Villette - Charlotte Brontë (best fiction books of all time TXT) 📗

sleeve with his hand), “despising the foibles of humanity⁠—above its luxuries⁠—independent of its comforts.”

“Et vous, Mademoiselle? vous êtes proprette et douillette, et affreusement insensible, par-dessus le marché.”

“But, in short, Monsieur, now I think of it, you must live somewhere? Do tell me where; and what establishment of servants do you keep?”

With a fearful projection of the underlip, implying an impetus of scorn the most decided, he broke out⁠—

“Je vis dans un trou! I inhabit a den, Miss⁠—a cavern, where you would not put your dainty nose. Once, with base shame of speaking the whole truth, I talked about my ‘study’ in that college: know now that this ‘study’ is my whole abode; my chamber is there and my drawing-room. As for my ‘establishment of servants’ ” (mimicking my voice) “they number ten; les voilà.”

And he grimly spread, close under my eyes, his ten fingers.

“I black my boots,” pursued he savagely. “I brush my paletôt.”

“No, Monsieur, it is too plain; you never do that,” was my parenthesis.

“Je fais mon lit et mon ménage; I seek my dinner in a restaurant; my supper takes care, of itself; I pass days laborious and loveless; nights long and lonely; I am ferocious, and bearded and monkish; and nothing now living in this world loves me, except some old hearts worn like my own, and some few beings, impoverished, suffering, poor in purse and in spirit, whom the kingdoms of this world own not, but to whom a will and testament not to be disputed has bequeathed the kingdom of heaven.”

“Ah, Monsieur; but I know!”

“What do you know? many things, I verily believe; yet not me, Lucy!”

“I know that you have a pleasant old house in a pleasant old square of the Basse-Ville⁠—why don’t you go and live there?”

“Hein?” muttered he again.

“I liked it much, Monsieur; with the steps ascending to the door, the grey flags in front, the nodding trees behind⁠—real trees, not shrubs⁠—trees dark, high, and of old growth. And the boudoir-oratoire⁠—you should make that room your study; it is so quiet and solemn.”

He eyed me closely; he half-smiled, half-coloured. “Where did you pick up all that? Who told you?” he asked.

“Nobody told me. Did I dream it, Monsieur, do you think?”

“Can I enter into your visions? Can I guess a woman’s waking thoughts, much less her sleeping fantasies?”

“If I dreamt it, I saw in my dream human beings as well as a house. I saw a priest, old, bent, and grey, and a domestic⁠—old, too, and picturesque; and a lady, splendid but strange; her head would scarce reach to my elbow⁠—her magnificence might ransom a duke. She wore a gown bright as lapis-lazuli⁠—a shawl worth a thousand francs: she was decked with ornaments so brilliant, I never saw any with such a beautiful sparkle; but her figure looked as if it had been broken in two and bent double; she seemed also to have outlived the common years of humanity, and to have attained those which are only labour and sorrow. She was become morose⁠—almost malevolent; yet somebody, it appears, cared for her in her infirmities⁠—somebody forgave her trespasses, hoping to have his trespasses forgiven. They lived together, these three people⁠—the mistress, the chaplain, the servant⁠—all old, all feeble, all sheltered under one kind wing.”

He covered with his hand the upper part of his face, but did not conceal his mouth, where I saw hovering an expression I liked.

“I see you have entered into my secrets,” said he, “but how was it done?”

So I told him how⁠—the commission on which I had been sent, the storm which had detained me, the abruptness of the lady, the kindness of the priest.

“As I sat waiting for the rain to cease, Père Silas whiled away the time with a story,” I said.

“A story! What story? Père Silas is no romancist.”

“Shall I tell Monsieur the tale?”

“Yes: begin at the beginning. Let me hear some of Miss Lucy’s French⁠—her best or her worst⁠—I don’t much care which: let us have a good poignée of barbarisms, and a bounteous dose of the insular accent.”

“Monsieur is not going to be gratified by a tale of ambitious proportions, and the spectacle of the narrator sticking fast in the midst. But I will tell him the title⁠—the ‘Priest’s Pupil.’ ”

“Bah!” said he, the swarthy flush again dyeing his dark cheek. “The good old father could not have chosen a worse subject; it is his weak point. But what of the ‘Priest’s Pupil?’ ”

“Oh! many things.”

“You may as well define what things. I mean to know.”

“There was the pupil’s youth, the pupil’s manhood⁠—his avarice, his ingratitude, his implacability, his inconstancy. Such a bad pupil, Monsieur!⁠—so thankless, cold-hearted, unchivalrous, unforgiving!

“Et puis?” said he, taking a cigar.

“Et puis,” I pursued, “he underwent calamities which one did not pity⁠—bore them in a spirit one did not admire⁠—endured wrongs for which one felt no sympathy; finally took the unchristian revenge of heaping coals of fire on his adversary’s head.”

“You have not told me all,” said he.

“Nearly all, I think: I have indicated the heads of Père Silas’s chapters.”

“You have forgotten one⁠—that which touched on the pupil’s lack of affection⁠—on his hard, cold, monkish heart.”

“True; I remember now. Père Silas did say that his vocation was almost that of a priest⁠—that his life was considered consecrated.”

“By what bonds or duties?”

“By the ties of the past and the charities of the present.”

“You have, then, the whole situation?”

“I have now told Monsieur all that was told me.”

Some meditative minutes passed.

“Now, Mademoiselle Lucy, look at me, and with that truth which I believe you never knowingly violate, answer me one question. Raise your eyes; rest them on mine; have no hesitation; fear not to trust me⁠—I am a man to be trusted.”

I raised my eyes.

“Knowing me thoroughly now⁠—all my antecedents, all my responsibilities⁠—having long known my faults, can you and I still be friends?”

“If Monsieur wants a friend in me, I shall be glad to