Part 8

“The rascal defended himself like a lion,” continued the adjutant, slightly mortified; “he killed one of my men, and, not content with that, he broke Corporal Chardon’s arm; but there’s no great harm done; he was only a Frenchman. After that, he hid himself so completely that the devil himself couldn’t have found him. If it hadn’t been for my little cousin, Fortunato, I could never have unearthed him.”

“Fortunato!” cried Mateo.

“Fortunato!” echoed Giuseppa.

“Yes, Gianetto was hidden under the haystack yonder; but my little cousin showed me the trick. And I’ll tell his uncle the _caporal_, so that he’ll send him a handsome present for his trouble. And his name and yours will be in the report I shall send the advocate-general.”

“Malediction!” muttered Mateo.

They had joined the squad. Gianetto was already lying on the litter, ready to start. When he saw Mateo with Gamba, he smiled a strange smile; then, turning towards the door of the house, he spat on the threshold, saying:

“House of a traitor!”

Only a man who had made up his mind to die would have dared to utter the word traitor as applying to Falcone. A quick thrust of the stiletto, which would not have needed to be repeated, would have paid for the insult instantly. But Mateo made no other movement than to put his hand to his forehead, like a man utterly crushed.

Fortunato had gone into the house when he saw his father coming. He soon reappeared with a mug of milk, which he handed to Gianetto with downcast eyes.

“Away from me!” shouted the outlaw in a voice of thunder. Then, turning to one of the voltigeurs, “Comrade,” he said, “give me a drink.”

The soldier placed his gourd in his hands, and the outlaw drank the water given him by a man with whom he had recently exchanged rifle shots. Then he asked that his hands might be bound so that they would be folded on his breast, instead of behind his back.

“I like to lie comfortably,” he said.

They readily gratified him; then the adjutant gave the signal for departure, bade adieu to Mateo, who made no reply, and marched down at a rapid pace towards the plain.

Nearly ten minutes passed before Mateo opened his mouth. The child glanced uneasily, now at his mother and now at his father, who, leaning upon his gun, gazed at him with an expression of intense wrath.

“You begin well!” said Mateo at last, in a voice which, although calm, was terrifying to one who knew the man.

“Father!” cried the child stepping forward, with tears in his eyes, as if to throw himself at his feet.

But Mateo cried:

“Away from me!”

And the child stopped and stood still, sobbing, a few steps from his father.

Giuseppa approached. She had spied the watch chain, one end of which protruded from Fortunato’s shirt.

“Who gave you that watch?” she asked in a harsh tone.

“My cousin the adjutant.”

Falcone seized the watch, and hurled it against a stone, breaking it into a thousand pieces.

“Woman,” he said, “is this child mine?”

Giuseppa’s brown cheeks turned a brick red.

“What do you say, Mateo? Do you know who you’re talking to?”

“Well, this child is the first of his race that ever did an act of treachery.”

Fortunato’s sobs and hiccoughs redoubled in force, and Falcone still kept his lynx-eyes fastened on him. At last he struck the butt of his gun on the ground, then threw it over his shoulder again and started back toward the _maquis_, calling to Fortunato to follow him. The child obeyed.

Giuseppa ran after Mateo and grasped his arm.

“He is your son,” she said in a trembling voice, fixing her black eyes on her husband’s, as if to read what was taking place in his mind.

“Let me alone,” replied Mateo, “I am his father.”

Giuseppa embraced her son and entered her cabin, weeping. She fell on her knees before an image of the Virgin and prayed fervently. Meanwhile Falcone walked some two hundred yards along the path, and did not stop until they reached a narrow ravine into which he descended. He sounded the earth with the butt of his rifle, and found it soft and easy to dig. It seemed to him a suitable spot for his design.

“Fortunato, go and stand by that big stone.”

The child did what he ordered, then knelt.

“Say your prayers.”

“Father, father, don’t kill me!”

“Say your prayers!” Mateo repeated, in a terrible voice.

The child, stammering and sobbing, repeated the _Pater_ and the _Credo_. The father, in a loud voice, said _Amen!_ at the end of each prayer.

“Are those all the prayers you know?”

“I know the _Ave Maria_, too, father, and the litany my aunt taught me.”

“That’s very long, but no matter.”

The child finished the litany in a feeble voice.

“Have you finished?”

“Oh, father! mercy! forgive me! I won’t do it again! I will pray so hard to my uncle the _caporal_ that he’ll forgive Gianetto!”

He continued to speak; Mateo had cocked his gun, and he took aim at him, saying:

“May God forgive you!”

The child made a desperate effort to rise and grasp his father’s knees; but he had not time. Mateo fired, and Fortunato fell stark dead.

Without glancing at the body, Mateo returned to his house to fetch a spade, in order to bury his son. He had taken only a few steps, when he met Giuseppa, who was running after them, terrified by the report.

“What have you done?” she cried.

“Justice.”

“Where is he?”

“In the ravine. I am going to bury him. He died the death of a Christian; I will have a mass sung for him. Send word to my son-in-law Tiodoro Bianchi to come and live with us.”

1829.

FOOTNOTES:

[40] In olden times the _caporals_ were the leaders chosen by the Corsican communes when they rebelled against the feudal lords. To-day the name is sometimes given to a man who, by reason of his property, his alliances, and his clientage, exerts a certain influence and acts as a sort of magistrate in a _pieve_ or a canton. The Corsicans, by an ancient custom, divide themselves into _gentlemen_ (some of whom are _magnificoes_, others _signori_), _caporali_, _citizens_, _plebeians_, and _foreigners_.

[41] The word is in this instance synonymous with outlaw.

[42] A corps levied within a few years by the government and employed on police duty, concurrently with the gendarmerie.

[43] The uniform of the voltigeurs consisted of a brown coat with a yellow collar.

[44] A leather girdle used as cartridge-box and as wallet.

The Venus of Ille

Ἰλεὼς ἣν δ' ἐγὼ, ἔστω ὁ ἀνδρίας Καὶ ἤπιος, οὔτως ἀνδρεῖος ὢν.

ΛΟΥΚΙΑΝΟΥ ΦΙΛΟΨΕΥΔΗΣ.

I was descending the last slope of Canigou, and, although the sun had already set, I could distinguish in the plain below the houses of the little town of Ille, for which I was bound.

“You know,” I said to the Catalan who had been acting as my guide since the preceding day, “you know, doubtless, where Monsieur de Peyrehorade lives?”

“Do I know!” he cried; “why, I know his house as well as I do my own; and if it wasn’t so dark, I’d show it to you. It’s the finest house in Ille. He has money, you know, has Monsieur de Peyrehorade; and his son is going to marry a girl that’s richer than himself.”

“Is the marriage to take place soon?” I asked.

“Soon! It may be that the fiddles are already ordered for the wedding. To-night, perhaps, or to-morrow, or the day after, for all I know! It’s to be at Puygarrig; for it’s Mademoiselle de Puygarrig that the young gentleman is going to marry.”

I had a letter of introduction to M. de Peyrehorade from my friend M. de P. He was, so my friend had told me, a very learned antiquarian, and good-natured and obliging to the last degree. He would take pleasure in showing me all the ruins within a radius of ten leagues. Now, I relied upon him to accompany me about the country near Ille, which I knew to be rich in monuments of ancient times and of the Middle Ages. This marriage, of which I now heard for the first time, might upset all my plans.

“I shall be an interloper,” I said to myself.

But I was expected; as my arrival had been announced by M. de P., I must needs present myself.

“I’ll bet you, monsieur,” said my guide, as we reached the foot of the mountain, “I’ll bet you a cigar that I can guess what you are going to do at Monsieur de Peyrehorade’s.”

“Why, that is not very hard to guess,” I replied, offering him a cigar. “At this time of day, when one has walked six leagues over Canigou, the most urgent business is supper.”

“Yes, but to-morrow? Look you, I’ll bet that you have come to Ille to see the idol! I guessed that when I saw you drawing pictures of the saints at Serrabona.”

“The idol! what idol?” The word had aroused my curiosity.

“What! didn’t any one at Perpignan tell you how Monsieur de Peyrehorade had found an idol in the ground?”

“You mean a terra-cotta, or clay statue, don’t you?”

“No, indeed! I mean a copper one, and it’s big enough to make a lot of big sous. It weighs as much as a church bell. It was way down in the ground, at the foot of an olive tree, that we found it.”

“So you were present at the discovery, were you?”

“Yes, monsieur. Monsieur de Peyrehorade told us a fortnight ago, Jean Coll and me, to dig up an old olive tree that got frozen last year--for it was a very hard winter, you know. So, while we were at work, Jean Coll, who was going at it with all his might, dug his pick into the dirt, and I heard a _bimm_--just as if he’d struck a bell.--‘What’s that?’ says I. We kept on digging and digging, and first a black hand showed; it looked like a dead man’s hand sticking out of the ground. For my part, I was scared. I goes to monsieur, and I says to him: ‘Dead men under the olive tree, master. You’d better call the curé.’

“‘What dead men?’ he says.

“He went with me, and he’d no sooner seen the hand than he sings out: ‘An antique! an antique!’ You’d have thought he had found a treasure. And to work he went with the pick and with his hands, and did as much as both of us together, you might say.”

“Well, what did you find?”

“A tall black woman more than half naked, saving your presence, monsieur, of solid copper; and Monsieur de Peyrehorade told us that it was an idol of heathen times--of the time of Charlemagne!”

“I see what it is: a bronze Blessed Virgin from some dismantled convent.”

“A Blessed Virgin! oh, yes! I should have recognised it if it had been a Blessed Virgin. It’s an idol, I tell you; you can see that from its expression. It fastens its great white eyes on you; you’d think it was trying to stare you out of countenance. Why, you actually lower your eyes when you look at it.”

“White eyes? They are incrusted on the bronze, no doubt. It may be some Roman statue.”

“Roman! that’s it. Monsieur de Peyrehorade says she’s a Roman.--Ah! I see that you’re a scholar like him.”

“Is it whole, well preserved?”

“Oh! it’s all there, monsieur. It’s even handsomer and finished better than the plaster-of-Paris bust of Louis Philippe at the mayor’s office. But for all that, I can’t get over the idol’s face. It has a wicked look--and she is wicked, too.”

“Wicked! what harm has she done you?”

“None to me exactly; but I’ll tell you. We had got down on all fours to stand her up, and Monsieur de Peyrehorade, he was pulling on the rope, too, although he hasn’t any more strength than a chicken, the excellent man! With a good deal of trouble we got her on her feet. I was picking up a piece of stone to wedge her, when, _patatras!_ down she went again, all in a heap. ‘Stand from under!’ says I. But I was too late, for Jean Coll didn’t have time to pull out his leg.”

“And he was hurt?”

“His poor leg broken off short like a stick! _Pécaïre!_ when I saw that, I was furious. I wanted to smash the idol with my pickaxe, but Monsieur de Peyrehorade held me back. He gave Jean Coll some money, but he’s been in bed all the same ever since it happened, a fortnight ago, and the doctor says he’ll never walk with that leg like the other. It’s a pity, for he was our best runner, and next to monsieur’s son, the best tennis player. I tell you, it made Monsieur Alphonse de Peyrehorade feel bad, for Coll always played with him. It was fine to see how they’d send the balls back at each other. Paf! paf! They never touched the ground.”

Chatting thus we entered Ille, and I soon found myself in M. de Peyrehorade’s presence. He was a little old man, still hale and active, with powdered hair, a red nose, and a jovial, bantering air. Before opening M. de P.’s letter, he installed himself in front of a bountifully spread table, and introduced me to his wife and son as an illustrious archæologist, who was destined to rescue Roussillon from the oblivion in which the indifference of scholars had thus far left it.

While eating with a hearty appetite--for nothing is more conducive thereto than the keen mountain air--I examined my hosts. I have already said a word or two of M. de Peyrehorade; I must add that he was vivacity personified. He talked, ate, rose from his chair, ran to his library, brought books to me, showed me prints, filled my glass; he was never at rest for two minutes in succession. His wife, who was a trifle too stout, like all the Catalan women after they have passed forty, impressed me as a typical provincial, who had no interests outside of her household. Although the supper was ample for at least six persons, she ran to the kitchen, ordered pigeons killed, all sorts of things fried, and opened Heaven knows how many jars of preserves. In an instant the table was laden with dishes and bottles, and I should certainly have died of indigestion if I had even tasted everything that was offered me. And yet, with every new dish that I declined, there were renewed apologies. She was afraid that I would find myself very badly off at Ille. One had so few resources in the provinces, and Parisians were so hard to please!

Amid all the goings and comings of his parents, M. Alphonse de Peyrehorade sat as motionless as the god Terminus. He was a tall young man of twenty-six, with a handsome and regular face, which however lacked expression. His figure and his athletic proportions fully justified the reputation of an indefatigable tennis player which he enjoyed throughout the province. On this evening he was dressed in the height of fashion, exactly in accordance with the engraving in the last number of the _Journal des Modes_. But he seemed ill at ease in his clothes; he was as stiff as a picket in his velvet stock, and moved his whole body when he turned. His rough, sunburned hands and short nails formed a striking contrast to his costume. They were the hands of a ploughman emerging from the sleeves of a dandy. Furthermore, although he scrutinised me with interest from head to foot, I being a Parisian, he spoke to me but once during the evening, and that was to ask me where I bought my watch chain.

“Look you, my dear guest,” said M. de Peyrehorade, as the supper drew to a close, “you belong to me, you are in my house; I shall not let you go until you have seen everything of interest that we have in our mountains. You must learn to know our Roussillon, and you must do her justice. You have no suspicion of all that we are going to show you: Phœnician, Celtic, Roman, Arabian, Byzantine monuments--you shall see them all, from the cedar to the hyssop. I will take you everywhere, and I will not let you off from a single brick.”

A paroxysm of coughing compelled him to pause. I seized the opportunity to say that I should be distressed to incommode him at a season so fraught with interest to his family. If he would simply give me the benefit of his excellent advice as to the excursions it would be well for me to make, I could easily, without putting him to the trouble of accompanying me----

“Ah! you refer to this boy’s marriage,” he exclaimed, interrupting me. “That’s a mere trifle--it will take place day after to-morrow. You must attend the wedding with us, _en famille_, as the bride is in mourning for an aunt whose property she inherits. So there are to be no festivities, no ball. It is too bad, for you might have seen our Catalan girls dance. They are very pretty, and perhaps you would have felt inclined to follow my Alphonse’s example. One marriage, they say, leads to others.--Saturday, when the young people are married, I shall be free, and we will take the field. I ask your pardon for subjecting you to the ennui of a provincial wedding. For a Parisian, sated with parties of all sorts--and a wedding without a ball, at that! However, you will see a bride--a bride--you must tell me what you think of her. But you are a serious man, and you don’t look at women any more. I have something better than that to show you. I will show you something worth seeing! I have a famous surprise in store for you to-morrow.”

“Mon Dieu!” said I, “it is difficult to keep a treasure in one’s house without the public knowing all about it. I fancy that I can divine the surprise that you have in store for me. But if you refer to your statue, the description of it that my guide gave me has served simply to arouse my curiosity and to predispose me to admiration.”

“Ah! so he spoke to you about the idol--for that is what they call my beautiful Venus Tur--but I will tell you nothing now. You shall see her to-morrow, by daylight, and tell me whether I am justified in considering her a _chef-d’œuvre_. Parbleu! you could not have arrived more opportunely! There are some inscriptions which I, poor ignoramus that I am, interpret after my manner. But a scholar from Paris! It may be that you will make fun of my interpretation--for I have written a memoir--I, who speak to you, an old provincial antiquary, have made a start; I propose to make the printing-presses groan. If you would kindly read and correct me, I might hope. For example, I am very curious to know how you will translate this inscription on the pedestal: CAVE--but I won’t ask you anything yet. Until to-morrow! until to-morrow! Not a word about the Venus to-day!”

“You are quite right, Peyrehorade,” said his wife, “to let your old idol rest. You must see that you are keeping monsieur from eating. Bah! monsieur has seen much finer statues than yours in Paris. There are dozens of them at the Tuileries, and bronze ones, too.”

“There you have the ignorance, the blessed ignorance of the provinces!” interrupted M. de Peyrehorade. “Think of comparing an admirable antique to Coustou’s insipid figures!

“‘With what irreverence Doth my good wife speak of the gods!’

Would you believe that my wife wanted me to melt my statue and make it into a bell for our church! She would have been the donor, you see. A _chef-d’œuvre_ of Myron, monsieur!”

“_Chef-d’œuvre! chef-d’œuvre!_ a pretty _chef-d’œuvre_ she made! to break a man’s leg!”

“Look you, my wife,” said M. de Peyrehorade in a determined tone, extending his right leg encased in a stocking of Chinese silk, in her direction, “if my Venus had broken this leg, I should not regret it.”

“Gracious Heaven! how can you say that, Peyrehorade? Luckily the man is getting better. Still, I can’t make up my mind to look at the statue that causes such accidents as that. Poor Jean Coll!”

“Wounded by Venus, monsieur,” said M. de Peyrehorade, with a chuckle, “wounded by Venus, the clown complains:

“‘Veneris nec præmia noris.’

“Who has not been wounded by Venus?”

M. Alphonse, who understood French better than Latin, winked with a knowing look, and glanced at me as if to ask:

“And you, Monsieur le Parisien, do you understand?”

The supper came to an end. I had eaten nothing for the last hour. I was tired and I could not succeed in dissembling the frequent yawns which escaped me. Madame de Peyrehorade was the first to notice my plight and observed that it was time to go to bed. Thereupon began a new series of apologies for the wretched accommodations I was to have. I should not be as comfortable as I was in Paris. One is so badly off in the provinces! I must be indulgent for the Roussillonnais. In vain did I protest that after a journey in the mountains a sheaf of straw would be a luxurious bed for me--she continued to beg me to excuse unfortunate country folk if they did not treat me as well as they would have liked to do. I went upstairs at last to the room allotted to me, escorted by M. de Peyrehorade. The staircase, the upper stairs of which were of wood, ended in the centre of a corridor upon which several rooms opened.

“At the right,” said my host, “is the apartment which I intend to give to Madame Alphonse that is to be. Your room is at the end of the opposite corridor. You know,” he added, with an expression meant to be sly, “you know we must put a newly married couple all by themselves. You are at one end of the house and they at the other.”

We entered a handsomely furnished room, in which the first object that caught my eye was a bed seven feet long, six feet wide, and so high that one had to use a stool to climb to the top. My host, having pointed out the location of the bell, having assured himself that the sugarbowl was full, and that the bottles of cologne had been duly placed on the dressing-table, and having asked me several times if I had everything that I wanted, wished me a good-night and left me alone.

The windows were closed. Before undressing I opened one of them to breathe the fresh night air, always delicious after a long supper. In front of me was Canigou, beautiful to look at always, but that evening, it seemed to me the most beautiful mountain in the world, lighted as it was by a brilliant moon. I stood for some minutes gazing at its wonderful silhouette, and was on the point of closing my window when, as I lowered my eyes, I saw the statue on a pedestal some forty yards from the house. It was placed at the corner of a quickset hedge which separated a small garden from a large square of perfectly smooth turf, which, as I learned later, was the tennis-court of the town. This tract, which belonged to M. de Peyrehorade, had been ceded by him to the commune, at his son’s urgent solicitation.

I was so far from the statue that I could not distinguish its attitude and could only guess at its height, which seemed to be about six feet. At that moment two young scamps from the town walked across the tennis-court, quite near the hedge, whistling the pretty Roussillon air, _Montagnes Régalades_. They stopped to look at the statue, and one of them apostrophised it in a loud voice. He spoke Catalan; but I had been long enough in Roussillon to understand pretty nearly what he said.

“So there you are, hussy! (The Catalan term was much more forcible.) So there you are!” he said. “So it was you who broke Jean Coll’s leg! If you belonged to me, I’d break your neck!”

“Bah! with what?” said the other. “She’s made of copper, and it’s so hard that Étienne broke his file, trying to file it. It’s copper of the heathen times, and it’s harder than I don’t know what.”

“If I had my cold-chisel”--it seemed that he was a locksmith’s apprentice--“I’d soon dig out her big white eyes, as easy as I’d take an almond out of its shell. They’d make more than a hundred sous in silver.”

They walked away a few steps.

“I must bid the idol good-night,” said the taller of the two, suddenly stopping again.

He stooped, and, I suppose, picked up a stone. I saw him raise his arm and throw something, and instantly there was a ringing blow on the bronze. At the same moment the apprentice put his hand to his head, with a sharp cry of pain.

“She threw it back at me!” he exclaimed.

And my two rascals fled at the top of their speed. It was evident that the stone had rebounded from the metal, and had punished the fellow for his affront to the goddess.

I closed my window, laughing heartily.

“Still another vandal chastised by Venus!” I thought. “May all the destroyers of our ancient monuments have their heads broken thus!”

And with that charitable prayer, I fell asleep.

It was broad daylight when I woke. Beside my bed were, on one side, M. de Peyrehorade in his _robe-de-chambre_; on the other a servant, sent by his wife, with a cup of chocolate in his hand.