The Surprises Of Life Part 2

III

MALUS VICINUS

Saint-juirs is the name of a village in the canton of Sainte Hermine.

Lying on the slope of a hill, it overlooks a fresh, gra.s.sy valley planted with poplars and watered by a brook which has no recorded name.

A very modest Romanesque church laboriously hoists skyward a heavy stone belfry amid a clump of elm and nut trees. The ruins of an old castle degenerated from the dignity of a stronghold to the simple rank of a country residence testifies that here, possibly, some notable event may have taken place. But as the inhabitants have forgotten it, and have no care to search it out, they live in absolute indifference to a thing that is not their direct business. Their village appears to them like all other villages, their church, their houses, their fields, their beasts, like all other churches and houses and fields and beasts. They only vaguely take in the idea of other countries on the earth. The newspapers tell them of unknown lands and of strange doings; it all seems to belong to some other world. What does it matter to them, anyhow, since they have no intention of ever stirring, and since nothing will ever happen to them? For them the past is without interest, and the future does not mar the peace of their slumbers. The present means the crops, the flocks, and the weather. For the things of Heaven there is the _cure_, for the things of earth there are the mayor, the notary, the customs officer, and the tax collector: a simplification of life.

Markets and fairs purvey to the restless cravings of such as are curious about outside happenings, but no inhabitant of Saint-Juirs would entertain the absurd idea that any trace of an event worth relating was to be found in his own village. Love itself is without drama, owing to the lack of stiffness in rustic morals, which precludes excesses of imagination by reducing to the proportions of newspaper items the conjunctions natural to our kind. There are, doubtless, disputes in Saint-Juirs as elsewhere, in connection with property rights, for "thine" and "mine," which are the foundation of "social order," are likewise a permanent cause of disorder among men. Trespa.s.sing in a pasture, the use of a well, a right of way, the branch of a tree reaching beyond a line, a hedge encroaching upon a ditch, result in quarrels, lawsuits, and dissension in families, the importance of which is no less to the small townspeople than was the feud between Capulets and Montagues to Verona. Centuries pa.s.s, the man of the past and the man of to-day meet on common ground in displaying the same old violence, to which sometimes even the excuse of interests involved is wanting, as happened when Benvolio drew his sword upon a burgher of Verona who had taken the liberty to cough in the street, and thereby waked his dog asleep in the suns.h.i.+ne.

The peaceful inhabitant of Saint-Juirs is a stranger to such vagaries.

Yet a Latin inscription above a door on the church square testifies to the fact that a local scholar took to heart those neighbourly quarrels to the point of wis.h.i.+ng to leave some memory of them to posterity. A plain stone door-frame gives access to a little garden surrounded by high walls. Behind box hedges a house may be seen, rather broad than high, built apparently as far back as the last century, and looking much like other houses of the period. A servant comes out carrying a laundry basket. A woman is sewing at the window. The door closes again. Nothing more. Mechanically the eye travels back to the cracked stone whereon stands deeply engraved the following wise epigraph: "Malus vicinus est grande malum."

I have often pa.s.sed by, and while freely granting that a bad neighbour is indeed a great evil, have always wondered what epic strife was recorded by this dolorous exclamation. Was the inscription the vengeance of the impotent, the amiable irony of a philosopher, resigned to the inevitable, or the triumphant cry of the unrighteous, eager to deceive by blaming for his own fault the inoffensive being who had no choice but to remain silent? I gazed at the house of G.o.d, twenty paces distant.

I wondered whether this ecclesiastical Latin might not be ascribed to some man of the church. Who else would know the sacred language sufficiently well to attain this degree of epigraphic plat.i.tude? Was there not in the mildness of the method of revenge a flavour of the seminary? A real man hara.s.sed by a bad neighbour would have responded by blows in kind. A priest was more likely to strike back with a sentence out of the breviary. So I reflected, questioning the unanswering stone, and never dreaming that chance would one day bring me the solution of the problem.

Chance knocked at my door a few years ago in the shape of a little account book found in the study of a lawyer, my neighbour, and fallen through inheritance into the possession of a friend of mine. It is a ma.n.u.script copy-book of which only a dozen pages are covered by accounts. On the parchment cover the two words "Malus vicinus" met my eye. Turning over the blank pages I discovered that the little notebook had been commenced at both ends--accounts at the front, and notes at the back of the volume. I found various items of information concerning births, deaths, and inheritances. At the beginning the date 1811. The well-known names of several Saint-Juirs families pa.s.sed under my eyes.

Then came the fateful t.i.tle "Malus vicinus," followed by a long and terribly tangled story. It was the secret of the door that was there revealed to me. A priests' quarrel, as I had fancied.

The Abbe Gobert and the Abbe Rousseau, both natives of Saint-Juirs, had been ordained upon leaving the seminary of Lucon, in about 1760. The book contains nothing concerning their families. One may suppose them both to have been of good middle-cla.s.s origin. Each manifestly had "a certain place in the sun." They were warm friends up to the time of their ordination, which brought about inevitable separation. Abbe Gobert was installed as vicar at Vieux Pouzauges whose _cure_ was to sit in the Const.i.tuency among the partisans of the new order; Abbe Rousseau was sent to Mortagne-sur-Sevres, in the heart of what was destined to be the territory of the Chouans.

Concerning their life up to the beginning of the Revolution we know nothing, except that they remained on friendly terms. They often visited each other. The walk from Pouzauges to Mortagne following the ridge of the hills of the Woodland is one of the most picturesque in our lovely western France, so rich in beautiful landscapes. Very pleasant are its valleys, watered by crystalline brooks flowing musically over pebbly beds; they are everywhere intersected by hedges behind which in serried ranks rise shady thickets, inviolate sanctuary of rural peace. There might the peasant be born and die with never the least knowledge of the outer world. Thirty years ago specimens of the kind were still to be found. If, however, you follow one of the road-cuts under the heavy, overarching boughs and laboriously climb the steep rise amid granite rocks and thick tufts of gorse mingling with brambles, which drape themselves from one to another tree stump centuries old, you emerge suddenly and as if miraculously into the very sky, whence all the earth is visible. Northward as far as the Loire, where rise the towers of Saint Peter's in Nantes, westward as far as the sea, stretches an immense garden of verdure bathed in that translucent bluish light which unites earth and sky and gives the sense of our planet launched in infinite s.p.a.ce. But to this day man and beast contemplate this marvellous spectacle with the same indifferent eye.

In those days, the preaching of the Gospel to peasants still stupefied from serfdom, by a clergy whose leaders prided themselves upon their unbelief, in nowise resembled the stultifying mummeries of to-day. When Abbe Gobert and Abbe Rousseau, arm in arm, stopped at some farmhouse for noonday rest after a frugal meal, their free speech would doubtless startle many a modern seminarist. Their views of the future were perhaps not very different. The ardent liberalism of the good _cure_ of Pouzauges could not have been unknown to his vicar, and how could the latter, open as he was to the new ideas, have refrained from unbosoming himself to his friend?

Meanwhile, every day witnessed the rising of the revolutionary tide.

Under a tranquil surface, unknown forces were gathering for the devastating tempests soon to rage. Finally the hurricane broke loose, and its tornadoes of fire and iron shook the quiet Woodland. There was no time for reflection. Everyone was swept into the conflict without a chance to know his own mind. Abbe Rousseau, belonging to the "White Vendee," could not refuse to follow his boys when they asked him to accompany them, declaring that they were "going to fight G.o.d's battle."

Abbe Gobert of the "Blue Vendee" found nothing to answer when his compatriots told him that they refused to make common cause with the foreigner against France, and that the Revolution was nothing more or less than the fulfilment of the Gospels on earth, despite the Pharisees of the ancient order, who while invoking the name of heaven appropriated all earthly privileges.

The adventures of the two Abbes during the war are not set down in the ma.n.u.script. There is mention of Abbe Rousseau being transferred to Stofflet's army, but no comment. Further on a note of three short lines in telegraphic style tells us that Abbe Gobert, "following his fatal bent," secularized himself, took up arms, and was left for dead at the taking of Fontenay. We are not told what saved him.

The writer of the little book now makes a jump to the Consulate, and we learn that the "reestablishment of the cult," at the Concordat, resulted in the installation of Abbe Rousseau as officiating priest in his native place of Saint-Juirs. Three years later, Gobert, then a "refugee in Paris," where he "was writing for the newspapers," returned to his old home, his fortune having been increased by an inheritance from his uncle Jean Renaud, owner of the house now adorned by the Latin inscription.

Destiny, after having violently separated the two men and set them at odds in a bitter war, now suddenly brought them together in their native place, where they might have the opportunity for an honest searching of their consciences, for justifications, and, before the end of life, possibly, reconciliation.

On the day after his arrival Gobert came face to face with Abbe Rousseau in the church square. He went straight to him, with hands outstretched.

The other, not having had time to put himself on guard, was unable to withstand a friendly impulse. The eyes of each scrutinizingly questioned the other, but every dangerous word was avoided. The Abbe, moreover, cut short the interview with the excuse of being expected at the bedside of a sick man. They had parted with the understanding that they should soon see each other again, but two days later, Gobert, going up to the Abbe who was pa.s.sing, received a curt bow from him, unaccompanied by a word of even perfunctory courtesy. It meant the end of friendly intercourse.

The meeting between the "annointed of the Lord" and the "unfrocked priest" had created a scandal in the community of the faithful, and Master Pierre Gaborit, President of the vestry board, had called his _cure_ roundly to account. Could a chaplain of the King's armies afford to be seen consorting with a tool of Satan, a renegade living amid the filth of apostasy, a man who, the report ran, had danced the Carmagnole at the foot of the scaffold?

The disconcerted Abbe listened, shaking his head.

"He was a good fellow, and a G.o.dly one, when I knew him formerly, at the seminary. He is perhaps not as guilty as they say--I hoped to bring him back into the fold----"

"One does not bring back the Devil," replied Gaborit, violently. "You do not wish to be a stumbling block, do you, _Monsieur le Cure_?"

"No--no----" replied the Abbe, who already saw himself denounced, excommunicated, d.a.m.ned.

From that day onward relations between the priest and his ancient comrade limited themselves to a mutual raising of the hat, for the Abbe never found the courage to ignore "the renegade," as Gaborit would have wished him to. That is why the latter conceived the plan of forestalling any eventual relapse into weakness by fostering between the man of G.o.d and the man of the Devil every possible cause for enmity.

Abbe Rousseau owned the house next to Gobert's, and Gaborit had rented it for his newly married son. A party wall, a common well, contiguous fields and rights of way through them, were more than sufficient to give rise to daily friction. After some resistance, Abbe Rousseau, under the pretext that he could have "no dealings with Satan's emissary," let himself be convinced that he must refuse all customary "rights" to the "enemy." Gobert's remonstrances obtained no attention, and thereupon followed lawsuits. A bucket of lime was thrown into his well. The trees in his orchard were hacked with a bill hook. His hens disappeared.

Investigation by a bailiff ensued, and the arrival of the police, who had first been to take instructions at the rectory. For a trifling bribe, the servant of the "accused" permitted the "revolutionary" cow to stray into the clerical hay field. This time Abbe Rousseau could do no less than to denounce the crime from the pulpit. A somewhat distorted version of the entire Revolution was rehea.r.s.ed.

Gobert, who like Talleyrand, similarly unfrocked, would perhaps have ended in the arms of the Church, had he been important enough to stimulate the zeal of a Dupanloup, experienced more surprise than anger at all these vexations. What surprised him most was to find that justice was unjust. Having become a philosopher, however, he resigned himself.

Only the loss of his friend caused him grief. He ended by suspecting Gaborit's manoeuvres, and several times sought opportunity for an explanation with Abbe Rousseau himself, but was met by obstinate silence.

It was then that, for the sake of reaching his former fellow student in spite of everything, by a word in the language familiar to both, he had had engraved on the lintel of his door the inscription which denounced Gaborit as the cause of their common misfortune. Daily, as he came out of his rectory, Abbe Rousseau could read the touching appeal which laid his guilt upon another. But the "glory of G.o.d" never permitted him to answer, as in the depth of his heart he would have liked to do.

He was the first to die. To the great scandal of all Gobert, "the excommunicated," followed him to the grave. On the very next day he gave orders to have the inscription removed, since it served no further purpose. The masons were soon at work, and a clumsy blow had already split the stone, when the ex-abbe was carried off suddenly by a pernicious fever. Things remained as they may be seen at the present day. Gobert went without church ceremonies to rest in the graveyard, not far from his old friend. They are still neighbours, but good neighbours, now, and for a long time!

IV

AUNT ROSALIE'S INHERITANCE

Mademoiselle Rosalie Rigal was by unanimous admission the most important person in the village. And yet the hamlet of St. Martin-en-Pareds, in the Woodland of the Vendee, boasts a former court notary who without great difficulty was allowed to drop out of the profession, and a retired sergeant of police who keeps the tobacconist's shop. Around these dignitaries are grouped a few well-to-do farmers and a dozen or more small landowners who, although obliged to work for a living, have a sense of their importance in the State. When they speak of "my field,"

"my cow," "my fence," the ring of their voice expresses the elation of the conqueror who in this infinite universe has set his clutch upon a portion of the planet and has no intention of letting go.

No one is unaware that the chief joy of country people is to surround themselves with hedges or walls, and to despise those who cannot do as much. That their admiration, their esteem, their respect, go out automatically to wealth is a trait they share with city people, which spares us the necessity of a detailed psychological a.n.a.lysis. Who, then, shall explain the unanimous deference with which St.

Martin-en-Pareds honoured Miss Rosalie Rigal?

The aged spinster--she was entering upon her seventieth year--possessed nothing under the sun but a tiny cottage, not in very good repair, but s.h.i.+ning and spotless from front door steps to roof tiles, at the end of a narrow little garden scarcely wider than the path to her door. Such a domain was not calculated to attract to its mistress the admiring attention of her fellow townsmen. The interior of the dwelling was extremely modest. A large oaken bedstead with carved posts, a common deal dining table, a few rush-bottomed chairs and Miss Rosalie's armchair, were all the furniture of the room in which she lived. On the walls were holy pictures. On the mantelpiece a tarnished bronze gilt clock, representing a savage Turk carrying off on his galloping steed a weeping Christian maiden, had as far back as any one could remember pointed to a quarter before twelve.

At the window-door leading to the street and letting in the light of day Miss Rosalie sat with her knitting from sun-up to sun-down. Hence arose difficulties of entrance and exit. When a visitor appeared, Miss Rosalie would call Victorine. The servant would come, help her mistress to rise, as she did slowly and stiffly, move the armchair, settle the old woman in it again, propping her with special cus.h.i.+ons in stated places, move the foot stool or the foot warmer, push out of the way the little stand which served as a work table, and open the door with endless excuses for the delay.

No fewer ceremonies were necessary than in seeking an audience with the Sun-G.o.d. If Victorine were busy with the housework, she sometimes obliged a caller to wait. Which gave Miss Rosalie's door step a reputation as the most favourable spot in the entire canton for catching cold.

In spite of these inconveniences visitors were not wanting. Foremost among the a.s.siduous ones were the notary and the _cure_. Monsieur Loiseau, the retired notary, was the friend of the house. A stout man, with a florid, smooth shaven face, and a head even smoother than his chin, always in a good humour, always full of amusing stories, yet concealing under his idle tales and his laughter a professional man's concern with serious matters, as was betokened by the ever-present white cravat, badge of his dignity, which added an official touch even to his hunting costume and to the undress of his gardening or vintaging attire.

The love of gardening was well developed in Monsieur Loiseau, and as he was especially fond of Miss Rosalie, he delighted in coming to hoe her flower beds, to tend her plants and water them, chatting with her the while. The old lady during this would be seated in the garden, near a spot where a deep niche in the wall had made it possible to cut a loophole commanding the street. From her point of vantage she could watch all St. Martin, and without moving keep in touch with its daily events, which gave her inexhaustible food for comment.

So close became the friends.h.i.+p between these two, that the notary one day announced that if certain old doc.u.ments once seen by him at the county town could be trusted, there was no doubt that their two families were related. From that moment Miss Rosalie Rigal became "Aunt Rosalie"

to Monsieur Loiseau, and as the relations.h.i.+p was one which anybody might claim, Miss Rosalie soon found herself "Aunt" to the entire village. She duly appreciated the honour of this large connection, and with pride in the universal friendliness, which seemed to her a natural return for her own rather indiscriminate good will toward all, she let herself softly float on the pleasure of being held in veneration by everyone in St.

Martin, which for her represented the universe.

The _cure_, who lived at two kilometers' distance, could come to see her only at irregular intervals. But a lift in a carriage, or even a friendly cart, often facilitated the journey, and although Aunt Rosalie was not in the least devout, despite the saintly pictures on her walls, the long conversations between her and the _cure_, from which the notary was excluded, gave rise to the popular belief that they had "secrets"

together.

And the supposition was correct. There were "secrets" between Aunt Rosalie and the priest. There were likewise "secrets" between Aunt Rosalie and the notary, and they were, to be plain, money secrets. For the irresistible attraction which drew all St. Martin-en-Pareds to Aunt Rosalie's feet must here be explained. The simple-minded old spinster supposed it the most natural thing in the world; she fancied her amiable qualities sufficient to engage the benevolent affection of all who knew her. Undeniably Aunt Rosalie's good humour and quiet fun were infinitely calculated to foster friendly neighbourly relations. But there was more to it than the uninquiring good soul suspected.

Aunt Rosalie was a poor relation of certain enormously rich people in the neighbouring canton. She was a grand niece of the famous Jean Bretaud, whose lucky speculations had made him the most important man in the district. The Bretauds had entirely forgotten the relations.h.i.+p and, taking the opposite course from the notary, would probably have denied it had Aunt Rosalie claimed it.

Aunt Rosalie claimed nothing, but she did not forget her family. When evening fell, and the blinds were closed, and the doors securely locked: "Victorine, go and bring the doc.u.ments," she would say, after a glance all around to make sure that no one could spy on her in the mysterious elaborations of the work under way. At these words, Victorine, with sudden gravity, would extract from the wardrobe a little flat box, cunningly tied with string, and place it respectfully on the table, after having with much ado untied the knots and unrolled the complicated wrappings which guarded the treasure from the gaze of the profane.