The servants in the castle of Bergenheim formed a family whose members were far from living in harmony. The Baron managed his household himself, and employed a large number of day-laborers, farm servants, and kitchen-girls, whom the liveried servants treated with great disdain. The rustics, on their side, resisted these privileged lackeys and called them “coxcombs” and “Parisians,” sometimes accompanying these remarks with the most expressive blows. Between these tribes of sworn enemies a third class, much less numerous, found them selves in a critical position; these were the two servants brought by Mademoiselle de Corandeuil. It was fortunate for them that their mistress liked large, vigorous men, and had chosen them for their broad, military shoulders; but for that it would have been impossible for them to come out of their daily quarrels safe and sound.
The question of superiority between the two households had been the first apple of discord; a number of personal quarrels followed to inflame them. They fought for their colors the whole time; the Bergenheim livery was red, the Corandeuil green. There were two flags; each exalted his own while throwing that of his adversaries in the mud. Greenhorn and crab were jokes; cucumber and lobster were insults.
Such were the gracious terms exchanged every day between the two parties. In the midst of this civil war, which was carefully concealed from their masters’ eyes, whose severity they feared, lived one rather singular personage. Leonard Rousselet, Pere Rousselet, as he was generally called, was an old peasant who, disheartened with life, had made various efforts to get out of his sphere, but had never succeeded in doing so. Having been successively hairdresser, sexton, school-teacher, nurse, and gardener, he had ended, when sixty years old, by falling back to the very point whence he started. He had no particular employment in M. de Bergenheim’s house; he went on errands, cared for the gardens, and doctored the mules and horses; he was a tall man, about as much at ease in his clothing as a dry almond in its shell. A long, dark, yellow coat usually hung about the calves of his legs, which were covered with long, blue woollen stockings, and looked more like vine-poles than human legs; a conformation which furnished daily jokes for the other servants, to which the old man deigned no response save a disdainful smile, grumbling through his teeth, “Menials, peasants without education.” This latter speech expressed the late gardener’s scorn, for it had been his greatest grief to pass for an uneducated man; and he had gathered from his various conditions a singularly dignified and pretentious way of speaking.
In spite of his self-confidence, it was not without some emotion that Leonard Rousselet responded to this call to appear in the drawing-room before the person he most feared in the chateau. His bearing showed this feeling when he presented himself at the drawing-room door, where he stood as grave and silent as Banquo’s ghost. Constance arose at sight of this fantastic figure, barked furiously and darted toward a pair of legs for which she seemed to share the irreverence of the liveried servants; but the texture of the blue stocking and the flesh which covered the tibia were rather too hard morsels for the dowager’s teeth; she was obliged to give up the attack and content herself with impotent barks, while the old man, who would gladly have given a month’s wages to break her jaw with the tip of his, boot, caressed her with his hand, saying, “Softly, pretty dear! softly, pretty little creature!” in a hypocritical tone.
This courtier-like conduct touched the old lady’s heart and softened the severe look upon her face.
“Stop your noise, Constance,” said she, “lie down beside your mistress. Rousselet, come nearer.”
The old man obeyed, walking across the floor with reverential bows, and taking a position like a soldier presenting arms.
“You were the one,” said Mademoiselle de Corandeuil, “who was sent to Remiremont yesterday? Did you perform all the commissions that were given you?”
“It is not among the impossibilities, Mademoiselle, that I may have neglected some of them,” replied the old man, fearing to compromise himself by a positive affirmative.
“Tell us, then, what you did.”
Leonard wiped his nose behind his hat, like a well-bred orator, and, balancing himself upon his legs in a way not at all Bourbonic, he said:
“I went to the city that morning myself because Monsieur le Baron had said the night before that he should hunt to-day, and that the groom was to help Monsieur le Baron drive a wild boar out of the Corne woods. I reached Remiremont; I went to the butcher’s; I purchased five kilogrammes of dressed goods—”
“Of dressed goods at the butcher’s!” exclaimed Madame de Bergenheim.
“I would say ten pounds of what uneducated people call pork,” said Rousselet, pronouncing this last word in a strangled voice.
“Pass over these details,” said Mademoiselle de Corandeuil. “You went to the post-office.”
“I went to the post-office, where I put in letters for Mademoiselle, Madame, Monsieur le Baron, and one from Mademoiselle Aline for Monsieur d’Artigues.”
“Aline writing to her cousin! Did you know that?” said the old aunt, turning quickly toward her niece.
“Certainly; they correspond regularly,” replied Clemence with a smile which seemed to say that she saw no harm in it.
The old maid shook her head and protruded her under lip, as much as to say: We will attend to this another time.
Madame de Bergenheim, who was out of patience at this questioning, began to speak in a quick tone which was a contrast to her aunt’s solemn slowness.
“Rousselet,” said she, “when you took the newspapers out of the office, did you notice whether the wrappers were intact, or whether they had been opened?”
The good man half concealed his face in his cravat at this precise questioning, and it was with embarrassment that he replied, after a moment’s hesitation:
“Certainly, Madame—as to the wrappers—I do not accuse the postmaster—”
“If the journals were sealed when you received them, you are the only one who could have opened them.”
Rousselet straightened himself up to his full height, and, giving to his nut-cracker face the most dignified look possible, he said in a solemn tone:
“With due deference to you, Madame, Leonard Rousselet is well known. Fifty-seven years old on Saint-Hubert’s day, I am incapable of opening newspapers. When they have been read at the chateau and they send me with them to the cure, I do not say—perhaps on my way—it is a recreation—and then the cure is Jean Bartou, son of Joseph Bartou, the tilemaker. But to read the newspaper before my masters have done so! Never! Leonard Rousselet is an old man incapable of such baseness. Baptized when a child; fifty-seven years on Saint-Hubert’s day.”
“When you speak of your pastor, do so in a more becoming manner,” interrupted Mademoiselle de Colrandeuil, although she herself in private did not speak of the plebeian priest in very respectful terms. But if Joseph Bartou’s son was always the son of Joseph Bartou to her, she meant that he should be Monsieur le Cure to the peasants.
Madame de Bergenheim had not been much affected by Pere Rousselet’s harangue, and shook her head impatiently, saying in an imperative tone:
“I am certain that the newspapers have been opened by you, or by some person to whom you have given them, and I wish to know at once by whom.”
Rousselet dropped his pose of a Roman senator; passing his hand behind his ears, a familiar gesture with people when in embarrassing positions, he continued less emphatically:
“I stopped on my way back at La Fauconnerie, at the ‘Femme-sans-Tete Inn’.”
“And what were you doing in a tavern?” interrupted Mademoiselle de Corandeuil severely. “You know it is not intended that the servants in this house should frequent taverns and such low places, which are not respectable and corrupt the morals of the lower classes.”
“Servants! lower classes! Old aristocrat!” growled Rousselet secretly; but, not daring to show his ill humor, he replied in a bland voice:
“If Mademoiselle had gone the same road that I did, with the same conveyance, she would know that it is a rather thirsty stretch. I stopped at the ‘Femme-sans-Tete’ to wash the dust down my parched throat. Whereupon Mademoiselle Reine—the daughter of Madame Gobillot, the landlady of the inn—Mademoiselle Reine asked me to allow her to look at the yellow-journal in which there are fashions for ladies; I asked her why; she said it was so that she might see how they made their bonnets, gowns, and other finery in Paris. The frivolity of women!”
Mademoiselle de Corandeuil threw herself back in her chair and gave way to an access of hilarity in which she rarely indulged.
“Mademoiselle Gobillot reading La Mode! Mademoiselle Gobillot talking of gowns, shawls, and cashmeres! Clemence, what do you say to that? You will see, she will be ordering her bonnets from Herbault! Ha! ha! This is what is called the progress of civilization, the age of light!”
“Mademoiselle Gobillot,” said Clemence, fixing a penetrating glance upon the old man, “was not the only one who looked at La Mode. Was there no other person in the tavern who saw it?”
“Madame,” replied Rousselet, forced from his last refuge, “there were two young men taking their refection, and one of them wore a beard no longer than a goat’s. Madame will pardon me if I allow myself to use this vulgar expression, but Madame wished to know all.”
“And the other young man?”
“The other had his facial epidermis shaved as close as a lady’s or mine. He was the one who held the journal while his comrade was smoking outside the door.”
Madame de Bergenheim made no further inquiries, but fell into a profound revery. With eyes fixed upon the last number of La Mode, she seemed to study the slightest lines of the sketch that had been made thereon, as if she hoped to find a solution to the mystery. Her irregular breathing, and the bright flush which tinged her usually pale cheeks, would have denoted to an eye-witness one of those tempests of the heart, the physical manifestations of which are like those of a fever. The pale winter flower dying under the snow had suddenly raised its drooping head and recovered its color; the melancholy against which the young woman had so vainly struggled had disappeared as if by enchantment. A little bird surmounted by a coronet, the whole rather badly sketched, was the strange talisman that had produced this change.
“They were commercial travellers,” said the old aunt; “they always pretend to know everything. One of them, doubtless, when reading the well-known name of Monsieur de Bergenheim upon the wrapper, sketched the animal in question. These gentlemen of industry usually have a rather good education! But this is giving the affair more importance than it merits. Leonard Rousselet,” said she, raising her voice as a judge does in court when pronouncing his charge, “you were wrong to let anything addressed to your master leave your hands. We will excuse you this time, but I warn you to be more careful in future; when you go to Madame Gobillot’s, you may say to Mademoiselle Reine, from me, that if she wishes to read La Mode I shall be delighted to procure a subscriber to one of our journals. You may retire now.”
Without waiting for this invitation to be repeated, Rousselet backed out of the room like an ambassador leaving the royal presence, escorted by Constance acting as master of ceremonies. Not having calculated the distance, he had just bumped against the door, when it suddenly opened and a person of extreme vivacity bounded into the middle of the room.
It was a very young and petite lady, whose perfectly developed form predicted an inclination to stoutness in the future. She belonged to the Bergenheim family, if one could credit the resemblance between her characteristic features and several of the old portraits in the room; she wore a dark-brown riding-habit, a gray hat perched on one side, showing on the left a mass of very curly, bright blond hair. This coiffure and the long green veil, floating at each movement like the plume in a helmet, gave a singularly easy air to the fresh face of this pretty amazon, who brandished, in guise of a lance, a billiard cue.
“Clemence,” she exclaimed, “I have just beaten Christian; I made the red ball, I made the white, and then the double stroke; I made all! Mademoiselle, I have just beaten Christian two games; is it not glorious? He made only eighteen points in a single game. Pere Rousselet, I have just beaten Christian! Do you know how to play billiards?”
“Mademoiselle Aline, I am absolutely ignorant of the game,” replied the old man, with as gracious a smile as was possible, while he tried to recover his equilibrium.
“You are needed no longer, Rousselet,” said Mademoiselle de Corandeuil; “close the door as you go out.”
When she had been obeyed, the old maid turned gravely toward Aline, who was still dancing about the room, having seized her sister-in-law’s hands in order to force her to share her childish joy.
“Mademoiselle,” said she in a severe tone, “is it the custom at the ‘Sacred Heart’ to enter a room without greeting the persons who are in it, and to jump about like a crazy person? a thing that is never permitted even in a peasant’s house.”
Aline stopped short in the midst of her dance and blushed a trifle; she caressed the pug dog, instead of replying, for she knew as well as Rousselet that it was the surest way of softening the old maid’s heart. The cajolery was lost this time.
“Do not touch Constance, I beg of you,” exclaimed the aunt, as if a dagger had been raised against the object of her love, “do not soil this poor beast with your hands. What dreadful thing have you on your fingers? Have you just come out of an indigo bag?”
The young girl blushed still deeper and gazed at her pretty hands, which were really a little daubed, and began to wipe them with an embroidered handkerchief which she took from her pocket.
“It was the billiards,” she said, in a low voice, “it is the blue chalk they rub the cue with in order to make good shots and caroms.”
“Make good shots! Caroms! Will you be so good as to spare us your slang speeches,” continued Mademoiselle de Corandeuil, who seemed to become more crabbed as the young girl’s confusion increased. “What a fine education for a young lady! and one who has just come from the ‘Sacred Heart’! One that has taken five prizes not fifteen days ago! I really do not know what to think of those ladies, your teachers! And now I suppose you are going to ride. Billiards and horses, horses and billiards! It is fine! It is admirable!”
“But, Mademoiselle,” said Aline, raising her large blue eyes, which were on the verge of tears, “it is vacation now, and there is no wrong in my playing a game of billiards with my brother; we have no billiards at the ‘Sacred Heart,’ and it is such fun! It is like riding; the doctor said that it would be very healthful for me, and Christian hoped that it might make me grow a little.”
As she said these words, the young girl glanced into the mirror in order to see whether her brother’s hopes had been realized; for her small stature was her sole anxiety. But this glance was as quick as a flash, for she feared that the severe old maid would make this act of coquetry serve as the text for another sermon.
“You are not my niece, and I am thankful for it,” continued the old lady. “I am too old to begin another education; thank goodness, one is quite enough! I have no authority over you, and your conduct is your brother’s concern. The advice which I give you is entirely disinterested; your amusements are not such as seem to me proper for a young girl of good birth. It may be possible that it is the fashion today, so I will say no more about it; but there is one thing more serious, upon which I should advise you to reflect. In my youth, a young lady never was allowed to write letters except to her father and mother. Your letters to your cousin d’Artigues are inconsiderate—do not interrupt me—they are inconsiderate, and I should advise you to mend your ways.”
Mademoiselle de Corandeuil arose, and, as she had found an opportunity to read three sermons in one forenoon, she could not say, like Titus, “I have wasted my morning.” She left the room with a majestic step, escorted by her dog and satisfied with herself, bestowing an ironical curtsey on the young girl, which the latter did not think it necessary to return.
“How hateful your aunt is!” exclaimed Mademoiselle de Bergenheim to her sister-in-law, when they were alone. “Christian says that I must pay no attention to her, because all women become like her if they never marry. As for myself, I know very well that if I am an old maid I shall try not to hurt others’ feelings—I, inconsiderate! When she can think of nothing more to say, she scolds me about my cousin. It is hardly worth while, for what we write about! Alphonse wrote of nothing, in his last letter, but of the partridge he had shot and his hunting costume; he is such a boy! But why do you not say something? You sit there speechless; are you angry with me, too?”
She approached Clemence and was about to seat herself in her lap, when the latter arose to avoid this loving familiarity.
“So you really have beaten Christian,” said she, in a listless tone; “are you going for a ride now? Your habit is very becoming.”
“Truly? oh! I am so glad!” replied the young girl, planting herself before the glass to look at her pretty figure. She pulled down her waist, adjusted the folds of the skirt of her dress and arranged her veil, placed her hat on her head with a little more jaunty air, turned three quarters around to get a better view of her costume; in one word, she went through the coquettish movements that all pretty women learn upon entering society. On the whole, she seemed very well pleased with her examination, for she smiled and showed a row of small teeth which were as white as milk.
“I am sorry now,” said she, “that I did not send for a black hat; my hair is so light that gray makes me look ugly. Do you not think so? Why do you not reply, Clemence? One can not get a word out of you to-day; is it because you have your neuralgia?”
“I have a trifle of it,” said Madame de Bergenheim, in order to give some pretext for her preoccupation.
“Now, then, you ought to come with us for a ride; the fresh air will do you good. Look how fine the weather is now; we will have a good gallop. Will you? I will help you put on your habit, and in five minutes you will be ready. Listen, I hear them in the yard now. I am going to tell Christian to have your horse saddled; come.”
Aline took her sister-in-law by the hand, led her into the next room and opened the window to see what was going on outside, where the cracking of whips and several voices were to be heard. A servant was walking up and down the yard leading a large horse which he had just brought from the stable; the Baron was holding a smaller one, which bore a lady’s saddle, while he carefully examined all the buckles. As he heard the window open above his head, he turned and bowed to Clemence with much chivalrous gallantry.
“You still refuse to go with us?” he asked.
“Is Aline going to ride Titania,” replied Madame de Bergenheim, making an effort to speak; “I am sure the mare will end by playing her some trick.”
The young girl, who had a fancy for Titania because the skittish creature had the attraction of forbidden fruit, nudged her sister with her elbow, and made a little grimace.
“Aline is afraid of nothing,” said the Baron; “we will enlist her with the hussars as soon as she leaves the ‘Sacred Heart.’ Come, Aline.”
The young girl kissed the Baroness, gathered up her skirt, and in a few moments was in the yard patting the neck of her dear brown mare.
“Up with you!” said Christian, taking his sister’s foot in one hand while he raised her with the other, placing her in the saddle as easily as he would a six-year-old child. Then he mounted his large horse, saluted his wife, and the couple, starting at a trot, soon disappeared down the avenue, which began at the gate of the courtyard.
As soon as they were out of sight, Clemence went to her room, took a shawl from her bed, and went rapidly down a secret stairway which led into the gardens.
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