A dream of love, a realistic novel

Front matter

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Chapter I

During the severe winter of i860 the river Oise froze over, and the plains of Lower Picardy were cov¬ ered with great masses of snow, heaped up by a rude northeaster, which nearly buried Beaumont on Christ¬ mas day. The storm began in the early morning, redoubled in fury toward evening, and the snow drifted all night long.

In the upper town, where the north fa<pade of the transept of the cathedral stands, as though ensconced, at the end of the “ rue des Orfevres,” the white mass, driven by the wind, beat against St. Agnes’ door, the old Romanesque gate, almost Gothic in style, richly ornamented with sculptures, under the barrenness of the gable.

The next day, at dawn, the snow there was nearly three feet deep. The street still slept, weary with the feast of the night before. Six o’clock struck. In the darkness,'which the slow and persistent fall of the flakes tinted with blue, a single indistinct form seemed alive, a little girl of nine, who, sheltered under the arch of the door, had passed the night there, shiver¬ ing, and protecting herself as best she could. She was clad in a thin, ragged, woolen gown, her head wrapped in the remnant of a scarf, and her bare feet ill protected by heavy man’s shoes. She had evidently been stranded there after long wandering through the town, and had sunk down on that spot from sheer weariness. For her, it was the end of the earth; no more people, no more anything, the last abandonment, the hunger that gnaws, the cold that kills. And, in her weakness, as if choked by the heavy weight of her heart, she finally ceased to struggle. Nothing remained in her but the physical recoil from death, the instinct to move about, to bury herself behind those old stones whenever a squall whirled the snow about. The hours dragged slowly. Between the double wings of twin bays, she had leaned against the wall where a pillar supports a statue of St. Agnes, the thirteen-year-old martyr, a little girl like herself, with the palm and the lamb at her feet. In the tympan above the lintel is portrayed in high relief, with naive faith, the whole legend of the child virgin affianced to Jesus: her hair, which suddenly became long and clothed her, when the Governor, whose son she refused, sent her naked to the stake, the flames of which, diverted from her form, burnt the executioners as they lighted the pile; the miracles of her bones: Constance, daughter of the Emperor, cured of leprosy; and the miracles of her painted images: Paulin, the 1 priest, tempted by a woman’s thought, offering, under the Pope’s advice, the emeralded ring on his finger to the statue, which stretched its stone hand, then withdrew it, keeping the ring, still to be seen there, and thus freeing Paulin from his obsession. At the summit of the tympan, Agnes is at last received in a nimbus into Heaven, where her affianced, Jesus, weds her, so small and so young, impressing on her lips the kiss of everlasting delights.

But when the wind rushed through the street, the snow whipped her face, and .white heaps threatened to bar the threshold; then the child pressed closer to the virgins hewn in stone above the* stylobate of the splayed door. These are the companions of Agnes, the saints who form her escort: three on her right — Dorothea, nourished while in prison with miraculous bread; Barbe, once immured in a tower; Genevieve, whose virgin sanctity saved Paris; and three on her left—Agatha, with her disfigured and distorted breasts; Christina, tortured by her father who cast her own flesh in her face; Cecilia, of whom an angel was en¬ amored. Above these, still more virgins, three ser¬ ried ranks of virgins, rise with the curves of the key¬ stones and fill in the three arches with a florescence of chaste and triumphant flesh; below, martyred and tortured; above, welcomed by a host of cherubim, enraptured into ecstacy in the midst of the celestial abodes.

When eight o’clock struck and the light came out brighter, there still stood the unprotected child. Had she not shaken it off, the snow would have reached up to her shoulders. Behind her, at the foot of the gray facade, so smooth and so bare that not a flake remained on it, the antique door was covered with snow as though decked with an ermine vestment, white as an altar. Especially were the tall saints on the splay clothed with it from their white feet to their white hair, dazzling with candor. Higher up, the scenes upon the tympan, the little saints on the arches, were brought out in bold relief, outlined with a ray of light against the sombre background;, and so on, till the final apotheosis was reached — the marriage of Agnes, which the archangels seemed to celebrate beneath a shower of white roses. Standing upright on her pillar, with her white palm and her white lamb, the statue of the virgin child, the immaculate snow figure, had the ineffable whiteness of purity in that immovable stiffness of cold which froze around her the mystic outburst of victorious virginity. And, at her feet, the other, the poverty-stricken child, wrapped up in snow, stiffened too and so white as to seem of stone, could no longer be distinguished from the tall virgins.

A shutter, however, thrown back with a clatter against one of the sleeping house-fronts, made her raise her eyes. It was on her right, on the first floor of the house adjoining the cathedral. There, a beautiful woman, a dark-haired matron of about forty, featured with all the correct serenity of marble, had just leaned over; and, in spite of the terrible frost, having seen the child stir, allowed her bare arm to remain a short instant outside. A compassionate wonderment sad¬ dened her calm face. Then, with a shiver, she closed the window. She bore away with her the rapid vision of the fair little waif with her violet eyes, under the ragged scarf, her drawn face, her slender, lily-like neck, her sloping shoulders, her little hands and feet turned blue and numb by the cold, with nothing living about her but the thin vapor of her breath.

The child had mechanically remained face upward gazing at the house, a narrow, very old, one-storied house, built toward the end of the fifteenth century. It stood sealed, as it were, to the flank of the cathedral, between two buttresses, as a wart that might have grown between the mighty toes of a colossus. And, thanks to this bulwark, it had been wonderfully well preserved, with its stone base, its wooden-faced story, studded with protruding bricks, the frame of the roof advancing a yard over the gable end, its turreted stair¬ case jutting out from the left angle, where the narrow window still retained the lead casing of its early builders.

Old age, however, had necessitated repairs; the tile roof dated perhaps from the time of Louis XIV. It was easy to recognize the work done about that period: a dormer window pierced in the acroterium of the tur¬ ret; little wooden frames replacing the primitive glasswork; the three bays affixed to the first floor reduced to two, that in the middle being closed in with bricks, so as to bring the fa$ade into symmetry with the other more recent buildings in the street. On the ground floor, the modifications were quite apparent: an oaken door with mouldings replaced an old iron-covered door, under the stairway; and the large central arch, the lower part, the sides and the top of which had been cemented so as to leave only a rectangular opening, formed a sort of large window instead of the ogive bay which formerly extended to the sidewalk.

Bereft of thought, the child was still looking at that venerable and well-kept master-workman’s home, and mechanically reading upon a yellow sign-board nailed on the left, near the door, these words, painted in old black letters: “ Hubert, Chasuble Maker,” when she was once more attracted by the noise of a shutter pushed open. This time it was the shutter of the ground-floor window. A man bent out, with worried countenance, beak-shaped nose and prominent forehead crowned with very thick hair, quite white already, in spite of his being only forty-five years old. He, likewise, examined her for a while, a pained expression showing itself about his compassionate mouth; then, through the little greenish panes she saw him stand still for a while. He turned round and made a gesture; his wife re¬ appeared, looking ever so beautiful. Neither seemed to move, but, side by side, they looked at her with profound sadness, as if unable to remove their gaze.

For four hundred years had the lineageof the Huberts, embroiderers from father to son, dwelt in this house. A master chasuble-maker had it built under King Louis XI.; another had it repaired under King Louis XIV., and the present Hubert embroidered chasubles under its roof, as all the others of his race had done. At twenty he had fallen in love with a young girl of six¬ teen — Hubertine; and so deep was his passion, that, upon being refused by her mother, the widow of a minor judge, he had eloped with and then married her. She was marvelously beautiful — and that was all their romance, their joy, their misfortune. When, some months later, the young wife came to her dying moth¬ er’s bedside, the latter disinherited and cursed her, and the shock was so great that her only born came to life and died on the same night. Since then, in the ceme¬ tery, in her grave as it were, the stubborn mother seemed still relentless, for the couple never had any other child in spite of their passionate yearning. After twenty-four years they still mourned the one baby they had lost, but now they indeed despaired of ever unbending the dead woman’s wrath.

Troubled by their steadfast gaze, the little one had shrunk behind the pillar of St. Agnes. She also became anxious as the street awakened, the shops opened, and the people began to stir. This “ rue des Orfevres,” the end of which runs up against the lateral fagade of the church, would be without outlet, blocked as it is along the apsis of the cathedral by the Huberts’ house, were it not that the “ rue du Soleil,” a narrow lane, throws it open on the other side, run¬ ning along the lateral wall as far as the grand fagade on the “ Place du Cloitre. ” Two early worshipers passed by, casting a surprised look upon the little’ beggar, quite unknown in Beaumont. The slow and steady falling of the snow continued; the cold seemed to increase with the bleak day; one heard nothing but a far-off rumble of voices under the dull thickness of the great white shroud which covered the town.

Still, wildly shy and ashamed of her homelessness as of a fault, the child was trying to hide herself fur¬ ther, when suddenly she saw before her Hubertine, who, keeping no servant, had gone out to fetch a loaf.

“ My little one, what are you doing here? and who are you? ”

She did not answer, out only hid her face. But she could no longer feel her limbs, her whole being was fainting away as though her heart, turned to ice, had stopped beating. As soon as the good lady had turned her back with a gesture of discreet pity, the girl sunk down helpless on her kfiees, and slipping, limp as a rag, in the snow, let the flakes silently bury her. The lady was now coming back with the hot

THE ©REAM

II bread in her hand, and, noticing the child crouching thus on the ground, once more approached her.

“ Come now, my little one, you cannot stay longer under this door.”

Then Hubert, who was now standing on the threshold of their house, taking the bread from her hands, said:

“ Take her up, bring her in! ”

Hubertine, without replying, bent down and raised the child in her strong arms. She no longer stirred, carried about like a thing inanimate, her teeth clenched, her eyes closed, quite cold, and as light as a little bird fallen from its nest.

They went in; Hubert closed the door, whilst Hubertine, loaded with her burden, crossed the front room used as a parlor, where some yards of embroi¬ dery hung on exhibition in the large square window.

She entered the kitchen, the old-fashioned" common room," preserved almost intact, with its ceiling beams, its flagstones mended in twenty places, its wide, stoneencased mantelpiece. On the shelves, the kitchen utensils, pots, kettles and pans, such as were used one or two centuries back; old crockery, old stoneware, old tins. But filling the chimney-hearth, was a mod¬ ern cook-stove, a large cast-iron one with bright brasswork. It was red hot; one could hear the water bubbling in the boiler. A saucepan full of coffee and milk was heating at one end.

“ Zounds! it is more comfortable here than outside,” said Hubert, laying his hand on the heavy Louis XIII. table which occupied the center of the room.

“ Put that poor little dear near the stove, and let her thaw herself.”

Hubertine was already seating the child, and both watched her come to herself again. The snow on her clothes melted, and fell in heavy drops. Through the holes of the rough shoes one could see her little bruised feet, while her thin woolen gown marked the rigidity of her limbs, that pitiable body of misery and pain.

She gave a long shiver, opened her astonished eyes, with the start of an animal waking up to find itself entrapped. Her face seemed to force itself back under the rag tied beneath her chin. They thought her right arm maimed, so tight did she press it, mo¬ tionless, against her chest.

“ Be not afraid, we will not hurt you? — Where do you come from? — Who are you? ”

As they spoke to her she became more and more frightened, looking behind her as though expecting to be struck. She glanced furtively around the kitchen, at the flagstones, the pots, the shining utensils; then gazed out, through one of the irregular windows re¬ maining over from the suppressed bay, looked all over the garden as far as the trees of the Bishop’s Palace, the white outlines of which peeped over the back wall. She seemed amazed to see there on her left the cathe¬ dral again, with the Romanesque windows of its apsis. And, shivering afresh, in spite of the heat of the stove slowly penetrating her, she lowered her eyes to the floor without sirring.

“ Do you belong in Beaumont? Who is your father?” they asked.

Noticing her silence, Hubert just thought that her throat was too parched to answer.

“ Instead of questioning her,” said he, " would it not be better to give her a good, warm cup of coffee? ”

The suggestion seemed so opportune, that Hubertine at once handed the child her own cup. While she was also cutting two thick slices for her, the child, still mis¬ trusting her new friends, slowly and sullenly recoiled. The torment of hunger was, however, too strong for her, and she began to eat and drink ravenously.

Not to trouble her, the couple kept silent, moved at the sight of the little hand trembling so that it almost missed her mouth. She used only her left hand, her right arm remaining obstinately glued to the body. When she had finished, she nearly dropped the cup, which she caught again with her elbow, awkwardly, as though crippled.

“ You must have hurt your arm? ” asked Hubertine.

“ Don’t be afraid, let me see to it, my dearie.”

But as she touched her, the child, suddenly violent, rose and struggled, and in the scuffle put out her right arm; a little book, which she had been hiding against her bare skin, slipped out through a tear in her dress. She tried to regain possession of it, and stood with her fists clutched in anger at seeing those two strangers read it. It was a Ward’s book, an official record issued by the Administration of Assisted Children of the De¬ partment of the Seine. On the first page, under a medallion-shaped picture of St. Vincent de Paul, were printed the following formulae:

Surname of Pupil —A mere dash filled the space.

Christian Name — Angelica Mary.

Born — January 22d, 1851

Admitted —On the 23d of same month.

Matriculating Number — 1,634.

Thus, father and mother unknown; no papers of identity, not even a certificate of birth, nothing but this book, with its official coldness and its cover of pale pink cloth. Nobody and nothing on earth except a Poor House book; a numbered and classified waif.

“Oh! a foundling! ” cried Hubertine.

Then spoke Angelica, in a passionate outburst of

fury: „ _ _ T

“ I’m worth more than all the rest of you! Yes, I am better, better! I never stole from anybody; they steal, everything from me.”

Such a helpless pride, such a desperate will to be the stronger, swayed her little womans body, that for a moment the Huberts were dumbstruck. They no longer recognized the fair-haired little stranger with the violet colored eyes, the long neck graceful as a lily.

The eyes had turned black in the wicked face, the sensuous neck had swollen with a flush of blood. Now that she was warm, she rose and hissed like a snake taken from the snow.

“ So you’re a bad girl?” softly said the embroiderer.

Why, it’s for your good that we wish to know who you are.”

And over his wife’s shoulders he glanced at the book as she turned it over. On page two, the name of the wet nurse was given. “ The child Angelica Mary was intrusted, on the 28th of January, 1851, to the nurse Francis, wife of Goodman Hamelin, a farmer by occupation, living in the township of Soulanges, in the district of Nevers; the aforesaid nurse having re¬ ceived, as she took charge of the child, the first month of nursing fee in advance, plus a babe’s outfit.”

Then followed a baptismal certificate signed by the Almoner of the Hospital of Assisted Children; then came the medical certificates, at the arrival and depar¬ ture of the child. The payments to the nurse, every three months, filled the columns of the four following pages, where each time appeared the illegible signature of the township treasurer.

“ Why! Nevers? ” asked Hubertine. " Is it near Nevers that you were raised? ”

Angelica, still flushed with anger at not having been able to prevent their reading, had once more fallen into a sullen silence. But rage loosened her lips, and she spoke of her nurse:

“ Ah! Surely Mother Nini would have beaten you! She took my part, although she did often give me slaps. Ah! After all, I was not so miserable over there, with the cattle-.”

Her voice seemed to grow hoarser as she went on in broken, incoherent sentences, speaking of the meadow where she used to lead Rousse, the old cow, of the highway where she played, of the cakes they cooked, of the big dog that bit her.

i5

Hubert interrupted, reading aloud:

“ In case of serious sickness or of bad treatment, the sub-inspector is authorized to give the child in charge to another nurse.”

Lower down, the book mentioned that the child Angelica Mary had been intrusted to Theresa, wife of Louis Franchomme, both florists, living in Paris.

“ I understand,” said Hubertine, “ you were sick, so they brought you back to Paris.”

This was not quite the case, however, and the Huberts learned the entire story, but only by drawing it out, bit by bit, from Angelica. Louis Franchomme, who was a cousin of Mother Nini, was obliged to return to his village for a month in order to recover from a fever; and it was then that Madame Theresa, becoming very fond of the child, had obtained per¬ mission to take her to Paris, where she bound herself to teach her the trade of an artificial florist. Three months later, her husband died, and, very sick herself, she found herself obliged to return to her brother’s, the tanner Rabier, established in Beaumont. She had died early in December, leaving in charge of her sister-in-law the little one, who, since then, abused and beaten, had suffered martyrdom.

“ The Rabiers,” murmured Hubert, “ the Rabiers, yes, yes; tanners, near the Ligneul in the lower town

_the husband a drunkard, and the wife not much

better.”

“ They treated me as a beggar,” continued the angry Angelica, enraged with suffering pride. “ They said that the gutter was good enough for me. After whip¬ ping me almost to death, she threw some food to me on the floor, as to a cat; and how often I went to bed without eating! Ah! I would have killed myself at last.”

She made a mad gesture of despair.

“ Christmas morning, yesterday, they drank; then they threw themselves upon me, threatening to gouge i6 my eyes out with their thumbs, for fun. They did not seem to get along well after this — they began fight¬ ing, hitting each other such great blows — I thought them dead, fallen as they both were across the room. I had long since made up my mind to escape, but I wanted my book. Mother Nini used to show it to me sometimes, saying: ‘You see that? Well, that is all you possess; for, if you had not that, you would have nothing ! ’ And I knew where they had hidden it, since Mother Theresa was dead — in the top drawer of the big chest — so I jumped over them, I took the book, and I ran, I ran, pressing it all the time under my arm against my skin. It was too large; I thought that everybody could see it; that they would steal it from me. Oh ! how I ran and ran ! and, when the night was all black, I was cold under that door. Oh ! how cold I was ! I thought I was not alive any more. But I don’t care; I did not let it go, anyhow, for here it is ! ”

And with a sudden bound, as the Huberts were just closing it to hand it back to her, she snatched the book from them.

Then, sitting down, she dropped her head on the table, holding the book tight, and began sobbing, her cheek against the pink cover. A fearful humility overcame her pride; all her being seemed to melt in the bitter¬ ness of those few pages, with their worn covers, of this poor thing which was a treasure, the only link that connected her with the life of the world. She could not empty her heart of her despair, her tears ran with¬ out ceasing: and, under this crushing grief, the fair¬ haired waif once more showed her pretty face, a very pure, slightly elongated oval, her eyes of violet tint, made paler by emotion; the delicate slenderness of her neck, which made her resemble a little virgin in a stained glass window. Suddenly she seized Hubertine’s hand, and kissed it passionately with her lips eager for caresses.

The Huberts were moved to the heart, and, almost in tears themselves, murmured:

“ Dear, dear child! ”

Then she was not as yet quite bad? Perhaps she could be broken of that violent temper that had so frightened them.

“Oh! I beg of you, do not take me back to those people,” she faltered, “ do not take me back to those people.”

The husband and wife looked at each other. It happened that, since autumn, they had been thinking of taking a resident apprentice, some little girl that should enliven the house so saddened by their regrets for their childlessness. And it was decided at once.

“ Will you? ” asked Hubert.

Hubertine answered slowly, in her calm voice, “ I am willing.”

They immediately busied themselves about the formalities. The embroiderer went out and told the story to the Justice of the Peace of the Northern Dis¬ trict of Beaumont, Mr. Grandsire, his wife’s cousin, the only relative she had any intercourse with; and he took charge of the whole matter. He wrote to the office of Public Assistance, where Angelica was readily traced, thanks to her matriculating number; and he got leave for her to stay as apprentice to the Huberts, whose good standing was so well known.

The sub-inspector of the district, as he came up to indorse the book, drew up the indentures with the new master, binding the latter to treat the child with kind¬ ness, to keep her in cleanliness, to oblige her to fre¬ quent both school and church, and to give her a bed to sleep alone. On the other hand, the Administration agreed to pay Hubert the usual fees, and to furnish the girl with an outfit according to rules.

In ten days all was done. Angelica slept upstairs near the garret, in the upper room overlooking the The Dream 2 i8 garden, and she had already taken her first lesson in embroidery. Sunday, before taking her to mass, Hubertine opened the old chest in the work-room, where she kept her fine gold thread. She was hold¬ ing the book in her hand, and she put it at the bottom of the drawer, saying: “ Look where I place it. I do not wish to hide it, so that you may take it when you wish. It is better that you should see it, and thus remember. ”

That morning, in entering the church, Angelica found herself once more under the St. Agnes door. There had been an incipient thaw the week before; then the cold had set in again so severely that the snow on the sculptures, half melted, had frozen in a florescence of clusters and spikes. All was ice; transparent robes and crystal lace clothed the virgins. Dorothea held a torch, limpid drops from which fell on her hands. Cecilia wore a silver crown which dripped liquid pearls. Agatha, her bosom torn by pincers, was veiled in an armor of crystals. And the scene on the tympan, the little virgins of the arches, seemed to have been thus for centuries behind the jeweled panes of a giant shrine. Agnes allowed her court mantle to trail, woven with light, braided with stars. Her lamb had a fleece of diamonds, her palm had taken the color of heaven. The whole gate was resplendent in the purity of that intense cold.

Angelica remembered the night she had spent there under the protection of the virgins. So she raised her head and smiled at them.

Chapter II

Beaumont is formed of two boroughs separate and distinct; Beaumont l’Eglise, on the hill, with its old cathedral of the twelfth century, its See-house, which dates only from the seventeenth, with hardly a thou¬ sand souls, crowded, choked down in the narrow streets; and Beaumont la Ville, at the foot of the declivity, on the banks of the Ligneul, an ancient town, enriched by the prosperity of its manufactures of laces and lawns, so prosperous that it numbers nearly ten thous¬ and inhabitants, boasting of their squares and handsome District offices of modern elegance. The two can¬ tons— the northern canton and the southern — thus have hardly more than administrative intercourse. Although but thirty leagues from Paris— a two-hours journey—Beaumont TEglise seems still walled in by its ancient ramparts, of which, however, but three gates remain. A fixed population, peculiar to the place, leads there the same life lived by their ancestors, from father to son, for over five hundred years.

The cathedral explains everything, gives birth to all, sustains all. It is the mother, the queen, huge above the little group of low houses, cozily sheltered like a brood under its wings of stone. The people here live only for it and by it; the trades labor, the shops sell, but to nourish it, to clothe it, to keep it and its clergy in prosperous condition; and, if one meets still a few scions of the well-to-do bourgeoisie, they are the last faith¬ ful ones of the vanished masses. The cathedral throbs from the center, each street is one of its veins, the town seems to breathe its breath. From it emanates that spirit of another age, that religious drowsiness belonging to the past, even to that cloistered city which hems it in, still redolent with an ancient perfume of peace and faith.

And of all that mystic gathering, the Huberts* house, where Angelica was to live, held most closely to the cathedral, as of its own flesh. The permission to build it there, between two buttresses, must have been granted by some by-gone prelate, anxious to retain the early ancestor of this generation of embroiderers as the head chasuble-maker to the vestry-rooms. Toward the south, the colossal mass of the church barred the narrow gar¬ den; first, the inclosures of the lateral chapels, whose windows looked down on the garden beds; then the projecting body of the nave, which the buttresses seemed to elbow; finally the vast roofs covered with sheets of lead. The sun never reached the end of that garden; the ivy and boxwood alone grew there vigor¬ ously; and yet that eternal shadow was very sweet, falling from the giant ridge of the apsis — a religious shadow, sepulchral and pure, which smelt good. Into the greenish half-light, the calm freshness, the two towers allowed nothing to fall but the peal of their bells. But the whole house shivered with it, sealed to those old stones, melted into them, living of their blood. It shuddered at the least ceremonies; the high mass, the roar of the organ, the voice of the choristers, even to the oppressed sigh of the faithful, buzzed in each of its rooms, rocked it with a saintly breath come of the invisible; and through the semi-heated wall, sometimes, even the vapors of the incense seemed to smoke.