Part 10

Outside the church was standing a _char-a-banc_ drawn by two horses, and it was in this that, after service, I returned to La Chesnaye with the children and the governesses. It was interesting to see how devoted the people of Guilly seem to be to the De Lesseps family, and how the men and women bowed and courtesied as the countess came out of church. Here, as at Vatan and in all the district, the love and respect for "Monsieur le Comte" have been increased rather than diminished by the persecutions to which he has been subjected. It was on the great fair-day at Vatan that the news of his condemnation was made public, and at once the villagers, in sign of mourning, stopped the public ball which is a _fete_ to which the young people of the district look forward for months beforehand. Sturdy Berrichon lads have been seen to flourish their sticks and heard to say that the Parisians had better keep their hands off "Monsieur le Comte." Nor is it surprising that in his own country M. de Lesseps should be loved and venerated. Always delighting in acts of kindness, his generosity towards his poor neighbors throughout the district has been constant and large-handed. Never a marriage takes place in any of the surrounding villages but that a handsome present from La Chesnaye is thrown into the bride's _corbeille_. The children are dressed for confirmation at the expense of the chateau; layettes are found for poor mothers, and no case of distress is allowed to pass unrelieved. Since the heavy losses which the Panama failure has entailed on the family, no change nor diminution in these liberalities has been made. But perhaps what the people in the district like the best in the La Chesnaye folk is their extreme simplicity. Chateau folk are not generally very popular in France, and certainly not in republican circumscriptions, because republican electors of the peasant class have inherited prejudices about them; and if the De Lesseps family is so very popular, it is because of the extreme simplicity of their manners and of the way in which they live the lives of the people around them. For instance, not the children alone, but even the elegant Madame de Lesseps herself, are dressed in clothes purchased and made in Vatan. Nothing is got from Paris, and the Vatan people are highly pleased with the unusual compliment thus paid to them. By the church at Guilly is an orphanage, which was founded by the De Lesseps, and is entirely kept up at their expense. It is a rule with Madame de Lesseps to pay a visit to this orphanage each Sunday after mass, and, accordingly, as she left church she asked me to return home with the children. Of these there are now seven at home; Matthew, who has just returned on sick leave from the Soudan, being in Paris near his stepbrother Charles. Ismail is serving in the army as a soldier in a regiment of _chasseurs_ at St. Germain; and the eldest daughter, the Comtesse de Gontaut-Biron, is in Nice, whither she has been sent by her doctors. Lolo, aged eighteen, is the eldest girl at home; and Paul, a handsome lad of twelve, with long ringlets down his back, is the eldest boy. The youngest children are mere babies. There is Zi-Zi, a tiny little boy, with fair curls and dark eyes; and Griselle, a charming little mite, who on that Sunday was dressed in a Kate Greenaway bonnet and gown, and looked sweetly pretty. The _char-a-banc_, spacious as it was, was quite filled. Besides all the children from Lolo down to Zi-Zi, there were the English and German governesses, Paul and Robert's tutor, the niece of Madame de Lesseps who for many years past has lived with the family, and an intimate friend, Mademoiselle Mimaut.

It was a merry party, and yet whenever the name of the poor old father at home was mentioned, silence came over the prattle of the children. "They all feel it deeply," said Madame de Lesseps to me later on, "though their youth often gets the better of their feelings. And what grieves them all most is, to know that their brother Charles, whom they all love and respect like a second father, is in prison, whilst they can run about. Zi-Zi and Griselle write to him every day at Mazas or the Conciergerie, and send him violets, and little stories which they compose for his amusement, spending long hours inking their fingers over their paper."

About half-way home the carriage passed the rural postman trudging along on his daily thirty-mile round. The children would have the carriage stopped, and, though it was quite full, place was made for him. Father Pierre seemed quite a favorite with the children, for is it not he, as little Griselle said, who brings letters from brother Charles? Charles, it seems, writes every day, and his letters, to judge by what every member of the family told me, are admirable in their manly unselfishness. There is never a word of complaint about the wretchedness of his position; his only anxiety is about his father, and he is ready to undergo everything so that the old man may be spared a moment's pain. Ruined, disgraced, though not dishonored, having to face a long period of imprisonment, which at his age and in his physical condition may kill him, he affects in his letters the greatest cheerfulness. Nor is his heroic unselfishness without its reward. He is the idol of everybody at La Chesnaye and for miles around. Only one complaint has escaped him since his confinement, and that was when, during his hurried visit, under guard, to his father, he went with the children for a favorite walk to a neighboring wood. Here, as he was walking along the avenue which runs through some magnificent timber, he looked around at the detectives behind him, and said with a sigh: "And to-morrow I shall be again within four gray walls." But immediately he added, that if he could only be allowed to come and pass an afternoon in the wood with his brothers and sisters every month, he would not mind his confinement in the least, and could resign himself to the prospect of imprisonment for the rest of his days. Yet he is past fifty-three, and his health has suffered terribly from what he has undergone.

The half hour before lunch was spent by the children in showing their pets. A prime favorite with them just now is a little Newfoundland puppy, which has quite dethroned in their affections an old shepherd dog, who, as Zi-Zi relates, "came one day and liked us so much that she has never left us." Another pet of whom a great deal is made is an African monkey which Matthew brought home from the Soudan. It is called Bou-Bou, and when it is scolded it hides its face in its hands. It is quite tame, and runs about without a chain.

Just before lunch the children set about picking violets, each a bunch. This they do every day. One is for Charles at Mazas, another for Madame de Lesseps, but the sweetest is for the old father to wear in his buttonhole at lunch, which is the only meal he takes with the family. The child whose bouquet is worn by the father is the proudest child in Berry that day.

I could not refrain from a movement of the most painful surprise when, after a few moments spent in the drawing-room, I was invited by Madame de Lesseps into the room where her husband sat. I have known M. de Lesseps for many years, and though the last time that I saw him he was already under the influence of the sorrow of defeat--it was just after he had been called before a magistrate, for examination--my recollection of him had always been as of a man full of the most surprising vitality and high spirits, keen, bright, energetic, defying the wear of time, a man of eternal youth in spite of his white hairs. I remembered him last, erect, with clear voice and flashing eyes, and now I saw him huddled together in a chair, a wrap about his knees, nodding his head as under sleep, pale, inert, and with all the life gone out of his eyes. Behind him stood a large screen tapestried with red stuff, against which the waxen whiteness of his face and hands stood out in strong relief. How old he looked, whom age had seemed to spare so long! For the most part the head drooped forward on his chest, but now and then he raised it listlessly and let his eyes wander round the room, or across the panes on to the fields beyond. There was rarely recognition in his glance; mostly a look of unalterable sadness--of wonder, it may be, at the terrible hazards of life. Yet, when now and then one of the children, who were crowding about his chair, pressed his hand or kissed his cheek or said some words of endearment to him, the smile which was one of his characteristics came over his face, and for a brief moment he seemed himself again. Himself again--that is to say, in the goodness and great-heartedness which more than all he has ever done for France merited for him the name of the great Frenchman. For greatness of heart has always been the keynote of the character of Ferdinand de Lesseps. It was the secret of the indescribable seduction which he exercised over everyone who came near him, from emperor to laborer. It was to this quality of his that M. Renan, albeit a sceptic himself, rendered such signal homage in the speech in which he welcomed M. de Lesseps to the French Academy on the day of his admittance.

"You were good to all who came," said M. Renan; "you made them feel that their past would be effaced and that a new life lay before them. In exchange you only asked them to share your enthusiasm in the work which you had devoted to the interest of France. You held that most people can amend if only one will forget their past. One day a whole gang of convicts arrived at Panama and took work at the canal. The Austrian consul demanded that they should be handed over to him; but you delayed giving satisfaction to his request, and at the end of some weeks the Austrian consulate was fully occupied in remitting home to Austria, to their families, or, it may be, to their victims, the moneys which these outcasts whom you had transformed into honest workmen were earning with the work of their hands. You have declared your faith in humanity. You have convinced yourself and tried to convince others that men are loyal and good if only they have the wherewithal to live. It is your opinion that it is only hunger that makes men bad. 'Never,' said you in one of your lectures, 'have I had cause for complaint against any of the workmen, although I have employed outcasts, pariahs, and convicts. Work has redeemed even the most dishonest. I have never been robbed, not even of a handkerchief. It is a fact which I have proved, that men can be brought to do anything by showing them kindness and by persuading them that they are working in a cause of universal interest.' Thus you have made green again what seemed withered for ever and aye. You have given, in a century of unbelief, a startling proof of the efficacy of faith."

A thousand instances of this kindness of heart might be cited to show that M. de Lesseps ever remained a chivalrous gentleman in the best sense of the word. A trifling experience of my own may suffice. A few days after my first visit to him, at the office of the Suez Canal, I was dining at a house in the Cours-la-Reine. It was my first visit to that house, a fact which somewhat contributed to my embarrassment in what was one of my first experiences in Parisian society. Amongst the guests was the editor of one of the principal French papers, and being anxious to make his acquaintance, I asked our host to introduce me to my _confrere_. The editor in question had no courtesies to waste upon an insignificant foreigner, and acknowledged my bow with a reverence of exaggerated profundity, bowing almost to the earth, and then swinging round on his heel to continue a conversation with another journalist, which had been interrupted by the introduction. I was left standing in the middle of the room, with my eyes on the editor's back, suffused with shame and mortification. M. de Lesseps saw the slight thus inflicted on a young man, and from kindness of heart immediately did what he could to efface it. From his place at the fire, where he had been standing surrounded by the usual crowd of courtiers, he had noticed the incident, and I saw him making his way across the drawing-room towards me, exclaiming to those around him: "Oh, there is a young man with whom I must have a few words!" He then took me by the hand, drew me aside, and remained conversing with me until dinner was announced.

In view of the awful change that, within so short a time, has been made in this gentleman, I cannot but think that it must be attributed to the shock produced in a very old man by an experience which shows him that he has been mistaken all his life long. It is terrible to wake up at eighty-five and find that things are not what one has believed during his past life, and that the men whom one has loved and respected are unworthy. I believe that what has struck Ferdinand de Lesseps down in his chair, in full vitality, is an immense disappointment, not at the failure of his hopes, for he has always been indifferent to money, and has never had the wish to leave his children large fortunes, but at the falseness of a creed which was optimistic to the point of blindness. I believe that Ferdinand de Lesseps is dying of a broken heart, broken by the immense ingratitude of men. And if the loss of all the money that has been sunk in the Panama mud and the pockets of the intrigants of the Third Republic adds to his sorrow, it is certainly not for himself nor his family, but for all those who are suffering because they shared his belief in his star, and who blindly followed him to ruin. He knew that they were of the humble, and often told me so. "Panama will be carried out with the savings in woollen stockings of the peasant and of the workman," he used to say. He has never been self-seeking. He presented France with a concession, that of the Suez Canal, estimated at one hundred millions of francs, and with lands worth another thirty millions, and fought heroically for years to render to his gift its greatest value. In the words of M. Renan, the courage, the energy, the resources of all sorts expended by M. de Lesseps in this struggle were nothing short of prodigious. In exchange he took for himself enough to enable him to lead the life of a gentleman and to do good around him. Each of his children he endowed with not more than seventy thousand francs, the revenues from which, together with his wife's private fortune, are now all that remain to the family. I firmly believe that all his life he acted only from feelings of philanthropy and from patriotism of the most chivalrous type. He never had any desire to leave a large fortune, and I can remember his saying to me, very emphatically, that his children must do as he had done; and that they would do so if they were worthy of his name; and that he never wished to leave them large fortunes, but an honorable name, a love for their country equal to his, and an example which he hoped they would follow. "Let them work as I have done," said this most tender of fathers.

It seems that not even this heritage of an honored name is, if the persecutors of the old man can have their way, to be left to his family. Since he has been down the number of his adversaries has of course increased tenfold. Even those who owe him all--many officials at the Suez Canal Company, for instance, who owe their positions and fortunes to his genius--seem glad to revenge themselves for their obligation. De Lesseps has done too much good to men not to be hated, and it is to be regretted that poor De Maupassant cannot wield his pen in analysis of the motives which are actuating his former dependents in their endeavors to renounce all solidarity with the dying octogenarian of La Chesnaye. I visited the offices of the Suez Canal Company a few days ago, and, prepared as one is for human ingratitude, it was distressing in the extreme to see how poor a thing to charm with was the name at the sound of which, as I can well remember, all the flunkeys of the place in livery or black frock coat doubled up in the days that are past. The lion is down, and every ass of Paris has a heel to kick him with.

On the other hand, the adversities of the De Lesseps family have revealed to them the immense number of friends which they possess in all parts of the world. Letters and telegrams keep pouring in from all sides to La Chesnaye, and all the available pens are kept busy most of the day and night in answering the kindest expressions of sympathy, many from utter strangers. "This is the only thing that gives me courage to bear it all," said Madame de Lesseps. Helene told me, with some amusement, that a Spanish banker had the day before written to Madame de Lesseps to offer her a present of a million, and that there had been many similar offers of pecuniary assistance from people who believed the family to be totally ruined. When Charles was down at La Chesnaye, and was walking in the woods with his escort behind him, a serious offer was made to him by friends who had gathered around him, to effect his rescue if he would but give the word. As for tokens of sympathy from all the country around, they are unending. The farmer at the home-farm, which was built by M. de Lesseps, and which has been in the occupation of the present tenants from the beginning, was at dinner when the paper containing the news of Charles's conviction and sentence reached him. "He turned quite white," said his wife to me, "and rushed out of the house and went roaming about the woods like a demented man until late at night. And I have cried every time I have thought of M. Charles, whom I knew when he was a baby not higher than my knee." But perhaps the most devoted friend that remains to the family is M. de Lesseps's valet, who since his master's fall has never left him for more than ten minutes together, sleeping on a mattress in his bedroom, and waiting on him patiently all day and all night. "Don't let anyone, I don't care who it may be," he says, clenching his fist, "come near my master. I will be killed before any offence shall be put upon him." And though one is rather sceptical as to such professions, I fully believe that in this case they are sincere. It was touching to note with what reverence, when lunch was served, this valet approached his master, and, mindful of old formalities of respect, bowed and said that Monsieur the Count was served; to note with what womanly gentleness this strong man lifted his feeble master up and guided his tottering steps into the adjoining dining-room.

What a beautiful family it was, to be sure, that gathered round that table! Paul with his girlish ringlets, Robert also in curls. Helene, who sat next to her father, with her jet-black hair loose down her back, and her bright eyes contrasting with the ivory pallor of her face, worn out as the poor child is with care and sorrow and hard work as her mother's penwoman. Then there was Lolo, a young lady of eighteen, roughly dressed, but of great elegance, who looked even sadder than the rest, but who tried to be bright and gay; and on the other side of her, Solange, who though she is quite a woman in appearance, hates to be considered so, and wants to be treated as a child, and refuses to wear long dresses, and loves to climb trees in the park and to give picnics to her little brothers and sisters in a mud hovel which she has constructed in the garden. Then there is Zi-Zi and Griselle--more than twenty in all around the long oval table. Every now and then one of the children rises from its seat, and runs up to the old father and kisses him on the cheek, or presses his hand; and I think all envied Helene who sat next to him and could caress him when she liked. I was seated just opposite the old man, and I am afraid my presence disturbed him; for he seemed to listen to what I said, and to wonder who I was, and what I might want. I shall never forget the sight of him as he faced me, sunk down in his chair, with one trembling hand holding his napkin to his breast, and feebly with the other guiding the morsels to his mouth. He seemed to eat with some appetite, though under persistent drowsiness, which was only shaken off for a moment when his wife, who came in late, took her seat at the table. Then his head was lifted, and a bright look came into his eyes, as if of salute to the comrade of his life. Whatever Madame de Lesseps may have suffered, I am sure that she feels herself repaid each time that those eyes are so lifted to hers. The _dejeuner_ was a simple though ample one, the _menu_ being in keeping with the manner of life at Chesnaye, which is that of comfort without ostentation. The wine is grown by Madame de Lesseps herself, on vineyards of her own planting, and is that "gray wine" which is so much appreciated by connoisseurs. It has a beautiful color in a cut-glass decanter. The conversation was a halting one. Each tried to be gay, each tried to forget the deep shadow that lay over that family gathering. When the old man's eyes wandered around the table as if in quest of some one whom he desired but who was not there, a silence imposed itself on all, for all knew whom he was seeking, and where that dear one was.

In his buttonhole was Helene's bouquet of violets, underneath which peeped out the rosette of the grand officer of the Legion of Honor, alas, in jeopardy!

We took coffee in the drawing-room. It was served on a table which stood underneath a fine portrait of Agnes Sorel, once the mistress of the house. Facing us were two pictures of the inauguration of the Suez Canal. The furniture was covered with tapestries mostly from the needle of the countess.

It was here that Madame de Lesseps told me of the old man's present life. "He has the fixed idea that the Queen of England will come and make all things right. He often rises in his chair and asks if Queen Victoria has arrived, and when any visitor comes he thinks that it is she at last."

Then blanching the countess added, "You think, sir, do you not, that he is in ignorance of what has happened? You do not think that he has any suspicion? Sometimes the dreadful thought troubles me that he knows all, and that, great-hearted gentleman that he is, he lends himself to this most tragic comedy that we are playing. I sometimes doubt. Would not that be terrible? And again there are times when I am convinced that our efforts to hide all that is, are successful. We give him last year's papers to read. I have had collections sent down. Formerly we used to cut out or erase parts which we did not want him to see, but he seemed to notice the alterations, and so we ordered down papers of a year ago. And it is quite pathetic to hear the remarks he occasionally makes. Thus a few days ago he called me to his side in high glee, and said how happy he was to hear that his old friend M. Ressman had been appointed Italian Ambassador to France, an event of more than a year ago. There are times, too, when he gets very impatient at being kept down here, and what he misses chiefly is the French Academy. He is constantly telling me how anxious he is to attend, and I have to invent the sorriest fables to explain to him that the Academicians are not holding any meetings; as, for instance, that they are all old men, and that they are taking a long holiday."

The countess sighed and said: "I do what I can, but that terrible doubt pursues me often. You see, he did know that the Panama affair had resulted in ruin. It is since he was called before that examining magistrate, M. Prinet, that he has been as you have seen him. He must suspect something. How much, we shall never know."