Chapter 18

"Olivier--Peyrol--Audibert--Come! It's four o'clock." Then a dive into the huge kitchen, where the maids, heavy with sleep, were warming the soup over the bright, crackling peat fire. They gave her her little plate of red Marseille earthenware, filled with boiled chestnuts, the frugal breakfast of an earlier time which nothing could induce her to change. Off she went at once with long strides, the keys jingling on the great silver key-ring fastened to her belt, her plate in her hand, held in equilibrium by the distaff which she held under her arm as if ready for battle, for she spun all day long, and did not stop even to eat her chestnuts. A glance, as she passed, at the stable, still dark, where the horses were sluggishly moving about, at the stifling cow-shed, filled with heads impatiently stretched toward the door; and the first rays of dawn, stealing over the courses of stone that supported the embankment of the park, fell upon the old woman running through the dew with the agility of a girl, despite her seventy years, verifying exactly each morning all the treasures of the estate, anxious to ascertain whether the night had stolen the statues and urns, uprooted the centenary trees, dried up the sparkling fountains that plashed noisily in their bowls. Then the bright southern sun, humming and vibrating, outlined upon the gravel of a path, or against the white supporting wall of a terrace, that tall old woman's figure, slender and straight as her distaff, picking up pieces of dead wood, breaking off a branch from a shrub that was out of line, heedless of the scorching reflection which affected her tough skin no more than an old stone bench. About that hour another promenader appeared in the park, less active, less bustling, dragging himself along rather than walking, leaning on the walls and railings, a poor bent, palsied creature, with a lifeless face to which one could assign no age, who, when he was tired, uttered a faint, plaintive cry to call the servant, who was always at hand to assist him to sit down, to huddle himself up on some step, where he would remain for hours, motionless and silent, his mouth half-open, blinking his eyes, soothed by the strident monotony of the locusts, a human blot on the face of the superb landscape.

He was the _oldest_, Bernard's brother, the cherished darling of the Jansoulets, father and mother, the hope and the glory of the family of the junk-dealer, who, faithful like so many more in the South to the superstition concerning the right of primogeniture, had made every conceivable sacrifice to send that handsome, ambitious youth to Paris; and he had started with four or five marshals' batons in his trunk, the admiration of all the girls in the village; but Paris--after it had beaten and twisted and squeezed that brilliant Southern rag in its great vat for ten years, burned him in all its acids, rolled him in all its mire--relegated him at last to the state of battered flotsam and jetsam, embruted, paralyzed, which had killed his father with grief and compelled his mother to sell everything in her house and to live by domestic service in the well-to-do families of the neighborhood. Luckily, just about the time that that relic of Parisian hospitals, sent back to his home by public charity, appeared in Bourg-Saint-Andéol, Bernard,--who was called Cadet, as in all the half-Arab Southern families, where the eldest son always takes the family name and the last comer the name of Cadet,--Bernard was already in Tunis, in process of making his fortune, and sending money home regularly. But what remorse it caused the poor mother to owe everything, even life itself, and the comfort of the wretched invalid, to the brave, energetic lad, of whom his father and she had always been fond, but without genuine tenderness, and whom, from the time he was five years old, they had been accustomed to treat as a day-laborer, because he was very strong and hairy and ugly, and was already shrewder than any one else in the house in the matter of dealing in old iron. Ah! how she would have liked to have her Cadet with her, to repay him a little of all he was doing for her, to pay in one sum all the arrears of affection, of motherly cosseting that she owed him.

But, you see, these kingly fortunes have the burdens, the vexations of kingly existences. Poor Mother Jansoulet, in her dazzling surroundings, was much like a genuine queen, having undergone the long banishments, the cruel separations and trials which atone for earthly grandeur; one of her sons in a state of stupid lethargy for all time, the other far away, writing little, engrossed by his great interests, always saying, "I will come," and never coming. In twelve years she had seen him but once, in the confusion of the bey's visit at Saint-Romans: a bewildering succession of horses, carriages, fireworks, and festivities. Then he had whirled away again behind his sovereign, having had hardly time to embrace his old mother, who had retained naught of that great joy, so impatiently awaited, save a few newspaper pictures, in which Bernard Jansoulet was exhibited arriving at the château with Ahmed and presenting his aged mother to him,--is not that the way in which kings and queens have their family reunions illustrated in the journals?--plus a cedar of Lebanon, brought from the end of the world,--a great _caramantran_ of a tree, which was as costly to move and as much in the way as the obelisk--being hoisted and planted by force of men and money and horses; a tree which had wrought confusion among the shrubbery as the price of setting up a souvenir commemorative of the royal visit. On his present trip to France, at least, knowing that he had come for several months, perhaps forever, she hoped to have her Bernard all to herself. And lo! he swooped down upon her one fine evening, enveloped in the same triumphant splendor, in the same official pomp, surrounded by a multitude of counts, marquises, fine gentlemen from Paris, who with their servants filled the two great breaks she had sent to meet them at the little station of Giffas, on the other side of the Rhone.

"Come, come, embrace me, my dear mamma. There's no shame in hugging your boy, whom you haven't seen for years, close to your heart. Besides, all these gentlemen are friends of ours. This is Monsieur le Marquis de Monpavon, and Monsieur le Marquis de Bois-l'Héry. Ah! the time has gone by when I used to bring you to eat bean soup with us, little Cabassu and Bompain Jean-Baptiste. You know Monsieur de Géry--he, with my old friend Cardailhac, whom I introduce to you, make up the first batch. But others are coming. Prepare for a terrible how-d'ye-do. We receive the bey in four days."

"The bey again!" said the good woman in dismay. "I thought he was dead."

Jansoulet and his guests could but laugh at her comical alarm, heightened by her Southern accent.

"But there's another, mamma. There are always beys--luckily for me, _sapristi_! But don't you be afraid. You won't have so much trouble on your hands. Friend Cardailhac has undertaken to look after things. We're going to have some superb fêtes. Meanwhile give us some dinner quick, and show us our rooms. Our Parisian friends are tired out."

"Everything is ready, my son," said the old woman simply, standing stiffly erect in her cap of Cambrai linen, with points yellowed by age, which she never laid aside even on great occasions. Wealth had not changed _her_. She was the typical peasant of the Rhone valley, independent and proud, with none of the cunning humility of the rustics described by Balzac, too simple, too, to be puffed up by wealth. Her only pride was to show her son with what painstaking zeal she had acquitted herself of her duties as care-taker. Not an atom of dust, not a trace of dampness on the walls. The whole magnificent ground-floor, the salons with the silk draperies and upholstery of changing hue, taken at the last moment from their coverings; the long summer galleries, with cool, resonant inlaid floors, which the Louis XV. couches, with cane seats and backs upholstered with flowered stuffs, furnished with summer-like coquetry; the enormous dining-hall, decorated with flowers and branches; even the billiard-room, with its rows of gleaming balls, its chandeliers and cue-racks,--the whole vast extent of the château, seen through the long door-windows, wide open upon the broad seignorial porch, displayed its splendor to the admiration of the visitors, and reflected the beauty of that marvellous landscape, lying serene and peaceful in the setting sun, in the mirrors, the waxed or varnished wainscoting, with the same fidelity with which the poplars bowing gracefully to each other, and the swans, placidly swimming, were reproduced on the mirror-like surface of the ponds. The frame was so beautiful, the general outlook so superb, that the obtrusive, tasteless luxury melted away, disappeared even to the most sensitive eye.

"There's something to work with," said Cardailhac the manager, with his monocle at his eye, his hat on one side, already planning his stage-setting.

And the haughty mien of Monpavon, who had been somewhat offended at first by the old lady's head-dress when she received them on the porch, gave place to a condescending smile. Certainly there was something to work with, and their friend Jansoulet, under the guidance of men of taste, could give his Maugrabin Highness a very handsome reception. They talked about nothing else all the evening. Sitting in the sumptuous dining-room, with their elbows on the table, warmed by wine and with full stomachs, they planned and discussed. Cardailhac, whose views were broad, had his plan all formed.

"Carte blanche, of course, eh, Nabob?"

"Carte blanche, old fellow. And let old Hemerlingue burst with rage."

Thereupon the manager detailed his plans, the festivities to be divided by days, as at Vaux when Fouquet entertained Louis XIV.; one day a play, another day Provençal fêtes, _farandoles_, bull-fights, local music; the third day--And, in his mania for management, he was already outlining programmes, posters, while Bois-l'Héry, with both hands in his pockets, lying back in his chair, slept peacefully with his cigar stuck in the corner of his sneering mouth, and the Marquis de Monpavon, always on parade, drew up his breastplate every moment, to keep himself awake.

De Géry had left them early. He had gone to take refuge with the old lady--who had known him, and his brothers, too, when they were children--in the modest parlor in the wing, with the white curtains and light wall-paper covered with figures, where the Nabob's mother tried to revive her past as an artisan, with the aid of some relics saved from the wreck.

Paul talked softly, sitting opposite the handsome old woman with the severe and regular features, the white hair piled on top of her head like the flax on her distaff, who sat erect upon her chair, her flat bust wrapped in a little green shawl;--never in her life had she rested her back against the back of a chair or sat in an armchair. He called her Françoise and she called him Monsieur Paul. They were old friends. And what do you suppose they were talking about? Of her grandchildren, _pardi!_ of Bernard's three boys whom she did not know, whom she would have loved so dearly to know.

"Ah! Monsieur Paul, if you knew how I long for them! I should have been so happy if he had brought me my three little ones instead of all these fine gentlemen. Just think, I have never seen them, except in those pictures yonder. Their mother frightens me a bit, she's a great lady out-and-out, a Demoiselle Afchin. But the children, I'm sure they're not little coxcombs, but would be very fond of their old _granny_. It would seem to me as if it was their father a little boy again, and I'd give them what I didn't give the father--for, you see, Monsieur Paul, parents aren't always just. They have favorites. But God is just. You ought to see how He deals with the faces that you paint and fix up the best, to the injury of the others. And the favoritism of the old people often does harm to the young."

She sighed as she glanced in the direction of the great alcove, from which, through the high lambrequins and falling draperies, issued at intervals a long, shuddering breath like the moan of a sleeping child who has been whipped and has cried bitterly.

A heavy step on the stairs, an unmelodious but gentle voice, saying in a low tone: "It's I--don't move,"--and Jansoulet appeared. As everybody had gone to bed at the château, he, knowing his mother's habits and that hers was always the last light to be extinguished in the house, had come to see her, to talk with her a little, to exchange the real greeting of the heart which they had been unable to exchange in the presence of others. "Oh! stay, my dear Paul; we don't mind you." And, becoming a child once more in his mother's presence, he threw his whole long body on the floor at her feet, with cajoling words and gestures really touching to behold. She was very happy too to have him by her side, but she was a little embarrassed none the less, looking upon him as an all-powerful, strange being, exalting him in her artless innocence to the level of an Olympian encompassed by thunder-bolts and lightning-flashes, possessing the gift of omnipotence. She talked to him, inquired if he was still satisfied with his friends, with the condition of his affairs, but did not dare to ask the question she had asked de Géry: "Why didn't you bring me my little grandsons?"--But he broached the subject himself.

"They're at boarding-school, mamma; as soon as the vacation comes, I'll send them to you with Bompain. You remember him, don't you, Bompain Jean-Baptiste? And you shall keep them two whole months. They'll come to you to have you tell them fine stories, they'll go to sleep with their heads on your apron, like this--"

And he himself, placing his curly head, heavy as lead, on the old woman's knees, recalling the happy evenings of his childhood when he went to sleep that way if he were allowed to do so, if his older brother's head did not take up all the room--he enjoyed, for the first time since his return to France, a few moments of blissful repose, outside of his tumultuous artificial life, pressed against that old motherly heart which he could hear beating regularly, like the pendulum of the century-old clock standing in a corner of the room, in the profound silence of the night, which one can feel in the country, hovering over the boundless expanse. Suddenly the same long sigh, as of a child who has fallen asleep sobbing, was repeated at the farther end of the room.

"Is that--?"

"Yes," she said, "I have him sleep here. He might need me in the night."

"I should like to see him, to embrace him."

"Come."

The old woman rose, took her lamp, led the way gravely to the alcove, where she softly drew aside the long curtain and motioned to her son to come, without making a noise.

He was asleep. And it was certain that something lived in him that was not there the day before, for, instead of the flaccid immobility in which he was mired all day, he was shaken at that moment by violent tremors, and on his expressionless, dead face there was a wrinkle of suffering life, a contraction as of pain. Jansoulet, profoundly moved, gazed at that thin, wasted, earth-colored face, on which the beard, having appropriated all the vitality of the body, grew with surprising vigor; then he stooped, placed his lips on the forehead moist with perspiration, and, feeling that he started, he said in a low tone, gravely, respectfully, as one addresses the head of the family:

"Good-evening, Aîné."

Perhaps the imprisoned mind heard him in the depths of its dark, degrading purgatory. But the lips moved and a long groan made answer; a far-off wail, a despairing appeal caused the glance Françoise and her son exchanged to overflow with impotent tears, and drew from them both a simultaneous cry in which their sorrows met: _Pécaïré!_ the local word expressive of all pity, all affection.

* * *

Early the next morning the uproar began with the arrival of the actors and actresses, an avalanche of caps, chignons, high boots, short petticoats, affected screams, veils floating over the fresh coats of rouge; the women were in a large majority, Cardailhac having reflected that, where a bey was concerned, the performance was of little consequence, that one need only emit false notes from pretty lips, show lovely arms and well-turned legs in the free-and-easy négligé of the operetta. All the plastic celebrities of his theatre were on hand, therefore, Amy Férat at their head, a hussy who had already tried her eye-teeth on the gold of several crowns; also two or three famous comic actors, whose pallid faces produced the same effect of chalky, spectral blotches amid the bright green of the hedgerows as was produced by the plaster statuettes. All that motley crew, enlivened by the journey, the unfamiliar fresh air, and the copious hospitality, as well as by the hope of hooking something in that procession of beys, nabobs, and other purse-bearers, asked nothing better than to caper and sing and make merry, with the vulgar enthusiasm of a crowd of Seine boatmen ashore on a lark. But Cardailhac did not propose to have it so. As soon as they had arrived, made their toilets and eaten their first breakfast, out came the books; we must rehearse!--There was no time to lose. The rehearsals took place in the small salon near the summer gallery, where they were already beginning to build the stage; and the noise of the hammers, the humming of the refrains, the thin voices supported by the squeaking of the orchestra leader's violin, mingled with the loud trumpet-calls of the peacocks on their perches, were blown to shreds in the mistral, which, failing to recognize the frantic chirping of its grasshoppers, contemptuously whisked it all away on the whirling tips of its wings.

Sitting in the centre of the porch, as if it were the proscenium of his theatre, Cardailhac, while superintending the rehearsals, issued his commands to a multitude of workmen and gardeners, ordered trees to be felled which obstructed the view, drew sketches of the triumphal arches, sent despatches and messengers to mayors, to sub-prefects, to Arles to procure a deputation of girls of the province in the national costume, to Barbantane, where the most skilful dancers of the _farandole_ are to be found, to Faraman renowned for its herds of wild bulls and Camarguese horses; and as Jansoulet's name blazed forth at the foot of all these despatches, as the name of the Bey of Tunis also figured in them, everybody acquiesced with the utmost eagerness, the telegraphic messages arrived in an endless stream, and that little Sardanapalus from Porte-Saint-Martin, who was called Cardailhac, was forever repeating: "There is something to work with;" delighted to throw gold about like handfuls of seed, to have a stage fifty leagues in circumference to arrange, all Provence, of which country that fanatical Parisian was a native, and thoroughly familiar with its resources in the direction of the picturesque.

Dispossessed of her functions, the old lady seldom appeared, gave her attention solely to the farm and her invalid, terrified by that crowd of visitors, those insolent servants whom one could not distinguish from their masters, those women with brazen, coquettish manners, those closely-shaven old villains who resembled wicked priests, all those mad creatures who chased one another through the halls at night with much throwing of pillows, wet sponges, and curtain tassels which they tore off to use as projectiles. She no longer had her son in the evening, for he was obliged to remain with his guests, whose number increased as the time for the fêtes drew near; nor had she even the resource of talking about her grandsons with "Monsieur Paul," whom Jansoulet, always the kindest of men, being a little awed by his friend's seriousness of manner, had sent away to pass a few days with his brothers. And the careful housekeeper, to whom some one came every moment and seized her keys to get spare linen or silverware, to open another room, thinking of the throwing open of her stores of treasures, of the plundering of her wardrobes and her sideboards, remembering the condition in which the visit of the former bey had left the château, devastated as by a cyclone, said in her patois, feverishly moistening the thread of her distaff:

"May God's fire devour all beys and all future beys!"

At last the day arrived, the famous day of which people still talk throughout the whole province. Oh! about three o'clock in the afternoon, after a sumptuous breakfast presided over by the old mother with a new Cambrai cap on her head,--a breakfast at which, side by side with Parisian celebrities, prefects were present and deputies, all in full dress, with swords at their sides, mayors in their scarfs of office, honest curés cleanly shaven,--when Jansoulet, in black coat and white cravat, surrounded by his guests, went out upon the stoop and saw, framed in that magnificent landscape, amid flags and arches and ensigns, that swarm of heads, that sea of brilliant costumes rising tier above tier on the slopes and thronging the paths; here, grouped in a nosegay on the lawn, the prettiest girls of Arles, whose little white faces peeped sweetly forth from lace neckerchiefs; below, the _farandole_ from Barbantane, its eight tambourines in a line, ready for the word, hand in hand, ribbons fluttering in the wind, hats over one ear, the red _taillote_ about the loins; still lower, in the succession of terraces, the choral societies drawn up in line, all black beneath their bright-hued caps, the banner-bearer in advance, serious and resolved, with clenched teeth, holding aloft his carved staff; lower still, on an immense _rond-point_, black bulls in shackles, and Camargue gauchos on their little horses with long white manes, their leggings above their knees, brandishing their spears; and after them more flags and helmets and bayonets, reaching to the triumphal arch at the entrance; then, as far as the eye could see on the other side of the Rhone,--over which two gangs of workmen had just thrown a bridge of boats, so that they could drive from the station to Saint-Romans in a straight line,--was an immense crowd, whole villages pouring down from all the hills, overflowing on the Giffas road in a wilderness of noise and dust, seated on the edge of the ditches, swarming among the elms, piled upon wagons, a formidable living lane for the procession to pass through; and over it all a huge white sun whose arrows a capricious breeze sent in every direction, from the copper of a tambourine to the point of a spear and the fringe of a banner, while the mighty Rhone, high-spirited and free, bore away to the ocean the shifting tableaux of that royal fête. In presence of those marvels, in which all the gold in his coffers shone resplendent, the Nabob felt a thrill of admiration and pride.

"It is fine," he said, turning pale, and his mother, standing behind him, as pale as he, but from indescribable terror, murmured:

"It is too fine for any man. One would think that God was coming."

The feeling of the devout old peasant woman was much the same as that vaguely experienced by all those people who had assembled on the roads as if to watch the passage of a colossal procession on Corpus Christi, and who were reminded by that visit of an Oriental prince to a child of the province, of the legends of the Magian kings, the arrival of Gaspard the Moor bringing to the carpenter's son the myrrh and the crown.

Amid the heartfelt congratulations that were showered on Jansoulet, Cardailhac, who had not been seen since morning, suddenly appeared, triumphant and perspiring.