CHAPTER XX.THE BAPTISM.
The important day at Aps is Monday because it is market day.
Long before daylight the roads that lead to the city, the great solitary turnpikes from Arles and Avignon, where the white dust lies as quiet as a fall of snow, are enlivened by the slow grinding noise of the carts and the squawking of chickens in their osier crates and the barking of dogs running alongside; or by that rustling sound of a shower which the passage of a flock of sheep produces, accompanied by the long blouse of the shepherd which one perceives as he is carried along by the bounding wave of his beasts. Then there are cries of the cow-boys panting in the rear of their cattle and the dull sound of sticks falling upon humpy backs and outlines of horsemen armed with cowpunches in trident form. Slowly and gropingly all these phantoms are swallowed up by the dark gateways whose crenelations are seen in festoons against the starry sky; thence it spreads wide again into thecorsowhich surrounds the sleepy city.
At that hour the town takes on itself again its character of an old Roman and Saracen city, withits irregular roofs and pointed moucharabies above the broken and dangerous stairways. This confused murmur of men and sleepy beasts penetrates with but little noise between the silvery trunks of the big plane-trees, overflows upon the avenue and even into the courtyards of the houses and stirs up warm odors of litters and fragrances of herbs and ripe fruit. When it wakes, therefore, the town discovers that it has been captured in every quarter by an enormous, lively and noisy market, just as if the entire agricultural part of Provence, men and beasts, fruits and seeds, had roused up and come together in one great nocturnal inundation.
In truth it is a magnificent sight, a pouring forth of rustic wealth that changes with the seasons. In certain places set apart by immemorial usage the oranges and pomegranates, golden colored quinces, sorbs, green and yellow melons, are piled up near the booths in rows and in heaps by the thousand; peaches, figs and grapes destroy themselves by their own weight in their baskets of transportation side by side with vegetables in sacks. Sheep and silky pigs and littlecabris(kids) show airs of weariness within the palisades of their small reservations. Oxen fastened to the yoke stride along before the buyer, while bulls with smoking nostrils drag at the iron ring which holds them to the wall. And farther on, quantities of horses, the little horses from the Camargue—dwarf Arabs—prance about mingling their brown, white or russet manes; upon being called by name, “Té!Lucifer—Té!l’Esterel—” they run up to eat oats from thehands of their keepers, veritable Gauchos of the pampas with boots above the knee. Then come the poultry two by two, red and fastened by the legs, guinea fowl and chickens lying, not without much banging of the earth with their wings, at the feet of their mistresses who are drawn up in a line. Then there is the fish market, with eels alive on fennel and trout from the Sorgue and the Durance, mixing their shining scales in rainbow agonies with all the rest of the color. And last of all, at the very end, in a sort of dry winter forest are the wooden spades and hay-forks and rakes, new and very white, which rise between the plows and harrows.
On the other side of thecorsoagainst the rampart the unhitched wagons stand in line, with their canopies and linen covers and high curtains and dusty wheels, and all through the space left vacant the noisy crowd circulates with difficulty, with calls and discussions and chattering in all kinds of dialects and accents—the Provençal accent, which is refined and full of airs and graces and requires certain movements of the head and shoulder and a bold sort of mimicry, while that of Languedoc is harder and heavier and almost Spanish in its articulation. From time to time this mass of felt hats and head-dresses from Arles or the Comté, this difficult circulation of a mob of buyers and sellers, splits in two at the cries from some lagging cart which comes slowly forward with great difficulty at a snail’s pace.
The burgesses of the city hardly appear, so full of scorn are they at this invasion from the country,which nevertheless is the occasion of its originality and the source of its wealth. From morning to night the peasants are walking through the streets, stopping at the booths, at the harness-makers, shoemakers and watchmakers, staring at the metal figures of the clock on the City Hall and into the shop windows, dazzled by the gilding and mirrors of the restaurants, just as the rustics in Theocritus stood and stared at the Palace of the Ptolemies. Some issue from the drug shops laden with parcels and big bottles; others, and they form a wedding procession, enter the jeweller’s to choose, after long and cunning bargains, ear-rings with long pendent pieces and the necklace for the coming bride. And these coarse gowns, these brown and wild-looking faces and their eager, businesslike manner make one think of some town in La Vendée taken by the Chouans at the time of the great wars.
That morning, the third Monday of February, animation was very lively; the crowd was as thick as on the finest summer days, which indeed it suggested through its cloudless sky warmed by a golden sun. People were talking and gesticulating in groups, but what agitated them was less the buying and selling than a certain event which caused all traffic to cease and turned all looks and heads and even the broad eyes of the oxen and the twitching ears of the little Camargue horses toward the Church of Sainte Perpétue. The fact was that a rumor had just spread through the market, where it occasioned an emotion thatran to extraordinary height, to the effect that to-day the son of Numa would be baptized—that same little Roumestan whose birth three weeks before had been received with transports of joy in Aps and the entire Provençal South. Unfortunately this baptism, which had been delayed because of the deep mourning the family was in, had to preserve the appearance of incognito for the very same reason, and it is probable that the ceremony would have passed unperceived had it not been for certain old sorceresses belonging to the country about Les Baux who every Monday install upon the front steps of Sainte Perpétue a little market of aromatic herbs and dried and perfumed simples culled among the Alpilles. Seeing the coach of Aunt Portal stopping in front of the church, the old herb-sellers gave the alarm to the women who sellaïets(garlic), who move about pretty much everywhere from one end of thecorsoto the other with their arms crammed with the shining wreaths of their wares. The garlic women notified the fish dames and very soon the little street which leads to the church poured forth upon the little square all the gossip and excitement of the market-place. They pressed about Ménicle, who sat erect on the box in deep mourning with crape on his arm and hat and merely answered all questions with a silent and indifferent play of his shoulders. Spite of everything, they insisted upon waiting, and in the mercer’s street beneath the bands of calico the crowd piled itself up to suffocation while the bolderspirits mounted the well-curb—all eyes fixed on the grand portal of the church, which at last opened.
There was a murmur of “ah!” as when fireworks are let off, a triumphant and modulated sound which was cut short by the sight of a tall old man dressed in black, very much overwhelmed and very melancholy, who gave his arm to Madame Portal, who as far as she was concerned was very proud to have served as godmother along with the First President, proud of their two names side by side on the parish register; but she was saddened by the recent mourning and the sorrowful impressions which she had just renewed once more in the church. The crowd had a feeling of severe deception at sight of this austere couple, who were followed by the great man of Aps, also entirely in black and with gloves on—Numa, penetrated by the solitude and cold of this baptism performed in the midst of four candles without any other music than the wailing of the little child, upon whom the Latin of the function and the baptismal water dropping on a tender little head like that of an unfledged bird had caused the most disagreeable impression. But the appearance of a richly fed nurse, large, heavy and decked with ribbons like a prize at an agricultural meet, and the sparkling little parcel of laces and white embroidery which she carried like a sash, dissipated the melancholy of the spectators and roused a new cry that sounded like a mounting rocket, a joy scattered into a thousand enthusiastic exclamations:
“Lou vaqui!—there he is!Vé! vé!”
Surprised and dazzled, winking in the bright sunlight, Numa stopped a moment on the high porch in order to look at these Moorish faces, this closely packed herding together of a black flock from which a crazy tenderness mounted up to where he stood. And although tired of ovations, at that moment he had one of the most lively emotions in his existence as a public man, a proud intoxication which an entirely new and already very lively sentiment of paternity ennobled. He was about to speak and then remembered that this platform in front of the church was not the place for it.
“Get in, nurse,” said he to the tranquil wet-nurse from Bourgogne, whose eyes, like those of a milch cow, were staring wide open in amazement. And while she was bestowing herself with her light burden in the coach he advised Ménicle to return quickly by the cross streets. But a tremendous clamor answered him:
“No, no, the grand round—the grand round!”
They meant that he should pass the entire length of the market place.
“Well then, the grand round be it!” said Roumestan after having consulted his father-in-law with a look; for he wished to spare him this joyful procession; and so the coach, starting with many crackings of its ancient and heavy carcass, entered the little street and debouched upon thecorsoin the midst ofvivasfrom the crowd, which grew excited over its own cries and culminated ina whirl of enthusiasm so as to block the way of horses and wheels at every moment. With the windows open they marched slowly on through these acclamations, raised hats, fluttering handkerchiefs and all the odors and hot breaths which the market exhaled as they passed. The women stuck their ardent bronzed heads forward right into the carriage and at seeing no more than the cap of the little baby would exclaim:
“Diou! lou bèu drôle!” (My God! what a lovely child!)
“He looks just like his father—qué?”
“Already has his Bourbon nose and his fine manners!”
“Show it to us, my darling, show us your beautiful man’s face.”
“He is as lovely as an egg!”
“You could drink him in a glass of water!”
“Té!my treasure!”
“My little quail!”
“My lambkin—my guinea-hen!”
“My lovely pearl!”
And these women wrapped and licked him with the brown flame from their eyes. But he, a child but one month old, was not scared in the least. Waked up by all this noise and leaning back on the cushion with its bows of pink ribbon, he regarded everything with his little cat eyes, the pupils dilated and fixed, with two drops of milk at the corners of his lips. And there he lay, calm and evidently pleased at these apparitions of heads at the windows and these growing noises withwhich soon mingled the baaing, mooing and braying of the cattle, seized as they were by a formidable nervous imitation, all their necks stretched out and mouths open and jaws yawning to the glory of Roumestan and his offspring! Even then, at a time when everybody else in the carriage was holding their stunned ears with both hands, the little man remained perfectly impassible, so that his coolness even broke up the solemn features of the old President, who said:
“Well, if that fellow was not born for the forum!”
On leaving the market they hoped to be rid of all this, but the crowd followed them, being joined as they went by the weavers on the Chemin-neuf, the yarn-makers in womanly bands and the porters from the Avenue Berchère. The shopmen ran to the threshold of their stores, the balcony of the Club of the Whites was flooded with people and presently with their banners the Orphéons debouched from all the streets singing their choral songs and giving musical bursts, just as if Numa had arrived; but along with it all there went something gayer and more unhackneyed, something beyond the habitual merry-making.
In the finest room belonging to the Portal Mansion, whose white wainscots and rich silks belonged to the last century, Rosalie was stretched upon an invalid’s chair, turning her eyes now upon the empty cradle and then upon the deserted and sunny street; she grew impatient as she waited for the return of her child. On her fine features, paleand creased with fatigue and tears, one might see nevertheless something like a happy restfulness; yet one could read there the whole history of her existence throughout the last two months, her anxieties and tortures, her rupture with Numa, the death of her dear Hortense and at last the birth of the child, which swept everything else into insignificance.
When this great happiness really came to her she did not believe it possible; broken by so many blows, she did not believe herself capable of giving life to anything. During the last days she even imagined that she no longer felt the impatient movements of the little captive, and although cradle and layette were all ready she hid them, moved by a superstitious fear, and merely notified the Englishwoman who took care of her:
“If child’s clothes are asked for, you will know where to find them.”
It is nothing to abandon oneself to a bed of torture with closed eyes and clenched teeth for many, many long hours, interrupted every five minutes by a terrible cry that tears and compels one; it is nothing to undergo one’s destiny as a victim all of whose happy moments must be dearly bought—if there is hope at the end of it all. But what horrible martyrdom in the final pain when, struck by a supreme disillusionment, the almost animal lamentations of the woman are mingled with the deeper sobs of deceived maternity! Half dead and bleeding, she kept repeating from the bottom of her annihilation: “He is dead—he is dead!”—whenshe heard that trial of a voice, that respiration and cry in one, that appeal for light which the newborn infant makes. Ah, with what overflowing tenderness did she not respond!
“My little one!”
He lived and they brought him to her. So this was hers after all, this little creature short of breath, dazzled and startled—almost blind! This small affair in the flesh connected her again with life, and merely by pressing it against her all the feverishness of her body was drowned by a sensation of comfortable coolness. No more mourning, no more wretchedness! Here was her son, that desire and regret which she had endured for ten years and had burnt her eyes with tears whenever she saw the children of other people, that very same baby which she had kissed so often beforehand upon so many other lovely little rosy cheeks! There he was, and he caused her a new ravishment and surprise every time that she leaned from her bed over his cradle and swept aside the covers that hid a slumber that could hardly be heard and the shivery and contracted positions of a newly born child. She wanted to have him always near her. When he went out she was anxious and counted every minute. But never had she experienced quite so much anguish as upon this morning of the baptism.
“What time is it?” asked she every minute. “How long they are! Heavens, what a time they take!”
Mme. Le Quesnoy, who had remained behindwith her daughter, reassured her, although she was herself a little anxious; for this grandson, the first and only one, was very close to the heart of his grandparents and lighted up their mourning with a hope. A distant clamor which grew deeper as it approached increased the trouble of the two women. Running to the window they listened—choral songs, gunshots, clamors, bells ringing like mad! And all of a sudden the Englishwoman who is looking out on the street cries: “Madame, it is the baptism!”
And so it was the baptism, this noise like a riot and these howlings as of cannibals around the stake.
“Oh, this South, this South!” repeated the young mother, now very much frightened, for she feared that her little one would be suffocated in the press.
But not at all; here he was, very alive indeed, in splendid case, waving his short little arms with his eyes wide open, wearing the long baptismal robe whose decorations Rosalie herself had embroidered and whose laces she herself had sewed on; it was the robe meant for the other; and so it is her two sons in one, the dead and the living one, whom she owns to-day.
“He did not make a cry, or ask for milk a single time the whole journey!” Aunt Portal affirms, and then goes on to relate in her picturesque way the triumphal tour of the town, whilst in the old hotel, which has suddenly become the old house for ovations, all the doors slam and the servantsrush out into the porch where the musicians are being regaled withgazeuse. The musical bursts resound and the panes tremble in every window. The old Le Quesnoys have gone out into the garden to get away from this jollity which overwhelms them with grief, and since Roumestan is about to make a speech from the balcony, Aunt Portal and Polly the Englishwoman run quickly into the drawing-room to listen.
“If Madame would be so kind as to hold the baby?” asks the wet-nurse, as consumed with curiosity as a wild woman. And Rosalie is only too happy to remain behind with her child upon her knees. From her window she can see the banners glittering in the wind and the crowd densely crushed together and spellbound by the words of her great man. Phrases from his speech reach her now and then, but more than all else she hears the tone of that captivating and moving voice, and a sorrowful shudder passes through her at thought of all the evil which has come to her by way of that eloquence, so ready to lie and to dupe others.
At last it is all over; she feels that she has reached a point where deceptions and wounds can hurt her no more; she has a child, and that sums up all her happiness, all her dreams! And holding him up like a buckler she hugs the dear little creature to her breast and questions him very low and very near by, as if she were looking for some response, or some resemblance in the sketchy features of this unformed little countenance, thesedainty lineaments which seem to have been impressed by a caress in wax and already show a sensual, violent mouth, a nose curved in search of adventures and a soft and square chin.
“And will you also be a liar? Will you pass your life betraying others and yourself, breaking those innocent hearts who have never done you other evil than to believe in and love you? Will you be possessed of a light and cruel inconstancy, taking life like an amateur and a singer of cavatinas? Will you make a merchandise of words without bothering yourself as to their real value and their connection with your thought, so long as they are brilliant and resounding?”
And putting her lips in a kiss upon that little ear which the light strands of hair surround:
“Tell me, are you going to be a Roumestan?”
The orator on the balcony had lashed himself up and had reached the moment of effusiveness when nothing could be heard except the final chords, accentuated in the Southern manner—“my soul”—“my blood”—“morals”—“religion”—“our country”—punctuated by the applause of that audience which was made according to his image and which he summed up in his own self both in his qualities and his vices—an effervescing South, mobile and tumultuous like a sea with many currents, each of which spoke of him!
There was a finalvivaand then the crowd was heard slowly passing away. Roumestan came into the room mopping his brow; intoxicated by his triumph and warmed by this endless tendernessof the whole people, he approached his wife and kissed her with a sincere effusion of sentiment. He felt himself very kind to her and as tender as on the first day of their marriage; never a bit of remorse and never a bit of rancor!
“Bé!just see how they make much of him! How they applaud your son!” Kneeling before the sofa the grand personage of Aps played with his child and touched the little fingers that seized upon everything and the little feet that kicked out into the air.
With a wrinkle on her brow Rosalie looked at him, trying to define his contradictory and inexplicable nature. Then suddenly, as if she had found something:
“Numa, what was that proverb you people use which Aunt Portal repeated the other day? ‘Joie de rue’—how was it?”
“Oh yes, I remember: ‘Gau de carriero, doulou d’oustau.’” (Happiness of the street, sorrow of the home.)
“That is it,” said she with an expression of deep thought. And, letting the words fall one by one as you drop stones into an abyss, she slowly repeated, putting the while the sorrow of her life into it, this proverb, in which an entire race has drawn its own portrait and formulated its own being:
“Happiness of the street, sorrow of the home.”
THE END.