Chapter Chapter 2 · 第2章

A delightful life of freedom began for Jeanne. She read, dreamed, and

wandered about all alone, walking slowly along the road, building

castles in the air, or dancing down the little winding valleys whose

sloping sides were covered with golden gorse. Its strong, sweet odor,

increased by the heat, intoxicated her like a perfumed wine, while she

was lulled by the distant sound of the waves breaking on the beach. When

she was in an idle mood she would throw herself down on the thick grass

of the hill-side, and sometimes when at the turn of a road she suddenly

caught a glimpse of the blue sea, sparkling in the light of the sun,

with a white sail at the horizon, she felt an inordinate joy, a

mysterious presentiment of future happiness.

She loved to be alone with the calm beauty of nature, and would sit

motionless for so long on the top of a hill, that the wild rabbits would

bound fearlessly up to her; or she would run swiftly along the cliff,

exhilarated by the pure air of the hills, and finding an exquisite

pleasure in being able to move without fatigue, like the swallows in the

air and the fish in the water.

Very fond of bathing, and strong, fearless, and unconscious of danger,

she would swim out to sea till she could no longer be perceived from the

shore, feeling refreshed by the cool water, and enjoying the rocking of

its clear blue waves. When she was a long way out, she floated, and,

with her arms crossed on her breast, gazed at the deep, blue sky,

against which a swallow or the white outline of a sea-gull could

sometimes be seen. No noise could be heard except the far away murmur of

the waves breaking on the beach, and the vague, confused, almost

imperceptible sound of the pebbles being drawn down by the receding

waves. When she went out too far, a boat put off to bring her in and she

would return to the chateau pale with hunger, but not at all tired, with

a smile on her lips, and her eyes dancing with joy.

The baron was planning great agricultural improvements; he wanted to

make experiments, to try new machines, to acclimatize foreign plants,

and he passed part of his time talking to the peasants, who shook their

heads and refused to believe in his ideas.

He often went on the sea with the sailors of Yport, and when he had seen

the caves, the springs, and the rocks that were of any interest in the

neighborhood, he fished like a common seaman. On windy days, when the

breeze filled the sails and forced the boat over till its edge touched

the water, and the mackerel-nets trailed over the sides, he would hold a

slender fishing-line, waiting with anxiety for the bite of a fish. Then

he went out in the moonlight to take up the nets set the night before

(for he loved to hear the creaking of the masts, and to breathe the

fresh night air), and, after a long time spent in tacking about to find

the buoys, guided by a ridge of rocks, the spire of a church, or the

light-house at Fecamp, he liked to lie still under the first rays of the

rising sun, which turned into a glittering mass the slimy rays and the

white-bellied turbot which lay on the deck of the boat.

At every meal, he gave a glowing account of his excursions, and the

baroness, in her turn, would tell him how many times she had walked up

and down the long poplar-avenues on the right next to the Couillards's

farm, the other one not having enough sun on it.

She had been advised to "take exercise," and she walked for hours

together. As soon as the sun was high enough for its warmth to be felt

she went out, leaning on Rosalie's arm, and enveloped in a cloak and two

shawls, with a red scarf on her head and a black hood over that.

Then she began a long, uninteresting walk from the corner of the chateau

to the first shrubs of the wood and back again. Her left foot, which

dragged a little, had traced two furrows where the grass had died. At

each end of the path she had had a bench placed, and every five minutes

she stopped, saying to the poor, patient maid who supported her: "Let us

sit down, my girl; I am a little tired."

And at each rest she left on one or other of the benches first the scarf

which covered her head, then one shawl, then the other, then the hood,

and then the cloak; and all these things made two big bundles of wraps,

which Rosalie carried on her free arm, when they went in to lunch.

In the afternoon the baroness recommenced her walk in a feebler way,

taking longer rests, and sometimes dozing for an hour at a time on a

couch that was wheeled out of doors for her. She called it taking "her

exercise," in the same way as she spoke of "my hypertrophy."

A doctor she had consulted ten years before because she suffered from

palpitations, had hinted at hypertrophy. Since then she had constantly

used this word, though she did not in the least understand what it

meant, and she was always making the baron, and Jeanne, and Rosalie put

their hands on her heart, though its beatings could not be felt, so

buried was it under her bosom. She obstinately refused to be examined by

any other doctor in case he should say she had another malady, and she

spoke of "her hypertrophy" so often that it seemed as though this

affection of the heart were peculiar to her, and belonged to her, like

something unique, to which no one else had any right. The baron and

Jeanne said "my wife's" or "mamma's hypertrophy" in the same way as they

would have spoken of her dress or her umbrella.

She had been very pretty when she was young, and as slender as a reed.

After flirting with the officers of all the regiments of the Empire, she

had read _Corinne_, which had made her cry, and, in a certain measure,

altered her character.

As her waist got bigger her mind became more and more poetical, and

when, through her size, she had to remain nearly all day in her

armchair, she dreamed of love adventures, of which she was always the

heroine; always thinking of the sort she liked best, like a hand-organ

continually repeating the same air. The languishing romances, where they

talk about captives and swallows, always made her cry; and she even

liked some of Beranger's coarse verses, because of the grief they

expressed. She would sit motionless for hours, lost in thought, and she

was very fond of Les Peuples, because it served as a scene for her

dreams, the surrounding woods, the sea, and the waste land reminding her

of Sir Walter Scott's books, which she had lately been reading.

On rainy days she stayed in her room looking over what she called her

"relics." They were all her old letters; those from her father and

mother, the baron's when she was engaged to him, and some others

besides. She kept them in a mahogany escritoire with copper sphinxes at

the corners, and she always used a particular tone when she said:

"Rosalie, bring me my souvenir-drawer."

The maid would open the escritoire, take out the drawer, and place it on

a chair beside her mistress, who slowly read the letters one by one,

occasionally letting fall a tear.

Jeanne sometimes took Rosalie's place and accompanied her mother's

walks, and listened to her reminiscences of childhood. The young girl

recognized herself in these tales, and was astonished to find that her

mother's thoughts and hopes had been the same as hers; for every one

imagines that he is the first to experience those feelings which made

the hearts of our first parents beat quicker, and which will continue to

exist in human hearts till the end of time.

These tales, often interrupted for several seconds by the baroness's

want of breath, were told as slowly as she walked, and Jeanne let her

thoughts run on to the happy future, without waiting to hear the end of

her mother's anecdotes.

One afternoon, as they were resting on the seat at the bottom of the

walk, they saw a fat priest coming towards them from the other end of

the avenue. He bowed, put on a smiling look, bowed again when he was

about three feet off, and cried:

"Well, Madame la baronne, and how are we to-day?"

He was the cure of the parish.

The baroness, born in a philosophical century and brought up in

revolutionary times by a father who did not believe very much in

anything, did not often go to church, although she liked priests with

the sort of religious instinct that most women have. She had forgotten

all about the Abbe Picot, her cure, and her face colored when she saw

him. She began to make excuses for not having gone to see him, but the

good-natured priest did not seem at all put out. He looked at Jeanne,

complimented her on her good looks, sat down, put his hat on his knees,

and wiped his forehead.

He was a very fat, red-faced man, who perspired very freely. Every

minute he drew an enormous, checked handkerchief from his pocket and

wiped his face and neck; but he had hardly put it back again when fresh

drops appeared on his skin and, falling on his cassock, made the dust on

it into little, round spots. He was a true country-priest, lively and

tolerant, talkative and honest. He told anecdotes, talked about the

peasants, and did not seem to have noticed that his two parishioners had

not been to mass; for the baroness always tried to reconcile her vague

ideas of religion to her indolence, and Jeanne was too happy at having

left the convent, where she had been sickened of holy ceremonies, to

think about going to church.

The baron joined them. His pantheistic religion made him indifferent to

doctrine, and he asked the abbe, whom he knew by sight, to stay to

dinner. The priest had the art of pleasing every one, and thanks to the

unconscious tact that is acquired by the most ordinary men called by

fate to exercise any moral power over their fellow creatures, and the

baroness, attracted perhaps by one of these affinities which draw

similar natures together, paid every attention to him, the fat man's

sanguine face and short breath agreeing with her gasping obesity. By the

time dessert was placed on the table he had begun telling funny stories,

with the _laisser_-_aller_ of a man who had had a good dinner in

congenial society.

All at once, as though a good idea had just occurred to him, he

exclaimed:

"Oh, I have a new parishioner I must introduce to you, M. le Vicomte de

Lamare."

The baroness, who had all the heraldy of the province at her finger

ends, asked:

"Does he belong to the family of Lamare de l'Eure?"

The priest bowed:

"Yes, madame; he is the son of the Vicomte Jean de Lamare, who died last

year."

Then Madame Adelaide, who loved the aristocracy above everything, asked

a great many questions, and learnt that the young man had sold the

family chateau to pay his father's debts, and had come to live on one of

the three farms that he owned at Etouvent.

This property only brought in about five or six thousand livres a year,

but the vicomte was of a foreseeing, economical disposition and meant to

live quietly for two or three years, so that he might save enough to go

into society and marry well, without having to get into debt or mortgage

his farms.

"He is a charming young fellow," added the cure; "and so steady, so

quiet. But he can't find many amusements in the country."

"Bring him to see us, M. l'Abbe," said the baron; "he might like to come

here sometimes." And then the conversation turned to other subjects.

When they went into the drawing-room the priest asked if he might go out

into the garden, as he was used to a little exercise after meals. The

baron went out with him, and they walked backwards and forwards the

whole length of the chateau, while their two shadows, the one thin, and

the other quite round and looking as though it had a mushroom on its

head, fell sometimes before and sometimes behind them, according as they

walked towards the moon or turned their backs on it. The cure chewed a

sort of cigarette that he had taken from his pocket; he told the baron

why he used it in the plain speech of a countryman:

"It is to help the digestion; my liver is rather sluggish."

Looking at the sky where the bright moon was sailing along, he suddenly

said:

"That is a sight one never gets tired of."

Then he went in to say good-bye to the ladies.

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