The Dream (Oxford World's Classics), page 6
‘Oh, a foundling!’ cried Hubertine.
All at once, Angélique burst into a rage, babbling:
‘I’m better than all the rest, I am! I’m better, better, better… I’ve never stolen anything, but they steal everything I’ve got… Give me back what you’ve stolen.’
The Huberts watched astonished as she fervently proclaimed her own superiority, her little body quivering with impotent pride. They no longer recognized the blonde child with violet-coloured eyes and long neck graceful as a lily. Her eyes had turned black, her face was twisted with hatred, and her sensual neck had swollen as the blood pulsed through it. Now that she was warm she stood tall and hissed like a grass snake that has been rescued from the snow.
‘Are you really a bad little girl, then?’ said the embroiderer gently. ‘We only want to find out who you are so we can help you.’
As his wife leafed through the book, he peered at it over her shoulder. The name of the foster mother was given on the second page. ‘On 25 January 1851, the infant Angélique Marie was placed in the care of a foster mother Françoise, wife of Monsieur Hamelin, a farmer by profession, who lives in the commune of Soulanges,* in the district of Nevers, said foster mother receiving on their departure a month’s food and a set of clothing.’* This was followed by a certificate of baptism, signed by the chaplain of the foundling hospital. There were also medical certificates completed when the child left the hospital and when she arrived at her destination. Four further pages were filled with columns containing details of the quarterly payments made, each one endorsed by the illegible signature of the tax official.
‘What? Nevers!’ cried Hubertine. ‘You were brought up near Nevers?’
Unable to stop them reading the book, Angélique flushed, and sank into a defiant silence. But anger at last unsealed her lips, and she spoke of her foster mother.
‘Mamma Nini would have thrashed you, that’s for sure. She always stood up for me, even if she slapped me around now and then. I wasn’t so badly off there, with all the animals…’
The words caught in her throat. She stammered out incoherent snatches about the meadows where she had taken their cow Red, the wide street where she had played with other children, the cakes she had baked, and a big dog that had bitten her.
Hubert interrupted her, reading aloud:
‘In the case of serious illness or mistreatment, the deputy inspector is authorized to move the child to a new foster mother.’
Below it stated that on 20 June 1860, the child Angélique Marie had been placed with Thérèse, wife of Louis Franchomme, who were both artificial flower-makers residing in Paris.
‘Now I understand,’ said Hubertine. ‘You fell ill and were taken back to Paris.’
But that was not it in fact. The Huberts learnt the full story only by drawing it out, little by little, from Angélique. Louis Franchomme, who was the cousin of Mamma Nini, had returned to his village for a month to recuperate from a fever. His wife, Thérèse, had quickly grown fond of the little girl, and had been allowed to take her back to Paris on the understanding that she would train her as a flower-maker. Three months later her husband had died and, very sick herself, Thérèse had been forced to go and stay with her brother, a tanner named Rabier who worked in Beaumont. She had died there in early December, after entrusting her sister-in-law with the little girl—who had been beaten, bullied and abused ever since.
‘The Rabiers,’ whispered Hubert, ‘you know, I’ve heard of the Rabiers! They’re tanners who live down by the Ligneul,* in the lower town. The husband drinks, and his wife is thoroughly immoral.’
‘They treated me like a stray child they’d picked up in the street,’ raged Angélique, burning with injured pride. ‘They said that a bastard’s place was in the gutter. When she’d finished beating me, the woman would put out scraps of food on the floor for me, like I was her cat. Often I went to bed without eating… Oh, by the end, I felt like killing myself!’
She made an angry, despairing gesture.
‘Yesterday, Christmas morning, they got drunk and grabbed me and threatened to gouge out my eyes with their thumbs, just for the fun of it. But it didn’t work out like out, they started fighting instead and thumped each other so hard they both collapsed on the bedroom floor. I thought they were dead… I’d made up my mind to run away long before. But I wanted my little book. Mamma Nini would show it to me sometimes and say, “That’s all you’ve got, you know, and if you didn’t have that, you’d have nothing.” And I knew where they hid it after Mamma Thérèse died—at the top of the chest of drawers… So I stepped over them and took out the book. I ran off holding it tight under my arm, next to my skin. But it was too big and I thought everyone would see it and try and steal it. Oh, I ran and ran! When it got dark I started to freeze under that doorway. I was so cold I thought I was going to die. But never mind, I haven’t lost it, here it is!’
Just as the Huberts were closing the book to give it back to her, she darted up and tore it from their grasp. And then she sat down, slumping forwards on the table, and started sobbing, cradling the book in her arms, her cheek resting against the pink cloth cover. An agonizing humility overwhelmed her pride, and her whole being seemed to melt before these few, bitter pages with their dog-eared corners; it was a pitiful object, and yet her most treasured possession, offering as it did her only tie to the rest of humanity. She could never empty her heart of such profound despair, and her tears flowed on, unceasingly. In this abject state, she regained her prettiness and became once again a little blonde child with a pure, almond-shaped face, pale, tender, violet-coloured eyes, and a delicate, elongated neck which gave her the appearance of a virgin in a stained-glass window. All of a sudden she took Hubertine’s hand, pressed her eager lips against it and kissed it passionately.
The Huberts felt a surge of compassion and, on the point of tears themselves, stammered, ‘Dear, dear child!’
So perhaps she wasn’t thoroughly bad after all? It might be possible for them to set her straight, and curb these shockingly ferocious outbursts.
‘Don’t take me back there, I beg you!’ she stuttered. ‘Please don’t take me back!’
The husband and wife exchanged glances. It just so happened that they had been thinking since the autumn about taking in an apprentice to live under their roof, a young girl who would brighten up a house made melancholy by their childless sorrow. They made up their minds at once.
‘What do you think?’ asked Hubert.
Hubertine answered calmly and deliberately. ‘I think we should.’
They immediately busied themselves with the formalities. The embroiderer went and related the story to the magistrate of Beaumont’s north canton, Monsieur Grandsire, one of his wife’s cousins, the only relative with whom she still remained in contact. The magistrate took care of everything. He wrote to the Child Welfare Services, which quickly identified Angélique by her registration number, and he obtained permission for her to remain as an apprentice with the Huberts, who were widely recognized as a couple of the utmost propriety. The deputy inspector of the district came by to update her record book, and signed a contract with her new custodian, requiring him to treat the child with compassion, keep her in a state of cleanliness, and ensure that she attended school and church, and had a bed of her own. For its part, the welfare services undertook to pay Hubert the set fees and to issue her with clothing, in accordance with the regulations.
Within ten days, everything was settled. Angélique slept high up in the house in the attic bedroom, which had a view out onto the garden, and a storage room next to it. She had already begun to receive her first embroidery lessons. Before taking her to Mass on Sunday morning, Hubertine opened the old sideboard in the workshop where she kept the gold thread. She picked up the record book and placed it at the bottom of a drawer, saying:
‘Look where I’m putting it, in case you ever feel like taking it out. Don’t forget now.’
As she went into the cathedral that morning, Angélique found herself once again beneath the portal of St Agnes. There had been a partial thaw during the week and then the bitter cold had returned, and the snow covering the statues had half-melted and then set hard in a great mass of clumps and icicles. Everything was covered with a layer of ice, and the virgins were clad in transparent robes trimmed with glassy lace. Dorothea held a torch whose clear flames flowed downwards from her hands. A silver crown sat on Cecilia’s head spilling out brilliant pearls. Agatha bore a crystal breastplate over flesh torn by pincers. And it was as though the scenes in the tympanum and the little virgins on the arches had been preserved like this for centuries behind the glass and jewels of some great reliquary. A courtly cloak, spun from light and embroidered with stars, trailed from Agnes’s shoulders. Her lamb wore a fleece of diamonds, and her palm branch appeared a celestial blue. The whole portal gleamed with a pure light in the deep winter cold.
Angélique recalled the night she had spent there under the protection of the virgins. She looked up at them, and smiled.
Chapter 2
Beaumont* is made up of two completely separate and distinct towns. Perched on a hill, Beaumont-l’Église has an ancient cathedral begun in the twelfth century, and a bishop’s palace, dating from just the seventeenth. Its population numbers barely one thousand souls, who live crammed into its narrow and stifling streets. By contrast, Beaumont-la-Ville, a former faubourg* of the old town, lies at the foot of the hillside on the banks of the Ligneul, and has expanded and grown prosperous thanks to its lace and cambric factories. Its population has swelled to nearly ten thousand, and it can boast wide open squares and an attractive sub-prefecture building, constructed in the modern style. The two cantons, the northern and the southern, have scarcely any dealings with one another, and these are restricted almost entirely to administrative matters. Although it lies only thirty leagues* from Paris, a journey that can be made in two hours, Beaumont-l’Église seems immured within its ancient ramparts, which have in fact all been demolished apart from three gates. It has an unusually sedentary population who have continued to lead the same lives as their ancestors, each generation exactly like the previous, for five hundred years.
The cathedral accounts for everything, has brought everything into being, and preserves everything. A mother and a queen, it looms enormously over the little heap of low-standing houses, which shelter like a brood of chicks beneath its stone wings. The inhabitants live for it and by it. The artisans toil and the shopkeepers trade simply to nourish, clothe, and maintain the cathedral and its clergy. And while you may occasionally run into a few members of the bourgeoisie there, they are the last surviving remnants of a population that has long since departed. The cathedral beats at the centre, each street is one of its veins, and the town breathes only with its lungs. And so it is that the spirit of an earlier age endures, the past piously slumbers on, and the town around it, sequestered from the outside world, bathes in an age-old atmosphere of tranquillity and faith.
And of all the dwellings in this mystical town, the Huberts’ house, where Angélique was to live from this time onwards, was the one that stood closest to the cathedral, and was in fact adjoined to its very flesh. Undoubtedly some priest of long ago granted permission for it to be built there, between two buttresses, in an attempt to secure the enduring services of a master vestment-maker and supplier to the sacristy—the ancestor of this line of embroiderers. The colossal mass of the cathedral loomed over the narrow garden, on the southern side; first there were the walls of the side chapels, whose windows looked onto the flowerbeds, and then the soaring body of the nave, supported by the flying buttresses, and finally the vast lead-sheeted roof. The sun never penetrated to the bottom of the garden, and ivy and box were all that flourished there. The great curved roof of the apse cast a perpetual shade, which was at once mild and sweet-smelling, holy, sepulchral, and pure. The cool tranquillity of the greenish half-light was disturbed only by the pealing of the bells which drifted down from the twin towers. The whole house would quiver then; it had merged and fused into the ancient stones, and was nourished by their lifeblood. The simplest of ceremonies would set the house atremble: High Mass, the rumblings of the organ, the choirmen’s voices, right down to the troubled sighs of the faithful, would hum through all its rooms, soothing the house with a sacred breath, blown from invisible realms; and sometimes it seemed as though fumes of incense seeped through the warm walls.
For five years Angélique grew up there, as though confined within convent walls, far removed from the world. The only time she went out was on Sundays, when she went to hear the seven o’clock Mass. Hubertine had obtained permission to keep Angélique out of school, as she feared that the child might fall in with bad company. This cramped and ancient building, and its garden, in which a deathly hush prevailed, were Angélique’s entire universe. She occupied a whitewashed bedroom under the eaves and came downstairs in the morning to have breakfast, and went back upstairs to the workshop and her embroidery on the first floor. These rooms, along with the turret containing the spiral stone staircase, were the only parts of the house she visited, and were in fact its oldest, not having been altered from one age to the next. She never entered the Huberts’ bedroom, and only rarely ventured into the sitting room downstairs; these were the two rooms that had been redecorated according to modern tastes. In the sitting room, the beams had been plastered over and the ceiling ornamented with a central rose and palmette cornices. The wallpaper, which was patterned with large yellow flowers, dated from the First Empire,* as did the white marble chimney-piece and the mahogany furniture—a pedestal table, a sofa, and four armchairs covered in Utrecht velvet.* On the rare occasions when she came downstairs to change the pieces of embroidery that hung on display in the window, she sometimes glanced outside, and saw always the same unvarying scene: the portal of St Agnes blocking off the street; a pious old lady pushing open one of the doors, which then swung softly to; and, opposite, the shops of the goldsmith and the candle-maker with their rows of communion chalices and stout candles, where no customer ever seemed to enter. And all through Beaumont-l’Église—along the Rue Magloire, behind the Bishop’s Palace, and the Grand’Rue, off which the Rue des Orfèvres runs, and in the Place du Cloître, dominated by the two soaring towers—a cloistral peace lulled the drowsy air and settled slowly with the pallid daylight onto the deserted cobbles.
Hubertine took it upon herself to complete Angélique’s education. She subscribed to the old view that a woman’s schooling is more than complete once she has mastered spelling and can do her sums. But she had to battle with the wayward child, who wasted many hours staring out the window, a very meagre diversion, as it was just the garden that lay beyond. Angélique took little interest in reading, and although she attempted many dictation exercises, drawn from a selection of classic authors, she never managed to spell out an entire page correctly. Nevertheless, her handwriting was very charming, and she confidently traced out her slender characters in the erratic style of a grande dame of a bygone age. In other areas, such as geography, history, and arithmetic, her ignorance remained untroubled. What was the point of knowledge? It was utterly useless. Later, when it was time for her first communion, she learnt the catechism by heart in such a burst of pious zeal that everyone was amazed by the accuracy of her recall.
Although they treated her gently, the Huberts often had cause to despair during that first year. Angélique displayed all the makings of a very fine embroideress, but bewildered them with her sudden changes of mood and inexplicable bouts of laziness after days of diligent application. She suddenly turned shiftless and sly, and pilfered sugar, her face appearing flushed, with dark rings under her eyes. If anyone tried to scold her, she answered back viciously. Sometimes when they tried to bring her to heel, her pride revolted and she flew into a wild frenzy, quivering tensely, lashing out with kicks and punches, raging to bite and scratch. They recoiled with fear before this little monster, horrified by the malign impulses that stirred within her. Who was she, then? Where had she come from? Foundlings, in most cases, are the children of criminality and vice. On two occasions, filled with sadness, and ruing their decision to take her in, they resolved to be rid of her and return her to the welfare services. But at the end of each of these terrible episodes, with the walls still ringing, the child dissolved in a flood of tears, offering up ardent expressions of remorse, and threw herself to the floor with such eagerness to receive her punishment, that they had to forgive her.
Little by little, Hubertine gained authority over her. With her warm and open nature, her imposing demeanour of calm strength, and her equitable good sense, she was made for instructing the child. She taught her renunciation and submission, setting these against passion and pride. Obedience was the essence of life. One had to obey God, parents, superiors, an entire hierarchy worthy of respect, beyond whose bounds life grew disordered and meaningless. After each act of defiance, she set the child some menial chore as punishment, as a way of teaching her humility—washing the dishes, cleaning the kitchen; and she stayed there until the job was done, ensuring that the child remained bent over the flagstones, raging at first, but in the end subdued. Hubertine was especially concerned by the child’s passions, by the ardour and intensity of her caresses. On several occasions she had caught her kissing her own hands. She watched as the young girl worked herself into a feverish passion over images, little engravings of holy scenes, and the Jesus figurines she collected; and then, one evening, she found her in a faint, eyes damp with tears, her head slumped forward on the table, her mouth pressed against the pictures. When Hubertine confiscated these things a terrible scene ensued, the child screaming and weeping as though she were being flayed alive. From that time onwards Hubertine kept a tight rein on her and refused to tolerate her fits of passion, overwhelming her with work, surrounding her with silence and calm when she sensed that the child was starting to grow agitated, her eyes wild, her cheeks burning.
