Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
ADIEU
By Honore De Balzac
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
DEDICATION
To Prince Frederic Schwartzenburg
ADIEU
CHAPTER I. AN OLD MONASTERY
“Come, deputy of the Centre, forward! Quick step! march! if we want to
be in time to dine with the others. Jump, marquis! there, that’s right!
why, you can skip across a stubble-field like a deer!”
These words were said by a huntsman peacefully seated at the edge of the
forest of Ile-Adam, who was finishing an Havana cigar while waiting for
his companion, who had lost his way in the tangled underbrush of the
wood. At his side four panting dogs were watching, as he did, the
personage he addressed. To understand how sarcastic were these
exhortations, repeated at intervals, we should state that the
approaching huntsman was a stout little man whose protuberant stomach
was the evidence of a truly ministerial “embonpoint.” He was struggling
painfully across the furrows of a vast wheat-field recently harvested,
the stubble of which considerably impeded him; while to add to his other
miseries the sun’s rays, striking obliquely on his face, collected an
abundance of drops of perspiration. Absorbed in the effort to maintain
his equilibrium, he leaned, now forward, now back, in close imitation
of the pitching of a carriage when violently jolted. The weather looked
threatening. Though several spaces of blue sky still parted the thick
black clouds toward the horizon, a flock of fleecy vapors were advancing
with great rapidity and drawing a light gray curtain from east to
west. As the wind was acting only on the upper region of the air, the
atmosphere below it pressed down the hot vapors of the earth. Surrounded
by masses of tall trees, the valley through which the hunter struggled
felt like a furnace. Parched and silent, the forest seemed thirsty. The
birds, even the insects, were voiceless; the tree-tops scarcely waved.
Those persons who may still remember the summer of 1819 can imagine the
woes of the poor deputy, who was struggling along, drenched in sweat,
to regain his mocking friend. The latter, while smoking his cigar, had
calculated from the position of the sun that it must be about five in
the afternoon.
“Where the devil are we?” said the stout huntsman, mopping his
forehead and leaning against the trunk of a tree nearly opposite to
his companion, for he felt unequal to the effort of leaping the ditch
between them.
“That’s for me to ask you,” said the other, laughing, as he lay among
the tall brown brake which crowned the bank. Then, throwing the end of
his cigar into the ditch, he cried out vehemently: “I swear by Saint
Hubert that never again will I trust myself in unknown territory with a
statesman, though he be, like you, my dear d’Albon, a college mate.”
“But, Philippe, have you forgotten your French? Or have you left your
wits in Siberia?” replied the stout man, casting a sorrowfully comic
look at a sign-post about a hundred feet away.
“True, true,” cried Philippe, seizing his gun and springing with a bound
into the field and thence to the post. “This way, d’Albon, this way,”
he called back to his friend, pointing to a broad paved path and reading
aloud the sign: “‘From Baillet to Ile-Adam.’ We shall certainly find
the path to Cassan, which must branch from this one between here and
Ile-Adam.”
“You are right, colonel,” said Monsieur d’Albon, replacing upon his head
the cap with which he had been fanning himself.
“Forward then, my respectable privy councillor,” replied Colonel
Philippe, whistling to the dogs, who seemed more willing to obey him
than the public functionary to whom they belonged.
“Are you aware, marquis,” said the jeering soldier, “that we still have
six miles to go? That village over there must be Baillet.”
“Good heavens!” cried the marquis, “go to Cassan if you must, but you’ll
go alone. I prefer to stay here, in spite of the coming storm, and
wait for the horse you can send me from the chateau. You’ve played me a
trick, Sucy. We were to have had a nice little hunt not far from Cassan,
and beaten the coverts I know. Instead of that, you have kept me running
like a hare since four o’clock this morning, and all I’ve had for
breakfast is a cup of milk. Now, if you ever have a petition before the
Court, I’ll make you lose it, however just your claim.”
The poor discouraged huntsman sat down on a stone that supported the
signpost, relieved himself of his gun and his gamebag, and heaved a long
sigh.
“France! such are thy deputies!” exclaimed Colonel de Sucy, laughing.
“Ah! my poor d’Albon, if you had been like me six years in the wilds of
Siberia--”
He said no more, but he raised his eyes to heaven as if that anguish
were between himself and God.
“Come, march on!” he added. “If you sit still you are lost.”
“How can I, Philippe? It is an old magisterial habit to sit still. On my
honor! I’m tired out--If I had only killed a hare!”
The two men presented a rather rare contrast: the public functionary
was forty-two years of age and seemed no more than thirty, whereas the
soldier was thirty, and seemed forty at the least. Both wore the red
rosette of the officers of the Legion of honor. A few spare locks of
black hair mixed with white, like the wing of a magpie, escaped from
the colonel’s cap, while handsome brown curls adorned the brow of the
statesman. One was tall, gallant, high-strung, and the lines of his
pallid face showed terrible passions or frightful griefs. The other
had a face that was brilliant with health, and jovially worth of an
epicurean. Both were deeply sun-burned, and their high gaiters of tanned
leather showed signs of the bogs and the thickets they had just come
through.
“Come,” said Monsieur de Sucy, “let us get on. A short hour’s march, and
we shall reach Cassan in time for a good dinner.”
“It is easy to see you have never loved,” replied the councillor, with a
look that was pitifully comic; “you are as relentless as article 304 of
the penal code.”
Philippe de Sucy quivered; his broad brow contracted; his face became
as sombre as the skies above them. Some memory of awful bitterness
distorted for a moment his features, but he said nothing. Like all
strong men, he drove down his emotions to the depths of his heart;
thinking perhaps, as simple characters are apt to think, that there was
something immodest in unveiling griefs when human language cannot
render their depths and may only rouse the mockery of those who do not
comprehend them. Monsieur d’Albon had one of those delicate natures
which divine sorrows, and are instantly sympathetic to the emotion they
have involuntarily aroused. He respected his friend’s silence, rose,
forgot his fatigue, and followed him silently, grieved to have touched a
wound that was evidently not healed.
“Some day, my friend,” said Philippe, pressing his hand, and thanking
him for his mute repentance by a heart-rending look, “I will relate to
you my life. To-day I cannot.”
They continued their way in silence. When the colonel’s pain seemed
soothed, the marquis resumed his fatigue; and with the instinct, or
rather the will, of a wearied man his eye took in the very depths of the
forest; he questioned the tree-tops and examined the branching paths,
hoping to discover some dwelling where he could ask hospitality.
Arriving at a cross-ways, he thought he noticed a slight smoke rising
among the trees; he stopped, looked more attentively, and saw, in the
midst of a vast copse, the dark-green branches of several pine-trees.
“A house! a house!” he cried, with the joy the sailor feels in crying
“Land!”
Then he sprang quickly into the copse, and the colonel, who had fallen
into a deep reverie, followed him mechanically.
“I’d rather get an omelet, some cottage bread, and a chair here,” he
said, “than go to Cassan for sofas, truffles, and Bordeaux.”
These words were an exclamation of enthusiasm, elicited from the
councillor on catching sight of a wall, the white towers of which
glimmered in the distance through the brown masses of the tree trunks.
“Ha! ha! this looks to me as if it had once been a priory,” cried the
marquis, as they reached a very old and blackened gate, through which
they could see, in the midst of a large park, a building constructed in
the style of the monasteries of old. “How those rascals the monks knew
how to choose their sites!”
This last exclamation was an expression of surprise and pleasure at the
poetical hermitage which met his eyes. The house stood on the slope of
the mountain, at the summit of which is the village of Nerville. The
great centennial oaks of the forest which encircled the dwelling made
the place an absolute solitude. The main building, formerly occupied by
the monks, faced south. The park seemed to have about forty acres.
Near the house lay a succession of green meadows, charmingly crossed by
several clear rivulets, with here and there a piece of water naturally
placed without the least apparent artifice. Trees of elegant shape and
varied foliage were distributed about. Grottos, cleverly managed, and
massive terraces with dilapidated steps and rusty railings, gave
a peculiar character to this lone retreat. Art had harmonized her
constructions with the picturesque effects of nature. Human passions
seemed to die at the feet of those great trees, which guarded this
asylum from the tumult of the world as they shaded it from the fires of
the sun.
“How desolate!” thought Monsieur d’Albon, observing the sombre
expression which the ancient building gave to the landscape, gloomy as
though a curse were on it. It seemed a fatal spot deserted by man. Ivy
had stretched its tortuous muscles, covered by its rich green mantle,
everywhere. Brown or green, red or yellow mosses and lichen spread their
romantic tints on trees and seats and roofs and stones. The crumbling
window-casings were hollowed by rain, defaced by time; the balconies
were broken, the terraces demolished. Some of the outside shutters hung
from a single hinge. The rotten doors seemed quite unable to resist an
assailant. Covered with shining tufts of mistletoe, the branches of the
neglected fruit-trees gave no sign of fruit. Grass grew in the paths.
Such ruin and desolation cast a weird poesy on the scene, filling the
souls of the spectators with dreamy thoughts. A poet would have stood
there long, plunged in a melancholy reverie, admiring this disorder
so full of harmony, this destruction which was not without its grace.
Suddenly, the brown tiles shone, the mosses glittered, fantastic shadows
danced upon the meadows and beneath the trees; fading colors revived;
striking contrasts developed, the foliage of the trees and shrubs
defined itself more clearly in the light. Then--the light went out. The
landscape seemed to have spoken, and now was silent, returning to its
gloom, or rather to the soft sad tones of an autumnal twilight.
“It is the palace of the Sleeping Beauty,” said the marquis, beginning
to view the house with the eyes of a land owner. “I wonder to whom it
belongs! He must be a stupid fellow not to live in such an exquisite
spot.”
At that instant a woman sprang from beneath a chestnut-tree standing to
the right of the gate, and, without making any noise, passed before the
marquis as rapidly as the shadow of a cloud. This vision made him mute
with surprise.
“Why, Albon, what’s the matter?” asked the colonel.
“I am rubbing my eyes to know if I am asleep or awake,” replied the
marquis, with his face close to the iron rails as he tried to get
another sight of the phantom.
“She must be beneath that fig-tree,” he said, pointing to the foliage of
a tree which rose above the wall to the left of the gate.
“She! who?”
“How can I tell?” replied Monsieur d’Albon. “A strange woman rose up
there, just before me,” he said in a low voice; “she seemed to come from
the world of shades rather than from the land of the living. She is so
slender, so light, so filmy, she must be diaphanous. Her face was as
white as milk; her eyes, her clothes, her hair jet black. She looked
at me as she flitted by, and though I may say I’m no coward, that cold
immovable look froze the blood in my veins.”
“Is she pretty?” asked Philippe.
“I don’t know. I could see nothing but the eyes in that face.”
“Well, let the dinner at Cassan go to the devil!” cried the colonel.
“Suppose we stay here. I have a sudden childish desire to enter that
singular house. Do you see those window-frames painted red, and the red
lines on the doors and shutters? Doesn’t the place look to you as if it
belonged to the devil?--perhaps he inherited it from the monks. Come,
let us pursue the black and white lady--forward, march!” cried Philippe,
with forced gaiety.
At that instant the two huntsmen heard a cry that was something like
that of a mouse caught in a trap. They listened. The rustle of a few
shrubs sounded in the silence like the murmur of a breaking wave. In
vain they listened for other sounds; the earth was dumb, and kept the
secret of those light steps, if, indeed, the unknown woman moved at all.
“It is very singular!” said Philippe, as they skirted the park wall.
The two friends presently reached a path in the forest which led to the
village of Chauvry. After following this path some way toward the main
road to Paris, they came to another iron gate which led to the principal
facade of the mysterious dwelling. On this side the dilapidation and
disorder of the premises had reached their height. Immense cracks
furrowed the walls of the house, which was built on three sides of
a square. Fragments of tiles and slates lying on the ground, and the
dilapidated condition of the roofs, were evidence of a total want of
care on the part of the owners. The fruit had fallen from the trees and
lay rotting on the ground; a cow was feeding on the lawn and treading
down the flowers in the borders, while a goat browsed on the shoots of
the vines and munched the unripe grapes.
“Here all is harmony; the devastation seems organized,” said the
colonel, pulling the chain of a bell; but the bell was without a
clapper.
The huntsmen heard nothing but the curiously sharp noise of a rusty
spring. Though very dilapidated, a little door made in the wall beside
the iron gates resisted all their efforts to open it.
“Well, well, this is getting to be exciting,” said de Sucy to his
companion.
“If I were not a magistrate,” replied Monsieur d’Albon, “I should think
that woman was a witch.”
As he said the words, the cow came to the iron gate and pushed her warm
muzzle towards them, as if she felt the need of seeing human beings.
Then a woman, if that name could be applied to the indefinable being who
suddenly issued from a clump of bushes, pulled away the cow by its rope.
This woman wore on her head a red handkerchief, beneath which trailed
long locks of hair in color and shape like the flax on a distaff. She
wore no fichu. A coarse woollen petticoat in black and gray stripes, too
short by several inches, exposed her legs. She might have belonged to
some tribe of Red-Skins described by Cooper, for her legs, neck, and
arms were the color of brick. No ray of intelligence enlivened her
vacant face. A few whitish hairs served her for eyebrows; the eyes
themselves, of a dull blue, were cold and wan; and her mouth was so
formed as to show the teeth, which were crooked, but as white as those
of a dog.
“Here, my good woman!” called Monsieur de Sucy.
She came very slowly to the gate, looking with a silly expression at the
two huntsmen, the sight of whom brought a forced and painful smile to
her face.
“Where are we? Whose house is this? Who are you? Do you belong here?”
To these questions and several others which the two friends alternately
addressed to her, she answered only with guttural sounds that seemed
more like the growl of an animal than the voice of a human being.
“She must be deaf and dumb,” said the marquis.
“Bons-Hommes!” cried the peasant woman.
“Ah! I see. This is, no doubt, the old monastery of the Bons-Hommes,”
said the marquis.
He renewed his questions. But, like a capricious child, the peasant
woman colored, played with her wooden shoe, twisted the rope of the
cow, which was now feeding peaceably, and looked at the two hunters,
examining every part of their clothing; then she yelped, growled, and
clucked, but did not speak.
“What is your name?” said Philippe, looking at her fixedly, as if he
meant to mesmerize her.
“Genevieve,” she said, laughing with a silly air.
“The cow is the most intelligent being we have seen so far,” said the
marquis. “I shall fire my gun and see if that will being some one.”
Just as d’Albon raised his gun, the colonel stopped him with a gesture,
and pointed to the form of a woman, probably the one who had so keenly
piqued his curiosity. At this moment she seemed lost in the deepest
meditation, and was coming with slow steps along a distant pathway, so
that the two friends had ample time to examine her.
She was dressed in a ragged gown of black satin. Her long hair fell in
masses of curls over her forehead, around her shoulders, and below her
waist, serving her for a shawl. Accustomed no doubt to this disorder,
she seldom pushed her hair from her forehead; and when she did so, it
was with a sudden toss of her head which only for a moment cleared her
forehead and eyes from the thick veil. Her gesture, like that of an
animal, had a remarkable mechanical precision, the quickness of which
seemed wonderful in a woman. The huntsmen were amazed to see her
suddenly leap up on the branch of an apple-tree, and sit there with the
ease of a bird. She gathered an apple and ate it; then she dropped to
the ground with the graceful ease we admire in a squirrel. Her limbs
possessed an elasticity which took from every movement the slightest
appearance of effort or constraint. She played upon the turf, rolling
herself about like a child; then, suddenly, she flung her feet and hands
forward, and lay at full length on the grass, with the grace and natural
ease of a young cat asleep in the sun. Thunder sounded in the distance,
and she turned suddenly, rising on her hands and knees with the rapidity
of a dog which hears a coming footstep.
The effects of this singular attitude was to separate into two heavy
masses the volume of her black hair, which now fell on either side of
her head, and allowed the two spectators to admire the white shoulders
glistening like daisies in a field, and the throat, the perfection of
which allowed them to judge of the other beauties of her figure.
Suddenly she uttered a distressful cry and rose to her feet. Her
movements succeeded each other with such airiness and grace that she
seemed not a creature of this world but a daughter of the atmosphere, as
sung in the poems of Ossian. She ran toward a piece of water, shook one
of her legs lightly to cast off her shoe, and began to dabble her foot,
white as alabaster, in the current, admiring, perhaps, the undulations
she thus produced upon the surface of the water. Then she knelt down at
the edge of the stream and amused herself, like a child, in casting in
her long tresses and pulling them abruptly out, to watch the shower of
drops that glittered down, looking, as the sunlight struck athwart them,
like a chaplet of pearls.
“That woman is mad!” cried the marquis.
A hoarse cry, uttered by Genevieve, seemed uttered as a warning to the
unknown woman, who turned suddenly, throwing back her hair from either
side of her face. At this instant the colonel and Monsieur d’Albon could
distinctly see her features; she, herself, perceiving the two friends,
sprang to the iron railing with the lightness and rapidity of a deer.
“Adieu!” she said, in a soft, harmonious voice, the melody of which did
not convey the slightest feeling or the slightest thought.
Monsieur d’Albon admired the long lashes of her eyelids, the blackness
of her eyebrows, and the dazzling whiteness of a skin devoid of even the
faintest tinge of color. Tiny blue veins alone broke the uniformity of
its pure white tones. When the marquis turned to his friend as if to
share with him his amazement at the sight of this singular creature, he
found him stretched on the ground as if dead. D’Albon fired his gun
in the air to summon assistance, crying out “Help! help!” and then
endeavored to revive the colonel. At the sound of the shot, the unknown
woman, who had hitherto stood motionless, fled away with the rapidity
of an arrow, uttering cries of fear like a wounded animal, and running
hither and thither about the meadow with every sign of the greatest
terror.
Monsieur d’Albon, hearing the rumbling of a carriage on the high-road
to Ile-Adam, waved his handkerchief and shouted to its occupants for
assistance. The carriage was immediately driven up to the old monastery,
and the marquis recognized his neighbors, Monsieur and Madame de
Granville, who at once gave up their carriage to the service of the
two gentlemen. Madame de Granville had with her, by chance, a bottle of
salts, which revived the colonel for a moment. When he opened his eyes
he turned them to the meadow, where the unknown woman was still running
and uttering her distressing cries. A smothered exclamation escaped
him, which seemed to express a sense of horror; then he closed his eyes
again, and made a gesture as if to implore his friend to remove him from
that sight.
Monsieur and Madame de Granville placed their carriage entirely at the
disposal of the marquis, assuring him courteously that they would like
to continue their way on foot.
“Who is that lady?” asked the marquis, signing toward the unknown woman.
“I believe she comes from Moulins,” replied Monsieur de Granville. “She
is the Comtesse de Vandieres, and they say she is mad; but as she
has only been here two months I will not vouch for the truth of these
hearsays.”
Monsieur d’Albon thanked his friends, and placing the colonel in the
carriage, started with him for Cassan.
“It is she!” cried Philippe, recovering his senses.
“Who is she?” asked d’Albon.
“Stephanie. Ah, dead and living, living and mad! I fancied I was dying.”
The prudent marquis, appreciating the gravity of the crisis through
which his friend was passing, was careful not to question or excite him;
he was only anxious to reach the chateau, for the change which had taken
place in the colonel’s features, in fact in his whole person, made him
fear for his friend’s reason. As soon, therefore, as the carriage had
reached the main street of Ile-Adam, he dispatched the footman to the
village doctor, so that the colonel was no sooner fairly in his bed at
the chateau than the physician was beside him.
“If monsieur had not been many hours without food the shock would have
killed him,” said the doctor.
After naming the first precautions, the doctor left the room, to
prepare, himself, a calming potion. The next day, Monsieur de Sucy was
better, but the doctor still watched him carefully.
“I will admit to you, monsieur le marquis,” he said, “that I have feared
some affection of the brain. Monsieur de Sucy has received a violent
shock; his passions are strong; but, in him, the first blow decides all.
To-morrow he may be entirely out of danger.”
The doctor was not mistaken; and the following day he allowed the
marquis to see his friend.
“My dear d’Albon,” said Philippe, pressing his hand, “I am going to ask
a kindness of you. Go to the Bons-Hommes, and find out all you can of
the lady we saw there; and return to me as quickly as you can; I shall
count the minutes.”
Monsieur d’Albon mounted his horse at once, and galloped to the old
abbey. When he arrived there, he saw before the iron gate a tall, spare
man with a very kindly face, who answered in the affirmative when asked
if he lived there. Monsieur d’Albon then informed him of the reasons for
his visit.
“What! monsieur,” said the other, “was it you who fired that fatal shot?
You very nearly killed my poor patient.”
“But, monsieur, I fired in the air.”
“You would have done the countess less harm had you fired at her.”
“Then we must not reproach each other, monsieur, for the sight of the
countess has almost killed my friend, Monsieur de Sucy.”
“Heavens! can you mean Baron Philippe de Sucy?” cried the doctor,
clasping his hands. “Did he go to Russia; was he at the passage of the
Beresina?”
“Yes,” replied d’Albon, “he was captured by the Cossacks and kept for
five years in Siberia; he recovered his liberty a few months ago.”
“Come in, monsieur,” said the master of the house, leading the marquis
into a room on the lower floor where everything bore the marks of
capricious destruction. The silken curtains beside the windows were
torn, while those of muslin remained intact.
“You see,” said the tall old man, as they entered, “the ravages
committed by that dear creature, to whom I devote myself. She is my
niece; in spite of the impotence of my art, I hope some day to
restore her reason by attempting a method which can only be employed,
unfortunately, by very rich people.”
Then, like all persons living in solitude who are afflicted with an ever
present and ever renewed grief, he related to the marquis at length the
following narrative, which is here condensed, and relieved of the many
digressions made by both the narrator and the listener.