The Bath Keepers Volume I Part 3

IV

BATHILDE

The baths on Rue Dauphine were kept by one Landry. He was a man of sixty, but still vigorous and robust, despite his gray moustache, which he wore very long. By his soldierly bearing and the way he carried his head, one could divine that he had seen military service. And Landry was, in fact, an ex-soldier. He had fought under Henri IV, whose name he never mentioned without carrying the back of his right hand to his forehead, or without manifesting his emotion by the change in his voice.

At the great king's death, Landry, then thirty-six years of age, had left the service. Later, although his face was scarred, his martial set-up and his military gait had fascinated Dame Ragonde, a widow with a small h.o.a.rd. She had married Landry, and they had obtained, by purchase, a license to keep hot and cold baths.

Landry was a tall, thin, stiff individual. He had an uncommunicative air, and his long gray moustache tended to make his expression even less inviting. However, Master Landry was not a bad-tempered man. He had never been known to seek a quarrel with anyone; and when quarrels arose among his neighbors, it was usually he who intervened to restore peace.

It is true that his voice was strong and that his moustache produced an imposing effect on the vulgar.

He performed his duties as bath keeper and barber with the scrupulous exactness which old soldiers retain in civil life with respect to everything that they consider a duty. But it was not wise to speak ill of Henri IV or of his minister Sully in the old soldier's presence. When such a thing occurred, a sudden change would take place in the whole aspect of the man; usually calm and cold, he would become as quick to explode as powder; his blood would boil anew with all the fervor of his younger days; and the unhappy wight who had presumed to utter a word derogatory to his idols would be chastised before he had time to apologize.

But such episodes were likely to be very infrequent, for the memory of good King Henri was held in too great veneration by Frenchmen for anyone to venture to impugn it.

Dame Ragonde, the bath keeper's wife, was fifteen years younger than her husband, but she seemed almost as old as he.

She was a tall, thin, yellow-skinned woman. Had she ever been pretty?

That she had been seemed more than doubtful. Her small, pale-green eyes were very bright, but they had an arrogant--yes, evil expression; they were eyes of the sort that seem never to look in any direction with any other purpose than that of finding something to blame, to reprove, or to forbid. Her long nose, hooked at the end like a parrot's, made her resemble in some degree a bird of prey. And her thin, bloodless, tightly closed lips seemed destined to open only to emit harsh or bitter words.

Since the day of her marriage to Landry, her second husband, n.o.body remembered having seen Dame Ragonde smile; indeed, it was not certain that she smiled on that day.

Her voice was shrill and piercing, her words always short and sharp; this fact, by the way, was creditable to the lady; she was no gossip and never said a word more than she had to say.

Who would have guessed that of that union between a man who was not handsome and a woman who was downright ugly a daughter would be born who would prove to be a veritable model of beauty, grace, and charm?

Such, nevertheless, was Bathilde, the only child of Landry and Ragonde.

At eighteen, her beauty had reached its perfect development: she was one of those types which painters delight to find, when they wish to paint a virgin, an angel, or a demon of temptation.

Bathilde was blond, but the tint was not one of those dull blonds in which there is a reflection of white; her long, thick, silky hair verged rather on the chestnut. Her skin had that whiteness in which there is life, and not that dull tone which imparts an aspect of inanition to a living person. On the contrary, the lovely girl's cheeks had a rosy tinge; and at the slightest word of reproof that was addressed to her, they at once became a most brilliant carmine. Large, deep-blue eyes, almond shaped, and shaded by long chestnut lashes; a small, fresh, red-lipped mouth; irreproachable teeth of dazzling whiteness; a chin slightly oval in shape; fine, but clearly marked eyebrows; a n.o.ble, beautiful brow, over which thick curls seemed proud to be placed.

Such was Bathilde, who possessed, in addition, a slender, lithe, dainty figure, a remarkably small foot, and a hand worthy to serve as a model.

But a mere enumeration of her advantages affords but a faint idea of the fascination of that young girl, of the charm with which her whole person was instinct, of the sweet melody of her voice, and of the pleasure that one felt in hearing it.

Sometimes one remains unmoved before the most unexceptionable beauty; for that which attracts and captivates us is not so much the perfection of the features, the regularity of the outlines of a face, as its amiable and gracious expression--a second element of beauty which many times exerts more power than the first; but when the two are combined, when nature has endowed a single woman with both, then it is that it is very difficult to avoid losing one's heart and one's reason.

And that lovely, graceful, fascinating girl was the daughter of Landry and Dame Ragonde!

Nature sometimes indulges in such strange whims. Do we not see flowers whose perfume intoxicates us and whose gorgeous colors dazzle our eyes, blooming upon stunted, th.o.r.n.y stalks?

As Bathilde's beauty would have attracted too many gallants, too many seducers, to Master Landry's shop, the girl never appeared there, nor did she wait upon the ladies who patronized her father's baths.

Bathilde had been brought up very strictly; almost always confined to her bedroom, which did not look on the street, the girl never went out except with her mother; and then a long veil, attached to her hood, covered almost the whole of her face, leaving nothing in sight save the end of her nose. If the sweet girl ventured to disarrange the veil and to expose one of her pink and white cheeks to the air for a moment, Dame Ragonde would instantly exclaim in her shrill, harsh voice:

"Your veil! your veil! Take care!"

Bathilde knew what that meant, and would hasten to swathe her lovely face anew.

Certainly, if Master Landry had desired that his establishment should be besieged by crowds of customers, he could easily have gratified his wish: nothing more would have been necessary than to allow his daughter to come to the shop now and then. Bathilde's beauty would have made a sensation, the court and the city would have been stirred to their depths, everyone would have desired to know that plebeian chef-d'uvre, and, with the inevitable vogue of his place of business, the bath keeper's fortune would have been a.s.sured.

But in this respect Bathilde's parents proved that their own honor and their child's virtue were to them treasures more precious than gold.

Some neighbors, knowing how strictly Bathilde had been brought up, said, and with some show of reason, that a mother should be able to watch over her daughter without converting her house into a prison. That to keep a child from knowledge of the world was not the way to protect her from the dangers that are encountered there at every step; and that it was downright barbarity to deprive a girl of all the pleasures suited to her years because it had pleased the Creator to endow her with all those physical qualities which charm and fascinate.

If these or other similar remarks reached Dame Ragonde's ears, it is probable that she paid little heed to them and that they made little impression on her. Immovable in her determination, impa.s.sible in her nature, rigorous in her conduct, she made no change whatever in her methods with her daughter.

And as for Master Landry, although he loved Bathilde dearly and was very proud of her, he looked upon his wife as the general whose duty it was to manage the internal economy of his household. As such general, he obeyed her promptly, reserving to himself only the command of the two apprentices employed in his baths.

However, Landry's establishment was prosperous, as were almost all the baths of those days, because they were very few in number.

The neighborhood of Rue Dauphine, which was less thickly populated than Rue Saint-Jacques, already contained some n.o.ble mansions and fine houses, occupied by magistrates, members of the Parliament, men of the robe, and rich annuitants. Moreover, the proximity of the Pre-aux-Clercs, which was still a favorite promenade, although some buildings were beginning to be erected there, contributed to attract to Master Landry's baths a more distinguished and more fashionable clientele, better society, in a word, than the ordinary patrons of his confrere, Master Hugonnet.

Furthermore, although the fascinating Bathilde was concealed from prying eyes, beauty spreads about it a perfume which causes its presence to be divined, and which attracts connoisseurs, even though they are destined to have nothing to show for their pains.

Despite all the precautions taken by Dame Ragonde, she could not prevent her neighbors from talking; they repeated, to whoever chose to listen, that Master Landry had a daughter more beautiful than the marvellous princesses of the _Thousand and One Nights_; that her surpa.s.sing beauty was the reason that her father and mother concealed her from all eyes, because they feared that somebody would take her away from them; and that they destined her for some wealthy foreign prince.

Others declared, on the contrary, that Master Landry's daughter was a monster of ugliness and deformity, and that it was to shelter the poor girl from the ridicule which was certain to be poured out upon her that they were careful to keep her out of sight.

This last version, however, obtained little credence. As a general rule, people do not take so many precautions with an ugly girl, or keep such close watch over one who has no reason to fear the enterprises of gallants.

Mystery always arouses curiosity, and the veil in which Dame Ragonde swathed Bathilde's face intensified the general desire to see it.

Extremes are dangerous in everything: the man who puts too many bolts on his door arouses a suspicion that he possesses a treasure.

Chance had brought Landry and his confrere Hugonnet together. One evening, when the latter was returning home, as usual, after a merry evening over the bottle at a wine shop recently opened in the Cite, at some distance from his house, he lost his way. Alone, late at night, the barber wandered for a long while through the dark and muddy lanes which were then called streets, feeling his way along the walls, seeking his own door, and cursing because he did not find it.

Two men, emerging suddenly from a blind alley, walked toward the drunken man, who at once asked them to direct him. But he had applied to a pair of vagabonds, whose only reply was to set about robbing Master Hugonnet of his purse, his cloak, his great fur cap--in fact, of a large part of his clothes. At the outset, as a result of his intoxication, which entirely changed his disposition, Hugonnet placidly allowed himself to be stripped, thinking that he had to do with unfortunate creatures who needed all those things for their families. But one of the marauders having been so imprudent as to strike him on the head, the blow, by sobering the barber, instantly changed the face of affairs. Restored to his senses, and realizing with what manner of men he had to do, he defended himself stoutly; he dealt the two robbers some l.u.s.ty blows, and they, irritated at meeting with such stubborn resistance from an intoxicated man, were already brandishing the daggers which they proposed to use, when Master Landry appeared upon the stage of this nocturnal attack.

To draw the rapier which he always carried under his cloak, to rush to the a.s.sistance of the man who was beset, to attack the two robbers with cut and thrust, to put them to flight, and to restore to Master Hugonnet his cloak, which had fallen to the ground--all this was the affair of a moment for the old trooper of Henri IV.

Hugonnet, completely sobered by the combat, offered Landry his hand and exclaimed:

"Vertudieu! I am inclined to think, comrade, that but for you those scoundrels would have made me pa.s.s a bad quarter of an hour!"

"I thank heaven that I arrived in time to offer you my a.s.sistance!"

"Sapristi! you went about it in the right way. You seemed to be at home!

How you handle your sword! I think that my knaves went off with the marks you made on them."

"It would be a great pity if I did not know how to fight. When one has had the honor of serving under the great Henri IV; when one has fought under him at Arques and Ivry----"

"Do you say that you served with the good king who wanted all his subjects to have a fowl to put in the pot? Shake hands! I am doubly happy to have met you; and, with your permission, I consider myself from this moment one of your friends."

"With all my heart, for you too are a brave man; I saw that by the way you defended yourself against those cutthroats. And yet, you had no weapons."