



Produced by KD Weeks, Melissa McDaniel and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)






                          Transcriber’s Note:

This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. A
superscripted character is denoted by ‘^’.

Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please
see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding
the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.

The footnotes have been moved to follow the paragraph in which they are
referenced.

                      THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE
                       IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
                       EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN




                            MOTHER OF PEARL

[Illustration: decoration]

                            MOTHER OF PEARL




                           BY ANATOLE FRANCE

                            A TRANSLATION BY
                            FREDERIC CHAPMAN

[Illustration: decoration]




                   LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
                  NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY: MCMVIII








             WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH




                                CONTENTS




                                                            PAGE

       THE PROCURATOR OF JUDÆA                                 3

       AMYCUS AND CELESTINE                                   29

       THE LEGEND OF SAINTS OLIVERIA AND LIBERETTA            39

       ST. EUPHROSINE                                         55

       SCHOLASTICA                                            75

       OUR LADY’S JUGGLER                                     83

       THE MASS OF SHADOWS                                    97

       LESLIE WOOD                                           109

       GESTAS                                                129

       THE MANUSCRIPT OF A VILLAGE DOCTOR                    143

       MEMOIRS OF A VOLUNTEER                                161

       DAWN                                                  225

       MADAME DE LUZY                                        243

       THE BOON OF DEATH BESTOWED                            257

       A TALE OF THE MONTH OF FLORÉAL IN THE YEAR II         265

       THE LITTLE LEADEN SOLDIER                             277

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                        THE PROCURATOR OF JUDÆA




                            MOTHER OF PEARL




                        THE PROCURATOR OF JUDÆA


Lælius Lamia, born in Italy of illustrious parents, had not yet
discarded the _toga prætexta_ when he set out for the schools of Athens
to study philosophy. Subsequently he took up his residence at Rome, and
in his house on the Esquiline, amid a circle of youthful wastrels,
abandoned himself to licentious courses. But being accused of engaging
in criminal relations with Lepida, the wife of Sulpicius Quirinus, a man
of consular rank, and being found guilty, he was exiled by Tiberius
Cæsar. At that time he was just entering his twenty-fourth year. During
the eighteen years that his exile lasted he traversed Syria, Palestine,
Cappadocia, and Armenia, and made prolonged visits to Antioch, Cæsarea,
and Jerusalem. When, after the death of Tiberius, Caius was raised to
the purple, Lamia obtained permission to return to Rome. He even
regained a portion of his possessions. Adversity had taught him wisdom.

He avoided all intercourse with the wives and daughters of Roman
citizens, made no efforts towards obtaining office, held aloof from
public honours, and lived a secluded life in his house on the Esquiline.
Occupying himself with the task of recording all the remarkable things
he had seen during his distant travels, he turned, as he said, the
vicissitudes of his years of expiation into a diversion for his hours of
rest. In the midst of these calm employments, alternating with assiduous
study of the works of Epicurus, he recognized with a mixture of surprise
and vexation that age was stealing upon him. In his sixty-second year,
being afflicted with an illness which proved in no slight degree
troublesome, he decided to have recourse to the waters at Baiæ. The
coast at that point, once frequented by the halcyon, was at this date
the resort of the wealthy Roman, greedy of pleasure. For a week Lamia
lived alone, without a friend in the brilliant crowd. Then one day,
after dinner, an inclination to which he yielded urged him to ascend the
incline, which, covered with vines that resembled bacchantes, looked out
upon the waves.

Having reached the summit he seated himself by the side of a path
beneath a terebinth, and let his glances wander over the lovely
landscape. To his left, livid and bare, the Phlegræan plain stretched
out towards the ruins of Cumæ. On his right, Cape Misenum plunged its
abrupt spur beneath the Tyrrhenian sea. Beneath his feet luxurious Baiæ,
following the graceful outline of the coast, displayed its gardens, its
villas thronged with statues, its porticos, its marble terraces along
the shores of the blue ocean where the dolphins sported. Before him, on
the other side of the bay, on the Campanian coast, gilded by the already
sinking sun, gleamed the temples which far away rose above the laurels
of Posilippo, whilst on the extreme horizon Vesuvius looked forth
smiling.

Lamia drew from a fold of his toga a scroll containing the _Treatise
upon Nature_, extended himself upon the ground, and began to read. But
the warning cries of a slave necessitated his rising to allow of the
passage of a litter which was being carried along the narrow pathway
through the vineyards. The litter being uncurtained, permitted Lamia to
see stretched upon the cushions as it was borne nearer to him the figure
of an elderly man of immense bulk, who, supporting his head on his hand,
gazed out with a gloomy and disdainful expression. His nose, which was
aquiline, and his chin, which was prominent, seemed desirous of meeting
across his lips, and his jaws were powerful.

From the first moment Lamia was convinced that the face was familiar to
him. He hesitated a moment before the name came to him. Then suddenly
hastening towards the litter with a display of surprise and delight—

“Pontius Pilate!” he cried. “The gods be praised who have permitted me
to see you once again!”

The old man gave a signal to the slaves to stop, and cast a keen glance
upon the stranger who had addressed him.

“Pontius, my dear host,” resumed the latter, “have twenty years so far
whitened my hair and hollowed my cheeks that you no longer recognize
your friend Ælius Lamia?”

At this name Pontius Pilate dismounted from the litter as actively as
the weight of his years and the heaviness of his gait permitted him, and
embraced Ælius Lamia again and again.

“Gods! what a treat it is to me to see you once more! But, alas, you
call up memories of those long-vanished days when I was Procurator of
Judæa in the province of Syria. Why, it must be thirty years ago that I
first met you. It was at Cæsarea, whither you came to drag out your
weary term of exile. I was fortunate enough to alleviate it a little,
and out of friendship, Lamia, you followed me to that depressing place
Jerusalem, where the Jews filled me with bitterness and disgust. You
remained for more than ten years my guest and my companion, and in
converse about Rome and things Roman we both of us managed to find
consolation—you for your misfortunes, and I for my burdens of State.”

Lamia embraced him afresh.

“You forget two things, Pontius; you are overlooking the facts that you
used your influence on my behalf with Herod Antipas, and that your purse
was freely open to me.”

“Let us not talk of that,” replied Pontius, “since after your return to
Rome you sent me by one of your freedmen a sum of money which repaid me
with usury.”

“Pontius, I could never consider myself out of your debt by the mere
payment of money. But tell me, have the gods fulfilled your desires? Are
you in the enjoyment of all the happiness you deserve? Tell me about
your family, your fortunes, your health.”

“I have withdrawn to Sicily, where I possess estates, and where I
cultivate wheat for the market. My eldest daughter, my best-beloved
Pontia, who has been left a widow, lives with me, and directs my
household. The gods be praised, I have preserved my mental vigour; my
memory is not in the least degree enfeebled. But old age always brings
in its train a long procession of griefs and infirmities. I am cruelly
tormented with gout. And at this very moment you find me on my way to
the Phlegræan plain in search of a remedy for my sufferings. From that
burning soil, whence at night flames burst forth, proceed acrid
exhalations of sulphur, which, so they say, ease the pains and restore
suppleness to the stiffened joints. At least, the physicians assure me
that it is so.”

“May you find it so in your case, Pontius! But, despite the gout and its
burning torments, you scarcely look as old as myself, although in
reality you must be my senior by ten years. Unmistakably you have
retained a greater degree of vigour than I ever possessed, and I am
overjoyed to find you looking so hale. Why, dear friend, did you retire
from the public service before the customary age? Why, on resigning your
governorship in Judæa, did you withdraw to a voluntary exile on your
Sicilian estates? Give me an account of your doings from the moment that
I ceased