CHAPTER 4

A Father and a Son

And will the fault be mine if things are so?

MACHIAVELLI

"MY WIFE has really a good head," said the Mayor of Verrieres next morning when he went down to old Sorel’s saw-mill; "the reason I gave her was that it would maintain my superior rank. It never occurred to me that if I don’t take this little priest Sorel, who, they say, knows Latin like a book, the Director of the poor-house, that insatiable creature, might have the same idea and take him away from me. With what an air of importance he would then talk of his children’s tutor! Will this tutor wear the cassock in my house?"

M. de Renal was absorbed in this idea, when he observed from a distance a peasant nearly six feet tall busily measuring some logs in the towing-path by the river bank. The peasant did not seem much pleased to see the Mayor approach him; for the logs were obstructing the path and were laid there contrary to law.

Father Sorel- for it was he- was greatly surprised, and even to a greater extent pleased at M. de Renal’s singular proposition with reference to his son Julien. He was no longer listening to him with that crestfallen air with which the cunning of these mountain burghers clothes itself so readily. Having been serfs during the Spanish supremacy, they still retain this characteristic of the Egyptian fellah.

Sorel’s answer was at first only a long recital of all the respectful formulas he knew by heart. While reciting these empty phrases- delivered with an awkward smile that accentuated the false and almost knavish expression of his face- the active mind of the old peasant was busily searching for the reason that would lead so important a man to take his scamp of a boy. He himself thought very little of Julien, and yet M. de Renal was offering him the unexpected sum of three hundred francs a year, besides his board and clothes. The last stipulation, which Sorel had the genius to put in at once, had been finally accepted by M. de Renal.

That request came home to the Mayor with great force. "Since Sorel is not overjoyed over my proposition, as he naturally should be, it is clear," he said to himself, "that he has received an offer from another direction; and where could it come from if not from Valenod?" It was in vain that M. de Renal urged Sorel to close the bargain at once; the old peasant’s astuteness offered an effective resistance. He wished, he said, to consult his son; as if, in the country, a rich father would consult a son with nothing in the world, but for pure form!

A saw-mill run by water power consists of a shed built on the bank of a stream. The roof is supported by a framework resting on four large wooden posts. At a height of eight or ten feet, in the middle of the shed, is the saw swaying up and down, while a very simple contrivance pushes the logs before it. A wheel turned by the water produces both these movements- that of the saw sliding up and down, and that by which the logs are slowly brought in front of it.

Approaching his mill, old Sorel, in stentorian tones, called for Julien. No one answered. He could only see his eldest sons, a race of giants, trimming fir logs with their heavy axes. They were intently following the black lines traced over the logs; with each stroke of the axe immense slivers were falling away. They did not hear their father’s voice. The latter therefore walked toward the shed. When he entered, he looked in vain for Julien, who should have been at work by the saw. He observed him five or six feet higher up, astride a beam beneath the roof. Instead of tending to the machinery, Julien was reading. Nothing was so exasperating to old Sorel. He could have forgiven Julien his slight figure, which was so ill-adapted to heavy work, and was so different from his elder sons; but this mania for reading he despised- he himself did not know how to read.

He called Julien two or three times, but in vain. The attention he was giving to the book, more than the noise of the machinery, prevented him from hearing anything. The latter, then, in spite of his age, leaped lightly upon the shaft supporting the framework of the saw, and from there to the horizontal beam beneath the roof. A violent blow sent into the river the book Julien was holding; a second one, equally violent, aimed at his head, made him lose his balance. He was about to fall twelve or fifteen feet below, on top of the moving machinery, where he would have been crushed, when his father caught him with his left hand as he slipped.

"Now, you lazy good-for-nothing! So you’ll then always be reading your damned books when you should be minding the saw? Read them at night when you go to waste your time at the curate’s!"

Julien, though stunned by the blow, and bleeding, went to his post of duty by the saw. There were tears in his eyes, less from physical pain than from the loss of the book he loved.

"Come down, you cur, so I can talk to you."

The noise of the machinery prevented Julien from hearing this order. His father, who had climbed down, went to get a pole, not wishing to take the trouble of climbing into the rafters again; with this he struck him on the shoulder. Hardly had Julien reached the floor, when old Sorel, pushing him rudely before him, chased him towards the house. "Lord knows what he is going to do with me," said the boy to himself. Coming near the river, he looked sadly where his book had fallen; it was "Memorial de Sainte-Helene," the book he cherished most of all.

His cheeks were purple and he kept his eyes on the ground. He was a lad eighteen or nineteen years of age, small in stature, with irregular but delicate features, and of a constitution apparently weakly. His nose was aquiline; and his large black eyes, which in quiet moments showed thought and vivacity, were ablaze now with the fiercest hatred. His dark brown hair, growing very low on his forehead, gave him a narrow brow, that in moments of anger looked positively wicked. His face would hardly be remarked among the infinite variety of human countenances by any feature particularly striking. His slight, well-proportioned figure gave evidence more of agility than of strength. From his earliest childhood his extremely pensive air and great paleness had given his father the idea that he would not live long, or that he would be a burden on the family. As he was treated slightingly by all in the house, he only had hatred for his father and brothers. He was always beaten in the Sunday games in the public square.

It was a year since his handsome face commenced to attract the attention of some friendly young girls. Having been an object of disdain to nearly every one as a weakly boy, Julien had worshipped that old surgeon-major who dared one day to speak to the Mayor on the subject of the plane trees.

This army surgeon sometimes paid Father Sorel a day’s wages for his son, whom he would then teach Latin and history; that is, what he knew of history- the campaign of 1796 in Italy. Before he died he bequeathed to him his Cross of the Legion of Honor, the arrears on his half-pay, and thirty or forty volumes, the most precious of which had just gone into the public stream. This was the stream the course of which had been changed by the authority of the Mayor.

Immediately upon entering the house Julien felt his shoulders seized by the powerful hands of his father; he trembled, expecting blows.

"Answer me without lying," the old peasant shrieked into his ears in his harsh voice, while turning him round with the hand, as a child might turn a tin soldier. Julien’s large black eyes, welling with tears, were opposite the little gray eyes of the old carpenter, who looked as if he wished to penetrate to the very bottom of his soul.