the involuntary cause of a terrible misfortune, which may serve you,
Docteur Bianchon,” he said, turning to me--“you, who take so much note
of the human mind while you study the human body--to solve certain of
your riddles concerning the will. I was making my second campaign; I
liked the danger and I laughed at everything, simple young lieutenant
of artillery that I was! When we reached the Beresina the army no
longer kept, as you know, any discipline; military obedience was at an
end. A crowd of men of all nations was making its way instinctively
from north to south. Soldiers drove their bare-footed and ragged
general from their camp-fires if he brought them neither wood nor
provisions. After the passage of that famous river, the disorder was
checked. I came out quietly, alone, without food, from the marshes of
Zembin, and I walked along looking for a house where some one might
be willing to admit me. Finding none all day, being driven away from
those I came to, I fortunately saw late in the evening a miserable
little Polish farmhouse, of which I can give you no idea unless you
have seen the wooden houses of lower Normandy or the poorest hovels
of La Beauce. These Polish dwellings consist of a single room, one
end of which is divided off by a plank partition and serves as a
storehouse for provisions. I saw in the twilight a light smoke rising
from this building, and hoping to find comrades more compassionate than
the persons I had hitherto approached, I marched boldly to the door.
Entering, I found a table spread. Several officers, among whom was
a woman (a not unusual sight), were eating potatoes and horse-flesh
broiled on the embers, and frozen beets. I recognized two or three
captains of artillery belonging to the regiment in which I had first
served. I was received with a volley of hails which would greatly have
surprised me on the other side of the Beresina; but at this moment
the cold was less intense, my comrades were resting, they were warm,
they were eating, and piles of straw at the end of the room offered
them the prospect of a delightful night. We didn’t ask for much in
those days. My comrades could be generous gratis--a very common way
of being generous, by the bye. At the end of the table, near the door
which led into the small room filled with straw and hay, I saw my
former colonel, one of the most extraordinary men I have ever met in
the varied collection of men it has been my lot to know. He was an
Italian. Whenever human beings are handsome in southern countries they
are sublimely handsome. Have you ever noticed the peculiar whiteness
of Italians when they are white? It is magnificent, especially in the
light. When I read the fantastic portrait Charles Nodier has given
us of Colonel Oudet, I found my own impressions expressed in every
sentence. Italian, like most of the officers of his regiment--borrowed
by the Emperor from the army of Prince Eugène--my colonel was a man of
great height, admirably proportioned, possibly a trifle too stout, but
amazingly vigorous and light, agile as a greyhound. His black hair,
curling profusely, set into brilliant relief a clear white skin like
that of a woman. He had handsome feet, small hands, a charming mouth,
and an aquiline nose with delicate lines, the tip of which contracted
naturally and turned white when he was angry, which was often. His
irascibility so passed all belief that I shall tell you nothing of it;
you shall judge for yourself. No one was ever at ease in his presence.
Perhaps I was the only man who did not fear him. It is true that he
had taken a singular liking to me; he thought whatever I did was good.
When anger worked within him, his forehead contracted, his muscles
stood out in the middle of it like the horse-shoe of Red-gauntlet. That
sign would have terrified you more than the magnetic lightning of his
blue eyes. His whole body would then quiver, and his strength, always
so great in his normal condition, passed all bounds. He rolled his
r’s excessively. His voice, certainly as powerful as that of Charles
Nodier’s Oudet, gave an indescribable richness of sound to the syllable
which contained that consonant. Though this vice of pronunciation was,
in him, and at all times, a charm, you cannot imagine the power that
accent, considered so vulgar in Paris, was capable of expressing when
he commanded a maneuver, or was in any way excited. You must have heard
it to understand it. When the colonel was tranquil his blue eyes were
full of angelic sweetness; his pure brow sparkled with an expression
that was full of charm. At a parade of the Army of Italy no man could
compare with him. Even d’Orsay himself, the handsome d’Orsay, was
vanquished by our colonel at the last review held by Napoleon before
his entrance into Russia. In this gifted man all was contradiction.
Passion lives by contrasts. Therefore do not ask me whether he was
conscious of those irresistible influences to which our nature” (the
general looked toward the Princesse de Cadignan) “bends like molten
glass beneath the blower’s pipe; but it so chanced that by some unusual
fatality the colonel had had but few love-affairs, or had neglected
to have them. To give you an idea of his violence, I will tell you in
two words what I once saw him do in a fit of anger. We were marching
with our cannon along a very narrow road, bordered on one side by woods
and on the other by a rather steep bank. Half way along this road we
met another regiment of artillery, its colonel marching with it. This
colonel wanted to make the captain of our regiment at the head of the
first battery give way to his troop. Naturally our captain refused.
But the colonel of the other regiment made a sign to his first battery
to advance, and in spite of the care the first driver took to keep
close into the woods the wheel of the gun carriage caught the right
leg of our captain, broke it, and flung him to the other side of his
horse. It was done in a moment. Our colonel, who happened to be at a
little distance, saw the quarrel, and galloped furiously up through
the trees and among the wheels at the risk of being flung with all his
hoofs in the air, reaching the spot in face of the other colonel just
as the captain cried out, ‘Help!’ and fell. No! our Italian colonel
was no longer a man. Foam, like that of champagne, boiled from his
mouth, he growled like a lion. Incapable of uttering a word, even a
cry, he made a dreadful sign to his adversary, pointing to the wood,
and drew his sabre. They entered it. In two seconds we saw the other
colonel on the ground with his head split in two. The soldiers of that
regiment retreated, ha! the devil! and in quick time, too! Our captain,
who just missed being killed, and who was yelping in the ditch where
the wheel of the gun-carriage had flung him, had a wife, a charming
Italian woman from Messina, who was not indifferent to our colonel.
This circumstance had greatly increased his fury. His protection was
due to the husband; he was bound to defend him as well as the wife.
Now, in the miserable Polish cabin this side of Zembin, where, as
I told you, I received such cordial welcome, this very captain sat
opposite to me, and his wife was at the other end of the table opposite
to the colonel. She was a little woman, named Rosina, very dark, but
bearing in her black eyes, shaped like almonds, all the ardor of the
sun of Sicily. At this moment she was deplorably thin, her cheeks were
covered with dust like a peach exposed to the weather on a high road.
Scarcely clothed and all in rags, wearied by marches, her hair in
disorder beneath the fragment of a shawl tied across her head, there
was still all the presence of a woman about her; her movements were
pretty, her rosy, dimpled mouth, her white teeth, the lines of her face
and bust, charms which misery, cold, and want of care had not entirely
effaced--still told of love and sweetness to anyone whose mind could
dwell upon a woman. Rosina evidently possessed one of those natures
which are fragile in appearance, but are full of nervous strength.
The face of the husband, a Piedmontese nobleman, expressed a sort of
jeering good-humor, if it is permissible to ally those two words.
Brave, intelligent and educated, he nevertheless seemed to ignore the
relations which had existed between his wife and the colonel for nearly
three years. I attributed this indifference to the strange customs
of Italy, or to some secret in their own home; but there was in the
man’s face one feature which had always inspired me with involuntary
distrust. His underlip, thin and very flexible, turned down at its two
extremities instead of turning up, which seemed to me to reveal an
underlying cruelty in a character apparently phlegmatic and indolent.
You can well imagine that the conversation was not brilliant when I
entered. My weary comrades were eating in silence, but they naturally
asked me a few questions; and we related our several misfortunes,
mingling them with reflections on the campaign, the generals, their
blunders, the Russians, and the cold. Soon after my arrival, the
colonel, having finished his meagre meal, wiped his mustache, wished us
good-night, cast his black eye toward the woman, and said, ‘Rosina.’
Then without awaiting any reply he went into the space partitioned off
for forage. The meaning of his summons was evident; and the young woman
made an indescribable gesture, which expressed both the annoyance that
she felt at seeing her dependance thus exhibited without respect for
human feelings, and her sense of the affront offered to her dignity as
a woman and to her husband. And yet in the strained expression of her
features and in the violent contraction of her eyebrows, there seemed
to be a sort of foreboding; perhaps a presentiment of her fate came
over her. Rosina continued to sit tranquilly at the table; a moment
later the colonel’s voice was heard repeating her name, ‘Rosina!’
The tone of this new summons was even more brutal than that of the
first. The rolling accent of the colonel’s voice and the echo which
the Italian language gives to vowels and final letters revealed in a
startling manner the tyranny, impatience, and will of that man. Rosina
turned pale, but she rose, passed behind us, and joined the colonel.
All my comrades maintained a rigid silence; but I, unhappily, after
looking round at them, began to laugh, and the laugh was then repeated
from mouth to mouth. ‘You laugh?’ said the husband. ‘Faith, comrade,’ I
replied, becoming serious, ‘I did wrong, I admit it; I ask ten thousand
pardons; and if you are not content with such excuses I am ready to
give you satisfaction.’ ‘It is not you who have done wrong, it is I,’
he replied coldly. Thereupon we all shook down our straw about the
room and were soon lost in the sleep of weariness. The next day each
man, without awaking his neighbor, without looking for a journeying
companion, started on his way with that utter egotism which made our
retreat from Russia one of the most horrible dramas of personality,
sadness, and horror which ever took place beneath the heavens. Yet
after each man had gone some seven or eight hundred yards from our
night’s lodging, we came together and marched along like geese led in
flocks by the unconscious dominance of a child. A common necessity was
driving us along. When we reached a slight elevation from which we
could see the house where we had passed the night, we heard sounds that
resembled the roaring of lions in the desert or the bellowing of bulls;
but no! that clamor could not be compared to any known sound. Mingled
with that horrible and sinister roar came the feeble cry of a woman. We
all turned round, seized with a sensation--I know not how to describe
it--of fear; the house was no longer visible, only a burning pile; the
building, which someone had barricaded, was in flames. Clouds of smoke,
driven by the wind, rolled toward us, bringing raucous sounds and a
strong indescribable odor. A few steps from us marched the captain, who
had quietly joined our caravan; we looked at him in silence, for none
of us dared question him. But he, divining our curiosity, touched his
breast with the forefinger of his right hand and pointed with the left
to the conflagration. ‘Son io!’ he said. We continued our way without
another word to him.”
“There is nothing more fearful than the revolt of sheep,” said de
Marsay.
“It would be too dreadful to let us part with that horrible scene in
our minds,” said Madame de Montcornet. “I shall dream of it.”
“Tell us, before we go, what punishment befell Monsieur de Marsay’s
first love,” said Lord Dudley, smiling.
“When Englishmen jest their foils are buttoned,” remarked Emile Blondet.
“Monsieur Bianchon can tell you that,” replied de Marsay, turning to
me. “He saw her die.”
“Yes,” I said, “and her death was one of the most beautiful I ever
witnessed. The duke and I had passed the night beside the pillow of
the dying woman, whose disease, consumption, was then in its final
stages; no hope remained, and she had received the last offices of
the Church the preceding evening. The duke had fallen asleep. Madame
la duchesse, waking about four in the morning, made me, in a touching
manner and with a smile, a tender little sign to let him sleep; and yet
she felt she was about to die! She had reached a stage of extraordinary
thinness, but her face preserved its features, and its outlines were
truly sublime. Her pallor made her skin resemble porcelain behind
which a light has been placed. Her brilliant eyes and the color in her
cheeks shone out upon this skin so softly beautiful, while the whole
countenance seemed to breathe forth a commanding tranquility. Evidently
she pitied the duke, and the feeling took its rise in a lofty sentiment
which seemed to see no limit in the approach of death. The silence was
profound. The chamber, softly lighted by a lamp, had the appearance of
all sick-chambers at the moment of death. At that instant the clock
struck. The duke awoke, and was in despair at having slept. I did not
see the gesture of impatience with which he showed the regret he felt
at having lost his wife from sight during the few last moments granted
to him; but it is certain that any other person than the dying woman
might have been mistaken about him. A statesman, preoccupied with the
interests of France, the duke had many of those apparent oddities which
often make men of genius pass for fools, though the explanation may be
found in the exquisite nature and requirements of their mind. He now
took a chair beside the bed and looked fixedly at his wife. The dying
woman put out her hand and took that of her husband which she pressed
gently, saying in a soft but trembling voice:
“‘My poor friend, who will understand you in the future?’
“So saying, she died, looking at him.”
[Footnote 1: Translated by George Milburn.]
[Footnote 2: “As it should be”--correct, ideal, perfect.]
[Footnote 3: “As it shouldn’t be,” the opposite of _comme il
faut_.]
=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=
Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced
quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and
otherwise left unbalanced.
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.