Pride.
by Eugene Sue.
CHAPTER I.
THE OLD COMMANDER.
Elle avait un vice, l"orgueil, qui lui tenait lieu de toutes les qualites.[A]
[A] She had one fault, pride, which, in her, answered in place of all the virtues.
COMMANDER BERNARD, a resident of Paris, after having served under the Empire in the Marine Corps, and under the Restoration as a lieutenant in the navy, was retired about the year 1830, with the brevet rank of captain.
Honourably mentioned again and again for his daring exploits in the maritime engagements of the East Indian war, and subsequently recognised as one of the bravest soldiers in the Russian campaign, M. Bernard, the most una.s.suming and upright of men, with the kindest heart in the world, lived quietly and frugally upon his modest pension, in a little apartment on one of the least frequented streets of the Batignolles.
An elderly woman, named Madame Barbancon, had kept house for him ten years or more, and, though really very fond of him, led him a rather hard life at times, for the worthy female, who had an extremely high temper and a very despotic disposition, was very fond of reminding her employer that she had sacrificed an enviable social position to serve him.
The real truth was, Madame Barbancon had long acted as a.s.sistant in the establishment of a well-known midwife,--an experience which furnished her with material for an inexhaustible stock of marvellous stories, her great favourite being her adventure with a masked lady who, with her a.s.sistance, had brought a lovely girl baby into the world, a child Madame Barbancon had taken care of for two years, but which had been claimed by a stranger at the expiration of that time.
Four or five years after this memorable event, Madame Barbancon decided to resign her practice and a.s.sume the twofold functions of nurse and housekeeper.
About this time Commander Bernard, who was suffering greatly from the reopening of several old wounds, needed a nurse, and was so well pleased with Madame Barbancon"s skill that he asked her to enter his service.
"You will have a pretty easy time of it, Mother Barbancon," the veteran said to her. "I am not hard to live with, and we shall get along comfortably together."
Madame Barbancon promptly accepted the offer, elevated herself forthwith to the position of Commander Bernard"s _dame de confiance_, and slowly but surely became a veritable servant-mistress. Indeed, seeing the angelic patience with which the commander endured this domestic tyranny, one would have taken the old naval officer for some meek-spirited _rentier_, instead of one of the bravest soldiers of the Empire.
Commander Bernard was pa.s.sionately fond of gardening, and lavished any amount of care and attention upon a little arbour, constructed by his own hands and covered with clematis, hop-vines, and honeysuckle, where he loved to sit after his frugal dinner and smoke his pipe and think of his campaigns and his former companions in arms. This arbour marked the limits of the commander"s landed possessions, for though very small, the garden was divided into two parts. The portion claimed by Madame Barbancon aspired only to be useful; the other, of which the veteran took entire charge, was intended to please the eye only.
The precise boundaries of these two plats of ground had been, and were still, the cause of a quiet but determined struggle between the commander and his housekeeper.
Never did two nations, anxious to extend their frontiers, each at the expense of the other, resort to more trickery or display greater cleverness and perseverance in concealing and maintaining their mutual attempts at invasion.
We must do the commander the justice to say that he fought only for his rights, having no desire to extend, but merely to preserve his territory intact,--territory upon which the bold and insatiable housekeeper was ever trying to encroach by establishing her thyme, savory, parsley, and camomile beds among her employer"s roses, tulips, and peonies.
Another cause of heated controversy between the commander and Madame Barbancon was the implacable hatred the latter felt for Napoleon, whom she had never forgiven for the death of a young soldier,--the only lover she had ever been able to boast of, probably. She carried this rancour so far, in fact, as to style the Emperor that "Corsican ogre," and even to deny him the possession of any military genius, an a.s.severation that amused the veteran immensely.
Nevertheless, in spite of these diverse political sentiments, and the ever recurring and annoying question of the boundaries of the two gardens, Madame Barbancon was, at heart, sincerely devoted to her employer, and attended a.s.siduously to his every want, while the veteran, for his part, would have sorely missed his irascible housekeeper"s care and attentions.
The spring of 1844 was fast drawing to a close. The May verdure was shining in all its freshness; three o"clock in the afternoon had just sounded; and though the day was warm, and the sun"s rays ardent, the pleasant scent of freshly watered earth, combined with the fragrant odour of several small clumps of lilacs and syringas, testified to the faithful care the commander bestowed upon his garden, for from a frequently and laboriously filled wash-tub sunk in the earth, and dignified with the name of reservoir, the veteran had just treated his little domain to a refreshing shower; nor had he, in his generous impartiality, excluded his housekeeper"s vegetable beds and kitchen herbs from the benefits of his ministrations.
The veteran, in his gardening costume of gray linen jacket and big straw hat, was now resting from his labours in the arbour, already nearly covered with a vigorous growth of clematis and honeysuckle. His sunburned features were characterised by an expression of unusual frankness and kindness, though a heavy moustache, as white as his bristling white hair, imparted a decidedly martial air to his physiognomy.
After wiping the sweat from his forehead with a blue checked handkerchief and returning it to his pocket, the veteran picked up his pipe from a table in the arbour, filled and lighted it, then, establishing himself in an old cane-bottomed armchair, began to smoke and enjoy the beauty of the day, the stillness of which was broken only by the occasional twitter of a few birds and the humming of Madame Barbancon, who was engaged in gathering some lettuce and parsley for the supper salad. If the veteran had not been blessed with nerves of steel, his _dolce far niente_ would have been sadly disturbed by the monotonous refrain of the old-fashioned love song ent.i.tled "Poor Jacques," which the worthy woman was murdering in the most atrocious manner.
"Mais a present que je suis loin de toi, Je mange de tout sur la terre,"[B]
she sang in a voice as false as it was nasal, and the lugubrious, heart-broken expression she gave to the words, shaking her head sadly the while, made the whole thing extremely ludicrous.
[B] Instead of "Je manque de tout sur la terre."
For ten years Commander Bernard had endured this travesty without a murmur, and without taking the slightest notice of the ridiculous meaning Madame Barbancon gave to the last line of the chorus.
It is quite possible that to-day the meaning of the words struck him more forcibly, and that a desire to devour everything upon the surface of the earth did not seem to him to be the natural consequence of separation from one"s beloved, for, after having lent an impartial and attentive ear a second time to his housekeeper"s doleful ditty, he exclaimed, laying his pipe on the table:
"What the devil is that nonsense you are singing, Madame Barbancon?"
"It is a very pretty love song called "Poor Jacques,"" snapped Madame Barbancon, straightening herself up. "Every one to his taste, you know, monsieur, and you have a perfect right to make fun of it, if you choose, of course. This isn"t the first time you have heard me sing it, though."
"No, no, you"re quite right about that!" responded the commander, satirically.
"I learned the song," resumed the housekeeper, sighing heavily, "in days--in days--but enough!" she exclaimed, burying her regrets in her capacious bosom. "I sang it, I remember, to that masked lady who came--"
"I"d rather hear the song," hastily exclaimed the veteran, seeing himself threatened with the same tiresome story. "Yes, I much prefer the song to the story. It isn"t so long, but the deuce take me if I understand you when you say:
""Mais a present que je suis loin de toi, Je mange de tout sur la terre.""
"What, monsieur, you don"t understand?"
"No, I don"t."
"It is very plain it seems to me, but soldiers are so unfeeling."
"But think a moment, Mother Barbancon; here is a girl who, in her despair at poor Jacques"s absence, sets about eating everything on the face of the earth."
"Of course, monsieur, any child could understand that."
"But I do not, I must confess."
"What! you can"t understand that this unfortunate young girl is so heart-broken, after her lover"s departure, that she is ready to eat anything and everything--even poison, poor thing! Her life is of so little value to her,--she is so wretched that she doesn"t even know what she is doing, and so eats everything that happens to be within reach--and yet, her misery doesn"t move you in the least."
The veteran listened attentively to this explanation, which did not seem to him so entirely devoid of reason, now, after all.
"Yes, yes, I understand," he responded, nodding his head; "but it is like all love songs--extremely far-fetched."
""Poor Jacques" far-fetched? The idea!" cried Madame Barbancon, indignantly.
""Every one to his taste," as you remarked a moment ago," answered the veteran. "I like our old sea songs very much better. A man knows what he is singing about when he sings them."
And in a voice as powerful as it was discordant, the old captain began to sing:
"Pour aller a Lorient pecher des sardines, Pour aller a Lorient pecher des harengs--"
"Monsieur!" exclaimed Madame Barbancon, interrupting her employer, with a highly incensed and prudish air, for she knew the end of the ditty, "you forget there are ladies present."
"Is that so?" demanded the veteran, straining his neck to see outside of the arbour.