Curiously enough, though it explains the old proverb that “extremes
meet,” the materialistic doctor and the cure of Nemours were soon
friends. The old man loved backgammon, a favorite game of the
priesthood, and the Abbe Chaperon played it with about as much skill as
he himself. The game was the first tie between them. Then Minoret was
charitable, and the abbe was the Fenelon of the Gatinais. Both had had
a wide and varied education; the man of God was the only person in all
Nemours who was fully capable of understanding the atheist. To be able
to argue, men must first understand each other. What pleasure is there
in saying sharp words to one who can’t feel them? The doctor and the
priest had far too much taste and had seen too much of good society
not to practice its precepts; they were thus well-fitted for the little
warfare so essential to conversation. They hated each other’s opinions,
but they valued each other’s character. If such conflicts and such
sympathies are not true elements of intimacy we must surely despair of
society, which, especially in France, requires some form of antagonism.
It is from the shock of characters, and not from the struggle of
opinions, that antipathies are generated.
The Abbe Chaperon became, therefore, the doctor’s chief friend. This
excellent ecclesiastic, then sixty years of age, had been curate of
Nemours ever since the re-establishment of Catholic worship. Out of
attachment to his flock he had refused the vicariat of the diocese. If
those who were indifferent to religion thought well of him for so
doing, the faithful loved him the more for it. So, revered by his
sheep, respected by the inhabitants at large, the abbe did good without
inquiring into the religious opinions of those he benefited. His
parsonage, with scarcely furniture enough for the common needs of life,
was cold and shabby, like the lodging of a miser. Charity and avarice
manifest themselves in the same way; charity lays up a treasure in
heaven which avarice lays up on earth. The Abbe Chaperon argued with his
servant over expenses even more sharply than Gobseck with his--if indeed
that famous Jew kept a servant at all. The good priest often sold the
buckles off his shoes and his breeches to give their value to some poor
person who appealed to him at a moment when he had not a penny. When he
was seen coming out of church with the straps of his breeches tied
into the button-holes, devout women would redeem the buckles from the
clock-maker and jeweler of the town and return them to their pastor with
a lecture. He never bought himself any clothes or linen, and wore his
garments till they scarcely held together. His linen, thick with darns,
rubbed his skin like a hair shirt. Madame de Portenduere, and other good
souls, had an agreement with his housekeeper to replace the old clothes
with new ones after he went to sleep, and the abbe did not always find
out the difference. He ate his food off pewter with iron forks and
spoons. When he received his assistants and sub-curates on days of high
solemnity (an expense obligatory on the heads of parishes) he borrowed
linen and silver from his friend the atheist.
“My silver is his salvation,” the doctor would say.
These noble deeds, always accompanied by spiritual encouragement, were
done with a beautiful naivete. Such a life was all the more meritorious
because the abbe was possessed of an erudition that was vast and varied,
and of great and precious faculties. Delicacy and grace, the inseparable
accompaniments of simplicity, lent charm to an elocution that was worthy
of a prelate. His manners, his character, and his habits gave to his
intercourse with others the most exquisite savor of all that is most
spiritual, most sincere in the human mind. A lover of gayety, he was
never priest in a salon. Until Doctor Minoret’s arrival, the good man
kept his light under a bushel without regret. Owning a rather fine
library and an income of two thousand francs when he came to Nemours,
he now possessed, in 1829, nothing at all, except his stipend as parish
priest, nearly the whole of which he gave away during the year. The
giver of excellent counsel in delicate matters or in great misfortunes,
many persons who never went to church to obtain consolation went to the
parsonage to get advice. One little anecdote will suffice to complete
his portrait. Sometimes the peasants,--rarely, it is true, but
occasionally,--unprincipled men, would tell him they were sued for debt,
or would get themselves threatened fictitiously to stimulate the abbe’s
benevolence. They would even deceive their wives, who, believing their
chattels were threatened with an execution and their cows seized,
deceived in their turn the poor priest with their innocent tears. He
would then manage with great difficulty to provide the seven or eight
hundred francs demanded of him--with which the peasant bought himself
a morsel of land. When pious persons and vestrymen denounced the fraud,
begging the abbe to consult them in future before lending himself to
such cupidity, he would say:--
“But suppose they had done something wrong to obtain their bit of land?
Isn’t it doing good when we prevent evil?”
Some persons may wish for a sketch of this figure, remarkable for the
fact that science and literature had filled the heart and passed through
the strong head without corrupting either. At sixty years of age the
abbe’s hair was white as snow, so keenly did he feel the sorrows of
others, and so heavily had the events of the Revolution weighed upon
him. Twice incarcerated for refusing to take the oath he had twice, as
he used to say, uttered in “In manus.” He was of medium height,
neither stout nor thin. His face, much wrinkled and hollowed and quite
colorless, attracted immediate attention by the absolute tranquillity
expressed in its shape, and by the purity of its outline, which seemed
to be edged with light. The face of a chaste man has an unspeakable
radiance. Brown eyes with lively pupils brightened the irregular
features, which were surmounted by a broad forehead. His glance wielded
a power which came of a gentleness that was not devoid of strength. The
arches of his brow formed caverns shaded by huge gray eyebrows which
alarmed no one. As most of his teeth were gone his mouth had lost its
shape and his cheeks had fallen in; but this physical destruction was
not without charm; even the wrinkles, full of pleasantness, seemed to
smile on others. Without being gouty his feet were tender; and he walked
with so much difficulty that he wore shoes made of calf’s skin all the
year round. He thought the fashion of trousers unsuitable for priests,
and he always appeared in stockings of coarse black yarn, knit by his
housekeeper, and cloth breeches. He never went out in his cassock, but
wore a brown overcoat, and still retained the three-cornered hat he had
worn so courageously in times of danger. This noble and beautiful old
man, whose face was glorified by the serenity of a soul above reproach,
will be found to have so great an influence upon the men and things of
this history, that it was proper to show the sources of his authority
and power.
Minoret took three newspapers,--one liberal, one ministerial, one
ultra,--a few periodicals, and certain scientific journals,
the accumulation of which swelled his library. The newspapers,
encyclopaedias, and books were an attraction to a retired captain of the
Royal-Swedish regiment, named Monsieur de Jordy, a Voltairean nobleman
and an old bachelor, who lived on sixteen hundred francs of pension and
annuity combined. Having read the gazettes for several days, by favor
of the abbe, Monsieur de Jordy thought it proper to call and thank
the doctor in person. At this first visit the old captain, formerly a
professor at the Military Academy, won the doctor’s heart, who returned
the call with alacrity. Monsieur de Jordy, a spare little man much
troubled by his blood, though his face was very pale, attracted
attention by the resemblance of his handsome brow to that of Charles
XII.; above it he kept his hair cropped short, like that of the
soldier-king. His blue eyes seemed to say that “Love had passed that
way,” so mournful were they; revealing memories about which he kept such
utter silence that his old friends never detected even an allusion to
his past life, nor a single exclamation drawn forth by similarity
of circumstances. He hid the painful mystery of his past beneath a
philosophic gayety, but when he thought himself alone his motions,
stiffened by a slowness which was more a matter of choice than the
result of old age, betrayed the constant presence of distressful
thoughts. The Abbe Chaperon called him a Christian ignorant of his
Christianity. Dressed always in blue cloth, his rather rigid demeanor
and his clothes bespoke the old habits of military discipline. His
sweet and harmonious voice stirred the soul. His beautiful hands and the
general cut of his figure, recalling that of the Comte d’Artois, showed
how charming he must have been in his youth, and made the mystery of
his life still more mysterious. An observer asked involuntarily what
misfortune had blighted such beauty, courage, grace, accomplishment,
and all the precious qualities of the heart once united in his person.
Monsieur de Jordy shuddered if Robespierre’s name were uttered before
him. He took much snuff, but, strange to say, he gave up the habit
to please little Ursula, who at first showed a dislike to him on that
account. As soon as he saw the little girl the captain fastened his eyes
upon her with a look that was almost passionate. He loved her play so
extravagantly and took such interest in all she did that the tie between
himself and the doctor grew closer every day, though the latter never
dared to say to him, “You, too, have you lost children?” There are
beings, kind and patient as old Jordy, who pass through life with a
bitter thought in their heart and a tender but sorrowful smile on their
lips, carrying with them to the grave the secret of their lives; letting
no one guess it,--through pride, through disdain, possibly through
revenge; confiding in none but God, without other consolation than his.
Monsieur de Jordy, like the doctor, had come to die in Nemours, but he
knew no one except the abbe, who was always at the beck and call of
his parishioners, and Madame de Portenduere, who went to bed at nine
o’clock. So, much against his will, he too had taken to going to bed
early, in spite of the thorns that beset his pillow. It was therefore a
great piece of good fortune for him (as well as for the doctor) when
he encountered a man who had known the same world and spoken the same
language as himself; with whom he could exchange ideas, and who went to
bed late. After Monsieur de Jordy, the Abbe Chaperon, and Minoret had
passed one evening together they found so much pleasure in it that the
priest and soldier returned every night regularly at nine o’clock, the
hour at which, little Ursula having gone to bed, the doctor was free.
All three would then sit up till midnight or one o’clock.
After a time this trio became a quartette. Another man to whom life
was known, and who owed to his practical training as a lawyer,
the indulgence, knowledge, observation, shrewdness, and talent for
conversation which the soldier, doctor, and priest owed to their
practical dealings with the souls, diseases, and education of men, was
added to the number. Monsieur Bongrand, the justice of peace, heard of
the pleasure of these evenings and sought admittance to the doctor’s
society. Before becoming justice of peace at Nemours he had been for ten
years a solicitor at Melun, where he conducted his own cases, according
to the custom of small towns, where there are no barristers. He became a
widower at forty-five years of age, but felt himself still too active
to lead an idle life; he therefore sought and obtained the position of
justice of peace at Nemours, which became vacant a few months before
the arrival of Doctor Minoret. Monsieur Bongrand lived modestly on his
salary of fifteen hundred francs, in order that he might devote his
private income to his son, who was studying law in Paris under the
famous Derville. He bore some resemblance to a retired chief of a civil
service office; he had the peculiar face of a bureaucrat, less sallow
than pallid, on which public business, vexations, and disgust leave
their imprint,--a face lined by thought, and also by the continual
restraints familiar to those who are trained not to speak their minds
freely. It was often illumined by smiles characteristic of men who
alternately believe all and believe nothing, who are accustomed to see
and hear all without being startled, and to fathom the abysses which
self-interest hollows in the depths of the human heart.
Below the hair, which was less white than discolored, and worn flattened
to the head, was a fine, sagacious forehead, the yellow tones of which
harmonized well with the scanty tufts of thin hair. His face, with the
features set close together, bore some likeness to that of a fox,
all the more because his nose was short and pointed. In speaking,
he spluttered at the mouth, which was broad like that of most great
talkers,--a habit which led Goupil to say, ill-naturedly, “An umbrella
would be useful when listening to him,” or, “The justice rains
verdicts.” His eyes looked keen behind his spectacles, but if he took
the glasses off his dulled glance seemed almost vacant. Though he was
naturally gay, even jovial, he was apt to give himself too important
and pompous an air. He usually kept his hands in the pockets of his
trousers, and only took them out to settle his eye-glasses on his nose,
with a movement that was half comic, and which announced the coming of
a keen observation or some victorious argument. His gestures, his
loquacity, his innocent self-assertion, proclaimed the provincial
lawyer. These slight defects were, however, superficial; he redeemed
them by an exquisite kind-heartedness which a rigid moralist might call
the indulgence natural to superiority. He looked a little like a fox,
and he was thought to be very wily, but never false or dishonest. His
wiliness was perspicacity; and consisted in foreseeing results and
protecting himself and others from the traps set for them. He loved
whist, a game known to the captain and the doctor, and which the abbe
learned to play in a very short time.
This little circle of friends made for itself an oasis in Mironet’s
salon. The doctor of Nemours, who was not without education and
knowledge of the world, and who greatly respected Minoret as an honor
to the profession, came there sometimes; but his duties and also his
fatigue (which obliged him to go to bed early and to be up early)
prevented his being as assiduously present as the three other friends.
This intercourse of five superior men, the only ones in Nemours who
had sufficiently wide knowledge to understand each other, explains old
Minoret’s aversion to his relatives; if he were compelled to leave them
his money, at least he need not admit them to his society. Whether the
post master, the sheriff, and the collector understood this distinction,
or whether they were reassured by the evident loyalty and benefactions
of their uncle, certain it is that they ceased, to his great
satisfaction, to see much of him. So, about eight months after the
arrival of the doctor these four players of whist and backgammon made
a solid and exclusive little world which was to each a fraternal
aftermath, an unlooked for fine season, the gentle pleasures of which
were the more enjoyed. This little circle of choice spirits closed
round Ursula, a child whom each adopted according to his individual
tendencies; the abbe thought of her soul, the judge imagined himself her
guardian, the soldier intended to be her teacher, and as for Minoret, he
was father, mother, and physician, all in one.
After he became acclimated old Minoret settled into certain habits of
life, under fixed rules, after the manner of the provinces. On Ursula’s
account he received no visitors in the morning, and never gave dinners,
but his friends were at liberty to come to his house at six o’clock and
stay till midnight. The first-comers found the newspapers on the table
and read them while awaiting the rest; or they sometimes sallied forth
to meet the doctor if he were out for a walk. This tranquil life was not
a mere necessity of old age, it was the wise and careful scheme of a man
of the world to keep his happiness untroubled by the curiosity of
his heirs and the gossip of a little town. He yielded nothing to that
capricious goddess, public opinion, whose tyranny (one of the present
great evils of France) was just beginning to establish its power and
to make the whole nation a mere province. So, as soon as the child was
weaned and could walk alone, the doctor sent away the housekeeper whom
his niece, Madame Minoret-Levrault had chosen for him, having discovered
that she told her patroness everything that happened in his household.
Ursula’s nurse, the widow of a poor workman (who possessed no name but a
baptismal one, and who came from Bougival) had lost her last child, aged
six months, just as the doctor, who knew her to be a good and honest
creature, engaged her as wetnurse for Ursula. Antoinette Patris (her
maiden name), widow of Pierre, called Le Bougival, attached herself
naturally to Ursula, as wetmaids do to their nurslings. This blind
maternal affection was accompanied in this instance by household
devotion. Told of the doctor’s intention to send away his housekeeper,
La Bougival secretly learned to cook, became neat and handy, and
discovered the old man’s ways. She took the utmost care of the house and
furniture; in short she was indefatigable. Not only did the doctor wish
to keep his private life within four walls, as the saying is, but he
also had certain reasons for hiding a knowledge of his business affairs
from his relatives. At the end of the second year after his arrival La
Bougival was the only servant in the house; on her discretion he knew he
could count, and he disguised his real purposes by the all-powerful open
reason of a necessary economy. To the great satisfaction of his heirs he
became a miser. Without fawning or wheedling, solely by the influence of
her devotion and solicitude, La Bougival, who was forty-three years old
at the time this tale begins, was the housekeeper of the doctor and
his protegee, the pivot on which the whole house turned, in short,
the confidential servant. She was called La Bougival from the admitted
impossibility of applying to her person the name that actually belonged
to her, Antoinette--for names and forms do obey the laws of harmony.
The doctor’s miserliness was not mere talk; it was real, and it had an
object. From the year 1817 he cut off two of his newspapers and ceased
subscribing to periodicals. His annual expenses, which all Nemours could
estimate, did not exceed eighteen hundred francs a year. Like most old
men his wants in linen, boots, and clothing, were very few. Every six
months he went to Paris, no doubt to draw and reinvest his income. In
fifteen years he never said a single word to any one in relation to his
affairs. His confidence in Bongrand was of slow growth; it was not until
after the revolution of 1830 that he told him of his projects. Nothing
further was known of the doctor’s life either by the bourgeoisie at
large or by his heirs. As for his political opinions, he did not meddle
in public matters seeing that he paid less than a hundred francs a year
in taxes, and refused, impartially, to subscribe to either royalist or
liberal demands. His known horror for the priesthood, and his deism were
so little obtrusive that he turned out of his house a commercial runner
sent by his great-nephew Desire to ask a subscription to the “Cure
Meslier” and the “Discours du General Foy.” Such tolerance seemed
inexplicable to the liberals of Nemours.
The doctor’s three collateral heirs, Minoret-Levrault and his wife,
Monsieur and Madame Massin-Levrault, junior, Monsieur and Madame
Cremiere-Cremiere--whom we shall in future call simply Cremiere,
Massin, and Minoret, because these distinctions among homonyms is quite
unnecessary out of the Gatinais--met together as people do in little
towns. The post master gave a grand dinner on his son’s birthday, a ball
during the carnival, another on the anniversary of his marriage, to
all of which he invited the whole bourgeoisie of Nemours. The collector
received his relations and friends twice a year. The clerk of the court,
too poor, he said, to fling himself into such extravagance, lived in
a small way in a house standing half-way down the Grand’Rue, the
ground-floor of which was let to his sister, the letter-postmistress
of Nemours, a situation she owed to the doctor’s kind offices.
Nevertheless, in the course of the year these three families did meet
together frequently, in the houses of friends, in the public promenades,
at the market, on their doorsteps, or, of a Sunday in the square, as on
this occasion; so that one way and another they met nearly every day.
For the last three years the doctor’s age, his economies, and his
probable wealth had led to allusions, or frank remarks, among the
townspeople as to the disposition of his property, a topic which made
the doctor and his heirs of deep interest to the little town. For the
last six months not a day passed that friends and neighbours did not
speak to the heirs, with secret envy, of the day the good man’s eyes
would shut and the coffers open.
“Doctor Minoret may be an able physician, on good terms with death, but
none but God is eternal,” said one.
“Pooh, he’ll bury us all; his health is better than ours,” replied an
heir, hypocritically.
“Well, if you don’t get the money yourselves, your children will, unless
that little Ursula--”
“He won’t leave it all to her.”
Ursula, as Madame Massin had predicted, was the bete noire of the
relations, their sword of Damocles; and Madame Cremiere’s favorite
saying, “Well, whoever lives will know,” shows that they wished at any
rate more harm to her than good.
The collector and the clerk of the court, poor in comparison with the
post master, had often estimated, by way of conversation, the doctor’s
property. If they met their uncle walking on the banks of the canal or
along the road they would look at each other piteously.
“He must have got hold of some elixir of life,” said one.
“He has made a bargain with the devil,” replied the other.
“He ought to give us the bulk of it; that fat Minoret doesn’t need
anything,” said Massin.
“Ah! but Minoret has a son who’ll waste his substance,” answered
Cremiere.
“How much do you really think the doctor has?”
“At the end of twelve years, say twelve thousand francs saved each year,
that would give one hundred and forty-four thousand francs, and the
interest brings in at least one hundred thousand more. But as he
must, if he consults a notary in Paris, have made some good strokes of
business, and we know that up to 1822 he could get seven or eight per
cent from the State, he must now have at least four hundred thousand
francs, without counting the capital of his fourteen thousand a year
from the five per cents. If he were to die to-morrow without leaving
anything to Ursula we should get at least seven or eight hundred
thousand francs, besides the house and furniture.”
“Well, a hundred thousand to Minoret, and three hundred thousand apiece
to you and me, that would be fair.”
“Ha, that would make us comfortable!”
“If he did that,” said Massin, “I should sell my situation in court
and buy an estate; I’d try to be judge at Fontainebleau, and get myself
elected deputy.”
“As for me I should buy a brokerage business,” said the collector.
“Unluckily, that girl he has on his arm and the abbe have got round him.
I don’t believe we can do anything with him.”
“Still, we know very well he will never leave anything to the Church.”