Villette
Grand ciel! Here was the show-trial, so long evaded, come on me like a
thunder-clap. These two fine, braided, mustachioed, sneering
personages, were none other than dandy professors of the
college—Messieurs Boissec and Rochemorte—a pair of cold-blooded fops
and pedants, sceptics, and scoffers. It seems that M. Paul had been
rashly exhibiting something I had written—something, he had never once
praised, or even mentioned, in my hearing, and which I deemed
forgotten. The essay was not remarkable at all; it only _seemed_
remarkable, compared with the average productions of foreign
school-girls; in an English establishment it would have passed scarce
noticed. Messieurs Boissec and Rochemorte had thought proper to
question its genuineness, and insinuate a cheat; I was now to bear my
testimony to the truth, and to be put to the torture of their
examination.
A memorable scene ensued.
They began with classics. A dead blank. They went on to French history.
I hardly knew Mérovée from Pharamond. They tried me in various
’ologies, and still only got a shake of the head, and an unchanging “Je
n’en sais rien.”
After an expressive pause, they proceeded to matters of general
information, broaching one or two subjects which I knew pretty well,
and on which I had often reflected. M. Emanuel, who had hitherto stood
looking on, dark as the winter-solstice, brightened up somewhat; he
thought I should now show myself at least no fool.
He learned his error. Though answers to the questions surged up fast,
my mind filling like a rising well, ideas were there, but not words. I
either _could_ not, or _would_ not speak—I am not sure which: partly, I
think, my nerves had got wrong, and partly my humour was crossed.
I heard one of my examiners—he of the braided surtout—whisper to his
co-professor, “Est-elle donc idiote?”
“Yes,” I thought, “an idiot she is, and always will be, for such as
you.”
But I suffered—suffered cruelly; I saw the damps gather on M. Paul’s
brow, and his eye spoke a passionate yet sad reproach. He would not
believe in my total lack of popular cleverness; he thought I _could_ be
prompt if I _would_.
At last, to relieve him, the professors, and myself, I stammered out:
“Gentlemen, you had better let me go; you will get no good of me; as
you say, I am an idiot.”
I wish I could have spoken with calm and dignity, or I wish my sense
had sufficed to make me hold my tongue; that traitor tongue tripped,
faltered. Beholding the judges cast on M. Emanuel a hard look of
triumph, and hearing the distressed tremor of my own voice, out I burst
in a fit of choking tears. The emotion was far more of anger than
grief; had I been a man and strong, I could have challenged that pair
on the spot—but it _was_ emotion, and I would rather have been scourged
than betrayed it.
The incapables! Could they not see at once the crude hand of a novice
in that composition they called a forgery? The subject was classical.
When M. Paul dictated the trait on which the essay was to turn, I heard
it for the first time; the matter was new to me, and I had no material
for its treatment. But I got books, read up the facts, laboriously
constructed a skeleton out of the dry bones of the real, and then
clothed them, and tried to breathe into them life, and in this last aim
I had pleasure. With me it was a difficult and anxious time till my
facts were found, selected, and properly jointed; nor could I rest from
research and effort till I was satisfied of correct anatomy; the
strength of my inward repugnance to the idea of flaw or falsity
sometimes enabled me to shun egregious blunders; but the knowledge was
not there in my head, ready and mellow; it had not been sown in Spring,
grown in Summer, harvested in Autumn, and garnered through Winter;
whatever I wanted I must go out and gather fresh; glean of wild herbs
my lapful, and shred them green into the pot. Messieurs Boissec and
Rochemorte did not perceive this. They mistook my work for the work of
a ripe scholar.
They would not yet let me go: I must sit down and write before them. As
I dipped my pen in the ink with a shaking hand, and surveyed the white
paper with eyes half-blinded and overflowing, one of my judges began
mincingly to apologize for the pain he caused.
“Nous agissons dans l’intérêt de la vérité. Nous ne voulons pas vous
blesser,” said he.
Scorn gave me nerve. I only answered,—
“Dictate, Monsieur.”
Rochemorte named this theme: “Human Justice.”
Human Justice! What was I to make of it? Blank, cold abstraction,
unsuggestive to me of one inspiring idea; and there stood M. Emanuel,
sad as Saul, and stern as Joab, and there triumphed his accusers.
At these two I looked. I was gathering my courage to tell them that I
would neither write nor speak another word for their satisfaction, that
their theme did not suit, nor their presence inspire me, and that,
notwithstanding, whoever threw the shadow of a doubt on M. Emanuel’s
honour, outraged that truth of which they had announced themselves
the—champions: I _meant_ to utter all this, I say, when suddenly, a
light darted on memory.
Those two faces looking out of the forest of long hair, moustache, and
whisker—those two cold yet bold, trustless yet presumptuous
visages—were the same faces, the very same that, projected in full
gaslight from behind the pillars of a portico, had half frightened me
to death on the night of my desolate arrival in Villette. These, I felt
morally certain, were the very heroes who had driven a friendless
foreigner beyond her reckoning and her strength, chased her breathless
over a whole quarter of the town.
“Pious mentors!” thought I. “Pure guides for youth! If ‘Human Justice’
were what she ought to be, you two would scarce hold your present post,
or enjoy your present credit.”
An idea once seized, I fell to work. “Human Justice” rushed before me
in novel guise, a red, random beldame, with arms akimbo. I saw her in
her house, the den of confusion: servants called to her for orders or
help which she did not give; beggars stood at her door waiting and
starving unnoticed; a swarm of children, sick and quarrelsome, crawled
round her feet, and yelled in her ears appeals for notice, sympathy,
cure, redress. The honest woman cared for none of these things. She had
a warm seat of her own by the fire, she had her own solace in a short
black pipe, and a bottle of Mrs. Sweeny’s soothing syrup; she smoked
and she sipped, and she enjoyed her paradise; and whenever a cry of the
suffering souls about her pierced her ears too keenly—my jolly dame
seized the poker or the hearth-brush: if the offender was weak,
wronged, and sickly, she effectually settled him: if he was strong,
lively, and violent, she only menaced, then plunged her hand in her
deep pouch, and flung a liberal shower of sugar-plums.
Such was the sketch of “Human Justice,” scratched hurriedly on paper,
and placed at the service of Messrs. Boissec and Rochemorte. M. Emanuel
read it over my shoulder. Waiting no comment, I curtsied to the trio,
and withdrew.
After school that day, M. Paul and I again met. Of course the meeting
did not at first run smooth; there was a crow to pluck with him; that
forced examination could not be immediately digested. A crabbed
dialogue terminated in my being called “une petite moqueuse et
sans-cœur,” and in Monsieur’s temporary departure.
Not wishing him to go quite away, only desiring he should feel that
such a transport as he had that day given way to, could not be indulged
with perfect impunity, I was not sorry to see him, soon after,
gardening in the berceau. He approached the glass door; I drew near
also. We spoke of some flowers growing round it. By-and-by Monsieur
laid down his spade; by-and-by he recommenced conversation, passed to
other subjects, and at last touched a point of interest.
Conscious that his proceeding of that day was specially open to a
charge of extravagance, M. Paul half apologized; he half regretted,
too, the fitfulness of his moods at all times, yet he hinted that some
allowance ought to be made for him. “But,” said he, “I can hardly
expect it at your hands, Miss Lucy; you know neither me, nor my
position, nor my history.”
His history. I took up the word at once; I pursued the idea.
“No, Monsieur,” I rejoined. “Of course, as you say, I know neither your
history, nor your position, nor your sacrifices, nor any of your
sorrows, or trials, or affections, or fidelities. Oh, no! I know
nothing about you; you are for me altogether a stranger.”
“Hein?” he murmured, arching his brows in surprise.
“You know, Monsieur, I only see you in classe—stern, dogmatic, hasty,
imperious. I only hear of you in town as active and wilful, quick to
originate, hasty to lead, but slow to persuade, and hard to bend. A man
like you, without ties, can have no attachments; without dependants, no
duties. All we, with whom you come in contact, are machines, which you
thrust here and there, inconsiderate of their feelings. You seek your
recreations in public, by the light of the evening chandelier: this
school and yonder college are your workshops, where you fabricate the
ware called pupils. I don’t so much as know where you live; it is
natural to take it for granted that you have no home, and need none.”
“I am judged,” said he. “Your opinion of me is just what I thought it
was. For you I am neither a man nor a Christian. You see me void of
affection and religion, unattached by friend or family, unpiloted by
principle or faith. It is well, Mademoiselle; such is our reward in
this life.”
“You are a philosopher, Monsieur; a cynic philosopher” (and I looked at
his paletôt, of which he straightway brushed the dim sleeve with his
hand), “despising the foibles of humanity—above its
luxuries—independent of its comforts.”
“Et vous, Mademoiselle? vous êtes proprette et douillette, et
affreusement insensible, par-dessus le marché.”
“But, in short, Monsieur, now I think of it, you _must_ live somewhere?
Do tell me where; and what establishment of servants do you keep?”
With a fearful projection of the under-lip, implying an impetus of
scorn the most decided, he broke out—
“Je vis dans un trou! I inhabit a den, Miss—a cavern, where you would
not put your dainty nose. Once, with base shame of speaking the whole
truth, I talked about my ‘study’ in that college: know now that this
‘study’ is my whole abode; my chamber is there and my drawing-room. As
for my ‘establishment of servants’” (mimicking my voice) “they number
ten; les voilà.”
And he grimly spread, close under my eyes, his ten fingers.
“I black my boots,” pursued he savagely. “I brush my paletôt.”
“No, Monsieur, it is too plain; you never do that,” was my parenthesis.
“Je fais mon lit et mon ménage; I seek my dinner in a restaurant; my
supper takes care, of itself; I pass days laborious and loveless;
nights long and lonely; I am ferocious, and bearded and monkish; and
nothing now living in this world loves me, except some old hearts worn
like my own, and some few beings, impoverished, suffering, poor in
purse and in spirit, whom the kingdoms of this world own not, but to
whom a will and testament not to be disputed has bequeathed the kingdom
of heaven.”
“Ah, Monsieur; but I know!”
“What do you know? many things, I verily believe; yet not me, Lucy!”
“I know that you have a pleasant old house in a pleasant old square of
the Basse-Ville—why don’t you go and live there?”
“Hein?” muttered he again.
“I liked it much, Monsieur; with the steps ascending to the door, the
grey flags in front, the nodding trees behind—real trees, not
shrubs—trees dark, high, and of old growth. And the
boudoir-oratoire—you should make that room your study; it is so quiet
and solemn.”