Delphi complete works of.., p.310
Delphi Complete Works of Alphonse Daudet (Illustrated), page 310
The special passages and scenes that linger in one’s memory and furnish evidence of Daudet’s minute care for detail work, are quite as numerous as could be expected. The scene in which Richard feels his jealousy flaming up once more on the first night of Lydie’s return is almost if not quite as strong as the somewhat similar scenes, with a different motif, in Zola’s Thérèse Raquin. The close of the chapter devoted to Lydie’s retirement near Quiberon, when the electric flash coincides with the report of the pistol with which she is trying to kill herself, and makes her “believe that it is eternity that is opening before her” is finely imaginative, even if it does smack of the sensational. But perhaps there is no more striking passage in the book, from an artistic point of view, than that in which the vile but acutely intelligent young Prince describes the character and fate of the forger, Borski. Strong, too, is the description of the interview between the paralytic Duke of Alcantara and the slayer of his depraved son, the sturdy, passionate gamekeeper Sautecœur.
It is impossible, in conclusion, to read a long story based on a passion so frequently treated as jealousy, without being reminded occasionally of other writers. There is here no question of a French rival to Othello, for Daudet, through the mouth of one of his characters, casts a doubt upon the Moor’s being a really jealous man which is strikingly like a passage in a forgotten novel of William Gilmore Simms — an author of whose existence Daudet was in all probability not aware. Whether he thought of Thérèse Raquin when he wrote the scene in the bedroom of the Fénigans and when he described the paralytic Duke watching the guilty lovers, is a question it would be hard to settle. For literary indebtedness is not established so easily as some critics imagine. For example, who is to determine whether or not Daudet thought of the Ephesian Matron when he wrote his description of the Prince’s adventure with the widow Nansen? He may have thought of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary time and again while writing his novel, just as he makes his reader think of it, and yet he may have had no suspicion that any one would accuse him of poaching on the elder novelist’s domain. So, too, the magistrate Delcrous is as plainly a figure borrowed from Balzac’s crowded gallery, as Napoléon Mérivet resembles one borrowed from that of Dickens, whom Daudet seems to have known little of; yet he would be an unwary critic who should on any such score accuse Daudet of being wanting in originality. Even the influence of Byron’s Don Juan upon the conception and development of the character of that youthful debauchee, the Prince of Olmütz, while hardly a matter of doubt, especially when we compare the details of the two shipwrecks undergone by the youths, may have been very indirect and unperceived by Daudet. It is not even certain W. P. TRENT. that he remembered that he was teaching the same lesson that Balzac had taught in Honorine. For after all, Daudet, in spite of his methodical notebooks, was a spontaneous genius whose industry was, like that of the bee, ever on the wing to rifle sweets from any attractive flower. Sometimes his flowers grew upon very unpleasant soil, but it was always pure, clear honey that he finally gave us.
THE LITTLE PARISH CHURCH.
CONJUGAL MANNERS.
The jealous man knows no peace by night or day.
OLD TEXT.
I.
RICHARD FÉNIGAN, AN enthusiastic hunter and fisherman of Seine-et-Oise, who lived in the country the year round with his mother and his young wife, had just drawn his nets in that stretch of the Seine, studded with green islets, in which he had taken a lease of the right of fishing, between the locks of Évry and Athis. On that scorching, sultry July morning, beneath a sun of molten metal which made the whole sky gleam like silver, the river steamed, silent and unruffled, without even the twittering as of a well-stocked aviary which the buntings and linnets and bank-swallows usually make in the bushes, while on the other hand the hot vapor intensified the pungent odor of the water plants, and the insipid smell of the cantharides clinging in emerald patches to the ash-trees. Fénigan himself, a robust fellow of thirty-five, with ruddy complexion and thick brown beard, felt the debilitating effect of the atmosphere; and when he approached the little cove where his fish-nets lay spread like white smoke on the pale green shore, beyond the moored boats, he remained for a few moments exhausted in the bottom of the boat, drowsing in his green canvas clothes, which were stained and black with mud. A bell rang on the hill on that side of the Seine.
“Did you hear, Chuchin?”
Chuchin, the keeper of the preserve, who was half out of sight in the cuddy, counting the pike and tench and eels, raised his tanned face, more wrinkled than the river by an east wind:
“That comes from the Château, for sure.”
“But they’re not ringing for breakfast. It is barely eleven o’clock.”
“A visitor; perhaps some one from Grosbourg. I just saw their victoria returning over the bridge.”
The bell rang again in the distance, sounding loud and shrill in the deathlike torpor of the countryside.
“Put everything in order, old Chuchin. I will go up and see.”
With the tranquil gait due to his life in the country, Richard followed the towing-path as far as the avenue of poplars leading up a sharp incline to the Corbeil road, along which lay the little village of Uzelles and the estate of that name. As he walked, he thought aloud, puzzled by that alarm-bell, but without any presentiment of evil. A visit from Grosbourg, — that was hardly probable. Who could have come? The general was taking the waters in the Tyrol with the duchess; the son at Stanislas, grinding for his examinations at Saint-Cyr, which were close at hand. More probably some drama of the servants’ quarters or the poultry-yard, necessitating the master’s presence. Or else a scene between his mother and his wife. But no, that had been at an end for some years, that horrible private war which had’ ruined the early years of their married life. What could it be, then?
An obsequious and cat-like “Good-morning, Monsieur Richard,” from the other side of the road, roused him from his reflections. There were four or five persons leaning against a great poplar, — Robin the road-mender, Roger the postman, standing by his velocipede which he held by the handle, a laundress seated on the shafts of her heavy barrow filled with dripping linen, all listening, open-eyed and open-mouthed, to the story M. Alexandre was telling them. M. Alexandre was a former maître-d’hôtel at Grosbourg, tall, clean-shaven, faultlessly attired in a complete suit of white flannel, with a black bamboo fishing-rod bound with silver. What was that gossip, abruptly interrupted by Fénigan’s arrival? Why that suggestion of irony in the salutation of the retired flunkey, who was usually so servilely respectful? Later, the most trivial details of that morning will recur to his mind with pitiless accuracy; he will find an explanation for all these incidents, which now, having no significance, hardly attract his notice.
In front of the church, white as a new tomb, on the edge of the dusty road, some one else called him — old Mérivet in a tall hat and long gray blouse, with a brush in one hand and a pot of black paint in the other, busily engaged in touching up, as he said, the inscription on his front door.
“Just look, neighbor; that can be read a league away now.”
He stood aside so that his neighbor could admire the newly painted lines on the rough-cast wall at the right of the main doorway:
NAPOLÉON MÉRIVET,
CHEVALIER OF THE ORDER OF SAINT-GRÉGOIRE-LE-GRAND,
BUILT THIS CHURCH IN MEMORY OF HIS WIFE IRENE AND
PRESENTED IT TO THE VILLAGE OF UZELLES.
That epigraph summarized a domestic drama of which no one in the province had a very clear idea. They knew only that M. Mérivet, on the death of his wife, whom he loved insanely, had built the church opposite his own property, and that he took care of it himself, with his cook for beadle and his valet for sacristan, taking the greatest pride in seeing it full of people on Sunday, when the vicar of Draveil, in whose jurisdiction Uzelles lay, came at nine o’clock to say a short mass. It was in connection with that Sunday service that he had stopped Fénigan as he passed, to complain of the people at the Château. Why on earth should the ladies go to hear mass at Draveil, or at the orphanage at Soisy, when right at their very gates —
“It’s too bad, neighbor, much too bad,” insisted the little old fellow dipping his brush in the paint; “neither of those churches is equal to mine. My church brings luck. If you had known her under whose patronage I have placed it, if you knew what my Irene’s nature was! The Republic writes on its monuments: — Liberty, Equality, Fraternity; on the pediment of this one I might well write: Pity, Charity, Forgiveness. They call us the Little Parish Church — the Good Parish Church would be a more suitable name; for all married people, if they come here to pray, assure the happiness of their households.”
Richard made excuses for himself and for the ladies: the very proximity of the church was the main obstacle to their exhibiting their goodwill. They went out so seldom; the Sunday mass at Draveil or the orphanage gave them an opportunity to take the air, to exercise the horses, which were really too fat. But he would mention it to his mother, and before long Mesdames Fénigan would have seats in the Good Church. That last phrase made him smile. He was thinking of the name commonly bestowed in the neighborhood on Père Mérivet’s church, a name by no means adapted to attract husbands, — when the bell rang the third time, a hurried and violent peal, and he started forward more rapidly than before.
The Uzelles estate, on the outskirts of the village, consisted of two buildings: the Château, of recent construction, with slated roof, verandah and balconies, occupied by Madame Fénigan the mother, and separated by a long hedgerow from the Pavilion, an old structure of the last century, where the young couple lived. A small gate in the wall gave ingress and egress to that part of the estate. It was from that gate that Rosine Chuchin, the keeper’s daughter, who was in the Fénigans’ service, stood with her hands over her eyes watching the road, dazzlingly bright with a reflected glare, and cried to Richard in the distance:
“Is not Madame with you, Monsieur?”
Indeed it often happened that Richard took his wife with him on the river when he went to look at his nets in the morning. She loved to plunge her arms up to the shoulder in the cool water, she loved the surprises awaiting them in the heavy net which they pulled on board, the restless, gleaming silver in its depths. But that morning Lydie was tired and answered all her husband’s urging with a sleepy little grunt; a delicious sight as she lay, pink and cool, on her pillow, the light of her blue-gray, pearl-gray eyes stealing out between her drooping lashes. For an instant Richard stood in the middle of the road, gloating over the memory of that amorous husband’s vision, while the lady’s maid repeated in consternation:
“Is not Madame with you, Monsieur?”
“No, why do you ask?”
“Why, Monsieur, because Madame has not been seen since this morning.”
“Not been seen! What nonsense!”
He had the strength to ascend the two steps leading to the little gate, but sank at once on the stone bench at the beginning of the hedgerow. His indisposition of the morning, the dazed feeling that had seized him on the river, returned with greater violence. Unable to speak or move, he listened to the buzzing of Rosine’s chatter, hardly understanding it. They had searched everywhere, — the park, the kitchen-garden, the old building on the bank of the river; at last, just a moment ago, Père Georges, the old tramp, returning from a stroll in the forest, had informed the gardener that one of the gates opening into the wood was open, and handed him a note for the elder Mme. Fénigan. “However, here comes Mme. Fénigan herself. Perhaps she has some news.”
Richard’s mother, a haughty, massive creature, always bare-headed, her black hair brushed, or rather drawn flat, was walking along the hedgerow, stirring at every step the patches of bright light with which the shaded ground was dotted. From her excited gait one felt that she had some information, and was in a rage. Richard tried to rise, to go to meet her; but he was powerless to leave his bench, and could only say with anguish in his eyes and the voice he had had when he was a little child:
“Lydie? Where is Lydie, mamma?”
Brutally, almost triumphantly, the mother replied:
“Your wife has gone, my child, and it’s the only favor she ever did us.”
“Gone!”
“And not alone, as you may imagine. But guess with whom — no, guess.”
Instead of guessing, he groaned feebly, trembled convulsively from head to foot, then fell back on the bench, purple in the face, his hands touching the gravel of the path.
II.
THE PRINCE’S JOURNAL.
GROSBOURG, April 6, 1886.
THIS morning, my dear Vallongue, and the mornings that come after, my seat by your side on the preparatory benches at Stanislas will be vacant. It is all over, I renounce Saint-Cyr and the glory in arms with which our family seems to me to be sufficiently provided. From my grandfather, Charles Dauvergne, who was made marshal, Duc d’ Alcantara and Prince d’Olmütz by the First Empire, to my poor devil of a father, Alexis Dauvergne, general commanding the Third Corps, stricken with paralysis at forty-seven, my most illustrious ancestors have left me nothing to aspire to. The Russian bowl, in the centre of our large salon on Rue de Chanaleilles, in which we put all the family decorations to pickle, is full to the brim. So what is there for me to do? Nothing. That is a subject upon which I feel that my decision is unalterable. At eighteen years of age, an only son, heir to a great name, to papa’s great fortune and doubtless to his deplorable health as well, wisdom counsels me to enjoy as speedily as possible whatever pleasure existence offers me. So I am beginning.
Of the two mysterious letters which you saw me writing the other morning during the trigonometry lecture, one was addressed to Captain Nuitt of Cardiff, and appointed a meeting with him in the little harbor of Cassis, Bouches-du-Rhône, where he is to have the yacht Red, White and Blue, with her crew of eight men, cooks and steward, all for ten thousand francs a month. The second notified the person who is to accompany me on my cruise; for you will hardly suppose that I propose to set sail alone. The lady is a stranger to you; at least she does not figure in the cravat drawer in which we have often sorted out together the letters and photographs of my favorites. I may tell you that she is married; our neighbor, opposite Grosbourg, on the other, side of the Seine. Barely thirty years old, with long, light eyes always lowered, which, when she opens them, light up her face as with the reflection of a pearl necklace; an air of reserve, large white pianist’s hands in old-fashioned mitts. No children, a husband who adores her, and the esteem of the whole province. I had only to write to her: “Come;” she answered: “I fly,” and behold her leaving everything, husband, family, home, to take ship with a companion so young and unreliable as your friend. Haven’t I told you that women are rare birds?
For my part I care no more for this one than another; I love all the ladies too well to prefer any one. As soon as I have tasted one of the delicious melting sweetmeats, I feel like spitting it out and rummaging the box in the hope of finding at last that super-exquisite flavor which I seek without finding. Wish me better luck this time, my dear Vallongue.
When you receive this letter I shall be under way - with all sail set, and the maledictions of my parents will ascend to heaven. So much the worse for them! they are responsible for what is happening. Instead of boxing me up, first at Grosbourg, then at Stanislas, if they had left me with a free hand in - Paris, I most assuredly should not have been seized with this sudden itching for running away. But my mother the duchess, who doesn’t object to being left alone away from her men as she calls us, considered it a very ingenious scheme to force me to work and be virtuous by making me the general’s nurse. She did not reflect that solitude is a bad adviser, and that, by dint of staring forever at the hillside of Uzelles with its little white stone church and its steeple in which all the ringdoves in the forest nest, I might perhaps fall into melancholy reflections and feel the need of space. The general finally drove me to flight by shutting me up at Stanislas. I will tell you some day about the drama that was enacted by that illustrious invalid and myself in the privacy of the château, during my residence there.
Ah, Vallongue, how I ruminated over affairs in general, all by myself in the evening in that vast Grosbourg, strolling through the park or along the terrace on the river-bank! How squarely I looked life in the face, and other people, and myself, the most complicated of all! The result of these examinations was the discovery that I, at eighteen years of age, am old and weary, utterly without ambition, loving nothing, interested in nothing, always looking forward to the end of any pleasure, whatever it may be. Why am I thus? Whence comes this precocious experience, this distaste for everything, and these wrinkles which I feel even at the ends of my fingers? Can they be common to my generation, to those of us who have been called “children of the conquest,” because we were born about the time of the war and the invasion, or are they simply peculiar to my family, to the old soil exhausted by too many abundant crops, and demanding now to lie fallow for a long while. Jour de Dieu! I will undertake to see that it lies fallow.
And first of all, women and boating being in my eyes the only desirable forms of distraction, I offer them both to myself, and in abundance. Hitherto, as lover and as sailor, I have fired only experimental broadsides; this time I am off for a long cruise, and if my confidences interest you, my dear Wilkie, I propose to keep for your benefit a perfectly truthful journal or logbook of the travels and adventures of a soul which the general-duke, my father, has long proclaimed to be as obscure and perilous as a battle at night.
III.
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