ANATOLE FRANCE 
 
 THE ASPIRATIONS 
 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 J/.'V ' UV .'!' ' 
 

 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE ASPIRATIONS 
 OF JEAN SERVIEN
 
 me 
 
 The ASPIRATIONS 
 
 of 
 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 <BY *ANATOL 
 
 DODD-MEAD 6? COMPANY
 
 Published in U. S. A., 1922 
 
 by 
 DODO, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. 
 
 PRINTED IN U. S. A. 
 
 THE VML-BALLOU PRESS
 
 JLA 
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 :;d 
 
 THE ASPIRATIONS 
 OF JEAN SERVIEN
 
 THE ASPIRATIONS OF JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 EAN SERVIEN was born in a back- 
 shop in the Rue Notre-Dame des 
 Champs. His father was a book- 
 binder and worked for the Religious 
 Houses. Jean was a little weakling 
 child, and his mother nursed him at her breast as she 
 sewed the books, sheet by sheet, with the curved 
 needle of the trade. One day as she was crossing 
 the shop, humming a song, in the words of which 
 she found expression for the vague, splendid visions 
 of her maternal ambition, her foot slipped on the 
 boards, which were moist with paste. 
 
 Instinctively she threw up her arm to guard the 
 child she held clasped to her bosom, and struck her 
 breast, thus exposed, a severe blow against the 
 corner of the iron press. She felt no very acute 
 pain at the time, but later on an abscess formed, 
 which got well, but presently reopened, and a low 
 fever supervened that confined her to her bed.
 
 2 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 There, in the long, long evenings, she would fold 
 her little one in her one sound arm and croon over 
 him in a hot, feverish whisper bits of her favourite 
 ditty: 
 
 The fisherman, when dawn is nigh, 
 
 Peers forth to greet the kindling sky. . . . 
 
 Above all, she loved the refrain that recurred at 
 the end of each verse with only the change of a 
 word. It was her little Jean's lullaby, who became, 
 at the caprice of the words, turn and turn about, 
 General, Lawyer, and ministrant at the altar in her 
 fond hopes. 
 
 A woman of the people, knowing nothing of the 
 circumstances of fashionable life, save from a few 
 peeps at their outward pomp and the vague tales of 
 concierges, footmen, and cooks, she pictured her boy 
 at twenty more beautiful than an archangel, his 
 breast glittering with decorations, in a drawing- 
 room full of flowers, amid a bevy of fashionable 
 ladies with manners every whit as genteel as had the 
 actresses at the Gymnase: 
 
 But for the nonce, on mother's breast, 
 Sweet wee gallant, take thy rest. 
 
 Presently the vision changed; now her boy was
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 3 
 
 standing up gowned in Court, by his eloquence sav- 
 ing the life and honour of some illustrious client : 
 
 But for the nonce, on mother's breast, 
 Sweet wee pleader, take thy rest. 
 
 Presently again he was an officer under fire, in a 
 brilliant uniform, on a prancing charger, victorious 
 in battle, like the great Generals whose portraits 
 she had seen one Sunday at Versailles : 
 
 But for the nonce, on mother's breast, 
 Sweet wee general, take thy rest. 
 
 But when night was creeping into the room, a 
 new picture would dazzle her eyes, a picture this 
 of other and incomparably greater glories. 
 
 Proud in her motherhood, yet humble too at 
 heart, she was gazing from the dim recesses of a 
 sanctuary at her son, her Jean, clad in sacerdotal 
 vestments, lifting the monstrance in the vaulted 
 choir censed by the beating wings of half-seen Cher- 
 ubim. And she would tremble awestruck as if she 
 were the mother of a god, this poor sick work- 
 woman whose puling child lay beside her drooping 
 in the poisoned air of a back-shop : 
 
 But for the nonce, on mother's breast, 
 My sweet boy-bishop, take thy rest.
 
 4 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 One evening, as her husband handed her a cool- 
 ing drink, she said to him in a tone of regret: 
 
 "Why did you disturb me? I could see the Holy 
 Virgin among flowers and precious stones and lights. 
 It was so beautiful! so beautiful!" 
 
 She said she was no longer in pain, that she 
 wished her Jean to learn Latin. And she passed 
 away.
 
 II 
 
 I HE widower, who was from the 
 Beauce country, sent his son to his 
 native village in the Eure-et-Loire to 
 be brought up by kinsfolk there. 
 As for himself, he was a strong 
 man, and soon learned to be resigned; he was of a 
 saving habit by instinct in both business and family 
 matters, and never put off the green serge apron 
 from week's end to week's end save for a Sunday 
 visit to the cemetery. He would hang a wreath on 
 the arm of the black cross, and, if it was a hot day, 
 take a chair on the way back along the boulevard 
 outside the door of a wine-shop. There, as he sat 
 slowly emptying his glass, his eye would rest on the 
 mothers and their youngsters going by on the side- 
 walk. 
 
 These young wives, as he watched them approach 
 and pass on, were so many passing reminders of 
 his Clotilde and made him feel sad without his quite 
 understanding why, for he was not much given to 
 thinking. 
 
 Time slipped by, and little by little his dead wife 
 
 5
 
 6 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 grew to be a tender, vague memory in the book- 
 binder's mind. One night he tried in vain to recall 
 Clotilde's features; after this experience, he told 
 himself that perhaps he might be able to discover 
 the mother's lineaments in the child's face, and he 
 was seized with a great longing to see this relic of 
 the lost one once more, to have the child home 
 
 again. 
 
 In the morning he wrote a letter to his old sister, 
 Mademoiselle Servein, begging her to come and 
 take up her abode with the little one in the Rue 
 Notre-Dame des Champs. The sister, who had 
 lived for many years in Paris at her brother's ex- 
 pense, for indolence was her ruling passion, agreed 
 to resume her life in a city where, she used to 
 say, folks are free and need not depend on their 
 neighbours. 
 
 One autumn evening she arrived at the Gare de 
 I'Ouest with Jean and her boxes and baskets, an 
 upright, hard-featured, fierce-eyed figure, all ready 
 to defend the child against all sorts of imaginary 
 perils. The bookbinder kissed the lad and ex- 
 pressed his satisfaction in two words. 
 
 Then he lifted him pickaback on his shoulders, 
 and bidding him hold on tight to his father's hair, 
 carried him off proudly to the house.
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 7 
 
 Jean was seven. Soon existence settled down to 
 a settled routine. At midday the old dame would 
 don her shawl and set off with the child in the di- 
 rection of Crenelle. 
 
 The pair followed the broad thoroughfares that 
 ran between shabby walls and red-fronted drinking- 
 shops. Generally speaking, a sky of a dappled 
 grey like the great cart-horses that plodded past, 
 invested the quiet suburb with a gentle melancholy. 
 Establishing herself on a bench, while the child 
 played under a tree, she would knit her stocking and 
 chat with an ol_d soldier and tell him her troubles 
 what a hard life it was in other people's houses. 
 
 One day, one of the last fine days of the season, 
 Jean, squatted on the ground, was busy sticking up 
 bits of plane-tree bark in the fine wet sand. That 
 faculty of "pretending," by which children are able 
 to make their lives one unending miracle, trans- 
 formed a handful of soil and a few bits of wood 
 into wondrous galleries and fairy castles to the lad's 
 imagination; he clapped his hands and leapt for 
 joy. Then suddenly he felt himself wrapped in 
 something soft and scented. It was a lady's gown; 
 he saw nothing except that she smiled as she put 
 him gently out of her way and walked on. He ran 
 to tell his aunt:
 
 8 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 "How good she smells, that lady!" 
 
 Mademoiselle Servein only muttered that great 
 ladies were no better than others, and that she 
 thought more of herself with her merino skirt than 
 all those set-up minxes in their flounces and finery, 
 adding: 
 
 "Better a good name than a gilt girdle." 
 
 But this talk was beyond little Jean's compre- 
 hension. The perfumed silk that had swept his 
 face left behind a vague sweetness, a memory as of a 
 gentle, ghostly caress.
 
 Ill 
 
 NE evening in summer the book- 
 binder was enjoying the fresh air be- 
 fore his door when a big man with 
 a red nose, past middle age and 
 wearing a scarlet waistcoast stained 
 with grease-spots, appeared, bowing politely and 
 confidentially, and addressed him in a sing-song 
 voice in which even Monsieur Servien could detect 
 an Italian accent: 
 
 "Sir, I have translated the Gerusalemme Libe- 
 rata, the immortal masterpiece of Torquato Tasso" 
 and a bulging packet of manuscript under his arm 
 confirmed the statement. 
 
 "Yes, sir, I have devoted sleepless nights to this 
 glorious and ungrateful task. Without family or 
 fatherland, I have written my translation in dark, 
 ice-cold garrets, on chandlers' wrappers, snuff pa- 
 pers, the backs of playing cards! Such has been 
 the exile's task! You, sir, you live in your own 
 land, in the bosom of a happy family at least I 
 hope so." 
 
 This speech, which impressed him by its magnilo-
 
 io THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 quence and its strangeness, set the bookbinder dream- 
 ing of the dead woman he had loved, and he saw 
 her in his mind's eye coiling her beautiful hair as 
 in the early days of their married life. 
 
 The big man proceeded: 
 
 "Man is like a plant which perishes when the 
 storms uproot it. 
 
 "Here is your son, is it not so? He is like you" 
 and laying his hand on Jean's head, who clung to 
 his father's coat-tails in wonder at the red waist- 
 coat and the sing-song voice, he asked if the child 
 learned his lessons well, if he was growing up to be 
 a clever man, if he would not soon be beginning 
 Latin. 
 
 "That noble language," he added, "whose inimit- 
 able monuments have often made me forget my mis- 
 fortunes. 
 
 "Yes, sir, I have often breakfasted on a page of 
 Tacitus and supped on a satire of Juvenal." 
 
 As he said the words, a look of sadness 
 overspread his shining red face, and dropping his 
 voice : 
 
 "Forgive me, sir, if I hold out to you the casque 
 of Belisarius. I am the Marquis Tudesco, of Ven- 
 ice. When I have received from the bookseller the 
 price of my labour, I will not forget that you sue-
 
 JEAN SERVIEN n 
 
 coured me with a small coin in the time of my sharp- 
 est trial." 
 
 The bookbinder, case-hardened as he was against 
 beggars, who on winter evenings drifted into his 
 shop with the east wind, nevertheless experienced a 
 certain sympathy and respect for the Marquis Tu- 
 desco. He slipped a franc-piece into his hand. 
 
 Thereupon the old Italian, like a man inspired, 
 exclaimed : 
 
 "One Nation there is that is unhappy Italy, one 
 generous People France ; and one bond that unites 
 the twain humanity. Ah ! chiefest of the virtues, 
 humanity, humanity!" 
 
 Meantime the bookbinder was pondering his 
 wife's last words: "I wish my Jean to learn 
 Latin." He hesitated, till seeing Monsieur Tu- 
 desco bowing and smiling to go : 
 
 "Sir," he said, "if you are ready, two or three 
 times a week, to give the boy lessons in French and 
 Latin, we might come to terms." 
 
 The Marquis Tudesco expressed no surprise. He 
 smiled and said: 
 
 "Certainly, sir, as you wish it, I shall find it a 
 delightful task to initiate your son in the mysteries 
 of the Latin rudiments. 
 
 "We will make a man of him and a good citizen,
 
 12 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 and God knows what heights my pupil will scale in 
 this noble land of freedom and generosity. He 
 may one day be ambassador, my dear sir. I say it : 
 knowledge is power." 
 
 "You will know the shop again," said the book- 
 binder; "there is my name on the signboard." 
 
 The Marquis Tudesco, after tweaking the son's 
 ear amicably and bowing to the father with a digni- 
 fied familiarity, walked away with a step that was 
 still jaunty.
 
 IV 
 
 
 HE Marquis Tudesco returned in due 
 course, smiled at Mademoiselle Ser- 
 vien, who darted poisonous looks at 
 him, greeted the bookbinder with a 
 discreet air of patronage, and had a 
 supply of grammars and dictionaries bought. 
 
 At first he gave his lessons with exemplary regu- 
 larity. He had taken a liking to these repetitions 
 of nouns and verbs, which he listened to with a dig- 
 nified, condescending air, slowly unrolling his screw 
 of snuff the while; he only interrupted to interject 
 little playful remarks with a geniality just touched 
 with a trace of ferocity, that bespoke his real na- 
 ture as an unctuous, cringing bully. He was jocu- 
 lar and pompous at the same time, and always made 
 a pretence of being a long time in seeing the glass 
 of wine put on the table for his refreshment. 
 
 The bookbinder, regarding him as a clever man 
 of ill-regulated life, always treated him with great 
 consideration, for faults of behaviour almost cease 
 to shock us except among neighbours, or at most 
 fellow-countrymen. Without knowing it, Jean 
 
 13
 
 i 4 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 found a fund of amusement in the witticisms and 
 harangues of his old teacher, who united in himself 
 the contradictory attributes of high-priest and buf- 
 foon. He was great at telling a story, and though 
 his tales were beyond the child's intelligence, they 
 did not fail to leave behind a confused impression 
 of recklessness, irony, and cynicism. Mademoi- 
 selle Servien alone never relaxed her attitude of un- 
 compromising dislike and disdain. She said noth- 
 ing against him, but her face was a rigid mask of 
 disapproval, her eyes two flames of fire, in answer 
 to the courteous greeting the tutor never failed to 
 offer her with a special roll of his little grey eyes. 
 
 One day the Marquis Tudesco walked into the 
 shop with a staggering gait; his eyes glittered and 
 his mouth hung half open in anticipation of racy 
 talk and self-indulgence, while his great nose, his 
 pink cheeks, his fat, loose hands and his big belly, 
 gallantly carried, gave him, beneath his jacket and 
 felt hat, a perfect likeness to a little rustic god his 
 ancestors worshipped, the old Silenus. 
 
 Lessons that day were fitful and haphazard. 
 Jean was repeating in a drawling voice: moneo, 
 mones, monet . . . monebam, monebas, monebat 
 . . . Suddenly Monsieur Tudesco sprang forward, 
 dragging his chair along the floor with a horrid
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 15 
 
 screech, and clapping his hand on his pupil's 
 shoulder : 
 
 "Child," he said, "to-day I am going to give you 
 a more profitable lesson than all the pitiful teaching 
 I have confined myself to up to now. 
 
 "It is a lesson of transcendental philosophy. 
 Hearken carefully, child. If one day you rise above 
 your station and come to know yourself and the 
 world about you, you will discover this, that men act 
 only out of regard for the opinion of their fellows 
 and per Bacco! they are consummate fools for 
 their pains. They dread other folks' blame and 
 crave their approval. 
 
 "The idiots fail to see that the world does not 
 care a straw for them, and that their dearest friends 
 will see them glorified or disgraced without miss- 
 ing one mouthful of their dinner. This is my les- 
 son, caro figUuolo, that the world's opinion is not 
 worth the sacrifice of a single one of our desires. 
 If you get this into your pate, you will be a strong 
 man and can boast you were once the pupil of the 
 Marquis Tudesco, of Venice, the exile who has 
 translated in a freezing garret, on scraps of refuse 
 paper, the immortal poem of Torquato Tasso. 
 What a task!" 
 
 The child listened to the tipsy philosopher with-
 
 1 6 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 out understanding one word of his rigmarole; only 
 Monsieur Tudesco struck him as a strange and 
 alarming personage, and taller by a hundred feet 
 than anybody he had ever seen before. 
 
 The professor warmed to his subject: 
 
 "Ah!" he cried, springing from his seat, "and 
 what profit did the immortal and ill-starred Tor- 
 quato Tasso win from all his genius? A few stolen 
 kisses on the steps of a palace. And he died of 
 famine in a madhouse. I say it: the world's opin- 
 ion, that empress of human-kind, I will tear from 
 her her crown and sceptre. Opinion tyrannizes 
 over unhappy Italy, as over all the earth. Italy! 
 what flaming sword will one day come to break her 
 fetters, as now I break this chair?" 
 
 In fact, he had seized his chair by the back and 
 was pounding it fiercely on the floor. 
 
 But suddenly he stopped, gave a knowing smile, 
 and said in a low voice : 
 
 "No, no, Marquis Tudesco, let be, let Venice 
 be a prey to Teuton savagery. The fetters of the 
 fatherland are daily bread to the exiled patriot." 
 
 His chin buried in his cravat, he stood chuckling 
 to himself, and his red waistcoat rose and fell in 
 jerks. 
 
 Mademoiselle Servien, who sat by at the lesson
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 17 
 
 knitting a stocking and for some moments had been 
 watching the tutor, her spectacles pushed half-way 
 up her forehead, with a look of amazement and 
 suspicion, exclaimed, as if talking to herself: 
 
 "If it isn't abominable to come to people's houses 
 in drink!" 
 
 Monsieur Tudesco did not seem to hear her. 
 His manner was quiet and jocular again. 
 
 "Child," he ordered, "write down the theme for 
 an essay. Write down : 'The worst thing . . . 
 yes, the worst thing of all,' write it down ... 'is 
 an old woman with a spiteful temper.' ' 
 
 And rising with the gracious dignity of a Prince 
 of the Church, he bowed low to the aunt, gave the 
 nephew's cheek a friendly tap, and marched out of 
 the room. 
 
 However, beginning with the very next lesson, 
 he lavished every mark of respect on the old lady, 
 and treated her to all his choicest airs and graces, 
 rounding his elbows, pursing his lips, strutting and 
 swaggering. She would not relax a muscle, and 
 sat there as silent and sulky as an owl. 
 
 But one day when she was hunting for her spec- 
 tacles, as she was always doing, Monsieur Tudesco 
 offered her his and persuaded her to try them; she 
 found they suited her sight and felt a trifle less
 
 1 8 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 unamiable towards him. The Italian, pursuing his 
 advantage, got into talk with her, and artfully 
 turned the conversation upon the vices of the rich. 
 The old lady approved his sentiments, and an ex- 
 change of petty confidences ensued. Tudesco knew 
 a sovereign remedy for catarrh, and this too was 
 well received. He redoubled his attentions, and 
 the concierge, who saw him smiling to himself on 
 the doorstep, told Aunt Servien: "The man's in 
 love with you." Of course she declared: "At my 
 time of life a woman doesn't want lovers," but her 
 vanity was tickled all the same. Monsieur Tudesco 
 got what he wanted to have his glass filled to the 
 brim every lesson. Out of politeness they would 
 even leave him the pint jug only half empty, which 
 he was indiscreet enough to drain dry. 
 
 One day he asked for a taste of cheese "just 
 enough to make a mouse's dinner," was his expres- 
 sion. "Mice are like me, they love the dark and a 
 quiet life and books; and like me they live on 
 crumbs." 
 
 This pose of the wise man fallen on evil days 
 made a bad impression, and the old lady became 
 silent and sombre as before. 
 
 When springtime came Monsieur Tudesco 
 vanished.
 
 HE bookbinder, for all his scanty 
 earnings, was resolved to enter Jean 
 at a school where the boy could en- 
 joy a regular and complete course of 
 instruction. He selected a day- 
 school not far from the Luxembourg, because he 
 could see the top branches of an acacia overtopping 
 the wall, and the house had a cheerful look. 
 
 Jean, as a little new boy (he was now eleven), was 
 some weeks before he shook off the shyness with 
 which his schoolfellows' loud voices and rough ways 
 and his masters' ponderous gravity had at first over- 
 whelmed him. Little by little he grew used to the 
 work, and learned some of the tricks by means of 
 which punishments were avoided; his schoolfellows 
 found him so inoffensive they left off stealing his 
 cap and Initiated him in the game of marbles. But 
 he had little love for school-life, and when five 
 o'clock came, prayers were over and his satchel 
 strapped, it was with unfeigned delight he dashed 
 out into the street basking in the golden rays of the 
 setting sun. In the intoxication of freedom, he 
 
 10
 
 20 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 danced and leapt, seeing everything, men and horses, 
 carriages and shops, in a charmed light, and out of 
 sheer joy of life mumbling at his Aunt Servien's 
 hand and arm, as she walked home with him carry- 
 ing the satchel and lunch-basket. 
 
 The evening was a peaceful time. Jean would 
 sit drawing pictures or dreaming over his copy- 
 books at one end of the table where Mademoiselle 
 Servien had just cleared away the meal. His father 
 would be busy with a book. As age advanced he 
 had acquired a taste for reading, his favourites being 
 La Fontaine's Fables, Anquetil's History of France , 
 and Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique, "to get 
 the hang of things," as he put it. His sister made 
 fruitless efforts to distract his attention with some 
 stinging criticism of the neighbours or a question 
 about "our fat friend who had not come back," for 
 she made a point of never remembering the Marquis 
 Tudesco's name.
 
 VI 
 
 EFORE long Jean's whole mind was 
 given over to the catechizings and 
 sermons and hymns preparatory to 
 the First Communion. Intoxicated 
 with the music of chants and organ, 
 drowned in the scent of incense and flowers, hung 
 about with scapularies, rosaries, consecrated med- 
 als, and holy images, he, like his companions, as- 
 sumed a certain air of self-importance and wore a 
 smug, sanctified look. He was cold and unbend- 
 ing towards his aunt, who spoke with far too much 
 unconcern about the "great day." Though she had 
 long been in the habit of taking her nephew to 
 Mass every Sunday, she was not "pious." Most 
 likely she confounded in one common detestation 
 the luxury of the rich and the pomps of the Church 
 service. She had more than once been overheard 
 informing one of the cronies she used to meet on 
 the boulevards that she was a religious woman, but 
 she could not abide priests, that she said her pray- 
 ers at home, and these were every bit as good as 
 the fine ladies' who flaunted their crinolines in 
 
 21
 
 22 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 church. His father was more in sympathy with 
 the lad's new-found zeal; he was interested and 
 even a little impressed. He undertook to bind a 
 missal with his own hands against the ceremony. 
 
 When the days arrived for retreats and general 
 confessions, Jean swelled with pride and vague as- 
 pirations. He looked for something out of the 
 ordinary to happen. Coming out at evening from 
 Saint-Sulpice with two or three of his schoolfellows, 
 he would feel an atmosphere of miracle about him; 
 some divine interposition must be forthcoming. 
 The lads used to tell each other strange stories, 
 pious legends they had read in one of their little 
 books of devotion. Now it was a phantom monk 
 who had stepped out of the grave, showing the 
 stigmata on hands and feet and the pierced side; 
 now a nun, beautiful as the veiled figures in the 
 Church pictures, expiating in the fires of hell mys- 
 terious sins. Jean had his favourite tale. Shud- 
 dering, he would relate how St. Francis Borgia, 
 after the death of Queen Isabella, who was lovely 
 beyond compare, must have the coffin opened 
 wherein she lay at rest in her robe embroidered 
 with pearls; in imagination he pictured the dead 
 Queen, invested her form with all the magic hues 
 of the unknown, traced in her lineaments the en-
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 23 
 
 chantments of a woman's beauty in the dark gulf 
 of death. And as he told the tale, he could hear, 
 in the twilight gloom, a murmur of soft voices sigh- 
 ing in the plane trees of the Luxembourg. 
 
 The great day arrived. The bookbinder, who 
 attended the ceremony with his sister, thought of 
 his wife and wept. 
 
 He was most favourably impressed by the cure's 
 homily, in which a young man without faith was 
 compared to an unbridled charger that plunges 
 over precipices. The simile struck his fancy, and 
 he would quote it years after with approbation. 
 He made up his mind to read the Bible, as he had 
 read Voltaire, "to get the hang of things." 
 
 Jean withdrew from the houselling cloth won- 
 dering to be just the same as ever and already 
 disillusioned. He was never again to recover the 
 first fervent rapture.
 
 VII 
 
 HE holidays were near. At noon of 
 a blazing hot day Jean was seated 
 in the shade on the dwarf-wall that 
 bounded the school court towards 
 the headmaster's garden. He was 
 playing languidly at shovel-board with a schoolfel- 
 low, a lad as pretty as a girl with his curls and his 
 jacket of white duck. 
 
 "Ewans," said Jean, as he pushed a pebble along 
 one of the lines drawn in charcoal on the stone 
 coping, "Ewans, you must find it tiresome to be 
 a boarder?" 
 
 "Mother cannot have me with her at home," re- 
 plied the boy. 
 
 Servien asked why. 
 
 "Oh ! because " stammered Ewans. 
 
 He stared a long time at the white pebble he 
 held in his hand ready to play, before he added: 
 "My mother goes travelling." 
 "And your father?" 
 
 "He is in America. I have never seen him. 
 You've lost. Let's begin again." 
 
 25
 
 26 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 Servien, who felt interested in Madame Ewans 
 because of the superb boxes of chocolates she used 
 to bring to school for her boy, put another ques- 
 tion: 
 
 "You love her very much, your mother I mean?" 
 
 "Of course I do!" cried the other, adding pres- 
 ently : 
 
 "You must come and see me one day in the hol- 
 idays at home. You'll find our house is very 
 pretty, there's sofas and cushions no end. But you 
 must not put off, for we shall be off to the seaside 
 soon." 
 
 At this moment a servant, a tall, thin man, ap- 
 peared in the playground and called out something 
 which the shrill cries of their companions at play 
 prevented the two seated on the wall from hearing. 
 A fat boy, standing by himself with his face to the 
 wall with the unconcern born of long familiarity 
 with this form of punishment, clapped his two 
 hands to his mouth trumpetwise and shrieked: 
 
 "Ewans, you're wanted in the parlour." 
 
 The usher marched up: 
 
 "Garneret," he ordered, "you will stand out half 
 an hour this evening at preparation for speaking 
 when you were forbidden to. Ewans, go to the 
 parlour."
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 27 
 
 The latter clapped his hands and danced for joy, 
 telling his friend : 
 
 "It's my mother! I'll tell her you are coming 
 to our house." 
 
 Servien reddened with pleasure, and stammered 
 out that he would ask his father's leave. But 
 Ewans had already scampered across the yard, leav- 
 ing a dusty furrow behind him. 
 
 Leave was readily granted by Monsieur Servien, 
 who was fully persuaded that all the boys admitted 
 to so expensive a school were born of well-to-do 
 parents, whose society could not but prove advan- 
 tageous to his son's manners and morals and to his 
 future success in life. 
 
 Such information as Jean could give him about 
 Madame Ewans was extremely vague, but the book- 
 binder was well used to contemplating the ways of 
 rich folks through a veil of impenetrable mystery. 
 
 Aunt Servien indulged in sundry observations on 
 the occasion of a very general kind touching people 
 who ride in carriages. Then she repeated a story 
 about a great lady who, just like Madame Ewans, 
 had put her son to boarding-school, and who was 
 mixed up in a case of illicit commissions, in the 
 time of Louis-Philippe. 
 
 She added, to clinch the matter, that the cowl
 
 28 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 does not make the monk, that she thought herself, 
 for all she did not wear flowers in her hat, a more 
 honest woman than your society ladies, false jades 
 every one, concluding with her pet proverb: Bet- 
 ter a good name than a gilt girdle ! 
 
 Jean had never seen a gilt girdle, but he thought 
 in a vague way he would very much like to have one. 
 
 The holidays came, and one Thursday after 
 breakfast his aunt produced a white waistcoat from 
 the wardrobe, and Jean, dressed in his Sunday best, 
 climbed on an omnibus which took him to the Rue de 
 Rivoli. He mounted four flights of a staircase, the 
 carpet and polished brass stair-rods of which filled 
 him with surprise and admiration. 
 
 On reaching the landing, he could hear the tin- 
 kling of a piano. He rang the bell, blushed hotly 
 and was sorry he had rung. He would have given 
 worlds to run away. A maid-servant opened the 
 door, and behind her stood Edgar Ewans, wearing 
 a brown holland suit, in which he looked entirely 
 at his ease. 
 
 "Come along," he cried, and dragged him into a 
 drawing-room, into which the half-drawn curtains 
 admitted shafts of sunlight that were flashed back 
 in countless broken reflections from mirrors and 
 gilt cornices. A sweet, stimulating perfume hung
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 29 
 
 about the room, which was crowded with a super- 
 abundance of padded chairs and couches and piles 
 of cushions. 
 
 In the half-light Jean beheld a lady so different 
 from all he had ever set eyes on till that moment 
 that he could form no notion of what she was, no 
 idea of her beauty or her age. Never had he seen 
 eyes that flashed so vividly in a face of such pale 
 fairness, or lips so red, smiling with such an un- 
 varying almost tired-looking smile. She was sit- 
 ting at a piano, idly strumming on the keys without 
 playing any definite tune. What drew Jean's eyes 
 above all was her hair, arranged in some fashion 
 that struck him with a sense of mystery and beauty. 
 
 She looked round, and smoothing the lace of her 
 peignoir with one hand : 
 
 "You are Edgar's friend?" she asked, in a cor- 
 dial tone, though her voice struck Jean as harsh in 
 this beautiful room that was perfumed like a 
 church. 
 
 "Yes, Madame." 
 
 "You like being at school?" 
 
 "Yes, Madame." 
 
 "The masters are not too strict?" 
 
 "No, Madame." 
 
 "You have no mother?"
 
 30 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 As she put the question Madame Ewans' voice 
 softened. 
 
 "No, Madame." 
 
 "What is your father?" 
 
 "A bookbinder, Madame" and the bookbinder's 
 son blushed as he gave the answer. At that mo- 
 ment he would gladly have consented never to see 
 his father more, his father whom he loved, if by the 
 sacrifice he could have passed for the son of a Cap- 
 tain in the Navy or a Secretary of the Embassy. 
 He suddenly remembered that one of his fellow- 
 pupils was the son of a celebrated physician whose 
 portrait was displayed in the stationers' windows. 
 
 If only he had had a father like that to tell 
 Madame Ewans of! But that was out of the 
 question and how cruelly unjust it was! He felt 
 ashamed of himself, as if he had said something 
 shocking. 
 
 But his friend's mother seemed quite unaffected 
 by the dreadful avowal. She was still moving her 
 hands at random up and down the keyboard. Then 
 presently : 
 
 "You must enjoy yourself finely to-day, boys," 
 she cried. "We will all go out. Shall I take you 
 to the fair at Saint-Cloud?"
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 31 
 
 Yes, Edgar was all for going, because of the 
 roundabouts. 
 
 Madame Ewans rose from the piano, patted her 
 pale flaxen hair in place with a pretty gesture, and 
 gave a sidelong look in the mirror as she passed. 
 
 "I'm going to dress," she told them; "I shall 
 not be long." 
 
 While she was dressing, Edgar sat at the piano 
 trying to pick out a tune from an opera bouffe, and 
 Jean, perched uncomfortably on the edge of his 
 chair, stared about the room at a host of strange 
 and sumptuous objects that seemed in some mysteri- 
 ous way to be part and parcel of their beautiful 
 owner, and affected him almost as strangely as she 
 herself had done. 
 
 Preceded by a faint waft of scent and a rustle of 
 silk, she reappeared, tying the strings of the hat that 
 made a dainty diadem above her smiling eyes. 
 
 Edgar looked at her curiously: 
 
 "Why, mother, there's something ... I don't 
 know what . . . something that alters you." 
 
 She glanced in the mirror, examining her hair, 
 which showed pale violet shadows amid the flaxen 
 plaits. 
 
 "Oh! it's nothing," she said; "only I have put
 
 32 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 some powder in my hair. Like the Empress," she 
 added, and broke into another smile. 
 
 As she was drawing on her gloves, a ring was 
 heard, and the maid came in to tell her mistress 
 that Monsieur Delbeque was waiting to see her. 
 
 Madame Ewans pouted and declared she could 
 not receive him, whereupon the maid spoke a few 
 words in a very peremptory whisper. Madame 
 Ewans shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "Stay where you are !" she told the boys, and 
 passed into the dining-room, whence the murmur of 
 two voices could presently be heard. 
 
 Jean asked Edgar, under his breath, who the 
 gentleman was. 
 
 "Monsieur Delbeque," Edgar informed him. 
 "He keeps horses and a carriage. He deals in pigs. 
 One evening he took us to the theatre, mother and 
 me." 
 
 Jean was surprised and rather shocked to find 
 Monsieur Delbeque dealt in pigs. But he hid his 
 surprise and asked if he was a relation. 
 
 "Oh! no," said Edgar, "he's one of our friends. 
 It's a long time ... at least a year we have known 
 him." 
 
 Jean, harking back to his first idea, put the ques- 
 tion:
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 33 
 
 "Have you ever seen him selling his pigs?" 
 
 "How stupid you are I" retorted Edgar; "he deals 
 in them wholesale. Mother says it's a famous 
 trade. He has a cigar-holder with an amber 
 mouthpiece and a woman all naked carved in meer- 
 schaum. Just think, the other day he came and 
 told mother his wife was making him atrocious 
 scenes." 
 
 Madame Ewans put in her head at the half- 
 open door: 
 
 "Come along," she said, and they set out. No 
 sooner were they in the street than a man, who was 
 smoking, greeted Madame with a friendly wave 
 of his gloved hand. She muttered between her 
 teeth : 
 
 "Shall we never be done with them?" 
 
 The man began in a guttural voice : 
 
 "I was just going to your place, my dear, to offer 
 you a box of Turkish cigarettes. But I see you are 
 taking a boarding-school out for a walk a regular 
 boarding-school, 'pon my word! You take pupils, 
 eh? I congratulate you. Make men of 'em, my 
 dear, make men of 'em." 
 
 Madame Ewans frowned and replied with a curl 
 of the lips: 
 
 "I am with my son and one of my son's friends."
 
 34 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 The gentleman threw a careless look at one of 
 the lads Jean Servien as it happened. 
 
 "Capital, capital!" he exclaimed. "Is that one 
 your son?" 
 
 "Not he, indeed!" she cried hotly. 
 
 Jean felt he was looked down upon, and as she 
 laid her hand on her son's shoulder with a proud 
 gesture, he could not help noticing his schoolfellow's 
 easy air and elegant costume, at the same time cast- 
 ing a glance of disgust at his own jacket, which had 
 been cut down for him by his aunt out of an over- 
 coat of his father's. 
 
 "Shall we be honoured by your presence to-night 
 at the Bouffes?" asked the gentleman. 
 
 "No !" replied Madame Ewans, and pushed the 
 two children forward with the tip of her sunshade. 
 
 Stepping out gaily, they soon arrive under the 
 chestnuts of the Tuileries, cross the bridge, then 
 down the river-bank, over the shaky gangway, and 
 so on to the steamer pontoon. 
 
 Now they are aboard the boat, which exhales a 
 strong, healthy smell of tar under the hot sun. 
 The long grey walls of the embankments slip by, to 
 be succeeded presently by wooded slopes. 
 
 Saint-Cloud ! The moment the ropes are made 
 fast, Madame Ewans springs on to the landing-
 
 . JEAN SERVIEN 35 
 
 stage and makes straight for the shrilling of the 
 clarinettes and thunder of the big drums, steering 
 her little charges through the press with the handle 
 of her sunshade. 
 
 Jean was mightily surprised when Madame 
 Ewans made him "try his luck" in a lottery. He 
 had before now gone with his aunt to sundry sub- 
 urban fairs, but she had always dissuaded him so 
 peremptorily from spending anything that he was 
 firmly persuaded revolving-tables and shooting- 
 galleries were amusements only permitted to a class 
 of people to which he did not belong. Madame 
 Ewans showed the greatest interest in her son's 
 success, urging him to give the handle a good vigor- 
 ous turn. 
 
 She was very superstitious about luck, "invoking" 
 the big prizes, clapping her hands in ecstasy when- 
 ever Edgar won a halfpenny egg-cup, falling into 
 the depths of despair at every bad shot. Perhaps 
 she saw an omen in his failure; perhaps she was just 
 blindly eager to have her darling succeed. After he 
 had lost two or three times, she pulled the boy away 
 and gave the wooden disk such a violent push round 
 as set its cargo of crockery-ware and glass rattling, 
 and proceeded to play on her own account once, 
 twice, twenty times, thirty times, with frantic eager-
 
 36 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 ness. Then followed quite a business about ex- 
 changing the small prizes for one big one, as is com- 
 monly done. Finally, she decided for a set of 
 beer jugs and glasses, half of which she gave to each 
 of the two friends-to carry. 
 
 But this was only a beginning. She halted the 
 children before every stall. She made them play 
 for macaroons at rouge et noir. She had them try 
 their skill at every sort of shooting-game, with cross- 
 bows loaded with little clay pellets, with pistols 
 and carbines, old-fashioned weapons with caps and 
 leaden bullets, at all sorts of distances, and at all 
 kinds of targets plaster images, revolving pipes, 
 dolls, balls bobbing up and down on top of a jet of 
 water. 
 
 Never in his life had Jean Servien been so busy 
 or done so many different things in so short a space 
 of time. 
 
 His eyes dazzled with uncouth shapes and star- 
 tling colours, his throat parched with dust, elbowed, 
 crushed, mauled, hustled by the crowd, he was in- 
 toxicated with this debauch of diversions. 
 
 He watched Madame Ewans for ever opening 
 her little purse of Russia leather, and a new power 
 was revealed to him. Nor was this all. There 
 was the Dutch top to be set twirling, the wooden
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 37 
 
 horses of the merry-go-round to be mounted; they 
 had to dash down the great chute and take a turn 
 in the Venetian gondolas, to be weighed in the ma- 
 chine and touch the arm of the "human torpedo." 
 
 But Madame Ewans could not help returning 
 again and again to stand before the booth of a hyp- 
 notist from Paris, a clairvoyant boasting a certifi- 
 cate signed by the Minister of Agriculture and Com- 
 merce and by three Doctors of the Faculty. She 
 gazed enviously at the servant-girls as they trooped 
 up blushing into the van meagrely furnished with a 
 bed and a couple of chairs; but she could not pluck 
 up courage to follow their example. 
 
 She recalled to mind how a hypnotist had once 
 helped a friend of hers to recover some stolen forks 
 and spoons. She had even gone so far as to con- 
 sult a fortune-teller shortly before Edgar's birth, 
 and the cards had foretold a boy. 
 
 All three were tired out and overloaded with 
 crockery, glass, reed-pipes, sticks of sugar-candy, 
 cakes of ginger-bread and macaroons. For all that, 
 they paid a visit to the wax-works, where they saw 
 Monseigneur Sibour's body lying in state at the 
 Archbishop's Palace, the execution of Mary Queen 
 of Scots, models of people's legs and arms disfig- 
 ured by various hideous diseases, and a Circassian
 
 38 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 maiden stepping out of the bath "the purest type 
 of female beauty," as a placard duly informed the 
 public. Madame Ewans examined this last exhibit 
 with a curiosity that very soon became critical. 
 
 "People may say what they please," she mut- 
 tered; "if you offered me the whole world, / 
 wouldn't have such big feet and such a thick waist. 
 And then, your regular features aren't one bit at- 
 tractive. Men like a face that says something." 
 
 When they left the tent, the sun was low and the 
 dust hovered in golden clouds over the throng of 
 women, working-men, and soldiers. 
 
 It was time for dinner; but as they passed the 
 monkey-cage, Madame Ewans noticed such a crush 
 of eager spectators squeezing in between the baize 
 curtains on the platform in front that she could not 
 resist the temptation to follow suit. Besides which, 
 she was drawn by a motive of curiosity, having been 
 told that monkeys were not insensible to female 
 charms. But the performance diverted her 
 thoughts in another direction. She saw an un- 
 happy poodle in red breeches shot as a deserter in 
 spite of his honest looks. Tears rose to her eyes, 
 she was so sensitive, so susceptible to the glamour 
 of the stage! 
 
 "Yes, it's quite true," she sobbed; "yes, poor
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 39 
 
 soldiers have been shot before now just for going 
 off without leave to stand by their mother's death- 
 bed or for smacking a bullying officer's face." 
 
 Some old refrain of Beranger she had heard 
 working folks sing in her plebeian childhood rose 
 to her memory and intensified her emotion. She 
 told the children the lamentable tale of the canine 
 deserter's pitiful doom, and made them feel quite 
 sad. 
 
 No sooner were they outside the place, however, 
 than an itinerant toy-seller with a paper helmet on 
 his head set them splitting with laughter. 
 
 Dinner must be thought of. She knew of a tav- 
 ern by the river-side where you could eat a fry of 
 fish in the arbour, and thither they betook them- 
 selves. 
 
 The lady from Paris and the landlady of the 
 inn greeted each other with a wink of the eye. It 
 was a long time since she had seen Madame; she 
 had no idea who the two young gentlemen were, but 
 anyway they were dear little ,angels. Madame 
 Ewans ordered the meal like a connoisseur, with a 
 knowing air and all the proper restaurant tricks of 
 phrase. All three sat silent, agreeably tired and 
 enjoying the sensation, she with her bonnet-strings 
 flying loose, the boys leaning back against the trellis.
 
 40 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 They could see the river and its grassy banks 
 through an archway of wild vine. Their thoughts 
 flowed softly on like the current before their eyes, 
 while the dusk and cool of the evening wrapped 
 them in a soft caress. For the first time Jean Ser- 
 vien, as he gazed at Madame Ewans, felt the thrill 
 of a woman's sweet proximity. 
 
 Presently, warmed by a trifle of wine and water 
 he had drunk, he became wholly lost in his dreams 
 visions of all sorts of elegant, preposterous, 
 chivalrous things. His head was still full of these 
 fancies when he was dragged back to the fair-ground 
 by Madame Ewans, who could never have enough 
 of sight-seeing and noise. Illuminated arches 
 spanned at regular intervals the broad-walk, lined 
 on either side by stalls and trestle-tables, but the 
 lateral avenues gloomed dark and deserted under 
 the tall black trees. Loving couples paced them 
 slowly, while the music from the shows sounded 
 muffled by the distance. They were still there when 
 a band of fifes, trombones, and trumpets struck up 
 close by, playing a popular polka tune. The very 
 first bar put Madame Ewans on her mettle. She 
 drew Jean to her, settled his hands in hers and lift- 
 ing him off the ground with a jerk of the hip, began 
 dancing with him. She swung and swayed to the
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 41 
 
 lilt of the music; but the boy was awkward and em- 
 barrassed, and only hindered his partner, dragging 
 back and bumping against her. She threw him 
 off roughly and impatiently, saying sharply: 
 
 "You don't know how to dance, eh? You come 
 here, Edgar." 
 
 She danced a while with him in the semi-darkness. 
 Then, rosy and smiling: 
 
 "Bravo!" she laughed; "we'll stop now." 
 
 Servien stood by in gloomy silence, conscious of 
 his own inefficiency. His heart swelled with a sul- 
 len anger. He was hurt, and longed for some- 
 body or something to vent his hate upon. 
 
 The drive home was a silent one. Jean nearly 
 gave himself cramp in his determined efforts not to 
 touch with his own the knees of Madame Ewans, 
 who dozed on the back seat of the conveyance. 
 She hardly awoke enough to bid him good-bye when 
 he alighted at his father's door. 
 
 As he entered he was struck for the first time by 
 a smell of paste that seemed past bearing. The 
 room where he had slept for years, happy in himself 
 and loved by others, seemed a wretched hole. He 
 sat down on his bed and looked round gloomily and 
 morosely at the holy-water stoup of gilt porcelain, 
 the print commemorating his First Communion,
 
 42 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 the toilet basin on the chest of drawers, and stacked 
 in the corners piles of pasteboard and ornamental 
 paper for binding. 
 
 Everything about him seemed animated by a 
 hostile, malevolent, unjust spirit. In the next room 
 he could hear his father moving. He pictured him 
 at his work-bench, with his serge apron, calm and 
 content. What a humiliation ! and for the second 
 time in a dozen hours he blushed for his parentage. 
 
 His slumbers were broken and uneasy; he 
 dreamed he was turning, turning unendingly in com- 
 plicated figures, and it was impossible always to 
 avoid touching Madame Ewans' knee, though all 
 the time he was horribly afraid of doing it. Then 
 there was a great field full of thousands and thou- 
 sands of marble pigs stuck up on stone pedestals, 
 among which he could see Monsieur Delbeque 
 promenading slowly up and down.
 
 VIII 
 
 EXT morning he awoke feeling sour- 
 tempered and low-spirited. 
 
 "Well, my boy," his father asked 
 him, blowing noisily at each spoon- 
 ful of soup he absorbed, "well, did 
 you enjoy yourself yesterday?" 
 
 He answered curtly and crossly. Everything 
 stirred his gorge. His aunt's print gown filled him 
 with a sort of rage. 
 
 His father propounded a hundred minute in- 
 quiries; he would fain have pictured the whole ex- 
 pedition to himself as he consumed his bowl of soup. 
 He had seen Saint-Cloud in his soldiering days; but 
 he had never been there since. He had a bright 
 idea ; they would go to Versailles, the three of them ; 
 his sister would see to having a bit of veal cooked 
 overnight, and they could take it with them. They 
 would have a look at the pictures, eat their snack 
 on the great lawn, and have a fine time generally. 
 Jean, who was horrified at the whole project, 
 opened his exercise-books and buried his head in his 
 lessons, to avoid the necessity of hearing any more 
 
 43
 
 44 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 and answering questions. He did not as a rule 
 show such alacrity about setting to work. His 
 father remarked on the fact, commending him for 
 his zeal. 
 
 "We should play," he announced, "when it is 
 play-time, and work when it is the time to work," 
 and he set to work flattening a piece of shagreen. 
 
 Jean fell into a brown study. He had caught 
 a glimpse of a world he knew to be for ever closed 
 against him, but towards which all the forces of his 
 young heart drew him irresistibly. He did not 
 dream Madame Ewans could ever be different from 
 what he had seen her. He could not imagine her 
 otherwise dressed or amid any other surroundings. 
 He knew nothing whatever of women; this one had 
 seemed motherly to him, and it was a mother such 
 as Madame Ewans he would have liked to have. 
 But how his heart beat and his brow burned as he 
 pictured this imaginary mother a reality! 
 
 Dating from the day at Saint-Cloud, Jean thought 
 himself unhappy, and unhappy he became in fact. 
 He was wilfully, deliberately insubordinate, proud 
 of breaking rules and defying punishments. 
 
 He and his school-mates attended the classes of 
 a Lycee in the Quartier Latin. Directly he had
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 45 
 
 taken his place on the remotest bench in the well- 
 warmed lecture-room, he would become absorbed in 
 some sentimental novel concealed under piles of 
 Latin and Greek authors. Sometimes the master, 
 short-sighted as he was, would catch the culprit in 
 the act. 
 
 Still, Jean had his hours of triumph. His trans- 
 lations were remarkable, not for accuracy, but at 
 any rate for elegance. So, too, his compositions 
 sometimes contained happy phrases that earned him 
 high praise. On the theme, "The maiden Theano 
 defending Alcibiades against the incensed Athe- 
 nians," he wrote a Latin oration that was warmly 
 commended by Monsieur Duruy, the then Inspector 
 of Public Instruction, and gained the young author 
 some weeks of scholastic fame. 
 
 On holidays he would roam the boulevards and 
 gaze with greedy eyes at the jewels, the silks and 
 satins, the bronzes, the photographs of women, dis- 
 played in the shop-windows the thousand and one 
 gewgaws and frivolities of fashion that seemed to 
 him to sum up the necessary conditions of happiness. 
 
 His entry into the philosophy class was a red- 
 letter day; he sported his first tall hat and smoked 
 his first non-surreptitious cigarettes. He possessed
 
 46 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 a certain brilliancy of mind and a keen wit that 
 amused his companions, whose superior he was in 
 gifts of imagination. 
 
 His last vacation was passed in tolerable con- 
 tent. His father, thinking him looking pale, sent 
 him on a visit to relatives living in a village near 
 Chartres. Jean, the tedious farm dinner ended, 
 would go and sit under a tree and bury himself in a 
 novel. Occasionally he would ride to the city in 
 the miller's cart. Often he would be drenched all 
 the way by the rain that fell drearily at nightfall. 
 Then he would enjoy the fun of drying himself be- 
 fore the huge fireplace of some inn on the outskirts 
 of the town, beside the savoury roast on the turn- 
 ing spit. He even had a day's shooting with an 
 old flint-lock fowling-piece under the auspices of his 
 cousin the miller. In short, he could boast on his 
 return of having had a country holiday.
 
 IX 
 
 T eighteen he took his bachelor's de- 
 gree. The evening after the ex- 
 amination Monsieur Servien un- 
 corked a bottle with a special seal, 
 which he had hoarded for years in 
 anticipation of this domestic solemnity, and the con- 
 tents of which had turned from red to pink as they 
 slowly fined. 
 
 "A young man who carries his diploma in his 
 pocket can enter every door," Monsieur Servien ob- 
 served, as he imbibed the wine with fitting respect; 
 it had been good stuff once, but was past its prime. 
 Jean polished off the family repast rapidly and 
 hurried away to the theatre. His only ideas as 
 yet of what a play was like were derived from the 
 posters he had seen. He selected for to-night one 
 of the big theatres where a tragedy was on the bill. 
 He took his ticket for the pit with a vague idea it 
 would be the talisman admitting him to a new 
 wonder-world of passion and emotion. Every 
 trifle is disconcerting to a troubled spirit, and on 
 his entrance he was surprised and sobered to see 
 
 47
 
 48 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 how few spectators there were in the stalls and 
 boxes. But at the first scraping of the violins as 
 the orchestra tuned up, he glued his eyes to the 
 curtain, which rose at last. 
 
 Then, then he saw, in a Roman palace, leaning 
 on the back of a chair of antique shape, a woman 
 who wore over her robe of white woollen the 
 saffron-hued palla. Amid the trampling of feet, 
 the rustle of dresses and the shifting of stools, she 
 was reciting a long soliloquy, accompanied by slow, 
 deliberate gestures. He felt, as he gazed, a 
 strange, unknown pleasure, that grew more and 
 more acute till it was almost pain. As scene fol- 
 lowed scene, there entered a confidante, then a 
 hero, then a crowd of supers. But he saw nothing 
 but the apparition that had first fascinated him. 
 His eyes fastened greedily on her beauty, caressing 
 the two bare arms, encircled with rings of metal, 
 gliding along the curve of the hips below the high 
 girdle, plunging amid the brown locks that waved 
 above the brow and were tied back with three white 
 fillets; they clung to the moving lips and the white, 
 moist teeth that ever and anon flashed in the glare 
 of the foot-lights. He longed to feel, to seize, to 
 hold this lovely, living thing that moved before his
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 49 
 
 eyes; in imagination he enfolded and embraced the 
 beautiful vision. 
 
 The wait between the acts (for the tragedy in- 
 volved a change of scenery) was intolerably tedious. 
 His neighbours were talking politics and passing one 
 another quarters of orange across him; the news- 
 paper boy and the man who hired out opera-glasses 
 deafened him with their bawling. He was in terror 
 of some sudden catastrophe that might interrupt 
 the play. 
 
 The curtain rose once more, on a succession of 
 scenes of political intrigue a la Corneille which had 
 no meaning for Servien. To his joy the lovely be- 
 ing in the white robe came on again. But he had 
 strained his sight too hard; he could see nothing; by 
 dint of riveting his gaze on the long gold pendants 
 that hung from the actress's ears, he was dazzled; 
 his eyes swam and closed involuntarily, and he could 
 hear no sound but the beating of the blood in his 
 temples. 
 
 By a supreme effort, in the last scene, he saw and 
 heard her again clearly and distinctly, yet not as 
 with his ordinary senses, for she wore for him the 
 elemental guise of a supernatural vision. When 
 the prompter's bell tinkled and the curtain descended
 
 50 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 for the last time, he had a feeling as though the uni- 
 verse had collapsed in irretrievable ruin. 
 
 Tartuffe was the after-piece; but neither the 
 spirit and perfection of the acting nor the pretty 
 face and plump shoulders of Elmire, nor the sou- 
 brette's dimpled arms, nor the ingenue's innocent 
 eyes, nor the noble, witty lines that filled the theatre 
 and roused the audience to fresh attention, could 
 stir his spirit that hung entranced on the lips of a 
 tragic heroine. 
 
 As he stepped out into the street, the first breath 
 of the cool night air on his face blew away his intoxi- 
 cation. His senses came back to him and he could 
 think again; but his thoughts never left the object 
 of his infatuation, and her image was the only thing 
 he saw distinctly. He was entranced, possessed; 
 but the feeling was delicious, and he roamed far 
 and wide in the dark streets, making long detours 
 by the river-side quays to lengthen out his reveries, 
 his heart full, overfull of passionate, voluptuous 
 imaginings. He was content because he was weary; 
 his soul lay drowned in a delicious languor that no 
 pang of desire troubled; to look and long was more 
 than sufficient as yet to still the cravings of his 
 virgin appetites. 
 
 He threw himself half dressed on his bed, over-
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 51 
 
 joyed to cherish the picture of her beauty in his 
 heart. All he wanted was to lose himself in the en- 
 chanted sleep that weighed down his boyish lids. 
 
 On waking, he gazed about him for something 
 he knew not what. Was he in love ? He could not 
 tell, but there was a void somewhere. Still, he felt 
 no overmastering impulse, except to read the verses 
 he had heard the actress declaim. He took down 
 from his shelves a volume of Corneille and read 
 through fimilie's part. Every line enchanted him, 
 one as much as another, for did they not all evoke 
 the same memory for him? 
 
 His father and his aunt, with whom he passed 
 his days, had grown to be only vague, meaningless 
 shapes to him. Their broadest pleasantries failed 
 to raise a smile, and the coarse realities of a narrow, 
 penurious existence had no power to disturb his 
 happy serenity. All day long, in the back-shop 
 where the penetrating smell of paste mingled with 
 the fumes of the cabbage-soup, he lived a life of his 
 own, a life of incomparable splendours. His little 
 Corneille, scored thickly with thumb-nail marks at 
 every couplet of fimilie's, was all he needed to fos- 
 ter the fairest of illusions. A face and the tones of 
 a voice were his world. 
 
 In a few days he knew the whole tragedy by
 
 52 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 heart. He would declaim the lines in a slow, pom- 
 pous voice, and his aunt would remark after each 
 speech, as she shredded the vegetables for dinner : 
 
 u So you're for being a cure, are you, that you 
 preach like they do in church?" 
 
 But in the main she approved of these exercises, 
 and when Monsieur Servien scratched his head 
 doubtfully and complained that his son would not 
 make up his mind to any way of earning a living, 
 she always took up the cudgels for the "little lad" 
 and silenced the bookbinder by telling him roundly 
 he knew nothing about it or about anything else. 
 
 So the worthy man went back to his calf-skins. 
 All the same, albeit he could form no very clear 
 idea of what was in his son's head, for the latter 
 having become a "gentleman" was beyond his pur- 
 view, he felt some disquietude to see a holiday, 
 legitimate enough no doubt after a successful exam- 
 ination, dragging out to such a length. He was 
 anxious to see his son earning money in some de- 
 partment of administration or other. He had 
 heard speak of the Hotel de Ville and the Govern- 
 ment Offices, and he racked his brains to think of 
 some one among his customers who might interest 
 himself in his son's future. But he was not the 
 man to act precipitately.
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 53 
 
 One day, when Jean Servien was out on one of 
 the long walks he had got into the habit of taking, 
 he read on a poster that his fimilie, Mademoiselle 
 
 Gabrielle T , was appearing in that evening's 
 
 piece. This time, ignoring his aunt's disapproval, 
 he donned his Sunday clothes, had his hair frizzed 
 and curled, and took his seat in the orchestra stalls. 
 
 He saw her again! For the first few moments 
 she did not seem so beautiful as he had pictured 
 her. So long had he laboured and lain awake over 
 the first image he had carried away of her that the 
 impression had become blurred, and the type that 
 had originally imprinted it on his heart no longer 
 corresponded with the result created by his mind's 
 unconscious working. Then he was disconcerted to 
 see neither the white stola and saffron mantle nor 
 the bracelets and fillets that had seemed to him part 
 and parcel of the beauty they adorned. Now she 
 wore the turban of Roxana and the wide muslin 
 trousers caught in at the ankle. It was only by de- 
 grees he could grow reconciled to the change. He 
 realized that her arms were a trifle thin, and that a 
 tooth stood back behind the rest in the row of 
 pearls. But in the end her very defects pleased 
 him, because they were hers, and he loved her the 
 better for them. This time, by the law of change
 
 54 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 which is of the very essence of life, and by virtue of 
 the imperfection that characterizes all living crea- 
 tures, she made a physical appeal to his senses and 
 called up the idea of a human being of flesh and 
 blood, a creature you could cling to and make one 
 with yourself. His admiration was lost in a flood 
 of tenderness and infinite sadness and he burst 
 into tears. 
 
 The next day he conceived a great desire to see 
 her as she was in everyday life, dressed for the 
 streets. It would be a sort of intimacy merely to 
 pass her on the pavement. One evening, when she 
 was playing, he watched for her at the stage-door, 
 through which emerged one after the other scene- 
 shifters, actors, constables, firemen, dressers, and 
 actresses. At last she appeared, muffled in her fur 
 cloak, a bouquet in her hand, tall and pale so pale 
 in the dusk her face seemed to him as if illumined 
 by an inward light. She stood waiting on the door- 
 step till a carriage was called. 
 
 He clasped both hands on his breast and thought 
 he was going to die. 
 
 When he found himself alone on the deserted 
 Ouai, he plucked a leaf from the overhanging bough 
 of a plane tree. Then, setting his elbows on the 
 parapet of the bridge, he tossed the leaf into the
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 55 
 
 river and watched it borne away by the current of 
 the stream that lay silvery in the moonlight, span- 
 gled with quivering lights. He watched it till he 
 could see it no longer. Was it not the emblem of 
 himself? He, too, was abandoning himself to the 
 waters of a passion that shone bright and which he 
 thought profound.
 
 X 
 
 HAT year the Champ de Mars was 
 occupied by one of the series of Ex- 
 positions Universelles. Under the 
 trees, in the heat and dust, crowds 
 were swarming towards the entrance. 
 Jean passed the turnstiles and entered the palace of 
 glass and iron. He was still pursuing his passion, 
 for he associated the being he loved with all mani- 
 festations of art and luxury. He made for the 
 park and went straight to the Egyptian pavilion. 
 Egypt had filled his dreams from the day when all 
 his thoughts had been centered on one woman. In 
 the avenue of sphinxes and before the painted tem- 
 ple he fell under the glamour that women of olden 
 days and strange lands exercise on the senses, on 
 those of lovers with especial force. The sanctuary 
 was venerable in his eyes, despite the vulgar use it 
 was put to as part of the Exhibition. Looking at 
 the jewels of Queen Aahotep, who lived and was 
 lovely in the days of the Patriarchs, he pondered 
 sadly over all that had been in the world and was 
 no more. He pictured in fancy the black locks that 
 
 57
 
 5 8 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 had scented this diadem with the sphinx's head, the 
 slim brown arms these beads of gold and lapis lazuli 
 had touched, the shoulders that had worn these vul- 
 ture's wings, the peaked bosoms these chains and 
 gorgets had confined, the breast that had once com- 
 municated its warmth to yonder gold scarabaeus with 
 the blue wing-cases, the little royal hand that once 
 held that poniard by the hilt wrought over with 
 flowers and women's faces. He could not conceive 
 how what was a dream to him had been a reality for 
 other men. Vainly he tried to follow the lapse of 
 ages. He told himself that another living shape 
 would vanish in its turn, and it would be for noth- 
 ing then that it had been so passionately desired. 
 The thought saddened and calmed him. He 
 thought, as he stood before these gewgaws from 
 the tomb, of all these men who, in the abyss of by- 
 gone time, had in turn loved, coveted, enjoyed, suf- 
 fered, whom death had taken, hungry or satiated, 
 and made an end of the appetites of all alike. A 
 placid melancholy swept over him and held him mo- 
 tionless, his face buried in his hands.
 
 XI 
 
 T was at breakfast the next morning 
 that Jean noticed, for the first time, 
 the venerable, kindly look of his f ath' 
 er's face. In truth, advancing years 
 had invested the bookbinder's ap- 
 pearance with a sort of beauty. The smooth fore- 
 head under the curling white locks betokened a habit 
 of peaceful and honest thoughts. Old age, while 
 rendering the play of the muscles less active, veiled 
 the distortion of the limbs due to long hours of 
 labour at the bench under the more affecting dis- 
 figurements which life and its long-drawn labours 
 impress on all men alike. The old man had read, 
 thought, striven honestly to do his best, and won the 
 saving grace a simple faith bestows on the humble 
 of heart; for he had become a religious man and a 
 regular attendant at the church of his parish. Jean 
 told himself it would be an easy and a grateful task 
 to cherish such a father, and he resolved to inaugu- 
 rate a life of toil and sacrifice. But he had no em- 
 ployment and no notion what to do. 
 
 Shut up in his room, he was filled with a great 
 
 59
 
 60 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 pity for himself and longed to recover the peace of 
 mind, the calm of the senses, the happy life that had 
 vanished along with the leaf he had abandoned that 
 evening to the drifting current. He opened a 
 novel, but at the first mention of love he pitched the 
 volume down, and fell to reading a book of travel, 
 following the steps of an English explorer into the 
 reed palace of the King of Uganda. He ascended 
 the Upper Nile to Urondogami; hippopotamuses 
 snorted in the swamps, waders and guinea-fowl rose 
 in flight, while a herd of antelopes sped flying 
 through the tall grasses. He was recalled from 
 far, far away by his aunt shouting up the stairs : 
 
 "Jean! Jean! come down into the shop; your 
 father wants you." 
 
 A stout, red-faced man, with the bent shoulders 
 that come of much stooping over the desk, sat be- 
 side the counter. Monsieur Servien's eyes rested on 
 his face with a deprecating air. 
 
 When the boy appeared, the stranger asked if 
 this was the young man in question, adding in a 
 scolding voice : 
 
 "You are all the same. You work and sweat and 
 wear yourselves out to make your sons bachelors of 
 arts, and you think the day after the examination
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 61 
 
 the fine fellows will be posted Ambassadors. For 
 God's sake ! no more graduates, if you please ! We 
 can't tell what to do with 'em. . . . Graduates in- 
 deed! Why, they block the road; they are cab- 
 drivers, they distribute handbills in the streets. 
 You have 'em dying in hospital, rotting in the 
 hulks! Why didn't you teach your son your own 
 trade? Why didn't you make a bookbinder of 
 him? ... Oh! I know why; you needn't tell me, 
 out of ambition ! Well, then ! some day your son 
 will die of starvation, blushing for your folly and 
 a good job too ! The State ! you say, the State ! it's 
 the only word you can put your tongues to. But 
 it's cluttered up, the State is! Take the Treasury; 
 you send us graduates who can't spell; what d'ye 
 expect us to do with all these loafers?" 
 
 He drew his hand across his hot forehead. Then 
 pointing a finger to show he was addressing Jean: 
 
 "At any rate, you write a good hand?" 
 
 Monsieur Servien answered for his son, saying it 
 was legible. 
 
 "Legible! legible!" repeated the great man 
 throwing his fat hands about. "A copying clerk 
 must write an even hand. Young man, do you 
 write an even hand?"
 
 62 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 Jean said he did not know, his handwriting might 
 have been spoilt, he had never thought very much 
 about it. His questioner frowned: 
 
 "That's very wrong," he blustered; "and I dare 
 swear you young fellows make a silly affectation of 
 not writing decently. ... I may have a bit of in- 
 fluence at the Ministry, but you mustn't ask me to 
 do impossibilities." 
 
 The bookbinder shrunk back with a scared glance. 
 He certainly did not look the man to ask impossi- 
 bilities. 
 
 The other got up : 
 
 "You will take lessons," he said, turning to Jean, 
 "in writing and ciphering. You have eight months 
 before you. Eight months from now the Minister 
 will hold an examination. I will put your name 
 down. Do you set to work without losing a min- 
 ute!" 
 
 So saying, he pulled out his watch, as though to 
 see if his protege was actually going to waste a 
 single minute before beginning his studies. He di- 
 rected Monsieur Servien to get to work without de- 
 lay on the books he was giving him to bind, and 
 walked out of the shop. After the bookbinder had 
 seen him to his carriage: 
 
 "Jean, my boy," said he, "that is Monsieur Barge-
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 63 
 
 mont; I have spoken to him about you and you have 
 heard what he had to say; he is going to help you 
 to get into the Treasury Office, where he holds a 
 high post. You understand what he told you about 
 the examinations ; you know more about such things, 
 praise God! than I do. I am only an ignoramus, 
 my lad, but I am your father. Now listen; I want 
 to have a word of explanation with you, so that 
 from this day on till I go where your dear mother 
 is we can look each other calmly in the face and 
 understand one another at the first glance. Your 
 mother loved you right well, Jean. There's not a 
 gold mine in the world could give a notion of the 
 wealth of affection that woman possessed. From 
 the first moment you saw the light, she lived, so to 
 say, more in you than in herself. Her love was 
 stronger than she could bear. Well, well, she is 
 dead. It was nobody's fault." 
 
 The old man turned his eyes involuntarily to- 
 wards the darkest corner of the shop, and Jean, 
 looking in the same direction, caught sight of the 
 sharp angles of the hand-press in the gloom. 
 
 Monsieur Servien went on : 
 
 "On her death-bed your mother asked me to 
 make an educated man of you, for well she knew 
 that education is the key that opens every door.
 
 64 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 "I have done what she wished. She was no 
 longer with us, Jean, and when a voice comes back 
 to you from the grave and bids you do a thing 'that 
 a blessing may come,' why, one must needs obey. 
 I did my best; and no doubt God was with me, for 
 I have succeeded. You have your education ; so far 
 so good, but we must not have a blessing turn into 
 a curse. And idleness is a curse. I have worked 
 like a packhorse, and given many a hard pull at the 
 collar, in harness from morning to night. I remem- 
 ber in particular one lot of cloth covers for the 
 firm of Pigoreau that kept me on the job for thirty- 
 six hours running. And then there was the year 
 when your examination fees had to be paid and I 
 accepted an order in the English style; it was a ter- 
 rible bit of work, for it's not in my way at all, and 
 at my time of life a man is not good at new meth- 
 ods. They wanted a light sort of binding, with 
 flexible boards as flimsy as paper almost. I shed 
 tears over it, but I learned the trick! Ah! it is a 
 famous tool, is a workman's hand ! But an edu- 
 cated man's brain is a far more wonderful thing 
 still, and that tool you have, thanks to God in the 
 first place, and to your mother in the second. It 
 was she had the notion of educating you, I only
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 65 
 
 followed her lead. Your work will be lighter than 
 mine, but you must do it. I am a poor man, as you 
 know; but, were I rich, I would not give you the 
 means to lead an idle life, because that would be 
 tempting you to vices and shaming you. Ah ! if I 
 thought your education had given you a taste for 
 idleness, I should be sorry not to have made you a 
 working man like myself. But then, I know you 
 have a good heart; you have not got into your stride 
 yet, that's all! The first steps will be uphill work; 
 Monsieur Bargemont said so. The State services 
 are overcrowded; there are over many graduates 
 though it is well enough to be one. Besides, I 
 shall be at your back; I will help you, I will work for 
 you; I have a pair of stout arms still. You shall 
 have pocket-money, never fear; you will want it 
 among the folks you will live with. We will save 
 and pinch. But you must help yourself lad; never 
 be afraid of hard work, hit out from the shoulder 
 and strike home. Good work never spoiled play 
 yet. Your job done, laugh and sing and amuse 
 yourself to your heart's content; you won't find me 
 interfere. And, when you are a great man, if I am 
 still in this world, don't you be afraid; I shall not 
 get in your way. I am not a fellow to make a noise.
 
 66 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 We will hide away in some quiet hole, your aunt and 
 I, and nobody will hear one word said of the old 
 father." 
 
 Aunt Servien, who had slipped into the shop and 
 been listening for the last few moments, broke into 
 sobs; she was quite ready to follow her brother and 
 hide away in a corner; but when her nephew had 
 risen to greatness, she would insist on going every 
 day to keep things straight in his grand house. 
 She was not going to leave "the little lad" to be a 
 prey to housekeepers housekeepers, indeed, she 
 called them housebreakers! 
 
 "The creatures keep great hampers," she de- 
 clared, "that swallow up bottles of wine, cold chick- 
 ens, and other titbits, fine linen, old clothes, oil, 
 sugar, and candles the best pickings from a rich 
 man's house. No, I'll not let my little Jean be 
 sucked to death by such vampires. / mean to keep 
 your house in order. No one will ever know I am 
 your aunt. And if they did know, there's nobody, 
 I should hope, could object. I don't know why any 
 one should be ashamed of me. They can lay my 
 whole life bare, I have nothing to blush for. And 
 there's many a Duchess can't say as much. As for 
 forsaking the lad for fear of doing him a hurt, well, 
 the notion is just what I expected of you, Servien;
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 67 
 
 you've always been a bit simple-minded. / mean 
 to stay all my life with Jean. No, little lad, you'll 
 never drive your old aunt out of your house, will 
 you? And who could ever make your bed the way 
 I can, my lamb?" 
 
 Jean promised his father faithfully, oh ! most 
 faithfully, he would lead a hardworking life. Then 
 he shut himself up in his room and pictured the fu- 
 ture to himself long years of austere and method- 
 ical labour. 
 
 He mapped out his days systematically. In the 
 morning he wrote copies to improve his handwriting, 
 seated at a corner of the workbench. After break- 
 fast he did sums in his bedroom. Every evening 
 he went to the Rue SouffJot by way of the Luxem- 
 bourg gardens to a private tutor's, and the old man 
 would set him dictations and explain the rules of 
 simple interest. On reaching the gate adjoining 
 the Fontaine Medicis the boy always turned round 
 for a look at the statues of women he could discern 
 standing like white ghosts along the terrace. He 
 had left behind on the path of life another fascinat- 
 ing vision. 
 
 He never read a theatrical poster now, and de- 
 liberately forgot his favourite poets for fear of re- 
 newing his pain.
 
 XII 
 
 |HIS new life pleased him; it slipped 
 by with a soothing monotony, and he 
 found it healthful and to his taste. 
 One evening, as he was coming 
 downstairs at his old tutor's, a stout 
 man offered him, with a sweep of the arm, the bill 
 of fare advertising a neighbouring cook-shop; he 
 carried a huge bundle of them under his left arm. 
 Then stopping abruptly: 
 
 "Per Bacco!" cried the fellow; "it is my old pupil. 
 Tall and straight as a young poplar, here stands 
 Monsieur Jean Servien!" 
 
 It was no other than the Marquis Tudesco. His 
 red waistcoat was gone; instead he wore a sort of 
 sleeved vest of coarse ticking, but his shining face, 
 with the little round eyes and hooked nose, still 
 wore the same look of merry, mischievous alertness 
 that was so like an old parrot's. 
 
 Jean was surprised to see him, and not ill-pleased 
 after all. He greeted him affectionately and asked 
 what he was doing now. 
 
 "Behold!" replied the Marquis, "my business is 
 69
 
 70 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 to distribute in the streets these advertisements of 
 a local poisoner, and thereby to earn a place at the 
 assassin's table to spread the fame of which I la- 
 bour. Camoens held out his hand for charity in 
 the streets of Lisbon. Tudesco stretches forth his 
 in the byways of the modern Babylon, but it is to 
 give and not to receive lunches at I fr. 25, dinners 
 at i fr. 75," and he offered one of his bills to a pass- 
 erby, who strode on, hands in pockets, without tak- 
 ing it. 
 
 Thereupon the Marquis Tudesco heaved a sigh 
 and exclaimed: 
 
 "And yet I have translated the Gerusalemme 
 Liberata, the masterpiece of the immortal Tor- 
 quato Tasso! But the brutal-minded booksellers 
 scorn the fruit of my vigils, and in the empyrean 
 the Muse veils her face so as not to witness the 
 humiliation inflicted on her nursling." 
 
 "And what has become of you all the time since 
 we last saw you?" asked the young man frankly. 
 
 "God only knows, and 'pon my word ! I think 
 He has forgotten." 
 
 Such was the Marquis Tudesco's oracular answer. 
 
 He tied up his bundle of papers in a cloth, and 
 taking his pupil by the arm, urged him in the direc- 
 tion of the Rue Saint-Jacques.
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 71 
 
 "See, my young friend," he said, "the dome of 
 the Pantheon is half hidden by the fog. The 
 School of Salerno teaches that the damp air of eve- 
 ning is inimical to the human stomach. There is 
 near by a decent establishment where we can con- 
 verse as two philosophers should, and I feel sure 
 your unavowed desire is to conduct your old in- 
 structor thither, the master who initiated you in the 
 Latin rudiments." 
 
 They entered a drinking-shop perfumed with so 
 strong a reek of kirsch and absinthe as took Ser- 
 vien's breath away. The room was long and nar- 
 row, while against the walls varnished barrels with 
 copper taps were ranged in a long-drawn perspec- 
 tive that was lost in the thick haze of tobacco-smoke 
 hanging in the air under the gas-jets. At little 
 tables of painted deal a number of men were drink- 
 ing; dressed in black and wearing tall silk hats, 
 broken-brimmed and shiny from exposure to the 
 rain, they sat and smoked in silence. Before the 
 door of the stove several pairs of thin legs were 
 extended to catch the heat, and a thread of steam 
 curled up from the toes of the owners' boots. A 
 heavy torpor seemed to weigh upon all this assem- 
 blage of pallid, impassive faces. 
 
 While Monsieur Tudesco was distributing hand-
 
 72 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 shakes to sundry old acquaintances, Jean caught 
 scraps of the conversation of those about him that 
 filled him with a despairing melancholy school 
 ushers railing at the cookery of cheap eating-houses, 
 tipplers maundering contentedly to one another, en- 
 chanted at the profundity of their own wisdom, 
 schemers planning to make a fortune, politicians 
 arguing, amateurs of the fair sex telling highly- 
 spiced anecdotes of love and women and amongst 
 it all this sentence: 
 
 "The harmony of the spheres fills the spaces of 
 infinity, and if we hear it not, it is because, as Plato 
 says, our ears are stopped with earth." 
 
 Monsieur Tudesco consumed brandy-cherries in 
 a very, elegant way. Then the waiter served two 
 dantzigs in little glass cups. Jean admired the 
 translucent liquor dotted with golden sparkles, and 
 Monsieur Tudesco demanded two more. Then, 
 raising his cup on high : 
 
 "I drink to the health of Monsieur Servien, your 
 venerable father," he cried. "He enjoys a green 
 and flourishing old age, at least I hope so; he is a 
 man superior to his mechanic and mercantile condi- 
 tion by the benevolence of his behaviour to needy 
 men of letters. And your respected aunt? She
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 73 
 
 still knits stockings with the same zeal as of yore? 
 At least I hope so. A lady of an austere virtue. I 
 conjecture you are wishing to order another dant- 
 zig, my young friend." 
 
 Jean looked about him. The dram-shop was 
 transfigured; the casks looked enormous with their 
 taps splendidly glittering, and seemed to stretch into 
 infinity in a quivering, golden mist. But one object 
 was more monstrously magnified than all the rest, 
 and that was the Marquis Tudesco; the old man 
 positively towered as huge as the giant of a fairy- 
 tale, and Jean looked for him to do wonders. 
 Tudesco was smiling. 
 
 "You do not drink, my young friend," he re- 
 sumed. "I conjecture you are in love. Ah I love ! 
 love is at once the sweetest and the bitterest thing 
 on earth. I too have felt my heart beat for a 
 woman. But it is long years ago since I outlived 
 that passion. I am now an old man crushed under 
 adverse fortune; but in happier days there was at 
 Rome a diva of a beauty so magnificent and a genius 
 so enthralling that cardinals fought to the death at 
 the door of her box; well, sir, that sublime creature 
 I have pressed to my bosom, and I have been in- 
 formed since that with her last sigh she breathed
 
 74 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 my name. I am like an old ruined temple, degraded 
 by the passage of time and the violence of men's 
 hands, yet sanctified for ever by the goddess." 
 
 This tale, whether it recalled in exaggerated 
 terms some commonplace intrigue of his young days 
 in Italy, or more likely was a pure fiction based on 
 romantic episodes he had read in novels, was ac- 
 cepted by Jean as authentic and vastly impressive. 
 The effect was startling, amazing. In an instant 
 he beheld, with all the miraculous clearness of a 
 vision, there, standing between the tables, the queen 
 of tragedy he adored; he saw the locks braided in 
 antique fashion, the long gold pendants drooping 
 from either ear, the bare arms and the white face 
 with scarlet lips. And he cried aloud: 
 
 "I too love an actress." 
 
 He was drinking, never heeding what the liquor 
 was; but lo! it was a philtre he swallowed that re- 
 vivified his passion. Then a torrent of words rose 
 flooding to his lips. The plays he had seen, Cinna, 
 Bajazet, the stern beauty of fimilie, the sweet fe- 
 rocity of Roxana, the sight of the actress cloaked in 
 velvet, her face shining so pale and clear in the 
 darkness, his longings, his hopes, his undying love, 
 he recounted everything with cries and tears. 
 
 Monsieur Tudesco heard him out, lapping up a
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 75 
 
 glass of Chartreuse drop by drop the while, and tak- 
 ing snuff from a screw of paper. At times he would 
 nod his head in approval and go on listening with 
 the air of a man watching and waiting his oppor- 
 tunity. When he judged that at last, after tedious 
 repetitions and numberless fresh starts, the other's 
 confidences were exhausted, he assumed a look of 
 gravity, and laying his fine hand with a gesture as 
 of priestly benediction on the young man's shoulder : 
 
 "Ah! my young friend," he said, "if I thought 
 that what you feel were true love . . . but I do 
 not," and he shook his head and let his hand drop. 
 
 Jean protested. To suffer so, and not to be 
 really in love? 
 
 Monsieur Tudesco repeated: 
 
 "If I thought that this were true love . . . but 
 I do not, so far." 
 
 Jean answered with great vehemence; he talked 
 of death and plunging a dagger in his heart. 
 
 Monsieur Tudesco reiterated for the third time : 
 
 "I do not believe it is true love." 
 
 Then Jean fell into a fury and began to rumple 
 and tear at his waistcoat as if he would bare his 
 heart for inspection. Monsieur Tudesco took his 
 hands and addressed him soothingly: 
 
 "Well, well, my young friend, since it is true love
 
 76 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 you feel, I will help you. I am a great tactician, 
 and if King Carlo Alberto had read a certain me- 
 morial I sent him on military matters he would have 
 won the battle of Novara. He did not read my 
 memorial, and the battle was lost, but it was a 
 glorious defeat. How happy the sons of Italy who 
 died for their mother in that thrice holy battle ! 
 The hymns of poets and the tears of women made 
 enviable their obsequies. I say it: what a noble, 
 what a heroic thing is youth! What flames divine 
 escape from young bosoms to rise to the Creator ! 
 I admire above everything young folk who throw 
 themselves into ventures of war and sentiment with 
 the impetuosity natural to their age." 
 
 Tasso, Novara, and the diva so beloved of car- 
 dinals mingled confusedly in Jean Servien's heated 
 brain, and in a burst of sublime if fuddled enthu- 
 siasm he wrung the old villain's hand. Everything 
 had grown indistinct; he seemed to be swimming in 
 an element of molten metal. 
 
 Monsieur Tudesco, who at the moment was im- 
 bibing a glass of kiimmel, pointed to his waistcoat 
 of ticking. 
 
 "The misfortune is," he observed, "that I am 
 garbed like a philosopher. How show myself in 
 such a costume among elegant females? 'Tis a sad
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 77 
 
 pity! for it would be an easy'matter for me to pay 
 my respects to an actress at an important theatre. 
 I have translated the Gerusalemme Liberata, that 
 masterpiece of Torquato Tasso's. I could pro- 
 pose to the great actress whom you love and who is 
 worthy of your love, at least I hope so, a French 
 adaptation of the Myrrha of the celebrated Alfieri. 
 What eloquence, what fire in that tragedy! The 
 part of Myrrha is sublime and terrible; she will be 
 eager to play it. Meantime, you translate Myrrha 
 into French verse; then I introduce you with your 
 manuscript into the sanctuary of Melpomene, when 
 you bring with you a double gift fame and love ! 
 What a dream, oh! fortunate young man! . . . 
 But alas! 'tis but a dream, for how should I enter 
 a lady's boudoir in this rude and sordid guise?" 
 
 But the tavern was closing and they had to leave. 
 Jean felt so giddy in the open air he could not tell 
 how he had come to lose Monsieur Tudesco, after 
 emptying the contents of his purse into the latter's 
 hand. 
 
 He wandered about all night in the rain, stum- 
 bling through the puddles which splashed up the 
 mud in his face. His brains buzzed with the mad- 
 dest schemes, that took shape, jostled one another, 
 and tumbled to pieces in his head. Sometimes he
 
 78 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 would stop to wipe the sweat from his forehead, 
 then start off again on his wild way. Fatigue 
 calmed his nerves, and a clear purpose emerged. 
 He went straight to the house where the actress 
 lived, and from the street gazed up at her dark, 
 shuttered windows ; then, stepping up to the porte- 
 cochere, he kissed the great doors.
 
 XIII 
 
 ATING from that night Jean Ser- 
 vien spent his days in translating 
 Myrrha bit by bit, with an infinity 
 of pains. The task having taught 
 him something of verse-making, he 
 composed an ode, which he sent by post to his mis- 
 tress. The poem was writ in tears of blood, yet it 
 was as cold and insipid as a schoolboy's exercise. 
 Still, he did get something said of the fair vision of 
 a woman that hovered for ever before his eyes, and 
 of the door he had kissed in a night of frenzy. 
 
 Monsieur Servien was disturbed to note how his 
 son had grown heedless, absent-minded, and hollow- 
 eyed, coming back late at night, and hardly up be- 
 fore noon. Before the mute reproach in his fath- 
 er's eyes the boy hung his head. But his home-life 
 was nothing now; his whole thoughts were abroad, 
 hovering around the unknown, in regions he pic- 
 tured as resplendent with poetry, wealth and 
 pleasure. 
 
 Occasionally, at a street corner, he would meet 
 the Marquis Tudesco again. He had found it im- 
 
 79
 
 80 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 possible to replace his waistcoat of ticking. More- 
 over, he now advised Jean to pay his addresses to 
 shop-girls. 
 
 When the summer came, the theatrical posters 
 announced in quick succession Mithridate, Adrienne 
 Lecouvreur, Rodogune, les Enfants tfEdouard, la 
 Fiammina. Jean, having secured the money to pay 
 for a seat by hook or by crook, by some bit of trick- 
 ery or falsehood, by cajoling his aunt or by a sur- 
 reptitious raid on the cash-box, would watch from 
 an orchestra stall the startling metamorphoses of 
 the woman he loved. He saw her now girt with 
 the white fillet of the virgins of Hellas, like those 
 figures carved with such an exquisite purity in the 
 marble of the Greek bas-reliefs that they seem clad 
 in inviolate innocence, now in a flowered gown, with 
 powdered ringlets sweeping her naked shoulders, 
 that had an inexpressible charm in their spare out- 
 lines suggestive of the bitter-sweet taste of an un- 
 ripe fruit. She reminded him in this attire of some 
 old-time pastel of gallant ladies such as the book- 
 binder's son had pored over in the dealers' shops on 
 the Quai Foltaire. Anon she would be crowned 
 with a hawk's crest, girdled with plaques of gold on 
 which were traced magic symbols in clustered rubies, 
 clad in the barbaric splendour of an Eastern queen;
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 81 
 
 presently she would be wearing the black hood, 
 pointed above the brow, and the dusky velvet robe 
 of a Royal widow, like the portraits to be seen 
 guarded as holy relics in a chamber of the Louvre; 
 last travesty of all (and it was in this guise he found 
 her most adorable), as a modern horsewoman, 
 clothed from neck to heel in a close-fitting habit, a 
 man's hat set rakishly on her dainty head. He 
 would fain spend his life in these romantic dreams, 
 and devoured Racine, the Greek tragedians, Cor- 
 neille, Shakespeare, Voltaire's verses on the death of 
 Adrienne Lecouvreur, and whatever in modern lit- 
 erature appealed to him as elegant or fraught with 
 passion. But in all these creations it was one im- 
 age, and one only, that he saw. 
 
 Going one evening to the dram-shop with the 
 Marquis Tudesco, who had given up all idea of 
 discarding his checked waistcoat, he made the ac- 
 quaintance of an old man whose white hair lay in 
 ringlets on his shoulders and who still had the blue 
 eyes of a child. He was an architect fallen to ruin 
 along with the little Gothic erections he had raised 
 at great expense in the Paris suburbs about 1840. 
 His name was Theroulde, and the old fellow, whose 
 smiling face belied his wretched condition, over- 
 flowed with anecdotes of artists and pretty women.
 
 82 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 In his prosperous days he had built country villas 
 for actresses and attended many a joyous house- 
 .warming, the fun and frolic of which were still 
 fresh in the light-hearted veteran's memory. He 
 had long ceased to care who heard him, and primed 
 with maraschino, he would unfold his reminiscences 
 like some sumptuous tapestry gone to tatters. The 
 bookseller's son, meeting an artist for the first time, 
 listened to the* old Bohemian with rapt enthusiasm. 
 All these forgotten celebrities, or half-celebrities, 
 all these old young beauties of whom Theroulde 
 spoke, came to life again for him, fascinated him 
 with an unexpected charm and a piquant sense of 
 familiarity. Servien pictured them as he had seen 
 them represented in the old foxed lithographs that 
 litter the second-hand bookstalls along the Quais, 
 wearing the hair in flat bandeaux with a jewel on a 
 gold chain in the middle of the forehead, or else in 
 heavy ringlets a I'Anglaise brushing the cheeks. Ob- 
 sessed by his one idea, he endeavoured to recall one 
 who seemed so well acquainted with ladies of the 
 stage to the present day. He spoke of tragedy, but 
 Theroulde said he thought that sort of plays ridicu- 
 lous, and repeated a number of parodies. Jean 
 mentioned Gabrielle T .
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 83 
 
 "T ," exclaimed the artist-architect; "I knew 
 
 her mother well." 
 
 Never in all his life had Jean heard a sentence 
 that interested him so profoundly. 
 
 "I knew her in 1842," Theroulde went on, "at 
 Nantes, where she created fourteen roles in six 
 weeks. And folks imagine actresses have nothing 
 to do ! A fine thing, the stage ! But the mischief 
 is, there's not a single architect capable of building 
 a playhouse with any sense. As to scenery, it is 
 simply puerile, even at the Opera so childish it 
 might make a South Sea Islander blush. I have 
 thought out a system of rollers in the flies so as to 
 get rid of those long top-cloths that represent the 
 sky without a pretence at deceiving any one. I 
 have likewise invented an arrangement of lamps and 
 reflectors so placed as to light the characters on the 
 stage from above downwards, as the sun does, which 
 is the rational way, and not from below upwards, 
 as the footlights do, which is absurd." 
 
 "Of course it is," agreed Servien. "But you 
 were speaking of Gabrielle T 's mother." 
 
 "She was a fine woman," replied the architect; 
 "tall, dark, with a little moustache that became her 
 to perfection. . . . You see the effect of my roller
 
 84 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 contrivance a vast sky shedding an equal illumina- 
 tion over the actors and giving every object its nat- 
 ural shadows. La Muette is being played, we will 
 say; the famous cavatina, the slumber-song, is heard 
 beneath a transparent sky, vaulted like the real 
 thing and giving the impression of boundless space. 
 The effect of the music is doubled ! Fenella wakes, 
 crosses the boards with cadenced tread; her shadow, 
 which follows her on the floor, is cadenced like her 
 steps; it is nature and art both together. That is 
 my invention I As for putting it in execution, why, 
 the means are childishly simple." 
 
 Thereupon he entered upon endless explanations, 
 using technical terms and illustrating his meaning 
 with everything he could lay hands on glasses, 
 saucers, matches. His frayed sleeves, as they 
 swept to and fro, wiped the marble top of the table 
 and set the glasses rattling. Disturbed by the 
 noise, the Marquis Tudesco, who was asleep, half 
 opened his eyes mechanically. 
 
 Servien kept nodding his approval and repeating 
 that he quite understood, to stop the old man's 
 babble. Then he advised the architect to try and 
 put his invention in practice; but he only shrugged 
 his shoulders it was years since he had left off try- 
 ing anything. After all, what did it matter to him
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 85 
 
 whether his system was applied or no? He was an 
 inventor ! 
 
 Recalled for the third time by his young listener 
 to Gabrielle T 's mother: 
 
 "She never had any great success on the stage," 
 he declared; "but she was a careful woman and 
 saved money. She was near on fifty when I came 
 upon her again in Paris living with Adolphe, a very 
 handsome young fellow of twenty-five or twenty-six, 
 nephew of a stockbroker. It was the most loving 
 couple, the merriest, happiest household in the 
 world. Never once did I breakfast at their little 
 flat, fifth floor of a house in the Rue Taitbout, with- 
 out being melted to tears. 'Eat, my kitten,' 'Drink, 
 my lamb !' and such looks and endearments, and 
 each so pleased with the other! One day he said 
 to her: 'My kitten, your money does not bring 
 you in what it ought; give me your scrip and in 
 forty-eight hours I shall have doubled your capital.' 
 She went softly to her cupboard and opening the 
 glass doors, handed him her securities one by one 
 with hands that trembled a little. 
 
 "He took them unconcernedly and brought her a 
 receipt tae same evening bearing his uncle's signa- 
 ture. Three months after she was pocketing a very 
 handsome income. The sixth month Adolphe dis-
 
 86 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 appeared. The old girl goes straight to the uncle 
 with her screed of paper. 'I never signed that,' 
 says the stockbroker, 'and my nephew never depos- 
 ited any securities with me.' She flies like a mad- 
 woman to the Commissary of Police, to learn that 
 Adolphe, hammered at the Bourse, is off to Belgium, 
 carrying with him a hundred and twenty thousand 
 francs he had done another old woman out of. She 
 never got over the blow; but we must say this of 
 her, she brought up her daughter mighty strictly, 
 and showed herself a very dragon of virtue. Poor 
 Gabrielle must feel her cheeks burn to this day only 
 to think of her years at the Conservatoire; for in 
 those days her mother used to smack them soundly 
 for her, morning and evening. Gabrielle, why I 
 can see her now, in her skyblue frock, running to 
 lessons nibbling coffee-berries between her teeth. 
 She was a good girl, that." 
 
 "You knew her!" cried Jean, for whom these 
 confidences formed the mo-st exciting love adventure 
 he had ever known. 
 
 The old man assured him: 
 
 "We used to have fine rides with her, and a lot 
 of artists in old days on horseback and donkey-back 
 in the woods of Ville d'Avray; she used to dress as 
 a man, and I remember one day . . ." He finished
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 87 
 
 his story in a whisper, it was just as well. He 
 went on to say he hardly ever saw her now that she 
 was with Monsieur Didier, of the Credit Bourgui- 
 gnon. The financier had sent the artists to the 
 right-about; he was a conceited, narrow-minded fel- 
 low, a dull, tiresome prig. 
 
 Jean was neither surprised nor excessively 
 shocked to hear that she had a lover, because hav- 
 ing studied the ways of the ladies of the theatre in 
 the proverbs in verse of Alfred de Musset, he pic- 
 tured the life of Parisian actresses without excep- 
 tion as one continual feast of wit and gallantry. 
 He loved her; with or without Didier, he loved her. 
 She might have had three hundred lovers, like Les- 
 bia, he would have loved her just as much. Is it 
 not always so with men's passions? They are in 
 love because they are in love, and in spite of every- 
 thing. 
 
 As for feeling jealousy of Monsieur Didier, he 
 never so much as thought of it. The infatuation of 
 the lad ! He was jealous of the men and women 
 who saw her pass to and fro in the street, of the 
 scene-shifters and workmen whom the business of 
 the stage brought into contact with her. For the 
 present these were his only rivals. For the rest, he 
 trusted to the future, the ineffable future big
 
 88 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 whether with bliss or torment. Indeed, the litera- 
 ture of romance had inspired him with no small 
 esteem of courtesans, if only their attitude was as it 
 should be leaning pensively on the balcony-rail of 
 their marble palace. 
 
 What did shock him in the rapscallion architect's 
 stories, what wounded his love without weakening 
 it, was all the rather squalid elements these nar- 
 ratives implied in the actress's young days. Of all 
 things in the world he thought anything sordid the 
 most repugnant. 
 
 Monsieur Tudesco, feeling sure his brandy- 
 cherries would be paid for, did not trouble himself 
 to talk, and the conversation was languishing when 
 the architect remarked casually: 
 
 "By-the-by! As I was going to Bellevue yester- 
 day on business of my own, I came upon that actress 
 of yours, young man, at her gate ... oh ! a rub- 
 bishy little villa, run up to last through a love 
 affair, standing in six square yards of garden, meant 
 to give a stockbroker some sort of notion what the 
 country's like. She invited me in but what was 
 the use?" . . . 
 
 She was at Bellevue ! Jean forgot all the hu- 
 miliating details the old man had told him, retaining 
 the one fact only, that she was at Bellevue and it
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 89 
 
 was possible to see her there in the sweet intimacy 
 of the country. 
 
 He got up to go. Monsieur Tudesco caught him 
 by the skirt of his jacket to detain him: 
 
 "My young friend, you have my admiration; for 
 I see you rise on daring pinions above the hindrances 
 of a lowly station to the realms of beauty, fame and 
 wealth. You will yet cull the splendid blossom that 
 fascinates you, at least I hope so. But how much 
 better had you loved a simple work-girl, whose 
 affections you could have beguiled by offering her a 
 penn'orth of fried potatoes and a seat among the 
 gods to see a melodrama. I fear you are a dupe of 
 men's opinion, for one woman is not very different 
 from another, and it is opinion, that mistress of the 
 world, and nothing else, which sets a high price on 
 some and a low one on others. Do you profit, my 
 young and very dear friend, by the experience af- 
 forded me by the vicissitudes of fortune, which are 
 such that I am obliged at this present moment to 
 borrow of you the modest sum of two and a half 
 francs." 
 
 So spake the Marquis Tudesco.
 
 XIV 
 
 EAN had trudged afoot up the hill of 
 Bellevue. Evening was falling. 
 The village street ran upwards be- 
 tween low walls, brambles and this- 
 tles lining the roadway on either side. 
 In front the woods melted into a far-off blue haze; 
 below him stretched the city, with its river, its roofs, 
 its towers and domes, the vast, smoky town which 
 had kindled Servien's aspirations at the flaring 
 lights of its theatres and nurtured his feverish long- 
 ings in the dust of its streets. In the west a broad 
 streak of purple lay between heaven and earth. A 
 sweet sense of peace descended on the landscape as 
 the first stars twinkled faintly in the sky. But it 
 was not peace Jean Servien had come to find. 
 
 A few more paces on the stony high road and 
 there stood the gate festooned with the tendrils of 
 a wild vine, just as it had been described to him. 
 
 He gazed long, in a trance of adoration. Peer- 
 ing through the bars, between the sombre boughs of 
 a Judas tree, he saw a pretty little white house with 
 a flight of stone steps before the front door, flanked 
 
 91
 
 92 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 by two blue vases. Everything was still, nobody 
 at the windows, nobody stirring on the gravel of the 
 drive; not a voice, not a whisper, not a footfall. 
 And yet, after a long, long look, he turned away al- 
 most happy, his heart filled with satisfaction. 
 
 He waited under the old walnut trees of the 
 avenue till the windows lighted up one by one in the 
 darkness, and then retraced his steps. As he passed 
 the railway station, to which people were hurrying 
 to catch an incoming train, he saw amid the confu- 
 sion a tall woman in a mantilla kiss a young girl 
 who was taking her leave. The pale face under 
 the mantilla, the long, delicate hands, that seemed 
 ungloved out of a voluptuous caprice, how well he 
 knew them! How he saw the woman from head to 
 foot in a flash! His knees bent under him. He 
 felt an exquisite languor, as if he would die there 
 and then ! No, he never believed she was so beau- 
 tiful, so beyond price ! And he had thought to for- 
 get her! He had imagined he could live without 
 her, as if she did not sum up in herself the world 
 and life and everything! 
 
 She turned into the lane leading to her house, 
 walking at a smart pace, with her dress trailing and 
 catching on the brambles, from which with a back-
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 93 
 
 ward sweep of the hand and a rough pull she would 
 twitch it clear. 
 
 Jean followed her, pushing his way deliberately 
 through the same bramble bushes and exulting to 
 feel the thorns scratch and tear his flesh. 
 
 She stopped at the gate, and Jean saw her pro- 
 file, in its purity and dignity, clearly defined in the 
 pale moonlight. She was a long time in turning 
 the key, and Jean could watch her face, the more 
 enthralling to the senses for the absence of any to- 
 kens of disturbing intellectual effort. He groaned 
 in grief and rage to think how in another second 
 the iron bars would be closed between her and him. 
 
 No, he would not have it so; he darted forward, 
 seized her by the hand, which he pressed in his own 
 and kissed. 
 
 She gave a loud cry of terror, the cry of a fright- 
 ened animal. Jean was on his knees on the stone 
 step, chafing the hand he held against his teeth, 
 forcing the rings into the flesh of his lips. 
 
 A servant, a lady's maid, came running up, hold- 
 ing a candle that had blown out. 
 
 "What is all this?" she asked breathlessly. 
 
 Jean released the hand, which bore the mark of 
 his violence in a drop of blood, and got to his feet.
 
 94 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 Gabrielle, panting and holding the wounded hand 
 against her bosom, leant against the gate for 
 support. 
 
 "I want to speak to you; I must," cried Jean. 
 
 "Here's pretty manners!" shrilled the maid-serv- 
 ant. "Go your ways," and she pointed with her 
 candlestick first to one end, then to the other of the 
 street. 
 
 The actress's face was still convulsed with the 
 shock "of her terror. Her lips were trembling and 
 drawn back so as to show the teeth glittering. But 
 she realized that she had nothing to fear. 
 
 "What do you want with me?" she demanded. 
 
 He had lost his temerity since he had dropped her 
 hand. It was in a very gentle voice he said : 
 
 "Madame, I beg and beseech you, let me say one 
 word to you alone." 
 
 "Rosalie," she ordered, after a moment's hesi- 
 tation, "take a turn or two in the garden. Now 
 speak, sir," and she remained standing on the step, 
 leaving the gate half-way open, as it had been at 
 the moment he had kissed her hand. 
 
 He spoke in all the sincerity of his inmost heart: 
 
 "All I have to say to you, Madame, is that you 
 must not, you ought not, to repulse me, for I love 
 you too well to live without you."
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 9S 
 
 She appeared to be searching in her memory. 
 "Was it not you," she asked, "who sent me some 
 verses?" 
 
 He said it was, and she resumed : 
 ''You followed me one evening. It is not right, 
 sir, not the right thing, to follow ladies in the 
 street." 
 
 "I only followed you, and that was because I 
 could not help it." 
 
 "You are very young." 
 
 "Yes, but it was long ago I began to love you." 
 "It came upon you all in a moment, did it not?" 
 "Yes, when I saw you." 
 
 "That is what I thought. You are inflammable, 
 so it seems." 
 
 "I do not know, Madame. I love you and I am 
 very unhappy. I have lost the heart to live, and I 
 cannot bear to die, for then I should not see you any 
 more. Let me be near you sometimes. It must be 
 so heavenly!" 
 
 "But, sir, I know nothing about you." 
 "That is my misfortune. But how can I be a 
 stranger for you? You are no stranger, no 
 stranger in my eyes. I do not know any woman, 
 for me thtre is no other woman in the world but 
 you."
 
 96 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 And again he took her hand, which she let him 
 kiss. THen : 
 
 "It is all very pretty," she said, "but it is not an 
 occupation, being in love. What are you? What 
 do you do?" 
 
 He answered frankly enough : 
 
 "My father is in trade; he is looking out for a 
 post for me." 
 
 The actress understood the truth; here was a lit- 
 tle bourgeois, living contentedly on next to nothing, 
 reared in habits of penuriousness, a hidebound, 
 mean creature, like the petty tradesmen who used to 
 come to her whining for their bills, and whom she 
 encountered of a Sunday in smart new coats in the 
 Meudon woods. She could feel no interest in him, 
 such as he might have inspired, whether as a rich 
 man with bouquets and jewels to offer her, or a poor 
 wretch so hungry and miserable as to bring tears to 
 her eyes. Dazzle her eyes or stir her compassion, 
 it must be one or the other! Then she was used 
 to young fellows of a more enterprising mettle. 
 She thought of a young violinist at the Conserva- 
 toire who, one evening, when she was entertaining 
 company, had pretended to leave with the rest and 
 concealed himself in her dressing-room; as she was 
 undressing, thinking herself alone, he burst from
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 97 
 
 his hiding-place, a bottle of champagne in either 
 hand and laughing like a madman. The new lover 
 was less diverting. However, she asked him his 
 name. 
 
 "Jean Servien." 
 
 "Well, Monsieur Jean Servien, I am sorry, very 
 sorry, to have made you unhappy, as you say you 
 are." 
 
 At the bottom of her heart she was more flat- 
 tered than grieved at the mischief she had done, 
 so she repeated several times over how very sorry 
 she was. 
 
 She added: 
 
 "I cannot bear to hurt people. Every time a 
 young man is unhappy because of me, I am so dis- 
 tressed; but, honour bright, what do you want me 
 to do for you? Take yourself off, and be sensible. 
 It's no use your coming back to see me. Besides, 
 it would be ridiculous. I have a life of my own to 
 live, quite private, and it is out of the question for 
 me to receive strange visitors." 
 
 He assured her between his sobs: 
 
 "Oh ! how I wish you were poor and forsaken. 
 I would come to you then and we should be happy." 
 
 She was a good deal surprised he did not take 
 her by the waist or think of dragging her into the
 
 98 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 garden under the clump of trees where there was a 
 bench. She was a trifle disappointed and in a way 
 embarrassed not to have to defend her virtue. 
 Finding the conclusion of the interview did not 
 match the beginning and the young man was getting 
 tedious, she slammed the gate in his face and 
 slipped back into the garden, where he saw her 
 vanish in the darkness. 
 
 She bore on her hand, beside a sapphire on her 
 ring finger, a drop of blood. In her chamber, as 
 she emptied a jug of water over her hands to wash 
 away the stain, she could not help reflecting how 
 every drop of blood in this young man's veins 
 would be shed for her whenever she should give 
 the word. And the thought made her smile. At 
 that moment, if he had been there, in that room, 
 at her side, it may be she would not have sent him 
 away.
 
 XV 
 
 EAN hurried down the lane and 
 started off across country in such a 
 state of high exaltation as robbed 
 him of all sense of realities and ban- 
 ished all consciousness whether of 
 joy or pain. He had no remembrance of what he 
 had been before the moment when he kissed the 
 actress's hand; he seemed a stranger to himself. 
 On his lips lingered a taste that stirred voluptuous 
 fancies, and grew stronger as he pressed them one 
 against the other. 
 
 Next morning his intoxication was dissipated and 
 he relapsed into profound depression. He told 
 himself that his last chance was gone. He realized 
 that the gate overhung with wild vine and ivy was 
 shut against him by that careless, capricious hand 
 more firmly and more inexorably than ever it could 
 have been by the bolts and bars of the most prudish 
 virtue. He felt instinctively that his kiss had 
 stirred no promptings of desire, that he had been 
 powerless to win any hold on his mistress's senses. 
 He had forgotten what he said, but he knew that 
 
 09
 
 ioo THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 he had spoken out in all the frank sincerity of his 
 heart. He had exposed his ignorance of the world, 
 his contemptible candour. The mischief was irre- 
 parable. Could anyone be more unfortunate? He 
 had lost even the one advantage he possessed, of 
 being unknown to her. 
 
 Though he entertained no very high opinion of 
 himself, he certainly held fate responsible for his 
 natural deficiencies. He was poor, he reasoned, 
 and therefore had no right to fall in love. Ah! if 
 only he were wealthy and familiar with all the 
 things idle, prosperous people know, how entirely 
 the splendour of his material surroundings would 
 be in harmony with the splendour of his passion! 
 What blundering, ferocious god of cruelty had im- 
 mured in the dungeon of poverty this soul of his 
 that so overflowed with desires? 
 
 He opened his window and caught sight of his 
 father's apprentice on his way back to the work- 
 shop. The lad stood there on the pavement talk- 
 ing with naive effrontery to a little book-stitcher of 
 his acquaintance. He was kissing the girl, with- 
 out a thought of the passers-by, and whistling a 
 tune between his teeth. The pretty, sickly-looking 
 slattern carried her rags with an air, and wore a 
 pair of smart, well-made boots; she was pretend-
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 101 
 
 ing to push her admirer away, while really doing 
 just the opposite, for the slim yet broad-shouldered 
 stripling in his blue blouse had a certain townified 
 elegance and the "conquering hero" air of the sub- 
 urban dancing-saloons. When he left her, she 
 looked back repeatedly; but he was examining the 
 saveloys in a pork-butcher's window, never giving 
 another thought to the girl. 
 
 Jean, as he looked on at the little scene, found 
 himself envying his father's apprentice.
 
 XVI 
 
 read the same morning on the pos- 
 ters that she was playing that eve- 
 ning. He watched for her after the 
 performance and saw her distribut- 
 ing hand-shakes to sundry acquaint- 
 ances before driving off. He was suddenly struck 
 with something hard and cruel in her, which he had 
 not observed in the interview of the night before. 
 Then he discovered that he hated her, abominated 
 her with all the force of his mind and muscles and 
 nerves. He longed to tear her to pieces, to rend 
 and crush her. It made him furious to think she 
 was moving, talking, laughing, in a word, that she 
 was alive. At least it was only fair she should suf- 
 fer, that life should wound her and make her heart 
 bleed. He was rejoiced at the thought that she 
 must die one day, and then nothing of her would 
 be left, of her rounded shape and the warmth of 
 her flesh; none would ever again see the superb play 
 of light in her hair and eyes, the reflections, now 
 pale, now pearly, of her dead-white skin. But 
 her body, that filled him with such rage, would be 
 
 103
 
 io 4 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 young and warm and supple for long years yet, and 
 lover after lover would feel it quiver and awake 
 to passion. She would exist for other men, but 
 not for him. Was that to be borne? Ah! the 
 deliciousness of plunging a dagger in that warm, 
 living bosom ! Ah ! the bliss, the voluptuousness 
 of holding her pinned beneath one knee and de- 
 manding between two stabs: 
 
 "Am I ridiculous now?" 
 
 He was still muttering suchlike maledictions 
 when he felt a hand laid on his shoulder. Wheel- 
 ing round, he saw a quaint figure a huge nose like 
 a pothook, high, massive shoulders, enormous, well- 
 shaped hands, a general impression of uncouthness 
 combined with vigour and geniality. He thought 
 for a moment where this strange monster could 
 have come from; then he shouted: "Garneret!" 
 
 Instantly his memory flew back to the courtyard 
 and class-rooms of the school in the Rue d'Assas, 
 and he saw a heavily built lad, for ever under pun- 
 ishment, standing out face to the wall during play- 
 time, getting and giving mighty fisticuffs, a terrible 
 fellow for plain speaking and hard hitting, indus- 
 trious, yet a thorn in the side of masters, always 
 in ill-luck, yet ever and anon electrifying the class 
 with some stroke of genius.
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 105 
 
 He was glad enough to see his old schoolfellow 
 again, who struck him as looking almost old with 
 his puckered lids and heavy features. They set 
 off arm in arm along the deserted Quai, and to the 
 accompaniment of the faint lapping of the water 
 against the retaining walls, told each other the 
 history of their past which was succinct enough, 
 their present ideas, and their hopes for the future 
 which were boundless. 
 
 The same ill-luck still pursued Garneret; from 
 morn to eve he was engaged on prodigiously labo- 
 rious hack-work for a map-maker, who paid him 
 the wages of one of his office boys; but his big head 
 was crammed with projects. He was working at 
 philosophy and getting up before the sun to make 
 experiments on the susceptibility to light of the 
 invertebrates; by way of studying English and pol- 
 itics at the same time, he was translating Mr. 
 Disraeli's speeches; then every Sunday he accom- 
 panied Monsieur Hebert's pupils on their geological 
 excursions in the environs of Paris, while at night 
 he gave lectures to working men on Italian painting 
 and political economy. There was never a week 
 passed but he was bowled over for twenty-four or 
 forty-eight hours with an agonizing sick-headache. 
 He spent long hours too with his fiancee, a girl with
 
 io6 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 no dowry and no looks, but of a loving, sensitive 
 temper, whom he adored and fully intended to 
 marry the moment he had five hundred francs to 
 call his own. 
 
 Servien could make nothing of the other's tem- 
 perament, one that looks upon the world as an 
 immense factory where the good workman labours, 
 coat off and sleeves rolled up, the sweat pouring 
 from his brow and a song on his lips. He found 
 it harder still to conceive a love with which the 
 glamour of the stage or the splendours of luxurious 
 living had nothing to do. Yet he felt there was 
 something strong and sensible and true about it 
 all, and craving sympathy he made Garneret the 
 confidant of his passion, telling the tale in accents 
 of despair and bitterness, though secretly proud to 
 be the tortured victim of such fine emotions. 
 
 But Garneret expressed no admiration. 
 
 "My dear fellow," said he, "you have got all 
 these romantic notions out of trashy novels. How 
 can you love the woman when you don't know her?" 
 
 How, indeed? Jean Servien did not know; but 
 his nights and days, the throbbings of his heart, the 
 thoughts that possessed his mind to the exclusion 
 of all else, everything convinced him that it was 
 so. He defended himself, talking of mystic influ-
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 107 
 
 ences, natural affinities, emanations, a divine unity 
 of essence. 
 
 Garneret only buried his face between his hands. 
 It was above his comprehension. 
 
 "But come," he said, "the woman is no differently 
 constituted from other women!" 
 
 Obvious as it was, this consideration filled Jean 
 Servien with amazement. It shocked him so much 
 that, rather than admit its truth, he racked his 
 brains in desperation to find arguments to contro- 
 vert the blasphemy. 
 
 Garneret gave his views on women. He had a 
 judicial mind, had Garneret, and could account for 
 everything in the relations of the sexes; but he 
 could not tell Jean why one face glimpsed among 
 a thousand gives joy and grief more than life itself 
 seemed able to contain. Still, he tried to explain 
 the problem, for he was of an eminently ratiocina- 
 tive temper. 
 
 "The thing is quite simple," he declared. 
 "There are a dozen violins for sale at a dealer's. 
 I pass that way, common scraper of catgut that I 
 am, I tune them and try them, and play over on 
 each of them in turn, with false notes galore, some 
 catchy tune Au clair de la lune or J'ai du bon tabac 
 dans ma tabatiere stuff fit to kill the old cow.
 
 io8 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 Then Paganini comes along; with one sweep of the 
 bow he explores the deepest depths of the vibrating 
 instruments. The first is flat, the second sharp, the 
 third almost dumb, the fourth is hoarse, five others 
 have neither power nor truth of tone; but lo! the 
 twelfth gives forth under the master's hand a 
 mighty music of sweet, deep-voiced harmonies. It 
 is a Stradivarius; Paganini knows it, takes it home 
 with him, guards it as the apple of his eye; from 
 an instrument that for me would never have been 
 more than a resonant wooden box he draws chords 
 that make men weep, and love, and fall into a very 
 ecstasy; he directs in his will that they bury this 
 violin with him in his coffin. Well, Paganini is the 
 lover, the instrument with its strings and tuning- 
 pegs is the woman. The instrument must be beau- 
 tifully made and come from the workshop of a right 
 skilful maker; more than that, it must fall into the 
 hands of an accomplished player. But, my poor 
 lad, granting your actress is a divine instrument of 
 amorous music, I don't believe you capable of draw- 
 ing from it one single note of passion's fugue. . . . 
 Just consider. I don't spend my nights supping 
 with ladies of the theatre; but we all know what 
 an actress is. It is an animal generally agreeable 
 to see and hear, always badly brought up, spoilt
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 109 
 
 first by poverty and afterwards by luxury. Very 
 busy into the bargain, which makes her as unro- 
 mantic as anybody can well be. Something like a 
 concierge turned princess, and combining the petty 
 spite of the porter's lodge with the caprices of the 
 boudoir and the fagged nerves of the student. 
 
 "You can hardly expect to dazzle T with 
 
 the munificence and tastefulness of your presents. 
 Your father gives you a hundred sous a week to 
 spend; a great deal for a bookbinder, but very little 
 for a woman whose gowns cost from five hundred 
 to three thousand francs apiece. And, as you are 
 neither a Manager to sign agreements, nor a Dra- 
 matic Author to apportion roles, nor a Journalist 
 to write notices, nor a young man from the draper's 
 to take advantage of a moment's caprice as oppor- 
 tunity offers when delivering a new frock, I don't 
 see in the least how you are to make her favour 
 you, and I think your tragedy queen did quite right 
 to slam her gate in your face." 
 
 "Ah, well!" sighed Jean Servien, "I told you just 
 now I loved her. It is not true. I hate her! I 
 hate her for all the torments she has made me suf- 
 fer, hate her because she is adorable and men love 
 her. And I hate all women, because they all love 
 someone, and that someone is not I !"
 
 no JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 Garneret burst out laughing. 
 
 "Candidly," he grinned, "they are not so far 
 wrong. Your love has no spark of anything affec- 
 tionate, kindly, useful in it. Since the day you fell 
 
 in love with Mademoiselle T , have you once 
 
 thought of sparing her pain? Have you once 
 dreamed of making a sacrifice for her sake? Has 
 any touch of human kindness ever entered into your 
 passion? Can it show one mark of manliness or 
 goodness? Not it. Well, being the poor devils 
 we are, with our own way to push in life and noth- 
 ing to help us on, we must be brave and good. It 
 is half-past one, and I have to get up at five. 
 Good night. Cultivate a quiet mind, and come and 
 
 see me."
 
 XVII 
 
 EAN had only three days left to pre- 
 pare for his examination for admis- 
 sion to the Ministry of Finance. 
 These he spent at home, where the 
 faces of father, aunt, and apprentice 
 seemed strange and unfamiliar, so completely had 
 they disappeared from his thoughts. Monsieur 
 Servien was displeased with his son, but was too 
 timid as well as too tactful to make any overt re- 
 proaches. His aunt overwhelmed him with garru- 
 lous expressions of doting affection; at night she 
 would creep into his room to see if he was sound 
 asleep, while all day long she wearied him with the 
 tale of her petty grievances and dislikes. 
 
 Once she had caught the apprentice with her 
 spectacles, her sacred spectacles, perched on his nose, 
 and the profanation had left a kind of religious 
 horror in her mind. 
 
 "That boy is capable of anything," she used to 
 say. One of the boy's pet diversions was to execute 
 behind the old lady's back a war-dance of the Can- 
 nibal Islanders he had seen once at a theatre.
 
 ii2 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 Sticking feathers he had plucked from a feather- 
 broom in his hair, and holding a big knife without 
 a handle between his teeth, he would creep nearer 
 and nearer, crouching low and advancing by little 
 leaps and bounds, with ferocious grimaces which 
 gradually gave place to a look of disappointed ap- 
 petite, as a closer scrutiny showed how tough and 
 leathery his victim was. Jean could not help laugh- 
 ing at this buffoonery, trivial and ill-bred as it was. 
 His aunt had never got clearly to the bottom of 
 the little farce that dogged her heels, but more than 
 once, turning her head sharply, she had found rea- 
 son to suspect something disrespectful was going 
 on. Nevertheless, she put up with the lad because 
 of his lowly origin. The only folks she really 
 hated were the rich. She was furious because the 
 butcher's wife had gone to a wedding in a silk dress. 
 At the upper end of the Rue de Rennes, beside a 
 plot of waste land, was a stall where an old woman 
 sold dusty ginger-bread and sticks of stale barley- 
 sugar. She had a face the colour of brick dust 
 under a striped cotton sun-bonnet, and eyes of a 
 pale, steely blue. Her whole stock-in-trade had not 
 cost a couple of francs, and on windy days the white 
 dust from houses building in the neighbourhood 
 covered it like a coat of whitewash. Nurses and
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 113 
 
 mothers would anxiously pull away their little ones 
 who were casting sheep's eyes at the sweetstuff: 
 "Dirty!" they would say dissuasively; "dirty I" 
 But the woman never seemed to hear; perhaps 
 she was past feeling anything. She did not beg. 
 Mademoiselle Servien used to bid her good-day 
 in passing, address her by name and fall into talk 
 with her before the stall, sometimes for a quarter 
 of an hour at a time. The staple of conversation 
 with them both was the neighbours, accidents that 
 had occurred in the public thoroughfares, cases of 
 coachmen ill-using their horses, the troubles and 
 trials of life and the ways of Providence, "which 
 are not always just." 
 
 Jean happened to be present at one of these col- 
 loquies. He was a plebeian himself, and this 
 glimpse of the petty lives of the poor, this peep 
 into sordid existences of idle sloth and spiritless 
 resignation, stirred all the blood in his veins. In 
 an instant, as he stood between the two old crones, 
 with their drab faces and no outlook on life save 
 that of the streets, now gloomy and empty, now 
 full of sunshine and crowded traffic, the young man 
 learned more of human conditions than he had ever 
 been taught at school. His thoughts flew from this 
 woman to that other, who was so beautiful and
 
 ii 4 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 whom he loved, and he saw life before him as a 
 whole a melancholy panorama. He told himself 
 they must die both of them, and a hideous old 
 woman, squatted before a few sodden sweetmeats, 
 gave him the same impression of solemn serenity 
 he had experienced at sight of the jewels from the 
 Queen of Egypt's sepulchre.
 
 XVIII 
 
 
 FTER sitting all day over little prob- 
 lems in arithmetic, he set off in the 
 evening in working clothes for the 
 Avenue de I'Observatoire. There, 
 between two tallow candles, in front 
 of a hoarding covered with ballads in illustrated 
 covers, a fellow was singing in a cracked voice to 
 the accompaniment of a guitar. A number of 
 workmen and work-girls stood round listening to 
 the music. Jean slipped into the circle, urged by 
 the instinct that draws a stroller with nothing to do 
 to the neighbourhood of light and noise and that 
 love of a crowd which is charateristic of your Pa- 
 risian. More isolated in the press, more alone than 
 ever, he stood dreaming of the splendour and pas- 
 sion of some noble tragedy of Euripides or Shake- 
 speare. It was some time before he noticed some- 
 thing soft touching and pressing against him from 
 behind. He turned round and saw a work-girl in 
 a little black hat with blue ribbons. She was young 
 and pretty enough, but his mind was fixed on the 
 awe-inspiring and superhuman graces of an Electra 
 
 "5
 
 n6 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 or a Lady Macbeth. She went on nuzzling against 
 his back till he looked round again. 
 
 "Monsieur," she said then; "will you just let me 
 slip in front of you? I am so little; I shan't stop 
 your seeing." 
 
 She had a nice voice. The poise of her head, 
 lifted and thrown back on a plump neck, showed a 
 pair of bright eyes and good teeth between pouting 
 lips. She glided, merry and alert, into the place 
 Jean made for her without a word. 
 
 The man with the guitar sang a ballad about 
 caged birds and blossoms in flower-pots. 
 
 "Mine," observed the work-girl to Jean, "are 
 carnations, and I have birds too canaries they 
 are." 
 
 At the moment he was thinking of some fair- 
 faced chatelaine roaming under the battlements of 
 a donjon. 
 
 The work-girl went on: 
 
 "I have a pair, you understand, to keep each 
 other company. Two is a nice number, don't you 
 think so?" 
 
 He marched off with his visions under the old 
 trees of the Avenue. After a turn or two up and 
 down, he espied the little work-girl hanging on 
 the arm of a handsome young fellow, fashionably
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 117 
 
 dressed, wearing a heavy gold watch-chain. Her 
 admirer was catching her by the waist in the dusk 
 of the trees, and she was laughing. 
 
 Then Jean Servien felt sorry he had scorned her 
 advances.
 
 XIX 
 
 EAN was called up for examination, 
 but with his insufficient preparation 
 he got hopelessly fogged in the in- 
 tricacies of a difficult, tricky piece 
 of dictation and sums that were too 
 long to be worked in the time allowed the candi- 
 dates. He came home in despair. His father 
 tried in his good-nature to reassure him. But a 
 fortnight after came an unstamped letter summon- 
 ing him to the Ministry, and after a three hours' 
 wait he was shown into Monsieur Bargemont's pri- 
 vate room. He recognized his own dictation in the 
 big man's hand. 
 
 "I am sorry," the functionary began, "to inform 
 you that you have entirely failed to pass the tests 
 set you. You do not know the language of your 
 own country, sir; you write Maisons-Lafitte without 
 an V to Maisons, You cannot spell ! and what is 
 more, you do not cross your Vs.' You must know 
 at your age that a V ought to be crossed. 
 It's past understanding, sir!" 
 
 And striking fiercely at the sheet of foolscap on 
 
 119
 
 120 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 which the mistakes were marked in red ink, he kept 
 muttering: "It's past understanding, past under- 
 standing!" His face grew purple, and a swollen 
 vein stood out on his forehead. A queer look in 
 Jean's face gave him pause : 
 
 "Young man," he resumed in a calmer voice, 
 "whatever I can do for you, I will do, be sure of 
 that; but you must not ask me to do impossibilities. 
 We cannot enlist in the service of the State young 
 men who spell so badly they write Maisons-Lafitte 
 without an V to the Maisons. It is in a way a 
 patriotic duty for a Frenchman to know his own 
 language. A year hence, the Ministry will hold 
 another examination, and I will enter your name. 
 You have a year before you; work hard, sir, and 
 learn your mother-tongue." 
 
 Jean stood there scarlet with rage, hate in his 
 heart, his eyes aflame, his throat dry, his teeth 
 clenched, unable to articulate a word; then he 
 swung round like an automaton and darted from 
 the room, banging the door after him with a noise 
 of thunder; piles of books and papers rolled on to 
 the floor of the Chief's office at the shock. 
 
 Monsieur Bargemont was left alone to digest his 
 stupefaction; even so his first thought was to save
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 121 
 
 the honour of his Department. He reopened the 
 door and shouted, "Leave the room!" after Jean, 
 who, mastered once more by his natural timidity, 
 was flying like a thief down the corridors.
 
 XX 
 
 N the court, which was enlivened by a 
 parterre of roses, Jean, carrying a 
 letter in his hand, was trying to find 
 his bearings according to the direc- 
 tions given him in a low voice, as if 
 it were a secret, by the lay-brother who acted as 
 doorkeeper. He was wandering uncertainly from 
 door to door along the walls of the old silent build- 
 ings when a little boy noticed his plight and accosted 
 him: 
 
 "Do you want to see the Director? He is in 
 his study with mamma. Go and wait in the 
 parlour." 
 
 This was a large hall with bare walls, a noble 
 enough apartment in its unadorned simplicity, in 
 spite of the mean horsehair chairs that stood round 
 it. Above the fire-place, instead of a mirror, was 
 a Mater dolorosa that caught the eye by its daz- 
 zling whiteness. Big marble tears stood arrested 
 in mid-career down the cheeks, while the features 
 expressed the pious absorption of the Divine 
 
 123
 
 i2 4 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 Mother's grief. Jean Servien read the inscription 
 cut in red letters on the pedestal, which ran thus: 
 
 PRESENTED TO THE REVEREND ABBE BORDIER, 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 PHILIPPE-GUY DE THIERERCHE, 
 
 WHO DIED AT PAU, 
 NOVEMBER II, 1867, IN THE SEVENTEENTH 
 
 YEAR OF HIS AGE, 
 
 BY THE COUNTESS VALENTINE DE THIERERCHE, 
 
 NEE DE BRUILLE DE SAINT-AMAND. 
 
 LAUDATE PUERI DOAIIXUM 
 
 Then he forgot his anxieties, forgot he was there 
 to beg for employment, shook off the instinctive 
 dread that had seized him on the threshold of the 
 great silent house. He forgot his fears and hopes 
 hopes of being promoted usher! He was ab- 
 sorbed by this cruel domestic drama revealed to 
 him in the inscription. A scion of one of the great- 
 est families of France, a pupil of the Abbe Bordier, 
 attacked by phthisis in the midst of his now profit- 
 less studies and leaving school, not to enjoy life and 
 taste the glorious pleasures only those contemn who 
 have drained them to the dregs, but to die at a 
 southern town in the arms of his mother whose 
 overwhelming, but still self-conscious grief was sym- 
 bolized by this pompous memorial of her sorrow.
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 125 
 
 He could feel, he could see it all. The three Latin 
 words that represent the stricken mother saying: 
 "Children, praise ye the Lord who hath taken away 
 my child," astonished him by their austere piety, 
 while at the same time he admired the aristocratic 
 bearing that was preserved even in the presence of 
 death. 
 
 He was still lost in these day-dreams when an old 
 priest beckoned him to walk into an inner room. 
 The worthy man took the letter of recommendation 
 which Jean handed him, set on his big nose a pair 
 of spectacles with round glasses for all the world 
 like the two wheels of a miniature silver chariot, 
 and proceeded to read the letter, holding it out at 
 the full stretch of his arm. The windows giving 
 on the garden stood open, and a tendril of wild 
 vine hung down on to the desk at the foot of a 
 crucifix of old ivory, while a light breeze set the 
 papers on it fluttering like white wings. 
 
 The Abbe Bordier, his reading concluded, turned 
 to the young man, showing a deeply lined counte- 
 nance and a forehead beautifully polished by age. 
 He took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. 
 Then the worn eyelids lifted slowly and discovered 
 a pair of grey eyes of a shade that somehow re- 
 minded you of an autumn morning. He lay back
 
 126 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 in his armchair, his legs stretched out in front of 
 him, displaying his silver-buckled shoes and black 
 stockings. 
 
 "It seems then, my dear boy," he began, "you 
 wish, so my venerable friend the Abbe Marguerite 
 informs me, to devote yourself to teaching; and 
 your idea would be to prepare for your degree while 
 at the same time performing the duties of an as- 
 sistant master to supervise the boys at their work. 
 It is a humble office; but it will depend entirely on 
 yourself, my dear young friend, to dignify it by a 
 heartfelt zeal and a determination to succeed. I 
 shall entrust the studies of the Remove to your care. 
 Our bursar will inform you of the conditions at- 
 taching to the post." 
 
 Jean bowed and made to leave the room; but 
 suddenly the Abbe Bordier beckoned him to stop 
 and asked abruptly: 
 
 "You understand the rules of verse?" 
 
 "Latin verse?" queried Jean. 
 
 "No, no! French verse. Now, would you 
 rhyme trone with couronne? The rhyme is not, it 
 must be allowed, quite satisfactory to the ear, yet 
 the usage of the great writers authorizes it." 
 
 So saying, the old fellow laid hold of a bulky 
 manuscriot book.
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 127 
 
 "Listen," he cried, "listen. It is St. Fabricius 
 addressing the Proconsul Flavius: 
 
 Acheve, fais dresser I'appareil souhaite 
 De ma mart, ou plutot de ma f elicit e. 
 Le Roi des Rois, du haut de son celeste trone, 
 Deja me tend la palme et tresse ma couronne. 
 
 "Do you think it would be better if he said: 
 
 Acheve, fais dresser I'appareil souhaite 
 
 De ma mort, ou plutot de ma felicite. 
 
 Je vois le Rot des Rois me tendre la couronne, 
 
 Quel n'en est pas le prix quand c'est Dieu qui la donne! 
 
 "Doubtless these latter lines are more correct 
 than the others, but they are less vigorous, and a 
 poet should never sacrifice meaning to metre. 
 
 Le Roi des Rois, du haut de son celeste trone, 
 Deja me tend la palme et tresse ma couronne." 
 
 This time, as he declaimed the verses, he went 
 through the corresponding gestures of tendering a 
 gift and plaiting a garland. 
 
 "It is better so," he added, "better so!" 
 
 Jean, in some surprise, said yes, it was certainly 
 better. 
 
 "Certainly better, yes," cried the old poet, smil- 
 ing with the happy innocence of a little child. 
 
 Then he confided in Jean that it was a very dif-
 
 128 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 ficult thing indeed to write poetry. You must get 
 the caesura in the right place, bring in the rhyme 
 naturally, make your rhythm run in divers cadences, 
 now strong, now sweet, sometimes onomatopoetic, 
 use only words either elevated in themselves or dig- 
 nified by the circumstances. 
 
 He read one passage of his Tragedy because he 
 had his doubts about the number of feet in the 
 line, another because he thought it contained some 
 bold strokes happily conceived, then a third to elu- 
 cidate the two first, eventually the whole five acts 
 from start to finish. He acted the words as he 
 read, modulating his voice to suit the various char- 
 acters, stamping and storming, and to adjust his 
 black skull-cap it would tumble off at the pathetic 
 parts dealing himself a succession of sounding 
 slaps on the crown of his head. 
 
 This sacred drama, in which no woman appeared, 
 was to be played by the pupils of the Institution at 
 a forthcoming function. The previous year he had 
 staged his first tragedy, le Bapteme de Clovis, in 
 the same approved style. A regular, Monsieur 
 Schuver, had arranged garlands of paper roses to 
 represent the battlefield of Tolbiac and the basilica 
 at Rheims. To give a wild, barbaric look to the 
 boys who represented Clovis' henchmen, the sister
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 129 
 
 superintendent of the wardrobe had tacked up their 
 white trousers to the knee. But the Abbe Bordier 
 hoped greater things still for his new piece. 
 
 Jean applauded and improved upon these ambi- 
 tious projects. His suggestions for scenery and 
 costumes were admirable. He would have the 
 ruthless Flavius seated on a curule chair of ivory, 
 draped with purple, erected before a portico 
 painted on the back cloth. The costumes of the 
 Roman soldiers, he insisted, must be copied from 
 those on Trajan's Column. 
 
 His words opened superb vistas before the old 
 priest's eyes; he was enchanted, ravished, yet full 
 of doubts and fears. Alas ! Monsieur Schuvcr was 
 quite helpless if it came to designing anything 
 more ambitious than his paper roses. Then Jean 
 must needs take a look round in the shed where the 
 properties were stored, and the two discussed to- 
 gether how the stage must be set and the side-scenes 
 worked. Jean took measurements, drew up a plan, 
 worked out an estimate. He manifested a passion- 
 ate eagerness that was surprising, albeit the old 
 priest took it all as a matter of course. A batten 
 would come here, a practicable door there. The 
 actor would enter there . . . 
 
 But the worthy priest checked him :
 
 1 30 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 "Say the reciter, my dear boy; actor is not a word 
 for self-respecting people." 
 
 Barring this trifling misunderstanding, they were 
 in perfect accord. The sun was setting by this 
 time and the Abbe Bordier's shadow, grotesquely 
 elongated, danced up and down the sandy floor 
 of the shed, while the old, broken voice declaimed 
 tags of verse that echoed to the furthest recesses 
 of the court. But Jean Servien was smiling at the 
 vision only his eyes could see of Gabrielle, the in- 
 spirer of all his enthusiasm.
 
 XXI 
 
 was nearly the end of the long 
 evening preparation and absolute 
 quiet reigned in the schoolroom. 
 The broad lamp-shades concen- 
 trated the light on the tangled 
 heads of the boys, who were working at their 
 lessons or sitting in a brown study with their noses 
 on the desks. The only sounds were the crackling 
 of paper, the lads' breathing and the scratch, 
 scratch of steel pens. The youngest there, his 
 cheeks still browned by the seabreezes, was dream- 
 ing over his half-finished exercise of a beach on the 
 Normandy coast and the sand-castles he and his 
 friends used to build, to see them swept away 
 presently by the waves of the rising tide. 
 
 At the top of the great room, at the high desk 
 where the Superintendent of Studies had solemnly 
 installed him underneath the great ebony crucifix, 
 Jean Servien, his head between his two hands, was 
 reading a Latin poet. 
 
 He felt utterly sad and lonely; but he had not 
 realized yet that his new life was actual fact, and
 
 i 3 2 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 from moment to moment he expected the school- 
 room would suddenly vanish and the desks with 
 their litter of dictionaries and grammars and the 
 young heads gilded by the lamp-light melt into thin 
 air. 
 
 Suddenly a paper pellet, shot from the far end 
 of the hall, struck him on the cheek. He turned 
 pale and cried in a voice shaking with anger: 
 
 "Monsieur de Grizolles, leave the room!" 
 
 There was some whispering and stifled laughter, 
 then peace was restored. The scratching of pens 
 began again, and exercises were passed surrepti- 
 tiously from hand to hand for cribbing purposes. 
 
 He was an usher. 
 
 His father had come to this decision by the ad- 
 vice of Monsieur Marguerite, the vicaire of his 
 parish and a friend of the Abbe Bordier. The 
 bookbinder, having a high respect for knowledge, 
 entertained a correspondingly high idea of the 
 status of all its ministers. Assistant master struck 
 him as an imposing title, and he was delighted to 
 have his son connected with an aristocratic and 
 religious foundation. 
 
 "Your son," the Abbe Marguerite told him, "will 
 read for his Master's degree in the intervals of his 
 duties, and the title of Licencie-es-Lettres will open
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 133 
 
 the door to the higher walks of teaching. We 
 have known assistants rise to high positions in the 
 University and even occupy Monsieur de Fontanes' 
 chair." 
 
 These considerations had clenched the book- 
 binder's resolution, and this was now the third day 
 of Jean's ushership.
 
 XXII 
 
 (HREE months had dragged by. It 
 was a Friday; a hot, nauseating smell 
 of fried fish filled the refectory; a 
 strong draught blew cold about feet 
 encased in wet boots; the walls 
 dripped with moisture, and outside the barred win- 
 dows a fine rain was falling from a grey sky. The 
 boys, seated at marble-topped tables, were making 
 a hideous rattle with their forks and tin cups, while 
 one of their schoolfellows, seated at the desk in 
 the middle of the great room, was reading aloud, 
 as the regulations direct, a passage from Rollin's 
 Ancient History. 
 
 Jean, at the head of a table, his nose in his ill- 
 washed earthernware plate, had cold feet and a sore 
 heart. Something resembling rotten wood formed 
 a deposit at the bottom of his glass, while the 
 servers were handing round dishes of prunes with 
 their thumbs washing in the juice. Now and again, 
 amid the rattle of plates, the rasping voice of the 
 reader, a lad of seventeen, reached the usher's ears. 
 He caught the name of Cleopatra and some scraps 
 
 135
 
 136 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 of sentences : "She was about to appear before 
 Antony at an age when women unite with the 
 flower of their beauty every charm of wit and 
 intellect . . . her person more compelling than 
 any magnificence of adornment. . . . Her galley 
 entered the Cydnus . . . the poop of the vessel 
 shone resplendent with gold, the sails were of 
 Tynan purple, the oars of silver" 
 
 Then the seductive names of Nereids, flutes, 
 perfumes. The hot blood flooded his cheeks. 
 The woman who for him was the sole and only in- 
 carnation of the whole race of womankind through- 
 out the ages rose before his mental sight with a 
 surprising clearness; every hair of his body stood 
 on end in an agonizing spasm of desire, and he 
 dug his nails into the palms of his hands. The 
 vision caused him an unspeakable yet delicious 
 pain Gabrielle in a loose peignoir at a small, 
 daintily ordered table gay with flowers ard glasses. 
 He saw it all quite clearly; his gaze searched 
 every fold of the soft material that covered her 
 bosom and rose and fell at each breath she drew. 
 Face and neck and lively hands had a surprisingly 
 brilliant yet so natural a sheen that they exhaled 
 amorous invitation as if they had been verily of 
 flesh and blood. The superb moulding of the lips,
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 137 
 
 pouting like a ripe mulberry, and the exquisite 
 grain of the skin were manifest treasures such as 
 men risk death and crime to win. It was the ac- 
 tress, in fine, seen by the two eyes which of all eyes 
 in the whole world had learned to see her best. 
 She was not alone; a man was looking at her with 
 a penetrating intensity as he filled her glass. They 
 were straining one towards the other. Jean could 
 not restrain his sobs. Suddenly he seemed to be 
 falling from the top of a high tower. The Super- 
 intendent of Studies was standing in front of him 
 and saying: 
 
 "Monsieur Servien, will you see about punishing 
 that boy Laboriette, who is emptying his leavings 
 in his neighbour's pocket?
 
 XXIII 
 
 HE Superintendent, with his large, 
 flat face and the sly ways of a 
 peasant turned monk, was a con- 
 stant thorn in Jean's side. "Be 
 firm, be firm, sir," was his parable 
 every day, and he never missed an opportunity 
 of doing the usher an ill turn with the Director. 
 
 The early days of Jean's servitude had slipped 
 by in an enervating monotony. With his quiet 
 ways, tactful temper and air of kindly aloofness, he 
 was popular with the more sensible boys, while the 
 others left him in peace, as he did them. But 
 there was one exception; Henri de Grizolles, a hand- 
 some young savage, proud of his aristocratic name, 
 which he scribbled in big letters on his light trousers, 
 and overjoyed at the chance of hurting an inferior's 
 feelings, had from the very first day declared war 
 against the poor usher. He used to empty ink- 
 bottles into his desk, stick cobbler's wax on his 
 chair, and let off crackers in the middle of school. 
 Hearing the disturbance, the Superintendent 
 
 139
 
 i 4 o THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 would march in with the airs of a Police Inspector 
 and bid Jean: "Be firm, sir! be firm!" 
 
 Far from taking his advice, Jean affected an 
 excessive easiness of temper. One day he caught 
 a boy in the act of drawing a caricature of himself; 
 he picked it up and glanced at it, then handed it 
 back to the artist with a shrug of the shoulders. 
 
 Such mildness was misconstrued and only weak- 
 ened his authority. The usher's miseries grew 
 acute, and he lost the patience that alleviated his 
 sufferings. He could not put up with the lads' rest- 
 lessness, their happy laughter and light-hearted 
 enjoyment of life. He showed temper, venting his 
 spite on mere acts of thoughtlessness or simple 
 ebullitions of high spirits. Then he would fall into 
 a sort of torpor. He had long fits of absentminded- 
 ness, during which he was deaf to every noise. It 
 became the fashion to keep birds, plait nets, shoot 
 arrows, and crow like a cock in Monsieur Jean Ser- 
 vien's class-room. Even the boys from other divi- 
 sions would slip out of their own class-rooms to 
 peep in at the windows of this one, about which 
 such amazing stories were told, and the ceiling of 
 which was decorated with little figures swinging at 
 the end of a string stuck to the plaster with chewed 
 paper.
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 141 
 
 DC Grizolles had installed a regular Roman cata- 
 pult for shooting kidney-beans at the usher's head. 
 
 Jean would drive the young gentleman out of 
 the room. The Superintendent of Studies would 
 reinstate him, only to be turned out again. And 
 each time meant a fresh report to the Director. 
 The Abbe Bordier, who never found patience to hear 
 the worthy Superintendent out to the end, could only 
 throw up his hands to heaven and declare they 
 would be the death of him between them. But the 
 impression became fixed in his mind that the As- 
 sistant in charge of the Remove was a source of 
 trouble.
 
 XXIV 
 
 UNDAY was a day of cheerful in- 
 dolence, devoted to attending the 
 services in the Chapel, which was 
 filled with the scent of incense all day 
 long. At Vespers, while the clear, 
 boyish voices intoned the long-drawn canticles, Jean 
 would be gazing at some woman's face half seen in 
 the dusk of the galleries where the pupils' mothers 
 and sisters knelt during the office, their haughty air 
 contradicting the humble attitude. At the sound of 
 the Ave mans Stella, the lowly bookbinder's son 
 would lift his eyes to these ladies of high degree, 
 the plainest of whom feels herself a jewel of price 
 and cherishes a natural and unaffected pride of 
 birth. The chants and incense, the flowers and 
 sacred images, whatever troubles the imagination 
 and stimulates to prayer, all these things united to 
 enervate his spirit and deliver him a trembling 
 victim to the glamour of these patrician dames. 
 
 But it was Gabrielle he worshipped in them, 
 Gabrielle to whom he offered up his prayers, his 
 
 143
 
 144 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 supplications. All that element in religion which 
 gives to love the fascination of forbidden fruit 
 appealed powerfully to his imagination. Unbe- 
 liever though he was, he loved the Magdalen's God 
 and savoured the creed that has bestowed on lovers 
 one amorous bliss the more the bliss of losing 
 their immortal souls.
 
 XXV 
 
 ITTLE by little the boys wearied 
 of this insubordination, their im- 
 aginations proving unequal to the 
 invention of any new forms of mis- 
 chief. Even de Grizolles himself 
 left off shooting beans. Instead, he conceived the 
 notion of brewing chocolate inside his desk with a 
 spirit-lamp and a silver patty-pan. Jean left him in 
 peace and reopened his Sophocles with a sigh of 
 relief. But the Superintendent, going by in the 
 court, caught a smell of cooking, searched the desks 
 and unearthed the patty-pan, which he offered, still 
 warm, for the Reverend the Director's inspection, 
 with the words: "There! that's what goes on 
 in Monsieur Servien's class-room." The Director 
 slapped his forehead, declared they would be the 
 death of him and ordered the patty-pan to be re- 
 stored to its owner. Then he sent for the Assistant 
 in charge and administered a severe reprimand, be- 
 cause he believed it to be his bounden duty to do so. 
 The next day was a whole holiday, and Jean went 
 to spend the day at his father's. The latter asked 
 
 MS
 
 146 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 him if he was ready for his professorial exami- 
 nation. 
 
 "My lad," he adjured him, "be quick and find a 
 good post if you want me to see you in it. One of 
 these days your aunt and I will be going out at 
 yonder door feet foremost. The old lady had a fit 
 of dizziness last week on the stairs. 7 am not ill, 
 but I can feel I am worn out. I have done a hard 
 life's work in the world." 
 
 He looked at his tools, and walked away, a bent 
 old man ! 
 
 Then Jean gathered up in both hands the old 
 work-worn tools, all polished with use, scissors, 
 punches, knives, folders, scrapers, and kissed them, 
 the tears running down his cheeks. 
 
 At that moment his aunt came in, looking for her 
 spectacles. Furtively, in a whisper, she asked him 
 for a little mone^. In the old days she used to save 
 the halfpence to slip them into the "little lad's" 
 hand; now, grown feebler than the child, she trem- 
 bled at the idea of destitution; she hoarded, and 
 asked charity of the priests. The fact is, her wits 
 were weakening. Very often she would inform her 
 brother that she did not mean to let the week pass 
 without going to see the Brideaus. Now the 
 Brideaus, jobbing tailors at Montrouge in their life-
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 147 
 
 time, had been dead, both husband and wife, for 
 the last two years. Jean gave her a louis, which 
 she took with a delight so ugly to see that the 
 poor lad took refuge out of doors. 
 
 Presently, without quite knowing how, he found 
 himself on the Quai near the Pont d'lena. It was 
 a bright day but the gloomy walls of the houses and 
 the grey look of the river banks seemed to proclaim 
 that life is hard and cruel. Out in the stream a 
 dredger, all drab with marl, was discharging one 
 after the other its bucketfuls of miry gravel. By 
 the waterside a stout oaken crane was unloading mill- 
 stones, wheeling backwards and forwards on its axis. 
 Under the parapet, near the bridge, an old dame 
 with a copper-red face sat knitting stockings as she 
 waited for customers to buy her apple-puffs. 
 
 Jean Servien thought of his childhood; many a 
 time had his aunt taken him to the same spot, many 
 a time had they watched together the dredger haul- 
 ing aboard, bucketful by bucketful, the muddy dregs 
 of the river. Very often his aunt had stopped to 
 exchange ideas with the old stallkeeper, while he 
 examined the counter which was spread with a 
 napkin, the carafe of liquorice-water that stood on 
 it, and the lemon that served as stopper. Nothing 
 was changed, neither the dredger, nor the rafts of
 
 148 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 timber, nor the old woman, nor the four ponderous 
 stallions at either end of the Pont d'lena. 
 
 Yes, Jean Servien could hear the trees along the 
 Quai, the waters of the river, the very stones of the 
 parapet calling to him: 
 
 "We know you; you are the little boy his aunt, 
 in a peasant's cap, used to bring here to see us in 
 former days. But we shall never see your aunt 
 again, nor her print shawl, nor her umbrella which 
 she opened against the sun; for she is old now and 
 does not take her nephew walks any more, for he is 
 a grown man now. Yes, the child is grown into a 
 man and has been hurt by life, while he was run- 
 ning after shadows."
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 NE day, in the midday interval, he 
 was informed that a visitor was 
 asking for him in the parlour; the 
 news filled him with delight, for he 
 was very young and still counted on 
 the possibilities of the unknown. In the parlour 
 he found Monsieur Tudesco, wearing his waistcoat 
 of ticking and holding a peaked hat in one hand. 
 
 "My young friend," began the Italian, "I 
 learned from your respected father's apprentice 
 that you were confined in this sanctuary of studious 
 learning. I venture to say your fortune is overcast 
 with clouds, at least I fear it is. The lowliness of 
 your estate is not gilded like that of the Latin poet, 
 and you are struggling with a valiant heart against 
 adverse fortune. That is why I am come to offer 
 you the hand of friendship, and I venture to say 
 you will regard as a mark of my amity and my 
 esteem the request I proffer for a crown-piece, 
 which I find needful to sustain an existence conse- 
 crated to learned studies." 
 
 The parlour was filling with pupils and their 
 
 149
 
 i 5 o THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 friends and relations. Mothers and sons were ex- 
 changing sounding kisses, followed by exclamations 
 of "How hot you are, dear I" and prolonged whis- 
 perings. Girls in light summer frocks were making 
 sheep's eyes on the sly at their brothers' friends, 
 while fathers were pulling cakes of chocolate out 
 of their pockets. 
 
 Monsieur Tudesco, entirely at his ease among 
 these fine people, did not seem at all aware of the 
 young usher's hideous embarrassment. To the 
 latter's, "Come outside; we can talk better there," 
 the old man replied unconcernedly, "Oh, no, I 
 don't think so." 
 
 He welcomed each lady who came in with a 
 profound bow, and distributed friendly taps on the 
 cheek among the young aristocrats around him. 
 
 Lying back in an arm-chair and displaying his 
 famous waistcoat to the very best advantage, he 
 enlarged on such episodes of his life as he thought 
 most impressive : 
 
 "The fates were vanquished," he was telling 
 Servien, "my livelihood was assured. The land- 
 lord of an inn had entrusted his books to me, and 
 under his roof I was devoting my attention to 
 mathematical calculations, not, like the illustrious 
 and ill-starred Galileo, to measure the stars, but
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 151 
 
 to establish with exactitude the profits and losses 
 of a trader. After two days' performance of these 
 honourable duties, the Commissary of Police made 
 a descent upon the inn, arrested the landlord and 
 the landlady and carried away my account books 
 with him. No, I had not vanquished the fates 1" 
 
 Every head was turned, every eye directed in 
 amazement towards this extraordinary personage. 
 There was much whispering and some half-sup- 
 pressed laughter. Jean, seeing himself the centre 
 of mocking glances and looks of annoyance, drew 
 Tudesco towards the door. But just as the Marquis 
 was making a series of sweeping bows by way of 
 farewell to the ladies, Jean found himself face to 
 face with the Superintendent of Studies, who said 
 to him: 
 
 "Oh! Monsieur Servien, will you go and take 
 detention in Monsieur Schuver's absence?" 
 
 The Marquis pressed his young friend's hand, 
 watched him depart to his duties, and then, turning 
 back to the groups gathered in the parlour, he 
 waved his hand with a gesture at once dignified and 
 appealing to call for silence. 
 
 "Ladies and gentlemen," he began, "I have trans- 
 lated into the French tongue, which Brunette 
 I atini declared to be the most delectable of all, the
 
 152 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 Gerusalemme Liberata, the glorious masterpiece of 
 the divine Torquato Tasso. This great work I 
 wrote in a garret without fire, on candle wrappers, 
 on snuff papers " 
 
 At this point, from one corner of the parlour, a 
 crow of childish laughter went off like a rocket. 
 
 Monsieur Tudesco stopped short and smiled, his 
 hair flying, his eye moist, his arms thrown open as 
 if to embrace and bless; then he resumed: 
 
 "I say it: the laugh of innocence is the ill-starred 
 veteran's joy. I see from where I stand groups 
 worthy of Correggio's brush, and I say: Happy 
 the families that meet together in peace in the heart 
 of their fatherland ! Ladies and gentlemen, pardon 
 me if I hold out to you the casque of Belisarius. I 
 am an old tree riven by the levin-bolt." 
 
 And he went from group to group holding out his 
 peaked felt hat, into which, amid an icy silence, fell 
 coin by coin a dribble of small silver. 
 
 But suddenly the Superintendent of Studies seized 
 the hat and pushed the old man outside. 
 
 "Give me back my hat," bawled Monsieur 
 Tudesco to the Superintendent, who was doing his 
 best to restore the coins to the donors; "give back 
 the old man's hat, the hat of one who has grown 
 grey in learned studies."
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 153 
 
 The Superintendent, scarlet with rage, tossed the 
 felt into the court, shouting: 
 
 "Be off, or I will call the police." 
 
 The Marquis Tudesco took to his heels with great 
 agility. 
 
 The same evening the new Assistant was sum- 
 moned to the Director's presence and received his 
 dismissal. 
 
 "Unhappy boy! unhappy boy!" said the Abbe 
 Bordier, beating his brow; "you have been the cause 
 of an intolerable scandal, of a sort unheard of in 
 this house, and that just when I had so much to 
 do." 
 
 And as he spoke, the scattered papers fluttered 
 like white birds on the Director's table. 
 
 Making his way through the parlour, Jean saw 
 the Mater dolorosa as before, and read again the 
 names of Philippe-Guy Thiererche and the Countess 
 Valentine. 
 
 "I hate them," he muttered through clenched 
 teeth, "I hate them all." 
 
 Meantime, the good priest felt a stir of pity. 
 Every day they had badgered him with reports 
 against Jean Servien. This time he had given way; 
 he had sacrificed the young usher; but he really 
 could make nothing of this tale about a beggar.
 
 154 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 He changed his mind, ran to the door and called 
 to the young man to come back. 
 
 Jean turned and faced him: 
 
 "No!" he cried, "no! I can bear the life no 
 longer; I am unhappy, I am full of misery and 
 hate." 
 
 "Poor lad!" sighed the Director letting his arms 
 drop by his side. 
 
 That evening he did not write a single line of 
 his Tragedy.
 
 XXVII 
 
 HE kind-hearted bookbinder har- 
 assed his son with no reproaches. 
 After dinner he went and sat at 
 his shop-door, and looked at the 
 first star that peeped out in the 
 evening sky. 
 
 "My boy, said he, "I am not a man of learning 
 like you; but I have the notion and you must not 
 rob me of it, because it is a comfort to me that, 
 when I have finished binding books, I shall go to 
 that star. The idea occurred to me from what I 
 have read in the paper that the stars are all worlds. 
 What is that star called?" 
 "Venus, father." 
 
 "In my part of the world, they say it is the 
 shepherd's star. It's a beautiful star, and I think 
 your mother is there. That is why I should like 
 to go there." 
 
 The old man passed his knotted fingers across 
 his brow, murmuring: 
 
 "God forgive me, how one forgets those who 
 are gone 1" 
 
 155
 
 156 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 Jean sought balm for his wounded spirit in read- 
 ing poetry and in long, dreamy walks. His head 
 was filled with visions a welter of sublime imag- 
 inings, in which floated such figures as Ophelia 
 and Cassandra, Gretchen, Delia, Phaedra, Manon 
 Lescaut, and Virginia, and hovering amid these, 
 shadows still nameless, still almost formless, and 
 yet full of seduction ! Holding bowls and daggers 
 and trailing long veils, they came and went, faded 
 and grew vivid with colour. And Jean could hear 
 them calling to him : "If ever we win to life, it will 
 be through you. And what a bliss it will be for 
 you, Jean Servien, to have created us. How you 
 will love us!" And Jean Servien would answer 
 them: "Come back, come back, or rather do not 
 leave me. But I cannot tell how to make you 
 visible; you vanish away when I gaze at you, and 
 I cannot net you in the meshes of beautiful verse!" 
 
 Again and again he tried to write poems, trage- 
 dies, romances; but his indolence, his lack of ideas, 
 his fastidiousness brought him to a standstill before 
 half a dozen lines were written, and he would toss 
 the all but virgin page into the fire. Quickly dis- 
 couraged, he turned his attention to politics. The 
 funeral of Victor Noir, the Belleville risings, the 
 plebiscite, filled his thoughts; he read the papers,
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 157 
 
 joined the groups that gathered on the boulevards, 
 followed the yelping pack of white blouses, and was 
 one of the crowd that hooted the Commissary of 
 Police as he read the Riot Act. Disorder and 
 uproar intoxicated him; his heart beat as if it would 
 burst his bosom, his enthusiasm rose to fever pitch, 
 amid these stupid exhibitions of mob violence. 
 Then to end up, after tramping the streets with other 
 gaping idlers till late at night, he would make his 
 way back, with weary limbs and aching ribs, his 
 head whirling confusedly with bombast and loud 
 talk, through the sleeping city to the Faubourg 
 Saint-Germain. There, as he strode past some 
 aristocratic mansion and saw the scutcheon bla- 
 zoned on its facade and the two lions lying white 
 in the moonlight on guard before its closed portal, 
 he would cast a look of hatred at the building. 
 Presently, as he resumed his march, he would picture 
 himself standing, musket in hand, on a barricade, in 
 the smoke of insurrection, along with workmen and 
 young fellows from the schools, as we see it all 
 represented in lithographs. 
 
 One day in July, he saw a troop of white blouses 
 moving along the boulevard and shouting: "To 
 Berlin !" Ragamuffin street-boys ran yelping round. 
 Respectable citizens lined the sidewalks, staring in
 
 158 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 wonder, and saying nothing; but one of them, a 
 stout, tall, red-faced man, waved his hat and 
 shouted : 
 
 "To Berlin! Long live the Emperor I" 
 Jean recognized Monsieur Bargemont.
 
 XXVIII 
 
 N the top of the ramparts. Bivouac 
 huts and stacked rifles guarded by a 
 sentinel. National Guards are play- 
 ing shove ha'penny. The autumn 
 sunshine lies clear and soft and 
 splendid on the roofs of the beleagured city. Out- 
 side the fortifications, the bare, grey fields; in the 
 distance the barracks of the outlying forts, over 
 which fleecy puffs of smoke sail upwards; on the 
 horizon the hills whence the Prussian batteries are 
 firing on Paris, leaving long trails of white smoke. 
 The guns thunder. They have been thundering for 
 a month, and no one so much as hears them now. 
 Servien and Garneret, wearing the red-piped kepi 
 and the tunic with brass buttons, are seated side by 
 side on sandbags, bending over the same book. 
 
 It was a Virgil, and Jean was reading out loud 
 the delicious episode of Silenus. Two youths have 
 discovered the old god lying in a drunken sleep 
 he is always drunk and it makes men mock at him, 
 albeit they still revere him and have bound him in 
 chains of flowers to force him to sing, ^gle, the 
 
 159
 
 160 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 fairest of the Naiads, has stained his cheeks scarlet 
 with juice of the mulberry, and lo ! he sings. 
 
 "He sings how from out the mighty void were 
 drawn together the germs of earth and air and sea 
 and of the subtle fire likewise; how of these begin- 
 nings came all the elements, and the fluid globe of 
 the firmament grew into solid being; how presently 
 the ground began to harden and to imprison 
 Nereus in the ocean, and little by little to take on 
 the shapes of things. He sings how anon con- 
 tinents marvelled to behold a new-emerging sun; 
 how the clouds broke up in the welkin and the rains 
 descended, what time the woods put forth their 
 first green and beasts first prowled by ones and 
 twos over the unnamed mountain-tops." 
 
 Jean broke off to observe : 
 
 "How admirably it all brings out Virgil's spirit, 
 so serious and tender! The poet has put a cos- 
 mogony in an idyll. Antiquity called him the Vir- 
 gin. The name well befits his Muse, and we should 
 picture her as a Mnemosyne pondering over the 
 works of men and the causes of things!" 
 
 Meanwhile Garneret, with a more concentrated 
 attention and his finger on the lines, was marshalling 
 his ideas. The players were still at their game,
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 161 
 
 and the little copper discs they used for throwing 
 kept rolling close to his feet, and the canteen-woman 
 passed backwards and forwards with her little 
 
 barrel. 
 
 "See this, Servien," he said presently; "in these 
 lines Virgil, or rather the poet of the Alexandrine 
 age who was his model, has anticipated Laplace's 
 great hypothesis and Charles Lycll's theories. He 
 shows cosmic matter, that negative something from 
 which everything must come, condensing to make 
 worlds, the plastic rind of the globe consolidating; 
 then the formation of islands and continents; then 
 the rains ceasing and first appearance of the sun, 
 heretofore veiled by opaque clouds; then vegetable 
 life manifesting itself before animal, because the 
 latter cannot maintain itself and endure save by 
 
 absorbing the elements of the former " 
 
 At that moment a stir was apparent along the 
 ramparts. The players broke off their game and 
 the two friends lifted their heads. It was a train 
 of wounded going by. Under the curtains of the 
 lumbering ambulance-waggons marked with the 
 Geneva red cross could be seen livid faces tied up 
 in bloodstained bandages. Linesmen and mobiles 
 tramped behind, their arms hanging in slings. The
 
 1 62 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 Nationals proffered them handfuls of tobacco and 
 asked for news. But the wounded men only shook 
 their heads and trudged stolidly on their way. 
 
 "Aren't we to have some fighting soon as well 
 as other fellows?" cried Garneret. 
 
 To which Servien growled back: 
 
 "We must first put down the traitors and in- 
 capables who govern us, proclaim the Commune 
 and march all together against the Prussians."
 
 XXIX 
 
 ATRED of the Empire which had 
 left him to rot in a back-shop and a 
 school class-room, love of the Repub- 
 lic that was to bring every blessing 
 in its train had, since the proclama- 
 tion of September 4, raised Jean Servien's warlike 
 enthusiasm to fever heat. But he soon wearied of 
 the long drills in the Luxembourg gardens and the 
 hours of futile sentry-go behind the fortifications. 
 The sight of tipsy shopkeepers in a frenzy of fool- 
 ish ardour, half drink, half patriotism, sickened 
 him, and this playing at soldiers, tramping through 
 the mud on an empty stomach, struck him as after 
 all an odious, ugly business. 
 
 Luckily Garneret was his comrade in the ranks, 
 and Servien felt the salutary effect of that well- 
 stored, well-ordered mind, the servant of duty and 
 stern reality. Only this saved him from a passion, 
 as futile in the past as it was hopeless in the future, 
 which was assuming the dangerous character of a 
 mental disease. 
 
 He had not seen Gabrielle again for a long 
 time. The theatres were shut; all he knew, from 
 
 163
 
 164 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 the newspapers, was that she was nursing the 
 wounded in the theatre ambulance. He had no 
 wish now to meet her. 
 
 When he was not on duty, he used to lie in bed 
 and read (it was a hard winter and wood was 
 scarce), or else scour the boulevards and mix with 
 the throng of idlers in search of news. One eve- 
 ning, early in January, as he was passing the corner 
 of the Rue Drouot, his attention was attracted by 
 the clamour of voices, and he saw Monsieur Barge- 
 mont being roughly handled by an ill-looking gang of 
 National Guards. 
 
 "I am a better Republican than any of you," 
 the big man was vociferating; "I have always pro- 
 tested against the infamies of the Empire. But 
 when you shout: Vive Blanqui ! . . . excuse me 
 ... I have a right to shout : Vive Jules Favre ! 
 
 excuse me, I have a perfect right " But his 
 
 voice was drowned in a chorus of yells. Men in 
 kepis shook their fists at him, shouting: "Traitor! 
 no surrender! Down with Badinguet!" His broad 
 face, distraught with terror, still bore traces of 
 its erstwhile look of smug effrontery. A girl in 
 the crowd shrieked: "Throw him in the river!" 
 and a hundred voices took up the cry. But just 
 at that moment the crowd swayed back violently
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 165 
 
 and Monsieur Bargemont darted into the fore- 
 court of the Mairie. A squad of police officers 
 received him in their ranks and closed in round 
 him. He was saved! 
 
 Little by little the crowd melted away, and 
 Jean heard a dozen different versions of the inci- 
 dent as it travelled with ever-increasing exaggera- 
 tion from mouth to mouth. The last comers learned 
 the startling news that they had just arrested 
 a German general officer, who had sneaked into 
 Paris as a spy to betray the city to the enemy with 
 the connivance of the Bonapartists. 
 
 The streets being once more passable, Jean saw 
 Monsieur Bargemont come out of the Mairie. He 
 was very red and a sleeve of his overcoat was torn 
 
 away. 
 
 Jean made up his mind to follow him. 
 
 Along the boulevards he kept him in view at a 
 distance, and not much caring whether he lost track 
 of him or no; but when the Functionary turned up 
 a cross street, the young man closed in on his quarry. 
 He had no particular suspicion even now; a mere 
 instinct urged him to dog the man's heels. Mon- 
 sieur Bargemont wheeled to the right, into a fairly 
 broad street, empty and badly lighted by petroleum 
 flares that supplied the place of the gas lamps. It
 
 1 66 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 was the one street Jean knew better than another. 
 He had been there so often and often! The shape 
 of the doors, the colour of the shop-fronts, the 
 lettering on the sign-boards, everything about it 
 was familiar; not a thing in it, down to the night-bell 
 at the chemist's and druggist's, but called up mem- 
 ories, associations, to touch him. The footsteps of 
 the two men echoed in the silence. Monsieur 
 Bargemont looked round, advanced a few paces 
 more and rang at a door. Jean Servien had now 
 come up with him and stood beside him under the 
 archway. It was the same door he had kissed one 
 night of desperation, Gabrielle's door. It opened; 
 Jean took a step forward and Monsieur Bargemont, 
 going in first, left it open, thinking the National 
 Guard there was a tenant going home to his lodging. 
 Jean slipped in and climbed two flights of the dark 
 staircase. Monsieur Bargemont ascended to the 
 third floor and rang at a door on the landing, which 
 was opened. Jean could hear Gabrielle's voice 
 saying: 
 
 "How late you are coming home, dear; I have 
 sent Rosalie to bed; I was waiting up for you, you 
 see." 
 
 The man replied, still puffing and panting with 
 his exertions:
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 167 
 
 "Just fancy, they wanted to pitch me into the 
 river, those scoundrels! But never you mind, I've 
 brought you something mighty rare and precious 
 a pot of butter." 
 
 "Like Little Red Ridinghood," laughed Gabri- 
 elle's voice. "Come in and you shall tell me all 
 about it. ... Hark! do you hear?" 
 
 "What, the guns? Oh! that never stops." 
 
 "No, the noise of a fall on the stairs." 
 
 "You're dreaming!" 
 
 "Give me the candle, I'm going to look." 
 
 Monsieur Bargemont went down two or three 
 steps and saw Jean stretched motionless on the 
 landing. 
 
 "A drunkard," he said; "there's so many of them! 
 they were drunkards, those chaps who wanted to 
 drown me." 
 
 He was holding his light to Jean's ashy face, 
 while Gabrielle, leaning over the rail, looked on: 
 
 "It's not a drunken man," she said; "he is too 
 white. Perhaps it is a poor young fellow dying 
 of hunger. When you're brought down to rations 
 of bread and horseflesh " 
 
 Then she looked more carefully under frowning 
 brows, and muttered: 
 
 "It's very queer, it's really very queer!"
 
 1 68 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 "Do you know him?" asked Bargemont. 
 
 "I am trying to remember " 
 
 But there was no need to try; already she had 
 recalled it all how her hand had been kissed at 
 the gate of the little house at Bellevue. 
 
 Running to her rooms, she returned with water 
 and a bottle of ether, knelt beside the fainting man, 
 and slipping her arm, which was encircled by the 
 white band of a nursing sister, under his shoulders, 
 raised Jean's head. He opened his eyes, saw her, 
 heaved the deepest sigh of love ever expelled from 
 a human breast and felt his lids fall softly to 
 again. He remembered nothing; only she was 
 bending over him; and her breath had caressed his 
 cheek. Now she was bathing his temples, and he 
 felt a delicious sense of returning life. Monsieur 
 Bargemont with the candle leant over Jean Servien, 
 who, opening his eyes for the second time, saw the 
 man's coarse red cheek within an inch of the 
 actress's delicate ear. He gave a great cry and a 
 convulsive spasm shook his body. 
 
 "Perhaps it is an epileptic fit," said Monsieur 
 Bargemont, coughing; he was catching cold standing 
 on the staircase. 
 
 She protested:
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 169 
 
 "We cannot leave a sick man without doing some- 
 thing for him. Go and wake Rosalie." 
 
 He remounted the stairs, grumbling. Meantime 
 Jean had got to his feet and was standing with 
 averted head. 
 
 She said to him in a low tone : 
 
 ''So you love me still?" 
 
 He looked at her with an indescribable sadness: 
 
 "No, I don't love you any longer" and he stag- 
 gered down the stairs. 
 
 Monsieur Bargemont reappeared: 
 
 "It's very curious," he said, "but I can't make 
 Rosalie hear." 
 
 The actress shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "Look here, go away, will you ? I have a horrid 
 headache. Go away, Bargemont."
 
 XXX 
 
 HE was Bargemont's mistress ! The 
 thought was torture to Jean Servien, 
 the more atrocious from the un- 
 expectedness of the discovery. He 
 both hated and despised the coarse 
 ruffian whose sham good-nature did not impose on 
 him, and whom he knew for a brutal, dull-witted, 
 mean-spirited bully. That pimply face, those 
 goggle eyes, that forehead with the swollen black 
 vein running across it, that heavy hand, that ugly, 
 
 vulgar soul, could it be It sickened him to 
 
 think of it I And disgust was the thing of all others 
 Servien's delicately balanced nature felt most keenly. 
 His morality was shaky, and he could have found 
 excuse for elegant vices, refined perversions, roman- 
 tic crimes. But Bargemont and his pot of but- 
 ter! . . . Never to possess the most adorable of 
 women, never to see her more, he was quite willing 
 for the sacrifice still, but to know her in the arms of 
 that coarse brute staggered the mind and rendered 
 life impossible. 
 
 171
 
 1 72 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 Absorbed in such thoughts, he found his way 
 back instinctively to his own quarter of the city. 
 Shells whistled over his head and burst with terrific 
 reports. Flying figures passed him, their heads en- 
 veloped in handkerchiefs and carrying mattresses on 
 their backs. At the corner of the Rue de Rennes he 
 tripped over a lamp-post lying across the pavement 
 beside a half-demolished wall. In front of his 
 father's shop he saw a huge hole. He went to open 
 the door; a shell had burst it in and he could see the 
 work-bench capsized in a dark corner. 
 
 Then he remembered that the Germans were 
 bombarding the left bank, and he felt a sudden 
 impulse to roam the streets under the rain of 
 iron. 
 
 A voice hailed him, issuing from underground: 
 
 "Is it you, my lad? Come in quick; you've given 
 me a fine fright. Come down here; we are settled 
 in the cellar." 
 
 He followed his father and found beds arranged 
 in the underground chambers, while the main cellar 
 served as kitchen and sitting-room. The bookbinder 
 had a map, and was pointing out to the concierge 
 and tenants the position of the relieving armies. 
 Aunt Servien sat in a dim corner, her eyes fixed in a 
 dull stare, mumbling bits of biscuit soaked in wine.
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 173 
 
 She had no notion of what was happening, but 
 maintained an attitude of suspicion. 
 
 The little assemblage, which had been living this 
 subterranean life since the evening of the day 
 before, asked what news young Servien brought. 
 Then the bookbinder resumed the explanations 
 which as an old soldier and a responsible man he had 
 been asked to give the company. 
 
 "The thing to do is," he continued, "to join hands 
 with the Army of the Loire, piercing the circle of 
 iron that shuts us in. Admiral La Ronciere has 
 carried the positions at fipinay away beyond Long' 
 jumeau " 
 
 Then turning to Jean : 
 
 "My lad, just find me Longjumeau on the map; 
 my eyes are not what they were at twenty, and these 
 tallow candles give a very poor light." 
 
 At that moment a tremendous explosion shook 
 the solid walls and filled the cellar with dust. The 
 women screamed; the porter went off to make his 
 rounds of inspection, tapping the walls with his 
 heavy keys; an enormous spider scampered across 
 the vaulted roof. 
 
 Then the conversation was resumed as if nothing 
 had happened, and two of the lodgers started a 
 game of cards on an upturned cask.
 
 174 JEAN SERVIEN 
 
 Jean was dog-tired and fell asleep on the floor 
 a nightmare sleep. 
 
 "Has the little lad come home?" asked Aunt 
 Servien, still sucking at her biscuit.
 
 XXXI 
 
 LD Servien, in his working jacket, 
 stepped up to the bed; then, creep- 
 ing away again on tip-toe: 
 
 "He is asleep, Monsieur Garneret, 
 he is asleep. The doctor tells us he 
 is saved. He is a very good doctor! You know 
 that yourself, for he is your friend, and it was you 
 brought him here. You have been our saviour, 
 Monsieur Garneret." 
 
 And the bookbinder turned his head away to wipe 
 his eyes, walked across to the window, lifted the 
 curtain and looked out into the sunlit street. 
 
 "The fine weather will quite set him up again. 
 But we have had six terrible weeks. I never lost 
 heart; it is not in the nature of things that a father 
 should despair of his son's life; still, you know, 
 Monsieur Garneret, he has been very ill. 
 
 "The neighbours have been very good to us; but 
 it was a hard job nursing him in this cursed cellar. 
 Just think, Monsieur Garneret, for twenty days we 
 had to keep his head in ice." 
 
 "You know that is the treatment for meningitis."
 
 176 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 The bookbinder came up confidentially to Gar- 
 neret. He scatched his ear, rubbed his forehead, 
 stroked his chin in great embarrassment. 
 
 "My poor lad," he got started at last, "is in love, 
 passionately in love. I have found it out from the 
 things he said when he was delirious. It is not my 
 way to interfere with what does not concern me; but 
 as I see the matter is serious, I am going to ask you, 
 for his own good, to tell me who it is, if you know 
 her." 
 
 Garneret shrugged his shoulders : 
 "An actress! a tragedy actress! pooh!" 
 The bookbinder pondered a moment; then: 
 "Look you, Monsieur Garneret, I acted for the 
 best in my poor boy's interest, but I blame myself. 
 I tell myself this, the education I gave him has dis- 
 qualified him for hard work and practical life. . . . 
 An actress, you say, a tragedy actress? Tastes of 
 that sort must be acquired in the schools. Those 
 times he was attending his classes, I used to get hold 
 of his exercise books after he had gone to bed and 
 read whatever there was in French. It was my way 
 of checking his work; because, ignoramus as he may 
 be, a man can see, with a little common sense, what 
 is done properly and what is scamped. Well, 
 Monsieur Garneret, I was terrified to find in his
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 177 
 
 themes so many high-flown ideas ; some of them were 
 very fine, no doubt, and I copied out on a paper 
 those that struck me most. But I used to tell my- 
 self : All these grand speeches, all these histories, 
 taken from the books of the ancient Romans, are 
 going to put my lad's head in a fever, and he will 
 never know the truth of things. I was right, my 
 dear Monsieur Garneret; it is school learning, look 
 you, has made him fall in love with a tragedy 
 actress " 
 
 Jean Servien raised himself up in bed. 
 
 "Is that you, Garneret? I am very glad to see 
 
 you." 
 
 Then, after listening a moment: 
 
 "Why, what is that noise?" he asked. 
 
 Garneret told him it was Mont Valerien firing 
 
 on the fortifications. The Commune was in full 
 
 swing. 
 
 "Vive la Commune!" cried Jean Servien, and he 
 dropped his head back on the pillow with a smile.
 
 XXXII 
 
 E was recovered and, with a book in 
 his hand, was taking a quiet walk 
 in the Luxembourg gardens. He 
 had that feeling of harmless selfish- 
 ness, that self-pity that comes with 
 convalescence. Of his previous life, all he cared to 
 remember was a charming face bending over him 
 and a voice sweeter than the loveliest music murmur- 
 ing: "So you love me still?" Oh! never fear, he 
 would not answer now as he did on that dreadful 
 staircase: "I don't love you any longer." No, he 
 would answer with eyes and lips and open arms: 
 "I shall love you always !" Still the odious spectre 
 of his rival would cross his memory at times and 
 cause him agonies. Suddenly his eyes were caught 
 by an extraordinary sight. 
 
 Two yards away from him in the garden, in 
 front of the orange-house, was Monsieur Tudesco, 
 burly and full-blown as usual, but how meta- 
 morphosed in costume ! He wore a National 
 Guard's tunic, covered with glittering aiguillettes; 
 from his red sash peeped the butts of a brace of 
 
 179
 
 i8o THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 pistols. On his head was perched a kepi with five 
 gold bands. The central figure of a group of 
 women and children, he was gazing at the heavens 
 with as much tender emotion as his little green eyes 
 were capable of expressing. His whole person 
 breathed a sense of power and kindly patronage. 
 His right hand rested at arm's length on a little 
 boy's head, and he was addressing him in a set 
 speech : 
 
 "Young citizen, pride of your mother's heart, 
 ornament of the public parks, hope of the Commune, 
 hear the words of the prescribed exile. I say it: 
 Young citizen, the i8th of March is a great day; it 
 witnessed the foundation of the Commune, it rescued 
 you from slavery. Grave on your heart's core that 
 never-to-be-forgotten date. I say it: We have 
 suffered and fought for you. Son of the disin- 
 herited and despairing, you shall be a free man I" 
 
 He ended, and restoring the child to its mother, 
 smiled upon his listeners of the fair sex, who were 
 lost in admiration of his eloquence, his red sash, 
 his gold lace and his green old age. 
 
 Albeit it was three o'clock in the afternoon, he 
 had not drunk more than he could carry, and he trod 
 the sandy walks with a mien of masterful assurance 
 amid the plaudits of the people.
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 181 
 
 Jean advanced to meet him; he had a soft place 
 in his heart for the old man. Monsieur Tudesco 
 grasped his hand with a fatherly affection and 
 declaimed : 
 
 "I am overjoyed to see my dear disciple, the child 
 of my intellect. Monsieur Servien, look yonder and 
 never forget the sight; it is the spectacle of a free 
 people." 
 
 The fact is, a throng of citizens of both sexes 
 was tramping over the lawns, picking the flowers 
 in the beds and breaking branches from the trees. 
 
 The two friends tried to find seats on a bench; 
 but these were all occupied by federes of all ranks 
 huddled up on them and snoring in chorus. For 
 this reason Monsieur Tudesco opined it was better 
 to adjourn to a cafe. 
 
 They came upon one in the Place de VOdeon, 
 where Monsieur Tudesco could display his striking 
 uniform to his own satisfaction. 
 
 "I am an engineer," he announced, when he was 
 seated with his bitter before him, "an engineer in the 
 service of the Commune, with the rank of Colonel." 
 Jean thought it mighty strange all the same. No 
 doubt he had heard his old tutor's tales about his 
 confabulations at the dram-shop with the leaders of 
 the Commune, but it struck him as extraordinary
 
 1 82 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 that the Monsieur Tudesco he knew should have 
 blossomed into an engineer and Colonel under any 
 circumstances. But there was the fact. Monsieur 
 Tudesco manifested no surprise, not hel 
 
 "Science!" he boasted, "science is everything! 
 It's study does it ! Knowledge is power I To 
 vanquish the myrmidons of despotism, we must have 
 science. That is why I am an engineer with the 
 rank of Colonel." 
 
 And Monsieur Tudesco went on to relate how he 
 was charged with very special duties to discover 
 the underground passages which the instruments of 
 tyranny had dug beneath the capital, tunnelling 
 under the two branches of the Seine, for the trans- 
 port of munitions of war. At the head of a gang of 
 navvies, he inspected the palaces, hospitals, barracks 
 and religious houses, breaking up cellars and staving 
 in drain-pipes. Science! science is everything! He 
 also inspected the crypts of churches, to unearth 
 traces of the priests' lubricity. Knowledge is 
 power! 
 
 After the bitter came absinthe and Colonel 
 Tudesco proposed for Servien's consideration a lu- 
 crative post at the Delegacy for Foreign Affairs. 
 
 But Jean shook his head. He felt tired and had 
 lost all heart.
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 183 
 
 "I see what it is," cried the Colonel, patting him 
 on the shoulder ; "you are young and in love. There 
 are two spirits breathe their inspiration alternately 
 in the ear of mankind Love and Ambition. Love 
 speaks the first; and you are still hearkening to his 
 voice, my young friend." 
 
 Jean, who had drunk his share of absinthe, 
 confessed that he was deeper in love than ever and 
 that he was jealous. He related the episode of the 
 staircase and inveighed bitterly against Monsieur 
 Bargemont. Nor did he fail to identify his case 
 with the good of the Commune, by making out 
 Gabrielle's lover to be a Bonapartist and an enemy 
 of the people. 
 
 Colonel Tudesco drew a note-book from his 
 pocket, inscribed Bargemont's name and address in 
 it, and cried: 
 
 "If the man has not fled like a poltroon, we will 
 make a hostage of him! I am the friend of the 
 Citizen Delegate in charge of the Prefecture of 
 Police, and I say it: you shall be avenged on the 
 infamous Bargemont ! Have you read the decree 
 concerning hostages? No? Read it then; it is an 
 inimitable monument of the wisdom of the people. 
 
 "I tear myself regretfully from your company, 
 my young friend. But I must be gone to discover
 
 1 84 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 an underground passage the Sisters of Marie- 
 Joseph, in their contumacy, have driven right from 
 the Prison of Saint-Lazare to the Mother Convent 
 in the village of Argenteuil. It is a long tunnel by 
 which they communicate with the traitors at Ver- 
 sailles. Come and see me in my quarters at the 
 General Staff, in the Place Fendome. Farewell and 
 fraternal greeting!" 
 
 Jean paid the Colonel's score and set out for 
 home. The walls were all plastered over with 
 posters and proclamations. He read one that was 
 half hidden under bulletins of victories: 
 
 "Article IV. All -persons detained In custody by 
 the verdict of the jury of accusation shall be hostages 
 of the people of Paris. 
 
 "Article V. Every execution of a prisoner of 
 war or a partisan of the government of the Com- 
 mune of Paris shall be followed by the instant 
 execution of thrice the number of hostages detained 
 in virtue of Article IF ', the same being chosen by 
 lot." 
 
 He frowned dubiously and asked himself: 
 
 "Can it be I have denounced a man as hostage?" 
 
 But his fears were soon allayed; Colonel Tudesco
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 185 
 
 was only a wind-bag, and could not really arrest 
 people. Besides, was it credible that Bargemont, 
 head of a Ministerial Department, was still in 
 Paris? And after all, if he did come to harm, well, 
 so much the worse for himl
 
 XXXIII 
 
 WO days after a cab with a musket 
 barrel protruding from either win- 
 dow stopped before the bookbinder's 
 shop. The two National Guards 
 who stumbled out of it demanded to 
 see the citizen Jean Servien, handed him a sealed 
 packet and signed to him to open the door wide and 
 wait for them. Next minute they reappeared 
 carrying a full-length portrait. 
 
 It represented a woman of forty or thereabouts, 
 with a yellow face, very long and disproportionately 
 large for the frail, sickly body it surmounted, and 
 dressed in an unpretending black gown. She wore 
 a sad, submissive look. Her grey eyes bespoke a 
 contrite and fearful heart, the cheeks were pendulous 
 and the loose chin almost touched the bosom. Jean 
 scrutinized the poor, pitiful face, but could recall 
 no memory in connection with it. He opened the 
 letter and read: 
 
 Commune of Paris General Staff . 
 
 "Order to deliver to the citizen Jean Servien the 
 portrait of Madame Bargemont. 
 
 "TUDESCO. 
 
 187
 
 188 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 "Colonel commanding the Subterranean Ways of 
 the Commune." 
 
 Jean wanted to ask the National Guards what it 
 all meant, but already the cab was driving off, 
 bayonets protruding from both windows. The 
 passers-by, who had long ceased to be surprised at 
 anything, cast a momentary glance after the retreat- 
 ing vehicle. 
 
 Jean, left alone with Madame Bargemont's 
 portrait before him, began to ask himself why 
 his disconcerting friend Tudesco had sent it to 
 him. 
 
 "The wretch," he told himself, "must have 
 arrested Bargemont and sacked his apartments." 
 
 Meantime Madame Bargemont was gazing at 
 him with a martyr's haunting eyes. She locked so 
 unhappy that Jean was filled with pity. 
 
 "Poor woman!" he ejaculated, and turning the 
 canvas face to the wall, he left the house. 
 
 Presently the bookbinder returned to his work 
 and, though anything but an inquisitive man, was 
 tempted to look at this big picture that blocked up 
 his shop. He scratched his head, wondering if this 
 could be the actress his son was in love with. He 
 opined she must be mightily taken with the young
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 189 
 
 man to send him so large a portrait in so handsome 
 a frame. He could not see anything to capture a 
 lover's fancy. 
 
 "At any rate, he thought, "she does not look like 
 a bad woman."
 
 XXXIV 
 
 EAN stepped over the bodies of two 
 or three drunken National Guards 
 and found himself in the room occu- 
 pied by Colonel Tudesco and in that 
 worthy's presence. The Colonel 
 lay snoring on a satin sofa, a cold chicken on the 
 table at his elbow. He wore his spurs. Jean shook 
 him roughly by the shoulder and asked him where 
 the portrait came from, declaring that he, Jean, had 
 not the smallest wish to keep it. The Colonel woke, 
 but his speech was thick and his memory confused. 
 His mind was full of his underground passages. 
 He was commander of them all and could not find 
 one. There was something in this fact that offended 
 his sense of justice. The Lady Superior of the 
 Nuns of Marie-Joseph had refused to betray the 
 secret of the famous Saint-Lazare tunnel. 
 
 "She has refused," declared the old Italian, "out 
 of contumacy and also, perhaps, because there is 
 no tunnel. And, since truth must out, I'm bound to 
 say, if I was not Commandant of the subterranean 
 
 IQI
 
 1 92 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 passages of the capital, I should really think there 
 
 were none." 
 
 His wits came back little by little. 
 
 "Young man, you have seen the soldier reposing 
 from his labours. What question have you come to 
 ask the veteran champion of freedom?" 
 
 "About Bargemont? About that Portrait?" 
 
 "I know, I know. I proceeded with a dozen men 
 to his domicile to arrest him, but he had taken to 
 flight, the coward! I carried out a perquisition in 
 his rooms. In the salon I saw Madame Barge- 
 mont's portrait and I said: 'That lady looks as 
 sad as Monsieur Jean Servien. They are both 
 victims of the infamous Bargemont; I will bring 
 them together and they shall console each other.' 
 Monsieur Servien, oblige me by tasting that cognac; 
 it comes from the cellar of your odious rival." 
 
 He poured the brandy into two big glasses and 
 hiccuped with a laugh: 
 
 "The cognac of an enemy tastes well." 
 
 Then he fell back on the sofa, muttering: 
 
 "The soldier reposing " 
 
 His face was crimson. Jean shrugged his 
 shoulders and left the room. He had hardly 
 opened the door when the old man began howling 
 in his sleep: "Help! help! they're murdering me."
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 193 
 
 In an instant the federes on guard hurled them- 
 selves upon Jean; he could feel the cold muzzles of 
 revolvers at his temples and hear rifles banging off 
 at random in the ante-room. 
 
 The Colonel was raving in the frenzy of alcoholic 
 delirium, writhing in horrible convulsions and yell- 
 ing: "he has killed me ! he has murdered me I" 
 
 "He has murdered the Colonel," the federes 
 took up the cry. "He has poisoned him. Take 
 him before the court martial." 
 
 "Shoot him right away. He's an assassin; the 
 Versaillais have sent him." 
 
 "Off with him to the lock-up !" 
 
 Servien's denials and struggles were in vain. 
 Again and again he protested: 
 
 "You can see for yourself he's drunk and asleep !" 
 
 "Listen to him he is insulting the sovereign 
 people." 
 
 "Pitch him in the river!" 
 
 "Swing him on a lamp-post." 
 
 "Shoot him!" 
 
 Bundled down the stairs, rifle-butts prodding him 
 in the back to help him along, Jean was haled 
 before an officer, who there and then signed an order 
 of arrest.
 
 XXXV 
 
 E had been in solitary confinement in 
 a cell at the depot for sixteen days 
 now or was it fifteen? he was 
 not sure. The hours dragged by 
 with an excruciating monotony and 
 tediousness. 
 
 At the start he had demanded justice and loudly 
 protested his innocence. But he had come to realize 
 at last that justice had no concern with his case or 
 that of the priests and gendarmes confined within 
 the same walls. He had given up all thought of 
 persuading the savage frenzy of the Commune to 
 listen to reason, and deemed it the wisest thing to 
 hold his tongue and the best to be forgotten. He 
 trembled to think how easily it might end in tragedy, 
 and his anguish seemed to choke him. 
 
 Sometimes, as he sat dreaming, he could see a 
 tree against a patch of blue sky, and great tears 
 would rise to his eyes. 
 
 It was there, in his prison cell, Jean learned to 
 know the shadowy joys of memory. 
 
 He thought of his good old father sitting at his 
 
 195
 
 i 9 6 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 work-bench or tightening the screw of the press; he 
 thought of the shop packed with bound volumes and 
 bindings, of his little room where of evenings he 
 read books of travel of all the familiar things of 
 home. And every time he reviewed in spirit the 
 poor thin romance of his unpretending life, he felt 
 his cheeks burn to think how it was all dominated, 
 almost every episode controlled, by this drunken 
 parasite of a Tudesco! It was true nevertheless I 
 paramount over his studies, his loves, his dangers, 
 over all his existence, loomed the rubicund face of 
 the old villain! The shame of it! He had lived 
 very ill ! but what a meagre life it had been too. 
 How cruel it was, how unjust ! and there was more 
 of self-pity in the poor, sore heart than of anger. 
 
 Every day, every hour he thought of Gabrielle; 
 but how changed the complexion of his love for her! 
 Now it was a tender, tranquil sentiment, a disinter- 
 ested affection, a sweet, soothing reverie. It was a 
 vision of a wondrous delicacy, such as loneliness and 
 unhappiness alone can form in the souls they shield 
 from the rude shocks of the common life the 
 dream of a holy life, a life dim and overshadowed, 
 vowed wholly and completely, without reward or 
 recompense, to the woman worshipped from afar, as 
 that of the good country cure is vowed to the God
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 197 
 
 who never steps down from the tabernacle of the 
 altar. 
 
 His gaoler was a good-natured sous-officier who, 
 amazed and horrified at what was going forward, 
 clung to discipline as a sheet-anchor in the general 
 shipwreck. He felt a rough, uncouth pity for his 
 prisoners, but this never interfered with the strict 
 performance of his duties, and Jean, who had no 
 experience of soldiers' ways, never guessed the man's 
 true character. However, he grew less and less 
 unbending and taciturn the nearer the army of order 
 approached the city. 
 
 Finally, one day he had told his prisoner, with a 
 wink of the eye : 
 
 "Courage, lad! something's going to turn up 
 soon." 
 
 The same afternoon Jean heard a distant sound 
 of musketry; then, all in a moment, the door of his 
 cell opened and he saw an avalanche of prisoners 
 roll from one end of the corridor to the other. 
 The gaoler had unlocked all the cells and shouted 
 the words, "Every man for himself; run for it!" 
 Jean himself was carried along, down stairs and 
 passages, out into the prison courtyard, and pitched 
 head foremost against the wall. By the time he 
 recovered from the shock of his fall, the prisoners
 
 198 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 had vanished, and he stood alone before the open 
 wicket. 
 
 Outside in the street he heard the crackle of 
 musketry and saw the Seine running grey under 
 the lowering smoke-cloud of burning Paris. Red 
 uniforms appeared on the Quai de I'Ecole. The 
 Pont-au-Change was thick with federes. Not know- 
 ing where to fly, he was for going back into the 
 prison; but a body of Vengeurs de Lutece, in full 
 flight, drove him before their bayonets towards the 
 Pont-au-Change. A woman, a cantiniere, kept 
 shouting: "Don't let him go, give him his gruel. 
 He's a Versaillais." The squad halted on the Qual- 
 au-Fleurs, and Jean was pushed against the wall of 
 the Hotel-Dieu, the cantiniere dancing and gesticula- 
 ting in front of him. Her hair flying loose under 
 her gold-laced kepi, with her ample bosom and her 
 elastic figure poised gallantly on the strong, well- 
 shaped limbs, she had the fierce beauty of some 
 magnificent wild animal. Her little round mouth 
 was wide open, yelling menaces and obscenities, as 
 she brandished a revolver. The Vengurs de 
 Lutece, hard-pressed and dispirited, looked stolidly 
 at their white-faced prisoner against the wall, and 
 then looked in each other's faces. Her fury re- 
 doubled; threatening them collectively, addressing
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 199 
 
 each man by some vile nickname, pacing in front of 
 them with a bold swing of the powerful hips, the 
 woman dominated them, intoxicated them with her 
 puissant influence. 
 
 They formed up in platoon. 
 
 "Fire!" cried the cantiniere. 
 
 Jean threw out his arms before him. 
 
 Two or three shots went off. He could hear 
 the balls flatten against the wall, but he was not 
 hit. 
 
 "Fire ! fire !" The woman repeated the cry in 
 the voice of an angry, self-willed child. 
 
 She had been through the fighting, this girl, she 
 had drunk her fill from staved-in wine-casks and 
 slept on the bare ground, pell-mell with the men, 
 out in the public square reddened with the glare of 
 conflagration. They were killing all around her, 
 and nobody had been killed yet for her. She was 
 resolved they should shoot her someone, before 
 the end ! Stamping with fury, she reiterated her 
 cry: 
 
 "Fire! fire! fire!" 
 
 Again the guns were cocked and the barrels 
 levelled. But the Vengeurs de Lutece had not much 
 heart left; their leader had vanished; they were 
 disorganized, they were running away; sobered and
 
 200 THE ASPIRATIONS OF 
 
 stupefied, they knew the game was up. They were 
 quite willing all the same to shoot the bourgeois 
 there at the wall, before bolting for covert, each 
 to hide in his own hole. 
 
 Jean tried to say: "Don't make me suffer more 
 than need be !" but his voice stuck in his throat. 
 
 One of the Vengeurs cast a look in the direction 
 of the Pont-au-Change and saw that the federes 
 were losing ground. Shouldering his musket, he 
 said: 
 
 "Let's clear out of the bl y place, by God!" 
 
 The men hesitated; some began to slink away. 
 
 At this the cantiniere shrieked: 
 
 "Bl sted hounds! Then /'// have to do his 
 
 business for him!" 
 
 She threw herself on Jean Servien and spat in his 
 face; she abandoned herself to a frantic orgy of 
 obscenity in word and gesture and clapped the muz- 
 zle of her revolver to his temple. 
 
 Then he felt all was over and waited. 
 
 A thousand things flashed in a second before his 
 eyes; he saw the avenues under the old trees 
 where his aunt used to take him walking in old 
 days; he saw himself a little child, happy and won- 
 dering; he remembered the castles he used to build 
 with strips of plane-tree bark . . . The trigger
 
 JEAN SERVIEN 201 
 
 was pulled. Jean beat the air with his arms and 
 fell forward face to the ground. The men finished 
 him with their bayonets; then the woman danced 
 on the corpse with yells of joy. 
 
 The fighting was coming closer. A well- 
 sustained fire swept the Quai. The woman was the 
 last to go. Jean Servien's body lay stretched in 
 the empty roadway. His face wore a strange look 
 of peacefulness; in the temple was a little hole, 
 barely visible; blood and mire fouled the pretty 
 hair a mother had kissed with such transports of 
 fondness. 
 
 THE END
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below. 
 
 M.M.k Slip S.-i-ies 4'JKO
 
 Library 
 
 UCLA-College Library 
 
 PQ 2254 D46E 1922 
 
 L 005 690 220 8 
 
 PQ 
 225k 
 
 1922 
 
 A 001 147 356 8
 
 \