My friend's book

THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE
IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN

MY FRIEND'S BOOK

MY FRIEND'S BOOK
BY ANATOLE FRANCE

A TRANSLATION BY
J. LEWIS MAY

LONDON : JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO : BELL & COCKBURN : MCMXIH

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON 6* Co.
At the Ballamyne Press, Edinburgh

LIP.RARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
SANTA BAiliURA

MY FRIEND'S BOOK

CONTENTS

THE BOOK OF PIERRE

DEDICATORY n

EARLY PROWESS

I. THE MONSTERS 17

II. THE LADY IN WHITE 21

III. "I WILL GIVE YOU THIS ROSE " ... 32

IV. THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER 35
V. THE BUNCH OF GRAPES .... 41

VI. MARCELLE OF THE GOLDEN EYES . . 49

VII. NOTE ADDED AT DAWN . . . 6 1

LATER EXPLOITS
I. THE HERMITAGE OF THE JARDIN DBS

PLANTES 65

II. PERE LE BEAU 73

III. GRANDMAMMA NOZIERB . . . .81

IV. THE TOOTH . . . .104
V. MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETRY . in

VI. TEUTOBOCHUS 121

VII. THE PRESTIGE OF THE ABBE JUBAL . . 127

vu

viii MY FRIEND'S BOOK

PAGE

VIII. FONTANET'S CAP . . . . . .136

IX. THE LAST WORDS OF DECIUS Mus . .141

X. THE HUMANITIES 149

XI. THE GROVE OF MYRTLE . . . .161

XII. THE SHADOW 172

THE BOOK OF SUZANNE
NOTE TO THE READER 181

SUZANNE

I. CHANTICLEER 185

II. THE STAR 196

III. GUIGNOL 204

SUZANNE'S FRIENDS

I. ANDRE 213

II. PIERRE 226

III. JESSY 233

SUZANNE'S LIBRARY

I. To MADAME D 243

II. DIALOGUES UPON FAIRY TALES . . . 252

THE BOOK OF PIERRE

MY FRIEND'S BOOK

3 ist December 188-.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
In the midway of this our mortal life

HIS line, wherewith Dante begins the
first canto of his Divina Commedia,
steals into my thoughts to-night,
possibly for the hundredth time.
But never until to-night has it really
touched my heart.

Yet now how intently I ponder it in my mind ;
how gravely beautiful it seems ; how full of mean-
ing. The reason is that now for the first time
I can apply its meaning to myself. I, too, have
reached the point where Dante stood when the old
sun set upon the first year of the fourteenth
century. I, too, am in the middle of life's journey
if, indeed, that journey were the same for all,
and if for all old age were its goal.

Ah me ! I knew twenty years since that it
would come to this. I knew it, yes, but I did not
realise it. In those days I recked as little about
the way of life as about the way to Chicago. But

12 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

now that I have mounted the hill and, gazing
backward, survey at a glance all the distance that
I have traversed so swiftly, the verse of the
Florentine poet fills me so deeply with the spirit
of reverie that I would fain sit through the night
here at my fireside calling up the spirits of the
past. Alas ! how light is the slumber of the
dead!

Sweet it is to summon up remembrance of things
past. Darkness and silence lend their aid to the
task. Night with its calm stills the fears of the
ghosts, who are timid and shy by nature, and wait
for the hours of darkness and solitude ere they
come to whisper their secrets in the ears of the
living whom they love.

The casement blinds are drawn close, the door
curtains hang in heavy folds upon the floor. One
door, and one only, stands ajar, and my eyes turn
as though instinctively towards it. Through it
there steals an opalescent gleam, and the sound of
gentle rhythmic breathing and not even I can tell
which is the mother's, which the children's.

Sleep, my beloved ones, sleep !

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

As I sit dreaming beside my dying fire, it seems
to me as though this house, this room lit by the
tremulous gleam of a night-lamp, the room whence

DEDICATORY 13

comes the soft sound of that innocent breathing,
were but a lonely hostelry upon a highway, whereof
half already lies behind me.

Sleep, my beloved ones ; for to-morrow we set
forth upon the road once more.

To-morrow ! Time was when the word awakened
within me dreams of all that was fairest and most
wonderful. As it fell from my lips, strange and
lovely shapes seemed to beckon me onwards,
whispering softly, " Come ! " Ah ! how sweet was
life in those days. I had confidence in life, the
joyous confidence of a young man in love. Not
once did I think that, pitiless though she be, she
would ever come to deal harshly with me.

I bring no charge against life. She has not
wrought me those ills that so many have suffered
at her hands. Occasionally it has chanced that,
aloof and mighty as she is, she has even suffered
me to feel the touch of her caress. In return for
what she has wrested or withheld from me, she
has bestowed upon me treasures beside which all
that I ever longed for were but dust and ashes.
But, spite of all, my hopes are fled, and now I
cannot hear the word " to-morrow " without a
feeling of sadness and misgiving.

No ! I have lost faith in life. But yet I am still
in love with her. So long as I behold her ray
divine shining on three bright, beloved brows, so

i 4 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

long shall I say that life is fair, and call down
benisons upon her.

Times there are when all seems strange to me,
when even the most everyday things thrill me as
with a sense of mystery. And so it is that now
memory is to me a wondrous thing, and the power
to summon up the past just as strange a gift, and a
far better, than the power of reading the future.

It is sweet to contemplate the past. The night
is calm. I have gathered together the embers on
the hearth, and kindled the blaze anew.

Sleep, my beloved ones, sleep. I am writing the
memories of my childhood's days, and I am writing
them

FOR YOU THREE.

EARLY PROWESS

I

THE MONSTERS

jEOPLE who aver that they can recall
nothing of their childhood's days
have always greatly surprised me.
For my own part I have retained
vivid recollections of the time when
I was quite a little boy. True, they are but isolated
pictures, but for that very reason they stand out in
bolder relief from the vague, mysterious background
which surrounds them. Though I am still far
enough from being an old man, these memories
which I love seem to me to proceed from a past
that is infinitely remote. In those days the world
was radiant with its early glories and apparelled
with the hues of dawn. Were I a savage I should
take the world to be just as young or just as old,
if you will as I myself. But a savage, unhappily,
I am not. Many are the books I have read con-
cerning the antiquity of the earth and the origin
of species, and sadly I compare the transitory life
of the individual with the long endurance of the
race. And so I know that it is not so very long

1 8 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

ago that I used to sleep in a cot in a large room
in a big, dilapidated house since pulled down to
make room for the new buildings of the Ecole des
Beaux Arts. It was here that my father lived, a
humble practitioner of medicine and an ardent
collector of the curiosities of Nature. Who asserts
that children have no memory? I can see that
room now with its green-sprigged wall-paper and a
pretty coloured-print which, as I discovered later,
represented Paul bearing Virginia in his arms across
the ford of the Black River. In this room the
most extraordinary adventures befel me.

As I have said, I had a little cot, which stood,
in the daytime, in a corner. At night my mother
used to move it into the middle of the room in
order, no doubt, that it might be nearer her own
bed, the great curtains of which filled me with awe
and admiration. Putting me to bed was quite a
performance. Entreaties, tears, and kisses, all had
to be gone through. Nor was this the whole of
the matter. When I had everything off but my
shirt, I would dart away, leaping hither and thither
like a young rabbit, till at length my mother would
catch hold of me beneath a piece of furniture and
lay me in my cot. It was fine fun !

But no sooner had I lain down than the strangest
individuals, people whom my family knew nothing
about, began to move in procession all about me.

THE MONSTERS 19

They had noses like storks' bills, bristling mous-
taches, protuberant bellies, and legs like chanti-
cleer's. They came in one after another showing
themselves in profile, each with one goggle eye in
the middle of his cheek, bearing brooms, skewers,
guitars, squirts, and other instruments that I knew
not. Such ugly beings had no business to show
themselves ; but this at least I must record in their
favour : they swept noiselessly along the wall, and
not one of them not even the littlest, and the
last, who had a pair of bellows sticking out behind
him ever so much as took a step towards my
bed. It was clear that some power held them to
the walls across which they glided seemingly un-
substantial things. This reassured me a little, but
I never went to sleep. You can imagine one would
not care to close one's eyes in such company as
that, and I kept mine wide open. And yet, here
is another marvel ! I would suddenly find the
room was flooded with sunlight, and no one in it
but my mother in her pink dressing-gown, and I
could not for the life of me imagine how the night
and the weird folk had vanished.

" What a boy you are to sleep," my mother would
say with a laugh ; and a fine sleeper I must indeed
have been.

Yesterday, as I was taking a stroll along by the
quays, I happened to see in a picture -shop one of

20 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

those books of grotesques, now much sought after,
which Callot of Lorraine wrought with his firm
and delicate needle. When I was a child, Mere
Mignot, our neighbour, who plied the trade of
print-seller, covered a whole wall with them, and
I used to gaze at them every day when I went out
for my walk, and when I came in. I feasted my
eyes upon these goblin shapes, and as I lay in my
little bed I used to see them all again, and had
not the sense to recognise them. O Jacques
Callot, what wonders you could work !

The little cahier over whose leaves I lingered,
brought back a whole world that had faded from
my memory. It seemed as though in the chambers
of my soul there floated a perfumed dust, and that
in its midst there passed the shadowy forms of
those whom I had loved.

II

THE LADY IN WHITE

T the time of which I am speaking,
two ladies were living in the same
house as we were : one was dressed
all in black, the other all in
white.

Do not ask me whether they were young ; that
would have been outside my range of knowledge.
But I know that they exhaled a delicate scent,
and that they had all kinds of dainty ways about
them. My mother, who was a busy woman, did
not care about visiting her neighbours, and seldom
went to see them. But I often did, especially at
lunch time, because the lady in black used to give
me cakes. So I made my calls alone. I used to
have to cross the courtyard, and my mother would
watch me from her window and tap on the pane
when I stood too long lost in contemplation of the
coachman grooming his horses. It was a great
business to get up the staircase with its iron
balusters, and the steep steps had never been made
for my small legs. But I was well rewarded for

22 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

my toil when I got into my ladies' room, for there
were countless things which sent me into raptures.
Nothing, however, came so high in my esteem
as the two porcelain grotesques who sat on
the chimney-piece, on either side of the clock.
Of their own accord they would wag their heads
and put out their tongues. I was told that they
came from China, and to China I made up my
mind to go. The difficulty was to get my nurse
to take me. I was quite certain in my own mind
that China was behind the Arc de Triomphe, but I
never managed to get so far.

Then, too, the ladies had in their room a carpet
with flowers on it, and on this I used rapturously
to roll. And there was a little sofa, soft and deep,
and this became sometimes a boat, sometimes a
horse or a carriage. The lady in black was a little
stout, I think, and she never used to scold me.
The lady in white could be sharp and impatient ;
but what a pretty laugh she had ! We three got
on splendidly together, and I had settled it in my
own mind that none but I should ever enter the
room where the Chinese figures were. I acquainted
the lady in white with my decision, and she made
not a little fun of me, I thought ; but I insisted,
and she promised me I should have my way.

She promised me. Nevertheless, one day I found
a gentleman seated on my sofa ; his feet were on

THE LADY IN WHITE 23

my carpet, and he was chatting to my ladies with
quite a self-satisfied air. Nay, more he gave them
a letter, which they handed back to him when they
had read it. This annoyed me, and I asked for
some eau sucree, because I was thirsty, and also
because I wanted to draw attention to myself. The
desired effect was obtained, and the gentleman
turned to look at me.

"A little neighbour of ours," said the lady in
black.

" An only child, is he not ? " replied the visitor.

" He is," said the lady in white ; " but what
made you think so?"

" He seems very much spoilt," was the reply.
" He is forward and inquisitive, and just now he is
staring with all his eyes."

I was indeed ! It was in order that I might see
him the better. I do not want to flatter myself,
but I understood thoroughly well from the con-
versation that the lady in white had a husband,
who was something or other in a distant country,
that the visitor had brought a letter from him,
that they were much obliged to him for his kind-
ness, and that they were congratulating him on
having been appointed a -premier secretaire. The
whole thing displeased me, and when I took my
departure I refused to kiss the lady in white, in
order to punish her.

24 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

That day at dinner I asked my father to tell me
what a secretaire was. My father did not answer,
but my mother said it was a small article of furni-
ture used for keeping papers in. Just imagine !
They put me to bed, and the goblins with their
eyes in the middle of their cheeks began to move
round my bed making queerer faces at me than
ever.

If you imagine that, when the next day came,
I gave a thought to the gentleman whom I had
found with the lady in white, you are mistaken. I
had forgotten him with the utmost alacrity, and,
if he had so willed, he might have been obliterated
from my memory for ever. But he had the effron-
tery to put in a second appearance. I do not
know whether it was ten days or ten years after his
first visit. I am at present disposed to think it
was ten days. It was, I thought, a most astound-
ing thing for him to come and usurp my place in
such a manner. This time I submitted him to a
careful scrutiny, and decided that he was wholly
unpleasing. His hair was very shiny ; he had black
moustaches and black whiskers, a shaven chin with
a dimple in the middle of it, a slim figure, fine
clothes, and withal an air of general self-satisfaction.
He chatted about the Foreign Office, what was
going on at the theatres, the latest fashions and
the latest books, and about the various evening

THE LADY IN WHITE 25

parties and dances to which he had been in the
vain hope of finding the ladies there. And they
actually listened to him ! So that was what they
called a conversation, was it ! That ! Why couldn't
he talk as the lady in black used to talk to me
about countries where the mountains were made of
caramel, and the rivers of lemonade ?

After he had gone, the lady in black said he
was a charming young man. I remarked that he
was old and ugly. The lady in white laughed
greatly at this observation, and yet there was nothing
to laugh at in it. But, there ! She either used to
laugh at everything I said, or else she did not take
any notice of my talk at all. She had these two
faults, the lady in white, to say nothing of a third
which used to drive me to despair. She would
weep and weep and weep. My mother had told
me that grown-up people never wept. Ah ! she
had never seen what I had seen. She had never
seen the lady in white lying in an arm-chair with
an open letter in her lap, her head thrown back,
and her handkerchief to her eyes. This letter (I
would wager, now, that it was an anonymous one)
caused her much grief, which was a pity, for she
could laugh so merrily. These two visits put it
into my head to ask her to marry me. She said
that she had a big husband in China, but that she
would like a little one on the Quai Malaquais.

26 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

Thus the matter was settled, and she gave me a
cake to clinch it.

But the gentleman with the black whiskers used
to come very frequently. One day the lady in
white was telling me that she would have some
blue fishes sent for me from China, with a line to
catch them with, when he was announced and
shown into the room. From the way we looked at
each other it was clear that there was no love lost
between us. The lady in white told him that her
aunt (she meant the lady in black) had gone to
do some shopping at the "Two Chinamen." But
I saw them there on the chimney-piece, and I could
not imagine what in the world going out shopping
could have to do with them. But things crop up
every day that are so hard to understand. The
gentleman appeared in no way distressed at the
absence of the lady in black, and he told the lady
in white that he wanted to speak to her on a matter
of importance. Daintily she settled herself in a
listening attitude on her sofa. But the gentleman
kept looking at me, and appeared ill at ease.

" He is a nice little fellow," said he at length ;
"but "

" He is my little husband," said the lady in white.

" Well," answered the gentleman, " couldn't you
send him home to his mother? What I have to
tell you is for your ears alone."

THE LADY IN WHITE 27

She gave in to him.

"Go, dear," said she, "and play in the dining-
room, and do not come back till I call you. Go,
there's a dear."

I went with a heavy heart. But it was a very
interesting place, this dining-room, because it con-
tained a clock adorned with a picture representing
a mountain by the seashore, with a church, and
blue sky overhead. And when it struck the hour
an engine with several carriages behind it came out
of a tunnel, and a balloon rose up into the heavens.
But when one's heart is sad nothing seems to
offer any attraction. Besides, the picture remained
motionless. The engine, the ship, and the balloon
only started once an hour, and an hour is a long
time at least it was in those days. Fortunately
the cook came in to get something from the side-
board, and, seeing how forlorn I was, gave me
some sweets, which soothed my wounded feelings.
But when the sweets were all gone, misery took
hold of me again. Though the picture-clock had
not struck, it seemed to me as though hours upon
hours were weighing upon my loneliness. Occa-
sionally I heard the gentleman in the next room
speaking with energy. He was addressing entreaties
to the lady in white, and then he seemed to grow
angry with her. It was all very fine, but when
would they finish ? I flattened my nose against

28 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

the window-pane. I pulled the horse-hair out of
the chairs, made the holes in the wall-paper bigger,
dragged off the fringe from the curtains heaven
knows what I did not do. Ennui is a dreadful
thing. At last I could remain there no longer.
Noiselessly I crept to the door which led into the
other room, and stretched up to reach the handle.
I knew I was doing something rude and naughty :
but even that made me feel a sort of self-import-
ance.

I opened the door and beheld the lady in white
standing by the chimney-piece. The gentleman
was on his knees at her feet, his arms outstretched
as though to catch her. He was redder than a
turkey-cock. His eyes were nearly starting from
his head. Fancy getting into such a state !

" Enough, sir," the lady in white was saying.
Her face had more colour in it than usual, and
she was very agitated. " Since you say you love
me, stop and do not make me regret . . ."

She seemed as though she feared him, as though
her strength was nearly exhausted.

He got up quickly when he saw me, and I
really believe that for a moment he had a good
mind to throw me out of window. But, instead
of scolding me, as I expected, she threw her arms
about me and called me her darling.

She carried me to the sofa, and wept long and

THE LADY IN WHITE 29

softly against my cheek. We were alone. I told
her, by way of consolation, that monsieur with the
whiskers was a naughty man, and that if she had
stayed alone with me as we had arranged she would
have had nothing to cry for. All the same, I
found grown-up people could behave very oddly
sometimes.

We had scarcely recovered ourselves when the
lady in black came in with some parcels in her
hand.

She asked if any one had been.

" Monsieur Arnould came," said the lady in white
composedly ; " but he only stayed a minute."

That, I knew perfectly well, was false ; but the
white lady's good genius, who had doubtless been
with me for some moments, placed an invisible
finger on my lips.

I saw Monsieur Arnould no more, and my love
passages with the lady in white suffered no further
interruption. This doubtless accounts for my re-
collecting little about them. As recently as yester-
day, that is, after more than thirty years, I was still
in ignorance of what had become of her.

Last night I went to the Foreign Minister's ball.
" Life," says Lord Palmerston, " would be quite
tolerable were it not for its pleasures " ; and I agree
with him. My daily toil does not demand too much
either of my strength or my intelligence, and I have

30 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

managed to cultivate an interest in it. But official
receptions are too much for me. I knew that I
should be bored and do no good by going to this
ball ; I knew it, yet I went, for it is part of human
nature to think wise things and do ridiculous
ones.

I had barely made my way into the great salon,

when the Ambassador of and Madame

were announced. The Ambassador, whose delicate
face had a worn expression by no means exclusively
to be ascribed to his diplomatic labours I had fre-
quently met before. He is reputed to have been
very wild in his young days, and there are various
stories going the round of the clubs about his ex-
ploits with the fair sex. He was stationed in China
thirty years ago, and his career over there is
particularly rich in the sort of tales that men like
to tell over their coffee when the doors are shut.
His wife, to whom I had never had the honour of
an introduction, appeared to be past fifty. She was
dressed entirely in black. Some magnificent lace
formed an admirable setting to the shadowy
remnants of her former beauty. I was glad to be
introduced to her, for I set the greatest store on
the conversation of women of riper years. We
touched on a hundred and one topics, as the
younger women swept past to the music of the
violins. At last she happened to refer to the days

THE LADY IN WHITE 31

when she lived in an old house on the Quai
Malaquais.

" You were the lady in white," I exclaimed.

" I always used to wear white, certainly," was
her reply.

" And I, madame, was your little husband."

" What ! So you are the son of the worthy
Dr. Noziere ? You used to be very fond of cakes.
Do you care about them still? Well, then, come
and have some at our house. Every Saturday we
have a little tht intime. Really, how small the
world is ! "

" And the lady in black ? "

" I am the lady in black now. My poor aunt
died the year of the war. She often spoke of you
towards the end of her life."

While we were talking, a gentleman with white
whiskers and white moustaches approached us and
bowed to the Ambassadress with all the stately
elegance of an old beau. There was something
about the shape of his chin that I seemed to re-
member quite well.

" Monsieur Arnould," said she ; " an old friend
of mine."

Ill

I WILL GIVE YOU THIS ROSE"

E used to live in a large house full
of strange things. The walls were
adorned with the arms of savage
warriors surmounted by skulls and
scalps. Pirogues with their paddles
were suspended from the ceilings side by side
with stuffed alligators. There were glass cases
containing birds and birds'-nests, branches of
coral, and a host of spiteful, malevolent-looking
little skeletons. I never knew what bond my
father had entered into with these monstrous
creatures, but I know now. He had bound him-
self to collect them. Most enlightened and
unselfish of men, it was his ambition to cram all
creation into a cupboard. He did it in the interests
of science ; this was what he said, and what he
believed. But as a matter of fact, he had the
collecting mania upon him.

The whole place was stuffed with natural
curiosities. The only room which had not suffered
a zoological, ethnographical, or teratological in-

''I WILL GIVE YOU THIS ROSE" 33

vasion was the little drawing-room. There neither
serpents' scales, nor turtle shells, nor bones, nor
flint arrow-heads, nor tomahawks found a place ;
but only roses : the wall-paper was strewn with
them. They were roses in bud, little, modest,
timid things all of them dainty, and all alike.

My mother, who was on anything but friendly
terms with comparative zoology and craniology,
used to pass her days in this room sitting at her
work-table, while I, seated on the floor at her feet,
would play with a sheep which, though once
possessing four feet, had now come down to three,
a circumstance which yet did not render it worthy
to associate with the two-headed rabbits that figured
in my father's teratological collection. I also had
a doll that moved its arms and smelled of paint. I
must have been gifted with a deal of imagination
in those days, for this sheep and this doll played
various parts in a multitude of dramas. When
anything of a really interesting nature befel the
sheep or the doll I used to relate it to my mother.
But to no purpose. Grown-up people, it may be
observed, never really understand the stories children
tell them. My mother was absent-minded. She
never listened carefully enough. This was her
great defect. But she had a way of looking at me
with her great eyes and calling me "little noodle
that used to set everything to rights.

34 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

One day, in the little drawing-room, she put
down her work and, picking me up in her arms,
pointed to one of the flowers on the wall, saying,
" I will give you this rose," and so that there
might be no mistake, she made a cross on it with
her bodkin.

No present ever made me happier.

IV

THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER

E looks like a brigand, this little boy
of mine, with his hair sticking up
in this fashion. Cut it aux enfants
Edouard, Monsieur Valence."

Monsieur Valence, to whom my
mother addressed these words, was an old hair-
dresser, a lame, but dapper little man, the mere
sight of whom reminded me of the horrid smell
of heated curling-irons. I used to shrink from him
not only because his hands were all greasy with
pomade, but because he could never cut my hair
without letting some of it get down my back.
When, therefore, he began to put the white overall
on me and to wrap a towel round my neck, I used
to make a fuss, and he would say, " But surely you
don't want to go about looking like a wild man,
as though you had just come off the raft of the
Medusa ? "

Whenever he had the chance he used to relate,
in his deep Southern tones, the story of the wreck
of the Medusa, from which he had only been

35

36 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

rescued after enduring the most horrible privations.
The raft, the unavailing signals of distress, how
they were driven to eat human flesh he described
it all with the easy-going manner of one who
knew how to look on the bright side of things,
for he was a jovial man, was Monsieur Valence.

He took too long over the business to please me
that day, and did my hair in what struck me as
being a very strange manner, when I looked at
myself in the glass. It was all patted down quite
smooth, and combed straight over my forehead
nearly on to my eyebrows, and it fell down on
to my cheeks like a spaniel's ears.

My mother was enchanted. Valence had done
his work perfectly, and, arrayed as I was in my
black velvet blouse, all that remained to be done,
she said, was to shut me up with my elder brother
in the Tower. " Ah ! If they dared ! " she added,
taking me up in her arms with a delicious air of
bravado.

And she carried me, hugging me tightly, to the
carriage. For we were going to make a call.

I plied her with questions about this elder brother,
and about the Tower, which made me feel afraid.

And then my mother who was gifted with
the divine patience and joyous simplicity of those
beings whose sole mission in this world is to love
told me in pretty baby-talk how King Edward's

THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER 37

two children, who were beautiful and good, were
dragged away from their mother and smothered
in a dungeon of the Tower of London by their
wicked uncle Richard. And she said, too, having
apparently obtained the idea from some popular
picture of the day, that the Princes' little dog
barked to warn them of the murderers' approach.

The story, she concluded, was a very ancient
one, but so moving and so beautiful, that people
still painted pictures of it and still acted it on the
stage, and that when she saw it at the theatre, all
the audience had shed tears, and she with them.

I said that anyone must be very wicked to make
my mamma weep like that, and all the other people
too.

She replied that, on the contrary, such a play
could only have been written by a very noble and
a very clever man ; but I did not understand her.
I knew nothing then of the luxury of tears.

The carriage put us down in the lie Saint Louis,
outside an old house that I had not seen before ;
and we went up a stone staircase whose worn and
broken steps sent a chill to my heart. At the
first landing a little dog began yapping. " 'Tis
he," thought I, " 'tis the dog of the Princes in
the Tower " ; and a sudden wild, uncontrollable
panic took possession of me. Evidently this was
the stairway of the Tower, and I with my hair

38 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

cut to look like a bonnet, and my velvet blouse,
was one of the little Princes. They were going
to kill me ! I would go no farther, and clung
to my mother's dress shrieking, " Take me away,
take me away ! I don't want to go up the stair-
case of the Tower."

" Be quiet, then, you little silly. . . . There,
there, then, don't be afraid. . . . This child is
really too nervous. . . . Pierre, Pierre, my dear
boy, do have a little sense."

But, stiff* and convulsed with fear, I hung on
to her skirt and refused to be comforted. I yelled,
I howled, I choked, staring wildly into the shadows
which my terror had peopled with a multitude
of mysterious figures.

At the sound of my cries a door on the landing
opened, and an old gentleman came out in whom,
despite my terror, despite the Turkish cap and
dressing-gown in which he was arrayed, I recognised
my friend Robin, my good Robin who used once
a week to bring me shortcakes in the lining of his
hat. Yes, it was Robin himself; but I could not
imagine how he came to be in the Tower, not
knowing that "the Tower" was a house, that the
house was old, and that it was natural that this old
gentleman should inhabit it.

He stretched out his arms towards us, his snuff-
box in his left hand, and between the thumb and

THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER 39

forefinger of his right hand a pinch of snuff. It
was he !

" Come in, dear lady," said he ; " my wife is
better ; she will be delighted to see you. But
master Pierre, I fancy, is not very easy in his mind.
Is he frightened at our little dog ? Come here,
Finette "

I was reassured, and said, "You live in an ugly
tower, Monsieur Robin ! "

Here my mother gave my arm a pinch to prevent
me, as I understood quite well, from asking my
friend Robin for a cake, which was exactly what I
was about to do.

In Monsieur and Madame Robin's yellow
drawing-room I found Finette a great resource. I
played with her, still retaining the belief that it was
she who had barked at the murderers of the little
Princes. This was why I let her have some of the
cake which Monsieur Robin gave me. But one
soon wearies of doing the same thing, especially
when one is little. My thoughts flew hither and
thither like birds that flit from branch to branch,
and finally came back once more to the Princes in
the Tower. Having formed an opinion concerning
them, I was anxious to produce it. Catching hold
of Monsieur Robin by the sleeve, I said, " I sav,
Monsieur Robin, if mamma had been in the Tower
of London, you know, she wouldn't have let the

4 o

wicked uncle smother the little Princes beneath
their pillows."

I thought Monsieur Robin did not seem to
appreciate the full force of my observation, but
when we were alone mamma and I on the
staircase, she gathered me up in her arms and ex-
claimed, " Oh ! you little demon, you, how I love
you ! "

THE BUNCH OF GRAPES

WAS happy, very happy. I looked
upon my father, my mother, and my
nurse as so many benevolent giants
who had beheld the infancy of the
world and who were unchangeable,
eternal, and unique in their own kind. I felt
quite sure that they could shield me from every
ill, and in their company I enjoyed a sense
of absolute security. The trust I reposed in
my mother knew no bounds ; it was infinite, and
when I recall that divine, adorable trust, I feel like
blowing kisses to the little fellow that was myself;
and whoso knows how hard a task it is in this world
to retain a sentiment unimpaired will understand
the enthusiasm such memories evoke.

I was happy. A thousand things at once familiar
and mysterious haunted my imagination ; a thousand
things which, though nothing in themselves, were
yet part and parcel of my life. My life was quite a
tiny thing, but it was a life that is to say, it was
the centre of things, the pivot of the world. Smile

42 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

not at that statement, or if you smile, smile with
indulgence and ponder on it. Whatsoever lives, be
it but a little dog, is at the " centre of things " !

It was a happiness to me to see and to hear. I
never so much as got a glimpse into my mother's
cupboard without experiencing a delicate and
poetical feeling of curiosity. What was in it, you
ask? What was in it, Mon Dieu! Why, linen, sachets,
boxes without number. I now suspect that my
mother had a weakness for boxes. She had them
in every shape and size, and in prodigious numbers.
And those boxes, which I was forbidden to touch,
afforded me a subject for profound meditation.
My toys, too, used to keep my little head busy ; at
least, the toys I had been promised, and was looking
out for. Those I possessed had lost their mystery
for me, and therefore their charm. But the play-
things of my dreams what splendid things were
they ! Another wonderful thing was the number of
shapes and faces one could draw with a pencil or
a pen. I used to sketch soldiers. I would make
an oval for the head, and put a shako on the top of
it. Only after prolonged observation did I learn to
put the head into the shako as far as the eyebrows.
I was very much alive to the beauty of flowers and
scents, and to the delicacies of the table, and to nice
clothes. My feathered cap and striped stockings
were objects of not a little pride. But what 1 loved

THE BUNCH OF GRAPES 43

more than any one thing in particular, was the
ensemble of things : the house, the air, the light,
and so on ; life, in a word ! A great sense of well-
being encompassed me. Never did little bird rub
himself with more delicious satisfaction against the
down which lined his nest.

I was happy, yes, very happy. Nevertheless
there was another child whose lot I used to envy.
He was called Alphonse. I never knew him by any
other name, and quite possibly he had none. His
mother was a washerwoman, and went out to work.
All day long Alphonse trudged about the courtyard
or on the quay, and from my window I used to
gaze at him going about with his smutty face,
yellow mop, and seatless breeches, trailing his sabots
in the gutter. I, too, would have given much to
be free to go paddling in the gutters. Alphonse
hung about after the cooks, from whom he received
plenty of cuffs, and now and then a few pieces of
stale pie-crust. Sometimes a groom would send
him to the pump for a bucketful of water, and he
would come back carrying it, very red in the face
and his tongue hanging out of his mouth. I used
to envy him. He had none of La Fontaine's fables
to learn as I had. He was never afraid of being
scolded for getting spots on his blouse ; he was
never called upon to say " Bonjour, Monsieur ;
bonjour, Madame," to people concerning whose

44

doings he was utterly indifferent ; and, if he did
not possess a Noah's Ark or a clockwork horse, he
could play to his heart's content with the sparrows
which he trapped, and the street dogs, wanderers
like himself; and he could even amuse himself
with the horses in the stables until the coachman
evicted him at the end of his broom. He was free
and he was bold. From the courtyard, which was
his domain, he used to gaze up at me sitting at my
window as one looks at a bird in a cage.

There was always plenty of life in the courtyard,
owing to the animals of every description which
haunted it, and the servants who were continually
going to and fro. It was a spacious place. The
main building which enclosed it on the south was
covered with a gnarled and starved-looking old
vine, above which was a sundial whose figures had
been nearly obliterated by sun and rain, and this
shadowy point which stole imperceptibly across the
stone surface used to fill me with wonder. Of all
the phantoms which I can summon up, Parisians of
to-day would find the ghost of this old courtyard
the most remarkable. Nowadays a courtyard is
about four yards square, and at the top of it, five
flights up, you can see a piece of sky about as big
as a handkerchief. That is progress, but it is not
healthy.

It chanced one day that this busy courtyard,

THE BUNCH OF GRAPES 45

where women used to come to fill their pitchers of
a morning at the pump, and where the cooks came
about six o'clock to rid their salads of moisture by
shaking them in wire baskets, and to pass the time
of day with the stablemen it happened, I say, that
this courtyard had to have the pavement taken up ;
but they were only taking it up to put it down
again. As it had been raining during the opera-
tions it was very muddy, and Alphonse, who lived
in the place like a Satyr in his wood, was, from
head to foot, the colour of the ground. He was
moving about the paving-stones with joyous ardour.
At length, raising his head, and seeing me in my
prison above, he signed to me to come down.
Now, I wanted to play with him at shifting the
paving-stones, very badly indeed. There were no
paving-stones in my room to be carried about. It
chanced that our front door was open. I went
down into the court.

" Here I am," said I to Alphonse.

" Pick up that stone," said he.

He had a savage, unkempt appearance, and his
voice was rough. I did as I was bid. Suddenly
the stone was snatched from my hands, and I felt
myself lifted bodily from the ground. My nurse
was carrying me off in indignation. She gave me
a thorough good scrubbing, and told me I ought
to be ashamed of myself to "go playing with a

46 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

good-for-nothing little ragamuffin of a street
boy."

"Alphonse," added my mother, " Alphonse is
a common little boy. It is not his fault, but his
misfortune ; but children who are properly brought
up shouldn't make friends with those that are not."

I was a very intelligent and thoughtful child. I
remembered what my mother told me, and her
words became associated in my mind, I know not
how, with what I learned about naughty children
in my old illustrated Bible. But my feelings for
Alphonse underwent a sudden change. I envied
him no longer ; no. He inspired me with feelings
of mingled pity and terror. " It is not his fault,
it is his misfortune." These words of my mother's
made me feel unhappy about him. It was well,
maman, that you spoke to me thus ; well that you
revealed to me, when I was yet a little child, the
innocence of the wretched. Your words were
good. Me it behoved to keep them before me in
after years.

Well, this time at all events, they had their
effect, and I grew sorrowful over the lot of that
naughty little boy. One day down in the court he
was teasing a parrot that belonged to one of the
tenants, an old lady, and I looked down on this
strong and sullen Cain with all the compunction of
a good little Abel. Alas! that it should need

THE BUNCH OF GRAPES 47

prosperity to make Abels of us. I cast about for a
means of showing my pity. I thought of sending
him a kiss. But his face was dirty, and my heart
brooked not that I should bestow this gift. I
thought for a long time what I could give him :
I was in a great dilemma. To give him my clock-
work horse, which now lacked both tail and mane,
seemed to me to be going too far. Moreover, can
one convey one's sympathy by making a present of
a horse ? Something suitable for an outcast must
be found. What about a flower, thought I ?
There were some bunches in the drawing-room.
But a flower, that was the same sort of thing as a
kiss. I doubted whether Alphonse cared about
flowers. In great perplexity I looked all round the
dining-room. Suddenly I clapped my hands with
delight. The difficulty was solved.

In a dish on the sideboard lay some magnificent
grapes. I got up on a chair and took a long and
heavy bunch which filled three-quarters of the dish.
The grapes were pale green, with a golden tinge on
one side, and they looked as though they would
melt deliciously in the mouth. But I forbore to
eat any. I ran to get a ball of twine from my
mother's work-table. I had been told not to take
anything from that table, but rules are made to be
broken. I attached the grapes to one end of the
twine, and then, leaning out of the window, I called

48 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

to Alphonse and slowly let them down into the
courtyard. The better to see what he was about,
the boy shook aside the yellow hair from his eyes,
and, as soon as the grapes were within his reach, he
snatched them, twine and all, out of my hand.
Then, looking up at me, he put out his tongue,
made a long nose, and departed, displaying his
posterior as he went. My little companions had
not accustomed me to such manners. At first I
felt highly incensed, but reflection restored my
equanimity. " I was quite right," thought I, " not
to send him a flower or a kiss." This consideration
dissipated all my bitterness, so true it is that when
one's amour propre is satisfied the rest matters little.

When, however, I reflected that I should have to
recount the adventure to my mother, I became
greatly depressed ; but I need not have done, for,
though my mother scolded me, she was not angry :
I saw it by the laughter in her eyes.

" We should give away what belongs to ourselves,
not what belongs to others," she said ; " and we
should learn how to give."

" It is the secret of happiness," added my father,
" and few possess it."

But he did !

VI

MARCELLE OF THE GOLDEN EYES

WAS five years old, and I had formed
ideas about the world which I have
since been compelled to modify. It
is a pity, for they were charming.
One day, when I was busy drawing,
my mother called me, never reflecting that she was
disturbing me. Mothers do these thoughtless things.
This time she wanted me to have my best things
on. I didn't see the use, but I did see the incon-
venience of the operation, and I struggled and made
ugly faces about it. My behaviour, in short, was
insufferable.

"Your godmother will be here directly," said
my mother, "and a pretty thing it would be if
you weren't dressed."

My godmother ! I had never yet seen her ; I
did not know her in the least. I did not even know
that she existed. But I knew perfectly well what
godmothers were like. I had read about them in
story-books, and seen pictures of them. I knew
that a godmother was a fairy.

49

50 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

I suffered them to comb me and wash me to
their hearts' content. My thoughts were all
centred on my godmother, whom I was dying to
see. But, inquisitive as I generally was, I never
asked a single question, though I was simply
burning with curiosity.

Why didn't I ask, you say ? Ah ! I dared not,
because fairies as I conceived them love silence and
mystery ; because there is something secret and
mysterious in our hearts which even the latest of
us to enter the world instinctively and jealously
endeavours to preserve inviolate ; because, for the
child as for the man, there are things that may
not be uttered ; because, though I knew her not,
I loved my godmother.

I shall astonish you I know though, happily,
Truth sometimes exhibits herself in unexpected
guise, which is why we are able to put up with her
but my godmother was just as lovely as my
imagination had painted her. I knew her as soon
as I saw her. She it was for whom I had been
waiting. She was indeed my fairy ! I gazed on
her with ecstasy, but without surprise. This time,
for a wonder, Nature had fulfilled a little child's
dream of loveliness.

My godmother looked upon me, and her eyes
were of gold. She smiled upon me, and I saw that
her teeth were no bigger than my own. She spoke

MARCELLE OF THE GOLDEN EYES 51

to me, and her voice was clear and musical as a
well-spring in the woods. She kissed me, and her
lips were cool and fragrant. Even now I can feel
their touch upon my cheek.

As I gazed upon her I was conscious of a sensation
of infinite sweetness, and the meeting, it would
seem, was unmixed ly happy, for the memory that
I have of it is free from all alloy. It has acquired
in my mind a sort of luminous simplicity. Standing
erect, with open arms and lips apart as though
ready to bestow a smile or a kiss it is ever thus
that my godmother appears to me.

She lifted me up, saying, " My treasure, let me
see what colour your eyes are."

Then, running her fingers through my curls, she
added :

" His hair is fair now, but it will get dark later
on." My fairy could read the future ; but she was
kind ; she did not tell me all that was to come, for
to-day my hair is neither fair nor dark.

Next day she sent me a present that seemed
scarcely suited to my tastes. I was wrapt up in my
books, my pictures, my glue-pot, my paint-boxes,
and all the paraphernalia of a delicate and intelli-
gent small boy, who was innocently instilling into
his mind through the medium of his playthings that
sensitive appreciation of form and colour that is
fraught with such joy and sorrow for its possessors.

52 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

The present which my godmother had chosen
did not harmonise with these habits of mine. It
consisted of a complete gymnastic outfit containing
a trapeze, ropes, bars, weights everything, in short,
with which a boy develops his muscles and trains
himself to acquire strength and manly grace.

Unluckily, even at this date my life had taken a
studious turn. I had a fondness for cutting out
figures by lamplight of an evening. I was keenly
alive to the beauty of form and symmetry, but
whenever I did forsake my usual occupations, a fit
of madness as it were, a sort of riot of reaction,
would impel me wildly into games without rule or
measure to play at robbers, shipwrecks, firemen,
and I know not what. But all this apparatus of iron
and varnished wood seemed to me a cold, heavy,
soulless sort of affair, until my godmother taught
me how to use it and invested it with some of the
charm that was her own. She picked up the dumb-
bells in great style, and, putting her arms well back,
she showed how to develop the chest by passing a
bar between the elbows and the back.

One day she took me on her knee and promised
me that I should have a ship, a ship with rigging,
sails, and guns at the port-holes. My godmother
talked like a veritable old salt : topmast, poop,
shrouds, foretop-gallant, mizzen she had it all
quite pat. She used to repeat these outlandish

MARCELLE OF THE GOLDEN EYES 53

words over and over again as though she were in
love with the sound of them. Doubtless they
brought many things to her mind, for fairies are at
home on the waters.

I did not get the ship. Yet never, even when
a very little boy, did I need to possess a thing
materially in order to enjoy it, and many and many
an hour has the fairy's boat beguiled for me. I
could see it then ; I see it now. It is a toy no
more, but a phantom. Silently it floats upon a
misty sea, and upon its deck, lo ! a woman is
standing motionless, her arms drooping listlessly
at her side, gazing before her with great, hollow
eyes.

I was never to behold my godmother again.

Even then I rightly judged her disposition. I
knew that she was made to shower joy and love
on those around her, that this was her mission in
the world. Alas! I was not at fault; she fulfilled
her mission all too well.

It was not till very many years later that I
learned some of the details of her life. Marcelle
and my mother had known each other at school ;
but my mother, who was the elder by some years,
was too quiet, too restrained, to cultivate any close
intimacy with Marcelle, whose attachments were
ardently, almost wildly enthusiastic. It happened
that Marcelle's most extravagant manifestations of

54

affection were excited by a merchant's daughter, a
fat, phlegmatic creature of limited capacity, but
rather inclined to be satirical. Marcelle could
never take her eyes off her; an unkind word, an
impatient gesture from her friend, would make
her burst into a flood of tears. She so wearied
the girl with her vows of friendship, her fits of
angry jealousy, and her interminable letters, that
at length the unromantic damsel's patience was
exhausted. She declared she had had enough of
it, and wanted to be left alone.

Poor Marcelle retired so crestfallen and so
desolate that my mother had compassion on her,
and thus, a short time before my mother left the
school, their intimacy began. They promised to
visit each other, and they kept their word.

Marcelle's father was the best and the most
charming of men, with abundance of brains and a
plentiful lack of common sense. He threw up
his post in the navy without any reason whatever,
after he had been twenty years at sea. People
were astounded ; but the wonder was that he had
remained in the service so long. His fortune was
mediocre, and his economic theories detestable.

Looking out of window one rainy day he saw
his wife and daughter struggling along in the wet
with their mackintoshes and umbrellas, and it
dawned upon him for the first time that they

MARCELLE OF THE GOLDEN EYES 55

had no carriage. The discovery grieved him
sorely. So what did he do, but realise his invest-
ments forthwith, sell his wife's jewelry, borrow
money from his friends, and hurry away to Baden.
Having invented a system that was bound to
ensure success, he did not hesitate to stake enough
to win the wherewithal to buy horses, carriage,
and livery. At the end of a week he came home
without a penny, but with greater confidence than
ever in his system.

However, he still had a little estate down in Brie,
and there he started growing pine-apples. After a
year of it he had to sell the land to pay for the
greenhouses. Then he went in heart and soul for
inventing machines, and his wife died without his
observing it. He used to send his plans and
memoranda to the members of the Government, the
Institute, the learned Societies, and everybody in
general. The memoranda were occasionally in
verse. Nevertheless, he managed to live. How he
did it was a marvel. Marcelle, however, took it
all as a matter of course, and went off to buy a new
hat whenever a few francs came her way.

She was then little more than a child, and my
mother could not understand this way of going
on at all. She trembled for Marcelle, but she
loved her.

" If you only knew," my mother used to say to

56 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

me over and over again ; " if you only knew how
charming she was in those days ! "

" Ah ! mother dear," I used to make reply, " I
can readily believe it ! "

However, they quarrelled, and the origin of the
quarrel was a sentimental affair which, though I
must not leave it in the limbo to which we con-
sign the shortcomings of those we love, it is not
permitted me to analyse so thoroughly as another
might. Indeed, whether I would or no, I could
not go into details, for my information on the
matter is of the scantiest. My mother was engaged
at that time to a young medical man, who, marrying
her shortly afterwards, became my father. Mar-
celle was most attractive ; you have heard that
often enough. Love was the very essence of her
being ; she breathed love, and she awakened it in
others. My father was young ; Marcelle met him,
and they talked to one another ... it was enough.
My mother married, and she saw Marcelle no
more. But after two years of exile the fair one
with the eyes of gold obtained her pardon, and the
pardon was so full and free that she was invited
to become my godmother. She had been married
in the interval, a circumstance which, I believe,
contributed not a little to the reconciliation. Mar-
celle simply worshipped her husband, a villainous-
looking little blackamoor who had been knock-

MARCELLE OF THE GOLDEN EYES 57

ing about at sea in a trading vessel ever since he
was seven, and who, I strongly suspect, had
dabbled pretty extensively in the slave-trade. He
had some property in Rio de Janeiro, and thither
he departed with my godmother.

" You cannot imagine," my mother often said
to me, " the sort of creature Marcelle's husband
was. He looked like an imp, a monkey and a
monkey dressed up from head to foot in yellow.
He couldn't speak any language properly, but he
had a smattering of them all. To express his
meaning he would shout, wave his arms about, and
roll his eyes, though it must, in justice, be admitted
that his eyes were splendid. But don't run away,
dear, with the notion that he came from the Indies,"
added my mother; "he was a Frenchman, born
at Brest, and his name was Dupont."

I must mention, by the way, that my mother
used to refer to every place that wasn't in Europe
as " the Indies," a peculiarity which drove my
father, the author of several treatises on compara-
tive ethnography, to desperation.

" Marcelle," continued my mother ; " Marcelle
doted on her husband. When they were first
married one always felt de trop when one went to
see them. For three or four years she lived happily
enough. I say happily, for we must take into
account that tastes differ. But while she was over

58 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

here in France you don't remember that ; you
weren't big enough "

" But I do, maman, I remember it perfectly well."

"Well, then, while she was away, her husband,
left to his own devices in the Indies, fell into the
most dreadful habits. He used to fuddle himself
in sailors' taverns with the lowest of the low. At
last someone stuck a knife into him. As soon
as she heard the news Marcelle took ship for home.
She nursed her husband with all the magnificent
energy that marked her every action. But he had
a haemorrhage, and died."

"But didn't Marcelle come back to France?
Tell me, mother, how it is that I have never seen
my godmother again."

My mother displayed some embarrassment as
she replied :

" When she was a widow she became acquainted
with some naval officers at Rio, who did her a great
wrong. We must not think evil of Marcelle, dear.
She was a woman apart and she acted differently
from other women. But it became difficult to
ask her to our house."

" But, mother, I do not think ill of Marcelle ;
only tell me what became of her."

" A naval lieutenant fell in love with her, which
was natural enough ; and he compromised her
because he wanted to brag of having made such

MARCELLE OF THE GOLDEN EYES 59

a fine conquest. I won't tell you his name. He
is now a vice-admiral, and you have frequently
dined with him."

"What! V , that fat, red-faced creature?

He has some fine after-dinner stories about women,
the old rip ! "

" Marcelle was madly in love with him, and
followed him everywhere. You can quite under-
stand that I am not very well up in this part of
the tale. Anyhow, the story had a terrible ending.
They were both of them in America ; where, I
cannot exactly say, I am such a poor hand at
remembering names of places. There he grew tired
of her and, making up some sort of excuse or other,
he left her and returned to France. While she
was waiting for him out there, she learned from
a Paris paper that he was going about to theatres
with some actress or other. This was too much
for her patience, and, ill as she was with the fever,
she sailed for France immediately. It was her last
voyage. She died on board the vessel, and your
poor godmother was sewn up in a sheet and cast
into the sea."

Such was my mother's story, and I know no
more. But, whenever the skies are a tender grey,
and the winds are sighing low, my thoughts take
wing to Marcelle, and I say to her :

" Poor soul in torment, poor soul that wanderest

60 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

o'er the immemorial ocean that of old lulled the
lovesick earth to sleep, O beloved phantom, my
godmother and my fairy, receive the blessing of
the truest of thy lovers, of him who, alone maybe
of all of them, still doth hold thee in his heart !
Blessed be thou for the gift which thou didst be-
stow upon me merely by bending o'er me in my
cradle. Blessed be thou for revealing to me when
yet a little child the sweet unrest with which Beauty
assails the souls of those who would fain lay bare
her mystery. Receive the blessing of him whom,
as a little child, thou didst gather in thy arms to
behold the colour of his eyes. The happiest, nay,
the truest of thy friends was he ! On him didst
thou bestow the rarest of thy gifts, O most generous
heart, for, opening thine arms to him, thou madest
him free of the illimitable land of dreams ! "

VII
NOTE ADDED AT DAWN

UCH are the gleanings of one
winter's night, my first sheaf of
memories. Shall I scatter them to
the winds, to whirl whither they list ?
Or were it better to gather them up
and bear them to the granary ? The ghosts, me-
thinks, will find in them a repast to their liking.

That excellent and most erudite of men,
Monsieur Littre, would have liked every family to
possess its records and its moral history. " Since,"
says he, " philosophy has taught me to attach great
importance to tradition, and to the due preservation
of all that belongs to the past, I have many a time
regretted that in the Middle Ages it did not occur
to people of the bourgeois class to keep a sort of
modest register in which to record the principal
incidents in the family life a register to be handed
down and added to by each successive generation
so long as the family lasted. What a curious
interest would have attached to such of these
records, however concise their contents, as might

61

62 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

have survived till our day. What ideas, what ex-
periences, now lost for ever, might have been pre-
served to us by the exercise of a little care."

Well, so far as I am concerned, I intend to carry
out the idea of this wise old scholar. These reminis-
cences shall be preserved, and they shall form the
beginning of the Noziere family register. Let us
not lightly cast aside anything that belongs to the
past, for only with the Past can we rear the fabric
of the Future.

LATER EXPLOITS

I

THE HERMITAGE OF THE JARDIN
DES PLANTES

HAD not yet learned to read. I was
still going about in baby knicker-
bockers, and I cried when my nurse
wiped my nose ; but I was consumed
with a thirst for glory. Yes, at the
very tenderest age I was possessed by a longing to
win immediate renown and to live on eternally in
the memory of mankind. My mind was exercised
as to the best means to compass this end, even as
I played with my soldiers on the dining-room table.
Had I been able, I would have gone forth to win
undying glory on the battle-field. I should have
become like one of those generals whom I used
to shift hither and thither with my little hands, and
to whom I dispensed the fortunes of war on a
piece of oil-cloth.

But it was not given me to possess a horse, a
uniform, a regiment, and enemies ; and all these
things are essential to military glory. It therefore
occurred to me that I would become a saint. The

E

66 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

outfit is less elaborate than that required for a
military career, and saints are held in high esteem.
My mother was a devout woman, and her piety
gentle and grave like herself deeply impressed
me. She often read me passages from the Lives
of the Saints. I listened with delight, and my heart
was filled with awe and admiration. I thus got to
know by what means the chosen of the Lord
rendered their lives precious and meritorious. I
learned what heavenly fragrance exhales from the
roses of martyrdom. But martyrdom was an extreme
to which I was not disposed to go ; nor did I
think of undertaking the work of an apostle or a
preacher, for I lacked the opportunity. My sole
idea was to live the life of an ascetic. That was
a line of conduct that could be pursued with ease
and safety, and in order to lose no time in putting
my ideas in operation, I refused to eat my break-
fast. My mother, who knew nothing of my new
vocation, thought I was ill, and looked at me with
an anxiety that it pained me to behold. Never-
theless I persevered with my fasting, and then, re-
membering the example of Saint Simeon Stylites, who
spent his life on a pillar, I climbed up on to the
kitchen cistern. But it was impossible to live there,
for Julie, our cook, promptly dislodged me. Though
I had thus been ousted from my cistern, I pursued
with undiminished ardour the way of perfection,

THE HERMITAGE 67

and next decided to imitate Saint Nicholas of Patras,
who gave all his riches to the poor. My father's
study window looked out on to the quay, and from it
I proceeded to fling down a dozen coppers or so
which had been presented to me because they were
new and bright. These I followed up with marbles,
humming-tops, whip-top, and eel-skin whip.

" The child is crazy ! " exclaimed my father, as
he shut the window.

I felt angry and mortified at hearing this judg-
ment passed upon me. But I remembered that my
father, not being a saint like myself, would not
share with me in the glories of the blessed, a reflec-
tion from which I derived great consolation.

The time came for me to go for my walk,
and they put my hat on ; but I tore out the
feather after the manner of the blessed Labre who,
when he was given a hat in the last stages of dilapi-
dation, was careful to drag it in the mire before
putting it on his head. My mother, when she
heard what had befallen my treasures and my hat,
shrugged her shoulders and sighed deeply. I was
really worrying her.

All the time I was out I kept my eyes riveted
on the ground, so that no external object should
distract my thoughts, thus conforming to a precept
frequently laid down in the Lives of the Saints.

It was on my return from this salutary promenade

68 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

that, in order to put the finishing touch upon my
sanctity, I made myself a hair shirt by stuffing the
padding of an old arm-chair down my back. But
here fresh tribulation awaited me, for Julie came
in and caught me just as I was engaged in thus
imitating the sons of Saint Francis. Looking only
on the superficial aspect of the matter, without
seeking the hidden motive, she was merely struck
by the fact that I had damaged an arm-chair, and
consequently whipped me in sheer ignorance.

Looking back over the painful incidents of this
day, I came to the conclusion that it was very diffi-
cult to be a saint with one's people about one. I
understood how it was that Saint Anthony and
Saint Jerome had gone forth into the desert among
the lions and the asgypans, and I resolved to with-
draw the very next day into a hermitage. I
selected, as my place of retirement, the maze in the
Jardin des Plantes. There it was that I made up
my mind to live a life of contemplation, attired,
after the manner of Saint Paul the Hermit, in a
mantle of palm-leaves.

" In this garden," thought I, " there will be roots
which will serve me for food. There, too, a hut is
to be found on the summit of a mountain. In
this spot I shall live amid all the beasts of creation.
The lion which with his claws dug the grave of
Saint Mary of Egypt, will doubtless come to seek

THE HERMITAGE 69

me in order that I may perform the last rites over
some anchorite of the district. I shall behold, like
Saint Anthony, the man with the feet of a goat, and
the horse with human head and shoulders. And,
peradventure, angels will bear me from the earth
amid the chanting of canticles."

My resolve will seem less strange when I explain
that, for a long time past, the Jardin des Plantes
had been a place hallowed in my eyes, as somewhat
resembling the earthly paradise which I used to
look at in my old illustrated Bible. My nurse used
frequently to take me there, and I was conscious
within its precincts of a feeling of holy joy. Even
the sky there seemed to be purer and more serene
than elsewhere, and in the clouds which drifted past
above the aviary of the parrots, the tigers' cage, the
bears' den, and the elephant house, I somehow
thought I beheld God, with snowy beard and robe
of blue, and arm outstretched to bestow His
blessing upon me and upon the antelope, the
gazelle, the rabbit, and the dove. And when I
sat down beneath the cedar of Lebanon I beheld
descending upon my head through the branches
the rays which shone from the finger-tips of the
Almighty. The animals which came and took food
from my hands, looking at me the while with great
soft eyes, brought back to me all that my mother
had taught me about Adam and the days of

yo MY FRIEND'S BOOK

primeval innocence. The living things that were
gathered together there, even as of old they had
found a home within the floating dwelling-place of
the Patriarch, were reflected in my eyes all adorned
with a childish grace. And nothing marred my
paradise. It did not shock me to behold nurse-
maids there, and soldiers and cocoa-nut sellers.
On. the contrary, I felt happy at being near these
lowly folk, these little ones I, who was the least
of them all. All seemed kindly and good to me,
because, with sovereign simplicity, I invested every-
thing with the glamour of my own childish ideal.

I fell asleep fully resolved to go and dwell in this
garden, in order that I might become meritorious
and achieve equality with the great saints whose
elaborate history I remembered.

Next morning my resolution was firm as ever,
and I disclosed the matter to my mother. She
began to laugh.

"Whoever put it into your head to become a
hermit and dwell in the maze of the Jardin des
Plantes ? " she asked, combing my hair and laughing
all the while.

" I want to be a celebrity," said I ; "to be able
to put on my visiting cards, ' Hermit and Saint of
the Calendar,' just as father has 'Laureate of the
Academy of Physicians and Secretary of the
Anthropological Society' on his."

THE HERMITAGE 71

At this my mother dropped the comb with which
she was doing my hair, exclaiming, " Pierre, Pierre,
how foolish and, oh ! how wicked ! Oh ! how
unfortunate I am ! Here, my little boy has lost
his wits before most people have any to lose."

Then, turning to my father :

" You heard that ? " said she ; " he is seven, and
he wants to be a celebrity."

" My dear," replied my father, " mark my words,
when he is twenty he will have grown sick of
fame."

" God grant it may be so ! " said my mother ;
" I do not like vain people."

God did grant it, and my father's words came
true. Like the king of Yvetot, I get on very well
without renown, and I have not the smallest wish
to inscribe the name of Pierre Noziere in the
memory of my fellow-men.

Nevertheless, whenever I come, with my long
train of far-off memories, to wander in these
gardens, now so lonely and so desolate, I feel un-
accountably impelled to seek some friendly stranger
and tell how once, long ago, it had been my
ambition to become a hermit there ; as if my
childish tale mingling with the stranger's thoughts
could bestow on him the blessing of a smile.

It is also a great question with me whether I
really acted wisely in relinquishing, at the age of

72 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

six, all idea of following a military career. For it
is a fact that I have never thought of being a
soldier since. This I am a little disposed to regret
There is a splendid dignity about the life of a
soldier. For him the path of duty is clearly
defined, not the less clearly because reason has no
part in defining it. The man who seeks out
reasons for what he does soon finds out that few
of his reasons are blameless. Only a priest or a
soldier is untortured by the stings of doubt.

As to becoming a hermit, the plan has recurred
to me every time I have felt convinced that life
is fundamentally bad. That is to say, every day.
But every day Nature has reasserted her sway
and reawakened my interest in those doings in
which ordinary men and women pass their lives.

II

PERE LE BEAU

OME of the portraits one meets
with in Heine's Memoirs, though
strikingly realistic, are clothed with
an atmosphere of poetry. Such is
the picture which the poet draws of
his uncle Simon Van Geldern.

" My uncle," says Heine, " was an eccentric old
fellow whose external appearance was of the
humblest, yet quaintest, description. He was a
quiet, unobtrusive little body, with a pale, severe
cast of countenance, and his nose, though Grecian
in its outline, was at least a third longer than the
Greeks themselves were in the habit of wearing
those appendages. He invariably went about in
clothes of antique cut, and wore the knee-breeches,
white silk stockings, buckle shoes, and pigtail of the
old regime. As the worthy little gentleman trotted
with short, mincing footsteps across the street, this
pigtail would bob about from shoulder to shoulder,
cutting all sorts of capers, as though it were mock-
ing at its proprietor behind his back.

73

74 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

"The little man was possessed of a most mag-
nanimous soul, and beneath his little swallow-tailed
surtout there beat the heart of the last survivor
of the days of chivalry. But, knight though he
was, he was not of the errant order. He never
wandered far from his little ancestral home at
Diisseldorf 'Noah's Ark,' as it was called, from
a cunningly carved and gaudily painted ark that
surmounted the doorway. There he was free to
indulge uninterruptedly in all his tastes : his little
puerilities of scholarship, his book-collecting, and
his mania for scribbling a mania which found an
outlet principally in political gazettes and obscure
little reviews.

" Ardour for the common weal it was that drove
Simon Van Geldern into authorship. He took
immense pains over his compositions. Thinking
alone, to say nothing of writing, was a desperate
effort for him. He wrote in the stiff, pedantic style
that he had acquired at the Jesuit schools.

" It was this uncle," Heine tells us, " who exerted
a great influence in the formation of my mind, and,
on this point, I owe him a debt of infinite gratitude.
Widely sundered as were our ideas, his literary
aspirations, pathetic though they were, may possibly
have helped to awaken in me the ambition to achieve
distinction in literature."

This description of the old man Van Geldern

LE BEAU 75

reminds me of another quaint figure whose portrait
as I have but my own recollections to draw upon
will, I am afraid, appear but faint and unattractive
in comparison. But I could never hope to sketch a
likeness with that wonderful blend of fidelity and
fantasy which is the distinguishing characteristic of
Rembrandt and Heine. It is unfortunate, for the
original was worthy of a skilful artist.

Yes ! I, too, had a Simon Van Geldern to inspire
my childish mind with a taste for things intellectual
and an incorrigible desire to write. He was called
Le Beau, and it is perhaps to him that I owe the
habit that has been mine since I was fifteen years of
age of covering unlimited paper with records of my
meditations. I know not whether I ought to thank
him ; but, at all events, the failing with which he in-
spired me was as harmless and as innocent as his own.
His mania was compiling catalogues. Week in, week
out, he catalogued and catalogued and catalogued.
He excited my admiration, and, when I was ten, I
thought that to make a catalogue was a finer thing
than to win a battle. Since then my ideas have de-
generated somewhat, but in reality my opinions have
not altered so much as one might suppose. Pere
Le Beau, as he used to be called, is still, to my mind,
a man to be envied and extolled ; and if I occasion-
ally indulge in a smile, as I think of this old friend
of mine, it is a smile all kindness and affection.

76 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

Pere Le Beau was very old when I was very
young : for which reason there was an excellent
understanding between us.

Everything about him inspired me with a trust-
ful curiosity. His spectacles perched on the end
of his nose, which was big and round ; his plump,
ruddy countenance, his flowered waistcoat, his
ample dressing-gown with its pockets stuffed full
of old books his whole appearance, in a word,
conveyed a suggestion of good-humour that a touch
of the motley only served to enhance. He wore
a low-crowned hat with wide brims, around which
his white hair twined and clustered like honey-
suckle about the rail of a garden terrace.

Everything he said was simple, short, and graphic,
like a tale for children. He was naturally of a
simple disposition, and kept me amused without
the slightest effort on his part. Being a great
friend of my parents, and regarding me as a quiet
and intelligent little boy, he encouraged me to go
and see him in his house, where he had scarcely
any visitors but the rats.

It was an old house, standing somewhat back
from a steep, narrow street which leads to the
Jardin des Plantes, a street which in those days, I
imagine, harboured all the cork-makers and coopers
of Paris. There was an odious smell of wine
casks about the place that I shall remember to my

PRE LE BEAU 77

dying day. You had first of all to follow Nanon,
the old servant, across a little parsonage garden,
and then, after ascending some stone steps, you
would find yourself in what was assuredly the most
extraordinary of dwellings. Mummies, ranged all
along the lobby wall, bade you welcome as you
entered. One was enclosed in its gilded sheath,
others had nothing but blackened linen about their
shrivelled bodies, and one in particular, freed from
its cerements, displayed its white teeth and enamel
eyes. Nor was the staircase less alarming : chains,
pillories, prison keys bigger than your arm, hung in
profusion on the walls.

Like Bouvard, P&re Le Beau would have been
quite equal to including a disused gallows in his
collection, and, indeed, he did possess Latude's
ladder and a dozen or so choke-pears. The four
rooms that comprised his dwelling were all alike.
Books were piled up right to the ceiling and lit-
tered the floors, intermingled in hopeless confusion
with maps, medals, armour, flags, smoke-begrimed
pictures, old broken bits of carving in wood or
stone. Heaped upon a rickety table and a worm-
eaten chest stood a mountainous pile of coloured
pottery.

Everything that one could possibly hang hung
from the ceiling in woeful attitudes. A uniform
coating of dust rendered everything in this chaotic

78 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

collection more or less indistinguishable, and each
object seemed only to be kept in place by the
countless spiders' webs which surrounded it, for
Pre Le Beau, who had his own notions concerning
the preservation of works of art, forbade Nanon to
sweep the floors. A most remarkable thing, how-
ever, was that everything had either a forlorn or
leering expression, and looked spitefully at one, as
though the whole place were tenanted by people
metamorphosed and held in thrall by evil spirits.

Pere Le Beau was usually to be found in his bed-
room, which was in just as great a muddle as the
rest of the house, but not so dusty, for there the
old servant had leave to ply her broom and feather-
brush. Half the space was taken up by a long
table smothered with little pieces of cardboard. At
this table my old friend, attired in his flowered
dressing-gown and night-cap, used to work with all
the joy of a peaceful, unsophisticated soul. He
catalogued, and I looked on in wide-eyed, breathless
admiration. He catalogued books and medals
chiefly, assisting his vision with a magnifying-glass.
He covered his little pieces of cardboard with a
small, regular, and cramped hand. I did not think
that anyone could devote himself to a finer occupa-
tion. I was wrong. A printer was found to print
the catalogue of Pere Le Beau, and then I beheld
my friend correcting proofs. He made mysterious

P&RE LE BEAU 79

marks in the margin of the cards, and then I knew
that this was the finest task the world could offer ;
and I stood agape with wonder and admiration.

After a while I grew more daring, and vowed
that I, too, would have proofs to correct one day.
The aspiration has not been fulfilled, but it is a
circumstance which I regard with qualified regret,
for I have discovered from intercourse with a friend
of mine a literary man that everything becomes
irksome after a time, even proof-correcting. Never-
theless it was this old friend that determined the
course my life was to take. The unusual spectacle
afforded by the contents of his abode accustomed
me to the sight of what was old and rare, turned
my gaze backwards towards the past. By the ex-
ample he afforded me of the regular untroubled
execution of a piece of literary spade-work, he
implanted in me, even as a child, the desire to work
for the improvement of my mind. In conclusion,
I owe it to him that I have developed into a great
reader, a zealous annotator of ancient texts, and
that I am here writing these memoirs that will never
find their way into print.

I was twelve years old when this kindly but
eccentric old man passed peacefully away. His
catalogue, as you can well imagine, was never
published ; and the mummies and the rest of the
things were sold by Nanon to the dealers.

8o MY FRIEND'S BOOK

Last week I happened to come across one of
those little models of the Bastille which Palloy
the patriot used to carve out of stones that had
belonged to the demolished fortress, models which
he offered for a consideration to the municipal
bodies and the general public. The thing was by
no means scarce, and it was very unwieldy. I ex-
amined it, however, with instinctive curiosity, and
it was not without emotion that I read, on the
base of one of the towers, the half-obliterated legend :
" From the collection of Monsieur Le Beau."

Ill

GRANDMAMMA NOZIERE

HAT morning my father looked very
much upset. My mother was bust-
ling about and speaking in an under-
tone. In the dining-room a sewing
woman was busily employed making
black dresses.

Luncheon, too, was a melancholy affair, and the
conversation was conducted in whispers. I knew
quite well that something had happened.

At length my mother, dressed all in black and
thickly veiled, came to me and said, " Come, my
dear."

I asked her where we were going, and she said :
" Pierre, listen to me ! Your grandmamma
Noziere you know, your father's mother died
last night. We are going to say good-bye to her,
and to kiss her for the last time."

And I saw that my mother had been crying. As
for the effect on myself, it was very great, for all
these years have not availed to obliterate it ; but
it was also very vague, for I cannot describe it

8 ' F

82 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

in words. I cannot say that it was a melancholy
effect, or if it was, the sadness had nothing terrible
in it. My state of mind was caused by nothing
external or tangible, and on the whole the most
fitting epithet to apply to it is perhaps " romantic."

All the way along, my thoughts were centred
upon my grandmother, but I could form no idea
of what it was that had befallen her. Death! I
could not imagine what that could possibly be.
But 1 knew that the hour of death was a serious
one.

By a not altogether inexplicable illusion, I thought
as I drew near the house of mourning that the
aspect of the immediate surroundings and all the
neighbourhood had some connection with my grand-
mother's death, and that the morning quiet of the
streets, the voices of the neighbours, the people
hurrying by, the sound of the blacksmith's hammer,
were all to be ascribed to the same cause. This
idea wholly engrossed me, and with this mysterious
thing called " Death " I also associated the beauty
of the trees, the radiance of the sky, and the soft-
ness of the air.

I felt as though I were treading a path of
mystery, and when, at a turn in the road, I beheld
the little garden and the cottage that I knew so well,
I was almost disappointed at discovering nothing
out of the ordinary. The birds were singing.

GRANDMAMMA NOZI^RE 83

A sense of fear came over me, and I looked
up at my mother. Her eyes were fixed with an
expression of religious awe on a spot toward which
I in turn directed my gaze.

Then I perceived, glimmering through the white-
curtained window of my grandmother's room, a
light, a pale, unsteady light. And this light
seemed so death-like amid the exceeding brightness
of the day, that I bowed my head that I might
see it no more.

We went up the little wooden staircase and
through the silent rooms. When my mother put
out her hand to open the bedroom door, I clutched
it as though to hold her back. We went in. A
nun, who was sitting in an arm-chair, rose and
made room for us at the head of the bed. My
grandmother was lying there, and her eyes were
closed.

It seemed to me that her head had grown very
heavy heavy as a stone, so deep was the pit it
made in the pillow ! Her hair was hidden beneath
a white cap ; she did not look so old as usual,
although her face was colourless.

Oh ! how little her appearance resembled sleep !
But what was the meaning of that little insistent
smile that was so painful to behold ?

I thought her eyelids trembled a little now and
then, doubtless because they were exposed to the

84 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

flickering light of the two tapers that were burning
on the table, one on either side of a bowl of holy
water in which a sprig of box was lying.

" Kiss grandmamma," said my mother.

I touched the face with my lips, and the chill
that went through me I cannot, nor ever shall be
able to, describe.

I covered my eyes, and I heard my mother
sobbing.

Really, I do not know what would have become
of me had not my grandmother's servant taken me
out of the room.

She led me by the hand, and took me to a toy-
shop, and said :

" Choose what you like." I chose a cross-bow,
and began to amuse myself shooting peas in among
the leaves of the trees.

I had forgotten my grandmother. It was only
in the evening, when I saw my father, that the
thoughts of the morning came back to me again.
My poor father was no longer recognisable. His
face was all swollen and drawn. His eyes were
brimming, and his lips quivering convulsively.

My mother was sitting at his side writing
addresses on black-edged paper. Some relatives
came in to help her. I was shown how to fold the
letters. There were about a dozen of us seated
round a large table. It was warm. The task I

GRANDMAMMA NOZlfcRE 85

had to perform was a new one ; this gave me a
feeling of importance and kept me amused.

After her death it seemed that my grandmother
lived again, and that this second life was more
remarkable than the first. I remembered with
incredible vividness everything I had seen her do or
heard her say. And my father used to tell us
stories about her every day that brought her before
us in her habit as she lived ; and sometimes at
night, after dinner was done, it almost seemed as
though she had been there breaking bread with us.
Oh ! why did we not speak to this dear shade as
the pilgrims of Emmaus spake to the Master ?

" Abide with us : for it is toward evening, and
the day is far spent."

Ah ! what a sweet ghost she made, with her
lace bonnet and green ribbons. It was difficult
impossible to imagine how she would adapt her-
self to the conditions of the other world ; with
nobody was the idea of death so difficult to associate
as with her. Death may come to a monk, or to
some beautiful heroine ; but that the cold grave
should claim a laughter-loving, light-hearted,
daintily-attired little old lady, such as grandmamma
Noziere how impossible it seemed !

I will tell you something I found out all by
myself about her when she was still alive.

Grandmamma was frivolous ; yes, grandmamma's

86 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

ideas about morality were not of the strictest ;
grandmamma had no more piety in her composition
than a bird. You ought to have seen the little
quizzical grimace she would make on Sundays when
mother and I were setting out for church. She
used to smile at the seriousness which my mother
brought to bear on everything connected with this
world and the next. She readily forgave me my
faults, and I think she would have forgiven bigger
ones than mine.

" He will be a very different sort of fellow from
his father," she used to say of me. By that she
meant that I should spend my young days dancing,
and fall in love with countless maidens. She
flattered me. As a matter of fact, the only thing
she would approve in me, if she were still of this
world (she would be a hundred and ten by this
time), would be that I can take life very comfort-
ably, and that I possess a happy tolerance in regard
to the views of others advantages I have purchased,
not too dearly as I think, by the sacrifice of a few
moral and political shibboleths. These were
qualities which, in my grandmother, had all the
attractiveness of natural gifts ; she died without
being aware that she possessed them. My inferi-
ority lies in my consciousness of being tolerant and
sociable.

My grandmother was real eighteenth century.

GRANDMAMMA NOZlfiRE 87

There was no doubt about that ! I regret that no
one ever wrote the story of her life. To do so
herself would have been quite out of her line.
But why could not my father have undertaken the
task instead of measuring the skulls of Papuans and
Bosjemans ?

Caroline Noziere was born at Versailles on the
1 6th April 1772. She was a daughter of that
Doctor Dussuel, of whose talents and character
Cabanis used to speak so eulogistically. Dussuel it
was who, in 1789, was called in to attend the
Dauphin in a slight attack of scarlatina. One of
the Queen's carriages would fetch him daily from
Luciennes, where he used to live in comparative
poverty, with his books and his herbarium about
him, like a true disciple of Jean-Jacques. One day
the carriage came back to the palace empty : the
doctor had refused to come.

" So you had forgotten us, monsieur," said the
Queen in irritated tones, on his next appearance.

" Madame," replied Dussuel, " your reproaches
wound me, but they do honour to your natural
instincts, and I must forgive them in a mother.
Have no misgivings ; I am treating your son with
every care ; but yesterday I was called to attend a
peasant woman at her lying-in, and I could not
leave her."

In 1789 Dussuel published a brochure which I

88 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

cannot open without respect, or read without a
smile. It is entitled, Les Foeux (Tun Citoyen ; and
for a motto it has the words, Miseris succurrere disco.
The author begins by referring to the aspirations
which he, beneath his humble roof, has formed for
the well-being of the French people. He then pro-
ceeds to trace, with simple candour, his rules for
ensuring the public welfare. They were founded
upon a basis of enlightened liberty, a liberty that
was to be safeguarded by constitutional guarantees.
He concluded by commending to the gratitude of
all men of feeling, Louis XVI., monarch of a free
people ; and he foretold the early return of the
Golden Age.

Three years later, his patients they were also his
friends were having their heads cut off, while he
himself, suspected of Moderatism, was taken to
Versailles by order of the Committee of Sevres, and
shut up in the Franciscan convent, which had been
turned into a prison. There he arrived covered
with dust, and looking much more like an aged
beggar than one learned in medicine and philosophy.
Having deposited a little bag containing the works
of Raynal and Rousseau on the floor, he sank back
into an arm-chair, exclaiming with a sigh :

"Is this, then, the reward of fifty years of
virtue ? "

At this point a young woman of great beauty,

GRANDMAMMA NOZI^RE 89

whose presence he had not at first observed, came
forward with a basin and sponge, saying :

"There is reason, monsieur, to believe that we
shall soon be guillotined. Will you, in the mean-
time, allow me to wash your face and hands, for
you have made yourself look like a wild man ? "

" Compassionate being," exclaimed the aged
Dussuel ; " is it, then, here, within these haunts
of crime, that I am fated to encounter you ? Your
youth, your countenance, your actions, all alike
assure me of your innocence."

" My sole crime," replied the fair captive, " is to
have bewailed the death of the worthiest of kings."

" Louis XVI. had his good qualities," replied my
great-grandfather ; " but what a pinnacle of fame
might he not have attained had he remained truly
loyal to this glorious Constitution."

" What ! monsieur," exclaimed the young
woman, brandishing her dripping sponge, "are
you, then, a Jacobin ? Are you, too, on the side
of the plunderers ? "

"And you, madame, are you at one with the
enemies of France ? " sighed Dussuel, whose ablu-
tions were but half completed. " Can a feeling
heart beat in the bosom of an aristocrat ? "

The lady's name was De Laville, and she had
gone into mourning for the king. During the
four months that she and Dussuel were shut up

9 o MY FRIEND'S BOOK

together, she was always upbraiding him, and always
trying to think of some means of making him
comfortable. Contrary to their expectation, they
were not guillotined. On the strength of a report
drawn up by Battelier, the Deputy, they were set at
liberty ; and Madame de Laville afterwards became
my grandmother's closest friend. My grandmother
was then twenty-one years old, and had been
married for three years to the citoyen Danger,
adjutant-major of a volunteer battalion of the
Upper Rhine.

" He is a very good-looking man," my grand-
mother used to say ; " but I'm not at all sure that
I should know him if I met him in the street."

She averred that she had seen him but five times,
and that she had not been in his company for more
than six hours altogether. She had only married
him in a moment of girlish caprice, because she
wanted to wear her hair a la nation. The truth was,
she didn't want a husband at all. He, on the other
hand, wanted all the women in the world. Eventu-
ally he left her, and she let him go without the
least trace of resentment.

When he set out upon the path of glory, the
only property with which Danger endowed his wife
was contained in one of the pigeon-holes of his
secretaire. It consisted of some receipts for money
which he had advanced to a brother of his, one

GRANDMAMMA NOZlfiRE 91

Danger de St. Elme, an officer in Conde's army,
and a packet of letters he had received from
some emigres material, in short, that would have
abundantly sufficed to bring my grandmother, and
fifty people besides, to the guillotine.

Indeed, she herself was not without misgivings
about the matter, and every time a domiciliary visit
took place in the neighbourhood, she would say to
herself, " Really, I must burn the papers that rascally
husband of mine left behind him." But she always
had a hundred different ideas in her head at once.
One morning, however, she made up her mind that
she would put the thing off no longer.

She had chosen the right moment, and no mis-
take !

She had taken the papers out of the secretaire
and spread them all over the sofa, and she was
sitting in front of the fire looking them over,
leisurely putting them into little piles, sorting out
those which she could keep from those she would
have to destroy. She was reading a line here and
a line there, gathering up little fragments of the
past as she pursued her task, when all of a sudden
she heard the door of the house open. Instinctively
it flashed upon her that this was a domiciliary visit.
Hastily gathering up the scattered papers in one
huge armful, she pitched them in under the sofa,
the cover of which reached right down to the floor,

92 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

giving them a kick to get them well back. Even
as it was, the corner of a letter was sticking out
like the tip of a white cat's ear, when a representa-
tive of the Committee of General Surety came
striding into the room, followed by six men of the
section armed with muskets, swords, and pikes.

Madame Danger was standing up in front of the
sofa. She reflected that her undoing was not yet
a matter of absolute certainty ; she deemed that she
had, perhaps, just one chance out of ten thousand,
and she became keenly interested in the course that
the proceedings were about to take.

" Citoyenne," said the president of the section ,
"you have been accused of holding treasonable
correspondence with the enemies of the Republic.
We have come to take possession of all your
papers."

The representative of the Committee of General
Surety then sat himself down on the sofa, and
prepared to draw up a report of the seizure.

His men then proceeded to turn the place upside
down. They forced the locks, and turned out the
drawers. Finding nothing there, they broke open
the cupboards, stove in the cabinets, turned the
pictures, and prodded their bayonets into the
arm-chairs and the cushions. They banged on
the walls with the butt-end of their muskets,
looked up the chimneys, and tore up pieces of the

GRANDMAMMA NOZI&RE 93

flooring but all to no purpose. Finally, after
three hours' fruitless search and useless destruction,
they withdrew in despair, worn out and crestfallen ;
but loudly proclaiming their intention of returning
to the charge. It had never occurred to them to
look under the sofa !

A few days after this, my grandmother was
coming home from the theatre, and had just
reached her front door, when she was confronted
by a half-starved, white-faced creature, with a dirty,
grey beard of several days' growth disfiguring his
countenance, who cast himself on his knees before
her, crying piteously :

" Citoyenne Danger, I am Alcide ; save me, I
beseech you, save me ! "

And then she saw who it was.

" Mon Dieu ! " she exclaimed, " is it possible ?
Are you really Monsieur Alcide, my dancing-
master? Fancy seeing you again in this plight,
Monsieur Alcide."

" There is a price on my head, citoyenne ; save,
oh, save me ! "

" I will do what I can. I am a suspect myself,
and my cook is a Jacobin. But, come, follow me !
Only take care my porter doesn't see you ; he is a
Municipal officer."

Up the stairs they went, and this little trump of
a woman locked herself in with the luckless Alcide,

94 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

who was shaking from head to foot with fever, and
kept saying over and over again, his teeth chattering
with terror : " Save me ! save me ! "

Pitiable as his condition was, she could scarcely
suppress a laugh. But the situation was a critical
one.

" Where on earth can I stuff him ? " said my
grandmother to herself, as she gave a hurried glance
at the cupboards and chests.

For want of a better place, she at last bethought
herself of putting him in her own bed.

She drew out two of the mattresses beyond the
others so as to form a sort of trough on the side
next the wall. Into this trough she bundled
Alcide. This gave the bed a very tumbled appear-
ance, so she undressed and got into it. Then she
rang for the cook.

" Zoe," said she, " I'm not well. Let me have
a chicken, some salad, and a bottle of claret ; and
Zoe ! what is the news to-day ? "

"Why, those ruffians of aristocrats have been
at their plots again. They won't be satisfied till
they have been guillotined, every man Jack of 'em.
But the sans culottes have got an eye on 'em. The
porter tells me that they are hunting for a black-
guard called Alcide in this district, and that you
may rely on having a domiciliary visit to-night."

Alcide, between his two mattresses, had been

GRANDMAMMA NOZI^RE 95

listening to this gentle discourse, and when Zoe
had gone out of the room, he was seized with a
fit that fairly shook the bed, and his breathing
became so painful that the whole room was filled
with a sort of strident wheezing.

" Here's a pretty go ! " quoth little Madame
Danger to herself.

And she proceeded to devour a wing of the
chicken, and passed down a nip or two of wine to
the lugubrious Alcide.

"Ah! madame! Ah! Jesus!" cried Alcide;
and he began to weep with more noise than
discretion.

"Splendid," said Madame Danger to herself;
" the Municipal people have only got to put in
an appearance and "

She had reached this point in her reflections,
when the rattle of muskets being brought heavily
to the ground made the landing shake.

Zoe ushered in four Municipal officers and thirty
men belonging to the National Guard.

Alcide did not budge an inch now, and nothing,
not so much as a sigh, was heard of him.

" Now then, citoyenne," said one of the Guards,
" up you get ! "

But one of his comrades pointed out that the
citoyenne could not very well dress herself in front
of a party of men.

96 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

Catching sight of the bottle of wine, one of the
fellows picked it up and helped himself; and the
others swilled at it with gusto.

One merry wight seated himself on the bed,
and, chucking Madame Danger under the chin,
exclaimed, " What a pity such a pretty face should
belong to an aristocrat ; what a shame to cut into
this nice little neck."

" Come," said Madame Danger, " I see you're
good-hearted fellows. Make haste, look at what-
ever you have got to look at, for I'm simply dying
to get to sleep."

For two mortal hours did they stay in that room.
A score of times they must have gone past the bed
and looked to see if there was anyone underneath
it. But, at last, after delivering themselves of
endless gibes and impertinences, they took their
departure.

Scarcely was the last man's back turned, when
little Madame Danger leaned over the edge of the
bed, calling out, " Monsieur Alcide ! Monsieur
Alcide ! "

" Good gracious," a rueful voice replied, " they
will hear us ! For Christ's sake, have pity on
me, madame ! "

" Monsieur Alcide," my grandmother went on,
" a pretty fright you have given me. I could hear
nothing of you. I thought you were dead, and

GRANDMAMMA NOZIERE 97

the idea of lying on a dead man nearly sent me
into a fit. Monsieur Alcide, you don't play fair.
When a person isn't dead, why, gracious me, he
should say so. I shall never forgive your giving
me such a turn."

Splendid, my grandmother, wasn't she, with her
poor little Monsieur Alcide ?

Next day she went and found him a hiding-place
at Meudon.

One wouldn't have thought the daughter of
Dussuel the philosopher a very likely subject to
believe in miracles, or to have hazarded a very near
approach to the confines of the unseen world. She
hadn't a particle of religion in her composition,
and anything in the shape of a mystery used to
revolt her somewhat hard common sense. Never-
theless, level-headed and practical as she was, she was
never tired of recounting the details of a marvellous
incident of which she had been an eye-witness.

When visiting her father during his detention in
the Franciscan convent at Versailles, she had be-
come acquainted with Madame de Laville, who
was a prisoner there. On her release the latter
went to reside in the Rue de Lancry, in the same
house as my grandmother. The two sets of rooms
opened on to the same landing.

Madame de Laville used to live with her younger

sister, whose name was Amelie.

c

9 8 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

Amelie was a lovely, tall creature. Her pale
face, enshrined in a setting of dusky hair, had an
expression of incomparable beauty ; and her eyes,
now languorous, now sparkling with fire, always
appeared to be seeking something mysterious and
unknown.

Amelie, who, while waiting an opportunity of
settling down in the world, had become a lay-
canoness in the Community of 1'Argentiere, was
reported, when little more than a child, to have
endured uncomplainingly the pangs of unrequited
love.

She appeared to be weighed down with ennui.
Occasionally she would burst into a flood of tears
without apparent cause. Sometimes she would
remain for days together in a state of dejection,
at others she would feverishly devour her books
of devotion. A prey to her own delusions, she
would writhe in unspeakable agony.

Her sister's arrest, the dreadful fate that had
befallen many of her friends who had been dragged
to the guillotine as conspirators, and the alarm
to which she was incessantly a prey, completed the
ruin of her already impaired constitution. She
grew terribly emaciated. The drums which daily
beat the sections to arms, the companies of citizens
that filed past her window wearing red caps, armed
with pikes, and singing the pz ira ! threw her into

GRANDMAMMA NOZlfeRE 99

a state of terror that was followed alternately by
fits of stupor and exaltation. Nervous attacks
ensued that were terrible in their intensity, and
gave rise to remarkable effects.

Amelie was visited by dreams and visions so
vivid, that those to whom she related them were
filled with amazement.

Wandering about by night, sometimes waking,
sometimes in a trance, far-off sounds assailed her
ear the sighs and groans of the victims of the
guillotine. Sometimes standing erect, she would
stretch forth her arm, and, pointing to some form
in the gloom, visible to none but herself, she would
utter the name of Robespierre. " Her forebodings
always come true," her sister used to say, " and she
can tell when evil is at hand."

During the night of the 9th Thermidor my
grandmother and her father sat up with the two
sisters in their room. All four were in a state of
great agitation, summing up the grave events that
had taken place during the day, and striving to
foretell what would come of them. A decree had
been passed ordering the tyrant's arrest ; he had
been taken to the Luxembourg, where the concierge
had refused to receive him. From there he had
been conveyed to the "Bureau de Police on the
Quai des Orfevres, then handed over by the Com-
mune and removed to the Httel de Ville, . . . Was

ioo MY FRIEND'S BOOK

he still there ? And how was he bearing himself?
Was he cowed or defiant? All four were con-
sumed with anxiety, but no sound reached their
ears save ever and anon the clatter of Henriot's
messengers as they galloped past in fiery haste
along the street. Thus they sat waiting, and wait-
ing, reviving old memories, exchanging hopes and
fears.

Amelie alone was silent.

Suddenly she uttered a piercing shriek.

It was half-past one in the morning. Leaning
over a mirror, she seemed to be witnessing the
enactment of some tragic scene.

" I see him," she said ; " I see him. Ah ! how
pale he looks ! Blood is pouring from his mouth !
His teeth and his jaws are shattered ! Praise be
to God ! He who has drunk so deep of the blood
of others shall now drink but of his own."

As she finished these words, which she uttered
in weird, chanting tones, she gave vent to a cry
of horror, and fell backwards with a crash. She
had fallen into a swoon.

It was at that very moment, in the Council
Chamber of the Hotel de Ville^ that Robespierre
was struck by the pistol shot which shattered his
jaw, and put an end to the Reign of Terror.

My grandmother, though a freethinker, firmly
believed in this vision.

GRANDMAMMA NOZI^RE 101

You ask me how I explain it ? Well, then, my
grandmother, sceptic though she was, held a pretty
strong belief in the Devil and the Black Bogey.
When she was young, the necromantic art amused
her; but later on she took fright at the Devil.
But it was too late ; he held her fast, and she
had to believe in him.

After the 9th of Thermidor, life once more be-
came tolerable for the little group in the Rue de
Lancry. My grandmother was highly delighted
at this change in the aspect of affairs ; but it was
not in her nature to bear malice against the Revolu-
tionaries. She did not admire them she never
admired anybody but me but she did not hate
them. It never entered her head to call them
to account for the frights they had given her ;
and perhaps the explanation is, that they never
really did frighten her. But the main reason was
that my grandmother was " true blue," and, as
someone has said, " once a blue always a blue."

Meanwhile, Danger was pursuing his brilliant
career on many a field of battle. His star was
always in the ascendant, and he was leading his
brigade in full-dress uniform at the glorious
skirmish of Abensberg, when he was struck by a
cannon ball and killed.

It was from the columns of the Moniteur that my
grandmother learned that she was a widow, and that

102 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

the gallant General Danger had fallen covered with
laurels.

" How unfortunate ! " she exclaimed ; " a fine-
looking man like that, too." The following year
she married Monsieur Hippolyte Noziere, head-
clerk at the Minister e de la Justice , an open-hearted,
jovial man, who played the flute from six till nine
in the morning, and from five to eight in the
evening. This time the match was an entire
success. They were in love with each other, and,
not being very young, they were able to bear with
each other's foibles. Caroline forgave Hippolyte
his everlasting flute, and Hippolyte put up with
Caroline's little whims and fancies. They were
happy.

My grandfather Noziere was the author of a
Statistique des Trisons (Paris, Imprimerie Royal,
1817-19, 2 vols., 4to) ; and of Les Filles de Momus
chansons nouvelles (Paris, privately printed, 1821,
i8mo).

He suffered tortures from gout ; but the gout
couldn't damp his spirits, even when it put a stop
to his flute-playing. In the end it choked him.
I never knew him ; but that's his portrait, over
there the man in the blue coat with his hair in
little curls like a lamb's fleece, and his chin buried
in an enormous cravat.

"I shall feel his loss to my dying day," my

GRANDMAMMA NOZI&RE 103

grandmother used to say at eighty, when she had
been a widow for fifteen years.

"And well you may, madame," replied an old
friend of ours ; " Noziere had all the virtues that
go to make a good husband."

** All the virtues and all the defects, please,"
rejoined my grandmother.

" To be an ideal husband, then, a man must have
defects ! "

" Pardi ! " cried my grandmother, with a shrug.
" He must have no vices, and that in itself is a
great defect ! "

She died on the 4th July 1853, in her eighty-
first year.

IV

THE TOOTH

people took as much pains to keep
in the background, as they do to
bring themselves into prominence,
they would avoid a deal of trouble.
Of this truth I had early experience.
It was a wet day. Someone had made me a
present of a postillion's outfit cap, whip, reins, and
bells everything complete. There were plenty of
bells. I put to that is to say, I harnessed my-
self to myself, for I was postillion, horses, and
carriage all in one. My portion of road extended
from the kitchen to the dining-room, along a
passage. The dining-room, I found, did splendidly
for a village ; and the mahogany sideboard, where
I changed horses, was the very thing for the White
Horse Inn. The passage was the highway, with
its ever-shifting views and unlooked-for encounters.
The space to which I was restricted was cramped
and dark, yet my delight was as great as if a limit-
less horizon lay before me ; and within these walls,

which I knew so well, I met with those unexpected

104

THE TOOTH 105

incidents on which the charm of travelling depends.
The reason was that I was a great magician in those
days. It is a gift I have since had the misfortune
to lose ; but on that rainy day, when I was playing
postillions, I possessed it in abundance.

The fact that such a gift was mine ought to have
satisfied me, but is one ever satisfied? I wanted
people to see me ; I wanted to take them by sur-
prise, to dazzle them, to astonish them. My velvet
cap and my bells would be nothing worth if there
were no one to admire them, and, as I heard my
father and mother talking together in the next
room, I dashed in making a great noise. My
father looked at me for a second or two in silence,
then, with a shrug, he said, " The child doesn't
know what to do with himself here. We shall
have to send him to school."

" He's only a little boy, yet," replied my mother.

"Well," said my father, "he will be put with
the little boys."

All this I understood perfectly well ; but what
followed I could not catch, and if I am able to
set down everything clearly here it is because I
have heard about it all so often since.

" The child has no brothers or sisters, and he
is getting into a dreamy way that will do him harm
in after years. Solitude over-excites his imagina-
tion, and I have already noticed that his head is

io6 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

full of fanciful ideas. But the children of his own
age with whom he will mix at school will give him
a notion of what the world is like. He will learn
from them what men are. He cannot learn it
from you and me, for he looks upon us as tutelary
genii. His school companions, on the other hand,
will be his equals. Some will excite his compassion,
and he will learn to take their part ; others he will
have to win over or to fight. In this manner he
will serve his apprenticeship to life."

" But are you not afraid, dear, that some of the
children will be naughty?'*

" Even they will be of use to him if he is
intelligent," replied my father, " for he will learn to
distinguish them from the good children, and that
is a highly necessary piece of knowledge. Besides,
you can go yourself and see what sort of schools
there are about here, and choose one where the
children have been brought up in the same way as
Pierre. The nature of man is everywhere the same,
but their nurture varies greatly according to the
locality. Careful cultivation carried on for several
generations will produce a flower of extreme delicacy,
and this flower, which has cost a century to produce,
may wither in a few days. Uncultivated children
would without profit to themselves exert a de-
teriorating influence on the culture of our child.
Noble thoughts are the gift of God. Noble ways

THE TOOTH 107

are learned from example, and become implanted by
inheritance. The possession of noble ways is finer
than the possession of a noble name ; for the former
is natural, and its own grace is its patent ; the title-
deeds of the latter are old papers that one has
much ado to read."

" You are quite right, dear," said my mother ;
" and to-morrow I will begin to look out for a
school. I will be guided in my choice by what you
say, and I will take care that the school is doing
well financially, for money troubles distract a
master's thoughts and spoil his temper. What do
you think, dear, of a dame's school ? "

My father did not answer.

" What do you think of the idea ? " repeated my
mother.

" It is a matter that requires consideration," said
my father.

He was sitting in his arm-chair at his roll-top
desk, and for some minutes had been looking
intently at a kind of little bone, one end of which
was pointed, and the other rough and eaten away.
He was turning it over in his fingers, and he was
clearly turning it over in his mind as well ; and
thenceforth, for all my bells, he was oblivious of my
existence. My mother was leaning over the back
of his chair, and her thoughts were still running on
what she had just been saying.

io8 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

The doctor showed her the ugly little bone,
saying, " This is the tooth of a man who lived in
the time of the mammoths, in the ice age ; of a
man who dwelt in a cave once bare and desolate,
but now half hidden with wild grape and gilly-
flowers, the cave near which has stood, for many
years now, that pretty white house in which we
sojourned for two summer months the year we were
married. Two happy months were they ! There
was an old piano there, and all day long you used
to play Mozart, and, thanks to you, that winged,
winsome music took flight through the windows, and
brought joy into the valley where the cave-dweller
had only heard the tiger's howl.

" This man knew nought, save fear and hunger.
He resembled a brute beast. His forehead was
low. When he scowled, the muscles of his eye-
brows produced hideous wrinkles ; his cheek-bones
formed two great protuberances upon his face ; his
teeth projected from his mouth. Look at this one ;
see how long and pointed it is !

" Such was primeval man. But, imperceptibly,
by dint of long and splendid effort, man became
less wretched, and, therefore, less ferocious. The
habit of thought developed his brain, and his fore-
head grew larger. Being no longer employed in
rending raw flesh, his teeth became shorter and
his jawbone less massive. Yes, the human face

THE TOOTH 109

became transfigured with a glorious beauty, and
upon woman's lips there dawned a smile."

At this point my father kissed my mother on
the cheek, and my mother smiled ; and then,
slowly raising the tooth of the cave-man above his
head, he apostrophised it thus :

"Man of a bygone age, thou, whose rude and
savage relic I hold here in my hand, the thoughts
of thee stir me to my being's inmost depths. I
respect thee, O my ancestor, and I love thee.
Accept, in that unfathomable Past where thou dost
slumber, the homage of my gratitude, for I know
the debt I owe thee. I know from what depths of
wretchedness thy efforts have preserved me. True,
thy thoughts were not of the future ; true, but a
feeble glimmer of intelligence flickered within the
darkness of thy soul. Still, thou wert man some
dim and vague idea impelled thee onward toward
the attainment of what is fair and good in men's
eyes. Thou didst live in misery, but thou didst
not live in vain. Thou didst bestow raiment upon
woman, and men learned the price of beauty."

Here, my father replaced the prehistoric tooth
upon his secretaire, and embraced my mother.

Then he began again. "Thus," said he, "to
these ancestors we are indebted for everything for
everything even for love."

I thought I should like to touch this tooth that

no MY FRIEND'S BOOK

had inspired my father to utter things beyond my
comprehension, and I went up to the desk to lay
hold of it ; but, at the sound of my bells, my
father turned his head in my direction, and said :

" But, stay, the task is not yet over. We should
be showing ourselves less generous than the cave-
men if, now that our turn has come, we did not
strive to make life better and more secure for our
children than it is for ourselves. To achieve this
end, two things are indispensable : knowledge and
love ; for with knowledge and love the world is
made."

" No doubt, dear," said my mother; "but the
more I think about it, the more thoroughly I am
convinced that a little boy like our Pierre ought to
be under a woman's care. I have heard a good
deal about a certain demoiselle Lefort ; I will go
and see her to-morrow."

MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETRY

ADEMOISELLE LEFORT, who

kept a school for little children in the
Faubourg Saint Germain, consented
to receive me as a pupil from ten
to twelve in the morning, and from
two to four in the afternoon. I had formed the
most dreadful notions about this school in my own
mind, and when my nurse dragged me there for the
first time, I gave myself up for lost.

I was therefore extremely surprised, on entering,
to find a large room with five or six little girls
and about a dozen little boys in it, all laughing,
making grimaces, and generally displaying their
unconcern.

On the other hand, I perceived that Mademoiselle
Lefort wore an expression of profound melancholy.
Her blue eyes were moist, and her lips slightly
apart.

Pallid-looking side-curls hung down each side of
her face like the willow boughs that droop mourn-
fully over the edge of a stream ; and she gazed

H2 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

straight in front of her without seeing anything,
apparently lost in a dream.

The harmless aspect of this afflicted spinster, and
the liveliness of the children, gave me confidence ;
and the idea that I was going to share the lot of
several little girls gradually put the last of my
fears to flight.

Mademoiselle Lefort, having given me a slate
and pencil, made me sit down beside a bright-eyed,
sharp-looking boy of my own age.

"My name's Fontanet," he said; "what's yours?"

He then asked me what my father was, and I
told him a doctor.

" Mine's a lawyer," replied Fontanet ; " that's
better."

"Why? "said I.

" What ! you don't see why it's better to be a
lawyer ? "

' No."

" Then you must be a silly ! "

Fontanet had a resourceful mind. He advised me
to keep silkworms, and showed me a fine multiplica-
tion table he had made all by himself. This excited
my admiration. Fables were all I knew about.

When I went home, Mademoiselle Lefort gave
me a good mark, which I couldn't discover the use
of at all. My mother explained that lack of
usefulness was the distinctive characteristic of all

POETRY AND I 113

honours. She then wanted to know what I had
done during my first day at school. I told her I
had looked at Mademoiselle Lefort.

She laughed at me, but I had spoken the truth.
I have, in fact, always been inclined to regard life
as a spectacle. I have never been, properly speak-
ing, an observer, for an observer must have a
system to guide him, and I have none. The
observer, moreover, chooses his field, whereas in the
case of the spectator his eyes choose for him. I am
a born sightseer, and all my life long I believe I
shall retain the unsophisticated outlook, the in-
genuousness, that marks those town-bred loungers
who find amusement in everything, and who still
display, when other folk are only thinking about
" getting on," the disinterested curiosity of little
children. Of all the spectacles of which I have
been a beholder, the only ones that have bored me
are those which are presented to our gaze on the
stage at the theatre. On the other hand, dramas
in real life, beginning with those enacted at Made-
moiselle Lefort's Academy, have always afforded me
plenty of entertainment.

But to continue. I went on scrutinising my
schoolmistress, and the idea that she was melancholy
obtained such a hold on my mind that I asked
Fontanet if he could tell me why she looked so sad.

Fontanet, without committing himself to any definite

H

n 4 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

statement, was disposed to ascribe it to remorse.
He had a great idea that he remembered seeing the
outward signs of melancholy suddenly manifest
themselves on Mademoiselle's countenance on the
day, already remote, when she had, without any
justification whatever, confiscated his boxwood top,
proceeding almost immediately thereafter to make
him the victim of a further outrage, for, in order to
stifle the complaints of him whom she had de-
spoiled, she rammed the dunce's cap right down
over his head.

Fontanet was of opinion that a soul which bore the
stain of such deeds as these would have said fare-
well for ever to joy and repose. Fontanet's reasons,
however, did not satisfy me, and I endeavoured to
think what else it could be.

But, to tell the truth, it was no easy matter to
think at all in Mademoiselle Lefort's class-room,
because of the incessant uproar that went on there.
The pupils would engage in pitched battles before
the very eyes of the visible yet absent Mademoiselle
Lefort. We used to throw so many catechisms and
crusts of bread at one another, that the air was
darkened with them, and the class-room filled with
a perpetual racket. The only quiet ones were the
very youngest children, who sat with their tongues
out and their feet in their hands, gazing upwards at
the ceiling and smiling placidly.

POETRY AND I 115

Suddenly, Mademoiselle Lefort, with the air of
one walking in her sleep, would enter the fray,
chastise someone who didn't deserve it, and then
shut herself up again in her melancholy, as though
in a tower. Try, please, to realise what must have
been the state of mind of a little boy of eight who,
amid all this incomprehensible tumult, had been
doing nothing for six weeks but write on a slate :

"To his grave, unheeded, Malfilitre by hunger was driven."

That was my task. Now and again I used to
clasp my head in my hands in order to collect my
ideas ; but of these ideas only one was at all distinct,
and that was, the melancholy of Mademoiselle
Lefort. My thoughts were perpetually occupied
with my grief-stricken schoolmistress. Fontanet
used to relate weird stories that still further whetted
my curiosity. He said that, every morning, when
you went by her door, you would hear doleful cries
mingled with the clanking of chains. " I re-
member," he added, " that, a long time ago it
might be a month she read out to the whole class
a story which they thought was in poetry, and that
she sobbed all the time."

There was something about Fontanet's tale that
went right through me, and an event occurred the
next day which led me to think that it was not
altogether imaginary at least, so far as the reading

n6 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

aloud was concerned. As for the chains that made
Fontanet grow pale, I never found out anything
about them, and I now take it that the noise of
these alleged chains was in reality the rattle of the
poker and tongs.

But this is what happened next day. Made-
moiselle Lefort rapped on her table with a ruler for
silence, coughed, and said in a sepulchral voice :

POOR JEANNE !
Then, after a pause, she added :

" Jeanne was the fairest of the village maids."

Fontanet gave me a dig in the ribs with his elbow,
and exploded with laughter. Mademoiselle Lefort
flashed an indignant glance at him, and then, in
tones more gloomy than the penitential psalms,
went on with the tale of Poor Jeanne. It is
probable, nay certain, that the story was in verse
from beginning to end ; but, of course, I can only
tell it as I remember it, and I trust that the disjecta
membra of the poem will be discernible in my prose.

Jeanne was betrothed. She had plighted her
troth to a gallant young mountaineer. Oswald was
the lucky herdsman's name. And now all was
ready for the bridal morn, and Jeanne's companions
had brought her the wreath and the veil. Ah !
happy Jeanne ! But, alas, she went off into a de-

POETRY AND I 117

cline. The pallor of death overspread her cheeks.
Oswald came down from the mountain and hastened
to her side, crying, " Art thou not for ever mine ? "
But she, in faint and far-off tones, replied, " Dear
Oswald, farewell ; I am dying." Poor Jeanne !
The tomb was her bridal bed, and the bells of the
village church, which should have rung out for her
wedding, tolled sadly for her burial.

The story contained a large number of words
then heard by me for the first time, the meaning of
which I did not understand. But the whole ap-
peared to me to be so sad and so beautiful, that I was
conscious as I listened to it, of a thrill I had never
felt before. The charm that belongs to melan-
choly was revealed to me by thirty lines or so of
verse whose literal meaning I should have been
totally unable to explain ; but except when one is
old, one need not understand much in order to feel
a great deal. The obscure may be touching, and
it is eminently true that the youthful mind finds
pleasure in the undefined. Tears welled. up from
my overburdened heart, and neither by grimaces
nor by jeers could Fontanet put an end to my
sobbing. Still, I had no doubts at that time of
Fontanet's superiority. Not till he became an
Under-Secretary of State was I visited by an un-
certainty about the matter.

My tears were pleasing in the sight of Made-

n8 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

moiselle Lefort. She called me to her and
said :

" Pierre Noziere, you have wept ; here is the
cross of honour. Know that I it was who wrote
that poem. I have a large notebook filled with
verses just as beautiful as those ; but, as yet, I
have not found a publisher to print them. Is not
that a horrible, nay, an unconscionable thing ? "

" Oh ! mademoiselle ! " said I ; " I am so glad.
Now I know the cause of your distress. You loved
poor Jeanne who lies dead in the hamlet, and it
is because you are thinking of her, is it not, that
you are sad and never notice what goes on in the
class ? "

Unfortunately, these observations displeased her,
for she looked at me wrathfully, and said :

" Jeanne is a fiction. You are a little silly.
Give me that cross and go back to your place."

I went back to my place weeping. This time
it was on my own account that I wept, and I
confess that these fresh tears had not that sensation
of sweetness that had mingled with those poor
Jeanne had wrung from me. There was another
thing, too, that increased my distress. I had not
the slightest idea what a fiction was. Fontanet was
just as ignorant as I.

I asked my mother about it when I got home.

" A fiction," said my mother, " is a lie."

POETRY AND I 119

" Oh ! mamma ! " said I, " what a pity that
Jeanne was a lie."

" Jeanne, which Jeanne ? " asked my mother.

"Jeanne was the fairest of the village maids,"

and I recounted what I remembered of the story.

My mother said nothing to me, but I heard her
whisper in my father's ear :

" What wretched stuff this child is being taught ! "

" Wretched stuff, indeed," replied my father ;
"but what do you expect an old maid to know
of pedagogy ? I have an educational system which
I will explain to you in detail some day. Accord-
ing to this system, we should instruct a child of
our Pierre's age in the habits of the animals which
he resembles in inclination and intelligence. Pierre
is capable of understanding the faithfulness of the
dog, the unselfishness of the elephants, the trickery
of the monkey. That is the kind of thing they
ought to talk to him about, instead of this Jeanne,
this village, and these bells, which have no common
sense about them."

" You are right," replied my mother. " Children
and animals understand one another very well ; they
are both close to Nature. But, believe me, dear,
there is something that children understand even
better than monkeys and their tricks : I mean the
noble deeds of great men. Heroism is as plain as

120 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

daylight, even to a little boy, and if Pierre were told
about the death of the Chevalier d'Assas, he would,
with God's aid, understand it as well as you or I."

" Alas ! " said my father, with a sigh, " I believe,
on the contrary, that there are divers conflicting
ideas regarding the nature of heroism, and that they
vary with the age, the place, and the people. But
that is of no importance. What does matter in a
deed of self-sacrifice is the sacrifice. Though the
object for which we sacrifice our lives may be an
illusion, the sacrifice itself is none the less a reality,
and this reality is the most splendid adornment that
man can embellish his moral wretchedness withal.
Dear heart, your natural generosity has enabled you
to comprehend these truths better than I with all
my experience and study could comprehend them.
I shall incorporate them in my system."

Thus did the doctor and my mother discuss
matters.

A week later I was writing on my slate for the
last time amid the tumult :

"To his grave, unheeded, Malfilatre by hunger was driven."

Fontanet and I both quitted Mademoiselle
Lefort's Academy on the same day.

VI

TEUTOBOCHUS

T does not seem possible to me that
a man should have an altogether
common cast of mind whose young
days were passed round about the
quays of Paris, hard by the Palais
Mazarin, where the eye looks across to the Louvre
and the Tuileries, and where the glorious River Seine
flows on amid the towers and turrets and spires of
Old Paris. From the Rue Guenegaud to the Rue
du Bac the shops of the booksellers, antiquaries, and
printsellers are full to overflowing of the fairest
forms of art, and the most curious relics of the
past. With its quaint elegance and comic confusion,
every shop window is a lure for eye and mind.
Whoso examines them with the seeing eye always
carries some thought away with him, even as a bird
flies off with a wisp of straw for its nest.

And, since there are trees there, and books, and
since women come and go thereby, there is surely
no fairer place in all the world.

In my childhood days this curio market abounded

122 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

(much more so than it does at present) with old
furniture, old prints, old books, and old pictures,
carved credence tables, china jugs, enamels,
coloured pottery, orphreys, figured stuffs, tapestry
pictures, illuminated books, and many a rare editio
prmceps bound in choice morocco. These delectable
wares were freely displayed for sale to the gaze of
the learned and discriminating collector, who, as
yet, was immune from the rivalry of stockbrokers
and actresses. They were already familiar to
Fontanet and me when we were still going about
in wide lace collars, knickerbockers, and short
socks.

Fontanet used to live at the corner of the Rue
Bonaparte, where his father had his chambers. The
house where my parents dwelt adjoined one of the
wings of the Hotel dc Chimay. We were friends
and neighbours, Fontanet and I. Whenever we had
a holiday, we used to go and play in the Tuileries
together, making our way along this learned Quai
Voltaire. And as we went along, with hoops in
our hands and balls in our jacket pockets, we used
to look in the shops just as the old gentlemen did,
and formed our own ideas concerning all those
strange things that had come down from the Past,
the dim, mysterious Past.

Ah ! yes, we sauntered about in proper style,
we hovered round the book-stalls, we weighed the

TEUTOBOCHUS 123

merits of the prints, for all the world like a pair of
accomplished connoisseurs.

It all interested us greatly, but Fontanet, I must
avow, did not share my respect for everything that
was old. He used to laugh at the queer mediaeval
shaving-dishes or at holy bishops who had lost their
noses. Even in those days Fontanet was the same
go-ahead, dashing fellow whom you have heard
addressing the Chamber of Deputies. His irrever-
ence used to send a shiver down my back ; I didn't
like to hear him refer to an ancestral portrait as an
" u gty phiz." I was a conservative, and I have still
got some of my conservatism left ; and all my
philosophy has not deprived me of my affection for
old trees and country cure's.

There is yet another thing in which I differ from
Fontanet, and that is my inclination to admire what
I don't understand. I used to adore books on the
occult, and everything or nearly everything was
occult to me then. Fontanet, on the other hand,
would only admire a thing in proportion as he was
acquainted with its uses. " See," he used to say,
" there's a hinge there, that opens " ; or, " Look,
there's a screw, that comes off." Fontanet had a
balanced mind he was level-headed. I must add,
though, that he could grow quite enthusiastic over
the picture of a battle. " The Passage of the Bere-
sina " really moved him. We were deeply interested,

i2 4 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

too, in the armourer's shop. One day we saw
Monsieur Petit-Pretre, surrounded by lances,
targets, breastplates, and bucklers, and wearing his
green baize apron, get up and go off limping, like
Vulcan himself, to the other end of his shop to
fetch an antique sword, which he proceeded to fix
in an iron vice on his bench to clean the blade and
repair the hilt ; and then we knew that we were
witnessing a noble sight. Monsieur Petit-Prtre
seemed to tower a hundred cubits above us. We
remained speechless with admiration, our faces glued
to the window. Fontanet's black eyes sparkled, and
his dark, intelligent little face beamed all over with
excitement.

The recollection of what we had seen greatly
elated us that evening, and countless enthusiastic
plans began to take shape in our brains.

" Suppose," said Fontanet, " suppose we get
some of that silver paper they wrap up chocolates
with, and make some armour like that which Petit-
Pretre has in his shop."

It was a fine idea. But we were not so success-
ful in carrying it out as we had hoped. I made
a helmet, but Fontanet took it for a wizard's cap.

And so I said : " Let's start a museum ! "

The idea was excellent, but at the moment we
had nothing to put in the museum but half a
hundred marbles and a dozen tops or so.

TEUTOBOCHUS 125

It was at this point that Fontanet came out with
yet a third plan : " Let's compose a History of
France," he exclaimed, "with all the details, in
fifty volumes."

This proposal fairly enchanted me. I clapped
my hands and shouted for joy. We arranged to
begin the following morning, although we had a
page of the De Viris to get up.

" All the details ! " said Fontanet once more ;
" we must put in all the details."

That was precisely my idea of the thing we
would have all the details.

We had to go to bed, but I stayed awake a
good quarter of an hour, so excited was I by the
sublime idea of writing a History of France in
fifty volumes, with all the details.

Well, we began our History. I can't for the
life of me tell why it was we began with King
Teutobochus, but our plan required it. Our first
chapter brought us face to face with this King
Teutobochus, who was thirty feet tall a fact
you can demonstrate by measuring his bones,
which have been accidentally unearthed. Fancy
having to face a giant like that at the very outset.
The encounter was terrible. Even Fontanet was
staggered .

"We shall have to skip old Teutobochus,"
said he.

126 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

But I did not dare.

The History of France in fifty volumes stopped
short at Teutobochus.

Alas ! how often in my life have I engaged in
this adventure of the Giant and the Book. How
often, when on the point of beginning a great
work, undertaking a vast enterprise, have I been
pulled up sharp by a Teutobochus, whom the
vulgar call Fate, or Chance, or Necessity. I have
come now to calling down blessings on all those
Teutobochuses who, shutting me out from the
hazardous paths of glory, have left me to the care
of those two faithful guardians : Obscurity and
Mediocrity. Gentle and kind to me are they both,
and they love me well. Surely it is meet that I
should return their love.

As for Fontanet, my subtle crony Fontanet
barrister, judge, director of divers companies, and
a Deputy to boot it is wonderful to see how freely
he disports himself and runs in and out between
the legs of all the Teutobochuses of public life.
Had I been in his place, I should have smashed
my nose against them times without number.

VII
THE PRESTIGE OF THE ABB# JUBAL

T was with a heart overflowing with
awe and pride that I made my de"but
in the Lower Eighth. The professor,
Monsieur 1'Abbe" Jubal, was not, in
himself, a formidable individual. He
did not seem harsh ; indeed, he had rather a young-
ladylike air about him. But he sat in a great, high,
black chair, and that made him redoubtable in my
sight. His voice and expression were gentle. He
had curly hair, white hands, and a kindly disposi-
tion. He was like a sheep, the resemblance being
perhaps rather greater than was becoming in a
professor.

My mother saw him one day in the parlour, and
murmured, " He is very young " ; and she said it
in a tone of conviction.

I was just succeeding in ceasing to be afraid of
him when I found myself constrained to yield him
my admiration. It came about while I was repeat-
ing my " prep.," some lines of the Abbe Gauthier
on the early kings of France.

IS 7

128 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

I delivered myself of every line at one breath, as if
it were composed of a single word :

"Pharamondfutdit-onleprernierdecesrois
QuelesFrancsdanslaGauleontmissurlepavois
ClodionprendCambraipuisregneM6rov6e." . . .

There I stopped short, and repeated
tMJrovee, fMerovee. This rhyme, uniting usefulness
with charm, reminded me that when the throne was
filled by Mtrovee, Lutece was preservee. . . . But
from what ? That, it was quite impossible for me
to tell, for it had completely slipped my memory.
To tell the truth, I hadn't been very much impressed
by the affair. I had an idea that Lutece was an old
lady. I was glad she had been saved ; but, on the
whole, my interest in her affairs was extremely
small. Unfortunately, Monsieur 1'Abbe Jubal ap-
peared to be very anxious that I should say what
she had been saved from. I kept stammering
" Er Er fMerovee / . . . Er Er Er." I would
have said, " I'll give it up ! " if it had been
the thing in the Lower Eighth. Fontanet kept
jeering at me, and Monsieur Jubal began to pare
his nails.

" ' Des fureurs d'Attila Lutece est preservee,' "
he said at last. " As you had forgotten the line,

THE ABB JUBAL 129

you should have made up something, instead of
stopping short like that. You could say :

*De 1'invasion d'Attila Lutece est pre"servee ' ;
or,

4 Du sombre Attila Lutece est prserve ' ;

or, more elegantly,

1 Du fleau de Dieu, Lutece est pr6serve"e.'

You can alter the words so long as you retain the
metre."

I got a bad mark ; but Monsieur l'Abb Jubal
acquired immense prestige in my eyes by reason of
his poetic facility. This prestige was shortly to
become greater still.

Monsieur Jubal, though his duties kept him pretty
close to Noel and Chapsal's Grammar and the Abbe
Gauthier's History of France, did not neglect the
moral and religious side of our education.

One day I don't remember what had led up to
it he put on a grave air and said :

" My sons, if you were called upon to entertain
a Minister of State, you would be anxious to do
him the honours of your house, as being the repre-
sentative of the sovereign. Well, then, what
respect ought you not to pay to priests who are
God's representatives on earth. Just as far as God
is above kings, so far is the priest above Ministers
of State."

I

130 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

I had never entertained a Minister, and I didn't
expect to do so for a long time to come. More-
over, I knew perfectly well that, if one did happen
to come to our house, my mother would send me
to have dinner with the servants, as, I am sorry to
say, she always did, when we had a dinner party.
Nevertheless I fully understood that priests were a
prodigiously respectable class, and, applying this
truth to Monsieur Jubal, I grew very troubled in
my heart. I recollected that I had, in his presence,
pinned a Dancing Jack on to Fontanet's back.
Was that a respectful thing to do? Should I
have pinned a Dancing Jack on to Fontanet's back
if a Minister had been there ? Assuredly not.
Yet here had I been pinning on this thing, certainly
without the knowledge, but still in the presence of,
Monsieur Jubal, who was so far above any Minister
of State. Nay, more, the wretched thing was
sticking out its tongue !

Now the light had illumined my soul, and I
was consumed with remorse. I made up my mind
to honour Monsieur 1'Abbe Jubal, and if, since
then, I have occasionally dropped pebbles down
Fontanet's neck in class time, and drawn caricatures
on the chair of Monsieur 1'Abbe Jubal himself, I
have at all events done these things with the full
consciousness of the enormity of my misdeeds.

Some short time after this, an event occurred

THE ABB6 JUBAL 131

which enabled me to realise the spiritual greatness
of Monsieur 1'Abbe Jubal.

I was in chapel with two or three other boys,
waiting my turn to confess. The twilight shades
were falling. The glow of the sanctuary lamp was
tremulously reflected by the golden stars that
twinkled in the gloom of the vaulted roof. At the
far end of the choir the painted statue of the Virgin
seemed to float dim and unsubstantial as a vision.
The altar was laden with gilt vases filled with
flowers, and the air was fragrant with incense.
Countless objects glimmered indistinctly in the
gathering dusk, and even ennui, that dread malady
of childhood, took on a gracious aspect ; and it
seemed to me that just beyond the sanctuary lay
Paradise itself.

It grew quite dark. Suddenly I beheld Monsieur
1'Abbe Jubal, with a lantern in his hand, proceed
along the aisle as far as the choir. He made a
profound genuflexion, and then, opening the
sanctuary gate, he ascended the steps of the altar.
I watched intently. He undid a parcel and took
out some wreaths of artificial flowers, which re-
sembled those close-packed bunches of cherries
that old women hawk about the streets in July.
And I was filled with wonder as I beheld my pro-
fessor draw near to the altar of the Blessed Virgin.
I watched you, Monsieur 1'Abbe, I watched you

1 32 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

pick up some tin-tacks with your finger and thumb,
and put them in your mouth. I feared, for a
moment, that you were going to swallow them ;
but no ; it was merely that you wanted to have
them within easy reach. Then, mounting a form,
you set to work to nail up the wreaths round about
the niche of the Blessed Virgin. But from time
to time you descended from your form in order
that you might judge how your work appeared
from a distance, and you saw that it was good.
Your cheeks glowed ; your eyes sparkled. You
would have smiled, had it not been for the tin-
tacks in your mouth. And I I looked on at you
in whole-hearted admiration. And, though the
lantern on the ground lit up your nostrils in comic
fashion, I deemed you had an imposing mien. I
recognised that, as you had led us to infer in an
ingenious speech, you were more exalted than
Ministers of State. It seemed to me that to ride
forth to victory in dazzling uniform, and mounted
upon a white charger, was not so splendid an
achievement as hanging wreaths on a chapel wall.
I felt that my vocation was to imitate you, and
imitate you I did, that same night, at home ; for,
getting hold of all the paper I could find, I cut it
up into strips with my mother's scissors, and made
it into wreaths. My home lessons suffered con-
siderably, the French grammar exercise being

THE ABB JUBAL 133

particularly unfortunate. The exercise in question
was taken from the manual of one Monsieur
Coquempot. That book was a cruel book, yet I
harbour no ill-will against its author, and, if he
had borne a less haunting patronymic, I would have
generously forgotten him. But, Coquempot ! You
don't forget a name like that ! Far be it from
me to take an ungenerous advantage of this purely
accidental circumstance. At the same time, I hope
I may be permitted to express my astonishment
that it should be necessary to do such painful
exercises in order to learn what is commonly called
one's mother-tongue. Indeed, I could learn it very
well from my mother, merely by hearing her talk.
For she talked enchantingly, did my mother !

But Monsieur 1'Abbe" Jubal thought there was
nobody like Coquempot, and as my excuses failed
to convince him, he gave me a bad mark. The
school year went by without any noteworthy incident.
Fontanet went in for breeding caterpillars in his
desk ; so I, not to be outdone, did the same,
although I loathed the things. Now Fontanet
hated Coquempot, too, and this formed a bond of
union between us. At the mere mention of the
name " Coquempot," we exchanged significant
glances from our respective seats, and pulled wry
faces. That was how we gave vent to our pent-up
feelings. Fontanet told me for a fact that, if they

134 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

went on doing Coquempot in the Eighth, he would
run away and get a berth as cabin-boy on a liner.
I liked the notion, and I promised Fontanet I would
join with him. We swore eternal friendship.

When speech-day came, Fontanet and I were
unrecognisable ; you wouldn't have known us
probably because we had had our hair brushed.
Our brand new jackets and white trousers, the
drugget, the crowd of relations, the flower-bedecked
da'is, all filled me with excited expectancy. The
books and the crowns made a brilliant pile, and I
looked with eager anxiety to see if I could make
out what I was to receive ; and I trembled as I sat
in my seat. Fontanet was more sensible. He
made no effort to probe the future. Indeed, he
maintained a magnificent imperturbability. Turning
his little ferret-face about in every direction, he
noted the comical noses of the papas and the
ridiculous hats of the mammas with an insouciance
quite beyond me.

The band struck up ; the Principal, wearing his
little ceremonial tippet over his soutane, made his
appearance on the da'is, accompanied by a general
in full-dress uniform, and followed by the whole
professorial staff. I recognised them all. They
took their places behind the general according to
their rank. First came the Vice-Principal, then the
professors of the senior classes, then Monsieur

THE ABB JUBAL 135

Schuwer, the music master, Monsieur Trouillon,
the writing master, and Sergeant Morin, the
gymnastic instructor. Monsieur l'Abb Jubal
brought up the rear, and deposited himself on a
miserable little stool, which, for want of room, only
had three legs on the da'is, and was boring a hole in
the drugget with the fourth. Even this humble
place Monsieur 1'Abbe Jubal was not fated to
retain very long. Fresh arrivals came, and he was
thrust into a corner, where he disappeared from
view beneath a flag. Then, somebody put a table
on the top of him, and that completed the business.
Fontanet was highly amused at this final eclipse, but
I was dumfounded to see so great an authority on
flowers and poetry, a representative of God upon
earth, left in a corner as though he were of no more
account than a stick or umbrella.

VIII
FONTANET'S CAP

VERY Saturday we used to be
taken to confession. If anyone can
tell me why, I shall be glad. It
was a practice that I regarded with
considerable awe and no little mis-
giving. I do not think that Monsieur I'Aumonier
took any genuine interest in listening to the recital
of my misdeeds, and it was unquestionably very
unpleasant for me to have to tell him about them.
The first difficulty was to find them. You may
perhaps believe me when I tell you that, when I
was ten, I did not possess the gift of self-analysis in
a sufficiently marked degree to enable me to make
a thorough examination of my inner consciousness.
But no sins meant no confession ; so sins had to
be found. True, I had been presented with a little
manual, a sort of compendium of all the sins.
It was therefore merely a matter of selection, but
even that presented difficulties. There was such a
multitude of dark and difficult references to larceny,

simony, prevarication, fornication, concupiscence !

136

FONTANET'S CAP 137

In it I found this sort of thing : " I am guilty of
having given way to despair " ; "I have been guilty
of listening to evil conversations." All that I found
very perplexing.

For this reason I usually kept to the section
which dealt with " Inattention," " Inattention in
church," " Inattention at meals," " Inattention at
meetings." I confessed to all, and felt terribly
ashamed of the bankrupt condition of my conscience.

I was humiliated at not having any real sins.
But at last, one day, I thought of Fontanet's cap.
I had got my sin ! I was saved !

From that day onwards, as sure as Saturday
came round, I relieved my soul of the burden of
Fontanet's cap, and laid it at the feet of my con-
fessor. When I reflected how, by the damage I
had wrought this cap, I had transgressed the law
enjoining upon us respect for our neighbour's
property, I suffered every Saturday, for quite a
number of minutes, considerable anxiety concerning
my spiritual welfare. I filled that cap with gravel ;
I shied it up into trees whence it had to be
knocked down with stones like fruit before it is ripe ;
I converted it into a duster to rub out the faces I
had chalked on the blackboard ; I threw it down trap-
doors into inaccessible cellars, and when, after school
was over, the ingenious Fontanet succeeded in dis-
covering it, it was nothing more than a miserable rag.

138 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

But a fairy watched over its destiny, for, when
Fontanet reappeared with it next day, it presented
most unexpectedly a clean, neat, almost elegant
appearance, and that not once, but always. The
fairy was Fontanet's elder sister, and this alone
constituted her a qualified housewife.

On more than one occasion, as I knelt at the
foot of the sacred tribunal, Fontanet's cap lay
whelmed at the bottom of the pool in the Great
Quadrangle, wherein I had flung it. At such
moments there was something peculiarly delicate
in my position.

What sentiment, you ask, impelled me so to
maltreat this cap ? It was vengeance !

Fontanet used to tease me about a queer, old-
fashioned-looking satchel with which my uncle
careful man had presented me, to my undoing.
The satchel was much too large for me, and I was
much too small for the satchel. Moreover, the
satchel did not look like a satchel, the reason being
that it wasn't a satchel at all ! It was an old
portfolio, which you could pull in and out like a
concertina ; and my uncle's bootmaker had put a
strap to it.

This portfolio I held in cordial detestation, and
not without cause ; but I cannot now say that I
think it was ugly enough to deserve all the in-
dignities that were heaped upon it. It was made

FONTANET'S CAP 139

of red morocco, and adorned with a broad gold
tooling ; and surmounting its brass keyhole were a
crown and a coat of arms much worn and scratched.
It was lined with faded silk that had once been
blue. How I should delight to examine it if it still
survived. For, when I recollect the crown, I feel
sure that it must have been a royal crown, and as
the crest consisted unless I dreamt it of three
fleurs-de-lys half obliterated with a penknife, I
now suspect that this same portfolio originally
belonged to a Minister of Louis XVI.

But Fontanet, who didn't stop to consider the
thing in its antiquarian aspect, could never see me
with it on my back but he must bombard it with
snowballs in winter, chestnuts in autumn, and
india-rubber balls all the year round.

In point of fact, my schoolfellows and Fontanet
himself had only one fault to find with my satchel,
and that was, that it was out of the common ; it
was not as other satchels were. Hence all the woes
that it brought upon me. Children have a posi-
tively brutal reverence for convention. They will
put up with nothing distinctive or original. This
characteristic my uncle had not sufficiently borne in
mind when he bestowed on me that most pernicious
present. Fontanet's satchel was a hideous thing.
Both his elder brothers had dragged and battered it
about on the Lyc6e forms before him, and it could

140 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

not have presented a more disreputable appearance.
The leather was all scratched and cracked, the
straps had gone and had been replaced by string ;
but as there was nothing unique about it, as it was
a satchel, Fontanet got off scot-free. No sooner,
however, did I make my appearance in the play-
ground with my portfolio on my back, than I was
greeted with ear-splitting yells, surrounded, set
upon, and laid flat upon my belly. Fontanet called it
making me play turtle, and he would get up and
sit straddle-legged upon my back. He was not
heavy, but oh ! the humiliation of the thing ! As
soon as I was on my feet again, I promptly jumped
on his cap !

Alas ! his cap was ever new, and my preposterous
satchel indestructible. Our mutual outrages were
linked together by inexorable fate, even as the long
tale of tragedies that befel the ancient House of
Atreus.

IX
THE LAST WORDS OF DECIUS MUS

HIS morning, as I was strolling along
the quays, rummaging among the
bookstalls, I happened to come
across an odd volume of Livy in
the penny box. As I stood idly
turning the pages, I chanced upon the following
passage : ** The remnants of the Roman army
made their way to Canusium under cover of night,"
and this sentence reminded me of Monsieur
Chotard. Now, when my thoughts light upon
Monsieur Chotard, they do not leave him in a
hurry ; and I was still thinking of him as I went
in for lunch. A smile still played about my
mouth, and I was called upon to reveal the
reason.

"The reason, my children," said I; "the reason
is none other than Monsieur Chotard."

"And who is Chotard, pray, that he causes you
this amusement ? " they inquired.

" I will tell you," said I. " If I bore you, well,
at all events, pretend to be listening, and don't

i 4 2 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

let me suspect that I am an irrepressible babbler,
babbling stories to himself.

"I was fourteen, and I was in the Third. My
professor's name was Chotard. He had the florid
complexion of an old monk, and an old monk he
was !

"Brother Chotard had been one of the most
docile members of the flock of Saint Francis when,
in 1830, he flung his monkish habit to the winds
and donned the raiment of the layman, which,
however, he never succeeded in wearing to ad-
vantage. Wherefore did Brother Chotard take
this step? Some say it was love, others that it
was fear, and that after those three Glorious Days
in July, the Sovereign People having hurled a

good few cabbage-stalks at the Capuchin of ,

Brother Chotard leapt over the monastery walls
in order to preserve his persecutors from commit-
ting so heinous a sin as maltreating a friar.

" The good brother was a man of parts. He
took his degree, began to teach, and lived so long
and so well, that his hair was going grey, his cheeks
growing fat, and his nose turning red, when I and
my comrades found ourselves placed beneath his
ferule.

" What a bellicose professor he was ! You ought
to have seen him when, book in hand, he marched
the army of Brutus to Philippi. What courage !

DECIUS MUS 143

What nobility of soul ! What heroism ! But he
chose his own time to be a hero, and that time
was not the present time. In real life Monsieur
Chotard was an obviously anxious and timid man.
He was easily frightened.

" He was afraid of thieves, he was afraid of dogs,
he was afraid of thunder, he was afraid of carts,
and, indeed, of anything from which the hide of
an honest man could possibly sustain an injury,
whether from far or near.

"True, it was only his body that dwelt among
us ; his spirit was away in the dim and distant
Past. He fought and died, this worthiest of men,
with Leonidas at Thermopylae. He navigated the
waters of Salamis on the ship of Themistocles. He
fought at Cannae side by side with Paulus jEmilius.
He fell, bathed in gore, into Lake Trasimenus,
and, many years after, a fisherman plying his nets
in those waters brought to the surface the ring
he had worn as a Roman knight. At Pharsalia,
he breathed defiance against Caesar and the gods
themselves. He brandished his shattered brand
over the dead body of Varus in the forest of
Hercynia. He was a famous warrior ! But not-
withstanding his resolve to sell his life dearly on
the banks of the Aegospotamos, notwithstanding
his proud determination to drain the cup of
freedom and death in beleagured Numantia,

i 4 4 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

Monsieur Chotard was by no means above plot-
ting with crafty captains and lending himself to
the most perfidious of stratagems.

" One of the stratagems which called for special
mention was that which Monsieur Chotard described
when commenting on a passage in ^Elian whereby
the hostile army is lured into a narrow gorge, and
crushed beneath huge masses of rock.

" He did not go on to tell us whether the hostile
forces frequently obliged by lending themselves to
this engaging manoeuvre. But let me come to the
idiosyncrasy by which Monsieur Chotard particularly
impressed himself on the minds of his pupils.

" Whenever he gave us a composition to write
Latin or French it was always about battles, sieges,
expiatory and propitiatory ceremonies, and it was
when he came to give out the corrected versions of
these narratives that he brought his finest eloquence
into play. Whether in French or Latin, his lan-
guage and delivery were always expressive of the
same warlike enthusiasm. He sometimes had to
interrupt the flow of his ideas in order to administer
some well-merited rebukes to his class, but the tone
of his discourse remained heroic, even when he was
occupied with such inglorious matters as these.
And so it fell out that, speaking, now like a consul
exhorting his troops, now like a third-form master
distributing ' impots,' but always in the same

DECIUS MUS 145

grandiose tone of voice, he greatly bewildered his
pupils ; it being quite impossible to tell whether
the schoolmaster or the consul was speaking. One
day he completely surpassed himself in this line,
and delivered a really incomparable oration. We
all got this speech up by heart, and I took care to
write it down in my notebook without omitting a
word of it.

" Here it is as I heard it, and as I hear it now,
for the voice of the unctuous Chotard still resounds
in my ears, filling them with its solemn and majestic
monotone :

"'THE LAST WORDS OF DECIUS MUS

" * Prepared to offer his life as a sacrifice to the
Deities of the other world, just ere he drove his
spurs into the flanks of his impetuous courser,
Decius Mus turned a last time to his comrades in
arms, saying ' :

" Unless you keep silence better than this, I shall
keep the whole class in. ' For my country's sake
I am about to enter into immortality. The abyss
awaits me. I am about to lay down my life for the
common weal.' Fontanet, you will copy out ten
pages of rudiment. * Thus, in his wisdom, hath
ordained Jupiter Capitolinus, eternal guardian of
the Eternal City.' Noziere, if, as I believe, you are
passing on your work to Fontanet for him to copy,

146 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

as he usually does, I shall write to your father.
' It is meet and right for a citizen to lay down his
life for the common weal. Envy me, therefore,
and weep not for me.' It is silly to laugh at noth-
ing, Noziere ; you will stay in on Thursday. ' My
example will dwell among you.' This giggling
is more than I can put up with ; I shall inform the
Principal of your conduct. ' And I shall behold,
as I look forth from Elysium, where the shades of
Heroes abide, the Virgins of the Republic laying
chaplets of flowers at the foot of my statues ! '

" In those days I possessed a prodigious faculty
for laughing. I employed it to the full on The
Last Words of Decius Mus ; and when, after
supplying us with this most potent reason for mirth,
Monsieur Chotard proceeded to remark that it
was inept to laugh at nothing, I buried my face in
a dictionary and became dead to the world. Those
who, when they were boys of fifteen, were never
doubled up with laughter what time the ' impots '
descended upon them like hailstones, have missed
one of the luxuries of life.

" But it must not be supposed that my capa-
bilities were limited to playing the fool in class. I
was a good enough little Humanist in my way,
very keenly alive to all that is attractive and noble
in what we so happily call Belles Lettres.

DECIUS MUS 147

" I had, even in those days, a great love of style
both in Latin and French, a love which I still
retain, despite the advice and example of many
of my more successful contemporaries. As usually
happens in the case of people whose cherished con-
victions are regarded with scant esteem, I have
gloried in what is perhaps but a vain and foolish
thing after all. I have kept my faith in Literature,
and I am still a staunch upholder of the Classics.
Call me an aristocrat, call me a mandarin if you
will, I still believe that six or seven years of literary
culture will impart to the mind, duly prepared to
receive it, a loftiness, a strength, an elegance and
a beauty, attainable by no other means.

" For myself, Sophocles and Virgil have afforded
me moments of pure delight. Monsieur Chotard,
yes, Monsieur Chotard, with the aid of Titus
Livius, inspired me with noble dreams ! The
imagination of children is a wondrous thing ; and
splendid are the visions that fill the little rascals'
heads. When he did not send me off into fits of
laughter, Monsieur Chotard used to inspire me with
enthusiasm.

" Every time I heard him, with his unctuous
pulpit tones, slowly declaiming that sentence :
' The remnants of the Roman army made their
way to Canusium under cover of night,' I beheld
a silent host pass by in the bare, moonlit country,

148 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

along a road fringed with tombs, their ashen faces
smeared with blood and dust, their helmets dented,
their breastplates battered and tarnished, their swords
shattered at the hilt. And this ghost-like pro-
cession, as it melted slowly into the night, was so
grave, so mournful, and so majestic, that my heart
leapt within me for grief and admiration."

X

THE HUMANITIES

WILL tell you what I am reminded
of every year by the stormy skies of
autumn, the first lamp-lit dinners,
the leaves turning yellow on the
shivering trees. I will tell you what
I see when I cross the Luxembourg Gardens in the
early days of October, when a vague hint of sadness
makes them lovelier than ever : for it is the time
when the leaves fall one by one upon the white
shoulders of the statues. What I behold at such
times in these gardens is just a little fellow trotting
along on his way to school with his hands in his
pockets and his satchel slung over his shoulder,
hopping about merry as a sparrow. It is only my
inward eye that beholds him, for this little fellow
is a ghost, the ghost of that which was / five-and-
twenty years ago. When he existed I thought but
little about him, but now that he is no more I have
taken a great fancy to him. On the whole he was
better worth loving than all the other "IV that
I have lost since then. He was thoughtless, very

150 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

thoughtless; but his heart was gentle, and I will
do him the justice to say that he has not bequeathed
to me a single unwelcome memory. It is a
little one that I have lost, and, natural enough it
is that I should feel his loss, natural enough that
I should see him again in my thoughts and take
pleasure in dwelling on his memory.

Five-and-twenty years ago, at this same season,
he was trotting along to school across these beauti-
ful gardens. His heart was the least bit heavy,
for the holidays were over.

However, on he jogged with his books on his
back and his top in his pocket. The thought of
seeing his school-fellows again soon restored his
spirits. There would be so much to tell, so much
to hear. Hadn't he got to ask Laboriette whether
he had really been out shooting in the Foret de
FAigle, and hadn't he got to tell him how he him-
self had ridden on horseback among the mountains
of Auvergne ? Such an achievement as that is not
the sort of thing you keep to yourself. And then,
how jolly to see the other fellows again ! How he
longed to set eyes on Fontanet, his chum, who
quizzed him so good-humouredly Fontanet, who
was about as big as a rat, and as resourceful as
Ulysses, and who took the lead in everything with
a sort of natural grace. He felt quite light-
hearted at the thought of seeing Fontanet again.

THE HUMANITIES 151

Such was his state of mind as he made his way
across the Luxembourg in the cool morning air.
All that he saw then, I still behold to-day. The
same heaven and the same earth. Everything has
a soul, as it used to have of old, a soul which
brings joy or melancholy or misgiving to my heart ;
only the little boy is no more.

Thus it is that the older I become the more
interest I take in the children going back to school.
Had I been a boarder in a Lyce'e, my school-day
memories would have been a horror, and I should
banish them from my mind ; but my parents did
not consign me to such a prison. I went as a day-
boy to a somewhat cloistral and sequestered old
college, and every day I saw the streets, every day
I saw my home. I was not cut off as boarders
are from world and home alike. I had no sense
of thraldom or constraint, my ideas expanded with
that sweetness and strength which Freedom bestows
on everything that comes to maturity within her
pale. Hatred had no place in my thoughts. If
I was inquisitive and eager to know the ins and
outs of things, it was that I might love them the
better. Everything I saw as I went my way along
the street men, animals, and things helped me
more than one would believe to feel and appreciate
the simple fundamental elements of life.

There is nothing like a street to make a boy

152 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

understand the working of the social machine.
Let him see the milk-women, the water-carriers,
and coalmen on their morning rounds ; let him
take stock of the grocers', the butchers', and the
wine merchants' shops ; let him see a regiment of
soldiers pass down the street with its band playing ;
let him, in a word, sniff in the air of the street,
and he will feel that the law of labour is a divine
law, and that everyone must perform his appointed
task in this world of ours.

I owe it to these morning and evening walks
from home to school, and from school back home
again, that I still retain an affectionate curiosity
regarding shop-people and their trades. I must
confess, however, that I liked some better than
others. The stationers who exhibited illustrated
story-books in their windows were my earliest
favourites, and times without number have I stood
flattening my nose against their windows reading
those pictured legends through from beginning
to end.

I read numbers of them in no time. Some of
them were of the fanciful order. They set my
imagination to work, and helped to develop that
seeing faculty without which, even in the realm
of the exact sciences, no discovery is made. Some
of them told plain and thrilling tales of what
people did and suffered, and these brought me for

THE HUMANITIES 153

the first time to contemplate the most terrible
thing there is or, rather, the one terrible thing

Fate. Ah ! yes, I owe a deal to those coloured

i

sheets they print at Epinal.

But later on, when I was fourteen or fifteen, I
gave up looking in the grocers' shops, though I
confess that their boxes of candied fruits long
continued to excite my admiration. I turned up
my nose at the drapers' shops, and gave up trying
to discover the "significance of the mysterious gilt Y
upon their shop signs. I scarcely troubled myself to
unravel the childish rebuses worked into the wrought
metal grilles of the ancient wineshops, where a
quince or a comet figured in hammered iron.

My tastes had grown more fastidious, and the
only wares in which I took an interest were prints,
curios, and old books.

Ye old rapacious Jews of the Rue du Cherche
<?Midi, ye artless book vendors of the quays, my
masters all ! How greatly am I beholden to you !
To you I owe as much, nay, even more than to the
University itself, for the training of my intellect.
It was you, good folk, who displayed to my
enchanted gaze the mysterious tokens of a bygone
age and all manner of precious memorials of the
pilgrimage of the human mind. Even as I turned
over the old tomes in your boxes, or gazed within
your dusty stalls laden with the sad relics of our

154 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

sires and their golden thoughts, I became insensibly
imbued with the most wholesome of philosophies.
Yes, my friends, it was when rummaging about
among those musty books, those scraps of tarnished
metal-work, those fragments of old, worm-eaten
carvings which you used to barter for your daily
bread, that my childish spirit recognised how frail
and fleeting are all the things of this world. I
divined that we living beings were but ever-changing
figures in the world's great Shadow Show ; and even
then my heart inclined to sadness, gentleness, and

pity-
Thus, the open-air school taught me many a

lofty lesson ; but the home school was more
profitable still. The family board, with its fair
white cloth, its clear, sparkling decanters, the
tranquil faces, the easy, natural talk from all
these things a boy may learn to love and to under-
stand the lowly and hallowed elements of human
life. If he is fortunate enough to have, as I had,
kindly and intelligent parents, the table-talk to
which he listens will give balance to his mind, and
dispose his heart to love. Day by day he eats of
that Blessed Bread which the Master brake and gave
unto the pilgrims in the inn at Emmaus, and he
murmurs even as they, " Doth not my heart burn
within me."

Meals taken in boarding-school refectories have

THE HUMANITIES 155

not this sweetness and this grace. Ah ! Home is a
famous school !

However, I should be grievously misunderstood
were it supposed that I wish to underrate classical
culture : I believe indeed that there is nothing so
valuable in shaping the mind as the study of classical
antiquity, carried out according to the methods of
the old French Humanists. By " Humanities," we
mean grace, elegance ; and it is a word we may
fittingly apply to classical culture.

The little fellow of whom I was speaking just
now with a warmth of sympathy that may perhaps
be forgiven me he is but a ghost, after all this
little fellow that used to wend his way to school
across the Luxembourg Gardens as merry as a
young sparrow, was, believe me, no indifferent
Humanist. Little boy though he was, he could
feel and appreciate the strength and majesty of
Old Rome, the splendours of the poetry of Anti-
quity. For all that he was a day-boy, for all that
he was free to wander at will among the bookstalls
and to dine at home with his father and mother,
he was by no means insensible to the lordly rhetoric
of the schools. Far from that, he was just as
"Attic," just as thorough-going a Ciceronian as
you could expect to find in a troop of urchins
under the governance of a few well-meaning old
dominies.

156 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

He strove but little for glory, and his name was
rarely blazoned on the prize-lists ; but he toiled
hard in order to "amuse himself," as La Fontaine's
saying goes. His versions were very well turned,
his Latin speeches would have deserved the en-
comiums of Monsieur 1'Inspecteur himself had they
not generally been marred by some careless blunder.
Have I not said Livy wrung from him tears of
generous sympathy !

But it was when he set foot on the shores of
Hellas that he first knew what Beauty was in its
superb simplicity. It was a tardy arrival. Early
in his career his spirit had been saddened by ./Esop's
fables. His first Greek professor had a crooked
back a crooked back and a crooked mind. Perhaps
you picture to yourself Thersites conducting the
young Galatians into the groves of the Muses.
That was not how it struck the pupil. You might
perhaps imagine that as his humpbacked pro-
fessor specialised as an exponent of ^sop, he might
have been suitably employed on such a task. Not
a bit of it ! He was a spurious hunchback a
great hulking hunchback devoid of wit, devoid
of kindness ; disposed to evil ; the most unjust of
men. He was good for nothing, not even for
telling you what a hunchback thinks of things.
Moreover, those dry little fables, which bear the
name of ^Esop, have come down to us clipped and

THE HUMANITIES 157

pared by some Byzantine monk who must have
carried a cramped and sterile brain beneath his
tonsure. I knew nothing and cared little about
their origin in those days ; but the opinion I had
of them I still retain.

After JEsop they gave us Homer. I saw Thetis
rising like a white cloud from the sea ; I saw
Nausicaa and her maidens, the palm-tree of Delos,
and the sky and the land and the sea ; and I
saw Andromache smiling through her tears. . . .
I understood I felt it all. For six months
I was lost in the Odyssey. It earned me many
punishments; but what cared I for "impots"? I
was sailing with Ulysses over the wine-dark sea.
Next came the tragic poets. Of ^Eschylus I could
make but little. But Sophocles, Euripides ! They
opened the gates of an enchanted world to me, a
world of heroes and heroines. From them I learned
the poetry of calamity. At every fresh tragedy I
read I was a prey to new thrills, new griefs, new
shudders.

To the Alcestis and the Antigone I owe the
noblest dreams that ever schoolboy was visited by.
As I sat at my ink-stained desk, my head buried
in my dictionary, forms of godlike beauty passed
before my vision ; I beheld arms of gleaming ivory
falling upon snowy tunics; I heard voices sweeter
than the sweetest melody mourning most musically.

1 58 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

This, again, brought down fresh punishments upon
me. But I deserved them all ! I was " occupying
myself with matters extraneous to the work of the
class." Alas ! the habit has clung to me. In
whatever class in life's school they put me for the
rest of my days, I am afraid that, old man though
I be, I shall still incur the rebukes I received as
a boy at the hands of my professor: "Monsieur
Pierre Noziere, your mind is occupied with matters
extraneous to the work of the class ! "

But it was, above all, of a winter's evening, when
I escaped into the streets again after school was
done, that I revelled in this visionary glow, these
soundless harmonies. I halted beneath lamp-posts ;
I stayed my steps by flaring shop-windows to con a
line or two, and then recited them in an undertone
as I pursued my way. The streets the narrow
streets of the faubourg on which the shadows of
night were beginning to fall, would then be filled
with the bustle of a busy winter's eve. Often
enough I collided with a pastry-cook's boy with
his hamper on his head, dreaming his dreams as
I was dreaming mine ; or else I would suddenly
feel on my cheek the hot breath of some unlucky
horse tugging at his load. Nor did reality mar
the beauty of my dreams, because I loved those
dear old streets of mine, whose every stone had
seen me growing into manhood. One evening I

THE HUMANITIES 159

read some lines of the Antigone by the lantern of
a vendor of baked chestnuts, and even now, after
a quarter of a century, I can never think of the line
that begins :

" O tomb ! O bridal bed ! "

without seeing the man of Auvergne blowing into
a paper bag, or feeling my side grow warm with
the heat of the stove where his chestnuts were a-
roasting. And the memory of this worthy blended
harmoniously in my mind with the lament of the
Theban maid.

This was how I learned a deal of poetry; this
was how I made many a useful and valuable ac-
quaintance ; this was how I put the finishing touch
on my humanities. It was a method that answered
well in my case. It might fail utterly in another's.
I should take great care not to recommend it to
anybody else.

All the same, I have to confess that, nurtured as I
had been on Homer and Sophocles, I was " lacking
in taste" when I took up my rhetoric. My professor
of rhetoric it was who told me so, and I am quite
ready to believe him. The taste one has, or the
taste one displays, at seventeen is seldom good. To
bring about an improvement in my own, my rhetoric
professor advised me to make a careful study of the
entire writings of Casimir Delavigne. I did not

160 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

follow his advice. Sophocles had given a certain
bent to my mind, and that bent was not to be got
rid of. I did not then, and do not now, regard
my professor of rhetoric as one gifted with a dis-
criminating taste in literary matters ; but though
he had a surly temper, he disdained meanness, and
his conduct was as straight as a die. His views on
literature may have been a trifle heterodox ; but, at
any rate, he showed us by his own example how an
upright man should act.

It was a science that had its reward, for Monsieur
Charron was respected by all his pupils. Children
never err in their estimate of the moral worth of
their instructors. The opinions I held twenty-five
years ago of the abusive hunchback and the worthy
Charron I still retain to-day.

But the shades of evening are descending upon
the plane-trees in the Luxembourg, and the little
ghost whose presence I evoked grows faint and
more faint amid the gathering gloom. Farewell,
then, little ego little " me " that I have lost
Never should I cease to mourn for you had you
not come back to me, and with an added beauty,
in my son.

XI
THE GROVE OF MYRTLE

I

S a child I had shown great intelli-
gence, but when I was about seven-
teen I grew stupid. I used to be
so nervous in those days, that I could
not make my bow or take my seat
in company without my forehead becoming moist
with perspiration. The presence of women sent
me off into a panic. I observed at least in the
letter the precept from the Imitation of Christ
which I had learned in some junior class or other,
and which I had remembered because the version,
which is Corneille's, had struck me as quaint :

" Fuis avec un grand soin la pratique des femmes ;
Ton ennemi par la peut savoir ton defaut.
Recommande en commun aux bontes du Trs-Haut
Celles dont les vertus embellissent les ames,
Et, sans en voir jamais qu'avec un prompt adieu
Aime les toutes, mais en Dieu." l

1 " Take heed that thou flee the company of women ;
By that road thy enemy may find thee vulnerable.
Commend to the mercies of the Most High, in general,

161 _

Ju

162 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

I followed the advice of the old monk and
mystic ; I followed it, but very much against the
grain ; I should have preferred a less prompt adieu.

Among my mother's friends there was one
woman in whose society I should have particularly
delighted to linger, with whom I should have loved
to have long talks. She was the wife of a distin-
guished pianist, Adolphe Gance, who had been cut off
at an early age. Her name was Alice, and though
I had never really seen her hair, her eyes, her teeth,
for how can one see what is but a brilliant, sparkling,
dazzling vision, to me she seemed fairer than a dream,
dowered with more than mortal loveliness. My
mother used to say that, taken separately, there was
nothing out of the common about any of Madame
Gance's features. Every time my mother expressed
this view, my father shook his head incredulously.
Doubtless he, good man, did as I did, and refrained
from taking Madame Gance's features separately.
And, whatever the details were like, the general
effect was charming. But never heed what my
mother said ; Madame Gance was beautiful, I give
you my word for it. Madame Gance attracted me :

All those whose souls are adorned by virtues,

And, never seeing them save to bid them a swift God-speed,

Love them all, but in the Lord."

A rather verbose expansion of the precept in the Imitation :
" Be not thou too familiar with any one woman, but commend
all good women generally to God."

THE GROVE OF MYRTLE 163

beauty is so sweet and kind ! Madame Gance made
me afraid : beauty is an awesome thing !

One evening my father was entertaining a few
friends, and Madame Gance came into the room
with a good-natured look upon her face that en-
couraged me a little. Sometimes, with men, she
would assume an air of leisurely condescension as of
one tossing bread crumbs to the sparrows. Then,
without any warning, she would put on a lofty
manner of icy hauteur, and move her fan to and fro
with a weary, bored expression on her countenance.
I never knew how to account for this. I can
thoroughly account for it now : Madame Gance was
a coquette. That is the whole of the matter.

But, as I was saying, when Madame Gance came
into the drawing-room that night she tossed every
one, even the humblest and that was I a crumb,
so to speak, of her benevolence. I never took my
eyes off her, and as I gazed I thought I detected a
shade of melancholy in her expression. I was quite
overcome, being, you see, a soft-hearted creature.
She was asked to play something, and she gave us
one of Chopin's Nocturnes. I have never heard
anything so beautiful. It seemed as though her
very fingers, her white, shapely fingers, from which
she had just removed her rings, were lightly touch-
ing my ears with the most heavenly of caresses.
When she had finished playing, I went to her

164 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

instinctively, and, hardly knowing what I was doing,
escorted her to her seat, and then sat down beside
her. As I breathed in the fragrance that exhaled
from her bosom, I shut my eyes. She asked me if
I was fond of music ; her voice sent a thrill through
me. I opened my eyes again, and I saw that she
was looking at me. That look was my undoing.

" Yes, sir," I answered in confusion.

Since the earth did not open and swallow me up,
it is clear that Nature is indifferent to the most
fervent supplications of mortal men.

Up in my bedroom that night, I did nothing but
call myself an idiot and a boor. When morning
came I pondered long and deeply on the matter ;
but, no, I could discover no extenuating circum-
stance. " You want to tell a woman she is beauti-
ful all too beautiful and that she can make the
piano sigh and sob, and all you do is just to blurt
out two preposterous words : ' Yes, sir.' To be so
destitute of the power of expression as that is just
a little bit too much of a good thing. Pierre
Noziere, you are a fool, an imbecile ! Go and hide
yourself ! " Unfortunately, I couldn't even do
that properly. I had to put in an appearance at
school, at table, and in the street. With the
fellows at school I could at least have exchanged
fisticuffs if I had liked, and there is some sort of
dignity about doing that. But with my mother's

THE GROVE OF MYRTLE 165

women friends I was in most pitiable case. I
realised to the full the worth of the precept laid
down in the Imitation ;

" Fuis avec un grand soin la pratique des femmes."

"What salutary advice," said I to myself.
" Had I shunned Madame Gance that fatal evening
when she played that Nocturne with such poetic
feeling, and made the air shudder with delight ;
had I shunned her then, she would not have asked
me whether I was fond of music, and I should
never have answered, * Yes, sir.' '

Those two words, " Yes, sir," were for ever ring-
ing in my ears. The recollection of them was
always with me, or, to speak more accurately, some
horrible psychical phenomenon made it seem as
though time had suddenly come to a standstill, and
that the dreadful moment that had been startled
by that irreparable utterance, "Yes, sir," was being
indefinitely prolonged. It was not remorse that
was torturing my soul. Remorse itself were sweet
compared with what I was feeling then. For six
weeks I remained in a condition of sombre melan-
choly, and after that my parents themselves realised
that I had lost my senses.

What put the coping-stone on my imbecility was
that my mind was as daring as my manners were
shy. As a general rule, the intellect in young

1 66 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

people is crude and undecided. Mine was rigid
and inflexible. I believed that I was in possession
of the truth. I was violent and revolutionary,
when I was alone. When I was alone, what a
blade, what a slashing fellow, I used to be ! I have
changed a deal since then. Now, I am not over-
much in awe of my contemporaries. I try to make
myself as snug as possible between those who have
more brains than I and those who have less; and
I trust to the cleverness of the former. On the
other hand, I am not without misgivings when I
come to look myself in the face. . . . But I was
telling you about something that happened to me
when I was seventeen. You will readily imagine
that such a blend of shyness and audacity made me
cut a most ridiculous figure.

Six months after the frightful occurrence I have
just related to you, I, having finished my course
of rhetoric with some credit to myself, was sent by
my father for a holiday in the country. He gave
me a letter to one of the humblest and worthiest of
his colleagues, an old country doctor who was in
practice at Saint Patrice, and thither I went. Saint
Patrice is a little village on the coast of Normandy.
Behind it is a forest, and on the seaward side it
slopes gently down towards a sandy beach hemmed
in between two cliffs. At the time of which I am
speaking this beach was wild and lonely. The sea,

THE GROVE OF MYRTLE 167

which I then beheld for the first time ; and the
woods, whose peace was so healing, so benign, sent
me into ecstasies. The dim expanse of woods and
waters harmonised with the vague promptings of
my soul. I went for rides in the forest ; I rolled
half naked on the strand, filled with a longing for
something I knew not what which seemed always
at hand, yet was to be found nowhere.

All day long I was alone ; and my tears would
flow without cause. Sometimes, indeed, my heart
grew so full that I thought I should die. In a
word, I was ill at ease; but is there in the whole
world anything to compare with the restlessness
that then possessed me ? No ! I call those woods,
whose branches whipped my face as I brushed
through them I call those woods to witness those
cliffs, whose heights I scaled to watch the sun sinking
in the sea those cliffs will bear me out there is
nought to compare with the malady which then
tormented me, nought to compare with a young
man's early dreams. If desire lends a grace to
whatsoever be the object of it, then the desire of
the unknown makes beautiful the Universe.

Shrewd enough as I am, I have always been
curiously unsophisticated in some things. I should,
perhaps, have gone many a day without discovering
the cause of my unrest and vague longings, had
not a poet revealed the mystery to me.

1 68 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

Even in my school-days I conceived an affection
for the poets, an affection which, happily, I have
ever since retained. As a boy of seventeen I adored
Virgil, and I understood him almost as well as if
my professors had never expounded his meaning to
me. During my holidays I always carried a Virgil
in my pocket. It was a little, cheap English edition,
and I have it still. I cherish it as tenderly as it is
possible for me to cherish anything Withered
flowers fall from its pages every time I open it.
Those that have been there the longest are the flowers
that I gathered in the woods of Saint Patrice, where
I was so happily unhappy when a boy of seventeen.

One day when I was wandering on the skirts of
this wood, breathing in with delight the fragrance
of the new-mown hay, while the wind, blowing in
softly from the sea, brought the savour of salt to
my lips, I was seized with an unconquerable sensa-
tion of weariness. I sat down on the ground, and
remained for a long time gazing at the clouds float-
ing by in the heavens. Then, by force of habit, I
opened my Virgil and read : Hie quos durus amor . . .
" Here shy glades conceal those whom un-
relenting love hath with cruel venom con-
sumed in lingering death, and all around them
groves of myrtle cast their shade."

"And the groves of myrtle cast their shade. . . ."
Oh ! I knew it ! I knew that grove of myrtle.

THE GROVE OF MYRTLE 169

But I knew not its name. Virgil had just revealed
to me the cause of my malady. Thanks to him, I
knew that it was Love.

But, as yet, I knew not whom I loved. That, it
was given to me to discover the following winter,
when I saw Madame Gance again.

Doubtless you are gifted with greater perspicacity
than I possessed. You, of course, have long since
divined that it was Alice whom I loved. Oh,
wonderful irony ! The woman I loved was the
very woman in whose presence I had covered myself
with ridicule, and who needs must have something
worse than a sorry opinion of me. Here was
matter for despair. But despair was not in vogue.
Our sires had made too free with it and worn it
threadbare. I did nothing sublime or terrible. I
did not seek the seclusion of some mouldering
cloister. I did not wander disconsolate amid the
waste places of the earth. I cried not to the
Northern blasts. I merely went on being miserable
and I took my degree.

Even the modicum of happiness that was vouch-
safed me contained a sting ; for it consisted in seeing
Alice, in hearing her voice, and saying to myself,
" She is the one woman in the world whom I can
love, I am the one man in the world she cannot
endure." When she played the piano, I used to
take my stand beside her to turn over the music,

i yo MY FRIEND'S BOOK

and watch the play of the little wavelets of hair
upon her white neck. But, in order that I might
run no risk of blurting out another " Yes, sir," I
vowed that I would speak to her no more. Before
long I had to make a change in my way of life, and
I lost sight of Alice without having broken my
vow.

II

I discovered Madame Gance again at a watering-
place in the mountains this very summer. Fifty
years have left their mark upon that lovely face,
the face to which I owe my first and most delicious
experience of love's unrest.

Her features, on which Time has left his trace,
are fair and gracious still, and I deemed that, being
now a grey-haired man, I might renounce that
boyish vow of mine. Approaching her, therefore,
I made my bow and said, " How do you do,
Madame Gance."

Alas ! the eager emotion of my youth had fled,
my voice was steady, my countenance composed.

She recognised me pretty readily. Our memories
formed a link between us. We used to have long
talks together about old times, and did our utmost
to help each other to beguile the somewhat unin-
spiring round of hotel existence.

Before long, we discovered new subjects of

THE GROVE OF MYRTLE 171

interest, new links of only too enduring a character.
Our ailments and our vexations formed the staple
of our conversation. All the morning we used to sit
out in the sun on a green garden-seat discussing our
rheumatism and our other trials and troubles. It
was a topic not easily exhausted. Sometimes, by way
of relief, we would mingle the past with the present.

" How very beautiful you were, madame," I re-
marked to her one day ; " and how people used to
rave about you."

" Yes," she answered with a smile, " I can acqui-
esce in that without impropriety, for I am an old
woman now. Yes," she went on, " 1 was thought
a good deal of, and the recollection of it brings a
solace to my growing years. I have had some
handsome compliments bestowed upon me ; but I
should perhaps surprise you if I told you which, of
all the compliments that were ever paid me, is the
one that touched me the most."

" Pray, tell me, I should so much like to know."

" Well, then, I will. One evening (it is a long
time ago, now), a little bashful schoolboy became
so dreadfully flurried as he looked at me, that he
answered * Yes, sir,' to a question I asked him.
Never did I receive a token of admiration that
flattered me so much, or pleased me more than that
1 Yes, sir,' and the tone in which it was uttered ! "

XII
THE SHADOW

WAS in my twentieth year when an
extraordinary thing happened to me.
My father had sent me down into
Lower Maine to see to a piece of
family business, and I set out one
afternoon from the pretty little town of Ernee on a
twenty-mile ride. I was making for the district of
Saint Jean in order to pay a visit to the house at
that time untenanted which had sheltered my
father's family for more than two hundred years.
It was early in December. Snow had been falling
since morning, and the road, which lay between two
quickset hedges, had given way in many places, so
that my horse and I had much ado to avoid the
quagmires.

But, when I got to within five or six miles of
Saint Jean, the surface began to improve, and,
despite the fact that a furious gale had sprung up,
and that the frozen snow was whipping my face, I
put my horse to the gallop. The trees which lined
the road flew past me in the darkness, like hideous,

172

THE SHADOW 173

stricken ghosts. How horrible they were, those
trees, lopped off at the top, covered with lumps
and gashes, extending frightful, twisted limbs.
They awoke a kind of terror in me, for I could not
help letting my mind run on a story which a
vicaire at Saint-Marcel d'Erne"e had told me the
night before. One of these trees one of those
mutilated veterans of Le Bocage a chestnut that
had been decapitated more than two hundred years
ago, and was as hollow as a tower, was riven from
top to bottom by lightning on the 24th of February
1849. Looking through the fissure, some people
saw the skeleton of a man standing bolt upright
within it, with a gun in one hand and a rosary in
the other. On a watch, which was picked up at
his feet, was engraved the name of Claude Noziere.
This Claude my father's great-uncle had been a
great smuggler in his day. In 1794 he attached
himself to the Chouans, and joined the band com-
manded by Treton, commonly called Jambe
d'Argent. Sorely wounded and hotly pursued by
the partisans of the Republic, the hunted man went
to hide himself, and to die, in the hollow of this
old chestnut. Friend and foe alike were ignorant
of the fate that had befallen him ; and it was not
until fifty years after his death that the mystery
was solved, and the old Chouan's grave laid bare
by a stroke of lightning.

174 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

His story came into my mind as the leafless,
stunted trees flew past, and I put spurs to my
horse. It was pitch dark when I reached Saint
Jean.

Swaying to and fro in the wind, the signboard
creaked drearily on its chains in the darkness as I
made my way up to the inn. Having attended to
my horse myself, I entered the parlour and threw
myself into an old arm-chair which stood in the
chimney corner. As I sat warming myself, the
firelight shone upon the countenance of my hostess.
She was old and hideously ugly. Her features
seemed prematurely covered with the dust of the
grave, and all that was discernible in her face was
a nose half eaten away and a pair of red -rimmed,
expressionless orbs. I was a stranger, and she kept
darting furtive and mistrustful glances in my direc-
tion. To set her mind at rest, I told her my name
was Noziere a name I felt sure she would know.
But she only shook her head, and replied that there
were no Nozieres left. However, she consented to
prepare me some supper, and, throwing a faggot
on the hearth, she quitted the room.

I was weary and low-spirited, weighed down with
an indescribable sensation of mental oppression.

Thick-coming fancies, scenes of violence and
gloom, tormented my imagination. After a while,
I fell into a fitful doze ; but in my uneasy slumber

THE SHADOW 175

I could hear the moaning of the wind in the chimney,
and now and again a gust of more than usual
violence would fling the ashes from the hearth over
my very boots.

When, a few minutes afterwards, I opened my
eyes, I beheld a sight that I shall never forget. I
saw at the far end of the room, silhouetted with the
utmost distinctness against the whitewashed wall,
a motionless shadow the shadow of a young girl.
The form was so instinct with gentleness, purity,
and charm, that, as I beheld it, I felt all my weari-
ness, all my melancholy, melt away into wonder
and delight.

I gazed at this vision for what, I suppose, was
about a minute it may have been more, it may
have been less ; for I have no means of measuring
the exact length of time. Then I turned round to
see who it could be that was casting so lovely a
shadow. Not a soul was in the room ... no one
but the old woman spreading a white cloth on the
table. Again I looked at the wall : the shadow had
disappeared.

Then something resembling a lover's longing
took possession of my heart, and I grieved for the
loss I had just sustained.

My mind was perfectly rational, and I pondered
for a few seconds on what had occurred. Then,
turning to the landlady, I said :

176 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

" Mother, tell me, who was it that was standing
there a second or two ago ? "

The old woman answered in a tone of surprise
that she had seen no one.

I hastened to the door. Snow was falling
heavily; it lay thick and white upon the ground,
yet not a footprint was to be seen.

" Mother, are you sure that there is not a woman
in the house ? "

The old woman replied that she was quite alone
in the place.

I next endeavoured to ascertain, by careful
observation, the precise position that a person would
have had to occupy to cast a shadow where I saw
it. I pointed to this spot with my hand, and said :

" There, that is where she was, I tell you."

The hag approached with a taper in her hand,
and, fixing her horrible expressionless eyes upon
me, she exclaimed :

" Now I know that you are not deceiving me ;
I know that you are really a Noziere. Can you
be a son of Jean Noziere, the one that is a doctor
in Paris? I knew young Rene", an uncle of his.
He, too, used to see a woman that no one else
could see. No doubt it is a curse that God has
laid upon the family for the sin committed by
Claude, the Chouan, who went to perdition with
the baker's wife."

THE SHADOW 177

" Do you mean the Claude whose skeleton was
discovered in a hollow tree, holding a gun and a
rosary ? " I asked.

"My good young sir, that rosary was no good
to him. He had lost his soul for a woman."

The old woman had no more to tell me about
the matter; but I could scarcely put my lips to
the bread, the bacon and eggs, and cider that she
placed before me. I was continually turning to
look at the wall where I had seen the shadow.
Oh ! yes ! I had seen it plainly enough. It was
delicate, and more distinctly outlined than a shadow
naturally produced by the flickering light of a fire
or the smoky flame of a tallow candle.

Next day I went and looked at the deserted
house where Claude and Rene had dwelt in their
day. I scoured the neighbourhood ; I cross-
questioned the cur6 ; but I learned nothing that
would enable me to discover the identity of the
young girl whose ghost I had seen.

Even now I am not so sure whether the old
woman's account of the matter was the true one
or not. Perhaps it was as she said ; perhaps there,
in the bleak solitudes of Le Bo9cage, some phantom
had been wont to appear to those peasants whose
descendant I am, and, maybe, it was the ancestral
shadow which haunted of old my untutored,
dreamy forefathers that presented itself with un-

M

178 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

wonted grace to the gaze of their visionary
child.

Was it indeed the Noziere family ghost that I saw
in the inn at Saint Jean, or was it not rather that a
sign was vouchsafed to me that winter's night a
sign that the best that this life can bestow was to
be mine ; that kindly Nature had granted me the
most precious of all her gifts the gift of dreams ?

THE BOOK OF SUZANNE

NOTE TO THE READER

HE reminiscences of Pierre Noziere
come to an end with the story that
we have just narrated, but we have
thought it incumbent on us to add a
few further pages by the same hand.
The 'Book of Suzanne consists entirely of extracts
from our friend's manuscripts, and in putting it
together we have availed ourselves of such of
Pierre Noziere's papers as have any connection,
near or remote, with his daughter's childhood.
We have thus been enabled to piece together a
further chapter of this family record a record
which it was his intention to keep regularly written
up, but which he only left in a fragmentary state.

SUZANNE

CHANTICLEER

ITHERTO Suzanne had not com-
menced her search for the beautiful ;
but when she was fifteen weeks old,
she set to work in real earnest.

It was in the dining-room. This
dining-room presents a fallacious appearance of
antiquity, because of the Fa'fence dishes, the stone-
ware bottles, the pewter flagons, and the phials of
Venetian glass, with which the buffets are loaded.
It is Suzanne's mamma who is responsible. She has
arranged everything in the style of this new-fangled
craze for curios. Amid all these antiquities,
Suzanne, in her white embroidered frock, looks
fresher and daintier than ever, and when you see her
you say to yourself, '* Well, here, at any rate, is a
little creature that is absolutely new."

She is quite indifferent to all this ancient crockery,
and to the dusky old portraits and great brass dishes
that hang upon the walls. Later on, no doubt,
these relics of the past will set all sorts of ideas

running in her little head fantastic, ridiculous, and

185

1 86 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

charming. She will have her visions, and if she is
of the imaginative cast of mind, she will employ her
fancy on those matters of style and detail that lend
such charm to life. I shall tell her all manner of
whimsical tales, tales that will be no farther re-
moved from the truth and infinitely more delightful
than those they commonly call history. She will
become madly in love with them. I should like
everyone I love to have a touch of the motley. It
gladdens the heart. Meanwhile, even the little
Bacchus sitting astride his cask cannot cheat her of
a smile. How serious we are at fifteen weeks.

The sky was a soft grey that morning. Some
bindweed intertwined with the wild bryony engar-
landed the casement with stars of divers hues. We
had finished lunch, my wife and I, and we were
chatting together after the fashion of people who
have nothing particular to talk about. It was one
of those hours when time glides onward like a
tranquil river. You can almost see it flowing, and
every word that is spoken seems like a little pebble
cast into its waters. I rather think we were talk-
ing about the colour of Suzanne's eyes. It is an
inexhaustible subject.

" They are slate blue. Yes."

" They have a tinge of old gold or onion broth.
Yes."

" They have green lights in them. They have."

CHANTICLEER 187

" It is all true ! They are miracles of eyes ! "

At this point, Suzanne came in. This time her
eyes were the same colour as the sky a most
taking shade of grey.

She was carried in by her nursemaid.

To have been really in the fashion, it ought to
have been a wet-nurse. But Suzanne, like La
Fontaine's lamb like all lambs, in fact is suckled
by her mother. I am perfectly well aware that
if we play the rustic to this extent, we ought at
least to study appearances and have a dry-nurse
a dry-nurse, with big pins and ribbons to her cap,
just like a full-blown wet-nurse. She would have
everything but the milk. But, then, the milk is
merely for the baby ; the ribbons and the pins are
for the world. Mothers who are weak enough to
suckle their children engage a dry-nurse to save
their faces.

But Suzanne's mother is very thoughtless in these
matters, and this attractive expedient never entered
her mind.

Suzanne's nursemaid is a little peasant who, down
in her own village, helped to bring up seven or
eight little brothers. From morning till night she
sings the songs of Lorraine. We let her have
a day off to go and see Paris. She came back en-
chanted. She had seen some splendid radishes.
The rest didn't strike her as being at all bad ; but

1 88 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

it was the radishes that won her fancy. She wrote
home about them. Her native simplicity enables
her to get on perfectly with Suzanne, who seems
to have no eyes for anything in Nature but lamps
and decanters.

When Suzanne appeared, hey presto ! the dining-
room was lit up with merriment. We laughed at
Suzanne ; Suzanne laughed at us. Folks that love
each other can always make their meaning clear.
Mamma stretched out her hands, and the sleeves
of her dressing-gown fell back from her supple
arms in the careless abandon that befits a warm
summer morning. Then Suzanne held out her
little arms, too, stiff in their starched pique as a
marionette's. She spread out her fingers, and
five little pink rays peeped out from the bottom
of her sleeves. Her mother, radiant with delight,
took her tenderly on her knees, and the three of
us were supremely happy, possibly because we were
thinking about nothing. But this blissful state
could not endure. Suzanne suddenly began to
lean over towards the direction of the table, and
opened her eyes so wide that they grew quite round,
and she beat her arms about as though they had
been made of wood, as, indeed, they appeared to
be. There was a look of wonderment and admira-
tion in her eyes. Into that touching stupidity of
expression, the expression that babies have worn

CHANTICLEER 189

since the world began, there stole an indefinable
gleam of Ariel-like intelligence.

Then she gave a sudden cry as of a stricken
bird.

" Perhaps a pin has pricked her," said her mother,
who was, happily, very much disposed to look on
the practical side of things. " One never knows
when those English pins are coming undone, and
Suzanne has eight of them about her." But no ;
it was not a pin that had pricked her ; it was her
love of the Beautiful.

" Love of the Beautiful at fifteen weeks ? Rub-
bish !" you exclaim.

Well, then, judge for yourself.

Having nearly succeeded in worming herself out
of her mother's arms, she was dabbing her little
fists on the table, and tugging and pushing with
might and main. With much puffing, spluttering,
and babbling, she managed at length to seize hold
of a plate. On the plate an old rustic craftsman
of Strasburg (he must have had a simple soul, God
rest his bones !) had painted a picture of a red
chanticleer.

Suzanne coveted this creature. She did not want
it to eat. It was evident, therefore, that she
desired it because she deemed it beautiful. Her
mother, to whom I imparted this simple deduction,
answered :

1 90 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

" Stuff and nonsense ! If Suzanne had been able
to get the plate in her hands, the first thing she
would have done would have been to try to put it
in her mouth ! Upon my word, you clever people
have no common sense."

"No doubt she would," I replied; "but what
does that prove save that the principal channel of
her varied and already numerous faculties is her
mouth. She used her mouth before she used her
eyes, and quite right, too. At present, her mouth,
being cultivated, delicate, and sensitive, is the best
organ of perception she has at her disposal. She is
quite right to use it. I tell you that your daughter
is wisdom personified. She would have put the
plate to her mouth, of course she would ; but she
would have done so because it was beautiful and
not because it was good to eat. Observe that this
habit, which exists in fact in the case of little
children, is still discernible in a figurative sense
in the language of grown-up people. We some-
times talk of savouring a poem, a picture, or an
opera."

While I was advancing these untenable proposi-
tions, which, however, the philosophic world would
readily accept provided they were stated in suf-
ficiently unintelligible language, Suzanne was
pounding her fists on the plate, scratching it with
her nails, speaking to it (and in what pretty,

CHANTICLEER 191

mysterious babble !), and turning it over every now
and again on its face with a terrific bang.

She did not exhibit any great skill, her move-
ments lacked precision. But, however simple an
action may appear, it is very difficult to perform
until one has acquired the habit of doing it. And
what habits do you expect a fifteen-week-old baby
to have acquired ? Think what a complex apparatus
of nerves, bones, and muscles has to be brought
into play merely to raise your little finger. Pulling
all the strings of Mr. Thomas Holden's marion-
ettes is child's-play to it. Darwin, who was a
sagacious observer, considered it remarkable that
little children should know how to laugh and cry.
He wrote a big book to show how they go about it.
" Nous sommes sans pitie* " we are a hard-hearted
race " we learned men," as Monsieur Zola says.

Fortunately, I am not quite so profound a savant
as Monsieur Zola. My learning is all on the
surface. I don't go in for experimenting on
Suzanne ; I confine myself to observing what she
does, whenever I can do so without putting her out.

Well, then, she kept scratching away at the
picture on the plate, growing more and more mysti-
fied, for she could not understand how it was that,
if" she could see a thing, she could not also take
it in her hands. That was beyond her compre-
hension, as, indeed, everything else was ; and that

1 92 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

is just what lends Suzanne her charm. Little
children pass their days with miracles perpetually
taking place around them. To them everything is
wonderful, hence the poetry in their eyes. Though
they are with us, they dwell in other worlds than
ours. The Unknown, the Divine Unknown, is all
about them.

" Little stupid ! " said her mamma.

" Dear heart, your daughter may be ignorant,
but she is perfectly rational. When one sees a
thing of beauty, one longs to possess it. That is
human nature, and the Law has provided for it.
Beranger's gipsies, whose motto is, ' Beholding is
holding,' are sages of a very rare order. If every-
one thought as they did, there would be no such
thing as civilisation, and we should live innocent
of clothes and the arts, like the Patagonians. You
do not share their views. You have a craving for
old tapestry with storks depicted beneath the
branches of trees, and you cover every wall in
the house with it. I do not quarrel with you, far
from it ; but do not misconstrue Suzanne and the
bird on the plate."

" I understand her well enough. She is just like
little Pierre, who wanted the moon in a bucket of
water. He didn't get it. But don't tell me, dear,
that she takes a painted cock-a-doodle-doo for a
real one, for she has never seen one at all."

CHANTICLEER 193

"No; she takes an illusion for a reality. And
for that, the artists are not a little responsible.
It is a long time now since they began to try to
portray the world in line and colour. How many
thousands of years is it since the death of that
worthy cave-dweller who engraved a mammoth
from Nature on an ivory tusk ? It would be a
marvel, and no mistake, if, after all their prolonged
efforts in the imitative arts, they could not succeed
in deceiving a fifteen-week-old baby. Appearances !
Who is not taken in by them ? Science itself, that
is always being thrown at us does Science go
beyond that which seems to be? What does Pro-
fessor Robin see when he looks into his microscope ?
Appearances, nothing but appearances. What says
Euripides ? ' We are disquieted in vain by cheating
dreams.' '

I was speaking thus, and preparing to comment
on this line of Euripides, in which I should no
doubt have discovered subtleties that the herb-
seller's son had never dreamt of, when the situation
suddenly became quite unfavourable to philosophic
speculation. For Suzanne, being unsuccessful in
her attempts to remove the cock-a-doodle-doo from
the plate, threw herself into such a temper, that
her face grew as red as a peony, her nostrils dilated
like a Kaffir's, her cheeks extended upwards till
they nearly blotted out her eyes, and her eyebrows

N

i 9 4 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

till they climbed to the top of her forehead that
had suddenly grown red and was covered all over
with bumps and cavities and furrows, till it looked
like a tract of volcanic ground. Her mouth opened
from ear to ear, and from between the gums there
issued the most barbarous of yells.

" There ! " I cried ; " there we have a manifesta-
tion of the passions. But let us not speak ill of the
passions ; they are the mainspring of all the great
deeds that are wrought in this world. In this
instance, you observe, they are making a tiny baby
almost as redoubtably ugly as a little Chinese idol.
Ah ! my daughter, you please me well. Let your
passions be strong, let them wax greater, and
yourself grow stronger with them. And if in after
years you become their inexorable mistress, their
strength will be your strength, and their loftiness
your beauty. The passions make up the whole of
man's moral riches."

" Oh ! dear ! What a din ! " exclaimed Suzanne's
mother. "What with a philosopher talking non-
sense, and a baby that takes a picture on a plate for
goodness knows what living thing, one cannot hear
one's own voice. We poor women need all our
common sense to put up with our husbands and
children."

" Your daughter," I replied, " has just made her
first essay in the pursuit of the beautiful. A

CHANTICLEER 195

Romanticist would call it the fascination of the
abyss. But I say it is the natural exercise of noble
minds. Nevertheless, we must not begin the quest
too soon or with too inadequate an equipment.
You, dear heart, have a sovereign remedy for
Suzanne's troubles. Come ! put your child to
sleep ! "

II

THE STAR

UZANNE has completed her twelfth
month to-night, and during the
year that she has been on this old
Earth of ours she has passed through
a multitude of experiences. A man
who could make as many valuable discoveries in
twelve years as Suzanne has made in as many
months, would be a god among his fellows.
Children are neglected geniuses ; they seize on the
world with superhuman energy. There is nothing
comparable to this primal putting forth of vital
force, this first upspringing of the soul. Do you
realise what it is when these little creatures exercise
the faculties of sight and touch, of observation,
comparison, and memory ? Have you any con-
ception of what walking, coming and going means
to them? And, then, their play! Why, there
you have the beginning of all the arts. A song
and a puppet, a doll and a rhyme, why 'tis nearly
the whole of Shakespeare !

Suzanne is the possessor of a great basketful of

196

THE STAR 197

toys. Of these, only some, such as the wooden
animals and india-rubber dolls, are toys by nature
and intention. The others merely owe their toy-
like state to a peculiar freak of fortune. These
latter consist of old purses, scraps of lace, the
bottoms of boxes, a yard-measure, a scissor-care,
a tin kettle, a railway guide, and a pebble. They
are one and all pitiably the worse for wear. Every
day Suzanne pulls them out of the basket, one after
another, to give to her mother. She bestows no
exceptional attention on any one of them in par-
ticular, and as a rule makes no distinction between
her little stock of possessions and things in general.
For her, the whole world is a great big toy, all
carved and painted.

If you took the trouble to enter into this con-
ception of Nature, and, in the light of it, to inter-
pret all that Suzanne does and thinks, you would
be filled with admiration at the little soul's logic.
But, then, we judge her according to our ideas,
not hers. And because she does not reason like us,
we conclude that she does not reason at all. What
an injustice ! I can look at the matter from the
right standpoint, and I can detect the workings of an
ordered intelligence where the vulgar would perceive
nothing but a succession of disconnected actions.

Nevertheless, I dwell in no fool's paradise. I
am not a man who idolises his children. I recog-

i 9 3 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

nise that my daughter is not so vastly superior to
any other child. I do not employ the language of
exaggeration in speaking of her. I merely say to
her mother :

" My dear, 'tis a very pretty little maid, this
little maid of ours."

Her answer somewhat resembles the reply made
by Mrs. Primrose when her neighbours paid her a
like compliment.

" My friend, Suzanne is what heaven has made
her ; handsome enough, if she be good enough."

And as she says these words, she looks down
long and lovingly at Suzanne, and beneath her
drooping lashes one knows her eyes are beaming
with pride and adoration.

But I insist.

" Agree that she is pretty," I say.

But she has several reasons for not agreeing, and
I know them better than she does herself. She
likes to be continually hearing that her child is
pretty. Yet, if she said so herself, she would
regard it as a little unbecoming, she would deem
herself slightly lacking in taste. But, above all, she
would fear lest she should offend some mysterious,
invisible power, a power which she does not know,
but which she feels is at hand, somewhere in the
background there, ready to visit on the children the
pride of overweening mothers.

THE STAR 199

And where is the happy man who would not
feel a sinking of the heart at the thought of that
spectre so surely hiding behind the curtains ? And
who, at night, as he pressed his wife and child to
his breast, would have the courage to say in the
presence of the viewless horror, " Dear hearts, how
much of our allotted portion of beauty and delight
is still in store for us ? " Therefore it is that I
make reply :

" You are in the right, dear heart, you are ever in
the right. Joy has lighted here, beneath this modest
roof. Hush, speak softly therefore, lest she spread
her wings and fly away. The Athenian mothers
used to be afraid of Nemesis, a goddess ever present,
never seen. Of her they knew .nought save that
she was Envy, the envy of the gods ; Nemesis,
whose handiwork was always to be seen in that
mysterious yet familiar thing ill-luck. Ah ! those
Athenian mothers. I can see one of them it is a
picture I love to conjure up I can see her now,
stooping down beneath the shade of the laurel
where the shrill cicadas sing. I can see her as she
lays at the foot of the family altar her little nurs-
ling, naked as a baby god. I imagine she was called
Lysilla, and that she dreaded Nemesis even as you
dread it, my dearest ; and that, like you, she was so
far from wishing to humiliate other women by a
great display of Eastern luxury, that all she thought

200 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

of was obtaining pardon for being so happy and so
beautiful. . . . Ah ! Lysilla ! Lysilla ! Have you
then passed away and left behind no shadow of
your shapely form, nor a breath of your gracious
soul ? Are you, then, as if you had never been ? "

But here Suzanne's mamma slit the thread of
these wayward musings.

" Tell me," she said ; " tell me why you speak
thus of this woman. She had her day as we are
having ours. Such is life ! "

" Do you imagine, then, my love, that what once
has been can be no more ? "

" Precisely. I am not like you, who see marvels
in everything."

All this she said composedly, as she busied herself
making ready to put Suzanne to bed. But Suzanne
obstinately refused to be undressed.

In the annals of old Rome such obstinacy would
be accounted a virtue, a fine trait in the life of a
Titus, say, or a Vespasian, or an Alexander Severus ;
but in Suzanne's case it brought her a scolding.
Human Justice, what a mockery thou art ! But,
truth to tell, if Suzanne wishes to stay up, it is not
to watch over the safety of the Empire, but to
rummage in the drawer of an old Dutch chest, a
great roomy affair with huge brass handles.

Into it she dives. With one hand she holds on
to the side of the thing to steady herself, and with

THE STAR 201

the other she seizes bonnets, bodices, dresses, and,
uttering all manner of little purling cries the while,
casts them with a mighty effort at her feet.

As she stands there, a little lace shawl covering
her back, how pathetically comical she looks, and
when, every now and then, she turns her head to
look at me, the satisfaction that is written on her
features is more touching still.

I can restrain myself no longer. "Just look at
her ! " I cry, forgetting all about Nemesis ; " how
adorable she looks standing at the drawer there."

With a gesture at once mutinous and fearful,
her maman came and placed a finger on my lips.
Then she went back to the ransacked drawer.
Meanwhile I resumed my train of thought.

" Dearest, if Suzanne is adorable for what she
knows, she is no less so for what she does not
know. It is when her knowledge fails that her
poetry is revealed."

At this Suzanne's mamma turned her eyes upon
me, smiling a little mocking smile out of the corner
of her mouth.

" Suzanne's poetry," she cried ; " your daughter's
poetry ? Why, she's only happy when she's in
the kitchen, that daughter of yours. I found her
grubbing among the potato peelings the other day
as happy as a queen. You call that poetry, do
you?"

202 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

" Most certainly, my dear, most certainly ! All
Nature is mirrored in her eyes with so magnificent
a purity that for her nothing in the world is dirty,
not even the refuse -basket. Therefore it is that
you discovered her rapt in wondering admiration
of cabbage leaves, onion skin, and shrimps' tails.
It was a delicious experience for her. I assure you
she transmutes Nature with heavenly alchemy, and
whatsoever she sees or touches is instinct with
beauty in her eyes."

During this harangue Suzanne quitted her chest
of drawers and went to the window. Her mother
followed her and took her in her arms. The
lovely tresses of the acacia whose blossom lay in
trails of white about our courtyard were bathed
in the translucent darkness. The dog was sleeping
with his front paws outside his kennel. Far off the
earth lay drenched in liquid azure. We all three
held our peace.

Then, amid the silence, the majestic silence of
the night, Suzanne raised her arm as high as she
could above her, and with her finger, which she could
never stretch quite straight, she pointed to a star.
This finger a miracle of tiny loveliness she would
bend at intervals as though she were beckoning to
something.

Then Suzanne talked to the star.

What she told it was not made up of words ;

THE STAR 203

it was a language obscure and lovely, a sort of
strange runic chant, something sweet yet profoundly
mysterious, as is befitting to express the soul of a
baby, when a star is mirrored in it.

" What a queer little thing it is ! " said her
mother, giving her a hug.

III

GUIGNOL

ESTERDAY I took Suzanne to see
Guignol. We both derived much
pleasure from our visit. It is a
performance within our intellectual
compass. Were I a dramatic author
I should write for marionettes. I don't know
whether I should have sufficient talent to succeed ;
but, at all events, the task would not oppress me
with alarm. But to compose sentences for the
cultured lips of the fair comediennes of the Corned ie
Fran9aise ! I should never be daring enough for
that. And then the drama the grown-up people's
idea of it, I mean is too infinitely complicated a
thing for me. I can simply make nothing of those
highly involved intrigues that are all the craze just
now. My whole art would consist in depicting the
passions, and those of the simplest. That kind of
thing would not do for the Gymnase, the Vaude-
ville, or the Frangais ; but it would be first-rate for
Guignol.

That is the place for strong and simple passions.

204

GUIGNOL 205

The truncheon is their most ordinary instrument,
and it cannot be doubted that the truncheon
possesses conspicuous advantages from the comic
point of view : an admirable agent is the truncheon,
and gives no end of go to the play as it hurries
on to the grand rough-and-tumble at the finish
the "grand charassement final," as the Lyons
folk, with whom these performances originated,
call the general melee with which they invariably
conclude. A fatal, an everlasting affair, this
"grand charassement." 'Tis the loth August!
'Tis the 9th Thermidor ! 'Tis Waterloo !

Well, I was telling you, I took Suzanne to
Guignol yesterday. No doubt the piece had its
shortcomings. I found it remarkably rich in
obscurities ; but it was splendidly calculated to
commend itself to the contemplative mind : it pro-
vided such plentiful food for thought. According
to my view of it, the play is of the philosophic
order. The characters are true to life, and they
act with vigour. I will tell you the plot just as
I heard it.

When the curtain went up, we saw Guignol
himself appear on the scene. I recognised him :
it was certainly he. His broad, placid face still
showed the marks of the thwacks that had flattened
his nose, though without marring the friendly in-
genuousness of his look and smile.

206 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

He was not wearing the serge gaberdine or the
cotton bonnet which in 1815 no citizen of Lyons
could behold on the Allee des Botteaux without
laughing. But if some survivor of those little boys
who, away back in 1815, had seen both Guignol and
Napoleon on the banks of the Rhone, had come,
before dying of old age, and sat down beside us
yesterday in the Champs Etystes, he would have
recognised the famous " salsify " of his beloved
marionette, the little pigtail which danced and
jigged so comically at the back of Guignol's neck.
The rest of the costume green coat and black cocked
hat was in keeping with the old Parisian tradition
which represents Guignol as a kind of valet.

Guignol looked at us with his great eyes, and
I was at once taken with his air of impudent
candour and that transparent simplicity of soul
which imparts innocence to vice itself. As far as
soul and expression went, it was the same old
Guignol that the worthy Mourguet of Lyons
played with such infinite jest and excellent fancy.
I could almost hear him saying to his proprietor,
Monsieur Canezou, who had declared his stories
were enough to send a man to sleep standing up :

" You're right, let's go home to bed."

So far, our Guignol had said nothing. But his
little pigtail was a-dance at the back of his neck,
and everyone had begun to laugh.

GUIGNOL 207

Then Gringalet, his son, arrived on the scene,
and rammed his head with fascinating grace into
the paternal abdomen. The audience were not in-
dignant ; on the contrary, they roared with laughter.

Such a d6but is the last word in dramatic art.
And in case you don't know how it came about
that this piece of audacity was such a success, I will
tell you. Guignol is a valet, and wears a livery.
Gringalet, his son, wears a blouse. He is no man's
servant, and he does no work. This superiority
enables him to misuse his father without offending
the public's sense of propriety.

Mademoiselle Suzanne recognised this im-
mediately, and her affection for Gringalet suffered
no abatement. Indeed, Gringalet is the sort of
person you can't help liking. He is thin and
weedy, but he is full of resource. Gringalet is the
man who jumps on the policeman. Mademoiselle
Suzanne, who is six years old, has quite made up
her mind regarding the representatives of law and
order. She is "agin" them, and shakes her sides
when Pandore gets a drubbing. Oh ! it is very
wrong of her, no doubt. Still, I confess I should
be sorry to have it otherwise. I like people to have
something of the rebel in them, no matter what age
they be. I myself am a peaceable citizen, a great
respecter of authority, a most humble observer of
the law. Nevertheless, if I saw someone play off a

208 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

good trick on a gendarme or a sub-prefect or a
park-keeper, I should be the first to laugh at it.
But, let me see, we were talking about the tussle
between Guignol and Gringalet.

Mademoiselle Suzanne takes Gringalet's part, and
I Guignol's. You shall hear both sides and judge
for yourself. Guignol and Gringalet have long
been making for a mysterious village, known only
to themselves the sort of village that would attract
a wild rush of greedy desperadoes if they only
knew of its existence. But this village was more
difficult to find than the palace of the Sleeping
Beauty that lay undiscovered for a hundred years.
There was a certain spice of magic in the matter,
for the region was inhabited by an Enchanter, an
Enchanter who had a treasure which he had promised
to bestow on whomsoever should emerge triumphant
from divers trials, the very thought of which made
your blood curdle. Our two travellers made their
way into the enchanted region with very dissimilar
ideas. Guignol is weary ; he lies down to sleep.
His son upbraids him for his lack of grit.

" Is this how we are going to gain possession of
the treasure which we have set out to seek ? "

And Guignol answers :

" Is there a treasure to compare with sleep ? "

I like that reply. I behold in Guignol a sage
who has realised the vanity of all things, and whose

GUIGNOL 209

sole desire is to enjoy repose after the sinful or
bootless tumults of the world. But Mademoiselle
Suzanne looks upon him as a muddy-mettled rascal
who goes to sleep when he ought to be up and
doing, who will perhaps be the cause of their losing
the things which they had set out to find lovely
things, too, perhaps ribbons, cakes, and flowers !
She applauds the zealous Gringalet, untiring in
his quest of these glorious treasures.

As I have said, the trials they have to undergo
are terrible. They have to face a crocodile and slay
the Devil.

" There's the Devil ! " said I to Suzanne.

" That ! why, that's a black man ! " she replied.

This was rationalism pure and simple, and I was
in despair. But I knew better, and I remained an
interested spectator of the battle between Gringalet
and the Devil. It is an awful struggle, and it ends
with the death of the Devil. Gringalet kills him.

Frankly, I don't look on that as his most laudable
achievement. I can quite understand how some of
the audience, possessed of superior spiritual insight
to Mam'zelle Suzanne's, looked on it coldly, nay,
with some degree of disapproval. For, look you,
the Devil being dead, it would be good-bye to sin.
Perhaps Beauty, the Devil's ally, would go with him.
Perhaps we should never more behold the flowers

that enchant us, and the eyes for love of which we

o

210 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

would lay down our lives. What, if that be so,
what in the world would become of us? Should
we still be able to practise virtue ? I doubt it.
Gringalet did not sufficiently realise that evil is as
necessary a corollary of good as darkness is of light,
that virtue is wholly in the effort, and that if there
were no longer any Devil to fight against, the saints
would be just as much out of work as the sinners.
Everyone would be bored to death. I am sure that,
when he killed the Devil, Gringalet committed an
act of grave imprudence.

Well, Punchinello came on and made his bow,
the curtain fell, and all the little boys and girls
went home ; but still I sat on, deep in meditation.
Mam'zelle Suzanne, perceiving my thoughtful mien,
concluded that I was in trouble. It is a common
notion that it is only unhappy people who think.

Very delicately and tenderly she put her hand in
mine, and asked me what I was grieving for.

I confessed that I was worried at Gringalet's
having killed the Devil.

Thereupon she twined her little arms about my
neck, and, putting her lips to my ear, she whispered :
" Let me tell you something ; Gringalet killed the
black man, but not for good."

My misgivings vanished : " The Devil is not
dead ! " said I to myself ; and we departed happy
in our minds.

SUZANNE'S FRIENDS

I

ANDRE

OU knew Doctor TreViSre? You
remember his frank, open counte-
nance, and his fine blue eyes ? He
had the skill and the soul of a great
surgeon. People used to speak with
admiration of his presence of mind in critical
circumstances. One day, when he was performing
a big operation in the theatre, the patient fell into
a state of collapse. His temperature dropped
suddenly, his pulse became imperceptible. The
man's life was ebbing away. But Trevire picked
him up in both arms, gripped him to his breast,
and shook his gashed and bleeding body as a
wrestler might shake his antagonist. Then he laid
him back on the operating table, and, resuming his
scalpel, proceeded to handle it with his customary
boldness and precision. The man's circulation was
restored and his life was saved.

As soon as the apron was put aside, TreVidre
was once more the good-hearted, simple-minded
individual he ordinarily was. People liked to hear

ai3

2i 4 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

his great, honest laugh. A few months after the
operation I have just mentioned, Treviere pricked
his finger wiping his bistoury. He didn't think it
worth worrying about, but he contracted blood
poisoning, and in two days he was dead. He was
only thirty-six, and he left a wife and child to
whom he had been passionately devoted.

Every day when the weather was warm and
sunny a young woman in deep mourning might
have been seen seated beneath the fir-trees in the
Bois de Boulogne knitting and looking over her
needles at a little boy crawling about on all fours
amid wheelbarrow, spade, and little mounds of
earth. It was Madame Treviere. The sunlight
fell caressingly on the warm pallor of her features.
Now and then a deep sigh would escape her, or a
glance steal from her great brown eyes in whose
depths there floated tiny motes of gold a sigh and
a glance that told of the full, pent-up life within.
Her eyes lingered lovingly on her little boy, who,
from time to time, to draw attention to the mud
pies he had made, would lift up his head of auburn
hair and display a pair of blue eyes, the hair and
eyes of his father.

His face was pink and chubby. But he began
to lose flesh as he grew taller, and the colour faded
from his cheeks. His mother began to feel anxious
about him. Sometimes, while he was running

ANDR 215

about the wood with his little playmates, he would
brush by the chair where she was knitting ; then
seizing hold of him as he flew past, she would lift
up his chin, and knit her brows as she anxiously
scanned his little pale face. Then she would
release him and gaze after him with an almost
imperceptible shake of the head as he resumed his
flight. At night she would get up if she heard
the smallest noise and stand barefooted leaning over
his little bed. Some of her husband's old medical
friends told her there was nothing to be alarmed
at : the child was delicate, that was all, and he
must have pure country air.

So Madame Trevi&re packed up her things and
went down to Bolles to her husband's people, who
were small farmers there. Trevi6re, you know, was
a countryman's son, and, till he was twelve, he had
been a rare hand at bird's-nesting coming home
from school.

The greetings took place beneath the hams that
hung from the smoke-begrimed roof of the living-
room. Granny Treviere was stooping down in
front of the great open hearth, and, still retaining
her hold on the handle of the frying-pan, turned a
mistrustful eye on the Parisienne and her maid,
But she pronounced the boy " a dear little fellow,
and the very image of his father" while goodman
Treviere, a little awkward and unbending, in clothes

216 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

of coarse homespun, was "very pleased to see his
grandson Andre."

But before supper was over, Andr was giving
his grandpapa great big kisses, and grandpapa's
beard was "oh, so dreadfully prickly." Then he
stood straight up on the old fellow's knees, and,
digging his fist into his cheeks, wanted to know
why they were so hollow.

" Because I've got no teeth," was the reply.

" And why haven't you any teeth ? "

" Because they turned black, and I sowed them
in the furrow to see if I could manage to grow
some white ones."

Whereat Andre laughed consumedly. His grand-
father's cheeks were very different from his mother's.

It had been arranged that the Parisian dame and
her little boy were to have the best bedroom the
room with the bridal bed, which the worthy couple
had only slept in once, and the oak chest stuffed
full of linen, which was always kept locked. The
little cot, which had once been their own son's, had
been brought down from the attic for their grand-
son. It had been put up in the most sheltered
corner of the room, under a shelf laden with pots
of jam. Like a methodical woman, Madame
Treviere made innumerable little voyages of dis-
covery over the creaking deal floor, but she was
fated to find never a hook to hang a dress on.

ANDRE 217

The walls and the ceiling, with its great wooden
beams, were all whitewashed. Madame Tre"viere
paid scant attention to the coloured prints that
adorned the walls of this grand room, but over the
bridal bed her eyes lighted upon a picture of some
little children in black jackets with badges on the
arm, and white knickerbockers, bearing tapers, and
filing into a Gothic church. Underneath was en-
graved the following legend, the names, date, and
signature being filled in by hand : " I, the under-
signed, hereby certify that Pierre Age"nor Trevire
made his first Communion in the Parish Church
at Bolles on the I5th May 1849. Gontard, Cure."

As she read these words, the widow heaved a
sigh, the sigh of a brave, sensible woman, one of
those sighs which, with the tears of love, are the
most priceless of earthly treasures.

Then she undressed Andre".

" Come, say your prayers,'* said she.

" Mamma, I do love you so," he murmured ;
after which act of devotion he drooped his head,
closed his little fists, and fell peacefully asleep.

Next morning, when he woke, he discovered the
existence of the farm-yard. He was filled with
wonder and delight. He looked out on the fowls,
the cow, the old one-eyed horse, and the pig. The
pig was a special attraction. The fascination lasted
for days and days, and it was the most difficult

2i 8 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

thing in the world to get him to come in to meals,
and when he did appear, he was covered with straw
and manure, his hair was all cobwebs, his boots
soaking with dirty stable water, his knees barked,
but his cheeks as red as roses, and he himself as
happy as a sandboy.

" Keep away from me, you little horror ! " his
mother cried, and forthwith smothered him with
kisses.

As he sat at table perched on the edge of a form,
eating away at the leg of a chicken, he looked like
a diminutive Hercules devouring his club.

He seemed to eat without noticing it, forgot to
drink anything, and prattled unceasingly.

" Mamma, what's a green chicken called ? " said
Andre.

" Why, you must have seen a parrakeet," his
mother returned thoughtlessly.

That's how it came about that Andre dubbed his
grandfather's ducks parrakeets, a circumstance that
rendered his vivid narratives a trifle puzzling.

But it was no easy task to get a rise out of
Andre.

" Mamma ! " he exclaimed ; " do you know what
grandpapa told me ? He said that it was the fowls
who made the eggs. But I know it isn't. I know
quite well that the greengrocer in the Avenue de
Neuilly makes the eggs and then takes them to the

ANDR6 219

fowls to be warmed. Because, mamma, how could
fowls make eggs, when they haven't got any hands
to make them with ? "

And so Andre prosecuted his researches into the
mysteries of Nature. When he went for walks in
the woods with his mother, he experienced all the
sensations of Robinson Crusoe. One day, while
Madame Treviere was sitting beneath an oak-tree
by the roadside working at her knitting, he found a
mole, a very big mole. True, it was a dead mole ;
it even had some blood on its muzzle. " Andre,"
exclaimed his mother, "will you leave those
horrible things alone ? . . . Oh ! quick ! look there,
in the tree ! "

He looked, and saw a squirrel hopping about
among the branches. His mamma was right : a
live squirrel is worth a dead mole, any day.

But it was gone too soon, and Andre was asking
whether squirrels have wings, when a passer-by,
whose frank, manly face was fringed with a fine
brown beard, raised his straw hat and approached
Madame TreViere.

" Good morning, madame ! How do you do ?
Fancy our meeting again ! That is your little boy ?
A nice little fellow. They told me you were down
here staying with Gaffer Tr<viere ... I beg your
pardon, but, you see, I've known him so many
years."

220 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

" We came because my little boy was in need of
fresh air. But I remember you here long ago,
when my husband was alive." There wa% a quiver
in the young widow's voice as she uttered these
words ; and he said, gravely :

"I understand, madame," and, quite simply, he
bowed his head as though to salute the memory of
a great sorrow.

Then, after a pause, he continued :

" Those were great times. What a number of
good folk have died since then. My poor artists, my
poor Millet. Ah ! well ! I am still the ' painters'
friend,' as they call me down at Barbizon. I knew
them all, and capital fellows they were, too."

" And your factory ? "

" My factory ! Oh ! that is going on swim-
mingly."

"Oh! mamma, mamma!" cried Andre, rushing
in betwixt them. '* There are ever so many lady-
birds under a big stone. There's at least a million
of them, really ! "

" Be quiet ! Run away and play ! " said his
mother, curtly.

The painters' friend took up the conversation
again in his full rich voice.

" How pleasant it is to meet again. My friends
often ask me what has become of the beautiful
Madame TreViere. I shall tell them that the

ANDR6

221

beautiful Madame Treviere is still beautiful more
beautiful than ever, in fact. Au revoir ! madame."

" Good-bye ! Monsieur Lassalle."

Then Andre" came on the scene again.

"Mamma," said he, "why do they only call
lady-birds the good God's beasties. Are not all
insects the good God's beasties ? Are there Devil's
beasties too, mamma ? Why don't you tell me ? "
and he tugged at her skirt.

Then she scolded him.

"Andre", you must not interrupt when I am
talking to people, do you hear ? "

"Why not?"

" Because it is rude."

Then there were a few tears, that ended in
smiles and kisses. This was another happy day,
one of the days that remind you of the skies that
hang low over hill and dale moist skies shot
through with rays of sunlight, skies that bring
sadness and charm to the heart.

Not long afterwards, one very wet day,
Monsieur Lassalle came to call on the young
widow.

" Good-morning, madame ! Ah ! Pere Treviere,
why, you look heartier than ever ! "
" The carcase is still right enough," said the old
man ; " but the legs are done for."

" And you, mother ? Always got your nose

222 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

over the saucepan, eh ? Testing the soup ? All
the good cooks do that."

These familiarities made the old woman smile,
and the eyes in her wrinkled old face gleamed with
a merry twinkle.

He took Andre" on his knee, and pinched his
cheeks; but the child quickly tore himself away,
and rushed over to clamber up on his grandfather's
knee.

"You be the horse!" he cried. "I'm the
postillion. Gee up, there ! Get along with you ! "

The visit went off without the widow and the
visitor exchanging half a dozen words, but many
a time glances passed between them like the light--
ning that flashes betwixt earth and sky on warm
summer nights.

" Do you know much about that gentleman,
papa ? " asked the young woman, with an assumed
air of unconcern.

" Know him ! I knew him before he was breeched ;
and his father before him ! Why, everyone knew
him for miles around. And fine people they are,
all fair and square and above-board. They're well
off, too : Monsieur Philippe (that's what we call
him) doesn't employ less than threescore workmen
in that factory of his."

Andre" now deemed the moment ripe for him
to express his view.

ANDR& 223

" He's a horrid man ! " said he.

His mother told him sharply that if he was only
going to talk nonsense, he had better hold his
tongue altogether.

Thenceforth fate willed that Madame Tre"viere
should encounter Monsieur Lassalle at every turn
in the road.

She became restless, absent, dreamy. She trembled
at the sound of the wind among the leaves. Her
knitting was left half finished, and she acquired
a habit of sitting with her chin resting in the
hollow of her hand.

One evening, in the autumn, a great gale arose
blowing in from the sea. It swept wailing and
howling over Pre TreViere's house, and over all
the surrounding country. The young widow hastily
dismissed the servant who had been lighting the
fire, and began to put Andre" to bed. While she
was pulling off his woollen stockings and patting
his little cold feet with the palm of her hand, he,
hearing the hollow roar of the wind and the rattle
of the rain against the window, flung his arms round
his mother's neck as she was bending over him.

" Mother," said he, " I am frightened."

" There, there, never mind," said she, soothingly,
giving him a kiss.

And she went and sat down by the fire and began
to read a letter.

224 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

As she read on, the colour came into her cheeks ;
her bosom heaved with warm sighs. And when
she had finished reading, she remained lying back
in her arm-chair with listless hands, lost in a dream.

" He loves me ; he is so kind, so frank, so good.
It is dreary to be alone these winter evenings. He
treated me so delicately ; certainly he has a kind
heart. The way he proposed to me gives me
sufficient proof of that."

Her glance fell on the " first communion "
picture : " I, the undersigned, certify that Pierre
Agenor Treviere . . ."

She lowered her eyes. Then she let her thoughts
run on again :

" A woman can't bring up a boy all by herself
Andre shall have a father . . ."

" Mamma ! "

The cry came from the little bed, and made her
start and tremble.

" What do you want me for, Andre ? You are
very restless to-night." ,

" Mamma, I was thinking about something."

" Instead of going to sleep and what were you
thinking about ? "

" Papa is dead, isn't he ? "

" Yes, my poor child."

" Then he will never come back again ? "

" No, my darling."

ANDR6 225

"Well, mamma, it's a good thing, after all.
Because, you see, I love you so much. I love you
like two people, and if he came back I shouldn't
have any love left for him at all."

She looked at him long and anxiously, then
threw herself back again in the arm-chair, where
she remained motionless with her head in her hands.

The child had been asleep more than two hours,
lulled by the sound of the wind, when she drew
near him and murmured with a deep sigh :

" Sleep on ; he will not come back."

Nevertheless, when two months were over, he did
come back, and he came back with the broad, sun-
burnt features of Monsieur Lassalle, the new master
of the house. And little Andre began to grow
sallow and thin and listless.

He is cured again now. He loves his nurse with
the love he used to bestow on his mother ; but
he doesn't know that his nurse has got a young
man.

II

PIERRE

OW old is your little boy, madame ? "
The mother looked at her child as

one would look at a clock to see the

time, and replied :

" Pierre ! He is just twenty-nine
months, madame."

It would have done just as well to say two and
a half; but Pierre is very sharp, and does a world
of remarkable things for his age, and there would be
a risk of other mothers being a shade less jealous if
he were represented as slightly older, and therefore
slightly less of a prodigy, than he actually is. She
has yet another reason for not wishing to make
Pierre a day older than his real age : she wishes
him to remain her little one, her little baby boy.
She feels that, little by little, he is slipping away
from her. Ungrateful little beings, they are always
bent on cutting themselves adrift. The primal
separation dates from their birth, for what, alas !
has a mother then but her breast and her two
arms to hold her baby to her.

PIERRE 227

Therefore, Pierre is just precisely twenty-nine
months old. But it is a fine age that ! I look on
it with very considerable respect. I have several
friends of that age who behave most hand-
somely towards me. Still, none of them are gifted
with Pierre's imagination. Pierre displays extra-
ordinary facility and some capriciousness in garnering
his ideas. Some of them date from a remote past.
He remembers faces that he has not seen for a
month or more, and he discerns in the picture-
books people give him a thousand and one peculiari-
ties that charm and excite him. When he is turning
over the one he likes best the one with only half
its pages torn two red spots appear on his cheeks,
and his eyes grow morbidly bright.

His mother is afraid of that hectic colour and
those bright eyes. She is terrified lest his little
brain should be overwrought ; she thinks of fever
and all kinds of things. Sometimes she almost
wishes he were like the baker's little boy, whom
she sees every day sitting outside the shop, with a
great flat face, expressionless blue eyes, a mouth lost
to view beneath a pair of fat cheeks, and a general
air of stupidity and health. There was no need for
that boy's mother to be anxious about him, at any
rate. But Pierre! his colour keeps coming and going,
his little hands are burning hot, and he keeps turning
and twisting about in his cot the whole night long.

228 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

The doctor, too, does not approve of our little
one looking at pictures. He says he should have
nothing to excite him. " Bring him up like a
puppy," says he ; " there's nothing very difficult
about that."

Therein he errs, for it is a very difficult thing
indeed. The doctor knows nothing about the
psychology of a little boy of twenty-nine months.
And is the doctor so sure that puppies do grow
up without mental excitement? I knew one he
was about six weeks old who used to dream the
whole night through, and fell from laughter to
tears with the most distressing rapidity. He used
to fill my room with noises that indicated a highly
disordered imagination. There wasn't much calm-
ness about him. No, indeed !

And the little animal began to grow thin, like
Pierre. Nevertheless he went on living. In the
same way, Pierre has plenty of generous vitality in
him ; there is nothing organically wrong. But it
would be good to see him less thin and pale.

Paris doesn't suit this little Parisian. Not that
he doesn't like it there. On the contrary, the
trouble is that he has too much to amuse him,
too much variety of colour and movement, too
many appeals to his imagination and his under-
standing ; he wears himself out with it all.

Last July his mother took him a poor, pinched,

PIERRE 229

pale-faced little fellow to some quiet spot in
Switzerland, where he could see nothing but the
pines upon the mountain side, the green pastures,
and cows browsing in the valley below.

For three months he rested on the bosom of
the great tranquil Nurse, three smiling months of
happiness, and unlimited brown bread. When he
came back in the early part of October, it was a
new Pierre that I beheld : a little gold and brown,
almost chubby-faced, Pierre, with swarthy hands,
a fine, sturdy voice, and a hearty laugh.

" Look at Pierre ! Look what a fright he is ! "
said the happy mother. " He has a face like a
Dutch doll."

But the colour did not last. He grew pale,
fragile, and excitable again, with something too
suggestive of the rare exotic about him. Once
more Paris began to exert its influence ; and when
I say Paris, I mean the spiritual, not the material
Paris the Paris that is everywhere and nowhere,
Paris that fills one with a vague yearning, that
makes one restless and eager, and sets the brain
at work, even when one is quite a little child.

And so here was Pierre flushing and turning
pale over his picture-books in the old way again.
About the end of that December I found him
nervous as ever, with great dilated eyes and burning
hands. He slept poorly and didn't relish his food.

230 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

"It is nothing," said the doctor; "give him
plenty to eat."

Yes, but how? His poor mother had worried
herself about him till she wept, but to no purpose.

Christmas Eve brought Pierre dolls and horses
and soldiers galore. In the morning his mother
was standing despondently in her dressing-gown
in front of the fireplace looking doubtfully at
this varied assortment of playthings.

"All these things will excite him more than
ever," she said to herself; "there are too many
of them." And softly, so as not to disturb Pierre,
she took Punch who had a wicked leer in his
eyes the soldiers, which she feared might lure
her boy to the battle-field one day, she even took
the good red horse, and, piling them up in her
arms, went on tip-toe and hid them in her cup-
board.

She left but one thing in the fireplace, and that
was a -white deal box, an eighteenpenny sheep-run
that some poor man had sent him. Then she went
and sat down by the little bed and gazed at her
boy. Being a woman, the little deception involved
in her beneficent action rather took her fancy, and
she smiled. Then her glance lighted on the blue
lines round her baby's eyes, and she said to herself,
" What a dreadful thing it is, that we cannot get
the child to eat."

PIERRE 231

No sooner was he dressed than little Pierre
opened the box and saw the sheep, the cows, the
horses, and the trees, little curly trees. To be
accurate, it was a farm-yard rather than a sheep-
run.

He saw the farmer and the farmer's wife. The
farmer was carrying a scythe, his wife a rake.
They were going to the meadow to make hay, but
they did not look as if they were walking. The
farmer's wife had on a straw hat and a red dress.
Pierre kissed her several times, and the paint came
off on his face. Then he looked at the house. It
was so small and so low that the farmer's wife
could not possibly have stood upright in it ; but it
had a door, and that was how Pierre knew it was a
house.

How do such things mirror themselves in the
primitive unjaded eyes of a little child ? Whatever
the effect, there was, in this instance, enchantment
in it. He grasped them in his little fists, and made
his hands all sticky. He set them out on his little
table, and called them by name in accents of fond
affection : " Dada ! Toutou ! Moumou ! " He
picked up one of the remarkable trees with its slim,
straight bole and conical crest, and said, " A pine !
It was a sort of revelation for his mother. She
would never have guessed it. Why, of course,
what could a green tree with a conical crest and a

232 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

straight stem be, but a pine ? Still, she would
never have recognised it unless Pierre had told her.

" You angel ! " she exclaimed ; and gave him
such a hug that the sheep-run was three parts
upset.

Meanwhile, Pierre went on discovering resem-
blances between the trees in the box and the trees
which he had seen away among the mountains.

He saw other things, too, which his mother did
not see. All those little pieces of painted wood
brought back sweet visions to his mind. By their
means he passed his days with the Alps once more
around him ; he was back again in Switzerland,
where he had been wont to eat so well. One idea
led to another, and he began to think about food.

" I should like some bread and milk," said he.

He ate and drank. His appetite came back.
Next day he looked at the sheep-run, and felt
hungry again. See what it is to have imagination !
A fortnight later he had grown into a sturdy little
fellow once more. His mother was in raptures.

" Look," she said, " look ! what cheeks ! And
it's all due to poor Mr. Blank's sheep-run ! "

Ill

JESSY

[HERE dwelt in London, in the reign
of Elizabeth, one Boer, a man of

O'

learning, who, under the name of
Bogus, had gained much renown
by reason of a Treatise concerning
Human Error, which no one had read.

Bogus, who had wrought thereat for twenty-five
years, had as yet given none of it to the public ;
but his manuscript, writ fair and ranged on shelves
in a window recess, consisted of no less than ten
folio volumes. Of these, the first treated of the
error of coming into the world the primary error
from which all other errors do proceed. The sub-
sequent volumes dealt with the errors of little boys
and girls, of youthful folk, of those of riper years,
and of the aged ; of the errors committed by
persons of divers occupations, such as statesmen,
merchants, soldiers, cooks, politicians, and so forth.
The concluding volumes as yet unfinished were

!made up of observations concerning the errors of
the body politic, which errors do arise from, and

33

234 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

have their origin in, the errors committed by the
individuals, or groups of individuals, composing it.
And so perfect was the interdependence, one upon
another, of the arguments in this great work, that
no single page could be extracted therefrom with-
out destroying the continuity of the whole. The
proofs followed orderly, one after another, and the
final demonstration established beyond all contro-
versy that evil is the essence of life, and that if life
be a quantity it may be affirmed with mathemati-
cal accuracy that the amount of evil upon the
earth is co-extensive with the amount of life
existing upon it.

Bogus had not committed the error of getting
married. He lived alone in his humble abode with
an old housekeeper called Kat, that is Catherine.
He used to call her Clausentina, because she came
from Southampton, a town which is the successor
to the Roman station of Clausentum.

But his sister, whose mind was of a less tran-
scendental cast than her brother's, had perpetrated
a whole series of errors, for she had fallen in
love with a city cloth merchant, espoused the said
merchant, and brought into the world a little
daughter, whose name was Jessy. Her crowning
error had been to die after ten years of married life,
thus causing the death of the cloth merchant, who
found it impossible to live without her. Bogus

JESSY 235

took the little orphan girl into his house out of
pity, and also because he hoped that she would
provide him with some valuable material for that
section of his work which treated of the errors of
children.

She was then six years of age. For the first
eight days she was with the sage she wept and
said nothing. On the ninth, she addressed Bog
as follows :

" I have seen mamma ; she was dressed all in
white ; she was wearing flowers in a fold of her
dress; she scattered them upon my bed, but I
could not find them this morning. Give them to
me ; give me mamma's flowers ! "

Bog recorded this error, but he noted in his
commentary thereon that the error was innocent
and not wholly unpleasing.

Some time after this, Jessy came to Bog and
said : " Uncle Bog, you are old and you are ugly ;
but I love you, and you must love me."

Whereupon Bog took up his pen, but, recognis-
ing, after some conflict of mind, that he no longer
presented a very youthful appearance, and that he
never had been particularly handsome, he refrained
from recording the child's remark. He merely
said :

" Why must I love you, Jessy ? "

" Because I am little," was the reply.

236 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

" Is it so ? " Bog wondered ; " is it, then, true
that we ought to love the little ones? Peradven-
ture it is, for in good sooth they stand in great
need of love. This would excuse the error
common to mothers, who give to their little ones both
their milk and their love. Here, methinks, is one
chapter in my Treatise that I shall have to rewrite."

When, on the morning of his birthday, he went
into the room where he kept his books and papers,
he became aware of a pleasant smell, and he beheld
a pot of carnations on his window-ledge.

There were but three flowers, but their hue was
scarlet, and the sunlight shone pleasantly upon
them. And everything was smiling in this learned
chamber ; the old tapestry arm-chair, the walnut
table, even the ancient books in their dingy bindings
of calf and vellum and pigskin looked down with
smiles ; and even Bogus, withered and dried up
as they, began to smile too.

" Look, uncle Bog ! " said Jessy, giving him a
kiss. "This is Heaven here" (and she pointed
through the little leaded panes to the misty blue
of the outer air) ; " then here, lower down, is the
Earth, the Earth in blossom " (and she pointed to
the pot of pinks) ; " and then here, down below,
where these big black books are, this is Hell."

These " big black books " were nothing more
nor less than the ten volumes of the Treatise on

JESSY 237

Human Error ranged along in the space under
the window. This error of Jessy's reminded the
doctor of his work, which he had neglected of late
in order to take Jessy for walks in the streets and
gardens. In the course of these wanderings, Jessy
discovered a thousand delightful things, and she
proceeded to make them known to Bogus, who had
scarcely put his head out of doors in his life before.

He used to go back to his manuscripts, but
somehow he no longer felt at home in his work.
Jessy and the flowers alike were lacking.

By good fortune, philosophy came to his rescue
at this juncture, and suggested the highly transcen-
dental idea that Jessy served no useful purpose
in the world, a truth to which he clung with ten-
acity because it was essential to the maintenance
of his Theory.

It chanced that one day, when his thoughts were
running on this theme, he discovered Jessy in his
library threading a needle by the window where
the carnations were. He asked her what she wanted
to sew.

"What! Uncle Bog," said Jessy; "don't you
know that the swallows have flown away ? "

Bogus knew nothing about it, for the matter
was not dealt with in Pliny or in Avicenna.

" Yes," continued Jessy ; " Kat told me yester-
day."

238 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

" Kat ! " cried Bogus ; " does the child speak
thus of the worthy Clausentina ? "

" Kat said to me yesterday, ' The swallows have
flown away earlier than usual this year ; we shall
have an early winter, and a hard one.' That is
what Kat said, and, then, I saw mother. She was
in white, and there was a brightness about her hair.
Only she had no flowers this time. She said to
me, ' Jessy, you must take Uncle Bog's fur cloak
from the press and mend it if it requires it.' I
awoke, and as soon as I was dressed, I took the
cloak from the press, and, as it is torn in several
places, I am going to mend it."

Winter came, and fulfilled the prediction of the
swallows. Bogus in his cloak, with his feet by
the fire, sat striving to patch up some of the
chapters of his Treatise ; but every time he man-
aged to reconcile his new experiences with his Theory
of the Universality of Evil, Jessy perhaps would
bring him a jug of good ale, or merely show her ,
eyes and her smiling face, and all his theories would
be blown to the winds once more.

When summer came again, uncle and niece went
for rambles in the country. Jessy used to bring
back flowers and herbs with her, and of an evening
her uncle would sit by her and tell her their names,
while she would arrange them according to their
properties. One evening, as she was spreading out

JESSY 239

on the table the flowers which she had gathered
during the day, she spoke to Bogus, saying : " Now,
Uncle Bog, I know the names of all the plants
that you have shown me. Here are those which
heal and console. I wish to keep them in order
that I may always know them, and that I may
make them known to others. But I want a big
book to press them in."

" Take this one," said Bog.

And he pointed to the first volume of the
Treatise on Human Error.

When this volume had a plant on every page,
they went on to the next, and in three summers the
Doctor's magnum opus had been completely changed
into an herbarium.

SUZANNE'S LIBRARY

Q

I

TO MADAME D-

Paris, 1 5th December 188-.

EW Year's Day is nearly here. It is
the day for presents and good wishes,
and of them the children have the
lion's share. And that is perfectly
natural. They have need of our love.
And they possess the special charm of poverty.
Even children that are born in luxury have nought
but what is given them. Then, again, they do not
make us presents in return, and that is why it is so
nice to give them things.

There is nothing more interesting than choosing
toys and books for children. Some day or other,
I shall write a philosophic treatise on children's toys.
It is a subject that has great attractions for me ; but
I should not dare to attempt k without long and
serious preparation.

To-day I shall confine myself to speaking of the
books designed to afford amusement to children;
and, since you have been good enough to ask me to

243

244 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

do so, I will acquaint you with some of my ideas
upon the subject.

There is one question which calls for an answer
at the outset. Ought we, in making presents of
books to children, to give a preference to books
written expressly for them ? To enable us to
answer this, our own experience is sufficient. It is
a remarkable fact that, in the vast majority of cases,
children display a marked antipathy to books " for
the young." The reason for this is only too evi-
dent. They perceive, as soon as they have read a
page or two, that the author has endeavoured to
enter into their world instead of transporting them
into his own ; and they realise in consequence that
they cannot, under his guidance, expect to find a
means of gratifying that passion for the novel and
the unknown which animates mankind at every age.
Little things though they be, they are already
possessed by that hunger for knowledge which
makes the student and the poet. They long for
someone to lay bare the secrets of the Universe, the
hidden, mystic Universe. The writer that throws
them back on themselves, and insists on their con-
templating their own childishness, bores them
beyond endurance. This, however, is what people
who write for the young are always endeavouring
to do. They aim at putting themselves into the
position of little children. They become children,

TO MADAME D 245

but with none of a child's innocence or grace. I
remember a story something about a fire at
school that someone gave me once, no doubt
with the best intentions in the world I was only
seven, and yet I felt it was sorry stuff. Another
such story would have disgusted me with books
altogether, yet I adored reading.

But you will say one must respect the limits of
a child's understanding.

That is doubtless true, but only indifferent
success is achieved by the method ordinarily
followed, a method which consists in putting on
a sort of goody-goody, namby-pamby tone, in
talking ineffectively about feeble things ; in volun-
tarily laying aside, in a word, all those things
which in the case of grown-up people tend to
charm or to persuade.

Nothing appeals to the juvenile mind like a
noble genius. The books which little boys and
girls love best are lofty works, rich in high con-
ceptions works whose component parts are so
finely and deftly arranged that they shine forth in
one luminous whole, books that are written in a
style fraught alike with energy and meaning.

I have often given quite young children some
passages from the Odyssey to read in a good
translation. They were delighted. If we leave
out some very considerable portions, there is

246 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

nothing better for a child of twelve to steep his
soul in than Don Quixote. Myself, I have read
the great-hearted Cervantes off and on ever since
I learned to read at all ; and so warmly did I love
him, so thoroughly did I enter into his spirit,
that it is to him I owe a great measure of
that cheery mental outlook which I still possess
to-day.

Robinson Crusoe itself, which, for a hundred
years or more, has been the classic among children's
books, was primarily written for grave men,
merchants of the city of London, and the mariners
of his Majesty's navy. Into this work its author
put all his art, all his intellectual directness, all
his immense knowledge and experience. And in
the end it turned out to be just the thing for a
schoolboy's delectation.

The masterpieces that I have mentioned all have
a story to unfold ; they tell about people, and
what befel them. The finest book in all the
world would convey nothing to a child if its ideas
were expressed in the form of abstractions. The
faculty of thinking in the abstract, and of com-
prehending abstractions, develops late and very
unequally among men.

The master who used to teach me when I was
in one of the junior forms at school, and who,
without casting any reflection upon him, was neither

TO MADAME D 247

a Rollin nor a Lhomond, used to tell us to amuse
ourselves during the holidays by reading Massillon's
Petit Careme. That was because he wanted us to
believe that he read it himself, and so make an
impression upon us. A child that could take an
interest in the Petit Carime would be nothing short
of a monstrosity. Personally, I don't think such
works as that attractive at any age.

When you are writing for children, do not
assume a style for the occasion. Think your best
and write your best. Let the whole thing live ;
let everything in your narrative be on a generous
scale ; let there be plenty of breadth and power.
That is the one secret of pleasing your readers.

Having said that, I should have said all had it
not been for the fact that, for ten years past, we
French people and, I verily believe, all the world
besides have been deluding ourselves with the
idea that we only ought to let children read books
about science, for fear of addling their brains with
poetry.

So firmly is this belief implanted in people's
minds, that nowadays when anyone brings out a
new edition of Perrault, it is only intended for
artists and bibliophiles. Look at Perrin's editions
for example, or Lemerre's : they are bought solely
by collectors, who have them bound in hand-tooled
full morocco.

248 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

Then look at the illustrated catalogues of
children's gift-books. Look at the sort of things
that are displayed to tempt the children's eyes :
crabs, spiders, caterpillars' nests, gas-engines. It's
no encouragement to be a child. Every year we
and our families are flooded out by books of
popularised science as countless as the waves of the
ocean. We are blinded overwhelmed by them.
But, amid them all, nothing to please the eye, no
noble thoughts, no art, no taste, nought of human
nature : only chemical and physiological phenomena.

Yesterday, someone showed me 'The Boy's Book
of Industrial Marvels! Another ten years, and we
shall all be electricians !

Why, the worthy Monsieur Louis Figuier's usual
placidity utterly deserts him at the mere idea of
it still being possible for little French boys and
girls to read about Peau Ane. He has written a
preface for the special purpose of impressing on
parents the importance of taking Perrault's tales
away from their children, and of presenting them
with the works of his friend Doctor Ludovicus
Ficus instead. " Come ! shut that book, please,
Mademoiselle Jeanne : no more of the Blue Bird
which you like so much that you shed tears over it.
Come ! look alive ! and learn up all about the theory
of etherisation. Here are you, seven years old, and
no opinions on the anaesthetic properties of protoxide

TO MADAME D 249

of azote ! " Monsieur Louis Figuier has found out
that fairies are creatures of the imagination, and
therefore he cannot bear that children should be
told anything about them. He talks to them about
guano : there is no imagination about that. But,
doctor, fairies exist precisely because they are
imaginary. They exist in those artless and un-
rivalled imaginations that are naturally receptive of
a form of poetry which never grows old the poetry
of national tradition.

The most insignificant little book, if it inspires a
poetical idea, or suggests a noble sentiment ; if, in a
word, it touches the soul, is more valuable to
children and young people than a wilderness of your
books about machinery.

We must have tales for little children, and tales
for big ones, tales that make us laugh or weep, that
waft us away to the realms of enchantment.

Only to-day I have received with the greatest
pleasure a book entitled The World Bewitched, con-
taining about a dozen fairy tales.

The kindly and learned man who has gathered
them together remarks, in his preface, on the im-
memorial craving of the human soul for stories of
enchantment.

The need men have to forget the real world, with
its disappointments and mortifications, is a need that
is universal. It is the gift of imagination rather

250 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

than the gift of laughter that distinguishes man
from the lower animals, and sets the seal upon his
superiority.

A child feels it this dream-hunger. He feels
his imagination stirring within him, and he craves
for fairy tales.

Refashioning the world in their own way, the
weavers of fairy tales prompt the weak, the simple,
and the young to refashion it in theirs. This is
why their influence is of the most sympathetic order.
They stir the imagination, they quicken the feelings,
they stimulate the affections.

Never fear that they will mislead the child by
filling his mind with useless notions about hob-
goblins and fairies. The child knows well enough
that such delightful apparitions are not of this
world. It is rather your popularised science that
does the mischief, that gives him false impressions
that are so difficult to eradicate. Little boys are
plentifully endowed with faith, and, when Monsieur
Verne tells them so, they will readily believe that
you can go up to the moon in a trajectile dis-
charged from a cannon, and that a body can defy
the laws of gravitation with impunity.

Such travesties of the ancient and venerable
science of astronomy have neither truth nor beauty
to recommend them.

What benefit can a child derive from slipshod

TO MADAME D 251

science, from so-called practical literature that ap-
peals neither to the mind nor to the heart.

Rather must we turn again to the beautiful
legends of the world, to the poetry of poets and
peoples, to whatsoever thrills us with a sense of
holiness and charm.

Unhappily, there are a great many chemists
abroad just now who look on the imagination with
mistrust. They are wrong ! For she it is that
sows the seeds of Beauty and Virtue up and down
the world. She alone leads to greatness. Never,
O ye mothers, never fear that she will injure your
children. Rather will she hold them safe from
vulgar faults and facile errors.

II

DIALOGUES UPON FAIRY TALES

LAURE. OCTAVE. RAYMOND

LAURE

HE purple belt that lay athwart the
sunset has faded away ; the horizon
is bright with a glow of orange, and
above it the sky is of the palest
green in hue. See! There is the
first star ; see how white it shines, how tremulous it
glows. And, look ! another, and yet another ! Soon
they will be too numerous to count. The trees
in the park have grown black, and they loom large
and mysterious. That little path which leads
down between that hedge of thorn, that little path
whose every stone I know how deep down, how
adventurous, how mysterious it appears to-night.
Whether I will or no, my imagination tells me that
this path leads into the fairy realms of dreamland.
How lovely is the night, how sweet it is to breathe.
I am listening, cousin ; talk to us of fairy tales,

since you have so many curious things to relate

352

FAIRY TALES 253

concerning them. But, I pray you, do not mar
them for me. Let me tell you at once that I adore
them, and it is herein that I feel a little vexed with
my daughter, who keeps wanting to know whether
" it's really true " about giants, ogres, and fairies.

RAYMOND

She is a child of the age, a sceptic before she
has cut her wisdom-teeth. I am not of that school.
I am no lover of philosophy in short frocks, and I
believe in fairies. Fairies exist, cousin, because
man made them. Whatever things we imagine,
these same things are real. They are the only
realities. If an old monk came to me and said,
" I have seen the Devil ; he has two horns and a
tail," I should make reply to that same old monk,
and say, " Father, even supposing the Devil did
not exist already, you have created him. He exists
now without a shadow of a doubt. Take care he
doesn't have you." Cousin, mind you believe in
fairies, giants, and all the rest.

LAURE

Oh ! Let's come to the fairies ; never mind the
rest. You were saying just now that learned men
were occupying themselves with our fairy tales.
Well, then, I say again, I am terribly afraid they

254 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

will ruin them for me. Fancy taking little Red
Riding Hood out of the nursery to drag her to
the Institute. Oh ! horror !

OCTAVE

I thought our present-day men of learning had
more disdain in their composition. But I see that
you are a good-natured set of fellows, that you
don't look down on stories that are the last word
in absurdity and puerility.

LAURE

Fairy tales are absurd and puerile if you like ;
but I find it very difficult to grant ; I love them so
much.

RAYMOND

Oh ! grant it, cousin ! grant it and never fear.
The Iliad, too, is a childish thing, and it is the
noblest poem that man can read. The purest poetry
is the poetry that was sung by nations in their
infancy. The races of the world are like the night-
ingale in the song : they sing well so long as their
hearts are light. As they grow old, they become
grave, learned, careworn, and then their finest poets
are but splendid rhetoricians. Certainly, "Sleeping
Beauty " is a childish thing, and that is why it

FAIRY TALES 255

resembles a passage from the Odyssey. The beauti-
ful simplicity, the divine ignorance of the primitive
ages, for which we look in vain in the literary pro-
ductions of classical eras, are preserved like a flower
with all its perfume in the fairy tales and folk-songs
of the world. Let us hasten to add, like Octave,
that the tales are very irrational. If they were not
absurd, they would not charm. You may rely
upon it that the things people call irrational are the
only things that are beautiful and sweet to the
taste, the only things which lend grace to life and
prevent us from dying of ennui. A sensible poem !
A sensible statue ! Why, everyone would be yawn-
ing at them, even your sensible men themselves.
For, look you, cousin! Those flounces on that
skirt of yours, those pleats and puffs and knots
how absurd the whole thing is, and how delicious.
I tender you my congratulations.

LAURE

No more about fal-lals, please; you know
nothing about them. I grant you that it does not
do to be too uniformly sensible in art. But in
life

RAYMOND

The only beautiful things in life are the passions,
and the passions are absurd. The finest of all ha s

256 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

the least of reason in it, and that is Love. There
is one that is somewhat less irrational than the rest,
its name is Avarice ; but Avarice is appallingly
ugly. Dickens used to say that mad people were
the only ones that interested him. Woe to him
who does not now and then mistake a windmill for
a giant. The great-hearted Don Quixote was his
own enchanter. He measured everything by his
own great soul. That is not being made a dupe
of, mark you ! Your real dupes are those who
never see aught of grandeur or loveliness in the
world.

OCTAVE

It appears to me, Raymond, that this " ab-
surdity" which you value so highly has its origin
in the imagination, and that the idea to which
you have just given expression in such a brilliant
paradox simply amounts to this, that the imagina-
tion makes an artist of a sensitive man, and a hero
of a brave one.

RAYMOND

That is a pretty accurate description of one
aspect of my idea. But I should very much like
to know what you understand by the word " imagi-
nation " ; and if, in your view, it is the faculty of

FAIRY TALES 257

calling up to one's mind the things which are or
the things which are not.

OCTAVE

My whole knowledge is limited to planting
cabbages, and I should talk of imagination pretty
much as a blind man would discourse on colours.
But it is my belief that imagination is not worthy
of the name save when it gives life to fresh forms
or new ideas, save, .that is to say, when it creates.

RAYMOND

Then imagination, according to your definition
of it, is not a human faculty at all. Man is utterly
incapable of imagining what he has never seen, or
heard, or felt, or tasted. In this matter I am
content to be old-fashioned ; I swear by my old
friend Condillac. All ideas come to us through
the medium of the senses, and imagination consists
not in the creation but in the piecing together
of ideas.

LAURE

How can you say such things ? Why ! I can
behold angels when I wish to !

R

258 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

RAYMOND

You see little boys and girls with goose wings.
The Greeks used to see centaurs, sirens, and
harpies, because they had previously seen men,
horses, women, fishes, and birds. Now, take Sweden-
borg ; he possesses imagination. He tells us all
about the inhabitants of Mars, Venus, and Saturn.
Well, not a single attribute does he give them that
is not to be found on this earth. But he combines
them in the most violently extravagant manner. He
raves all the time. Now see, on the other hand,
what a beautiful, childlike imagination can produce.
Homer or, to speak more accurately, the un-
known rhapsodist to whom we give that name
makes a young woman rise up from the grey sea
" like unto a cloud." She speaks and she bemoans
her fate, but with heavenly calm. " Alas ! Oh my
child," says she, " wherefore did I nurture thee ?
Hapless is the destiny for which I brought thee
forth in my house. But I will go to the snowy
summits of Olympus. I will enter the brazen
house of Zeus. I will fold my arms about his
knees, and I believe that he will grant my prayer."
She speaks ! It is Thetis, a goddess ! Nature
supplied the woman, the sea, and the cloud-drift ;
the poet wove them together. Poetry and en-
chantment are all dependent on these happy associa-

FAIRY TALES 259

tions of ideas. See, there, through the dark tracery
of these interwoven branches, a moon-ray steals
along the silvered boles of the birches. It trembles,
and, lo ! it is a ray no more ; it is the white wing of
a fairy. Children, if they saw it, would run away
with a delicious terror in their breasts. Thus it
was that the fairies and the gods came into being.
In the supernatural world there is not so much as
an atom that does not exist in the natural world.

LAURE

What a medley, to be sure, of Homer's goddesses
and Perrault's fairies !

RAYMOND

Both are identical in origin and in nature. Your
kings, your Prince Charmings, your fairy prin-
cesses lovely as the light of day, your giants at
once the terror and delight of little boys and girls
were gods and goddesses once upon a time, and
filled our remote forefathers, the children of the
race, with joy or terror. Hop- o-my-thumb and Blue
Beard are antique and venerable tales, which come
to us from distant very distant lands.

LAURE
Now, where do they come from ?

260 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

RAYMOND

Ah ! did I but know ! Some people have main-
tained, and would maintain to-day, that they hail
from the Hindu Koosh. They will have it that
they were invented beneath the terebinth trees of
that bleak and homeless region by the wandering
forefathers of the Greeks, the Latins, the Celts,
and the Germans. That is a theory that has
been held by very grave and learned men, who, if
they err at all, err not from flippancy. And one
needs a lively brain to construct scientific theories
at random. A polyglot may unaided flounder in a
score of languages. The wiseacres of whom I am
speaking never flounder in any circumstances. But
certain facts relating to the tales, the allegories,
and the legends, to which they would fain ascribe
an Indo-European origin, put them in a terrible
quandary. When they have taken prodigious pains
to prove to you that Peau d ' Ane comes from the
Hindu Koosh, and that the tale of Reynard the
Fox is of exclusively Japhetic origin, behold !
an explorer arrives with the news that he has dis-
covered Reynard among the Zulus, and that Peau
Ane is a household word among the Papuans.
This is a dreadful blow to their theory. But
theories are born to serve as targets, to be put out
of joint, to be distended, and finally to burst like

FAIRY TALES 261

bubbles. However, one thing is likely enough, to
wit, that fairy tales particularly Perrault's are
derived from the oldest traditions of the human
race.

OCTAVE

One moment, Raymond. I know little enough
of present-day science, and I am much more of a
farmer than a scholar ; but I remember having read
in a very well-written little book that the giants
or ogres were none other than those Huns who
ravaged Europe in the Dark Ages, and that the
story of Blue Beard was based on the only too well
authenticated story of that monster of iniquity the
Marechal de Retz, who was hanged in the reign of
Charles VII.

RAYMOND

We have done away with those ideas, my dear
Octave, and the little book you mention, which was
written by the Baron Walckenaer, is only so much
waste paper. True, the Huns overran the face of
Europe at the end of the eleventh century like a
swarm of locusts, and appalling barbarians they
were ; but the form in which their name appears
in the Romance languages conflicts with Baron
Walckenaer's suggested derivation. Diez assigns a
far more remote origin to the word " ogre." He

262 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

derives it from the Latin orcus, which, according to
Alfred Maury, is of Etruscan origin. Orcus is the
God of Hell, the Devourer, who feeds on flesh,
preferably the flesh of new-born babes. Now Gilles
de Retz was undoubtedly hanged at Nantes in 1440,
but not for having butchered his seven wives. The
details of his story bear no resemblance to the fairy
tale, and it is doing Blue Beard an injustice to con-
found him with that abominable old villain. Blue
Beard is not so black as he is painted.

LAURE
Not so black as he is painted ?

RAYMOND

He is not black at all, for he is nothing more nor
less than the sun

LAURE

What ! did the sun kill his wives, and was he
in turn killed by a dragoon and a musketeer ?
That won't do at all ! I know nothing of your
Huns or your Gilles de Retz ; but I must say I
agree with my husband that it is much more in
accordance with common sense to suppose that an
historical fact .

FAIRY TALES 263

RAYMOND

Ah ! cousin, there is nothing so fallacious as
common sense. You are like all the rest of the
world. If error appeared absurd to everybody, there
would be an end to errors. All the erroneous con-
clusions that have ever been arrived at are the result
of common sense ; beware of it, cousin, for all the
foolish and criminal deeds that were ever wrought
were wrought in its name. So leave it alone, and
come back to Blue Beard, who is the sun. The
seven wives whom he slays are the seven dawns,
for is it not true that every day in the week the sun
rises and puts an end to the dawn ? The star that
is celebrated in the hymns of the Veda has, I con-
fess, in its Gallic form, taken on something of the
ferocious aspect of a feudal tyrant ; but the tyrant
has retained one attribute which proves his antique
origin, and which enables us to recognise in this
wicked baron a former solar divinity. The beard
to which he owes his name the beard of cerulean
hue at once establishes his identity with the Indra
of the Hindu scriptures, the god of the firmament,
the god of sunshine and rain and thunder, whose
beard is azure.

LAURE

Now tell me, cousin, please, whether the two
knights one of whom was a dragoon, and the other
a musketeer were also Indian deities.

264 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

RAYMOND

Have you ever heard of the Avini and the
Dioscuri ?

LAURE
No, never !

RAYMOND

The A$vini among the Hindus, and the Dioscuri
among the Greeks, represent the morning and
evening twilight. Thus, in the Greek myth, it is
Castor and Pollux who release Helen, the light of
Dawn whom Theseus, the sun, had been holding in
thrall. The dragoon and the musketeer of the
story do no more nor less when they set free their
sister, Madame Blue Beard.

OCTAVE

I do not deny the ingenuity of these interpreta-
tions, but I believe that they are utterly baseless.
You put me and my Huns to rout just now, so let
me tell you, in turn, that there is nothing new in
your theory, and that my late grandfather, who
was well up in Dupuis, Volney, and Dulaure, be-
lieved the Zodiac to be at the bottom of every
religious system. He used, worthy man, to de-
clare and my poor mother used to be terribly
scandalised that Jesus Christ was the sun, and His
twelve apostles the twelve months of the year.

FAIRY TALES 265

But do you know, most learned sir, how a witty
man utterly routed Dupuis, Volney, Dulaure, my
grandfather, and all ? Applying a similar theory to
Napoleon I., he demonstrated by its means that Napo-
leon had had no real existence, and that his whole
story was a myth. The hero, who is born in an
island, who is victorious in the east and west, who
loses his power in the north during the winter, and
disappears in the ocean, is, says the author I don't
remember his name quite evidently the sun. His
twelve marshals were the twelve signs of the Zodiac,
and his four brothers the four seasons. I am greatly
afraid, Raymond, that you are treating Blue Beard
very much in the same way as this worthy individual
treated the First Napoleon.

RAYMOND

The author you mention was, as you say, a witty
man, and a man of learning. His name was Jean
Baptiste Pe"res. He died in 1840 at Agen, where
he had followed the occupation of librarian. His
curious little book, entitled Comme quoi Napoleon
ria jamais existe, was printed, if I am not mistaken,
in the year 1817. It was undoubtedly a very in-
genious skit on Dupuis' methods. But the theory,
of whose application I have given you but a solitary
and therefore an unconvincing example, reposes on
a solid foundation of comparative grammar and

266 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

mythology. The brothers Grimm have, as you
know, collected the folk-stories of Germany. Their
example has been followed in nearly every other
country, and we now possess collections of the folk-
lore of the Scandinavian, Danish, Flemish, Russian,
English, Italian, and Zulu races. Reading these
tales, so diverse in their origin, we note with as-
tonishment that they are all, or nearly all, variations
of a comparatively limited number of types. Here,
perhaps, is a Scandinavian tale that seems as though
it had been modelled on French traditions, which,
in turn, may reproduce all the principal features
of an Italian folk-story. Now, the idea that these
resemblances are to be attributed to successive inter-
changes of ideas between the peoples concerned,
cannot be entertained. It has therefore been as-
sumed that such narratives belonged to the human
family, as a whole, before its separation into its
several parts, and that it was during their im-
memorial sojourn in their common home the cradle
of the race that these fables and allegories pre-
sented themselves to their imagination. But, as no
one has ever heard either of a region or a period
when the Zulus, the Papuans, and the Hindus
herded their flocks in common, we are forced to the
conclusion that the early imaginings of the human
mind are universally the same, that the same phe-
nomena have produced the same impressions among

FAIRY TALES 267

all primitive people, and that men, who experience
the pangs of hunger, of love, and of fear, who have
the same sky overhead and the same earth beneath
their feet, have all, in order to give expression to
their ideas of Nature and Destiny, invented the
same little dramas. Similarly, our nursery tales
were originally merely a presentment of life and its
surroundings, simple enough in style to satisfy the
artistic cravings of the most unsophisticated of
human beings ; and this presentment probably
followed the same broad outlines among the white,
yellow, and black races alike. This admitted, I
think we should do wisely to adhere to the Indo-
European tradition, and to our ancestors of the
Hindu Koosh, without troubling ourselves further
concerning other human families.

OCTAVE

I am following you with much interest ; but are
you not afraid of exposing so recondite a subject
to some danger in thus making it the subject of a
casual conversation ?

RAYMOND

To tell you the truth, I am disposed to enter-
tain fewer apprehensions for my subject from the
accidents of an informal talk than from the logical

268 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

developments of a written essay. Don't take an
unfair advantage of this avowal, for I warn you
that I shall withdraw it the moment you show any
inclination to employ it to my disadvantage. From
this point onwards I am going to lay down the law.
I am going to give myself the pleasure of being
certain of what I say. So take warning ! If I con-
tradict myself, as in all probability I shall, I shall
show an equal degree of affection for each of the
opposing threads of my argument so as to be quite
sure of not doing an injustice to the correct one.
Well, then, take heed ! I am going to show myself
harsh, uncompromising, and, if I can manage it, a
fanatic.

LAURE

We shall have an opportunity of seeing how such
an attitude suits your style of countenance. But
what compels you to assume it ?

RAYMOND

Experience ! Experience tells me that scepticism,
however extensive, ceases when one begins to speak
or to act. For no sooner does one begin to speak,
than one dogmatises. A man is bound to take
sides. Well, at all events, I shall spare you the
c< perhapses," the "if I may say so's," the "as it

FAIRY TALES 269

were's," and all the dialectic frills and furbelows
that only a Renan can wear with elegance.

OCTAVE

Oh ! dogmatise to your heart's content. But do
introduce some sort of order into your exposition ;
and, for goodness' sake, tell us what your thesis is
now that you have got one.

RAYMOND

Everyone who is guided by sound judgment in
matters of general research has recognised that the
tales of the fairies have their origin in the myths
of Antiquity. Max Miiller has told us that fairy
tales are the modern patois of mythology, and that
if they are to be made the subject of scientific study,
the first thing we have to do is to trace back every
modern story to an older legend, and every legend
to the original myth.

LAURE
Well, and have you performed this task ?

RAYMOND

Had I indeed carried out such a stupendous
undertaking, I should not have a hair left on my

270 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

head, nor should I have the pleasure of looking on
you now, unless it were to peer at you from beneath
a green shade through four pairs of spectacles. The
work has not been accomplished, but sufficient data
have been collected to permit every scholar to hold
with certainty that our fairy tales are not the mere
random offspring of the imagination, but that in a
number of cases they are most closely connected
with the very essence of ancient thought and ancient
modes of speech. The old, tottering, decrepit deities,
long since in their dotage, and thrust out from all
share in human affairs, still serve to amuse our little
boys and girls. Such is ever the lot of the " grand-
fer " ; and what task more suitable to the old age
of the former lords of heaven and earth could
possibly be found ? Fairy tales are great religious
poems, poems which the men of the race have
forgotten maybe, but which our grandmothers,
endowed with longer memories, have piously re-
tained. Such poems have grown childish, but yet
how sweetly they fall from the gentle lips of yon
old grandam, who has put aside her spinning-wheel
to tell them to her son's little ones, as they sit
huddled around her on the floor beside the hearth.

The tribes of the white races are scattered over
the earth ; some have gone to dwell beneath translu-
cent skies, by shining headlands, where the blue
sea breaks in music on the shore ; others have held

FAIRY TALES 271

on their way into those mournful regions where
the mists bedim the fringes of the grey north sea,
where monstrous shapes half seen, half guessed
at hover, vague and shadowy, in the twilight.
Others have pitched their camps amid those lonely
steppes where their horses find scanty pasture.
Others have made their couch upon the frozen
snow, with a firmament of steel and diamonds above
them. Some have gone to cull the flowers of gold
from fields of granite ; and India's sons have drunk
of the rivers of Europe. But, all the world over,
in hut or in tent, or by the fire kindled in the plain,
she who was once a little girl, but has now become
a grandmother in her turn, tells over again to the
little ones of to-day the stories which had charmed
her as a child. And always the characters and the
adventures are the same, only the narrator though
she knows it not sheds upon her tales the hues
of the air she has breathed so long, and of the
earth which has nourished her, and which is soon
to gather her to its bosom again. And then once
more the tribe renew their wanderings, 'mid toil
and danger, leaving the old mother to sleep the
unawakening sleep amid the youthful and the aged
dead, while they fare ever farther and farther from
the sunrise. But the tales that have issued from
her lips now cold in death take flight like
Psyche's butterflies, and, lighting anew, fragile yet

272 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

immortal, on the lips of other grandams, glisten
in the wondering eyes of the newest nurslings of
the ancient race. Who was it, then, who introduced
Peau Ane to the little boys and girls of France
" Sweet France " as the song has it ? " Old Mother
Goose," reply the learned in country lore old
Mother Goose, whose spindle and tongue were never
at rest. The scholars grew hot on the scent : they
found that old Mother Goose was none other than
that Queen PMauque whom the master sculptors
placed above the porch of the church of Sainte
Marie at Nesles in the diocese of Troyes, over the
porch of Sainte Benigne at Dijon, over those of
Saint Pour9ain in Auvergne and Saint Pierre at
Nevers. They identify old Mother Goose with
Queen Bertrade, wife and godmother to King
Robert ; with Queen Berthe Bigfoot, the mother of
Charlemagne ; with the Queen of Sheba, who, being
an idolatress, had a cloven foot ; with the swan-
footed Freya, the fairest of the Scandinavian god-
desses ; with Sainte Lucie, whose body, like her
name, was composed of Light. But this is hunting
very far afield, and one may lose oneself in such
a quest. For who and what is Mother Goose, but
the mother of us all, the mother of our mothers,
of the women of simple hearts and vigorous arms
who wrought at their daily task with a grand
humility, and who, when withered with age, when,

FAIRY TALES 273

like the crickets, they had neither flesh nor blood,
still prattled by the chimney corner weaving those
long stories to all the bratlings of the family, stories
that would bring a world of visionary shapes before
their eyes. And the streams of mystic poetry,
the poetry of field and wood and fountain, flowed
fresh and virginal from the lips of the toothless
crone, even as the clear crystal flood which bubbles
forth spontaneously from a hidden spring. Upon
the ancestral canvas, upon the ancient Hindu back-
ground, Mother Goose embroidered the pictures
that she knew so well the castle with its great
towers, the cottage, the fruitful field, the dim forest,
the beautiful ladies, the fairies so familiar to the
village-folk, fairies whom Joan of Arc might have
seen at eventide beneath the great chestnut by the
margin of the well . . .

Well, cousin, have I ruined your fairy tales for
you ?

LAURE
Go on, please ! Go on ! I am all attention.

RAYMOND

Had I to choose, I would with all my heart
sacrifice a whole library of philosophers rather than

part with Peau Ane. In the whole range of our

s

274 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

literature, none, save La Fontaine, has understood
like Mother Goose the poetry of the soil, the
strong and abiding charm of simple, homely
things.

But I must not omit to mention some important
considerations that are apt to be overlooked in the
course of a casual conversation. The primitive
languages were all pictorial, and they invested
everything with a living soul. The stars, the
clouds, "the kine of heaven," the daylight, the
winds, and the dawn they endowed them all
with human feelings. From these picture-words,
words that lived and had a soul, sprang the myth,
and from the myth the fairy tale. The fairy tale
was incessantly undergoing changes, for change is
the essence of existence. The fairy tale was looked
on as being literally true, and, as good fortune
would have it, no clever people came along to
prate about allegories, and slay it at a stroke.
Good folk saw in Peau Ane> Peau cTAne and
nothing more nor less. Perrault sought for
nothing deeper in the story. Then came Science
and, at a glance, took in the long road the myth
and the tale had travelled, and Science said : " The
Dawn became Peau d'Ane" But Science should
add that, as soon as Peau d'Ane was thought of,
she took on a physiognomy, and enjoyed an in-
dividual existence of her own.

FAIRY TALES 275

LAURE

I now begin to see the drift of what you are
telling us. But you have mentioned Peau (FAne,
and I will confess to you that there is one thing
in the story that revolts me beyond expression.
Was it an Indian's idea that Peau (TAnes father
should conceive that odious passion for his
daughter ?

RAYMOND

Let us examine the real significance of the myth,
and the incest at which you are so horrified will
appear in quite an innocent light. Peau cT Ane is
the Dawn ; she is daughter to the Sun. When
the king is described as being in love with his
daughter, the meaning is that the Sun, when he
rises, hastens after the Dawn. Similarly, in the
Vedic mythology, Prajapati, the Lord of Creation,
the protector of every creature who is identical
with the Sun pursues his daughter Uschas, the
Dawn, who flees before him.

LAURE

Sun or no sun, your king revolts me, and I have
a grudge against those who created him.

276 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

RAYMOND

They were innocent, and therefore immoral . . .
Nay, spare your protests, cousin ; corruption is the
raison-fietre of morality, just as violence necessitates
the making of laws. This love which the king
entertains for his daughter, which is religiously
respected by tradition and by Perrault, bears witness
to the story's venerable antiquity. Incest was
looked on without horror in those families of
simple herdsmen, where the father was known as
" The one who protects," the brother as " The
one who aids," the sister as " The one who con-
soles," the daughter as "The one who herds the
cows," and the husband and wife as " The strong
ones." These neatherds of the Land of the Sun
had not invented Shame. In those days, the
woman, being devoid of mystery, was devoid of
danger. The patriarch's will alone decided whether
or not the aspiring bridegroom should bear away
his bride in the chariot drawn by two white oxen.
If, from the nature of the case, the union of a
father with his daughter was a rare occurrence,
such a union was not condemned. Peau d^Ane's
father did not create a scandal. Scandal is a pre-
rogative of highly civilised societies; it is, indeed
among their favourite distractions.

FAIRY TALES 277

OCTAVE

Well, well ! But I am convinced that your
explanations are valueless. The moral sense is
innate in mankind.

RAYMOND

Morality is merely custom reduced to a science.
It varies with every country, and in none does it
remain ten years the same. Yours, for instance,
Octave, does not very closely resemble that of your
father. The "innate" theory, moreover, is mere
moonshine.

LAURE

Never mind about morality and innate ideas,
please ; they are highly tedious topics. Let us get
back to Peau aAnes father, the Sun.

RAYMOND

You will remember that he nurtured in his
stables, among horses of the noblest breed, richly
caparisoned and stiff with gold and embroidered
trappings, an ass so the story runs "of so
strange a breed, that its litter, instead of being
foul, was strewn every morning with splendid
golden crowns and louis d'or of every description."

278 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

Now, this ass, onager, zebra, or whatever it may be,
is the courser of the Sun, and the louis d'or with
which it strews its litter are the discs of light which
it scatters down through the interwoven branches.
Its skin is emblematic of the gathering clouds.
The Dawn shrouds herself therein, and disappears.
You remember that charming scene where Peau
cT Ane^ in her sky-blue robe, is seen by the Beautiful
Prince, who looks through the keyhole. This
prince, the king's son, is a ray of sunlight . . .

LAURE

. . . Streaming through the door, that is to say
between a rift in the clouds, I suppose.

RAYMOND

Most aptly stated, cousin ; and I see that you
have quite a gift for comparative mythology. Now
let us take the simplest story of them all, the
story of the young girl who lets fall from her lips
two roses, two pearls, and two diamonds. This
young damsel is the dawn that causes the flowers
to unfold their petals and bathes them with light
and dew. Her wicked sister who vomits toads is
the mist. Cinderella, besmutted with ashes, is the
dawn obscured by clouds ; the young prince that
weds her is the sun.

FAIRY TALES 279

OCTAVE

So, then, Blue Beard's wives are each of them
the dawn ; Peau d'Ane is the dawn ; the damsel
that lets fall roses and pearls is the dawn ; Cinder-
ella is the dawn. You give us nothing but dawns !

RAYMOND

Because the dawn, the magnificent Indian dawn,
is the richest source of Aryan mythology. She is
celebrated under a multiplicity of names and forms
in the Vedic hymns. No sooner has night fallen,
than men call upon her name and await her coming
with a longing mingled with fear.

"The Dawn, beloved by us from of old, will
she return ? Will the powers of darkness be routed
by the God of Light ? " But she comes, the fair
maiden. "She draweth nigh unto every house,
and every man rejoiceth in his heart. 'Tis she,
the daughter of Dyaus, the divine herdswoman
who, every morning, drives afield the kine of
heaven which, from their heavy udders, drop a
fresh and quickening dew upon the parching earth."

As her coming was hailed with chants, so shall
her flight be sung in a hymn to celebrate the
triumph of the sun.

" Behold ! here is yet another mighty deed that
thou hast wrought, O Indra ! Thou hast smitten

2 8o MY FRIEND'S BOOK

the daughter of Dyaus, a woman hard to overcome.
Yea ! the daughter of Dyaus the Glorious One,
the Dawn thou, O Indra, hast scattered her
limbs asunder. The Dawn cast herself down in
her shattered car, fearing lest Indra, the bull, should
smite her. Her car lay there in fragments, but
as for her she fled afar."

The primitive Hindu made himself various
pictures of the dawn, but the picture was always
instinct with life, and the pale and feeble reflections
of it are still discernible in the stories which we have
Just mentioned, as well as in Little Red Riding
Hood. The colour of the hood worn by the little
maiden is an important indication of her celestial
origin. The task of carrying cakes and butter to
her grandmother enables us to connect her with the
Dawn of the Vedas, who is a messenger. With
regard to the wolf which eats her up ...

LAURE
It is a cloud.

RAYMOND
Not so, cousin, it is the sun.

LAURE
The sun ! A wolf?

FAIRY TALES 281

RAYMOND

Yes, the devourer with the shining fur, Vrika,
the Vedic wolf. Do not forget that two solar
deities the Lycian Apollo of the Greeks and the
Apollo Soranus of the Latins have the wolf for an
emblem.

OCTAVE

But what connection is there between the sun and
a wolf?

RAYMOND

When the sun dries up the water in the troughs,
parches the meadows, and sears the hide of the
starving oxen that gasp and pant with their tongues
lolling from their mouths, does he not resemble a
hungry wolf? The hide of the wolf is bright, and
his eyes are ablaze ; he shows his white teeth ; his
jaws and his loins are strong. The colour of his
dazzling hair and eyes, and the destroying might of
his jaws, prove that he is the sun. Here in this
moist country, where the apple-trees bloom in
abundance, you fear the sun but little, Octave ; but
Little Red Riding Hood has come from afar and
traversed many a sun-scorched tract.

LAURE

The Dawn dies, and the Dawn is born again.
But Little Red Riding Hood dies and comes back

282 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

no more. It was wrong of her to stay gathering
nuts and listening to the wolf; but is that a reason
why she should be devoured without mercy ? Were
it not better that she should come forth again from
the wolfs belly, as the Dawn issues from the
darkness ?

RAYMOND

Your pity, cousin, is very much to the point.
Mother Goose had become rather hazy about the
way the story ends, but at her age it is pardonable
if one grows a trifle forgetful.

But the grandams of Germany and England
know well enough that Little Red Riding Hood
dies and comes to life again like the dawn. They
tell how a huntsman opened the beast's belly and
drew therefrom the rosy child, who gazed about her
in wide-eyed amazement, saying, " Oh, what a fright
I've had, and how dark it was in there ! "

I was in your little girl's room just now looking
at one of those coloured picture-books which Walter
Crane, the Englishman, illuminates with such a
wealth of fantasy and humour. He is possessed
of an imagination which combines the qualities of
homeliness and learning. He has the true feeling for
what is legendary and a love for the realities of life :
he reveres the past and enjoys the present. His is
essentially the English outlook. The book I was

FAIRY TALES 283

turning over contained the story of Little Red
Riding Hood (our Petit Chaperon Rouge}. The
wolf devours her, but a gentleman-farmer in green
coat, yellow breeches, and top-boots puts a bullet
between its cruel glaring eyes, slits open its belly
with his hunting-knife and releases the child, who
comes forth fresh as a rose.

" Some sportsman (he certainly was a dead shot)
Had aimed at the Wolf when she cried ;
So Red Riding Hood got safe home, did she not,
And lived happily there till she died."

Such is the truth of the matter, cousin ; and you
guessed that it was so. Now Sleeping Beauty, whose
story is a piece of deep and simple poetry . . .

OCTAVE

She is the Dawn !

RAYMOND

Not so ! Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, and
Hop o' my Thumb belong to another group of
Aryan legends : a group which symbolises the strife
between Winter and Summer, the perpetual renova-
tion of the natural world, the story, everlastingly
re-enacted, of the universal Adonis, that Rose of
the World that withers and blossoms anew eternally.
Sleeping Beauty is none other than Asteria, own
sister to Latona, and identical with Core and Perse-

284 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

phone. It was a happy inspiration of the popular
mind to choose as the symbol of light the earthly
form upon which light most lovingly lingers.
But give me Sleeping Beauty as she appears
in Virgil's story of Eurydice or in the Brun-
hilde of the Edda. The former was stung by a
snake, the latter was pricked by a thorn. The
Grecian maid was rescued from eternal darkness by
a poet and the Scandinavian by a warrior. It is
the ordinary fate of the lovely heroines of myth-
ology to fall into a trance when scratched by any-
thing that is sharp, be it thorn, talon, or spindle. In
a legend of the Deccan, discovered by Miss Frere, a
little girl pricks herself with a talon which a Rakchasa
had left in a doorway ; she swoons away immedi-
ately. A king passes by, kisses her and brings her
back to life again. The distinctive characteristic
of those stories of the strife between Summer and
Winter is that they never come to an end. Per-
rault's story begins again when it seemed to be
over and done with. Sleeping Beauty weds the
Prince, and from their union are born two children,
the lesser Day and the lesser Dawn, the JEthra.
and Hemeros of Hesiod, or if you prefer it, Phoebus
and Artemis. In the Prince's absence, his mother,
an ogress, a Rakchasa, that is to say the Terror of
Night, threatens to devour the two royal children,
who are only saved by the timely return of Kin

FAIRY TALES 285

Sun. In the west of France, Sleeping Beauty has
a rustic sister whose story is related with much
na'ivete in a very ancient song. This song tells how
a little girl named Guenillon was sent into the
woods by her father to gather nuts, how she found
the branches beyond her reach, and how she pricked
her finger with a thorn and fell into a deep slumber.
Then, so the story runs, three gallant knights came
riding by. " I spy a maiden," cried the first. "She
is asleep," cried the second. " She shall be my lady-
love," said the third, and laughed a rollicking
laugh, 1

1 " Quand j'e"tais chez mon pere,
Guenillon,
Petite jeune fille,
II m' envoyait au bois,
Guenillon.

Pour cueillir la nouzille,
Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! Ah !

Guenillon,
Saute en guenille.

II m' envoyait au bois
Pour cueillir la nouzille !
Le bois etait trop haut,
La belle trop petite . . .

Le bois etait trop haut,
La belle trop petite
Elle se mit en main
Une tant verte 6pine.

Elle se mit en main
Une tant verte e"pine
A la douleur du doigt
La bell' s'est endormie . . .

286 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

There the legend has fallen into the last stages
of corruption, and it would be impossible, in the
absence of other evidence, to recognise, in the
rustic Guenillon, the heavenly light which languishes
during the winter and regains his strength in the
springtide.

The Persian Epic, the Schahnameh, introduces
us to a hero whose fate resembles that of Sleeping
Beauty. Isfendiar, whom no sword could wound,
was destined to die of a thorn which pierced his eye.
The story of Balder in the Scandinavian Edda
presents a still more striking resemblance to Sleep-
ing Beauty.

Just as the fairies gathered round the cradle of

A la douleur du doigt
La bell' s'est endormie,
Et au chemin passa
Trois cavaliers bons drilles.

Et le premier des trois
Bit: "Je vois une fille."
Et le second des trois
Dit " Elle est endormie,"
Et le second des trois,
Guenillon,

Dit : " Elle est endormie."
Dit le dernier des trois,
Guenillon,

Dit : " Ell' sera ma mie,"
Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! Ah !

Guenillon,
Saute en guenille. . . ."

FAIRY TALES 287

the king's daughter, so all the gods come to look
upon Balder, the divine infant, and swear that no
harm shall come to him from anything on earth ;
but the mistletoe which grows not upon the ground
was forgotten by all the immortals, just as the
king and queen forgot the old hag who was turning
her spinning-wheel away up in one of the towers
of their castle. A spindle pricks the beautiful
princess ; a branch of mistletoe is the death of
Balder.

" So on the floor lay Balder dead ; and round
Lay thickly strewn swords, axes, darts, and spears,
Which all the Gods in sport had idly thrown
At Balder, whom no weapon pierced or clove ;
But in his breast stood fixt the fatal bough
Of mistletoe, which Lok the Accuser gave
To Hoder, and unwitting Hoder threw." 1

LAURE

All that is very beautiful ; but have you nothing
to tell us about the little dog Puff that lay asleep
on the Princess's bed. She seems to me a dainty
little animal. Puff was fondled on the lap of many
a marquise, and I can picture Madame de Sevign6
caressing her with the hands that penned those
graceful letters of hers.

1 M. Arnold : Balder Dead.

288 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

RAYMOND

Well then, to please you, we will see to it that
Mademoiselle Puff has a celestial ancestry. We
will trace her descent back to Sarama, the female
dog that pursues the Dawn, or to the hound Seirios,
the guardian of the stars. That, I trow, is a pedi-
gree worth having ! Puff has now only to prove
her quarterings to be made Canoness of the Chapter
of a canine Remiremont. But it would need the
authority of a four-footed D'Hozier to establish so
complicated a genealogical claim. I shall limit
myself to pointing out one ramification of her tree,
namely, the Finnish branch represented by the little
dog Flo, whose mistress addresses him thrice, saying :

" Go, my little dog Flo, and see if it will soon
be daylight."

When she had said this a third time, the day
broke.

OCTAVE

I really like the way you find places in heaven
for all the men and women and animals in these
tales of yours. Never was Roman emperor more
promptly assigned a dwelling-place among the con-
stellations. Now according to you, the Marquis
de Carabas cannot be anything less of a personage
than the sun himself.

FAIRY TALES 289

RAYMOND

Not a doubt of it, Octave ! This needy, humble
individual who grows in wealth and power as time
goes on, is the sun which rises in a mist and then
shines forth in splendour in the clear air of noonday.
Observe this point : the Marquis de Carabas comes
forth from the water and arrays himself in brilliant
apparel. What could be more obviously symbolical

of the sunrise ?

LAURE

But according to the story, the Marquis is a
sluggish creature who is led by the nose. It is the
cat who does all the acting and thinking, and it is
only right that, like Puff, this cat should have a
place in the heavens.

RAYMOND

And a place in the heavens he has ; like his master,
he represents the sun.

LAURE

I am very glad to hear it. But are his title-deeds
in order, like Puffs ? Can he prove his lineage ?

RAYMOND

As Racine says :

" L'hymen n'est pas toujours entoure de flambeaux." 1
Perhaps Puss in Boots is a descendant of the cats

1 Hymen is not always surrounded by torches.

T

290 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

that drew the chariot of Freya, the Scandinavian
Venus, albeit the chroniclers of the tiles make no
mention of it. There is one very ancient solar cat,
the Egyptian cat, identical with Ra, who recites a
part in a funeral service which has been translated
by Monsieur de Rouge. " I am the Great Cat,"
says the animal, " who was in the avenue of the
tree of life, in An, on the night of the great com-
bat." But this cat is a Cushite and a son of Shem
Puss in Boots is of the tribe of Japhet, and I cannot
see for the life of me how to establish any connec-
tion between them.

LAURE

This Great Cushite Cat who discourses so cryptic-
ally in that funeral service of yours, did he wear
boots and carry a wallet ?

RAYMOND

There is no mention of it in the service. The
boots of the Marquis's cat are analogous to the
Seven League Boots which Hop o' my Thumb puts
on, and which are symbolical of the swiftness of
light. According to the learned Monsieur Gaston
Paris, Hop o' my Thumb was originally one of those
Aryan cattle-robbing deities who herded and stole
the oxen of heaven, a divinity after the style of the
infant Hermes, who is represented on vases cradled

FAIRY TALES 291

in a shoe. The popular imagination assigned Hop
o' my Thumb an abode in the smallest star of the
Great-Bear group. By-the-by, you know that
Jacquemart, who gave the world such beautiful
etchings, had a fine collection of footgear. If one
followed his example and made a museum of mytho-
logical shoes and so forth, one could fill up more
than one glass case. Alongside of the Seven League
Boots, the shoe of the infant Hermes, and the boots
of the famous Puss, you would have to range the
talaria worn by the adult Hermes, the sandals of
Perseus, Cinderella's glass slipper, and the tight shoes
of Marie, the little Russian girl. All these various
coverings for the feet are expressive, each in its
own way, of the swiftness of light and the courses
of the stars.

LAURE

It was a mistake, was it not, when people said that
Cinderella's slippers were made of glass ? l It is im-
possible to imagine anything to put on one's feet
being made of the same material as a decanter, for
example. Slippers made of squirrel's skin 2 would be
much more conceivable, though they would be hardly
the things for a little girl to go to a ball in. To
keep up the dance with such hot things on her feet
as that she must have been dance-mad ; but then
1 Verre. a Vair.

292 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

all young girls are dance-mad. They would foot
it if their shoes were soled with lead.

RAYMOND

Cousin, I had warned you to beware of common-
sense conclusions. Cinderella's slippers were not
made of fur but of glass, glass as transparent as
any that ever came from Saint Gobain, as trans-
parent as spring water or rock crystal. You see,
they were fairy slippers, and that does away with
all your difficulties. A pumpkin becomes a coach ;
well, it was a fairy pumpkin, and what more natural
than for a fairy pumpkin to become a fairy coach ?
The surprising thing would be if it did not. The
Russian Cinderella has a sister who cuts off her
big toe in order to get the slipper on, ancT the
slipper becomes covered with blood. So the Prince
learns to what an heroic subterfuge ambition had
driven the girl.

LAURE

Perrault merely says that the two wicked sisters
did their very utmost to squeeze their feet into
the slipper, but that all their efforts were in vain.
I like that better.

FAIRY TALES 293

RAYMOND

That is also Mother Goose's account of the
matter. But if you had Sclavonic blood in your
veins you would be a little bloodthirsty, and the
lopped-off toe would be just to your taste.

OCTAVE

Raymond has been telling us a good deal about
fairy tales, but not a word has he said up to the
present about fairies themselves.

LAURE

True. But would it not be better not to dispel
their mystery, better to leave them vague and
undefined ?

RAYMOND

You are afraid that these capricious creatures,
who can be good or wicked, young or old, as
their fancy takes them, who have such power over
Nature yet seem always on tiptoe to run and hide
themselves in her bosom you fear that they would
resent our prying ways and slip through our fingers
just as we thought to seize them. They are made
of the moonbeam. Only the rustling of the leaves
tells you of their passing, and their voices mingle

294 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

with the murmur of the streams. Catch at their
golden raiment as they hurry by and you find but
a few dry leaves in your hand. I should never be
so impious as to chase them, but their name alone
suffices to reveal the secret of their nature.

The French word fee is the same as the
Italian fata, the Spanish hada, and the Portuguese
fada. In Provence they talk about fade, while in the
Berri country which George Sand made so famous
the word appears as fadette. All alike come from
the Latin fatum, which means Destiny. The fairies
have their origin in what is at once the gentlest and
the most tragic, the most intimate and most uni-
versal conception of the life of man. It is well that
a woman should typify Fate ; for woman, like Fate,
is wayward, seductive, deceiving, a thing of charm,
unrest, and peril. It is perfectly true that a fairy
is godmother to every one of us, and that, as she
leans over our cradle, she dispenses gifts fraught
with bliss or bale, that remain with us to the end
of our days. Take any group of people ; ask them
what they are, what has made them so, and what
they do. You will find that the ruling influence of
their destiny, be it happy or be it disastrous, is a
fairy. We all like Claude, because he sings so
well. He sings well because his vocal chords are
disposed to harmony. But who placed them thus
in Claude's throat ? Why, a fairy ! Wherefore did

FAIRY TALES 295

1 the king's daughter prick herself with the old
crone's spindle? Because she was full of life and
just the least bit thoughtless. And who was re-
sponsible for that ? The fairies !

This is just exactly what the fairy tales say, and
all the stores of human wisdom can no farther go.
For how is it, cousin, that you are witty, fair, and
kind ? Because one fairy gave you kindness, another
a clever brain, and another a beautiful face. It
was done even as they commanded. A mysterious
godmother pre-ordains, at our birth, what all our

actions, all our thoughts shall be through life, and
we shall be just as good and enjoy just that measure
of happiness that she has meted out to us. Freedom
is a dream, the fairy is a reality. My friends, virtue,
like vice, is a necessity we cannot evade. Nay, I
know what you would say ! But virtue is none the
less beautiful because it is involuntary, none the less
worthy of our adoration.

What takes us in an act of kindness is not the
price it costs but the good it works. Beautiful
thoughts are but emanations from beautiful souls
shedding around them their own substance, as per-
fumes are particles of flowers that melt upon the
air. The breath of a noble soul can be but noble
ever, even as the rose can smell but of the rose.
'Tis the will of the fairies. Cousin, you must
thank them.

296 MY FRIEND'S BOOK

LAURE

Enough, I will hear no more. Your wisdom is
uncanny. I know the power the fairies have. I
know their changeful moods. They have visited
me with sinkings of the heart, with vexations and
weariness, no less than other folk. But I know that
above the fairies, above the wavering chances of the
world, there soars that Everlasting Mind that has
inspired our hearts with Faith, and Hope, and
Charity. Cousin, good-night !

THE END

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