The romance of my childhood and youth

A DAUGHTER, Olympe, was born to them after the German woman’s departure; her mother nursed her, brought her up with loving care, and you may be sure that the imaginative Pélagie dreamed at an early hour of the possible romance of the future marriage of her only child.

Unfortunately Olympe distressed her by the fantastical turn of her mind. She took great interest from her earliest age in the details of housekeeping, was troublesome, humdrum even, said her mother.

She disliked to read, was much annoyed at her father’s absence from home, whose motives she loudly incriminated. Urged to this by the servants’ stories, she quarrelled with him, bitterly reproached her mother for the number of books she read; and she introduced into the home, where the careless indifference of one member, the resignation of the other, might have brought about peace, an agitation which fed the constant disputes.

However, the husband and wife, so much disunited, were proud of their daughter’s beauty. Her father would often say: “She deserves a prince,” while her mother would reply: “A shepherd would please her better.”

Nothing foretold that this admirable statue would be animated some day. Olympe was fifteen years old, and in her family the marriage bells had always rung at that age. Olympe’s parents were humiliated at the thought that no one had as yet asked for their daughter’s hand.

The romantic Pélagie dreamed of an “unforeseen” marriage for Olympe, as she had done formerly for herself. But no predictions had been made concerning it. Madame Seron could never induce her daughter to go to a fortune-teller with her. Alas! the way seemed obscure, but just as it had been impossible for her to find her own hero among the youths of the town, so did it seem impossible to discover another hero for Olympe at Chauny.

How was it, one would say, that she did not judge her own experience of the “unforeseen” lamentable? On the contrary, Pélagie regretted nothing, and, were it to be done over again, she would have made the same marriage, taking all its consequences.

The desired romance had, after all, been written. How many finalities of marriage resembled hers! The important thing was to have loved. Her Don Juan of a husband did not disgust her. She, the faithful wife, although living in a manner separated from him, still preserved, in the romance of her life, a rôle in no wise commonplace. Her husband, obliged to respect her, could not forget the past either, and he sometimes courteously alluded to it, adding: “I am always constant to my affection for my better half, even amid my inconstancies.”

And this was quite true. He did really love his wife, and would not have hesitated to sacrifice his most devoted women friends to her. He never opposed any of her plans, and he repeated her words: “What shall we do, where shall we seek, how shall we discover a husband for Olympe?”

They lived in the Rue de Noyon, the house on the square having become hateful to Madame Seron, who had lost, while living in it, her grandmother and her twins, and had also suffered there from the invasion and from scenes with the German woman. Now, in this street, opposite to one of the windows of the large drawing-room where Pélagie passed the greater part of her days embroidering, and especially devouring novels by the dozen, was the large front door of a young boys’ school. Madame Seron knew every pupil, every professor.

She had remarked among the latter a young man of tall stature and handsome presence, who never left the school without a book in his hand. He bowed respectfully to her several times a day, for she involuntarily raised her eyes every time the door opposite was shut noisily.

One evening, when the master of the school, M. Blangy, came to consult Doctor Seron, whom he knew he would find at meal-time, Madame Seron questioned him about his new professor.

“He has a very romantic history.”

“Tell us about him.”

“His name is Jean Louis Lambert. His father, when a baby, was brought one day dressed in a richly embroidered frock covered with lace by a midwife to a well-to-do farmer of Pontoise, near Noyon, who, having no children, consented to receive the child (who, the midwife said, was an orphan), and to bring him up. A girl was born to the farmer five years later, and the two young persons, who loved each other, were married afterwards.

“My professor is the eldest of four children. His father wished to make him a priest and placed him at the Seminary of Beauvais. On entering there he was remarked for his intelligence, his religious ardour, his poetic talent, and for his theological science, and they soon endowed him with the minor orders.

“The archbishop of Beauvais became his protector and made Jean Louis Lambert his secretary. He was not bigoted, but very pious, even mystical, and they hastened on for him the moment when he should be invested with the major orders.

“On the evening before the day when he was to pronounce his new sacerdotal vows, he was present at a dinner which the archbishop gave to the members of the high clergy of his diocese, and he heard these gentlemen talk at table like ordinary convivial guests. As the dinner went on, they exchanged witty remarks on things terrestrial and even celestial, which seemed to Jean Louis Lambert suggested by the devil himself. A stupid joke about the pillars of the church confessing idle nonsense completely revolted the young postulant. On account of a few jests the young fellow, who was so artless, so little worldly, felt the whole scaffolding of his faith fall to the ground. He wished to speak, to cry anathema to those who seemed blasphemers to him, but, trembling, he slid out of the dining-room, went up to his room, took a valise, in which he packed his books, the manuscript of his ‘Canticles to the Virgin,’ his scant wardrobe, and left the archbishop’s residence half wild. Almost running, he walked twenty-four leagues, and arrived at his father’s house exhausted, in despair, and declared he would never be a priest.

“His excitement, the mad race he had run, gave him so bad a fever that his life was in danger. When he was cured he was obliged to suffer the pious exhortations of the old village priest who had instructed him; his masters came themselves to endeavour to win him back and calm his indignation. They succeeded in proving to him that he had exaggerated things to a ridiculous degree, but the ideal of his vocation was so shattered that his disillusions soon made him an atheist.

“I confess to you,” added M. Blangy, “that I am somewhat alarmed at having him as professor of philosophy, and I made some observations lately which offended him; but he is such a hard worker, and so intelligent, so full of loyalty and so conscientious, that in spite of my fears I do not regret having taken him into my school. His pupils adore him and make rapid progress with him, and were it not for his passion for negation, I think I should take him as my partner.”

This was sufficient to inflame Olympe’s mother’s imagination. A romance was within her reach. She would protect this young man, thrown out of place, who had abandoned his first proposed career and who was without fortune; she would make something of him, and induce him to accept the career she proposed for him, that of a physician. She would have in him a grateful son, who should become her daughter’s husband, and, perhaps, the father of a little girl whom she would love as her grandmother had loved her, and whom she would bring up as she had been educated.

“As badly?” asked her husband, laughing, to whom she at once confided her plans.

One Sunday Madame Seron invited Jean Louis Lambert to breakfast. He almost lost his mind with joy, for he was hopelessly in love with Olympe, his inaccessible star.

After breakfast my grandfather, according to his habit, hastened to leave the house, understanding besides that he would be in the way. Olympe also having left home to pass the afternoon with a friend, the romantic Pélagie, alone with her protégé, whom she already called to herself her “dear child,” experienced one of the sweetest joys of her life.

She questioned him, and—miracle of miracles! His great ambition was to be a doctor! But he could not impose upon his parents the expense that would necessitate the taking up of a new career. They were all so good to him, his sisters so devoted; and his young brother had just entered the army in order that he should not be obliged to perform his military service.

Madame Seron waded in complete felicity. She talked, and appeared to the young professor like some unreal, beneficent fairy, who, with a touch of her magic wand, changes a woodcutter into a prince, a disinherited man into the most fortunate one in the world.

Jean Louis Lambert’s emotion, his gratitude, were expressed in such noble, almost passionate, terms that it brought tears to her eyes, and she at once assumed the rôle of an ideal mother to him.

They agreed, approved, and understood each other in everything. Jean Louis—his protectrice already left off the Lambert—during the next three months would prepare himself for his new studies, and then, on some very plausible pretext, would leave the school and go to Paris, where his future mother-in-law, as an advance on her daughter’s dot, would provide for all expenses until he should have passed his examinations.

He would study doubly hard, and, as soon as he should have obtained his degrees, he would return and marry Olympe, whom, meanwhile, her mother would influence favourably towards the match.

Isolated in Paris, with but one friend from Chauny, Bergeron, who later fired a pistol at Louis Philippe, Jean Louis worked with passionate ardour. In love for the first time and with the woman whom he knew would be his wife, infatuated with his studies, his mystical adoration for the Virgin transformed into a desire to possess the object he adored, he lived in a fever, impatient to deserve the promised happiness, and finding the reward for all his struggles far superior to the efforts he made to acquire it.

Doctor Seron completely approved his wife’s romantic plan, considering that it was without question his place, who had been so cruelly abandoned by all save the humble, to protect a young, hard-working, and virtuous man.

This latter adjective he rolled out with great emphasis, which much amused Olympe’s mother every time he pronounced it.

“No one more than myself esteems, admires, and honours purity and virtue,” said Pélagie’s amusing husband, “for no one is so conscious of the rarity, the beauty of these two traits.”

A renewal of good feeling flourished between the husband and wife. Every letter from their future son-in-law was read, commented upon, admired, and even re-read by them both; these youthful, exuberant, loving letters, often containing very good poetry, rejuvenated the parents’ hearts, already extremely proud of him whom they called between themselves: “Our son.”

Olympe, while her parents were enthusiastic, was perfectly indifferent. One day, when they were both exasperated at her, they asked whether or not she would consent to this marriage. The young girl replied to her anxious mother, and to her father, revolted at seeing her so prosaic:

“Since you desire it, since you have committed yourselves so far that you cannot withdraw, I will resign myself to it. Where you have tied the goat she will browse.”

Ah! that phrase, what a rôle it played in the disputes between the Lambert and Seron families, so frequent in later years.

Olympe’s parents were assailed day and night by these words, which they repeated to themselves aghast. “Where you have tied the goat she will browse.”

Jean Louis Lambert returned to Chauny and was married, a little disappointed at his wife’s coldness, but trusting to his passion to inspire her with the love he himself felt.

Olympe Lambert was tall, with a handsome figure like her mother’s; she had an olive complexion, large, velvety, and luminous eyes, a charming mouth with small teeth, a delicate nose with pink nostrils, brown hair with ruddy tints in it, handsome arms and hands, and a very small foot. It was impossible to discover a more fascinating creature to look at and one of less good-humour.