go to see sick people just to hold your tongue; and for goodness’ sake stop fiddling with that book, or whatever it is you have got there!”

The poor old fellow stood up. “I am going, Colas,” he said gently. “I can see that the sight of me puts you out, but I thought--I had brought you this book,--_Lives of Celebrated Men_, by Plutarch; it is translated by Jacques Amyot, Bishop of Auxerre;--would you like it?--it might amuse you. It would perhaps be some consolation or companionship!” I could see that his mind was not quite made up, for it was like drawing teeth for him to lend his books, which he cherished even more dearly than his ducats.

If any one dared touch one of the precious volumes in his library, he was like a lover who sees rude hands laid on the lady of his affections. I was touched and softened by the greatness of the sacrifice, and held out my hand to my old comrade, telling him how grateful I was for his kindness to such a brute as I had shown myself to be; and I took the book from his reluctant fingers.

“Take good care of it,” said he.

“Make your mind easy, it shall lie under my pillow,” and with this reassuring reply I let him depart.

Plutarch of Cheronæus was a stout little volume, as broad as it was long, of about thirteen hundred closely printed pages; the words all heaped one upon another, like corn in a bin. “There is three years’ provender there, for three donkeys,” thought I. At the head of each chapter were round medallion portraits of the illustrious subjects of the memoirs, surrounded by wreaths of laurel; these diverted me extremely; they only lacked a bunch of parsley in their mouths to be complete.

“What are all these Greeks and Romans to me?” I thought. “We are living, and they are long since dead, and can teach me nothing but what I knew before; that man is a wicked creature, but agreeable enough; that age improves wine, and spoils women; that in all countries, the big fishes swallow the little ones, and the weak jeer at their oppressors.--These Romans are terrible fellows to make long speeches; and I am not by any means opposed to eloquence; only I want to warn these gentlemen that turn and turn about is fair play.”

Fluttering the leaves with a condescending air, I threw my eyes along the pages, as an angler draws his line along a stream, and hang me if I did not hook something at the very first cast. No one ever saw better fishing; the cork went under as soon as it touched the water; and such fish as I pulled up! Gold and silver, some with shining scales like jewels, scattering a shower of sparks around them; jumping and twisting, too, with quivering fins, and flapping tails. To think of my saying that they were dead!