It is a very big bundle, but not very heavy.I take it into my library, and there untie the ribbons and unfasten the paper wrappings;and I see--what? a log! a first-class log! a real Christmas log, but so light that I know it must be hollow.Then I find that it is indeed composed of two separate pieces, opening on hinges, and fastened with hooks.I slip the hooks back, and find myself inundated with violets! Violets! they pour over my table, over my knees, over the carpet.They tumble into my vest, into my sleeves.I am all perfumed with them.
"Therese! Therese! fill me some vases with water, and bring them here, quick! Here are violets sent to us I know not from what country nor by what hand; but it must be from a perfumed country, and by a very gracious hand....Do you hear me, old crow?"I have put all the violets on my table--now completely covered by the odorous mass.But there is still something in the log...a book--a manuscript.It is...I cannot believe it, and yet I cannot doubt it....It is the "Legende Doree"!--It is the manuscript of the Clerk Alexander! Here is the "Purification of the Virgin" and the "Coronation of Proserpine";--here is the legend of Saint Droctoveus.
I contemplate this violet-perfumed relic.I turn the leaves of it--between which the dark rich blossoms have slipped in here and there;and, right opposite the legend of Saint-Cecilia, I find a card bearing this name:
"Princess Trepof."
Princess Trepof!--you who laughed and wept by turns so sweetly under the fair sky of Agrigentum!--you, whom a cross old man believed to be only a foolish little woman!--to-day I am convinced of your rare and beautiful folly; and the old fellow whom you now overwhelm with happiness will go to kiss your hand, and give you back, in another form, this precious manuscript, of which both he and science owe you an exact and sumptuous publication!
Therese entered my study just at that moment; she seemed to be very much excited.
"Monsieur!" she cried, "guess whom I saw just now in a carriage, with a coat-of-arms painted on it, that was stopping before the door?""Parbleu!--Madame Trepof," I exclaimed.
"I don't know anything about any Madame Trepof," answered my housekeeper."The woman I saw just now was dressed like a duchess, and had a little boy with her, with lace-frills all along the seams of his clothes.And it was that same little Madame Coccoz you once sent a log to, when she was lying-in here about eleven years ago.
I recognized her at once."
"What!" I exclaimed, "you mean to say it was Madame Coccoz, the widow of the almanac-peddler?""Herself, Monsieur! The carriage-door was open for a minute to let her little boy, who had just come from I don't know where, get in.
She hasn't changed scarcely at all.Well, why should those women change?--they never worry themselves about anything.Only the Coccoz woman looks a little fatter than she used to be.And the idea of a woman that was taken in here out of pure charity coming to show off her velvets and diamonds in a carriage with a crest painted on it!
Isn't it shameful!"
"Therese!" I cried, in a terrible voice, "if you ever speak to me again about that lady except in terms of the deepest respect, you and I will fall out!...Bring me the Sevres vases to put those violets in, which now give the City of Books a charm it never had before."While Therese went off with a sigh to get the Sevres vases, Icontinued to contemplate those beautiful scattered violets, whose odour spread all about me like the perfume of some sweet presence, some charming soul; and I asked myself how it had been possible for me never to recognise Madame Coccoz in the person of the Princess Trepof.But that vision of the young widow, showing me her little child on the stairs, had been a very rapid one.I had much more reason to reproach myself for having passed by a gracious and lovely soul without knowing it.
"Bonnard," I said to myself, "thou knowest how to decipher old texts;but thou dost not know how to read in the Book of Life.That giddy little Madame Trepof, whom thou once believed to possess no more soul than a bird, has expended, in pure gratitude, more zeal and finer tact than thou didst ever show for anybody's sake.Right royally hath she repaid thee for the log-fire of her churching-day!
"Therese! Awhile ago you were a magpie; now you are becoming a tortoise! Come and give some water to these Parmese violets."
