Читать книгу The Sin of Monsieur Antoine - George Sand - Страница 13

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The breakfast on this occasion was a little more luxurious than was customary at Châteaubrun. Janille had had time to make some preparations. She had procured milk, honey and eggs, and had bravely sacrificed two pullets which were still cackling when Emile appeared at the gate, but which had been placed on the gridiron while they were warm, and were very tender.

The young man had found an appetite in the orchard, and the meal was most enjoyable. The praise that he bestowed upon it delighted Janille, who sat as usual opposite her master and did the honors of the table with much distinction.

She was especially touched by her guest's approbation of the wild blackberries preserved by herself.

"Little mother," said Gilberte, "you must send a specimen of your skill with your receipt to Madame Cardonnet, and perhaps she will send us in exchange some strawberry plants."

"Those great garden strawberries aren't good for anything," replied Janille; "they smell of nothing but water. I prefer our little mountain strawberries, so red and so fragrant. But that won't hinder my giving Monsieur Emile a big jar of my preserves for his mamma, if she will accept them."

"My mother wouldn't want to deprive you of them, my dear Mademoiselle Janille," Emile replied, especially touched by Gilberte's frank generosity, and mentally comparing the sincere kindly impulses of that poor family with the disdainful manners of his own.

"Oh," said Gilberte with a smile, "that won't be any deprivation to us. We have plenty of the fruit and we can begin again. Blackberries are not scarce with us, and if we don't look out, the bramble-bushes that bear them will pierce our walls and grow in our rooms."

"And whose fault is it," said Janille, "if we are overrun by brambles? Didn't I want to cut them all down? I certainly could have done it all without help from anybody if I had been let."

"But I protected the poor brambles against you, dear little mother! They make such pretty garlands around our ruins, that it would be a great pity to destroy them."

"I agree that they make a pretty effect," said Janille, "and that you can't find such fine bushes or such big berries within ten leagues!"

"You hear her, Monsieur Emile," said Monsieur Antoine. "That's Janille all over! There's nothing beautiful, good, useful or salutary that is not found at Châteaubrun. It's a saving grace."

"Pardine! complain, monsieur," retorted Janille; "yes, I advise you to complain of something!"

"I complain of nothing," replied the honest nobleman; "God forbid! with my daughter and you, what more could I ask for my happiness?"

"Oh! yes; you talk like that when any one is listening to you, but if our backs are turned, and a little fly stings you, you put on a look of resignation altogether out of place in your position."

"My position is what God has made it," rejoined Monsieur Antoine, with melancholy gentleness. "If my daughter accepts it without regret, it is not for you or me to reproach Providence."

"I!" cried Gilberte; "what regret can I have, pray? Tell me, dear father; for, so far as I am concerned, I should look in vain to find anything on earth that I lack or that I can ask to have improved."

"And I am of mademoiselle's opinion," said Emile, deeply touched by the sincere and nobly affectionate expression on that lovely face; "I am sure that she is happy, because——"

"Because what? Tell us, Monsieur Cardonnet!" said Gilberte playfully; "you were going to say why, and you stopped short."

"I should be very sorry to seem to say anything insipid," replied Emile, blushing almost as red as the girl; "but I was thinking that when one had these three treasures, beauty, youth and amiability, one should be happy, because one could be sure of being loved."

"I am happier than you think, then," said Gilberte, putting one hand in her father's and the other in Janille's; "for I am loved dearly without reference to those other things. Whether I am beautiful and amiable, I don't know; but I am sure that if I were ugly and cross, my father and mother would love me just the same. My happiness therefore comes from their goodness to me and not from any merit of my own."

"We will permit you to believe, however," said Monsieur Antoine to Emile, pressing his daughter to his heart, "that it comes partly from one and partly from the other."

"Oh! Monsieur Antoine, see what you've done!" cried Janille; "more of your absent-mindedness! You've made a mark with your egg on Gilberte's sleeve."

"That's nothing," said Monsieur Antoine; "I'll wash it out myself."

"No! no! that would make it worse; you'd pour the whole carafe on it and drown my girl. Come here, my child, and let me take out the stain. I have a horror of stains! Wouldn't it be a pity to spoil this pretty new dress?"

Emile looked for the first time at Gilberte's costume. He had hitherto paid no attention to aught save her graceful figure and the beauty of her face. She wore a dress of grey drilling, quite new, but coarse, with a little neckerchief, white as snow, about her neck. Gilberte noticed his scrutiny, and, instead of being humiliated by it, seemed to take some pride in saying that she liked her dress, that it was of good material, that she could defy thorns and briers, and that, as Janille chose it herself, nothing could be more agreeable to her to wear.

"The dress is charming, in truth," said Emile; "my mother has one just like it."

That was not true; Emile, although naturally truthful, told this little lie involuntarily. Gilberte was not deceived by it; but she was grateful to him for the delicacy of his purpose.

As for Janille, she was visibly flattered by this testimony to her good taste, for she was almost as proud of that quality as of Gilberte's beauty.

"My daughter is no coquette," said she, "but I am for her. And what would you say, Monsieur Antoine, if your child was not dressed genteelly and becomingly as befits her rank in society?"

"We have nothing to do with society, my dear Janille," said Monsieur Antoine, "and I don't complain. Don't indulge in any useless illusions."

"You have a disappointed air when you say that, Monsieur Antoine; for my part, I tell you that rank can't be lost: but that's just like you; you always throw the blade after the helve!"

"I throw nothing at all," retorted the châtelain; "on the contrary, I accept everything as it comes."

"Oh! you do!" said Janille, who always longed to quarrel with some one, to keep her tongue and her lively pantomime in practice. "You are very good, on my word, to accept such a fate as yours! Wouldn't any one say, to hear you, that you had to have a deal of sense and philosophy for that? Bah! you're no better than an ingrate!"

"What's the matter with you, you cross-grained creature?" said Monsieur Antoine. "I say again that everything is all right and that I am consoled for everything."

"Consoled! there you go again; consoled for what, if you please? Haven't you always been the happiest of men?"

"No, not always. My life has had its mixture of bitterness like every man's; but why should I have been treated any better than so many others who are as good as I am?"

"No, other men are not so good as you are—I insist upon that, as I also insist that you have always been treated better than any one. Yes, monsieur, I'll prove to you, whenever you choose, that you were born under a lucky star."

"Ah! you would please me exceedingly if you could really prove that," said Monsieur Antoine with a smile.

"Very well, I take you at your word, and I will begin. Monsieur Cardonnet shall be judge and witness."

"We will let her have her say, Monsieur Emile," said Monsieur Antoine. "We have reached the dessert and there's nothing that will keep Janille from chattering at this stage of the meal. She will say innumerable foolish things, I warn you! But she is bright and enthusiastic. You won't be bored listening to her."

"In the first place," said Janille, bridling up in her determination to justify this eulogium, "Monsieur was born Comte de Châteaubrun, which is neither a bad name nor a trifling honor!"

"The honor has no great significance to-day," said Monsieur de Châteaubrun; "and as for the name my ancestors handed down to me, as I have been able to do nothing to add to its splendor, I do not much deserve to bear it."

"Nonsense, monsieur, nonsense!" interposed Janille. "I know what you're coming at, and I'll come at it myself. Let me talk. Monsieur comes into the world here—in the loveliest country in the world—and he is nursed by the prettiest and freshest village girl in the neighborhood, an old friend of mine, although I was several years younger, honest Jean Jappeloup's mother; he has always been as devoted to monsieur as the foot is to the leg. He is in trouble now, but his troubles will soon come to an end, I've no doubt!"

"Thanks to you!" said Gilberte, looking at Emile; and with that innocent, kindly glance she paid him for his compliment to her beauty and her dress.

"If you start on your usual parentheses," said Monsieur Antoine to Janille, "we shall never finish."

"Yes, we will, monsieur," she replied. "I resume, as monsieur le curé at Cuzion says at the beginning of his sermons. Monsieur was blessed with an excellent constitution, and, moreover, he was the handsomest child that ever was seen. In proof of that is the fact he became one of the handsomest cavaliers in the province, as the ladies of all ranks lost no time in discovering."

"Go on, go on, Janille," interposed the châtelain, with a touch of sadness in his gayety; "there's not much to be said on that subject."

"Never fear," was her reply, "I'll say nothing that it isn't all right to say. Monsieur was brought up in the country, in this old château, which was great and fine in those days—and which is very comfortable to live in to-day! Playing with the youngsters of his age and with little Jean Jappeloup, his foster-brother, kept him in excellent health. Come, monsieur, now complain of your health, and tell us if you know a man of fifty more active and better preserved than you?"

"That's all very well; but you don't say that, as I was born in a period of civil commotion and revolution my early education was neglected."

"Pardieu! monsieur, would you have liked to be born twenty years earlier and be seventy to-day? That's a strange idea! You were born just in time, since you still have a long while to live, thank God! As for education, you lacked nothing; you were sent to school at Bourges, and you worked very well there."

"On the contrary, very ill. I had not been accustomed to working with my mind. I fell asleep during the lessons; my memory had never had any practice; I had more difficulty in learning the elements of things than other lads in completing a full course of study."

"Very well, then you deserved more credit because you had more trouble. At all events you knew enough to be a gentleman. You weren't intended for a curé or a school-master. Did you need so much Greek and Latin? When you came here in vacation you were an accomplished young man. No one was more skilful than you in bodily exercises; you could bat your ball over the high tower, and when you called your dogs your voice was so loud that you could be heard at Cuzion."

"All that doesn't show hard study," said Monsieur Antoine, laughing at this panegyric.

"When you were old enough to leave school, it was the time of the war with the Austrians and Prussians and Russians. You fought well, for you received several wounds."

"Trifling ones," said Monsieur Antoine.

"Thank God!" rejoined Janille. "Would you have liked to be crippled and go on crutches! You gathered the laurel, and you returned covered with glory and with not too many bruises."

"No, no, Janille, very little glory, I assure you. I did my best; but say what you will, I was born several years too late; my parents fought too long against my desire to serve my country under the usurper, as they called him. I had hardly made a start in the army when I had to return home, trailing my wing and dragging my foot, in utter consternation and despair at the disaster of Waterloo."

"I agree, monsieur, that the fall of the Emperor was not a good thing for you, and that you were generous enough to regret it, although that man never behaved very well toward you. With the name you bore, he ought to have made you a general at once, instead of paying no attention whatever to you."

"I presume," laughed Monsieur de Châteaubrun, "that his mind was directed from that duty by other and more pressing affairs. However, you agree, Janille, that my military career was nipped in the bud, and that, thanks to my fine education, I was not very well fitted to start on any other?"

"You might very well have served under the Bourbons, but you wouldn't do it."

"I had the ideas of my generation. Perhaps I should still have them, if it were all to be done again."

"Well, monsieur, who could blame you for it? It was very honorable, according to what people said in the province then, and no one but your relations condemned you."

"My relations were proud and inflexible in their legitimist opinions. You cannot deny that they abandoned me to the disaster that threatened me, and that they worried very little over the loss of my fortune."

"You were even prouder than they, for you would never go on your knees to them."

"No, whether from recklessness or dignity, I never asked them for assistance."

"And you lost your fortune in a great lawsuit against your father's estate; everybody knows that. But you only lost the case because you chose to."

"And it was the noblest and most honorable thing my father ever did in his life," interposed Gilberte, with much warmth.

"My children," said Monsieur Antoine, "you mustn't say that I lost the case; I didn't allow it to come to trial."

"To be sure, to be sure," said Janille; "for if you had, you would have won it. There was only one opinion on that point."

"But my father, recognizing that possession in fact is not possession of right," said Gilberte, addressing Emile with animation, "refused to take advantage of his position. You must know this story, Monsieur Cardonnet, for my father would never dream of telling it to you, and you have so recently arrived in the province that you cannot have heard it yet. My grandfather had contracted debts of honor during my father's minority. He died before circumstances enabled him or made it an urgent duty to pay them. The claims of the creditors were of no value in law; but my father, when he investigated his affairs, found a minute of one of these claims among my grandfather's papers. He might have destroyed it and no one would have known of its existence. On the contrary, he produced it and sold all of the family property to pay a sacred debt. My father has brought me up upon principles which do not permit me to think that he did any more than his duty; but many wealthy people thought differently. Some called him a fool and madman. I am very glad that, when you hear certain upstarts say that Monsieur Antoine de Châteaubrun was ruined by his own folly, which in their eyes is the greatest possible dishonor, you will know what to think about my father's dissipation and wrong-headedness."

"Ah! mademoiselle," cried Emile, overpowered by his emotion, "how fortunate you are to be his daughter, and how I envy you this noble poverty!"

"Don't make me out a hero, my dear child," said Monsieur Antoine, pressing Emile's hand. "There is always some truth at the bottom of the judgments pronounced by men, even when they are harsh and unjust for the most part. It is very certain that I was always a little extravagant, that I understood nothing about domestic economy, or business, and that I deserve less credit than another for sacrificing my fortune, because I regretted it less."

This modest apology inspired in Emile such a warm regard for Monsieur Antoine, that he stooped over the hand which held his and put his lips to it with a feeling of veneration with which Gilberte was not wholly unconnected. Gilberte was more moved than she was prepared to be by this sudden impulse on their young guest's part. She felt a tear trembling on her eyelid, and lowered her eyes to hide it; she tried to assume a serious bearing, and, suddenly carried away by an irresistible impulse of the heart, she almost held out her own hand to the young man; but she did not yield to this outburst of feeling and artlessly turned it aside by rising to take Emile's plate and give him another, with the grace and simplicity of a patriarch's daughter holding the pitcher to the wayfarer's lips.

Emile was surprised at first by this act of humble sympathy, so out of harmony with the conventionalities of the society in which he had lived. Then he understood it, and his breast was so agitated that he could find no words to thank the fair hostess of Châteaubrun, his charming servant.

"After all this," continued Monsieur Antoine, who saw nothing but the simplest courtesy in his daughter's action, "Janille must surely agree that there has been a little misfortune in my life; for that lawsuit had been going on for some time when I discovered the acknowledgment of his debt that my father had left behind him, in the drawer of an old abandoned desk. Until then I had not believed in the good faith of his creditors. It seemed improbable that they could have been unfortunate enough to lose their proofs, so I slept on both ears. My Gilberte was born and I had no suspicion that she was doomed to share with me a hand-to-mouth existence. The dear child's birth made the blow a little more severe than it would otherwise have been to my natural improvidence. Seeing that I was absolutely without resource, I resolved to work for my living, and I had some hard moments at first."

"Yes, monsieur, that is true," said Janille, "but you succeeded in buckling down to work, and you soon recovered your good humor and your open-hearted gayety, didn't you?"

"Thanks to you, good Janille, for you did not desert me. We went to Gargilesse to live with Jean Jappeloup, and the honest fellow found me something to do."

"What!" said Emile, "you have been a mechanic, monsieur le comte?"

"To be sure, my young friend. I was carpenter's apprentice, journeyman carpenter, and in a few years carpenter's assistant, and not more than two years ago you could have seen me with a blouse on my back and a hatchet over my shoulder, going out for my day's work with Jappeloup."

"That is the reason, then," said Emile, sorely embarrassed, "that——" He paused, not daring to finish.

"That is the reason, yes, I understand," rejoined Monsieur Antoine; "that is the reason that you have heard some one say: 'Old Antoine degenerated terribly during his poverty; he lived with workingmen; he was seen laughing and drinking with them in wineshops.' Well, that requires a little explanation, and I will not make myself out any stronger or purer than I am. According to the ideas of the nobles and the rich bourgeois of the province, I should have done better doubtless to remain melancholy and solemn, proudly crushed by my disgrace, working in silence, sighing in secret, blushing to receive wages,—I who had had wage-earners under my orders—and taking no part on Sundays in the merrymaking of the mechanics who permitted me to work beside them during the week. Well, I do not know if it would have been better so, but, I confess, that it would have been entirely foreign to my character. I am so constituted that it is impossible for me to be affected and horrified for long by anything under heaven. I had been brought up with Jappeloup and other peasant children of my own age. I had treated them as my equals in our childish games. Since then I had never played the master or the nobleman with them. They received me with open arms in my distress, and offered me their houses, their bread, their advice, their tools and their custom. How could I have helped being fond of them? How could their society seem to me to be unworthy of me? How could I help sharing my week's wages with them on Sunday? Bah! on the contrary, I suddenly found joy and pleasure in doing it, as a compensation for my hard work. Their songs, their meetings, under the trellised arbor where the holly-branch of the wineshop waved in the wind, their frank familiarity with me, and my indissoluble friendship with dear Jean, my foster-brother, my master in carpentry, my comforter, made a new life for me, which I could not but find very pleasant, especially when I had succeeded in acquiring enough skill at my trade not to be a burden to them."

"It is true enough that you worked hard," said Janille, "and that you were soon a very great help to poor Jean. Ah! I remember his fits of anger with you at the beginning, for he was never patient, the dear man, and you were so awkward! Really, Monsieur Emile, you'd have laughed to hear Jean swear after Monsieur le Comte, as he would after any little apprentice. And then, after it was over, they would make it up and shake hands, so that I used to feel like crying. But as we have actually set about telling you our whole history, instead of just quarrelling among ourselves, as I intended to do at first, I propose to tell you the rest of it; for if we let Monsieur Antoine do it, he'll never let me put in a word."

"Go on, Janille, go on!" cried Monsieur Antoine; "I ask your pardon for having kept you from talking so long!"