Numa Roumestan

The little Bachellery girl, clad in a fantastic cloak with a blue silk capuchon, to go with a little toque wound round with a great big veil, sang before her glass while finishing the buttoning of her gloves; her clear, sharp voice had risen that morning in full limpidity and in the best of humors. 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. Downstairs the basket-wagon was waiting, the horses shaking their bells and a full escort of youths caracoling in front of the porch.

Just as the toilet was finished a knock came at the door.

“Come in!”

Roumestan came in, much excited, and held out to her a large envelope:

“There, Mlle—O! read—read—”

It was her engagement at the opera for five years, with all the appointments she had wished, with the right of having her name printed big, and everything. When she had read it, article by article, coldly and with perfect poise, down to the great coarse signature of Cadaillac, then and only then she took one step towards the Minister, and, raising her veil, which was drawn closely about her face to keep out the dust on the trip, standing very close to him, her rosy beak in the air:

“You are very good—I love you—”

Nothing more than that was needed to make the man of the public forget all the embarrassments which this engagement was going to cause him. He restrained himself, however, and remained stiff, cold and frowning like a crag.

“Now, I have kept my promise and I withdraw—I do not care to disarrange your picnic party—”

“My picnic? Oh, yes, that’s so—we’re going to Château Bayard.”

And then, casting both her arms around his neck, she said in a wheedling voice:

“You’ve got to come with us; yes—O, yes, I tell you.”

She brushed her long pencilled eyelashes across his cheek and even nibbled a little at his statuesque chin, but not very hard, with the ends of her little teeth.

“What! with those young people? Why, it is impossible. You cannot dream of it?”

“Those young people? Much do I care for those young people! I will just let them rip—Mamma will let them know—oh, they are used to it!—You hear, Mamma?”

“I’m going,” said Mme. Bachellery, whom one could see in the next chamber with her foot on a chair, trying to force over her red stockings a pair of cloth gaiters much too small for her. She made the Minister one of her famous courtesies from the Folies Bordelaises and hurried downstairs to send the young gentlemen flying.

“Keep a horse for Bompard; he will come with us,” cried the little girl after her; and Numa, touched by this attention, enjoyed the delicious pleasure of holding this pretty girl in his arms and hearing all that impertinent gang of young people walk off at a funeral pace with their ears drooping. Many a time had their jumpings and skippings caused his heart a lively time. One kiss applied for a long moment on a smile which promised everything—then she disengaged herself.

“Hurry up and dress yourself; I’m in haste to be on the way.”

What a buzz of curiosity through the hotel, what a movement behind the green blinds, when it was known that the Minister had joined the picnic at Château Bayard and that his big white waistcoat and the Panama hat shading his Roman face were seen displayed in the basket-wagon in front of the little singer! After all, just as Father Olivieri who had learned a lot during his voyages remarked, what harm was there in it, anyhow? Didn’t her mother accompany them, and Château Bayard, a historical monument, did it or did it not belong to the public buildings under Ministerial control? So let us not be so intolerant, great Heavens! especially in regard to men who give up their entire life to the defence of the right doctrines and our holy religion!

“Bompard is not coming—what’s the matter with him?” murmured Roumestan, impatient at having to wait there before the hotel exposed to all those plunging glances which volleyed upon him notwithstanding the canopy of the carriage. At a window in the first story an extraordinary something appeared, a something white and round and exotic, which spake in the voice of the former chieftain of Circassians, “Go on ahead, I’ll rejine you!”

Just as if they had only been waiting for the word, the two mules, low in shoulder but solid in hoof, got away shaking their travelling-bells, crossed the park in three jumps and whirled past the bathing establishment.

“Ware! ware!”

The frightened bathers and sedan-chairs hurried to one side; the bathing-maids, the big pockets of their aprons full of money and colored tickets, appeared at the entrance of the galleries; the massage men, as naked as Bedoweens under their woollen blankets, showed themselves up to the waist on the stairway of the furnaces; the blue shades of the inhalation halls were thrust aside; everybody wished to see the Minister and the diva pass.

But already they are far away, whirled at railway speed through the intersecting labyrinth of Arvillard’s little black streets, over the sharp cobblestones, close together and veined with sulphur and fire, out of which the carriage strikes sparks as it bounds along, shaking the low walls of the leprous-colored houses and causing heads to appear at the windows decked with placards. At the thresholds of the shops where they sell iron-pointed canes, parasols, climbing-irons, chalk stones, minerals, crystals and other catch-penny things for bathers appear heads which bow and brows that uncover at the sight of the Minister. The very people affected with goitre recognize him and salute with their foolish and raucous cries the grand master of the University of France, while the good ladies seated with him proudly draw themselves up stiff and most worshipful opposite, feeling well the honor which is being done them. They only lounge at their ease when they are quite clear of the village lands, on the fine turnpike toward Pontcharra, where the mules stop to blow at the foot of the tower of Le Truil, which Bompard had fixed upon as a trysting-place.

The minutes pass, but no Bompard! They know he is a good horseman because he has so often boasted of it; they are astonished and irritated—particularly Numa—who is impatient to get on down that even white road which seems absolutely without an end, and get farther into that day which seems to open up like a life full of hopes and adventures. Finally, from a cloud of dust out of which rises a frightened voice that pants out Ho! la! Ho! la! emerges the head of Bompard, covered by one of those pith helmets spread with white cloth, having a vague look of a life-boat, like those used by the British army in India, which the Provençal had brought along with the intention of dramatizing and making imposing his trip to the baths, having allowed his hatter to believe that he was off for Bombay or Calcutta.

“Come on, my dear boy!”

Bompard tosses his head with a tragical air. Evidently at his departure things had taken place; the Circassian must have been giving the people of the hotel a very queer idea of his powers of equilibrium, because his back and arms are soiled with large spots of dust.

“Wretched horse!” said he, bowing to the ladies, while the basket-wagon started once more, “wretched horse! but I have forced him to a walk!”

He had forced him so well to a walk that now the strange beast would not go ahead at all, prancing and turning about on one spot like a sick cat, notwithstanding all the efforts made by his rider. The carriage was already far away.

“Are you coming, Bompard?”

“Go on ahead, I’ll rejine you!” cried he once more in his finest Marseilles twang; then he made a despairing gesture and they saw him rushing off in the direction of Arvillard in a furious whirl of hoofs. Everybody thought: “He must have forgotten something,” and nobody thought about him further.

The turnpike curved about the hills, a broad highroad of France set with walnut-trees, having to the left forests of chestnut and pines growing on terraces and on the right tremendous slopes rolling down as far as one could see, down to the plain where villages appear crowded together in the hollows of the landscape. There were the vineyards, fields of wheat and corn, mulberries, almond-trees and dazzling carpets of Spanish broom, the seeds of which, exploding in the heat, kept up a constant popping as if the very soil were crackling and all on fire. One could readily suppose it were so, considering the heavy air and the furnace heat that did not seem to come from the sun—which was almost invisible, having retired behind a sort of haze—but appeared to emanate from burning vapors of the earth; it made the sight of Glayzin and its top, surmounted with snows which one might touch, as it seemed, with the end of one’s umbrella, look deliciously refreshing to the sight.

Roumestan could not remember ever to have seen a landscape to be compared with that one; no, not even in his dear Provence; and he could not imagine happiness more complete than his own. No anxiety, no remorse. His wife faithful and believing, the hope of a child, the prediction Bouchereau had uttered concerning Hortense, the ruinous effect which the appearance in the Journal Officiel of the decree as to Cadaillac would produce—none of these had any existence so far as he was concerned. His entire destiny was wrapt up in that beautiful girl whose eyes reflected his own, whose knees touched his, and who, beneath her blue veil turned to a rose-color by her blond flesh, sang to him while pressing his hand:

While they were rapidly whirling away in the breeze made by their motion, the turnpike, gradually becoming lonelier, widened out their horizons little by little, permitting them to see an immense plain in a semicircle with its lakes and villages and then mountains differing in shade according to their distance; it was Savoy beginning.

“O! how beautiful! O! how beautiful!” said the little singer; and he answered in a low voice: “How I do love you!”

At the last halt Bompard came up to them once more, but very piteously, on foot, dragging his horse after him by the bridle.

“This brute is most extraordinary,” said he without further explanation, and when the ladies asked him if he had fallen: “No—it’s my old wound which has opened again.”

Wounded! where and when? He had never spoken of it before. But with Bompard one had to expect any surprise. They made him get into the carriage; and with his very mild-mannered horse quietly fastened behind they set off toward Château Bayard, whose two pepper-box towers, wretchedly restored, could be seen on a high piece of ground.

A maid servant came to meet them, a quick-witted mountaineer’s woman in the service of an old priest formerly in charge of parishes in the neighborhood, who dwells in Château Bayard with the proviso that tourists may enter freely. When a visitor is announced the priest goes up to his bed-chamber in a very dignified way, unless indeed it is a question of personages of note; but the Minister, sly fellow, took good care not to give his title, so that it was in the guise of ordinary visitors that they were shown by the servant—with her phrases learned by heart and the canting tone of people of this sort—all that is left of the old manor of the chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, whilst the driver laid out breakfast under an arbor in the little garden.

“Here you have the antique chapel where our good chevalier morning and evening.... Ladies and gentlemen will kindly notice the thickness of the walls.”

But they didn’t notice anything at all. It was very dark and they stumbled against the broken bits of wall which were dimly lit from a loophole, the light of which fell through a hay-loft established above the beams of the ceiling. Numa, his little girl’s arm under his own, made some fun of the Chevalier Bayard and of “his worthy mother,” dame Hélène des Allemans. The odor of ancient things bored them to death, and actually, at one time, in order to try the echo of the vaulted ceiling in the kitchen, Mme. Bachellery started to sing the last ballad composed by her husband, but really a very naughty one—

and yet nobody was scandalized; quite the contrary.

But outside, when breakfast was served on a massive stone table, and after their first hunger had been appeased, the valley of the Graisivaudan, Les Bauges, the severe buttresses of the Grande-Chartreuse and the contrast made by that landscape full of tremendous lines with the little terrace grass-plot where this solitary old man dwelt—given up entirely to prayer, to his tulip-trees and to his bees—affected little by little their spirits with something sweet and grave which was akin to reflection. At dessert the Minister, opening his guide-book to refresh his memory, spoke about Bayard “and of his poor dame mother who did tenderly weep” on that day when the child, setting out for Chambéry to be page at the Court of the Duke of Savoy, caused his little bay nag to prance in front of the north gate, on that very place where the shadow of the great tower was lengthening itself, slender but majestic, like the phantom of the old vanished castle.

And Numa, exciting himself, read to them the fine sentiments of Madame Hélène to her son at the moment of his departure:

“Pierre, my friend, I recommend to thee that before everything else thou shalt love, fear and serve God without in any wise doing Him offence, if that be possible.”

Standing there on the terrace, sweeping off a gesture which carried as far as Chambéry:

“That is what should be said to children, that is what all parents, that is what all schoolmasters—”

He stopped short and struck his brow with his hand:

“My speech!—why, that is my speech!—I have it! splendid! the Château Bayard, a local legend—for fifteen days have I been looking for it—and here it is!”

“Why, it is pure Providence,” cried Mme. Bachellery, full of admiration, but thinking all the same that the breakfast was ending rather solemnly. “What a man! What a man!”

The little girl seemed also very much excited, but of this impression Roumestan took no heed; the orator was boiling in him, behind his brow and in his breast; so, completely absorbed with his idea:

“The fine thing,” said he, casting his eyes about him, “the fine thing would be to date the speech from Château Bayard—”

“O, if Mr. Lawyer should want a little corner in which to write—”

“Why, yes, only to jot down a few notes. You’ll excuse me, ladies, just for the time that will do to drink your coffee, and I will be back. It’s merely to be able to put the date to my speech without telling a lie.”

The servant placed him in a little room on the ground floor, most ancient in appearance, whose domelike, vaulted ceiling still carries traces of gilding; an ancient room which they pretend was Bayard’s oratory, just as they present to you as his bedroom the big hall to one side in which an enormous peasant’s bed, with a canopy and dark blue curtains, is set up.

It was very nice to write between those thick walls into which the heavy atmosphere of the day could not penetrate, behind that half-open shutter which threw a pencil of light across the page and allowed the perfumes from the little garden to enter. At first the orator’s pen was not quick enough to keep pace with the flow of his ideas; he poured out his phrases headlong, in a mass—well worn but eloquent phrases of a Provençal lawyer, filled with a hidden heat and the sputtering of sparks here and there, like the outflow of molten metal. Suddenly he stopped, his head emptied of words or rendered heavy by the fatigue of the journey and the weight of the breakfast. Then he marched up and down from the oratory to the bedroom, talking in a high voice, lashing himself, listening to his footsteps under the sonorous vaults as if they were those of some illustrious revenant, and then he set himself down again without the thoughts to put down a line. Everything swam about him, the walls brilliantly white-washed and that pencil of sunlight which seemed to hypnotize him. He heard the noise of plates and laughter in the garden, far, far away, and presently, with his nose on the paper, he had fallen fast asleep.

A tremendous thunder-clap made him start to his feet. How long had he been there? His head a little confused, he stepped out into the deserted and motionless garden. The fragrance of the tulip-trees made the air heavy. Under the vacant arbor wasps were heavily flying about the heeltaps in the champagne glasses and the bits of sugar left in the cups, which the mountaineer’s woman was hurriedly clearing off, seized by the nervous fear of an animal at the approach of a thunder-storm and making the sign of the cross each time the lightning flashed. She informed Numa that the young lady had found herself with a bad headache after breakfast and so she had taken her to Bayard’s chamber to sleep a little, closing the door “vary gently” in order not to bother the gentleman at his work. The two others, the fat lady and the man with the white hat, had gone down toward the valley and without any doubt they would catch it, because there was going to be a terrible ... “just look!”

In the direction she indicated, on the choppy crest of Les Bauges and the chalky peaks of the Grande-Chartreuse, which were enveloped in lightning flashes like some mysterious Mount Sinai, the sky was darkened by an enormous blot of ink that grew larger every instant, under which the whole valley took on an extraordinary luminous value, like the light from a white and oblique reflector, according as this sombre and growling threat continued to advance. All the valley shared in the change, the reflux of wind in the tops of the green trees, the golden masses of grain, the highways indicated by feathery clouds of white dust raised by the wind and the silver surface of the river Isère. In the far distance Roumestan perceived the canvas pith helmet of Bompard, which shone like a lighthouse reflector.

He went in again but could not take hold of his work. For the moment sleep no longer paralyzed his pen; on the contrary he felt himself strangely excited by the presence of Alice Bachellery in the next chamber. By the way, was she still there? He opened the door a little and did not dare to shut it again for fear of disturbing the charming slumber of the singer, who had thrown herself with loosened clothes on the bed in a troubling disorder of tumbled hair, open corset and white, half-seen curves.

“Come, come, Numa, beware! it is the bedroom of Bayard; what the deuce!”

Positively he seized himself by the collar like a malefactor, dragged himself back and forcibly seated himself at the table. He put his head between his hands, closing his eyes and his ears in order to absorb himself completely in the last phrase, which he repeated in a low voice:

“Yes, gentlemen, the sublime advice of the mother of Bayard, which has come down to us in that mellifluous tongue of the middle ages—would that the University of France....”

The storm was so heavy and depleting, like the shade of certain trees in the tropics, it took away his nerve. His head was swimming, intoxicated by the exquisite perfumes given forth by the bitter flowers of the tulip-trees or else by that armful of blond hair scattered over the bed not far off. Wretched Minister! It was all very well to cling to his speech and to invoke the aid of the chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, public instruction, religious culture, the rector of Chambéry—nothing was of any use. He had to return into Bayard’s bedchamber, and this time so close to the sleeping girl that he could hear her gentle breathing and touch with his hand the tassel stuff of the curtains which framed this provoking slumber, this mother-of-pearl flesh with the shadows and the rosy undercolor of a naughty drawing in red chalk by Fragonard.

But even there, on the brink of temptation, the Minister still fought with himself and in a mechanical murmur his lips continued to mumble that sublime advice which the University of France—when a sudden roll of thunder, whose claps came nearer and nearer, woke the singer all of a jump.

“Oh, what a fear I was in—hello! is it you?” She recognized him with a smile, with those clear eyes of a child which wakes up without the slightest embarrassment at its own disorder; and there they remained motionless and affected by the silence and growing flame of their desire. But the bedroom was suddenly plunged in a big dark shadow by the clapping-to of the tall shutters, which the wind banged shut one after the other. They heard the doors slam, a key fall, the whirling of leaves and flowers over the sand as far as the lintel of the door through which the hurricane plaintively moaned.

“What a storm!” said she in a very low voice, taking hold of his burning hand and almost dragging him beneath the curtains—

“Yes, gentlemen, this sublime advice of Bayard’s mother, which has come down to us in that mellifluous tongue of the middle ages—”

It was at Chambéry this time, in sight of the old Château of Savoy and of that marvellous amphitheatre formed of green hills and snowy mountains which Châteaubriand remembered when he saw Mount Taygetus, that the grand master of the University was speaking, thickly surrounded by embroidered coats, by palm decorations, by orders with ermine, by epaulettes decked with big tassels; there he was, dominating an enormous crowd excited by the power of his will and the gesture of his strong hand that still grasped a little ivory-handled trowel with which he had just spread the mortar for the first stone of the new Lyceum.

“Would that the University of France might speak those words to every one of its boys: ‘Pierre, my friend, I recommend to thee before everything else that....’”

And whilst he quoted those touching words emotion caused his hand, his voice and his broad cheeks to tremble at the memory of that great perfumed room in which, during the agitation caused by a most memorable thunder-storm, the Chambéry speech had been composed.