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Elle avait un vice, l'orgueil, qui lui tenait lieu de toutes les qualités.[A]

[A] She had one fault, pride, which, in her, answered in place of all the virtues.

Commander Bernard, a resident of Paris, after having served under the Empire in the Marine Corps, and under the Restoration as a lieutenant in the navy, was retired about the year 1830, with the brevet rank of captain.

Honourably mentioned again and again for his daring exploits in the maritime engagements of the East Indian war, and subsequently recognised as one of the bravest soldiers in the Russian campaign, M. Bernard, the most unassuming and upright of men, with the kindest heart in the world, lived quietly and frugally upon his modest pension, in a little apartment on one of the least frequented streets of the Batignolles.

An elderly woman, named Madame Barbançon, had kept house for him ten years or more, and, though really very fond of him, led him a rather hard life at times, for the worthy female, who had an extremely high temper and a very despotic disposition, was very fond of reminding her employer that she had sacrificed an enviable social position to serve him.

The real truth was, Madame Barbançon had long acted as assistant in the establishment of a well-known midwife—an experience which furnished her with material for an inexhaustible stock of marvellous stories, her great favourite being her adventure with a masked lady who, with her assistance, had brought a lovely girl baby into the world, a child Madame Barbançon had taken care of for two years, but which had been claimed by a stranger at the expiration of that time.

Four or five years after this memorable event, Madame Barbançon decided to resign her practice and assume the twofold functions of nurse and housekeeper.

About this time Commander Bernard, who was suffering greatly from the reopening of several old wounds, needed a nurse, and was so well pleased with Madame Barbançon's skill that he asked her to enter his service.

"You will have a pretty easy time of it, Mother Barbançon," the veteran said to her. "I am not hard to live with, and we shall get along comfortably together."

Madame Barbançon promptly accepted the offer, elevated herself forthwith to the position of Commander Bernard's dame de confiance, and slowly but surely became a veritable servant-mistress. Indeed, seeing the angelic patience with which the commander endured this domestic tyranny, one would have taken the old naval officer for some meek-spirited rentier, instead of one of the bravest soldiers of the Empire.

Commander Bernard was passionately fond of gardening, and lavished any amount of care and attention upon a little arbour, constructed by his own hands and covered with clematis, hop-vines, and honeysuckle, where he loved to sit after his frugal dinner and smoke his pipe and think of his campaigns and his former companions in arms. This arbour marked the limits of the commander's landed possessions, for though very small, the garden was divided into two parts. The portion claimed by Madame Barbançon aspired only to be useful; the other, of which the veteran took entire charge, was intended to please the eye only.

The precise boundaries of these two plats of ground had been, and were still, the cause of a quiet but determined struggle between the commander and his housekeeper.

Never did two nations, anxious to extend their frontiers, each at the expense of the other, resort to more trickery or display greater cleverness and perseverance in concealing and maintaining their mutual attempts at invasion.

We must do the commander the justice to say that he fought only for his rights, having no desire to extend, but merely to preserve his territory intact—territory upon which the bold and insatiable housekeeper was ever trying to encroach by establishing her thyme, savory, parsley, and camomile beds among her employer's roses, tulips, and peonies.

Another cause of heated controversy between the commander and Madame Barbançon was the implacable hatred the latter felt for Napoleon, whom she had never forgiven for the death of a young soldier—the only lover she had ever been able to boast of, probably. She carried this rancour so far, in fact, as to style the Emperor that "Corsican ogre," and even to deny him the possession of any military genius, an asseveration that amused the veteran immensely.

Nevertheless, in spite of these diverse political sentiments, and the ever recurring and annoying question of the boundaries of the two gardens, Madame Barbançon was, at heart, sincerely devoted to her employer, and attended assiduously to his every want, while the veteran, for his part, would have sorely missed his irascible housekeeper's care and attentions.

The spring of 1844 was fast drawing to a close. The May verdure was shining in all its freshness; three o'clock in the afternoon had just sounded; and though the day was warm, and the sun's rays ardent, the pleasant scent of freshly watered earth, combined with the fragrant odour of several small clumps of lilacs and syringas, testified to the faithful care the commander bestowed upon his garden, for from a frequently and laboriously filled wash-tub sunk in the earth, and dignified with the name of reservoir, the veteran had just treated his little domain to a refreshing shower; nor had he, in his generous impartiality, excluded his housekeeper's vegetable beds and kitchen herbs from the benefits of his ministrations.

The veteran, in his gardening costume of gray linen jacket and big straw hat, was now resting from his labours in the arbour, already nearly covered with a vigorous growth of clematis and honeysuckle. His sunburned features were characterised by an expression of unusual frankness and kindness, though a heavy moustache, as white as his bristling white hair, imparted a decidedly martial air to his physiognomy.

After wiping the sweat from his forehead with a blue checked handkerchief and returning it to his pocket, the veteran picked up his pipe from a table in the arbour, filled and lighted it, then, establishing himself in an old cane-bottomed armchair, began to smoke and enjoy the beauty of the day, the stillness of which was broken only by the occasional twitter of a few birds and the humming of Madame Barbançon, who was engaged in gathering some lettuce and parsley for the supper salad. If the veteran had not been blessed with nerves of steel, his dolce far niente would have been sadly disturbed by the monotonous refrain of the old-fashioned love song entitled "Poor Jacques," which the worthy woman was murdering in the most atrocious manner.

"Mais à présent que je suis loin de toi,

Je mange de tout sur la terre,"[B]

she sang in a voice as false as it was nasal, and the lugubrious, heart-broken expression she gave to the words, shaking her head sadly the while, made the whole thing extremely ludicrous.

[B] Instead of "Je manque de tout sur la terre."

For ten years Commander Bernard had endured this travesty without a murmur, and without taking the slightest notice of the ridiculous meaning Madame Barbançon gave to the last line of the chorus.

It is quite possible that to-day the meaning of the words struck him more forcibly, and that a desire to devour everything upon the surface of the earth did not seem to him to be the natural consequence of separation from one's beloved, for, after having lent an impartial and attentive ear a second time to his housekeeper's doleful ditty, he exclaimed, laying his pipe on the table:

"What the devil is that nonsense you are singing, Madame Barbançon?"

"It is a very pretty love song called 'Poor Jacques,'" snapped Madame Barbançon, straightening herself up. "Every one to his taste, you know, monsieur, and you have a perfect right to make fun of it, if you choose, of course. This isn't the first time you have heard me sing it, though."

"No, no, you're quite right about that!" responded the commander, satirically.

"I learned the song," resumed the housekeeper, sighing heavily, "in days—in days—but enough!" she exclaimed, burying her regrets in her capacious bosom. "I sang it, I remember, to that masked lady who came—"

"I'd rather hear the song," hastily exclaimed the veteran, seeing himself threatened with the same tiresome story. "Yes, I much prefer the song to the story. It isn't so long, but the deuce take me if I understand you when you say:

"'Mais à présent que je suis loin de toi,

Je mange de tout sur la terre.'"

"What, monsieur, you don't understand?"

"No, I don't."

"It is very plain it seems to me, but soldiers are so unfeeling."

"But think a moment, Mother Barbançon; here is a girl who, in her despair at poor Jacques's absence, sets about eating everything on the face of the earth."

"Of course, monsieur, any child could understand that."

"But I do not, I must confess."

"What! you can't understand that this unfortunate young girl is so heart-broken, after her lover's departure, that she is ready to eat anything and everything—even poison, poor thing! Her life is of so little value to her—she is so wretched that she doesn't even know what she is doing, and so eats everything that happens to be within reach—and yet, her misery doesn't move you in the least."

The veteran listened attentively to this explanation, which did not seem to him so entirely devoid of reason, now, after all.

"Yes, yes, I understand," he responded, nodding his head; "but it is like all love songs—extremely far-fetched."

"'Poor Jacques' far-fetched? The idea!" cried Madame Barbançon, indignantly.

"'Every one to his taste,' as you remarked a moment ago," answered the veteran. "I like our old sea songs very much better. A man knows what he is singing about when he sings them."

And in a voice as powerful as it was discordant, the old captain began to sing:

"Pour aller à Lorient pêcher des sardines,

Pour aller à Lorient pêcher des harengs—"

"Monsieur!" exclaimed Madame Barbançon, interrupting her employer, with a highly incensed and prudish air, for she knew the end of the ditty, "you forget there are ladies present."

"Is that so?" demanded the veteran, straining his neck to see outside of the arbour.

"There is no need to make such an effort as that, it seems to me," remarked the housekeeper, with great dignity. "You can see me easy enough, I should think."

"That is true, Mother Barbançon. I always forget that you belong to the other sex, but for all that I like my song much better than I do yours. It was a great favourite on the Armide, the frigate on which I shipped when I was only fourteen, and afterwards we sang it many a time on dry land when I was in the Marine Corps. Oh, those were happy days! I was young then."

"Yes, and then Bû-û-onaparte"—it is absolutely necessary to spell and accent the word in this way, to give the reader any idea of the disdainful and sneering manner in which Mother Barbançon uttered the name of the great man who had been the cause of her brave soldier boy's death—"Bû-û-onaparte was your leader."

"Yes, the Emperor, that 'Corsican ogre,' the Emperor you revile so, wasn't far off, I admit."

"Yes, monsieur, your Emperor was an ogre, and worse than an ogre."

"What! worse than an ogre?"

"Yes, yes, laugh as much as you like, but he was. Do you know, monsieur, that when that Corsican ogre had the Pope in his power at Fontainebleau, do you know how grossly he insulted our Holy Father, your beast of a Bû-û-onaparte?"

"No, Mother Barbançon, I never heard of it, upon my word of honour."

"It is of no use for you to deny it; I heard it from a young man in the guards—"

"Who must be a pretty old customer by this time, but let us hear the story."

"Ah, well, monsieur, your Bû-û-onaparte was mean enough, in his longing to humiliate the Pope, to harness him to the little King of Rome's carriage, then get into it and make the poor Holy Father drag him across the park at Fontainebleau, in order that he might go in this fashion to announce his divorce to the Empress Josephine—that poor, dear, good woman!"

"What, Mother Barbançon," exclaimed the old sailor, almost choking with laughter, "that scoundrel of an Emperor made the Pope drag him across the park in the King of Rome's carriage to tell the Empress Josephine of his divorce?"

"Yes, monsieur, in order to torment her on account of her religion, just as he forced her to eat a big ham every Good Friday in the presence of Roustan, that dreadful mameluke of his, who used to boast of being a Mussulman and talk about his harem before the priests, just to insult the clergy, until they blushed with shame. There is nothing to laugh at in all this, monsieur. At one time, everybody knew and talked about it, even—"

But, unfortunately, the housekeeper was unable to continue her tirade. Her recriminations were just then interrupted by a vigorous peal of the bell, and she hurried off to open the door.

A few words of explanation are necessary before the introduction of a new character, Olivier Raymond, Commander Bernard's nephew.

The veteran's sister had married a copyist in the Interior Department, and after several years of wedded life the clerk died, leaving a widow and one son, then about eight years of age; after which several friends of the deceased interested themselves in the fatherless boy's behalf, and secured him a scholarship in a fairly good school.

The widow, left entirely without means, and having no right to a pension, endeavoured to support herself by her needle, but after a few years of pinched and laborious existence she left her son an orphan. His uncle Bernard, his sole relative, was then a lieutenant in command of a schooner attached to one of our naval stations in the Southern Pacific. Upon his return to France, the captain found that his nephew's last year in college was nearing an end. Olivier, though his college course had been marked by no particularly brilliant triumphs, had at least thoroughly profited by his gratuitous education, but unfortunately, this education being, as is often the case, far from practical, his future on leaving college was by no means assured.

After having reflected long and seriously upon his nephew's precarious position, and being unable to give him any pecuniary assistance by reason of the smallness of his own pay, Commander Bernard said to Olivier:

"My poor boy, there is but one thing for you to do. You are strong, brave, and intelligent. You have received an education which renders you superior to most of the poor young men who enlist in the army. The conscription is almost sure to catch you next year. Get ahead of it. Enlist. In that case, you will at least be able to select the branch of the service you will enter. There is fighting in Africa, and in five or six years you are likely to be made an officer. This will give you some chance of a career. Still, if the idea of a military life is distasteful to you, my dear boy, we will try to think of something else. We can get along on my pay, as a retired officer, until something else offers. Now think the matter over."

Olivier was not long in making up his mind. Three months afterward he enlisted, on condition that he should be assigned to the African Chasseurs. A year later he was a quartermaster's sergeant; one year afterward a quartermaster. Attacked with one of those stubborn fevers, which a return to a European climate alone can cure, Olivier, unfortunately, was obliged to leave Africa just as he had every reason to expect an officer's epaulettes. After his recovery he was assigned to a regiment of hussars, and, after eighteen months' service in that, he had recently come to spend a six months' furlough in Paris, with his uncle.

The old sailor's flat consisted of a tiny kitchen, into which Madame Barbançon's room opened, of a sort of hall-way, which served as a dining-room, and another considerably larger room, in which the commander and his nephew slept. Olivier, knowing how little his uncle had to live on, would not consent to remain idle. He wrote a remarkably good hand, and this, together with the knowledge of accounts acquired while acting as quartermaster, enabled him to secure several sets of books to keep among the petty merchants in the neighbourhood; so, instead of being a burden upon the veteran, the young officer, with Madame Barbançon's connivance, secretly added his mite to the forty-eight francs' pay the commander received each month, besides treating his uncle now and then to agreeable surprises, which both delighted and annoyed the worthy man, knowing, as he did, the assiduous labour Olivier imposed upon himself to earn this money.

Accustomed from childhood to privations of every kind, first by his experience as a charity pupil, and subsequently by the vicissitudes of army life in Africa, kind-hearted, genial, enthusiastic, and brave, Olivier had but one fault, that is, if an excessive delicacy in all money matters, great and small, can be called a fault. As a common soldier, he even carried his scruples so far that he would refuse the slightest invitation from his comrades, if he was not allowed to pay his own score. This extreme sensitiveness having been at first ridiculed and considered mere affectation, two duels, in which Olivier quite covered himself with glory, caused this peculiarity in the character of the young soldier to be both accepted and respected.

Olivier, cheerful, obliging, quick-witted, and delighted with everything, enlivened his uncle's modest home immensely by his gay spirits. In his rare moments of leisure the young man cultivated his taste by reading the great poets, or else he spaded and watered and gardened with his uncle, after which they smoked their pipes, and talked of foreign lands and of war. At other times, calling into play the culinary knowledge acquired in African camps, Olivier initiated Madame Barbançon into the mysteries of brochettes de mouton and other viands, the cooking lessons being enlivened with jokes and all sorts of teasing remarks about Bû-û-onaparte, though the housekeeper scolded and snubbed Olivier none the less because she loved him with her whole heart. In short, the young man's presence had cheered the monotonous existence of the veteran and his housekeeper so much that their hearts quite failed them when they recollected that two months of Olivier's leave had already expired.