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 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
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Cornell University 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924088393602 
 
PAUL BOURGET 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORWIELEY 
 
 PASTELS OF MEN 
 
 Jirgt SCTiea 
 
 
 # 
 
 
 I. 
 
 A SAINT 
 
 
 II. 
 
 M. LEGRIMAUDET 
 
 III. 
 
 TWO LITTLE 
 
 BOYS 
 
 
 .. M. VifWi 
 
 Brother 
 
 
 z. Marcel 
 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS 
 
 189'! I 
 
Copyright, iS<ji, 
 By Roberts Brothers. 
 
 All rights reserved^ 
 
 John WilsoSi and Son, Cambrtdgp, U.S.A. 
 / 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Pass 
 
 I. A Saint 7 
 
 II. Monsieur Legkimaudet 85 
 
 III. Two Little Boys 
 
 /. Monsieur Viple's Brother .... 179 
 II. Marcel 198 
 
I. 
 
 A SAINT. 
 
PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 I. 
 
 A SAINT. 
 
 To Madame George S. R. T. 
 
 I WAS travelling in Italy in the month of 
 October, 188-, with no other object than to get rid 
 of a few weeks in again seeing, this time at my 
 leisure, a number of my favorite masterpieces. 
 The pleasure of a second impression has always 
 been to me more vivid than that of the first ; 
 doubtless because I have ever felt the beauty of 
 the arts as a writer, — that is to say, as a man 
 who requires that a picture or a statue should, 
 in the first instance, be a text for thought. Not 
 an aesthetic reason, and one at which all painters 
 who are painters indeed will scoff. And yet this 
 reason alone had brought me, in the month of Oc- 
 tober of wliich I speak, to spend a few days at 
 Pisa. I wished to live over again, at my ease, the 
 dream of Benozzo Gozzoli and Orcagna. Here, 
 in a parenthesis, let me say, so as not to seem in 
 the eyes of connoisseurs too ignorant of art, that 
 
8 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 I call by the name of Orcagna the painter of 
 the " Triumph of Death " in the Campo Santo of 
 the old town, knowing well that modern criticism 
 questions his paternity of the work. But to me, 
 and to all those whose memory cherishes the 
 admirable lines of Pianto on the tragic fresco, 
 Orcagna is, and ever wiU be, the sole author of 
 it. At any rate, Benozzo has not lost, through 
 the sceptical and fatal criticism of catalogues, 
 his right and title to the decoration of the west 
 wall of the cemetery. 
 
 What intense sensations have I not felt in this 
 little corner of the world, remembering ever that 
 Byron and Shelley lived in the ancient Tuscan 
 town, that my dear master, M. Taine, has de- 
 scribed the adjoining spot in the most eloquent 
 of his eloquent pages, that the lyrical poet Pianto 
 came here, and that Benozzo Gozzoli himself, the 
 laborious toiler of painted poesy, lies buried at 
 .the foot of the wall on which his frescos are 
 softly fading. In that enclosure of the Pisan 
 Campo Santo, on the sacred earth brought thither 
 in pious ages, I had watched the springtide 
 calling the pale narcissi into bloom at the feet of 
 the black cypresses; I had seen the winters 
 shedding light flakes of snow, melted as soon as 
 fallen; I had felt the torrid sky of an Italian 
 summer weltering above that shadeless spot with 
 crushing heat; and yet I had not exhausted 
 the charm of it, for I now returned there in the 
 
A SAINT. 9 
 
 autumn of which I speak, — little expecting the 
 moral drama in which this visit was to involve 
 me, if not as an actor at least as a deeply inter- 
 ested spectator, though somewhat against my 
 will. 
 
 The first episode of this drama was, like that 
 of many others, a rather commonplace incident, 
 which I nevertheless relate with pleasure, though 
 it has but slight connection with my tale. It 
 evokes for me the pleasant recollection of two 
 English old maids. During my visits to the 
 Campo Santo I had noticed this couple, who, by 
 reason of their singular ugliness and the utilita- 
 rian oddity of their clothes, seemed a living and 
 caricatural illustration of a certain poet's tender 
 address to the dead : — 
 
 " Thou hast no longer sex or age." 
 
 The browner of the two (the other might 
 possibly pass for a ruddy blonde) was vigor- 
 ously washing-in a water-color presentment of the 
 woman in the " Triumph of Death ; " the one who 
 faces you, in the cavalcade to the left, with her 
 candid eyes and her sensitive mouth, — eyes and 
 mouth which have never lied, and which are 
 never forgotten when once we have loved them. 
 The worthy Englishwoman was totally devoid 
 of talent, but her choice of this subject and the 
 conscientiousness of her work interested me. 
 
10 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 Consequently, as these spinsters lived at my 
 hotel, I had somewhat indiscreetly yielded to 
 my curiosity so far as to look for their names on 
 the register. I found that one was named Miss 
 Mary Dobson, the other Miss Clara Eoberts. 
 They were about fifty years of age, and were now 
 making that tour " abroad," as they call it, 
 which thousands of their courageous colleagues 
 in celibacy (forced or voluntary) undertake 
 annually from the island shores of Great Britain. 
 The sisterhood start in pairs, in threes, some- 
 times in fours. Behold them thus alone for 
 fifteen or twenty months ; installed in myste- 
 rious boarding-houses, the addresses of which 
 are known and transmitted by the whole free- 
 masonry of travelling spinsters; learning new 
 languages in spite of their gray hairs ; applying 
 themselves with heroic perseverance to under- 
 stand the arts ; passing through evil places with 
 their purity, which is that of the angels, un- 
 tainted ; ever in quest of an English church, an 
 English cemetery, and an English chemist, — not 
 to speak of the tea which they never fail to 
 prepare after the British fashion in the depths 
 of Calabria or far up the Nile at the precise hour 
 they are in the habit of imbibing it in their 
 drawing-rooms in Kent or Devonshire. I ha^■e 
 such an admiration for the moral courage which 
 lurks behind the absurd exteriors of these curious 
 beings that in the course of my too frequent 
 
A SAINT. 11 
 
 vagabondizing I take pains to enter into con- 
 versation with them, — all the more, perhaps, 
 because I have discovered that the passion for 
 facts which rules their race makes them not 
 infrequently very useful to consult. They are 
 sure to have verified every statement in the 
 guide-book ; and whoever has wandered, Baedeker 
 in hand, through a remote region of Italy, will 
 readily admit that such verifications are precious. 
 Therefore, on the third evening of my stay at 
 Pisa, the departure of certain guests having 
 brought my place at the table d'hSte next to that 
 of the two old maids, I began a conversation 
 with them, quite sure that they would not reject so 
 good an opportunity to " practise their French." 
 
 You now see the stage-setting, do you not ? 
 — a room in an old palace transformed into a 
 hotel dining-room, with more or less modern 
 furniture, the ceiling frescoed in lively colors, 
 a long dinner-table with few places laid because 
 the winter season has not yet begun. On the 
 table, swaying in their brass holders, are the 
 fiascM, those delightful long-necked flasks, with 
 their bellies wrapped in osier and filled with the 
 wine of so-called Chianti. If the little mountain 
 of that name supplies enough to fill all the 
 bottles which are labelled thus it certainly must 
 yield, at the least, a harvest a week. But the 
 false Chianti is a true and good wine, the flavor 
 of which, though rather sharp, tastes of the 
 
12 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 grape ; and the glow of it colors the cheeks of 
 the seven or eight persons who chance to be 
 stranded for the time being around the table, — 
 a German couple, making the classic wedding 
 journey on this side the Alps ; a Milanese mer- 
 chant, with a face both sly and sensual ; two 
 Genoese burghers visiting the neighborhood, and 
 now in Pisa to meet their nephew, a cavalry 
 officer. The latter is dining at the table d'hote 
 in captain's uniform, dashing, jovial, and speak- 
 ing in loud tones with the rather guttural accent 
 of the Eiviera. His talk, interspersed with 
 laughter, gives me the odyssey of his parents, in 
 which I should be more interested if Miss Mary 
 Dobson had not suddenly broached a subject 
 which roused me, passionate quattrocentist that 
 I am, the lover of frescos and paintings on wood 
 before the sixteenth century. 
 
 Miss Mary was the darker of the two spin- 
 sters, she whose water-color brushes had so 
 flattened and dulled the rude design of the 
 primitive master ; and after a long dissertation on 
 the problem as to whether the famous " Triumph " 
 was to be attributed to Buonamico Buffalmaco 
 or to Nardo Daddi she suddenly addressed me as 
 follows : — 
 
 " Have you been to the convent of Monte- 
 Chiaro ? " 
 
 "Do you mean the one between Pisa and 
 Lucca, on the mountain the other side of Ver- 
 
A SAINT. 13 
 
 ruca ? " I replied. " Well, no ; the guide-book 
 says it takes six hours to drive there, and for two 
 poor Luca della Eobbias and a few pictures of the 
 Bologna school which is all they mention — " 
 
 " What is the date of your guide-book ? " 
 asked Miss Clara, sharply. 
 
 " I don't know," I said, a little embarrassed 
 by the sarcastic manner in which that mouth 
 with its long teeth questioned me. " The fact is 
 I have a superstition about keeping the same 
 copy that I used when I came to Italy for the 
 first time, — rather long ago, I must admit." 
 
 " How French that is ! " returned Miss Clara. 
 
 Instantly I understood her pre-Raphaelitism ; 
 it was nothing more than one form of vanity. 
 However, I took no notice of the international 
 sneer, as I might have done by simply repeating 
 the remark and emphasizing the Britannic ben- 
 evolence of it. In dealing with English folk of 
 the aggressive species silence is the true weapon, 
 for it wounds them to the quick of their defect. 
 They hunger and thirst for contradiction, from 
 the combative instinct which inheres in their 
 blood and impels the race to every form of con- 
 quest and proselytism. I therefore bore with 
 the magnanimity of a sage the sharp glance of 
 Miss Clara's blue eyes, which challenged to 
 mortal combat the whole Gallic nation, the more 
 easily perhaps, because Miss Mary interposed, 
 remarking : — 
 
14 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 "The truth is they discovered at Monte- 
 Chiaro about two years ago some very beautiful 
 frescos of your beloved Benozzo, as fresh and 
 brilliant in color as those in the Capello Eic- 
 cardi at Florence. He was known to have 
 worked in the convent, and he was also known 
 to have painted, among other things, the legend 
 of Saint Thomas. That calumniator Vasari 
 says so. But no trace of this work, which the 
 master must have executed about the time of his 
 Pisan frescos, remained. Now see how things 
 happen. Dom Grifh, the old Benedictine abb^ 
 who has had charge of the convent ever since it 
 was ' nationalized,' ordered a servant to sweep 
 down a spider's web in a corner of one of the 
 cells now used as lodging-rooms for travellers. 
 A bit of plaster was knocked off by the broom. 
 The abb^ sent for a ladder and clambered up, 
 in spite of his three-score years and ten. I 
 ought to tell you that the convent is his idol, 
 his passion. He has seen it peopled by two 
 hundred of his brethren, and he accepted the 
 post of warden after the decree in the full be- 
 lief that he will one day see it restored to what 
 it has been. His sole thought is of the time 
 when the monks will return and find the ancient 
 structure preserved from degradation. That is 
 why he consented to the trying service of giving 
 board and lodging to tourists. He was afraid of 
 an inn at his gates, like that at Monte-Cassin ; 
 
A SAINT. 15 
 
 lie could n't end\ire the idea of such an inn close 
 beside the convent, with American girls dancing 
 every evening to a piano — " 
 
 " But he mounted the ladder, and what then ? " 
 I said, to cut short the panegyric on Dom Griffi. 
 I was fearful of a reactionary end in some bigoted 
 Protestant attack ; and in fact, Miss Clara did 
 not lose the opportunity. 
 
 " I must say," she remarked, profiting by the 
 interruption. " I should never have believed, 
 unless I had known Dom Griffi, that a man 
 could possibly be so intelligent or so useful in 
 a priest's garb." 
 
 "When he mounted the ladder," said Miss 
 Mary, " he scratched off more of the plaster very 
 carefully. First he found a forehead and eyes, 
 then a mouth, then the whole face of a Christ. 
 All these Italians are born artists; it runs in 
 their veins. The abb^ saw at once that he had 
 a fresco of great value under a layer of plaster." 
 
 " Those monks," interrupted Miss Clara, " found 
 nothing better to do than to whitewash the 
 masterpieces of the 15th century and hide the 
 decorations of the old masters behind their 
 stucco ornamentations and their frescos of a 
 depraved style." 
 
 " Nevertheless, it was the monks who ordered 
 those very decorations," I said ; " which goes to 
 prove that good or bad taste has nothing to do 
 with religious convictions." 
 
16 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 " Well, naturally," replied the terrible Eng- 
 lishwoman, " being a Parisian you are sceptical." 
 
 " Let me finish my story,'' cried Miss Mary, 
 by which I perceived that she was something 
 more than pre-Eaphaelite, she was kind ; which 
 in these days of vagrant sestheticism is rare. 
 She was visibly distressed by the militant incli- 
 nations of her travelling companion as directed 
 towards me. "Dear Miss Eoberts, you shall 
 discuss that subject later, " she said. " The 
 good abbd pondered how he could clear the wall 
 of the whitewash without endangering the 
 fresco, and this is how he managed it. He 
 glued a cloth to the plaster and let it dry till it 
 held firmly ; then he wrenched cloth and plaster 
 away and scratched off what remained inch by 
 inch. It took him months, poor old man, to un- 
 cover, first, one panel on which Saint Thomas is 
 represented laying his finger on the Saviour's 
 wounds, and then another, where the apostle is 
 seen at an audience granted to him by the King 
 of the Indies, Gondoforus — " 
 
 " But you, of course, don't know that legend," 
 said Miss Clara, brusquely addressing me. This 
 time I would not give her satisfaction by 
 again exhibiting French superficialty. I had 
 read the legend — by chance, be it said — in 
 Voragine when I was hunting, I must admit, for 
 the subject of a tale wanted by a boulevard 
 newspaper. I recollected it on account of the 
 
A SAINT. 17 
 
 noble symbolism it contains, and also for its 
 exotic character which gives it all the charm of 
 the picturesque. Saint Thomas being at Cesarea, 
 our Lord appeared to him and ordered him 
 to go to Gondoforus, because that king was 
 seeking for an architect to build him a nobler 
 dwelling than the palace of the Eoman emperor. 
 Thomas obeyed. Gondoforus, then on the point 
 of starting for a distant seat of war, gave him 
 enormous quantities of gold and silver intended 
 for the construction of the palace. On his 
 return he ordered the Saint to show him the 
 work. Thomas had distributed the treasure en- 
 trusted to him to the poor, even to the last 
 penny, and not one stone of the promised palace 
 had been laid. The king, furiously angry, impris- 
 oned his strange architect and proceeded to 
 meditate as to what were the most refined tor- 
 tures with which he could punish the traitor. 
 But that very night, behold, the spectre of his 
 brother, who had been dead four days, stood at 
 the foot of his bed and said to him : " The 
 man thou desirest to torture is the servant of 
 God. The angels have shown me a wondrous 
 dwelling of gold and silver and precious stones 
 which he has built for thee in Paradise." Over- 
 come by the apparition and by the words which 
 he heard, Gondoforus hastened to fling himself at 
 the prisoner's feet. Thomas raised him and 
 said : " Dost thou not know, King, that the 
 
 2 
 
18 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 only mansions which endure are those which 
 our faith and our charity build for us in 
 heaven." 
 
 "It is quite certain," I said, after referring 
 (not without a certain malicious complacency) 
 to the foregoing legend, " that it must have been 
 a very interesting subject to a painter passion- 
 ately devoted, like Benozzo, to sumptuous robes, 
 complicated architecture, landscapes with illim- 
 itable flora and chimerical beasts — " 
 
 " Ah ! " cried Miss Dobson, pushing aside in 
 her enthusiasm the dish of purple and green figs 
 which the waiter was offering to her, — a waiter, 
 by the bye, with cheeks that were stiff with a 
 six days' growth of beard, and a threadbare black 
 coat opening to view amazing pink coral buttons 
 stuck into a ragged shirt-front, — " you can't 
 imagine the magnificence of the Gondoforus in 
 the fresco at Monte-Chiaro, — a sort of Moor, with 
 a green silk robe embroidered in relief with 
 gold, yellow boots with spurs, also gold — such 
 liquid coloring ! so perfectly preserved, so fresh ! 
 Just think ! these layers of whitewash must have 
 been put on the wall about the end of the 16th 
 century ; consequently, there 's not a blemish in 
 the painting, no retouching ; there it still is in 
 the cell where it was painted ; which used to 
 be, I am told, the oratory of the bishops who 
 visited the convent. It covers the whole of one 
 large wall and the space above a window." 
 
A SAINT. 19 
 
 The conversation had reached this point and 
 I was just asking Miss Mary for a few points 
 as to the ways of communication between Pisa 
 and the convent (for I was drawn there past all 
 power of resistance by this revelation of an un- 
 known work by my favorite master) when the 
 door opened to admit a couple, already known, 
 no doubt, to the English spinsters, for Miss 
 Mary cast down her eyes with a blush, while 
 Miss Clara remarked to her in English : — 
 
 " Why, it is that Frenchman and the woman we 
 met in Florence at the trattoria. How extraor- 
 dinary that a respectable hotel like this should 
 receive such persons." 
 
 I looked myself, and saw a couple taking 
 their seats at one of the small tables which sur- 
 rounded the large one, whose questionable char- 
 acter was too evident to allow me to accuse my 
 formidable neighbor of slandering them. It 
 was equally impossible to deny the nationality 
 of the young man. He might have been twenty- 
 five years of age, but his drawn features and 
 pallid skin, his shrunken shoulders and the 
 nervous condition visible in his whole being 
 gave him a look of premature age, counteracted 
 however by a pair of black eyes which were 
 very keen and extremely handsome. He was 
 dressed with a semi-elegance which had a flavor 
 of pretension on the one hand, and a touch of 
 bohemianism on the other. You ask me how ? 
 
20 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 I can no more put these shades into words than 
 I can fully explain the general characteristics 
 •which made this stranger the type, exclusively 
 and incoutestably, the type of a Frenchman. It 
 is a cut of the coat, it is a gesture, it is a way of 
 sitting down to table and taking up the card to 
 order dinner, which tells us instantly that we 
 have a compatriot within two feet of us. I shall 
 have the courage to admit, although I may 
 wound what a humorist sarcastically calls ante- 
 chamber patriotism, that such a meeting is more 
 alarming than agreeable. Travelling French- 
 men certainly bring their worst qualities to the 
 front, — like travelling English and travelling 
 Germans for that matter, with this difference, 
 that while I am indifferent to those of the 
 English, and those of the Germans simply enter- 
 tain me, T suffer from the vulgar qualities of 
 Frenchmen because I know how they slander 
 our dear, good land. I have never, in an Italian 
 cafe, heard a Frenchman on his travels talking 
 loudly and flouting the town where he chanced 
 to be and the one from which he came in mali- 
 ciously depreciating speeches, without reflecting 
 that there were twenty ears about him to absorb 
 his jests, or rather the mere wording of them. 
 For though five foreigners out of ten may under- 
 stand our language, how many know its spirit 
 — I mean the harmless spirit of its wit ? One 
 in a hundred possibly. What absurd national 
 
A SAINT. 21 
 
 misunderstandings are begun and envenomed 
 by these thoughtless remarks made in public 
 with as little evil intention as that with which 
 some of us scribble articles in a newspaper office 
 merely to eke out " copy.'' 
 
 The present stranger belonged, fortunately for 
 my nerves, to the species which, thanks be to 
 God ! does exist, of silent Frenchmen. Moreover, 
 his companion of the evening absorbed his atten- 
 tion in a manner which certainly seemed to 
 justify Miss Eoberts' attack. This mysterious 
 friend was about thirty -five years of age, and if 
 he, under every aspect, was a Frenchman of the 
 bourgeois class, she was as unmistakably an 
 Italian, from her little head to her little feet, 
 from her rather too marked features to the flounc- 
 ings of her gown, from the end of her arm laden 
 with bracelets to the tip of her shoe with its exag- 
 gerated heel. Her black eyes betrayed when they 
 rested on the young man a passion which was 
 certainly not feigned. Neither of them appeared 
 to be aware that they were under observation, 
 and in spite of a vague expression of slyness 
 and distrust which something, I hardly know 
 what, gave to the man, this air of mutual senti- 
 ment and absorption made me suddenly sympa- 
 thetic with them, — so much so that I undertook 
 their defence against Miss Eoberts when she 
 continued : — 
 
 " Besides, she is twenty years older than he ! " 
 
22 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 " Say ten," I interrupted, laughing; " and slie 
 is very pretty." 
 
 " With us, a gentleman never parades himself 
 in that way with a creature who is not a lady." 
 
 I was thankful that she made this speech in 
 English, which my compatriot was not likely to 
 understand, all the more because she uttered it 
 in a high, clear voice. I could not help reply- 
 ing in the same language, partly, I acknowledge, 
 from the vanity of proving to her that I could 
 speak it. 
 
 " But how do you know she is not a lady ? " 
 
 " How do I know ? " Ah ! my poor little 
 vanity. I was punished for it on the spot, for 
 she corrected my pronunciation sarcastically by 
 repeating my own words. " Why, look at the 
 way she eats." 
 
 I must confess that these two specimens of 
 the Latin race presented at that moment a spec- 
 tacle which did not conform to any of the pre- 
 cepts taught by governesses on the farther shores 
 of the British Channel. While waiting for the 
 soup, the gentleman had begun upon the flask 
 of Chianti and the bread beside his plate ; he 
 was dipping his bread in wine ; while she, on 
 her part, was nibbling a bit of citron, taken 
 from the dishes of the dessert. The contrast 
 between the daughters of Albion (as they were 
 called in the novels of 1830) and these children 
 of nature was a little overpowering. I was 
 
A SAINT. 23 
 
 afraid I should laugh, and so, as dinner was now 
 over, I left the table at the same time as the 
 Germans, the Milanese, the relatives of the 
 of&cer, and tlie officer himself. I thought my 
 neighbors would soon follow us, as in fact they 
 did, leaving the two lovers to their tete-k-tete, 
 under the indulgent protection of the coral- 
 buttoned waiter. Perhaps there was some virtue 
 in my rather precipitate retreat, for I surmised a 
 slight romance in the rather unintelligible con- 
 junction of the young Frenchman and the beau- 
 tiful Italian. But I would die sooner than 
 remorselessly play the part of spy which modern 
 writers are pleased to call documentary research, 
 and of which they boast as a professional merit. 
 
 The following morning I had almost forgotten 
 this more or less morganatic pair, and was think- 
 ing only of the frescos discovered by Dom 
 Griffi, and of the best means of transporting my- 
 self to the convent of Monte-Chiaro. I went to 
 the office of the hotel to discuss the little jour- 
 ney with the clerk, an ex-Garibaldian who was 
 so proud of having worn the red blouse of the 
 Mille that he still lived in a fog of ultra-revolu- 
 tionary fancies, — all the while busy, with com- 
 mendable activity, in providing that hot-water 
 was duly sent to No. 6 and that No. 10 obtained 
 tlie tea it ordered. 
 
 " The government is too indulgent to these 
 
24 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 conspirators/' he said to me, referring to the 
 poor monks, instead of replying to my questions 
 about the road to take, the -vehicle to choose, 
 and the price to pay. My friends the English- 
 women had gone by the diligence as far as it 
 went, and had done the rest of the way on foot. 
 I succeeded, however, in extracting from the 
 Cavaliere Dante Annibale Cornacchini (such was 
 the name of the former companion of the Hero) 
 a promise that a coachman selected by him 
 should await me with a light carriage at the 
 tocco. What a charming expression! and how 
 characteristic of the Italian people ; there 's a 
 whole sensation in it. It means one blow of 
 a hammer, and also one hour after midday, the 
 hour when the clock-hammer sounds one blow. 
 What was my surprise when on leaving the 
 office of the hotel (where a bronze statuette 
 of the General in his blouse and another of 
 Mazzini in an overcoat surmounted the hostelry 
 placards) I found myself face to face with the 
 young Parisian of the previous evening, who was 
 evidently waiting for me ; for he approached at 
 once with a certain grace of manner, or so it 
 seemed to me, — for what author would not have 
 looked with favorable eyes upon the bearing of 
 a stranger who met him with words like these : — 
 " Monsieur, I have seen your name upon the 
 register, and as I have read all your works I 
 venture " — etc. 
 
A SAINT. • 25 
 
 It is enough to have been before the public in 
 any capacity whatever to know how little such 
 compliments are worth. But the childish van- 
 ity of the literary man is such that he is always 
 taken in by them and does as I then did ; for 
 (having vowed to myself that I would not spoil 
 my sensation of that dear and mournful Pisa with 
 frivolous talk and new acquaintances) I found 
 myself ten minutes later walking along the quay 
 with this stranger ; in less than half an hour I 
 was wandering, still in his company, beneath the 
 vaults of the Campo Santo ; and at the end of 
 another hour I had induced him to accompany 
 me to the convent, and we were both getting 
 into the carrozzela witli one horss which was to 
 take us to Monte-Chiaro. This sudden travelling 
 intimacy sprang up without the motive on my 
 part of a nearer view of the pretty and natural 
 Italian who had dined with him on the preced- 
 ing evening. He had taken care, be it under- 
 stood, to speak of her at once. I thus learned 
 that the possessor of those expressive features, 
 that emotional pallor, and the gestures which 
 were almost vulgar was an actress in a travelling 
 troop then at Florence, and that she had left Pisa 
 that morning to play at night, and that he had 
 been unable to accompany her. He did not tell 
 me why. But I guessed the reason from the 
 rest of his history, which he related in the first 
 half-hour we were together. Even without the 
 
26 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 rather romantic attraction of this little incident 
 he would have taken my attention as a sharply 
 defined type of a class of young men whom I 
 already knew, as I thought, sufficiently well. Still 
 one can never see too much of the representatives 
 of a coming generation. How can we help them 
 (for that is the duty of those of us who wield the 
 pen) if we do not talk with them, and talk a good 
 deal, too ? But, alas, it was not impressions of 
 this kind that I was seeking along the shores of 
 the sad and glaucous Arno. Was I fated to 
 meet, everywhere and at all times, that which I 
 like least in Paris without being able to check 
 my interest in it, as though I really liked it ? 
 Would my insatiable curiosity about the human 
 soul never cease to be stronger than my lofty 
 projects of an ideal existence among the master- 
 pieces of art ? 
 
 The young man was known by the unaristo- 
 cratic name of Philippe Dubois. He was the 
 fourth son of a university professor of some 
 standing but little means. After a brilliant 
 course of study at his provincial lyceum he had 
 come to Paris, first with a scholarship as licen- 
 tiate, next on a fellowship. He passed his two 
 examinations, and the influence of a friend of his 
 father obtained for him a mission to Italy in 
 quest of archaeological remains. This employ- 
 ment had come to an end during the present 
 month, and he was now on • his way back 
 
A SAINT. 27 
 
 to France. I had lived too keenly during my 
 own youth among surroundings analogous to his, 
 not to understand at once the pinched condition 
 to which the family resources had reduced him. 
 Probably he had barely enough money to get 
 home. That was, no doubt, the real reason why 
 the actress had left him without his being able 
 to follow her. In recalling at this moment the 
 various confidences he made to me I once more 
 recognize the truth that external facts are of 
 little account; the true motor is in the soul 
 which receives their impression. 
 
 This sudden attraction between a young student 
 in love with the world of antiquity, where all is 
 beauty, and an ardent and disinterested young 
 actress is already assuming the charm of a senti- 
 mental idyl, is it not ? Eemark the elements, 
 — a forced parting, the shedding of many tears, 
 the acceptance of a path to which destiny has 
 called us, — truly a romance of capricious fate, 
 and all its poesy ! 
 
 I had no difficulty in assuring myself that 
 Philippe Dubois felt none of the sad and touch- 
 ing emotions which belonged to his romance. 
 There was not the slightest shade of tenderness 
 in the words with which he unfolded to me his 
 facile intrigue. They betrayed nothing but the 
 vanity of being loved by a woman who, as I 
 afterwards ascertained, was a good deal before 
 the public. But then, if he had been the ingen- 
 
28 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 uous lover that he ought to have been would he 
 have captured my attention as he did when I 
 discovered that his past existence of studious 
 youth was but a phase, an aspect, just as this 
 love affair was, to his mind, a mere accident ? 
 That which constituted the actual being of this 
 young fellow was one of the most excessive 
 literary ambitions which I have met during my 
 intercourse with such aspirants, — an ambition 
 that was all the more keen because his pride, 
 joined to a certain sullen timidity, had hitherto 
 prevented him from entering the career. During 
 the four or live years of arid study which fol- 
 lowed his college life he had nourished the 
 literary incubus on his breast with all the cruel 
 candor that malady compels. There were in him, 
 and very distinctly, two persons : one submis- 
 sive and duty-bound, the son of a professor sent 
 on a mission ; the other poetic, with the soul of 
 a romance-maker without a career, with all 
 the acrimony of that precocious bitterness which 
 accompanies a repressed vocation. Such duality 
 is a proof of strong will or, better still, of a 
 nature superior through adaptiveness and the 
 power of self-control. But the harshness and acri- 
 mony revealed at the same time a loveless soul, 
 whose chief aspirations in a literary career were 
 for the coarser satisfactions of fame and money. 
 "You can understand," he said to me, after 
 relating several scenes in his intercourse with 
 
A SAINT. 29 
 
 the poor actress in which he played a sufficiently 
 Juanesque part to take pleasure in recalling them, 
 " you can understand that I have not lost the 
 advantage of such emotions. I have nearly 
 finished a little volume of verses which I will 
 show you later — Ah! I've had enough of 
 Etruscan tombs and Greek inscriptions and all 
 that pedantic drudgery which I only agreed to 
 do for pay. As soon as I take my last degree I 
 shall resign and launch out into a literary career. 
 I have a series of articles in my head. Some 
 I've already sent to various journals signed 
 with a pen-name. They have not appeared — 
 envy, I know, in the men who read them." 
 
 " You should make allowance for the unhappy 
 editors, who have not time to read everything 
 themselves," I said. " They are pledged to take 
 certain things ; and besides, they must admit 
 achieved positions and well-known talent." 
 
 " Well-known talent ! let 's talk of that," he 
 exclaimed with a bitter laugh, which increased 
 my perception of the smothered rage of the un- 
 published writer, embittered by envy before he 
 had even measured himself with his rivals ; and 
 he proceeded to take up one by one all the best- 
 known authors of the present day. This one 
 was a mere relater of anecdotes without thought ; 
 that one a hawker of images for workmen ; that 
 other a Paul de Kock modernized, the fourth 
 was a social manoeuvrer, clever at sugaring 
 
30 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 Stendhal and Balzac for the cloyed stomachs of 
 fashionable women. To all of them he fastened 
 the low tales tattled throughout Paris by the 
 score in the childishly cruel little world of 
 literary aspirants. I let him talk with a pro- 
 found sense of sadness ; not that I attach ex- 
 treme importance to the strictures of the new- 
 comers upon their elders — among whom I now 
 rank. Such attacks have been made from all 
 time, and they have their uses ; it was the sarcasm 
 of Mephistopheles which compelled Faust to work. 
 But I perceived beneath these harsh criticisms 
 (with which perhaps he fancied he pleased me 
 by condemning my literary fellows, foolish lad !) 
 a real anguish. Above all, I noticed in him the 
 excessive and preternatural pride which belongs 
 to our period — I mean in the world of thinkers. 
 Formerly all ambitions were alike selfish, though 
 that among literary men was the least perceptibly 
 so. Nowadays when universal levelling has 
 brought the recognized brain-worker into a more 
 brilliant position (at least apparently) literature 
 appears to many as a fair means of rapid fortune. 
 They enter it therefore as others enter commerce 
 — for precisely the same reasons. There is, how- 
 ever, this difference. The ardent toiler in the 
 Bourse and its by-ways knows that he has 
 money behind him ; the ardent toiler in litera- 
 ture mistakes his eagerness after success for the 
 afflatus of apostleship ; and this produces, if sue- 
 
A SAINT. 31 
 
 cess does not come to him by the time he is 
 forty, a condition of soul that is truly terrible, 
 for the most painful passions and the vilest com- 
 bine to rend him. This was seen only too 
 plainly among certain writers of the Commune. 
 As I listened to the young man's talk I knew 
 him for the goaded rebel of his circumstances. 
 But, even so, the rebel of the period. He held 
 himself in hand, partly from an instinct of bour- 
 geois prudence, and also from a natural taste for 
 the higher culture which ought to have saved 
 him, and might still do so. Had he not had 
 the intelligence and the patience to acquire, in 
 spite of his envious literary fever, a science, the 
 knowledge of a craft ? and this thought gave me 
 the idea of a struggle which might have taken 
 place or was now taking place within him. 
 
 " You are very severe on your elders," I said, 
 to stop his string of Parisian calumnies. " I 
 know all those tales ; they are monotonously 
 abject and false ! " 
 
 "You '11 see what I shall say when I begin to 
 write ! " he cried, with a fatuous self-conceit that 
 was naive and yet villanous. " Ha ! ha ! one 
 must treat one's predecessors as the Polynesians 
 do old men. They put them up a tree and 
 shake it. As long as the old fellows have 
 strength to hold on it 's all right. When they 
 fall they are knocked on the head and eaten." 
 
 I did not reply to the youthful blood-thirsti- 
 
32 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 ness of this paradox. Philippe Dubois was 
 merely " getting a rise " out of me, to use an 
 expressive slang term now a little out of date. 
 I continued the conversation by inquiring as to 
 his researches in archaeology ; which put him 
 into visible ill-humor. Then I gave him, point- 
 blank, the advice not to enter journalism when 
 he returned to France, but to find a situation in 
 the provinces, where he could live a useful life 
 and eventually come before the public as the 
 writer of some valuable work. That, alas ! was 
 the advice which was given to me at his age, but 
 I had not followed it; which goes to prove 
 that this lottery of misery and fame called the 
 profession of men of letters will always tempt a 
 certain class of souls among young men. Must 
 I own it ? I felt a sort of irony, almost an hy- 
 pocris)' in the role of moralist which I was 
 playing. It gave me a slight sense of remorse, 
 and then, as I really pitied the groundwork of 
 inward dissatisfaction on which he appeared to 
 me to be living, I ended by proposing that 
 he should go with me to the convent. This ex- 
 cursion led to the brief and rapid drama to 
 which I have alluded, — to explain which these 
 over-long preliminaries were really necessary. 
 Philippe's return would be delayed only two 
 days ; he accepted the proposal and we started 
 as the hour " struck " according to the promise 
 of the ex-Mille, another of whose delightful say- 
 
A SAINT. 33 
 
 ings I cannot refrain from here quoting. He 
 seized the opportunity, while we were waiting 
 for the coachman, to communicate his ideas on 
 the existing French parliament. "They have 
 lost the revolutionary traditions," he said to 
 me ; and then, after a terrorist declamation which 
 I will not transcribe, he added, with comical 
 melancholy, " I even think they are capitalists ! " 
 
 Thanks to this speech, which Philippe enjoyed 
 as much as I did, we started in " high spirits " 
 as Miss Mary Dobson would have said, I much 
 disposed, as indeed he was, to enjoy the trip. 
 The road which leads from Pisa to Monte- 
 Chiaro runs at first through a charming land- 
 scape of vineyards interspersed with mulberry 
 trees. Gigantic reeds quiver to the breeze, 
 villas surrounded by cedars bear marble lions on 
 their entrance gates, and always, for a back- 
 ground, lie the gorges of that mountain which, 
 as Dante says, prevents the Pisans from seeing 
 Lucca : — 
 
 " Cacciando '1 lupo e i lupicini al monte, 
 Per ehe i Pisan veder Lucca non ponno.'' 
 
 " That is what is lacking to us in France," I re- 
 marked to my companion after quoting the lines. 
 " We have no poet who has given a legendary 
 fame to the remotest corners of his native land." 
 
 " Do you care for that ? " he answered. " Now, 
 for my part, Joanne's guide-book for this region 
 
34 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 puts me quite out of conceit of the Divine 
 Comedy." 
 
 Eeceiving this reply and noticing that his late 
 gayety was already over, I regretted having 
 brought him. I foresaw that if he began hy 
 fencing with paradox he would keep to the foils ; 
 and a young man of his type once thrown into 
 an attitude of self-conceit, stiffens himself in it 
 more and more, though it be to his own injury. 
 I dropped into silence therefore, and tried to lose 
 myself in the contemplation of nature, which 
 was now growing wilder. Our carriage, though 
 light, was moving slowly. We were entering a 
 region which was almost without vegetation. 
 Bare foot-hills rose on all sides ; huge swellings, 
 as it were, of grayish clay fissured hy rain. No 
 more brooks, no more vineyards, no olive-trees, 
 no villas, but a positive resemblance to a desert. 
 The coachman was off his box. He was a little 
 man, with a square and delicately cut face, who 
 called his gray mare Zara and softened, like 
 other Tuscans, the hard c at the beginning of 
 words into the aspirated Ji. "Huesta havalla," 
 he said, speaking of his beast, instead of " questa 
 cavalla," — this mare. 
 
 " I bought her at Livorno, monsieur," he said 
 to me. " I paid only two hundred francs for 
 her because they thought she was lame. Look 
 and see if she is ! — Hey ! Zara, courage ! She 
 follows me about, monsieur, just like a dog, and 
 
A SAINT. 35 
 
 I love her, ah, yes, I love her ! My wife is jeal- 
 ous, but I tell her, ' Zara earns my bread, and 
 you — you eat it.' There, monsieur, look at 
 those rocks ; that 's where Lorenzo di Medici 
 came near being murdered after the massacre of 
 the Pazzi." 
 
 " Is n't it a curious thing," I remarked to my 
 companion, " that this man, who is only cab- 
 driver, should talk to us in the same breath of 
 his mare Zara and Lorenzo di Medici ? Ah, 
 these Italians ! How they know the history of 
 their beloved land, and how proud they are of 
 it ! " 
 
 " Oh, as for that," said Philippe, shrugging his 
 shoulders, " Alfieri has a line which suits them 
 ' The human plant is born maturer here than 
 elsewhere.' The fact is that they are taught 
 from their earliest years to speculate on foreign- 
 ers ; they are trained to the quest of fees. They 
 are scarcely weaned before they turn into guides. 
 Ha ! I '11 write a novel on modern Italy and its 
 colossal humbugs ! I 've collected notes. I '11 
 show up this nation — " 
 
 Whereupon he launched forth into a violent 
 diatribe against that sweet country where the 
 si resounds, while I continued, for my part, to 
 see her as she first appeared to me in 1874, 
 the home, the sole home of Beauty. Philippe's 
 outburst reminded me of talks I had heard in 
 my early years, when I frequented the symposia 
 
36 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 of future poets and romance-writers. Nearly- 
 all these embryo writers were employed in the 
 public offices. Bitterly hating that abject life, 
 they spent hours in filling their souls with gall, 
 pouring out their contempt for men and things 
 with a species of acrid eloquence which often 
 made me, in those days, doubt everything and 
 myself as well. I was ignorant then of what I 
 have since had too good reason to know by ex- 
 perience, that such eloquence is merely a form 
 of impotent envy which knows itself for what it 
 is. All great talent begins and ends in love and 
 in enthusiasm. The precocious cynics are the 
 unfortunates who foresee their future sterility 
 and are taking a premature revenge. Heavens ! 
 how I wished the fellow would talk to me (with 
 exaggerated, even ridiculous ardor if he chose) 
 about Florence where he had worked, where he 
 had been loved, — yes, above all, about his love. 
 But he really seemed to have forgotten it as he 
 plunged, apropos of the book he intended to 
 write on Italy, into inquiries as to the salaries 
 or the profits of our principal authors." 
 
 " Is it true that Jacques Molan gets a franc 
 and a half a volume ? They tell me Vincy is 
 paid two francs a line — ah, the wretch ! " 
 
 I now discerned behind all this bitter criti- 
 cism and the hardening effect of disillusion an 
 almost frantic desire for money, and by an in- 
 consistency which was reaUy explainable, I for- 
 
A SAINT. 37 
 
 gave him for that sentiment far more than for 
 his irony. The iron hand of necessity presses so 
 cruelly upon a brain in which all youthful ener- 
 gies are seething, and which sees in a trifle of 
 gold the emancipation of its inner self 
 
 "And to think," he concluded with infinite 
 bitterness, " that my father will not give me even 
 the first three thousand francs that I must have to 
 live in Paris before I make my first appearance 
 as an author ! Yes, that sum would be enough 
 to keep me while I learned my ground and 
 waged my first battle. Three thousand francs ! 
 just what a commonplace fellow like [here the 
 name of a writer much in vogue] gets for fifty 
 pages of copy ! " 
 
 I have omitted to say that in the meantime 
 he had sketched his father and mother for my 
 benefit in rather flattering likenesses. How can 
 I explain that in spite of all this he still con- 
 tinued to interest me ? He was giving vent to 
 the ideas I most dislike ; he divulged sentiments 
 which seemed to me radically opposed to those a 
 young writer ought to feel. But with it all I 
 felt that he suffered ; and I waited for the reac- 
 tion, when, having produced his first effect, he 
 might listen to my sage counsels and possibly 
 let me rectify two or three of his absurd points 
 of view. On this I counted all the more because 
 his manner of expressing himself, and his refer- 
 ences, revealed a genuine culture and a mind that 
 
38 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 was more than keen — that was strong and 
 original. 
 
 The scenery grew more and more savage. We 
 had left behind us, in the far distance, the great 
 plain on which Pisa lies. The dome and the 
 leaning tower reappeared every now and then 
 between two peaks, as if raised in relief upon a 
 map. Livorno was outlined far below, with the 
 sea in all its blueness ; while about us yawned 
 those great holes hollowed in the friable earth 
 which they call in those parts lahe. Summits 
 and peaks bare and menacing overhung us. The 
 cattle, now few in number, were no longer the 
 beautiful white beasts of the Maremma, with 
 their long, straight horns. The horns of these 
 were short and curved upwards, their hides were 
 as gray as the soil. For the first time since we 
 started Philippe Dubois said a few words which 
 betrayed a consciousness of present sensation. 
 
 " Is n't the whole landscape like a series of 
 pit-holes ? — just the place for a convent." 
 
 At that instant the coachman, now on his 
 box, turned to me and called out : — 
 
 " Monsieur, there 's Monte-Chiaro." 
 
 With the end of his whip he pointed to a 
 valley on a slope of the mountain more gullied 
 than the rest, in the centre of which, on a little 
 hill planted with cypress-trees, stood a long 
 structure built of red brick. On that cloudless 
 blue day the color of the walls contrasted so 
 
A SAINT. 39 
 
 vividly with the blackness of the surrounding 
 foUage that the reason for the name, Monte- 
 Chiaro, was obvious. Except on the Monte- 
 Oliveto, near Sienna, I have never seen a sanc- 
 tuary for retreat so relentlessly far removed from 
 all approach of human life. I knew, from in- 
 formation obtained of the Garibaldian at Pisa, 
 which eked out that of the Englishwomen, that 
 the abb^ had consented to the humble task of 
 housing and feeding the visitors who came to 
 see the convent, which was secularized in 1867. 
 
 " What sort of cooking do you think we shall 
 find in this Thebai'd ? " I said to my companion, 
 to whom I had previously explained the manner 
 in which we were to pass the night and the 
 following day. 
 
 "As there's a tariff charge of five francs a 
 day," he replied, " the priest would n't belong to 
 this coiyitry if he did n't put three in his own 
 pocket." 
 
 " Well, at any rate, a fine Benozzo Gozzoli is 
 well worth a bad dinner," I replied, laughing. 
 
 Half an hour after we had thus come in sight, 
 from a rise in the road, of the time-worn refuge 
 of the Benedictines, once so celebrated through- 
 out Tuscany, now so sadly solitary,' the white 
 mare Zara was beginning to climb the hilly ap- 
 proach, which was planted with cypress-trees. 
 My companion and I left the carriage and walked 
 
40 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 up for a better view of the little shrines raised 
 along the side of the road at a distance of some 
 fifty feet apart, and were under the speU, he as 
 well as I, of the melancholy majesty of this 
 approach to the cloister. I beheld in thought 
 the innumerable white cowls which had filed 
 through these sombre avenues, the Benedictines 
 of Monte-Chiaro having been, like those of 
 Oliveto, dedicated to the Virgin. My English 
 friend had initiated me into this little matter 
 of costume. I thought of the simple souls to 
 whom this barren horizon had marked the end of 
 the world, of the weary souls who had found rest 
 in this lonely spot, of the violent souls gnawed 
 here as elsewhere by envy, by ambition, by all 
 those cravings of pride which the apostle justly 
 classes among the lusts of the flesh. My absorp- 
 tion in this vision was so complete that I woke 
 with a start when the coachman, who was walk- 
 ing up this last ascent, leading Zara by the bridle 
 and talking to her to encourage her, suddenly 
 turned and called back to me : — 
 
 " Monsieur, here 's the Father abb^ coming to 
 meet us. He must have heard the wheels." 
 
 " Why, that 's the late Hyacinth, of the Palais 
 Eoyal ! " cried Philippe. It is true that, seen as 
 he was on the threshold of the convent, at the 
 farther end of the sombre path, the poor monk 
 did present a beggarly appearance. He wore a 
 ragged cassock, the color of which, originally 
 
A SAINT. 41 
 
 black, was now greenish. He told me later that 
 the government had placed him in charge of the 
 confiscated convent on condition that he re- 
 nounced the beautiful white robe of his order. 
 His tall, thin body, slightly bowed by age, rested 
 on a stick. The brim of his hat was thread- 
 worn. His face, turned towards the new-comers, 
 and perfectly smooth, did vaguely resemble that 
 of a comic actor, while an endless nose developed 
 therefrom, — the nose of a snuff-taker, — seeming 
 longer still from the leanness of the cheeks and 
 the sunken mouth, which had lost its front teeth. 
 But the old man's glance soon corrected this first 
 impression. Though his eyes were not large, 
 and their color, of a muddy green, was indistinct, 
 a flame burned within them which would soon 
 have quenched the jesting spirit of my young 
 companion if he had had the slightest experience 
 in judging of the human countenance. His im- 
 pertinent remark shocked me all the more be- 
 cause he made it in a high tone of voice, which 
 sounded through the deep silence of the autumn 
 afternoon. But did Dom Gabriele GriflS under- 
 stand French ? and if he did, would the name 
 of the poor comedian who played the part of 
 Marasquiu so comically in the Mari de la debu- 
 tante, mean anything to his mind ? The foolish 
 jest served to flash the scenes of that amusing 
 play before my mind. What a contrast ! The 
 foxir little girls who cry so gayly under the de- 
 
42 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 vspairing nose of the said Hyacinth, all fotll^ 
 pointing their pretty toes in the air at the same 
 moment, " Safeynme I'a quitte — pour aller faire 
 la noce — et allez done," were pirouetting before 
 me when the hermit, whose guests we were now 
 to be, said to us in the purest and most elegant 
 Italian, -^ 
 
 " You have come, gentlemen, to visit the con- 
 vent ? Why did you not send me word ? Pas- 
 qiiale," he added, addressing the coachman, " you 
 should have told these gentlemen to send me a 
 written notice." 
 
 " I thought, of course, the gentlemen had done 
 so. Father abbd, when the clerk at their hotel 
 confided them to my care." 
 
 " Well, they must eat what there is," said the 
 abb^ ; then turning to us with a kindly smile, 
 and a gesture towards heaven, he added, " When 
 things go wrong we must shut our eyes and com- 
 mend ourselves up there." 
 
 I stammered, in moderately correct Italian, an 
 excuse, which the father cut short with a wave 
 of his hand. 
 
 " Come and look at your rooms in the first place. 
 To console you for the food you will be obliged 
 to eat I will make you priors of the order." 
 
 He laughed at his little joke, the meaning of 
 which I did not at the moment seize. I was 
 completely absorbed in the strange sight of the 
 vast red edifice in the glow of the setting sun ; 
 
A SAINT. 43 
 
 measuring its great size and comprehending its 
 solitude in the same glance. Monte-Ohiaro was 
 huilt at various periods, from the day in 1259 
 ■when the head of the family of the Gherardesca, 
 uncle of UgoHno the tragic, retired to this re- 
 mote valley with nine companions, seeking to do 
 penance. In the last century over three hundred 
 monks lived here at their ease ; and the abbey 
 and its belongings, its bakery, fish-pond, wine- 
 press, and cow-sheds, sufficed for their main- 
 tenance. But the innumerable windows of this 
 great farmhouse were now closed, the faded 
 color of the shutters, once green, told of its 
 abandonment, as did the grass on the terrace be- 
 fore the church and the veil of dusty cobwebs 
 on the walls of the corridors through which we 
 passed as we followed Dom Griffi. 
 
 Even the minor details of the ornamentation 
 showed the former prosperity of the abbey, from 
 the vast lavabo of marble, with lion's heads, 
 placed at the entrance of the refectory, to the 
 architecture of the three cloisters, one succeeding 
 another, and all three decorated with frescos. 
 A mere glance showed me that these paintings 
 were in the pedantic Italian taste of the seven- 
 teenth century; possibly, therefore, their aca- 
 demic coloring concealed some spontaneous 
 masterpiece of a Gozzoli or an Orcagna. We 
 mounted the steps of a staircase hung with pict- 
 ures blackened by time, among them a charming 
 
44 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 cavalier of Timoteo della Vite, the real master 
 of Eaffaelle, stranded here by chance. Then 
 we entered another corridor on the next floor, 
 with numerous cell doors marked Visitator 
 primus, Visitator secundus, and so on, until we 
 stopped before the last, which was surmounted 
 by a mitre and crozier. The abb^, who had not 
 said a word since we left the entrance, except to 
 point out the Timoteo, now spoke in French, 
 with a slightly Italian turn of phrase, but very 
 little accent, — 
 
 "These are the quarters which I give to 
 guests ; " then making way for us to enter, he 
 added : " The superiors of the convent occupied 
 these rooms for five hundred years." 
 
 I glanced at Master Philippe from the corner 
 of my eye, and perceived that he was somewhat 
 shamefaced at the discovery that our guide was 
 thoroughly conversant with the French language. 
 He had chosen as we came along the corridors 
 to make other remarks and jokes in very doubt- 
 ful taste. Had the abbd noticed them, and did 
 he mean to give us warning that he understood 
 what we said ? or was he merely seeking in his 
 simple hospitality to relieve us of the efi'ort of 
 speaking in a foreign language ? I could not 
 guess his meaning from the immovable features 
 of his large face. He seemed wholly absorbed 
 in the numerous memories which the vast room 
 where we now stood evoked for him. It was 
 
A SAINT. 45 
 
 poorly furnished with a few wooden chairs, a 
 square table, and a sofa. In one corner a half- 
 open door gave to view an altar covered with a 
 smoke-stained cloth ; it was there, no doubt, that 
 the priors said their prayers. Another door, 
 opposite and wide open, showed two more con- 
 necting rooms, each with an iron bed, wooden 
 chairs, and wash-basins standing on rickety 
 bureaus. The red-tiled floors were not even 
 polished; the woodwork of the doors and the 
 window frames was cracked and defaced, but the 
 landscape seen from the latter was really glo- 
 rious. On a height directly opposite was a 
 village with houses close together, and from this 
 village to the monastery a marvellous vegetation 
 clothed the slope, — no longer the gloomy cy- 
 presses of the other side, but oaks, whose green 
 foliage was turning crimson ; while farther down, 
 in the valley which lay to the southward, were 
 other signs of cultivation, and olive-trees inter- 
 spersed among the oaks. Evidently the monks 
 stranded in this Thebaid had toiled there. 
 Beyond this oasis solitude and desolation re- 
 appeared, sterner than before, darkly frowned 
 upon by the highest peak of the Pisan moun- 
 tains; that of Verruca, where a ruined castle is 
 still crumbling, once the stronghold of some lord 
 of the soil, against whose attacks the square 
 bastion which defends the convent on this side 
 was doubtless buUt. This little square redoubt 
 
46 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 was outlined, with its crenelated bastion in red 
 stone, before the window at which we stood, and 
 against the blue of a sky now flecked with rosy 
 vapor. My companion was no longer disposed 
 to jest, being struck, as I was, to the depths of 
 his artistic nature, by the graceful severity of 
 that horizon on which had rested the eyes, long 
 closed, of many monks, some thinking only of an- 
 other world, others beholding in the rosy sky so 
 softly roseate the mirage of an earthly paradise, 
 others again, ambitious and lordly, dreaming amid 
 this silence of a cardinal's hat, or it may be, of 
 the tiara, and then — " the silence vast and fath- 
 omless of death." 
 
 That line in the "Contemplations" oame to 
 my memory, as it ever does in all encounters 
 with the past, when I feel the shock of a sensa- 
 tion, which is almost agony, produced by too 
 close a contact with that which once was but 
 never shall be again. It lasted barely a minute, 
 but during that minute the ancient life of the 
 old monastery lay spread before my eyes, incar- 
 nate in the humble or the ambitious dreams of 
 those who had stood where I was standing, the 
 princes of that cloister, whose sole representative 
 was an old abb^ with ragged cassock and rusty 
 shoes, who, breaking the silence, said to us : — 
 
 " The view is fine, is it not ? I have lived 
 forty years in this convent without ever leaving 
 it, but I never weary of that view." 
 
A SAINT. 47 
 
 "Forty years!" I exclaimed, almost against 
 my will. " Without ever leaving the convent ! 
 Surely you have made a few journeys ? " 
 
 " True, so I have, — two in aU," he answered, 
 " each of six days. I went to Milan, my own 
 city, when my sister was dying and wished me 
 to bring her the last sacraments. Poor, sainted 
 angel ! And I went to Eome when my old mas- 
 ter Cardinal Peloro received the hat — Yes," 
 he continued, looking fixedly into space, " I 
 came here in 1845. How beautiful Monte- 
 Chiaro was then ! What masses were sung ! 
 To have seen this convent as I once saw it, and 
 to see it as I now see it is to look upon a body 
 without a soul where all was youth and life — 
 But patience, patience ! ' Multa renascentur 
 quae jam cecidere, cadentque quae nunc sunt 
 in honore.' Now, gentlemen, I must leave you 
 to order your dinner. Luigi will bring up your 
 valises. With him, remember, patience, patience. 
 You must shut your eyes and commend your- 
 selves to God ! " 
 
 With this advice and quotation Dom Grifii 
 left us, and he had scarcely crossed the threshold 
 of the door before Philippe threw himself into a 
 chair with that eternal, sneering laugh of his. 
 
 " Upon my word," he cried, " that grotesque 
 old fellow was alone worth the journey." 
 
 " I don't know what you find grotesque in 
 what the priest has said or done," I replied. 
 
48 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 " He told us in the simplest way -of the changes 
 in the convent, which must be a great grief to 
 him, and which he bears with the hope of a true 
 believer. I am nearly fifteen years older than 
 you, I have been about the world as you are 
 going now, in pursuit of many a chimera, and I 
 have, alas, learned to know that there is nothing 
 wiser, nothing nobler here below than a man 
 who works at one work, with the same ideal, in 
 the same corner of this earth." 
 
 " Amen ! " added my young companion, laugh- 
 ing louder still. " I agree to it all ! the chanted 
 masses, his master the cardinal, the sainted soul 
 of his sister, and jostling among them that quo- 
 tation from Horace, and his functions as an inn- 
 keeper ! By the bye, we shall pay him well for 
 his hospitality. This miserable hole," dragging 
 me by the arm into the first bedroom, " is worth, 
 I should say, about a franc a night. But," he 
 added with sarcastic consideration, " since my 
 remarks displease you, my dear master — " 
 
 Queer fellow ! I cannot better describe the 
 sensation he produced in me than to say it was 
 that of a blind which creaks in the wind. At 
 each new impression his nerves gave forth a 
 rasping note. But the most disconcerting and 
 puzzling thing of all, on which I think I have 
 scarcely dwelt enough, was the flame of intellect 
 running through these whimsical outbreaks. of a 
 petulant and ill-bred child. I omitted to say 
 
A SAINT. 49 
 
 how, during the journey, he had amazed me by 
 two or three remarks on the geological construc- 
 tion of the country through which we were pass- 
 ing ; and now, going out upon a balcony which 
 served for both rooms and looked toward the 
 redoubt which protected the abbey, he began to 
 talk of Florentine architecture like one who had 
 studied it well in books, and also with his eyes, 
 — two forms of study seldom combined. This 
 knowledge, quite other than that his mission had 
 prepared me to expect, showed, in addition to his 
 surprising acquaintance, which I had also detected, 
 with contemporary literature both high and loW, 
 an amazing suppleness of intellect. But this in- 
 tellect seemed to hang to him like a jewel, per- 
 haps I had better say an instrument. It was 
 something worn outside of him. It was not he 
 himself He possessed it, but it did not possess 
 him ; it helped him neither to believe nor to 
 love. I compared him, involuntarily, to the 
 very man, Dom Griffi, at whom he had been 
 scoffing. Certainly the poor monk could never 
 shine through intellectual subtlety, but he con- 
 veyed an instant impression of sincere and 
 single-minded devotion to his mission, to his 
 watch over the beloved convent until the longed- 
 for return of his brethren. Comparing the two, 
 which, I asked myself, was the young man, 
 which the old man, if youth consists in' grasping 
 an ideal with the force of an invincible will ? 
 4 
 
50 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 However, such as he was, made up of irony and 
 precocious nihilism, my young companion was 
 consistent with himself. He was a complete 
 antithesis to the poor priest self-devoted to the 
 care of an empty monastery, but the antithesis 
 was frank and genuine, the opposition of the 
 present half of our century to the simple and 
 pious spirit of former times. But, I asked my- 
 self again, was I not equally unfortunate, even 
 more so, — I, whose life was being spent in the 
 effort to comprehend fully both the criminal 
 charm of negation and the splendors of devout 
 faith without ever remaining at one or the other 
 of these two poles of the human spirit ? 
 
 These reflections were more importunate still 
 when I found myself seated about seven o'clock 
 before the meal which the abbd had ordered for 
 us in the large hall, formerly, as he told us, the 
 refectory of the convent. A brass lamp of the 
 old shape, with three wicks and the accessories 
 of snuffer, pricker, and extinguisher dangling 
 by little chains of the same metal, gave a smoky 
 light to one corner of an enormous table, on 
 which were glass decanters bearing the arms of 
 the bonvent. Each of us had two beside him ; 
 one filled with wine, the other with water. 
 These were the bottles which formerly doled out 
 to the monks the parsimonious amount of liquid 
 allowed to their thirst. A dish of fresh iigs and 
 another of grapes were there for our dessert. 
 
A SAINT. 61 
 
 The soup was already served in plates awaiting 
 us, while goat's cheese, raw ham, stale bread, and 
 hoiled chestnuts, in other plates, made up the bill 
 of fare, the frugality of M'hich incited the old 
 monk to another Latin quotation of the same 
 order as its predecessor. He had said the Bene- 
 dicite as he sat down with us. " Castanese moUes 
 et pressi copia lactis," he added, pointing to the 
 dishes which illustrated Virgil's lines. 
 
 '' I expected that," muttered Philippe in my 
 ear. Then he began, in his most serious man- 
 ner, to discourse to Dom Griffi of the food of the 
 ancients. I feared, and not without reason, that 
 this apparent amiability was leading up to some 
 jest. 
 
 " When you have no guests do you dine alone. 
 Father ? " he inquired. 
 
 " No," said the abb^ ; " there are two of the 
 brotherhood still in the convent. They left us 
 seven. Four died of grief immediately after the 
 suppression. We were all ill and we nursed 
 each other as best we could. God was not will- 
 ing we should all disappear." 
 
 "But when you and the two friars are no 
 longer here, what then ? " persisted Philippe. 
 
 " Con gallo e senza gallo, Dio fa giorno," said 
 the priest, a slight cloud crossing his face, which, 
 however, was instantly dispersed ; the question 
 touched him cruelly in the most sensitive spot of 
 his whole being. "With or without the cock 
 
52 , PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 God sends the day," he added translating the 
 Italian words. 
 
 " But how do you occupy your time, Father ? " 
 I said to him, full of eager curiosity in presence 
 of a faith so deep that I could almost fancy my- 
 self before a man of the Middle Ages. 
 
 " Ah ! I have no leisure at all," exclaimed 
 Dom Griffi. " Such as you see me now, I have 
 the convent to look after and all the adjacent 
 land to farm. I employ fifteen peasant families. 
 From early morning it is one long procession to 
 my cell ; they never leave me a minute to my- 
 self, — accounts to settle, confessions to receive, 
 medicine wanted ! I 'm a bit of a doctor, of a 
 chemist, a judge, and even a schoolmaster. Yes, 
 I teach the children. Luigi is one of my schol- 
 ars ; he does n't do me credit, but he 's a very 
 good fellow. Moreover, I am a guide, and there 
 are strangers to show about the convent — well, 
 not many." 
 
 " I met two English ladies at Pisa, — Miss 
 Dobson and Miss Eoberts, — who had just come 
 from Monte-Chiaro," I remarked. 
 
 " Ha, ha ! " he exclaimed, laughing, — " my two 
 red mullets. I call them so from the color of 
 their hair. They are Protestants, but good souls 
 all the same. Lascia fare a Bio, cKi santo 
 vecchio, — ' Let God manage things, he 's the 
 oldest of the saints.' They are going to Eome. 
 I said to them, ' Saint Peter is a fisherman ; I 
 
A SAINT. 53 
 
 hope he may catch my red mullets in his net.' 
 England is getting nearer to God every day," he 
 added, rubbing his hands, " ever since Puseyisin. 
 Perhaps you young men will see the great sight 
 of all Christians under one father. After that 
 Antichrist, then the Last Judgment, and then — 
 Peace ! " 
 
 His eyes shone with a visionary light as he 
 said the words. No believer in the Millennium 
 was ever more fervent. Philippe and I looked 
 at each other. I saw the satire in my compan- 
 ion's eyes, and I heard him, with amazement, 
 make answer : — 
 
 " In Prance also Catholicism is making great 
 progress, Pather. We have had many edifying 
 examples of holiness, — more especially in an 
 author named Baudelaire, and several of his 
 disciples. They are so humble that they call 
 themselves decadents. They write hymns and 
 chant them to each other. They publish news- 
 papers which preach the word. What can be 
 more edifying than such a faith in early youth ? " 
 
 " I had not heard of them," said the father. 
 " Decadents, did you say ? " 
 
 " Yes," replied Philippe, " those who descend, 
 who seek those below — '' 
 
 "I understand," said the father; "they are 
 repentant, and they do right. We have a prov- 
 erb : Non hisogna aver paura che de' suoi peccavi, 
 — 'No need to fear any but our own sins.' " 
 
54 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 " Dear Father," I said, to cut short my com- 
 panion's foolisli joke, our frugal supper being 
 now ended, "can we not see to-night those 
 frescos of Gozzoli the English ladies told me 
 of?" 
 
 "You cannot judge them very well by this 
 light," said Dom Griffi. Then, carried away by 
 the pleasure of exhibiting his discovery, he 
 added, " But you can see them again to-morrow. 
 Ah ! when the monks come back how delighted 
 they will be with those paintings ! I hope to 
 find time to clean them thoroughly this winter. 
 Luigi, go and get the taper stick in the chapel ; 
 here, take the key," and he drew from his pocket 
 a bunch of enormous keys. " We have to lock 
 every door," he said, " for the peasants are 
 coming and going at all hours. They are worthy 
 souls, but you ought never to tempt the poor." 
 
 Luigi soon returned, bearing a sort of rush- 
 light tied to the, end of a stick, evidently used to 
 light the altar candles. The monk rose from 
 table, repeated once more the Benedicte, and 
 then with the gayety of a child, he took the 
 brass lamp by the ring at the top and said, laugh- 
 ing : " I march before you, and as M^e shall pass 
 through an actual labyrinth you can say with 
 Dante, ' Per la impacciata via, retro al mio 
 duca.' " 
 
 " More Dante ! " whispered Philippe. " These 
 fellows can't do a thing, they can't even eat a bit 
 
A SAINT. 55 
 
 of green cheese, their infernal gorgonzola, with- 
 out being reminded of a line by that fool of a 
 Florentine whose real name was Durante, that 
 is, Durand. Did you know that ? Vallfes in- 
 vented the joke. The Divine Comedy signed 
 Durand ! I 've a great mind to get it off on our 
 host." 
 
 "You are out of your reckoning,'' I replied. 
 " I have told you already how I admire that 
 great poet." 
 
 " I know, I know," he exclaimed ; " but that 's 
 on your devout, reverent, and sacrificial side. As 
 for me, as you must see, I belong solely to the 
 generation of the iconoclasts — that 's all the 
 difference between us." 
 
 While we exchanged these remarks in a low 
 voice the cassock of our guide, fantastically 
 illumined by the lamp, whose unprotected flames 
 flickered in the draughts, plunged deeper and 
 deeper into interminable corridors^ We went 
 up one staircase and down others. Sometimes 
 we threaded the arcades of a cloister. Now and 
 then a night-bird rose at our approach, or a cat 
 fled away silent and terrified. If there had been 
 but a single gleam of moonlight the romantic 
 mystery of our walk across that vast convent 
 might have furnished forth a nightmare. As it 
 was, I evoked in thought the monks of other ages 
 who had glided through these shadows on their 
 way to prayer. Our guide himself seemed set 
 
56 PASTELS 0¥ MEN. 
 
 back forty years, and to be walking the corridors 
 in a file of his brethren, — young, eager in his 
 beliefs, ardent for his order. What memories 
 must stir within him now that he lived alone in 
 that deserted building ! And yet he was gay, 
 almost jovial in the midst of this disaster, 
 through the vigor of his faith. What power lies 
 in that mysterious phenomenon which constitutes 
 belief, — absolute, complete, invincible belief ? 
 Dom Griffi paused before a door. He searched 
 through the jailer's bunch which he held in his 
 left hand for another key. The old door creaked 
 on its hinges, and we entered a lofty room where 
 the trembling light of the lamp wicks vaguely 
 lighted two walls painted in fresco, and a third 
 which at first sight I took to be aU white- 
 washed. 
 
 "My son," said the abb^ to Luigi, "give me 
 the rushlight ; I will light it. You will let the 
 grease fall on my cassock, — which I am sure 
 doesn't need it." 
 
 He set the lamp on the floor and looked care- 
 fully to the fastening of the taper at the end of 
 the pole. Then, having lighted the little wick, 
 he began to move the flame here and there along 
 the wall; and as if by magic divers portions 
 of the master's work became alive in its bright- 
 ness. As the old monk moved the tiny flame 
 from spot to spot along the first wall we saw the 
 bleeding wound of Christ, the hand of the apostle 
 
A SAINT. 57 
 
 wounding again that bloody wound, the mourn- 
 ful look of the Saviour, the blending of remorse 
 and curiosity on the features of Saint Thomas, and 
 the angels bearing to heaven the instruments of 
 the Passion, their ethereal faces wet with tears. 
 On the other wall we saw, detail by detail, as 
 the flame showed them, the green tunic and the 
 gold embroideries of Gondoforus, the precious 
 stones of the vases given to the apostle, while 
 peacocks displayed their occulated tails upon the 
 balconies, parrots of every color swung from the 
 trees, and great lords started for the chase, drag- 
 ging leopards by chains through mountain fast- 
 nesses. And still the little flame of our guide's 
 torch wandered hither and thither like a will o' 
 the wisp. As it passed along, each spot drawn for 
 an instant from shadowy vagueness retreated 
 into the void. It was of course impossible to 
 judge of the work as a whole, but seen thus it 
 had a charm of fantastic strangeness appropriate 
 to the time and place, — all the greater because 
 Dom Griffi, in exhibiting the two frescos, aban- 
 doned himself like a child to the passionate de- 
 light they afforded him. He loved to look at 
 them, as a miser loves to handle the gold he 
 hoards. Were they not his own creation — his ; 
 the precious jewel with which he had enriched 
 his cherished convent? As he talked of them 
 the wrinkles of his expressive old face empha- 
 sized his words : — 
 
58 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 " See the finger of the apostle — how he hesi- 
 tates! and our Lord's gesture, and his lips; 
 that is just as men do when they are wounded 
 and the doctor touches them. Look at that land- 
 scape in the background; don't you recognize 
 Verruca and the hill of Monte-Chiaro ? See, to 
 the right, there, are the windows of your room. 
 Those dear angels, their eyes are getting smaller ! 
 They weep, but they don't want to, and so they 
 wrinkle up their noses like that. And there's 
 the black king ; look at his earrings. One of 
 our fathers — who died here after the suppres- 
 sion, God rest his soul ! — made a few excava- 
 tions round one of our convents near Volterra, and 
 he found an Etruscan tomb, and in it were ear- 
 rings just like these, lying close to the head of a 
 skeleton. I have them now, and I '11 show them 
 you. Now, here — " 
 
 So saying he turned and I saw him direct his 
 taper towards the wall to the right which I had 
 hitherto supposed to be all whitewashed. The 
 magic flame now illumined a spot in that 
 whiteness about the size of half my hand. 
 Chance had willed that in beginning at random 
 to clear off the plaster the old monk had un- 
 covered just half the face of a Madonna, — the 
 line of her chin, her mouth, nose, and eyes. The 
 smile and the glance of the Blessed Virgin 
 thus appearing in the midst of that great 
 white field grasped the mind like something 
 
A SAINT. 59 
 
 supernatural. The little flame flickered a trifle, 
 attached as it was to a long pole in the hands of 
 an old man, and the lips of the Madonna seemed 
 to move, her cheeks breathed, her eyes quivered. 
 One might have thought a living woman was 
 there, about to shake off that shroud of plaster 
 and reveal herself to our eyes in the untrammelled 
 grace of her youth. The father was silent now, 
 but his countenance expressed so profound a 
 piety of admiration that I comprehended why 
 it was he had not hastened to remove the 
 plaster from the rest of the fresco. His guileless 
 artistic sense and the fervor of his faith made 
 him feel the poesy of that divine smile and those 
 divine eyes, imprisoned as it were in their coarse 
 casing. We were all silent. Philippe was 
 vanquished for the moment by the force of the 
 impression, and I heard him murmur in a low 
 voice : — 
 
 " "Why, it 's Edgar Poe — it 's a bit of Shelley ! " 
 
 The abb^, who certainly had never heard the 
 name of either of those writers, said naively, 
 without suspicion that he was making a just 
 criticism on the sentiment of his young guest: — 
 
 " No, it 's a Gozzoli. I '11 prove it to you in 
 Vasari. And what do you suppose is behind it ? 
 Undoubtedly the miracle of the girdle." 
 
 " What miracle is that ? " I asked. 
 
 " Dear me ! " he said, with visible amazement. 
 "Did you not see in the Cathedral at Pistoia 
 
60 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 the girdle of the Blessed Virgin, which she threw 
 to Saint Thomas after her assumption ? He was 
 absent when she rose to -heaven in presence of 
 the other apostles. He came back three days 
 later, and as he still doubted the truth of every- 
 thing he did not see, the Madonna was so good 
 as to let fall her girdle before his eyes, that he 
 might never doubt again." 
 
 He related this legend (which proves, we may 
 remark in a parenthesis, that early Christianity 
 foresaw even the analysts and their possible sal- 
 vation) as he extinguished the rushlight, which 
 he gave to Luigi ; then he locked the door. 
 . The single-minded conviction with which he 
 spoke of the miracle proved to me that he lived 
 in supernaturalism just as the rest of us, sons of 
 our century, live in restlessness and irony. I 
 could not help comparing him, in a way, to the 
 fragment of the fresco he had shown us on the 
 third wall. That uncovered bit of painting suf- 
 ficed to make the whole blank sheet of plaster a 
 living picture, and he, Dom Griffi, sufficed by his 
 sole presence to make that convent desert a living 
 scene. He was indeed the soul of it, — I felt this 
 now, — and a soul which represented, in the exact 
 sense of that word, the souls of his absent breth- 
 ren. In my childhood I had seen an officer of 
 the Grand Army passing along the pavement of 
 the town in which I was brought up. The old 
 hero limped, for he was wounded at Leipzig ; he 
 
A SAINT. 61 
 
 was poor, and his ribbon hung upon a threadbare 
 coat. Yet he was to me the whole epic of the 
 Empire, for I knew that the Emperor had deco- 
 rated him with his own hand. I felt the same 
 impression now as I followed Dom Griffi. He 
 bore his whole order in the folds of the old cas- 
 sock which Luigi took such ill care of. Such is 
 the grandeur which all absolute abdication of 
 our own personality for the furtherance of some 
 high and noble work bestows upon us. We 
 renounce self, and in so doing we magnify it by 
 a law which modern society, attached to vulgar 
 individualism, strangely ignores. Man is of no 
 value except as he immolates himself to an idea. 
 What is an order, what is an army, if not an or- 
 ganized idea which assimilates to itself thousands 
 of existences ? Each of these existences has a 
 share in the united forces of all the others. 
 What would Dom Griffi have been in his con- 
 vent ? Probably an antiquary of narrow mind, 
 who might have catalogued some museum ; for 
 no sooner had his enthusiasm abated, as we made 
 our way back to our apartments, than he fell 
 into the jargon of a collector who forgets the 
 fundamental sentiment of a work of art in a 
 discussion of its accessories, its resemblances, 
 and its authenticity. 
 
 "A great deal has been written," he said, "on 
 this very subject of the girdle of the Madonna, 
 and Saint Thomas. You will find in the Acad- 
 
62 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 emy at Florence a charming bas-relief of Lnca 
 della Eobbia, where the Madonna, surrounded by 
 angels, is giving her girdle to the apostle. Fran- 
 cesco Granacci treated the subject twice ; so did 
 Fra Paolino, of Pistoia, and Taddeo Gaddi, and 
 Giovanni Antonio Sogliani, and Bastiano Main- 
 ardi, — the last at Santa Croce. My red mullets 
 sent me photographs of all these pictures. I 
 am certain our Benozzino's is best of all, judging 
 only by that tiny bit of the Virgin's head. But 
 please come into my cell, and I will show you 
 those earrings and the little collection of Dom 
 Pio Schedone." 
 
 We accepted the invitation, Philippe perhaps 
 from archaeological instinct, and I from curiosity 
 to see the actual objects among which the old 
 monk passed his life. The disorderly appear- 
 ance of the first room into which he took us 
 revealed the neglect of the comical servant who 
 answered to the name of Luigi. Piles of books 
 were scattered about, the size and binding of 
 which proclaimed them the Fathers of the 
 Church. In one corner were tools, hammers, a 
 pair of pincers, and a box filled with nails and 
 screws and old iron, showing that Dom GrifEi 
 was able to dispense with workmen if mending 
 were needed for locks or furniture. Lemons 
 were drying on a plate. Flasks, with the straw 
 much blackened and soiled, seemed to contain 
 samples of the last harvest of oil and wine. 
 
A SAINT. 63 
 
 One of those brown earthenware pots which 
 Tuscan women call " scaldini," and which they 
 fill with charcoal to warm their hands as they 
 hold them by the handles, was the sole sign of 
 comfort in the brick-floored room, where a jet 
 black cat was lazily washing herself. Perhaps 
 some English lady, grateful for his kindness, had 
 sent the poor monk the little silver teapot, sole 
 sign of elegance in this rustic capharnaiim, 
 which Luigi had taken good care not to clean, 
 and which now stood blackening on an upper 
 shelf. A tall crucifix, resting on its base, over- 
 looked the table, which was piled with sheets of 
 paper covered in a large and firm hand-writing. 
 
 " Those are my master's sermons, which are 
 sent to me to copy," said Dom Griffi. " The good 
 cardinal is blind, and he wants to have his work 
 printed before his death. He is eighty-seven. 
 Ah ! his writing is terribly perfidious" added the 
 abb^, using the Italian idiom ; " and besides, I 
 have so little time. Happily, I can do with 
 only four hours' sleep. Come, Nero, mio micino, 
 mio mutzi, get out of that chair, get out of that 
 chair." He spoke to the cat as Pasquale had 
 spoken to his mare, and Nero, apparently com- 
 prehending him, jumped from the chair to the 
 pile of papers which contained the old cardinal's 
 claims to posthumous glory. 
 
 " Good ; sit you there," he said to me ; " and 
 you here. Signer filippo." He had asked our 
 
64 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 Christian names at the beginning of dinner so 
 that he might, with the charming familiarity of 
 his country, call us by them. " Dear me ! " he 
 went on, looking about him, " where is that ras- 
 cally box ? I see it, under the volume of 
 Tathers which I took down the other day to find 
 a clause in the treatise of Saint Irenseus against 
 the Gnostics. The question was about certain 
 Basilideans who wished to avoid martyrdom 
 on the ground that we ought not to make known 
 our ideas to the common people. Ah ! pride, 
 pride ! You '11 find pride at the bottom of all 
 the heresies and all the sophisms. Faith is a 
 great thing, and it is so easy and simple too. 
 Here 's the box. It is open ; I never lock any- 
 thing in this room, because it belongs to me and 
 not to the convent. Where are those earrings ? " 
 While speaking he had disinterred a leather 
 case or coffer, the lock of which was so compli- 
 cated that in case of injury it would have defied 
 the poor workmen of this remote spot. The cover 
 raised, we saw that the box contained a quantity 
 of small articles wrapped in paper and carefully 
 ticketed. The circular shape, of most of these 
 packages clearly indicated that the greater part 
 of the late Dom Pio's collection consisted of 
 coins or medals. I noticed with some surprise 
 that the workmanship of the Etruscan earrings 
 was extremely delicate. Taking up at random 
 one of the little round packages, I read on the 
 
A SAINT. 65 
 
 paper wrapping the words, "Julii Csesarius 
 aureus," and on examining the piece of gold 
 I recognized it as genuine. I passed it to 
 Philippe, who called my attention to a head of 
 Mark Antony on the reverse, observing : — 
 " That 's a very fine coin, and extremely rare.'' 
 I took up a second, and a third, and then I 
 came with still greater amazement upon a Bru- 
 tus, the value of which I happened to know, 
 in this wise. When selecting my New Year's 
 presents in the preceding year I chanced to 
 think of offering to certain ladies with whom I 
 had dined little coins or medals to hang upon 
 their bracelets ; and my dear friend Gustave S., 
 one of the most distinguished numismatists of 
 the present day, was kind enough to accompany 
 me to a dealer who makes them a speciality. 
 There I had greatly admired the gold coin which 
 bears the head of the younger Brutus on one 
 side, and on the other that of the elder. My 
 friend could not restrain a smile at my igno- 
 rance when, in reply to my remark " I will take 
 this one," the dealer said " Then to you, mon- 
 sieur, as a friend of Monsieur S., it shall be only 
 thirteen hundred francs." And this coin, which 
 thus had a quotable market value, was here 
 among fifty or sixty others in Dom Pio's collec- 
 tion ! An exclamation escaped me as I showed 
 it to Philippe, and told him what I knew of its 
 value. 
 
 5 
 
66 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 " I can easily believe it," he said, " for I know 
 something of numismatics ; see how well pre- 
 served it is, the edge not worn." 
 
 '' You have a treasure. Father," I said to 
 Dom Griffi, who was listening without seeming 
 to take our words seriously. I persisted, how- 
 ever, in explaining to him the grounds on which 
 I could myself assure him of the value of at 
 least one of his coins, and of my companion's 
 abilitj' to judge of the rest. 
 
 " Dom Pio always told me they were valuable," 
 he said, his face gradually changing its expression. 
 '' He had picked them up here and there in his 
 various excavations. When he died, poor Pio, 
 things were at their worst with us ; we had just 
 been scattered, and I had so much to do that I 
 neglected to have the collection examined by 
 Professor Marchetti, whom you may have met at 
 Pisa. In fact, I forgot all about it, and if it had 
 not been for King Gondoforus and his jewels I 
 should never have thought of looking at it. It 
 was only the other day, while rummaging among 
 these old books, that I happened to remember I 
 had seen a curious pair of earrings in Dom Pio's 
 possession. I looked in his box and found them, 
 and now I have happened to speak of them to 
 you. Bless me ! " he continued, rubbing his 
 hands. " I do hope you may be right. There 's 
 a terrace near the tower which is falling to ruin, 
 and the government won't give me the money 
 
A SAINT. 67 
 
 to repair it ; four thousand francs would be 
 enough — but four thousand francs ! " he added, 
 shaking his head incredulously as he looked at 
 the coffer. 
 
 " If I were you," I remarked, " I should con- 
 sult the professor you mentioned, Father; for 
 here 's an aureus of Domitian which I think I 
 have seen among rare coins." 
 
 "It is extremely rare," said Philippe, examin- 
 ing it ; " and so is this Dide Julien, and that 
 Didia Clara — splendid specimens ! Probably 
 some peasant found the treasure of a Eoman 
 legion, lost in battle near Volterra, and sold the 
 whole to Dom Pio." 
 
 " If that were so," said the abb6, rubbing his 
 hands again, " it would be another proof of how 
 right the dear cardinal was when he used to say, 
 ' Dio non manda mai bocca che uon mandi cibo ' 
 — 'God doesn't send mouths without sending 
 food.' How I have prayed for that terrace ! 
 That 's where the sick brothers used to walk in 
 the sun when they were getting well. I '11 write 
 to Monsieur Marchetti to come and pay me a 
 visit as soon as he is able. Ah ! he is a friend 
 of mine ; he likes to come to Monte-Chiaro. 
 To-morrow morning when I say mass I shall 
 thank the Lord and pray for both of you. Dear 
 me ! I had almost forgotten to tell Luigi to be 
 ready to serve at six, for at seven I have several 
 appointments." 
 
68 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 " Can't you understand," I said to Philippe, a 
 little later as I wished him good-night, " how 
 readily certain circumstances — like these for in- 
 stance — appear to be providential ? This poor 
 monk wants money for his convent ; he prays 
 to God with all his might ; two strangers prove 
 to him that he has the money in his own hand." 
 
 " Oh, the blundering of chance ! " cried Phil- 
 ippe, shrugging his shoulders. " Have you ever 
 heard of any young man of talent who needed a 
 trifling sum of money to put him in the way of 
 using his talents and found it ? Did any great 
 writer ever win a penny in a lottery ? And yet 
 I 've known rich and stupid bourgeois in my 
 province whose shares in the Ville de Paris 
 brought them in as much as two hundred thou- 
 sand francs. A cousin of mine left me a share. 
 Happily I sold it. Would you believe that it 
 has never turned up but once in ten years ? It 
 would n't have given me six, nor two, nor even 
 one thousand francs. And here 's this imbecile 
 old cowl who will get his six thousand, — more, 
 perhaps, — and spend them, how ? in repairing a 
 rotten terrace for monks who will never come 
 back to it ! Chamfort said the world was the 
 work of a crazy devil ; he had better have said 
 an idiotic one." 
 
 " Meantime," I remarked with pretended petu- 
 lance, as though I were speaking to a small 
 child, — to avoid showing how provoked I felt at 
 
A SAINT. 69 
 
 what was, after all, a justifiable complaint, — 
 " go to bed and to sleep, and let me do likewise." 
 As the wind had risen, — a melancholy au- 
 tumn wind, — blowing gently, yet plaintively, 
 about the convent, I found a certain diffi- 
 culty in carrying out my own programme and 
 in falling asleep on the rather hard bed of 
 the late priors. I heard Philippe Dubois mov- 
 ing about his room, and I wondered whether, in 
 spite of his ironical mood (too exaggerated to be 
 perfectly genuine), he was not touched by the 
 noble sight our host had shown us all that even- 
 ing of a pious and self-devoted life. The 
 priest's remarks on the providential character of 
 certain meetings came back to me. Is it possi- 
 ble to think deeply and sincerely upon our own 
 destiny and that of those nearest to us without 
 a dim consciousness or intuition that a spirit 
 hovers over us and guides us, by ways that are 
 often tortuous, to ends of which we have no 
 perception ? Above all, in the punishment of 
 our faults, does not this mysterious agent reveal 
 its presence ? — a presence recognized by the mor- 
 alists of all ages, from the Greek poets who 
 worshipped Nemesis, that mysterious universal 
 equity, to Shakspeare and Balzac, the masters 
 of modern art ; for is not their work controlled 
 by the vision of a final and mighty justice en- 
 veloping human life ? So thinking, I began to 
 make objections, from that wretched habit of see- 
 
70 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 ing the pros and cons, which we cannot get 
 rid of as easily and simply as our good host 
 had done. I thought of that other law, the 
 law of decadence, which requires the death of 
 all things, even the noblest of human exist- 
 ence, from the moral being of a convent to the 
 masterpieces of a glorious art. The frescos of 
 Benozzo were just recovered, after a loss of four 
 centuries, only to disappear again in a hundred 
 or more years, destroyed then by the irresistible 
 hand of Time. Yes, all dies, and all begins 
 anew. Dom Griffi had spoken of the Basilideans, 
 of their subtle theories and the pride which 
 underlies all heresies. I remembered the aston- 
 ishing analogy which struck me, when I studied 
 the doctrines of Alexandria, between those fa- 
 mous paradoxes and the moral maladies of our 
 own day. My young companion was a case in 
 point ; had he not maintained to me, apropos of 
 the relations between a writer and the public, 
 precisely that sophism of falsehood from con- 
 tempt which was dear to the Gnostics ? I heard 
 him even then pacing his room, — was he rest- 
 less ? was he, too, discussing problems ? — 
 until at last, in the midst of contradictory argu- 
 ments, I fell asleep ; and when I woke in the 
 morning, it was to see the innocent Luigi stand- 
 ing at my bed's head with a tray on which was 
 my coffee ; and almost at the same moment Dom 
 Grif& entered the room. 
 
A SAINT. 71 
 
 " Ah, bravo ! " he cried, with his cheery laugh ; 
 " you have slept well, and you have given the lie 
 to an old proverb, Chi dorme non piglia pesci, — 
 ' He who sleeps does n't catch fish ; ' for a peasant 
 has brought you some fresh trout for your break- 
 fast. As for Signor Filippo, he was off early 
 on the mountain. When I returned from mass, 
 about half-past six, I caught sight of him climb- 
 ing beyond the village, as active as a cat. When 
 you are ready we '11 go and see the Benozzos by 
 daylight. By that time Signor Filippo will have 
 got back, no doubt. You shall also see the con- 
 vent library. Ah ! if you only knew how rich 
 it was before the first suppression, — I mean 
 that of Napoleon I. Well, patience, patience, — 
 all the more because we can now build up the 
 terrace. ' Multa renascentur.' " 
 
 An hour later 1 was dressed and I had drunk, 
 not without some grimaces, the coffee, based on 
 chicory, made by Luigi. The father and I paid 
 another visit to the Eastern king, Gondoforus, 
 and to the " Smile of the Virgin." Dom Griffi 
 found time to show me the refectories, small and 
 large, the library, the chapels, the fish-pond, the 
 cisterns, and the narrow garden where he was 
 raising tiny cypresses, intending to plant them 
 out. Philippe was still absent. Had he lost 
 his way ? Or did he feel an antipathy to the 
 monk's society and conversation, such as nervous 
 temperaments like his are unable to control ? I 
 
72 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 should have asked myself these questions with 
 some indifference, I must admit, so annoying 
 had his flippancy become to me, if, after re- 
 turning to the convent about eleven o'clock, I had 
 not been literally terrified by the result of a 
 trifling circumstance, which was purely acci- 
 dental, and which I myself had brought about 
 without the smallest presentiment. 
 
 Dom Griffi had just excused himself He was 
 obliged to leave me alone until breakfast. I had 
 no books with me. My correspondence, strange 
 to say, was written up. " Suppose I look over 
 those coins," I thought, and thereupon I asked 
 the father for the coffer, which he kindly 
 brought to me himself. Peaceably installed in 
 my bedroom, I unfolded the papers one by one, 
 admiring the profile of some laurel-crowned em- 
 peror, or the figure of a Victory. I don't know 
 why the fancy took me to examine the aureus 
 of Caesar with the head of Antony. I looked 
 for it among the others and could not find it. 
 I took out the packages one by one, but the 
 name of the dictator did not appear on any one 
 of them. " We must have folded them wrong,'-' 
 I said to myself, and I took the trouble to undo 
 each one. The coin of Csesar was not among 
 them ; nor that of Brutus either. I think I 
 never in my life felt an agony like that which 
 gripped my heart when I felt certain that the 
 two coins, worth over two thousand francs, which 
 
A SAINT. 73 
 
 had been in the box the night before, were no 
 longer there. I had held them in my own hand. 
 I had examined them with a glass ; I had my- 
 self revealed their probable price to Dom Griffi, 
 — and they had disappeared ! I hoped he might 
 have put them aside, in consequence of what we 
 said, so as to send them to Pisa and verify their 
 genuineness as soon as possible. I ran to his 
 cell at the risk of interrupting him ; it was 
 impossible for me not to relieve my mind instantly. 
 Dom Gri£& was engaged in recovering a debt 
 from a tall sun-burnt rogue of a peasant, who was 
 holding in his horny hand a leather pocket-book, 
 from which he drew, with comic regret, various 
 paper notes of the value of five and ten francs. 
 The abb^ saw by my face that I had something 
 important to say. 
 
 " Your friend is not ill ? " he inquired hastily. 
 
 " No " I answered. " But let me ask you one 
 question, Father. Did you take any of those 
 gold coins we were handling yesterday from 
 Dom Pio's box ? " 
 
 " None ; I took none," he answered simply ; 
 " the box remained just where we left it." 
 
 " Great God ! " I exclaimed in terror, " at least 
 two are missing, and the most valuable, — the 
 Csesar and the Brutus." 
 
 I had no sooner uttered the words than T felt 
 the full force of their bearing. No one, until 
 our arrival, had suspected the money value of 
 
74 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 Dom Pio's collection. The Caesar and the Bru- 
 tus were the very coins we had chiefly noticed. 
 They had been stolen. Luigi certainly would 
 not -have selected them from the others, nor 
 would any of the peasants, like the rustic I could 
 see at this moment fingering his dirty bank- 
 bills with a clumsy hand. On the other hand, I 
 myself could not be suspected. I was in my 
 bed when the father said mass and his room 
 was left empty. Since then he and I had been 
 together. The flash of an intolerable evidence 
 made me cry out : — 
 
 " No, no, it is impossible ! " 
 
 I had a vision of Philippe, tempted, almost 
 immediately after our conversation of the night 
 before, by the close proximity of the little treas- 
 ure. The sound of his steps late in the night 
 echoed in my memory, and brought with them a 
 dreadful explanation. He had said so much to 
 me during our journey of his great need of a sum 
 of money to support him while starting on his 
 career in Paris. He had seen that sum within 
 his grasp. He had struggled, struggled, and 
 then, — he had yielded. He was guilty of this 
 theft, so easy to commit, and so doubly infamous 
 inasmuch as the poor old monk was our hospita- 
 ble entertainer. He must have risen a little 
 before the hour of service. He had left his 
 chamber. He had slipped into the now empty 
 cell of his host. He had taken the two coins 
 
A SAINT. 75 
 
 which he knew to be most valuable, and prob- 
 ably others. Then he had left the convent and 
 walked about the country, no doubt to give some 
 reason for his early rising and perhaps to quell 
 the anguish which must have shaken him ; for 
 between the paradoxes of the boldest intellectual 
 immorality and a shameful action like this there 
 is a gulf. In presence of this horrible and over- 
 whelming probability I was seized with such 
 emotion that my legs gave way and I was forced 
 to sit down, while Dom Griffi said to the peasant 
 with his customary gentleness : — 
 
 " Go and wait in the corridor, Peppe. I '11 
 call you." 
 
 When we were alone he turned to me. 
 
 "Now, my son," he began, in a voice I had 
 not yet heard him use, not the voice of a kindly 
 host, but that of a priest, as he took both my 
 hands in his, "look me in the face. You feel that 
 I know it was not you, do you not ? Say noth- 
 ing, explain nothing, and make me a promise — " 
 
 " To compel that unhappy man to make resti- 
 tution. Ah ! Father, if I have to wrench those 
 coins from his hands or deliver him myself to 
 the police." 
 
 " You have not guessed my meaning," he 
 said, shaking his head. "I wish you, on the 
 contrary, to promise me on your honor that you 
 will not let drop a word which can make him 
 suspect that you have discovered the loss of 
 
76 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 those coins, — not one word, do you understand 
 me ? and not one gesture. I have a right to ask 
 this, have I not ? " 
 
 " I don't understand," I began. 
 
 "Pazienza," he said, employing his favorite 
 word, " give me your promise, and then let me 
 finish with that dreadful Peppe. Ah ! these 
 peasants will be the death of me before I get 
 the brothers back again. They squabble, franc 
 by franc, over the payment of their leases ; but 
 then, you know, we must shut our eyes and 
 commend ourselves to God. Have I your 
 promise ? " 
 
 " You have," I replied, yielding to a species 
 of authority which seemed to emanate from his 
 person at that moment, 
 
 "And will you bring the coffer to me at 
 once ? " 
 
 " I will fetch it, Father." 
 
 In spite of my promise I could scarcely con- 
 tain myself when, half an hour after this inter- 
 view, I met Philippe Dubois returning from his 
 walk. I must say to his credit that his face 
 betrayed an inward anxiety which would have 
 fully convinced me of his guilt had I retained the 
 slightest doubt of it. He must have felt sure 
 of his secret however, for my second examina- 
 tion of Dom Pio's collection was the merest 
 accident, and no one but me could have missed 
 the stolen coins. We had mentioned them too 
 
A SAINT. 77 
 
 briefly for the monk to remember their names. 
 Therefore it was no fear of discovery that gave 
 so gloomy an expression of uneasiness to that 
 intelligent brow and to the eyes that were so 
 lively only the night before. I guessed that 
 remorse and shame were rending him. He was 
 so young, in spite of the cynical mask he chose 
 to wear, so near to the hearth of home, so nur- 
 tured in provincial loyalty in spite of his intel- 
 lectual depravity ! He noticed my depressed 
 manner, but if at first he suspected its true 
 cause the silence I maintained in accordance with 
 my promise must have reassured him. 
 
 " I have had a splendid walk," he said, with- 
 out my asking him a single question as to how 
 he had spent the morning. " Only I lost my 
 way, and have got back too late to go over the 
 convent. I don't regret that ; I should be sorry 
 to spoil the impression of last night by seeing 
 those frescos in broad daylight. At what time 
 do we start ? " 
 
 " About half-past two," I replied. 
 
 " Then " said he, " if you will allow me, I will 
 go and fasten my valise." 
 
 He went into his room on that pretext, and I 
 heard him walking up and down as he had done 
 during the night. My presence was evidently 
 intolerable to him. How would it be when he 
 met the abb^ ? I dreaded, with an uneasiness 
 which was actual suffering, the moment when 
 
78 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 we should all three be seated at the table of the 
 refectory, forced to converse, the priest and I 
 knowing what we did know, and he with this 
 weight on his heart. Curiosity, I must admit, 
 was mingled with my uneasiness. In demanding 
 my absolute silence Dom Griffi must certainly 
 have had some purpose. Did he hope to induce 
 the young man to confess privately, and so hu 
 miliate him as little as possible ? Or, with the 
 divine mercy which shone in his eyes — the 
 eyes of a true believer — had he resolved to for- 
 give in silence, and rely upon what was left of 
 Dom Pio's collection to rebuild the terrace ? At 
 any rate the breakfast hour came, as all hours 
 come ; Dom Grifi& called us himself in his usual 
 cheery and cordial voice. 
 
 " Well, Signer Filippo," he said, grasping both 
 the young man's hands affectionately, "you 
 must be hungry after your walk." 
 
 " No, Father," answered Philippe, who seemed 
 disturbed by the friendly pressure, "but I am 
 afraid I have taken cold." 
 
 " Then you must drink a little of my ' vino 
 santo,' " replied the monk. " Do you know why 
 we give it that name ? We hang the grapes to 
 dry till Easter-day, and then we press them. 
 There 's a Tuscan proverb : iVeZr ^lva sono tre 
 vinaccioli, — ' there are three 'seeds in a grape ; ' 
 uTio di sanith, uno di letizia, e uno di ubria- 
 chezza, — 'one of health, one of gayety, one of 
 
A SAINT. 79 
 
 intoxication.' But in my ' vino santo ' there are 
 only the first two." 
 
 He kept up a series of cheerful and kindly 
 remarks throughout the meal, which consisted 
 of the promised trout, roasted chestnuts, eggs in 
 an omelet supposed to be fried, and thrushes — 
 those thrushes gorged with grapes and juniper 
 which are the autumn luxury of this ever- 
 blessed region of Italy. 
 
 " I have never been able to eat a single one of 
 those little birds," said the father, " they fly so 
 near to me here. But our peasants catch them 
 with birdlime. Have n't you noticed the men 
 and boys with tame owls. They lay sticks 
 covered with lime round the vineyards. Then 
 they put an owl on the ground fastened to 
 another stick. It hops about here and there. 
 The birds are attracted by curiosity. They light 
 on the sticks and are caught. I am surprised 
 that no poet has ever made a tale of that little 
 picture." 
 
 Not an allusion to the lost coins, not a word ! 
 Not one word either to show a difference in his 
 regard towards me and towards my companion ; 
 possibly there was something a little more 
 caressing in his manner to Philippe, who, I saw 
 plainly, was overcome by the almost affectionate 
 kindness of the man he had so basely betrayed. 
 A score of times I saw tears at the rim of his 
 eyelids ; evidently he was not born to evil. 
 
80 PASTELS OF MEK. 
 
 Twenty times I was on the point of saying to 
 him, "Ask pardon of this saint, and make an 
 end of it." But-instantly as the moisture came, 
 he would frown, his nostrils contracted, the fire of 
 pride would quench the tears within his lids, and 
 the conversation went on, or rather, I should say 
 the monologues of Dom Griffi, who presently 
 compared his beloved Monte-Chiaro with Monte- 
 Oliveto, and spoke with tenderness of a friend 
 of his, who is also a friend of mine, the dear 
 
 Abbd de N" , who had undertaken a duty 
 
 like his own. Then he told us many anecdotes 
 about the convent, some of them very interesting, 
 — one, for instance, of a visit of the Constable 
 de Bourbon on his way to Eome, when he se- 
 cretly ordered the prior to say amass for his 
 soul, naming the day which did actually succeed 
 his death. Other tales were naive and childlike, 
 and related mostly to local legends. It was not 
 till after the meal was over and we had returned 
 to our sitting-room that I fathomed his intention 
 and understood the idea suggested to him by his 
 knowledge of the human heart, — knowledge 
 which none but a confessor can ever really ob- 
 tain. Having left us for a few moments he 
 returned with Dom Pio's coffer in his hand. I 
 glanced at Philippe. He had turned livid. But 
 the wrinkled face of the monk gave no sign of 
 stern arraignment. 
 
 " You have taught me the value of these 
 
A SAINT. 81 
 
 coins," he said simply, as he placed the box on 
 the table. " There are more than I need to 
 repair the terrace. Do me the favor to select 
 two or three for each of you, and keep them in 
 memory of an old monk who prayed for you both 
 this morning." 
 
 He looked at me as he said the words as if to 
 remind me of my promise. Then he left the 
 room, and Philippe Dubois and I remained alone 
 and motionless. I trembled lest the guilty man 
 should guess that I knew his secret. The divine 
 mercy of Dom Griffi, destined to produce a well- 
 nigh blasting repentance through excessive shame, 
 could only have its full effect on this anguished 
 soul if the gall of wounded self-love were not 
 present. 
 
 " What is better than a good priest ? " I said 
 at last, merely to break the silence. 
 
 Philippe made no answer. He turned hastily 
 to the window and looked at the green prospect 
 we had so much admired on our arrival ; he was 
 plunged in thought. I opened the coffer and 
 took a coin at random to obey our entertainer ; 
 then I went into my bedroom. My heart was 
 beating hard. Presently I heard the young man 
 rush away ; quick, quick rang his footsteps in 
 the direction of the monk's cell. His pride was 
 conquered. He had gone to return the stolen 
 coins and confess his fault. In what words 
 he addressed the father he had so insolently 
 6 
 
82 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 compared to the late Hyacinthe, and how the 
 latter answered him, I shall never know. But 
 when we were once more in the carriage and 
 Pasquale was saying to his mare, " Come, Zara, 
 show your legs." I turned to give another 
 glance at the convent we were leaving and to 
 bow to the abb^ ; and as I did so I saw in the 
 look which my companion was casting on the 
 simple monk the davm of another soul. No, the 
 era of miracles is not over, but saints are needed, 
 and they — are scarce. 
 
11. 
 
 MONSIEUR LEGRIMAUDET. 
 
 To Francis Magnaed, 
 
II. 
 
 MONSIEUK LEGEIMAUDET. 
 
 I. His Life. 
 
 Since my advent into that mysterious region 
 which is called the World of Letters, I have 
 been in the way of studying so many original 
 characters, so many paradoxical existences that 
 the Z. Marcas of Balzac and the nephew of Ea- 
 meau, drawn from the life by the boldest prose 
 writer of the eighteenth century, seem to me 
 quite natural. But among them all I have 
 never known so strange a being as a professional 
 parasite, an enemy of the great Diderot, a per- 
 sonal and malignant enemy as though he were 
 the worst of rivals, Monsieur Jean Legrimaudet. 
 He is now dead, and his calumnious book 
 against the Encyclopedists, which obtained, in 
 1855, a certain reactionary success, is now for- 
 gotten. Forgotten likewise are his two volumes 
 against Victor Hugo, a tissue of fantastic tales, 
 of anecdotes as silly and false as they were 
 scandalous. I forget who it was who said of 
 him, with a laugh : " Legrimaudet ! his style is 
 our best protection against his calumny ; " and it 
 
86 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 is a fact that neither the phraseology of this 
 quUl-driver, his vague and pretentious rhetoric, 
 the credulous imbecility of his information (al- 
 ways puerile and usually inexact), nor the silly 
 intolerance of a so-called Catholicism, which 
 consists in outlawing all adversaries suspected 
 of free thought, — in short, nothing in the books 
 which he has left behind him gives the slightest 
 idea of the originality, the, if I may so express 
 it, carnal originality of the lampooner himself. 
 
 By a singular caprice of accident the coming 
 of each new year brings before me (I will pres- 
 ently tell why) the vanished face of a genuine 
 Diogenes, whom my eyes have seen, to whom 
 my ears have listened. The temptation has 
 now come to me to sketch, in two studies, the 
 portrait of this solitary, who lived a lonelier life 
 in Paris than Crusoe on his isle. To begin with, 
 I shall relate the incident which connects in an 
 odd way in my mind the recollection of this 
 man with the close of the month of December. 
 Possibly those persons who are curious about 
 eccentricities may study with interest these 
 " sketches from nature." Perhaps some reader 
 addicted to practical conclusions will find in this 
 simple tale one proof the more in support of the 
 great precept of the gospel, so profound and so 
 misunderstood : " Judge not." I have often 
 thought that the highest moral aim of a work of 
 art — I am speaking now of literary art — should 
 
MONSIEUR LEGEIMATJDET. 87 
 
 consist in deepening our sense of the mystery- 
 hidden in the depths of each human being, the 
 most pitiable, the most comic, or the most sub- 
 lime. " The soul of another," as Tourgu^nief 
 said, "is a darksome forest." Ah, what true 
 words! whoso keeps them living in his mind 
 will spare himself the commission of much daily 
 injustice and many cruelties to the hearts of 
 others, — most of which are, in truth, mere 
 deeds of ignorance. 
 
 When I met Legrimaudet for the first time, in 
 1874, it was towards the end of autumn, at the 
 rooms of the earliest comrade of my youth, 
 Andr^ Mareuil, who was for a time the fashiona- 
 ble newsmonger of the day, and then — what ? 
 But at the period of which I now write Mareuil 
 was fulfilling the humble duty of assistant li- 
 brarian at the Bibliothfeque Rationale; and it 
 was about this time that he began to exhibit a sort 
 of childish taste for what he considered a life 
 of elegance. On a salary of eighteen hundred 
 francs, he lived near the Pare Monceau, under 
 the eaves of a monstrously tall house. There it 
 was that I one day found, installed in the chim- 
 ney corner of my friend's little study, a man 
 about sixty years of age, of squalid appearance, 
 who was resting his feet on the fire irons, — 
 two horrible feet, deformed by bunions and 
 chilblains as others are by gout, and tortured 
 
88 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 into toots bought evidently at a bargain, or given 
 by some ungenerous benefactor who wanted to 
 get rid of them. The head of this person 
 would have caused the most ignorant Phil- 
 istine in matters of art to exclaim, " That 's a 
 Daumier ! " — so faithfully did it reproduce the 
 favorite type of that tragic draughtsman. Gray 
 hair that was greenish in spots framed a cadav- 
 erous face, a gray and withered face, where two 
 small, filmy eyes blinked in their reddened lids 
 with a spite that was almost savage. A sunken 
 mouth, a dirty beard, wrinkles that made black 
 lines across his face, were all in keeping with 
 the shabby high silk hat which the stranger held 
 on his knees, the wetting of innumerable showers 
 being visible on its nap. The man wore a dress- 
 coat, stranded — after what strange vicissitudes ? 
 — on his back. A coat, did I say? no, the 
 ghost of a coat, a spidery tissue, every thread of 
 which was worn till the whole web seemed 
 ready to give way at a touch ; it was buttoned 
 in front over a knitted jersey that was once 
 maroon. A blue cravat knotted round a ravelled 
 shirt-collar, and a pair of ragged trousers com- 
 pleted the shabbiness by which society recog- 
 nizes a positive and incurable outcast, the victim 
 of life reduced to live in beggary, but who still 
 retains, even in his worst distress, a certain 
 middle-class bearing and manner which distin- 
 guishes him from, the broken-down workman. 
 
MONSIEUR LEGRIMAUDET. 89 
 
 Though I was then very young and knew but 
 little of the varieties of that vast species, the 
 beggars of literature, I could not fail to recog- 
 nize in the strange guest who was warming his 
 tatters before Mareuil's fire a parasite of the 
 lower walks of the profession. My friend did 
 not name him at first ; he seemed to eujoy the 
 curiosity I felt in the picturesque stranger, who, 
 for his part, took no notice of my existence. 
 His whole person had an air of outrageous inso- 
 lence, which clothed him like a panoply and 
 rebuffed all pity. I heard of his saying once, in 
 speaking of his clothes, — 
 
 " I am the one Frenchman who wears a coat 
 well. I have worn this coat for fifteen years." 
 
 And it was said in good faith. His whole 
 bearing revealed an overwhelming self-conceit, 
 condensed into contempt for every one about 
 him, as I had reason to see in this first inter- 
 view. While Andr^ and I were conversing we 
 happened to mention the " Journal de Lestoile," 
 which my friend was then reading; and he 
 showed me a curious copy, with marginal notes 
 of its own time, which he had borrowed from his 
 Library. The visitor, who had not opened his 
 mouth since my entrance except to spit noisily 
 into the fire, suddenly asked Mareuil to let him 
 look at the book. 
 
 He took it in his fleshless hand (by the thin- 
 ness of which I could guess the emaciation of 
 
90 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 his poor body), turned over a few pages, and 
 then, returning it to Andr^, he remarked, — 
 
 " It is a vile business that of a librarian. 
 They are so tempted. They all end by stealing 
 the books entrusted to them. Good evening, 
 monsieur." 
 
 He rose to take leave after uttering this amaz- 
 ing impertinence. I saw that Mareuil was 
 struggling with an inclination to laugh. 
 
 "Wait a moment ;" he said, " I wish to present 
 you to each other." He named me, and then, 
 with great solemnity, he said : " Monsieur Jean 
 Legrimaudet, the personal enemy of Diderot and 
 Hugo, the author of the ' History of Drunken- 
 ness in Literature.'" 
 
 " Is monsieur a literary man ? " asked Legri- 
 maudet. 
 
 " Poet," replied Mareuil. 
 
 "Ah, monsieur is a poet" (he pronounced the 
 word "poat "). " Then write me an ode, monsieur, 
 write me an ode. Do you know what Veuillot 
 calls a poet ? A lascivious sparrow. So when 
 he published his own verses I made the follow- 
 ing epigram upon him : — 
 
 Veuillot, 
 Promiscuous 
 Sparrow 
 Lascivious. 
 
 I am therefore your brother in Apollo. Monsieur, 
 and dear comrade, adieu." 
 
MONSIEUR LEGEIMAUDET. 91 
 
 With this jest, uttered in a sour tone, he de- 
 parted, without my being able to understand 
 whether he was in joke or in earnest, whether he 
 was rambling in mind, or whether his pretended 
 wit — and what wit ! — concealed some low 
 meaning. He had no sooner crossed the thresh- 
 old of the door than Mareuil gave way to shouts 
 of laughter as I asked him : — 
 
 " What sort of being is he ? Can he be the 
 living illustration of some book of his ? Why do 
 you receive such queer fellows ? " 
 
 " Queer ? yes, that he is," said Andrd " But, 
 I can't help it, I 've an unwholesome taste for 
 him. He amuses me. Everybody has a hobby in 
 this low world, and mine is to compel him to say 
 ' Thank you.' Does that puzzle you ? Well, I 
 swear I 'm in earnest. I have been working for 
 that result the last two years, and I see no 
 chance of obtaining it. I have done him a score 
 of favors ; I have .paid his rent, I have bought 
 his clothes, I have sent him wine when he was 
 ill, employed a doctor, furnished drugs, — and in 
 return I have never got anything, if you '11 be- 
 lieve me, but insolence like that we have just 
 heard. You remember our old friend D'Altai 
 and his weakness in trying to hide his age. 
 Well, he fed Legrimaudet for twenty years. 
 Now guess what the latter did last year. He 
 wrote to the mayor of poor D' Altai's native town 
 for the record of his benefactor's birth. It cost 
 
92 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 him three or four francs, and he is only worth 
 about two sous. He then procured some of that 
 type cut in brass, such as children play with, and 
 before long about a hundred of us received cards 
 each bearing the words 'November 2, 1810. 
 Birthday of young Monsieur d'Altai.' A mere 
 nothing, but true malice. Ah! I do believe 
 him to be a thorough villain, but without com- 
 mitting crime, remember. They ought to create 
 a title for him, — the Great Thankless of Prance. 
 He is quite sincere. Ever since he wrote his 
 Hugo book he considers himself a celebrated 
 writer cruelly persecuted. I 'm telling you the 
 truth ; I swear it is a true portrait." 
 
 I remember that I made no reply to my 
 friend's sally. About this period he was pro- 
 fessing a dandyism of misanthropy which I have 
 still much difficulty in understanding. Human 
 infamy cheered him into a gayety which I 
 thought horrible, but which he managed to com- 
 bine with the utmost delicacy of friendship. 
 When, sometime later, I happened to read Flau- 
 bert's correspondence I met with an identical 
 sentiment, — the avowal of ferocious gayety in 
 presence of moral foulness. Is it merely one of 
 the phenomena of a morbid condition, the suf- 
 fering of a wounded sensibility which will not 
 admit the wound, but conceals it under this 
 peculiar form of irony ? Is it the melancholy sat- 
 
MONSIEUR LEGRIMAUDET. 93 
 
 isfaction of a pessimism which delights in veri- 
 fying its doctrines by the spectacle of the lowest 
 depths to which that pretentious animal called 
 man is capable of descending ? Or, does there 
 still remain in certain civilized beings, hidden in 
 their inner consciousness, a feeling analogous to 
 that worship of monsters which appears in cer- 
 tain primitive religions, — an instinct partly cruel, 
 and which in latter times explains the presence 
 of dwarfs about a king, like those deformed 
 creatures whose ugliness is immortalized by 
 Velasquez in the museum on the Prado ? When 
 I scolded Andrd for this tendency of his mind, 
 which I could not prevent myself from consider- 
 ing as degrading, saying frankly, '' You ought 
 to be ashamed of it," he would answer with a 
 " Yes, Prudhomme," which silenced me. I 
 therefore refrained from reproving his sentiments 
 about Legrimaudet. I thought in my own mind 
 that my paradoxical friend had once more mis- 
 placed his fancy on a miserable and grotesque 
 individual ; and, in spite of his clever silhouette 
 of this literary vagabond, I should probably have 
 forgotten all about the man if chance had not 
 brought me again in contact with the Great 
 Thankless of France, under circumstances which 
 I was not likely to forget. 
 
 A fortnight went by after my visit to Andrd. 
 We were then in the latter half of November, 
 
94 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 It was one of those cold afternoons, clear and 
 dry, when the laziest of men enjoys a walk 
 along the clean pavements as he breathes the 
 crisp air of a cloudless sky. I was returning at 
 a quick pace along the streets which led to the 
 old Sorbonne, where I was following a course of 
 lectures on Greek philosophy in the " £cole des 
 Hautes Etudes," when I stopped before the booth 
 of a dealer in ^second-hand books and began to 
 turn some of the leaves. Need I say that my vo- 
 cation as Hellenist was not at all serious, and that 
 I was not searching on an open bookstall for the 
 works of either Sophocles or Demosthenies ? My 
 " finds " were volumes published under the head 
 of romance. The stamp of Urbain Canel was 
 more precious to me far than that of Elzevir. I 
 acquired thus, in these gleanings along the by- 
 ways of the Latin qiiarter, certain books which 
 to this day bring back the freshest and sweetest 
 joys of my apprentice years, — Merim^e's " La 
 Jacquerie," from the press of Honors Balzac, 
 printer of the rue Visconti ; " The British Opium- 
 Eater," by A. D. M., a thin little volume written 
 by Musset not long before the " Spanish Tales ; " 
 and the " Eouge et Noir," of Beyle, published by 
 Levavasseur with a current change of title on 
 each page, following the text. On this fine, cool 
 November day my quest for first editions may 
 have seemed to me less interesting than usual, 
 for I turned to examine — instead of the stall be- 
 
MONSIEUR LEGEIMAUDET. 95 
 
 fore me — the interior of the shop, where second- 
 hand books were piled in tottering heaps, and a 
 number of the bibliomaniac brotherhood were 
 standing about. There may have been four 
 or five of them, all poorly but decently clad, 
 watched apparently by a shopman, in whom I 
 recognized with amazement the parasite of my 
 friend Mareuil, the beggar who had never said 
 ' Thank you,' Monsieur Jean Legrimaudet himself. 
 I was not mistaken. Even if his general ap- 
 pearance had misled me, each detail would have 
 convinced me that I was right, and that it was 
 he himself, unaccountably in charge of the shop, 
 with his rusty old hat on his greenish white 
 hair ; himself, with his shapeless boots worn 
 down at heel ; himself, with the blue cravat 
 knotted around his ragged shirt-coUar ; himself, 
 with that lank and insolent face of his, wan and 
 bitter, inexpressive and scoundrelly ; himself, in 
 short, in his threadbare coat almost diaphanous 
 from usage, buttoned across that faded shirt. 
 With his hands buried in the over-long sleeves 
 of his coat as in a muff, he was walking up and 
 down behind the bookstall. Every now and 
 then the knotty hands were protruded from the 
 rotten cloth to take some volume from a humble 
 reader of the kind who swarm round these stalls 
 to inhale the treasures of a book, as other food- 
 less beings smell a meal behind the gratings of a 
 restaurant. While thus employed in a species 
 
96 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 of police work the discolored face of Monsieur 
 Legrimaudet seemed more arrogant than ever. 
 Not a word fell from his contemptuous lips as 
 he renewed his watchful pacings. Certainly I 
 could not be suspected of sharing my friend's 
 sympathy for this odious pamphleteer, for the 
 calumniator of the noble dead and the noble 
 living, of Diderot and of Hugo. But all the 
 same I could not escape a painful feeling in my 
 heart as I watched him thus employed, — the 
 author of several volumes and a man of letters, 
 after aU. On the other hand, how came he to 
 have this employment, if his friend and pro- 
 tector, Mareuil, knew nothing about it? He 
 continued to pace up and down, without deign- 
 ing to recognize or even to look at me, with a 
 sort of impassibility under extreme misery which 
 reminded me of an anecdote related, I think, by 
 the Abbd de Pradt of a soldier of the imperial 
 guard. After the retreat from Eussia the abbd 
 saw this soldier leaning on his gun in the court- 
 yard of the embassy at Warsaw, and sound asleep 
 as he stood. The priest woke him gently, saying, 
 "You had better go to bed, my brave fellow." 
 " Ah ! " replied the man, " they are always 
 waking me too early;" and again he went to 
 sleep, still standing. The immovable face of 
 Legrimaudet showed an equal endurance, all 
 things considered, to that of the emperor's vet- 
 eran. But how came he there, the watchman of 
 
MONSIEUR LEGEIMAUDET. 97 
 
 a bootli ? Had he lately accepted the situation 
 to escape the degradation of begging ? Did he 
 conceal this employment from his benefactors 
 to add his meagre profits to their alms ? The 
 mystery was soon explained, for presently 
 another old man came up to Legrimaudet ; 
 comfortably clad, this one, for he was wrapped 
 in a goat-skin coat, his hands were covered with 
 mittens held round his neck by a string, on his 
 head was a cap with ear-pads, and his feet were 
 protected by woollen socks and galoshes. His 
 ruddy complexion and the blue veins traced 
 upon his rubicund cheeks told of frequent liba- 
 tions and plentiful repasts. At the first words 
 of the new-comer I knew that I saw before me 
 the owner of the establishment, and that his 
 substitute had only supplied his place for an 
 hour to oblige him. 
 
 " Here I am, Monsieur Legrimaudet," he said, 
 gayly, " I 've not tried your patience too long, 
 have I ?" 
 
 " Give me the book I want," said the old 
 writer, without deigning to reply to the semi- 
 excuse of the librarian. " In these winter 
 months the daylight is soon over, and I get 
 little time to study. I go to bed at six o'clock. 
 That's not your way of living." 
 
 " Oh, I," said the other, — " no. I play a little 
 same with a few friends as soon as the blinds 
 are fastened and the dinner eaten ; but by 
 7 
 
98 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 eleven o'clock, good-night, everybody goes away. 
 Here are your two volumes." 
 
 " Well, good-by," said Legrimaudet, taking the 
 books. " Take care of yourself, monsieur, take 
 care of yourself. Eemember your brother died 
 in a fit ; such things run in families, and consid- 
 ering the life you lead in cafds, and at your age 
 — hum ! you ought to be careful. Good-by." 
 
 Had he suddenly noticed that I was close by 
 him as he made that speech, and did he only then 
 recognize me ? Or, having waited in vain tiU I 
 should bow to him while he watched the books, 
 did he feel a desire to let loose upon me a few of 
 his jeering epigrams, the absurdity of which was 
 steeped in gall ? At any rate he had no sooner 
 taken leave of the librarian than he approached 
 me, and taking off his hat with a flourish, he 
 cried : — 
 
 " I salute you, monsieur le pofete. How is 
 your muse ? And your friend. Monsieur Ma- 
 reuil, is he as melancholy as ever ? I don't know 
 what the young men of the present day mean by 
 being as dismal as a night-cap. When I was of 
 your age, monsieur, I was a gay dog. Is that 
 the ode in my honor that I see in your hand ? " 
 he added, catching sight of a roU of paper that I 
 held under my arm. 
 
 " No," I answered, naively ; " merely notes on 
 lectures I am attending at the Sorbonne." 
 
MONSIEXIB LEGEIMAUDET. 99 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! then you are a student over 
 there ? Tell me, worthy scholar, have you the 
 same provost who was there last year ? " 
 
 " Yes, the same," I answered. " Do you know 
 him?" 
 
 " He is an ass," he said, briefly. " Do you 
 want me to prove it to you ? " 
 
 " I have always heard him mentioned, on the 
 contrary, as a really distinguished scholar." 
 
 " Distinguished ! distinguished ! Well, you 
 shall judge." I kept pace with him, carried 
 away by an overpowering curiosity, while he 
 went on : "You know, of course, what a noise 
 was made in the world of letters about my 
 ' Household and Finances of Victor Hugo.' 
 Ha ! I lived in a species of intoxication for two 
 years! I couldn't open a newspaper without 
 reading my name." , 
 
 This was true, but he forgot to add that it was 
 usually coupled with some epithet, such as rogue, 
 vermin, scavenger, abject scoundrel, black-mailer, 
 sponger, and other amenities of that nature. 
 
 " Monsieur," he continued, " I have a trunk 
 full of those articles. When I am alone in my 
 own room I often read them over. I measure 
 my fame by the insults of those who envy me. 
 I have letters from distinguished personages. 
 A great functionary in Japan wrote to congratu- 
 late me. The Bishop of Orleans thanked me for 
 my last book, offering me his respects, a thing no 
 
100 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 bishop has ever before done to a layman. Well, 
 monsieur, I received a letter last year from your 
 provost requesting me to caU upon him about a 
 matter which concerned me. I debated in my 
 own mind : ' What can he want of me ? To 
 offer me the cross, no doubt. Holding my opin- 
 ions can I accept it from the Eepublic ? Pooh, 
 I could wear it in travelling — ' Finally I made 
 up my mind and I kept the appointment. I 
 went to that Sorbonne of yours. They made me 
 wait. Those professors have n't an idea of the 
 value of time to us writers. At last I was 
 shown in, and what do you suppose your distin- 
 guished provost said to me ? ' Monsieur Legri- 
 maudet, you have asked assistance from the 
 minister of public instruction as a literary man ; 
 have you published any books ? ' " 
 
 " What did you reply ? " I asked ; for he 
 stopped speaking and looked full in my face for 
 the ilash of indignation which this ignorance of 
 his genius should have brought there. 
 
 " I rose," he replied, " and I said to him, ' So 
 you don't know the books in your library ? 
 Mine are all there ; go and read them, — they '11 
 teach you something ; ' and I departed." 
 
 " But the assistance you wanted ? " I said. 
 
 " Monsieur, that ignorant fool, very naturally, 
 made them refuse it. But I 'm used to that. It 
 is all envy. Beware of talent, monsieur ; be like 
 your friend. Monsieur Mareuil, who has n't any. 
 
MONSIEUR LEGEIMAUDET. 101 
 
 He is commonplace, third-rate, and he succeeds. 
 He steps on nobody's toes. As for me, monsieur, 
 just at that time all my Mecsenases were absent. 
 I hadn't a farthing. I used to buy two sous' 
 worth of fried potatoes on credit. It is hard for 
 a man when he 's illustrious to come down to 
 such petty loans." 
 
 He uttered this speech in so passionate a tone 
 that it did not occur to me to laugh at it ; more- 
 over, behind the incredible folly of his conceit I 
 perceived an abyss of wretchedness before which 
 all sense of ridicule and all repugnances were 
 wiped out. Almost without reflection I still 
 followed him. We passed up the rue Soufflot. 
 As the dome of the Pantheon rose before us 
 Legrimaudet glanced at the inscription on the 
 pediment with a strange look. I began to think 
 Mareuil less inexplicable for his interest in this 
 social rebel, who was evidently thinking in his 
 own mind that the nation would fail in its mis- 
 sion if after his death no place was found for 
 him in this temple to great men, and I said to 
 him : — 
 
 "Are you alone in the world ? Have you no 
 family, no relatives ? What part of France do 
 you come from ? " 
 
 "You are very superficial, monsieur," he said 
 gravely. "What region of our country do you 
 suppose I could come from if not from that of 
 Bossuet? Monsieur, I am from Dijon. My 
 
102 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 father was a baker there, like the father of Gen- 
 eral Drouot. At ten years of age I amazed that 
 town by the precocity of my intellect. I went 
 to the seminary in the iirst place, and then to 
 the clerical college. But I preached too well, 
 monsieur ; I excited the jealousy of the bishop 
 himself, and I left before graduating ; otherwise 
 I might now have been a cardinal. Still, I don't 
 regret it ; I could n't have written my ' Diderot ' 
 with such vigor if I had never come to Paris." 
 
 " Did you come here when you left college ? 
 That must be a long time ago," I said. 
 
 " Very long," he replied, evasively. " First, I 
 got a place as clerk in a lawyer's office, thanks 
 to a cousin of mine who is dead — no brains but 
 a good heart ! This clerkship was a great help 
 to me for ray ' Hugo,' monsieur. I learned to 
 understand business, and I was fully prepared to 
 examine the accounts of the so-called poet and 
 his publishers. I might have stayed at the bar ; 
 I was well fitted for it. But the gift of writ- 
 ing is inexorable. My fingers itched for the 
 pen. When my father died I inherited fifteen 
 thousand francs and I plunged into literature. 
 My career began with the ' History of Great 
 Men,' but the true bent of my genius was still 
 to seek. When I found it I began my ' Diderot' 
 That was about the time of the Coup d'jGtat. I 
 publislied it. Monsieur, in spite of the turmoil 
 in politics that book made a great noise. Then 
 
MONSIEUR LEGEIMAUDET. 103 
 
 it was that envy and jealousy became so bitter 
 against me. Never since have they let me go. 
 All the newspapers and all the publishing 
 houses have turned their backs upon me. My 
 own profession has persecuted me. They sought 
 to silence me, monsieur, and they chose a sure 
 means — hunger." 
 
 " Did you never think of getting a situation 
 of some sort where you could support yourself 
 and write in ofi" hours ? " 
 
 "A situation! Consider the value of my 
 time, monsieur. I have not enough time as it 
 is to compose. Besides, I have no fears for the 
 future — it is a mere CLuestion of patience." 
 
 " Do you expect to inherit property ? " I 
 asked, surprised at the confident tone with which 
 this white-haired tatterdemalion spoke of the 
 future. The future ! why, to him it was the 
 hospital, the dissecting-table, at best a pauper's 
 grave ! And yet an indescribable flash of chi- 
 merical hope lighted up his surly countenance. 
 Ignominy made way for mystic lights ! 
 
 " Monsieur," he said, " cut me a lock of your 
 hair, and I will have your horoscope drawn for 
 you. I know the somnambulist who predicted 
 the success of Napoleon III. when he consulted 
 her in the disguise of a jockey. This is a fact. I 
 put her to sleep myself in 1855. I am a power- 
 ful magnetizer. She used to give me my break- 
 fast, and I went there every day from twelve 
 
104 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 o'clock to three. We quarrelled after a time be- 
 cause she advised me not to publish my " Hugo." 
 She was right enough on the score of my peace 
 of mind. She predicted that I should die a rich 
 man and a senator; therefore I can borrow 
 money without feeling ashamed of doing so. 
 All my loans are entered in a ledger ; they will 
 all be paid. Your friend Mareuil has an account 
 with me. Yes, every farthing will be paid. If 
 not," he added, in a smothered voice, "I re- 
 nounce God ; I will die damned — " 
 
 We had passed the Pantheon and were now 
 at the angle of the rue de la Vieille-Estrapade 
 when Monsieur Legrimaudet stopped short to 
 litter that sentence. There is, I must believe, 
 in open, avowed self-conceit driven to its par- 
 oxysm a mighty power of fascination ; for this 
 cry, this extravagant outburst of indomitable 
 confidence in his heritage of fame, uttered by 
 the miserable creature before my eyes, grasped 
 me for a moment like some weird poesy. The 
 voices of the schoolboys in a college play-ground 
 alone broke the silence of this provincial part of 
 Paris — the Paris in which my companion had 
 managed to construct himself so fantastic an 
 existence of illusions and infamy. Perhaps he 
 felt the need of thinking aloud ; for, resuming 
 his walk and drawing me in the direction of the 
 rue Tournefort through a labj'rinth of by-ways 
 quite unknown to me, he continued : — 
 
MONSIEUR LEGKIMAUDET. 105 
 
 " Monsieur, five months ago, when this distress 
 came upon me, the worst I have ever known, 
 I despaired. I wished to kill myself. I thought 
 of the means. I had a mind to hang myself 
 on the statue of the leader of the Encyclopedists, 
 Voltaire, to cast shame upon my own party. 
 Just at that very moment I received a legacy. 
 A widow, who had been my neighbor, gave me 
 all her husband's clothes. Clothes-dealers are 
 thieves ; but out of this windfall I managed to 
 get enough money to live on. Another edition 
 of my ' Hugo,' came out, — a splendid affair in 
 spite of the cabal. Monsieur, I don't need 
 much. With five hundred francs a year I am 
 rich. That surprises you because you don't 
 know how to live. Count it up. I have a very 
 good room for fifteen francs a month in a large 
 house in the rue de la Clef, close by here. It is 
 a place for workmen, but that does n't matter to 
 me. They know me under the name of Mon- 
 sieur Jean. I reserve until I become a rich 
 man the satisfaction of making known that a 
 Legrimaudet was reduced to live in such a place 
 by the jealousy of his contemporaries. My room 
 has a chimney, which is very useful to me in 
 cooking ; in fact, that is why I have kept it in 
 spite of a great defect — it has only a skylight, 
 and when the snow falls I cannot open the 
 window to clear it, and the room is dark all day. 
 But it 's a great thing to be able to warm your 
 
106 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 food. That quarter is full of cookshops on 
 account of the workmen. If you were to meet 
 me of a morning, monsieur, when I go for pro- 
 visions with a tin box under my arm, in which I 
 put my purchases, you would think I was carry- 
 ing a pat^ that cost six francs. Let me tell 
 you, people ought to know how to buy, and 
 where, and when. In the rue du Pot-de-Fer 
 Saint -Marcel there's an eating house. Wednes- 
 days the owner serves the customers himself and 
 he 's generous, — as generous as a thief. For 
 seven sous I get a portion large enough to last 
 me two days. Saturday is roast-meat day, be- 
 cause it is pay-day. But you must choose your 
 dealers carefally. If you go a little way up the 
 rue du Faubourg Saint-Jacques (I '11 give you the 
 address, and be careful to go before nine o'clock) 
 you can get a fine slice of rare roast-beef. 
 Those days I breakfast better than Monsieur 
 Hugo, in spite of his ill-gotten millions and his 
 avarice. Two sous' worth of bread, and I 'm 
 ballasted for work. At ten o'clock, unless I am 
 forced to go elsewhere, I'm in the Bibliothfeque 
 Nationale, and there I stay till four, reading and 
 making notes. I read a great deal. I read the 
 whole of Bayle last year. It is immensely over- 
 done. Towards five o'clock I get home and pre- 
 pare my wine-soup or my milk-tea. The latter 
 is only milk and tea, but I like that double 
 meaning, — it is my lethe, for after it I go to 
 
MONSIEUR LEGEIMAUDET. 107 
 
 sleep. In summer I generally go after dinner to 
 the Bibliothfeque Sainte-Genevifeve. In winter I 
 go to bed at six o'clock on account of the cold. 
 The nights are long. I wake up about two. 
 This quarter is full of convents ; and that is very 
 convenient, for you don't need a watch. I light 
 my pipe and smoke in bed without a lamp. 
 Those are my hours of inspiration. I have 
 lately been planning another book ; for which, 
 by the by, I need these two volumes." 
 
 " May I ask the subject ? " I said. 
 
 " No, monsieur ; I know literary life too well 
 to tell any one the subject of a book before I 
 publish it." 
 
 This discourse, begun, interrupted, and re- 
 newed among the countless turns of the narrow 
 by-ways, had brought us to the nest of houses 
 which cluster about Sainte-P^lagie, and I read 
 on a corner house the name of the rue de la Clef. 
 I have not gone through that quarter of Paris for 
 many years, and I do not know whether it still 
 swarms, as it did then, with common boarding- 
 houses of a sinister aspect, mingled with the 
 open shop-fronts of Auvergnats, displaying the 
 heterogeneous rubbish from which those sons of 
 the Cantal manage to derive a certain number 
 of copper sous. The street is populated by old 
 clothes-dealers, and this may have led one of 
 their number to open a house of furnished 
 
108 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 lodgings, before the door of which Legrimaudet 
 now stopped nie. The front wall bore the fol- 
 lowing inscription : " Hotel de I'ficu and de Saint- 
 Flour united." The wine-shop, which occupied 
 one half of the ground-floor, had another sign, 
 meaningless to all minds except that of a compa- 
 triot of Vercing^torix and Pascal, "Wines of 
 Coran and of Chanturgue." On the other side, 
 the shop window of a laundry displayed the 
 doubtful freshness of some shabby, bluish linen ; 
 while a door beside it, with a lattice painted green, 
 gave to view at the end of a passage a damp stair- 
 case leading to the bedrooms, which, to judge by 
 the yellow frontage reeking with filth, by the win- 
 dows which had no blinds, by the settling of the 
 building as though it were sinking into itself, 
 must have been like the dens of the galley 
 slaves. It was indeed the true home of a Legri- 
 maudet, the lair of the outcast writer of scurri- 
 lous books ! He had been silent ever since we 
 turned the corner of the street, and seemed to be 
 unconscious of my presence. I noticed, just be- 
 fore we reached the house of which I speak, that 
 he fumbled in the pockets of his coat and drew 
 out a package, which I saw to be a cake wrapped 
 in paper. He took off the paper and held the 
 cake in his hands ; then, with a smile I should 
 never have expected to see on those venomous 
 lips, he approached a child about six years old, 
 who was playing in front of the laundry — a 
 
MONSIEUR LEGRIMAUDET. 109 
 
 poor little puny fellow, pallid and emaciated, 
 the mere sight of whom leaping like a wounded 
 insect was enough to wring the heart. He was 
 lame, and when he ran he managed a light crutch 
 with much dexterity. 
 
 "Good morning, Henri," said Legrimaudet. 
 " How are you to-day ? I have brought you a 
 nice cake." 
 
 The child looked at the old writer with a 
 cruel expression of repugnance. He took the 
 cake and smelled it. The awkward fingers 
 of the old man had left their marks upon the 
 frosting. 
 
 " It is almost as dirty as you are yourself," 
 said the boy, who went off to his playmates, 
 munching the cake, however, and paying no 
 further attention to Legrimaudet, who came 
 back to me and said, in a more sarcastic voice 
 than ever as he pointed to the house with a 
 flash of the eye that seemed to me almost 
 dangerous, — 
 
 " See to what I have been brought by all that 
 has been written for and against me ; I am 
 Monsieur Much-Ado-about-Nothing, tortured for 
 want of money." Then, after a moment's silence 
 holding out his hand with a gesture that was 
 both humble and surly, " Have n't you a bit of 
 silver," he said, " for the little chapel ? " As I 
 gave him a franc from my scanty student's purse, 
 he added, thrusting the paltry alms into the 
 
110 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 pocket of his knitted waistcoat with inexpressible 
 contempt, " What do yon expect I can do with 
 that ? " Having given utterance to this singular 
 form of thanks, he pushed open the latticed door, 
 which gave forth a squeaking sound, and disap- 
 peared, without looking back, into the damp 
 corridor. 
 
 I am quite certain that I have not changed 
 ten words of this conversation, which I wrote 
 down the same evening in my journal of that 
 date. As I thus parted with Monsieur Legri- 
 maudet (can any one, after this, continue to deny 
 that fate has to do with the construction of 
 names ?) the feeling came to me that I had 
 just seen in all its naked truth (as I stated at 
 the beginning of my narrative) a unique person- 
 ality, a specimen of enraged and suffering hu- 
 manity, such as could by no possibility be 
 compared with any other. Yes, I had looked 
 into the depths of a lost soul, damned by so- 
 ciety, — full of anguish, pride, hatred, madness, 
 and at the same time a grotesque and aborted 
 soul. Yet, in this nature that was all ugliness 
 one spot of delicacy lingered, — pity for that 
 poor limping child ; and the child, ungrateful too, 
 despised the great despiser ! The sole tender- 
 ness of this miserable being was rejected. Who 
 shall say that there was not in that last touch 
 of kindness in the gangrened heart the sign of a 
 
MONSIEUR LEGKIMATJDET. Ill 
 
 possible redemption ? One of those divine heal- 
 ers of a troubled conscience, such as we imagine 
 a true priest might be, would have found in that 
 incident a ground of hope. This interview had 
 so powerfully affected me, and the questions it 
 awakened were so closely allied to the philoso- 
 phical ideas which were then seething in my 
 young mind, that I could not refrain from telling 
 Andr^ Mareuil of my discovery of a kindly feel- 
 ing in the heart of the man who had never said 
 " Thank you." My friend persisted in laughing 
 viciously. 
 
 " If onsense," he said ; " you saw wrong, or else 
 Legrimaudet has tapped the washerwoman of a 
 franc or two at some time or other. I do beg of 
 you, don't diminish his merit to my mind. He 
 is a more perfect specimen than you have any 
 idea of. I am delighted to know you had a 
 taste of his quality when your twenty sous were 
 given and received. He reminds me of those 
 metal cases we see at fairs. Slip in a sou and 
 out comes a caramel ; with him it is an insult, 
 and even more unfailing." 
 
 " Well, consider me a ninny, and let us say no 
 more about it," I replied, not insisting any 
 longer. 
 
 I disapproved of Mareuil's chaffing manner ; 
 nevertheless it intimidated me. I was at an age 
 when young men blush for their own best in- 
 stincts. They have a confused impression of 
 
112 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 being duped in the game of life if they yield to 
 the naivete of their first beliefs. It is then that 
 they choose their friends among those whose 
 precocious cynicism is most painful to them; 
 they dare not give free course to the impulses of 
 their heart, the value of which they do not per- 
 ceive until later in life, when a debilitated and 
 calculating egoism has superseded them. The 
 laws which rule the development of our persons 
 require that we pass through that singular crisis 
 the acute stage of which is marked, about our 
 twenty-second year, by the vaunting of vices. I 
 had not the nerve to tell Mareuil that I was 
 sure, perfectly sure of the sincerity of his wretched 
 parasite in that action of kindly pity to the lame 
 boy. Neither did I dare to add that his own 
 duty was to give the poor man a little real sym- 
 pathy and not his usual sneering and ironical 
 charity. We stopped speaking of Monsieur 
 Legrimaudet that day ; and other days passed, 
 in fact many, without affording us the chance 
 to converse on that or any other topic ; for it so 
 happened that I left Paris for several months 
 soon after my long conversation with the cynic 
 of the rue de la Clef. I went for the first time 
 to Italy and Greece. When I returned I found 
 Mareuil launched in the whirlpool of an existence 
 which rendered any intimacy with him almost 
 impossible. He had left the Bibliothfeque Na- 
 tionaJe, and his early dreams of a literary life 
 
MONSIEUR LEGfilMAUDET. 113 
 
 above the trammels of self-interest were trans- 
 formed into a more practical desire to coin money 
 immediately with his real gift of writing. He 
 had taken a place as parliamentary reporter of 
 an evening newspaper. "We met sometimes as 
 everybody meets in Paris, once in three months 
 or so, with a " Good-day," " How are you ? " 
 " We really must make an appointment to dine 
 together some of these days." Such remarks are 
 made in good faith, but the time never comes, 
 the appointment is never made; we may live, 
 perhaps, four or five years in the same city as a 
 friend, whom we still love with all our heart, 
 without ever passing a couple of hours with him. 
 
 Though I had never met Monsieur Legri- 
 maudet after that famous afternoon, his enigmat- 
 ical personality still remained in my memory 
 and obsessed me ; so much so that whenever I 
 did meet Andr^ I never failed to question him 
 about the old author. Neither did my questions 
 ever fail to bring back the old mocking laugh to 
 the lips of my former comrade, — the mere name 
 of his favorite parasite was enough ; and each 
 time we spoke of him he told me some charac- 
 teristic anecdote which exhibited a trait of this 
 singular individual. 
 
 " Monsieur Legrimaudet ? Oh, yefe ! as thank- 
 less as ever. I have never yet got a grateful 
 word out of him. Last week I was going into 
 the country, and I left an order with my woman 
 
114 PASTELS OF MEN, 
 
 to clothe him from head to foot with a lot of my 
 things, — hat, boots, trousers, jacket, shirts, etc. 
 He wrote to me. I trembled as I opened his 
 letter ; was it possible that he would belie him- 
 self and thank me for the unexpected gift ? 'No, 
 he gave me a commission to do something for 
 him with the editor of a newspaper, and the sole 
 allusion he made to the clothes was in the signa- 
 ture of the letter : ' Wholly yours, except the 
 socks.' My woman had forgotten to give him 
 any, and he reminded me of ^the omission with 
 his usual severity." 
 
 Or perhaps it was : — 
 
 "Monsieur Legrimaudet? As bitter as ever. 
 He came to see me as soon as I got back from 
 England. ' Have n't you a bit of silver for the 
 little chapel ? ' — you know the formula. I gave 
 him the money. ' Monsieur,' he said, pocketing 
 it, ' your breeding has improved ; travelling is 
 good for you. Adieu.' " 
 
 Or this : — 
 
 " Monsieur Legrimaudet ? Just as fuU as ever 
 of deluded self-conceit. He earned a little money 
 lately by a vile pamphlet on the diseases of free- 
 thinkers, — just the subject for him ! What do 
 you suppose he did with the money ? That out- 
 cast, that homeless vagabond, bought himself a 
 bishop's ring — do you hear me ? a bishop's ring 
 with an enormous amethyst. He wears it — 
 you recollect his hands ! ' Monsieur,' he said, ' I 
 
MONSIEUR LEGEIMATJDET. 115 
 
 have been tracking these rings for years. There 
 are twenty-three among the second-hand dealers 
 in my quarter. This one is much the finest.' " 
 
 Or again : — 
 
 " Monsieur Legrimaudet ? — oh ! famishing as 
 ever, with his hungry speeches ; you should 
 hear him let fall the sensualities of a poor beggar 
 who has n't had a full meal since his youth. ' It 
 has been a good summer,' he said to me the 
 other day ; ' the cholera made fruit cheap. I 
 ate my fill. It is better than meat.' " 
 
 Or again : — 
 
 " Monsieur Legrimaudet ? Well, he 's break- 
 ing out. The virtuous castigator of the obscene 
 Diderot has turned lively. He talks of his 
 amours in connection with a certain blue worsted 
 comforter one of his kind neighbors has knit for 
 him. ' The sex admires celebrity,' he said to 
 me with a foppish air ; then — in his well- 
 known style — ' When I was young, monsieur, 
 with three sous' worth of coffee, I never found 
 them coy. Monsieur Paul de Kock has drawn me 
 to the life in Gustave.' Then he pulled from his 
 pocket a newspaper article in which was stated 
 the number of soldiers the coming war was 
 likely to cost. ' Good news for men like me,' 
 he added, with a wicked look ; ' it will leave us 
 more women,' — winding up with the usual bit of 
 silver for the little chapel and more insults. I 
 tell you, he is absolutely perfect." 
 
116 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 My information as to this strange individual 
 stopped short at this point until (about six 
 years after I had first met him) I was sitting at 
 supper with Audr^ Mareuil on the 31st of 
 December, 1880. Do I remember the date on 
 account of the incident, or the incident on 
 account of the date ? I don't know. By this 
 time I was myself connected with the press, 
 and I wrote the theatrical notices in a journal 
 that has since disappeared. Andr^ Mareuil, no 
 longer a parliamentary reporter, was now a 
 critic, and held the same position as mine on a 
 more fashionable newspaper. We were again 
 " accrochds," hooked together, as the saying is, 
 and we fraternized as of old between the acts of 
 a smutty vaudeville or the boisterous scenes of 
 a drama. We agreed to sup together on this 
 particular night in accordance with the ironical 
 custom which turns the end of the year into an 
 occasion for an orgy. Our orgy, however, con- 
 sisted in a talk, our elbows on the table in the 
 corner of a restaurant, with a dozen oysters and 
 a cold partridge ; but it was a long and a gay 
 talk as in the olden time. We were in the 
 midst of this frugal repast and a good deal 
 amused by the comings and goings of the other 
 guests who landed in our nocturnal restaurant. 
 We were observing them out of the corners of 
 our eyes, and Andrd, incorrigible satirist, -was 
 characterizing them each with a word, when he 
 
MONSIEUR LEGEIMAUDET. 117 
 
 suddenly struck his forehead like a man con- 
 victed of unpardonable forgetfulness. He sent 
 the waiter for his overcoat, felt for his portfolio, 
 and from that receptacle he produced a letter, 
 saying : — 
 
 " Think of my forgetting to speak of Him ! " 
 " I '11 bet I know who, by the mere tone of 
 your voice," I cried. " No other than the Sieur 
 Legrimaudet." 
 
 " You 've named him," he replied, with a shout 
 of laughter. " Well, I humbly beg your pardon. 
 You were right, and I was wrong ; perfection is 
 not to be found in this world. The old rascal 
 said ' Thank you' to me this very morning — do you 
 hear that ? He said ' Thank you ' — t-h-a-n-k, 
 thank, y-o-u, thank you ! — said it for the first and 
 the last time. To begin with, read that letter ; '' 
 and he held out to me a sheet of paper, of the 
 kind used by schoolboys in their classes, on 
 which was written, in letters of enormous size 
 and almost childish shape, the following 
 epistle : — 
 
 Paris, December 23. 
 Young, handsome and lucky reporter, — 
 I have heard through a lawyer that you are hack 
 from the provinces. I supposed you still away when 
 young Barre-Desminieres, one of my Meceenases, told 
 me he had been introduced to you this week. He 
 liked you. Did you like him 1 You have the same 
 taste in dress. 
 
118 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 All hail to your amazing success ! I shall go and 
 see you to-morrow night, New Year's Eve. Shall 
 you make yourself invisible, like your brother jour- 
 nalists ? When I, young and then unknown to fame, 
 made my visits of admiration to Chateaubriand, 
 Lamartine, Lacordaire, Berryer, Paul de Kock, Mon- 
 talembert, I was instantly received and welcomed. 
 But when I wished to see the princes of the press 
 I found them inaccessible, in fact unfindable — for 
 fear of Clichy. Creditors continue to be a terror to 
 these gentry, but nowadays they are more afraid of 
 being sent to prison on conaplaint of the people they 
 have slandered than for the paltry debts that used to 
 terrify them in the olden time. Ask your dear 
 friend Monsieur d' Altai if that is not so. 
 
 The autumn overcoat bestowed upon me by the 
 model handmaiden (I like that old word) mareuilized 
 me extremely well. The lawyer I mentioned has 
 been friendly. He gave me two pairs of magnificent 
 shoes. I have stretched them on a form made to 
 the measure of my foot expressly for me by the 
 shoemaker of this street. Saint Crispin protects the 
 triumphant enemy of the impious Diderot. I shall 
 put them on to-morrow when I call to ask you for 
 my little New Year's gift. Silver money will not 
 suffice this time ; I shall count on a louis, and this, 
 I think, will probably be my last demand. There is 
 talk of the government giving me a pension, such as 
 will distinguish me from the mob of paltry writers to 
 whom they dole out a hundred or so of francs. This 
 louis is very necessary to me ; I need it urgently. 
 I wiU tell you why when we meet. 
 
MONSIEUR LEGEIMAUDET. 119 
 
 Again, all hail ! Are you as morose as ever, — you, 
 •who have all the good things of life 1 Real talent is 
 gay ; look at me. 
 
 Jean Legrimaudet. 
 
 " Well, that is a document indeed," I said, 
 as I gave the letter back. " Why did he want 
 the louis ? " 
 
 " That 's your triumph," returned Mareuil, with 
 a gesture of vexation. " Do you remember tell- 
 ing me of a lame boy, to whom you said Monsieur 
 Legrimaudet had given a cake ? You declared 
 that the old wretch had a tender corner in his 
 heart for that child." 
 
 "And you made fun of me," I interrupted, 
 laughing. 
 
 " I was wrong," continued Andr^, in a tone of 
 discouragement, " quite wrong. I thought Leg- 
 rimaudet was greater than nature ; that was mere 
 romanticism, as our friend Zola says. Life, it 
 seems, is more commonplace. The why and 
 wherefore of that louis was the little lame boy. 
 This morning about ten o'clock Monsieur Legri- 
 maudet arrived and he told me, after getting off 
 a string of his usual impertinences, that the child 
 was ill, very ill, — adding that he, Legrimaudet, 
 wished to surprise him with a Christmas present. 
 He explained to me his interest in the small 
 boy. The mother, a laundress on the lower 
 floor, had done his washing for nothing for 
 
120 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 several years. The cMld was very intelligent, 
 and so lively ! he said. It was sad to see him 
 lying in his bed, white as the sheet, with eyes 
 that were dying. In short, toy precious Legri- 
 maudet was no longer recognizable in this 
 sudden rush of pity. A diabolical idea came 
 into my head. I must tell you that I played 
 cards at the club last night. Casal was banker, 
 more 's the luck ! a wink ! — in short, I won 
 over iifty louis on the ace. Legriraaudet did 
 certainly seem to me sincere. Here was a 
 chance to fathom the depths of his ingratitude. 
 I took a hundred-franc note from my purse and 
 gave it to him, saying : ' Come, Monsieur Legri- 
 maudet, let us go shares in the present to your 
 little sick boy. Here 's your louis, and four to 
 boot. Buy him a toy such as he never dreamed 
 of." You can't imagine the face of that old 
 animal when I said this. In his eyes, on his 
 lips, in every dirty wrinkle of the hideous 
 parchment which serves him for a skin, a mighty 
 struggle went on between the rush of pleasure 
 my offer gave him and the bitter hatred he has 
 felt for me for so many years." 
 
 " Which you deserve," I interrupted. " Tell 
 the truth ; admit that there is something al- 
 most fiendish in your sarcastic charity to him." 
 
 "Yes, noble soul, there is," replied Mareuil. 
 " At last, — unheard-of, improbable, unbelievable 
 sight ! — I saw with my own eyes gratitude get 
 
MONSIEUR LEGEIMAUDET. 121 
 
 the better of hatred in that soul which I had 
 fondly believed to be too strong for it. Oh ! it 
 was all over in a minute, short but simple. His 
 eyes betrayed an indescribable struggle. His 
 face contorted. His toothless mouth opened, and 
 I heard a ' Thank you ' issue from it, rasping his 
 throat ; he took my hand — for a second — and 
 then he left me, muttering, ' To the toy shop.' " 
 
 " It is you whom I would fain have seen dur- 
 ing that interview," I said, laughing in my turn. 
 I was touched that my friend should tell me this 
 tale, and half provoked that he should still affect, 
 even before me, to ridicule his own emotion. For 
 I felt he was moved, even he, by the incident, 
 though he would not have said so for an empire. 
 
 " As for me," he replied, " I suppose I looked 
 like the baron in ' On ne hadine jpas,' when Bla- 
 sius tells him that Perdican is skipping stones on 
 the water with the girls in the village. ' Let us 
 shut ourselves up in my study and think of 
 these things,' he says. Monsieur Legrimaudet 
 had no sooner crossed the threshold of the door 
 than I felt I was a fool for believing his fantastic 
 story. The sick child, the louis for a toy, the 
 philanthropic washerwoman ! ' Mareuil, my 
 friend, you are a ninny,' I said to myself. Where- 
 upon I seized my coat, and behold me in the 
 street pursuing my Legrimaudet. I was deter- 
 mined to see if he lied to me in pretending to 
 go for the toy. I had no difficulty in getting 
 
122 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 within sight of him as he shuffled along at the 
 end of my street. He turned to the left, I 
 turned to the left. He went down the boulevard 
 Hausmann, I did the same behind him. A quar- 
 ter of an hour, later I saw him enter a toy-shop at 
 the corner of the rue de Eivoli — he actually 
 did ! I had a moment of pure joy as I noticed 
 the scared look of the shopman when this ragged 
 object asked for a toy worth five louis. The 
 man called the master of the shop, who came 
 himself to speak to Legrimaudet, and then went 
 and fetched his wife. I was quite prepared to 
 enter the shop myself, and protect the poor 
 devil if they accused him of having stolen the 
 blue bank note, which he held in his hand while 
 master, mistress, and clerk gazed at it and at him 
 with insulting suspicion. At last they decided 
 on showing him a box of tin soldiers, — you 
 know, those boxes we once dreamed of, cannons 
 that go off, calvary you can dismount, carriages 
 that open, tents to put up and down. He 
 chose one, they wrapped it up, and out he came, 
 the bundle under his arm, having left the bill, 
 the whole sum, and the master of the shop had 
 given him no change 1 Which proved indisputa- 
 bly that this half-starved wretch, this black- 
 mailer, this lamentable being had actually paid 
 away his hundred francs, every one of his hun- 
 dred francs, to carry that ridiculous present to a 
 sick child, — and perhaps that very child wOI 
 
MONSIEUR LEGRIMAUDET. 123 
 
 receive it as you told me he did the cake, 
 without a ' Thank you.' " 
 
 " Poor Legrimaudet ! " I could not help saying. 
 
 " Well, as for me," added Mareuil, with comical 
 indignation, " I 've a great mind to have nothing 
 more to do with him ; he has deceived me these 
 eight years. I thought I was nourishing a per- 
 fect specimen of ingratitude, the true literary 
 monster in all its splendor. I beheld it in mar- 
 ble, in brass, in anything you please, — a 
 solid block ; and to think of this rift in it ! 
 No, truly, he's spoUt for me." 
 
 II. His Death. 
 
 Months and months had passed since this 
 night of the 31st of December when we supped 
 so gayly, Andr^ and I, resting from our labors 
 of incompetent dramatic criticism ; and if there 
 was any one I felt sure I should never meet 
 again it was that strange and contradictory 
 being, Jean Legrimaudet. For this reason: An- 
 dr^, the only person who formed a link between 
 us, was married under rather peculiar circum- 
 stances, and had left Paris permanently or very 
 nearly so. He had taken a mistress, a pretty, 
 intelligent girl, named Christine Anroux. They 
 had one child. His paternity so enraptured the 
 sceptic that he married the mother, which was 
 not very sensible. But after aU, it was a pleas- 
 
124 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 ing generosity whicli might have done him 
 no harm with the rest of us if Christine had 
 been a suitable wife for a writer, without other 
 ambition than to help her bohemian of a hus- 
 band to do his best in his profession. Alas ! 
 she was just the reverse. Mareuil had not been 
 married three months before we noticed — we 
 who delighted in him for what he was, the light- 
 hearted, high-spirited, froitrfrouant Parisian, the 
 gay mimic, the humorous dilletante — a strange 
 alteration in his manner of writing. He took 
 to political portraiture, — he, the anonymous 
 author of " L'Art de Eompre," and the teller of 
 that immoral masterpiece, " Le Jupon de Hor- 
 tense." That feathery pen, hitherto dipped in the 
 lightest of ink, was now employed — on what ? 
 in sketching the profiles of apprentice ministers, 
 men who had jumped to power through the folly 
 of electors, and who were maintaining themselves 
 there by low intrigues between the centres and 
 the extreme left. The unfortunate fellow was 
 applying his gift of writing to this miserable 
 purpose, which he could not justify, as in the 
 case of his earlier career, by the want of money. 
 Soon he degenerated still more. He left the staff 
 of the boulevard journal on which he had worked 
 for years, and began a series of " Social Studies " 
 for a pretentious newspaper. More inexplicable 
 still to my mind, he revived, in his signature to 
 these articles (all of a marked radicalism in science 
 
MONSIEUK LEGRIMAUDET. 125 
 
 ■ and government), a paltry and rather inelegant 
 title which he had formerly dropped, out of dis- 
 like to his father, — Mareuil des Herbiers. I re- 
 member that a few days after the first appearance 
 of this rather ridiculous signature at the end of a 
 column of prose, the tendency of which was 
 more deplorable than usual (though the charm- 
 ing style remained, so lively, trenchant, and so 
 truly French !) my poor Claude Larcher was 
 breakfasting with me just before he started for 
 our dear Auvergne, where he died. It was in 
 fact the last time that I ever saw this best 
 friend of my childhood and youth, — the friend, 
 too, of Andr^ Mareuil. Naturally enough, we 
 were led to speak of the " Social Studies " and 
 their author. 
 
 "What the devil possessed him to use that 
 signature ? " I said. " Why trot out those Her- 
 biers whom he used to ridicule so heartily when 
 his father was living ? — his ' natural father ' as 
 he called him by way of rejecting him, like 
 Beyle. And just now, too, after making himself 
 the reddest of the reds ! Have you seen his de- 
 fence of religious persecution ? To become a 
 red-hot Eepublican and pick up his title at the 
 same time ! why, there 's no sense in it." 
 
 " Patience," replied Claude. " Christine is 
 behind it all. I don't know exactly what broth 
 that witch is brewing, but this production of the 
 title is only the beginning of things." 
 
126 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 " Beginning of what things ? " I cried, shrug- 
 ging my shoulders. 
 
 " Why, a secretaryship to an embassy," said 
 Claude, " or master of petitions to the Council of 
 State, treasurer to something or other, perhaps 
 even prefect." Then, as I interrupted him with 
 " Oh, oh ! " he gave way to the nervous irrita- 
 bility which seized him at the least opposition 
 in his later days. " Why not ? " he demanded. 
 " I think you are very surprising ! Would n't 
 he do honor to all those posts ? Has n't he 
 more talent in his little finger than all the titled 
 men who fill them put together ? — though, upon 
 my word, they do impose upon your mind 
 amazingly." 
 
 " I don't question his talent," I said, to stop 
 the tirade. I dreaded the usual assertion of 
 the superiority of the man of letters, which I 
 know but too well ; I myself produce it now and 
 then in view of the shameful ignorance and 
 foUy of certain specimens of wealth ; and what 
 good do I do ? — " but how about his behavior ? " 
 
 " Behavior, indeed ! Is n't Christine there to 
 look after him ? Do you count her for nothing ? 
 ' Andr^ ! ' She has a way of pronouncing those 
 two syllables — cold, cold, icy enough to freeze 
 the mercury in the thermometer which she 
 makes him keep in his study. She is afraid he 
 will overheat himself and get a congestion ; she 
 drops in to watch the glass, and takes occasion to 
 
MONSIEUK LEGRIMA.UDET. 127 
 
 find out with what friend Andr^ is dawdling. 
 Would you believe she got him to quarrel with 
 me by telling him I made love to her? She 
 was afraid of me ; and much mistaken she was, 
 for I adored their pretty idyl. When Bdbd, as 
 she calls him, came, and she used to tickle 
 him to make him gurgle at his papa, can't you 
 fancy me between them, recalling my little 
 suppers with her and Gladys and Casal on the 
 one hand, and on the other my devotions with 
 Andr^, before the altar of a compliant Venus ? 
 Ha ! it was worth any money to me ! But I 
 must needs go and quote to her a saying of 
 Casal's which made me laugh consumedly only 
 the other day. I was breakfasting at his house 
 with Lord Herbert Bohun, and we were in the 
 smoking-room, where Casal showed me photo- 
 graphs of their last trip to the Eocky Mountains. 
 He mistook the album and opened one in which 
 I recognized the portraits of several, of his 
 former mistresses. ' Oh, those,' he said, hastily 
 turning the leaves, 'are a lot of women who 
 hate each other.'" 
 
 " Do you mean to tell me that you quoted that 
 speech to Madame Mareuil ? " 
 
 " The truth is," said Claude, ingenuously, " I 
 had really forgotten it concerned her. There is 
 so little of the same woman in her that I no 
 longer remember what she was. However, she 
 paid me off sharply, apropos of my last novel. 
 
12 & PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 ' Will you never write a single page in which 
 there is true sentiment/ she said, — ' some- 
 thing which does one good, something to re- 
 fresh us ? ' 'I don't do the brunette article,' I 
 replied." 
 
 " And Mareuil all this time ; what of him ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " Des Herbiers ? Well, he looked rather 
 sheepish, as you may suppose ; and since then 
 he turns his head away when he sees me. 
 When we do bump our noses together, as we did 
 at the tailor's the other day, it is merely ' Good- 
 day,' ' Good-morning.' In short, so far as he 
 and I are concerned, it is a quarrel. No matter 
 now, but when Madame des Herbiers is ambas- 
 sadress, or treasuress, or mistress of petitions, it 
 ■will matter a good deal, a good deal ! " 
 
 I was too accustomed to Claude's exaggera- 
 tions to attach any importance whatever to his 
 prophecies, which, however, to my utter amaze- 
 ment, I must confess, were actually verified. In 
 the first place, I believed the transformation of 
 the most fantastic being I ever knew into a staid 
 public functionary a thing impossible. Besides, 
 there was Christine Anroux's past life. I was 
 doubly mistaken, however, and Claude was right 
 as to Andr^, and above all as to his wife. The 
 chief strength of women lies in their daring to 
 undertake all things, being convinced, and justly 
 so, of the invincible power of petty means, and 
 
MONSIEUR LEGKIMA.UDET. 129 
 
 of public forgetfulness. The name and title of 
 des Herbiers were nothing in themselves, but 
 they obliterated a good deal of the compromising 
 literary baggage of Mareuil ; moreover, it Was a 
 barrier, however slight, against retrospective 
 inquiry. Ah ! she counselled him intelligently. 
 To follow the regular road by regular stages was 
 the best way to avoid the ridicule that might 
 fasten on his new nobiUty, or rather on its tardy 
 revival. As might be expected, a boulevard 
 reporter who did not like Mareuil made fun of 
 the pretension, declaring, with a coarse and 
 savage allusion to poor Christine's past, that 
 Andrd should have signed his articles " Des 
 Herbages." Mareuil sent a challenge to this 
 individual, and was lucky enough to lodge a ball 
 in his side, which all but relieved the press of 
 one of the worst toadies of the fraternity. He 
 profited by the sympathy aroused by this sum- 
 mary punishment of a colleague as much hated 
 as he was feared to publish the register of his own 
 birth, and to prove, documents in hand, his right 
 to the particle, and he finally renounced the 
 name of Mareuil; for the article in which he 
 asked, according to the formula, " to be allowed 
 a few words on a personal matter," was signed, 
 " Des Herbiers " only, and so were all others 
 that succeeded it. After this the tie that bound 
 him to the doctrinaires of the Left was strength- 
 ened. He offered himself as ministerial candi- 
 
 9 
 
130 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 date in the western department from which he 
 came. He failed, but, all the same, he had set 
 foot into politics, and when, seven months later, 
 the " Officiel" gazetted the appointment of Mon- 
 sieur des Herbiers to a prefecture no one was sur- 
 prised at the result, which, by the bye, brought 
 forth the last telegram I received from Claude 
 before his death. I copy it here in all its irony, 
 suppressing only the address and retaining the 
 signature, in which was a poor pun on the title of 
 a book which Claude delighted in. "Was I 
 right ? " said the missive. " See last administra- 
 tive action. Eeconcile me with prefectess ; for 
 whom unbounded admiration. Thy drunken 
 brother." What must the telegraph agent at 
 Saint- Amand-Tallende (Puy-de-D6me) near Saint- 
 Saturnin, where it is dated, have thought of this 
 despatch ! He was right, my dear and absurd 
 friend, for after his death I learned from an au- 
 thentic source that Monsieur des Herbiers was 
 one of the best prefects, and that Madame des 
 Herbiers had reconciled the usually conflicting 
 relations of the prefecture and bishopric. She 
 had found her vocation, and he had found his. 
 Which proves (by way of parenthesis) that the 
 most ill-chosen marriages do sometimes turn out 
 the wisest. Let me ask you what Andrd would 
 have done if he had not married that pretty 
 little Anroux. Made debts and scandalous 
 articles, the latter paying for the former, and 
 
MONSIEUR LEGRIMAUDET. 131 
 
 lived an unhealthy life. Instead of that he re- 
 news his youth, grows stouter but not too stout, 
 gets the Legion of honor, and is sceptical, or 
 broad-minded, enough and also eloquent enough to 
 preside with dignity at a " grand rally of repub- 
 lican conservatives " — the formula of his minis- 
 try. Only one thing puzzles me : Christine in 
 her gay days did not know how to write ; her 
 love-letters were written by an extraordinary 
 person to whom she was much attached, a former 
 pupil at Saint- Denis and afterward the scribe of 
 numberless uneducated cocottes. Had Christine 
 kept her as amanuensis ? Was it she who wrote 
 the letters of Madame la pr^fete to the bishop ? 
 
 If I have made this rather strange digression 
 into the career of the present prefect of — (look 
 into the Register) it has not been, as I trust my 
 readers will believe, for the mere pleasure of 
 ridiculing an old friend who has fallen from 
 bohemianism into honors and distinction. 
 Neither do I intend to criticise the personal 
 appointments of this, our third republic. As 
 things have turned out, the choice of the minis- 
 try has been justified. I have simply given 
 way, pen in hand, to my recollections, when I 
 really intended only to explain why I no longer 
 expected to meet the old parasite of my former 
 friend. For of course Mareuil's new career re- 
 moved him from our usual opportunities of 
 
132 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 meeting, and neither of us sought to make any 
 other ; in which, I must say, we were very wise. 
 The renewal of intercourse between early com- 
 rades who have grown totally dissimilar by the 
 action of life is only a source of suffering. 
 While Andr^ had anchored his boat in a tranquil 
 official haven I was endeavoring to steer mine 
 through the tossing waves of that dangerous 
 literary ocean which justifies my worn-out meta- 
 phor by its inconstancy and its demand for 
 daily effort. To speak prosaically, I had con- 
 tinued to write volume after volume, to produce 
 articles that were more or less hostile to received 
 opinions, to verify in my own person the old 
 remarks of moralists on the bitter hatreds ex- 
 cited by even slight success, and to resign my- 
 self or become depressed according to the mood 
 in which they found me. But after all, the lot 
 of a man who exercises a profession which con- 
 forms to the desires of his earliest youth is a 
 happy one compared to that of others in this 
 world of trial. It has its dark hours, — when, for 
 instance, we are insulted and abused by some 
 brother of the craft, whom we have ever treated 
 with gracious courtesy. But it has also many 
 charming hours, even delightful ones, when some 
 warm effusion of fresh young sympathy comes to 
 us ; and it was through one of these that I came 
 once more upon the traces of the enigmatical 
 Legrimaudet. The occasion was very nearly too 
 
MONSIEUK LEGKIMAUDET. 133 
 
 late for that result, but it was written above that 
 the face of that lost soul of literature, outlined 
 rather than pictured upon my memory by the two 
 interviews I have related and by Andre's confi- 
 dences, should be cut into my mind with inefface- 
 able characters before it disappeared forever. 
 
 I received last year, in the month of December, 
 one of those letters from unknown persons 
 which flatter, irresistibly, an author's self-love, 
 even after long experience has proved to him 
 that such missives serve as a prologue to other 
 missives much less disinterested. This particu- 
 lar letter, signed " Juste Dolomieu," merely asked 
 me to be kind enough to read a voluminous 
 manuscript bearing the rather juvenile title of 
 "The Death of the Century." I opened its 
 pages with distrust, but I closed them with a 
 curiosity that was almost an emotion. The book 
 was a novel, in which the author had tried to 
 embody in three or four personages the . con- 
 flicting tendencies of the age : socialism and 
 dilettanteism, the cosmopolitan spirit and the 
 analytical spirit, pessimistic discouragement and 
 the revival of mysticism. This mere indication of 
 its character wiU relieve me of the necessity of 
 adding that the book was lacking in certain 
 qualities, indispensable, after aU, to the art of 
 novel-writing, which must not be reduced to 
 dissertation. However, though the dramatic ele- 
 ment was absent in this rather incoherent work, 
 
134 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 absent too the red Wood of life, eloquence 
 abounded, and so did intellectual passion and 
 thought. The young author of these pages would 
 doubtless never become a novelist, but he would 
 as undoubtedly be a writer of note. Still less 
 did I doubt it when I saw the youth himself, for 
 he seized my sympathetic interest at once by 
 one of the most captivating personalities of a 
 youthful great artist that I have ever met. Thin 
 and almost fragile, this lad, who might perhaps 
 be twenty-three, had a way of bending his head 
 forward which betrayed long hours of labor at a 
 writing-table, just as his pallid cheeks gave signs 
 of insufficient nourishment, and his clean but 
 threadbare garments of poverty and thrift. His 
 white teeth, shown by his naive smile, and the 
 glorious lustre of his blue eyes proved, on the 
 other hand, that the vital forces were untouched. 
 His hair, worn long, was fine as a woman's, and 
 through the humble sleeves of his woollen shirt 
 came a pair of handsome and well-kept hands. 
 When he spoke ideas seemed to flash from his 
 forehead, and his voice, which was rather low, 
 had a charm analogous to that of his glance and 
 of his writing, the nervous elegance of which I 
 had greatly admired. In short, to employ a 
 term now hackneyed by ill-usage, but which 
 alone expresses an indefinable form of charm, if 
 any face ever deserved to be called interesting it 
 was his, and my first interview with him made 
 
MONSIEUR LEGEIMAUDET. 135 
 
 me quickly aware that a choice soul was hidden 
 behind that delicate personality. After discuss- 
 ing without presumption and without flattery, 
 the criticisms I had written to him upon his 
 novel, he ended what he had to say with the 
 grace of a proud modesty which simply charmed 
 me, the tone was so different from that of the 
 young gentlemen who aspire to literature in the 
 present day. Moreover, I had lately received 
 so painful an impression of the ravages which 
 the ferocity (if I may so call it) of precocious 
 ambition can produce in the heart of a young 
 man of twenty-five (see " A Saint ") that to meet 
 a true aspirant of the literary life did me good. 
 He concluded by saying : — 
 
 " After all, the book is only a study. It is 
 the second I have written, and I shall wait for 
 the eighth or ninth before I print, — if I am 
 then satisfied, or rather, less dissatisfied. Do you 
 think I am right ? " 
 
 "To tell you the truth," I replied, "it is not 
 easy to give a definite opinion on that point. 
 Some men of genius have been trained by con- 
 tact with the public, like Hugo and Balzac. 
 Others have been immediately incapacitated by 
 the same contact. Besides, there is a primary 
 consideration, which seems as if it ought to be 
 quite secondary in such matters, but which con- 
 trols, and always has controlled, the destiny of a 
 man of letters. You will readily understand 
 
136 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 that I mean money. Let me ask you an indis- 
 creet question. What business do you follow 
 outside of your literary work?" 
 
 The young man's clothes betrayed, as I have 
 said, a decent poverty, which seemed to authorize 
 my question; I was therefore not a little sur- 
 prised when he answered : — 
 
 " None. My living is secured for five years." 
 
 " I xmderstand," I said ; " your family are 
 making you an allowance for that time?" 
 
 "Alas!" he replied, very sadly. "I have no 
 family. I lost my father three years ago, and 
 my mother last year." 
 
 " Pardon me," I replied, " for having touched 
 those memories. But," I persisted, " it was the 
 natural interpretation of your remark as to your 
 life being secured for five years." 
 
 " Oh ! " he exclaimed, " had my poor father 
 lived it would not have been for five years ; my 
 whole life would have been secured to me. We 
 did not live in Paris, monsieur, as you have 
 doubtless perceived." He certainly had a sort 
 of awkwardness in his movements which might 
 have been thought provincial, but could also be 
 explained by the timidity of youth. "I was 
 educated," he continued, " at the school of Ami- 
 ens. My father was notary at Beaucamps-le- 
 Vieux, a small market-town, near Aumale and 
 Tr^port. If you ask why the idea occurred to 
 me to become a literary man, I cannot answer 
 
MONSIEUE LEGEIMAUDET. 137 
 
 you. I only know that from my eleventh or 
 twelfth year I have always had it. Monsieur, 
 my father was so kind, so intelligent. He never 
 opposed my choice ; he only asked that I should 
 live in the country under his roof, that was his one 
 condition. He was a man of much education, 
 of high culture. He had reflected much, and he 
 believed in local literature. By his advice I 
 planned a series of novels in which I should have 
 applied the same system which Monsieur Zola 
 employs for his picture of divers social classes to 
 the history of my own neighborhood. I should 
 have followed a GaUic-Eoman family through 
 the ages. Before me were new and unused types 
 and surroundings, or I should rather say revived 
 surroundings, for science enables us in these 
 days to re-construct the Middle Ages and the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, — to men- 
 tion only three periods, — as our forefathers were 
 unable to do. What amplitude in the frame we 
 now possess, which allows of a book on the Cru- 
 sades, on the hundred years' war, the invasion of 
 Italy, the wars of the Eevolution, and those of the 
 Empire ! Why, it is a field of labor in which one 
 may represent, layer upon layer, the formation of 
 the soul of our northern France. Don't think 
 me vain for speaking thus. In revealing to you 
 this project, which was first suggested to me by 
 my father, I wished to show you what a counsel- 
 lor I have lost in losing him. It was an ordinary 
 
138 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 tragedy, but heart-breaking. The absconding 
 of a banker in Aumale and the financial ruin 
 which came of it to the whole neighborhood 
 forced my poor father to sell his practice hastily. 
 It would take me too long to tell you how he 
 indorsed for others out of pure kindness. We 
 were ruined. He died of grief, and my mother 
 soon followed him. I lost the long period of 
 easy leisure required for the execution of the 
 vast plan my father and I had discussed. Be- 
 sides, life at Beaucamps had become too painful 
 to me. I converted into money the little prop- 
 erty I was able to rescue from the wreck of what 
 had once been a comfortable proArincial fortune, 
 and I resolved to go to Paris. I had before my 
 mind the example of Balzac's D'Arthez, and of 
 Balzac himself. I gave myself five years to 
 learn my profession as a novel-writer, and to 
 produce a work which should open the feuilleton 
 columns to me, and so enable me to live by my 
 pen. My calculation was a very simple one : these 
 feuilletons must be made to pay ; it is impossible 
 therefore the editors of newspapers should not 
 accept careful work in preference to the novels 
 they now publish, which are not carefully writ- 
 ten. On the other hand, if there is really any 
 thing in me it wiU come out, and I shall do true 
 work, together with this work for money, — like 
 our masters." 
 This little speech was made in a tone so ener- 
 
MONSIEUR LEGEIMAUDET. 139 
 
 getic and yet tranquil that it pleased me hugely. 
 The project he had developed of a series of 
 novels on the history of his province might have 
 given him the opportunity for a display of pre- 
 tension. On the contrary, the charm of his in- 
 genuous nature made itself felt. The image of 
 this father passionately interested in the literary 
 future of his son and striving to guide his voca- 
 tion instead of opposing it touched me deeply. 
 The reverence the son felt for that dear memory 
 moved me not less. I saw reason to estimate 
 the moral character of this young man as highly 
 as I already did his precocious gift of writing, 
 and his courageous acceptance of his temporary 
 toil. But would his courage survive a practical 
 knowledge of the difficulties against which he 
 was sure to strike ? Thus thinking, and having 
 complimented the wisdom of his scheme, I said 
 to him: — 
 
 " Will you allow me, as elder brother of the 
 craft, to push my indiscretion still further? 
 You say you have just come to Paris ? " 
 
 " I have been here five months." 
 
 " Well, how much have those five months cost 
 you ? " 
 
 " Five hundred francs," he replied, simply. 
 
 " Five hundred francs ! oh, impossible ! " I 
 cried. 
 
 " It is true, though," he said with a laugh of 
 almost juvenile gayety. " I pay fifteen francs a 
 
140 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 month for my room, and three francs for attend- 
 ance. I get my dinner by the plateful in a little 
 creamery frequented by workmen, where the 
 meal costs only twenty sous. I take my break- 
 fast at home with a little something from a cook- 
 shop, bread, cheese, and a cup of coffee which 
 I make myself; the whole does n't cost me iifteen 
 sous. I have linen and clothes enough to last 
 several years. In the evenings I work at the 
 Biblioth^que Sainte-Genevi^ve, and I get up at 
 daylight. In this way I save lights. As for 
 the cold, I have a little foot-warmer, such as the 
 peasant- women use in my province. My budget 
 is fixed at the sum of one hundred and twenty 
 francs a month, one thousand and five hundred 
 francs a year, for five years. At this moment I 
 am within it by over a hundred francs." 
 
 " But suppose the value of some of your little 
 property diminishes ; or suppose it were stolen ? 
 Where have you deposited it ? " 
 
 " Nowhere," he replied, with a knowing look. 
 " I had my poor father's experience for a warn- 
 ing. Before leaving Beaucamps I got the 
 wheelwright of the village to make me a leather 
 belt such as travellers wore in the olden time, 
 with a number of little pockets all round it. 
 I put my money into that and I wear it next my 
 skin under my clothes." 
 
 " How did you manage to secure a room for 
 fifteen francs in the rue Princesse, so near the 
 
MONSIEUR LEGRIMAUDET. 141 
 
 faubourg Saint-Germain ? " That was the ad- 
 dress he had written on the outer sheet of his 
 manuscript This street, which runs parallel with 
 the rue Bonaparte, opens into that nest of old 
 houses clustering between Saint-Sulpice and 
 Saint-Germain-des-Prds. I happened to know it 
 because my bookbinder lived there. Narrow as 
 it was, and little worthy of its royal name, it did 
 not seem, as I recollected it, to be so low in the 
 scale as to furnish lodgings at that meagre price. 
 Juste Dolomieu's face again wore its happy smUe 
 of triumph. 
 
 " Ah ! " he cried, " it was not so easy, I admit. 
 I wished to live in the Latin quarter so as to be 
 near the two libraries, the Sorbonne and Sainte- 
 Genevifeve. I could find nothing. Furnished 
 lodgings are unattainable for me now because 
 the institution of scholarships has increased the 
 number of students who are able to pay forty or 
 fifty francs a month without feeling it. For 
 thirty francs you can get nothing better than a 
 corner und^r the roof ; now my Thebai'd, on the 
 contrary, is comparatively spacious, though 
 rather high up. But there I have a fine view 
 of the old abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pr^s, 
 and I can repeat every evening the lines of 
 Baudelaire : — 
 
 ' Beside the bells I listen, dreaming, 
 To solemn hymns the breeze conveys.' 
 
142 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 The little room has already brought me luck; 
 for it was there I wrote the novel which you 
 have read, — three hundred pages in five months. 
 That's something. Besides, these fourth-rate 
 hotels in Paris are fall of mysteries, and now that 
 I have done the work I laid out to accomplish 
 by the end of the year, I have time for observa- 
 tion. Every day I meet elegant women pass- 
 ing up and down the staircase, who are keeping 
 some rendezvous. Moreover I have a neighbor, 
 an old man who is a great puzzle to me. Imag- 
 ine a character out of Dickens, — a small, old 
 man, very white, and always wearing a dress coat. 
 He used to talk with me, but since he found out 
 that I am busy with literature he avoids me. 
 He is afraid I 'U put him in some book, poor old 
 fellow. I need n't tell you that if I do utilize 
 him I shall take good care to conceal his iden- 
 tity. Yes, poor soul, he is poor indeed ! But 
 he must have seen better days, and belonged to 
 some family who were comfortably off, for he 
 possesses jewels which must have come to him 
 by inheritance. No later than last week I heard 
 voices disputing on our landing. I opened my 
 door and found he was urging the waiter to give 
 him back a little article. It was a bishop's ring 
 with an enormous amethyst. The waiter had 
 taken it from the old man, and he replied in- 
 solently : 'Pay me the ten francs you have owed 
 me for the last month, or 1 11 take it to the pawn- 
 
MONSIEUE LEGEIMAUDET. 143 
 
 brokers and get my money.' The old man re- 
 torted : ' Give back that ring. You know very 
 well I have not received the money I expected. 
 I shall have it in another week ; give back the 
 ring ! ' ' Ten francs, or no ring ! ' cried the other 
 who has an evil face, like that of a bloated Her- 
 cules. If you had only seen the despair of Mon- 
 sieur Jean, — that 's my neighbor's name, — the 
 sort of agonized wrath which contracted all the 
 features of his miserable face, you would have 
 done as I did." 
 
 " You paid the waiter his ten francs and re- 
 turned the ring to the poor devil ? " 
 
 " Of course I did," he replied. 
 
 '\And Monsieur Jean insulted you in this 
 tone — "I continued, imitating as best I could 
 the inimitable voice of my old friend Legrimau- 
 det, whom I had instantly recognized by three 
 infallible signs : his everlasting dress-coat, the 
 incognito of his Christian name, and the bishop's 
 ring, bought in memory of his early ecclesiastical 
 days out of his starvation savings. 
 
 " Surely, you know him ! " exclaimed Juste 
 Dolomieu. " It is quite true that when I said, 
 ' You can return the money when convenient,' he 
 replied : ' Monsieur, in a house of this kind it 
 is very easy to earn money if you are young. 
 That waiter has plenty ; and so, no doubt, have 
 you. Ladies are not scarce.' I did not com- 
 prehend untH after he had gone that he sus- 
 
144 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 pected me of receiving money from some of 
 those fine ladies who often come here." 
 
 " That is he ! " I cried, " he himself ! I recog- 
 nize the Master's manner. Small eyes of differ- 
 ent colors, are they not ? a hideous mouth, 
 bitterness itself? The right leg drags as he 
 walks and he has an enormous bunion on his 
 left foot ? Hair, greenish gray, such as you see 
 in very old portraits ? " Then, as Juste replied 
 to each of my questions with an affirmative ges- 
 ture, I added : " There 's not a doubt of it ! He 
 is no other than Monsieur Jean Legrimaudet." 
 
 When I uttered, with intentional emphasis, a 
 name so celebrated in the annals of defamatory 
 literature I could see on the transparent face of 
 my young visitor an indignant disgust, which 
 the tale of the hundred-franc toy given to a sick 
 child was powerless to lessen. I envied him his 
 indignation. I, too, had felt it on the occasion 
 of my first encounter with the base lampooner. 
 Good heavens ! I was far enough from feeling 
 it now! — another aspect of that truth so elo- 
 quently, and so sadly formulated by the ancient 
 philosopher : " We die degraded by life, which 
 allows us to retain none of the noble senti- 
 ments which can alone render it worth living." 
 Why live it, then ? Twenty years of Parisian 
 existence deprives a man of letters of all sources 
 of surprise save one, — that of not encountering 
 the worst rancors of jealous hatred in the com- 
 
MONSIEUR LEGKIMAUDET. 145 
 
 panions of our youth who have remained behind 
 the age; nor the calumny of those we serve; 
 nor the ferocious jealousy of our juniors, nor a 
 like jealousy in our dearest masters when the 
 ups and downs of fashion bring us into com- 
 petition with them. Ah, that hideous passion 
 of jealousy ! that disease, common to all, but 
 seemingly the special attribute of the genus 
 artist, — so fruitful a soil does it find in hearts 
 that are emulous of fame, — how can we pre- 
 serve a rightful indignation against it after we 
 have once discovered that its existence is a thing 
 unknown to itself? The saddest of all sad 
 things, that. It is a very rare thing that a jeal- 
 ous man is conscious of his vice. On the con- 
 trary, he attributes honorable motives to the 
 furious antipathy he feels toward the object of his 
 fatal passion. The victim of this vice has no 
 difficulty, however, in discovering all abject 
 human weaknesses in those he envies. He 
 swells their total with the anger that consumes 
 him. He sees nothing but those weaknesses ; 
 and so it comes to pass that he mistakes the 
 sincerity of his hatreds for conviction, his brutal- 
 ity for frankness, and his calumnies for a 
 bounden duty. I am not sure but what a Legri- 
 maudet imagines he does the work of an honest 
 man in pursuing with the bitterest bile a famous 
 writer. I endeavored to explain these causes 
 for compassion to the uncompromising young 
 
 10 
 
146 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 mind of my visitor. But he was at the age of 
 all noble revolts, while I, alas, had passed it. 
 
 After he left me I was unable to go back to 
 the work he had interrupted. Again I was 
 forcibly struck by the strange meetings of 
 chance and the delight that mysterious power 
 seems to take in bringing the poles together. 
 Did it intend by this meeting of Juste Dolomieu 
 and Jean Legrimaudet on the same landing of a 
 dingy hotel to symbolize to my eyes the two 
 extremes of literary life, — the artist at the dawn 
 of his talent and his life, on the one hand ; on the 
 other, the victim of the pen at his last stage in 
 the fatal overthrow of all his hopes. The youth, 
 so proud and confident to-day, would he, too, end 
 like this old man ? Had the old man, at twenty- 
 two, when he left his native Dijon for Paris and 
 wrote the " History of Great Men," had he 
 the emotions of this young novel-writer ? " It 
 is indeed a pity," I said to myself, " that Mareuil 
 is no longer Mareuil. What meditations we 
 could have had together." This was Andre's 
 favorite word employed to ridicule Claude 
 Larcher at the time he was writing his " Physi- 
 ology of Love," a naive reproduction of Brillat 
 and Balzac. I imagined to myself the sarcasms 
 that scoffer would have indulged in ; and then I 
 wondered, with a renewal of curiosity, through 
 what vicissitudes the Great Thankless had been 
 led to desert his haven in the rue de la Clef. 
 
MONSIEUR LEGEIMAUDET. 147 
 
 To such poor wretches with the wolf at their 
 door, who Ijve from hand to mouth on a fluctuat- 
 ing charity, the question of lodging is cruelly 
 important. A corner where they are known, 
 where they can, on a pinch, get credit for a week 
 or a month, — why, that is safety, or indeed sal- 
 vation, to most of them, especially in the cold 
 winter months, the cruel severity of which we 
 little imagine as we sit from October to May 
 beside the logs in our fireplaces, with leisure to 
 play with the embers at the will of our dreams. 
 A Legrimaudet, in Paris, is like an animal in a 
 wood. He clings to his burrow, the hole or lair 
 in which he crouches of a cold night or when 
 death threatens him, — that awful death at the an- 
 gle of a quay or on the bench of a lonely boulevard. 
 Besides, I said to myself, that real affection, the 
 only affection of his bitter and suffering heart, 
 would have kept him in the house before which 
 I had seen him playing with the little lame boy. 
 The child must have died, as Legrimaudet seemed 
 to fear he might in his conversation with Andr^ 
 on New Year's Eve, — that New Year's Eve, 
 now so distant, which we had celebrated, my 
 friend and I, with a gayety and light-heartedness 
 now gone forever. All these questions pre- 
 sented themselves to my mind pell-mell, and the 
 upshot was that about a week after my talk 
 with Juste Dolomieu I paid a visit to the rue 
 Princesse which still makes me shudder when- 
 
148 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 ever I think of it. But the sketch which I have 
 here drawn of a lost soul of literature would be 
 incomplete without an account of this subse- 
 quent meeting and the events which followed it. 
 
 I found the little street, as narrow, poverty- 
 stricken and busy as I remembered it, — with its 
 humble shops and its haggard population, its 
 pallid children, its ill-fed workwomen ; in short, 
 as much as ever a miserable slum of the old 
 Paris. I had no difficulty in discovering the 
 house which had the honor of harboring at 
 this particular time two notable specimens of 
 the literary profession. It was the only hotel 
 in the street, and quite in keeping with what 
 I had imagined it to be from Juste Dolomieu's 
 description, except that it bore no other sign 
 than the name of the proprietor painted on a 
 lantern hanging above the door: ''Furnished 
 Eooms, Isidore Cordabceuf, proprietor." The 
 building must have been very old, for it had 
 sunk on one side, — so much so that the words 
 " Furnished Eooms," freshly painted in black 
 letters, showed the line of settlement. The 
 door, which was grated in the style of the hotel 
 de Saint-Flour, was partly open. I pushed it 
 and found myself in a corridor, on the wall of 
 which' I read the words, " Ofl&ce on the first 
 floor." The staircase was covered with a carpet 
 now so worn, faded, and pieced that it was im- 
 
MONSIEUE LEGRIMAtTDET. 149 
 
 possible even to imagine its original color. In 
 epite of the suspiciously sordid aspect of the 
 entrance, I was not prepared for the spectacle 
 presented to me in the office, where two women 
 were playing Chinese bezique among a number 
 of beer glasses on a table which was still covered 
 with the remains of a meal, though the hands 
 of a time-piece on the mantel were at three 
 o'clock. " Eighty patrons," said the stouter of 
 the two women, throwing down four kings, the 
 colors of which were concealed by grease. She 
 showed a bosom worthy of one of Eubens' ne- 
 reids, which shook and oscillated at every move- 
 ment beneath a sort of dressing-gown made of 
 blue flannel, — all the while smoking an Hi-made 
 cigarette between lips that were outrageously 
 painted. A layer of rouge was caked upon her 
 cheeks, the eyebrows were blackened with a 
 chalk pencil, the bandeaux of her dark hair 
 shone with pomatum, while the hands which 
 held the cards were adorned with trumpery rings 
 in such numbers that nearly every finger was 
 covered to the first joint. As for her partner, 
 she wore a dinner-dress, very light in color and 
 very much f urbelo wed, which I judged, from a mere 
 inspection of the sleeves which were braided to 
 the shoulder and fantastically puffed, had been 
 worn about the streets ; a white felt hat, adorned 
 in the same taste with enormous feathers, re- 
 posed on the sideboard among the bottles. This 
 
150 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 oue was fair-haired, with a complexion drained 
 of blood, — the faded, washed-out, ghastly com- 
 plexion of a creature who has gone through 
 innumerable revels. She too was smoking; 
 driving the smoke through her thin nostrils, 
 which contracted nervously. Her blue eyes 
 glittered with a cold, false light. She stared at 
 me rudely with her impassible face, where each 
 feature was sharply defined as if marked by the 
 point of a knife. Her companion, on the con- 
 trary, assumed a honeyed smile on her painted 
 lips as she greeted me ; replying in her softest 
 voice to my question, " Is Monsieur Dolomieu 
 at home ? " " Number 47 ? No, monsieur, his 
 key is on the nail. He is out. But if you like 
 to wait, he won't be long." 
 
 The obsequiousness of this questionable matron, 
 the fantastic apparel and crapulous face of her 
 companion, at once enlightened me as to the 
 class of inns to which the house belonged. To 
 tell the truth, I had suspected as much when 
 Dolomieu mentioned the ladies he met on the 
 stairs, and especially when he repeated Legri- 
 maudet's sneer about handsome young men and 
 their resources. But neither then nor even now 
 when I saw the house did I suspect the particu- 
 lar speculation of the Sieur Cordabceuf, or the 
 official business of that man with the truculent 
 name. I was not to remain long in this state 
 of ignorance, as will now be seen. 
 
MONSIEUR LEGKIMAUDET. 151 
 
 " I have not time to wait," I replied to the 
 fat woman. " But if Monsieur Jean is at home 
 I will go up and see him." 
 
 " Ah ! do you know Monsieur Jean ? " said the 
 woman, eagerly. " What a pity Monsieur is not 
 at home to speak to you. We are rather uneasy 
 about Monsieur Jean, and if we only knew the 
 address of his family — " 
 
 " I don't know it myself," I said. " Is he ill ? " 
 
 " If he goes out of this house any way but 
 feet foremost he'll be lucky," said the other 
 woman. Heavens, what a voice ! coming hoarsely 
 • from that emaciated breast, evidently destroyed 
 by alcohol, — the fitting herald of a Legrimau- 
 det's death. My heart ach^d as I asked : — 
 
 " What is the matter with him ? " 
 
 '' Misery and starvation," said the girl, in her 
 terrible voice, as she blew a puff of smoke from 
 her cigarette and shrugged her shoulders, while 
 the other remarked in her insinuating way : — 
 
 "You can easily understand, monsieur, that 
 if any misfortune happened — " 
 
 " But what does the doctor say ? " I ex- 
 claimed, interrupting her. 
 
 " The doctor ! " she replied. " Oh ! bless me ! 
 he won't let even the waiter go into his room 
 more than once a day. Such a smell in there 
 for a week past ! — ever since he has been in this 
 state. If I were Monsieur I 'd send him to the 
 hospital, sharp." 
 
152 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 " Old Cordaboeuf is wickeder than you, said 
 the girl. " Don't you know that types like Jean 
 often have thousand-franc notes sewn into the 
 lining of their coats all the while they are let- 
 ting themselves die of hunger ? The master has 
 an eye to the hoard when the old one is snuffed 
 out, you may he sure." 
 
 "You have no right to talk so, Eosette," 
 replied the elder woman. " If it were Madame, 
 now, that might be. But Monsieur — it's a 
 word and a blow with him, I know, but he is 
 good-hearted. The proof is that Monsieur Jean 
 owes him four months, and he does not dun him 
 for it." 
 
 " I shall go up," I remarked. " If he does not 
 let me in I can come down again, that 's all. 
 What is his number ? " 
 
 " 49 ; next to Monsieur Dolomieu, fourth 
 story, to the right." 
 
 Then, without further attention to me, she 
 began to arrange the cards spread out before 
 her, and I heard the monotonous " Eighty mon- 
 archs," as I made my way up the staircase over 
 the filthy carpet. Two or three doors opened as 
 I passed, disclosing the faces of other women as 
 painted and bedizened as that of the manager 
 below, — a minor detail which continued to en- 
 lighten me as to the morals of this den. It 
 needed the innocence and literary somnambulism 
 of Juste Dolomieu not to have perceived that 
 
MONSIEUR LEGKIMAXIDET. 153 
 
 this so-called hotel was simply one of those 
 questionable houses which only need a metal 
 number to go by a blunter name. And it was 
 here, in this lair of clandestine prostitution, that 
 a young man was nurturing his earliest dreams 
 of art, here that, Monsieur Legrimaudet was 
 about to die, denying God, as he had foretold to 
 me in former days ! True, the miserable 
 creature had followed a base career as parasite 
 and slanderer ; but to die here, under such con- 
 ditions, was indeed too much. I don't know why 
 a passage from Michelet came into my mind as 
 I passed up the dingy staircase (dingy in spite 
 of the cloudless sky without), — except that I 
 have always loved the strange, deep pity of it. 
 The historian has just related the Ninth Ther- 
 midor and the fall of the sanguinary pedant in 
 whom was manifested in its highest degree the 
 imbecile atrocity of the Terror. Suddenly he 
 breaks forth : " Eobespierre drank gall, to the 
 dregs of all the world contained of it." We 
 may hate the murderer of Andrd Chdnier and. 
 of so many others, but when we think of him 
 in that hour when the populace insulted him, as 
 it formerly acclaimed him, with the basest 
 cowardice ; when his infamous courtiers aban- 
 doned him ; when he suffered in the flesh with 
 that broken jaw, in his pride as he felt himself 
 vanquished and forever, in his mind when he 
 saw the absurd scaffolding of his political ideas 
 
154 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 crumbling to atoms — yes, when we think of 
 him stretched on that table amid those taunts, 
 overtaken by such ruin, pity comes, and we say 
 with Michelet, " he was made to drink all the 
 gall this world contains." How then shall we 
 feel when the matter concerns, not one of the 
 worst tyrants in history, but a poor devil of a 
 parasite, besotted with self-conceit and guilty of 
 certain slanderous lampoons, forgotten as soon as 
 printed, — the fate by the bye, of all books on 
 personalities. Fate had filled his cup, even his ! 
 with gall indeed. Thinking thus, I reached the 
 fourth story, where the carpet came to a sudden 
 end, leaving bare the dingy and disjointed floor, 
 which had not been oiled for many a year. 
 The corridor on which the chambers opened 
 turned round upon itself, for the house, with its 
 two wings thrown back, inclosed a court. A 
 court ? no, — a pit of dampness and foul smells, 
 which 1 perceived through the windows, void of 
 glass. The proprietor had evidently renounced 
 the hope of making money out of these attic 
 rooms, and had therefore relegated to their dis- 
 comforts his own servants and his more luck- 
 less tenants, such as my young friend Dolomieu 
 and Legrimaudet, to both of whom their ex- 
 tremely low rent made even those discomforts 
 acceptable. I looked at the numbers, 42, 43, 45 
 — there is the room of the guileless emulator of 
 D'Arthez ; 49, here the lair of the old monster. 
 
MONSIEUR LEGRIMAUDET. 155 
 
 I knocked. No answer. I knocked again, two 
 sharp raps which would have roused the sound- 
 est sleeper. Same silence. Two more raps. 
 At last I heard a voice, which I recognized, 
 groaning rather than shouting an angry " Who 's 
 there ? " The eager desire I had to see the 
 man suggested the reply which was most likely 
 to force that locked door. 
 
 " A friend of Monsieur Andr4 Mareuil," I said, 
 dwelling on the name, which I repeated, " Mon- 
 sieur Mareuil." 
 
 "Wait a moment," said the voice after a 
 moment's pause ; " I will open the door." 
 
 No doubt Legrimaudet deliberated with him- 
 self as to whether or not he should admit the 
 friend of his former protector. Then he decided 
 to depart from his usual habits. " Apparently," 
 thought I, " because he hopes for some assist- 
 ance in money or care." I was mistaken; I 
 firmly believe now that he was actuated, even 
 in this hour of his greatest distress, by the 
 desire, the almost physical need of insulting 
 Andr^ once more in the person of his friend. 
 He hated him so intensely. Nothing was 
 changed in that soul, as tenaciously powerful, 
 in its way, as that of hero or martyr. I was 
 soon convinced of this by the look he gave me 
 after he had drawn the bolt of the door and I 
 stood before him. He was in his shirt, if that 
 name can be given the dirty rag of tattered 
 
156 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 flannel which hung upon his body. How 
 shrunken that body was, the miserable naked 
 legs tottering with fever told but too well. No 
 early Christian painter infatuated with mysti- 
 cism ever gave to his Christs such emaciated 
 limbs, so fleshless and devoid of muscle. The 
 hair, now white, hung in disorder about the 
 face, which was more wrinkled than it used to 
 be, more like a bit of parchment, but still as 
 terrific as ever with its red blotches. Upon it 
 I read Death in the strange decomposition of 
 each haggard feature. He looked at me with a 
 sort of peevish astonishment, for which I was 
 prepared ; and without giving him time to reflect 
 I pushed him toward the bed. 
 
 " Come," I said, " you wiU take cold ; lie down 
 again." 
 
 He obeyed me, with groans which plainly 
 told of his sufferings, as he clambered back upon 
 the miserable pallet, on which he had piled all 
 his clothes, — a mound of rags ; at the top of 
 them the coat, the celebrated coat, displayed 
 its antiquated shape and its threadbare texture, 
 more arachnean than ever. Could it be the 
 same habiliment, preserved to him by some 
 miracle of the goddess Poverty ? or did Legri- 
 maudet think it due to his dignity to barter the 
 many garments his Mecsenases bestowed upon 
 him for an unfailing dress-coat ? This secret he 
 has carried to his grave, together with that other 
 
MONSIEUR LEGRIMAUDET. 157 
 
 secret as to where the articles which furnished 
 this lair of his came from, and what was their 
 history. His trunk, in the first place, the one in 
 which he kept all the criticisms published for 
 and against him about his " Diderot," where did 
 he get that ? What were his reasons for keep- 
 ing on his bureau that bunch of rusty keys, that 
 plaster bust of Homer, an empty case for 
 knives (which was always open) and the band- 
 box for his hat ? Cigar-ends picked up in the 
 street were piled upon a cracked plate. The 
 cast of his misshapen and clumsy foot, made by 
 a charitable shoemaker, stood on one end of the 
 bureau, together with two loaves of bread, of 
 which nothing remained but the crust, the 
 crumb having been scraped out by dirty finger- 
 nails. Empty bottles, boxes of sardines also 
 empty, books, pipes, etc., were tossed here and 
 there ; and among this rubbish I saw, laid flat 
 upon the bureau, a child's crutch 1 This relic 
 of the little lame boy, the sole being the old 
 lampooner had ever loved, touched me more 
 than I can tell and disposed me to receive indul- 
 gently the splash of sepia which the sick man was 
 certain to squirt at me. His sharp eye pierced 
 me from the depths of his bed. He was trying to 
 recall my features through the years that were 
 past. This absorbed contemplation left me time 
 to complete my inventory of the room and its 
 furniture, which latter consisted of a writing- 
 
158 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 table covered with papers, a carpet more rotten 
 than that on the stairs, three chairs, and a table 
 beside the bed with a broken-nosed water- 
 pitcher and a wineglass. No chimney. A 
 round hole made in an upper pane of the win- 
 dow, and now closed with oiled paper, proved 
 the presence of a stove in the more sumptuous 
 days of Legrimaudet's predecessor. Suddenly I 
 saw by his lip that he recognized me ; which did 
 not surprise me. Beggars, who are obliged to 
 scrutinize the features of their contributors with 
 an acuteness on which their very subsistence 
 depends, have an amazing memory for faces, 
 equal to that found at the other extremity of the 
 social universe, — among princes, whose business 
 it is to cultivate it. This recognition enabled 
 him to kill two birds with one stone, as the say- 
 ing is,' and to associate me with the insult he 
 was preparing to launch at Andr6. 
 
 " Well, well," he began, " so you, are the poet 
 [he said " poate," as usual]. Do you still write 
 verses ? Did you compose an epithalamium on 
 the marriage of Monsieur Mareuil des Herbiers ? 
 I am told, monsieur, that his wife could formerly 
 be had for five francs. I have taken to myself 
 a new motto : no money, no illusions. Well, 
 it's a pity. There was some good in him, too. 
 Why has n't he been to inquire after me ? 
 Probably his wife would n't let him ; such 
 creatures are afraid of a keen observer, — they 
 
MONSIEUR LEGRIMATJDET. 159 
 
 prefer simpletons. I suppose you stand well 
 with her ? " 
 
 A racking cough interrupted this speech, in 
 which I recognized, despite the quavering of 
 the feeble voice, that spontaneity of almost 
 genial insult which Andr^ admired so much. 
 Ah, he was still the Great Thankless of France, 
 who could not lay down his arms even on his 
 deathbed ! I understood at last, and I may say 
 for the first time, the diabolical fascination he 
 had for my friend. How could I answer, except, 
 as I did, with a commonplace remark. 
 
 " Mareuil is not in Paris," T said ; " he is at 
 his prefecture, if not — " 
 
 " He resides there, does he ? " interrupted the 
 sick man, " that 's surprising in a man who liked 
 to travel. Travel was good for him. It used to 
 form him a little. He came back from England 
 quite improved, I remember. I told him at the 
 time — " Here another fit of coughing came 
 on, and then those arrogant lips began again : 
 " If you have not come from him, monsieur le 
 poSte, I would like to know who has sent you ? 
 Some editor, perhaps. I warn you I shall be 
 stiff in my conditions. They have kept me 
 waiting too long — " 
 
 So his old illusions were as vivid as ever! 
 Should I laugh or weep at his crazy self-conceit. 
 After all, he had lived by it." As I think of him 
 now it seems to me that those words, said in 
 
160 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 that place and at that moment, were the most 
 significant he ever uttered. It was in good faith 
 that he spoke and thought of his own genius and 
 its ultimate triumph. He awaited that triumph 
 with the certainty with which an astronomer 
 awaits the comet his calculations have predicted. 
 
 It was necessary, however, to explain my 
 presence, were it only to prevent an anger 
 which might have been fatal to him. I decided 
 to tell him the simple truth. 
 
 " No one has sent me," I said ; " a mere acci- 
 dent brought me. I received a visit from your 
 young neighbor, Monsieur Juste Dolomieu. I 
 came to return it, and hearing you were ill I 
 inquired for you — " 
 
 " Ah ! " he moaned, in a tone of wounded 
 vanity, which told me how imprudent I had 
 been. " So that man informed you that I was his 
 neighbor ? He has ferreted out my name. I '11 
 give him a lesson ; I '11 teach him to mind his 
 own business, instead of going about telling 
 where I live. He is not much of a man himself, 
 or he would n't live here. As for me, mon- 
 sieur, if I do lodge in this place it is because I 
 am reduced to it by envy. But he, at his age, 
 and when he might earn money by work, he 
 must be lost indeed to stay in a house like this 
 and be kept by it." 
 
 "I think myself," I replied, "that the air 
 seems bad." 
 
MONSIEUR LEGRIMAUDET. 161 
 
 " The air bad, monsieur ! " he exclaimed. 
 " Why, has n't your friend told you that it is an 
 annex to a house of ill-fame in the rue des 
 Canettes, close by ? Yes, monsieur, the master 
 of that house had the productive idea five years 
 ago of takin" this hotel for his boarders who are 
 out at night. You know there are some men 
 to whom it is repugnant to go into that other 
 kind of house, and the girls tell them of a little 
 hotel they know, very quiet, kept by worthy 
 people. The fools pay for it. Ten francs, mon- 
 sieur ! And who gets the money, do you 
 suppose ? Cordabceuf. Then there 's five francs 
 for the room, ten or fifteen more for what's 
 consumed, — champagne, cigarettes, a little sup- 
 per. And who gets that money ? Always 
 Cordabceuf Ah, monsieur, if you only knew 
 what it is to bear the name of Leguimaudet and 
 to be in debt to such a blackguard. The women 
 are worth a dozen of him. There is always one 
 who will get a package of tobacco from a lover 
 and give it to me. And once, monsieur, one 
 freezing night when I was very cold, one of 
 them, after her man had left her early, came and 
 fetched me and took me into her own bed 
 because there was a fire in her room. She was 
 very tired, monsieur. We were very virtuous. 
 But oh ! I slept well that night, comforted 
 by the warmth of that young body. Api'opos, 
 monsieur, why are the women of these days so 
 11 
 
162 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 indifferent that they refuse to let us kiss their 
 lips ? " 
 
 " But tell me," I said, overcome by this 
 awful revelation of so piteous a charity, " how did 
 you ever come to live in this dreadful place ? " 
 
 " I am thirsty,'' he said ; " will you give me 
 the water- pitcher." Then, after I had filled him 
 a glass and he had emptied it, " Monsieur," he 
 said, " it is easy to see that you have never 
 known poverty. There can be no talent with- 
 out knowing it; remember that I told you so. 
 But in my case the trial has lasted too long. It 
 ■was the waiter at the hotel de Saint- Flour who 
 decided me to come here. Twelve francs in- 
 stead of fifteen, — it was a great saving. And 
 then my washerwoman went away because her 
 boy died, — such an intelligent child, monsieur. 
 I hoped to educate him. Ah ! he would have 
 revenged me on my enemies. Don't let us 
 speak of it, — in short, I moved here. At first 
 things went pretty well, for the waiter told me 
 the histories of the women. Monsieur, a sen- 
 ator comes here every Saturday, with a false 
 beard; and a journalist, one of those who at- 
 tacked my books. I have seen him here. I am 
 preparing a note about him to the preface of 
 the new edition of my ' Hugo.' Yes, I am only 
 waiting till I get well to do battle once more. 
 Lately, my good waiter has been sent away, and 
 they have got another in his place who detests 
 
MONSIEUR LEGEIMAUDET. 163 
 
 me. Between ourselves, I think the journalist 
 recognized my face and that he is paying these 
 people to get rid of me by ill-treatment. Mon- 
 sieur, I will never yield to such proceedings — 
 Ah ! " he added, striking his breast with a trem- 
 bling hand, on which I saw the gleaming ame- 
 thyst of the bishop's ring, " how I burn here ! 
 drink, give me more drink ! " 
 
 " But," I said, " if you continue to drink this 
 cold water it will do you harm. Let me send 
 you some milk." 
 
 "I have more than I need," he answered; 
 " one of the women brings it up to me every 
 evening since I have been ill, at iive o'clock." 
 
 "Then let me send you some bedding" 
 
 " No, monsieur, I am suffocating with heat as 
 it is." 
 
 " But, at least," I persisted, " you won't refuse 
 a bit of silver for the little chapel ? " 
 
 " I have money," he replied with rising anger. 
 " That drawer is full of it. My publishers paid 
 me in advance for the new edition of ' Hugo ' 
 the very day before I caught this cold." He 
 coughed again as though his very soul would 
 be coughed up. " He owed it to me," continued 
 the sick man, " in view of the preceding edition 
 which he fairly stole from me." 
 
 "Then," said I, "I shall send you my own 
 physician to-morrow, to put an end to this ail- 
 ment of yours." 
 
164 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 " A physician ! " he sneered. " No, monsieur, 
 I will not see one. They are all humbugs. If 
 I wished for a physician, let me tell you that 
 Mademoiselle Gransart would send me hers ; in 
 fact, if I were willing, she would be here now to 
 nurse me. This Sunday is the first for twenty- 
 five years that I have not gone to breakfast with 
 her at Passy. Her father appreciated me, mon- 
 sieur. He was a man of taste, though something 
 of a pedant. He was superintendent at the Louvre, 
 and was very useful to me in preparing my 
 'Diderot.' He could n't write, but he was a capi- 
 tal library rat for all that. He died three 
 months ago, at the age of eighty, from a fall he 
 had in getting out of an omnibus. I said to 
 him. ' You indulge yourself too much, Mon- 
 sieur Gransart ; you should take exercise; walk 
 as I do.' However, he was an old egoist; he 
 preferred to spend his money in riding about, 
 instead of economizing for his daughter, whom 
 he might have left richer than he did. She 
 deserved it, monsieur, for she 's a saint. I can 
 say this, for I 've known her, as I told you, for 
 tlie last twenty-five years. You can readily 
 imagine I have never told her my address. I 
 don't choose that she should ever come and see 
 me here. She must have expected me last Sun- 
 day, and been uneasy at my absence. I am her 
 best friend. I went to see her every day for a 
 time, after her father died. She has always 
 
MONSIEUR LEGRIMAUDET. 165 
 
 welcomed me with angelic kindness. Women 
 can understand a great talent under misfortune. 
 Tliey are less jealous than men." 
 
 Though the last little touch was altogether 
 Lefjrimaudesque, as Andr^ used to say, the 
 rest of his remarks about Mademoiselle Grausart 
 betrayed such unusual feelings in his unfortunate 
 soul that this alone gave me an extreme desire 
 to know the old maid. The age at which her 
 father died, and the twenty-five years of para- 
 sitism to which Legrimaudet had owned, classed 
 her in that category to which the most interest- 
 ing specimens of female character belong. She 
 must indeed be a saintly creature, I thought, to 
 have conquered this mad dog, who bites the 
 hands of all who feed him. Curiosity, however, 
 might not have led me to the lengths I actually 
 went if I had not considered it all-important to 
 obtain the assistance of this sole friend of the 
 dying man. He was obviously very ill, and it 
 was absolutely necessary to remove him at any 
 cost to some suitable place, and endeavor to 
 sootlie his remaining days. I had seen too 
 plainly the gesture with which he received my 
 offers of assistance to attempt to renew them, 
 and I knew of no one more likely to succeed. 
 Would Mademoiselle Gransart be able to exer- 
 cise some authority ? In any case, it was my 
 duty to ascertain. I could, of course, obtain her 
 address from the porter at the Louvre. Behold 
 
166 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 me, therefore, hailing a cab in front of Saint- 
 Germain-des-Pr^s, and as the vehicle threaded 
 the long rue des Saints-Pferes on its way to the 
 Seine I fell, I well remember, into a mood of 
 deepest melancholy. The strange heart of this 
 dreadful man opened to me its inmost folds. It 
 was that very gesture of refusal which enabled 
 me to perceive him as a whole. Yes, self-conceit 
 had wrecked him ; but, in the first instance, it 
 was a noble self-conceit, that of a man of talent 
 who feels himself elected to a glorious toil. 
 Under the influence of this illusion, of this 
 proud estimate of his powers, — which in a truly 
 great man is thought a sublime faith, — he had 
 neglected to work for a living. Without a busi- 
 ness or a craft he came to want. Brought face 
 to face with that tragic dilemma, to die or beg, 
 he had begged, though the cruel act had rent his 
 soul each time his hand performed it. His 
 literary work had followed suit. The various 
 publications of that engine of hatred seemed to 
 me to follow, one upon the other, with frightful 
 logic. For, if we attempt to explain the origin 
 of evil we are likely to end in doubting Provi- 
 dence, and when, after years of inward struggle, 
 we have recovered, under the dry analyses of 
 science, our faith in the consoling doctrine of 
 the Unknowable, we live in dread of losing it, — 
 of losing that faith and the hope it brings with 
 it, — in dread of no longer being able to utter 
 
MONSIEUR LEGRIMAUDET. 167 
 
 with the same assxirance the only prayer whicli 
 enables us to live: "Our Father who art in 
 heaven." How disturbing it is, therefore, to 
 come face to face with this problem of moral 
 ugliness and physical suffering in a man held by 
 fate in the cruel vice of his position. We must 
 believe that there is some mysterious meaning 
 to this suffering universe; that the agonizing 
 darkness of this life will pass into the light of 
 another after death. But how tempted we are 
 to a horrible nihilism in presence of certain 
 shipwrecks of the soul and of destiny. These 
 reflections, growing ever more intense, pursued 
 me as I drove the long distance between the 
 Louvre, where they gave me Mademoiselle 
 Gransart's address, and the rue Boulainvilliers, 
 at Passy, where she lived. As I made my way 
 through the silent avenues of that peaceful 
 neighborhood, the little houses in their little 
 gardens, homes of bourgeois happiness, con- 
 trasted ironically in my mind with the shocking 
 den where the old maid's friend lay dying. I 
 thought of the old maid herself, and of the rare 
 delicacy she must have shown to the hapless 
 wretch, to have been able to do him such ser- 
 vices and yet not wound him. I wondered what 
 idea her innocent mind had formed of the most 
 venomous spirit of our present day. Well, I 
 should soon find out, for I was nearing the num- 
 ber of the house given to me by the porter of 
 
168 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 the Louvre. The cab stopped. It was not 
 altogether one of the little houses with a 
 margin of a lawn the comfortable elegance 
 of which I had been comparing with Legri- 
 maudet's lair ; it was a more modest dwell- 
 ing, of the kind which presupposes the income 
 of its tenant to be six, seven, ten, or twelve 
 thousand francs at the utmost. The porter, who 
 was a tailor (as a small placard written by hand 
 duly informed me), was hard at work when I 
 rapped on the tiled floor, mending an overcoat, 
 which belonged no doubt to some other friend 
 of the old maid, in easier circumstances. From 
 the tone in which he pronounced her name in 
 answer to my question, " Is Mademoiselle Gran- 
 sart at home ? " I fancied I obtained proof of 
 unbounded respect, almost of veneration. 
 
 " Mademoiselle Gransart is out," he said ; " and 
 as it is the day when Mademoiselle dines with 
 her brother at the BatignoUes, she is not likely 
 to be home before ten o'clock." 
 
 " Is no one in the house ? " 
 
 " No one, monsieur. Mademoiselle Annette 
 always accompanies Mademoiselle when Made- 
 moiselle dines out." 
 
 " Will you give me something with wliich to 
 write a line ? " I asked, so persuaded was I 
 of the seriousness of the case, and of the duty of 
 at once informing the sick man's benefactress. 
 It was not a line, but a letter which I scribbled on 
 
MONSIEUR LEGKIMAUDET. 169 
 
 the two sheets of ruled paper which the porter 
 at last succeeded in finding in a cupboard, all the 
 while growling : " If my wife were only here ! 
 She knows where the little one keeps his things. 
 She has just gone to fetch him from school." 
 In my letter I explained Monsieur Legrimau- 
 det's condition to Mademoiselle Gransart and 
 gave her his address, without, be it understood, 
 revealing the character of the house in which 
 the poor creature lay dying. I told her, in words 
 which must have been moving for I was moved 
 myself in the highest degree, that she alone had 
 enough influence over the sick man to induce 
 him to go to some proper place. I gave her, 
 also, my own address and that of two or three 
 hospitals for paying patients that were known to 
 me as decent ; and, finally, I placed my own 
 modest resources at her service for this good 
 work. Alas ! I relate all these particulars to 
 preface an avowal which is not in keeping with 
 the warmth of my letter. But I feel impelled 
 to make it, if only to illustrate the sort of char- 
 ity under which this poor Legrimaudet had lived 
 and suffered. Ah, that Parisian charity, which 
 no belief sustains, which is nothing more than 
 an impulse of flesh and blood, how quickly it 
 ceases to move us when the object of our emotion 
 is out of sight ! Why should we be surprised if 
 the sensitiveness of the poor as quickly measures 
 the shallowness of the pity of which we are so 
 
170 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 contemptibly proud ? They discern the element 
 of hypocritical selfishness in our momentary and 
 superficial compassion ; they are ungrateful be- 
 cause they are clear-sighted, with a hardness of 
 judgment which does not show, it is true, any no- 
 bility of heart, but which, nevertheless, we deserve. 
 I was engaged to dine out and go to the theatre 
 on the evening of the day I had been thus use- 
 fully employed. I was so taken up by this 
 double amusement that the image of Monsieur 
 Legrimaudet faded from my mind, and I forgot 
 on the following day to inquire for him. The 
 next day it was the same thing ; again I was 
 busy with the useless and multifarious occupa- 
 tions for which the best of us incessantly sacri- 
 fice that interest which Christian moralists so 
 justly term Salvation — that serious and con- 
 tinued travail of our inner selves. In short, I 
 let four times twenty-four hours go by with- 
 out once thinking of the wretched being in the 
 hStel Cordabceuf Therefore was I seized with a 
 species of shame, that was very like remorse, 
 when, returning from the theatre on the night 
 of the fourth day, I found in my mail-bag the 
 following letter, which I here transcribe without 
 changing a word ; for certain unmerited praises 
 are sometimes the worst of satires ; moreover, 
 the little document will serve to show the truth 
 of the old proverb : " To the pure all things are 
 pure." 
 
MONSIEUR LEGKIMAUDET. 171 
 
 Passt, May 25th. 
 
 Monsieur, — You showed so touching an interest 
 in the worthy and most unfortunate Monsieur Legri- 
 maudet that I blame myself for not having sooner 
 replied to your kind solicitude for our dear friend 
 whom we had, alas ! the grief of losing yesterday, at 
 the hospital of the Brothers of Saint-Jean-de-Dieu, 
 rue Oudinot, where I had taken him the preceding 
 evening, in accordance with your excellent advice. 
 Poverty and injustice had long preyed upon a 
 nature which concealed, under a manner which was 
 sometimes irritable, a touching fidelity to his old 
 friendships, and a deep faith. Therefore, God granted 
 to our dear friend the happiness of keeping his con- 
 sciousness to the last, and of dying as a good and 
 fervent Christian. I think that I conform to your 
 wishes by letting you know that the funeral services 
 will take place at the Church of Saint-Frangois- 
 Xavier to-morrow morning at nine o'clock. The 
 body will be taken afterwards to the cemetery of 
 Mount-Parnasse. 
 
 I beg you to accept, monsieur, my cordial compli- 
 ments. 
 
 Eveline Gransart. 
 
 P. S. I forgot to thank you for your generous 
 offer, which would have gratified Monsieur Legrimau- 
 det had he known of it. I intended to tell him as 
 soon as he was able to bear any emotion. 
 
 I remember that I remained a long time read- 
 ing and rereading this letter, instead of going to 
 
172 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 bed; for it evoked before me a drama such as 
 life, actual life, alone affords, -with personages 
 brought from every province of the world of 
 souls. Mareuil, with his paradoxical flippancy, 
 Juste Dolomieu and the fervor of his honest 
 young art, the little lame Henri and his child- 
 ish brutality, — one by one they all appeared 
 to me ; next, the clients of the honorable Corda- 
 bcEuf ; and lastly, the noble unknown spinster to 
 whose true charity Jean Legriraaudet owed tlie 
 non-realization of his blasphemous prophecy. 
 And I myself, with my indifference, which was 
 sometimes sad and sometimes heedless — a good 
 impulse had led me to contribute at the eleventh 
 hour to the old man's redemption ; for Mademoi- 
 selle (iransart could only have known through 
 me of the illness of her life-long protdg^. Well, 
 T would at least repair my forgetfulness of the 
 last four days by rising early the next morn- 
 ing and attending the funeral of the unhappy 
 man; though without this feeling of remorse, 
 without even the idea of fulfilling a duty, I 
 should certainly have done so, if only for a near 
 view of the mysterious old maid who had found 
 it in her heart to pity and like a Legriraaudet. 
 
 On the morrow, then, I was promptly in the 
 church, accompanied by Juste Dolomieu, whom 
 I had sent my servant to summon with a line 
 from me, that there might, at any rate, be two 
 men of letters at the burial of a writer who was 
 
MONSIEUR LEGEIMAUDET. 173 
 
 leaving the world in such abject misery. I 
 ought to say that my young friend performed 
 this humane drudgery with a good grace, in 
 spite of his repugnance to the miserable lam- 
 pooner. At any rate, there we were, standing, 
 with our arms crossed, in one of the chapels of 
 the ugliest church in Paris (where there are so 
 many ugly churches), listening' to the service for 
 the dead hastily said by a hurried priest over 
 that melancholy coffin. Not very far from us 
 were two women, kneeling ; one of whom was 
 evidently the servant of the other; and this 
 other, all in black, showed as she prayed a gen- 
 tle, resigned face, — of a piety so sincere that its 
 plainness, which was rather common, seemed 
 transfigured. Mademoiselle Gransart's blue eyes 
 were so clear and pure, so tenderly fresh and 
 pure, they revealed such a candor of innocence 
 that no woman could be thought ugly with such 
 orbs. But — must I confess it ? — Mademoi- 
 selle G-ransart it was I had come to see, and yet 
 I had no eyes or thought for any one except a 
 fifth personage who completed the little group, 
 and who occupied a chair beside her; a man 
 about forty years of age, clean shaved, rosy- 
 cheeked, with an authoritative eye, a pompous 
 mouth, very much of a man, in short, well 
 set-up, with the shoulders of an athlete in a 
 well-fitting overcoat of plain cloth, the classic 
 overcoat of a solid property owner. His large 
 
174 PASTELS 01' MEN. 
 
 hand, gloved in black, held a small prayer-book, 
 lent to him no doubt by one of the women of his 
 establishment — or his establishments ; for I had 
 recognized Cordaboeuf by the reserved, composed 
 and yet protecting gesture v^^hich he made to 
 his tenant and my companion. Juste Dolomieu. 
 We were standing, as I have said, Dolomieu and 
 I, with our arms crossed, in the respectful but 
 rather unedifying attitude of freethinkers out of 
 place in a church. Cordaboeuf, on the contrary, 
 did not miss a line of the prayers, which he read 
 in his book ; and he followed with irreproachable 
 promptitude every movement of his neighbors. 
 Mademoiselle Gransart knelt down, he knelt 
 down. She crossed herself, he crossed himself 
 She bent her head, he bent his head, showing' 
 between his very white collar and the roots of 
 his thick hair the nape of a butcher's neck, red 
 and muscular. The irony of the situation went 
 beyond words. It was decreed, however, that 
 Monsieur Legrimaudet should go to his final 
 rest attended by an irony still more amazing; 
 for when mass was said, and Mademoiselle 
 Gransart, having followed the coffin to the door, 
 turned to make me a slight bow, I saw Corda- 
 boeuf crook his arm and offer it to the saintly 
 creature, who accepted the support as she 
 walked to a carriage, which she entered followed 
 by her maid. The funeral procession (of the 
 third class) started, accompanied by one hack- 
 
MONSIEUR LEGEIMAUDET. 175 
 
 ney coach, and as we were preparing, Juste and 
 I, to get into our own cab and follow the body, 
 Cordaboeuf approached us. 
 
 "You intend to follow to the grave, gentle- 
 men ? " he said. " I regret very much that I 
 cannot go. Business — you understand. It is 
 not for me to complain, for that good lady has 
 paid up everytliing, but I must say it killed the 
 old fellow to be taken from his room. He was 
 so comfortable with us, so gay, such a jolly dog ! 
 The women liked him so. Every day he had 
 some lively thing or other to say, some fun to 
 poke at us." 
 
 Such was the funeral oration delivered over 
 Monsieur Jean Legrimaudet, who had come from 
 Dijon to rival the fame of Bossuet ; the author 
 of several volumes, the man to whom a fortune- 
 teller had predicted that he would die a million- 
 naire, a senator, an officer of the Legion of honor 
 and famous, and who believed it ! 
 
 Poor aborted being ! 
 
ill. 
 
 TWO LITTLE BOYS. 
 
 I. MONSIEUE VIPLE'S BEOTHEE. 
 II. MAECEL. 
 
 To Henri Laukbnt. 
 
III. 
 
 TWO LITTLE BOYS. 
 
 I. MONSIEUR VIPLE'S BROTHER. 
 
 One of the most exciting impressions of my 
 childhood was the sojourn of the Austrian sol- 
 diers made prisoners during the campaign of 1859 
 in the provincial town where I grew up. In 
 that gloomy town of Clermont in Auvergne, 
 where the railroad has only lately penetrated, 
 we were not spoiled by travellers ; those who 
 came to us were chiefly invalids on their way to 
 Eoyat, still in the wilds, or to Mouut-Dore and 
 Bourboule, then difficult of access. The arrival 
 of these vanquished enemies, with tlieir white 
 uniforms soiled by service and their foreign 
 faces, was an event for the whole population, but 
 especially for little urchins of my age (I was 
 then seven) ; and I well remember with what 
 innocently cruel curiosity we went as near as we 
 dared to the new-comers, while they walked up 
 and down on the terrace of the Poterne cele- 
 brated by Chauteaubriand, from which can be 
 seen the fine line of mountains extending from 
 
180 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 the plain of the CStes to the massive woods of 
 Grave-Noire. I don't know what confused images 
 of war may flutter in the brains of children who, 
 in this year of grace 1889, trundle their hoops 
 along that terrace, now much changed. Where 
 are the chains, fastened to great stone posts, 
 which barred the way towards the cathedral ? 
 Where the rough declivity which sloped from 
 the terrace level, the stronghold of the street 
 boys who were the objects of my secret envy ? 
 The boys of the present day are the sons of a 
 people on whom weighs the burden of a national 
 defeat ; but we were the children of a period still 
 near to the imperial epic. The old men of 
 seventy who laid their hands upon our curly heads 
 had seen the victorious eagles re-entering France 
 on their return from Europe ; and the legend of 
 the Napoleonic glory was still so stirring that 
 it filled our imagination with magnificent and 
 also, it must be owned, with comical conceits. 
 Tor instance, I and my four best friends, ifimile 
 
 C , Arthur B , Joseph C , and 
 
 Claude L , were convinced that one little 
 
 French boy was stronger than two little foreign 
 boys, no matter of what other nation they might 
 be. Our astonishment was therefore great when 
 we compared 'the brave and vigorous Austrian 
 troopers before our eyes with the soldiers of our 
 own country who were passing along the same 
 paths and beneath the same trees. It bewil- 
 
MONSIEUK VIPLE'S BROTHER. 181 
 
 dered us to see them of the same height and with 
 the same appearance of muscular power, — such 
 was the foolish form of our boyish faith in the 
 superiority of our race and nation. Eleven 
 years later we were to pay dear for such illu- 
 sions, and for others more serious though founded 
 on a faith which was almost as childishly 
 puerile. 
 
 I recall this sojourn of the prisoners with 
 strange uniforms (which was in fact very brief) 
 because another recollection is attached to it, — 
 that of an incident which long remained myste- 
 rious to my boyish mind, and on which I still 
 reflect with passionate interest whenever I hear 
 a discussion on the nature of children. I must 
 add that the person who told it to me lives in 
 my memory as one of the most original types 
 which I knew in this old provincial town, where 
 my ferreting eyes were already opening to every 
 peculiarity of countenance and to the slightest 
 oddity of behavior. He was an old friend of my 
 family, once actively connected with the uni- 
 versity and now retired with the function of 
 inspector, who answered to the somewhat fan- 
 tastic name of Monsieur Optat Viple, the man 
 being as fantastic as the name. I see him now 
 across the vanished years, as though he were 
 coming from the cemetery to take his accustomed 
 walk along the Cours Sablon in the sunshine, — 
 
182 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 very tall, very lean, his hat in his hand, with a 
 pointed, bald head, spectacles on an endless nose, 
 his overcoat buttoned tightly round his elongated 
 waist, in summer as in winter, in winter as in 
 summer, his feet encased in double-soled boots, 
 which he never changed, even in the house, for 
 fear of taking cold. He had kindly offered to 
 teach me the rudiments of Latin and Greek for 
 the pleasure of testing a method of his own, and 
 I went every day at nine o'clock to take my 
 lesson in his study before his dinner, which he 
 invariably ate at ten o'clock, that he might 
 sup (as they call it in those parts) at half-past 
 five. 
 
 Not once since the death of his wife had the 
 inspector broken this rule of two meals, 
 ordered by him according to the hygienic advice 
 of a friendly doctor, from whom he acquired a 
 horror of alcohol, tobacco, and coffee. One 
 bottle of wine (true Chanturge which he got 
 from his own vineyard) sufficed him per week. 
 But ten libraries would have been wholly insuffi- 
 cient to satisfy his hunger for reading. I have 
 never known a man so possessed by a mania for 
 printed literature. All was fish to his net, from 
 the newspapers of his neighborhood to the local 
 reviews, from the finest Latin authors to the 
 worst novels of the present day ; the whole in- 
 terlarded daily with readings from Voltaire, out 
 of Kehl's edition, which filled two large shelves 
 
MONSIEUR TIPLE'S BROTHER. 183 
 
 in his bookroom. Monsieur Optat Viple was 
 (though it pains me to say so after tliis descrip- 
 tion) outrageously irreligious and jacobin, — 
 nearly as much so as his friend, Monsieur Gas- 
 pard Larcher ; and these highly respectable infi- 
 dels never met without the one saying to the 
 other, " Homme noir, where do you come from ? " 
 On which they would both laugh with juvenile 
 hilarity. As for Monsieur Viple, the matter 
 explains itself; one of his nearest relatives, his 
 mother's brother, sat in the Convention and 
 voted for the king's death. How he reconciled 
 republicanism and the horror which the actual 
 regime inspired in him with a mameluk admira- 
 tion for the first Bonaparte was one of the 
 mysteries attaching to the worthy man, who, 
 by the bye, had a mania for extolling Nature in 
 the style of Eousseau, apropos of his wild and 
 dear Auvergne which he had traversed on foot 
 in all directions. He uttered the name Jean 
 Jacques in trembling accents. As I think of 
 it, it seems to me hardly wise to have confided 
 my education to this Voltairean, though he never 
 allowed himself to interfere with the religious 
 instruction which was given to me by others. 
 But he talked to me, young as I was, with the 
 utmost enthusiasm about the encyclopedists and 
 the revolutionists. While professor at Langres 
 after leaving the ificole normals, he had met a 
 relation of Diderot's. The names of all the 
 
184 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 ■writers of tlie eighteenth century filed through 
 the interminable conversations he kept up with 
 me when he took me to walk ; for on fine days 
 he would fetch me from my home and I was 
 allowed to go with him along the roads which 
 were strewn with the scoriae of extinct volcanoes. 
 We spent hours in this way, — I questioning him 
 on a thousand childish or serious things, he 
 replying with a kindness that never wearied ; 
 while far in the distance the Domes profiled 
 their masses, outlined iu peaks symmetrical or 
 rugged, and the vineyards glowed in greenery 
 around us, with their clustering unripe grapes or 
 their heavy purple bunches, according to the 
 season, while the brooklets flowed beneath the 
 willows and the unseen songsters sang — Oh, 
 mysterious sadness of the springtide of other 
 days ! 
 
 I remember, as though it were but yesterday, 
 the morning when my old friend related to me 
 the incident to which I just now made allusion. 
 As the weather seemed uncertain we had started 
 for the Bughes, a sort of square planted with 
 trees quite near the town and reached through 
 the faubourg Saint>-Allyre. We were just about 
 to meet on the Poterne terrace a group of Aus- 
 trian prisoners in their white uniforms, when 
 Monsieur Viple, as if to avoid them, pulled me 
 abruptly down the side street which leads to 
 
MONSIEUK TIPLE'S BROTHER. 185 
 
 Notre-Dame-du-Port, an old Eoman basilica 
 with a dark crypt. He was silent for some 
 minutes. I looked into his furrowed face, on 
 which the rounded point of his shirt collar was 
 pressing, and I said to him suddenly : — 
 
 " Monsieur Viple, don't you want to look at 
 those Austrians a little nearer ? " 
 
 " No, ray child," he said, with a look I had 
 never yet seen on his face, — full, it seemed to me, 
 of the shadow of some dark memory, — " the last 
 time I saw their uniform was too dreadful." 
 
 " When was that ? " I persisted. 
 
 "At the time of the invasion," he replied. 
 Then, as if making a calculation in his head, he 
 added, " About forty-five years ago." 
 
 " Did they get as far as Issoire ? " I asked, 
 knowing that he came from that town. 
 
 " Yes. as far as Issoire," he answered slowly. 
 Presently, as we were going down the road 
 which leads to the station, he added, pointing to 
 another, parallel road, which is called the route 
 to Issoire : "¥irst they reached Clarmont; then 
 they came direct to us. Ah ! our house was 
 very near being burned at that time — yes, 
 yes, even so. We did not expect them. We 
 knew very well that the Emperor had been 
 defeated, but we could not believe it was all over 
 with him, — that devil of a man had won the 
 game so often. And then, we loved him ; my 
 father loved him ; he had seen him once review- 
 
186 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 ing his troops in the Carrousel after the cam- 
 paign of Austerlitz. How often he told us of 
 that wonderful blue eye which forced you to 
 cry " Vive I'Empereur I " by merely looking at 
 you. And mind you, my boy, that Emperor was 
 not like this present one. He was a man of the 
 Eevolution, a jacobin at heart, who was n't 
 afraid oi hommes noirs. Enough, enough !" 
 
 "But why did the Austrians want to burn 
 your house ? " I asked with the persistency of 
 a small boy who perceives a story and does not 
 mean to let it escape him. 
 
 "The invaders arrived one evening," continued 
 the old man, as if he had forgotten me, and was 
 following the visions which crowded on his 
 memory. " They were not very numerous, — a 
 single detachment of cavalry, commanded by a 
 tall office"r, very young, with an insolent face 
 and a long, fair moustache which almost floated 
 in the wind. We had spent that day in horrible 
 anxiety. We knew the enemy were at Cler- 
 mont. Would they come to us, or would they 
 not come ? How ought we to receive them ? 
 A council was held at my father's house, for he 
 was then mayor of the village. If he had n't 
 been so sick he was the man to put himself at 
 the head of a determined troop and barricade the 
 streets. Who knows whether, if all the towns 
 and villages had done that, the allies might not 
 have met the fate of our grumblers in Spain. 
 
MONSIEUR VIPLE's BROTHER. 187 
 
 There is but one policy for an invaded people, 
 — guerilla warfare and sharp-shooting, the tak- 
 ing off of the enemy head by head. Yes, we 
 might have defended ourselves. We had pro- 
 visions, and all the peasantry round about had 
 guns hanging to a nail in their chimneys. But 
 my poor dear father was in bed shaking with 
 chills and fever, which he caught in the marshes 
 of Courpiferes while snaring birds. So wiser 
 counsels prevailed. Suddenly a burst of trum- 
 pets ; the enemy were upon us ! Ah, boy, may 
 you never know what it is to hear the clarions 
 sound a foreign march like that. Such superb 
 disdain was in that blast, — disdain and hatred ! 
 How well I remember listening to it in my 
 father's bed-chamber, my forehead against the 
 window panes as I watched the officer caracoling 
 at the head of his troop; and when I turned 
 away I saw the old man weeping." 
 
 "Tiien you ought to be pleased. Monsieur 
 Viple, to see those very soldiers prisoners now," 
 I said. 
 
 " Pleased ? pleased ! I have no confidence in 
 this Emperor. But enough, enough ! " 
 
 This was the customary exclamation of the 
 old jacobin, when he did not wish to say any- 
 thing I might repeat, to the displeasure of my 
 family. He continued his tale : — 
 
 " The Austrians had not been fifteen minutes 
 in the .town before they knocked violently at 
 
188 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 our door. The handsome officer with the long 
 moustache chose to install himself in the 
 mayor's house in company with two others, and 
 I was ordered to move out of my room. I can 
 see myself still, inveighing against them and 
 hiding a pistol which I had loaded for the 
 defence in a sort of cupboard, which served me 
 for a poke-away. I was furious at having to 
 leave my room, which was the prettiest in the 
 house ; it looked out upon a terrace where I 
 played constantly, from which a flight of stone 
 steps covered with mosses led down into the 
 garden. Beneath it was the billiard-room, and 
 above a sort of attic to wliich I was relegated 
 during the time the Austrian officers were in the 
 house. They immediately ordered dinner ; and 
 as they were tired with their day's march every- 
 one had to put his or her hand to the business 
 of getting their meal ready at once. These 
 three officers and six persons with them made 
 nine, and that was a good many to provide for 
 suddenly. However, we managed to get up a 
 repast which my mother was anxious to make 
 succulent. ' We must mollify them,' said the poor 
 woman, as she sent me to the fish-pond to catch 
 some trout, — those beautiful fresh trout I was so 
 fond of feeling slip through my fingers as I caught 
 them. I was also sent to the cellar for champagne ; 
 four bottles of which my father used formerly to 
 uncork for each of the great Emperor's victories. 
 
MONSIEUR viple's beothee. 189 
 
 The supply was almost exhausted. I can't tell 
 you my distress in having to prepare such a 
 feast for these men with our own provisions in 
 our own house, by this time noisy with their 
 boisterous gayety, — the racket increasing and 
 stiU increasing with laughter and the clinking 
 of glasses as the meal went on. They drank 
 toasts given in a language I had never heard. 
 I listened to the noise from the kitchen, where it 
 was decreed that we should take our own meals 
 in the chimney corner. What were they toast- 
 ing ? Our defeat, no doubt, and the death of 
 our poor Emperor. I was only twelve years old 
 at the time, but I swear to you no one ever 
 suffered more from anger and indignation than 
 I did sitting on my little chair opposite to my 
 mother. As a good housewife her mind dwelt 
 chiefly on the breakage of the plates and glasses. 
 ' I hope they have all they want ? ' she said 
 anxiously to the servant. ' They want this, and 
 they want that,' answered our good Michel; 
 and this and that were accordingly sent in to 
 them until the moment when Michel came into 
 the kitchen with a troubled face. 'They want 
 coffee ! ' he said." 
 
 " Coffee was easy enough to supply," I re- 
 marked, interrupting Monsieur Viple. 
 
 '' Do you think so ? " he replied. " You don't 
 know, child, what rarities coffee and sugar were 
 in those days. You have been told how the 
 
190 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 Emperor had the idea of a great continental 
 blockade for the purpose of preventing all com- 
 merce between England and the European 
 nations. Yes, it was an idea, and a great idea, 
 though it came to nothing. However, it had 
 the immediate result to us of the lesser bour- 
 geoisie of diminishing and even stopping alto- 
 gether the sale of certain foreign products. So, 
 when the servant came in with this fresh de- 
 mand my mother was aghast. ' Coffee ! ' she 
 cried ; ' but we have n't an atom of it in the 
 house. Go and tell them so.' Two minutes 
 later Michel returned. ' They are drunk, 
 madame,' he said ; ' and they declare they 
 will either have the coffee or smash everything.' 
 ' Good God ! ' cried my mother, clasping her 
 hands ; ' and I have left my Sevres set on the 
 sideboard ! ' 
 
 " The racket in the dining-room increased. The 
 of&cers were rapping on the floor with their 
 sabres and shouting till the window-panes rat- 
 tled. That good Michel of ours tried three 
 several times to make them listen to reason, and 
 three times he returned to us fairly routed 
 by a shower of abuse. They shouted : ' Coffee ! 
 coffee ! ' and the mere words, pronounced in the 
 German way, seemed a hoarse growl of savagery. 
 At last the uproar became so loud that the 
 sound of it reached my father's room, and pres- 
 ently the kitchen door opened and his tall figure. 
 
MONSIEUR VIPLE'S BEOTHEB. 191 
 
 ■wrapped in a brown dressing-gown, with a 
 foulard round the head, appeared, his eyes gleam- 
 ing. ' What is all this ? ' he said, and I saw 
 his lips tremble as he asked the question ; with 
 fever was it, or anger ? They explained the 
 matter to him. ' I will speak to them,' he said, 
 and he went into the dining-room. I followed 
 him. I shall see that scene throughout my 
 whole life, — the Austrian officers in their white 
 uniforms, their faces flushed with drink, broken 
 plates and bottles flung here and there upon the 
 floor, the soiled cloth, and the smoke of their 
 tobacco curling about the heads of our insolent 
 conquerors. Yes, all my life I shall hear my 
 father saying : ' Gentlemen, I give you my word 
 of honor that I do not possess what you ask ; 
 I have risen from a sick bed to come here and 
 ask you to respect the hearth on which I have 
 received you as my guests." He was hardly 
 allowed to finish before the man with the long 
 moustache, whose blue eyes gleamed with an 
 evil look, rose and came up to him with a gob- 
 let of champagne in his hand. ' Very well ! ' 
 he said in a tolerably pure accent, which showed 
 him to be a man of superior education to his fel- 
 lows, ' we will believe you if you will do us the 
 pleasure of drinking to our august master, who 
 has come here to save your country. Gentlemen, 
 we will all drink to the health of our Emperor. 
 " I looked at my father in terror, and, knowing 
 
192 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 him as I did, I saw that he was in a paroxysm 
 of anger. He took the glass ; then lifting it 
 towards the portrait of Napoleon, which the 
 brutes had not observed, he said in a ringing 
 voice : ' Yes, gentlemen, long live the Em- 
 peror!' The officer with the long moustache 
 followed the direction of my father's eyes. He 
 saw the portrait, — an ordinary engraving. 
 Breaking the glass and frame into fragments 
 with one blow of his sabre and refilling the glass 
 my father had emptied, he cried, brutally : 
 ' Come, shout, " Long live the Emperor of Aus- 
 tria ! " and make haste about it.' 
 
 " My father took the glass, raised it again, 
 and said, ' Long live the Emperor ! ' ' Ha ! you 
 French scoundrel !' shouted the officer, and catch- 
 ing up a chair he struck my sick father a violent 
 blow in the chest, flinging him backward with his 
 head against the angle of a door, while my mother 
 and the servants and I uttered cries of horror." 
 
 " Was he dead ? " I asked, interrupting the 
 old man. 
 
 "We thought he was," answered Monsieur 
 Viple; "for we saw the blood reddening the 
 white handkerchief about his head. But he 
 lived ; though it took him six months to recover 
 from the shock of that blow." 
 
 " What did you do, Monsieur Viple ? " I asked. 
 
 "11" he said, hesitating, " nothing, abso- 
 lutely nothing ; but my brother — " 
 
MONSIEUR yiple's bkothek. 193 
 
 " Your brother ? you never told me about 
 him." 
 
 " 'So, he died young. We were nearly of an 
 age ; he was scarcely a year older than I. After 
 he had gone to bed in his garret (for we 
 had the same bedroom, and both of us were 
 exiled to the attic) he began to think — think — 
 think. Little boys in those days, you must 
 know, were trained to be soldiers ; they heard 
 so much of fights and dangers and cannon-balls 
 and musquetry that there was very little they 
 were afraid of. So after he went to bed he 
 could think of nothing but the troubles of that 
 miserable day, the arrival of the enemy, their 
 entrance into the house, the preparations for 
 dinner, the assault upon his father, the insults 
 to the Emperor. He imagined the officer asleep 
 in his own bed, — his, and he the son of that old 
 man basely injured. Suddenly an idea of ven- 
 geance began to grow, to grow, in his little head. 
 He knew the old house as you know yours in 
 every corner of it. It was built at various 
 times, and the skylight of the attic room to 
 which the boy was now consigned opened upon 
 a gently sloping roof, with a ledge or coping 
 some seven feet below it. By walking along 
 that ledge one could reach an ivied wall ; in the 
 wall were iron spikes which made a sort of ladder 
 by which to reach a chimney in one direction, 
 and in the other a second ledge from which it 
 
 13 
 
194 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 was possible to get down upon the terrace which 
 I mentioned to you. The room in which the 
 officer slept opened upon this terrace ; and so, 
 you see, my brother got out of bed, dressed in 
 haste, crept like a cat down the slope of the 
 roof to the coping, then along the coping down 
 the iron spikes to the terrace, and so to the 
 window of his old room. 'T was a warm sum- 
 mer's night. The officer had closed the blinds, 
 but not the window. My brother made sure 
 of this by passing his little hand through the 
 heart-shaped hole in the shutter. He stretched 
 out his arm and felt no glass. Close to the hole 
 was a bit of twine which served to open the 
 shutters from within. He was brave enough to 
 pull it. ' The worst that can happen to me,' 
 thought he, ' is to be caught. Well, if I am, I 
 shall say that I had forgotten something in my 
 room and came to get- it.' A foolish excuse ; 
 but the boy was possessed by an idea. The 
 shutter creaked as it opened, but no one stirred. 
 The officer was sleeping soundly, — stupefied no 
 doubt by wines and liquors. His snores echoed 
 from the room in regular cadence. With all the 
 precautions of a thief my brother glided along 
 the floor till he reached the cupboard where he 
 had seen me hide that pistol. He took it out. 
 You can fancy how his heart beat. He stayed 
 there perfectly still a quarter of an hour per- 
 haps, crouching on the floor, hugging his weapon, 
 
MONSIEUR VIPLE'S BROTHER. 195 
 
 witliout really knowing what he meant to do 
 with it. The moonbeams entering through the 
 window fell athwart the room, lighting it just 
 enough to show a vague outline of the various 
 objects. The officer slept on ; still the same 
 calm, unbroken sleep proclaimed by the monoto- 
 nous snore. An image of his father entered the 
 child's mind. He saw the scene of the evening ; 
 that old man raising his glass towards the por- 
 trait ; the chair flung upon him, then his fall and 
 the flowing blood. The boy half rose and crept 
 to the bed. He could almost distinguish the 
 features of the sleeper. He cocked the pistol — 
 how tremendous such little sounds as that can 
 seem in moments like these ! He pointed the 
 pistol to the corner of the man's ear, there, just 
 there below the hair, and he fired — " 
 
 " What then ? " I exclaimed, as he paused. 
 
 " Then," continued the old man, " he ran to 
 the window, jumped the balustrade of the ter- 
 race, crept along the coping of one roof, climbed 
 the iron spikes of the wall, and along the coping 
 and slope of the other roof till he gained his 
 room. Once there he closed the skylight, hid 
 the pistol beneath his pillow, and went to bed 
 again, pretending to sleep, while a sudden uproar 
 filled the house, showing that the pistol-shot 
 had wakened the household, who were doubtless 
 searching for the murderer." 
 
 " Did they find him ? " 
 
196 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 " Never. Threats and search all failed. The 
 Austrians wanted to burn the house down ; they 
 arrested our servants one by one, but each could 
 show an alibi, fortunately, — my brother, too. 
 But who would think of suspecting a child ? 
 Moreover, the dead man was hated by his sol- 
 diers and also by his superior oSicers." 
 
 " Ha ! then he was really dead, was he ? It 
 served hiin right ! " I cried. 
 
 " Yes, did it not ? You think it was right, 
 don't you?" asked the old inspector, his eyes 
 glittering with a feverish recollection of a long 
 past yet ever present memory. 
 
 " And your brother ? " I persisted, " what be- 
 came of him ? " 
 
 " I have told you already that he died young," 
 he replied. 
 
 Passing through Issoire a few years ago, I met, 
 at the house of a distant relative of mine, an old 
 lady over eighty years of age, who was a sort of 
 cousin of my early friend the inspector. We 
 talked of him a great deal and, in the course of 
 conversation I chanced to say : — 
 
 " Did you know his brother ? " 
 
 " What brother ? " she asked. 
 
 " The one who died young." 
 
 " You are mistaken," she replied ; " Optat never 
 had a brother ; he was an only son, — as I know 
 very well, for I was brought up with him." 
 
MONSIEUR VIPLE'S BROTHER. 197 
 
 I then understood why it was that Monsieur 
 Viple did not choose to cross the market-place 
 where the Austrian prisoners were assembled. 
 He himself was the child who had avenged his 
 outraged father, — he, the old university professor, 
 who since that day had probably never touched 
 a weapon. What strange mysteries are some- 
 times hidden in the depths of a peaceful and 
 humble destiny ! 
 
II. MAECEL. 
 
 {Extract from the Diary of Frangois Vernantes.) 
 
 I have given elsewhere, under the title of 
 Madame Bressuire (see " Pastels of Women ") a 
 fragmentary tale selected from the papers be- 
 queathed to me by my friend, the late Franqois 
 Vernantes. Some persons were so interested in 
 that fragment that I believe I shall gratify their 
 wishes by selecting from the same papers an in- 
 cident of Vernantes' youth. They will find in 
 it the same inclination to analyze and refine 
 upon his own emotions which did such ill service 
 to that unfortunate man. I have already ex- 
 plained why it did so in the few lines I gave to 
 his brief biography, and I need not repeat the 
 explanation here ; the present introduction being 
 merely intended to place in its true light the 
 personal confidence made to me in the little tale, 
 the whole interest of which (if there is any) lies 
 in the study, too seldom attempted, of the shades 
 of sensibility in a child's nature. 
 
 Paris, September, 187 — 
 How strange and, after all, inexplicable are cer- 
 tain friendships of our childhood which endure 
 
MARCEL. 199 
 
 but for a season and yet occupy a place in the 
 memory of our hearts against which nothing is 
 ever able to prevail, — neither life-long separa- 
 tions, nor fresh and deeper passions, nor even 
 other memories differing in themselves and in 
 our hearts from those which were so dear to us 
 in distant years. Outwardly they may have 
 changed, but no change comes to the tender 
 feelings with which they once inspired us ; they 
 remain in some mysterious fold of our inner 
 being, so that we continue to love them for what 
 they were and are no longer, and by what we 
 have been and now, alas, have ceased to be, — 
 like mutilated soldiers who feel the fingers of a 
 lost arm. It may be that childhood, guileless and 
 disinterested, in all the freshness of its powers of 
 affection which have come to no bitter deteriora- 
 tion through the senses, childhood with its gift 
 of illusion and its ignorance of the future, is to 
 friendship what the dawn of puberty is to love. 
 As we advance in life we know better why we 
 love the friends whom we then make ; just as we 
 find mistresses to whom we attach ourselves with 
 the almost tragic seriousness of our riper years. 
 But behind these friendships and behind these 
 loves there lies a past which impels us, at times, 
 to comparison, to keen regret, even — it may be 
 — in the midst of happiness. Our souls, robbed 
 of their native elasticity, cannot proceed along 
 new ways with that ardent impulse which once 
 
200 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 imagined but one end to a glorious road. By this 
 time we have followed too many such ways which 
 seemed so long and proved so short, which prom- 
 ised joy and led to sorrow. And yet we re-enter 
 them, — yes, we re-enter them ! Time was 
 when we entered those paths for the first time. 
 " Enter " and " re-enter," — there is but one sylla- 
 ble of difference in the two words, and yet infini- 
 tude lies between them. 
 
 These reflections, as I am well aware, convey 
 nothing that is original ; but, after all, what 
 is there original in being a son, brother, lover, 
 or father, in growing old and in feeling one's 
 self grow old, in being a man in all that our 
 present humanity contains of simple, sad, and 
 tender ? At any rate, I write them down, — per 
 sfogarmi, as my dear Stendhal says, — on my 
 return from a trip to an old town in the Ile-de- 
 France, to which I had long meditated a memo- 
 rial visit, although I had spent but six weeks 
 there, and those over twenty years ago. 
 
 This gray and solitary old town is on the 
 borders of a great forest. A river and two 
 canals intersect it. Why should I tell its name 
 in this journal ? Hidden from others as these, 
 my pages, are meant to be, they might be read 
 by indifferent eyes, and the mere thought of 
 meaningless curiosity almost rebuffs me from 
 ■writing them. I had long preserved a memory 
 
MARCEL. 201 
 
 of the decaying old town, and of the holidays I 
 once passed there, — a delightful memory of 
 slothful, transparent waters, meandering along 
 their grassy bed, where the herbage scarcely 
 bent beneath the current. Its very name, 
 which I forbear to write, evokes for me, when I 
 read it in a newspaper, or a railway time-table, 
 or, it may be, in a book, the outline of ancient 
 houses covered with brown roofs, projecting their 
 antiquated balconies of brownish wood (always 
 filled with flowers) over river or canal. Again I 
 see the black mill-wheel, turning with gentle 
 motion ; its broad blades scattering a rain of 
 drops brilliant as diamonds. The half-ruined 
 tower of the castle, the remains of fortifications 
 now converted into gardens, the open bell-tower 
 of the church with its unfinished spire — hovy 
 often I have dwelt in thought on all these de- 
 tails, and on the smiling landscape in its summer 
 garb, — for that expression is the only one 
 which truly renders my recollection of those 
 half-mown wheat fields, the luxuriance of the 
 grasses and the foliage, the warm breath of the 
 earth exhaling upward, the luminous peace 
 falling from the sky and enfolding all things. 
 Such perceptions come from the virginity of 
 sensation which belongs to childhood. Since 
 then I have travelled through many lands; I 
 have spent many a summer escaping Paris on 
 the seashore, among the mountains, or in lonely 
 
202 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 nooks of England or of Italy ; and yet my one 
 conception of summer, when I think about it, 
 dates back to my six weeks' stay as a boy in that 
 ancient town so truly French, close to the 
 canals, to the river, and to the forest, — first days 
 of liberty to a lad hitherto impiisoned, as one 
 might say, in an apartment of the rue Saint- 
 Honor^ ; six enchanting weeks, enchanted by 
 the gain of an adolescent friendship such as in 
 after life we never forget. Their memory was, 
 in fact, the motive which led me to leave the 
 train at the station of this remote and lonely 
 town, to seek once more that well-remembered 
 scenery and the friend I had left there, were he 
 still living, and — my young soul ! 
 
 It is well to add that this friendship of six 
 weeks' duration, severed almost as soon as 
 formed, was stamped on my mind by an inward 
 drama, the various scenes of which return to my 
 memory at this moment with so clear-cut a 
 precision that my recollections of yesterday are 
 not more vivid ; and it is really more to relate 
 them to myself than to philosophize on the 
 heart's memory, its power and its deceptions, 
 that I have seized my pen. After thirty years 
 of age it is best to profit by every hour of living 
 memories, and to fix their images, too ready to 
 grow vague and misty, in our brains. Living, 
 indeed, is the memory of Marcel — such was 
 
MAECEL. 203 
 
 the name of my little friend of 1855. I see 
 myself, as we see our double in fairy tales, 
 walking beside the cousin with whom I was 
 spending my holidays, towards the house where 
 I was destined to meet the first true friend I 
 ever had. Why my father and mother decided 
 to part with me, instead of taking me with them 
 to certain baths, is a question I did not then 
 ask myself, but which I answer now with, I 
 must admit, the most calculating of bourgeois 
 reasons. My cousin was not married ; he had 
 served in the navy with a rank which, though 
 it did not exactly justify the title of " admiral," 
 bestowed upon him by my family, was high 
 enough to satisfy his ambition; and his retire- 
 ment from the service, coinciding in date with 
 the inheritance of a fine property, gave food to 
 the imagination of my solicitous parents. 
 
 " Unless he flings his money into the river," I 
 have heard them say a hundred times, " he must 
 certainly have laid by a pretty pile. Our uncle 
 left him twenty thousand francs a year. There 's 
 his pension, his cross. In that provincial town 
 he can't spend more than six thousand francs a 
 year, and it is fifteen years since he went there." 
 
 Silence usually followed these speeches. I 
 have no doubt now that the hope of securing me 
 a good place in Cousin Henry's will, led to my 
 being sent to stay with him. On his side, he 
 was glad to pay off, once for all, the hospitality 
 
204 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 shown to him by my parents ; for he always 
 stayed with us when he journeyed to Paris. 
 This old sailor with the gray eyes, which looked 
 so keenly through their wrinkled lids, was by 
 no means incapable of detecting my parents' 
 scheme. But I rather think he forgave it, as I 
 forgive certain of my own cousins who are culti- 
 vating in me, a confirmed old bachelor of forty 
 touched in his liver, a possible codicil to my 
 will I only hope that they may forgive me 
 when that will is opened, as I do the admiral, 
 who left the whole of his eight hundred thousand 
 francs to a naval hospital. If I had that money 
 to-day, what good would it be to me ; how could 
 it help me now ? On the other hand, were it 
 not for the hope of that money I might not have 
 stayed with him in that deserted old town, and I 
 should never have known MarcS. Can a mass 
 of material obligations ever outweigh in value 
 the memory of a heart-warm enthusiasm ? 
 
 I experienced that enthusiasm on the very 
 first afternoon when my cousin took me to the 
 house of Madame Am^lie, — it was so that the 
 admiral called the grandmother of my new 
 companion. How shady that alley of acacias 
 through which we passed to reach the house ! 
 how intense the foliage against the blue of the 
 sky on that sweet day ! I breathe again the 
 aroma of the flowers which swayed their long 
 racemes of pink or white among the leafage, — 
 
MAKCEL. 205 
 
 last blossoms of the season. My cousin Henry 
 told me, as we came along, the history of Marcel 
 and his grandmother. The child had no other 
 relation in the world ; he had been an orphan 
 for six months. What the admiral did not tell 
 me was that he himself had formerly wished to 
 marry Madame Am^lie. No doubt he still felt 
 for her the romantic devotion which honorable 
 women are able late in life to inspire in the 
 men who have loved them young. Men are so 
 grateful to those women who by an irreproach- 
 able life have kept alive the ideal they had 
 formed of them. It is so hard to see the woman 
 we dreamed of at twenty-five as the companion 
 of our destiny, lower herself morally. 
 
 Neither did my cousin Henry tell me that 
 Madame Am^lie and her husband, now dead, 
 had quarrelled with their only son about his 
 marriage and had never again seen him. The 
 young man had given their name against their 
 will to a woman whom he had picked up in 
 Paris, and who was Marcel's mother. Of all the 
 personages of this little domestic tragedy none 
 survived but the boy and his grandmother. The 
 stem anger of the lonely widow against this de- 
 grading marriage had not carried her so far as to 
 abandon to strangers a child in whose veins a 
 little of her own blood flowed. But the blood 
 of that other mingled with it, of that girl whom 
 her husband and she had cursed ; and I was to 
 
206 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 be a witness, thoiigh without knowing the cause, 
 of the direful effects of this rancor surviving 
 death, — the hardest and the most inexpiable of 
 all the evil feelings of the heart. To those who 
 are gone we owe that forgiveness of sins which 
 is the noblest act of human piety, a communion 
 in the mutual weakness of our poor nature. 
 Madame Am^lie was picas in all other ways ; 
 but ten years of suffering had told upon her and 
 could no more be effaced from her character than 
 the wrinkles from her thin, sallow face where the 
 brown eyes shone with piercing lustre. The 
 smooth, gray hair which framed a forehead hollow 
 at the temples, the nervous contraction of the 
 melancholy mouth, the slenderness of the with- 
 ered fingers, which a pair of black lace mittens 
 seemed to make more withered and discolored 
 still, the ascetic leanness of her figure, the au- 
 sterity of her mourning garments, all contributed 
 to render this most worthy and respectable widow 
 an apparition of gloom. When I firet saw her, 
 a group of lindens with lopped branches, their 
 crowns trimmed into shape, surrounded her au- 
 stere figure with a dome of foliage through which 
 the sun was shining. The house appeared at a 
 little distance, quite low and covered with a grape 
 vine trained upon the walls. There was con- 
 trast and yet harmony between the melancholy 
 widow and the soothing scene about her, — con- 
 trast, inasmuch as she symbolized too plainly the 
 
MARCEL. 207 
 
 sorrows of the soul amid the charms of happy 
 nature ; harmouy, because a cloistral atmosphere 
 issued from the stilly grove and the closed portal, 
 which, however, opened at the voice of the old 
 lady as she called, " Marcel, Marcel ! " A boy 
 of my own age came out ; but so puny and pale 
 was he, so weak and suffering his poor limbs, 
 that he seemed to be younger than I by several 
 years. His beautiful eyes of a liquid blue, which 
 were over-large, revealed too precocious an ac- 
 quaintance with mental suffering. I saw him 
 walk towards us (he never ran), when his grand- 
 mother called him, and I heard the latter say to 
 him in a harsh voice, — 
 
 " Wliere were you ? " 
 
 "I was reading in the salon," replied the 
 boy. 
 
 " You know very well that I have forbidden 
 you to read after breakfast. It does you harm. 
 Here is Monsieur Henry ; cannot you say good- 
 morning to him ? " 
 
 " Good-morning, monsieur," said the child. 
 
 "And this is his cousin, Frauqois Vernantes, 
 with whom you are to play." 
 
 " Yes, madame," he replied. 
 
 He called her " madame ! " — his grandmother ! 
 
 I remember that as I followed my new com- 
 panion to the garden, which he had instantly and 
 very gracefully offered to show me, I was lost in 
 reflections on this circumstance, to me inexpli- 
 
208 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 cable. I was so spoilt by my own two grand- 
 luammas, so accustomed to find in them- the 
 divine indulgence of an affection that was never 
 stern, that I could not comprehend it. My cu- 
 riosity was awakened and I did not repress it, 
 so that after half-an-hour spent in making ac- 
 quaintance with the roses of the rond-point and 
 the rabbits in their hutch, with the long rows of 
 fruit-trees and the stone steps leading to the 
 canal where the linen was washed, with the 
 growling watch-dog chained in his kennel and 
 the cooing pigeons in the dovecot, I suddenly 
 turned to Marcel and asked abruptly : — 
 
 " Was Madame Am^lie very angry with you 
 just now ? " 
 
 " She is always so," he answered. 
 
 " Does she always speak to you like that ? " 
 
 " Always," he replied. 
 
 " Do you always call her ' madame ' ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said. 
 
 " How queer ! " I persisted. 
 
 Suddenly, and just as I uttered those childish 
 words I saw Marcel's forehead contract, his lips 
 tremble, and a torrent of blood suffuse his cheeks. 
 Tears rolled, from his eyes. 
 
 " Ah ! " he said, sobbing, " why are you, you 
 too, so unkind ? Why do you speak like that ? 
 I don't want you near me. Go away, go away ! " 
 
 How well I remember it all! When the 
 trembling lips of my little friend uttered these 
 
MARCEL. 209 
 
 angry words we were standing at the lower 
 end of the garden close to a gigantic fir-tree with 
 a carpet of fiine needles beneath it. The air was 
 filled with the warm scent of its resin, an odor 
 which I have never since that day inhaled with- 
 out again living over this strange scene and the 
 unreflecting, naive impulse of pity which set me 
 crying myself I caught Marcel's hands and en- 
 treated him not to be angry with me ; I assever- 
 ated that I had spoken thoughtlessly and I 
 promised not to do so again. Even now, when 
 I try to understand, through my experience as 
 a mature man, what it was that moved me so 
 deeply at that moment, I can only find one 
 explanation for the sudden violence of my sym- 
 pathy. Assuredly he did produce in my eleven- 
 year-old heart the thunder-clap of a true friend- 
 ship, — just as the thunder-claps of love burst 
 upon the hearts of twenty. It was a frenzy of 
 pure affection, which overflowed, I think, in 
 words of moving sincerity; for the poor child 
 ceased to sob; a gentle smile returned to his 
 refined lips ; his face, with its delicate features, 
 glowed with a sparkle of gratitude. His whole 
 soul was so sick and weary, poor orphan that he 
 was with those too thoughtful eyes, that this 
 outburst of a generous affection was infinitely 
 sweet to him. He replied to me with touching 
 sympathy, and in less than half an hour from the 
 time he had so angrily turned upon me we were 
 14 
 
210 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 sitting side by side beneath the gigantic tree and 
 I was saying to him, — 
 
 " Will you be my friend ? " 
 
 To which he answered, — 
 
 " Yes, I will ; but you must have no other." 
 
 We kissed each other, to seal this pledge of 
 sudden friendship, and then, with the amazing 
 rapidity of feeling which belongs to that vibrat- 
 ing age, we began to make arrangements for the 
 future. We agreed to say " thee " and " thou," 
 to have no secrets between us, to stand by each 
 other on all occasions, to meet every day and 
 play with no other boys during the holidays. In 
 short, it was one of those sudden entrances into 
 an idyl of elective brotherhood, such as we may 
 all have known in the dawn of youth. Good 
 God ! how severe and yet how true is the saying 
 of a celebrated writer when he speaks of his 
 develoutee soul of fifty, — faded and worn at fifty 
 only ! He was of a past generation, while we, 
 the sons of the middle of this century, lose at 
 fifteen, and beyond recovery, the velvet bloom of 
 our inner being, thanks to our guilty reading. I 
 myself, how early I became worn out ! 
 
 I have spoken of brotherhood ; but in truth I 
 never had a brother. So I gave that noble name 
 to my new friend, and with the name that por- 
 tion of my heart's affection which might have 
 gone to a brother younger and smaller than my- 
 
MARCEL. 211 
 
 self, one to be wrapped and held in the warm 
 tenderness of protection. The muscles of this 
 son of a father and a mother dying young were 
 far too delicate for the bodily exercise which is 
 the base of all boyish amusements ; in fact, he 
 was disinherited of physical existence. So, dur- 
 ing the six happy weeks when we were allowed 
 to roam together, like two inoffensive animals 
 set for a time at liberty, between the garden of 
 Madame Am^lie and the park of my cousin the 
 admiral, it was I who took pride in sparing him 
 all effort ; I who lifted the heavy stones when we 
 dammed the brook ; I who took the oars when 
 we floated down the canal in a boat (against 
 the repeated orders of my cousin and his grand- 
 mother) ; I who climbed the trees to gather fruit 
 and take a deserted bird's-nest ; I who scaled 
 the rocks for a bunch of wild flowers. I rejoiced 
 in my vigor. In the visions of far-distant ad- 
 venture which we imagined after reading a book 
 of travels which I had won as a prize, it was I 
 who was elected to supply by my labor and in- 
 dustry the wants of our community of two. 
 
 " We shall live on my hunting," I told Marcel. 
 
 " Oh, that will be good," he replied ; " when 
 wUl that time come ? I am so unhappy here." 
 
 It was indeed true that the poor frail boy was 
 unhappy ; he endured in that house and beside 
 his grandmother one of those subtle forms of 
 suffering of which we might surely suppose that 
 
212 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 youth was unsusceptible. But in my humble 
 opinion youth is more sensitive to such suffering 
 than maturer age, whenever, as sometimes hap- 
 pens, its frenzied power of imagination turns to 
 torture. During the interminable conversations 
 which filled the intervals between our games 
 Marcel recovered a superiority over me which 
 resulted from his precocious gift of feeling, devel- 
 oped by his sensitive delicacy. What hours we 
 spent lying in the shade of a boat, or curled up 
 on the steps to the canal watching the lazy water ; 
 he telling me his sorrows, I listening to them. 
 They all came from the passionate attachment 
 he bore his mother, who died when he was nine 
 years old, just fourteen months before his father. 
 He described to me her sick-room (she was con- 
 sumptive), his long sittings in that closed cham- 
 ber, occupied in some silent amusement, fearing 
 to wake her if she dozed. He pictured her so 
 pale, never leaving her bed, and coughing, always 
 coughing. He told me how he saw his father 
 weeping ; and how he overheard, he. Marcel, a 
 conversation among the women-servants who 
 stated that the doctor said she could not live a 
 week. He described his own self, with his fore- 
 head against the window panes, gazing into the 
 street, — one of those Parisian streets which I 
 happened to know well ; always noisy and full 
 of life, but then covered with straw that the 
 sound of the carriages might be deadened, and 
 
MAECEL. 213 
 
 not disturb her dying moments. With what 
 sadness he made me share in his last vigil beside 
 the dead, and hear the details of her funeral. 
 Since then I have read hundreds of such tales, 
 with my passionate taste for personal memoirs 
 and correspondences. None has ever touched 
 me like the simple words in which my little 
 friend pictured that death scene, with his blue 
 eyes fixed in space, which was filled for him 
 with those melancholy images. Then he told of 
 the dinners alone with his father, who would 
 suddenly weep as he looked at him, and who 
 often came to kiss him in the night-time, saying, 
 " Oh, my poor Marcel ! " 
 
 " Yes, " said the strange child, " poor Marcel, 
 truly. When papa died and my grandmother 
 came to take me you don't know how I trembled. 
 Mamma had so often spoken of her and told 
 me she would never love me. ' She hates me,' 
 she said. Why ? If you had known mamma, 
 and how beautiful she was even though she was 
 ill, with her golden hair so long, so long, and her 
 eyes so blue, so blue, you would never have be- 
 lieved that any one could hate her, — but it was 
 all true ; my grandmother hates her still, and 
 me too because I am like her. Just think, the 
 very first day she said to the servant, ' Take away 
 those portraits,' pointing to the photographs of 
 my poor mamma which stood on the table. Ah ! 
 then I understood how she hated her. And just 
 
214 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 because of that I have never been able to thank 
 her, really thank her — no, I could n't ! She is 
 good to me, I know, very, very good. But when 
 she looks at me, when we are alone, I feel she 
 sees mamma and I turn cold. Oh ! how cold it 
 makes me. And then I long to run away, to 
 get to Paris and see the grave where they have 
 put her. My papa is not with her, they brought 
 him here. My grandmother would have it so, 
 and I am sure he comes back at night to reproach 
 her, for she can't sleep. She comes into my 
 room ; she thinks I am asleep ; I am so afraid of 
 her that I shut my eyes. I know she is looking 
 at me and I 'm afraid she will hear my heart 
 beat, for it makes such a noise ! Oh ! if you 
 could only see the pretty garden they have 
 planted over mamma ; it is all roses. I always 
 went there twice a week with my papa. It is 
 on a little hill in the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise. 
 Did you ever go there ? Oh ! how I wish I 
 could go back there once more ! " 
 
 I must feel very sure of my memory or I could 
 scarcely believe now that Marcel did really speak 
 and feel thus ; and I must also summon all my 
 knowledge as to the romantic spirit which be- 
 longs to childhood before I can understand that 
 such conversations, constantly repeated, should 
 have ended, towards the close of my stay, in the 
 project which we actually planned. Marcel and 
 
MARCEL. 215 
 
 I ; or rather, he planned it alone and brought me 
 into it, as Orestes brought Pylades, in the my- 
 thology of which our heads were full, to the 
 scheme of abducting Iphigenia. 
 
 Madame Am^lie's f§te-day was close at hand. 
 My little friend confided to me a few days before 
 that event that he had prayed God so hard, so 
 hard, to help him that an inspiration had come 
 to him from those prayers. I ought to add that 
 we had just made our first communion, and our 
 religious fervor was so intense that our chimeri- 
 cal visions of a hunter's life in America alternated 
 with that of entering the same convent as soon 
 as we were grown men. Marcel's inspiration 
 from on high bore a fatal resemblance to the 
 prank of a naughty boy ; for it was nothing else 
 than to run away from home, — the object, how- 
 ever, having nothing in common with boyish 
 mischief. We were to go to Paris, visit the ceme- 
 tery of Pfere-Lachaise, and return in time for the 
 birthday fete. 
 
 " And," continued Marcel, " I shall bring my 
 grandmother a bunch of roses from mamma's 
 grave, and I shall tell her mamma sent them, and 
 I shall ask her to give me back the portraits and 
 to love me." 
 
 " Yes, I '11 go with you," I cried, without 
 stopping to discuss the practicability of this ro- 
 mantic proceeding which roused my enthusiasm. 
 Neither did Marcel discuss my resolution to 
 
216 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 follow him. We set our minds at once to dis- 
 cover some practical means of getting out of 
 the old town and reaching Paris. The distance 
 was about fifty miles. In those days the jour- 
 ney was made by a yellow diligence with four 
 horses. We saw it daily driving away in clouds 
 of dust, with its imperial full of peasants in their 
 blue blouses, while the coup6 and the interior 
 were filled with bourgeois. We never dreamed 
 of taking this antiquated conveyance, because, 
 in the first place, the conductor knew our fami- 
 lies, and in the second, our combined purses 
 produced only four francs. We were honest 
 little boys, and it never occurred to us to obtain 
 more money by illegitimate means. I therefore 
 submitted for Marcel's judgment a calculation 
 which, all things considered, seemed to both of 
 us unassailable. 
 
 " It will," I said, " take us one hour to go 
 two and a half miles, won't it ? We tried that 
 the other day. Therefore it will take us twenty 
 hours to do fifty miles. Consequently, if we 
 leave here at nine o'clock at night we shall be in 
 Paris the next afternoon. You can get your 
 roses. We will sleep at my house ; there is no 
 one there but old Susan, the maid, who won't 
 turn us away. We can start to return after 
 breakfast and we '11 be back here just in time 
 for your grandmother's fSte." 
 
MARCEL. 217 
 
 I am sure that I never in my life have felt 
 such a glow of exultation as that which sup- 
 ported my youthful courage on the warm and 
 balmy September night when I slipped out of 
 bed, then out of the house, and next, out of the 
 admiral's park to join my accomplice. I found 
 him sitting on a milestone, chosen as the place 
 of rendezvous. We clasped hands without a 
 word and started. The moon was lighting the 
 broad landscape with that almost supernatural 
 light which throws into strong relief the weird 
 outline of surrounding objects. Under other 
 circumstances my companion and I would cer- 
 tainly have not felt easy in crossing, all alone, 
 a dark forest, which the breeze, soft but inces- 
 sant, was filling with mysterious murmurs. The 
 belated cartmen and the postman whom we 
 encountered would undoubtedly have seemed 
 brigands all ready to attack us. Even in broad 
 daylight we were neither of us over-brave in 
 presence of a dog in the street, and we met at 
 least ten running with their noses to the ground 
 in search of something. But phantoms, thieves 
 and dangerous beasts did not enter our heads ; 
 we thought only of our scheme and its object, 
 and during the first hours, that is, until the 
 dawn broke we kept faithfully to the programme, 
 — so much that by the first gleam of light I was 
 able to read on a milestone that we were only 
 twenty-five miles from Paris. It was, in short, 
 
218 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 no dangerous adventure that stopped us on the 
 gray road to the capital which now lay stretched 
 before our eyes like an endless ribbon. We had 
 not reckoned on the immense fatigue a night of 
 forced marching and want of sleep would bring 
 upon us. At the end of the next mile we were 
 obliged to sit down on a pile of hay. At the 
 end of two more our eleven-year-old legs refused 
 to stir. I see us now, lying worn out, side by 
 side. Marcel sobbing with despair. But why 
 relate the absurd mortifications of our epic, 
 which ended like the famous first essay of the 
 great hidalgo, the Knight of the Sad Counte- 
 nance, and his faithful squire, by a return to the 
 old town (and to punishment) in one of the 
 carriages sent in search of us by the admiral as 
 soon as our absence was discovered in the morn- 
 ing. How terrified we now were by tlie un- 
 known men whom we met on the road along 
 which we had passed so calmly during the night. 
 Surely they knew our history ; and how could 
 we explain to them the real reason of our flight, 
 sitting there in a hired tilbury driven by a man 
 who seemed to be jeering at us, as though we 
 were a pair of thieves. But such fears were 
 nothing compared to the expectation of our 
 meeting with Madame Am^lie and my cousin. 
 When at last I stood in presence of the latter 
 and heard him say, ' Do you mean to explain 
 your conduct before I send you back to your 
 
MARCEL. 219 
 
 father ? ' I became a coward, so base a coward 
 that, for the first and last time of my life, I was 
 driven to treachery. Yes, I betrayed my friend. 
 I had solemnly sworn to him that I would never 
 reveal to any human being his confidences about 
 his grandmother. But I did reveal them now ; 
 I repeated our conversations about his dead 
 mother, and I told the secret of our flight and 
 our intention to return after visiting the ceme- 
 tery. The face of my judge — that rugged 
 bronzed face, redolent of sea-life — expressed as 
 he listened to me a benign astonishment which 
 encouraged me to hope. 
 
 "Ask Madame Am^lie to forgive Marcel," 
 I implored him. " Tell her it was all my doing , 
 find some excuse. Oh, I entreat you, cousin, 
 don't let her ever know what I have told you. 
 I promised Marcel I would never tell. If she 
 knows she will be more angry than ever. Punish 
 me as much as you like, but don't send me back 
 to Paris. Let me finish my holidays with him. 
 He has no one but me." 
 
 ''I shall do what I think right," said the 
 admiral in a kindlier tone, which I took to be 
 a promise of forgiveness. So, when I went to 
 bed, after a supper to which my appetite as a 
 tramp did justice in spite of my distress of 
 mind, I slept peacefully and soundly. But what 
 a waking it was in the morning as the first 
 rays of light filtered through tlie cracks of the 
 
220 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 blind, recalling me to the recollection of my 
 double wrong-doing, — to my cousin, for running 
 away ; to my friend (and this was dreadful) for 
 betraying his secret. My imagination, which 
 throughout my life has afflicted me with the 
 worst view of all events, had, by the time I saw 
 the admiral again, suggested to me every possi- 
 bility of evil. Yes, I had foreseen everything, 
 except precisely the thing that happened. 
 
 " Come," said my cousin Henry, stroking my 
 clipped head with his knotty hand after his 
 usual fashion, " run round to Madame Am^lie's 
 and ask how Marcel feels." 
 
 " Is he ill ? " I cried. 
 
 " It is nothing, nothing," he answered, " he is 
 rather weak, that 's all, — and devilish good 
 reason for it, too. Go at once ; he wants you." 
 
 Not one word about our flight ; no allusion to 
 punishment ! The explanation soon came when 
 I entered the room of my little friend and found 
 Madame Am^lie sitting beside his bed, — but 
 Madame Am^lie transfigured, with a smile of 
 pity upon her pale lips, the liglit of feeling in 
 her brown eyes, tenderness in the gesture with 
 which she stroked her grandson's cheeks as she 
 said to him, — 
 
 " You feel better, dear ? " 
 
 " Yes, grandmamma," he answered. 
 
 And he looked with rapture at a portrait 
 lying beside him, — one of those daguerrotypes 
 
MARCEL. 221 
 
 wliicli we find among our family relics, bright 
 and blurred at the same time when exposed to 
 the light. An expression of ineffable joy and 
 faith illumined that suffering face. Grandmother 
 and grandson were both so absorbed, she in strok- 
 ing those poor thin cheeks, he in contemplating 
 his mother's portrait, that they did not hear me 
 enter. But I did not need any words to tell me 
 that the admiral had repeated my confession to 
 the grandmother, and that in that aged heart 
 the knowledge of the mute suffering of the child, 
 hitherto supposed ungrateful, had triumphed over 
 the old woman's hatred of the dead ; and the 
 little daguerrotype lying on the sheet was the 
 pledge of a sacred reconciliation. 
 
 Such were the memories I sought to revive, 
 after an absence of many years in that ancient 
 town of the lle-de-France, where not a stone has 
 changed. The clear waters of the little river 
 where the black fish dart still flow between 
 their grassy banks. The two canals move slug- 
 gishly between the tow-paths. The barges, with 
 their low, wooden houses, geraniums adorning 
 their tiny windows, which set our youthful fancy 
 dreaming, still glide along those monotonous 
 water-ways with the same even, unhasting mo- 
 tion. The moment I left the station (the only 
 new building in the stagnant town, happily 
 beyond the walls) I beheld again the ancient 
 
222 PASTELS OF MEN. 
 
 castle, the open clock-tower of the church, the 
 bridge, my cousin's house, and then that other 
 house, — of Madame Am^lie. Who lives there 
 now ? The one which sheltered the admiral's 
 last years I knew had passed to strangers. The 
 good man died only four months after I left him, 
 — a painful parting which made my little friend 
 and me shed many tears and promise a correspond- 
 ence, which lasted scarce a year ! I have never 
 seen him again, my six-weeks' friend. Months 
 passed, then years, and I did not receive from 
 him, neither did I give him, any sign of existence. 
 Is he still living ? Is it he who now occupies 
 that house of Madame Amelia, the blinds of 
 which (still painted gray) I see beyond the 
 lindens, trimmed as ever ? And if he lives 
 what is he now ? Does any trace of that ro- 
 mantic soul which made him once so deeply 
 dear to me remain ? I myself have changed 
 so much since then — changed to darkness, to 
 sadness ; I am so belittled, if I must own the 
 truth. 
 
 Instead of ringing the bell of the closed gate, 
 I seated myself on a bench by the canal where I 
 could see the terrace, our terrace of other days, 
 the flowing water, image of our lives, scarce 
 bending the soft herbage, our herbage, our 
 water! And then — I came away, not seeking 
 to know whether Marcel was still of this world, 
 nor whether he lived in the old town, nor indeed 
 
MARCEL. 223 
 
 anything of his present being. Why find in a 
 provincial bourgeois, full of notions, the delight- 
 ful child who was my friend ? Why prove to 
 myself that the most exquisite of our poets was 
 right when he said : — 
 
 "I dread the scoffing adieu 
 Men fling to dreams of youtli " ? 
 
 A sad law, but too real, that in friendship, as 
 in love, it is best to remember alone, not with 
 another, if we wish to remember tenderly. 
 
4;