A
Humble Drama
by Guy de Maupassant
(1850-1893)
Translators: Albert M.C. McMaster, A.E. Henderson, Mme. Quesada, & others.
by Guy de Maupassant
(1850-1893)
Translators: Albert M.C. McMaster, A.E. Henderson, Mme. Quesada, & others.
Meetings that are unexpected constitute the charm of traveling. Who has
not experienced the joy of suddenly coming across a Parisian, a college friend,
or a neighbor, five hundred miles from home? Who has not passed a night awake
in one of those small, rattling country stagecoaches, in regions where steam is
still a thing unknown, beside a strange young woman, of whom one has caught
only a glimpse in the dim light of the lantern, as she entered the carriage in
front of a white house in some small country town?
And the next morning, when one's head and ears feel numb with the
continuous tinkling of the bells and the loud rattling of the windows, what a
charming sensation it is to see your pretty neighbor open her eyes, startled,
glance around her, arrange her rebellious hair with her slender fingers, adjust
her hat, feel with sure hand whether her corset is still in place, her waist
straight, and her skirt not too wrinkled.
She glances at you coldly and curiously. Then she leans back and no
longer seems interested in anything but the country.
In spite of yourself, you watch her; and in spite of yourself you keep
on thinking of her. Who is she? Whence does she come? Where is she going? In
spite of yourself you spin a little romance around her. She is pretty; she
seems charming! Happy he who . . . Life might be delightful with her. Who
knows? She is perhaps the woman of our dreams, the one suited to our
disposition, the one for whom our heart calls.
And how delicious even the disappointment at seeing her get out at the
gate of a country house! A man stands there, who is awaiting her, with two
children and two maids. He takes her in his arms and kisses as he lifts her
out. Then she stoops over the little ones, who hold up their hands to her; she
kisses them tenderly; and then they all go away together, down a path, while
the maids catch the packages which the driver throws down to them from the
coach.
Adieu! It is all over. You never will see her again! Adieu to the young
woman who has passed the night by your side. You know her no more, you have not
spoken to her; all the same, you feel a little sad to see her go. Adieu!
I have had many of these souvenirs of travel, some joyous and some sad.
Once I was in Auvergne, tramping through those delightful French
mountains, that are not too high, not too steep, but friendly and familiar. I
had climbed the Sancy, and entered a little inn, near a pilgrim's chapel called
Notre-Dame de Vassiviere, when I saw a queer, ridiculous-looking old woman
breakfasting alone at the end table.
She was at least seventy years old, tall, skinny, and angular, and her
white hair was puffed around her temples in the old-fashioned style. She was
dressed like a traveling Englishwoman, in awkward, queer clothing, like a
person who is indifferent to dress. She was eating an omelet and drinking
water.
Her face was peculiar, with restless eyes and the expression of one with
whom fate has dealt unkindly. I watched her, in spite of myself, thinking:
"Who is she? What is the life of this woman? Why is she wandering alone
through these mountains?"
She paid and rose to leave, drawing up over her shoulders an astonishing
little shawl, the two ends of which hung over her arms. From a corner of the
room she took an alpenstock, which was covered with names traced with a hot
iron; then she went out, straight, erect, with the long steps of a
letter-carrier who is setting out on his route.
A guide was waiting for her at the door, and both went away. I watched
them go down the valley, along the road marked by a line of high wooden
crosses. She was taller than her companion, and seemed to walk faster than he.
Two hours later I was climbing the edge of the deep funnel that incloses
Lake Pavin in a marvelous and enormous basin of verdure, full of trees, bushes,
rocks, and flowers. This lake is so round that it seems as if the outline had
been drawn with a pair of compasses, so clear and blue that one might deem it a
flood of azure come down from the sky, so charming that one would like to live
in a but on the wooded slope which dominates this crater, where the cold, still
water is sleeping. The Englishwoman was standing there like a statue, gazing
upon the transparent sheet down in the dead volcano. She was straining her eyes
to penetrate below the surface down to the unknown depths, where monstrous
trout which have devoured all the other fish are said to live. As I was passing
close by her, it seemed to me that two big tears were brimming her eyes. But
she departed at a great pace, to rejoin her guide, who had stayed behind in an
inn at the foot of the path leading to the lake.
I did not see her again that day.
The next day, at nightfall, I came to the chateau of Murol. The old
fortress, an enormous tower standing on a peak in the midst of a large valley,
where three valleys intersect, rears its brown, uneven, cracked surface into
the sky; it is round, from its large circular base to the crumbling turrets on
its pinnacles.
It astonishes the eye more than any other ruin by its simple mass, its
majesty, its grave and imposing air of antiquity. It stands there, alone, high
as a mountain, a dead queen, but still the queen of the valleys stretched out
beneath it. You go up by a slope planted with firs, then you enter a narrow
gate, and stop at the foot of the walls, in the first inclosure, in full view
of the entire country.
Inside there are ruined halls, crumbling stairways, unknown cavities,
dungeons, walls cut through in the middle, vaulted roofs held up one knows not
how, and a mass of stones and crevices, overgrown with grass, where animals
glide in and out.
I was exploring this ruin alone.
Suddenly I perceived behind a bit of wall a being, a kind of phantom,
like the spirit of this ancient and crumbling habitation.
I was taken aback with surprise, almost with fear, when I recognized the
old lady whom I had seen twice.
She was weeping, with big tears in her eyes, and held her handkerchief in
her hand.
I turned around to go away, when she spoke to me, apparently ashamed to
have been surprised in her grief.
"Yes, monsieur, I am crying. That does not happen often to
me."
"Pardon me, madame, for having disturbed you," I stammered,
confused, not knowing what to say. "Some misfortune has doubtless come to
you."
"Yes. No--I am like a lost dog," she murmured, and began to
sob, with her handkerchief over her eyes.
Moved by these contagious tears, I took her hand, trying to calm her.
Then brusquely she told me her history, as if no longer ably to bear her grief
alone.
"Oh! Oh! Monsieur--if you knew--the sorrow in which I live--in what
sorrow.
"Once I was happy. I have a house down there--a home. I cannot go
back to it any more; I shall never go back to it again, it is too hard to bear.
"I have a son. It is he! it is he! Children don't know. Oh, one has
such a short time to live! If I should see him now I should perhaps not
recognize him. How I loved him? How I loved him! Even before he was born, when
I felt him move. And after that! How I have kissed and caressed and cherished
him! If you knew how many nights I have passed in watching him sleep, and how
many in thinking of him. I was crazy about him. When he was eight years old his
father sent him to boarding-school. That was the end. He no longer belonged to
me. Oh, heavens! He came to see me every Sunday. That was all!
"He went to college in Paris. Then he came only four times a year,
and every time I was astonished to see how he had changed, to find him taller
without having seen him grow. They stole his childhood from me, his confidence,
and his love which otherwise would not have gone away from me; they stole my
joy in seeing him grow, in seeing him become a little man.
"I saw him four times a year. Think of it! And at every one of his
visits his body, his eye, his movements, his voice his laugh, were no longer
the same, were no longer mine. All these things change so quickly in a child;
and it is so sad if one is not there to see them change; one no longer
recognizes him.
"One year he came with down on his cheek! He! my son! I was
dumfounded --would you believe it? I hardly dared to kiss him. Was it really
he, my little, little curly head of old, my dear; dear child, whom I had held
in his diapers or my knee, and who had nursed at my breast with his little
greedy lips--was it he, this tall, brown boy, who no longer knew how to kiss
me, who seemed to love me as a matter of duty, who called me 'mother' for the
sake of politeness, and who kissed me on the forehead, when I felt like
crushing him in my arms?
"My husband died. Then my parents, and then my two sisters. When
Death enters a house it seems as if he were hurrying to do his utmost, so as
not to have to return for a long time after that. He spares only one or two to
mourn the others.
"I remained alone. My tall son was then studying law. I was hoping
to live and die near him, and I went to him so that we could live together. But
he had fallen into the ways of young men, and he gave me to understand that I
was in his way. So I left. I was wrong in doing so, but I suffered too much in
feeling myself in his way, I, his mother! And I came back home.
"I hardly ever saw him again.
'He married. What a joy! At last we should be together for good. I
should have grandchildren. His wife was an Englishwoman, who took a dislike to
me. Why? Perhaps she thought that I loved him too much.
"Again I was obliged to go away. And I was alone. Yes, monsieur.
"Then he went to England, to live with them, with his wife's
parents. Do you understand? They have him--they have my son for themselves.
They have stolen him from me. He writes to me once a month. At first he came to
see me. But now he no longer comes.
"It is now four years since I saw him last. His face then was
wrinkled and his hair white. Was that possible? This man, my son, almost an old
man? My little rosy child of old? No doubt I shall never see him again.
"And so I travel about all the year. I go east and west, as you
see, with no companion.
"I am like a lost dog. Adieu, monsieur! don't stay here with me for
it hurts me to have told you all this."
I went down the hill, and on turning round to glance back, I saw the old
woman standing on a broken wall, looking out upon the mountains, the long
valley and Lake Chambon in the distance.
And her skirt and the queer little shawl which she wore around her thin
shoulders were fluttering tike a flag in the wind.
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