Saturday Evening Gazette/June 7, 1856/Cecile
CECILE;
OR THE TWO MISERS.
TRANSLATED FOR THE GAZETTE.
It was a very ordinary looking bench, that of which we are going to speak, and in reality no different from other benches; nevertheless, unlike them, it had received a name. It was called “The Bench of the Two Misers.”
It had this appellation for about two years. This was its origin. A poor woman’s child, aged about six years, was run over by a vehicle, and his leg was broken. The mother’s grief was poignant. The words in which she expressed her emotion brought tears to the eyes of the bystanders. She was a widow and her child’s sustenance depended on her labor. What was to become of her? If she devoted herself henceforth to her crippled child, she could work no longer; if she did not take care of him, it would be necessary to put him in a hospital, and to be separated from him, when he had most need of his mother. Thus, while a doctor who, passing by, stopped to examine the child’s wound, a silence prevailed in the crowd grouped round the sufferer. What was to be done?
The old apple women who stood on the corner broke the silence. She was certainly not a wealthy person, and her business was not extensive.
“Well!” said she, “here are thirty-six means of doing something. Let us each contribute something, and help the mother to pay her attention alone to her boy until he is entirely recovered.”
And so saying, she took off her bonnet, and emptied into it all she had in her pocket.
“Right!” said a man who was standing by her side, and he let a twenty franc piece fall into the bonnet. Every one murmured approbation. Money poured in on all sides. There were but two who refused to give.
They were two men of a certain age, habitues of the place. They always sat on a particular bench. The meagre form, the cold eye, the pinched lip, all betrayed them misers.
The apple woman stopped before them and said:—
“We appeal to your charity for this poor woman whose child has been severely injured.”
“I’ve no money,” said the first.
“Nor I,” said the second.
But a large sum was collected,—more than sufficient, for the mother and her child.
From that day the bench received the name to which we have alluded. When the misers sat there, none came near them; even little children avoided them.
Our story opens on the 26th of October. The day was glorious, the air pure, and not a cloud in the heavens, and the two misers sat on their wonted seat.
The one was about sixty years of age; the other perhaps fifty. The last, who had sat quietly for a long time, drew an almanack from his pocket, ran his finger down the column of figures, and then asked,
“To-day is the 26th, eh, Robert?”
“Yes, the 26th.”
“To-morrow is the day of St. Frumence—my Saint’s Day.”
“Ah, indeed. But did you suppose I would think of that?”
“No. You have never done so. I have even heard you criticise this custom. You are right.”
And he put the almanack again in his pocket. A moment after, he remarked,
“It is twenty-one years since any one has thought of it.”
“Yes,” said Robert, “then Cecile remembered it.”
“Yes. The day before she died.”
“I remember Cecile on that occasion gave you a purse which she worked herself.”
“And which disappeared,” added Frumence, “on the day of the death of Cecile.”
“With two hundred francs which it contained.”
“It seems that it was the destiny of those two hundred francs to be lost.”
“True. Cecile would have lost them in another way. The influence of woman is bad;—it enervates man.”
After a short silence, Frumence continued:
“She governed us, truly, for she led us like little children, you, her father, me her husband. You recall the time when she regarded us fixedly with her great eyes; they had a strange color, her eyes; I have never seen similar. I loved her indeed, Robert; her death was so unexpected, so sudden, that it rendered me almost mad. It cost me six hundred francs to bury her!”
“Six hundred francs!” said Robert.
“There were a great many people at her funeral,—especially poor people,—do you remember? She was very much beloved—she gave a great deal.”
“The human race is a race of frailty. Giving is favoring idleness and all the vices.”
Night came on. M. Robert took his gloves in his hands, and put them on methodically. While doing so, he stopped and touched the arm of Frumence:
“Why did you say that no one has thought of your fete day for twenty-one years? A mistake, Frumence; some one has thought of you.”
“Who?”
“The little one,—your daughter. When she was at boarding school, and the day came round, she sent you a letter with a bouquet and a pair of slippers embroidered by herself.”
“True; but that was only once.”
“I remember that you forbade its repetition. Were you angry at it?”
“No; it seemed to me that I had sufficiently fulfilled the duty of a father towards her; I have paid all her expenses, and have given her my consent to get married.”
The fact is that M. Frumence understood nobly the obligations of paternity. Who paid his daughter’s expenses more punctually than he? He never delayed an hour. What father opposed less obstacles to his daughter’s marriage? It is true that he never troubled himself about her, that he hardly knew to whose charge his daughter was confided. But what of that? He owed no one a cent on her account. That was his “thing essential!” That was his beau ideal of parental tenderness.
M. Frumence congratulated himself, then, on the manner in which he had discharged his duties as a father. M. Robert had nothing to say, for he had discharged no less satisfactorily his duties as a grandfather, and he finished putting on his gloves.
A little childish voice was heard near them at that moment. It said, “Mamma, I’m hungry.” Robert and Frumence turned their heads and saw a woman at the other end of the bench, with a little child upon her knees. It didn’t interest our misers at all. Just then a little fellow of twelve years, a match seller, stopped before them.
“Just the thing,” said Robert. “We are out of matches. You paid for them the last time. It’s my turn, now. Let us see the matches. The boxes are very small. You want a sou, don’t you?” And he felt in his pocket. Just then the child’s voice was heard, crying, “Oh, mamma, how hungry I am! Please buy me some bread!” Had those misers listened to the mother’s answer, they might have heard her murmur, “Ah! my poor little one, I have not a sou to buy bread with!”
The match boy was paid and went away. The poor little child saw the purse and money, and, coming to Robert, asked in a trembling voice, “Sir, please give me a sou to buy some bread?”
The miser looked coldly at her and answered, “There are some people who bring up their children to beg in the streets.” And as he spoke, a sou rolled accidentally from his purse to the feet of the child, who took it up.
“Give me my money, you little thief,” cried he.
The mother took the sou from the child’s hand and give it to the miser. He received it. Yes, he had the courage to put it back in his purse. Then, placing the child in her arms, the mother walked rapidly away.
The misers looked at each other in silence and went home.
PART II.
Let us look at the antecedents of the misers. Robert married at an early age the daughter of his employer, who presented him with one child,—a daughter named Cecile. The little one was not ten years of age when her mother died. Robert associated Frumence with him in business. Their tastes were similar. They were both penurious in the extreme. At thirteen Cecile showed a maturity of intelligence rare at that age. She grew up remarkably beautiful. Frumence fell in love with her. Her father desired that a match should be made, but could that really superior young woman fancy a person like Frumence? She steadily refused. But the great object of her life was to change her father’s disposition; to make him, if not generous, at least charitable. And so he said to her at last, “Marry Frumence and you may mould me to your wishes, be they what they may.” And the young girl yielded at last and became a wife.
One day Cecile said to her husband, “The time is fast approaching when I shall become a mother. Bring me, I pray you, the purse which I gave you, and ask my father to come here.”
When they were both present, she succeeded in obtaining a hundred francs from each. Then they went to dinner. After the repeat was concluded, she took her seat at the piano, and played a morceau full of touching melody. Alas! it was the song of the swan. Then, with a smile on her lips and the purse in her hands, she bade her father and husband accompany her on a mission of charity. But hardly had she stepped her foot on the porch, when she felt the pangs of maternity.
She gave birth to a daughter and died.
Frumence only saw in his child the cause of her mother’s death. He cared not to look at her; but put her out to nurse, and then sent her to boarding-school. And his monotonous existence lasted till the time when our story continues.
They walked homeward after refusing, as we have seen, a sou to the starving child. They were admitted by Pierre, the foster brother of Cecile.
The misers sat down and thought. All at once a strange feeling of superstitious terror crept over the twain.
“Do you believe in spectres?” at length asked Frumence.
The answer died away on the lips of Robert, and his self-possession entirely forsook him.
“I am sorry,” said Frumence, “that you did not give the sou to the little child.”
“I, also,” said Robert, “am sorry for it.”
“We should have felt less unhappy now.”
“The fact is,” said Robert, “that this sou actually burdens my pocket. Yes, I wish I had given it to the little child.”
And thus saying, he took the sou from his pocket and put it on the table.
“Look at it! Look, Frumence! How strange! It shines like fire!”
“It is made of bell metal,” returned the other, without daring to look at it.
“True. It is bell metal.”
Then it seemed to Robert that his sou began to increase in size little by little, and that it spoke in a loud voice, saying: “A bell, I call to prayer—prayer for the living and the dead—for the dead who were poor while living! I am the money of the poor! I love to buy them bread. The purse of the miser is my prison—free me!”
“Do you hear it, Frumence? Do you hear it?” shrieked the old man. “It speaks of prayers, of poor people! Throw it away! Rid me of it, I beg you.”
Frumence opened the window rapidly, seized the sou and threw it. It struck against the iron window bar, fell on the floor, and rolled into a crack. Robert took his knife and tried to extricate it. In vain. With every effort it was wedged in still further.
For a long time not a word was spoken, at last Frumence broke the silence.
“Robert,” said he, “we are acting like two children. We have thought of Cecile, and the resemblance that poor woman with the child bore to her, has foolishly excited our imaginations. We are both sorry, that we have not, as Cecile wished, given money every year to the poor. Let us give them some money. We should be then more at peace with ourselves.”
“I believe you are right,” said Robert.
“Besides,” added Frumence, “our stomachs are empty, and nothing produces hallucinations like hunger.”
Accordingly they sat down to table.
“I have an idea,” said Robert. “It is your fete day. We should drink a bottle to your health. It isn’t often we do that.”
Certainly not; they didn’t do that very often.
Decidedly, they resolved upon a debauch. A cheese was brought out, which hadn’t been touched for six months, and a pot of dulces which was bought four years before when Robert was sick.
Robert went to the cellar to bring a bottle of the Bordeaux which had not been tasted since the death of Cecile. “Are you there, Pierre?” asked he as he entered the cellar. Pierre was not there; but Robert saw, or thought he saw, was the image of Cecile. He seized the bottle, hurried up stairs, and fell half stifled upon a chair.
“Frumence! she is in the house!” said he. “I have just seen her.”
“Bah! imagination merely. A good thimble-full of this wine will revive you. Do you know it has been bottled twenty-two years?”
“To your health, then,” said Robert, “since it is your fete day. Ah, we should drink a little every day.”
“True. We are unhappy. Nobody loves us.”
“Yes, one day we shall die in a corner, alone, with none to bury us.”
“Wine is glorious. Let us drink more of it.”
And they drank, when of a sudden they heard a plaintive melody upon the piano in the next room, which had not been touched since the death of Cecile. They shuddered.
“We are not children, now,” said Robert. “Let us see what that means.”
They entered the room. The piano was open.
“Cecile is in the house,” murmured Robert. “Look there—her purse—the lost purse—Cecile’s purse.”
They left the room, pale and trembling. After a pause, Frumence said, “We will keep our promise to Cecile. Every year we will give 200 francs to the poor.”
“Yes, yes.”
“And we will distribute them ourselves.”
“Yes, yes.”
“And then why should we fear the spectre of Cecile?”
They filled the purse, and then drank to the memory of Cecile. Then they sat down in silence.
The sou of bell metal talked to them again. “Give, yes, give!” it said. “Give to mothers who have little ones! Poor mothers! still poorer little ones! Cecile left a daughter. Where is she?” Then the piano sounded the melody Cecile had played the day before her death, and to that succeeded a strange and terrible morceau. Every note took a human voice. They groaned, cried, supplicated. The wail of the mother despairing, of the infant starving, rang out in the silence.
By a superhuman effort the misers shrieked, “Pardon, Cecile, pardon.” And Cecile stood before them in her grave clothes. “Father! husband! Have you done your duty to your brother? have you done your duty to your God?”
And the misers woke. It was daylight and they had dreamed. They took each other’s hands quietly, and went out. In the entry they saw Pierre, their servant, and the foster brother of Cecile, lying, as was his wont, on the floor uncovered. Quietly they brought him blankets and pillows, and covered him. They went out, and visited a hundred dwellings of the poor, distributing alms, and at nightfall they returned.
Pierre, lamp in hand, opened the door. He had passed a troubled day. His masters both gone out so early—spending the whole day—not letting him know whither or for what purpose they had gone—and he waking up to find their bed clothes over him—what could all this signify?
“Nothing, nothing, my poor Pierre,” cried Frumence, “we have found nothing. But if you knew how many dwellings we have visited, the poverty which we have seen in seeking our daughter! We have spent all the money we took with us, but no signs of Cecile. And, all this time she is suffering.”
If ever Pierre could be considered an idiot, it was at that moment. It seemed to him that a great change had taken place in his masters, and it was not to be doubted that it was Cecile they sought.
“Cecile!” murmured he mechanically.
“You have seen her, perhaps?” asked Robert.
“She is my foster sister. I saw her yesterday. Do not beat me for having let her enter. Her little one was hungry, and Cecile had told it that Pierre would give it a bit of bread. That was why she came. I gave her my dinner, but it was very little.”
Robert took Pierre’s hands and held them in his own. Pierre continued.
“She has been here very often. I have never seen her so sad as she was yesterday. She told me that she was indeed suffering and that she should soon depart for a better world. She wished to visit once more the chamber of her mother, and to see all that belonged to her. She went to the piano her mother’s hands so often touched, and at the first notes we both were unable to restrain our tears. Oh, Monsieur Frumence, love her—love the little child!”
“Do you know where she lives?”
“Yes, monsiuer, yes.” And he drew a written paper from his breast.
“Quick, let us go!” exclaimed Frumence. “Pierre, come with us.”
A moment after, the three departed in a coach.
Cecile had really come, the evening before, to the paternal roof, so inhospitable to her. And now she was in her miserable lodging, in the upper story of a house of the meanest appearance. There resided only those who lived by labor, and of these sad, reduced people, the saddest was Cecile.
She opened her door, and a man, some twenty-five years received her. The anxious expression on his disappeared when he saw Cecile.
“It is you, then?” said he. “Come in, come in. How much anxiety you have given us.”
At this moment the mother of him who had spoken appeared. She is an old acquaintance of the reader, for she was the apple woman of whom we spoke at the commencement of our tale.
“Heavens!” cried she. “How pale you are. And the little child, how tired! Place the child, who needs sleep, on the bed. We were very anxious about you. Richard has been to the door twenty times. You are sick—you need something!”
“Nothing but repose. It is very late and I am detaining you.”
“Not at all. I wish to speak to you. The truth must out. Richard loves you devotedly. I know you have troubles, but, if it be in our power, we will put an end to them. We are not rich, yet we will share willingly with you and the little one. My son will be the happiest of husbands, and I the happiest of mothers. I know that this thing demands reflection, but one must speak and the thing depends on you.”
“Cecile,” said Richard, on his knees, “the happiness of my life hangs upon your answer. I do not offer you a brilliant future,—nothing, but a devoted heart.”
“Richard,” answered Cecile, reading in Richard’s eyes the sincerity of his words, “I believe you, and I know you would make a wife happy. I will answer you to-morrow.”
The next day the apple woman knocked at the door of Cecile. No one answered. While preparing her son’s dinner she thought she heard a light step in the entry. She opened the door. “I am deceived,” said she.
Richard returned and eat his meal, but still no signs of Cecile. At length a knock was heard, and Richard and his mother, opening the door, found themselves face to face with three persons, Robert, Frumence and Pierre.
“Cecile!” exclaimed Frumence, “where is she?”
“There is her door, but she is not here,” returned Richard.
They entered the room. On the table was a paper inscribed, “For Richard.” Frumence seized it and opened it. In it Cecile avowed that she loved the young man, but did not wish to burden him with herself and child. She spoke of troubles, secret and profound; of her life devoted to despair; of the rest of the grave. It was a mixture of love and despair. “When you read this, Richard,” wrote she, “my child and I will sleep the sleep of eternity in the waters of the Seine.”
We cannot paint the expression of despair on the face of every person present. Pierre fell on his knees, and as chance would have it, in so doing his hand touched the pen with which Cecile had written. The ink upon it was not yet dry! He bounded to the floor. “Cecile still lives!” cried he, “there is yet time to save her! To the Seine! to the Seine!”
In an instant all save Richard’s mother had left the house.
Having arrived at the river, their eyes sought her in all directions, but in vain. An idea seized Richard. Cecile had gone to her father’s house. This was the last hope. Thither, then, they wended their way, and there they found her.
How to describe the feeling of joy, of rapture, of ecstacy, which all felt? Robert and Frumence learned that of which they had been ignorant,—that Cecile, whom they had so wilfully neglected, had been married, and that her husband had left her a widow at the end of a year. His bad conduct had left her nothing at his death save misery.
That night Richard slept but little. The next day be found himself incapable of work, and his mother remained at home with him. About noon M. Frumence entered the lonely dwelling.
“I am charged with an answer to you, Richard,” said he. “Cecile consented! But on one condition—that we shall all live together. Come, come with me, to greet your bride. But, ere we go, do you remember two persons,—the two misers? They are misers no longer? they are dead! very dead!” ***** There was a wedding next day, and its unparallelled splendor is yet remembered. ***** The stone bench still stands in its old place. Every one sits on it now, save the two misers of yore. “They are dead—very dead!”
Excellent Pens.—Benj. Loring & Co., have for sale a splendid bullion pen, as they term it, that is superior in many respects to any in the market. In one, its durability is a matter of much importance, and it holds its elasticity and fineness to the last. As a business or editorial pen it is capital, and we can freely commend it to the attention of the class of people who would use it for those purposes.