IPOLITICS
AFTER my long convalescence I did indeed return to school. It was an ancient institution in which kindly monks imparted antiquated instruction. It was possible to work there, when one’s schoolfellows did not positively put obstacles in the way, but it was easier to devote oneself to clandestine industries, such as training flies and cockchafers, drawing caricatures, reading forbidden books, and even carrying on explorations through the passages. The discipline was no better than the teaching. Up to this time the idea had never occurred to me to view as a prison this great building with its numerous doors and windows where one came and went as one pleased under the paternal eye of a new porter, entirely absorbed in the care of his flowers and of a tortoise whose manners he was studying. But I was now new-born to the sentiment of liberty, and consequently to that of slavery. I made every effort therefore to discover that I was unhappy.
On holidays I resumed my walks with grandfather. An involuntary complicity established itself between us. If one or another of my brothers or sisters joined us we spoke only of indifferent things. When we were alone we went into rhapsodies over the joys of the fieldsand the brotherhood of men, only hindered by property with all its enclosures. I learned that money was the cause of all ills, that one should despise and do away with it, and that the only necessary good things cost nothing, namely, health, the sunlight, pure air, the songs of birds and all the pleasures of the eye. My teachers, who were much more interested in Latin than in philanthropy, neglected to teach me the latter except by their example, to which I paid no attention. No more towns, no more armies (and Bernard, who was preparing at Saint-Cyr, and who had never been informed of these truths!), no more judges, no more lost lawsuits, no more houses. But here I thought that grandfather was going rather too far. No more houses! What about ours, then? Ours which had been repaired and all done over! It mattered little about the others, so long as ours was spared.
“Why no, little dunce; pastoral peoples used to sleep out of doors. It’s more hygienic.”
When Abraham journeyed to the land of Canaan he must have slept out of doors, and so must the shepherds whom we had met leading their flock to the mountains.
We made another pilgrimage to the pavilion which I had come to call Helen’s pavilion, and from time to time we put in an appearance together at the Café of the Navigators, so that I did not entirely lose contact with my friends.
I was entering my fourteenth year, I think, or it may have been a little later, when our town became the scene of great events. The mayor’s office was contested in an election, and the Marinetti Circus set up its tent and waggon-houses in the market-place. I do not know which of these two dissimilar facts seemed the more important to me.
At our house, in view of the new preoccupations as to our future, the tone of conversation became more serious. More than once I came upon our father and mother mysteriously discussing Mélanie’s approaching majority.
“The time is coming,” father would say. “I have promised and I shall keep my promise. But it will be hard.”
And mother would answer,
“God wills it. He will give us the needful strength.”
Nevertheless, she seemed less sad than father, when she spoke about my sister. What promise were they talking about, and what was it that God willed? I used often to think of the picture in the Bible representing the sacrifice of Isaac, but since the time of our missing church I was less inclined to believe that God was so very strict.
Mélanie went often to church, visited the poor, and dipped her brush in water every morning to smooth down her blond hair which curled naturally and refused to lie in straight bands. I knew these details through Aunt Deen, who was always saying:
“That child is an angel.”
It had become impossible to quarrel with Mélanie. Our parents no longer gave her orders; they spoke to her gently, as if they were consulting her. Even I, without knowing why, dared not speak roughly to her, and growing less and less inclined to be respectful, I kept aloof from her, and no longer sought her company.
The others were not to return until the long vacation. Louise, from her boarding school in Lyons, wrote loving letters which I found somewhat silly, because they often alluded to religious ceremonies and visits of the Superior, or of some passing missionary. Bernard’s letters briefly described the life at Saint-Cyr which he had just entered, and Stephen’s contained numerous obscure allusions to his plans, which seemed to harmonise with those of Mélanie. I could not condescend so far as to play with the younger children, the delicate Nicola who was always disturbing mother while she was writing to the absent ones, and the tumultuous Jamie, in whose behalf I would cheerfully have seen the establishment of the severe discipline which I did not care about for myself. I treated them as from a higher level—they could not understand me. So that my real comrade was grandfather.
Two or three times my father, displeased by my silences or my superior airs, observed in those family councils of which somehow children generally manage to catch scraps,
“That child is growing secretive.”
Mother, still somewhat uneasy about me, did not protest, but Aunt Deen, fertile in excuses, would authoritatively affirm that I would blossom out before long. Far from being grateful to this steadfast ally, I laughed in my sleeve at her fanatical loyalty, by way of proving my superior intelligence.
The circus and the elections stirred up the town at the same time. Every day as I crossed the market-place I would stop to watch the slow erection of the tent and the placing of the raised seats, necessary preliminaries of the show. At our house the conversation was more likely to turn upon the future of the country. I was not so ignorant of politics as they might have supposed, though my opinions vacillated. I knew that certain days, like the Fourth of September and the Sixteenth of May, were anniversaries variously celebrated, that all the monks except ours had been expelled, and that there was an expedition to China,—which as it happened, aroused only criticism at our house.
“Why can’t they let those folks alone!” grandfather would exclaim.
Father would shake his head:
“They are forgetting the past. A conquered people should never scatter its forces.”
I was not ignorant of his having taken part in the war—we used to speak of it simply as “the war”—and I could easily imagine him at the head of an army, whereas grandfather must always have preferred hisviolin and his telescope to swords, guns, pistols and other murderous engines. In vain had the Café des Navigateurs poured contempt upon all military glory: it still kept its prestige for me. Yet I could not easily understand how the French Guard and the grenadier in the drawing-room could have died, one for the King and the other for the Emperor, and yet both deserve the same praise, while the partisans of the Emperor were always exchanging opprobrious remarks with those of the King.
Father explained: “For the soldier, there is only France. There is no nobler death.”
Grandfather, being present, declared that in his opinion the noblest thing was to die for liberty. But he did not insist, and notwithstanding the silence which followed I saw that he had displeased my father.
The idea seemed to haunt him, for he returned to it on our next walk, and described, with more enthusiasm than usual, a splendid epoch which he had known, compared with which our own period was but darkness. Our own period seemed to me quite endurable, between our walks and the Café. It appeared that at that time, as under the Revolution, liberty had a second time been set free, and when liberty is set free an era of universal peace and concord begins. Citizens moved by a fraternal impulse were working together in vast national workshops, a modest remuneration, the same for all, weak and strong, robust and malingerers, giving to each that contentment which arises from beingsure of one’s daily bread.
“That is what M. Martinod demands,” I said.
“Martinod is right,” replied my companion, “but will he succeed where we came to grief?”
“You came to grief, grandfather!”
“We failed in the blood of the days of June.”
We failed in the blood of the days of June. The meaning of the words might escape me, but they made music in my ears like the rolling of a drum. Long ago—three or four years perhaps—I had been excited over other mysterious words, such as the lament of the White Blackbird,I was arranging trifles while you were in the woods, and also that of the Nightingale,All night long I strain my throat for her, but she sleeps and hears me not. Now I found their melancholy somewhat insipid, and preferred this new rhythm, so war-like and full of pain. Touched to the heart I at once asked, as with Aunt Deen’s stories when I was little,
“And what happened after that?”
“A tyrant came.”
Ah, this time it was all clear! A tyrant, a hospodar, to be sure! Aunt Deen’s hospodar, the famous man all dressed in red, who gave commands with loud shouts.
“What tyrant?” I asked, by way of knowing it all.
“Badinguet. Napoleon III. For that matter all emperors and all kings are tyrants.”
No; certainly I could not understand. The glimmer of truth which I had half seen died out. Our father, at table or in other conversations with us, had never failed to instil into our minds respect and love for the long line of kings who had ruled France, and whom nearly all the bad paintings in the drawing-room, save the grenadier and the latest portraits, had served. He used to talk as often of the power of nations as grandfather of their happiness. Napoleon the Great, whose epic story all school boys know by heart, had ruined the country, but all the same he was the greatest genius of modern times. As for Napoleon the Little, it was to him we owed defeat and the loss of territory. Curiously enough these events, when they were spoken of at our house, never seemed to me to have the slightest connection with those that figured in my history book. One never recognises in the plants of a herbarium those that are growing in the fields. And when father spoke in praise of the kings grandfather had never made any objection. He had neither approved nor disapproved. And here he was declaring in peremptory tones that all kings were tyrants! Why did he keep silence at table when he was so sure of his opinion? No doubt he did not wish to oppose any one. Thenceforth I accounted to myself for his self-effacement by delicacy, and was moved to consider him right.
Once again he spoke to me of those mysterious days of June when people fought to break the chains that bound the proletariat. I had nodistinct notion of what the proletariat was. Tem Bossette, Mimi Pachoux and The Hanged, for instance, were they proletaires? I pictured them to myself loaded with chains and shut up in a cellar full of empty wine casks—because if the casks had been full they would never have come out of their own accord. Grandfather had rushed to their aid. I learned from his own lips that he had taken part in the insurrection in Paris, and had carried a gun.
“Did you fire it off, grandfather?” I asked in surprise and perhaps in admiration, for I should never have thought him capable of so vigorous an act.
He modestly explained that he had never had an opportunity.
Aunt Deen had shown me, in a cupboard, the sabre which my father had worn during the war. Why had no one ever showed me that gun? Was not it too a family trophy? Grandfather concluded his somewhat vague story with the familiar reflection:
“Papa wasn’t pleased.”
He seemed so old that I should never have had an idea of thinking of his parents, who were nothing but paintings in the drawing-room. And here he was sayingpapa, like little Jamie, not evenfatherlike my elder brothers and me. Greatly amused I exclaimed,
“Your papa, grandfather?”
“To be sure, the man of roses and laws, the magistrate, the nurseryman.”
He spoke of him without the slightest respect, and this to me unimaginable audacity seemed a thing so prodigious that by itself it was enough to obliterate all distinctions of rank. By it he at once placed himself above all other men, of whom he could make light with impunity. I promised myself to be disrespectful, too, to show my spirit.
Grandfather proceeded to enlighten me with certain particulars concerning the displeasure of his “papa.”
“Yes, indeed! he insisted that a king is as necessary to a nation as a gardener to a garden. And all the bad paintings in the drawing-room thought the same.”
What! all the family! Grandfather was deliberately taking his stand apart from all the ancestors! He proposed to flock by himself, to walk alone, far from the road, as in our walks. What’s the use of being a grown-up person if one must still consider others, may not do as he chooses, must heed counsels and remonstrances? He had done mighty well to carry a gun, seeing it was for liberty.
His impertinent little laugh seemed to break with paternal opinion and invoke nature:
“It’s absurd! As if it was necessary to trim trees and cut plants into shape! See how they grow without any help, and if these don’t knock out all the gardens in the world!”
We had reached a grove of beeches, aspens and other trees. The tender little spring leaves were not large enough yet to hide the ramifications of the branches. Before my convalescence I should have disagreed with grandfather. The transformation of our garden since our father took the reins of government, the arrangement of the grass-plots, the form of the groves, the harmonious order of the whole, had given me great satisfaction. But our wanderings in the country had by degrees opened my eyes to the beauty of wilder things. A clump of ferns and reeds, a tangle of vines and bushes, rocks crowned with ruddy bracken, and hidden nooks had won my preference, so that I unhesitatingly accepted his view. But I was in a measure stunned by the discovery that one might be of a different mind from one’s parents and even sit in judgment upon them, like this, in all quietness of mind. Grandfather had not been afraid to condemn his father in my presence. It was the most effective lesson in independence that I had yet received, and this discovery, far from gratifying me, inspired me with fear, and aroused again the feeling of sacrilege which I had felt with respect to the dead man. Irreverence was not liberty. One might scorn and at the same time obey, still, one really had a right to be free, not to accept his father’s ideas, not obey his orders.
I dared not give form to the thoughts which were assailing me and therefore returned to politics.
“Then,” I asked, “there won’t be kings any more?”
“As fast as people become civilised, kings will disappear.”
“How about the Count de Chambord?”
“Oh, as for him, he may as well cut up his white flag into a nightshirt.”
To speak of the Count de Chambord like that! The pleasantry shocked, rather than amused me. The Count de Chambord had always seemed to me a legendary personage, as far away and illusory as the chevaliers in the ballads which had thrilled me during my convalescence. To be sure he had not filched the cup of happiness from Titania, the fair queen of the elves, he had not come on a red roan steed to see the young girl of the romance of the Swan’s Nest; but I knew that he was living in exile, endued with the martyr’s aureola, and that he was expected. Aunt Deen never spoke of him except as “our prince,” and raised her head proudly whenever he was mentioned, as if he belonged to her. From time to time conferences were held in our drawing-room for the discussion of his approaching return. And he would not come back alone; God would come with him, and he would bring back the white flag. My imagination found no difficulty in picturing him at the head of a multitude waving banners, though I could not quite determine whether it was an army or a religious procession.
Of all these conferences one of the members was Mlle Tapinois, shewho resembled the old dove in my picture book; there were also M. de Hurtin, an old gentleman who looked like the falcon who had been ruined by Revolutions, and divers other personages also drawn from my “Scenes from Animal Life,” and who are now somewhat mixed in my memory. There was also a certain impetuous priest, Abbé Heurtevant, who was always scenting the battle from afar, and whose prominent round eyes could see only things at a distance, so that he was always bumping into the furniture, and always restless, carrying on war against vases and Chinese curiosities. When he upset a knickknack he never excused himself but simply remarked:
“That’s one less.”
Small frivolous objects of that sort interfered with his actions and he detested them. Aunt Deen forgave even his destructiveness for the sake of his eloquence. When he was standing his head was perched so high that I would look for it as for a mountain top. On the other hand, when he sat down he would almost disappear in an easy chair, his knees on a level with his chin, as if he had been folded in three parts of equal length. He was as emaciated as an ascetic, which was not surprising since his only food was roots. It was he, indeed, who during the mushroom season, lived upon Satan bolets. They did him no harm, but neither did they fatten him. Grandfather was greatly interested in his diet, considering him a phenomenon, and upholding his opinions becauseof his eccentricities. He never called him anything but Nostradamus. On the contrary, father thought comparatively little of such an ally, and indeed did not greatly care for these quasi secret meetings.
“Our good abbé,” he would say, “is always up in the air. He studies the heavens, but knows nothing of what is going on down here.”
What need had he of knowing, since he could foresee the future? In fact, he was making a collection of predictions concerning the restoration of the monarchy, and could cite from memory all the important ones. I can remember a good many of them, having heard them so often. The most celebrated of them all was that from the Abbey of Orval, which had predicted the downfall of Napoleon, the return of the Bourbons and even the reign of Louis-Philippe and the war. How then, could it have been mistaken in the apostrophe which Abbé Heurtevant would whisper in a moving tone, bringing tears from the eyes of the ladies.Come, young prince, leave the island of captivity ... unite the lion with the white flower. He had found a subtle interpretation of the island of captivity and the lion, which on the first investigation had been obscure. I was however in no haste to have the young prince obey this injunction, because of the events which were bound to follow, namely, the conversion of England and of the Jews, and to finish up with, Antichrist. Antichrist terrified me: he also, likeDeath in my Bible, was to ride, on a pale horse.
“The young prince, indeed,” grandfather would sneer when I related all these marvels to him, for he refused to be present at the assemblies over which Abbé Nostradamus presided, “young prince of sixty springs!”
There were also the visions of a certain Rose-Colombe, a Dominican nun, deceased upon the Italian coast. A great revolution was to burst out in Europe, the Russians and Prussians would turn their churches into stables, and peace would hot appear again until the lilies, descendants of Saint Louis, were again blossoming upon the throne of France, which would happen.Which would happenclosed the paragraph, proving that it was not a mere hypothesis, as learned men might construe it, but an incontestable truth, proved by ecstatic visions.
“Yes, the lilies will bloom again,” Aunt Deen loved to repeat, for she attached especial credit to the sayings of Sister Rose Colombe.
This conviction caused her to rush up and downstairs all the more proudly, since she might suppose that her services would be needed. She had a habit of accompanying the innumerable labours to which, without respite, she gave herself, with interjections and exclamations. We could hear her psalmodies as she swept or scoured, for she turned her hand to everything.
“They will bloom again, to the salvation of religion and of France.”
The Abbé did not stop at predictions which re-established monarchs among ourselves. His solicitude extended even over unhappy Poland, and one evening he triumphantly brought in a Roman newspaper, in which was recorded the apparition of the Blessed Andrew Bobola, who informed a monk of the restoration of that kingdom, after a war which would involve all nations.
“At last Poland is saved,” he concluded in a tone of satisfaction.
“Poor Poland, it is high time!” chimed in Aunt Deen, who had compassion upon all unfortunates.
Nevertheless, in order to attain to these miraculous renascences many catastrophes must be endured. Our abbé heroically put the torch to all Europe, and consented to drench it in blood if only the lilies would bloom again at the end.
The ladies enjoyed his vaticinations. His nostrils would expand like sails under a favourable breeze, and his round eyes would bulge with so much ardour that it almost seemed as if they might fall out, all in a flame. He used also to break a lance with the party that admitted the escape of Louis XVII from the prison of the Temple and the authenticity of Naundorff. Mlle Tapinois, especially, preached Naundorffism, which won her many a stinging retort. She almost drew Aunt Deen after her, but one glance from Abbé Heurtevant sufficed to keep her firm inthe good cause. Mlle Tapinois invoked Providence, of whom every one knew that she was the right arm, declaring him—it was impossible to say why—hostile to the return of the Count de Chambord. By way of eclipsing her adversary she would state that Jules Favre, the advocate of her Naundorff, had received from him as a token of gratitude the seal of the Bourbons, and happening to have no other one with him on that historic day, he had set the royal seal to the Treaty of Paris after the signature of Count Bismarck, as if he were acting simply as the delegate of his prince. This anecdote having obtained the success of curiosity, in spite of father’s remark, “No Bourbon would have signed such a treaty,” Abbé Heurtevant, broken-hearted at having been interrupted in his predictions by such fiddle-faddles, shrugged his shoulders in token of his incredulity, and from the corner where I was playing with a pack of cards, I heard him murmur,
“When Balaam’s ass spoke, the prophet kept silence.”
I knew the adventure of Balaam from a picture in my Bible. But our abbé came in also for his own, and was recompensed for his brief overthrow. Old M. Hurtin, whose bird of prey profile deceived people as to the obstinacy of his temper, shaken by the stories and asseverations of Mlle Tapinois, began on his part to bring up objections to Monseigneur, for no one failed to give him his title if only to dispute it. He wentso far as to reproach him for having no children.
“One will be made for him,” M. Heurtevant declared in a moment of sudden illumination.
This remark, most forcibly uttered, raised a great outcry. The ladies manifested their indignation by various little ejaculations, and Mlle Tapinois, covering her face, protested against a man of God daring to scandalise a respectable and well-meaning company, and with children present. The abbé, blushing and quite out of countenance, being much more accustomed to reprimand others than to be reprimanded, lifted up his hands while Mlle Tapinois was haranguing, as a sign that he desired to explain. The opportunity was not immediately given, and he was forced to have patience until the excitement was calmed. He had simply meant to say that the continuity of the dynasty would be provided for, and that the royal race was not threatened with extinction. A legitimate successor would do as well as a child of a king. His explanations were received with ill grace, and Mlle Tapinois, who was seated near me, turned to M. de Hurtin, and put him through a course of questions, to certify that the prophet had found a very bad mouthpiece; thus taking her revenge on Balaam’s ass, which had not escaped her acute ear.
This incident which fastened itself on my memory though I did not very well understand it, as sometimes happens with memories, had cast a damper on these royalist meetings, when the approaching electionsreanimated them.
“I do not believe in salvation by election,” father remarked, “still we must neglect nothing for the welfare of the country.”
A rumour was going round that the mayor’s chair would be contested, the actual occupant being unworthy. But who would lead the conflict? It must be a man of mettle, able and firm. Thenceforth I never passed the municipal building on my way to school without imagining it endowed with machicolations and cannons and bearing its part in a great confusion of historic sieges.
The bell at our gate was incessantly ringing, and it was not always some one for the doctor. Well dressed gentlemen who seemed to prefer to slip in at nightfall with the shadows, peasants, working men, were invading the house, and the same words were constantly repeated:
“Won’t you come forward, doctor?”
“Doctor, you must come forward.”
The old men of the suburbs would say more familiarly, “Get a move on, Monsieur Michel.”
I observed that the peasants and working men put more earnestness and conviction into their entreaties. The well-dressed gentlemen, better mannered, and more discreet, did not insist, and one of them, stout and dignified, carried his devotion so far as to propose himself.
“To be sure, we understand your scruples, your hesitations. It’s aweighty undertaking and very expensive. If it must be, I will consent to be candidate in your place—just to please you.”
“Not you,” spoke up with authority a bearded individual in a blue blouse. “You wouldn’t get four votes. Monsieur Michel is another story.”
The gentleman, thus turned down, majestically buttoned up his frock coat.
When the intruders had retired, a discussion arose between father and mother, peaceful, grave and confidential. So absorbed were they that they did not notice that we were present.
“You can not,” said mother gently, almost quoting the stout gentleman. “Think of the expenses that we are bearing. You were obliged to buy the property in order to spare your father, and I encouraged your doing so, remember. In a family, all stand or fall together. The great schools are very expensive, for we do not get scholarships, though we have seven children. You are known to be hostile to the institutions under which we are governed. Within a few years we shall need to settle Louise, even though Mélanie will need but a small dowry. And besides, think of yourself. You are already working too hard, your patients absorb all your strength. I am afraid you will overdo. We are no longer in our first youth, my dear. The family is enough for us. The family is our first duty.”
Father was silent for a moment, as if weighing the pros and cons. Then he said:
“I do not forget the family. Don’t distress yourself about my health, Valentine. I have never felt myself more robust nor better able to endure fatigue. And I can not help thinking of the useful part which is offered me,—for to be mayor to-day is to be deputy to-morrow: to denounce to the country the gang that is cheating it and fattening upon it, to prepare the public mind for the return of the king—so necessary if we are to recover from defeat. All these plain folk who rely upon me touch my heart, and shake my resolution to hold myself aloof from public life. I have no personal ambition. But even here, surely here, there is a duty to fulfil.”
They were like alternating strophes in which the family and the country by turns made their pressing appeals.
My father’s picture of a restored France did not closely resemble that of Abbé Heurtevant, who trusted to miracles. He added circumstantial details which I could not follow, but in the end, without knowing exactly how, we got the impression that the aroused provinces would march promptly and joyfully under the authority of the prince who would address himself directly to them, and who at the same time would refer all religious matters to the Pope of Rome.
Father was so well able to command that I found it quite natural that the government should be entrusted to him, since the realm of the house was not enough for him, and he desired another. And besides, in thatcase he would be too busy to watch over my studies and my thoughts, which I well knew he talked over anxiously with mother, in the evenings.
Things were even more changed at the Café des Navigateurs than at our house, where only a faint note of coming events reached my ear. I went thither with grandfather, one holiday, when we were not expected. Casenave, prematurely aged, apart from the others, was still drinking for pleasure, in the midst of the general inattention, the other members of the group being occupied with loftier things. They were not talking of the king, but of liberty. I learned that the hydra of reaction which had been supposed to be crushed after the Sixteenth of May, was beginning to lift up its head. Galurin was openly demanding the partition of goods, which was his hobby, Gallus and Merinos were repudiating a bourgeois Republic, desiring it to be at once Athenian and popular, one which would assure to each person a minimum wage for an indeterminate amount of work, and at the same time would be open to beauty, and a protector of the arts. They were both sketching, in the intervals of their labours, one a symphony, the other a charcoal drawing in which the new era was symbolised. But I hardly recognised Martinod. Instead of presenting to our dazzled eyes, as in former days, the marriage of the People and Reason, he left all phrase-making to the two artists. With unexpected coherence he was enumeratingurgent reforms, the diminution of military service with a view to its complete suppression, the independence of syndicates, State monopoly of education, not to mention the revision of the Constitution, a matter upon which every one was agreed. The independence of syndicates especially struck me because no matter how much my neighbour explained to me in what it consisted, I could not in the least understand it, and therefore set a particularly high value upon it. Leaving his reforms, notwithstanding their urgency, Martinod, who was continually bringing in recruits and treating them, worked himself up into a great excitement upon a subject of more immediate importance, which was the next mayor.
Decidedly, I understood one thing, the battle would be carried on there and not elsewhere.
Soon the entire conversation began to turn upon proper names. Forgotten was the Athenian and popular Republic, forgotten were reforms, only individuals were spoken of, and very few of these found grace in the eyes of the company. Most of them were considered suspicious; they were not deemed pure enough,—and all sorts of fatal defects were brought up against them, notably consorting with priests, and sending their children to clerical schools. Then there were discussions in an undertone (and I clearly saw Martinod directing furtive glances, now in grandfather’s direction and now in mine, which flattered me, for ingeneral I did not exist for so great a man), of a redoubtable leader who would be the worst adversary and not easily to be overcome.
“There is only he,” Martinod concluded. “The others are all knaves or thieves.”
“He is the only one,” repeated the chorus in approval.
Yet nobody mentioned his name. I found no difficulty, however, in picturing him to myself formidable and mysterious, leading his forces to certain victory. Grandfather was negligently listening to Casenave’s dialogue with his double. Martinod, who had been observing him for a moment or two, now secretly and again full in the face, suddenly leaned toward him, and said abruptly:
“Do you know one thing, Father Rambert? You are the one to lead us in this fight.”
“I!” exclaimed grandfather, quite taken aback. “Oho!”
And he gurgled out his little laugh. They let him laugh at his ease, after which Martinod repeated his offer.
“To be sure, you. Who deserves it better? In ’48 you came near dying for liberty.”
“Not at all. I did not come near dying.”
This proposition was not further pressed. But as we were going back to the house at the dinner hour he stood still, saying:
“That was a good thing, Martinod! I their candidate? Insane!”
He laughed again with all his heart. A little further on he repeated,
“I, their candidate!”
This time he did not laugh. I understood that all the same he was not displeased with Martinod’s suggestion.