Part 61

He was going to ring, more at home and at ease than the old mother herself. She stopped him.

“No, no, I don’t want anything. I have still something left in my basket.” And she put two figs and a crust of bread on the edge of the table. Then, while she was eating: “And you, lad, your business? You look very much sprucer than you did the last time you were at Bourg. How smart you are! What do you do in the house?”

“Professor of massage,” said Aristide gravely.

“Professor--you?” said she with respectful astonishment; but she did not dare ask him what he taught, and Cabassu, who felt such questions a little embarrassing, hastened to change the subject.

“Shall I go and find the children? Haven’t they told them that their grandmother is here?”

“I didn’t want to disturb them at their work. But I believe it must be over now--listen!”

Behind the door they could hear the shuffling impatience of the children anxious to be out in the open air, and the old woman enjoyed this state of things, doubling her maternal desire, and hindering her from doing anything to hasten its pleasure. At last the door opened. The tutor came out first--a priest with a pointed nose and great cheek-bones, whom we have met before at the great dejeuners. On bad terms with his bishop, he had left the diocese where he had been engaged, and in the precarious position of an unattached priest--for the clergy have their Bohemians too--he was glad to teach the little Jansoulets, recently turned out of the Bourdaloue College. With his arrogant, solemn air, overweighted with responsibilities, which would have become the prelates charged with the education of the dauphins of France, he preceded three curled and gloved little gentlemen in short jackets, with leather knapsacks, and great red stockings reaching half-way up their little thin legs, in complete suits of cyclist dress, ready to mount.

“My children,” said Cabassu, “that is Mme. Jansoulet, your grandmother, who has come to Paris expressly to see you.”

They stopped in a row, astonished, examining this old wrinkled visage between the folds of her cap, this strange dress of a simplicity unknown to them; and their grandmother’s astonishment answered theirs, complicated with a heart-breaking discomfiture and constraint in dealing with these little gentlemen, as stiff and disdainful as any of the nobles or ministers whom her son had brought to Saint-Romans. On the bidding of their tutor “to salute their venerable grandmother,” they came in turn to give her one of those little half-hearted shakes of the hand of which they had distributed so many in the garrets they had visited. The fact is that this good woman, with her agricultural appearance and clean but very simple clothes, reminded them of the charity visits of the College Bourdaloue. They felt between them the same unknown quality, the same distance, which no remembrance, no word of their parents had ever helped to bridge. The abbe felt this constraint, and tried to dispel it--speaking with the tone of voice and gestures customary to those who always think they are in the pulpit.

“Well, madame, the day has come, the great day when Jansoulet will confound his enemies--confundantur hostes mei, quia injuste iniquitatem fecerunt in me--because they have unjustly persecuted me.”

The old lady bent religiously before the Latin of the Church, but her face expressed a vague expression of uneasiness at this idea of enemies and of persecutions.

“These enemies are powerful and numerous, my noble lady, but let us not be alarmed beyond measure. Let us have confidence in the decrees of Heaven and in the justice of our cause. God is in the midst of it, it shall not be overthrown--in medio ejus non commovebitur.”

A gigantic negro, resplendent with gold braid, interrupted him by announcing that the bicycles were ready for the daily lesson on the terrace of the Tuileries. Before setting out, the children again shook solemnly their grandmother’s wrinkled and hardened hand. She was watching them go, stupefied and oppressed, when all at once, by an adorable spontaneous movement, the youngest turned back when he had got to the door and, pushing the great negro aside, came to throw himself head foremost, like a little buffalo, into Mme. Jansoulet’s skirts, squeezing her to him, while holding out his smooth forehead, covered with brown curls, with the grace of a child offering its kiss like a flower. Perhaps this one, nearer the warmth of the nest, the cradling knees of the nurses with their peasant songs, had felt the maternal influence, of which the Levantine had deprived him, reach his heart. The old woman trembled all over with the surprise of this instinctive embrace.

“Oh! little one, little one,” said she, seizing the little silky, curly head which reminded her so much of another and she kissed it wildly. Then the child unloosed himself, and ran off without saying anything, his head moist with hot tears.

Left alone with Cabassu, the mother, comforted by this embrace, asked some explanation of the priest’s words. Had her son many enemies?

“Oh!” said Cabassu, “it is not astonishing, in his position.”

“But what is this great day--this sitting of which you all speak?”

“Well, then, it is to-day that we shall know whether Bernard will be deputy or no.”

“What? He is not one now, then? And I have told them everywhere in the country. I illuminated Saint-Romans a month ago. Then they have made me tell a lie.”

The masseur had a great deal of trouble in explaining to her the parliamentary formalities of the verification of elections. She only listened with one ear, walking up and down the linen-room feverishly.

“That’s where my Bernard is now, then?”

“Yes, madame.”

“And can women go to the Chamber? Then why is his wife not there? For one does not need telling that it is an important matter for him. On a day like this he needs to feel all those whom he loves at his side. See, my lad, you must take me there, to this sitting. Is it far?”

“No, quite near. Only, it must have begun already. And then,” added he, a little disconcerted, “it is the hour when madame wants me.”

“Ah! Do you teach her this thing you are professor of? What do you call it?”

“Massage. We have learned it from the ancients. Yes, there she is ringing for me, and some one will come to fetch me. Shall I tell her you are here?”

“No, no; I prefer to go there at once.”

“But you have no admission ticket.”