IITHE ALPETTE

IITHE ALPETTE

OUR father and mother held a council of war, in which the resolution was taken that we should be sent away. The family owned, on the uplands of one of the high valleys, a chalet which we called the Alpette, standing by itself in a clearing in the pines. In favourable seasons we used to spend a month of the long vacation there. A dilapidated stagecoach used to climb to the nearest village in four or five hours. It was not easy to get supplies up there, and we should have to be content with frugal and modest fare; but the air was redolent of balsam, and we should be beyond all danger of contagion.

“The epidemic is spreading,” father told us. “You will all go to-morrow morning except your mother, who will not leave me.”

Perhaps he had resolved to remain alone, but had encountered her refusal.

“That’s an excellent idea,” said grandfather approvingly. “We are good for nothing here, but rather, in the way.”

“Well! I for one shall not go,” declared Aunt Deen, shaking her head. “I am a part of the building.”

Father urged that she had her brother to take care of, but this argument was by no means favourably received.

“He can take care of himself well enough. He is perfectly well. And besides, Louise will look after him.”

Louise urged her desire to stay. We thought she was joking, for she said it laughingly, but she firmly insisted. Couldn’t she be of service, visiting the sick, nursing them even? Wasn’t every willing person needed? Between her and Aunt Deen a debate arose, the unselfishness of which was at the time unperceived by me; but Aunt Deen insisted so hard that she carried her point.

Encouraged by this example, I signified to my parents my fixed intention not to leave town, but to play my part in it also. This was by way of affirming my personality—my personality of barely eighteen years!—much more than as a boast of courage. The idea of death, either my own or that of the others, had not occurred to me. I did not apprehend the slightest danger. No doubt father was the most exposed, both by his profession and his functions, but to me he seemed immortal. I was simply thinking of gaining a little importance.

Father listened to me patiently, and then replied that if I had begun to study medicine, as he had hoped, he should not have hesitated to make use of me, notwithstanding his affection and his fears; it would have been a right which I might have claimed; but that having takenanother course, I had no good reason for remaining in a vitiated atmosphere, where I could be of no use, at the risk of succumbing to the disease any day. He thanked me for my offer, but could not accept it. The mountain air would be good for my health, which would improve up there: I was somewhat delicate, I should return stronger.

The calm refusal simply exasperated me. I discerned in it a contempt that was not to be endured, and I persisted in claiming the post as if my honour was involved.

“I regret infinitely, father, my inability to yield in this matter, but I judge that I ought to stay, and I shall stay.”

The words came grandly. He fixed me with his piercing eyes, and did not even raise his voice:

“I rule in my house, before ruling in the town, my boy. I give you this order: You will go to-morrow with your grandfather, Louise and the two younger children. I am in charge of the whole city: we shall see whether my son will be the first to disobey.”

He turned away. So peremptorily had he spoken that a sense of the impossibility of resistance took possession of me. He had been humouring me this long time; he had thought from my reserve that I was indifferent if not hostile, and he cherished the hope of regaining my confidence. Now he suddenly abandoned all methods of conciliation and put me back in the ranks like a mere soldier, not like a future chief.Without caring the least in the world about taking active service among the hospital staff, I champed my bit with rage, as if I had been subjected to the most cruel abuse. Grandfather, delighted with this outcome, consoled me good-naturedly.

“Oho! what do you care? He has a craze for giving orders. We shall be very well off up there.”

Our preparations filled the afternoon. Grandfather himself brought down from the tower his barometer, violin, pipes and almanacs. The repeated journeys put him out of breath, but he would stop for no one. The rest of the packing was of no interest to him, but concerned Aunt Deen, to whom he had long ago given over the care of his clothes and linen. At nightfall Abbé Heurtevant came for a visit. Father was at the hospital, or the mayor’s office, and mother at the work-rooms where bed clothing for the sick poor was being made. Grandfather, with new found resolution, refused to have the door opened, and inquired from the window whether our friend had been disinfected.

Nothing would do but for the abbé to pass through the disinfecting room that had been set up in the house, after which he was welcomed with gladness, and grandfather even offered him his copy of the prophecies of Michel Nostradamus. M. Heurtevant accepted the gift with small enthusiasm; he was acquainted with the Centuries and found them obscure and contradictory.

“Yes, you prefer Sister Rose-Colombe and the Abbey of Orval. And what catastrophes have you to report, Abbé?”

“In the first place, your labourer Tem Bossette died this morning of the pestilence.”

“Ah!” said grandfather, quickly adding, as if finding an excuse for not grieving, “he was a drunkard.”

“Poor Tem!” sighed Aunt Deen. “Had he confessed?”

“He had no time—the complaint seized him like a thunderclap.”

“An alcoholic,” observed grandfather.

My aunt went on questioning our guest about persons of our acquaintance:

“How about Beatrix? And Mimi Pachoux?”

“Don’t be uneasy about your Mimi, mademoiselle; he is helping to bury the dead, and is even superintending the entire force of gravediggers. His zeal is magnificent; he multiplies himself, he is at every funeral. As for The Hanged, I think he is down with the fever.”

“I will go and see him,” said Aunt Deen simply, whereupon her brother looked at her with surprise, and some disapprobation.

But the abbé, with incomparable ease, had already passed from special misfortunes to general calamities. The contagion would be sure to spread, it would not be checked until it had reached Paris. It would decimate the capital, that sink of all iniquities, and would constrainpoliticians to reflect. It would be as good as a war, in the matter of moral renovation. And the lilies would bloom again.

“They will bloom again,” Aunt Deen did not fail to repeat gravely.

The description of these approaching misfortunes affected grandfather, who changed the subject of conversation.

“I say, Abbé, if you will come to the Alpette to see us, we will give you some Satan bolets, and even if you don’t bring too much bad news, some negro head bolets, which are at least eatable and of a savoury flavour. Or rather, no! don’t put yourself out to come. There is no disinfecting apparatus up there, and you would be capable of contaminating us all.”

The next morning a two-horse brake, ordered especially for us, came to take us and our parcels. Father superintended the embarkation, and hastened it, for he was being called upon from all quarters at once. At the house, whenever any difficulty arose he had always been immediately sought for, all calling in one voice,Monsieur Michel!Where is Monsieur Michel! In these days, all through the city, the rallying cry was,Monsieur Rambert! or more briefly,the doctor, orthe mayor.

“Oho!” said grandfather lightly, “he has enough to give orders to now.”

Grandfather climbed into the vehicle first, with his instruments, which he would not let go, though the violin case was much in the way.Like little Jamie, he had all the gaiety of a school boy on vacation. Never had he seemed so to feel the attractions of the Alpette. Louise, on the contrary, and Nicola, imitating her sister, whom she admired, manifested an emotion which for my part I deemed excessive. They clung to our parents with tears, as if it were a case of prolonged absence.

“Come, children,” said father, “make haste and have no fears.”

My own adieus to him were of marked coldness, because of the scene of the previous day. He had constrained me to obedience, and had wounded my pride; I could not forget it so soon; dignity obliged me to assume an offended air.

The smallest details of that departure, upon which my memory has dwelt so much, vainly seeking something to mitigate its bitterness, stand out before me with a distinctness which time has never blurred. Every one was more or less impatient, the horses because of the flies that tormented them, the coachman out of compassion for his cattle, grandfather and Jamie in their haste to enjoy the pleasures of the journey, Louise and Nicola in their sadness over going away, Aunt Deen because she dreaded the tumult of her feelings, and I, to get rid of the uneasiness that was overcoming me. Mother was trying to keep calm. Father alone did so, naturally. When my turn came to get in, last of all, he seemed to hesitate for a brief moment as if he would have detained me, spoken to me. I do not precisely know what it was thatshowed me this, but I am sure of it. And once in my seat I felt an unreasoning desire to get out again. Was it an instinctive longing for reconciliation? How I long to feel sure that it was! But the feeling was too vague for me to be sure of it now. Taking my place on the same seat with grandfather, I gave expression to my inward feeling by an act of ill humour, seizing hold of the violin case, which chafed my knees, and laying it roughly in the bottom of the carriage.

“Be careful! It’s delicate,” observed grandfather protestingly.

I can still see the vibrating light in the air, and the shining of the road in the sunlight.

“All right?” asked the coachman, clambering to his seat.

“Forward!” ordered father.

And mother added the prayer that she always uttered at each parting.

“God be with you!”

Our heavy vehicle was already in motion, and these were the last words that we heard.Forward, andGod be with you; they mingle, become one, always accompany one another in my memory, and whenever to this day I set out upon a journey, it seems to me that I hear them.

At the turn of the road, down below the entrance gate, I saw the three figures standing out in the glaring day, Aunt Deen somewhat massive; my mother’s, more delicate, and the tall, proud figure of my father,lifting up his head. Why did I not call out? The one word, “Father!” would have pleased him, and he would have understood. His figure revealed such force, so rich a vitality, so dominant an authority, that it was of course of no use to humiliate oneself to give him satisfaction. I should always have time enough if I wanted to do so,—later, later.

Grandfather was fumbling about my legs to rescue his violin case and I had to help him. We passed under the chestnut tree that had overshadowed—just one moment—the departing Nazzarena, Nazzarena laughing and showing her teeth. And the house was lost behind us.

I was not slow to forget this uncomfortable parting in the enchantment of my new life in the chalet of the Alpette. For the first time I was absolute master of my days. Grandfather exercised not the slightest oversight. He liked to sit for hours together on a bench on the pleasantest side of the house, warming himself in the sun and smoking his pipe. He took no walks except in the immediate neighbourhood, going with difficulty even to the pine woods, for his legs had become weak and could not carry him far. Once in the woods, he would devote himself to his favourite pursuit, which had not changed, the hunt after mushrooms. He especially pursued and not without success the negro head bolet, which grows well in the shadow of the pines. Jamie and hisinseparable Nicola used to go with him, and stoop for him to retrieve the game which he pointed out to them. He preferred their childhood to my youth, and I was not jealous of them. He never tried to establish with them the intimacy that had formerly existed between him and me. He shrank from all fatigue, from any conversation which would have led to discussions, explanations, was contented with trifling facts not open to debate. For my part, I preferred my solitude.

Whether from sisterly affection or because she had received instructions to this effect, Louise busied herself with us even to obsession; she would have cut herself in two to be at the same time with me and with the two little ones. When she had become convinced of the peaceful, commonplace character of grandfather’s conversation, she turned all the more to me, hoping to be my confidant, and to gain a little influence over me. She was only two years my senior, and her conduct filled me with wonder, for nothing down in the town had given any indication that altitude would so totally change her. Pretty, lively, care-free, I had deemed her rather volatile and even a bit capricious—and had been not the less pleased with her for that. At times she would rush at her piano with intense zeal, and again she would not touch it for weeks. She filled the house with her laughter, her charming spirits, her quick movements. “She won’t be one to interfere with me,” I had thought in the carriage. And now, behold her suddenly changed into something like the head of a community ora family boarding house, thoughtful and kindly, but exacting, even arbitrary. One must be punctual at meals, explain his absences, guard his words before the children, not turn either principles or people into ridicule. Had her responsibilities changed her and turned her head? She assumed the place of our parents in matters of conscience, but I gave her to understand that boys didn’t obey girls, and that any directions she might have received did not concern me. She insisted, and almost from the outset we were in a state of tension which was almost conflict.

It was the Sunday after our arrival. The village was two kilometres distant, and only one mass—high mass—was celebrated. Louise informed us of the fact, and at what she judged the proper moment she called to us to set out. Grandfather, who never went to church, raised a disinterested objection.

“Public places are the most unhealthy. Beware of the epidemic.”

“There has not been a single case of typhus in the whole valley,” said Louise triumphantly.

“Very well,” said grandfather, filling his morning pipe.

I then informed my sister that I had planned to take a walk and regretted that I could not escort her. She looked at me in astonishment, such astonishment that I can still see the surprise in her limpid eyes.

“What, you are not going to mass, Francis? There is only one.”

“No,” I replied with my most assured manner.

“It isn’t possible!”

Her eyes, those limpid eyes, at once filled with tears, and I remembered the first mass that I had missed. Pride forbade me to yield, pride and also that new, vague belief which my imagination had built up. Louise pushed Nicola and Jamie before her, and turned to me, her book of hours in her hand, still hoping to move me.

“I beg you, come with us.”

If she had added, “to please me,” perhaps I would have yielded, so alarmed did she appear. She no doubt would have deemed that plea unworthy of its purpose. This time I refused still more emphatically.

“I shall be obliged to write to mamma,” she urged as a last argument.

“As you please.”

She did not, however, carry out her threat. Her sense of delicacy warned her not to add to our parents’ anxieties in the midst of their battle with the pestilence. On the contrary, she doubled her attention to me, trying to win me to her, to gain my friendship, my confidence. With innate art she became an improvised mother of the family, ever trying to bring us together, to group us, warring against the isolation in which I delighted.

When a letter came she would call us together and read it aloud tous. We received letters from home very regularly, and they forwarded Mélanie’s to us from the hospital in London, where she was caring for the sick; Bernard’s from his expedition in Tonkin; Stephen’s, who was completing his theological studies in Rome. Through her the absent ones visited us, and if it had depended only upon her we should have carried on at the Alpette the same life as at home. It was precisely that which revolted me, and I rose in rebellion against the twenty-year-old will which, with unlooked for tenacity, went counter to mine.

To place myself beyond her influence I formed the habit of leaving our chalet with a book the first thing in the morning, returning only for meals. Uneasy about me, she would remain upon the doorstep until I had disappeared, and very often, at my return, I would find her in the same place, as if she had never lost sight of me. Her interest extended even to my reading. The library at the Alpette contained only a few books, some odd volumes of Buffon and Lacépède, a “Dictionary of Conversation” in fifty volumes, a copy of “Jocelyn,” and a few less important works. Even the Dictionary did not terrify me and I would resolutely carry with me the volumes containing biographical notices, or systems of philosophy. I found myself at ease in the boldest or the most obscure of their conceptions. I understood them before I had completed their demonstration, whether they put the universe in subjection to the ego, or whether they put man in subjection to the universe leftto itself. Still, I was inclined to believe that everything depended upon our intelligence, and that it alone, by its sole power breathed existence into things, the laws of which were fixed by it. I have never since been able to regain such facility in moving in the abstract, nor such pleasure and pride.

When wearied by these adventures in metaphysics, I would refresh myself with the poetry of “Jocelyn.” It harmonised so perfectly with the nature that surrounded me that it seemed to become its natural expression and I ceased to think of distinguishing between them. How many times, under the pines, have I repeated lines which from that time have been fixed in my memory:

I went from tree to tree and loved them all;I took from them a sense of tears and wept;Believing thus, so strong the deep heart’s call.That answering thrills through all their rough bark swept.

I went from tree to tree and loved them all;I took from them a sense of tears and wept;Believing thus, so strong the deep heart’s call.That answering thrills through all their rough bark swept.

I went from tree to tree and loved them all;I took from them a sense of tears and wept;Believing thus, so strong the deep heart’s call.That answering thrills through all their rough bark swept.

I went from tree to tree and loved them all;

I took from them a sense of tears and wept;

Believing thus, so strong the deep heart’s call.

That answering thrills through all their rough bark swept.

So greatly did I long to feel pervading everything around me, in the soul of the trees or the spirit of the earth, the love which I refused to receive from the family. When I reached the top of some hill, it was in the apostrophe

Oh, mountain tops, pure air and floods of light!

that my rapture found expression. The serenity of the night spoke to me ofpeace, love, eternity. I dreamed of Laurence, and had no difficulty in picturing him to myself, such a model of precision didhis portrait seem to me:

Never the hand of God on fifteen yearsHad marked a soul more lovely or more human.

Never the hand of God on fifteen yearsHad marked a soul more lovely or more human.

Never the hand of God on fifteen yearsHad marked a soul more lovely or more human.

Never the hand of God on fifteen years

Had marked a soul more lovely or more human.

What more was wanting to feed a love which, having no object, created its image for itself?

Another book, however, was destined to enter still more deeply into my sensibility, corresponding as it did with that condition of independence and enfranchisement to which I deemed myself to have attained. Into the pile of almanacs brought thither by grandfather had slipped that copy of the “Confessions” which had puzzled me as a child, and which I had taken for a manual of piety. The innocentLimping Messenger of Berne and Veveycame leading by the hand that Jean-Jacques whom, long before I knew him, I had heard spoken of as if he were still living and we might meet him anywhere in our walks. I had read in school only short fragments of his writings in which I had found nothing personal. I fell upon the narrative of that troubled life, which at first disgusted me. The theft of the ribbon in the house of Mme de Vercellis and the cowardly accusation that followed, certain physiological details which I could ill understand, the title ofmamanbestowed upon Mme de Warens, produced upon me the effect of immodest confidences, and all alone as I was in the forest, or lying in the grass on the top of the mountain, I felt myself blushing to the ears. My deepest nature resisted, but by an insensible decline I cameeven to admire the man who could humiliate himself by such avowals; not perceiving their pride I felt giddied by their truth.

After that the volume never left me. Louise, disturbed by this preoccupation, tried to wield some censorship. One evening as I came in from gazing at the stars—those in the South, which I most easily recognised—I found her under the lamp looking into the “Confessions.” She did not see me and I watched her; she suddenly closed the book, and perceiving me, her indignation burst forth:

“You have no right to read this book.”

“I read what I please.”

She appealed to grandfather, who declined all responsibility.

“Oh, every one is free. And at least Jean-Jacques is sincere.”

The love passages excited me, and what rendered them more precious and more seductive to me was the writers lovely way of praising at once the peace of the country and the happiness of bucolic life. In the peace that environed me I felt more plainly the movements of my own heart. I was at the feet of Mme Basilewithout daring so much as to touch her dress. A slight movement of her finger,—hand lightly pressed against my lips, were the only favours I ever received from her, and the memory of these slight favours transports me as I think of them. I would try to represent to myself the gentle air of those fair women whomno heart could resist, and—shall I be believed?—I found a personal application in a lament which touched my hardly completed and already disquieted eighteen years.Tormented with the desire to love without ever finding its satisfaction, I saw myself drawing nigh to the gates of old age and dying without having lived. When I climbed high enough to see the lake, far away at the foot of the hills, I would repeat the simple aspiration,All I desire is a sure friend, a loving wife, a cow and a little boat, and my growing exaltation of sentiment seemed endowed with innocence. I could have wept for love while eating strawberries smothered in sweet cream.

Thus the period through which I was passing was very closely linked with that of my convalescence, of which it became in a sort the completion. Alone by myself I resumed the walks which a few years before I had taken with grandfather. His friend Jean-Jacques was with me in his stead. These were not the same places, but in natural aspects there was small difference between them. They had the same glamour of wildness, that flutter of vegetation stirred by the slightest breath, the sparkle of waters; and the greater altitude even added a more exhilarating air, farther distances, less accessible to the works of man, a new exaltation. In the mountains the holdings are without walls or gates. No enclosure mars the beauty of the land, and individual ownership is not apparent,—that ownership which, as I knew from grandfather’s teachings, corrupts the heart of man and fills it withgreed, jealousy and cupidity. On the mountains field and forest belong to every one and to no one, like the sun and the air, like health. The upper pastures, whither the shepherd who in one sentence had revealed longing to me, was leading his sheep,—now I was treading their short grass. Mountain climbing thrilled me with an ardour for conquest, and with each height gained I hoped to meet her whom I was awaiting but who continually evaded me. She was not Nazzarena, whom I had loved and whom now my dreams disdained; who seemed to me too young, too simple. I thought rather of the unknown lady of the pavilion, or still more of her who had appeared before me on the road, all in white with a hat trimmed with cherries, and a flower-like face, she whose parasol made an aureola about her, and whom I had called Helen since I knew that her beauty was like that of the immortal goddesses.

I was alone, deliciously alone, and in love, with no beloved one. I was perfectly happy, and never realised that I was torturing my sister Louise, whose affection I misunderstood. I was free.

By reason of the difficulty of procuring provisions our table was the most frugal in the world. We lived upon eggs, potatoes, cheese, and on Sundays had the luxury of a fowl. Grandfather was never tired of extolling the excellencies of this fare, and the benefits of pastoral life. It was easy for me to persuade myself of the excellence of ourmode of living. I took less and less interest in the news from town that reached us by the diligence. Once or twice, to give us fuller intelligence, they sent up the farmer himself, so that in our hermitage we knew the number of deaths and the ravages of the pestilence. The Hanged, who was dead, had made a most edifying end, Aunt Deen being with him to the last. Gallus and Merinos were safe and sound.

“They are always in luck,” observed grandfather.

The farmer shook his head as if to say that the last word hadn’t been said yet, and that the ravages of the epidemic were not over. Of Martinod he knew nothing; he was still in hiding. Our friend Abbé Heurtevant had resisted but he was undermined; however he still had life enough to predict catastrophes.

“May we go back?” Louise would ask each time. This astonished grandfather and me, for we were in no hurry.

“Not yet, Miss; Master Michael has said like this, that the moment hasn’t come yet.”

A lazaretto had been set up for doubtful cases, the two hospitals were crowded, those who went in or out of the city were examined. A series of edicts had been issued by the mayor, ordering the most minute precautions.

“It’s awful,” concluded the farmer, who was giving these details.

Grandfather declared that we were perfectly comfortable at theAlpette, but Louise was chafing with impatience.

Little by little the days grew shorter. After the month of August, which was very warm, September came, with fresher breezes, and September passed. The oaks and birches in the forest were changing colour among the changeless pines, the oaks turning red and the birches golden. The dried tufts of bushes on the rocks took on a scarlet tint. I was sometimes overtaken by the darkness which rose rapidly from the hollow of the valley, and losing my way was forced to seek the aid of a shepherd in some hamlet whose twinkling lights shone out and guided me.

At last we were informed that the pestilence was abating, and we might soon leave the Alpette. I heard the news without pleasure, intoxicated with liberty as I had become during my long period of idleness. Still, we were to remain a few days longer.

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