The Life of the fly Part 4

Padded with a perpetual layer of cow dung, in which I sank to my knees, broken up with shimmering puddles of dark brown liquid manure, the farmyard also boasted a numerous population. Here the lambs skipped, the geese trumpeted, the fowls scratched the ground and the sow grunted with her swarm of little pigs hanging to her dugs.

The harshness of the climate did not give husbandry the same chances.

In a propitious season, they would set fire to a stretch of moorland bristling with gorse and send the swing plow across the ground enriched with the cinders of the blaze. This yielded a few acres of rye, oats and potatoes. The best corners were kept for hemp, which furnished the distaffs and spindles of the house with the material for linen and was looked upon as grandmother's private crop.

Grandfather, therefore, was, before all, a herdsman versed in matters of cows and sheep, but completely ignorant of aught else. How dumbfounded he would have been to learn that, in the remote future, one of his family would become enamoured of those insignificant animals to which he had never vouchsafed a glance in his life! Had he guessed that that lunatic was myself, the scapegrace seated at the table by his side, what a smack I should have caught in the neck, what a wrathful look!

"The idea of wasting one's time with that nonsense!" he would have thundered.

For the patriarch was not given to joking. I can still see his serious face, his unclipped head of hair, often brought back behind his ears with a flick of the thumb and spreading its ancient Gallic mane over his shoulders. I see his little three-cornered hat, his small clothes buckled at the knees, his wooden shoes, stuffed with straw, that echoed as he walked. Ah, no! Once childhood's games were past, it would never have done to rear the Gra.s.shopper and unearth the Dung beetle from his natural surroundings.

Grandmother, pious soul, used to wear the eccentric headdress of the Rouergue highlanders: a large disk of black felt, stiff as a plank, adorned in the middle with a crown a finger's breadth high and hardly wider across than a six franc piece. A black ribbon fastened under the chin maintained the equilibrium of this elegant, but unsteady circle.

Pickles, hemp, chickens, curds and whey, b.u.t.ter; washing the clothes, minding the children, seeing to the meals of the household: say that and you have summed up the strenuous woman's round of ideas. On her left side, the distaff, with its load of flax; in her right hand, the spindle turning under a quick twist of her thumb, moistened at intervals with her tongue: so she went through life, unwearied, attending to the order and the welfare of the house. I see her in my mind's eye particularly on winter evenings, which were more favorable to family talk. When the hour came for meals, all of us, big and little, would take our seats round a long table, on a couple of benches, deal planks supported by four rickety legs. Each found his wooden bowl and his tin spoon in front of him. At one end of the table always stood an enormous rye loaf, the size of a cartwheel, wrapped in a linen cloth with a pleasant smell of washing, and remained until nothing was left of it. With a vigorous stroke, grandfather would cut off enough for the needs of the moment; then he would divide the piece among us with the one knife which he alone was ent.i.tled to wield. It was now each one's business to break up his bit with his fingers and to fill his bowl as he pleased.

Next came grandmother's turn. A capacious pot bubbled l.u.s.tily and sang upon the flames in the hearth, exhaling an appetizing savor of bacon and turnips. Armed with a long metal ladle, grandmother would take from it, for each of us in turn, first the broth, wherein to soak the bread, and next the ration of turnips and bacon, partly fat and partly lean, filling the bowl to the top. At the other end of the table was the pitcher, from which the thirsty were free to drink at will. What appet.i.tes we had and what festive meals those were, especially when a cream cheese, homemade, was there to complete the banquet!

Near us blazed the huge fireplace, in which whole tree trunks were consumed in the extreme cold weather. From a corner of that monumental, soot-glazed chimney, projected, at a convenient height, a bracket with a slate shelf, which served to light the kitchen when we sat up late. On this we burnt chips of pine wood, selected among the most translucent, those containing the most resin. They shed over the room a lurid red light, which saved the walnut oil in the lamp.

When the bowls were emptied and the last crumb of cheese sc.r.a.ped up, grandam went back to her distaff, on a stool by the chimney corner. We children, boys and girls, squatting on our heels and putting out our hands to the cheerful fire of furze, formed a circle round her and listened to her with eager ears. She told us stories, not greatly varied, it is true, but still wonderful, for the wolf often played a part in them. I should have very much liked to see this wolf, the hero of so many tales that made our flesh creep; but the shepherd always refused to take me into his straw hut, in the middle of the fold, at night. When we had done talking about the horrid wolf, the dragon and the serpent and when the resinous splinters had given out their last gleams, we went to sleep the sweet sleep that toil gives. As the youngest of the household, I had a right to the mattress, a sack stuffed with oat chaff. The others had to be content with straw.

I owe a great deal to you, dear grandmother: it was in your lap that I found consolation for my first sorrows. You have handed down to me, perhaps, a little of your physical vigor, a little of your love of work; but certainly you were no more accountable than grandfather for my pa.s.sion for insects.

Nor was either of my own parents. My mother, who was quite illiterate, having known no teacher than the bitter experience of a hara.s.sed life, was the exact opposite of what my tastes required for their development.

My peculiarity must seek its origin elsewhere: that I will swear. But I do not find it in my father, either. The excellent man, who was hard working and st.u.r.dily built like granddad, had been to school as a child. He knew how to write, though he took the greatest liberties with spelling; he knew how to read and understood what he read, provided the reading presented no more serious literary difficulties than occurred in the stories in the almanac. He was the first of his line to allow himself to be tempted by the town and he lived to regret it. Badly off, having but little outlet for his industry, making G.o.d knows what shifts to pick up a livelihood, he went through all the disappointments of the countryman turned townsman. Persecuted by bad luck, borne down by the burden, for all his energy and good will, he was far indeed from starting me in entomology. He had other cares, cares more direct and more serious. A good cuff or two when he saw me pinning an insect to a cork was all the encouragement that I received from him. Perhaps he was right.

The conclusion is positive: there is nothing in heredity to explain my taste for observation. You may say that I do not go far enough back.

Well, what should I find beyond the grandparents where my facts come to a stop? I know, partly. I should find even more uncultured ancestors: sons of the soil, plowmen, sowers of rye, neat herds; one and all, by the very force of things, of not the least account in the nice matters of observation.

And yet, in me, the observer, the inquirer into things began to take shape almost in infancy. Why should I not describe my first discoveries?

They are ingenuous in the extreme, but will serve notwithstanding to tell us something of the way in which tendencies first show themselves.

I was five or six years old. That the poor household might have one mouth less to feed, I had been placed in grandmother's care, as I have just been saying. Here, in solitude, my first gleams of intelligence were awakened amidst the geese, the calves and the sheep. Everything before that is impenetrable darkness. My real birth is at that moment when the dawn of personality rises, dispersing the mists of unconsciousness and leaving a lasting memory. I can see myself plainly, clad in a soiled frieze frock flapping against my bare heels; I remember the handkerchief hanging from my waist by a bit of string, a handkerchief often lost and replaced by the back of my sleeve.

There I stand one day, a pensive urchin, with my hands behind my back and my face turned to the sun. The dazzling splendor fascinates me. I am the Moth attracted by the light of the lamp. With what am I enjoying the glorious radiance: with my mouth or my eyes? That is the question put by my budding scientific curiosity. Reader, do not smile: the future observer is already practicing and experimenting. I open my mouth wide and close my eyes: the glory disappears. I open my eyes and shut my mouth: the glory reappears. I repeat the performance, with the same result. The question's solved: I have learnt by deduction that I see the sun with my eyes. Oh, what a discovery! That evening, I told the whole house all about it. Grandmother smiled fondly at my simplicity: the others laughed at it. 'Tis the way of the world.

Another find. At nightfall, amidst the neighboring bushes, a sort of jingle attracted my attention, sounding very faintly and softly through the evening silence. Who is making that noise? Is it a little bird chirping in his nest? We must look into the matter and that quickly.

True, there is the wolf, who comes out of the woods at this time, so they tell me. Let's go all the same, but not too far: just there, behind that clump of groom. I stand on the look out for long, but all in vain.

At the faintest sound of movement in the brushwood, the jingle ceases.

I try again next day and the day after. This time, my stubborn watch succeeds. Whoosh! A grab of my hand and I hold the singer. It is not a bird; it is a kind of Gra.s.shopper whose hind legs my playfellows have taught me to like: a poor recompense for my prolonged ambush. The best part of the business is not the two haunches with the shrimpy flavor, but what I have just learnt. I now know, from personal observation, that the Gra.s.shopper sings. I did not publish my discovery, for fear of the same laughter that greeted my story about the sun.

Oh, what pretty flowers, in a field close to the house! They seem to smile to me with their great violet eyes. Later on, I see, in their place, bunches of big red cherries. I taste them. They are not nice and they have no stones. What can those cherries be? At the end of the summer, grandfather comes with a spade and turns my field of observation topsy-turvy. From under ground there comes, by the basketful and sackful, a sort of round root. I know that root; it abounds in the house; time after time I have cooked it in the peat stove. It is the potato. Its violet flower and its red fruit are pigeonholed for good and all in my memory.

With an ever watchful eye for animals and plants, the future observer, the little six-year-old monkey, practiced by himself, all unawares.

He went to the flower, he went to the insect, even as the large white b.u.t.terfly goes to the cabbage and the red admiral to the thistle. He looked and inquired, drawn by a curiosity whereof heredity did not know the secret. He bore within him the germ of a faculty unknown to his family; he kept alive a glimmer that was foreign to the ancestral hearth. What will become of that infinitesimal spark of childish fancy?

It will die out, beyond a doubt, unless education intervene, giving it the fuel of example, fanning it with the breath of experience. In that case, schooling will explain what heredity leaves unexplained. This is what we will examine in the next chapter.

CHAPTER VI. MY SCHOOLING

I am back in the village, in my father's house. I am now seven years old; and it is high time that I went to school. Nothing could have turned out better: the master is my G.o.dfather. What shall I call the room in which I was to become acquainted with the alphabet? It would be difficult to find the exact word, because the room served for every purpose. It was at once a school, a kitchen, a bedroom, a dining room and, at times, a chicken house and a piggery. Palatial schools were not dreamt of in those days; any wretched hovel was thought good enough.

A broad fixed ladder led to the floor above. Under the ladder stood a big bed in a boarded recess. What was there upstairs? I never quite knew. I would see the master sometimes bring down an armful of hay for the a.s.s, sometimes a basket of potatoes which the housewife emptied into the pot in which the little porkers' food was cooked. It must have been a loft of sorts, a storehouse of provisions for man and beast. Those two apartments composed the whole building.

To return to the lower one, the schoolroom: a window faces south, the only window in the house, a low, narrow window whose frame you can touch at the same time with your head and both your shoulders. This sunny aperture is the only lively spot in the dwelling, it overlooks the greater part of the village, which straggles along the slopes of a slanting valley. In the window recess is the master's little table.

The opposite wall contains a niche in which stands a gleaming copper pail full of water. Here the parched children can relieve their thirst when they please, with a cup left within their reach. At the top of the niche are a few shelves bright with pewter plates, dishes and drinking vessels, which are taken down from their sanctuary on great occasions only.

More or less everywhere, at any spot which the light touches, are crudely colored pictures, pasted on the walls. Here is Our Lady of the Seven Dolours, the disconsolate Mother of G.o.d opening her blue cloak to show her heart pierced with seven daggers. Between the sun and moon, which stare at you with their great, round eyes, is the Eternal Father, whose robe swells as though puffed out with the storm. To the right of the window, in the embrasure, is the Wandering Jew. He wears a three-cornered hat, a large, white leather ap.r.o.n, hobnailed shoes and a stout stick. 'Never was such a bearded man seen before or after,' says the legend that surrounds the picture. The draftsman has not forgotten this detail: the old man's beard spreads in a snowy avalanche over the ap.r.o.n and comes down to his knees. On the left is Genevieve of Brabant, accompanied by the roe, with fierce Golo hiding in the bushes, sword in hand. Above hangs The Death of Mr. Credit, slain by defaulters at the door of his inn; and so on and so on, in every variety of subject, at all the unoccupied spots of the four walls.

I was filled with admiration of this picture gallery, which held one's eyes with its great patches of red, blue, green and yellow. The master, however, had not set up his collection with a view to training our minds and hearts. That was the last and least of the worthy man's ambitions.

An artist in his fashion, he had adorned his house according to his taste; and we benefited by the scheme of decoration.

While the gallery of halfpenny pictures made me happy all the year round, there was another entertainment which I found particularly attractive in winter, in frosty weather, when the snow lay long on the ground. Against the far wall stands the fireplace, as monumental in size as at my grandmother's. Its arched cornice occupies the whole width of the room, for the enormous redoubt fulfils more than one purpose. In the middle is the hearth, but, on the right and left, are two breast-high recesses, half wood and half stone. Each of them is a bed, with a mattress stuffed with chaff of winnowed corn. Two sliding planks serve as shutters and close the chest if the sleeper would be alone. This dormitory, sheltered under the chimney mantel, supplies couches for the favored ones of the house, the two boarders. They must lie snug in there at night, with their shutters closed, when the north wind howls at the mouth of the dark valley and sends the snow awhirl. The rest is occupied by the hearth and its accessories: the three-legged stools; the salt box, hanging against the wall to keep its contents dry; the heavy shovel which it takes two hands to wield; lastly, the bellows similar to those with which I used to blow out my cheeks in grandfather's house. They consist of a mighty branch of pine, hollowed throughout its length with a red-hot iron. By means of this channel, one's breath is applied, from a convenient distance, to the spot which is to be revived. With a couple of stones for supports, the master's bundle of sticks and our own logs blaze and flicker, each of us having to bring a log of wood in the morning, if he would share in the treat.

For that matter, the fire was not exactly lit for us, but, above all, to warm a row of three pots in which simmered the pigs' food, a mixture of potatoes and bran. That, despite the tribute of a log, was the real object of the brushwood fire. The two boarders, on their stools, in the best places, and we others sitting on our heels formed a semicircle around those big cauldrons, full to the brim and giving off little jets of steam, with puff-puff-puffing sounds. The bolder among us, when the master's eyes were engaged elsewhere, would dig a knife into a well cooked potato and add it to their bit of bread; for I must say that, if we did little work in my school, at least we did a deal of eating. It was the regular custom to crack a few nuts and nibble at a crust while writing our page or setting out our rows of figures.

We, the smaller ones, in addition to the comfort of studying with our mouths full, had every now and then two other delights, which were quite as good as cracking nuts. The back door communicated with the yard where the hen, surrounded by her brood of chicks, scratched at the dung hill, while the little porkers, of whom there were a dozen, wallowed in their stone trough. This door would open sometimes to let one of us out, a privilege which we abused, for the sly ones among us were careful not to close it on returning. Forthwith, the porkers would come running in, one after the other, attracted by the smell of the boiled potatoes. My bench, the one where the youngsters sat, stood against the wall, under the copper pail to which we used to go for water when the nuts had made us thirsty, and was right in the way of the pigs. Up they came trotting and grunting, curling their little tails; they rubbed against our legs; they poked their cold pink snouts into our hands in search of a sc.r.a.p of crust; they questioned us with their sharp little eyes to learn if we happened to have a dry chestnut for them in our pockets. When they had gone the round, some this way and some that, they went back to the farmyard, driven away by a friendly flick of the master's handkerchief.

Next came the visit of the hen, bringing her velvet-coated chicks to see us. All of us eagerly crumbled a little bread for our pretty visitors.

We vied with one another in calling them to us and tickling with our fingers their soft and downy backs. No, there was certainly no lack of distractions.

What could we learn in such a school as that! Let us first speak of the young ones, of whom I was one. Each of us had, or rather was supposed to have, in his hands a little penny book, the alphabet, printed on gray paper. It began, on the cover, with a pigeon, or something like it. Next came a cross, followed by the letters in their order. When we turned over, our eyes encountered the terrible ba, be, bi, bo, bu, the stumbling block of most of us. When we had mastered that formidable page, we were considered to know how to read and were admitted among the big ones. But, if the little book was to be of any use, the least that was required was that the master should interest himself in us to some extent and show us how to set about things. For this, the worthy man, too much taken up with the big ones, had not the time. The famous alphabet with the pigeon was thrust upon us only to give us the air of scholars. We were to contemplate it on our bench, to decipher it with the help of our next neighbor, in case he might know one or two of the letters. Our contemplation came to nothing, being every moment disturbed by a visit to the potatoes in the stew pots, a quarrel among playmates about a marble, the grunting invasion of the porkers or the arrival of the chicks. With the aid of these distractions, we would wait patiently until it was time for us to go home. That was our most serious work.

The big ones used to write. They had the benefit of the small amount of light in the room, by the narrow window where the Wandering Jew and ruthless Golo faced each other, and of the large and only table with its circle of seats. The school supplied nothing, not even a drop of ink; every one had to come with a full set of utensils. The inkhorn of those days, a relic of the ancient pen case of which Rabelais speaks, was a long cardboard box divided into two stages. The upper compartment held the pens, made of goose or turkey quills trimmed with a penknife; the lower contained, in a tiny well, ink made of soot mixed with vinegar.

The master's great business was to mend the pens--a delicate work, not without danger for inexperienced fingers--and then to trace at the head of the white page a line of strokes, single letters or words, according to the scholar's capabilities. When that is over, keep an eye on the work of art which is coming to adorn the copy! With what undulating movements of the wrist does the hand, resting on the little finger, prepare and plan its flight! All at once, the hand starts off, flies, whirls; and, lo and behold, under the line of writing is unfurled a garland of circles, spirals and flourishes, framing a bird with outspread wings, the whole, if you please, in red ink, the only kind worthy of such a pen. Large and small, we stood awestruck in the presence of these marvels. The family, in the evening, after supper, would pa.s.s from hand to hand the masterpiece brought back from school: 'What a man!' was the comment. 'What a man, to draw you a Holy Ghost with a stroke of the pen!'

What was read at my school? At most, in French, a few selections from sacred history. Latin recurred oftener, to teach us to sing vespers properly. The more advanced pupils tried to decipher ma.n.u.script, a deed of sale, the hieroglyphics of some scrivener.

And history, geography? No one ever heard of them. What difference did it make to us whether the earth was round or square! In either case, it was just as hard to make it bring forth anything.

And grammar? The master troubled his head very little about that; and we still less. We should have been greatly surprised by the novelty and the forbidding look of such words in the grammatical jargon as substantive, indicative and subjunctive. Accuracy of language, whether of speech or writing, must be learnt by practice. And none of us was troubled by scruples in this respect. What was the use of all these subtleties, when, on coming out of school, a lad simply went back to his flock of sheep!

And arithmetic? Yes, we did a little of this but not under that learned name. We called it sums. To put down rows of figures, not too long, add them and subtract them one from the other was more or less familiar work. On Sat.u.r.day evenings, to finish up the week, there was a general orgy of sums. The top boy stood up and, in a loud voice, recited the multiplication table up to twelve times. I say twelve times, for in those days, because of our old duodecimal measures, it was the custom to count as far as the twelve times table, instead of the ten times of the metric system. When this recital was over, the whole cla.s.s, the little ones included, took it up in chorus, creating such an uproar that chicks and porkers took to flight if they happened to be there. And this went on to twelve times twelve, the first in the row starting the next table and the whole cla.s.s repeating it as loud as it could yell. Of all that we were taught in school, the multiplication table was what we knew best, for this noisy method ended by dinning the different numbers into our ears. This does not mean that we became skilful reckoners. The cleverest of us easily got muddled with the figures to be carried in a multiplication sum. As for division, rare indeed were they who reached such heights. In short, the moment a problem, however insignificant, had to be solved, we had recourse to mental gymnastics much rather than to the learned aid of arithmetic.

When all is said, our master was an excellent man who could have kept school very well but for his lack of one thing; and that was time. He devoted to us all the little leisure which his numerous functions left him. And, first of all, he managed the property of an absentee landowner, who only occasionally set foot in the village. He had under his care an old castle with four towers, which had become so many pigeon houses; he directed the getting in of the hay, the walnuts, the apples and the oats. We used to help him during the summer, when the school, which was well attended in winter, was almost deserted. All that remained, because they were not yet big enough to work in the fields, were a few children, including him who was one day to set down these memorable facts. Lessons at that time were less dull. They were often given on the hay or on the straw; oftener still, lesson time was spent in cleaning out the dovecote or stamping on the snails that had sallied in rainy weather from their fortresses, the tall box borders of the garden belonging to the castle.

Our master was a barber. With his light hand, which was so clever at beautifying our copies with curlicue birds, he shaved the notabilities of the place: the mayor, the parish priest, the notary. Our master was a bell ringer. A wedding or a christening interrupted the lessons: he had to ring a peal. A gathering storm gave us a holiday: the great bell must be tolled to ward off the lightning and the hail. Our master was a choir singer. With his mighty voice, he filled the church when he led the Magnificat at vespers. Our master wound up and regulated the village clock. This was his proudest function. Giving a glance at the sun, to ascertain the time more or less nearly, he would climb to the top of the steeple, open a huge cage of rafters and find himself in a maze of wheels and springs whereof the secret was known to him alone.

With such a school and such a master and such examples, what will become of my embryo tastes, as yet so imperceptible? In that environment, they seem bound to perish, stifled for ever. Yet no, the germ has life; it works in my veins, never to leave them again. It finds nourishment everywhere, down to the cover of my penny alphabet, embellished with a crude picture of a pigeon which I study and contemplate much more zealously than the A B C. Its round eye, with its circlet of dots, seems to smile upon me. Its wing, of which I count the feathers one by one, tells me of flights on high, among the beautiful clouds; it carries me to the beeches raising their smooth trunks above a mossy carpet studded with white mushrooms that look like eggs dropped by some vagrant hen; it takes me to the snow-clad peaks where the birds leave the starry print of their red feet. He is a fine fellow, my pigeon friend: he consoles me for the woes hidden behind the cover of my book. Thanks to him, I sit quietly on my bench and wait more or less till school is over.

School out of doors has other charms. When the master takes us to kill the snails in the box borders, I do not always scrupulously fulfil my office as an exterminator. My heel sometimes hesitates before coming down upon the handful which I have gathered. They are so pretty! Just think, there are yellow ones and pink, white ones and brown, all with dark spiral streaks. I fill my pockets with the handsomest, so as to feast my eyes on them at my leisure.

On hay making days in the master's field, I strike up an acquaintance with the frog. Flayed and stuck at the end of a split stick, he serves as bait to tempt the crayfish to come out of his retreat by the brook side. On the alder trees I catch the Hoplia, the splendid scarab who pales the azure of the heavens. I pick the narcissus and learn to gather, with the tip of my tongue, the tiny drop of honey that lies right at the bottom of the cleft corolla. I also learn that too long indulgence in this feast brings a headache; but this discomfort in no way impairs my admiration for the glorious white flower, which wears a narrow red collar at the throat of its funnel.

When we go to beat the walnut trees, the barren gra.s.s plots provide me with locusts spreading their wings, some into a blue fan, others into a red. And thus the rustic school, even in the heart of winter, furnished continuous food for my interest in things. There was no need for precept and example: my pa.s.sion for animals and plants made progress of itself.

What did not make progress was my acquaintance with my letters, greatly neglected in favor of the pigeon. I was still at the same stage, hopelessly behindhand with the intractable alphabet, when my father, by a chance inspiration, brought me home from the town what was destined to give me a start along the road of reading. Despite the not insignificant part which it played in my intellectual awakening, the purchase was by no means a ruinous one. It was a large print, price six farthings, colored and divided into compartments in which animals of all sorts taught the A B C by means of the first letters of their names.