Works of Honore De Balzac, page 1023
“She is quite alone up there!” said Genestas.
“No. One of my herdswomen sleeps in the house,” the doctor answered. “You did not see my farm buildings which lie behind the house. They are hidden by the pine-trees. Oh! she is quite safe. Moreover, there are no mauvais sujets here in the valley; if any come among us by any chance, I send them into the army, where they make excellent solders.”
“Poor girl!” said Genestas.
“Oh! the folk round about do not pity her at all,” said Benassis; “on the other hand, they think her very lucky; but there is this difference between her and the other women: God has given strength to them and weakness to her, and they do not see that.”
The moment that the two horsemen came out upon the road to Grenoble, Benassis stopped with an air of satisfaction; a different view had suddenly opened out before them; he foresaw its effect upon Genestas, and wished to enjoy his surprise. As far as the eye could see, two green walls sixty feet high rose above a road which was rounded like a garden path. The trees had not been cut or trimmed, each one preserved the magnificent palm-branch shape that makes the Lombard poplar one of the grandest of trees; there they stood, a natural monument which a man might well be proud of having reared. The shadow had already reached one side of the road, transforming it into a vast wall of black leaves, but the setting sun shone full upon the other side, which stood out in contrast, for the young leaves at the tips of every branch had been dyed a bright golden hue, and, as the breeze stirred through the waving curtain, it gleamed in the light.
“You must be very happy here!” cried Genestas. “The sight of this must be all pleasure to you.”
“The love of Nature is the only love that does not deceive human hopes. There is no disappointment here,” said the doctor. “Those poplars are ten years old; have you ever seen any that are better grown than these of mine?”
“God is great!” said the soldier, coming to a stand in the middle of the road, of which he saw neither beginning nor end.
“You do me good,” cried Benassis. “It was a pleasure to hear you say over again what I have so often said in the midst of this avenue. There is something holy about this place. Here, we are like two mere specks; and the feeling of our own littleness always brings us into the presence of God.”
They rode on slowly and in silence, listening to their horses’ hoof-beats; the sound echoed along the green corridor as it might have done beneath the vaulted roof of a cathedral.
“How many things have a power to stir us which town-dwellers do not suspect,” said the doctor. “Do you not notice the sweet scent given off by the gum of the poplar buds, and the resin of the larches? How delightful it is!”
“Listen!” exclaimed Genestas. “Let us wait a moment.”
A distant sound of singing came to their ears.
“Is it a woman or a man, or is it a bird?” asked the commandant in a low voice. “Is it the voice of this wonderful landscape?”
“It is something of all these things,” the doctor answered, as he dismounted and fastened his horse to a branch of a poplar tree.
He made a sign to the officer to follow his example and to come with him. They went slowly along a footpath between two hedges of blossoming hawthorn which filled the damp evening air with its delicate fragrance. The sun shone full into the pathway; the light and warmth were very perceptible after the shade thrown by the long wall of poplar trees; the still powerful rays poured a flood of red light over a cottage at the end of the stony track. The ridge of the cottage roof was usually a bright green with its overgrowth of mosses and house-leeks, and the thatch was brown as a chestnut shell, but just now it seemed to be powdered with a golden dust. The cottage itself was scarcely visible through the haze of light; the ruinous wall, the doorway and everything about it was radiant with a fleeting glory and a beauty due to chance, such as is sometimes seen for an instant in a human face, beneath the influence of a strong emotion that brings warmth and color into it. In a life under the open sky and among the fields, the transient and tender grace of such moments as these draws from us the wish of the apostle who said to Jesus Christ upon the mountain, “Let us build a tabernacle and dwell here.”
The wide landscape seemed at that moment to have found a voice whose purity, and sweetness equaled its own sweetness and purity, a voice as mournful as the dying light in the west — for a vague reminder of Death is divinely set in the heavens, and the sun above gives the same warning that is given here on earth by the flowers and the bright insects of the day. There is a tinge of sadness about the radiance of sunset, and the melody was sad. It was a song widely known in the days of yore, a ballad of love and sorrow that once had served to stir a national hatred of France for England. Beaumarchais, in a later day, had given it back its true poetry by adapting it for the French theatre and putting it into the mouth of a page, who pours out his heart to his stepmother. Just now it was simply the air that rose and fell. There were no words; the plaintive voice of the singer touched and thrilled the soul.
“It is the swan’s song,” said Benassis. “That voice does not sound twice in a century for human ears. Let us hurry; we must put a stop to the singing! The child is killing himself; it would be cruel to listen to him any longer. Be quiet, Jacques! Come, come, be quiet!” cried the doctor.
The music ceased. Genestas stood motionless and overcome with astonishment. A cloud had drifted across the sun, the landscape and the voice were both mute. Shadow, chillness, and silence had taken the place of the soft glory of the light, the warm breath of the breeze, and the child’s singing.
“What makes you disobey me?” asked Benassis. “I shall not bring you any more rice pudding nor snail broth! No more fresh dates and white bread for you! So you want to die and break your poor mother’s heart, do you?”
Genestas came into a little yard, which was sufficiently clean and tidily kept, and saw before him a lad of fifteen, who looked as delicate as a woman. His hair was fair but scanty, and the color in his face was so bright that it seemed hardly natural. He rose up slowly from the bench where he was sitting, beneath a thick bush of jessamine and some blossoming lilacs that were running riot, so that he was almost hidden among the leaves.
“You know very well,” said the doctor, “that I told you not to talk, not to expose yourself to the chilly evening air, and to go to bed as soon as the sun was set. What put it into your head to sing?”
“Dame! M. Benassis, it was so very warm out here, and it is so nice to feel warm! I am always cold. I felt so happy that without thinking I began to try over Malbrouk s’en va-t-en guerre, just for fun, and then I began to listen to myself because my voice was something like the sound of the flute your shepherd plays.”
“Well, my poor Jacques, this must not happen again; do you hear? Let me have your hand,” and the doctor felt his pulse.
The boy’s eyes had their usual sweet expression, but just now they shone with a feverish light.
“It is just as I thought, you are covered with perspiration,” said Benassis. “Your mother has not come in yet?”
“No, sir.”
“Come! go in-doors and get into bed.”
The young invalid went back into the cottage, followed by Benassis and the officer.
“Just light a candle, Captain Bluteau,” said the doctor, who was helping Jacques to take off his rough, tattered clothing.
When Genestas had struck a light, and the interior of the room was visible, he was surprised by the extreme thinness of the child, who seemed to be little more than skin and bone. When the little peasant had been put to bed, Benassis tapped the lad’s chest, and listened to the ominous sounds made in this way by his fingers; then, after some deliberation, he drew back the coverlet over Jacques, stepped back a few paces, folded his arms across his chest, and closely scrutinized his patient.
“How do you feel, my little man?”
“Quite comfortable, sir.”
A table, with four spindle legs, stood in the room; the doctor drew it up to the bed, found a tumbler and a phial on the mantel-shelf, and composed a draught, by carefully measuring a few drops of brown liquid from the phial into some water, Genestas holding the light the while.
“Your mother is very late.”
“She is coming, sir,” said the child; “I can hear her footsteps on the path.”
The doctor and the officer looked around them while they waited. At the foot of the bed there was a sort of mattress made of moss, on which, doubtless, the mother was wont to sleep in her clothes, for there were neither sheets nor coverlet. Genestas pointed out this bed to Benassis, who nodded slightly to show that he likewise had already admired this motherly devotion. There was a clatter of sabots in the yard, and the doctor went out.
“You will have to sit up with Jacques to-night, Mother Colas. If he tells you that his breathing is bad, you must let him drink some of the draught that I have poured into the tumbler on the table. Take care not to let him have more than two or three sips at a time; there ought to be enough in the tumbler to last him all through the night. Above all things, do not touch the phial, and change the child’s clothing at once. He is perspiring heavily.”
“I could not manage to wash his shirts to-day, sir; I had to take the hemp over to Grenoble, as we wanted the money.”
“Very well, then, I will send you some shirts.”
“Then is he worse, my poor lad?” asked the woman.
“He has been so imprudent as to sing, Mother Colas; and it is not to be expected that any good can come of it; but do not be hard upon him, nor scold him. Do not be down-hearted about it; and if Jacques complains overmuch, send a neighbor to fetch me. Good-bye.”
The doctor called to his friend, and they went back along the foot-path.
“Is that little peasant consumptive?” asked Genestas.
“Mon Dieu! yes,” answered Benassis. “Science cannot save him, unless Nature works a miracle. Our professors at the Ecole de Medecine in Paris often used to speak to us of the phenomenon which you have just witnessed. Some maladies of this kind bring about changes in the voice-producing organs that give the sufferer a short-lived power of song that no trained voice can surpass. I have made you spend a melancholy day, sir,” said the doctor when he was once more in the saddle. “Suffering and death everywhere, but everywhere also resignation. All these peasant folk take death philosophically; they fall ill, say nothing about it, and take to their beds like dumb animals. But let us say no more about death, and let us quicken our horses’ paces a little; we ought to reach the town before nightfall, so that you may see the new quarter.”
“Eh! some place is on fire over there,” said Genestas, pointing to a spot on the mountain, where a sheaf of flames was rising.
“It is not a dangerous fire. Our lime-burner is heating his kiln, no doubt. It is a newly-started industry, which turns our heather to account.”
There was the sudden report of a gun, followed by an involuntary exclamation from Benassis, who said, with an impatient gesture, “If that is Butifer, we shall see which of us two is the stronger.”
“The shot came from that quarter,” said Genestas, indicating a beech-wood up above them on the mountain side. “Yes, up there; you may trust an old soldier’s ear.”
“Let us go there at once!” cried Benassis, and he made straight for the little wood, urging his horse at a furious speed across the ditches and fields, as if he were riding a steeplechase, in his anxiety to catch the sportsman red-handed.
“The man you are after has made off,” shouted Genestas, who could scarcely keep up with him.
Benassis wheeled his horse round sharply, and came back again. The man of whom he was in search soon appeared on the top of a perpendicular crag, a hundred feet above the level of the two horsemen.
“Butifer!” shouted Benassis when he saw that this figure carried a fowling-piece; “come down!”
Butifer recognized the doctor, and replied by a respectful and friendly sign which showed that he had every intention of obeying.
“I can imagine that if a man were driven to it by fear or by some overmastering impulse that he might possibly contrive to scramble up to that point among the rocks,” said Genestas; “but how will he manage to come down again?”
“I have no anxiety on that score,” answered Benassis; “the wild goats must feel envious of that fellow yonder! You will see.”
The emergencies of warfare had accustomed the commandant to gauge the real worth of men; he admired the wonderful quickness of Butifer’s movements, the sure-footed grace with which the hunter swung himself down the rugged sides of the crag, to the top of which he had so boldly climbed. The strong, slender form of the mountaineer was gracefully poised in every attitude which the precipitous nature of the path compelled him to assume; and so certain did he seem of his power to hold on at need, that if the pinnacle of rock on which he took his stand had been a level floor, he could not have set his foot down upon it more calmly. He carried his fowling-piece as if it had been a light walking-cane. Butifer was a young man of middle height, thin, muscular, and in good training; his beauty was of a masculine order, which impressed Genestas on a closer view.
Evidently he belonged to the class of smugglers who ply their trade without resorting to violent courses, and who only exert patience and craft to defraud the government. His face was manly and sunburned. His eyes, which were bright as an eagle’s, were of a clear yellow color, and his sharply-cut nose with its slight curve at the tip was very much like an eagle’s beak. His cheeks were covered with down, his red lips were half open, giving a glimpse of a set of teeth of dazzling whiteness. His beard, moustache, and the reddish whiskers, which he allowed to grow, and which curled naturally, still further heightened the masculine and forbidding expression of his face. Everything about him spoke of strength. He was broad-chested; constant activity had made the muscles of his hands curiously firm and prominent. There was the quick intelligence of a savage about his glances; he looked resolute, fearless, and imperturbable, like a man accustomed to put his life in peril, and whose physical and mental strength had been so often tried by dangers of every kind, that he no longer felt any doubts about himself. He wore a blouse that had suffered a good deal from thorns and briars, and he had a pair of leather soles bound to his feet by eel-skin thongs, and a pair of torn and tattered blue linen breeches through which his legs were visible, red, wiry, hard, and muscular as those of a stag.
“There you see the man who once fired a shot at me,” Benassis remarked to the commandant in a low voice. “If at this moment I were to signify to him my desire to be rid of any one, he would kill them without scruple. — Butifer!” he went on, addressing the poacher, “I fully believed you to be a man of your word; I pledged mine for you because I had your promise. My promise to the procureur du roi at Grenoble was based upon your vow never to go poaching again, and to turn over a new leaf and become a steady, industrious worker. You fired that shot just now, and here you are, on the Comte de Labranchoir’s estate! Eh! you miscreant? Suppose his keeper had happened to hear you? It is a lucky thing for you that I shall take no formal cognizance of this offence; if I did, you would come up as an old offender, and of course you have no gun license! I let you keep that gun of yours out of tenderness for your attachment to the weapon.”
“It is a beauty,” said the commandant, who recognized a duck gun from Sainte Etienne.
The smuggler raised his head and looked at Genestas by way of acknowledging the compliment.
“Butifer,” continued Benassis, “if your conscience does not reproach you, it ought to do so. If you are going to begin your old tricks again, you will find yourself once more in a park enclosed by four stone walls, and no power on earth will save you from the hulks; you will be a marked man, and your character will be ruined. Bring your gun to me to-night, I will take care of it for you.”
Butifer gripped the barrel of his weapon in a convulsive clutch.
“You are right, sir,” he said; “I have done wrong, I have broken bounds, I am a cur. My gun ought to go to you, but when you take it away from me, you take all that I have in the world. The last shot which my mother’s son will fire shall be through my own head.... What would you have? I did as you wanted me. I kept quiet all winter; but the spring came, and the sap rose. I am not used to day labor. It is not in my nature to spend my life in fattening fowls; I cannot stoop about turning over the soil for vegetables, nor flourish a whip and drive a cart, nor scrub down a horse in a stable all my life, so I must die of starvation, I suppose? I am only happy when I am up there,” he went on after a pause, pointing to the mountains. “And I have been about among the hills for the past week; I got a sight of a chamois, and I have the chamois there,” he said, pointing to the top of the crag; “it is at your service! Dear M. Benassis, leave me my gun. Listen! I will leave the Commune, foi de Butifer! I will go to the Alps; the chamois-hunters will not say a word; on the contrary, they will receive me with open arms. I shall come to grief at the bottom of some glacier; but, if I am to speak my mind, I would rather live for a couple of years among the heights, where there are no governments, nor excisemen, nor gamekeepers, nor procureurs du roi, than grovel in a marsh for a century. You are the only one that I shall be sorry to leave behind; all the rest of them bore me! When you are in the right, at any rate you don’t worry one’s life out — — ”
“And how about Louise?” asked Benassis. Butifer paused and turned thoughtful.
“Eh! learn to read and write, my lad,” said Genestas; “come and enlist in my regiment, have a horse to ride, and turn carabineer. If they once sound ‘to horse’ for something like a war, you will find out that Providence made you to live in the midst of cannon, bullets, and battalions, and they will make a general of you.”
“Ye-es, if Napoleon was back again,” answered Butifer.
“You know our agreement,” said the doctor. “At the second infraction of it, you undertook to go for a soldier. I give you six months in which to learn to read and write, and then I will find some young gentleman who wants a substitute.”
