And the bookbinder turned his head away to wipe his
eyes, walked across to the window, lifted the curtain
and looked out into the sunlit street.
“The fine weather will quite set him up again.
But we have had six terrible weeks. I never lost
heart; it is not in the nature of things that a father
should despair of his son’s life; still, you
know, Monsieur Garneret, he has been very ill.
“The neighbours have been very good to us; but
it was a hard job nursing him in this cursed cellar.
Just think, Monsieur Garneret, for twenty days we
had to keep his head in ice.”
“You know that is the treatment for meningitis.”
The bookbinder came up confidentially to Garneret.
He scratched his ear, rubbed his forehead, stroked
his chin in great embarrassment.
“My poor lad,” he got started at last,
“is in love, passionately in love. I have
found it out from the things he said when he was delirious.
It is not my way to interfere with what does not concern
me; but as I see the matter is serious, I am going
to ask you, for his own good, to tell me who it is,
if you know her.”
Garneret shrugged his shoulders:
“An actress! a tragedy actress! pooh!”
The bookbinder pondered a moment; then:
“Look you, Monsieur Garneret, I acted for the
best in my poor boy’s interest, but I blame
myself. I tell myself this, the education I gave
him has disqualified him for hard work and practical
life.... An actress, you say, a tragedy actress?
Tastes of that sort must be acquired in the schools.
Those times he was attending his classes, I used to
get hold of his exercise books after he had gone to
bed and read whatever there was in French. It
was my way of checking his work; because, ignoramus
as he may be, a man can see, with a little common
sense, what is done properly and what is scamped.
Well, Monsieur Garneret, I was terrified to find in
his themes so many high-flown ideas; some of them were
very fine, no doubt, and I copied out on a paper those
that struck me most. But I used to tell myself:
All these grand speeches, all these histories, taken
from the books of the ancient Romans, are going to
put my lad’s head in a fever, and he will never
know the truth of things. I was right, my dear
Monsieur Garneret; it is school learning, look you,
has made him fall in love with a tragedy actress——”
Jean Servien raised himself up in bed.
“Is that you, Garneret? I am very glad
to see you.”
Then, after listening a moment:
“Why, what is that noise?” he asked.
Garneret told him it was Mont Valerien firing on the
fortifications. The Commune was in full swing.
“Vive la Commune!” cried Jean Servien,
and he dropped his head back on the pillow with a
smile.
