Villette
wrath of the wearer’s own unglazed eyes.
I now found the advantage of proximity: these short-sighted “lunettes”
were useless for the inspection of a criminal under Monsieur’s nose;
accordingly, he doffed them, and he and I stood on more equal terms.
I am glad I was not really much afraid of him—that, indeed, close in
his presence, I felt no terror at all; for upon his demanding cord and
gibbet to execute the sentence recently pronounced, I was able to
furnish him with a needleful of embroidering thread with such
accommodating civility as could not but allay some portion at least of
his surplus irritation. Of course I did not parade this courtesy before
public view: I merely handed the thread round the angle of the desk,
and attached it, ready noosed, to the barred back of the Professor’s
chair.
“Que me voulez-vous?” said he in a growl of which the music was wholly
confined to his chest and throat, for he kept his teeth clenched; and
seemed registering to himself an inward vow that nothing earthly should
wring from him a smile.
My answer commenced uncompromisingly: “Monsieur,” I said, “je veux
l’impossible, des choses inouïes;” and thinking it best not to mince
matters, but to administer the “douche” with decision, in a low but
quick voice, I delivered the Athenian message, floridly exaggerating
its urgency.
Of course, he would not hear a word of it. “He would not go; he would
not leave his present class, let all the officials of Villette send for
him. He would not put himself an inch out of his way at the bidding of
king, cabinet, and chambers together.”
I knew, however, that he _must_ go; that, talk as he would, both his
duty and interest commanded an immediate and literal compliance with
the summons: I stood, therefore, waiting in silence, as if he had not
yet spoken. He asked what more I wanted.
“Only Monsieur’s answer to deliver to the commissionaire.”
He waved an impatient negative.
I ventured to stretch my hand to the bonnet-grec which lay in grim
repose on the window-sill. He followed this daring movement with his
eye, no doubt in mixed pity and amazement at its presumption.
“Ah!” he muttered, “if it came to that—if Miss Lucy meddled with his
bonnet-grec—she might just put it on herself, turn garçon for the
occasion, and benevolently go to the Athénée in his stead.”
With great respect, I laid the bonnet on the desk, where its tassel
seemed to give me an awful nod.
“I’ll write a note of apology—that will do!” said he, still bent on
evasion.
Knowing well it would _not_ do, I gently pushed the bonnet towards his
hand. Thus impelled, it slid down the polished slope of the varnished
and unbaized desk, carried before it the light steel-framed “lunettes,”
and, fearful to relate, they fell to the estrade. A score of times ere
now had I seen them fall and receive no damage—_this_ time, as Lucy
Snowe’s hapless luck would have it, they so fell that each clear pebble
became a shivered and shapeless star.
Now, indeed, dismay seized me—dismay and regret. I knew the value of
these “lunettes”: M. Paul’s sight was peculiar, not easily fitted, and
these glasses suited him. I had heard him call them his treasures: as I
picked them up, cracked and worthless, my hand trembled. Frightened
through all my nerves I was to see the mischief I had done, but I think
I was even more sorry than afraid. For some seconds I dared not look
the bereaved Professor in the face; he was the first to speak.
“Là!” said he: “me voilà veuf de mes lunettes! I think Mademoiselle
Lucy will now confess that the cord and gallows are amply earned; she
trembles in anticipation of her doom. Ah, traitress! traitress! You are
resolved to have me quite blind and helpless in your hands!”
I lifted my eyes: his face, instead of being irate, lowering, and
furrowed, was overflowing with the smile, coloured with the bloom I had
seen brightening it that evening at the Hotel Crécy. He was not
angry—not even grieved. For the real injury he showed himself full of
clemency; under the real provocation, patient as a saint. This event,
which seemed so untoward—which I thought had ruined at once my chance
of successful persuasion—proved my best help. Difficult of management
so long as I had done him no harm, he became graciously pliant as soon
as I stood in his presence a conscious and contrite offender.
Still gently railing at me as “une forte femme—une Anglaise
terrible—une petite casse-tout”—he declared that he dared not but obey
one who had given such an instance of her dangerous prowess; it was
absolutely like the “grand Empereur smashing the vase to inspire
dismay.” So, at last, crowning himself with his bonnet-grec, and taking
his ruined “lunettes” from my hand with a clasp of kind pardon and
encouragement, he made his bow, and went off to the Athénée in
first-rate humour and spirits.
After all this amiability, the reader will be sorry for my sake to hear
that I was quarrelling with M. Paul again before night; yet so it was,
and I could not help it.
It was his occasional custom—and a very laudable, acceptable custom,
too—to arrive of an evening, always à l’improviste, unannounced, burst
in on the silent hour of study, establish a sudden despotism over us
and our occupations, cause books to be put away, work-bags to be
brought out, and, drawing forth a single thick volume, or a handful of
pamphlets, substitute for the besotted “lecture pieuse,” drawled by a
sleepy pupil, some tragedy made grand by grand reading, ardent by fiery
action—some drama, whereof, for my part, I rarely studied the intrinsic
merit; for M. Emanuel made it a vessel for an outpouring, and filled it
with his native verve and passion like a cup with a vital brewage. Or
else he would flash through our conventual darkness a reflex of a
brighter world, show us a glimpse of the current literature of the day,
read us passages from some enchanting tale, or the last witty
feuilleton which had awakened laughter in the saloons of Paris; taking
care always to expunge, with the severest hand, whether from tragedy,
melodrama, tale, or essay, whatever passage, phrase, or word, could be
deemed unsuited to an audience of “jeunes filles.” I noticed more than
once, that where retrenchment without substitute would have left
unmeaning vacancy, or introduced weakness, he could, and did, improvise
whole paragraphs, no less vigorous than irreproachable; the
dialogue—the description—he engrafted was often far better than that he
pruned away.
Well, on the evening in question, we were sitting silent as nuns in a
“retreat,” the pupils studying, the teachers working. I remember my
work; it was a slight matter of fancy, and it rather interested me; it
had a purpose; I was not doing it merely to kill time; I meant it when
finished as a gift; and the occasion of presentation being near, haste
was requisite, and my fingers were busy.
We heard the sharp bell-peal which we all knew; then the rapid step
familiar to each ear: the words “Voilà Monsieur!” had scarcely broken
simultaneously from every lip, when the two-leaved door split (as split
it always did for his admission—such a slow word as “open” is
inefficient to describe his movements), and he stood in the midst of
us.
There were two study tables, both long and flanked with benches; over
the centre of each hung a lamp; beneath this lamp, on either side the
table, sat a teacher; the girls were arranged to the right hand and the
left; the eldest and most studious nearest the lamps or tropics; the
idlers and little ones towards the north and south poles. Monsieur’s
habit was politely to hand a chair to some teacher, generally Zélie St.
Pierre, the senior mistress; then to take her vacated seat; and thus
avail himself of the full beam of Cancer or Capricorn, which, owing to
his near sight, he needed.
As usual, Zélie rose with alacrity, smiling to the whole extent of her
mouth, and the full display of her upper and under rows of teeth—that
strange smile which passes from ear to ear, and is marked only by a
sharp thin curve, which fails to spread over the countenance, and
neither dimples the cheek nor lights the eye. I suppose Monsieur did
not see her, or he had taken a whim that he would not notice her, for
he was as capricious as women are said to be; then his “lunettes” (he
had got another pair) served him as an excuse for all sorts of little
oversights and shortcomings. Whatever might be his reason, he passed by
Zélie, came to the other side of the table, and before I could start up
to clear the way, whispered, “Ne bougez pas,” and established himself
between me and Miss Fanshawe, who always would be my neighbour, and
have her elbow in my side, however often I declared to her, “Ginevra, I
wish you were at Jericho.”
It was easy to say, “Ne bougez pas;” but how could I help it? I must
make him room, and I must request the pupils to recede that _I_ might
recede. It was very well for Ginevra to be gummed to me, “keeping
herself warm,” as she said, on the winter evenings, and harassing my
very heart with her fidgetings and pokings, obliging me, indeed,
sometimes to put an artful pin in my girdle by way of protection
against her elbow; but I suppose M. Emanuel was not to be subjected to
the same kind of treatment, so I swept away my working materials, to
clear space for his book, and withdrew myself to make room for his
person; not, however, leaving more than a yard of interval, just what
any reasonable man would have regarded as a convenient, respectful
allowance of bench. But M. Emanuel never _was_ reasonable; flint and
tinder that he was! he struck and took fire directly.
“Vous ne voulez pas de moi pour voisin,” he growled: “vous vous donnez
des airs de caste; vous me traitez en paria;” he scowled. “Soit! je
vais arranger la chose!” And he set to work.
“Levez vous toutes, Mesdemoiselles!” cried he.
The girls rose. He made them all file off to the other table. He then
placed me at one extremity of the long bench, and having duly and
carefully brought me my work-basket, silk, scissors, all my implements,
he fixed himself quite at the other end.
At this arrangement, highly absurd as it was, not a soul in the room
dared to laugh; luckless for the giggler would have been the giggle. As
for me, I took it with entire coolness. There I sat, isolated and cut
off from human intercourse; I sat and minded my work, and was quiet,
and not at all unhappy.
“Est ce assez de distance?” he demanded.
“Monsieur en est l’arbitre,” said I.
“Vous savez bien que non. C’est vous qui avez crée ce vide immense: moi
je n’y ai pas mis la main.”
And with this assertion he commenced the reading.
For his misfortune he had chosen a French translation of what he called
“un drame de Williams Shackspire; le faux dieu,” he further announced,
“de ces sots païens, les Anglais.” How far otherwise he would have
characterized him had his temper not been upset, I scarcely need
intimate.
Of course, the translation being French, was very inefficient; nor did
I make any particular effort to conceal the contempt which some of its
forlorn lapses were calculated to excite. Not that it behoved or
beseemed me to say anything: but one can occasionally _look_ the
opinion it is forbidden to embody in words. Monsieur’s lunettes being
on the alert, he gleaned up every stray look; I don’t think he lost
one: the consequence was, his eyes soon discarded a screen, that their
blaze might sparkle free, and he waxed hotter at the north pole to
which he had voluntarily exiled himself, than, considering the general
temperature of the room, it would have been reasonable to become under
the vertical ray of Cancer itself.
The reading over, it appeared problematic whether he would depart with