MODESTE MIGNON
By Honore De Balzac
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
DEDICATION
To a Polish Lady.
Daughter of an enslaved land, angel through love, witch through
fancy, child by faith, aged by experience, man in brain, woman in
heart, giant by hope, mother through sorrows, poet in thy dreams,
--to _thee_ belongs this book, in which thy love, thy fancy, thy
experience, thy sorrow, thy hope, thy dreams, are the warp through
which is shot a woof less brilliant than the poesy of thy soul,
whose expression, when it shines upon thy countenance, is, to
those who love thee, what the characters of a lost language are to
scholars.
De Balzac.
MODESTE MIGNON
CHAPTER I. THE CHALET
At the beginning of October, 1829, Monsieur Simon Babylas Latournelle,
notary, was walking up from Havre to Ingouville, arm in arm with his
son and accompanied by his wife, at whose side the head clerk of the
lawyer’s office, a little hunchback named Jean Butscha, trotted along
like a page. When these four personages (two of whom came the same way
every evening) reached the elbow of the road where it turns back upon
itself like those called in Italy “cornice,” the notary looked about to
see if any one could overhear him either from the terrace above or
the path beneath, and when he spoke he lowered his voice as a further
precaution.
“Exupere,” he said to his son, “you must try to carry out intelligently
a little manoeuvre which I shall explain to you, but you are not to ask
the meaning of it; and if you guess the meaning I command you to toss
it into that Styx which every lawyer and every man who expects to have
a hand in the government of his country is bound to keep within him for
the secrets of others. After you have paid your respects and compliments
to Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon, to Monsieur and Madame Dumay, and
to Monsieur Gobenheim if he is at the Chalet, and as soon as quiet
is restored, Monsieur Dumay will take you aside; you are then to look
attentively at Mademoiselle Modeste (yes, I am willing to allow it)
during the whole time he is speaking to you. My worthy friend will ask
you to go out and take a walk; at the end of an hour, that is, about
nine o’clock, you are to come back in a great hurry; try to puff as if
you were out of breath, and whisper in Monsieur Dumay’s ear, quite low,
but so that Mademoiselle Modeste is sure to overhear you, these words:
‘The young man has come.’”
Exupere was to start the next morning for Paris to begin the study of
law. This impending departure had induced Latournelle to propose him
to his friend Dumay as an accomplice in the important conspiracy which
these directions indicate.
“Is Mademoiselle Modeste suspected of having a lover?” asked Butscha in
a timid voice of Madame Latournelle.
“Hush, Butscha,” she replied, taking her husband’s arm.
Madame Latournelle, the daughter of a clerk of the supreme court,
feels that her birth authorizes her to claim issue from a parliamentary
family. This conviction explains why the lady, who is somewhat blotched
as to complexion, endeavors to assume in her own person the majesty of
a court whose decrees are recorded in her father’s pothooks. She
takes snuff, holds herself as stiff as a ramrod, poses for a person
of consideration, and resembles nothing so much as a mummy brought
momentarily to life by galvanism. She tries to give high-bred tones to
her sharp voice, and succeeds no better in doing that than in hiding
her general lack of breeding. Her social usefulness seems, however,
incontestable when we glance at the flower-bedecked cap she wears,
at the false front frizzling around her forehead, at the gowns of her
choice; for how could shopkeepers dispose of those products if there
were no Madame Latournelle? All these absurdities of the worthy woman,
who is truly pious and charitable, might have passed unnoticed, if
nature, amusing herself as she often does by turning out these ludicrous
creations, had not endowed her with the height of a drum-major, and thus
held up to view the comicalities of her provincial nature. She has
never been out of Havre; she believes in the infallibility of Havre; she
proclaims herself Norman to the very tips of her fingers; she venerates
her father, and adores her husband.
Little Latournelle was bold enough to marry this lady after she had
attained the anti-matrimonial age of thirty-three, and what is more, he
had a son by her. As he could have got the sixty thousand francs of
her “dot” in several other ways, the public assigned his uncommon
intrepidity to a desire to escape an invasion of the Minotaur, against
whom his personal qualifications would have insufficiently protected him
had he rashly dared his fate by bringing home a young and pretty wife.
The fact was, however, that the notary recognized the really fine
qualities of Mademoiselle Agnes (she was called Agnes) and reflected to
himself that a woman’s beauty is soon past and gone to a husband. As
to the insignificant youth on whom the clerk of the court bestowed in
baptism his Norman name of “Exupere,” Madame Latournelle is still so
surprised at becoming his mother, at the age of thirty-five years and
seven months, that she would still provide him, if it were necessary,
with her breast and her milk,--an hyperbole which alone can fully
express her impassioned maternity. “How handsome he is, that son of
mine!” she says to her little friend Modeste, as they walk to church,
with the beautiful Exupere in front of them. “He is like you,” Modeste
Mignon answers, very much as she might have said, “What horrid
weather!” This silhouette of Madame Latournelle is quite important as an
accessory, inasmuch as for three years she has been the chaperone of the
young girl against whom the notary and his friend Dumay are now plotting
to set up what we have called, in the “Physiologie du Mariage,” a
“mouse-trap.”
As for Latournelle, imagine a worthy little fellow as sly as the purest
honor and uprightness would allow him to be,--a man whom any stranger
would take for a rascal at sight of his queer physiognomy, to which,
however, the inhabitants of Havre were well accustomed. His eyesight,
said to be weak, obliged the worthy man to wear green goggles for the
protection of his eyes, which were constantly inflamed. The arch of each
eyebrow, defined by a thin down of hair, surrounded the tortoise-shell
rim of the glasses and made a couple of circles as it were, slightly
apart. If you have never observed on the human face the effect produced
by these circumferences placed one within the other, and separated by a
hollow space or line, you can hardly imagine how perplexing such a face
will be to you, especially if pale, hollow-cheeked, and terminating in a
pointed chin like that of Mephistopheles,--a type which painters give
to cats. This double resemblance was observable on the face of Babylas
Latournelle. Above the atrocious green spectacles rose a bald crown,
all the more crafty in expression because a wig, seemingly endowed with
motion, let the white hairs show on all sides of it as it meandered
crookedly across the forehead. An observer taking note of this excellent
Norman, clothed in black and mounted on his two legs like a beetle on
a couple of pins, and knowing him to be one of the most trustworthy
of men, would have sought, without finding it, for the reason of such
physical misrepresentation.
Jean Butscha, a natural son abandoned by his parents and taken care of
by the clerk of the court and his daughter, and now, through sheer hard
work, head-clerk to the notary, fed and lodged by his master, who
gave him a salary of nine hundred francs, almost a dwarf, and with
no semblance of youth,--Jean Butscha made Modeste his idol, and would
willingly have given his life for hers. The poor fellow, whose eyes
were hollowed beneath their heavy lids like the touch-holes of a cannon,
whose head overweighted his body, with its shock of crisp hair, and
whose face was pock-marked, had lived under pitying eyes from the time
he was seven years of age. Is not that enough to explain his whole
being? Silent, self-contained, pious, exemplary in conduct, he went
his way over that vast tract of country named on the map of the heart
Love-without-Hope, the sublime and arid steppes of Desire. Modeste had
christened this grotesque little being her “Black Dwarf.” The nickname
sent him to the pages of Walter Scott’s novel, and he one day said
to Modeste: “Will you accept a rose against the evil day from your
mysterious dwarf?” Modeste instantly sent the soul of her adorer to its
humble mud-cabin with a terrible glance, such as young girls bestow
on the men who cannot please them. Butscha’s conception of himself was
lowly, and, like the wife of his master, he had never been out of Havre.
Perhaps it will be well, for the sake of those who have never seen
that city, to say a few words as to the present destination of the
Latournelle family,--the head clerk being included in the latter term.
Ingouville is to Havre what Montmartre is to Paris,--a high hill at the
foot of which the city lies; with this difference, that the hill and the
city are surrounded by the sea and the Seine, that Havre is helplessly
circumscribed by enclosing fortifications, and, in short, that the mouth
of the river, the harbor, and the docks present a very different aspect
from the fifty thousand houses of Paris. At the foot of Montmartre an
ocean of slate roofs lies in motionless blue billows; at Ingouville the
sea is like the same roofs stirred by the wind. This eminence, or line
of hills, which coasts the Seine from Rouen to the seashore, leaving a
margin of valley land more or less narrow between itself and the river,
and containing in its cities, its ravines, its vales, its meadows,
veritable treasures of the picturesque, became of enormous value in
and about Ingouville, after the year 1816, the period at which the
prosperity of Havre began. This township has become since that time
the Auteuil, the Ville-d’Avray, the Montmorency, in short, the suburban
residence of the merchants of Havre. Here they build their houses on
terraces around its ampitheatre of hills, and breathe the sea air
laden with the fragrance of their splendid gardens. Here these bold
speculators cast off the burden of their counting-rooms and the
atmosphere of their city houses, which are built closely together
without open spaces, often without court-yards,--a vice of construction
with the increasing population of Havre, the inflexible line of the
fortifications, and the enlargement of the docks has forced upon them.
The result is, weariness of heart in Havre, cheerfulness and joy at
Ingouville. The law of social development has forced up the suburb of
Graville like a mushroom. It is to-day more extensive than Havre itself,
which lies at the foot of its slopes like a serpent.
At the crest of the hill Ingouville has but one street, and (as in all
such situations) the houses which overlook the river have an immense
advantage over those on the other side of the road, whose view they
obstruct, and which present the effect of standing on tip-toe to look
over the opposing roofs. However, there exist here, as elsewhere,
certain servitudes. Some houses standing at the summit have a finer
position or possess legal rights of view which compel their opposite
neighbors to keep their buildings down to a required height. Moreover,
the openings cut in the capricious rock by roads which follow its
declensions and make the ampitheatre habitable, give vistas through
which some estates can see the city, or the river, or the sea. Instead
of rising to an actual peak, the hill ends abruptly in a cliff. At the
end of the street which follows the line of the summit, ravines appear
in which a few villages are clustered (Sainte-Adresse and two or three
other Saint-somethings) together with several creeks which murmur and
flow with the tides of the sea. These half-deserted slopes of Ingouville
form a striking contrast to the terraces of fine villas which overlook
the valley of the Seine. Is the wind on this side too strong for
vegetation? Do the merchants shrink from the cost of terracing it?
However this may be, the traveller approaching Havre on a steamer is
surprised to find a barren coast and tangled gorges to the west of
Ingouville, like a beggar in rags beside a perfumed and sumptuously
apparelled rich man.
In 1829 one of the last houses looking toward the sea, and which in
all probability stands about the centre of the Ingouville to-day, was
called, and perhaps is still called, “the Chalet.” Originally it was a
porter’s lodge with a trim little garden in front of it. The owner of
the villa to which it belonged,--a mansion with park, gardens, aviaries,
hot-houses, and lawns--took a fancy to put the little dwelling more in
keeping with the splendor of his own abode, and he reconstructed it on
the model of an ornamental cottage. He divided this cottage from his own
lawn, which was bordered and set with flower-beds and formed the terrace
of his villa, by a low wall along which he planted a concealing hedge.
Behind the cottage (called, in spite of all his efforts to prevent it,
the Chalet) were the orchards and kitchen gardens of the villa. The
Chalet, without cows or dairy, is separated from the roadway by a wooden
fence whose palings are hidden under a luxuriant hedge. On the other
side of the road the opposite house, subject to a legal privilege, has
a similar hedge and paling, so as to leave an unobstructed view of Havre
to the Chalet.
This little dwelling was the torment of the present proprietor of the
villa, Monsieur Vilquin; and here is the why and the wherefore. The
original creator of the villa, whose sumptuous details cry aloud,
“Behold our millions!” extended his park far into the country for the
purpose, as he averred, of getting his gardeners out of his pockets; and
so, when the Chalet was finished, none but a friend could be allowed to
inhabit it. Monsieur Mignon, the next owner of the property, was very
much attached to his cashier, Dumay, and the following history will
prove that the attachment was mutual; to him therefore he offered
the little dwelling. Dumay, a stickler for legal methods, insisted on
signing a lease for three hundred francs for twelve years, and Monsieur
Mignon willingly agreed, remarking,--
“My dear Dumay, remember, you have now bound yourself to live with me
for twelve years.”
In consequence of certain events which will presently be related, the
estates of Monsieur Mignon, formerly the richest merchant in Havre, were
sold to Vilquin, one of his business competitors. In his joy at getting
possession of the celebrated villa Mignon, the latter forgot to demand
the cancelling of the lease. Dumay, anxious not to hinder the sale,
would have signed anything Vilquin required, but the sale once made, he
held to his lease like a vengeance. And there he remained, in Vilquin’s
pocket as it were; at the heart of Vilquin’s family life, observing
Vilquin, irritating Vilquin,--in short, the gadfly of all the Vilquins.
Every morning, when he looked out of his window, Vilquin felt a violent
shock of annoyance as his eye lighted on the little gem of a building,
the Chalet, which had cost sixty thousand francs and sparkled like a
ruby in the sun. That comparison is very nearly exact. The architect has
constructed the cottage of brilliant red brick pointed with white.
The window-frames are painted of a lively green, the woodwork is brown
verging on yellow. The roof overhangs by several feet. A pretty gallery,
with open-worked balustrade, surmounts the lower floor and projects
at the centre of the facade into a veranda with glass sides. The
ground-floor has a charming salon and a dining-room, separated from
each other by the landing of a staircase built of wood, designed
and decorated with elegant simplicity. The kitchen is behind the
dining-room, and the corresponding room back of the salon, formerly a
study, is now the bedroom of Monsieur and Madame Dumay. On the upper
floor the architect has managed to get two large bedrooms, each with a
dressing-room, to which the veranda serves as a salon; and above this
floor, under the eaves, which are tipped together like a couple of
cards, are two servants’ rooms with mansard roofs, each lighted by a
circular window and tolerably spacious.
Vilquin has been petty enough to build a high wall on the side toward
the orchard and kitchen garden; and in consequence of this piece
of spite, the few square feet which the lease secured to the Chalet
resembled a Parisian garden. The out-buildings, painted in keeping
with the cottage, stood with their backs to the wall of the adjoining
property.
The interior of this charming dwelling harmonized with its exterior.
The salon, floored entirely with iron-wood, was painted in a style that
suggested the beauties of Chinese lacquer. On black panels edged with
gold, birds of every color, foliage of impossible greens, and fantastic
oriental designs glowed and shimmered. The dining-room was entirely
sheathed in Northern woods carved and cut in open-work like the
beautiful Russian chalets. The little antechamber formed by the landing
and the well of the staircase was painted in old oak to represent Gothic
ornament. The bedrooms, hung with chintz, were charming in their costly
simplicity. The study, where the cashier and his wife now slept, was
panelled from top to bottom, on the walls and ceiling, like the cabin of
a steamboat. These luxuries of his predecessor excited Vilquin’s wrath.
He would fain have lodged his daughter and her husband in the cottage.
This desire, well known to Dumay, will presently serve to illustrate the
Breton obstinacy of the latter.
The entrance to the Chalet is by a little trellised iron door, the
uprights of which, ending in lance-heads, show for a few inches above
the fence and its hedge. The little garden, about as wide as the more
pretentious lawn, was just now filled with flowers, roses, and dahlias
of the choicest kind, and many rare products of the hot-houses, for
(another Vilquinard grievance) the elegant little hot-house, a very whim
of a hot-house, a hot-house representing dignity and style, belonged
to the Chalet, and separated, or if you prefer, united it to the villa
Vilquin. Dumay consoled himself for the toils of business in taking care
of this hot-house, whose exotic treasures were one of Modeste’s joys.
The billiard-room of the villa Vilquin, a species of gallery, formerly
communicated through an immense aviary with this hot-house. But after
the building of the wall which deprived him of a view into the orchards,
Dumay bricked up the door of communication. “Wall for wall!” he said.
In 1827 Vilquin offered Dumay a salary of six thousand francs, and ten
thousand more as indemnity, if he would give up the lease. The cashier
refused; though he had but three thousand francs from Gobenheim, a
former clerk of his master. Dumay was a Breton transplanted by fate into
Normandy. Imagine therefore the hatred conceived for the tenants of the
Chalet by the Norman Vilquin, a man worth three millions! What criminal
leze-million on the part of a cashier, to hold up to the eyes of such
a man the impotence of his wealth! Vilquin, whose desperation in the
matter made him the talk of Havre, had just proposed to give Dumay a
pretty house of his own, and had again been refused. Havre itself began
to grow uneasy at the man’s obstinacy, and a good many persons explained
it by the phrase, “Dumay is a Breton.” As for the cashier, he thought
Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon would be ill-lodged elsewhere. His
two idols now inhabited a temple worthy of them; the sumptuous little
cottage gave them a home, where these dethroned royalties could keep the
semblance of majesty about them,--a species of dignity usually denied to
those who have seen better days.
Perhaps as the story goes on, the reader will not regret having learned
in advance a few particulars as to the home and the habitual companions
of Modeste Mignon, for, at her age, people and things have as much
influence upon the future life as a person’s own character,--indeed,
character often receives ineffaceable impressions from its surroundings.