THE NAPOLEON OF THE PEOPLE

“Let us go to my barn,” said the doctor, taking Genestas by the arm, after saying good-night to the curate and his other guests.  “And there, Captain Bluteau, you will hear about Napoleon.  We shall find a few old cronies who will set Goguelat, the postman, to declaiming about the people’s god.  Nicolle, my stable-man, was to put a ladder by which we can get into the hay-loft through a window, and find a place where we can see and hear all that goes on.  A veillee is worth the trouble, believe me.  Come, it isn’t the first time I’ve hidden in the hay to hear the tale of a soldier or some peasant yarn.  But we must hide; if these poor people see a stranger they are constrained at once, and are no longer their natural selves.”

“Eh! my dear host,” said Genestas, “haven’t I often pretended to sleep, that I might listen to my troopers round a bivouac?  I never laughed more heartily in the Paris theatres than I did at an account of the retreat from Moscow, told in fun, by an old sergeant to a lot of recruits who were afraid of war.  He declared the French army slept in sheets, and drank its wine well-iced; that the dead stood still in the roads; Russia was white, they curried the horses with their teeth; those who liked to skate had lots of fun, and those who fancied frozen puddings ate their fill; the women were usually cold, and the only thing that was really disagreeable was the want of hot water to shave with:  in short, he recounted such absurdities that an old quarter-master, who had had his nose frozen off and was known by the name Nez-restant, laughed himself.”

“Hush,” said Benassis, “here we are:  I’ll go first; follow me.”

The pair mounted the ladder and crouched in the hay, without being seen or heard by the people below, and placed themselves at ease, so that they could see and hear all that went on.  The women were sitting in groups round the three or four candles that stood on the tables.  Some were sewing, some knitting; several sat idle, their necks stretched out and their heads and eyes turned to an old peasant who was telling a story.  Most of the men were standing, or lying on bales of hay.  These groups, all perfectly silent, were scarcely visible in the flickering glimmer of the tallow-candles encircled by glass bowls full of water, which concentrated the light in rays upon the women at work about the tables.  The size of the barn, whose roof was dark and sombre, still further obscured the rays of light, which touched the heads with unequal color, and brought out picturesque effects of light and shade.  Here, the brown forehead and the clear eyes of an eager little peasant-girl shone forth; there, the rough brows of a few old men were sharply defined by a luminous band, which made fantastic shapes of their worn and discolored garments.  These various listeners, so diverse in their attitudes, all expressed on their motionless features the absolute abandonment of their intelligence to the narrator.  It was a curious picture, illustrating the enormous influence exercised over every class of mind by poetry.  In exacting from a story-teller the marvelous that must still be simple, or the impossible that is almost believable, the peasant proves himself to be a true lover of the purest poetry.