The Conqueror of Death, page 4
A burst of sonorous laughter interrupted me.
“I know your story,” Julien Tafforel exclaimed, gaily. “To get rid of the intruder—or, rather, a redoubtable competitor, Monsieur de Salvandy gave him a well-paid position…a long way away.”
“That’s right. What moral do you deduce from the anecdote?”
“What, that it’s necessary for me to take up angling? To poach on Monsieur Champignol’s preserves?”
“Exactly.”
“But I’ll turn him against me even more. He’ll get angry with me, and imagine that I’m mocking him, and he’ll never consent to accept me as a son-in-law.”
“Tut tut! Try...”
“It’s impossible for me to maintain my incognito for long, and once Monsieur Champignol knows who I am, he’ll understand that I’m playing with him and feel a sharp resentment toward me.”
“Don’t you understand, you big baby, that the painter will disappear before the angler. It won’t happen overnight…Monsieur Champignol will be vexed to begin with, and look at you darkly, because a competitor is always unwelcome—but he’ll form a better opinion of your character. For many bourgeois, a painter is still a kind of phenomenon, who does not share the morals, the tastes or the habits of other mortals, whereas an angler is a pearl among men, the living symbol of calm and resignation, the incarnation of ingenuity and candor. Is it possible to desire a better son-in-law? If you’re clever, within a week, Félix Grandin will be sunk; Monsieur Champignol will be singing your praises, declaring that you’re the foremost painter of the era, and that you alone—take my word for it—are worthy to aspire to his daughter’s hand.”
“Truly, that would be a surfeit of happiness.”
“Try, then.”
“When should I set to work?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Well, until tomorrow.”
After a last handshake, Julien left me.
While retracing my steps, I smiled at the singular idea that had germinated in my brain, and the awkward position in which I was going to put Vincent Champignol. The latter’s anger, stubbornness and conceit merited a lesson. I found a thousand good reasons to excuse the planned mischief, and that evening, when I had an opportunity to see Mademoiselle Laure, I whispered to her: “I’ve seen him. He’s worthy of you.”
“Does he not have a great heart and a chivalrous character?” Laure replied, without anxiety.
“Yes. He wants to be worthy of you, and for that, he’ll attempt...”
“For God’s sake, don’t let him run any risk because of me.”
“Don’t worry; he won’t be in any danger.”
“That’s reassuring. Can I do anything to help?”
“Later.”
“Tell him that, whatever happens, I’ll never marry Félix Grandin—that I’m my father’s daughter and I have a will of my own.”
“There are the claws extending,” I murmured.
We parted, she thinking about some romantic adventure in which the exploits of Amadis would pale by comparison with those of her “fiancé,” me to sleep without anxiety or remorse, in spite of my dark designs.
The following day, immediately after lunch, I went to see Julien Tafforel. His house, about half a league distant from the Champignols’, was almost completely hidden in a dip in the ground formed by an old ravine. It looked to be in danger of collapse. The walls, cracked in places, were no longer vertical; large patches of roughcast that had fallen off left the gradually-disintegrating bricks and mortar bare. On the other hand, there was such a profusion of bushes and climbing plants around it that, from a distance, it resembled an enormous clump of verdure negligently thrown on the ground.
On the roof, damaged by bad weather, pigeons were cooing and sparrows chirping, intoxicated by the sunlight. To one side, chickens were scratching the ground and cackling, while several ducks were paddling gravely at the edge of a pond alimented by the continual sweat of a bank that limited it. In sum, the habitation, inelegant as it was, ought to please an artist like Julien Tafforel, or a philosopher, such as its tenant seemed to be.
I found the painter in the midst of preparing his brushes and colors. He intended to work on a painting whose sketch had been completed several days ago.
“Well,” I said, “this is how you follow my prescriptions. Laure is getting away from you and you’re only thinking of yourself.”
“But my dear Monsieur,” Julian Tafforel replied, “I’ve carried out your orders to the letter.”
“Come on, tell me about it.”
“This morning, very early, I installed myself in Monsieur Champignol’s ‘spot’ and fished with the patience of a angel. Naturally, I caught nothing, since my line was innocent of hooks and only comprised a poor bit of string attached to a hastily-cut reed. I hadn’t had time to buy fishing equipment. Nevertheless, it was urgent to persuade the enemy that it was a formidable apparatus.”
“Monsieur Champignol must have made fun of you.”
“Not at all! I had taken a few little precautions. When one isn’t strong, it’s necessary to be cunning, as the saying has it. I had gone to the market in order to buy two or three kilograms of fish, which I had ostentatiously scattered at my feet. When Monsieur Champignol appeared, he uttered a cry of surprise, darted a rapid glance at my ‘catch’ and retired, grumbling. I held firm and didn’t budge. He came back twice, and twice he found me there, as if rooted to the ground...”
“Well played!” I exclaimed. “Your intelligence has resources that are a guarantee of success in attaining your objective.”
“Here’s my famous catch—a miraculous catch,” Julien Tafforel continued.
A mighty burst of laughter swelled my chest and abdomen. In the plateful of fish that the painter set before my eyes, I distinguished salt-water species mingled with freshwater species.
“Oh!” I said, still laughing. “Wretch—your catch is a veritable salad, which must have scandalized Monsieur Champignol.”
“Really?”
“Yes, of course. How do you expect him to take seriously a fisherman who catches in a river fish that are only found in the sea?”
“Oh, if that’s all it is, I’m not worried. Monsieur Champignol was so upset and vexed that he didn’t pay any great attention to what I’d caught. Do you think he’d be concerned about the origin of fish scattered on the grass? I could have had sardines in oil or pickled herrings that he’d have imagined I’d just caught. Who can tell whether he might not have supposed that I was experimenting with bait that attracted new species?”
“Go on,” I continued. “I observe with pleasure that you’re neither short-sighted nor naïve. The future is yours. You’ll succeed, if you hold firm…and for some time.”
“Have no fear on that subject.”
“Most of all, don’t rest on your laurels. An angler is like the peasants that Victorien Sardou put on stage in Nos Bons villageois. Notions of property take on a new and surprising meaning in him. The river is his river, the place he occupies on its bank belongs to him by right of choice. He creates for himself an area of exploration in which any mere mortal who intrudes thereupon immediately becomes an enemy. As for the fish, they have been put into the bosom of the waters for his greater pleasure, and no one except him has the right to take possession of them. I won’t mention the dose of obstinacy and egotism that enters into his character. Don’t you remember the amazing event recently reported by all the newspapers? A young clerk went swimming in the Couesnon and drowned, not without struggling and calling for help. Twenty paces away was an angler, an excellent swimmer, but he had a bite. The moment was too psychological for him to try to save a human life. When that impassive witness was interrogated about the accident, he reported that he had experienced...”
“Remorse, no doubt?”
“No, an acute annoyance, because the desperate movements on the drowning man were stirring up the water and disturbing it...”
“But your anglers are savages.”
“Some are.”
“Is Monsieur Champignol one of them?”
“Oh, you’re asking too much of me. If he’s good, it’s up to you to seduce him. If he’s wicked, it’s up to you to tame him.”
“When a man is the father of a young woman like Mademoiselle Laure, he can’t be bad.”
What reply was possible? Don’t lovers always see everything through rose-tinted spectacles? Don’t talk to them before a marriage about the ridiculousness of a father-in-law or the shrewishness of a mother-in-law. They won’t believe you. The aureole with which they have surrounded their fiancée covers everything close to her with its dazzling reflections.
I had not only come to talk about fishing, but also to see. I wanted to observe Julien Tafforel’s talent for myself—that is to say, to convince myself that I was dealing with a true artist and not a servile copyist. My examination satisfied me fully. The few canvases I looked at very attentively proved to me that my new friend had a very clear sentiment of nature and understood its least-known charms. Following in the footsteps of our great Millet, he knew how to identify individuals and landscapes by means of felt impressions, and to reject the conventions and apparatus of color employed by painters who seek to flatter. A kind of soft and gentle harmony radiated from his works and explained the success of his painting “In the Wheatfields,” which had won him a silver medal at the latest Salon.
Julien Tafforel received my compliments and approval without false modesty. He was fully conscious of his merit and did not take refuge behind those restrictions which, in spite of their apparent humility, reveal vanity and complacency.
“And what do you think of this one?” he asked, lifting up a piece of calico covering a painting.
I saw the portrait of Laure Champignol—a portrait painted from memory, but ravishing, superb and bursting with life.
“And it’s a man like you that Monsieur Champignol refuses as a son-in-law?” I exclaimed, enthused. “We have to prevent him from committing that…stupidity.”
“I’d like nothing better, to be sure.”
“Well then, prepare...”
“My brushes?”
“No, your lines and bait. And tomorrow, without fail, be at your post.”
“I’ll be there.”
“No hesitation, no weakness. The fisherman must be worthy of the painter.”
“He will be.”
“And now, have courage!”
“I shall.”
The following day, Julian Tafforel, clad in a long gray smock, wearing a vast battered panama hat, decked out like a highwayman, took possession of Vincent Champignol’s spot, fishing with a brand new rod and line prepared by old Benamer. For three days he repeated that maneuver; for three days, he arrived first on the terrain. He even caught—what a miracle!—a few fish…and the beginning of a sunstroke that had no serious consequences.
I would need the verve of Ariosto, the immortal author of Orlando Furioso, to give worthy credit to the wrath of Vincent Champignol. At least twenty times he descended to the hidden location, and he always found his spot occupied. What imprecations, execrations and abominations fell from his lips! He inveighed with extraordinary violence against those who did not respect the sacred rights of property; he accused heaven, the mores of the epoch and the government of producing and tolerating vagrants, starvelings who had no other resource but to catch a few fish in order to subsist; he regretted not possessing the monstrous privileges of the aristocrats of the Middle Ages, in order to exterminate all the poachers on land and water who pullulate in this world.
I laughed covertly, for I took great care not to reveal my schemes. Even the Champignol ladies, weary of the former haberdasher’s irritation, were beginning to get annoyed with the threadbare and scurvy unknown who permitted himself, insolently, to occupy a place that no one had ever disputed with Vincent Champignol, and which really belonged to him, since he had been going there on a daily basis for five years.
The Grandins were country neighbors of the Champignols, and Félix Grandin, encouraged by the warm welcome of the man he regarded as his future father-in-law, made numerous visits. Needless to say, Laure received him with a cold reserve, but without wounding him. He arrived on one occasion at the moment when Vincent Champignol was fulminating against the wretched fisherman who was “stealing” his fish.
“Do you know who that animal is?” he said to me. “Does anyone know where he comes from? And the authorities permit it! If I were a magistrate, he’d already have been expelled, the good-for-nothing vagabond, the scoundrel who has no respect for anything. Once, a price was put on the head of men who hadn’t committed a quarter of the crimes that rogue must have committed. Taking my spot! Occupying it for four days! Can you imagine that? And the gendarmes haven’t arrested the vagabond! And lightning hasn’t struck him down! Everything’s upside-down in today’s world. But that’s how we’re governed!”
Félix Grandin made a gesture à la Nicolas11 and twirled his moustache, which he wore very long. “Can’t one citizen be brought to book?” he said, animatedly. “I’ll take charge of it personally. If he doesn’t obey my injunctions and disappear immediately, I’ll bring you his ears, Monsieur Champignol.”
The handsome Félix left us and headed for the river in the manner of a moor-slayer. After an absence of a quarter of an hour he came back, rather crestfallen. Not only did he not bring back the ears of the stubborn angler, but he had been roundly abused and threatened with being thrown in the water like a bundle of dirty laundry.
“Instinctively,” Julien Tafforel told me, later, “I understood that it was my rival who was shouting at me and giving me an order to decamp as quickly as possible. I replied hotly and invited him to come down to me in order that he might obtain the benefits of a forced bath. He preferred to withdraw, threatening me with the rigors of the gendarmes and all the other subaltern representatives of authority. Five or six thoroughly Parisian zuts informed him as to the dread he inspired in me.”
Nevertheless, that slightly shameful retreat won Félix Grandin warm felicitations. By design, Vincent Champignol praised his courage and temerity, while addressing violent invective to the mysterious fisherman whom no one knew, and who had suddenly surged forth, unceremoniously taking other people’s spots.
The next day, Vincent Champignol preceded his adversary on to the battlefield. When Julien Tafforel arrived he manifested neither surprise nor resentment. With the composure of a consummate practitioner and a wise slowness, he prepared and baited his hooks, and cast his line beside the haberdasher’s.
The adversaries finally found themselves together and battle was about to be engaged! For a good hour they did not take their eyes off their floats and did not say a word. Neither had a bite.
“It’s disappointing,” said Vincent Champignol, finally. “One can’t catch anything…and yet this was once the best spot on the river.”
“Which is why,” Julien Tafforel said, “I’ve caught more than twenty kilos of fish here in a few days.” He was lying brazenly, but intentionally, to excite acute regrets.”
“Twenty kilos!” said Vincent Champignol. Since you’ve been here, I’ve been watching you from the corner of my eye, and I’ve observed that you don’t know anything about fishing...”
“Really! And from what club have you come, to judge with so much authority? Is there an Academy of Anglers, and are you its permanent secretary?”
“Leave the stupidities there. You have a floating line, but you’re taking it out of the water all the time as if you were fishing with a dangling line. Is it knowing one’s business to act like that?”
“Everyone fishes as he likes. Probably, if you hadn’t come to disturb me, I’d already have a good fry-up.”
“What! But it’s my spot you’re occupying.”
“Your spot? Excuse me! Where are your title-deeds? Show them, so that we can see whether the notary has stamped them. Your spot! Why should it be yours rather than mine? I’m here, I’m staying...and I’m going to keep coming back.”
“I can have you removed.”
“You think so?”
“I think it’s an unspeakable infamy. I’ve been coming here for five years, and no one has ever dared to trespass on my rights.”
“There’s a first time for everything. I won’t abandon this spot until I’ve depopulated the river. And that’ll take a minute or two, won’t it?” And Julien Tafforel made a rather irreverent gesture.
That was too much. Vincent Champignol left, swearing that he would make himself respected, and that he would not surrender his prerogatives as a longstanding occupant to a badly-dressed stranger, a peasant who probably had no hearth or home. That made him angry, and it was far from the outcome for which I had hoped. But, remembering that Cupid is a sly god who overcomes all obstacles, I maintained my habitual calm.
That evening, when I saw Julien Tafforel, I received a volley of reproaches. The plan was going awry, and it was all my fault. Monsieur Champignol was very annoyed and would never compromise.
“A little patience,” I replied. “We’re only in the first act of the comedy that’s in performance—wait for the denouement; and, as in the majority of comedies, you’ll see that it will end with a marriage.”
“Monsieur Champignol is out of patience.”
“So much the better. After the tempest comes the calm, and every skillful pilot knows how to take advantage of it.”
Since the world began, people have claimed that love works miracles, but I’m almost certain that it has rarely transformed an artist into an angler, especially an ichthyologist. I omitted to mention that Julien Tafforel was studying fish, aided by voluminous textbooks of natural history and pisciculture, La Blanchère’s12 Dictionnaire de pêche, two or three manuals of angling and a few popular works “for the use of laymen.”
