Alphonse Daudet

“ Will you pass your life betraying others and yourself, breaking those innocent hearts who have never done you other evil than to believe in and love you? Will you be possessed of a light and cruel inconstancy, taking life like an amateur and a singer of cavatinas? Will you make a merchandise of words without bothering yourself as to their real value and their connection with your thought, so long as they are brilliant and resounding?”
And putting her lips in a kiss upon that little ear which the light strands of hair surround:
“Tell me, are you going to be a Roumestan?” ”

“ Out of eight members Provence, Bordeaux, Périgord and Languedoc had supplied six; and then, growing excited: “Aha, the South is climbing, the South is climbing! Paris is ours. We have everything. It rests with you, gentlemen, to profit by it. For the second time the Latins have conquered Gaul!”
He looked indeed like a Latin of the conquest, his head like a medallion with broad flat surfaces on the cheeks, with his dark complexion and unceremonious ways, his carelessness, so out of place in this Parisian drawing-room. ”

“ Just as if that would have weighed a straw in the balance for such a free and proud nature, had there been a real love in her heart; but how can one say: “I love him,” and buckle on one’s armor, rouse one’s spirits and fight, when one does not love at all?
However, she had promised, and every day she was harassed by new demands. For instance there was that first night at the skating-rink, to which the peasant girl insisted upon taking her, whether or no, counting upon the singer’s success and the sympathy of the applause to break down the last objections. ”

“ He flew into a rage, talked loudly and brutally like a shopman at Aps laying down the law in his own household. What business was it of hers, after all was said and done? What did she mean by it? Did he interfere with her about the shape of her bonnets or the models of her gowns? He stormed and thundered as if he had a public audience, but Rosalie maintained a tranquil, almost disdainful silence at such violence as this, mere remnant of a will already broken, sure of her victory in the end. These crises which weaken and disarm them are themselves the ruin of exuberant natures. ”

“ Out here it did not bellow any more as it did round the ramparts and through the vaulted passages of the town; but, free of all obstacles, driving before it the great plain itself, where a solitary farm and some peasant manses here and there, forming gray spots in the green landscape, seemed the scattering of a village by the storm, the wind passed in the form of smoke before the sky, and like sudden dashes of surf over the tall wheat and olive orchards, whose silvery leaves it made to flutter like a swarm of butterflies. ”

“ People exchange good-byes and shake hands about the carriage which is taking off the bathers; the hotel people press forward, their eyes brilliant with that shiny look, that famous sheen of the Savoyard; we kiss people whom we hardly know; handkerchiefs are waved; the horse-bells jangle, and then the heavy and crowded wagon disappears, swaying along the narrow road on the side of the hill, carrying off with it those names and faces which for a moment have made a part of our life in common, those faces unknown yesterday and to-morrow forgot. ”

“ Vauters to touch again the loosened cords of her voice. All of a sudden a sign of life appears, a movement of curiosity, just as it was a little while ago when the small Mlle. Bachellery made her entrance. It is the tabor-player Valmajour, the apparition of that proud peasant, his soft felt hat over one ear, his red belt around his waist and his plainsman’s jacket on one shoulder. It was an idea of Audiberte’s, an instinct in her natural feminine taste, to dress him in this way in order to give him greater effect in the midst of all the black coats. ”

“ It really needed a world of patience on Rosalie’s part and all the love of family inculcated in her by her parents to endure for two whole months the whims and tiresome caprices of this disordered imagination, always over-excited and as restless in mind as she was indolent in her big body. Seated [68] in the large vestibule, as cool as a Moorish court, but yet close and musty from the exclusion of air and sunshine, Rosalie, holding a bit of embroidery in her hands—for like a true Parisian she never could be idle—was obliged to listen for hours at a time to her surprising confidences. ”

“ Her other sorrow, her happiness as a woman all destroyed, was quite in the background; she thought of nothing except that horrible and inevitable thing which was approaching day by day. Was it the evening hour, that red and deepening sun which left all the garden in shadow and yet lingered on the panes of the house, or that mournful wind blowing high up which she could hear without feeling it? At that moment she felt a melancholy, an anguish which could not be expressed in words. Hortense! her Hortense! more than a sister for her, almost a daughter ... ”

“ From the card-table where she sat ranging the cards and markers Mme. Le Quesnoy, without turning round, gently interposed:
“Forgive, my child, forgive.”
“O yes, that is easy to say when one has a husband as upright and loyal as yours, when one never has known the suffocating effect of lies and treason, drawing their plots about one. He is a hypocrite, I tell you. He has his Chambéry morality and his morality of the Rue de Londres. His words and his acts are never in accord—two ways of speech, two faces—all the seductive and catlike nature of his race—in a word, the man of the South!” ”

“ Mamma, whom the noise of the hotel fatigues and who particularly fears lest I should dance too much in the drawing-room, had indulged the dream of hiring a little house in Arvillard, where there is plenty of choice at every door; on every story there are bills, which flutter among the potted plants between the fresh and tempting curtains. One asks oneself what on earth becomes of the inhabitants during the season; do they camp in bands on the surrounding mountains, or do they go and live in the hotel at fifty francs a day? ”

“ Without precisely having heard this speech from an august mouth, which was murmured in Numa’s ear in an alcove, the gentlemen round him saw very clearly their own fall coming behind that of their chief.
“Oh, women, women!” grunted the learned Béchut over his plate. M. de la Calmette with his thirty years of official life grew melancholy as he pondered over a retiring from office like unto Tircis, and below his breath the long-legged Lappara amused himself by frightening Rochemaure out of his wits:
“Viscount, we must look out for ourselves; we shall be decapitated before eight days are over!” ”

“ Suddenly the liveliness of the old fellow stopped short and his gesture, like that of a jumping-jack, was brought to a dead pause by the apparition before him of a Provençal head-dress trembling with rage.
“What are you doing here, father?”
Madame Mèfre raised her arms toward the sausages suspended from the ceiling:
“What! this is your young lady? And you have never told us about her! Well, how teeny-weeny she is! but a good girl, I’ll be bound. Take a seat Miss, do!” ”

“ But later, when everyday life sets in, during the monotony of days and nights passed beneath the same roof, that mist which constitutes love disappears; the veil is lifted; they begin to see each other, and, what is worse, to judge each other!
It was some time before the awakening came to these young people; at least with Rosalie the illusion lasted. Clear-sighted and clever on all other subjects, for a long while she remained blind to Numa’s faults and could not see how far in many ways she was his superior. ”

“ But was there not still a perfume of delicate beauty, a charming Italian coquetry pervading this landscape of the Alpilles, like the quiver of a lute or viol floating through the pure, still air?
Numa grew excited, forgetting that he had only his sister-in-law and old Ménicle’s blue cloak for audience, and, after a few commonplaces fit for local banquets and meetings of the Academy, broke forth into one of those ingenious and brilliant impromptus that proved him to be indeed the descendant of the light Provençal troubadours. ”

“ Particularly in Paris, the Sunday concerts and those given during Holy Week, and the numberless musical clubs, have aroused the public taste and made the works of the great masters known to all, making a musical education the fashion. But at bottom Paris is too full of life, too given over to intellect, really to love music, that absorbing goddess who holds you motionless without voice or thought in a floating web of harmony, and hypnotizes you like the ocean; in Paris the follies that are done in her name are like those committed by a fop for a mistress who is the fashion ”

“ In the falling shades of night and the steam of dampness which the rain threw up from the hurrying crowd, in this great jostling crowd the poor boy seemed so lost, exiled and overwhelmed by the tall, unfriendly buildings around him—he seemed so pitifully unlike the handsome Valmajour at the door of his mas, giving the rhythm to the locusts with his tabor, that Roumestan turned away his head and, for a few moments, a feeling of remorse threw a cloud over the radiant pathway of his triumph. ”

“ At one time, it is true, the appearance of Alice Bachellery on the stage wakes up and enlivens the audience; a struggling bunch of curious people assails each of the two doors of the hall in order to see the little diva in her short skirt on the platform, her mouth half open and her long lashes quivering as if with surprise at seeing all this multitude.
“Chaud! chaud! les p’tits pains d’ gruau!” hum the young club-men as they imitate the low-lived gesture that accompanies the end of her refrain. ”

“ He felt penetrated to the heart by a similar warmth as if the contact with this supple youthful form communicated some of its spring-like vitality to him. “Ah! how charming is youth!”
Instinctively he glanced at himself in the mirror; a mournfulness came over him that he had not felt for years. How changed things were, boun Diou! He had grown very stout from want of exercise, much sitting at his desk and the too constant use of his carriage; his complexion was injured by staying up late at night, his hair thin and grizzled at the temples ”

“ She sees him with her imagination, and especially in the light of your legends and inventions which she has not been able to put in the right focus. That is why this advertisement and grotesque coloring which enrage you fill me on the contrary with joy. I believe that her hero will appear so ridiculous to her that she will no longer dare to love him. If it were not for that, I hardly know what would become of us. Can you imagine the despair of my father; can you imagine yourself the brother-in-law of Valmajour?—oh, Numa, Numa! ”

“ This little creature, eight years old, who is not allowed to play with the other children and who looks down sadly from the balcony on the games of croquet and the riding-parties at the hotel, bores herself to death. They think that her blood is too blue for such common joys and prefer to keep her in the gloomy atmosphere of that dying mother, by the side of that father who shows his sick wife to the public with an impudent and worn-out face, or give the child over to the servants. ”

“ On her fine features, pale [391] and creased with fatigue and tears, one might see nevertheless something like a happy restfulness; yet one could read there the whole history of her existence throughout the last two months, her anxieties and tortures, her rupture with Numa, the death of her dear Hortense and at last the birth of the child, which swept everything else into insignificance.
When this great happiness really came to her she did not believe it possible; broken by so many blows, she did not believe herself capable of giving life to anything. ”

“ There, all alone, seated in the corner of a bench and with his pre-occupation strong upon him, infected by the melancholy of the hour and that distant music, he was mechanically stirring about with his umbrella the spots of fire with which the alley was strewn by the setting sun, when a slow shade passing across his sunlight made him raise his eyes. It was Bouchereau, the celebrated doctor, very pale and puffy, dragging his feet after him. They knew each other in the way that all Parisians at a certain height of society know each other. ”

“ In that little gray house the great orator first saw the light on the 15th of July, 1832; it was easy to draw more than one parallel between his narrow, classical talent and his education as a Catholic and a Legitimist, and that little house of needy citizens with a convent on one side and a seignorial residence on the other, and a provincial academy in front of it.
Roumestan was filled with emotion, as he always was over anything concerning himself. He had not visited this spot for perhaps thirty years; it needed the whim of this young girl to bring him here. ”

“ It is nothing to abandon oneself to a bed of torture with closed eyes and clenched teeth for many, many long hours, interrupted every five minutes by a terrible cry that tears and compels one; it is nothing to undergo one’s destiny as a victim all of whose happy moments must be dearly bought—if there is hope at the end of it all. But what horrible martyrdom in the final pain when, struck by a supreme disillusionment, the almost animal lamentations of the woman are mingled with the deeper sobs of deceived maternity! ”

“ Spick and span for the excursion, the gay little body of her had a pleasant fragrance of fresh toilet and new gown, very neat and trig in contrast with the sloppy state of the hotel bedroom, where the remainder of a late supper was to be seen on the table, higgledy-piggledy with poker chips, cards and candles—all this close to the tumbled bed and a big bath-tub full of that gleaming “little milk” of Arvillard, so fine for calming the nerves and making the skin of the ladies bathing there as smooth as satin. ”

“ Two or three pieces of work begun were hanging over the backs of the chairs and the open desk showed a windy scattering of note-paper with monograms. When you entered there was always a minute or two of trouble.
“O, it’s the wind,” said Hortense with a peal of laughter. “The wind knows I adore him; he must have come to see if I was at home.”
“They must have left the window open,” answered Rosalie quietly. “How can you live in such an interior? For my part I am not able to think if anything is out of place.” ”

“ She stopped short, suffocated by feeling, and then in a solemn accent:
“My daughter, all sorrows become softened and all wounds are capable of being cured. There is only one sorrow which is irreparable and that is the death of the person we love.”
In the failure of her agitated forces that followed these last words Rosalie felt the figure of her mother grow in grandeur by as much as her father had lost greatness in her eyes. ”

“ Now the newspapers could begin their jokes again—Roumestan and Valmajour the fifer for the Ministry; and, growing excited at the memory of these attacks, his big cheeks quivering with the anger hereditary in his family, with a fit of rage like those of Aunt Portal, more scaring in the solemn surroundings of an office where the personality of a man should disappear before the public situation, he screamed at the top of his voice:
“But for God’s sake get out of here, you wretched creature, get out of here! We have had enough of your shepherd’s fife!” ”

“ But to-day the two large drawing-rooms were humming and crowded to overflowing; new people were constantly arriving, friends to the remotest degree, even to the slightest acquaintanceship, people to whose faces it would have puzzled Rosalie to attach a name.
Dressed very simply in a gown of violet, most becoming to her slender figure and the whole harmonious personality of her being, she received every one alike with her gentle little smile, her manner somewhat haughty—her réfréjon, or “uppish” air, as Aunt Portal had once expressed it. ”

“ Numa’s success was paid for by costs and imprisonment. So from the ashes of many a play that has ruined manager and author one actor may snatch a reputation. [32] Old Sagnier, who had come to hear Numa plead, embraced his pupil before the assembled crowd. “Count yourself from this day on a great man, my dear Numa!” said he, and seemed surprised that he had hatched such a falcon’s egg. But the most surprised man was Numa himself, as with the echo of his own words still sounding in his ears he descended the broad railless staircase of the Palais de Justice, quite stunned, as if in a dream. ”

“ Then for the first time Roumestan perceived a stout woman in a velvet cloak and a much beplumed bonnet advancing toward him with regular reverences every three steps. Mme. Bachellery, the mother, had been a singer in a concert-garden. She had the Bordeaux accent, a little nose like her daughter’s sunk in a large face like a dish—one of those terrible mothers, who, in the company of their daughters, seem the hideous prophecy of what their beauty will come to! But Numa was not engaged in a philosophical study. ”

“ Though once well warned, Rosalie was much too honest and high-minded to spy jealously upon her husband, and although she was always anxious, never sought for proofs. Even at that moment, if Numa had had any idea of the influence this new fancy of his was to have upon his life, he would have hastened to ascend the stairs much more quickly than he had come down them; but our destiny delights to come to us in mask and domino, doubling the pleasure of the first meeting with the touch of mystery. ”

“ But Bompard was so well trained to his business of shadow that even at that time of night Numa found him ready to warm up and be indignant in sympathy with him and to express, with his magnificent head under the silken ends of a night scarf, the emotions of anger, irony or sorrow, according as the talk fell upon the false eyelashes of the artificial little girl, on her sixteen years, which certainly were equal to twenty-four, or on the immorality of a mother who could take part in such scandalous orgies. ”

“ Hidden away in his coach in order to escape ovations, Roumestan enjoyed immensely all this [374] jollity, pleased with the sight of these countenances all brown and hooked-nosed and alive with emotion and sarcasm, these big fellows with their smart air, these chatos as amber-colored as the long berries of the muscat grape, who as they grow older will turn into these crones, black and dried by the sun, who seem to scatter a dust as from the tomb every time they make one of their habitual gestures. ”

“ Not much!” said the Provençal girl indignantly.
Already they had arranged themselves in a half circle, like a crescent-shaped mass of seaweed, all the time whirling their rattles, which sounded very distinctly now, because the row made by the parlor skates was softened and for a moment the noise of the lobby was hushed in a close wall of heads leaning toward the stage, their eyes glaring [297] under every kind of head-dress in the world. The wretchedness which tore Hortense’s heart grew deeper when she heard coming, at first from afar and gradually increasing, the low sound of the tabor. ”