larger business than I can manage, and he saw it. Well, it worried
him; he must needs mind the horse! I says to him, ‘Really, General----’
‘Bah!’ says he, ‘I am not going to eat my head off doing nothing. I
learned to rub a horse down many a year ago.’--I had some bills out for
the purchase money of my dairy--a fellow named Grados--Do you know him,
sir?”
“But, my good man, I have not time to listen to your story. Only tell me
how the Colonel offended you.”
“He hurt our feelings, sir, as sure as my name is Louis Vergniaud, and
my wife cried about it. He heard from our neighbors that we had not a
sou to begin to meet the bills with. The old soldier, as he is, he saved
up all you gave him, he watched for the bill to come in, and he paid it.
Such a trick! While my wife and me, we knew he had no tobacco, poor old
boy, and went without.--Oh! now--yes, he has his cigar every morning!
I would sell my soul for it--No, we are hurt. Well, so I wanted to ask
you--for he said you were a good sort--to lend us a hundred crowns on
the stock, so that we may get him some clothes, and furnish his room.
He thought he was getting us out of debt, you see? Well, it’s just
the other way; the old man is running us into debt--and hurt our
feelings!--He ought not to have stolen a march on us like that. And we
his friends, too!--On my word as an honest man, as sure as my name is
Louis Vergniaud, I would sooner sell up and enlist than fail to pay you
back your money----”
Derville looked at the dairyman, and stepped back a few paces to glance
at the house, the yard, the manure-pool, the cowhouse, the rabbits, the
children.
“On my honor, I believe it is characteristic of virtue to have nothing
to do with riches!” thought he.
“All right, you shall have your hundred crowns, and more. But I shall
not give them to you; the Colonel will be rich enough to help, and I
will not deprive him of the pleasure.”
“And will that be soon?”
“Why, yes.”
“Ah, dear God! how glad my wife will be!” and the cowkeeper’s tanned
face seemed to expand.
“Now,” said Derville to himself, as he got into his cab again, “let us
call on our opponent. We must not show our hand, but try to see hers,
and win the game at one stroke. She must be frightened. She is a woman.
Now, what frightens women most? A woman is afraid of nothing but...”
And he set to work to study the Countess’ position, falling into one of
those brown studies to which great politicians give themselves up when
concocting their own plans and trying to guess the secrets of a hostile
Cabinet. Are not attorneys, in a way, statesmen in charge of private
affairs?
But a brief survey of the situation in which the Comte Ferraud and
his wife now found themselves is necessary for a comprehension of the
lawyer’s cleverness.
Monsieur le Comte Ferraud was the only son of a former Councillor in the
old _Parlement_ of Paris, who had emigrated during the Reign of Terror,
and so, though he saved his head, lost his fortune. He came back under
the Consulate, and remained persistently faithful to the cause of Louis
XVIII., in whose circle his father had moved before the Revolution.
He thus was one of the party in the Faubourg Saint-Germain which nobly
stood out against Napoleon’s blandishments. The reputation for capacity
gained by the young Count--then simply called Monsieur Ferraud--made him
the object of the Emperor’s advances, for he was often as well pleased
at his conquests among the aristocracy as at gaining a battle. The Count
was promised the restitution of his title, of such of his estates as had
not been sold, and he was shown in perspective a place in the ministry
or as senator.
The Emperor fell.
At the time of Comte Chabert’s death, M. Ferraud was a young man of
six-and-twenty, without a fortune, of pleasing appearance, who had had
his successes, and whom the Faubourg Saint-Germain had adopted as doing
it credit; but Madame la Comtesse Chabert had managed to turn her share
of her husband’s fortune to such good account that, after eighteen
months of widowhood, she had about forty thousand francs a year. Her
marriage to the young Count was not regarded as news in the circles of
the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Napoleon, approving of this union, which
carried out his idea of fusion, restored to Madame Chabert the money
falling to the Exchequer under her husband’s will; but Napoleon’s hopes
were again disappointed. Madame Ferraud was not only in love with her
lover; she had also been fascinated by the notion of getting into
the haughty society which, in spite of its humiliation, was still
predominant at the Imperial Court. By this marriage all her vanities
were as much gratified as her passions. She was to become a real fine
lady. When the Faubourg Saint-Germain understood that the young Count’s
marriage did not mean desertion, its drawing-rooms were thrown open to
his wife.
Then came the Restoration. The Count’s political advancement was not
rapid. He understood the exigencies of the situation in which Louis
XVIII. found himself; he was one of the inner circle who waited till the
“Gulf of Revolution should be closed”--for this phrase of the King’s, at
which the Liberals laughed so heartily, had a political sense. The order
quoted in the long lawyer’s preamble at the beginning of this story had,
however, put him in possession of two tracts of forest, and of an estate
which had considerably increased in value during its sequestration. At
the present moment, though Comte Ferraud was a Councillor of State, and
a Director-General, he regarded his position as merely the first step of
his political career.
Wholly occupied as he was by the anxieties of consuming ambition, he had
attached to himself, as secretary, a ruined attorney named Delbecq, a
more than clever man, versed in all the resources of the law, to whom he
left the conduct of his private affairs. This shrewd practitioner had so
well understood his position with the Count as to be honest in his own
interest. He hoped to get some place by his master’s influence, and he
made the Count’s fortune his first care. His conduct so effectually gave
the lie to his former life, that he was regarded as a slandered man. The
Countess, with the tact and shrewdness of which most women have a share
more or less, understood the man’s motives, watched him quietly,
and managed him so well, that she had made good use of him for the
augmentation of her private fortune. She had contrived to make Delbecq
believe that she ruled her husband, and had promised to get him
appointed President of an inferior court in some important provincial
town, if he devoted himself entirely to her interests.
The promise of a place, not dependent on changes of ministry, which
would allow of his marrying advantageously, and rising subsequently to
a high political position, by being chosen Depute, made Delbecq the
Countess’ abject slave. He had never allowed her to miss one of those
favorable chances which the fluctuations of the Bourse and the increased
value of property afforded to clever financiers in Paris during the
first three years after the Restoration. He had trebled his protectress’
capital, and all the more easily because the Countess had no scruples
as to the means which might make her an enormous fortune as quickly as
possible. The emoluments derived by the Count from the places he held
she spent on the housekeeping, so as to reinvest her dividends; and
Delbecq lent himself to these calculations of avarice without trying to
account for her motives. People of that sort never trouble themselves
about any secrets of which the discovery is not necessary to their own
interests. And, indeed, he naturally found the reason in the thirst for
money, which taints almost every Parisian woman; and as a fine fortune
was needed to support the pretensions of Comte Ferraud, the secretary
sometimes fancied that he saw in the Countess’ greed a consequence of
her devotion to a husband with whom she still was in love. The Countess
buried the secrets of her conduct at the bottom of her heart. There lay
the secrets of life and death to her, there lay the turning-point of
this history.
At the beginning of the year 1818 the Restoration was settled on
an apparently immovable foundation; its doctrines of government, as
understood by lofty minds, seemed calculated to bring to France an era
of renewed prosperity, and Parisian society changed its aspect. Madame
la Comtesse Ferraud found that by chance she had achieved for love a
marriage that had brought her fortune and gratified ambition. Still
young and handsome, Madame Ferraud played the part of a woman of
fashion, and lived in the atmosphere of the Court. Rich herself, with a
rich husband who was cried up as one of the ablest men of the royalist
party, and, as a friend of the King, certain to be made Minister, she
belonged to the aristocracy, and shared its magnificence. In the midst
of this triumph she was attacked by a moral canker. There are feelings
which women guess in spite of the care men take to bury them. On
the first return of the King, Comte Ferraud had begun to regret his
marriage. Colonel Chabert’s widow had not been the means of allying him
to anybody; he was alone and unsupported in steering his way in a course
full of shoals and beset by enemies. Also, perhaps, when he came to
judge his wife coolly, he may have discerned in her certain vices of
education which made her unfit to second him in his schemes.
A speech he made, _a propos_ of Talleyrand’s marriage, enlightened the
Countess, to whom it proved that if he had still been a free man she
would never have been Madame Ferraud. What woman could forgive this
repentance? Does it not include the germs of every insult, every crime,
every form of repudiation? But what a wound must it have left in the
Countess’ heart, supposing that she lived in the dread of her first
husband’s return? She had known that he still lived, and she had ignored
him. Then during the time when she had heard no more of him, she had
chosen to believe that he had fallen at Waterloo with the Imperial
Eagle, at the same time as Boutin. She resolved, nevertheless, to bind
the Count to her by the strongest of all ties, by a chain of gold, and
vowed to be so rich that her fortune might make her second marriage
dissoluble, if by chance Colonel Chabert should ever reappear. And he
had reappeared; and she could not explain to herself why the struggle
she had dreaded had not already begun. Suffering, sickness, had perhaps
delivered her from that man. Perhaps he was half mad, and Charenton
might yet do her justice. She had not chosen to take either Delbecq or
the police into her confidence, for fear of putting herself in their
power, or of hastening the catastrophe. There are in Paris many women
who, like the Countess Ferraud, live with an unknown moral monster, or
on the brink of an abyss; a callus forms over the spot that tortures
them, and they can still laugh and enjoy themselves.
“There is something very strange in Comte Ferraud’s position,” said
Derville to himself, on emerging from his long reverie, as his cab
stopped at the door of the Hotel Ferraud in the Rue de Varennes. “How is
it that he, so rich as he is, and such a favorite with the King, is not
yet a peer of France? It may, to be sure, be true that the King, as
Mme. de Grandlieu was telling me, desires to keep up the value of the
_pairie_ by not bestowing it right and left. And, after all, the son of
a Councillor of the _Parlement_ is not a Crillon nor a Rohan. A Comte
Ferraud can only get into the Upper Chamber surreptitiously. But if his
marriage were annulled, could he not get the dignity of some old peer
who has only daughters transferred to himself, to the King’s great
satisfaction? At any rate this will be a good bogey to put forward and
frighten the Countess,” thought he as he went up the steps.
Derville had without knowing it laid his finger on the hidden wound, put
his hand on the canker that consumed Madame Ferraud.
She received him in a pretty winter dining-room, where she was at
breakfast, while playing with a monkey tethered by a chain to a little
pole with climbing bars of iron. The Countess was in an elegant wrapper;
the curls of her hair, carelessly pinned up, escaped from a cap, giving
her an arch look. She was fresh and smiling. Silver, gilding, and
mother-of-pearl shone on the table, and all about the room were rare
plants growing in magnificent china jars. As he saw Colonel Chabert’s
wife, rich with his spoil, in the lap of luxury and the height of
fashion, while he, poor wretch, was living with a poor dairyman among
the beasts, the lawyer said to himself:
“The moral of all this is that a pretty woman will never acknowledge as
her husband, nor even as a lover, a man in an old box-coat, a tow wig,
and boots with holes in them.”
A mischievous and bitter smile expressed the feelings, half
philosophical and half satirical, which such a man was certain to
experience--a man well situated to know the truth of things in spite of
the lies behind which most families in Paris hide their mode of life.
“Good-morning, Monsieur Derville,” said she, giving the monkey some
coffee to drink.
“Madame,” said he, a little sharply, for the light tone in which she
spoke jarred on him. “I have come to speak with you on a very serious
matter.”
“I am so _grieved_, M. le Comte is away--”
“I, madame, am delighted. It would be grievous if he could be present at
our interview. Besides, I am informed through M. Delbecq that you like
to manage your own business without troubling the Count.”
“Then I will send for Delbecq,” said she.
“He would be of no use to you, clever as he is,” replied Derville.
“Listen to me, madame; one word will be enough to make you grave.
Colonel Chabert is alive!”
“Is it by telling me such nonsense as that that you think you can make
me grave?” said she with a shout of laughter. But she was suddenly
quelled by the singular penetration of the fixed gaze which Derville
turned on her, seeming to read to the bottom of her soul.
“Madame,” he said with cold and piercing solemnity, “you know not the
extent of the danger that threatens you. I need say nothing of the
indisputable authenticity of the evidence nor of the fulness of proof
which testifies to the identity of Comte Chabert. I am not, as you know,
the man to take up a bad cause. If you resist our proceedings to show
that the certificate of death was false, you will lose that first case,
and that matter once settled, we shall gain every point.”
“What, then, do you wish to discuss with me?”
“Neither the Colonel nor yourself. Nor need I allude to the briefs which
clever advocates may draw up when armed with the curious facts of this
case, or the advantage they may derive from the letters you received
from your first husband before your marriage to your second.”
“It is false,” she cried, with the violence of a spoilt woman. “I never
had a letter from Comte Chabert; and if some one is pretending to be
the Colonel, it is some swindler, some returned convict, like Coignard
perhaps. It makes me shudder only to think of it. Can the Colonel rise
from the dead, monsieur? Bonaparte sent an aide-de-camp to inquire for
me on his death, and to this day I draw the pension of three thousand
francs granted to this widow by the Government. I have been perfectly in
the right to turn away all the Chaberts who have ever come, as I shall
all who may come.”
“Happily we are alone, madame. We can tell lies at our ease,” said he
coolly, and finding it amusing to lash up the Countess’ rage so as to
lead her to betray herself, by tactics familiar to lawyers, who are
accustomed to keep cool when their opponents or their clients are in
a passion. “Well, then, we must fight it out,” thought he, instantly
hitting on a plan to entrap her and show her her weakness.
“The proof that you received the first letter, madame, is that it
contained some securities--”
“Oh, as to securities--that it certainly did not.”
“Then you received the letter,” said Derville, smiling. “You are caught,
madame, in the first snare laid for you by an attorney, and you fancy
you could fight against Justice----”
The Countess colored, and then turned pale, hiding her face in her
hands. Then she shook off her shame, and retorted with the natural
impertinence of such women, “Since you are the so-called Chabert’s
attorney, be so good as to--”
“Madame,” said Derville, “I am at this moment as much your lawyer as I
am Colonel Chabert’s. Do you suppose I want to lose so valuable a client
as you are?--But you are not listening.”
“Nay, speak on, monsieur,” said she graciously.
“Your fortune came to you from M. le Comte Chabert, and you cast him
off. Your fortune is immense, and you leave him to beg. An advocate
can be very eloquent when a cause is eloquent in itself; there are here
circumstances which might turn public opinion strongly against you.”
“But, monsieur,” said the Comtesse, provoked by the way in which
Derville turned and laid her on the gridiron, “even if I grant that your
M. Chabert is living, the law will uphold my second marriage on account
of the children, and I shall get off with the restitution of two hundred
and twenty-five thousand francs to M. Chabert.”
“It is impossible to foresee what view the Bench may take of the
question. If on one side we have a mother and children, on the other we
have an old man crushed by sorrows, made old by your refusals to know
him. Where is he to find a wife? Can the judges contravene the law? Your
marriage with Colonel Chabert has priority on its side and every legal
right. But if you appear under disgraceful colors, you might have an
unlooked-for adversary. That, madame, is the danger against which I
would warn you.”
“And who is he?”
“Comte Ferraud.”
“Monsieur Ferraud has too great an affection for me, too much respect
for the mother of his children--”
“Do not talk of such absurd things,” interrupted Derville, “to lawyers,
who are accustomed to read hearts to the bottom. At this instant
Monsieur Ferraud has not the slightest wish to annual your union, and I
am quite sure that he adores you; but if some one were to tell him that
his marriage is void, that his wife will be called before the bar of
public opinion as a criminal--”
“He would defend me, monsieur.”
“No, madame.”
“What reason could he have for deserting me, monsieur?”
“That he would be free to marry the only daughter of a peer of France,
whose title would be conferred on him by patent from the King.”
The Countess turned pale.
“A hit!” said Derville to himself. “I have you on the hip; the poor
Colonel’s case is won.”--“Besides, madame,” he went on aloud, “he would
feel all the less remorse because a man covered with glory--a
General, Count, Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor--is not such a bad
alternative; and if that man insisted on his wife’s returning to him--”
“Enough, enough, monsieur!” she exclaimed. “I will never have any lawyer
but you. What is to be done?”
“Compromise!” said Derville.
“Does he still love me?” she said.
“Well, I do not think he can do otherwise.”
The Countess raised her head at these words. A flash of hope shone in
her eyes; she thought perhaps that she could speculate on her first
husband’s affection to gain her cause by some feminine cunning.
“I shall await your orders, madame, to know whether I am to report our
proceedings to you, or if you will come to my office to agree to the
terms of a compromise,” said Derville, taking leave.
A week after Derville had paid these two visits, on a fine morning
in June, the husband and wife, who had been separated by an almost
supernatural chance, started from the opposite ends of Paris to meet in
the office of the lawyer who was engaged by both. The supplies liberally
advanced by Derville to Colonel Chabert had enabled him to dress as
suited his position in life, and the dead man arrived in a very decent
cab. He wore a wig suited to his face, was dressed in blue cloth with
white linen, and wore under his waistcoat the broad red ribbon of the
higher grade of the Legion of Honor. In resuming the habits of wealth he
had recovered his soldierly style. He held himself up; his face, grave
and mysterious-looking, reflected his happiness and all his hopes, and
seemed to have acquired youth and _impasto_, to borrow a picturesque
word from the painter’s art. He was no more like the Chabert of the old
box-coat than a cartwheel double sou is like a newly coined forty-franc
piece. The passer-by, only to see him, would have recognized at once one
of the noble wrecks of our old army, one of the heroic men on whom
our national glory is reflected, as a splinter of ice on which the sun
shines seems to reflect every beam. These veterans are at once a picture
and a book.
When the Count jumped out of his carriage to go into Derville’s office,
he did it as lightly as a young man. Hardly had his cab moved off,
when a smart brougham drove up, splendid with coats-of-arms. Madame
la Comtesse Ferraud stepped out in a dress which, though simple, was
cleverly designed to show how youthful her figure was. She wore a pretty
drawn bonnet lined with pink, which framed her face to perfection,
softening its outlines and making it look younger.
If the clients were rejuvenescent, the office was unaltered, and
presented the same picture as that described at the beginning of this
story. Simonnin was eating his breakfast, his shoulder leaning against
the window, which was then open, and he was staring up at the blue sky
in the opening of the courtyard enclosed by four gloomy houses.
“Ah, ha!” cried the little clerk, “who will bet an evening at the play
that Colonel Chabert is a General, and wears a red ribbon?”
“The chief is a great magician,” said Godeschal.
“Then there is no trick to play on him this time?” asked Desroches.
“His wife has taken that in hand, the Comtesse Ferraud,” said Boucard.
“What next?” said Godeschal. “Is Comtesse Ferraud required to belong to
two men?”
“Here she is,” answered Simonnin.
“So you are not deaf, you young rogue!” said Chabert, taking the
gutter-jumper by the ear and twisting it, to the delight of the other
clerks, who began to laugh, looking at the Colonel with the curious
attention due to so singular a personage.
Comte Chabert was in Derville’s private room at the moment when his wife
came in by the door of the office.
“I say, Boucard, there is going to be a queer scene in the chief’s room!
There is a woman who can spend her days alternately, the odd with Comte
Ferraud, and the even with Comte Chabert.”
“And in leap year,” said Godeschal, “they must settle the _count_
between them.”
“Silence, gentlemen, you can be heard!” said Boucard severely. “I never
was in an office where there was so much jesting as there is here over
the clients.”
Derville had made the Colonel retire to the bedroom when the Countess
was admitted.
“Madame,” he said, “not knowing whether it would be agreeable to you
to meet M. le Comte Chabert, I have placed you apart. If, however, you
should wish it--”
“It is an attention for which I am obliged to you.”
“I have drawn up the memorandum of an agreement of which you and M.
Chabert can discuss the conditions, here, and now. I will go alternately
to him and to you, and explain your views respectively.”
“Let me see, monsieur,” said the Countess impatiently.
Derville read aloud:
“‘Between the undersigned:
“‘M. Hyacinthe Chabert, Count, Marechal de Camp, and Grand Officer of
the Legion of Honor, living in Paris, Rue du Petit-Banquier, on the one
part;
“‘And Madame Rose Chapotel, wife of the aforesaid M. le Comte Chabert,
_nee_--’”
“Pass over the preliminaries,” said she. “Come to the conditions.”