BRANCH LIBRARY, 426 FIFTH A. . MERCANTILE LIBRARY, ASTOR PLACE. THIS BOOK >IAV I*i; KEPT {^"" A Fine will be incurred if the Book is kept be- yond the time allowed. iks are delivered only to Members or their Written Order. t'HF. BRANCH LIBRARY IS OPEN DAILY FROM 8 A.M. ro9P.M, TERMS OF MEMBERSHIP. CLEEKS Initiation Fee, f 1, and Annual Dues, $4. All others, 15 per year, or 13 for six months. This payment entitles a member to one book at a time ; also to the use of the Reading Room. Any member may take two books at the same time, by paying $3 a year. EXTRA BOOKS, 1Oc. PER WEEK EACH. X THE JBOOK OF PITY AND' OF DEATH V BY PIERRE LOTI (of the French Academy) SOLD BY THE MEECAlfTILE LTBRAET, NEW YOBK. TRANSLATED BT T. P. O'CONNOR, M. P. L :5. 1.0 :{;.{'* NEW YOKK CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE . . COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY. All rights reserved. THE MEHBHON COMPANY JUHWAV, N, J, TTo /IDs JSelovefc flDotber I DEDICATE THIS BOOK, AND WITHOUT FEAK : FOR HER CHRISTIAN FAITH ALLOWS HER TO READ WITH TRAN- QUILLITY EVEN THE MOST SOMBER THINGS. 2217814 CONTENTS. PAGE A PRELIMINARY WORD FROM THE AUTHOR, . . vii A DREAM, 1 THE SORROW OF AN OLD CONVICT, .... 13 A MANGY CAT 23 A COUNTRY WITHOUT A NAME, .... 33 A STORY OF Two CATS, 41 THE WORK AT PEN-BRON 119 IN THE DEAD PAST, 141 SOME FISHERMEN'S WIDOWS, 165 AUNT CLAIRE LEAVES Us, 183 THE SLAUGHTER OF AN Ox AT SEA, . . . 343 THE IDYL OF AN OLD COUPLE, .... 253 A PRELIMINARY WORD FROM THE AUTHOR. Ah ! Insense, qui crois que tu ri*es pas moi. VICTOR HUGO : " Les Contemplations." THIS book is more my real self than any- thing I have yet written. It contains one chapter (the Ninth, which is between page 185 and page 242) that I have never al- lowed to appear in any magazine lest it should fall under the eyes of certain peo- ple without my being able to give them a forewarning. My first inclination was not to publish this chapter at all. But I thouo-ht of the friends I have who are o unknown to me ; one response from their distant sympathy I would regard as too much to give up. And then I have always the feeling that in time and space I extend a little the limits of niy own soul by ming- viii A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR. ling it with theirs. A few moments and I shall have passed away ; and then, per- haps, these brethren will preserve the life of the images dear to me which I have graven on their memories. This craving to struggle against death, besides next to the desire of doing some- thing of which one believes one's self cap- able is the sole spiritual reason one has for writing at all. Among those who profess to study the works of their neighbors, there is a goodly number with whom I have nothing in common, either in my language or my ideas. I am less than ever capable of feeling irritation against them, so much do I allow, before judging other men, for dif- ferences either natural or acquired. But this is the first time their sarcasm has the power to wound me, if it should ever reach me, for it would wound at the same time things and beings that are sacred to me. I certainly give them their chance by publishing this book. To them, A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR. IX then, I desire to say just here : " Do me the favor not to read it ; it contains noth- ing for you ; and it will bore you so much, if you only knew." PlERRE LOTI. A DREAM. SOLD BY THE ANTHE LIBEAEY, NEW YORK. A DREAM. I WOULD I knew a language apart in which I could write the visions of my sleep. When I try to do so with ordinary words I only succeed in constructing a description that is clumsy - and dull, in which my readers can see nothing. I am alone able to perceive behind the cloud of accumulated words the unfathom- able abyss. Dreams, even those which seem to us the longest, have, it appears, a scarcely appre- ciable duration no more than those fugi- tive moments in which the spirit floats be- tween waking and sleep. But we are de- ceived by the extraordinary rapidity with which their mirages succeed and change; and having seen so many things pass be- fore us we say : " I have dreamt the whole night through," when perhaps we have dreamt for barely one minute. The vision which I am about to describe did not really last in all probability for more than a few seconds, for even to my- self it appeared very brief. The first faint picture defined itself two or three times by stages like the flame of a lamp that is raised by slight jerks behind something transparent. At first there was a long, wavering light, drawing to it the attention of my soul as it emerged from deep sleep, from night, and from non-existence. The light becomes a beam of the sun, which enters by an open window and spreads over the floor. At the same time, my soul growing more excited, suddenly is disquieted ; a vague reminiscence of I know not what, a rapid presentiment, rushes upon me. like a flash of lightning, of something which must move ine to the very depths of my soul, A DREAM. 3 Then the scene becomes more defined. It is the ray of the evening sun that comes from a garden into which the window looks an exotic garden where, without seeing them, I know there are mango trees. In the sunlight that lies across the floor is reflected the shadow of a plant which is in the garden outside and trembles gently the shadow of a banana tree. And now the parts, which were com- paratively dark, become clear; in the semi- light the different objects become distinct, and at last I see everything with an inde- scribable shudder. Yet there is nothing there but the most simple things : a small colonial room, with walls of wood and chairs of straw: on a console table a clock of the time of Louis the Fifteenth, whose pendulum ticks imper- ceptibly. But I have already seen all this, though I am conscious of being unable to recollect where, and I am shaken with an. before this dark veil which is spreacl THE BOOK OF PITT AND OF DEATH. across at a certain point in my memory, im- peding the looks I would plunge beyond into some abyss more profound. It is evening, and the golden light is about to disappear, and the hands of the Louis Fifteenth clock point to six six o'clock, on what day forever lost in the eternal gulf ? on what day, in what year, now remote and dead ? Those chairs have also an antique look. On one of them is laid a woman's large hat, white straw, and of a shape which was in vogue more than a hundred years ago. My eyes are at once attracted to it, and then again the indescribable shudder, stronger now than before. The light be- comes lower and lower, and now it is scarcely even the dim illumination of ordi- nary dreams. I do not know, I cannot say how it is, and yet I feel that at one time I was familiar with everything in this house and with the life that was led there this life, more melancholy and more remote in the Colonies of former days, when the dis- A DREAM. 5 tances were greater, and the seas more un- known. And while I gaze at this woman's hat, which gradually becomes dimmer and dimmer, like everything else which is there in the gray twilight, the reflection comes to me, though evidently it sprung in another brain than mine, " Oh, then She has come in." And, in fact, She does appear. She stands behind me without my having heard her enter She remains in that dark space in the room to which the reflection of the sun does not penetrate ; She very vague, like a sketch, drawn in dead colors and gray shadows. She very young, a Creole, bare-headed, her black curls arranged around her brow in a manner long since out of date : eyes, beautiful and limpid, that seemingly long to speak to me, with a mixture in them of sad apprehension and infantine candor: perhaps not absolutely beautiful, still su- premely charming .... and then, above all things, it is She a word which in it- self is exquisitely sweet to pronounce, a word which, taken in the sense in which I understand it, embraces in it every reason for existence, expresses almost the ineffable and the infinite. To say that I recognized her would be an expression miserably commonplace and miserably weak. There was .something which made all my being rush toward her, moved by some profound and irresistible attraction, as if to seize hold of her, and. this impulse at the same time had something about it restrained and repressed, as though it were an impossible effort by someone to regain his lost breath and his dead life after years and years passed under the mound of a grave. Usually a very strong emotion in a dream breaks its impalpable threads and all is over. You awake ; the fragile web, once broken, floats an instant, and then vanishes the more quickly the more eagerly A DREAM. 1 the mind strives to retain it ; disappears like a torn veil which one pursues into the void, and which the wind carries away to inaccessible distances. But no ; this time I woke not, and the dream continued even while it was being effaced, lasted on still while gradually fading away. A moment we remained one opposite the other, stupefied, in the very ecstacy of our remembrance, by some indefinable and somber inertia; without voices to speak, and almost without thought ; ex- changing our phantom looks with astonish- ment and a delicious anguish Then our eyes were veiled and we became forms still vaguer, performing insignificant and involuntary actions. The light became dimmer, ever dimmer, and soon we saw al- most nothing. She went outside and I followed her into a kind of drawing-room with white walls, vast and scantily fur- nished wdth simple things, as was the custom in the dwellings of the planters. 8 THE BOOK OF PITY AND OF DEATH. Another woman's shadow awaited us there, clothed in the Creole dress an elderly woman whom I recognized almost immediately, and who resembled her, doubtless her mother. She arose at our approach, and we all three went out to- gether, without previous arrangement, as if obeying a habit. . . . . Good Heavens! What an accumulation of words and of prolix phrases to explain awkwardly all that thus passed passed without duration and without noise, between personages transparent as rays, moving without life in a darkness that ever increased, ever became more colorless, and ever dimmer than that of night. We all three went out together in the twilight into a sad little street, ah ! so sad with small, low colonial houses on each side under large trees ; at the end, the sea,' vaguely defined; over it all, a suggestion of expatriation, of distant exilo, something like what one would have felt in the last century in the streets of Martinique or of A DREAM. 9 La Reunion, but without the full light of day ; everything seen in that twilight where dwell the dead. Large birds wheeled in the dark sky, but, in spite of this darkness, one had the consciousness of its being that hour, still bright, which fol- lows the setting of the sun. Evidently we were following an ordinary habit. In this darkness, which ever became thicker, though it was not the darkness of night, we were once again taking our evening stroll. But the clear impressions were no longer visible, and there remained to ine nothing beyond a notion of two specters, light and sweet, that walked by my side, and then, then came nothingness to us, extinguished in the absolute night of real sleep. I slept for a long time after this dream an hour, two hours, how long I know not. When I awoke and began to think, as soon as the first recollection of what I had seen came back to me, I experienced 10 THE BOOK OF PITT AND OF DEATH. that kind of internal emotion which makes one start and open wide one's eyes. In my memory I caught the vision first at its most intense moment, that in which sud- denly I had thought of Her; that I recog- nized her large hat thrown on that chair, and that she had appeared from behind me. .... Then slowly, little by little, I rec- ollected all the rest : details, so precise, of that room already familiar to me ; of that older lady whom I saw in the shade ; of that walk in the little dilapidated street. .... Where, then, had I seen and lived all this? I sought rapidly in my past with a certain inquietude, with an anxious sadness, believing it certain that I should find it all there. .But no ; there was nothing of the kind anywhere in my own life; there was nothing to resemble it in my own experiences The human head is filled with innumer- able memories, heaped up pell-mell, like the threads in a tangled skein. There are thousands and thousands of them hidden A DREAM. 11 in obscure corners whence they will never come forth; the mysterious hand that moves and then puts them back seizes sometimes those which are most minute and most illusive, and brings them back for a moment into the light during those intervals of calm that precede or follow sleep. That which I have just related will certainly never reappear ; or, if it does re- appear some other night, I shall probably learn no more as to this woman and this place of exile, because in my head there is no more that concerns them. It is the last fragment of a broken thread which finished where finished my dream. The commencement and the end existed in other brains long since returned to dust. Among my ancestors I had some sailors whose lives and adventures are but im- perfectly known to me, and there are cer- tainly I know not where in some small cemetery in the Colonies some old bones which are the remains of the young woman with the straw hat and the black 12 THE BOOK OF PITT AND OF DEATH. locks. The charm which her eyes exer- cised over one of my ancestors was suffi- ciently powerful to project a last mysteri- ous reflection even unto me. I dreamt of her the whole day .... and with so strange a melancholy. THE SOEEOW OF AN OLD CONVICT. THE SORROW OF AN OLD CONVICT. THIS is a little story which was told me by Yves. It happened one evening when he had gone into the Roads to carry in his gunboat a cargo of convicts to the trans- port vessel which was to take them to New Caledonia. Among them was a very old convict (seventy at least), who carried with him very tenderly a poor sparrow in a small cage. Yves, to pass the time, had entered into conversation with this old fellow, who had not, it appears, a bad face, but who was tied by his chain to a young gentleman ignoble-looking, sneering, with the glasses of the short-sighted on a small pale nose. An old highwayman arrested for the 15 16 THE BOOK OF PITY AND OF DEATH. fifth or sixth time for vagabondage and robbery, he said he was. " How can a man avoid stealing when he has once com- menced, and when he has no trade what- ever, and when people won't have any- thing to do with him anywhere? He must, mustn't he ? My last sentence was for a sack of potatoes which I took in a field with a wagoner's whip and a pump- kin. Mightn't they have allowed me to die in France, I ask you, instead of sending me down there, old as I am ?".... And then, quite happy at finding that some- body was willing to listen to him with sympathy, he showed to Yves his most precious possession in the world, the little cage and the sparrow. The sparrow was quite tame, and knew his voice, and for more than a year had lived with him in his cell, perched on his shoulder. .... Ah, it was not without trouble he had obtained permission to take it with him to New Caledonia, and then, he had besides to make for it a cage which THE SORROW OF AN OLD CONVICT. 17 would be suitable for the voyage, to pro- cure some wood, a little old Avire, and a little green paint to paint the whole and make it pretty. Here I recall the very words of Yves. " Poor sparrow ! It had for food in its cage a piece of that gray bread which is given in prisons, but it had the appearance of being quite happy, nevertheless. It jumped about just like any other bird." Some hours afterward, when they reached the transport vessel and the con- victs were about to embark for their long voyage, Yves, who had forgotten this old man, passed once more by chance near him. " Here, take it, 77 said the old man, with a voice that had altogether changed, hold- ing out to him his little cage, " I give it to you. You may perhaps find some use for it ; perhaps it may give you pleasure." " Certainly not," replied Yves. " On the contrary, you must take it with you. It will be your little comrade down there." "Oh," replied the old man, "he is no 18 THE BOOK OF PITY AND OF DEATH. longer inside. You didn't know that ; you didn't hear, then ! He is no longer there," and two tears of indescribable misery ran down his cheeks. Through a lurch of the vessel the door of the cage had opened ; the sparrow took fright, flew out, and immediately fell into the sea because of its cut wing. Oh, what a moment of horrible grief to see it fight and die, swept away by the rapid current, and he all the time helpless to rescue it. At first, by a natural impulse, he wished to cry out for help ; to address himself to Yves ; to im- plore him But the impulse was im- mediately stopped by the recollection and the consciousness of his personal degrada- tion. An old wretch like him ! Who would be ready to hear the prayer of such as he ? Could he ever imagine that the ship would be stopped to fish up a drowning sparrow the poor bird of a convict ? The idea was absurd. Accordingly he re- O / mained silent in his place, looking at the little gray body as it disappeared on the THE SORROW OF AN OLD CONVICT. 19 foam of the sea, struggling to the end. He felt terribly lonely now, and forever, and great tears of solitary and supreme despair dimmed Iris eyes. Meantime, the young gentleman with the eye-glasses, his chain- fellow, laughed to see an old man weep. Now that the bird was no longer there, he did not wish to preserve its cage, made with so much solicitude for the lonely dead bird. He offered it to this good soldier who had condescended to listen to his story, anxious to leave him this legacy before de- parting for his long and last voyage. And Yves sadly had accepted the empty cage as a present, so that he might not cause any more pain to this old aban- doned wretch by appearing to disdain this thing which had cost him so much labor. I feel that I have not been able to do full justice to all the sadness that there was in this story as it was told me. It was evening and very late, and I was about to go to bed. I, who had in the 20 THE BOOK OF PITT AND OF DEATH. course of my life seen with little emo- tion so many loud-sounding sorrows and dramas and deaths, perceived with aston- ishment that the distress of this old man tore my heart, and even threatened to dis- turb my sleep. " I wonder," said I, " if means could be found of sending him another ? " " Yes," replied Yves, " I also thought of that. I thought of buying him a beauti- ful bird at a bird dealer's and bringing it back to him to-morrow with the little cage if there were time to do so before his de- parture. It would be a little difficult. Moreover, you are the only person who could go into the Roads to-morrow and go on board the transport to find out this old man ; and I do not even know his name. And, then, would not people think it very odd?" "Ah, yes, certainly. As to its being thought odd, there cannot be any mistake about that." And for a moment I dwelt with pleasure upon the idea, laughing that THE SORROW OF AN OLD CONVICT. 21 good inner laugh which scarcely appears upon the surface. However, I did not follow up the pro- ject, and the following morning when I awoke, and with the first impression gone, the thing appeared to me childish and ridiculous. This disappointment was not one of those which a mere plaything could console. The poor old convict, all alone in the Avorld the most beautiful bird in Paradise would never replace for him the humble gray little sparrow with cut wing, reared on prison bread, who had been able to awake once more in him a tenderness infinitely sweet, and to draw tears from a heart that was hardened and half-dead. ROCHESTER, December, 1889. A MANGY CAT. A MANGY CAT. AN old mangy cat, hunted out of its abode no doubt by its owners, had estab- lished itself in our street, on the footpath of our house, where a little November sun once more warmed its body. It is the custom with certain people whose pity is a selfish pity thus to send off, as far away as possible, and " lose" the poor animals they care neither to tend nor to see suffer. All day long it would sit piteously in the corner of a window sill, looking, oh ! so unhappy and so humble, an object of dis- gust to those who passed, menaced by children and by dogs, in continual danger, and sickening from hour to hour. It lived on offal, picked up with great difficulty in the streets, and there it sat all alone, drag- ging out its existence as it could, striving to 25 26 THE BOOK OF PITT AND OF DEATH. ward off death. Its poor head was eaten up with disease, covered with sores, and almost without fur, but its eyes, which re- mained bright, seemed to reflect profoundly. It must have felt in its frightful bitterness the worst of all sufferings to a cat that of not being able to make its toilet, to lick its fur, and to comb itself with the care cats always bestow on this operation. To make its toilet! I believe that to beast, as to man, this is one of the most necessary distractions of life. The poorest, the most diseased, and the most decrepit animals at certain hours dress themselves up, and, as long as they are able to find time to do that, have not lost everything in life. But to be no longer able to care for their appearance because nothing can be done before the final moldering away, that has always appeared to me the lowest depth of all the supreme agony. Alas for those poor old beggars who before death have mud and filth on their faces, their bodies scarred with wounds that no longer A MANGY CAT. 27 can be dressed, the poor diseased animals for whom there is no longer even pity. It gave me so much miseiy to look at this forsaken cat that I first sent it some- thing to eat in the street, and then I approached it and spoke to it softly (animals very soon learn to understand kind actions and find consolation in them). Accustomed to be hunted, it was first frightened at seeing me stop before it. Its first look was suspicious, filled with re- proach and supplication. " Are you also going to drive me away from this last sunny corner?" And then quickly per- ceiving that I had come from sympathy, and astonished at so much kindness, it ad- dressed to me very softly its poor cat's an- swer, "Prr! PIT! Prr !" rising out of po- liteness, and attempting to lift its back, in spite of its weariness, and in hopes that perhaps I would go as far as a caress. No, my pity, even though I was the only body in the world that felt any for it, did not go this length. That happiness of be- 28 THE BOOK OF PITT AND OF DEATH. ing caressed it would never know again, but as a compensation I imagined that I might give it death immediately, with my own hand, and in a manner almost pleasant. An hour afterward this was done in the stable. Sylvester, my servant, who had first gone and bought some chloroform, had attracted the cat in quietly, induced it to lie down on the hot hay at the bottom of a wicker basket, which was to be its mortuary chamber. Our preparations did not disquiet it. We had rolled a carte-de- visite in the shape of a cone, as we had seen the surgeons do in the ambulance. The cat looked at us with a confiding and happy air, having thought at last it had found a home, people who would take compassion on it, new masters who would heal it. Meantime, and in spite of my dread of its disease, I leaned down to caress it, hav- ing already received from the hands of Sylvester the paste-board cup all covered with poison. While caressing it I tried to A MANGY CAT. 29 induce it to remain quiet there, to push little by little the end of his nose into the narcotized cup. A little surprised at first, sniffing with va