Part 4

As with long strides he promenaded the garden walk of his little country presbytery, sometimes a question would arise in his mind: “Why did God create that?” And, mentally taking the place of God, he searched obstinately for the answer--and nearly always found it. It would not have been like him to murmur, in an outburst of pious humility: “O Lord, thy designs are impenetrable!” Rather might he say to himself: “I am the servant of God; I ought to know the reasons for what He does, or if I know them not, I ought to divine them.”

To him, all nature seemed created with a logic as absolute as it was admirable. The “wherefore” and the “because” always corresponded perfectly. Dawn was made to gladden our waking, the day to ripen the crops, the rain to water them, the evening to prepare for slumber, and the night darkened for sleep.

The four seasons met perfectly all the needs of agriculture; and to the priest it was quite inconceivable that nature had no designs, and that, on the contrary, all living things were subjects of the same inexorable laws of period, climate, and matter.

But he did hate woman! He hated her unconscionably, and by instinct held her in contempt. Often did he repeat the words of Christ, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” And he would add, “One might think that God Himself did not feel quite content with this one work of his hands!” To him, indeed, woman was the child twelve times unclean of whom the poet speaks. She was the temptress who had ensnared the first man, and who constantly kept up her work of damnation--she was a feeble, dangerous, and mysteriously troublous creature. And even more than her accursed body did he hate her loving spirit.

He had often felt that women were regarding him tenderly, and even though he knew himself to be invulnerable, it exasperated him to recognize that need for loving which fluttered ever-present in their hearts.

In his opinion, God had created woman only to tempt man and to test him. She should never be even approached without those defensive measures which one would take, and those fears which one would harbor, when nearing a trap. In fact, she was precisely like a trap, with her lips open and arms extended towards man.

Only toward nuns did he exercise any indulgence, for they were rendered harmless by their vow. But he treated them harshly just the same, because, ever-living in the depths of their pent-up and humbled hearts, he discerned that everlasting tenderness which constantly surged up toward him, priest though he was.

Of all this he was conscious in their upturned glances, more limpid with pious feeling than the looks of monks; in the spiritual exaltations in which their sex indulged; in their ecstasies of love toward Christ, which made the priest indignant because it was really woman’s love, carnal love. Of this detestable tenderness he was conscious, too, in their very docility, in the gentleness of their voices when they addressed him, in their downcast eyes, and in their submissive tears when he rudely rebuked them.

So he would shake his cassock when he left the convent door, and stride off, stretching his legs as if fleeing before some danger.

Now the Abbé had a niece who lived with her mother in a little house near by. He was determined to make of her a sister of charity.

She was pretty, giddy, and a born tease. When he preached at her, she laughed; and when he became angry with her, she kissed him vehemently, pressing him to her bosom, while he would instinctively seek to disengage himself from this embrace--which, all the same, gave him a thrill of exquisite joy, awaking deep within his soul that feeling of fatherhood which slumbers in every man.

Often as they walked together along the footpaths through the fields, he would talk with her of God, of his God; but she scarcely heard him, for she was looking at the sky, the grass, the flowers, with a joy of life which beamed from her eyes. Sometimes she would dart away to catch some flying creature, crying as she brought it back: “See, my uncle, how pretty it is; I should like to kiss it.” And that passion to kiss insects, or lilac flowers, disturbed, irritated, and repelled the priest, who recognized even in that longing the ineradicable love which blooms perennial in the heart of woman.

And now one day the sacristan’s wife, who was the Abbé Marignan’s housekeeper, cautiously told him that his niece had a lover!

He was dreadfully shocked, and stood gasping for breath, lather all over his face, for he was shaving.

When at length he was able to think and speak, he cried: “It is not true. You are lying, Mélanie!”

But the peasant woman laid her hand over her heart: “May our Lord judge me if I am lying, _monsieur le curé_. I tell you she goes out to him every night as soon as your sister is in bed. They meet each other down by the river. You need only go there between ten o’clock and midnight to see for yourself.”

He stopped rubbing his chin and began pacing the room violently, as was his custom in times of serious thought. When at length he did try to finish his shaving he cut himself three times, from nose to ear.

All day long he was silent, though almost exploding with indignation and wrath. To his priestly rage against the power of love was now added the indignation of a spiritual father, of a teacher, of the guardian of souls, who has been deceived, robbed, and trifled with by a mere child. He felt that egotistical suffocation which parents experience when their daughter tells them that she has selected a husband without their advice and in defiance of their wishes.

After dinner he tried to read a little, but he could not--he grew more and more exasperated. When the clock struck ten, he grasped his cane, a formidable oaken club which he always carried when he went out at night to visit the sick. With a smile he examined this huge cudgel, gripped it in his solid, countryman’s fist, and flourished it menacingly in the air. Then, suddenly, with grinding teeth, he brought it down upon a chair-back, which fell splintered to the floor.

He opened his door to go out; but paused upon the threshold, surprised by such a glory of moonlight as one rarely sees.

And as he was endowed with an exalted soul of such a sort as the Fathers of the Church, those poetic seers, must have possessed, he became suddenly entranced, moved by the grand and tranquil beauty of the pale-faced night.

In his little garden, all suffused with the tender radiance, his fruit-trees, set in rows, outlined in shadows upon the paths their slender limbs of wood, scarce clothed with verdure. The giant honeysuckle, clinging to the house wall, exhaled its delicious, honeyed breath--the soul of perfume seemed to hover about in the warm, clear night.

He began to breathe deep, drinking in the air as drunkards drink their wine; and he walked slowly, ravished, amazed, his niece almost forgotten.

When he reached the open country he paused to gaze upon the broad sweep of landscape, all deluged by that caressing radiance, all drowned in that soft and sensuous charm of peaceful night. Momently the frogs sounded out their quick metallic notes, and distant nightingales added to the seductive moonlight their welling music, which charms to dreams without thought--that gossamer, vibrant melody born only to mate with kisses.

The Abbé moved on again, his courage unaccountably failing. He felt as though he were enfeebled, suddenly exhausted--he longed to sit down, to linger there, to glorify God for all His works.

A little farther on, following the winding of the little river, curved a row of tall poplars. Suspended about and above the banks, enwrapping the whole sinuous course of the stream with a sort of light transparent down, was a fine white mist, shot through by the moon-rays, and transmuted by them into gleaming silver.

The priest paused once again, stirred to the deeps of his soul by a growing, an irresistible feeling of tenderness.

And a doubt, an undefined disquietude, crept over him; he discerned the birth of one of those questions which now and again came to him.

Why had God made all this? Since the night was ordained for slumber, for unconsciousness, for repose, for forgetfulness of everything, why should He make it lovelier than the day, sweeter than dawn and sunset? And that star, slow-moving, seductive, more poetic than the sun, so like to destiny, and so delicate that seemingly it was created to irradiate things too subtle, too refined, for the greater orb--why was it come to illuminate all the shades?

Why did not the most accomplished of all singing birds repose now like the others, instead of singing in the unquiet dark?

Why was this semi-veil cast over the world? Why this sighing of the heart, this tumult of the soul, this languor of the flesh?

Why this show of charms, never seen by men because they are asleep? For whose eyes was all this sublime spectacle designed, all this wealth of poetic loveliness diffused from heaven over the earth?

And the Abbé did not understand it at all.

But there below, at the very edge of the field, under the arching trees wet with luminous mist, two shadows appeared, walking side by side.

The man was the taller, and had his arm about his sweetheart’s neck; and from time to time he bent to kiss her forehead. Suddenly they animated the lifeless landscape, which enveloped their figures like a divine frame fashioned expressly for them. They seemed, those two, like a single being, the being for whom was created this tranquil, silent night. Like a living answer, the answer which his Master had sent to his question, they moved toward the priest.

Overwhelmed, his heart throbbing, he stood still, and it seemed as though there spread before him some Biblical scene, like the loves of Ruth and Boaz, the working out of the Lord’s will in one of those majestic dramas set forth in the lives of the saints. The verses of the Song of Songs, the ardent cries, the call of the body--all the glowing romance of that poem so aflame with tenderness and love, began to sing itself into his mind.

And he said to himself: “Perhaps God made nights such as this in order to cast the veil of the ideal over the loves of men.”

He withdrew before this pair who went ever arm in arm. True, it was his niece; but now he asked himself if he had not been upon the verge of disobeying God. And, indeed, if God did not permit love, why did he visibly encompass it with glory such as this?

And he fled, bewildered, almost ashamed, as if he had penetrated into a temple wherein he had no right to enter.

ALPHONSE DAUDET, MAN AND ARTIST

When the gods parceled out their gifts, to Alphonse Daudet fell a rich endowment: a poet’s imaginative nature, yet withal a clear vision for realities which is often denied the disciple of poesy; a sure dramatic instinct, too, with a contrasting power of repression which checked his slightest tendency toward the florid and the melodramatic; and, coloring all, a native sense of humor so tenderly sympathetic that it prevented his satire from biting with that acid sharpness of which his wit was capable. An all-round, well-poised literary genius was he, efficient in many fields, and preëminent in more than one.

There is one word of all the happy many which, in the opinion of all his critics, fitly characterizes Daudet--he possessed charm, charm of manner personally and charm of literary style. I wish his portrait were before us here, that we might trace in that striking countenance the record of those fascinating qualities of mind and heart which are so patent in his life and work.

As for his person, from boyhood his hair grew in that untamed profusion which we so often associate with strong individuality, and even in later life he wore his locks long and full. His beard was silky, and unrestrained rather than unkempt. Near-sighted eyes, peering from behind the inevitable black-rimmed _pince nez_, or at times a monocle, seemed curious and inquiring, typifying perfectly the spirit of naïve interest with which he looked out on life to observe its myriad moods and forms. In this look there was something reflective, too, as though he had just noticed a matter of unusual interest, and was inwardly speculating upon its further meanings. The nose was pleasure-loving, though robust, dignified, and individual--counteracted upon by the satirical mouth, whose sarcasm, in turn, was gently toned by twinkling furrows that flanked his eyes. In later days the sharpness of Daudet’s expression of mouth had been almost lost, and a gentle detachment, betokening a just but sympathetic critical spirit, marked his countenance and made it less keen than lovable. Yet it was in those later years that his cherished hatred for the French Academy led to the bitter satirical outburst against that institution in his novel, _The Immortal_ (1888). But that was only one phase temporarily dominant in the man whom everyone loved and who himself loved all.

Alphonse Daudet was--especially in youth--the exponent of the south, the south as typified by his native Provence. His was the rich, effusive, impressionable southland nature--abundantly moved upon by all the southern charm and vivacity and naïveté and life, as well as richly gifted in the ability to reproduce those impressions in the pages of his writings. Then what more natural than that he should both personally and in his fiction embody the vivid life of the carefree land? When, in 1869, his first important volume of collected stories appeared, it was seen that into _Letters from My Mill_--which included “The Pope’s Mule”--Daudet had poured not only the young unspoiled richness of his own buoyancy, but also the fulness of his feeling for local landscapes, traditions, and characters of town and country. And again and again, even in his later work, Daudet reverts to the scenes of his boyhood life, and gives us pictures--now jocund as the wine of the country, now sad as a poet’s wail--whose tone and spirit are of the Provençal life, all delicately set in the atmosphere of that sunny clime.

In the _History of My Books_, which forms an integral part of the author’s _Thirty Years in Paris_, he takes us by the hand in his dear, intimate way and shows us the great white house, the ancient and unique manor of Montauban. Near by, its shattered wings swaying in the wind on the summit of a little pine-clad mountain, stands _Mon Moulin_--the windmill about whose dusty portals for centuries had gathered the quaint characters of the district, and where, now that its traffic was forever departed, the young Alphonse first began to distinguish man from man in the stories told him by the ancients of the province.

“Excellent people, blessed house!” he writes. “How often have I repaired thither in the winter to recuperate in the embrace of nature, to heal myself of Paris and its fevers in the wholesome emanations of our little Provençal hills.”

The greetings of old friends at an end, he would whistle to Miracle, a venerable spaniel some fisherman had once found on a bit of wreckage at sea, and climb up to his mill, there to browse and dream and wander in fancy whithersoever the spirits of the place should beckon.

“The mill was a ruin,” he says; “a crumbling mass of stone, iron, and ancient boards which had not turned in the wind for many years, and which lay, with broken limbs, as useless as a poet, while all around on the hillside the miller’s trade prospered and ground and ground with all its wings. Strange affinities subsist between ourselves and inanimate objects. From the first day, that cast-off structure was dear to my heart; I loved it for its desolation, its road overgrown with weeds, those little grayish, fragrant mountain weeds with which Père Gaucher compounded his elixir; for its little worn platform where it was so pleasant to loiter, sheltered from the wind, while a rabbit hurried by, or a long snake, rustling among the leaves with crafty detours, hunted the field mice with which the ruin swarmed. With the creaking of the old building shaken by the north wind, the flapping of its wings like the rigging of a ship at sea, the mill stirred in my poor, restless, nomadic brain memories of journeys by sea, of landings at lighthouses and far-off islands; and the shivering swell all about completed the illusion. I know not whence I derived this taste for wild and desert places which has characterized me from my childhood, and which seems so inconsistent with the exuberance of my nature, unless it be at the same time the physical need of repairing by a fast from words, by abstinence from outcries and gestures, the terrible waste which the southerner makes of his whole being. Be that as it may, I owe a great deal to those places of refuge for the mind; and no one of them has been more salutary in its effect upon me than that old mill in Provence.”

Here, both in boyhood and in young manhood’s revisitations, Daudet found the “grasshopper’s library,” and in its secret alcoves discovered such delightful stories as “The Elixir of the Reverend Father Gaucher,” “The Three Low Masses,” “The Goat of Monsieur Seguin,” “Master Cornille’s Secret,” and “The Old Folks,” all abounding in naïve character and told with his own delicate charm. Here, too, he learned to take a delight in his craft which waned not with the years; and to find joy in pleasing “the people,” who were ever the subjects of his finest delineations.

Born at Nîmes in 1840, and as a mere lad leaving home for the city of Lyons, Daudet’s public career began with his journey to Paris in November, 1857. The boy of seventeen and a half came possessed of a slender collection of poems which, though the product of so youthful a rhymester, met with no little favor. In manner common to those who must win their way along the precarious paths of letters, he pressed on, until in 1859--he being not yet twenty--Daudet published his first volume of poems, _Les Amoureuses_, which won high praise from the critics, but is now sought chiefly by collectors. Thus he began to gain confidence, and others of his works followed almost yearly. The pages of _Le Figaro_ were now freely opened to him, and that public by whom he never ceased to be loved began to scan its columns for his fantastic chronicles of Provençal life. In that same journal he began in 1866 to publish his _Letters from My Mill_, which were collected in volume form in 1869, and constituted his first real popular triumph.

The third period in our author’s life is marked by the sad experiences of the Siege of Paris, in 1870. Just as his life in the south inspired the _Letters_, so did the grave impressions made by those terrible days in the French capital during the Franco-Prussian War move him to write the little masterpieces which, in part, appeared in the volume entitled _Monday Tales_, published in 1873. Who that has read them can forget the “piercing pathos” of “The Last Class” and “The Siege of Berlin”? Not only are these human episodes of singularly tender appeal, but they are masterpieces of form, unsurpassed among short-stories of any language. As Daudet’s best work, they deserve further notice here.

At the close of the Franco-Prussian War, Alsace and Lorraine were ceded to Germany by France. One of the edicts issued by the conquerors, with a view to nationalizing the acquired territory, was that the French language should no longer be taught in their public schools. And this furnishes the _motif_ for Daudet’s “The Last Class.”

The story is simply told in the first person by Frantz, a little Alsatian. Frantz recalls that historic day when he set off for school a little late. Hoping that he might perhaps escape the teacher’s ferrule, he cuts across the public square without even stopping to find out the meaning of the knot of perturbed villagers who are discussing an announcement upon the bulletin board in front of the mayor’s office. As he slips into his seat, hoping to escape observation, he is impressed by the unnatural quiet in the school-room, and also by the presence of a number of the town notables, all solemnly garbed in holiday dress.

The lad marvels that he is not even chided for his lateness, and is more than ever mystified as the schoolmaster proceeds with one lesson and another, all under stress of deep emotion.

By and by the schoolmaster tells his pupils of the cruel edict, and Frantz begins to realize that the worthy master will no longer rule in his accustomed place. He becomes conscious of neglected work, and a whole tide of better resolutions surges in his breast. Finally the master has heard the last class and arising seeks utterance for his farewells. At first he is able to give his pupils some sound advice, but at length no words will come, and with such quiverings of lip as even Daudet tries not to depict, he chokes, swiftly turns to the blackboard, takes a piece of chalk, and, bearing with all his might, dashes off his final expression of patriotic protest and personal sorrow:

VIVE LA FRANCE!

“Then he stood there, with his head resting against the wall, and without speaking, he motioned to us with his hand:

“'That is all; go.’”

On rereading “The Last Class” for the dozenth time, I find that it is surrounded with an emotional atmosphere which, textually, the story does not contain. I think this must be the aura emanating from the spirit of the story; for a great work of fiction is not only the product of emotion, but it kindles emotion, because it is a creation, an entity, a living being. Doubtless the contention could not be demonstrated that, when properly received, a great work of fictional art will arouse the same emotions in the reader as were first enkindled in the breast of its author when the story was born. None the less, I believe it to be true. What feelings, then, must Daudet have known when he gave forth this little master-story! It must be these that I myself feel, for I do not, by analysis, find them all present in the text, even by suggestion. Happy artist, who can so project the creations of his soul that they henceforth live and expand and communicate their messages to multitudes to him unknown! So all great fiction is alive; so lives the work of Alphonse Daudet.

The emotion in “The Siege of Berlin” is of a different type. It, too, finds its _motif_ in the Franco-Prussian War; this time in the Siege of Paris itself.