Part 17

It took place at last, that downfall of brick and mortar, longed for during twenty gloomy years. It took place in April, at the moment of the first balmy airs of the first long evenings. Very quickly it was accomplished, in the midst of the noise of falling stones, of singing workmen, in a cloud of plaster and of ancient dust.

And at twilight of the second day, when the work was finished, the workmen gone, silence returned, they found themselves once more sitting at their table, the mother and the daughter, bewildered at seeing so clearly, at having need no longer of the lamp to begin their evening meal. Like a formal visit from familiar days gone by, they contemplated the rose bushes of their court spread out once more against the sky. But instead of the joy they had looked forward to there was at first an indefinable uneasiness: too much light all at once in their little salon, a sort of melancholy splendor, and the feeling of an unaccustomed void out of doors, of limitless change. No words there came to them in presence of the accomplishment of their dream; rapt, the one and the other, held by an ever-increasing melancholy, they remained there without talking, without touching the waiting meal. And little by little, their two hearts pressing still closer, that grew to be a kind of grief, like one of those regrets, dull and without hope, which the dead leave us.

When the mother, at length, perceived that the eyes of her daughter began to grow faded with crying, divining the unexpressed thoughts which must so perfectly resemble her own: "It can be built up again," she says. "It seems to me they can try, can they not, to make it the same again?"

"I, too, thought of that," replied the daughter. "But no, don't you see: _it would never be the same_!"

Mon Dieu! was it possible that such a thing could be; it was she, the very same, who had decreed it, the annihilation of that background of a familiar picture, below which, during one springtime, she had seen in high relief a certain fine face of a young man, and during so many winters the venerable profile of an old aunt dead.

And all at once, at recollection of that vague design in the form of the shadow of a bird, traced there by patient gutters, and which she would see again never, never, never, her heart was suddenly torn in a manner most pitiable; she wept the most melancholy tears of her life before the irreparable destruction of that wall.

THE ANCESTOR

BY CHARLES JOSEPH PAUL BOURGET

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_Paul Bourget presents the greatest possible contrast to Anatole France. His style is involved, sentence is fitted into sentence, clothed like Henry James, and altogether un-French. Bourget's psychology, though penetrating, seems rather to clothe his characters than to create them, consequently his novels are long psychological treatises. It was a delight, therefore, to come upon this tale of Bourget's, in which the story is as absorbing as the psychology._

_Bourget was born at Amiens in 1852, and began his literary career, as usual, by writing verses, etc. Besides "Outre Mer," which he published in 1891 after his visit to America, his work consists chiefly of novels, "Mensonges," "Crime d'Amour," "Le Disciple," "Cosmopolis," etc. He was elected a member of the French Academy in 1894._

[Illustration]

THE ANCESTOR

BY PAUL BOURGET

Translated by V. Quiroga. Copyright, 1907, by P. F. Collier & Son.

Alfred Boyer felt very happy that afternoon over the printer's proofs that the mail had just brought him. He could not take his eyes off the page containing the title:

"_Mémoires du Maréchal Frédet Prince d'Augsbourg, Duc d'Ivrea, with notes and introduction by Alfred Boyer, former student of the École de Chartres._" The work to which he had devoted himself during the last two years was nearing completion. His name was going to be associated for ever with that of "Catinat of the Grande Armée," who had begun as volunteer in 1792, and had died of a broken heart after Waterloo.

Need one recall Frédet's heroism in the wars in the North--then too, in the first campaign in Italy, just under the walls of Ivrea, and his brilliant services in Egypt and Germany; how after Ulm, he had surrounded and taken prisoner ten thousand of the enemy at the gates of Augsbourg, with a handful of hussars? Austerlitz, Iéna, Eylau, Wagram, and Spain in turn saw this indefatigable soldier maneuvre his troops with the skill to which the "Mémoires" bore testimony. "I sent Frédet to Catalonia," said the Emperor, "with twenty thousand men. It was like sending fifty thousand. He alone made up the difference."

A very severe wound prevented his joining Napoleon in Russia, he achieved wonders at Dresden, though scarcely reestablished in health, and at Leipzig, where he saved the retreat by checking during several hours, the main body of the Austrian cavalry. Like Ney, and like the Emperor himself, he was one of those who sought death at Waterloo, and whom death would not accept, in spite of prodigies of valor, exalted almost to madness by the despair of the defeat.

When peace was concluded, the veteran shut himself up at Combronde, near Riom, on a small estate that he had acquired in Auvergne, where he had been born. It was there where he commenced to write or rather to dictate his mémoires in a haphazard fashion, following his exalted fancy, accumulating a pile of rather incoherent notes, which had slept in their portfolios for eighty years--from 1821, at which date the old soldier died, until 1900 when his grandson, the present Prince of Augsbourg, had at last decided to publish those papers, a little influenced, it must be admitted, by his need of money. Having a scanty fortune and a very large family--five marriageable daughters--he had been tempted by the success of "Marbot's Mémoires." He summoned from Paris to his little Château of Combes, where the meagreness of his income and his misanthropy kept him prisoner the year round, a young man who was to put in order that mass of documents mostly without shape. That is how Alfred Boyer found himself with a task that developed into a passion. Whatever may be the political value accorded to the Napoleonic legend, its heroic character casts a magic spell that few historians of that fantastic epoch have been able to overthrow. That magic spell had acted so much the more on the young compiler, because the moral figure of Frédet was fully in accord with his military bearing. Among the portraits of those marshals, all equally brilliant, but not equally attractive, his was one of the most pure and exalted. The heroism of the Prince of Augsbourg retained to the last that antique charm that one imagines would have adorned Desaix had he lived long enough. It seems that Frédet never had any ambition for these dignities which his master delighted to shower upon him. When did he have a chance to enjoy them? Bonaparte, who knew men and their value, never ceased for a moment to keep him employed, in peace as well as in war. When he was not fighting, Frédet was an administrator. His proverbial integrity, his gentleness, and--a quality extremely rare in that army sprung from the Revolution--his religious fervor, gave to his countenance the look of a paladin. While he lived it was impossible to come in contact with him without loving him. He disarmed the envy of Marmont, the sour humor of Soult, and warmed the coldness of Macdonald. The writings of these three rivals in glory, give ample proof of it. Dead, his rare personality had just performed a similar miracle of seduction in his memorialist, who gazed as if hypnotized at the first page of the mémoires, and the bulky package of proofs. At that very minute he was living over again the two years of his arduous labor. He saw himself once more, after his thesis had been approved, hesitating between accepting a poorly paid post as librarian in an obscure corner of some province, and the offer that one of his professors had made him, to work on the mémoires of the famous marshal. It was food and lodging assured for some time, a means of becoming known, and of laying aside a few thousand francs with which he could support himself until he could obtain appointment to some good post. Beyond this, Boyer did not know anything about the soldier whose papers he had to classify.

In that old house at Combes, which had remained unchanged during three-quarters of a century, he had commenced to give himself up to that retrospective semi-hallucination known only to those who have a scholarly disposition. Taine has pictured it in that eloquent page, where he describes himself at the archives, following over the yellowed paper the old writings of the men of the Revolution. "I was," he says, "tempted to speak aloud to them." In that poor mansion where the old hero had sheltered himself in his last few days, the walls were covered with relics of his glorious adventures, brought together in confusion; here, swords of honor hung on the wall, next to them some engravings representing feats of arms; there, portraits of the marshal himself, the first Consul, the Emperor, Frédet's chosen companions, among others that of Ney, who had been one of the witnesses to his marriage. Frédet's wife was there, frail and delicate in her rich costume of a court lady, painted by Gérard, in an attitude identical with that of the Duchess of Rovigo, on the edge of a park leaning on a small column ornamented with helmets and cuirasses in high relief. She had survived her husband forty years, and to her piety was due the preservation of the home to which the eldest son of the family had not returned until 1875, after having served in the army and resigned while simple lieutenant-colonel, when another had--unjustly as he maintained--been promoted over him. His carelessness produced at least this advantage, that the species of family museum brought together through the sorrow of the grandmother had remained undisturbed.

In the mean while, that is to say, under the monarchy of July and the Second Empire, the Frédets had lived in Paris; the second Prince of Augsbourg as a peer of France, and then as Senator; the third, the present Prince, as an officer of the staff of Napoleon the Third. Physically the colonel was the living image of his illustrious grandfather. He had the leonine face, the calm and powerful mien, the grave eyes, the serious mouth, and also the athlete's muscles, broad shoulders and powerful neck. There the resemblance stopped. Was it lack of education or opportunity? Did he take morally after some ancestor on the mother's side? His father had married a girl of noble birth, but of that country nobility with whom hunting is the sole hereditary occupation. In his old age it was the only pleasure that seemed to survive in this heir to an illustrious name, the first ambition of a disappointed career.

Alfred Boyer recalled his strange impression during the first weeks of his sojourn when he saw the Prince start out in the early morning, with his gamekeeper and his dogs and not return until nightfall, covered with dust or mud, sunburned or else soaked in rain, according to the weather, his gun on his shoulder, and his game bag bulging with the pheasants hunted during the day. To his five daughters, left at home under the charge of an old aunt, who managed the household for him, this taciturn hunter seemed to give no thought.

They were pretty and refined girls, and if the memorialist had not been a poor pale-faced student, his presence in this isolation with these five young unmarried girls might not have been without danger. But Alfred belonged to that class of timid, intellectual men who have no need of disenchanting experiences to put in practise the advice the fair Venetian gave so amusingly to Rousseau: "Avoid women and study mathematics." Being of a sickly nature, knowing himself awkward and homely, he had early turned into intellectual channels the feverish ardor that young men of his age usually spend in sentimental adventures. His only pleasures were the discoveries of unpublished texts, of ingenious hypotheses on obscure historical points, and the patient conquest of a chair in the Institute by force of erudite publications. The marshal's papers fell in well with this program, and with something more--the poetry of the extraordinary imperial exploit incarnate in one of the most magnificent workers. Thus it was that after having engaged in the work as compiler of records, Alfred Boyer continued as enthusiast, identifying himself with his hero in each episode of his brilliant career, collating the smallest anecdotes about him, claiming for him the first place in all the events in which he had taken part, putting himself at infinite pains to make this great man greater still; possessed by one of those retrospective idolatries at which we can not smile, so disinterested and pathetic are they when their object is a name sunk in misfortune and oblivion, like that of this soldier who had died of the defeat of his master and of France. What a work it was to decipher the piles of notes and documents he had left, to make selection from among the texts, to complete them with commentaries! But those "Mémoires" were at last to appear, all the traits of that noble figure were to shine out in a brilliant light, and the author of this posthumous justice could not gaze enough on the printed characters that would soon shine forth in the cover of the first volume--the complete work would be in four volumes--in the booksellers' shop windows....

The sound of a door opening roused Boyer from his "semihypnotic"[14] trance. He raised his head and sprang suddenly to his feet. It was the Prince of Augsbourg who had just entered the library. Those visits, rare at first, had become more frequent as Alfred Boyer's work advanced. Not that the sportsman had ever ventured to give any advice to the memorialist, who had read to him some of the pages dictated or written by his grandfather--those, more frequently, in which the marshal told of the departure from his paternal roof (he was the son of a physician at Combronde), to join the army--the story of the first battle in which he had taken part, at Hondschoote--that of his last, and his farewell to the Emperor before the charge at Waterloo.

The manner in which he listened to those recitals, his head in his hands, never uttering a word, revealed an intense feeling in the hero's descendant. Evidently an almost religious cult for his ancestor burned in this obscure and wild nature, which Alfred Boyer pitied without quite comprehending. He could see that, overburdened by the weight of a great name, ruined by his father, discontented with his present circumstances, and knowing his inability to alter them, the colonel had fallen into that lethargy of the will in which for some years he had simply vegetated.

He had given up the society of his set, as well as his profession, turning countryman, and since his wife's death had not paid any attention to the small details in personal appearance that, even in the most ordinary surroundings, reveal the man who has been used to good company. It was evident that he loved his daughters, as proved by the sadness with which his eyes would sometimes rest on these pretty children, doomed by their portionless condition to some obscure marriage in that corner of Auvergne. The remnants of his fortune yielded an income of about thirty thousand francs a year. Was that enough to sustain the rank of a prince?

The colonel had said to himself that decadence would be better borne in the solitude of this house peopled with the memories of his grandfather. Thus he had reasoned.

Or at least that was the solution that Alfred Boyer had found in his mind to the enigma presented by that character; and his own constantly increasing cult for the marshal made him sympathize with the homage rendered by abdication to that ruinous heritage. The grandson felt the glory of the grandfather. That was enough to make the enthusiastic compiler of the "Mémoires" feel himself in sympathy with his taciturn patron, and on this occasion he felt keen pleasure at seeing him enter the library. He would show him the proofs just arrived by the courier. He welcomed the newcomer, and, handing to him the proofs, he said:

"I was just going to ask you to receive me, Prince. Our first volume is printed."

"I do not understand much about these things," replied the Prince of Augsbourg, after having glanced at the bundle of proofs, "but all this seems to me very good." He glanced through them again more slowly, stopping at certain passages that he recognized, and, a detail that Alfred was surprised to note, his face grew visibly more sombre. This made his resemblance to his grandfather much more striking. One would have said that to hold in his hand this book, which was, in a measure, his production since he had kept the memorialist at work at his own expense during the past two years, was more than painful to him. At last he returned the sheets to the young man, saying: "Yes, that is very good--but perhaps you will have to add some notes to it. Yes," he continued after a moment's hesitation, "I received a letter this morning informing me that certain documents will be placed at my disposal. I shall have to go to Paris to fetch them. I have come to ask you to accompany me--Thanks," he went on as Alfred Boyer nodded assent, "I did not doubt that you would be willing to come--" He hesitated again, then with an effort he added: "Doubtless you have heard something about the Duchesse d'Ivrea."

"The Duchesse d'Ivrea?" repeated the young man. "I thought that title was one of those belonging to the Princess of Augsbourg."

"It is borne by the widow of my younger brother," interrupted the colonel, who added in a singular tone: "You are right. All the titles of the family should belong to the eldest, but my uncle was formerly called the Duc d'Ivrea, and my brother naturally took the same title. I am surprised at your not knowing this, after having been busy with the marshal, as you have, for almost twenty months. It is true," and a bitter smile curled his lips, "that, compared with him, we are scarcely interesting. And then my brother and I had not visited each other, and I do not know his wife. That is why I never mentioned her to you. She is very ill, she informs me--given up by her physicians, in fact. She wishes to deliver into my hands some family papers left in her keeping by my brother. I can rely on you, then. The most interesting part of them is a correspondence with Moreau during the latter's sojourn in America. You know that the marshal made a campaign with him in Holland. He foresaw his failure and wished to prevent it. These letters were offered for sale some years ago. They got them away from me because they were wealthier than I, but now they wish to return them to me, and it is right that they should. We should find a place for them in the second volume. That will mean a great deal of revising, but it is worth the trouble. I shall leave you now, as I have many orders to attend to. We shall start this evening." ...

While making his preparations after this interview, Alfred Boyer could not shake off an impression, that, vague as it was and without foundation, seemed to him a certainty. This visit to his sister-in-law was costing the Prince very dear. There was a mystery in their relations, and a very painful one. Whence came this rupture, and what were its causes, so profound that not the slightest mention of a Duchess d'Ivrea had ever been made either by the Prince or by any of his five daughters? Not one of them bore this name; they were called simply the Frédets of Augsbourg. What had happened between the two brothers? Had this rupture preceded the marriage? Or had that event been the cause of it?

All these questions presented themselves to the young man's mind without his having the faintest inkling as to their solution. During the long months of his sojourn he had not established relations with any one among the few country families in the neighborhood of Combes.

Moreover, he would have considered himself unworthy of the confidence that his patron had shown him from the very first, opening his archives to him, letting him live in complete intimacy with his household, if he had made any inquiries about the Frédets. From the moment that there was a question of some family secret, to start a conversation on this subject with the old relative who acted as housekeeper would have been as impossible as to try and make one of the young girls talk about it. He knew no more of the affair when the day after the conversation the Prince and he arrived in Paris than he did on the preceding evening. During the journey he had noted the increasing preoccupation of his companion, who, when they reached the station, said to him: "I do not know as yet where we shall put up. Let us take a cab and we will stop at some lodging-house. I used to know a place in the Rue de Bourgogne, in the neighborhood of the Chamber of Deputies. We will be near the Rue de Grenelle, where our business is. The d'Ivrea house is the same that the marshal lived in under the Empire."

"Next door to the house of the Duc de Feltré?" returned Alfred Boyer. "It was only three days ago that I was transcribing the page on which he relates their meeting on the sidewalk in front of their houses on his return from Waterloo, and his refusal to return the Duc's salutation. How finely the passage concludes: 'Perhaps it was not just,' he writes, 'but at that time every French officer who had not fought at Waterloo filled me with horror. I should add that if the Duc de Feltré deserted us, at least it was not, as in so many other cases, for money. He was my friend, and I attest that I have always known him to be an upright man with clean hands.'

"Upright and with clean hands," repeated the Prince. "Yes, those were his words; I recall them, too. That might have been his own device, do you not think so? My brother repurchased the house," he added after a pause. "I do not know how _they_ have furnished it, but the façade should not be changed. It is of the seventeenth century and has the grand style of that period. You shall judge of it yourself this afternoon, for I do not intend to remain here long. I count upon going to the d'Ivrea house in this same cab as soon as we have engaged our apartment in the Rue Bourgogne. You will not leave me--I am not paying a visit to a relative. I have come here to obtain some papers that belong to me by right as the senior. You have been good enough to engage your services as historian for our family until the end of the publication of the 'Mémoires.' Your place, then, is with me."