"
The women offered their help, but she declined it.
The women offered their help, but she declined it.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v20 - Phi to Qui
And the bride, in whose eyes this elderly gentleman
with the tight boots appeared a rosy-winged Cupid, waved her
handkerchief until the vehicle had sidled round the hill, resem-
bling in its progress a very infirm crab in a hurry.
As a fact, the Registrar wore a silk hat, a suit of black West-
of-England broadcloth, a watch-chain made out of his dead wife's
hair, and two large seals that clashed together when he moved
His face was wide and round, with a sanguine complexion, gray
side-whiskers, and a cicatrix across the chin. He had shaved in
a hurry that morning; for the wedding was early, and took place
on the extreme verge of his district. His is a beautiful office
recording day by day the solemnest and most mysterious events
in nature. Yet, standing at the cross-roads, between down and
woodland, under an April sky full of sun and southwest wind,
he threw the ugliest shadow in the landscape.
The road towards the coast dipped-too steeply for tight
boots - down a wooded coombe; and he followed it, treading deli-
cately. The hollow of the V ahead, where the hills overlapped
against the pale blue, was powdered with a faint brown bloom,
soon to be green, an infinity of bursting buds. The larches
stretched their arms upwards, as men waking. The yellow was
out on the gorse, with a heady scent like a pineapple's; and
between the bushes spread the gray film of coming bluebells.
High up, the pines sighed along the ridge, turning paler; and
far down, where the brook ran, a mad duet was going on be-
tween thrush and chaffinch,-"Cheer up, cheer up, Queen! " "Clip,
clip, clip, and kiss me-Sweet! "—one against the other.
Now, the behavior of the Registrar of Births, Deaths, and
Marriages changed as he descended the valley. At first he went
from side to side, because the loose stones were sharp and lay
unevenly; soon he zigzagged for another purpose,-to peer into
the bank for violets, to find a gap between the trees where, by
## p. 11950 (#584) ##########################################
11950
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
bending down with a hand on each knee and his head tilted
back, he could see the primroses stretching in broad sheets to
the very edge of the pine woods. By frequent tilting his collar
broke from its stud and his silk hat settled far back on his neck.
Next he unbuttoned his waistcoat and loosened his braces; but
no, he could not skip,- his boots were too tight He looked at
each tree as he passed. "If I could only see » he muttered.
"I'll swear there used to be one on the right, just here. "
But he could not find it here,- perhaps his memory misgave
him; and presently turned with decision, climbed the low fence
on his left, between him and the hollow of the coombe, and
dropped into the plantation on the other side. Here the ground
was white in patches with anemones; and as his feet crushed
them, descending, the babel of the birds grew louder and louder.
He issued on a small clearing by the edge of the brook,
where the grass was a delicate green, each blade pushing up
straight as a spear-point from the crumbled earth.
Here were
more anemones, between patches of last year's bracken, and on
the further slope a mass of daffodils. He pulled out a pocket-
knife that had sharpened some hundreds of quill pens, and look-
ing to his right, found what he wanted at once.
It was a sycamore, on which the buds were swelling. He cut
a small twig, as big round as his middle finger, and sitting him-
self down on a barked log close by, began to measure and cut it
to a span's length, avoiding all knots. Then, taking the knife by
the blade between finger and thumb, he tapped the bark gently
with the tortoise-shell handle. And as he tapped, his face went
back to boyhood again, in spite of the side-whiskers, and his
mouth was pursed up to a silent tune.
For ten minutes the tapping continued, the birds ceased their
contention, and broke out restlessly at intervals. A rabbit across
the brook paused and listened at the funnel-shaped mouth of his
hole, which caught the sound and redoubled it.
"Confound these boots! " said the Registrar, and pulling them
off, tossed them among the primroses. They were "elastic-sides. "
The tapping ceased. A breath of the landward breeze came
up, combing out the tangle that winter had made in the grass,
caught the brook on the edge of a tiny fall, and puffed it back
six inches in a spray of small diamonds. It quickened the whole
copse. The oak saplings rubbed their old leaves one on another,
## p. 11951 (#585) ##########################################
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
11951
as folks rub their hands, feeling life and warmth; the chestnut
buds groped like an infant's fingers; and the chorus broke out
again, the thrush leading,-"Tiurru, tiurru, chippewee; tio-tee, tio-
tee; queen, queen, que-een ! »
In a moment or two he broke off suddenly, and a honey-bee
shot out of an anemone-bell like a shell from a mortar.
For a
new sound disconcerted them—a sound sharp and piercing. The
Registrar had finished his whistle and was blowing like mad,
moving his fingers up and down. Having proved his instrument,
he dived a hand into his tail-pocket and drew out a roll, tied
around with ribbon. It was the folded leather-bound volume in
which he kept his blank certificates. And spreading it on his
knees, he took his whistle again and blew, reading his music from
the blank pages, and piping a strain he had never dreamed of.
For he whistled of Births and Marriages.
O happy Registrar! O happy, happy Registrar! You will
never get into those elastic-sides again. Your feet swell as they
tap the swelling earth, and at each tap the flowers push, the sap
climbs, the speck of life moves in the hedge-sparrow's egg; while
far away on the downs, with each tap the yellow van takes bride
and groom a foot nearer felicity. It is hard work in worsted
socks; for you smite with the vehemence of Pan, and Pan had a
hoof of horn.
The Registrar's mother lived in the fishing-village, two miles
down the coombe. Her cottage leant back against the cliff so
closely that the boys, as they followed the path above, could toss
tabs of turf down her chimney: and this was her chief annoy-
ance.
Now it was close on the dinner-hour, and she stood in her
kitchen beside a pot of stew that simmered over the wreck-wood
fire.
Suddenly a great lump of earth and grass came bouncing
down the chimney, striking from side to side, and soused into
pot, scattering the hot stew over the hearth-stone and splash-
ing her from head to foot.
Quick as thought, she caught up a besom and rushed out
around the corner of the cottage.
"You stinking young adders! " she began.
A big man stood on the slope above her.
«< Mother, cuff my head, that's a dear. I couldn' help doin' it. "
## p. 11952 (#586) ##########################################
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A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
It was the elderly Registrar. His hat, collar, tie, and waist-
coat were awry; his boots were slung on the walking-stick over
his shoulder; stuck in his mouth and lit was a twist of root-fibre,
such as country boys use for lack of cigars, and he himself had
used forty years before.
The old woman turned to an ash color, leant on her besom,
and gasped.
"William Henry! "
"I'm not drunk, mother: been a Band of Hope these dozen
years. "
He stepped down the slope to her and bent his head
low. "Box my ears, mother, quick! You used to have a wonder-
ful gift o' cuffin'. "
"William Henry, I'm bound to do it or die. "
"Then be quick about it. "
Half laughing, half sobbing, she caught him a feeble cuff,
and next instant held him close to her old breast. The Registrar
disengaged himself after a minute, brushed his eyes, straightened
his hat, picked up the besom, and offered her his arm. They
passed into the cottage together.
THE PAUPERS
From The Delectable Duchy. ' Copyright 1893, by Macmillan & Co.
I
οὐ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ γε κρεῖσσον καὶ ἄρειον,
ἢ ὅθ᾽ ὁμοφρονέοντε νοήμασιν οἶκον ἔχητον
ἀνὴρ ἠδὲ γυνή *
RⓇ
OUND the skirts of the plantation, and half-way down the hill,
there runs a thick fringe of wild cherry-trees. Their white
blossom makes, for three weeks in the year, a pretty con-
trast with the larches and Scotch firs that serrate the long ridge
above; and close under their branches runs the line of oak rails
that marks off the plantation from the meadow.
A laboring-man came deliberately round the slope, as if fol-
lowing this line of rails. As a matter of fact, he was treading
*«For greater strength and virtue are there none
Than where with single mind a man and wife
Maintain a household. »
## p. 11953 (#587) ##########################################
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
11953
the little-used footpath that here runs close alongside the fence
for fifty yards before diverging down-hill towards the village. So
narrow is this path that the man's boots were powdered to a rich
gold by the buttercups they had brushed aside.
By-and-by he came to a standstill, looked over the fence, and
listened. Up among the larches a faint chopping sound could
just be heard, irregular but persistent. The man put a hand to
his mouth, and hailed
"Hi-i-i! Knock off! Stable clock's gone noo-oon! "
Came back no answer.
But the chopping ceased at once; and
this apparently satisfied the man, who leaned against the rail
and waited, chewing a spear of brome-grass, and staring stead-
ily but incuriously at his boots. Two minutes passed without
stir or sound in this corner of the land. The human figure was
motionless. The birds in the plantation were taking their noon-
day siesta. A brown butterfly rested with spread wings on the
rail so quietly, he might have been pinned there.
A cracked voice was suddenly lifted a dozen yards off, and
within the plantation: -
――
-
"Such a man as I be to work! Never heard a note o' that
blessed clock, if you'll believe me. Ab-sorbed, I s'pose. "
A thin withered man in a smock-frock emerged from among
the cherry-trees with a bill-hook in his hand, and stooped to pass
under the rail.
"Ewgh! The pains I suffer in that old back of mine you'll
never believe, my son, not till the appointed time when you come
to suffer 'em yoursel'. Well-a-well! Says I just now, up among
the larches, Heigh, my sonny-boys, I can crow over you, any-
ways: for I was a man grown when Squire planted ye; and here
I be, a lusty gaffer, markin' ye down for destruction. ' But hullo!
where's the dinner? "
"There bain't none. "
"Hey ? "
"There bain't none. "
"How's that? Damme! William Henry, dinner's dinner, an'
don't you joke about it. Once you begin to make fun o' sacred
things like meals and vittles -»
"And don't you flare up like that, at your time o' life. We're
fashionists to-day: dining out. 'Quarter after nine this morning
I was passing by the Green wi' the straw-cart, when old Jan
XX-748
## p. 11954 (#588) ##########################################
11954
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
Trueman calls after me, 'Have 'ee heard the news? ' 'What
news? ' says I. 'Why,' says he, 'me an' my misses be going
into the House this afternoon-can't manage to pull along by
ourselves any more,' he says; 'an' we wants you an' your father
to drop in soon after noon an' take a bite wi' us, for old times'
sake. 'Tis our last taste o' free life, and we'm going to do the
thing fittywise,' he says. "
The old man bent a meditative look on the village roofs
below.
"We'll pleasure 'en, of course," he said slowly. "So 'tis come
round to Jan's turn? But a' was born in the year of Waterloo
victory, ten year' afore me, so I s'pose he've kept his doom off
longer than most. "
The two set off down the footpath. There is a stile at the
foot of the meadow, and as he climbed it painfully, the old man
spoke again.
"And his doorway, I reckon, 'll be locked for a little while,
an' then opened by strangers; an' his nimble youth be forgot
like a flower o' the field; an' fare thee well, Jan Trueman!
Maria, too I can mind her well as a nursing mother-a comely
woman in her day. I'd no notion they'd got this in their
mind. "
-
"Far as I can gather, they've been minded that way ever
since their daughter Jane died, last fall. '
>>>
From the stile where they stood they could look down into
the village street. And old Jan Trueman was plain to see, in
clean linen and his Sunday suit, standing in the doorway and
welcoming his guests.
"Come ye income ye in, good friends," he called, as they
approached. "There's cold bekkon, an' cold sheep's liver, an'
Dutch cheese, besides bread, an' a thimble-full o' gin-an'-water
for every soul among ye, to make it a day of note in the
parish. "
He looked back over is shoulder into the kitchen. A dozen
men and women, all elderly, were already gathered there. They
had brought their own chairs. Jan's wife wore her bonnet and
shawl, ready to start at a moment's notice. Her luggage in a
blue handkerchief lay on the table. As she moved about and
supplied her guests, her old lips twitched nervously; but when
she spoke it was with no unusual tremor of the voice.
## p. 11955 (#589) ##########################################
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
11955
"I wish, friends, I could ha' cooked ye a little something hot;
but there'd be no time for the washing-up, an' I've ordained to
leave the place tidy. "
One of the old women answered:
-:
"There's naught to be pardoned, I'm sure. Never do I mind
such a gay set-off for the journey. For the gin-an'-water is a
little addition beyond experience. The vittles, no doubt, you
begged up at the Vicarage, sayin' you'd been a peck o' trouble
to the family, but this was going to be the last time. "
"I did, I did," assented Mr. Trueman.
"But the gin-an'-water-how on airth you contrived it is a
riddle! "
The old man rubbed his hands together and looked around
with genuine pride.
"There was old Miss Scantlebury," said another guest, a
smock-frocked gaffer of seventy, with a grizzled shock of hair.
"You remember Miss Scantlebury? "
"O' course, o' course. "
« Well, she did it better 'n anybody I've heard tell of. When
she fell into redooced circumstances she sold the eight-day clock
that was the only thing o' value she had left. Brown o' Tregar-
rick made it, with a very curious brass dial, whereon he carved
a full-rigged ship that rocked like a cradle, an' went down stern
foremost when the hour struck. 'Twas worth walking a mile to
see. Brown's grandson bought it off Miss Scantlebury for two
guineas, he being proud of his grandfather's skill; an' the old
lady drove into Tregarrick Work'us behind a pair o' grays wi'
the proceeds. Over and above the carriage hire, she'd enough
left to adorn the horse wi' white favors an' give the rider a crown,
large as my lord. Aye, an' at the Work'us door she said to the
fellow, said she, 'All my life I've longed to ride in a bridal
chariot; an' though my only lover died of a decline when I
was scarce twenty-two, I've done it at last,' said she; 'an' now
heaven an' airth can't undo it! >»
A heavy silence followed this anecdote, and then one or two
of the women vented small disapproving coughs. The reason
was the speaker's loud mention of the Workhouse. A week, a
day, a few hours before, its name might have been spoken in
Mr. and Mrs. Trueman's presence. But now they had entered
its shadow; they were "going "— whether to the dim vale of
Avilion, or with chariot and horses of fire to heaven, let nobody
-
## p. 11956 (#590) ##########################################
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A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
too curiously ask. If Mr. and Mrs. Trueman chose to speak
definitely, it was another matter.
Old Jan bore no malice, however, but answered, "That beats
me, I own. Yet we shall drive, though it be upon two wheels
an' behind a single horse. For Farmer Lear's driving into Tre-
garrick in an hour's time, an' he've a-promised us a lift. "
"But about that gin-an'-water? For real gin-an'-water it is,
to sight an' taste. "
"Well, friends, I'll tell ye: for the trick may serve one of
ye in the days when you come to follow me, tho' the new reliev-
ing officer may have learnt wisdom before then. You must know
we've been considering of this step for some while; but hearing
that old Jacobs was going to retire soon, I says to Maria, 'We'll
bide till the new officer comes, and if he's a green hand, we'll
diddle 'en. ' Day before yesterday, as you know, was his first
round at the work; so I goes up an' draws out my ha'af-crown
same as usual, an' walks straight off for the Four Lords for a
ha'af-crown's worth o'gin. Then back I goes, an' demands an
admission order for me an' the missus. Why, where's your
ha'af-crown? ' says he. Gone in drink,' says I. 'Old man,'
says he, 'you'm a scandal, an' the sooner you're put out o' the
way o' drink, the better for you an' your poor wife. ' 'Right
you are,' I says; an' I got my order. But there, I'm wasting
time; for to be sure you've most of ye got kith and kin in the
place where we'm going, and 'll be wanting to send 'em a word
by us. "
It was less than an hour before Farmer Lear pulled up to the
door in his red-wheeled spring-cart.
"Now, friends," said Mrs. Trueman, as her ears caught the
rattle of the wheels, "I must trouble ye to step outside while I
tidy up the floor.
"
The women offered their help, but she declined it. Alone she
put the small kitchen to rights, while they waited outside around
the door. Then she stepped out with her bundle, locked the
door after her, and slipped the key under an old flower-pot on
the window ledge. Her eyes were dry.
"Come along, Jan. ”
There was a brief hand-shaking, and the paupers climbed up
beside Farmer Lear.
"I've made a sort o' little plan in my head," said old Jan at
parting, "of the order in which I shall see ye again, one by one.
## p. 11957 (#591) ##########################################
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
11957
'Twill be a great amusement to me, friends, to see how the fact
fits in wi' my little plan. "
The guests raised three feeble cheers as the cart drove away,
and hung about for several minutes after it had passed out of
sight, gazing along the road as wistfully as more prosperous men
look in through church-yard gates at the acres where their kins-
folk lie buried.
II
The first building passed by the westerly road as it descends.
into Tregarrick is a sombre pile of some eminence, having a
gateway and lodge before it, and a high encircling wall. The
sun lay warm on its long roof, and the slates flashed gayly there,
as Farmer Lear came over the knap of the hill and looked down
on it.
He withdrew his eyes nervously to glance at the old
couple beside him. At the same moment he reined up his dun-
colored mare.
"I reckoned," he said timidly, "I reckoned you'd be for stop-
ping hereabouts an' getting down. You'd think it more seemly
that's what I reckoned: an' 'tis down-hill now all the way. "
For ten seconds and more neither the man nor the woman
gave a sign of having heard him. The spring-cart's oscillatory
motion seemed to have entered into their spinal joints; and now
that they had come to a halt, their heads continued to wag for-
ward and back as they contemplated the haze of smoke, spread
like a blue scarf over the town, and the one long slate roof that
rose from it as if to meet them. At length the old woman spoke,
and with some viciousness, though her face remained as blank
as the Workhouse door.
"The next time I go back up this hill, if ever I do, I'll be
carried up feet first. "
"Maria," said her husband, feebly reproachful, "you tempt
the Lord, that you do. "
"Thank 'ee, Farmer Lear," she went on, paying no heed:
"you shall help us down, if you've a mind to, an' drive on.
We'll make shift to trickly 'way down so far as the gate; for I'd
be main vexed if anybody that had known me in life should see
us creep in. Come along, Jan. "
Farmer Lear alighted, and helped them out carefully. He
was a clumsy man, but did his best to handle them gently.
When they were set on their feet, side by side on the high-road,
## p. 11958 (#592) ##########################################
11958
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
he climbed back, and fell to arranging the reins, while he cast
about for something to say.
“Well, folks, I s'pose I must be wishing 'ee good-bye. " He
meant to speak cheerfully, but over-acted, and was hilarious in-
stead. Recognizing this, he blushed.
"We'll meet in heaven, I daresay," the woman answered. "I
put the door-key, as you saw, under the empty geranium-pot
'pon the window-ledge; an' whoever the new tenant's wife may
be, she can eat off the floor if she's minded. Now drive along,
that's a good soul, and leave us to fend for ourselves. "
They watched him out of sight before either stirred. The
last decisive step, the step across the Workhouse threshold, must
be taken with none to witness. If they could not pass out of
their small world by the more reputable mode of dying, they
would at least depart with this amount of mystery. They had
left the village in Farmer Lear's cart, and Farmer Lear had left
them in the high-road; and after that, nothing should be known.
"Shall we be moving on? " Jan asked at length. There was
a gate beside the road just there, with a small triangle of green
before it, and a granite roller half buried in dock leaves. With-
out answering, the woman seated herself on this, and pulling a
handful of the leaves, dusted her shoes and skirt.
"Maria, you'll take a chill that'll carry you off, sitting 'pon
that cold stone. "
"I don't care. 'Twon't carry me off afore I get inside, an'
I'm going in decent or not at all. Come here, an' let me titti-
vate you. "
He sat down beside her, and submitted to be dusted.
"You'd as lief lower me as not in their eyes, I verily believe. "
"I always was one to gather dust. "
"An' a fresh spot o' bacon-fat 'pon your weskit, that I've kept
the moths from since goodness knows when! "
Old Jan looked down over his waistcoat. It was of good
West-of-England broadcloth, and he had worn it on the day when
he married the woman at his side.
"I'm thinking-" he began.
"Hey? "
"I'm thinking I'll find it hard to make friends in- in there.
'Tis such a pity, to my thinking, that by reggilations we'll be
parted as soon as we get inside. You've a-got so used to my
little ways an' corners, an' we've a-got so many little secrets
## p. 11959 (#593) ##########################################
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
11959
together an' old-fash'ned odds an' ends o' knowledge, that you
can take my meaning almost afore I start to speak. An' that's a
great comfort to a man o' my age. It'll be terrible hard, when
I wants to talk, to begin at the beginning every time. There's
that old yarn o' mine about Hambly's cow an' the lawn-mowing
machine-I doubt that anybody 'll enjoy it so much as you
always do; an' I've so got out o' the way o' telling the beginning
-which bain't extra funny, though needful to a stranger's under-
standing the whole joke-that I 'most forgets how it goes. "
"We'll see one another now an' then, they tell me. The sexes
meet for Chris'mas-trees an' such-like. "
"I'm jealous that 'twon't be the same. You can't hold your
triflin' confabs with a great Chris'mas-tree blazin' away in your
face as important as a town afire. "
"Well, I'm going to start along," the old woman decided,
getting on her feet; "or else some one 'll be driving by and see-
ing us. "
Jan too stood up.
«<
"We may so well make our congees here," she went on, as
under the porter's nose. "
An awkward silence fell between them for a minute; and
these two old creatures, who for more than fifty years had felt
no constraint in each other's presence, now looked into each oth-
er's eyes with a fearful diffidence. Jan cleared his throat, much
as if he had to make a public speech.
"Maria," he began in an unnatural voice, "we're bound for
to part, and I can trewly swear, on leaving ye, that—”
"that for twoscore year and twelve it's never entered your
head to consider whether I've made 'ee a good wife or a bad.
Kiss me, my old man; for I tell 'ee I wouldn' ha' wished it
other. An' thank 'ee for trying to make that speech. What did
it feel like? "
"Why, 't rather reminded me o' the time when I offered 'ee
marriage. "
"It reminded me o' that, too.
Com'st along. "
They tottered down the hill towards the Workhouse gate.
When they were but ten yards from it, however, they heard the
sound of wheels on the road behind them, and walked bravely
past, pretending to have no business at that portal. They had
descended a good thirty yards beyond (such haste was put into
them by dread of having their purpose guessed) before the
## p. 11960 (#594) ##########################################
11960
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
vehicle overtook them,-a four-wheeled dog-cart carrying a com-
mercial traveler, who pulled up and offered them a lift into the
town.
They declined.
Then, as soon as he passed out of sight, they turned, and be-
gan painfully to climb back towards the gate. Of the two, the
woman had shown the less emotion. But all the way her lips
were at work, and as she went she was praying a prayer. It
was the only one she used night and morning, and she had never
changed a word since she learned it as a chit of a child. Down
to her seventieth year she had never found it absurd to beseech
God to make her "a good girl"; nor did she find it so as the
Workhouse gate opened, and she began a new life.
## p. 11961 (#595) ##########################################
11961
—
EDGAR QUINET
(1803-1876)
BY HENRY BÉRENGER
B
DGAR QUINET belongs to that generation of great romantic.
French writers who were at the same time men of thought
and men of action, poets and philosophers, historians and
critics, who were in a word models of the complete man, such as
modern democracies too rarely succeed in creating. The life of Edgar
Quinet was as full as his work is varied; but both are stamped with
remarkable unity, both are the double and
indissoluble expansion of a true and reso-
lute genius, who was never inconsistent in
any hour of his existence or in any line of
his writings. Quinet is not only a great
writer, he is a national character; and the
new generations of France recognize, and
will recognize for a long time to come, in
him as in Lamartine, as in Victor Hugo, as
in Michelet, an ancestor to whom they owe
what is best in themselves.
EDGAR QUINET
He was born at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, February 17th, 1803, on
the southeast frontier of France, at Bourg
in the Department of Ain. He seems to
have had all his life the strong health and perfect equilibrium of
body and mind which characterizes the races of the Jura and of
Mâcon, and which was equally manifested by Victor Hugo, born at
Besançon, and by Lamartine, born at Mâcon. He was descendant
of an old bourgeois and parliamentary family. His father, Jérôme
Quinet, who was war commissioner under both the Republic and the
Empire, was also a scholar to whom we owe an important work on
meteorology. His mother was a Protestant, with a mind both reso-
lute and liberal, steadfast and sprightly, imbued with the ideas of
the eighteenth century without having lost the religious gravity
of her origin. Edgar Quinet evidently owes much to both his father
and mother; but she who directed his early education seems to have
exercised a profound moral and intellectual influence over him. He
## p. 11962 (#596) ##########################################
11962
EDGAR QUINET
had from the start a healthy, well-endowed nature, uniting the obsti-
nate tenacity of the combatant to an ideal sensibility of the solitary
and the poet. Both frank and sagacious, ardent and acute, there were
united within him talents apparently the most opposed; and it was
this which gave his genius a character at the same time so practical
and so mystical, so occupied with reality while soaring toward the
ideal.
After earnest studies, irregular enough, at the schools of Charolles
and Bourg, then at the lycée of Lyon (1811 to 1817), and after a
very fruitful stay in the paternal home at Certines, among majestic
and attractive natural scenes, he started for England and Germany.
It was there he discovered Herder, toward whom he was drawn in
his first youthful musings upon the philosophy of history. His trans-
lation in 1825 of Herder's chief work made a great sensation, and
rendered him famous. In 1827 he returned to that Germany of which
he loved the dreamy and philosophic genius; there he connected
himself with the greatest minds of the time, scholars or poets,-
Niebuhr, Uhland, Creuzer. In 1829 he left for Greece, from which
he brought back his work upon 'La Grèce Moderne,' and above all,
profounder views upon the historical evolution of humanity.
The Revolution of 1830, first revival of the democratic spirit in
France, thrust Quinet into action. He was a democrat by nature as
well as by origin, but he dreamed of a democracy highly intellectual.
His activity from 1830 to 1833 was enormous. He published numer-
ous and remarkable political pamphlets; in philosophy and Romance
literature he was the precursor of Fauriel and Paris; finally, after a
trip to Italy, he published his noble and celebrated poem, 'Ahas-
vérus,' a work written in prose by a lyric genius of the first order,-
a kind of pilgrimage of the human species across the ages, which
made a great stir among the choice scholars of all Europe. He
married in Germany, and returning to Paris, for six years he dis-
tinguished himself as one of the most brilliant controversialists of
the French press; and collected his principal articles under the name
of 'Allemagne et Italie. ' Although he had shown himself almost
hostile to the government of King Louis Philippe, and had already
proclaimed his republican faith, it was due not less to his character
than to his celebrity that he was appointed professor of literature
in the Faculty of Letters of Lyons, in 1839. He exercised so potent
an influence over intellectual youth that M. Villemain, then minister,
had him appointed professor of the Collège de France in 1841. It
was then that, together with his friends Michelet and Mickiewicz,
he began that eloquent apostolate to the students of Paris, from
which resulted two important works: 'Les Révolutions d'Italie' and
'Les Jésuites. ' The character of his instruction was so liberal, so
## p. 11963 (#597) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11963
secularizing, and so republican, that in 1846 the government resolved
to put an end to it.
From 1847 Quinet entered active politics. He was one of the pro-
moters and one of the founders of the Republic of 1848. Represent-
ative of the people in the Constituent Assembly and the Legislative
Assembly, colonel of the National Guard in the days of June, he con-
ducted himself like a wise and clear-sighted citizen. He foretold the
Coup d'État of 1851, and vainly attempted to oppose the growing
Cæsarism. He was exiled by Bonaparte after the Coup d'État, and
remained, like Victor Hugo, nineteen years in exile, conscientiously
protesting against the violation of law. This period of exile-first
at Brussels (1852-1858), where he was married again, this time to the
daughter of the poet Assaki; then at Veylaux in Switzerland (1858-
1870) was extremely fruitful for the thinker and the poet.
It was
then that he published Marnix de Saint-Aldegonde' (1856); 'L'His-
toire de Mes Idées' (1858); 'Merlin l'Enchanteur' (1860); and above
all, the admirable Révolution Française (1865), which is perhaps
the finest book ever written upon the subject, even when compared
with the works of Thiers, Michelet, and Taine.
―――
After the fall of the Empire, and the disasters of 1870, Edgar
Quinet returned to France. Elected deputy from Paris by two hun-
dred thousand votes, he took a seat with Victor Hugo on the extreme
left of the Chamber, and continued to vote against all the laws of
clerical and monarchical reaction, and in favor of all the seculariz-
ing and democratic laws. Before his death in 1876 he was able to
foresee the certain realization of his ideas by the generation whose
parliamentary guides were Jules Ferry and Léon Gambetta. In 1874
he had published 'L'Esprit Nouveau,' in which are solemnly affirmed
the principal articles of his social, moral, and intellectual creed.
Edgar Quinet as man and as author appears one of the most
complete minds of France. By his poetic intuitions he created and
rediscovered mysterious legends, in which are incarnated the spirit
of the race; by his critical investigations he analyzed and revived
the noblest epochs of modern Europe; by his constructive power of
thought, he synthesized the evolutionary philosophy of the new hu-
manity; finally, by his enthusiasm and political tenacity, he offered
the noble sight of a citizen superior to the ephemeral passions of
party. He lacked only a little more sobriety of style, and a little
more precision of thought, to be a genius of the first order.
Such as
he is, he deserves to remain - what he wished to be and what he was
to the youth of his time: the initiator of the new France and of the
new humanity.
Henry Bérengen
## p. 11964 (#598) ##########################################
11964
EDGAR QUINET
NAPLES AND VESUVIUS
From (Italy)
W"
HEN I reached Naples, Vesuvius was in full eruption. Dur-
ing the day the lava rolled its black streams on the side
of the Annunziata and Pompeii. Toward evening the
torrents changed into a burning belt tying and untying itself
in the darkness. I impatiently awaited the morrow, in order to
climb to the edge of the crater in the middle of the night.
At eight in the evening I started from the little town of
Torre del Greco. After an hour's walk I arrived at the hermit-
age. The night was very black. I lighted my torch; the her-
mit wished me a pleasant journey; I went on my way with my
guide, and soon reached the foot of the cone.
At that distance I was too near the volcano to see it; but I
heard over my head explosions which the echoes magnified for-
midably, and a rain of stones rolling in the darkness. From
this tempest issued a great sigh, like that of a giant who is
stoned. The wind put out my torch. I finished my ascent in
total darkness. But just as I reached the summit, an infernal
light illumined the sky. Behold the spectacle which I had then
before me.
The earth trembled; it was warm to the touch. Through its
fissures shone the fiery veins of a hidden furnace. In the midst
of the great crater to which I had come, a new cone was form-
ing which seemed all in flames. From the mouth of this gulf
was exhaled a vast and long-sustained breath. This sigh, and a
profound and regular respiration like that of a forge, rose from
the bosom of the oppressed mountain. A terrible detonation fol-
lowed them. Flaming stones were cast in groups beyond our
vision, and rattled down noisily on the edges of the cone. For an
instant the steep sides and the interior of the abyss were lighted
as in broad day.
Lava was issuing from the ground by openings distant from
the crater. It rolled crackling from four mouths. Soon after-
ward the mountain uttered another giant sigh. Glancing toward
the sea at the moment of the explosion, I saw distinctly little
boats at anchor.
The mountain trembled still more; but the waves were not
affected, and nothing seemed to me more beautiful than the sleep
## p. 11965 (#599) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11965
of the sea, smiling under the unchained volcano. The Bay of
Naples resembled thus Ariosto's Angelica under the jaws and
outstretched wings of the Chimera.
I sat down upon the trembling ground; nature was seized
with a vertigo to which I abandoned myself with delight. The
intervals in quick succession of noise and silence, of light and
darkness, the calm of the night, the calm not less great of the
sea, this mountain shaken by starts,—all these contrary effects
were strengthened the one by the other. Without seeking why,
I found in this spectacle a host of images applicable to the moral
state in which I then was, and which had strongly prevailed
since my departure from Rome. I passed the night on the sum-
mit. When day appeared, I was able to enjoy at my leisure the
view of the famous gulf which lay at my feet. In the distance,
the island of Capri, which is shaped like an ancient galley, closed
the entrance to the sea. The sun rose from the other side of
Pompeii; it hovered some time over the tombs like a funeral
torch. This was the signal for a multitude of little barks to
leave shore and hoist sail. I heard at that moment the noise
of the awakening towns and villages. The vines interlaced in
the poplars, like gigantic thyrsi, began to shiver under the sea
breeze; an instant later the light sparkled on the ruffled waves;
a golden vapor like the dust of stars rose from the horizon; the
air became charged with perfumes. All nature seemed intoxi-
cated as in a pagan festival; and as long as the volcano con-
tinued agitated, this Christian Campania resembled the Sibyl
hesitating on her stand.
In Naples, the city of passions, I observe that the most con-
siderable monuments of art are the tombs. Moreover, these tombs
nearly all belong to the epoch of Spanish domination. The dead,
upright on their mausoleums, torch or dagger in hand, are sus-
tained by a singular pride: they seem still to rule over the living,
who pass lightly with furtive step over the soil below them.
The towers of Anjou, bathed by the sea, hold also this captive
earth. The palace of Jeanne la Folle, abandoned to the waves
which are every day seizing upon it, the beautiful arch of Ara-
gon, are other witnesses of the conquest. All the nations have
left the traces of their rule here in a particular architecture.
Only the Neapolitans are absent from the monuments of Naples.
This mimic people warms itself in the sun. It alone of all
Italy has never belonged to itself. Without a past, it has no
## p. 11966 (#600) ##########################################
11966
EDGAR QUINET
regrets; without a near future, it has no desire.
It cries, it ges-
ticulates, it spreads its nets, it runs, it declaims, it muses, it men-
aces,—and all that at once. Polichinel is its hero.
Yet when a soul chances to awaken from the bosom of this
mendicant sybarism, it is exalted in spiritualism or armed with
boundless energy. Pythagoras and his school, St. Thomas Aqui-
nas, Vico, Spagnoletto, Salvator Rosa, were strange lazzaroni.
Toward the middle of the day, sailors from Chia, from Sicily,
from Malta, seat themselves in a circle on the pier; a sail shades
the audience, which impatiently awaits the improvisator. At last
he appears; he is dressed in sailor's fustian; in his hand he
carries a switch instead of the laurel branch of his ancestors.
The eyes of the lazzaroni devour his lips in anticipation of the
story he is going to narrate.
with the tight boots appeared a rosy-winged Cupid, waved her
handkerchief until the vehicle had sidled round the hill, resem-
bling in its progress a very infirm crab in a hurry.
As a fact, the Registrar wore a silk hat, a suit of black West-
of-England broadcloth, a watch-chain made out of his dead wife's
hair, and two large seals that clashed together when he moved
His face was wide and round, with a sanguine complexion, gray
side-whiskers, and a cicatrix across the chin. He had shaved in
a hurry that morning; for the wedding was early, and took place
on the extreme verge of his district. His is a beautiful office
recording day by day the solemnest and most mysterious events
in nature. Yet, standing at the cross-roads, between down and
woodland, under an April sky full of sun and southwest wind,
he threw the ugliest shadow in the landscape.
The road towards the coast dipped-too steeply for tight
boots - down a wooded coombe; and he followed it, treading deli-
cately. The hollow of the V ahead, where the hills overlapped
against the pale blue, was powdered with a faint brown bloom,
soon to be green, an infinity of bursting buds. The larches
stretched their arms upwards, as men waking. The yellow was
out on the gorse, with a heady scent like a pineapple's; and
between the bushes spread the gray film of coming bluebells.
High up, the pines sighed along the ridge, turning paler; and
far down, where the brook ran, a mad duet was going on be-
tween thrush and chaffinch,-"Cheer up, cheer up, Queen! " "Clip,
clip, clip, and kiss me-Sweet! "—one against the other.
Now, the behavior of the Registrar of Births, Deaths, and
Marriages changed as he descended the valley. At first he went
from side to side, because the loose stones were sharp and lay
unevenly; soon he zigzagged for another purpose,-to peer into
the bank for violets, to find a gap between the trees where, by
## p. 11950 (#584) ##########################################
11950
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
bending down with a hand on each knee and his head tilted
back, he could see the primroses stretching in broad sheets to
the very edge of the pine woods. By frequent tilting his collar
broke from its stud and his silk hat settled far back on his neck.
Next he unbuttoned his waistcoat and loosened his braces; but
no, he could not skip,- his boots were too tight He looked at
each tree as he passed. "If I could only see » he muttered.
"I'll swear there used to be one on the right, just here. "
But he could not find it here,- perhaps his memory misgave
him; and presently turned with decision, climbed the low fence
on his left, between him and the hollow of the coombe, and
dropped into the plantation on the other side. Here the ground
was white in patches with anemones; and as his feet crushed
them, descending, the babel of the birds grew louder and louder.
He issued on a small clearing by the edge of the brook,
where the grass was a delicate green, each blade pushing up
straight as a spear-point from the crumbled earth.
Here were
more anemones, between patches of last year's bracken, and on
the further slope a mass of daffodils. He pulled out a pocket-
knife that had sharpened some hundreds of quill pens, and look-
ing to his right, found what he wanted at once.
It was a sycamore, on which the buds were swelling. He cut
a small twig, as big round as his middle finger, and sitting him-
self down on a barked log close by, began to measure and cut it
to a span's length, avoiding all knots. Then, taking the knife by
the blade between finger and thumb, he tapped the bark gently
with the tortoise-shell handle. And as he tapped, his face went
back to boyhood again, in spite of the side-whiskers, and his
mouth was pursed up to a silent tune.
For ten minutes the tapping continued, the birds ceased their
contention, and broke out restlessly at intervals. A rabbit across
the brook paused and listened at the funnel-shaped mouth of his
hole, which caught the sound and redoubled it.
"Confound these boots! " said the Registrar, and pulling them
off, tossed them among the primroses. They were "elastic-sides. "
The tapping ceased. A breath of the landward breeze came
up, combing out the tangle that winter had made in the grass,
caught the brook on the edge of a tiny fall, and puffed it back
six inches in a spray of small diamonds. It quickened the whole
copse. The oak saplings rubbed their old leaves one on another,
## p. 11951 (#585) ##########################################
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
11951
as folks rub their hands, feeling life and warmth; the chestnut
buds groped like an infant's fingers; and the chorus broke out
again, the thrush leading,-"Tiurru, tiurru, chippewee; tio-tee, tio-
tee; queen, queen, que-een ! »
In a moment or two he broke off suddenly, and a honey-bee
shot out of an anemone-bell like a shell from a mortar.
For a
new sound disconcerted them—a sound sharp and piercing. The
Registrar had finished his whistle and was blowing like mad,
moving his fingers up and down. Having proved his instrument,
he dived a hand into his tail-pocket and drew out a roll, tied
around with ribbon. It was the folded leather-bound volume in
which he kept his blank certificates. And spreading it on his
knees, he took his whistle again and blew, reading his music from
the blank pages, and piping a strain he had never dreamed of.
For he whistled of Births and Marriages.
O happy Registrar! O happy, happy Registrar! You will
never get into those elastic-sides again. Your feet swell as they
tap the swelling earth, and at each tap the flowers push, the sap
climbs, the speck of life moves in the hedge-sparrow's egg; while
far away on the downs, with each tap the yellow van takes bride
and groom a foot nearer felicity. It is hard work in worsted
socks; for you smite with the vehemence of Pan, and Pan had a
hoof of horn.
The Registrar's mother lived in the fishing-village, two miles
down the coombe. Her cottage leant back against the cliff so
closely that the boys, as they followed the path above, could toss
tabs of turf down her chimney: and this was her chief annoy-
ance.
Now it was close on the dinner-hour, and she stood in her
kitchen beside a pot of stew that simmered over the wreck-wood
fire.
Suddenly a great lump of earth and grass came bouncing
down the chimney, striking from side to side, and soused into
pot, scattering the hot stew over the hearth-stone and splash-
ing her from head to foot.
Quick as thought, she caught up a besom and rushed out
around the corner of the cottage.
"You stinking young adders! " she began.
A big man stood on the slope above her.
«< Mother, cuff my head, that's a dear. I couldn' help doin' it. "
## p. 11952 (#586) ##########################################
11952
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
It was the elderly Registrar. His hat, collar, tie, and waist-
coat were awry; his boots were slung on the walking-stick over
his shoulder; stuck in his mouth and lit was a twist of root-fibre,
such as country boys use for lack of cigars, and he himself had
used forty years before.
The old woman turned to an ash color, leant on her besom,
and gasped.
"William Henry! "
"I'm not drunk, mother: been a Band of Hope these dozen
years. "
He stepped down the slope to her and bent his head
low. "Box my ears, mother, quick! You used to have a wonder-
ful gift o' cuffin'. "
"William Henry, I'm bound to do it or die. "
"Then be quick about it. "
Half laughing, half sobbing, she caught him a feeble cuff,
and next instant held him close to her old breast. The Registrar
disengaged himself after a minute, brushed his eyes, straightened
his hat, picked up the besom, and offered her his arm. They
passed into the cottage together.
THE PAUPERS
From The Delectable Duchy. ' Copyright 1893, by Macmillan & Co.
I
οὐ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ γε κρεῖσσον καὶ ἄρειον,
ἢ ὅθ᾽ ὁμοφρονέοντε νοήμασιν οἶκον ἔχητον
ἀνὴρ ἠδὲ γυνή *
RⓇ
OUND the skirts of the plantation, and half-way down the hill,
there runs a thick fringe of wild cherry-trees. Their white
blossom makes, for three weeks in the year, a pretty con-
trast with the larches and Scotch firs that serrate the long ridge
above; and close under their branches runs the line of oak rails
that marks off the plantation from the meadow.
A laboring-man came deliberately round the slope, as if fol-
lowing this line of rails. As a matter of fact, he was treading
*«For greater strength and virtue are there none
Than where with single mind a man and wife
Maintain a household. »
## p. 11953 (#587) ##########################################
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
11953
the little-used footpath that here runs close alongside the fence
for fifty yards before diverging down-hill towards the village. So
narrow is this path that the man's boots were powdered to a rich
gold by the buttercups they had brushed aside.
By-and-by he came to a standstill, looked over the fence, and
listened. Up among the larches a faint chopping sound could
just be heard, irregular but persistent. The man put a hand to
his mouth, and hailed
"Hi-i-i! Knock off! Stable clock's gone noo-oon! "
Came back no answer.
But the chopping ceased at once; and
this apparently satisfied the man, who leaned against the rail
and waited, chewing a spear of brome-grass, and staring stead-
ily but incuriously at his boots. Two minutes passed without
stir or sound in this corner of the land. The human figure was
motionless. The birds in the plantation were taking their noon-
day siesta. A brown butterfly rested with spread wings on the
rail so quietly, he might have been pinned there.
A cracked voice was suddenly lifted a dozen yards off, and
within the plantation: -
――
-
"Such a man as I be to work! Never heard a note o' that
blessed clock, if you'll believe me. Ab-sorbed, I s'pose. "
A thin withered man in a smock-frock emerged from among
the cherry-trees with a bill-hook in his hand, and stooped to pass
under the rail.
"Ewgh! The pains I suffer in that old back of mine you'll
never believe, my son, not till the appointed time when you come
to suffer 'em yoursel'. Well-a-well! Says I just now, up among
the larches, Heigh, my sonny-boys, I can crow over you, any-
ways: for I was a man grown when Squire planted ye; and here
I be, a lusty gaffer, markin' ye down for destruction. ' But hullo!
where's the dinner? "
"There bain't none. "
"Hey ? "
"There bain't none. "
"How's that? Damme! William Henry, dinner's dinner, an'
don't you joke about it. Once you begin to make fun o' sacred
things like meals and vittles -»
"And don't you flare up like that, at your time o' life. We're
fashionists to-day: dining out. 'Quarter after nine this morning
I was passing by the Green wi' the straw-cart, when old Jan
XX-748
## p. 11954 (#588) ##########################################
11954
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
Trueman calls after me, 'Have 'ee heard the news? ' 'What
news? ' says I. 'Why,' says he, 'me an' my misses be going
into the House this afternoon-can't manage to pull along by
ourselves any more,' he says; 'an' we wants you an' your father
to drop in soon after noon an' take a bite wi' us, for old times'
sake. 'Tis our last taste o' free life, and we'm going to do the
thing fittywise,' he says. "
The old man bent a meditative look on the village roofs
below.
"We'll pleasure 'en, of course," he said slowly. "So 'tis come
round to Jan's turn? But a' was born in the year of Waterloo
victory, ten year' afore me, so I s'pose he've kept his doom off
longer than most. "
The two set off down the footpath. There is a stile at the
foot of the meadow, and as he climbed it painfully, the old man
spoke again.
"And his doorway, I reckon, 'll be locked for a little while,
an' then opened by strangers; an' his nimble youth be forgot
like a flower o' the field; an' fare thee well, Jan Trueman!
Maria, too I can mind her well as a nursing mother-a comely
woman in her day. I'd no notion they'd got this in their
mind. "
-
"Far as I can gather, they've been minded that way ever
since their daughter Jane died, last fall. '
>>>
From the stile where they stood they could look down into
the village street. And old Jan Trueman was plain to see, in
clean linen and his Sunday suit, standing in the doorway and
welcoming his guests.
"Come ye income ye in, good friends," he called, as they
approached. "There's cold bekkon, an' cold sheep's liver, an'
Dutch cheese, besides bread, an' a thimble-full o' gin-an'-water
for every soul among ye, to make it a day of note in the
parish. "
He looked back over is shoulder into the kitchen. A dozen
men and women, all elderly, were already gathered there. They
had brought their own chairs. Jan's wife wore her bonnet and
shawl, ready to start at a moment's notice. Her luggage in a
blue handkerchief lay on the table. As she moved about and
supplied her guests, her old lips twitched nervously; but when
she spoke it was with no unusual tremor of the voice.
## p. 11955 (#589) ##########################################
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
11955
"I wish, friends, I could ha' cooked ye a little something hot;
but there'd be no time for the washing-up, an' I've ordained to
leave the place tidy. "
One of the old women answered:
-:
"There's naught to be pardoned, I'm sure. Never do I mind
such a gay set-off for the journey. For the gin-an'-water is a
little addition beyond experience. The vittles, no doubt, you
begged up at the Vicarage, sayin' you'd been a peck o' trouble
to the family, but this was going to be the last time. "
"I did, I did," assented Mr. Trueman.
"But the gin-an'-water-how on airth you contrived it is a
riddle! "
The old man rubbed his hands together and looked around
with genuine pride.
"There was old Miss Scantlebury," said another guest, a
smock-frocked gaffer of seventy, with a grizzled shock of hair.
"You remember Miss Scantlebury? "
"O' course, o' course. "
« Well, she did it better 'n anybody I've heard tell of. When
she fell into redooced circumstances she sold the eight-day clock
that was the only thing o' value she had left. Brown o' Tregar-
rick made it, with a very curious brass dial, whereon he carved
a full-rigged ship that rocked like a cradle, an' went down stern
foremost when the hour struck. 'Twas worth walking a mile to
see. Brown's grandson bought it off Miss Scantlebury for two
guineas, he being proud of his grandfather's skill; an' the old
lady drove into Tregarrick Work'us behind a pair o' grays wi'
the proceeds. Over and above the carriage hire, she'd enough
left to adorn the horse wi' white favors an' give the rider a crown,
large as my lord. Aye, an' at the Work'us door she said to the
fellow, said she, 'All my life I've longed to ride in a bridal
chariot; an' though my only lover died of a decline when I
was scarce twenty-two, I've done it at last,' said she; 'an' now
heaven an' airth can't undo it! >»
A heavy silence followed this anecdote, and then one or two
of the women vented small disapproving coughs. The reason
was the speaker's loud mention of the Workhouse. A week, a
day, a few hours before, its name might have been spoken in
Mr. and Mrs. Trueman's presence. But now they had entered
its shadow; they were "going "— whether to the dim vale of
Avilion, or with chariot and horses of fire to heaven, let nobody
-
## p. 11956 (#590) ##########################################
11956
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
too curiously ask. If Mr. and Mrs. Trueman chose to speak
definitely, it was another matter.
Old Jan bore no malice, however, but answered, "That beats
me, I own. Yet we shall drive, though it be upon two wheels
an' behind a single horse. For Farmer Lear's driving into Tre-
garrick in an hour's time, an' he've a-promised us a lift. "
"But about that gin-an'-water? For real gin-an'-water it is,
to sight an' taste. "
"Well, friends, I'll tell ye: for the trick may serve one of
ye in the days when you come to follow me, tho' the new reliev-
ing officer may have learnt wisdom before then. You must know
we've been considering of this step for some while; but hearing
that old Jacobs was going to retire soon, I says to Maria, 'We'll
bide till the new officer comes, and if he's a green hand, we'll
diddle 'en. ' Day before yesterday, as you know, was his first
round at the work; so I goes up an' draws out my ha'af-crown
same as usual, an' walks straight off for the Four Lords for a
ha'af-crown's worth o'gin. Then back I goes, an' demands an
admission order for me an' the missus. Why, where's your
ha'af-crown? ' says he. Gone in drink,' says I. 'Old man,'
says he, 'you'm a scandal, an' the sooner you're put out o' the
way o' drink, the better for you an' your poor wife. ' 'Right
you are,' I says; an' I got my order. But there, I'm wasting
time; for to be sure you've most of ye got kith and kin in the
place where we'm going, and 'll be wanting to send 'em a word
by us. "
It was less than an hour before Farmer Lear pulled up to the
door in his red-wheeled spring-cart.
"Now, friends," said Mrs. Trueman, as her ears caught the
rattle of the wheels, "I must trouble ye to step outside while I
tidy up the floor.
"
The women offered their help, but she declined it. Alone she
put the small kitchen to rights, while they waited outside around
the door. Then she stepped out with her bundle, locked the
door after her, and slipped the key under an old flower-pot on
the window ledge. Her eyes were dry.
"Come along, Jan. ”
There was a brief hand-shaking, and the paupers climbed up
beside Farmer Lear.
"I've made a sort o' little plan in my head," said old Jan at
parting, "of the order in which I shall see ye again, one by one.
## p. 11957 (#591) ##########################################
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
11957
'Twill be a great amusement to me, friends, to see how the fact
fits in wi' my little plan. "
The guests raised three feeble cheers as the cart drove away,
and hung about for several minutes after it had passed out of
sight, gazing along the road as wistfully as more prosperous men
look in through church-yard gates at the acres where their kins-
folk lie buried.
II
The first building passed by the westerly road as it descends.
into Tregarrick is a sombre pile of some eminence, having a
gateway and lodge before it, and a high encircling wall. The
sun lay warm on its long roof, and the slates flashed gayly there,
as Farmer Lear came over the knap of the hill and looked down
on it.
He withdrew his eyes nervously to glance at the old
couple beside him. At the same moment he reined up his dun-
colored mare.
"I reckoned," he said timidly, "I reckoned you'd be for stop-
ping hereabouts an' getting down. You'd think it more seemly
that's what I reckoned: an' 'tis down-hill now all the way. "
For ten seconds and more neither the man nor the woman
gave a sign of having heard him. The spring-cart's oscillatory
motion seemed to have entered into their spinal joints; and now
that they had come to a halt, their heads continued to wag for-
ward and back as they contemplated the haze of smoke, spread
like a blue scarf over the town, and the one long slate roof that
rose from it as if to meet them. At length the old woman spoke,
and with some viciousness, though her face remained as blank
as the Workhouse door.
"The next time I go back up this hill, if ever I do, I'll be
carried up feet first. "
"Maria," said her husband, feebly reproachful, "you tempt
the Lord, that you do. "
"Thank 'ee, Farmer Lear," she went on, paying no heed:
"you shall help us down, if you've a mind to, an' drive on.
We'll make shift to trickly 'way down so far as the gate; for I'd
be main vexed if anybody that had known me in life should see
us creep in. Come along, Jan. "
Farmer Lear alighted, and helped them out carefully. He
was a clumsy man, but did his best to handle them gently.
When they were set on their feet, side by side on the high-road,
## p. 11958 (#592) ##########################################
11958
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
he climbed back, and fell to arranging the reins, while he cast
about for something to say.
“Well, folks, I s'pose I must be wishing 'ee good-bye. " He
meant to speak cheerfully, but over-acted, and was hilarious in-
stead. Recognizing this, he blushed.
"We'll meet in heaven, I daresay," the woman answered. "I
put the door-key, as you saw, under the empty geranium-pot
'pon the window-ledge; an' whoever the new tenant's wife may
be, she can eat off the floor if she's minded. Now drive along,
that's a good soul, and leave us to fend for ourselves. "
They watched him out of sight before either stirred. The
last decisive step, the step across the Workhouse threshold, must
be taken with none to witness. If they could not pass out of
their small world by the more reputable mode of dying, they
would at least depart with this amount of mystery. They had
left the village in Farmer Lear's cart, and Farmer Lear had left
them in the high-road; and after that, nothing should be known.
"Shall we be moving on? " Jan asked at length. There was
a gate beside the road just there, with a small triangle of green
before it, and a granite roller half buried in dock leaves. With-
out answering, the woman seated herself on this, and pulling a
handful of the leaves, dusted her shoes and skirt.
"Maria, you'll take a chill that'll carry you off, sitting 'pon
that cold stone. "
"I don't care. 'Twon't carry me off afore I get inside, an'
I'm going in decent or not at all. Come here, an' let me titti-
vate you. "
He sat down beside her, and submitted to be dusted.
"You'd as lief lower me as not in their eyes, I verily believe. "
"I always was one to gather dust. "
"An' a fresh spot o' bacon-fat 'pon your weskit, that I've kept
the moths from since goodness knows when! "
Old Jan looked down over his waistcoat. It was of good
West-of-England broadcloth, and he had worn it on the day when
he married the woman at his side.
"I'm thinking-" he began.
"Hey? "
"I'm thinking I'll find it hard to make friends in- in there.
'Tis such a pity, to my thinking, that by reggilations we'll be
parted as soon as we get inside. You've a-got so used to my
little ways an' corners, an' we've a-got so many little secrets
## p. 11959 (#593) ##########################################
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
11959
together an' old-fash'ned odds an' ends o' knowledge, that you
can take my meaning almost afore I start to speak. An' that's a
great comfort to a man o' my age. It'll be terrible hard, when
I wants to talk, to begin at the beginning every time. There's
that old yarn o' mine about Hambly's cow an' the lawn-mowing
machine-I doubt that anybody 'll enjoy it so much as you
always do; an' I've so got out o' the way o' telling the beginning
-which bain't extra funny, though needful to a stranger's under-
standing the whole joke-that I 'most forgets how it goes. "
"We'll see one another now an' then, they tell me. The sexes
meet for Chris'mas-trees an' such-like. "
"I'm jealous that 'twon't be the same. You can't hold your
triflin' confabs with a great Chris'mas-tree blazin' away in your
face as important as a town afire. "
"Well, I'm going to start along," the old woman decided,
getting on her feet; "or else some one 'll be driving by and see-
ing us. "
Jan too stood up.
«<
"We may so well make our congees here," she went on, as
under the porter's nose. "
An awkward silence fell between them for a minute; and
these two old creatures, who for more than fifty years had felt
no constraint in each other's presence, now looked into each oth-
er's eyes with a fearful diffidence. Jan cleared his throat, much
as if he had to make a public speech.
"Maria," he began in an unnatural voice, "we're bound for
to part, and I can trewly swear, on leaving ye, that—”
"that for twoscore year and twelve it's never entered your
head to consider whether I've made 'ee a good wife or a bad.
Kiss me, my old man; for I tell 'ee I wouldn' ha' wished it
other. An' thank 'ee for trying to make that speech. What did
it feel like? "
"Why, 't rather reminded me o' the time when I offered 'ee
marriage. "
"It reminded me o' that, too.
Com'st along. "
They tottered down the hill towards the Workhouse gate.
When they were but ten yards from it, however, they heard the
sound of wheels on the road behind them, and walked bravely
past, pretending to have no business at that portal. They had
descended a good thirty yards beyond (such haste was put into
them by dread of having their purpose guessed) before the
## p. 11960 (#594) ##########################################
11960
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
vehicle overtook them,-a four-wheeled dog-cart carrying a com-
mercial traveler, who pulled up and offered them a lift into the
town.
They declined.
Then, as soon as he passed out of sight, they turned, and be-
gan painfully to climb back towards the gate. Of the two, the
woman had shown the less emotion. But all the way her lips
were at work, and as she went she was praying a prayer. It
was the only one she used night and morning, and she had never
changed a word since she learned it as a chit of a child. Down
to her seventieth year she had never found it absurd to beseech
God to make her "a good girl"; nor did she find it so as the
Workhouse gate opened, and she began a new life.
## p. 11961 (#595) ##########################################
11961
—
EDGAR QUINET
(1803-1876)
BY HENRY BÉRENGER
B
DGAR QUINET belongs to that generation of great romantic.
French writers who were at the same time men of thought
and men of action, poets and philosophers, historians and
critics, who were in a word models of the complete man, such as
modern democracies too rarely succeed in creating. The life of Edgar
Quinet was as full as his work is varied; but both are stamped with
remarkable unity, both are the double and
indissoluble expansion of a true and reso-
lute genius, who was never inconsistent in
any hour of his existence or in any line of
his writings. Quinet is not only a great
writer, he is a national character; and the
new generations of France recognize, and
will recognize for a long time to come, in
him as in Lamartine, as in Victor Hugo, as
in Michelet, an ancestor to whom they owe
what is best in themselves.
EDGAR QUINET
He was born at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, February 17th, 1803, on
the southeast frontier of France, at Bourg
in the Department of Ain. He seems to
have had all his life the strong health and perfect equilibrium of
body and mind which characterizes the races of the Jura and of
Mâcon, and which was equally manifested by Victor Hugo, born at
Besançon, and by Lamartine, born at Mâcon. He was descendant
of an old bourgeois and parliamentary family. His father, Jérôme
Quinet, who was war commissioner under both the Republic and the
Empire, was also a scholar to whom we owe an important work on
meteorology. His mother was a Protestant, with a mind both reso-
lute and liberal, steadfast and sprightly, imbued with the ideas of
the eighteenth century without having lost the religious gravity
of her origin. Edgar Quinet evidently owes much to both his father
and mother; but she who directed his early education seems to have
exercised a profound moral and intellectual influence over him. He
## p. 11962 (#596) ##########################################
11962
EDGAR QUINET
had from the start a healthy, well-endowed nature, uniting the obsti-
nate tenacity of the combatant to an ideal sensibility of the solitary
and the poet. Both frank and sagacious, ardent and acute, there were
united within him talents apparently the most opposed; and it was
this which gave his genius a character at the same time so practical
and so mystical, so occupied with reality while soaring toward the
ideal.
After earnest studies, irregular enough, at the schools of Charolles
and Bourg, then at the lycée of Lyon (1811 to 1817), and after a
very fruitful stay in the paternal home at Certines, among majestic
and attractive natural scenes, he started for England and Germany.
It was there he discovered Herder, toward whom he was drawn in
his first youthful musings upon the philosophy of history. His trans-
lation in 1825 of Herder's chief work made a great sensation, and
rendered him famous. In 1827 he returned to that Germany of which
he loved the dreamy and philosophic genius; there he connected
himself with the greatest minds of the time, scholars or poets,-
Niebuhr, Uhland, Creuzer. In 1829 he left for Greece, from which
he brought back his work upon 'La Grèce Moderne,' and above all,
profounder views upon the historical evolution of humanity.
The Revolution of 1830, first revival of the democratic spirit in
France, thrust Quinet into action. He was a democrat by nature as
well as by origin, but he dreamed of a democracy highly intellectual.
His activity from 1830 to 1833 was enormous. He published numer-
ous and remarkable political pamphlets; in philosophy and Romance
literature he was the precursor of Fauriel and Paris; finally, after a
trip to Italy, he published his noble and celebrated poem, 'Ahas-
vérus,' a work written in prose by a lyric genius of the first order,-
a kind of pilgrimage of the human species across the ages, which
made a great stir among the choice scholars of all Europe. He
married in Germany, and returning to Paris, for six years he dis-
tinguished himself as one of the most brilliant controversialists of
the French press; and collected his principal articles under the name
of 'Allemagne et Italie. ' Although he had shown himself almost
hostile to the government of King Louis Philippe, and had already
proclaimed his republican faith, it was due not less to his character
than to his celebrity that he was appointed professor of literature
in the Faculty of Letters of Lyons, in 1839. He exercised so potent
an influence over intellectual youth that M. Villemain, then minister,
had him appointed professor of the Collège de France in 1841. It
was then that, together with his friends Michelet and Mickiewicz,
he began that eloquent apostolate to the students of Paris, from
which resulted two important works: 'Les Révolutions d'Italie' and
'Les Jésuites. ' The character of his instruction was so liberal, so
## p. 11963 (#597) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11963
secularizing, and so republican, that in 1846 the government resolved
to put an end to it.
From 1847 Quinet entered active politics. He was one of the pro-
moters and one of the founders of the Republic of 1848. Represent-
ative of the people in the Constituent Assembly and the Legislative
Assembly, colonel of the National Guard in the days of June, he con-
ducted himself like a wise and clear-sighted citizen. He foretold the
Coup d'État of 1851, and vainly attempted to oppose the growing
Cæsarism. He was exiled by Bonaparte after the Coup d'État, and
remained, like Victor Hugo, nineteen years in exile, conscientiously
protesting against the violation of law. This period of exile-first
at Brussels (1852-1858), where he was married again, this time to the
daughter of the poet Assaki; then at Veylaux in Switzerland (1858-
1870) was extremely fruitful for the thinker and the poet.
It was
then that he published Marnix de Saint-Aldegonde' (1856); 'L'His-
toire de Mes Idées' (1858); 'Merlin l'Enchanteur' (1860); and above
all, the admirable Révolution Française (1865), which is perhaps
the finest book ever written upon the subject, even when compared
with the works of Thiers, Michelet, and Taine.
―――
After the fall of the Empire, and the disasters of 1870, Edgar
Quinet returned to France. Elected deputy from Paris by two hun-
dred thousand votes, he took a seat with Victor Hugo on the extreme
left of the Chamber, and continued to vote against all the laws of
clerical and monarchical reaction, and in favor of all the seculariz-
ing and democratic laws. Before his death in 1876 he was able to
foresee the certain realization of his ideas by the generation whose
parliamentary guides were Jules Ferry and Léon Gambetta. In 1874
he had published 'L'Esprit Nouveau,' in which are solemnly affirmed
the principal articles of his social, moral, and intellectual creed.
Edgar Quinet as man and as author appears one of the most
complete minds of France. By his poetic intuitions he created and
rediscovered mysterious legends, in which are incarnated the spirit
of the race; by his critical investigations he analyzed and revived
the noblest epochs of modern Europe; by his constructive power of
thought, he synthesized the evolutionary philosophy of the new hu-
manity; finally, by his enthusiasm and political tenacity, he offered
the noble sight of a citizen superior to the ephemeral passions of
party. He lacked only a little more sobriety of style, and a little
more precision of thought, to be a genius of the first order.
Such as
he is, he deserves to remain - what he wished to be and what he was
to the youth of his time: the initiator of the new France and of the
new humanity.
Henry Bérengen
## p. 11964 (#598) ##########################################
11964
EDGAR QUINET
NAPLES AND VESUVIUS
From (Italy)
W"
HEN I reached Naples, Vesuvius was in full eruption. Dur-
ing the day the lava rolled its black streams on the side
of the Annunziata and Pompeii. Toward evening the
torrents changed into a burning belt tying and untying itself
in the darkness. I impatiently awaited the morrow, in order to
climb to the edge of the crater in the middle of the night.
At eight in the evening I started from the little town of
Torre del Greco. After an hour's walk I arrived at the hermit-
age. The night was very black. I lighted my torch; the her-
mit wished me a pleasant journey; I went on my way with my
guide, and soon reached the foot of the cone.
At that distance I was too near the volcano to see it; but I
heard over my head explosions which the echoes magnified for-
midably, and a rain of stones rolling in the darkness. From
this tempest issued a great sigh, like that of a giant who is
stoned. The wind put out my torch. I finished my ascent in
total darkness. But just as I reached the summit, an infernal
light illumined the sky. Behold the spectacle which I had then
before me.
The earth trembled; it was warm to the touch. Through its
fissures shone the fiery veins of a hidden furnace. In the midst
of the great crater to which I had come, a new cone was form-
ing which seemed all in flames. From the mouth of this gulf
was exhaled a vast and long-sustained breath. This sigh, and a
profound and regular respiration like that of a forge, rose from
the bosom of the oppressed mountain. A terrible detonation fol-
lowed them. Flaming stones were cast in groups beyond our
vision, and rattled down noisily on the edges of the cone. For an
instant the steep sides and the interior of the abyss were lighted
as in broad day.
Lava was issuing from the ground by openings distant from
the crater. It rolled crackling from four mouths. Soon after-
ward the mountain uttered another giant sigh. Glancing toward
the sea at the moment of the explosion, I saw distinctly little
boats at anchor.
The mountain trembled still more; but the waves were not
affected, and nothing seemed to me more beautiful than the sleep
## p. 11965 (#599) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11965
of the sea, smiling under the unchained volcano. The Bay of
Naples resembled thus Ariosto's Angelica under the jaws and
outstretched wings of the Chimera.
I sat down upon the trembling ground; nature was seized
with a vertigo to which I abandoned myself with delight. The
intervals in quick succession of noise and silence, of light and
darkness, the calm of the night, the calm not less great of the
sea, this mountain shaken by starts,—all these contrary effects
were strengthened the one by the other. Without seeking why,
I found in this spectacle a host of images applicable to the moral
state in which I then was, and which had strongly prevailed
since my departure from Rome. I passed the night on the sum-
mit. When day appeared, I was able to enjoy at my leisure the
view of the famous gulf which lay at my feet. In the distance,
the island of Capri, which is shaped like an ancient galley, closed
the entrance to the sea. The sun rose from the other side of
Pompeii; it hovered some time over the tombs like a funeral
torch. This was the signal for a multitude of little barks to
leave shore and hoist sail. I heard at that moment the noise
of the awakening towns and villages. The vines interlaced in
the poplars, like gigantic thyrsi, began to shiver under the sea
breeze; an instant later the light sparkled on the ruffled waves;
a golden vapor like the dust of stars rose from the horizon; the
air became charged with perfumes. All nature seemed intoxi-
cated as in a pagan festival; and as long as the volcano con-
tinued agitated, this Christian Campania resembled the Sibyl
hesitating on her stand.
In Naples, the city of passions, I observe that the most con-
siderable monuments of art are the tombs. Moreover, these tombs
nearly all belong to the epoch of Spanish domination. The dead,
upright on their mausoleums, torch or dagger in hand, are sus-
tained by a singular pride: they seem still to rule over the living,
who pass lightly with furtive step over the soil below them.
The towers of Anjou, bathed by the sea, hold also this captive
earth. The palace of Jeanne la Folle, abandoned to the waves
which are every day seizing upon it, the beautiful arch of Ara-
gon, are other witnesses of the conquest. All the nations have
left the traces of their rule here in a particular architecture.
Only the Neapolitans are absent from the monuments of Naples.
This mimic people warms itself in the sun. It alone of all
Italy has never belonged to itself. Without a past, it has no
## p. 11966 (#600) ##########################################
11966
EDGAR QUINET
regrets; without a near future, it has no desire.
It cries, it ges-
ticulates, it spreads its nets, it runs, it declaims, it muses, it men-
aces,—and all that at once. Polichinel is its hero.
Yet when a soul chances to awaken from the bosom of this
mendicant sybarism, it is exalted in spiritualism or armed with
boundless energy. Pythagoras and his school, St. Thomas Aqui-
nas, Vico, Spagnoletto, Salvator Rosa, were strange lazzaroni.
Toward the middle of the day, sailors from Chia, from Sicily,
from Malta, seat themselves in a circle on the pier; a sail shades
the audience, which impatiently awaits the improvisator. At last
he appears; he is dressed in sailor's fustian; in his hand he
carries a switch instead of the laurel branch of his ancestors.
The eyes of the lazzaroni devour his lips in anticipation of the
story he is going to narrate.
