BOOK III

"See," my father said,—"the head is gold."

"Certainly it is," she replied.

"Well, then, as I cannot leave my children sufficiently well off to deprive them of the money that knob might fetch—little though it may be—take the cane to Duguet's, the goldsmith's opposite, who will melt it down into a nugget,—then let him bring the nugget to me directly he has done it."

Madame Darcourt was about to venture a remark, but heentreated her so insistently to do what he asked, that she consented, and took the cane to Duguet.

She returned immediately, as she only had to run across the street.

"Well?" my father asked.

"All right, you shall have your nugget at six o'clock to-morrow evening, General."

"To-morrow at six in the evening," repeated my father. "That will do; it is probable I shall not be dead by then."

Next day Duguet brought the nugget over, and the dying man gave it to my mother: he was exceedingly weak by then, but his mind was perfectly clear, and he was able to hear what was said to him and to talk.

At ten at night, feeling death near at hand, he asked for Abbé Grégoire.

Abbé Grégoire was not only a good priest, he was an excellent friend of my father.

It was not a confession that the dying man wanted to make, for in all his life my father had not done a single bad action with which he could reproach himself; maybe in the depths of his heart he harboured feelings of hatred towards Berthier and Napoleon. But how could the last hours of a dying man concern these men at the pinnacle of fame and fortune? Moreover, all feelings of hatred were forgotten in the two hours before his death, which were spent in trying to comfort those he was to leave alone in the world, when he had departed from it.

Once, he asked to see me; but, as they were preparing to fetch me from my cousin's, where I had been sent, he forbade them. "No," he said,—"poor child, he is asleep, do not disturb him."

Finally, after bidding farewell to Madame Darcourt and the abbé, he turned towards my mother and, keeping his last breath for her, he died in her arms as midnight struck.

My love for my father—His love for me—I am taken away to my cousin Marianne's—Plan of the house—The forge—The apparition—I learn the death of my father—I wish to go to heaven to kill God—Our situation at the death of my father—Hatred of Bonaparte.

The night my father died I had been carried out of the house by Maman Zine and deposited with my other cousin, Marianne, who lived with her father in the rue de Soissons.

They did not want me to be acquainted with death at my early age, and foreseeing its near approach and dreading the disturbance I should be sure to make, they took the precaution of taking me away at five o'clock in the afternoon. Maman Zine returned to the house after leaving me, as my poor mother needed help during the coming night.

I worshipped my father. Maybe, at so early an age, the feeling which now I should call love was nothing but an innocent and wondering admiration for the herculean stature and giant strength which I had seen my father exercise on various occasions. Perhaps it was only a childish pride in his braided coat, his tricoloured cockade, and his big sword, which I could scarcely lift. But, whatever it may have been, the recollection of my father, in every detail of his figure, in every feature of his face, is as present with me as though I had but lost him yesterday. No matter from what reasons, I love him still with as tender and deep and true a love as though he had watched over my youth and I had had the blessing of leaning on his strong arm throughout my childhood and early manhood.

On his side, too, my father worshipped me. I have said it,and I cannot repeat the fact too often, especially if the dead hear what is said of them; and, although during the last period of his life his great sufferings had got on his nerves to such an extent that he could not bear any noise or movement in his room, he made an exception for me.

I do not remember whether they took me to kiss my father before I was taken away; what happened during the night the events of which I am about to relate, whether or not it be put down to my youthful imagination, makes me think that they had forgotten that pious care. As I have said, my only notions of death were taken from the death of my big black dog and the fainting bather. It would, besides, have been extremely difficult for me to realise the death of my father, whom I had seen on his horse only three days previously. So I did not approve of being taken from home, and, once away, I was ignorant as to whether my father spoke of me or asked for me. A veil is drawn over my eyes in connection with that last day of his life. I only remember the following incident I am about to relate, the details of which are perfectly clear to my mind.

They had taken me to my uncle's house.

This worthy individual was a locksmith, named Fortier; and he had a brother who was a village priest. I shall speak of this brother later, for he was a very curious type of person.

I remained, therefore, under the care of my cousin Marianne.

Allow me to give an exact plan of the house, in order to make the situation clear. It is forty years or more since I entered the house and yet I can see it as though I had just left it.

As can be seen, the house was in reality one long passage, composed of the forge, which opened upon the rue de Soissons; an inner court just behind the forge; the dwelling-house, consisting of a bedroom furnished in the usual style, with a great walnut chest of drawers, a large four-post bed with green serge hangings, a table and several chairs, and, in addition, a little bed that had been improvised for me, on two chairs, for that night, which they had put opposite the big bed. Next afterthis bedroom came the kitchen, the accustomed home of a big cat called theDoctor,by whose claws I one day nearly lost the sight of one of my eyes. Then after the kitchen was a little garden shaded by some trees and littered with many stones, a garden which never grew anything but nettles, as no one seemed ever to have thought of putting anything else in it—this looked out on the place du Château. It will be seen that the dwelling-house was shut off completely from the rest of the world when the door of the forge, opening on the rue de Soissons and the garden gate, leading into the place du Château were closed; unless, indeed, the walls of the garden were scaled.

I stayed then with my cousin Marianne without raising any objection to doing so. I loved going to the forge, where a lad named Picard was very partial to me. I used to make fireworks there with iron filings, and the workmen, Picard in particular, would tell me thrilling stories.

I stayed in the forge till quite late in the evening; the forge gave me infinite delight that night, with its fantastic reflections and dancing play of light and shadow. About eight o'clock my cousin Marianne fetched me away and put me to bed in the little bed opposite the large one; and I slept the sound sleep that God gives to little children as He gives refreshing dew in spring-tide.

At midnight I was waked up, or rather we were waked up, my cousin and I, by a loud knocking at our door. A night lamp glimmered on a table near the bedside, and by the light of this lamp I could see my cousin sitting up in bed, silent, terrified.

Nobody could knock at that inner door, as the two other doors were shut.

But I, who to-day almost shudder with fear as I write these lines, I, on the contrary, felt no fear: I got out of my cot and approached the door.

"Where are you going, Alexandre?" cried my cousin. "Where are you going, child?"

"You will soon see," I calmly replied. "I am going to open the door for papa, who has come to say good-bye to us."

Plan of House

The poor girl leapt from her bed, terrified, seized hold of me just as I was putting my hand on the lock, and forced me back into bed.

I struggled in her arms, crying out with all my might: "Good-bye, papa! Good-bye, papa!"

Something like a dying breath passed over my face and quietened me. But I fell asleep sobbing, with tears on my cheeks.

Next day they woke us at dawn, my father had died precisely at the time we heard the knocking at the door! Then it was that I heard these words, but without taking in their significance: "My poor child, the papa who loved you so much is dead!"

I cannot tell what lips uttered those words over me, the little orphan of three and a half years, nor who it was that announced the greatest misfortune of my life.

"My father is dead?" said I. "What does that mean?"

"It means that you will never see him again."

"What! I shall never see my papa again?"

"No."

"Why shall I not see him?"

"Because the good God has taken him from you."

"For ever?"

"For ever."

"And you say I shall never see him any more?"

"Never again."

"Never, never at all?"

"Nevermore!"

"Where does the good God live?"

"He lives in heaven."

I remained in thought for a moment; unreasoning baby though I was, I quite understood that something dreadful had happened in my life. Then I took advantage of the first moment when attention was diverted from me to escape from my uncle's house and run straight home to my mother.

All the doors were open, and everybody looked scared; one could tell that death was in the house.

I got in without being noticed at all, and reached a little room where arms were kept; I took up one of my father's single-barrelled guns, which he had often promised to give me when I should be grown up.

Then, armed with this gun, I climbed the stairs.

I met my mother on the first landing; she was coming out of the death-chamber, weeping bitterly.

"Where are you going?" she asked, surprised to see me there, when she thought I was at my uncle's.

"I am going to heaven," I replied.

"What! you are going to heaven?"

"Yes, let me go."

"What are you going to do in heaven, my poor child?"

"I am going to kill the good God for killing papa."

My mother seized me in her arms and pressed me closely to her.

"Oh! my child," she cried, "do not say such things; we are quite unhappy enough already."

Indeed, the death of my father, who had only received a retiring salary of 4000 francs, left us with no other fortune than about 30 roods of land in the village of Soucy, which had belonged to my maternal grandfather, who was still living at that time. There were arrears of salary due to my father, as I have said, arrears of 28,500 francs, for the years VII and VIII, but since our journey to Paris a law had been passed which declared that no arrears before the year IX should be paid.

As for the indemnity of 500,000 francs, due from the King of Naples for the French prisoners, which Bonaparte had exacted, nothing was heard of it, and it was for this reason, no doubt, that the French seized the kingdom of Naples.

It is true that some day a house and a fine garden, situated in the place de la Fontaine, would revert to us; but in the meantime the rent of it went to a certain M. Harlay, who had already been in receipt of it for twenty years. That good man, in fact, exemplified the truth of the proverb that a life interest is a certificate of long life for the payee: he died in 1817, at theage of ninety-two or ninety-three, and by that time we had paid the value of the house and garden nearly four times over. Thus, besides the irreparable loss of father and husband, my mother and I were losing also, she her whole income and I that future benefit which only the presence of a father can give to a son.

Murat and Brune then tried—Brune zealously, Murat half-heartedly—to keep the promise they had made to my father on our behalf. But it was quite useless. Napoleon never forgot the meeting held in my father's tent during the third day of the march between Alexandria and Cairo, and my mother, the innocent victim of my father's Republican sentiments, could not obtain from the man who had offered to stand godfather to me before my birth the very smallest pension, although she was the widow of a general officer who had been chief-in-command of three armies.

Nor was this all. Napoleon's hatred, not content with wreaking itself on my father's fortune, aimed at his reputation too. A painting had been ordered, representing my father's entry into the Grand Mosque, the day of the insurrection at Cairo, during the revolt which he had quelled "in the absence of everyone else," as Bonaparte had himself expressed it. They substituted a tall fair hussar for my father, the portrait of no one in particular, thus causing the picture to be devoid of meaning alike to contemporaries and to posterity.

We shall see later how this hatred extended even to me, for in spite of the applications which were made on my behalf by my father's old comrades, I could never obtain entrance to any military school or civil college.

Finally, my father died without even having been made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur—he who had been the hero of the day at Maulde, at la Madeleine, at Mont Cenis, at the siege of Mantua, at the bridge of Brixen, at the revolt of Cairo, the man whom Bonaparte had made governor of the Trévisan, and whom he presented to the Directory as the Horatius Codes of the Tyrol.

Small wonder then if the spirit of my father, on its wayheavenwards, hovered for a moment over his poor child, whom he was leaving so destitute of all hope on earth.

What did I divine of it all in the midst of the storm of grief which raged around me? What part I played at this time, my young life just beginning, his ended, I have not the faintest remembrance; I recollect nothing after my mother took me in her arms, as I have related, and carried me away.

A letter from M. Deviolaine announcing my father's death to his friend, General Pille, is my sole guide in this darkness: it informs me that we took shelter at Antilly.

This is the letter:—

"VILLERS-COTTERETS,"27th February 1806."MY DEAR COUSIN,—I little thought I should so soon have to inform you of the death of our brave and unfortunate General Dumas. He finished his course at eleven o'clock last night, at Villers-Cotterets, where he had returned to carry out his doctor's orders. The malady of which he died was the result of the shocking treatment he experienced at Naples, on his return from Egypt. He had the consolation of learning, on the very day of his death, that that country was conquered by the French; but this satisfaction did not at all comfort him for the privation of not being able to end his days on the field of battle. Ever since his retirement from active service—all through his illness—he never ceased offering prayers for the success of the French arms. It was most touching to hear him say, only a few hours before his death, that, for his wife and children's sake, he would like to be buried on the field of Austerlitz."As a matter of fact, my dear cousin, he has left them without any means of existence; his illness consumed his small remaining capital."My wife is going to take Madame Dumas—her relative—to Antilly, where she will remain a few days, whilst we do all we possibly can to give the general the funeral honours to which his rank, his brave deeds, and the love of his citizens entitle him."In charging myself with conveying to you this melancholy and distressing news I told Madame Dumas that I wouldinvite you to join her husband's comrades-in-arms; their share in this melancholy affair will soften in some small degree the bitterness of her sorrows."I thank you, my dear cousin, for the certificate of death in the case of Lasne,maréchal des logis.If it is not quite in form, I will inform you."Believe me, my dear cousin, your attached friend,"DEVIOLAINE."

"VILLERS-COTTERETS,

"27th February 1806.

"MY DEAR COUSIN,—I little thought I should so soon have to inform you of the death of our brave and unfortunate General Dumas. He finished his course at eleven o'clock last night, at Villers-Cotterets, where he had returned to carry out his doctor's orders. The malady of which he died was the result of the shocking treatment he experienced at Naples, on his return from Egypt. He had the consolation of learning, on the very day of his death, that that country was conquered by the French; but this satisfaction did not at all comfort him for the privation of not being able to end his days on the field of battle. Ever since his retirement from active service—all through his illness—he never ceased offering prayers for the success of the French arms. It was most touching to hear him say, only a few hours before his death, that, for his wife and children's sake, he would like to be buried on the field of Austerlitz.

"As a matter of fact, my dear cousin, he has left them without any means of existence; his illness consumed his small remaining capital.

"My wife is going to take Madame Dumas—her relative—to Antilly, where she will remain a few days, whilst we do all we possibly can to give the general the funeral honours to which his rank, his brave deeds, and the love of his citizens entitle him.

"In charging myself with conveying to you this melancholy and distressing news I told Madame Dumas that I wouldinvite you to join her husband's comrades-in-arms; their share in this melancholy affair will soften in some small degree the bitterness of her sorrows.

"I thank you, my dear cousin, for the certificate of death in the case of Lasne,maréchal des logis.If it is not quite in form, I will inform you.

"Believe me, my dear cousin, your attached friend,

"DEVIOLAINE."

M. Deviolaine had not at all exaggerated our state of distress. My father's only income had been his half-pay pension of 4000 francs; my sister's boarding-school expenses took about 1200 francs of this, so there only remained 2800 francs to provide for the expenses of illness, for the constant changes of place which the restlessness of a dying man craved, and for our usual wants; it was very little, as the reader can see for himself.

Accordingly, my poor mother asked all my father's old friends, Brune, Murat, Augereau, Lannes, Jourdan, to endeavour to obtain a pension from the emperor. It was all in vain. The most urgent entreaties were of no avail against that extraordinary hatred, and, tired of hearing a name repeated so often which was already merely a dim recollection in his career, Napoleon angrily exclaimed to Brune, our warmest partisan:

"I forbid you ever to mention that fellow to me again."

My mother could not believe that the widow of a man who had been chief commander of three armies, and had served under his country's flag for twenty years, whose various campaigns were equivalent to forty-four years of service, although he was only forty-one years of age, had not the right to beg a pension from France, some little help, a morsel of bread. A letter from Jourdan came to destroy her last hope and to teach her that she must depend on God alone for help.

Here is the letter. No one would believe me if I simply related its contents, no one would believe that, at this period of supreme triumph, Napoleon, installed in the palace of thekings of France, handling more millions than Louis XIV. ever touched, regarded as the conqueror, victor, Cæsar,Augustus,who had placed his foot on the neck of Europe and had stretched out his hands over the whole world, would knowingly refuse to save from starvation the wife and children of him who had taken Mont Cenis, reduced Mantua to capitulation, forced the passes of the Tyrol, and quelled the insurrection of Cairo.

But, sire, as it is right that people should believe these things, I will quote Jourdan's letter, even though it cast a stain on your Majesty's imperial robes.

"NAPLES, 28th April 1806."MADAME,—I have the honour to inform you that I have just received from His Excellency the Minister of War an answer to the letter I wrote him on your behalf. He regrets to inform me that you cannot obtain any pension, as the law of 8 Floréal, year XI, only allows pensions to be granted to the widows of soldiers killed on the field of battle, or of those who die of their wounds within six months after receiving them; and as General Dumas was not in active service when he died, there remains, madame, but one other means of hope, namely, for you to go personally to His Majesty the Emperor, and throw yourself upon his generosity."I have the honour to remain, madame, your most obedient servant,JOURDAN (Marshal)."

"NAPLES, 28th April 1806.

"MADAME,—I have the honour to inform you that I have just received from His Excellency the Minister of War an answer to the letter I wrote him on your behalf. He regrets to inform me that you cannot obtain any pension, as the law of 8 Floréal, year XI, only allows pensions to be granted to the widows of soldiers killed on the field of battle, or of those who die of their wounds within six months after receiving them; and as General Dumas was not in active service when he died, there remains, madame, but one other means of hope, namely, for you to go personally to His Majesty the Emperor, and throw yourself upon his generosity.

"I have the honour to remain, madame, your most obedient servant,

JOURDAN (Marshal)."

There was thus one hope still left. My mother went to Paris in order to present herself to His Majesty the Emperor, to beg him for help. But His Majesty the Emperor declined the audience she craved, and she returned to Villers-Cotterets the poorer by the money she had spent on her journey.

Sire, you may be a Hannibal, you may be a Cæsar, you may be an Octavius, posterity may not yet have had time to decide this question, or maybe the question is already settled; but I am very sure you are no Augustus! Augustus pleaded in person for the old soldier who had served under him at Actium; while you, you condemn to misery thewidow of the man who served not only under you, but with you!

I have said, sire, that if you failed us, there remained but God to help us. We will see what God did for this poor forsaken family.

My mother and I take refuge with my grandfather—Madame Darcourt's house—My first books and my first terrors—The park at Villers-Cotterets—M. Deviolaine and his family—The swarm of bees—The old cloister.

We all went to live with my grandfather and grandmother, who were still alive. They enlarged their hearth for us, and took in my mother, my sister, and me.

My grandfather reserved rooms at the hôtel del'Épée, where my father had died. We took possession of his chamber of death, and lived in it surrounded by all his belongings.

Now, in the midst of the obscurity in which my earliest years float, like half-forgotten dreams, the recollection of the three principal houses in which all my childhood was spent stand sharply defined.

These three houses were those of Madame Darcourt, M. Deviolaine, and M. Collard. It will be remembered that I have already had occasion to speak of these three persons, and I may be permitted to say a little about them, were it only to discharge the debt of gratitude we owe them. Moreover, pictures of the kind I am about to draw are nothing without their accessary details.

Madame Darcourt was our neighbour; she resided on the ground floor of the house adjoining the one in which my father died. She was the widow of a distinguished military surgeon. She had two children, a son and a daughter. The son might have been twenty-eight, and his name was Antoine. Thedaughter was perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five, and was called Éléonore.

God granted the mother a long and happy life—she lived to eighty years of age.

I hardly knew Antoine, but I was almost brought up by Éléonore.

The great attraction to me about this house, besides their kindness to me, was a splendid edition of Buffon with coloured pictures.

Every evening, after my mother had made her visit to the cemetery,—a religious office she never missed one single day,—whilst she sat absorbed in her grief in a corner by the fireplace, whilst Madame Darcourt and her daughter sewed, they would put a volume of Buffon in my hands, and were then relieved of any further trouble on my account throughout the evening.

In consequence I learnt to read—and though I do not knowhow, I can saywhy: I wanted to read about the history, the habits, the instincts of the animals whose portraits I looked at. The result of this interest of mine in batrachians, and especially in ophidians, was such that, at the age when children are still spelling, I had already read all the books other which form a child's library.

While at Madame Darcourt's house I experienced the sensation of fear for the first time—a feeling hitherto totally unknown to me.

My mania for reading extended in every direction, even to newspapers—in later years so little read by me.

One day I came upon theJournal de l'Empire, and I read in it a short article relating how a prisoner, entombed in the dungeons of Amiens, had been devoured there by a snake.

I had hitherto looked upon snakes as monsters, if not altogether mythical yet belonging to quite another part of the globe than ours.

In Buffon, or rather in Daudin's continuation of him, snakes had been a constant source of curiosity to me; after reading theJournal de l'Empire, they inspired me with the greatest terror.

The evening I read that fatal article I pretended to be absorbed in readingRobinson Crusoe, and I asked to be allowed to sit up as late as possible, meaning until my mother should herself go to bed.

The favour was readily granted me; but when the same excuse was renewed the next day, the day after that and several nights running, I was compelled to give an explanation.

I recounted the story of the prisoner of Amiens, and I confessed that if I went to bed by myself I should be afraid of being eaten up by a snake.

My mother was greatly surprised at this confession, for I had been so brave hitherto. She did her utmost to reason away my fears, but reason failed in the face of instinct, and time alone softened although it did not altogether efface the recollection of that awful picture.

Next to Madame Darcourt's house—to which I shall again have occasion to refer—were the other two households who were so hospitable to us in our misfortunes, those of M. Deviolaine and M. Collard.

M. Deviolaine was our cousin by marriage; he had married a niece of my grandfather, who, as she was an orphan, had been brought up with my mother in our family circle; furthermore, he had been my father's intimate friend.

M. Deviolaine was Inspector of Forests for the district of Villers-Cotterets, which gave him a leading position in our little town; and quite naturally, too, since there were only 2400 inhabitants in the town, whereas the forest covered 50,000 acres.

M. Deviolaine was a great dignitary in my eyes, not so much because of the above-mentioned reason, but because, in virtue of the position he held, he could grant leave to shoot in the forest, and to go hunting freely some day in that forest was one of the ambitions of my childhood.

This ambition, among several others, has since been realised; and I should add that it has been one that has yielded the least disappointment in the fulfilment.

In comparison with the small rooms to which we hadbeen confined since my father's death, M. Deviolaine's house seemed a palace; and I, poor child, greatly appreciated the change, for, brought up as I had been at the châteaux of Fossés and of Antilly, and running wild in the walks and over the lawns, I seemed to live on air and sunshine. M. Deviolaine's house contained first and foremost a suite of rooms covering a considerable area, stables and coach-houses, yards and a charming garden, partly English, partly French, partly picturesque, partly kitchen garden. The English garden contained waterfalls, pools, and weeping-willow trees; the fruit garden was full of pears, peaches, greengages, artichokes, and melons, and then it opened upon a fine park, which you could see through the railings, and which you could walk into through a gateway.

This park, planted by François I., was cut down by Louis-Philippe.

Grand trees they were! Under their shade François I. had lain by the side of Madame d'Étampes, Henri II. with his Diane de Poitiers, Henri IV. with Gabrielle: it was natural to expect that a Bourbon would have reverenced these trees, and permitted the long life of beeches and oaks; that birds would have sung on their dead and leafless boughs as they sang on them when green and in full leaf! Unluckily, there is a material value attached to them, besides the inestimable one of poetry and memories. You glorious beeches, with your polished, silvery trunks, you fine oaks with your dark and rugged bark—you were worth 100,000 crowns! The King of France, who thought himself too poor to keep you standing, and had his twelve millions from the civil list besides his private fortune of six millions, must needs sell you! Had you been my sole means of fortune, I would have kept you; for, being a poet, I love the murmur of the wind through your leaves above all the gold earth can give; the shadows that flicker under my tread; the delicious visions, the lovely phantoms, which, at eventide, between day and night, in the dubious hour of twilight, glide in and out between your venerable trunks, as flit the shades of the ancient race ofAbencérage between the myriad columns of Cordova's royal mosque.

There was not the least idea of this in the mind of that other poet, Demoustier, when he wrote on the bark of one of these trees the following verse: with the trees has it also disappeared, and perhaps I alone remember it:—

"Ce bois fut l'asile chériDe l'amour autrefois fidèle;Tout l'y rappelle encore, et le coeur attendriSoupire en se disant: C'est ici que HenriSoupirait près de Gabrielle."

And notwithstanding all this the king destroyed the forest, the man who believed himself more firmly fixed to the throne than the trees were to the earth. Nothing did he understand of the really great; everything was stripped of the glamour of imagination, and only its material value did he appraise. He said to himself, "Every man can be bought, just as every tree can be sold. I possess vast forests, I will sell the trees, and I will purchase men."

Sire, you were self-deceived. There are other things in life than algebra and mathematics: there is faith, there is belief; you put no faith in others, and others therefore put no faith in you; you breathed scorn on the past, and now the past scorns you.

What a long way we have travelled, though, from the home of M. Deviolaine—which to me seemed such a palace!

Glorious trees, you are more than a palace—you are like a temple! a temple wherein the Lord reveals Himself to me, as I lie at your feet, and try to study the stars, in utter ignorance of their names, through the moving canopy of your foliage, on the fine nights of summer. How many times, when the laughing, restless spirit of childhood begins to yield to the dreams of early manhood; how many times, kissed by the wind-bent grass under me, have I stretched two eager hands towards some star more brilliant than others, and tried to seize a ray of moonlight as it played upon my face! And Ihave prayed: "Saviour, who art in heaven! Saviour, who art on earth! Saviour, who art everywhere! O Saviour, take me in Thy mighty arms and make me an instrument to glorify and bless Thy power; a harp to sing to Thee, a lyre to praise Thee, a voice to pray to Thee! Make me grow great, O Lord, so that I may be nearer to Thee! and the greater I am the more humbly will I acknowledge Thy name, Thy splendour, Thy majesty!

"It is Thou, O God! who makest the forests to grow which kings sell; Thou who createst the little birds that sing among their branches; Thou who caressest them with the breeze which is Thy smile, and refreshest them with sunshine, which is Thy face, and tearest them up in the storm, which is Thy anger!

"Lord, Thou alone art great, Thou alone art eternal!"

But to return to M. Deviolaine and his house.

Although it was large, its accommodation was far from being superfluous. M. Deviolaine had veritably the family of a patriarch. He had one son and two daughters by his first marriage, and a son and two more daughters by his second.

The latter were our relatives, our cousin being his second wife.

As the name of M. Deviolaine and those of his children are constantly recurring in the relation of the first portion of my life, I must dwell for a moment on this ample family.

The names of the three children by the first marriage were Victor, Léontine, and Léonore; those of the three children of the second were, Félix, Cécile, and Augustine.

Seven or eight years later, a third daughter arrived, but I shall speak of her birth in the proper order of time.

Victor, Léontine, and Léonore were much older than I, and more naturally became my sister's companions, who was nine years my senior. Cécile, the oldest of the second set of children, whose age was nearer my sister's than mine, joined their ranks.

This left me for my playfellows, Augustine, a year older than I, and Félix, two years younger.

M, Deviolaine, the head of the family, was an excellentman at heart,—I say at heart, for on the surface nature had endowed him with a tough skin, which for roughness might have vied with the most rugged oak trees in his forest.

He was five feet seven inches in height, and had small black eyes, shaded by enormous eyebrows; his lips were thick and protruding, his frame was that of a Hercules, he was clothed with hair like a wild boar and he was hardly as sociable as the animal with which we have taken the liberty of comparing him. His paroxysms of rage—and every day was an April day with him—were the terror of his family. When he came down from his study, which was isolated from the rest of the house, with his face portending storms to come, women, children, and servants fled from his presence, terrified, with their heads down, as shepherd, dogs, and flocks flee before a coming storm.

Never but once did I see him with a gracious countenance.

Never but once did I hear him speak without swearing.

This moral and physical change had been wrought in him by his attempt to gather in a swarm of bees, which he feared would fly away out of his reach.

It was summer, and he wore his shirt open. He had rashly shaken the tree in which the swarm was grouped, and half the swarm—that is to say, about ten thousand bees—tumbled on his open breast.

This accident took place at the bottom of the garden; we were all gathered round the kitchen door, waiting to see the result of the operation, when all at once we caught sight of him at the end of a path, coming towards the house with measured steps, smiling, holding out his shirt with both his hands and saying in the gentlest tones:

"There, my little ones—there—"

And we gazed at him from afar, marvelling to see him walk with such an unaccustomed gait, smiling such an unusual smile, talking with that incomprehensible urbanity. Everyone asked himself to whom M. Deviolaine was talking and smiling thus.

M. Deviolaine was talking and smiling to the bees.

His mild tones succeeded, and they all flew off him, everysingle bee, not one of them stinging him; but when the last had flown away, and he raised his eyes, and discovered his wife, his children, and his servants all perched on the kitchen steps looking at him, there was such an outburst of "mille tonnerres" and other oaths that the household did not recover for a week after!

As for us, we disappeared like magic; one would have thought the ground had opened beneath our feet and swallowed us up.

The remarkable fact about all these tempests was, that they ended in nothing worse than clouds and lightning, without any hailstones or thunderbolts. No one ever remembered seeing M. Deviolaine even kick out at his dog—unless the beast were well outside the reach of his foot.

M. Deviolaine possessed another house besides this one; it was called St. Remy, and stood in the middle of a charming little plateau, surrounded on all sides by the forest.

St. Remy specially deserves a few words; the days we went there were fête days indeed!

St. Remy had once been a nunnery, but I do not know to what order it had belonged. I only remember the portrait of the abbess, in a frame above the chimney-piece in the large hall. She was a beautiful woman, clothed entirely in black, with a blue cord round her to which was attached a cross; she was round and plump, stout with the corpulence only to be found among buxom saints. She bore some titled name known in those parts, which I forget.

The convent had been in use until 1791 or 1792; then the laws came into force which destroyed cloistered life, and all these doves of the Lord had to flee: I believe M. Deviolaine bought the convent as ecclesiastical property.

There was an immense cloister attached to this convent—though not so large perhaps in reality as in my remembrance of it: children's eyes see strange hallucinations in the region of memory—space, to their minds, is infinite.

Outside this cloister were great staircases, with iron bannisters, leading to the former apartments of the abbess. Onlya portion of these had been fitted up, the rest belonged to rats and cats, which appeared to have settled a truce, for they lived together on a pretty good understanding.

A dozen acres of meadow-land, little woods, and walled-in gardens enclosed this old cloistered building, which was shaded with trees as old as itself.

To-day, trees and cloister have fallen down: nothing really remains on the earth's surface; everything springs up only to decay: the lives of monuments, of trees, and of men, are all but a question of durability; stone and wood decay just as do flesh and bones.

But at that time all was still standing, like the hopes of our young lives; the cloister knew not of black bands or the trees of speculators. It was all sold together, felled timber and ruins, and from the débris of the immense building and the trunks of the oak trees there was left sufficient material to build a pretty little house, of the kind built nowadays, containing one sitting-room four mètres square, and several rooms about twelve feet long by eight feet wide; regular Socrates' houses, empty, small though they be, for want of friends to fill them!

Oh! that great cloister, how full it was on Sundays with the sound of joyous shouting and mad races! How happy were all children who loved adventure beyond the borders of their native town, far from the watchful eye of family and townsfolk, how grateful to the unknown founder of that great nest, once melancholy, but to-day peopled by gay singing birds! How this noise from the living world must have made the nuns tremble in their graves—those black shades that had been women, with bodies containing souls, those skeletons which had once possessed hearts, and had come to bury the passions of their hearts, and the hopes of their souls, and the beauty of their faces in the obscurity of the cloister, in the night of penitence, and in the mysteries of the ascetic life!

We laughed where, mayhap, many had wept bitter tears; we leaped and bounded in our joyous childhood, where probablymany had paced towards death with slow, sad, hopeless steps.

But what cared we, children born but yesterday? Did a past exist in our thoughts? Why, we could scarcely remember last autumn's yellow leaves, scarcely recall last spring's emerald leaves: our memories only went as far back as yesterday's sunshine; our hopes were centred only on to-morrow's sunshine; our future was twenty-four hours; to us, a month was eternity!

Oh! what recollections of my childhood, hitherto forgotten, are stored in the pathways of that cloistered domain! When I retrace my steps to-day, at every footfall they arise, as precious as those flowers of diamonds, rubies, and sapphires, gathered in the gardens of theThousand and one Nights, which never faded!

The two snakes—M. de Valence and Madame de Montesson—Who little Hermine was—Garnier the wheelwright and Madame de Valence—Madame Lafarge—Fantastic apparition of Madame de Genlis.

I had a great fright one day in that beautiful garden. At one corner stood a kind of ruined and roofless tower; in August, the sun's rays concentrated inside this tower and made it as hot as a furnace. It was a curious sight then to watch the flies buzzing there, and the butterflies dancing, the beautiful grey and green lizards gliding along its walls. One day when I was playing near the tower, I heard a sharp hissing noise, and, on going to look what it was, I saw through the opening which had once been a door, two long snakes sitting on their tails, with their bodies coiled round in spirals, darting out their long black tongues at one another, and hissing either with love or rage. Such as these must have been the two serpents to whom Mercury threw his wand, for they looked just like the two that have for ever coiled round that rod.

But I was not Mercury, I had not the magic wand that pacified the bitterest hatreds; I took to flight, as Laocoon would have done if he had seen the two serpents of Tenedos rolling in with the tide of the Dardanelles, had he known they had left their island on purpose to strangle himself and his children.

As I fled I met M. Deviolaine, who, seeing me in such a fright, asked me what was the matter: I told him, and to my great amazement he did not in the least share my fears; he merely tore up from the ground a pole which propped up a young tree and walked towards the tower, whence, after five minutes' fight, he came out, having conquered the two hydras.

From that moment I looked upon M. Deviolaine as a Hercules, the tamer of monsters.

I shall often return to M. Deviolaine, for he had great influence over my life; I was more afraid of him than of any man, but at the same time I loved him next after my father.

We will now proceed to M. Collard.

M. Collard was as good-natured as M. Deviolaine, his most intimate friend, was ill-tempered: his smiling face was as great a contrast to his friend's forbidding aspect. M. Collard was the head of a family to which the terrible and mysterious Glandier law-suit has since given such a sinister notoriety.

M. Collard, who occupied the delightful little château of Villers-Hellon, about three leagues from Villers-Cotterets, was of aristocratic descent; but he had dropped the name of Montjouy and simply kept that of Collard, to give less offence to democratic ears. He had formerly been acquainted with M. de Talleyrand in the Legislative Assembly, and, in 1795 or 1796, he had married a young girl named Hermine, who lived with Madame de Valence.

One day the duc d'Orléans unexpectedly called on Madame de Montesson, who was then his wife, and found M. de Valence at her feet, with his head on her lap. The situation was embarrassing, but Madame de Montesson was a great lady not easily put to confusion: she turned laughingly to her husband, who stood petrified in the doorway, and she said to him:

"Come and help me, my dear duke, to get rid of Valence: he has fallen in love with Pulchérie, and insists on marrying her."

Pulchérie was Madame de Genlis's second daughter; the first was called Caroline, and had married M. de Lawoestine.

After the fright he had just had, the duke was ready enough to give Pulchérie to M. de Valence. He settled 600,000 francs on the bride, and they were married. Now how came little Hermine to the house of Madame de Valence, and who was she? I am going to explain.

Madame de Montesson was aunt to Madame de Genlis.Madame de Genlis had been placed with the duchesse d'Orléans (Mademoiselle de Penthièvre) by Madame de Montesson, in the position of maid of honour. While with the duchess, Philippe-Joseph (since Philippe-Égalité) had met her, fallen in love, made her his mistress, and had had a daughter by her.

That daughter was little Hermine.

She was brought up in England, and when Madame Adélaïde, sister to King Louis-Philippe, was seven or eight years old, they wished to give her a young English companion, with whom she could do her lessons and learn to talk English. Here was an opportunity to bring Hermine near her parents. She therefore left London and came to Paris.

After the emigration of the duc de Chartres, of MM. de Beaujolais, de Montpensier, and the Princess Adélaïde, Hermine, then about fourteen or fifteen years of age, took refuge with her sister, Madame de Valence; but Madame de Valence herself was soon arrested and thrown into prison, and Philippe-Égalité lost his head on the scaffold.

So Hermine then lived with the children of Madame de Valence; Félicie, who married M. de Celles, and Rosamonde, wife of Marshal Gérard.

These poor children were only saved by a miracle from becoming orphans.

A wheelwright named Garnier living in the rue Neuve-des-Mathurins was in love with her; he was a member of the Town Council, and at the peril of his life he twice burnt the despatches sent by the governor of the prison to the Revolutionary Tribunal, in which Madame de Valence was denounced as the most aristocratic prisoner there. This devoted act saved Madame de Valence, for it tided her over till the 9th Thermidor.

Every New Year's Day for years after the wheelwright Garnier paid a visit to Madame de Valence. It should be borne in mind that she owed her precious life to him, and the whole family welcomed him as he deserved to be welcomed for his heroism.

On the death of my father, M. Collard had been appointed my guardian; and I therefore saw Madame Collard when she was still young, not more than thirty or thirty-two. It would have been difficult to find more perfectly distinguished manners, with such dignity of movement and actions, or more graceful hospitality, than were blended in Madame Collard's character.

She had one son and three daughters: Maurice, who became a country squire; Caroline, who married Baron Capelle, whose daughter Marie, under the name of Madame Lafarge, was the heroine in one of the most touching dramas that ever was played before a Court of Assize; Hermine, who married the baron de Martens, the Prussian ambassador in Portugal,—she inherited her mother's wit, aristocratic bearing, and never-failing youthfulness of spirits; lastly, Louise, who married Garat, whose commercial signature carries more weight than that of any other man. Louise was, and is still, one of the prettiest women in Paris.

I have spoken of M. Deviolaine's town and country gardens; but they were nothing when compared with those near the park of Villers-Hellon, with their grand trees, their fine groves, and the little stream of green water winding through the gardens like a necklace of emeralds. And therefore, with the selfishness of childhood, of the three houses I preferred M. Collard's. The Darcourts' house contained a most beautiful copy of Buffon, but it had nothing of a garden. The Deviolaine house had a fine situation, and even two very beautiful gardens; but M. Deviolaine had a scowling face, whilst M. Collard had a fine garden, a kind face, and, furthermore, a splendid Bible.

From that Bible I learnt my sacred history so thoroughly that I have never needed to study it since.

I have spoken of two great alarms I had already experienced in my life—the third happened at Villers-Hellon.

One evening, when I was as usual busy turning over the pictures in my fine Bible (I was between four and five years old at the time), we heard a carriage draw up in front of the porch, then loud shrieks in the dining-room. Everyone rushed towards the door, and when it opened it gave entrance to thestrangest Meg Merrilies that the imagination of any Walter Scott could ever conceive. This witch—and at first sight her appearance was such as to justify one in calling her so—was dressed in black, and, as she had lost her bonnet, her mass of false hair had taken advantage of its freedom from restraint to fly in all directions, so that her own grey hairs fell down on each side of her face and floated over her shoulders.

The vision was entirely different from the famous snake of Amiens and the two serpents at St. Remy; moreover, the Amiens snake I had only seen in imagination, and the two serpents of St. Remy I had had time to escape from; but this sorceress I beheld with my very eyes, and we met in the same room.

I threw down my Bible, and, under cover of the tumult occasioned by this apparition, I fled to my room, hid in my bed, dressed as I was, and drew the bed-clothes well over my head.

Next day I learnt that the cause of my fright was the illustrious Madame de Genlis, who, coming to visit her daughter, Madame Collard, had lost her way in the forest of Villers-Cotterets through the fault of her coachman, and had given way to panic, being in profound dread of ghosts: she had not even then recovered from her fright, although she had communicated the greater part of it to me.

It was in these three houses that the first portion of my childhood was passed,—those early years studded with sunny memories as soft and as fresh as the dawn; for, indeed, with the exception of M. Deviolaine's surly countenance, and the grotesque apparition of Madame de Genlis, everything connected with those two houses was sunny. The gardens were full of green trees and brilliantly-coloured flowers; the walks were peopled by fair and dark young girls, with rosy, smiling faces—nearly all rosy and sweet, even when they were not pretty.

Then, from time to time, some woman noted for her beauty in the days of the century about to close would appear inthe midst of this laughing, younger generation; some woman who, having retained somewhat of the fashions of the days of the Directory, looked like a glorious statue of Summer amidst that budding Spring.

These ladies were Madame de Valence, Madame Menin, or Madame Dusauloy.

I have already spoken of the Princess Pauline Borghèse and the impression she left on my mind. And now we must return to my own story.

Mademoiselle Pivert—I make her read theThousand and One Nights, or, rather, one story in that collection—Old Hiraux, my music-master—The little worries of his life—He takes his revenge on his persecutors after the fashion of the Maréchal de Montluc—He is condemned to be flogged, and nearly loses the sight of his eyes—What happened on Easter Day in the organ-loft at the monastery—He becomes a grocer's lad—His vocation leads him to the study of music—I have little aptitude for the violin.

I had learnt to read at a very early age, as I have said, thanks to Madame Darcourt's Buffon, M. Collard's Bible and, above all, to my mother's kindly pains. My sister too, who was at a boarding-school in Paris, during her six weeks' vacations, which were spent with us, completed my early education by teaching me to write.

So at five or six years of age I was very well up in these two accomplishments, and extraordinarily conceited about them. I can still see myself, about the height of a jack-boot, in a little cotton jacket (for, like the Romans, I did not leave off thetoga praetextatill I was fifteen),—I can still see myself, pedantically joining in the conversation of grown-up people, contributing items of sacred or profane learning which I had derived from the Bible or mythology, theories of natural history cribbed from M. de Buffon and M. Daudin, geographical information borrowed fromRobinson Crusoe, and social and political ideas culled from the sage Idomeneus, founder of Salentum.

But mythology was my strong point. Besides theLettres à Emilie sur la Mythologieof my compatriot Demoustier, which I knew by heart, I possessed aMythologie de la Jeunesse, illustrated with pictures and interspersed with verses fromRacine and Saint-Ange, which I was everlastingly devouring. Not a god or goddess or demi-god, not a single faun or dryad, not a hero was there whose attributes I did not know. Hercules and his twelve labours, Jupiter and his twenty transformations, Vulcan and his thirty-six misfortunes, I knew them all at my fingers' ends, and, what is still more extraordinary, I know them still.

One day (it was at M. Deviolaine's house, in 1809, at a time when each morning's paper contained bulletins of deeds which, for ten years, made our history seem like one of the heroic fables of old) I remember some of the guests asked, just after luncheon, what the news of the day was; but as it was still early no one had read the papers, and consequently no one could satisfy the general curiosity.

M. Deviolaine rang the bell, and the servant appeared.

"Mas," he said (the name of the servant), "get aGazetteand bring it us."

"Oh! there is no need for that, cousin," I said, crossing my hands behind my back; "I have read the paper and there is nothing of importance in it—only a sitting of theCorps Législatif."

I have said that M. Deviolaine often shot out his foot when angry, but never kicked anything; I was wrong; he did kick something that time!

I left the room furious, and for three months after I would not enter the house where I had received such a humiliation.

How came it about that I knew anything concerning theCorps Législatif?

It was in this wise.

One day I had seen M. Collard in a blue coat braided with gold.

"You are a general, then, like my papa?" I asked him roguishly.

"No, my little friend," he answered, "I am a member of theCorps Législatif."

And from that time I used to read the proceedings of theCorps Législatifto find out what M. Collard said there.

But my curiosity was never gratified.

However, everybody was not so contemptuous about my learning as M. Deviolaine had shown himself to be. Among others, there were three or four elderly devotees—one of them a certain damsel of sixty-five or sixty-six called Pivert—who appreciated and praised my knowledge. There was no kind of story, whether sacred or profane, that they did not make me relate; and Mademoiselle Pivert in particular, not contented with my recitals, had recourse to my library, in order to get at the source of my information.

Well, I gave her an imperfect copy of theThousand and One Nights, which I possessed; it contained only theWonderful Lamp, nothing else. She would be absorbed in the reading of this for a whole week, then she would return me the volume and ask for the next, which I would promise to give her on the morrow; I lent her the same again, which she always conscientiously re-read, and, I must add, with renewed delight.

This lasted quite a year, during which time she re-read the same volume fifty-two times.

"Well, Mademoiselle Pivert," I asked her at the end of the year, "does theThousand and One Nightsstill entertain you?"

"Immensely, my little friend," she replied; "but one thing puzzles me; you may be able to explain it, as you are so learned."

"What is it, Mademoiselle Pivert?"

"Why are they all called Aladdin?"

Now, clever though I was, I could not answer Mademoiselle Pivert without confessing the truth, therefore I declared my ignorance, while she regarded it as an unpardonable fault in the unknown poet-author of theThousand and One Nightsto have labelled all his charactersAladdin.

Notwithstanding all this, the prodigious stock of learning, which was my pride and Mademoiselle Pivert's admiration, was still considered incomplete by my dear mother.

My sister was quite a good musician, and sang prettily; and my mother reproached herself, in spite of our poverty,for not giving equal advantages to both her children; so she decided that I also should learn music. But as it had already been discovered that good Mother Nature, so bountiful towards me in other respects, had endowed me with the most discordant of voices imaginable; and as it had been noticed that I had very nimble fingers and was clever with my hands; they elected to make me an instrumentalist only, and chose the violin,—the instrument which a musician does not use to accompany his voice, unless he is afflicted with blindness.

As the town of Villers-Cotterets only possessed one teacher there was no difficulty in choosing a professor.

This professor's name was Hiraux.

Hiraux really deserves a chapter to himself—or rather two.

Hiraux—or Old Hiraux, as he was familiarly called by the town—was for all the world a second Hoffmann; with his long, slender figure, his maroon-coloured coat, and his wig, which had a way of always accompanying his hat with each salutation he made. Because of this, in order to avoid such an inconvenience, Hiraux decided not to wear his wig save on Sundays and on great fête days. On ordinary days, the wig was replaced by a black silk cap, which he would pull down violently over his ears whenever his pupils played a wrong note.

Now, after considerable reflection upon the matter, and in view of all I saw and heard, I came to the conclusion that Hiraux gave up wearing his wig daily because of the difficulty of applying it to the same purpose as the cap.

Consequently, except on fête days and Sundays, he only half saluted anyone; if by salutation it is understood that I mean he uncovered his head, because, when he took off his hat, he still kept on his black silk cap.

Moreover, his black silk cap had become an integral part of his person. A score of times did I touch it, as the inhabitants of Lilliput fingered Gulliver's clothes,—to make sure that this adornment was not his own skin,—Hiraux was so good-natured that he permitted me to make this investigation.

Under that cap, Hiraux had one of the most emaciated and parchment-like faces I have ever seen—the cleverest and the most mobile, owing to the play of every muscle on it, which seemed to vibrate in unison with his thoughts, even as the strings of his violin or the keys of his pianoforte vibrated under his long, thin, flexible fingers, fingers like those of Paganini.

Hiraux had had an adventurous youth; he had been a choir-boy, an organ-blower in a monastery of Piedmontese monks, then a grocer's lad, then a fiddler, then a music-teacher, and finally an organist.

It would puzzle me to tell you how his steps were first directed to the precincts of the Church of Bourg-Fontaine (the convent where Hiraux was brought up); but at times he would relate, among his early recollections, as I am doing in these Memoirs, some good stories of the monks similar to those of Rabelais and la Fontaine.

Hiraux was a living chronicle of those old claustral traditions, already so remote from the ideas of men of to-day, forty years later, that they are lost like phantasms of another world, behind the early recollections of our youth, and lost so effectually that in the generation to come after ours there will be no trace left of them at all.

The monks were driven from France, then from Spain, then from Italy, till they ended by existing only in the paintings of Dominiquin, Zurbaran, and Lesueur.

I do not know whether society has been the gainer, but, very certainly, art and romance have lost considerably by their disappearance. I have seen the Escurial without its monks, and it looked like a tomb.

When I go to see Rome I cannot tell what effect it will produce upon me.

I have stated that I could not say in what way Hiraux entered the monastery of Bourg-Fontaine, but I know well enough how he left it.

Hiraux was a coward; he cannot he blamed for this; it was characteristic of him. As a matter of fact, he had the quickwittedness to boast about it, just as another man might have bragged about his courage.

Now, he still lived in the happy days whenfarceswere all the rage, and all his life he had been the object of more or less comic practical jokes, several of which were nearly the death of him.

As we have said before, or as we say now if we forgot to mention it previously, Hiraux combined the two offices of choir-boy and organ-blower in the monastery of Bourg-Fontaine. In virtue of this double qualification he slept in the sacristy of the monastery, and every night he had to go through the church to get to his bedroom.

It was a nightly terror to him to have to walk down that vast arched nave (I have only seen the ruins of it, wherein Hiraux's son and I used to rob crows' nests): the great windows with their carved traceries through which the pallid and flickering moonlight shone upon the tombstones in the floor; the mysterious vistas where darkness reigned even in daytime; all these together, especially on a winter's night when the north wind whistled through the great gaunt trees whose dry branches rubbed against one another like the bones of a skeleton, and the wind made long-drawn moanings down the abbey corridors; all these, I say, combined to make such a funereal and gloomy effect that poor Hiraux's blood ran cold in his veins, accustomed as he was to witness the malice of men so constantly intermingle with the awe-inspiring majesty of the place.

The monks were not the people who plagued him; nor the prior, who loved Hiraux like a son; but it was that semi-religious, semi-secular race which forms a connecting link between the men of heaven and the men of this world, and which swarms in every monastery.

Hiraux's most relentless persecutors were the brothers who served as scullions.

One November day—All Souls Day it was—when the customary empty coffin had been exposed all day covered with a black-and-silver cloth surrounded by a forest of candles,which remained lighted all the night, Hiraux entered the church, still more afraid of the light on this night than he was ordinarily of the darkness.

After closing the door of the church as gently as possible behind him, walking on tiptoe, brushing against the wall so as to keep as far away as possible from the centre of the church, so funereally lighted up as we have explained, he reached the sacristy.

Suddenly Hiraux stood still, glued to the wall, with his limbs rigid, his mouth open, his hair on end, the perspiration coming out on his forehead, as motionless as the stone statues of the priors in their tombs in the Abbey.

The catafalque had moved.

At first Hiraux thought he must have been mistaken, and tried to reason away his fears; but what good was reason against the actual fact? For the catafalque had not only moved, but it began to come straight towards him! Hiraux tried to shriek out, but, like the voices of Virgil's heroes, the sound stuck in his throat; and, seeing that the catafalque continued to make straight for him, his legs failed him, he leant helpless against the wall, and fell in a faint.

At three o'clock in the morning, the church opened for matins; Hiraux was still in the same place, as still as though he were dead. He had come to his senses; but, although he found the catafalque in its place, he dared not stir for fear it would move again.

The sacristan brother hearing himself called in a stifled voice, turned to see where it came from, and found Hiraux with his face to the ground, icily cold and bathed in perspiration at the same time.

But he found something else on the floor, too, as he went to Hiraux.

He found a cotton cap.

Now, while Hiraux was telling the sacristan of the horrible apparition he had seen in the night, his eyes fixed on the cotton cap, which the sacristan held in his hand, and, thanksto that tell-tale cap, light rapidly dawned on his mind and dissipated the panic terror that had overwhelmed him.

So, as Hiraux continued his narrative, the supernatural phenomenon gave place to natural causes, and, while going over his nocturnal experiences with his friend, the sacristan, guided by the clue of the cotton cap, he became convinced that, if the catafalque had moved, and had walked towards him, it was the brother who cooked for the monks, with perhaps two or three of his scullion knaves, who had got underneath and carried it along.

People are not brought up in convents without acquiring a certain amount of the spirit of revenge. Hiraux kept his own counsel, and did not speak of his suspicions to a soul; he let them laugh at his fright, he let them circulate the story all through the monastery, and even outside, internally vowing vengeance.

The reader may recall the story of Marshal Montluc, and the famous hanging of Huguenots he ordered as he passed through some town whose name I do not remember. I am going to repeat it in case it has been forgotten.

Marshal de Montluc, then, was passing through a certain town, and thought he had a grievance against some judges who, in virtue of the axiomCedant arma togo, had neglected to pay him the respect he thought was his due.

He set to work to make these judges repent their impertinent conduct. He found out what they were busy over, and learnt that they were looking forward with great pleasure to judging a dozen Huguenots on the morrow, who had been taken captive for carrying arms, and were awaiting their sentence in the town prisons.

So the marshal de Montluc went to the prisons, under a strong escort, had them opened, had a dozen nails driven into the beams, attached a dozen ropes thereto, and, from these twelve ropes, hung the twelve Huguenots. "And the judges were well taken in the next day," says the marshal in his Memoirs, "when they found nobody left to try."

Hiraux punished the scullions in pretty much the same way as the marshal de Montluc punished the judges. He stoleinto the monastic dispensary, seized upon a copious dose of jalap and mixed it with the kitchen sauces.

Had Hiraux written his Memoirs he would, no doubt, have written, after the fashion of the marshal de Montluc: "Next day, the scullions were well taken aback at seeing their monks purged inside out; just as though they had swallowed a triple dose of Doctor Leroy's physic."

This happened at Epiphany.

There was a great commotion in the Abbey, as may well be imagined. A whole monastery—from prior to sacristan—is not purged at Epiphany without religious duties suffering considerably.

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