" ' I often turn my eyes in that direction (the
old man explains) from habit. One might
suppose that a peasant had the scent of the earth
on which he has laboured. I have given so
much of the sweat of my brow — there — towards
Rocaillet ! Angelique, my dead wife, was of
Rocaillet ; and when she married me, brought
a few morsels of land in her apron. What a
state they're in now ! — those poor morsels of
land we used to weed and rake and hoe, my
boy and I ! What superb crops of vetches we
mowed then, for feeding, in due time, our
lambs, our calves ! All is gone to ruin since
my blindness, and especially since Angelique left
me for the churchyard, never to come back.'
He paused to my great relief. For every one
of those phrases he modulated under the fig-
trees more sadly than the Lamentations of
Jeremiah on yeudi Saint overset me — was like
death."
128
FERDINAND FABRE
That is good drawing, in its simple and quiet
way ! The actual scene, however, is cheerful
enough on this early summer day — a symphony,
as we said, in cherries and goldfinches, in which
the higher valleys of the Cevennes abound. In
fact, the boys witness the accordailles^ the en-
gagement, of Norine and Justin Lebasset. The
latter is calling the birds to sing good luck to
the event : —
* He had a long steady look towards the
fruit-trees, and then whistled, on a note at once
extremely clear and extremely soft. He paused,
watched awhile, recommenced. The note be-
came more rapid, more sonorous. What an
astounding man he was, this Justin Lebasset !
Upright, his red beard forward, his forehead
thrown back, his eyes on the thick foliage of
the cherry-trees, his hands on his haunches, in
an attitude of repose, easy, superb, he was Hke
some youthful pagan god, gilded with red gold,
on his way across the country — like Pan, if he
chose to amuse himself by charming birds.
You should have seen the enthusiastic glances
with which Norine watched him. Upright —
she too, slim, at full height, inclining from
K. 129
*THE GUARDIAN' ESSAYS
time to time towards Justin with a movement of
irresistible fascination, she followed the notes of
her mate ; and sometimes, her lips half opening,
added thereto a sigh — something of a sigh, an
aspiration, a prayer, towards the goldfinch, with-
drawn into the shadows.
"The leaves were shaken in the clear,
burning green ; and, on a sudden, a multitude of
goldfinches, the heads red in the wind, the
wings half spread, were fluttering from branch
to branch. I could have fancied, amid the
quivering of the great bunches of fruit, that
they were cherries on the wing. Justin suffered
his pipe to die away : the birds were come at
his invitation, and performed their prelude."
It is forty years afterwards that the narrator,
now a man of letters in Paris, writes to his old
friend, with tidings of Justin and Norine : —
"In 1842 (he observes) you were close on
fifteen ; I scarcely twelve. In my eyes your
age made you my superior. And then, you
were so strong, so tender, so amiteux, to use a
word from up there — a charming word. And
so God, Who had His designs for you, whereas
I, in spite of my pious childhood, wandered on
130
FERDINAND FABRE
my way as chance bade me, led you by the
hand, attached, ended by keeping you for Him-
self. He did well truly when He chose you
and rejected me ! "
His finding the pair in the wilds of Paris is
an adventure, in which, in fact, a goldfinch
again takes an important part — a goldfinch who
is found to understand the Cevenol dialect : —
" The goldfinch (escaped from its cage some-
where, into the dreary court of the Institute) has
seen me : is looking at me. If he chose to
make his way into my apartment, he would be
very welcome. I feel a strong impulse to try
him with that unique patois word, which,
whistled after a peculiar manner, when I was
a boy never failed to succeed in the moun-
tains of Orb — Beni ! Bent ! Viens I Viens I I
dare not ! He might take fright and fly away
altogether."
In effect, the Cevenol bird, true to call,
introduces Norine, his rightful owner, whose
husband Justin is slowly dying. Towards the
end of a hard life, faithful to their mountain
ideal, they have not lost their dignity, though
in a comparatively sordid medium :
131
•THE GUARDIAN' ESSAYS
" As for me, my dear Arribas, I remained in
deep agitation, an attentive spectator of the
scene ; and while Justin and Norine, set both
alike in the winepress of sorrow, k pressoir de
la douleur, as your good books express it,
murmured to each other their broken consoling
words, I saw them again, in thought, young,
handsome, in the full flower of life, under the
cherry-trees, the swarming goldfinches, of blind
Barthelemy Jalaguier. Ah me ! It was thus
that, five-and-forty years after, in this dark street
of Paris, that festive day was finishing, blessed,
in the plenitude of nature, by that august old
man, celebrated by the alternate song of all the
birds of Rocaillet."
Justin's one remaining hope is to go home to
those native mountains, if it may be, with the
dead body of his boy, dead " the very morning
on which he should have received the tonsure
from the hands of Mgr. I'Archeveque," and
buried now temporarily at the cemetery of
Montparnasse : —
" * Theodore calls me. I saw him dis-
tinctly to-night. He gave me a sign. After
all said, life is heavy, sans le Jillot, and but
132
FERDINAND FABRE
for you it were well to be released from
It. ...
" I have seen Justin Lebasset die, dear
Arribas, and was touched, edified, to the bottom
of my soul. God grant, when my hour comes,
I may find that calm, that force, in the last
struggle with life. Not a complaint ! not a
sigh ! Once only he gave Norine a sorrowful,
heartrending look ; then, from lips already cold,
breathed that one word, ' Theodore ! ' Marcus
Aurelius used to say : ' A man should leave the
world as a ripe olive falls from the tree that
bore it, and with a kiss for the earth that
nourished it.' Well ! the peasant of Rocaillet
had the beautiful, noble, simple death of the
fruit of the earth, going to the common
receptacle of all mortal beings, with no sense
that he was torn away. Pardon, I pray, my
quotation from Marcus Aurelius, who per-
secuted the Christians. I give it with the same
respect with which you would quote some holy
writer. Ah ! my dear Arribas ! not all the
saints have received canonization."
It is to the priestly character, in truth, that
M. Fabre always comes back for tranquillizing
133
'THE GUARDIAN' ESSAYS
effect ; and if his peasants have something akin
to Wordsworth's, his priests may remind one of
those solemn ecclesiastical heads familiar in the
paintings and etchings of M. Alphonse Legros.
The reader travelling in Italy, or Belgium
perhaps, has doubtless visited one or more of
those spacious sacristies, introduced to vvfhich
for the inspection of some more than usually
recherche work of art, one is presently dominated
by their reverend quiet : simple people coming
and going there, devout, or at least on devout
business, with half-pitched voices, not without
touches of kindly humour, in what seems to
express like a picture the most genial side,
midway between the altar and the home, of the
ecclesiastical life. Just such interiors we seem
to visit under the magic of M. Fabre's well-
trained pen. He has a real power of taking one
from Paris, or from London, to places and
people certainly very different from either, to the
satisfaction of those who seek in fiction an
escape.
134
IX
THE " CONTES " OF M. AUGUSTIN FILON
I 6th July 1890
"CoNTES Du Centenaire." Par Augustin Filon
Paris : Hachette et Cie.
135
THE "CONTES" OF M. AUGUSTIN
FILON
TALES OF A HUNDRED YEARS SINCE
It was a happy thought of M. Filon to put into
the mouth of an imaginary centenarian a series
of dehghtfully picturesque studies which aim
at the minute presentment of life in France
under the old regime, and end for the most part
with the Revolution. A genial centenarian,
whose years have told happily on him, he
appreciates not only those humanities of feeling
and habit which were peculiar to the last
century and passed away with it, but also that
permanent humanity which has but undergone
a change of surface in the new world of our
own, wholly different though it may look.
With a sympathetic sense of life as it is always,
137
'THE GUARDIAN' ESSAYS
M. Filon has transplanted the creations of his
fancy into an age certainly at a greater distance
from ourselves than can be estimated by mere
lapse of time, and where a fully detailed anti-
quarian knowledge, used with admirable tact
and economy, is indeed serviceable in giving
reality of effect to scene and character. In
truth, M. Filon's very lively antiquarianism
carries with it a genuine air of personal memory.
With him, as happens so rarely, an intimate
knowledge of historic detail is the secret of life,
of the impression of life ; puts his own imagina-
tion on the wing ; secures the imaginative co-
operation of the reader. A stately age — to us,
perhaps, in the company of the historic muse,
seeming even more stately than it actually was
— it is pleasant to find it, as we do now and
again on these pages, in graceful deshabille.
With perfect lightness of touch, M. Filon seems
to have a complete command of all the physio-
gnomic details of old France, of old Paris and its
people — how they made a holiday ; how they
got at the news ; the fashions. Did the
English reader ever hear before of the beauti-
fully dressed doll which came once a month
13B
'CONTES' OF M. AUGUSTIN FILON
from Paris to Soho to teach an expectant world
of fashion how to dress itself? Old Paris !
For young lovers at their windows ; for every
one fortunate enough to have seen it : — " Qu'il
est joli ce paysage du Paris nocturne d'il y a cent
ans ! " We think we shall best do justice to an
unusually pretty book by taking one of M.
Filon's stories (not because we are quite sure it
is the cleverest of them) with a view to the
more definite illustration of his method, therein.
Christopher Marteau was a warden of the
corporation of Luthiers. He dealt in musical
instruments, as his father and grandfather had
done before him, at the sign of Saint Cecilia,
With his wife, his only child Phlipote, and
Claude his apprentice, who was to marry
Phlipote, he occupied a good house of his own.
Of course the disposition of the young people,
bred together from their childhood, does not at
first entirely concur with the parental arrange-
ments. But the story tells, reassuringly, how —
to some extent how sadly — they came heartily
to do so. M. Marteau was no ordinary shop-
keeper. The various distinguished people who
had fingered his clavecins, and turned over the
139
*THE GUARDIAN* ESSAYS
folios of music, for half a century past, had left
their memories behind them ; M. de Voltaire,
for instance, who had caressed the head of
Phlipote with an aged, skeleton hand, leaving,
apparently, no very agreeable impression on the
child, though her father delighted to recall the
incident, being himself a demi-philosophe. He
went to church, that is to say, only twice a year,
on the Feast of St. Cecilia and on the Sunday
when the Luthiers offered the pain benit. It was
his opinion that everything in the State needed
reform except the Corporations. The relations
of the husband to his affectionate, satiric,
pleasure-seeking wife, who knew so well all the
eighteen theatres which then existed in Paris,
are treated with much quiet humour. On
Sundays the four set forth together for a country
holiday. At such times Phlipote would walk
half-a-dozen paces in advance of her father and
mother, side by side with her intended. But
they never talked to each other : the hands, the
eyes, never met. Of what was Phlipote dream-
ing ? and what was in the thoughts of Claude .?
It happened one day that, like sister and
brother, the lovers exchanged confidences. " It
140
'CONTES' OF M. AUGUSTIN FILON
is not always," observes Phlipote, whom every
one excepting Claude on those occasions sought
with admiring eyes —
" ' It is not always one loves those one is told
to love.'
" ' What, have you^ too, a secret, my little
Phlipote ? '
" ' I too^ Claude ! Then what may be
yours ? '
"'Listen, Phlipote!* he answered. *We
don't wish to be husband and wife, but we can
be friends — good and faithful friends, helping
each other to change the decision of our
parents.'
" ' Were I but sure you would not betray
me '
" ' Would you like me to confess first ? The
woman I love Ah ! but you will laugh at
my folly ! '
" ' No, Claude ! I shall not laugh. I know
too well what one suffers.'
" ' Especially when love is hopeless.*
" ' Hopeless ? '
" ' Alas ! I have never spoken to her.
Perhaps never shall ! '
141
THE GUARDIAN' ESSAYS
C( (
Well ! as for me, I don't even know the
name of him to whom my heart is given ! '
'" Ah ! poor Phlipote ! '
" ' Poor Claude ! '
" They had approached each other. The
young man took the tiny hand of his friend,
pressing it in his own.
" ' The woman I adore is Mademoiselle
Guimard ! *
*' ' What ! Guimard of the Opera ? — the
fiancee of Despreaux ? ' "
Claude still held the hands of Phlipote, who
was trembling now, and almost on fire at the
story of this ambitious love. In return she
reveals her own. It was Good Friday. She
had come with her mother to the Sainte Chape He
to hear Mademoiselle Coupain play the organ
and witness the extraordinary spectacle of the
convulsionnaires^ brought thither to be touched by
the relic of the True Cross. In the press of the
crowd at this exciting scene Phlipote faints, or
nearly faints, when a young man comes kindly
to their aid. " She is so young ! " he explains
to the mother, " she seems so delicate ! " " He
looked at me," she tells Claude — " he looked at
142
'CONTES' OF M. AUGUSTIN FILON
me, through his half-closed eyelids ; and his
words were like a caress " : —
" ' And have you seen him no more ? ' asks
Claude, full of sympathy.
" ' Yes ! once again. He pretended to be
looking at the window of the Little Dunkirk^
over the way, but with cautious glances towards
our house. Only, as he did not know what
storey we live on, he failed to discover me behind
my curtain, where I was but half visible.'
" ' You should have shown yourself,'
" ' Oh, Claude ! ' she cried, with a delicious
gesture of timidity, of shame.
" So they prattled for a long time ; he talking
of the great Guimard, she of her unknown lover,
scarce listening to, but completely understanding
each other.
" ' Holloa ! ' cries the loud voice of Christopher
Marteau. * What are you doing out there ? '
" The young people arose. Phlipote linked
her arm gaily in that of Claude. * How con-
tented I feel ! ' she says ; ' how good it is to
have a friend — to have you whom I used to
detest, because I thought you were in love with
me. Now, when I know you can't bear me, I
143
'THE GUARDIAN' ESSAYS
shall be nicely in love with you.' The soft
warmth of her arm seemed to pass through
Claude, and gave him strange sensations. He
resumed naively, * Yes ! and how odd it is after
all that I am not in love with you. You are so
pretty ! * Phlipote raised her finger coquettishly,
* No compliments, monsieur. Since we are not
to marry each other, it is forbidden to pay court
to me ! ' "
From that day a close intimacy established
itself between the formerly affianced pair, now
become accomplices in defeating the good in-
tentions of their elders. In long conversations,
they talked in turn, or both together, of their re-
spective loves. Phlipote allows Claude entrance
to her chamber, full of admiration for its graceful
arrangements, its virgin cleanliness. He inspects
slowly all the familiar objects daily touched by
her, her books, her girlish ornaments. One day
she cried with an air of mischief, " If she were
here in my place, what would you do .? " and no
sooner were the words uttered than his arms
were round her neck. " 'Tis but to teach you
what I would do were she here." They were
a little troubled by this adventure.
144
'CONTES' OF M. AUGUSTIN FILON
And the next day was a memorable one. By
the kind contrivance of Phlipote herself, Claude
gains the much-desired access to the object of
his affections, but to his immense disillusion. If
he could but speak to her, he fancies he should
find the courage, the skill, to bend her. Breath-
less, Phlipote comes in secret with the good
news. The great actress desires some one to
tune her clavecin : —
" ' Papa would have gone ; but I begged him
so earnestly to take me to the Theatre Fran9ais
that he could not refuse ; and it is yourself will go
this evening to tune the clavecin of your beloved.*
" ' Phlipote, you've a better heart than I !
This morning I saw a gentleman, who resembled
point by point your description of the unknown
at the Sainte Chapelle^ prowling about our shop.'
" ' And you didn't tell me ! '
" Claude hung his head.
" ' But why not ? ' the young girl asks im-
periously. ' Why not ? '
" ' In truth I could hardly say, hardly under-
stand, myself. Do you forgive me, Phlipote ? '
" ' I suppose I must. So make yourself as
smart as you can, to please your goddess.' "
L 145
'THE GUARDIAN' ESSAYS
Next day she hears the story of Claude's
grievous disappointment on seeing the great actress
at home — plain, five-and-forty, ill-tempered. He
had tuned the clavecin and taken flight.
And now for Phlipote's idol ! It was agreed
that Whitsunday should be spent at Versailles.
On that day the royal apartments were open to
the public, and at the hour of High Mass the
crowd flowed back towards the vestibule of the
chapel to witness what was called the procession
of the Cordons Bleus. The " Blue Ribbons "
were the knights of the Order Du Saint-Esprit
in their robes of ceremony, who came to range
themselves in the choir according to the date of
their creation. The press was so great that the
parents were separated from the young people.
Claude, however, at the side of Phlipote, realized
the ideal of a faithful and jealous guardian. The
hallebardes of the Suisses rang on the marble
pavement of the gallery. Royalty, now un-
consciously presenting its ceremonies for the last
time, advanced through a cloud of splendour ;
but before the Queen appeared it was necessary
that all the knights of the order down to the
youngest should pass by, slow, solemn, majestic.
146
'CONTES' OF M. AUGUSTIN FILON
They wore, besides their ribbons of bhie moire,
the silver dove on the shoulder, and the long
mantle of sombre blue velvet lined with yellow
satin. Phlipote watched mechanically the double
file of haughty figures passing before them : then,
on a sudden, with a feeble cry, falls fainting into
the arms of Claude.
Recovered after a while, under shelter of the
great staircase, she wept as those weep whose
heart is broken by a great blow. Claude, without
a word, sustained, soothed her. A sentiment of
gratitude mingled itself with her distress. " How
good he is ! " she thought.
" It was a pity," says her mother a little later
— " a pity you did not see the Cordons Bieus.
Fancy ! You will laugh at me ! But in one of
the handsomest of the Chevaliers I felt sure I
recognized the stranger who helped us at the
Sainte Chape lie, and was so gallant with you."
Philpote did not laugh. " You are deceived,
mother ! " she said in a faint voice. " Pardi ! "
cries the father. " 'Tis what I always say.
Your stranger was some young fellow from a
shop."
Two months later the young people receive
147
'THE GUARDIAN' ESSAYS
the nuptial benediction, and continue the musical
business when the elders retire to the country.
At first a passionate lover, Claude was afterwards
a good and devoted husband. Phllpote never
again opened her lips regarding the vague love
which for a moment had flowered in her heart :
only sometimes, a cloud of reverie veiled her
eyes, which seemed to seek sadly, beyond the
circle of her slow, calm life, a brilliant but
chimeric image visible for her alone.
And once again she saw him. It was m the
terrible year 1794. She knew the hour at which
the tumbril with those condemned to die passed
the windows ; and at the first signal would close
them and draw the curtain. But on this day
some invincible fascination nailed her to her
place. There were ten faces ; but she had eyes
for one alone. She had not forgotten, could not
mistake, him — that pale head, so proud and fine,
but now thin with sufi^ering ; the beautiful
mobile eyes, now encircled with the signs of
sorrow and watching. The convict's shirt, open
in large, broad folds, left bare the neck, delicate
as a woman's, and made for that youthful face an
aureole, of innocence, of martyrdom. His looks
148
'CONTES' OF M. AUGUSTIN FILON
met hers. Did he recognize her ? She could
not have said. She remained there, paralyzed
with emotion, till the moment when the vision
disappeared.
Then she flung herself into her chamber, fell
on her knees, lost herself in prayer. There was
a distant roll of drums. The man to whom she
had given her maiden soul was gone.
*' Cursed be their anger, for it was cruel ! "
says the reader. But Monsieur Filon's stories
sometimes end as merrily as they begin ; and
always he is all delicacy — a delicacy which keeps
his large yet minute antiquarian knowledge of
that vanished time ever in service to a direct
interest in humanity as it is permanently, alike
before and after '93. His book is certainly one
well worth possessing.
THE END
Printed hy R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.
LIBRARY EDITION OF
THE WORKS
OF
WALTER PATER
In Ten Volumes. With decorated backs. 8vo.
7s. 6d. net each.
I. THE RENAISSANCE: STUDIES IN ART
AND POETRY.
II. AND III. MARIUS THE EPICUREAN. In
Two Vols.
IV. IMAGINARY PORTRAITS.
V. APPRECIATIONS. With an Essay on '* Style."
VI. PLATO AND PLATONISM. A Series of
Lectures.
VIL GREEK STUDIES. A Series of Essays.
VIII. MISCELLANEOUS STUDIES. A Series of
Essays.
IX. GASTON DE LATOUR. An unfinished Romance.
X. ESSAYS FROM "THE GUARDIAN."
MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON.
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