Peter Ibbetson | Page 7

fogs of Clerkenwell, when the frequent longing would come over me to revisit "the pretty place of my birth," it was for the Mare d'Auteuil I longed the most; that was the loadstar, the very pole of my home-sick desires; always thither the wings of my hopeless fancy bore me first of all; it was, oh! to tread that sunlit grassy brink once more, and to watch the merry tadpoles swarm, and the green frog takes its header like a little man, and the water-rat swim to his hole among the roots of the willow, and the horse-leech thread his undulating way between the water-lily stems; and to dream fondly of the delightful, irrevocable past, on the very spot of all where I and mine were always happiest!
"...Qu'ils ��taient beaux, les jours De France!"
In the avenue I have mentioned (the avenue, as it is still to me, and as I will always call it) there was on the right hand, half the way up, a maison de sant��, or boarding-house, kept by one Madame Pel��; and there among others came to board and lodge, a short while after our advent, four or five gentlemen who had tried to invade France, with a certain grim Pretender at their head, and a tame eagle as a symbol of empire to rally round.
The expedition had failed; the Pretender had been consigned to a fortress; the eagle had found a home in the public slaughter-house of Boulogne-sur-Mer, which it adorned for many years, and where it fed as it had never probably fed before; and these, the faithful followers, le Colonel Voisil, le Major Duquesnois, le Capitaine Audenis, le Docteur Lombal (and one or two others whose names I have forgotten), were prisoners on parole at Madame Pel��'s, and did not seem to find their durance very vile.
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I grew to know and love them all, especially the Major Duquesnois, an almost literal translation into French of Colonel Newcome. He took to me at once, in spite of my Englishness, and drilled me, and taught me the exercise as it was performed in the Vieille Garden and told me a new fairy-tale, I verily believe, every afternoon for seven years. Scheherezade could do no more for a Sultan, and to save her own neck from the bowstring!
Cher et bien am�� "Vieux de la Vieille!" with his big iron-gray mustache, his black satin stock, his spotless linen, his long green frock-coat so baggy about the skirts, and the smart red ribbon in his button-hole! He little foresaw with what warm and affectionate regard his memory would be kept forever sweet and green in the heart of his hereditary foe and small English tyrant and companion!
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Opposite Madame Pel��'s, and the only other dwelling besides hers and ours in the avenue, was a charming little white villa with a Grecian portico, on which were inscribed in letters of gold the words "Parva sed Apta"; but it was not tenanted till two or three years after our arrival.
In the genial French fashion of those times we soon got on terms of intimacy with these and other neighbors, and saw much of each other at all times of the day.
My tall and beautiful young mother (la belle Madame Pasquier, as she was gallantly called) was an Englishwoman who had been born and partly brought up in Paris.
My gay and jovial father (le beau Pasquier, for he was also tall and comely to the eye) was a Frenchman, although an English subject, who had been born and partly brought up in London; for he was the child of emigres from France during the Reign of Terror.
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"When in death I shall calm recline, Oh take my heart to my mistress dear! Tell her it lived upon smiles and wine Of the brightest hue while it lingered here!"
He was gifted with a magnificent, a phenomenal voice--a barytone and tenor rolled into one; a marvel of richness, sweetness, flexibility, and power--and had intended to sing at the opera; indeed, he had studied for three years at the Paris Conservatoire to that end; and there he had carried all before him, and given rise to the highest hopes. But his family, who were Catholics of the blackest and Legitimists of the whitest dye--and as poor as church rats had objected to such a godless and derogatory career; so the world lost a great singer, and the great singer a mine of wealth and fame.
However, he had just enough to live upon, and had married a wife (a heretic!) who had just about as much, or as little; and he spent his time, and both his money and hers, in scientific inventions--to little purpose, for well as he had learned how to sing, he had not been to any conservatoire