A Convent Man-Servant

DELAVEAU was waiting with the convent carriage at Sézanne when we made our first plunge into Marne. He had also provided a large omnibus, or diligence, in which the company of religieuses and their pupils from the Paris convent were to be carried to the summer abbey. It was a warm July day, and the whole group panted from confinement in a third-class railway compartment, though the largest and airiest of this kind of carriage had been reserved for them.

“ If a nun ever rode above third-class in France, there would be a great outcry,”explained one of the Assumption mothers. But even railway employees could see the incongruity of hard benches in narrow wooden ovens for these refined women, some of whom had sprang from noble French and English families ; and everything possible had been done to give a degree of comfort and entire privacy to their journey.

Whether Delaveau was intoxicated with joy or with vine juice at the return of his patrons, he capered from duty to duty. The piles of trunks and queerlooking luggage which people in the Old World take on their shortest journeys were finally ready in a van for the fifteen kilometres’ transportation to Château Andecy. As guests we were put in the convent carriage with madame one of the mothers; “la petite nouvelle,” as she called the young American, taking first oral French lessons beside her. It was delightful to ride through cool air up the great sloping hills, with a gorgeous panorama of country spread behind us. Woods and grainfields, vineyards and glorious melting visions of light and shade far off, unrolled as Sézanne disappeared. Delaveau bragged of the country, pouring hysteric volubility on madame’s ears. He had little black eyes which sparkled with exhilaration, and a nut-brown face, with cap pulled over the forehead. His figure was short and muscular.

The convent carriage was a shaky vehicle. Cushioned seats at the sides held five of us comfortably. Delaveau occupied the cocher’s seat in front, but he would spring from it like a frog, and run along by his horse’s head, slapping her neck with familiar companionship. It was evident he delighted in tormenting the good nun, and his joy over the return of the convent family let itself out in these antics. As we descended a long slope, he would slyly grind a sort of coffee-mill brake until it braced the wheel, and then startle the horse with shouts and whip - cracking. We tore downhill, the rickety carryall rocking like a steamer in a heavy swell. Madame raised her hands and shut her eyes, watched by Delaveau with apish rapture.

“ Oh, more slowly, Delaveau, — go gently.”

“ Mais, non, madame,”he coaxed. “ It is not too fast. It is very easy.”

Then with a sudden jerk he would pitch us all forward. Or while the mare galloped, he flung himself to the road and galloped beside her, slapping a fly or jerking her to her haunches. He fed her bunches of grass and talked to her like a mother, — “ My fine Bichette ! ” — and tucking the lines upon her back, he sauntered, leaving us quite at the mercy of the amiable beast.

Then madame would appeal and command : “ Oh ! regardez votre cheval, Delaveau ! ”

Upon which Delaveau would spring to his place, grind the coffee-mill brake again, and dash down another hill.

He could not understand a word of English, but he eyed us impudently when we talked about him. This convent manservant was a person not to be looked down or discouraged, and he cared nothing for Americans, more than a panther would have cared gamboling at its tamer’s feet. His tongue did not cease a minute its incessant chatter. He told madame of everything at the abbey : of Josephine his wife, of his eldest son and little René at Les Buissons, of Frizette’s health and the growth of Mouton, the paschal lamb. A torrent of talk poured from his mouth, in the carriage or out of it.

“ Did you ever hear such a gabbler ? ” sighed madame in resignation. “Oh! regardez votre cheval, Delaveau ! They say a woman’s tongue runs always. It is most unjust. Hear this man. What will monsieur think of him? Americans do not talk all the time. But this man, we have had him seven years at the convent, and his woman. He is a good man, though I think he drinks too much, and it often happens we obey him instead of making him obey us. He must have his joke. Oh ! regardez votre cheval, Delaveau ! ”

Madame, as she sat patient and apparently inattentive to Delaveau’s gabble, shook her head and commented. He bragged of the convent property and its great abundance of springs. We passed a château which he said had no springs. He declared the region around Andecy was the finest country in the world. He bragged of upsetting his wife Josephine by driving over the brink of a stream in the dark.

“ He is afraid of his wife,” observed madame. “ He only dares tell behind Josephine’s back what a wetting he gave her.”

Some hint of this communication must have penetrated Delaveau, for he began at once to proclaim he was not afraid of anything on earth ; and as for strength, there was no one to be compared to him except his son.

The heavy omnibus rumbling far behind our eccentric flights and pauses, we passed through many villages, each having its name and the name of its commune on the wall of the first house. Beautiful as the unfolding country was, the exquisite winding road seemed never able to overtake our goal. It was late in the afternoon before we paused in Baye at the inn with the inverted bush. Here the older Americans were to bide after introducing la petite nouvelle to her abbey, a kilometre or so away.

The remnant of an ancient estate now appertained to the nuns of the Assumption, who as an order have existed barely half a century. Beyond the abbey grounds their rights were distributed in parcels among their neighbors, until a map of Andecy would have resembled a map of German principalities.

Delaveau left off his antics, and drove soberly into the domain which he farmed and over which he stood guard during the absence of his patrons in winter. The outlying village of Andecy was an elbow lane of small stone houses sheltering the families of laborers on the land. Perhaps it had the antiquity of Baye, but there was no visible sign of this.

Screened like every French château from the passer, the abbey of Andecy was first fully seen when we entered the short avenue. A king in the twelfth century built it for his sister the abbess, and it had passed through many hands before being purchased by this sisterhood,— a typical white stone château with wings. At one side of the lawn an artificial lake was made to fall through a series of metal tanks, the latest owner having given himself up to fish culture. But nothing finny was now to be seen except goldfish playing in a fountain before the entrance. Next the half-sunk garden wall was a pleached walk of broad-leaved lindens so thickly interwoven overhead that sun and sky never penetrated. The canopy was like a bedding of many years’ growth. The colonnade of tree-stems made a long vista ending in a half-dark grotto with its image. Beside this favorite walk each child had a little plot of flower-ground given her.

The abbey stood in front of a tangled park full of holly, fern, and ivy. And here the younger children had what were called their “ Crusoes,” the mossiest playhouses which could be contrived in a country overflowing with greenery. This little settlement, even when uninhabited, was a cluster of the most inviting sylvan homes.

Prominent on high ground, though quite apart from the château’s right wing, stood the dovecote, a low tower of stone not unlike a martello tower. In those elder days nobody except the nobles was allowed to keep pigeons, so the dovecotes were made much of as a symbol of rank. The two great towers usually flanking the two wings of a château prove to this day how the prerogative was appreciated.

When we passed the avenue gates Delaveau was a lamb. When we alighted he touched his cap, and with Bichette gently and silently disappeared in buildings apart. With the convent environment, his habit of submission to and aloofness from the nuns returned upon him.

It was very pretty to see the young girls enter their summer home in line, exchanging cheek-kisses with the superior, who was there to receive them, and greeting her,— “ Bon jour, ma mère.” Their goûté, or afternoon lunch, was ready for them in the dining-room. Usually it consisted of chocolate and bread, or bread and ripe fruit ; but after an early breakfast and a long ride, and the loss of the lunch-basket from the baggage, we were all glad to find a substantial déjeuner. As no man could lodge at the convent, our own rooms and dinner were already ordered for us — without la nouvelle — at the inn with the bush in Baye. But it was pleasant to linger in the pleached alley and feel the delicious peace of this place come over one like a blessing. Nowhere have I ever seen grass greener or water clearer. The front of the château had a rich paneled effect. The centre was three stories high. Just under the edge of the roof round-topped dormitory windows stood open and cool.

On the lawn, near the fountain, was an enormous iron pot, almost as huge as Guy’s porridge-pot in a show-room at Warwick Castle. This had been used by former good abbesses in their soupmaking for the poor ; but modern hands had haled it out of the ancient and disused vault kitchen, and set it to boiling over with bloom in the open air. It bore on its side the date 1730, and was consequently having comfort ladled out of it to the poor of Marne before our Revolutionary fathers declared their independence. Briefly, that pot was older than the United States.

There were many rooms in the vault under the abbey, of stone and stone-hard plaster, having tunnel windows piercing the outer walls. A safe retreat they must have been in times of raid and siege. Here fagots were piled. A milkchamber and an arched vault for hanging meat were dark and cool. The laundry had an oblong ever running pool, with a trap at its outlet for catching stray pieces.

From these convent cellars some exploring maids carried out a flat hard board shaped like a shadow of the human leg.

“ Here,”declared one, "is the old model on which they used to form cloth hose before knitting came into vogue.”

“ But you are mistaken,” insisted another. “ This is the leg of the poor in Marne. The mother abbess and her nuns kept it always with them to shape their charity work upon.”

The care of the poor and the fine art of needlework seem to be among the earliest lessons of convent-breeding. One little lady of the noblesse had a pretty sewing-machine given her by her aunt the superior, not that she might amuse herself with a novel toy, but that she might the better sew for the poor.

A glass corridor, stone - paved, ran along the front of the abbey, and from this opened various high-ceiled apartments. I have slipped through that corridor of early mornings when the nuns yet spoke in whispers, and it seemed the tunnel vestibule to some cathedral. Sunlight fell softened on worn flags. From the hall at the end of this corridor a mighty and broad oak stairway, with hand-wrought iron balustrade, went up three stories ; past the chapel, and the wing with chambers, and the recreationroom where the children had their books and tables and games, up to cool dormitories where a regiment might have encamped as under the sky. La petite nouvelle, infatuated with the larger snowwhite vaulted barrack having a row of windows on each side, selected her bed within screens.

The garden was below the level of the lawn. When venturesome little girls ran along the top of the wall, they looked down into verdant deeps. Under their feet wall-fruit ripened, — such pears and apricots and peaches as grow only in that moist climate, basking on branches flattened by the gardener’s force. The half-buried wall had once been part of the convent. Outlines of ancient doors and windows, filled up with stone, remained distinct.

One could not help wondering what shapes had gone in and out of these doors; and if St. Alpin came there to celebrate mass, and what kind of Delaveau brought him and his acolytes in what kind of vehicle, whirling to the entrance, as the young curé of Baye now came.

I tried to picture to myself the abbey in winter; for it seemed as if winter could not visit that lush green land. Josephine and Delaveau and their brood would look out of their own domicile at the icy white pile, and he would approach like Jean Noël, sifted over with snowflakes, to take commands from one of the half dozen or more sisters who always remained. Their cells were all in one wing. Frost flowers and ferns would muffle in splendid white foliage the long glass corridor when, early in the morning, they crept noiselessly to the kitchen. And Josephine, if she came to help them with the housework which was part of their religious service, might imagine she heard noises in the huge closed dormitories. But Josephine, rotund and stolid, was probably more afraid of unclosing her own window-sashes at night than of anything in the convent. For was there not a man who slept outdoors all one summer night near Versailles, and became blind in consequence? Indeed, when one sees the blind and soreeyed beggars on the road to Versailles, the day air scarcely seems wholesome thereabouts. But night air is a deadly enemy, which a good French housewife will exclude, from which she will protect her family with high curtained beds and smotoering down sacks.

Delaveau came into the glass corridor every evening at six o’clock to take the letters for delivery at Baye. On Sunday morning, at early mass, he and his family were always to be seen in their chapel seats. The dress of the Assumption nuns is ideal : a robe of the shade which is neither lavender nor purple, but all royal, girt with tasseled cords of the same color, and a transparent white veil. To see devout women in such stately apparel passing before the altar to receive the sacrament, drawing their veils far over their faces as they bowed to the emblem, was to see a vision of angels. But such pictures are lost on peasants and very young Americans. Delaveau appeared to regard it with the stolidity of custom, and la petite nouvelle was impressed only by the length of the prayers. “ My back almost broke,” she lamented in private, “ and the girls say it is because I have never been taught to kneel enough. But ma mère says I may sit down whenever I like, and I think I shall like to sit down all the time.”

“ You must never say ‘ sister ‘ to the superior nuns,” la petite impressed us, out of her new knowledge. “ It is almost as wrong as saying ‘ ma mère ’ to a sister. To the inferior nuns you must say ‘ ma sœur.’ ”

Delaveau had a friend in Baye, the driver of the diligence to Epernay, who came to offer his horse and voiture and services instead of the slow cheese-laden public vehicle, for our transportation when we turned again eastward. This fellow had traveled. The convent manservant openly admired his display of English. Liverpool and London itself had been explored by him quite regardless of expense. “ I pay five sch’lings the day,” he proclaimed, with a reckless dash of the hand.

When you deal with a peasant, you deal with a peasant. But when you make arrangements with a prince like this, you will find, as we did, that you have to contribute to his revenue a larger sum than that specified for services, or bring yourself into disrepute in your comings and goings.

As a general thing, the French peasant is no rolling stone except during his military service. The landlady of the inn with the inverted bush had never stirred from her own commune. “ Je ne suis pas voyageur,” she said, smiling and shaking her head. Her experience began at one end of Baye, and was likely to end at the other. Eper-r-r-nay, — she dwelt on the letters, — it was so beautiful ! But she had never been there nor desired to be there ; and Sézanne was as far as the pole.

As Delaveau had first driven us to the convent, so he happened to be my cocher on my final departure ; American independence having revolted against the tax of the man who spent five sch’lings the day in England. I dreaded sitting alone in the old carriage and enduring mile after mile of Delaveau’s gabble ; for I was to meet the train at Montmirail. Nuns take refuge in a book of prayer from the encroachments of the world, but what refuge is there for the people of the world from a convent man-servant ?

The startling effervescence of a Frenchman, when occasion arouses him, is really not as astonishing as the calm which, like a flatness in beverages, follows it. I once saw a crowd on one spoke of that wheel of streets that rays off from the Arc de Triomphe as a hub. A baker’s man, white-aproned and tray in hands, was under arrest, struggling with the gendarmes. I did not learn what he had done, but what he did was to put his salver down in the middle of the street and use his fists on both sides. He remonstrated ; he burst into tears, and fought like a tiger. The officers took him, however, gently, being careful not to hurt him, and with laughing conciliatory pats. With a gesture of extreme despair he pulled off his white cap and dashed it to the ground. This act of capitulation was the discharge of his wrath. He at once picked up cap and tray, and fell into chatty familiarity with the gendarmes as they walked away arm in arm with him.

Though I had seen Delaveau in the effervescent state, I was really not prepared for the calm of that long ride to Montmirail. We drove over a stony, lovely country, which, except for the sterile rock and a glimpse of quarries, resembled rolling prairie. The park and hills of Andecy were far behind us, and Bichette steadily flung them farther still. The weather was very gray and raw. And not a word passed Delaveau’s lips except the admonition to his mare, — “ Di’e-don’, Bichette, di’e-don’.”

We finally wound through the crooked streets of Montmirail and reached the gare. Yet had not Delaveau disturbed my peace by a spoken word. And I never heard him speak again, for the franc he received when he set my baggage down was acknowledged by a bow and a lift of his cap. His silence was impressive. I looked after him with increased respect for the manifold capacities of the French people. The most voluble man in Marne had held his tongue half a day.

Alary Hartwell Catherwood.