A Very French Christmas Read online

  “The tempter was only waiting for this moment.

  “For the last few minutes the silence of the night had been broken by the sound of invisible wings. Then came a shout of laughter, and a series of discreet little knocks on door and shutter.

  “‘The devils! Hide, hide, Barrabas!’ cried I, and Barrabas, who had good reason to hate all sorts of devilish tricks, took refuge behind the kneading trough.

  “The slates on my roof rattled as if it were hailing. The infernal gang was once more let loose about my head.

  “But now we come to the strangest thing. Instead of the terrific noises and discords by which my enemies generally announced their coming—cries of foul night-birds, bleating of he-goats, rattling of bones, and clanking of iron chains—this time they were low sounds; at first quite vague, like those which the chilly traveller hears from out an inn whose doors are closed, and which, growing more and more distant, resolve themselves into a marvelous music of turning of spits, stirring of saucepans, clinking of glasses, emptying of bottles, rattling of forks and plates, and sizzling of frying pans.

  “All at once the music ceased. The walls of my cabin trembled, the shutter blew open, the door slammed back, and the wind, rushing in, put out my lamp.

  “I expected to smell brimstone and sulphur. But, no! Not at all! This time the infernal wind was laden with pleasant odors of burned sugar and cinnamon. My cabin smelled very sweet.

  “Just then I heard a squeal from Barrabas. They had found out his hiding place.

  “‘Come, come,’ said I, ‘the old jokes are beginning again. They are going to tie fireworks on his tail once more.’ These devils have not much invention. And forgetting myself, I prayed Heaven to grant my companion strength to bear the trial. But as he cried louder and louder, I ventured to open my eyes, and my lamp being suddenly relighted, I saw the unfortunate martyr held fast by his tail and his ears, and struggling for dear life, surrounded by white devils.”

  “White devils! Good St. Anthony!”

  “Yes, my friends, white devils. The very whitest of the white, I assure you, disguised as they were as scullions and potboys, in short jackets and caps. They brandished larding needles and pranced about with dripping-pans.

  “However, in the middle of the room they had placed a long board on two trestles, and on this they stretched Barrabas. Near the board was a big knife, a pail, a little broom, and a sponge. Barrabas squealed, and I knew that they were about to cut his throat.

  “What a soul-destroying thing is gluttony! While the blood was running and Barrabas was still squealing, my soul was greatly disquieted. But Barrabas once silent— ‘Bah,’ said I to myself, ‘since he is dead’— and with guilty coolness and even with a certain interest, I looked at Barrabas in the hands of the assassins. The innocent Barrabas, the dear companion of my solitude, cruelly torn to pieces and marvelously transformed into a multitude of savory things.

  “I saw him cut open, cleaned and scraped, hung by the feet along a ladder, washed as white as a lily, and smelling very good already in the steam of the boiling water; then cut, chopped, salted, made into sausages, pâté meat, all with diabolical rapidity; so that in a twinkling my hearthstone was covered with a bed of live coals (the devils are never at a loss for anything). I was surrounded by steaming kettles, gridirons, and spits, where, amid perfumes as fragrant as ambergris, in gravies and sauces ruddy as gold, bubbled, sizzled, fried, boiled—and that, I confess, to my great joy and satisfaction—the remains of him who was my friend, now transformed into pork.

  “All of a sudden everything changes. What a spectacle! A palace instead of a cabin; no more cooking and no more live coals. The broken walls were hung with tapestry; the floor of beaten earth was covered with a carpet.

  “Only the slates of the roof kept their places, but these were transformed into a wonderful vine trellis, and through their openings were seen the blue sky and the stars. I had already admired one like it at the house of a rich man in the city, where I had preached repentance for sin. And through these openings ascended and descended a host of little scullions carrying dishes, catching on by the brittle vine twigs, sliding down the branches and covering a table beside me with meats done to a turn.

  “There was everything on that table. Ah! My friends, my mouth waters at the thought—Stop, what was I going to say? No; at the very thought of it, my heart is full of remorse. Four hams, two big and two little; four truffled feet; only one head, but stuffed so full of pistachio nuts; steaks; galantines blushing through their mantle of quivering amber jelly; dainty forcemeat balls; twisted sausages; puddings black as hell.

  “Then the roasts; the hashes; the sauces; and I, with staring eyes and dilated nostrils, wondered that so many savory things could be contained under the bristles of a humble animal, and my heart ached at the thought of poor Barrabas.”

  “But did you eat any of him?”

  “Almost. I almost ate some, my friends. I had already stuck my fork into the crackling skin of a black blood-pudding, offered me by a very polite little devil. The fork was in; the devil smiled.

  “‘Get thee behind me, get thee behind me!’ cried I. I had just recognized the smile of the diabolical little peddler, the cause of all my temptations, who two months before had tried to sell me a spit. ‘Get thee behind me, Satan!’

  “The vision fled: it was daybreak and my fire had just gone out. Barrabas, well and happy, shook himself and rang the little bell about his neck, and instead of a host of white devils, snowflakes as big as your fist whirled in the door and window, which the storm had burst open.”

  “And what next?” said the children, eager for more of the beautiful story.

  “Next, my dear friends, with a heart full of penitence, I shared my meal of roots with Barrabas, and since then no more devils have ever come to disturb our Christmas Eve feast.”

  1880

  THE LOUIS D’OR

  François Coppée

  When Lucien de Hem saw his last bill for a hundred francs clawed by the banker’s rake, when he rose from the roulette table where he had just lost the debris of his little fortune scraped together for this supreme battle, he experienced something like vertigo, and thought that he should fall. His brain was muddled; his legs were limp and trembling. He threw himself upon the leather lounge that circumscribed the gambling table. For a few moments he mechanically followed the clandestine proceedings of that hell in which he had sullied the best years of his youth, recognized the worn profiles of the gamblers under the merciless glare of the three great shadeless lamps, listened to the clicking and the sliding of the gold over the felt, realized that he was bankrupt, lost, remembered that in the top drawer of his dressing table lay a pair of pistols—the very pistols of which General de Hem, his father, had made noble use at the attack of Zaatcha; then, overcome by exhaustion, he sank into a heavy sleep.

  When he awoke his mouth was clammy, and his tongue stuck to his palate. He realized by a hasty glance at the clock that he had scarcely slept a half hour, and he felt the imperious necessity of going out to get a breath of the fresh night air. The hands on the dial pointed exactly to a quarter of twelve. As he rose and stretched his arms it occurred to him that it was Christmas Eve, and by one of those ironical freaks of the memory, he felt as though he were once more a child, ready to stand his little boot on the hearth before going to bed. Just then old Dronski, one of the pillars of the trade, the traditional Pole, wrapped in the greasy worn cloak adorned with frogs and passementerie, came up to Lucien muttering something behind his dirty grayish beard.

  “Lend me five francs, will you, Monsieur? I haven’t stirred from this place for two days, and for two whole days seventeen hasn’t come out once. You may laugh at me all you like, but I bet you my fist that when the clock strikes twelve, seventeen will be the winning number.”

  Lucien de Hem shrugged his shoulders; and fumbling through his pockets, he found that he had not even money enough to comply with that feature of gambling etiquette known among th
e frequenters of the establishment as “the Pole’s hundred cents.” He passed into the antechamber, put on his hat and cloak, and disappeared down the narrow stairway with the agility of people who have a fever. During the four hours which Lucien had spent in the den it had snowed heavily, and the street, one of those narrow wedges between two rows of high buildings in the very heart of Paris, was intensely white. Above, in the calm blue black of the sky, cold stars glittered. The exhausted gambler shivered under his furs, and hurried along with a blank despair in his heart, thinking of the pistols that awaited him in the top drawer of his dressing table. He had not gone a hundred feet when he stopped suddenly before a heart-rending spectacle.

  On a stone bench, near the monumental doorway of a wealthy residence, sat a little girl six or seven years old, barely covered by a ragged black gown. She had fallen asleep there in spite of the bitter cold, her body bent forward in a pitiful posture of resigned exhaustion. Her poor little head and her dainty shoulder had molded themselves into the angle of the freezing wall. One of her worn slippers had fallen from her dangling foot and lay in the snow before her. Lucien de Hem mechanically thrust his hand into his vest pocket, but he remembered that he had not even been able to fee the club waiter. He went up to the child, however, impelled by an instinct of pity. He meant, no doubt, to pick her up and take her home with him, to give her shelter for the night, when suddenly he saw something glitter in the little slipper at his feet. He stooped. It was a louis d’or.

  Some charitable soul—a woman, no doubt—had passed there, and at the pathetic sight of that little shoe in the snow had remembered the poetic Christmas legend, and with discreet fingers had dropped a splendid gift, so that the forsaken little one might still believe in the presents of the Child Christ, and might awaken with renewed faith in the midst of her misery. A gold louis! That meant many days of rest and comfort for the little beggar. Lucien was just about to awaken her and surprise her with her good fortune when, in a strange hallucination, he heard a voice in his ear, which whispered with the drawling inflection of the old Pole: “I haven’t stirred from this place for two days, and for two whole days seventeen hasn’t come out once. I’ll bet you my fist that when the clock strikes twelve, seventeen will be the winning number.”

  Then this youth, who was twenty-three years of age, the descendant of a race of honest men—this youth who bore a great military name, and had never been guilty of an unmanly act—conceived a monstrous thought; an insane desire took possession of him. He looked anxiously up and down the street, and having assured himself that he had no witness, he knelt, and reaching out cautiously with trembling ringers, stole the treasure from the little shoe, then rose with a spring and ran breathlessly down the street. He rushed like a madman up the stairs of the gambling house, flung open the door with his fist, and burst into the room at the first stroke of midnight. He threw the gold piece on the table and cried:

  “Seventeen!”

  Seventeen won. He then pushed the whole pile on the red. The red won. He left the seventy-two louis on the same color. The red came out again. He doubled the stakes, twice, three times, and always with the same success. Before him was a huge pile of gold and banknotes. He tried the twelve, the column, he worked every combination. His luck was something unheard of, something almost supernatural. One might have believed that the little ivory ball, in its frenzied dance around the table, had been bewitched, magnetized by this feverish gambler, and obeyed his will. With a few bold strokes he had won back the bundle of banknotes which he had lost in the early part of the evening. Then he staked two and three hundred louis at a time, and as his fantastic luck never failed him, he soon won back the whole capital that had constituted his inherited fortune.

  In his haste to begin the game he had not even thought of taking off his fur-lined coat, the great pockets of which were now swollen with the rolls of banknotes, and heavy with the weight of the gold. Not knowing where to put the money that was steadily accumulating before him, he stuffed it away in the inside and outside pockets of his coat, his vest, his trousers, in his cigar case, his handkerchief. Everything became a recipient. And still he played and still he won, his brain whirling the while like that of a drunkard or a madman. It was amazing to see him stand there throwing gold on the table by the handful, with that haughty gesture of absolute certainty and disdain. But withal there was a gnawing at his heart, something that felt like a red-hot iron there, and he could not rid himself of the vision of the child asleep in the snow, the child whom he had robbed.

  “In just a few minutes,” said he, “I will go back to her. She must be there in the same place. Of course she must be there. It is no crime, after all. I will make it right to her—it will be no crime. Quite the contrary. I will leave here in a few moments, when the clock strikes again, I swear it. Just as soon as the clock strikes again I will stop, I will go straight to where she is, I will take her up in my arms and will carry her home with me asleep. I have done her no harm; I have made a fortune for her. I will keep her with me and educate her; I will love her as I would a child of my own, and I will take care of her, always, as long as she lives!”

  But the clock struck one, a quarter past, half past, and Lucien was still there. Finally, a few minutes before two the man opposite him rose brusquely and said in a loud voice, “The bank is broken, gentlemen; this will do for tonight.”

  Lucien started, and wedging his way brutally through the group of gamblers, who pressed around him in envious admiration, hurried out into the street and ran as fast as he could toward the stone bench. In a moment he saw by the light of the gas that the child was still there.

  “God be praised!” said he, and his heart gave a great throb of joy. Yes, here she was! He took her little hand in his. Poor little hand, how cold it was! He caught her under the arms and lifted her. Her head fell back, but she did not awake. “The happy sleep of childhood!” thought he. He pressed her close to his breast to warm her, and with a vague presentiment he tried to rouse her from this heavy sleep by kissing her eyelids. But he realized then with horror that through the child’s half-open lids her eyes were dull, glassy, fixed. A distracting suspicion flashed through his mind. He put his lips to the child’s mouth; he felt no breath.

  While Lucien had been building a fortune with the louis stolen from this little one, she, homeless and forsaken, had perished with cold.

  Lucien felt a suffocating knot at his throat. In his anguish he tried to cry out, and in the effort which he made he awoke from his nightmare, and found himself on the leather lounge in the gambling room, where he had fallen asleep a little before midnight. The garçon of the den had gone home at about five o’clock, and out of pity had not wakened him.

  A misty December dawn made the windowpanes pale. Lucien went out, pawned his watch, took a bath, then went over to the Bureau of Recruits, and enlisted as a volunteer in the First Regiment of the Chasseurs d’Afrique.

  Lucien de Hem is now a lieutenant. He has not a cent in the world but his pay. He manages to make that do, however, for he is a steady officer, and never touches a card. He even contrives to economize, it would seem; for a few days ago a comrade, who was following him up one of the steep streets of the Casbah, saw him stop to lay a piece of money in the lap of a little Spanish girl who had fallen asleep in a doorway. His comrade was startled at the poor lieutenant’s generosity, for this piece of money was a gold louis.

  1893

  CHRISTMAS IN ALGIERS

  Anatole Le Braz

  I

  The yule log sputtered softly, as if it had little old confidences to impart. And his feet to the flame, the soldier told stories in his slow tones, his hairy hands thrust in his blue belt—the kind the men of Leon wear.

  He had, with all the regiment, served the campaign of Tunis at the double-quick. Of those others—a dozen of them Bretons like himself—more than one had stayed there, stretched out on his back in the great naked mountains, with a hole in his belly made by Khroumire bullets. And he added, in
a tone of funereal humor, with the grave laugh that they have in the country of Saint-Thégonnek:

  “It’s a great while their bones have whitened surely, for the vultures that way make quick work of cleaning up a carcass.”

  A voice spoke up: “God rest their souls!”

  He, at least, had returned—his skin blackened like an old harness, but without a cut. All the same, before seeing once more the chimney of his tiled cottage in the garden of Leon, he had had to serve his time below at the other side of the world, in “Algiers of Africa.”

  “You’d never believe,” he went on, wetting his lips in the bowl of warm cider, “you would never believe with what a feeling of content I used to climb the twisty alleys of Casbah, where we had our barracks. It was exactly at Christmastime ...”

  “Ah, yes!” exclaimed the elder brother who had just taken holy orders and was to celebrate his first mass next day. “You’ve told me of that Christmas!

  “You know, between ourselves, you ought perhaps to make confession of it. It wasn’t strictly orthodox.”

  “Oh, my confession’s easy enough,” he responded. “Since you urge me on, I’ll make it publicly.”

  The Yuletide watchers cried out with one voice:

  “That’s it, Yvik! We’ll absolve you. We all!”

  The girls of the household poured into the bowls of painted clay a new round of the smoking cider. The soldier told his tale.

  II

  Well, on the twenty-fourth of December that you know about, he mounted guard in the Upper Town, happy to find himself there again, living and intact, whereas so many of his comrades ... Enough!

  Algiers is Africa, to be sure—but you can still smell the good odor of France. And he came and went, his gun at his shoulder.

  At his feet, the white town melted into nothingness, like a great cascade of foam whipped by the wind as far as the dark blue of the sea. For a high wind was blowing. Down there, that is how the winter comes on. At every shifting of the squall, billows of water fell, and clouds raced madly across the troubled sky. And he took to placing them elsewhere, those clouds; and, in imagination, sketched out the ideal contour of another country, where their shadows moved over the ground as in procession ...