During that month, the whole family would have died of starvation, hadit not been for a supply of rice, which one of their acquaintances, theComtesse d'Auteuil, had had the forethought to lay aside, and which sheconsented to share with the father and the two children.
Thus, Monsieur de Varandeuil escaped the Revolutionary Tribunal byburying himself in obscurity. He escaped it also by reason of the factthat the accounts of his administration of his office were stillunsettled, as he had had the good fortune to procure the postponement ofthe settlement from month to month. Then, too, he kept suspicion at bayby his personal animosity toward some great personages at court, and bythe hatred of the queen which many retainers of the king's brothers hadconceived. Whenever he had occasion to speak of that wretched woman, heused violent, bitter, insulting words, uttered in such a passionate,sincere tone that they almost made him appear as an enemy of the royalfamily; so that those to whom he was simply Citizen Roulot looked uponhim as a good patriot, and those who knew his former name almost excusedhim for having been what he had been: a noble, the friend of a princeof the blood, and a place holder.
The Republic had reached the epoch of patriotic suppers, those repastsof a whole street in the street; Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, in herconfused, terrified reminiscences of those days, could still see thetables on Rue Pavee, with their legs in the streams of the blood ofSeptember flowing from La Force! It was at one of these suppers thatMonsieur de Varandeuil conceived a scheme that completely assured hisimmunity. He informed two of his neighbors at table, devoted patriotsboth, one of whom was on intimate terms with Chaumette, that he was ingreat embarrassment because his daughter had been privately baptizedonly, so that she had no civil status, and said that he would be veryhappy if Chaumette would have her entered on the registers of themunicipality and honor her with a name selected by him from theRepublican calendar of Greece or Rome. Chaumette at once arranged ameeting with this father, _who had reached so high a level_, as theysaid in those days. During the interview Mademoiselle de Varandeuil wastaken into a closet where she found two women who were instructed tosatisfy themselves as to her sex, and she showed them her breast. Theythen escorted her to the great Salle des Declarations, and there, aftera metaphorical allocution, Chaumette baptized her _Sempronie_; a namewhich habit was destined to fasten upon Mademoiselle de Varandeuil andwhich she never abandoned.
Somewhat protected and reassured by that episode, the family passedthrough the terrible days preceding the fall of Robespierre. At lastcame the ninth Thermidor and deliverance. But poverty was none the lessa pressing fact in the Varandeuil household. They had not lived throughthe bitter days of the Revolution, they were not to live through thewretched days of the Directory without unhoped-for succor, money sent byProvidence by the hand of Folly. The father and the two children couldhardly have existed without the income from four shares in the_Vaudeville_, an investment which Monsieur de Varandeuil was happilyinspired to make in 1791, and which proved to be the best of allpossible investments in those years of death, when people felt the needof forgetting death every evening--in those days of supreme agony, wheneveryone wished to laugh his last laugh at the latest song. Soon theseshares, added to the amount of some outstanding claims that were paid,provided the family with something more than bread. They thereupon leftthe eaves of the Hotel du Petit-Charolais and took a small suite in theMarais, on Rue du Chaume.
No change took place, however, in the habits of the household. Thedaughter continued to wait upon her father and brother. Monsieur deVarandeuil had gradually become accustomed to see in her only the womanindicated by her costume and by the work that she did. The father's eyesdid not care to recognize a daughter in that servant's garb and in herperformance of menial occupations. She was no longer a person with hisblood in her veins or who had the honor to belong to him: she was aservant; and his selfishness confirmed him so fully in that idea and inhis harsh treatment of her, he found that filial, affectionate,respectful service,--which cost nothing at all, by the way,--soconvenient, that it cost him a bitter pang to give it up later, when alittle more money mended the family fortunes: battles had to be foughtto induce him to take a maid to fill his child's place and to relievethe girl from the most humiliating domestic labor.
They were without information concerning Madame de Varandeuil, who hadrefused to join her husband at Paris during the early years of theRevolution; at last they learned that she had married again in Germany,producing, as a certificate of her husband's death, the deathcertificate of his guillotined brother, the baptismal name having beenchanged. The girl grew up, therefore, abandoned, without affection, withno mother except a woman dead to her family, whom her father taught herto despise. Her childhood was passed in constant anxiety, in theprivations that wear life away, in the fatigue resulting from labor thatexhausted the strength of a sickly child, in an expectation of deaththat became, at last, an impatient longing to die: there had been hourswhen that girl of thirteen was tempted to do as many women did in thosedays--to open the door and rush into the street, crying: _Vive le roi!_in order to end it all. Her girlhood was a continuation of her childhoodwith less tragic motives of weariness. She had to submit to the illhumor, the exactions, the bitter moods, the tempestuous outbreaks of herfather, which had been hitherto somewhat curbed and restrained by thegreat tempest of the time. She was still doomed to undergo the fatiguesand humiliations of a servant. She remained alone with her father, keptdown and humbled, shut out from his arms and his kisses, her heart heavywith grief because she longed to love and had nothing to love. She wasbeginning to suffer from the cold void that is formed about a woman byan unattractive, unfascinating girlhood, by a girlhood devoid of beautyand sympathetic charm. She could see that she aroused a sort ofcompassion with her long nose, her yellow complexion, her angularfigure, her thin body. She felt that she was ugly, and that her uglinesswas made repulsive by her miserable costumes, her dismal, woolen dresseswhich she made herself, her father paying for the material only aftermuch grumbling: she could not induce him to make her a small allowancefor her toilet until she was thirty-five.
How sad and bitter and lonely for her was her life with that morose,sour old man, who was always scolding and complaining at home, affableonly in society, and who left her every evening to go to the greathouses that were reopened under the Directory and at the beginning ofthe Empire! Only at very long intervals did he take her out, and when hedid, it was always to that everlasting _Vaudeville_, where he had boxes.Even on those rare occasions, his daughter was terrified. She trembledall the time that she was with him; she was afraid of his violentdisposition, of the tone of the old regime that his outbreaks of wrathhad retained, of the facility with which he would raise his cane at aninsolent remark from the _canaille_. On almost every occasion there werescenes with the manager, wordy disputes with people in the pit, andthreats of personal violence to which she put an end by lowering thecurtain of the box. The same thing was kept up in the street, even inthe cab, with the driver, who would refuse to carry them at Monsieur deVarandeuil's price and would keep them waiting one hour, two hourswithout moving; sometimes would unharness his horse in his wrath andleave him in the vehicle with his daughter who would vainly implore himto submit and pay the price demanded.
Considering that these diversions should suffice for Sempronie, andhaving, moreover, a jealous desire to have her all to himself and alwaysunder his hand, Monsieur de Varandeuil allowed her to form no intimacieswith anybody. He did not take her into society; he did not take her tothe houses of their kinsfolk who returned after the emigration, excepton days of formal receptions or family gatherings. He kept her closelyconfined to the house: not until she was forty did he consider that shewas old enough to be allowed to go out alone. Thus, the girl had nofriendship, no connection of any sort to lean upon; indeed, she nolonger had her younger brother with her, as he had gone to the UnitedStates and enlisted in the American navy.
She was forbidden by her father to marry, he did not admit that shewould allow he
rself even to think of marrying and deserting him; all thesuitors who might have come forward he fought and rejected in advance,in order not to leave his daughter the courage to speak to him on thesubject, if the occasion should ever arise.
Meanwhile our victories were stripping Italy of her treasures. Themasterpieces of Rome, Florence and Venice were hurrying to Paris.Italian art was at a premium. Collectors no longer took pride in anypaintings but those of the Italian school. Monsieur de Varandeuil saw anopening for a fortune in this change of taste. He, also, had fallen avictim to the artistic dilettantism which was one of the refinedpassions of the nobility before the Revolution. He had lived in thesociety of artists and collectors; he admired pictures. It occurred tohim to collect a gallery of Italian works and then to sell them. Pariswas still overrun with the objects of art sold and scattered under theTerror. Monsieur de Varandeuil began to walk back and forth through thestreets--they were the markets for large canvases in those days,--and atevery step he made a discovery; every day he purchased something. Soonthe small apartment was crowded with old, black paintings, so large forthe most part that the walls would not hold them with their frames, withthe result that there was no room for the furniture. These werechristened Raphael, Vinci, or Andrea del Sarto; there were none but_chefs d'oeuvre_, and the father would keep his daughter standing infront of them hours at a time, forcing his admiration upon her, wearyingher with his ecstatic flights. He would ascend from epithet to epithet,would work himself into a state of intoxication, of delirium, and wouldend by thinking that he was negotiating with an imaginary purchaser,would dispute with him over the price of a masterpiece, and would cryout: "A hundred thousand francs for my Rosso! yes, monsieur, a hundredthousand francs!" His daughter, dismayed by the large amount of moneythat those great, ugly things, in which there were so many nude men,deducted from the housekeeping supply, ventured upon remonstrance andtried to check such ruinous extravagance. Monsieur de Varandeuil losthis temper, waxed wroth like a man who was ashamed to find one of hisblood so deficient in taste, and told her that that was her fortune andthat she would see later if he was an old fool. At last she induced himto realize. The sale took place; it was a failure, one of the mostcomplete shipwrecks of illusions that the glazed hall of the HotelBullion has ever seen. Stung to the quick, furious with rage at thisblow, which not only involved pecuniary loss and a serious inroad uponhis little fortune, but was also a direct denial of his claims toconnoisseurship, a slap at his knowledge of art delivered upon the cheekof his Raphaels, Monsieur de Varandeuil informed his daughter that theywere too poor to remain in Paris and that they must go into theprovinces to live. Having been cradled and reared in an epoch littleadapted to inspire a love of country life in women, Mademoiselle deVarandeuil tried vainly to combat her father's resolution: she wasobliged to go with him wherever he chose to go, and, by leaving Paris,to lose the society and friendship of two young kinswomen, to whom, intheir too infrequent interviews, she had partly given her confidence,and whose hearts she had felt reaching out to her as to an older sister.
Monsieur de Varandeuil hired a small house at L'Isle-Adam. There he wasnear familiar scenes, in the atmosphere of what was formerly a littlecourt, close at hand to two or three chateaux, whose owners he knew, andwhich were beginning to throw open their doors once more. Then, too,since the Revolution a little community of well-to-do bourgeois, richshopkeepers, had settled upon this territory which once belonged to theContis. The name of Monsieur de Varandeuil sounded very grand in theears of all those good people. They bowed very low to him, theycontended for the honor of entertaining him, they listenedrespectfully, almost devoutly, to the stories he told of society as itwas. And thus, flattered, caressed, honored as a relic of Versailles, hehad the place of honor and the prestige of a lord among them. When hedined with Madame Mutel, a former baker, who had forty thousand francs ayear, the hostess left the table, silk dress and all, to go and fry theoyster plants herself: Monsieur de Varandeuil did not like them exceptas she cooked them. But Monsieur de Varandeuil's decision to go intoretirement at L'Isle-Adam was mainly due, not to the pleasantsurroundings there, but to a project that he had formed. He had gonethither to obtain leisure for a monumental work. That which he had beenunable to do for the honor and glory of Italian art by his collection,he proposed to do by his pen. He had learned a little Italian with hiswife; he took it into his head to present Vasari's _Lives of thePainters_ to the French public, to translate it with the assistance ofhis daughter, who, when she was very small, had heard her mother's maidspeak Italian and had retained a few words. He plunged the girl intoVasari, he locked up her time and her thoughts in grammars,dictionaries, commentaries, all the works of all the scholiasts ofItalian art, kept her bending double over the ungrateful toil, the_ennui_ and labor of translating Italian words, groping in the darknessof her imperfect knowledge. The whole burden of the book fell upon her;when he had laid out her task, he would leave her tete-a-tete with thevolumes bound in white vellum, to go and ramble about the neighborhood,paying visits, gambling at some chateau or dining among the bourgeois ofhis acquaintance, to whom he would complain pathetically of thelaborious effort that the vast undertaking of his translation entailedupon him. He would return home, listen to the reading of the translationmade during the day, make comments and critical remarks, and upset asentence to give it a different meaning, which his daughter wouldeliminate again when he had gone; then he would resume his walks andjaunts, like a man who has well earned his leisure, walking very erect,with his hat under his arm and dainty pumps on his feet, enjoyinghimself, the sky and the trees and Rousseau's God, gentle to all natureand loving to the plants. From time to time fits of impatience, commonto children and old men, would overtake him; he would demand a certainnumber of pages for the next day, and would compel his daughter to situp half the night.
Two or three years passed in this labor, in which Sempronie's eyes wereruined at last. She lived entombed in her father's Vasari, more entirelyalone than ever, holding aloof through innate, haughty repugnance fromthe bourgeois ladies of L'Isle-Adam and their manners _a la MadameAngot_, and too poorly clad to visit at the chateaux. For her, there wasno pleasure, no diversion, which was not made wretched and poisoned byher father's eccentricities and fretful humor. He tore up the flowersthat she planted secretly in the garden. He would have nothing there butvegetables and he cultivated them himself, putting forth grandutilitarian theories, arguments which might have induced the Conventionto convert the Tuileries into a potato field. Her only enjoyment waswhen her father, at very long intervals, allowed her to entertain one ofher two young friends for a week--a week which would have been sevendays of paradise to Sempronie, had not her father embittered its joys,its diversions, its fetes, with his always threatening outbreaks, hisill-humor always armed and alert, and his constant fault-finding abouttrifles--a bottle of eau de Cologne that Sempronie asked for to place inher friend's room, a dish for her dinner, or a place to which she wishedto take her.
At L'Isle-Adam Monsieur de Varandeuil had hired a servant, who almostimmediately became his mistress. A child was born of this connection,and the father, in his cynical indifference, was shameless enough tohave it brought up under his daughter's eyes. As the years rolled on thewoman acquired a firm foothold in the house. She ended by ruling thehousehold, father and daughter alike. The day came when Monsieur deVarandeuil chose to have her sit at his table and be served bySempronie. That was too much. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil rebelled underthe insult, and drew herself up to the full height of her indignation.Secretly, silently, in misery and isolation, harshly treated by thepeople and the things about her, the girl had built up a resolute,straightforward character; tears had tempered instead of softening it.Beneath filial docility and humility, beneath passive obedience, beneathapparent gentleness of disposition, she concealed a character of iron, aman's strength of will, one of those hearts which nothing bends andwhich never bend themselves. When her father demanded that she lowerherself to that extent, she reminded him that sh
e was his daughter, shereviewed her whole life, cast, in a flood of words, the shame and thereproach of it in his face, and concluded by informing him that if thatwoman did not leave the house that very evening, she would leave it, andthat she should have no difficulty in living, thank God! wherever shemight go, with the simple tastes he had forced upon her. The father,thunderstruck and bewildered by this revolt, yielded and dismissed theservant; but he retained a dastardly sort of rancor against his daughteron account of the sacrifice she had extorted from him. His spleenbetrayed itself in sharp, aggressive words, ironical thanks and bittersmiles. Sempronie's only revenge was to attend to his wants morethoroughly, more gently, more patiently than ever. Her devotion wasdestined to be subjected to one final test; the old man had a stroke ofapoplexy which left him with one whole side of his body stiff and dead,lame in one leg, and asleep so far as his intelligence was concerned,although keenly conscious of his misfortune and of his dependence uponhis daughter. Thereupon, all the evil that lay dormant in the depths ofhis nature was aroused and let loose. His selfishness amounted toferocity. Under the torment of his suffering and his weakness, he becamea sort of malevolent madman. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil devoted her daysand her nights to the invalid, who seemed to hate her for herattentions, to be humiliated by her care as if it implied generosity andforgiveness, to suffer torments at seeing always by his side,indefatigable and kindly, that image of duty. But what a life it was!She had to contend against the miserable man's incurable _ennui_, to bealways ready to bear him company, to lead him about and support him allday long. She must play cards with him when he was at home, and not lethim win or lose too much. She must combat his wishes, his gormandizingtendencies, take dishes away from him, and, in connection witheverything that he wanted, endure complaints, reproaches, insults,tears, mad despair, and the outbursts of childish anger in whichhelpless old men indulge. And this lasted ten years! ten years, duringwhich Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had no other recreation, no otherconsolation than to pour out all the tenderness and warmth of a maternalaffection upon one of her two young friends, recently married,--her_chick_, as she called her. It was Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's delightto go and pass a short time every fortnight in that happy household. Shewould kiss the pretty child, already in its cradle and asleep for thenight when she arrived; she would dine at racing speed; at dessert shewould send for a carriage and would hasten away like a tardy schoolboy.But in the last years of her father's life she could not even obtainpermission to dine out: the old man would no longer sanction such a longabsence and kept her almost constantly beside him, repeating again andagain that he was well aware that it was not amusing to take care of aninfirm old man like himself, but that she would soon be rid of him. Hedied in 1818, and, before his death, could find no words but these forher who had been his daughter nearly forty years: "I know that you neverloved me!"