Читать книгу The Sin of Monsieur Antoine - George Sand - Страница 12

Table of Contents

The weather was superb and the sun was rising when Emile found himself opposite Châteaubrun. That ruin, which had seemed to him so awe-inspiring by the glare of the lightning-flashes, bore now an appearance of majesty and splendor which triumphed over the ravages of time and the despoiler. The morning sunbeams bathed it in a rosy-white glow and the vegetation with which it was covered bloomed coquettishly—a fitting garment to be the virginal shroud of so noble a monument.

There are in reality few châteaux with entrances so majestically disposed and so commandingly situated as that of Châteaubrun. The square structure which contained the gateway and the ogive peristyle is of a beautiful design; the hewn stone used in the arch and in the frame of the former portcullis is of imperishable whiteness. The façade of the château stands at the top of the knoll, covered with turf and flowers but built on the solid rock which ends in a precipice, at the foot of which flows a torrential stream. The trees, rocks and patches of greensward, scattered without order or regularity over these steep slopes, have a natural charm which the creations of art could never surpass. In the other direction the view is more extensive and more grand: the Creuse, crossed diagonally by two dams, forms, among the fields and the willows, two gentle and melodious waterfalls in its lovely stream, sometimes so placid, sometimes so frantic in its course, but everywhere clear as crystal and everywhere bordered by enchanting landscapes and picturesque ruins. From the top of the large tower of the château the eye can follow it as it winds in and out among the steep cliffs and glides like a streak of quicksilver over the dark verdure and among the rocks covered with pink heather.

When Emile had crossed the bridge which passes over enormous ditches partly filled, their banks covered with tufts of grass and flowering brambles, he observed with pleasure the cleanliness of that vast natural terrace and all the approaches to the ruin, due to the recent downpour of rain. All the fragments of plaster had been washed away and all the scattered pieces of wood, and you would have said that some gigantic fairy had carefully washed the paths and the old walls, screened the gravel and cleared the passage of all the rubbish of demolition which the châtelain would never have been able to have removed. The flood, which had marred, spoiled, destroyed all the beauty of the new Cardonnet house, had served to clean and renovate the despoiled monument of Châteaubrun. Its immovable old walls defied the centuries and the tempest, and the elevated site they occupied seemed destined to dominate all the transitory works of later generations.

Although he was proud, as befitted a descendant of the ancient bourgeoisie, that intelligent, revengeful, wilful race, which has made such a glorious record in history and which would still be so exalted if it had held out its hand to the people instead of trampling them under foot, Emile was impressed by the majestic aspect which that feudal abode retained amid its ruins, and he was conscious of a thrill of respectful pity as he entered—he, a rich and powerful plebeian—that domain where only the pride of a great name was left to contend against the real superiority of his position. This generous compassion was all the easier to entertain because there was nothing in the feelings and habits of the châtelain either to invite it or to repel it. The excellent Antoine, who was occupied in trimming fruit trees at the entrance to his garden, placid, unconcerned and amiable, greeted him with a fatherly air, ran to meet him and said with a smile:

"Welcome, once more, my dear Monsieur Emile; for I know who you are now, and I am very glad to know you. Upon my word your face took my fancy at the first glance, and since you overthrew the prejudices that Jean tried to instill in me against your father, I feel that it will be pleasant to me to see you often in my ruins. Come with me first of all to the stable, and I will help you to fasten your horse, for Monsieur Charasson is busy grafting rose-bushes with my daughter and we mustn't interrupt the little one in such an important occupation. You will breakfast with me this time; for we owe you a meal that we stole from you the other day."

"I did not come to cause you more trouble, my generous host," said Emile, pressing with an irresistible impulse of friendliness the country gentleman's broad callous hand. "I wished first of all to thank you for your kindness to me, and in the second place to meet a man who is your friend and my own, and with whom I made an appointment for last evening."

"I know, I know about that," said Monsieur Antoine, putting his finger to his lips: "he told me the whole story. But he exaggerated his grievances against your father, as usual. We will talk about that later, however, and I have to thank you, on my own account, for your interest in him. He went away at daybreak, and I don't know if he will be able to return to-day, for he is more hotly pursued than ever; but I am sure that his affairs will soon take a turn for the better, thanks to you. You must tell me what you finally obtained from your father in the direction of my poor friend's safety and satisfaction. I am authorized to listen to you and to reply to you, for I have full powers to arrange the terms of pacification; I am sure that any terms that pass through your mouth will be honorable! But the matter is not so pressing that you cannot breakfast with us, and I tell you frankly that I will not begin negotiations on an empty stomach. Let us begin by feeding your horse, for animals don't know how to ask for what they want, and we ought to look out for them before we look out for ourselves, lest we forget them. Look you, Janille! bring your apron full of oats, for this noble beast is in the habit of eating them every day I am sure, and I want him to neigh in token of good-will every time he passes my gate; indeed I want him to come in in spite of his master, if he happens to forget me."

Janille, notwithstanding the parsimonious economy that guided all her actions, unhesitatingly brought a small quantity of oats which she kept in reserve for great occasions. She was of the opinion that they were a useless luxury; but she would have sold her last gown for the honor of her master's house, and on this occasion she said to herself with generous shrewdness that the present Emile had made her at their last interview and the one he would not fail to make her to-day would be more than enough to feed his horse sumptuously as often as he chose to come.

"Eat, my boy, eat," she said, patting the horse with an air which she strove to render manly and knowing; then, taking a handful of straw, she set about rubbing him down.

"Hold, Dame Janille," cried Emile, taking the straw from her hands, "I will do that myself."

"Pray, do you think I wouldn't do it as well as a man?" said the omni-competent little woman. "Never fear, monsieur, I am as good in the stable as in the pantry and the laundry; and if I didn't pay my visit to the hay-rack and the harness-room every day, that little rattle-brain jockey would never keep monsieur le comte's mare in decent condition. See how clean and fat she is, poor old Lanterne! She isn't handsome, monsieur, but she's good; she's like everything else here except my child, who is handsome and good too."

"Your child!" said Emile, suddenly remembering a fact which deprived Mademoiselle de Châteaubrun's image of something of its poetic charm. "You have a child here? I have not seen her."

"Fie, monsieur! what are you saying?" cried Janille, her pale and glistening cheeks mantling with a modest blush, while Monsieur Antoine smiled with some embarrassment. "Apparently you are not aware that I am unmarried."

"Excuse me," said Emile, "I have so recently come into this neighborhood that I am likely to make many absurd mistakes. I thought that you were married or a widow."

"It is true that at my age I might have buried several husbands," rejoined Janille; "for I have not lacked opportunities. But I have always had a dislike for marriage, because I like to do as I choose. When I say our child, it's on account of my affection for a child whom I saw born, as you might say, for I had her with me when she was being weaned, and monsieur le comte allows me to treat his daughter as if she belonged to me, which doesn't take away any of the respect I owe her. But if you had seen mademoiselle, you would have noticed that she no more looks like me than she does like you, and that she has only noble blood in her veins. Jour de Dieu! if I had such a child, where could I have got her? I should be so proud of her, that I'd tell everybody, even if it made people speak ill of me. Ha! ha! you are laughing, are you, Monsieur Antoine? laugh as much as you choose; I am fifteen years older than you, and evil tongues have nothing to say against me."

"Nonsense, Janille! nobody dreams of such a thing, so far as I know," said Monsieur Châteaubrun, affecting an air of gayety. "That would be doing me too much honor, and I am not conceited enough to boast of it. As for my daughter, you certainly have the right to call her what you please, for you have been more than a mother to her, if such a thing is possible!"

As he uttered these last words in a serious, agitated tone, there suddenly came into the châtelain's eyes and voice, as it were a cloud, and an accent of profound melancholy. But it was incompatible with his character that any depressing sentiment should be of long duration, and he soon recovered his usual serenity.

"Go and prepare breakfast, young madcap," he said playfully to his female majordomo; "I still have two trees to trim and Monsieur Emile will come and keep me company."

The garden of Châteaubrun had formerly been on a vast and magnificent scale like the rest of the domain; but a large part of it had been sold with the park, now transformed into a grain-field, and only a few acres remained. The part nearest the château was lovely in the natural disorder of its vegetation; the grass and the ornamental trees, left undisturbed in their vagabond growth, revealed here and there a step or two and a few fragments of wall, which had been summer-houses and labyrinths in the days of Louis XV. There, doubtless, mythological statues, urns, fountains and so-called rustic pavilions had repeated on a small scale the dainty and affected ornamentation of the royal palaces. But now it was all shapeless débris, covered with vines and ivy, lovelier perhaps in the eyes of an artist or a poet than it had been in the time of its magnificence.

On a higher level, surrounded with a thorn-hedge to confine the two goats that grazed at will in the former garden, was the orchard, filled with venerable trees, whose gnarled and knotty branches, escaping from the constraint of the pruning-knife and the espalier, assumed odd and fantastic shapes. There was a curious interlacing of monstrous hydras and dragons writhing under foot and over head, so that it was difficult to walk there without tripping over huge roots or leaving one's hat among the branches.

"These are old servants of the family," said Monsieur Antoine, breaking out a path for Emile through these patriarchs of the orchard; "they bear only once in five or six years; but then, such magnificent, juicy fruit comes from that rich, but sluggish sap! When I repurchased my estate, everybody advised me to cut down these old stumps; my daughter pleaded for them because of their great beauty, and it was a good thing that I followed her advice, for they give a fine shade, and although some of them yield mighty little in a year, we are sufficiently supplied with fruit. See this huge apple-tree! It must have been here when my father was born, and I'll wager that it will live to see my grand-children. Wouldn't it be downright murder to cut down such a patriarch? There's a quince-tree that bears only about a dozen quinces a year. That's very few for its size; but they're as big as my head and as yellow as pure gold; and such a flavor, monsieur! You'll see them in the fall! See, here's a cherry-tree that has a very good crop. Yes, the old fellows are still good for something, don't you think? It's only a matter of knowing how to prune them properly. A theoretical horticulturist would tell you that you must stop all this development of branches, clip and prune, so as to force the sap to transform itself into buds. But when a man is old himself, his own experience tells him something different. When the fruit tree has lived fifty years with everything sacrificed to increase its bearing qualities, you must give it its liberty and hand it over for a few years to the care of nature. Then it enters into its second childhood; it puts out new twigs and leaves and that rests it. And when, instead of a mere clipped skeleton, it has become a real tree again, it thanks you and rewards you by bearing all you choose. For instance, here's a big branch that seems to be of no use," he continued, opening his pruning-knife. "But I shall respect it, for such an extensive amputation would weaken the tree. In these old bodies the blood is not renewed fast enough for them to stand operations which youth can undergo safely. It's the same with vegetables. I am just going to take away the dead wood, scratch the moss, and freshen up the extremities. Look, it's very simple."

The artless gravity with which Monsieur de Châteaubrun immersed himself in this innocent occupation touched Emile and presented a constant contrast to what took place in his own home with regard to similar matters. While a gardener with a large salary, and two assistants, busily at work from morning till night, were not enough to keep his mother's garden sufficiently neat and gorgeous, while she worried over a rose bud that failed to bloom or an unsuccessful graft, Monsieur Antoine was happy in the proud savagery of his pupils, and in his eyes nothing was more fruitful and more generous than the will of nature. That old-fashioned orchard, with its fine soft turf, cropped by the hard-working teeth of a few patient sheep, allowed to wander there without dog or keeper, with its hardy and capricious vegetation and its gently undulating slopes, was a beautiful spot where no fear of jealous surveillance interrupted one's musing.

"Now that I have finished with my trees," said Monsieur Antoine, putting on his jacket which he had hung on a branch, "let us go and find my daughter and have breakfast. You haven't seen my daughter yet, I believe? But she knows you already, for she is admitted to all of our poor Jean's little secrets; indeed, he is so fond of her that he often goes to her for advice instead of me. Go on, Monsieur," he said to his dog, "go and tell your young mistress that breakfast time has come. Ah! that makes you frisky, doesn't it? Your appetite tells you the time as well as any watch."

Monsieur Antoine's dog answered to the name of Monsieur, which he gave him when he was pleased with him, and that of Sacripant, which was his real name, but which Mademoiselle de Châteaubrun did not like, so that his master only used it when hunting or by way of stern rebuke, when it happened, as it very rarely did, that he committed some impropriety, such as eating gluttonously, snoring when he was asleep, or barking when Jean came over the wall in the middle of the night. The faithful beast seemed to understand what his master said, for he began to laugh, an expression of merriment very strongly marked in some dogs, which gives to their faces an almost human look of intelligence and kindliness. Then he ran ahead and disappeared down the slope toward the stream.

As they followed him, Monsieur Antoine called Emile's attention to the beauty of the landscape that was gradually unfolded before them. "Our Creuse also took it into its head to overflow the other day," he said; "but all the hay along the banks had been housed, thanks to Jean's advice, for he had warned us not to let it get overripe. Everybody hereabout looks up to him as an oracle, and it's a fact that he has a great faculty of observation and a prodigious memory. By the aid of certain signs that nobody else notices, the color of the water or the clouds, and especially the influence of the moon in the first fortnight of spring, he can predict infallibly what sort of weather we are to hope for or fear throughout the year. He would be an invaluable man for your father, if he would listen to him. He is good at everything, and if I were in Monsieur Cardonnet's position, nothing would deter me from trying to make a friend of him; for it's of no use to think of making him into an assiduous and well-disciplined servant. He has the nature of the savage, who dies when he is brought into subjection. Jean Jappeloup will never do anything good except of his own free will; but just get hold of his heart, which is the biggest heart God ever made, and you will see how, on important occasions, that man rises above what he seems to be! Let Monsieur Cardonnet's establishment be endangered by freshet, fire or any unforeseen catastrophe, and then he will tell you if Jean Jappeloup's head and arms can be too dearly bought and sheltered!"

Emile did not listen to the end of this eulogy with the interest which it would have aroused in him under any other circumstances, for his ears and his thoughts had taken another direction: a fresh young voice was singing, or rather humming, at a little distance, one of those melodies, charming in their melancholy and artless sweetness, which are peculiar to the country. And the châtelain's daughter, the bachelor's child, whose mother's name was a mystery to the whole neighborhood, appeared at the corner of a clump of eglantine, as lovely as the loveliest wild-flower of that charming solitude.

Fair-haired and pale, and about eighteen or nineteen years of age, Gilberte de Châteaubrun had, in her face as in her character, an admixture of good sense beyond her years and her childish gayety, which few young women would have retained in such a position as hers; for it was impossible for her not to be aware of her poverty and of the future of isolation and privations which was in store for her in that age of cold calculation and selfishness. She seemed, however, to be no more affected by it than her father, whom she resembled, feature by feature, morally as well as physically; her fearless, amiable glance was marked by the most touching serenity. She blushed deeply when she saw Emile, but it was the effect of surprise rather than embarrassment; for she came forward and bowed to him without awkwardness, without that constrained and slyly-bashful air which has been too highly extolled in young women, for lack of knowledge as to what it means. It did not occur to Gilberte that her father's young guest would devour her with his eyes, and that she should assume a dignified air in order to place a curb upon the audacity of his secret desires. On the contrary, she looked at him, to see if his face appealed to her as it did to her father, and with ready perspicacity she observed that he was very handsome without being in the least degree vain; that he followed the fashions to a moderate extent; that he was neither stiff, nor arrogant, nor presuming; in short, that his expressive face was instinct with candor, courage and delicacy. Satisfied with this scrutiny, she at once felt as much at her ease as if there were no stranger with her and her father.

"It is true," she said, completing Monsieur de Châteaubrun's sentence of introduction, "my father was angry with you for running away the other day without your breakfast. But I understood perfectly that you were impatient to see your mother, especially in view of the flood when everyone might well tremble for his friends. Luckily, Madame Cardonnet didn't get very much of a fright, we were told, and you lost none of your workmen."

"Thank God, no one was killed at our place or in the village," Emile replied.

"But your property was damaged a good deal, wasn't it?"

"That is the least interesting point, mademoiselle; the poor people suffered much more in proportion. Luckily, my father has the power and the inclination to repair many disasters."

"They say especially—they say also," rejoined the girl, blushing a little at the word that had escaped her involuntarily—"that madame your mother is exceedingly kind and charitable. I was talking about her just now with little Sylvain, whom she overwhelmed with kindness."

"My mother is perfect," said Emile; "but, on that occasion, it was quite natural that she should manifest much good-will toward that poor child, but for whom I should very likely have lost my life through imprudence. I am impatient to see him and thank him."

"Here he is," said Mademoiselle de Châteaubrun, pointing to Charasson, who was coming behind her with a basket and a little jar of pitch. "We have made more than fifty grafts, and there are some slips there that Sylvain picked up in the upper part of your garden. They were in what the gardener threw away after pruning his rose-bushes, and they will give us some lovely flowers, if our grafting isn't too badly done. You will look at it, won't you, father? for I am not very skilful yet."

"Nonsense! you can graft better than I, with your little hands," said Monsieur Antoine, putting his daughter's pretty fingers to his lips. "That's woman's work, and requires more deftness than we men can manage. But you ought to put on your gloves, little one! Those wretched thorns have no respect for you."

"What harm do they do, father?" said the girl with a smile. "I am no princess, and I am glad of it. I am freer and happier."

Emile did not lose a word of this last sentiment, although it was uttered in an undertone for her father's ear only; and although he had stepped forward to meet little Sylvain and bid him a friendly good-morning.

"Oh! I am doing very well," replied the page; "I was only afraid of one thing and that was that the mare might take cold after such a bath. But by good luck she seems all the better for it, and I was very glad of the chance to go into your little château and see the beautiful rooms and your papa's servants, who wear red waistcoats and have gold lace on their hats!"

"Ah! that is what turned his head more than anything," said Gilberte, laughing heartily and disclosing two rows of little teeth as white and close together as a necklace of pearls. "Monsieur Sylvain here is overflowing with ambition: he has looked with profound scorn upon his new jacket and his gray hat since he saw your gold-laced lackeys. If he ever sees a chasseur with his cock's feather and epaulets, he'll go mad over him."

"Poor child!" said Emile, "if he knew how much freer, happier and honorable his lot is than that of the bedizened lackeys in the large cities!"

"He has no suspicion that a livery is degrading," said the girl, "and he is not aware that he is the luckiest servant that ever lived."

"I don't complain," rejoined Sylvain; "everybody is kind to me here, even Mademoiselle Janille, although she is a little watchful, and I wouldn't like to leave these parts, because my father and mother are at Cuzion, right near the house! But a bit of a costume, you know, makes a man over!"

"So you would like to be dressed better than your master, would you?" said Mademoiselle de Châteaubrun. "Look at my father, how simple his dress is. He would be very unhappy if he had to put on a black coat and white gloves every day."

"It is quite true that it would be hard for me to take up the habit again," said Monsieur Antoine. "But do you hear, Janille, my children? there she is shrieking to us to come to breakfast."

My children was a general term by which Monsieur Antoine, when he was in an amiable mood, often addressed Janille and Sylvain when they were together, or the peasants in his vicinity.

Gilberte therefore was amazed at the involuntary rapid glance which young Cardonnet bestowed upon her. He had started, and a confused thrill of longing, of dread and of pleasure had made his heart beat fast when he heard himself joined with the lovely Gilberte in the châtelain's paternal appellation.