steps had died away on the stairs she ran out on to the balcony to see
him get into the tilbury, to see him gather up the reins, to catch a
parting look, hear the crack of his whip and the sound of his wheels on
the stones, watch the handsome horse, the master’s hat, the tiger’s
gold lace, and at last to stand gazing long after the dark corner of the
street had eclipsed this vision.
Five years after Mademoiselle Caroline de Bellefeuille had taken up her
abode in the pretty house in the Rue Taitbout, we again look in on one
of those home-scenes which tighten the bonds of affection between two
persons who truly love. In the middle of the blue drawing-room, in front
of the window opening to the balcony, a little boy of four was making
a tremendous noise as he whipped the rocking-horse, whose two curved
supports for the legs did not move fast enough to please him; his pretty
face, framed in fair curls that fell over his white collar, smiled up
like a cherub’s at his mother when she said to him from the depths of
an easy-chair, “Not so much noise, Charles; you will wake your little
sister.”
The inquisitive boy suddenly got off his horse, and treading on tiptoe
as if he were afraid of the sound of his feet on the carpet, came up
with one finger between his little teeth, and standing in one of those
childish attitudes that are so graceful because they are so perfectly
natural, raised the muslin veil that hid the rosy face of a little girl
sleeping on her mother’s knee.
“Is Eugenie asleep, then?” said he, quite astonished. “Why is she asleep
when we are awake?” he added, looking up with large, liquid black eyes.
“That only God can know,” replied Caroline, with a smile.
The mother and boy gazed at the infant, only that morning baptized.
Caroline, now about four-and-twenty, showed the ripe beauty which
had expanded under the influence of cloudless happiness and constant
enjoyment. In her the Woman was complete.
Delighted to obey her dear Roger’s every wish, she had acquired the
accomplishments she had lacked; she played the piano fairly well, and
sang sweetly. Ignorant of the customs of a world that would have treated
her as an outcast, and which she would not have cared for even if it had
welcomed her--for a happy woman does not care for the world--she had
not caught the elegance of manner or learned the art of conversation,
abounding in words and devoid of ideas, which is current in fashionable
drawing-rooms; on the other hand, she worked hard to gain the knowledge
indispensable to a mother whose chief ambition is to bring up her
children well. Never to lose sight of her boy, to give him from the
cradle that training of every minute which impresses on the young a
love of all that is good and beautiful, to shelter him from every evil
influence and fulfil both the painful duties of a nurse and the tender
offices of a mother,--these were her chief pleasures.
The coy and gentle being had from the first day so fully resigned
herself never to step beyond the enchanted sphere where she found all
her happiness, that, after six years of the tenderest intimacy, she
still knew her lover only by the name of Roger. A print of the picture
of the Psyche lighting her lamp to gaze on Love in spite of his
prohibition, hung in her room, and constantly reminded her of the
conditions of her happiness. Through all these six years her humble
pleasures had never importuned Roger by a single indiscreet ambition,
and his heart was a treasure-house of kindness. Never had she longed for
diamonds or fine clothes, and had again and again refused the luxury of
a carriage which he had offered her. To look out from her balcony for
Roger’s cab, to go with him to the play or make excursions with him,
on fine days in the environs of Paris, to long for him, to see him,
and then to long again,--these made up the history of her life, poor in
incidents but rich in happiness.
As she rocked the infant, now a few months old, on her knee, singing
the while, she allowed herself to recall the memories of the past. She
lingered more especially on the months of September, when Roger was
accustomed to take her to Bellefeuille and spend the delightful days
which seem to combine the charms of every season. Nature is equally
prodigal of flowers and fruit, the evenings are mild, the mornings
bright, and a blaze of summer often returns after a spell of autumn
gloom. During the early days of their love, Caroline had ascribed the
even mind and gentle temper, of which Roger gave her so many proofs,
to the rarity of their always longed-for meetings, and to their mode of
life, which did not compel them to be constantly together, as a husband
and wife must be. But now she could remember with rapture that, tortured
by foolish fears, she had watched him with trembling during their first
stay on this little estate in the Gatinais. Vain suspiciousness of love!
Each of these months of happiness had passed like a dream in the midst
of joys which never rang false. She had always seen that kind creature
with a tender smile on his lips, a smile that seemed to mirror her own.
As she called up these vivid pictures, her eyes filled with tears; she
thought she could not love him enough, and was tempted to regard her
ambiguous position as a sort of tax levied by Fate on her love. Finally,
invincible curiosity led her to wonder for the thousandth time what
events they could be that led so tender a heart as Roger’s to find his
pleasure in clandestine and illicit happiness. She invented a thousand
romances on purpose really to avoid recognizing the true reason, which
she had long suspected but tried not to believe in. She rose, and
carrying the baby in her arms, went into the dining-room to superintend
the preparations for dinner.
It was the 6th of May 1822, the anniversary of the excursion to the Park
of Saint-Leu, which had been the turning-point of her life; each year it
had been marked by heartfelt rejoicing. Caroline chose the linen to
be used, and arranged the dessert. Having attended with joy to these
details, which touched Roger, she placed the infant in her pretty cot
and went out on to the balcony, whence she presently saw the carriage
which her friend, as he grew to riper years, now used instead of the
smart tilbury of his youth. After submitting to the first fire of
Caroline’s embraces and the kisses of the little rogue who addressed
him as papa, Roger went to the cradle, looked at his little sleeping
daughter, kissed her forehead, and then took out of his pocket a
document covered with black writing.
“Caroline,” said he, “here is the marriage portion of Mademoiselle
Eugenie de Bellefeuille.”
The mother gratefully took the paper, a deed of gift of securities in
the State funds.
“Buy why,” said she, “have you given Eugenie three thousand francs a
year, and Charles no more than fifteen hundred?”
“Charles, my love, will be a man,” replied he. “Fifteen hundred francs
are enough for him. With so much for certain, a man of courage is above
poverty. And if by chance your son should turn out a nonentity, I do
not wish him to be able to play the fool. If he is ambitious, this small
income will give him a taste for work.--Eugenie is a girl; she must have
a little fortune.”
The father then turned to play with his boy, whose effusive affection
showed the independence and freedom in which he was brought up. No sort
of shyness between the father and child interfered with the charm which
rewards a parent for his devotion; and the cheerfulness of the little
family was as sweet as it was genuine. In the evening a magic-lantern
displayed its illusions and mysterious pictures on a white sheet
to Charles’ great surprise, and more than once the innocent child’s
heavenly rapture made Caroline and Roger laugh heartily.
Later, when the little boy was in bed, the baby woke and craved its
limpid nourishment. By the light of a lamp in the chimney corner, Roger
enjoyed the scene of peace and comfort, and gave himself up to the
happiness of contemplating the sweet picture of the child clinging to
Caroline’s white bosom as she sat, as fresh as a newly opened lily,
while her hair fell in long brown curls that almost hid her neck. The
lamplight enhanced the grace of the young mother, shedding over her,
her dress, and the infant, the picturesque effects of strong light and
shadow.
The calm and silent woman’s face struck Roger as a thousand times
sweeter than ever, and he gazed tenderly at the rosy, pouting lips
from which no harsh word had ever been heard. The very same thought was
legible in Caroline’s eyes as she gave a sidelong look at Roger, either
to enjoy the effect she was producing on him, or to see what the end
of the evening was to be. He, understanding the meaning of this cunning
glance, said with assumed regret, “I must be going. I have a serious
case to be finished, and I am expected at home. Duty before all
things--don’t you think so, my darling?”
Caroline looked him in the face with an expression at once sad and
sweet, with the resignation which does not, however, disguise the pangs
of a sacrifice.
“Good-bye, then,” said she. “Go, for if you stay an hour longer I cannot
so lightly bear to set you free.”
“My dearest,” said he with a smile, “I have three days’ holiday, and am
supposed to be twenty leagues away from Paris.”
A few days after this anniversary of the 6th of May, Mademoiselle de
Bellefeuille hurried off one morning to the Rue Saint-Louis, in the
Marais, only hoping she might not arrive too late at a house where she
commonly went once a week. An express messenger had just come to inform
her that her mother, Madame Crochard, was sinking under a complication
of disorders produced by constant catarrh and rheumatism.
While the hackney coach-driver was flogging up his horses at Caroline’s
urgent request, supported by the promise of a handsome present, the
timid old women, who had been Madame Crochard’s friends during her later
years, had brought a priest into the neat and comfortable second-floor
rooms occupied by the old widow. Madame Crochard’s maid did not know
that the pretty lady at whose house her mistress so often dined was
her daughter, and she was one of the first to suggest the services of a
confessor, in the hope that this priest might be at least as useful
to herself as to the sick woman. Between two games of boston, or
out walking in the Jardin Turc, the old beldames with whom the widow
gossiped all day had succeeded in rousing in their friend’s stony heart
some scruples as to her former life, some visions of the future, some
fears of hell, and some hopes of forgiveness if she should return in
sincerity to a religious life. So on this solemn morning three ancient
females had settled themselves in the drawing-room where Madame Crochard
was “at home” every Tuesday. Each in turn left her armchair to go to the
poor old woman’s bedside and sit with her, giving her the false hopes
with which people delude the dying.
At the same time, when the end was drawing near, when the physician
called in the day before would no longer answer for her life, the three
dames took counsel together as to whether it would not be well to
send word to Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille. Francoise having been duly
informed, it was decided that a commissionaire should go to the Rue
Taitbout to inform the young relation whose influence was so disquieting
to the four women; still, they hoped that the Auvergnat would be too
late in bringing back the person who so certainly held the first
place in the widow Crochard’s affections. The widow, evidently in the
enjoyment of a thousand crowns a year, would not have been so fondly
cherished by this feminine trio, but that neither of them, nor Francoise
herself knew of her having any heir. The wealth enjoyed by Mademoiselle
de Bellefeuille, whom Madame Crochard, in obedience to the traditions of
the older opera, never allowed herself to speak of by the affectionate
name of daughter, almost justified the four women in their scheme of
dividing among themselves the old woman’s “pickings.”
Presently the one of these three sibyls who kept guard over the sick
woman came shaking her head at the other anxious two, and said:
“It is time we should be sending for the Abbe Fontanon. In another two
hours she will neither have the wit nor the strength to write a line.”
Thereupon the toothless old cook went off, and returned with a man
wearing a black gown. A low forehead showed a small mind in this
priest, whose features were mean; his flabby, fat cheeks and double chin
betrayed the easy-going egotist; his powdered hair gave him a pleasant
look, till he raised his small, brown eyes, prominent under a flat
forehead, and not unworthy to glitter under the brows of a Tartar.
“Monsieur l’Abbe,” said Francoise, “I thank you for all your advice; but
believe me, I have taken the greatest care of the dear soul.”
But the servant, with her dragging step and woe-begone look, was silent
when she saw that the door of the apartment was open, and that the most
insinuating of the three dowagers was standing on the landing to be the
first to speak with the confessor. When the priest had politely faced
the honeyed and bigoted broadside of words fired off from the widow’s
three friends, he went into the sickroom to sit by Madame Crochard.
Decency, and some sense of reserve, compelled the three women and old
Francoise to remain in the sitting-room, and to make such grimaces of
grief as are possible in perfection only to such wrinkled faces.
“Oh, is it not ill-luck!” cried Francoise, heaving a sigh. “This is
the fourth mistress I have buried. The first left me a hundred francs a
year, the second a sum of fifty crowns, and the third a thousand crowns
down. After thirty years’ service, that is all I have to call my own.”
The woman took advantage of her freedom to come and go, to slip into a
cupboard, whence she could hear the priest.
“I see with pleasure, daughter,” said Fontanon, “that you have pious
sentiments; you have a sacred relic round your neck.”
Madame Crochard, with a feeble vagueness which seemed to show that she
had not all her wits about her, pulled out the Imperial Cross of the
Legion of Honor. The priest started back at seeing the Emperor’s head;
he went up to the penitent again, and she spoke to him, but in such a
low tone that for some minutes Francoise could hear nothing.
“Woe upon me!” cried the old woman suddenly. “Do not desert me. What,
Monsieur l’Abbe, do you think I shall be called to account for my
daughter’s soul?”
The Abbe spoke too low, and the partition was too thick for Francoise to
hear the reply.
“Alas!” sobbed the woman, “the wretch has left me nothing that I can
bequeath. When he robbed me of my dear Caroline, he parted us, and only
allowed me three thousand francs a year, of which the capital belongs to
my daughter.”
“Madame has a daughter, and nothing to live on but an annuity,” shrieked
Francoise, bursting into the drawing-room.
The three old crones looked at each other in dismay. One of them, whose
nose and chin nearly met with an expression that betrayed a superior
type of hypocrisy and cunning, winked her eyes; and as soon as
Francoise’s back was turned, she gave her friends a nod, as much as to
say, “That slut is too knowing by half; her name has figured in three
wills already.”
So the three old dames sat on.
However, the Abbe presently came out, and at a word from him the witches
scuttered down the stairs at his heels, leaving Francoise alone with her
mistress. Madame Crochard, whose sufferings increased in severity, rang,
but in vain, for this woman, who only called out, “Coming, coming--in
a minute!” The doors of cupboards and wardrobes were slamming as though
Francoise were hunting high and low for a lost lottery ticket.
Just as this crisis was at a climax, Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille came
to stand by her mother’s bed, lavishing tender words on her.
“Oh my dear mother, how criminal I have been! You are ill, and I did not
know it; my heart did not warn me. However, here I am--”
“Caroline--”
“What is it?”
“They fetched a priest--”
“But send for a doctor, bless me!” cried Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille.
“Francoise, a doctor! How is it that these ladies never sent for a
doctor?”
“They sent for a priest----” repeated the old woman with a gasp.
“She is so ill--and no soothing draught, nothing on her table!”
The mother made a vague sign, which Caroline’s watchful eye understood,
for she was silent to let her mother speak.
“They brought a priest--to hear my confession, as they said.--Beware,
Caroline!” cried the old woman with an effort, “the priest made me tell
him your benefactor’s name.”
“But who can have told you, poor mother?”
The old woman died, trying to look knowingly cunning. If Mademoiselle de
Bellefeuille had noted her mother’s face she might have seen what no one
ever will see--Death laughing.
To enter into the interests that lay beneath this introduction to my
tale, we must for a moment forget the actors in it, and look back at
certain previous incidents, of which the last was closely concerned with
the death of Madame Crochard. The two parts will then form a whole--a
story which, by a law peculiar to life in Paris, was made up of two
distinct sets of actions.
Towards the close of the month of November 1805, a young barrister, aged
about six-and-twenty, was going down the stairs of the hotel where
the High Chancellor of the Empire resided, at about three o’clock one
morning. Having reached the courtyard in full evening dress, under
a keen frost, he could not help giving vent to an exclamation of
dismay--qualified, however, by the spirit which rarely deserts a
Frenchman--at seeing no hackney coach waiting outside the gates, and
hearing no noises such as arise from the wooden shoes or harsh voices
of the hackney-coachmen of Paris. The occasional pawing of the horses
of the Chief Justice’s carriage--the young man having left him still
playing _bouillote_ with Cambaceres--alone rang out in the paved court,
which was scarcely lighted by the carriage lamps. Suddenly the young
lawyer felt a friendly hand on his shoulder, and turning round, found
himself face to face with the Judge, to whom he bowed. As the footman
let down the steps of his carriage, the old gentleman, who had served
the Convention, suspected the junior’s dilemma.
“All cats are gray in the dark,” said he good-humoredly. “The Chief
Justice cannot compromise himself by putting a pleader in the right
way! Especially,” he went on, “when the pleader is the nephew of an old
colleague, one of the lights of the grand Council of State which gave
France the Napoleonic Code.”
At a gesture from the chief magistrate of France under the Empire, the
foot-passenger got into the carriage.
“Where do you live?” asked the great man, before the footman who awaited
his orders had closed the door.
“Quai des Augustins, monseigneur.”
The horses started, and the young man found himself alone with the
Minister, to whom he had vainly tried to speak before and after the
sumptuous dinner given by Cambaceres; in fact, the great man had
evidently avoided him throughout the evening.
“Well, Monsieur _de_ Granville, you are on the high road!”
“So long as I sit by your Excellency’s side--”
“Nay, I am not jesting,” said the Minister. “You were called two years
since, and your defence in the case of Simeuse and Hauteserre had raised
you high in your profession.”
“I had supposed that my interest in those unfortunate emigres had done
me no good.”
“You are still very young,” said the great man gravely. “But the High
Chancellor,” he went on, after a pause, “was greatly pleased with you
this evening. Get a judgeship in the lower courts; we want men. The
nephew of a man in whom Cambaceres and I take great interest must not
remain in the background for lack of encouragement. Your uncle helped
us to tide over a very stormy season, and services of that kind are not
forgotten.” The Minister sat silent for a few minutes. “Before long,” he
went on, “I shall have three vacancies open in the Lower Courts and
in the Imperial Court in Paris. Come to see me, and take the place you
prefer. Till then work hard, but do not be seen at my receptions. In the
first place, I am overwhelmed with work; and besides that, your rivals
may suspect your purpose and do you harm with the patron. Cambaceres
and I, by not speaking a word to you this evening, have averted the
accusation of favoritism.”
As the great man ceased speaking, the carriage drew up on the Quai des
Augustins; the young lawyer thanked his generous patron for the two
lifts he had conferred on him, and then knocked at his door pretty
loudly, for the bitter wind blew cold about his calves. At last the old
lodgekeeper pulled up the latch; and as the young man passed his window,
called out in a hoarse voice, “Monsieur Granville, here is a letter for
you.”
The young man took the letter, and in spite of the cold, tried to
identify the writing by the gleam of a dull lamp fast dying out. “From
my father!” he exclaimed, as he took his bedroom candle, which the
porter at last had lighted. And he ran up to his room to read the
following epistle:--
“Set off by the next mail; and if you can get here soon enough,
your fortune is made. Mademoiselle Angelique Bontems has lost her
sister; she is now an only child; and, as we know, she does not
hate you. Madame Bontems can now leave her about forty thousand
francs a year, besides whatever she may give her when she marries.
I have prepared the way.
“Our friends will wonder to see a family of old nobility allying
itself to the Bontems; old Bontems was a red republican of the
deepest dye, owning large quantities of the nationalized land,
that he bought for a mere song. But he held nothing but convent
lands, and the monks will not come back; and then, as you have
already so far derogated as to become a lawyer, I cannot see why
we should shrink from a further concession to the prevalent ideas.
The girl will have three hundred thousand francs; I can give you a
hundred thousand; your mother’s property must be worth fifty
thousand crowns, more or less; so if you choose to take a
judgeship, my dear son, you are quite in a position to become a
senator as much as any other man. My brother-in-law the Councillor
of State will not indeed lend you a helping-hand; still, as he is
not married, his property will some day be yours, and if you are
not senator by your own efforts, you will get it through him. Then
you will be perched high enough to look on at events. Farewell.
Yours affectionately.”
So young Granville went to bed full of schemes, each fairer than the
last. Under the powerful protection of the High Chancellor, the Chief
Justice, and his mother’s brother--one of the originators of the
Code--he was about to make a start in a coveted position before the
highest court of the Empire, and he already saw himself a member of the
bench whence Napoleon selected the chief functionaries of the realm.
He could also promise himself a fortune handsome enough to keep up
his rank, for which the slender income of five thousand francs from an
estate left him by his mother would be quite insufficient.
To crown his ambitious dreams with a vision of happiness, he called up
the guileless face of Mademoiselle Angelique Bontems, the companion of
his childhood. Until he came to boyhood his father and mother had
made no objection to his intimacy with their neighbor’s pretty little
daughter; but when, during his brief holiday visits to Bayeux, his
parents, who prided themselves on their good birth, saw what friends the
young people were, they forbade his ever thinking of her. Thus for ten
years past Granville had only had occasional glimpses of the girl, whom
he still sometimes thought of as “his little wife.” And in those
brief moments when they met free from the active watchfulness of their
families, they had scarcely exchanged a few vague civilities at the
church door or in the street. Their happiest days had been those when,
brought together by one of those country festivities known in Normandy
as _Assemblees_, they could steal a glance at each other from afar.
In the course of the last vacation Granville had twice seen Angelique,
and her downcast eyes and drooping attitude had led him to suppose that
she was crushed by some unknown tyranny.