Villette

ALEVOLA.

Madame Beck called me on Thursday afternoon, and asked whether I had
any occupation to hinder me from going into town and executing some
little commissions for her at the shops.

Being disengaged, and placing myself at her service, I was presently
furnished with a list of the wools, silks, embroidering thread,
etcetera, wanted in the pupils’ work, and having equipped myself in a
manner suiting the threatening aspect of a cloudy and sultry day, I was
just drawing the spring-bolt of the street-door, in act to issue forth,
when Madame’s voice again summoned me to the salle-à-manger.

“Pardon, Meess Lucie!” cried she, in the seeming haste of an impromptu
thought, “I have just recollected one more errand for you, if your
good-nature will not deem itself over-burdened?”

Of course I “confounded myself” in asseverations to the contrary; and
Madame, running into the little salon, brought thence a pretty basket,
filled with fine hothouse fruit, rosy, perfect, and tempting, reposing
amongst the dark green, wax-like leaves, and pale yellow stars of, I
know not what, exotic plant.

“There,” she said, “it is not heavy, and will not shame your neat
toilette, as if it were a household, servant-like detail. Do me the
favour to leave this little basket at the house of Madame Walravens,
with my felicitations on her fête. She lives down in the old town,
Numéro 3, Rue des Mages. I fear you will find the walk rather long, but
you have the whole afternoon before you, and do not hurry; if you are
not back in time for dinner, I will order a portion to be saved, or
Goton, with whom you are a favourite, will have pleasure in tossing up
some trifle, for your especial benefit. You shall not be forgotten, ma
bonne Meess. And oh! please!” (calling me back once more) “be sure to
insist on seeing Madame Walravens herself, and giving the basket into
her own hands, in order that there may be no mistake, for she is rather
a punctilious personage. Adieu! Au revoir!”

And at last I got away. The shop commissions took some time to execute,
that choosing and matching of silks and wools being always a tedious
business, but at last I got through my list. The patterns for the
slippers, the bell-ropes, the cabas were selected—the slides and
tassels for the purses chosen—the whole “tripotage,” in short, was off
my mind; nothing but the fruit and the felicitations remained to be
attended to.

I rather liked the prospect of a long walk, deep into the old and grim
Basse-Ville; and I liked it no worse because the evening sky, over the
city, was settling into a mass of black-blue metal, heated at the rim,
and inflaming slowly to a heavy red.

I fear a high wind, because storm demands that exertion of strength and
use of action I always yield with pain; but the sullen down-fall, the
thick snow-descent, or dark rush of rain, ask only resignation—the
quiet abandonment of garments and person to be drenched. In return, it
sweeps a great capital clean before you; it makes you a quiet path
through broad, grand streets; it petrifies a living city as if by
eastern enchantment; it transforms a Villette into a Tadmor. Let, then,
the rains fall, and the floods descend—only I must first get rid of
this basket of fruit.

An unknown clock from an unknown tower (Jean Baptiste’s voice was now
too distant to be audible) was tolling the third quarter past five,
when I reached that street and house whereof Madame Beck had given me
the address. It was no street at all; it seemed rather to be part of a
square: it was quiet, grass grew between the broad grey flags, the
houses were large and looked very old—behind them rose the appearance
of trees, indicating gardens at the back. Antiquity brooded above this
region, business was banished thence. Rich men had once possessed this
quarter, and once grandeur had made her seat here. That church, whose
dark, half-ruinous turrets overlooked the square, was the venerable and
formerly opulent shrine of the Magi. But wealth and greatness had long
since stretched their gilded pinions and fled hence, leaving these
their ancient nests, perhaps to house Penury for a time, or perhaps to
stand cold and empty, mouldering untenanted in the course of winters.

As I crossed this deserted “place,” on whose pavement drops almost as
large as a five-franc piece were now slowly darkening, I saw, in its
whole expanse, no symptom or evidence of life, except what was given in
the figure of an infirm old priest, who went past, bending and propped
on a staff—the type of eld and decay.

He had issued from the very house to which I was directed; and when I
paused before the door just closed after him, and rang the bell, he
turned to look at me. Nor did he soon avert his gaze; perhaps he
thought me, with my basket of summer fruit, and my lack of the dignity
age confers, an incongruous figure in such a scene. I know, had a young
ruddy-faced bonne opened the door to admit me, I should have thought
such a one little in harmony with her dwelling; but, when I found
myself confronted by a very old woman, wearing a very antique peasant
costume, a cap alike hideous and costly, with long flaps of native
lace, a petticoat and jacket of cloth, and sabots more like little
boats than shoes, it seemed all right, and soothingly in character.

The expression of her face was not quite so soothing as the cut of her
costume; anything more cantankerous I have seldom seen; she would
scarcely reply to my inquiry after Madame Walravens; I believe she
would have snatched the basket of fruit from my hand, had not the old
priest, hobbling up, checked her, and himself lent an ear to the
message with which I was charged.

His apparent deafness rendered it a little difficult to make him fully
understand that I must see Madame Walravens, and consign the fruit into
her own hands. At last, however, he comprehended the fact that such
were my orders, and that duty enjoined their literal fulfilment.
Addressing the aged bonne, not in French, but in the aboriginal tongue
of Labassecour, he persuaded her, at last, to let me cross the
inhospitable threshold, and himself escorting me up-stairs, I was
ushered into a sort of salon, and there left.

The room was large, and had a fine old ceiling, and almost church-like
windows of coloured-glass; but it was desolate, and in the shadow of a
coming storm, looked strangely lowering. Within—opened a smaller room;
there, however, the blind of the single casement was closed; through
the deep gloom few details of furniture were apparent. These few I
amused myself by puzzling to make out; and, in particular, I was
attracted by the outline of a picture on the wall.

By-and-by the picture seemed to give way: to my bewilderment, it shook,
it sunk, it rolled back into nothing; its vanishing left an opening
arched, leading into an arched passage, with a mystic winding stair;
both passage and stair were of cold stone, uncarpeted and unpainted.
Down this donjon stair descended a tap, tap, like a stick; soon there
fell on the steps a shadow, and last of all, I was aware of a
substance.

Yet, was it actual substance, this appearance approaching me? this
obstruction, partially darkening the arch?

It drew near, and I saw it well. I began to comprehend where I was.
Well might this old square be named quarter of the Magi—well might the
three towers, overlooking it, own for godfathers three mystic sages of
a dead and dark art. Hoar enchantment here prevailed; a spell had
opened for me elf-land—that cell-like room, that vanishing picture,
that arch and passage, and stair of stone, were all parts of a fairy
tale. Distincter even than these scenic details stood the chief
figure—Cunegonde, the sorceress! Malevola, the evil fairy. How was she?

She might be three feet high, but she had no shape; her skinny hands
rested upon each other, and pressed the gold knob of a wand-like ivory
staff. Her face was large, set, not upon her shoulders, but before her
breast; she seemed to have no neck; I should have said there were a
hundred years in her features, and more perhaps in her eyes—her malign,
unfriendly eyes, with thick grey brows above, and livid lids all round.
How severely they viewed me, with a sort of dull displeasure!

This being wore a gown of brocade, dyed bright blue, full-tinted as the
gentianella flower, and covered with satin foliage in a large pattern;
over the gown a costly shawl, gorgeously bordered, and so large for
her, that its many-coloured fringe swept the floor. But her chief
points were her jewels: she had long, clear earrings, blazing with a
lustre which could not be borrowed or false; she had rings on her
skeleton hands, with thick gold hoops, and stones—purple, green, and
blood-red. Hunchbacked, dwarfish, and doting, she was adorned like a
barbarian queen.

“Que me voulez-vous?” said she, hoarsely, with the voice rather of male
than of female old age; and, indeed, a silver beard bristled her chin.

I delivered my basket and my message.

“Is that all?” she demanded.

“It is all,” said I.

“Truly, it was well worth while,” she answered. “Return to Madame Beck,
and tell her I can buy fruit when I want it, et quant à ses
félicitations, je m’en moque!” And this courteous dame turned her back.

Just as she turned, a peal of thunder broke, and a flash of lightning
blazed broad over salon and boudoir. The tale of magic seemed to
proceed with due accompaniment of the elements. The wanderer, decoyed
into the enchanted castle, heard rising, outside, the spell-wakened
tempest.

What, in all this, was I to think of Madame Beck? She owned strange
acquaintance; she offered messages and gifts at an unique shrine, and
inauspicious seemed the bearing of the uncouth thing she worshipped.
There went that sullen Sidonia, tottering and trembling like palsy
incarnate, tapping her ivory staff on the mosaic parquet, and muttering
venomously as she vanished.

Down washed the rain, deep lowered the welkin; the clouds, ruddy a
while ago, had now, through all their blackness, turned deadly pale, as
if in terror. Notwithstanding my late boast about not fearing a shower,
I hardly liked to go out under this waterspout. Then the gleams of
lightning were very fierce, the thunder crashed very near; this storm
had gathered immediately above Villette; it seemed to have burst at the
zenith; it rushed down prone; the forked, slant bolts pierced athwart
vertical torrents; red zigzags interlaced a descent blanched as white
metal: and all broke from a sky heavily black in its swollen abundance.

Leaving Madame Walravens’ inhospitable salon, I betook myself to her
cold staircase; there was a seat on the landing—there I waited.
Somebody came gliding along the gallery just above; it was the old
priest.

“Indeed Mademoiselle shall not sit there,” said he. “It would
displeasure our benefactor if he knew a stranger was so treated in this
house.”

And he begged me so earnestly to return to the salon, that, without
discourtesy, I could not but comply. The smaller room was better
furnished and more habitable than the larger; thither he introduced me.
Partially withdrawing the blind, he disclosed what seemed more like an
oratory than a boudoir, a very solemn little chamber, looking as if it
were a place rather dedicated to relics and remembrance, than designed
for present use and comfort.

The good father sat down, as if to keep me company; but instead of
conversing, he took out a book, fastened on the page his eyes, and
employed his lips in whispering—what sounded like a prayer or litany. A
yellow electric light from the sky gilded his bald head; his figure
remained in shade—deep and purple; he sat still as sculpture; he seemed
to forget me for his prayers; he only looked up when a fiercer bolt, or
a harsher, closer rattle told of nearing danger; even then, it was not
in fear, but in seeming awe, he raised his eyes. I too was awe-struck;
being, however, under no pressure of slavish terror, my thoughts and
observations were free.

To speak truth, I was beginning to fancy that the old priest resembled
that Père Silas, before whom I had kneeled in the church of the
Béguinage. The idea was vague, for I had seen my confessor only in dusk
and in profile, yet still I seemed to trace a likeness: I thought also
I recognized the voice. While I watched him, he betrayed, by one lifted
look, that he felt my scrutiny; I turned to note the room; that too had
its half mystic interest.

Beside a cross of curiously carved old ivory, yellow with time, and
sloped above a dark-red prie-dieu, furnished duly, with rich missal
and ebon rosary—hung the picture whose dim outline had drawn my eyes
before—the picture which moved, fell away with the wall and let in
phantoms. Imperfectly seen, I had taken it for a Madonna; revealed by
clearer light, it proved to be a woman’s portrait in a nun’s dress. The
face, though not beautiful, was pleasing; pale, young, and shaded with
the dejection of grief or ill health. I say again it was not beautiful;
it was not even intellectual; its very amiability was the amiability of
a weak frame, inactive passions, acquiescent habits: yet I looked long
at that picture, and could not choose but look.

The old priest, who at first had seemed to me so deaf and infirm, must
yet have retained his faculties in tolerable preservation; absorbed in
his book as he appeared, without once lifting his head, or, as far as I
knew, turning his eyes, he perceived the point towards which my
attention was drawn, and, in a slow distinct voice, dropped, concerning
it, these four observations:—

“She was much beloved.

“She gave herself to God.

“She died young.

“She is still remembered, still wept.”

“By that aged lady, Madame Walravens?” I inquired, fancying that I had
discovered in the incurable grief of bereavement, a key to that same
aged lady’s desperate ill-humour.

The father shook his head with half a smile.

“No, no,” said he; “a grand-dame’s affection for her children’s
children may be great, and her sorrow for their loss, lively; but it is
only the affianced lover, to whom Fate, Faith, and Death have trebly
denied the bliss of union, who mourns what he has lost, as Justine
Marie is still mourned.”

I thought the father rather wished to be questioned, and therefore I
inquired who had lost and who still mourned “Justine Marie.” I got, in
reply, quite a little romantic narrative, told not unimpressively, with
the accompaniment of the now subsiding storm. I am bound to say it
might have been made much more truly impressive, if there had been less
French, Rousseau-like sentimentalizing and wire-drawing; and rather
more healthful carelessness of effect. But the worthy father was
obviously a Frenchman born and bred (I became more and more persuaded
of his resemblance to my confessor)—he was a true son of Rome; when he
did lift his eyes, he looked at me out of their corners, with more and
sharper subtlety than, one would have thought, could survive the wear
and tear of seventy years. Yet, I believe, he was a good old man.

The hero of his tale was some former pupil of his, whom he now called
his benefactor, and who, it appears, had loved this pale Justine Marie,
the daughter of rich parents, at a time when his own worldly prospects
were such as to justify his aspiring to a well-dowered hand. The
pupil’s father—once a rich banker—had failed, died, and left behind him
only debts and destitution. The son was then forbidden to think of
Marie; especially that old witch of a grand-dame I had seen, Madame
Walravens, opposed the match with all the violence of a temper which
deformity made sometimes demoniac. The mild Marie had neither the
treachery to be false, nor the force to be quite staunch to her lover;
she gave up her first suitor, but, refusing to accept a second with a
heavier purse, withdrew to a convent, and there died in her noviciate.

Lasting anguish, it seems, had taken possession of the faithful heart
which worshipped her, and the truth of that love and grief had been
shown in a manner which touched even me, as I listened.

Some years after Justine Marie’s death, ruin had come on her house too:
her father, by nominal calling a jeweller, but who also dealt a good
deal on the Bourse, had been concerned in some financial transactions
which entailed exposure and ruinous fines. He died of grief for the
loss, and shame for the infamy. His old hunchbacked mother and his
bereaved wife were left penniless, and might have died too of want; but
their lost daughter’s once-despised, yet most true-hearted suitor,
hearing of the condition of these ladies, came with singular
devotedness to the rescue. He took on their insolent pride the revenge
of the purest charity—housing, caring for, befriending them, so as no
son could have done it more tenderly and efficiently. The mother—on the
whole a good woman—died blessing him; the strange, godless, loveless,
misanthrope grandmother lived still, entirely supported by this
self-sacrificing man. Her, who had been the bane of his life, blighting
his hope, and awarding him, for love and domestic happiness, long
mourning and cheerless solitude, he treated with the respect a good son
might offer a kind mother. He had brought her to this house, “and,”
continued the priest, while genuine tears rose to his eyes, “here, too,
he shelters me, his old tutor, and Agnes, a superannuated servant of
his father’s family. To our sustenance, and to other charities, I know
he devotes three-parts of his income, keeping only the fourth to
provide himself with bread and the most modest accommodations. By this
arrangement he has rendered it impossible to himself ever to marry: he
has given himself to God and to his angel-bride as much as if he were a
priest, like me.”

The father had wiped away his tears before he uttered these last words,
and in pronouncing them, he for one instant raised his eyes to mine. I
caught this glance, despite its veiled character; the momentary gleam
shot a meaning which struck me.

These Romanists are strange beings. Such a one among them—whom you know
no more than the last Inca of Peru, or the first Emperor of China—knows
you and all your concerns; and has his reasons for saying to you so and
so, when you simply thought the communication sprang impromptu from the
instant’s impulse: his plan in bringing it about that you shall come on
such a day, to such a place, under such and such circumstances, when
the whole arrangement seems to your crude apprehension the ordinance of
chance, or the sequel of exigency. Madame Beck’s suddenly-recollected
message and present, my artless embassy to the Place of the Magi, the
old priest accidentally descending the steps and crossing the square,
his interposition on my behalf with the bonne who would have sent me
away, his reappearance on the staircase, my introduction to this room,
the portrait, the narrative so affably volunteered—all these little
incidents, taken as they fell out, seemed each independent of its
successor; a handful of loose beads: but threaded through by that
quick-shot and crafty glance of a Jesuit-eye, they dropped pendent in a
long string, like that rosary on the prie-dieu. Where lay the link of
junction, where the little clasp of this monastic necklace? I saw or
felt union, but could not yet find the spot, or detect the means of
connection.

Perhaps the musing-fit into which I had by this time fallen, appeared
somewhat suspicious in its abstraction; he gently interrupted:
“Mademoiselle,” said he, “I trust you have not far to go through these
inundated streets?”

“More than half a league.”

“You live——?”

“In the Rue Fossette.”

“Not” (with animation), “not at the pensionnat of Madame Beck?”

“The same.”

“Donc” (clapping his hands), “donc, vous devez connaître mon noble
élève, mon Paul?”

“Monsieur Paul Emanuel, Professor of Literature?”

“He and none other.”

A brief silence fell. The spring of junction seemed suddenly to have
become palpable; I felt it yield to pressure.

“Was it of M. Paul you have been speaking?” I presently inquired. “Was
he your pupil and the benefactor of Madame Walravens?”

“Yes, and of Agnes, the old servant: and moreover, (with a certain
emphasis), he was and is the lover, true, constant and eternal, of
that saint in heaven—Justine Marie.”

“And who, father, are you?” I continued; and though I accentuated the
question, its utterance was well nigh superfluous; I was ere this quite
prepared for the answer which actually came.

“I, daughter, am Père Silas; that unworthy son of Holy Church whom you
once honoured with a noble and touching confidence, showing me the core
of a heart, and the inner shrine of a mind whereof, in solemn truth, I
coveted the direction, in behalf of the only true faith. Nor have I for
a day lost sight of you, nor for an hour failed to take in you a rooted
interest. Passed under the discipline of Rome, moulded by her high
training, inoculated with her salutary doctrines, inspired by the zeal
she alone gives—I realize what then might be your spiritual rank, your
practical value; and I envy Heresy her prey.”

This struck me as a special state of things—I half-realized myself in
that condition also; passed under discipline, moulded, trained,
inoculated, and so on. “Not so,” thought I, but I restrained
deprecation, and sat quietly enough.

“I suppose M. Paul does not live here?” I resumed, pursuing a theme
which I thought more to the purpose than any wild renegade dreams.

“No; he only comes occasionally to worship his beloved saint, to make
his confession to me, and to pay his respects to her he calls his
mother. His own lodging consists but of two rooms: he has no servant,
and yet he will not suffer Madame Walravens to dispose of those
splendid jewels with which you see her adorned, and in which she takes
a puerile pride as the ornaments of her youth, and the last relics of
her son the jeweller’s wealth.”

“How often,” murmured I to myself, “has this man, this M. Emanuel,
seemed to me to lack magnanimity in trifles, yet how great he is in
great things!”

I own I did not reckon amongst the proofs of his greatness, either the
act of confession, or the saint-worship.

“How long is it since that lady died?” I inquired, looking at Justine
Marie.

“Twenty years. She was somewhat older than M. Emanuel; he was then very
young, for he is not much beyond forty.”

“Does he yet weep her?”

“His heart will weep her always: the essence of Emanuel’s nature
is—constancy.”

This was said with marked emphasis.

And now the sun broke out pallid and waterish; the rain yet fell, but
there was no more tempest: that hot firmament had cloven and poured out
its lightnings. A longer delay would scarce leave daylight for my
return, so I rose, thanked the father for his hospitality and his tale,
was benignantly answered by a “pax vobiscum,” which I made kindly
welcome, because it seemed uttered with a true benevolence; but I liked
less the mystic phrase accompanying it.

“Daughter, you shall be what you shall be!” an oracle that made me
shrug my shoulders as soon as I had got outside the door. Few of us
know what we are to come to certainly, but for all that had happened
yet, I had good hopes of living and dying a sober-minded Protestant:
there was a hollowness within, and a flourish around “Holy Church”
which tempted me but moderately. I went on my way pondering many
things. Whatever Romanism may be, there are good Romanists: this man,
Emanuel, seemed of the best; touched with superstition, influenced by
priestcraft, yet wondrous for fond faith, for pious devotion, for
sacrifice of self, for charity unbounded. It remained to see how Rome,
by her agents, handled such qualities; whether she cherished them for
their own sake and for God’s, or put them out to usury and made booty
of the interest.

By the time I reached home, it was sundown. Goton had kindly saved me a
portion of dinner, which indeed I needed. She called me into the little
cabinet to partake of it, and there Madame Beck soon made her
appearance, bringing me a glass of wine.

“Well,” began she, chuckling, “and what sort of a reception did Madame
Walravens give you? Elle est drôle, n’est-ce pas?”

I told her what had passed, delivering verbatim the courteous message
with which I had been charged.

“Oh la singulière petite bossue!” laughed she. “Et figurez-vous qu’elle
me déteste, parcequ’elle me croit amoureuse de mon cousin Paul; ce
petit dévot qui n’ose pas bouger, à moins que son confesseur ne lui
donne la permission! Au reste” (she went on), “if he wanted to marry
ever so much—soit moi, soit une autre—he could not do it; he has too
large a family already on his hands: Mère Walravens, Père Silas, Dame
Agnes, and a whole troop of nameless paupers. There never was a man
like him for laying on himself burdens greater than he can bear,
voluntarily incurring needless responsibilities. Besides, he harbours a
romantic idea about some pale-faced Marie Justine—personnage assez
niaise à ce que je pense” (such was Madame’s irreverent remark), “who
has been an angel in heaven, or elsewhere, this score of years, and to
whom he means to go, free from all earthly ties, pure comme un lis, à
ce qu’il dit. Oh, you would laugh could you but know half M. Emanuel’s
crotchets and eccentricities! But I hinder you from taking refreshment,
ma bonne Meess, which you must need; eat your supper, drink your wine,
oubliez les anges, les bossues, et surtout, les Professeurs—et bon
soir!”