The Quebec Anthology: 1830-1990

"The Italian Teacher" 1927

Harry Bernard Translated by Matt Cohen THE ITALIAM TEACHER Harry Bernard was born in London, England, in 1898, but moved to Canada in early childhood. He studied at the Seminaire de Saint-Hyacinthe and at the Universite de Montreal, where he received his Ph.D. in literature in 1948. By then he had already published eight of his ten books, most of which were novels. The first, L'Homme tombe (Fallen Man), appeared in 1924, the year after he left his job as editor and parliamentarycorrespondent for Le Droit and took up a new position as publisher of the Courrier de SaintHyacinthe . His other novels include La Maison vide (The Empty House) and La Terre vivante (The Living Earth), both published in 1925; La Ferine despins (Pine Farm), 1930; Juana, mon aimee (Juana My Love}, 1931; Dolores, 1932; and, perhaps his best-known work, LesJours sont longs (Long Are the Days), which appeared in 1951. He received a Rockefeller Foundation grant in 1943, and was awarded the Prix David three times: in 1924, 1925, and 1931. Like his contemporary, Jean-Aubert Loranger, Bernard was very interested in regionalism as a defining influence on culture and character. He wrote a study of the subject, Le Roman regionaliste aux Etats-Unis. 1913-1940(The American Regionalist Novel, 1913-1940), published in 1949, in which he maintained that a strong attachment to region was the basis of all good writing. "Catholic and French in their essence, our literature will be Canadian in its achievements ," he wrote in Essais critiques in 1929. "This means that our books, written by Canadians,will strive to show the souls of our people, to paint and interpret the place in which they live and the landscapethat surrounds them." "Le professeur d'italien," translated as "The Italian Teacher" byMatt Cohen, first appeared in Bernard's only collection of short stories, La Dameblanche (The White THE ITALIAN TEACHER 99 Lady), published in 1927. It is interesting to read this story in light of Bernard'stheories of the importance ofregionalism in culture, and in the context of his view that "the French language of the rest of the world ... is not the language of French Canadians." Bernard died in Montreal in 1979. "The Italian Teacher" is a translation of "Le professeur d'italien" published in La Dame blanche (Montreal: Bibliotheque de PAction francaise, 1927). 100 HARRY BERNARD M ademoiselle Jeanne-Aimee Bruneau was in a state. She had fallen in love with Luigi Paschetti, her Italian teacher, a soft-spoken man with a gentleman 's fine manners. Afraid of her parents, who would never forgive her for loving a man who was both poor and an immigrant, she had told no one about her feelings. It was the year 1843. Her father was Gilles Bruneau, a shipowner and grain-dealer whose business was located on rue Notre-Dame. He belonged to one of Montreal's richest and most distinguished families and had three daughters of whom the eldest, Jeanne-Aimee, would soon be nineteen. The family lived in a stone house shaded with poplars on rue Saint-Denis, in the Saint-Louis district. They socialized with only the best people: Joseph Bourret, the mayor of Montreal; Jacques Viget, his predecessor; the merchant and philanthropist Antoine-Olivier Berthelet, who was also a former member of Parliament for Montreal East; William Molson, the son ofJohn Molson. It is to be understood that Gilles Bruneau, who tolerated Paschetti as a teacher, would not have wanted him as a son-in-law. He had never even considered such an unlikely thing. He would have preferred to see his daughters behind the iron gates of the Ursuline convent in Montreal. Knowing her father, Jeanne-Aimee had kept the secrets of her heart to herself. Luigi Paschetti had only recently moved to Montreal. A handsome man with a serious face and well-kept hands, he said he came from the United States. He started out by giving lessons to the children of the lawyer Zephir Cherrier, then to the young women and ladies of the city who suddenly developed a passion for learning languages. Received in Montreal's wealthiest homes, he was treated with deference. Like their friends, Jeanne-Aimee and her sister, Therese, wanted the handsome foreigner at their house. Therese, who was only seventeen and no longer went to school at the convent, was happy for the distraction. Thus the young ladies conjugated...