The Complete Works: Short Stories, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Memoirs and more. Guy de Maupassant
after which she wished to visit the village and the establishment.
Her father and her husband went back to their rooms to wait till she was ready. She soon came out to call them, and they descended together. She grew enthusiastic at first sight over the aspect of the village, built in the middle of a wood in a deep valley, which seemed hemmed in on every side by chestnut-trees lofty as mountains. These could be seen everywhere, springing up just as they chanced to have shot forth here and there in a century, in front of doorways, in the courtyards, in the streets. Then, again, there were fountains everywhere made of a great black stone standing upright pierced with a small aperture, through which dashed a streamlet of clear water that whirled about in a circle before it fell into the trough. A fresh odor of grass and of stables floated over those masses of verdure; and they saw the peasant women of Auvergne standing in front of their dwellings, spinning at their distaffs with lively movements of their fingers the black wool attached to their girdles. Their short petticoats showed their thin ankles covered with blue stockings, and the bodies of their dresses fastened over their shoulders with straps left exposed the linen sleeves of their chemises, out of which stretched their hard, dry arms and bony hands.
But, suddenly, queer lilting kind of music burst on the promenaders’ ears. It was like a barrel-organ with piping sounds, a barrel-organ used up, broken-winded, invalided.
Christiane exclaimed: “What is that?”
Her father began to laugh: “It is the orchestra of the Casino. It takes four of them to make that noise.” And he led her up to a red bill affixed to a corner of a farmhouse, on which appeared in black letters:
CASINO OF ENVAL
UNDER THE DIRECTION OF M. PETRUS MARTEL, OF THE ODEON.
Saturday, 6th of July.
GRAND CONCERT organized by the Maestro, Saint Landri, second grand prize winner at the Conservatoire.
The piano will be presided over by M. Javel, grand laureate of the Conservatoire.
Flute, M. Noirot, laureate of the Conservatoire. Double-bass, M. Nicordi, laureate of the Royal Academy of Brussels. After the Concert, grand representation of Lost in the Forest, a Comedy in one act, by M. Pointellet.
Characters:
Pierre de Lapointe — M. Petrus Martel, of the Odéon.
Oscar Leveillé — M. Petitnivelle, of the Vaudeville.
Jean — M. Lapalme, of the Grand Theater of Bordeaux.
Philippine — Mademoiselle Odelin, of the Odéon.
During the representation, the Orchestra will be likewise conducted by the Maestro, Saint Landri.
Christiane read this aloud, laughed, and was astonished.
Her father went on: “Oh! they will amuse you. Come and look at them.”
They turned to the right, and entered the park. The bathers promenaded gravely, slowly, along the three walks. They drank their glasses of water, and then went away. Some of them, seated on benches, traced lines in the sand with the ends of their walking-sticks or their umbrellas. They did not talk, seemed not to think, scarcely to live, enervated, paralyzed by the ennui of the thermal station. Only the odd music of the orchestra broke the sweet silence as it leaped into the air, coming one knew not whence, produced one knew not how, passing under the foliage and appearing to stir up these melancholy walkers.
A voice cried: “Christiane!”
She turned round. It was her brother. He rushed toward her, embraced her, and, having pressed Andermatt’s hand, took his sister by the arm, and drew her along with him, leaving his father and his brother-in-law in the rear.
They chatted. He was a tall, well-made young fellow, prone to laughter like her, lighthearted as the Marquis, indifferent to events, but always on the lookout for a thousand francs.
“I thought you were asleep,” said he. “But for that I would have come to embrace you. And then Paul carried me off this morning to the chateau of Tournoel.”
“Who is Paul? Oh, yes, your friend!”
“Paul Bretigny. It is true you don’t know him. He is taking a bath at the present moment.”
“He is a patient, then?”
“No, but he is curing himself, all the same. He is trying to get over a love episode.”
“And so he’s taking acidulated baths — they’re called acidulated, are they not? — in order to restore himself.”
“Yes. He’s doing all I told him to do. Oh! he has been hit hard. He’s a violent youth, terrible, and has been at death’s door. He wanted to kill himself, too. It was an actress — a well-known actress. He was madly in love with her. And then she was not faithful to him, do you see? The result was a frightful drama. So I brought him away. He’s going on better now, but he’s still thinking about it.”
She smiled for a moment, then, becoming grave, she returned:
“It will amuse me to see him.”
For her, however, this thing, “Love,” did not mean very much. She sometimes bestowed a thought on it, just as you think, when you are poor, now and then of a pearl necklace, of a diadem of brilliants, with a desire awakened in you for this thing — possible though far away. This fancy would come to her after reading some novel to kill time, without attaching to it, beyond that, any special importance. She had never dreamed about it much, having been born with a happy soul, tranquil and contented, and, although now two years and a half married, she had not yet awakened out of that sleep in which innocent young girls live, that sleep of the heart, of the mind, and of the senses, which, with some women, lasts until death. For her life was simple and good, without complications. She had never looked for the causes or the hidden meaning of things. She had lived on from day to day, slept soundly, dressed with taste, laughed, and felt satisfied. What more could she have asked for?
When Andermatt had been introduced to her as her future husband, she refused to wed him at first with a childish indignation at the idea of becoming the wife of a Jew. Her father and her brother, sharing her repugnance, replied with her and like her by formally declining the offer. Andermatt disappeared, acted as if he were dead, but, at the end of three months, had lent Gontran more than twenty thousand francs; and the Marquis, for other reasons, was beginning to change his opinion.
In the first place, he always on principle yielded when one persisted, through sheer egotistical desire not to be disturbed. His daughter used to say of him: “All papa’s ideas are jumbled up together”; and this was true. Without opinions, without beliefs, he had only enthusiasms, which varied every moment. At one time, he would attach himself, with a transitory and poetic exaltation, to the old traditions of his race, and would long for a king, but an intellectual king, liberal, enlightened, marching along with the age. At another time, after he had read a book by Michelet or some democratic thinker, he would become a passionate advocate of human equality, of modern ideas, of the claims of the poor, the oppressed, and the suffering. He believed in everything, just as each thing harmonized with his passing moods; and, when his old friend, Madame Icardon, who, connected as she was with many Israelites, desired the marriage of Christiane and Andermatt, and began to preach in favor of it, she knew full well the kind of arguments with which she should attack him.
She pointed out to him that the Jewish race had arrived at the hour of vengeance. It had been a race crushed down as the French people had been before the Revolution, and was now going to oppress others by the power of gold. The Marquis, devoid of religious faith, but convinced that the idea of God was rather a legislative idea, which had more effect in keeping the foolish, the ignorant, and the timid in the right path than the simple notion of Justice, regarded dogmas with a respectful indifference, and held in equal and sincere esteem Confucius, Mohammed, and Jesus Christ. Accordingly, the fact that the latter was crucified did not at all present itself as an original wrongdoing but as a gross, political blunder. In consequence