In 1824, at the last opera ball of the season, several masks were
struck by the beauty of a youth who was wandering about the passages
and greenroom with the air of a man in search of a woman kept at home by
unexpected circumstances. The secret of this behavior, now dilatory and
again hurried, is known only to old women and to certain experienced
loungers. In this immense assembly the crowd does not trouble itself
much to watch the crowd; each one’s interest is impassioned, and even
idlers are preoccupied.
The young dandy was so much absorbed in his anxious quest that he
did not observe his own success; he did not hear, he did not see the
ironical exclamations of admiration, the genuine appreciation, the
biting gibes, the soft invitations of some of the masks. Though he was
so handsome as to rank among those exceptional persons who come to an
opera ball in search of an adventure, and who expect it as confidently
as men looked for a lucky coup at roulette in Frascati’s day, he seemed
quite philosophically sure of his evening; he must be the hero of one
of those mysteries with three actors which constitute an opera ball, and
are known only to those who play a part in them; for, to young wives
who come merely to say, “I have seen it,” to country people, to
inexperienced youths, and to foreigners, the opera house must on those
nights be the palace of fatigue and dulness. To these, that black swarm,
slow and serried--coming, going, winding, turning, returning, mounting,
descending, comparable only to ants on a pile of wood--is no more
intelligible than the Bourse to a Breton peasant who has never heard of
the Grand livre.
With a few rare exceptions, men wear no masks in Paris; a man in a
domino is thought ridiculous. In this the spirit of the nation betrays
itself. Men who want to hide their good fortune can enjoy the opera ball
without going there; and masks who are absolutely compelled to go in
come out again at once. One of the most amusing scenes is the crush at
the doors produced as soon as the dancing begins, by the rush of persons
getting away and struggling with those who are pushing in. So the men
who wear masks are either jealous husbands who come to watch their
wives, or husbands on the loose who do not wish to be watched by
them--two situations equally ridiculous.
Now, our young man was followed, though he knew it not, by a man in a
mask, dogging his steps, short and stout, with a rolling gait, like a
barrel. To every one familiar with the opera this disguise betrayed
a stock-broker, a banker, a lawyer, some citizen soul suspicious of
infidelity. For in fact, in really high society, no one courts such
humiliating proofs. Several masks had laughed as they pointed this
preposterous figure out to each other; some had spoken to him, a few
young men had made game of him, but his stolid manner showed entire
contempt for these aimless shafts; he went on whither the young man
led him, as a hunted wild boar goes on and pays no heed to the bullets
whistling about his ears, or the dogs barking at his heels.
Though at first sight pleasure and anxiety wear the same livery--the
noble black robe of Venice--and though all is confusion at an opera
ball, the various circles composing Parisian society meet there,
recognize, and watch each other. There are certain ideas so clear to the
initiated that this scrawled medley of interests is as legible to them
as any amusing novel. So, to these old hands, this man could not be here
by appointment; he would infallibly have worn some token, red, white, or
green, such as notifies a happy meeting previously agreed on. Was it a
case of revenge?
Seeing the domino following so closely in the wake of a man apparently
happy in an assignation, some of the gazers looked again at the handsome
face, on which anticipation had set its divine halo. The youth was
interesting; the longer he wandered, the more curiosity he excited.
Everything about him proclaimed the habits of refined life. In obedience
to a fatal law of the time we live in, there is not much difference,
physical or moral, between the most elegant and best bred son of a duke
and peer and this attractive youth, whom poverty had not long since held
in its iron grip in the heart of Paris. Beauty and youth might cover him
in deep gulfs, as in many a young man who longs to play a part in Paris
without having the capital to support his pretensions, and who, day
after day, risks all to win all, by sacrificing to the god who has most
votaries in this royal city, namely, Chance. At the same time, his dress
and manners were above reproach; he trod the classic floor of the opera
house as one accustomed there. Who can have failed to observe that
there, as in every zone in Paris, there is a manner of being which shows
who you are, what you are doing, whence you come, and what you want?
“What a handsome young fellow; and here we may turn round to look
at him,” said a mask, in whom accustomed eyes recognized a lady of
position.
“Do you not remember him?” replied the man on whose arm she was leaning.
“Madame du Chatelet introduced him to you----”
“What, is that the apothecary’s son she fancied herself in love with,
who became a journalist, Mademoiselle Coralie’s lover?”
“I fancied he had fallen too low ever to pull himself up again, and I
cannot understand how he can show himself again in the world of Paris,”
said the Comte Sixte du Chatelet.
“He has the air of a prince,” the mask went on, “and it is not
the actress he lived with who could give it to him. My cousin, who
understood him, could not lick him into shape. I should like to know the
mistress of this Sargine; tell me something about him that will enable
me to mystify him.”
This couple, whispering as they watched the young man, became the object
of study to the square-shouldered domino.
“Dear Monsieur Chardon,” said the Prefet of the Charente, taking the
dandy’s hand, “allow me to introduce you to some one who wishes to renew
acquaintance with you----”
“Dear Comte Chatelet,” replied the young man, “that lady taught me how
ridiculous was the name by which you address me. A patent from the king
has restored to me that of my mother’s family--the Rubempres. Although
the fact has been announced in the papers, it relates to so unimportant
a person that I need not blush to recall it to my friends, my enemies,
and those who are neither----You may class yourself where you will, but
I am sure you will not disapprove of a step to which I was advised by
your wife when she was still only Madame de Bargeton.”
This neat retort, which made the Marquise smile, gave the Prefet of la
Charente a nervous chill. “You may tell her,” Lucien went on, “that I
now bear gules, a bull raging argent on a meadow vert.”
“Raging argent,” echoed Chatelet.
“Madame la Marquise will explain to you, if you do not know, why that
old coat is a little better than the chamberlain’s key and Imperial gold
bees which you bear on yours, to the great despair of Madame Chatelet,
nee Negrepelisse d’Espard,” said Lucien quickly.
“Since you recognize me, I cannot puzzle you; and I could never tell
you how much you puzzle me,” said the Marquise d’Espard, amazed at
the coolness and impertinence to which the man had risen whom she had
formerly despised.
“Then allow me, madame, to preserve my only chance of occupying your
thoughts by remaining in that mysterious twilight,” said he, with the
smile of a man who does not wish to risk assured happiness.
“I congratulate you on your changed fortunes,” said the Comte du
Chatelet to Lucien.
“I take it as you offer it,” replied Lucien, bowing with much grace to
the Marquise.
“What a coxcomb!” said the Count in an undertone to Madame d’Espard. “He
has succeeded in winning an ancestry.”
“With these young men such coxcombry, when it is addressed to us, almost
always implies some success in high places,” said the lady; “for with
you older men it means ill-fortune. And I should very much like to
know which of my grand lady friends has taken this fine bird under her
patronage; then I might find the means of amusing myself this evening.
My ticket, anonymously sent, is no doubt a bit of mischief planned by a
rival and having something to do with this young man. His impertinence
is to order; keep an eye on him. I will take the Duc de Navarrein’s arm.
You will be able to find me again.”
Just as Madame d’Espard was about to address her cousin, the mysterious
mask came between her and the Duke to whisper in her ear:
“Lucien loves you; he wrote the note. Your Prefet is his greatest foe;
how can he speak in his presence?”
The stranger moved off, leaving Madame d’Espard a prey to a double
surprise. The Marquise knew no one in the world who was capable of
playing the part assumed by this mask; she suspected a snare, and went
to sit down out of sight. The Comte Sixte du Chatelet--whom Lucien
had abridged of his ambitious _du_ with an emphasis that betrayed long
meditated revenge--followed the handsome dandy, and presently met a
young man to whom he thought he could speak without reserve.
“Well, Rastignac, have you seen Lucien? He has come out in a new skin.”
“If I were half as good looking as he is, I should be twice as rich,”
replied the fine gentleman, in a light but meaning tone, expressive of
keen raillery.
“No!” said the fat mask in his ear, repaying a thousand ironies in one
by the accent he lent the monosyllable.
Rastignac, who was not the man to swallow an affront, stood as if struck
by lightning, and allowed himself to be led into a recess by a grasp of
iron which he could not shake off.
“You young cockerel, hatched in Mother Vauquer’s coop--you, whose heart
failed you to clutch old Taillefer’s millions when the hardest part of
the business was done--let me tell you, for your personal safety, that
if you do not treat Lucien like the brother you love, you are in our
power, while we are not in yours. Silence and submission! or I shall
join your game and upset the skittles. Lucien de Rubempre is under the
protection of the strongest power of the day--the Church. Choose between
life and death--Answer.”
Rastignac felt giddy, like a man who has slept in a forest and wakes to
see by his side a famishing lioness. He was frightened, and there was no
one to see him; the boldest men yield to fear under such circumstances.
“No one but HE can know--or would dare----” he murmured to himself.
The mask clutched his hand tighter to prevent his finishing his
sentence.
“Act as if I were _he_,” he said.
Rastignac then acted like a millionaire on the highroad with a brigand’s
pistol at his head; he surrendered.
“My dear Count,” said he to du Chatelet, to whom he presently returned,
“if you care for your position in life, treat Lucien de Rubempre as
a man whom you will one day see holding a place far above where you
stand.”
The mask made a imperceptible gesture of approbation, and went off in
search of Lucien.
“My dear fellow, you have changed your opinion of him very suddenly,”
replied the Prefet with justifiable surprise.
“As suddenly as men change who belong to the centre and vote with the
right,” replied Rastignac to the Prefet-Depute, whose vote had for a few
days failed to support the Ministry.
“Are there such things as opinions nowadays? There are only interests,”
observed des Lupeaulx, who had heard them. “What is the case in point?”
“The case of the Sieur de Rubempre, whom Rastignac is setting up as a
person of consequence,” said du Chatelet to the Secretary-General.
“My dear Count,” replied des Lupeaulx very seriously, “Monsieur de
Rubempre is a young man of the highest merit, and has such good interest
at his back that I should be delighted to renew my acquaintance with
him.”
“There he is, rushing into the wasps’ nest of the rakes of the day,”
said Rastignac.
The three speakers looked towards a corner where a group of recognized
wits had gathered, men of more or less celebrity, and several men
of fashion. These gentlemen made common stock of their jests, their
remarks, and their scandal, trying to amuse themselves till something
should amuse them. Among this strangely mingled party were some men with
whom Lucien had had transactions, combining ostensibly kind offices with
covert false dealing.
“Hallo! Lucien, my boy, why here we are patched up again--new stuffing
and a new cover. Where have we come from? Have we mounted the high
horse once more with little offerings from Florine’s boudoir? Bravo, old
chap!” and Blondet released Finot to put his arm affectionately around
Lucien and press him to his heart.
Andoche Finot was the proprietor of a review on which Lucien had
worked for almost nothing, and to which Blondet gave the benefit of his
collaboration, of the wisdom of his suggestions and the depth of
his views. Finot and Blondet embodied Bertrand and Raton, with this
difference--that la Fontaine’s cat at last showed that he knew himself
to be duped, while Blondet, though he knew that he was being fleeced,
still did all he could for Finot. This brilliant condottiere of the pen
was, in fact, long to remain a slave. Finot hid a brutal strength of
will under a heavy exterior, under polish of wit, as a laborer rubs
his bread with garlic. He knew how to garner what he gleaned, ideas
and crown-pieces alike, in the fields of the dissolute life led by men
engaged in letters or in politics.
Blondet, for his sins, had placed his powers at the service of Finot’s
vices and idleness. Always at war with necessity, he was one of the
race of poverty-stricken and superior men who can do everything for the
fortune of others and nothing for their own, Aladdins who let other men
borrow their lamp. These excellent advisers have a clear and penetrating
judgment so long as it is not distracted by personal interest. In them
it is the head and not the arm that acts. Hence the looseness of their
morality, and hence the reproach heaped upon them by inferior minds.
Blondet would share his purse with a comrade he had affronted the day
before; he would dine, drink, and sleep with one whom he would demolish
on the morrow. His amusing paradoxes excused everything. Accepting the
whole world as a jest, he did not want to be taken seriously; young,
beloved, almost famous and contented, he did not devote himself, like
Finot, to acquiring the fortune an old man needs.
The most difficult form of courage, perhaps, is that which Lucien needed
at this moment to get rid of Blondet as he had just got rid of Madame
d’Espard and Chatelet. In him, unfortunately, the joys of vanity
hindered the exercise of pride--the basis, beyond doubt, of many great
things. His vanity had triumphed in the previous encounter; he had
shown himself as a rich man, happy and scornful, to two persons who had
scorned him when he was poor and wretched. But how could a poet, like
an old diplomate, run the gauntlet with two self-styled friends, who had
welcomed him in misery, under whose roof he had slept in the worst of
his troubles? Finot, Blondet, and he had groveled together; they had
wallowed in such orgies as consume something more than money. Like
soldiers who find no market for their courage, Lucien had just done what
many men do in Paris: he had still further compromised his character by
shaking Finot’s hand, and not rejecting Blondet’s affection.
Every man who has dabbled, or still dabbles, in journalism is under
the painful necessity of bowing to men he despises, of smiling at his
dearest foe, of compounding the foulest meanness, of soiling his fingers
to pay his aggressors in their own coin. He becomes used to seeing
evil done, and passing it over; he begins by condoning it, and ends by
committing it. In the long run the soul, constantly strained by shameful
and perpetual compromise, sinks lower, the spring of noble thoughts
grows rusty, the hinges of familiarity wear easy, and turn of their own
accord. Alceste becomes Philinte, natures lose their firmness, talents
are perverted, faith in great deeds evaporates. The man who yearned
to be proud of his work wastes himself in rubbishy articles which
his conscience regards, sooner or later, as so many evil actions. He
started, like Lousteau or Vernou, to be a great writer; he finds himself
a feeble scrivener. Hence it is impossible to honor too highly men whose
character stands as high as their talent--men like d’Arthez, who know
how to walk surefooted across the reefs of literary life.
Lucien could make no reply to Blondet’s flattery; his wit had an
irresistible charm for him, and he maintained the hold of the corrupter
over his pupil; besides, he held a position in the world through his
connection with the Comtesse de Montcornet.
“Has an uncle left you a fortune?” said Finot, laughing at him.
“Like you, I have marked some fools for cutting down,” replied Lucien in
the same tone.
“Then Monsieur has a review--a newspaper of his own?” Andoche Finot
retorted, with the impertinent presumption of a chief to a subordinate.
“I have something better,” replied Lucien, whose vanity, nettled by the
assumed superiority of his editor, restored him to the sense of his new
position.
“What is that, my dear boy?”
“I have a party.”
“There is a Lucien party?” said Vernou, smiling
“Finot, the boy has left you in the lurch; I told you he would. Lucien
is a clever fellow, and you never were respectful to him. You used him
as a hack. Repent, blockhead!” said Blondet.
Blondet, as sharp as a needle, could detect more than one secret in
Lucien’s air and manner; while stroking him down, he contrived to
tighten the curb. He meant to know the reasons of Lucien’s return to
Paris, his projects, and his means of living.
“On your knees to a superiority you can never attain to, albeit you are
Finot!” he went on. “Admit this gentleman forthwith to be one of the
great men to whom the future belongs; he is one of us! So witty and
so handsome, can he fail to succeed by your quibuscumque viis? Here he
stands, in his good Milan armor, his strong sword half unsheathed, and
his pennon flying!--Bless me, Lucien, where did you steal that smart
waistcoat? Love alone can find such stuff as that. Have you an address?
At this moment I am anxious to know where my friends are domiciled;
I don’t know where to sleep. Finot has turned me out of doors for the
night, under the vulgar pretext of ‘a lady in the case.’”
“My boy,” said Lucien, “I put into practice a motto by which you may
secure a quiet life: Fuge, late, tace. I am off.”
“But I am not off till you pay me a sacred debt--that little supper, you
know, heh?” said Blondet, who was rather too much given to good cheer,
and got himself treated when he was out of funds.
“What supper?” asked Lucien with a little stamp of impatience.
“You don’t remember? In that I recognize my prosperous friend; he has
lost his memory.”
“He knows what he owes us; I will go bail for his good heart,” said
Finot, taking up Blondet’s joke.
“Rastignac,” said Blondet, taking the young dandy by the arm as he came
up the room to the column where the so-called friends were standing.
“There is a supper in the wind; you will join us--unless,” he added
gravely, turning to Lucien, “Monsieur persists in ignoring a debt of
honor. He can.”
“Monsieur de Rubempre is incapable of such a thing; I will answer for
him,” said Rastignac, who never dreamed of a practical joke.
“And there is Bixiou, he will come too,” cried Blondet; “there is no
fun without him. Without him champagne cloys my tongue, and I find
everything insipid, even the pepper of satire.”
“My friends,” said Bixiou, “I see you have gathered round the wonder of
the day. Our dear Lucien has revived the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Just as
the gods used to turn into strange vegetables and other things to seduce
the ladies, he has turned the Chardon (the Thistle) into a gentleman to
bewitch--whom? Charles X.!--My dear boy,” he went on, holding Lucien
by his coat button, “a journalist who apes the fine gentleman deserves
rough music. In their place,” said the merciless jester, as he pointed
to Finot and Vernou, “I should take you up in my society paper; you
would bring in a hundred francs for ten columns of fun.”
“Bixiou,” said Blondet, “an Amphitryon is sacred for twenty-four hours
before a feast and twelve hours after. Our illustrious friend is giving
us a supper.”
“What then!” cried Bixiou; “what is more imperative than the duty of
saving a great name from oblivion, of endowing the indigent aristocracy
with a man of talent? Lucien, you enjoy the esteem of the press of
which you were a distinguished ornament, and we will give you our
support.--Finot, a paragraph in the ‘latest items’!--Blondet, a
little butter on the fourth page of your paper!--We must advertise the
appearance of one of the finest books of the age, _l’Archer de Charles
IX._! We will appeal to Dauriat to bring out as soon as possible _les
Marguerites_, those divine sonnets by the French Petrarch! We must carry
our friend through on the shield of stamped paper by which reputations
are made and unmade.”
“If you want a supper,” said Lucien to Blondet, hoping to rid himself
of this mob, which threatened to increase, “it seems to me that you need
not work up hyperbole and parable to attack an old friend as if he were
a booby. To-morrow night at Lointier’s----” he cried, seeing a woman
come by, whom he rushed to meet.
“Oh! oh! oh!” said Bixiou on three notes, with a mocking glance, and
seeming to recognize the mask to whom Lucien addressed himself. “This
needs confirmation.”
He followed the handsome pair, got past them, examined them keenly, and
came back, to the great satisfaction of all the envious crowd, who were
eager to learn the source of Lucien’s change of fortune.
“Friends,” said Bixiou, “you have long known the goddess of the Sire de
Rubempre’s fortune: She is des Lupeaulx’s former ‘rat.’”
A form of dissipation, now forgotten, but still customary at the
beginning of this century, was the keeping of “rats.” The “rat”--a slang
word that has become old-fashioned--was a girl of ten or twelve in the
chorus of some theatre, more particularly at the opera, who was trained
by young roues to vice and infamy. A “rat” was a sort of demon page, a
tomboy who was forgiven a trick if it were but funny. The “rat” might
take what she pleased; she was to be watched like a dangerous animal,
and she brought an element of liveliness into life, like Scapin,
Sganarelle, and Frontin in old-fashioned comedy. But a “rat” was too
expensive; it made no return in honor, profit, or pleasure; the fashion
of rats so completely went out, that in these days few people knew
anything of this detail of fashionable life before the Restoration till
certain writers took up the “rat” as a new subject.
“What! after having seen Coralie killed under him, Lucien means to rob
us of La Torpille?” (the torpedo fish) said Blondet.
As he heard the name the brawny mask gave a significant start, which,
though repressed, was understood by Rastignac.
“It is out of the question,” replied Finot; “La Torpille has not a
sou to give away; Nathan tells me she borrowed a thousand francs of
Florine.”
“Come, gentlemen, gentlemen!” said Rastignac, anxious to defend Lucien
against so odious an imputation.
“Well,” cried Vernou, “is Coralie’s kept man likely to be so very
particular?”
“Oh!” replied Bixiou, “those thousand francs prove to me that our friend
Lucien lives with La Torpille----”
“What an irreparable loss to literature, science, art, and politics!”
exclaimed Blondet. “La Torpille is the only common prostitute in whom I
ever found the stuff for a superior courtesan; she has not been spoiled
by education--she can neither read nor write, she would have understood
us. We might have given to our era one of those magnificent Aspasias
without which there can be no golden age. See how admirably Madame du
Barry was suited to the eighteenth century, Ninon de l’Enclos to the
seventeenth, Marion Delorme to the sixteenth, Imperia to the fifteenth,
Flora to Republican Rome, which she made her heir, and which paid off
the public debt with her fortune! What would Horace be without Lydia,
Tibullus without Delia, Catullus without Lesbia, Propertius without
Cynthia, Demetrius without Lamia, who is his glory at this day?”
“Blondet talking of Demetrius in the opera house seems to me rather too
strong of the _Debats_,” said Bixiou in his neighbor’s ears.
“And where would the empire of the Caesars have been but for these
queens?” Blondet went on; “Lais and Rhodope are Greece and Egypt. They
all indeed are the poetry of the ages in which they lived. This poetry,
which Napoleon lacked--for the Widow of his Great Army is a barrack
jest, was not wanting to the Revolution; it had Madame Tallien! In these
days there is certainly a throne to let in France which is for her who
can fill it. We among us could make a queen. I should have given La
Torpille an aunt, for her mother is too decidedly dead on the field of
dishonor; du Tillet would have given her a mansion, Lousteau a carriage,
Rastignac her footmen, des Lupeaulx a cook, Finot her hats”--Finot
could not suppress a shrug at standing the point-blank fire of this
epigram--“Vernou would have composed her advertisements, and Bixiou her
repartees! The aristocracy would have come to enjoy themselves with our
Ninon, where we would have got artists together, under pain of death
by newspaper articles. Ninon the second would have been magnificently
impertinent, overwhelming in luxury. She would have set up opinions.
Some prohibited dramatic masterpiece should have been read in her
drawing-room; it should have been written on purpose if necessary. She
would not have been liberal; a courtesan is essentially monarchical. Oh,
what a loss! She ought to have embraced her whole century, and she makes
love with a little young man! Lucien will make a sort of hunting-dog of
her.”
“None of the female powers of whom you speak ever trudged the streets,”
said Finot, “and that pretty little ‘rat’ has rolled in the mire.”
“Like a lily-seed in the soil,” replied Vernou, “and she has improved
in it and flowered. Hence her superiority. Must we not have known
everything to be able to create the laughter and joy which are part of
everything?”
“He is right,” said Lousteau, who had hitherto listened without
speaking; “La Torpille can laugh and make others laugh. That gift of all
great writers and great actors is proper to those who have investigated
every social deep. At eighteen that girl had already known the greatest
wealth, the most squalid misery--men of every degree. She bears about
her a sort of magic wand by which she lets loose the brutal appetites so
vehemently suppressed in men who still have a heart while occupied with
politics or science, literature or art. There is not in Paris another
woman who can say to the beast as she does: ‘Come out!’ And the beast
leaves his lair and wallows in excesses. She feeds you up to the chin,
she helps you to drink and smoke. In short, this woman is the salt of
which Rabelais writes, which, thrown on matter, animates it and
elevates it to the marvelous realms of art; her robe displays unimagined
splendor, her fingers drop gems as her lips shed smiles; she gives the
spirit of the occasion to every little thing; her chatter twinkles with
bright sayings, she has the secret of the quaintest onomatopoeia, full
of color, and giving color; she----”
“You are wasting five francs’ worth of copy,” said Bixiou, interrupting
Lousteau. “La Torpille is something far better than all that; you have
all been in love with her more or less, not one of you can say that
she ever was his mistress. She can always command you; you will
never command her. You may force your way in and ask her to do you a
service----”
“Oh, she is more generous than a brigand chief who knows his business,
and more devoted than the best of school-fellows,” said Blondet. “You
may trust her with your purse or your secrets. But what made me choose
her as queen is her Bourbon-like indifference for a fallen favorite.”
“She, like her mother, is much too dear,” said des Lupeaulx. “The
handsome Dutch woman would have swallowed up the income of the
Archbishop of Toledo; she ate two notaries out of house and home----”
“And kept Maxime de Trailles when he was a court page,” said Bixiou.
“La Torpille is too dear, as Raphael was, or Careme, or Taglioni, or
Lawrence, or Boule, or any artist of genius is too dear,” said Blondet.
“Esther never looked so thoroughly a lady,” said Rastignac, pointing to
the masked figure to whom Lucien had given his arm. “I will bet on its
being Madame de Serizy.”
“Not a doubt of it,” cried du Chatelet, “and Monsieur du Rubempre’s
fortune is accounted for.”
“Ah, the Church knows how to choose its Levites; what a sweet
ambassador’s secretary he will make!” remarked des Lupeaulx.
“All the more so,” Rastignac went on, “because Lucien is a really clever
fellow. These gentlemen have had proof of it more than once,” and he
turned to Blondet, Finot, and Lousteau.
“Yes, the boy is cut out of the right stuff to get on,” said Lousteau,
who was dying of jealousy. “And particularly because he has what we call
independent ideas...”
“It is you who trained him,” said Vernou.
“Well,” replied Bixiou, looking at des Lupeaulx, “I trust to the memory
of Monsieur the Secretary-General and Master of Appeals--that mask is La
Torpille, and I will stand a supper on it.”
“I will hold the stakes,” said du Chatelet, curious to know the truth.
“Come, des Lupeaulx,” said Finot, “try to identify your rat’s ears.”
“There is no need for committing the crime of treason against a mask,”
replied Bixiou. “La Torpille and Lucien must pass us as they go up the
room again, and I pledge myself to prove that it is she.”
“So our friend Lucien has come above water once more,” said Nathan,
joining the group. “I thought he had gone back to Angoumois for the rest
of his days. Has he discovered some secret to ruin the English?”
“He has done what you will not do in a hurry,” retorted Rastignac; “he
has paid up.”
The burly mask nodded in confirmation.
“A man who has sown his wild oats at his age puts himself out of court.
He has no pluck; he puts money in the funds,” replied Nathan.
“Oh, that youngster will always be a fine gentleman, and will always
have such lofty notions as will place him far above many men who think
themselves his betters,” replied Rastignac.
At this moment journalists, dandies, and idlers were all examining the
charming subject of their bet as horse-dealers examine a horse for sale.
These connoisseurs, grown old in familiarity with every form of Parisian
depravity, all men of superior talent each his own way, equally corrupt,
equally corrupting, all given over to unbridled ambition, accustomed
to assume and to guess everything, had their eyes centered on a masked
woman, a woman whom no one else could identify. They, and certain
habitual frequenters of the opera balls, could alone recognize under the
long shroud of the black domino, the hood and falling ruff which make
the wearer unrecognizable, the rounded form, the individuality of figure
and gait, the sway of the waist, the carriage of the head--the most
intangible trifles to ordinary eyes, but to them the easiest to discern.
In spite of this shapeless wrapper they could watch the most appealing
of dramas, that of a woman inspired by a genuine passion. Were she La
Torpille, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, or Madame de Serizy, on the
lowest or highest rung of the social ladder, this woman was an exquisite
creature, a flash from happy dreams. These old young men, like these
young old men, felt so keen an emotion, that they envied Lucien the
splendid privilege of working such a metamorphosis of a woman into a
goddess. The mask was there as though she had been alone with Lucien;
for that woman the thousand other persons did not exist, nor the evil
and dust-laden atmosphere; no, she moved under the celestial vault of
love, as Raphael’s Madonnas under their slender oval glory. She did not
feel herself elbowed; the fire of her glance shot from the holes in
her mask and sank into Lucien’s eyes; the thrill of her frame seemed to
answer to every movement of her companion. Whence comes this flame that
radiates from a woman in love and distinguishes her above all others?
Whence that sylph-like lightness which seems to negative the laws
of gravitation? Is the soul become ambient? Has happiness a physical
effluence?
The ingenuousness of a girl, the graces of a child were discernible
under the domino. Though they walked apart, these two beings suggested
the figures of Flora and Zephyr as we see them grouped by the cleverest
sculptors; but they were beyond sculpture, the greatest of the arts;
Lucien and his pretty domino were more like the angels busied with
flowers or birds, which Gian Bellini has placed beneath the effigies of
the Virgin Mother. Lucien and this girl belonged to the realm of fancy,
which is as far above art as cause is above effect.
When the domino, forgetful of everything, was within a yard of the
group, Bixiou exclaimed:
“Esther!”
The unhappy girl turned her head quickly at hearing herself called,
recognized the mischievous speaker, and bowed her head like a dying
creature that has drawn its last breath.
A sharp laugh followed, and the group of men melted among the crowd
like a knot of frightened field-rats whisking into their holes by the
roadside. Rastignac alone went no further than was necessary, just to
avoid making any show of shunning Lucien’s flashing eye. He could thus
note two phases of distress equally deep though unconfessed; first,
the hapless Torpille, stricken as by a lightning stroke, and then the
inscrutable mask, the only one of the group who had remained. Esther
murmured a word in Lucien’s ear just as her knees gave way, and Lucien,
supporting her, led her away.
Rastignac watched the pretty pair, lost in meditation.
“How did she get her name of La Torpille?” asked a gloomy voice that
struck to his vitals, for it was no longer disguised.
“_He_ again--he has made his escape!” muttered Rastignac to himself.
“Be silent or I murder you,” replied the mask, changing his voice. “I am
satisfied with you, you have kept your word, and there is more than
one arm ready to serve you. Henceforth be as silent as the grave; but,
before that, answer my question.”
“Well, the girl is such a witch that she could have magnetized
the Emperor Napoleon; she could magnetize a man more difficult to
influence--you yourself,” replied Rastignac, and he turned to go.
“One moment,” said the mask; “I will prove to you that you have never
seen me anywhere.”
The speaker took his mask off; for a moment Rastignac hesitated,
recognizing nothing of the hideous being he had known formerly at Madame
Vauquer’s.
“The devil has enabled you to change in every particular, excepting your
eyes, which it is impossible to forget,” said he.
The iron hand gripped his arm to enjoin eternal secrecy.
At three in the morning des Lupeaulx and Finot found the elegant
Rastignac on the same spot, leaning against the column where the
terrible mask had left him. Rastignac had confessed to himself; he had
been at once priest and pentient, culprit and judge. He allowed himself
to be led away to breakfast, and reached home perfectly tipsy, but
taciturn.
The Rue de Langlade and the adjacent streets are a blot on the Palais
Royal and the Rue de Rivoli. This portion of one of the handsomest
quarters of Paris will long retain the stain of foulness left by the
hillocks formed of the middens of old Paris, on which mills formerly
stood. These narrow streets, dark and muddy, where such industries are
carried on as care little for appearances wear at night an aspect of
mystery full of contrasts. On coming from the well-lighted regions of
the Rue Saint-Honore, the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, and the Rue de
Richelieu, where the crowd is constantly pushing, where glitter the
masterpieces of industry, fashion, and art, every man to whom Paris by
night is unknown would feel a sense of dread and melancholy, on finding
himself in the labyrinth of little streets which lie round that blaze of
light reflected even from the sky. Dense blackness is here, instead of
floods of gaslight; a dim oil-lamp here and there sheds its doubtful
and smoky gleam, and many blind alleys are not lighted at all. Foot
passengers are few, and walk fast. The shops are shut, the few that are
open are of a squalid kind; a dirty, unlighted wineshop, or a seller
of underclothing and eau-de-Cologne. An unwholesome chill lays a clammy
cloak over your shoulders. Few carriages drive past. There are sinister
places here, especially the Rue de Langlade, the entrance to the Passage
Saint-Guillaume, and the turnings of some streets.
The municipal council has not yet been to purge this vast lazar-place,
for prostitution long since made it its headquarters. It is, perhaps,
a good thing for Paris that these alleys should be allowed to preserve
their filthy aspect. Passing through them by day, it is impossible
to imagine what they become by night; they are pervaded by strange
creatures of no known world; white, half-naked forms cling to the
walls--the darkness is alive. Between the passenger and the wall a dress
steals by--a dress that moves and speaks. Half-open doors suddenly
shout with laughter. Words fall on the ear such as Rabelais speaks of
as frozen and melting. Snatches of songs come up from the pavement. The
noise is not vague; it means something. When it is hoarse it is a voice;
but if it suggests a song, there is nothing human about it, it is
more like a croak. Often you hear a sharp whistle, and then the tap of
boot-heels has a peculiarly aggressive and mocking ring. This medley of
things makes you giddy. Atmospheric conditions are reversed there--it is
warm in winter and cool in summer.
Still, whatever the weather, this strange world always wears the same
aspect; it is the fantastic world of Hoffmann of Berlin. The most
mathematical of clerks never thinks of it as real, after returning
through the straits that lead into decent streets, where there are
passengers, shops, and taverns. Modern administration, or modern policy,
more scornful or more shamefaced than the queens and kings of past ages,
no longer dare look boldly in the face of this plague of our capitals.
Measures, of course, must change with the times, and such as bear on
individuals and on their liberty are a ticklish matter; still, we
ought, perhaps, to show some breadth and boldness as to merely material
measures--air, light, and construction. The moralist, the artist, and
the sage administrator alike must regret the old wooden galleries of the
Palais Royal, where the lambs were to be seen who will always be found
where there are loungers; and is it not best that the loungers should go
where they are to be found? What is the consequence? The gayest parts of
the Boulevards, that delightfulest of promenades, are impossible in the
evening for a family party. The police has failed to take advantage of
the outlet afforded by some small streets to purge the main street.
The girl whom we have seen crushed by a word at the opera ball had
been for the last month or two living in the Rue de Langlade, in a
very poor-looking house. This structure, stuck on to the wall of an
enormously large one, badly stuccoed, of no depth, and immensely high,
has all its windows on the street, and bears some resemblance to a
parrot’s perch. On each floor are two rooms, let as separate flats.
There is a narrow staircase clinging to the wall, queerly lighted by
windows which mark its ascent on the outer wall, each landing being
indicated by a stink, one of the most odious peculiarities of Paris. The
shop and entresol at that time were tenanted by a tinman; the landlord
occupied the first floor; the four upper stories were rented by
very decent working girls, who were treated by the portress and the
proprietor with some consideration and an obligingness called forth by
the difficulty of letting a house so oddly constructed and situated.
The occupants of the quarter are accounted for by the existence there of
many houses of the same character, for which trade has no use, and which
can only be rented by the poorer kinds of industry, of a precarious or
ignominious nature.
At three in the afternoon the portress, who had seen Mademoiselle Esther
brought home half dead by a young man at two in the morning, had just
held council with the young woman of the floor above, who, before
setting out in a cab to join some party of pleasure, had expressed her
uneasiness about Esther; she had not heard her move. Esther was, no
doubt, still asleep, but this slumber seemed suspicious. The portress,
alone in her cell, was regretting that she could not go to see what was
happening on the fourth floor, where Mademoiselle Esther lodged.
Just as she had made up her mind to leave the tinman’s son in charge of
her room, a sort of den in a recess on the entresol floor, a cab stopped
at the door. A man stepped out, wrapped from head to foot in a cloak
evidently intended to conceal his dress or his rank in life, and
asked for Mademoiselle Esther. The portress at one felt relieved; this
accounted for Esther’s silence and quietude. As the stranger mounted
the stairs above the portress’ room, she noticed silver buckles in his
shoes, and fancied she caught sight of the black fringe of a priest’s
sash; she went downstairs and catechised the driver, who answered
without speech, and again the woman understood.
The priest knocked, received no answer, heard a slight gasp, and forced
the door open with a thrust of his shoulder; charity, no doubt lent him
strength, but in any one else it would have been ascribed to practice.
He rushed to the inner room, and there found poor Esther in front of an
image of the Virgin in painted plaster, kneeling, or rather doubled up,
on the floor, her hands folded. The girl was dying. A brazier of burnt
charcoal told the tale of that dreadful morning. The domino cloak and
hood were lying on the ground. The bed was undisturbed. The unhappy
creature, stricken to the heart by a mortal thrust, had, no doubt,
made all her arrangements on her return from the opera. A candle-wick,
collapsed in the pool of grease that filled the candle-sconce, showed
how completely her last meditations had absorbed her. A handkerchief
soaked with tears proved the sincerity of the Magdalen’s despair, while
her classic attitude was that of the irreligious courtesan. This abject
repentance made the priest smile.
Esther, unskilled in dying, had left the door open, not thinking that
the air of two rooms would need a larger amount of charcoal to make it
suffocating; she was only stunned by the fumes; the fresh air from the
staircase gradually restored her to a consciousness of her woes.
The priest remained standing, lost in gloomy meditation, without being
touched by the girl’s divine beauty, watching her first movements as if
she had been some animal. His eyes went from the crouching figure to
the surrounding objects with evident indifference. He looked at the
furniture in the room; the paved floor, red, polished, and cold,
was poorly covered with a shabby carpet worn to the string. A little
bedstead, of painted wood and old-fashioned shape, was hung with yellow
cotton printed with red stars, one armchair and two small chairs, also
of painted wood, and covered with the same cotton print of which the
window-curtains were also made; a gray wall-paper sprigged with flowers
blackened and greasy with age; a fireplace full of kitchen utensils of
the vilest kind, two bundles of fire-logs; a stone shelf, on which lay
some jewelry false and real, a pair of scissors, a dirty pincushion, and
some white scented gloves; an exquisite hat perched on the water-jug,
a Ternaux shawl stopping a hole in the window, a handsome gown hanging
from a nail; a little hard sofa, with no cushions; broken clogs and
dainty slippers, boots that a queen might have coveted; cheap china
plates, cracked or chipped, with fragments of a past meal, and nickel
forks--the plate of the Paris poor; a basket full of potatoes and dirty
linen, with a smart gauze cap on the top; a rickety wardrobe, with
a glass door, open and empty, and on the shelves sundry
pawn-tickets,--this was the medley of things, dismal or pleasing, abject
and handsome, that fell on his eye.
These relics of splendor among the potsherds, these household
belongings--so appropriate to the bohemian existence of the girl who
knelt stricken in her unbuttoned garments, like a horse dying in harness
under the broken shafts entangled in the reins--did the whole strange
scene suggest any thoughts to the priest? Did he say to himself that
this erring creature must at least be disinterested to live in such
poverty when her lover was young and rich? Did he ascribe the disorder
of the room to the disorder of her life? Did he feel pity or terror? Was
his charity moved?
To see him, his arms folded, his brow dark, his lips set, his eye harsh,
any one must have supposed him absorbed in morose feelings of hatred,
considerations that jostled each other, sinister schemes. He was
certainly insensible to the soft roundness of a bosom almost crushed
under the weight of the bowed shoulders, and to the beautiful modeling
of the crouching Venus that was visible under the black petticoat, so
closely was the dying girl curled up. The drooping head which, seen from
behind, showed the white, slender, flexible neck and the fine shoulders
of a well-developed figure, did not appeal to him. He did not raise
Esther, he did not seem to hear the agonizing gasps which showed that
she was returning to life; a fearful sob and a terrifying glance from
the girl were needed before he condescended to lift her, and he carried
her to the bed with an ease that revealed enormous strength.
“Lucien!” she murmured.
“Love is there, the woman is not far behind,” said the priest with some
bitterness.
The victim of Parisian depravity then observed the dress worn by
her deliverer, and said, with a smile like a child’s when it takes
possession of something longed for:
“Then I shall not die without being reconciled to Heaven?”
“You may yet expiate your sins,” said the priest, moistening her
forehead with water, and making her smell at a cruet of vinegar he found
in a corner.
“I feel that life, instead of departing, is rushing in on me,” said she,
after accepting the Father’s care and expressing her gratitude by simple
gestures. This engaging pantomime, such as the Graces might have used to
charm, perfectly justified the nickname given to this strange girl.
“Do you feel better?” said the priest, giving her a glass of sugar and
water to drink.
This man seemed accustomed to such queer establishments; he knew all
about it. He was quite at home there. This privilege of being everywhere
at home is the prerogative of kings, courtesans, and thieves.
“When you feel quite well,” this strange priest went on after a pause,
“you must tell me the reasons which prompted you to commit this last
crime, this attempted suicide.”
“My story is very simple, Father,” replied she. “Three months ago I was
living the evil life to which I was born. I was the lowest and vilest
of creatures; now I am only the most unhappy. Excuse me from telling you
the history of my poor mother, who was murdered----”
“By a Captain, in a house of ill-fame,” said the priest, interrupting
the penitent. “I know your origin, and I know that if a being of your
sex can ever be excused for leading a life of shame, it is you, who have
always lacked good examples.”
“Alas! I was never baptized, and have no religious teaching.”
“All may yet be remedied then,” replied the priest, “provided that your
faith, your repentance, are sincere and without ulterior motive.”
“Lucien and God fill my heart,” said she with ingenuous pathos.
“You might have said God and Lucien,” answered the priest, smiling. “You
remind me of the purpose of my visit. Omit nothing that concerns that
young man.”
“You have come from him?” she asked, with a tender look that would have
touched any other priest! “Oh, he thought I should do it!”
“No,” replied the priest; “it is not your death, but your life that we
are interested in. Come, explain your position toward each other.”
“In one word,” said she.
The poor child quaked at the priest’s stern tone, but as a woman quakes
who has long ceased to be surprised at brutality.
“Lucien is Lucien,” said she, “the handsomest young man, the kindest
soul alive; if you know him, my love must seem to you quite natural. I
met him by chance, three months ago, at the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre,
where I went one day when I had leave, for we had a day a week at Madame
Meynardie’s, where I then was. Next day, you understand, I went out
without leave. Love had come into my heart, and had so completely
changed me, that on my return from the theatre I did not know myself:
I had a horror of myself. Lucien would never have known. Instead of
telling him what I was, I gave him my address at these rooms, where a
friend of mine was then living, who was so kind as to give them up to
me. I swear on my sacred word----”
“You must not swear.”
“Is it swearing to give your sacred word?--Well, from that day I have
worked in this room like a lost creature at shirt-making at twenty-eight
sous apiece, so as to live by honest labor. For a month I have had
nothing to eat but potatoes, that I might keep myself a good girl and
worthy of Lucien, who loves me and respects me as a pattern of virtue.
I have made my declaration before the police to recover my rights, and
submitted to two years’ surveillance. They are ready enough to enter
your name on the lists of disgrace, but make every difficulty about
scratching it out again. All I asked of Heaven was to enable me to keep
my resolution.
“I shall be nineteen in the month of April; at my age there is still a
chance. It seems to me that I was never born till three months ago.--I
prayed to God every morning that Lucien might never know what my former
life had been. I bought that Virgin you see there, and I prayed to her
in my own way, for I do not know any prayers; I cannot read nor write,
and I have never been into a church; I have never seen anything of God
excepting in processions, out of curiosity.”
“And what do you say to the Virgin?”
“I talk to her as I talk to Lucien, with all my soul, till I make him
cry.”
“Oh, so he cries?”
“With joy,” said she eagerly, “poor dear boy! We understand each other
so well that we have but one soul! He is so nice, so fond, so sweet
in heart and mind and manners! He says he is a poet; I say he is
god.--Forgive me! You priests, you see, don’t know what love is. But,
in fact, only girls like me know enough of men to appreciate such as
Lucien. A Lucien, you see, is as rare as a woman without sin. When you
come across him you can love no one else; so there! But such a being
must have his fellow; so I want to be worthy to be loved by my Lucien.
That is where my trouble began. Last evening, at the opera, I was
recognized by some young men who have no more feeling than a tiger
has pity--for that matter, I could come round the tiger! The veil of
innocence I had tried to wear was worn off; their laughter pierced
my brain and my heart. Do not think you have saved me; I shall die of
grief.”
“Your veil of innocence?” said the priest. “Then you have treated Lucien
with the sternest severity?”
“Oh, Father, how can you, who know him, ask me such a question!” she
replied with a smile. “Who can resist a god?”
“Do not be blasphemous,” said the priest mildly. “No one can be like
God. Exaggeration is out of place with true love; you had not a pure
and genuine love for your idol. If you had undergone the conversion you
boast of having felt, you would have acquired the virtues which are
a part of womanhood; you would have known the charm of chastity,
the refinements of modesty, the two virtues that are the glory of a
maiden.--You do not love.”
Esther’s gesture of horror was seen by the priest, but it had no effect
on the impassibility of her confessor.
“Yes; for you love him for yourself and not for himself, for the
temporal enjoyments that delight you, and not for love itself. If he has
thus taken possession of you, you cannot have felt that sacred thrill
that is inspired by a being on whom God has set the seal of the most
adorable perfections. Has it never occurred to you that you would
degrade him by your past impurity, that you would corrupt a child by
the overpowering seductions which earned you your nickname glorious in
infamy? You have been illogical with yourself, and your passion of a
day----”
“Of a day?” she repeated, raising her eyes.
“By what other name can you call a love that is not eternal, that does
not unite us in the future life of the Christian, to the being we love?”
“Ah, I will be a Catholic!” she cried in a hollow, vehement tone, that
would have earned her the mercy of the Lord.
“Can a girl who has received neither the baptism of the Church nor that
of knowledge; who can neither read, nor write, nor pray; who cannot
take a step without the stones in the street rising up to accuse her;
noteworthy only for the fugitive gift of beauty which sickness may
destroy to-morrow; can such a vile, degraded creature, fully aware too
of her degradation--for if you had been ignorant of it and less devoted,
you would have been more excusable--can the intended victim to suicide
and hell hope to be the wife of Lucien de Rubempre?”
Every word was a poniard thrust piercing the depths of her heart. At
every word the louder sobs and abundant tears of the desperate girl
showed the power with which light had flashed upon an intelligence as
pure as that of a savage, upon a soul at length aroused, upon a nature
over which depravity had laid a sheet of foul ice now thawed in the
sunshine of faith.
“Why did I not die!” was the only thought that found utterance in the
midst of a torrent of ideas that racked and ravaged her brain.
“My daughter,” said the terrible judge, “there is a love which is
unconfessed before men, but of which the secret is received by the
angels with smiles of gladness.”
“What is that?”
“Love without hope, when it inspires our life, when it fills us with
the spirit of sacrifice, when it ennobles every act by the thought of
reaching some ideal perfection. Yes, the angels approve of such love;
it leads to the knowledge of God. To aim at perfection in order to
be worthy of the one you love, to make for him a thousand secret
sacrifices, adoring him from afar, giving your blood drop by drop,
abnegating your self-love, never feeling any pride or anger as regards
him, even concealing from him all knowledge of the dreadful jealousy he
fires in your heart, giving him all he wishes were it to your own loss,
loving what he loves, always turning your face to him to follow him
without his knowing it--such love as that religion would have forgiven;
it is no offence to laws human or divine, and would have led you into
another road than that of your foul voluptuousness.”
As she heard this horrible verdict, uttered in a word--and such a word!
and spoken in such a tone!--Esther’s spirit rose up in fairly legitimate
distrust. This word was like a thunder-clap giving warning of a storm
about to break. She looked at the priest, and felt the grip on her
vitals which wrings the bravest when face to face with sudden and
imminent danger. No eye could have read what was passing in this man’s
mind; but the boldest would have found more to quail at than to hope for
in the expression of his eyes, once bright and yellow like those of a
tiger, but now shrouded, from austerities and privations, with a haze
like that which overhangs the horizon in the dog-days, when, though the
earth is hot and luminous, the mist makes it indistinct and dim--almost
invisible.
The gravity of a Spaniard, the deep furrows which the myriad scars of
virulent smallpox made hideously like broken ruts, were ploughed into
his face, which was sallow and tanned by the sun. The hardness of this
countenance was all the more conspicuous, being framed in the meagre
dry wig of a priest who takes no care of his person, a black wig looking
rusty in the light. His athletic frame, his hands like an old soldier’s,
his broad, strong shoulders were those of the Caryatides which the
architects of the Middle Ages introduced into some Italian palaces,
remotely imitated in those of the front of the Porte-Saint-Martin
theatre. The least clear-sighted observer might have seen that fiery
passions or some unwonted accident must have thrown this man into the
bosom of the Church; certainly none but the most tremendous shocks
of lightning could have changed him, if indeed such a nature were
susceptible of change.
Women who have lived the life that Esther had so violently repudiated
come to feel absolute indifference as to the critics of our day, who
may be compared with them in some respects, and who feel at last perfect
disregard of the formulas of art; they have read so many books, they see
so many pass away, they are so much accustomed to written pages, they
have gone through so many plots, they have seen so many dramas, they
have written so many articles without saying what they meant, and have
so often been treasonable to the cause of Art in favor of their personal
likings and aversions, that they acquire a feeling of disgust of
everything, and yet continue to pass judgment. It needs a miracle to
make such a writer produce sound work, just as it needs another miracle
to give birth to pure and noble love in the heart of a courtesan.
The tone and manner of this priest, who seemed to have escaped from
a picture by Zurbaran, struck this poor girl as so hostile, little as
externals affected her, that she perceived herself to be less the object
of his solitude than the instrument he needed for some scheme. Being
unable to distinguish between the insinuating tongue of personal
interest and the unction of true charity, for we must be acutely
awake to recognize false coin when it is offered by a friend, she felt
herself, as it were, in the talons of some fierce and monstrous bird of
prey who, after hovering over her for long, had pounced down on her; and
in her terror she cried in a voice of alarm:
“I thought it was a priest’s duty to console us, and you are killing
me!”
At this innocent outcry the priest started and paused; he meditated a
moment before replying. During that instant the two persons so strangely
brought together studied each other cautiously. The priest understood
the girl, though the girl could not understand the priest.
He, no doubt, put aside some plan which had threatened the unhappy
Esther, and came back to his first ideas.
“We are physicians of the soul,” said he, in a mild voice, “and we know
what remedies suit their maladies.”
“Much must be forgiven to the wretched,” said Esther.
She fancied she had been wrong; she slipped off the bed, threw herself
at the man’s feet, kissed his gown with deep humility, and looked up at
him with eyes full of tears.
“I thought I had done so much!” she said.
“Listen, my child. Your terrible reputation has cast Lucien’s family
into grief. They are afraid, and not without reason, that you may lead
him into dissipation, into endless folly----”
“That is true; it was I who got him to the ball to mystify him.”
“You are handsome enough to make him wish to triumph in you in the
eyes of the world, to show you with pride, and make you an object for
display. And if he wasted money only!--but he will waste his time, his
powers; he will lose his inclination for the fine future his friends can
secure to him. Instead of being some day an ambassador, rich, admired
and triumphant, he, like so many debauchees who choke their talents in
the mud of Paris, will have been the lover of a degraded woman.
“As for you, after rising for a time to the level of a sphere of
elegance, you will presently sink back to your former life, for you have
not in you the strength bestowed by a good education to enable you to
resist vice and think of the future. You would no more be able to break
with the women of your own class than you have broken with the men who
shamed you at the opera this morning. Lucien’s true friends, alarmed
by his passion for you, have dogged his steps and know all. Filled with
horror, they have sent me to you to sound your views and decide your
fate; but though they are powerful enough to clear a stumbling-stone
out of the young man’s way, they are merciful. Understand this, child:
a girl whom Lucien loves has claims on their regard, as a true Christian
worships the slough on which, by chance, the divine light falls. I came
to be the instrument of a beneficent purpose;--still, if I had found you
utterly reprobate, armed with effrontery and astuteness, corrupt to the
marrow, deaf to the voice of repentance, I should have abandoned you to
their wrath.
“The release, civil and political, which it is so hard to win, which the
police is so right to withhold for a time in the interests of society,
and which I heard you long for with all the ardor of true repentance--is
here,” said the priest, taking an official-looking paper out of his
belt. “You were seen yesterday, this letter of release is dated to-day.
You see how powerful the people are who take an interest in Lucien.”
At the sight of this document Esther was so ingenuously overcome by the
convulsive agitation produced by unlooked-for joy, that a fixed smile
parted her lips, like that of a crazy creature. The priest paused,
looking at the girl to see whether, when once she had lost the horrible
strength which corrupt natures find in corruption itself, and was thrown
back on her frail and delicate primitive nature, she could endure so
much excitement. If she had been a deceitful courtesan, Esther would
have acted a part; but now that she was innocent and herself once more,
she might perhaps die, as a blind man cured may lose his sight again if
he is exposed to too bright a light. At this moment this man looked into
the very depths of human nature, but his calmness was terrible in its
rigidity; a cold alp, snow-bound and near to heaven, impenetrable and
frowning, with flanks of granite, and yet beneficent.
Such women are essentially impressionable beings, passing without reason
from the most idiotic distrust to absolute confidence. In this respect
they are lower than animals. Extreme in everything--in their joy and
despair, in their religion and irreligion--they would almost all go mad
if they were not decimated by the mortality peculiar to their class, and
if happy chances did not lift one now and then from the slough in which
they dwell. To understand the very depths of the wretchedness of this
horrible existence, one must know how far in madness a creature can go
without remaining there, by studying La Torpille’s violent ecstasy at
the priest’s feet. The poor girl gazed at the paper of release with
an expression which Dante has overlooked, and which surpassed the
inventiveness of his Inferno. But a reaction came with tears. Esther
rose, threw her arms round the priest’s neck, laid her head on his
breast, which she wetted with her weeping, kissing the coarse stuff that
covered that heart of steel as if she fain would touch it. She seized
hold of him; she covered his hands with kisses; she poured out in a
sacred effusion of gratitude her most coaxing caresses, lavished fond
names on him, saying again and again in the midst of her honeyed words,
“Let me have it!” in a thousand different tones of voice; she wrapped
him in tenderness, covered him with her looks with a swiftness that
found him defenceless; at last she charmed away his wrath.
The priest perceived how well the girl had deserved her nickname; he
understood how difficult it was to resist this bewitching creature; he
suddenly comprehended Lucien’s love, and just what must have fascinated
the poet. Such a passion hides among a thousand temptations a dart-like
hook which is most apt to catch the lofty soul of an artist. These
passions, inexplicable to the vulgar, are perfectly accounted for by the
thirst for ideal beauty, which is characteristic of a creative mind.
For are we not, in some degree, akin to the angels, whose task it is to
bring the guilty to a better mind? are we not creative when we purify
such a creature? How delightful it is to harmonize moral with physical
beauty! What joy and pride if we succeed! How noble a task is that which
has no instrument but love!
Such alliances, made famous by the example of Aristotle, Socrates,
Plato, Alcibiades, Cethegus, and Pompey, and yet so monstrous in the
eyes of the vulgar, are based on the same feeling that prompted Louis
XIV. to build Versailles, or that makes men rush into any ruinous
enterprise--into converting the miasma of a marsh into a mass of
fragrance surrounded by living waters; placing a lake at the top of a
hill, as the Prince de Conti did at Nointel; or producing Swiss scenery
at Cassan, like Bergeret, the farmer-general. In short, it is the
application of art in the realm of morals.
The priest, ashamed of having yielded to this weakness, hastily pushed
Esther away, and she sat down quite abashed, for he said:
“You are still the courtesan.” And he calmly replaced the paper in his
sash.
Esther, like a child who has a single wish in its head, kept her eyes
fixed on the spot where the document lay hidden.
“My child,” the priest went on after a pause, “your mother was a Jewess,
and you have not been baptized; but, on the other hand, you have never
been taken to the synagogue. You are in the limbo where little children
are----”
“Little children!” she echoed, in a tenderly pathetic tone.
“As you are on the books of the police, a cipher outside the pale of
social beings,” the priest went on, unmoved. “If love, seen as it swept
past, led you to believe three months since that you were then born, you
must feel that since that day you have been really an infant. You
must, therefore, be led as if you were a child; you must be completely
changed, and I will undertake to make you unrecognizable. To begin with,
you must forget Lucien.”
The words crushed the poor girl’s heart; she raised her eyes to the
priest and shook her head; she could not speak, finding the executioner
in the deliverer again.
“At any rate, you must give up seeing him,” he went on. “I will take
you to a religious house where young girls of the best families are
educated; there you will become a Catholic, you will be trained in the
practice of Christian exercises, you will be taught religion. You may
come out an accomplished young lady, chaste, pure, well brought up,
if----” The man lifted up a finger and paused.
“If,” he went on, “you feel brave enough to leave the ‘Torpille’ behind
you here.”
“Ah!” cried the poor thing, to whom each word had been like a note of
some melody to which the gates of Paradise were slowly opening. “Ah! if
it were possible to shed all my blood here and have it renewed!”
“Listen to me.”
She was silent.
“Your future fate depends on your power of forgetting. Think of the
extent to which you pledge yourself. A word, a gesture, which betrays
La Torpille will kill Lucien’s wife. A word murmured in a dream, an
involuntary thought, an immodest glance, a gesture of impatience, a
reminiscence of dissipation, an omission, a shake of the head that might
reveal what you know, or what is known about you for your woes----”
“Yes, yes, Father,” said the girl, with the exaltation of a saint. “To
walk in shoes of red-hot iron and smile, to live in a pair of stays set
with nails and maintain the grace of a dancer, to eat bread salted with
ashes, to drink wormwood,--all will be sweet and easy!”
She fell again on her knees, she kissed the priest’s shoes, she melted
into tears that wetted them, she clasped his knees, and clung to them,
murmuring foolish words as she wept for joy. Her long and beautiful
light hair waved to the ground, a sort of carpet under the feet of the
celestial messenger, whom she saw as gloomy and hard as ever when she
lifted herself up and looked at him.
“What have I done to offend you?” cried she, quite frightened. “I
have heard of a woman, such as I am, who washed the feet of Jesus with
perfumes. Alas! virtue has made me so poor that I have nothing but tears
to offer you.”
“Have you not understood?” he answered, in a cruel voice. “I tell you,
you must be able to come out of the house to which I shall take you so
completely changed, physically and morally, that no man or woman you
have ever known will be able to call you ‘Esther’ and make you look
round. Yesterday your love could not give you strength enough so
completely to bury the prostitute that she could never reappear; and
again to-day she revives in adoration which is due to none but God.”
“Was it not He who sent you to me?” said she.
“If during the course of your education you should even see Lucien, all
would be lost,” he went on; “remember that.”
“Who will comfort him?” said she.
“What was it that you comforted him for?” asked the priest, in a tone in
which, for the first time during this scene, there was a nervous quaver.
“I do not know; he was often sad when he came.”
“Sad!” said the priest. “Did he tell you why?”
“Never,” answered she.
“He was sad at loving such a girl as you!” exclaimed he.
“Alas! and well he might be,” said she, with deep humility. “I am the
most despicable creature of my sex, and I could find favor in his eyes
only by the greatness of my love.”
“That love must give you the courage to obey me blindly. If I were to
take you straight from hence to the house where you are to be educated,
everybody here would tell Lucien that you had gone away to-day, Sunday,
with a priest; he might follow in your tracks. In the course of a week,
the portress, not seeing me again, might suppose me to be what I am not.
So, one evening--this day week--at seven o’clock, go out quietly and
get into a cab that will be waiting for you at the bottom of the Rue des
Frondeurs. During this week avoid Lucien, find excuses, have him sent
from the door, and if he should come in, go up to some friend’s room.
I shall know if you have seen him, and in that event all will be at an
end. I shall not even come back. These eight days you will need to make
up some suitable clothing and to hide your look of a prostitute,” said
he, laying a purse on the chimney-shelf. “There is something in your
manner, in your clothes--something indefinable which is well known to
Parisians, and proclaims you what you are. Have you never met in the
streets or on the Boulevards a modest and virtuous girl walking with her
mother?”
“Oh yes, to my sorrow! The sight of a mother and daughter is one of
our most cruel punishments; it arouses the remorse that lurks in the
innermost folds of our hearts, and that is consuming us.--I know too
well all I lack.”
“Well, then, you know how you should look next Sunday,” said the priest,
rising.
“Oh!” said she, “teach me one real prayer before you go, that I may pray
to God.”
It was a touching thing to see the priest making this girl repeat Ave
_Maria_ and _Paternoster_ in French.
“That is very fine!” said Esther, when she had repeated these two grand
and universal utterances of the Catholic faith without making a mistake.
“What is your name?” she asked the priest when he took leave of her.
“Carlos Herrera; I am a Spaniard banished from my country.”
Esther took his hand and kissed it. She was no longer the courtesan; she
was an angel rising after a fall.
In a religious institution, famous for the aristocratic and pious
teaching imparted there, one Monday morning in the beginning of March
1824 the pupils found their pretty flock increased by a newcomer, whose
beauty triumphed without dispute not only over that of her companions,
but over the special details of beauty which were found severally in
perfection in each one of them. In France it is extremely rare, not to
say impossible, to meet with the thirty points of perfection, described
in Persian verse, and engraved, it is said, in the Seraglio, which are
needed to make a woman absolutely beautiful. Though in France the whole
is seldom seen, we find exquisite parts. As to that imposing union which
sculpture tries to produce, and has produced in a few rare examples like
the Diana and the Callipyge, it is the privileged possession of Greece
and Asia Minor.
Esther came from that cradle of the human race; her mother was a Jewess.
The Jews, though so often deteriorated by their contact with other
nations, have, among their many races, families in which this sublime
type of Asiatic beauty has been preserved. When they are not repulsively
hideous, they present the splendid characteristics of Armenian beauty.
Esther would have carried off the prize at the Seraglio; she had the
thirty points harmoniously combined. Far from having damaged the finish
of her modeling and the freshness of her flesh, her strange life had
given her the mysterious charm of womanhood; it is no longer the close,
waxy texture of green fruit and not yet the warm glow of maturity; there
is still the scent of the flower. A few days longer spent in dissolute
living, and she would have been too fat. This abundant health, this
perfection of the animal in a being in whom voluptuousness took
the place of thought, must be a remarkable fact in the eyes of
physiologists. A circumstance so rare, that it may be called impossible
in very young girls, was that her hands, incomparably fine in shape,
were as soft, transparent, and white as those of a woman after the birth
of her second child. She had exactly the hair and the foot for which the
Duchesse de Berri was so famous, hair so thick that no hairdresser
could gather it into his hand, and so long that it fell to the ground in
rings; for Esther was of that medium height which makes a woman a sort
of toy, to be taken up and set down, taken up again and carried without
fatigue. Her skin, as fine as rice-paper, of a warm amber hue showing
the purple veins, was satiny without dryness, soft without being clammy.
Esther, excessively strong though apparently fragile, arrested attention
by one feature that is conspicuous in the faces in which Raphael has
shown his most artistic feeling, for Raphael is the painter who has
most studied and best rendered Jewish beauty. This remarkable effect was
produced by the depth of the eye-socket, under which the eye moved free
from its setting; the arch of the brow was so accurate as to resemble
the groining of a vault. When youth lends this beautiful hollow its pure
and diaphanous coloring, and edges it with closely-set eyebrows, when
the light stealing into the circular cavity beneath lingers there with a
rosy hue, there are tender treasures in it to delight a lover, beauties
to drive a painter to despair. Those luminous curves, where the shadows
have a golden tone, that tissue as firm as a sinew and as mobile as the
most delicate membrane, is a crowning achievement of nature. The eye at
rest within is like a miraculous egg in a nest of silken wings. But as
time goes on this marvel acquires a dreadful melancholy, when passions
have laid dark smears on those fine forms, when grief had furrowed that
network of delicate veins. Esther’s nationality proclaimed itself in
this Oriental modeling of her eyes with their Turkish lids; their color
was a slate-gray which by night took on the blue sheen of a raven’s
wing. It was only the extreme tenderness of her expression that could
moderate their fire.
Only those races that are native to deserts have in the eye the power
of fascinating everybody, for any woman can fascinate some one person.
Their eyes preserve, no doubt, something of the infinitude they have
gazed on. Has nature, in her foresight, armed their retina with some
reflecting background to enable them to endure the mirage of the sand,
the torrents of sunshine, and the burning cobalt of the sky? or,
do human beings, like other creatures, derive something from the
surroundings among which they grow up, and preserve for ages the
qualities they have imbibed from them? The great solution of this
problem of race lies perhaps in the question itself. Instincts are
living facts, and their cause dwells in past necessity. Variety in
animals is the result of the exercise of these instincts.
To convince ourselves of this long-sought-for truth, it is enough to
extend to the herd of mankind the observation recently made on flocks
of Spanish and English sheep which, in low meadows where pasture is
abundant, feed side by side in close array, but on mountains, where
grass is scarce, scatter apart. Take these two kinds of sheep, transfer
them to Switzerland or France; the mountain breeds will feed apart even
in a lowland meadow of thick grass, the lowland sheep will keep together
even on an alp. Hardly will a succession of generations eliminate
acquired and transmitted instincts. After a century the highland spirit
reappears in a refractory lamb, just as, after eighteen centuries of
exile, the spirit of the East shone in Esther’s eyes and features.
Her look had no terrible fascination; it shed a mild warmth, it was
pathetic without being startling, and the sternest wills were melted in
its flame. Esther had conquered hatred, she had astonished the depraved
souls of Paris; in short, that look and the softness of her skin had
earned her the terrible nickname which had just led her to the verge
of the grave. Everything about her was in harmony with these
characteristics of the Peri of the burning sands. Her forehead was
firmly and proudly molded. Her nose, like that of the Arab race, was
delicate and narrow, with oval nostrils well set and open at the base.
Her mouth, fresh and red, was a rose unblemished by a flaw, dissipation
had left no trace there. Her chin, rounded as though some amorous
sculptor had polished its fulness, was as white as milk. One thing only
that she had not been able to remedy betrayed the courtesan fallen very
low: her broken nails, which needed time to recover their shape, so much
had they been spoiled by the vulgarest household tasks.
The young boarders began by being jealous of these marvels of beauty,
but they ended by admiring them. Before the first week was at an end
they were all attached to the artless Jewess, for they were interested
in the unknown misfortunes of a girl of eighteen who could neither read
nor write, to whom all knowledge and instruction were new, and who was
to earn for the Archbishop the triumph of having converted a Jewess
to Catholicism and giving the convent a festival in her baptism. They
forgave her beauty, finding themselves her superiors in education.
Esther very soon caught the manners, the accent, the carriage and
attitudes of these highly-bred girls; in short, her first nature
reasserted itself. The change was so complete that on his first visit
Herrera was astonished as it would seem--and the Mother Superior
congratulated him on his ward. Never in their existence as teachers had
these sisters met with a more charming nature, more Christian meekness,
true modesty, nor a greater eagerness to learn. When a girl has suffered
such misery as had overwhelmed this poor child, and looks forward to
such a reward as the Spaniard held out to Esther, it is hard if she does
not realize the miracles of the early Church which the Jesuits revived
in Paraguay.
“She is edifying,” said the Superior, kissing her on the brow.
And this essentially Catholic word tells all.
In recreation hours Esther would question her companions, but
discreetly, as to the simplest matters in fashionable life, which to
her were like the first strange ideas of life to a child. When she heard
that she was to be dressed in white on the day of her baptism and first
Communion, that she should wear a white satin fillet, white bows, white
shoes, white gloves, and white rosettes in her hair, she melted into
tears, to the amazement of her companions. It was the reverse of the
scene of Jephtha on the mountain. The courtesan was afraid of being
understood; she ascribed this dreadful dejection to the joy with which
she looked forward to the function. As there is certainly as wide a gulf
between the habits she had given up and the habits she was acquiring as
there is between the savage state and civilization, she had the grace
and simplicity and depth which distinguished the wonderful heroine of
the American Puritans. She had too, without knowing it, a love that was
eating out her heart--a strange love, a desire more violent in her who
knew everything than it can be in a maiden who knows nothing, though the
two forms of desire have the same cause, and the same end in view.
During the first few months the novelty of a secluded life, the
surprises of learning, the handiworks she was taught, the practices
of religion, the fervency of a holy resolve, the gentle affections
she called forth, and the exercise of the faculties of her awakened
intelligence, all helped to repress her memory, even the effort she made
to acquire a new one, for she had as much to unlearn as to learn. There
is more than one form of memory: the body and mind have each their own;
home-sickness, for instance, is a malady of the physical memory. Thus,
during the third month, the vehemence of this virgin soul, soaring to
Paradise on outspread wings, was not indeed quelled, but fettered by a
dull rebellion, of which Esther herself did not know the cause. Like the
Scottish sheep, she wanted to pasture in solitude, she could not conquer
the instincts begotten of debauchery.
Was it that the foul ways of the Paris she had abjured were calling her
back to them? Did the chains of the hideous habits she had renounced
cling to her by forgotten rivets, and was she feeling them, as old
soldiers suffer still, the surgeons tell us, in the limbs they have
lost? Had vice and excess so soaked into her marrow that holy waters had
not yet exorcised the devil lurking there? Was the sight of him for
whom her angelic efforts were made, necessary to the poor soul, whom God
would surely forgive for mingling human and sacred love? One had led
to the other. Was there some transposition of the vital force in her
involving her in inevitable suffering? Everything is doubtful and
obscure in a case which science scorns to study, regarding the subject
as too immoral and too compromising, as if the physician and the writer,
the priest and the political student, were not above all suspicion.
However, a doctor who was stopped by death had the courage to begin an
investigation which he left unfinished.
Perhaps the dark depression to which Esther fell a victim, and which
cast a gloom over her happy life, was due to all these causes; and
perhaps, unable as she was to suspect them herself, she suffered as sick
creatures suffer who know nothing of medicine or surgery.
The fact is strange. Wholesome and abundant food in the place of bad
and inflammatory nourishment did not sustain Esther. A pure and regular
life, divided between recreation and studies intentionally abridged,
taking the place of a disorderly existence of which the pleasures and
the pains were equally horrible, exhausted the convent-boarder. The
coolest rest, the calmest nights, taking the place of crushing fatigue
and the most torturing agitation, gave her low fever, in which the
common symptoms were imperceptible to the nursing Sister’s eye or
finger. In fact, virtue and happiness following on evil and misfortune,
security in the stead of anxiety, were as fatal to Esther as her
past wretchedness would have been to her young companions. Planted in
corruption, she had grown up in it. That infernal home still had a hold
on her, in spite of the commands of a despotic will. What she loathed
was life to her, what she loved was killing her.
Her faith was so ardent that her piety was a delight to those about
her. She loved to pray. She had opened her spirit to the lights of true
religion, and received it without an effort or a doubt. The priest who
was her director was delighted with her. Still, at every turn her body
resisted the spirit.
To please a whim of Madame de Maintenon’s, who fed them with scraps from
the royal table, some carp were taken out of a muddy pool and placed in
a marble basin of bright, clean water. The carp perished. The animals
might be sacrificed, but man could never infect them with the leprosy
of flattery. A courtier remarked at Versailles on this mute resistance.
“They are like me,” said the uncrowned queen; “they pine for their
obscure mud.”
This speech epitomizes Esther’s story.
At times the poor girl was driven to run about the splendid convent
gardens; she hurried from tree to tree, she rushed into the darkest
nooks--seeking? What? She did not know, but she fell a prey to the
demon; she carried on a flirtation with the trees, she appealed to them
in unspoken words. Sometimes, in the evening, she stole along under the
walls, like a snake, without any shawl over her bare shoulders. Often
in chapel, during the service, she remained with her eyes fixed on the
Crucifix, melted to tears; the others admired her; but she was crying
with rage. Instead of the sacred images she hoped to see, those glaring
nights when she had led some orgy as Habeneck leads a Beethoven symphony
at the Conservatoire--nights of laughter and lasciviousness, with
vehement gestures, inextinguishable laughter, rose before her, frenzied,
furious, and brutal. She was as mild to look upon as a virgin that
clings to earth only by her woman’s shape; within raged an imperial
Messalina.
She alone knew the secret of this struggle between the devil and the
angel. When the Superior reproved her for having done her hair more
fashionably than the rule of the House allowed, she altered it with
prompt and beautiful submission; she would have cut her hair off if
the Mother had required it of her. This moral home-sickness was truly
pathetic in a girl who would rather have perished than have returned to
the depths of impurity. She grew pale and altered and thin. The Superior
gave her shorter lessons, and called the interesting creature to her
room to question her. But Esther was happy; she enjoyed the society
of her companions; she felt no pain in any vital part; still, it was
vitality itself that was attacked. She regretted nothing; she wanted
nothing. The Superior, puzzled by her boarder’s answers, did not know
what to think when she saw her pining under consuming debility.
The doctor was called in when the girl’s condition seemed serious; but
this doctor knew nothing of Esther’s previous life, and could not guess
it; he found every organ sound, the pain could not be localized. The
invalid’s replies were such as to upset every hypothesis. There remained
one way of clearing up the learned man’s doubts, which now lighted on
a frightful suggestion; but Esther obstinately refused to submit to a
medical examination.
In this difficulty the Superior appealed to the Abbe Herrera. The
Spaniard came, saw that Esther’s condition was desperate, and took the
physician aside for a moment. After this confidential interview, the man
of science told the man of faith that the only cure lay in a journey to
Italy. The Abbe would not hear of such a journey before Esther’s baptism
and first Communion.
“How long will it be till then?” asked the doctor.
“A month,” replied the Superior.
“She will be dead,” said the doctor.
“Yes, but in a state of grace and salvation,” said the Abbe.
In Spain the religious question is supreme, above all political, civil,
or vital considerations; so the physician did not answer the Spaniard.
He turned to the Mother Superior, but the terrible Abbe took him by the
arm and stopped him.
“Not a word, monsieur!” said he.
The doctor, though a religious man and a Monarchist, looked at Esther
with an expression of tender pity. The girl was as lovely as a lily
drooping on its stem.
“God help her, then!” he exclaimed as he went away.
On the very day of this consultation, Esther was taken by her protector
to the _Rocher de Cancale_, a famous restaurant, for his wish to save
her had suggested strange expedients to the priest. He tried the effect
of two excesses--an excellent dinner, which might remind the poor child
of past orgies; and the opera, which would give her mind some images of
worldliness. His despotic authority was needed to tempt the young saint
to such profanation. Herrera disguised himself so effectually as a
military man, that Esther hardly recognized him; he took care to make
his companion wear a veil, and put her in a box where she was hidden
from all eyes.
This palliative, which had no risks for innocence so sincerely regained,
soon lost its effect. The convent-boarder viewed her protector’s dinners
with disgust, had a religious aversion for the theatre, and relapsed
into melancholy.
“She is dying of love for Lucien,” said Herrera to himself; he had
wanted to sound the depths of this soul, and know how much could be
exacted from it.
So the moment came when the poor child was no longer upheld by moral
force, and the body was about to break down. The priest calculated the
time with the hideous practical sagacity formerly shown by executioners
in the art of torture. He found his protegee in the garden, sitting on a
bench under a trellis on which the April sun fell gently; she seemed to
be cold and trying to warm herself; her companions looked with interest
at her pallor as of a folded plant, her eyes like those of a dying
gazelle, her drooping attitude. Esther rose and went to meet the
Spaniard with a lassitude that showed how little life there was in her,
and, it may be added, how little care to live. This hapless outcast,
this wild and wounded swallow, moved Carlos Herrera to compassion for
the second time. The gloomy minister, whom God should have employed only
to carry out His revenges, received the sick girl with a smile, which
expressed, indeed, as much bitterness as sweetness, as much vengeance
as charity. Esther, practised in meditation, and used to revulsions of
feeling since she had led this almost monastic life, felt on her part,
for the second time, distrust of her protector; but, as on the former
occasion, his speech reassured her.
“Well, my dear child,” said he, “and why have you never spoken to me of
Lucien?”
“I promised you,” she said, shuddering convulsively from head to foot;
“I swore to you that I would never breathe his name.”
“And yet you have not ceased to think of him.”
“That, monsieur, is the only fault I have committed. I think of him
always; and just as you came, I was saying his name to myself.”
“Absence is killing you?”
Esther’s only answer was to hang her head as the sick do who already
scent the breath of the grave.
“If you could see him----?” said he.
“It would be life!” she cried.
“And do you think of him only spiritually?”
“Ah, monsieur, love cannot be dissected!”
“Child of an accursed race! I have done everything to save you; I send
you back to your fate.--You shall see him again.”
“Why insult my happiness? Can I not love Lucien and be virtuous? Am I
not ready to die here for virtue, as I should be ready to die for him?
Am I not dying for these two fanaticisms--for virtue, which was to make
me worthy of him, and for him who flung me into the embrace of virtue?
Yes, and ready to die without seeing him or to live by seeing him. God
is my Judge.”
The color had mounted to her face, her whiteness had recovered its amber
warmth. Esther looked beautiful again.
“The day after that on which you are washed in the waters of baptism you
shall see Lucien once more; and if you think you can live in virtue by
living for him, you shall part no more.”
The priest was obliged to lift up Esther, whose knees failed her; the
poor child dropped as if the ground had slipped from under her feet.
The Abbe seated her on a bench; and when she could speak again she asked
him:
“Why not to-day?”
“Do you want to rob Monseigneur of the triumph of your baptism and
conversion? You are too close to Lucien not to be far from God.”
“Yes, I was not thinking----”
“You will never be of any religion,” said the priest, with a touch of
the deepest irony.
“God is good,” said she; “He can read my heart.”
Conquered by the exquisite artlessness and gestures, Herrera kissed her
on the forehead for the first time.
“Your libertine friends named you well; you would bewitch God the
Father.--A few days more must pass, and then you will both be free.”
“Both!” she echoed in an ecstasy of joy.
This scene, observed from a distance, struck pupils and superiors alike;
they fancied they had looked on at a miracle as they compared Esther
with herself. She was completely changed; she was alive. She reappeared
her natural self, all love, sweet, coquettish, playful, and gay; in
short, it was a resurrection.
Herrera lived in the Rue Cassette, near Saint-Sulpice, the church to
which he was attached. This building, hard and stern in style, suited
this Spaniard, whose discipline was that of the Dominicans. A lost son
of Ferdinand VII.’s astute policy, he devoted himself to the cause of
the constitution, knowing that this devotion could never be rewarded
till the restoration of the _Rey netto_. Carlos Herrera had thrown
himself body and soul into the _Camarilla_ at the moment when the Cortes
seemed likely to stand and hold their own. To the world this conduct
seemed to proclaim a superior soul. The Duc d’Angouleme’s expedition had
been carried out, King Ferdinand was on the throne, and Carlos Herrera
did not go to claim the reward of his services at Madrid. Fortified
against curiosity by his diplomatic taciturnity, he assigned as his
reason for remaining in Paris his strong affection for Lucien de
Rubempre, to which the young man already owed the King’s patent relating
to his change of name.
Herrera lived very obscurely, as priests employed on secret missions
traditionally live. He fulfilled his religious duties at Saint-Sulpice,
never went out but on business, and then after dark, and in a hackney
cab. His day was filled up with a siesta in the Spanish fashion, which
arranges for sleep between the two chief meals, and so occupies the
hours when Paris is in a busy turmoil. The Spanish cigar also played
its part, and consumed time as well as tobacco. Laziness is a mask as
gravity is, and that again is laziness.
Herrera lived on the second floor in one wing of the house, and Lucien
occupied the other wing. The two apartments were separated and joined by
a large reception room of antique magnificence, suitable equally to the
grave priest and to the young poet. The courtyard was gloomy; large,
thick trees shaded the garden. Silence and reserve are always found in
the dwellings chosen by priests. Herrera’s lodging may be described in
one word--a cell. Lucien’s, splendid with luxury, and furnished with
every refinement of comfort, combined everything that the elegant life
of a dandy demands--a poet, a writer, ambitious and dissipated, at once
vain and vainglorious, utterly heedless, and yet wishing for order,
one of those incomplete geniuses who have some power to wish, to
conceive--which is perhaps the same thing--but no power at all to
execute.
These two, Lucien and Herrera, formed a body politic. This, no doubt,
was the secret of their union. Old men in whom the activities of life
have been uprooted and transplanted to the sphere of interest, often
feel the need of a pleasing instrument, a young and impassioned actor,
to carry out their schemes. Richelieu, too late, found a handsome pale
face with a young moustache to cast in the way of women whom he wanted
to amuse. Misunderstood by giddy-pated younger men, he was compelled to
banish his master’s mother and terrify the Queen, after having tried to
make each fall in love with him, though he was not cut out to be loved
by queens.
Do what we will, always, in the course of an ambitious life, we find
a woman in the way just when we least expect such an obstacle. However
great a political man may be, he always needs a woman to set against
a woman, just as the Dutch use a diamond to cut a diamond. Rome at
the height of its power yielded to this necessity. And observe how
immeasurably more imposing was the life of Mazarin, the Italian
cardinal, than that of Richelieu, the French cardinal. Richelieu met
with opposition from the great nobles, and he applied the axe; he died
in the flower of his success, worn out by this duel, for which he had
only a Capuchin monk as his second. Mazarin was repulsed by the citizen
class and the nobility, armed allies who sometimes victoriously put
royalty to flight; but Anne of Austria’s devoted servant took off no
heads, he succeeded in vanquishing the whole of France, and trained
Louis XIV., who completed Richelieu’s work by strangling the nobility
with gilded cords in the grand Seraglio of Versailles. Madame de
Pompadour dead, Choiseul fell!
Had Herrera soaked his mind in these high doctrines? Had he judged
himself at an earlier age than Richelieu? Had he chosen Lucien to be his
Cinq-Mars, but a faithful Cinq-Mars? No one could answer these questions
or measure this Spaniard’s ambition, as no one could foresee what his
end might be. These questions, asked by those who were able to see
anything of this coalition, which was long kept a secret, might have
unveiled a horrible mystery which Lucien himself had known but a few
days. Carlos was ambitious for two; that was what his conduct made plain
to those persons who knew him, and who all imagined that Lucien was the
priest’s illegitimate son.
Fifteen months after Lucien’s reappearance at the opera ball, which led
him too soon into a world where the priest had not wished to see him
till he should have fully armed him against it, he had three fine horses
in his stable, a coupe for evening use, a cab and a tilbury to drive
by day. He dined out every day. Herrera’s foresight was justified; his
pupil was carried away by dissipation; he thought it necessary to effect
some diversion in the frenzied passion for Esther that the young man
still cherished in his heart. After spending something like forty
thousand francs, every folly had brought Lucien back with increased
eagerness to La Torpille; he searched for her persistently; and as he
could not find her, she became to him what game is to the sportsman.
Could Herrera understand the nature of a poet’s love?
When once this feeling has mounted to the brain of one of these great
little men, after firing his heart and absorbing his senses, the poet
becomes as far superior to humanity through love as he already is
through the power of his imagination. A freak of intellectual heredity
has given him the faculty of expressing nature by imagery, to which he
gives the stamp both of sentiment and of thought, and he lends his love
the wings of his spirit; he feels, and he paints, he acts and meditates,
he multiplies his sensations by thought, present felicity becomes
threefold through aspiration for the future and memory of the past; and
with it he mingles the exquisite delights of the soul, which makes him
the prince of artists. Then the poet’s passion becomes a fine poem in
which human proportion is often set at nought. Does not the poet then
place his mistress far higher than women crave to sit? Like the sublime
Knight of la Mancha, he transfigures a peasant girl to be a princess.
He uses for his own behoof the wand with which he touches everything,
turning it into a wonder, and thus enhances the pleasure of loving by
the glorious glamour of the ideal.
Such a love is the very essence of passion. It is extreme in all things,
in its hopes, in its despair, in its rage, in its melancholy, in its
joy; it flies, it leaps, it crawls; it is not like any of the emotions
known to ordinary men; it is to everyday love what the perennial Alpine
torrent is to the lowland brook.
These splendid geniuses are so rarely understood that they spend
themselves in hopes deceived; they are exhausted by the search for their
ideal mistress, and almost always die like gorgeous insects splendidly
adorned for their love-festival by the most poetical of nature’s
inventions, and crushed under the foot of a passer-by. But there is
another danger! When they meet with the form that answers to their soul,
and which not unfrequently is that of a baker’s wife, they do as Raphael
did, as the beautiful insect does, they die in the Fornarina’s arms.
Lucien was at this pass. His poetical temperament, excessive in all
things, in good as in evil, had discerned the angel in this girl, who
was tainted by corruption rather than corrupt; he always saw her
white, winged, pure, and mysterious, as she had made herself for him,
understanding that he would have her so.
Towards the end of the month of May 1825 Lucien had lost all his good
spirits; he never went out, dined with Herrera, sat pensive, worked,
read volumes of diplomatic treatises, squatted Turkish-fashion on a
divan, and smoked three or four hookahs a day. His groom had more to do
in cleaning and perfuming the tubes of this noble pipe than in currying
and brushing down the horses’ coats, and dressing them with cockades
for driving in the Bois. As soon as the Spaniard saw Lucien pale, and
detected a malady in the frenzy of suppressed passion, he determined to
read to the bottom of this man’s heart on which he founded his life.
One fine evening, when Lucien, lounging in an armchair, was mechanically
contemplating the hues of the setting sun through the trees in the
garden, blowing up the mist of scented smoke in slow, regular clouds,
as pensive smokers are wont, he was roused from his reverie by hearing a
deep sigh. He turned and saw the Abbe standing by him with folded arms.
“You were there!” said the poet.
“For some time,” said the priest, “my thoughts have been following the
wide sweep of yours.” Lucien understood his meaning.
“I have never affected to have an iron nature such as yours is. To me
life is by turns paradise and hell; when by chance it is neither, it
bores me; and I am bored----”
“How can you be bored when you have such splendid prospects before you?”
“If I have no faith in those prospects, or if they are too much
shrouded?”
“Do not talk nonsense,” said the priest. “It would be far more worthy of
you and of me that you should open your heart to me. There is now that
between us which ought never to have come between us--a secret. This
secret has subsisted for sixteen months. You are in love.”
“And what then?”
“A foul hussy called La Torpille----”
“Well?”
“My boy, I told you you might have a mistress, but a woman of rank,
pretty, young, influential, a Countess at least. I had chosen Madame
d’Espard for you, to make her the instrument of your fortune without
scruple; for she would never have perverted your heart, she would have
left you free.--To love a prostitute of the lowest class when you
have not, like kings, the power to give her high rank, is a monstrous
blunder.”
“And am I the first man who had renounced ambition to follow the lead of
a boundless passion?”
“Good!” said the priest, stooping to pick up the mouthpiece of the
hookah which Lucien had dropped on the floor. “I understand the retort.
Cannot love and ambition be reconciled? Child, you have a mother in old
Herrera--a mother who is wholly devoted to you----”
“I know it, old friend,” said Lucien, taking his hand and shaking it.
“You wished for the toys of wealth; you have them. You want to shine;
I am guiding you into the paths of power, I kiss very dirty hands to
secure your advancement, and you will get on. A little while yet and you
will lack nothing of what can charm man or woman. Though effeminate in
your caprices, your intellect is manly. I have dreamed all things of
you; I forgive you all. You have only to speak to have your ephemeral
passions gratified. I have aggrandized your life by introducing into it
that which makes it delightful to most people--the stamp of political
influence and dominion. You will be as great as you now are small; but
you must not break the machine by which we coin money. I grant you all
you will excepting such blunders as will destroy your future prospects.
When I can open the drawing-rooms of the Faubourg Saint-Germain to you,
I forbid your wallowing in the gutter. Lucien, I mean to be an iron
stanchion in your interest; I will endure everything from you, for you.
Thus I have transformed your lack of tact in the game of life into the
shrewd stroke of a skilful player----”
Lucien looked up with a start of furious impetuosity.
“I carried off La Torpille!”
“You?” cried Lucien.
In a fit of animal rage the poet jumped up, flung the jeweled mouthpiece
in the priest’s face, and pushed him with such violence as to throw down
that strong man.
“I,” said the Spaniard, getting up and preserving his terrible gravity.
His black wig had fallen off. A bald skull, as shining as a death’s
head, showed the man’s real countenance. It was appalling. Lucien sat on
his divan, his hands hanging limp, overpowered, and gazing at the Abbe
with stupefaction.
“I carried her off,” the priest repeated.
“What did you do with her? You took her away the day after the opera
ball.”
“Yes, the day after I had seen a woman who belonged to you insulted by
wretches whom I would not have condescended to kick downstairs.”
“Wretches!” interrupted Lucien, “say rather monsters, compared with
whom those who are guillotined are angels. Do you know what the unhappy
Torpille had done for three of them? One of them was her lover for two
months. She was poor, and picked up a living in the gutter; he had not
a sou; like me, when you rescued me, he was very near the river; this
fellow would get up at night and go to the cupboard where the girl kept
the remains of her dinner and eat it. At last she discovered the trick;
she understood the shameful thing, and took care to leave a great deal;
then she was happy. She never told any one but me, that night, coming
home from the opera.
“The second had stolen some money; but before the theft was found out,
she lent him the sum, which he was enabled to replace, and which he
always forgot to repay to the poor child.
“As to the third, she made his fortune by playing out a farce worthy of
Figaro’s genius. She passed as his wife and became the mistress of a man
in power, who believed her to be the most innocent of good citizens. To
one she gave life, to another honor, to the third fortune--what does it
all count for to-day? And this is how they reward her!”
“Would you like to see them dead?” said Herrera, in whose eyes there
were tears.