The frontiers of the heart

Preface

By means of two great collective bodies, the Army and the Town of Metz, Le Desastre endeavoured to revive an epoch. The following picture, painted with the same colours, is confined to the presentation of a household tragedy. In the case of this Frenchwoman and this German, in the case of these races which confront each other, the fatherland rises above the family, — love is killed by war.

The heart also possesses frontiers, — unsuspected walls hidden by peace and happiness, and which, on the bloody day, rise up abruptly. Such would be the import of these pages, which do but execrate that abominable scourge, war, and express the desire that, on each side of the frontier, family and fatherland be held in honour.

Without wasting time over a tedious bibliography, I am desirous, with respect to the historical portion of this novel, of thanking M. Henri Michel, the curator of the Amiens Library, who kindly brought to my notice the very interesting unpublished memoirs of Ambroise Janvier, and M. Niquet, the archivist who communicated to me the deliberations of the Municipal Council of those days, as well as the

PREFACE rare Memorial d’ Amiens. I have also consulted, with great benefit, M. Gabriel Monod’s Frangais et Allemands , and M. de Calonne’s Histoire d’ Amiens.

V. M.

Part I I

“ Slowly, slowly, little one ! ”

Marthe Ellange raised her beautiful brown eyes towards the aged face of the murmurer and smiled.

“ I beg your pardon, grandfather. I wasn’t thinking . . .”

“ Of my seventy-eight years, eh? ”

“ Oh ! but you don’t look them ! ”

The Major straightened his stooping figure, squaring his broad shoulders in his dark green frock coat, which was drawn in at the waist like a military tunic. The large red rosette of the Legion of Honour decorated his buttonhole. A roguish look gleamed beneath his heavy eyelids.

“ Come now ! That’s all very well ! ”

The girl blushed.

“ We are late, too,” she said. “ He must have been there a quarter of an hour already.”

“ Ah ! love’s fair dream ! But must I tell you what I think? Don’t hurry too much. There is good in waiting; it excites desire.”

“ Yes, grandfather, but Otto and I have been waiting a whole year.”

“ You will love each other all the better for that. Listen, little one, the poets are sometimes right:

L’absence est a l’amour comme est au feu le vent Qui eteint le petit et avive le grand!

But where the deuce have the others gone to ? ”

“ Lost, — lost once more. I’m sure they do it on purpose.”

The Major shrugged his shoulders in indication of the human river which was carrying them along, the incessant eddy of the crowd, passing backwards and forwards. All nations mingled their characters, dress and speech in that place. There was a roar as of the ocean and the tide under the huge glazed arch of the central alley, which, on that June day, had become stiflingly hot. A cloud of fine dust, like a golden veil, floated in the depths of the galleries, whose circular spaces, filled with marvels, stretched on every side. Innumerable heads moved up and down in the distance. An acrid and powerful odour entered the throat and dulled the senses : the emanation from that gigantic furnace into which one hundred thousand beings were packed. On that Sunday the 1867 Exhibition was in full swing.

An exclamation of relief passed the girl’s lips.

They had just issued from the Rue de Belgique

THE FRONTIERS OF THE HEART S and entered the Avenue d’ Europe, leaving behind them the deadened roar of the huge glass-roofed palace, which, with its annulated domes, might have been compared to an immense oval sea-shell, lying flat on the ground, and whose mighty, confused murmur — a murmur as of the sea — gradually diminished. The splendour of the declining day enveloped them. How pleasant was the freshness of the expanses of verdure, with their light-coloured buildings scattered here and there! The Major shaded his reddened eyes with his hand, and turned his shaking head from side to side. His large white moustache bristled on his rough skin, which resembled an ancient stone eaten away by lichens. Scorched by the sun of many lands and shrivelled up by age, this old soldier of Napoleon, this Brazilian colonist, this old independent gentleman of Amiens was now but a ruin. Nevertheless, with his tall, corpulent stature, his scarred cheek, and his rough good-natured air, he still presented a fine figure.

“ Positively, I’ve lost sight of them altogether.”

Marthe pouted. Tall and slender, with a welldeveloped figure and round hips, she formed, on the old man’s arm, an astonishing contrast. A large paille d’ltalie hat, the black velvet ribbons of which fell on to her low chignon, framed her pure face and auburn hair. Her twenty-three years, which still retained the grace of a young girl and already indicated the maturity of a woman, exhaled health, distinction, strength. She had a peach-like complexion and snow-white teeth, the brilliancy and softness of a beautiful golden fruit. A strong yet sweet look — her whole soul — shone in her admirable chestnut-coloured eyes. A shade of hardness appeared in them now.

“ Father doesn’t like Otto and mother fears a marriage which would take me far from her . . . If they had their way we should not meet M. Rudheimer to-day.”

The Major struck the ground with his goldheaded stick.

“ But haven’t I told you that you shall marry him?”

“ Yes, I know that quite well. Consequently, it is not a fear of the future which troubles me. I am certain that I shall be very happy with Otto. Hesse is not far from either Paris or Amiens. And Marburg is a charming town. You know it, since you were in garrison there.”

“ An owl’s nest. Everything three centuries old. But it has changed, perhaps, since . . .”

“ No, everything is in its place and still older. Ah! how I adore Marburg. I can see myself there already, in my little house in the Burgerstrasse.”

She sighed.

“ No, what grieves me is that my fiance . . .”

“ Your fiance, your fiance! ”

“ But, grandfather, it is not only the announcement of the marriage which binds, nor the ring. Our feeling is such that it is in no way increased by these official consecrations. I have his word and he has mine; — that is enough. Well, now, what wounds and irritates me is the fact that for the past year they have taken no account of my wish, and continue to regard Otto as a stranger and our promise as null. You are the only one who understands me, — you and Frida. As to my brother . .

Louis, the barrister, and the elder brother Jacques, the lieutenant, looked with no kindly eye on a sister who dreamed of a marriage which would exile her.

She tenderly pressed the arm upon which she appeared to be leaning but which, filially, she was supporting.

“ They discuss and quibble as though my mind were not made up. Otto has been here a fortnight and yet not a day has passed without papa making him feel that he is not yet one of the family and never will be except against his will. Jacques and Louis have not even taken the trouble to come to Paris to meet him, and mamma knits her brows as soon as she sees him. Poor mamma ! It is sad to think that, in order to conquer one’s happiness, one must torture those one loves ! ”

The old soldier uttered a sudden exclamation and whirled his heavy stick round in his knotty hand, — a flourish which caused two English ladies to step aside and regard him with an air of reproof. A group of Indians passed. Grave under their turbans and white garments, their features were so clear cut that they appeared to be in bronze. There was a dormant fire in their black eyes. The fustanella of a Greek fell in ample folds over his red gaiters. Some placid Dutchmen elbowed a bevy of beautiful Scandinavians, long in their lines and loud in their speech. Golden hair fell in curls on their swanlike necks.

“ Little one,” said the Major, “ the essential thing is to conquer your happiness. Let each individual follow his conscience and each generation its ideas. Do you think that, when, at the age of seventeen and in the year of Jena, I left Amiens for the war, and when, after Waterloo, I sailed for Brazil, my parents did not weep? The Ellanges had been doctors from father to son. But I parted from the syringe and the bistoury. And the best hours of my life were those which I spent as a boy rushing over Europe behind the Tondu 1 and those, when a man, which I employed in planting and harvesting coffee at Sao Paulo. Not to mention the fact that over there I also made a fortune, which enabled me, when I returned with Pepita, to sweeten the declining days of the old folks.”

He contemplated the dreamy Marthe stealthily. She had the very look of her grandmother.

“Your eyes are the same as hers. Ah! if you had only known her.”

1 The little corporal, — Napoleon I. — Translator.

Moved, he called to memory their long life together, — a cloudless life, in spite of the difference in their ages and nationality. He could hear her singing voice and its guttural languor. Since he had been happy with a woman of Portuguese blood, why should not Marthe, in her turn, find happiness with a German ?

The girl evoked the pastel which decorated her bedroom, above the chest of drawers. Within a faded gold frame, a dark face with thick wavy hair was smiling like an ardent-souled madonna. Marthe thought of the obscure bonds of heredity, the source of beings, a bottomless abyss. Thus the light which shone in the grandmother’s tender look, and the extinguished flame of which she had so many times scrutinised, was living within her, kindled anew. And the look with which she herself boldly faced the future, — that look in which her soul, her own soul, blazed, — that look which for the first time seemed to her to fix, to possess the present was but a reflection, the mysterious legacy of the past !

She laughed.

“ Very well, grandfather, I will do as you did. I will conquer my happiness.”

“ How so?”

“ You’ll see . . . Six o’clock already ! let us hurry.”

“ Six o’clock? Where do you see that? ”

She pointed to the distant clock of the £cole

Militaire, situated on the axis of the building, at the end of the palisaded Champ-de-Mars.

“ Ah! good.”

They passed in front of the statue of Leopold I and the annex of the Beaux- Arts. In her eagerness to have a definite explanation, she hurried the old man along. She felt sure that her father and mother, with Frida Lehmann, must already be at the meeting-place, — La Grande Serre, in the Jardin Reserve. If only Otto had not yet arrived and she could extort a consent to the marriage from her parents! Dragging himself along, the Major followed her. He was more active in the old days — fifty-two years ago ! — when he strode over that same ground at the head of his company, the Velites of the Young Guard. How many times he had raised his eyes toward that clock whose indefatigable hands ever continued to turn ! Since the time of Louis XVI they had witnessed on the grassy plain the great fetes of the Revolution and the Empire. They had measured time at the reviews of the Restoration and the July Monarchy. They still recorded it at the displays of Napoleon III, at this World’s Fair, where, with so much pomp and profusion, the glory and the wealth of France was spread out.

With a feeling of pride, the Major took in at a glance the foreign section which stretched on his right. Surmounted by multicoloured flags, the pavilions of Prussia and the small German States, of Spain, Norway, Portugal and Switzerland raised, amidst clumps of flowers and trees, their picturesque architecture. Further off, around the Palais Central, — a prodigious accumulation of all the industries and arts of the country, and symbolical of the feverish heart of Paris, the capital of the world, — were the buildings of Sweden, Austria, Italy and Russia. Still further away, like a cincture of suburbs, stood those of the Pontifical States, Turkey, Persia, the American Republic and China. Jean Pierre Ellange thought that he was once more living in heroic times. An audience of kings sat at the Opera; they did homage at the Tuileries. To-day it was the Czar and the King of Prussia ; to-morrow it would be the Emperor of Austria and the Sultan. The impassive-faced Emperor, with the Grand Cordon across his breast, filed past in his eagle emblazoned victoria amidst a retinue of sovereigns. The beauty of the Empress shed additional glory on the brilliant splendour of the court balls. The laurels of Sebastopol and Magenta, hardly yet dried by the sun of Mexico, made the reign a triumphal victory. The dark days of the Invasion, the nightmare of Cossack boots and Prussian heels were forgotten. Had he, Jean Pierre, really lived through that? No, victories grouped themselves, faithful still, at the foot of the throne. The crowned N shone as in former days on the purple velvet, rustling with bees.

A sound of trumpets, sharp and distinct, came through the sonorous air from beyond the barracks. A vision of the army appeared before the Major’s eyes. France was again at the height of her power. Enthusiasm followed by a sudden feeling of melancholy, filled his heart. He felt so very tired, so near his end ! He had traversed so many countries and periods ! Soon his eyes would close. Oh ! that they might do so whilst this magnificence lasted !

“ I say, but you’ve made me warm ! ” exclaimed the old man.

They had arrived, on skirting the fresh-water Aquarium, at the approaches to the Grande Serre, whose trellis- work portico and curved roofs stood on a calcareous foundation, surrounded by gushing streams, in the middle ;of the Jardin Reserve. The oriflammes, hanging motionless at the top of the flag-staffs, suddenly began to wave in the air. A breeze had sprung up, caressing the grey, heatladened atmosphere. The setting sun covered the glass, which had the aspect of metal in fusion, with large golden scales.

“ There they are,” murmured Marthe.

She had caught sight of them in the central alley of the building, opposite a clump of tropical plants, — an enormous dark bouquet of cacti, euphorbias, palms, bananas, latanias, aloes and lianes which formed a complicated and inextricable mass of branches and prickly, hairy leaves. M. and Mme. Ellange, with a discontented air, stood there on the watch. Near them, comfortably seated in the hoilow of a wicker-work bench, good Frida Lehmann was dozing.

Marthe advanced quickly towards her mother, who also made a few steps to meet them, whilst M. Ellange, in order to show his detachment, sat down near the governess, thus exaggerating his ordinary gravity.

“ Otto has not yet arrived,” declared Mme. Ellange in a reproachful tone. “ It is inconceivable. I think that when people make an appointment . .

“ So much the better, petite mere !”

She did not waste time in making excuses for him, but went straight to the point. The minutes were precious.

“ It is just as well that he is late. For it gives me time to speak to you and father.”

Mme. Ellange sounded her, put out of countenance. This counter-attack left her defenceless. An excellent woman, whose weakness was boundless in the case of those she loved, she submitted, in this matter, to the habitual authority of her husband. At forty -five years of age, with her grey fillets and small, plump, spruce face, she had the ingenuous air of a little girl. In her flax-blue eyes was to be read absolute goodness, and in her entire person — discreet and steeped in devotion — an astonishing absence of will-power. She had two masters, whom she unreservedly venerated : her husband and God. Two passions governed her: her home, which she carefully kept in hand, and her daughter, who, on reaching adolescence, had escaped from her. She had had no more influence over her than upon her sons, Jacques and Louis, devil-may-care youths who, whilst yet boys, exercised a man-like tyranny.

“ But — ”

With a look she appealed to the Major, but immediately beat a retreat on hearing him say :

“ Marthe is quite right. The matter must be ended.”

“ You must say that to Lucien,” she sighed.

M. Ellange, on seeing his daughter walk towards him with a firm footstep, faced her. A tall, thin man with a bony face, almost white whiskers, yellow complexion and clear look, he rose, and with a dignity befitting an Imperial Procurator. M. Ellange, whose frigidity dissimulated a rare judicial knowledge and a cultured mind, seemed the very incarnation of the magistrature, ever ready to present a claim. He possessed more heart than he showed on the surface, a very keen taste for literature, — especially Latin literature, and a deep knowledge of politics and history.

“ Well, where’s the fiance , Mademoiselle? ”

He added between his teeth :

“If only he could never come! ”

“Oh! Father,” protested Marthe, “that is too bad!”

“ Mein gott ! ”

“ Lucien ! ”

“ Leave me, my good wife,” ordered M. Ellange.

“And as to you, Fraulein, I will do without your advice.”

Mme. Ellange, overwhelmed, dropped into a seat by the side of Frida Lehmann. With her hands clasped over her knees, the latter regarded with disquietude the combat between her pupil, almost her daughter ( for had she not formed her, morally and spiritually?) and the hardy antagonist she knew the magistrate to be. Father and daughter faced each other, with compressed lips and stiffened chins. With a confident look, Marthe enjoined her governess to keep silent; Frida could be of no assistance to her at such a moment.

M. Ellange was that day taking his revenge on the influence which had been exercised for so many years. If Marthe had turned aside from their ideas, if she had also taken, in a particularly striking manner, the German impress, — that amalgam of romantic sensibility, practical common sense and steadiness of mind, it was “ Mademoiselle ” Lehmann’s doing. Beware of attaching yourself to people! Ah! he had been well inspired on the day when, on the lookout for a governess for his daughter and touched by the misfortunes of Frida, a penniless orphan, he had brought her from Hesse on the recommendation of Father Rudheimer. What need had he to write to that stupid pastor, a former acquaintance at the ficole de Droit? And what an idea, too, that of teaching Marthe German ! They saw now what that had led to. The deuce take their systems and all the philosophers beyond the Rhine, — philosophic systems under whose fascination he had come like other people but which with all the reveries of their poets, he now cursed. The deuce take Kant and Goethe, Hegel, Klopstock and Heine. And the deuce take Frida Lehmann. In turn he cast a severe look at the governess’ good, freckled face, her tow-like hair and corpulent body, the result of gluttony and lack of physical exercise. Frida had a beautiful soul within a heavy envelope.

“ Father,” said Marthe resolutely, “ we have evaded this matter enough. Otto is leaving for Germany at the end of the week. His patients require attention. On leaving us yesterday he was no further advanced than on the very first day. This situation cannot last any longer. We have loved each other since . .

“ Your visit to Marburg ! I know.”

Ah ! that three months’ holiday, four years ago ! Entrusted to the care of Frida, who had not seen Hesse again since her arrival at Amiens, Marthe had fallen in love with Otto. What an error he had committed in arranging that sojourn, during which, under the pretext that she was perfecting herself in the study of the language, she had familiarised herself with Marburg society and had noticed the doctor. And what weakness he had shown in consenting to her return there in the following summer! . . . But how was he to know what was going to happen ? . . . He detested Marthe’s feeling, which had been sown and had grown to maturity without his knowledge . . . Her dissimulation and then, after the confession, her obstinacy drove him out of his wits.

Very calmly, she continued:

“ We have loved each other for four years. And we told each other so a year ago. It was then that I opened my heart to you. ,,

“ Somewhat late in the day.”

“ On the very day on which I began to read my heart. Did I know until then ? It was Otto’s confession which revealed me to myself. Well, you asked me then to reflect and have patience. I have done so, during twelve months ... It has been a long trial! We have now seen each other again, and our love is stronger — if that is possible — than ever. During the past fortnight mamma and you have been able to form an opinion of the character and value of M. Rudheimer . . . His father is but waiting for the announcement that you are agreeable, to make his demand. What do you decide ? ”

M. Ellange assumed a joking attitude.

“ The deuce ! you need a reply immediately ? ”

She spoke out plainly :

“ Immediately ! ”

“ Well, well! . . ”

He made a sudden gesture.

Seeing the game compromised by her vivacity, she adopted a tenderer tone :

“What, little father? Do you reproach Otto with anything? ”

“ Oh! no, I’ve nothing to say against him. He is a loyal and honest fellow. I believe that he has as generous a heart and as quick an intellect as it is possible for a German to have. He is fond of work and his profession, which is a fine one. He is a true man of science. ,,

“ There now, you see his good qualities quite well ! ”

“ But, my poor child, love is not the only thing. There is marriage. Have you considered what your life would be over there, far from your native country and your parents, without friends and isolated in an unbreathable air, — an existence during which everything would clash with your tastes and habits? . . . Think of yourself, you, so French, in spite of the culture which you owe to Mile. Lehmann — (the name stuck in his throat) — you, a Catholic, in that Lutheran hole Marburg, where every one, from the Aulic Councillor to the youngest red-capped student, would look upon you as an infidel, — where the old women would point you out with their fingers ! ”

“ But you know how liberal Otto is. Those are subjects upon which we never enter. I am sure he will respect my religious scruples, as I respect his. And as to the others — the world . .

She swept them aside with a gesture.

“ You will have your work cut out. The individual cannot escape from the society which surrounds and has formed him. Little by little it will deform you. If you marry this man you are lost to us.”

“ Never, father; since I shall always love you just as much as ever. Yes; to leave home is a sad law. But it is written : ‘ Thou shalt leave thy

father and thy mother/ Have not the birds to fly from the nest? Some day or other I shall have to leave home and found a family of my own.”

“ Evidently. But Otto is not the only one who loves you. I know an honest fellow . . .”

“ It is useless saying more, father. You mean Lieutenant Charbalye ? He is your fancy and Jacques’ too. But I tell you I don’t love him. You would not, surely, condemn me to a marriage in which affection was not shared ? ”

“ You would not have flown so far away from home.”

“ There are no frontiers in the case of either affection or memory.”

“ Oh ! yes, there are. You will be lost to us and to your native country.”

She collected her thoughts, and then said, religiously :

“ My native land ! But I shall take it with me, make it known and loved. And thus I shall serve it better than by living peaceably in a house in Amiens.”

“You will serve it better by becoming a Prussian? And what about your sons? — your sons who will be born foreigners, subservient to the laws of Berlin, — your sons who will one day, perhaps, bear arms against everything which you love — and abandon so cheerfully ! ”

“ My sons, — no, no ! ”

“Heedless girl! To-day hides to-morrow from you. Behind Hegel there is Moltke. But look and reflect. It is not a Hessian you would marry but a Prussian, for, since the Treaty of Prague, Electoral Hesse no longer exists. Prussia extends as far as the Maine. And do you know what Prussia, for the past sixty years, has desired and patiently, tenaciously prepared for? The revenge for Jena. Hodie mihi, eras tibi! Violence engenders violence. To them we are the hereditary enemy, — the Erbfeind, as you say. Certainly Otto does not hate us ; on the contrary. The Rudheimers have always loved France, and they deserve praise for so doing. For France has not always loved Marburg. Ask your grandfather about that and 1807. He was there.”

He addressed his concluding words to the Major who, out of discretion, had withdrawn and, concluding that the discussion was nearing its end, was now returning, after having walked round the greenhouse alongside the basins. These encircled the central clump, the miniature virgin forest, and formed a brilliant girdle. All the flowers of June — red, pink, yellow, blue and white — ornamented the borders there, in tufts, rows and mosaics, and scented the air. Mme. Ellange and Frida, hypnotised, still sat listening on their bench.

“ As to that,” confessed the Major, “ we deteriorated the bastions and casemates a little. By heavens ! What an explosion ! Fine fortifications, ma foi! Swept clean away! There were fragments of the walls in all the gardens of the neighbourhood. Huge blocks, blown up as though they were fleas. Those devils, you see, had driven us out of the castle, so the Tondu retaliated by demolishing every fortress on Hessian territory.”

“ Under these conditions, Marthe,” continued M. Ellange, “you will understand what Hesse, now that it has become Prussia, feels. Rancour added to hatred. For Prussia hates us. I can read hatred in the courteous good-nature of its king, a guest effaced, notwithstanding Sadowa, by the Imperial Majesties. I can read it in the smile of that big white cuirassier with a face like a bulldog ready to bite. William and Bismarck envy and detest us. Did you see their exhibition? Full of cannon, and what cannon too ! All sizes and calibres. The Krupp arsenal. As much as to say : 4 Beware !

Whose turn is it now?’ Victory has given them confidence in their strength. Appetite has come with their teeth. You allow your dream to blind your eyes. Look at the horizon ! Yes, open a map of Europe, sapristi! The progress they have made is startling. The Germanic Confederation is buried. Germany is no longer at Vienna but at Berlin. Holstein, Sleswig, Hanover, Electoral Hesse, the Duchy of Nassau and Frankfort are henceforth Prussian, and Prussia is at the head of the Confederation of the North. The Southern States are uncertain and distracted by dissensions. You tell me that I paint too black a picture? No, no, my child. War is inevitable. Whether it will come to-morrow or in twenty years, I know not. But one day it will come ! And on that day . . .”

“ I don’t want to think of it. It is impossible.”

“ History has its laws and events take their course. Nothing can stop them. Prussia is growing. Let any one who stands in her way look out! After Denmark, after Austria, it will be France’s turn.”

“ Let them come,” chuckled the Major.

The Imperial Procurator took up his historical theme again.

“ Oh ! my mind is easy as regards that ! People think twice before they measure themselves with a Napoleon. But anyway, whatever Marthe may say, it is possible. And it is my duty to make her see all the consequences of such an act. I no longer appeal to her heart but to her patriotism and reason.”

The grandfather pointed out to the father his daughter’s wrinkled brow, her sad but obstinate eyes.

“ Then the case is heard,” he said. “ You can conclude.”