TALES OF STRANGE ADVENTURE
M. DE CHAUVELIN'S WILL
CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE IN THE RUE DE VAUGIRARD
ANYONE going from the Rue du Cherche-Midi to the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs will see on his left nand, opposite a public fountain marking the corner of the Rue du Regard and the Rue de Vaugirard, a small house inscribed as No. 84 in the municipal registers of Paris.
But first, before proceeding farther, for a confession which I am loth to make. This house, where I was accorded the frankest of welcomes almost ere I had shaken the dust of the provinces from off my feet, this house where for three years I was looked upon as a brother, this house where, in every disaster and every triumph of my life, I could in those days have knocked with the certainty of seeing the door open to my tears or my joy,—the situation of this house I have just been obliged to verify on a plan of the city, before I could make my readers understand its exact topographical position!
Twenty years ago God knows I should not have believed this possible.
The truth is in these same twenty years so many stirring events, like an ever rising tide, have eftaced from the minds of the men of our generation the recollections of their youth that it is no longer their memory they must trust,—memory has a twilight of its own in which far-off recollections fade away,—but to their heart.
So, when I abandon my memory to fall back on my heart, I find enshrined there, as in a holy tabernacle, all the dear recollections that have disappeared from my life one by one, as water escapes drop by drop from a cracked vase; no twilight is there, growing ever darker and darker, but dawn brightening more and more to the perfect day. Memory merges into darkness and nullity; the heart aspires to the light, to God.
Well, there it stands, the house I spoke of, a small building shut in and half hidden away behind a dark grey wall, for sale now they tell me, ready to escape, alas! from the friendly hands that once threw open its doors to me.
Let me tell you how I first crossed that threshold; the tale will bring us, in a roundabout way I know, to the history I purpose to relate. But no matter, come with me, we will talk as we go, and I will do what I can to make the way seem less tedious than it is in reality.
It was towards the end of 1826, to the best of my belief. There you see, I said only twenty years ago, and lo! it is twenty-two. I was just twenty then myself at the time.
In connexion with poor James Rousseau, I have told you about my literary dreams and aspirations. Already in 1826 they had grown more ambitious. It was no longer the Chasse et l'Amour I was inditing in collaboration with Adolphe de Leuven, or the Noce et l'Enterrement I was composing in conjunction with Vulplan and Lassagne; it was Christine I was planning, alone and unassisted. Glorious, shining vision, that in my youthful hopes, was to open that garden of the Hesperides to me, that garden with the golden apples, whereof criticism is the sleepless dragon.
Meantime, poor Hercules that I was. Necessity had laid a world upon my unfortunate shoulders. Ill-conditioned Goddess, who had not in my case even the pretext she had with Atlas of resting for an hour while burdening me with the crushing weight.
