My Memoirs. Marguerite Steinheil

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СКАЧАТЬ Red Lion, the chief inn of Montbéliard in those already distant days. Edouard Japy had married Mlle. Emilie Rau in spite of the opposition of his family, who had declared that such a marriage would be a mésalliance. He had married her—as he often told me when, as a young girl, I became more than his child: his friend and confidante—because "she was very beautiful and very good." My mother had dark eyes, large and very tender, and her raven-black hair, when loosed, streamed down to her feet. She was of a quiet and sunny nature, kind, serene, and smiling. She ignored evil, was exquisitely artless, and never understood a great deal of the realities of life, because she did not see them. She gave away and spent without counting, was indulgent in a manner as touching as it was unconscious, and went through life a simple and happy being, knowing neither great exultation nor deep depression, incapable of sustained effort or serious worry. Edouard adored Emilie, Emilie adored Edouard, and all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

      The man who was to be my father having decided—and he had both will and charm—that Mlle. Rau should be his wife, managed to have her sent to a boarding-school at Stuttgart, so that she might complete her education. Mlle. Rau was then fourteen years old. Two years later she became Madame Japy. Her husband was then twenty-five.

      I do not intend to sketch here the history of the Japys of Beaucourt; but after having given a few details about my parents, I may add a few about my grandparents, if only to satisfy the curiosity of those who believe as much in atavism as in heredity.

      The first Japys who "matter" were two brothers, the grandfather and great-uncle of my father. The one, an inventor of genius, at first turned his attention to clocks and then to all kinds of machine tools—screwing, planing, riveting, bolting, boring, and so on. He created; his brother organised. The first had ideas; the second rendered them practical and profitable. I will not say any more about the financier and company-promoter, but the following story about the inventor is well worth telling: He had built for himself a small house, "on stilts," as it were. Below the floor of the large and only room, there was nothing but—air, and then the grass of the meadow. The inventor reached his retreat with the help of a rope ladder, which he withdrew when he had climbed up to his famous "idea-room." There, safe from intrusion, he worked, day after day, and for his meals was satisfied with a little bread and cheese. It was generally dark before he returned to earth and joined his wife, who, I have been told, was strikingly beautiful.

      Later, the children of those two brothers, developed the already important undertaking of their fathers, and gradually the firm Japy Frères became what it is to-day, one of the largest and strongest industrial concerns in France.

      I was educated by resident governesses and professors. One of the governesses, questioned thirty-five years later, was to declare that at the age of five, I used to lie a good deal but that I succeeded in being forgiven, thanks to my "talents as an actress."

      At my trial in the Paris Assize Court, the Public Prosecutor made a great deal out of this evidence, and saw therein a sure sign of my precocious depravity.

      Personally, I believe that all normal children tell fibs, more or less, and I am delighted to think that I was a normal little girl. As for my talent as an actress, I have since seen too many little girls of five to believe seriously in it. I smile, and I proceed....

      My father looked after my education with charming care. My brother and my sisters were brought up in boarding-schools, but my school was at home, in a large room on the first floor. I still see that light and beautiful room, overlooking our park, the trees of which, alive with birds, were so often the cause of much inattention to my work. I see the two blackboards, the one covered at regular intervals with detested figures and the other written over with words and sentences or the names of places and people. My father, wearing a stern expression, kept entering the room to see "how the little one was getting on," and invariably had some recommendation to make: "Since you are telling her about the Odyssey, make her follow Ulysses' travels on a map," or "I see you are reading the Iliad, pray insist on Andromache, Hector, Achilles, but skip whenever you come to Nestor; he was a fool and a bore."... "Promise to take her to Domrémy if she learns to love Joan of Arc."... "You are studying Napoleon.... Wait one moment, I'll fetch an album of Raffet's drawings for her."... "What, you are drawing in this room, in this weather! Run down into the garden: that's the ideal place where to draw"... and I always thought my father was absolutely right.

      There was a large globe in my schoolroom, and quite a library of travel-books. Ah! the tropics, the flowers, the birds! Ah! to see the birds of Paradise in Borneo, or humming-birds in Brazil! To gather orchids in Central Africa or in Queensland... I adore two rivers: the Orinoco and the Brahmaputra, and two mountains: Kilimanjaro and Popocatapetl, because of their extraordinary names! My favourite heroes were Hannibal and—Napoleon, of course.

      My father began to teach me the violin when I was four, and the piano and the organ the following year. He had his own ideas on the education of girls, but applied them to me only. When I was a mere child, he taught me to bow, to arrange flowers, and to recognise and appreciate things beautiful, ancient or rare—old furniture, old tapestries, old china, old pewter. He showed me the hall-marks on silver, he made me caress cameos and enamel-work and touch embroideries and old lace reverently. He made me go up and down a staircase ten, twenty times in succession: "You see, darling, any one can go down steps without being ridiculous, but to go up a staircase, that's another matter. Now then, come down—that's it—raise your head—go slowly—like a queen in books of long ago. Look as though you came down from Heaven and had wings, and didn't press upon the carpet!" And he added gaily, "when I go down a staircase, I feel as if I were an emperor descending towards his loving people! You ought to imagine a long train behind you, held by two little eighteenth-century negroes, twenty steps above." And the lessons went on again: "Now walk upstairs. Lightly, lightly, little one! Don't move your arms. Now turn your head round ... Ah! there's a pretty picture! By the way, you must dress your hair in another way. And what is that gold bracelet round your wrist! A flower, that's the only jewel you may wear at present, Mademoiselle!"

      He designed my dresses, and later on he insisted that I should learn to make them myself. He gave me a riding-master, a violin teacher and a piano teacher, besides the various governesses who taught me the "other things," but it was with him and through him that I learned the little I have learned. His was a beautiful life, and there sang in my young heart those words which my father often whispered in my ear: "I love you every day more than yesterday and less than to-morrow." I looked upon my father as a kind of marvellously beneficent Deity. Sometimes I heard it said that he was "not practical," but I pitied those who criticised him. If he hated to calculate, that was his own affair, after all! Though warned of the catastrophe which never befell him, he remained cheerful, kind and generous. Our house was known as "La Maison du Bon Dieu." Every one was welcome there, and my father, who was a gourmet, and had a remarkable chef, treated his guests to feasts worthy of Lucullus, and to the best wines in his cellars—under one condition, invariably the same: that they should listen to the concert in the drawing-room, afterwards.

      My father kept my mother's whole family, paid the debts of his friends, and did his utmost to assist any one and every one. Whenever he passed through a village round Beaucourt, men, women, and children would appear at the windows or doors of their cottages, and greet him with a sign, a word, or a smile of gratitude. And I used to sit as close to him as possible, in the trap; I was proud and happy and felt like shouting to the good villagers: "You know, he is my daddy!"

      Dear father! they were to slander him, too, at my trial. A member of his own family asserted that he was a brute and a drunkard. And when I revolted against such an abominable statement, my counsel tried to appease me. "Don't take any notice," he muttered. "The statement, it seems, has been made to save you at any cost. Being the daughter of a drunkard, you could be considered, to some extent, as irresponsible. It was tactics, not an insult!"

      In my memory I can see next to my father the lovable figure of M. Doriand, my parents' "old" and my "great" friend.

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