CHAPTER I

Produced by John Bickers; and Dagny

THE CELIBATES

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC

INTRODUCTION

_Les Celibataires_, the longest number of the original _Comedie

Humaine_ under a single title, next to _Illusions perdues_, is not,

like that book, connected by any unity of story. Indeed, the general

bond of union is pretty weak; and though it is quite true that

bachelors and old maids are the heroes and heroines of all three, it

would be rather hard to establish any other bond of connection, and it

is rather unlikely that any one unprompted would fix on this as a

sufficient ground of partnership.

Two at least of the component parts, however, are of very high

excellence. I do not myself think that _Pierrette_, which opens the

series, is quite the equal of its companions. Written, as it was, for

Countess Anna de Hanska, Balzac's step-daughter of the future, while

she was still very young, it partakes necessarily of the rather

elaborate artificiality of all attempts to suit the young person, of

French attempts in particular, and it may perhaps be said of Balzac's

attempts most of all. It belongs, in a way, to the Arcis series--the

series which also includes the fine _Tenebreuse Affaire_ and the

unfinished _Depute d'Arcis_--but is not very closely connected

therewith. The picture of the actual _Celibataires_, the brother and

sister Rogron, with which it opens, is one of Balzac's best styles,

and is executed with all his usual mastery both of the minute and of

the at least partially repulsive, showing also that strange knowledge

of the _bourgeois de Paris_ which, somehow or other, he seems to have

attained by dint of unknown foregatherings in his ten years of

apprenticeship. But when we come to _Pierrette_ herself, the story is,

I think, rather less satisfying. Her persecutions and her end, and the

devotion of the faithful Brigaut and the rest, are pathetic no doubt,

but tend (I hope it is not heartless to say it) just a very little

towards _sensiblerie_. The fact is that the thing is not quite in

Balzac's line.

_Le Cure de Tours_, is certainly on a higher level, and has attracted

the most magnificent eulogies from some of the novelist's admirers. I

think both Mr. Henry James and Mr. Wedmore have singled out this

little piece for detailed and elaborate praise, and there is no doubt

that it is a happy example of a kind in which the author excelled. The

opening, with its evident but not obtruded remembrance of the old and

well-founded superstition--derived from the universal belief in some

form of Nemesis--that an extraordinary sense of happiness, good luck,

or anything of the kind, is a precursor of misfortune, and calls for

some instant act of sacrifice or humiliation, is very striking; and

the working out of the vengeance of the goddess by the very

ungoddess-like though feminine hand of Mademoiselle Gamard has much

that is commendable. Nothing in its well exampled kind is better

touched off than the Listomere coterie, from the shrewdness of Monsieur

de Bourbonne to the selfishness of Madame de Listomere. I do not know

that the old maid herself--cat, and far worst than cat as she is--is at

all exaggerated, and the sketch of the coveted _appartement_ and its

ill-fated _mobilier_ is about as good as it can be. And the battle

between Madame de Listomere and the Abbe Troubert, which has served as

a model for many similar things, has, if it has often been equaled,

not often been surpassed.

I cannot, however, help thinking that there is more than a little

exaggeration in more than one point of the story. The Abbe Birotteau

is surely a little too much of a fool; the Abbe Troubert an Iago a

little too much wanting in verisimilitude; and the central incident of

the clause about the furniture too manifestly improbable. Taking the

first and the last points together, is it likely that any one not

quite an idiot should, in the first place, remain so entirely ignorant

of the value of his property; should, in the second, though, ignorant

or not, he attached the greatest possible _pretium affectionis_ to it,

contract to resign it for such a ridiculous consideration; and should,

in the third, take the fatal step without so much as remembering the

condition attached thereto? If it be answered that Birotteau _was_

idiot enough to do such a thing, then it must be observed further that

one's sympathy is frozen by the fact. Such a man deserved such

treatment. And, again, even if French justice was, and perhaps is, as

much influenced by secret considerations as Balzac loves to represent

it, we must agree with that member of the Listomere society who

pointed out that no tribunal could possibly uphold such an obviously

iniquitous bargain. As for Troubert, the idea of the Jesuitical

ecclesiastic (though Balzac was not personally hostile to the Jesuits)

was a common one at the time, and no doubt popular, but the actual

personage seems to me nearer to Eugene Sue's Rodin in some ways than I

could have desired.

These things, however, are very much a case of "As You Like It" or "As

It Strikes You," and I have said that _Le Cure de Tours_ strikes some

good judges as of exceptional merit, while no one can refuse it merit

in a high degree. I should not, except for the opening, place it in

the very highest class of the _Comedie_, but it is high beyond all

doubt in the second.

The third part (The Two Brothers/A Bachelor's Establishment) of _Les

Celibataires_ takes very high rank among its companions. As in most of

his best books, Balzac has set at work divers favorite springs of

action, and has introduced personages of whom he has elsewhere given,

not exactly replicas--he never did that--but companion portraits. And

he has once more justified the proceeding amply. Whether he has not

also justified the reproach, such as it is, of those who say that to

see the most congenial expression of his fullest genius, you must go

to his bad characters and not to his good, readers shall determine for

themselves after reading the book.

It was the product of the year 1842, when the author was at the ripest

of his powers, and after which, with the exception of _Les Parents

Pauvres_, he produced not much of his very best save in continuations

and rehandlings of earlier efforts. He changed his title a good deal,

and in that MS. correction of a copy of the _Comedie_ which has been

taken, perhaps without absolutely decisive authority, as the basis of

the _Edition Definitive_, he adopted _La Rabouilleuse_ as his latest

favorite. This, besides its quaintness, has undoubted merit as fixing

the attention on one at least of the chief figures of the book, while

_Un Menage de garcon_ only obliquely indicates the real purport of the

novel. Jean-Jacques Rouget is a most unfortunate creature, who

anticipates Baron Hulot as an example of absolute dependence on things

of the flesh, _plus_ a kind of cretinism, which Hulot, to do him

justice, does not exhibit even in his worst degradation. But his

"bachelor establishment," though undoubtedly useful for the purposes

of the story, might have been changed for something else, and his

personality have been considerably altered, without very much

affecting the general drift of the fiction.

Flore Brazier, on the other hand, the _Rabouilleuse_ herself, is

essential, and with Maxence Gilet and Philippe Bridau forms the centre

of the action and the passion of the book. She ranks, indeed, with

those few feminine types, Valerie Marneffe, La Cousine Bette, Eugenie

Grandet, Beatrix, Madame de Maufrigneuse, and perhaps Esther Gobseck,

whom Balzac has tried to draw at full length. It is to be observed

that though quite without morals of any kind, she is not _ab initio_

or intrinsically a she-fiend like Valerie or Lisbeth. She does not do

harm for harm's sake, nor even directly to gratify spite, greed, or

other purely unsocial and detestable passions. She is a type of

feminine sensuality of the less ambitious and restless sort. Given a

decent education, a fair fortune, a good-looking and vigorous husband

to whom she had taken a fancy, and no special temptation, and she

might have been a blameless, merry, "sonsy" _commere_, and have died

in an odor of very reasonable sanctity. Poverty, ignorance, the

Rougets (father and son), Maxence Gilet, and Philippe Bridau came in

her way, and she lived and died as Balzac has shown her. He has done

nothing more "inevitable;" a few things more complete and

satisfactory.

Maxence Gilet is a not much less remarkable sketch, though it is not

easy to say that he is on the same level. Gilet is the man of distinct

gifts, of some virtues, or caricatures of virtues, who goes to the

devil through idleness, fulness of bread, and lack of any worthy

occupation. He is extraordinarily unconventional for a French figure

in fiction, even for a figure drawn by such a French genius as Balzac.

But he is also hardly to be called a great type, and I do not quite

see why he should have succumbed before Philippe as he did.

Philippe himself is more complicated, and, perhaps, more questionable.

He is certainly one of Balzac's _fleurs du mal_; he is studied and

personally conducted from beginning to end with an extraordinary and

loving care; but is he quite "of a piece"? That he should have

succeeded in defeating the combination against which his virtuous

mother and brother failed is not an undue instance of the irony of

life. The defeat of such adversaries as Flore and Max has, of course,

the merit of poetical justice and the interest of "diamond cut

diamond." But is not the terrible Philippe Bridau, the "Mephistopheles

_a cheval_" of the latter part of the book, rather inconsistent with

the common-place ne'er-to-well of the earlier? Not only does it

require no unusual genius to waste money, when you have it, in the

channels of the drinking-shop, the gaming table, and elsewhere, to

sponge for more on your mother and brother, to embezzle when they are

squeezed dry, and to take to downright robbery when nothing else is

left; but a person who, in the various circumstances and opportunities

of Bridau, finds nothing better to do than these ordinary things, can

hardly be a person of exceptional intellectual resource. There is here

surely that sudden and unaccounted-for change of character which the

second-rate novelist and dramatists may permit himself, but from which

the first-rate should abstain.

This, however, may be an academic objection, and certainly the book is

of first-class interest. The minor characters, the mother and brother,

the luckless aunt with her combination at last turning up when the

rascal Philippe has stolen her stake-money, the satellites and

abettors of Max in the club of "La Desoeuvrance," the slightly

theatrical Spaniard, and all the rest of them, are excellent. The book

is an eminently characteristic one--more so, indeed, than more than

one of those in which people are often invited to make acquaintance

with Balzac.

_Pierrette_, which was earlier called _Pierrette Lorrain_, was issued

in 1840, first in the _Siecle_, and then in volume form, published by

Souverain. In both issues it had nine chapter or book divisions with

headings. With the other _Celibataires_ it entered the _Comedie_ as a

_Scene de la Vie de Province_ in 1843.

_Le Cure de Tours_ (which Balzac had at one time intended to call by

the name of the Cure's enemy, and which at first was simply called by

the general title _Les Celibataires_) is much older than its

companions, and appeared in 1832 in the _Scenes de la Vie Privee_. It

was soon properly shifted to the _Vie de Province_, and as such in due

time joined the _Comedie_ bearing its present title.

The third story of _Les Celibataires_ has a rather more varied

bibliographical history than the others. The first part, that dealing

with the early misconduct of Philippe Bridau, was published

separately, as _Les Deux Freres_, in the _Presse_ during the spring of

1841, and a year or so later in volumes. It had nine chapters with

headings. The volume form also included under the same title the

second part, which, as _Un Menage de garcon en Province_, had been

published in the same newspaper in the autumn of 1842. This had

sixteen chapters in both issues, and in the volumes two part-headings

--one identical with the newspaper title, and the other "A qui la

Succession?" The whole book then took rank in the _Comedie_ under the

second title, _Un Menage de garcon_, and retained this during Balzac's

life and long afterwards. In the _Edition Definitive_, as observed

above, he had marked it as _La Rabouilleuse_, after having also

thought of _Le Bonhomme Rouget_. For English use, the better known,

though not last or best title, is clearly preferable, as it can be

translated, while _La Rabouilleuse_ cannot.

George Saintsbury

I

PIERRETTE

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC

Translated by

Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION

To Mademoiselle Anna Hanska:

Dear Child,--You, the joy of the household, you, whose pink or

white pelerine flutters in summer among the groves of

Wierzschovnia like a will-o'-the-wisp, followed by the tender eyes

of your father and your mother,--how can I dedicate to _you_ a

story full of melancholy? And yet, ought not sorrows to be spoken

of to a young girl idolized as you are, since the day may come

when your sweet hands will be called to minister to them? It is so

difficult, Anna, to find in the history of our manners and morals

a subject that is worthy of your eyes, that no choice has been

left me; but perhaps you will be made to feel how fortunate your

fate is when you read the story sent to you by

Your old friend,

De Balzac.

PIERRETTE

I

THE LORRAINS

At the dawn of an October day in 1827 a young fellow about sixteen

years of age, whose clothing proclaimed what modern phraseology so

insolently calls a proletary, was standing in a small square of Lower

Provins. At that early hour he could examine without being observed

the various houses surrounding the open space, which was oblong in

form. The mills along the river were already working; the whirr of

their wheels, repeated by the echoes of the Upper Town in the keen air

and sparkling clearness of the early morning, only intensified the

general silence so that the wheels of a diligence could be heard a

league away along the highroad. The two longest sides of the square,

separated by an avenue of lindens, were built in the simple style

which expresses so well the peaceful and matter-of-fact life of the

bourgeoisie. No signs of commerce were to be seen; on the other hand,

the luxurious porte-cocheres of the rich were few, and those few

turned seldom on their hinges, excepting that of Monsieur Martener, a

physician, whose profession obliged him to keep a cabriolet, and to

use it. A few of the house-fronts were covered by grape vines, others

by roses climbing to the second-story windows, through which they

wafted the fragrance of their scattered bunches. One end of the square

enters the main street of the Lower Town, the gardens of which reach

to the bank of one of the two rivers which water the valley of

Provins. The other end of the square enters a street which runs

parallel to the main street.

At the latter, which was also the quietest end of the square, the

young workman recognized the house of which he was in search, which

showed a front of white stone grooved in lines to represent courses,

windows with closed gray blinds, and slender iron balconies decorated

with rosettes painted yellow. Above the ground floor and the first

floor were three dormer windows projecting from a slate roof; on the

peak of the central one was a new weather-vane. This modern innovation

represented a hunter in the attitude of shooting a hare. The front

door was reached by three stone steps. On one side of this door a

leaden pipe discharged the sink-water into a small street-gutter,

showing the whereabouts of the kitchen. On the other side were two

windows, carefully closed by gray shutters in which were heart-shaped

openings cut to admit the light; these windows seemed to be those of

the dining-room. In the elevation gained by the three steps were

vent-holes to the cellar, closed by painted iron shutters fantastically

cut in open-work. Everything was new. In this repaired and restored

house, the fresh-colored look of which contrasted with the time-worn

exteriors of all the other houses, an observer would instantly

perceive the paltry taste and perfect self-satisfaction of the retired

petty shopkeeper.

The young man looked at these details with an expression of pleasure

that seemed to have something rather sad in it; his eyes roved from

the kitchen to the roof, with a motion that showed a deliberate

purpose. The rosy glow of the rising sun fell on a calico curtain at

one of the garret windows, the others being without that luxury. As he

caught sight of it the young fellow's face brightened gaily. He

stepped back a little way, leaned against a linden, and sang, in the

drawling tone peculiar to the west of France, the following Breton

ditty, published by Bruguiere, a composer to whom we are indebted for

many charming melodies. In Brittany, the young villagers sing this

song to all newly-married couples on their wedding-day:--

"We've come to wish you happiness in marriage,

To m'sieur your husband

As well as to you:

"You have just been bound, madam' la mariee,

With bonds of gold

That only death unbinds:

"You will go no more to balls or gay assemblies;

You must stay at home

While we shall go.

"Have you thought well how you are pledged to be

True to your spouse,

And love him like yourself?

"Receive these flowers our hands do now present you;

Alas! your fleeting honors

Will fade as they."

This native air (as sweet as that adapted by Chateaubriand to _Ma

soeur, te souvient-il encore_), sung in this little town of the Brie

district, must have been to the ears of a Breton maiden the touchstone

of imperious memories, so faithfully does it picture the manners and

customs, the surroundings and the heartiness of her noble old land,

where a sort of melancholy reigns, hardly to be defined; caused,

perhaps, by the aspect of life in Brittany, which is deeply touching.

This power of awakening a world of grave and sweet and tender memories

by a familiar and sometimes lively ditty, is the privilege of those

popular songs which are the superstitions of music,--if we may use the

word "superstition" as signifying all that remains after the ruin of a

people, all that survives their revolutions.

As he finished the first couple, the singer, who never took his eyes

from the attic curtain, saw no signs of life. While he sang the

second, the curtain stirred. When the words "Receive these flowers"

were sung, a youthful face appeared; a white hand cautiously opened

the casement, and a girl made a sign with her head to the singer as he

ended with the melancholy thought of the simple verses,--"Alas! your

fleeting honors will fade as they."

To her the young workman suddenly showed, drawing it from within his

jacket, a yellow flower, very common in Brittany, and sometimes to be

found in La Brie (where, however, it is rare),--the furze, or broom.

"Is it really you, Brigaut?" said the girl, in a low voice.

"Yes, Pierrette, yes. I am in Paris. I have started to make my way;

but I'm ready to settle here, near you."

Just then the fastening of a window creaked in a room on the first

floor, directly below Pierrette's attic. The girl showed the utmost

terror, and said to Brigaut, quickly:--

"Run away!"

The lad jumped like a frightened frog to a bend in the street caused

by the projection of a mill just where the square opens into the main

thoroughfare; but in spite of his agility his hob-nailed shoes echoed

on the stones with a sound easily distinguished from the music of the

mill, and no doubt heard by the person who opened the window.

That person was a woman. No man would have torn himself from the

comfort of a morning nap to listen to a minstrel in a jacket; none but

a maid awakes to songs of love. Not only was this woman a maid, but

she was an old maid. When she had opened her blinds with the furtive

motion of the bat, she looked in all directions, but saw nothing, and

only heard, faintly, the flying footfalls of the lad. Can there be

anything more dreadful than the matutinal apparition of an ugly old

maid at her window? Of all the grotesque sights which amuse the eyes

of travellers in country towns, that is the most unpleasant. It is too

repulsive to laugh at. This particular old maid, whose ear was so

keen, was denuded of all the adventitious aids, of whatever kind,

which she employed as embellishments; her false front and her

collarette were lacking; she wore that horrible little bag of black

silk on which old women insist on covering their skulls, and it was

now revealed beneath the night-cap which had been pushed aside in

sleep. This rumpled condition gave a menacing expression to the head,

such as painters bestow on witches. The temples, ears, and nape of the

neck, were disclosed in all their withered horror,--the wrinkles being

marked in scarlet lines that contrasted with the would-be white of the

bed-gown which was tied round her neck by a narrow tape. The gaping of

this garment revealed a breast to be likened only to that of an old

peasant woman who cares nothing about her personal ugliness. The

fleshless arm was like a stick on which a bit of stuff was hung. Seen

at her window, this spinster seemed tall from the length and

angularity of her face, which recalled the exaggerated proportions of

certain Swiss heads. The character of their countenance--the features

being marked by a total want of harmony--was that of hardness in the

lines, sharpness in the tones; while an unfeeling spirit, pervading

all, would have filled a physiognomist with disgust. These

characteristics, fully visible at this moment, were usually modified

in public by a sort of commercial smile,--a bourgeois smirk which

mimicked good-humor; so that persons meeting with this old maid might

very well take her for a kindly woman. She owned the house on shares

with her brother. The brother, by-the-bye, was sleeping so tranquilly

in his own chamber that the orchestra of the Opera-house could not

have awakened him, wonderful as its diapason is said to be.

The old maid stretched her neck out of the window, twisted it, and

raised her cold, pale-blue little eyes, with their short lashes set in

lids that were always rather swollen, to the attic window, endeavoring

to see Pierrette. Perceiving the uselessness of that attempt, she

retreated into her room with a movement like that of a tortoise which

draws in its head after protruding it from its carapace. The blinds

were then closed, and the silence of the street was unbroken except by

peasants coming in from the country, or very early persons moving

about.

When there is an old maid in a house, watch-dogs are unnecessary; not

the slightest event can occur that she does not see and comment upon

and pursue to its utmost consequences. The foregoing trifling

circumstance was therefore destined to give rise to grave

suppositions, and to open the way for one of those obscure dramas

which take place in families, and are none the less terrible because

they are secret,--if, indeed, we may apply the word "drama" to such

domestic occurrences.

Pierrette did not go back to bed. To her, Brigaut's arrival was an

immense event. During the night--that Eden of the wretched--she

escaped the vexations and fault-findings she bore during the day. Like

the hero of a ballad, German or Russian, I forget which, her sleep

seemed to her the happy life; her waking hours a bad dream. She had

just had her only pleasurable waking in three years. The memories of

her childhood had sung their melodious ditties in her soul. The first

couplet was heard in a dream; the second made her spring out of bed;

at the third, she doubted her ears,--the sorrowful are all disciples

of Saint Thomas; but when the fourth was sung, standing in her

night-gown with bare feet by the window, she recognized Brigaut, the

companion of her childhood. Ah, yes! it was truly the well-known

square jacket with the bobtails, the pockets of which stuck out at the

hips,--the jacket of blue cloth which is classic in Brittany; there,

too, were the waistcoat of printed cotton, the linen shirt fastened by

a gold heart, the large rolling collar, the earrings, the stout shoes,

the trousers of blue-gray drilling unevenly colored by the various

lengths of the warp,--in short, all those humble, strong, and durable

things which make the apparel of the Breton peasantry. The big buttons

of white horn which fastened the jacket made the girl's heart beat.

When she saw the bunch of broom her eyes filled with tears; then a

dreadful fear drove back into her heart the happy memories that were

budding there. She thought her cousin sleeping in the room beneath her

might have heard the noise she made in jumping out of bed and running

to the window. The fear was just; the old maid was coming, and she

made Brigaut the terrified sign which the lad obeyed without the least

understanding it. Such instinctive submission to a girl's bidding

shows one of those innocent and absolute affections which appear from

century to century on this earth, where they blossom, like the aloes

of Isola Bella, twice or thrice in a hundred years. Whoever had seen

the lad as he ran away would have loved the ingenuous chivalry of his

most ingenuous feeling.

Jacques Brigaut was worthy of Pierrette Lorrain, who was just fifteen.

Two children! Pierrette could not keep from crying as she watched his

flight in the terror her gesture had conveyed to him. Then she sat

down in a shabby armchair placed before a little table above which

hung a mirror. She rested her elbows on the table, put her head in her

hands, and sat thinking for an hour, calling to memory the Marais, the

village of Pen-Hoel, the perilous voyages on a pond in a boat untied

for her from an old willow by little Jacques; then the old faces of

her grandfather and grandmother, the sufferings of her mother, and the

handsome face of Major Brigaut,--in short, the whole of her careless

childhood. It was all a dream, a luminous joy on the gloomy background

of the present.

Her beautiful chestnut hair escaped in disorder from her cap, rumpled

in sleep,--a cambric cap with ruffles, which she had made herself. On

each side of her forehead were little ringlets escaping from gray

curl-papers. From the back of her head hung a heavy braid of hair that

was half unplaited. The excessive whiteness of her face betrayed that

terrible malady of girlhood which goes by the name of chlorosis,

deprives the body of its natural colors, destroys the appetite, and

shows a disordered state of the organism. The waxy tones were in all

the visible parts of her flesh. The neck and shoulders explained by

their blanched paleness the wasted arms, flung forward and crossed

upon the table. Her feet seemed enervated, shrunken from illness. Her

night-gown came only to her knees and showed the flaccid muscles, the

blue veins, the impoverished flesh of the legs. The cold, to which she

paid no heed, turned her lips violet, and a sad smile, drawing up the

corners of a sensitive mouth, showed teeth that were white as ivory

and quite small,--pretty, transparent teeth, in keeping with the

delicate ears, the rather sharp but dainty nose, and the general

outline of her face, which, in spite of its roundness, was lovely. All

the animation of this charming face was in the eyes, the iris of

which, brown like Spanish tobacco and flecked with black, shone with

golden reflections round pupils that were brilliant and intense.

Pierrette was made to be gay, but she was sad. Her lost gaiety was

still to be seen in the vivacious forms of the eye, in the ingenuous

grace of her brow, in the smooth curve of her chin. The long eyelashes

lay upon the cheek-bones, made prominent by suffering. The paleness of

her face, which was unnaturally white, made the lines and all the

details infinitely pure. The ear alone was a little masterpiece of

modelling,--in marble, you might say. Pierrette suffered in many ways.

Perhaps you would like to know her history, and this is it.

Pierrette's mother was a Demoiselle Auffray of Provins, half-sister by

the father's side of Madame Rogron, mother of the present owners of

the house.

Monsieur Auffray, her husband, had married at the age of eighteen; his

second marriage took place when he was nearly sixty-nine. By the

first, he had an only daughter, very plain, who was married at sixteen

to an innkeeper of Provins named Rogron.

By his second marriage the worthy Auffray had another daughter; but

this one was charming. There was, of course, an enormous difference in

the ages of these daughters; the one by the first marriage was fifty

years old when the second child was born. By this time the eldest,

Madame Rogron, had two grown-up children.

The youngest daughter of the old man was married at eighteen to a man

of her choice, a Breton officer named Lorrain, captain in the Imperial

Guard. Love often makes a man ambitious. The captain, anxious to rise

to a colonelcy, exchanged into a line regiment. While he, then a

major, and his wife enjoyed themselves in Paris on the allowance made

to them by Monsieur and Madame Auffray, or scoured Germany at the beck

and call of the Emperor's battles and truces, old Auffray himself

(formerly a grocer) died, at the age of eighty-eight, without having

found time to make a will. His property was administered by his

daughter, Madame Rogron, and her husband so completely in their own

interests that nothing remained for the old man's widow beyond the

house she lived in on the little square, and a few acres of land. This

widow, the mother of Madame Lorrain, was only thirty-eight at the time

of her husband's death. Like many widows, she came to the unwise

decision of remarrying. She sold the house and land to her

step-daughter, Madame Rogron, and married a young physician named

Neraud, who wasted her whole fortune. She died of grief and misery two

years later.

Thus the share of her father's property which ought to have come to

Madame Lorrain disappeared almost entirely, being reduced to the small

sum of eight thousand francs. Major Lorrain was killed at the battle

of Montereau, leaving his wife, then twenty-one years of age, with a

little daughter of fourteen months, and no other means than the

pension to which she was entitled and an eventual inheritance from her

late husband's parents, Monsieur and Madame Lorrain, retail

shopkeepers at Pen-Hoel, a village in the Vendee, situated in that

part of it which is called the Marais. These Lorrains, grandfather and

grandmother of Pierrette Lorrain, sold wood for building purposes,

slates, tiles, pantiles, pipes, etc. Their business, either from their

own incapacity or through ill-luck, did badly, and gave them scarcely

enough to live on. The failure of the well-known firm of Collinet at

Nantes, caused by the events of 1814 which led to a sudden fall in

colonial products, deprived them of twenty-four thousand francs which

they had just deposited with that house.

The arrival of their daughter-in-law was therefore welcome to them.

Her pension of eight hundred francs was a handsome income at Pen-Hoel.

The eight thousand francs which the widow's half-brother and sister

Rogron sent to her from her father's estate (after a multitude of

legal formalities) were placed by her in the Lorrains' business, they

giving her a mortgage on a little house which they owned at Nantes,

let for three hundred francs, and barely worth ten thousand.

Madame Lorrain the younger, Pierrette's mother, died in 1819. The

child of old Auffray and his young wife was small, delicate, and

weakly; the damp climate of the Marais did not agree with her. But her

husband's family persuaded her, in order to keep her with them, that

in no other quarter of the world could she find a more healthy region.

She was so petted and tenderly cared for that her death, when it came,

brought nothing but honor to the old Lorrains.

Some persons declared that Brigaut, an old Vendeen, one of those men

of iron who served under Charette, under Mercier, under the Marquis de

Montauran, and the Baron du Guenic, in the wars against the Republic,

counted for a good deal in the willingness of the younger Madame

Lorrain to remain in the Marais. If it were so, his soul must have

been a truly loving and devoted one. All Pen-Hoel saw him--he was

called respectfully Major Brigaut, the grade he had held in the

Catholic army--spending his days and his evenings in the Lorrains'

parlor, beside the window of the imperial major. Toward the last, the

curate of Pen-Hoel made certain representations to old Madame Lorrain,

begging her to persuade her daughter-in-law to marry Brigaut, and

promising to have the major appointed justice of peace for the canton

of Pen-Hoel, through the influence of the Vicomte de Kergarouet. The

death of the poor young woman put an end to the matter.

Pierrette was left in charge of her grandparents who owed her four

hundred francs a year, interest on the little property placed in their

hands. This small sum was now applied to her maintenance. The old

people, who were growing less and less fit for business, soon found

themselves confronted by an active and capable competitor, against

whom they said hard things, all the while doing nothing to defeat him.

Major Brigaut, their friend and adviser, died six months after his

friend, the younger Madame Lorrain,--perhaps of grief, perhaps of his

wounds, of which he had received twenty-seven.

Like a sound merchant, the competitor set about ruining his

adversaries in order to get rid of all rivalry. With his connivance,

the Lorrains borrowed money on notes, which they were unable to meet,

and which drove them in their old days into bankruptcy. Pierrette's

claim upon the house in Nantes was superseded by the legal rights of

her grandmother, who enforced them to secure the daily bread of her

poor husband. The house was sold for nine thousand five hundred

francs, of which one thousand five hundred went for costs. The

remaining eight thousand came to Madame Lorain, who lived upon the

income of them in a sort of almshouse at Nantes, like that of

Sainte-Perine in Paris, called Saint-Jacques, where the two old people

had bed and board for a humble payment.

As it was impossible to keep Pierrette, their ruined little

granddaughter, with them, the old Lorrains bethought themselves of her

uncle and aunt Rogron, in Provins, to whom they wrote. These Rogrons

were dead. The letter might, therefore, have easily been lost; but if

anything here below can take the place of Providence, it is the post.

Postal spirit, incomparably above public spirit, exceeds in brilliancy

of resource and invention the ablest romance-writers. When the post

gets hold of a letter, worth, to it, from three to ten sous, and does

not immediately know where to find the person to whom that letter is

addressed, it displays a financial anxiety only to be met with in very

pertinacious creditors. The post goes and comes and ferrets through

all the eighty-six departments. Difficulties only arouse the genius of

the clerks, who may really be called men-of-letters, and who set about

to search for that unknown human being with as much ardor as the

mathematicians of the Bureau give to longitudes. They literally

ransack the whole kingdom. At the first ray of hope all the

post-offices in Paris are alert. Sometimes the receiver of a missing

letter is amazed at the network of scrawled directions which covers both

back and front of the missive,--glorious vouchers for the administrative

persistency with which the post has been at work. If a man undertook

what the post accomplishes, he would lose ten thousand francs in

travel, time, and money, to recover ten sous. The letter of the old

Lorrains, addressed to Monsieur Rogron of Provins (who had then been

dead a year) was conveyed by the post in due time to Monsieur Rogron,

son of the deceased, a mercer in the rue Saint-Denis in Paris. And

this is where the postal spirit obtains its greatest triumph. An heir

is always more or less anxious to know if he has picked up every scrap

of his inheritance, if he has not overlooked a credit, or a trunk of

old clothes. The Treasury knows that. A letter addressed to the late

Rogron at Provins was certain to pique the curiosity of Rogron, Jr.,

or Mademoiselle Rogron, the heirs in Paris. Out of that human interest

the Treasury was able to earn sixty centimes.

These Rogrons, toward whom the old Lorrains, though dreading to part

with their dear little granddaughter, stretched their supplicating

hands, became, in this way, and most unexpectedly, the masters of

Pierrette's destiny. It is therefore indispensable to explain both

their antecedents and their character.

II

THE ROGRONS

Pere Rogron, that innkeeper of Provins to whom old Auffray had married

his daughter by his first wife, was an individual with an inflamed

face, a veiny nose, and cheeks on which Bacchus had drawn his scarlet

and bulbous vine-marks. Though short, fat, and pot-bellied, with stout

legs and thick hands, he was gifted with the shrewdness of the Swiss

innkeepers, whom he resembled. Certainly he was not handsome, and his

wife looked like him. Never was a couple better matched. Rogron liked

good living and to be waited upon by pretty girls. He belonged to the

class of egoists whose behavior is brutal; he gave way to his vices

and did their will openly in the face of Israel. Grasping, selfish,

without decency, and always gratifying his own fancies, he devoured

his earnings until the day when his teeth failed him. Selfishness

stayed by him. In his old days he sold his inn, collected (as we have

seen) all he could of his late father-in-law's property, and went to

live in the little house in the square of Provins, bought for a trifle

from the widow of old Auffray, Pierrette's grandmother.

Rogron and his wife had about two thousand francs a year from

twenty-seven lots of land in the neighborhood of Provins, and from the

sale of their inn for twenty thousand. Old Auffray's house, though out

of repair, was inhabited just as it was by the Rogrons,--old rats like

wrack and ruin. Rogron himself took to horticulture and spent his

savings in enlarging the garden; he carried it to the river's edge

between two walls and built a sort of stone embankment across the end,

where aquatic nature, left to herself, displayed the charms of her

flora.

In the early years of their marriage the Rogrons had a son and a

daughter, both hideous; for such human beings degenerate. Put out to

nurse at a low price, these luckless children came home in due time,

after the worst of village training,--allowed to cry for hours after

their wet-nurse, who worked in the fields, leaving them shut up to

scream for her in one of those damp, dark, low rooms which serve as

homes for the French peasantry. Treated thus, the features of the

children coarsened; their voices grew harsh; they mortified their

mother's vanity, and that made her strive to correct their bad habits

by a sternness which the severity of their father converted through

comparison to kindness. As a general thing, they were left to run

loose about the stables and courtyards of the inn, or the streets of

the town; sometimes they were whipped; sometimes they were sent, to

get rid of them, to their grandfather Auffray, who did not like them.

The injustice the Rogrons declared the old man did to their children,

justified them to their own minds in taking the greater part of "the

old scoundrel's" property. However, Rogron did send his son to school,

and did buy him a man, one of his own cartmen, to save him from the

conscription. As soon as his daughter, Sylvie, was thirteen, he sent

her to Paris, to make her way as apprentice in a shop. Two years later

he despatched his son, Jerome-Denis, to the same career. When his

friends the carriers and those who frequented the inn, asked him what

he meant to do with his children, Pere Rogron explained his system

with a conciseness which, in view of that of most fathers, had the

merit of frankness.

"When they are old enough to understand me I shall give 'em a kick and

say: 'Go and make your own way in the world!'" he replied, emptying

his glass and wiping his lips with the back of his hand. Then he

winked at his questioner with a knowing look. "Hey! hey! they are no

greater fools than I was," he added. "My father gave me three kicks; I

shall only give them one; he put one louis into my hand; I shall put

ten in theirs, therefore they'll be better off than I was. That's the

way to do. After I'm gone, what's left will be theirs. The notaries

can find them and give it to them. What nonsense to bother one's self

about children. Mine owe me their life. I've fed them, and I don't ask

anything from them,--I call that quits, hey, neighbor? I began as a

cartman, but that didn't prevent me marrying the daughter of that old

scoundrel Auffray."

Sylvie Rogron was sent (with six hundred francs for her board) as

apprentice to certain shopkeepers originally from Provins and now

settled in Paris in the rue Saint-Denis. Two years later she was "at

par," as they say; she earned her own living; at any rate her parents

paid nothing for her. That is what is called being "at par" in the rue

Saint-Denis. Sylvie had a salary of four hundred francs. At nineteen

years of age she was independent. At twenty, she was the second

demoiselle in the Maison Julliard, wholesale silk dealers at the

"Chinese Worm" rue Saint-Denis. The history of the sister was that of

the brother. Young Jerome-Denis Rogron entered the establishment of

one of the largest wholesale mercers in the same street, the Maison

Guepin, at the "Three Distaffs." When Sylvie Rogron, aged twenty-one,

had risen to be forewoman at a thousand francs a year Jerome-Denis,

with even better luck, was head-clerk at eighteen, with a salary of

twelve hundred francs.

Brother and sister met on Sundays and fete-days, which they passed

in economical amusements; they dined out of Paris, and went to

Saint-Cloud, Meudon, Belleville, or Vincennes. Towards the close of the

year 1815 they clubbed their savings, amounting to about twenty thousand

francs, earned by the sweat of their brows, and bought of Madame

Guenee the property and good-will of her celebrated shop, the "Family

Sister," one of the largest retail establishments in the quarter.

Sylvie kept the books and did the writing. Jerome-Denis was master and

head-clerk both. In 1821, after five years' experience, competition

became so fierce that it was all the brother and sister could do to

carry on the business and maintain its reputation.

Though Sylvie was at this time scarcely forty, her natural ugliness,

combined with hard work and a certain crabbed look (caused as much by

the conformation of her features as by her cares), made her seem like

a woman of fifty. At thirty-eight Jerome Rogron presented to the eyes

of his customers the silliest face that ever looked over a counter.

His retreating forehead, flattened by fatigue, was marked by three

long wrinkles. His grizzled hair, cut close, expressed in some

indefinable way the stupidity of a cold-blooded animal. The glance of

his bluish eyes had neither flame nor thought in it. His round, flat

face excited no sympathy, nor even a laugh on the lips of those who

might be examining the varieties of the Parisian species; on the

contrary, it saddened them. He was, like his father, short and fat,

but his figure lacked the latter's brutal obesity, and showed,

instead, an almost ridiculous debility. His father's high color was

changed in him to the livid flabbiness peculiar to persons who live in

close back-shops, or in those railed cages called counting-rooms,

forever tying up bundles, receiving and making change, snarling at the

clerks, and repeating the same old speeches to customers.

The small amount of brains possessed by the brother and sister had

been wholly absorbed in maintaining their business, in getting and

keeping money, and in learning the special laws and usages of the

Parisian market. Thread, needles, ribbons, pins, buttons, tailors'

furnishings, in short, the enormous quantity of things which go to

make up a mercer's stock, had taken all their capacity. Outside of

their business they knew absolutely nothing; they were even ignorant

of Paris. To them the great city was merely a region spreading around

the Rue Saint-Denis. Their narrow natures could see no field except

the shop. They were clever enough in nagging their clerks and their

young women and in proving them to blame. Their happiness lay in

seeing all hands busy at the counters, exhibiting the merchandise, and

folding it up again. When they heard the six or eight voices of the

young men and women glibly gabbling the consecrated phrases by which

clerks reply to the remarks of customers, the day was fine to them,

the weather beautiful! But on the really fine days, when the blue of

the heavens brightened all Paris, and the Parisians walked about to

enjoy themselves and cared for no "goods" but those they carried on

their back, the day was overcast to the Rogrons. "Bad weather for

sales," said that pair of imbeciles.

The skill with which Rogron could tie up a parcel made him an object

of admiration to all his apprentices. He could fold and tie and see

all that happened in the street and in the farthest recesses of the

shop by the time he handed the parcel to his customer with a "Here it

is, madame; _nothing else_ to-day?" But the poor fool would have been

ruined without his sister. Sylvie had common-sense and a genius for

trade. She advised her brother in their purchases and would pitilessly

send him to remote parts of France to save a trifle of cost. The

shrewdness which all women more or less possess, not being employed in

the service of her heart, had drifted into that of speculation. A

business to pay for,--that thought was the mainspring which kept the

machine going and gave it an infernal activity.

Rogron was really only head-clerk; he understood nothing of his

business as a whole; self-interest, that great motor of the mind, had

failed in his case to instruct him. He was often aghast when his

sister ordered some article to be sold below cost, foreseeing the end

of its fashion; later he admired her idiotically for her cleverness.

He reasoned neither ill nor well; he was simply incapable of reasoning

at all; but he had the sense to subordinate himself to his sister, and

he did so from a consideration that was outside of the business. "She

is my elder," he said. Perhaps an existence like his, always solitary,

reduced to the satisfaction of mere needs, deprived of money and all

pleasures in youth, may explain to physiologists and thinkers the

clownish expression of the face, the feebleness of mind, the vacant

silliness of the man. His sister had steadily prevented him from

marrying, afraid perhaps to lose her power over him, and seeing only a

source of expense and injury in some woman who would certainly be

younger and undoubtedly less ugly than herself.

Silliness has two ways of comporting itself; it talks, or is silent.

Silent silliness can be borne; but Rogron's silliness was loquacious.

The man had a habit of chattering to his clerks, explaining the

minutiae of the business, and ornamenting his talk with those flat

jokes which may be called the "chaff" of shopkeeping. Rogron, listened

to, of course, by his subordinates and perfectly satisfied with

himself, had come at last into possession of a phraseology of his own.

This chatterer believed himself an orator. The necessity of explaining

to customers what they want, of guessing at their desires, and giving

them desires for what they do not want, exercises the tongue of all

retail shopkeepers. The petty dealer acquires the faculty of uttering

words and sentences in which there is absolutely no meaning, but which

have a marked success. He explains to his customers matters of

manufacture that they know nothing of; that alone gives him a passing

superiority over them; but take him away from his thousand and one

explanations about his thousand and one articles, and he is,

relatively to thought, like a fish out of water in the sun.

Rogron and Sylvie, two mechanisms baptized by mistake, did not

possess, latent or active, the feelings which give life to the heart.

Their natures were shrivelled and harsh, hardened by toil, by

privation, by the remembrance of their sufferings during a long and

cruel apprenticeship to life. Neither of them complained of their

trials. They were not so much implacable as impracticable in their

dealings with others in misfortune. To them, virtue, honor, loyalty,

all human sentiments consisted solely in the payment of their bills.

Irritable and irritating, without feelings, and sordid in their

economy, the brother and sister bore a dreadful reputation among the

other merchants of the rue Saint-Denis. Had it not been for their

connection with Provins, where they went three or four times a year,

when they could close the shop for a day or two, they would have had

no clerks or young women. But old Rogron, their father, sent them all

the unfortunate young people of his neighborhood, whose parents wished

to start them in business in Paris. He obtained these apprentices by

boasting, out of vanity, of his son's success. Parents, attracted by

the prospect of their children being well-trained and closely watched,

and also, by the hope of their succeeding, eventually, to the

business, sent whichever child was most in the way at home to the care

of the brother and sister. But no sooner had the clerks or the young

women found a way of escape from that dreadful establishment than they

fled, with rejoicings that increased the already bad name of the

Rogrons. New victims were supplied yearly by the indefatigable old

father.

From the time she was fifteen, Sylvie Rogron, trained to the simpering

of a saleswoman, had two faces,--the amiable face of the seller, the

natural face of a sour spinster. Her acquired countenance was a

marvellous bit of mimicry. She was all smiles. Her voice, soft and

wheedling, gave a commercial charm to business. Her real face was that

we have already seen projecting from the half-opened blinds; the mere

sight of her would have put to flight the most resolute Cossack of

1815, much as that horde were said to like all kinds of Frenchwomen.

When the letter from the Lorrains reached the brother and sister, they

were in mourning for their father, from whom they inherited the house

which had been as good as stolen from Pierrette's grandmother, also

certain lands bought by their father, and certain moneys acquired by

usurious loans and mortgages to the peasantry, whose bits of ground

the old drunkard expected to possess. The yearly taking of stock was

just over. The price of the "Family Sister" had, at last, been paid in

full. The Rogrons owned about sixty thousand francs' worth of

merchandise, forty thousand in a bank or in their cash-box, and the

value of their business. Sitting on a bench covered with striped-green

Utrecht velvet placed in a square recess just behind their private

counter (the counter of their forewoman being similar and directly

opposite) the brother and sister consulted as to what they should do.

All retail shopkeepers aspire to become members of the bourgeoisie. By

selling the good-will of their business, the pair would have over a

hundred and fifty thousand francs, not counting the inheritance from

their father. By placing their present available property in the

public Funds, they would each obtain about four thousand francs a

year, and by taking the proceeds of their business, when sold, they

could repair and improve the house they inherited from their father,

which would thus be a good investment. They could then go and live in

a house of their own in Provins. Their forewoman was the daughter of a

rich farmer at Donnemarie, burdened with nine children, to whom he had

endeavored to give a good start in life, being aware that at his death

his property, divided into nine parts, would be but little for any one

of them. In five years, however, the man had lost seven children,--a

fact which made the forewoman so interesting that Rogron had tried,

unsuccessfully, to get her to marry him; but she showed an aversion

for her master which baffled his manoeuvres. Besides, Mademoiselle

Sylvie was not in favor of the match; in fact, she steadily opposed

her brother's marriage, and sought, instead, to make the shrewd young

woman their successor.

No passing observer can form the least idea of the cryptogramic

existence of a certain class of shopkeepers; he looks at them and asks

himself, "On what, and why, do they live? whence have they come? where

do they go?" He is lost in such questions, but finds no answer to

them. To discover the false seed of poesy which lies in those heads

and fructifies in those lives, it is necessary to dig into them; and

when we do that we soon come to a thin subsoil beneath the surface.

The Parisian shopkeeper nurtures his soul on some hope or other, more

or less attainable, without which he would doubtless perish. One

dreams of building or managing a theatre; another longs for the honors

of mayoralty; this one desires a country-house, ten miles from Paris

with a so-called "park," which he will adorn with statues of tinted

plaster and fountains which squirt mere threads of water, but on which

he will spend a mint of money; others, again, dream of distinction and

a high grade in the National Guard. Provins, that terrestrial

paradise, filled the brother and sister with the fanatical longings

which all the lovely towns of France inspire in their inhabitants. Let

us say it to the glory of La Champagne, this love is warranted.

Provins, one of the most charming towns in all France, rivals

Frangistan and the valley of Cashmere; not only does it contain the

poesy of Saadi, the Persian Homer, but it offers many pharmaceutical

treasures to medical science. The crusades brought roses from Jericho

to this enchanting valley, where by chance they gained new charms

while losing none of their colors. The Provins roses are known the

world over. But Provins is not only the French Persia, it is also

Baden, Aix, Cheltenham,--for it has medicinal springs. This was the

spot which appeared from time to time before the eyes of the two

shopkeepers in the muddy regions of Saint-Denis.

After crossing the gray plains which lie between La Ferte-Gaucher and

Provins, a desert and yet productive, a desert of wheat, you reach a

hill. Suddenly you behold at your feet a town watered by two rivers;

at the feet of the rock on which you stand stretches a verdant valley,

full of enchanting lines and fugitive horizons. If you come from Paris

you will pass through the whole length of Provins on the everlasting

highroad of France, which here skirts the hillside and is encumbered

with beggars and blind men, who will follow you with their pitiful

voices while you try to examine the unexpected picturesqueness of the

region. If you come from Troyes you will approach the town on the

valley side. The chateau, the old town, and its former ramparts are

terraced on the hillside, the new town is below. They go by the names

of Upper and Lower Provins. The upper is an airy town with steep

streets commanding fine views, surrounded by sunken road-ways and

ravines filled with chestnut trees which gash the sides of the hill

with their deep gulleys. The upper town is silent, clean, solemn,

surmounted by the imposing ruins of the old chateau. The lower is a

town of mills, watered by the Voulzie and the Durtain, two rivers of

Brie, narrow, sluggish, and deep; a town of inns, shops, retired

merchants; filled with diligences, travelling-carriages, and waggons.

The two towns, or rather this town with its historical memories, its

melancholy ruins, the gaiety of its valley, the romantic charm of its

ravines filled with tangled shrubbery and wildflowers, its rivers

banked with gardens, excites the love of all its children, who do as

the Auvergnats, the Savoyards, in fact, all French folks do, namely,

leave Provins to make their fortunes, and always return. "Die in one's

form," the proverb made for hares and faithful souls, seems also the

motto of a Provins native.

Thus the two Rogrons thought constantly of their dear Provins. While

Jerome sold his thread he saw the Upper town; as he piled up the cards

on which were buttons he contemplated the valley; when he rolled and

unrolled his ribbons he followed the shining rivers. Looking up at his

shelves he saw the ravines where he had often escaped his father's

anger and gone a-nutting or gathering blackberries. But the little

square in the Lower town was the chief object of his thoughts; he

imagined how he could improve his house: he dreamed of a new front,

new bedrooms, a salon, a billiard-room, a dining-room, and the kitchen

garden out of which he would make an English pleasure-ground, with

lawns, grottos, fountains, and statuary. The bedrooms at present

occupied by the brother and sister, on the second floor of a house

with three windows front and six storeys high in the rue Saint-Denis,

were furnished with the merest necessaries, yet no one in Paris had

finer furniture than they--in fancy. When Jerome walked the streets he

stopped short, struck with admiration at the handsome things in the

upholsterers' windows, and at the draperies he coveted for his house.

When he came home he would say to his sister: "I found in such a shop,

such and such a piece of furniture that will just do for the salon."

The next day he would buy another piece, and another, and so on. He

rejected, the following month, the articles of the months before. The

Budget itself, could not have paid for his architectural schemes. He

wanted everything he saw, but abandoned each thing for the last thing.

When he saw the balconies of new houses, when he studied external

ornamentation, he thought all such things, mouldings, carvings, etc.,

out of place in Paris. "Ah!" he would say, "those fine things would

look much better at Provins." When he stood on his doorstep leaning

against the lintel, digesting his morning meal, with a vacant eye, the

mercer was gazing at the house of his fancy gilded by the sun of his

dream; he walked in his garden; he heard the jet from his fountain

falling in pearly drops upon a slab of limestone; he played on his own

billiard-table; he gathered his own flowers.

Sylvie, on the other hand, was thinking so deeply, pen in hand, that

she forgot to scold the clerks; she was receiving the bourgeoisie of

Provins, she was looking at herself in the mirrors of her salon, and

admiring the beauties of a marvellous cap. The brother and sister

began to think the atmosphere of the rue Saint-Denis unhealthy, and

the smell of the mud in the markets made them long for the fragrance

of the Provins roses. They were the victims of a genuine nostalgia,

and also of a monomania, frustrated at present by the necessity of

selling their tapes and bobbins before they could leave Paris. The

promised land of the valley of Provins attracted these Hebrews all the

more because they had really suffered, and for a long time, as they

crossed breathlessly the sandy wastes of a mercer's business.

The Lorrains' letter reached them in the midst of meditations inspired

by this glorious future. They knew scarcely anything about their

cousin, Pierrette Lorrain. Their father got possession of the Auffray

property after they left home, and the old man said little to any one

of his business affairs. They hardly remembered their aunt Lorrain. It

took an hour of genealogical discussion before they made her out to be

the younger sister of their own mother by the second marriage of their

grandfather Auffray. It immediately struck them that this second

marriage had been fatally injurious to their interests by dividing the

Auffray property between two daughters. In times past they had heard

their father, who was given to sneering, complain of it.

The brother and sister considered the application of the Lorrains from

the point of view of such reminiscences, which were not at all

favorable for Pierrette. To take charge of an orphan, a girl, a

cousin, who might become their legal heir in case neither of them

married,--this was a matter that needed discussion. The question was

considered and debated under all its aspects. In the first place, they

had never seen Pierrette. Then, what a trouble it would be to have a

young girl to look after. Wouldn't it commit them to some obligations

towards her? Could they send the girl away if they did not like her?

Besides, wouldn't they have to marry her? and if Jerome found a

yoke-mate among the heiresses of Provins they ought to keep all their

property for his children. A yokemate for Jerome, according to Sylvie,

meant a stupid, rich and ugly girl who would let herself be governed.

They decided to refuse the Lorrain request. Sylvie agreed to write the

answer. Business being rather urgent just then she delayed writing,

and the forewoman coming forward with an offer for the stock and

good-will of the "Family Sister," which the brother and sister

accepted, the matter went entirely out of the old maid's mind.

Sylvie Rogron and her brother departed for Provins four years before

the time when the coming of Brigaut threw such excitement into

Pierrette's life. But the doings of the pair after their arrival at

Provins are as necessary to relate as their life in Paris; for Provins

was destined to be not less fatal to Pierrette than the commercial

antecedents of her cousins!

III

PATHOLOGY OF RETIRED MERCERS

When the petty shopkeeper who has come to Paris from the provinces

returns to the provinces from Paris he brings with him a few ideas;

then he loses them in the habits and ways of provincial life into

which he plunges, and his reforming notions leave him. From this there

do result, however, certain trifling, slow, successive changes by

which Paris scratches the surface of the provincial towns. This

process marks the transition of the ex-shopkeeper into the substantial

bourgeois, but it acts like an illness upon him. No retail shopkeeper

can pass with impunity from his perpetual chatter into dead silence,

from his Parisian activity to the stillness of provincial life. When

these worthy persons have laid by property they spend a portion of it

on some desire over which they have long brooded and into which they

now turn their remaining impulses, no longer restrained by force of

will. Those who have not been nursing a fixed idea either travel or

rush into the political interests of their municipality. Others take

to hunting or fishing and torment their farmers or tenants; others

again become usurers or stock-jobbers. As for the scheme of the

Rogrons, brother and sister, we know what that was; they had to

satisfy an imperious desire to handle the trowel and remodel their old

house into a charming new one.

This fixed idea produced upon the square of Lower Provins the front of

the building which Brigaut had been examining; also the interior

arrangements of the house and its handsome furniture. The contractor

did not drive a nail without consulting the owners, without requiring

them to sign the plans and specifications, without explaining to them

at full length and in every detail the nature of each article under

discussion, where it was manufactured, and what were its various

prices. As to the choicer things, each, they were told, had been used

by Monsieur Tiphaine, or Madame Julliard, or Monsieur the mayor, the

notables of the place. The idea of having things done as the rich

bourgeois of Provins did them carried the day for the contractor.

"Oh, if Monsieur Garceland has it in his house, put it in," said

Mademoiselle Rogron. "It must be all right; his taste is good."

"Sylvie, see, he wants us to have ovolos in the cornice of the

corridor."

"Do you call those ovolos?"

"Yes, mademoiselle."

"What an odd name! I never heard it before."

"But you have seen the thing?"

"Yes."

"Do you understand Latin?"

"No."

"Well, it means eggs--from the Latin _ovum_."

"What queer fellows you are, you architects!" cried Rogron. "It is

stepping on egg-shells to deal with you."

"Shall we paint the corridor?" asked the builder.

"Good heavens, no!" cried Sylvie. "That would be five hundred francs

more!"

"Oh, but the salon and the staircase are too pretty not to have the

corridor decorated too," said the man. "That little Madame Lesourd had

hers painted last year."

"And now, her husband, as king's attorney, is obliged to leave

Provins."

"Ah, he'll be chief justice some of these days," said the builder.

"How about Monsieur Tiphaine?"

"Monsieur Tiphaine? he's got a pretty wife and is sure to get on.

He'll go to Paris. Shall we paint the corridor?"

"Yes, yes," said Rogron. "The Lesourds must be made to see that we are

as good as they."

The first year after the Rogrons returned to Provins was entirely

taken up by such discussions, by the pleasure of watching the workmen,

by the surprise occasioned to the townspeople and the replies to

questions of all kinds which resulted therefrom, and also by the

attempts made by Sylvie and her brother to be socially intimate with

the principal families of Provins.

The Rogrons had never gone into any society; they had never left their

shop, knowing absolutely no one in Paris, and now they were athirst

for the pleasures of social life. On their arrival in Provins they

found their former masters in Paris (long since returned to the

provinces), Monsieur and Madame Julliard, lately of the "Chinese

Worm," their children and grandchildren; the Guepin family, or rather

the Guepin clan, the youngest scion of which now kept the "Three

Distaffs"; and thirdly, Madame Guenee from whom they had purchased the

"Family Sister," and whose three daughters were married and settled in

Provins. These three races, Julliard, Guepin, and Guenee, had spread

through the town like dog-grass through a lawn. The mayor, Monsieur

Garceland, was the son-in-law of Monsieur Guepin; the curate, Abbe

Peroux, was own brother to Madame Julliard; the judge, Monsieur

Tiphaine junior, was brother to Madame Guenee, who signed herself

"_nee_ Tiphaine."

The queen of the town was the beautiful Madame Tiphaine junior, only

daughter of Madame Roguin, the rich wife of a former notary in Paris,

whose name was never mentioned. Clever, delicate, and pretty, married

in the provinces to please her mother, who for special reasons did not

want her with her, and took her from a convent only a few days before

the wedding, Melanie Tiphaine considered herself an exile in Provins,

where she behaved to admiration. Handsomely dowered, she still had

hopes. As for Monsieur Tiphaine, his old father had made to his eldest

daughter Madame Guenee such advances on her inheritance that an estate

worth eight thousand francs a year, situated within fifteen miles of

Provins, was to come wholly to him. Consequently the Tiphaines would

possess, sooner or later, some forty thousand francs a year, and were

not "badly off," as they say. The one overwhelming desire of the

beautiful Madame Tiphaine was to get Monsieur Tiphaine elected deputy.

As deputy he would become a judge in Paris; and she was firmly

resolved to push him up into the Royal courts. For these reasons she

tickled all vanities and strove to please all parties; and--what is

far more difficult--she succeeded. Twice a week she received the

bourgeoisie of Provins at her house in the Upper town. This

intelligent young woman of twenty had not as yet made a single blunder

or misstep on the slippery path she had taken. She gratified

everybody's self-love, and petted their hobbies; serious with the

serious, a girl with girls, instinctively a mother with mothers, gay

with young wives and disposed to help them, gracious to all,--in

short, a pearl, a treasure, the pride of Provins. She had never yet

said a word of her intentions and wishes, but all the electors of

Provins were awaiting the time when their dear Monsieur Tiphaine had

reached the required age for nomination. Every man in the place,

certain of his own talents, regarded the future deputy as his

particular friend, his protector. Of course, Monsieur Tiphaine would

attain to honors; he would be Keeper of the Seals, and then, what

wouldn't he do for Provins!

Such were the pleasant means by which Madame Tiphaine had come to rule

over the little town. Madame Guenee, Monsieur Tiphaine's sister, after

having married her eldest daughter to Monsieur Lesourd, prosecuting

attorney, her second to Monsieur Martener, the doctor, and the third

to Monsieur Auffray, the notary, had herself married Monsieur

Galardon, the collector. Mother and daughters all considered Monsieur

Tiphaine as the richest and ablest man in the family. The prosecuting

attorney had the strongest interest in sending his uncle to Paris,

expecting to step into his shoes as judge of the local court of

Provins. The four ladies formed a sort of court round Madame Tiphaine,

whose ideas and advice they followed on all occasions. Monsieur

Julliard, the eldest son of the old merchant, who had married the only

daughter of a rich farmer, set up a sudden, secret, and disinterested

passion for Madame Tiphaine, that angel descended from the Parisian

skies. The clever Melanie, too clever to involve herself with

Julliard, but quite capable of keeping him in the condition of Amadis

and making the most of his folly, advised him to start a journal,

intending herself to play the part of Egeria. For the last two years,

therefore, Julliard, possessed by his romantic passion, had published

the said newspaper, called the "Bee-hive," which contained articles

literary, archaeological, and medical, written in the family. The

advertisements paid expenses. The subscriptions, two hundred in all,

made the profits. Every now and then melancholy verses, totally

incomprehensible in La Brie, appeared, addressed, "TO HER!!!" with

three exclamation marks. The clan Julliard was thus united to the

other clans, and the salon of Madame Tiphaine became, naturally, the

first in the town. The few aristocrats who lived in Provins were, of

course, apart, and formed a single salon in the Upper town, at the

house of the old Comtesse de Breautey.

During the first six months of their transplantation, the Rogrons,

favored by their former acquaintance with several of these people,

were received, first by Madame Julliard the elder, and by the former

Madame Guenee, now Madame Galardon (from whom they had bought their

business), and next, after a good deal of difficulty, by Madame

Tiphaine. All parties wished to study the Rogrons before admitting

them. It was difficult, of course, to keep out merchants of the rue

Saint-Denis, originally from Provins, who had returned to the town to

spend their fortunes. Still, the object of all society is to

amalgamate persons of equal wealth, education, manners, customs,

accomplishments, and character. Now the Guepins, Guenees, and

Julliards had a better position among the bourgeoisie than the

Rogrons, whose father had been held in contempt on account of his

private life, and his conduct in the matter of the Auffray property,

--the facts of which were known to the notary Auffray, Madame

Galardon's son-in-law.

In the social life of these people, to which Madame Tiphaine had given

a certain tone of elegance, all was homogeneous; the component parts

understood each other, knew each other's characters, and behaved and

conversed in a manner that was agreeable to all. The Rogrons flattered

themselves that being received by Monsieur Garceland, the mayor, they

would soon be on good terms with all the best families in the town.

Sylvie applied herself to learn boston. Rogron, incapable of playing a

game, twirled his thumbs and had nothing to say except to discourse on

his new house. Words seemed to choke him; he would get up, try to

speak, become frightened, and sit down again, with comical distortion

of the lips. Sylvie naively betrayed her natural self at cards. Sharp,

irritable, whining when she lost, insolent when she won, nagging and

quarrelsome, she annoyed her partners as much as her adversaries, and

became the scourge of society. And yet, possessed by a silly,

unconcealed ambition, Rogron and his sister were bent on playing a

part in the society of a little town already in possession of a close

corporation of twelve allied families. Allowing that the restoration

of their house had cost them thirty thousand francs, the brother and

sister possessed between them at least ten thousand francs a year.

This they considered wealth, and with it they endeavored to impress

society, which immediately took the measure of their vulgarity, crass

ignorance, and foolish envy. On the evening when they were presented

to the beautiful Madame Tiphaine, who had already eyed them at Madame

Garceland's and at Madame Julliard the elder's, the queen of the town

remarked to Julliard junior, who stayed a few moments after the rest

of the company to talk with her and her husband:--

"You all seem to be taken with those Rogrons."

"No, no," said Amadis, "they bore my mother and annoy my wife. When

Mademoiselle Sylvie was apprenticed, thirty years ago, to my father,

none of them could endure her."

"I have a great mind," said Madame Tiphaine, putting her pretty foot

on the bar of the fender, "to make it understood that my salon is not

an inn."

Julliard raised his eyes to the ceiling, as if to say, "Good heavens?

what wit, what intellect!"

"I wish my society to be select; and it certainly will not be if I

admit those Rogrons."

"They have neither heart, nor mind, nor manners"; said Monsieur

Tiphaine. "If, after selling thread for twenty years, as my sister did

for example--"

"Your sister, my dear," said his wife in a parenthesis, "cannot be out

of place in any salon."

"--if," he continued, "people are stupid enough not to throw off the

shop and polish their manners, if they don't know any better than to

mistake the Counts of Champagne for the _accounts_ of a wine-shop, as

Rogron did this evening, they had better, in my opinion, stay at

home."

"They are simply impudent," said Julliard. "To hear them talk you

would suppose there was no other handsome house in Provins but theirs.

They want to crush us; and after all, they have hardly enough to live

on."

"If it was only the brother," said Madame Tiphaine, "one might put up

with him; he is not so aggressive. Give him a Chinese puzzle and he

will stay in a corner quietly enough; it would take him a whole winter

to find it out. But Mademoiselle Sylvie, with that voice like a hoarse

hyena and those lobster-claws of hands! Don't repeat all this,

Julliard."

When Julliard had departed the little woman said to her husband:--

"I have aborigines enough whom I am forced to receive; these two will

fairly kill me. With your permission, I shall deprive myself of their

society."

"You are mistress in your own house," replied he; "but that will make

enemies. The Rogrons will fling themselves into the opposition, which

hitherto has had no real strength in Provins. That Rogron is already

intimate with Baron Gouraud and the lawyer Vinet."

"Then," said Melanie, laughing, "they will do you some service. Where

there are no opponents, there is no triumph. A liberal conspiracy, an

illegal cabal, a struggle of any kind, will bring you into the

foreground."

The justice looked at his young wife with a sort of alarmed

admiration.

The next day it was whispered about that the Rogrons had not

altogether succeeded in Madame Tiphaine's salon. That lady's speech

about an inn was immensely admired. It was a whole month before she

returned Mademoiselle Sylvie's visit. Insolence of this kind is very

much noticed in the provinces.

During the evening which Sylvie had spent at Madame Tiphaine's a

disagreeable scene occurred between herself and old Madame Julliard

while playing boston, apropos of a trick which Sylvie declared the old

lady had made her lose on purpose; for the old maid, who liked to trip

others, could never endure the same game on herself. The next time she

was invited out the mistress took care to make up the card-tables

before she arrived; so that Sylvie was reduced to wandering from table

to table as an onlooker, the players glancing at her with scornful

eyes. At Madame Julliard senior's house, they played whist, a game

Sylvie did not know.

The old maid at last understood that she was under a ban; but she had

no conception of the reason of it. She fancied herself an object of

jealousy to all these persons. After a time she and her brother

received no invitations, but they still persisted in paying evening

visits. Satirical persons made fun of them,--not spitefully, but

amusingly; inveigling them to talk absurdly about the eggs in their

cornice, and their wonderful cellar of wine, the like of which was not

in Provins.

Before long the Rogron house was completely finished, and the brother

and sister then resolved to give several sumptuous dinners, as much to

return the civilities they had received as to exhibit their luxury.

The invited guests accepted from curiosity only. The first dinner was

given to the leading personages of the town; to Monsieur and Madame

Tiphaine, with whom, however the Rogrons had never dined; to Monsieur

and Madame Julliard, senior and junior; to Monsieur Lesourd, Monsieur

le cure, and Monsieur and Madame Galardon. It was one of those

interminable provincial dinners, where you sit at table from five to

nine o'clock. Madame Tiphaine had introduced into Provins the Parisian

custom of taking leave as soon as coffee had been served. On this

occasion she had company at home and was anxious to get away. The

Rogrons accompanied her husband and herself to the street door, and

when they returned to the salon, disconcerted at not being able to

keep their chief guests, the rest of the party were preparing to

imitate Madame Tiphaine's fashion with cruel provincial promptness.

"They won't see our salon lighted up," said Sylvie, "and that's the

show of the house."

The Rogrons had counted on surprising their guests. It was the first

time any one had been admitted to the now celebrated house, and the

company assembled at Madame Tiphaine's was eagerly awaiting her

opinion of the marvels of the "Rogron palace."

"Well!" cried little Madame Martener, "you've seen the Louvre; tell us

all about it."

"All? Well, it would be like the dinner,--not much."

"But do describe it."

"Well, to begin with, that front door, the gilded grating of which we

have all admired," said Madame Tiphaine, "opens upon a long corridor

which divides the house unequally; on the right side there is one

window, on the other, two. At the garden end, the corridor opens with

a glass door upon a portico with steps to the lawn, where there's a

sun dial and a plaster statue of Spartacus, painted to imitate bronze.

Behind the kitchen, the builder has put the staircase, and a sort of

larder which we are spared the sight of. The staircase, painted to

imitate black marble with yellow veins, turns upon itself like those

you see in cafes leading from the ground-floor to the entresol. The

balustrade, of walnut with brass ornaments and dangerously slight, was

pointed out to us as one of the seven wonders of the world. The cellar

stairs run under it. On the other side of the corridor is the

dining-room, which communicates by folding-doors with a salon of equal

size, the windows of which look on the garden."

"Dear me, is there no ante-chamber?" asked Madame Auffray.

"The corridor, full of draughts, answers for an ante-chamber," replied

Madame Tiphaine. "Our friends have had, they assured us, the eminently

national, liberal, constitutional, and patriotic feeling to use none

but French woods in the house; so the floor in the dining-room is

chestnut, the sideboards, tables, and chairs, of the same. White

calico window-curtains, with red borders, are held back by vulgar red

straps; these magnificent draperies run on wooden curtain rods ending

in brass lion's-paws. Above one of the sideboards hangs a dial

suspended by a sort of napkin in gilded bronze,--an idea that seemed

to please the Rogrons hugely. They tried to make me admire the

invention; all I could manage to say was that if it was ever proper to

wrap a napkin round a dial it was certainly in a dining-room. On the

sideboard were two huge lamps like those on the counter of a

restaurant. Above the other sideboard hung a barometer, excessively

ornate, which seems to play a great part in their existence; Rogron

gazed at it as he might at his future wife. Between the two windows is

a white porcelain stove in a niche overloaded with ornament. The walls

glow with a magnificent paper, crimson and gold, such as you see in

the same restaurants, where, no doubt, the Rogrons chose it. Dinner

was served on white and gold china, with a dessert service of light

blue with green flowers, but they showed us another service in

earthenware for everyday use. Opposite to each sideboard was a large

cupboard containing linen. All was clean, new, and horribly sharp in

tone. However, I admit the dining-room; it has some character, though

disagreeable; it represents that of the masters of the house. But

there is no enduring the five engravings that hang on the walls; the

Minister of the Interior ought really to frame a law against them. One

was Poniatowski jumping into the Elster; the others, Napoleon pointing

a cannon, the defence at Clichy, and the two Mazepas, all in gilt

frames of the vulgarest description,--fit to carry off the prize of

disgust. Oh! how much I prefer Madame Julliard's pastels of fruit,

those excellent Louis XV. pastels, which are in keeping with the old

dining-room and its gray panels,--defaced by age, it is true, but they

possess the true provincial characteristics that go well with old

family silver, precious china, and our simple habits. The provinces

are provinces; they are only ridiculous when they mimic Paris. I

prefer this old salon of my husband's forefathers, with its heavy

curtains of green and white damask, the Louis XV. mantelpiece, the

twisted pier-glasses, the old mirrors with their beaded mouldings, and

the venerable card tables. Yes, I prefer my old Sevres vases in royal

blue, mounted on copper, my clock with those impossible flowers, that

rococco chandelier, and the tapestried furniture, to all the finery of

the Rogron salon."

"What is the salon like?" said Monsieur Martener, delighted with the

praise the handsome Parisian bestowed so adroitly on the provinces.

"As for the salon, it is all red,--the red Mademoiselle Sylvie turns

when she loses at cards."

"Sylvan-red," said Monsieur Tiphaine, whose sparkling saying long

remained in the vocabulary of Provins.

"Window-curtains, red; furniture, red; mantelpiece, red, veined

yellow, candelabra and clock ditto mounted on bronze, common and heavy

in design,--Roman standards with Greek foliage! Above the clock is

that inevitable good-natured lion which looks at you with a simper,

the lion of ornamentation, with a big ball under his feet, symbol of

the decorative lion, who passes his life holding a black ball,

--exactly like a deputy of the Left. Perhaps it is meant as a

constitutional myth. The face of the clock is curious. The glass over

the chimney is framed in that new fashion of applied mouldings which

is so trumpery and vulgar. From the ceiling hangs a chandelier

carefully wrapped in green muslin, and rightly too, for it is in the

worst taste, the sharpest tint of bronze with hideous ornaments. The

walls are covered with a red flock paper to imitate velvet enclosed in

panels, each panel decorated with a chromo-lithograph in one of those

frames festooned with stucco flowers to represent wood-carving. The

furniture, in cashmere and elm-wood, consists, with classic

uniformity, of two sofas, two easy-chairs, two armchairs, and six

common chairs. A vase in alabaster, called a la Medicis, kept under

glass stands on a table between the windows; before the windows, which

are draped with magnificent red silk curtains and lace curtains under

them, are card-tables. The carpet is Aubusson, and you may be sure the

Rogrons did not fail to lay hands on that most vulgar of patterns,

large flowers on a red ground. The room looks as if no one ever lived

there; there are no books, no engravings, none of those little

knick-knacks we all have lying about," added Madame Tiphaine, glancing

at her own table covered with fashionable trifles, albums, and little

presents given to her by friends; "and there are no flowers,--it is

all cold and barren, like Mademoiselle Sylvie herself. Buffon says the

style is the man, and certainly salons have styles of their own."

From this sketch everybody can see the sort of house the brother and

sister lived in, though they can never imagine the absurdities into

which a clever builder dragged the ignorant pair,--new inventions,

fantastic ornaments, a system for preventing smoky chimneys, another

for preventing damp walls; painted marquetry panels on the staircase,

colored glass, superfine locks,--in short, all those vulgarities which

make a house expensive and gratify the bourgeois taste.

No one chose to visit the Rogrons, whose social plans thus came to

nothing. Their invitations were refused under various excuses,--the

evenings were already engaged to Madame Garceland and the other ladies

of the Provins world. The Rogrons had supposed that all that was

required to gain a position in society was to give a few dinners. But

no one any longer accepted them, except a few young men who went to

make fun of their host and hostess, and certain diners-out who went

everywhere.

Frightened at the loss of forty thousand francs swallowed up without

profit in what she called her "dear house," Sylvie now set to work to

recover it by economy. She gave no more dinners, which had cost her

forty or fifty francs without the wines, and did not fulfil her social

hopes, hopes that are as hard to realize in the provinces as in Paris.

She sent away her cook, took a country-girl to do the menial work, and

did her own cooking, as she said, "for pleasure."

Fourteen months after their return to Provins, the brother and sister

had fallen into a solitary and wholly unoccupied condition. Their

banishment from society roused in Sylvie's heart a dreadful hatred

against the Tiphaines, Julliards and all the other members of the

social world of Provins, which she called "the clique," and with whom

her personal relations became extremely cold. She would gladly have

set up a rival clique, but the lesser bourgeoisie was made up of

either small shopkeepers who were only free on Sundays and fete-days,

or smirched individuals like the lawyer Vinet and Doctor Neraud, and

wholly inadmissible Bonapartists like Baron Gouraud, with whom,

however, Rogron thoughtlessly allied himself, though the upper

bourgeoisie had warned him against them.

The brother and sister were, therefore, forced to sit by the fire of

the stove in the dining-room, talking over their former business,

trying to recall the faces of their customers and other matters they

had intended to forget. By the end of the second winter ennui weighed

heavily on them. They did not know how to get through each day;

sometimes as they went to bed the words escaped them, "There's another

over!" They dragged out the morning by staying in bed, and dressing

slowly. Rogron shaved himself every day, examined his face, consulted

his sister on any changes he thought he saw there, argued with the

servant about the temperature of his hot water, wandered into the

garden, looked to see if the shrubs were budding, sat at the edge of

the water where he had built himself a kiosk, examined the joinery of

his house,--had it sprung? had the walls settled, the panels cracked?

or he would come in fretting about a sick hen, and complaining to his

sister, who was nagging the servant as she set the table, of the

dampness which was coming out in spots upon the plaster. The barometer

was Rogron's most useful bit of property. He consulted it at all

hours, tapped it familiarly like a friend, saying: "Vile weather!" to

which his sister would reply, "Pooh! it is only seasonable." If any

one called to see him the excellence of that instrument was his chief

topic of conversation.

Breakfast took up some little time; with what deliberation those two

human beings masticated their food! Their digestions were perfect;

cancer of the stomach was not to be dreaded by them. They managed to

get along till twelve o'clock by reading the "Bee-hive" and the

"Constitutionnel." The cost of subscribing to the Parisian paper was

shared by Vinet the lawyer, and Baron Gouraud. Rogron himself carried

the paper to Gouraud, who had been a colonel and lived on the square,

and whose long yarns were Rogron's delight; the latter sometimes

puzzled over the warnings he had received, and asked himself how such

a lively companion could be dangerous. He was fool enough to tell the

colonel he had been warned against him, and to repeat all the "clique"

had said. God knows how the colonel, who feared no one, and was

equally to be dreaded with pistols or a sword, gave tongue about

Madame Tiphaine and her Amadis, and the ministerialists of the Upper

town, persons capable of any villany to get places, and who counted

the votes at elections to suit themselves, etc.

About two o'clock Rogron started for a little walk. He was quite happy

if some shopkeeper standing on the threshold of his door would stop

him and say, "Well, pere Rogron, how goes it with _you_?" Then he

would talk, and ask for news, and gather all the gossip of the town.

He usually went as far as the Upper town, sometimes to the ravines,

according to the weather. Occasionally he would meet old men taking

their walks abroad like himself. Such meetings were joyful events to

him. There happened to be in Provins a few men weary of Parisian life,

quiet scholars who lived with their books. Fancy the bewilderment of

the ignorant Rogron when he heard a deputy-judge named Desfondrilles,

more of an archaeologist than a magistrate, saying to old Monsieur

Martener, a really learned man, as he pointed to the valley:--

"Explain to me why the idlers of Europe go to Spa instead of coming to

Provins, when the springs here have a superior curative value

recognized by the French faculty,--a potential worthy of the medicinal

properties of our roses."

"That is one of the caprices of caprice," said the old gentleman.

"Bordeaux wine was unknown a hundred years ago. Marechal de Richelieu,

one of the noted men of the last century, the French Alcibiades, was

appointed governor of Guyenne. His lungs were diseased, and, heaven

knows why! the wine of the country did him good and he recovered.

Bordeaux instantly made a hundred millions; the marshal widened its

territory to Angouleme, to Cahors,--in short, to over a hundred miles

of circumference! it is hard to tell where the Bordeaux vineyards end.

And yet they haven't erected an equestrian statue to the marshal in

Bordeaux!"

"Ah! if anything of that kind happens to Provins," said Monsieur

Desfondrilles, "let us hope that somewhere in the Upper or Lower town

they will set up a bas-relief of the head of Monsieur Opoix, the

re-discoverer of the mineral waters of Provins."

"My dear friend, the revival of Provins is impossible," replied

Monsieur Martener; "the town was made bankrupt long ago."

"What!" cried Rogron, opening his eyes very wide.

"It was once a capital, holding its own against Paris in the twelfth

century, when the Comtes de Champagne held their court here, just as

King Rene held his in Provence," replied the man of learning; "for in

those days civilization, gaiety, poesy, elegance, and women, in short

all social splendors, were not found exclusively in Paris. It is as

difficult for towns and cities as it is for commercial houses to

recover from ruin. Nothing is left to us of the old Provins but the

fragrance of our historical glory and that of our roses,--and a

sub-prefecture!"

"Ah! what mightn't France be if she had only preserved her feudal

capitals!" said Desfondrilles. "Can sub-prefects replace the poetic,

gallant, warlike race of the Thibaults who made Provins what Ferrara

was to Italy, Weimar to Germany,--what Munich is trying to be to-day."

"Was Provins ever a capital?" asked Rogron.

"Why! where do you come from?" exclaimed the archaeologist. "Don't you

know," he added, striking the ground of the Upper town where they

stood with his cane, "don't you know that the whole of this part of

Provins is built on catacombs?"

"Catacombs?"

"Yes, catacombs, the extent and height of which are yet undiscovered.

They are like the naves of cathedrals, and there are pillars in them."

"Monsieur is writing a great archaeological work to explain these

strange constructions," interposed Monsieur Martener, seeing that the

deputy-judge was about to mount his hobby.

Rogron came home much comforted to know that his house was in the

valley. The crypts of Provins kept him occupied for a week in

explorations, and gave a topic of conversation to the unhappy

celibates for many evenings.

In the course of these ramblings Rogron picked up various bits of

information about Provins, its inhabitants, their marriages, together

with stale political news; all of which he narrated to his sister.

Scores of times in his walks he would stop and say,--often to the same

person on the same day,--"Well, what's the news?" When he reached home

he would fling himself on the sofa like a man exhausted with labor,

whereas he was only worn out with the burden of his own dulness.

Dinner came at last, after he had gone twenty times to the kitchen and

back, compared the clocks, and opened and shut all the doors of the

house. So long as the brother and sister could spend their evenings in

paying visits they managed to get along till bedtime; but after they

were compelled to stay at home those evenings became like a parching

desert. Sometimes persons passing through the quiet little square

would hear unearthly noises as though the brother were throttling the

sister; a moment's listening would show that they were only yawning.

These two human mechanisms, having nothing to grind between their

rusty wheels, were creaking and grating at each other. The brother

talked of marrying, but only in despair. He felt old and weary; the

thought of a woman frightened him. Sylvie, who began to see the

necessity of having a third person in the home, suddenly remembered

the little cousin, about whom no one in Provins had yet inquired, the

friends of Madame Lorrain probably supposing that mother and child

were both dead.

Sylvie Rogron never lost anything; she was too thoroughly an old maid

even to mislay the smallest article; but she pretended to have

suddenly found the Lorrains' letter, so as to mention Pierrette

naturally to her brother, who was greatly pleased at the possibility

of having a little girl in the house. Sylvie replied to Madame

Lorrain's letter half affectionately, half commercially, as one may

say, explaining the delay by their change of abode and the settlement

of their affairs. She seemed desirous of receiving her little cousin,

and hinted that Pierrette would perhaps inherit twelve thousand francs

a year if her brother Jerome did not marry.

Perhaps it is necessary to have been, like Nebuchadnezzar, something

of a wild beast, and shut up in a cage at the Jardin des Plantes

without other prey than the butcher's meat doled out by the keeper, or

a retired merchant deprived of the joys of tormenting his clerks, to

understand the impatience with which the brother and sister awaited

the arrival of their cousin Lorrain. Three days after the letter had

gone, the pair were already asking themselves when she would get

there.

Sylvie perceived in her spurious benevolence towards her poor cousin a

means of recovering her position in the social world of Provins. She

accordingly went to call on Madame Tiphaine, of whose reprobation she

was conscious, in order to impart the fact of Pierrette's approaching

arrival,--deploring the girl's unfortunate position, and posing

herself as being only too happy to succor her and give her a position

as daughter and future heiress.

"You have been rather long in discovering her," said Madame Tiphaine,

with a touch of sarcasm.

A few words said in a low voice by Madame Garceland, while the cards

were being dealt, recalled to the minds of those who heard her the

shameful conduct of old Rogron about the Auffray property; the notary

explained the iniquity.

"Where is the little girl now?" asked Monsieur Tiphaine, politely.

"In Brittany," said Rogron.

"Brittany is a large place," remarked Monsieur Lesourd.

"Her grandfather and grandmother Lorrain wrote to us--when was that,

my dear?" said Rogron addressing his sister.

Sylvie, who was just then asking Madame Garceland where she had bought

the stuff for her gown, answered hastily, without thinking of the

effect of her words:--

"Before we sold the business."

"And have you only just answered the letter, mademoiselle?" asked the

notary.

Sylvie turned as red as a live coal.

"We wrote to the Institution of Saint-Jacques," remarked Rogron.

"That is a sort of hospital or almshouse for old people," said

Monsieur Desfondrilles, who knew Nantes. "She can't be there; they

receive no one under sixty."

"She is there, with her grandmother Lorrain," said Rogron.

"Her mother had a little fortune, the eight thousand francs which your

father--no, I mean of course your grandfather--left to her," said the

notary, making the blunder intentionally.

"Ah!" said Rogron, stupidly, not understanding the notary's sarcasm.

"Then you know nothing about your cousin's position or means?" asked

Monsieur Tiphaine.

"If Monsieur Rogron had known it," said the deputy-judge, "he would

never have left her all this time in an establishment of that kind. I

remember now that a house in Nantes belonging to Monsieur and Madame

Lorrain was sold under an order of the court, and that Mademoiselle

Lorrain's claim was swallowed up. I know this, for I was commissioner

at the time."

The notary spoke of Colonel Lorrain, who, had he lived, would have

been much amazed to know that his daughter was in such an institution.

The Rogrons beat a retreat, saying to each other that the world was

very malicious. Sylvie perceived that the news of her benevolence had

missed its effect,--in fact, she had lost ground in all minds; and she

felt that henceforth she was forbidden to attempt an intimacy with the

upper class of Provins. After this evening the Rogrons no longer

concealed their hatred of that class and all its adherents. The

brother told the sister the scandals that Colonel Gouraud and the

lawyer Vinet had put into his head about the Tiphaines, the Guenees,

the Garcelands, the Julliards, and others:--

"I declare, Sylvie, I don't see why Madame Tiphaine should turn up her

nose at shopkeeping in the rue Saint-Denis; it is more honest than

what she comes from. Madame Roguin, her mother, is cousin to those

Guillaumes of the 'Cat-playing-ball' who gave up the business to

Joseph Lebas, their son-in-law. Her father is that Roguin who failed

in 1819, and ruined the house of Cesar Birotteau. Madame Tiphaine's

fortune was stolen,--for what else are you to call it when a notary's

wife who is very rich lets her husband make a fraudulent bankruptcy?

Fine doings! and she marries her daughter in Provins to get her out of

the way,--all on account of her own relations with du Tillet. And such

people set up to be proud! Well, well, that's the world!"

On the day when Jerome Rogron and his sister began to declaim against

"the clique" they were, without being aware of it, on the road to

having a society of their own; their house was to become a rendezvous

for other interests seeking a centre,--those of the hitherto floating

elements of the liberal party in Provins. And this is how it came

about: The launch of the Rogrons in society had been watched with

great curiosity by Colonel Gouraud and the lawyer Vinet, two men drawn

together, first by their ostracism, next by their opinions. They both

professed patriotism and for the same reason,--they wished to become

of consequence. The Liberals in Provins were, so far, confined to one

old soldier who kept a cafe, an innkeeper, Monsieur Cournant a notary,

Doctor Neraud, and a few stray persons, mostly farmers or those who

had bought lands of the public domain.

The colonel and the lawyer, delighted to lay hands on a fool whose

money would be useful to their schemes, and who might himself, in

certain cases, be made to bell the cat, while his house would serve as

a meeting-ground for the scattered elements of the party, made the

most of the Rogrons' ill-will against the upper classes of the place.

The three had already a slight tie in their united subscription to the

"Constitutionnel"; it would certainly not be difficult for the colonel

to make a Liberal of the ex-mercer, though Rogron knew so little of

politics that he was capable of regarding the exploits of Sergeant

Mercier as those of a brother shopkeeper.

The expected arrival of Pierrette brought to sudden fruition the

selfish ideas of the two men, inspired as they were by the folly and

ignorance of the celibates. Seeing that Sylvie had lost all chance of

establishing herself in the good society of the place, an afterthought

came to the colonel. Old soldiers have seen so many horrors in all

lands, so many grinning corpses on battle-fields, that no

physiognomies repel them; and Gouraud began to cast his eyes on the

old maid's fortune. This imperial colonel, a short, fat man, wore

enormous rings in ears that were bushy with tufts of hair. His sparse

and grizzled whiskers were called in 1799 "fins." His jolly red face

was rather discolored, like those of all who had lived to tell of the

Beresina. The lower half of his big, pointed stomach marked the

straight line which characterizes a cavalry officer. Gouraud had

commanded the Second Hussars. His gray moustache hid a huge blustering

mouth,--if we may use a term which alone describes that gulf. He did

not eat his food, he engulfed it. A sabre cut had slit his nose, by

which his speech was made thick and very nasal, like that attributed

to Capuchins. His hands, which were short and broad, were of the kind

that make women say: "You have the hands of a rascal." His legs seemed

slender for his torso. In that fat and active body an absolutely

lawless spirit disported itself, and a thorough experience of the

things of life, together with a profound contempt for social

convention, lay hidden beneath the apparent indifference of a soldier.

Colonel Gouraud wore the cross of an officer of the Legion of honor,

and his emoluments from that, together with his salary as a retired

officer, gave him in all about three thousand francs a year.

The lawyer, tall and thin, had liberal opinions in place of talent,

and his only revenue was the meagre profits of his office. In Provins

lawyers plead their own cases. The court was unfavorable to Vinet on

account of his opinions; consequently, even the farmers who were

Liberals, when it came to lawsuits preferred to employ some lawyer who

was more congenial to the judges. Vinet was regarded with disfavor in

other ways. He was said to have seduced a rich girl in the

neighborhood of Coulommiers, and thus have forced her parents to marry

her to him. Madame Vinet was a Chargeboeuf, an old and noble family of

La Brie, whose name comes from the exploit of a squire during the

expedition of Saint Louis to Egypt. She incurred the displeasure of

her father and mother, who arranged, unknown to Vinet, to leave their

entire fortune to their son, doubtless charging him privately, to pay

over a portion of it to his sister's children.

Thus the first bold effort of the ambitious man was a failure. Pursued

by poverty, and ashamed not to give his wife the means of making a

suitable appearance, he had made desperate efforts to enter public

life, but the Chargeboeuf family refused him their influence. These

Royalists disapproved, on moral grounds, of his forced marriage;

besides, he was named Vinet, and how could they be expected to protect

a plebian? Thus he was driven from branch to branch when he tried to

get some good out of his marriage. Repulsed by every one, filled with

hatred for the family of his wife, for the government which denied him

a place, for the social world of Provins, which refused to admit him,

Vinet submitted to his fate; but his gall increased. He became a

Liberal in the belief that his fortune might yet be made by the

triumph of the opposition, and he lived in a miserable little house in

the Upper town from which his wife seldom issued. Madame Vinet had

found no one to defend her since her marriage except an old Madame de

Chargeboeuf, a widow with one daughter, who lived at Troyes. The

unfortunate young woman, destined for better things, was absolutely

alone in her home with a single child.

There are some kinds of poverty which may be nobly accepted and gaily

borne; but Vinet, devoured by ambition, and feeling himself guilty

towards his wife, was full of darkling rage; his conscience grew

elastic; and he finally came to think any means of success

permissible. His young face changed. Persons about the courts were

sometimes frightened as they looked at his viperish, flat head, his

slit mouth, his eyes gleaming through glasses, and heard his sharp,

persistent voice which rasped their nerves. His muddy skin, with its

sickly tones of green and yellow, expressed the jaundice of his balked

ambition, his perpetual disappointments and his hidden wretchedness.

He could talk and argue; he was well-informed and shrewd, and was not

without smartness and metaphor. Accustomed to look at everything from

the standpoint of his own success, he was well fitted for a

politician. A man who shrinks from nothing so long as it is legal, is

strong; and Vinet's strength lay there.

This future athlete of parliamentary debate, who was destined to share

in proclaiming the dynasty of the house of Orleans had a terrible

influence on Pierrette's fate. At the present moment he was bent on

making for himself a weapon by founding a newspaper at Provins. After

studying the Rogrons at a distance (the colonel aiding him) he had

come to the conclusion that the brother might be made useful. This

time he was not mistaken; his days of poverty were over, after seven

wretched years, when even his daily bread was sometimes lacking. The

day when Gouraud told him in the little square that the Rogrons had

finally quarrelled with the bourgeois aristocracy of the Upper town,

he nudged the colonel in the ribs significantly, and said, with a

knowing look:--

"One woman or another--handsome or ugly--_you_ don't care; marry

Mademoiselle Rogron and we can organize something at once."

"I have been thinking of it," replied Gouraud, "but the fact is they

have sent for the daughter of Colonel Lorrain, and she's their next of

kin."

"You can get them to make a will in your favor. Ha! you would get a

very comfortable house."

"As for the little girl--well, well, let's see her," said the colonel,

with a leering and thoroughly wicked look, which proved to a man of

Vinet's quality how little respect the old trooper could feel for any

girl.

IV

PIERRETTE

After her grandfather and grandmother entered the sort of hospital in

which they sadly expected to end their days, Pierrette, being young

and proud, suffered so terribly at living there on charity that she

was thankful when she heard she had rich relations. When Brigaut, the

son of her mother's friend the major, and the companion of her

childhood, who was learning his trade as a cabinet-maker at Nantes,

heard of her departure he offered her the money to pay her way to

Paris in the diligence,--sixty francs, the total of his _pour-boires_

as an apprentice, slowly amassed, and accepted by Pierrette with the

sublime indifference of true affection, showing that in a like case

she herself would be affronted by thanks.

Brigaut was in the habit of going every Sunday to Saint-Jacques to

play with Pierrette and try to console her. The vigorous young workman

knew the dear delight of bestowing a complete and devoted protection

on an object involuntarily chosen by his heart. More than once he and

Pierrette, sitting on Sundays in a corner of the garden, had

embroidered the veil of the future with their youthful projects; the

apprentice, armed with his plane, scoured the world to make their

fortune, while Pierrette waited.

In October, 1824, when the child had completed her eleventh year, she

was entrusted by the two old people and by Brigaut, all three

sorrowfully sad, to the conductor of the diligence from Nantes to

Paris, with an entreaty to put her safely on the diligence from Paris

to Provins and to take good care of her. Poor Brigaut! he ran like a

dog after the coach looking at his dear Pierrette as long as he was

able. In spite of her signs he ran over three miles, and when at last

he was exhausted his eyes, wet with tears, still followed her. She,

too, was crying when she saw him no longer running by her, and putting

her head out of the window she watched him, standing stock-still and

looking after her, as the lumbering vehicle disappeared.

The Lorrains and Brigaut knew so little of life that the girl had not

a penny when she arrived in Paris. The conductor, to whom she had

mentioned her rich friends, paid her expenses at the hotel, and made

the conductor of the Provins diligence pay him, telling him to take

good care of the girl and to see that the charges were paid by the

family, exactly as though she were a case of goods. Four days after

her departure from Nantes, about nine o'clock of a Monday night, a

kind old conductor of the Messageries-royales, took Pierrette by the

hand, and while the porters were discharging in the Grand'Rue the

packages and passengers for Provins, he led the little girl, whose

only baggage was a bundle containing two dresses, two chemises, and

two pairs of stockings, to Mademoiselle Rogron's house, which was

pointed out to him by the director at the coach office.

"Good-evening, mademoiselle and the rest of the company. I've brought

you a cousin, and here she is; and a nice little girl too, upon my

word. You have forty-seven francs to pay me, and sign my book."

Mademoiselle Sylvie and her brother were dumb with pleasure and

amazement.

"Excuse me," said the conductor, "the coach is waiting. Sign my book

and pay me forty-seven francs, sixty centimes, and whatever you please

for myself and the conductor from Nantes; we've taken care of the

little girl as if she were our own; and paid for her beds and her

food, also her fare to Provins, and other little things."

"Forty-seven francs, twelve sous!" said Sylvie.

"You are not going to dispute it?" cried the man.

"Where's the bill?" said Rogron.

"Bill! look at the book."

"Stop talking, and pay him," said Sylvie, "You see there's nothing

else to be done."

Rogron went to get the money, and gave the man forty-seven francs,

twelve sous.

"And nothing for my comrade and me?" said the conductor.

Sylvie took two francs from the depths of the old velvet bag which

held her keys.

"Thank you, no," said the man; "keep 'em yourself. We would rather

care for the little one for her own sake." He picked up his book and

departed, saying to the servant-girl: "What a pair! it seems there are

crocodiles out of Egypt!"

"Such men are always brutal," said Sylvie, who overhead the words.

"They took good care of the little girl, anyhow," said Adele with her

hands on her hips.

"We don't have to live with him," remarked Rogron.

"Where's the little one to sleep?" asked Adele.

Such was the arrival of Pierrette Lorrain in the home of her cousins,

who gazed at her with stolid eyes; she was tossed to them like a

package, with no intermediate state between the wretched chamber at

Saint-Jacques and the dining-room of her cousins, which seemed to her

a palace. She was shy and speechless. To all other eyes than those of

the Rogrons the little Breton girl would have seemed enchanting as she

stood there in her petticoat of coarse blue flannel, with a pink

cambric apron, thick shoes, blue stockings, and a white kerchief, her

hands being covered by red worsted mittens edged with white, bought

for her by the conductor. Her dainty Breton cap (which had been washed

in Paris, for the journey from Nantes had rumpled it) was like a halo

round her happy little face. This national cap, of the finest lawn,

trimmed with stiffened lace pleated in flat folds, deserves

description, it was so dainty and simple. The light coming through the

texture and the lace produced a partial shadow, the soft shadow of a

light upon the skin, which gave her the virginal grace that all

painters seek and Leopold Robert found for the Raffaelesque face of

the woman who holds a child in his picture of "The Gleaners." Beneath

this fluted frame of light sparkled a white and rosy and artless face,

glowing with vigorous health. The warmth of the room brought the blood

to the cheeks, to the tips of the pretty ears, to the lips and the end

of the delicate nose, making the natural white of the complexion

whiter still.

"Well, are you not going to say anything? I am your cousin Sylvie, and

that is your cousin Rogron."

"Do you want something to eat?" asked Rogron.

"When did you leave Nantes?" asked Sylvie.

"Is she dumb?" said Rogron.

"Poor little dear, she has hardly any clothes," cried Adele, who had

opened the child's bundle, tied up in a handkerchief of the old

Lorrains.

"Kiss your cousin," said Sylvie.

Pierrette kissed Rogron.

"Kiss your cousin," said Rogron.

Pierrette kissed Sylvie.

"She is tired out with her journey, poor little thing; she wants to go

to sleep," said Adele.

Pierrette was overcome with a sudden and invincible aversion for her

two relatives,--a feeling that no one had ever before excited in her.

Sylvie and the maid took her up to bed in the room where Brigaut

afterwards noticed the white cotton curtain. In it was a little bed

with a pole painted blue, from which hung a calico curtain; a walnut

bureau without a marble top, a small table, a looking-glass, a very

common night-table without a door, and three chairs completed the

furniture of the room. The walls, which sloped in front, were hung

with a shabby paper, blue with black flowers. The tiled floor, stained

red and polished, was icy to the feet. There was no carpet except for

a strip at the bedside. The mantelpiece of common marble was adorned

by a mirror, two candelabra in copper-gilt, and a vulgar alabaster cup

in which two pigeons, forming handles, were drinking.

"You will be comfortable here, my little girl?" said Sylvie.

"Oh, it's beautiful!" said the child, in her silvery voice.

"She's not difficult to please," muttered the stout servant. "Sha'n't

I warm her bed?" she asked.

"Yes," said Sylvie, "the sheets may be damp."

Adele brought one of her own night-caps when she returned with the

warming-pan, and Pierrette, who had never slept in anything but the

coarsest linen sheets, was amazed at the fineness and softness of the

cotton ones. When she was fairly in bed and tucked up, Adele, going

downstairs with Sylvie, could not refrain from saying, "All she has

isn't worth three francs, mademoiselle."

Ever since her economical regime began, Sylvie had compelled the maid

to sit in the dining-room so that one fire and one lamp could do for

all; except when Colonel Gouraud and Vinet came, on which occasions

Adele was sent to the kitchen.

Pierrette's arrival enlivened the rest of the evening.

"We must get her some clothes to-morrow," said Sylvie; "she has

absolutely nothing."

"No shoes but those she had on, which weigh a pound," said Adele.

"That's always so, in their part of the country," remarked Rogron.

"How she looked at her room! though it really isn't handsome enough

for a cousin of yours, mademoiselle."

"It is good enough; hold your tongue," said Sylvie.

"Gracious, what chemises! coarse enough to scratch her skin off; not a

thing can she use here," said Adele, emptying the bundle.

Master, mistress, and servant were busy till past ten o'clock,

deciding what cambric they should buy for the new chemises, how many

pairs of stockings, how many under-petticoats, and what material, and

in reckoning up the whole cost of Pierrette's outfit.

"You won't get off under three hundred francs," said Rogron, who

could remember the different prices, and add them up from his former

shop-keeping habit.

"Three hundred francs!" cried Sylvie.

"Yes, three hundred. Add it up."

The brother and sister went over the calculation once more, and found

the cost would be fully three hundred francs, not counting the making.

"Three hundred francs at one stroke!" said Sylvie to herself as she

got into bed.

* * * * *

Pierrette was one of those children of love whom love endows with its

tenderness, its vivacity, its gaiety, its nobility, its devotion.

Nothing had so far disturbed or wounded a heart that was delicate as

that of a fawn, but which was now painfully repressed by the cold

greeting of her cousins. If Brittany had been full of outward misery,

at least it was full of love. The old Lorrains were the most incapable

of merchants, but they were also the most loving, frank, caressing, of

friends, like all who are incautious and free from calculation. Their

little granddaughter had received no other education at Pen-Hoel than

that of nature. Pierrette went where she liked, in a boat on the pond,

or roaming the village and the fields with Jacques Brigaut, her

comrade, exactly as Paul and Virginia might have done. Petted by

everybody, free as air, they gaily chased the joys of childhood. In

summer they ran to watch the fishing, they caught the many-colored

insects, they gathered flowers, they gardened; in winter they made

slides, they built snow-men or huts, or pelted each other with

snowballs. Welcomed by all, they met with smiles wherever they went.

When the time came to begin their education, disasters came, too.

Jacques, left without means at the death of his father, was

apprenticed by his relatives to a cabinet-maker, and fed by charity,

as Pierrette was soon to be at Saint-Jacques. Until the little girl

was taken with her grandparents to that asylum, she had known nothing

but fond caresses and protection from every one. Accustomed to confide

in so much love, the little darling missed in these rich relatives, so

eagerly desired, the kindly looks and ways which all the world, even

strangers and the conductors of the coaches, had bestowed upon her.

Her bewilderment, already great, was increased by the moral atmosphere

she had entered. The heart turns suddenly cold or hot like the body.

The poor child wanted to cry, without knowing why; but being very

tired she went to sleep.

The next morning, Pierrette being, like all country children,

accustomed to get up early, was awake two hours before the cook. She

dressed herself, stepping on tiptoe about her room, looked out at the

little square, started to go downstairs and was struck with amazement

by the beauties of the staircase. She stopped to examine all its

details: the painted walls, the brasses, the various ornamentations,

the window fixtures. Then she went down to the garden-door, but was

unable to open it, and returned to her room to wait until Adele should

be stirring. As soon as the woman went to the kitchen Pierrette flew

to the garden and took possession of it, ran to the river, was amazed

at the kiosk, and sat down in it; truly, she had enough to see and to

wonder at until her cousins were up. At breakfast Sylvie said to

her:--

"Was it you, little one, who was trotting over my head by daybreak,

and making that racket on the stairs? You woke me so that I couldn't

go to sleep again. You must be very good and quiet, and amuse yourself

without noise. Your cousin doesn't like noise."

"And you must wipe your feet," said Rogron. "You went into the kiosk

with your dirty shoes, and they've tracked all over the floor. Your

cousin likes cleanliness. A great girl like you ought to be clean.

Weren't you clean in Brittany? But I recollect when I went down there

to buy thread it was pitiable to see the folks,--they were like

savages. At any rate she has a good appetite," added Rogron, looking

at his sister; "one would think she hadn't eaten anything for days."

Thus, from the very start Pierrette was hurt by the remarks of her two

cousins,--hurt, she knew not why. Her straightforward, open nature,

hitherto left to itself, was not given to reflection. Incapable of

thinking that her cousins were hard, she was fated to find it out

slowly through suffering. After breakfast the brother and sister,

pleased with Pierrette's astonishment at the house and anxious to

enjoy it, took her to the salon to show her its splendors and teach

her not to touch them. Many celibates, driven by loneliness and the

moral necessity of caring for something, substitute factitious

affections for natural ones; they love dogs, cats, canaries, servants,

or their confessor. Rogron and Sylvie had come to the pass of loving

immoderately their house and furniture, which had cost them so dear.

Sylvie began by helping Adele in the mornings to dust and arrange the

furniture, under pretence that she did not know how to keep it looking

as good as new. This dusting was soon a desired occupation to her, and

the furniture, instead of losing its value in her eyes, became ever

more precious. To use things without hurting them or soiling them or

scratching the woodwork or clouding the varnish, that was the problem

which soon became the mania of the old maid's life. Sylvie had a

closet full of bits of wool, wax, varnish, and brushes, which she had

learned to use with the dexterity of a cabinet-maker; she had her

feather dusters and her dusting-cloths; and she rubbed away without

fear of hurting herself,--she was so strong. The glance of her cold

blue eyes, hard as steel, was forever roving over the furniture and

under it, and you could as soon have found a tender spot in her heart

as a bit of fluff under the sofa.

After the remarks made at Madame Tiphaine's, Sylvie dared not flinch

from the three hundred francs for Pierrette's clothes. During the

first week her time was wholly taken up, and Pierrette's too, by

frocks to order and try on, chemises and petticoats to cut out and

have made by a seamstress who went out by the day. Pierrette did not

know how to sew.

"That's pretty bringing up!" said Rogron. "Don't you know how to do

anything, little girl?"

Pierrette, who knew nothing but how to love, made a pretty, childish

gesture.

"What did you do in Brittany?" asked Rogron.

"I played," she answered, naively. "Everybody played with me.

Grandmamma and grandpapa they told me stories. Ah! they all loved me!"

"Hey!" said Rogron; "didn't you take it easy!"

Pierrette opened her eyes wide, not comprehending.

"She is as stupid as an owl," said Sylvie to Mademoiselle Borain, the

best seamstress in Provins.

"She's so young," said the workwoman, looking kindly at Pierrette,

whose delicate little muzzle was turned up to her with a coaxing look.

Pierrette preferred the sewing-women to her relations. She was

endearing in her ways with them, she watched their work, and made them

those pretty speeches that seem like the flowers of childhood, and

which her cousin had already silenced, for that gaunt woman loved to

impress those under her with salutary awe. The sewing-women were

delighted with Pierrette. Their work, however, was not carried on

without many and loud grumblings.

"That child will make us pay through the nose!" cried Sylvie to her

brother.

"Stand still, my dear, and don't plague us; it is all for you and not

for me," she would say to Pierrette when the child was being measured.

Sometimes it was, when Pierrette would ask the seamstress some

question, "Let Mademoiselle Borain do her work, and don't talk to her;

it is not you who are paying for her time."

"Mademoiselle," said Mademoiselle Borain, "am I to back-stitch this?"

"Yes, do it firmly; I don't want to be making such an outfit as this

every day."

Sylvie put the same spirit of emulation into Pierrette's outfit that

she had formerly put into the house. She was determined that her

cousin should be as well dressed as Madame Garceland's little girl.

She bought the child fashionable boots of bronzed kid like those the

little Tiphaines wore, very fine cotton stockings, a corset by the

best maker, a dress of blue reps, a pretty cape lined with white silk,

--all this that she, Sylvie, might hold her own against the children

of the women who had rejected her. The underclothes were quite in

keeping with the visible articles of dress, for Sylvie feared the

examining eyes of the various mothers. Pierrette's chemises were of

fine Madapolam calico. Mademoiselle Borain had mentioned that the

sub-prefect's little girls wore cambric drawers, embroidered and

trimmed in the latest style. Pierrette had the same. Sylvie ordered

for her a charming little drawn bonnet of blue velvet lined with white

satin, precisely like the one worn by Dr. Martener's little daughter.

Thus attired, Pierrette was the most enchanting little girl in all

Provins. On Sunday, after church, all the ladies kissed her; Mesdames

Tiphaine, Garceland, Galardon, Julliard, and the rest fell in love

with the sweet little Breton girl. This enthusiasm was deeply

flattering to old Sylvie's self-love; she regarded it as less due to

Pierrette than to her own benevolence. She ended, however, in being

affronted by her cousin's success. Pierrette was constantly invited

out, and Sylvie allowed her to go, always for the purpose of

triumphing over "those ladies." Pierrette was much in demand for games

or little parties and dinners with their own little girls. She had

succeeded where the Rogrons had failed; and Mademoiselle Sylvie soon

grew indignant that Pierrette was asked to other children's houses

when those children never came to hers. The artless little thing did

not conceal the pleasure she found in her visits to these ladies,

whose affectionate manners contrasted strangely with the harshness of

her two cousins. A mother would have rejoiced in the happiness of her

little one, but the Rogrons had taken Pierrette for their own sakes,

not for hers; their feelings, far from being parental, were dyed in

selfishness and a sort of commercial calculation.

The handsome outfit, the fine Sunday dresses, and the every-day frocks

were the beginning of Pierrette's troubles. Like all children free to

amuse themselves, who are accustomed to follow the dictates of their

own lively fancies, she was very hard on her clothes, her shoes, and

above all on those embroidered drawers. A mother when she reproves her

child thinks only of the child; her voice is gentle; she does not

raise it unless driven to extremities, or when the child is much in

fault. But here, in this great matter of Pierrette's clothes, the

cousins' money was the first consideration; their interests were to be

thought of, not the child's. Children have the perceptions of the

canine race for the sentiments of those who rule them; they know

instinctively whether they are loved or only tolerated. Pure and

innocent hearts are more distressed by shades of difference than by

contrasts; a child does not understand evil, but it knows when the

instinct of the good and the beautiful which nature has implanted in

it is shocked. The lectures which Pierrette now drew upon herself on

propriety of behavior, modesty, and economy were merely the corollary

of the one theme, "Pierrette will ruin us."

These perpetual fault-findings, which were destined to have a fatal

result for the poor child, brought the two celibates back to the old

beaten track of their shop-keeping habits, from which their removal to

Provins had parted them, and in which their natures were now to expand

and flourish. Accustomed in the old days to rule and to make

inquisitions, to order about and reprove their clerks sharply, Rogron

and his sister had actually suffered for want of victims. Little minds

need to practise despotism to relieve their nerves, just as great

souls thirst for equality in friendship to exercise their hearts.

Narrow natures expand by persecuting as much as others through

beneficence; they prove their power over their fellows by cruel

tyranny as others do by loving kindness; they simply go the way their

temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of self-interest

and you may read the enigma of most social matters.

Thenceforth Pierrette became a necessity to the lives of her cousins.

From the day of her coming their minds were occupied,--first, with her

outfit, and then with the novelty of a third presence. But every new

thing, a sentiment and even a tyranny, is moulded as time goes on into

fresh shapes. Sylvie began by calling Pierrette "my dear," or "little

one." Then she abandoned the gentler terms for "Pierrette" only. Her

reprimands, at first only cross, became sharp and angry; and no sooner

were their feet on the path of fault-finding than the brother and

sister made rapid strides. They were no longer bored to death! It was

not their deliberate intention to be wicked and cruel; it was simply

the blind instinct of an imbecile tyranny. The pair believed they were

doing Pierrette a service, just as they had thought their harshness a

benefit to their apprentices.

Pierrette, whose true and noble and extreme sensibility was the

antipodes of the Rogrons' hardness, had a dread of being scolded; it

wounded her so sharply that the tears would instantly start in her

beautiful, pure eyes. She had a great struggle with herself before she

could repress the enchanting sprightliness which made her so great a

favorite elsewhere. After a time she displayed it only in the homes of

her little friends. By the end of the first month she had learned to

be passive in her cousins' house,--so much so that Rogron one day

asked her if she was ill. At that sudden question, she ran to the end

of the garden, and stood crying beside the river, into which her tears

may have fallen as she herself was about to fall into the social

torrent.

One day, in spite of all her care, she tore her best reps frock at

Madame Tiphaine's, where she was spending a happy day. The poor child

burst into tears, foreseeing the cruel things which would be said to

her at home. Questioned by her friends, she let fall a few words about

her terrible cousin. Madame Tiphaine happened to have some reps

exactly like that of the frock, and she put in a new breadth herself.

Mademoiselle Rogron found out the trick, as she expressed it, which

the little devil had played her. From that day forth she refused to

let Pierrette go to any of "those women's" houses.

The life the poor girl led in Provins was divided into three distinct

phases. The first, already shown, in which she had some joy mingled

with the cold kindness of her cousins and their sharp reproaches,

lasted three months. Sylvie's refusal to let her go to her little

friends, backed by the necessity of beginning her education, ended the

first phase of her life at Provins, the only period when that life was

bearable to her.

These events, produced at the Rogrons by Pierrette's presence, were

studied by Vinet and the colonel with the caution of foxes preparing

to enter a poultry-yard and disturbed by seeing a strange fowl. They

both called from time to time,--but seldom, so as not to alarm the old

maid; they talked with Rogron under various pretexts, and made

themselves masters of his mind with an affectation of reserve and

modesty which the great Tartuffe himself would have respected. The

colonel and the lawyer were spending the evening with Rogron on the

very day when Sylvie had refused in bitter language to let Pierrette

go again to Madame Tiphaine's, or elsewhere. Being told of this

refusal the colonel and the lawyer looked at each other with an air

which seemed to say that they at least knew Provins well.

"Madame Tiphaine intended to insult you," said the lawyer. "We have

long been warning Rogron of what would happen. There's no good to be

got from those people."

"What can you expect from the anti-national party!" cried the colonel,

twirling his moustache and interrupting the lawyer. "But,

mademoiselle, if we had tried to warn you from those people you might

have supposed we had some malicious motive in what we said. If you

like a game of cards in the evening, why don't you have it at home;

why not play your boston here, in your own house? Is it impossible to

fill the places of those idiots, the Julliards and all the rest of

them? Vinet and I know how to play boston, and we can easily find a

fourth. Vinet might present his wife to you; she is charming, and,

what is more, a Chargeboeuf. You will not be so exacting as those apes

of the Upper town; _you_ won't require a good little housewife, who is

compelled by the meanness of her family to do her own work, to dress

like a duchess. Poor woman, she has the courage of a lion and the

meekness of a lamb."

Sylvie Rogron showed her long yellow teeth as she smiled on the

colonel, who bore the sight heroically and assumed a flattered air.

"If we are only four we can't play boston every night," said Sylvie.

"Why not? What do you suppose an old soldier of the Empire like me

does with himself? And as for Vinet, his evenings are always free.

Besides, you'll have plenty of other visitors; I warrant you that," he

added, with a rather mysterious air.

"What you ought to do," said Vinet, "is to take an open stand against

the ministerialists of Provins and form an opposition to them. You

would soon see how popular that would make you; you would have a

society about you at once. The Tiphaines would be furious at an

opposition salon. Well, well, why not laugh at others, if others laugh

at you?--and they do; the clique doesn't mince matters in talking

about you."

"How's that?" demanded Sylvie.

In the provinces there is always a valve or a faucet through which

gossip leaks from one social set to another. Vinet knew all the slurs

cast upon the Rogrons in the salons from which they were now excluded.

The deputy-judge and archaeologist Desfondrilles belonged to neither

party. With other independents like him, he repeated what he heard on

both sides and Vinet made the most of it. The lawyer's spiteful tongue

put venom into Madame Tiphaine's speeches, and by showing Rogron and

Sylvie the ridicule they had brought upon themselves he roused an

undying spirit of hatred in those bitter natures, which needed an

object for their petty passions.

A few days later Vinet brought his wife, a well-bred woman, neither

pretty nor plain, timid, very gentle, and deeply conscious of her

false position. Madame Vinet was fair-complexioned, faded by the cares

of her poor household, and very simply dressed. No woman could have

pleased Sylvie more. Madame Vinet endured her airs, and bent before

them like one accustomed to subjection. On the poor woman's rounded

brow and delicately timid cheek and in her slow and gentle glance,

were the traces of deep reflection, of those perceptive thoughts which

women who are accustomed to suffer bury in total silence.

The influence of the colonel (who now displayed to Sylvie the graces

of a courtier, in marked contradiction to his usual military

brusqueness), together with that of the astute Vinet, was soon to harm

the Breton child. Shut up in the house, no longer allowed to go out

except in company with her old cousin, Pierrette, that pretty little

squirrel, was at the mercy of the incessant cry, "Don't touch that,

child, let that alone!" She was perpetually being lectured on her

carriage and behavior; if she stooped or rounded her shoulders her

cousin would call to her to be as erect as herself (Sylvie was rigid

as a soldier presenting arms to his colonel); sometimes indeed the

ill-natured old maid enforced the order by slaps on the back to make

the girl straighten up.

Thus the free and joyous little child of the Marais learned by degrees

to repress all liveliness and to make herself, as best she could, an

automaton.

V

HISTORY OF POOR COUSINS IN THE HOME OF RICH ONES

One evening, which marked the beginning of Pierrette's second phase of

life in her cousin's house, the child, whom the three guests had not

seen during the evening, came into the room to kiss her relatives and

say good-night to the company. Sylvie turned her cheek coldly to the

pretty creature, as if to avoid kissing her. The motion was so cruelly

significant that the tears sprang to Pierrette's eyes.

"Did you prick yourself, little girl?" said the atrocious Vinet.

"What is the matter?" asked Sylvie, severely.

"Nothing," said the poor child, going up to Rogron.

"Nothing?" said Sylvie, "that's nonsense; nobody cries for nothing."

"What is it, my little darling?" said Madame Vinet.

"My rich cousin isn't as kind to me as my poor grandmother was,"

sobbed Pierrette.

"Your grandmother took your money," said Sylvie, "and your cousin will

leave you hers."

The colonel and the lawyer glanced at each other.

"I would rather be robbed and loved," said Pierrette.

"Then you shall be sent back whence you came."

"But what has the dear little thing done?" asked Madame Vinet.

Vinet gave his wife the terrible, fixed, cold look with which men

enforce their absolute dominion. The hapless helot, punished

incessantly for not having the one thing that was wanted of her, a

fortune, took up her cards.

"What has she done?" said Sylvie, throwing up her head with such

violence that the yellow wall-flowers in her cap nodded. "She is

always looking about to annoy us. She opened my watch to see the

inside, and meddled with the wheel and broke the mainspring.

Mademoiselle pays no heed to what is said to her. I am all day long

telling her to take care of things, and I might just as well talk to

that lamp."

Pierrette, ashamed at being reproved before strangers, crept softly

out of the room.

"I am thinking all the time how to subdue that child," said Rogron.

"Isn't she old enough to go to school?" asked Madame Vinet.

Again she was silenced by a look from her husband, who had been

careful to tell her nothing of his own or the colonel's schemes.

"This is what comes of taking charge of other people's children!"

cried the colonel. "You may still have some of your own, you or your

brother. Why don't you both marry?"

Sylvie smiled agreeably on the colonel. For the first time in her life

she met a man to whom the idea that she could marry did not seem

absurd.

"Madame Vinet is right," cried Rogron; "perhaps teaching would keep

Pierrette quiet. A master wouldn't cost much."

The colonel's remark so preoccupied Sylvie that she made no answer to

her brother.

"If you are willing to be security for that opposition journal I was

talking to you about," said Vinet, "you will find an excellent master

for the little cousin in the managing editor; we intend to engage that

poor schoolmaster who lost his employment through the encroachments of

the clergy. My wife is right; Pierrette is a rough diamond that wants

polishing."

"I thought you were a baron," said Sylvie to the colonel, while the

cards were being dealt, and after a long pause in which they had all

been rather thoughtful.

"Yes; but when I was made baron, in 1814, after the battle of Nangis,

where my regiment performed miracles, I had money and influence enough

to secure the rank. But now my barony is like the grade of general

which I held in 1815,--it needs a revolution to give it back to me."

"If you will secure my endorsement by a mortgage," said Rogron,

answering Vinet after long consideration, "I will give it."

"That can easily be arranged," said Vinet. "The new paper will soon

restore the colonel's rights, and make your salon more powerful in

Provins than those of Tiphaine and company."

"How so?" asked Sylvie.

While his wife was dealing and Vinet himself explaining the importance

they would all gain by the publication of an independent newspaper,

Pierrette was dissolved in tears; her heart and her mind were one in

this matter; she felt and knew that her cousin was more to blame than

she was. The little country girl instinctively understood that charity

and benevolence ought to be a complete offering. She hated her

handsome frocks and all the things that were made for her; she was

forced to pay too dearly for such benefits. She wept with vexation at

having given cause for complaint against her, and resolved to behave

in future in such a way as to compel her cousins to find no further

fault with her. The thought then came into her mind how grand Brigaut

had been in giving her all his savings without a word. Poor child! she

fancied her troubles were now at their worst; she little knew that

other misfortunes were even now being planned for her in the salon.

A few days later Pierrette had a writing-master. She was taught to

read, write, and cipher. Enormous injury was thus supposed to be done

to the Rogrons' house. Ink-spots were found on the tables, on the

furniture, on Pierrette's clothes; copy-books and pens were left

about; sand was scattered everywhere, books were torn and dog's-eared

as the result of these lessons. She was told in harsh terms that she

would have to earn her own living, and not be a burden to others. As

she listened to these cruel remarks Pierrette's throat contracted

violently with acute pain, her heart throbbed. She was forced to

restrain her tears, or she was scolded for weeping and told it was an

insult to the kindness of her magnanimous cousins. Rogron had found

the life that suited him. He scolded Pierrette as he used to scold his

clerks; he would call her when at play, and compel her to study; he

made her repeat her lessons, and became himself the almost savage

master of the poor child. Sylvie, on her side, considered it a duty to

teach Pierrette the little that she knew herself about women's work.

Neither Rogron nor his sister had the slightest softness in their

natures. Their narrow minds, which found real pleasure in worrying the

poor child, passed insensibly from outward kindness to extreme

severity. This severity was necessitated, they believed, by what they

called the self-will of the child, which had not been broken when

young and was very obstinate. Her masters were ignorant how to give to

their instructions a form suited to the intelligence of the pupil,--a

thing, by the bye, which marks the difference between public and

private education. The fault was far less with Pierrette than with her

cousins. It took her an infinite length of time to learn the

rudiments. She was called stupid and dull, clumsy and awkward for mere

nothings. Incessantly abused in words, the child suffered still more

from the harsh looks of her cousins. She acquired the doltish ways of

a sheep; she dared not do anything of her own impulse, for all she did

was misinterpreted, misjudged, and ill-received. In all things she

awaited silently the good pleasure and the orders of her cousins,

keeping her thoughts within her own mind and sheltering herself behind

a passive obedience. Her brilliant colors began to fade. Sometimes she

complained of feeling ill. When her cousin asked, "Where?" the poor

little thing, who had pains all over her, answered, "Everywhere."

"Nonsense! who ever heard of any one suffering everywhere?" cried

Sylvie. "If you suffered everywhere you'd be dead."

"People suffer in their chests," said Rogron, who liked to hear

himself harangue, "or they have toothache, headache, pains in their

feet or stomach, but no one has pains everywhere. What do you mean by

everywhere? I can tell you; 'everywhere' means _nowhere_. Don't you

know what you are doing?--you are complaining for complaining's sake."

Pierrette ended by total silence, seeing how all her girlish remarks,

the flowers of her dawning intelligence, were replied to with ignorant

commonplaces which her natural good sense told her were ridiculous.

"You complain," said Rogron, "but you've got the appetite of a monk."

The only person who did not bruise the delicate little flower was the

fat servant woman, Adele. Adele would go up and warm her bed,--doing

it on the sly after a certain evening when Sylvie had scolded her for

giving that comfort to the child.

"Children should be hardened, to give them strong constitutions. Am I

and my brother the worse for it?" said Sylvie. "You'll make Pierrette

a _peakling_"; this was a word in the Rogron vocabulary which meant a

puny and suffering little being.

The naturally endearing ways of the angelic child were treated as

dissimulation. The fresh, pure blossoms of affection which bloomed

instinctively in that young soul were pitilessly crushed. Pierrette

suffered many a cruel blow on the tender flesh of her heart. If she

tried to soften those ferocious natures by innocent, coaxing wiles

they accused her of doing it with an object. "Tell me at once what you

want?" Rogron would say, brutally; "you are not coaxing me for

nothing."

Neither brother nor sister believed in affection, and Pierrette's

whole being was affection. Colonel Gouraud, anxious to please

Mademoiselle Rogron, approved of all she did about Pierrette. Vinet

also encouraged them in what they said against her. He attributed all

her so-called misdeeds to the obstinacy of the Breton character, and

declared that no power, no will, could ever conquer it. Rogron and his

sister were so shrewdly flattered by the two manoeuvrers that the

former agreed to go security for the "Courrier de Provins," and the

latter invested five thousand francs in the enterprise.

On this, the colonel and lawyer took the field. They got a hundred

shares, of five hundred francs each, taken among the farmers and

others called independents, and also among those who had bought lands

of the national domains,--whose fears they worked upon. They even

extended their operations throughout the department and along its

borders. Each shareholder of course subscribed to the paper. The

judicial advertisements were divided between the "Bee-hive" and the

"Courrier." The first issue of the latter contained a pompous eulogy

on Rogron. He was presented to the community as the Laffitte of

Provins. The public mind having thus received an impetus in this new

direction, it was manifest, of course, that the coming elections would

be contested. Madame Tiphaine, whose highest hope was to take her

husband to Paris as deputy, was in despair. After reading an article

in the new paper aimed at her and at Julliard junior, she remarked:

"Unfortunately for me, I forgot that there is always a scoundrel close

to a dupe, and that fools are magnets to clever men of the fox breed."

As soon as the "Courrier" was fairly launched on a radius of fifty

miles, Vinet bought a new coat and decent boots, waistcoats, and

trousers. He set up the gray slouch hat sacred to liberals, and showed

his linen. His wife took a servant, and appeared in public dressed as

the wife of a prominent man should be; her caps were pretty. Vinet

proved grateful--out of policy. He and his friend Cournant, the

liberal notary and the rival of the ministerial notary Auffray, became

the close advisers of the Rogrons, to whom they were able to do a

couple of signal services. The leases granted by old Rogron to their

father in 1815, when matters were at a low ebb, were about to expire.

Horticulture and vegetable gardening had developed enormously in the

neighborhood of Provins. The lawyer and notary set to work to enable

the Rogrons to increase their rentals. Vinet won two lawsuits against

two districts on a question of planting trees, which involved five

hundred poplars. The proceeds of the poplars, added to the savings of

the brother and sister, who for the last three years had laid by six

thousand a year at high interest, was wisely invested in the purchase

of improved lands. Vinet also undertook and carried out the ejectment

of certain peasants to whom the elder Rogron had lent money on their

farms, and who had strained every nerve to pay off the debt, but in

vain. The cost of the Rogrons' fine house was thus in a measure

recouped. Their landed property, lying around Provins and chosen by

their father with the sagacious eye of an innkeeper, was divided into

small holdings, the largest of which did not exceed five acres, and

rented to safe tenants, men who owned other parcels of land, that were

ample security for their leases. These investments brought in, by

1826, five thousand francs a year. Taxes were charged to the tenants,

and there were no buildings needing insurance or repairs.

By the end of the second period of Pierrette's stay in Provins life

had become so hard for her, the cold indifference of all who came to

the house, the silly fault-finding, and the total absence of affection

on the part of her cousins grew so bitter, she was conscious of a

chill dampness like that of a grave creeping round her, that the bold

idea of escaping, on foot and without money, to Brittany and to her

grandparents took possession of her mind. Two events hindered her from

attempting it. Old Lorrain died, and Rogron was appointed guardian of

his little cousin. If the grandmother had died first, we may believe

that Rogron, advised by Vinet, would have claimed Pierrette's eight

thousand francs and reduced the old man to penury.

"You may, perhaps, inherit from Pierrette," said Vinet, with a horrid

smile. "Who knows who may live and who may die?"

Enlightened by that remark, Rogron gave old Madame Lorrain no peace

until she had secured to Pierrette the reversion of the eight thousand

francs at her death.

Pierrette was deeply shocked by these events. She was on the point of

making her first communion,--another reason for resigning the hope of

escape from Provins. This ceremony, simple and customary as it was,

led to great changes in the Rogron household. Sylvie learned that

Monsieur le cure Peroux was instructing the little Julliards,

Lesourds, Garcelands, and the rest. She therefore made it a point of

honor that Pierrette should be instructed by the vicar himself,

Monsieur Habert, a priest who was thought to belong to the

_Congregation_, very zealous for the interests of the Church, and much

feared in Provins,--a man who hid a vast ambition beneath the

austerity of stern principles. The sister of this priest, an unmarried

woman about thirty years of age, kept a school for young ladies.

Brother and sister looked alike; both were thin, yellow, black-haired,

and bilious.

Like a true Breton girl, cradled in the practices and poetry of

Catholicism, Pierrette opened her heart and ears to the words of this

imposing priest. Sufferings predispose the mind to devotion, and

nearly all young girls, impelled by instinctive tenderness, are

inclined to mysticism, the deepest aspect of religion. The priest

found good soil in which to sow the seed of the Gospel and the dogmas

of the Church. He completely changed the current of the girl's

thoughts. Pierrette loved Jesus Christ in the light in which he is

presented to young girls at the time of their first communion, as a

celestial bridegroom; her physical and moral sufferings gained a

meaning for her; she saw the finger of God in all things. Her soul, so

cruelly hurt although she could not accuse her cousins of actual

wrong, took refuge in that sphere to which all sufferers fly on the

wings of the cardinal virtues,--Faith, Hope, Charity. She abandoned

her thoughts of escape. Sylvie, surprised by the transformation

Monsieur Habert had effected in Pierrette, was curious to know how it

had been done. And it thus came about that the austere priest, while

preparing Pierrette for her first communion, also won to God the

hitherto erring soul of Mademoiselle Sylvie. Sylvie became pious.

Jerome Rogron, on whom the so-called Jesuit could get no grip (for

just then the influence of His Majesty the late _Constitutionnel_ the

First was more powerful over weaklings than the influence of the

Church), Jerome Rogron remained faithful to Colonel Gouraud, Vinet,

and Liberalism.

Mademoiselle Rogron naturally made the acquaintance of Mademoiselle

Habert, with whom she sympathized deeply. The two spinsters loved each

other as sisters. Mademoiselle Habert offered to take Pierrette into

her school to spare Sylvie the annoyance of her education; but the

brother and sister both declared that Pierrette's absence would make

the house too lonely; their attachment to their little cousin seemed

excessive.

When Gouraud and Vinet became aware of the advent of Mademoiselle

Habert on the scene they concluded that the ambitious priest her

brother had the same matrimonial plan for his sister that the colonel

was forming for himself and Sylvie.

"Your sister wants to get you married," said Vinet to Rogron.

"With whom?" asked Rogron.

"With that old sorceress of a schoolmistress," cried the colonel,

twirling his moustache.

"She hasn't said anything to me about it," said Rogron, naively.

So thorough an old maid as Sylvie was certain to make good progress in

the way of salvation. The influence of the priest would as certainly

increase, and in the end affect Rogron, over whom Sylvie had great

power. The two Liberals, who were naturally alarmed, saw plainly that

if the priest were resolved to marry his sister to Rogron (a far more

suitable marriage than that of Sylvie to the colonel) he could then

drive Sylvie in extreme devotion to the Church, and put Pierrette in a

convent. They might therefore lose eighteen months' labor in flattery

and meannesses of all sorts. Their minds were suddenly filled with a

bitter, silent hatred to the priest and his sister, though they felt

the necessity of living on good terms with them in order to track

their manoeuvres. Monsieur and Mademoiselle Habert, who could play

both whist and boston, now came every evening to the Rogrons. The

assiduity of the one pair induced the assiduity of the other. The

colonel and lawyer felt that they were pitted against adversaries who

were fully as strong as they,--a presentiment that was shared by the

priest and his sister. The situation soon became that of a

battle-field. Precisely as the colonel was enabling Sylvie to taste

the unhoped-for joys of being sought in marriage, so Mademoiselle

Habert was enveloping the timid Rogron in the cotton-wool of her

attentions, words, and glances. Neither side could utter that grand

word of statesmanship, "Let us divide!" for each wanted the whole prey.

The two clever foxes of the Opposition made the mistake of pulling the

first trigger. Vinet, under the spur of self-interest, bethought

himself of his wife's only friends, and looked up Mademoiselle de

Chargeboeuf and her mother. The two women were living in poverty at

Troyes on two thousand francs a year. Mademoiselle Bathilde de

Chargeboeuf was one of those fine creatures who believe in marriage

for love up to their twenty-fifth year, and change their opinion when

they find themselves still unmarried. Vinet managed to persuade Madame

de Chargeboeuf to join her means to his and live with his family in

Provins, where Bathilde, he assured her, could marry a fool named

Rogron, and, clever as she was, take her place in the best society of

the place.

The arrival of Madame and Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf in the lawyer's

household was a great reinforcement for the liberal party; and it

created consternation among the aristocrats of Provins and also in the

Tiphaine clique. Madame de Breautey, horrified to see two women of

rank so misled, begged them to come to her. She was shocked that the

royalists of Troyes had so neglected the mother and daughter, whose

situation she now learned for the first time.

"How is it that no old country gentleman has married that dear girl,

who is cut out for a lady of the manor?" she said. "They have let her

run to seed, and now she is to be flung at the head of a Rogron!"

She ransacked the whole department but did not succeed in finding any

gentleman willing to marry a girl whose mother had only two thousand

francs a year. The "clique" and the subprefect also looked about them

with the same object, but they were all too late. Madame de Breautey

made terrible charges against the selfishness which degraded France,

--the consequence, she said, of materialism, and of the importance

now given by the laws to money: nobility was no longer of value! nor

beauty either! Such creatures as the Rogrons, the Vinets, could stand

up and fight with the King of France!

Bathilde de Chargeboeuf had not only the incontestable superiority of

beauty over her rival, but that of dress as well. She was dazzlingly

fair. At twenty-five her shoulders were fully developed, and the

curves of her beautiful figure were exquisite. The roundness of her

throat, the purity of its lines, the wealth of her golden hair, the

charming grace of her smile, the distinguished carriage of her head,

the character of her features, the fine eyes finely placed beneath a

well-formed brow, her every motion, noble and high-bred, and her light

and graceful figure,--all were in harmony. Her hands were beautiful,

and her feet slender. Health gave her, perhaps, too much the look of a

handsome barmaid. "But that can't be a defect in the eyes of a

Rogron," sighed Madame Tiphaine. Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf's dress

when she made her first appearance in Provins at the Rogrons' house

was very simple. Her brown merino gown edged with green embroidery was

worn low-necked; but a tulle fichu, carefully drawn down by hidden

strings, covered her neck and shoulders, though it opened a little in

front, where its folds were caught together with a _sevigne_. Beneath

this delicate fabric Bathilde's beauties seemed all the more enticing

and coquettish. She took off her velvet bonnet and her shawl on

arriving, and showed her pretty ears adorned with what were then

called "ear-drops" in gold. She wore a little _jeannette_--a black

velvet ribbon with a heart attached--round her throat, where it shone

like the jet ring which fantastic nature had fastened round the tail

of a white angora cat. She knew all the little tricks of a girl who

seeks to marry; her fingers arranged her curls which were not in the

least out of order; she entreated Rogron to fasten a cuff-button, thus

showing him her wrist, a request which that dazzled fool rudely

refused, hiding his emotions under the mask of indifference. The

timidity of the only love he was ever to feel in the whole course of

his life took an external appearance of dislike. Sylvie and her friend

Celeste Habert were deceived by it; not so Vinet, the wise head of

this doltish circle, among whom no one really coped with him but the

priest,--the colonel being for a long time his ally.

On the other hand the colonel was behaving to Sylvie very much as

Bathilde behaved to Rogron. He put on a clean shirt every evening and

wore velvet stocks, which set off his martial features and the

spotless white of his collar. He adopted the fashion of white pique

waistcoats, and caused to be made for him a new surtout of blue cloth,

on which his red rosette glowed finely; all this under pretext of

doing honor to the new guests Madame and Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf.

He even refrained from smoking for two hours previous to his

appearance in the Rogrons' salon. His grizzled hair was brushed in a

waving line across a cranium which was ochre in tone. He assumed the

air and manner of a party leader, of a man who was preparing to drive

out the enemies of France, the Bourbons, on short, to beat of drum.

The satanic lawyer and the wily colonel played the priest and his

sister a more cruel trick than even the importation of the beautiful

Madame de Chargeboeuf, who was considered by all the Liberal party and

by Madame de Breautey and her aristocratic circle to be far handsomer

than Madame Tiphaine. These two great statesmen of the little

provincial town made everybody believe that the priest was in sympathy

with their ideas; so that before long Provins began to talk of him as

a liberal ecclesiastic. As soon as this news reached the bishop

Monsieur Habert was sent for and admonished to cease his visits to the

Rogrons; but his sister continued to go there. Thus the salon Rogron

became a fixed fact and a constituted power.

Before the year was out political intrigues were not less lively than

the matrimonial schemes of the Rogron salon. While the selfish

interests hidden in these hearts were struggling in deadly combat the

events which resulted from them had a fatal celebrity. Everybody knows

that the Villele ministry was overthrown by the elections of 1826.

Vinet, the Liberal candidate at Provins, who had borrowed money of his

notary to buy a domain which made him eligible for election, came very

near defeating Monsieur Tiphaine, who saved his election by only two

votes. The headquarters of the Liberals was the Rogron salon; among

the _habitues_ were the notary Cournant and his wife, and Doctor

Neraud, whose youth was said to have been stormy, but who now took a

serious view of life; he gave himself up to study and was, according

to all Liberals, a far more capable man than Monsieur Martener, the

aristocratic physician. As for the Rogrons, they no more understood

their present triumph than they had formerly understood their

ostracism.

The beautiful Bathilde, to whom Vinet had explained Pierrette as an

enemy, was extremely disdainful to the girl. It seemed as though

everybody's selfish schemes demanded the humiliation of that poor

victim. Madame Vinet could do nothing for her, ground as she herself

was beneath those implacable self-interests which the lawyer's wife

had come at last to see and comprehend. Her husband's imperious will

had alone taken her to the Rogron's house, where she had suffered much

at the harsh treatment of the pretty little creature, who would often

press up against her as if divining her secret thoughts, sometimes

asking the poor lady to show her a stitch in knitting or to teach her

a bit of embroidery. The child proved in return that if she were

treated gently she would understand what was taught her, and succeed

in what she tried to do quite marvellously. But Madame Vinet was soon

no longer necessary to her husband's plans, and after the arrival of

Madame and Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf she ceased to visit the

Rogrons.

Sylvie, who now indulged in the idea of marrying, began to consider

Pierrette as an obstacle. The girl was nearly fourteen; the pallid

whiteness of her skin, a symptom of illness entirely overlooked by the

ignorant old maid, made her exquisitely lovely. Sylvie took it into

her head to balance the cost which Pierrette had been to them by

making a servant of her. All the _habitues_ of the house to whom she

spoke of the matter advised that she should send away Adele. Why

shouldn't Pierrette take care of the house and cook? If there was too

much work at any time Mademoiselle Rogron could easily employ the

colonel's woman-of-all-work, an excellent cook and a most respectable

person. Pierrette ought to learn how to cook, and rub floors, and

sweep, said the lawyer; every girl should be taught to keep house

properly and go to market and know the price of things. The poor

little soul, whose self-devotion was equal to her generosity, offered

herself willingly, pleased to think that she could earn the bitter

bread which she ate in that house. Adele was sent away, and Pierrette

thus lost the only person who might have protected her.

In spite of the poor child's strength of heart she was henceforth

crushed down physically as well as mentally. Her cousins had less

consideration for her than for a servant; she belonged to them! She

was scolded for mere nothings, for an atom of dust left on a glass

globe or a marble mantelpiece. The handsome ornaments she had once

admired now became odious to her. No matter how she strove to do

right, her inexorable cousins always found something to reprove in

whatever she did. In the course of two years Pierrette never received

the slightest praise, or heard a kindly word. Happiness for her lay in

not being scolded. She bore with angelic patience the morose ill-humor

of the two celibates, to whom all tender feelings were absolutely

unknown, and who daily made her feel her dependence on them.

Such a life for a young girl, pressed as it were between the two chops

of a vise, increased her illness. She began to feel violent internal

distresses, secret pangs so sudden in their attacks that her strength

was undermined and her natural development arrested. By slow degrees

and through dreadful, though hidden sufferings, the poor child came to

the state in which the companion of her childhood found her when he

sang to her his Breton ditty at the dawn of the October day.

VI

AN OLD MAID'S JEALOUSY

Before we relate the domestic drama which the coming of Jacques

Brigaut was destined to bring about in the Rogron family it is best to

explain how the lad came to be in Provins; for he is, as it were, a

somewhat mute personage on the scene.

When he ran from the house Brigaut was not only frightened by

Pierrette's gesture, he was horrified by the change he saw in his

little friend. He could scarcely recognize the voice, the eyes, the

gestures that were once so lively, gay, and withal so tender. When he

had gained some distance from the house his legs began to tremble

under him; hot flushes ran down his back. He had seen the shadow of

Pierrette, but not Pierrette herself! The lad climbed to the Upper

town till he found a spot from which he could see the square and the

house where Pierrette lived. He gazed at it mournfully, lost in many

thoughts, as though he were entering some grief of which he could not

see the end. Pierrette was ill; she was not happy; she pined for

Brittany--what was the matter with her? All these questions passed and

repassed through his heart and rent it, revealing to his own soul the

extent of his love for his little adopted sister.

It is extremely rare to find a passion existing between two children

of opposite sexes. The charming story of Paul and Virginia does not,

any more than this of Pierrette and Brigaut, answer the question put

by that strange moral fact. Modern history offers only the illustrious

instance of the Marchesa di Pescara and her husband. Destined to marry

by their parents from their earliest years, they adored each other and

were married, and their union gave to the sixteenth century the noble

spectacle of a perfect conjugal love without a flaw. When the marchesa

became a widow at the age of thirty-four, beautiful, intellectually

brilliant, universally adored, she refused to marry sovereigns and

buried herself in a convent, seeing and knowing thenceforth only nuns.

Such was the perfect love that suddenly developed itself in the heart

of the Breton workman. Pierrette and he had often protected each

other; with what bliss had he given her the money for her journey; he

had almost killed himself by running after the diligence when she left

him. Pierrette had known nothing of all that; but for him the

recollection had warmed and comforted the cold, hard life he had led

for the last three years. For Pierrette's sake he had struggled to

improve himself; he had learned his trade for Pierrette; he had come

to Paris for Pierrette, intending to make his fortune for _her_. After

spending a fortnight in the city, he had not been able to hold out

against the desire to see her, and he had walked from Saturday night

to Monday morning. He intended to return to Paris; but the moving

sight of his little friend nailed him to Provins. A wonderful

magnetism (still denied in spite of many proofs) acted upon him

without his knowledge. Tears rolled from his eyes when they rose in

hers. If to her he was Brittany and her happy childhood, to him she

was life itself.

At sixteen years of age Brigaut did not yet know how to draw or to

model a cornice; he was ignorant of much, but he had earned, by

piece-work done in the leisure of his apprenticeship, some four or five

francs a day. On this he could live in Provins and be near Pierrette;

he would choose the best cabinet-maker in the town, and learn the rest

of his trade in working for him, and thus keep watch over his darling.

Brigaut's mind was made up as he sat there thinking. He went back to

Paris and fetched his certificate, tools, and baggage, and three days

later he was a journeyman in the establishment of Monsieur Frappier,

the best cabinet-maker in Provins. Active, steady workmen, not given

to junketing and taverns, are so rare that masters hold to young men

like Brigaut when they find them. To end Brigaut's history on this

point, we will say here that by the end of the month he was made

foreman, and was fed and lodged by Frappier, who taught him arithmetic

and line drawing. The house and shop were in the Grand'Rue, not a

hundred feet from the little square where Pierrette lived.

Brigaut buried his love in his heart and committed no imprudence. He

made Madame Frappier tell him all she knew about the Rogrons. Among

other things, she related to him the way in which their father had

laid hands on the property of old Auffray, Pierrette's grandfather.

Brigaut obtained other information as to the character of the brother

and sister. He met Pierrette sometimes in the market with her cousin,

and shuddered to see the heavy basket she was carrying on her arm. On

Sundays he went to church to look for her, dressed in her best

clothes. There, for the first time, he became aware that Pierrette was

Mademoiselle Lorrain. Pierrette saw him and made him a hasty sign to

keep out of sight. To him, there was a world of things in that little

gesture, as there had been, a fortnight earlier, in the sign by which

she told him from her window to run away. Ah! what a fortune he must

make in the coming ten years in order to marry his little friend, to

whom, he was told, the Rogrons were to leave their house, a hundred

acres of land, and twelve thousand francs a year, not counting their

savings!

The persevering Breton was determined to be thoroughly educated for

his trade, and he set about acquiring all the knowledge that he

lacked. As long as only the principles of his work were concerned he

could learn those in Provins as well as in Paris, and thus remain near

Pierrette, to whom he now became anxious to explain his projects and

the sort of protection she could rely on from him. He was determined

to know the reason of her pallor, and of the debility which was

beginning to appear in the organ which is always the last to show the

signs of failing life, namely the eyes; he would know, too, the cause

of the sufferings which gave her that look as though death were near

and she might drop at any moment beneath its scythe. The two signs,

the two gestures--not denying their friendship but imploring caution

--alarmed the young Breton. Evidently Pierrette wished him to wait and

not attempt to see her; otherwise there was danger, there was peril

for her. As she left the church she was able to give him one look, and

Brigaut saw that her eyes were full of tears. But he could have sooner

squared the circle than have guessed what had happened in the Rogrons'

house during the fortnight which had elapsed since his arrival.

It was not without keen apprehension that Pierrette came downstairs on

the morning after Brigaut had invaded her morning dreams like another

dream. She was certain that her cousin Sylvie must have heard the

song, or she would not have risen and opened her window; but Pierrette

was ignorant of the powerful reasons that made the old maid so alert.

For the last eight days, strange events and bitter feelings agitated

the minds of the chief personages who frequented the Rogron salon.

These hidden matters, carefully concealed by all concerned, were

destined to fall in their results like an avalanche on Pierrette. Such

mysterious things, which we ought perhaps to call the putrescence of

the human heart, lie at the base of the greatest revolutions,

political, social or domestic; but in telling of them it is desirable

to explain that their subtle significance cannot be given in a

matter-of-fact narrative. These secret schemes and calculations do not

show themselves as brutally and undisguisedly while taking place as

they must when the history of them is related. To set down in writing

the circumlocutions, oratorical precautions, protracted conversations,

and honeyed words glossed over the venom of intentions, would make as

long a book as that magnificent poem called "Clarissa Harlowe."

Mademoiselle Habert and Mademoiselle Sylvie were equally desirous of

marrying, but one was ten years older than the other, and the

probabilities of life allowed Celeste Habert to expect that her

children would inherit all the Rogron property. Sylvie was forty-two,

an age at which marriage is beset by perils. In confiding to each

other their ideas, Celeste, instigated by her vindictive brother the

priest, enlightened Sylvie as to the dangers she would incur. Sylvie

trembled; she was terribly afraid of death, an idea which shakes all

celibates to their centre. But just at this time the Martignac

ministry came into power,--a Liberal victory which overthrew the

Villele administration. The Vinet party now carried their heads high

in Provins. Vinet himself became a personage. The Liberals prophesied

his advancement; he would certainly be deputy and attorney-general. As

for the colonel, he would be made mayor of Provins. Ah, to reign as

Madame Garceland, the wife of the present mayor, now reigned! Sylvie

could not hold out against that hope; she determined to consult a

doctor, though the proceeding would only cover her with ridicule. To

consult Monsieur Neraud, the Liberal physician and the rival of

Monsieur Martener, would be a blunder. Celeste Habert offered to hide

Sylvie in her dressing-room while she herself consulted Monsieur

Martener, the physician of her establishment, on this difficult

matter. Whether Martener was, or was not, Celeste's accomplice need

not be discovered; at any rate, he told his client that even at thirty

the danger, though slight, did exist. "But," he added, "with your

constitution, you need fear nothing."

"But how about a woman over forty?" asked Mademoiselle Celeste.

"A married woman who has had children has nothing to fear."

"But I mean an unmarried woman, like Mademoiselle Rogron, for

instance?"

"Oh, that's another thing," said Monsieur Martener. "Successful

childbirth is then one of those miracles which God sometimes allows

himself, but rarely."

"Why?" asked Celeste.

The doctor answered with a terrifying pathological description; he

explained that the elasticity given by nature to youthful muscles and

bones did not exist at a later age, especially in women whose lives

were sedentary.

"So you think that an unmarried woman ought not to marry after forty?"

"Not unless she waits some years," replied the doctor. "But then, of

course, it is not marriage, it is only an association of interests."

The result of the interview, clearly, seriously, scientifically and

sensibly stated, was that an unmarried woman would make a great

mistake in marrying after forty. When the doctor had departed

Mademoiselle Celeste found Sylvie in a frightful state, green and

yellow, and with the pupils of her eyes dilated.

"Then you really love the colonel?" asked Celeste.

"I still hoped," replied Sylvie.

"Well, then, wait!" cried Mademoiselle Habert, Jesuitically, aware

that time would rid her of the colonel.

Sylvie's new devotion to the church warned her that the morality of

such a marriage might be doubtful. She accordingly sounded her

conscience in the confessional. The stern priest explained the

opinions of the Church, which sees in marriage only the propagation of

humanity, and rebukes second marriages and all passions but those with

a social purpose. Sylvie's perplexities were great. These internal

struggles gave extraordinary force to her passion, investing it with

that inexplicable attraction which, from the days of Eve, the thing

forbidden possesses for women. Mademoiselle Rogron's perturbation did

not escape the lynx-eyed lawyer.

One evening, after the game had ended, Vinet approached his dear

friend Sylvie, took her hand, and led her to a sofa.

"Something troubles you," he said.

She nodded sadly. The lawyer let the others depart; Rogron walked home

with the Chargeboeufs, and when Vinet was alone with the old maid he

wormed the truth out of her.

"Cleverly played, abbe!" thought he. "But you've played into my

hands."

The foxy lawyer was more decided in his opinion than even the doctor.

He advised marriage in ten years. Inwardly he was vowing that the

whole Rogron fortune should go to Bathilde. He rubbed his hands, his

pinched lips closed more tightly as he hurried home. The influence

exercised by Monsieur Habert, physician of the soul, and by Vinet,

doctor of the purse, balanced each other perfectly. Rogron had no

piety in him; so the churchman and the man of law, the black-robed

pair, were fairly matched.

On discovering the victory obtained by Celeste, in her anxiety to

marry Rogron herself, over Sylvie, torn between the fear of death and

the joy of being baronness and mayoress, the lawyer saw his chance of

driving the colonel from the battlefield. He knew Rogron well enough

to be certain he could marry him to Bathilde; Jerome had already

succumbed inwardly to her charms, and Vinet knew that the first time

the pair were alone together the marriage would be settled. Rogron had

reached the point of keeping his eyes fixed on Celeste, so much did he

fear to look at Bathilde. Vinet had now possessed himself of Sylvie's

secrets, and saw the force with which she loved the colonel. He fully

understood the struggle of such a passion in the heart of an old maid

who was also in the grasp of religious emotion, and he saw his way to

rid himself of Pierrette and the colonel both by making each the cause

of the other's overthrow.

The next day, after the court had risen, Vinet met the colonel and

Rogron talking a walk together, according to their daily custom.

Whenever the three men were seen in company the whole town talked of

it. This triumvirate, held in horror by the sub-prefect, the

magistracy, and the Tiphaine clique, was, on the other hand, a source

of pride and vanity to the Liberals of Provins. Vinet was sole editor

of the "Courrier" and the head of the party; the colonel, the working

manager, was its arm; Rogron, by means of his purse, its nerves. The

Tiphaines declared that the three men were always plotting evil to the

government; the Liberals admired them as the defenders of the people.

When Rogron turned to go home, recalled by a sense of his dinner-hour,

Vinet stopped the colonel from following him by taking Gouraud's arm.

"Well, colonel," he said, "I am going to take a fearful load off your

shoulders; you can do better than marry Sylvie; if you play your cards

properly you can marry that little Pierrette in two years' time."

He thereupon related the Jesuit's manoeuvre and its effect on Sylvie.

"What a skulking trick!" cried the colonel; "and spreading over years,

too!"

"Colonel," said Vinet, gravely, "Pierrette is a charming creature;

with her you can be happy for the rest of your life; your health is so

sound that the difference in your ages won't seem disproportionate.

But, all the same, you mustn't think it an easy thing to change a

dreadful fate to a pleasant one. To turn a woman who loves you into a

friend and confidant is as perilous a business as crossing a river

under fire of the enemy. Cavalry colonel as you are, and daring too,

you must study the position and manoeuvre your forces with the same

wisdom you have displayed hitherto, and which has won us our present

position. If I get to be attorney-general you shall command the

department. Oh! if you had been an elector we should be further

advanced than we are now; I should have bought the votes of those two

clerks by threatening them with the loss of their places, and we

should have had a majority."

The colonel had long been thinking about Pierrette, but he concealed

his thoughts with the utmost dissimulation. His roughness to the child

was only a mask; but she could not understand why the man who claimed

to be her father's old comrade should usually treat her so ill, when

sometimes, if he met her alone, he would chuck her under the chin and

give her a friendly kiss. But after the conversation with Vinet

relating to Sylvie's fears of marriage Gouraud began to seek

opportunities to find Pierrette alone; the rough colonel made himself

as soft as a cat; he told her how brave her father was and what a

misfortune it had been for her that she lost him.

A few days before Brigaut's arrival Sylvie had come suddenly upon

Gouraud and Pierrette talking together. Instantly, jealousy rushed

into her heart with monastic violence. Jealousy, eminently credulous

and suspicious, is the passion in which fancy has most freedom, but

for all that it does not give a person intelligence; on the contrary,

it hinders them from having any; and in Sylvie's case jealousy only

filled her with fantastic ideas. When (a few mornings later) she heard

Brigaut's ditty, she jumped to the conclusion that the man who had

used the words "Madam' le mariee," addressing them to Pierrette, must

be the colonel. She was certain she was right, for she had noticed for

a week past a change in his manners. He was the only man who, in her

solitary life, had ever paid her any attention. Consequently she

watched him with all her eyes, all her mind; and by giving herself up

to hopes that were sometimes flourishing, sometimes blighted, she had

brought the matter to such enormous proportions that she saw all

things in a mental mirage. To use a common but excellent expression,

by dint of looking intently she saw nothing. Alternately she repelled,

admitted, and conquered the supposition of this rivalry. She compared

herself with Pierrette; she was forty-two years old, with gray hair;

Pierrette was delicately fair, with eyes soft enough to warm a

withered heart. She had heard it said that men of fifty were apt to

love young girls of just that kind. Before the colonel had come

regularly to the house Sylvie had heard in the Tiphaines' salon

strange stories of his life and morals. Old maids preserve in their

love-affairs the exaggerated Platonic sentiments which young girls of

twenty are wont to profess; they hold to these fixed doctrines like

all who have little experience of life and no personal knowledge of

how great social forces modify, impair, and bring to nought such grand

and noble ideas. The mere thought of being jilted by the colonel was

torture to Sylvie's brain. She lay in her bed going over and over her

own desires, Pierrette's conduct, and the song which had awakened her

with the word "marriage." Like the fool she was, instead of looking

through the blinds to see the lover, she opened her window without

reflecting that Pierrette would hear her. If she had had the common

instinct of a spy she would have seen Brigaut, and the fatal drama

then begun would never have taken place.

It was Pierrette's duty, weak as she was, to take down the bars that

closed the wooden shutters of the kitchen, which she opened and

fastened back; then she opened in like manner the glass door leading

from the corridor to the garden. She took the various brooms that were

used for sweeping the carpets, the dining-room, the passages and

stairs, together with the other utensils, with a care and

particularity which no servant, not even a Dutchwoman, gives to her

work. She hated reproof. Happiness for her was in seeing the cold blue

pallid eyes of her cousin, not satisfied (that they never were), but

calm, after glancing about her with the look of an owner,--that

wonderful glance which sees what escapes even the most vigilant eyes

of others. Pierrette's skin was moist with her labor when she returned

to the kitchen to put it in order, and light the stove that she might

carry up hot water to her two cousins (a luxury she never had for

herself) and the means of lighting fires in their rooms. After this

she laid the table for breakfast and lit the stove in the dining-room.

For all these various fires she had to fetch wood and kindling from

the cellar, leaving the warm rooms for a damp and chilly atmosphere.

Such sudden transitions, made with the quickness of youth, often to

escape a harsh word or obey an order, aggravated the condition of her

health. She did not know she was ill, and yet she suffered. She began

to have strange cravings; she liked raw vegetables and salads, and ate

them secretly. The innocent child was quite unaware that her condition

was that of serious illness which needed the utmost care. If Neraud,

the Rogrons' doctor, had told this to Pierrette before Brigaut's

arrival she would only have smiled; life was so bitter she could smile

at death. But now her feelings changed; the child, to whose physical

sufferings was added the anguish of Breton homesickness (a moral

malady so well-known that colonels in the army allow for it among

their men), was suddenly content to be in Provins. The sight of that

yellow flower, the song, the presence of her friend, revived her as a

plant long without water revives under rain. Unconsciously she wanted

to live, and even thought she did not suffer.

Pierrette slipped timidly into her cousin's bedroom, made the fire,

left the hot water, said a few words, and went to wake Rogron and do

the same offices for him. Then she went down to take in the milk, the

bread, and the other provisions left by the dealers. She stood some

time on the sill of the door hoping that Brigaut would have the sense

to come to her; but by that time he was already on his way to Paris.

She had finished the arrangement of the dining-room and was busy in

the kitchen when she heard her cousin Sylvie coming down. Mademoiselle

Rogron appeared in a brown silk dressing-gown and a cap with bows; her

false front was awry, her night-gown showed above the silk wrapper,

her slippers were down at heel. She gave an eye to everything and then

came straight to Pierrette, who was awaiting her orders to know what

to prepare for breakfast.

"Ha! here you are, lovesick young lady!" said Sylvie, in a mocking

tone.

"What is it, cousin?"

"You came into my room like a sly cat, and you crept out the same way,

though you knew very well I had something to say to you."

"To me?"

"You had a serenade this morning, as if you were a princess."

"A serenade!" exclaimed Pierrette.

"A serenade!" said Sylvie, mimicking her; "and you've a lover, too."

"What is a lover, cousin?"

Sylvie avoided answering, and said:--

"Do you dare to tell me, mademoiselle, that a man did not come under

your window and talk to you of marriage?"

Persecution had taught Pierrette the wariness of slaves; so she

answered bravely:--

"I don't know what you mean,--"

"Who means?--your dog?" said Sylvie, sharply.

"I should have said 'cousin,'" replied the girl, humbly.

"And didn't you get up and go in your bare feet to the window?--which

will give you an illness; and serve you right, too. And perhaps you

didn't talk to your lover, either?"

"No, cousin."

"I know you have many faults, but I did not think you told lies. You

had better think this over, mademoiselle; you will have to explain

this affair to your cousin and to me, or your cousin will be obliged

to take severe measures."

The old maid, exasperated by jealousy and curiosity, meant to frighten

the girl. Pierrette, like all those who suffer more than they have

strength to bear, kept silence. Silence is the only weapon by which

such victims can conquer; it baffles the Cossack charges of envy, the

savage skirmishings of suspicion; it does at times give victory,

crushing and complete,--for what is more complete than silence? it is

absolute; it is one of the attributes of infinity. Sylvie watched

Pierrette narrowly. The girl colored; but the color, instead of rising

evenly, came out in patches on her cheekbones, in burning and

significant spots. A mother, seeing that symptom of illness, would

have changed her tone at once; she would have taken the child on her

lap and questioned her; in fact, she would long ago have tenderly

understood the signs of Pierrette's pure and perfect innocence; she

would have seen her weakness and known that the disturbance of the

digestive organs and the other functions of the body was about to

affect the lungs. Those eloquent patches would have warned her of an

imminent danger. But an old maid, one in whom the family instincts

have never been awakened, to whom the needs of childhood and the

precautions required for adolescence were unknown, had neither the

indulgence nor the compassionate intelligence of a mother; such

sufferings as those of Pierrette, instead of softening her heart only

made it more callous.

"She blushes, she is guilty!" thought Sylvie.

Pierrette's silence was thus interpreted to her injury.

"Pierrette," continued Sylvie, "before your cousin comes down we must

have some talk together. Come," she said, in a rather softer tone,

"shut the street door; if any one comes they will rung and we shall

hear them."

In spite of the damp mist which was rising from the river, Sylvie took

Pierrette along the winding gravel path which led across the lawn to

the edge of the rock terrace,--a picturesque little quay, covered with

iris and aquatic plants. She now changed her tactics, thinking she

might catch Pierrette tripping by softness; the hyena became a cat.

"Pierrette," she said, "you are no longer a child; you are nearly

fifteen, and it is not at all surprising that you should have a

lover."

"But, cousin," said Pierrette, raising her eyes with angelic sweetness

to the cold, sour face of her cousin, "What is a lover?"

It would have been impossible for Sylvie to define a lover with truth

and decency to the girl's mind. Instead of seeing in that question the

proof of adorable innocence, she considered it a piece of insincerity.

"A lover, Pierrette, is a man who loves us and wishes to marry us."

"Ah," said Pierrette, "when that happens in Brittany we call the young

man a suitor."

"Well, remember that in owning your feelings for a man you do no

wrong, my dear. The wrong is in hiding them. Have you pleased some of

the men who visit here?"

"I don't think so, cousin."

"Do you love any of them?"

"No."

"Certain?"

"Quite certain."

"Look at me, Pierrette."

Pierrette looked at Sylvie.

"A man called to you this morning in the square."

Pierrette lowered her eyes.

"You went to your window, you opened it, and you spoke to him."

"No cousin, I went to look out and I saw a peasant."

"Pierrette, you have much improved since you made your first

communion; you have become pious and obedient, you love God and your

relations; I am satisfied with you. I don't say this to puff you up

with pride."

The horrible creature had mistaken despondency, submission, the

silence of wretchedness, for virtues!

The sweetest of all consolations to suffering souls, to martyrs, to

artists, in the worst of that divine agony which hatred and envy force

upon them, is to meet with praise where they have hitherto found

censure and injustice. Pierrette raised her grateful eyes to her

cousin, feeling that she could almost forgive her for the sufferings

she had caused.

"But if it is all hypocrisy, if I find you a serpent that I have

warmed in my bosom, you will be a wicked girl, an infamous creature!"

"I think I have nothing to reproach myself with," said Pierrette, with

a painful revulsion of her heart at the sudden change from unexpected

praise to the tones of the hyena.

"You know that to lie is a mortal sin?"

"Yes, cousin."

"Well, you are now under the eye of God," said the old maid, with a

solemn gesture towards the sky; "swear to me that you did not know

that peasant."

"I will not swear," said Pierrette.

"Ha! he was no peasant, you little viper."

Pierrette rushed away like a frightened fawn terrified at her tone.

Sylvie called her in a dreadful voice.

"The bell is ringing," she answered.

"Artful wretch!" thought Sylvie. "She is depraved in mind; and now I

am certain the little adder has wound herself round the colonel. She

has heard us say he was a baron. To be a baroness! little fool! Ah!

I'll get rid of her, I'll apprentice her out, and soon too!"

Sylvie was so lost in thought that she did not notice her brother

coming down the path and bemoaning the injury the frost had done to

his dahlias.

"Sylvie! what are you thinking about? I thought you were looking at

the fish; sometimes they jump out of the water."

"No," said Sylvie.

"How did you sleep?" and he began to tell her about his own dreams.

"Don't you think my skin is getting _tabid_?"--a word in the Rogron

vocabulary.

Ever since Rogron had been in love,--but let us not profane the word,

--ever since he had desired to marry Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf, he

was very uneasy about himself and his health. At this moment Pierrette

came down the garden steps and called to them from a distance that

breakfast was ready. At sight of her cousin, Sylvie's skin turned

green and yellow, her bile was in commotion. She looked at the floor

of the corridor and declared that Pierrette ought to rub it.

"I will rub it now if you wish," said the little angel, not aware of

the injury such work may do to a young girl.

The dining-room was irreproachably in order. Sylvie sat down and

pretended all through breakfast to want this, that, and the other

thing which she would never have thought of in a quieter moment, and

which she now asked for only to make Pierrette rise again and again

just as the child was beginning to eat her food. But such mere teasing

was not enough; she wanted a subject on which to find fault, and was

angry with herself for not finding one. She scarcely answered her

brother's silly remarks, yet she looked at him only; her eyes avoided

Pierrette. Pierrette was deeply conscious of all this. She brought the

milk mixed with cream for each cousin in a large silver goblet, after

heating it carefully in the _bain-marie_. The brother and sister

poured in the coffee made by Sylvie herself on the table. When Sylvie

had carefully prepared hers, she saw an atom of coffee-grounds

floating on the surface. On this the storm broke forth.

"What is the matter?" asked Rogron.

"The matter is that mademoiselle has put dust in my milk. Do you

suppose I am going to drink coffee with ashes in it? Well, I am not

surprised; no one can do two things at once. She wasn't thinking of

the milk! a blackbird might have flown through the kitchen to-day and

she wouldn't have seen it! how should she see the dust flying! and

then it was my coffee, ha! that didn't signify!"

As she spoke she was laying on the side of her plate the

coffee-grounds that had run through the filter.

"But, cousin, that is coffee," said Pierrette.

"Oh! then it is I who tell lies, is it?" cried Sylvie, looking at

Pierrette and blasting her with a fearful flash of anger from her

eyes.

Organizations which have not been exhausted by powerful emotions often

have a vast amount of the vital fluid at their service. This

phenomenon of the extreme clearness of the eye in moments of anger was

the more marked in Mademoiselle Rogron because she had often exercised

the power of her eyes in her shop by opening them to their full extent

for the purpose of inspiring her dependents with salutary fear.

"You had better dare to give me the lie!" continued Sylvie; "you

deserve to be sent from the table to go and eat by yourself in the

kitchen."

"What's the matter with you two?" cried Rogron, "you are as cross as

bears this morning."

"Mademoiselle knows what I have against her," said Sylvie. "I leave

her to make up her mind before speaking to you; for I mean to show her

more kindness than she deserves."

Pierrette was looking out of the window to avoid her cousin's eyes,

which frightened her.

"Look at her! she pays no more attention to what I am saying than if I

were that sugar-basin! And yet mademoiselle has a sharp ear; she can

hear and answer from the top of the house when some one talks to her

from below. She is perversity itself,--perversity, I say; and you

needn't expect any good of her; do you hear me, Jerome?"

"What has she done wrong?" asked Rogron.

"At her age, too! to begin so young!" screamed the angry old maid.

Pierrette rose to clear the table and give herself something to do,

for she could hardly bear the scene any longer. Though such language

was not new to her, she had never been able to get used to it. Her

cousin's rage seemed to accuse her of some crime. She imagined what

her fury would be if she came to know about Brigaut. Perhaps her

cousin would have him sent away, and she should lose him! All the many

thoughts, the deep and rapid thoughts of a slave came to her, and she

resolved to keep absolute silence about a circumstance in which her

conscience told her there was nothing wrong. But the cruel, bitter

words she had been made to hear and the wounding suspicion so shocked

her that as she reached the kitchen she was taken with a convulsion of

the stomach and turned deadly sick. She dared not complain; she was

not sure that any one would help her. When she returned to the

dining-room she was white as a sheet, and, saying she was not well, she

started to go to bed, dragging herself up step by step by the baluster

and thinking that she was going to die. "Poor Brigaut!" she thought.

"The girl is ill," said Rogron.

"She ill! That's only _shamming_," replied Sylvie, in a loud voice

that Pierrette might hear. "She was well enough this morning, I can

tell you."

This last blow struck Pierrette to the earth; she went to bed weeping

and praying to God to take her out of this world.

VII

DOMESTIC TYRANNY

For a month past Rogron had ceased to carry the "Constitutionnel" to

Gouraud; the colonel came obsequiously to fetch his paper, gossip a

little, and take Rogron off to walk if the weather was fine. Sure of

seeing the colonel and being able to question him, Sylvie dressed

herself as coquettishly as she knew how. The old maid thought she was

attractive in a green gown, a yellow shawl with a red border, and a

white bonnet with straggling gray feathers. About the hour when the

colonel usually came Sylvie stationed herself in the salon with her

brother, whom she had compelled to stay in the house in his

dressing-gown and slippers.

"It is a fine day, colonel," said Rogron, when Gouraud with his heavy

step entered the room. "But I'm not dressed; my sister wanted to go

out, and I was going to keep the house. Wait for me; I'll be ready

soon."

So saying, Rogron left Sylvie alone with the colonel.

"Where were you going? you are dressed divinely," said Gouraud, who

noticed a certain solemnity on the pock-marked face of the old maid.

"I wanted very much to go out, but my little cousin is ill, and I

cannot leave her."

"What is the matter with her?"

"I don't know; she had to go to bed."

Gouraud's caution, not to say his distrust, was constantly excited by

the results of his alliance with Vinet. It certainly appeared that the

lawyer had got the lion's share in their enterprise. Vinet controlled

the paper, he reigned as sole master over it, he took the revenues;

whereas the colonel, the responsible editor, earned little. Vinet and

Cournant had done the Rogrons great services; whereas Gouraud, a

colonel on half-pay, could do nothing. Who was to be deputy? Vinet.

Who was the chief authority in the party? Vinet. Whom did the liberals

all consult? Vinet. Moreover, the colonel knew fully as well as Vinet

himself the extent and depth of the passion suddenly aroused in Rogron

by the beautiful Bathilde de Chargeboeuf. This passion had now become

intense, like all the last passions of men. Bathilde's voice made him

tremble. Absorbed in his desires Rogron hid them; he dared not hope

for such a marriage. To sound him, the colonel mentioned that he was

thinking himself of asking for Bathilde's hand. Rogron turned pale at

the thought of such a formidable rival, and had since then shown

coldness and even hatred to Gouraud.

Thus Vinet reigned supreme in the Rogron household while he, the

colonel, had no hold there except by the extremely hypothetical tie of

his mendacious affection for Sylvie, which it was not yet clear that

Sylvie reciprocated. When the lawyer told him of the priest's

manoeuvre, and advised him to break with Sylvie and marry Pierrette,

he certainly flattered Gouraud's foible; but after analyzing the inner

purpose of that advice and examining the ground all about him, the

colonel thought he perceived in his ally the intention of separating

him from Sylvie, and profiting by her fears to throw the whole Rogron

property into the hands of Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf.

Therefore, when the colonel was left alone with Sylvie his

perspicacity possessed itself immediately of certain signs which

betrayed her uneasiness. He saw at once that she was under arms and

had made this plan for seeing him alone. As he already suspected Vinet

of playing him some trick, he attributed the conference to the

instigation of the lawyer, and was instantly on his guard, as he would

have been in an enemy's country,--with an eye all about him, an ear to

the faintest sound, his mind on the qui vive, and his hand on a

weapon. The colonel had the defect of never believing a single word

said to him by a woman; so that when the old maid brought Pierrette on

the scene, and told him she had gone to bed before midday, he

concluded that Sylvie had locked her up by way of punishment and out

of jealousy.

"She is getting to be quite pretty, that little thing," he said with

an easy air.

"She will be pretty," replied Mademoiselle Rogron.

"You ought to send her to Paris and put her in a shop," continued the

colonel. "She would make her fortune. The milliners all want pretty

girls."

"Is that really your advice?" asked Sylvie, in a troubled voice.

"Good!" thought the colonel, "I was right. Vinet advised me to marry

Pierrette just to spoil my chance with the old harridan. But," he said

aloud, "what else can you do with her? There's that beautiful girl

Bathilde de Chargeboeuf, noble and well-connected, reduced to

single-blessedness,--nobody will have her. Pierrette has nothing, and

she'll never marry. As for beauty, what is it? To me, for example,

youth and beauty are nothing; for haven't I been a captain of cavalry

in the imperial guard, and carried my spurs into all the capitals of

Europe, and known all the handsomest women of these capitals? Don't

talk to me; I tell you youth and beauty are devilishly common and

silly. At forty-eight," he went on, adding a few years to his age, to

match Sylvie's, "after surviving the retreat from Moscow and going

through that terrible campaign of France, a man is broken down; I'm

nothing but an old fellow now. A woman like you would pet me and care

for me, and her money, joined to my poor pension, would give me ease

in my old days; of course I should prefer such a woman to a little

minx who would worry the life out of me, and be thirty years old, with

passions, when I should be sixty, with rheumatism. At my age, a man

considers and calculates. To tell you the truth between ourselves, I

should not wish to have children."

Sylvie's face was an open book to the colonel during this tirade, and

her next question proved to him Vinet's perfidy.

"Then you don't love Pierrette?" she said.

"Heavens! are you out of your mind, my dear Sylvie?" he cried. "Can

those who have no teeth crack nuts? Thank God I've got some

common-sense and know what I'm about."

Sylvie thus reassured resolved not to show her own hand, and thought

herself very shrewd in putting her own ideas into her brother's mouth.

"Jerome," she said, "thought of the match."

"How could your brother take up such an incongruous idea? Why, it is

only a few days ago that, in order to find out his secrets, I told him

I loved Bathilde. He turned as white as your collar."

"My brother! does he love Bathilde?" asked Sylvie.

"Madly,--and yet Bathilde is only after his money." ("One for you,

Vinet!" thought the colonel.) "I can't understand why he should have

told you that about Pierrette. No, Sylvie," he said, taking her hand

and pressing it in a certain way, "since you have opened this matter"

(he drew nearer to her), "well" (he kissed her hand; as a cavalry

captain he had already proved his courage), "let me tell you that I

desire no wife but you. Though such a marriage may look like one of

convenience, I feel, on my side, a sincere affection for you."

"But if I _wish_ you to marry Pierrette? if I leave her my fortune

--eh, colonel?"

"But I don't want to be miserable in my home, and in less than ten

years see a popinjay like Julliard hovering round my wife and

addressing verses to her in the newspapers. I'm too much of a man to

stand that. No, I will never make a marriage that is disproportionate

in age."

"Well, colonel, we will talk seriously of this another time," said

Sylvie, casting a glance upon him which she supposed to be full of

love, though, in point of fact, it was a good deal like that of an

ogress. Her cold, blue lips of a violet tinge drew back from the

yellow teeth, and she thought she smiled.

"I'm ready," said Rogron, coming in and carrying off the colonel, who

bowed in a lover-like way to the old maid.

Gouraud determined to press on his marriage with Sylvie, and make

himself master of the house; resolving to rid himself, through his

influence over Sylvie during the honeymoon, of Bathilde and Celeste

Habert. So, during their walk, he told Rogron he had been joking the

other day; that he had no real intention of aspiring to Bathilde; that

he was not rich enough to marry a woman without fortune; and then he

confided to him his real wishes, declaring that he had long chosen

Sylvie for her good qualities,--in short, he aspired to the honor of

being Rogron's brother-in-law.

"Ah, colonel, my dear baron! if nothing is wanting but my consent you

have it with no further delay than the law requires," cried Rogron,

delighted to be rid of his formidable rival.

Sylvie spent the morning in her own room considering how the new

household could be arranged. She determined to build a second storey

for her brother and to furnish the rest for herself and her husband;

but she also resolved, in the true old-maidish spirit, to subject the

colonel to certain proofs by which to judge of his heart and his

morals before she finally committed herself. She was still suspicious,

and wanted to make sure that Pierrette had no private intercourse with

the colonel.

Pierrette came down before the dinner-hour to lay the table. Sylvie

had been forced to cook the dinner, and had sworn at that "cursed

Pierrette" for a spot she had made on her gown,--wasn't it plain that

if Pierrette had done her own work Sylvie wouldn't have got that

grease-spot on her silk dress?

"Oh, here you are, _peakling_? You are like the dog of the marshal who

woke up as soon as the saucepans rattled. Ha! you want us to think you

are ill, you little liar!"

That idea: "You did not tell the truth about what happened in the

square this morning, therefore you lie in everything," was a hammer

with which Sylvie battered the head and also the heart of the poor

girl incessantly.

To Pierrette's great astonishment Sylvie sent her to dress in her best

clothes after dinner. The liveliest imagination is never up to the

level of the activity which suspicion excites in the mind of an old

maid. In this particular case, this particular old maid carried the

day against politicians, lawyers, notaries, and all other

self-interests. Sylvie determined to consult Vinet, after examining

herself into all the suspicious circumstances. She kept Pierrette

close to her, so as to find out from the girl's face whether the

colonel had told her the truth.

On this particular evening the Chargeboeuf ladies were the first to

arrive. Bathilde, by Vinet's advice, had become more elaborate in her

dress. She now wore a charming gown of blue velveteen, with the same

transparent fichu, garnet pendants in her ears, her hair in ringlets,

the wily _jeannette_ round her throat, black satin slippers, gray silk

stockings, and _gants de Suede_; add to these things the manners of a

queen and the coquetry of a young girl determined to capture Rogron.

Her mother, calm and dignified, retained, as did her daughter, a

certain aristocratic insolence, with which the two women hedged

themselves and preserved the spirit of their caste. Bathilde was a

woman of intelligence, a fact which Vinet alone had discovered during

the two months' stay the ladies had made at his house. When he had

fully fathomed the mind of the girl, wounded and disappointed as it

was by the fruitlessness of her beauty and her youth, and enlightened

by the contempt she felt for the men of a period in which money was

the only idol, Vinet, himself surprised, exclaimed,--

"If I could only have married you, Bathilde, I should to-day be Keeper

of the Seals. I should call myself Vinet de Chargeboeuf, and take my

seat as deputy of the Right."

Bathilde had no vulgar idea in her marriage intentions. She did not

marry to be a mother, nor to possess a husband; she married for

freedom, to gain a responsible position, to be called "madame," and to

act as men act. Rogron was nothing but a name to her; she expected to

make something of the fool,--a voting deputy, for instance, whose

instigator she would be; moreover, she longed to avenge herself on her

family, who had taken no notice of a girl without money. Vinet had

much enlarged and strengthened her ideas by admiring and approving

them.

"My dear Bathilde," he said, while explaining to her the influence of

women, and showing her the sphere of action in which she ought to

work, "do you suppose that Tiphaine, a man of the most ordinary

capacity, could ever get to be a judge of the Royal court in Paris by

himself? No, it is Madame Tiphaine who has got him elected deputy, and

it is she who will push him when they get to Paris. Her mother, Madame

Roguin, is a shrewd woman, who does what she likes with the famous

banker du Tillet, a crony of Nucingen, and both of them allies of the

Kellers. The administration is on the best of terms with those lynxes

of the bank. There is no reason why Tiphaine should not be judge,

through his wife, of a Royal court. Marry Rogron; we'll have him

elected deputy from Provins as soon as I gain another precinct in the

Seine-et-Marne. You can then get him a place as receiver-general,

where he'll have nothing to do but sign his name. We shall belong to

the opposition _if_ the Liberals triumph, but if the Bourbons remain

--ah! then we shall lean gently, gently towards the centre. Besides,

you must remember Rogron can't live forever, and then you can marry a

titled man. In short, put yourself in a good position, and the

Chargeboeufs will be ready enough to serve us. Your poverty has no

doubt taught you, as mine did me, to know what men are worth. We must

make use of them as we do of post-horses. A man, or a woman, will take

us along to such or such a distance."

Vinet ended by making Bathilde a small edition of Catherine de

Medicis. He left his wife at home, rejoiced to be alone with her two

children, while he went every night to the Rogrons' with Madame and

Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf. He arrived there in all the glory of

better circumstances. His spectacles were of gold, his waistcoat silk;

a white cravat, black trousers, thin boots, a black coat made in

Paris, and a gold watch and chain, made up his apparel. In place of

the former Vinet, pale and thin, snarling and gloomy, the present

Vinet bore himself with the air and manner of a man of importance; he

marched boldly forward, certain of success, with that peculiar show of

security which belongs to lawyers who know the hidden places of the

law. His sly little head was well-brushed, his chin well-shaved, which

gave him a mincing though frigid look, that made him seem agreeable

in the style of Robespierre. Certainly he would make a fine

attorney-general, endowed with elastic, mischievous, and even murderous

eloquence, or an orator of the shrewd type of Benjamin Constant. The

bitterness and the hatred which formerly actuated him had now turned

into soft-spoken perfidy; the poison was transformed into anodyne.

"Good-evening, my dear; how are you?" said Madame de Chargeboeuf,

greeting Sylvie.

Bathilde went straight to the fireplace, took off her bonnet, looked

at herself in the glass, and placed her pretty foot on the fender that

Rogron might admire it.

"What is the matter with you?" she said to him, looking directly in

his face. "You have not bowed to me. Pray why should we put on our

best velvet gowns to please you?"

She pushed past Pierrette to lay down her hat, which the latter took

from her hand, and which she let her take exactly as though she were a

servant. Men are supposed to be ferocious, and tigers too; but neither

tigers, vipers, diplomatists, lawyers, executioners or kings ever

approach, in their greatest atrocities, the gentle cruelty, the

poisoned sweetness, the savage disdain of one young woman for another,

when she thinks herself superior in birth, or fortune, or grace, and

some question of marriage, or precedence, or any of the feminine

rivalries, is raised. The "Thank you, mademoiselle," which Bathilde

said to Pierrette was a poem in many strophes. She was named Bathilde,

and the other Pierrette. She was a Chargeboeuf, the other a Lorrain.

Pierrette was small and weak, Bathilde was tall and full of life.

Pierrette was living on charity, Bathilde and her mother lived on

their means. Pierrette wore a stuff gown with a chemisette, Bathilde

made the velvet of hers undulate. Bathilde had the finest shoulders in

the department, and the arm of a queen; Pierrette's shoulder-blades

were skin and bone. Pierrette was Cinderella, Bathilde was the fairy.

Bathilde was about to marry, Pierrette was to die a maid. Bathilde was

adored, Pierrette was loved by none. Bathilde's hair was ravishingly

dressed, she had so much taste; Pierrette's was hidden beneath her

Breton cap, and she knew nothing of the fashions. Moral, Bathilde was

everything, Pierrette nothing. The proud little Breton girl understood

this tragic poem.

"Good-evening, little girl," said Madame de Chargeboeuf, from the

height of her condescending grandeur, and in the tone of voice which

her pinched nose gave her.

Vinet put the last touch to this sort of insult by looking fixedly at

Pierrette and saying, in three keys, "Oh! oh! oh! how fine we are

to-night, Pierrette!"

"Fine!" said the poor child; "you should say that to Mademoiselle de

Chargeboeuf, not to me."

"Oh! she is always beautifully dressed," replied the lawyer. "Isn't

she, Rogron?" he added, turning to the master of the house, and

grasping his hand.

"Yes," said Rogron.

"Why do you force him to say what he does not think?" said Bathilde;

"nothing about me pleases him. Isn't that true?" she added, going up

to Rogron and standing before him. "Look at me, and say if it isn't

true."

Rogron looked at her from head to foot, and gently closed his eyes

like a cat whose head is being scratched.

"You are too beautiful," he said; "too dangerous."

"Why?"

Rogron looked at the fire and was silent. Just then Mademoiselle

Habert entered the room, followed by the colonel.

Celeste Habert, who had now become the common enemy, could only reckon

Sylvie on her side; nevertheless, everybody present showed her the

more civility and amiable attention because each was undermining her.

Her brother, though no longer able to be on the scene of action, was

well aware of what was going on, and as soon as he perceived that his

sister's hopes were killed he became an implacable and terrible

antagonist to the Rogrons.

Every one will immediately picture to themselves Mademoiselle Habert

when they know that if she had not kept an institution for young

ladies she would still have had the air of a school-mistress.

School-mistresses have a way of their own in putting on their caps.

Just as old Englishwomen have acquired a monopoly in turbans,

school-mistresses have a monopoly of these caps. Flowers nod above

the frame-work, flowers that are more than artificial; lying by in

closets for years the cap is both new and old, even on the day it is

first worn. These spinsters make it a point of honor to resemble the

lay figures of a painter; they sit on their hips, never on their

chairs. When any one speaks to them they turn their whole busts

instead of simply turning their heads; and when their gowns creak one

is tempted to believe that the mechanism of these beings is out of

order. Mademoiselle Habert, an ideal of her species, had a stern eye,

a grim mouth, and beneath her wrinkled chin the strings of her cap,

always limp and faded, floated as she moved. Two moles, rather large

and brown, adorned that chin, and from them sprouted hairs which she

allowed to grow rampant like clematis. And finally, to complete her

portrait, she took snuff, and took it ungracefully.

The company went to work at their boston. Mademoiselle Habert sat

opposite to Sylvie, with the colonel at her side opposite to Madame de

Chargeboeuf. Bathilde was near her mother and Rogron. Sylvie placed

Pierrette between herself and the colonel; Rogron had set out a second

card-table, in case other company arrived. Two lamps were on the

chimney-piece between the candelabra and the clock, and the tables

were lighted by candles at forty sous a pound, paid for by the price

of the cards.

"Come, Pierrette, take your work, my dear," said Sylvie, with

treacherous softness, noticing that the girl was watching the

colonel's game.

She usually affected to treat Pierrette well before company. This

deception irritated the honest Breton girl, and made her despise her

cousin. She took her embroidery, but as she drew her stitches she

still watched Gouraud's play. Gouraud behaved as if he did not know

the girl was near him. Sylvie noticed this apparent indifference and

thought it extremely suspicious. Presently she undertook a _grande

misere_ in hearts, the pool being full of counters, besides containing

twenty-seven sous. The rest of the company had now arrived; among them

the deputy-judge Desfondrilles, who for the last two months had

abandoned the Tiphaine party and connected himself more or less with

the Vinets. He was standing before the chimney-piece, with his back to

the fire and the tails of his coat over his arms, looking round the

fine salon of which Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf was the shining

ornament; for it really seemed as if all the reds of its decoration

had been made expressly to enhance her style of beauty. Silence

reigned; Pierrette was watching the game, Sylvie's attention was

distracted from her by the interest of the _grande misere_.

"Play that," said Pierrette to the colonel, pointing to a heart in his

hand.

The colonel began a sequence in hearts; the hearts all lay between

himself and Sylvie; the colonel won her ace, though it was protected

by five small hearts.

"That's not fair!" she cried. "Pierrette saw my hand, and the colonel

took her advice."

"But, mademoiselle," said Celeste, "it was the colonel's game to play

hearts after you began them."

The scene made Monsieur Desfondrilles smile; his was a keen mind,

which found much amusement in watching the play of all the

self-interests in Provins.

"Yes, it was certainly the colonel's game," said Cournant the notary,

not knowing what the question was.

Sylvie threw a look at Mademoiselle Habert,--one of those glances

which pass from old maid to old maid, feline and cruel.

"Pierrette, you did see my hand," said Sylvie fixing her eyes on the

girl.

"No, cousin."

"I was looking at you all," said the deputy-judge, "and I can swear

that Pierrette saw no one's hand but the colonel's."

"Pooh!" said Gouraud, alarmed, "little girls know how to slide their

eyes into everything."

"Ah!" exclaimed Sylvie.

"Yes," continued Gouraud. "I dare say she looked into your hand to

play you a trick. Didn't you, little one?"

"No," said the truthful Breton, "I wouldn't do such a thing; if I had,

it would have been in my cousin's interests."

"You know you are a story-teller and a little fool," cried Sylvie.

"After what happened this morning do you suppose I can believe a word

you say? You are a--"

Pierrette did not wait for Sylvie to finish her sentence; foreseeing a

torrent of insults, she rushed away without a light and ran to her

room. Sylvie turned white with anger and muttered between her teeth,

"She shall pay for this!"

"Shall you pay for the _misere_?" said Madame de Chargeboeuf.

As she spoke Pierrette struck her head against the door of the passage

which some one had left open.

"Good! I'm glad of it," cried Sylvie, as they heard the blow.

"She must be hurt," said Desfondrilles.

"She deserves it," replied Sylvie.

"It was a bad blow," said Mademoiselle Habert.

Sylvie thought she might escape paying her _misere_ if she went to see

after Pierrette, but Madame de Chargeboeuf stopped her.

"Pay us first," she said, laughing; "you will forget it when you come

back."

The remark, based on the old maid's trickery and her bad faith in

paying her debts at cards was approved by the others. Sylvie sat down

and thought no more of Pierrette,--an indifference which surprised no

one. When the game was over, about half past nine o'clock, she flung

herself into an easy chair at the corner of the fireplace and did not

even rise as her guests departed. The colonel was torturing her; she

did not know what to think of him.

"Men are so false!" she cried, as she went to bed.

Pierrette had given herself a frightful blow on the head, just above

the ear, at the spot where young girls part their hair when they put

their "front hair" in curlpapers. The next day there was a large

swelling.

"God has punished you," said Sylvie at the breakfast table. "You

disobeyed me; you treated me with disrespect in leaving the room

before I had finished my sentence; you got what you deserved."

"Nevertheless," said Rogron, "she ought to put on a compress of salt

and water."

"Oh, it is nothing at all, cousin," said Pierrette.

The poor child had reached a point where even such a remark seemed to

her a proof of kindness.

VIII

THE LOVES OF JACQUES AND PIERRETTE

The week ended as it had begun, in continual torture. Sylvie grew

ingenious, and found refinements of tyranny with almost savage

cruelty; the red Indians might have taken a lesson from her. Pierrette

dared not complain of her vague sufferings, nor of the actual pains

she now felt in her head. The origin of her cousin's present anger was

the non-revelation of Brigaut's arrival. With Breton obstinacy

Pierrette was determined to keep silence,--a resolution that is

perfectly explicable. It is easy to see how her thoughts turned to

Brigaut, fearing some danger for him if he were discovered, yet

instinctively longing to have him near her, and happy in knowing he

was in Provins. What joy to have seen him! That single glimpse was

like the look an exile casts upon his country, or the martyr lifts to

heaven, where his eyes, gifted with second-sight, can enter while

flames consume his body.

Pierrette's glance had been so thoroughly understood by the major's

son that, as he planed his planks or took his measures or joined his

wood, he was working his brains to find out some way of communicating

with her. He ended by choosing the simplest of all schemes. At a

certain hour of the night Pierrette must lower a letter by a string

from her window. In the midst of the girl's own sufferings, she too

was sustained by the hope of being able to communicate with Brigaut.

The same desire was in both hearts; parted, they understood each

other! At every shock to her heart, every throb of pain in her head,

Pierrette said to herself, "Brigaut is here!" and that thought enabled

her to live without complaint.

One morning in the market, Brigaut, lying in wait, was able to get

near her. Though he saw her tremble and turn pale, like an autumn leaf

about to flutter down, he did not lose his head, but quietly bought

fruit of the market-woman with whom Sylvie was bargaining. He found

his chance of slipping a note to Pierrette, all the while joking the

woman with the ease of a man accustomed to such manoeuvres; so cool

was he in action, though the blood hummed in his ears and rushed

boiling through his veins and arteries. He had the firmness of a

galley-slave without, and the shrinkings of innocence within him,

--like certain mothers in their moments of mortal trial, when held

between two dangers, two catastrophes.

Pierrette's inward commotion was like Brigaut's. She slipped the note

into the pocket of her apron. The hectic spots upon her cheekbones

turned to a cherry-scarlet. These two children went through, all

unknown to themselves, many more emotions than go to the make-up of a

dozen ordinary loves. This moment in the market-place left in their

souls a well-spring of passionate feeling. Sylvie, who did not

recognize the Breton accent, took no notice of Brigaut, and Pierrette

went home safely with her treasure.

The letters of these two poor children were fated to serve as

documents in a terrible judicial inquiry; otherwise, without the fatal

circumstances that occasioned that inquiry, they would never have been

heard of. Here is the one which Pierrette read that night in her

chamber:--

My dear Pierrette,--At midnight, when everybody is asleep but me,

who am watching you, I will come every night under your window.

Let down a string long enough to reach me; it will not make any

noise; you must fasten to the end of it whatever you write to me.

I will tie my letter in the same way. I hear _they_ have taught

you to read and write,--those wicked relations who were to do you

good, and have done you so much harm. You, Pierrette, the daughter

of a colonel who died for France, reduced by those monsters to be

their servant! That is where all your pretty color and health have

gone. My Pierrette, what has become of her? what have they done

with her. I see plainly you are not the same, not happy. Oh!

Pierrette, let us go back to Brittany. I can earn enough now to

give you what you need; for you yourself can earn three francs a

day and I can earn four or five; and thirty sous is all I want to

live on. Ah! Pierrette, how I have prayed the good God for you

ever since I came here! I have asked him to give me all your

sufferings, and you all pleasures. Why do you stay with them? why

do they keep you? Your grandmother is more to you than they. They

are vipers; they have taken your gaiety away from you. You do not

even walk as you once did in Brittany. Let us go back. I am here

to serve you, to do your will; tell me what you wish. If you need

money I have a hundred and fifty francs; I can send them up by the

string, though I would like to kiss your dear hands and lay the

money in them. Ah, dear Pierrette, it is a long time now that the

blue sky has been overcast for me. I have not had two hours'

happiness since I put you into that diligence of evil. And when I

saw you the other morning, looking like a shadow, I could not

reach you; that hag of a cousin came between us. But at least we

can have the consolation of praying to God together every Sunday

in church; perhaps he will hear us all the more when we pray

together.

Not good-by, my dear, Pierrette, but _to-night_.

This letter so affected Pierrette that she sat for more than an hour

reading and re-reading and gazing at it. Then she remembered with

anguish that she had nothing to write with. She summoned courage to

make the difficult journey from her garret to the dining-room, where

she obtained pen, paper, and ink, and returned safely without waking

her terrible cousin. A few minutes before midnight she had finished

the following letter:--

My Friend,--Oh! yes, my friend; for there is no one but you,

Jacques, and my grandmother to love me. God forgive me, but you

are the only two persons whom I love, both alike, neither more nor

less. I was too little to know my dear mamma; but you, Jacques,

and my grandmother, and my grandfather,--God grant him heaven, for

he suffered much from his ruin, which was mine,--but you two who

are left, I love you both, unhappy as I am. Indeed, to know how

much I love you, you will have to know how much I suffer; but I

don't wish that, it would grieve you too much. _They_ speak to me

as we would not speak to a dog; _they_ treat me like the worst of

girls; and yet I do examine myself before God, and I cannot find

that I do wrong by them. Before you sang to me the marriage song I

saw the mercy of God in my sufferings; for I had prayed to him to

take me from the world, and I felt so ill I said to myself, "God

hears me!" But, Jacques, now you are here, I want to live and go

back to Brittany, to my grandmamma who loves me, though _they_ say

she stole eight thousand francs of mine. Jacques, is that so? If

they are mine could you get them! But it is not true, for if my

grandmother had eight thousand francs she would not live at

Saint-Jacques.

I don't want to trouble her last days, my kind, good grandmamma,

with the knowledge of my troubles; she might die of it. Ah! if she

knew they made her grandchild scrub the pots and pans,--she who

used to say to me, when I wanted to help her after her troubles,

"Don't touch that, my darling; leave it--leave it--you will spoil

your pretty fingers." Ah! my hands are never clean now. Sometimes

I can hardly carry the basket home from market, it cuts my arm.

Still I don't think my cousins mean to be cruel; but it is their

way always to scold, and it seems that I have no right to leave

them. My cousin Rogron is my guardian. One day when I wanted to

run away because I could not bear it, and told them so, my cousin

Sylvie said the gendarmes would go after me, for the law was my

master. Oh! I know now that cousins cannot take the place of

father or mother, any more than the saints can take the place of

God.

My poor Jacques, what do you suppose I could do with your money?

Keep it for our journey. Oh! how I think of you and Pen-Hoel, and

the big pong,--that's where we had our only happy days. I shall

have no more, for I feel I am going from bad to worse. I am very

ill, Jacques. I have dreadful pains in my head, and in my bones,

and back, which kill me, and I have no appetite except for horrid

things,--roots and leaves and such things. Sometimes I cry, when I

am all alone, for they won't let me do anything I like if they

know it, not even cry. I have to hide to offer my tears to Him to

whom we owe the mercies which we call afflictions. It must have

been He who gave you the blessed thought to come and sing the

marriage song beneath my window. Ah! Jacques, my cousin heard you,

and she said I had a lover. If you wish to be my lover, love me

well. I promise to love you always, as I did in the past, and to

be

Your faithful servant,

Pierrette Lorrain.

You will love me always, won't you?

She had brought a crust of bread from the kitchen, in which she now

made a hole for the letter, and fastened it like a weight to her

string. At midnight, having opened her window with extreme caution,

she lowered the letter with the crust, which made no noise against

either the wall of the house or the blinds. Presently she felt the

string pulled by Brigaut, who broke it and then crept softly away.

When he reached the middle of the square she could see him

indistinctly by the starlight; but he saw her quite clearly in the

zone of light thrown by the candle. The two children stood thus for

over an hour, Pierrette making him signs to go, he starting, she

remaining, he coming back to his post, and Pierrette again signing

that he must leave her. This was repeated till the child closed her

window, went to bed, and blew out the candle. Once in bed she fell

asleep, happy in heart though suffering in body,--she had Brigaut's

letter under her pillow. She slept as the persecuted sleep,--a slumber

bright with angels; that slumber full of heavenly arabesques, in

atmospheres of gold and lapis-lazuli, perceived and given to us by

Raffaelle.

The moral nature had such empire over that frail physical nature that

on the morrow Pierrette rose light and joyous as a lark, as radiant

and as gay. Such a change could not escape the vigilant eye of her

cousin Sylvie, who, this time, instead of scolding her, set about

watching her with the scrutiny of a magpie. "What reason is there for

such happiness?" was a thought of jealousy, not of tyranny. If the

colonel had not been in Sylvie's mind she would have said to Pierrette

as formerly, "Pierrette, you are very noise, and very regardless of

what you have often been told." But now the old maid resolved to spy

upon her as only old maids can spy. The day was still and gloomy, like

the weather that precedes a storm.

"You don't appear to be ill now, mademoiselle," said Sylvie at dinner.

"Didn't I tell you she put it all on to annoy us?" she cried,

addressing her brother, and not waiting for Pierrette's answer.

"On the contrary, cousin, I have a sort of fever--"

"Fever! what fever? You are as gay as a lark. Perhaps you have seen

some one again?"

Pierrette trembled and dropped her eyes on her plate.

"Tartufe!" cried Sylvie; "and only fourteen years old! what a nature!

Do you mean to come to a bad end?"

"I don't know what you mean," said Pierrette, raising her sweet and

luminous brown eyes to her cousin.

"This evening," said Sylvie, "you are to stay in the dining-room with

a candle, and do your sewing. You are not wanted in the salon; I

sha'n't have you looking into my hand to help your favorites."

Pierrette made no sign.

"Artful creature!" cried Sylvie, leaving the room.

Rogron, who did not understand his sister's anger, said to Pierrette:

"What is all this about? Try to please your cousin, Pierrette; she is

very indulgent to you, very gentle, and if you put her out of temper

the fault is certainly yours. Why do you squabble so? For my part I

like to live in peace. Look at Mademoiselle Bathilde and take pattern

by her."

Pierrette felt able to bear everything. Brigaut would come at midnight

and bring her an answer, and that hope was the viaticum of her day.

But she was using up her last strength. She did not go to bed, and

stood waiting for the hour to strike. At last midnight sounded; softly

she opened the window; this time she used a string made by tying bits

of twine together. She heard Brigaut's step, and on drawing up the

cord she found the following letter, which filled her with joy:--

My dear Pierrette,--As you are so ill you must not tire yourself

by waiting for me. You will hear me if I cry like an owl. Happily

my father taught me to imitate their note. So when you hear the

cry three times you will know I am there, and then you must let

down the cord. But I shall not come again for some days. I hope

then to bring you good news.

Oh! Pierrette, don't talk of dying! Pierrette, don't think such

things! All my heart shook, I felt as though I were dead myself at

the mere idea. No, my Pierrette, you must not die; you will live

happy, and soon you shall be delivered from your persecutors. If I

do not succeed in what I am undertaking for your rescue, I shall

appeal to the law, and I shall speak out before heaven and earth

and tell how your wicked relations are treating you. I am certain

that you have not many more days to suffer; have patience, my

Pierrette! Jacques is watching over you as in the old days when we

slid on the pond and I pulled you out of the hole in which we were

nearly drowned together.

Adieu, my dear Pierrette; in a few days, if God wills, we shall be

happy. Alas, I dare not tell you the only thing that may hinder

our meeting. But God loves us! In a few days I shall see my dear

Pierrette at liberty, without troubles, without any one to hinder

my looking at you--for, ah! Pierrette, I hunger to see you

--Pierrette, Pierrette, who deigns to love me and to tell me so.

Yes, Pierrette, I will be your lover when I have earned the

fortune you deserve; till then I will be to you only a devoted

servant whose life is yours to do what you please with it. Adieu.

Jacques Brigaut.

Here is a letter of which the major's son said nothing to Pierrette.

He wrote it to Madame Lorrain at Nantes:--

Madame Lorrain,--Your granddaughter will die, worn-out with

ill-treatment, if you do not come to fetch her. I could scarcely

recognize her; and to show you the state of things I enclose a

letter I have received from Pierrette. You are thought here to

have taken the money of your granddaughter, and you ought to

justify yourself. If you can, come at once. We may still be happy;

but if delay Pierrette will be dead.

I am, with respect, your devoted servant,

Jacques Brigaut.

At Monsieur Frappier's, Cabinet-maker, Grand'Rue, Provins.

Brigaut's fear was that the grandmother was dead.

Though this letter of the youth whom in her innocence she called her

lover was almost enigmatical to Pierrette, she believed in it with all

her virgin faith. Her heart was filled with that sensation which

travellers in the desert feel when they see from afar the palm-trees

round a well. In a few days her misery would end--Jacques said so. She

relied on this promise of her childhood's friend; and yet, as she laid

the letter beside the other, a dreadful thought came to her in

foreboding words.

"Poor Jacques," she said to herself, "he does not know the hole into

which I have now fallen!"

Sylvie had heard Pierrette, and she had also heard Brigaut under her

window. She jumped out of bed and rushed to the window to look through

the blinds into the square and there she saw, in the moonlight, a man

hurrying in the direction of the colonel's house, in front of which

Brigaut happened to stop. The old maid gently opened her door, went

upstairs, was amazed to find a light in Pierrette's room, looked

through the keyhole, and could see nothing.

"Pierrette," she said, "are you ill?"

"No, cousin," said Pierrette, surprised.

"Why is your candle burning at this time of night? Open the door; I

must know what this means."

Pierrette went to the door bare-footed, and as soon as Sylvie entered

the room she saw the cord, which Pierrette had forgotten to put away,

not dreaming of a surprise. Sylvie jumped upon it.

"What is that for?" she asked.

"Nothing, cousin."

"Nothing!" she cried. "Always lying; you'll never get to heaven that

way. Go to bed; you'll take cold."

She asked no more questions and went away, leaving Pierrette terrified

by her unusual clemency. Instead of exploding with rage, Sylvie had

suddenly determined to surprise Pierrette and the colonel together, to

seize their letters and confound the two lovers who were deceiving

her. Pierrette, inspired by a sense of danger, sewed the letters into

her corset and covered them with calico.

Here end the loves of Pierrette and Brigaut.

Pierrette rejoiced in the thought that Jacques had determined to hold

no communication with her for some days, because her cousin's

suspicions would be quieted by finding nothing to feed them. Sylvie

did in fact spend the next three nights on her legs, and each evening

in watching the innocent colonel, without discovering either in him or

in Pierrette, or in the house or out of it, anything that betrayed

their understanding. She sent Pierrette to confession, and seized that

moment to search the child's room, with the method and penetration of

a spy or a custom-house officer. She found nothing. Her fury reached

the apogee of human sentiments. If Pierrette had been there she would

certainly have struck her remorselessly. To a woman of her temper,

jealousy was less a sentiment than an occupation; she existed in it,

it made her heart beat, she felt emotions hitherto completely unknown

to her; the slightest sound or movement kept her on the qui vive; she

watched Pierrette with gloomy intentness.

"That miserable little wretch will kill me," she said.

Sylvie's severity to her cousin reached the point of refined cruelty,

and made the deplorable condition of the poor girl worse daily. She

had fever regularly, and the pains in her head became intolerable. By

the end of the week even the visitors at the house noticed her

suffering face, which would have touched to pity all selfishness less

cruel than theirs. It happened that Doctor Neraud, possibly by Vinet's

advice, did not come to the house during that week. The colonel,

knowing himself suspected by Sylvie, was afraid to risk his marriage

by showing any solicitude for Pierrette. Bathilde explained the

visible change in the girl by her natural growth. But at last, one

Sunday evening, when Pierrette was in the salon, her sufferings

overcame her and she fainted away. The colonel, who first saw her

going, caught her in his arms and carried her to a sofa.

"She did it on purpose," said Sylvie, looking at Mademoiselle Habert

and the rest who were playing boston with her.

"I assure you that your cousin is very ill," said the colonel.

"She seemed well enough in your arms," Sylvie said to him in a low

voice, with a savage smile.

"The colonel is right," said Madame de Chargeboeuf. "You ought to send

for a doctor. This morning at church every one was speaking, as they

came out, of Mademoiselle Lorrain's appearance."

"I am dying," said Pierrette.

Desfondrilles called to Sylvie and told her to unfasten her cousin's

gown. Sylvie went up to the girl, saying, "It is only a tantrum."

She unfastened the gown and was about to touch the corset, when

Pierrette, roused by the danger, sat up with superhuman strength,

exclaiming, "No, no, I will go to bed."

Sylvie had, however, touched the corset and felt the papers. She let

Pierrette go, saying to the company:

"What do you think now of her illness? I tell you it is all a

pretence. You have no idea of the perversity of that child."

After the card-playing was over she kept Vinet from following the

other guests; she was furious and wanted vengeance, and was grossly

rude to the colonel when he bade her good-night. Gouraud threw a look

at the lawyer which threatened him to the depths of his being and

seemed to put a ball in his entrails. Sylvie told Vinet to remain.

When they were alone, she said,--

"Never in my life, never in my born days, will I marry the colonel."

"Now that you have come to that decision I may speak," said the

lawyer. "The colonel is my friend, but I am more yours than his.

Rogron has done me services which I can never forget. I am as strong a

friend as I am an enemy. Once in the Chamber I shall rise to power,

and I will make your brother a receiver-general. Now swear to me,

before I say more, that you will never repeat what I tell you."

(Sylvie made an affirmative sign.) "In the first place, the brave

colonel is a gambler--"

"Ah!" exclaimed Sylvie.

"If it had not been for the embarrassments this vice has brought upon

him, he might have been a marshal of France," continued Vinet. "He is

capable of running through your property; but he is very astute; you

cannot be sure of not having children, and you told me yourself the

risks you feared. No, if you want to marry, wait till I am in the

Chamber and then take that old Desfondrilles, who shall be made chief

justice. If you want revenge on the colonel make your brother marry

Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf,--I can get her consent; she has two

thousand francs a year, and you will be connected with the de

Chargeboeufs as I am. Recollect what I tell you, the Chargeboeufs will

be glad to claim us for cousins some day."

"Gouraud loves Pierrette," was Sylvie's only answer.

"He is quite capable of it," said Vinet, "and capable of marrying her

after your death."

"A fine calculation!" she said.

"I tell you that man has the shrewdness of the devil. Marry your

brother and announce that you mean to remain unmarried and will leave

your property to your nephews and nieces. That will strike a blow at

Gouraud and Pierrette both! and you'll see the faces they'll make."

"Ah! that's true," cried the old maid, "I can serve them both right.

She shall go to a shop, and get nothing from me. She hasn't a sou; let

her do as we did,--work."

Vinet departed, having put his plan into Sylvie's head, her dogged

obstinacy being well-known to him. The old maid, he was certain, would

think the scheme her own, and carry it out.

The lawyer found the colonel in the square, smoking a cigar while he

waited for him.

"Halt!" said Gouraud; "you have pulled me down, but stones enough came

with me to bury you--"

"Colonel!--"

"Colonel or not, I shall give you your deserts. In the first place,

you shall not be deputy--"

"Colonel!--"

"I control ten votes and the election depends on--"

"Colonel, listen to me. Is there no one to marry but that old Sylvie?

I have just been defending you to her; you are accused and convicted

of writing to Pierrette; she saw you leave your house at midnight and

come to the girl's window--"

"Stuff and nonsense!"

"She means to marry her brother to Bathilde and leave her fortune to

their children."

"Rogron won't have any."

"Yes he will," replied Vinet. "But I promise to find you some young

and agreeable woman with a hundred and fifty thousand francs? Don't be

a fool; how can you and I afford to quarrel? Things have gone against

you in spite of all my care; but you don't understand me."

"Then we must understand each other," said the colonel. "Get me a wife

with a hundred and fifty thousand francs before the elections; if not

--look out for yourself! I don't like unpleasant bed-fellows, and

you've pulled the blankets all over to your side. Good-evening."

"You shall see," said Vinet, grasping the colonel's hand

affectionately.

* * * * *

About one o'clock that night three clear, sharp cries of an owl,

wonderfully well imitated, echoed through the square. Pierrette heard

them in her feverish sleep; she jumped up, moist with perspiration,

opened her window, saw Brigaut, and flung down a ball of silk, to

which he fastened a letter. Sylvie, agitated by the events of the day

and her own indecision of mind, was not asleep; she heard the owl.

"Ah, bird of ill-omen!" she thought. "Why, Pierrette is getting up!

What is she after?"

Hearing the attic window open softly, Sylvie rushed to her own window

and heard the rustle of paper against her blinds. She fastened the

strings of her bed-gown and went quickly upstairs to Pierrette's room,

where she found the poor girl unwinding the silk and freeing the

letter.

"Ha! I've caught you!" cried the old woman, rushing to the window,

from which she saw Jacques running at full speed. "Give me that

letter."

"No, cousin," said Pierrette, who, by one of those strong inspirations

of youth sustained by her own soul, rose to a grandeur of resistance

such as we admire in the history of certain peoples reduced to

despair.

"Ha! you will not?" cried Sylvie, advancing upon the girl with a face

full of hatred and fury.

Pierrette fell back to get time to put her letter in her hand, which

she clenched with unnatural force. Seeing this manoeuvre Sylvie

grasped the delicate white hand of the girl in her lobster claws and

tried to open it. It was a frightful struggle, an infamous struggle;

it was more than a physical struggle; it assailed the mind, the sole

treasure of the human being, the thought, which God has placed beyond

all earthly power and guards as the secret way between the sufferer

and Himself. The two women, one dying, the other in the vigor of

health, looked at each other fixedly. Pierrette's eyes darted on her

executioner the look the famous Templar on the rack cast upon Philippe

le Bel, who could not bear it and fled thunderstricken. Sylvie, a

woman and a jealous woman, answered that magnetic look with malignant

flashes. A dreadful silence reigned. The clenched hand of the Breton

girl resisted her cousin's efforts like a block of steel. Sylvie

twisted Pierrette's arm, she tried to force the fingers open; unable

to do so she stuck her nails into the flesh. At last, in her madness,

she set her teeth into the wrist, trying to conquer the girl by pain.

Pierrette defied her still, with that same terrible glance of

innocence. The anger of the old maid grew to such a pitch that it

became blind fury. She seized Pierrette's arm and struck the closed

fist upon the window-sill, and then upon the marble of the

mantelpiece, as we crack a nut to get the kernel.

"Help! help!" cried Pierrette, "they are murdering me!"

"Ha! you may well scream, when I catch you with a lover in the dead of

night."

And she beat the hand pitilessly.

"Help! help!" cried Pierrette, the blood flowing.

At that instant, loud knocks were heard at the front door. Exhausted,

the two women paused a moment.

Rogron, awakened and uneasy, not knowing what was happening, had got

up, gone to his sister's room, and not finding her was frightened.

Hearing the knocks he went down, unfastened the front door, and was

nearly knocked over by Brigaut, followed by a sort of phantom.

At this moment Sylvie's eyes chanced to fall on Pierrette's corset,

and she remembered the papers. Releasing the girl's wrist she sprang

upon the corset like a tiger on its prey, and showed it to Pierrette

with a smile,--the smile of an Iroquois over his victim before he

scalps him.

"I am dying," said Pierrette, falling on her knees, "oh, who will save

me?"

"I!" said a woman with white hair and an aged parchment face, in which

two gray eyes glittered.

"Ah! grandmother, you have come too late," cried the poor child,

bursting into tears.

Pierrette fell upon her bed, her strength all gone, half-dead with the

exhaustion which, in her feeble state, followed so violent a struggle.

The tall gray woman took her in her arms, as a nurse lifts a child,

and went out, followed by Brigaut, without a word to Sylvie, on whom

she cast one glance of majestic accusation.

The apparition of that august old woman, in her Breton costume,

shrouded in her coif (a sort of hooded mantle of black cloth),

accompanied by Brigaut, appalled Sylvie; she fancied she saw death.

She slowly went down the stairs, listened to the front door closing

behind them, and came face to face with her brother, who exclaimed:

"Then they haven't killed you?"

"Go to bed," said Sylvie. "To-morrow we will see what we must do."

She went back to her own bed, ripped open the corset, and read

Brigaut's two letters, which confounded her. She went to sleep in the

greatest perplexity,--not imagining the terrible results to which her

conduct was to lead.

* * * * *

The letters sent by Brigaut to old Madame Lorrain reached her in a

moment of ineffable joy, which the perusal of them troubled. The poor

old woman had grieved deeply in living without her Pierrette beside

her, but she had consoled her loneliness with the thought that the

sacrifice of herself was in the interests of her grandchild. She was

blessed with one of those ever-young hearts which are upheld and

invigorated by the idea of sacrifice. Her old husband, whose only joy

was his little granddaughter, had grieved for Pierrette; every day he

had seemed to look for her. It was an old man's grief,--on which such

old men live, of which they die.

Every one can now imagine the happiness which this poor old woman,

living in a sort of almshouse, felt when she learned of a generous

action, rare indeed but not impossible in France. The head of the

house of Collinet, whose failure in 1814 had caused the Lorrains a

loss of twenty-four thousand francs, had gone to America with his

children after his disasters. He had too high a courage to remain a

ruined man. After eleven years of untold effort crowned by success he

returned to Nantes to recover his position, leaving his eldest son in

charge of his transatlantic house. He found Madame Lorrain of Pen-Hoel

in the institution of Saint-Jacques, and was witness of the

resignation with which this most unfortunate of his creditors bore her

misery.

"God forgive you!" said the old woman, "since you give me on the

borders of my grave the means of securing the happiness of my dear

granddaughter; but alas! it will not clear the debts of my poor

husband!"

Monsieur Collinet made over to the widow both the capital and the

accrued interest, amounting to about forty-two thousand francs. His

other creditors, prosperous, rich, and intelligent merchants, had

easily born their losses, whereas the misfortunes of the Lorrains

seemed so irremediable to old Monsieur Collinet that he promised the

widow to pay off her husband's debts, to the amount of forty thousand

francs more. When the Bourse of Nantes heard of this generous

reparation they wished to receive Collinet to their board before his

certificates were granted by the Royal court at Rennes; but the

merchant refused the honor, preferring to submit to the ordinary

commercial rule.

Madame Lorrain had received the money only the day before the post

brought her Brigaut's letter, enclosing that of Pierrette. Her first

thought had been, as she signed the receipt: "Now I can live with my

Pierrette and marry her to that good Brigaut, who will make a fortune

with my money."

Therefore the moment she had read the fatal letters she made instant

preparations to start for Provins. She left Nantes that night by the

mail; for some one had explained to her its celerity. In Paris she

took the diligence for Troyes, which passes through Provins, and by

half-past eleven at night she reached Frappier's, where Brigaut,

shocked at her despairing looks, told her of Pierrette's state and

promised to bring the poor girl to her instantly. His words so

terrified the grandmother that she could not control her impatience

and followed him to the square. When Pierrette screamed, the horror of

that cry went to her heart as sharply as it did to Brigaut's. Together

they would have roused the neighborhood if Rogron, in his terror, had

not opened the door. The scream of the young girl at bay gave her

grandmother the sudden strength of anger with which she carried her

dear Pierrette in her arms to Frappier's house, where Madame Frappier

hastily arranged Brigaut's own room for the old woman and her

treasure. In that poor room, on a bed half-made, the sufferer was

deposited; and there she fainted away, holding her hand still

clenched, wounded, bleeding, with the nails deep bedded in the flesh.

Brigaut, Frappier, his wife, and the old woman stood looking at

Pierrette in silence, all four of them in a state of indescribable

amazement.

"Why is her hand bloody?" said the grandmother at last.

Pierrette, overcome by the sleep which follows all abnormal displays

of strength, and dimly conscious that she was safe from violence,

gradually unbent her fingers. Brigaut's letter fell from them like an

answer.

"They tried to take my letter from her," said Brigaut, falling on his

knees and picking up the lines in which he had told his little friend

to come instantly and softly away from the house. He kissed with pious

love the martyr's hand.

It was a sight that made those present tremble when they saw the old

gray woman, a sublime spectre, standing beside her grandchild's

pillow. Terror and vengeance wrote their fierce expressions in the

wrinkles that lined her skin of yellow ivory; her forehead, half

hidden by the straggling meshes of her gray hair, expressed a solemn

anger. She read, with a power of intuition given to the aged when near

their grave, Pierrette's whole life, on which her mind had dwelt

throughout her journey. She divined the illness of her darling, and

knew that she was threatened with death. Two big tears painfully rose

in her wan gray eyes, from which her troubles had worn both lashes and

eyebrows, two pearls of anguish, forming within them and giving them a

dreadful brightness; then each tear swelled and rolled down the

withered cheek, but did not wet it.

"They have killed her!" she said at last, clasping her hands.

She fell on her knees which struck sharp blows on the brick-laid

floor, making a vow no doubt to Saint Anne d'Auray, the most powerful

of the madonnas of Brittany.

"A doctor from Paris," she said to Brigaut. "Go and fetch one,

Brigaut, go!"

She took him by the shoulder and gave him a despotic push to send him

from the room.

"I was coming, my lad, when you wrote me; I am rich,--here, take

this," she cried, recalling him, and unfastening as she spoke the

strings that tied her short-gown. Then she drew a paper from her bosom

in which were forty-two bank-bills, saying, "Take what is necessary,

and bring back the greatest doctor in Paris."

"Keep those," said Frappier; "he can't change thousand franc notes

now. I have money, and the diligence will be passing presently; he can

certainly find a place on it. But before he goes we had better consult

Doctor Martener; he will tell us the best physician in Paris. The

diligence won't pass for over an hour,--we have time enough."

Brigaut woke up Monsieur Martener, and brought him at once. The doctor

was not a little surprised to find Mademoiselle Lorrain at Frappier's.

Brigaut told him of the scene that had just taken place at the

Rogrons'; but even so the doctor did not at first suspect the horror

of it, nor the extent of the injury done. Martener gave the address of

the celebrated Horace Bianchon, and Brigaut started for Paris by the

diligence. Monsieur Martener then sat down and examined first the

bruised and bloody hand which lay outside the bed.

"She could not have given these wounds herself," he said.

"No; the horrible woman to whom I had the misfortune to trust her was

murdering her," said the grandmother. "My poor Pierrette was screaming

'Help! help! I'm dying,'--enough to touch the heart of an

executioner."

"But why was it?" said the doctor, feeling Pierrette's pulse. "She is

very ill," he added, examining her with a light. "She must have

suffered terribly; I don't understand why she has not been properly

cared for."

"I shall complain to the authorities," said the grandmother. "Those

Rogrons asked me for my child in a letter, saying they had twelve

thousand francs a year and would take care of her; had they the right

to make her their servant and force her to do work for which she had

not the strength?"

"They did not choose to see the most visible of all maladies to which

young girls are liable. She needed the utmost care," cried Monsieur

Martener.

Pierrette was awakened by the light which Madame Frappier was holding

near her face, and by the horrible sufferings in her head caused by

the reaction of her struggle.

"Ah! Monsieur Martener, I am very ill," she said in her pretty voice.

"Where is the pain, my little friend?" asked the doctor.

"Here," she said, touching her head above the left ear.

"There's an abscess," said the doctor, after feeling the head for a

long time and questioning Pierrette on her sufferings. "You must tell

us all, my child, so that we may know how to cure you. Why is your

hand like this? You could not have given yourself that wound."

Pierrette related the struggle between herself and her cousin Sylvie.

"Make her talk," said the doctor to the grandmother, "and find out the

whole truth. I will await the arrival of the doctor from Paris; and we

will send for the surgeon in charge of the hospital here, and have a

consultation. The case seems to me a very serious one. Meantime I will

send you a quieting draught so that mademoiselle may sleep; she needs

sleep."

Left alone with her granddaughter the old Breton woman exerted her

influence over the child and made her tell all; she let her know that

she had money enough now for all three, and promised that Brigaut

should live with them. The poor girl admitted her martyrdom, not

imagining the events to which her admissions would give rise. The

monstrosity of two beings without affection and without conception of

family life opened to the old woman a world of woe as far from her

knowledge as the morals of savages may have seemed to the first

discoverers who set foot in America.

The arrival of her grandmother, the certainty of living with her in

comfort soothed Pierrette's mind as the sleeping draught soothed her

body. The old woman watched her darling, kissing her forehead, hair,

and hands, as the holy women of old kissed the hands of Jesus when

they laid him in the tomb.

IX

THE FAMILY COUNCIL

At nine o'clock that morning Monsieur Martener went to see Monsieur

Tiphaine, and related to him the scene between Pierrette and Sylvie,

and the tortures of all kinds, moral and physical, to which the

Rogrons had subjected their cousin, and the two alarming forms of

illness which their cruelty had developed. Monsieur Tiphaine sent for

Auffray the notary, one of Pierrette's own relations on the maternal

side.

At this particular time the war between the Vinet party and the

Tiphaine party was at its height. The scandals which the Rogrons and

their adherents were disseminating through the town about the liaison

of Madame Tiphaine's mother with the banker du Tillet, and the

bankruptcy of her father (a forger, they said), were all the more

exasperating to the Tiphaines because these things were malicious

truths, not libels. Such wounds cut deep; they go to the quick of

feelings and of interests. These speeches, repeated to the partisans

of the Tiphaines by the same mouths which told the Rogrons of the

sneers of "those women" of the Tiphaine clique, fed the hatreds of

both sides, now increased by the political element. The animosities

caused at this time in France by the spirit of party, the violences of

which were excessive, were everywhere mixed up, as in Provins, with

selfish schemes and wounded or vindictive individual interests. Each

party eagerly seized on whatever might injure the rival party.

Personal hatreds and self-love mingled as much as political animosity

in even the smallest matters, and were carried to hitherto unheard-of

lengths. A whole town would be roused to excitement over some private

struggle, until it took the character of a political debate.

Monsieur Tiphaine at once perceived in the case of Pierrette against

the Rogrons a means of humbling, mortifying, and dishonoring the

masters of that salon where plans against the monarchy were made and

an opposition journal born. The public prosecutor was called in; and

together with Monsieur Auffray the notary, Pierrette's relation, and

Monsieur Martener, a cautious consultation was held in the utmost

secrecy as to the proper course to follow. Monsieur Martener agreed to

advise Pierrette's grandmother to apply to the courts to have Auffray

appointed guardian to his young relation. The guardian could then

convene a "Family Council," and, backed by the testimony of three

doctors, demand the girl's release from the authority of the Rogrons.

The affair thus managed would have to go before the courts, and the

public prosecutor, Monsieur Lesourd, would see that it was taken to a

criminal court by demanding an inquiry.

Towards midday all Provins was roused by the strange news of what had

happened during the night at the Rogrons'. Pierrette's cries had been

faintly heard, though they were soon over. No one had risen to inquire

what they meant, but every one said the next day, "Did you hear those

screams about one in the morning?" Gossip and comments soon magnified

the horrible drama, and a crowd collected in front of Frappier's shop,

asking the worthy cabinet-maker for information, and hearing from him

how Pierrette was brought to his house with her fingers broken and the

hand bloody.

Towards one in the afternoon the post-chaise of Doctor Bianchon, who

was accompanied by Brigaut, stopped before the house, and Madame

Frappier went at once to summon Monsieur Martener and the surgeon in

charge of the hospital. Thus the gossip of the town received

confirmation. The Rogrons were declared to have ill-used their cousin

deliberately, and to have come near killing her. Vinet heard the news

while attending to his business in the law courts; he left everything

and hurried to the Rogrons. Rogron and his sister had just finished

breakfast. Sylvie was reluctant to tell her brother of her

discomfiture of the night before; but he pressed her with questions,

to which she would make no answer than, "That's not your business."

She went and came from the kitchen to the dining-room on pretence of

preparing the breakfast, but chiefly to avoid discussion. She was

alone when Vinet entered.

"You know what's happened?" said the lawyer.

"No," said Sylvie.

"You will be arrested on a criminal charge," replied Vinet, "from the

way things are now going about Pierrette."

"A criminal charge!" cried Rogron, who had come into the room. "Why?

What for?"

"First of all," said the lawyer, looking at Sylvie, "explain to me

without concealment and as if you stood before God, what happened in

this house last night--they talk of amputating Pierrette's hand."

Sylvie turned livid and shuddered.

"Then there is some truth in it?" said Vinet.

Mademoiselle Rogron related the scene, trying to excuse herself; but,

prodded with questions, she acknowledged the facts of the horrible

struggle.

"If you have only injured her fingers you will be taken before the

police court for a misdemeanor; but if they cut off her hand you may

be tried at the Assizes for a worse offence. The Tiphaines will do

their best to get you there."

Sylvie, more dead than alive, confessed her jealousy, and, what was

harder to do, confessed also that her suspicions were unfounded.

"Heavens, what a case this will make!" cried the lawyer. "You and your

brother may be ruined by it; you will be abandoned by most people

whether you win or lose. If you lose, you will have to leave Provins."

"Oh, my dear Monsieur Vinet, you who are such a great lawyer," said

Rogron, terrified, "advise us! save us!"

The crafty Vinet worked the terror of the two imbeciles to its utmost,

declaring that Madame and Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf might be

unwilling to enter their house again. To be abandoned by women of

their rank would be a terrible condemnation. At length, after an hour

of adroit manoeuvring, it was agreed that Vinet must have some

powerful motive in taking the case, that would impress the minds of

all Provins and explain his efforts on behalf of the Rogrons. This

motive they determined should be Rogron's marriage to Mademoiselle de

Chargeboeuf; it should be announced that very day and the banns

published on Sunday. The contract could be drawn immediately.

Mademoiselle Rogron agreed, in consideration of the marriage, to

appear in the contract as settling her capital on her brother,

retaining only the income of it. Vinet made Rogron and his sister

comprehend the necessity of antedating the document by two or three

days, so as to commit the mother and daughter in the eyes of the

public and give them a reason for continuing their visits.

"Sign that contract and I'll take upon myself to get you safely out of

this affair," said the lawyer. "There will be a terrible fight; but I

will put my whole soul into it--you'll have to make me a votive

offering."

"Oh, yes, yes," said Rogron.

By half-past eleven the lawyer had plenary powers to draw the contract

and conduct the defence of the Rogrons. At twelve o'clock application

was made to Monsieur Tiphaine, as a judge sitting in chambers, against

Brigaut and the widow Lorrain for having abducted Pierrette Lorrain, a

minor, from the house of her legal guardian. In this way the bold

lawyer became the aggressor and made Rogron the injured party. He

spoke of the matter from this point of view in the court-house.

The judge postponed the hearing till four o'clock. Needless to

describe the excitement in the town. Monsieur Tiphaine knew that by

three o'clock the consultation of doctors would be over and their

report drawn up; he wished Auffray, as surrogate-guardian, to be at

the hearing armed with that report.

The announcement of Rogron's marriage and the sacrifices made to it by

Sylvie in the contract alienated two important supporters from the

brother and sister, namely,--Mademoiselle Habert and the colonel,

whose hopes were thus annihilated. They remained, however, ostensibly

on the Rogron side for the purpose of injuring it. Consequently, as

soon as Monsieur Martener mentioned the alarming condition of

Pierrette's head, Celeste and the colonel told of the blow she had

given herself during the evening when Sylvie had forced her to leave

the salon; and they related the old maid's barbarous and unfeeling

comments, with other statements proving her cruelty to her suffering

cousin. Vinet had foreseen this storm; but he had secured the entire

fortune of the Rogrons for Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf, and he

promised himself that in a few weeks she should be mistress of the

Rogron house, and reign with him over Provins, and even bring about a

fusion with the Breauteys and the aristocrats in the interests of his

ambition.

From midday to four o'clock all the ladies of the Tiphaine clique sent

to inquire after Mademoiselle Lorrain. She, poor girl, was wholly

ignorant of the commotion she was causing in the little town. In the

midst of her sufferings she was ineffably happy in recovering her

grandmother and Brigaut, the two objects of her affection. Brigaut's

eyes were constantly full of tears. The old grandmother sat by the bed

and caressed her darling. To the three doctors she told every detail

she had obtained from Pierrette as to her life in the Rogron house.

Horace Bianchon expressed his indignation in vehement language.

Shocked at such barbarity he insisted on all the physicians in the

town being called in to see the case; the consequence was that Dr.

Neraud, the friend of the Rogrons, was present. The report was

unanimously signed. It is useless to give a text of it here. If

Moliere's medical terms were barbarous, those of modern science have

the advantage of being so clear that the explanation of Pierrette's

malady, though natural and unfortunately common, horrified all ears.

At four o'clock, after the usual rising of the court, president

Tiphaine again took his seat, when Madame Lorrain, accompanied by

Monsieur Auffray and Brigaut and a crowd of interested persons,

entered the court-room. Vinet was alone. This contrast struck the

minds of those present. The lawyer, who still wore his robe, turned

his cold face to the judge, settled his spectacles on his pallid green

eyes, and then in a shrill, persistent voice he stated that two

strangers had forced themselves at night into the Rogron domicile and

had abducted therefrom the minor Lorrain. The legal rights were with

the guardian, who now demanded the restoration of his ward.

Monsieur Auffray rose, as surrogate-guardian, and requested to be

heard.

"If the judge," he said, "will admit the report, which I hold in my

hand, signed by one of the most famous physicians in Paris, and by all

the physicians in Provins, he will understand not only that the demand

of the Sieur Rogron is senseless, but also that the grandmother of the

minor had grave cause to instantly remove her from her persecutors.

Here are the facts. The report of these physicians attribute the

almost dying condition of the said minor to the ill-treatment she has

received from the Sieur Rogron and his sister. We shall, as the law

directs, convoke a Family Council with the least possible delay, and

discuss the question as to whether or not the guardian should be

deposed. And we now ask that the minor be not returned to the domicile

of the said guardian but that she be confided to some member of her

family who shall be designated by the judge."

Vinet replied, declaring that the physicians' report ought to have

been submitted to him in order that he might have disproved it.

"Not submitted to your side," said the judge, severely, "but possibly

to the _procureur du roi_. The case is heard."

The judge then wrote at the bottom of the petition the following

order:--

"Whereas it appears, from a deliberate and unanimous report of all

the physicians of this town, together with Doctor Bianchon of the

medical faculty of Paris, that the minor Lorrain, claimed by

Jerome-Denis Rogron, her guardian, is extremely ill in consequence

of ill-treatment and personal assault in the house of the said

guardian and his sister:

"We, president of the court of Provins, passing upon the said

petition, order that until the Family Council is held the minor

Lorrain is not to be returned to the household of her said

guardian, but shall be kept in that of her surrogate-guardian.

"And further, considering the state in which the said minor now

is, and the traces of violence which, according to the report of

the physicians, are now upon her person, we commission the

attending physician and the surgeon in charge of the hospital of

Provins to visit her, and in case the injuries from the said

assault become alarming, the matter will be held to await the

action of the criminal courts; and this without prejudice to the

civil suit undertaken by Auffray the surrogate-guardian."

This severe judgment was read out by President Tiphaine in a loud and

distinct voice.

"Why not send them to the galleys at once?" said Vinet. "And all this

fuss about a girl who was carrying on an intrigue with an apprentice

to a cabinet-maker! If the case goes on in this way," he cried,

insolently, "we shall demand other judges on the ground of legitimate

suspicion."

Vinet left the court-room, and went among the chief men of his party

to explain Rogron's position, declaring that he had never so much as

given a flip to his cousin, and that the judge had viewed him much

less as Pierrette's guardian than as a leading elector in Provins.

To hear Vinet, people might have supposed that the Tiphaines were

making a great fuss about nothing; the mounting was bringing forth a

mouse. Sylvie, an eminently virtuous and pious woman, had discovered

an intrigue between her brother's ward and a workman, a Breton named

Brigaut. The scoundrel knew very well that the girl would have her

grandmother's money, and he wished to seduce her (Vinet to talk of

that!). Mademoiselle Rogron, who had discovered letters proving the

depravity of the girl, was not as much to blame as the Tiphaines were

trying to make out. If she did use some violence to get possession of

those letters (which was no wonder, when we consider what Breton

obstinacy is), how could Rogron be considered responsible for all

that?

The lawyer went on to make the matter a partisan affair, and to give

it a political color.

"They who listen to only one bell hear only one sound," said the wise

men. "Have you heard what Vinet says? Vinet explains things clearly."

Frappier's house being thought injurious to Pierrette, owing to the

noise in the street which increased the sufferings in her head, she

was taken to that of her surrogate guardian, the change being as

necessary medically as it was judicially. The removal was made with

the utmost caution, and was calculated to produce a great public

effect. Pierrette was laid on a mattress and carried on a stretcher by

two men; a Gray Sister walked beside her with a bottle of sal volatile

in her hand, while the grandmother, Brigaut, Madame Auffray, and her

maid followed. People were at their windows and doors to see the

procession pass. Certainly the state in which they saw Pierrette, pale

as death, gave immense advantage to the party against the Rogrons. The

Auffrays were determined to prove to the whole town that the judge was

right in the decision he had given. Pierrette and her grandmother were

installed on the second floor of Monsieur Auffray's house. The notary

and his wife gave her every care with the greatest hospitality, which

was not without a little ostentation in it. Pierrette had her

grandmother to nurse her; and Monsieur Martener and the head-surgeon

of the hospital attended her.

On the evening of this day exaggerations began on both sides. The

Rogron salon was crowded. Vinet had stirred up the whole Liberal party

on the subject. The Chargeboeuf ladies dined with the Rogrons, for the

contract was to be signed that evening. Vinet had had the banns posted

at the mayor's office in the afternoon. He made light of the Pierrette

affair. If the Provins court was prejudiced, the Royal courts would

appreciate the facts, he said, and the Auffrays would think twice

before they flung themselves into such a suit. The alliance of the

Rogrons with the Chargeboeufs was an immense consideration in the

minds of a certain class of people. To them it made the Rogrons as

white as snow and Pierrette an evilly disposed little girl, a serpent

warmed in their bosom.

In Madame Tiphaine's salon vengeance was had for all the mischievous

scandals that the Vinet party had disseminated for the past two years.

The Rogrons were monsters, and the guardian should undergo a criminal

trial. In the Lower town, Pierrette was quite well; in the Upper town

she was dying; at the Rogrons' she scratched her wrist; at Madame

Tiphaine's her fingers were fractured and one was to be cut off. The

next day the "Courrier de Provins," had a plausible article, extremely

well-written, a masterpiece of insinuations mixed with legal points,

which showed that there was no case whatever against Rogron. The

"Bee-hive," which did not appear till two days later, could not answer

without becoming defamatory; it replied, however, that in an affair

like this it was best to wait until the law took its course.

The Family Council was selected by the _juge de paix_ of the canton of

Provins, and consisted of Rogron and the two Messieurs Auffray, the

nearest relatives, and Monsieur Ciprey, nephew of Pierrette's maternal

grandmother. To these were joined Monsieur Habert, Pierrette's

confessor, and Colonel Gouraud, who had always professed himself a

comrade and friend of her father, Colonel Lorrain. The impartiality of

the judge in these selections was much applauded,--Monsieur Habert and

Colonel Gouraud being considered the firm friends of the Rogrons.

The serious situation in which Rogron found himself made him ask for

the assistance of a lawyer (and he named Vinet) at the Family Council.

By this manoeuvre, evidently advised by Vinet himself, Rogron

succeeded in postponing the meeting of the council till the end of

December. At that time Monsieur Tiphaine and his wife would be settled

in Paris for the opening of the Chambers; and the ministerial party

would be left without its head. Vinet had already worked upon

Desfondrilles, the deputy-judge, in case the matter should go, after

the hearing before the council, to the criminal courts.

Vinet spoke for three hours before the Family Council; he proved the

existence of an intrigue between Pierrette and Brigaut, which

justified all Mademoiselle Rogron's severity. He showed how natural it

was that the guardian should have left the management of his ward to a

woman; he dwelt on the fact that Rogron had not interfered with

Pierrette's education as planned by his sister Sylvie. But in spite of

Vinet's efforts the Council were unanimous in removing Rogron from the

guardianship. Monsieur Auffray was appointed in his place, and

Monsieur Ciprey was made surrogate. The Council summoned before it and

examined Adele, the servant-woman, who testified against her late

masters; also Mademoiselle Habert, who related the cruel remarks made

by Mademoiselle Rogron on the evening when Pierrette had given herself

a frightful blow, heard by all the company, and the speech of Madame

de Chargeboeuf about the girl's health. Brigaut produced the letter he

had received from Pierrette, which proved their innocence and stated

her ill-treatment. Proof was given that the condition of the minor was

the result of neglect on the part of the guardian, who was responsible

for all that concerned his ward. Pierrette's illness had been apparent

to every one, even to persons in the town who were strangers to the

family, yet the guardian had done nothing for her. The charge of

ill-treatment was therefore sustained against Rogron; and the case

would now go before the public.

Rogron, advised by Vinet, opposed the acceptance of the report of the

Council by the court. The authorities then intervened in consequence

of Pierrette's state, which was daily growing worse. The trial of the

case, though placed at once upon the docket, was postponed until the

month of March, 1828, to wait events.

X

VERDICTS--LEGAL AND OTHER

Meantime Rogron's marriage with Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf took

place. Sylvie moved to the second floor of the house, which she shared

with Madame de Chargeboeuf, for the first floor was entirely taken up

by the new wife. The beautiful Madame Rogron succeeded to the social

place of the beautiful Madame Tiphaine. The influence of the marriage

was immense. No one now came to visit Sylvie, but Madame Rogron's

salon was always full.

Sustained by the influence of his mother-in-law and the bankers du

Tillet and Nucingen, Monsieur Tiphaine was fortunate enough to do some

service to the administration; he became one of its chief orators, was

made judge in the civil courts, and obtained the appointment of his

nephew Lesourd to his own vacant place as president of the court of

Provins. This appointment greatly annoyed Desfondrilles. The Keeper of

the Seals sent down one of his own proteges to fill Lesourd's place.

The promotion of Monsieur Tiphaine and his translation to Paris were

therefore of no benefit at all to the Vinet party; but Vinet

nevertheless made a clever use of the result. He had always told the

Provins people that they were being used as a stepping-stone to raise

the crafty Madame Tiphaine into grandeur; Tiphaine himself had tricked

them; Madame Tiphaine despised both Provins and its people in her

heart, and would never return there again. Just at this crisis

Monsieur Tiphaine's father died; his son inherited a fine estate and

sold his house in Provins to Monsieur Julliard. The sale proved to the

minds of all how little the Tiphaines thought of Provins. Vinet was

right; Vinet had been a true prophet. These things had great influence

on the question of Pierrette's guardianship.

Thus the dreadful martyrdom brutally inflicted on the poor child by

two imbecile tyrants (which led, through its consequences, to the

terrible operation of trepanning, performed by Monsieur Martener under

the advice of Doctor Bianchon),--all this horrible drama reduced to

judicial form was left to float in the vile mess called in legal

parlance the calendar. The case was made to drag through the delays

and the interminable labyrinths of the law, by the shufflings of an

unprincipled lawyer; and during all this time the calumniated girl

languished in the agony of the worst pain known to science.

Monsieur Martener, together with the Auffray family, were soon charmed

by the beauty of Pierrette's nature and the character of her old

grandmother, whose feelings, ideas, and ways bore the stamp of Roman

antiquity,--this matron of the Marais was like a woman in Plutarch.

Doctor Martener struggled bravely with death, which already grasped

its prey. From the first, Bianchon and the hospital surgeon had

considered Pierrette doomed; and there now took place between the

doctor and the disease, the former relying on Pierrette's youth, one

of those struggles which physicians alone comprehend,--the reward of

which, in case of success, is never found in the venal pay nor in the

patients themselves, but in the gentle satisfaction of conscience, in

the invisible ideal palm gathered by true artists from the contentment

which fills their soul after accomplishing a noble work. The physician

strains towards good as an artist towards beauty, each impelled by

that grand sentiment which we call virtue. This daily contest wiped

out of Doctor Martener's mind the petty irritations of that other

contest of the Tiphaines and the Vinets,--as always happens to men

when they find themselves face to face with a great and real misery to

conquer.

Monsieur Martener had begun his career in Paris; but the cruel

activity of the city and its insensibility to its masses of suffering

had shocked his gentle soul, fitted only for the quiet life of the

provinces. Moreover, he was under the yoke of his beautiful native

land. He returned to Provins, where he married and settled, and cared

almost lovingly for the people, who were to him like a large family.

During the whole of Pierrette's illness he was careful not to speak of

her. His reluctance to answer the questions of those who asked about

her was so evident that persons soon ceased to put them. Pierrette was

to him, what indeed she truly was, a poem, mysterious, profound, vast

in suffering, such as doctors find at times in their terrible

experience. He felt an admiration for this delicate young creature

which he would not share with any one.

This feeling of the physician for his patient was, however,

unconsciously communicated (like all true feelings) to Monsieur and

Madame Auffray, whose house became, so long as Pierrette was in it,

quiet and silent. The children, who had formerly played so joyously

with her, agreed among themselves with the loving grace of childhood

to be neither noisy nor troublesome. They made it a point of honor to

be good because Pierrette was ill. Monsieur Auffray's house was in the

Upper town, beneath the ruins of the Chateau, and it was built upon a

sort of terrace formed by the overthrow of the old ramparts. The

occupants could have a view of the valley from the little fruit-garden

enclosed by walls which overlooked the town. The roofs of the other

houses came to about the level of the lower wall of this garden. Along

the terrace ran a path, by which Monsieur Auffray's study could be

entered through a glass door; at the other end of the path was an

arbor of grape vines and a fig-tree, beneath which stood a round

table, a bench and some chairs, painted green. Pierrette's bedroom was

above the study of her new guardian. Madame Lorrain slept in a cot

beside her grandchild. From her window Pierrette could see the whole

of the glorious valley of Provins, which she hardly knew, so seldom

had she left that dreadful house of the Rogrons. When the weather was

fine she loved to drag herself, resting on her grandmother's arm, to

the vine-clad arbor. Brigaut, unable to work, came three times a day

to see his little friend; he was gnawed by a grief which made him

indifferent to life. He lay in wait like a dog for Monsieur Martener,

and followed him when he left the house. The old grandmother, drunk

with grief, had the courage to conceal her despair; she showed her

darling the smiling face she formerly wore at Pen-Hoel. In her desire

to produce that illusion in the girl's mind, she made her a little

Breton cap like the one Pierrette had worn on her first arrival in

Provins; it made the darling seem more like her childlike self; in it

she was delightful to look upon, her sweet face circled with a halo of

cambric and fluted lace. Her skin, white with the whiteness of

unglazed porcelain, her forehead, where suffering had printed the

semblance of deep thought, the purity of the lines refined by illness,

the slowness of the glances, and the occasional fixity of the eyes,

made Pierrette an almost perfect embodiment of melancholy. She was

served by all with a sort of fanaticism; she was felt to be so gentle,

so tender, so loving. Madame Martener sent her piano to her sister

Madame Auffray, thinking to amuse Pierrette who was passionately fond

of music. It was a poem to watch her listening to a theme of Weber, or

Beethoven, or Herold,--her eyes raised, her lips silent, regretting no

doubt the life escaping her. The cure Peroux and Monsieur Habert, her

two religious comforters, admired her saintly resignation. Surely the

seraphic perfection of young girls and young men marked with the

hectic of death, is a wonderful fact worthy of the attention alike of

philosophers and of heedless minds. He who has ever seen one of these

sublime departures from this life can never remain, or become, an

unbeliever. Such beings exhale, as it were, a celestial fragrance;

their glances speak of God; the voices are eloquent in the simplest

words; often they ring like some seraphic instrument revealing the

secrets of the future. When Monsieur Martener praised her for having

faithfully followed a harsh prescription the little angel replied, and

with what a glance!--

"I want to live, dear Monsieur Martener; but less for myself than for

my grandmother, for my Brigaut, for all of you who will grieve at my

death."

The first time she went into the garden on a beautiful sunny day in

November attended by all the household, Madame Auffray asked her if

she was tired.

"No, now that I have no sufferings but those God sends I can bear

all," she said. "The joy of being loved gives me strength to suffer."

That was the only time (and then vaguely) that she ever alluded to her

horrible martyrdom at the Rogrons, whom she never mentioned, and of

whom no one reminded her, knowing well how painful the memory must be.

"Dear Madame Auffray," she said one day at noon on the terrace, as she

gazed at the valley, warmed by a glorious sun and colored with the

glowing tints of autumn, "my death in your house gives me more

happiness than I have had since I left Brittany."

Madame Auffray whispered in her sister Martener's ear:--

"How she would have loved!"

In truth, her tones, her looks gave to her words a priceless value.

Monsieur Martener corresponded with Doctor Bianchon, and did nothing

of importance without his advice. He hoped in the first place to

regular the functions of nature and to draw away the abscess in the

head through the ear. The more Pierrette suffered, the more he hoped.

He gained some slight success at times, and that was a great triumph.

For several days Pierrette's appetite returned and enabled her to take

nourishing food for which her illness had given her a repugnance; the

color of her skin changed; but the condition of her head was terrible.

Monsieur Martener entreated the great physician his adviser to come

down. Bianchon came, stayed two days, and resolved to undertake an

operation. To spare the feelings of poor Martener he went to Paris and

brought back with him the celebrated Desplein. Thus the operation was

performed by the greatest surgeon of ancient or modern times; but that

terrible diviner said to Martener as he departed with Bianchon, his

best-loved pupil:--

"Nothing but a miracle can save her. As Horace told you, caries of the

bone has begun. At her age the bones are so tender."

The operation was performed at the beginning of March, 1828. During

all that month, distressed by Pierrette's horrible sufferings,

Monsieur Martener made several journeys to Paris; there he consulted

Desplein and Bianchon, and even went so far as to propose to them an

operation of the nature of lithotrity, which consists in passing into

the head a hollow instrument by the help of which an heroic remedy can

be applied to the diseased bone, to arrest the progress of the caries.

Even the bold Desplein dared not attempt that high-handed surgical

measure, which despair alone had suggested to Martener. When he

returned home from Paris he seemed to his friends morose and gloomy.

He was forced to announce on that fatal evening to the Auffrays and

Madame Lorrain and to the two priests and Brigaut that science could

do no more for Pierrette, whose recovery was now in God's hands only.

The consternation among them was terrible. The grandmother made a vow,

and requested the priests to say a mass every morning at daybreak

before Pierrette rose,--a mass at which she and Brigaut might be

present.

The trial came on. While the victim lay dying, Vinet was calumniating

her in court. The judge approved and accepted the report of the Family

Council, and Vinet instantly appealed. The newly appointed _procureur

du roi_ made a requisition which necessitated fresh evidence. Rogron

and his sister were forced to give bail to avoid going to prison. The

order for fresh evidence included that of Pierrette herself. When

Monsieur Desfondrilles came to the Auffrays' to receive it, Pierrette

was dying, her confessor was at her bedside about to administer

extreme unction. At that moment she entreated all present to forgive

her cousins as she herself forgave them, saying with her simple good

sense that the judgment of these things belonged to God alone.

"Grandmother," she said, "leave all you have to Brigaut" (Brigaut

burst into tears); "and," continued Pierrette, "give a thousand francs

to that kind Adele who warmed my bed. If Adele had remained with my

cousins I should not now be dying."

It was at three o'clock on the Tuesday of Easter week, on a beautiful,

bright day, that the angel ceased to suffer. Her heroic grandmother

wished to watch all that night with the priests, and to sew with her

stiff old fingers her darling's shroud. Towards evening Brigaut left

the Auffray's house and went to Frappier's.

"I need not ask you, my poor boy, for news," said the cabinet-maker.

"Pere Frappier, yes, it is ended for her--but not for me."

He cast a look upon the different woods piled up around the shop,--a

look of painful meaning.

"I understand you, Brigaut," said his worthy master. "Take all you

want." And he showed him the oaken planks of two-inch thickness.

"Don't help me, Monsieur Frappier," said the Breton, "I wish to do it

alone."

He passed the night in planing and fitting Pierrette's coffin, and

more than once his plane took off at a single pass a ribbon of wood

which was wet with tears. The good man Frappier smoked his pipe and

watched him silently, saying only, when the four pieces were joined

together,--

"Make the cover to slide; her poor grandmother will not hear the

nails."

At daybreak Brigaut went out to fetch the lead to line the coffin. By

a strange chance, the sheets of lead cost just the sum he had given

Pierrette for her journey from Nantes to Provins. The brave Breton,

who was able to resist the awful pain of himself making the coffin of

his dear one and lining with his memories those burial planks, could

not bear up against this strange reminder. His strength gave way; he

was not able to lift the lead, and the plumber, seeing this, came with

him, and offered to accompany him to the house and solder the last

sheet when the body had been laid in the coffin.

The Breton burned the plane and all the tools he had used. Then he

settled his accounts with Frappier and bade him farewell. The heroism

with which the poor lad personally performed, like the grandmother,

the last offices for Pierrette made him a sharer in the awful scene

which crowned the tyranny of the Rogrons.

Brigaut and the plumber reached the house of Monsieur Auffray just in

time to decide by their own main force an infamous and shocking

judicial question. The room where the dead girl lay was full of

people, and presented to the eyes of the two men a singular sight. The

Rogron emissaries were standing beside the body of their victim, to

torture her even after death. The corpse of the child, solemn in its

beauty, lay on the cot-bed of her grandmother. Pierrette's eyes were

closed, the brown hair smoothed upon her brow, the body swathed in a

coarse cotton sheet.

Before the bed, on her knees, her hair in disorder, her hands

stretched out, her face on fire, the old Lorrain was crying out, "No,

no, it shall not be done!"

At the foot of the bed stood Monsieur Auffray and the two priests. The

tapers were still burning.

Opposite to the grandmother was the surgeon of the hospital, with an

assistant, and near him stood Doctor Neraud and Vinet. The surgeon

wore his dissecting apron; the assistant had opened a case of

instruments and was handing him a knife.

This scene was interrupted by the noise of the coffin which Brigaut

and the plumber set down upon the floor. Then Brigaut, advancing, was

horrified at the sight of Madame Lorrain, who was now weeping.

"What is the matter?" he asked, standing beside her and grasping the

chisel convulsively in his hand.

"This," said the old woman, "_this_, Brigaut: they want to open the

body of my child and cut into her head, and stab her heart after her

death as they did when she was living."

"Who?" said Brigaut, in a voice that might have deafened the men of

law.

"The Rogrons."

"In the sacred name of God!--"

"Stop, Brigaut," said Monsieur Auffray, seeing the lad brandish his

chisel.

"Monsieur Auffray," said Brigaut, as white as his dead companion, "I

hear you because you are Monsieur Auffray, but at this moment I will

not listen to--"

"The law!" said Auffray.

"Is there law? is there justice?" cried the Breton. "Justice, this is

it!" and he advanced to the lawyer and the doctors, threatening them

with his chisel.

"My friend," said the curate, "the law has been invoked by the lawyer

of Monsieur Rogron, who is under the weight of a serious accusation;

and it is impossible for us to refuse him the means of justification.

The lawyer of Monsieur Rogron claims that if the poor child died of an

abscess in her head her former guardian cannot be blamed, for it is

proved that Pierrette concealed the effects of the blow which she gave

to herself--"

"Enough!" said Brigaut.

"My client--" began Vinet.

"Your client," cried the Breton, "shall go to hell and I to the

scaffold; for if one of you dares to touch her whom your client has

killed, I will kill him if my weapon does its duty."

"This is interference with the law," said Vinet. "I shall instantly

inform the court."

The five men left the room.

"Oh, my son!" cried the old woman, rising from her knees and falling

on Brigaut's neck, "let us bury her quick,--they will come back."

"If we solder the lead," said the plumber, "they may not dare to open

it."

Monsieur Auffray hastened to his brother-in-law, Monsieur Lesourd, to

try and settle the matter. Vinet was not unwilling. Pierrette being

dead the suit about the guardianship fell, of course, to the ground.

All the astute lawyer wanted was the effect produced by his request.

At midday Monsieur Desfondrilles made his report on the case, and the

court rendered a decision that there was no ground for further action.

Rogron dared not go to Pierrette's funeral, at which the whole town

was present. Vinet wished to force him there, but the miserable man

was afraid of exciting universal horror.

Brigaut left Provins after watching the filling up of the grave where

Pierrette lay, and went on foot to Paris. He wrote a petition to the

Dauphiness asking, in the name of his father, that he might enter the

Royal guard, to which he was at once admitted. When the expedition to

Algiers was undertaken he wrote to her again, to obtain employment in

it. He was then a sergeant; Marshal Bourmont gave him an appointment

as sub-lieutenant in a line regiment. The major's son behaved like a

man who wished to die. Death has, however, respected Jacques Brigaut

up to the present time; although he has distinguished himself in all

the recent expeditions he has never yet been wounded. He is now major

in a regiment of infantry. No officer is more taciturn or more

trustworthy. Outside of his duty he is almost mute; he walks alone and

lives mechanically. Every one divines and respects a hidden sorrow. He

possesses forty-six thousand francs, which old Madame Lorrain, who

died in Paris in 1829, bequeathed to him.

At the elections of 1830 Vinet was made a deputy. The services he

rendered the new government have now earned him the position of

_procureur-general_. His influence is such that he will always remain

a deputy. Rogron is receiver-general in the same town where Vinet

fulfils his legal functions; and by one of those curious tricks of

chance which do so often occur, Monsieur Tiphaine is president of the

Royal court in the same town,--for the worthy man gave in his adhesion

to the dynasty of July without the slightest hesitation. The

ex-beautiful Madame Tiphaine lives on excellent terms with the

beautiful Madame Rogron. Vinet is hand in glove with Madame Tiphaine.

As to the imbecile Rogron, he makes such remarks as, "Louis-Philippe

will never be really king till he is able to make nobles."

The speech is evidently not his own. His health is failing, which

allows Madame Rogron to hope she may soon marry the General Marquis de

Montriveau, peer of France, who commands the department, and is paying

her attentions. Vinet is in his element, seeking victims; he never

believes in the innocence of an accused person. This thoroughbred

prosecutor is held to be one of the most amiable men on the circuit;

and he is no less liked in Paris and in the Chamber; at court he is a

charming courtier.

According to a certain promise made by Vinet, General Baron Gouraud,

that noble relic of our glorious armies, married a Mademoiselle

Matifat, twenty-five years old, daughter of a druggist in the rue des

Lombards, whose dowry was a hundred thousand francs. He commands (as

Vinet prophesied) a department in the neighborhood of Paris. He was

named peer of France for his conduct in the riots which occurred

during the ministry of Casimir Perier. Baron Gouraud was one of the

generals who took the church of Saint-Merry, delighted to rap those

rascally civilians who had vexed him for years over the knuckles; for

which service he was rewarded with the grand cordon of the Legion of

honor.

None of the personages connected with Pierrette's death ever felt the

slightest remorse about it. Monsieur Desfondrilles is still

archaeological, but, in order to compass his own election, the

_procureur general_ Vinet took pains to have him appointed president

of the Provins court. Sylvie has a little circle, and manages her

brother's property; she lends her own money at high interest, and does

not spend more than twelve hundred francs a year.

From time to time, when some former son or daughter of Provins returns

from Paris to settle down, you may hear them ask, as they leave

Mademoiselle Rogron's house, "Wasn't there a painful story against the

Rogrons,--something about a ward?"

"Mere prejudice," replies Monsieur Desfondrilles. "Certain persons

tried to make us believe falsehoods. Out of kindness of heart the

Rogrons took in a girl named Pierrette, quite pretty but with no

money. Just as she was growing up she had an intrigue with a young

man, and stood at her window barefooted talking to him. The lovers

passed notes to each other by a string. She took cold in this way and

died, having no constitution. The Rogrons behaved admirably. They made

no claim on certain property which was to come to her,--they gave it

all up to the grandmother. The moral of it was, my good friend, that

the devil punishes those who try to benefit others."

"Ah! that is quite another story from the one old Frappier told me."

"Frappier consults his wine-cellar more than he does his memory,"

remarked another of Mademoiselle Rogron's visitors.

"But that old priest, Monsieur Habert says--"

"Oh, he! don't you know why?"

"No."

"He wanted to marry his sister to Monsieur Rogron, the

receiver-general."

* * * * *

Two men think of Pierrette daily: Doctor Martener and Major Brigaut;

they alone know the hideous truth.

To give that truth its true proportions we must transport the scene to

the Rome of the middle ages, where a sublime young girl, Beatrice

Cenci, was brought to the scaffold by motives and intrigues that were

almost identical with those which laid our Pierrette in her grave.

Beatrice Cenci had but one defender,--an artist, a painter. In our day

history, and living men, on the faith of Guido Reni's portrait,

condemn the Pope, and know that Beatrice was a most tender victim of

infamous passions and base feuds.

We must all agree that legality would be a fine thing for social

scoundrelism IF THERE WERE NO GOD.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Bianchon, Horace

Father Goriot

The Atheist's Mass

Cesar Birotteau

The Commission in Lunacy

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

A Bachelor's Establishment

The Secrets of a Princess

The Government Clerks

A Study of Woman

Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Honorine

The Seamy Side of History

The Magic Skin

A Second Home

A Prince of Bohemia

Letters of Two Brides

The Muse of the Department

The Imaginary Mistress

The Middle Classes

Cousin Betty

The Country Parson

In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following:

Another Study of Woman

La Grande Breteche

Brigaut, Major

The Chouans

Desplein

The Atheist's Mass

Cousin Pons

Lost Illusions

The Thirteen

The Government Clerks

A Bachelor's Establishment

The Seamy Side of History

Modeste Mignon

Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Honorine

Gouraud, General, Baron

Cousin Pons

Keller, Adolphe

The Middle Classes

Cesar Birotteau

Matifat, Mademoiselle

Cesar Birotteau

The Firm of Nucingen

Montriveau, General Marquis Armand de

The Thirteen

Father Goriot

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Another Study of Woman

The Member for Arcis

Nucingen, Baron Frederic de

The Firm of Nucingen

Father Goriot

Cesar Birotteau

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Another Study of Woman

The Secrets of a Princess

A Man of Business

Cousin Betty

The Muse of the Department

The Unconscious Humorists

Roguin

Cesar Birotteau

Eugenie Grandet

A Bachelor's Establishment

The Vendetta

Roguin, Madame

Cesar Birotteau

At the Sign of the Cat and Racket

A Second Home

A Daughter of Eve

Tillet, Ferdinand du

Cesar Birotteau

The Firm of Nucingen

The Middle Classes

A Bachelor's Establishment

Melmoth Reconciled

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

The Secrets of a Princess

A Daughter of Eve

The Member for Arcis

Cousin Betty

The Unconscious Humorists

Tiphaine, Madame

The Vendetta

Vinet

The Member for Arcis

The Middle Classes

Cousin Pons

THE VICAR OF TOURS

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC

Translated by

Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION

To David, Sculptor:

The permanence of the work on which I inscribe your name

--twice made illustrious in this century--is very problematical;

whereas you have graven mine in bronze which survives nations

--if only in their coins. The day may come when numismatists,

discovering amid the ashes of Paris existences perpetuated by

you, will wonder at the number of heads crowned in your

atelier and endeavour to find in them new dynasties.

To you, this divine privilege; to me, gratitude.

De Balzac.

THE VICAR OF TOURS

I

Early in the autumn of 1826 the Abbe Birotteau, the principal

personage of this history, was overtaken by a shower of rain as he

returned home from a friend's house, where he had been passing the

evening. He therefore crossed, as quickly as his corpulence would

allow, the deserted little square called "The Cloister," which lies

directly behind the chancel of the cathedral of Saint-Gatien at Tours.

The Abbe Birotteau, a short little man, apoplectic in constitution and

about sixty years old, had already gone through several attacks of

gout. Now, among the petty miseries of human life the one for which

the worthy priest felt the deepest aversion was the sudden sprinkling

of his shoes, adorned with silver buckles, and the wetting of their

soles. Notwithstanding the woollen socks in which at all seasons he

enveloped his feet with the extreme care that ecclesiastics take of

themselves, he was apt at such times to get them a little damp, and

the next day gout was sure to give him certain infallible proofs of

constancy. Nevertheless, as the pavement of the Cloister was likely to

be dry, and as the abbe had won three francs ten sous in his rubber

with Madame de Listomere, he bore the rain resignedly from the middle

of the place de l'Archeveche, where it began to come down in earnest.

Besides, he was fondling his chimera,--a desire already twelve years

old, the desire of a priest, a desire formed anew every evening and

now, apparently, very near accomplishment; in short, he had wrapped

himself so completely in the fur cape of a canon that he did not feel

the inclemency of the weather. During the evening several of the

company who habitually gathered at Madame de Listomere's had almost

guaranteed to him his nomination to the office of canon (then vacant

in the metropolitan Chapter of Saint-Gatien), assuring him that no one

deserved such promotion as he, whose rights, long overlooked, were

indisputable.

If he had lost the rubber, if he had heard that his rival, the Abbe

Poirel, was named canon, the worthy man would have thought the rain

extremely chilling; he might even have thought ill of life. But it so

chanced that he was in one of those rare moments when happy inward

sensations make a man oblivious of discomfort. In hastening his steps

he obeyed a more mechanical impulse, and truth (so essential in a

history of manners and morals) compels us to say that he was thinking

of neither rain nor gout.

In former days there was in the Cloister, on the side towards the

Grand'Rue, a cluster of houses forming a Close and belonging to the

cathedral, where several of the dignitaries of the Chapter lived.

After the confiscation of ecclesiastical property the town had turned

the passage through this close into a narrow street, called the Rue de

la Psalette, by which pedestrians passed from the Cloister to the

Grand'Rue. The name of this street, proves clearly enough that the

precentor and his pupils and those connected with the choir formerly

lived there. The other side, the left side, of the street is occupied

by a single house, the walls of which are overshadowed by the

buttresses of Saint-Gatien, which have their base in the narrow little

garden of the house, leaving it doubtful whether the cathedral was

built before or after this venerable dwelling. An archaeologist

examining the arabesques, the shape of the windows, the arch of the

door, the whole exterior of the house, now mellow with age, would see

at once that it had always been a part of the magnificent edifice with

which it is blended.

An antiquary (had there been one at Tours,--one of the least literary

towns in all France) would even discover, where the narrow street

enters the Cloister, several vestiges of an old arcade, which formerly

made a portico to these ecclesiastical dwellings, and was, no doubt,

harmonious in style with the general character of the architecture.

The house of which we speak, standing on the north side of the

cathedral, was always in the shadow thrown by that vast edifice, on

which time had cast its dingy mantle, marked its furrows, and shed its

chill humidity, its lichen, mosses, and rank herbs. The darkened

dwelling was wrapped in silence, broken only by the bells, by the

chanting of the offices heard through the windows of the church, by

the call of the jackdaws nesting in the belfries. The region is a

desert of stones, a solitude with a character of its own, an arid

spot, which could only be inhabited by beings who had either attained

to absolute nullity, or were gifted with some abnormal strength of

soul. The house in question had always been occupied by abbes, and it

belonged to an old maid named Mademoiselle Gamard. Though the property

had been bought from the national domain under the Reign of Terror by

the father of Mademoiselle Gamard, no one objected under the

Restoration to the old maid's retaining it, because she took priests

to board and was very devout; it may be that religious persons gave

her credit for the intention of leaving the property to the Chapter.

The Abbe Birotteau was making his way to this house, where he had

lived for the last two years. His apartment had been (as was now the

canonry) an object of envy and his "hoc erat in votis" for a dozen

years. To be Mademoiselle Gamard's boarder and to become a canon were

the two great desires of his life; in fact they do present accurately

the ambition of a priest, who, considering himself on the highroad to

eternity, can wish for nothing in this world but good lodging, good

food, clean garments, shoes with silver buckles, a sufficiency of

things for the needs of the animal, and a canonry to satisfy

self-love, that inexpressible sentiment which follows us, they say,

into the presence of God,--for there are grades among the saints. But

the covetous desire for the apartment which the Abbe Birotteau was now

inhabiting (a very harmless desire in the eyes of worldly people) had

been to the abbe nothing less than a passion, a passion full of

obstacles, and, like more guilty passions, full of hopes, pleasures,

and remorse.

The interior arrangements of the house did not allow Mademoiselle

Gamard to take more than two lodgers. Now, for about twelve years

before the day when Birotteau went to live with her she had undertaken

to keep in health and contentment two priests; namely, Monsieur l'Abbe

Troubert and Monsieur l'Abbe Chapeloud. The Abbe Troubert still lived.

The Abbe Chapeloud was dead; and Birotteau had stepped into his place.

The late Abbe Chapeloud, in life a canon of Saint-Gatien, had been an

intimate friend of the Abbe Birotteau. Every time that the latter paid

a visit to the canon he had constantly admired the apartment, the

furniture and the library. Out of this admiration grew the desire to

possess these beautiful things. It had been impossible for the Abbe

Birotteau to stifle this desire; though it often made him suffer

terribly when he reflected that the death of his best friend could

alone satisfy his secret covetousness, which increased as time went

on. The Abbe Chapeloud and his friend Birotteau were not rich. Both

were sons of peasants; and their slender savings had been spent in the

mere costs of living during the disastrous years of the Revolution.

When Napoleon restored the Catholic worship the Abbe Chapeloud was

appointed canon of the cathedral and Birotteau was made vicar of it.

Chapeloud then went to board with Mademoiselle Gamard. When Birotteau

first came to visit his friend, he thought the arrangement of the

rooms excellent, but he noticed nothing more. The outset of this

concupiscence of chattels was very like that of a true passion, which

often begins, in a young man, with cold admiration for a woman whom he

ends in loving forever.

The apartment, reached by a stone staircase, was on the side of the

house that faced south. The Abbe Troubert occupied the ground-floor,

and Mademoiselle Gamard the first floor of the main building, looking

on the street. When Chapeloud took possession of his rooms they were

bare of furniture, and the ceilings were blackened with smoke. The

stone mantelpieces, which were very badly cut, had never been painted.

At first, the only furniture the poor canon could put in was a bed, a

table, a few chairs, and the books he possessed. The apartment was

like a beautiful woman in rags. But two or three years later, an old

lady having left the Abbe Chapeloud two thousand francs, he spent that

sum on the purchase of an oak bookcase, the relic of a chateau pulled

down by the Bande Noire, the carving of which deserved the admiration

of all artists. The abbe made the purchase less because it was very

cheap than because the dimensions of the bookcase exactly fitted the

space it was to fill in his gallery. His savings enabled him to

renovate the whole gallery, which up to this time had been neglected

and shabby. The floor was carefully waxed, the ceiling whitened, the

wood-work painted to resemble the grain and knots of oak. A long table

in ebony and two cabinets by Boulle completed the decoration, and gave

to this gallery a certain air that was full of character. In the

course of two years the liberality of devout persons, and legacies,

though small ones, from pious penitents, filled the shelves of the

bookcase, till then half empty. Moreover, Chapeloud's uncle, an old

Oratorian, had left him his collection in folio of the Fathers of the

Church, and several other important works that were precious to a

priest.

Birotteau, more and more surprised by the successive improvements of

the gallery, once so bare, came by degrees to a condition of

involuntary envy. He wished he could possess that apartment, so

thoroughly in keeping with the gravity of ecclestiastical life. The

passion increased from day to day. Working, sometimes for days

together, in this retreat, the vicar could appreciate the silence and

the peace that reigned there. During the following year the Abbe

Chapeloud turned a small room into an oratory, which his pious friends

took pleasure in beautifying. Still later, another lady gave the canon

a set of furniture for his bedroom, the covering of which she had

embroidered under the eyes of the worthy man without his ever

suspecting its destination. The bedroom then had the same effect upon

the vicar that the gallery had long had; it dazzled him. Lastly, about

three years before the Abbe Chapeloud's death, he completed the

comfort of his apartment by decorating the salon. Though the furniture

was plainly covered in red Utrecht velvet, it fascinated Birotteau.

From the day when the canon's friend first laid eyes on the red damask

curtains, the mahogany furniture, the Aubusson carpet which adorned

the vast room, then lately painted, his envy of Chapeloud's apartment

became a monomania hidden within his breast. To live there, to sleep

in that bed with the silk curtains where the canon slept, to have all

Chapeloud's comforts about him, would be, Birotteau felt, complete

happiness; he saw nothing beyond it. All the envy, all the ambition

which the things of this world give birth to in the hearts of other

men concentrated themelves for Birotteau in the deep and secret

longing he felt for an apartment like that which the Abbe Chapeloud

had created for himself. When his friend fell ill he went to him out

of true affection; but all the same, when he first heard of his

illness, and when he sat by his bed to keep him company, there arose

in the depths of his consciousness, in spite of himself, a crowd of

thoughts the simple formula of which was always, "If Chapeloud dies I

can have this apartment." And yet--Birotteau having an excellent

heart, contracted ideas, and a limited mind--he did not go so far as

to think of means by which to make his friend bequeath to him the

library and the furniture.

The Abbe Chapeloud, an amiable, indulgent egoist, fathomed his

friend's desires--not a difficult thing to do--and forgave them; which

may seem less easy to a priest; but it must be remembered that the

vicar, whose friendship was faithful, did not fail to take a daily

walk with his friend along their usual path in the Mail de Tours,

never once depriving him of an instant of the time devoted for over

twenty years to that exercise. Birotteau, who regarded his secret

wishes as crimes, would have been capable, out of contrition, of the

utmost devotion to his friend. The latter paid his debt of gratitude

for a friendship so ingenuously sincere by saying, a few days before

his death, as the vicar sat by him reading the "Quotidienne" aloud:

"This time you will certainly get the apartment. I feel it is all over

with me now."

Accordingly, it was found that the Abbe Chapeloud had left his library

and all his furniture to his friend Birotteau. The possession of these

things, so keenly desired, and the prospect of being taken to board by

Mademoiselle Gamard, certainly did allay the grief which Birotteau

felt at the death of his friend the canon. He might not have been

willing to resuscitate him; but he mourned him. For several days he

was like Gargantus, who, when his wife died in giving birth to

Pantagruel, did not know whether to rejoice at the birth of a son or

grieve at having buried his good Babette, and therefore cheated

himself by rejoicing at the death of his wife, and deploring the

advent of Pantagruel.

The Abbe Birotteau spent the first days of his mourning in verifying

the books in _his_ library, in making use of _his_ furniture, in

examining the whole of his inheritance, saying in a tone which,

unfortunately, was not noted at the time, "Poor Chapeloud!" His joy

and his grief so completely absorbed him that he felt no pain when he

found that the office of canon, in which the late Chapeloud had hoped

his friend Birotteau might succeed him, was given to another.

Mademoiselle Gamard having cheerfully agreed to take the vicar to

board, the latter was thenceforth a participator in all those

felicities of material comfort of which the deceased canon had been

wont to boast.

Incalculable they were! According to the Abbe Chapeloud none of the

priests who inhabited the city of Tours, not even the archbishop, had

ever been the object of such minute and delicate attentions as those

bestowed by Mademoiselle Gamard on her two lodgers. The first words

the canon said to his friend when they met for their walk on the Mail

referred usually to the succulent dinner he had just eaten; and it was

a very rare thing if during the walks of each week he did not say at

least fourteen times, "That excellent spinster certainly has a

vocation for serving ecclesiastics."

"Just think," the canon would say to Birotteau, "that for twelve

consecutive years nothing has ever been amiss,--linen in perfect

order, bands, albs, surplices; I find everything in its place, always

in sufficient quantity, and smelling of orris-root. My furniture is

rubbed and kept so bright that I don't know when I have seen any dust

--did you ever see a speck of it in my rooms? Then the firewood is so

well selected. The least little things are excellent. In fact,

Mademoiselle Gamard keeps an incessant watch over my wants. I can't

remember having rung twice for anything--no matter what--in ten years.

That's what I call living! I never have to look for a single thing,

not even my slippers. Always a good fire, always a good dinner. Once

the bellows annoyed me, the nozzle was choked up; but I only mentioned

it once, and the next day Mademoiselle gave me a very pretty pair,

also those nice tongs you see me mend the fire with."

For all answer Birotteau would say, "Smelling of orris-root!" That

"smelling of orris-root" always affected him. The canon's remarks

revealed ideal joys to the poor vicar, whose bands and albs were the

plague of his life, for he was totally devoid of method and often

forgot to order his dinner. Therefore, if he saw Mademoiselle Gamard

at Saint-Gatien while saying mass or taking round the plate, he never

failed to give her a kindly and benevolent look,--such a look as Saint

Teresa might have cast to heaven.

Though the comforts which all creatures desire, and for which he had

so often longed, thus fell to his share, the Abbe Birotteau, like the

rest of the world, found it difficult, even for a priest, to live

without something to hanker for. Consequently, for the last eighteen

months he had replaced his two satisfied passions by an ardent longing

for a canonry. The title of Canon had become to him very much what a

peerage is to a plebeian minister. The prospect of an appointment,

hopes of which had just been held out to him at Madame de Listomere's,

so completely turned his head that he did not observe until he reached

his own door that he had left his umbrella behind him. Perhaps, even

then, if the rain were not falling in torrents he might not have

missed it, so absorbed was he in the pleasure of going over and over

in his mind what had been said to him on the subject of his promotion

by the company at Madame de Listomere's,--an old lady with whom he

spent every Wednesday evening.

The vicar rang loudly, as if to let the servant know she was not to

keep him waiting. Then he stood close to the door to avoid, if he

could, getting showered; but the drip from the roof fell precisely on

the toes of his shoes, and the wind blew gusts of rain into his face

that were much like a shower-bath. Having calculated the time necesary

for the woman to leave the kitchen and pull the string of the outer

door, he rang again, this time in a manner that resulted in a very

significant peal of the bell.

"They can't be out," he said to himself, not hearing any movement on

the premises.

Again he rang, producing a sound that echoed sharply through the house

and was taken up and repeated by all the echoes of the cathedral, so

that no one could avoid waking up at the remonstrating racket.

Accordingly, in a few moments, he heard, not without some pleasure in

his wrath, the wooden shoes of the servant-woman clacking along the

paved path which led to the outer door. But even then the discomforts

of the gouty old gentleman were not so quickly over as he hoped.

Instead of pulling the string, Marianne was obliged to turn the lock

of the door with its heavy key, and pull back all the bolts.

"Why did you let me ring three times in such weather?" said the vicar.

"But, monsieur, don't you see the door was locked? We have all been in

bed ever so long; it struck a quarter to eleven some time ago.

Mademoiselle must have thought you were in."

"You saw me go out, yourself. Besides, Mademoiselle knows very well I

always go to Madame de Listomere's on Wednesday evening."

"I only did as Mademoiselle told me, monsieur."

These words struck the vicar a blow, which he felt the more because

his late revery had made him completely happy. He said nothing and

followed Marianne towards the kitchen to get his candlestick, which he

supposed had been left there as usual. But instead of entering the

kitchen Marianne went on to his own apartments, and there the vicar

beheld his candlestick on a table close to the door of the red salon,

in a sort of antechamber formed by the landing of the staircase, which

the late canon had inclosed with a glass partition. Mute with

amazement, he entered his bedroom hastily, found no fire, and called

to Marianne, who had not had time to get downstairs.

"You have not lighted the fire!" he said.

"Beg pardon, Monsieur l'abbe, I did," she said; "it must have gone

out."

Birotteau looked again at the hearth, and felt convinced that the fire

had been out since morning.

"I must dry my feet," he said. "Make the fire."

Marianne obeyed with the haste of a person who wants to get back to

her night's rest. While looking about him for his slippers, which were

not in the middle of his bedside carpet as usual, the abbe took mental

notes of the state of Marianne's dress, which convinced him that she

had not got out of bed to open the door as she said she had. He then

recollected that for the last two weeks he had been deprived of

various little attentions which for eighteen months had made life

sweet to him. Now, as the nature of narrow minds induces them to study

trifles, Birotteau plunged suddenly into deep meditation on these four

circumstances, imperceptible in their meaning to others, but to him

indicative of four catastrophes. The total loss of his happiness was

evidently foreshadowed in the neglect to place his slipppers, in

Marianne's falsehood about the fire, in the unusual removal of his

candlestick to the table of the antechamber, and in the evident

intention to keep him waiting in the rain.

When the fire was burning on the hearth, and the lamp was lighted, and

Marianne had departed without saying, as usual, "Does Monsieur want

anything more?" the Abbe Birotteau let himself fall gently into the

wide and handsome easy-chair of his late friend; but there was

something mournful in the movement with which he dropped upon it. The

good soul was crushed by a presentiment of coming calamity. His eyes

roved successively to the handsome tall clock, the bureau, curtains,

chairs, carpets, to the stately bed, the basin of holy-water, the

crucifix, to a Virgin by Valentin, a Christ by Lebrun,--in short, to

all the accessories of this cherished room, while his face expressed

the anguish of the tenderest farewell that a lover ever took of his

first mistress, or an old man of his lately planted trees. The vicar

had just perceived, somewhat late it is true, the signs of a dumb

persecution instituted against him for the last three months by

Mademoiselle Gamard, whose evil intentions would doubtless have been

fathomed much sooner by a more intelligent man. Old maids have a

special talent for accentuating the words and actions which their

dislikes suggest to them. They scratch like cats. They not only wound

but they take pleasure in wounding, and in making their victim see

that he is wounded. A man of the world would never have allowed

himself to be scratched twice; the good abbe, on the contrary, had

taken several blows from those sharp claws before he could be brought

to believe in any evil intention.

But when he did perceive it, he set to work, with the inquisitorial

sagacity which priests acquire by directing consciences and burrowing

into the nothings of the confessional, to establish, as though it were

a matter of religious controversy, the following proposition:

"Admitting that Mademoiselle Gamard did not remember it was Madame de

Listomere's evening, and that Marianne did think I was home, and did

really forget to make my fire, it is impossible, inasmuch as I myself

took down my candlestick this morning, that Mademoiselle Gamard,

seeing it in her salon, could have supposed I had gone to bed. Ergo,

Mademoiselle Gamard intended that I should stand out in the rain, and,

by carrying my candlestick upstairs, she meant to make me understand

it. What does it all mean?" he said aloud, roused by the gravity of

these circumstances, and rising as he spoke to take off his damp

clothes, get into his dressing-gown, and do up his head for the night.

Then he returned from the bed to the fireplace, gesticulating, and

launching forth in various tones the following sentences, all of which

ended in a high falsetto key, like notes of interjection:

"What the deuce have I done to her? Why is she angry with me? Marianne

did _not_ forget my fire! Mademoiselle told her not to light it! I must

be a child if I can't see, from the tone and manner she has been

taking to me, that I've done something to displease her. Nothing like

it ever happened to Chapeloud! I can't live in the midst of such

torments as--At my age--"

He went to bed hoping that the morrow might enlighten him on the

causes of the dislike which threatened to destroy forever the

happiness he had now enjoyed two years after wishing for it so long.

Alas! the secret reasons for the inimical feelings Mademoiselle Gamard

bore to the luckless abbe were fated to remain eternally unknown to

him,--not that they were difficult to fathom, but simply because he

lacked the good faith and candor by which great souls and scoundrels

look within and judge themselves. A man of genius or a trickster says

to himself, "I did wrong." Self-interest and native talent are the

only infallible and lucid guides. Now the Abbe Birotteau, whose

goodness amounted to stupidity, whose knowledge was only, as it were,

plastered on him by dint of study, who had no experience whatever of

the world and its ways, who lived between the mass and the

confessional, chiefly occupied in dealing the most trivial matters of

conscience in his capacity of confessor to all the schools in town and

to a few noble souls who rightly appreciated him,--the Abbe Birotteau

must be regarded as a great child, to whom most of the practices of

social life were utterly unknown. And yet, the natural selfishness of

all human beings, reinforced by the selfishness peculiar to the

priesthood and that of the narrow life of the provinces had

insensibly, and unknown to himself, developed within him. If any one

had felt enough interest in the good man to probe his spirit and prove

to him that in the numerous petty details of his life and in the

minute duties of his daily existence he was essentially lacking in the

self-sacrifice he professed, he would have punished and mortified

himself in good faith. But those whom we offend by such unconscious

selfishness pay little heed to our real innocence; what they want is

vengeance, and they take it. Thus it happened that Birotteau, weak

brother that he was, was made to undergo the decrees of that great

distributive Justice which goes about compelling the world to execute

its judgments,--called by ninnies "the misfortunes of life."

There was this difference between the late Chapeloud and the vicar,

--one was a shrewd and clever egoist, the other a simple-minded and

clumsy one. When the canon went to board with Mademoiselle Gamard he

knew exactly how to judge of his landlady's character. The

confessional had taught him to understand the bitterness that the

sense of being kept outside the social pale puts into the heart of an

old maid; he therefore calculated his own treatment of Mademoiselle

Gamard very wisely. She was then about thirty-eight years old, and

still retained a few pretensions, which, in well-behaved persons of

her condition, change, rather later, into strong personal self-esteem.

The canon saw plainly that to live comfortably with his landlady he

must pay her invariably the same attentions and be more infallible

than the pope himself. To compass this result, he allowed no points of

contact between himself and her except those that politeness demanded,

and those which necessarily exist between two persons living under the

same roof. Thus, though he and the Abbe Troubert took their regular

three meals a day, he avoided the family breakfast by inducing

Mademoiselle Gamard to send his coffee to his own room. He also

avoided the annoyance of supper by taking tea in the houses of friends

with whom he spent his evenings. In this way he seldom saw his

landlady except at dinner; but he always came down to that meal a few

minutes in advance of the hour. During this visit of courtesy, as it

may be called, he talked to her, for the twelve years he had lived

under her roof, on nearly the same topics, receiving from her the same

answers. How she had slept, her breakfast, the trivial domestic

events, her looks, her health, the weather, the time the church

services had lasted, the incidents of the mass, the health of such or

such a priest,--these were the subjects of their daily conversation.

During dinner he invariably paid her certain indirect compliments; the

fish had an excellent flavor; the seasoning of a sauce was delicious;

Mademoiselle Gamard's capacities and virtues as mistress of a

household were great. He was sure of flattering the old maid's vanity

by praising the skill with which she made or prepared her preserves

and pickles and pates and other gastronomical inventions. To cap all,

the wily canon never left his landlady's yellow salon after dinner

without remarking that there was no house in Tours where he could get

such good coffee as that he had just imbibed.

Thanks to this thorough understanding of Mademoiselle Gamard's

character, and to the science of existence which he had put in

practice for the last twelve years, no matter of discussion on the

internal arrangements of the household had ever come up between them.

The Abbe Chapeloud had taken note of the spinster's angles,

asperities, and crabbedness, and had so arranged his avoidance of her

that he obtained without the least difficulty all the concessions that

were necessary to the happiness and tranquility of his life. The

result was that Mademoiselle Gamard frequently remarked to her friends

and acquaintances that the Abbe Chapeloud was a very amiable man,

extremely easy to live with, and a fine mind.

As to her other lodger, the Abbe Troubert, she said absolutely nothing

about him. Completely involved in the round of her life, like a

satellite in the orbit of a planet, Troubert was to her a sort of

intermediary creature between the individuals of the human species and

those of the canine species; he was classed in her heart next, but

directly before, the place intended for friends but now occupied by a

fat and wheezy pug which she tenderly loved. She ruled Troubert

completely, and the intermingling of their interests was so obvious

that many persons of her social sphere believed that the Abbe Troubert

had designs on the old maid's property, and was binding her to him

unawares with infinite patience, and really directing her while he

seemed to be obeying without ever letting her percieve in him the

slightest wish on his part to govern her.

When the Abbe Chapeloud died, the old maid, who desired a lodger with

quiet ways, naturally thought of the vicar. Before the canon's will

was made known she had meditated offering his rooms to the Abbe

Troubert, who was not very comfortable on the ground-floor. But when

the Abbe Birotteau, on receiving his legacy, came to settle in writing

the terms of his board she saw he was so in love with the apartment,

for which he might now admit his long cherished desires, that she

dared not propose the exchange, and accordingly sacrificed her

sentiments of friendship to the demands of self-interest. But in order

to console her beloved canon, Mademoiselle took up the large white

Chateau-Renaud bricks that made the floors of his apartment and

replaced them by wooden floors laid in "point de Hongrie." She also

rebuilt a smoky chimney.

For twelve years the Abbe Birotteau had seen his friend Chapeloud in

that house without ever giving a thought to the motive of the canon's

extreme circumspection in his relations to Mademoiselle Gamard. When

he came himself to live with that saintly woman he was in the

condition of a lover on the point of being made happy. Even if he had

not been by nature purblind of intellect, his eyes were too dazzled by

his new happiness to allow him to judge of the landlady, or to reflect

on the limits which he ought to impose on their daily intercourse.

Mademoiselle Gamard, seen from afar and through the prism of those

material felicities which the vicar dreamed of enjoying in her house,

seemed to him a perfect being, a faultless Christian, essentially

charitable, the woman of the Gospel, the wise virgin, adorned by all

those humble and modest virtues which shed celestial fragrance upon

life.

So, with the enthusiasm of one who attains an object long desired,

with the candor of a child, and the blundering foolishness of an old

man utterly without worldly experience, he fell into the life of

Mademoiselle Gamard precisely as a fly is caught in a spider's web.

The first day that he went to dine and sleep at the house he was

detained in the salon after dinner, partly to make his landlady's

acquaintance, but chiefly by that inexplicable embarrassment which

often assails timid people and makes them fear to seem impolite by

breaking off a conversation in order to take leave. Consequently he

remained there the whole evening. Then a friend of his, a certain

Mademoiselle Salomon de Villenoix, came to see him, and this gave

Mademoiselle Gamard the happiness of forming a card-table; so that

when the vicar went to bed he felt that he had passed a very agreeable

evening. Knowing Mademoiselle Gamard and the Abbe Troubert but

slightly, he saw only the superficial aspects of their characters; few

persons bare their defects at once, they generally take on a becoming

veneer.

The worthy abbe was thus led to suggest to himself the charming plan

of devoting all his evenings to Mademoiselle Gamard, instead of

spending them, as Chapeloud had done, elsewhere. The old maid had for

years been possessed by a desire which grew stronger day by day. This

desire, often formed by old persons and even by pretty women, had

become in Mademoiselle Gamard's soul as ardent a longing as that of

Birotteau for Chapeloud's apartment; and it was strengthened by all

those feelings of pride, egotism, envy, and vanity which pre-exist in

the breasts of worldly people.

This history is of all time; it suffices to widen slightly the narrow

circle in which these personages are about to act to find the

coefficient reasons of events which take place in the very highest

spheres of social life.

Mademoiselle Gamard spent her evenings by rotation in six or eight

different houses. Whether it was that she disliked being obliged to go

out to seek society, and considered that at her age she had a right to

expect some return; or that her pride was wounded at receiving no

company in her house; or that her self-love craved the compliments she

saw her various hostesses receive,--certain it is that her whole

ambition was to make her salon a centre towards which a given number

of persons should nightly make their way with pleasure. One morning as

she left Saint-Gatien, after Birotteau and his friend Mademoiselle

Salomon had spent a few evenings with her and with the faithful and

patient Troubert, she said to certain of her good friends whom she met

at the church door, and whose slave she had hitherto considered

herself, that those who wished to see her could certainly come once a

week to her house, where she had friends enough to make a card-table;

she could not leave the Abbe Birotteau; Mademoiselle Salomon had not

missed a single evening that week; she was devoted to friends; and--et

cetera, et cetera. Her speech was all the more humbly haughty and

softly persuasive because Mademoiselle Salomon de Villenoix belonged

to the most aristocatic society in Tours. For though Mademoiselle

Salomon came to Mademoiselle Gamard's house solely out of friendship

for the vicar, the old maid triumphed in receiving her, and saw that,

thanks to Birotteau, she was on the point of succeeding in her great

desire to form a circle as numerous and as agreeable as those of

Madame de Listomere, Mademoiselle Merlin de la Blottiere, and other

devout ladies who were in the habit of receiving the pious and

ecclesiastical society of Tours.

But alas! the abbe Birotteau himself caused this cherished hope to

miscarry. Now if those persons who in the course of their lives have

attained to the enjoyment of a long desired happiness and have

therefore comprehended the joy of the vicar when he stepped into

Chapeloud's vacant place, they will also have gained some faint idea

of Mademoiselle Gamard's distress at the overthrow of her favorite

plan.

After accepting his happiness in the old maid's salon for six months

with tolerable patience, Birotteau deserted the house of an evening,

carrying with him Mademoiselle Salomon. In spite of her utmost efforts

the ambitious Gamard had recruited barely six visitors, whose faithful

attendance was more than problematical; and boston could not be played

night after night unless at least four persons were present. The

defection of her two principal guests obliged her therefore to make

suitable apologies and return to her evening visiting among former

friends; for old maids find their own company so distasteful that they

prefer to seek the doubtful pleasures of society.

The cause of this desertion is plain enough. Although the vicar was

one of those to whom heaven is hereafter to belong in virtue of the

decree "Blessed are the poor in spirit," he could not, like some

fools, endure the annoyance that other fools caused him. Persons

without minds are like weeds that delight in good earth; they want to

be amused by others, all the more because they are dull within. The

incarnation of ennui to which they are victims, joined to the need

they feel of getting a divorce from themselves, produces that passion

for moving about, for being somewhere else than where they are, which

distinguishes their species,--and also that of all beings devoid of

sensitiveness, and those who have missed their destiny, or who suffer

by their own fault.

Without really fathoming the vacuity and emptiness of Mademoiselle

Gamard's mind, or stating to himself the pettiness of her ideas, the

poor abbe perceived, unfortunately too late, the defects which she

shared with all old maids, and those which were peculiar to herself.

The bad points of others show out so strongly against the good that

they usually strike our eyes before they wound us. This moral

phenomenon might, at a pinch, be made to excuse the tendency we all

have, more or less, to gossip. It is so natural, socially speaking, to

laugh at the failings of others that we ought to forgive the ridicule

our own absurdities excite, and be annoyed only by calumny. But in

this instance the eyes of the good vicar never reached the optical

range which enables men of the world to see and evade their

neighbours' rough points. Before he could be brought to perceive the

faults of his landlady he was forced to undergo the warning which

Nature gives to all her creatures--pain.

Old maids who have never yielded in their habits of life or in their

characters to other lives and other characters, as the fate of woman

exacts, have, as a general thing, a mania for making others give way

to them. In Mademoiselle Gamard this sentiment had degenerated into

despotism, but a despotism that could only exercise itself on little

things. For instance (among a hundred other examples), the basket of

counters placed on the card-table for the Abbe Birotteau was to stand

exactly where she placed it; and the abbe annoyed her terribly by

moving it, which he did nearly every evening. How is this

sensitiveness stupidly spent on nothings to be accounted for? what is

the object of it? No one could have told in this case; Mademoiselle

Gamard herself knew no reason for it. The vicar, though a sheep by

nature, did not like, any more than other sheep, to feel the crook too

often, especially when it bristled with spikes. Not seeking to explain

to himself the patience of the Abbe Troubert, Birotteau simply

withdrew from the happiness which Mademoiselle Gamard believed that

she seasoned to his liking,--for she regarded happiness as a thing to

be made, like her preserves. But the luckless abbe made the break in a

clumsy way, the natural way of his own naive character, and it was not

carried out without much nagging and sharp-shooting, which the Abbe

Birotteau endeavored to bear as if he did not feel them.

By the end of the first year of his sojourn under Mademoiselle

Gamard's roof the vicar had resumed his former habits; spending two

evenings a week with Madame de Listomere, three with Mademoiselle

Salomon, and the other two with Mademoiselle Merlin de la Blottiere.

These ladies belonged to the aristocratic circles of Tourainean

society, to which Mademoiselle Gamard was not admitted. Therefore the

abbe's abandonment was the more insulting, because it made her feel

her want of social value; all choice implies contempt for the thing

rejected.

"Monsieur Birotteau does not find us agreeable enough," said the Abbe

Troubert to Mademoiselle Gamard's friends when she was forced to tell

them that her "evenings" must be given up. "He is a man of the world,

and a good liver! He wants fashion, luxury, witty conversation, and

the scandals of the town."

These words of course obliged Mademoiselle Gamard to defend herself at

Birotteau's expense.

"He is not much a man of the world," she said. "If it had not been for

the Abbe Chapeloud he would never have been received at Madame de

Listomere's. Oh, what didn't I lose in losing the Abbe Chapeloud! Such

an amiable man, and so easy to live with! In twelve whole years I

never had the slightest difficulty or disagreement with him."

Presented thus, the innocent abbe was considered by this bourgeois

society, which secretly hated the aristocratic society, as a man

essentially exacting and hard to get along with. For a week

Mademoiselle Gamard enjoyed the pleasure of being pitied by friends

who, without really thinking one word of what they said, kept

repeating to her: "How _could_ he have turned against you?--so kind and

gentle as you are!" or, "Console yourself, dear Mademoiselle Gamard,

you are so well known that--" et cetera.

Nevertheless, these friends, enchanted to escape one evening a week in

the Cloister, the darkest, dreariest, and most out of the way corner

in Tours, blessed the poor vicar in their hearts.

Between persons who are perpetually in each other's company dislike or

love increases daily; every moment brings reasons to love or hate each

other more and more. The Abbe Birotteau soon became intolerable to

Mademoiselle Gamard. Eighteen months after she had taken him to board,

and at the moment when the worthy man was mistaking the silence of

hatred for the peacefulness of content, and applauding himself for

having, as he said, "managed matters so well with the old maid," he

was really the object of an underhand persecution and a vengeance

deliberately planned. The four marked circumstances of the locked

door, the forgotten slippers, the lack of fire, and the removal of the

candlestick, were the first signs that revealed to him a terrible

enmity, the final consequences of which were destined not to strike

him until the time came when they were irreparable.

As he went to bed the worthy vicar worked his brains--quite uselessly,

for he was soon at the end of them--to explain to himself the

extraordinarily discourteous conduct of Mademoiselle Gamard. The fact

was that, having all along acted logically in obeying the natural laws

of his own egotism, it was impossible that he should now perceive his

own faults towards his landlady.

Though the great things of life are simple to understand and easy to

express, the littlenesses require a vast number of details to explain

them. The foregoing events, which may be called a sort of prologue to

this bourgeois drama, in which we shall find passions as violent as

those excited by great interests, required this long introduction; and

it would have been difficult for any faithful historian to shorten the

account of these minute developments.

II

The next morning, on awaking, Birotteau thought so much of his

prospective canonry that he forgot the four circumstances in which he

had seen, the night before, such threatening prognostics of a future

full of misery. The vicar was not a man to get up without a fire. He

rang to let Marianne know that he was awake and that she must come to

him; then he remained, as his habit was, absorbed in somnolent

musings. The servant's custom was to make the fire and gently draw him

from his half sleep by the murmured sound of her movements,--a sort of

music which he loved. Twenty minutes passed and Marianne had not

appeared. The vicar, now half a canon, was about to ring again, when

he let go the bell-pull, hearing a man's step on the staircase. In a

minute more the Abbe Troubert, after discreetly knocking at the door,

obeyed Birotteau's invitation and entered the room. This visit, which

the two abbe's usually paid each other once a month, was no surprise

to the vicar. The canon at once exclaimed when he saw that Marianne

had not made the fire of his quasi-colleague. He opened the window and

called to her harshly, telling her to come at once to the abbe; then,

turning round to his ecclesiastical brother, he said, "If Mademoiselle

knew that you had no fire she would scold Marianne."

After this speech he inquired about Birotteau's health, and asked in a

gentle voice if he had had any recent news that gave him hopes of his

canonry. The vicar explained the steps he had taken, and told,

naively, the names of the persons with whom Madam de Listomere was

using her influence, quite unaware that Troubert had never forgiven

that lady for not admitting him--the Abbe Troubert, twice proposed by

the bishop as vicar-general!--to her house.

It would be impossible to find two figures which presented so many

contrasts to each other as those of the two abbes. Troubert, tall and

lean, was yellow and bilious, while the vicar was what we call,

familiarly, plump. Birotteau's face, round and ruddy, proclaimed a

kindly nature barren of ideas, while that of the Abbe Troubert, long

and ploughed by many wrinkles, took on at times an expression of

sarcasm, or else of contempt; but it was necessary to watch him very

closely before those sentiments could be detected. The canon's

habitual condition was perfect calmness, and his eyelids were usually

lowered over his orange-colored eyes, which could, however, give clear

and piercing glances when he liked. Reddish hair added to the gloomy

effect of this countenance, which was always obscured by the veil

which deep meditation drew across its features. Many persons at first

sight thought him absorbed in high and earnest ambitions; but those

who claimed to know him better denied that impression, insisting that

he was only stupidly dull under Mademoiselle Gamard's despotism, or

else worn out by too much fasting. He seldom spoke, and never laughed.

When it did so happen that he felt agreeably moved, a feeble smile

would flicker on his lips and lose itself in the wrinkles of his face.

Birotteau, on the other hand, was all expansion, all frankness; he

loved good things and was amused by trifles with the simplicity of a

man who knew no spite or malice. The Abbe Troubert roused, at first

sight, an involuntary feeling of fear, while the vicar's presence

brought a kindly smile to the lips of all who looked at him. When the

tall canon marched with solemn step through the naves and cloisters of

Saint-Gatien, his head bowed, his eye stern, respect followed him;

that bent face was in harmony with the yellowing arches of the

cathedral; the folds of his cassock fell in monumental lines that were

worthy of statuary. The good vicar, on the contrary, perambulated

about with no gravity at all. He trotted and ambled and seemed at

times to roll himself along. But with all this there was one point of

resemblance between the two men. For, precisely as Troubert's

ambitious air, which made him feared, had contributed probably to keep

him down to the insignificant position of a mere canon, so the

character and ways of Birotteau marked him out as perpetually the

vicar of the cathedral and nothing higher.

Yet the Abbe Troubert, now fifty years of age, had entirely removed,

partly by the circumspection of his conduct and the apparent lack of

all ambitions, and partly by his saintly life, the fears which his

suspected ability and his powerful presence had roused in the minds of

his superiors. His health having seriously failed him during the last

year, it seemed probable that he would soon be raised to the office of

vicar-general of the archbishopric. His competitors themselves desired

the appointment, so that their own plans might have time to mature

during the few remaining days which a malady, now become chronic,

might allow him. Far from offering the same hopes to rivals,

Birotteau's triple chin showed to all who wanted his coveted canonry

an evidence of the soundest health; even his gout seemed to them, in

accordance with the proverb, an assurance of longevity.

The Abbe Chapeloud, a man of great good sense, whose amiability had

made the leaders of the diocese and the members of the best society in

Tours seek his company, had steadily opposed, though secretly and with

much judgment, the elevation of the Abbe Troubert. He had even

adroitly managed to prevent his access to the salons of the best

society. Nevertheless, during Chapeloud's lifetime Troubert treated

him invariably with great respect, and showed him on all occasions the

utmost deference. This constant submission did not, however, change

the opinion of the late canon, who said to Birotteau during the last

walk they took together: "Distrust that lean stick of a Troubert,

--Sixtus the Fifth reduced to the limits of a bishopric!"

Such was the friend, the abiding guest of Mademoiselle Gamard, who now

came, the morning after the old maid had, as it were, declared war

against the poor vicar, to pay his brother a visit and show him marks

of friendship.

"You must excuse Marianne," said the canon, as the woman entered. "I

suppose she went first to my rooms. They are very damp, and I coughed

all night. You are most healthily situated here," he added, looking up

at the cornice.

"Yes; I am lodged like a canon," replied Birotteau.

"And I like a vicar," said the other, humbly.

"But you will soon be settled in the archbishop's palace," said the

kindly vicar, who wanted everybody to be happy.

"Yes, or in the cemetery, but God's will be done!" and Troubert raised

his eyes to heaven resignedly. "I came," he said, "to ask you to lend

me the 'Register of Bishops.' You are the only man in Tours I know who

has a copy."

"Take it out of my library," replied Birotteau, reminded by the

canon's words of the greatest happiness of his life.

The canon passed into the library and stayed there while the vicar

dressed. Presently the breakfast bell rang, and the gouty vicar

reflected that if it had not been for Troubert's visit he would have

had no fire to dress by. "He's a kind man," thought he.

The two priests went downstairs together, each armed with a huge folio

which they laid on one of the side tables in the dining-room.

"What's all that?" asked Mademoiselle Gamard, in a sharp voice,

addressing Birotteau. "I hope you are not going to litter up my

dining-room with your old books!"

"They are books I wanted," replied the Abbe Troubert. "Monsieur

Birotteau has been kind enough to lend them to me."

"I might have guessed it," she said, with a contemptuous smile.

"Monsieur Birotteau doesn't often read books of that size."

"How are you, mademoiselle?" said the vicar, in a mellifluous voice.

"Not very well," she replied, shortly. "You woke me up last night out

of my first sleep, and I was wakeful for the rest of the night." Then,

sitting down, she added, "Gentlemen, the milk is getting cold."

Stupefied at being so ill-naturedly received by his landlady, from

whom he half expected an apology, and yet alarmed, like all timid

people at the prospect of a discussion, especially if it relates to

themselves, the poor vicar took his seat in silence. Then, observing

in Mademoiselle Gamard's face the visible signs of ill-humour, he was

goaded into a struggle between his reason, which told him that he

ought not to submit to such discourtesy from a landlady, and his

natural character, which prompted him to avoid a quarrel.

Torn by this inward misery, Birotteau fell to examining attentively

the broad green lines painted on the oilcloth which, from custom

immemorial, Mademoiselle Gamard left on the table at breakfast-time,

without regard to the ragged edges or the various scars displayed on

its surface. The priests sat opposite to each other in cane-seated

arm-chairs on either side of the square table, the head of which was

taken by the landlady, who seemed to dominate the whole from a high

chair raised on casters, filled with cushions, and standing very near

to the dining-room stove. This room and the salon were on the

ground-floor beneath the salon and bedroom of the Abbe Birotteau.

When the vicar had received his cup of coffee, duly sugared, from

Mademoiselle Gamard, he felt chilled to the bone at the grim silence

in which he was forced to proceed with the usually gay function of

breakfast. He dared not look at Troubert's dried-up features, nor at

the threatening visage of the old maid; and he therefore turned, to

keep himself in countenance, to the plethoric pug which was lying on a

cushion near the stove,--a position that victim of obesity seldom

quitted, having a little plate of dainties always at his left side,

and a bowl of fresh water at his right.

"Well, my pretty," said the vicar, "are you waiting for your coffee?"

The personage thus addressed, one of the most important in the

household, though the least troublesome inasmuch as he had ceased to

bark and left the talking to his mistress, turned his little eyes,

sunk in rolls of fat, upon Birotteau. Then he closed them peevishly.

To explain the misery of the poor vicar it should be said that being

endowed by nature with an empty and sonorous loquacity, like the

resounding of a football, he was in the habit of asserting, without

any medical reason to back him, that speech favored digestion.

Mademoiselle Gamard, who believed in this hygienic doctrine, had not

as yet refrained, in spite of their coolness, from talking at meals;

though, for the last few mornings, the vicar had been forced to strain

his mind to find beguiling topics on which to loosen her tongue. If

the narrow limits of this history permitted us to report even one of

the conversations which often brought a bitter and sarcastic smile to

the lips of the Abbe Troubert, it would offer a finished picture of

the Boeotian life of the provinces. The singular revelations of the

Abbe Birotteau and Mademoiselle Gamard relating to their personal

opinions on politics, religion, and literature would delight observing

minds. It would be highly entertaining to transcribe the reasons on

which they mutually doubted the death of Napoleon in 1820, or the

conjectures by which they mutually believed that the Dauphin was

living,--rescued from the Temple in the hollow of a huge log of wood.

Who could have helped laughing to hear them assert and prove, by

reasons evidently their own, that the King of France alone imposed the

taxes, that the Chambers were convoked to destroy the clergy, that

thirteen hundred thousand persons had perished on the scaffold during

the Revolution? They frequently discussed the press, without either of

them having the faintest idea of what that modern engine really was.

Monsieur Birotteau listened with acceptance to Mademoiselle Gamard

when she told him that a man who ate an egg every morning would die in

a year, and that facts proved it; that a roll of light bread eaten

without drinking for several days together would cure sciatica; that

all the workmen who assisted in pulling down the Abbey Saint-Martin

had died in six months; that a certain prefect, under orders from

Bonaparte, had done his best to damage the towers of Saint-Gatien,

--with a hundred other absurd tales.

But on this occasion poor Birotteau felt he was tongue-tied, and he

resigned himself to eat a meal without engaging in conversation. After

a while, however, the thought crossed his mind that silence was

dangerous for his digestion, and he boldly remarked, "This coffee is

excellent."

That act of courage was completely wasted. Then, after looking at the

scrap of sky visible above the garden between the two buttresses of

Saint-Gatien, the vicar again summoned nerve to say, "It will be finer

weather to-day than it was yesterday."

At that remark Mademoiselle Gamard cast her most gracious look on the

Abbe Troubert, and immediately turned her eyes with terrible severity

on Birotteau, who fortunately by that time was looking on his plate.

No creature of the feminine gender was ever more capable of presenting

to the mind the elegaic nature of an old maid than Mademoiselle Sophie

Gamard. In order to describe a being whose character gives a momentous

interest to the petty events of the present drama and to the anterior

lives of the actors in it, it may be useful to give a summary of the

ideas which find expression in the being of an Old Maid,--remembering

always that the habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the

physical presence.

Though all things in society as well as in the universe are said to

have a purpose, there do exist here below certain beings whose purpose

and utility seem inexplicable. Moral philosophy and political economy

both condemn the individual who consumes without producing; who fills

a place on the earth but does not shed upon it either good or evil,

--for evil is sometimes good the meaning of which is not at once made

manifest. It is seldom that old maids of their own motion enter the

ranks of these unproductive beings. Now, if the consciousness of work

done gives to the workers a sense of satisfaction which helps them to

support life, the certainty of being a useless burden must, one would

think, produce a contrary effect, and fill the minds of such fruitless

beings with the same contempt for themselves which they inspire in

others. This harsh social reprobation is one of the causes which

contribute to fill the souls of old maids with the distress that

appears in their faces. Prejudice, in which there is truth, does cast,

throughout the world but especially in France, a great stigma on the

woman with whom no man has been willing to share the blessings or

endure the ills of life. Now, there comes to all unmarried women a

period when the world, be it right or wrong, condemns them on the fact

of this contempt, this rejection. If they are ugly, the goodness of

their characters ought to have compensated for their natural

imperfections; if, on the contrary, they are handsome, that fact

argues that their misfortune has some serious cause. It is impossible

to say which of the two classes is most deserving of rejection. If, on

the other hand, their celibacy is deliberate, if it proceeds from a

desire for independence, neither men nor mothers will forgive their

disloyalty to womanly devotion, evidenced in their refusal to feed

those passions which render their sex so affecting. To renounce the

pangs of womanhood is to abjure its poetry and cease to merit the

consolations to which mothers have inalienable rights.

Moreover, the generous sentiments, the exquisite qualities of a woman

will not develop unless by constant exercise. By remaining unmarried,

a creature of the female sex becomes void of meaning; selfish and

cold, she creates repulsion. This implacable judgment of the world is

unfortunately too just to leave old maids in ignorance of its causes.

Such ideas shoot up in their hearts as naturally as the effects of

their saddened lives appear upon their features. Consequently they

wither, because the constant expression of happiness which blooms on

the faces of other women and gives so soft a grace to their movements

has never existed for them. They grow sharp and peevish because all

human beings who miss their vocation are unhappy; they suffer, and

suffering gives birth to the bitterness of ill-will. In fact, before

an old maid blames herself for her isolation she blames others, and

there is but one step between reproach and the desire for revenge.

But more than this, the ill grace and want of charm noticeable in

these women are the necessary result of their lives. Never having felt

a desire to please, elegance and the refinements of good taste are

foreign to them. They see only themselves in themselves. This instinct

brings them, unconsciously, to choose the things that are most

convenient to themselves, at the sacrifice of those which might be

more agreeable to others. Without rendering account to their own minds

of the difference between themselves and other women, they end by

feeling that difference and suffering under it. Jealousy is an

indelible sentiment in the female breast. An old maid's soul is

jealous and yet void; for she knows but one side--the miserable side

--of the only passion men will allow (because it flatters them) to

women. Thus thwarted in all their hopes, forced to deny themselves the

natural development of their natures, old maids endure an inward

torment to which they never grow accustomed. It is hard at any age,

above all for a woman, to see a feeling of repulsion on the faces of

others, when her true destiny is to move all hearts about her to

emotions of grace and love. One result of this inward trouble is that

an old maid's glance is always oblique, less from modesty than from

fear and shame. Such beings never forgive society for their false

position because they never forgive themselves for it.

Now it is impossible for a woman who is perpetually at war with

herself and living in contradiction to her true life, to leave others

in peace or refrain from envying their happines. The whole range of

these sad truths could be read in the dulled gray eyes of Mademoiselle

Gamard; the dark circles that surrounded those eyes told of the inward

conflicts of her solitary life. All the wrinkles on her face were in

straight lines. The structure of her forehead and cheeks was rigid and

prominent. She allowed, with apparent indifference, certain scattered

hairs, once brown, to grow upon her chin. Her thin lips scarcely

covered teeth that were too long, though still quite white. Her

complexion was dark, and her hair, originally black, had turned gray

from frightful headaches,--a misfortune which obliged her to wear a

false front. Not knowing how to put it on so as to conceal the

junction between the real and the false, there were often little gaps

between the border of her cap and the black string with which this

semi-wig (always badly curled) was fastened to her head. Her gown,

silk in summer, merino in winter, and always brown in color, was

invariably rather tight for her angular figure and thin arms. Her

collar, limp and bent, exposed too much the red skin of a neck which

was ribbed like an oak-leaf in winter seen in the light. Her origin

explains to some extent the defects of her conformation. She was the

daughter of a wood-merchant, a peasant, who had risen from the ranks.

She might have been plump at eighteen, but no trace remained of the

fair complexion and pretty color of which she was wont to boast. The

tones of her flesh had taken the pallid tints so often seen in

"devotes." Her aquiline nose was the feature that chiefly proclaimed

the despotism of her nature, and the flat shape of her forehead the

narrowness of her mind. Her movements had an odd abruptness which

precluded all grace; the mere motion with which she twitched her

handkerchief from her bag and blew her nose with a loud noise would

have shown her character and habits to a keen observer. Being rather

tall, she held herself very erect, and justified the remark of a

naturalist who once explained the peculiar gait of old maids by

declaring that their joints were consolidating. When she walked her

movements were not equally distributed over her whole person, as they

are in other women, producing those graceful undulations which are so

attractive. She moved, so to speak, in a single block, seeming to

advance at each step like the statue of the Commendatore. When she

felt in good humour she was apt, like other old maids, to tell of the

chances she had had to marry, and of her fortunate discovery in time

of the want of means of her lovers,--proving, unconsciously, that her

worldly judgment was better than her heart.

This typical figure of the genus Old Maid was well framed by the

grotesque designs, representing Turkish landscapes, on a varnished

paper which decorated the walls of the dining-room. Mademoiselle

Gamard usually sat in this room, which boasted of two pier tables and

a barometer. Before the chair of each abbe was a little cushion

covered with worsted work, the colors of which were faded. The salon

in which she received company was worthy of its mistress. It will be

visible to the eye at once when we state that it went by the name of

the "yellow salon." The curtains were yellow, the furniture and walls

yellow; on the mantelpiece, surmounted by a mirror in a gilt frame,

the candlesticks and a clock all of crystal struck the eye with sharp

brilliancy. As to the private apartment of Mademoiselle Gamard, no one

had ever been permitted to look into it. Conjecture alone suggested

that it was full of odds and ends, worn-out furniture, and bits of

stuff and pieces dear to the hearts of all old maids.

Such was the woman destined to exert a vast influence on the last

years of the Abbe Birotteau.

For want of exercising in nature's own way the activity bestowed upon

women, and yet impelled to spend it in some way or other, Mademoiselle

Gamard had acquired the habit of using it in petty intrigues,

provincial cabals, and those self-seeking schemes which occupy, sooner

or later, the lives of all old maids. Birotteau, unhappily, had

developed in Sophie Gamard the only sentiments which it was possible

for that poor creature to feel,--those of hatred; a passion hitherto

latent under the calmness and monotony of provincial life, but which

was now to become the more intense because it was spent on petty

things and in the midst of a narrow sphere. Birotteau was one of those

beings who are predestined to suffer because, being unable to see

things, they cannot avoid them; to them the worst happens.

"Yes, it will be a fine day," replied the canon, after a pause,

apparently issuing from a revery and wishing to conform to the rules

of politeness.

Birotteau, frightened at the length of time which had elapsed between

the question and the answer,--for he had, for the first time in his

life, taken his coffee without uttering a word,--now left the

dining-room where his heart was squeezed as if in a vise. Feeling that

the coffee lay heavy on his stomach, he went to walk in a sad mood

among the narrow, box-edged garden paths which outlined a star in the

little garden. As he turned after making the first round, he saw

Mademoiselle Gamard and the Abbe Troubert standing stock-still and

silent on the threshold of the door,--he with his arms folded and

motionless like a statue on a tomb; she leaning against the blind door.

Both seemed to be gazing at him and counting his steps. Nothing is so

embarrassing to a creature naturally timid as to feel itself the object

of a close examination, and if that is made by the eyes of hatred, the

sort of suffering it causes is changed into intolerable martyrdom.

Presently Birotteau fancied he was preventing Mademoiselle Gamard and

the abbe from walking in the narrow path. That idea, inspired equally

by fear and kindness, became so strong that he left the garden and

went to the church, thinking no longer of his canonry, so absorbed was

he by the disheartening tyranny of the old maid. Luckily for him he

happened to find much to do at Saint-Gatien,--several funerals, a

marriage, and two baptisms. Thus employed he forgot his griefs. When

his stomach told him that dinner was ready he drew out his watch and

saw, not without alarm, that it was some minutes after four. Being

well aware of Mademoiselle Gamard's punctuality, he hurried back to

the house.

He saw at once on passing the kitchen door that the first course had

been removed. When he reached the dining-room the old maid said, with

a tone of voice in which were mingled sour rebuke and joy at being

able to blame him:--

"It is half-past four, Monsieur Birotteau. You know we are not to wait

for you."

The vicar looked at the clock in the dining-room, and saw at once, by

the way the gauze which protected it from dust had been moved, that

his landlady had opened the face of the dial and set the hands in

advance of the clock of the cathedral. He could make no remark. Had he

uttered his suspicion it would only have caused and apparently

justified one of those fierce and eloquent expositions to which

Mademoiselle Gamard, like other women of her class, knew very well how

to give vent in particular cases. The thousand and one annoyances

which a servant will sometimes make her master bear, or a woman her

husband, were instinctively divined by Mademoiselle Gamard and used

upon Birotteau. The way in which she delighted in plotting against the

poor vicar's domestic comfort bore all the marks of what we must call

a profoundly malignant genius. Yet she so managed that she was never,

so far as eye could see, in the wrong.

III

Eight days after the date on which this history began, the new

arrangements of the household and the relations which grew up between

the Abbe Birotteau and Mademoiselle Gamard revealed to the former the

existence of a plot which had been hatching for the last six months.

As long as the old maid exercised her vengeance in an underhand way,

and the vicar was able to shut his eyes to it and refuse to believe in

her malevolent intentions, the moral effect upon him was slight. But

since the affair of the candlestick and the altered clock, Birotteau

would doubt no longer that he was under an eye of hatred turned fully

upon him. From that moment he fell into despair, seeing everywhere the

skinny, clawlike fingers of Mademoiselle Gamard ready to hook into his

heart. The old maid, happy in a sentiment as fruitful of emotions as

that of vengeance, enjoyed circling and swooping above the vicar as a

bird of prey hovers and swoops above a field-mouse before pouncing

down upon it and devouring it. She had long since laid a plan which

the poor dumbfounded priest was quite incapable of imagining, and

which she now proceeded to unfold with that genius for little things

often shown by solitary persons, whose souls, incapable of feeling the

grandeur of true piety, fling themselves into the details of outward

devotion.

The petty nature of his troubles prevented Birotteau, always effusive

and liking to be pitied and consoled, from enjoying the soothing

pleasure of taking his friends into his confidence,--a last but cruel

aggravation of his misery. The little amount of tact which he derived

from his timidity made him fear to seem ridiculous in concerning

himself with such pettiness. And yet those petty things made up the

sum of his existence,--that cherished existence, full of busyness

about nothings, and of nothingness in its business; a colorless barren

life in which strong feelings were misfortunes, and the absence of

emotion happiness. The poor priest's paradise was changed, in a

moment, into hell. His sufferings became intolerable. The terror he

felt at the prospect of a discussion with Mademoiselle Gamard

increased day by day; the secret distress which blighted his life

began to injure his health. One morning, as he put on his mottled blue

stockings, he noticed a marked dimunition in the circumference of his

calves. Horrified by so cruel and undeniable a symptom, he resolved to

make an effort and appeal to the Abbe Troubert, requesting him to

intervene, officially, between Mademoiselle Gamard and himself.

When he found himself in presence of the imposing canon, who, in order

to receive his visitor in a bare and cheerless room, had hastily

quitted a study full of papers, where he worked incessantly, and where

no one was ever admitted, the vicar felt half ashamed at speaking of

Mademoiselle Gamard's provocations to a man who appeared to be so

gravely occupied. But after going through the agony of the mental

deliberations which all humble, undecided, and feeble persons endure

about things of even no importance, he decided, not without much

swelling and beating of the heart, to explain his position to the Abbe

Troubert.

The canon listened in a cold, grave manner, trying, but in vain, to

repress an occasional smile which to more intelligent eyes than those

of the vicar might have betrayed the emotions of a secret

satisfaction. A flame seemed to dart from his eyelids when Birotteau

pictured with the eloquence of genuine feeling the constant bitterness

he was made to swallow; but Troubert laid his hand above those lids

with a gesture very common to thinkers, maintaining the dignified

demeanor which was usual with him. When the vicar had ceased to speak

he would indeed have been puzzled had he sought on Troubert's face,

marbled with yellow blotches even more yellow than his usually bilious

skin, for any trace of the feelings he must have excited in that

mysterious priest.

After a moment's silence the canon made one of those answers which

required long study before their meaning could be thoroughly

perceived, though later they proved to reflecting persons the

astonishing depths of his spirit and the power of his mind. He simply

crushed Birotteau by telling him that "these things amazed him all the

more because he should never have suspected their existence were it

not for his brother's confession. He attributed such stupidity on his

part to the gravity of his occupations, his labors, the absorption in

which his mind was held by certain elevated thoughts which prevented

his taking due notice of the petty details of life." He made the vicar

observe, but without appearing to censure the conduct of a man whose

age and connections deserved all respect, that "in former days,

recluses thought little about their food and lodging in the solitude

of their retreats, where they were lost in holy contemplations," and

that "in our days, priests could make a retreat for themselves in the

solitude of their own hearts." Then, reverting to Birotteau's affairs,

he added that "such disagreements were a novelty to him. For twelve

years nothing of the kind had occurred between Mademoiselle Gamard and

the venerable Abbe Chapeloud. As for himself, he might, no doubt, be

an arbitrator between the vicar and their landlady, because his

friendship for that person had never gone beyond the limits imposed by

the Church on her faithful servants; but if so, justice demanded that

he should hear both sides. He certainly saw no change in Mademoiselle

Gamard, who seemed to him the same as ever; he had always submitted to

a few of her caprices, knowing that the excellent woman was kindness

and gentleness itself; the slight fluctuations of her temper should be

attributed, he thought, to sufferings caused by a pulmonary affection,

of which she said little, resigning herself to bear them in a truly

Christian spirit." He ended by assuring the vicar that "if he stayed a

few years longer in Mademoiselle Gamard's house he would learn to

understand her better and acknowledge the real value of her excellent

nature."

Birotteau left the room confounded. In the direful necessity of

consulting no one, he now judged Mademoiselle Gamard as he would

himself, and the poor man fancied that if he left her house for a few

days he might extinguish, for want of fuel, the dislike the old maid

felt for him. He accordingly resolved to spend, as he formerly did, a

week or so at a country-house where Madame de Listomere passed her

autumns, a season when the sky is usually pure and tender in Touraine.

Poor man! in so doing he did the thing that was most desired by his

terrible enemy, whose plans could only have been brought to nought by

the resistant patience of a monk. But the vicar, unable to divine

them, not understanding even his own affairs, was doomed to fall, like

a lamb, at the butcher's first blow.

Madame de Listomere's country-place, situated on the embankment which

lies between Tours and the heights of Saint-Georges, with a southern

exposure and surrounded by rocks, combined the charms of the country

with the pleasures of the town. It took but ten minutes from the

bridge of Tours to reach the house, which was called the "Alouette,"

--a great advantage in a region where no one will put himself out for

anything whatsoever, not even to seek a pleasure.

The Abbe Birotteau had been about ten days at the Alouette, when, one

morning while he was breakfasting, the porter came to say that

Monsieur Caron desired to speak with him. Monsieur Caron was

Mademoiselle Gamard's laywer, and had charge of her affairs.

Birotteau, not remembering this, and unable to think of any matter of

litigation between himself and others, left the table to see the

lawyer in a stage of great agitation. He found him modestly seated on

the balustrade of a terrace.

"Your intention of ceasing to reside in Mademoiselle Gamard's house

being made evident--" began the man of business.

"Eh! monsieur," cried the Abbe Birotteau, interrupting him, "I have

not the slightest intention of leaving it."

"Nevertheless, monsieur," replied the lawyer, "you must have had some

agreement in the matter with Mademoiselle, for she has sent me to ask

how long you intend to remain in the country. The event of a long

absence was not foreseen in the agreement, and may lead to a contest.

Now, Mademoiselle Gamard understanding that your board--"

"Monsieur," said Birotteau, amazed, and again interrupting the lawyer,

"I did not suppose it necessary to employ, as it were, legal means

to--"

"Mademoiselle Gamard, who is anxious to avoid all dispute," said

Monsieur Caron, "has sent me to come to an understanding with you."

"Well, if you will have the goodness to return to-morrow," said the

abbe, "I shall then have taken advice in the matter."

The quill-driver withdrew. The poor vicar, frightened at the

persistence with which Mademoiselle Gamard pursued him, returned to

the dining-room with his face so convulsed that everybody cried out

when they saw him: "What _is_ the matter, Monsieur Birotteau?"

The abbe, in despair, sat down without a word, so crushed was he by

the vague presence of approaching disaster. But after breakfast, when

his friends gathered round him before a comfortable fire, Birotteau

naively related the history of his troubles. His hearers, who were

beginning to weary of the monotony of a country-house, were keenly

interested in a plot so thoroughly in keeping with the life of the

provinces. They all took sides with the abbe against the old maid.

"Don't you see, my dear friend," said Madame de Listomere, "that the

Abbe Troubert wants your apartment?"

Here the historian ought to sketch this lady; but it occurs to him

that even those who are ignorant of Sterne's system of "cognomology,"

cannot pronounce the three words "Madame de Listomere" without

picturing her to themselves as noble and dignified, softening the

sternness of rigid devotion by the gracious elegance and the courteous

manners of the old monarchical regime; kind, but a little stiff;

slightly nasal in voice; allowing herself the perusal of "La Nouvelle

Heloise"; and still wearing her own hair.

"The Abbe Birotteau must not yield to that old vixen," cried Monsieur

de Listomere, a lieutenant in the navy who was spending a furlough

with his aunt. "If the vicar has pluck and will follow my suggestions

he will soon recover his tranquillity."

All present began to analyze the conduct of Mademoiselle Gamard with

the keen perceptions which characterize provincials, to whom no one

can deny the talent of knowing how to lay bare the most secret motives

of human actions.

"You don't see the whole thing yet," said an old landowner who knew

the region well. "There is something serious behind all this which I

can't yet make out. The Abbe Troubert is too deep to be fathomed at

once. Our dear Birotteau is at the beginning of his troubles. Besides,

would he be left in peace and comfort even if he did give up his

lodging to Troubert? I doubt it. If Caron came here to tell you that

you intended to leave Mademoiselle Gamard," he added, turning to the

bewildered priest, "no doubt Mademoiselle Gamard's intention is to

turn you out. Therefore you will have to go, whether you like it or

not. Her sort of people play a sure game, they risk nothing."

This old gentleman, Monsieur de Bourbonne, could sum up and estimate

provincial ideas as correctly as Voltaire summarized the spirit of his

times. He was thin and tall, and chose to exhibit in the matter of

clothes the quiet indifference of a landowner whose territorial value

is quoted in the department. His face, tanned by the Touraine sun, was

less intellectual than shrewd. Accustomed to weigh his words and

measure his actions, he concealed a profound vigilance behind a

misleading appearance of simplicity. A very slight observation of him

sufficed to show that, like a Norman peasant, he invariably held the

upper hand in business matters. He was an authority on wine-making,

the leading science of Touraine. He had managed to extend the meadow

lands of his domain by taking in a part of the alluvial soil of the

Loire without getting into difficulties with the State. This clever

proceeding gave him the reputation of a man of talent. If Monsieur de

Bourbonne's conversation pleased you and you were to ask who he was of

a Tourainean, "Ho! a sly old fox!" would be the answer of those who

were envious of him--and they were many. In Touraine, as in many of

the provinces, jealousy is the root of language.

Monsieur de Bourbonne's remark occasioned a momentary silence, during

which the persons who composed the little party seemed to be

reflecting. Meanwhile Mademoiselle Salomon de Villenoix was announced.

She came from Tours in the hope of being useful to the poor abbe, and

the news she brought completely changed the aspect of the affair. As

she entered, every one except Monsieur de Bourbonne was urging

Birotteau to hold his own against Troubert and Gamard, under the

auspices of the aristocractic society of the place, which would

certainly stand by him.

"The vicar-general, to whom the appointments to office are entrusted,

is very ill," said Mademoiselle Salomon, "and the archbishop has

delegated his powers to the Abbe Troubert provisionally. The canonry

will, of course, depend wholly upon him. Now last evening, at

Mademoiselle de la Blottiere's the Abbe Poirel talked about the

annoyances which the Abbe Birotteau had inflicted on Mademoiselle

Gamard, as though he were trying to cast all the blame on our good

abbe. 'The Abbe Birotteau,' he said, 'is a man to whom the Abbe

Chapeloud was absolutely necessary, and since the death of that

venerable man, he has shown'--and then came suggestions, calumnies!

you understand?"

"Troubert will be made vicar-general," said Monsieur de Bourbonne,

sententiously.

"Come!" cried Madame de Listomere, turning to Birotteau, "which do you

prefer, to be made a canon, or continue to live with Mademoiselle

Gamard?"

"To be a canon!" cried the whole company.

"Well, then," resumed Madame de Listomere, "you must let the Abbe

Troubert and Mademoiselle Gamard have things their own way. By sending

Caron here they mean to let you know indirectly that if you consent to

leave the house you shall be made canon,--one good turn deserves

another."

Every one present applauded Madame de Listomere's sagacity, except her

nephew the Baron de Listomere, who remarked in a comic tone to

Monsieur de Bourbonne, "I would like to have seen a fight between the

Gamard and the Birotteau."

But, unhappily for the vicar, forces were not equal between these

persons of the best society and the old maid supported by the Abbe

Troubert. The time soon came when the struggle developed openly, went

on increasing, and finally assumed immense proportions. By the advice

of Madame de Listomere and most of her friends, who were now eagerly

enlisted in a matter which threw such excitement into their vapid

provincial lives, a servant was sent to bring back Monsieur Caron. The

lawyer returned with surprising celerity, which alarmed no one but

Monsieur de Bourbonne.

"Let us postpone all decision until we are better informed," was the

advice of that Fabius in a dressing-gown, whose prudent reflections

revealed to him the meaning of these moves on the Tourainean

chess-board. He tried to enlighten Birotteau on the dangers of his

position; but the wisdom of the old "sly-boots" did not serve the

passions of the moment, and he obtained but little attention.

The conference between the lawyer and Birotteau was short. The vicar

came back quite terrified.

"He wants me to sign a paper stating my relinquishment of domicile."

"That's formidable language!" said the naval lieutenant.

"What does it mean?" asked Madame de Listomere.

"Merely that the abbe must declare in writing his intention of leaving

Mademoiselle Gamard's house," said Monsieur de Bourbonne, taking a

pinch of snuff.

"Is that all?" said Madame de Listomere. "Then sign it at once," she

added, turning to Birotteau. "If you positively decide to leave her

house, there can be no harm in declaring that such is your will."

Birotteau's will!

"That is true," said Monsieur de Bourbonne, closing his snuff-box with

a gesture the significance of which it is impossible to render, for it

was a language in itself. "But writing is always dangerous," he added,

putting his snuff-box on the mantelpiece with an air and manner that

alarmed the vicar.

Birotteau was so bewildered by the upsetting of all his ideas, by the

rapidity of events which found him defenceless, by the ease with which

his friends were settling the most cherished matters of his solitary

life, that he remained silent and motionless as if moonstruck,

thinking of nothing, though listening and striving to understand the

meaning of the rapid sentences the assembled company addressed to him.

He took the paper Monsieur Caron had given him and read it, as if he

were giving his mind to the lawyer's document, but the act was merely

mechanical. He signed the paper, by which he declared that he left

Mademoiselle Gamard's house of his own wish and will, and that he had

been fed and lodged while there according to the terms originally

agreed upon. When the vicar had signed the document, Monsieur Caron

took it and asked where his client was to send the things left by the

abbe in her house and belonging to him. Birotteau replied that they

could be sent to Madame de Listomere's,--that lady making him a sign

that she would receive him, never doubting that he would soon be a

canon. Monsieur de Bourbonne asked to see the paper, the deed of

relinquishment, which the abbe had just signed. Monsieur Caron gave it

to him.

"How is this?" he said to the vicar after reading it. "It appears that

written documents already exist between you and Mademoiselle Gamard.

Where are they? and what do they stipulate?"

"The deed is in my library," replied Birotteau.

"Do you know the tenor of it?" said Monsieur de Bourbonne to the

lawyer.

"No, monsieur," said Caron, stretching out his hand to regain the

fatal document.

"Ha!" thought the old man; "you know, my good friend, what that deed

contains, but you are not paid to tell us," and he returned the paper

to the lawyer.

"Where can I put my things?" cried Birotteau; "my books, my beautiful

book-shelves, and pictures, my red furniture, and all my treasures?"

The helpless despair of the poor man thus torn up as it were by the

roots was so artless, it showed so plainly the purity of his ways and

his ignorance of the things of life, that Madame de Listomere and

Mademoiselle de Salomon talked to him and consoled him in the tone

which mothers take when they promise a plaything to their children.

"Don't fret about such trifles," they said. "We will find you some

place less cold and dismal than Mademoiselle Gamard's gloomy house. If

we can't find anything you like, one or other of us will take you to

live with us. Come, let's play a game of backgammon. To-morrow you can

go and see the Abbe Troubert and ask him to push your claims to the

canonry, and you'll see how cordially he will receive you."

Feeble folk are as easily reassured as they are frightened. So the

poor abbe, dazzled at the prospect of living with Madame de Listomere,

forgot the destruction, now completed, of the happiness he had so long

desired, and so delightfully enjoyed. But at night before going to

sleep, the distress of a man to whom the fuss of moving and the

breaking up of all his habits was like the end of the world, came upon

him, and he racked his brains to imagine how he could ever find such a

good place for his book-case as the gallery in the old maid's house.

Fancying he saw his books scattered about, his furniture defaced, his

regular life turned topsy-turvy, he asked himself for the thousandth

time why the first year spent in Mademoiselle Gamard's house had been

so sweet, the second so cruel. His troubles were a pit in which his

reason floundered. The canonry seemed to him small compensation for so

much misery, and he compared his life to a stocking in which a single

dropped stitch resulted in destroying the whole fabric. Mademoiselle

Salomon remained to him. But, alas, in losing his old illusions the

poor priest dared not trust in any later friendship.

In the "citta dolente" of spinsterhood we often meet, especially in

France, with women whose lives are a sacrifice nobly and daily offered

to noble sentiments. Some remain proudly faithful to a heart which

death tore from them; martyrs of love, they learn the secrets of

womanhood only though their souls. Others obey some family pride

(which in our days, and to our shame, decreases steadily); these

devote themselves to the welfare of a brother, or to orphan nephews;

they are mothers while remaining virgins. Such old maids attain to the

highest heroism of their sex by consecrating all feminine feelings to

the help of sorrow. They idealize womanhood by renouncing the rewards

of woman's destiny, accepting its pains. They live surrounded by the

splendour of their devotion, and men respectfully bow the head before

their faded features. Mademoiselle de Sombreuil was neither wife nor

maid; she was and ever will be a living poem. Mademoiselle Salomon de

Villenoix belonged to the race of these heroic beings. Her devotion

was religiously sublime, inasmuch as it won her no glory after being,

for years, a daily agony. Beautiful and young, she loved and was

beloved; her lover lost his reason. For five years she gave herself,

with love's devotion, to the mere mechanical well-being of that

unhappy man, whose madness she so penetrated that she never believed

him mad. She was simple in manner, frank in speech, and her pallid

face was not lacking in strength and character, though its features

were regular. She never spoke of the events of her life. But at times

a sudden quiver passed over her as she listened to the story of some

sad or dreadful incident, thus betraying the emotions that great

sufferings had developed within her. She had come to live at Tours

after losing the companion of her life; but she was not appreciated

there at her true value and was thought to be merely an amiable woman.

She did much good, and attached herself, by preference, to feeble

beings. For that reason the poor vicar had naturally inspired her with

a deep interest.

Mademoiselle de Villenoix, who returned to Tours the next morning,

took Birotteau with her and set him down on the quay of the cathedral

leaving him to make his own way to the Cloister, where he was bent on

going, to save at least the canonry and to superintend the removal of

his furniture. He rang, not without violent palpitations of the heart,

at the door of the house whither, for fourteen years, he had come

daily, and where he had lived blissfully, and from which he was now

exiled forever, after dreaming that he should die there in peace like

his friend Chapeloud. Marianne was surprised at the vicar's visit. He

told her that he had come to see the Abbe Troubert, and turned towards

the ground-floor apartment where the canon lived; but Marianne called

to him:--

"Not there, monsieur le vicaire; the Abbe Troubert is in your old

apartment."

These words gave the vicar a frightful shock. He was forced to

comprehend both Troubert's character and the depths of the revenge so

slowly brought about when he found the canon settled in Chapeloud's

library, seated in Chapeloud's handsome armchair, sleeping, no doubt,

in Chapeloud's bed, and disinheriting at last the friend of Chapeloud,

the man who, for so many years, had confined him to Mademoiselle

Gamard's house, by preventing his advancement in the church, and

closing the best salons in Tours against him. By what magic wand had

the present transformation taken place? Surely these things belonged

to Birotteau? And yet, observing the sardonic air with which Troubert

glanced at that bookcase, the poor abbe knew that the future

vicar-general felt certain of possessing the spoils of those he had so

bitterly hated,--Chapeloud as an enemy, and Birotteau, in and through

whom Chapeloud still thwarted him. Ideas rose in the heart of the poor

man at the sight, and plunged him into a sort of vision. He stood

motionless, as though fascinated by Troubert's eyes which fixed

themselves upon him.

"I do not suppose, monsieur," said Birotteau at last, "that you intend

to deprive me of the things that belong to me. Mademoiselle may have

been impatient to give you better lodgings, but she ought to have been

sufficiently just to give me time to pack my books and remove my

furniture."

"Monsieur," said the Abbe Troubert, coldly, not permitting any sign of

emotion to appear on his face, "Mademoiselle Gamard told me yesterday

of your departure, the cause of which is still unknown to me. If she

installed me here at once, it was from necessity. The Abbe Poirel has

taken my apartment. I do not know if the furniture and things that are

in these rooms belong to you or to Mademoiselle; but if they are

yours, you know her scrupulous honesty; the sanctity of her life is

the guarantee of her rectitude. As for me, you are well aware of my

simple modes of living. I have slept for fifteen years in a bare room

without complaining of the dampness,--which, eventually will have

caused my death. Nevertheless, if you wish to return to this apartment

I will cede it to you willingly."

After hearing these terrible words, Birotteau forgot the canonry and

ran downstairs as quickly as a young man to find Mademoiselle Gamard.

He met her at the foot of the staircase, on the broad, tiled landing

which united the two wings of the house.

"Mademoiselle," he said, bowing to her without paying any attention to

the bitter and derisive smile that was on her lips, nor to the

extraordinary flame in her eyes which made them lucent as a tiger's,

"I cannot understand how it is that you have not waited until I

removed my furniture before--"

"What!" she said, interrupting him, "is it possible that your things

have not been left at Madame de Listomere's?"

"But my furniture?"

"Haven't you read your deed?" said the old maid, in a tone which would

have to be rendered in music before the shades of meaning that hatred

is able to put into the accent of every word could be fully shown.

Mademoiselle Gamard seemed to rise in stature, her eyes shone, her

face expanded, her whole person quivered with pleasure. The Abbe

Troubert opened a window to get a better light on the folio volume he

was reading. Birotteau stood as if a thunderbolt had stricken him.

Mademoiselle Gamard made his ears hum when she enunciated in a voice

as clear as a cornet the following sentence:--

"Was it not agreed that if you left my house your furniture should

belong to me, to indemnify me for the difference in the price of board

paid by you and that paid by the late venerable Abbe Chapeloud? Now,

as the Abbe Poirel has just been appointed canon--"

Hearing the last words Birotteau made a feeble bow as if to take leave

of the old maid, and left the house precipitately. He was afraid if he

stayed longer that he should break down utterly, and give too great a

triumph to his implacable enemies. Walking like a dunken man he at

last reached Madame de Listomere's house, where he found in one of the

lower rooms his linen, his clothing, and all his papers packed in a

trunk. When he eyes fell on these few remnants of his possessions the

unhappy priest sat down and hid his face in his hands to conceal his

tears from the sight of others. The Abbe Poirel was canon! He,

Birotteau, had neither home, nor means, nor furniture!

Fortunately Mademoiselle Salomon happened to drive past the house, and

the porter, who saw and comprehended the despair of the poor abbe,

made a sign to the coachman. After exchanging a few words with

Mademoiselle Salomon the porter persuaded the vicar to let himself be

placed, half dead as he was, in the carriage of his faithful friend,

to whom he was unable to speak connectedly. Mademoiselle Salomon,

alarmed at the momentary derangement of a head that was always feeble,

took him back at once to the Alouette, believing that this beginning

of mental alienation was an effect produced by the sudden news of Abbe

Poirel's nomination. She knew nothing, of course, of the fatal

agreement made by the abbe with Mademoiselle Gamard, for the excellent

reason that he did not know of it himself; and because it is in the

nature of things that the comical is often mingled with the pathetic,

the singular replies of the poor abbe made her smile.

"Chapeloud was right," he said; "he is a monster!"

"Who?" she asked.

"Chapeloud. He has taken all."

"You mean Poirel?"

"No, Troubert."

At last they reached the Alouette, where the priest's friends gave him

such tender care that towards evening he grew calmer and was able to

give them an account of what had happened during the morning.

The phlegmatic old fox asked to see the deed which, on thinking the

matter over, seemed to him to contain the solution of the enigma.

Birotteau drew the fatal stamped paper from his pocket and gave it to

Monsieur de Bourbonne, who read it rapidly and soon came upon the

following clause:--

"Whereas a difference exists of eight hundred francs yearly between

the price of board paid by the late Abbe Chapeloud and that at which

the said Sophie Gamard agrees to take into her house, on the

above-named stipulated condition, the said Francois Birotteau; and

whereas it is understood that the undersigned Francois Birotteau is

not able for some years to pay the full price charged to the other

boarders of Mademoiselle Gamard, more especially the Abbe Troubert;

the said Birotteau does hereby engage, in consideration of certain

sums of money advanced by the undersigned Sophie Gamard, to leave her,

as indemnity, all the household property of which he may die possessed,

or to transfer the same to her should he, for any reason whatever or

at any time, voluntarily give up the apartment now leased to him, and

thus derive no further profit from the above-named engagements made by

Mademoiselle Gamard for his benefit--"

"Confound her! what an agreement!" cried the old gentleman. "The said

Sophie Gamard is armed with claws."

Poor Birotteau never imagined in his childish brain that anything

could ever separate him from that house where he expected to live and

die with Mademoiselle Gamard. He had no remembrance whatever of that

clause, the terms of which he had not discussed, for they had seemed

quite just to him at a time when, in his great anxiety to enter the

old maid's house, he would readily have signed any and all legal

documents she had offered him. His simplicity was so guileless and

Mademoiselle Gamard's conduct so atrocious, the fate of the poor old

man seemed so deplorable, and his natural helplessness made him so

touching, that in the first glow of her indignation Madame de

Listomere exclaimed: "I made you put your signature to that document

which has ruined you; I am bound to give you back the happiness of

which I have deprived you."

"But," remarked Monsieur de Bourbonne, "that deed constitutes a fraud;

there may be ground for a lawsuit."

"Then Birotteau shall go to the law. If he loses at Tours he may win

at Orleans; if he loses at Orleans, he'll win in Paris," cried the

Baron de Listomere.

"But if he does go to law," continued Monsieur de Bourbonne, coldly,

"I should advise him to resign his vicariat."

"We will consult lawyers," said Madame de Listomere, "and go to law if

law is best. But this affair is so disgraceful for Mademoiselle

Gamard, and is likely to be so injurious to the Abbe Troubert, that I

think we can compromise."

After mature deliberation all present promised their assistance to the

Abbe Birotteau in the struggle which was now inevitable between the

poor priest and his antagonists and all their adherents. A true

presentiment, an infallible provincial instinct, led them to couple

the names of Gamard and Troubert. But none of the persons assembled on

this occasion in Madame de Listomere's salon, except the old fox, had

any real idea of the nature and importance of such a struggle.

Monsieur de Bourbonne took the poor abbe aside into a corner of the

room.

"Of the fourteen persons now present," he said, in a low voice, "not

one will stand by you a fortnight hence. If the time comes when you

need some one to support you you may find that I am the only person in

Tours bold enough to take up your defence; for I know the provinces

and men and things, and, better still, I know self-interests. But

these friends of yours, though full of the best intentions, are

leading you astray into a bad path, from which you won't be able to

extricate yourself. Take my advice; if you want to live in peace,

resign the vicariat of Saint-Gatien and leave Tours. Don't say where

you are going, but find some distant parish where Troubert cannot get

hold of you."

"Leave Tours!" exclaimed the vicar, with indescribable terror.

To him it was a kind of death; the tearing up of all the roots by

which he held to life. Celibates substitute habits for feelings; and

when to that moral system, which makes them pass through life instead

of really living it, is added a feeble character, external things

assume an extraordinary power over them. Birotteau was like certain

vegetables; transplant them, and you stop their ripening. Just as a

tree needs daily the same sustenance, and must always send its roots

into the same soil, so Birotteau needed to trot about Saint-Gatien,

and amble along the Mail where he took his daily walk, and saunter

through the streets, and visit the three salons where, night after

night, he played his whist or his backgammon.

"Ah! I did not think of it!" replied Monsieur de Bourbonne, gazing at

the priest with a sort of pity.

All Tours was soon aware that Madame la Baronne de Listomere, widow of

a lieutenant-general, had invited the Abbe Birotteau, vicar of

Saint-Gatien, to stay at her house. That act, which many persons

questioned, presented the matter sharply and divided the town into

parties, especially after Mademoiselle Salomon spoke openly of a fraud

and a lawsuit. With the subtle vanity which is common to old maids, and

the fanatic self-love which characterizes them, Mademoiselle Gamard was

deeply wounded by the course taken by Madame de Listomere. The

baroness was a woman of high rank, elegant in her habits and ways,

whose good taste, courteous manners, and true piety could not be

gainsaid. By receivng Birotteau as her guest she gave a formal denial

to all Mademoiselle Gamard's assertions, and indirectly censured her

conduct by maintaining the vicar's cause against his former landlady.

It is necessary for the full understanding of this history to explain

how the natural discernment and spirit of analysis which old women

bring to bear on the actions of others gave power to Mademoiselle

Gamard, and what were the resources on her side. Accompanied by the

taciturn Abbe Troubert she made a round of evening visits to five or

six houses, at each of which she met a circle of a dozen or more

persons, united by kindred tastes and the same general situation in

life. Among them were one or two men who were influenced by the gossip

and prejudices of their servants; five or six old maids who spent

their time in sifting the words and scrutinizing the actions of their

neighbours and others in the class below them; besides these, there

were several old women who busied themselves in retailing scandal,

keeping an exact account of each person's fortune, striving to control

or influence the actions of others, prognosticating marriages, and

blaming the conduct of friends as sharply as that of enemies. These

persons, spread about the town like the capillary fibres of a plant,

sucked in, with the thirst of a leaf for the dew, the news and the

secrets of each household, and transmitted them mechanically to the

Abbe Troubert, as the leaves convey to the branch the moisture they

absorb.

Accordingly, during every evening of the week, these good devotees,

excited by that need of emotion which exists in all of us, rendered an

exact account of the current condition of the town with a sagacity

worthy of the Council of Ten, and were, in fact, a species of police,

armed with the unerring gift of spying bestowed by passions. When they

had divined the secret meaning of some event their vanity led them to

appropriate to themselves the wisdom of their sanhedrim, and set the

tone to the gossip of their respective spheres. This idle but ever

busy fraternity, invisible, yet seeing all things, dumb, but

perpetually talking, possessed an influence which its nonentity seemed

to render harmless, though it was in fact terrible in its effects when

it concerned itself with serious interests. For a long time nothing

had entered the sphere of these existences so serious and so momentous

to each one of them as the struggle of Birotteau, supported by Madame

de Listomere, against Mademoiselle Gamard and the Abbe Troubert. The

three salons of Madame de Listomere and the Demoiselles Merlin de la

Blottiere and de Villenoix being considered as enemies by all the

salons which Mademoiselle Gamard frequented, there was at the bottom

of the quarrel a class sentiment with all its jealousies. It was the

old Roman struggle of people and senate in a molehill, a tempest in a

teacup, as Montesquieu remarked when speaking of the Republic of San

Marino, whose public offices are filled by the day only,--despotic

power being easily seized by any citizen.

But this tempest, petty as it seems, did develop in the souls of these

persons as many passions as would have been called forth by the

highest social interests. It is a mistake to think that none but souls

concerned in mighty projects, which stir their lives and set them

foaming, find time too fleeting. The hours of the Abbe Troubert fled

by as eagerly, laden with thoughts as anxious, harassed by despairs

and hopes as deep as the cruellest hours of the gambler, the lover, or

the statesman. God alone is in the secret of the energy we expend upon

our occult triumphs over man, over things, over ourselves. Though we

know not always whither we are going we know well what the journey

costs us. If it be permissible for the historian to turn aside for a

moment from the drama he is narrating and ask his readers to cast a

glance upon the lives of these old maids and abbes, and seek the cause

of the evil which vitiates them at their source, we may find it

demonstrated that man must experience certain passions before he can

develop within him those virtues which give grandeur to life by

widening his sphere and checking the selfishness which is inherent in

every created being.

Madame de Listomere returned to town without being aware that for the

previous week her friends had felt obliged to refute a rumour (at

which she would have laughed had she known if it) that her affection

for her nephew had an almost criminal motive. She took Birotteau to

her lawyer, who did not regard the case as an easy one. The vicar's

friends, inspired by the belief that justice was certain in so good a

cause, or inclined to procrastinate in a matter which did not concern

them personally, had put off bringing the suit until they returned to

Tours. Consequently the friends of Mademoiselle Gamard had taken the

initiative, and told the affair wherever they could to the injury of

Birotteau. The lawyer, whose practice was exclusively among the most

devout church people, amazed Madame de Listomere by advising her not

to embark on such a suit; he ended the consultation by saying that "he

himself would not be able to undertake it, for, according to the terms

of the deed, Mademoiselle Gamard had the law on her side, and in

equity, that is to say outside of strict legal justice, the Abbe

Birotteau would undoubtedly seem to the judges as well as to all

respectable laymen to have derogated from the peaceable, conciliatory,

and mild character hitherto attributed to him; that Mademoiselle

Gamard, known to be a kindly woman and easy to live with, had put

Birotteau under obligations to her by lending him the money he needed

to pay the legacy duties on Chapeloud's bequest without taking from

him a receipt; that Birotteau was not of an age or character to sign a

deed without knowing what it contained or understanding the importance

of it; that in leaving Mademoiselle Gamard's house at the end of two

years, when his friend Chapeloud had lived there twelve and Troubert

fifteen, he must have had some purpose known to himself only; and that

the lawsuit, if undertaken, would strike the public as an act of

ingratitude;" and so forth. Letting Birotteau go before them to the

staircase, the lawyer detained Madame de Listomere a moment to entreat

her, if she valued her own peace of mind, not to involve herself in

the matter.

But that evening the poor vicar, suffering the torments of a man under

sentence of death who awaits in the condemned cell at Bicetre the

result of his appeal for mercy, could not refrain from telling his

assembled friends the result of his visit to the lawyer.

"I don't know a single pettifogger in Tours," said Monsieur de

Bourbonne, "except that Radical lawyer, who would be willing to take

the case,--unless for the purpose of losing it; I don't advise you to

undertake it."

"Then it is infamous!" cried the navel lieutenant. "I myself will take

the abbe to the Radical--"

"Go at night," said Monsieur de Bourbonne, interrupting him.

"Why?"

"I have just learned that the Abbe Troubert is appointed vicar-general

in place of the other man, who died yesterday."

"I don't care a fig for the Abbe Troubert."

Unfortunately the Baron de Listomere (a man thirty-six years of age)

did not see the sign Monsieur de Bourbonne made him to be cautious in

what he said, motioning as he did so to a friend of Troubert, a

councillor of the Prefecture, who was present. The lieutenant

therefore continued:--

"If the Abbe Troubert is a scoundrel--"

"Oh," said Monsieur de Bourbonne, cutting him short, "why bring

Monsieur Troubert into a matter which doesn't concern him?"

"Not concern him?" cried the baron; "isn't he enjoying the use of the

Abbe Birotteau's household property? I remember that when I called on

the Abbe Chapeloud I noticed two valuable pictures. Say that they are

worth ten thousand francs; do you suppose that Monsieur Birotteau

meant to give ten thousand francs for living two years with that

Gamard woman,--not to speak of the library and furniture, which are

worth as much more?"

The Abbe Birotteau opened his eyes at hearing he had once possessed so

enormous a fortune.

The baron, getting warmer than ever, went on to say: "By Jove! there's

that Monsieur Salmon, formerly an expert at the Museum in Paris; he is

down here on a visit to his mother-in-law. I'll go and see him this

very evening with the Abbe Birotteau and ask him to look at those

pictures and estimate their value. From there I'll take the abbe to

the lawyer."

Two days after this conversation the suit was begun. This employment

of the Liberal laywer did harm to the vicar's cause. Those who were

opposed to the government, and all who were known to dislike the

priests, or religion (two things quite distinct which many persons

confound), got hold of the affair and the whole town talked of it. The

Museum expert estimated the Virgin of Valentin and the Christ of

Lebrun, two paintings of great beauty, at eleven thousand francs. As

to the bookshelves and the gothic furniture, the taste for such things

was increasing so rapidly in Paris that their immediate value was at

least twelve thousand. In short, the appraisal of the whole property

by the expert reached the sum of over thirty-six thousand francs. Now

it was very evident that Birotteau never intended to give Mademoiselle

Gamard such an enormous sum of money for the small amount he might owe

her under the terms of the deed; therefore he had, legally speaking,

equitable grounds on which to demand an amendment of the agreement; if

this were denied, Mademoiselle Gamard was plainly guilty of

intentional fraud. The Radical lawyer accordingly began the affair by

serving a writ on Mademoiselle Gamard. Though very harsh in language,

this document, strengthened by citations of precedents and supported

by certain clauses in the Code, was a masterpiece of legal argument,

and so evidently just in its condemnation of the old maid that thirty

or forty copies were made and maliciously distributed through the

town.

IV

A few days after this commencement of hostilities between Birotteau

and the old maid, the Baron de Listomere, who expected to be included

as captain of a corvette in a coming promotion lately announced by the

minister of the Navy, received a letter from one of his friends

warning him that there was some intention of putting him on the

retired list. Greatly astonished by this information he started for

Paris immediately, and went at once to the minister, who seemed to be

amazed himself, and even laughed at the baron's fears. The next day,

however, in spite of the minister's assurance, Monsieur de Listomere

made inquiries in the different offices. By an indiscretion (often

practised by heads of departments in favor of their friends) one of

the secretaries showed him a document confirming the fatal news, which

was only waiting the signature of the director, who was ill, to be

submitted to the minister.

The Baron de Listomere went immediately to an uncle of his, a deputy,

who could see the minister of the Navy at the chamber without loss of

time, and begged him to find out the real intentions of his Excellency

in a matter which threatened the loss of his whole future. He waited

in his uncle's carriage with the utmost anxiety for the end of the

session. His uncle came out before the Chamber rose, and said to him

at once as they drove away: "Why the devil have you meddled in a

priest's quarrel? The minister began by telling me you had put

yourself at the head of the Radicals in Tours; that your political

opinions were objectionable; you were not following in the lines of

the government,--with other remarks as much involved as if he were

addressing the Chamber. On that I said to him, 'Nonsense; let us come

to the point.' The end was that his Excellency told me frankly you

were in bad odor with the diocese. In short, I made a few inquiries

among my colleagues, and I find that you have been talking slightingly

of a certan Abbe Troubert, the vicar-general, but a very important

personage in the province, where he represents the Jesuits. I have

made myself responsible to the minister for your future conduct. My

good nephew, if you want to make your way be careful not to excite

ecclesiastical enmities. Go at once to Tours and try to make your

peace with that devil of a vicar-general; remember that such priests

are men with whom we absolutely _must_ live in harmony. Good heavens!

when we are all striving and working to re-establish religion it is

actually stupid, in a lieutenant who wants to be made a captain, to

affront the priests. If you don't make up matters with that Abbe

Troubert you needn't count on me; I shall abandon you. The minister of

ecclesiastical affairs told me just now that Troubert was certain to

be made bishop before long; if he takes a dislike to our family he

could hinder me from being included in the next batch of peers. Don't

you understand?"

These words explained to the naval officer the nature of Troubert's

secret occupations, about which Birotteau often remarked in his silly

way: "I can't think what he does with himself,--sitting up all night."

The canon's position in the midst of his female senate, converted so

adroitly into provincial detectives, and his personal capacity, had

induced the Congregation of Jesus to select him out of all the

ecclesiastics in the town, as the secret proconsul of Touraine.

Archbishop, general, prefect, all men, great and small, were under his

occult dominion. The Baron de Listomere decided at once on his course.

"I shall take care," he said to his uncle, "not to get another round

shot below my water-line."

Three days after this diplomatic conference between the uncle and

nephew, the latter, returning hurriedly in a post-chaise, informed his

aunt, the very night of his arrival, of the dangers the family were

running if they peristed in supporting that "fool of a Birotteau." The

baron had detained Monsieur de Bourbonne as the old gentleman was

taking his hat and cane after the usual rubber of whist. The

clear-sightedness of that sly old fox seemed indispensable for an

understanding of the reefs among which the Listomere family suddenly

found themselves; and perhaps the action of taking his hat and cane

was only a ruse to have it whispered in his ear: "Stay after the

others; we want to talk to you."

The baron's sudden return, his apparent satisfaction, which was quite

out of keeping with a harrassed look that occasionally crossed his

face, informed Monsieur de Bourbonne vaguely that the lieutenant had

met with some check in his crusade against Gamard and Troubert. He

showed no surprise when the baron revealed the secret power of the

Jesuit vicar-general.

"I knew that," he said.

"Then why," cried the baroness, "did you not warn us?"

"Madame," he said, sharply, "forget that I was aware of the invisible

influence of that priest, and I will forget that you knew it equally

well. If we do not keep this secret now we shall be thought his

accomplices, and shall be more feared and hated than we are. Do as I

do; pretend to be duped; but look carefully where you set your feet. I

did warn you sufficiently, but you would not understand me, and I did

not choose to compromise myself."

"What must we do now?" said the baron.

The abandonment of Birotteau was not even made a question; it was a

first condition tactily accepted by the three deliberators.

"To beat a retreat with the honors of war has always been the triumph

of the ablest generals," replied Monsieur de Bourbonne. "Bow to

Troubert, and if his hatred is less strong than his vanity you will

make him your ally; but if you bow too low he will walk over you

rough-shod; make believe that you intend to leave the service, and

you'll escape him, Monsieur le baron. Send away Birotteau, madame, and

you will set things right with Mademoiselle Gamard. Ask the Abbe

Troubert, when you meet him at the archbishop's, if he can play whist.

He will say yes. Then invite him to your salon, where he wants to be

received; he'll be sure to come. You are a woman, and you can

certainly win a priest to your interests. When the baron is promoted,

his uncle peer of France, and Troubert a bishop, you can make

Birotteau a canon if you choose. Meantime yield,--but yield

gracefully, all the while with a slight menace. Your family can give

Troubert quite as much support as he can give you. You'll understand

each other perfectly on that score. As for you, sailor, carry your

deep-sea line about you."

"Poor Birotteau?" said the baroness.

"Oh, get rid of him at once," replied the old man, as he rose to take

leave. "If some clever Radical lays hold of that empty head of his, he

may cause you much trouble. After all, the court would certainly give

a verdict in his favour, and Troubert must fear that. He may forgive

you for beginning the struggle, but if they were defeated he would be

implacable. I have said my say."

He snapped his snuff-box, put on his overshoes, and departed.

The next day after breakfast the baroness took the vicar aside and

said to him, not without visible embarrassment:--

"My dear Monsieur Birotteau, you will think what I am about to ask of

you very unjust and very inconsistent; but it is necessary, both for

you and for us, that your lawsuit with Mademoiselle Gamard be

withdrawn by resigning your claims, and also that you should leave my

house."

As he heard these words the poor abbe turned pale.

"I am," she continued, "the innocent cause of your misfortunes, and,

moreover, if it had not been for my nephew you would never have begun

this lawsuit, which has now turned to your injury and to ours. But

listen to me."

She told him succinctly the immense ramifications of the affair, and

explained the serious nature of its consequences. Her own meditations

during the night had told her something of the probable antecedents of

Troubert's life; she was able, without misleading Birotteau, to show

him the net so ably woven round him by revenge, and to make him see

the power and great capacity of his enemy, whose hatred to Chapeloud,

under whom he had been forced to crouch for a dozen years, now found

vent in seizing Chapeloud's property and in persecuting Chapeloud in

the person of his friend. The harmless Birotteau clasped his hands as

if to pray, and wept with distress at the sight of human horrors that

his own pure soul was incapable of suspecting. As frightened as though

he had suddenly found himself at the edge of a precipice, he listened,

with fixed, moist eyes in which there was no expression, to the

revelations of his friend, who ended by saying: "I know the wrong I do

in abandoning your cause; but, my dear abbe, family duties must be

considered before those of friendship. Yield, as I do, to this storm,

and I will prove to you my gratitude. I am not talking of your worldly

interests, for those I take charge of. You shall be made free of all

such anxieties for the rest of your life. By means of Monsieur de

Bourbonne, who will know how to save appearances, I shall arrange

matters so that you shall lack nothing. My friend, grant me the right

to abandon you. I shall ever be your friend, though forced to conform

to the axioms of the world. You must decide."

The poor, bewildered abbe cried aloud: "Chapeloud was right when he

said that if Troubert could drag him by the feet out of his grave he

would do it! He sleeps in Chapeloud's bed!"

"There is no use in lamenting," said Madame de Listomere, "and we have

little time now left to us. How will you decide?"

Birotteau was too good and kind not to obey in a great crisis the

unreflecting impulse of the moment. Besides, his life was already in

the agony of what to him was death. He said, with a despairing look at

his protectress which cut her to the heart, "I trust myself to you--I

am but the stubble of the streets."

He used the Tourainean word "bourrier" which has no other meaning than

a "bit of straw." But there are pretty little straws, yellow,

polished, and shining, the delight of children, whereas the bourrier

is straw discolored, muddy, sodden in the puddles, whirled by the

tempest, crushed under feet of men.

"But, madame, I cannot let the Abbe Troubert keep Chapeloud's

portrait. It was painted for me, it belongs to me; obtain that for me,

and I will give up all the rest."

"Well," said Madame de Listomere. "I will go myself to Mademoiselle

Gamard." The words were said in a tone which plainly showed the

immense effort the Baronne de Listomere was making in lowering herself

to flatter the pride of the old maid. "I will see what can be done,"

she said; "I hardly dare hope anything. Go and consult Monsieur de

Bourbonne; ask him to put your renunciation into proper form, and

bring me the paper. I will see the archbishop, and with his help we

may be able to stop the matter here."

Birotteau left the house dismayed. Troubert assumed in his eyes the

dimensions of an Egyptian pyramid. The hands of that man were in

Paris, his elbows in the Cloister of Saint-Gatien.

"He!" said the victim to himself, "_He_ to prevent the Baron de

Listomere from becoming peer of France!--and, perhaps, 'by the help of

the archbishop we may be able to stop the matter here'!"

In presence of such great interests Birotteau felt he was a mere worm;

he judged himself harshly.

The news of Birotteau's removal from Madame de Listomere's house

seemed all the more amazing because the reason of it was wholly

impenetrable. Madame de Listomere said that her nephew was intending

to marry and leave the navy, and she wanted the vicar's apartment to

enlarge her own. Birotteau's relinquishment was still unknown. The

advice of Monsieur de Bourbonne was followed. Whenever the two facts

reached the ears of the vicar-general his self-love was certain to be

gratified by the assurance they gave that even if the Listomere family

did not capitulate they would at least remain neutral and tacitly

recognize the occult power of the Congregation,--to reconize it was,

in fact, to submit to it. But the lawsuit was still sub judice; his

opponents yielded and threatened at the same time.

The Listomeres had thus taken precisely the same attitude as the

vicar-general himself; they held themselves aloof, and yet were able

to direct others. But just at this crisis an event occurred which

complicated the plans laid by Monsieur de Bourbonne and the Listomeres

to quiet the Gamard and Troubert party, and made them more difficult

to carry out.

Mademoiselle Gamard took cold one evening in coming out of the

cathedral; the next day she was confined to her bed, and soon after

became dangerously ill. The whole town rang with pity and false

commiseration: "Mademoiselle Gamard's sensitive nature has not been

able to bear the scandal of this lawsuit. In spite of the justice of

her cause she was likely to die of grief. Birotteau has killed his

benefactress." Such were the speeches poured through the capillary

tubes of the great female conclave, and taken up and repeated by the

whole town of Tours.

Madame de Listomere went the day after Mademoiselle Gamard took cold

to pay the promised visit, and she had the mortification of that act

without obtaining any benefit from it, for the old maid was too ill to

see her. She then asked politely to speak to the vicar-general.

Gratified, no doubt, to receive in Chapeloud's library, at the corner

of the fireplace above which hung the two contested pictures, the

woman who had hitheto ignored him, Troubert kept the baroness waiting

a moment before he consented to admit her. No courtier and no

diplomatist ever put into a discussion of their personal interests or

into the management of some great national negotiation more

shrewdness, dissimulation, and ability than the baroness and the

priest displayed when they met face to face for the struggle.

Like the seconds or sponsors who in the Middle Age armed the champion,

and strengthened his valor by useful counsel until he entered the

lists, so the sly old fox had said to the baroness at the last moment:

"Don't forget your cue. You are a mediator, and not an interested

party. Troubert also is a mediator. Weigh your words; study the

inflection of the man's voice. If he strokes his chin you have got

him."

Some sketchers are fond of caricaturing the contrast often observable

between "what is said" and "what is thought" by the speaker. To catch

the full meaning of the duel of words which now took place between the

priest and the lady, it is necessary to unveil the thoughts that each

hid from the other under spoken sentences of apparent insignificance.

Madame de Listomere began by expressing the regret she had felt at

Birotteau's lawsuit; and then went on to speak of her desire to settle

the matter to the satisfaction of both parties.

"The harm is done, madame," said the priest, in a grave voice. "The

pious and excellent Mademoiselle Gamard is dying." ("I don't care a

fig for the old thing," thought he, "but I mean to put her death on

your shoulders and harass your conscience if you are such a fool as to

listen to it.")

"On hearing of her illness," replied the baroness, "I entreated

Monsieur Birotteau to relinquish his claims; I have brought the

document, intending to give it to that excellent woman." ("I see what

you mean, you wily scoundrel," thought she, "but we are safe now from

your calumnies. If you take this document you'll cut your own fingers

by admitting you are an accomplice.")

There was silence for a moment.

"Mademoiselle Gamard's temporal affairs do not concern me," said the

priest at last, lowering the large lids over his eagle eyes to veil

his emotions. ("Ho! ho!" thought he, "you can't compromise me. Thank

God, those damned lawyers won't dare to plead any cause that could

smirch me. What do these Listomeres expect to get by crouching in this

way?")

"Monsieur," replied the baroness, "Monsieur Birotteau's affairs are no

more mine than those of Mademoiselle Gamard are yours; but,

unfortunately, religion is injured by such a quarrel, and I come to

you as a mediator--just as I myself am seeking to make peace." ("We

are not decieving each other, Monsieur Troubert," thought she. "Don't

you feel the sarcasm of that answer?")

"Injury to religion, madame!" exclaimed the vicar-general. "Religion

is too lofty for the actions of men to injure." ("My religion is I,"

thought he.) "God makes no mistake in His judgments, madame; I

recognize no tribunal but His."

"Then, monsieur," she replied, "let us endeavor to bring the judgments

of men into harmony with the judgments of God." ("Yes, indeed, your

religion is you.")

The Abbe Troubert suddenly changed his tone.

"Your nephew has been to Paris, I believe." ("You found out about me

there," thought he; "you know now that I can crush you, you who dared

to slight me, and you have come to capitulate.")

"Yes, monsieur; thank you for the interest you take in him. He returns

to-night; the minister, who is very considerate of us, sent for him;

he does not want Monsieur de Listomere to leave the service."

("Jesuit, you can't crush us," thought she. "I understand your

civility.")

A moment's silence.

"I did not think my nephew's conduct in this affair quite the thing,"

she added; "but naval men must be excused; they know nothing of law."

("Come, we had better make peace," thought she; "we sha'n't gain

anything by battling in this way.")

A slight smile wandered over the priests face and was lost in its

wrinkles.

"He has done us the service of getting a proper estimate on the value

of those paintings," he said, looking up at the pictures. "They will

be a noble ornament to the chapel of the Virgin." ("You shot a sarcasm

at me," thought he, "and there's another in return; we are quits,

madame.")

"If you intend to give them to Saint-Gatien, allow me to offer frames

that will be more suitable and worthy of the place, and of the works

themselves." ("I wish I could force you to betray that you have taken

Birotteau's things for your own," thought she.)

"They do not belong to me," said the priest, on his guard.

"Here is the deed of relinquishment," said Madame de Listomere; "it

ends all discussion, and makes them over to Mademoiselle Gamard." She

laid the document on the table. ("See the confidence I place in you,"

thought she.) "It is worthy of you, monsieur," she added, "worthy of

your noble character, to reconcile two Christians,--though at present

I am not especially concerned for Monsieur Birotteau--"

"He is living in your house," said Troubert, interrupting her.

"No, monsieur, he is no longer there." ("That peerage and my nephew's

promotion force me to do base things," thought she.)

The priest remained impassible, but his calm exterior was an

indication of violent emotion. Monsieur Bourbonne alone had fathomed

the secret of that apparent tranquillity. The priest had triumphed!

"Why did you take upon yourself to bring that relinquishment," he

asked, with a feeling analogous to that which impels a woman to fish

for compliments.

"I could not avoid a feeling of compassion. Birotteau, whose feeble

nature must be well known to you, entreated me to see Madaemoiselle

Gamard and to obtain as the price of his renunciation--"

The priest frowned.

"of rights upheld by distinguished lawyers, the portrait of--"

Troubert looked fixedly at Madame de Listomere.

"the portrait of Chapeloud," she said, continuing: "I leave you to

judge of his claim." ("You will be certain to lose your case if we go

to law, and you know it," thought she.)

The tone of her voice as she said the words "distinguished lawyers"

showed the priest that she knew very well both the strength and

weakness of the enemy. She made her talent so plain to this

connoisseur emeritus in the course of a conversation which lasted a

long time in the tone here given, that Troubert finally went down to

Mademoiselle Gamard to obtain her answer to Birotteau's request for

the portrait.

He soon returned.

"Madame," he said, "I bring you the words of a dying woman. 'The Abbe

Chapeloud was so true a friend to me,' she said, 'that I cannot

consent to part with his picture.' As for me," added Troubert, "if it

were mine I would not yield it. My feelings to my late friend were so

faithful that I should feel my right to his portrait was above that of

others."

"Well, there's no need to quarrel over a bad picture." ("I care as

little about it as you do," thought she.) "Keep it, and I will have a

copy made of it. I take some credit to myself for having averted this

deplorable lawsuit; and I have gained, personally, the pleasure of

your acquaintance. I hear you have a great talent for whist. You will

forgive a woman for curiosity," she said, smiling. "If you will come

and play at my house sometimes you cannot doubt your welcome."

Troubert stroked his chin. ("Caught! Bourbonne was right!" thought

she; "he has his quantum of vanity!")

It was true. The vicar-general was feeling the delightful sensation

which Mirabeau was unable to subdue when in the days of his power he

found gates opening to his carriage which were barred to him in

earlier days.

"Madame," he replied, "my avocations prevent my going much into

society; but for you, what will not a man do?" ("The old maid is going

to die; I'll get a footing at the Listomere's, and serve them if they

serve me," thought he. "It is better to have them for friends than

enemies.")

Madame de Listomere went home, hoping that the archbishop would

complete the work of peace so auspiciously begun. But Birotteau was

fated to gain nothing by his relinquishment. Mademoiselle Gamard died

the next day. No one felt surprised when her will was opened to find

that she had left everything to the Abbe Troubert. Her fortune was

appraised at three hundred thousand francs. The vicar-general sent to

Madame de Listomere two notes of invitation for the services and for

the funeral procession of his friend; one for herself and one for her

nephew.

"We must go," she said.

"It can't be helped," said Monsieur de Bourbonne. "It is a test to

which Troubert puts you. Baron, you must go to the cemetery," he

added, turning to the lieutenant, who, unluckily for him, had not left

Tours.

The services took place, and were performed with unusual

ecclesiastical magnificence. Only one person wept, and that was

Birotteau, who, kneeling in a side chapel and seen by none, believed

himself guilty of the death and prayed sincerely for the soul of the

deceased, bitterly deploring that he was not able to obtain her

forgiveness before she died.

The Abbe Troubert followed the body of his friend to the grave; at the

verge of which he delivered a discourse in which, thanks to his

eloquence, the narrow life the old maid had lived was enlarged to

monumental proportions. Those present took particular note of the

following words in the peroration:--

"This life of days devoted to God and to His religion, a life adorned

with noble actions silently performed, and with modest and hidden

virtues, was crushed by a sorrow which we might call undeserved if we

could forget, here at the verge of this grave, that our afflictions

are sent by God. The numerous friends of this saintly woman, knowing

the innocence and nobility of her soul, foresaw that she would issue

safely from her trials in spite of the accusations which blasted her

life. It may be that Providence has called her to the bosom of God to

withdraw her from those trials. Happy they who can rest here below in

the peace of their own hearts as Sophie now is resting in her robe of

innocence among the blest."

"When he had ended his pompous discourse," said Monsieur de Bourbonne,

after relating the incidents of the internment to Madame de Listomere

when whist was over, the doors shut, and they were alone with the

baron, "this Louis XI. in a cassock--imagine him if you can!--gave a

last flourish to the sprinkler and aspersed the coffin with holy

water." Monsieur de Bourbonne picked up the tongs and imitated the

priest's gesture so satirically that the baron and his aunt could not

help laughing. "Not until then," continued the old gentleman, "did he

contradict himself. Up to that time his behavior had been perfect; but

it was no doubt impossible for him to put the old maid, whom he

despised so heartily and hated almost as much as he hated Chapeloud,

out of sight forever without allowing his joy to appear in that last

gesture."

The next day Mademoiselle Salomon came to breakfast with Madame de

Listomere, chiefly to say, with deep emotion: "Our poor Abbe Birotteau

has just received a frightful blow, which shows the most determined

hatred. He is appointed curate of Saint-Symphorien."

Saint-Symphorien is a suburb of Tours lying beyond the bridge. That

bridge, one of the finest monuments of French architecture, is

nineteen hundred feet long, and the two open squares which surround

each end are precisely alike.

"Don't you see the misery of it?" she said, after a pause, amazed at

the coldness with which Madame de Listomere received the news. "It is

just as if the abbe were a hundred miles from Tours, from his friends,

from everything! It is a frightful exile, and all the more cruel

because he is kept within sight of the town where he can hardly ever

come. Since his troubles he walks very feebly, yet he will have to

walk three miles to see his old friends. He has taken to his bed, just

now, with fever. The parsonage at Saint-Symphorien is very cold and

damp, and the parish is too poor to repair it. The poor old man will

be buried in a living tomb. Oh, it is an infamous plot!"

To end this history it will suffice to relate a few events in a simple

way, and to give one last picture of its chief personages.

Five months later the vicar-general was made Bishop of Troyes; and

Madame de Listomere was dead, leaving an annuity of fifteen hundred

francs to the Abbe Birotteau. The day on which the dispositions in her

will were made known Monseigneur Hyacinthe, Bishop of Troyes, was on

the point of leaving Tours to reside in his diocese, but he delayed

his departure on receiving the news. Furious at being foiled by a

woman to whom he had lately given his countenance while she had been

secretly holding the hand of a man whom he regarded as his enemy,

Troubert again threatened the baron's future career, and put in

jeopardy the peerage of his uncle. He made in the salon of the

archbishop, and before an assembled party, one of those priestly

speeches which are big with vengeance and soft with honied mildness.

The Baron de Listomere went the next day to see this implacable enemy,

who must have imposed sundry hard conditions on him, for the baron's

subsequent conduct showed the most entire submission to the will of

the terrible Jesuit.

The new bishop made over Mademoiselle Gamard's house by deed of gift

to the Chapter of the cathedral; he gave Chapeloud's books and

bookcases to the seminary; he presented the two disputed pictures to

the Chapel of the Virgin; but he kept Chapeloud's portrait. No one

knew how to explain this almost total renunciation of Mademoiselle

Gamard's bequest. Monsieur de Bourbonne supposed that the bishop had

secretly kept moneys that were invested, so as to support his rank

with dignity in Paris, where of course he would take his seat on the

Bishops' bench in the Upper Chamber. It was not until the night before

Monseigneur Troubert's departure from Tours that the sly old fox

unearthed the hidden reason of this strange action, the deathblow

given by the most persistent vengeance to the feeblest of victims.

Madame de Listomere's legacy to Birotteau was contested by the Baron

de Listomere under a pretence of undue influence!

A few days after the case was brought the baron was promoted to the

rank of captain. As a measure of ecclesiastical discipline, the curate

of Saint-Symphorien was suspended. His superiors judged him guilty.

The murderer of Sophie Gamard was also a swindler. If Monseigneur

Troubert had kept Mademoiselle Gamard's property he would have found

it difficult to make the ecclestiastical authorities censure

Birotteau.

At the moment when Monseigneur Hyacinthe, Bishop of Troyes, drove

along the quay Saint-Symphorien in a post-chaise on his way to Paris

poor Birotteau had been placed in an armchair in the sun on a terrace

above the road. The unhappy priest, smitten by the archbishop, was

pale and haggard. Grief, stamped on every feature, distorted the face

that was once so mildly gay. Illness had dimmed his eyes, formerly

brightened by the pleasures of good living and devoid of serious

ideas, with a veil which simulated thought. It was but the skeleton of

the old Birotteau who had rolled only one year earlier so vacuous but

so content along the Cloister. The bishop cast one look of pity and

contempt upon his victim; then he consented to forget him, and went

his way.

There is no doubt that Troubert would have been in other times a

Hildebrand or an Alexander the Sixth. In these days the Church is no

longer a political power, and does not absorb the whole strength of

her solitaries. Celibacy, however, presents the inherent vice of

concentating the faculties of man upon a single passion, egotism,

which renders celibates either useless or mischievous. We live at a

period when the defect of governments is to make Man for Society

rather than Society for Man. There is a perpetual struggle going on

between the Individual and the Social system which insists on using

him, while he is endeavoring to use it to his own profit; whereas, in

former days, man, really more free, was also more loyal to the public

weal. The round in which men struggle in these days has been

insensibly widened; the soul which can grasp it as a whole will ever

be a magnificent exception; for, as a general thing, in morals as in

physics, impulsion loses in intensity what it gains in extension.

Society can not be based on exceptions. Man in the first instance was

purely and simply, father; his heart beat warmly, concentrated in the

one ray of Family. Later, he lived for a clan, or a small community;

hence the great historical devotions of Greece and Rome. After that he

was a man of caste or of a religion, to maintain the greatness of

which he often proved himself sublime; but by that time the field of

his interests became enlarged by many intellectual regions. In our

day, his life is attached to that of a vast country; sooner or later

his family will be, it is predicted, the entire universe.

Will this moral cosmopolitanism, the hope of Christian Rome, prove to

be only a sublime error? It is so natural to believe in the

realization of a noble vision, in the Brotherhood of Man. But, alas!

the human machine does not have such divine proportions. Souls that

are vast enough to grasp a range of feelings bestowed on great men

only will never belong to either fathers of families or simple

citizens. Some physiologists have thought that as the brain enlarges

the heart narrows; but they are mistaken. The apparent egotism of men

who bear a science, a nation, a code of laws in their bosom is the

noblest of passions; it is, as one may say, the maternity of the

masses; to give birth to new peoples, to produce new ideas they must

unite within their mighty brains the breasts of woman and the force of

God. The history of such men as Innocent the Third and Peter the

Great, and all great leaders of their age and nation will show, if

need be, in the highest spheres the same vast thought of which

Troubert was made the representative in the quiet depths of the

Cloister of Saint-Gatien.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Birotteau, Abbe Francois

The Lily of the Valley

Cesar Birotteau

Bourbonne, De

Madame Firmiani

Listomere, Baronne de

Cesar Birotteau

The Muse of the Department

Troubert, Abbe Hyacinthe

The Member for Arcis

Villenoix, Pauline Salomon de

Louis Lambert

A Seaside Tragedy

THE TWO BROTHERS

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC

Translated by

Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION

To Monsieur Charles Nodier, member of the French Academy, etc.

Here, my dear Nodier, is a book filled with deeds that are

screened from the action of the laws by the closed doors of

domestic life; but as to which the finger of God, often called

chance, supplies the place of human justice, and in which the

moral is none the less striking and instructive because it is

pointed by a scoffer.

To my mind, such deeds contain great lessons for the Family

and for Maternity. We shall some day realize, perhaps too

late, the effects produced by the diminution of paternal

authority. That authority, which formerly ceased only at the

death of the father, was the sole human tribunal before which

domestic crimes could be arraigned; kings themselves, on

special occasions, took part in executing its judgments.

However good and tender a mother may be, she cannot fulfil the

function of the patriarchal royalty any more than a woman can

take the place of a king upon the throne. Perhaps I have never

drawn a picture that shows more plainly how essential to

European society is the indissoluble marriage bond, how fatal

the results of feminine weakness, how great the dangers

arising from selfish interests when indulged without

restraint. May a society which is based solely on the power of

wealth shudder as it sees the impotence of the law in dealing

with the workings of a system which deifies success, and

pardons every means of attaining it. May it return to the

Catholic religion, for the purification of its masses through

the inspiration of religious feeling, and by means of an

education other than that of a lay university.

In the "Scenes from Military Life" so many fine natures, so

many high and noble self-devotions will be set forth, that I

may here be allowed to point out the depraving effect of the

necessities of war upon certain minds who venture to act in

domestic life as if upon the field of battle.

You have cast a sagacious glance over the events of our own

time; its philosophy shines, in more than one bitter

reflection, through your elegant pages; you have appreciated,

more clearly than other men, the havoc wrought in the mind of

our country by the existence of four distinct political

systems. I cannot, therefore, place this history under the

protection of a more competent authority. Your name may,

perhaps, defend my work against the criticisms that are

certain to follow it,--for where is the patient who keeps

silence when the surgeon lifts the dressing from his wound?

To the pleasure of dedicating this Scene to you, is joined the

pride I feel in thus making known your friendship for one who

here subscribes himself

Your sincere admirer,

De Balzac

Paris, November, 1842.

THE TWO BROTHERS

CHAPTER I

In 1792 the townspeople of Issoudun enjoyed the services of a

physician named Rouget, whom they held to be a man of consummate

malignity. Were we to believe certain bold tongues, he made his wife

extremely unhappy, although she was the most beautiful woman of the

neighborhood. Perhaps, indeed, she was rather silly. But the prying of

friends, the slander of enemies, and the gossip of acquaintances, had

never succeeded in laying bare the interior of that household. Doctor

Rouget was a man of whom we say in common parlance, "He is not

pleasant to deal with." Consequently, during his lifetime, his

townsmen kept silence about him and treated him civilly. His wife, a

demoiselle Descoings, feeble in health during her girlhood (which was

said to be a reason why the doctor married her), gave birth to a son,

and also to a daughter who arrived, unexpectedly, ten years after her

brother, and whose birth took the husband, doctor though he were, by

surprise. This late-comer was named Agathe.

These little facts are so simple, so commonplace, that a writer seems

scarcely justified in placing them in the fore-front of his history;

yet if they are not known, a man of Doctor Rouget's stamp would be

thought a monster, an unnatural father, when, in point of fact, he was

only following out the evil tendencies which many people shelter under

the terrible axiom that "men should have strength of character,"--a

masculine phrase that has caused many a woman's misery.

The Descoings, father-in-law and mother-in-law of the doctor, were

commission merchants in the wool-trade, and did a double business by

selling for the producers and buying for the manufacturers of the

golden fleeces of Berry; thus pocketing a commission on both sides. In

this way they grew rich and miserly--the outcome of many such lives.

Descoings the son, younger brother of Madame Rouget, did not like

Issoudun. He went to seek his fortune in Paris, where he set up as a

grocer in the rue Saint-Honore. That step led to his ruin. But nothing

could have hindered it: a grocer is drawn to his business by an

attracting force quite equal to the repelling force which drives

artists away from it. We do not sufficiently study the social

potentialities which make up the various vocations of life. It would

be interesting to know what determines one man to be a stationer

rather than a baker; since, in our day, sons are not compelled to

follow the calling of their fathers, as they were among the Egyptians.

In this instance, love decided the vocation of Descoings. He said to

himself, "I, too, will be a grocer!" and in the same breath he said

(also to himself) some other things regarding his employer,--a

beautiful creature, with whom he had fallen desperately in love.

Without other help than patience and the trifling sum of money his

father and mother sent him, he married the widow of his predecessor,

Monsieur Bixiou.

In 1792 Descoings was thought to be doing an excellent business. At

that time, the old Descoings were still living. They had retired from

the wool-trade, and were employing their capital in buying up the

forfeited estates,--another golden fleece! Their son-in-law Doctor

Rouget, who, about this time, felt pretty sure that he should soon

have to mourn for the death of his wife, sent his daughter to Paris to

the care of his brother-in-law, partly to let her see the capital, but

still more to carry out an artful scheme of his own. Descoings had no

children. Madame Descoings, twelve years older than her husband, was

in good health, but as fat as a thrush after harvest; and the canny

Rouget knew enough professionally to be certain that Monsieur and

Madame Descoings, contrary to the moral of fairy tales, would live

happy ever after without having any children. The pair might therefore

become attached to Agathe.

That young girl, the handsomest maiden in Issoudun, did not resemble

either father or mother. Her birth had caused a lasting breach between

Doctor Rouget and his intimate friend Monsieur Lousteau, a former

sub-delegate who had lately removed from the town. When a family

expatriates itself, the natives of a place as attractive as Issoudun

have a right to inquire into the reasons of so surprising a step. It

was said by certain sharp tongues that Doctor Rouget, a vindictive

man, had been heard to exclaim that Monsieur Lousteau should die by

his hand. Uttered by a physician, this declaration had the force of a

cannon-ball. When the National Assembly suppressed the sub-delegates,

Lousteau and his family left Issoudun, and never returned there. After

their departure Madame Rouget spent most of her time with the sister

of the late sub-delegate, Madame Hochon, who was the godmother of her

daughter, and the only person to whom she confided her griefs. The

little that the good town of Issoudun ever really knew of the

beautiful Madame Rouget was told by Madame Hochon,--though not until

after the doctor's death.

The first words of Madame Rouget, when informed by her husband that he

meant to send Agathe to Paris, were: "I shall never see my daughter

again."

"And she was right," said the worthy Madame Hochon.

After this, the poor mother grew as yellow as a quince, and her

appearance did not contradict the tongues of those who declared that

Doctor Rouget was killing her by inches. The behavior of her booby of

a son must have added to the misery of the poor woman so unjustly

accused. Not restrained, possibly encouraged by his father, the young

fellow, who was in every way stupid, paid her neither the attentions

nor the respect which a son owes to a mother. Jean-Jacques Rouget was

like his father, especially on the latter's worst side; and the doctor

at his best was far from satisfactory, either morally or physically.

The arrival of the charming Agathe Rouget did not bring happiness to

her uncle Descoings; for in the same week (or rather, we should say

decade, for the Republic had then been proclaimed) he was imprisoned

on a hint from Robespierre given to Fouquier-Tinville. Descoings, who

was imprudent enough to think the famine fictitious, had the

additional folly, under the impression that opinions were free, to

express that opinion to several of his male and female customers as he

served them in the grocery. The citoyenne Duplay, wife of a

cabinet-maker with whom Robespierre lodged, and who looked after the

affairs of that eminent citizen, patronized, unfortunately, the

Descoings establishment. She considered the opinions of the grocer

insulting to Maximilian the First. Already displeased with the manners

of Descoings, this illustrious "tricoteuse" of the Jacobin club regarded

the beauty of his wife as a kind of aristocracy. She infused a venom

of her own into the grocer's remarks when she repeated them to her

good and gentle master, and the poor man was speedily arrested on the

well-worn charge of "accaparation."

No sooner was he put in prison, than his wife set to work to obtain

his release. But the steps she took were so ill-judged that any one

hearing her talk to the arbiters of his fate might have thought that

she was in reality seeking to get rid of him. Madame Descoings knew

Bridau, one of the secretaries of Roland, then minister of the

interior,--the right-hand man of all the ministers who succeeded each

other in that office. She put Bridau on the war-path to save her

grocer. That incorruptible official--one of the virtuous dupes who are

always admirably disinterested--was careful not to corrupt the men on

whom the fate of the poor grocer depended; on the contrary, he

endeavored to enlighten them. Enlighten people in those days! As well

might he have begged them to bring back the Bourbons. The Girondist

minister, who was then contending against Robespierre, said to his

secretary, "Why do you meddle in the matter?" and all others to whom

the worthy Bridau appealed made the same atrocious reply: "Why do you

meddle?" Bridau then sagely advised Madame Descoings to keep quiet and

await events. But instead of conciliating Robespierre's housekeeper,

she fretted and fumed against that informer, and even complained to a

member of the Convention, who, trembling for himself, replied hastily,

"I will speak of it to Robespierre." The handsome petitioner put faith

in this promise, which the other carefully forgot. A few loaves of

sugar, or a bottle or two of good liqueur, given to the citoyenne

Duplay would have saved Descoings.

This little mishap proves that in revolutionary times it is quite as

dangerous to employ honest men as scoundrels; we should rely on

ourselves alone. Descoings perished; but he had the glory of going to

the scaffold with Andre Chenier. There, no doubt, grocery and poetry

embraced for the first time in the flesh; although they have, and ever

have had, intimate secret relations. The death of Descoings produced

far more sensation than that of Andre Chenier. It has taken thirty

years to prove to France that she lost more by the death of Chenier

than by that of Descoings.

This act of Robespierre led to one good result: the terrified grocers

let politics alone until 1830. Descoings's shop was not a hundred

yards from Robespierre's lodging. His successor was scarcely more

fortunate than himself. Cesar Birotteau, the celebrated perfumer of

the "Queen of Roses," bought the premises; but, as if the scaffold had

left some inexplicable contagion behind it, the inventor of the "Paste

of Sultans" and the "Carminative Balm" came to his ruin in that very

shop. The solution of the problem here suggested belongs to the realm

of occult science.

During the visits which Roland's secretary paid to the unfortunate

Madame Descoings, he was struck with the cold, calm, innocent beauty

of Agathe Rouget. While consoling the widow, who, however, was too

inconsolable to carry on the business of her second deceased husband,

he married the charming girl, with the consent of her father, who

hastened to give his approval to the match. Doctor Rouget, delighted

to hear that matters were going beyond his expectations,--for his

wife, on the death of her brother, had become sole heiress of the

Descoings,--rushed to Paris, not so much to be present at the wedding

as to see that the marriage contract was drawn to suit him. The ardent

and disinterested love of citizen Bridau gave carte blanche to the

perfidious doctor, who made the most of his son-in-law's blindness, as

the following history will show.

Madame Rouget, or, to speak more correctly, the doctor, inherited all

the property, landed and personal, of Monsieur and Madame Descoings

the elder, who died within two years of each other; and soon after

that, Rouget got the better, as we may say, of his wife, for she died

at the beginning of the year 1799. So he had vineyards and he bought

farms, he owned iron-works and he sold fleeces. His well-beloved son

was stupidly incapable of doing anything; but the father destined him

for the state in life of a land proprietor and allowed him to grow up

in wealth and silliness, certain that the lad would know as much as

the wisest if he simply let himself live and die. After 1799, the

cipherers of Issoudun put, at the very least, thirty thousand francs'

income to the doctor's credit. From the time of his wife's death he

led a debauched life, though he regulated it, so to speak, and kept it

within the closed doors of his own house. This man, endowed with "strength

of character," died in 1805, and God only knows what the townspeople

of Issoudun said about him then, and how many anecdotes they related

of his horrible private life. Jean-Jacques Rouget, whom his father,

recognizing his stupidity, had latterly treated with severity,

remained a bachelor for certain reasons, the explanation of which will

form an important part of this history. His celibacy was partly his

father's fault, as we shall see later.

Meantime, it is well to inquire into the results of the secret

vengeance the doctor took on a daughter whom he did not recognize as

his own, but who, you must understand at once, was legitimately his.

Not a person in Issoudun had noticed one of those capricious facts

that make the whole subject of generation a vast abyss in which

science flounders. Agathe bore a strong likeness to the mother of

Doctor Rouget. Just as gout is said to skip a generation and pass from

grandfather to grandson, resemblances not uncommonly follow the same

course.

In like manner, the eldest of Agathe's children, who physically

resembled his mother, had the moral qualities of his grandfather,

Doctor Rouget. We will leave the solution of this problem to the

twentieth century, with a fine collection of microscopic animalculae;

our descendants may perhaps write as much nonsense as the scientific

schools of the nineteenth century have uttered on this mysterious and

perplexing question.

Agathe Rouget attracted the admiration of everyone by a face destined,

like that of Mary, the mother of our Lord, to continue ever virgin,

even after marriage. Her portrait, still to be seen in the atelier of

Bridau, shows a perfect oval and a clear whiteness of complexion,

without the faintest tinge of color, in spite of her golden hair. More

than one artist, looking at the pure brow, the discreet, composed

mouth, the delicate nose, the small ears, the long lashes, and the

dark-blue eyes filled with tenderness,--in short, at the whole

countenance expressive of placidity,--has asked the great artist, "Is

that a copy of a Raphael?" No man ever acted under a truer inspiration

than the minister's secretary when he married this young girl. Agathe

was an embodiment of the ideal housekeeper brought up in the provinces

and never parted from her mother. Pious, though far from

sanctimonious, she had no other education than that given to women by

the Church. Judged, by ordinary standards, she was an accomplished

wife, yet her ignorance of life paved the way for great misfortunes.

The epitaph on the Roman matron, "She did needlework and kept the

house," gives a faithful picture of her simple, pure, and tranquil

existence.

Under the Consulate, Bridau attached himself fanatically to Napoleon,

who placed him at the head of a department in the ministry of the

interior in 1804, a year before the death of Doctor Rouget. With a

salary of twelve thousand francs and very handsome emoluments, Bridau

was quite indifferent to the scandalous settlement of the property at

Issoudun, by which Agathe was deprived of her rightful inheritance.

Six months before Doctor Rouget's death he had sold one-half of his

property to his son, to whom the other half was bequeathed as a gift,

and also in accordance with his rights as heir. An advance of fifty

thousand francs on her inheritance, made to Agathe at the time of her

marriage, represented her share of the property of her father and

mother.

Bridau idolized the Emperor, and served him with the devotion of a

Mohammedan for his prophet; striving to carry out the vast conceptions

of the modern demi-god, who, finding the whole fabric of France

destroyed, went to work to reconstruct everything. The new official

never showed fatigue, never cried "Enough." Projects, reports, notes,

studies, he accepted all, even the hardest labors, happy in the

consciousness of aiding his Emperor. He loved him as a man, he adored

him as a sovereign, and he would never allow the least criticism of

his acts or his purposes.

From 1804 to 1808, the Bridaus lived in a handsome suite of rooms on

the Quai Voltaire, a few steps from the ministry of the interior and

close to the Tuileries. A cook and footman were the only servants of

the household during this period of Madame Bridau's grandeur. Agathe,

early afoot, went to market with her cook. While the latter did the

rooms, she prepared the breakfast. Bridau never went to the ministry

before eleven o'clock. As long as their union lasted, his wife took

the same unwearying pleasure in preparing for him an exquisite

breakfast, the only meal he really enjoyed. At all seasons and in all

weathers, Agathe watched her husband from the window as he walked

toward his office, and never drew in her head until she had seen him

turn the corner of the rue du Bac. Then she cleared the

breakfast-table herself, gave an eye to the arrangement of the rooms,

dressed for the day, played with her children and took them to walk,

or received the visits of friends; all the while waiting in spirit for

Bridau's return. If her husband brought him important business that

had to be attended to, she would station herself close to the

writing-table in his study, silent as a statue, knitting while he

wrote, sitting up as late as he did, and going to bed only a few

moments before him. Occasionally, the pair went to some theatre,

occupying one of the ministerial boxes. On those days, they dined at a

restaurant, and the gay scenes of that establishment never ceased to

give Madame Bridau the same lively pleasure they afford to provincials

who are new to Paris. Agathe, who was obliged to accept the formal

dinners sometimes given to the head of a department in a ministry, paid

due attention to the luxurious requirements of the then mode of dress,

but she took off the rich apparel with delight when she returned home,

and resumed the simple garb of a provincial. One day in the week,

Thursday, Bridau received his friends, and he also gave a grand ball,

annually, on Shrove Tuesday.

These few words contain the whole history of their conjugal life,

which had but three events; the births of two children, born three

years apart, and the death of Bridau, who died in 1808, killed by

overwork at the very moment when the Emperor was about to appoint him

director-general, count, and councillor of state. At this period of

his reign, Napoleon was particularly absorbed in the affairs of the

interior; he overwhelmed Bridau with work, and finally wrecked the

health of that dauntless bureaucrat. The Emperor, of whom Bridau had

never asked a favor, made inquiries into his habits and fortune.

Finding that this devoted servant literally had nothing but his

situation, Napoleon recognized him as one of the incorruptible natures

which raised the character of his government and gave moral weight to

it, and he wished to surprise him by the gift of some distinguished

reward. But the effort to complete a certain work, involving immense

labor, before the departure of the Emperor for Spain caused the death

of the devoted servant, who was seized with an inflammatory fever.

When the Emperor, who remained in Paris for a few days after his

return to prepare for the campaign of 1809, was told of Bridau's

death he said: "There are men who can never be replaced." Struck by

the spectacle of a devotion which could receive none of the brilliant

recognitions that reward a soldier, the Emperor resolved to create an

order to requite civil services, just as he had already created the

Legion of honor to reward the military. The impression he received

from the death of Bridau led him to plan the order of the Reunion. He

had not time, however, to mature this aristocratic scheme, the

recollection of which is now so completely effaced that many of my

readers may ask what were its insignia: the order was worn with a blue

ribbon. The Emperor called it the Reunion, under the idea of uniting

the order of the Golden Fleece of Spain with the order of the Golden

Fleece of Austria. "Providence," said a Prussian diplomatist, "took

care to frustrate the profanation."

After Bridau's death the Emperor inquired into the circumstances of

his widow. Her two sons each received a scholarship in the Imperial

Lyceum, and the Emperor paid the whole costs of their education from

his privy purse. He gave Madame Bridau a pension of four thousand

francs, intending, no doubt, to advance the fortune of her sons in

future years.

From the time of her marriage to the death of her husband, Agathe had

held no communication with Issoudun. She lost her mother just as she

was on the point of giving birth to her youngest son, and when her

father, who, as she well knew, loved her little, died, the coronation

of the Emperor was at hand, and that event gave Bridau so much

additional work that she was unwilling to leave him. Her brother,

Jean-Jacques Rouget, had not written to her since she left Issoudun.

Though grieved by the tacit repudiation of her family, Agathe had come

to think seldom of those who never thought of her. Once a year she

received a letter from her godmother, Madame Hochon, to whom she

replied with commonplaces, paying no heed to the advice which that

pious and excellent woman gave to her, disguised in cautious words.

Some time before the death of Doctor Rouget, Madame Hochon had written

to her goddaughter warning her that she would get nothing from her

father's estate unless she gave a power of attorney to Monsieur

Hochon. Agathe was very reluctant to harass her brother. Whether it

were that Bridau thought the spoliation of his wife in accordance with

the laws and customs of Berry, or that, high-minded as he was, he

shared the magnanimity of his wife, certain it is that he would not

listen to Roguin, his notary, who advised him to take advantage of his

ministerial position to contest the deeds by which the father had

deprived the daughter of her legitimate inheritance. Husband and wife

thus tacitly sanctioned what was done at Issoudun. Nevertheless,

Roguin had forced Bridau to reflect upon the future interests of his

wife which were thus compromised. He saw that if he died before her,

Agathe would be left without property, and this led him to look into

his own affairs. He found that between 1793 and 1805 his wife and he

had been obliged to use nearly thirty thousand of the fifty thousand

francs in cash which old Rouget had given to his daughter at the time

of her marriage. He at once invested the remaining twenty thousand in

the public funds, then quoted at forty, and from this source Agathe

received about two thousand francs a year. As a widow, Madame Bridau

could live suitably on an income of six thousand francs. With

provincial good sense, she thought of changing her residence,

dismissing the footman, and keeping no servant except a cook; but her

intimate friend, Madame Descoings, who insisted on being considered

her aunt, sold her own establishment and came to live with Agathe,

turning the study of the late Bridau into her bedroom.

The two widows clubbed their revenues, and so were in possession of a

joint income of twelve thousand francs a year. This seems a very

simple and natural proceeding. But nothing in life is more deserving

of attention than the things that are called natural; we are on our

guard against the unnatural and extraordinary. For this reason, you

will find men of experience--lawyers, judges, doctors, and priests

--attaching immense importance to simple matters; and they are often

thought over-scrupulous. But the serpent amid flowers is one of the

finest myths that antiquity has bequeathed for the guidance of our

lives. How often we hear fools, trying to excuse themselves in their

own eyes or in the eyes of others, exclaiming, "It was all so natural

that any one would have been taken in."

In 1809, Madame Descoings, who never told her age, was sixty-five. In

her heyday she had been popularly called a beauty, and was now one of

those rare women whom time respects. She owed to her excellent

constitution the privilege of preserving her good looks, which,

however, would not bear close examination. She was of medium height,

plump, and fresh, with fine shoulders and a rather rosy complexion.

Her blond hair, bordering on chestnut, showed, in spite of her

husband's catastrophe, not a tinge of gray. She loved good cheer, and

liked to concoct nice little made dishes; yet, fond as she was of

eating, she also adored the theatre and cherished a vice which she

wrapped in impenetrable mystery--she bought into lotteries. Can that

be the abyss of which mythology warns us under the fable of the

Danaides and their cask? Madame Descoings, like other women who are

lucky enough to keep young for many years, spend rather too much upon

her dress; but aside from these trifling defects she was the

pleasantest of women to live with. Of every one's opinion, never

opposing anybody, her kindly and communicative gayety gave pleasure to

all. She had, moreover, a Parisian quality which charmed the retired

clerks and elderly merchants of her circle,--she could take and give a

jest. If she did not marry a third time it was no doubt the fault of

the times. During the wars of the Empire, marrying men found rich and

handsome girls too easily to trouble themselves about women of sixty.

Madame Descoings, always anxious to cheer Madame Bridau, often took

the latter to the theatre, or to drive; prepared excellent little

dinners for her delectation, and even tried to marry her to her own

son by her first husband, Bixiou. Alas! to do this, she was forced to

reveal a terrible secret, carefully kept by her, by her late husband,

and by her notary. The young and beautiful Madame Descoings, who

passed for thirty-six years old, had a son who was thirty-five, named

Bixiou, already a widower, a major in the Twenty-Fourth Infantry, who

subsequently perished at Lutzen, leaving behind him an only son.

Madame Descoings, who only saw her grandson secretly, gave out that he

was the son of the first wife of her first husband. The revelation was

partly a prudential act; for this grandson was being educated with

Madame Bridau's sons at the Imperial Lyceum, where he had a

half-scholarship. The lad, who was clever and shrewd at school, soon

after made himself a great reputation as draughtsman and designer, and

also as a wit.

Agathe, who lived only for her children, declined to re-marry, as much

from good sense as from fidelity to her husband. But it is easier for

a woman to be a good wife than to be a good mother. A widow has two

tasks before her, whose duties clash: she is a mother, and yet she

must exercise parental authority. Few women are firm enough to

understand and practise this double duty. Thus it happened that

Agathe, notwithstanding her many virtues, was the innocent cause of

great unhappiness. In the first place, through her lack of

intelligence and the blind confidence to which such noble natures are

prone, Agathe fell a victim to Madame Descoings, who brought a

terrible misfortune on the family. That worthy soul was nursing up a

combination of three numbers called a "trey" in a lottery, and

lotteries give no credit to their customers. As manager of the joint

household, she was able to pay up her stakes with the money intended

for their current expenses, and she went deeper and deeper into debt,

with the hope of ultimately enriching her grandson Bixiou, her dear

Agathe, and the little Bridaus. When the debts amounted to ten

thousand francs, she increased her stakes, trusting that her favorite

trey, which had not turned up in nine years, would come at last, and

fill to overflowing the abysmal deficit.

From that moment the debt rolled up rapidly. When it reached twenty

thousand francs, Madame Descoings lost her head, still failing to win

the trey. She tried to mortgage her own property to pay her niece, but

Roguin, who was her notary, showed her the impossibility of carrying

out that honorable intention. The late Doctor Rouget had laid hold of

the property of the brother-in-law after the grocer's execution, and

had, as it were, disinherited Madame Descoings by securing to her a

life-interest on the property of his own son, Jean-Jacques Rouget. No

money-lender would think of advancing twenty thousand francs to a

woman sixty-six years of age, on an annuity of about four thousand, at

a period when ten per cent could easily be got for an investment. So

one morning Madame Descoings fell at the feet of her niece, and with

sobs confessed the state of things. Madame Bridau did not reproach

her; she sent away the footman and cook, sold all but the bare

necessities of her furniture, sold also three-fourths of her

government funds, paid off the debts, and bade farewell to her

_appartement_.