Monsieur Bergeret in Paris. Anatole France
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their childhood in one of the houses in this street. Their father, a professor at the University, had settled there in 1856, after having led for four years a wandering and precarious existence, ceaselessly hunted from town to town by an inimical Minister of Instruction. And, as witnessed the battered notice-board, the very flat in which Lucien and Zoe had first seen the light of day, and tasted the savour of life, was now to let.
As they passed down the path which led under the massive forefront of the building, they experienced an inexplicable feeling of melancholy and reverence. The damp courtyard was hemmed in by walls which since the minority of Louis XIV had slowly been crumbling in the rains and the fogs rising from the Seine. On the right as they entered was a small building, which served as a porter’s lodge. There, on the window-sill, a magpie hopped about in a cage, and in the lodge, behind a flowering plant, a woman sat sewing.
“Is the second floor on the courtyard to let?”
“Yes, do you wish to see it?”
“Yes, we should like to see it.”
Key in hand, the concierge led the way. They followed her in silence. The gloomy antiquity of the house caused the memories which the blackened stones evoked for the brother and sister to recede into an unfathomable past. They climbed the stone stairs in a state of sorrowful eagerness, and when the concierge opened the door of the flat they remained motionless upon the landing, afraid to enter the rooms that seemed to be haunted by the host of their childish memories, like so many little ghosts.
“You can go in; the flat is empty.”
At first they could find nothing of the past in the wide empty rooms, freshly papered. They were amazed to find that they had become strangers to things which had formerly been so familiar.
“Here is the kitchen,” said the concierge, “and here are the dining-room and the drawing-room.”
A voice cried from the courtyard:
“M’ame Falempin!”
The concierge looked out of the window, apologized, and grumbling to herself went down the stairs with feeble steps, groaning. Then the brother and sister began to remember. Memories of inimitable hours, of the long days of childhood, began to return to them.
“Here is the dining-room,” said Zoe. “The sideboard used to be there, against the wall.”
“The mahogany sideboard, ‘battered by its long wanderings,’ as our father used to say, when he and his family and his furniture were ceaselessly hunted from north to south and from east to west by the Minister of the 2nd of December. It remained here a few years, however, maimed and crippled.”
“There is the porcelain stove in its old corner.”
“The flue is different.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes, Zoe. Ours had a head of Jupiter Trophonius upon it. In those far-off days it was the custom of the stove-makers in the Cour du Dragon to decorate porcelain flues with a head of Jupiter Trophonius.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure. Don’t you remember a crowned head with a pointed beard?”
“No.”
“Oh, well that is not surprising; you were always indifferent to the shapes of things. You don’t look at anything.”
“I am more observant than you, my poor Lucien; it is you who never notice things. The other day, when Pauline had waved her hair, you didn’t notice it. If it were not for me——”
She did not finish her sentence, but peered about the empty room with her green eyes and sharp nose.
“Over there in that corner near the window, Mademoiselle Verpie used to sit with her feet on her foot-warmer. Saturday was the sewing-woman’s day, and Mademoiselle Verpie never missed a Saturday.”
“Mademoiselle Verpie,” said Lucien with a sigh: “how old would she be to-day? She was getting on in life when we were children. She used to tell a story about a box of matches. I have always remembered that story and can repeat it now word for word just as she used to tell it. ‘It was when they were placing the statues on the Pont des Saints-Pères. It was so cold that my fingers were quite numb. Coming back from doing my marketing, I was watching the workmen. There was a whole crowd of people waiting to see how they would lift such heavy statues. I had my basket on my arm. A well-dressed gentleman said to me, “Mademoiselle, you are on fire.” Then I smelt a smell of sulphur and saw smoke pouring out of my basket. My threepenny box of matches had caught fire.’ That was how Mademoiselle Verpie related the adventure,” added Monsieur Bergeret. “She often used to tell us of it. Probably it was the greatest adventure of her life.”
“You’ve forgotten an important part of the story, Lucien. These were Mademoiselle Verpie’s exact words: ‘A well-dressed gentleman said to me, “Mademoiselle, you are on fire.” I answered “Go away and leave me alone.” “Just as you like, Mademoiselle.” Then I smelt a smell of sulphur.’ ”
“You are quite right, Zoe. I was mutilating the text and omitted an important passage. By her reply, Mademoiselle Verpie, who was hump-backed, showed that she was a virtuous woman. It is a point that one should bear in mind. I seem to recollect, too, that she was very easily shocked.”
“Our poor mother,” said Zoe, “had a mania for mending. What an amount of darning used to be done!”
“Yes, she was fond of her needle. But what I thought so charming was that before she sat down to her sewing she always placed a pot of wallflowers or daisies or a dish of fruit and green leaves on the table before her just where the light caught it. She used to say that rosy apples were as pretty as roses. I never met anyone who appreciated as she did the beauty of a peach or a bunch of grapes. When she went to see the Chardins at the Louvre, she knew by instinct that they were good pictures, but she could not help feeling that she preferred her own groups. With what conviction she would say to me: ‘Look, Lucien, have you ever seen anything so beautiful as this feather from a pigeon’s wing?’ I think no one ever loved nature more simply and frankly than she.”
“Poor Mother,” sighed Zoe, “and in spite of that her taste in dress was dreadful. One day she chose a blue dress for me at the Petit-Saint-Thomas. It was called electric blue, and it was terrible. That frock was the burden of my childish days.”
“You were never fond of dress, you.”
“You think so, do you? Well, you are mistaken. I should have loved to have pretty dresses, but the elder sister had to go short because little Lucien needed tunics. It couldn’t be helped.”
They passed into a narrow room, more like a passage.
“This was Father’s study,” said Zoe.
“Hasn’t it been cut in two by a partition? I thought it was much larger than this.”
“No, it was always the same as it is now. His writing-desk was there, and above it hung the portrait of Monsieur Victor Leclerc. Why haven’t you kept that engraving, Lucien?”
“What! do you mean to say that this narrow room held his motley crowd of books and contained whole nations of poets, orators and historians? When I was a child I used to listen to the silent eloquence that filled my ears with a buzz of glory. No doubt the presence of such an assembly pressed back the walls. I certainly remember it as a spacious room.”
“It was very overcrowded. He would never let us tidy anything in his study.”
“So it was here that our father used to work, seated in his old red arm-chair with his cat Zobeide on a cushion at his feet. Here it was that he used to look at us with the same slow smile that he never lost all through his illness, even up to the very last. I saw him smile gently at death itself, as he had smiled at life.”
“You are mistaken in that, Lucien. Father did not know he was going to die.”
Monsieur Bergeret did not speak for