ITHE EPIDEMIC
I WAS being prepared for liberty by years of seclusion, the history of which, after so many petty rebellions, I shall not set down here. I never became wonted to that boarding school to which I had demanded to be sent in a moment of pride which for nothing in the world would I have disavowed. Yet I passed for a good scholar, whose only fault was a little reserve or dissimulation.
I suffered frightfully during the first absence from home. I used to cry in the dormitory, my head smothered in the covers, until I fell asleep, enwrapped in my sorrow. But I never uttered a word of complaint.
My parents no doubt thought that I had accepted my new life without difficulty. My father wrote to me regularly and at length: no doubt this correspondence made an addition to his burdens for which I was not in the least obliged to him. Self love urged me to repel all his advances. Knowing nothing of Martinod’s insinuations, how should he have guessed that I saw on every side injustice to myself, marks of preference for my brothers? I systematically distorted phrases, sentiments, thoughts. If, in his virile love, he avoided expressionsof affection, for fear of softening me, I accused him of harshness. If on the other hand he gave way to his fondness for me, it was simply to deceive me, and impose all the more upon me an authority which I exaggerated to the point of imagining that it was everywhere about me, an imagined persecution which became unsupportable. I usually wrote to my mother, and he never remarked upon the fact. Yet he noticed it, and several of his letters showed that he did. “I know,” he once wrote, “that you do not care to confide in your father.” And mother, who had also noticed it, missed no opportunity of writing about him, emphasising his kindness of heart above all his other merits, reminding me of instances of it, which exasperated me. If he had become aware of my purposed and tenacious hostility, he had no suspicion of its cause; and so the chasm which in the beginning a single step might easily have crossed, grew ever wider between us.
This tension of my mind inspired in me a great ardour for work. I achieved brilliant successes with perfect indifference, successes which contributed to deceive my family, who found in them a proof that I had accepted my new discipline. A good pupil, as my bulletins had it, could not but be a fine child and the joy of his family. Aunt Deen sent me extravagant compliments in bad handwriting, setting all down to the account of my filial affection. From grandfather I never heard.
But what were these positive results in comparison with the inward experiences that were going on in me? Little by little I relinquished all religious practices, building up for myself a sort of mysticism in which I formed a habit of taking refuge. Imagination substituted for my walks in the forest and other wild retreats, and even for my meetings with Nazzarena, a sort of abstract notion of nature and of love in which I found intense joy. I invented elusive landscapes and ideal passions. I was at the age in which one most easily lives in metaphysical chimeras, when ideas are mistaken for affections, and the sensibilities have no need of the spring-board of reality to leap into action. In my dreams I was my own master, until such time as life should make me independent. I had discovered the independence of the brain, and that it can supply all that is lacking. And to crown all, I threw myself into music as into an element which takes one’s own shape; plastic and so to say liquid, it lent itself to all my longings with a docility which filled me with wonder. I had come upon theFreischützandEuryanthe, that forest where the alleys reach beyond sight. It was more beautiful and especially more vast than the one which long ago had awakened me to the latent life of things. By it I scaled mountains higher and more inaccessible than that to which the shepherd had been leading his flock. And sometimes the sharp pain of the notes that I drew from my instrument brought back to me the unforgettable lamentation of the nightingale in love with therose:All night long I wear out my throat for her, but she sleeps and hears me not. For her? I did not know her name, I could not perceive her face, but that she existed I had not the slightest doubt. But—strange phenomenon—she was no longer Nazzarena: fidelity itself was but one more chain to break.
With the help of music and of my thoughts I built for myself a palace into which no visitor was admitted: they thought me present, and simply absent-minded, when in fact I had retreated to my solitude, the only place where I was actually myself. This faculty of concentration set me apart from friendship. No schoolfellow was admitted to my friendship; so that my family, against which I was in rebellion, by itself alone represented to me all humanity.
Thus all the seeds dropped during my convalescence were germinating in me after the lapse of a few years. I was free within myself, and no one suspected it. My parents were satisfied with my conduct and my place in school. I had the reputation of being quiet, obedient and easy to manage, and under the shelter of that reputation I let myself glide peacefully into a happy state in which I recognised no other law than my own and which was pretty near to anarchy. I made sacrifices to contingencies, but they courted for little in comparison with my inward joys.
When I went home for vacations my coldness and indifference surprised and saddened my family. Unable to understand them, they attributedthem to humility, to the reserve which was characteristic of me, and they multiplied efforts to bring me back to natural ways—only to make me all the more distant. The laugh of Louise, who was now the flower of the house, was as powerless to thaw me out as the martial exhortations of Bernard, at home on leave, which simply exasperated me. As for the two younger children, Nicola and Jamie, I inspired in them a sort of fear, so that they avoided me. After having alienated them, there was nothing for me but to be vexed at their bad dispositions, which I was not slow to do.
Aunt Deen, seeking for a flattering explanation of my changed humour, discovered this:
“He is so superior!”
When my father got hold of me, with a little time to spare, he tried all means to resume the conversation that we had had on the hill of Malpas, that election day. With a secret disquietude which I felt, and which in a spirit of opposition only anchored me the more firmly in my attitude, he saw that I had closed my eyes to all that pertained to the field of observation, whether it were history, the past, tradition, laws, manners and customs, or practical every-day life, and confined myself to abstract reading, philosophy, mathematics, or threw myself still more absorbingly into music—an ambiguous and undefined régime, the mirages of which he dreaded for me. Deeply affected by the departure of Mélanie and Stephen and the approaching absence ofBernard, who was at home merely for a few months before setting out for his destination in Tonkin, where the war seemed likely to be unending, he had hoped to talk intimately with me, to win me back, to guide me. I would listen to him courteously, hardly replying, and he could not misunderstand my silence and my distant manner. He never wearied in pointing out to me the superiority which in every profession, in all the course of human existence, is conferred by a clear vision of realities. How much intelligence, tact, even diplomacy, he must have expended in that effort to win me back which I constantly evaded, I now realise as I recall it all.
Nicola and James, now grown beyond babyhood, used to accompany us in these walks which were such a bore to me, and which recalled others, that I had loved; they were interested in his conversation, which almost became a monologue, and in after years I discovered in them the impress of these teachings by which they had unconsciously profited, while I was determinedly refractory to them. Sometimes I would hear in his voice—suddenly grown imperious—the echo of that which on that memorable day had thrilled me to the marrow, and I almost expected to hear him say, as then,But understand me, poor child. You must indeed understand me—your future is at stake—then the excited voice would calm itself, or would be silent. My father had recognised the uselessness of his effort.
I was able also effectively to evade the solicitations of my mother, who sought my confidence and was troubled by my indifference to religion.
“You don’t pray enough,” she would say to me. “You don’t know how necessary it is. It is the most real thing in the world.”
I had, however, been clever enough to resume relations with grandfather without awakening suspicion. We used to practise together, though he trembled a little and his violin seemed tremulous. Or we would discuss a sonata or a symphony for hours together. Thus I had watched him admiringly years ago, in the Café des Navigateurs, getting off into a corner with Gallus. If any member of the family undertook to join in our conversation we would gaze at him in a superior manner, as at a profane person incapable of an intelligent opinion. Music could have meaning only for us; it belonged to us; and through it we resumed our former intimacy.
I had entered upon my eighteenth year when the event occurred which was to decide my future life. The baccalaureates had covered me with honour, and for a year past I had been preparing for the Central School, with no particular drawing toward it, and even with perfect indifference. A certain taste for natural sciences, purposely abandoned, had for a time given my father the false hope that I should return to the plans of my childhood, and could even be his successor some day. But I had chosen the calling of engineer because it wouldtake me away from home, and permit me to be my own master.
When the time came for us to return home the first figure that we never failed to see on the platform at the station was that of our father, who had hastened to meet us. His face would be actually illuminated with paternal love. I used to greet him as if I had left him the day before, but he would not let himself be put off so, and would always open his arms to me as if he were finding me after I had long been lost. These effusions in public appeared to me very vulgar, and I evaded them most artfully.
It was the end of July. Examinations over, I had come home for the vacation. Having thoroughly irritated me by clasping me to his breast, my father had me get into a carriage, my valise at our feet, and we took the road to the house, which was at the other end of the town, and on its outskirts, as I have elsewhere described.
We were crossing the Market Square when a group of the lower sort of people cast hostile glances at us, accompanied by low growls; then some one cried,
“Down with Rambert.”
I turned in amazement to my father, who had made no reply, and was even smiling at those who insulted him;—oh, not that smile that I had already seen upon his lips when preparing for a conflict, but a smile almost of sympathy, of commiseration. Why this sudden unpopularity? They might refuse to elect him, but they had respected, and above all,feared him. The coachman had already whipped up his horse, a few hoots pursued us. I could not but ask what it all meant.
“Oh, nothing,” he said. “Some poor creatures. I will tell you about it.”
The household rushed to the steps to meet us. It was the usual proceeding, at the return of each absent one. Grandfather alone did not stir, and I heard his violin giving forth its plaintive melody from the tower chamber. Father told of the manifestations of which we had been victims.
“Oh, the wretches!” exclaimed Aunt Deen, who by reason of rheumatism in the leg limped a little, but whom years had robbed of none of her war-like virtue. “They came all the way here a while ago; they or some others. Fortunately the gate was closed.”
She had barricaded us against “them,” our enemies.
“Oh, my God!” murmured mother—“if only nothing happens to you, Michel!”
Father explained the recent incident. The municipality which had been elected three years previously had given orders for important aqueducts to be built to bring water to the public fountains. These works had been awarded to a somewhat unscrupulous and even disreputable contractor, who had been put forward by important political influences. It appeared that within a few days father had discovered two or three cases of typhus, both in the hospital and in the working people’squarter, and he attributed them to the water recently introduced into the city, which must have been either contaminated or ill trapped. If he had been correct in his diagnosis of the origin of the disease he dreaded an epidemic. He had therefore at once laid before the mayor a request for the immediate closing of the suspected fountains, and had asked for a decree enjoining the use of boiled water only, with other precautionary measures. Whereupon the mayor, who was a grocer by the name of Baboulin, being advised by his deputy, Martinod, had refused the request out of deference to public sentiment. Our town, built like an amphitheatre above the lake, was a chosen summer resort of a large colony of strangers. If there should be any talk of contagion the season’s business would be ruined at a stroke. And besides, it would have been an avowal of the inadequacy of those famous improvements of which, according to custom, much had been made to add to the fame of the town. The quarrel had leaked out, and the public had violently taken the side against the prophet of evil.
I listened to the story with the indulgence of a traveller whose duty it is to share politely in the interests of his hosts. This was provincial gossip, quick to be born, soon to die; and I had come from Paris. Our friend Abbé Heurtevant dropped in at nightfall to lend strength to them. Since the decease of the Count de Chambord he had predicted nothing but plagues, wars, cyclones and catastrophes of allsorts. He was in his element now, and scented from afar an odour of cholera which would re-establish his blemished reputation and punish the Republic.
“I hear,” he said to my father, “that they are going to give you a tin pan serenade to-night.”
“A serenade,” repeated Aunt Deen. “I should like to see them! I’ll empty a boiler of boiling water on their heads, since they won’t have boiled water to drink.”
“Very well,” said my father. “I’ll wait.”
After dinner, mother, who was anxious, asked us to recite prayers in common. I hesitated to join in these invocations which I deemed puerile, and I only did repeat them with my lips, without heart, merely, I said to myself, to avoid sowing discord the first day. As for grandfather, he had valiantly mounted to his tower to direct his telescope upon I know not what planet.
About nine o’clock we heard a formidable clamour, but it was far away. For a time it neither drew nearer nor became more distant. The crowd that made it must be marking time. We distinctly distinguished a sort of refrain of two notes, the meaning of which we could not grasp. Suddenly the bell rang at the gate.
“There they are!” exclaimed Aunt Deen.
But no; under the gas jet only one shadow was distinguishable, and that a small one. Aunt Deen and mother were of opinion that the gate shouldbe opened only for a good reason.
“Probably some one is sick,” observed my father; and he himself went to the gate. He recognised in the nocturnal visitor Mimi Pachoux, who had furtively hastened thither to tell us:
“It appears, Doctor, that there are other cases; and they are assaulting the mayor’s office.”
“Oh, truly? What is it that they are shouting?”
“Resign! Resign!”
“Very well, good friend. I am going.”
When this dialogue was reported to Aunt Deen she wanted to reward our labourer’s devotion, but father checked her.
“Oh, don’t be in a hurry, aunt. He ran away from me these last days. He simply anticipates the popular movement, when he is perfectly sure of its direction.”
Then turning to me he asked, “Will you go with me? It will be a change from your studies.”
It was one of those fine moonless nights of July when the stars seem to hang low from the dark dome of heaven, like suspended lamps. We reached the square of the City Hall, which was black with people, all the air resounding with the one cry,
“Resign! Resign!”
We were at the back of the crowd, which was stamping and vociferating before the fast-closed municipal building. There were groups of citizens gathered from the cafés, into which the news had doubtlessspread, and there were also many family groups, with children in their arms, the women more excited than the men, some of them demanding that the mayor should be ducked in the fountain. To say truth, such an act would have required considerable good will. To my mind, all those Chinese shadows gesticulating in the uncertain light appeared supremely ridiculous. Absorbed in my own interior life, I took not the slightest interest in their goings on.
Suddenly a light shone forth from a room of the City Hall which opened upon a balcony. Mayor Baboulin had decided to reassure his constituency. But it was in vain that he essayed to make himself heard; epithets of all sorts were flying through the air at him, prisoner, traitor, knave, and others less elegant but even more sonorous.
Another man appeared beside him. My old friend Deputy Martinod, trusting to his popularity and his gifts of speech, came forward. But the hulla-baloos continued, while vituperations even more familiar and offensive were showered upon him. In the gaslight I recognised near me the inseparable Gallus and Merinos conscientiously reviling their old friend.
“You see,” said my father, making no attempt, to moderate his voice, “what to expect of the populace. Yesterday they were hurrahing for them; to-day they insult them.”
I confess that I was surprised to hear him express himself so freely,in that strong, ringing voice which always so disturbed grandfather. Only a few hours ago, as we were driving from the station, hadn’t the populace hooted at him, too? What if they should begin again? We were not behind the shelter of walls nor under the protection of the police. Just at that moment one of the demonstrators turned, crimson-faced and open-mouthed. A light was reflected full upon him; it was Tem Bossette, in person, facing us, full and overflowing like a wine-bottle, gesticulating even more vigorously than the others. The moment he saw us he cried aloud:
“Long live Rambert!”
All around him uprose a great tumult, and to my stupefaction every one was crying, “Long live Rambert!” at the top of his lungs. Father touched me on the shoulder, whispering,
“Let’s get out of this: we’ve had enough!”
A little more and our retreat would have been cut off, and we should have been obliged to submit to the unexpected ovation. Rapidly, before they could get into line to accompany us, we gained a cross street and hastened to the house, where the family were awaiting us. The shadow at the window told us of the disquietude which our absence had caused. Father gaily related what had happened, describing Tem’s intervention.
“Good fellow!” exclaimed Aunt Deen approvingly.
“Oh, he is a worse case than Mimi. The last few days he hasn’t even said good morning to me.”
“What business is it of his?” asked grandfather, who was troubled about the epidemic. “He is in no danger. He has never been a hard drinker.”
“Hark!” exclaimed mother—so quick to be fearful for us.
The expected clamour was certainly approaching; the sounds were growing more distinct; in a moment they would be intelligible.
“Oh, my God!” she added; “what is going to happen next!”
Father laughingly reassured her:
“This time, Valentine, they are cheering. It’s more than I asked for. This afternoon I was only fit for a ducking; this evening I am a saviour.”
How little he cared for public favour! He wore his battle smile, and I thought it very contemptuous. In the mysticism in which I had taken refuge I held myself aloof from all mankind; but so long as I was not obliged to associate with them I was quite willing to grant them all the virtues, even that of consistency. The crowd was already defiling before the gate, singing,
It’s Rambert, Rambert, Rambert,It’s Rambert that we need!
It’s Rambert, Rambert, Rambert,It’s Rambert that we need!
It’s Rambert, Rambert, Rambert,It’s Rambert that we need!
It’s Rambert, Rambert, Rambert,
It’s Rambert that we need!
Was there then only one Rambert? Grandfather, for whom no one was calling, slipped away, I alone observing his movement of retreat; he was probably going back to his tower, returning quietly to histelescope; the planet that he had been observing had not yet sunk below the horizon.
I would fain have followed him, but father asked me to look out. I looked, without interest, at the confused mass whose surges were beating against the gate and the wall of enclosure. It might have been a long, enormous serpent, a long, enormous mole-cricket whose body filled the breadth of the street, and whose tail must have stretched far away, beyond the turn of the road.
Suddenly the gate gave way, and the great beast, like the gipsies long ago, invaded the short avenue and the flower borders. In a moment it was assaulting the house. Aunt Deen, at my side, was torn between the joys of popularity and the instinctive defence of our garden.
By way of checking the onrush of the multitude father opened the window. He was saluted with a tempest of applause, but easily commanded silence, his voice ringing out like a deep-toned church bell:
“My friends,” he said, “we shall do all we can to check the progress of this scourge. Count upon me, go back home, and above all, invoke the help of God.”
Invoke the help of God! But it was he whom they looked upon as Providence! In all that manifestation my mother had been the only one who had thought of praying. Aunt Deen was drinking in her nephew’s words, but their eloquence touched me not at all. I could have wishedhim to utter a few noble sentiments in praise of science, which alone was capable of dealing with epidemics and preventing contagions; but of science my father had said never a word. At that moment I noticed how large a number of good women were in the crowd, some of them brandishing their babies at arms’ length, as if offering them to my father. No doubt he had been talking for the good women.
Nevertheless he had gained his point. Little by little the crowd was calming down and gradually dribbling away. They passed out of the gate, and the lovely summer night, but now torn with shoutings, slowly gained its empire over the last lingerers in the garden, over the roads and the fields, and gave them back to silence.
Events began to hurry one upon another, the very next morning. The municipal council, responsible for the defective work upon the aqueducts, resigned under general obloquy and contempt.
“There are your electors!” said our father at table. “First rejoicing in the triumph of the mayor and council over conservatism, and now demanding the disgrace of those very men and dragging them in the mud with shame.”
In a flash I saw myself again in the Café des Navigateurs a few years before, drinking champagne with Martinod and his heelers, in honour of grandfather’s candidacy, and far from revolting me, the memorytouched my heart. Then, a child, I had quaffed a sort of delicious recklessness, something like that love-languor that Nazzarena, passing out of my life, had left with me, listening to those fine theories which were not very clear to me but were preparing me for liberty nevertheless.
The excitement increased in the town with the increase in the number of deaths, which, however, were still few. The exact figures which my father gave by no means corresponded with those that were printed in the newspapers, or flew from lip to lip. He had forbidden us to go into the town, grandfather approving:
“One never knows how those things get caught—a mere nothing is enough. It’s quite enough to have so many sick persons coming here.”
I had found grandfather aging, when I came home. He was nearly eighty, of course, but he had so long kept his air of youth, the alert step due to his long walks, and even his bright eyes, their sarcastic glint only emphasised by the gathering wrinkles. Now he was growing bent, and his gaze seemed dimmed. Still he clung to life, and perhaps all the more as he felt his strength failing.
The most absurd and contradictory rumours were flying about everywhere, and political passions had free course. An individual had been caught putting poison into the river;—a priest, said the anti-clericals; a free mason, said the others. A frightful mania of suspicion began to run wild. An unlucky fellow with a pimpled face just missed of beingstrung up, on the pretext of spreading contagion, and was only saved by my father’s intervention:
“Pimples on the face are the only ones that mean nothing!” he had shouted, just in time.
He brought home to us all these incidents and rumours, for we went nowhere; he even carefully disinfected himself on returning from his rounds.
Next, the villages below the water-works thought the contagion had reached them, and were struck with panic, their inhabitants crowding to the town. We could see them passing with their carts, their cattle, their furniture, like fugitives before the face of war. Brawls arose from attempts to keep them out.
Then suddenly the epidemic, which until then had been under control, its ravages greatly exaggerated, took on a disturbing character, whether in consequence of the crowded state of the town and the lack of hygiene, or because the air had really become tainted. The general terror became itself a danger. Pestilence and famine were said to be upon us. Abbé Heurtevant, who, all devotion to the sufferers, yet seemed to breathe in a sort of consolation from the atmosphere of catastrophe, seeing in all this the fulfilment of his prophecies, and who could not but discern signs of divine intervention, was formally accused of sorcery, and was obliged to run to earth in his own room for several days, lest evil should befall him. Mlle Tapinois had given the signal for departure, abandoning her work-rooms, which mother took upwithout comment. The hotels were emptied, and all the people who could fly from town fled.
The lack of organisation increased the evil. The municipality had resigned and the prefect was taking the waters in Germany. The electors were convoked on a call of urgency. Then came a rush for father. Every day there was a crowd before the gate crying,Long live Rambert! orIt’s Rambert we must have. Aunt Deen was never surfeited with this refrain, which was music to her ears. Only he—there was no one but Michel.
I did not see and I cannot describe the despairing town, the shops closed for fear of pillage, the inhabitants torn by party enmity, haunted by all sorts of suspicion, clinging to every superstition, ravaged by bitterness and poverty, and given over to terror. But I did see with my own eyes, at our very feet, there under our very windows, the town entreating one man, submitting to him, grovelling before him, whom formerly they would have none of. The multitude dragged itself in the dust, moaned, uttered howls of desire like an infuriated dog. And not comprehending its distress I despised it.
My father had lost his authority over me, not from having abused it, notwithstanding that I had imagined tyranny in some of his acts, but perhaps—who can say?—for not having exerted it, that evening when he brought me back from the Café des Navigateurs, that day when in the tower chamber I had braved him in defence of grandfather. He had nosuspicion either of my first experience of love, which had played havoc in my heart, nor of the intensity of those aspirations after liberty which had been slowly infiltrated into it by all those walks and conversations.
Yet he had felt my detachment from the house, and had trusted to clemency to bring me back. And that clemency had belittled him in my eyes. His prestige had been made up of his never-failing victories, and had I not heard him in mother’s room, uttering the laments of one conquered? By his pain I had measured my own importance. The greater price he set upon the reconquest of myself, the stronger I felt to resist him. Perhaps he would have kept his empire over me had he not showed such an excess of paternal solicitude. Would it be dangerous for a sovereign to take too much pains in training his heir and fitting him to succeed to the throne? Must one put more confidence in words and acts than in the influence which one tries to exert over minds? Each generation differs from the former in the expression of its ideas if not in the ideas themselves. It thinks to create all things anew: life will teach it that nothing is created, and that everything goes on by the same processes.
Now, in the time of danger, that authority from which I had withdrawn myself imposed itself upon every one else. My father had been in charge of the medical service. Now, elected almost unanimously, he was entrusted with the town.