The news of Mademoiselle Cormon’s choice stabbed poor Athanase Granson
to the heart; but he showed no outward sign of the terrible agitation
within him. When he first heard of the marriage he was at the house of
the chief-justice, du Ronceret, where his mother was playing boston.
Madame Granson looked at her son in a mirror, and thought him pale;
but he had been so all day, for a vague rumor of the matter had already
reached him.
Mademoiselle Cormon was the card on which Athanase had staked his life;
and the cold presentiment of a catastrophe was already upon him. When
the soul and the imagination have magnified a misfortune and made it
too heavy for the shoulders and the brain to bear; when a hope long
cherished, the realization of which would pacify the vulture feeding on
the heart, is balked, and the man has faith neither in himself, despite
his powers, nor in the future, despite of the Divine power,--then that
man is lost. Athanase was a fruit of the Imperial system of education.
Fatality, the Emperor’s religion, had filtered down from the throne to
the lowest ranks of the army and the benches of the lyceums. Athanase
sat still, with his eyes fixed on Madame du Ronceret’s cards, in a
stupor that might so well pass for indifference that Madame Granson
herself was deceived about his feelings. This apparent unconcern
explained her son’s refusal to make a sacrifice for this marriage of his
_liberal_ opinions,--the term “liberal” having lately been created for
the Emperor Alexander by, I think, Madame de Stael, through the lips of
Benjamin Constant.
After that fatal evening the young man took to rambling among the
picturesque regions of the Sarthe, the banks of which are much
frequented by sketchers who come to Alencon for points of view.
Windmills are there, and the river is gay in the meadows. The shores of
the Sarthe are bordered with beautiful trees, well grouped. Though
the landscape is flat, it is not without those modest graces which
distinguish France, where the eye is never wearied by the brilliancy of
Oriental skies, nor saddened by constant fog. The place is solitary. In
the provinces no one pays much attention to a fine view, either because
provincials are blases on the beauty around them, or because they have
no poesy in their souls. If there exists in the provinces a mall, a
promenade, a vantage-ground from which a fine view can be obtained, that
is the point to which no one goes. Athanase was fond of this solitude,
enlivened by the sparkling water, where the fields were the first to
green under the earliest smiling of the springtide sun. Those persons
who saw him sitting beneath a poplar, and who noticed the vacant eye
which he turned to them, would say to Madame Granson:--
“Something is the matter with your son.”
“I know what it is,” the mother would reply; hinting that he was
meditating over some great work.
Athanase no longer took part in politics: he ceased to have opinions;
but he appeared at times quite gay,--gay with the satire of those who
think to insult a whole world with their own individual scorn. This
young man, outside of all the ideas and all the pleasures of the
provinces, interested few persons; he was not even an object of
curiosity. If persons spoke of him to his mother, it was for her sake,
not his. There was not a single soul in Alencon that sympathized with
his; not a woman, not a friend came near to dry his tears; they dropped
into the Sarthe. If the gorgeous Suzanne had happened that way, how many
young miseries might have been born of the meeting! for the two would
surely have loved each other.
She did come, however. Suzanne’s ambition was early excited by the tale
of a strange adventure which had happened at the tavern of the More,--a
tale which had taken possession of her childish brain. A Parisian woman,
beautiful as the angels, was sent by Fouche to entangle the Marquis
de Montauran, otherwise called “The Gars,” in a love-affair (see “The
Chouans”). She met him at the tavern of the More on his return from an
expedition to Mortagne; she cajoled him, made him love her, and then
betrayed him. That fantastic power--the power of beauty over mankind;
in fact, the whole story of Marie de Verneuil and the Gars--dazzled
Suzanne; she longed to grow up in order to play upon men. Some months
after her hasty departure she passed through her native town with an
artist on his way to Brittany. She wanted to see Fougeres, where the
adventure of the Marquis de Montauran culminated, and to stand upon the
scene of that picturesque war, the tragedies of which, still so little
known, had filled her childish mind. Besides this, she had a fancy to
pass through Alencon so elegantly equipped that no one could recognize
her; to put her mother above the reach of necessity, and also to send to
poor Athanase, in a delicate manner, a sum of money,--which in our age
is to genius what in the middle ages was the charger and the coat of
mail that Rebecca conveyed to Ivanhoe.
One month passed away in the strangest uncertainties respecting the
marriage of Mademoiselle Cormon. A party of unbelievers denied the
marriage altogether; the believers, on the other hand, affirmed it. At
the end of two weeks, the faction of unbelief received a vigorous blow
in the sale of du Bousquier’s house to the Marquis de Troisville, who
only wanted a simple establishment in Alencon, intending to go to Paris
after the death of the Princess Scherbellof; he proposed to await that
inheritance in retirement, and then to reconstitute his estates. This
seemed positive. The unbelievers, however, were not crushed. They
declared that du Bousquier, married or not, had made an excellent
sale, for the house had only cost him twenty-seven thousand francs.
The believers were depressed by this practical observation of the
incredulous. Choisnel, Mademoiselle Cormon’s notary, asserted the
latter, had heard nothing about the marriage contract; but the
believers, still firm in their faith, carried off, on the twentieth day,
a signal victory: Monsieur Lepressoir, the notary of the liberals, went
to Mademoiselle Cormon’s house, and the contract was signed.
This was the first of the numerous sacrifices which Mademoiselle Cormon
was destined to make to her husband. Du Bousquier bore the deepest
hatred to Choisnel; to him he owed the refusal of the hand of
Mademoiselle Armande,--a refusal which, as he believed, had influenced
that of Mademoiselle Cormon. This circumstance alone made the marriage
drag along. Mademoiselle received several anonymous letters. She
learned, to her great astonishment, that Suzanne was as truly a virgin
as herself so far as du Bousquier was concerned, for that seducer
with the false toupet could never be the hero of any such adventure.
Mademoiselle Cormon disdained anonymous letters; but she wrote to
Suzanne herself, on the ground of enlightening the Maternity Society.
Suzanne, who had no doubt heard of du Bousquier’s proposed marriage,
acknowledged her trick, sent a thousand francs to the society, and did
all the harm she could to the old purveyor. Mademoiselle Cormon convoked
the Maternity Society, which held a special meeting at which it was
voted that the association would not in future assist any misfortunes
about to happen, but solely those that had happened.
In spite of all these various events which kept the town in the choicest
gossip, the banns were published in the churches and at the mayor’s
office. Athanase prepared the deeds. As a matter of propriety and public
decency, the bride retired to Prebaudet, where du Bousquier, bearing
sumptuous and horrible bouquets, betook himself every morning, returning
home for dinner.
At last, on a dull and rainy morning in June, the marriage of
Mademoiselle Cormon and the Sieur du Bousquier took place at noon in the
parish church of Alencon, in sight of the whole town. The bridal pair
went from their own house to the mayor’s office, and from the mayor’s
office to the church in an open caleche, a magnificent vehicle for
Alencon, which du Bousquier had sent for secretly to Paris. The loss of
the old carriole was a species of calamity in the eyes of the community.
The harness-maker of the Porte de Seez bemoaned it, for he lost the
fifty francs a year which it cost in repairs. Alencon saw with alarm
the possibility of luxury being thus introduced into the town. Every
one feared a rise in the price of rents and provisions, and a coming
invasion of Parisian furniture. Some persons were sufficiently pricked
by curiosity to give ten sous to Jacquelin to allow them a close
inspection of the vehicle which threatened to upset the whole economy
of the region. A pair of horses, bought in Normandie, were also most
alarming.
“If we bought our own horses,” said the Ronceret circle, “we couldn’t
sell them to those who come to buy.”
Stupid as it was, this reasoning seemed sound; for surely such a course
would prevent the region from grasping the money of foreigners. In the
eyes of the provinces wealth consisted less in the rapid turning over
of money than in sterile accumulation. It may be mentioned here that
Penelope succumbed to a pleurisy which she acquired about six weeks
before the marriage; nothing could save her.
Madame Granson, Mariette, Madame du Coudrai, Madame du Ronceret, and
through them the whole town, remarked that Madame du Bousquier entered
the church _with her left foot_,--an omen all the more dreadful because
the term Left was beginning to acquire a political meaning. The priest
whose duty it was to read the opening formula opened his book by chance
at the De Profundis. Thus the marriage was accompanied by circumstances
so fateful, so alarming, so annihilating that no one dared to augur well
of it. Matters, in fact, went from bad to worse. There was no wedding
party; the married pair departed immediately for Prebaudet. Parisian
customs, said the community, were about to triumph over time-honored
provincial ways.
The marriage of Jacquelin and Josette now took place: it was gay; and
they were the only two persons in Alencon who refuted the sinister
prophecies relating to the marriage of their mistress.
Du Bousquier determined to use the proceeds of the sale of his late
residence in restoring and modernizing the hotel Cormon. He decided to
remain through two seasons at Prebaudet, and took the Abbe de Sponde
with them. This news spread terror through the town, where every
individual felt that du Bousquier was about to drag the community into
the fatal path of “comfort.” This fear increased when the inhabitants
of Alencon saw the bridegroom driving in from Prebaudet one morning to
inspect his works, in a fine tilbury drawn by a new horse, having Rene
at his side in livery. The first act of his administration had been to
place his wife’s savings on the Grand-Livre, which was then quoted at 67
fr. 50 cent. In the space of one year, during which he played constantly
for a rise, he made himself a personal fortune almost as considerable as
that of his wife.
But all these foreboding prophecies, these perturbing innovations, were
superseded and surpassed by an event connected with this marriage which
gave a still more fatal aspect to it.
On the very evening of the ceremony, Athanase and his mother were
sitting, after their dinner, over a little fire of fagots, which the
servant lighted usually at dessert.
“Well, we will go this evening to the du Roncerets’, inasmuch as we have
lost Mademoiselle Cormon,” said Madame Granson. “Heavens! how shall I
ever accustom myself to call her Madame du Bousquier! that name burns my
lips.”
Athanase looked at his mother with a constrained and melancholy air; he
could not smile; but he seemed to wish to welcome that naive sentiment
which soothed his wound, though it could not cure his anguish.
“Mamma,” he said, in the voice of his childhood, so tender was it, and
using the name he had abandoned for several years,--“my dear mamma, do
not let us go out just yet; it is so pleasant here before the fire.”
The mother heard, without comprehending, that supreme prayer of a mortal
sorrow.
“Yes, let us stay, my child,” she said. “I like much better to talk
with you and listen to your projects than to play at boston and lose my
money.”
“You are so handsome to-night I love to look at you. Besides, I am in
a current of ideas which harmonize with this poor little salon where we
have suffered so much.”
“And where we shall still suffer, my poor Athanase, until your works
succeed. For myself, I am trained to poverty; but you, my treasure! to
see your youth go by without a joy! nothing but toil for my poor boy
in life! That thought is like an illness to a mother; it tortures me
at night; it wakes me in the morning. O God! what have I done? for what
crime dost thou punish me thus?”
She left her sofa, took a little chair, and sat close to Athanase, so as
to lay her head on the bosom of her child. There is always the grace of
love in true motherhood. Athanase kissed her on the eyes, on her
gray hair, on her forehead, with the sacred desire of laying his soul
wherever he applied his lips.
“I shall never succeed,” he said, trying to deceive his mother as to the
fatal resolution he was revolving in his mind.
“Pooh! don’t get discouraged. As you often say, thought can do all
things. With ten bottles of ink, ten reams of paper, and his powerful
will, Luther upset all Europe. Well, you’ll make yourself famous; you
will do good things by the same means which he used to do evil things.
Haven’t you said so yourself? For my part, I listen to you; I understand
you a great deal more than you think I do,--for I still bear you in my
bosom, and your every thought still stirs me as your slightest motion
did in other days.”
“I shall never succeed here, mamma; and I don’t want you to witness the
sight of my struggles, my misery, my anguish. Oh, mother, let me leave
Alencon! I want to suffer away from you.”
“And I wish to be at your side,” replied his mother, proudly. “Suffer
without your mother!--that poor mother who would be your servant if
necessary; who will efface herself rather than injure you; your mother,
who will never shame you. No, no, Athanase; we must not part.”
Athanase clung to his mother with the ardor of a dying man who clings to
life.
“But I wish it, nevertheless. If not, you will lose me; this double
grief, yours and mine, is killing me. You would rather I lived than
died?”
Madame Granson looked at her son with a haggard eye.
“So this is what you have been brooding?” she said. “They told me right.
Do you really mean to go?”
“Yes.”
“You will not go without telling me; without warning me? You must have
an outfit and money. I have some louis sewn into my petticoat; I shall
give them to you.”
Athanase wept.
“That’s all I wanted to tell you,” he said. “Now I’ll take you to the du
Roncerets’. Come.”
The mother and the son went out. Athanase left his mother at the door of
the house where she intended to pass the evening. He looked long at the
light which came through the shutters; he clung closely to the wall, and
a frenzied joy came over him when he presently heard his mother say, “He
has great independence of heart.”
“Poor mother! I have deceived her,” he cried, as he made his way to the
Sarthe.
He reached the noble poplar beneath which he had meditated so much for
the last forty days, and where he had placed two heavy stones on which
he now sat down. He contemplated that beautiful nature lighted by the
moon; he reviewed once more the glorious future he had longed for;
he passed through towns that were stirred by his name; he heard the
applauding crowds; he breathed the incense of his fame; he adored that
life long dreamed of; radiant, he sprang to radiant triumphs; he raised
his stature; he evoked his illusions to bid them farewell in a last
Olympic feast. The magic had been potent for a moment; but now it
vanished forever. In that awful hour he clung to the beautiful tree
to which, as to a friend, he had attached himself; then he put the two
stones into the pockets of his overcoat, which he buttoned across his
breast. He had come intentionally without a hat. He now went to the deep
pool he had long selected, and glided into it resolutely, trying to make
as little noise as possible, and, in fact, making scarcely any.
When, at half-past nine o’clock, Madame Granson returned home, her
servant said nothing of Athanase, but gave her a letter. She opened it
and read these few words,--
“My good mother, I have departed; don’t be angry with me.”
“A pretty trick he has played me!” she thought. “And his linen! and the
money! Well, he will write to me, and then I’ll follow him. These
poor children think they are so much cleverer than their fathers and
mothers.”
And she went to bed in peace.
During the preceding morning the Sarthe had risen to a height foreseen
by the fisherman. These sudden rises of muddy water brought eels from
their various runlets. It so happened that a fisherman had spread his
net at the very place where poor Athanase had flung himself, believing
that no one would ever find him. About six o’clock in the morning the
man drew in his net, and with it the young body. The few friends of
the poor mother took every precaution in preparing her to receive
the dreadful remains. The news of this suicide made, as may well be
supposed, a great excitement in Alencon. The poor young man of genius
had no protector the night before, but on the morrow of his death a
thousand voices cried aloud, “I would have helped him.” It is so easy
and convenient to be charitable gratis!
The suicide was explained by the Chevalier de Valois. He revealed, in
a spirit of revenge, the artless, sincere, and genuine love of Athanase
for Mademoiselle Cormon. Madame Granson, enlightened by the chevalier,
remembered a thousand little circumstances which confirmed the
chevalier’s statement. The story then became touching, and many women
wept over it. Madame Granson’s grief was silent, concentrated, and
little understood. There are two forms of mourning for mothers. Often
the world can enter fully into the nature of their loss: their son,
admired, appreciated, young, perhaps handsome, with a noble path before
him, leading to fortune, possibly to fame, excites universal regret;
society joins in the grief, and alleviates while it magnifies it. But
there is another sorrow of mothers who alone know what their child was
really; who alone have received his smiles and observed the treasures of
a life too soon cut short. That sorrow hides its woe, the blackness
of which surpasses all other mourning; it cannot be described; happily
there are but few women whose heart-strings are thus severed.
Before Madame du Bousquier returned to town, Madame du Ronceret, one of
her good friends, had driven out to Prebaudet to fling this corpse upon
the roses of her joy, to show her the love she had ignored, and sweetly
shed a thousand drops of wormwood into the honey of her bridal month.
As Madame du Bousquier drove back to Alencon, she chanced to meet Madame
Granson at the corner of the rue Val-Noble. The glance of the mother,
dying of her grief, struck to the heart of the poor woman. A thousand
maledictions, a thousand flaming reproaches, were in that look: Madame
du Bousquier was horror-struck; that glance predicted and called down
evil upon her head.
The evening after the catastrophe, Madame Granson, one of the persons
most opposed to the rector of the town, and who had hitherto supported
the minister of Saint-Leonard, began to tremble as she thought of the
inflexible Catholic doctrines professed by her own party. After placing
her son’s body in its shroud with her own hands, thinking of the mother
of the Saviour, she went, with a soul convulsed by anguish, to the house
of the hated rector. There she found the modest priest in an outer room,
engaged in putting away the flax and yarns with which he supplied poor
women, in order that they might never be wholly out of work,--a form
of charity which saved many who were incapable of begging from actual
penury. The rector left his yarns and hastened to take Madame Granson
into his dining-room, where the wretched mother noticed, as she looked
at his supper, the frugal method of his own living.
“Monsieur l’abbe,” she said, “I have come to implore you--” She burst
into tears, unable to continue.
“I know what brings you,” replied the saintly man. “I must trust to you,
madame, and to your relation, Madame du Bousquier, to pacify Monseigneur
the Bishop at Seez. Yes, I will pray for your unhappy child; yes, I will
say the masses. But we must avoid all scandal, and give no opportunity
for evil-judging persons to assemble in the church. I alone, without
other clergy, at night--”
“Yes, yes, as you think best; if only he may lie in consecrated ground,”
said the poor mother, taking the priest’s hand and kissing it.
Toward midnight a coffin was clandestinely borne to the parish church by
four young men, comrades whom Athanase had liked the best. A few friends
of Madame Granson, women dressed in black, and veiled, were present; and
half a dozen other young men who had been somewhat intimate with this
lost genius. Four torches flickered on the coffin, which was covered
with crape. The rector, assisted by one discreet choirboy, said the
mortuary mass. Then the body of the suicide was noiselessly carried to a
corner of the cemetery, where a black wooden cross, without inscription,
was all that indicated its place hereafter to the mother. Athanase lived
and died in shadow. No voice was raised to blame the rector; the bishop
kept silence. The piety of the mother redeemed the impiety of the son’s
last act.
Some months later, the poor woman, half beside herself with grief, and
moved by one of those inexplicable thirsts which misery feels to steep
its lips in the bitter chalice, determined to see the spot where her son
was drowned. Her instinct may have told her that thoughts of his could
be recovered beneath that poplar; perhaps, too, she desired to see
what his eyes had seen for the last time. Some mothers would die of the
sight; others give themselves up to it in saintly adoration. Patient
anatomists of human nature cannot too often enunciate the truths before
which all educations, laws, and philosophical systems must give way.
Let us repeat continually: it is absurd to force sentiments into one
formula: appearing as they do, in each individual man, they combine with
the elements that form his nature and take his own physiognomy.
Madame Granson, as she stood on that fatal spot, saw a woman approach
it, who exclaimed,--
“Was it here?”
That woman wept as the mother wept. It was Suzanne. Arriving that
morning at the hotel du More, she had been told of the catastrophe. If
poor Athanase had been living, she meant to do as many noble souls,
who are moneyless, dream of doing, and as the rich never think of
doing,--she meant to have sent him several thousand francs, writing up
the envelope the words: “Money due to your father from a comrade who
makes restitution to you.” This tender scheme had been arranged by
Suzanne during her journey.
The courtesan caught sight of Madame Granson and moved rapidly away,
whispering as she passed her, “I loved him!”
Suzanne, faithful to her nature, did not leave Alencon on this occasion
without changing the orange-blossoms of the bride to rue. She was the
first to declare that Madame du Bousquier would never be anything but
Mademoiselle Cormon. With one stab of her tongue she revenged poor
Athanase and her dear chevalier.
Alencon now witnessed a suicide that was slower and quite differently
pitiful from that of poor Athanase, who was quickly forgotten by
society, which always makes haste to forget its dead. The poor Chevalier
de Valois died in life; his suicide was a daily occurrence for fourteen
years. Three months after the du Bousquier marriage society remarked,
not without astonishment, that the linen of the chevalier was frayed and
rusty, that his hair was irregularly combed and brushed. With a frowsy
head the Chevalier de Valois could no longer be said to exist! A few
of his ivory teeth deserted, though the keenest observers of human life
were unable to discover to what body they had hitherto belonged, whether
to a foreign legion or whether they were indigenous, vegetable or
animal; whether age had pulled them from the chevalier’s mouth, or
whether they were left forgotten in the drawer of his dressing-table.
The cravat was crooked, indifferent to elegance. The negroes’ heads grew
pale with dust and grease. The wrinkles of the face were blackened and
puckered; the skin became parchment. The nails, neglected, were often
seen, alas! with a black velvet edging. The waistcoat was tracked and
stained with droppings which spread upon its surface like autumn leaves.
The cotton in the ears was seldom changed. Sadness reigned upon that
brow, and slipped its yellowing tints into the depths of each furrow.
In short, the ruins, hitherto so cleverly hidden, now showed through the
cracks and crevices of that fine edifice, and proved the power of the
soul over the body; for the fair and dainty man, the cavalier, the young
blood, died when hope deserted him. Until then the nose of the chevalier
was ever delicate and nice; never had a damp black blotch, nor an amber
drop fall from it; but now that nose, smeared with tobacco around the
nostrils, degraded by the driblets which took advantage of the natural
gutter placed between itself and the upper lip,--that nose, which no
longer cared to seem agreeable, revealed the infinite pains which
the chevalier had formerly taken with his person, and made observers
comprehend, by the extent of its degradation, the greatness and
persistence of the man’s designs upon Mademoiselle Cormon.
Alas, too, the anecdotes went the way of the teeth; the clever sayings
grew rare. The appetite, however, remained; the old nobleman saved
nothing but his stomach from the wreck of his hopes; though he languidly
prepared his pinches of snuff, he ate alarming dinners. Perhaps you will
more fully understand the disaster that this marriage was to the mind
and heart of the chevalier when you learn that his intercourse with the
Princess Goritza became less frequent.
One day he appeared in Mademoiselle Armande’s salon with the calf of
his leg on the shin-bone. This bankruptcy of the graces was, I do assure
you, terrible, and struck all Alencon with horror. The late young man
had become an old one; this human being, who, by the breaking-down
of his spirit, had passed at once from fifty to ninety years of age,
frightened society. Besides, his secret was betrayed; he had waited and
watched for Mademoiselle Cormon; he had, like a patient hunter, adjusted
his aim for ten whole years, and finally had missed the game! In short,
the impotent Republic had won the day from Valiant Chivalry, and that,
too, under the Restoration! Form triumphed; mind was vanquished by
matter, diplomacy by insurrection. And, O final blow! a mortified
grisette revealed the secret of the chevalier’s mornings, and he now
passed for a libertine. The liberals cast at his door all the foundlings
hitherto attributed to du Bousquier. But the faubourg Saint-Germain of
Alencon accepted them proudly: it even said, “That poor chevalier, what
else could he do?” The faubourg pitied him, gathered him closer to their
circle, and brought back a few rare smiles to his face; but frightful
enmity was piled upon the head of du Bousquier. Eleven persons deserted
the Cormon salon, and passed to that of the d’Esgrignons.
The old maid’s marriage had a signal effect in defining the two parties
in Alencon. The salon d’Esgrignon represented the upper aristocracy
(the returning Troisvilles attached themselves to it); the Cormon salon
represented, under the clever influence of du Bousquier, that fatal
class of opinions which, without being truly liberal or resolutely
royalist, gave birth to the 221 on that famous day when the struggle
openly began between the most august, grandest, and only true power,
_royalty_, and the most false, most changeful, most oppressive of all
powers,--the power called _parliamentary_, which elective assemblies
exercise. The salon du Ronceret, secretly allied to the Cormon salon,
was boldly liberal.
The Abbe de Sponde, after his return from Prebaudet, bore many and
continual sufferings, which he kept within his breast, saying no word
of them to his niece. But to Mademoiselle Armande he opened his heart,
admitting that, folly for folly, he would much have preferred the
Chevalier de Valois to Monsieur du Bousquier. Never would the dear
chevalier have had the bad taste to contradict and oppose a poor old
man who had but a few days more to live; du Bousquier had destroyed
everything in the good old home. The abbe said, with scanty tears
moistening his aged eyes,--
“Mademoiselle, I haven’t even the little grove where I have walked for
fifty years. My beloved lindens are all cut down! At the moment of my
death the Republic appears to me more than ever under the form of a
horrible destruction of the Home.”
“You must pardon your niece,” said the Chevalier de Valois. “Republican
ideas are the first error of youth which seeks for liberty; later it
finds it the worst of despotisms,--that of an impotent canaille. Your
poor niece is punished where she sinned.”
“What will become of me in a house where naked women are painted on the
walls?” said the poor abbe. “Where shall I find other lindens beneath
which to read my breviary?”
Like Kant, who was unable to collect his thoughts after the fir-tree at
which he was accustomed to gaze while meditating was cut down, so the
poor abbe could never attain the ardor of his former prayers while
walking up and down the shadeless paths. Du Bousquier had planted an
English garden.
“It was best,” said Madame du Bousquier, without thinking so; but the
Abbe Couterier had authorized her to commit many wrongs to please her
husband.
These restorations destroyed all the venerable dignity, cordiality, and
patriarchal air of the old house. Like the Chevalier de Valois, whose
personal neglect might be called an abdication, the bourgeois dignity of
the Cormon salon no longer existed when it was turned to white and gold,
with mahogany ottomans covered in blue satin. The dining-room, adorned
in modern taste, was colder in tone than it used to be, and the dinners
were eaten with less appetite than formerly. Monsieur du Coudrai
declared that he felt his puns stick in his throat as he glanced at
the figures painted on the walls, which looked him out of countenance.
Externally, the house was still provincial; but internally everything
revealed the purveyor of the Directory and the bad taste of the
money-changer,--for instance, columns in stucco, glass doors, Greek
mouldings, meaningless outlines, all styles conglomerated, magnificence
out of place and out of season.
The town of Alencon gabbled for two weeks over this luxury, which seemed
unparalleled; but a few months later the community was proud of it, and
several rich manufacturers restored their houses and set up fine salons.
Modern furniture came into the town, and astral lamps were seen!
The Abbe de Sponde was among the first to perceive the secret
unhappiness this marriage now brought to the private life of his beloved
niece. The character of noble simplicity which had hitherto ruled their
lives was lost during the first winter, when du Bousquier gave two balls
every month. Oh, to hear violins and profane music at these worldly
entertainments in the sacred old house! The abbe prayed on his knees
while the revels lasted. Next the political system of the sober salon
was slowly perverted. The abbe fathomed du Bousquier; he shuddered at
his imperious tone; he saw the tears in his niece’s eyes when she felt
herself losing all control over her own property; for her husband now
left nothing in her hands but the management of the linen, the table,
and things of a kind which are the lot of women. Rose had no longer any
orders to give. Monsieur’s will was alone regarded by Jacquelin, now
become coachman, by Rene, the groom, and by the chef, who came from
Paris, Mariette being reduced to kitchen maid. Madame du Bousquier had
no one to rule but Josette. Who knows what it costs to relinquish the
delights of power? If the triumph of the will is one of the intoxicating
pleasures in the lives of great men, it is the ALL of life to narrow
minds. One must needs have been a minister dismissed from power to
comprehend the bitter pain which came upon Madame du Bousquier when she
found herself reduced to this absolute servitude. She often got into the
carriage against her will; she saw herself surrounded by servants who
were distasteful to her; she no longer had the handling of her dear
money,--she who had known herself free to spend money, and did not spend
it.
All imposed limits make the human being desire to go beyond them. The
keenest sufferings come from the thwarting of self-will. The beginning
of this state of things was, however, rose-colored. Every concession
made to marital authority was an effect of the love which the poor
woman felt for her husband. Du Bousquier behaved, in the first instance,
admirably to his wife: he was wise; he was excellent; he gave her the
best of reasons for each new encroachment. So for the first two years of
her marriage Madame du Bousquier appeared to be satisfied. She had that
deliberate, demure little air which distinguishes young women who have
married for love. The rush of blood to her head no longer tormented
her. This appearance of satisfaction routed the scoffers, contradicted
certain rumors about du Bousquier, and puzzled all observers of the
human heart. Rose-Marie-Victoire was so afraid that if she displeased
her husband or opposed him, she would lose his affection and be deprived
of his company, that she would willingly have sacrificed all to him,
even her uncle. Her silly little forms of pleasure deceived even the
poor abbe for a time, who endured his own trials all the better for
thinking that his niece was happy, after all.
Alencon at first thought the same. But there was one man more difficult
to deceive than the whole town put together. The Chevalier de Valois,
who had taken refuge on the Sacred Mount of the upper aristocracy, now
passed his life at the d’Esgrignons. He listened to the gossip and the
gabble, and he thought day and night upon his vengeance. He meant to
strike du Bousquier to the heart.
The poor abbe fully understood the baseness of this first and last
love of his niece; he shuddered as, little by little, he perceived the
hypocritical nature of his nephew and his treacherous manoeuvres. Though
du Bousquier restrained himself, as he thought of the abbe’s property,
and wished not to cause him vexation, it was his hand that dealt the
blow that sent the old priest to his grave. If you will interpret the
word _intolerance_ as _firmness of principle_, if you do not wish to
condemn in the catholic soul of the Abbe de Sponde the stoicism which
Walter Scott has made you admire in the puritan soul of Jeanie Deans’
father; if you are willing to recognize in the Roman Church the Potius
mori quam foedari that you admire in republican tenets,--you will
understand the sorrow of the Abbe de Sponde when he saw in his niece’s
salon the apostate priest, the renegade, the pervert, the heretic, that
enemy of the Church, the guilty taker of the Constitutional oath. Du
Bousquier, whose secret ambition was to lay down the law to the town,
wished, as a first proof of his power, to reconcile the minister of
Saint-Leonard with the rector of the parish, and he succeeded. His wife
thought he had accomplished a work of peace where the immovable abbe saw
only treachery. The bishop came to visit du Bousquier, and seemed glad
of the cessation of hostilities. The virtues of the Abbe Francois
had conquered prejudice, except that of the aged Roman Catholic, who
exclaimed with Cornelle, “Alas! what virtues do you make me hate!”
The abbe died when orthodoxy thus expired in the diocese.
In 1819, the property of the Abbe de Sponde increased Madame du
Bousquier’s income from real estate to twenty-five thousand francs
without counting Prebaudet or the house in the Val-Noble. About this
time du Bousquier returned to his wife the capital of her savings which
she had yielded to him; and he made her use it in purchasing lands
contiguous to Prebaudet, which made that domain one of the most
considerable in the department, for the estates of the Abbe de Sponde
also adjoined it. Du Bousquier thus passed for one of the richest men of
the department. This able man, the constant candidate of the liberals,
missing by seven or eight votes only in all the electoral battles fought
under the Restoration, and who ostensibly repudiated the liberals by
trying to be elected as a ministerial royalist (without ever being
able to conquer the aversion of the administration),--this rancorous
republican, mad with ambition, resolved to rival the royalism and
aristocracy of Alencon at the moment when they once more had the
upper hand. He strengthened himself with the Church by the deceitful
appearance of a well-feigned piety: he accompanied his wife to mass; he
gave money for the convents of the town; he assisted the congregation of
the Sacre-Coeur; he took sides with the clergy on all occasions when the
clergy came into collision with the town, the department, or the State.
Secretly supported by the liberals, protected by the Church, calling
himself a constitutional royalist, he kept beside the aristocracy of the
department in the one hope of ruining it,--and he did ruin it. Ever
on the watch for the faults and blunders of the nobility and
the government, he laid plans for his vengeance against the
“chateau-people,” and especially against the d’Esgrignons, in whose
bosom he was one day to thrust a poisoned dagger.
Among other benefits to the town he gave money liberally to revive the
manufacture of point d’Alencon; he renewed the trade in linens, and the
town had a factory. Inscribing himself thus upon the interests and heart
of the masses, by doing what the royalists did not do, du Bousquier did
not really risk a farthing. Backed by his fortune, he could afford
to wait results which enterprising persons who involve themselves are
forced to abandon to luckier successors.
Du Bousquier now posed as a banker. This miniature Lafitte was a partner
in all new enterprises, taking good security. He served himself while
apparently serving the interests of the community. He was the prime
mover of insurance companies, the protector of new enterprises for
public conveyance; he suggested petitions for asking the administration
for the necessary roads and bridges. Thus warned, the government
considered this action an encroachment of its own authority. A struggle
was begun injudiciously, for the good of the community compelled the
authorities to yield in the end. Du Bousquier embittered the provincial
nobility against the court nobility and the peerage; and finally he
brought about the shocking adhesion of a strong party of constitutional
royalists to the warfare sustained by the “Journal des Debats,” and M.
de Chateaubriand against the throne,--an ungrateful opposition based on
ignoble interests, which was one cause of the triumph of the bourgeoisie
and journalism in 1830.
Thus du Bousquier, in common with the class he represented, had the
satisfaction of beholding the funeral of royalty. The old republican,
smothered with masses, who for fifteen years had played that comedy to
satisfy his vendetta, himself threw down with his own hand the white
flag of the mayoralty to the applause of the multitude. No man in
France cast upon the new throne raised in August, 1830, a glance of more
intoxicated, joyous vengeance. The accession of the Younger Branch was
the triumph of the Revolution. To him the victory of the tricolor meant
the resurrection of Montagne, which this time should surely bring
the nobility down to the dust by means more certain than that of the
guillotine, because less violent. The peerage without heredity; the
National Guard, which puts on the same camp-bed the corner grocer
and the marquis; the abolition of the entails demanded by a bourgeois
lawyer; the Catholic Church deprived of its supremacy; and all the other
legislative inventions of August, 1830,--were to du Bousquier the wisest
possible application of the principles of 1793.
Since 1830 this man has been a receiver-general. He relied for his
advancement on his relations with the Duc d’Orleans, father of
Louis Philippe, and with Monsieur de Folmon, formerly steward to the
Duchess-dowager of Orleans. He receives about eighty thousand francs a
year. In the eyes of the people about him Monsieur du Bousquier is a
man of means,--a respectable man, steady in his principles, upright,
and obliging. Alencon owes to him its connection with the industrial
movement by which Brittany may possibly some day be joined to what is
popularly called modern civilization. Alencon, which up to 1816 could
boast of only two private carriages, saw, without amazement, in the
course of ten years, coupes, landaus, tilburies, and cabriolets rolling
through her streets. The burghers and the land-owners, alarmed at first
lest the price of everything should increase, recognized later that
this increase in the style of living had a contrary effect upon their
revenues. The prophetic remark of du Ronceret, “Du Bousquier is a very
strong man,” was adopted by the whole country-side.
But, unhappily for the wife, that saying has a double meaning. The
husband does not in any way resemble the public politician. This great
citizen, so liberal to the world about him, so kindly inspired with love
for his native place, is a despot in his own house, and utterly devoid
of conjugal affection. This man, so profoundly astute, hypocritical, and
sly; this Cromwell of the Val-Noble,--behaves in his home as he behaves
to the aristocracy, whom he caresses in hopes to throttle them. Like his
friend Bernadotte, he wears a velvet glove upon his iron hand. His
wife has given him no children. Suzanne’s remark and the chevalier’s
insinuations were therefore justified. But the liberal bourgeoisie,
the constitutional-royalist-bourgeoisie, the country-squires, the
magistracy, and the “church party” laid the blame on Madame du
Bousquier. “She was too old,” they said; “Monsieur du Bousquier had
married her too late. Besides, it was very lucky for the poor woman;
it was dangerous at her age to bear children!” When Madame du Bousquier
confided, weeping, her periodic despair to Mesdames du Coudrai and du
Ronceret, those ladies would reply,--
“But you are crazy, my dear; you don’t know what you are wishing for; a
child would be your death.”
Many men, whose hopes were fastened on du Bousquier’s triumph, sang his
praises to their wives, who in turn repeated them to the poor wife in
some such speech as this:--
“You are very lucky, dear, to have married such an able man; you’ll
escape the misery of women whose husbands are men without energy,
incapable of managing their property, or bringing up their children.”
“Your husband is making you queen of the department, my love. He’ll
never leave you embarrassed, not he! Why, he leads all Alencon.”
“But I wish,” said the poor wife, “that he gave less time to the public
and--”
“You are hard to please, my dear Madame du Bousquier. I assure you that
all the women in town envy you your husband.”
Misjudged by society, which began by blaming her, the pious woman found
ample opportunity in her home to display her virtues. She lived in
tears, but she never ceased to present to others a placid face. To so
Christian a soul a certain thought which pecked forever at her heart was
a crime: “I loved the Chevalier de Valois,” it said; “but I have married
du Bousquier.” The love of poor Athanase Granson also rose like a
phantom of remorse, and pursued her even in her dreams. The death of her
uncle, whose griefs at the last burst forth, made her life still more
sorrowful; for she now felt the suffering her uncle must have endured
in witnessing the change of political and religious opinion in the
old house. Sorrow often falls like a thunderbolt, as it did on Madame
Granson; but in this old maid it slowly spread like a drop of oil, which
never leaves the stuff that slowly imbibes it.
The Chevalier de Valois was the malicious manipulator who brought about
the crowning misfortune of Madame du Bousquier’s life. His heart was set
on undeceiving her pious simplicity; for the chevalier, expert in love,
divined du Bousquier, the married man, as he had divined du Bousquier,
the bachelor. But the wary republican was difficult of attack. His salon
was, of course, closed to the Chevalier de Valois, as to all those who,
in the early days of his marriage, had slighted the Cormon mansion. He
was, moreover, impervious to ridicule; he possessed a vast fortune;
he reigned in Alencon; he cared as little for his wife as Richard III.
cared for the dead horse which had helped him win a battle. To please
her husband, Madame du Bousquier had broken off relations with the
d’Esgrignon household, where she went no longer, except that sometimes
when her husband left her during his trips to Paris, she would pay a
brief visit to Mademoiselle Armande.
About three years after her marriage, at the time of the Abbe de
Sponde’s death, Mademoiselle Armande joined Madame du Bousquier as they
were leaving Saint-Leonard’s, where they had gone to hear a requiem said
for him. The generous demoiselle thought that on this occasion she owed
her sympathy to the niece in trouble. They walked together, talking of
the dear deceased, until they reached the forbidden house, into which
Mademoiselle Armande enticed Madame du Bousquier by the charm of her
manner and conversation. The poor desolate woman was glad to talk of her
uncle with one whom he truly loved. Moreover, she wanted to receive the
condolences of the old marquis, whom she had not seen for nearly
three years. It was half-past one o’clock, and she found at the hotel
d’Esgrignon the Chevalier de Valois, who had come to dinner. As he bowed
to her, he took her by the hands.
“Well, dear, virtuous, and beloved lady,” he said, in a tone of emotion,
“we have lost our sainted friend; we share your grief. Yes, your loss is
as keenly felt here as in your own home,--more so,” he added, alluding
to du Bousquier.
After a few more words of funeral oration, in which all present spoke
from the heart, the chevalier took Madame du Bousquier’s arm, and,
gallantly placing it within his own, pressed it adoringly as he led her
to the recess of a window.
“Are you happy?” he said in a fatherly voice.
“Yes,” she said, dropping her eyes.
Hearing that “Yes,” Madame de Troisville, the daughter of the Princess
Scherbellof, and the old Marquise de Casteran came up and joined the
chevalier, together with Mademoiselle Armande. They all went to walk in
the garden until dinner was served, without any perception on the part
of Madame du Bousquier that a little conspiracy was afoot. “We have her!
now let us find out the secret of the case,” were the words written in
the eyes of all present.
“To make your happiness complete,” said Mademoiselle Armande, “you ought
to have children,--a fine lad like my nephew--”
Tears seemed to start in Madame du Bousquier’s eyes.
“I have heard it said that you were the one to blame in the matter, and
that you feared the dangers of a pregnancy,” said the chevalier.
“I!” she said artlessly. “I would buy a child with a hundred years of
purgatory if I could.”
On the question thus started a discussion arose, conducted by Madame
de Troisville and the old Marquise de Casteran with such delicacy and
adroitness that the poor victim revealed, without being aware of it,
the secrets of her house. Mademoiselle Armande had taken the chevalier’s
arm, and walked away so as to leave the three women free to discuss
wedlock. Madame du Bousquier was then enlightened on the various
deceptions of her marriage; and as she was still the same simpleton she
had always been, she amused her advisers by delightful naivetes.
Although at first the deceptive marriage of Mademoiselle Cormon made a
laugh throughout the town, which was soon initiated into the story of
the case, before long Madame du Bousquier won the esteem and sympathy
of all the women. The fact that Mademoiselle Cormon had flung herself
headlong into marriage without succeeding in being married, made
everybody laugh at her; but when they learned the exceptional position
in which the sternness of her religious principles placed her, all the
world admired her. “That poor Madame du Bousquier” took the place of
“That good Mademoiselle Cormon.”
Thus the chevalier contrived to render du Bousquier both ridiculous and
odious for a time; but ridicule ends by weakening; when all had said
their say about him, the gossip died out. Besides, at fifty-seven years
of age the dumb republican seemed to many people to have a right to
retire. This affair, however, envenomed the hatred which du Bousquier
already bore to the house of Esgrignon to such a degree that it made
him pitiless when the day of vengeance came. [See “The Gallery of
Antiquities.”] Madame du Bousquier received orders never again to set
foot into that house. By way of reprisals upon the chevalier for the
trick thus played him, du Bousquier, who had just created the journal
called the “Courrier de l’Orne,” caused the following notice to be
inserted in it:--
“Bonds to the amount of one thousand francs a year will be paid to
any person who can prove the existence of one Monsieur de
Pombreton before, during, or after the Emigration.”
Although her marriage was essentially negative, Madame du Bousquier saw
some advantages in it: was it not better to interest herself in the
most remarkable man in the town than to live alone? Du Bousquier was
preferable to a dog, or cat, or those canaries that spinsters love. He
showed for his wife a sentiment more real and less selfish than that
which is felt by servants, confessors, and hopeful heirs. Later in life
she came to consider her husband as the instrument of divine wrath; for
she then saw innumerable sins in her former desires for marriage; she
regarded herself as justly punished for the sorrow she had brought on
Madame Granson, and for the hastened death of her uncle. Obedient
to that religion which commands us to kiss the rod with which the
punishment is inflicted, she praised her husband, and publicly approved
him. But in the confessional, or at night, when praying, she wept often,
imploring God’s forgiveness for the apostasy of the man who thought the
contrary of what he professed, and who desired the destruction of the
aristocracy and the Church,--the two religions of the house of Cormon.
With all her feelings bruised and immolated within her, compelled by
duty to make her husband happy, attached to him by a certain indefinable
affection, born, perhaps, of habit, her life became one perpetual
contradiction. She had married a man whose conduct and opinions she
hated, but whom she was bound to care for with dutiful tenderness.
Often she walked with the angels when du Bousquier ate her preserves or
thought the dinner good. She watched to see that his slightest wish was
satisfied. If he tore off the cover of his newspaper and left it on a
table, instead of throwing it away, she would say:--
“Rene, leave that where it is; monsieur did not place it there without
intention.”
If du Bousquier had a journey to take, she was anxious about his
trunk, his linen; she took the most minute precautions for his material
benefit. If he went to Prebaudet, she consulted the barometer the
evening before to know if the weather would be fine. She watched for
his will in his eyes, like a dog which hears and sees its master while
sleeping. When the stout du Bousquier, touched by this scrupulous love,
would take her round the waist and kiss her forehead, saying, “What a
good woman you are!” tears of pleasure would come into the eyes of the
poor creature. It is probably that du Bousquier felt himself obliged
to make certain concessions which obtained for him the respect
of Rose-Marie-Victoire; for Catholic virtue does not require a
dissimulation as complete as that of Madame du Bousquier. Often the
good saint sat mutely by and listened to the hatred of men who concealed
themselves under the cloak of constitutional royalists. She shuddered
as she foresaw the ruin of the Church. Occasionally she risked a stupid
word, an observation which du Bousquier cut short with a glance.
The worries of such an existence ended by stupefying Madame du
Bousquier, who found it easier and also more dignified to concentrate
her intelligence on her own thoughts and resign herself to lead a life
that was purely animal. She then adopted the submission of a slave, and
regarded it as a meritorious deed to accept the degradation in which her
husband placed her. The fulfilment of his will never once caused her to
murmur. The timid sheep went henceforth in the way the shepherd led her;
she gave herself up to the severest religious practices, and thought no
more of Satan and his works and vanities. Thus she presented to the
eyes of the world a union of all Christian virtues; and du Bousquier
was certainly one of the luckiest men in the kingdom of France and of
Navarre.
“She will be a simpleton to her last breath,” said the former collector,
who, however, dined with her twice a week.
This history would be strangely incomplete if no mention were made of
the coincidence of the Chevalier de Valois’s death occurring at the same
time as that of Suzanne’s mother. The chevalier died with the monarchy,
in August, 1830. He had joined the cortege of Charles X. at Nonancourt,
and piously escorted it to Cherbourg with the Troisvilles, Casterans,
d’Esgrignons, Verneuils, etc. The old gentleman had taken with him fifty
thousand francs,--the sum to which his savings then amounted. He offered
them to one of the faithful friends of the king for transmission to his
master, speaking of his approaching death, and declaring that the money
came originally from the goodness of the king, and, moreover, that the
property of the last of the Valois belonged of right to the crown. It is
not known whether the fervor of his zeal conquered the reluctance of the
Bourbon, who abandoned his fine kingdom of France without carrying away
with him a farthing, and who ought to have been touched by the devotion
of the chevalier. It is certain, however, that Cesarine, the residuary
legate of the old man, received from his estate only six hundred francs
a year. The chevalier returned to Alencon, cruelly weakened by grief and
by fatigue; he died on the very day when Charles X. arrived on a foreign
shore.
Madame du Val-Noble and her protector, who was just then afraid of
the vengeance of the liberal party, were glad of a pretext to remain
incognito in the village where Suzanne’s mother died. At the sale of the
chevalier’s effects, which took place at that time, Suzanne, anxious to
obtain a souvenir of her first and last friend, pushed up the price
of the famous snuff-box, which was finally knocked down to her for a
thousand francs. The portrait of the Princess Goritza was alone worth
that sum. Two years later, a young dandy, who was making a collection
of the fine snuff-boxes of the last century, obtained from Madame du
Val-Noble the chevalier’s treasure. The charming confidant of many a
love and the pleasure of an old age is now on exhibition in a species
of private museum. If the dead could know what happens after them, the
chevalier’s head would surely blush upon its left cheek.
If this history has no other effect than to inspire the possessors of
precious relics with holy fear, and induce them to make codicils to
secure these touching souvenirs of joys that are no more by bequeathing
them to loving hands, it will have done an immense service to the
chivalrous and romantic portion of the community; but it does, in truth,
contain a far higher moral. Does it not show the necessity for a
new species of education? Does it not invoke, from the enlightened
solicitude of the ministers of Public Instruction, the creation of
chairs of anthropology,--a science in which Germany outstrips us? Modern
myths are even less understood than ancient ones, harried as we are with
myths. Myths are pressing us from every point; they serve all theories,
they explain all questions. They are, according to human ideas, the
torches of history; they would save empires from revolution if only the
professors of history would force the explanations they give into the
mind of the provincial masses. If Mademoiselle Cormon had been a reader
or a student, and if there had existed in the department of the Orne a
professor of anthropology, or even had she read Ariosto, the frightful
disasters of her conjugal life would never have occurred. She would
probably have known why the Italian poet makes Angelica prefer Medoro,
who was a blond Chevalier de Valois, to Orlando, whose mare was dead,
and who knew no better than to fly into a passion. Is not Medoro the
mythic form for all courtiers of feminine royalty, and Orlando the myth
of disorderly, furious, and impotent revolutions, which destroy but
cannot produce? We publish, but without assuming any responsibility for
it, this opinion of a pupil of Monsieur Ballanche.
No information has reached us as to the fate of the negroes’ heads in
diamonds. You may see Madame du Val-Noble every evening at the Opera.
Thanks to the education given her by the Chevalier de Valois, she has
almost the air of a well-bred woman.
Madame du Bousquier still lives; is not that as much as to say she still
suffers? After reaching the age of sixty--the period at which women
allow themselves to make confessions--she said confidentially to Madame
du Coudrai, that she had never been able to endure the idea of dying an
old maid.
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
(Note: The Collection of Antiquities is a companion piece to The Old
Maid. In other Addendum appearances they are combined under the title of
The Jealousies of a Country Town.)
Bordin
The Gondreville Mystery
The Seamy Side of History
The Commission in Lunacy
Bousquier, Du (or Du Croisier or Du Bourguier)
The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)
The Middle Classes
Bousquier, Madame du (du Croisier) (Mlle. Cormon)
The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)
Casteran, De
The Chouans
The Seamy Side of History
The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)
Beatrix
The Peasantry
Chesnel (or Choisnel)
The Seamy Side of History
The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)
Coudrai, Du
The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)
Esgrignon, Charles-Marie-Victor-Ange-Carol, Marquis d’ (or Des Grignons)
The Chouans
The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)
Esgrignon, Marie-Armande-Claire d’
The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)
Gaillard, Madame Theodore (Suzanne)
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor’s Establishment
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Beatrix
The Unconscious Humorists
Granson, Athanase
The Government Clerks (mentioned only)
Lenoncourt, Duc de
The Lily of the Valley
Cesar Birotteau
The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)
The Gondreville Mystery
Beatrix
Navarreins, Duc de
Colonel Chabert
The Muse of the Department
The Thirteen
The Peasantry
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
The Country Parson
The Magic Skin
The Gondreville Mystery
The Secrets of a Princess
Cousin Betty
Pombreton, Marquis de
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Ronceret, Du
The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)
Beatrix
Ronceret, Madame Du
The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)
Simeuse, Admiral de
Beatrix
The Gondreville Mystery
Troisville, Guibelin, Vicomte de
The Seamy Side of History
The Chouans
The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)
The Peasantry
Valois, Chevalier de
The Chouans
The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)
Verneuil, Duc de
The Chouans
The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)