A NORMAL EVENING
/Mouche/ is a game played with five cards dealt to each player, and
one turned over. The turned-over card is trumps. At each round the
player is at liberty to run his chances or to abstain from playing his
card. If he abstains he loses nothing but his own stake, for as long
as there are no forfeits in the basket each player puts in a trifling
sum. If he plays and wins a trick he is paid /pro rata/ to the stake;
that is, if there are five sous in the basket, he wins one sou. The
player who fails to win a trick is made /mouche/; he has to pay the
whole stake, which swells the basket for the next game. Those who
decline to play throw down their cards during the game; but their play
is held to be null. The players can exchange their cards with the
remainder of the pack, as in ecarte, but only by order of sequence, so
that the first and second players may, and sometimes do, absorb the
remainder of the pack between them. The turned-over trump card belongs
to the dealer, who is always the last; he has the right to exchange it
for any card in his own hand. One powerful card is of more importance
than all the rest; it is called Mistigris. Mistigris is the knave of
clubs.
This game, simple as it is, is not lacking in interest. The cupidity
natural to mankind develops in it; so does diplomatic wiliness; also
play of countenance. At the hotel du Guenic, each of the players took
twenty counters, representing five sous; which made the sum total of
the stake for each game five farthings, a large amount in the eyes of
this company. Supposing some extraordinary luck, fifty sous might be
won,--more capital than any person in Guerande spent in the course of
any one day. Consequently Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel put into this game
(the innocence of which is only surpassed in the nomenclature of the
Academy by that of La Bataille) a passion corresponding to that of the
hunters after big game. Mademoiselle Zephirine, who went shares in the
game with the baroness, attached no less importance to it. To put up
one farthing for the chance of winning five, game after game, was to
this confirmed hoarder a mighty financial operation, into which she
put as much mental action as the most eager speculator at the Bourse
expends during the rise and fall of consols.
By a certain diplomatic convention, dating from September, 1825, when
Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel lost thirty-five sous, the game was to cease
as soon as a person losing ten sous should express the wish to retire.
Politeness did not allow the rest to give the retiring player the pain
of seeing the game go on without him. But, as all passions have their
Jesuitism, the chevalier and the baron, those wily politicians, had
found a means of eluding this charter. When all the players but one
were anxious to continue an exciting game, the daring sailor, du
Halga, one of those rich fellows prodigal of costs they do not pay,
would offer ten counters to Mademoiselle Zephirine or Mademoiselle
Jacqueline, when either of them, or both of them, had lost their five
sous, on condition of reimbursement in case they won. An old bachelor
could allow himself such gallantries to the sex. The baron also
offered ten counters to the old maids, but under the honest pretext of
continuing the game. The miserly maidens accepted, not, however,
without some pressing, as is the use and wont of maidens. But, before
giving way to this vast prodigality the baron and the chevalier were
required to have won; otherwise the offer would have been taken as an
insult.
/Mouche/ became a brilliant affair when a Demoiselle de Kergarouet
was in transit with her aunt. We use the single name, for the
Kergarouets had never been able to induce any one to call them
Kergarouet-Pen-Hoel,--not even their servants, although the latter
had strict orders so to do. At these times the aunt held out to the
niece as a signal treat the /mouche/ at the du Guenics. The girl was
ordered to look amiable, an easy thing to do in the presence of the
beautiful Calyste, whom the four Kergarouet young ladies all adored.
Brought up in the midst of modern civilization, these young persons
cared little for five sous a game, and on such occasions the stakes
went higher. Those were evenings of great emotion to the old blind
sister. The baroness would give her sundry hints by pressing her foot
a certain number of times, according to the size of the stake it was
safe to play. To play or not to play, if the basket were full, involved
an inward struggle, where cupidity fought with fear. If Charlotte de
Kergarouet, who was usually called giddy, was lucky in her bold throws,
her aunt on their return home (if she had not won herself), would be cold
and disapproving, and lecture the girl: she had too much decision in her
character; a young person should never assert herself in presence of
her betters; her manner of taking the basket and beginning to play was
really insolent; the proper behavior of a young girl demanded much
more reserve and greater modesty; etc.
It can easily be imagined that these games, carried on nightly for
twenty years, were interrupted now and then by narratives of events in
the town, or by discussions on public events. Sometimes the players
would sit for half an hour, their cards held fan-shape on their
stomachs, engaged in talking. If, as a result of these inattentions, a
counter was missing from the basket, every one eagerly declared that
he or she had put in their proper number. Usually the chevalier made
up the deficiency, being accused by the rest of thinking so much of
his buzzing ears, his chilly chest, and other symptoms of invalidism
that he must have forgotten his stake. But no sooner did he supply the
missing counter than Zephirine and Jacqueline were seized with
remorse; they imagined that, possibly, they themselves had forgotten
their stake; they believed--they doubted--but, after all, the
chevalier was rich enough to bear such a trifling misfortune. These
dignified and noble personages had the delightful pettiness of
suspecting each other. Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel would almost
invariably accuse the rector of cheating when he won the basket.
"It is singular," he would reply, "that I never cheat except when I
win the trick."
Often the baron would forget where he was when the talk fell on the
misfortunes of the royal house. Sometimes the evening ended in a
manner that was quite unexpected to the players, who all counted on a
certain gain. After a certain number of games and when the hour grew
late, these excellent people would be forced to separate without
either loss or gain, but not without emotion. On these sad evenings
complaints were made of /mouche/ itself; it was dull, it was long; the
players accused their /mouche/ as Negroes stone the moon in the water
when the weather is bad. On one occasion, after an arrival of the
Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Kergarouet, there was talk of whist and
boston being games of more interest than /mouche/. The baroness, who
was bored by /mouche/, encouraged the innovation, and all the company
--but not without reluctance--adopted it. But it proved impossible to
make them really understand the new games, which, on the departure of
the Kergarouets, were voted head-splitters, algebraic problems, and
intolerably difficult to play. All preferred their /mouche/, their
dear, agreeable /mouche/. /Mouche/ accordingly triumphed over modern
games, as all ancient things have ever triumphed in Brittany over
novelties.
While the rector was dealing the cards the baroness was asking the
Chevalier du Halga the same questions which she had asked him the
evening before about his health. The chevalier made it a point of
honor to have new ailments. Inquiries might be alike, but the nautical
hero had singular advantages in the way of replies. To-day it chanced
that his ribs troubled him. But here's a remarkable thing! never did
the worthy chevalier complain of his wounds. The ills that were really
the matter with him he expected, he knew them and he bore them; but
his fancied ailments, his headaches, the gnawings in his stomach, the
buzzing in his ears, and a thousand other fads and symptoms made him
horribly uneasy; he posed as incurable,--and not without reason, for
doctors up to the present time have found no remedy for diseases that
don't exist.
"Yesterday the trouble was, I believe, in your legs," said the rector.
"It moves about," replied the chevalier.
"Legs to ribs?" asked Mademoiselle Zephirine.
"Without stopping on the way?" said Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, smiling.
The chevalier bowed gravely, making a negative gesture which was not a
little droll, and proved to an observer that in his youth the sailor
had been witty and loving and beloved. Perhaps his fossil life at
Guerande hid many memories. When he stood, solemnly planted on his two
heron-legs in the sunshine on the mall, gazing at the sea or watching
the gambols of his little dog, perhaps he was living again in some
terrestrial paradise of a past that was rich in recollections.
"So the old Duc de Lenoncourt is dead," said the baron, remembering
the paragraph of the "Quotidienne," where his wife had stopped
reading. "Well, the first gentleman of the Bedchamber followed his
master soon. I shall go next."
"My dear, my dear!" said his wife, gently tapping the bony calloused
hand of her husband.
"Let him say what he likes, sister," said Zephirine; "as long as I am
above ground he can't be under it; I am the elder."
A gay smile played on the old woman's lips. Whenever the baron made
reflections of that kind, the players and the visitors present looked
at each other with emotion, distressed by the sadness of the king of
Guerande; and after they had left the house they would say, as they
walked home: "Monsieur du Guenic was sad to-night. Did you notice how
he slept?" And the next day the whole town would talk of the matter.
"The Baron du Guenic fails," was a phrase that opened the conversation
in many houses.
"How is Thisbe?" asked Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel of the chevalier, as
soon as the cards were dealt.
"The poor little thing is like her master," replied the chevalier;
"she has some nervous trouble, she goes on three legs constantly. See,
like this."
In raising and crooking his arm to imitate the dog, the chevalier
exposed his hand to his cunning neighbor, who wanted to see if he had
Mistigris or the trump,--a first wile to which he succumbed.
"Oh!" said the baroness, "the end of Monsieur le cure's nose is
turning white; he has Mistigris."
The pleasure of having Mistigris was so great to the rector--as it was
to the other players--that the poor priest could not conceal it. In
all human faces there is a spot where the secret emotions of the heart
betray themselves; and these companions, accustomed for years to
observe each other, had ended by finding out that spot on the rector's
face: when he had Mistigris the tip of his nose grew pale.
"You had company to-day," said the chevalier to Mademoiselle de
Pen-Hoel.
"Yes, a cousin of my brother-in-law. He surprised me by announcing the
marriage of the Comtesse de Kergarouet, a Demoiselle de Fontaine."
"The daughter of 'Grand-Jacques,'" cried the chevalier, who had lived
with the admiral during his stay in Paris.
"The countess is his heir; she has married an old ambassador. My
visitor told me the strangest things about our neighbor, Mademoiselle
des Touches,--so strange that I can't believe them. If they were true,
Calyste would never be so constantly with her; he has too much good
sense not to perceive such monstrosities--"
"Monstrosities?" said the baron, waked up by the word.
The baroness and the rector exchanged looks. The cards were dealt;
Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel had Mistigris! Impossible to continue the
conversation! But she was glad to hide her joy under the excitement
caused by her last word.
"Your play, monsieur le baron," she said, with an air of importance.
"My nephew is not one of those youths who like monstrosities,"
remarked Zephirine, taking out her knitting-needle and scratching her
head.
"Mistigris!" cried Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, making no reply to her
friend.
The rector, who appeared to be well-informed in the matter of Calyste
and Mademoiselle des Touches, did not enter the lists.
"What does she do that is so extraordinary, Mademoiselle des Touches?"
asked the baron.
"She smokes," replied Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel.
"That's very wholesome," said the chevalier.
"About her property?" asked the baron.
"Her property?" continued the old maid. "Oh, she is running through
it."
"The game is mine!" said the baroness. "See, I have king, queen, knave
of trumps, Mistigris, and a king. We win the basket, sister."
This victory, gained at one stroke, without playing a card, horrified
Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, who ceased to concern herself about Calyste
and Mademoiselle des Touches. By nine o'clock no one remained in the
salon but the baroness and the rector. The four old people had gone to
their beds. The chevalier, according to his usual custom, accompanied
Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel to her house in the Place de Guerande, making
remarks as they went along on the cleverness of the last play, on the
joy with which Mademoiselle Zephirine engulfed her gains in those
capacious pockets of hers,--for the old blind woman no longer
repressed upon her face the visible signs of her feelings. Madame du
Guenic's evident preoccupation was the chief topic of conversation,
however. The chevalier had remarked the abstraction of the beautiful
Irish woman. When they reached Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel's door-step,
and her page had gone in, the old lady answered, confidentially, the
remarks of the chevalier on the strangely abstracted air of the
baroness:--
"I know the cause. Calyste is lost unless we marry him promptly. He
loves Mademoiselle des Touches, an actress!"
"In that case, send for Charlotte."
"I have sent; my sister will receive my letter to-morrow," replied
Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, bowing to the chevalier.
Imagine from this sketch of a normal evening the hubbub excited in
Guerande homes by the arrival, the stay, the departure, or even the
mere passage through the town, of a stranger.
When no sounds echoed from the baron's chamber nor from that of his
sister, the baroness looked at the rector, who was playing pensively
with the counters.
"I see that you begin to share my anxiety about Calyste," she said to
him.
"Did you notice Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel's displeased looks to-night?"
asked the rector.
"Yes," replied the baroness.
"She has, as I know, the best intentions about our dear Calyste; she
loves him as though he were her son, his conduct in Vendee beside his
father, the praises that MADAME bestowed upon his devotion, have only
increased her affection for him. She intends to execute a deed of gift
by which she gives her whole property at her death to whichever of her
nieces Calyste marries. I know that you have another and much richer
marriage in Ireland for your dear Calyste, but it is well to have two
strings to your bow. In case your family will not take charge of
Calyste's establishment, Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel's fortune is not to
be despised. You can always find a match of seven thousand francs a
year for the dear boy, but it is not often that you could come across
the savings of forty years and landed property as well managed, built
up, and kept in repair as that of Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel. That
ungodly woman, Mademoiselle des Touches, has come here to ruin many
excellent things. Her life is now known."
"And what is it?" asked the mother.
"Oh! that of a trollop," replied the rector,--"a woman of questionable
morals, a writer for the stage; frequenting theatres and actors;
squandering her fortune among pamphleteers, painters, musicians, a
devilish society, in short. She writes books herself, and has taken a
false name by which she is better known, they tell me, than by her
own. She seems to be a sort of circus woman who never enters a church
except to look at the pictures. She has spent quite a fortune in
decorating Les Touches in a most improper fashion, making it a
Mohammedan paradise where the houris are not women. There is more wine
drunk there, they say, during the few weeks of her stay than the whole
year round in Guerande. The Demoiselles Bougniol let their lodgings
last year to men with beards, who were suspected of being Blues; they
sang wicked songs which made those virtuous women blush and weep, and
spent their time mostly at Les Touches. And this is the woman our dear
Calyste adores! If that creature wanted to-night one of the infamous
books in which the atheists of the present day scoff at holy things,
Calyste would saddle his horse himself and gallop to Nantes for it. I
am not sure that he would do as much for the Church. Moreover, this
Breton woman is not a royalist! If Calyste were again called upon to
strike a blow for the cause, and Mademoiselle des Touches--the Sieur
Camille Maupin, that is her other name, as I have just remembered--if
she wanted to keep him with her the chevalier would let his old father
go to the field without him."
"Oh, no!" said the baroness.
"I should not like to put him to the proof; you would suffer too
much," replied the rector. "All Guerande is turned upside down about
Calyste's passion for this amphibious creature, who is neither man nor
woman, who smokes like an hussar, writes like a journalist, and has at
this very moment in her house the most venomous of all writers,--so
the postmaster says, and he's a /juste-milieu/ man who reads the
papers. They are even talking about her at Nantes. This morning the
Kergarouet cousin who wants to marry Charlotte to a man with sixty
thousand francs a year, went to see Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, and
filled her mind with tales about Mademoiselle des Touches which lasted
seven hours. It is now striking a quarter to ten, and Calyste is not
home; he is at Les Touches,--perhaps he won't come in all night."
The baroness listened to the rector, who was substituting monologue
for dialogue unconsciously as he looked at this lamb of his fold, on
whose face could be read her anxiety. She colored and trembled. When
the worthy man saw the tears in the beautiful eyes of the mother, he
was moved to compassion.
"I will see Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel to-morrow," he said. "Don't be
too uneasy. The harm may not be as great as they say it is. I will
find out the truth. Mademoiselle Jacqueline has confidence in me.
Besides, Calyste is our child, our pupil,--he will never let the devil
inveigle him; neither will he trouble the peace of his family or
destroy the plans we have made for his future. Therefore, don't weep;
all is not lost, madame; one fault is not vice."
"You are only informing me of details," said the baroness. "Was not I
the first to notice the change in my Calyste? A mother keenly feels
the shock of finding herself second in the heart of her son. She
cannot be deceived. This crisis in a man's life is one of the trials
of motherhood. I have prepared myself for it, but I did not think it
would come so soon. I hoped, at least, that Calyste would take into
his heart some noble and beautiful being,--not a stage-player, a
masquerader, a theatre woman, an author whose business it is to feign
sentiments, a creature who will deceive him and make him unhappy! She
has had adventures--"
"With several men," said the rector. "And yet this impious creature
was born in Brittany! She dishonors her land. I shall preach a sermon
upon her next Sunday."
"Don't do that!" cried the baroness. "The peasants and the /paludiers/
would be capable of rushing to Les Touches. Calyste is worthy of his
name; he is Breton; some dreadful thing might happen to him, for he
would surely defend her as he would the Blessed Virgin."
"It is now ten o'clock; I must bid you good-night," said the abbe,
lighting the wick of his lantern, the glass of which was clear and the
metal shining, which testified to the care his housekeeper bestowed on
the household property. "Who could ever have told me, madame," he
added, "that a young man brought up by you, trained by me to Christian
ideas, a fervent Catholic, a child who has lived as a lamb without
spot, would plunge into such mire?"
"But is it certain?" said the mother. "How could any woman help loving
Calyste?"
"What other proof is needed than her staying on at Les Touches. In all
the twenty-four years since she came of age she has never stayed there
so long as now; her visits to these parts, happily for us, were few
and short."
"A woman over forty years old!" exclaimed the baroness. "I have heard
say in Ireland that a woman of this description is the most dangerous
mistress a young man can have."
"As to that, I have no knowledge," replied the rector, "and I shall
die in my ignorance."
"And I, too, alas!" said the baroness, naively. "I wish now that I had
loved with love, so as to understand and counsel and comfort Calyste."
The rector did not cross the clean little court-yard alone; the
baroness accompanied him to the gate, hoping to hear Calyste's step
coming through the town. But she heard nothing except the heavy tread
of the rector's cautious feet, which grew fainter in the distance, and
finally ceased when the closing of the door of the parsonage echoed
behind him.