Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.

      The next day Pierre passed our windows. He bowed gayly, and called up that he was going for his six francs' worth of ante-nuptial absolution. An hour later he passed again, but he did not look up. In the evening Père Duhaut came, bursting with laughter.

      "Ask Pierre how he got his certificate," he guffawed. Then he told us the story. Pierre, it seems, had offered the six francs, which offer the confessor had rejected with scorn.

      "In to the confessional," he cried, "and make your confession like a penitent!"

      "I'll make it fifteen," grinned Pierre.

      "Not for a thousand. In! in!"

      "Come, now, Duhaut, this is all humbug. You know I'm not penitent, and I'll be– if I'll confess to you."

      Without more words, the burly priest seized the recalcitrant and grabbed him by the neck, trying to force him into the confession-box. Pierre resisted, and, as the curé told us bursting with laughter, the two wrestled and waltzed half around the church. Finally Pierre was brought to his knees.

      "Eh bien, allez! What am I to confess?" he grumbled.

      "Every sin you have committed since your last confession."

      How malicious was Père Duhaut in this! for he knew Pierre had not kept the observances of the Church since he left home at seventeen, and had not been an anchorite either.

      "I'll make it an even hundred," begged the now exasperated yet humbled Pierre. "Come, now, do be reasonable; that's a jolly old boy."

      "Confess! confess!" roared the confessor, dealing the kneeling impenitent a sounding cuff on the ear.

      "Ask Pierre how he got his certificate," roared Père Duhaut. "Demandez-lui! Demandez-lui!"

      But we never did.

      Until his grave received him, only a few weeks ago, a marked character of our ville was a stooping old man, of a ghastly paleness, noted through all the region for avarice and for speaking every one of his many languages each with worse accent than the other. His Spanish sounded like German, his German had the strongest possible American accent, his English was vividly Teutonic, and after forty years of marriage his Norman wife never ceased to mock at his atrociously-mouthed French. He was wine-merchant and banker combined, and, though his social position was among the best in our bourgeoise ville, all the world smiled with the knowledge that the rich old banquier, whose nose had a strong Hebraic curve, delivered his own merchandise at night from under his long coat, in order to escape the tax on every bottle of wine transported from one domicile to another.

      The stately gate-post of "Père S–'s" pretentious and philistine mansion is decorated with the coats-of-arms of several nations. England's is there, Germany's, Spain's, Portugal's, as well as our own Eagle; while upon days when our own exiled hearts beat most proudly—4th of July and 22d of February—our star-spangled banner floats from his roof-top as well as from our own, the only two, of course, in our ville. Our ville, so important to us, has scarcely an existence for our home government, and administrative changes there float over us like clouds of heaven, without touching us in their changefulness. Thus Père S–, though so courteous and cordial to Americans, has been long years forgotten at Washington, whence every living servitor of the administration that appointed him our consul here has long since passed away forever. He was born in Pennsylvania, of German parents, nearly eighty years ago. He received his appointment in 1837, and held it through fourteen administrations since Van Buren, without ever returning to America, till he faded away one little month ago and was buried in the parish cemetery of Saint-Léonard by a Lutheran pastor brought over for the occasion from Havre. No church-bells tolled for his death, and the street-children did not go on their way singing, as they always do, to the sound of funeral bells.

      "Viens, corps, ta fosse t'attend!" for Pere S– was a heretic, and could not have slept in consecrated ground had he died before the République Française removed religious restrictions from all burial-places. All the consular corps in all the region round about followed the old man to his long home, all our public buildings hung their flags half-mast high, all our little world told queer stories of the dead old man. But our own hearts grew tender with thoughts of this life finished at fourscore years with its longing of almost half a century unfulfilled. "Philip Nolan" we often called the old man, who sometimes said to us, with yearning, pathetic voice,—

      Temperament is Fate. Père S–'s temperament of Harpagon fated him to die as he had lived,—a man without a country.

      THE PRIMITIVE COUPLE

      I. PARADISE

      The island in Magog Lake was like a world by itself. Though there were but fifteen or twenty acres of land in it, that land was so diversified by dense woods, rocks, verdant open spots, and smooth shore-rims that it seemed many places in one.

      Adam's tent was set in the arena of an amphitheatre of hills, upon close, smooth sward sloping down to the lake-margin of milk-white sand. Beyond the lake stood up a picture as heavenly to man's vision as the New Jerusalem appearing in the clouds.