Part 16

"Oui, M'sieur Laferté."

"Tire moi une gamme."

"Dorémifasollasido--Dosilasolfamirédo!" sang Josselin, up and down, in beautiful tune, with his fresh bird-like soprano.

"Ah! q' ça fait du bien!" says M. L.; then a pause, and puffs of smoke and grunts and sighs of satisfaction.

"Josselin?"

"Oui, M'sieur Laferté!"

"'La brune Thérèse!'"

And Josselin would sing about the dark-haired Thérèsa--three verses.

"Tu as changé la fin du second couplet--tu as dit 'des comtesses' au lieu de dire 'des duchesses'--recommence!" (You changed the end of the second verse--you said "countesses" instead of "duchesses"--begin again.)

And Barty would re-sing it, as desired, and bring in the duchesses.

"Maintenant, 'Colin, disait Lisette!'"

And Barty would sing that charming little song, most charmingly:

"'Colin,' disait Lisette, 'Je voudrais passer l'eau! Mais je suis trop pauvrette Pour payer le bateau!' 'Entrez, entrez, ma belle! Entrez, entrez toujours! Et vogue la nacelle Qui porte mes amours!"

And old L. would smoke and listen with an air of heavenly beatitude almost pathetic.

"Elle était bien gentille, Lisette--n'est-ce pas, petiot?--recommence!" (She was very nice, Lisette; wasn't she, sonny?--being again!)

"Now both get up and wash and go to breakfast. Come here, Josselin--you see this little silver dagger" (producing it from under his pillow). "It's rather pointy, but not at all dangerous. My mother gave it me when I was just your age--to cut books with; it's for you. Allons, file! [cut along] no thanks!--but look here--are you coming with us à la chasse to-day?"

"Non, M. Laferté!"

"Pourquoi?--t'as pas peur, j'espère!"

"Sais pas. J' n'aime pas les choses mortes--ça saigne--et ça n' sent pas bon--ça m'fait mal au coeur." (Don't know. I'm not fond of dead things. They bleed--and they don't smell nice--it makes me sick.)

And two or three times a day would Barty receive some costly token of this queer old giant's affection, till he got quite unhappy about it. He feared he was despoiling the House of Laferté of all its treasures in silver and gold; but he soothed his troubled conscience later on by giving them all away to favorite boys and masters at Brossard's--especially M. Bonzig, who had taken charge of his white mouse (and her family, now quite grown up--children and grandchildren and all) when Mlle. Marceline went for her fortnight's holiday. Indeed, he had made a beautiful cage for them out of wood and wire, with little pasteboard mangers (which they nibbled away).

Well, the men of the party and young Laferté and I would go off with the dogs and keepers into the forest--and Barty would pick filberts and fruit with Jeanne and Marie, and eat them with bread-and-butter and jam and cernaux (unripe walnuts mixed with salt and water and verjuice--quite the nicest thing in the world). Then he would find his way into the heart of the forest, which he loved--and where he had scraped up a warm friendship with some charcoal-burners, whose huts were near an old yellow-watered pond, very brackish and stagnant and deep, and full of leeches and water-spiders. It was in the densest part of the forest, where the trees were so tall and leafy that the sun never fell on it, even at noon. The charcoal-burners told him that in '93 a young de la Tremblaye was taken there at sunset to be hanged on a giant oak-tree--but he talked so agreeably and was so pleasant all round that they relented, and sent for bread and wine and cider and made a night of it, and didn't hang him till dawn next day; after which they tied a stone to his ankles and dropped him into the pond, which was called "the pond of the respite" ever since; and his young wife, Claire Élisabeth, drowned herself there the week after, and their bones lie at the bottom to this very day.

And, ghastly to relate, the ringleader in this horrible tragedy was a beautiful young woman, a daughter of the people, it seems--one Séraphine Doucet, whom the young viscount had betrayed before marriage--le droit du seigneur!--and but for whom he would have been let off after that festive night. Ten or fifteen years later, smitten with incurable remorse, she hanged herself on the very branch of the very tree where they had strung up her noble lover; and still walks round the pond at night, wringing her hands and wailing. It's a sad story--let us hope it isn't true.

Barty Josselin evidently had this pond in his mind when he wrote in "Âmes en peine":

Sous la berge hantée L'eau morne croupit-- Sous la sombre futaie Le renard glapit, Et le cerf-dix-cors brame, et les daims viennent boire à l'Étang du Répit. "Lâchez-moi, Loupgaroux!" Que sinistre est la mare Quand tombe la nuit; La chouette s'effare-- Le blaireau s'enfuit! L'on y sent que les morts se réveillent--qu'une ombre sans nom vous poursuit. "Lâchez-moi, Loup-garoux!"

Forêt! forêt! what a magic there is in that little French dissyllable! Morne forêt! Is it the lost "s," and the heavy "^" that makes up for it, which lend such a mysterious and gloomy fascination?

Forest! that sounds rather tame--almost cheerful! If we want a forest dream we have to go so far back for it, and dream of Robin Hood and his merrie men! And even then Epping forces itself into our dream--and even Chingford, where there was never a were-wolf within the memory of man. Give us at least the virgin forest, in some far Guyana or Brazil--or even the forest primeval--

"... where the murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar"--

that we may dream of scalp-hunting Mingoes, and grizzly-bears, and moose, and buffalo, and the beloved Bas-de-cuir with that magic rifle of his, that so seldom missed its mark and never got out of repair.