THE BARON, HIS WIFE, AND SISTER
Early in the month of May, in the year 1836, the period when this
scene opens, the family of Guenic (we follow henceforth the modern
spelling) consisted of Monsieur and Madame du Guenic, Mademoiselle du
Guenic the baron's elder sister, and an only son, aged twenty-one,
named, after an ancient family usage, Gaudebert-Calyste-Louis. The
father's name was Gaudebert-Calyste-Charles. Only the last name was
ever varied. Saint Gaudebert and Saint Calyste were forever bound to
protect the Guenics.
The Baron du Guenic had started from Guerande the moment that La
Vendee and Brittany took arms; he fought through the war with
Charette, with Cathelineau, La Rochejaquelein, d'Elbee, Bonchamps, and
the Prince de Loudon. Before starting he had, with a prudence unique
in revolutionary annals, sold his whole property of every kind to his
elder and only sister, Mademoiselle Zephirine du Guenic. After the
death of all those heroes of the West, the baron, preserved by a
miracle from ending as they did, refused to submit to Napoleon. He
fought on till 1802, when being at last defeated and almost captured,
he returned to Guerande, and from Guerande went to Croisic, whence he
crossed to Ireland, faithful to the ancient Breton hatred for England.
The people of Guerande feigned utter ignorance of the baron's
existence. In the whole course of twenty years not a single indiscreet
word was ever uttered. Mademoiselle du Guenic received the rents and
sent them to her brother by fishermen. Monsieur du Guenic returned to
Guerande in 1813, as quietly and simply as if he had merely passed a
season at Nantes. During his stay in Dublin the old Breton, despite
his fifty years, had fallen in love with a charming Irish woman,
daughter of one of the noblest and poorest families of that unhappy
kingdom. Fanny O'Brien was then twenty-one years old. The Baron du
Guenic came over to France to obtain the documents necessary for his
marriage, returned to Ireland, and, after about ten months (at the
beginning of 1814), brought his wife to Guerande, where she gave him
Calyste on the very day that Louis XVIII. landed at Calais,--a
circumstance which explains the young man's final name of Louis.
The old and loyal Breton was now a man of seventy-three; but his
long-continued guerilla warfare with the Republic, his exile, the perils
of his five crossings through a turbulent sea in open boats, had weighed
upon his head, and he looked a hundred; therefore, at no period had
the chief of the house of Guenic been more in keeping with the
worn-out grandeur of their dwelling, built in the days when a court
reigned at Guerande.
Monsieur du Guenic was a tall, straight, wiry, lean old man. His oval
face was lined with innumerable wrinkles, which formed a net-work over
his cheek-bones and above his eyebrows, giving to his face a
resemblance to those choice old men whom Van Ostade, Rembrandt,
Mieris, and Gerard Dow so loved to paint, in pictures which need a
microscope to be fully appreciated. His countenance might be said to
be sunken out of sight beneath those innumerable wrinkles, produced by
a life in the open air and by the habit of watching his country in the
full light of the sun from the rising of that luminary to the sinking
of it. Nevertheless, to an observer enough remained of the
imperishable forms of the human face which appealed to the soul, even
though the eye could see no more than a lifeless head. The firm
outline of the face, the shape of the brow, the solemnity of the
lines, the rigidity of the nose, the form of the bony structure which
wounds alone had slightly altered,--all were signs of intrepidity
without calculation, faith without reserve, obedience without
discussion, fidelity without compromise, love without inconstancy. In
him, the Breton granite was made man.
The baron had no longer any teeth. His lips, once red, now violet, and
backed by hard gums only (with which he ate the bread his wife took
care to soften by folding it daily in a damp napkin), drew inward to
the mouth with a sort of grin, which gave him an expression both
threatening and proud. His chin seemed to seek his nose; but in that
nose, humped in the middle, lay the signs of his energy and his Breton
resistance. His skin, marbled with red blotches appearing through his
wrinkles, showed a powerfully sanguine temperament, fitted to resist
fatigue and to preserve him, as no doubt it did, from apoplexy. The
head was crowned with abundant hair, as white as silver, which fell in
curls upon his shoulders. The face, extinguished, as we have said, in
part, lived through the glitter of the black eyes in their brown
orbits, casting thence the last flames of a generous and loyal soul.
The eyebrows and lashes had disappeared; the skin, grown hard, could
not unwrinkle. The difficulty of shaving had obliged the old man to
let his beard grow, and the cut of it was fan-shaped. An artist would
have admired beyond all else in this old lion of Brittany with his
powerful shoulders and vigorous chest, the splendid hands of the
soldier,--hands like those du Guesclin must have had, large, broad,
hairy; hands that once had clasped the sword never, like Joan of Arc,
to relinquish it until the royal standard floated in the cathedral of
Rheims; hands that were often bloody from the thorns and furze of the
Bocage; hands which had pulled an oar in the Marais to surprise the
Blues, or in the offing to signal Georges; the hands of a guerilla, a
cannoneer, a common solder, a leader; hands still white though the
Bourbons of the Elder branch were again in exile. Looking at those
hands attentively, one might have seen some recent marks attesting the
fact that the Baron had recently joined MADAME in La Vendee. To-day
that fact may be admitted. These hands were a living commentary on the
noble motto to which no Guenic had proved recreant: /Fac!/
His forehead attracted attention by the golden tones of the temples,
contrasting with the brown tints of the hard and narrow brow, which
the falling off of the hair had somewhat broadened, giving still more
majesty to that noble ruin. The countenance--a little material,
perhaps, but how could it be otherwise?--presented, like all the
Breton faces grouped about the baron, a certain savagery, a stolid
calm which resembled the impassibility of the Huguenots; something,
one might say, stupid, due perhaps to the utter repose which follows
extreme fatigue, in which the animal nature alone is visible. Thought
was rare. It seemed to be an effort; its seat was in the heart more
than in the head; it led to acts rather than ideas. But, examining
that grand old man with sustained observation, one could penetrate the
mystery of this strange contradiction to the spirit of the century. He
had faiths, sentiments, inborn so to speak, which allowed him to
dispense with thought. His duty, life had taught him. Institutions and
religion thought for him. He reserved his mind, he and his kind, for
action, not dissipating it on useless things which occupied the minds
of other persons. He drew his thought from his heart like his sword
from its scabbard, holding it aloft in his ermined hand, as on his
scutcheon, shining with sincerity. That secret once penetrated, all is
clear. We can comprehend the depth of convictions that are not
thoughts, but living principles,--clear, distinct, downright, and as
immaculate as the ermine itself. We understand that sale made to his
sister before the war; which provided for all, and faced all, death,
confiscation, exile. The beauty of the character of these two old
people (for the sister lived only for and by the brother) cannot be
understood to its full extent by the right of the selfish morals, the
uncertain aims, and the inconstancy of this our epoch. An archangel,
charged with the duty of penetrating to the inmost recesses of their
hearts could not have found one thought of personal interest. In 1814,
when the rector of Guerande suggested to the baron that he should go
to Paris and claim his recompense from the triumphant Bourbons, the
old sister, so saving and miserly for the household, cried out:--
"Oh, fy! does my brother need to hold out his hand like a beggar?"
"It would be thought I served a king from interest," said the old man.
"Besides, it is for him to remember. Poor king! he must be weary
indeed of those who harass him. If he gave them all France in bits,
they still would ask."
This loyal servant, who had spent his life and means on Louis XVIII.,
received the rank of colonel, the cross of Saint-Louis, and a stipend
of two thousand francs a year.
"The king did remember!" he said when the news reached him.
No one undeceived him. The gift was really made by the Duc de Feltre.
But, as an act of gratitude to the king, the baron sustained a siege
at Guerande against the forces of General Travot. He refused to
surrender the fortress, and when it was absolutely necessary to
evacuate it he escaped into the woods with a band of Chouans, who
continued armed until the second restoration of the Bourbons. Guerande
still treasures the memory of that siege.
We must admit that the Baron du Guenic was illiterate as a peasant. He
could read, write, and do some little ciphering; he knew the military
art and heraldry, but, excepting always his prayer-book, he had not
read three volumes in the course of his life. His clothing, which is
not an insignificant point, was invariably the same; it consisted of
stout shoes, ribbed stockings, breeches of greenish velveteen, a cloth
waistcoat, and a loose coat with a collar, from which hung the cross
of Saint-Louis. A noble serenity now reigned upon that face where, for
the last year or so, sleep, the forerunner of death, seemed to be
preparing him for rest eternal. This constant somnolence, becoming
daily more and more frequent, did not alarm either his wife, his blind
sister, or his friends, whose medical knowledge was of the slightest.
To them these solemn pauses of a life without reproach, but very
weary, were naturally explained: the baron had done his duty, that was
all.
In this ancient mansion the absorbing interests were the fortunes of
the dispossessed Elder branch. The future of the exiled Bourbons, that
of the Catholic religion, the influence of political innovations on
Brittany were the exclusive topics of conversation in the baron's
family. There was but one personal interest mingled with these most
absorbing ones: the attachment of all for the only son, for Calyste,
the heir, the sole hope of the great name of the du Guenics.
The old Vendean, the old Chouan, had, some years previously, a return
of his own youth in order to train his son to those manly exercises
which were proper for a gentleman liable to be summoned at any moment
to take arms. No sooner was Calyste sixteen years of age than his
father accompanied him to the marshes and the forest, teaching him
through the pleasures of the chase the rudiments of war, preaching by
example, indifferent to fatigue, firm in his saddle, sure of his shot
whatever the game might be,--deer, hare, or a bird on the wing,
--intrepid in face of obstacles, bidding his son follow him into
danger as though he had ten other sons to take Calyste's place.
So, when the Duchesse de Berry landed in France to conquer back the
kingdom for her son, the father judged it right to take his boy to
join her, and put in practice the motto of their ancestors. The baron
started in the dead of night, saying no word to his wife, who might
perhaps have weakened him; taking his son under fire as if to a fete,
and Gasselin, his only vassal, who followed him joyfully. The three
men of the family were absent for three months without sending news of
their whereabouts to the baroness, who never read the "Quotidienne"
without trembling from line to line, nor to his old blind sister,
heroically erect, whose nerve never faltered for an instance as she
heard that paper read. The three guns hanging to the walls had
therefore seen service recently. The baron, who considered the
enterprise useless, left the region before the affair of La
Penissiere, or the house of Guenic would probably have ended in that
hecatomb.
When, on a stormy night after parting from MADAME, the father, son,
and servant returned to the house in Guerande, they took their friends
and the baroness and old Mademoiselle du Guenic by surprise, although
the latter, by the exercise of senses with which the blind are gifted,
recognized the steps of the three men in the little lane leading to
the house. The baron looked round upon the circle of his anxious
friends, who were seated beside the little table lighted by the
antique lamp, and said in a tremulous voice, while Gasselin replaced
the three guns and the sabres in their places, these words of feudal
simplicity:--
"The barons did not all do their duty."
Then, having kissed his wife and sister, he sat down in his old
arm-chair and ordered supper to be brought for his son, for Gasselin,
and for himself. Gasselin had thrown himself before Calyste on one
occasion, to protect him, and received the cut of a sabre on his
shoulder; but so simple a matter did it seem that even the women
scarcely thanked him. The baron and his guests uttered neither curses
nor complaints of their conquerors. Such silence is a trait of Breton
character. In forty years no one ever heard a word of contumely from
the baron's lips about his adversaries. It was for them to do their
duty as he did his. This utter silence is the surest indication of an
unalterable will.
This last effort, the flash of an energy now waning, had caused the
present weakness and somnolence of the old man. The fresh defeat and
exile of the Bourbons, as miraculously driven out as miraculously
re-established, were to him a source of bitter sadness.
About six o'clock on the evening of the day on which this history
begins, the baron, who, according to ancient custom, had finished
dining by four o'clock, fell asleep as usual while his wife was
reading to him the "Quotidienne." His head rested against the back of
the arm-chair which stood beside the fireplace on the garden side.
Near this gnarled trunk of an ancient tree, and in front of the
fireplace, the baroness, seated on one of the antique chairs,
presented the type of those adorable women who exist in England,
Scotland, or Ireland only. There alone are born those milk-white
creatures with golden hair the curls of which are wound by the hands
of angels, for the light of heaven seems to ripple in their silken
spirals swaying to the breeze. Fanny O'Brien was one of those sylphs,
--strong in tenderness, invincible under misfortune, soft as the music
of her voice, pure as the azure of her eyes, of a delicate, refined
beauty, blessed with a skin that was silken to the touch and caressing
to the eye, which neither painter's brush nor written word can
picture. Beautiful still at forty-two years of age, many a man would
have thought it happiness to marry her as she looked at the splendors
of that autumn coloring, redundant in flowers and fruit, refreshed and
refreshing with the dews of heaven.
The baroness held the paper in the dimpled hand, the fingers of which
curved slightly backward, their nails cut square like those of an
antique statue. Half lying, without ill-grace or affectation, in her
chair, her feet stretched out to warm them, she was dressed in a gown
of black velvet, for the weather was now becoming chilly. The corsage,
rising to the throat, moulded the splendid contour of the shoulders
and the rich bosom which the suckling of her son had not deformed. Her
hair was worn in /ringlets/, after the English fashion, down her
cheeks; the rest was simply twisted to the crown of her head and held
there with a tortoise-shell comb. The color, not undecided in tone as
other blond hair, sparkled to the light like a filagree of burnished
gold. The baroness always braided the short locks curling on the nape
of her neck--which are a sign of race. This tiny braid, concealed in
the mass of hair always carefully put up, allowed the eye to follow
with delight the undulating line by which her neck was set upon her
shoulders. This little detail will show the care which she gave to her
person; it was her pride to rejoice the eyes of the old baron. What a
charming, delicate attention! When you see a woman displaying in her
own home the coquetry which most women spend on a single sentiment,
believe me, that woman is as noble a mother as she is a wife; she is
the joy and the flower of the home; she knows her obligations as a
woman; in her soul, in her tenderness, you will find her outward
graces; she is doing good in secret; she worships, she adores without
a calculation of return; she loves her fellows, as she loves God,--for
their own sakes. And so one might fancy that the Virgin of paradise,
under whose care she lived, had rewarded the chaste girlhood and the
sacred life of the old man's wife by surrounding her with a sort of
halo which preserved her beauty from the wrongs of time. The
alterations of that beauty Plato would have glorified as the coming of
new graces. Her skin, so milk-white once, had taken the warm and
pearly tones which painters adore. Her broad and finely modelled brow
caught lovingly the light which played on its polished surface. Her
eyes, of a turquoise blue, shone with unequalled sweetness; the soft
lashes, and the slightly sunken temples inspired the spectator with I
know now what mute melancholy. The nose, which was aquiline and thin,
recalled the royal origin of the high-born woman. The pure lips,
finely cut, wore happy smiles, brought there by loving-kindness
inexhaustible. Her teeth were small and white; she had gained of late
a slight embonpoint, but her delicate hips and slender waist were none
the worse for it. The autumn of her beauty presented a few perennial
flowers of her springtide among the richer blooms of summer. Her arms
became more nobly rounded, her lustrous skin took a finer grain; the
outlines of her form gained plenitude. Lastly and best of all, her
open countenance, serene and slightly rosy, the purity of her blue
eyes, that a look too eager might have wounded, expressed illimitable
sympathy, the tenderness of angels.
At the other chimney-corner, in an arm-chair, the octogenarian sister,
like in all points save clothes to her brother, sat listening to the
reading of the newspaper and knitting stockings, a work for which
sight is needless. Both eyes had cataracts; but she obstinately
refused to submit to an operation, in spite of the entreaties of her
sister-in-law. The secret reason of that obstinacy was known to
herself only; she declared it was want of courage; but the truth was
that she would not let her brother spend twenty-five louis for her
benefit. That sum would have been so much the less for the good of the
household.
These two old persons brought out in fine relief the beauty of the
baroness. Mademoiselle Zephirine, being deprived of sight, was not
aware of the changes which eighty years had wrought in her features.
Her pale, hollow face, to which the fixedness of the white and
sightless eyes gave almost the appearance of death, and three or four
solitary and projecting teeth made menacing, was framed by a little
hood of brown printed cotton, quilted like a petticoat, trimmed with a
cotton ruche, and tied beneath the chin by strings which were always a
little rusty. She wore a /cotillon/, or short skirt of coarse cloth,
over a quilted petticoat (a positive mattress, in which were secreted
double louis-d'ors), and pockets sewn to a belt which she unfastened
every night and put on every morning like a garment. Her body was
encased in the /casaquin/ of Brittany, a species of spencer made of
the same cloth as the /cotillon/, adorned with a collarette of many
pleats, the washing of which caused the only dispute she ever had with
her sister-in-law,--her habit being to change it only once a week.
From the large wadded sleeves of the /casaquin/ issued two withered
but still vigorous arms, at the ends of which flourished her hands,
their brownish-red color making the white arms look like poplar-wood.
These hands, hooked or contracted from the habit of knitting, might be
called a stocking-machine incessantly at work; the phenomenon would
have been had they stopped. From time to time Mademoiselle du Guenic
took a long knitting needle which she kept in the bosom of her gown,
and passed it between her hood and her hair to poke or scratch her
white locks. A stranger would have laughed to see the careless manner
in which she thrust back the needle without the slightest fear of
wounding herself. She was straight as a steeple. Her erect and
imposing carriage might pass for one of those coquetries of old age
which prove that pride is a necessary passion of life. Her smile was
gay. She, too, had done her duty.
As soon as the baroness saw that her husband was asleep she stopped
reading. A ray of sunshine, stretching from one window to the other,
divided by a golden band the atmosphere of that old room and burnished
the now black furniture. The light touched the carvings of the
ceiling, danced on the time-worn chests, spread its shining cloth on
the old oak table, enlivening the still, brown room, as Fanny's voice
cast into the heart of her octogenarian blind sister a music as
luminous and as cheerful as that ray of sunlight. Soon the ray took on
the ruddy colors which, by insensible gradations, sank into the
melancholy tones of twilight. The baroness also sank into a deep
meditation, one of those total silences which her sister-in-law had
noticed for the last two weeks, trying to explain them to herself, but
making no inquiry. The old woman studied the causes of this unusual
pre-occupation, as blind persons, on whose soul sound lingers like a
divining echo, read books in which the pages are black and the letters
white. Mademoiselle Zephirine, to whom the dark hour now meant
nothing, continued to knit, and the silence at last became so deep
that the clicking of her knitting-needles was plainly heard.
"You have dropped the paper, sister, but you are not asleep," said the
old woman, slyly.
At this moment Mariotte came in to light the lamp, which she placed on
a square table in front of the fire; then she fetched her distaff, her
ball of thread, and a small stool, on which she seated herself in the
recess of a window and began as usual to spin. Gasselin was still busy
about the offices; he looked to the horses of the baron and Calyste,
saw that the stable was in order for the night, and gave the two fine
hunting-dogs their daily meal. The joyful barking of the animals was
the last noise that awakened the echoes slumbering among the darksome
walls of the ancient house. The two dogs and the two horses were the
only remaining vestiges of the splendors of its chivalry. An
imaginative man seated on the steps of the portico and letting himself
fall into the poesy of the still living images of that dwelling, might
have quivered as he heard the baying of the hounds and the trampling
of the neighing horses.
Gasselin was one of those short, thick, squat little Bretons, with
black hair and sun-browned faces, silent, slow, and obstinate as
mules, but always following steadily the path marked out for them. He
was forty-two years old, and had been twenty-five years in the
household. Mademoiselle had hired him when he was fifteen, on hearing
of the marriage and probable return of the baron. This retainer
considered himself as part of the family; he had played with Calyste,
he loved the horses and dogs of the house, and talked to them and
petted them as though they were his own. He wore a blue linen jacket
with little pockets flapping about his hips, waistcoat and trousers of
the same material at all seasons, blue stockings, and stout hob-nailed
shoes. When it was cold or rainy he put on a goat's-skin, after the
fashion of his country.
Mariotte, who was also over forty, was as a woman what Gasselin was as
a man. No team could be better matched,--same complexion, same figure,
same little eyes that were lively and black. It is difficult to
understand why Gasselin and Mariotte had never married; possibly it
might have seemed immoral, they were so like brother and sister.
Mariotte's wages were ninety francs a year; Gasselin's, three hundred.
But thousands of francs offered to them elsewhere would not have
induced either to leave the Guenic household. Both were under the
orders of Mademoiselle, who, from the time of the war in La Vendee to
the period of her brother's return, had ruled the house. When she
learned that the baron was about to bring home a mistress, she had
been moved to great emotion, believing that she must yield the sceptre
of the household and abdicate in favor of the Baronne du Guenic, whose
subject she was now compelled to be.
Mademoiselle Zephirine was therefore agreeably surprised to find in
Fanny O'Brien a young woman born to the highest rank, to whom the
petty cares of a poor household were extremely distasteful,--one who,
like other fine souls, would far have preferred to eat plain bread
rather than the choicest food if she had to prepare it for herself; a
woman capable of accomplishing all the duties, even the most painful,
of humanity, strong under necessary privations, but without courage
for commonplace avocations. When the baron begged his sister in his
wife's name to continue in charge of the household, the old maid
kissed the baroness like a sister; she made a daughter of her, she
adored her, overjoyed to be left in control of the household, which
she managed rigorously on a system of almost inconceivable economy,
which was never relaxed except for some great occasion, such as the
lying-in of her sister, and her nourishment, and all that concerned
Calyste, the worshipped son of the whole household.
Though the two servants were accustomed to this stern regime, and no
orders need ever have been given to them, for the interests of their
masters were greater in their minds than their own,--/were/ their own
in fact,--Mademoiselle Zephirine insisted on looking after everything.
Her attention being never distracted, she knew, without going up to
verify her knowledge, how large was the heap of nuts in the barn; and
how many oats remained in the bin without plunging her sinewy arm into
the depths of it. She carried at the end of a string fastened to the
belt of her /casaquin/, a boatswain's whistle, with which she was wont
to summon Mariotte by one, and Gasselin by two notes.
Gasselin's greatest happiness was to cultivate the garden and produce
fine fruits and vegetables. He had so little work to do that without
this occupation he would certainly have felt lost. After he had
groomed his horses in the morning, he polished the floors and cleaned
the rooms on the ground-floor, then he went to his garden, where weed
or damaging insect was never seen. Sometimes Gasselin was observed
motionless, bare-headed, under a burning sun, watching for a
field-mouse or the terrible grub of the cockchafer; then, as soon as it
was caught, he would rush with the joy of a child to show his masters
the noxious beast that had occupied his mind for a week. He took
pleasure in going to Croisic on fast-days, to purchase a fish to be had
for less money there than at Guerande.
Thus no household was ever more truly one, more united in interests,
more bound together than this noble family sacredly devoted to its
duty. Masters and servants seemed made for one another. For
twenty-five years there had been neither trouble nor discord. The only
griefs were the petty ailments of the little boy, the only terrors were
caused by the events of 1814 and those of 1830. If the same things
were invariably done at the same hours, if the food was subjected to
the regularity of times and seasons, this monotony, like that of
Nature varied only by alterations of cloud and rain and sunshine, was
sustained by the affection existing in the hearts of all,--the more
fruitful, the more beneficent because it emanated from natural causes.