The Aspirations of Jean Servien eBook

At that moment his aunt came in, looking for her spectacles.  Furtively, in a whisper, she asked him for a little money.  In old days she used to save the halfpence to slip them into the “little lad’s " hand; now, grown feebler than the child, she trembled at the idea of destitution; she hoarded, and asked charity of the priests.  The fact is, her wits were weakening.  Very often she would inform her brother that she did not mean to let the week pass without going to see the Brideaus.  Now the Brideaus, jobbing tailors at Montrouge in their lifetime, had been dead, both husband and wife, for the last two years.  Jean gave her a louis, which she took with a delight so ugly to see that the poor lad took refuge out of doors.

Presently, without quite knowing how, he found himself on the Quai near the Pont d’Iena.  It was a bright day, but the gloomy walls of the houses and the grey look of the river banks seemed to proclaim that life is hard and cruel.  Out in the stream a dredger, all drab with marl, was discharging one after the other its bucket-fuls of miry gravel.  By the waterside a stout oaken crane was unloading millstones, wheeling backwards and forwards on its axis.  Under the parapet, near the bridge, an old dame with a copper-red face sat knitting stockings as she waited for customers to buy her apple-puffs.

Jean Servien thought of his childhood; many a time had his aunt taken him to the same spot, many a time had they watched together the dredger hauling aboard, bucketful by bucketful, the muddy dregs of the river.  Very often his aunt had stopped to exchange ideas with the old stallkeeper, while he examined the counter which was spread with a napkin, the carafe of liquorice-water that stood on it, and the lemon that served as stopper.  Nothing was changed, neither the dredger, nor the rafts of timber, nor the old woman, nor the four ponderous stallions at either end of the Pont d’Iena.

Yes, Jean Servien could hear the trees along the Quai, the waters of the river, the very stones of the parapet calling to him: 

“We know you; you are the little boy his aunt, in a peasant’s cap, used to bring here to see us in former days.  But we shall never see your aunt again, nor her print shawl, nor her umbrella which she opened against the sun; for she is old now and does not take her nephew walks any more, for he is a grown man now.  Yes, the child is grown into a man and has been hurt by life, while he was running after shadows.”

XXVI

One day, in the midday interval, he was informed that a visitor was asking for him in the parlour; the news filled him with delight, for he was very young and still counted on the possibilities of the unknown.  In the parlour he found Monsieur Tudesco, wearing his waistcoat of ticking and holding a peaked hat in one hand.