IXLEARNING TO BE BRAVE
IF my grandmother, who was not a learned person, and who acquired much knowledge in educating me, wished to make me learned, my grandfather, who as a general rule was lacking in courage, wished me to become a brave woman.
Early on Sunday mornings, before going to high mass with my schoolmates, he would take me with him to the Hospital. I was a friend of Sister Victoire, who used to aid my grandfather in his dressing of wounds and his operations. Both of them were forming me to look on human misery, they said.
I often assisted at small operations, and grandfather promised that when, by my good behaviour, I was worthy of it, I should be present at more important ones.
He showed me what he called “fine” wounds. Sister Victoire often taught me, especially if she were dressing a child’s wound, how to roll and place a bandage. When I was seven years old I knew a good many things about surgery, and could be of some help to Sister Victoire and grandfather.I could prepare an arm for bleeding; I learned how to bleed, myself, and how to bandage an arm after the operation, and this was most important, for, in those days, bleeding was an important part of medical practice.
During the summer grandfather would often bleed people in the courtyard of our house, near the garden, under a lilac tree of which I was very fond, and whose perfume when in flower intoxicated me. It was not a shrub but a real tree, affording shade.
People used to come and, without giving any explanation or asking for a consultation, say simply: “I have come to be bled,” and they were bled on the spot.
I was sent to fetch the lancet, basin, and bandages. I held the basin, and, when the operation was over, I dug a hole at the foot of my lilac tree, and poured in the blood. Perhaps that was the reason why it was so beautiful, and why the flowers were so plentiful and sweet.
Grandmother could not look at a drop of blood. Had she been obliged to witness a simple bleeding, she would have fainted.
Grandfather would keep saying all the while to her: “I am making a brave woman of your grandchild. She, at least, is not afraid of a few dropsof blood. The only thing she needs now is to love war, renown, and the Emperor.”
“And to be as brave as you are,” grandmother would add. “I am afraid of the sight of blood,” she said, “but if France were again invaded, I feel that I should fear neither Prussians nor English.”
Although grandmother would laugh at grandfather’s want of courage, she was very pleased that I was not afraid at the sight of blood, and she often thanked him for having kept me from this weakness. My schoolmates thought more highly of me for my courage, and sugar-plums had, in this instance, nothing to do with their estimation of me.
In the little school-world, and even in the town, some traits of my courage were told; among others this rather ghastly one:
A notary of Chauny had some time before committed suicide, and his body had been given to my grandfather, who had asked for it. He had a very fine skeleton made from it, which was kept in the garret, and was called “the notary.” Arthémise was dreadfully afraid of it. I knew the “notary” very well, being always prowling about the garret to hunt for the place where grandfather hid his money, which I always found. I was passionatelyfond of this special kind of hunting. When I had found the money, I changed the hiding-place, and would tease grandfather for days by not letting him know where I had hidden it, and defying him to find any hiding-place that would be secret from me.
When at last I told him where the money was, I deducted, according to the sum, a small percentage for my sugar-plums.
I used then to tell grandmother (when grandfather did not tell her himself, for there was never the slightest discussion about money matters between them), I used to tell her the adventure, which would greatly amuse her.
“Only,” she would say, “do not take any money from what you find. I do not think it is nice. Whenever you want money for your sugar-plums, ask me for it.”
“No,” I replied, “with grandfather I earn it.” And I really thought I had earned the money by all the trouble I had taken.
I always fancied that the “notary,” whose horrid history I learned only long afterwards, helped me to find grandfather’s money, and consequently I considered the skeleton my friend. So it did not strike me as unusual when, one summer evening, while some neighbours were enjoying the cool airwith us in our moonlit garden, my grandfather should have told me to go and fetch the “notary” from the garret, which, by the way, he would not have done himself.
Grandmother nodded approvingly, delighted at the idea that I was about to do something extraordinary, which would the next day electrify the town. She looked at me with her bright eyes and her red-gold hair shining in the moonlight. She was dressed in white, her favourite colour for herself and for me, and wore a large bunch of lilacs I had pinned on her bosom.
“Shall I go?” I asked her in a low tone. “They will be frightened—they do not know what the ‘notary’ is.”
“Yes, go,” she said, laughing.
I went up to the garret to fetch the “notary.”
He was very large, and I was very small. I put his head under my left arm, and with my right hand took hold of the banister. The moon was shining through the window. I can still hear the noise his bones made as they rattled on the stairs behind me.
I entered the garden, and threw the “notary” on grandfather’s knees. There was a general scream. The children shrieked, and hid their heads in their mothers’ laps. The mothers cried:“Oh! what a horrible thing! It is frightful! Monsieur Seron, take it away!”
Grandfather enjoyed the joke, and laughed with all his might. One woman fainted, and, while grandmother was throwing water on her face, he took the “notary” and placed it at the foot of the stairs. He did not dare to take it up himself.
We found this out afterwards, because Arthémise, coming into the room which I shared with grandmother, when we had gone to bed, cried out:
“Madame, Mam’zelle, the ‘notary’ has got downstairs alone. He is at the foot of the staircase!”
Grandfather was obliged to get up and put it back in the garret, but he made Arthémise go with him carrying a light.
My grandfather—who would believe it?—had very poetical tastes and was fond of pigeons. We had hundreds of them, and he had made me share his passion for these pets, and every day after breakfast he and I would feed them. They flew all about us, just as later in life I have seen them do on the Piazza di San Marco at Venice. We slipped on large linen blouses with hoods, and the pigeons would cover us entirely, head and shoulders, arms and hands. They clung to us and picked at us. The flutter of their wings and theircooing delighted me, and seemed like music. When we moved, they followed us with their pretty, mincing steps.
Grandfather and I were very fond of our pigeons, but grandmother, finding that they multiplied too fast, had the young ones taken from their nests, while we were absent, by a man who sold them, which grieved us very much. I heard of it through a little schoolmate, whose mother had bought some, and who told me one day that she had eaten some of my pigeons.
I scolded grandmother, who asked me if I would rather have eaten them myself.
“Most certainly not!”
Grandfather calmed me by saying that we could not possibly keep all that were born, and that grandmother did quite right, provided she would only take the young ones, and leave us the fathers and mothers. She promised this, and kept her word, and the old ones became more and more tame.