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                          HUMAN FOLLIES.




                          HUMAN FOLLIES.

                      (_La Bêtise Humaine._)

                                BY

                           JULES NORIAC.

         _Translated from the_ SIXTEENTH _Paris Edition_.

                                BY

                          GEORGE MARLOW.


                          [Illustration]


                           PHILADELPHIA:
                        FREDERICK LEYPOLDT.
                    NEW YORK: F. W. CHRISTERN.
                               1863.




HUMAN FOLLIES.




CHAPTER I.


When Eusebe Martin had attained his twenty-first year, his father,
who was a man of sense, thus addressed him:--

“Eusebe, you are no longer a child: it is time to begin your
education. You were but eight years old when you lost your mother,
my beloved wife. This was a great misfortune, no doubt; for her
heart would have been to you a treasure of affection. However, if
we were permitted to believe in compensations in this world, I
should think that you had been recompensed for this loss, great as
it was. Your mother, had she lived, would have spoiled you, and
to-day you would not have been half the man you are.

“Remember that I have been to you a father full of solicitude.
Since the day of your mother’s death, I have left you as free as
the bird that at this moment is singing on the linden-tree at
the door. I have clothed you according to the season,--in summer
in linen, in winter in wool. My table has always been abundantly
supplied. As I never told you that you ate too much, you have never
shown a desire to overload your stomach. I have accustomed you to
running in the fields and to working with the peasants, which has
rendered you strong and vigorous.

“Morally, I owed you nothing more. Nevertheless, I have taught you
to read and to write. I cannot tell you how thankful I am that
you have not a thick head: instead of six months, you would have
wearied me two long years,--perhaps more. What use have you made
of the little learning I have given you? I have never taken the
pains to inquire. I have left my library entirely at your disposal,
because I knew that if it contained no good books it also contained
no bad ones. Have the books you have read tended to form or deform
your judgment? Little do I care; for, since no one can know where
falsehood is to be found and where truth is hidden, my reflections
would, probably, have been at war with reason.”

“Books generally tire me,” interrupted Eusebe. “Up to the present
time I have read nothing but the adventures of a sailor named
Robinson Crusoe, and of one Telemachus, son of Ulysses.”

“So much the better,” replied M. Martin; “or, perhaps, so much the
worse. I would rather see you an enthusiastic admirer of Robinson,
than of Paul and Virginia, or Faublas. But perhaps I am wrong; for,
after all, Paul and Virginia are all tenderness, Faublas all love,
and Robinson is egotism personified. However, nothing proves that
egotism, which is a fault, is not alone worth as much as tenderness
and love, which are considered good qualities.

“Now, my son, listen to me. You owe me your existence, for which,
if I do not merit your thanks, I should not incur your displeasure.
I but fulfilled a natural law. I have provided for your wants: the
laws of society made it my duty. I have just paid a sum of money
which exempts you from military service. You will, however, be
at liberty to become a soldier at any time you may think proper.
To-day I have received from my notary your mother’s fortune. Here
it is: it is yours. In this belt there are forty-eight pieces of
paper of the Bank of France, and one hundred pieces of gold. Each
one of these pieces of paper is worth fifty pieces of gold: each
piece of gold is worth twenty of those white pieces which I give
you on Sunday, when you go to play with the vagabond boys of the
village on the church square. In short, you possess fifty thousand
francs,--that is, more twenty-sous pieces than we gather apples
in ten years. Compared with some, you are rich; with others, you
are poor. Do not trouble yourself either about those who are above
or about those who are below you. The interest of this money will
enable you to live until, after having become acquainted with the
world, you decide to choose a vocation. If, however, you do not see
fit to take the trouble of investing it, you have only to limit
your expenses to ten francs per day, when your patrimony will
last five thousand days,--that is, about fourteen years. In all
probability, at the expiration of this time I shall be dead, and
you will naturally be the possessor of our domain, the Capelette,
the revenues of which are three thousand francs a year, in bad
times as well as in good.

“You are about to set out for Paris, the city _par excellence_ of
civilization. Never will you have so good a theatre for studying
the world. Profit by it. Go, Eusebe, and do not take the goods of
others: you would have no excuse, since you have enough of your
own. Never disguise the truth. The play is not worth the candle.
Never strike the weak, and be equally careful not to defend them:
you would make yourself two enemies. Try to have neither enemies
nor friends: there is little to choose between them. And now,
good-bye, my boy: here is the coach.”

The young man threw his arms around his father’s neck and embraced
him affectionately. M. Martin was moved by this unexpected outburst
of feeling. In a trembling voice, he said,--

“Farewell, my son! farewell!”

The young man started. His father, having placed himself at the
window a moment afterwards, looked at him as he hurried towards the
road.

“Eusebe!” cried he: “come here a moment, and tell me what put it
into your head to embrace me, and who taught you to make this
demonstration of affection.”

“Father,” replied the young man, “ten years ago M. Jaucourt, the
curate, who died last year, seeing me divide a piece of bread with
a poor idiot, embraced me as I just embraced you when you divided
your fortune with me.”

At this moment the diligence passed. With one bound, Eusebe seated
himself beside the postilion.

M. Martin closed the window, and, as he with a large plaid
handkerchief wiped away a tear that was ready to fall, said,--

“Plague on the curates! they are always sticking their noses where
they have no business!”




CHAPTER II.


M. Martin was neither a wicked man nor a fool, but he was a
confirmed skeptic. For forty years (he was now sixty) he had been
disappointed in all the events of his life.

When it became necessary for him to marry, he had to choose between
two of his cousins, who were equally accomplished and equally
beautiful. He preferred the one who pleased him least, because
she was of a more robust constitution than her sister. Nine years
afterwards she died, while the delicate sister was still living.

Martin was half ruined by a friend of his youth, for whom he would
have given his life.

One day, when he was from home, one of his outbuildings caught
fire, and the flames would have communicated to his dwelling but
for a man, who, at the risk of his life, succeeded in arresting
them. This man was his only enemy!

Well informed for a man of his condition, and endowed with a fair
share of sense, he was looked up to by his neighbors with a certain
degree of deference. He studied hard in order to strengthen a
reputation of which he was proud; but in so doing he was not slow
to discover that he knew nothing.

His first visit to Paris was still fresh in his memory. It was in
September, 1832. One morning he went to breathe the fresh air in
the garden of the Tuileries, when a man of a noble and friendly
mien, wearing a gray hat, commenced conversation with him.

“You are a stranger in Paris?”

“I am from Limousin,” replied Martin.

“You are a manufacturer, perhaps?”

“No: I am a farmer.”

“I am not acquainted with your section of the country, but I have
heard it highly spoken of.”

“We have, indeed, a beautiful country,” replied the
countryman,--“rich and picturesque, industrious and patriotic: we
are in want of but one thing,--a river.”

“But you have the Vienna.”

“The Vienna is not navigable.”

“Could it not be made so?”

“It is the dream of the entire population of Limousin.”

“Monsieur, what is your name?”

“Martin.”

“Very well, Monsieur Martin: when you return home, tell your
neighbors that in less than three years their river will be
navigable.”

“Who are you,” asked Martin, “who speak with so much authority?”

A bland smile lighted up the features of the man with the gray hat,
as he replied, with simplicity,--

“I am the King of the French.”

It seemed as if the crowd which had gathered around the two
promenaders had only waited for this announcement. Cries of “_Vive
le Roi!_” many times repeated, burst forth. The people surrounded
the king, who smiled at some, offered his hand to others, and had a
kind word for all.

“There is a great king and a great people,” thought Martin, who
returned to the Capelette to narrate his royal adventure and
acquaint the whole department with the king’s promises.

Seventeen years wore away. Martin, tired of the monotony of the
country, and living alone with his son, who was still a child,
resolved to go once more to Paris. Scarcely had he arrived at a
hotel, when he hurried to dress himself in his best, saying that,
although the king had not kept his promise, he owed him the first
visit. “I shall see him in his garden,” said he: “he will be less
embarrassed than if I were to call at his palace.”

He found the entrances to the Tuileries blocked up, and motley
crowds, who were loud in their cries, surrounded the palace. “What
excellent people!--what love for their sovereign!” thought honest
Martin.

Multitudes of ragged boys were running through the streets,
singing,--

    “Mourir pour la patrie,
      C’est le sort le plus beau,
    Le plus digne d’envie:
      C’est le sort * * * *”

“What youths! What noble youths!” cried honest Martin, with tears
in his eyes.

Seeing that he could not approach the garden from the side of the
Rue de Rivoli, he went round to the Place de la Concorde. Just as
he arrived at the quay, a small half-hidden gate in the wall opened
before him, from which issued an old man, wearing a blue blouse,
leaning on the arm of another man scarcely less aged than himself.

“Monsieur Martin,” said he, “help me, I pray you, to get into this
cab.”

“Who are you? I do not recollect you,” said the astonished rustic.

“An hour ago I was King of the French,” replied the old man.

“Ah! sire,” cried Martin, preoccupied by the one idea, “the Vienna
is not yet navigable.”

“It is true: I failed to keep my promise, and I am cruelly
punished.”

The cab drove rapidly away, while Martin remained fixed to the
spot, unable to comprehend the meaning of this royal apparition.
He was, however, soon roused from his revery by a noisy crowd that
issued from the little gate.

“The brigand has escaped us,” cried they.

“We will have him before he gets far.”

“So much the better.”

“Unfortunate king! deluded people!” murmured the countryman; and
he took the road to the Capelette, where he lived in solitude. His
mind became more and more wavering. Having no one with whom to
engage in discussion, he had contracted the habit of controverting
his ideas himself, and the consequence was, that he had become a
skeptic in every thing. This was the reason why he had brought
up his son as he had done, or, rather, the reason why he had not
brought him up at all.




CHAPTER III.


On the evening of the day on which he left home, Eusebe arrived at
the railroad-depot. He approached the ticket-office, and said to
the agent,--

“I want to go to Paris.”

“Which class car do you wish, sir?”

“The best.”

“Fifty-four francs,” replied the agent.

Eusebe handed him three louis, and received six francs in return.

“There,” thought Eusebe, “is a clever fellow: it did not take him a
minute to tell how much was coming to me.”

“And now,” he asked, “could you tell me, sir, where I will find the
carriage?”

“The train, you mean.”

“I don’t know. Is that the name of the vehicle that is to transport
me to Paris?” asked Eusebe, timidly.

“Vehicle!” cried the man. “What do you call a vehicle? Your
jesting is ill timed, sir. Here is your car: another time try to be
a little more polite.”

“This man,” said Eusebe to himself, “is not so clever, after all:
he is a fool,--an ignoramus!”

Eusebe’s journey was without incident. Alone in a first-class
_coupé_, he made himself a couch, on the floor, of the cushions,
and, placing his valise under his head for a pillow, he slept
quietly until daylight.

When he awoke, he had passed Orleans. His eyes, half open, glanced
at the country, and a cry of admiration escaped him.

“Oh, what splendid farms! what beautiful fields!” cried he:
“how admirably the land is cultivated! what care, what labor,
is bestowed on it! My father was right: civilization has not
penetrated into the departments of the interior. Fifteen hours
ago, I left the Capelette. What a difference! Why is the soil so
fertile here and so sterile with us? The soil is the same, but
the cultivation is not. Here there are no immense forests, no
uncultivated fields: the country is as populous as our cities.
Laborers abound, and agricultural implements are brought to the
highest state of perfection. What abundance! what riches! Everybody
seems to be happy and contented. How beautiful and grand all this
is!”

At the moment he made these reflections, the train began to slacken
its speed. They approached a station. Eusebe watched attentively
the groups of people who were waiting behind a barrier for the
train to pass, in order that they might, in their turn, pass also.
The noise of the locomotive frightened a cart-horse tied to a post
near by. The poor animal, trembling with fear, snorted and reared
up on his hind legs, when a man, armed with a whip, came out of an
inn and began to strike the beast with all his might. The more he
struck, the more the horse reared and pranced. Finally, breaking
his halter, the animal sprang furiously against the barrier, which
he struck with his head and fell dead. The man cursed like a
carter, which he was.

“Surely,” said Eusebe to himself, “this is a very bad business.
The fault is the man’s, and not the beast’s. If the man had not
left the horse, the horse would not have been frightened. If the
horse had not been frightened, the man would not have struck him;
and if the man had not struck the horse, the animal would not
be dead. This man is perhaps a savage, recently arrived among
civilized people. That, however, I think scarcely probable, since
he speaks with tolerable correctness. Is my father right in saying
that extremes touch, and that the last word of civilization is
perhaps the first of barbarism?”

Eusebe had arrived at this point in his reflections, when two
travellers entered the _coupé_ he occupied. Although it was still
early in September, the two new-comers wore fur caps and overshoes
and thick woollen cloaks, while their faces were half concealed by
immense woollen comforters.

“Upon my word,” said one of them, “the winter is already setting
in: this northwest wind is any thing but agreeable. What do you say
to taking a puff? It will give us an appetite.”

On hearing these words, Eusebe was a prey to the most lively
curiosity. The singular costume of his travelling-companions made
him suspect he had in them two subjects for study, coming from some
distant clime. To judge from their furs, they must have first seen
the light at Moscow. On hearing them talk about “taking a puff,”
he expected to see something new and extraordinary, and prepared
himself to be all eyes and ears, in order to become acquainted with
the customs of the strangers whom chance had thrown in his way.

To the great disappointment of the young man, the traveller took
some cigars out of his pocket and lighted one, after having offered
them to his companion and then to Eusebe, who had refused.

“You do not smoke, young man?”

“No, sir.”

“Bah! How old are you, then?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Twenty-one years old, and you do not smoke! Where the devil do you
come from, my young friend?”

“I come from the Capelette, a domain near Saint-Brice, in Limousin;
I am going to Paris to see the world; and I cannot be your friend,
since I never met you until this morning.”

“Do not get angry, young man. It was not my intention to be rude.”

“I know that,” said Eusebe. “On the contrary, you offered me your
rolls of tobacco, for which I am obliged.”

“Ah! you are from Monsieur de Pourceaugnac’s