VTHE RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY
“YOU are in luck,” my brothers would say to me as they prepared to face the dreaded examinations for the baccalaureate, bending from morning till night over their books through all the trying July heat; “no school, no examinations, no possible failures for you.”
“And no piano,” Louise would add, for having given evidence of an aptitude for music she had been set to work at never-ending five-finger exercises.
Even little James, rebellious under his first lessons in reading and writing, confided to his inseparable Nicola that when he was big he would do like François.
“What does Francis do?” she would ask.
“Nothing.”
The month of August drew on without awaking that impatience which its approach had never failed to arouse in me until this year; I even felt a selfish regret as it came nearer. Vacation would rob me of that superiority which convalescence had conferred upon me, and would put me back into my place, the common life. Or rather, I supposed it would do so, being incompetent to measure the chasm that had opened between thelittle boy that I had been yesterday, and what I had now become. Some one had measured it before me.
I had become much absorbed between my walks and my visits to the Café of the Navigators, whither grandfather, who was no longer happy without my companionship, was taking me regularly. Though I was rather unobservant of the acts and doings of the family, I again became aware of an atmosphere of anxiety at our house, and of secret conferences that recalled to me the days when the destiny of our property had been at stake.
Father’s voice was penetrating, even when he moderated it and believed himself to be speaking softly.
“We shall have no fortune to leave them,” he was saying. “We must neglect nothing in their education. They must be armed for life.”
We, armed? Why should we be armed? Nothing was easier than life. I had outgrown wooden swords, heroic biographies, epic stories. All I should need would be a few tools for working in the ground, which furnishes men abundantly with all they need. One would harvest so much as was necessary, one would live on white cheese, sweet cream and wild strawberries, and listen to Martinod, preaching universal peace and proclaiming the arrival of the golden age. How simple the programme! What need was there of arms?
Mother was answering father.
“You are right. We must neglect nothing. Their faith and their unionwill be their only fortune.”
Far from being touched by this declaration of principles, I was imagining the little laugh with which grandfather would meet it, and one morning while combing my hair I practised my face in assuming a satirical expression.
In conversations which I accidentally overheard, the names of Parisian schools or lycées would recur, those especially that prepared boys for the great schools, Stanislas on Post-office Street, Louis-le-grand or Saint-Louis. My parents would have preferred a religious institution, and in this Aunt Deen emphatically acquiesced.
“No godless school,” she would exclaim. “All the rascals come out of the lycées.”
“Oho!” grandfather would protest, greatly amused at her vehemence. “I was educated in a lycée.”
He received his bouquet without a moment’s delay.
“And you are not worth so very much!”
It is true that to soften the severity of her retort, she went on,
“I must confess that you have become good for something, now that you take the boy out walking.”
Father, who seemed always to be glad of anything which might bring him and grandfather together, heightened the reluctant admission into praise.
“Yes, François owes his health to you. And all these lovely walks that you are giving him will attach him the more firmly to the region in which he is to live, and which he will know the better because of them.”
As a matter of fact I felt myself entirely aloof from the region and even from our house. What I loved was the earth, the vast unnamed earth, and not this place or that; most of all I loved the uncultivated places, the wild places in the woods, the copses, the secret nooks, and in less degree the pasture lands, any untilled, unsowed: bit of earth. In the matter of people, I had accepted grandfather’s new gospel which catalogued them as peasants and towns people. The nice people were in the country, whereas towns were inhabited by wicked individuals and notably bybourgeois, who persecute men of genius like my friends of the café. And in the towns were the schools where you were reduced to a state of slavery.
While I was giving myself up to these reflections my mother’s gaze had fallen upon me; it seemed to me that she was reading my thoughts, and I blushed—a proof that I was not unaware of my inward insubordination.
“He has grown quite robust,” she said. “Could he not begin gradually to take up his lessons? We could arrange him a place in the garden, where he would be in the out-door air, and yet not be entirely idle. Idleness is never good.”
I was astounded to hear my mother uttering so direful a proposition—my mother, so careful to spare me all fatigue, so expert in nursing me, so minute in her watchfulness! Decidedly, they had changed parts; father had appeared suspicious of my walks with grandfather, and now he was not only authorising, he was encouraging them.
“No, no,” he exclaimed, “pleurisy is too grave a matter. He would still risk losing strength and colour. See how well he looks now!” adding aside to mother, “Father is so happy in his little companion! Since he has had charge of him he has quite changed and grown younger. Haven’t you noticed it?”
Mother, who always agreed with him, did not express her opinion. I divined that she was uneasy about me, but why? Had she not rejoiced in my good spirits and my round, rosy cheeks? Grandfather never attempted to monopolise me; he took me on his walks, and helped in that way, and in addition, he taught me a thousand things about trees, mushrooms, botany: the things he knew were much more interesting than the history, geography and catechism that my teachers used to teach me.
Now that my attention had been attracted to mother’s uneasiness I continually noticed that she was always following me like a shadow. At the bottom of my heart I was pleased. Even a child loves to inspire fear in those who love him; it puts him at a sort of vantage point,gives him a feeling as of being a man, and understanding life better than a weak woman can do.
One day mother was talking in her room with Aunt Deen. I heard only the reply of the latter, who never could conceal anything.
“Come, come! my poor Valentine; don’t you go to troubling your head about that good-for-nothing boy. In the first place, I know perfectly what those two talk to one another about—country things, the pleasures of the fields, the peace of the earth, the goodness of the animals; all humbug, to be sure, but what of that? It’s just like poultices,—it can’t do any harm.”
I had not the slightest doubt that they were talking of me, and I was not at all displeased at having my share in the family interest, for in these days there was a great deal of discussion about my brothers, who, having graduated from school, would start for Paris in the autumn, Bernard for the military school at Saint-Cyr, and Stephen, who was not yet sixteen, to complete his studies in mathematics, unless indeed he persisted in wishing to enter the Seminary. Aunt Deen was greatly distressed over the exorbitant cost of board and outfit, and was continually discanting with emotion upon the merits of our parents, who shrank from no financial sacrifice to complete our education.
“Aha!” sneered grandfather. “These great religious institutions don’ttake in a pupil for nothing. They bleed their patrons at all four veins for the love of God.”
Furthermore, it was arranged that Louise was to go for two or three years to the convent school of the Ladies of the Retreat at Lyons. She would sober down there, and when she came home she would be an accomplished young lady, like Mélanie, who at that time was in the very flower of her youth—Mélanie, who long ago had invited me to sing vespers before a wardrobe, or to run after Yes-Yes, the drunkard, with a glass of water, and whose persistent piety foreshadowed a vocation which she had professed as a child, but concerning which she was now silent, unless, perhaps, to our mother.
Altogether the future of the family now demanded much reflection and many decisions. Grandfather and I remained quite apart from it all. Once beyond the gate we never looked back, except when my companion, laughing derisively, would say:
“And as to you, boy; what is being cooked up for you? Are you still inclined to enter the school of adversity?”
There had been much pleasantry over that incident, and I found it by no means amusing. I had given up all my fine plans, and had no thought of commanding some brilliant situation like my brothers. I was content with the sort of property which one enjoys without ever taking trouble, after grandfather’s fashion,—the lake, the forest, the mountain; notto speak of the stars and those fine July nights. I am not even sure that I did not prefer to them all the red benches of the Café of the Navigators, when I had the feeling of being a man, admitted to hear utterances concerning painting, music and politics.
Yet I never ceased to feel my mother’s gaze resting upon me. By way of not acknowledging it I began to put on airs of independence. Like the “Scenes in Animal Life,” I would work up offensive resemblances for all the people with whom we were familiar; turning men and things to ridicule and even affecting when with my brothers and sisters an incurious air, as if I had formed my views of life and had nothing more to learn. By a singular phenomenon, as I now see clearly, the more deeply I was initiated into the simplicity of rural life and the benevolence of nature the more complicated I became. And always, through all my newly assumed ways, that gaze followed me, as if it were seeking my heart.
Grandfather and I had a fright one day when we came upon my mother in the street. She was going to church for benediction and we to the café for our pleasure. She so rarely left the house that we had never thought of meeting her. Noses in air, already inhaling the special odour of tobacco and anise which awaited us, we paid no attention to the woman who was approaching, so modest, so grave that no one thoughtof looking at her, and we were much surprised when she accosted us, asking,
“Where are you going?”
What would grandfather say? I wondered. We had so loudly proclaimed our disdain of the town which we were now lightheartedly crossing. Would he betray the secret which I had kept so well? Without the least embarrassment in the world he replied:
“To buy a paper, daughter.”
Then he would not own up about our visits to the Café of the Navigators, either. Mother let us go on our way. When she had turned to the left, in the direction of the church, grandfather chuckled over the fine trick he had played her, but she had not wished to appear to doubt the truth of his reply: it had not deceived her. I knew it, for I had seen her blush at our falsehood.
Another circumstance directly revealed her penetration and her anxiety. One Sunday morning as I was going out of the door of the house with grandfather, she admonished us to come back in time for Mass. She would go with me herself, she said, although she had already heard mass at daybreak, as was her habit. All would have been well if grandfather and I, on our way home, had not met Gallus and Merinos, amiable and thirsty pair, who urged us, in spite of ourselves, to take a morning draught. We need only stay two or three minutes, at most, and we were really early. But at the Café was Martinod, perorating in full vein. All the tables were listening to him, drinking to him,applauding him, surrounding him with an atmosphere of admiration, the smoke of the pipes rising like incense around him. He was describing with picturesque and highly coloured details the approaching era of Nature and Reason, so that every one seemed to be already living, by anticipation, in that glorious time. What festival it would be!—a generous humanity renouncing all divisions of caste, class or race, all frontiers and wars, fraternally sharing all riches of earth! The transfigured orator tore away the evil from the future, and showed the sun of that day like the golden monstrance in a religious procession. It was all so beautiful that we quite forgot about Mass, and when, sated with eloquence, we turned our steps homeward, the hour was long past.
At the gate, grandfather, descending from his exalted mood, began to show some anxiety. As for me, I felt not the slightest remorse, being under the shelter of an older responsibility. Still, when I saw, behind the half-closed blind, that shadow that was so easily disquieted about the absent one, I too felt my pride droop, and became conscious that I had done wrong. Mother came down to meet us. We found her on the doorstep, so pale that we could no longer mistake the importance of our defection. Her voice betrayed her anxiety as she asked:
“What can have happened?”
“Why, nothing at all,” replied grandfather.
“Then why did you let the child miss Mass?”
“Oh, we forgot how time was passing.”
This time grandfather rubbed his nose and excused himself as if he had done wrong. A shadow passed over mother’s eyes. A moment before they had been limpid, and now the light that shone through their humidity pierced my heart. Softened as it was by the mist of tears it can not have been very formidable, there was nothing in it by itself so to affect me, but I have never forgotten its power. It must have been with eyes like these that Confessors of the faith looked upon their torturers. I know that I, too, have seen that divine flame.
Young as I was I understood that my mother was shaken by filial respect: yet a more imperious obligation constrained her to speak, and she spoke:
“We did not entrust this child to you, father, to withdraw him from his religious duties. You should not have forgotten this, for the sake both of his soul and of us.”
She spoke with mingled firmness and gentleness, and her face, already pale when we arrived, became so white from the effort she was making, as to seem absolutely bloodless.
... Long, very long after this, when I was a young man, I was getting ready to go out to meet a woman. The woman whom I loved—for how long?—had promised to betray her husband for my pleasure, but I was thinking only of her beauty. My mother came into my room. She had not the courage to say a word; as so long ago she was trembling, this timewith that other sort of respect which is respect for oneself. I did not know why she had come, and I felt uneasy at being detained. She laid her hand on my shoulder:
“Francis,” she said, “listen; one must never take what belongs to another.”
I protested my innocent intentions, and as I went my way I shook off the importunate words, which however met me again on the road and went with me. By what clairvoyance of love had my mother divined where I was going? She had looked at me with those same eyes, faintly shadowed by mist. Grief, rather than years, had already made her almost an old woman. And I distinctly saw the evil of the light love to which I was hastening with a song upon my lips....
Grandfather made no attempt to defend himself. He did not call to his aid the little dry laugh which usually served him so conveniently in shaking off his opponent without argument. He only murmured, somewhat weakly, “Oh! goodness, what a fuss about nothing,” and hastened toward the staircase, to go up to his tower where, at least, he would be sheltered from reproach. But my father, who was coming down, seemed to close the way. A conflict appeared to be imminent. And by the natural inclination of my childish logic I suddenly recalled that return from the procession which had first revealed to me this same antagonism:—my parents all a-thrill from the ceremony which grandfather compared tothe festival of the sun, and my suddenly chilled enthusiasm. But I was in a mood to take this recollection lightly; without knowing it, I had changed sides.
Grandfather appeared to me all the more embarrassed on hearing steps upon the stairs. He could not avoid the meeting. But as a matter of fact it passed off the most quietly in the world. A few words were exchanged about the weather, the crops, our walk. Generosity, deference, the desire to avoid a domestic dispute, or to spare my father an anxiety, kept my mother silent as to our late return.
But after this she never saw me going out with grandfather without fixing upon me that look, the anxiety of which I still feel. By some ingenious artifice she used to add Louise to our party, or even little Nicola, who would trot behind us, her seven year old legs finding some difficulty in keeping up with us. The whole troop would set forth, grandfather clearly showing his displeasure over the new recruits.
“I don’t propose to drag the whole camp after me,” he would mutter. “I am not a child’s nurse.”
“Come, come!” Aunt Deen would reply, “such pretty children! You are only too proud to show yourself in their company.”
None the less I agreed with him that the presence of my sisters spoiled our walks. One can never talk about anything with women along. They don’t understand out-of-door things, and they get cross as soon asone touches upon religion. I was not very far—I who had shown such fervour at my first communion—from thinking that mother exaggerated the importance of our having missed that service. I thought myself free, because I had closed my mind against all teaching except what came to me from grandfather. Being free, one could do as he pleased. We were not hindering the others from going to church, and even to the communion, and vespers into the bargain.
Vacation came and completely interrupted our walks by ourselves. After vacation school would begin, and I should resume my place among the little school boys of my own age, without so much as knowing that the previous three months had quite changed my heart.