CHAPTER VII

Spring at Villers-Cotterets--Whitsuntide--The Abbé Grégoire invites me to dance with his niece--Red books--The Chevalier de Faublas--Laurence and Vittoria--A dandy of 1818.

"O youth! springtime of life! O spring! youth of the year!" So said Metastasio.

We have now reached the beginning of May 1818, and I should be sixteen in the month of July.

The month of May, the favourite month of the year, which is abundant in beauty and in promise everywhere, is even more beautiful and resplendent at Villers-Cotterets than anywhere else.

It is difficult to form any idea of what that fine park was like at that epoch of time and at that season of the year: my heart still mourns because of the order for its destruction given by Louis-Philippe.

The park was simple and yet great in its design. Two splendid stretches of grass--rather longer than they were broad--were attached like two wings to the immense Castle which overlooked the green sward: one end touched the Castle walls, and the other joined two avenues of gigantic Spanish chestnut trees, which first formed laterally the two sides of a great square, then approached one another diagonally till they nearly met, then continued right out of sight, leaving between their two lines a large open space until within a league of the mountain of Vivières, which stood out on the distant horizon, with its crumbling red sides tufted with yellow blossoming gorse.

It was all lifeless, sad, lonely, and silent in winter; the birds had migrated to more cheerful climes; only the rooks' nests remained, sole and persistent proprietors of the highest trees about that magnificent domain. It seemed as though hordes of savages had spoiled the grounds and laid waste the forests.

This state of desolation lasted four months of the year; but with the beginning of April the grass began to spring up, braving the hoar frost, which spread a silvery carpet over it every morning; the buds of the trees, which had looked so bare, so desolate, so dead, began to put on their velvety down. The sleeping birds--(where do birds sleep? we know nothing about them;--) wake up, hop about among the branches, and soon begin building their nests. Thence, each day of the month and every hour of the day brings its own changes, as part of Nature's great awakening. Chestnuts, limes, and beeches are the spring's advance guard. Daisies star the lawn; buttercups glow richly; and grasshoppers chirp in the long grass. Butterflies, flying flowers that blow in the air, come and kiss the flowers of earth. Pretty children come out of the town in their white frocks and their pink ribbons, and play on the grass: everything moves, and revives, and lives. Spring comes with the first breath of May, and we think we feel her touch as she passes in the morning mists, shaking her rose-filled hair and reviving the world with her sweet-scented breath.

It was at this joyous time of renaissance that our town held it's feast--a feast ever lavish and charming, for Nature took upon herself to defray its costs.

The feast, as I believe I have already said, lasted three days, and fell at Whitsuntide.

For three days the park was filled with pleasant sounds and happy murmurs, which began at early morning and did not die away until far on in the night. For three days the poor forgot their misery, and, much more extraordinary still, the rich forgot their riches. The whole town was gathered together in the park as one great family, and, as this family invited all its branches, relations, friends, acquaintances, the population increased fourfold. People came from la Ferté-Milon, from Crespy, from Soissons, from Château-Thierry, from Compiègne, from Paris! Every place in the coaches was booked for fifteen days in advance: and all kinds of other means of transport were devised; horses, cabs, tilburys, postcarts arrived and jostled each other in the only two hotels of the district, the _Dauphin_ and the _Boule d'Or._ For three days the little town was like a body over full of blood, whose heart was beating ten times as fast as it should. But on the Wednesday it began to part with its surplus, which gradually dwindled away during the following days, until everything little by little resumed its ordinary aspect again. The large woods, which had been disturbed for three days even in their thickest depths, recovered their silence and their solitude once more: the chestnuts again became inhabited by birds, which, flying in and out among their branches, scattered a snow of flowers. Finally, the sward, which had been trodden underfoot and despoiled of its flowers, sprang up again by degrees, under the sun's influence, and once more offered a second harvest of daisies and buttercups to the devastating hands of children.

Two strangers came to the pleasant feast of Whitsuntide, this particular year.

One was a niece of the Abbé Grégoire, named Laurence--I have forgotten her surname.

The other was a friend of hers. She made out that she was of Spanish extraction, and was called Vittoria.

The abbé had told me of her coming. One morning, he came into our house and quite frightened me.

"Come here, boy," he said to me.

And I went to him, not feeling very sure what he was going to do to me.

"Nearer," he said--"much nearer still; you know I am shortsighted ... there--that will do."

The poor abbé was really as blind as a mole.

"You can dance, can you not?"

"Why do you ask me that, M. l'abbé?"

"Why! don't you remember you accused yourself in your last confession of having been to the theatre, to the opera, and to a ball?"

And, indeed, in one of those examinations of conscience that are sold ready printed, to aid idle and recalcitrant memories, I had read that it was a sin to go to a comedy, to the opera, and to a ball; therefore, as during my journey to Paris with my father when I was three years old, I had seen _Paul et Virginie_ played at the Opéra Comique; as I had since been to plays, if by chance any strolling players passed through Villers-Cotterets; as, finally, I had been to a ball at Madame Deviolaine's on the birthday of one of her daughters, I had naïvely accused myself of having committed these three sins, much to the amusement of the worthy Abbé Grégoire, who, as we see, had revealed the secrets of the confessional.

"Well,--yes, I can dance," I replied,--"but why?"

"Dance an _entrechat_ for me."

The _entrechat_ was my strong point. People really did dance at the time I learnt dancing: nowadays they are satisfied to walk; which is much more convenient ... and much easier to learn.

I danced a few steps there and then.

"Bravo!" said the abbé. "Now you shall dance with my niece, who is coming at Whitsuntide."

"But ... I do not like dancing," I rudely replied.

"Bah! you must pretend you do, out of politeness."

"It is no wonder your cousin Cécile says you are a bear in manners," added my mother, with a shrug of her shoulders.

This accusation set me thinking.

"I beg your pardon, M. l'abbé," I said; "I will do just what you wish."

"Very good," said the abbé; "and, to make the acquaintance of our Parisian visitors, come and have lunch with us after high mass on Sunday."

There were eight days in which to prepare myself for my office of attendant cavalier.

During those eight days an important event occurred.

When my brother-in-law left Villers-Cotterets he left part of his library behind.

Amongst these books, there was a work covered in smooth red paper, comprising some eight or ten volumes. My brother-in-law had remarked to my mother:

"You can let him read them all except that work."

I shot a furtive glance at the work, and determined that on the contrary it should be the very one I would read.

I waited some days after my brother-in-law's departure, then I set myself to find the famous red books he had forbidden me to read.

But, although I turned all the books upside down, I could not lay hands on it, and I had to renounce the search.

Suddenly the thought that I had to be the cavalier of a young lady of twenty-two or twenty-four made me look through my wardrobe. Nearly all my coats had patched elbows, and most of my trousers had darned knees.

The only presentable suit I had was the one I had worn at my first communion: nankeen breeches, a white piqué waistcoat, a light blue coat with gilt buttons. Luckily everything had been made two inches too long, so that now everything was but one inch too short.

There was a big chest in the loft which contained coats and vests and breeches belonging to my grandfather, and coats and breeches belonging to my father: all in very good condition.

These clothes were destined by my mother to form my wardrobe as I grew up, and they were protected against vermin by bottles of _vétyver_ and sachets of camphor.

I had never troubled over my toilette, and consequently never taken it into my head to pay a visit to this chest.

But, promoted by the abbé, who looked upon me as a dancer whom he need not trouble about, to the dignity of squire to his niece, a new idea entered my head.

I felt myself seized by the desire to look smart.

Without saying a word to my mother, for I had my own plans in mind, I went up to the loft; I locked myself in there, so as to be undisturbed in my search; and then I opened the chest.

It contained clothing fashionable enough to satisfy the most fastidious taste: from a figured satin vest to a scarlet waistcoat braided with gold; from rep breeches to pantaloons of leather.

But, of more importance still, at the bottom of that mysterious press, under all these clothes, were the famous red paper-covered volumes which I had been so expressly forbidden to read.

I immediately opened the first that fell into my hands, and I read:

"_Aventures du Chevalier de Faublas._"

The title did not convey much to my mind, but the engravings taught me rather more.

A score of lines which I devoured taught me more than the engravings.

I gathered up the first four volumes, which I hid, carefully spread out over my chest, over which I buttoned my waistcoat; and I went down on tiptoe. I went along M. Lafarge's back lane rather than pass by the shop, and I gained the park at a run. I hid myself in one of the darkest and remotest parts of it, where I was quite certain I should not be disturbed, and then I began to read.

Chance had sometimes put obscene books in my hands.

A travelling hawker who ostensibly sold pictures, but who concealed forbidden literature under his cloak, used to go through Villers-Cotterets two or three times a year, hobbling along with difficulty on two wooden legs, and giving out he was an old soldier.

The money that I had managed to extort from my poor mother had more than once been spent in these clandestine purchases; but a feeling of delicacy which was innate in me, and by reason of which there are not four out of the six hundred volumes I have written that the most scrupulous of mothers need hide from her daughter--this sentiment of delicacy, for which I give thanks to God, always caused me to throw far away from me such books at the tenth page or at the second picture.

But it was quite a different thing with _Faublas._ _Faublas_ is, without gainsaying, a bad book from the point of view of morality; a delightful romance from the point of view of fancy; a romance full of originality, depicting a variety of types, somewhat exaggerated, no doubt, but which had their counterparts in the days of Louis XV.

So I felt as great an attraction towards _Faublas_ as I had felt repugnance towards _Thérèse philosophe, Felicia ou mes fredaines_, those dirty lucubrations which persistently polluted the press throughout the latter part of the eighteenth century.

From that moment I discovered my vocation--one I had never recognised or even suspected until then--I wanted to become a second Faublas.

It is true I soon renounced the idea, and that idiocy has never been put down on the list of the many failings with which I have been charged.

I had prepared a magnificent theory, all cut and dried, of seductiveness, by the time Sunday in Whitsuntide came, and I was introduced, clad in my light blue coat and nankeen breeches, to the two charming Parisian girls.

Mademoiselle Laurence was tall, thin, willowy in figure, and in character she was of a bantering and indolent disposition. She was fair-haired, clear-skinned, and possessed the graceful taste of a Parisian woman: she, as I have said, was the good abbé's niece.

Mademoiselle Vittoria was pale, stout, slightly pitted with smallpox, broad-bosomed, wide-hipped, bold in her looks, representing exactly the Spanish type from Madrid, with her dead white complexion, her velvety eyes, and her supple figure.

Although I knew it to be my duty, from M. Grégoire's previous choice of me, to give my special attention first to his niece, and although the expression of gentle candour on her face had won me from the very outset, it was to Mademoiselle Laurence that I first paid court.

It was to her I offered my arm for a walk in the park after dinner.

I will not hide the fact that I was dreadfully bored, and that I must therefore have behaved very awkwardly and very ridiculously. My appearance, besides, which was all right for a child attending his first communion in 1816, was slightly eccentric in the case of a young man making his first debut into society in 1818. Breeches at that time were only worn by old-fashioned people, who almost all belonged to the previous century, so it came about that I, almost a child still, whom no one would have been surprised to see in a turn-down collar, a round waistcoat, and fancy knickerbockers, was dressed like an old man--an anachronism that made the charms of the coquettish young lady on my arm stand out to still greater advantage. She knew well enough that the ridicule that was being poured on her cavalier could not affect her, so she kept as calm a demeanour in the midst of the smiles we met and the curious looks that followed us, as Virgil's divinities, who passed in the midst of men unmoved by the looks of men, because they did not deign to notice them. But it was a different matter to me; I could feel myself blushing all the time; and, when anyone I knew came by, instead of meeting his glance proudly, I simply turned my head away.

Like the stag in the fable, I discovered that I had very poor legs.

My poor mother imagined that because I was heir to my father's breeches, I had also inherited his calves.

They have developed since, it is true, but they are a superfluous luxury at a time when short breeches are no longer worn.

Worse than this was the fact that the presence of the two strangers made me a centre of curiosity. Mademoiselle Vittoria walked immediately after us, giving her arm to the abbé's sister, who was a little hunchback, a most excellent housekeeper to her brother, but whose plain dress and deformity of figure stood out most conspicuously against the elegant dress and ample voluptuous figure of the Spanish woman.

Every now and again the two young girls exchanged looks, and, although I did not catch them, I could feel, so to speak, the smiles that passed between them; smiles which sent the blood rushing up to my temples with shame, for they seemed to say, "Oh! my dear friend, what a bear garden have we stumbled upon!"

A word I heard increased my confusion and turned it to anger.

A young Parisian who had been employed for two or three years at the Castle, and who was gifted with all the qualities I lacked, that is to say, he was fair, pink, plump, and dressed in the latest fashion, crossed our path, and gazed after us through an eyeglass hung from a little steel chain.

"Ah! ah!" he said, "there is Dumas going to his first communion again, only he has changed his taper."

This epigram hit me straight to the heart; I went white, and almost dropped my companion's arm. She saw what was my trouble, no doubt, for she said, pretending she had not heard:

"Who is the young man who has just passed us?"

"He is a certain M. Miaud," I replied, "who is employed at the workhouse."

I must confess I dwelt on these last words with delight, hoping they might modify the good opinion my lovely companion seemed immediately to have formed of this dandy.

"Ah! how strange!" she said; "I should have taken him for a Parisian."

"By what?" I asked.

"By his style of dress."

I am sure the arrow was not shot intentionally, but, like Parthian barbed arrows, it went right to the depths of my heart, none the less.

"His style of dress!" So dress was a most important matter; by its means and in proportion to its good or bad taste, people could at the first glance at a man form an idea of his intelligence, his mind, or his heart.

This expression, "his style of dress," illuminated my ignorance at a flash.

He was indeed perfectly dressed in the fashion of 1818: he wore tight-fitting, light coffee-coloured trousers, with boots folded in the shape of a heart over his instep, a waistcoat of chamois leather with carved gilt buttons, a brown coat with a high collar. In his waistcoat pocket was a gold eyeglass fastened to a fine steel chain, and a host of tiny charms and seals dangled coquettishly from the fob of his pantaloons.

I heaved a sigh, and vowed to dress like that some day, no matter what it cost me.