Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
HONORINE
By Honore De Balzac
Translated by Clara Bell
DEDICATION
To Monsieur Achille Deveria
An affectionate remembrance from the Author.
HONORINE
If the French have as great an aversion for traveling as the English
have a propensity for it, both English and French have perhaps
sufficient reasons. Something better than England is everywhere to be
found; whereas it is excessively difficult to find the charms of France
outside France. Other countries can show admirable scenery, and they
frequently offer greater comfort than that of France, which makes but
slow progress in that particular. They sometimes display a bewildering
magnificence, grandeur, and luxury; they lack neither grace nor noble
manners; but the life of the brain, the talent for conversation, the
“Attic salt” so familiar at Paris, the prompt apprehension of what one
is thinking, but does not say, the spirit of the unspoken, which is half
the French language, is nowhere else to be met with. Hence a Frenchman,
whose raillery, as it is, finds so little comprehension, would wither
in a foreign land like an uprooted tree. Emigration is counter to the
instincts of the French nation. Many Frenchmen, of the kind here in
question, have owned to pleasure at seeing the custom-house officers
of their native land, which may seem the most daring hyperbole of
patriotism.
This preamble is intended to recall to such Frenchmen as have traveled
the extreme pleasure they have felt on occasionally finding their native
land, like an oasis, in the drawing-room of some diplomate: a pleasure
hard to be understood by those who have never left the asphalt of the
Boulevard des Italiens, and to whom the Quais of the left bank of the
Seine are not really Paris. To find Paris again! Do you know what that
means, O Parisians? It is to find--not indeed the cookery of the _Rocher
de Cancale_ as Borel elaborates it for those who can appreciate it, for
that exists only in the Rue Montorgueil--but a meal which reminds you
of it! It is to find the wines of France, which out of France are to be
regarded as myths, and as rare as the woman of whom I write! It is
to find--not the most fashionable pleasantry, for it loses its aroma
between Paris and the frontier--but the witty understanding, the
critical atmosphere in which the French live, from the poet down to the
artisan, from the duchess to the boy in the street.
In 1836, when the Sardinian Court was residing at Genoa, two Parisians,
more or less famous, could fancy themselves still in Paris when they
found themselves in a palazzo, taken by the French Consul-General, on
the hill forming the last fold of the Apennines between the gate of San
Tomaso and the well-known lighthouse, which is to be seen in all the
keepsake views of Genoa. This palazzo is one of the magnificent villas
on which Genoese nobles were wont to spend millions at the time when the
aristocratic republic was a power.
If the early night is beautiful anywhere, it surely is at Genoa, after
it has rained as it can rain there, in torrents, all the morning; when
the clearness of the sea vies with that of the sky; when silence reigns
on the quay and in the groves of the villa, and over the marble heads
with yawning jaws, from which water mysteriously flows; when the stars
are beaming; when the waves of the Mediterranean lap one after another
like the avowal of a woman, from whom you drag it word by word. It must
be confessed, that the moment when the perfumed air brings fragrance to
the lungs and to our day-dreams; when voluptuousness, made visible and
ambient as the air, holds you in your easy-chair; when, a spoon in your
hand, you sip an ice or a sorbet, the town at your feet and fair woman
opposite--such Boccaccio hours can be known only in Italy and on the
shores of the Mediterranean.
Imagine to yourself, round the table, the Marquis di Negro, a knight
hospitaller to all men of talent on their travels, and the Marquis
Damaso Pareto, two Frenchmen disguised as Genoese, a Consul-General
with a wife as beautiful as a Madonna, and two silent children--silent
because sleep has fallen on them--the French Ambassador and his wife,
a secretary to the Embassy who believes himself to be crushed and
mischievous; finally, two Parisians, who have come to take leave of
the Consul’s wife at a splendid dinner, and you will have the picture
presented by the terrace of the villa about the middle of May--a picture
in which the predominant figure was that of a celebrated woman, on
whom all eyes centered now and again, the heroine of this improvised
festival.
One of the two Frenchmen was the famous landscape painter, Leon de Lora;
the other a well known critic Claude Vignon. They had both come with
this lady, one of the glories of the fair sex, Mademoiselle des Touches,
known in the literary world by the name of Camille Maupin.
Mademoiselle des Touches had been to Florence on business. With the
charming kindness of which she is prodigal, she had brought with her
Leon de Lora to show him Italy, and had gone on as far as Rome that he
might see the Campagna. She had come by Simplon, and was returning by
the Cornice road to Marseilles. She had stopped at Genoa, again on the
landscape painter’s account. The Consul-General had, of course, wished
to do the honors of Genoa, before the arrival of the Court, to a woman
whose wealth, name, and position recommend her no less than her talents.
Camille Maupin, who knew her Genoa down to its smallest chapels, had
left her landscape painter to the care of the diplomate and the two
Genoese marquises, and was miserly of her minutes. Though the ambassador
was a distinguished man of letters, the celebrated lady had refused to
yield to his advances, dreading what the English call an exhibition;
but she had drawn in the claws of her refusals when it was proposed that
they should spend a farewell day at the Consul’s villa. Leon de Lora had
told Camille that her presence at the villa was the only return he
could make to the Ambassador and his wife, the two Genoese noblemen, the
Consul and his wife. So Mademoiselle des Touches had sacrificed one of
those days of perfect freedom, which are not always to be had in Paris
by those on whom the world has its eye.
Now, the meeting being accounted for, it is easy to understand that
etiquette had been banished, as well as a great many women even of the
highest rank, who were curious to know whether Camille Maupin’s manly
talent impaired her grace as a pretty woman, and to see, in a word,
whether the trousers showed below her petticoats. After dinner till nine
o’clock, when a collation was served, though the conversation had been
gay and grave by turns, and constantly enlivened by Leon de Lora’s
sallies--for he is considered the most roguish wit of Paris to-day--and
by the good taste which will surprise no one after the list of guests,
literature had scarcely been mentioned. However, the butterfly flittings
of this French tilting match were certain to come to it, were it only to
flutter over this essentially French subject. But before coming to the
turn in the conversation which led the Consul-General to speak, it will
not be out of place to give some account of him and his family.
This diplomate, a man of four-and-thirty, who had been married about six
years, was the living portrait of Lord Byron. The familiarity of that
face makes a description of the Consul’s unnecessary. It may, however,
be noted that there was no affectation in his dreamy expression. Lord
Byron was a poet, and the Consul was poetical; women know and recognize
the difference, which explains without justifying some of their
attachments. His handsome face, thrown into relief by a delightful
nature, had captivated a Genoese heiress. A Genoese heiress! the
expression might raise a smile at Genoa, where, in consequence of the
inability of daughters to inherit, a woman is rarely rich; but Onorina
Pedrotti, the only child of a banker without heirs male, was an
exception. Notwithstanding all the flattering advances prompted by a
spontaneous passion, the Consul-General had not seemed to wish to marry.
Nevertheless, after living in the town for two years, and after certain
steps taken by the Ambassador during his visits to the Genoese Court,
the marriage was decided on. The young man withdrew his former refusal,
less on account of the touching affection of Onorina Pedrotti than by
reason of an unknown incident, one of those crises of private life which
are so instantly buried under the daily tide of interests that, at a
subsequent date, the most natural actions seem inexplicable.
This involution of causes sometimes affects the most serious events of
history. This, at any rate, was the opinion of the town of Genoa, where,
to some women, the extreme reserve, the melancholy of the French Consul
could be explained only by the word passion. It may be remarked, in
passing, that women never complain of being the victims of a preference;
they are very ready to immolate themselves for the common weal. Onorina
Pedrotti, who might have hated the Consul if she had been altogether
scorned, loved her _sposo_ no less, and perhaps more, when she know that
he had loved. Women allow precedence in love affairs. All is well if
other women are in question.
A man is not a diplomate with impunity: the _sposo_ was as secret as the
grave--so secret that the merchants of Genoa chose to regard the young
Consul’s attitude as premeditated, and the heiress might perhaps have
slipped through his fingers if he had not played his part of a love-sick
_malade imaginaire_. If it was real, the women thought it too degrading
to be believed.
Pedrotti’s daughter gave him her love as a consolation; she lulled these
unknown griefs in a cradle of tenderness and Italian caresses.
Il Signor Pedrotti had indeed no reason to complain of the choice to
which he was driven by his beloved child. Powerful protectors in Paris
watched over the young diplomate’s fortunes. In accordance with a
promise made by the Ambassador to the Consul-General’s father-in-law,
the young man was created Baron and Commander of the Legion of Honor.
Signor Pedrotti himself was made a Count by the King of Sardinia.
Onorina’s dower was a million of francs. As to the fortune of the Casa
Pedrotti, estimated at two millions, made in the corn trade, the young
couple came into it within six months of their marriage, for the first
and last Count Pedrotti died in January 1831.
Onorina Pedrotti is one of those beautiful Genoese women who, when they
are beautiful, are the most magnificent creatures in Italy. Michael
Angelo took his models in Genoa for the tomb of Giuliano. Hence the
fulness and singular placing of the breast in the figures of Day and
Night, which so many critics have thought exaggerated, but which is
peculiar to the women of Liguria. A Genoese beauty is no longer to be
found excepting under the mezzaro, as at Venice it is met with only
under the _fazzioli_. This phenomenon is observed among all fallen
nations. The noble type survives only among the populace, as after the
burning of a town coins are found hidden in the ashes. And Onorina, an
exception as regards her fortune, is no less an exceptional patrician
beauty. Recall to mind the figure of Night which Michael Angelo has
placed at the feet of the _Pensieroso_, dress her in modern garb, twist
that long hair round the magnificent head, a little dark in complexion,
set a spark of fire in those dreamy eyes, throw a scarf about the
massive bosom, see the long dress, white, embroidered with flowers,
imagine the statue sitting upright, with her arms folded like those of
Mademoiselle Georges, and you will see before you the Consul’s wife,
with a boy of six, as handsome as a mother’s desire, and a little
girl of four on her knees, as beautiful as the type of childhood so
laboriously sought out by the sculptor David to grace a tomb.
This beautiful family was the object of Camille’s secret study. It
struck Mademoiselle des Touches that the Consul looked rather too
absent-minded for a perfectly happy man.
Although, throughout the day, the husband and wife had offered her the
pleasing spectacle of complete happiness, Camille wondered why one of
the most superior men she had ever met, and whom she had seen too
in Paris drawing-rooms, remained as Consul-General at Genoa when he
possessed a fortune of a hundred odd thousand francs a year. But, at the
same time, she had discerned, by many of the little nothings which women
perceive with the intelligence of the Arab sage in _Zadig_, that the
husband was faithfully devoted. These two handsome creatures would no
doubt love each other without a misunderstanding till the end of their
days. So Camille said to herself alternately, “What is wrong?--Nothing
is wrong,” following the misleading symptoms of the Consul’s demeanor;
and he, it may be said, had the absolute calmness of Englishmen, of
savages, of Orientals, and of consummate diplomatists.
In discussing literature, they spoke of the perennial stock-in-trade
of the republic of letters--woman’s sin. And they presently found
themselves confronted by two opinions: When a woman sins, is the man
or the woman to blame? The three women present--the Ambassadress,
the Consul’s wife, and Mademoiselle des Touches, women, of course, of
blameless reputations--were without pity for the woman. The men tried to
convince these fair flowers of their sex that some virtues might remain
in a woman after she had fallen.
“How long are we going to play at hide-and-seek in this way?” said Leon
de Lora.
“_Cara vita_, go and put your children to bed, and send me by Gina the
little black pocket-book that lies on my Boule cabinet,” said the Consul
to his wife.
She rose without a reply, which shows that she loved her husband very
truly, for she already knew French enough to understand that her husband
was getting rid of her.
“I will tell you a story in which I played a part, and after that we can
discuss it, for it seems to me childish to practise with the scalpel on
an imaginary body. Begin by dissecting a corpse.”
Every one prepared to listen, with all the greater readiness because
they had all talked enough, and this is the moment to be chosen for
telling a story. This, then, is the Consul-General’s tale:--
“When I was two-and-twenty, and had taken my degree in law, my old
uncle, the Abbe Loraux, then seventy-two years old, felt it necessary
to provide me with a protector, and to start me in some career. This
excellent man, if not indeed a saint, regarded each year of his life as
a fresh gift from God. I need not tell you that the father confessor of
a Royal Highness had no difficulty in finding a place for a young man
brought up by himself, his sister’s only child. So one day, towards the
end of the year 1824, this venerable old man, who for five years had
been Cure of the White Friars at Paris, came up to the room I had in his
house, and said:
“‘Get yourself dressed, my dear boy; I am going to introduce you to some
one who is willing to engage you as secretary. If I am not mistaken, he
may fill my place in the event of God’s taking me to Himself. I shall
have finished mass at nine o’clock; you have three-quarters of an hour
before you. Be ready.’
“‘What, uncle! must I say good-bye to this room, where for four years I
have been so happy?’
“‘I have no fortune to leave you,’ said he.
“‘Have you not the reputation of your name to leave me, the memory of
your good works----?’
“‘We need say nothing of that inheritance,’ he replied, smiling. ‘You do
not yet know enough of the world to be aware that a legacy of that kind
is hardly likely to be paid, whereas by taking you this morning to M. le
Comte’--Allow me,” said the Consul, interrupting himself, “to speak
of my protector by his Christian name only, and to call him Comte
Octave.--‘By taking you this morning to M. le Comte Octave, I hope to
secure you his patronage, which, if you are so fortunate as to please
that virtuous statesman--as I make no doubt you can--will be worth, at
least, as much as the fortune I might have accumulated for you, if my
brother-in-law’s ruin and my sister’s death had not fallen on me like a
thunder-bolt from a clear sky.’
“‘Are you the Count’s director?’
“‘If I were, could I place you with him? What priest could be capable
of taking advantage of the secrets which he learns at the tribunal of
repentance? No; you owe this position to his Highness, the Keeper of
the Seals. My dear Maurice, you will be as much at home there as in your
father’s house. The Count will give you a salary of two thousand four
hundred francs, rooms in his house, and an allowance of twelve hundred
francs in lieu of feeding you. He will not admit you to his table,
nor give you a separate table, for fear of leaving you to the care of
servants. I did not accept the offer when it was made to me till I was
perfectly certain that Comte Octave’s secretary was never to be a mere
upper servant. You will have an immense amount of work, for the Count
is a great worker; but when you leave him, you will be qualified to fill
the highest posts. I need not warn you to be discreet; that is the first
virtue of any man who hopes to hold public appointments.’
“You may conceive of my curiosity. Comte Octave, at that time, held one
of the highest legal appointments; he was in the confidence of Madame
the Dauphiness, who had just got him made a State Minister; he led such
a life as the Comte de Serizy, whom you all know, I think; but even more
quietly, for his house was in the Marais, Rue Payenne, and he hardly
ever entertained. His private life escaped public comment by its
hermit-like simplicity and by constant hard work.
“Let me describe my position to you in a few words. Having found in the
solemn headmaster of the College Saint-Louis a tutor to whom my uncle
delegated his authority, at the age of eighteen I had gone through all
the classes; I left school as innocent as a seminarist, full of faith,
on quitting Saint-Sulpice. My mother, on her deathbed, had made my uncle
promise that I should not become a priest, but I was as pious as though
I had to take orders. On leaving college, the Abbe Loraux took me
into his house and made me study law. During the four years of study
requisite for passing all the examinations, I worked hard, but chiefly
at things outside the arid fields of jurisprudence. Weaned from
literature as I had been at college, where I lived in the headmaster’s
house, I had a thirst to quench. As soon as I had read a few modern
masterpieces, the works of all the preceding ages were greedily
swallowed. I became crazy about the theatre, and for a long time I went
every night to the play, though my uncle gave me only a hundred francs
a month. This parsimony, to which the good old man was compelled by his
regard for the poor, had the effect of keeping a young man’s desires
within reasonable limits.
“When I went to live with Comte Octave I was not indeed an innocent, but
I thought of my rare escapades as crimes. My uncle was so truly angelic,
and I was so much afraid of grieving him, that in all those four years
I had never spent a night out. The good man would wait till I came in
to go to bed. This maternal care had more power to keep me within bounds
than the sermons and reproaches with which the life of a young man
is diversified in a puritanical home. I was a stranger to the various
circles which make up the world of Paris society; I only knew some women
of the better sort, and none of the inferior class but those I saw as I
walked about, or in the boxes at the play, and then only from the depths
of the pit where I sat. If, at that period, any one had said to me, ‘You
will see Canalis, or Camille Maupin,’ I should have felt hot coals in
my head and in my bowels. Famous people were to me as gods, who neither
spoke, nor walked, nor ate like other mortals.
“How many tales of the Thousand-and-one Nights are comprehended in the
ripening of a youth! How many wonderful lamps must we have rubbed before
we understand that the True Wonderful Lamp is either luck, or work, or
genius. In some men this dream of the aroused spirit is but brief; mine
has lasted until now! In those days I always went to sleep as Grand Duke
of Tuscany,--as a millionaire,--as beloved by a princess,--or famous! So
to enter the service of Comte Octave, and have a hundred louis a year,
was entering on independent life. I had glimpses of some chance of
getting into society, and seeking for what my heart desired most, a
protectress, who would rescue me from the paths of danger, which a young
man of two-and-twenty can hardly help treading, however prudent and well
brought up he may be. I began to be afraid of myself.
“The persistent study of other people’s rights into which I had plunged
was not always enough to repress painful imaginings. Yes, sometimes in
fancy I threw myself into theatrical life; I thought I could be a great
actor; I dreamed of endless triumphs and loves, knowing nothing of the
disillusion hidden behind the curtain, as everywhere else--for every
stage has its reverse behind the scenes. I have gone out sometimes, my
heart boiling, carried away by an impulse to rush hunting through Paris,
to attach myself to some handsome woman I might meet, to follow her
to her door, watch her, write to her, throw myself on her mercy, and
conquer her by sheer force of passion. My poor uncle, a heart consumed
by charity, a child of seventy years, as clear-sighted as God, as
guileless as a man of genius, no doubt read the tumult of my soul; for
when he felt the tether by which he held me strained too tightly and
ready to break, he would never fail to say, ‘Here, Maurice, you too
are poor! Here are twenty francs; go and amuse yourself, you are not a
priest!’ And if you could have seen the dancing light that gilded his
gray eyes, the smile that relaxed his fine lips, puckering the corners
of his mouth, the adorable expression of that august face, whose native
ugliness was redeemed by the spirit of an apostle, you would understand
the feeling which made me answer the Cure of White Friars only with a
kiss, as if he had been my mother.
“‘In Comte Octave you will find not a master, but a friend,’ said my
uncle on the way to the Rue Payenne. ‘But he is distrustful, or to be
more exact, he is cautious. The statesman’s friendship can be won only
with time; for in spite of his deep insight and his habit of gauging
men, he was deceived by the man you are succeeding, and nearly became a
victim to his abuse of confidence. This is enough to guide you in your
behavior to him.’
“When we knocked at the enormous outer door of a house as large as the
Hotel Carnavalet, with a courtyard in front and a garden behind, the
sound rang as in a desert. While my uncle inquired of an old porter in
livery if the Count were at home, I cast my eyes, seeing everything
at once, over the courtyard where the cobblestones were hidden in the
grass, the blackened walls where little gardens were flourishing above
the decorations of the elegant architecture, and on the roof, as high as
that of the Tuileries. The balustrade of the upper balconies was eaten
away. Through a magnificent colonnade I could see a second court on one
side, where were the offices; the door was rotting. An old coachman
was there cleaning an old carriage. The indifferent air of this servant
allowed me to assume that the handsome stables, where of old so many
horses had whinnied, now sheltered two at most. The handsome facade of
the house seemed to me gloomy, like that of a mansion belonging to the
State or the Crown, and given up to some public office. A bell rang as
we walked across, my uncle and I, from the porter’s lodge--_Inquire of
the Porter_ was still written over the door--towards the outside steps,
where a footman came out in a livery like that of Labranche at the
Theatre Francais in the old stock plays. A visitor was so rare that the
servant was putting his coat on when he opened a glass door with small
panes, on each side of which the smoke of a lamp had traced patterns on
the walls.
“A hall so magnificent as to be worthy of Versailles ended in a
staircase such as will never again be built in France, taking up as much
space as the whole of a modern house. As we went up the marble steps, as
cold as tombstones, and wide enough for eight persons to walk abreast,
our tread echoed under sonorous vaulting. The banister charmed the eye
by its miraculous workmanship--goldsmith’s work in iron--wrought by the
fancy of an artist of the time of Henri III. Chilled as by an icy mantle
that fell on our shoulders, we went through ante-rooms, drawing-rooms
opening one out of the other, with carpetless parquet floors, and
furnished with such splendid antiquities as from thence would find their
way to the curiosity dealers. At last we reached a large study in a
cross wing, with all the windows looking into an immense garden.
“‘Monsieur le Cure of the White Friars, and his nephew, Monsieur de
l’Hostal,’ said Labranche, to whose care the other theatrical servant
had consigned us in the first ante-chamber.
“Comte Octave, dressed in long trousers and a gray flannel morning coat,
rose from his seat by a huge writing-table, came to the fireplace,
and signed to me to sit down, while he went forward to take my uncle’s
hands, which he pressed.
“‘Though I am in the parish of Saint-Paul,’ said he, ‘I could scarcely
have failed to hear of the Cure of the White Friars, and I am happy to
make his acquaintance.’
“‘Your Excellency is most kind,’ replied my uncle. ‘I have brought to
you my only remaining relation. While I believe that I am offering a
good gift to your Excellency, I hope at the same time to give my nephew
a second father.’
“‘As to that, I can only reply, Monsieur l’Abbe, when we shall have
tried each other,’ said Comte Octave. ‘Your name?’ he added to me.
“‘Maurice.’
“‘He has taken his doctor’s degree in law,’ my uncle observed.
“‘Very good, very good!’ said the Count, looking at me from head to
foot. ‘Monsieur l’Abbe, I hope that for your nephew’s sake in the first
instance, and then for mine, you will do me the honor of dining here
every Monday. That will be our family dinner, our family party.’
“My uncle and the Count then began to talk of religion from the
political point of view, of charitable institutes, the repression of
crime, and I could at my leisure study the man on whom my fate would
henceforth depend. The Count was of middle height; it was impossible to
judge of his build on account of his dress, but he seemed to me to
be lean and spare. His face was harsh and hollow; the features were
refined. His mouth, which was rather large, expressed both irony and
kindliness. His forehead perhaps too spacious, was as intimidating as
that of a madman, all the more so from the contrast of the lower part of
the face, which ended squarely in a short chin very near the lower lip.
Small eyes, of turquoise blue, were as keen and bright as those of the
Prince de Talleyrand--which I admired at a later time--and endowed, like
the Prince’s, with the faculty of becoming expressionless to the verge
of gloom; and they added to the singularity of a face that was not pale
but yellow. This complexion seemed to bespeak an irritable temper and
violent passions. His hair, already silvered, and carefully dressed,
seemed to furrow his head with streaks of black and white alternately.
The trimness of this head spoiled the resemblance I had remarked in the
Count to the wonderful monk described by Lewis after Schedoni in
the _Confessional of the Black Penitents (The Italian)_, a superior
creation, as it seems to me, to _The Monk_.
“The Count was already shaved, having to attend early at the law courts.
Two candelabra with four lights, screened by lamp-shades, were still
burning at the opposite ends of the writing-table, and showed plainly
that the magistrate rose long before daylight. His hands, which I saw
when he took hold of the bell-pull to summon his servant, were extremely
fine, and as white as a woman’s.
“As I tell you this story,” said the Consul-General, interrupting
himself, “I am altering the titles and the social position of this
gentleman, while placing him in circumstances analogous to what his
really were. His profession, rank, luxury, fortune, and style of living
were the same; all these details are true, but I would not be false to
my benefactor, nor to my usual habits of discretion.
“Instead of feeling--as I really was, socially speaking--an insect in
the presence of an eagle,” the narrator went on after a pause, “I felt I
know not what indefinable impression from the Count’s appearance,
which, however, I can now account for. Artists of genius” (and he
bowed gracefully to the Ambassador, the distinguished lady, and the
two Frenchmen), “real statesmen, poets, a general who has commanded
armies--in short, all really great minds are simple, and their
simplicity places you on a level with themselves.--You who are all of
superior minds,” he said, addressing his guests, “have perhaps observed
how feeling can bridge over the distances created by society. If we
are inferior to you in intellect, we can be your equals in devoted
friendship. By the temperature--allow me the word--of our hearts I felt
myself as near my patron as I was far below him in rank. In short, the
soul has its clairvoyance; it has presentiments of suffering, grief,
joy, antagonism, or hatred in others.
“I vaguely discerned the symptoms of a mystery, from recognizing in the
Count the same effects of physiognomy as I had observed in my uncle.
The exercise of virtue, serenity of conscience, and purity of mind had
transfigured my uncle, who from being ugly had become quite beautiful.
I detected a metamorphosis of a reverse kind in the Count’s face; at the
first glance I thought he was about fifty-five, but after an attentive
examination I found youth entombed under the ice of a great sorrow,
under the fatigue of persistent study, under the glowing hues of some
suppressed passion. At a word from my uncle the Count’s eyes recovered
for a moment the softness of the periwinkle flower, and he had an
admiring smile, which revealed what I believed to be his real age, about
forty. These observations I made, not then but afterwards, as I recalled
the circumstances of my visit.
“The man-servant came in carrying a tray with his master’s breakfast on
it.
“‘I did not ask for breakfast,’ remarked the Count; ‘but leave it, and
show monsieur to his rooms.’
“I followed the servant, who led the way to a complete set of pretty
rooms, under a terrace, between the great courtyard and the servants’
quarters, over a corridor of communication between the kitchens and
the grand staircase. When I returned to the Count’s study, I overheard,
before opening the door, my uncle pronouncing this judgment on me:
“‘He may do wrong, for he has strong feelings, and we are all liable to
honorable mistakes; but he has no vices.’
“‘Well,’ said the Count, with a kindly look, ‘do you like yourself
there? Tell me. There are so many rooms in this barrack that, if you
were not comfortable, I could put you elsewhere.’
“‘At my uncle’s I had but one room,’ replied I.
“‘Well, you can settle yourself this evening,’ said the Count, ‘for your
possessions, no doubt, are such as all students own, and a hackney coach
will be enough to convey them. To-day we will all three dine together,’
and he looked at my uncle.
“A splendid library opened from the Count’s study, and he took us in
there, showing me a pretty little recess decorated with paintings, which
had formerly served, no doubt, as an oratory.
“‘This is your cell,’ said he. ‘You will sit there when you have to work
with me, for you will not be tethered by a chain;’ and he explained in
detail the kind and duration of my employment with him. As I listened I
felt that he was a great political teacher.
“It took me about a month to familiarize myself with people and things,
to learn the duties of my new office, and accustom myself to the Count’s
methods. A secretary necessarily watches the man who makes use of him.
That man’s tastes, passions, temper, and manias become the subject of
involuntary study. The union of their two minds is at once more and less
than a marriage.
“During these months the Count and I reciprocally studied each other. I
learned with astonishment that Comte Octave was but thirty-seven years
old. The merely superficial peacefulness of his life and the propriety
of his conduct were the outcome not solely of a deep sense of duty and
of stoical reflection; in my constant intercourse with this man--an
extraordinary man to those who knew him well--I felt vast depths beneath
his toil, beneath his acts of politeness, his mask of benignity, his
assumption of resignation, which so closely resembled calmness that it
is easy to mistake it. Just as when walking through forest-lands certain
soils give forth under our feet a sound which enables us to guess
whether they are dense masses of stone or a void; so intense egoism,
though hidden under the flowers of politeness, and subterranean caverns
eaten out by sorrow sound hollow under the constant touch of familiar
life. It was sorrow and not despondency that dwelt in that really great
soul. The Count had understood that actions, deeds, are the supreme law
of social man. And he went on his way in spite of secret wounds, looking
to the future with a tranquil eye, like a martyr full of faith.
“His concealed sadness, the bitter disenchantment from which he
suffered, had not led him into philosophical deserts of incredulity;
this brave statesman was religious, without ostentation; he always
attended the earliest mass at Saint-Paul’s for pious workmen and
servants. Not one of his friends, no one at Court, knew that he so
punctually fulfilled the practice of religion. He was addicted to God as
some men are addicted to a vice, with the greatest mystery. Thus one day
I came to find the Count at the summit of an Alp of woe much higher than
that on which many are who think themselves the most tried; who laugh at
the passions and the beliefs of others because they have conquered their
own; who play variations in every key of irony and disdain. He did not
mock at those who still follow hope into the swamps whither she leads,
nor those who climb a peak to be alone, nor those who persist in the
fight, reddening the arena with their blood and strewing it with their
illusions. He looked on the world as a whole; he mastered its beliefs;
he listened to its complaining; he was doubtful of affection, and yet
more of self-sacrifice; but this great and stern judge pitied them,
or admired them, not with transient enthusiasm, but with silence,
concentration, and the communion of a deeply-touched soul. He was a sort
of catholic Manfred, and unstained by crime, carrying his choiceness
into his faith, melting the snows by the fires of a sealed volcano,
holding converse with a star seen by himself alone!
“I detected many dark riddles in his ordinary life. He evaded my gaze
not like a traveler who, following a path, disappears from time to time
in dells or ravines according to the formation of the soil, but like a
sharpshooter who is being watched, who wants to hide himself, and seeks
a cover. I could not account for his frequent absences at the times when
he was working the hardest, and of which he made no secret from me, for
he would say, ‘Go on with this for me,’ and trust me with the work in
hand.
“This man, wrapped in the threefold duties of the statesman, the judge,
and the orator, charmed me by a taste for flowers, which shows an
elegant mind, and which is shared by almost all persons of refinement.
His garden and his study were full of the rarest plants, but he always
bought them half-withered. Perhaps it pleased him to see such an image
of his own fate! He was faded like these dying flowers, whose almost
decaying fragrance mounted strangely to his brain. The Count loved his
country; he devoted himself to public interests with the frenzy of a
heart that seeks to cheat some other passion; but the studies and
work into which he threw himself were not enough for him; there were
frightful struggles in his mind, of which some echoes reached me.
Finally, he would give utterance to harrowing aspirations for happiness,
and it seemed to me he ought yet to be happy; but what was the obstacle?
Was there a woman he loved? This was a question I asked myself. You may
imagine the extent of the circles of torment that my mind had searched
before coming to so simple and so terrible a question. Notwithstanding
his efforts, my patron did not succeed in stifling the movements of his
heart. Under his austere manner, under the reserve of the magistrate, a
passion rebelled, though coerced with such force that no one but I
who lived with him ever guessed the secret. His motto seemed to be,
‘I suffer, and am silent.’ The escort of respect and admiration
which attended him; the friendship of workers as valiant as
himself--Grandville and Serizy, both presiding judges--had no hold over
the Count: either he told them nothing, or they knew all. Impassible and
lofty in public, the Count betrayed the man only on rare intervals when,
alone in his garden or his study, he supposed himself unobserved; but
then he was a child again, he gave course to the tears hidden beneath
the toga, to the excitement which, if wrongly interpreted, might have
damaged his credit for perspicacity as a statesman.
“When all this had become to me a matter of certainty, Comte Octave had
all the attractions of a problem, and won on my affection as much as
though he had been my own father. Can you enter into the feeling of
curiosity, tempered by respect? What catastrophe had blasted this
learned man, who, like Pitt, had devoted himself from the age of
eighteen to the studies indispensable to power, while he had no
ambition; this judge, who thoroughly knew the law of nations, political
law, civil and criminal law, and who could find in these a weapon
against every anxiety, against every mistake; this profound legislator,
this serious writer, this pious celibate whose life sufficiently proved
that he was open to no reproach? A criminal could not have been more
hardly punished by God than was my master; sorrow had robbed him of half
his slumbers; he never slept more than four hours. What struggle was
it that went on in the depths of these hours apparently so calm, so
studious, passing without a sound or a murmur, during which I often
detected him, when the pen had dropped from his fingers, with his head
resting on one hand, his eyes like two fixed stars, and sometimes wet
with tears? How could the waters of that living spring flow over the
burning strand without being dried up by the subterranean fire? Was
there below it, as there is under the sea, between it and the central
fires of the globe, a bed of granite? And would the volcano burst at
last?
“Sometimes the Count would give me a look of that sagacious and
keen-eyed curiosity by which one man searches another when he desires
an accomplice; then he shunned my eye as he saw it open a mouth, so to
speak, insisting on a reply, and seeming to say, ‘Speak first!’ Now and
then Comte Octave’s melancholy was surly and gruff. If these spurts of
temper offended me, he could get over it without thinking of asking my
pardon; but then his manners were gracious to the point of Christian
humility.
“When I became attached like a son to this man--to me such a mystery,
but so intelligible to the outer world, to whom the epithet eccentric is
enough to account for all the enigmas of the heart--I changed the state
of the house. Neglect of his own interests was carried by the Count
to the length of folly in the management of his affairs. Possessing an
income of about a hundred and sixty thousand francs, without including
the emoluments of his appointments--three of which did not come under
the law against plurality--he spent sixty thousand, of which at least
thirty thousand went to his servants. By the end of the first year I
had got rid of all these rascals, and begged His Excellency to use his
influence in helping me to get honest servants. By the end of the second
year the Count, better fed and better served, enjoyed the comforts of
modern life; he had fine horses, supplied by a coachman to whom I paid
so much a month for each horse; his dinners on his reception days,
furnished by Chevet at a price agreed upon, did him credit; his daily
meals were prepared by an excellent cook found by my uncle, and helped
by two kitchenmaids. The expenditure for housekeeping, not including
purchases, was no more than thirty thousand francs a year; we had two
additional men-servants, whose care restored the poetical aspect of the
house; for this old palace, splendid even in its rust, had an air of
dignity which neglect had dishonored.
“‘I am no longer astonished,’ said he, on hearing of these results, ‘at
the fortunes made by servants. In seven years I have had two cooks, who
have become rich restaurant-keepers.’
“Early in the year 1826 the Count had, no doubt, ceased to watch me, and
we were as closely attached as two men can be when one is subordinate to
the other. He had never spoken to me of my future prospects, but he had
taken an interest, both as a master and as a father, in training me. He
often required me to collect materials for his most arduous labors;
I drew up some of his reports, and he corrected them, showing the
difference between his interpretation of the law, his views and mine.
When at last I had produced a document which he could give in as his own
he was delighted; this satisfaction was my reward, and he could see that
I took it so. This little incident produced an extraordinary effect on a
soul which seemed so stern. The Count pronounced sentence on me, to
use a legal phrase, as supreme and royal judge; he took my head in his
hands, and kissed me on the forehead.
“‘Maurice,’ he exclaimed, ‘you are no longer my apprentice; I know not
yet what you will be to me--but if no change occurs in my life, perhaps
you will take the place of a son.’
“Comte Octave had introduced me to the best houses in Paris, whither I
went in his stead, with his servants and carriage, on the too frequent
occasions when, on the point of starting, he changed his mind, and sent
for a hackney cab to take him--Where?--that was the mystery. By the
welcome I met with I could judge of the Count’s feelings towards me, and
the earnestness of his recommendations. He supplied all my wants with
the thoughtfulness of a father, and with all the greater liberality
because my modesty left it to him always to think of me. Towards the
end of January 1827, at the house of the Comtesse de Serizy, I had such
persistent ill-luck at play that I lost two thousand francs, and I would
not draw them out of my savings. Next morning I asked myself, ‘Had I
better ask my uncle for the money, or put my confidence in the Count?’
“I decided on the second alternative.
“‘Yesterday,’ said I, when he was at breakfast, ‘I lost persistently at
play; I was provoked, and went on; I owe two thousand francs. Will you
allow me to draw the sum on account of my year’s salary?’
“‘No,’ said he, with the sweetest smile; ‘when a man plays in society,
he must have a gambling purse. Draw six thousand francs; pay your debts.
Henceforth we must go halves; for since you are my representative on
most occasions, your self-respect must not be made to suffer for it.’
“I made no speech of thanks. Thanks would have been superfluous between
us. This shade shows the character of our relations. And yet we had not
yet unlimited confidence in each other; he did not open to me the vast
subterranean chambers which I had detected in his secret life; and
I, for my part, never said to him, ‘What ails you? From what are you
suffering?’
“What could he be doing during those long evenings? He would often come
in on foot or in a hackney cab when I returned in a carriage--I, his
secretary! Was so pious a man a prey to vices hidden under hypocrisy?
Did he expend all the powers of his mind to satisfy a jealousy more
dexterous than Othello’s? Did he live with some woman unworthy of him?
One morning, on returning from I have forgotten what shop, where I had
just paid a bill, between the Church of Saint-Paul and the Hotel de
Ville, I came across Comte Octave in such eager conversation with an old
woman that he did not see me. The appearance of this hag filled me with
strange suspicions, suspicions that were all the better founded because
I never found that the Count invested his savings. Is it not shocking to
think of? I was constituting myself my patron’s censor. At that time I
knew that he had more than six hundred thousand francs to invest; and
if he had bought securities of any kind, his confidence in me was so
complete in all that concerned his pecuniary interests, that I certainly
should have known it.
“Sometimes, in the morning, the Count took exercise in his garden, to
and fro, like a man to whom a walk is the hippogryph ridden by dreamy
melancholy. He walked and walked! And he rubbed his hands enough to
rub the skin off. And then, if I met him unexpectedly as he came to
the angle of a path, I saw his face beaming. His eyes, instead of
the hardness of a turquoise, had that velvety softness of the blue
periwinkle, which had so much struck me on the occasion of my first
visit, by reason of the astonishing contrast in the two different looks;
the look of a happy man, and the look of an unhappy man. Two or three
times at such a moment he had taken me by the arm and led me on; then
he had said, ‘What have you come to ask?’ instead of pouring out his
joy into my heart that opened to him. But more often, especially since
I could do his work for him and write his reports, the unhappy man would
sit for hours staring at the goldfish that swarmed in a handsome marble
basin in the middle of the garden, round which grew an amphitheatre
of the finest flowers. He, an accomplished statesman, seemed to have
succeeded in making a passion of the mechanical amusement of crumbling
bread to fishes.
“This is how the drama was disclosed of this second inner life, so
deeply ravaged and storm-tossed, where, in a circle overlooked by Dante
in his _Inferno_, horrible joys had their birth.”
The Consul-General paused.
“On a certain Monday,” he resumed, “as chance would have it, M. le
President de Grandville and M. de Serizy (at that time Vice-President
of the Council of State) had come to hold a meeting at Comte Octave’s
house. They formed a committee of three, of which I was the secretary.
The Count had already got me the appointment of Auditor to the Council
of State. All the documents requisite for their inquiry into the
political matter privately submitted to these three gentlemen were laid
out on one of the long tables in the library. MM. de Grandville and de
Serizy had trusted to the Count to make the preliminary examination of
the papers relating to the matter. To avoid the necessity for carrying
all the papers to M. de Serizy, as president of the commission, it was
decided that they should meet first in the Rue Payenne. The Cabinet at
the Tuileries attached great importance to this piece of work, of which
the chief burden fell on me--and to which I owed my appointment, in the
course of that year, to be Master of Appeals.
“Though the Comtes de Grandville and de Serizy, whose habits were much
the same as my patron’s, never dined away from home, we were still
discussing the matter at a late hour, when we were startled by the
man-servant calling me aside to say, ‘MM. the Cures of Saint-Paul and of
the White Friars have been waiting in the drawing-room for two hours.’
“It was nine o’clock.
“‘Well, gentlemen, you find yourselves compelled to dine with priests,’
said Comte Octave to his colleagues. ‘I do not know whether Grandville
can overcome his horror of a priest’s gown----’
“‘It depends on the priest.’
“‘One of them is my uncle, and the other is the Abbe Gaudron,’ said
I. ‘Do not be alarmed; the Abbe Fontanon is no longer second priest at
Saint-Paul----’
“‘Well, let us dine,’ replied the President de Grandville. ‘A bigot
frightens me, but there is no one so cheerful as a truly pious man.’