



Produced by David Widger





THE IMMORTAL;

OR, ONE OF THE "FORTY." (L'IMMORTEL.)

By Alphonse Daudet,

Translated From The French By A. W. Verrall And Margaret D. G. Verrall

Rand, McNally & Company, Publishers - 1889




IMMORTAL; OR, THE "FORTY." (L'IMMORTEL)




CHAPTER I.

In the 1880 edition of Men of the Day, under the heading _Astier-Rehu_,
may be read the following notice:--

Astier, commonly called Astier-Rehu (Pierre Alexandre Leonard), Member
of the Academie Francaise, was born in 1816 at Sauvagnat (Puy-de-Dome).
His parents belonged to the class of small farmers. He displayed from
his earliest years a remarkable aptitude for the study of history. His
education, begun at Riom and continued at Louis-le-Grand, where he
was afterwards to re-appear as professor, was more sound than is now
fashionable, and secured his admission to the Ecole Normale Superieure,
from which he went to the Chair of History at the Lycee of Mende. It
was here that he wrote the Essay on Marcus Aurelius, crowned by
the Academie Francaise. Called to Paris the following year by M. de
Salvandy, the young and brilliant professor showed his sense of the
discerning favour extended to him by publishing, in rapid succession,
The Great Ministers of Louis XIV. (crowned by the Academie Francaise),
Bonaparte and the Concordat (crowned by the Academie Francaise), and
the admirable Introduction to the History of the House of Orleans, a
magnificent prologue to the work which was to occupy twenty years of his
life. This time the Academie, having no more crowns to offer him, gave
him a seat among its members. He could scarcely be called a stranger
there, having married Mlle. Rehu, daughter of the lamented Paulin Rehu,
the celebrated architect, member of the Academie des Inscriptions et
Belles-Lettres, and granddaughter of the highly respected Jean Rehu,
the father of the Academie Francaise, the elegant translator of Ovid and
author of the Letters to Urania, whose hale old age is the miracle of
the Institute. By his friend and colleague M. Thiers Leonard Astier-Rehu
was called to the post of Keeper of the Archives of Foreign Affairs.
It is well known that, with a noble disregard of his interests, he
resigned, some years later (1878), rather than that the impartial pen of
history should stoop to the demands of our present rulers. But deprived
of his beloved archives, the author has turned his leisure to good
account. In two years he has given us the last three volumes of his
history, and announces shortly New Lights on Galileo, based upon
documents extremely curious and absolutely unpublished. All the works of
Astier-Rehu may be had of Petit-Sequard, Bookseller to the Academie.

As the publisher of this book of reference entrusts to each person
concerned the task of telling his own story, no doubt can possibly be
thrown upon the authenticity of these biographical notes. But why must
it be asserted that Leonard Astier-Rehu resigned his post as Keeper of
the Archives? Every one knows that he was dismissed, sent away with no
more ceremony than a hackney-cabman, because of an imprudent phrase let
slip by the historian of the House of Orleans, vol. v. p. 327: 'Then, as
to-day, France, overwhelmed by the flood of demagogy, etc.' Who can see
the end of a metaphor? His salary of five hundred pounds a year, his
rooms in the Quai d'Orsay (with coals and gas) and, besides, that
wonderful treasure of historic documents, which had supplied the sap
of his books, all this had been carried away from him by this unlucky
'flood,' all by his own flood! The poor man could not get over it. Even
after the lapse of two years, regret for the ease and the honours of his
office gnawed at his heart, and gnawed with a sharper tooth on
certain dates, certain days of the month or the week, and above all on
'Teyssedre's Wednesdays.' Teyssedre was the man who polished the floors.
He came to the Astiers' regularly every Wednesday. On the afternoon
of that day Madame Astier was at home to her friends in her husband's
study, this being the only presentable apartment of their third floor in
the Rue de Beaune, the remains of a grand house, terribly inconvenient
in spite of its magnificent ceiling. The disturbance caused to the
illustrious historian by this 'Wednesday,' recurring every week and
interrupting his industrious and methodical labours, may easily be
conceived. He had come to hate the rubber of floor, a man from his
own country, with a face as yellow, close, and hard as his own cake
of beeswax. He hated Teyssedre, who, proud of coming from Riom, while
'Meuchieu Achtier came only from Chauvagnat,' had no scruple in pushing
about