The Conqueror of Death Read online

  Brian Stableford

  Alphonse Brown: Tribulations of an Angler

  (1891)

  Nothing is more elegant, charming or graceful than our local river. To describe the agricultural landscapes through which its capricious meanders flow would require the pen of George Sand or André Theuriet, the two writers most expect in depicting nature and making us love it. That river has nothing banal about it, and although it does not flow through any famous region or water and important town, it excites the admiration of tourists who take vacations in the locality, by the fertility of the plain through which it runs, by the beauty of its banks, and by the picturesque quality of the hills, sometimes crowned with feudal ruins, around the gentle slopes of which its green-tinted waters wind.

  Here and there, profoundly upstanding rocks, speckled with moss, cleave the bank and cause eddies in which wisps of straw, dead leaves and all the other tiny wrecks that follow the watercourse swirl and are swallowed up.

  If Plutus had lavished his favors on my modest person, I would have hastened to acquire some land bordering on my beloved river in order to live there as a philosopher and a sage. What God had pitilessly refused me, alas, he had accorded to other mortals, and among them was Vincent Champignol, a retired haberdasher who had become, thanks to his private income, a petty agriculturalist and a keen angler.

  An angler!

  At the mere pronouncement, I can see mocking smiles parting all lips and hear the more or less witty gibes that are incessantly repeated with regard to fanatics of the hook. Oh, my God, an angler is not always what vain people think; there are depths of sentiment within him, refined by solitude, long reveries and multiple contemplations of nature.

  When he had sold his shop in order to live in the country, Vincent Champignol had devoted himself entirely to agriculture and made every effort to become a fervent follower of Olivier de Serres,6 a worthy rival of Mathieu de Dombasle, de Gasparin7 and the greatest landowners in France. But the sacred fire was lacking. One is born a peasant; one does not become one. He tried hunting, but having sworn many times over to massacre all the hares and partridges in the canton, he so often came back empty-handed from his cynegetic excursions that he sacrificed a splendid game-bag and a superb almost-virgin Lefaucheux8 to the great St. Hubert. Then he thought of fishing.

  The river ran through the depths of his property, and brought him enjoyments and intoxications untroubled by provocative irritations. The water scintillated in dazzling oscillations beneath the caresses of the sunlight and sometimes radiated gleams as rapid as lightning flashes. There were agile bleak, massive carp, yellow-tinted barbels and gluttonous pike in pursuit of prey, skimming the breeze-stirred wavelets with their dorsal fins. The slope of the bank was so cluttered with brambles, vine-stocks, ivy, honeysuckle and other climbing plants whose names I forget that one might have believed, with a little imaginative effort, that one were seeing the tangle of lianas and formidable interlacement of sarmentous vegetation characteristic of the forests of the New World. Beneath the somber foliage snaked a narrow, primitive path unknown to the profane, ending at a rocky point on which had grown—God knows how!—a thicket of bitter-scented alder bushes, a clump of reeds and a single stunted willow.

  It is impossible to imagine a more discreet and picturesque hideaway. On the opposite bank the view was blocked by a curtain of poplars whose slender trunks were reflected in the current, like enormous boa constrictors forever in movement. And to animate that scene, reed-warblers, sedge-warblers, elegant wagtails and chattering blackbirds were perpetually coming and going within and without the dense foliage, casting their most joyful notes and their most cheerful songs to all the winds. Sometimes, a blue streak would fly through the air like a shooting star and disappear into the obscurity of some crack masked by lacy ferns; that was a kingfisher seeking a quiet shelter in order to devour a freshly-caught fish.

  The spot pleased Vincent Champignol. One morning, he installed himself there bravely, equipped with a rod and line, basket, landing-net and other accessories indispensable to any angler who takes his art seriously. No one is unaware that certain special manuals declare that angling is an art to be ranked alongside poetry, music and painting, if not above them.

  At first, the former haberdasher did not manifest the fervor and zeal that distinguish neophytes of all kinds. Having only a short step to take—which is to say, to cross the towpath and descend the hidden path—to reach the edge of the water, he went nonchalantly to the retreat, did not stay long, cast a distracted eye on the cork, attached his rod to some twig, and went home, abandoning to hazard the care of catching a fish on a hook often deprived of its bait. Little by little, however, and especially after the few catches that are always epoch-making in the splendors of angling, what had been only an amusement became a passion.

  Then he spent hours, and then half-days, and finally entire days with his arm extended, his eyes fixed on the float, in all seasons and all weathers, stoically receiving the sun’s rays full in the face and enduring diluvian downpours. Soon, he did not hesitate to take of his shoes and socks, roll up his trousers to the knees and take prolonged foot-baths in order to increase the range of his line. Henceforth, he was an angler, a true angler, and he was able to repeat to the echoes of the bank Correggio’s famous “Anch’io son pittore.”9

  Vincent Champignol and I were almost the same age, and quite good friends. During my daily strolls along the bank, I often ran into him. After having exchanged a cordial greeting and a vigorous handshake, we chatted. Our conversation scarcely varied. Between ourselves, we discussed the probable perturbations of the atmosphere, the temperature and limpidity of the water, and conditions favorable for fishing. When Champignol had made some important catch, however, it was impossible to put a brake on his loquacity. He counted emphatically the innocent ups and downs of his battle against the “denizens of the deep,” and embroidered them, as befits every angler or hunter of merit, with a few lies that would have disconcerted the astonishing Monsieur de Crac himself.10 Finally, he put his arm in mine and, if it was morning, invited me to lunch, or if it was evening, to dinner.

  Although I am no gourmet, and the gratitude of my stomach does not incite me to the slightest flattery. I must say that one ate well at Vincent Champignol’s, and I had many good times at his table. It’s true that the reception was enhanced by the amiability and perfect manners of Madame Champignol and Mademoiselle Laure Champignol. They lavished all sorts of kindness upon me and always welcomed me with demonstrations of esteem and amity, which tickled my self-respect agreeably.

  Madame Champignol was an excellent and worthy woman, an accomplished housekeeper, modest and unpretentious in spite of her wealth, living for her husband, whose manias she excused, and her daughter, whom she cherished as only true mothers can. Laure Champignol could not have been cited as one of those accomplished beauties who turn all heads and speak to all hearts, but even so, she was genteel, gracious and possessed of a simplicity that had its seductiveness. When I have added that she had pretty eyes, slightly curly dark hair, an intelligent forehead, pink lips and perfect teeth, there will be nothing missing from the sketch I am making of that charming individual. I shall not stress her moral qualities and her attractive character. Well brought up and adequately educated, she talked well and knew how to listen. Although there was a slight hint of saintly Touch-Me-Not about her, which suited her delightfully, one divined that she had a fundament firmness about her that scarcely admitted compromise. Thus, I often murmured between my teeth: “There’s an Agnes who has claws under her velvet paws.”

  One evening in summer, I met Vincent Champignol on the towpath. In accordance with the custom of most anglers, he was rigged out like one of Callot’s beggars and was carrying his rod triumphantly in his left hand, while his right hand held a fine bundle of fish, in the middle of which I distinguished a bream weighing between 1200 and 1500 grams.

  “You’re in luck!” he cried, as soon as he saw me. “You know the pr
overb: whoever has a bream in his pond can give a friend a feast; but one feasts even better when the bream is out of the pond and ready to be handed over to the cook.”

  I excused myself, on the pretext of certain business affairs that were summoning me to town, and that I wanted to get home early, but Vincent insisted tenaciously.

  “Bah!” he said. “You’re a bachelor and your time is your own. My wife and daughter will be delighted to have your company this evening. Then again, one doesn’t always have the opportunity to at a bream as fine as this one…and so fresh! I’ll simply say this: Nanette will prepare us a meal fit for a king.”

  So many judicious arguments seduced me. I accepted the invitation in order not to disoblige Vincent, who would have been very annoyed if he had not been able to find any listener, apart from his family and servants, disposed to celebrate his glory. Was that fault not excusable in an angler doubling as an Amphitryon?

  As usual, the dinner was one of the best, and Nanette, a cook renowned throughout the neighborhood, prepared the bream in a superior fashion. Needless to say, I congratulated the chef warmly, and then my host, whose skill had given me a meal worthy of the gods. Nanette smiled agreeably, and Vincent gave free rein to his loquacity.

  “Can you imagine, my dear chap,” he said, “that this slut”—he meant the bream—“led me a merry dance before being caught. First of all she’s finicky, turning around the bait with a veritable disgust. By the movement of the cork, I deduce that the fish is a good size, and desires something other than the boiled wheat garnishing the hook. ‘You’ll be served what you want,” I murmured. Quickly, I baited the hook with an earthworm with a color and vivacity bound to create a desire to taste it. I cast the line, and bang!—down goes the float. I reel in immediately, and feel something like an electric shock in my arm. My bream is caught…unfortunately, the line’s a trifle weak and I feel some apprehension about its solidity. It’s necessary to tell you, my dear fellow that my intention was to fish for small fry rather than the big one, and I hadn’t taken all my precautions. The bream writhed and thrashed like a demon in a font, and manifested a violent desire to escape. I understood her tactics…you can’t fool an old hand like me…and instead of lifting her out I drew her gently toward the bank. She resisted, the minx, and got back into the open water two or three times; I brought her back, and finally grabbed her with the landing net. The fight lasted a good ten minutes, but the victory was mine...”

  “And thanks to your talent, sagacity and patience,” I hastened to put in, to interrupt the verbiage, which was wearying us somewhat, “we’re devouring the optima spolia of the victory.”

  My reflection was found to be very apt; it served as a transition to a conversation that was often renewed. With a great deal of tact, Laure Champignol pretended to be very interested in the historical facts that had rendered the optima spolia of the Romans famous, and when I had cited Acron, king of Caenina, killed by Romulus; Lars Tolumnius, king of the Veii, killed by Cornelius Cossus; and Viridomarus, king of the Gauls, killed by Marcus Claudius Marcellus, the conversation became less pedantic, and generalized in the thousand trivia that often give it all its charm.

  I don’t know how or why the word “marriage” came to fall from my lips. It had the effect of a bucketful of cold water unexpectedly thrown over people who were already freezing. Madame Champignol had a coughing fit; Laure blushed so deeply as to make a poppy envious; Vincent looked at me with a slightly bewildered astonishment. I was trying to explain my blunder, and repair it, if it arose from tactlessness on my part, when the master of the house said to me, in a familiar fashion: “Joker! You know something...”

  “Me?” I said, utterly surprised.

  “Come on, admit it…talk at your ease. A marriage isn’t a mystery, damn it!”

  “I can assure you that I’m unaware...”

  “Bah! You aren’t unaware of anything. After all, why hide something that will soon be published? We’re marrying Laure.”

  “Oh!”

  “We’re marrying Laure to Félix Grandin. You know Félix, the son of Gaspard Grandin, who has the draper’s shop in the High Street.”

  “My heartiest congratulations,” I murmured.

  “My word!” Vincent Champignol put in, with a dry chuckle. “I’ve caught a lot of fish in my time, but never one as big as that. Do you know that Grandin’s giving his son a dowry of 150,000 francs? What do you think of that catch? Truly, it’ll be a rich marriage...”

  Vincent had let his tongue run away with him; he did not win the approval of his wife or his daughter. By their expressions, I gathered that the announced marriage scarcely made them smile...

  “The marriage is only at the stage of negotiation,” Madame Champignol added, “and I don’t see why we should be preoccupied with it before a complete agreement has been reached.”

  “Grandin and I are in agreement,” Vincent insisted, stubbornly, “And the marriage will be made…soon.”

  I deduced that the weather was getting stormy—which is to say that one of the conjugal tempests that sometimes trouble the closest of marriages was about to blow up—and that my presence was becoming awkward. I withdrew.

  Madame Champignol accompanied me to the door in order to say to me, covertly: “I need to talk to you. Be good enough to come tomorrow while my husband is fishing. My daughter’s future and happiness are at stake. I’m counting on you.”

  “I shall obey, Madame.”

  While tipping my hat one last time I had the time to examine Laure’s face. Her features remained impassive, but her dark eyes were alight with ardent gleams.

  “Good!” I murmured. “Her claws are beginning to show...”

  The next day, while Vincent Champignol was pestering “the aquatic gentry” I presented myself at his house. Having given me a cordial welcome, Madame Champignol cut directly to the reasons that had driven her to talk to me in private.

  “You’re too good a friend of the family,” she said, “for me not to explain myself frankly and for me to hesitate about asking you for a favor.”

  “I’m entirely at your disposal, Madame.”

  “Yesterday, a fortuitous circumstance revealed to you a subject of keen preoccupation for us all. Seduced by the wealth of the Grandins, my husband thought he was ensuring Laure’s happiness by arranging, unknown to us, a marriage…of money. To be sure, my husband is the best of men, and an excellent father, but when he has caressed an idea for some time, when a conviction gets into his head, he becomes obstinate, and finds it difficult to let go of resolutions he has made.”

  “That fault,” I observed, “is typical of most anglers.”

  “That’s the peril—the veritable peril—we’re in, and I’m telling you in order to beg you to help us avoid it.”

  “How can I hope to obtain what has been refused to you?”

  “My husband holds you in high esteem. He’ll listen to your advice. It’s necessary to demonstrate to him that this marriage is impossible and that money alone is not a sufficiently powerful factor on which found the happiness of a domestic hearth…although songs proclaim the contrary.”

  “That argument is quite specious, Madame, and I dread that it will only exert a distinctly secondary leverage on Monsieur Champignol’s resolution.”

  “You’re right. Although I’m reluctant to speak ill of my neighbor, there are circumstances when silence is culpable, especially on the part of a mother. I’ve known Félix Grandin for a long time, and I’m convinced that he’ll be a detestable husband. Spoiled by unthinking parents who’ve told him over and over again that he’s rich and that nothing in the world can prevent him from indulging himself and abusing his life, he leads a deplorable existence, scornful of everything that does not reflect opulence, brutalizing himself in pleasures, and mocking al the sound traditions that are the guarantees of the future in mirage.”

  “That picture is very dark, Madame, and...”

  “No, no; don’t think that I’m obeying the paltry sen
timents that are the inseparable companions of slander.” And the worthy woman added: “In me, the mother-in-law is not yet born. Will she ever be? I feel enough affection in my heart to love my daughter and the man who will become my son equally. Félix Grandin hides his faults—not to say his vices—beneath a varnish of elegance and a decorum that attracts the admiration of the naïve, but I’m not deceived by it. In any case, women have a clairvoyance that is completely lacking in men. My husband is dazzled too, fascinated by the allures of milord Félix, and it’s up to you to disillusion him.”

  “And Mademoiselle Laure…?” I asked.

  “Laure doesn’t want to be Madame Félix Grandin…and I cannot associate myself with my husband in making our daughter unhappy.”

  “Well, Madame, I shall fulfill the mission you have confided to me as fully as you desire…but what if I don’t succeed?”

  “Be brave! And remember that you have faithful allies.”

  I promised to deploy all sorts of admissible means to vanquish Vincent Champignol’s resolution. The task was difficult; I had no illusions about that, for the well-known patience of anglers is closely akin to obstinacy, and gives them an inertia capable of resisting all intrepidity.

  How many curious and pleasant monographs had I read? And all of them, without exception, enviously celebrated the stoicism and the stubbornness of the heroes of the maggot: qualities that frightened me now because they loomed up before me, as inexorable as fatality, in opposition to my designs. It was almost with terror that I recalled the following observations:

  An angler must combine calmness, patience and resignation; three qualities—I should say three virtues—that seem incompatible with the ardent passion that consumes him. Look at him, with his feet in the water, the nape of his neck devoured by the sun, his hands and face harassed by mosquitoes; he does not flinch; as motionless as a boundary-marker, with his arm extended and his eyes glued to a cork that fascinates and magnetizes him, he waits anxiously for a quiver to give him a sign of life. Do not speak to him; he will not answer; or rather, he will answer you in a low voice, with some monosyllable that means to say, politely—for he is very polite—“Go away; leave me alone.” Only the cork has the right to speak to him, and then only by signs.