I bowed my head and sat there stupefied, unable to answer either yes or no to the crier, who called to me:
"Six thousand five hundred, by me--not by you on the right there!--it is my bid--no mistake! Six thousand five hundred!"
"Perfectly understood!" declared the auctioneer. "Six thousand five hundred. Perfectly clear; perfectly plain.... Any more bids? The last bid is six thousand five hundred francs."
A solemn silence prevailed. Suddenly I felt as if my head had burst open. It was the hammer of the officiant, who, with a loud blow on the platform, adjudged No. 42 irrevocably to Signor Polizzi. Forthwith the pen of the clerk, coursing over the papier-timbre, registered that great fact in a single line.
I was absolutely prostrated, and I felt the utmost need of rest and quiet. Nevertheless, I did not leave my seat. My powers of reflection slowly returned. Hope is tenacious. I had one more hope. It occurred to me that the new owner of the "Legende Doree" might be some intelligent and liberal bibliophile who would allow me to examine the MS., and perhaps even to publish the more important parts. And, with this idea, as soon as the sale was over I approached the expert as he was leaving the platform.
"Monsieur," I asked him, "did you buy in No. 42 on your own account, or on commission?"
"On commission. I was instructed not to let it go at any price."
"Can you tell me the name of the purchaser?"
"Monsieur, I regret that I cannot serve you in that respect. I have been strictly forbidden to mention the name."
I went home in despair.
December 30, 1859.
"Therese! don"t you hear the bell? Somebody has been ringing at the door for the last quarter of an hour?"
Therese does not answer. She is chattering downstairs with the concierge, for sure. So that is the way you observe your old master"s birthday? You desert me even on the eve of Saint-Sylvestre! Alas! if I am to hear any kind wishes to-day, they must come up from the ground; for all who love me have long been buried. I really don"t know what I am still living for. There is the bell again!... I get up slowly from my seat at the fire, with my shoulders still bent from stooping over it, and go to the door myself. Whom do I see at the threshold? It is not a dripping love, and I am not an old Anacreon; but it is a very pretty little boy of about ten years old. He is alone; he raises his face to look at me. His cheeks are blushing; but his little pert nose gives one an idea of mischievous pleasantry. He has feathers in his cap, and a great lace-ruff on his jacket. The pretty little fellow! He holds in both arms a bundle as big as himself, and asks me if I am Monsieur Sylvestre Bonnard. I tell him yes; he gives me the bundle, tells me his mamma sent it to me, and then he runs downstairs.
I go down a few steps; I lean over the bal.u.s.trade, and see the little cap whirling down the spiral of the stairway like a feather in the wind.
"Good-bye, my little boy!" I should have liked so much to question him.
But what, after all, could I have asked? It is not polite to question children. Besides, the package itself will probably give me more information than the messenger could.
It is a very big bundle, but not very heavy. I take it into my library, and there untie the ribbons and unfasten the paper wrappings; and I see--what? a log! a first-cla.s.s log! a real Christmas log, but so light that I know it must be hollow. Then I find that it is indeed composed of two separate pieces, opening on hinges, and fastened with hooks. I slip the hooks back, and find myself inundated with violets! Violets! they pour over my table, over my knees, over the carpet. They tumble into my vest, into my sleeves. I am all perfumed with them.
"Therese! Therese! fill me some vases with water, and bring them here, quick! Here are violets sent to us I know not from what country nor by what hand; but it must be from a perfumed country, and by a very gracious hand.... Do you hear me, old crow?"
I have put all the violets on my table--now completely covered by the odorous ma.s.s. But there is still something in the log...a book--a ma.n.u.script. It is...I cannot believe it, and yet I cannot doubt it....
It is the "Legende Doree"!--It is the ma.n.u.script of the Clerk Alexander!
Here is the "Purification of the Virgin" and the "Coronation of Proserpine";--here is the legend of Saint Droctoveus. I contemplate this violet-perfumed relic. I turn the leaves of it--between which the dark rich blossoms have slipped in here and there; and, right opposite the legend of Saint-Cecilia, I find a card bearing this name:
"Princess Trepof."
Princess Trepof!--you who laughed and wept by turns so sweetly under the fair sky of Agrigentum!--you, whom a cross old man believed to be only a foolish little woman!--to-day I am convinced of your rare and beautiful folly; and the old fellow whom you now overwhelm with happiness will go to kiss your hand, and give you back, in another form, this precious ma.n.u.script, of which both he and science owe you an exact and sumptuous publication!
Therese entered my study just at that moment; she seemed to be very much excited.
"Monsieur!" she cried, "guess whom I saw just now in a carriage, with a coat-of-arms painted on it, that was stopping before the door?"
"Parbleu!--Madame Trepof," I exclaimed.
"I don"t know anything about any Madame Trepof," answered my housekeeper. "The woman I saw just now was dressed like a d.u.c.h.ess, and had a little boy with her, with lace-frills all along the seams of his clothes. And it was that same little Madame Coccoz you once sent a log to, when she was lying-in here about eleven years ago. I recognized her at once."
"What!" I exclaimed, "you mean to say it was Madame Coccoz, the widow of the almanac-peddler?"
"Herself, Monsieur! The carriage-door was open for a minute to let her little boy, who had just come from I don"t know where, get in.
She hasn"t changed scarcely at all. Well, why should those women change?--they never worry themselves about anything. Only the Coccoz woman looks a little fatter than she used to be. And the idea of a woman that was taken in here out of pure charity coming to show off her velvets and diamonds in a carriage with a crest painted on it! Isn"t it shameful!"
"Therese!" I cried, in a terrible voice, "if you ever speak to me again about that lady except in terms of the deepest respect, you and I will fall out!...Bring me the Sevres vases to put those violets in, which now give the City of Books a charm it never had before."
While Therese went off with a sigh to get the Sevres vases, I continued to contemplate those beautiful scattered violets, whose odour spread all about me like the perfume of some sweet presence, some charming soul; and I asked myself how it had been possible for me never to recognise Madame Coccoz in the person of the Princess Trepof. But that vision of the young widow, showing me her little child on the stairs, had been a very rapid one. I had much more reason to reproach myself for having pa.s.sed by a gracious and lovely soul without knowing it.
"Bonnard," I said to myself, "thou knowest how to decipher old texts; but thou dost not know how to read in the Book of Life. That giddy little Madame Trepof, whom thou once believed to possess no more soul than a bird, has expended, in pure grat.i.tude, more zeal and finer tact than thou didst ever show for anybody"s sake. Right royally hath she repaid thee for the log-fire of her churching-day!
"Therese! Awhile ago you were a magpie; now you are becoming a tortoise!
Come and give some water to these Parmese violets."
PART II--THE DAUGHTER OF CLEMENTINE
Chapter I--The Fairy
When I left the train at the Melun station, night had already spread its peace over the silent country. The soil, heated through all the long day by a strong sun--by a "gros soleil," as the harvesters of the Val de Vire say--still exhaled a warm heavy smell. Lush dense odours of gra.s.s pa.s.sed over the level of the fields. I brushed away the dust of the railway carriage, and joyfully inhaled the pure air. My travelling-bag--filled by my housekeeper wit linen and various small toilet articles, munditiis, seemed so light in my hand that I swung it about just as a schoolboy swings his strapped package of rudimentary books when the cla.s.s is let out.
Would to Heaven that I were again a little urchin at school! But it is fully fifty years since my good dead mother made me some tartines of bread and preserves, and placed them in a basket of which she slipped the handle over my arm, and then led me, thus prepared, to the school kept by Monsieur Douloir, at a corner of the Pa.s.sage du Commerce well known to the sparrows, between a court and a garden. The enormous Monsieur Douloir smiled upon us genially, and patted my cheek to show, no doubt, the affectionate interest which my first appearance had inspired. But when my mother had pa.s.sed out of the court, startling the sparrows as she went, Monsieur Douloir ceased to smile--he showed no more affectionate interest; he appeared, on the contrary, to consider me as a very troublesome little fellow. I discovered, later on, that he entertained the same feelings towards all his pupils. He distributed whacks of his ferule with an agility no one could have expected on the part of so corpulent a person. But his first aspect of tender interest invariably reappeared when he spoke to any of our mothers in our presence; and always at such times, while warmly praising our remarkable apt.i.tudes, he would cast down upon us a look of intense affection.
Still, those were happy days which I pa.s.sed on the benches of the Monsieur Couloir with my little playfellows, who, like myself, cried and laughed by turns with all their might, from morning till evening.
After a whole half-century these souvenirs float up again, fresh and bright as ever, to the surface of memory, under this starry sky, whose face has in no wise changed since then, and whose serene and immutable lights will doubtless see many other schoolboys such as I was slowly turn into grey-headed servants, afflicted with catarrh.
Stars, who have shown down upon each wise or foolish head among all my forgotten ancestors, it is under your soft light that I now feel stir within me a certain poignant regret! I would that I could have a son who might be able to see you when I shall see you no more. How I should love him! Ah! such a son would--what am I saying?--why, he would be no just twenty years old if you had only been willing, Clementine--you whose cheeks used to look so ruddy under your pink hood! But you are married to that young bank clerk, Noel Alexandre, who made so many millions afterwards! I never met you again after your marriage, Clementine, but I can see you now, with your bright curls and your pink hood.
A looking-gla.s.s! a looking-gla.s.s! a looking-gla.s.s! Really, it would be curious to see what I look like now, with my white hair, sighing Clementine"s name to the stars! Still, it is not right to end with sterile irony the thought begun in the spirit of faith and love. No, Clementine, if your name came to my lips by chance this beautiful night, be it for ever blessed, your dear name! and may you ever, as a happy mother, a happy grandmother, enjoy to the very end of life with your rich husband the utmost degree of that happiness which you had the right to believe you could not win with the poor young scholar who loved you!
If--though I cannot even now imagine it--if your beautiful hair has become white, Clementine, bear worthily the bundle of keys confided to you by Noel Alexandre, and impart to your grandchildren the knowledge of all domestic virtues!
Ah! beautiful Night! She rules, with such n.o.ble repose, over men and animals alike, kindly loosed by her from the yoke of daily toil; and even I feel her beneficent influence, although my habits of sixty years have so changed me that I can feel most things only through the signs which represent them. My world is wholly formed of words--so much of a philologist I have become! Each one dreams the dream of life in his own way. I have dreamed it in my library; and when the hour shall come in which I must leave this world, may it please G.o.d to take me from my ladder--from before my shelves of books!...
"Well, well! it is really himself, pardieu! How are you, Monsieur Sylvestre Bonnard? And where have you been travelling to all this time, over the country, while I was waiting for you at the station with my cabriolet? You missed me when the train came in, and I was driving back, quite disappointed, to Lusance. Give me your valise, and get up here beside me in the carriage. Why, do you know it is fully seven kilometres from here to the chateau?"
Who addresses me thus, at the very top of his voice from the height of his cabriolet? Monsieur Paul de Gabry, nephew and heir of Monsieur Honore de Gabry, peer of France in 1842, who recently died at Monaco.
And it was precisely to Monsieur Paul de Gabry"s house that I was going with that valise of mine, so carefully strapped by my housekeeper.
This excellent young man has just inherited, conjointly with his two brothers-in-law, the property of his uncle, who, belonging to a very ancient family of distinguished lawyers, had acc.u.mulated in his chateau at Lusance a library rich in MSS., some dating back to the fourteenth century. It was for the purpose of making an inventory and catalogue of these MSS. that I had come to Lusance at the urgent request of Monsieur Paul de Gabry, whose father, a perfect gentleman and distinguished bibliophile, had maintained the most pleasant relations with me during his lifetime. To tell the truth, Monsieur Paul has not inherited the fine tastes of his father. Monsieur Paul likes sporting; he is a great authority on horses and dogs; and I much fear that of all the sciences capable of satisfying or of duping the inexhaustible curiosity of mankind, those of the stable and the dog-kennel are the only ones thoroughly mastered by him.