The Cross of Berny Read online

  It is distressing to think that only six months have passed since I was raised from the depths of poverty, and here I am already spoiled by good fortune!

  Misfortune is a great master, but like all masters he only is obeyed when present; we work with him, but when his back is turned forget his admonitions.

  We reached the depot as the train was starting, obtaining comfortable seats. I met with a most interesting adventure, that is, interesting to me; how small the world is! I had for a companion an old friend of Roger, but who fortunately did not know me; it was M. Edgar de Meilhan, the poet, whose talents I admire, and whose acquaintance I had long desired; judging from his conversation he must be quite an original character. But he was accompanied by one of those explanatory gossips who seem born to serve as cicerones to the entire world, and render useless all penetrating perspicacity.

  These sort of bores are amusing to meet on a journey; rather well informed, they quote their favorite authors very neatly in order to display the extent of their information; they also have a happy way of imposing on the ignorant people, who sit around with wide-stretched mouths, listening to the string of celebrated names so familiarly repeated as to indicate a personal intimacy with each and all of them; in a word, it is a way of making the most of your acquaintance, as your witty friend M.L. would say. Now I must give you a portrait of this gentleman; it shall be briefly done.

  He was an angular man, with a square forehead, a square nose, a square mouth, a square chin, a square smile, a square hand, square shoulders, square gayety, square jokes; that is to say, he is coarse, heavy and rugged. A coarse mind cultivated often appears smooth and moves easily in conversation, but a square mind is always awkward and threatening. Well, this square man evidently "made the most of his acquaintances" for my benefit, for poor little me, an humble violet met by chance on the road! He spoke of M. Guizot having mentioned this to him; of M. Thiers, who dined with him lately, having said that to him; of Prince Max de Beauvau, whom he bet with at the last Versailles races; of the beautiful Madame de Magnoncourt, with whom he danced at the English ambassador's ball; of twenty other distinguished personages with whom he was intimate, and finally he mentioned Prince Roger de Monbert, the eccentric tiger-hunter, who for the last two months had been the lion of Paris. At the name of Roger I became all attention; the square man continued:

  "But you, my dear Edgar, were brought up with him, were you not?"

  "Yes," said the poet.

  "Have you seen him since his return?"

  "Not yet, but I hear from him constantly; I had a letter yesterday."

  "They say he is engaged to the beautiful heiress, Irene de Chateaudun, and will be married very soon."

  "'Tis an idle rumor," said M. de Meilhan, in a dry tone that forced his dreadful friend to select another topic of conversation.

  Oh, how curious I was to find out what Roger had written to M. de Meilhan! Roger had a confidant! He had told him about me! What could he have said? Oh, this dreadful letter! What would I not give to see it! My sole thought is, how can I obtain it; unconsciously I gazed at M. de Meilhan, with an uneasy perplexity that must have astonished him and given him a queer idea of my character.

  I was unable to conceal my joy, when I heard him say he lived at Richeport, and that he intended stopping at Pont de l'Arche, which is but a short distance from his estate; my satisfaction must have appeared very strange.

  A dreadful storm detained us two hours in the neighborhood of the depot. We remained in company under the shed, and watched the falling rain. My situation was embarrassing; I wished to be agreeable and polite to M. de Meilhan that I might encourage him to call at Madama Taverneau's, Pont de l'Arche, and then again I did not wish to be so very gracious and attentive as to inspire him with too much assurance. It was a difficult game to play. I must boldly risk making a bad impression, and at the same time keep him at a respectful distance. Well, I succeeded in solving the problem within the pale of legitimate curiosity, offering to share with my companion in misfortune a box of bon-bons, intended for Madame Taverneau.

  But what attentions he showered on me before meriting this great sacrifice! What ingenious umbrellas he improvised for me under this inhospitable shed, that grudgingly lent us a perfidious and capricious shelter! What charming seats, skilfully made of sticks and logs driven into the wet ground!

  When the storm was over M. de Meilhan offered to escort us to Pont de l'Arche; I accepted, much to the astonishment of the severe Blanchard, who cannot understand the sudden change in my conduct, and begins to suspect me of being in search of adventures.

  When we reached our destination, and Madam Taverneau heard that M. de Meilhan had been my escort, she was in such a state of excitement that she could talk of nothing else. M. de Meilhan is highly thought of here, where his family have resided many years; his mother is venerated, and he himself beloved by all that know him. He has a moderate fortune; with it he quietly dispenses charity and daily confers benefits with an unknown hand. He seems to be very agreeable and witty. I have never met so brilliant a man, except M. de Monbert. How charming it would be to hear them talk together!

  But that letter! What would I not give for that letter! If I could only read the first four lines! I would find out what I want to know. These first lines would tell me if Roger is really sad; if he is to be pitied, and if it is time for me to console him. I rely a little upon the indiscretion of M. de Meilhan to enlighten me. Poets are like doctors; all artists are kindred spirits; they cannot refrain from telling a romantic love affair any more than a physician can from citing his last remarkable case; the former never name their friends, the latter never betray their patients. But when we know beforehand, as I do, the name of the hero or patient, we soon complete the semi-indiscretion.

  So I mercilessly slander all heiresses and capricious women of fashion that I may incite Roger's confidant to relate me my own history. I forgot to mention that since my arrival here M. de Meilhan has been every day to call on Madame Taverneau. She evidently imagines herself the object of his visits. I am of a different opinion. Indeed, I fear I have made a conquest of this dark-eyed young poet, which is not at all flattering to me. This sudden adoration shows that he has not a very elevated opinion of me. How he will laugh when he recognises this adventurous widow in the proud wife of his friend!

  You reproach me bitterly for having sacrificed you to Madame Taverneau. Cruel Prefect that you are, go and accuse the government and your consul-general of this unjust preference.

  Can I reach Grenoble in three hours, as I do Rouen? Can I return from Grenoble to Paris in three hours; fly when I wish, reappear when 'tis necessary? In a word have you a railway? No! Well, then, trust to my experience and believe that where locomotion is concerned there is an end to friendship, gratitude, sympathy and devotion. Nothing is to be considered but railways, roads, wagons that jolt you to death, but carry you to your destination, and stages that upset and never arrive.

  We cannot visit the friends we love best, but those we can get away from with the greatest facility.

  Besides, for a heroine wishing to hide herself, the asylum you offer has nothing mysterious, it is merely a Thebais of a prefecture; and there I am afraid of compromising you.

  A Parisian in a provincial town is always standing on a volcano, one unlucky word may cause destruction.

  How difficult it is to be a Prefect! You have commenced very properly—four children! All that is necessary to begin with. They are such convenient excuses. To be a good Prefect one must have four children. They are inexhaustible pretexts for escaping social horrors; if you wish to decline a compromising invitation, your dear little girl has got the whooping cough; when you wish to avoid dining a friend in transitu, your eldest son has a dreadful fever; you desire to escape a banquet unadorned by the presence of the big-wigs—brilliant idea! all four children have the measles.

  Now confess you did well to have the four lovely children! Without them you would be conquered in spite of your wi
sdom; it requires so much skill for a Parisian to live officially in a province!

  There all the women are clever; the most insignificant citizen's wife can outwit an old diplomat. What science they display under the most trying and peculiar circumstances! What profound combination in their plans of vengeance! What prudence in their malice! What patience in their cruelty! It is dreadful! I will visit you when you reside in the country, but while you reign over a prefecture, I have for you the respectful horror that a democratic mind has for all authorities.

  Who is this poor convalescent whose wound caused you so much anxiety? You don't tell me his name! I understand you, Madame! Even to an old friend you must show your administrative discretion!

  Is this wounded hero young? I suppose he is, as you do not say he is old. He is "about to leave, and return to his home;" "his home" is rather vague, as you don't tell me his name! Now, I am different from you; I name and fully describe every one I meet, you respond with enigmas.

  I well know that your destiny is fulfilled, and that mine has all the attractiveness of a new romance. Nevertheless, you must be more communicative if you expect to be continued in office as my confidant.

  Embrace for me your dear little ones, whom I insist upon regarding as your best counsellors at the prefecture, and tell my goddaughter, Irene, to kiss you for me.

  IRENE DE CHATEAUDUN.

  Chapter VIII

  *

  EDGAR DE MEILHAN to the PRINCE DE MONBERT,

  Saint Dominique street, Paris.

  RICHEPORT, May 31st, 18—.

  Now that you are a sort of Amadis de Gaul, striking attitudes upon a barren rock, as a sign of your lovelorn condition, you have probably forgotten, my dear Roger, my encounter upon the cars with an ideal grisette, who saved me from the horrors of starvation by generously dividing with me a bag of sugar-plums. But for this unlooked-for aid, I should have been reduced, like a famous handful of shipwrecked mariners, to feed upon my watch-chain and vest-buttons. To a man so absorbed in his grief, as you are, the news of the death from starvation of a friend upon the desert island of a railway station, would make very little impression; but I not being in love with any Irene de Chateaudun, have preserved a pleasant recollection of this touching scene, translated from the Æneid in modern and familiar prose.

  I wrote immediately,—for my beauty, of an infinitely less exalted rank than yours, lodges with the post-mistress,—several fabulous letters to problematic people, in countries which do not exist, and are only designated upon the map by a dash.

  Madame Taverneau has conceived a profound respect for a young man who has correspondents in unknown lands, barely sighted in 1821 at the Antarctic pole, and in 1819 at the Arctic pole, so she invited me to a little soirée musicale et dansante, of which I was to be the bright particular star. An invitation to an exclusive ball, given at an inaccessible house, never gave a woman with a doubtful past or an uncertain position, half the pleasure that I felt from the entangled sentences of Madame Taverneau in which she did not dare to hope, but would be happy if—.

  Apart from the happiness of seeing Madame Louise Guérin (my charmer's name), I looked forward to an entirely new recreation, that of studying the manners of the middle class in their intimate relations with each other. I have lived with the aristocracy and with the canaille; in the highest and lowest conditions of life are found entire absence of pretension; in the highest, because their position is assured; in the lowest, because it is simply impossible to alter it. None but poets are really unhappy because they cannot climb to the stars. A half-way position is the most false.

  I thought I would go early to have some talk with Louise, but the circle was already completed when I arrived; everybody had come first.

  The guests were assembled in a large, gloomy room, gloriously called a drawing-room, where the servant never enters without first taking off her shoes at the door, like a Turk in a mosque, and which is only opened on the most solemn occasions. As it is doubtful whether you have ever set foot in a like establishment, I will give you, in imitation of the most profound of our novel-writers (which one? you will say; they are all profound now-a-days), a detailed description of Madame Taverneau's salon.

  Two windows, hung in red calico, held up by some black ornaments, a complication of sticks, pegs and all sorts of implements on stamped copper, gave light to this sanctuary, which commanded through them an animated look-out—in the language of the commonalty—upon the scorching, noisy highway, bordered by sickly elms sprinkled with dust, from the constant passage of vehicles which shake the house to its centre; wagons loaded with noisy iron, and droves of hogs, squeaking under the drover's whip.

  The floor was painted red and polished painfully bright, reminding one of a wine-merchant's sign freshly varnished; the walls were concealed under frightful velvet paper which so religiously catches the fluff and dust. The mahogany furniture stood round the room, a reproach against the discovery of America, covered with sanguinary cloth stamped in black with subjects taken from Fontaine's fables. When I say subjects I basely flatter the sumptuous taste of Madame Taverneau; it was the same subject indefinitely repeated—the Fox and the Stork. How luxurious it was to sit upon a stork's beak! In front of each chair was spread a piece of carpet, to protect the splendor of the floor, so that the guests when seated bore a vague resemblance to the bottles and decanters set round the plated centrepiece of a banquet given to a deputy by his grateful constituents.

  An atrocious troubadour clock ornamented the mantel-piece representing the templar Bois-Guilbert bearing off a gilded Rebecca upon a silver horse. On either side of this frightful time-piece were placed two plated lamps under globes.

  This magnificence filled with secret envy more than one housekeeper of Pont de l'Arche, and even the maid trembled as she dusted. We will not speak of the spun-glass poodles, little sugar St. Johns, chocolate Napoleons, a cabinet filled with common china, occupying a conspicuous place, engravings representing the Adieux to Fontainebleau, Souvenirs and Regrets, The Fisherman's Family, The Little Poachers, and other hackneyed subjects. Can you imagine anything like it? For my part, I never could understand this love for the common-place and the hideous. I know that every one does not dwell in Alhambras, Louvres, or Parthenons, but it is so easy to do without a clock to leave the walls bare, to exist without Manrin's lithographs or Jazet's aquatints!

  The people filling the room, seemed to me, in point of vulgarity, the queerest in the world; their manner of speaking was marvellous, imitating the florid style of the defunct Prudhomme, the pupil of Brard and St. Omer. Their heads spread out over their white cravats and immense shirt collars recalled to mind certain specimens of the gourd tribe. Some even resemble animals, the lion, the horse, the ass; these, all things considered, had a vegetable rather than an animal look. Of the women I will say nothing, having resolved never to ridicule that charming sex.

  Among these human vegetables, Louise appeared like a rose in a cabbage patch. She wore a simple white dress fastened at the waist by a blue ribbon; her hair arranged in bandeaux encircled her pure brow and wound in massive coils about her head. A Quakeress could have found no fault with this costume, which placed in grotesque and ridiculous contrast the hearselike trappings of the other women. It was impossible to be dressed in better taste. I was afraid lest my Infanta should seize this opportunity to display some marvellous toilette purchased expressly for the occasion. That plain muslin gown which never saw India, and was probably made by herself, touched and fascinated me. Dress has very little weight with me. I once admired a Granada gypsy whose sole costume consisted of blue slippers and a necklace of amber beads; but nothing annoys me more than a badly made dress of an unbecoming shade.

  The provincial dandies much preferring the rubicund gossips, with their short necks covered with gold chains, to Madame Taverneau's young and slender guest, I was free to talk with her under cover of Louisa Pugett's ballads and sonatas executed by infant phenomena upon a cracked piano hired from Rouen for the
occasion.

  Louisa's wit was charming. How mistaken it is to educate instinct out of women! To replace nature by a school-mistress! She committed none of those terrible mistakes which shock one; it was evident that she formed her sentences herself instead of repeating formulae committed to memory. She had either never read a novel or had forgotten it, and unless she is a wonderful actress she remains as the great fashioner, Nature, made her—a perfect woman. We remained a greater part of the evening seated together in a corner like beings of another race. Profiting by the great interest betrayed by the company in one of those soi-disant innocent games where a great deal of kissing is done, the fair girl, doubtless fearing a rude salute on her delicate cheek, led me into her room, which adjoins the parlor and opens into the garden by a glass door.

  On a table in the room, feebly lighted by a lamp which Louisa modestly turned up, were scattered pell-mell, screens, boxes from Spa, alabaster paper-weights and other details of the art of illuminating, which profession my beauty practises; and which explains her occasional aristocratic airs, unbecoming an humble seamstress. A bouquet just commenced showed talent; with some lessons from St. Jean or Diaz she would easily make a good flower painter. I told her so. She received my encomiums as a matter of course, evincing none of that mock-modesty which I particularly detest.

  She showed me a bizarre little chest that she was making, which at first-sight seemed to be carved out of coral; it was constructed out of the wax-seals cut from old letters pasted together. This new mosaic was very simple, and yet remarkably pretty. She asked me to give her, in order to finish her box, all the striking seals I possessed, emblazoned in figures and devices. I gave her five or six letters that I had in my pocket, from which she dexterously cut the seals with her little scissors. While she was thus engaged I strolled about the garden—a Machiavellian manoeuvre, for, in order to return me my letters, she must come in search of me.