solicitude.
“Ah! I only wish,” cried the Normandy priest, “that all the woes
inflicted on you by the hand of God were dealt out to me; but, my
admirable friend, there are trials to which you can but bow.”
“Can any worse punishments await me than those with which Providence
crushes me by making my husband the instrument of His wrath?”
“You must prepare yourself, daughter, to yet worse mischief than we and
your pious friends had ever conceived of.”
“Then I may thank God,” said the Countess, “for vouchsafing to use you
as the messenger of His will, and thus, as ever, setting the treasures
of mercy by the side of the scourges of His wrath, just as in bygone
days He showed a spring to Hagar when He had driven her into the
desert.”
“He measures your sufferings by the strength of your resignation and the
weight of your sins.”
“Speak; I am ready to hear!” As she said it she cast her eyes up to
heaven. “Speak, Monsieur Fontanon.”
“For seven years Monsieur Granville has lived in sin with a concubine,
by whom he has two children; and on this adulterous connection he has
spent more than five hundred thousand francs, which ought to have been
the property of his legitimate family.”
“I must see it to believe it!” cried the Countess.
“Far be it from you!” exclaimed the Abbe. “You must forgive, my
daughter, and wait in patience and prayer till God enlightens your
husband; unless, indeed, you choose to adopt against him the means
offered you by human laws.”
The long conversation that ensued between the priest and his penitent
resulted in an extraordinary change in the Countess; she abruptly
dismissed him, called her servants who were alarmed at her flushed face
and crazy energy. She ordered her carriage--countermanded it--changed
her mind twenty times in the hour; but at last, at about three o’clock,
as if she had come to some great determination, she went out, leaving
the whole household in amazement at such a sudden transformation.
“Is the Count coming home to dinner?” she asked of his servant, to whom
she would never speak.
“No, madame.”
“Did you go with him to the Courts this morning?”
“Yes, madame.”
“And to-day is Monday?”
“Yes, madame.”
“Then do the Courts sit on Mondays nowadays?”
“Devil take you!” cried the man, as his mistress drove off after saying
to the coachman:
“Rue Taitbout.”
Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille was weeping: Roger, sitting by her side,
held one of her hands between his own. He was silent, looking by turns
at little Charles--who, not understanding his mother’s grief, stood
speechless at the sight of her tears--at the cot where Eugenie lay
sleeping, and Caroline’s face, on which grief had the effect of rain
falling across the beams of cheerful sunshine.
“Yes, my darling,” said Roger, after a long silence, “that is the great
secret: I am married. But some day I hope we may form but one family. My
wife has been given over ever since last March. I do not wish her dead;
still, if it should please God to take her to Himself, I believe
she will be happier in Paradise than in a world to whose griefs and
pleasures she is equally indifferent.”
“How I hate that woman! How could she bear to make you unhappy? And yet
it is to that unhappiness that I owe my happiness!”
Her tears suddenly ceased.
“Caroline, let us hope,” cried Roger. “Do not be frightened by anything
that priest may have said to you. Though my wife’s confessor is a man to
be feared for his power in the congregation, if he should try to blight
our happiness I would find means--”
“What could you do?”
“We would go to Italy: I would fly--”
A shriek that rang out from the adjoining room made Roger start
and Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille quake; but she rushed into the
drawing-room, and there found Madame de Granville in a dead faint. When
the Countess recovered her senses, she sighed deeply on finding herself
supported by the Count and her rival, whom she instinctively pushed
away with a gesture of contempt. Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille rose to
withdraw.
“You are at home, madame,” said Granville, taking Caroline by the arm.
“Stay.”
The Judge took up his wife in his arms, carried her to the carriage, and
got into it with her.
“Who is it that has brought you to the point of wishing me dead, of
resolving to fly?” asked the Countess, looking at her husband with grief
mingled with indignation. “Was I not young? you thought me pretty--what
fault have you to find with me? Have I been false to you? Have I not
been a virtuous and well-conducted wife? My heart has cherished no image
but yours, my ears have listened to no other voice. What duty have I
failed in? What have I ever denied you?”
“Happiness, madame,” said the Count severely. “You know, madame, that
there are two ways of serving God. Some Christians imagine that by
going to church at fixed hours to say a _Paternoster_, by attending Mass
regularly and avoiding sin, they may win heaven--but they, madame, will
go to hell; they have not loved God for himself, they have not worshiped
Him as He chooses to be worshiped, they have made no sacrifice. Though
mild in seeming, they are hard on their neighbors; they see the law, the
letter, not the spirit.--This is how you have treated me, your earthly
husband; you have sacrificed my happiness to your salvation; you were
always absorbed in prayer when I came to you in gladness of heart;
you wept when you should have cheered my toil; you have never tried to
satisfy any demands I have made on you.”
“And if they were wicked,” cried the Countess hotly, “was I to lose my
soul to please you?”
“It is a sacrifice which another, a more loving woman, has dared to
make,” said Granville coldly.
“Dear God!” she cried, bursting into tears, “Thou hearest! Has he been
worthy of the prayers and penance I have lived in, wearing myself out to
atone for his sins and my own?--Of what avail is virtue?”
“To win Heaven, my dear. A woman cannot be at the same time the wife of
a man and the spouse of Christ. That would be bigamy; she must choose
between a husband and a nunnery. For the sake of future advantage you
have stripped your soul of all the love, all the devotion, which God
commands that you should have for me, you have cherished no feeling but
hatred--”
“Have I not loved you?” she put in.
“No, madame.”
“Then what is love?” the Countess involuntarily inquired.
“Love, my dear,” replied Granville, with a sort of ironical surprise,
“you are incapable of understanding it. The cold sky of Normandy is not
that of Spain. This difference of climate is no doubt the secret of our
disaster.--To yield to our caprices, to guess them, to find pleasure in
pain, to sacrifice the world’s opinion, your pride, your religion even,
and still regard these offerings as mere grains of incense burnt in
honor of the idol--that is love--”
“The love of ballet-girls!” cried the Countess in horror. “Such flames
cannot last, and must soon leave nothing but ashes and cinders, regret
or despair. A wife ought, in my opinion, to bring you true friendship,
equable warmth--”
“You speak of warmth as negroes speak of ice,” retorted the Count, with
a sardonic smile. “Consider that the humblest daisy has more charms than
the proudest and most gorgeous of the red hawthorns that attract us in
spring by their strong scent and brilliant color.--At the same time,”
he went on, “I will do you justice. You have kept so precisely in the
straight path of imaginary duty prescribed by law, that only to make you
understand wherein you have failed towards me, I should be obliged to
enter into details which would offend your dignity, and instruct you in
matters which would seem to you to undermine all morality.”
“And you dare to speak of morality when you have but just left the house
where you have dissipated your children’s fortune in debaucheries?”
cried the Countess, maddened by her husband’s reticence.
“There, madame, I must correct you,” said the Count, coolly interrupting
his wife. “Though Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille is rich, it is at
nobody’s expense. My uncle was master of his fortune, and had several
heirs. In his lifetime, and out of pure friendship, regarding her as his
niece, he gave her the little estate of Bellefeuille. As for anything
else, I owe it to his liberality--”
“Such conduct is only worthy of a Jacobin!” said the sanctimonious
Angelique.
“Madame, you are forgetting that your own father was one of the Jacobins
whom you scorn so uncharitably,” said the Count severely. “Citizen
Bontems was signing death-warrants at a time when my uncle was doing
France good service.”
Madame de Granville was silenced. But after a short pause, the
remembrance of what she had just seen reawakened in her soul the
jealousy which nothing can kill in a woman’s heart, and she murmured,
as if to herself--“How can a woman thus destroy her own soul and that of
others?”
“Bless me, madame,” replied the Count, tired of this dialogue, “you
yourself may some day have to answer that question.” The Countess was
scared. “You perhaps will be held excused by the merciful Judge, who
will weigh our sins,” he went on, “in consideration of the conviction
with which you have worked out my misery. I do not hate you--I hate
those who have perverted your heart and your reason. You have prayed
for me, just as Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille has given me her heart
and crowned my life with love. You should have been my mistress and the
prayerful saint by turns.--Do me the justice to confess that I am no
reprobate, no debauchee. My life was cleanly. Alas! after seven years
of wretchedness, the craving for happiness led me by an imperceptible
descent to love another woman and make a second home. And do not imagine
that I am singular; there are in this city thousands of husbands, all
led by various causes to live this twofold life.”
“Great God!” cried the Countess. “How heavy is the cross Thou hast laid
on me to bear! If the husband Thou hast given me here below in Thy wrath
can only be made happy through my death, take me to Thyself!”
“If you had always breathed such admirable sentiments and such devotion,
we should be happy yet,” said the Count coldly.
“Indeed,” cried Angelique, melting into a flood of tears, “forgive me
if I have done any wrong. Yes, monsieur, I am ready to obey you in all
things, feeling sure that you will desire nothing but what is just and
natural; henceforth I will be all you can wish your wife to be.”
“If your purpose, madame, is to compel me to say that I no longer love
you, I shall find the cruel courage to tell you so. Can I command my
heart? Can I wipe out in an instant the traces of fifteen years of
suffering?--I have ceased to love.--These words contain a mystery as
deep as lies the words _I love_. Esteem, respect, friendship may be won,
lost, regained; but as to love--I might school myself for a thousand
years, and it would not blossom again, especially for a woman too old to
respond to it.”
“I hope, Monsieur le Comte, I sincerely hope, that such words may not
be spoken to you some day by the woman you love, and in such a tone and
accent--”
“Will you put on a dress _a la Grecque_ this evening, and come to the
Opera?”
The shudder with which the Countess received the suggestion was a mute
reply.
Early in December 1833, a man, whose perfectly white hair and worn
features seemed to show that he was aged by grief rather than by years,
was walking at midnight along the Rue Gaillon. Having reached a house
of modest appearance, and only two stories high, he paused to look up at
one of the attic windows that pierced the roof at regular intervals. A
dim light scarcely showed through the humble panes, some of which
had been repaired with paper. The man below was watching the wavering
glimmer with the vague curiosity of a Paris idler, when a young man came
out of the house. As the light of the street lamp fell full on the face
of the first comer, it will not seem surprising that, in spite of the
darkness, this young man went towards the passer-by, though with the
hesitancy that is usual when we have any fear of making a mistake in
recognizing an acquaintance.
“What, is it you,” cried he, “Monsieur le President? Alone at this hour,
and so far from the Rue Saint-Lazare. Allow me to have the honor of
giving you my arm.--The pavement is so greasy this morning, that if
we do not hold each other up,” he added, to soothe the elder man’s
susceptibilities, “we shall find it hard to escape a tumble.”
“But, my dear sir, I am no more than fifty-five, unfortunately for me,”
replied the Comte de Granville. “A physician of your celebrity must know
that at that age a man is still hale and strong.”
“Then you are in waiting on a lady, I suppose,” replied Horace Bianchon.
“You are not, I imagine, in the habit of going about Paris on foot. When
a man keeps such fine horses----”
“Still, when I am not visiting in the evening, I commonly return from
the Courts or the club on foot,” replied the Count.
“And with large sums of money about you, perhaps!” cried the doctor. “It
is a positive invitation to the assassin’s knife.”
“I am not afraid of that,” said Granville, with melancholy indifference.
“But, at least, do not stand about,” said the doctor, leading the Count
towards the boulevard. “A little more and I shall believe that you are
bent of robbing me of your last illness, and dying by some other hand
than mine.”
“You caught me playing the spy,” said the Count. “Whether on foot or in
a carriage, and at whatever hour of the night I may come by, I have for
some time past observed at a window on the third floor of your house the
shadow of a person who seems to work with heroic constancy.”
The Count paused as if he felt some sudden pain. “And I take as great an
interest in that garret,” he went on, “as a citizen of Paris must feel
in the finishing of the Palais Royal.”
“Well,” said Horace Bianchon eagerly, “I can tell you--”
“Tell me nothing,” replied Granville, cutting the doctor short. “I would
not give a centime to know whether the shadow that moves across that
shabby blind is that of a man or a woman, nor whether the inhabitant of
that attic is happy or miserable. Though I was surprised to see no one
at work there this evening, and though I stopped to look, it was solely
for the pleasure of indulging in conjectures as numerous and as idiotic
as those of idlers who see a building left half finished. For nine
years, my young--” the Count hesitated to use a word; then he waved his
hand, exclaiming--“No, I will not say friend--I hate everything that
savors of sentiment.--Well, for nine years past I have ceased to wonder
that old men amuse themselves with growing flowers and planting trees;
the events of life have taught them disbelief in all human affection;
and I grew old within a few days. I will no longer attach myself to any
creature but to unreasoning animals, or plants, or superficial things.
I think more of Taglioni’s grace than of all human feeling. I abhor life
and the world in which I live alone. Nothing, nothing,” he went on, in
a tone that startled the younger man, “no, nothing can move or interest
me.”
“But you have children?”
“My children!” he repeated bitterly. “Yes--well, is not my eldest
daughter the Comtesse de Vandenesse? The other will, through her
sister’s connections, make some good match. As to my sons, have they
not succeeded? The Viscount was public prosecutor at Limoges, and is now
President of the Court at Orleans; the younger is public prosecutor
in Paris.--My children have their own cares, their own anxieties and
business to attend to. If of all those hearts one had been devoted to
me, if one had tried by entire affection to fill up the void I have
here,” and he struck his breast, “well, that one would have failed
in life, have sacrificed it to me. And why should he? Why? To bring
sunshine into my few remaining years--and would he have succeeded? Might
I not have accepted such generosity as a debt? But, doctor,” and the
Count smiled with deep irony, “it is not for nothing that we teach them
arithmetic and how to count. At this moment perhaps they are waiting for
my money.”
“O Monsieur le Comte, how could such an idea enter your head--you who
are kind, friendly, and humane! Indeed, if I were not myself a living
proof of the benevolence you exercise so liberally and so nobly--”
“To please myself,” replied the Count. “I pay for a sensation, as I
would to-morrow pay a pile of gold to recover the most childish illusion
that would but make my heart glow.--I help my fellow-creatures for my
own sake, just as I gamble; and I look for gratitude from none. I should
see you die without blinking; and I beg of you to feel the same with
regard to me. I tell you, young man, the events of life have swept
over my heart like the lavas of Vesuvius over Herculaneum. The town is
there--dead.”
“Those who have brought a soul as warm and as living as yours was to
such a pitch of indifference are indeed guilty!”
“Say no more,” said the Count, with a shudder of aversion.
“You have a malady which you ought to allow me to treat,” said Bianchon
in a tone of deep emotion.
“What, do you know of a cure for death?” cried the Count irritably.
“I undertake, Monsieur le Comte, to revive the heart you believe to be
frozen.”
“Are you a match for Talma, then?” asked the Count satirically.
“No, Monsieur le Comte. But Nature is as far above Talma as Talma is
superior to me.--Listen: the garret you are interested in is inhabited
by a woman of about thirty, and in her love is carried to fanaticism.
The object of her adoration is a young man of pleasing appearance but
endowed by some malignant fairy with every conceivable vice. This fellow
is a gambler, and it is hard to say which he is most addicted to--wine
or women; he has, to my knowledge, committed acts deserving punishment
by law. Well, and to him this unhappy woman sacrificed a life of ease,
a man who worshiped her, and the father of her children.--But what is
wrong, Monsieur le Comte?”
“Nothing. Go on.”
“She has allowed him to squander a perfect fortune; she would, I
believe, give him the world if she had it; she works night and day; and
many a time she has, without a murmur, seen the wretch she adores rob
her even of the money saved to buy the clothes the children need, and
their food for the morrow. Only three days ago she sold her hair, the
finest hair I ever saw; he came in, she could not hide the gold piece
quickly enough, and he asked her for it. For a smile, for a kiss, she
gave up the price of a fortnight’s life and peace. Is it not dreadful,
and yet sublime?--But work is wearing her cheeks hollow. Her children’s
crying has broken her heart; she is ill, and at this moment on her
wretched bed. This evening they had nothing to eat; the children have
not strength to cry, they were silent when I went up.”
Horace Bianchon stood still. Just then the Comte de Granville, in spite
of himself, as it were, had put his hand into his waistcoat pocket.
“I can guess, my young friend, how it is that she is yet alive if you
attend her,” said the elder man.
“O poor soul!” cried the doctor, “who could refuse to help her? I only
wish I were richer, for I hope to cure her of her passion.”
“But how can you expect me to pity a form of misery of which the joys
to me would seem cheaply purchased with my whole fortune!” exclaimed
the Count, taking his hand out of his pocket empty of the notes which
Bianchon had supposed his patron to be feeling for. “That woman feels,
she is alive! Would not Louis XV. have given his kingdom to rise from
the grave and have three days of youth and life! And is not that the
history of thousands of dead men, thousands of sick men, thousands of
old men?”
“Poor Caroline!” cried Bianchon.
As he heard the name the Count shuddered, and grasped the doctor’s arm
with the grip of an iron vise, as it seemed to Bianchon.
“Her name is Caroline Crochard?” asked the President, in a voice that
was evidently broken.
“Then you know her?” said the doctor, astonished.
“And the wretch’s name is Solvet.--Ay, you have kept your word!”
exclaimed Granville; “you have roused my heart to the most terrible pain
it can suffer till it is dust. That emotion, too, is a gift from hell,
and I always know how to pay those debts.”
By this time the Count and the doctor had reached the corner of the Rue
de la Chaussee d’Antin. One of those night-birds who wonder round with a
basket on their back and crook in hand, and were, during the Revolution,
facetiously called the Committee of Research, was standing by the
curbstone where the two men now stopped. This scavenger had a shriveled
face worthy of those immortalized by Charlet in his caricatures of the
sweepers of Paris.
“Do you ever pick up a thousand-franc note?”
“Now and then, master.”
“And you restore them?”
“It depends on the reward offered.”
“You’re the man for me,” cried the Count, giving the man a
thousand-franc note. “Take this, but, remember, I give it to you on
condition of your spending it at the wineshop, of your getting drunk,
fighting, beating your wife, blacking your friends’ eyes. That will give
work to the watch, the surgeon, the druggist--perhaps to the police, the
public prosecutor, the judge, and the prison warders. Do not try to do
anything else, or the devil will be revenged on you sooner or later.”
A draughtsman would need at once the pencil of Charlet and of Callot,
the brush of Teniers and of Rembrandt, to give a true notion of this
night-scene.
“Now I have squared accounts with hell, and had some pleasure for my
money,” said the Count in a deep voice, pointing out the indescribable
physiognomy of the gaping scavenger to the doctor, who stood stupefied.
“As for Caroline Crochard!--she may die of hunger and thirst, hearing
the heartrending shrieks of her starving children, and convinced of the
baseness of the man she loves. I will not give a sou to rescue her; and
because you have helped her, I will see you no more----”
The Count left Bianchon standing like a statue, and walked as briskly
as a young man to the Rue Saint-Lazare, soon reaching the little house
where he resided, and where, to his surprise, he found a carriage
waiting at the door.
“Monsieur, your son, the attorney-general, came about an hour since,”
said the man-servant, “and is waiting for you in your bedroom.”
Granville signed to the man to leave him.
“What motive can be strong enough to require you to infringe the order
I have given my children never to come to me unless I send for them?”
asked the Count of his son as he went into the room.
“Father,” replied the younger man in a tremulous voice, and with great
respect, “I venture to hope that you will forgive me when you have heard
me.”
“Your reply is proper,” said the Count. “Sit down,” and he pointed to
a chair, “But whether I walk up and down, or take a seat, speak without
heeding me.”
“Father,” the son went on, “this afternoon, at four o’clock, a very
young man who was arrested in the house of a friend of mine, whom he had
robbed to a considerable extent, appealed to you.--He says he is your
son.”
“His name?” asked the Count hoarsely.
“Charles Crochard.”
“That will do,” said the father, with an imperious wave of the hand.
Granville paced the room in solemn silence, and his son took care not to
break it.
“My son,” he began, and the words were pronounced in a voice so mild
and fatherly, that the young lawyer started, “Charles Crochard spoke the
truth.--I am glad you came to me to-night, my good Eugene,” he added.
“Here is a considerable sum of money”--and he gave him a bundle of
banknotes--“you can make any use of them you think proper in this
matter. I trust you implicitly, and approve beforehand whatever
arrangements you may make, either in the present or for the
future.--Eugene my dear son, kiss me. We part perhaps for the last time.
I shall to-morrow crave my dismissal from the King, and I am going to
Italy.