CHAPTER XIV
A VILLAGE WEDDING
HE had made but a few steps within the forest, when he found himself surrounded by his wolves. He was pleased to see them again; he slackened his pace; he called to them; and the wolves came crowding round him. Thibault caressed them as a shepherd might his sheep, as a keeper of the hounds his dogs. They were his flock, his hunting pack; a flock with flaming eyes, a pack with looks of fire. Overhead, among the bare branches, the screech-owls were hopping and fluttering, making their plaintive calls, while the other owls uttered their melancholy cries in concert. The eyes of these night-birds shone like winged coals flying about among the trees, and there was Thibault in the middle of it all, the centre of the devilish circle.
Even as the wolves came up to fawn upon him and crouch at his feet, so the owls appeared to be attracted towards him. The tips of their silent wings brushed against his hair; some of them alighted to perch upon his shoulder.
“Ah!” murmured Thibault, “I am not then the enemy of all created things; if men hate me, the animals love me.”
He forgot what place the animals, who loved him, held in the chain of created beings. He did not remember that these animals which loved him, were those which hated mankind, and which mankind cursed.
He did not pause to reflect that these animals loved him, because he had become among men, what they were among animals; a creature of the night! a man of prey! With all these animals together, he could not do an atom of good; but, on the other hand, he could do a great deal of harm. Thibault smiled at the thought of the harm he could do.
He was still some distance from home, and he began to feel tired. He knew there was a large hollow oak somewhere near, and he took his bearings and made for it; but he would have missed his way if the wolves, who seemed to guess his thoughts, had not guided him to it. While flocks of owls hopped along from branch to branch, as if to illuminate the way, the wolves trotted along in front to show it him. The tree stood about twenty paces back from the road; it was, as I have said, an old oak, numbering not years, but centuries. Trees which live ten, twenty, thirty times the length of a man’s life, do not count their age by days and nights, but by seasons. The autumn is their twilight, the winter, their night; the spring is their dawn, the summer their day. Man envies the tree, the butterfly envies man. Forty men could not have encircled the trunk of the old oak with their arms.
The hollow made by time, that daily dislodged one more little piece of wood with the point of its scythe, was as large as an ordinarily sized room; but the entrance to it barely allowed a man to pass through. Thibault crept inside; there he found a sort of seat cut out of the thickness of the trunk, as soft and comfortable to sit in as an arm chair. Taking his place in it, and bidding good night to his wolves and his screech owls, he closed his eyes and fell asleep, or at least appeared to do so.
The wolves lay down in a circle round the tree; the owls perched in the branches. With these lights spread around its trunk, with these lights scattered about its branches, the oak had the appearance of a tree lit up for some infernal revel.
It was broad daylight when Thibault awoke; the wolves had long ago sought their hiding-places, the owls flown back to their ruins. The rain of the night before had ceased, and a ray of sunlight, one of those pale rays which are a harbinger of spring, came gliding through the naked branches of the trees, and having as yet none of the short-lived verdure of the year to shine upon, lit up the dark green of the mistletoe.
From afar came a faint sound of music, gradually it grew nearer, and the notes of two violins and a hautboy could be distinguished.
Thibault thought at first that he must be dreaming. But as it was broad daylight, and he appeared to be in perfect possession of his senses, he was obliged to acknowledge that he was wide awake, the more so, that having well rubbed his eyes, to make quite sure of the fact, the rustic sounds came as distinctly as ever to his ear. They were drawing rapidly nearer; a bird sang, answering the music of man with the music of God; and at the foot of the bush where it sat and made its song, a flower, – only a snowdrop it is true – was shining like a star. The sky above was as blue as on an April day. What was the meaning of this spring-like festival, now, in the heart of winter?
The notes of the bird as it sang in salutation of this bright, unexpected day, the brightness of the flower that shone as if with its radiance to thank the sun for coming to visit it, the sounds of merry-making which told the lost and unhappy man that his fellow-creatures were joining with the rest of nature in their rejoicings under the azure canopy of heaven, all the aroma of joy, all this up-springing of happiness, brought no calmer thoughts back to Thibault, but rather increased the anger and bitterness of his feelings. He would have liked the whole world to be as dark and gloomy as was his own soul. On first detecting the sounds of the approaching rural band, he thought of running away from it; but a power, stronger than his will, as it seemed to him, held him rooted to the spot; so he hid himself in the hollow of the oak and waited. Merry voices and lively songs could be heard mingling with the notes of the violins and hautboy; now and again a gun went off, or a cracker exploded; and Thibault felt sure that all these festive sounds must be occasioned by some village wedding. He was right, for he soon caught sight of a procession of villagers, all dressed in their best, with long ribands of many colours floating in the breeze, some from the women’s waists, some from the men’s hats or button-holes. They emerged into view at the end of the long lane of Ham.
They were headed by the fiddlers; then followed a few peasants, and among them some figures, which by their livery, Thibault recognised as keepers in the service of the lord of Vez. Then came Engoulevent, the second huntsman, giving his arm to an old blind woman, who was decked out with ribands like the others; then the major-domo of the Castle of Vez, as representative probably of the father of the little huntsman, giving his arm to the bride.
And the bride herself – Thibault stared at her with wild fixed eyes; he endeavoured, but vainly, to persuade himself that he did not recognise her – it was impossible not to do so when she came within a few paces from where he was hiding. The bride was Agnelette.
Agnelette!
And to crown his humiliation, as if to give a final blow to his pride, no pale and trembling Agnelette dragged reluctantly to the altar, casting looks behind her of regret or remembrance, but an Agnelette as bright and happy as the bird that was singing, the snowdrop that flowered, the sunlight that was shining; an Agnelette, full of delighted pride in her wreath of orange flowers, her tulle veil and muslin dress; an Agnelette, in short, as fair and smiling as the virgin in the church at Villers-Cotterets, when dressed in her beautiful white dress at Whitsuntide.
She was, no doubt, indebted for all this finery to the Lady of the Castle, the wife of the lord of Vez, who was a true Lady Bountiful in such matters.
But the chief cause of Agnelette’s happiness and smiles was not the great love she felt towards the man who was to become her husband, but her contentment at having found what she so ardently desired, that which Thibault had wickedly promised to her without really wishing to give her, – someone who would help her to support her blind old grandmother.
The musicians, the bride and bridegroom, the young men and maidens, passed along the road within twenty paces of Thibault, without observing the head with its flaming hair and the eyes with their fiery gleam, looking out from the hollow of the tree. Then, as Thibault had watched them appear through the undergrowth, so he watched them disappear. As the sounds of the violins and hautboy has gradually become louder and louder, so now they became fainter and fainter, until in another quarter of an hour the forest was as silent and deserted as ever, and Thibault was left alone with his singing bird, his flowering snowdrop, his glittering ray of sunlight. But a new fire of hell had been lighted in his heart, the worst of the fires of hell; that which gnaws at the vitals like the sharpest serpent’s tooth, and corrodes the blood like the most destructive poison – the fire of jealousy.
On seeing Agnelette again, so fresh and pretty, so innocently happy, and, worse still, seeing her at the moment when she was about to be married to another, Thibault, who had not given a thought to her for the last three month, Thibault, who had never had any intention of keeping the promise which he made her, Thibault now brought himself to believe that he had never ceased to love her.
He persuaded himself that Agnelette was engaged to him by oath, that Engoulevent was carrying off what belonged to him, and he almost leaped from his hiding place to rush after her and reproach her with her infidelity. Agnelette, now no longer his, at once appeared to his eyes as endowed with all the virtues and good qualities, all in short that would make it advantageous to marry her, which, when he had only to speak the word and everything would have been his, he had not even suspected.
After being the victim of so much deception, to lose what he looked upon as his own particular treasure, to which he had imagined that it would not be too late to return at any time, simply because he never dreamed that anyone would wish to take it from him, seemed to him the last stroke of ill fortune. His despair was no less profound and gloomy that it was a mute despair. He bit his fists, he knocked his head against the sides of the tree, and finally began to cry and sob. But they were not those tears and sobs which gradually soften the heart and are often kindly agents in dispersing a bad humour and reviving a better one; no, they were tears and sobs arising rather from anger than from regret, and these tears and sobs had no power to drive the hatred out of Thibault’s heart. As some of his tears fell visibly adown his face, so it seemed that others fell on his heart within like drops of gall.
He declared that he loved Agnelette; he lamented at having lost her; nevertheless, this furious man, with all his tender love, would gladly have been able to see her fall dead, together with her bridegroom, at the foot of the altar when the priest was about to join them. But happily, God, who was reserving the two children for other trials, did not allow this fatal wish to formulate itself in Thibault’s mind. They were like those who, surrounded by storm, hear the noise of the thunder and see the forked flashes of the lightning, and yet remain untouched by the deadly fluid.
Before long the shoe-maker began to feel ashamed of his tears and sobs; he forced back the former, and made an effort to swallow the latter.
He came out of his lair, not quite knowing where he was, and rushed off in the direction of his hut, covering a league in a quarter of an hour; this mad race, however, by causing him to perspire, somewhat calmed him down. At last he recognised the surroundings of his home; he went into his hut as a tiger might enter its den, closed the door behind him, and went and crouched down in the darkest corner he could find in his miserable lodging. There, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his hands, he sat and thought. And what thoughts were they which occupied this unhappy, desperate man? Ask of Milton what were Satan’s thoughts after his fall.
He went over again all the old questions which had upset his mind from the beginning, which had brought despair upon so many before him, and would bring despair to so many that came after him.
Why should some be born in bondage and others be born to power?
Why should there be so much inequality with regard to a thing which takes place in exactly the same way in all classes – namely birth?
By what means can this game of nature’s, in which chance for ever holds the cards against mankind, be made a fairer one?
And is not the only way to accomplish this, to do what the clever gamester does – get the devil to back him up? he had certainly thought so once.
To cheat? He had tried that game himself. And what had he gained by it? Each time he had held a good hand, each time he had felt sure of the game, it was the devil after all who had won.
What benefit had he reaped from this deadly power that had been given him of working evil to others?
None.
Agnelette had been taken from him; the owner of the mill had driven him away; the Bailiff’s wife had made game of him.
His first wish had caused the death of poor Marcotte, and had not even procured him a haunch of the buck that he had been so ambitious to obtain, and this had been the starting point of all his disappointed longings, for he had been obliged to give the buck to the dogs so as to put them off the scent of the black wolf.
And then this rapid multiplication of devil’s hairs was appalling! He recalled the tale of the philosopher who asked for a grain of wheat, multiplied by each of the sixty-four squares of the chess board – the abundant harvests of a thousand years were required to fill the last square. And he – how many wishes yet remained to him? – seven or eight at the outside. The unhappy man dared not look at himself either in the spring which lurked at the foot of one of the trees in the forest, or in the mirror that hung against the wall. He feared to render an exact account to himself of the time still left to him in which to exercise his power; he preferred to remain in the night of uncertainty than to face that terrible dawn which must rise when the night was over.
But still, there must be a way of continuing matters, so that the misfortunes of others should bring him good of some kind. He thought surely that if he had received a scientific education, instead of being a poor shoe-maker, scarcely knowing how to read or cypher, he would have found out, by the aid of science, some combinations which would infallibly have procured for him both riches and happiness.
Poor fool! If he had been a man of learning, he would have known the legend of Doctor Faust. To what did the omnipotence conferred on him by Mephistopheles lead Faust, the dreamer, the thinker, the pre-eminent scholar? To the murder of Valentine! to Margaret’s suicide! to the pursuit of Helen of Troy, the pursuit of an empty shadow!
And, moreover, how could Thibault think coherently at all of ways and means while jealousy was raging in his heart, while he continued to picture Agnelette at the altar, giving herself for life to another than himself.
And who was that other? That wretched little Engoulevent, the man who had spied him out when he was perched in the tree, who had found his boar-spear in the bush, which had been the cause of the stripes he had received from Marcotte.
Ah! if he had but known! to him and not to Marcotte would he have willed that evil should befall! What was the physical torture he had undergone from the blows of the strap compared to the moral torture he was enduring now!
And if only ambition had not taken such hold upon him, had not borne him on the wings of pride above his sphere, what happiness might have been his, as the clever workman, able to earn as much as six francs a day, with Agnelette for his charming little housekeeper! For he had certainly been the one whom Agnelette had first loved; perhaps, although marrying another man, she still loved him. And as Thibault sat pondering over these things, he became conscious that time was passing, that night was approaching.
However modest might be the fortune of the wedded pair, however limited the desires of the peasants who had followed them, it was quite certain that bride, bridegroom and peasants were all at this hour feasting merrily together.
And he, he was sad and alone. There was no one to prepare a meal for him; and what was there in his house to eat or drink? A little bread! a little water! and solitude! in place of that blessing from heaven which we call a sister, a mistress, a wife.
But, after all, why should not he also dine merrily and abundantly? Could he not go and dine wheresoever he liked? Had he not money in his pocket from the last game he had sold to the host of the Boule-d’Or? And could he not spend on himself as much as the wedded couple and all their guests together? He had only himself to please.
“And, by my faith!” he exclaimed, “I am an idiot indeed to stay here, with my brain racked by jealousy, and my stomach with hunger, when, with the aid of a good dinner and two or three bottles of wine, I can rid myself of both torments before another hour is over. I will be off to get food, and better still, to get drink!”
In order to carry this determination into effect, Thibault took the road to Ferté-Milon, where there was an excellent restaurant, known as the Dauphin d’Or, able it was said to serve up dinners equal to those provided by his head cook for his Highness, the Duke of Orleans.
CHAPTER XV
THE LORD OF VAUPARFOND
THIBAULT, on arriving at the Dauphin d’Or, ordered himself as fine a dinner as he could think of. It would have been quite easy for him to have engaged a private room, but he would not then have enjoyed the personal sense of superiority. He wished the company of ordinary diners to see him eat his pullet, and his eel in its delicate sauce. He wished the other drinkers to envy him his three different wines, drunk out of three different shaped glasses. He wished everybody to hear him give his orders in a haughty voice, to hear the ring of his money.
As he gave his first order, a man in a grey coat, seated in the darkest corner of the room with a half bottle of wine before him, turned round, as if recognising a voice he knew. And, as it turned out, this was one of Thibault’s acquaintances – it is scarcely necessary to add, a tavern acquaintance.
Thibault, since he had given up making shoes by day and, instead, had his wolves about at night, had made many such acquaintances. On seeing that it was Thibault, the other man turned his face away quickly, but not so quickly but that Thibault had time to recognise Auguste François Levasseur, valet to Raoul the Lord of Vauparfond.
“Halloa! François!” Thibault called out, “what are you doing sitting there in the corner, and sulking like a Monk in Lent, instead of taking your dinner openly and cheerfully as I am doing, in full view of everybody?”
François made no reply to this interrogation, but signed to Thibault to hold his tongue.
“I am not to speak? not to speak?” said Thibault, “and supposing it does not suit me to hold my tongue, supposing I wish to talk, and that I am bored at having to dine alone? and that it pleases me to say; ‘Friend François, come here; I invite you to dine with me?!’ You will not? no? very well, then I shall come and fetch you.” And Thibault rose from his seat, and followed by all eyes, went up to his friend and gave him a slap on the shoulder vigorous enough to dislocate it.
“Pretend that you have made a mistake, Thibault, or you will lose me my place; do you not see that I am not in livery, but am only wearing my drab great-coat! I am here as proxy in a love affair for my master, and I am waiting for a letter from a lady to carry back to him.”
“That’s another matter altogether, and I understand now and am sorry for my indiscretion. I should like, however, to have dined in your company.”
“Well, nothing is easier; order your dinner to be served in a separate room, and I will give word to our host, that if another man dressed in grey like me comes in, he is to show him upstairs; he and I are old cronies, and understand one another.”
“Good,” said Thibault; and he therewith ordered his dinner to be taken up to a room on the first floor, which looked out upon the street.
François seated himself so as to be able to see the person he was expecting, while some distance off, as he came down the hill of Ferté-Milon. The dinner which Thibault had ordered was quite sufficient for the two; all that he did was to send for another bottle or so of wine. Thibault had only taken two lessons from Maître Magloire, but he had been an apt pupil, and they had done their work; moreover Thibault had something which he wished to forget, and he counted on the wine to accomplish this for him. It was good fortune, he felt, to have met a friend with whom he could talk, for, in the state of mind and heart in which he was, talking was as good a help towards oblivion as drinking. Accordingly, he was no sooner seated, and the door shut, and his hat stuck well down on to his head so that François might not notice the change in the colour of his hair, than he burst at once into conversation, boldly taking the bull by the horns.
“And now, friend François,” he said, “you are going to explain to me some of your words which I did not quite understand.”
“I am not surprised at that,” replied François, leaning back in his chair with an air of conceited impertinence, “we attendants on fashionable lords learn to speak court language, which everyone of course does not understand.”
“Perhaps not, but if you explain it to your friends, they may possibly understand.”
“Quite so! ask what you like and I will answer.”
“I look to your doing so the more, that I will undertake to supply you with what will help to loosen your tongue. First, let me ask, why do you call yourself a grey-coat? I thought grey-coat another name for a jack-ass.”
“Jack-ass yourself, friend Thibault,” said François, laughing at the shoe-maker’s ignorance. “No, a grey-coat is a liveried servant, who puts on a grey overall to hide his livery, while he stands sentinel behind a pillar, or mounts guard inside a doorway.”
“So you mean that at this moment then, my good François, you are on sentry go? And who is coming to relieve you?”
“Champagne, who is in the Comtesse de Mont-Gobert’s service.”
“I see; I understand exactly. Your master, the Lord of Vauparfond, is in love with the Comtesse de Mont-Gobert, and you are now awaiting a letter which Champagne is to bring from the lady.”
“Optimé! as the tutor to Monsieur Raoul’s young brother says.”
“My Lord Raoul is a lucky fellow!”
“Yes indeed,” said François, drawing himself up.
“And what a beautiful creature the Countess is!”
“You know her then?”
“I have seen her out hunting with his Highness the Duke of Orleans and Madame de Montesson.”
Thibault in speaking had said out hunting.
“My friend, let me tell you that in society we do not say hunting and shooting, but huntin’ and shootin’.”
“Oh!” said Thibault, “I am not so particular to a letter as all that. To the health of my Lord Raoul!”
As François put down his glass on the table, he uttered an exclamation; he had that moment caught sight of Champagne.
They threw open the window and called to this third comer, and Champagne, with all the ready intuition of the well-bred servant, understood at once, and went upstairs. He was dressed, like François, in a long grey coat, and had brought a letter with him.
“Well,” asked François, as he caught sight of the letter in his hand, “and is there to be a meeting to-night?”
“Yes,” answered Champagne, with evident delight.
“That’s all right,” said François cheerfully.
Thibault was surprised at these expressions of apparent sympathy on the part of the servants with their master’s happiness.
“Is it your master’s good luck that you are so pleased about?” he asked of François.
“Oh, dear me no!” replied the latter, “but when my master is engaged, I am at liberty!”
“And do you make use of your liberty?”
“One may be a valet, and yet have one’s own share of good luck, and also know how to spend the time more or less profitably,” answered François, bridling as he spoke.
“And you, Champagne?”
“Oh, I,” replied the last comer, holding his wine up to the light, “yes, I too hope to make good use of it.”
“Well, then, here’s to all your love affairs! since everybody seems to have one or more on hand,” said Thibault.
“The same to yours!” replied the two other men in chorus.
“As to myself,” said the shoe-maker, a look of hatred to his fellow creatures passing over his face, “I am the only person who loves nobody, and whom nobody loves.”
His companion looked at him with a certain surprised curiosity.
“Ah! ah!” said François, “is the report that is whispered abroad about you in the country-side a true tale then?”
“Report about me?”
“Yes, about you,” put in Champagne.
“Oh, then they say the same thing about me at Mont-Gobert as they do at Vauparfond?”
Champagne nodded his head.
“Well, and what is it they do say?”
“That you are a were-wolf,” said François.
Thibault laughed aloud. “Tell me, now, have I a tail?” he said, “have I a wolf’s claws, have I a wolf’s snout?”
“We only repeat what other people say,” rejoined Champagne, “we do not say that it is so.”
“Well, anyhow, you must acknowledge,” said Thibault, “that were-wolves have excellent wine.”
“By my faith, yes!” exclaimed both the valets.
“To the health of the devil who provides it, gentlemen.”
The two men who were holding their glasses in their hand, put both glasses down on the table.
“What is that for?” asked Thibault.
“You must find someone else to drink that health with you,” said François, “I won’t, that’s flat!”
“Nor I,” added Champagne.
“Well and good then! I will drink all three glasses myself,” and he immediately proceeded to do so.
“Friend Thibault,” said the Baron’s valet, “it is time we separated.”
“So soon?” said Thibault. “My master is awaiting me, and no doubt with some impatience … the letter, Champagne?”
“Here it is.”
“Let us take farewell then of your friend Thibault, and be off to our business and our pleasures, and leave him to his pleasures and business.” And so saying, François winked at his friend, who responded with a similar sign of understanding between them.
“We must not separate,” said Thibault, “without drinking a stirrup-cup together.”
“But not in those glasses,” said François, pointing to the three from which Thibault had drunk to the enemy of mankind.
“You are very particular, gentlemen; better call the sacristan and have them washed in holy water.”
“Not quite that, but rather than refuse the polite invitation of a friend, we will call for the waiter, and have fresh glasses brought.”
“These three, then,” said Thibault, who was beginning to feel the effects of the wine he had drunk, “are fit for nothing more than to be thrown out of window? To the devil with you!” he exclaimed as he took up one of them and sent it flying. As the glass went through the air it left a track of light behind it, which blazed and went out like a flash of lightning. Thibault took up the two remaining glasses and threw them in turn, and each time the same thing happened, but the third flash was followed by a loud peal of thunder.
Thibault shut the window, and was thinking, as he turned to his seat again, how he should explain this strange occurrence to his companions; but his two companions had disappeared.
“Cowards!” he muttered. Then he looked for a glass, but found none left.
“Hum! that’s awkward,” he said. “I must drink out of the bottle, that’s all!”
And suiting the action to the word, Thibault finished up his dinner by draining the bottle, which did not help to steady his brain, already somewhat shaky.
At nine o’clock, Thibault called the innkeeper, paid his account, and departed.
He was in an angry disposition of enmity against all the world; the thoughts from which he had hoped to escape possessed him more and more. Agnelette was being taken farther and farther from him as the time went by; everyone, wife or mistress, had someone to love them. This day which had been one of hatred and despair to him, had been one full of the promise of joy and happiness for everybody else; the lord of Vauparfond, the two wretched valets, François and Champagne, each of them had a bright star of hope to follow; while he, he alone, went stumbling along in the darkness. Decidedly there was a curse upon him. “But,” he went on thinking to himself, “if so, the pleasures of the damned belong to me, and I have a right to claim them.”
As these thoughts went surging through his brain, as he walked along cursing aloud, shaking his fist at the sky, he was on the way to his hut and had nearly reached it, when he heard a horse coming up behind him at a gallop.
“Ah!” said Thibault, “here comes the Lord of Vauparfond, hastening to the meeting with his love. I should laugh, my fine Sir Raoul, if my Lord of Mont-Gobert managed just to catch you! You would not get off quite so easily as if it were Maître Magloire; there would be swords out, and blows given and received!”
Thus engaged in thinking what would happen if the Comte de Mont-Gobert were to surprise his rival, Thibault, who was walking in the road, evidently did not get out of the way quickly enough, for the horseman, seeing a peasant of some kind barring his passage, brought his whip down upon him in a violent blow, calling out at the same time: “Get out of the way, you beggar, if you don’t wish to be trampled under the horse’s feet!”
Thibault, still half drunk, was conscious of a crowd of mingled sensations, of the lashing of the whip, the collision with the horse, and the rolling through cold water and mud, while the horseman passed on.
He rose to his knees, furious with anger, and shaking his fist at the retreating figure:
“Would the devil,” he exclaimed, “I might just for once have my turn at being one of you great lords, might just for twenty-four hours take your place, Monsieur Raoul de Vauparfond, instead of being only Thibault, the shoe-maker, so that I might know what it was to have a fine horse to ride, instead of tramping on foot; might be able to whip the peasants I met on the road, and have the opportunity of paying court to these beautiful women, who deceive their husbands, as the Comtesse de Mont-Gobert does!”