第44章

His grandfather (I think)was a dignitary of a kind,the Syndic of the Pilots.I made acquaintances among these people,but mainly among the pilots.The very first whole day I ever spent on salt water was by invitation,in a big half-decked pilot-boat,cruising under close reefs on the lookout,in misty,blowing weather,for the sails of ships and the smoke of steamers rising out there,beyond the slim and tall Planier lighthouse cutting the line of the wind-swept horizon with a white perpendicular stroke.They were hospitable souls,these sturdy Provencal seamen.Under the general designation of le petit ami de Baptistin I was made the guest of the corporation of pilots,and had the freedom of their boats night or day.And many a day and a night,too,did I spend cruising with these rough,kindly men,under whose auspices my intimacy with the sea began.Many a time "the little friend of Baptistin"had the hooded cloak of the Mediterranean sailor thrown over him by their honest hands while dodging at night under the lee of Chateau daft on the watch for the lights of ships.Their sea tanned faces,whiskered or shaved,lean or full,with the intent,wrinkled sea eyes of the pilot breed,and here and there a thin gold hoop at the lobe of a hairy ear,bent over my sea infancy.The first operation of seamanship I had an opportunity of observing was the boarding of ships at sea,at all times,in all states of the weather.They gave it to me to the full.And I have been invited to sit in more than one tall,dark house of the old town at their hospitable board,had the bouillabaisse ladled out into a thick plate by their high-voiced,broad-browed wives,talked to their daughters--thick-set girls,with pure profiles,glorious masses of black hair arranged with complicated art,dark eyes,and dazzlingly white teeth.

I had also other acquaintances of quite a different sort.One of them,Madame Delestang,an imperious,handsome lady in a statuesque style,would carry me off now and then on the front seat of her carriage to the Prado,at the hour of fashionable airing.She belonged to one of the old aristocratic families in the south.In her haughty weariness she used to make me think of Lady Dedlock in Dickens's "Bleak House,"a work of the master for which I have such an admiration,or rather such an intense and unreasoning affection,dating from the days of my childhood,that its very weaknesses are more precious to me than the strength of other men's work.I have read it innumerable times,both in Polish and in English;I have read it only the other day,and,by a not very surprising inversion,the Lady Dedlock of the book reminded me strongly of the "belle Madame Delestang."

Her husband (as I sat facing them both),with his thin,bony nose and a perfectly bloodless,narrow physiognomy clamped together,as it were,by short,formal side whiskers,had nothing of Sir Leicester Dedlock's "grand air"and courtly solemnity.He belonged to the haute bourgeoisie only,and was a banker,with whom a modest credit had been opened for my needs.He was such an ardent--no,such a frozen-up,mummified Royalist that he used in current conversation turns of speech contemporary,I should say,with the good Henri Quatre;and when talking of money matters,reckoned not in francs,like the common,godless herd of post-Revolutionary Frenchmen,but in obsolete and forgotten ecus--ecus of all money units in the world!--as though Louis Quatorze were still promenading in royal splendour the gardens of Versailles,and Monsieur de Colbert busy with the direction of maritime affairs.You must admit that in a banker of the nineteenth century it was a quaint idiosyncrasy.Luckily,in the counting-house (it occupied part of the ground floor of the Delestang town residence,in a silent,shady street)the accounts were kept in modern money,so that I never had any difficulty in making my wants known to the grave,low-voiced,decorous,Legitimist (I suppose)clerks,sitting in the perpetual gloom of heavily barred windows behind the sombre,ancient counters,beneath lofty ceilings with heavily molded cornices.I always felt,on going out,as though I had been in the temple of some very dignified but completely temporal religion.And it was generally on these occasions that under the great carriage gateway Lady Ded--I mean Madame Delestang--catching sight of my raised hat,would beckon me with an amiable imperiousness to the side of the carriage,and suggest with an air of amused nonchalance,"Venez donc faire un tour avec nous,"to which the husband would add an encouraging "C'est ca.Allons,montez,jeune homme."He questioned me some times,significantly but with perfect tact and delicacy,as to the way I employed my time,and never failed to express the hope that I wrote regularly to my "honoured uncle."I made no secret of the way I employed my time,and I rather fancy that my artless tales of the pilots and so on entertained Madame Delestang so far as that ineffable woman could be entertained by the prattle of a youngster very full of his new experience among strange men and strange sensations.She expressed no opinions,and talked to me very little;yet her portrait hangs in the gallery of my intimate memories,fixed there by a short and fleeting episode.One day,after putting me down at the corner of a street,she offered me her hand,and detained me,by a slight pressure,for a moment.While the husband sat motionless and looking straight before him,she leaned forward in the carriage to say,with just a shade of warning in her leisurely tone:"Il faut,cependant,faire attention a ne pas gater sa vie."I had never seen her face so close to mine before.She made my heart beat and caused me to remain thoughtful for a whole evening.Certainly one must,after all,take care not to spoil one's life.But she did not know--nobody could know--how impossible that danger seemed to me.