Delphi complete works of.., p.417
Delphi Complete Works of Alphonse Daudet (Illustrated), page 417
He lived alone, outside the village, in the midst of the forest.
He was supposed to have no friends. The curiosity of the village had been long perplexed by the solitude and silence of the stranger who had come from the heart of the Nièvre to set up his block apart from the others.
For six years he had worked in all weathers, without giving himself a holiday, like a condemned man, although he was known to have much property, made good bargains, and went often to consult a notary upon investing his savings.
One day he had told the curé he was a widower.
Nothing more was known of him.
When Maugendre saw the children, he would put down his saw, and leave his work, in order to talk with them.
He took a liking to Victor, and taught him to whittle the hulls of boats out of chips of wood.
Once he said to him:
“You remind me of a child I lost.”
And as if he feared he had told too much, he added: “Oh, it was long, long ago!”
Another time he said to Father Louveau:
“When you are tired of Victor, give him to me. I have no heirs, I will make sacrifices, and send him to school in town. He will pass the examinations and enter the school of Forestry.”
But Francois still felt the glow of his good deed. He refused, and Maugendre waited patiently till the progressive increase of the Louveau family or some money-trouble should disgust the sailor with having adopted the child.
It seemed as if chance would fulfil his wishes.
In short, one might have believed that bad luck had embarked on the Belle Nivernaise at the same time with Victor.
From that moment everything went amiss.
The wood did not sell well.
The Crew constantly broke some limb the day before the unloading of the cargo.
At last, one fine day, just as they were to set out for Paris, Mother Louveau fell ill.
Francois lost his head in the midst of the children’s shrieks.
He mixed up the medicines and the soup.
He made the sick woman so impatient by his stupidity that he gave up taking care of her, and left Victor in charge.
For the first time in his life, the sailor bought his wood himself.
In vain he wound his rope round the trees, and took the same measure thirty-six times, one after the other, he always made a mistake in the calculation, — you know, the famous calculation:
“I multiply and multiply—”
It was Mother Louveau who understood that.
He made mistakes in executing his order, started for Paris in great anxiety, and fell in with a dishonest customer, who profited by the circumstances to cheat him.
He returned to the boat with a very heavy heart, sat down at the foot of the bed, and said in a disconsolate voice:
“My poor wife, try to get well, or we shall be ruined.”
Mother Louveau recovered slowly. She struggled against their ill-fortune and did wonders to make both ends meet.
If they had had the means to buy a new boat, they might have set up their business again, but they had spent all their savings in the days of sickness, and their profits went in stopping the holes of the Belle Nivernaise, that was completely worn out.
Victor became a heavy burden to them.
He was no longer the child of four that they dressed in a blouse and fed without extra expense.
He was twelve, now, and ate like a man, although he had remained thin and nervous, and could not as yet be trusted to handle the boat-hook, — when the Crew broke some part of himself.
Everything was going from bad to worse. They had had great difficulty on their last voyage in ascending the Seine as far as Clamecy.
The Belle Nivernaise leaked all over; the temporary mending did no good; they ought to have had the whole hull repaired or rather have put the boat aside and replaced it.
Once in March, the evening before the day they were to make ready for Paris, as Louveau, quite careworn, was taking leave of Maugendre, after paying his bill for wood, the carpenter invited him to come and have a drink with him at his house.
“I have something to say to you, François.”
They entered the cabin.
Maugendre filled two glasses, and they sat down to table, one opposite the other.
“I have not always been alone in the world as you see me now. I remember the time when I had all a man needs to be happy; a little property and a wife who loved me. I have lost all. Through my own fault.”
The carpenter interrupted himself; the confession sticking in his throat choked him.
“I have never been a bad man, Francois. But I had one vice—”
“What, you?”
“I have it still. I love money above everything. That is what caused my misfortunes.”
“How was that, poor Maugendre?”
“I will tell you. Soon after we were married, when our child was born, the idea came to me of sending my wife to Paris, to find a place as nurse. That brings in a great deal, when the husband is an orderly man and knows how to do his own housekeeping. My wife did not want to separate herself from her baby. She said to me:
‘We are really making enough money as it is. The other money would be ill come by. It would be of no profit to us. Leave such resources to poor families already over-burdened with children, and spare me the sorrow of leaving you.’”
“I would not listen to her, Louveau, and I forced her to go.”
“Well?”
“Well, when my wife found a place she gave her child to an old woman to take it back to her country again. She went with them to the railway-station. Nothing was ever heard of them after that.”
“And your wife, poor Maugendre?”
“When she heard the news, it made her milk turn. She died.”
They were both silent, Louveau moved by what he had just heard, and Maugendre overcome by his recollections.
It was the carpenter who spoke first:
“To punish myself, I condemned myself to the existence I now lead. I have lived for twelve years apart from all. I can stand it no longer. I am afraid of dying alone. If you pity me, you will give me Victor, to take the place of the child I lost.”
Louveau was much embarrassed.
Victor was a great expense to them. But if they let him go now, at the time he was soon to be able to make himself useful, all the sacrifices they had made in bringing him up would be thrown away.
Maugendre guessed what he was thinking of.
“Of course, François, if you give him to me, I will repay you what you have spent for him.
“It will be a good thing, too, for the boy. I can never see boys from the School of Forestry in the woods without thinking: ‘I might have made my boy into a young gentleman like these!’ Victor is industrious, and I like him. You know very well that I shall treat him like my own son. Come, is it agreed?”
This was discussed in the cabin of the Belle-Nivernaise, after the children had gone to bed.
The woman of sense tried to argue.
“You see, François, we have done all we could for that child. God knows we should like to keep him!
“But, since an opportunity is offered us of parting from him without making him unhappy, we must try to be brave.”
Involuntarily, their eyes turned toward the bed, where Victor and Mimile were sleeping the calm and untroubled sleep of childhood.
“Poor little boy!” said Francois in a low voice.
They heard the river rippling along against the sides of the boat, and from time to time, the whistle of the train rending the night.
Mother Louveau burst into sobs: “God have mercy upon us, Francois; I will keep him.”
CHAPTER IV.
LIFE IS HARD.
VICTOR WAS ABOUT fifteen.
The little pale boy had suddenly become a strong fellow, with broad shoulders and quiet manners.
He had been travelling so long on the Belle-Nivernaise that he began to know the way like an old sailor, naming the shallows, sniffing out the deep places, and passing from the handling of the boathook to that of the rudder.
He wore a red sash and his blouse hanging loose round the waist.
When Father Louveau let him take the tiller, Clara, who was growing a big girl, came to knit beside him, charmed with his calm face and vigorous movements.
This time, the journey from Corbigny to Paris had been a hard one.
Swollen by the autumnal rains, the Seine had broken its barriers, and rushed toward the sea like an escaped wild beast.
The anxious sailors were hastening the unlading of their cargoes, for the stream was already flowing on a level with the quays, and the despatches, sent every hour by the lock-keepers’ messengers, brought bad news.
It was said that the tributaries were bursting the dikes, and overflowing the country, and the river was rising, rising.
The wharves were overrun by a busy throng, a swarm of men, carts and horses; above, the steam-cranes were brandishing their great arms.
The wine-market was already cleared.
The cases of sugar were being carried away in trucks.
The tugs left their moorings; the wharves were emptied; and the file of carts, mounting the slope of the embankment, fled from the flood like an army on the march.
The Louveaus, who had been delayed by the roughness of the waters, and the intermission of work caused by moonless nights, despaired of getting their wood off in time.
Everybody had lent a hand to the task, and they worked till very late in the evening, by the light of lanterns and the gas-jets on the quay.
At eleven o’clock all the cargo was piled up at the foot of the embankment.
As the cart of Dubac, the joiner, did not appear, they went to bed.
It was a terrible night, full of the clashing of chains, the creaking of planks, and the noise of boats hitting against one another.
The Belle-Nivernaise, strained by the shocks she received, groaned like a creature in pain.
There was no possibility of sleeping. Father Louveau, his wife, Victor and the Crew rose at dawn, leaving the children in their beds.
The Seine had risen still higher during the night.
Roughened with waves like the sea, it ran green under the low sky.
There was no sign of life on the quays.
But the ruins of roofs and fences were borne along on the stream of the current.
Beyond the bridges could be seen the silhouette of Notre-Dame, blotted in the fog.
There was not a minute to lose, for the river had already risen above the parapets of the wharf, and the little waves, licking the ends of the logs, had pulled down the piles of wood.
Up to their knees in water, François, Mother Louveau and Dubac loaded the cart.
Suddenly a loud noise close to them alarmed them.
A barge, laden with mill-stones, breaking its chain, had come and foundered against the quay, split from stem to stern.
There was a horrible tearing, followed by an ebb of the current.
And, as they stood motionless, terrified by the shipwreck, they heard a clamor behind them.
Unchained by the shock, the Belle-Nivernaise was floating loose from the shore.
Mother Louveau uttered a cry:
“My children!”
Victor had already rushed into the cabin.
He reappeared on deck, the youngest child in his arms.
Clara and Mimile followed him, and all stretched out their hands toward the quay.
“Take them!”
“A boat!”
“A rope!”
“What shall we do?”
It was impossible to save them all by swimming. And the Crew ran from one side to the other, dazed and helpless.
It was necessary to bring up the boat alongside at any price.
In face of the bewildered man and the sobbing children, Victor took command, and felt himself possessed of the energy needed to save them.
He gave orders:
“Quick! Throw a rope!”
“Hurry!”
“Catch it!”
They tried it three times over.
But the Belle-Nivernaise, was already too far away, and the rope fell into the water.
Then Victor ran to the helm, and they heard him call:
“Don’t be frightened! I take charge!”
In fact, with a vigorous turn of the tiller, he straightened the boat, which, caught broadside, was floating to leeward.
On the quay, Louveau lost his head.
He wanted to throw himself into the water to reach his children, but Dubac had seized him by the middle, while Mother Louveau covered her face so as not to see.
Now, the Belle-Nivernaise kept the current, and shot with the swiftness of a tug toward the Bridge of Austerlitz.
Quietly leaning against the tiller, Victor steered, encouraged the children and told the Crew what to do.
He was sure of getting through, for he had aimed straight for the red flag, hung in the middle of the main arch to show the way to sailors.
But, O God! would there be space enough to pass under?
He saw the bridge approaching very rapidly.
“To your boat-hook, Crew! And you, Clara, hold the children tight.”
He clung fast to the rudder.
Already he felt the wind from the arch in his hair.
They had reached it.
Carried on by its impetus, the Belle-Nivernaise disappeared under the archway, with a terrific noise, but not too quickly for the crowd collected on the Bridge of Austerlitz to see the sailor with the wooden leg miss his stroke with the boat-hook, and fall on his face, while the boy at the helm called:
“A grappling-hook! A grappling hook!”
The Belle-Nivernaise was under the bridge.
In the shadow of the arch, Victor distinguished clearly the enormous rings fixed in the masonry of the piers, the joinings of the vault above his head, and in perspective, the series of the other bridges framing in bits of sky.
Then it was like the widening of horizon and the dazzling of the outer-light to one coming from a cellar, a noise of hurrahs above his head, and the vision of the cathedral anchored upon the stream like a frigate.
The boat stopped short.
Some men on the bridge had succeeded in hurling a hook that stuck in the planking of the boat.
Victor ran to the mooring cable and made the rope fast to it.
The Belle-Nivernaise was seen to put about, to slue round the rope, and, yielding to the new power that impelled it, to bring up slowly alongside the Quay of La Tournelle, with its crew of children and its fifteen-year-old captain.
Oh, what joy that evening, to find themselves all there, round the smoking stew in the cabin of the boat — this time well moored and anchored!
The little hero has the place of honour, the captain’s place.
They had not much appetite after the morning’s violent emotion, but their hearts expanded after the anguish they had passed through.
They breathed freely.
The parents winked to each other across the table, as if to say:
“Just suppose we had carried him back to the commissary?”
And Father Louveau smiled from ear to ear, as his moist eyes strayed over his brood.
One would have supposed that good luck had happened to them, that the Belle-Nivernaise had no more holes in her sides, or that they had won a big prize in the lottery.
The sailor overwhelmed Victor with playful blows.
It was his way of showing his affection!
“Victor, you rascal! How you put that helm about! Did you see that, Crew? I could not have done better myself; ha! ha! — I, the captain!”
The good man spent two weeks in uttering exclamations and running round the quays to tell about the turn of the tiller:
“You understand. The boat was adrift. Then he came. There!”
And he made a gesture to indicate the movement.
All this time the Seine was subsiding, and the day of departure approached.
One morning, as Victor and Louveau were pumping on the deck, the postman brought a letter.
It bore a blue seal on the back. The sailor opened the letter with a hand that trembled slightly, and as he was not much cleverer at reading than at arithmetic, he said to Victor:
“Read that to me.”
And Victor read:
POUCE STATION. TWELFTH WARD.
Monsieur Louveau (François), captain, is requested to come as soon as possible to see the commissary of the police.
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
Louveau was out all day.
When he came back in the evening, all his cheerfulness had disappeared.
He was sombre, morose, and silent.
Mother Louveau could not understand it, and when the children went up to play on deck, she asked:
“What is it?”
“Something is troubling me.”
“Because of your cargo?”
“No, because of Victor.”
And he related his visit to the commissary.
“You remember that woman that deserted him? She was not his mother.”
“Oh, pooh!”
“She had stolen him.”
“How do they know?”
“She herself confessed it on her deathbed to the commissary.”
“Then they told you the name of his parents?” Louveau shuddered.
“Why do you think they told me?”
“Oh, because they sent for you!”
François flew into a rage.
“If I knew, do you think I should tell you!”
He was quite flushed with anger, and went out slamming the door.
Mother Louveau was amazed.
“What is the matter with him?”
Yes, what was the matter with François?
From that day on, his manners, his speech, his character, all were changed.
He did not eat, he slept badly, he talked in his sleep.
He answered his wife!
He quarrelled with the Crew, and abused everybody, Victor more than all the rest.
When Mother Louveau, astonished, asked him what was the matter, he answered roughly:
“Nothing is the matter with me. Do I look as if anything were the matter with me? You are all in a conspiracy against me.”
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