Little French Masterpieces

She went down to her own apartments, half carried by Brigitte and her old servant.

"What, madame,!" cried the maid, "is that man going to sleep in Monsieur Auguste's bed, wear Monsieur Auguste's slippers, eat the pie that I made for Monsieur Auguste? They may guillotine me, but I – "

"Brigitte!" cried Madame de Dey.

"Hold your tongue, chatterbox!" said her husband in a low voice; "do you want to kill madame?"

At that moment the conscript made a noise in his room, drawing his chair to the table.

"I will not stay here," cried Madame de Dey; "I will go to the greenhouse, where I can hear better what goes on outside during the night."

She was still wavering between fear of having lost her son and the hope of seeing him appear. The night was disquietingly silent. There was one ghastly moment for the countess, when the battalion of conscripts marched into the town, and each man repaired to his lodging. There were disappointed hopes at every footstep and every sound; then nature resumed its terrible tranquillity. Towards morning the countess was obliged to return to her room. Brigitte, who watched her mistress every moment, finding that she did not come out again, went to her room and found the countess dead.

"She probably heard the conscript dressing and walking about in Monsieur Auguste's room, singing their d – d Marseillaise as if he were in a stable!" cried Brigitte. "It was that which killed her!"

The countess's death was caused by a more intense emotion, and probably by some terrible vision. At the precise moment when Madame de Dey died at Carentan, her son was shot in Le Morbihan. We might add this tragic story to the mass of other observations on that sympathy which defies the law of space – documents which some few solitary scholars are collecting with scientific curiosity, and which will one day serve as basis for a new science, a science which till now has lacked only its man of genius.

1831.

A Passion in the Desert

"The sight was fearful!" she cried, as we left the menagerie of Monsieur Martin.

She had been watching that daring performer work with his hyena, to speak in the style of the posters.

"How on earth," she continued, "can he have tamed his animals so as to be sure enough of their affection to – "

"That fact, which seems to you a problem," I replied, interrupting her, "is, however, perfectly natural."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, while an incredulous smile flickered on her lip.

"Do you mean to say that you think that beasts are entirely devoid of passions?" I asked her. "Let me tell you that we can safely give them credit for all the vices due to our state of civilisation."

She looked at me with an air of astonishment.

"But," I continued, "when I first saw Monsieur Martin, I admit that I exclaimed in surprise, as you did. I happened to be beside an old soldier who had lost his right leg, and who had gone into the menagerie with me. His face had struck me. It was one of those dauntless faces, stamped with the seal of war, upon which Napoleon's battles are written. That old trooper had above all a frank and joyous manner, which always prejudices me favourably. Doubtless he was one of those fellows whom nothing surprises, who find food for laughter in the last contortions of a comrade, whom they bury or strip merrily; who defy cannon-balls fearlessly, who never deliberate long, and who would fraternise with the devil. After looking closely at the proprietor of the menagerie as he came out of the dressing-room, my companion curled his lip, expressing disdain by that sort of meaning glance which superior men affect in order to distinguish themselves from dupes. And so, when I waxed enthusiastic over Monsieur Martin's courage, he smiled and said to me with a knowing look, shaking his head: 'I know all about it!'

"'What? You do?' I replied. 'If you will explain what you mean, I shall be very much obliged.'

"After a few moments, during which we introduced ourselves, we went to dine at the first restaurant that we saw. At dessert, a bottle of champagne made that interesting old soldier's memory perfectly clear. He told me his history, and I saw that he was justified in exclaiming: 'I know all about it!'"

When we reached her house, she teased me so, and made me so many promises, that I consented to repeat to her the soldier's story. And so the next day she received this episode of an epic which might be entitled The French in Egypt.

At the time of General Desaix's expedition to Upper Egypt, a Provençal soldier, having fallen into the hands of the Maugrabins, was taken by those Arabs to the desert which lies beyond the cataracts of the Nile. In order to place between themselves and the French army a sufficient space to ensure their safety, the Maugrabins made a forced march and did not halt until dark. They camped about a well, concealed by palm-trees, near which they had previously buried some provisions. Having no idea that the thought of flight would ever occur to their prisoner, they simply bound his hands, and one and all went to sleep, after eating a few dates and giving their horses some barley. When the bold Provençal saw that his enemies had ceased to watch him, he made use of his teeth to get possession of a scimitar; then, using his knees to hold the blade in place, he cut the cords which prevented him from using his hands, and was free. He at once seized a carbine and a poniard, and took the precaution to lay in a supply of dried dates, a small bag of barley, and some powder and ball; then he strapped a scimitar about his waist, mounted a horse, and rode swiftly away in the direction in which he supposed the French army to be. In his haste to reach camp, he urged his already tired beast so hard that the poor creature died, his flanks torn to shreds, leaving the Frenchman in the midst of the desert.

After walking through the sand for a long time, with the courage of an escaping convict, the soldier was obliged to stop; the day was drawing to a close. Despite the beauty of the sky of an Eastern night, he did not feel strong enough to go on. Luckily he had been able to reach an elevation, on top of which rose a few palm-trees, whose foliage, seen long before, had aroused the sweetest hope in his heart. His weariness was so great that he lay down upon a rock shaped like a camp-bed, and fell asleep there without taking the least precaution to protect himself while asleep. The loss of his life seemed inevitable, and his last thought was a regret. He had already repented of having left the Maugrabins, whose wandering life had begun to seem delightful to him since he was far away from them and helpless.

He was awakened by the sun, whose pitiless rays, falling perpendicularly upon the granite, caused an intolerable heat. For the Provençal had been foolish enough to lie on the side opposite the shadow cast by the majestic and verdant fronds of the palm-trees. He looked at those solitary trunks, and shuddered. They reminded him of the graceful shafts, crowned with long leaves, for which the columns of the Saracen cathedral at Arles are noted. But when, after counting the palm-trees, he glanced about him, the most ghastly despair settled about his heart. He saw a boundless ocean; the sombre sands of the desert stretched away in every direction as far as the eye could see, and glittered like a steel blade in a bright light. He did not know whether it was a sea of glass or a succession of lakes as smooth as a mirror. Rising in waves, a fiery vapour whirled above that quivering soil. The sky shone with a resplendent Oriental glare, of discouraging purity, for it left nothing for the imagination to desire. Sky and earth were aflame. The silence terrified by its wild and desolate majesty. The infinite, vast expanse weighed upon the soul from every side; not a cloud in the sky, not a breath in the air, not a rift on the surface of the sand, which seemed to move in tiny waves; and the horizon terminated, as at sea in fine weather, with a line of light as slender as the edge of a sword. The Provençal embraced the trunk of a palm-tree as if it were the body of a friend; then, sheltered by the straight, slender shadow which the tree cast upon the stone, he wept, seated himself anew, and remained there, gazing with profound melancholy at the implacable scene before his eyes. He shouted as if to tempt the solitude. His voice, lost in the hollows of the hillock, made in the distance a faint sound which awoke no echo; the echo was in his heart. The Provençal was twenty-two years old; he cocked his carbine.

"I shall have time enough for that!" he said to himself, as he placed the weapon on the ground.

Gazing alternately at the dark stretch of sand and the blue expanse of the sky, the soldier dreamed of France. He smelt with a thrill of rapture the gutters of Paris, he recalled the towns through which he had marched, the faces of his comrades, the most trivial details of his life. In truth, his southern imagination soon brought before him the stones of his dear Provence, in the eddying waves of heat which shimmered above the vast sheet of the desert. Dreading all the perils of that cruel mirage, he descended the slope opposite that by which he had ascended the mound the night before. He was overjoyed to discover a sort of cave, hollowed out by nature in the huge fragments of granite which formed the base of that hillock. The remains of a mat indicated that the shelter had once been inhabited. Then, a few steps away, he saw some palm-trees laden with dates. At that sight the instinct which attaches us to life reawoke in his heart. He hoped to live long enough to await the passing of some Maugrabins; or perhaps he should soon hear the roar of cannon; for at that moment Bonaparte was marching through Egypt. Revived by that thought, the Frenchman shook down several clusters of ripe fruit, beneath the weight of which the trees seemed to bend, and he assured himself, on tasting that unlooked-for manna, that the previous occupant of the grotto had cultivated the palm-trees; in truth, the fresh and toothsome flesh of the dates demonstrated the care of his predecessor. The Provençal passed abruptly from the gloomiest despair to the most frantic joy.

He returned to the top of the hill, and employed himself during the rest of the day cutting down one of the sterile palm-trees, which had served him for a roof the night before. A vague memory brought to his mind the beasts of the desert, and, anticipating that they might come to drink at the spring which gushed out of the sand at the foot of the bowlders, he determined to guard himself against their visits by placing a barrier against the door of his hermitage. Despite his zeal, despite the strength which the fear of being eaten up during his sleep gave him, it was impossible for him to cut the palm-tree into pieces during that day, but he succeeded in felling it. When, towards evening, that king of the desert fell, the noise of its fall echoed in the distance, and the solitude uttered a sort of moan; the soldier shuddered as if he had heard a voice predicting disaster. But like an heir who does not mourn long over the death of his parent, he stripped that noble tree of the great green leaves which are its poetic adornment, and used them to repair the mat, upon which he lay down to sleep. Fatigued by the heat and hard work, he fell asleep beneath the red vault of the grotto.

In the middle of the night, his slumber was disturbed by a peculiar noise. He sat up, and the profound silence which prevailed enabled him to recognise a breathing whose savage energy could not belong to a human being. A terrible fear, increased by the dark, the silence, and the bewilderment of the first waking moments, froze his heart. Indeed, he already felt the painful contraction of his hair, when, by dint of straining his eyes, he perceived in the darkness two faint amber lights. At first he attributed those lights to the reflection of his own eyes; but soon, the brilliancy of the night assisting him little by little to distinguish the objects in the cavern, he discovered a huge beast lying within two yards of him. Was it a lion? Was it a tiger? Was it a crocodile?

The Provençal had not enough education to know to what species his companion belonged; but his terror was the more violent in that his ignorance led him to imagine all sorts of calamities at once. He endured the fiendish tortures of listening, of noticing the irregularities of that breathing, without losing a sound, and without daring to make the slightest motion. An odour as pungent as that given forth by foxes, but more penetrating, more weighty, so to speak, filled the cave; and when the Provençal had smelled it, his terror reached its height, for he could no longer doubt the nature of the terrible companion whose royal den he had appropriated for a camp. Soon the reflection of the moon, which was sinking rapidly towards the horizon, lighted up the den, and little by little illuminated the spotted skin of a panther.

The lion of Egypt was asleep, curled up like a huge dog in peaceable possession of a luxuriant kennel at the door of a palace; its eyes, which had opened for a moment, had closed again. Its head was turned towards the Frenchman. A thousand conflicting thoughts passed through the mind of the panther's prisoner; at first, he thought of killing her with his carbine; but he saw that there was not room enough between himself and the beast for him to take aim; the end of the barrel would have reached beyond the panther. And suppose she should wake? That supposition kept him perfectly still. As he listened to his heart beat in the silence, he cursed the too violent pulsations caused by the rushing of his blood, fearing lest they should disturb that slumber which enabled him to devise some plan of escape. Twice he put his hand to his scimitar, with the idea of cutting off his enemy's head; but the difficulty of cutting through the close-haired skin made him abandon the bold project. "If I missed, it would be sure death," he thought.

He preferred the chances of a fight, and determined to wait for daylight. And the day was not long in coming. Then the Frenchman was able to examine the beast; its muzzle was stained with blood.

"It has eaten a good meal," thought he, undisturbed as to whether the meal had been of human flesh or not; "it will not be hungry when it wakes."

It was a female; the hair on the stomach and thighs was a dazzling white. A number of little spots, like velvet, formed dainty bracelets around her paws. The muscular tail was white also, but ended in black rings. The upper part of the coat, yellow as unpolished gold, but very smooth and soft, bore the characteristic marking of rose-shaped spots which serve to distinguish panthers from other varieties of the feline family. That placid but formidable hostess lay snoring in an attitude as graceful as that of a cat lying on the cushion of an ottoman. Her blood-stained paws, muscular and provided with sharp claws, were above her head, which rested on them; and from her muzzle projected a few straight hairs called whiskers, like silver thread. If he had seen her thus in a cage, the Provençal would certainly have admired the beast's grace and the striking contrast of the bright colours which gave to her coat an imperial gloss and splendour; but at that moment, his eyes were bewildered by that terrible sight. The presence of the panther, even though asleep, produced upon him the effect which the snake's magnetic eyes are said to produce upon the nightingale. For a moment the soldier's courage oozed away before that danger; whereas it would doubtless have been raised to its highest pitch before the mouths of cannon vomiting shot and shell. However, a bold thought entered his mind and froze at its source the cold perspiration which stood on his brow. Acting like those men who, driven to the wall by misfortune, defy death and offer themselves defenceless to its blows, he detected in that adventure a tragedy which he could not understand, and resolved to play his part with honour to the last.

"The Arabs might have killed me day before yesterday," he thought.

Looking upon himself as dead, he waited with anxious curiosity for his enemy to wake. When the sun appeared, the panther suddenly opened her eyes; then she stretched her paws, as if to limber them and to rid herself of the cramp; finally she yawned, showing her terrifying arsenal of teeth, and her cloven tongue, hard as a file.

"She is like a dainty woman!" thought the Frenchman, as he watched her roll about and go through the prettiest and most coquettish movements.

She licked off the blood which stained her paws and her nose, and scratched her head again and again, with the most graceful of gestures.

"Good! give a little attention to your toilet!" said the Frenchman to himself, his gayety returning with his courage; "in a moment we will bid each other good day."

And he grasped the short poniard which he had taken from the Maugrabins.

At that moment the panther turned her face towards the Frenchman and gazed steadfastly at him without moving. The rigidity of her steely eyes, and their unendurable brilliancy, made the Provençal shudder, especially when the beast walked towards him; but he gazed at her with a caressing expression, and smiling at her as if to magnetise her, allowed her to come close to him; then, with a touch as gentle and loving as if he were caressing the fairest of women, he passed his hand over her whole body from head to tail, scratching with his nails the flexible vertebrae which formed the panther's yellow back. The animal stiffened her tail with pleasure, her eyes became softer; and when the Frenchman performed that self-interested caress for the third time, she began to purr, as cats do to express pleasure; but the sound came forth from a throat so deep and so powerful that it rang through the grotto like the last notes of an organ through a church. The Provençal, realising the importance of his caresses, repeated them in a way to soothe, to lull the imperious courtesan. When he felt sure that he had allayed the ferocity of his capricious companion, whose hunger had certainly been sated the night before, he rose and started to leave the grotto. The panther allowed him to go; but, when he had climbed the hill, she bounded after him as lightly as a sparrow hops from branch to branch, and rubbed against his legs, curving her back after the manner of a cat; then, looking into her guest's face with an eye whose glare had become less deadly, she uttered that wild cry which naturalists liken to the noise made by a saw.

"She is very exacting!" exclaimed the Frenchman, with a smile.

He tried playing with her ears, patting her sides, and scratching her head hard with his nails; and finding that he was successful, he tickled her skull with the point of his dagger, watching for an opportunity to kill her, but the hardness of the bones made him afraid that he might not succeed.

The sultana of the desert approved her slave's talents by raising her head, stretching out her neck, and demonstrating her delight by the tranquillity of her manner. Suddenly the Frenchman thought that to murder with a single blow that savage princess he would have to stab her in the throat, and he had already raised his blade, when the panther, satiated no doubt, gracefully lay down at his feet, casting on him from time to time glances in which, despite their natural savagery, there was a vague expression of kindness. The poor Provençal ate his dates, leaning against one of the palm-trees; but he gazed by turns at the desert in search of rescuers, and at his terrible companion to observe the progress of her uncertain kindness. The panther watched the place where the date-stones fell, whenever he threw one away, and her eyes then expressed a most extraordinary degree of suspicion. She examined the Frenchman with the prudent scrutiny of a tradesman; but that scrutiny was evidently favourable to him, for, when he had finished his meagre meal, she licked his shoes, and with her rough, strong tongue removed as by a miracle the dust that had become caked in the creases of the leather.

"But what will happen when she is hungry?" thought the Provençal. Despite the shudder caused by that idea, the soldier began to observe with a curious ardour the proportions of the panther, certainly one of the finest examples of the species; for she was three feet in height, and four feet long, not including the tail. That powerful weapon, as round as a club, measured nearly three feet. The face, which was as large as a lioness's, was distinguished by an expression of extraordinary shrewdness; the unfeeling cruelty of the tiger was predominant therein, but there was also a vague resemblance to the face of an artful woman. At that moment, that solitary queen's features disclosed a sort of merriment like that of Nero in his cups; she had quenched her thirst in blood, and was inclined to play. The soldier tried to come and go; the panther allowed him to do as he pleased, contenting herself with following him with her eyes, resembling not so much a faithful dog as a great Angora cat, distrustful of everything, even her master's movements. When he turned, he saw beside the spring the remains of his horse; the panther had brought the body all that distance. About two-thirds of it were consumed. That spectacle encouraged the Frenchman. It was easy then for him to explain the panther's absence and the forbearance with which she had treated him during his sleep. Emboldened by his good fortune to tempt the future, he conceived the wild hope of living on good terms with the panther from day to day, neglecting no method of taming her and of winning her good graces.

He returned to her side and had the indescribable joy of seeing her move her tail with an almost imperceptible movement. Thereupon he sat down fearlessly beside her and they began to play together: he patted her paws and her nose, twisted her ears, threw her over on her back, and scratched roughly her soft, warm flanks. She made no objection, and when the soldier attempted to smooth the hair on her paws, she carefully withdrew her nails, which were curved like Damascus blades. The Frenchman, who had one hand on his dagger, was still thinking of thrusting it into the side of the too trustful panther; but he was afraid of being strangled in her last convulsions. Moreover, he had in his heart a sort of remorse, enjoining upon him to respect a harmless creature. It seemed to him that he had found a friend in that boundless desert.

Involuntarily he thought of his first sweetheart, whom he had nicknamed Mignonne, by antiphrasis, because she was so fiendishly jealous that, throughout all the time that their intercourse lasted, he had to be on his guard against the knife with which she constantly threatened him. That memory of his youth suggested to him the idea of trying to make the young panther answer to that name; he admired her agility, her grace, and her gentleness with less terror now.

Towards the close of the day, he had become accustomed to his hazardous situation and he was almost in love with its dangers. His companion had finally caught the habit of turning to him when he called, in a falsetto voice:

"Mignonne!"

At sunset, Mignonne repeated several times a deep and melancholy cry.