The Immortal.
by Alphonse Daudet.
CHAPTER I.
In the 1880 edition of Men of the Day, under the heading _Astier-Rehu_, may be read the following notice:--
Astier, commonly called Astier-Rehu (Pierre Alexandre Leonard), Member of the Academie Francaise, was born in 1816 at Sauvagnat (Puy-de-Dome).
His parents belonged to the cla.s.s of small farmers. He displayed from his earliest years a remarkable apt.i.tude for the study of history. His education, begun at Riom and continued at Louis-le-Grand, where he was afterwards to re-appear as professor, was more sound than is now fashionable, and secured his admission to the Ecole Normale Superieure, from which he went to the Chair of History at the Lycee of Mende. It was here that he wrote the Essay on Marcus Aurelius, crowned by the Academie Francaise. Called to Paris the following year by M. de Salvandy, the young and brilliant professor showed his sense of the discerning favour extended to him by publishing, in rapid succession, The Great Ministers of Louis XIV. (crowned by the Academie Francaise), Bonaparte and the Concordat (crowned by the Academie Francaise), and the admirable Introduction to the History of the House of Orleans, a magnificent prologue to the work which was to occupy twenty years of his life. This time the Academie, having no more crowns to offer him, gave him a seat among its members. He could scarcely be called a stranger there, having married Mlle. Rehu, daughter of the lamented Paulin Rehu, the celebrated architect, member of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and granddaughter of the highly respected Jean Rehu, the father of the Academie Francaise, the elegant translator of Ovid and author of the Letters to Urania, whose hale old age is the miracle of the Inst.i.tute. By his friend and colleague M. Thiers Leonard Astier-Rehu was called to the post of Keeper of the Archives of Foreign Affairs.
It is well known that, with a n.o.ble disregard of his interests, he resigned, some years later (1878), rather than that the impartial pen of history should stoop to the demands of our present rulers. But deprived of his beloved archives, the author has turned his leisure to good account. In two years he has given us the last three volumes of his history, and announces shortly New Lights on Galileo, based upon doc.u.ments extremely curious and absolutely unpublished. All the works of Astier-Rehu may be had of Pet.i.t-Sequard, Bookseller to the Academie.
As the publisher of this book of reference entrusts to each person concerned the task of telling his own story, no doubt can possibly be thrown upon the authenticity of these biographical notes. But why must it be a.s.serted that Leonard Astier-Rehu resigned his post as Keeper of the Archives? Every one knows that he was dismissed, sent away with no more ceremony than a hackney-cabman, because of an imprudent phrase let slip by the historian of the House of Orleans, vol. v. p. 327: "Then, as to-day, France, overwhelmed by the flood of demagogy, etc." Who can see the end of a metaphor? His salary of five hundred pounds a year, his rooms in the Quai d"Orsay (with coals and gas) and, besides, that wonderful treasure of historic doc.u.ments, which had supplied the sap of his books, all this had been carried away from him by this unlucky "flood," all by his own flood! The poor man could not get over it. Even after the lapse of two years, regret for the ease and the honours of his office gnawed at his heart, and gnawed with a sharper tooth on certain dates, certain days of the month or the week, and above all on "Teyssedre"s Wednesdays." Teyssedre was the man who polished the floors.
He came to the Astiers" regularly every Wednesday. On the afternoon of that day Madame Astier was at home to her friends in her husband"s study, this being the only presentable apartment of their third floor in the Rue de Beaune, the remains of a grand house, terribly inconvenient in spite of its magnificent ceiling. The disturbance caused to the ill.u.s.trious historian by this "Wednesday," recurring every week and interrupting his industrious and methodical labours, may easily be conceived. He had come to hate the rubber of floor, a man from his own country, with a face as yellow, close, and hard as his own cake of beeswax. He hated Teyssedre, who, proud of coming from Riom, while "Meuchieu Achtier came only from Chauvagnat," had no scruple in pushing about the heavy table covered with pamphlets, notes, and reports, and hunted the ill.u.s.trious victim from room to room till he was driven to seek refuge in a kind of pigeon-hole over the study, where, though not a big man, he must sit for want of room to get up. This lumber-closet, which was furnished with an old damask chair, an aged card-table and a stand of drawers, looked out on the courtyard through the upper circle of the great window belonging to the room below. Through this opening, much resembling the low gla.s.s door of an orangery, the travailing historian might be seen from head to foot, miserably doubled up like Cardinal La Balue in his cage. It was here that he was sitting one morning with his eyes upon an ancient scrawl, having been already expelled from the lower room by the bang-bang-bang of Teyssedre, when he heard the sound of the front door bell.
"Is that you, f.a.ge?" asked the Academician in his deep and resonant ba.s.s.
"No, _Meuchieu Achtier_. It is the young gentleman."
On Wednesday mornings the polisher opened the door, because Corentine was dressing her mistress.
"How"s _The Master?_" cried Paul Astier, hurrying by to his mother"s room. The Academician did not answer. His son"s habit of using ironically a t.i.tle generally bestowed upon him as a compliment was always offensive to him.
"M. f.a.ge is to be shown up as soon as he comes," he said, not addressing himself directly to the polisher.
"Yes, _Meuchieu Achtier_." And the bang-bang-bang began again.
"Good morning, mamma."
"Why, it"s Paul! Come in. Mind the folds, Corentine."
Madame Astier was putting on a skirt before the looking-gla.s.s. She was tall, slender, and still good-looking in spite of her worn features and her too delicate skin. She did not move, but held out to him a cheek with a velvet surface of powder. He touched it with his fair pointed beard. The son was as little demonstrative as the mother.
"Will M. Paul stay to breakfast?" asked Corentine. She was a stout countrywoman of an oily complexion, pitted with smallpox. She was sitting on the carpet like a shepherdess in the fields, and was about to repair, at the hem of the skirt, her mistress"s old black dress.
Her tone and her att.i.tude showed the objectionable familiarity of the under-paid maid-of-all-work.
No, Paul would not stay to breakfast. He was expected elsewhere. He had his buggy below; he had only come to say a word to his mother.
"Your new English cart? Let me look," said Madame Astier. She went to the open window, and parted the Venetian blinds, on which the bright May sunlight lay in stripes, just far enough to see the neat little vehicle, shining with new leather and polished pinewood, and the servant in spotless livery standing at the horse"s head.
"Oh, ma"am, how beautiful!" murmured Coren-tine, who was also at the window. "How nice M. Paul must look in it!"
The mother"s face shone. But windows were opening opposite, and people were stopping before the equipage, which was creating quite a sensation at this end of the Rue de Beaune. Madame Astier sent away the servant, seated herself on the edge of a folding-chair, and finished mending her skirt for herself, while she waited for what her son had to say to her, not without a suspicion what it would be, though her attention seemed to be absorbed in her sewing. Paul Astier was equally silent. He leaned back in an arm-chair and played with an ivory fan, an old thing which he had known for his mother"s ever since he was born. Seen thus, the likeness between them was striking; the same Creole skin, pink over a delicate duskiness, the same supple figure, the same impenetrable grey eye, and in both faces a slight defect hardly to be noticed; the finely-cut nose was a little out of line, giving an expression of slyness, of something not to be trusted. While each watched and waited for the other, the pause was filled by the distant brushing of Teyssedre.
"Rather good, that," said Paul.
His mother looked up. "What is rather good?"
He raised the fan and pointed, like an artist, at the bare arms and the line of the falling shoulders under the fine cambric bodice. She began to laugh.
"Yes, but look here." She pointed to her long neck, where the fine wrinkles marked her age. "But after all,"... you have the good looks, so what does it matter? Such was her thought, but she did not express it.
A brilliant talker, perfectly trained in the fibs and commonplaces of society, a perfect adept in expression and suggestion, she was left without words for the only real feeling which she had ever experienced.
And indeed she really was not one of those women who cannot make up their minds to grow old. Long before the hour of curfew--though indeed there had perhaps never been much fire in her to put out--all her coquetry, all her feminine eagerness to captivate and charm, all her aspirations towards fame or fashion or social success had been transferred to the account of her son, this tall, good-looking young fellow in the correct attire of the modern artist, with his slight beard and close-cut hair, who showed in mien and bearing that soldierly grace which our young men of the day get from their service as volunteers.
"Is your first floor let?" asked the mother at last.
"Let! let! Not a sign of it! All the bills and advertis.e.m.e.nts no go!
"I don"t know what is the matter with them; but they don"t come," as Vedrine said at his private exhibition."
He laughed quietly, at an inward vision of Vedrine among his enamels and his sculptures, calm, proud, and self-a.s.sured, wondering without anger at the non-appearance of the public. But Madame Astier did not laugh.
That splendid first floor empty for the last two years! In the Rue Fortuny! A magnificent situation--a house in the style of Louis XII.--a house built by her son! Why, what did people want? The same people, doubtless, who did not go to Vedrine. Biting off the thread with which she had been sewing, she said:
"And it is worth taking, too!"
"Quite; but it would want money to keep it up."
The people at the Credit Foncier would not be satisfied. And the contractors were upon him--four hundred pounds for carpenter"s work due at the end of the month, and he hadn"t a penny of it.
The mother, who was putting on the bodice of her dress before the looking-gla.s.s, grew pale and saw that she did so. It was the shiver that you feel in a duel, when your adversary raises his pistol to take aim.
"You have had the money for the restorations at Mousseaux?"
"Mousseaux! Long ago."
"And the Rosen tomb?"
"Can"t get on. Vedrine still at his statue."
"Yes, and why must you have Vedrine? Your father warned you against him."
"Oh, I know. They can"t bear him at the Inst.i.tute."
He rose and walked about the room.
"You know me, come. I am a practical man. If I took him and not some one else to do my statue, you may suppose that I had a reason." Then suddenly, turning to his mother:
"You could not let me have four hundred pounds, I suppose?" She had been waiting for this ever since he came in; he never came to see her for anything else.
"Four hundred pounds? How can you think----" She said no more; but the pained expression of her mouth and eyes said clearly enough:
"You know that I have given you everything--that I am dressed in clothes fit for the rag-bag--that I have not bought a bonnet for three years--that Corentine washes my linen in the kitchen because I should blush to give such rubbish to the laundress; and you know also that my worst misery is to refuse what you ask. Then why do you ask?" And this mute address of his mother"s was so eloquent that Paul Astier answered it aloud:
"Of course I was not thinking of your having it yourself. By Jove, if you had, it would be the better for me. But," he continued, in his cool, off hand way, "there is _The Master_ up there. Could you get it from him? You might. You know how to get hold of him."
"That is over. There is an end of that."
"Well, but, you know, he works; his books sell; you spend nothing."
He looked round in the subdued light at the reduced state of the old furniture, the worn curtains, the threadbare carpet, nothing of later date than their marriage thirty years ago. Where was it then that all the money went?