quibble.--Suppose you had the money, I ought perhaps to have waited
until I had your authorization; but I, Comte d’Esgrignon, was pressed
for money, so I---- Come, come, your prosecution is a piece of
revengeful spite. Forgery is defined by the law as an attempt to obtain
any advantage which rightfully belongs to another. There is no forgery
here, according to the letter of the Roman law, nor according to the
spirit of modern jurisprudence (always from the point of a civil action,
for we are not here concerned with the falsification of public or
authentic documents). Between private individuals the essence of a
forgery is the intent to defraud; where is it in this case? In what
times are we living, gentlemen? Here is the President going away to balk
a preliminary examination which ought to be over by this time! Until
to-day I did not know M. le President, but he shall have the benefit of
arrears; from this time forth he shall draft his decisions himself. You
must set about this affair with all possible speed, M. Camusot.”
“Yes,” said Michu. “In my opinion, instead of letting the young man out
on bail, we ought to pull him out of this mess at once. Everything turns
on the examination of du Croisier and his wife. You might summons
them to appear while the court is sitting, M. Camusot; take down their
depositions before four o’clock, send in your report to-night, and we
will give our decision in the morning before the court sits.”
“We will settle what course to pursue while the barristers are
pleading,” said Vice-President Blondet, addressing Camusot.
And with that the three judges put on their robes and went into court.
At noon Mlle. Armande and the Bishop reached the Hotel d’Esgrignon;
Chesnel and M. Couturier were there to meet them. There was a
sufficiently short conference between the prelate and Mme. du Croisier’s
director, and the latter set out at once to visit his charge.
At eleven o’clock that morning du Croisier received a summons to
appear in the examining magistrate’s office between one and two in
the afternoon. Thither he betook himself, consumed by well-founded
suspicions. It was impossible that the President should have foreseen
the arrival of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse upon the scene, the return
of the public prosecutor, and the hasty confabulation of his learned
brethren; so he had omitted to trace out a plan for du Croisier’s
guidance in the event of the preliminary examination taking place.
Neither of the pair imagined that the proceedings would be hurried on in
this way. Du Croisier obeyed the summons at once; he wanted to know
how M. Camusot was disposed to act. So he was compelled to answer the
questions put to him. Camusot addressed him in summary fashion with the
six following inquiries:--
“Was the signature on the bill alleged to be a forgery in your
handwriting?--Had you previously done business with M. le Comte
d’Esgrignon?--Was not M. le Comte d’Esgrignon in the habit of
drawing upon you, with or without advice?--Did you not write a letter
authorizing M. d’Esgrignon to rely upon you at any time?--Had not
Chesnel squared the account not once, but many times already?--Were you
not away from home when this took place?”
All these questions the banker answered in the affirmative. In spite of
wordy explanations, the magistrate always brought him back to a “Yes”
or “No.” When the questions and answers alike had been resumed in the
proces-verbal, the examining magistrate brought out a final thunderbolt.
“Was du Croisier aware that the money destined to meet the bill had been
deposited with him, du Croisier, according to Chesnel’s declaration, and
a letter of advice sent by the said Chesnel to the Comte d’Esgrignon,
five days before the date of the bill?”
That last question frightened du Croisier. He asked what was meant by
it, and whether he was supposed to be the defendant and M. le Comte
d’Esgrignon the plaintiff? He called the magistrate’s attention to the
fact that if the money had been deposited with him, there was no ground
for the action.
“Justice is seeking information,” said the magistrate, as he dismissed
the witness, but not before he had taken down du Croisier’s last
observation.
“But the money, sir----”
“The money is at your house.”
Chesnel, likewise summoned, came forward to explain the matter. The
truth of his assertions was borne out by Mme. du Croisier’s deposition.
The Count had already been examined. Prompted by Chesnel, he produced du
Croisier’s first letter, in which he begged the Count to draw upon him
without the insulting formality of depositing the amount beforehand. The
Comte d’Esgrignon next brought out a letter in Chesnel’s handwriting, by
which the notary advised him of the deposit of a hundred thousand crowns
with M. du Croisier. With such primary facts as these to bring
forward as evidence, the young Count’s innocence was bound to emerge
triumphantly from a court of law.
Du Croisier went home from the court, his face white with rage, and the
foam of repressed fury on his lips. His wife was sitting by the fireside
in the drawing-room at work upon a pair of slippers for him. She
trembled when she looked into his face, but her mind was made up.
“Madame,” he stammered out, “what deposition is this that you made
before the magistrate? You have dishonored, ruined, and betrayed me!”
“I have saved you, monsieur,” answered she. “If some day you will have
the honor of connecting yourself with the d’Esgrignons by marrying your
niece to the Count, it will be entirely owing to my conduct to-day.”
“A miracle!” cried he. “Balaam’s ass has spoken. Nothing will astonish
me after this. And where are the hundred thousand crowns which (so M.
Camusot tells me) are here in my house?”
“Here they are,” said she, pulling out a bundle of banknotes from
beneath the cushions of her settee. “I have not committed mortal sin by
declaring that M. Chesnel gave them into my keeping.”
“While I was away?”
“You were not here.”
“Will you swear that to me on your salvation?”
“I swear it,” she said composedly.
“Then why did you say nothing to me about it?” demanded he.
“I was wrong there,” said his wife, “but my mistake was all for your
good. Your niece will be Marquise d’Esgrignon some of these days, and
you will perhaps be a deputy, if you behave well in this deplorable
business. You have gone too far; you must find out how to get back
again.”
Du Croisier, under stress of painful agitation, strode up and down his
drawing-room; while his wife, in no less agitation, awaited the result
of this exercise. Du Croisier at length rang the bell.
“I am not at home to any one to-night,” he said, when the man appeared;
“shut the gates; and if any one calls, tell them that your mistress and
I have gone into the country. We shall start directly after dinner, and
dinner must be half an hour earlier than usual.”
The great news was discussed that evening in every drawing-room;
little shopkeepers, working folk, beggars, the noblesse, the merchant
class--the whole town, in short, was talking of the Comte d’Esgrignon’s
arrest on a charge of forgery. The Comte d’Esgrignon would be tried in
the Assize Court; he would be condemned and branded. Most of those who
cared for the honor of the family denied the fact. At nightfall Chesnel
went to Mme. Camusot and escorted the stranger to the Hotel d’Esgrignon.
Poor Mlle. Armande was expecting him; she led the fair Duchess to her
own room, which she had given up to her, for his lordship the Bishop
occupied Victurnien’s chamber; and, left alone with her guest, the noble
woman glanced at the Duchess with most piteous eyes.
“You owed help, indeed, madame, to the poor boy who ruined himself for
your sake,” she said, “the boy to whom we are all of us sacrificing
ourselves.”
The Duchess had already made a woman’s survey of Mlle. d’Esgrignon’s
room; the cold, bare, comfortless chamber, that might have been a nun’s
cell, was like a picture of the life of the heroic woman before her. The
Duchess saw it all--past, present, and future--with rising emotion, felt
the incongruity of her presence, and could not keep back the falling
tears that made answer for her.
But in Mlle. Armande the Christian overcame Victurnien’s aunt. “Ah, I
was wrong; forgive me, Mme. la Duchesse; you did not know how poor we
were, and my nephew was incapable of the admission. And besides, now
that I see you, I can understand all--even the crime!”
And Mlle. Armande, withered and thin and white, but beautiful as those
tall austere slender figures which German art alone can paint, had tears
too in her eyes.
“Do not fear, dear angel,” the Duchess said at last; “he is safe.”
“Yes, but honor?--and his career? Chesnel told me; the King knows the
truth.”
“We will think of a way of repairing the evil,” said the Duchess.
Mlle. Armande went downstairs to the salon, and found the Collection of
Antiquities complete to a man. Every one of them had come, partly to
do honor to the Bishop, partly to rally round the Marquis; but Chesnel,
posted in the antechamber, warned each new arrival to say no word of
the affair, that the aged Marquis might never know that such a thing
had been. The loyal Frank was quite capable of killing his son or du
Croisier; for either the one or the other must have been guilty of
death in his eyes. It chanced, strangely enough, that he talked more of
Victurnien than usual; he was glad that his son had gone back to Paris.
The King would give Victurnien a place before very long; the King was
interesting himself at last in the d’Esgrignons. And his friends, their
hearts dead within them, praised Victurnien’s conduct to the skies.
Mlle. Armande prepared the way for her nephew’s sudden appearance among
them by remarking to her brother that Victurnien would be sure to come
to see them, and that he must be even then on his way.
“Bah!” said the Marquis, standing with his back to the hearth, “if he is
doing well where he is, he ought to stay there, and not be thinking
of the joy it would give his old father to see him again. The King’s
service has the first claim.”
Scarcely one of those present heard the words without a shudder. Justice
might give over a d’Esgrignon to the executioner’s branding iron. There
was a dreadful pause. The old Marquise de Casteran could not keep back
a tear that stole down over her rouge, and turned her head away to hide
it.
Next day at noon, in the sunny weather, a whole excited population was
dispersed in groups along the high street, which ran through the heart
of the town, and nothing was talked of but the great affair. Was the
Count in prison or was he not?--All at once the Comte d’Esgrignon’s
well-known tilbury was seen driving down the Rue Saint-Blaise; it had
evidently come from the Prefecture, the Count himself was on the box
seat, and by his side sat a charming young man, whom nobody recognized.
The pair were laughing and talking and in great spirits. They wore
Bengal roses in their button-holes. Altogether, it was a theatrical
surprise which words fail to describe.
At ten o’clock the court had decided to dismiss the charge, stating
their very sufficient reasons for setting the Count at liberty, in a
document which contained a thunderbolt for du Croisier, in the shape of
an _inasmuch_ that gave the Count the right to institute proceedings
for libel. Old Chesnel was walking up the Grand Rue, as if by accident,
telling all who cared to hear him that du Croisier had set the most
shameful of snares for the d’Esgrignons’ honor, and that it was entirely
owing to the forbearance and magnanimity of the family that he was not
prosecuted for slander.
On the evening of that famous day, after the Marquis d’Esgrignon had
gone to bed, the Count, Mlle. Armande, and the Chevalier were left with
the handsome young page, now about to return to Paris. The charming
cavalier’s sex could not be hidden from the Chevalier, and he alone,
besides the three officials and Mme. Camusot, knew that the Duchess had
been among them.
“The house is saved,” began Chesnel, “but after this shock it will take
a hundred years to rise again. The debts must be paid now; you must
marry an heiress, M. le Comte, there is nothing left for you to do.”
“And take her where you may find her,” said the Duchess.
“A second mesalliance!” exclaimed Mlle. Armande.
The Duchess began to laugh.
“It is better to marry than to die,” she said. As she spoke she drew
from her waistcoat pocket a tiny crystal phial that came from the court
apothecary.
Mlle. Armande shrank away in horror. Old Chesnel took the fair
Maufrigneuse’s hand, and kissed it without permission.
“Are you all out of your minds here?” continued the Duchess. “Do you
really expect to live in the fifteenth century when the rest of the
world has reached the nineteenth? My dear children, there is no noblesse
nowadays; there is no aristocracy left! Napoleon’s Code Civil made an
end of the parchments, exactly as cannon made an end of feudal castles.
When you have some money, you will be very much more of nobles than you
are now. Marry anybody you please, Victurnien, you will raise your wife
to your rank; that is the most substantial privilege left to the
French noblesse. Did not M. de Talleyrand marry Mme. Grandt without
compromising his position? Remember that Louis XIV. took the Widow
Scarron for his wife.”
“He did not marry her for her money,” interposed Mlle. Armande.
“If the Comtesse d’Esgrignon were one du Croisier’s niece, for instance,
would you receive her?” asked Chesnel.
“Perhaps,” replied the Duchess; “but the King, beyond all doubt, would
be very glad to see her.--So you do not know what is going on in the
world?” continued she, seeing the amazement in their faces. “Victurnien
has been in Paris; he knows how things go there. We had more influence
under Napoleon. Marry Mlle. Duval, Victurnien; she will be just as much
Marquise d’Esgrignon as I am Duchesse de Maufrigneuse.”
“All is lost--even honor!” said the Chevalier, with a wave of the hand.
“Good-bye, Victurnien,” said the Duchess, kissing her lover on the
forehead; “we shall not see each other again. Live on your lands; that
is the best thing for you to do; the air of Paris is not at all good for
you.”
“Diane!” the young Count cried despairingly.
“Monsieur, you forget yourself strangely,” the Duchess retorted coolly,
as she laid aside her role of man and mistress, and became not merely
an angel again, but a duchess, and not only a duchess, but Moliere’s
Celimene.
The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse made a stately bow to these four
personages, and drew from the Chevalier his last tear of admiration at
the service of le beau sexe.
“How like she is to the Princess Goritza!” he exclaimed in a low voice.
Diane had disappeared. The crack of the postilion’s whip told Victurnien
that the fair romance of his first love was over. While peril lasted,
Diane could still see her lover in the young Count; but out of danger,
she despised him for the weakling that he was.
Six months afterwards, Camusot received the appointment of assistant
judge at Paris, and later he became an examining magistrate. Goodman
Blondet was made a councillor to the Royal-Court; he held the post just
long enough to secure a retiring pension, and then went back to live in
his pretty little house. Joseph Blondet sat in his father’s seat at the
court till the end of his days; there was not the faintest chance of
promotion for him, but he became Mlle. Blandereau’s husband; and she, no
doubt, is leading to-day, in the little flower-covered brick house,
as dull a life as any carp in a marble basin. Michu and Camusot also
received the Cross of the Legion of Honor, while Blondet became an
Officer. As for M. Sauvager, deputy public prosecutor, he was sent to
Corsica, to du Croisier’s great relief; he had decidedly no mind to
bestow his niece upon that functionary.
Du Croisier himself, urged by President du Ronceret, appealed from the
finding of the Tribunal to the Court-Royal, and lost his cause. The
Liberals throughout the department held that little d’Esgrignon was
guilty; while the Royalists, on the other hand, told frightful stories
of plots woven by “that abominable du Croisier” to compass his revenge.
A duel was fought indeed; the hazard of arms favored du Croisier, the
young Count was dangerously wounded, and his antagonist maintained his
words. This affair embittered the strife between the two parties; the
Liberals brought it forward on all occasions. Meanwhile du Croisier
never could carry his election, and saw no hope of marrying his niece to
the Count, especially after the duel.
A month after the decision of the Tribunal was confirmed in the
Court-Royal, Chesnel died, exhausted by the dreadful strain, which had
weakened and shaken him mentally and physically. He died in the hour of
victory, like some old faithful hound that has brought the boar to bay,
and gets his death on the tusks. He died as happily as might be, seeing
that he left the great House all but ruined, and the heir in penury,
bored to death by an idle life, and without a hope of establishing
himself. That bitter thought and his own exhaustion, no doubt, hastened
the old man’s end. One great comfort came to him as he lay amid the
wreck of so many hopes, sinking under the burden of so many cares--the
old Marquis, at his sister’s entreaty, gave him back all the old
friendship. The great lord came to the little house in the Rue du
Bercail, and sat by his old servant’s bedside, all unaware how much
that servant had done and sacrificed for him. Chesnel sat upright, and
repeated Simeon’s cry.--The Marquis allowed them to bury Chesnel in the
castle chapel; they laid him crosswise at the foot of the tomb which
was waiting for the Marquis himself, the last, in a sense, of the
d’Esgrignons.
And so died one of the last representatives of that great and beautiful
thing, Service; giving to that often discredited word its original
meaning, the relation between feudal lord and servitor. That relation,
only to be found in some out-of-the-way province, or among a few old
servants of the King, did honor alike to a noblesse that could call
forth such affection, and to a bourgeoisie that could conceive it. Such
noble and magnificent devotion is no longer possible among us. Noble
houses have no servitors left; even as France has no longer a King,
nor an hereditary peerage, nor lands that are bound irrevocably to
an historic house, that the glorious names of the nation may be
perpetuated. Chesnel was not merely one of the obscure great men
of private life; he was something more--he was a great fact. In his
sustained self-devotion is there not something indefinably solemn and
sublime, something that rises above the one beneficent deed, or the
heroic height which is reached by a moment’s supreme effort? Chesnel’s
virtues belong essentially to the classes which stand between the
poverty of the people on the one hand, and the greatness of the
aristocracy on the other; for these can combine homely burgher virtues
with the heroic ideals of the noble, enlightening both by a solid
education.
Victurnien was not well looked upon at Court; there was no more chance
of a great match for him, nor a place. His Majesty steadily refused to
raise the d’Esgrignons to the peerage, the one royal favor which could
rescue Victurnien from his wretched position. It was impossible that he
should marry a bourgeoise heiress in his father’s lifetime, so he was
bound to live on shabbily under the paternal roof with memories of his
two years of splendor in Paris, and the lost love of a great lady to
bear him company. He grew moody and depressed, vegetating at home with
a careworn aunt and a half heart-broken father, who attributed his son’s
condition to a wasting malady. Chesnel was no longer there.
The Marquis died in 1830. The great d’Esgrignon, with a following of
all the less infirm noblesse from the Collection of Antiquities, went
to wait upon Charles X. at Nonancourt; he paid his respects to his
sovereign, and swelled the meagre train of the fallen king. It was an
act of courage which seems simple enough to-day, but, in that time of
enthusiastic revolt, it was heroism.
“The Gaul has conquered!” These were the Marquis’ last words.
By that time du Croisier’s victory was complete. The new Marquis
d’Esgrignon accepted Mlle. Duval as his wife a week after his old
father’s death. His bride brought him three millions of francs for du
Croisier and his wife settled the reversion of their fortunes upon her
in the marriage-contract. Du Croisier took occasion to say during the
ceremony that the d’Esgrignon family was the most honorable of all the
ancient houses in France.
Some day the present Marquis d’Esgrignon will have an income of more
than a hundred thousand crowns. You may see him in Paris, for he comes
to town every winter and leads a jolly bachelor life, while he treats
his wife with something more than the indifference of the grand seigneur
of olden times; he takes no thought whatever for her.
“As for Mlle. d’Esgrignon,” said Emile Blondet, to whom all the detail
of the story is due, “if she is no longer like the divinely fair woman
whom I saw by glimpses in my childhood, she is decidedly, at the age of
sixty-seven, the most pathetic and interesting figure in the Collection
of Antiquities. She queens it among them still. I saw her when I made my
last journey to my native place in search of the necessary papers for
my marriage. When my father knew who it was that I had married, he was
struck dumb with amazement; he had not a word to say until I told him
that I was a prefect.
“‘You were born to it,’ he said, with a smile.
“As I took a walk around the town, I met Mlle. Armande. She looked
taller than ever. I looked at her, and thought of Marius among the ruins
of Carthage. Had she not outlived her creed, and the beliefs that had
been destroyed? She is a sad and silent woman, with nothing of her
old beauty left except the eyes, that shine with an unearthly light. I
watched her on her way to mass, with her book in her hand, and could not
help thinking that she prayed to God to take her out of the world.”
LES JARDIES, July 1837.
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Note: The Old Maid is a companion piece to The Collection of
Antiquities. In other Addendum appearances they are combined under the
title of The Jealousies of a Country Town.
Blondet (Judge)
Beatrix
Blondet, Emile
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Modeste Mignon
Another Study of Woman
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve
The Firm of Nucingen
The Peasantry
Blondet, Virginie
The Secrets of a Princess
The Peasantry
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Another Study of Woman
The Member for Arcis
A Daughter of Eve
Bousquier, Du (or Du Croisier or Du Bourguier)
The Old Maid
The Middle Classes
Bousquier, Madame du (or du Croisier)
The Old Maid
Camusot de Marville
Cousin Pons
The Commission in Lunacy
Scenes from a Cuortesan’s Life
Camusot de Marville, Madame
The Vendetta
Cesar Birotteau
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Cousin Pons
Cardot (Parisian notary)
The Muse of the Department
A Man of Business
Pierre Grassou
The Middle Classes
Cousin Pons
Casteran, De
The Chouans
The Seamy Side of History
The Old Maid
Beatrix
The Peasantry
Chesnel (or Choisnel)
The Seamy Side of History
The Old Maid
Coudrai, Du
The Old Maid
Esgrignon, Charles-Marie-Victor-Ange-Carol, Marquis d’ (or Des Grignons)
The Chouans
The Old Maid
Esgrignon, Victurnien, Comte (then Marquis d’)
Letters of Two Brides
A Man of Business
The Secrets of a Princess
Cousin Betty
Esgrignon, Marie-Armande-Claire d’
The Old Maid
Herouville, Duc d’
The Hated Son
Modeste Mignon
Cousin Betty
Lenoncourt, Duc de
The Lily of the Valley
Cesar Birotteau
The Old Maid
The Gondreville Mystery
Beatrix
Leroi, Pierre
The Chouans
The Seamy Side of History
Marsay, Henri de
The Thirteen
The Unconscious Humorists
Another Study of Woman
The Lily of the Valley
Father Goriot
Ursule Mirouet
A Marriage Settlement
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Letters of Two Brides
The Ball at Sceaux
Modest Mignon
The Secrets of a Princess
The Gondreville Mystery
A Daughter of Eve
Maufrigneuse, Duchesse de
The Secrets of a Princess
Modeste Mignon
The Muse of the Department
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Letters of Two Brides
Another Study of Woman
The Gondreville Mystery
The Member for Arcis
Michu, Francois
The Gondreville Mystery
The Member for Arcis
Pamiers, Vidame de
The Thirteen
Ronceret, Du
The Old Maid
Beatrix
Ronceret, Madame du
The Old Maid
Ronceret, Fabien-Felicien du (or Duronceret)
Beatrix
Gaudissart II
Scherbelloff, Princesse (or Scherbellof or Sherbelloff)
The Peasantry
Thirion
The Vendetta
Cesar Birotteau
Troisville, Guibelin, Vicomte de
The Seamy Side of History
The Chouans
The Old Maid
The Peasantry
Valois, Chevalier de
The Chouans
The Old Maid
Verneuil, Duc de
The Chouans
The Old Maid
End of Project Gutenberg’s The Collection of Antiquities, by Honore de Balzac