Picciola

Preface

Picciola , the touching story of a prisoner and a flower, is always new and fresh, although it has been reprinted in the original French more than twoscore times, and has been translated into every language of Europe since it first appeared in 1836.

Such success was little expected by its modest author, who wrote it for his own satisfaction alone, but was finally persuaded to print it by a friend, who took up the manuscript by chance and could not lay it down until he had read it through.

Saintine received the Monthyon prize from the French Academy and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor in recognition of the merits of Picciola , but these honors did not give him such pleasure as the thought that some real prisoner might find consolation in his book. This hope was fulfilled when Louis Napoleon wrote to him from the fortress of Ham, where he was imprisoned, that Picciola had been both a lesson and a solace to him, had shown him that a philosopher has hidden treasures in his heart which may enable him to enjoy happiness under any circumstances.

In his own preface to the work the author says : "My book is neither a drama nor a romance.

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PREFACE.

" My story is a simple one, so simple that perhaps no writer ever tried his hand on a subject of such narrow limits. My heroine is such a little thing ! Not that I would throw the blame on her in advance in case of failure; Heaven forbid! Do you lay any value upon the truth of facts ? I assure you that my tale is a true one, and I offer this as some recompense for all that you may miss in it.

"You remember that kind and gracious lady who died not long ago, — the Countess de Charney, — an incredible mixture of sweetness and audacity, of gentleness and resolution ; she was a terrible lioness, whom a child could calm with a word ; she was a timid dove, capable of enduring tempest and storm to defend her loved ones.

" Such as I knew her, others knew her long before I did. It is with lively pleasure that I tell you of this noble creature ; I shall but too seldom have opportunity to speak of her again. She is not the chief heroine of this story.

" During your one visit to her at Belleville, where she made her permanent home, for her husband’s tomb is there (and her own, too, now), several things must have struck you as strange. For instance, the presence of a white-haired old man-servant seated beside her at table. You seemed amazed to hear this person, with his uncouth gestures, his common manners, address the daughter of the Countess so familiarly, and to hear the elegant and high-bred young woman, beautiful as her mother before her, answer the old man with deference and respect, calling him godfather ; she is indeed his goddaughter.

" Then, perhaps you remember a withered, faded flower, contained in a rich case ; and when you asked its history,

PREFACE.

V do you recall the sad look which swept over the poor widow’s face ? I think she even let your question go unanswered : it would have taken too long to answer it, and the story could not be told to indifferent ears.

" I will give you your answer now.

" Honored by the affection of that rare woman, I have more than once sat between her and her faithful old servant, face to face with that precious relic, listening to long and detailed accounts which moved me strangely. I have long had in my possession the manuscripts of the Count, his correspondence, and the double journal of his prison, on linen and on paper. I have not lacked documentary proof and historic evidence.

" I treasured those stories in my memory; I studied those manuscripts attentively ; I copied precious extracts from that correspondence ; from that journal I derived my inspiration, and, if I succeed in transmitting to your soul the emotion which seized me at the sight of all these tokens of the prisoner, I need not fear for the fate of my book.

" One word more. Here are no stirring incidents, no thrilling love tale. And yet there is love in what I am about to relate ; but it is only the love of a man for . . . Shall I tell you ? . . . No, read, and you will learn.”

The supreme lesson of the story, brought out by the author with cumulative skill and force, is the marvellous power of quietude, loneliness, and concentration in developing the affections of the soul. At liberty in the varied intercourse of the world, attention and sympathy scattered fugitively over a thousand shifting objects become careless, superficial, frivolous, and transient. But when one is

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PREFACE.

shut up in the enforced solitude of a prison, his spirit first recoils upon itself from the dreadful monotony, and then grows conscious of its unfathomable capacity and demand for fellowship. Under these circumstances, give it even the simplest and humblest object around which to entwine the yearning tendrils of its love, and it will idealize that object until it grows divine and calls forth an incredible wealth of devotion. This great truth Picciola teaches with a charm equally emphatic and persuasive. This of itself alone lends the work extraordinary value as an educational influence of the highest moral order.

A. L. A.

Chapter I

Count Charles Veramont de Charney, whose name is doubtless not yet forgotten by the learned men of our time, and might, if need were, be found inscribed in the books of the imperial police , 1 was born with a vast facility for learning ; but his noble intellect, trained in the schools, had acquired the habit of discussion. He argued far more than he observed. In short, he was better adapted for a philosopher than a scientist.

When he was twenty-five years old, he was complete master of seven languages. Unlike many worthy polyglots who seem to have labored to acquire various idioms merely to display their ignorance and inanity to foreigners as well as to their fellow-countrymen (for a man may be a fool in several languages), Count Charney made use of these preparatory studies as stepping-stones to others far more important.

If he had many servants in the employ of his intelligence, at least each of them had his own duties, his

1 Referring to the period from 1804 to 1814, reign of Napoleon I.

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especial charge, his particular fields to till . 1 With the Germans, he devoted himself to metaphysics; with the English and Italians, to politics and legislation ; with all, to history, which he could question by going back to its first sources, thanks to the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans.

He accordingly devoted himself wholly to these grave speculations, by no means neglecting the sister sciences which relate to them. But soon, dismayed by the everwidening horizon, stumbling at every step in the labyrinthine maze upon which he had entered, wearied by the vain pursuit of a doubtful truth, he ceased to regard history as anything but a huge traditional lie, and strove to reconstruct it upon new bases. He merely wrote one more romance, which scholars ridiculed from envy, and the world from ignorance.

Political and legislative science offered him something more positive ; but it seemed to call for so many reforms in Europe ! And when he tried to point out some which might be made, he found abuses so ineradicable a part of the social structure, so many existences were dependent upon a false principle, that he lost courage, feeling that he had neither the strength nor the lack of feeling needed to overturn in other lands what the stress and storm of revolution 2 had failed to destroy in France.

Then, how many worthy people, with the same light and with the same good intentions, had theories wholly opposed to his ! What if he were to set the whole world by the ears for a doubt ! This thought troubled him even

1 Refers to the seven languages he had mastered as so many servants

2 Revolution of 1789.

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more than the aberrations of history, and left him in a state of painful perplexity.

There remained metaphysics.

The world of ideas — where he thought no one’s repose need be disturbed — and he lost his own.

The deeper he plunged into its depths, analyzing, discussing, and arguing, the more obscure and confusing all became to him. The unattainable truth, always evading his approach, vanished before him and seemed to hover mockingly above him like a will-of-the-wisp, drawing him on only to lead him astray.

Hesitating between Bossuet and Spinoza , 1 between deism and atheism, urged in different directions by spiritualists, epicureans, animists, autologists, eclectics, and materialists, he was seized with an immense doubt which he desperately solved by a complete negation.

Chance became his God, nothingness his hope !

He clung to this system with rapture, almost with pride, as if he had himself created it, feeling happy, in the midst of his incredulity, to be rid of all the doubts which had besieged him.

The death of a relative left him possessor of a large fortune. He bade farewell to learning and resolved to live for pleasure alone.

After the coming into office of the consular government, French society was put upon a new footing of luxury and splendor. Amidst the trumpet blasts of victory heard on every hand, all was wild delight in Paris.

Charney went into society, rich, fashionable society,

amiable, brilliant society, the society of grace and wit and intellect ; then in the centre of this whirl of idle and yet busy life, of this mad chase after pleasure, he was amazed to find that he was not happy.

He had tried to be intimate with men famed for their learning and their good sense ; but how weak, ignorant, and full of errors he found them ! He pitied them.

This is one of the worst inconveniences of an excess of human knowledge ; you find no one on a level with you ; even those who know as much as you do, do not know it in the same way. From the height which you have reached, you see other men below you, weak and insignificant ; for in the hierarchy of intellect, as in that of power, solitude is the result of greatness.

To live alone is the punishment of those who aspire to too great heights !

Our philosopher appealed more and more freely to material and positive enjoyments. In that society just springing to life again, so long deprived of pleasures and parties, still bearing the marks of the bloody struggles of the revolution, and which, trailing behind its shreds and tatters of Roman virtues, at a single bound outdid the gorgeous orgies of the regency , 1 he made himself conspicuous by the exaggeration of his expenditures, his lavish extravagance, his follies. Fruitless efforts !

He had horses, carriages, an open table ; he gave concerts, balls, and hunting parties ; and nowhere could he find pleasure !

*****

1 Period during the minority of Louis XV, from 1715-1723, when Philip, Duke of Orleans, was Regent — a period of corruption and extravagance.

Charney could find happiness neither in truth nor in error.

To virtue he was averse, to vice indifferent.

He had sounded the vanity of learning, and happy ignorance was forbidden him. The gates of that Eden were forever closed behind him.

The bustle of society wearied him ; solitude and silence were painful to him.

In company, others bored him ; alone, he bored himself.

Profound melancholy took possession of him.

Philosophic analysis, in spite of his efforts to avoid it, ruled his thoughts and, destroying all illusion, tarnished, dwarfed, and destroyed the pleasures and luxury amid which he fain would live. The praises of his friends ceased to be anything but the current coin in which they paid for the share they took in his wealth, and merely showed their desire to secure at his expense a seat at the table with the fortunate of the earth.

He was stricken with a dreadful disease, and yet one more common than we might think — one which attacks the proud to humble them.

In the fine texture of his clothes he seemed to smell the foul odor of the animal which furnished the wool. In the silk of his rich hangings he saw the loathsome worm which spun it. His elegant furniture, his carpets, his books, his silver and ivory toys, all seemed to him mere cast-off skins and refuse. Death, Death set off and fashioned by the sweat of a dirty artisan.

His illusions were gone, his imagination paralyzed.

And yet he must have sensations at any cost !

The love which he could not fix on a single object he strove to lavish on an entire nation.

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He became a philanthropist !

To help mankind, whom he despised, he again threw himself into politics, not speculative politics now, but active politics. He was initiated into secret societies ; he strove to feel that sort of fanaticism which may befit disillusioned spirits. In short, he conspired ! And against whom ? Against the power of Bonaparte.

Perhaps the patriotic love, the universal love which seemed to inspire him, may really have been nothing more than hatred for a single man, for a man whose glory and success disturbed him.

The aristocratic Charney fell back upon the principles of equality ; the proud gentleman, stripped of the title inherited from his ancestors, could not endure another to assume with impunity the title of emperor, which he had only won at the point of the sword.

What was the conspiracy ? It matters not.

There was no lack of conspiracies at that time. I only know that it smouldered from 1803 to 1804; but it was never permitted to break forth ; the police, the secret providence watching over the destinies of the coming empire, exposed it betimes and did not see fit to make any stir about it, nor think it worthy of a military execution on the plains of Grenoble. 1

The leaders of the conspiracy, taken by surprise, arrested in their own houses, condemned almost unheard, were scattered among the prisons, citadels, or fortresses of the ninety-six departments of France.

1 Now included in the limits of Paris ; formerly a small village where military executions took place.

Chapter II

I remember that as I crossed the Greek Alps , 1 on my way to Italy, travelling on foot, my knapsack on my back and my alpenstock in my hand, I paused musingly to gaze on a torrent, not far from the Col de Rodovetto, swollen by the melting glaciers.

The roar of its waters, the foaming cascades along its course, its various hues, now yellow, now white, and now black, showed that it had made its way through layers of marlstone, limestone, and slate ; the huge blocks of marble and flint which it had laid bare, but not uprooted, formed so many cataracts, added a different note to all the other tones, fresh cascades to all the other cascades ; the branches of drifting trees, half out of the water, were on the one side torn by the wind, which was blowing violently, and on the other twisted by the leaping waves. Clods of earth, still covered with verdure, islets wrested from the banks, floated on the surface of the torrent and were dashed to pieces against the trees, as the trees in turn were dashed against the boulders. All this uproar and confusion, the various sights and sounds, compressed within two lofty steep banks, held me for some time a prey to meditation.

This torrent was the Clusare . 2

I wandered along its banks, and in its company I reached one of the four valleys known as Protestant, in

1 A portion of the Alps extending from Mont Cenis to Mont Blanc.

2 One of the minor affluents of the Po.

PICCIOLA.

memory of the Waldenses , 1 who once took refuge there. My torrent had now lost its rapid, lawless course and its roaring, brawling voices. It ran smoother, it had left its trees and islets by the way ; its colors had melted and blended into a single tint, and the mud from its bed no longer clouded its surface. Still flowing swiftly, but smoothly, it assumed the aspect of a peaceful river to caress with its waves the walls of Fenestrella.

Before me was Fenestrella, a large town famed for its peppermint, and still more for the forts which crown the two mounts upon which the town lies. These forts, which communicate by means of covered ways , 2 were partly dis-* mantled during the wars of the republic ; one of them, however, repaired and revictualled, was made a state prison when Piedmont became a part of France.

In this very fort, at Fenestrella, Charles Veramont, Count de Charney, was confined, accused of an attempt to overthrow the regular and lawful government of his country, and to substitute a reign of disorder and terror.

Behold him now, parted alike from scholars and pleasure seekers, regretting neither, forgetting without much regret the hope of political regeneration which had for a moment seemed to kindle his weary soul ; bidding a forced farewell, but one full of resignation, to his fortune, all whose splendors could not dazzle him ; to his friends who loved him or deceived him ; his abode, instead of his

1 Vaudois or Waldenses, a religious sect, so called from their founder, Pierre de Vaux, born near Lyons in 1170. In 1689 they sought shelter in Piedmont.

2 Passages protected from shot by a breastwork of earth, gabions or sandbags.

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spacious and elegant house, a bare and gloomy cell, his gaoler for his only servant.

What does he care for the gloom and poverty of his home? All that is strictly necessary is there, and he is tired of superfluities. Even his gaoler seems to him tolerable.

His thoughts alone oppress him.

And yet what other diversion is left him ?

All communication with the outside world is forbidden him. He has not, nor can he have, either books, pen, or paper. Such are the rules of the prison.

This would have been no privation to him once, when his only idea was to evade the scientific doubts which besieged him. Now, a book would have given him a friend to consult ; nay, more, a foe to combat. Aloof from the world, he was forced to fall back upon himself, to live with his enemy — with his thoughts.

But how bitter and how oppressive are those thoughts which never cease to remind him of his desperate position ! How dull and cold for him, for him upon whom Nature once lavished her gifts, whom society surrounded from his birth with favors and privileges ; for him now a wretched captive ; for him who has such need of protection and help, and who has no faith either in the power of God or the pity of man !

He tries again to free himself from that demon of argumentation which alternately freezes and inflames him. Once more he strives to live with the external world, in the material world. But how narrow are now the limits of that world for him !

The cell occupied by Count de Charney was in the rear of the fortress, in a small building constructed upon the

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ruins of an ancient stronghold, formerly a part of the defence of the fortress, but now made unnecessary by newer fortifications.

Four walls freshly whitewashed, where he could find no trace of those who had occupied this place of desolation before him ; a table upon which he could do nothing but eat ; 1 a chair, whose painful unity seemed to warn him that no human being would ever sit beside him there ; a box for his clothes ; a small sideboard of painted pine, half worm-eaten, upon which, in strange contrast, lay a rich dressing case, inlaid with silver (the only relic of his former splendor) ; a bed, narrow but clean ; a couple of blue cotton curtains, which hung at the window, as if in mockery; for considering the size of the iron bars and the high wall opposite, which rose ten feet in the air, there was no cause to fear either curious glances or the oppressive rays of the sun ; such was the furniture of his room.

Above this room there was another, precisely like his, but empty, unoccupied ; for he had no companions in this detached part of the fortress.

The rest of his universe was limited to a short and massive stone staircase, winding down to a tiny paved courtyard, constructed in one of the old moats of the citadel.

This was the place where, for two hours a day, he was allowed to take such exercise and to enjoy such liberty as the rules laid down by the commanding officer permitted.

Thence the prisoner could see the mountain peaks and the mists which rose from the plains ; for the outworks of the fortress, falling away abruptly to the east of the court -

1 Having no books or writing materials.

yard, allowed sun and air to enter. But once inside his room, a horizon of masonry alone met his gaze in the midst of the sublime and picturesque scenery by which he was surrounded. On his right bloomed the enchanted slopes of Saluces ; 1 on his left were the valleys of Aosta and the banks of the Chiara ; before him lay the wondrous plains of Turin ; behind him the Alps rose peak above peak, decked with rocks, forests, and chasms, from Mont Genevre to Mont Cenis, and he saw nothing ; nothing but a hazy sky hanging above his head in a framework of stones ; nothing but that lofty wall opposite, whose wearisome monotony was only broken towards the end of it by one small square window, through the bars of which from time to time he caught a glimpse of a sad and sullen face.

Such was the limited world where he was henceforth to seek his amusements and find his joys.

He struggled hard to do so.

He scribbled, he scrawled in charcoal on the walls of his room, figures and dates which reminded him of happy incidents of his youth ; but how few they were ! These memories did but leave him more down-hearted than ever.

Then his fatal demon, his thoughts, returned with their distressing convictions and he shaped them into maxims which he did not hesitate to scratch upon his walls, side by side with the names of his mother and sister.

Longing at last to overcome his morbid abstraction and his overwhelming idleness, he strove to adapt himself to frivolous and childish things ; he yielded to the sluggishness produced by prolonged imprisonment ; he revelled in it, he wallowed in it with rapture.

1 A town of Northern Italy.

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The scholar unravelled linen and silk !

The philosopher made reed pipes ; he built men-of-war of nutshells !

The man of genius made whistles, carved boxes and openwork baskets of fruit stones ! The revolutionist made chains and musical instruments of the wire springs 1 in his braces !

Then he fell to admiring himself in his works ; then, soon after, he was seized with disgust, and he trampled them all underfoot.

To vary his occupations, he carved a thousand odd figures on his table.

Never did schoolboy hack his desk, or load it with arabesques, in high and low relief, with more skill and patience. The church at Caudebec , 2 the pulpit and palm trees of St. Gudule, the cathedral at Brussels, are not adorned with a greater profusion of figures on wood. There were houses upon houses, fishes upon trees, men taller than the steeples, boats upon roofs, carriages in the middle of a lake, dwarfed pyramids, and giant flies ; all this, horizontal, vertical, oblique, upside down, topsy-turvy, pell-mell, a hieroglyphic chaos, where he sometimes struggled to find a symbolic meaning, a sequence, a plot ; for one who had such firm faith in the power of chance might well hope to find a perfect poem in the scratches upon his table, like a drawing by Raphael 3 on the mottled rims of a bit of boxwood.

1 Elastic had not then been invented.

2 A small town in the department of lower Seine, with a church in the florid style of the fifteenth century.

3 Raphael, great Italian painter, born at Urbino 1483, died 1520.

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He thus tried his best to multiply the difficulties to be overcome, the problems to be solved, the riddles to be guessed, and yet tedium, dread tedium, surprised him in the midst of all these grave cares !

The man whose face he had seen at the end of the high wall might perhaps have afforded him more genuine diversion ; but this fellow-prisoner appeared to shun his gaze, withdrawing from his grating as soon as the Count seemed to look at him with any attention. Charney at once took an aversion to him.

He had so poor an opinion of mankind that this movement to retreat was all that was needed to make him think that the unknown was a spy charged to watch him even in the leisure of his prison, or an ancient enemy enjoying his misery and disgrace.

When he questioned the gaoler on this point, the latter tried to undeceive him.

"That is an Italian,” he said; "a good fellow, a good Christian, for I often find him saying his prayers.”

Charney shrugged his shoulders.

"And why is he here ? ” he asked.

" He tried to kill the emperor .’ 5

" So he is a patriot ? ”

" A patriot ? oh ! no ; but the poor man had a son and a daughter ; he has only a daughter now ; and his son died in Germany. ... A cannon ball carried off his head. Povero jigliuolo / ” 1

" Then it was only an outburst of egotism ! ” muttered Charney.

" Zounds ! you are not a father, Signor Conte" said the

1 Poor lad.

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gaoler. " If I had to choose between my little Antonio, who is still at his mother’s breast, and the empire, which is just about the same age as he is. . . . Cristo santo ! But silence, I don’t want to live at Fenestrella except with the keys at my belt or under my pillow.”

"And what are the present occupations of this bold conspirator ? ”

" He catches flies,” said the gaoler with a semi-jocose expression.

Charney no longer hated his neighbor ; he despised him.

" Is he crazy ? ” he exclaimed.

" Percht pazzo} Count ? You came here more recently than he did, and you are already a master-hand at wood carving. Pazienza ! ” 2

In spite of the irony contained in these last words, Charney resumed his manual labors and the explanation of his hieroglyphics, remedies which were still of no avail against the evils which tormented him.

Amid these trifling occupations, amid these trials, the winter wore away.

Happily for him a new subject of diversion soon came to his aid.

1 Why crazy.

2 Wait awhile.

Chapter III

One day, at the set hour, Charney was walking in his courtyard, his head bent, his arms crossed behind his back, pacing slowly, softly up and down, as if to enlarge the narrow limits which he was permitted to traverse.

Springtime was at hand ; a gentler air filled his lungs, and he longed to be at liberty, to be free to come and go.

He was counting the paving stones of the little yard one by one, no doubt to make sure of the correctness of his former calculations, for it was not by any means the first time that he had counted them, when he saw, there, directly in front of him, before his eyes, a tiny hillock of earth slightly upheaved between two paving stones and gaping wide at the top.

He paused and his heart beat ; he knew not why. But to a prisoner everything is cause for hope or fear ! In the most indifferent objects, the most insignificant event, he seeks some miraculous reason which may lead to his rescue.

Perhaps this slight upheaval of the surface may be caused by some vast works in the bowels of the earth ! There may be passageways underground which will open and make a road for him to pass through fields and mountains ! Perhaps his friends or his former accomplices are sapping and mining 1 to get at him and restore him to life and liberty !

1 " Sap,” open trenches on the surface of the ground. " Mine,” underground galleries. Both are used when approaching a fortified place, regularly besieged.

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He listens eagerly, and fancies he hears a dull, longdrawn sound from the centre of the fortress ; he lifts his head, and the air in commotion bears to him the rapid strokes of an alarm bell. The roll of drums runs along the ramparts, as a signal for war. He shudders and presses a quivering hand to his forehead, which is moist with apprehension.