A Childhood in Brittany Eighty Years Ago Part 6

CHAPTER XI

BONNE MAMAN'S DEATH

We were at Quimper when _bonne maman_ died. She had been failing for some time, and her character, until then so gentle, had altered. Mere trifles disquieted her, and she became fretful, alarmed, and even impatient. She seemed so little in her big bed, and, when I wanted to climb up beside her, after my wont, she signed to Jeannie to take me away and said that it tired her too much to see children and that the air of a sick-room was not good for them. "Tell my daughter--tell her.

They must not come!" she repeated several times in a strange, shrill voice. I slid down from the bed, I remember, abashed and disconcerted, and while I longed to see my dear _bonne maman_ as I had known her, I was afraid of this changed _bonne maman_; and it hurt me more for her than for myself that she should be so changed.

But one day when _maman_ was in the room, she caught sight of me hanging about furtively in the pa.s.sage, and called out gently to me to go away, that _bonne maman_ was tired and was going to sleep. Then a poor little voice, no longer shrill, very trembling, came from the bed, saying: "Let her come, Eliane. It will not hurt me. I want to see her for a moment."

I approached the bed, walking on tiptoe; the curtains were drawn to shade _bonne maman_ from the sunlight, and I softly came and stood within them. O my poor _bonne maman_! I could hardly recognize her.

She seemed old--old and shrunken, and her eyes no longer smiled. She looked at me so fixedly that I was frightened, and she said to _maman_:

"Lift her up on the bed. I want to kiss her." She took my hand then, and looked at my little finger as she always used to do, and said: "I see that you have been very good with your mother, but that you don't obey your nurse. You must always be obedient. You understand me, don't you, Sophie? Do you say your prayers?"

"Yes, _bonne maman_," I answered.

"Have you said them this morning?"

"No, _bonne maman_."

"Say them now."

I made the sign of the cross and said the following prayer, which I repeated morning and evening every day, and with slightly altered nomenclature, my children and grandchildren have repeated, as I did, until the age of reason: "_Mon Dieu_, bless me and bless and preserve _grand-pere_, _bonne maman_, _maman_, _papa_, my sisters, my brother, Tiny" [this was my little dog], "Ghislaine, France, Kerandraon, all my family, and make me very good. Amen." When I had finished, _bonne maman_ drew me gently to her, pressed me in her arms, and kissed me on my eyes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Paul]

After this, for how many days I do not remember, everything became very still in the house. The servants whispered when they had to speak, and the older people, when they met us, told us gently to go into the garden and to be very quiet. We did not see _maman_ or _papa_ at all. My _tante_ de Laisieu was with us, and dear France.

_Bon papa_ arrived from Paris. One morning was very sunny and beautiful, and as I played with Eliane in the garden I forgot the oppression that weighed upon us and began to sing to her a Breton song which Jeannie had taught me. These were the words:

Le Roy vient demain au chateau, "Ecoute moi bien, ma Fleurette, Tu regarderas bien son aigrette!"

"Je regarderai," dit Fleurette, "Pour bien reconnaitre le Roy!

Mes yeux ne verront que toi, Et mon coeur n'aimera que toi."

While I sang I looked up at _bonne maman's_ window, for I knew how fond she was of hearing me. The window was shut, and this was unusual; so I sang the louder, that she should hear me, of _Fleurette_ and _le Roy_. Then France and one of the servants came running out of the house, and I saw that both had been crying, and France put his arm about me while the servant said, "Mademoiselle must not sing." And France whispered: "You will wake _bonne maman_. Go into the orchard, dear Sophie. There you will not be heard." In the evening papa came for us in the nursery, and I saw that he, too, had been crying. I had never before seen tears in his dear eyes. He took us up to _maman's_ room. All the blinds were drawn down, but I could see her lying on her bed, in her white woolen _peignoir_, her arms crossed behind her head, her black jet rosary lying along the sheet beside her. We kissed her, one after the other, and I saw the great tears rolling down her cheeks.

"_Maman_--is _bonne maman_ very ill?" I whispered. I felt that something terrible had happened to us all.

"My little girl," said _maman_, "your poor _bonne maman_ does not suffer any more. She is very happy now with the angels and _le bon Dieu_," but _maman_ was sobbing as she spoke.

[Ill.u.s.tration: We children had a splendid picnic breakfast]

I knew death only as it had come to one of my little birds that lived in the round cage hung in the nursery-window, and I was very much frightened when papa said: "I am going to take Sophie to your mother's room, Eliane. She is old enough to understand." But I went with him obediently, holding his hand. Outside _bonne maman's_ door he paused and stooped to kiss me and said: "I know how much you loved your _bonne maman_, Sophie, and I want you to say good-by to her, for you will never see her again. She loved you so much, my little darling, and you shall be the last one to kiss her." The room was all black, and in the middle stood the bed. Beside it, on a table, a little _chapelle_ had been made with a great silver cross and candelabra with lighted tapers. A bunch of fresh box stood in a goblet of holy water. _Bonne maman_ lay with her arms stretched out before her, the hands clasped on her black wooden crucifix with a silver Christ that had always hung upon her wall. Her hair was not dressed, but drawn up from her forehead and covered with a mantilla of white silk Spanish lace, which fell down over her shoulders on each side. I stood beside her holding papa's hand. Her profile was sharply cut against the blackness, and I had never before seen how beautiful it was. Her eyes were closed, and she smiled tranquilly. I felt no longer any fear; but when papa lifted me in his arms so that I might kiss _bonne maman_ and my lips touched her forehead, a great shock went through me. How cold her forehead was! O my poor _bonne maman_! Even now, after all the l.u.s.ters that have pa.s.sed over me, I feel the cold of that last kiss.

CHAPTER XII

THE JOURNEY FROM BRITTANY

It was not long after _bonne maman's_ death that we left Brittany and went to Paris to live with _bon papa_. I remember every detail of this my first long journey. The day began with a very early breakfast, which we all had together in the dining-room and at which we had the great treat of drinking chocolate. Then came the complicated business of stowing us all away in our capacious traveling-carriage. It was divided into three compartments. First came what was called the _coupe_, with windows at the sides and a large window in front from which we looked out past the coachman's red-stockinged legs and along the horses' backs to where the postilion jounced merrily against the sky in a red Breton costume like the coachman's, his long hair tied behind with black ribbon, a red jockey's cap on his head, and black shoulder-knots with jet _aiguillettes_. After the _coupe_, and communicating with it by a tiny pa.s.sage, though it had doors of its own, was another compartment for maids, nurses, and children, and behind that another and larger division for all the other servants. On the top were seats beside the coachman, and papa spent most of the day up there smoking. The luggage, carried on the top, was covered by a great leather covering, buckled down all over it, called a _bache_.

The horses were post-horses, renewed at every post. It was decided that I was to go in the _coupe_ with _maman_, papa, and little Maraquita, as I should get more fresh air there. I wore, I remember, a red cashmere dress made out of a dress of _maman's_. The material had been brought from India and was bordered with a design of palm-leaves.

Indeed, this red cashmere must have provided me with a succession of dresses, for I remember that when I made my _entree_ at the _Sacre Coeur_ years afterwards, the bishop, visiting the convent, stopped, smiling, at my bench, and said, "Why, this is a little Republican, is it not?" Eliane and I both wore _capulets_ on our heads. These were squares of white cloth that fell to the shoulders and that folded back from the forehead and fastened under the chin with bands of black velvet, a Spanish head-dress. Our cloaks were the full cloaks, gathered finely around the neck and shoulders, that _maman_ had made for us, copied from the peasants' cloaks, of foulard for summer and wool for winter. Little Maraquita, who spent most of the three days'

journey on _maman's_ knees, wore, as always until she was seven or eight, white and pale blue, the Virgin's colors, as she had been _vouee au bleu et au blanc_ after a terrible accident that had befallen her in infancy. She had fallen into the fire at Landerneau, and her head and forehead had been badly burned, and _maman_ had thus dedicated her to the Virgin with prayers that she might not be disfigured--prayers that were more than answered, for Maraquita became exquisitely beautiful. Papa, I may add here, had many friends and connections in Spain; hence my little sister's name, and hence our _capulets_.

Eliane and Ernest traveled in the second compartment with their nurses, Eliane carrying Tiny and her huge doll, and Ernest, unfortunately for our peace of mind, a drum of mine that I had given him and upon which he beat the drumsticks hour after hour. _Maman_, in the _coupe_, cried out at intervals that it was intolerable to hear such an incessant noise and that the child must really, now, be made to stop; but papa always mildly soothed her, saying: "Let him play. It keeps him distracted; he would probably be crying otherwise." So Ernest continued to roll his drum. In the _coupe_ I was fully occupied in playing at horses. Real leather reins had been fixed at each side of the front window, pa.s.sing under it so that, looking out over the horses' haunches, I had the delightful illusion, as I wielded the reins, of really driving them. I do not remember that I was sick at all on the first day. The country was mountainous, and at every steep hill we all got out and walked down, and this also, probably helped to preserve me. One feature of the Brittany landscape of those days stands out clearly in my memory, the tall, sinister-looking telegraph-poles that stood, each one just visible to the last, on the heights of the country. When I say telegraph it must not be imagined that they were our modern electric installations, although so they were called. These were of a very primitive and very ingenious construction. At the top of each pole, by means of the projecting arm that gave it the look of a gallows, immense wooden letters were hung out, one after the other; these letters were worked by means of wires that pa.s.sed down the poles into the little hut at its foot. Each wire at the bottom had a label with its corresponding letter, and the operator in the hut, by pulling the wire, pulled the letter into its place at the top of the pole, and was thus able laboriously to spell out the message he had to convey and to make it visible to the operator at the next post, who pa.s.sed it on to the next. These clumsy telegrams could be sent, as far as I remember, only at certain hours of the day, and I think that it must have been during a wayside halt on this journey that I visited a hut with papa and had the system explained to me and saw a message being sent, for I remember the clatter and shaking as the big letters overhead were pulled into place. I do not know whether this method of communication was used all over France, but one or two of the old poles still survive in Brittany.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The postilion sounded his horn]

Our first stop that day was at Quimperle. The postilion, as we approached a town or village, sounded his horn, and what excitement it caused in these quiet little places when we came driving up, and how all the people crowded round us!

The inn at Quimperle was called the Hotel du Trefle Noir, and though very primitive, the thatch showing through the rafters in the roof of the immense kitchen-dining-room, it was scrupulously clean. We all sat down together at the long table, servants, coachman, postilion, and all, and the _dejeuner_ served to us by the good landlady was fit to put before a king. I remember _maman_ laughing and asking her why she served the salmon and, afterward, a heaping golden mound of fried potatoes, on a great plank, and the landlady saying that she had no dishes large enough. There was a turkey, too, stuffed with chestnuts and of course _crepes_ and cream. Next door to us, in a smaller room, a band of commercial travelers were also lunching, and as we finished each course it was carried in to those cheerful young fellows, whose hurrahs of joy added zest to our own appet.i.tes. That night we slept at Rennes, where I remember only that I was very tired and that a horrid man who came to make a fire in our bedrooms spat upon the floor, to our disgust and indignation. I remember, too, a very pleasant crisp cake, or roll, that _maman_ gave me to eat before I went to bed.

It was on the third day that we drove at last into Paris, a fairy-land to my gazing, stupefied eyes. What struck me most were the fountains of the Place de la Concorde, the bronze mermaids holding the spouting fish, and the little sunken gardens, four of them, that at that time surrounded the obelisk. _Bon papa_ lived in the rue St. Dominique, St.

Germain, and as we drove up to the door I remember that it was under blossoming acacia-trees and that the postilion blew a great blast upon his horn to announce our arrival. The house, which was, indeed, a very pleasing specimen of Louis XV architecture, looked palatial to my childish eyes. _Bon papa_ was standing, very portly, on the terrace to welcome us, and we ran into a park behind the house, with an avenue of horse-chestnuts and a high fountain. But Brittany was left far behind, and many, many years were to pa.s.s before I again saw my Loch-ar-Brugg.

THE END