CHAPTER III

Mademoiselle Pivert--I make her read the _Thousand and One Nights_, or, rather, one story in that collection--Old Hiraux, my music-master--The little worries of his life--He takes his revenge on his persecutors after the fashion of the Maréchal de Montluc--He is condemned to be flogged, and nearly loses the sight of his eyes--What happened on Easter Day in the organ-loft at the monastery--He becomes a grocer's lad--His vocation leads him to the study of music--I have little aptitude for the violin.

I had learnt to read at a very early age, as I have said, thanks to Madame Darcourt's Buffon, M. Collard's Bible and, above all, to my mother's kindly pains. My sister too, who was at a boarding-school in Paris, during her six weeks' vacations, which were spent with us, completed my early education by teaching me to write.

So at five or six years of age I was very well up in these two accomplishments, and extraordinarily conceited about them. I can still see myself, about the height of a jack-boot, in a little cotton jacket (for, like the Romans, I did not leave off the _toga praetexta_ till I was fifteen),--I can still see myself, pedantically joining in the conversation of grown-up people, contributing items of sacred or profane learning which I had derived from the Bible or mythology, theories of natural history cribbed from M. de Buffon and M. Daudin, geographical information borrowed from _Robinson Crusoe_, and social and political ideas culled from the sage Idomeneus, founder of Salentum.

But mythology was my strong point. Besides the _Lettres à Emilie sur la Mythologie_ of my compatriot Demoustier, which I knew by heart, I possessed a _Mythologie de la Jeunesse_, illustrated with pictures and interspersed with verses from Racine and Saint-Ange, which I was everlastingly devouring. Not a god or goddess or demi-god, not a single faun or dryad, not a hero was there whose attributes I did not know. Hercules and his twelve labours, Jupiter and his twenty transformations, Vulcan and his thirty-six misfortunes, I knew them all at my fingers' ends, and, what is still more extraordinary, I know them still.

One day (it was at M. Deviolaine's house, in 1809, at a time when each morning's paper contained bulletins of deeds which, for ten years, made our history seem like one of the heroic fables of old) I remember some of the guests asked, just after luncheon, what the news of the day was; but as it was still early no one had read the papers, and consequently no one could satisfy the general curiosity.

M. Deviolaine rang the bell, and the servant appeared.

"Mas," he said (the name of the servant), "get a _Gazette_ and bring it us."

"Oh! there is no need for that, cousin," I said, crossing my hands behind my back; "I have read the paper and there is nothing of importance in it--only a sitting of the _Corps Législatif._"

I have said that M. Deviolaine often shot out his foot when angry, but never kicked anything; I was wrong; he did kick something that time!

I left the room furious, and for three months after I would not enter the house where I had received such a humiliation.

How came it about that I knew anything concerning the _Corps Législatif?_

It was in this wise.

One day I had seen M. Collard in a blue coat braided with gold.

"You are a general, then, like my papa?" I asked him roguishly.

"No, my little friend," he answered, "I am a member of the _Corps Législatif._"

And from that time I used to read the proceedings of the _Corps Législatif_ to find out what M. Collard said there.

But my curiosity was never gratified.

However, everybody was not so contemptuous about my learning as M. Deviolaine had shown himself to be. Among others, there were three or four elderly devotees--one of them a certain damsel of sixty-five or sixty-six called Pivert--who appreciated and praised my knowledge. There was no kind of story, whether sacred or profane, that they did not make me relate; and Mademoiselle Pivert in particular, not contented with my recitals, had recourse to my library, in order to get at the source of my information.

Well, I gave her an imperfect copy of the _Thousand and One Nights_, which I possessed; it contained only the _Wonderful Lamp_, nothing else. She would be absorbed in the reading of this for a whole week, then she would return me the volume and ask for the next, which I would promise to give her on the morrow; I lent her the same again, which she always conscientiously re-read, and, I must add, with renewed delight.

This lasted quite a year, during which time she re-read the same volume fifty-two times.

"Well, Mademoiselle Pivert," I asked her at the end of the year, "does the _Thousand and One Nights_ still entertain you?"

"Immensely, my little friend," she replied; "but one thing puzzles me; you may be able to explain it, as you are so learned."

"What is it, Mademoiselle Pivert?"

"Why are they all called Aladdin?"

Now, clever though I was, I could not answer Mademoiselle Pivert without confessing the truth, therefore I declared my ignorance, while she regarded it as an unpardonable fault in the unknown poet-author of the _Thousand and One Nights_ to have labelled all his characters _Aladdin._

Notwithstanding all this, the prodigious stock of learning, which was my pride and Mademoiselle Pivert's admiration, was still considered incomplete by my dear mother.

My sister was quite a good musician, and sang prettily; and my mother reproached herself, in spite of our poverty, for not giving equal advantages to both her children; so she decided that I also should learn music. But as it had already been discovered that good Mother Nature, so bountiful towards me in other respects, had endowed me with the most discordant of voices imaginable; and as it had been noticed that I had very nimble fingers and was clever with my hands; they elected to make me an instrumentalist only, and chose the violin,--the instrument which a musician does not use to accompany his voice, unless he is afflicted with blindness.

As the town of Villers-Cotterets only possessed one teacher there was no difficulty in choosing a professor.

This professor's name was Hiraux.

Hiraux really deserves a chapter to himself--or rather two.

Hiraux--or Old Hiraux, as he was familiarly called by the town--was for all the world a second Hoffmann; with his long, slender figure, his maroon-coloured coat, and his wig, which had a way of always accompanying his hat with each salutation he made. Because of this, in order to avoid such an inconvenience, Hiraux decided not to wear his wig save on Sundays and on great fête days. On ordinary days, the wig was replaced by a black silk cap, which he would pull down violently over his ears whenever his pupils played a wrong note.

Now, after considerable reflection upon the matter, and in view of all I saw and heard, I came to the conclusion that Hiraux gave up wearing his wig daily because of the difficulty of applying it to the same purpose as the cap.

Consequently, except on fête days and Sundays, he only half saluted anyone; if by salutation it is understood that I mean he uncovered his head, because, when he took off his hat, he still kept on his black silk cap.

Moreover, his black silk cap had become an integral part of his person. A score of times did I touch it, as the inhabitants of Lilliput fingered Gulliver's clothes,--to make sure that this adornment was not his own skin,--Hiraux was so good-natured that he permitted me to make this investigation.

Under that cap, Hiraux had one of the most emaciated and parchment-like faces I have ever seen--the cleverest and the most mobile, owing to the play of every muscle on it, which seemed to vibrate in unison with his thoughts, even as the strings of his violin or the keys of his pianoforte vibrated under his long, thin, flexible fingers, fingers like those of Paganini.

Hiraux had had an adventurous youth; he had been a choir-boy, an organ-blower in a monastery of Piedmontese monks, then a grocer's lad, then a fiddler, then a music-teacher, and finally an organist.

It would puzzle me to tell you how his steps were first directed to the precincts of the Church of Bourg-Fontaine (the convent where Hiraux was brought up); but at times he would relate, among his early recollections, as I am doing in these Memoirs, some good stories of the monks similar to those of Rabelais and la Fontaine.

Hiraux was a living chronicle of those old claustral traditions, already so remote from the ideas of men of to-day, forty years later, that they are lost like phantasms of another world, behind the early recollections of our youth, and lost so effectually that in the generation to come after ours there will be no trace left of them at all.

The monks were driven from France, then from Spain, then from Italy, till they ended by existing only in the paintings of Dominiquin, Zurbaran, and Lesueur.

I do not know whether society has been the gainer, but, very certainly, art and romance have lost considerably by their disappearance. I have seen the Escurial without its monks, and it looked like a tomb.

When I go to see Rome I cannot tell what effect it will produce upon me.

I have stated that I could not say in what way Hiraux entered the monastery of Bourg-Fontaine, but I know well enough how he left it.

Hiraux was a coward; he cannot he blamed for this; it was characteristic of him. As a matter of fact, he had the quick wittedness to boast about it, just as another man might have bragged about his courage.

Now, he still lived in the happy days when _farces_ were all the rage, and all his life he had been the object of more or less comic practical jokes, several of which were nearly the death of him.

As we have said before, or as we say now if we forgot to mention it previously, Hiraux combined the two offices of choir-boy and organ-blower in the monastery of Bourg-Fontaine. In virtue of this double qualification he slept in the sacristy of the monastery, and every night he had to go through the church to get to his bedroom.

It was a nightly terror to him to have to walk down that vast arched nave (I have only seen the ruins of it, wherein Hiraux's son and I used to rob crows' nests): the great windows with their carved traceries through which the pallid and flickering moonlight shone upon the tombstones in the floor; the mysterious vistas where darkness reigned even in daytime; all these together, especially on a winter's night when the north wind whistled through the great gaunt trees whose dry branches rubbed against one another like the bones of a skeleton, and the wind made long-drawn moanings down the abbey corridors; all these, I say, combined to make such a funereal and gloomy effect that poor Hiraux's blood ran cold in his veins, accustomed as he was to witness the malice of men so constantly intermingle with the awe-inspiring majesty of the place.

The monks were not the people who plagued him; nor the prior, who loved Hiraux like a son; but it was that semi-religious, semi-secular race which forms a connecting link between the men of heaven and the men of this world, and which swarms in every monastery.

Hiraux's most relentless persecutors were the brothers who served as scullions.

One November day--All Souls Day it was--when the customary empty coffin had been exposed all day covered with a black-and-silver cloth surrounded by a forest of candles, which remained lighted all the night, Hiraux entered the church, still more afraid of the light on this night than he was ordinarily of the darkness.

After closing the door of the church as gently as possible behind him, walking on tiptoe, brushing against the wall so as to keep as far away as possible from the centre of the church, so funereally lighted up as we have explained, he reached the sacristy.

Suddenly Hiraux stood still, glued to the wall, with his limbs rigid, his mouth open, his hair on end, the perspiration coming out on his forehead, as motionless as the stone statues of the priors in their tombs in the Abbey.

The catafalque had moved.

At first Hiraux thought he must have been mistaken, and tried to reason away his fears; but what good was reason against the actual fact? For the catafalque had not only moved, but it began to come straight towards him! Hiraux tried to shriek out, but, like the voices of Virgil's heroes, the sound stuck in his throat; and, seeing that the catafalque continued to make straight for him, his legs failed him, he leant helpless against the wall, and fell in a faint.

At three o'clock in the morning, the church opened for matins; Hiraux was still in the same place, as still as though he were dead. He had come to his senses; but, although he found the catafalque in its place, he dared not stir for fear it would move again.

The sacristan brother hearing himself called in a stifled voice, turned to see where it came from, and found Hiraux with his face to the ground, icily cold and bathed in perspiration at the same time.

But he found something else on the floor, too, as he went to Hiraux.

He found a cotton cap.

Now, while Hiraux was telling the sacristan of the horrible apparition he had seen in the night, his eyes fixed on the cotton cap, which the sacristan held in his hand, and, thanks to that tell-tale cap, light rapidly dawned on his mind and dissipated the panic terror that had overwhelmed him.

So, as Hiraux continued his narrative, the supernatural phenomenon gave place to natural causes, and, while going over his nocturnal experiences with his friend, the sacristan, guided by the clue of the cotton cap, he became convinced that, if the catafalque had moved, and had walked towards him, it was the brother who cooked for the monks, with perhaps two or three of his scullion knaves, who had got underneath and carried it along.

People are not brought up in convents without acquiring a certain amount of the spirit of revenge. Hiraux kept his own counsel, and did not speak of his suspicions to a soul; he let them laugh at his fright, he let them circulate the story all through the monastery, and even outside, internally vowing vengeance.

The reader may recall the story of Marshal Montluc, and the famous hanging of Huguenots he ordered as he passed through some town whose name I do not remember. I am going to repeat it in case it has been forgotten.

Marshal de Montluc, then, was passing through a certain town, and thought he had a grievance against some judges who, in virtue of the axiom _Cedant arma togo_, had neglected to pay him the respect he thought was his due.

He set to work to make these judges repent their impertinent conduct. He found out what they were busy over, and learnt that they were looking forward with great pleasure to judging a dozen Huguenots on the morrow, who had been taken captive for carrying arms, and were awaiting their sentence in the town prisons.

So the marshal de Montluc went to the prisons, under a strong escort, had them opened, had a dozen nails driven into the beams, attached a dozen ropes thereto, and, from these twelve ropes, hung the twelve Huguenots. "And the judges were well taken in the next day," says the marshal in his Memoirs, "when they found nobody left to try."

Hiraux punished the scullions in pretty much the same way as the marshal de Montluc punished the judges. He stole into the monastic dispensary, seized upon a copious dose of jalap and mixed it with the kitchen sauces.

Had Hiraux written his Memoirs he would, no doubt, have written, after the fashion of the marshal de Montluc: "Next day, the scullions were well taken aback at seeing their monks purged inside out; just as though they had swallowed a triple dose of Doctor Leroy's physic."

This happened at Epiphany.

There was a great commotion in the Abbey, as may well be imagined. A whole monastery--from prior to sacristan--is not purged at Epiphany without religious duties suffering considerably.

Hiraux, the choir-boy, was the only one who kept his post. And it was that very attitude, the calmness of one who stands steadfast while the heavens are falling round him, that ruined Hiraux. Proserpina found an Æsculapius who declared that he had seen her eat seven pomegranate seeds. Hiraux had his Æsculapius who declared that he had seen him stealing at nightfall on tiptoe from the dispensary.

The monastery organist was his accuser.

The denunciation was credited, and when the evidence was put together everybody held Hiraux to be the true culprit. One is not brought up in a monastery, moreover, without learning to lie on occasion. Hiraux denied, protested, swore; but this only made things worse, whereas an honest confession might perhaps have smoothed matters.

Hiraux was therefore given over by the prior to the cook, that is to say, religious justice handed him over to the secular arm.

The cook condemned him to twenty-four hours' solitary confinement, accompanied by bread and water, and, to make sure that the punishment should not be mitigated by any friend of the criminal, he shut him up in the monastery cellar.

But the cook had forgotten that the cellar was well filled with wines, cider, oil, vinegar, brandy, rum, etc., etc.

All these liquids were arranged symmetrically in barrels, as becometh honest barrels, in a well-regulated cellar belonging to a Premonstratensian Monastery.

Hiraux went to all the casks and turned on all the taps, one after the other, saying at each turn of the keys: That's the wine running out, that's the cider running out, that's the oil running out, that's the vinegar running out, that's the brandy running out, that's the rum running out, etc., etc.

The operation took some time, and as Hiraux pronounced his remarks in a loud voice those in the kitchens heard sounds like distant chanting, but could catch no words. But, as the murmur continued, the cook became uneasy and went to listen at the door. He heard Hiraux's litany; he fearfully comprehended what it meant. In a second he had lit a lamp, the cellar door was opened, and the anticipated spectacle was revealed in all its heinousness.

Every cask had its tap at full cock, and was emptying itself of its contents; the mixture of all the liquids had already created a flood six inches deep, which was increasing fast.

Hiraux was seated astride a big barrel, as composed as an Indian Bacchus, philosophically waiting till the lake reached him.

The crime was so patent this time that, instead of the culprit denying it, he boasted of it so impudently that the cook did not stop to refer the matter to the prior, but decided to take the law into his own hands.

But the first and most urgent thing to do was to shut off the taps.

Then they seized upon Hiraux, who made no attempt to escape. Next they called a court of justice, comprised of the cook and his scullions.

It was decided unanimously that Hiraux should be birched.

The sentence admitted of no appeal, and it was instantly put into execution. Furthermore, it was carried out vigorously, lasting for ten minutes, in spite of the victim's cries. At the conclusion, the brother cook took a handful of pepper and rubbed it on the injured part to soothe his pains and to efface the bleeding traces the infliction had left.

Hiraux nearly lost the sight of his eyes in consequence.

This may seem odd at first, and it may be thought I have used the wrong phrase: but not at all.

Hiraux wept, Hiraux bled; his eyes and his flanks were almost equally sore. He alternately rubbed his eyes and his flanks, carrying, by this double exercise, the pepper from behind to his eyes. Consequently inflammation gained rapidly, and the more Hiraux rubbed, the worse it became, until his eyes had swollen to the size of eggs, when a sympathetic person advised him to go and allay his pain in the lavatory of the monastery. He comprehended the sense of that advice, immediately rushed off there, and, thanks to a prolonged bath, the burning sensations which tortured him were in a measure allayed.

But he could not extinguish a burning fever which kept him to his bed for a week.

When the prior heard of his illness he inquired into its causes, and punished the cook and his scullions.

Hiraux was revenged upon them, but the real culprit, in the sufferer's eyes, had escaped the prior's sentence of justice; the true culprit was the organist who had given him away--thus betraying the sacred brotherhood of musicians; for Hiraux, in his capacity of organ-blower, looked upon himself as already a musician.

He therefore made up his mind to pay the organist out.

Hiraux could be as deep and unfathomable as the corridors of his cloisters; he locked up his revengeful determination in his breast and decided to wait until Easter Day should come.

Easter Day is a high festival throughout all Christendom. All the peasantry from the outlying districts came to hear Mass at the monastery of Bourg-Fontaine on that day. It was a day of rejoicing for everybody--from the prior, who said Mass, the monks who chanted it, the choir-boys who served it, to the organist who accompanied it, and even to Hiraux who blew the organ.

The day before Easter, Hiraux ascended to the organ-loft, feather-broom in hand, and spent the day cleaning the organ with the most praiseworthy carefulness.

But next morning, contrary to all expectation, and in spite of the efforts of the blower, in spite of the dexterity of the player, the organ would produce nothing but muffled and doleful sounds, which confused the choir instead of aiding their chants. No matter how hard the organist tried or pulled out the various stops, the oboe was mute, the trumpet was hoarse and the vox humana had lost its voice.

Whilst the unlucky musician, wondering what to be at, was groaning and swearing and striking the keyboard, with fingers, fists, and elbows, Hiraux went on blowing as solemn as Oculi.

Oculi, of course, was the son of St. Éloi, and blew the bellows whilst St. Éloi forged. There is a song about it somewhere.

Mass was not over before Hiraux was suspected of being the cause of this novel entertainment, in spite of the pains he had taken and in spite of his grave demeanour.

So whilst he was applying himself with greater vigour than ever to the bellows handle, now quite useless, the organist left his place, and going to the door of the organ-loft, he dosed it, double-locked it and put the key in his pocket.

Hiraux instantly perceived what was going to happen, and exclaimed: "I didn't do it, sir!" leaving hold of his handle for the first time; "it wasn't me!"

"We shall see about that," replied the enraged organist, as he began to take the organ to pieces. "Ho, ho!" the said, "the vox humana has something wrong with its throat to-day!"

The organist did not need to go further afield, for he had discovered the mystery of the crime. Hiraux, out of revenge, had disabled the three vox humana, the trumpet and hautbois, and there is good reason to believe that if he had only directed his energies towards those three pipes, it was because he had not been able to do worse damage.

Hiraux had counted upon flying from the monastery directly after Mass, only he had not reckoned on being found out so soon. Now, the discovery was made, and as he could not escape because the door was locked, he flung himself on his knees and begged for mercy.

The organist could dissimulate as well as Hiraux. He made a pretence of forgiving him on condition that Hiraux should put things to rights as he had found them, as they say in leases.

Hiraux was only too glad to get off so easily, and he accepted the terms.

When Mass was finished, the organist left, promising Hiraux not to tell the prior of his latest prank. Hiraux knew that this one surpassed all his others, and bordered on sacrilege; so when left to himself, he did his very best to fulfil the task allotted to him; a task that Fourier, in his distribution of the passions, reserved for children who, in his opinion, should do their work ardently.

We shall see whether Fourier is right or wrong when Considérant has erected his phalanstery.

Whether Hiraux did his task heartily or indifferently, it was done when the organist returned--he might really have been on the watch for that moment--followed by the brother cook and his scullions.

He had been to fetch his own allies,--Hiraux's born foes.

Hostilities began immediately the door of the organ-loft was shut. Hiraux expected he would be flogged again as before. But they could not repeat that punishment for want of rods. Still, a presentiment warned him to be more alarmed on account of the absence of rods than he would have been by their presence.

For as a matter of fact they did not intend to birch him, but to inflate him, and the operation was accomplished with the aid of the organ bellows.

This time Hiraux was not-blinded, but they very nearly killed him. They let him go when the operation was over, and he fled as far as he could from the accursed monastery, feeling more like an inflated balloon than a human being, till finally he fell, or rather he rolled, down at the foot of a tree.

It was more than a fortnight before he was completely disinflated.

In consequence of this little episode Hiraux became a grocer's lad; but no one can avoid his fate.

Hiraux was heart and soul a musician. He got hold of an old violin, and perseveringly scraped away in his odd moments.

The grocer's wife was young, and she was unappreciated by her husband--in all times there have been unappreciated wives;--she played the spinet, and at night she and Hiraux gave concerts which so enchanted the grocer that Hiraux, exalted by his domestic achievements, determined to abandon the grocery trade, and to devote himself entirely to instrumental music.

His talents were genuine enough, and almost entirely self-taught; he attained to such skill on the spinet and on the violin that the town of Villers-Cotterets appointed him organist at a salary of 800 livres per annum.

Hiraux made a little more by giving violin and pianoforte lessons. But all his pupils did not pay him in money; he received some of his fees in kind. The timber merchant would pay him in wood and shavings; the grocer in sugar, in prunes and in jam; the tailor in coats, in trousers and in waistcoats. So, what with his 1600 francs in money, and his income in goods, Hiraux had not only enough to live on but sufficient to enjoy a certain independence, which enabled him to send away pupils who did not satisfy him or who had no taste for music.

My mother, therefore, asked Hiraux to undertake my musical education--and he accepted the office with alacrity, while I, on my side, viewed the arrangement not wholly with repugnance. Hiraux was at that time already sixty years old, but so gay and jolly, so witty, so full of funny stories, possessing such an inexhaustible flow of spirits that he was beloved both by young and old alike. I had known Hiraux as long as I could remember anyone; he had been my sister's first music teacher, before she went to Paris, and he remained her private teacher during her vacations.

During the latter days of my father's illness, who, as I have said, suffered a great deal, and knew he was dying in the heyday of his life, Hiraux used to be invited to come and see us at the château des Fossés; and, as Villers-Cotterets was only a league from Fossés, Hiraux would come and return on foot, sleeping at Villers-Cotterets.

That is to say, to make ourselves quite understood, Hiraux, being always a coward, began by sleeping at Fossés: but it was decreed that persecution should follow this poor man all his life long. The stories of his youth were known by everybody: I have only related a twentieth part of these anecdotes in order to enable everyone else to add another fresh story about his most eventful life.

Now, to our house came secretaries and aides-de-camp,--people as lively and as ingenious at practical jokes as any monks of forty or fifty years back.

The invariable result was that, on going to his room at night, a pot of water placed above the door would fall on Hiraux, or he would find a needle in his bed, or a cock in his wardrobe, until at last he gave up sleeping at Fossés, and would return to Villers-Cotterets no matter what the hour or the weather.

This resolution taken, Hiraux usually came to our house armed with a long sword-stick, enclosed in a leather sheath, to give him courage during his nocturnal walk back.

In spite of this stick--or rather because of it--two young men, who had been dining at the house with Hiraux, invented a fresh trick for him. It needed some imagination to do this, for poor Hiraux, ever since the year of grace 1750, had been the victim of so many different pleasantries, that he believed himself proof, not against any prank, but at any rate against any fresh prank.

They took the sword-blade out of the scabbard, relieving Hiraux of that which constituted his protection, and fastened a long peacock's-feather in the handle in its place.

That night Hiraux, ever cautious, wished to leave early; but the young men held him back and would not let him go, promising to accompany him home. This promise put Hiraux's mind at rest. Sure of an escort home, he gave free vent to his merry wit, made more talkative perhaps than usual that evening by generous libations of champagne.

When ten o'clock struck, he began to say it was time they made a move for the town; but the young men protested that they were too comfortable to leave the castle, and that as the general had kindly offered to put them up for the night they would accept, suggesting that Hiraux should do the same.

But he took care not to accept; he suspected the visitors of being capable of any amount of tricks.

He declared that his intention of beating a retreat was immovable, and, taking up his stick and his hat, he said his adieus and departed.

The young men impatiently awaited his departure, and the great door of the château was scarcely shut behind the nocturnal traveller when they left the house by the smaller door, outran him by means of a cross-cut, and hid themselves in a corner of the forest.

The moon was shining brilliantly. Hiraux sang as people do who are frightened; but, to reassure anyone who heard him of his peaceful habits, he sang Gregorian chants, instead of singing a merry song or a lusty battle-hymn.

Suddenly, two masked men rushed out of the wood, sprang on him and demanded his money or his life.

They say no one is more dangerous than a terrified coward; Hiraux, it seemed, had something in his purse and valued his life, for he replied merely by stepping back and drawing his sword.

The sword, as we have said, had been transformed into a peacock's feather.

There was that in the scabbard which would have baffled Roland and the eleven peers of Charlemagne. Hiraux found therein what certainly neither the one nor the other of those valiant chevaliers did.

"You can see for yourselves, my friends," he said, as he showed the peacock's feather to his assailants, "you can see for yourselves I do not want to harm you."

No one could have resisted such artlessness. Threats gave way to shouts of laughter, masks fell off, and, when they had given Hiraux's legs time to recover their stability, all three returned amicably to the town.

Hiraux added one more adventure to his record.

Hiraux made me laugh so much in my childhood, and I loved him so dearly, that my sympathy for the musician overcame my antipathy to music and I agreed to take violin lessons.

But I insisted that they should buy me a violin in Paris, and not one of those for sale in the old curiosity shops of Villers-Cotterets, which did not satisfy my pride as good enough.

My mother always let me go my own way; so it was decided that Hiraux should buy me a violin the next time he went to Paris, and that my musical education should begin on his return.

Only, when would that journey be likely to take place? It looked at first as though I had counted on a postponement to the Greek Kalends. But such was not to be: chance, or rather a new joke, of which Hiraux was the victim, decreed otherwise.

The journey to Paris was arranged at the close of a dinner, at which Hiraux and some friends of his were present--among others were his two intimate friends, Mussart and Duez, whose names we mention now as we shall hear of them again presently.

It was settled under the drollest of conditions.

They were dining at the house of a man named Hutin, where all the diligences stop on their way between Laon and Paris. They made Hiraux so tipsy that he neither knew what he was doing, nor what was done to him. They undressed him and, with only his drawers and shirt on, they bundled him under the box of the diligence, among the trunks, portmanteaus and hat-boxes.

Of course they did not leave a single farthing on him--where would the fun have been if Hiraux had had money?

Hiraux came to his senses in Paris. The conductor was completely ignorant of the joke, and was therefore quite as astonished to find Hiraux there as Hiraux was himself. Hiraux was greatly embarrassed at first at finding himself dressed only in his shirt and pants, in the courtyard among all the diligences; but, being a man of resource, he bethought him of a nephew, named Camusat,--a good, excellent fellow, who has since been and still is my friend. He called a cab, got in, and cried out through the top:--

"To M. Camusat at the Rapée!" Hiraux remembered his nephew's address, so he was able to drive straight there: I am sure I should have been too much embarrassed to have remembered it, in like circumstances.

Camusat was long and thin like his uncle; he provided him with coat, trousers and waistcoat; then he lent him twenty francs to buy me a violin and fifteen francs for the return journey.

With the fifteen francs Hiraux brought me back a violin rather worn at the neck, but quite sound in all its essential organs.

I could make a book out of Hiraux's adventures, if I liked, and quite as entertaining as many books I know. But I will restrict myself to one last instance, the saddest of them all.

At the end of three years' lessons under Hiraux, I could not even tune my violin!

He was obliged to recognise my phenomenal dislike to music, and to tell my poor disappointed mother that it was simply stealing her money to attempt any longer to make a musician of me.

So I gave up the violin.

Poor Hiraux! After his stirring life he now sleeps the peaceful sleep of death in the pretty cemetery of Villers-Cotterets, surrounded by green weeping willows and flowers in full bloom; and, in thinking of that excellent man, gay, sharp-witted, quaint, I am inevitably reminded of Shakespeare's lines wherein Hamlet apostrophises the skull of his father's former fool:--

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning; quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that."