Original Short Stories of Maupassant, Volume 10

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GUY DE MAUPASSANT

ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES

Translated by
ALBERT M. C. McMASTER, B.A.
A. E. HENDERSON, B.A.
MME. QUESADA and Others




VOLUME X.



THE CHRISTENING
THE FARMER'S WIFE
THE DEVIL
THE SNIPE
THE WILL
WALTER SCHNAFF'S ADVENTURE
AT SEA
MINUET
THE SON
THAT PIG OF A MORIN
SAINT ANTHONY
LASTING LOVE
PIERROT
A NORMANDY JOKE
FATHER MATTHEW




THE CHRISTENING

"Well doctor, a little brandy?"

"With pleasure."

The old ship's surgeon, holding out his glass, watched it as it slowly
filled with the golden liquid. Then, holding it in front of his eyes, he
let the light from the lamp stream through it, smelled it, tasted a few
drops and smacked his lips with relish. Then he said:

"Ah! the charming poison! Or rather the seductive murderer, the
delightful destroyer of peoples!

"You people do not know it the way I do. You may have read that admirable
book entitled L'Assommoir, but you have not, as I have, seen alcohol
exterminate a whole tribe of savages, a little kingdom of
negroes--alcohol calmly unloaded by the barrel by red-bearded
English seamen.

"Right near here, in a little village in Brittany near Pont-l'Abbe, I
once witnessed a strange and terrible tragedy caused by alcohol. I was
spending my vacation in a little country house left me by my father. You
know this flat coast where the wind whistles day and night, where one
sees, standing or prone, these giant rocks which in the olden times were
regarded as guardians, and which still retain something majestic and
imposing about them. I always expect to see them come to life and start
to walk across the country with the slow and ponderous tread of giants,
or to unfold enormous granite wings and fly toward the paradise of the
Druids.

"Everywhere is the sea, always ready on the slightest provocation to rise
in its anger and shake its foamy mane at those bold enough to brave its
wrath.

"And the men who travel on this terrible sea, which, with one motion of
its green back, can overturn and swallow up their frail barks--they
go out in the little boats, day and night, hardy, weary and drunk. They
are often drunk. They have a saying which says: 'When the bottle is full
you see the reef, but when it is empty you see it no more.'

"Go into one of their huts; you will never find the father there. If you
ask the woman what has become of her husband, she will stretch her arms
out over the dark ocean which rumbles and roars along the coast. He
remained, there one night, when he had had too much to drink; so did her
oldest son. She has four more big, strong, fair-haired boys. Soon it will
be their time.

"As I said, I was living in a little house near Pont-l'Abbe. I was there
alone with my servant, an old sailor, and with a native family which took
care of the grounds in my absence. It consisted of three persons, two
sisters and a man, who had married one of them, and who attended to the
garden.

"A short time before Christmas my gardener's wife presented him with a
boy. The husband asked me to stand as god-father. I could hardly deny the
request, and so he borrowed ten francs from me for the cost of the
christening, as he said.

"The second day of January was chosen as the date of the ceremony. For a
week the earth had been covered by an enormous white carpet of snow,
which made this flat, low country seem vast and limitless. The ocean
appeared to be black in contrast with this white plain; one could see it
rolling, raging and tossing its waves as though wishing to annihilate its
pale neighbor, which appeared to be dead, it was so calm, quiet and cold.

"At nine o'clock the father, Kerandec, came to my door with his
sister-in-law, the big Kermagan, and the nurse, who carried the infant
wrapped up in a blanket. We started for the church. The weather was so
cold that it seemed to dry up the skin and crack it open. I was thinking
of the poor little creature who was being carried on ahead of us, and I
said to myself that this Breton race must surely be of iron, if their
children were able, as soon as they were born, to stand such an outing.

"We came to the church, but the door was closed; the priest was late.

"Then the nurse sat down on one of the steps and began to undress the
child. At first I thought there must have been some slight accident, but
I saw that they were leaving the poor little fellow naked completely
naked, in the icy air. Furious at such imprudence, I protested:

"'Why, you are crazy! You will kill the child!'

"The woman answered quietly: 'Oh, no, sir; he must wait naked before the
Lord.'

"The father and the aunt looked on undisturbed. It was the custom. If it
were not adhered to misfortune was sure to attend the little one.

"I scolded, threatened and pleaded. I used force to try to cover the
frail creature. All was in vain. The nurse ran away from me through the
snow, and the body of the little one turned purple. I was about to leave
these brutes when I saw the priest coming across the country, followed.
by the sexton and a young boy. I ran towards him and gave vent to my
indignation. He showed no surprise nor did he quicken his pace in the
least. He answered:

"'What can you expect, sir? It's the custom. They all do it, and it's of
no use trying to stop them.'

"'But at least hurry up!' I cried.

"He answered: 'But I can't go any faster.'

"He entered the vestry, while we remained outside on the church steps. I
was suffering. But what about the poor little creature who was howling
from the effects of the biting cold.

"At last the door opened. He went into the church. But the poor child had
to remain naked throughout the ceremony. It was interminable. The priest
stammered over the Latin words and mispronounced them horribly. He walked
slowly and with a ponderous tread. His white surplice chilled my heart.
It seemed as though, in the name of a pitiless and barbarous god, he had
wrapped himself in another kind of snow in order to torture this little
piece of humanity that suffered so from the cold.

"Finally the christening was finished according to the rites and I saw
the nurse once more take the frozen, moaning child and wrap it up in the
blanket.

"The priest said to me: 'Do you wish to sign the register?'

"Turning to my gardener, I said: 'Hurry up and get home quickly so that
you can warm that child.' I gave him some advice so as to ward off, if
not too late, a bad attack of pneumonia. He promised to follow my
instructions and left with his sister-in-law and the nurse. I followed
the priest into the vestry, and when I had signed he demanded five francs
for expenses.

"As I had already given the father ten francs, I refused to pay twice.
The priest threatened to destroy the paper and to annul the ceremony. I,
in turn, threatened him with the district attorney. The dispute was long,
and I finally paid five francs.

"As soon as I reached home I went down to Kerandec's to find out whether
everything was all right. Neither father, nor sister-in-law, nor nurse
had yet returned. The mother, who had remained alone, was in bed,
shivering with cold and starving, for she had had nothing to eat since
the day before.

"'Where the deuce can they have gone?' I asked. She answered without
surprise or anger, 'They're going to drink something to celebrate: It was
the custom. Then I thought, of my ten francs which were to pay the church
and would doubtless pay for the alcohol.

"I sent some broth to the mother and ordered a good fire to be built in
the room. I was uneasy and furious and promised myself to drive out these
brutes, wondering with terror what was going to happen to the poor
infant.

"It was already six, and they had not yet returned. I told my servant to
wait for them and I went to bed. I soon fell asleep and slept like a top.
At daybreak I was awakened by my servant, who was bringing me my hot
water.

"As soon as my eyes were open I asked: 'How about Kerandec?'

"The man hesitated and then stammered: 'Oh! he came back, all right,
after midnight, and so drunk that he couldn't walk, and so were Kermagan
and the nurse. I guess they must have slept in a ditch, for the little
one died and they never even noticed it.'

"I jumped up out of bed, crying:

"'What! The child is dead?'

"'Yes, sir. They brought it back to Mother Kerandec. When she saw it she
began to cry, and now they are making her drink to console her.'

"'What's that? They are making her drink!'

"'Yes, sir. I only found it out this morning. As Kerandec had no more
brandy or money, he took some wood alcohol, which monsieur gave him for
the lamp, and all four of them are now drinking that. The mother is
feeling pretty sick now.'

"I had hastily put on some clothes, and seizing a stick, with the
intention of applying it to the backs of these human beasts, I hastened
towards the gardener's house.

"The mother was raving drunk beside the blue body of her dead baby.
Kerandec, the nurse, and the Kermagan woman were snoring on the floor. I
had to take care of the mother, who died towards noon."

The old doctor was silent. He took up the brandy-bottle and poured out
another glass. He held it up to the lamp, and the light streaming through
it imparted to the liquid the amber color of molten topaz. With one gulp
he swallowed the treacherous drink.




THE FARMER'S WIFE

Said the Baron Rene du Treilles to me:

"Will you come and open the hunting season with me at my farm at
Marinville? I shall be delighted if you will, my dear boy. In the first
place, I am all alone. It is rather a difficult ground to get at, and the
place I live in is so primitive that I can invite only my most intimate
friends."

I accepted his invitation, and on Saturday we set off on the train going
to Normandy. We alighted at a station called Almivare, and Baron Rene,
pointing to a carryall drawn by a timid horse and driven by a big
countryman with white hair, said:

"Here is our equipage, my dear boy."

The driver extended his hand to his landlord, and the baron pressed it
warmly, asking:

"Well, Maitre Lebrument, how are you?"

"Always the same, M'sieu le Baron."

We jumped into this swinging hencoop perched on two enormous wheels, and
the young horse, after a violent swerve, started into a gallop, pitching
us into the air like balls. Every fall backward on the wooden bench gave
me the most dreadful pain.

The peasant kept repeating in his calm, monotonous voice:

"There, there! All right all right, Moutard, all right!"

But Moutard scarcely heard, and kept capering along like a goat.

Our two dogs behind us, in the empty part of the hencoop, were standing
up and sniffing the air of the plains, where they scented game.

The baron gazed with a sad eye into the distance at the vast Norman
landscape, undulating and melancholy, like an immense English park, where
the farmyards, surrounded by two or four rows of trees and full of
dwarfed apple trees which hid the houses, gave a vista as far as the eye
could see of forest trees, copses and shrubbery such as landscape
gardeners look for in laying out the boundaries of princely estates.

And Rene du Treilles suddenly exclaimed:

"I love this soil; I have my very roots in it."

He was a pure Norman, tall and strong, with a slight paunch, and of the
old race of adventurers who went to found kingdoms on the shores of every
ocean. He was about fifty years of age, ten years less perhaps than the
farmer who was driving us.

The latter was a lean peasant, all skin and bone, one of those men who
live a hundred years.

After two hours' travelling over stony roads, across that green and
monotonous plain, the vehicle entered one of those orchard farmyards and
drew up before in old structure falling into decay, where an old
maid-servant stood waiting beside a young fellow, who took charge of the
horse.

We entered the farmhouse. The smoky kitchen was high and spacious. The
copper utensils and the crockery shone in the reflection of the hearth. A
cat lay asleep on a chair, a dog under the table. One perceived an odor
of milk, apples, smoke, that indescribable smell peculiar to old
farmhouses; the odor of the earth, of the walls, of furniture, the odor
of spilled stale soup, of former wash-days and of former inhabitants, the
smell of animals and of human beings combined, of things and of persons,
the odor of time, and of things that have passed away.

I went out to have a look at the farmyard. It was very large, full of
apple trees, dwarfed and crooked, and laden with fruit which fell on the
grass around them. In this farmyard the Norman smell of apples was as
strong as that of the bloom of orange trees on the shores of the south of
France.

Four rows of beeches surrounded this inclosure. They were so tall that
they seemed to touch the clouds at this hour of nightfall, and their
summits, through which the night winds passed, swayed and sang a
mournful, interminable song.

I reentered the house.

The baron was warming his feet at the fire, and was listening to the
farmer's talk about country matters. He talked about marriages, births
and deaths, then about the fall in the price of grain and the latest news
about cattle. The "Veularde" (as he called a cow that had been bought at
the fair of Veules) had calved in the middle of June. The cider had not
been first-class last year. Apricots were almost disappearing from the
country.

Then we had dinner. It was a good rustic meal, simple and abundant, long
and tranquil. And while we were dining I noticed the special kind of
friendly familiarity which had struck me from the start between the baron
and the peasant.

Outside, the beeches continued sighing in the night wind, and our two
dogs, shut up in a shed, were whining and howling in an uncanny fashion.
The fire was dying out in the big fireplace. The maid-servant had gone to
bed. Maitre Lebrument said in his turn:

"If you don't mind, M'sieu le Baron, I'm going to bed. I am not used to
staying up late."

The baron extended his hand toward him and said: "Go, my friend," in so
cordial a tone that I said, as soon as the man had disappeared:

"He is devoted to you, this farmer?"

"Better than that, my dear fellow! It is a drama, an old drama, simple
and very sad, that attaches him to me. Here is the story:

"You know that my father was colonel in a cavalry regiment. His orderly
was this young fellow, now an old man, the son of a farmer. When my
father retired from the army he took this former soldier, then about
forty; as his servant. I was at that time about thirty. We were living in
our old chateau of Valrenne, near Caudebec-en-Caux.

"At this period my mother's chambermaid was one of the prettiest girls
you could see, fair-haired, slender and sprightly in manner, a genuine
soubrette of the old type that no longer exists. To-day these creatures
spring up into hussies before their time. Paris, with the aid of the
railways, attracts them, calls them, takes hold of them, as soon as they
are budding into womanhood, these little sluts who in old times remained
simple maid-servants. Every man passing by, as recruiting sergeants did
formerly, looking for recruits, with conscripts, entices and ruins them
--these foolish lassies--and we have now only the scum of the
female sex for servant maids, all that is dull, nasty, common and
ill-formed, too ugly, even for gallantry.

"Well, this girl was charming, and I often gave her a kiss in dark
corners; nothing more, I swear to you! She was virtuous, besides; and I
had some respect for my mother's house, which is more than can be said of
the blackguards of the present day.

"Now, it happened that my man-servant, the ex-soldier, the old farmer you
have just seen, fell madly in love with this girl, perfectly daft. The
first thing we noticed was that he forgot everything, he paid no
attention to anything.

"My father said incessantly:

"'See here, Jean, what's the matter with you? Are you ill?'

"He replied:

"'No, no, M'sieu le Baron. There's nothing the matter with me.'

"He grew thin; he broke glasses and let plates fall when waiting on the
table. We thought he must have been attacked by some nervous affection,
and sent for the doctor, who thought he could detect symptoms of spinal
disease. Then my father, full of anxiety about his faithful man-servant,
decided to place him in a private hospital. When the poor fellow heard of
my father's intentions he made a clean breast of it.

"'M'sieu le Baron'

"'Well, my boy?'

"'You see, the thing I want is not physic.'

"'Ha! what is it, then?'

"'It's marriage!'

"My father turned round and stared at him in astonishment.

"'What's that you say, eh?'

"'It's marriage."

"'Marriage! So, then, you jackass, you're to love.'

"'That's how it is, M'sieu le Baron.'

"And my father began to laugh so immoderately that my mother called out
through the wall of the next room:

"'What in the world is the matter with you, Gontran?'

"He replied:

"'Come here, Catherine.'

"And when she came in he told her, with tears in his eyes from sheer
laughter, that his idiot of a servant-man was lovesick.

"But my mother, instead of laughing, was deeply affected.

"'Who is it that you have fallen in love with, my poor fellow?' she
asked.

"He answered without hesitation:

"'With Louise, Madame le Baronne.'

"My mother said with the utmost gravity: 'We must try to arrange this
matter the best way we can.'

"So Louise was sent for and questioned by my mother; and she said in
reply that she knew all about Jean's liking for her, that in fact Jean
had spoken to her about it several times, but that she did not want him.
She refused to say why.

"And two months elapsed during which my father and mother never ceased to
urge this girl to marry Jean. As she declared she was not in love with
any other man, she could not give any serious reason for her refusal. My
father at last overcame her resistance by means of a big present of
money, and started the pair of them on a farm--this very farm. I did
not see them for three years, and then I learned that Louise had died of
consumption. But my father and mother died, too, in their turn, and it
was two years more before I found myself face to face with Jean.

"At last one autumn day about the end of October the idea came into my
head to go hunting on this part of my estate, which my father had told me
was full of game.

"So one evening, one wet evening, I arrived at this house. I was shocked
to find my father's old servant with perfectly white hair, though he was
not more than forty-five or forty-six years of age. I made him dine with
me, at the very table where we are now sitting. It was raining hard. We
could hear the rain battering at the roof, the walls, and the windows,
flowing in a perfect deluge into the farmyard; and my dog was howling in
the shed where the other dogs are howling to-night.

"All of a sudden, when the servant-maid had gone to bed, the man said in
a timid voice:

"'M'sieu le Baron.'

"'What is it, my dear Jean?'

"'I have something to tell you.'

"'Tell it, my dear Jean.'

"'You remember Louise, my wife.'

"'Certainly, I remember her.'

"'Well, she left me a message for you.'

"'What was it?'

"'A--a--well, it was what you might call a confession.'

"'Ha--and what was it about?'

"'It was--it was--I'd rather, all the same, tell you nothing
about it--but I must--I must. Well, it's this--it wasn't
consumption she died of at all. It was grief--well, that's the long
and short of it. As soon as she came to live here after we were married,
she grew thin; she changed so that you wouldn't know her, M'sieu le
Baron. She was just as I was before I married her, but it was just the
opposite, just the opposite.

"'I sent for the doctor. He said it was her liver that was affected--he
said it was what he called a "hepatic" complaint--I don't know these
big words, M'sieu le Baron. Then I bought medicine for her, heaps on
heaps of bottles that cost about three hundred francs. But she'd take
none of them; she wouldn't have them; she said: "It's no use, my poor
Jean; it wouldn't do me any good." I saw well that she had some hidden
trouble; and then I found her one time crying, and I didn't know what to
do, no, I didn't know what to do. I bought her caps, and dresses, and
hair oil, and earrings. Nothing did her any good. And I saw that she was
going to die. And so one night at the end of November, one snowy night,
after she had been in bed the whole day, she told me to send for the
cure. So I went for him. As soon as he came--'

"'Jean,' she said, 'I am going to make a confession to you. I owe it to
you, Jean. I have never been false to you, never! never, before or after
you married me. M'sieu le Cure is there, and can tell you so; he knows my
soul. Well, listen, Jean. If I am dying, it is because I was not able to
console myself for leaving the chateau, because I was too fond of the
young Baron Monsieur Rene, too fond of him, mind you, Jean, there was no
harm in it! This is the thing that's killing me. When I could see him no
more I felt that I should die. If I could only have seen him, I might
have lived, only seen him, nothing more. I wish you'd tell him some day,
by and by, when I am no longer here. You will tell him, swear you, will,
Jean--swear it--in the presence of M'sieu le Cure! It will console me to
know that he will know it one day, that this was the cause of my death!
Swear it!'

"'Well, I gave her my promise, M'sieu It Baron, and on the faith of an
honest man I have kept my word.'

"And then he ceased speaking, his eyes filling with tears.

"Good God! my dear boy, you can't form any idea of the emotion that
filled me when I heard this poor devil, whose wife I had killed without
suspecting it, telling me this story on that wet night in this very
kitchen.

"I exclaimed: 'Ah! my poor Jean! my poor Jean!'

"He murmured: 'Well, that's all, M'sieu le Baron. I could not help it,
one way or the other--and now it's all over!'

"I caught his hand across the table, and I began to weep.

"He asked, 'Will you come and see her grave?' I nodded assent, for I
couldn't speak. He rose, lighted a lantern, and we walked through the
blinding rain by the light of the lantern.

"He opened a gate, and I saw some crosses of black wood.

"Suddenly he stopped before a marble slab and said: 'There it is,' and he
flashed the lantern close to it so that I could read the inscription:

"'TO LOUISE HORTENSE MARINET,
"'Wife of Jean-Francois Lebrument, Farmer,
"'SHE WAS A FAITHFUL WIFE. GOD REST HER SOUL.'

"We fell on our knees in the damp grass, he and I, with the lantern
between us, and I saw the rain beating on the white marble slab. And I
thought of the heart of her sleeping there in her grave. Ah! poor heart!
poor heart! Since then I come here every year. And I don't know why, but
I feel as if I were guilty of some crime in the presence of this man who
always looks as if he forgave me."




THE DEVIL

The peasant and the doctor stood on opposite sides of the bed, beside the
old, dying woman. She was calm and resigned and her mind quite clear as
she looked at them and listened to their conversation. She was going to
die, and she did not rebel at it, for her time was come, as she was
ninety-two.

The July sun streamed in at the window and the open door and cast its hot
flames on the uneven brown clay floor, which had been stamped down by
four generations of clodhoppers. The smell of the fields came in also,
driven by the sharp wind and parched by the noontide heat. The
grass-hoppers chirped themselves hoarse, and filled the country with
their shrill noise, which was like that of the wooden toys which are sold
to children at fair time.

The doctor raised his voice and said: "Honore, you cannot leave your
mother in this state; she may die at any moment." And the peasant, in
great distress, replied: "But I must get in my wheat, for it has been
lying on the ground a long time, and the weather is just right for it;
what do you say about it, mother?" And the dying old woman, still
tormented by her Norman avariciousness, replied yes with her eyes and her
forehead, and thus urged her son to get in his wheat, and to leave her to
die alone.

But the doctor got angry, and, stamping his foot, he said: "You are no
better than a brute, do you hear, and I will not allow you to do it, do
you understand? And if you must get in your wheat today, go and fetch
Rapet's wife and make her look after your mother; I will have it, do you
understand me? And if you do not obey me, I will let you die like a dog,
when you are ill in your turn; do you hear?"

The peasant, a tall, thin fellow with slow movements, who was tormented
by indecision, by his fear of the doctor and his fierce love of saving,
hesitated, calculated, and stammered out: "How much does La Rapet charge
for attending sick people?" "How should I know?" the doctor cried. "That
depends upon how long she is needed. Settle it with her, by Heaven! But I
want her to be here within an hour, do you hear?"

So the man decided. "I will go for her," he replied; "don't get angry,
doctor." And the latter left, calling out as he went: "Be careful, be
very careful, you know, for I do not joke when I am angry!" As soon as
they were alone the peasant turned to his mother and said in a resigned
voice: "I will go and fetch La Rapet, as the man will have it. Don't
worry till I get back."