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One of the Seven Cardinal Sins
Vol. I
CHAPTER I
THE OLD COMMANDER
Elle avait un vice, l'orgueil, qui lui tenait lieu de toutes les qualités.1
Commander Bernard, a resident of Paris, after having served under the Empire in the Marine Corps, and under the Restoration as a lieutenant in the navy, was retired about the year 1830, with the brevet rank of captain.
Honourably mentioned again and again for his daring exploits in the maritime engagements of the East Indian war, and subsequently recognised as one of the bravest soldiers in the Russian campaign, M. Bernard, the most unassuming and upright of men, with the kindest heart in the world, lived quietly and frugally upon his modest pension, in a little apartment on one of the least frequented streets of the Batignolles.
An elderly woman, named Madame Barbançon, had kept house for him ten years or more, and, though really very fond of him, led him a rather hard life at times, for the worthy female, who had an extremely high temper and a very despotic disposition, was very fond of reminding her employer that she had sacrificed an enviable social position to serve him.
The real truth was, Madame Barbançon had long acted as assistant in the establishment of a well-known midwife, – an experience which furnished her with material for an inexhaustible stock of marvellous stories, her great favourite being her adventure with a masked lady who, with her assistance, had brought a lovely girl baby into the world, a child Madame Barbançon had taken care of for two years, but which had been claimed by a stranger at the expiration of that time.
Four or five years after this memorable event, Madame Barbançon decided to resign her practice and assume the twofold functions of nurse and housekeeper.
About this time Commander Bernard, who was suffering greatly from the reopening of several old wounds, needed a nurse, and was so well pleased with Madame Barbançon's skill that he asked her to enter his service.
"You will have a pretty easy time of it, Mother Barbançon," the veteran said to her. "I am not hard to live with, and we shall get along comfortably together."
Madame Barbançon promptly accepted the offer, elevated herself forthwith to the position of Commander Bernard's dame de confiance, and slowly but surely became a veritable servant-mistress. Indeed, seeing the angelic patience with which the commander endured this domestic tyranny, one would have taken the old naval officer for some meek-spirited rentier, instead of one of the bravest soldiers of the Empire.
Commander Bernard was passionately fond of gardening, and lavished any amount of care and attention upon a little arbour, constructed by his own hands and covered with clematis, hop-vines, and honeysuckle, where he loved to sit after his frugal dinner and smoke his pipe and think of his campaigns and his former companions in arms. This arbour marked the limits of the commander's landed possessions, for though very small, the garden was divided into two parts. The portion claimed by Madame Barbançon aspired only to be useful; the other, of which the veteran took entire charge, was intended to please the eye only.
The precise boundaries of these two plats of ground had been, and were still, the cause of a quiet but determined struggle between the commander and his housekeeper.
Never did two nations, anxious to extend their frontiers, each at the expense of the other, resort to more trickery or display greater cleverness and perseverance in concealing and maintaining their mutual attempts at invasion.
We must do the commander the justice to say that he fought only for his rights, having no desire to extend, but merely to preserve his territory intact, – territory upon which the bold and insatiable housekeeper was ever trying to encroach by establishing her thyme, savory, parsley, and camomile beds among her employer's roses, tulips, and peonies.
Another cause of heated controversy between the commander and Madame Barbançon was the implacable hatred the latter felt for Napoleon, whom she had never forgiven for the death of a young soldier, – the only lover she had ever been able to boast of, probably. She carried this rancour so far, in fact, as to style the Emperor that "Corsican ogre," and even to deny him the possession of any military genius, an asseveration that amused the veteran immensely.
Nevertheless, in spite of these diverse political sentiments, and the ever recurring and annoying question of the boundaries of the two gardens, Madame Barbançon was, at heart, sincerely devoted to her employer, and attended assiduously to his every want, while the veteran, for his part, would have sorely missed his irascible housekeeper's care and attentions.
The spring of 1844 was fast drawing to a close. The May verdure was shining in all its freshness; three o'clock in the afternoon had just sounded; and though the day was warm, and the sun's rays ardent, the pleasant scent of freshly watered earth, combined with the fragrant odour of several small clumps of lilacs and syringas, testified to the faithful care the commander bestowed upon his garden, for from a frequently and laboriously filled wash-tub sunk in the earth, and dignified with the name of reservoir, the veteran had just treated his little domain to a refreshing shower; nor had he, in his generous impartiality, excluded his housekeeper's vegetable beds and kitchen herbs from the benefits of his ministrations.
The veteran, in his gardening costume of gray linen jacket and big straw hat, was now resting from his labours in the arbour, already nearly covered with a vigorous growth of clematis and honeysuckle. His sunburned features were characterised by an expression of unusual frankness and kindness, though a heavy moustache, as white as his bristling white hair, imparted a decidedly martial air to his physiognomy.
After wiping the sweat from his forehead with a blue checked handkerchief and returning it to his pocket, the veteran picked up his pipe from a table in the arbour, filled and lighted it, then, establishing himself in an old cane-bottomed armchair, began to smoke and enjoy the beauty of the day, the stillness of which was broken only by the occasional twitter of a few birds and the humming of Madame Barbançon, who was engaged in gathering some lettuce and parsley for the supper salad. If the veteran had not been blessed with nerves of steel, his dolce far niente would have been sadly disturbed by the monotonous refrain of the old-fashioned love song entitled "Poor Jacques," which the worthy woman was murdering in the most atrocious manner.
"Mais à présent que je suis loin de toi,
Je mange de tout sur la terre,"2
she sang in a voice as false as it was nasal, and the lugubrious, heart-broken expression she gave to the words, shaking her head sadly the while, made the whole thing extremely ludicrous.
For ten years Commander Bernard had endured this travesty without a murmur, and without taking the slightest notice of the ridiculous meaning Madame Barbançon gave to the last line of the chorus.
It is quite possible that to-day the meaning of the words struck him more forcibly, and that a desire to devour everything upon the surface of the earth did not seem to him to be the natural consequence of separation from one's beloved, for, after having lent an impartial and attentive ear a second time to his housekeeper's doleful ditty, he exclaimed, laying his pipe on the table:
"What the devil is that nonsense you are singing, Madame Barbançon?"
"It is a very pretty love song called 'Poor Jacques,'" snapped Madame Barbançon, straightening herself up. "Every one to his taste, you know, monsieur, and you have a perfect right to make fun of it, if you choose, of course. This isn't the first time you have heard me sing it, though."
"No, no, you're quite right about that!" responded the commander, satirically.
"I learned the song," resumed the housekeeper, sighing heavily, "in days – in days – but enough!" she exclaimed, burying her regrets in her capacious bosom. "I sang it, I remember, to that masked lady who came – "
"I'd rather hear the song," hastily exclaimed the veteran, seeing himself threatened with the same tiresome story. "Yes, I much prefer the song to the story. It isn't so long, but the deuce take me if I understand you when you say:
"'Mais
She had one fault, pride, which, in her, answered in place of all the virtues.
Instead of "Je manque de tout sur la terre."