XXIV
I RECEIVE A HANDSOME GIFT
“THE end of your journey must not be Verton, my dear Lambert,” said Liénard one morning to my father. “I wish you to inspect the whole line. We will go to Boulogne-sur-Mer, and travel over a certain portion of the route in trucks. Then you will have shown to Juliette, Amiens—the most beautiful town of our Picardy—and Boulogne, one of its finest sea-ports.”
My father made no objection. The thought of seeing big ships delighted me. We were to return to Verton after visiting Boulogne and leave from there for Chauny. The railway train, with its little coaches open overhead, pleased me marvellously, but the large, locked-up coaches from which one could not get out except at the employés’ will, seemed like prisons to me, and I was honestly afraid of the tunnels, in which heads were sometimes cut off.
All the great cities I have seen later in my numerous travels over Europe have interested me in a different manner, and I have admired them for a thousand complex reasons, but none has left in my memory a more deeply engraved impression than Boulogne-sur-Mer.
We were Liénard’s guests, and he treated us like lords, in one of the best hotels of the place. I saw the sea all day long, and I, who was so fond of sleeping, would get up to look at it under the star-light. I saw it one night by full moonlight.
“Drops of gold shrank and expanded, crackled, leapt in playful sparkles on the water’s surface, as if to encircle, in a frame of moving gold, Phœbe’s beautiful face as she looked at herself in the sea.”
I found these metaphors in one of my poems written at that time, and, incredible as it may seem, I still remember these unformed verses, which I did not dare to repeat to my father, and which I kept for the enraptured admiration of my grandparents, Blondeau, and my friend Charles.
The movement of the boats around the pier delighted me so much I wished never to leave the place, and my father was obliged to scold me sometimes and to drag me after him to the house.
I ate my first oyster at Boulogne. All my family were extremely fond of the fat oysters that came from the North. In winter, when my mother and father came to Chauny, they usually selected the day on which the fish-wagon arrived. This wagon, driven at full speed, and which had relays like the post-wagon, brought to Chauny, on Friday mornings, the fish caught on the night of Wednesday to Thursday.
Every Friday during the oyster season, a basket containing twelve dozen oysters was brought to my grandmother’s. My grandfather and father each ate four dozen. My grandmother and mother would eat two dozen, and Blondeau, when he was present, would take his dozen, here and there, from the portions of the others. Was it because I saw them eat such quantities that I could never swallow one? My reluctance absolutely grieved my family.
Liénard and I went shopping while my father talked with some democratic-socialist republicans whom he had discovered. I wanted to take to all my friends many of those little souvenirs one finds at seaside places, things utterly unknown at Chauny, and I had with me, in order to gratify this wish, all the money given to me by grandparents and Blondeau to spend on my journey. My purse, confided to Liénard’s care, who bargained and paid for all my purchases, must, I thought, after calculating the amount expended, be very nearly empty. So, when my father promised me one morning a louis if I would eat an oyster, I did my best to please him, and at the same time to earn four large crowns. I swallowed one oyster, and afterwards others followed in great numbers, for I grew to like them.
I picked up quantities of shells, and I would have liked to carry many more away. I bought an immense covered basket, which I took with me wherever I went, and never left it for a moment during my return voyage, in spite of the supplication of my father, who tried every persuasive means possible to rid himself of the trouble of looking after it.
I went on the beach at Wimereux, where Prince Louis Napoleon landed in such grotesque fashion. I saw the great Emperor’s column, and thought of my grandfather and my godmother.
My father spoke to Liénard and to me of “the man of Strasburg and Boulogne,” and of his ancestor, “the man of the Brumaire.” He was more indulgent towards the nephew than towards the uncle, whom he thus defined:
“The political juggler of the Revolution, whose final number of conquests, after the sacrifice of millions of men, was inferior to the conquests won by the fourteen armies of the Republic.”
Napoleon I. was my father’s special aversion. He spoke of him with hatred, as of a criminal. I knew some scathing and virulent poems written by my father on the “Modern Cæsar,” and when I recited them, I ended by naming their author: Jean Louis Lambert.
My father had bought a tilbury as we passed through Amiens, the carriage-makers of the capital of our province being “renowned,” as they then expressed it.
What was his astonishment, as we left the railway station on our return to Amiens, to see a very handsome horse harnessed to his tilbury, instead of the hired one which was to take it to Chauny. Liénard had accompanied us there.
“My dear friend,” he said to my father, accentuating these words with feeling, “I beg of you to accept the little horse, as a small proof of my eternal gratitude.”
My father, who delighted to give, but hated to accept things, refused bluntly; but Liénard’s disappointment was so great, and I saw his eyes so full of tears, that I sought for a way to make my father yield.
“Will you give me your horse, Liénard?” I said. “I think it very pretty and I will take it.”
Mutually embarrassed and grieved a moment before, my father and Liénard were much amused at my intervention.
“Ah, yes! I will give it to you,” replied Liénard. “It is yours, and I am not afraid now that your father will take it from you.”
I adored the feeling of being important. But to have overcome this difficult situation did not suffice me.
“Now, since I have a horse and papa has a tilbury, I wish to return to Chauny in it and not in the diligence,” I added.
“But it will take us three days instead of one,” said father.
“Oh! papa, shall you really find three days quite alone with your daughter too long? You will tell me a lot of things, and I, also, will tell you as many. It will be so amusing to travel in a carriage, like gipsies.”
“Do as she wishes, dear Lambert,” said Liénard. “Come, get into your carriage and start. I will send you your packages by the diligence.”
“Papa! papa! do, I beg of you, let us be off!”
“Has the horse eaten?” Liénard asked the groom.
“Yes, sir, he can go for five hours without needing anything more.”
“Be off! be off!” our friend cried gaily, as he lifted me into the tilbury after kissing me.
My father and Liénard kissed each other, like the loving friends they were, and father got into the carriage.
“Where is the state high-road?” he asked the groom.
Liénard replied:
“This boy will take one of the carriages at the station and accompany you until nightfall, to see that Juliette’s horse behaves itself. I will go to-morrow morning to his master’s, and will get news of you there. Good-bye, good-bye; a pleasant journey!”
A small valise bought by my father at Boulogne, held our toilet articles. My famous basket was at our feet, our luggage ticket given to Liénard, and off we started.