Veronique remained for some minutes under the chestnut trees, apparently looking at the landscape. Thence she could see that portion of the forest which clothes the side of the valley down which flows the torrent of the Gabou, now dry, a mass of stones, looking like a huge ditch cut between the wooded mountains of Montegnac and another chain of parallel hills beyond,—the latter being much steeper and without vegetation, except for heath and juniper and a few sparse trees toward their summit.
These hills, desolate of aspect, belong to the neighboring domain and are in the department of the Correze. A country road, following the undulations of the valley, serves to mark the line between the arrondissement of Montegnac and the two estates. This barren slope supports, like a wall, a fine piece of woodland which stretches away in the distance from its rocky summit. Its barrenness forms a complete contrast to the other slope, on which is the cottage of Farrabesche. On the one side, harsh, disfigured angularities, on the other, graceful forms and curving outlines; there, the cold, dumb stillness of unfruitful earth held up by horizontal blocks of stone and naked rock, here, trees of various greens, now stripped for the most part of foliage, but showing their fine straight many-colored trunks on every slope and terrace of the land; their interlacing branches swaying to the breeze. A few more persistent trees, oaks, elms, beeches, and chestnuts, still retained their yellow, bronzed, or crimsoned foliage.
Toward Montegnac, where the valley widened immensely, the two slopes form a horse-shoe; and from the spot where Veronique now stood leaning against a tree she could see the descending valleys lying like the gradations of an ampitheatre, the tree-tops rising from each tier like persons in the audience. This fine landscape was then on the other side of her park, though it afterwards formed part of it. On the side toward the cottage near which she stood the valley narrows more and more until it becomes a gorge, about a hundred feet wide.
The beauty of this view, over which Madame Graslin’s eyes now roved mechanically, recalled her presently to herself. She returned to the cottage where the father and son were standing, silently awaiting her and not seeking to explain her singular absence.
She examined the house, which was built with more care than its thatched roof seemed to warrant. It had, no doubt, been abandoned ever since the Navarreins ceased to care for this domain. No more hunts, no more game-keepers. Though the house had been built for over a hundred years, the walls were still good, notwithstanding the ivy and other sorts of climbing-plants which clung to them. When Farrabesche obtained permission to live there he tiled the room on the lower floor and put in furniture. Veronique saw, as she entered, two beds, a large walnut wardrobe, a bread-box, dresser, table, three chairs, and on the dresser a few brown earthenware dishes and other utensils necessary to life. Above the fireplace were two guns and two gamebags. A number of little things evidently made by the father for the child touched Veronique’s heart—the model of a man-of-war, of a sloop, a carved wooden cup, a wooden box of exquisite workmanship, a coffer inlaid in diaper pattern, a crucifix, and a splendid rosary. The chaplet was made of plum-stones, on each of which was carved a head of marvellous delicacy,—of Jesus Christ, of the apostles, the Madonna, Saint John the Baptist, Saint Joseph, Saint Anne, the two Magdalens, etc.
“I do that to amuse the little one in the long winter evenings,” he said, as if excusing himself.
The front of the house was covered with jessamine and roses, trained to the wall and wreathing the windows of the upper floor, where Farrabesche stored his provisions. He bought little except bread, salt, sugar, and a few such articles, for he kept chickens, ducks, and two pigs. Neither he nor the boy drank wine.
“All that I have heard of you and all that I now see,” said Madame Graslin at last, “make me feel an interest in your welfare which will not, I hope, be a barren one.”
“I recognize Monsieur Bonnet’s kindness in what you say,” cried Farrabesche, in a tone of feeling.
“You are mistaken; the rector has not yet spoken of you to me; chance—or God—has done it.”
“Yes, madame, God! God alone can do miracles for a miserable man like me.”
“If you have been a miserable man,” said Madame Graslin, lowering her voice that the child might not hear her (an act of womanly delicacy which touched his heart), “your repentance, your conduct, and the rector’s esteem have now fitted you to become a happier man. I have given orders to finish the building of the large farmhouse which Monsieur Graslin intended to establish near the chateau. I shall make you my farmer, and you will have an opportunity to use all your faculties, and also to employ your son. The procureur-general in Limoges shall be informed about you, and the humiliating police-inspection you are now subjected to shall be removed. I promise you.”
At these words Farrabesche fell on his knees, as if struck down by the realization of a hope he had long considered vain. He kissed the hem of Madame Graslin’s habit, then her feet. Seeing the tears in his father’s eyes, the boy wept too, without knowing why.
“Rise, Farrabesche,” said Madame Graslin, “you do not know how natural it is that I should do for you what I have promised. You planted those fine trees, did you not?” she went on, pointing to the groups of Northern pine, firs, and larches at the foot of the dry and rocky hill directly opposite.
“Yes, madame.”
“Is the earth better there?”
“The water in washing down among the rocks brings a certain amount of soil, which it deposits. I have profited by this; for the whole of the level of the valley belongs to you,—the road is your boundary.”
“Is there much water at the bottom of that long valley?”
“Oh, madame,” cried Farrabesche, “before long, when the rains begin, you will hear the torrent roar even at the chateau; but even that is nothing to what happens in spring when the snows melt. The water then rushes down from all parts of the forest behind Montegnac, from those great slopes which are back of the hills on which you have your park. All the water of these mountains pours into this valley and makes a deluge. Luckily for you, the trees hold the earth; otherwise the land would slide into the valley.”
“Where are the springs?” asked Madame Graslin, giving her full attention to what he said.
Farrabesche pointed to a narrow gorge which seemed to end the valley just below his house. “They are mostly on a clay plateau lying between the Limousin and the Correze; they are mere green pools during the summer, and lose themselves in the soil. No one lives in that unhealthy region. The cattle will not eat the grass or reeds that grow near the brackish water. That vast tract, which has more than three thousand acres in it, is an open common for three districts; but, like the plains of Montegnac, no use can be made of it. This side on your property, as I showed you, there is a little earth among the stones, but over there is nothing but sandy rock.”
“Send your boy for the horses; I will ride over and see it for myself.”
Benjamin departed, after Madame Graslin had shown him the direction in which he would find Maurice and the horses.
“You who know, so they tell me, every peculiarity of the country thoroughly,” continued Madame Graslin, “explain to me how it is that the streams of my forest which are on the side of the mountain toward Montegnac, and ought therefore to send their waters down there, do not do so, neither in regular water-courses nor in sudden torrents after rains and the melting of the snows.”
“Ah, madame,” said Farrabesche, “the rector, who thinks all the time about the welfare of Montegnac, has guessed the reason, but he can’t find any proof of it. Since your arrival, he has made me trace the path of the water from point to point through each ravine and valley. I was returning yesterday, when I had the honor of meeting you, from the base of the Roche-Vive, where I carefully examined the lay of the land. Hearing the horses’ feet, I came up to see who was there. Monsieur Bonnet is not only a saint, madame; he is a man of great knowledge. ‘Farrabesche,’ he said to me (I was then working on the road the village has just built to the chateau, and the rector came to me and pointed to that chain of hills from Montegnac to Roche-Vive),—‘Farrabesche,’ he said, ‘there must be some reason why that water-shed does not send any of its water to the plain; Nature must have made some sluiceway which carries it elsewhere.’ Well, madame, that idea is so simple you would suppose any child might have thought it; yet no one since Montegnac existed, neither the great lords, nor their bailiffs, nor their foresters, nor the poor, nor the rich, none of those who saw that plain barren for want of water, ever asked themselves why the streams which now feed the Gabou do not come there. The three districts above, which have constantly been afflicted with fevers in consequence of stagnant water, never looked for the remedy; I myself, who live in the wilds, never dreamed of it; it needed a man of God.”
The tears filled his eyes as he said the word.
“All that men of genius discover,” said Madame Graslin, “seems so simple that every one thinks they might have discovered it themselves. But,” she added, as if to herself, “genius has this fine thing about it,—it resembles all the world, but no one resembles it.”
“I understood Monsieur Bonnet at once,” continued Farrabesche; “it did not take him many words to tell me what I had to do. Madame, this fact I tell you of is all the more singular because there are, toward the plain, great rents and fissures in the mountain, gorges and ravines down which the water flows; but, strange to say, these clefts and ravines and gorges all send their streams into a little valley which is several feet below the level of your plain. To-day I have discovered the reason of this phenomenon: from the Roche-Vive to Montegnac, at the foot of the mountains, runs a shelf or barricade of rock, varying in height from twenty to thirty feet; there is not a break in it from end to end; and it is formed of a species of rock which Monsieur Bonnet calls schist. The soil above it, which is of course softer than rock, has been hollowed out by the action of the water, which is turned at right angles by the barricade of rock, and thus flows naturally into the Gabou. The trees and underbrush of the forest conceal this formation and the hollowing out of the soil. But after following the course of the water, as I have done by the traces left of its passage, it is easy to convince any one of the fact. The Gabou thus receives the water-shed of both mountains,—that which ought to go down the mountain face on which your park and garden are to the plain, and that which comes down the rocky slopes before us. According to Monsieur Bonnet the present state of things will crease when the water-shed toward the plain gains a natural outlet, and is dammed toward the Gabou by the earth and rocks which the mountain torrents bring down with them. It will take a hundred years to do that, however; and besides, it isn’t desirable. If your soil will not take up more water than the great common you are now going to see, Montegnac would be full of stagnant pools, breeding fever in the community.”
“I suppose that the places Monsieur Bonnet showed me the other day where the foliage of the trees is still green mark the present conduits by which the water falls into the Gabou?”
“Yes, madame. Between Roche-Vive and Montegnac there are three distinct mountains with three hollows between them, down which the waters, stopped by the schist barrier, turn off into the Gabou. The belt of trees still green at the foot of the hill above the barrier, which looks, at a distance, like a part of the plain, is really the water-sluice the rector supposed, very justly, that Nature had made for herself.”
“Well, what has been to the injury of Montegnac shall soon be its prosperity,” said Madame Graslin, in a tone of deep intention. “And inasmuch as you have been the first instrument employed on the work, you shall share in it; you shall find me faithful, industrious workmen; lack of money can always be made up by devotion and good work.”
Benjamin and Maurice came up as Veronique ended these words; she mounted her horse and signed to Farrabesche to mount the other.
“Guide me,” she said, “to the place where the waters spread out in pools over that waste land.”
“There is all the more reason why madame should go there,” said Farrabesche, “because the late Monsieur Graslin, under the rector’s advice, bought three hundred acres at the opening of that gorge, on which the waters have left sediment enough to make good soil over quite a piece of ground. Madame will also see the opposite side of the Roche-Vive, where there are fine woods, among which Monsieur Graslin would no doubt have put a farm had he lived; there’s an excellent place for one, where the spring which rises just by my house loses itself below.”
Farrabesche rode first to show the way, taking Veronique through a path which led to the spot where the two slopes drew closely together and then flew apart, one to the east the other to the west, as if repulsed by a shock. This narrow passage, filled with large rocks and coarse, tall grasses, was only about sixty feet in width.
The Roche-Vive, cut perpendicularly on this side looked like a wall of granite in which there was no foothold; but above this inflexible wall was a crown of trees, the roots of which hung down it, mostly pines clinging to the rock with their forked feet like birds on a bough.
The opposite hill, hollowed by time, had a frowning front, sandy, rocky, and yellow; here were shallow caverns, dips without depth; the soft and pulverizing rock had ochre tones. A few plants with prickly leaves above, and burdocks, reeds, and aquatic growths below, were indication enough of the northern exposure and the poverty of the soil. The bed of the torrent was of stone, quite hard, but yellow. Evidently the two chains, though parallel and ripped asunder by one of the great catastrophes which have changed the face of the globe, were, either from some inexplicable caprice or for some unknown reason, the discovery of which awaited genius, composed of elements that were wholly dissimilar. The contrast of their two natures showed more clearly here than elsewhere.
Veronique now saw before her an immense dry plateau, without any vegetation, chalky (this explained the absorption of the water) and strewn with pools of stagnant water and rocky places stripped of soil. To the right were the mountains of the Correze; to left the Roche-Vive barred the view covered with its noble trees; on its further slope was a meadow of some two hundred acres, the verdure of which contrasted with the hideous aspect of the desolate plateau.
“My son and I cut that ditch you see down there marked by the tall grasses,” said Farrabesche; “it joins the one which bounds your forest. On this side the estate is bounded by a desert, for the nearest village is three miles distant.”
Veronique turned rapidly to the dismal plain, followed by her guide. She leaped her horse across the ditch and rode at full gallop across the drear expanse, seeming to take a savage pleasure in contemplating that vast image of desolation. Farrabesche was right. No power, no will could put to any use whatever that soil which resounded under the horses’ feet as though it were hollow. This effect was produced by the natural porousness of the clay; but there were fissures also through which the water flowed away, no doubt to some distant source.
“There are many souls like this,” thought Veronique, stopping her horse after she had ridden at full speed for fifteen or twenty minutes. She remained motionless and thoughtful in the midst of this desert, where there was neither animal nor insect life and where the birds never flew. The plain of Montegnac was at least pebbly or sandy; on it were places where a few inches of soil did give a foothold for the roots of certain plains; but here the ungrateful chalk, neither stone nor earth, repelled even the eye, which was forced to turn for relief to the blue of the ether.
After examining the bounds of her forest and the meadows purchased by her husband, Veronique returned toward the outlet of the Gabou, but slowly. She then saw Farrabesche gazing into a sort of ditch which looked like one a speculator might have dug into this desolate corner of the earth expecting Nature to give up some hidden treasure.
“What is the matter?” asked Veronique, noticing on that manly face an expression of deep sadness.
“Madame, I owe my life to that ditch; or rather, to speak more correctly, I owe to it time for repentance, time to redeem my sins in the eyes of men.”
This method of explaining life so affected Madame Graslin that she stopped her horse on the brink of the ditch.
“I was hiding there, madame. The ground is so resonant that when my ear was against it I could hear the horses of the gendarmerie, or even the footsteps of the soldiers, which are always peculiar. That gave me time to escape up the Gabou to a place where I had a horse, and I always managed to put several miles between myself and my pursuers. Catherine used to bring me food during the night; if she did not find me I always found the bread and wine in a hole covered with a rock.”
This recollection of his wandering and criminal life, which might have injured Farrabesche with some persons, met with the most indulgent pity from Madame Graslin. She rode hastily on toward the Gabou, followed by her guide. While she measured with her eye this opening, through which could be seen the long valley, so smiling on one side, so ruined on the other, and at its lower end, a league away, the terraced hill-sides back of Montegnac, Farrabesche said:—
“There’ll be a famous rush of water in a few days.”
“And next year, on this day, not a drop shall flow there. Both sides belong to me, and I will build a dam solid enough and high enough to stop the freshet. Instead of a valley yielding nothing, I will have a lake twenty, thirty, forty feet deep over an extent of three or four miles,—an immense reservoir, which shall supply the flow of irrigation with which I will fertilize the plain of Montegnac.”
“Ah, madame! the rector was right, when he said to us as we finished our road, ‘You are working for a mother.’ May God shed his blessing on such an undertaking.”
“Say nothing about it, Farrabesche,” said Madame Graslin. “The idea was Monsieur Bonnet’s.”
They returned to the cottage, where Veronique picked up Maurice, with whom she rode hastily back to the chateau. When Madame Sauviat and Aline saw her they were struck with the change in her countenance; the hope of doing good in the region she now owned gave her already an appearance of happiness. She wrote at once to Monsieur Grossetete, begging him to ask Monsieur de Grandville for the complete release of the returned convict, on whose conduct she gave him assurances which were confirmed by a certificate from the mayor of Montegnac and by a letter from Monsieur Bonnet. To this request she added information about Catherine Curieux, begging Grossetete to interest the procureur-general in the good work she wished to do, and persuade him to write to the prefecture of police in Paris to recover traces of the girl. The circumstance of Catherine’s having sent money to Farrabesche at the galleys ought to be clew enough to furnish information. Veronique was determined to know why it was that the young woman had not returned to her child and to Farrabesche, now that he was free. She also told her old friend of her discovery about the torrent of the Gabou, and urged him to select an able engineer, such as she had already asked him to procure for her.
The next day was Sunday, and for the first time since her installation at Montegnac Veronique felt able to hear mass in church; she accordingly went there and took possession of the bench that belonged to her in the chapel of the Virgin. Seeing how denuded the poor church was, she resolved to devote a certain sum yearly to the needs of the building and the decoration of the altars. She listened to the sweet, impressive, angelic voice of the rector, whose sermon, though couched in simple language suited to the rustic intellects before him, was sublime in character. Sublimity comes from the heart, intellect has little to do with it; religion is a quenchless source of this sublimity which has no dross; for Catholicism entering and changing all hearts, is itself all heart. Monsieur Bonnet took his text from the epistle for the day, which signified that, sooner or later, God accomplishes all promises, assisting His faithful ones, encouraging the righteous. He made plain to every mind the great things which might be accomplished by wealth judiciously used for the good of others,—explaining that the duties of the poor to the rich were as widely extended as those of the rich to the poor, and that the aid and assistance given should be mutual.
Farrabesche had made known to a few of those who treated him in a friendly manner (the result of the Christian charity which Monsieur Bonnet had put in practice among his parishioners) the benevolent acts Madame Graslin had done for him. Her conduct in this matter had been talked over by all the little groups of persons assembled round the church door before the service, as is the custom in country places. Nothing could have been better calculated to win the friendship and good-will of these eminently susceptible minds; so that when Veronique left the church after service she found nearly all the inhabitants of the parish formed in two hedges through which she was expected to pass. One and all they bowed respectfully in profound silence. She was deeply touched by this reception, without knowing the actual cause of it. Seeing Farrabesche humbly stationed among the last, she stopped and said to him:—
“You are a good hunter; do not forget to supply me with game.”
A few days later Veronique went to walk with the rector through the part of the forest that was nearest the chateau, wishing to descend with him the terraced slopes she had seen from the house of Farrabesche. In doing this she obtained complete certainty as to the nature of the upper affluents of the Gabou. The rector saw for himself that the streams which watered certain parts of upper Montegnac came from the mountains of the Correze. This chain of hills joined the barren slopes we have already described, parallel with the chain of the Roche-Vive.
On returning from this walk the rector was joyful as a child; he foresaw, with the naivete of a poet, the prosperity of his dear village—for a poet is a man, is he not? who realizes hopes before they ripen. Monsieur Bonnet garnered his hay as he stood overlooking that barren plain from Madame Graslin’s upper terrace.
The next day Farrabesche and his son came to the chateau with game. The keeper also brought, for Francis, a cocoanut cup, elaborately carved, a genuine work of art, representing a battle. Madame Graslin was walking at the time on the terrace, in the direction which overlooked Les Tascherons. She sat down on a bench, took the cup in her hand and looked earnestly at the deft piece of work. A few tears came into her eyes.
“You must have suffered very much,” she said to Farrabesche, after a few moments’ silence.
“How could I help it, madame?” he replied; “for I was there without the hope of escape, which supports the life of most convicts.”
“An awful life!” she said in a tone of horror, inviting Farrabesche by word and gesture to say more.
Farrabesche took the convulsive trembling and other signs of emotion he saw in Madame Graslin for the powerful interest of compassionate curiosity in himself.
Just then Madame Sauviat appeared, coming down a path as if she meant to join them; but Veronique drew out her handkerchief and made a negative sign; saying, with an asperity she had never before shown to the old woman:—
“Leave me, leave me, mother.”
“Madame,” said Farrabesche, “for ten years I wore there (holding out his leg) a chain fastened to a great iron ring which bound me to another man. During my time I had to live thus with three different convicts. I slept on a wooden bench; I had to work extraordinarily hard to earn a little mattress called a serpentin. Each dormitory contains eight hundred men. Each bed, called a tolard, holds twenty-four men, chained in couples. Every night the chain of each couple is passed round another great chain which is called the filet de ramas. This chain holds all the couples by the feet, and runs along the bottom of the tolard. It took me over two years to get accustomed to that iron clanking, which called out incessantly, ‘Thou art a galley-slave!’ If I slept an instant some vile companion moved or quarrelled, reminding me of where I was. There is a terrible apprenticeship to make before a man can learn how to sleep. I myself could not sleep until I had come to the end of my strength and to utter exhaustion. When at last sleep came I had the nights in which to forget. Oh! to forget, madame, that was something! Once there, a man must learn to satisfy his needs, even in the smallest things, according to the ways laid down by pitiless regulations. Imagine, madame, the effect such a life produced on a lad like me, who had lived in the woods with the birds and the squirrels! If I had not already lived for six months within prison-walls, I should, in spite of Monsieur Bonnet’s grand words—for he, I can truly say, is the father of my soul—I should, ah! I must have flung myself into the sea at the mere sight of my companions. Out-doors I still could live; but in the building, whether to sleep or to eat,—to eat out of buckets, and each bucket filled for three couples,—it was life no longer, it was death; the atrocious faces and language of my companions were always insufferable to me. Happily, from five o’clock in summer, and from half-past seven o’clock in winter we went, in spite of heat or cold and wind or rain, on ‘fatigue,’ that is, hard-labor. Thus half this life was spent in the open air; and the air was sweet after the close dormitory packed with eight hundred convicts. And that air, too, is sea-air! We could enjoy the breezes, we could be friends with the sun, we could watch the clouds as they passed above us, we could hope and pray for fine weather! As for me, I took an interest in my work—”
Farrabesche stopped; two heavy tears were rolling down his mistress’s face.
“Oh! madame, I have only told you the best side of that life,” he continued, taking the expression of her face as meant for him. “The terrible precautions taken by the government, the constant spying of the keepers, the blacksmith’s inspection of the chains every day, night and morning, the coarse food, the hideous garments which humiliate a man at all hours, the comfortless sleep, the horrible rattling of eight hundred chains in that resounding hall, the prospect of being shot or blown to pieces by cannon if ten of those villains took a fancy to revolt, all those dreadful things are nothing,—nothing, I tell you; that is the bright side only. There’s another side, madame, and a decent man, a bourgeois, would die of horror in a week. A convict is forced to live with another man; obliged to endure the company of five other men at every meal, twenty-three in his bed at night, and to hear their language! The great society of galley-slaves, madame, has its secret laws; disobey them and you are tortured; obey them, and you become a torturer. You must be either victim or executioner. If they would kill you at once it would at least be the cure of life. But no, they are wiser than that in doing evil. It is impossible to hold out against the hatred of these men; their power is absolute over any prisoner who displeases them, and they can make his life a torment far worse than death. The man who repents and endeavors to behave well is their common enemy; above all, they suspect him of informing; and an informer is put to death, often on mere suspicion. Every hall and community of eight hundred convicts has its tribunal, in which are judged the crimes committed against that society. Not to obey the usages is criminal, and a man is liable to punishment. For instance, every man must co-operate in escapes; every convict has his time assigned him to escape, and all his fellow-convicts must protect and aid him. To reveal what a comrade is doing with a view to escape is criminal. I will not speak to you of the horrible customs and morals of the galleys. No man belongs to himself; the government, in order to neutralize the attempts at revolt or escape, takes pains to chain two contrary natures and interests together; and this makes the torture of the coupling unendurable; men are linked together who hate or distrust each other.”
“How was it with you?” asked Madame Graslin.
“Ah! there,” replied Farrabesche, “I had luck; I never drew a lot to kill a convict; I never had to vote the death of any one of them; I never was punished; no man took a dislike to me; and I got on well with the three different men I was chained to; they all feared me but liked me. One reason was, my name was known and famous at the galleys before I got there. A chauffeur! they thought me one of those brigands. I have seen chauffing,” continued Farrabesche after a pause, in a low voice, “but I never either did it myself, or took any of the money obtained by it. I was a refractory, I evaded the conscription, that was all. I helped my comrades, I kept watch; I was sentinel and brought up the rear-guard; but I never shed any man’s blood except in self-defence. Ah! I told all to Monsieur Bonnet and my lawyer, and the judges knew well enough that I was no murderer. But, all the same, I am a great criminal; nothing that I ever did was morally right. However, before I got there, as I was saying, two of my comrades told of me as a man able to do great things. At the galleys, madame, nothing is so valuable as that reputation, not even money. In that republic of misery murder is a passport to tranquillity. I did nothing to destroy that opinion of me. I was sad, resigned, and they mistook the appearance of it. My gloomy manner, my silence, passed for ferocity. All that world, convicts, keepers, young and old, respected me. I was treated as first in my hall. No one interfered with my sleep; I was never suspected of informing; I behaved honorably according to their ideas; I never refused to do service; I never testified the slightest repugnance; I howled with the wolves outside, I prayed to God within. My last companion in chains was a soldier, twenty-two years of age, who had committed a theft and deserted in consequence of it. We were chained together for four years, and we were friends; wherever I may be I am certain to meet him when his time is up. This poor devil, whose name is Guepin, is not a scoundrel, he is merely heedless; his punishment may reform him. If my comrades had discovered that religion led me to submit to my trials,—that I meant, when my time was up, to live humbly in a corner, letting no one know where I was, intending to forget their horrible community and never to cross the path of any of them,—they would probably have driven me mad.”
“Then,” said Madame Graslin, “if a poor young man, a tender soul, carried away by passion, having committed a murder, was spared from death and sent to the galleys—”
“Oh! madame,” said Farrabesche, interrupting her, “there is no sparing in that. The sentence may be commuted to twenty years at the galleys, but for a decent young man, that is awful! I could not speak to you of the life that awaits him there; a thousand times better die. Yes, to die upon the scaffold is happiness in comparison.”
“I dared not think it,” murmured Madame Graslin.
She had turned as white as wax. To hide her face she laid her forehead on the balustrade, and kept it there several minutes. Farrabesche did not know whether he ought to go or remain.
Madame Graslin raised her head at last, looked at Farrabesche with an almost majestic air, and said, to his amazement, in a voice that stirred his heart:—
“Thank you, my friend. But,” she added, after a pause, “where did you find courage to live and suffer?”
“Ah! madame, Monsieur Bonnet put a treasure within my soul! and for that I love him better than all else on earth.”
“Better than Catherine?” said Madame Graslin, smiling with a sort of bitterness.
“Almost as well, madame.”
“How did he do it?”
“Madame, the words and the voice of that man conquered me. Catherine brought him to that hole in the ground I showed you on the common; he had come fearlessly alone. He was, he said, the new rector of Montegnac; I was his parishioner, he loved me; he knew I was only misguided, not lost; he did not intend to betray me, but to save me; in short, he said many such things that stirred my soul to its depths. That man, madame, commands you to do right with as much force as those who tell you to do wrong. It was he who told me, poor dear man, that Catherine was a mother, and that I was dooming two beings to shame and desertion. ‘Well,’ I said to him, ‘they are like me; I have no future.’ He answered that I had a future, two bad futures, before me—one in another world, one in this world—if I persisted in not changing my way of life. In this world, I should die on the scaffold. If I were captured my defence would be impossible. On the contrary, if I took advantage of the leniency of the new government toward all crimes traceable to the conscription, if I delivered myself up, he believed he could save my life; he would engage a good lawyer, who would get me off with ten years at the galleys. Then Monsieur Bonnet talked to me of the other life. Catherine wept like the Magdalen—See, madame,” said Farrabesche, holding out his right arm, “her face was in that hand, and I felt it wet with tears. She implored me to live. Monsieur Bonnet promised to secure me, when I had served my sentence, a peaceful life here with my child, and to protect me against affront. He catechised me as he would a little child. After three such visits at night he made me as supple as a glove. Would you like to know how, madame?”
Farrabesche and Madame Graslin looked at each other, not explaining to themselves their mutual curiosity.
“Well,” resumed the poor liberated convict, “when he left me the first time, and Catherine had gone with him to show the way, I was left alone. I then felt within my soul a freshness, a calmness, a sweetness, I had never known since childhood. It was like the happiness my poor Catherine had given me. The love of this dear man had come to seek me; that, and his thought for me, for my future, stirred my soul to its depths; it changed me. A light broke forth in my being. As long as he was there, speaking to me, I resisted. That’s not surprising; he was a priest, and we bandits don’t eat of their bread. But when I no longer heard his footsteps nor Catherine’s, oh! I was—as he told me two days later—enlightened by divine grace. God gave me thenceforth strength to bear all,—prison, sentence, irons, parting; even the life of the galleys. I believed in his word as I do in the Gospel; I looked upon my sufferings as a debt I was bound to pay. When I seemed to suffer too much, I looked across ten years and saw my home in the woods, my little Benjamin, my Catherine. He kept his word, that good Monsieur Bonnet. But one thing was lacking. When at last I was released, Catherine was not at the gate of the galleys; she was not on the common. No doubt she has died of grief. That is why I am always sad. Now, thanks to you, I shall have useful work to do; I can employ both body and soul,—and my boy, too, for whom I live.”
“I begin to understand how it is that the rector has changed the character of this whole community,” said Madame Graslin.
“Nothing can resist him,” said Farrabesche.
“Yes, yes, I know it!” replied Veronique, hastily, making a gesture of farewell to her keeper.
Farrabesche withdrew. Veronique remained alone on the terrace for a good part of the day, walking up and down in spite of a fine rain which fell till evening. When her face was thus convulsed, neither her mother nor Aline dared to interrupt her. She did not notice in the dusk that her mother was talking in the salon to Monsieur Bonnet; the old woman, anxious to put an end to this fresh attack of dreadful depression, sent little Francis to fetch her. The child took his mother’s hand and led her in. When she saw the rector she gave a start of surprise in which there seemed to be some fear. Monsieur Bonnet took her back to the terrace, saying:—
“Well, madame, what were you talking about with Farrabesche?”
In order not to speak falsely, Veronique evaded a reply; she questioned Monsieur Bonnet.
“That man was your first victory here, was he not?” she said.
“Yes,” he answered; “his conversion would, I thought, give me all Montegnac—and I was not mistaken.”
Veronique pressed Monsieur Bonnet’s hand and said, with tears in her voice, “I am your penitent from this day forth, monsieur; I shall go to-morrow to the confessional.”
Her last words showed a great internal effort, a terrible victory won over herself. The rector brought her back to the house without saying another word. After that he remained till dinner-time, talking about the proposed improvements at Montegnac.
“Agriculture is a question of time,” he said; “the little that I know of it makes me understand what a gain it would be to get some good out of the winter. The rains are now beginning, and the mountains will soon be covered with snow; your operations cannot then be begun. Had you not better hasten Monsieur Grossetete?”
Insensibly, Monsieur Bonnet, who at first did all the talking, led Madame Graslin to join in the conversation and so distract her thoughts; in fact, he left her almost recovered from the emotions of the day. Madame Sauviat, however, thought her daughter too violently agitated to be left alone, and she spent the night in her room.
The following day an express, sent from Limoges by Monsieur Grossetete to Madame Graslin, brought her the following letter:—
As she read that sentence Madame Graslin let fall the letter and was thoughtful for several minutes.
“My God!” she said at last, “when wilt thou cease to strike me down on all sides?”
Then she took up the letter and continued reading it:
F. Grossetete.
The enclosed letter was as follows:—