Chapter 2

When I left the train at the Melun station, night had already spread its
peace over the silent country. The soil, heated through all the long
day by a strong sun--by a “gros soleil,” as the harvesters of the Val de
Vire say--still exhaled a warm heavy smell. Lush dense odours of grass
passed over the level of the fields. I brushed away the dust of
the railway carriage, and joyfully inhaled the pure air. My
travelling-bag--filled by my housekeeper wit linen and various small
toilet articles, munditiis, seemed so light in my hand that I swung it
about just as a schoolboy swings his strapped package of rudimentary
books when the class is let out.

Would to Heaven that I were again a little urchin at school! But it is
fully fifty years since my good dead mother made me some tartines of
bread and preserves, and placed them in a basket of which she slipped
the handle over my arm, and then led me, thus prepared, to the school
kept by Monsieur Douloir, at a corner of the Passage du Commerce well
known to the sparrows, between a court and a garden. The enormous
Monsieur Douloir smiled upon us genially, and patted my cheek to show,
no doubt, the affectionate interest which my first appearance had
inspired. But when my mother had passed out of the court, startling the
sparrows as she went, Monsieur Douloir ceased to smile--he showed no
more affectionate interest; he appeared, on the contrary, to consider
me as a very troublesome little fellow. I discovered, later on, that
he entertained the same feelings towards all his pupils. He distributed
whacks of his ferule with an agility no one could have expected on the
part of so corpulent a person. But his first aspect of tender interest
invariably reappeared when he spoke to any of our mothers in our
presence; and always at such times, while warmly praising our remarkable
aptitudes, he would cast down upon us a look of intense affection.
Still, those were happy days which I passed on the benches of the
Monsieur Couloir with my little playfellows, who, like myself, cried and
laughed by turns with all their might, from morning till evening.

After a whole half-century these souvenirs float up again, fresh and
bright as ever, to the surface of memory, under this starry sky, whose
face has in no wise changed since then, and whose serene and immutable
lights will doubtless see many other schoolboys such as I was slowly
turn into grey-headed servants, afflicted with catarrh.

Stars, who have shown down upon each wise or foolish head among all my
forgotten ancestors, it is under your soft light that I now feel stir
within me a certain poignant regret! I would that I could have a son who
might be able to see you when I shall see you no more. How I should love
him! Ah! such a son would--what am I saying?--why, he would be no just
twenty years old if you had only been willing, Clementine--you whose
cheeks used to look so ruddy under your pink hood! But you are married
to that young bank clerk, Noel Alexandre, who made so many millions
afterwards! I never met you again after your marriage, Clementine, but I
can see you now, with your bright curls and your pink hood.

A looking-glass! a looking-glass! a looking-glass! Really, it would
be curious to see what I look like now, with my white hair, sighing
Clementine’s name to the stars! Still, it is not right to end with
sterile irony the thought begun in the spirit of faith and love. No,
Clementine, if your name came to my lips by chance this beautiful night,
be it for ever blessed, your dear name! and may you ever, as a happy
mother, a happy grandmother, enjoy to the very end of life with your
rich husband the utmost degree of that happiness which you had the right
to believe you could not win with the poor young scholar who loved you!
If--though I cannot even now imagine it--if your beautiful hair has
become white, Clementine, bear worthily the bundle of keys confided to
you by Noel Alexandre, and impart to your grandchildren the knowledge of
all domestic virtues!

Ah! beautiful Night! She rules, with such noble repose, over men and
animals alike, kindly loosed by her from the yoke of daily toil; and
even I feel her beneficent influence, although my habits of sixty years
have so changed me that I can feel most things only through the signs
which represent them. My world is wholly formed of words--so much of a
philologist I have become! Each one dreams the dream of life in his own
way. I have dreamed it in my library; and when the hour shall come in
which I must leave this world, may it please God to take me from my
ladder--from before my shelves of books!...

“Well, well! it is really himself, pardieu! How are you, Monsieur
Sylvestre Bonnard? And where have you been travelling to all this time,
over the country, while I was waiting for you at the station with my
cabriolet? You missed me when the train came in, and I was driving back,
quite disappointed, to Lusance. Give me your valise, and get up here
beside me in the carriage. Why, do you know it is fully seven kilometres
from here to the chateau?”

Who addresses me thus, at the very top of his voice from the height
of his cabriolet? Monsieur Paul de Gabry, nephew and heir of Monsieur
Honore de Gabry, peer of France in 1842, who recently died at Monaco.
And it was precisely to Monsieur Paul de Gabry’s house that I was going
with that valise of mine, so carefully strapped by my housekeeper.
This excellent young man has just inherited, conjointly with his two
brothers-in-law, the property of his uncle, who, belonging to a very
ancient family of distinguished lawyers, had accumulated in his chateau
at Lusance a library rich in MSS., some dating back to the fourteenth
century. It was for the purpose of making an inventory and catalogue of
these MSS. that I had come to Lusance at the urgent request of Monsieur
Paul de Gabry, whose father, a perfect gentleman and distinguished
bibliophile, had maintained the most pleasant relations with me during
his lifetime. To tell the truth, Monsieur Paul has not inherited the
fine tastes of his father. Monsieur Paul likes sporting; he is a great
authority on horses and dogs; and I much fear that of all the sciences
capable of satisfying or of duping the inexhaustible curiosity of
mankind, those of the stable and the dog-kennel are the only ones
thoroughly mastered by him.

I cannot say I was surprised to meet him, since we had made a
rendezvous; but I acknowledge that I had become so preoccupied with my
own thoughts that I had forgotten all about the Chateau de Lusance and
its inhabitants, and that the voice of the gentleman calling out to me
as I started to follow the country road winding away before me--“un bon
ruban de queue,” as they say--had given me quite a start.

I fear my face must have betrayed my incongruous distraction by a
certain stupid expression which it is apt to assume in most of my social
transactions. My valise was pulled up into the carriage, and I followed
my valise. My host pleased me by his straightforward simplicity.

“I don’t know anything myself about your old parchments,” he said; “but
I think you will find some folks to talk to at the house. Besides the
cure, who writes books himself, and the doctor, who is a very good
fellow--although a radical--you will meet somebody able to keep your
company. I mean my wife. She is not a very learned woman, but there are
few things which she can’t divine pretty well. Then I count upon
being able to keep you with us long enough to make you acquainted with
Mademoiselle Jeanne, who has the fingers of a magician and the soul of
an angel.”

“And is this delightfully gifted young lady one of your family?” I
asked.

“Not at all,” replied Monsieur Paul.

“Then she is just a friend of yours?” I persisted, rather stupidly.

“She has lost both her father and mother,” answered Monsieur de Gabry,
keeping his eyes fixed upon the ears of his horse, whose hoofs rang
loudly over the road blue-tinted by the moonshine. “Her father managed
to get us into some very serious trouble; and we did not get off with a
fright either!”

Then he shook his head, and changed the subject. He gave me due warning
of the ruinous condition in which I should find the chateau and the
park; they had been absolutely deserted for thirty-two years.

I learned from him that Monsieur Honore de Gabry, his uncle, had been
on very bad terms with some poachers, whom he used to shoot at like
rabbits. One of them, a vindictive peasant, who had received a whole
charge of shot in his face, lay in wait for the Seigneur one evening
behind the trees of the mall, and very nearly succeeded in killing him,
for the ball took off the tip of his ear.

“My uncle,” Monsieur Paul continued, “tried to discover who had fired
the shot; but he could not see any one, and he walked back slowly to the
house. The day after he called his steward and ordered him to close up
the manor and the park, and allow no living soul to enter. He expressly
forbade that anything should be touched, or looked after, or any repairs
made on the estate during his absence. He added, between his teeth, that
he would return at Easter, or Trinity Sunday, as they say in the song;
and, just as the song has it, Trinity Sunday passed without a sign of
him. He died last year at Monaco; my brother-in-law and myself were the
first to enter the chateau after it had been abandoned for thirty-two
years. We found a chestnut-tree growing in the middle of the parlour. As
for the park, it was useless trying to visit it, because there were no
longer any paths or alleys.”

My companion ceased to speak; and only the regular hoof-beat of the
trotting horse, and the chirping of insects in the grass, broke the
silence. On either hand, the sheaves standing in the fields took, in the
vague moonlight, the appearance of tall white women kneeling down; and
I abandoned myself awhile to those wonderful childish fancies which the
charm of night always suggests. After driving under the heavy shadows
of the mall, we turned to the right and rolled up a lordly avenue at
the end of which the chateau suddenly rose into view--a black mass, with
turrets en poivriere. We followed a sort of causeway, which gave access
to the court-of-honor, and which, passing over a moat full of running
water, doubtless replaced a long-vanished drawbridge. The loss of that
draw-bridge must have been, I think, the first of various humiliations
to which the warlike manor had been subjected ere being reduced to that
pacific aspect with which it received me. The stars reflected themselves
with marvelous clearness in the dark water. Monsieur Paul, like a
courteous host, escorted me to my chamber at the very top of the
building, at the end of a long corridor; and then, excusing himself for
not presenting me at once to his wife by reason of the lateness of the
hour, bade me good-night.

My apartment, painted in white and hung with chintz, seemed to keep some
traces of the elegant gallantry of the eighteenth century. A heap
of still-glowing ashes--which testified to the pains taken to dispel
humidity--filled the fireplace, whose marble mantlepiece supported
a bust of Marie Antoinette in bisuit. Attached to the frame of the
tarnished and discoloured mirror, two brass hooks, that had once
doubtless served the ladies of old-fashioned days to hang their
chatelaines on, seemed to offer a very opportune means of suspending
my watch, which I took care to wind up beforehand; for, contrary to the
opinion of the Thelemites, I hold that man is only master of time,
which is Life itself, when he has divided it into hours, minutes and
seconds--that is to say, into parts proportioned to the brevity of human
existence.

And I thought to myself that life really seems short to us only because
we measure it irrationally by our own mad hopes. We have all of us, like
the old man in the fable, a new wing to add to our building. I want,
for example, before I die, to finish my “History of the Abbots of
Saint-Germain-de-Pres.” The time God allots to each one of us is like a
precious tissue which we embroider as we best know how. I had begun my
woof with all sorts of philological illustrations.... So my thoughts
wandered on; and at last, as I bound my foulard about my head, the
notion of Time led me back to the past; and for the second time within
the same round of the dial I thought of you, Clementine--to bless you
again in your prosperity, if you have any, before blowing out my candle
and falling asleep amid the chanting of the frogs.