Part 30

There is no such thing as perfect happiness, and Captain Mercadier, who had thought that he had found it (happiness) when he installed himself in his café, was forced to abjure his illusions. On market-day the café was not fit to turn a card in. From daybreak it swarmed with trucksters, farmers, men who sold hogs, eggs, and poultry; loud-mouthed people with thick, sunburnt necks, carrying mammoth rawhides, slouching about in blue blouses and otter-skin caps, who drank as they drove their bargains, thumped the tables with their fists, called the waiter "thou," cracked the billiard balls, and "raised hell" generally. When the Captain entered the café for his 11 a.m. breakfast, he found the room full of drunkards lying over the tables, staggering about or bolting their coarse dinners. His own place was taken. The cashier's bell rang incessantly; the proprietor and the waiter bustled about, napkins on arms; in short, it was a day of bad luck, and the days preceding it weighed on the Captain's spirits like presentiments of evil. One Monday morning his courage failed him and he decided to eat at home.

He knew that the café would swarm; that he could not eat or drink in peace; that the green table would be unfit for play. But a ray of the soft autumnal sunlight enticed him, and he went out and took his seat on the stone bench by the street door. He was sitting there, smoking his damp cigar, melancholy enough, when he saw, coming down the street, a little girl eight or ten years old, driving before her a flock of geese. In her hand she held a switch.

Looking fixedly at her as she drew nearer, the Captain saw that she had a wooden leg. There was nothing of the father in the heart of the old soldier; he was a hardened bachelor, impervious as a shellback to the feelings of a family-father; in the days of his service in Algeria, when the little Arabs had pursued him, imploring him with their soft eyes, he had chased them with a whip. On the few occasions of his visits to his married comrades he had gone home growling against their ill-kept and weeping "young ones," who had "pawed" his gold lace with unclean fingers. But the strange aspect of this child, the peculiarity of her infirmity, moved him with feelings that he had never known. His heart contracted at sight of the little creature. The wasted frame was barely covered by a ragged skirt and worn-out shirt. And then she followed her geese so bravely! The dust arose in clouds around her bare foot as she stumped along on her ill-made wooden leg.

Recognizing their residence, the geese entered the courtyard and the child was following them, when the old man stopped her.

"Eh! little girl!" he cried, "what is your name?"

"Pierrette, at your service, sir," answered the child, fixing great dark eyes upon him and putting back her disordered hair.

"Do you belong here? I have never seen you until now."

"Oh! yes, and I know you well. I sleep under the stairs, and you wake me up every night when you come home."

"Truly? Well, hereafter I will come on tiptoes. How old are you?"

"Nine years old, sir, next All Saints."

"Is the madame your mother?"

"No, sir. I am a servant."

"What do they pay you?"

"They give me my soup and my bed under the stairs."

"How did you get that arrangement?" (pointing to the wooden leg).

"A horse kicked me when I was six years old."

"Are your parents living?"

The pale face reddened, and she murmured, hesitating as if ashamed to confess it:

"I am a foundling."

Then with an awkward salute she limped away, passing under the porte-cochère; and the Captain heard the clicking of the wooden leg as it struck the pavement of the courtyard.

"Good heavens!" he said, mechanically taking the road to the café.

"This is not according to regulations! If a soldier loses his leg he goes to the hospital! They give him money for tobacco. This one has to work and they give her nothing! That is too much! Such an infirmity! Too bad! too bad!" He had reached the café, but when he saw the blue blouses, and when he heard the roars of coarse laughter, he turned away and retraced his steps. He was in very bad humor.

He had never been in his room so long when it was daylight. The room was sordid! The bed-curtains were the color of tanned meerschaum; the rug was littered with cigar stumps and with other things more appropriate for the cuspidor than for the carpet; the dust lay on everything, and so thick that a man might write his name in it.

He gazed at the blue walls, the pictured river, where the sublime lancer of Leipsic met his glorious death; then, to pass the time, he reviewed his wardrobe.

"I need a striker," he murmured. "As I am now I should not pass muster"; and suddenly his thoughts turned to the cripple.

"I have it! I will rent the adjoining room! Winter is coming; the little one would freeze under the stairs! she shall be my striker, caterer, sutler; _that_ one is brave enough for a man! _Quoi!_"

Then his face clouded; quarter-day was coming, and he was deep in debt at the café.

"I am not rich enough," he said gloomily, "and yet they rob me down there! I could stake my pay on that! What do I have to eat? My board is too dear; and that devil of a horse-doctor cheats like old man Bezique himself. For eight days I have paid for his drinks. Who knows if I should not do better to take the little one! She could make soup for breakfast, _pot-au-feu_ for dinner, and a stew for supper. The campaign grub! don't I remember it!"

Decidedly, the temptation was strong.

Going into the street that night, he met the mistress of the house, a fat, rosy-cheeked peasant.

The little girl was with her; they stood half-bent, picking up the droppings before the house with pitchforks.

"Can she sew, scrub, make soup?" he asked abruptly.

"Who, Pierrette? Why shouldn't she?"

"Does she know anything of all that?"

"Why not? She is a foundling; she came from the hospital; they teach them to take care of themselves."

"I say! little one, you are not afraid of me, are you? No, I would not hurt you! What do you think of it, madame? May I take her? I need a servant."

"You may take her if you will feed and clothe her."

"Agreed! Here are four dollars; buy her a dress and a shoe; let her put them on at once. To-morrow we will draw up papers."

Then, amiably tapping the child upon the cheek, he went away, twirling his cane--it was just such a _moulinet_ as he had made with his sabre.

"I shall have to draw the line on my drinks--a few less absinthes, Captain Mercadier!" he thought merrily. "As for the horse-doctor, I must turn his flank! I can't play bezique any more. _This_ thing is according to regulations!"

. . . . . . . . . . . .

"Captain, you are a deserter!" said the pillars of the Café Prosper, when he appeared among them after a long absence.

"Well, that's about it!" answered the Captain.

But the poor man had not foreseen all the consequences of his charity. By suppressing his beer and absinthes he had managed to clothe and feed the child of his adoption; but the modest price of her sustenance did not end it! Now the bachelor was housekeeping! and housekeeping costs money.

The heart of the child was full of gratitude and she proved it by her acts. The Captain's room was as fresh as a rose; the furniture was like new; the spiders no longer trailed their threads over the glorious death of Poniatowski. When the Captain set foot upon the stair he was saluted by the odor of cabbage soup and all the well-remembered dishes of the mess! All that set upon the coarse but snow-white cloth; and the painted plate and the sparkling cover! Sapristi! _this_ was campaigning!

Pierrette always profited by the after-dinner humor to confess her wishes. She longed for brass andirons for the chimney; for now the Captain had a warm room every day; the little one kept the fire laid ready for his coming. The days were short and cold. And Pierrette longed for a pretty mold; for she made such cakes for the Captain!

"Yes, all that cost money. Where was it to come from?" But the Captain smiled at all her wishes. Home comforts had won the old war-dog; home was the best! and this home was a real home. "The andirons must be had--so must the mold! but how--where from?" He resisted the mellow seductions of his Loudrès--a demi-Loudrès must do for the present; then came another struggle and the demi-Loudrès was displaced by a 1-cent "Algérienne." Some one offered five points at écarté, and a stare that froze the marrow in his bones answered him. Then came the last sacrifice. The third glass of beer was suppressed--so was the second glass of chartreuse. It was a struggle! They were on foot, breast to breast! Time and time again the green demon tugged at the strings of his memory. Sometimes it was too strong for him; he entered the wine-shop; then, summoning all his manhood, he triumphed over his tempters; and that night his _moulinet_ was like a whirlwind on a whirlpool. Sometimes, in dreams, he turned the king and cried out _à tout_! Then, springing from his bed, he stood at attention, and saluted with the gesture of a conqueror.

"Drink, play, tobacco! Ho, ho! Not according to regulations!" He was not superhuman; _but he had been a soldier_! Mercadier, First Cuirassiers, Army of France (retired).

He loved his little adopted daughter all the better for the sacrifices made for her; and each time that he controlled his vices he kissed her more tenderly. _For he kissed her_. She was no longer a servant; that was past! Once, when she had stood silent and respectful on her wooden leg, his pent-up feelings had burst their bounds; he had seized the thin hands and cried out furiously:

"Come here and kiss me! then take your place at the table and talk to me. Give me the pleasure of hearing you say '_thou_' to me! _Mille tonnerres!_"

So _that_ was settled--she was his daughter. The child had saved him from an inglorious old age. He had cast aside the vices of the Egotist and to fill their place he had taken a passion for all eternity--the love of a father for his child! He adored the little infirm creature who limped around him in the coquettish, well-ordered room.

He had taught Pierrette to read, and now, recalling his own early lessons, he had set her a copy in writing. And he was never happier than when he sat in his polished chair watching the child bending over her copy, or, with face close to the paper, lapping up an ink-spot, as a kitten laps up cream. She had copied all the letters of the most interminable of adverbs!

Now he had but one cause for anxiety; he had nothing to leave her. He had taken a mania for saving; he was almost a miser; he planned and theorized. He must give up his tobacco! Even the blue "National" was too dear for him. He was saving money from his allowance; he would buy out a little fancy store; and then he could die in peace. Pierrette would have her shop; and behind it there would be a little room. He pushed his pipe away, even when Pierrette filled and lighted it. If she had that shop she could live in the room back of it, obscure and tranquil, in spite of her wooden leg! She could live then; and so, when on the walls of her little room she would hang the cross hard won by gallant and meritorious conduct in the field, it would remind her of the Captain!

. . . . . . . . . . . .

He walked with her every day on the parapet of the ramparts, and now and then the peasants passing through the town turned to gaze after the strange pair. They wondered at them. The veteran, untouched by all his wars; the child crippled, though still so young!

And once the Captain wept for joy. He had heard what they said: "Poor old man! what tales he could tell! But his daughter, how pretty and how sweet!"

RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

_Should you ask me, "Who is Hawthorne? Who this Hawthorne that you mention?" I should answer, I should tell you, "He's a Yankee, who had written Many books you must have heard of; For he wrote 'The Scarlet Letter' And 'The House of Seven Gables,' Wrote, too, 'Rappaccini's Daughter,' And a lot of other stories;-- Some are long and some are shorter; Some are good and some are better." --Henry Bright in "Song of Consul Hawthorne," 1855._

RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER

By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

A young man named Giovanni Guasconti came very long ago from the more southern region of Italy to pursue his studies at the University of Padua. Giovanni, who had but a scanty supply of gold ducats in his pocket, took lodgings in a high and gloomy chamber of an old edifice which looked not unworthy to have been the palace of a Paduan noble, and which, in fact, exhibited over its entrance the armorial bearings of a family long since extinct. The young stranger, who was not unstudied in the great poem of his country, recollected that one of the ancestors of this family, and perhaps an occupant of this very mansion, had been pictured by Dante as a partaker of the immortal agonies of his Inferno. These reminiscences and associations, together with the tendency to heartbreak natural to a young man for the first time out of his native sphere, caused Giovanni to sigh heavily as he looked around the desolate and ill-furnished apartment.

"Holy Virgin, signor!" cried old Dame Lisabetta, who, won by the youth's remarkable beauty of person, was kindly endeavoring to give the chamber a habitable air; "what a sigh was that to come out of a young man's heart! Do you find this old mansion gloomy? For the love of Heaven, then, put your head out of the window, and you will see as bright sunshine as you have left in Naples."

Guasconti mechanically did as the old woman advised, but could not quite agree with her that the Lombard sunshine was as cheerful as that of Southern Italy. Such as it was, however, it fell upon a garden beneath the window, and expended its fostering influences on a variety of plants which seemed to have been cultivated with exceeding care.

"Does this garden belong to the house?" asked Giovanni.

"Heaven forbid, signor, unless it were fruitful of better pot-herbs than any that grow there now," answered old Lisabetta. "No; that garden is cultivated by the own hands of Signor Giacomo Rappaccini, the famous doctor who, I warrant him, has been heard of as far as Naples. It is said that he distils these plants into medicines that are as potent as a charm. Oftentimes you may see the Signor Doctor at work, and perchance the signora his daughter, too, gathering the strange flowers that grow in the garden."

The old woman had now done what she could for the aspect of the chamber, and, commending the young man to the protection of the saints, took her departure.

Giovanni still found no better occupation than to look down into the garden beneath his window. From its appearance he judged it to be one of those botanic gardens which were of earlier date in Padua than elsewhere in Italy, or in the world. Or, not improbably, it might once have been the pleasure-place of an opulent family; for there was the ruin of a marble fountain in the centre, sculptured with rare art, but so wofully shattered that it was impossible to trace the original design from the chaos of remaining fragments. The water, however, continued to gush and sparkle into the sunbeams as cheerfully as ever. A little gurgling sound ascended to the young man's window and made him feel as if a fountain were an immortal spirit that sung its song unceasingly, and without heeding the vicissitudes around it, while one century embodied it in marble and another scattered the perishable garniture on the soil. All about the pool into which the water subsided grew various plants that seemed to require a plentiful supply of moisture for the nourishment of gigantic leaves, and in some instances flowers of gorgeous magnificence. There was one shrub in particular, set in a marble vase in the midst of the pool, that bore a profusion of purple blossoms, each of which had the lustre and richness of a gem; and the whole together made a show so resplendent that it seemed enough to illuminate the garden, even had there been no sunshine. Every portion of the soil was peopled with plants and herbs which, if less beautiful, still bore tokens of assiduous care, as if all had their individual virtues, known to the scientific mind that fostered them. Some were placed in urns rich with old carving and others in common garden-pots; some crept serpent-like along the ground, or climbed on high, using whatever means of ascent was offered them. One plant had wreathed itself round a statue of Vertumnus, which was thus quite veiled and shrouded in a drapery of hanging foliage so happily arranged that it might have served a sculptor for a study.

While Giovanni stood at the window he heard a rustling behind a screen of leaves, and became aware that a person was at work in the garden. His figure soon emerged into view, and showed itself to be that of no common laborer, but a tall, emaciated, sallow and sickly-looking man dressed in a scholar's garb of black. He was beyond the middle term of life, with gray hair, and a thin gray beard, and a face singularly marked with intellect and cultivation, but which could never, even in his more youthful days, have expressed much warmth of heart.

Nothing could exceed the intentness with which this scientific gardener examined every shrub which grew in his path; it seemed as if he was looking into their inmost nature, making observations in regard to their creative essence, and discovering why one leaf grew in this shape and another in that, and wherefore such and such flowers differed among themselves in hue and perfume. Nevertheless, in spite of the deep intelligence on his part, there was no approach to intimacy between himself and these vegetable existences. On the contrary, he avoided their actual touch or the direct inhaling of their odors with a caution that impressed Giovanni most disagreeably; for the man's demeanor was that of one walking among malignant influences, such as savage beasts or deadly snakes or evil spirits which, should he allow them one moment of license, would wreak upon him some terrible fatality. It was strangely frightful to the young man's imagination to see this air of insecurity in a person cultivating a garden--that most simple and innocent of human toils, and which had been alike the joy and labor of the unfallen parents of the race. Was this garden, then, the Eden of the present world? and this man with such a perception of harm in what his own hands caused to grow--was he the Adam?

The distrustful gardener, while plucking away the dead leaves or pruning the too luxuriant growth of the shrubs, defended his hands with a pair of thick gloves. Nor were these his only armor. When, in his walk through the garden, he came to the magnificent plant that hung its purple gems beside the marble fountain, he placed a kind of mask over his mouth and nostrils, as if all this beauty did but conceal a deadlier malice. But, finding his task still too dangerous, he drew back, removed the mask, and called loudly, but in the infirm voice of a person affected with inward disease:

"Beatrice! Beatrice!"

"Here am I, my father! What would you?" cried a rich and youthful voice from the window of the opposite house--a voice as rich as a tropical sunset, and which made Giovanni, though he knew not why, think of deep hues of purple or crimson and of perfumes heavily delectable. "Are you in the garden?"

"Yes, Beatrice," answered the gardener, "and I need your help."

Soon there emerged from under a sculptured portal the figure of a young girl arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of the flowers, beautiful as the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid that one shade more would have been too much. She looked redundant with life, health, and energy; all of which attributes were bound down and compressed, as it were, and girdled tensely in their luxuriance by her virgin zone. Yet Giovanni's fancy must have grown morbid while he looked down into the garden, for the impression which the fair stranger made upon him was as if here were another flower, the human sister of those vegetable ones, as beautiful as they--more beautiful than the richest of them--but still to be touched only with a glove, nor to be approached without a mask. As Beatrice came down the garden path it was observable that she handled and inhaled the odor of several of the plants which her father had most sedulously avoided.

"Here, Beatrice," said the latter; "see how many needful offices require to be done to our chief treasure. Yet, shattered as I am, my life might pay the penalty of approaching it so closely as circumstances demand. Henceforth, I fear, this plant must be consigned to your sole charge."

"And gladly will I undertake it," cried again the rich tones of the young lady as she bent toward the magnificent plant and opened her arms as if to embrace it. "Yes, my sister, my splendor, it shall be Beatrice's task to nurse and serve thee, and thou shalt reward her with thy kisses and perfume-breath, which to her is as the breath of life."

Then, with all the tenderness in her manner that was so strikingly expressed in her words, she busied herself with such attentions as the plant seemed to require; and Giovanni, at his lofty window, rubbed his eyes, and almost doubted whether it were a girl tending her favorite flower or one sister performing the duties of affection to another.

The scene soon terminated. Whether Doctor Rappaccini had finished his labors in the garden or that his watchful eye had caught the stranger's face, he now took his daughter's arm and retired. Night was already closing in; oppressive exhalations seemed to proceed from the plants and steal upward past the open window, and Giovanni, closing the lattice, went to his couch and dreamed of a rich flower and beautiful girl. Flower and maiden were different, and yet the same, and fraught with some strange peril in either shape.