a widower, fran?ois des ygrées established himself near the principality; on the grounds of roquebrune; he took pension with a family, which included a pretty brunette called mia. there he reared the bearer of his own name with the baby-bottle.
often he would go out at dawn for a walk at the sea shore. the road was fringed with amaryllis which he would always compare involuntarily with packages of dried cod. sometimes, because of the contrary winds, he would turn to light an egyptian cigarette whose smoke rose in spirals like the bluish mountains emerging far off in italy.
* * *
the family in whose bosom he had installed himself was composed of the father, the mother and mia. m. cecchi, a corsican, was a croupier at the casino. he had previously been croupier at baden-baden and had married a german woman there. of this union mia was born; her carnation tint and black hair bespoke her corsican blood. she was always dressed in buoyant colors. her walk was balanced, her figure arched; she was smaller at the breast than at the buttocks, and a touch of strabism lent her dark eyes a somewhat distraught look, which only rendered her more tempting.
her speech was lazy, soft, guttural, but pleasant nevertheless. it was the accent of the monegascans whose syntax mia followed. after having seen the young girl gather roses, fran?ois des ygrées began to take notice of her and was much amused by her syntax for whose rules he enjoyed making research... first of all, he noticed the italianisms in her vocabulary, and especially the habit of conjugating the verb "to be" with the wrong auxiliary. for example, mia would say: "je suis étée," instead of "j'ai été." he also noted her bizarre way of repeating the verb in her principal clause: "i was at the moulins, while you went to menton, i was;" or better: "this year i am going to the gingerbread fair at nice, i am."
one time before sunrise, fran?ois des ygrées went down to the garden. he abandoned himself to sweet reveries, during which he caught cold. all of a sudden he began to sneeze about twenty times in succession.
sneezing aroused him. he saw that the sky had whitened and the horizon cleared with the first light of dawn. then the first shafts of sunlight enflamed the sky along the italian coast. before him spread the still sorrowful sea, and on the horizon, like little clouds above the film of sea, could be seen the curving peaks of corsica, which always disappeared after the rising of the sun. the baron des ygrées shivered, then he yawned and stretched himself. he kept on regarding the sea to the east where one might have said there glittered a royal navy in sight of a seaport with white houses, bodighère, which furnished palms for the festivities of the vatican. he turned toward the immobile guardian of the garden, a great cypress, begirt with a full-blown rose bush which clambered up almost to its top. fran?ois des ygrées breathed of the sumptuous roses of nonpareil fragrance whose petals, as yet closed, were of flesh.
and just then mia called him to have his breakfast.
with her braid hanging down her back, she had just come to pick some figs and she was letting a few creamy drops flow into a pitcher of milk. she smiled at fran?ois des ygrées, saying:
"have you slept well?"
"no, there are too many mosquitoes."
"don't you know that when you are stung you should rub the place with lemon and in order not to be stung by them you should put vaseline on your face before going to sleep. they never bite me."
"that would be too bad. for you are very pretty, and ought to be told so oftener."
"there are those who tell me so and others who think so without telling. those who tell it to me make me neither hot nor cold, as for the others, so much the worse for them..."
and fran?ois des ygrées conceived at once a little fable for the timid:
fable of the oyster and the herring
an oyster dwelt, beautiful and wise, on a rock. she never dreamed of love but during fine weather simply bayed beatifically at the sun. a herring saw her and it was as a spark of powder. he tumbled hopelessly in love with her without daring to avow it.
one summer day, happy and coy, the oyster yawned. smuggled behind a rock the herring looked on, but all at once the desire to imprint a kiss upon his beloved became so overpowering that he could no longer restrain himself.
and so he threw himself between the open shells of the oyster who in her surprise shut them with a snap, decapitating the wretched herring, whose headless body floats aimlessly upon the ocean.
"'twas so much the worse for the herring," said mia laughing, "he was much too foolish. i too want people to tell me that i am pretty, not for fun, but so as we can marry..."
and fran?ois des ygrées noted for future consideration her curious peculiarities of syntax: "so as we can marry." ...and he thought further: "she doesn't love me. macarée dead. mia indifferent. alas i am unhappy in love."
* * *
one day he found himself in the valley of gaumates on a little knoll covered with skinny little pines. the shore trimmed by the white-blue of the waves stretched far out before him. the casino emerged from the bank of splendid trees in its gardens. this palace looked like a man squatting and lifting his arms toward heaven. near it, fran?ois des ygrées hearkened to an invisible mammon:
"regard this palace, fran?ois, it is made in the image of man. it is sociable like him. it loves those who come to it and especially, those who are unhappy in love. go there and thou wilt win, for thou canst not lose in play, since thou hast lost all in love."
since it was six o'clock, the angelus tinkled from the different churches in the neighborhood. the voice of the bells prevailed against the voice of the invisible mammon, who became silent, while fran?ois des ygrées searched for him.
* * *
on the next day, fran?ois took the road to the temple of mammon. it was palm sunday. the streets were littered with children, young girls and women carrying palms and olive-branches. the palms were either very simple or woven in a peculiar fashion. at each corner of the street, the weavers of palms were sitting against the wall, working. under their deft hands the palm fibers bent, circled bizarrely and charmingly. the children were playing about already with hard eggs. on a square a troop of urchins were pummelling a red-headed kid whom they had found trying to consume a marble egg. very small girls were going to mass, well dressed and carrying like candles the woven palms in which their mothers had hung sweet-meats.
fran?ois des ygrées thought:
"the sight of these palms brings good luck and today, which is gay easter, i shall break the bank."
* * *
in the game hall, he regarded at first the diverse throng which pressed about the tables...
fran?ois des ygrées approached a table and played. he lost. the invisible mammon had come back and spoke sharply each time they erased a deal:
"thou hast lost!"
and fran?ois saw the crowd no more, his head was turning, he placed louis, packages of bills, on one square, diagonally, transversally. he played a long time losing as much as he wanted to.
he turned away at last and saw the whole brilliant hall where the players still pressed about the tables as before. noticing a young man whose chagrined face revealed that he had had no luck, fran?ois smiled at him and asked whether he had lost.
the young man replied angrily:
"you too? a russian just won more than two hundred thousand francs by my side. ah! if i only had a hundred francs more, i would make up what i have lost twenty or thirty times over. but oh, i have beastly luck, i am hoodooed, done for. imagine..."
and taking fran?ois by the arm, he led him toward a divan on which they sat down.
"imagine," he continued, "i have lost everything. i am almost a thief. the money i have lost did not belong to me. i am not rich, i had a position of trust. my employer sent me to recover claims in marseilles. i got them. i took the train to come here and try my luck. i lost. what is there left? they will arrest me. they will say that i am a dishonest man, even though i haven't ever profited of the money i took. i have lost all. if i had won, no one would have reproached me. what luck i have! there is nothing for me to do but to kill myself."
and suddenly rising the young man put a revolver to his mouth and fired. the corpse was carried away. several players turned their heads a moment, but none of them bothered at all, and most of them took no notice of the incident which, however, made a profound impression on the mind of the baron des ygrées. he had lost all that macarée had left him and the child. as he went out fran?ois felt the whole universe contract about him like a tiny cell, and then like a coffin. he got back to the villa where he lived. at the door he passed mia who was chatting with a stranger who carried a valise.
"i am a hollander," said the man, "but i live in provence and i would like to hire a room for several days; i have come here to make some mathematical observations."
at this moment the baron des ygrées sent a kiss with his left hand to mia, while with a revolver in his right he blew his brains out and rolled in the dust.
"we have only one room to rent," said mia, "but it has just become free."
and she quickly closed the eyelids of the baron des ygrées, gave cries of grief, and aroused the neighborhood.
* * *
as to the young child, whom his father had in such a characteristic burst of lyricism named for aye croniamantal, he was gathered up by the dutch traveller who soon carried him off to bring him up as his own son.
on the day they left, mia sold her virginity to a millionaire trap-shooting-champion, and it was the thirty-fifth time that she had lent herself to this little commercial transaction.
andré dérain
