Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 Read online

  OUR VILLE.

  The picturesqueness of France in our day is confined almost exclusivelyto its humble life. The Renaissance and the Revolution swept away inmost parts of the country moated castle, abbaye, grange, and chateau, toreplace them with luxurious but conventional piles and ruins humblyrestored and humbly inhabited. Many a farmhouse with unkempt _cour_and dishevelled _pelouse_ is the relic of a turreted chateau,stables are often desecrated churches, seigneurial _colombiers_shelter swine, and battlemented portals to fortified walls serve, asdoes the one of our ville, to house hideously-uniformed _douaniers_watching the luggage of arriving travellers.

  Our ville was never an aristocratic one, and to this day very few of ournames are preceded by the idealizing particle _de_. We have anancient history, however,--so ancient that all historians place ourorigin at _un temps tresrecule_. We had houses and walls when Rouenyonder was a marsh, and we saw Havre spring up like a mushroom only twolittle centuries and a half ago. Besieged and taken, burned and ravaged,alternately by Protestant and Catholic, no wonder our ville has not evenruins to show that we are older than the fifteen hundreds. Still,ancient though we are, we have always been a ville of humblefolk,--hardy sailors, brave fishers, and thrifty bourgeois,--and to-day,as always, our highest families buy and sell and build their philistinehomes back toward the _cote_, while our humble ones picturesquelyhaunt the _quais_.

  The town is exquisitely situated at the foot of abrupt _cotes_,just where the broad and tranquil river shudders with mysterious deepheavings and meets its dolphin-hued death in the all-devouring sea. Awayoff in the shimmering distance is the second seaport city of France. Onstill days,--and our gray or golden Norman days are almost alwaysstill,--faint muffled sounds of life, the throbbing of factories, thefarewell boom of cannon from ships setting forth across the Atlantic,even the musical notes of the Angelus, float across the water to us asdreamily vague as perhaps our earth-throbs and passion-pulses reach aworld beyond the clouds. This city is our metropolis, with which we areconnected by small steamers crossing to and fro with the tide, and whereall our shopping is done, our own ville being too thoroughly limited and_roturier_ in taste to merit many of our shekels.

  In fact, such of our shopping as is done in our ville is in the quaintmarketplace, where black house-walls are beetling and bent, andSainte-Catherine's ancient wooden tower stands the whole width of thePlace away from its Gothic church. Here we bargain and chaffer withtowering _bonnets blancs_ for peasant pottery and faience,paintable half-worn stuffs, and delicious ancestral odds and ends ofbroken peasant households.

  We have many streets over which wide eaves meet, and within whichtwilight dwells at noonday. Some of the hand-wide streets run straightup the _cote_, and are a succession of steep stairs climbing besidecrouching, timber-skeletoned houses perforated by narrow windows openingupon vistas of shadow. Others seem only to run down from the _cote_to the sea as steeply as black planks set against a high building. Uponthe very apex of the _cote_, visible miles away at sea, lives ourrichest citizen. His house smiles serenely modern even if onlypseudo-classic contempt on all the quaint duskiness and irregularitybelow, and is pillared, corniced, entablatured, and friezed, with linesseverely straight, although the building itself is as round as anymediaeval campanile and surmounted with a Gothic bell-turret, while theentrance-gate is turreted, machicolated, castellated, like thefortress-castles of the Goths.

  Lower down the _cote_, convent walls raise themselves abovered-tiled and lichen-grown roofs. In one of these convents, behindeyeless grim walls, are hidden cloistered nuns; from others the Sistersgo freely forth upon errands of both business and mercy. The convent ofcloisters, Couvent des Augustines, is passing rich, and has houses andlands to let. Once upon a time an _Americaine_ coveted one of thesepicturesque houses. She entered the convent and interviewed thebusiness-manager, a veiled nun behind close bars.

  "Madame may occupy the house," said _ma Soeur_, "by paying fivehundred francs a year, by observing every fast and feast of the Church,by attending either matins or vespers every day, and by attendingconfession and partaking of the holy sacrament every month."

  Madame is a zealous Catholic, therefore the terms, although peculiar,did not seem too severe. She was about to remove into the house, when,lo! she received word that, it having come to the knowledge of theconvent that the husband of Madame was a heretic, he could not beallowed to occupy any tenement of the Communaute.

  Although this cloistered sisterhood is vowed to perpetual seclusion,once a year even heretics may gaze upon their pale faces. This annualoccasion is the prize-day of the school they teach, when the school-roomis decorated with white cloth and paper roses, the _cures_ ofneighboring parishes and the Maire of our ville, with inviteddistinguished guests, occupy the platform, and the floor below is freeto everybody furnished with invitation-cards.

  I had always longed to enter these prison-like walls and gaze from mytempestuous distance upon those peaceful lives set apart from earth'srush and turmoil in a fair and blessed haven of the Lord. I longed tosee those pure visionaries, pale spouses of Christ, and read uponillumined faces the unspeakable rapture of mystic union with the Lamb ofGod.

  Monsieur le Docteur S----, our family physician, is also physician ofthe convent.

  "You will see nobody," he said, remarking my sentimental curiosityconcerning cloistered nuns,--"you will see nobody but a lot oflace-mending and stocking-knitting old maids who failed to gethusbands."

  I had already heard queer stories of our old doctor's forty years ofattendance upon the convent, and I was not so easily discouraged. I wasespecially anxious to see the Mother Superior, having many times heardthe story of her flight in slippers and dressing-gown from thebreakfast-table to bury herself forever within the walls that have heldher now these twenty-five years. In all these years her unforgivingfather has never seen her face, nor she his, although they live withinstone's throw of each other.

  "Know about him? of course she does," answered Victoire to my question."She knows all about him, and more too. Do you suppose there is an itemof news in the whole town that those cloistered nuns do not hear? If youhad been educated by them, as we were, and pumped dry every day as towhat went on in our own and our neighbors' families, you would not askthat question."

  Victoire and I penetrated into the convent that very same day. Wefollowed a crowd of women, _paysannes_ and _citoyennes_, intoa sunny court paved with large stones and arched by the noontide sky,but unsoftened by tree or flower, and surrounded by the open windows ofdormitories. Over the threshold we had just crossed the nuns pass butonce after their vows,--pass outward, feet foremost, deaf and unseeing,to a closer, darker home than even their cloistered one. Some of themhave seen nothing beyond their convent walls for forty years, while onehas here worn away sixty years.

  _Sixty years_ without one single glimpse of sweet dawn or fairsunset, without one single vision of the sea in winter majesty of stormor summer glory! _Sixty years_ without sound of lisping musicrunning through tall grass, without one single whisper of the aeolianpines, or glimpse of blooming orchards against pure skies! _Sixtyyears_!

  Beside me in the school-room sat a buxom peasant-woman, who, as a littlegirl crowned with a gaudy tinsel wreath descended from the platform,confidentially informed me, "_C'est ma fille._ She has taken theprize for good conduct, and there isn't a worse _coquine_ in ourwhole commune."

  I saw the pale visionaries, a circle of black-robed figures, withdead-white bands, like coffin-cerements, across their brows. I saw themalmost unanimously fat, with pendulous jowls and black and broken teeth,as remote from any expression of mystic fervors and spiritual espousalsas could be well imagined, _"Vieilles commeres_!" grunted my_paysanne,_ who was evidently neither amiable nor saintly.

  Mother Mary-of-the-Angels, once Elise Gautier, was short, fat, andbustling, with large round-eyed spectacles upon her nose, and the pastycomplexion and premature flaccid wrinkles that come with long seclusionfrom sunshine and exercise. She marched about like one
who had chosenMartha's rather than Mary's manner of serving her Lord, and we saw herchat a full half-hour with the wife of the Maire, bowing, smiling,gesticulating meantime with all the florid grace of a French woman ofthe world.

  "The Maire's wife was her former intimate friend," whispered Victoire."See how much younger and healthier she looks than the Mother Superior,and how much happier. _On dit_ that it was chagrin at the marriageof this friend that caused Elise Gautier to desert her widowed fatherand dependent little brothers and sisters to bury herself in a convent."

  A more interesting story than Elise Gautier's is told in our ville. Someyears ago a nun left the Couvent des Augustines in open day, passing outfrom the central door in her nun's garb, and meeting there aforeign-looking man accompanied by a posse of gendarmes. The couple,followed by a half-hooting, half-cheering mob, drove directly to thehotel-de-ville, where they were united in marriage. Then they went awayfrom our ville, where both were born, to the husband's home in Spain.When those convent doors had closed upon her, a quarter of a centurybefore, and the lovers believed themselves eternally separated, she wasa lovely girl of twenty, he a bright youth of twenty-five. She passedaway from his despairing sight, fair and fresh as a spring flower, withbeautiful golden hair and violet eyes; she came out from that fatalportal a woman of forty-five, stout, spectacled, with faded, thin hairbeneath her nun's cowl, to meet a portly gray-haired man of fifty, inwhom not even love's eye could detect the faintest vestige of theslender bright-eyed lover of her youth.

  The unhappy Laure had been forced to unwilling vows to keep her fromthis beggarly lover, and, when he fled to Spain, both became dead to ourville for long years. Twenty-two years after Laure became Soeur Angelicait was known in the convent that the machinery of the civil law, whichhad only lately forbidden eternal religious vows, had been set in motionto secure her release; but it remained a mystery who the spring of themovement was, her parents having long been dead. Soeur Angelica herselfseemed almost more terrified than otherwise at the knowledge, for everyconventual influence was brought to bear upon her morbid conscience toassure her that eternal damnation follows broken vows. It seems,however, that amid all her spiritual stress she never confessed, even toher spiritual director, what desecration had come upon that dovecote byher constant correspondence with the lover of her youth, now a wealthywine-merchant in Spain. When she left the convent, some of theselove-letters were left behind; and to this day those scandalized doves,to whom Soeur Angelica is forever a lost soul, wonder futilely how thoseemissaries of Satan penetrated their holy walls.

  "How _did_ they, do you suppose?" I asked.

  Victoire and Clarice smiled curiously, while Emile, with an expressionsavoring of paganism and pig-tails, squinted obliquely toward ourdoctor.

  "_Nous n'en savons rien_" they answered me.

  The social amusements of our ville are few, as must naturally be thecase in a provincial town ruled by the Draconian law that a _jeunefille a marier_ must be no more than an animated puppet, while_jeunes gens_ must have their coarse fling before they are fit forrefined society. Occasionally an ambulant theatrical troupe gives anentertainment in our little theatre. Once a year Talbot comes, duringvacation at the Francais, and gives us "L'Avare" or "Le Roi s'amuse;"but such are small events, to our provincial taste, compared with thevaulting and grimacing of the more frequent English and American circustroupes in our Place Thiers.

  Perhaps the chief distraction of our young people is going to earlymass, whither our young ladies go accompanied by _bonnes_, Mamanhaving not yet emerged from the French mamma's chrysalis condition ofmorning crimping-pins, petticoat and short gown, and list slippers. The_bonnes_ who thus serve as chaperons are often as young as or evenyounger than the demoiselles whose virginal modesty they are supposed toprotect. That they are anything more than a mere form of guardian, afigment of the social fiction that a young French girl never leaves hermother's side till she goes to her husband's, it is unnecessary toobserve. Human nature, especially French human nature, is human natureall the world over, and Romeo will woo and Juliet be won during earlymass or twilight vespers as well as from a balcony, in spite of all theMontagues and Capulets. Girl-chaperons are oftener in sympathy withardent daughters than with worldly mothers, while even the oldest andmost sedate of French _bonnes_ are malleable to other influencesthan those of their legitimate employers. It was across our river,yonder from whence the sound of the Angelus comes across the summerwater like the music of dreams, that Balzac's Modest Mignon carried onher intrigues of hifalutin gush, by means of a facile _bonne_, witha man whom she had never seen, and who deceived her by personating thepoet she wished him to be. Modest Mignons are not rare in our ville, andthe Gothic vaults of Saint-Leonard and the pillared aisles ofSainte-Catherine witness almost as many little intrigues, as manyheart-beats and blushes, as does "evenin' meetin'" in our own bucolicregions.

  Desiree, our _femme-de-chambre,_ before she came to us, lived in awealthy _roturier_ family.

  "It was a good place, and I was sorry to lose it when MademoiselleEugenie was married," said she. "The little gifts the _jeunes gens_slipped into my panier as I came with mademoiselle from mass almostequalled my wages. Mademoiselle had a good _dot_ as well as beauty,and _ces jeunes gens_ expected to lose nothing by what they gaveme. Mademoiselle herself often said, 'Desiree, walk a few steps behindme, and, while I keep my eyes upon the pavement, tell me all the youngmen who turn to look after me. If you hear any of them say, "_Commeelle est jolie!_" (How pretty she is!) you shall have my _batistemouchoirs_.'"

  On Sunday afternoons all the bourgeois world of our ville disportsitself upon the jetty. Not only then do all the mothers of the town withdaughters "to marry" bring those daughters to the weekly matrimonialmart, but many of the mothers and chaperons of the near country roundabout come in from rural _propriete_ and rustic _chalet_ toexhibit their candidates. The method of procedure is eminently French,of course, and eminently naive, as even the intrigues and machinationsof Balzac's _bourgeoisie_, although intended as marvels of finesse,seem so often naivete itself to our blunter and less-plotting minds. Themothers and daughters, or chaperons and charges, walk slowly arm in armup and down one side the jetty, facing the counter-current of young menand men not young who have not lost interest in feminine attractions.Back and forth, back and forth, for hours, move the two separatestreams, never for one instant commingling, each discussing the other'sprospects, characters, appearance, and, above all, _dots_ and_rentes_, till twilight falls and all the world goes home todinner.

  Once upon a time a retired man of business came to our ville,accompanied by his son. He was one of the class known in England as"Commys," and so obnoxious in France as _commis-voyageurs._ Hestopped at the Cheval Blanc, and in conversation with mine host inquiredif it might chance that some cafe-keeper in the town desired to sell hiscafe and marry his daughter. Monsieur Brissom mentioned to him ourcafe-keepers blessed with marriageable daughters, and "Commy" made therounds among them, announcing that he had a son whom he wished to marryto some charming demoiselle _dot_ed with a cafe. One of thecafe-keepers had "_precisement votre affaire_." It was arrangedthat Mademoiselle Clothilde should be promenaded by her mother the nextSunday on the jetty, where the young man should join thecounter-current, and thus each take observations of the other.

  As said, so done. Monsieur Henri and Mademoiselle Clothilde declaredthemselves enchanted with each other.

  "_Tres-bien_," said the reflective parents. "Now fall in love asfast as ever you please."

  Monsieur and mademoiselle not only "fell," but plunged.

  Two weeks afterward, however, the papas fell out. Cafetier exacted morethan Commis could promise, and Commis declared Mademoiselle Clothilde_pas grand' chose_: her eyebrows were too white, and her toesturned in.

  The marriage was declared "off," and the young people were ordered tofall out of love the quickest possible.

  "Too late!" they cried.

  "You have seen each other but four times."

  "Qui
te enough," declared the lovers.

  "You shall not marry," shouted the parents.

  "We _will_!" screamed their offspring.

  Nevertheless they could not, for the French law gives almost absolutepower to parents. Mademoiselle would have no _dot_ unless herfather chose to give her one, and no French marriage is legal withoutpaternal consent or the almost disgraceful expedient of _sommationsrespectueuses_. Mademoiselle threatened to enter a convent. Cafetierassured her that no convent opens cordial doors to _dot_less girls.

  Juliet was ready to defy all the Capulets when she had seen Romeo butonce; Corinne was ready to fling all her laurels at Oswald's feet attheir second interview; Rosamond Vincy planned her house-furnishingduring her second meeting with Lydgate; even Dorothea Brooke felt a"trembling hope" the very next day after her first sight of Mr.Casaubon. How, then, could one expect poor Clothilde to yield up herundersized, thin-moustached, and very unheroic-looking Henri, havingseen him _four_ times?

  There was one way out of her troubles,--that to which Alphonse Daudet'sand Andre Theuriet's people gravitate as needles to their pole. Shewalked one dark midnight upon the jetty alone. Nobody saw the end; butthe next Sunday, three weeks to a day from the one when the two hadcountermarched in matrimonial procession, Mademoiselle Clothilde waslaid in her grave.

  The whole French social system revolves around the _dot_.

  "How dare you speak to my father so!" I once heard a daughter reproachher mother. "How dare you, who brought him no _dot_!"

  "It is a pity Madame Marais has no more influence in her family," Iheard remarked in a social company. "It is a pity, for she is a goodwoman, and her husband and sons are all going to the bad."

  "Yes, it is a pity," answered another; "but, then, what else can sheexpect? She brought no _dot_ into the family."

  Once upon a time a young man made a friendly call upon a family in ourville, he a distant relative of the family. He sat in the _salon_with mother and daughter, when suddenly the mother was called away amoment. When she returned, not more than two minutes later,--horror!_she could not enter the room!_ In closing the door she had somehowdisarranged the handles; screws had dropped out and could not be found;the knob would not turn. What a situation! A young girl shut up in alocked room with a young man! What a scandal if the story got out in thetown! and what could the poor, distracted mamma do to release herdaughter from that damning situation without the knowledge of theservants? She dared not even summon a locksmith, for locksmith tonguesare free; and who would not shoot out the lip at poor Jeanne, hearingthe miserable story at breakfast-tables to-morrow?

  "You must marry Jeanne, _mon cousin_," cried mamma through thekeyhole.

  "Impossible, _ma cousine_. You know I am _fiance_," laughedhe.

  Nevertheless he did!

  For when papa heard that Jeanne had remained two whole hours shut upwith Cousin Pierre in a brilliantly-lighted _salon_, with a franticmother at the keyhole and all the servants grinning upon their kneessearching for the missing screws, he added twenty thousand francs to her_dot_ on the spot, and Pierre wrote to his other _fiancee_ that he had"changed his intentions."

  "Mamma's _tapage_ was too funny," laughed Madame Pierre, telling methis story herself. "Pierre and I laughed well on our side of the door,although we were careful not to let maman hear us. For we had often beenalone together before when _nobody knew it_."

  Which makes all the difference in the world in our ville, as well aselsewhere.

  Pierre's funny experience did not end with his betrothal. In relatingthe adventure which follows, I wish it distinctly to be understood thatI do it in all respect, admiration, and reverence for the Church whichis the mother of all Churches calling themselves Christian. The HolyRoman Catholic Church is no less holy that her servants are so oftenbase and vile and that her livery is so often stolen to serve evil in.What wickedness and hypocrisy have we not in our own Protestant clergy,and without even the tremendous excuse for it which the conditions ofEuropean society give for the occasional levity of its priesthood! InFrance the Church is a recognized profession, to which parents destineand for which they educate their sons without waiting for them toexhibit any special bias toward a religious life. In spite ofthemselves, many young men are even forced into the priesthood, not onlyby strong family influence, but through having been educated so as to beabsolutely unfitted for any other walk of life. With us the priesthoodis a matter of deliberate and perfectly voluntary choice, and he whowears it as a cloak is ten thousand times the hypocrite his Catholicbrother is.

  It happened that our _cure_ of Saint-Etienne was a jolly goodfellow, somewhat given to wine-bibbing, and much given to Rabelaisianstories. He was also hail-fellow-well-met with Pierre, and Pierre, likemost of the young men of France, prided himself upon his entire freedomfrom the "superstitious." Pere Duhaut lived by teaching and preaching.

  In France the church sacrament of marriage cannot be performed unlessboth the contracting parties furnish certificates of having madeconfession within three weeks. To secure his certificate it would benecessary for Pierre to confess to the _cure_ of Saint-Etienne,Pere Duhaut.

  "_I_ confess to Duhaut!" he laughed in our house. "I'llbe--what's-his-named first. Old Duhaut might as well confess to me. Ishall simply give him six francs and get my certificate without any moreado, just as the other fellows get theirs."

  That very afternoon Pere Duhaut took tea with us, and Emile was meanenough to betray Pierre's intentions.

  "We'll see," said our _cure_.

  The next day Pierre passed our windows. He bowed gayly, and called upthat he was going for his six francs' worth of ante-nuptial absolution.An hour later he passed again, but he did not look up. In the eveningPere Duhaut came, bursting with laughter.

  "Ask Pierre how he got his certificate," he guffawed. Then he told usthe story. Pierre, it seems, had offered the six francs, which offer theconfessor had rejected with scorn.

  "In to the confessional," he cried, "and make your confession like apenitent!"

  "I'll make it fifteen," grinned Pierre.

  "Not for a thousand. In! _in_!"

  "Come, now, Duhaut, this is all humbug. You know I'm not penitent, andI'll be---- if I'll confess to you."

  Without more words, the burly priest seized the recalcitrant and grabbedhim by the neck, trying to force him into the confession-box. Pierreresisted, and, as the _cure_ told us bursting with laughter, thetwo wrestled and waltzed half around the church. Finally Pierre wasbrought to his knees.

  "_Eh bien, allez_! What am I to confess?" he grumbled.

  "Every sin you have committed since your last confession."

  How malicious was Pere Duhaut in this! for he knew Pierre had not keptthe observances of the Church since he left home at seventeen, and hadnot been an anchorite either.

  "I'll make it an even hundred," begged the now exasperated yet humbledPierre. "Come, now, do be reasonable; that's a jolly old boy."

  "Confess! confess!" roared the confessor, dealing the kneelingimpenitent a sounding cuff on the ear.

  "Ask Pierre how he got his certificate," roared Pere Duhaut."_Demandez-lui! Demandez-lui!_"

  But we never did.

  Until his grave received him, only a few weeks ago, a marked characterof our ville was a stooping old man, of a ghastly paleness, notedthrough all the region for avarice and for speaking every one of hismany languages each with worse accent than the other. His Spanishsounded like German, his German had the strongest possible Americanaccent, his English was vividly Teutonic, and after forty years ofmarriage his Norman wife never ceased to mock at his atrociously-mouthedFrench. He was wine-merchant and banker combined, and, though his socialposition was among the best in our bourgeoise ville, all the worldsmiled with the knowledge that the rich old _banquier_, whose nosehad a strong Hebraic curve, delivered his own merchandise at night fromunder his long coat, in order to escape the tax on every bottle of winetransported from one domicile to another.

  The stately gate-post of "Pere S----'s
" pretentious and philistinemansion is decorated with the coats-of-arms of several nations.England's is there, Germany's, Spain's, Portugal's, as well as our ownEagle; while upon days when our own exiled hearts beat most proudly--4thof July and 22d of February--our star-spangled banner floats from hisroof-top as well as from our own, the only two, of course, in our ville.Our ville, so important to us, has scarcely an existence for our homegovernment, and administrative changes there float over us like cloudsof heaven, without touching us in their changefulness. Thus Pere S----,though so courteous and cordial to Americans, has been long yearsforgotten at Washington, whence every living servitor of theadministration that appointed him our consul here has long since passedaway forever. He was born in Pennsylvania, of German parents, nearlyeighty years ago. He received his appointment in 1837, and held itthrough fourteen administrations since Van Buren, without ever returningto America, till he faded away one little month ago and was buried inthe parish cemetery of Saint-Leonard by a Lutheran pastor brought overfor the occasion from Havre. No church-bells tolled for his death, andthe street-children did not go on their way singing, as they always do,to the sound of funeral bells.

  "_Viens, corps, ta fosse t'attend!_" for Pere S---- was a heretic,and could not have slept in consecrated ground had he died before theRepublique Francaise removed religious restrictions from allburial-places. All the consular corps in all the region round aboutfollowed the old man to his long home, all our public buildings hungtheir flags half-mast high, all our little world told queer stories ofthe dead old man. But our own hearts grew tender with thoughts of thislife finished at fourscore years with its longing of almost half acentury unfulfilled. "Philip Nolan" we often called the old man, whosometimes said to us, with yearning, pathetic voice,--

  "I am an American; I am here only till I make my fortune. When I am richenough I shall go _Home_. I shall die and be buried at Home,--whenI am rich enough."

  Temperament is Fate. Pere S----'s temperament of Harpagon fated him todie as he had lived,--a man without a country.

  MARGARET BERTHA WRIGHT.