In The July Sun

By Alice Jackson

This work represents the life of a man and a woman with entangled destinies .

Everything was good until they found themself between the war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alice Jackson
• Release date: Jun 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393340751

Book preview

Table of Contents

In The July Sun

After the hugs, the tears, pardons, M me Héricourt leaned against the high carved oak cabinet in the vestibule of the Mills. Nodding, she repeated:

-Hein, Caroline! Is he my son ...? The rascal! Ah Lucifer ... go! Rome did not change you.

She folded her wet handkerchief. In the trees of the garden, through the panes of the glass partition, she looked at her pain to know it without devotion.

Well, my handsome lawyer, do you find any change here? Aunt Caroline Cavrois asked proudly.

With her keychain, she pointed to the new plaster of the octagon piece, a yellow plaster with brown squares. Two fish wriggled in a jar supported by a bronze foot, in the middle of the pedestal table. The aunt, with a gesture, admired the screen covered with a fresh tapestry whose Tyrolean landscape, reproduced five times per sheet, was surrounded by a blue arabesque. He hid the supply of logs and fagots piled against the wall. The hunting whips, the dog collars, the rifle sticks, were suspended against a small panel, near the clock beating the measure in its high wooden sheath. The prospects ofThe kitchen opened up there, on their red tile, with their chairs and tables scraped by the glass, their copper batteries blooming under the candlesticks, the gleaming figures of the basins. Big girls fired the hot dishes from the oven. The fat shouted around the partridges. A smell of sumptuous dinner first satisfied the nostrils.

Omer praised the sharpness of the clear hall, which was graceful with a tier of cyclamen pots, discreet reseda and healthy hydrangeas. Aunt Caroline gently raised their heads, wiped their leaves. With a flower, she says:

-It embalmed ...

-How did you not try to get an audience with the Holy Father? again asked his son M me Héricourt.

Her fingers, wet beforehand by the mouth, the widow smoothed her thin strips and gray against migraine wrinkles forehead.

Omer excused himself as best he could, down the three steps that led to the low room, to his vast rustic chimney, where the rack of paint, carved with currency coat of arms, hung a very ancient cauldron, hammered, hallmarked, offering the stiff image of Saint Omer, who, trowel in hand, was building the monastery and the city of his name.

The young man is touched by the memory of the holidays spent there, to Elvira, stories of werewolves. From the rack to the old rifles, he had repeatedly won the weapons, to handle the guns, to examine the packs of the deer on the engraving of the turntables. A Saint Hubert carved in relief in a crosier of 1720 had delighted a long time, like a puppet with camel nose and grotesque mouth. All this still decorated the panels, no less than the roosters, the claws of lictors and the hatsfrom Mithra on the plates of the Revolution. A servant opened a chest. The same scent of salt and brown bread that preceded the making of snacks was lost in the past.

"Aunt, give me, I beg you, a slice of bread.

-Five! ... great fool! ...

He had it. With delight, he ate it.

-Make your handkerchief on your coat, for crumbs ... Butter stains ... you know! ... But look at it, Virginie, your son ... It seems, by my faith, that it comes to go crazy with his cousins ​​in the Pré aux Vaches! ... A mug of beer, huh?

The foamy jug was brought by the naked and too pink arms of the stove. In a high faceted crystal, Omer slowly drank the bitter freshness of the liquid. Simulating an unlimited satisfaction, he knew how to please the age of the parents. They contemplated him. They remembered many deceased happiness. And he thought it best to please them.

The big, heartbroken eyes of Mother Virginia reproached him gently for having omitted their vows. Leaning on the arm of her little stiff armchair, she leaned against two dry fingers, her manly brown face with thin bands that silver combs stretched to her widow's cap, white silk, black crepe. The other hand was the rosary of agate and amber that her son had acquired for Gennarello the Roman antiquary. She had lost a lot during her son's stay in Italy. The fatness of maturity, following a cerebral fever, had progressively diminished. At forty-seven she was a flat, worn-out person, with impatient long legs under the taffeta of the dark dress. Omer liked him better. It differed less from the image than the sound of the brightly colored stuffs, and the clinking stones of his bracelets, the meshes of his chains of gold.

He congratulated herself on seeing her lose that heaviness in which she had stuck herself, inert, and lamenting the death of her husband, on the impossibility of attaining the Christian perfection which is worth the seraphic beatitudes of the saints, the only certain happiness. she thought: those in the world were too fragile. Physical transformation no doubt determined moral change. Omer's renunciation of the priesthood, the marriage with Elvire Gresloup, she received with less tears and pains than at the time she felt them.

Once the six essential words had been spoken, he was opposite to her as to a maniacal stranger. Their souls did not communicate. They were vainly searching for heartfelt words, consolations, excuses and forgiveness. They had recourse only in useless and vague words relating to the insignificances of life. She only mentioned, like Aunt Caroline, the old days, the mischiefs of the young Praxi-Blassans, those of Dieudonne, those of her son. Slowly she laughed, bad teeth. Soon a sad idea effaced the timid joy.

Besides, she remarked, "you have always been too adroit.

-Too clever?

-Oh!

She raised her rosette hand to the ceiling joists, and, shaking her head, she determined to judge the fiance of the rich Elvira.

-And me who thought ... What silly I do, great God ... Yes, yes, you knew how to put in your interests the Church, Rome and the Holy Congregation ... Must it, Lord, be it your very priests who persuade me to let him follow a secular path ...?

-Profane! ... The life I want to flow to Elvira, to your angel! Can you accuse me so ... that you accuse him!

-I foresee that, through this door open to the world, you will get away from the sky ...

-Allons, Virginie ... Truce of reproaches, today, at least. I want him to see my living room and give me his opinion, this fashionable of the Boulevard de Gand ...

Ah! you carry it. It's what you want: the Moulins' lawyer ... the word of our money, your money, your money! He is not the advocate of Christ. You carry it, Caroline! You carry it! He is more your son than my son ... You said it well in 1812, when you came to the castle of Lorraine to buy the harvest on foot, and sell it in grains to the armies of Leipzig, then to the allies. You told him you needed a lawyer in the family ... And I'm nothing but a poor dog without power! My God...

"How, mother, how? Am I not the advocate of the humble according to what Christ recommended? And who then defended the unfortunate, this Major Ulbach?

On this he declaimed. The traditions of Italian carbonarism, which made the recipient appear in the figure of Christ, inspired him. He assumed to continue the messianic task. Is not the advocate of the poor the advocate of God? He expanded on this theme, finishing his beer. Mother Virginia shrugged her shoulders, and uttered loud sighs.

"No, no, you are not noble and generous like your father, like me. I feel it well, and you will not make me believe it, neither you, nor the abbot of Praxi-Blassans ...

-My mother!

-Oh! you are so clever, resumed bitterly. said Hericourt . Edward himself, who knows you well, he, whoHe is at once a scholar and a saint; he has not refused tonsure! Well, Edward also apologizes ... How do you go about turning them all in your favor!

"But, mother, I am, I assure you, a poor Machiavelli. Ask Father Ronsin. Although he has left the Congregation, he will tell you about her and me.

Ah! that one judges you, as I judge you. He's complaining to me! Not that he deprives you of indulgence towards you; but he sees clearly ...

-What does he see?

-It sees that you become the disciple of my brother Edme, Major Gresloup, and all these half-sales, henchmen of the Jacobins! ... He does not want that in the Holy Congregation, you bring the evil spirit of the revolted angels . And he begged his successor to exclude you.

Omer allowed himself to smile, proud to be dreaded by Father Ronsin.

-Oh! you laugh, my poor child! You laugh! And yet, what pain overwhelms me today, when I should be animated only with joy. So it is not my son, it is Edward of Praxi-Blassans who will plant the cross of the Mission on the place, on the Earth of City. To give thanks to this good servant of God, the prefect receives at the Hotel de Ville, the bishop, in person says Mass, your uncle of Praxi-Blassans and Augustine came from Paris, all the girls dress white, the city in celebration is preparing. And you could have been that one, the one who makes Jesus pay so much honor!

-Well, said Caroline, when we do not have what we love, we must love what we have ... Kiss your son, and come to the living room ...

M me Héricourt first received the kiss softly Omer.

Do you esteem, he murmured, "that the God of mercy requires so much trouble, so much pain, so many sacrifices, and so many horrible anxieties? Really, can the God of meekness and forgiveness require so much of a saint as you, my mother!

-Alas! Alas! your godly soul is dead, if you do not understand the measure of our duties to the Savior!

-Or that, my godly soul is dead too! Aunt Caroline joked, for I do not give myself that tintouin! ... I'm of Omer's opinion ... Our Lord does not ask for so much!

Standing, Ms.Hericourt had buried his head in the shoulder of his son, and he conceived the sincerity of these frightful sobs. Faith consumed this unhappy life. No logic, no affection that could remedy. Against his coat, Omer felt the blood of the jugular vein flutter in the withered neck. Pain swelled in this poor widow, choked her, strangled her, and then jerked out. Hot and heavy, she weighed there, without hope. Could he still give up life and take the cassock? Should he sacrifice his young life to this patient? He consulted for the seconds that passed. With regard to society, science, and human duty, it was better for this unfortunate woman to perish, and to live free, as far as possible.

Mom Virginie was still leaning on Omer's shoulder. Her persuasion, her prayer, hitherto vainly translated by language and writing, she tried to insinuate physically through the application of her aching body against the heart moved by his son. All the organs, the swollen stomach, the congested esophagus, the swarming intestines, Omer felt them tense and suffer against him. He had said that his mother was trying, to make it more sound, to absorb it in her flank that had carried it. At least it seemed she wanted him remember how they were the same flesh, and how the son depended on the maternal brain, by the laws of nature. As much as a member obeys the will, should he not obey, the child conceived, the day after Austerlitz, in the castle of Moravia, where camped the colonel Héricourt, winner of the tyrants.

The firmness of the young man staggered. The law of Rome would indicate duty. The brass table, on which were engraved the precepts, shone in his memory which recalled the frontispieces of the legal books. The deity of the Law stood in his logical mind; it and its merits, which summarize the conclusions of human wisdom, since the obscure times of the first family, the first horde and the first tribe. His veneration for the work of the Latins would advise him perfectly. He thinks.

Obedience was due to the head of the family, to the father, not to the mother. And the ideal of the dead father was that of Uncle Edme, Major Gresloup, and General Pithouet. It was not that of the Abbot of Praxi-Blassans nor Father Ronsin, or M me Héricourt. The law of Rome opposed the law of nature. The victors of the virgins command the race, and not the women who are subject to be fertilized.

Even if she died, the mother was not to be obeyed.

It was not the son who condemned her to distress, or even death. It was the law.

Mum Virginie was aware of this decision? She shuddered for a long time, stifling her son against his chest. A last nervous sob shook her. He was penetrated by the pangs of this moral torture.

He shuddered himself, and his lips brushed gray hair smoothed at the edge of the cap.

His mother was going to perish, as a result.

The soul shattered and the heart hugged, he immolated it.

Because he did not pour out blood at the bottom of acrypt on the stone of the human sacrifices, because no image of Mithra carved in the rock dominated this room with oak chests, because Omer occupied at the same time the place of the pontiff during the dismal mysteries, and that of the support, M me Héricourt she seemed less a captive victim Libyan or Celtic, a barbarian, that every opponent civilizing spirit of understanding, and for that, to be abolished! For the law dictates that perished forces, whose shades harm the new and fertile light, perish. Really, the mother was not less slaughtered than the human hosts of the Roman legionaries. The aspect of death paled sluggish side when M meHericourt raised his head and moved away from the parricide. Her tears were dry in her opaque eyes. Straight and flat, she remained motionless for a few moments, playing with the rosary she adored, half-closed eyelids.

Omer praised the virtue of Elvira, his piety. He presented it under the guise of an angel with azure arms and eyes of powerful clarity.

-She is beautiful and good, only says M me Héricourt, and I guess she loves.

-Well seen! She is an accomplished young person.

For this compliment, M me Cravois thought he had ended the drama in which she did not untangled the tragic truth.

-Now, come see my living room! ... Virginie! Do not continue your jealousy! ... Ah! my boy your mother loves you too much! She does not suffer another woman, and even her angel, supplant her in your heart. As well, has she always protested against marriages! In 1806, with your poor father, she was so opposed to my brother Augustin marrying the beautiful Dutch girl! I ask you a little: a simple captain at the staff of Oudinot! And the lady then inherited her first husband, her merchant from Rotterdam,the man from the counters of Java! ... Fortunately, Augustine did not listen to you, my dear! Would he be a general at this hour? Has she been soon dead, my God, Malvina! It is a blessing for the family that Augustine has associated their Malaysian business with the Bank of Artois! Tell me, Virginie, would he have done it, if he had not married your daughter since? What not! Well! All our feelings, my good, were pronounced against these engagements ... And today? You and Denise love him! They are happy! ... And Joseph has sent from Sourabaya a load of cinnamon and indigo, by La Belle-Ariadne ... It sells for the weight of gold in the London docks! ... I never did not see that ... Gratias tibi Domine! ... By the way, IGresloup supply the meat to three counties in England! ... I learned that on Sunday from a broker who buys us, in Dunkirk, two cargoes from Odessa, those on the way. He's from Wales, that man ... He told me numbers! If my nephew seduces Elvire ... suddenly, the credit of the Bank of Artois can double in the British Isles ... No more, no less! ... Virginia, you can sing Sensitive Woman on the island. This is how ... Pierquin, the notary of Douai, wanted, last week, to acquire shares of our Compagnie Héricourt, on behalf of a lord ... The goddamoffer to pay them three thousand pounds from France, one ... And they have not yet found a seller! ... Go: weddings are good, my old saint! ... Besides, you do not have not always been against! You have changed since your youth ... Mazette! General Moreau did not need to insist that you approve the advances of my brother Bernard, in 1803. You led this, both, beating! But yes! ... And when he stayed six months away, during the campaign of Austerlitz ... you could not hold it anymore! ... you were joined in post-office! Why do you want to ...? ...? ... Why? ... To do this?Handsome boy, madame! To make M. Omer Hericourt a lawyer at the Court of Appeal of Paris! Do not show us blues. My husband was indignant! Yes, poor Cavrois! He could not believe it. Spend six thousand pounds of travel to play the flute in Moravia with an emperor's dragon! I almost believe that's what brought the end of my late! well, my nephew, that's how she was your holy mother, in 1805 ... Do not listen to her ... She preaches in the manner of our good priests: Do what I say ... do not do what I I did! ... You love Elvire ... She loves you ... If that's okay, go ahead ... In front of the music ... But laugh so, as you like, old bigot!

She did not want to, sacrificed! She watched, without seeing her, her fat sister-in-law who, with her belly forward, her cheeks drooping, and the good laugh, quickly made the bunch of keys spin at the end of her silver chain, which repeated comical reverences in the silk dress, with stripes, which even made the military salute by carrying a hand replete with its Malines headdress pinned with gold.

- O fortunatos nimium! "replied Aunt Caroline, not a forgetful of her Latin learned at the time of the Revolution, when her father was harboring a Dominican proscribed as suspect! ... O fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint ... fanaticos! ... You're lucky to have time to argue with the devil! ... Me, thank God! ... I have too much business in mind! Go, go, my maid, if the marriage is concluded, the Company will increase your rents, and you can repair another chapel, or offer a couple of stained glass windows to a convent. You will be counted for five hundred days of indulgence, at least ... Your confessor will arrange that ...

She spoke to M me Héricourt well as a weak-minded child, hiding irony feigned reality of his opinion. Omer was hurt.

M me Héricourt swung his head, shrugged. She was raising a finger.

-Caroline, do not offend the Church, nor me ...

"It's not my intention, my dear. You prevent your son from seeing my living room. I avenge myself according to my means. And what I say is to laugh a bit, my dear saint! ... Please Heaven that you accept with more resignation the decrees of Providence. Saint Francis de Sales recommends it above all else ...

-My mother, it is consoling to have the courage of her faith ... If nothing happens only by the will of the Sky, sorrow is a sin ... The martyrs went to the circus by singing litanies of joy ... and your martyrdom is not the most cruel, it seems!

He kissed her. M me Héricourt watching his son to the depths of the soul. She lives in mourning and compassion.

It is true, said she, "the poor dog being whipped licks his hand; he lies down at the feet of the master who chastises him, he wags his tail as a sign of his docile joy.

Thus, not without a real bitterness, she repeated this sermon sentence. She went on:

-God gives us a thousand examples of patience, in the spectacles of nature. It should be admired. And yet, I am sure he will chastise me for not having gained the soul of my child. It was my mission here below. I did not know how to fill it. He will chastise me! ... He will chastise me! ... And I will know the horror of the terrible tortures he has revealed to Dante ...

-Do can we find salvation in the century, objected M me Cavrois?

-My mother, God is too fair to make you responsible for my weaknesses ...

M me Héricourt shook his head.

"Lord, I have used the deposit you had entrusted to me badly! if she cried. Lord, I make you a corrupt heart, and a libertine soul. But may your will be done, even in hell ... And I will accept it, serenely, since the greatest saints command us.

At these words, having closed her eyes for a little while, she seemed transfigured when she opened them again. Right and smiling, she admired the amber and agate beads set in the silver of the rosary beads. She warmly thanked Omer for choosing this gift for her. And it seemed that she made no effort to please herself by seeing the light of day grow in the glow of the grains she was raising in front of the window. She herself praised the tapestries of Caroline, who decked the log-vault of the salon. She turned over the mahogany armchairs to show the right way to the cabinetmaking. She was stroking the thuja yellow and tiger of the round table. She pulled down the face of the square secretary; she made the drawers play, moved the letter boxes; having spread the powder of the hourglass, she picked it up, while mocking his clumsiness. Soon it was difficult to know if the playfulness was not becoming sincere. Caroline having let loose a naughty, MI Héricourt adds almost. Did she forget the Decalogue all of a sudden? His son thought so. Female mobility allows these sharp contrasts. Alert and talkative, the widow recalled many comic memories, veiling, then unveiling the French windows, by the coming and going of the wide green velvet curtains, their gold cords.

The aunt had some difficulty in drying up this verve to replace it with a theoretical explanation of the boat chartered by the Hericourt Company, and which served the Royal Messageries between Dunkirk and Dover. This building was steam. In three frames, it appeared, first according to an external profile, providedpaddle wheels, masts and rigging. On a second sketch, the cut of the ship and its boiler were drawn finely, with stairs under the hatches, a generator half full of water, its mercury manometer, its level checking tube, the manhole and the safety valve. With an index of bare gold ring encircled, M meCavrois followed the lines and the dots. She dissected on the elasticity of the vapor. Drawer and register, reciprocating rectilinear, relaxation, high and low pressure, alimentary hose, regulator, eccentric, steering wheel, were magic words which indicated, by its mouth, each of the parts. The miller hoped to soon be able to apply the steam system to the rotation of millstones that crush the wheat in the mills. She calculated a prodigious number of bags filled by the hour by the apparatus she commanded at the forges du Creusot. But it would be a long time until the end of the work and transport to Artois. Caroline was sorry, continued her usual gesture of rubbing her hands, as if to soap them.

In the middle of the salon, she perora long, glorious of his work. The barges covered the Scarpe as far as the border of the Netherlands. They distributed the coal of the Fosse-Cavrois, the leather of the Tanneries and the flour of the Moulins Hericourt, at Douai, Marchiennes and Saint-Amand, finally, by the Scheldt as far as Batave Flanders, at Tournay itself. On their return, they took loads of canvas and earthenware, liqueurs and Dutch pipes, cotton blankets, flaxseeds, brandy, copper objects, asparagus, cauldrons, tiles, soaps, tulle. Others floated by the canals to bring, by Dunkirk, the Russian and Canadian wheat, the spices and the indigos sent to Caroline, his brother from a first bed, Joseph Héricourt, the shipowner and the formerCorsair of La Belle-Ariadne . The aunt liked to say again how, under the Empire, chased by the English frigates, as far as Surat, the old sailor was four years old, lived captive on the pontoons. Free in 1814, he had wanted to restore his health in neighboring countries, in the establishments of the Belle Hollandaise and his nephew Augustin. There, having liked, he remained always, great breeder of parrots. One of these birds, stuffed carefully adorned the top shelf of the Secretary, in the M salon meCavrois. He had crossed the oceans, doubled, without damage, the Cape of Good Hope to come to expire, from indigestion, to the Mills, on the beaker of the vestibule. Two shells, as pink as the mucous membranes of the gums, in their inner volute, flanked magnificently the Annamese porcelain elephant, which occupied the center of the chimney, with its palanquin, its mahout and its enamelled travelers in blue, the whole surmounting a Flemish manufacturing base with green bronze dial.

Wonder! I have in my living-room, Europe and Asia, said the aunt, with a good-natured good-nature. The velvet of Amiens, which covers my armchairs, and that of the curtains, I owe it to a poorly woven weaver, who thus paid for a supply of our coals. The tulle of these curtains comes from Tournay. The ladies of the city made me present because I did not fail to give leather for the shoes of their Children of Mary. Since then, the Catholics of the city dye the cloth with the indigo of Java. In these bottles of faience with blue landscapes, there are the liquors of Holland that our buyers of cinnamon send us as a supplement to their payments. These big andirons of copper, which represent Joan of Arc resting on the crenellations of the dungeon, I owe them to the bakers of Marchiennes;of flour. Then they begged me to accept this pledge of their gratitude. I have in this room the friendship of all Flanders ... And here is what I harvest for the subscription in favor of the poor Greeks: seventy-five thousand francs, which will be used to buy the women of Chio, sold to the auction by the Turks on the Smyrna market. From Arras to Rotterdam, all that has an honorable name in the trade has poured his penny ... Do you believe that Praxi-Blassans, and the patronage committee, thank me ...? I am going to hand him a bill of exchange of seventy-five thousand francs, which will be paid into the cash register of M. Laffitte.

She waved a small register dressed in green morocco.

Ah, Caroline, do you not know that honest people always look with a bad eye at this noisy appeal for schismatics and subjects in revolt against their legitimate sovereign?

Your Majesty Charles X obliges you to count with us. Has not she sent her fleet to join Navarin the English squadron and the Russian squadron to impose, by the cannon, the armistice to the Turks? And do not his regiments hunt the Egyptians from the Morea at this hour?

She displayed a circular printed on parchment. Two lines after the name of M. de Chateaubriand, was on the list of the members of the committee that of Count Gaetan de Praxi-Blassans, peer of France; further on, that of General Hericourt, and, at the bottom of the list, mixed with those of Laffitte and Casimir Perier, the names of General Pithouet, General Lamarque, General Comte du Bourg, Colonel Fabvier, defender of Athens; Major Gresloup, Captain Lyrisse, defender of Missolonghi and delegate of the Aegina Congress ...

Beneath an eloquent appeal to sensitive souls, whom the misfortune of the Greeks touched to tears, began series of subscriptions and signatures. In a large space left intentionally white, at the head, the King's fine, slender writing was affixed, Charles , in front of a sum of a thousand francs.

-The King subscribes to a work that my brother Edme is patronizing!

It was I who obtained it last year, my maid when Her Majesty, passed by Arras, on the return from the camp of Saint-Omer. In spite of all the insults lavished on me by the gentlemen of the prefecture, they had to invite me to the reception of the Hotel de Ville. So Charles X came down from his horse café au lait, and I received him, on the steps, with all the ladies of the Place. The prefect could not dispense with naming me when the king held the circle. Madame Cavrois! ... It was you who lent a million, in 1815, to my steward, when I left for Ghent ... Yes, sir, I answered, at first stupidly; but I began again immediately: Yes, sir, sire! -Madame, I would be glad to mark you in some way the recognition of my house, if that is possible. I do not lose my head; I draw my parchment from beneath my boa: Sire, said I, give a sou to our unfortunate Greeks, and sign there. Your royal flourish will bring them good luck. He looked at me uneasily; he let his jaw and his big teeth jerk off; he glanced intently at the names of the committee. Madame, I can not deny you anything here, except for the penny. The king's privilege is to give several ; and these are gold sous! On that he gave me a little stiff salute, and turned his back on me. I only saw his big cord. But an aide-de-camp kept my parchment, and he let his jaw and his big teeth jerk off; he glanced intently at the names of the committee. Madame, I can not deny you anything here, except for the penny. The king's privilege is to give several ; and these are gold sous! On that he gave me a little stiff salute, and turned his back on me. I only saw his big cord. But an aide-de-camp kept my parchment, and he let his jaw and his big teeth jerk off; he glanced intently at the names of the committee. Madame, I can not deny you anything here, except for the penny. The king's privilege is to give several ; and these are gold sous! On that he gave me a little stiff salute, and turned his back on me. I only saw his big cord. But an aide-de-camp kept my parchment, anda captain-gendarme reported it to me the same evening. The royal signature was there for a thousand francs. I ran my list. From then on, as the king had set the example, all the nobles and all the officials ... subscribed to their best. The crowd followed ...

Heavy and noisy in her silk bell with brown stripes, Caroline waddled the story; she tapped the little green morocco register. His greasy eyelids blinked against his eyes of perfidious water.

So it was at that moment that the French fleet set sail to impose on Turk ...

The exaggeration seemed daring. The comminatory note of the Powers had been postponed as early as August 16th, 1827, and received in a negative manner by the Sultan; The king had only returned to Arras in September when his squadron was already sailing to Navarin to join the English and Russian fleets. Omer, however, refrained from suggesting that he doubted the influence exerted on Charles X by Aunt Caroline in the Arras Hotel de Ville.

-Eh but ... eh but! he said, admiring his gesture.

She giggled. The keychain turned vertiginously at the end of his hand. Mom Virginia was smiling. As if to chase away such a presumptuous smell, she waved her handkerchief in front of her brown, manly face.

Omer sat down beside her, spoke of Rome, the churches, St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major, and Scala-Santa, whose followers climbed the steps on their knees. At St. Peter's he had seen the pope. Caroline listened to all ears, dusting the gleams, on the surface of thuja and new mahogany, with the fringe of her orange scarf.

Suddenly, the dogs barked, the pigeons flew away in the courtyard, a door was opened without precaution.

-Tonton, tontaine, uncle!

The sound organ of Dieudonne Cavrois was trumpeting in the vestibule. Echoes were stirred. When we went to meet the chemist, he took a third hare from his carnivore. Already partridges and quails were piling up on the shelf set up along the glass roof. A rusty, wet deer lay on the loamy sandblasted tile; there crossed gray feet with black hooves. A little peasant came out of a stained bag, a pheasant and his fine tail. In the midst of carnage, the rogue hunter triumphed amid the exclamations of widows and maids. Under the armpits and towards the neck, the sweat blackened the gray blouse glued against her belly. He says:

-Ah that, cousin, have you rested enough? Did Morpheus take away the stiffness of the mortal staggered with forty sous of guides by three leagues? You were wrong not to get up in the morning ... Nimrod would have been angry if he could see you by my side. Zulma, fill me with a basin of fresh water ... And then, at the table, mom! ... I'm starving and I'm dying of thirst! ...

He tapped his feet to drop the dust from his gaiters. Ten minutes later, the towel to the neck, it lampait his soup in the lower hall, opposite M me Cavrois. Beside his chair, in a bucket, refreshed the bottles of beer.

Omer, what did you do to Captain Lyrisse? He asked, wiping his lips and chin.

"I left my uncle at the Chateau de Lorraine with his son and the widow of the officer of the Republic, the governess. He instructs this good lady in the art of managing the estate. He also invited General Bourg to hunt on his land.

"Apparently, they are going to give care to the voters on that side.

"I think my uncle Edme is going to jostle Nancy and shake up the ultras.

-All in good time! Let's have a drink.

My God, sighed M me Héricourt, will you always fought by those I love!

-Ah, aunt! what can you blame your son! He remains at the party of Praxi-Blassans and M. de Chateaubriand. It is your pious Society of Good Letters who emancipate themselves, Omer with! Did we not see, last year, the Journal des Débats recommend to the votes of the taxpayers the Marquis de Lafayette, Benjamin Constant, Laffitte, Casimir Perier and General Pithouet ... at the same time as former Ultras like Hyde de Neuville and Duvergier de Hauranne ...

"Come, my maid, you can not deny M. de Chateaubriand, who wrote the Genie du Christianisme and who is an ambassador in Rome ...

-You abuse me, Caroline?

-Point. This coalition is the right one ... I want that from the real source ... That's what suits us. If our constitutional opposition did not bring benefits, would the king show his great teeth to the Turk, like the King of England and the Tsar? Now General House forces the Egyptians of Ibrahim to re-embark for Egypt. It serves us. The Turkish corsairs no longer let the Bosphorus pass to the Russian ships carrying Odessa wheat to Gibraltar to compensate for our bad harvest here. Those I am waiting for have already passed the Dardannelles. But those waiting for the London broker at Falmouth have not yet come out of the Black Sea ... If the caravels of the Turks prevent them, the mill of London will have to resort to my provisions ... And it will pay what I am ... At this time, I have in the port of Gibraltar at anchor, six boats from Taganrog. Their captains wait formy sign before sailing on Falmouth or Dunkirk. As long as I learn that the Turk and the Russian are still firing, I send a letter to the depths of Spain. My ships go to sea. During the eight days of crossing, the rise will be made on the market of Albion. My gabars will touch the British coast, if my calculations are right, in the week of the highest odds ... And I sell twenty-five francs which costs me sixteen francs made in the docks ... Did you understand, Virginia?

Aunt Caroline was winking and soaping her pale hands over the bones of the fish she had eaten. Triumphant, and her fat-haired head curled up between her fat shoulders, she taunted the guests.

-But, there is a catch ... If England buys me everything, I do not have a bushel of wheat left to put under the millstones of our mills ... I sold my wheat futures Artois. He takes advantage of the surplus value, which began at the time of the contracts. That heavy weather delays my ships of Gibraltar, it will be necessary to deliver to the millers of London the bags stored here ... Then, we will be reduced to the bad flours that America ships by barrels. It will be difficult to respond to the orders of our customers, the bakeries of Douai, Marchiennes, Saint-Amand, and the stewardship of the camp of Saint-Omer. Stewardship does not find my bribes strong enough. She might well refuse the flours, and cancel ... Ah! By the way, I let the prefect know that, in this case, I would go to the Jacobins, with all my debtors, my boatmen, and my people coal ... And to put him in the ear, I portray in the most atrocious colors the campaign that will lead the Liberals ... He knows me in the secret of gods ... He is afraid of being dismissed if the royalist candidate loses too much voice. Anyone, Omer,I regret that you were not yourself at Taganrok, as I asked you to do by the count. You could have made us the buyers of the crop, and leave the English little more than that. .. The fool who left for you did not even charter all three masts. Two are sold by our competitors ... Finally, you prefer to pay court to your beautiful! ... Dieudonné says she is pale ...

-Elvire was not well enough during your pilgrimage to Rome. Did you know? The doctors had to shoot him several pints of blood.

She is weak a tad, the fat boy confirmed, his mouth full, pulling out of his jaws a partridge bone.

Omer did not worry too much. He rejected the idea that this indisposition had its absence for real reason.

-Finally, says M me Héricourt; the count and the general will give you fresh news. They saw her before they left ...

-They saw it on Thursday ... We are Saturday ... It's not far; because they did diligence. The count only wanted to sleep at the hotel in Amiens, before going through the three relays of yesterday by Albert and Ervilliers ... Dieudonné, did you thank him, your uncle of Praxi-Blassans ... To his age ... it's so tiring ... I bless the sky for what they were able to get to, for the planting of the cross ... They dine today at the bishop, but they dine and sleep here ... My prefect will not fail to lecture at the Stewardship of Saint-Omer when he sees a Peer of France, a General, and a Missionary of the Congregation coming to my home escort by the gendarmes and precede by the music ... All things considered, the soldiers will eat American flour. Not a fife will die! The sauce of this partridge is too fat!

-What a united family for our interests! concludes M me Héricourt smiling.

-Why does the procession take place on Monday, not tomorrow?

Without doubt, he remarked judiciously, "Sunday being a day of rest and celebration for everybody, one could not distinguish zeal from curiosity.

-Eh! yes, answered Caroline. It is very political.

M me Héricourt quickly replied:

In this way he offers to the true faithful, already so few, the opportunity of one more sacrifice, by devoting to the procession, against the impiety of the age, all the time they give to their accustomed labors. It is very Christian.

Trade wins, adds Caroline. I brought from Tournay, at the address of the ladies Manicou, the milliners, six pieces of tulle, so much they ordered them of new hats.

And then we joined party for a picnic of hunters after the ceremony, added his son; also the lukewarm will always come, for the bottles and the pâté. The prefect will find it good to be in number, if we want to seduce the King's stewardship.

"Then, when will you go to the Claes?

"But this time, I promised the abbe to take him there. I suspect that he absolutely wants to learn from Father Baltazar, a phenomenon still unknown to physicists, by which he would amaze the world by a miracle similar to those of Moses. We'll have dinner there. We will return in the night. Omer, do you come with us! We will harness the char-à-bancs.

Willingly.

M me Héricourt, soon began the uplifting story of Mary Alacoque, his devotion to the Sacred Heart was issued by paralysis of the legs. Dieudonne denied,respectful, the possibility of healing, while her mother blamed the servant for having forgotten to slip a clove into the grout. A cat came and jumped on the lady's shoulder, purring. She gave him a welcome, and poured milk into his glass so that he would drink there, amused indefinitely by the minion of the beast, by his language, skilful in the lapping behind the transparency of the crystal. Discreet, a stout dog came in behind the kitchen girl: she was wearing with difficulty a huge terrine covered with a natural peacock, thanks to the art of the stuffer who had beautifully bloomed the radiant tail. The dog leaned against Dieudonne's plate on the checkered tablecloth, his brown snout, his wet nose and his grave bronze eyes. The canaries of Holland, their yellow feathers ruffled on the skull, whistled in the aviary; and as long as we did not hear each other anymore. Chasing the cat on the chairs, a claw tense, the dog yelped. A cloud opened. The sun lit up the golden ocelli in the greenish blue tail of the peacock, in the middle of the half-full glasses, the garnished plates, the peaches and the pyramid pears on the compotiers, the stoves of silver. Cavrois's plump, hairless face, which was greased on his chin with bread, bowed to Caroline's face with pale cheeks animated by a wicked smile between the barbs of lace pinned with gold. We ate. The same words as before were repeated. The sun lit up the golden ocelli in the greenish blue tail of the peacock, in the middle of the half-full glasses, the garnished plates, the peaches and the pyramid pears on the compotiers, the stoves of silver. Cavrois's plump, hairless face, which was greased on his chin with bread, bowed to Caroline's face with pale cheeks animated by a wicked smile between the barbs of lace pinned with gold. We ate. The same words as before were repeated. The sun lit up the golden ocelli in the greenish blue tail of the peacock, in the middle of the half-full glasses, the garnished plates, the peaches and the pyramid pears on the compotiers, the stoves of silver. Cavrois's plump, hairless face, which was greased on his chin with bread, bowed to Caroline's face with pale cheeks animated by a wicked smile between the barbs of lace pinned with gold. We ate. The same words as before were repeated. leaned toward Caroline's face with pale cheeks animated by a cunning smile between the barbs of lace pinned with gold. We ate. The same words as before were repeated. leaned toward Caroline's face with pale cheeks animated by a cunning smile between the barbs of lace pinned with gold. We ate. The same words as before were repeated.

During the garden walk, following the meal, Mother Virginie leaned tenderly on her son's arm. After a few sighs, she praised her angel.

-Are you sure to please her? ... She never talked about it ... She is so young, the truth ... M me Gresloup must have blown a word to her manager?

-I do not know.

Would the Jesuit Father of Rome have talked to you about it, if he had not heard of it? Perhaps the confessor of Elvira, at the convent of Esquermes, received a shy confession.

And the secret of the sacrament?

-Omer! I beg you, spare me this irony of tartan when you speak of the representatives of the Lord ... If they spoke, it was because they had the right and the duty.

But she continued to disguise herself, motherly and sweet. She approved the ambitions of her son, that of having a political salon, reserve made on the ideas to support. Omer thought it very clever to invite him spontaneously to stay together in Paris. He used delicate and convoluted phrases, as if totally unaware that she had the design, and as if he feared that she would refuse.

She let herself be taken; she seemed happy that he had thought of it first.

My dear child! Oh! My dear child! ... I did not dare to ask you ... Thank you! ... Thank you! ... I will not bother you, at least? ... Are you sure? ... And for my health, therefore! Paris doctors treat better; although I do not believe in human science ... God give it back to you! You have just given me a great joy.

So, she's getting younger. Flat and stiff in her dark, lustrous black dress, she dusted her sleeves with legs. His belly now did not weigh him down anymore. She found subterfuges of coquette to conceal, under a fold of dress that she pinched, this defective part of her high and noble body. With deliberate words, she gave verdicts on the right kind and tone, while the young man detailed his plans. General de Bourg, ruined by royal ingratitude, wanted to sell his hotel in the Faubourg Saint-Germain and the encyclopaedist's furniturethat a Longueville had offered to his grandfather. It would be bought at a moderate price, for Uncle Edme, under the color of taking a pension, discharged his friend from many expenses and gradually purged mortgages, since the return from