The Man with the broken Ear by Edmond About (phonics books .TXT) 📕

I took you for a madman; but now I remember that the newspapers have contained some scraps of your history, and I see that you are the victim of a mistake. I am not forty-six years old, but thirty-four. My mother's name was not Clementine Pichon, but Marie Herval. She was not born at Nancy, but at Vannes, and she was but seven years old in 1813. Nevertheless, I am happy to make your acquaintance."

"Ah! you're not my son!" replied Fougas, angrily. "Very well! So much the worse for you! No one seems to want a father of the name of Fougas! As for sons by the name of Langevin, one only has to stoop to pick them up. I know where to find one who is not a Counsellor of the Prefecture, it is true, and who does not put on a laced coat to go to mass, but who has an honest and simple heart, and is named Pierre, just like me! But, I beg your pardon, when one shows gentlemen the door, one ought at least to return what belongs to them."

"I don't prevent your collecting the bon-bons which my children have scattered over the floor."

"Yes, I'm talking about bon-bons with a vengeance! My million, sir!"

"What million?"

"Your brother's million!---- No! The million that belongs to him who is not your brother--to Clementine's son, my dear and only child, the only scion of my race, Pierre Langevin, called Pierrot, a miller at Vergaville!"

"But I assure you, monsieur, that I haven't your million, or anybody's else."

"You dare to deny it, scoundrel, when I sent it to you by mail, myself!"

"Possibly you sent it, but I certainly have not received it!"

"Aha! Defend yourself!"

He made at his throat, and perhaps France would have lost a Counsellor of Prefecture that day, if the servant had not come in with two letters in her hand. Fougas recognized his own handwriting and the Berlin postmark, tore open the envelope, and displayed the check.

"Here," said he, "is the million I intended for you, if you had seen fit to be my son! Now it's too late for you to retract. The voice of Nature calls me to Vergaville. Your servant, sir!"

On the 4th of September, Pierre Langevin, miller at Vergaville, celebrated the marriage of Cadet Langevin, his second son. The miller's family was numerous, respectable, and in comfortable circumstances. First, there was the grandfather, a fine, hale old man, who took his four meals a day, and doctored his little ailings with the wine of Bar or Thiaucourt. The grandmother, Catharine, had been pretty in her day, and a little frivolous; but she expiated by absolute deafness the crime of having listened too tenderly to gallants. M. Pierre Langevin, alias Pierrot, alias Big Peter, after having sought his fortune in America (a custom becoming quite general in the rural districts), had returned to the village in pretty much the condition of the infant Saint John, and God only knows how many jokes were perpetrated over his ill luck. The people of Lorraine are terrible wags, and if you are not fond of personal jokes, I advise you not to travel in their neighborhood. Big Peter, stung to the quick, and half crazed at having run through his inheritance, borrowed money at ten per cent., bought the mill at Vergaville, worked like a plough-horse in heavy land, and repaid his capital and the interest. Fortune, who owed him some compensations, gave him gratis pro Deo , a half dozen superb workers--six big boys, whom his wife presented him with, one annually, as regularly as clock-work. Every year, nine months, to a day, after the fête of Vergaville, Claudine (otherwise known as Glaudine) presented one for baptism. At last she died after the sixth, from eating four huge pieces of quiche before her churching. Big Peter did not marry again, having concluded that he had workers enough, and he continued to add to his fortune nicely. But, as standing jokes last a long time in villages, the miller's comrades still spoke to him about those famous millions which he did not bring back from America, and Big Peter grew very red under his flour, just as he used to in his earlier days.

On the 4th of September, then, he married his second son to a good big woman of Altroff, who had fat and blazing cheeks: this being a kind of beauty much affected in the country. The wedding took place at the mill, because the bride was orphaned of father and mother, and had previously lived with the nuns of Molsheim.

A messenger came and told Pierre Langevin that a gentleman wearing decorations had something to say to him, and Fougas appeared in all his glory. "My good sir," said the miller, "I am far from being in a mood to talk business, as we just took a good pull at white wine before mass; but we are going to drink some red wine that's by no means bad, at dinner, and if your heart prompts you, don't be backward! The table is a long one. We can talk afterwards. You don't say no? Then that's yes."

"For once," thought Fougas, "I am not mistaken. This is surely the voice of Nature! I would have liked a soldier better, but this genial rustic, so comfortably rounded, satisfies my heart. I cannot be indebted to him for many gratifications of my pride; but never mind! I am sure of his good-will."

Dinner was served, and the table more heavily laden with viands than the stomach of Gargantua. Big Peter, as proud of his big family as of his little fortune, made the Colonel stand by as he enumerated his children. And Fougas was joyful at learning that he had six welcome grandchildren.

He was seated at the right of a little stunted old woman who was presented to him as the grandmother of the youngsters. Heavens! how changed Clementine appeared to him. Save the eyes which were still lively and sparkling, there was no longer anything about her that could be recognized. "See," thought Fougas, "what I would have been like to-day, if the worthy John Meiser had not desiccated me!" He smiled to himself on regarding Grandfather Langevin, the reputed progenitor of this numerous family. "Poor old fellow," murmured Fougas, "you little think what you owe to me!"

They dine boisterously at village weddings. This is an abuse which, I sincerely hope, Civilization will never reform. Under cover of the noise, Fougas entered into conversation, or thought he did, with his left-hand neighbor. "Clementine!" he said to her. She raised her eyes, and her nose too, and responded:

"Yes, monsieur."

"My heart has not deceived me, then?--you are indeed my Clementine!"

"Yes, monsieur."

"And you have recognized me, noble and excellent woman!"

"Yes, monsieur."

"But how did you conceal your emotion so well?---- How strong women are!---- I fall from the skies into the midst of your peaceful existence, and you see me without moving a muscle!"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Have you forgiven me for a seeming injury for which Destiny alone is responsible?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Thanks! A thousand thanks!---- What a charming family you have about you! This good Pierre, who almost opened his arms on seeing me approach, is my son, is he not?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Rejoice! He shall be rich! He already has happiness; I bring him fortune. His portion shall be a million. Oh, Clementine! what a commotion there will be in this simple assembly, when I raise my voice and say to my son: 'Here! this million is for you!' Is it a good time now? Shall I speak? Shall I tell all?"

"Yes, monsieur."

Fougas immediately arose, and requested silence. The people thought he was going to sing a song, and all kept quiet.

"Pierre Langevin," said he with emphasis, "I have come back from the other world, and brought you a million."

If Big Peter did not want to get angry, he at least got red, and the joke seemed to him in bad taste. But when Fougas announced that he had loved the grandmother in her youth, grandfather Langevin no longer hesitated to fling a bottle at his head. The Colonel's son, his splendid grandchildren, and even the bride all jumped up in high dudgeon and there was a very pretty scrimmage indeed.

For the first time in his life, Fougas did not get the upper hand. He was afraid that he might injure some of his family. Paternal affection robbed him of three quarters of his power.

But having learned during the clamor that Clementine was called Catharine, and that Pierre Langevin was born in 1810, he resumed the offensive, blacked three eyes, broke an arm, mashed two noses, knocked in four dozen teeth, and regained his carriage with all the honors of war.

"Devil take the children!" said he, while riding in a post-chaise toward the Avricourt station. "If I have a son, I wish he may find me!"


CHAPTER XIX.

HE SEEKS AND BESTOWS THE HAND OF CLEMENTINE.


On the fifth of September, at ten o'clock in the morning, Leon Renault, emaciated, dejected and scarcely recognizable, was at the feet of Clementine Sambucco in her aunt's parlor. There were flowers on the mantel and flowers in all the vases. Two great burglar sunbeams broke through the open windows. A million of little bluish atoms were playing in the light, crossing each other and getting fantastically mixed up, like the ideas in a volume of M. Alfred Houssaye. In the garden, the apples were falling, the peaches were ripe, the hornets were ploughing broad, deep furrows in the duchesse pears; the trumpet-flowers and clematis-vines were in blossom, and to crown all, a great mass of heliotropes, trained over the left window, was flourishing in all its beauty. The sun had given all the grapes in the arbor a tint of golden bronze; and the great Yucca on the lawn, shaken by the wind like a Chinese hat, noiselessly clashed its silver bells. But the son of M. Renault was more pale and haggard than the white lilac sprays, more blighted than the leaves on the old cherry-tree; his heart was without joy and without hope, like the currant bushes without leaves and without fruit!

To be exiled from his native land, to have lived three years in an inhospitable climate, to have passed so many days in deep mines, so many nights over an earthenware stove in the midst of an infinity of bugs and a multiplicity of serfs, and to see himself set aside for a twenty-five-louis Colonel whom he himself had brought to life by soaking him in water!

All men are subject to disappointments, but surely never had one encountered a misfortune so unforeseen and so extraordinary. Leon knew that Earth is not a valley flowing with chocolate and soup à la reine . He knew the list of the renowned unfortunates beginning with Abel slain in the garden of Paradise, and ending with Rubens assassinated in the gallery of the Louvre at Paris. But history, which seldom instructs us, never consoles us. The poor engineer in vain repeated to himself that a thousand others had been supplanted on the day before marriage, and a hundred thousand on the day after. Melancholy was stronger than Reason, and three or four soft locks were beginning to whiten about his temples.

"Clementine!" said he, "I am the most miserable of men. In refusing me the hand which you have promised, you condemn me to agony a hundred times