The man from Paris is a natural object of hatred to the poacher. I refer to the hunting man from Paris, who raises game for his own sport in carefully preserved enclosures. This ostentatious personage, who comes and fills the countryside with special guards to keep the aggrieved pedestrian out of glades and plains and bypaths, seems to the rustics a pernicious intruder, in a state of legal warfare against the countryman, who feels himself the friend and legitimate owner of the animals, furry or feathered, with whom his labour in the fields has made him well acquainted. All is fair play against this "maker of trouble." The only thing is not to get "pinched."
Then begins a warfare of ambushes and ruses with the band of gamekeepers, who, having the law on their side, always end by getting the better of those whose only argument of defence is the "natural right" of a man to destroy wild life.
During the season there are almost daily exchanges of shot. Often a man is killed, which means jail, penitentiary, scaffold. All for a miserable rabbit! Remnants of the feudalism of birth which the effort of revolutions has merely replaced by the feudalism of money.
The worst of it is that gamekeepers and poachers, mutually exasperated, cling to their quarrel, and that a taste for brigandage develops in men diverted from the unremunerative tilling of the soil by the daily temptation of booty. Deal as harshly as you may with the poacher, you will not succeed in discouraging him. Has anything ever cured a devotee of roulette? And to the excitement of gambling, in this case, is added the attraction of danger. There is no cure for it. The question of increasing the penalty for poaching often comes up. There will be long discussion before anything is ever done. The discrepancy would be too great between the misdeed and the punishment. And the matter of elections enters into it. No one is anxious to make too violent enemies among the citizen electors.
Entirely different is the question of poaching in the happy regions—there are not many left in France—where preserved hunting is still at the rhetorical stage. There the poacher is merely a hunter without a permit, and as no such thing exists as a peasant whom a hare has never tempted to use his gun, and as a natural understanding unites all those who are compelled to pay taxes against the State which represents taxation and statute labour, never will you find a field labourer ready to admit that a shot, in order to be lawful, needs the seal of a tax gatherer.
The poacher on free territory, therefore, does not hide as does the poacher on preserved lands. He plays a sort of tag with the rural guard, who is by no means eager to meet him, and with the occasionalgendarmes, whose cocked hats and baldricks make them conspicuous from afar. Following along hedges, looking for burrows, keeping his eyes steadfastly on the ground, he scents out the wild creatures and knows the art of capturing them.
How often, in the days of my youth, have I accompanied the redoubtable Janière on his Sunday expeditions, when he would ostensibly leave the village by the highroad, his hands in his pockets, then dash into the fields, and miraculously find his gun hidden in a bush, a few feet from a rabbit hole. Nor man nor beast was ever known to get the better of him. He was an old Chouan of 1815 who, having been a poacher all his days, and a marauder now and then, died without ever having had a writ served on him. The entire district took pride in Janière. When he left us for a better world: "He never once went to prison," said the peasants by way of funeral oration. What that man could deduce from a blade of grass lying over on one side or the other at the edge of a thicket really approached the miraculous. He would consult the wind, the sun, and would construct for me the train of reasoning which must have brought the hare to the precise spot where we invariably found him. His accommodating gun made no more noise than the cracking of a whip. The victim, hidden in the hollow of a pollard, would at nightfall find its way under Janière's blouse.
But whither have I let myself wander? It was of the water poacher that I meant to speak. He, one might say, is the enemy of no man on earth. Fish, of dubious morals we are assured, find no such personal sympathy among us as do the furry and feathered folk. A carp, gasping on the grass, does not bring tears to our eyes, he seems to belong to a different world, and the police officer at war against illicit fishing, backed up by more or less convincing arguments relating to the restocking of rivers, has no one on his side. For this reason, my compatriot Simon Grelu counted as many friends as there were inhabitants in the canton. The killing of a hare in his lair rouses enmity among the poachers who alike had their eye on him. No quarrel results from a tench landed. Simon Grelu, besides fishing at once for profit and the love of it, gave freely of his catch, whence came the universal good-will accompanying him on his nightly or daily expeditions.
Our river in the Vendée, the Lay, wends its leisurely way amid reeds and waterlilies, sometimes narrowing between rocks covered with broom and furze and oak trees, sometimes widening under overarching alders, onward to the meadows, where it attracts the flocks. Everywhere are mills with their gates. It is a populous river, and no one could be said to "populate" it more than Simon Grelu, nominally a miller's assistant, living in the ruin of what was thought to have been a mill at the time of the wars between the Blues and the Whites.
Simon Grelu is a great tall fellow, all legs and arms and joints, with a long neck leading up to a long nose, which gives him the look of a heron. From the Marshland to the Woodland there is no more noted spoiler of rivers; he is celebrated for the constancy of his relations with the police. Hampered by his lengthy appendages, he is perpetually letting himself be caught, and disdaining what will be thought of it. Every angle of every rock, every stump by the water's edge, is so familiar and homelike to him that he cannot bear to leave his river, and rather than make good his escape on land, prefers to have a warrant served on him, secure in the fact that he has nothing wherewith to pay a fine.
When the police sergeant rebukes his men for their laziness, they cry with one accord:
"Let us go and look up Grelu!"
They go, and find him without the least trouble.
That was what happened last week, and owing to it I had the pleasure of witnessing the interview I am about to relate. I was taking a walk with the Mayor, when Simon Grelu suddenly stood before us. More elongated than ever, with his bony, sallow face, his pointed skull topped by a little tuft of white hair, his mouth open in a smile truly formidable from the threat of a single great black tooth which the slightest cough would inevitably have flung in one's face, the heron-man stood before us, motionless in his wooden shoes.
"I have come for my certificate,monsieur le maire," said he with a sort of clucking which might express either mirth or despair.
"What certificate?"
"Why, my certificate of mendicancy, as usual, when I am caught."
"What! Again? Is there no end to it?"
"It is better than stealing, isn't it,monsieur le maire?"
"But you have not the choice between poaching and stealing only, Simon. You could work."
"And do you suppose I don't work? Many thanks! Who drudges more than I do? The whole night in the water! Those accursed policemen played a trick on me!"
"They caught you?"
"That's nothing. They made a fool of me,monsieur le maire. No, it can't be called anything else. I shall never forgive myself for being made a fool of——"
"What happened?"
"What happened is that those policemen laughed at me all the way up and down the river. They were half a mile away, and I could still hear them roaring with laughter. No, I never knew I was such a dunderhead."
"But, come to the point, what did they do to you?"
"Ah—the villains! Imagine,monsieur le maire, it was just before daylight, and I was quietly fishing below the mill of La Rochette. The idea, anyway, of forbidding fishing before sunrise! Is it my fault if fishes come out to play at night?"
"Well—what happened?"
"I was in my boat——"
"You have a boat, then?"
"No,monsieur le maire, I may as well tell you, for you'll know it to-morrow, anyway, that it was your boat, which I had taken from your dike by the big pasture."
"And where did you get the key?"
"Ah—you know—with a nail—and there is no chain——But I shut everything up again without damaging the lock. I should not like to give you any trouble. I washed the boat, too, where the fish had left it muddy."
"You had caught a great deal of fish?"
"No. Ten pounds, perhaps. I had only just begun."
"I never caught that much fish in my life. How do you do it?"
"Oh—they know me. As I was telling you, I was in my—in your boat, when I heard those d——policemen calling me. 'Hey! Grelu, come ashore! We are serving your warrant on you!' Well, I landed, of course. I am used to it. We chatted like friends. They carried away my fish to fry for themselves. You won't tell me there is any justice in that, will you,monsieur le maire?"
"Is that the trick they played on you?"
"Oh, no! When the police had gone, I said to myself: 'Now I'm fined, I may as well go on fishing. I shan't be able to pay the fine, whether I do or not. So I'll stay.' I fished and I fished. I was doing first rate. I was happy. When, suddenly, I hear voices. The police again! Two warrants in one night! I couldn't have that! The boat was giving me away. But they might think I had left it there. So I hide in the water, with nothing out but my head, and I wait. What do you think they do? They stretch out on the grass, they light their pipes, and they begin to talk. They had got lost, the idiots! And finding themselves back at the mill, were looking for me to ask their way.
"As for me, I was none too comfortable in the mud. Those loafers wouldn't go away. When one pipe went out, they lighted another. I saw there was going to be nothing for it but to get caught again. Suddenly one of the men says: 'Father Grelu,' says he, 'you must be cold in there. Come and warm yourself at my pipe.' I come out, all covered with mud, and I shake my fist at him. 'If you serve another warrant on me——!' says I to him. 'A second warrant?' says he. 'No danger of that. The law prevents it. We can only serve one warrant in twenty-four hours on the same person for the same offence. What! You didn't know that, Grelu? And that is why you stayed in the water? We were just saying: "I wonder why he does that?" Ah, Father Grelu, we are sorry! We thought you knew better.' And they laughed. And they laughed. I was in no mood for laughing. Did you know that,monsieur le maire, that two warrants could not be served at once?"
"No."
"Well, I know it for another time, you may be sure. And now, may I have my certificate of mendicancy, which releases me from liability to fine?"
"Very well. Your bath might have given you pneumonia. How old are you?"
"Over seventy. No harm will ever come to me from water."
"Nor from wine, eh? It is funny, all the same, to be giving you a certificate of destitution when I see you so often at the tavern."
"They give me credit,monsieur le maire. I pay them in fish. It is better than stealing, anyway."
After the poacher the vagabond has the place of honour in the disfavour of the licensed citizen. A man without an abode inscribed in the tax collector's book comes near to being a man without a country, in the eyes of the bourgeois, inclined to regard the land of his fathers as exclusively what one of them has frankly called it, "the native land of the landed proprietor."
It is easy to pronounce against the unfortunate nomad the withering sentence: "He pays no taxes." No taxes, the barefoot tramp who halts on the edge of a ditch to eat his succinct meal? I defy him to spend the penny just tossed him, without the State stepping in between him and his poor bite and taking a portion of it away. How can he be fed, clothed, and warmed without the State making its existence felt by the exaction of a tithe? Merely tithes levied upon beggars would amount to a considerable revenue. The beggar takes no pride in this fact, being carelessly ungrudging of the sacrifices demanded by public duty, and this very modesty does him wrong, for under the pretext that he is of no social utility, householders, under-prefects, army corps commanders, and directors of the Bank of France, all unite in imputing to him most of the evils from which they are supposed to protect us.
In country places, the blame for whatever happens falls on the vagabonds. Theft, arson, trespassing, who could be guilty of these offences, if not the homeless wanderers going over the roads afoot, when all self-respecting men have at least the use of an automobile? What trade can they ply but taking other people's belongings, seeing that they have nothing of their own? Hence the execration of those who have belongings. I once knew an old philosopher who maintained that it was better to throw bread than stones at them. Ordinarily stones are readier to hand. When there are enough of them, the tramp gathers them into a pile at the roadside and breaks them for honest wages. Never for a moment believe that any one, from the President of the Republic down to the road mender, will express the slightest gratitude to him. Like Timon of Athens, he expects nothing from human kind.
And yet, his defence, should he take the trouble to make one, would not be lacking in interest. Lost sentinel of the army of labour, he might relate strange adventures in the industrial warfare, no less cruel than the other warfare. He might find it difficult to deny a share of shortcomings on his side—but what of the consciences of "the righteous," oftentimes, if one could see them in nakedness?
Humanity means weakness. If the vagabond can own as much for himself, he can bear witness to the same in the case of others. Oftener, perhaps, than is generally believed, for peasants, like city people, are tempted by their neighbours' property, and as the caught thief always accuses some unknown personage of the crime attributed to him, the vagabond is in all countries the easy expiatory victim of "the respectable."
Something of the kind happened in the affair of the "Gray Fox," which once upon a time set my village in uproar. At that distant date one of the notables of the hamlet, a locksmith by trade, who had "inherited property," was Claude Guillorit. Without vanity in his Roman Emperor's name, he carried it with the quiet dignity of a man whose future is assured. He was a "scholar," incredibly learned in the accumulation of miscellaneous facts which almanacs spread even in the remotest districts. He quoted proverbs, was full of strange saws, foretold the future—approximately. He was to be met with by night, carrying a large basket, in search of simples, which have special virtues when gathered after sun-down. He brewed philters for the benefit of man and beast, and cured fevers, I must admit, more easily than he did locks.
For, in spite of his explicit locksmith's sign, locks were wrapped in mystery for Claudit—so called "for short." Village housewives, whose furniture knows not intricate locks, are at the end of their resources when they have cleaned the rust off their keys, or smeared a creaky lock with oil. If the evil persisted, in those days, the cry of supreme distress used to be: "Go and get Claudit," even as Napoleon's cry was: "Send forward the guard!" when he was at the end of his genius.
Accompanied by a formidable clatter of ironware, a little slim, spare, sharp man would approach, with long gray locks swinging about his face, after straggling from under a black round of which no one could have declared with any certainty whether it had been a hat or a cap at the time of the Revolution. But it was not his headgear that held the eye. What struck one, what fixed the attention, what filled even a person unacquainted with him with a sort of superstitious uneasiness, was the black dart of two small, lustreless eyes, which entered one's very soul and stuck there. When the shaft of Claudit's glance had pierced one, it was not to be plucked from the memory. The man, however, did not concern himself with the impression he produced; he never broke the silence except from necessity, and then spoke only of things pertaining to lock mending.
When he had arrived before the recalcitrant lock, he would throw on the ground—together with the great basket from which he was never separated, and which no one ever saw open except on one memorable occasion—an iron hoop, whence hung an extraordinary number of queerly wrought and bent hooks; then he would kneel down as if in prayer, and apply his eye to the keyhole. After a moment of scientific examination:
"Pardine!" he would cry—it was his favourite oath—"I see nothing at all."
In which there was nothing surprising. Claudit seemed, none the less, to experience great relief from this first ascertainment. Then followed questions regarding the piece of furniture, what was its history, and the probable age of its lock, then groans over the wretched work done in olden days. And now the moment had come for the diagnosis. Every lock may be afflicted with any one of numerous ailments. Claudit would enumerate them with great erudition, giving his client his choice among the various evils.
"It may be that, or it may be something else. I am no wizard. We shall see."
Thereupon a storm of hammerblows would beat upon the wood and the iron. The cloudburst over, the key would function no better.
He would have to resort to subtler methods. Unperturbed, Claudit would brandish his hoop with the pendent hooks, and having examined each with care, would select one and insert it very deliberately, with appropriate contortions, into the orifice where lay the seat of the trouble. Creakings would ensue beyond anything ever heard. Up and down, down and up, from left to right, and right to left, and all around the compass, he would turn and twist and rub the rusty point, would force it to the exhaustion of human strength, and, since the truth must be told, I will confess that I have seen locks which under this violent treatment took the provisional course of behaving themselves. Claudit would exhibit no pride. Such triumphs of his art were not calculated to surprise him.
When the lock seemed to be entirely bedevilled, Claudit would draw from his pocket a two-penny knife, the blade of which had gained a saw-edge from much usage, and for the final satisfaction of conscience would do what he could by "rummaging" with it. After that it was finished.
"The King himself could do no more," he would declare, fully assured that Louis Philippe would have succeeded no better than he. "If you like, I will make you a new lock."
Do not imagine that the manufacture of this lock would give Claudit any great trouble. He sent to Nantes for his locks. He unscrewed one, and screwed on another, and by this simple performance acquired the reputation of a "skilled workman."
A little forge was attached to his house. It was littered with iron junk. But no man alive ever saw it lighted, so that hens had formed the habit of making their nest amid the cinders of the hearth, and the white gleam of eggs was pleasant to see at the bottom of the crater where one looked for glowing coals. I have seen as many as ten, for Claudit, owing to an extreme love of poultry, permitted large numbers of hens to wander at will about his dwelling.
In reality, the mending of locks and the brewing of healing philters were merely the recreations of his life. Its passion was "the little hen," as he tenderly called her. One of those silent passions deeply rooted in our inmost being, for the satisfaction of which the Evil One besieges us with temptations. It is certain that between Claudit and the gallinaceous tribe obscure affinities existed. On Claudit's side the sentiment might be explained by an appetite for toothsome eating. But why did the hen feel Claudit's fascination? Why did she stand there, stupidly motionless, fastened to the ground by the magnetism of that black eye? They say that hypnotized hens will drop of themselves into the fox's jaws. To quote Hamlet: "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy."
Curious as it may seem, Claudit was not the only one in our village to cultivate a fondness for poultry. From time immemorial housewives on all sides had complained of missing hens. Everyone blamed it on the tramps, who were never there to answer back. Claudit more than any other suffered from these thefts, and bewailed his losses at every street corner. His white hen gone, his black hen and his yellow hen gone, the thieves were cleaning him out—and the neighbours got Christian consolation in their misfortunes from the reflection that Claudit was even more cruelly hit than they.
Claudit, as may be imagined, was on the lookout for marauders, but in vain. One day he saw one, but was unable to catch up with him. It was a bent old man, dragging along a bag, full of hens, no doubt. "A regular gray fox," muttered the wronged and indignant Claudit.
The name stuck to the unknown. His description was given to the police, and a warning was sent out by the authorities, against the despoiler of farms, and chief of a band of marauders, known under the name of "Gray Fox."
One day Claudit, on his way home from a heated battle with a stubborn lock, was crossing the village, when he stopped at sight of a crowd. An aged tramp, bent double under the weight of a coarse canvas bag, was struggling with the rural guard, who had found him lying asleep beside a ditch and was accusing him of all the vague crimes reported over the whole canton. The women had come running out of their houses, and each of them had some accusation to bring against the malefactor. One in particular was making an outcry:
"My cuckoo hen was stolen this morning. He took it! Come, now, give me back my hen and go get yourself hanged elsewhere!"
"Ah! So you stole a hen, did you?" exclaimed the rural guard. "I knew there was something wrong."
Then addressing the crowd: "The bent old man with a bag is the 'Gray Fox,' isn't he? You are the 'Gray Fox,' aren't you? You may as well confess."
It was here that Claudit arrived upon the scene, by good luck, for having once seen the thief, he could identify him better than any one else. Way was made for him, and the entire village, hanging on his lips, waited to hear what he would say.
"Pardine!" said Claudit, scratching his ear, "I believe we've got him this time. Yes, yes, I recognize him. He is the 'Gray Fox.'"
"Hoo—hoo! To prison with the Gray Fox!" howled the delirious crowd.
"Give me back my cuckoo hen!" screamed the housewife.
But the man, not in the least agitated, straightened up and said:
"So I am the Gray Fox, am I? My word! You are too great fools! Often enough, from the other side of a hedge, I have seen him at work, your Gray Fox. I know him. Do you want me to show him to you?"
And with a kick he overturned Claudit's basket, whence fell the dead body of the much-lamented cuckoo hen.
The entire canton still echoes with this spectacular stroke. With blows and kicks the Gray Fox, the real one, was led back to his lair, and there, in a secret cellar, was discovered a collection of stolen hens, peacefully awaiting their turn to be cooked with accompaniment of cabbage. Everyone recognized his own hen, and everyone hastily seized it. Even Claudit's legitimate hens went by that road. But he was not the man to let himself be despoiled in silence.
"You say these hens are yours!" he cried. "I know nothing about it. I am willing to give them to you. But I shall let nobody steal the hens that belong to me."
And before a week had passed, Claudit had, by the power of speech, got back all his hens, with, it was said, a few of doubtful ownership into the bargain.
To this insistence and its success he owed a return of public esteem. But when a lock thereafter required his attention he was emphatically bidden to leave his basket at home.
I have had no very consecutive relations with thecuréof my village. Many things stand between us. Our age, our occupations, our ideas. He follows one path, I another. Which does not prevent our occasionally meeting out in the country, or at the cross roads. We exchange greetings which vary according to the time of day; we occasionally talk of the weather, as it is, and as it should be to satisfy the peasants. In the crops we find yet another subject for a brief conversation. But we rarely venture beyond this circle of observations. His breviary claims him, and the finger marking the page of his interrupted reading is a delicate hint that the talk had best be brief. I have partridges to deliver, and must not linger, either. There is a slight awkwardness between us, even in saying good-bye. I am anxious not to say anything that may offend the simplicity of his faith, but I always fear one of those somewhat indiscreet suggestions which priests regard as part of their duty. On his side, it is evident that he dreads my so far forgetting myself as to make remarks which will oblige him to stand on the defensive. I cannot help seeing that I am an incomprehensible enigma to him, whereas his state of mind is not in the least puzzling to me. How can I explain this mystery to him, without cruelly wounding him? We therefore part, after a few conventional words, regretting the necessity to stop short on the verge of a conversation which tempts us both, and aware that we have something to say to each other which we shall never say. To his last day he will undoubtedly regard me as an agent of the Devil. And on my side I can only silently sympathize with his sorrow in the recesses of my mind.
Abbé Mignot is a tall, robust, florid Burgundian, whose muscular frame seems better suited to field labour than to the unctuous gestures of the sacred ministry. The son of a vintner, he had begun life as a plowboy, when an aged singer, who had been a great sinner while she trod the boards of light opera in Paris, returned to her native village, there to acquire spiritual merit by good works, which the remuneration for vice out in the world enabled her to do. She reared altars, and munificently endowed them. She enriched the church with incomparable raiment. The pulpit praised the zeal of the excellent donor, who was earning Heaven by the virtues belonging to old age, and by preaching austerity to others.
One day this saintly lady, in quest of redemption, met at the edge of the village a dishevelled boy who was subduing the fierceness of a young bullock by the aid of sounding oaths and a shower of blows. The picture seemed to her beautiful, even though the music was profane. She questioned the child, whose precocious adolescence called up distant memories connected with this same muddy, rustic setting, and being suddenly vouchsafed light from on high, she conceived the plan of redeeming her very earliest sin (which had led to so many others), by means of the young bullock driver who seemed to her on the brink of perdition. Providence, and not chance, had set on her path this innocence to be saved from imminent peril. What an admirable priest the youth would make, when properly scrubbed, with his great clear eyes, his blond curls, his laughing insolence of a conquering hero! So the sinner who had turned away so many souls from the path to Heaven would redeem the past forever by leaving behind her an authentic servant of God, to keep up the necessary expiatory work after her death.
All would have been well had not the vintner hung mightily back. His son had cost him "a lot of money." He was just about to "bring him in something" now. This was not the time for sending him away.
"If he goes," he said, "I shall have to hire a servant.... That costs a great deal, counting his food. I can't afford it."
But the more obdurate the peasant was, the more obstinate became the devout lady in her resolve to accomplish the duty laid upon her by Heaven, as she declared. Negotiations were difficult, for Father Mignot had no liking for "skullcaps," as he called priests, and a double argument had to be used: one bag of money to repay him for his "pecuniary loss," and a second bag to allay the scruples of anticlericalism, aggravated by the circumstances. And this is what was called "The vocation of Arsène Mignot."
More than twenty years later, Abbé Mignot came to us with the remnants of his family: a widowed sister and three nephews without means of support. As I am telling nothing but what is strictly true, I have to admit that he met with a chilly reception. The oldcuré, whom we had just lost, had had enough to do to guard his eighty years from the heat and the cold, and to quaver out his masses. Our peasants are not fond of being too closely questioned. When they saw this new man, still under forty, carrying his need for action into their very houses, breaking, from one day to the next, the happy-go-lucky traditions which had made his predecessor popular, they silently assumed the attitude of self-defence. But thecuré, being a peasant, knew his peasants. When he discovered his mistake, he had the sense to change his course, and to win back the discontented, one by one, without noise or waste of words.
And so, our village would have had no story, but for a hospital belonging to it, and standing in a hamlet two miles away. This hospital, privately endowed, was tended by four nuns of I know not what order. Disease, however, never marred the spot by its presence. Against the express wish of the founder, a school had been established in it, and any sick person coming to ask admission was told that his presence would be dangerous to the school children, upon which he obediently went to die elsewhere. Two elderly spinsters, who did the work of servants, figured in the Sisters' conversation as "our incurables." By this means they were entitled to retain the inscription on the wall, announcing that hospital care might there be obtained.
Concerning the Sisters themselves there is nothing to say. They taught the catechism, sang off the key at mass, and made a great show of zeal toward the one they called "Mother." Their chief entertainment was luncheon at thecuré'son Sunday after church. A sweet dish and a little glass of Chartreuse crowned this extravagance. Then there would be much puerile chatter on topics drawn chiefly from theReligious Weekly. New recruits were proudly enumerated, eyes were rolled heavenward at talk of "apostates," and the latest miracles were related in minutest detail. A touch of politics occasionally spiced the heroic resolution to brave martyrdom. At parting, all were in a state of edification.
The trouble was that Abbé Mignot, without income, had four mouths to feed. The cost of the luncheon could not be brought within the limits of his budget. He made a frank confession of this to the "Mother," who answered haughtily that privation was the luxury of her estate, and that the Sisters would uncomplainingly return to sharing the "bread of the sick," at the hospital. Her words came true, for the very next week there was a patient at the hospital: the "Mother" herself, whom an attack of erysipelas carried off in three days. The school had to be dismissed and everything scientifically disinfected, before the scholars could return. This duty fell upon the new Mother, a charming young nun, whose beautiful eyes, gentle speech, and affable manners, created a sensation in the countryside.
Mother Rosalie was gifted with a beautiful soprano voice, which proved to be a source of divine refreshment to Abbé Mignot, who was fond of playing the organ. There can be no music without work. Work at their music threw the Mother and thecurétogether. And as one study leads to another, the visits of Mother Rosalie to Abbé Mignot came to be fairly frequent. Presently there was gossip, and after a time what had at first been a playful buzzing became rumblings of scandal. Is it credible? The first threat of a storm came from the three Sisters at the hospital. These old maids, who had until that moment been totally insignificant, felt surging in them, of a sudden, an irrepressible wave of spleen, intensified and again intensified by the acid of celibacy. Although touched in a sensitive spot by the discontinuance of luncheon at the rectory on Sundays, sole amusement of their lives, they had made no sign. But the moment their one-time host laid himself open to criticism, the hurricane burst, and the flood of heinous words came beating against the very walls of the sacred edifice.
Nothing can be hidden in a village. Life is carried on in broad daylight. The ditches, the stones, the bushes have eyes. Everyone knew very well that Abbé Mignot and "the pretty Mother," as she was currently called, had never met anywhere but in the church, the door of which was open to all. The pealing of the organ and the pure voice rising to the rafters ought, it would seem, to have counteracted the poison of malevolent insinuations.
"Certainly," said the peasants, "they are doing no harm,as long as they keep on singing!"
Occasionally, when the organ was silent, Mother Rosalie knelt in the confessional. Busybodies, stationed behind pillars, considered that she remained there too long, and that she confessed oftener than necessary. This was all that any one could find to say against them. I did my best to defend them, when occasion arose, but the only effect of my pleading, I fear, was to give more importance to the spiteful words.
Meanwhile, Abbé Mignot and Mother Rosalie continued happy in their music and their friendship. I never knew Mother Rosalie, and will not invent a psychology for her. We exchanged a few words on several occasions, and I received the impression of a remarkably refined nature. Whatever I might say beyond this would be drawn from my imagination. With regard to the Abbé, the reader is as well qualified to judge him as I. Bound over to continence by an adept in the reverse, he resigned himself to inevitable fate, the cruelty of which he had recognized when it was too late. Heaven, chance, or destiny had thrown a friendly soul in his path, a prisoner of the same destiny. He surrendered to the delight of the association, happy to come out of himself, to give a little of his life, to receive something of a human life in return, and to feel his pleasure shared. They did not conceal themselves, having nothing to conceal. This seemed to them a safeguard, under the eyes of their brothers in humanity.
The "scandal" lasted three months. One fine day, without warning, an elderly, hunchbacked Sister descended from the coach, and having entered the hospital, exhibited, along with her titles as the new "Mother," the order to "Sister Rosalie" to returnwithin the hourto the convent. Sister Rosalie bowed her head in submission, asked whether time would be allowed her for one leave-taking, and upon receiving a negative answer, retired to her chamber, "to pray and to obey." She came out with faltering steps, and departed never to return.
The following day was Sunday. The event had been kept secret for the sake of a more dramatic climax. When the priest, coming before the altar, met the shock of the sardonic joy twisting the lips of the hunchbacked Mother and her three acolytes in the charity of the Lord, he fell a step backward, as if mocked by Satan himself. Pale, shaken, he was unable to restrain the trembling of his lips. The thunderbolt had struck. In the anguish of death he retained the appearance of life, and must play the part of a living man. By an heroic effort he regained self command. Violently theIntroitrang out, as if from depths beyond the grave, and in it were mingled the tragedy of the man and of the God.
There was but one word at the end of mass:
"Monsieur le curémade the pretty Mother sing too much. She has gone away to rest."
Last month I met Abbé Mignot out among the rocks of Deux Fontaines. He sat with knitted brows at the foot of a bush, and nervously turned the pages of his breviary. He was evidently making a desperate effort to fasten down his wandering attention. He did not notice me, and had not my dog run up to him, I should have turned and walked away, to avoid disturbing him in his lonely struggle. When he saw me he rose, afraid of having been caught betraying something of himself. I held out my hand in friendship, and this time I would gladly have stopped for a talk had I not seemed to read in his eyes an entreaty to pass on without speaking. I obeyed the silent appeal. But yielding to an obscure need—
"Monsieur le curé," I said, "you ought to be careful. There are snakes among those stones. You must have been warned before?"
"Yes, I know," he answered in a muffled voice. "This place is infested with vipers—most pernicious beasts,Monsieur. I hope that on your side you will be able to guard against them."
What kind of justice did Saint Louis dispense under his oak tree? History does not tell us that he was a doctor of law. Everything leads us to suppose that he owed extremely little if anything at all to Papinian, Ulpian, or Tribonian. He was, of course, a Saint, and those among us chosen by Providence to make Its Supreme Will known receive appropriate inspiration from on high. King Solomon, like other Asiatic kings, who are by their people regarded as mouthpieces of divine wisdom, consulted no text when he spoke the famous judgment upon which his glory still rests.
Jews or Christians, the ancient leaders of the people judged in equity, and without too great difficulty arrived at an approximate justice, superior to the "judgments of God," which had too often what looked like the iniquitous unfairness of chance. Codes, by their inflexible rules applied to every case, have overthrown the ancient order, under which an arbitrary procedure fitted the law to each individual transgression. Laws and judges have since become more flexible, they would otherwise be intolerable, but they are still too rigid to bend felicitously to the modifications by which natural right might be promoted. In addition to which, gratuitous "justice" not infrequently ruins the person seeking it.
For all these reasons—fear of the law, which pounces upon poor people they know not whence, fear of the hardened judge who refers the case to his learning rather than to his conscience—our peasants in Western France with difficulty make up their minds to set in motion the so-called "protective" machinery of the law. Even the settlement of a dispute before a justice of the peace seems an extreme measure, and they have recourse to it only under great stress, which is a matter for rejoicing, for such is the "social order," that without this fortunate tendency, mankind, being entirely composed of people who complain, or have reason to complain, law courts would need to be made big enough to accommodate the entire human race.
In the country, sources of disagreement abound. The limb of a tree stretching beyond a fixed boundary, a vagrant root, a fruit dropping on the wrong side of a hedge, the use of a stream, a right of way, may bring up interpretations of customs giving to conflicting interests occasion for dispute. Before coming to the last expedient of going to law, quarrels, insults, and blows perform their office of preparing the way for reconciliation, which eventually results from nervous or muscular exhaustion. A good hand-to-hand fight would constitute a "judgment of God" not without its merits, but for the temptation to "appeal" by nocturnal reprisals on innocent crops.
All that might take one very far. Which is the reason why we often find in country districts certain natural-born arbiters, who bear the same relation to judges that sorcerers do to doctors. The judge is the Hippocrates of social maladies, even as the physician is the judge of physiological disorders. The power to judge and the power to heal are acquired by some mysterious method concerning which rustic clients and patients have very misty notions. Judge and physician often make mistakes, and these create in men's minds a dismay greater than the comfort induced by their most authentic successes.
Is even learning absolutely necessary to make one competent to judge and to heal? In olden days this ability was a gift from heaven, a matter exclusively of divine inspiration, which invested a man with the requisite faculties. Why should it no longer be the same? The peasant's slow wit still clings to the old conceptions and retains the imprint of past beliefs. He therefore prefers the wizard to the doctor, whom science has stripped of the prestige of mysteriousness. In the same way, he prefers—rather than to seek advice from competent sources—to consult concerning his rights, or the conduct of his affairs, one of his own sort, totally ignorant, and playing the part of doctor of law from inspiration.
I once knew, long, long ago, alas, one of these improvised Solomons, whose reputation for legal knowledge had spread from parish to parish over a considerable area of the Woodland of the Vendée. Baptist Merian, better known by the name of Master Baptist, was a peasant of uncouth appearance, who personally looked after the property apportioned to him by heaven and the inheritance laws. He was a big fellow whose once-powerful muscles were becoming overlaid with fat as he neared his seventieth year, the period when I first happened upon him in the exercise of his functions. His purplish, pockmarked face very nearly concealed in its fleshy folds two small gray eyes which pierced an interlocutor directly through. He had a voice of thunder, and the gestures of a thunderer. He had the imposing utterance of one passing absolute judgments on men and things. He was like Zeus whose frown shook Olympus, when he gave orders to take the mare to pasture or harness the oxen to the plough. And yet he was at bottom a timorous spirit, very attentive to the suggestions of prudence, and careful never to push any matter to a violent issue.
His adversary, whoever contradicted him, was generally called a "blockhead," and when Master Baptist had thus pronounced himself nothing remained for the sentenced one but to bow his head in silence, which was what all around him were in the habit of doing. No one could have told whence he derived his legal authority. He made no claim to anything so contemptible as a knowledge of the law, for he could scarcely read, and with difficulty could sign his name. He was none too pleasant a neighbour, and had on various occasions started lawsuits which he had wisely brought to a close by a more or less advantageous settlement, giving as his reason that the judge in his opinion was a "blockhead." The consideration he enjoyed was not lessened by this, for he continued to speak of his litigations as if he had won his cases; it was even noticeable that the magistrate who had earned that unpleasant epithet from his client lost, to a certain extent, the respect in which the community had held him.
Master Baptist was not one of those geniuses who need to blow their horn. Respectful of everybody's right to manage his own affairs, he never ventured to offer advice to any one. At the most, if he saw a field which did not carry out his idea of a proper rotation of crops, or a field badly fenced, or an animal in poor condition, he would express his view that the owner was a "blockhead," and public opinion could do nothing but record the condemnation, from which there was no appeal. Far from protesting against Master Baptist's uniform verdicts, people would at the least disagreement, the first difficulty, come running to him to explain their case, inquire what their chances were of success, and often beg him to arbitrate.
With great dignity, with benevolence, even, he would receive these visitors—if it were winter, by the hearth in the kitchen, which is the countryman's parlour; if warm weather, by the house door, a few feet from the black drain into which the sink emptied the odoriferous extract of culinary operations. Comfortably seated in a quaint semicircular armchair, the wool-stuffed cushion of which was covered with ticking, he would listen to the men who had come to consult him and who remained standing, cap in hand, while they told their interminable and tangled stories. When they stopped for lack of breath, Master Baptist would ask questions, which usually called forth prolix replies. Finally he would speak:
"Peter, it is you who are the blockhead." And Peter would have no choice but to submit to John. Both would then pull their blue caps over their ears and sit down for a glass of white wine, which by a reversal of ancient custom constituted the fee of judge to litigants. Often they came from a great distance to find out which was the blockhead, and having found out, departed content, glad to have ended the quarrel without assistance from the omniscient bench.
It was something of an undertaking at that time to reach the out-of-the-way hamlet where Master Baptist uttered his oracles. Now, country roads connect "The Pines" with the rest of the world. I used to reach it in those days by way of the rocky ridge stretching for two miles between Mouilleron-en-Pareds and La Chataignerie. "The Rocks," as the ridge is locally called, form the last buttress of the Woodland hills. From the top a vast wooded stretch is visible, every field being enclosed by a belt of tall trees. The rocks themselves are covered with gorse and furze, and giant chestnut trees, twisted and gnarled by old storms. Suddenly the rocks part, and in the hollow they reveal lie meadows enlivened by the song of running water. There humble huts group themselves in hamlets, concealed by the high trees. "The Pines," Master Baptist's domain, was doubtless distinguished in former days by the presence of a pine tree. The tree disappeared under the axe of time. But a cluster of houses remains, sheltered from the world by the high rampart of "The Rocks."
One day, as I was hunting in that neighbourhood, I suddenly from my hill-top perceived the roofs of "The Pines," before anything had betrayed the fact that a human habitation was at hand. The strangeness of the place, as a place to live in, aroused my curiosity. I had met Master Baptist at Mouilleron. The occasion seemed propitious for a renewal of the acquaintance. I entered a courtyard littered with manure, and there, behind a yoke of oxen drinking at a trough, I discovered the master of the house, seated in his dooryard, surrounded by his poultry, and busy as usual dealing justice.
It was vacation time. Baptist's son, a law student at Poitiers and a prospective notary, was cheerfully loading dung into a cart (no one dreamed of calling upon him for enlightenment), while the unlettered father learnedly dispensed the law. In front of the solemn arbitrator, and at a respectful distance from him, a man stood waiting open mouthed for the solicited verdict. With a kindly wave of the hand, Master Baptist motioned to me to wait until the audience should be closed. I therefore remained where I was, and watched the plaintiff—a big, gray-headed fellow who was mechanically twisting between his hands the greasy crown of a brimless hat.
"You are sure that all you have told me is true?" Master Baptist was saying, and I could see that he was inclined to apply his epithet of "blockhead" to the absent party in the dispute.
"I have told you everything just as it is," answered the other.
"Then you may tell Michael that he is a blockhead. Be sure you tell him so, will you?"
"Yes, Master Baptist, I will tell him this very evening. But what if he says it isn't so?"
"If he answers that it isn't so, no later than to-morrow you will have notice served on him."
The idea of sending his adversary a stamped document seemed to fill the plaintiff with keen joy.
"I surely will serve notice on him!" he gleefully exclaimed.
Then, scratching his head: "But suppose he won't have notice served on him, what then?"
At these words Master Baptist rose on a gust of excitement. I am not aware what his idea was of a man "who will not have notice served on him." But the case manifestly appeared to him out of all measure horrific. An agonized silence followed. Then the storm burst.
"If he refuses to have notice served on him," thundered Master Baptist, "you may take your two hoofs and give him a couple of swift kicks in the shins."
Everyone heaved a sigh of relief. The point of law was solved. The plaintiff, his spirit forever at rest, vigorously fell upon his judge's hand and pressed it, along with what was left of his hat.
"That's it! That's it! My two hoofs—I will not fail!"
As for me, I was filled with admiration at the point chosen for giving full force to the arguments of jurisprudence—the part of the leg where, just under the skin, the tibia presents a collection of nervous fibres which a nimble wooden shoe can crush against the bone, is certainly a well-chosen spot, and calculated to give effectiveness to the energy of the opposing party.
The white wine was brought. The student of law left his dung heap to come and clink glasses.
"All the same," said the good client, dropping into his chair, "I should like to know a question for which Master Baptist would have no answer."
"Oh, well," replied the judge, modestly, "one sees so many things. That is how one learns."
In connection with the scandalous conduct of a lady pigeon I shall presently speak of comparative psychology in the world of animals. The capacity of animals for emotion and sentiment is naturally the first psychic phenomenon presenting itself to the observer. Their manner of expressing the sensations received from the exterior world, and the impulses resulting from those sensations constitute what may without derision be called the moral life of animals, leading, just as it does in the case of man, to the best adjustment possible between the individual organism and surrounding conditions.
Many good people will doubtless be distressed by the idea that morality, in which they take such pride, though not always preaching it by example, instead of falling from heaven in the form of indisputable commands, has its roots far down in the animate hierarchy. If they were willing to reflect, they would be able to understand that undeniable analogies of organism involve a corresponding analogy of function. Nothing further is necessary to show the high significance of a study of comparative sentimentality and the morality illustrating it, determined by the organism that the great mass of living creatures have in common. The amusing side of the thing is that the majority of those who will cry out against this statement will in the same breath speak of the "intelligence" of animals, and will quote some story about a dog or cat or elephant, without suspecting that their very manner of presenting the problem solves the question of its principle, and leaves them with the sole resource of rebelling against the consequences of that principle.
But it is not my intention to speak, as the reader may be thinking, of Montargis' dog, or any other animal known to history, for the astonishing proofs of sagacity he may have given. As I mean to relate a very simple but authentic story of brotherly love between a bullfinch and a maker of wooden shoes, my subject is more particularly the exchange of sentiments between two species of animal, a phenomenon in which the kinship of souls is very clearly demonstrated.
It is common enough for man to give affection to the animals that surround him, an affection generally proportioned to the service he expects of them. Disinterestedness is rarely coupled with power.
Man having made himself the strongest of living creatures, annexes and subordinates such animals as he needs for the satisfaction of his wants. The hunter loves his dog, but if the latter fails to retrieve, what harsh words are showered on him, to say nothing of blows, the danger of which perpetually hangs over a dog. Friendship between man and man is all too often based upon arrangements in some way profitable to both. Is it surprising, then, if an analysis of the affections of the more elementary orders of the living hierarchy explains the condescension of the strong for the defenceless weak by attributing it to self-interest? And may not the devotion of the weak to the strong arise partly from a need for protection? But self-interest does not account for everything—whatever utilitarian philosophy may say.
I once knew a cock whose favourite haunt was the back of a Percheron mare in the stable. It may be that the bird's greed relieved the quadruped of certain irritating parasites. But why did the cock never turn to any other than his special friend, the mare? And why would any other fowl have been swiftly shaken off her back? The two animals "took to each other," that is all one can say. You should have seen the mare look over her shoulder with beatific eyes when her cock appeared, and seen him stand on her complaisant rump, flapping his wings and crowing triumphantly.
I say nothing of the animals in our menageries, who are trained to tolerate one another for the astonishment of the idle spectator. They exemplify a distortion of nature. But we see daily very strong attachments between cats and dogs, who are natural enemies. Is the dog, whom we accuse of servility for licking the hand of the master who beats him, above or beneath the dignity of friendship? He is certainly not moved by cowardice, for he will hurl himself against anyone attacking that same brutal man of whom he might justly complain. Is it, then, that the forgiveness preached by the Gospel is easier for him than for us? Are dogs more "Christian" than men? That would make obvious the reason why men often misinterpret dogs.
We cannot deny that signs of altruism, born principally of love, manifest themselves on all sides in the animal world. The defence of the young is the commonest instance of it. The courtship of the male is also marked by exhibitions of generosity, even as it is on the Boulevard. When a cock finds a worm, does he not summon his entire harem, and magnificently toss the savoury morsel to them?
The bullfinch and the maker of wooden shoes who loved each other tenderly had no remotest expectation of reward beside the pleasure of living and telling their love, each in his own language at first, and later, each, as far as he could, in the language of the other. I have forgotten the shoemaker's name, but I could go blindfold to his house on the main street of the village in the Vendée where I used yearly to spend a happy month of vacation. I can see his white sign board with a magnificent yellow wooden shoe agreeably surrounded by decorative additions. I can see the little door with glass panes, giving access to the shop, hardly larger than a wardrobe, where rows of wooden shoes hung from the ceiling, were hooked to the walls, littered the floor, and even overran into the street.
The little court behind the shop has remained particularly vivid in my memory. That was the workshop. There, with both hands clasped around the tool that flung chips into his face, the artist would miraculously draw from a block of wood braced against his chest the form of a wooden shoe. Julius II, watching the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel as they sprang from Michael Angelo's brush, could not have been more impressed than was my youth before the prodigies performed by the shoemaker.
He, for the increase of my pleasure, seemed to share it; he accompanied the manœuvres of his adze with commentaries calculated to drive well into my soul the particular merits of his work. He was a poor, pale, thin, fragile being, himself carved down as if by an adze, rubbed flat and hollowed out by sickness. Folds of white skin below his hairless chin trembled when he moved. His eyes were of no colour. He had a nasal, far-away voice, like that of a consumptive ventriloquist. I never knew anything about him. I do not believe he had any family—I never saw a petticoat that seemed to belong in the house. All day long he worked at his wooden shoes without a word, perhaps without a thought, happy in his little friend the bullfinch on whom were centred all the emotions of his existence.
Although I have forgotten the man's name, I remember the bullfinch's. It was Mignon. There was nothing to make him look different from the rest of his kind. As you entered the shop, you saw against the wall a large cage decorated with rude carvings, on which the shoemaker had lavished all the fancy of his art. In this, hopping from one wooden bar to the other, was a little bright red ball with a black head, lighted by two jet-black eyes gleaming with intelligence. The tiny hooked beak retreating into the throat did not appear fashioned for conversation, yet if during the shoemaker's absence you crossed the threshold, a muffled voice, which seemed to issue from the depths of the walls, greeted you with a cry, repeated over and over: "Someone in the shop, someone in the shop," etc., etc. By the smothered quality, the nasal tone, you recognized the master's voice. But it was not he who spoke, for you could see him coming from the courtyard with his mouth shut, while the sentinel's warning continued. It was the bullfinch, who with unfailing vigilance stood guard over the rows of wooden shoes.
For Mignon talked like a "real person," with a dainty articulation much clearer than that of the most accomplished parrot. The shoemaker had, I suppose, taken him from the nest, and taught him from tenderest infancy. In close association with, and under the suggestion of, a mentality which spared no pains in the education of a friend, the bird had by a loving effort raised himself to the level of the man who had lagged behind in the evolution of his own race. They had met on the same plane, and both having capacity for affection had seized upon each other with atomic grapnels better than they might have done had both been human.
To please his friend, Mignon had accepted articulate speech as a means of communication, for, needless to say, his vocabulary was not limited to the sentry challenge: "Who goes there?" but grew daily more extensive. On the other side, which was no less remarkable, the human teacher had let himself be taught the fluty language of his woodland friend. When the shoemaker wished to convey something to his feathered comrade, he would break forth in "twee-twees," accompanied by a sort of hoarse, throaty trill whose slightest inflection is comprehensible to all the bullfinches in the world. They had thus two languages at their disposal from which each could draw according to the inspiration of the moment. A strange dialogue, in which it was often the man who said "twee-twee," while the bird answered with dictionary words.
The door of the cage always stood open. But Mignon loved the peace of his home. In his natural state the bullfinch prefers the most secluded and silent spot in the forest. His character is both trusting and contemplative. I remember once finding a nest of bullfinches in an ancient oak. The father and mother could not believe that I was an enemy. They perched on a bough at hardly more than a yard's distance from me, without a flutter or a note of alarm, as if to give me time and opportunity to admire their little ones. They made no sound until my departure, when, as if to do the honours of the thicket, they uttered farewell "twee-twees." As he was afraid of cats and dogs, Mignon never went into the street. The shop and the courtyard were his whole domain, with the cage for meals and meditation.
In the courtyard, among the reddish alder logs, Mignon would come and go with evident enjoyment, scratching the wood to whet his beak, or searching it for dainty bits. I can still see those splendid shafts, golden yellow, marbled with sanguine red, on which the bird would sometimes stand motionless, swelling his copper-coloured throat, or at other times hop and flutter and cheep and softly twitter, to win a glance or a silent smile from his friend. Then he would fly straight to the shoemaker's shoulder and peck his face and say: "Good morning, my friend, I love you, indeed I do. Have you slept well?" The answer to which would be given in human "twee-twees," until the neglected wooden shoe recalled the forgetful workman to his duty.
Best of all was the song and dance.
"Come now, Mignon, dance the polka for your friend."
Mignon would stretch himself proudly to his full height, uttering three rhythmic "twee-twees," and hop from one foot to the other, keeping perfect time. He seemed to enjoy himself hugely, and the shoemaker, who supplemented the music by an exact imitation of it, expressed boundless delight by the contortions of his colourless face.
A childish amusement, some will say. Yet what is more important than loving? And if we love, what matters the way of expressing a deep mutual tenderness? The shoemaker did not exhibit his friend's accomplishments to the casual or the indifferent. The desire to "show off" was foreign to these two. They simply lived for each other, and their intimacy behind closed doors, far from jealous eyes, must have had exquisite sweetness.
I am aware that there should be some effective ending to my story. The truth is that I know nothing beyond what I have told. The maker of wooden shoes and the bullfinch have remained very much alive in my memory—the end of the episode has escaped it. Did I go there one day and not find them? Or is it not more likely that I ceased to go there? It was all so long ago!
I am certain that whichever of them went first was not long survived by the other. At least, I like to think so, for if the shoemaker had replaced Mignon by another bullfinch, or if Mignon had found it in his heart to dance the polka for Brossard, the nailer, who used to make such a racket on the other side of the street, I should lose a supreme illusion concerning the heart of man and bird. If we lose our faith in man, whom experience may lead us to suspect of selfishness, let us retain our respectful esteem for animals.
Children are always interested in nests—thrilled by the mystery of them, filled with admiring wonder at the cunning of the little feathered creature in concealing its brood from the enemy, whether it be man or hawk, crow or magpie. The impulse to appropriate any living thing (an instinct inherited from his carnivorous ancestors), indeed, a whole collection of irresistible impulses direct the murderous sporting instinct of the future lord of creation toward the delicate feathery structure. Sympathy is as yet non-existent in the child man, for he has never suffered. He is carried away by delight in the unknown, his eyes widen with wonder, his hands reach out, and at the first touch irretrievable harm is done.
But no sooner has the nest been torn from the branch, and no sooner are the little ones, hideous in their grotesque nudity, scattered on the ground, than he is filled with dismay, like the school boy with all the parts of his watch spread on the table before him. Having looked at everything, analyzed it, touched it, he could go his way with a light heart if only he were able to fit the pieces together again, and reconstruct a whole. But it is too late. Our first impulse is a death-dealing one. A sense of the uselessness of destruction is necessary to awaken pity in us for whatever has life. I have sometimes seen those very school boys who massacre birds for fun, go back, ashamed of the stupid wrong committed, and awkwardly try to put the nest in its place, with the little ones in it, then go away, looking over their shoulder to witness the gratitude due to them from the despairing family for their generous effort. On the following day the boys return to look, and find a graveyard.
Many birds forsake their progeny at the least break in the usual course of things. Unaccountable panic seizes them, abruptly quenching the overmastering love that before had governed the activities of the pair. If you merely touch a young pigeon, the parents will from that moment onward hear his clamour for food with indifference—they will let him starve, while the drama of rearing new young dimly takes shape in their mysterious minds. Other more courageous birds will fight to the end without yielding, they will fly into snares in the attempt to reach their brood, they will come daily to feed their young in the cage, and if a strange egg has been introduced into their nest, whether by the hand of man or the cunning of the cuckoo, they will make no difference between the bastard and their legitimate offspring.
I have witnessed some fierce battles, notably that of a pair of warblers against a magpie, who, undeterred by the stones I was throwing, managed in less than five minutes to remove from their nest into her own, as a treat for her young magpies, all the little warblers just full-fed with succulent insects. Whither turn for help against the rivalry of appetites organized by Providence? "The reason of the strongest is always the best," sadly observes the poet philosopher. A sorrowful avowal, that, which leaves us, for sole comfort, the hypothetical felicity of another world. But what could be more unjust than to exclude from a celestial paradise these secondary creatures, victims of our common fate, who in the beginning possessed the earthly paradise, and were driven from it in the company of our erring ancestors, without having followed their sinful example?
Until the order of things changes, all that the weak can do is to cry out their protest, their vain appeal to universal justice, which, deaf, insensible, and paralyzed, sits in mute contemplation of the disorder composing the order of the world.
Man, the supreme arbiter of the destinies of his inferiors, has arrogated all rights. The child who lets a bird flutter at the end of a string only to jerk it to the ground when the poor creature finally thought itself free, lives in his own person the evolution from the frank cruelty of the savage to the decent hypocrisies of civilized barbarism. Man is, indeed, the first one whom animals learn to guard against. Wherever there are no men, or few, birds are among the first to become fearless. I have seen nests built in wide recesses and fully exposed to view, amid the desert ruins of the citadel of Corinth.
Better still, I once knew—it is now more than fifty years ago—a wonderful garden, in part cultivated, in part allowed to follow the fancies of vegetation running wild, where two old people, of beloved memory, used to walk and take their last pleasures as life neared its close. A large, typically French garden, with symmetrical flower beds bordered with box. A long arbour formed a wall at the farther side, and had at each end a circular bower, bright in springtime with the rosy blaze of Judas trees. In the centre was a fountain covered by a high white dome upheld by three slender Ionic columns, delicately mottled with rose-coloured lichens. At the summit of the dome the sculptor had carved a vase of formal shape, from which sprang a sheaf of flowers that took from the mosses overgrowing it an appearance of life. Under the arch was a bird with spread wings, bearing the motto of the former masters of the domain, whose name you will find in Hozier: "Altiora contendimus omnes." The monument dated from the end of the 16th century. Its remains, scattered in "artistic ruins," now decorate an ornamental grove.
Never was a spot less disturbed by the activities of the world, nowhere was solitude more calculated to win man from his fellows and leave him to the companionship of trees and animals. Beyond the arbour lay a meadow, a brook, woods. No human habitation anywhere near. Peace—the great peace of nature. Sheltered by the high wall, animals lived happy and unafraid of man, from whom they received only kindness. I can remember goldfinch nests among the rose bushes within reach of my hand. I was early taught to touch them only with my eyes.
In her very bedroom, the lady of the manor gave shelter to swallows. Traces of nests may still be seen on the great rafters of the ceiling. In spring, one day at dawn, the travellers, arriving from their great journey, would come tapping with beak and claw at the high windows. The aged dame would immediately rise and let in her friends. Greetings would ensue—enthusiastic greetings after the long separation. Three or four birds, sometimes half a dozen, would wheel about the vast chamber, with little sharp cries expressing joy in their return and their hospitable reception. They perched on the great wardrobes, and twittered for happiness, their little ruby throats swelling below their black hoods. All day long they came and went. Soon, one might see a swallow drop on to the water of a trench, and rest there with wings outspread, then rise into the air, and gather on her wet feathers the dust of earth needed to make mortar for her nest. Then began the work of masonry. The basket-shaped wall rose quickly, formed of thin layers of clay, one above another, and as soon as the nest was finished, an indentation fashioned in the edge by the dainty black beak informed one that the laying of eggs had begun.
Three or four nests among the rafters became in time a whole aviary, for the young birds, returning the following year, often selected their birthplace as a home. There they reared their family. At first peep of dawn, the father from outside and the mother from inside begged to have the window opened. They met each other with expressions of delight and flew skyward in quest of the supply of insects imperiously demanded by the noisy and hungry nestlings. As soon as the successful hunter appeared, and before he could fairly get his claws into the earthen parapet, six gaping throats were outstretched to catch the prey. This business filled the day. A newspaper, spread on the floor, received all incongruous happenings. In the evening, when the lamp was lighted, we were sometimes startled by a sudden outburst of quarrelling up among the rafters. It might be that a small bird was out of his customary place, and was beginning his apprenticeship in life by defending his rights, as well as he could, against the selfish infringements of an enterprising brother. A muffled call from the mother stilled the tumult, and fear of punishment brought the children back to moderation, or perhaps resignation. And then autumn took on the sharpness of winter, and all the swallows, assembled on the summit of a neighbouring elm, held a great council of departure. They talked the whole day. But their discussion, unlike ours, was a preface to action. They started before sunrise of the day after. Sadly their old friend bade them farewell: "Go, my dear ones, you intend to come back, but the time is not far when I shall no longer be here to open the window at your home coming!" The swallows still return. But for a long time, a very long time, the window has not been opened.
Alas! the loveliest part of the setting has likewise disappeared. The white dome of the fountain, with its rosy colonnade, has been broken up, and replaced by a hideous rockery in the style of Chatou. The seemly classic rectangular flower beds, with their severe arrangement, have made room for a wide lawn dotted with artistic plots of shrubbery. The long arbour and the Judas trees have blazed in the fireplace on winter evenings. But, near or far, imagination can restore them. I find myself walking through twisted underbrush to spy upon domestic scenes in nests. I have retained a particularly vivid memory of the tragedy which revealed to me for the first time the distressing vicissitudes of the struggle for life.
At the foot of the long arbour lay a dying birdling. He had as yet no feathers, but a thin black down covered his bluish skin now painfully heaving with the last spasms of agony. My first motion was to climb in search of the nest from which the victim had fallen. I had not mounted a yard from the ground before I found a little dead body similar to the one I had just seen, and while I peered upward into the shadow, what should tumble on to my head but a third member of the same brood. I finally distinguished the nest, and soon little, stifled cries warned me of something going on in it. I bent to one side, to get a better view, and discovered in the midst of the down-lined dwelling a great grayish black bird surrounded by three wretched wee ones who had not as yet been tossed into the abyss, but who were rendered miserably uncomfortable by the inordinate growth of their big brother.