Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885. Various
Читать онлайн книгу.
expected to lose nothing by what they gave me. Mademoiselle herself often said, 'Désirée, walk a few steps behind me, and, while I keep my eyes upon the pavement, tell me all the young men who turn to look after me. If you hear any of them say, "Comme elle est jolie!" (How pretty she is!) you shall have my batiste mouchoirs.'"
On Sunday afternoons all the bourgeois world of our ville disports itself upon the jetty. Not only then do all the mothers of the town with daughters "to marry" bring those daughters to the weekly matrimonial mart, but many of the mothers and chaperons of the near country round about come in from rural propriété and rustic chalet to exhibit their candidates. The method of procedure is eminently French, of course, and eminently naïve, as even the intrigues and machinations of Balzac's bourgeoisie, although intended as marvels of finesse, seem so often naïveté itself to our blunter and less-plotting minds. The mothers and daughters, or chaperons and charges, walk slowly arm in arm up and down one side the jetty, facing the counter-current of young men and men not young who have not lost interest in feminine attractions. Back and forth, back and forth, for hours, move the two separate streams, never for one instant commingling, each discussing the other's prospects, characters, appearance, and, above all, dots and rentes, till twilight falls and all the world goes home to dinner.
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. He stopped at the Cheval Blanc, and in conversation with mine host inquired if it might chance that some café-keeper in the town desired to sell his café and marry his daughter. Monsieur Brissom mentioned to him our café-keepers blessed with marriageable daughters, and "Commy" made the rounds among them, announcing that he had a son whom he wished to marry to some charming demoiselle doted with a café. One of the café-keepers had "précisément votre affaire." It was arranged that Mademoiselle Clothilde should be promenaded by her mother the next Sunday on the jetty, where the young man should join the counter-current, and thus each take observations of the other.
As said, so done. Monsieur Henri and Mademoiselle Clothilde declared themselves enchanted with each other.
"Très-bien," said the reflective parents. "Now fall in love as fast as ever you please."
Monsieur and mademoiselle not only "fell," but plunged.
Two weeks afterward, however, the papas fell out. Cafétier exacted more than Commis could promise, and Commis declared Mademoiselle Clothilde pas grand' chose: her eyebrows were too white, and her toes turned in.
The marriage was declared "off," and the young people were ordered to fall out of love the quickest possible.
"Too late!" they cried.
"You have seen each other but four times."
"Quite 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 absolute power to parents. Mademoiselle would have no dot unless her father chose to give her one, and no French marriage is legal without paternal consent or the almost disgraceful expedient of sommations respectueuses. Mademoiselle threatened to enter a convent. Cafétier assured her that no convent opens cordial doors to dotless girls.
Juliet was ready to defy all the Capulets when she had seen Romeo but once; Corinne was ready to fling all her laurels at Oswald's feet at their second interview; Rosamond Vincy planned her house-furnishing during 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 her undersized, thin-moustached, and very unheroic-looking Henri, having seen him four times?
There was one way out of her troubles,—that to which Alphonse Daudet's and André Theuriet's people gravitate as needles to their pole. She walked one dark midnight upon the jetty alone. Nobody saw the end; but the next Sunday, three weeks to a day from the one when the two had countermarched in matrimonial procession, Mademoiselle Clothilde was laid 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 reproach her mother. "How dare you, who brought him no dot!"
"It is a pity Madame Marais has no more influence in her family," I heard remarked in a social company. "It is a pity, for she is a good woman, and her husband and sons are all going to the bad."
"Yes, it is a pity," answered another; "but, then, what else can she expect? She brought no dot into the family."
Once upon a time a young man made a friendly call upon a family in our ville, he a distant relative of the family. He sat in the salon with mother and daughter, when suddenly the mother was called away a moment. When she returned, not more than two minutes later,—horror! she could not enter the room! In closing the door she had somehow disarranged 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 a locked room with a young man! What a scandal if the story got out in the town! and what could the poor, distracted mamma do to release her daughter from that damning situation without the knowledge of the servants? She dared not even summon a locksmith, for locksmith tongues are free; and who would not shoot out the lip at poor Jeanne, hearing the miserable story at breakfast-tables to-morrow?
"You must marry Jeanne, mon cousin," cried mamma through the keyhole.
"Impossible, ma cousine. You know I am fiancé," laughed he.
Nevertheless he did!
For when papa heard that Jeanne had remained two whole hours shut up with Cousin Pierre in a brilliantly-lighted salon, with a frantic mother at the keyhole and all the servants grinning upon their knees searching for the missing screws, he added twenty thousand francs to her dot on the spot, and Pierre wrote to his other fiancée that he had "changed his intentions."
"Mamma's tapage was too funny," laughed Madame Pierre, telling me this 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 been alone together before when nobody knew it."
Which makes all the difference in the world in our ville, as well as elsewhere.
Pierre's funny experience did not end with his betrothal. In relating the adventure which follows, I wish it distinctly to be understood that I do it in all respect, admiration, and reverence for the Church which is the mother of all Churches calling themselves Christian. The Holy Roman Catholic Church is no less holy that her servants are so often base 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 of European society give for the occasional levity of its priesthood! In France the Church is a recognized profession, to which parents destine and for which they educate their sons without waiting for them to exhibit any special bias toward a religious life. In spite of themselves, many young men are even forced into the priesthood, not only by strong family influence, but through having been educated so as to be absolutely unfitted for any other walk of life. With us the priesthood is a matter of deliberate and perfectly voluntary choice, and he who wears it as a cloak is ten thousand times the hypocrite his Catholic brother is.
It happened that our curé of Saint-Étienne was a jolly good fellow, somewhat given to wine-bibbing, and much given to Rabelaisian stories. He was also hail-fellow-well-met with Pierre, and Pierre, like most of the young men of France, prided himself upon his entire freedom from the "superstitious." Père Duhaut lived by teaching and preaching.
In France the church sacrament of marriage cannot be performed unless both the contracting parties furnish certificates of having made confession within three weeks. To secure his certificate it would be necessary for Pierre to confess to the curé of Saint-Étienne, Père Duhaut.
"I confess to Duhaut!" he laughed in our house. "I'll be—what's-his-named