Univerfity of Illinois 
 
 Library Friends 
 atUcbana-Champaign 
 
 Gift of 
 Helen Bess Cone 
 
 BOOKfiTACiLS 
 
 I 
 
The person charging this material is re- 
 sponsible for its return to the library from 
 which it was withdrawn on or before the 
 Latest Date stamped below. 
 
 Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons 
 for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from 
 the University. 
 
 To renew call Telephone Center, 333-8400 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 /MOV- 
 OCT 30 1987 
 
 HAY 2? 138 
 
 B 
 
 HI 
 
 L161— O-1096 
 
Croxlep f^bition 
 
 r 
 
 mt OTorfeg of 
 
 ii-very ill/' said the Doctor, feeling Piet-^ 
 )ulse. 
 
 Volumes VII-VIII 
 
 9t tfje feign of tfte Cat anb J&acket 
 a JBacftelor's; €mb\i&f)mm 
 J^onorme 
 9nb ©tter fetoneg 
 
 MttP of (finglisff) anb Jf rtnct) literature 
 
Craxlep Cbition 
 
 Wt^t Morfeg of 
 
 Jlonore be pal^ac 
 
 Volumes VII-VIII 
 
 !3t tte ^(gn of tlie Cat anb leiacket 
 ^ JBaci)elot'£; Csitabltsitment 
 5|onorme 
 
 S>ociEtp of Cnglis^l) anb Jf rencl) literature 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 ix^TRODUCTION - 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND 
 RACKET- . - - - 
 
 (La Maiscn du Chat-qui-Pelote) 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 {Le Bal de Sgeaux) 
 
 THE PURSE .... 
 
 (Z« Bourse) 
 
 MADAME FIRMIANI 
 
 {Mme. Ftrmiant) 
 
 THE CELIBATES— I 
 PIERRETTE . . , - 
 
 {Pierrette) 
 
 THE CELIBATES— II 
 
 THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 {Le Cure de Tours) 
 
 VOL. 4—1 
 
iv 
 
 CONTENTS 
 PART II 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 THE CELIBATES— III 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT - - - I 
 ( Un Menage de garden) 
 
 HONORINE 299 
 
 {Honorine) 
 (Translator, Clara Bbll ) 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 THE CELIBATES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 {n the very interesting prefatse, dated July 1842, which Bal- 
 zac prefixed to the first collection of the Comedie Humaine, 
 he endeavors, naturally enough, to represent the division into 
 Scenes de la Vie Parisienne, etc., as a rational and reasoned 
 one. Although not quite arbitrary, it was of course to a 
 great extent determined by considerations which were not 
 those of design; and we did not require the positive testi- 
 mony which we find in the Letters to tell us that in the 
 author's view, as well as in our own, not a few of the stories 
 might have been shifted over from one division to another, 
 and have filled their place just as well in the other as in the 
 one. 
 
 La Maison du Chat-qui-Pelote, however, which originally 
 bore the much less happy title of "Gloire et Malheur," was 
 a Scene de la Vie Privee from the first, and it bears out better 
 than some of its companions its author's expressed intention 
 of making these "scenes" represent youth, whether Parisian 
 or Provincial. Few of Balzac's stories have united the gen- 
 eral suffrage for touching grace more than this; and there 
 are few better examples of his minute Dutch-painting than 
 the opening passages, or of his unconquerable delight in the 
 details of business than his sketch of Monsieur Guillaume's^ 
 establishment and its ways. The French equivalent of the 
 Complete Tradesman" of Defoe lasted much longer than his 
 English counterpart; but, except in the smaller provincial 
 towns, he is said to be uncommon now. As for the plot, it 
 
X 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 such a stately name can be given to so delicate a sketch, it is 
 of course open to downright British judgment to pronounce 
 the self-sacrifice of Lebas more ignoble than touching, the 
 conduct of Theodore too childish to deserve the excuses some- 
 times possible for passionate inconstancy, and the character 
 of Augustine angelically idiotic. This last outrage, if it were 
 committed, would indeed only be an instance of the irrecon- 
 cilable difference which almost to the present day divides 
 English and French ideas of ideally perfect girlhood, and of 
 that state of womanhood which corresponds thereto. The 
 candeur adorable which the Frenchman adores and exhibits 
 in the girl; the uncompromising, though mortal, passion of 
 the woman ; are too different from any ideal that we have en- 
 tertained, except for a very short period in the eighteenth 
 "century. But there are few more pathetic and charming im- 
 personations of this other ideal than Augustine de Sommer- 
 vieux. 
 
 All the stories associated with La Maison du Chat-qui- 
 Pelote, according to French standards — all, perhaps, accord- 
 ing to all but the very strictest and oldest-fashioned of Eng- 
 lish — are perfectly free from the slightest objection on the 
 score of that propriety against which Balzac has an amusing: 
 if not quite exact tirade in one of his books. And this is 
 evidently not accidental, for the preface above referred to 
 is an elaborate attempt to rebut the charge of impropriety, 
 and to show that the author could draw virtuous as well as 
 unvirtuous characters. But they are not, taking them as a 
 whole, and omitting the "Cat and Racket" itself, quite ex- 
 amples of putting the best foot foremost. Le Bal de Sceaux, 
 with its satire on contempt for trade, is in some ways more 
 like Balzac's young friend and pupil Charles de Bernard 
 than \ike himself; and I believe it attracted English notice 
 
INTRODTjCTION 
 
 xi 
 
 pretty early. At least I seem, when quite a boy, and long 
 before I read the Comedie Ilumaine, to have seen an English 
 version or paraphrase of it. La Bourse, though agreeable, is 
 a little slight. I should rank Madame Firmiani a good deal 
 higher than these two, though it also is a little slight, and 
 though it is not in Balzac's most characteristic or important 
 manner. Eather, perhaps, does it remind us of the "Physiolo- 
 gies" and the other social "skits'^ and sketches which he was 
 writing for the Caricature and other papers at the time. Still, 
 the various descriptions of the heroine have a point and 
 sparkle which are almost peculiar to the not quite mature 
 work of men of genius; and the actual story has a lightness 
 which, perhaps, would have disappeared if Balzac had 
 handled it at greater length. 
 
 As for bibliography. La Maison du Chat-qui-Pelote, under 
 the title above referred to, saw the light first with other 
 Scenes de la Vie Privee in 1830. But it was not dated as of 
 the previous year till five years later, in its third edition; 
 while the title was not changed till the great collection itself. 
 Of its companions, Le Bal de Sceaux was an original one, 
 iind seems to have been written as well as published more 
 or less at the same time. It at first had an alternative title, 
 Ou le Pair de France, which was afterwards dropped. 
 
 La Bourse was early, but not quite so early as these. It 
 appeared in, and was apparently written for, the second edi- 
 tion of the Scenes de la Vie Privee, published in May 1832. 
 In 1835 it was moved over to the Scenes de la Vie Parisienne, 
 between which and the Vie Privee there is in fact a good deal 
 of cross and arbitrary division. But when the full Comedie 
 took shape it moved back again. La Vendetta, which be- 
 longs with this group of stories, has been reserved for a later 
 volume. 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 Madame Firmiani was first published in the Revue de 
 Paris for February 1832 ; then became a Conte Philosophique, 
 and still in the same year a Scene de la Vie Parisienne. It 
 was in the 1842 collection that it took up its abode in the 
 Scenes de la Vie Privee, 
 
 Les Celilataires, the longest number of the original Comedie 
 under a single title, next to Illusions per dues, is not, like that 
 book, connected by any unity of story. Indeed, the general 
 bond of union is pretty weak ; and though it is quite true that 
 bachelors and old maids are the heroes and heroines ofiall 
 three, it would be rather hard to establish any other bond of 
 connection, and it is rather unlikely that any one unprompted 
 would fix on this as a sufficient ground of partnership. 
 
 Two at least of the component parts, however, are of very 
 high excellence. I do not myself think that Pierrette, which 
 opens the series, is quite the equal of its companions. 
 Written, as it was, for Countess Anna de Hanska, Balzac's 
 step-daughter of the future, while she was still very young, it 
 partakes necessarily of the rather elaborate artificiality of all 
 attempts to suit the young person, of French attempts in par- 
 ticular, and it may perhaps be said of Balzac's attempts most 
 of all. It belongs, in a way, to the Arcis series — the series 
 which also includes the fine Tenebreuse Affaire and the un- 
 finished Depute d' Arcis — but is not very closely connected 
 therewith. The picture of the actual Celihataires, the brother 
 and sister Eogron, with which it opens, is in one of Balzac's 
 best-known styles, and is executed with all his usual mastery 
 both of the minute and of the at least partially repulsive, show- 
 ing also that strange knowledge of the bourgeois de Paris 
 which, somehow or other, he seems to have attained by dint of 
 
rNTI«]rDUCTIX3N 
 
 xill 
 
 unknown foregatherings in his ten years of apprenticeship. 
 But when we come to Pierrette herself, the story is, I think^ 
 rather less satisfying. Her persecutions and her end, and the 
 devotion of the faithful Brigaut and the rest, are pathetic no 
 doubt, but tend (I hope it is not heartless to say it) Just a 
 very little towards sensihlerie. The fact is that the thing is 
 not quite in Balzac's line. 
 
 The other and shorter constituent of the book, Le Cure de 
 Tours, is certainly on a higher level, and has attracted the 
 most magnificent eulogies from some of the novelist's ad- 
 mirers. I think both Mr. Henry James and Mr. Wedmore 
 have singled out this little piece for detailed and elaborate 
 praise, and there is no doubt that it is a happy example of a 
 kind in which the author excelled. The opening, with its evi- 
 dent but not obtruded remembrance of the old and well- 
 founded superstition — derived from the universal belief in 
 some form of Nemesis — that an extraordinary sense of happi- 
 ness, good luck, or anything of the kind, is a precursor of mis- 
 fortune, and calls for some instant act of sacrifice or humilia- 
 tion, is very striking; and the working out of the vengeance 
 of the goddess by the very ungoddess-like though feminine 
 hand of Mademoiselle Gamard has much that is commend- 
 able. Nothing in its well exampled kind is better touched 
 off than the Listomere coterie, from the shrewdness of Mon- 
 sieur de Bourbonne to the selfishness of Madame de Listo- 
 mere. 1 do not know that the old maid herself — cat, and far 
 worse than cat as she is — is at all exaggerated, and the sketch 
 of the coveted appartement and its ill-fated mohilier is about 
 as good as it can be. And the battle between Madame de 
 Listomere and the Abbe Troubert, which has served as a 
 model for many similar things, has, if it has often been 
 equaled, not often been surpassed. 
 
xiv 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I cannot, however, help thinking that there is more than 
 a little exaggeration in more than one point of the story. The 
 Abbe Birotteau is surely a little too much of a fool; the 
 Abbe Troubert an lago a little too much wanting in verisi- 
 militude; and the central incident of the clause about the 
 furniture too manifestly improbable. Taking the first and 
 the last points together, is it likely that any one not quite an 
 idiot should, in the first place, remain so entirely ignorant 
 of the value of his property; should, in the second, though, 
 ignorant or not, he attached the greatest possible pretium 
 affectionis to it, contract to resign it for such a ridiculous con- 
 sideration; and should, in the third, take the fatal step with- 
 out so much as remembering the condition attached thereto? 
 If it be answered that Birotteau was idiot enough to do such 
 a thing, then it must be observed further that one's sympath}' 
 is frozen by the fact. Such a man deserved such treatment. 
 And, again, even if French justice was, and perhaps is, as 
 much influenced by secret considerations as Balzac loves to 
 represent it, we must agree with that member of the Listo- 
 mere society who pointed out that no tribunal could possibly 
 uphold such an obviously iniquitous bargain. As for Trou- 
 bert, the idea of the Jesuitical ecclesiastic (though Balzac 
 was not personally hostile to the Jesuits) was a common one 
 at the time, and no doubt popular, but the actual personage 
 seems to me nearer to Eugene Sue's Eodin in some ways than 
 I could have desired. 
 
 These things, however, are very much a case of "As You 
 Like It" or "As It Strikes You," and I have said that Le Cure 
 de Tours strikes some good judges as of exceptional merit, 
 while no one can refuse it merit in a high degree. I should 
 not, except for the opening, place it in the very highest class 
 of the Comedie, but it is high beyond all doubt in the second. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 XV 
 
 Pierrette, which was earlier called Pierrette Lorrain, was 
 issued in 1840, first in the Siecle, and then in volume form, 
 published by Souverain. In both issues it had nine chapter 
 or book divisions with headings. With the other Celihataires 
 it entered the Comedie as a Scene de la Vie de Province in 
 1843. 
 
 Le Cure de Tours (which Balzac had at one time intended 
 to call by the name of the Cure's enemy, and which at first 
 was simply called by the general title Les Celihataires) is 
 much older than its companions, and appeared in 1832 in the 
 Scenes de la Vie Privee. It was soon properly shifted to the 
 Vie de Province, and as such in due time joined the Comedie 
 bearing its present title. G-. S. 
 
 [The third part of Les Celihataires, not being connected 
 with the others, is included in a separate volume^ under its 
 own title of Un Menage de gargon.] 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 Dedicated to Mademoiselle Marie de Montheau ' 
 
 Half-way down the Kue Saint-Denis, almost at the corned 
 of the Eue du Petit-Lion, there stood formerly one of those 
 delightful houses which enable historians to reconstruct old 
 Paris by analogy. The threatening walls of this tumbledown 
 abode seemed to have been decorated with hieroglyphics. For 
 what other name could the passer-by give to the Xs and Vs 
 which the horizontal or diagonal timbers traced on the front, 
 outlined by little parallel cracks in the plaster? It w^as evi- 
 dent that every beam quivered in its mortices at the passing 
 of the lightest vehicle. This venerable structure was 
 \?rowned by a triangular roof of which no example will, ere 
 if.ong, be seen in Paris. This covering, warped by the ex- 
 tremes of the Paris climate, projected three feet over the 
 j'oadway, as much to protect the threshold from the rainfall 
 as to shelter the wall of a loft and its sill-less dormer-window. 
 This upper story was built of planks, overlapping each other 
 like slates, in order, no doubt, not to overweight the frail 
 house. 
 
 One rainy morning in the month of March, a young man, 
 carefully wrapped in his cloak, stood under the awning of a 
 shop opposite this old house, which he was studying with the 
 enthusiasm of an antiquary. In point of fact, this relic of 
 the civic life of the sixteenth century offered more than one 
 problem to the consideration of an observer. Each story 
 presented some singularity; on the first floor four tall, 
 narrow windows, close together, were filled as to the lower 
 panes with boards, so as to produce the doubtful light by 
 which a clever salesman can ascribe to his goods the color 
 
2 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 his customers inquire for. The young man seemed very 
 scornful of this part of the house; his eyes had not yet 
 rested on it. The windows of the second floor, where the 
 Venetian blinds were drawn up, revealing little dingy muslin 
 curtains behind the large Bohemian glass panes, did not in- 
 terest him either. His attention was attracted to the third 
 floor, to the modest sash-frames of wood, so clumsily wrought 
 that they might have found a place in the Museum of Arts 
 and Crafts to illustrate the early efforts of French carpentry. 
 These windows were glazed with small squares of glass so 
 green that, but for his good eyes, the young man could not 
 have seen the blue-checked cotton curtains which screened 
 the mysteries of the room from profane eyes. Now and then 
 the watcher, weary of his fruitless contemplation, or of the 
 silence in which the house was buried, like the whole neigh- 
 borhood, dropped his eyes towards the lower regions. An in- 
 voluntary smile parted his lips each time he looked at the 
 shop, where, in fact, there were some laughable details. 
 
 A formidable wooden beam, resting on four pillars, which 
 appeared to have bent under the weight of the decrepit house, 
 had been encrusted with as many coats of different paint ay 
 there are of rouge on an old duchess' cheek. In the middle 
 of this broad and fantastically carved joist there was an old 
 painting representing a cat playing rackets. This picture 
 was what moved the young man to mirth. But it must be 
 said that the wittiest of modern painters could not invent 
 so comical a caricature. The animal held in one of its fore- 
 paws a racket as big as itself, and stood on its hind legs to 
 aim at hitting an enormous ball, returned by a man in a fine 
 embroidered coat. Drawing, color, and accessories, all were 
 treated in such a way as to suggest that the artist had meant 
 to make game of the shop-owner and of the passing observer. 
 Time, while impairing this artless painting, had made it yet 
 more grotesque by introducing some uncertain features which 
 must have puzzled the conscientious idler. For instance, the 
 cat's tail had been eaten into in such a way that it might 
 now have been taken for the figure of a spectator — so long. 
 
AT THE SIGN OP THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 3 
 
 and thick, and furry were the tails of our forefathers' cats. 
 To the right of the picture, on an azure field which ill-dis- 
 guised the decay of the wood, might be read the name 
 "Guillaume," and to the left, "Successor to Master Chevrel." 
 Sun and rain had worn away most of the gilding parsi- 
 moniously applied to the letters of this superscription, in 
 which the Us and Vs had changed places in obedience to the 
 laws of old-world orthography. 
 
 To quench the pride of those who believe that the world 
 is growing cleverer day by day, and that modern humbug 
 surpasses everything, it may be observed that these signs, of 
 which the origin seems so whimsical to many Paris merchants, 
 are the dead pictures of once living pictures by which our 
 roguish ancestors contrived to tempt customers into their 
 houses. Thus the Spinning Sow, the Green Monkey, and 
 others, were animals in cages whose skill astonished the 
 passer-by, and whose accomplishments prove the patience oi* 
 the fifteenth-century artisan. Such curiosities did more to 
 enrich their fortunate owners than the signs of "Providence," 
 "Good-faith," "Grace of God," and "Decapitation of John the 
 Baptist," which may still be seen in the Eue Saint-Denis. 
 
 However, our stranger was certainly not standing there to 
 admire the cat, which a minute's attention sufficed to stamp 
 on his memory. The young man himself had his peculiarities. 
 His cloak, folded after the manner of an antique drapery, 
 showed a smart pair of shoes, all the more remarkable in the 
 midst of the Paris mud, because he wore white silk stockings, 
 on which the splashes betrayed his impatience. He had just 
 come, no doubt, from a wedding or a ball; for at this early 
 hour he had in his hand a pair of white gloves, and his 
 black hair, now out of curl, and flowing over his shoulders, 
 showed that it had been dressed d la Caracalla, a fashion in- 
 troduced as much by David's school of painting as by the 
 mania for Greek and Eoman styles which characterized the 
 early years of this century. 
 
 In spite of the noise made by a few market gardeners, who, 
 being late, rattled past towards the great market-place at a 
 
4 
 
 AT THE SIGN OP THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 gallop, the busy street lay in a stillness of which the magic 
 charm is known only to those who have wandered through 
 deserted Paris at the hours when its roar, hushed for a mo- 
 ment, rises and spreads in the distance like the great voicd 
 of the sea. This strange young man must have seemed as 
 curious to the shopkeeping folk of the "Cat and Eacket" a? 
 the "Cat and Racket" was to him. A dazzlingly white cravat 
 made his anxious face look even paler than it really was. The 
 fire that flashed in his black eyes, gloomy and sparkling by 
 turns, was in harmony with the singular outline of his 
 features, with his wide, flexible mouth, hardened into a smile. 
 His forehead, knit with violent annoyance, had a stamp of 
 doom. Is not the forehead the most prophetic feature of a 
 man? When the stranger's brow expressed passion the fur- 
 rows formed in it were terrible in their strength and energy; 
 but when he recovered his calmness, so easily upset, it beamed 
 with a luminous grace which gave great attractiveness to a 
 countenance in which joy, grief, love, anger, or scorn blazed 
 out so contagiously that the coldest man could not fail to be 
 impressed. 
 
 He was so thoroughly vexed by the time when the dormer- 
 window of the loft was suddenly flung open, that he did not 
 observe the apparition of three laughing faces, pink and v/hite 
 and chubby, but as vulgar as the face of Commerce as it 
 is seen in sculpture on certain monuments. These three 
 faces, framed by the window, recalled the puffy cherubs 
 floating among the clouds that surround God the Father. 
 The apprentices snuffed up the exhalations of the street with 
 an eagerness that showed how hot and poisonous the atmos- 
 phere of their garret must be. After pointing to the singular 
 sentinel, the most jovial, as he seemed, of the apprentices 
 retired and came back holding an instrument whose hard 
 metal pipe is now superseded by a leather tube; and they all 
 grinned with mischief as they looked down on the loiterer, 
 and sprinkled him with a fine white shower of which the 
 scent proved that three chins had just been shaved. Stand- 
 ing on tiptoe, in the farthest corner of their loft, to enjoy 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 5 
 
 their victim's rage, the lads ceased laughing on seeing the 
 haughty indifference with which the young man shook his 
 cloak, and the intense contempt expressed by his face as he 
 glanced up at the empty window-frame. 
 
 At this moment a slender white hand threw up the lower 
 half of one of the clumsy windows on the third floor by the 
 aid of the sash runners, of which the pulley so often suddenly 
 gives way and releases the heavy panes it ought to hold up. 
 The watcher was then rewarded for his long waiting. The 
 face of a young girl appeared, as fresh as one of the white 
 cups that bloom on the bosom of the waters, crowned by a 
 frill of tumbled muslin, which gave her head a look of ex- 
 quisite innocence. Though wrapped in brown stuff, her neck 
 and shoulders gleamed here and there through little open- 
 ings left by her movements in sleep. No expression of em- 
 barrassment detracted from the candor of her face, or the 
 calm look of eyes immortalized long since in the sublimf? 
 works of Raphael; here were the same grace, the same repos(? 
 as in these Virgins, and now proverbial. There was a de - 
 lightful contrast between the cheeks of that face on which 
 sleep had, as it were, given high relief to a superabundance 
 of life, and the antiquity of the heavy window with its clumsy 
 shape and black sill. Like those day-blowing flowers, which 
 in the early morning have not yet unfurled their cups, 
 twisted by the chills of night, the girl, as yet hardly awake, 
 let her blue eyes wander beyond the neighboring roofs to look 
 at the sky; then, from habit, she east them down on the 
 gloomy depths of the street, where they immediately met those 
 of her adorer. Vanity, no doubt, distressed her at being seen in 
 undress ; she started back, the worn pulley gave way, and the 
 sash fell with the rapid run, which in our day has earned 
 for this artless invention of our forefathers an odious name.* 
 The vision had disappeared. To the young man the most 
 radiant star of morning seemed to be hidden by a cloud. 
 
 During these little incidents the heavy inside shutters that 
 protected the slight windows of the shop of the "Cat and 
 
 * Fenfire it la Qvillotine. 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE GAT AND RAGKET 
 
 Racket" had been removed as if by magic. The old door 
 with its knocker was opened back against the wall of the 
 entry by a man-servant, apparently coeval with the sign, who, 
 with a shaking hand, hung upon it a square of cloth, on which 
 were embroidered in yellow silk the words : "Guillaume, suc- 
 cessor to Chevrel." Many a passer-by would have found it 
 difficult to guess the class of trade carried on by Monsieur 
 Guillaume. Between the strong iron bars which protected 
 ■his shop windows on the outside, certain packages, wrapped 
 in brown linen, were hardly visible, though as numerous as 
 herringsi swimming in a shoal. Notwithstanding the primi- 
 tive aspect of the Gothic front, Monsieur Guillaume, of all 
 the merchant clothiers in Paris, was the one whose stores 
 were always the best provided, whose connections were the 
 most extensive, and whose commercial honesty never lay under 
 the slightest suspicion. If some of his brethren in business 
 made a contract with the Government, and had not the re- 
 quired quantity of cloth, he was always ready to deliver it, 
 however large the number of pieces tendered for. The wily 
 dealer knew a thousand ways of extracting the largest profits 
 without being obliged, like them, to court patrons, cringiag 
 to them, or making them costly presents. When his fellow- 
 tradesmen could only pay in good bills of long date, he would 
 mention his notary as an accommodating man, and managed 
 to get a second profit out of the bargain, thanks to this ar- 
 rangement, which had made it a proverb among the traders 
 of the Rue Saint-Denis: "Heaven preserve you from Mon- 
 sieur Guillaume's notary !" to signify a heavy discount. 
 
 The old merchant was to be seen standing on the threshold 
 of his shop, as if by a miracle, the instant the servant with- 
 drew. Monsieur Guillaume looked at the Rue Saint-Denis,' 
 at the neighboring shops, and at the weather, like a man 
 disembarking at Havre, and seeing France once more after 
 a long voyage. Having convinced himself that nothing had 
 changed while he was asleep, he presently perceived the 
 stranger on guard, and he, on his part, gazed at the pa- 
 triarchal draper as Humboldt may have scrutinized tLe 
 
At the sign of the Cat and Racket 
 
I 
 
AT THE SIGN 01' THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 7 
 
 first electric eel he saw in America. Monsieur Guillaume 
 wore loose black velvet breeches, pepper-and-salt stockings, 
 and square-toed shoes with silver buckles. His coat, with 
 square-cut fronts, square-cut tails, and square-cut collar, 
 clothed his slightly bent figure in greenish cloth, finished with 
 white metal buttons, tawny from wear. His gray hair was 
 so accurately combed and flattened over his yellow pate that 
 it made it look like a furrowed field. His little green eyes, 
 that might have been pierced with a gimlet, flashed beneath 
 arches faintly tinged with red in the place of eyebrows. 
 Anxieties had wrinkled his forehead with as many horizontal 
 lines as there were creases in his coat. This colorless face 
 expressed patience, commercial shrewdness, and the sort of 
 wily cupidity which is needful in business. At that time 
 these old families were less rare than they are now, in which 
 the characteristic habits and costume of their calling, sur- 
 viving in the midst of more recent civilization, were preserved 
 as cherished traditions, like the antediluvian remains found 
 by Cuvier in the quarries. 
 
 The head of the Guillaume family was a notable upholder 
 of ancient practices ; he might be heard to regret the Provost 
 of Merchants, and never did he mention a decision of the 
 Tribunal of Commerce without calling it the Sentence of the 
 Consuls. Up and dressed the first of the household, in obe- 
 dience, no doubt, to these old customs, he stood sternly await- 
 ing the appearance of his three assistants, ready to scold them 
 in case they were late. These young disciples of Mercury 
 knew nothing more terrible than the wordless assiduity with 
 which the master scrutinized their faces and their movements 
 on Monday in search of evidence or traces of their pranks. 
 But at this moment the old clothier paid no heed to his ap- 
 prentices; he was absorbed in trying to divine the motive 
 of the anxious looks which the young man in silk stock- 
 ings and a cloak cast alternately at his signboard and into 
 the depths of his shop. The daylight was now brighter, and 
 enabled the stranger to discern the cashier's corner enclosed 
 by a railing and screened bv old orreen silk curtains, where 
 
8 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 were kept the immense ledgers, the silent oracles of the 
 house. The too inquisitive gazer seemed to covet this little 
 nook, and to be taking the plan of a dining-room at one side, 
 lighted by a skylight, whence the family at meals could easily 
 see the smallest incident that might occur at the shop-door. 
 So much affection for his dwelling seemed suspicious to a 
 trader who had lived long enough to remember the law of 
 maximum prices; Monsieur Guillaume naturally thought that 
 this sinister personage had an eye to the till of the Cat and 
 Eacket. After quietly observing the mute duel which was 
 going on between his master and the stranger, the eldest 
 of the apprentices, having seen that the young man was 
 stealthily watching the windows of the third floor, ventured 
 to place himself on the stone flag where Monsieur Guillaume 
 was standing. He took two steps out into the street, raised 
 his head, and fancied that he caught sight of Mademoiselle 
 Augustine Guillaume in hasty retreat. The draper, annoyed 
 by his assistant's perspicacity, shot a side glance at him; 
 but the draper and his amorous apprentice were suddenly 
 relieved from the fears which the young man's presence had 
 excited in their minds. He hailed a hackney cab on its way 
 to a neighboring stand, and jumped into it with an air of 
 affected indifference. This departure was a balm to the hearts 
 of the other two lads, Avho had been somewhat uneasy as to 
 meeting the victim of their practical joke. 
 
 "Well, gentlemen, what ails you that you are standing 
 there with your arms folded?" said Monsieur Guillaume to 
 his three neophytes. "In former days, bless you, when I 
 was in Master Chevrel's service, I should have overhauled 
 more than two pieces of cloth by this time." 
 
 "Then it was daylight earlier," said the second assistant, 
 whose duty this was. 
 
 The old shopkeeper could not help smiling. Though two 
 of these young fellows, who were confided to his care by their 
 fathers, rich manufacturers at Louviers and at Sedan, had 
 only to ask and to have a hundred thousand francs the day 
 when they were old enough to settle in life, Guillaume re- 
 
AT THH SIGN OF THE CAT AND llAOKET 
 
 0 
 
 garded it as his duty to keep them under the rod of an old- 
 world despotism, unknown nowadays in the showy modern 
 shops, where the apprentices expect to be rich men at thirty. 
 He made them work like negroes. These three assistants were 
 equal to a business which would harry ten such clerks as those 
 whose sybaritical tastes now swell the columns of the budget. 
 Not a sound disturbed the peace of this solemn house, where 
 the hinges were always oiled, and where the meanest article 
 of furniture showed the respectable cleanliness which reveals 
 strict order and economy. The most waggish of the three 
 youths often amused himself by writing the date of its first 
 appearance on the Gruyere cheese which was left to their ten- 
 der mercies at breakfast, and which it was their pleasure to 
 leave untouched. This bit of mischief, and few others of the 
 same stamp, would sometimes bring a smile on the face of 
 the younger of Guillaume's daughters, the pretty maiden who 
 has just now appeared to the bewitched man in the street. 
 
 Though each of the apprentices, even the eldest, paid a 
 round sum for his board, not one of them would have been 
 bold enough to remain at the 'master's table when dessert was 
 served. When Madame Guillaume talked of dressing the 
 salad, the hapless youths trembled as they thought of the 
 thrift with which her prudent hand dispensed the oil. They 
 could never think of spending a night away from the house 
 without having given, long before, a plausible reason for such 
 an irregularity. Every Sunday, each in his turn, two of them 
 accompanied the Guillaume family to mass at Saint-Leu, and 
 to vespers. Mesdemoiselles Virginie and Augustine, simply 
 attired in cotton print, each took the arm of an apprentice 
 and walked in front, under the piercing eye of their mother, 
 who closed the little family procession with her husband, 
 accustomed by her to carry two large prayer-books, bound in 
 black morocco. The second apprentice received no salary. 
 As for the eldest, whose twelve years of perseverance and dis- 
 cretion had initiated him into the secrets of the house, he was 
 paid eight hundred francs a year as the reward of his 
 labors. On certain family festivals he received as a gratuity 
 
to AT THE SIGN OP THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 some little gift, to which Madame Guillaume's dry and 
 wrinkled hand alone gave value — netted purses, which she 
 took care to stuff with cotton wool, to show off the fancy 
 stitches, braces of the strongest make, or heavy silk stockings. 
 Sometimes, but rarel}^, this prime minister was admitted to 
 share the pleasures of the family when they went into the 
 country, or when, after waiting for months, they made up 
 their mind to exert the right acquired by taking a box at the 
 theatre to command a piece which Paris had already for- 
 gotten. 
 
 As to the other assistants, the barrier of respect which 
 formerly divided a master draper from his apprentices was 
 so firmly established between them and the old shopkeeper, 
 that they would have been more likely to steal a piece of 
 cloth than to infringe this time-honored etiquette. Such 
 reserve may now appear ridiculous ; but these old houses were 
 a school of honesty and sound morals. The masters adopted 
 their apprentices. The young man's linen was cared for, 
 mended, and often replaced by the mistress of the house. If 
 an apprentice fell ill, he was the object of truly maternal 
 attention. In a case of danger the master lavished his money 
 in calling in the most celebrated physicians, for he was not 
 answerable to their parents merely for the good conduct and 
 1;raining of the lads. If one of them, whose character was 
 unimpeachable, suffered misfortune, these old tradesmen knew 
 how to value the intelligence he had displayed, and they did 
 not hesitate to entrust the happiness of their daughters to 
 men whom they had long trusted with their fortunes. 
 Guillaume was one of these men of the old school, and if he 
 had their ridiculous side, he had all their good qualities; 
 and Joseph Lebas, the chief assistant, an orphan without any 
 fortune, was in his mind destined to be the husband of Vir- 
 ginie, his elder daughter. But Joseph did not share the sym- 
 metrical ideas of his master, who would not for an empire 
 have given his second daughter in marriage before the elder. 
 The unhappy assistant felt that his heart was wholly given 
 to Mademoiselle Augustine, the younger. In order to justify 
 
 V 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 11 
 
 this passion, which had grown up in secret, it is necessary to 
 inquire a little further into the springs of the absolute gov- 
 ernment which ruled the old cloth-merchant's household. 
 
 Guillaume had two daughters. The elder, Mademoiselle 
 Virginie, was the very image of her mother. Madame 
 Guillaume, daughter of the Sieur Chevrel, sat so upright in 
 the stool behind her desk, that more than once she had heard 
 some wag bet that she was a stuffed figure. Her long, thin 
 face betrayed exaggerated piety. Devoid of attractions or of 
 amiable manners, Madame Guillaume commonly decorated 
 her head — that of a woman near on sixty — 'wdth a cap of a 
 particular and unvarying shape, with long lappets, like that of 
 a widow. In all the neighborhood she was known as the 
 "portress nun." Her speech was curt, and her movements 
 had the stiff precision of a semaphore. Her eye, with a 
 gleam in it like a cat's, seemed to spite the world because she 
 was so ugly.^ Mademoiselle Virginie, brought up, like her 
 younger sister, under the domestic rule of her mother, had 
 reached the age of eight-and-twenty. Youth mitigated the 
 graceless effect which her likeness to her mother sometimes 
 gave to her features, but maternal austerity had endowed her 
 with two great qualities which made up for everything. She 
 was patient and gentle. Mademoiselle Augustine,, who was 
 but just eighteen, was not like either her father or her 
 mother. She was one of those daughters whose total ab- 
 sence of any physical affinity with their parents makes one 
 believe in the adage: "God gives children." Augustine was 
 little, or, to describe her more truly, delicately made. Full 
 of gracious candor, a man of the world could have found no 
 fault in the charming girl beyond a certain meanness of 
 gesture or vulgarity of attitude, and sometimes a want of 
 ease. Her silent and placid face was full of the transient 
 .melancholy which comes over all young girls who are too 
 weak to dare to resist their mother's will. 
 
 The two sisters, always plainly dressed, could not gratify 
 the innate vanity of womanhood but by a luxury of cleanli- 
 ness which became them wonderfully, and made them har- 
 
12 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 monize with the polished counters and the shining shelves, 
 on which the old man-servant never left a speck of dust, and 
 with the old-world simplicity of all they saw about them. As 
 their style of living compelled them to find the elements of 
 happiness in persistent work, Angustine and Virginie 
 had hitherto always satisfied their mother, who secretly 
 prided herself on the perfect characters of her two daugh- 
 ters. It is easy to imagine the results of the training they, 
 had received. Brought up to a commercial life, accustomed 
 to hear nothing but dreary arguments and calculations about 
 trade, having studied nothing but grammar, book-keeping, 
 a little Bible-history, and the history of France in Le Ragois, 
 and never reading any book but those their mother would 
 sanction, their ideas had not acquired much scope. They 
 knew perfectly how to keep house ; they were familiar .with 
 the prices of things ; they understood the difficulty of amass- 
 ing money; they were economical, and had a great respect 
 for the qualities that make a man of business. Although 
 their father was rich, they were as skilled in darning as in 
 embroidery ; their mother often talked of having them taught 
 to cook, so that they might know how to order a dinner and 
 scold a cook with due knowledge. They knew nothing of 
 the pleasures of the world; and, seeing how their parents 
 spent their exemplary lives, they very rarely suffered their 
 eyes to wander beyond the walls of their hereditary home, 
 which to their mother was the whole universe. The meetings 
 to which family anniversaries gave rise filled in the future 
 of earthly joy to them. 
 
 When the great drawing-room on the second floor was to 
 be prepared to receive company — Madame Roquin, a 
 Demoiselle Chevrel, fifteen months younger than her cousin, 
 and bedecked with diamonds; young Rabourdin, employed in 
 the Finance Office; Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, the rich per-' 
 fumer, and his wife, known as Madame Cesar; Monsieur 
 Camusot, the richest silk mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais, 
 with his father-in-law, Monsieur Cardot, two or three old 
 bankers, and some itiiniaculatc ladies — the arrangements, 
 
AT THE SIGN OP THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 13 
 
 made necessary by the way in which everything was packed 
 away — the plate, the Dresden china^ the candlesticks, and 
 the glass — made a variety in the monotonous lives of the 
 three women, who came and went and exerted themselves 
 as nuns would to receive their bishop. Then, in the evening; 
 when all three were tired out with having wiped, rubbed, 
 unpacked, and arranged all the gauds of the festival, as the 
 girls heJped their mother to undress, Madame Guillaume 
 would say to them, "Children, we have done nothing to- 
 day." 
 
 When, on very great occasions, "the portress nun" allowed 
 dancing, restricting the games of boston, whist, and back- 
 gammon within the limits of h^r bedroom, such a concession 
 was accounted as the most unhoped felicity, and made them 
 happier than going to the great balls, to two or three of 
 which Guillaume would take the girls at the time of the 
 Carnival. 
 
 And once a year the worthy draper gave an entertain^ 
 ment, when he spared no expense. However rich and fash- 
 ionable the persons invited might be, they were careful not 
 to be absent ; for the most important houses on the exchange 
 had recourse to the immense credit, the fortune, or the 
 time-honored experience of Monsieur Guillaume. Still, the 
 excellent merchant's two daughters did not benefit as much 
 as might be supposed by the lessons the world has to offer 
 to young spirits. At these parties, which were indeed set 
 down in the ledger to the credit of the house, they wore 
 dresses the shabbiness of which made them blush. Their 
 style of dancing was not in any way remarkable, and their 
 mother's surveillance did not allow of their holding any con- 
 versation with their partners beyond Yes and No. Also, the 
 law of the old sign of the Cat and Kacket commanded that 
 they should be home by eleven o'clock, the hour when balls 
 and fetes begin to be lively. Thus their pleasures, which 
 seemed to conform very fairly to their fathei-'s position, were 
 often made insipid by circumstances which were part of the 
 family habits and principles* 
 
14 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 As to their usual life^, one remark will sufficiently paint it. 
 Madame Guillaume required her daughters to be dressed very 
 early in the morning, to come down every day at the same 
 hour, and she ordered their employments with monastic regu- 
 larity. Augustine, however, had been gifted by chance with 
 a spirit lofty enough to feel the emptiness of such a life 
 Her blue eyes would sometimes be raised as if to pierce the 
 depths of that gloomy staircase and those damp store-rooms. 
 After sounding the profound cloistral silence, she seemed 
 to be listening to remote, inarticulate revelations of the life 
 of passion, which accounts feelings as of higher value than 
 things. And at such moments her cheek would flush, her idle 
 hands would lay the muslin sewing on the polished oak 
 counter, and presently her mother would say in a voice, of 
 which even the softest tones were sour, "Augustine, my treas- 
 ure, what are you thinking about?" It is possible that two 
 romances discovered by Augustine in the cupboard of a cook 
 Madame Guillaume had lately discharged — Hippolyte Comte 
 de Douglas and Le Comte de Comminges — may have con- 
 tributed to develop the ideas of the young girl, who had de- 
 voured them in secret, during the long nights of the past 
 winter. 
 
 And so Augustine's expression of vague longing, her gentle 
 voice, her jasmine skin, and her blue eyes had lighted in poor 
 Lebas' soul a flame as ardent as it was reverent. From an 
 easily understood caprice, Augustine felt no affection for the 
 orphan; perhaps because she did not know that he loved her. 
 On the other hand, the senior apprentice, with his long legs, 
 his chestnut hair, his big hands and powerful frame, had 
 found a secret admirer in Mademoiselle Virginie, who, in 
 spite of her dower of fifty thousand crowns, had as yet no 
 suitor. Nothing could be more natural than these two pas- 
 sions at cross-purposes, born in the silence of the dingy 
 shop, as violets bloom in the depths of a wood. The mute 
 and constant looks which made the young people's eyes meet 
 by sheer need of change in the midst of persistent work and 
 cloistered peace, was sure, sooiaer or later, to give rise to 
 
AT THE SIGN OP THE CAT AND RACKET 15 
 
 « 
 
 feelings of love. The habit of seeing always the same face 
 leads insensibly to our reading there the qualities of the souL 
 and at last effaces all its defects. 
 
 "At the pace at which that man goes, our girls will soon 
 have to go on their knees to a suitor !" said Monsieur Guil- 
 laume to himself, as he read the first decree by which Na- 
 poleon drew in advance on the conscript classes. 
 
 From that day the old merchant, grieved at seeing his eld- 
 est daughter fade, remembered how he had married Made- 
 moiselle Chevrel under much the same circumstances as those 
 of Joseph Lebas and Virginie. A good bit of business, to 
 marry off his daughter, and discharge a sacred debt by re- 
 paying to an orphan the benefit he had formerly received 
 from his predecessor under similar conditions ! Joseph 
 Lebas, who was now three-and-thirty, was aware of the ob- 
 stacle which a difference of fifteen years placed between Au- 
 gustine and himself. Being also too clear-sighted not to un- 
 derstand Monsieur Guillaume's purpose, he knew his inex- 
 orable principles well enough to feel sure that the second 
 would never marry before the elder. So the hapless as- 
 sistant, whose heart was as warm as his legs were long and 
 his chest deep, suffered in silence. 
 
 This was the state of affairs in the tiny republic which, 
 in the heart of the Eue Saint-Denis, was not unlike a de- 
 pendency of La Trappe. But to give a full account of events 
 as well as of feelings, it is needful to go back to some months 
 before the scene with which this story opens. At dusk one 
 evening, a young man passing the darkened shop of the Cat 
 and Racket, had paused for a moment to gaze at a picture 
 which might have arrested every painter in the world. The 
 shop was not yet lighted, and was as a dark cave beyond 
 which the dining-room was visible. A hanging lamp shed 
 the yellow light which lends such charm to pictures of the 
 Dutch school. The white linen, the silver, the cut glass, were 
 brilliant accessories, and made more picturesque by strong 
 -contrasts of light and shade. The figures of the head of the 
 family and his wife, the faces of the apprentices, and the 
 
16 AT THE SIGN OF THE GAT AND RACKET 
 
 pure form of Augustine, near whom a fat chubby-cheeked 
 maid was standing, composed so strange a group; the heads 
 were so singular, and every face had so candid an expres- 
 sion ; it was so easy to read the peace, the silence, the modest 
 way of life in this family, that to an artist accustomed to 
 render nature,, there was something hopeless in any attempt 
 ito depict this scene, come upon by chance. The stranger 
 was a young painter, who, seven years before, had gained the 
 first prize for painting. He had now just come back from 
 Rome. His soul, full-fed with poetry; his eyes, satiated 
 with Raphael and Michael Angelo, thirsted for real nature 
 after long dwelling in the pompous land where art has every- 
 where left something grandiose. Right or wrong, this was 
 his personal feeling. His heart, which had long been a prey 
 to the fire of Italian passion, craved one of those modest and 
 meditative maidens whom in Rome he had unfortunately 
 seen only in painting. From the enthusiasm produced in 
 his excited fancy by the living picture before him, he naturally 
 passed to a profound admiration for the principal figure; 
 Augustine seeined to be pensive, and did not eat; by the ar- 
 rangement of the lamp the light fell full on her face, and 
 her bust seemed to move in a circle of fire, which threw up 
 the shape of her head and illuminated it with almost super- 
 natural effect. The artist involuntarily compared her to an 
 exiled angel dreaming of heaven. An almost unknown emo- 
 tion, a limpid, seething love flooded his heart. After remain- 
 ing a minute, overwhelmed by the weight of his ideas, he tore 
 himself from his bliss, went home, ate nothing, and could 
 not sleep. 
 
 The next day he went to his studio, and did not come out 
 of it till he had placed on canvas the magic of the scene of 
 which the memory had, in a sense, made him a devotee; his 
 happiness was incomplete till he should possess a faithful 
 portrait of his idol. He went many times past the house of 
 the Cat and Racket; he even ventured in once or twice, 
 under a disguise, to get a closer view of the bewitching 
 creature that Madame Guillaume covered with her wing. For 
 
A\ THE SIGN OP THE CAT AND RACKET 1*? 
 
 eight whole months, devoted to his love and to his brush, he 
 was lost to the sight of his most intimate friends, forgetting 
 the worlds the theatre, poetry, music, and all his dearest 
 habits. One morning Girodet broke through all the barriers 
 with which artists are familiar, and which they know how to 
 evade, ^vent into his room, and woke him by asking, ^^What 
 ;are you going to send to the Salon The artist grasped his 
 friend's hand, dragged him off to the studio, uncovered a 
 small easel picture and a portrait. After a long and eager 
 study of the two masterpieces, Girodet threw himself on his 
 comrade's neck and hugged him, without speaking a word. 
 His feelings could only be expressed as he felt them — soul to 
 soul. 
 
 "You are in love ?" said Girodet. 
 
 They both knew that the finest portraits by Titian, Ea- 
 phael,, and Leonardo da Vinci, were the outcome of the en- 
 thusiastic sentiments by which, indeed, under various con- 
 ditions, every masterpiece is engendered. The artist only 
 bent his head in reply. 
 
 "How happy are you to be able to be in love, here, after 
 coming back from Italy ! But I do not advise you to send 
 such works as these to the Salon," the great painter went on. 
 "You see, these two works will not be appreciated. Such 
 true coloring, such prodigious work, cannot yet be understood ; 
 the public is not accustomed to such depths. The pictures we 
 paint, my dear fellow, are mere screens. We should do better 
 to turn rhymes, and translate the antique poets! There is 
 more glory to be looked for there than from our luckless can- 
 vases V 
 
 Notwithstanding this charitable advice, the two pictures 
 were exhibited. The Interior made a revolution in painting. 
 It gave birth to the pictures of genre which pour into all our 
 exhibitions in such prodigious quantity that they might be 
 supposed to be produced by machinery. As to the portrait, 
 few artists have forgotten that lifelike work; and the public, 
 which as a body is sometimes discerning, awarded it the 
 crown which Girodet himself had hung over it. The twc? 
 
18 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 pictures were surrounded by a vast throng. They fought 
 for places, as women say. Speculators and moneyed men 
 would have covered the canvas with double napoleons, but 
 the artist obstinately refused to sell or to make replicas. An 
 enormous sum was offered him for the right of engraving 
 them, and the print-sellers were not more favored than the 
 amateurs. 
 
 Though these incidents occupied the world, they were not 
 of a nature to penetrate the recesses of the monastic solitude 
 in the Eue Saint-Denis. However, when paying a visit to 
 Madame Guillaume, the notary's wife spoke of the exhibi- 
 tion before Augustine, of whom she was very fond, and ex- 
 plained its purpose. Madame Roquin's gossip naturally in- 
 spired Augustine with a wish to see the pictures, and with 
 courage enough to ask her cousin secretly to take her to the 
 Louvre. Her cousin succeeded in the negotiations she opened 
 with Madame Guillaume for permission to release the young 
 girl for two hours from her dull labors. Augustine was thus 
 able to make her way through the crowd to see the crowned 
 work. A fit of trembling shook her like an aspen leaf as she 
 recognized herself. She was terrified, and looked about her to 
 find Madame Eoquin, from whom she had been separated by a 
 tide of people. At that moment her frightened eyes fell 
 on the impassioned face of the young painter. She at once 
 recalled the figure of a loiterer whom, being curious, she had 
 frequently observed, believing him to be a new neighbor. 
 
 "You see how love has inspired me," said the artist in the 
 timid creature's ear, and she stood in dismay at the words. 
 
 She found supernatural courage to enable her to push 
 through the crowd and join her cousin, who was still strug- 
 gling with the mass of people that hindered her from getting 
 to the picture. 
 
 "You will be stifled !" cried Augustine. "Let us go." 
 
 But there are moments, at the Salon, when two v/omen are 
 not always free to direct their steps through the galleries. 
 By the irregular course to which they were compelled by the 
 press. Mademoiselle Guillaume and her cousin were pushed 
 
AT THl^] SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 19 
 
 to within a few steps of the second picture. Chance thus 
 brought them, both together, to where they could easily see 
 the canvas made famous by fashion, for once in agreement 
 with talent. Madame Eoquin's exclamation of surprise was 
 lost in the hubbub and buzz of the crowd; Augustine invol- 
 untarily shed tears at the sight of this wonderful study. 
 Then, by an almost unaccountable impulse, she laid her 
 finger on her lips, as she perceived quite near her the ecstatic 
 face of the young painter. The stranger replied by a nod, 
 and pointed to Madame Eoquin, as a spoil-sport, to show Au- 
 gustine that he had understood. This pantomime struck the 
 young girl like hot coals on her flesh; she felt quite guilty 
 as she perceived that there was a compact between herself and 
 the artist. The suffocating heat, the dazzling sight of beauti- 
 ful dresses, the bewilderment produced in Augustine's brain 
 by the truth of coloring, the multitude of living or painted- 
 figures, the profusion of gilt frames, gave her a sense of in- 
 toxication which doubled her alarms. She would perhaps have 
 fainted if an unknown rapture had not surged up in her 
 heart to vivify her whole being, in spite of this chaos of 
 sensations. She nevertheless believed herself to be under 
 the power of the Devil, of whose awful snares she had been 
 warned by the thundering words of preachers. This mo- 
 ment was to her like a moment of madness. She found her- 
 self accompanied to her cousin^s carriage by the young man, 
 radiant with joy and love. Augustine, a prey to an agita- 
 tion new to her experience, an intoxication which seemed to 
 abandon her to nature, listened to the eloquent voice of her 
 heart, and looked again and again at the young painter, be- 
 traying the emotion that came over her. Never had the 
 bright rose of her cheeks shown in stronger contrast with the 
 whiteness of her skin. The artist saw her beauty in all its 
 bloom, her maiden modesty in all its glory. She herself 
 felt a sort of rapture mingled with terror at thinking that 
 her presence had brought happiness to him whose name was 
 on every lip, and whose talent lent immortality to transient 
 scenes. She was loved ! It was impossible to doubt it. When 
 
20 
 
 AT THE SIGN OP THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 she no longer saw the artist, these simple words still echoed 
 in her ear, "Yon see how love has inspired me !" And the 
 throbs of her heart, as they grew deeper, seemed a pain, 
 her heated blood revealed so many nnknown forces in her 
 being. She affected a severe headache to avoid replying 
 to her cousin's questions concerning the pictures ; but on their 
 return Madame Eoquin could not forbear from speaking 
 to Madame Guillaume of the fame that had fallen on the 
 house of the Cat and Racket, and Augustine quaked in every 
 limb as she heard her mother say that she should go to the 
 Salon to see her house there. The young girl again declared 
 herself suffering, and obtained leave to go to bed. 
 
 "That is what comes of sight-seeing,'^ exclaimed Monsieur 
 Guillaume — "a headache. And is it so very amusing to see 
 vn a picture what you can see any day in your own street? 
 Don't talk to me of your artists ! Like writers, they are a 
 atarveling crew. Why the devil need they choose my house 
 to flout it in their pictures?" 
 
 "It may help to sell a few ells more of cloth," said Joseph 
 Lebas. 
 
 This remark did not protect art and thought from being 
 condemned once again before the judgment-seat of trade. 
 As may be supposed, these speeches did not infuse much hope 
 into Augustine, who, during the night, gave herself up to 
 the first meditations of love. The events of the day were 
 like a dream, which it was joy to recall to her mind. She 
 was initiated into the fears, the hopes, the remorse, all the 
 ebb and flow of feeling which could not fail to toss a heart 
 so simple and so timid as hers. What a void she perceived in 
 this gloomy house ! What a treasure she found in her soul ! 
 To be the wife of a genius, to share his glory ! What ravages 
 must such a vision make in the heart of a girl brought up 
 among such a family ! What hopes must it raise in a young 
 creature who, in the midst of sordid elements, had pined for 
 a life of elegance! A sunbeam had fallen into the prison. 
 Augustine was suddenly in love. So many of her feelings 
 were soothed that she succumbed without reflection. At 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 21 
 
 eighteen does not love hold a prism between the world and 
 the eyes of a young girl? She was incapable of suspecting 
 the hard facts which result from the union of a loving woman 
 with a man of imagination^ and she believed herself called 
 to make him happy, not seeing any disparity between herself 
 and him. To her the future would be as the present. When, 
 next day, her father and mother returned from the Salon, 
 their dejected faces proclaimed some disappointment. In 
 the first place, the painter had removed the two pictures; 
 and then Madame Guillaume had lost her cashmere shawl. 
 But the news that the pictures had disappeared from the 
 walls since her visit revealed to Augustine a delicacy of senti- 
 ment which a woman can always appreciate, even by instinct. 
 
 On the morning when, on his way home from a ball, Theo- 
 dore de Sommervieux — for this was the name which fame 
 had stamped on Augustine's heart — had been squirted on. 
 by the apprentices while awaiting the appearance of his art- 
 less little friend, who certainly did not know that he was 
 there, the lovers had seen each other for the fourth time only 
 since their meeting at the Salon. The difficulties which the 
 rule of the house placed in the way of the painter's ardent 
 nature gave added violence to his passion for Augustine. 
 
 How could he get near to a young girl seated in a counting- 
 house between two such women as Mademoiselle Virginie 
 and Madame Guillaume ? How could he correspond with her 
 when her mother never left her side? Ingenious, as lovers 
 are, to imagine woes, Theodore saw a rival in one of the 
 assistants, to whose interests he supposed the others to be 
 devoted. If he should evade these sons of Argus, he would 
 yet be wrecked under the stern eyes of the old draper or of 
 Madame Guillaume. The very vehemence of his passion 
 hindered the young painter from hitting on the ingenious 
 expedients which, in prisoners and in lovers, seem to be the 
 last effort of intelligence spurred by a wild craving for lib- 
 erty, or by the fire of love. Theodore wandered about the 
 neighborhood with the restlessness of a madman, as though 
 movement might inspire him with some device. After racking 
 
22 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 his imagination, it occurred to him to bribe the blo\78y 
 waiting-maid with gold. Thus a few notes were exchanged 
 at long intervals during the fortnight following the ill-starred 
 morning when Monsieur Guillaume and Theodore had so 
 scrutinized one another. At the present moment the young 
 couple had agreed to see each other at a certain hour of 
 the day, and on Sunday, at Saint-Leu, during Mass and 
 vespers. Augustine had sent her dear Theodore a list of 
 the relations and friends of the family, to whom the young 
 painter tried to get access, in the hope of interesting, if it 
 were possible, in his love affairs, one of these souls absorbed 
 in money and trade, to whom a genuine passion must appear 
 a quite monstrous speculation, a thing unheard-of. Nothing 
 meanwhile, was altered at the sign of the Cat and Racket. 
 If Augustine was absent-minded, if, against all obedience to 
 the domestic code, she stole up to her room to make signals 
 by means of a jar of flowers, if she sighed, if she were lost in 
 thought, no one observed it, not even her mother. This will 
 cause some surprise to those who have entered into the spirit 
 of the household, where an idea tainted with poetry would be 
 in startling contrast to persons and things, where no one could 
 venture on a gesture or a look which would not be seen and 
 analyzed. Nothing, however, could be more natural: the 
 quiet barque that navigated the stormy waters of the Paris 
 Exchange, under the flag of the Cat and Racket, was just now 
 in the toils of one of these tempests which, returning periodi- 
 cally, might be termed equinoctial. For the last fortnight 
 the five men forming the crew, with Madame Guillaume and 
 Mademoiselle Virginie, had been devoting themselves to the 
 hard labor, known as stock-taking. 
 
 Every bale was turned over, and the length yerified to ascer- 
 tain the exact value of the remnant. The ticket attached to 
 each parcel was carefully examined to see at what time the 
 piece had been bought. The retail price was fixed. Monsieur 
 Guillaume, always on his feet, his pen behind his ear, was 
 like a captain commanding the working of the ship. His 
 sharp tones, spoken through a trap-door, to inquire into the 
 
AT THE SIGN OP THE CKT AND RACKET 23 
 
 depths of the hold in the cellar-store, gave utterance to the 
 barbarous formulas of trade-jargon, which find expression 
 only in cipher. ''How much H.N.Z. "All sold."— "What 
 is left of Q. X.?"— "Two ells."— "At what price ?"— "Fifty- 
 five three." — "Set down A. at three, with all of J. J., all of 
 M. P., and what is left of V. D. 0." — A hundred other in- 
 junctions equally intelligible were spouted over the counters 
 like verses of modern poetrj^ quoted by romantic spirits, to 
 excite each other's enthusiasm for one of their poets. In the 
 evening Guillaume, shut up with his assistant and his wife, 
 balanced his accounts, carried on the balance, wrote to debtors 
 in arrears, and made out bills. All three were busy over 
 this enormous labor, of which the result could be stated on 
 a sheet of foolscap, proving to the head of the house that 
 there was so much to the good in hard cash, so much in goods, 
 so much in bills and notes ; that he did not owe a sou ; that a 
 hundred or two hundred thousand francs were owing to him ; 
 that the capital had been increased; that the farmlands, the 
 houses, or the investments were extended, or repaired, or 
 doubled. Whence it became necessary to begin again with 
 increased ardor, to accumulate more crown-pieces, without 
 its ever entering the brain of these laborious ants to ask — 
 "To what end?" 
 
 Favored by this annual turmoil, the happy Augustine es- 
 caped the investigations of her Argus-eyed relations. At 
 last, one Saturday evening, the stock-taking was finished. 
 The figures of the sum-total showed a row of O's long enough 
 to allow Guillaume for once to relax the stern rule as to 
 dessert which reigned throughout the year. The shrewd old 
 draper rubbed his hands, and allowed his assistants to remain 
 at table.. The members of the crew had hardly swallowed 
 their thimbleful of some home-made liqueur, when the 
 rumble of a carriage was heard. The family party were going 
 to see Cendrillon at the Varietes, while the two younger ap- 
 prentices each received a crown of six francs, with permission 
 to go wherever they chose, provided they were iu by mid- 
 night. 
 
24 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKHT 
 
 Notwithstanding this debauch, the old cloth-merchant was 
 shaving- himself at six next morning, put on his maroon- 
 colored coat, of which the glowing lights afforded him peren- 
 nial enjoyment, fastened a pair of gold buckles on the knee- 
 straps of his ample satin breeches; and then, at about seven 
 o'clock, while all were still sleeping in the house, he made 
 his way to the little office adjoining the shop on the first floor. 
 Daylight came in through a window, fortified by iron bars, 
 and looking out on a small yard surrounded by such black 
 walls that it was very like a well. The old merchant opened 
 the iron-lined shutters, which were so familiar to him, and 
 threw up the lower half of the sash window. The icy air of 
 the courtyard came in to cool the hot atmosphere of the 
 little room, full of the odor peculiar to offices. 
 
 The merchant remained standing, his hand resting on the 
 greasy arm of a large cane chair lined with morocco, of which 
 the original hue had disappeared; he seemed to hesitate as 
 to seating himself. He looked with affection at the double 
 desk, where his wife's seat, opposite his own, was fitted into 
 a little niche in the wall. He contemplated the numbered 
 boxes, the files, the implements, the cash box — objects all of 
 immemorial origin, and fancied himself in the room with 
 the shade of Master Chevrel. He even pulled out the high 
 stool on which he had once sat in the presence of his de- 
 parted master. This stool, covered with black leather, the 
 horse-hair showing at every corner — as it had long done, 
 without, however, coming 6ut — he placed with a shaking 
 hand on the very spot where his predecessor had put it, and 
 then, with an emotion difficult to describe, he pulled a bell, 
 which rang at the head of Joseph Lebas' bed. When this 
 decisive blow had been struck, the old man, for whom, no 
 doubt, these reminiscence? v,^ero too much, took up three or 
 four bills of exchange, and looked at them without seeing 
 them. 
 
 Suddenly Joseph Lebas stood before him. 
 
 "Sit down there," said Guillaume, pointing to the stooL 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 25 
 
 As the old master draper had never yet bid his assistant 
 be seated in his presence, J oseph Lebas was startled. 
 "What do you think of these notes ?" asked Guillaume. 
 "They will never be paid/' 
 "Why?'' 
 
 "Well, I heard that the day before yesterday £]tienne and 
 Co. had made their payments in gold." 
 
 "Oh, oh !" said the draper. "Well, one must be very ill to. 
 show one's bile. Let us speak of something else. — J oseph, the 
 stock-taking is done." 
 
 "Yes, monsieur, and the dividend is one of the best you 
 have ever made." 
 
 "Do not use new-fangled words. Say the profits, Joseph. 
 Do you know, my boy, that this result is partly owing to you ? 
 And I do not intend to pay you a salary any longer. Madame 
 Guillaume has suggested to me to take you into partnership. — 
 *^Guillaume and Lebas ;' will not that make a good business 
 name ? We might add, ^and Co.' to round off the firm's signa- 
 ture." 
 
 Tears rose to the eyes of Joseph Lebas, who tried to hide 
 them. 
 
 "Oh, Monsieur Guillaume, how have I deserved such kind- 
 ness? I only do my duty. It was so much already that you 
 should take an interest in a poor orph " 
 
 He was brushing the cuff of his left sleeve with his right 
 hand, and dared not look at the old man, who smiled as ho 
 thought that this modest young fellow no doubt needed, as 
 he had needed once on a time, some encouragement to com- 
 plete his explanation. 
 
 "To be sure," said Virginie's father, "you do not alto- 
 gether deserve this favor, Joseph. You have not so much 
 confidence in me as I have in you. (The young man looked 
 up quickly.) You know all the secrets of the cash-box. For 
 the last two years I have told you of almost all my concerns. 
 I have sent you to travel in our goods. In short, I have noth- 
 ing on my conscience as regards you. Bid you — you have a 
 soft place, and you have never breathed a word of it." Jo- , 
 
26 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 sepli Lebas blushed. "Ah, ha!" cried Guillaume, ''^so you 
 thought you could deceive an old fox like me? When you 
 knew that I had scented the Lecocq bankruptcy 
 
 "What, monsieur?" replied Joseph Lebas, looking at his 
 master as keenly as his master looked at him, "you knew that 
 I was in love ?" 
 
 "I know everything, you rascal," said the worthy and cun- 
 ning old merchant, pulling the assistant's ear. "And I for- 
 give you — I did the same myself." 
 
 "And you will give her to me ?" 
 
 "Yes — with fifty thousand crowns; and I will leave you 
 as much by will, and we will start on our new career under 
 the name of a new firm. We will do good business yet, my 
 boy !" added the old man, getting up and flourishing his 
 arms. "I tell you, son-in-law, there is nothing like trade. 
 Those who ask what pleasure is to be found in it are 
 simpletons. To be on the scent of a good bargain, to hold 
 your own on 'Change, to watch as anxiously as at the gam- 
 ing-table whether Etienne and Co. will fail or no, to see a 
 regiment of Guards march past all dressed in your cloth, to 
 trip your neighbor up — honestly of course ! — to make the 
 goods cheaper than others can; then to carry out an under- 
 taking which you have planned, which begins, grows, totters, 
 and succeeds ! to know the workings of every house of busi- 
 ness as well as a minister of police, so as never to make a 
 mistake; to hold up your head in the midst of wrecks, to 
 have friends by correspondence in every manufacturing town ; 
 is not that a perpetual game, J oseph ? That is life, that is ! 
 I shall die in that harness, like old Chevrel, but taking it 
 easy now, all the same." 
 
 In the heat of his eager rhetoric, old Guillaume had 
 scarcely looked at his assistant, who was weeping copiously. 
 "Why, Joseph,, my poor boy, what is the matter ?" 
 
 "Oh, I love her so ! Monsieur Guillaume, that my heart fails 
 me; I believe " 
 
 "Well, well, boy," said the old man, touched, "you are 
 happier than you know, by Gad ! For she loves you 1 know 
 it." 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 27 
 
 And he blinlved his little green eyes as he looked at the 
 young man. 
 
 "Mademoiselle Augustine! Mademoiselle Augustine!" ex- 
 claimed Joseph Lebas in his rapture. 
 
 He was about to rush out of the room when he felt him- 
 self clutched by a hand of iron, and his astonished master 
 spun him round in front of him once more. 
 
 "What has Augustine to do with this matter?" he asked, 
 in a voice which instantly froze the luckless Joseph. 
 
 "Is it not she that — ^that — I love?" stammered the as- 
 sistant. 
 
 Much put out by his own want of perspicacity, Gruillaume 
 sat down again, and rested his long head in his hands to 
 consider the perplexing situation in which he found him- 
 self. Joseph Lebas, shamefaced and in despair, remained 
 standing. 
 
 "Joseph," the draper said with frigid dignity, "I wslh 
 speaking of Virginie. Love cannot be made to order, I 
 know. I know, too, that you can be trusted. We will for- 
 get all this. I will not let Augustine marry before Virginie. 
 — Your interest will be ten per cent." 
 
 The young man, to whom love gave I know not what power 
 of courage and eloquence, clasped his hand, and spoke in his 
 turn — spoke for a quarter of an hour, with so much warmth 
 and feeling, that he altered the situation. If the question 
 had been a matter of business, the old tradesman would have 
 had fixed principles to guide his decision ; but, tossed a thou- 
 sand miles from commerce, on the ocean of sentiment, with- 
 out a compass, he floated, as he told himself, undecided in the 
 face of such an unexpected event. Carried away by his 
 fatherly kindness, he began to beat about the bush. 
 
 "Deuce take it, Joseph, you must know that there are ten 
 years between my two children. Mademoiselle Chevrel was 
 no beauty, still she has had nothing to complain of in me. 
 Do as I did. Come, come, don't cry. Can you be so silly? 
 What is to be done? It can be managed perhaps. There 
 is always some way out of a scrape. And we men are not 
 
28 AT THE SIGN OF THE OAT AND RACKET 
 
 always devoted Celadons to our wives — you understand? 
 Madame Guillaume is very pious. . . . Come. By Gad, 
 boy, give your arm to Augustine this morning as we go to 
 Mass." 
 
 These were the phrases spoken at random by the old draper, 
 and their conclusion made the lover happy. He was already 
 thinking of a friend of his as a match for Mademoiselle Vir- 
 ginie, as he went out of the smoky office, pressing his future 
 father-in-law's hand, after saying with a knowing look that 
 all would turn out for the best. 
 
 "What will Madame Guillaume say to it?" was the idea 
 that greatly troubled the worthy merchant when he found 
 himself alone. 
 
 At breakfast Madame Guillaume and Virginie, to whom 
 the draper had not as yet confided his disappointment, cast 
 meaning glances at Joseph Lebas, who was extremely embar- 
 rassed. The young assistant's bashfulness commended him 
 to his mother-in-law's good graces. The matron became so 
 cheerful that she smiled as she looked at her husband, and 
 allowed herself some little pleasantries of time-honored ac- 
 ceptance in such simple families. She wondered whether 
 Joseph or Virginie were the taller, to ask them to compare 
 their height. This preliminary fooling brought a cloud to 
 the master's brow, and he even made such a point of decorum 
 that he desired Augustine to take the assistant's arm on their 
 way to Saint-Leu. Madame Guillaume, surprised at this 
 manly delicacy, honored her husband with a nod of approval. 
 So the procession left the house in such order as to suggest 
 no suspicious meaning to the neighbors. 
 
 "Does it not seem to you, Mademoiselle Augustine," said 
 the assistant, and he trembled, "that the wife of a merchant 
 whose credit is as good as Monsieur Guillaume's, for in- 
 stance, might enjoy herself a little more than Madame your 
 mother does? Might wear diamonds — or keep a carriage? 
 For my part, if I were to marry, I should be glad to take 
 all the work, and see my wife happy. I would not put her 
 into the counting-house. In the drapery business, you see, 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 29 
 
 a woman is not so necessary now as formerly. Monsieur 
 Guillaume was quite right to act as he did — and besides^ 
 his wife liked it. But so long as a woman knows how to 
 turn her hand to the book-keeping, the correspondence, the 
 retail business, the orders, and her housekeeping, so as not 
 to sit idle, that is enough. At seven o'clock, when the shop 
 is shut, I shall take my pleasures, go to the play, and into 
 company. — But you are not listening to me." 
 
 "Yes, indeed. Monsieur Joseph. What do you think of 
 painting? That is a fine calling." 
 
 "Yes. I know a master house-painter. Monsieur Lourdois. 
 He is well-to-do." 
 
 Thus conversing, the family reached the Church of Saint- 
 Leu. There Madame Guillaume reasserted her rights, and, 
 for the first time, placed Augustine next herself, Virginie 
 taking her place on the fourth chair, next to Lebas. During 
 the sermon all went well between Augustine and Theodore, 
 who, standing behind a pillar, worshiped his Madonna with 
 fervent devotion; but at the elevation of the Host, Madame 
 Guillaume discovered, rather late, that her daughter Augus- 
 tine was holding her prayer-book upside down. She was 
 about to speak to her strongly, when, lowering her veil, she 
 interrupted her own devotions to look in the direction where 
 her daughter's eyes found attraction. By the help of her 
 spectacles she saw the young artist, whose fashionable ele- 
 gance seemed to proclaim him a cavalry officer on leave rather 
 than a tradesman of the neighborhood. It is difficult to con- 
 ceive of the state of violent agitation in which Madame Guil- 
 laume found herself — she, who flattered herself on having 
 brought up her daughters to perfection — on discovering in 
 Aug-ustine a clandestine passion of which her prudery and 
 ignorance exaggerated the perils. She believed her daughter 
 to be cankered to the core. 
 
 "Hold your book right way up, miss," she muttered in a 
 low voice, tremulous with wrath. She snatched away the 
 tell-tale prayer-book and returned it with the letter-press 
 right way up. "Do not allow your eyes to look anj^here 
 
30 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 but at your prayers/' she added, "or I shall have something 
 to say to you. Your father and I will talk to you after 
 church." 
 
 These words came like a thunderbolt on poor Augustine. 
 She felt faint; but, torn between the distress she felt and 
 the dread of causing a commotion in church, she bravely con- 
 cealed her anguish. It was, however, easy to discern the 
 stormy state of her soul from the trembling of her prayer-, 
 book, and the tears which dropped on every page she turned. 
 From the furious glare shot at him by Madame Guillaume 
 the artist saw the peril into which his love affair had fallen ; 
 he went out, with a raging soul, determined to venture all. 
 
 '^'^Go to your room,, miss !" said Madame Guillaume, on 
 their return home; "we will send for you, but take care not 
 to quit it.'' 
 
 The conference between the husband and wife was con- 
 ducted so secretly that at first nothing was heard of it. 
 Virginie, however, who had tried to give her sister courage 
 by a variety of gentle remonstrances, carried her good nature 
 so far as to listen at the door of her mother's bedroom where 
 the discussion was held, to catch a word or two. The first 
 time she went down to the lower floor she heard her father 
 exclaim, "Then, madame, do you wish to kill your daughter ?" 
 
 "My poor dear !" said Virginie, in tears, "papa takes your 
 part." 
 
 "And what do they want to do to Theodore?" asked the 
 innocent girl. 
 
 Virginie, inquisitive, went down again; but this time she 
 stayed longer; she learned that Joseph Lebas loved Augus- 
 tine. It was written that on this memorable day, this house, 
 generally so peaceful, should be a hell. Monsieur Guillaume 
 brought Joseph Lebas to despair by telling him of Augus- 
 tine's love for a stranger. Lebas, who had advised his 
 friend to become a suitor for Mademoiselle Virginie, saw all 
 his hopes wrecked. Mademoiselle Virginie, overcome by 
 hearing that Joseph had, in a way, refused her, had a sick 
 headache. The dispute that had arisen from the discussion 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 31 
 
 between Monsieur and Madame Guillanme, when, for the 
 third time in their lives, they had been of antagonistic 
 opinions, had shown itself in a terrible form. Finally, at 
 half-past four in the afternoon, Augustine, pale, trembling, 
 and with red eyes, was haled before her father and mother. 
 The poor child artlessly related the too brief tale of her love. 
 Reassured by a speech from her father, who promised to 
 listen to her in silence, she gathered courage as she pronounced 
 to her parents the name of Theodore de Sommervieux, with 
 a mischievous little emphasis on the aristocratic de. And 
 yielding to the unknown charm of talking of her feelings, 
 she was brave enough to declare with innocent decision that 
 she loved Monsieur de Sommervieux, that she had written 
 to him, and she added, with tears in her e3^es : "To sacrifice 
 me to another man would make me wretched." 
 
 "But, Augustine, you cannot surely know what a painter 
 is ?" cried her mother with horror. 
 
 "Madame Guillaume said the old man, compelling her 
 to silence. — "Augustine," he went on, "artists are generally 
 little better than beggars. They are too extravagant not to 
 be always a bad sort. I served the late Monsieur Joseph 
 Vernet, the late Monsieur Lekain, and the late Monsieur 
 Noverre. Oh, if you could only know the tricks played on 
 poor Father Chevrel by that Monsieur Noverre, by the Chev- 
 alier de Saint-Georges, and especially by Monsieur Philidor ! 
 They are a set of rascals ; I know them well ! They all have 
 
 a gab and nice manners. Ah, your Monsieur Sumer , 
 
 Somm " 
 
 "De Sommervieux, papa." 
 
 "Well^ well, de Sommervieux, well and good. He can 
 never have been half so sweet to you as Monsieur le Chevalier 
 de Saint-Georges was to me the day I got a verdict of the 
 consuls against him. And in those days they were gentlemen 
 of quality." 
 
 "But, father, Monsieur Theodore is of good family, and 
 he wrote me that he is rich ; his father was called Chevalier 
 de Sommervieux before the Revolution." 
 
32 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 At these words Monsieur Guillaume looked at his terrible 
 better half, who, like an angry woman, sat tapping the floor 
 with her foot while keeping sullen silence; she avoided even 
 casting wrathful looks at Augustine, appearing to leave to 
 Monsieur Guillaume the whole responsibility in so grave a 
 matter, since her opinion was not listened to. Nevertheless, 
 in spite of her apparent self-control, when she saw her hus- 
 band giving way so mildly under a catastrophe which had no 
 concern with business, she exclaimed : 
 
 "Eeally, monsieur, you are so weak with your daughters! 
 However 
 
 The sound of a carriage, which stopped at the door, inter- 
 rupted the rating which the old draper already quaked 
 at. In a minute Madame Roquin was standing in the middle 
 of the room, and looking at the actors in this domestic scene : 
 "I know all, my dear cousin," said she, with a patronizing 
 air. 
 
 Madame Roquin made the great mistake of supposing that 
 a Paris notary's wife could play the part of a favorite of 
 fashion. 
 
 "I know all/' she repeated, "and I have come into Noah's 
 Ark, like the dove, with the olive-branch. I read that alle- 
 gory in the Genie du Christianisme/' she added, turning to 
 Madame Guillaume; "the allusion ought to please you, 
 cousin. Do you know," she went on, smiling at Augustine, 
 "that Monsieur de Sommervieux is a charming man? He 
 gave me my portrait this morning, painted by a master's 
 hand. It is worth at least six thousand francs." And at 
 these words she patted Monsieur Guillaume on the arm. The 
 old draper could not help making a grimace with his lips, 
 which was peculiar to him. 
 
 "I know Monsieur de Sommervieux very well," the Dove 
 ran on. "He has come to my evenings this fortnight past, 
 and made them delightful. He has told me all his woes, 
 and commissioned me to plead for him. I know since this 
 morning that he adores xVugustine, and he shall have her. 
 A.h, cousin, do not shake your head in refusal. He will be 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 33 
 
 created Baron, I can tell you, and has just been made Clieva- 
 lier of the Legion of Honor, by the Emperor himself, at the 
 Salon. Koquin is now his lawyer, and knows all his affairs. 
 Well ! Monsieur de Sommervieux has twelve thousand francs 
 a year in good landed estate. Do you know that the father- 
 in-law of such a man may get a rise in life — be mayor of 
 his arrondissement, for instance. Have we not seen Monsieur 
 Dupont become a Count of the Empire, and a senator, all 
 because he went as mayor to congratulate the Emperor on his 
 entry into Vienna? Oh, this marriage must take place ! For 
 my part, I adore the dear young man. His behavior to 
 Augustine is only met with in romances. Be easy, little one, 
 you shall be happy, and every girl will wish she were in your 
 place. Madame la Duchesse de Carigliano, who comes to my 
 *At Homes/ raves about Monsieur de Sommervieux. Some 
 spiteful people say she only comes to me to meet him; as if 
 a duchess of yesterday was doing too much honor to a Chevrel, 
 whose family have been respected citizens these hundred 
 years ! 
 
 "Augustine," Madame Roquin went on, after a short pause, 
 "I have seen the portrait. Heavens ! How lovely it is ! Do 
 you know that the Emperor wanted to have it? He laughed, 
 and said to the Deputy High Constable that if there were 
 many women like that at his court while all the kings visited 
 it, he should have no difficulty about preserving the peace 
 of Europe. Is not that a compliment?" 
 
 The tempests with which the day had begun were to re- 
 semble those of nature, by ending in clear and serene 
 weather. Madame Roquin displayed so much address in her 
 harangue, she was able to touch so many strings in the dry 
 hearts of Monsieur and Madame Guillaume, that at last she hit 
 on one which she could work upon. At this strange period com- 
 merce and finance were more than ever possessed by the crazy 
 mania for seeking alliance with rank; and the generals of 
 the Empire took full advantage of this desire. Monsieur 
 Guillaume, as a singular exception, opposed this deplorable 
 craving. His favorite axioms were that, to secure happiness, 
 
34 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 a woman must marry a man of her own class; that every 
 one was punished sooner or later for having climbed too 
 high; that love could so little endure under the worries of 
 a household, that both husband and wife needed sound good 
 qualities to be happy; that it would not do for one to be far 
 in advance of the other, because, above everything, they must 
 understand each other; if a man spoke Greek and his wife 
 Latin, they might come to die of hunger. He had himself 
 invented this sort of adage. And he compared such marriages 
 to old-fashioned materials of mixed silk and wool, in which 
 the silk always at last wore through the wool. Still, there 
 is so much vanity at the bottom of man's heart that the pru- 
 dence of the pilot who steered the Cat and Eacket so wisely 
 gave way before Madame Eoquin's aggressive volubility. 
 Austere Madame Guillaume was the first to see in her 
 daughter's affection a reason for abdicating her principles 
 and for consenting to receive Monsieur de Sommervieux, 
 whom she promised herself she would put under severe inqui- 
 sition. 
 
 The old draper went to look for Joseph Lebas, and inform 
 him of the state of affairs. At half-past six, the dining-room 
 immortalized by the artist saw, united under its skylight, 
 j^onsieur and Madame Eoquin, the young painter and his 
 charming Augustine, Joseph Lebas, who found his happiness 
 in patience, and Mademoiselle Virginie, convalescent from 
 her headache. Monsieur and Madame Guillaume saw in per- 
 spective both their children married, and the fortunes of the 
 Cat and Eacket once more in skilful hands. Their satisfac- 
 tion was at its height when, at dessert, Theodore made them 
 a present of the wonderful picture which they had failed to 
 see, representing the interior of the old shop, and to which 
 they all owed so much happiness. 
 
 "Isn't it pretty!" cried Guillaume. "And to think that 
 any one would pay thirty thousand francs for that !" 
 
 "Because you can see my lappets in it," said Madame 
 Guillaume. 
 
 "And the cloth unrolled!" added Lebas; "you might take 
 it up in your hand." 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 35 
 
 ^'Drapery always comes out well/' replied the painter. "We 
 should be only too happy, we modern artists, if we could touch 
 the perfection of antique drapery." 
 
 "So you like drapery V cried old Guillaume. ^^ell, then, 
 by Gad ! shake hands on that, my young friend. Since you 
 can respect trade, we shall understand each other. And why 
 should it be despised? The world began with trade, since 
 Adam sold Paradise for an apple. He did not strike a good 
 bargain though!" And the old man roared with honest 
 laughter, encouraged by the champagne, which he sent round 
 with a liberal hand. The band that covered the young artist's 
 eyes was so thick that he thought his future parents amiable. 
 He was not above enlivening them by a few jests in the best 
 taste. So he too pleased every one. In the evening, when the 
 drawing-room, furnished with what Madame Guillaume 
 called "everything handsome," was deserted, and while she 
 flitted from the table to the chimney-piece, from the can- 
 delabra to the tall candlesticks, hastily blowing out the wa^- 
 lights, the worthy draper, who was always clear-sighted when 
 money was in question, called Augustine to him, and seating 
 her on his knee, spoke as follows : — 
 
 "My dear child, you shall marry your Sommervieux since 
 you insist; you may, if you like, risk your capital in happi- 
 ness. But I am not going to be hoodwinked by the thirty 
 thousand francs to be made by spoiling good canvas. Money 
 that is lightly earned is lightly spent. Did I not hear that 
 hare-brained youngster declare this evening that money was 
 made round that it might roll. If it is round for spend- 
 thrifts, it is flat for saving folks who pile it up. Now, my 
 child, that fine gentleman talks of giving you carriages and 
 diamonds ! He has money, let him spend it on you ; so be it. 
 It is no concern of mine. But as to what I can give you, 
 .1 will not have the crown-pieces I have picked up with so 
 much toil wasted in carriages and flippery. Those who spend 
 too fast never grow rich. A hundred thousand crowns, which 
 is your fortune, will not buy up Paris. It is all very well to 
 look forward to a few hundred thousand francs to be yours 
 
36 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 some da,y; I shall keep you waiting for them as long as pos- 
 sible, by Gad ! So I took your lover aside, and a man who 
 managed the Lecoeq bankruptcy had not much difficulty in 
 persuading the artist to marry under a settlement of his wife's 
 money on herself. I will keep an eye on the marriage contract 
 to see that what he is to settle on you is safely tied up. So 
 noWj, my child, I hope to be a grandfather, by Gad ! I will 
 begin at once to lay up for my grandchildren; but swear to 
 me, here and now, never to sign any papers relating to money 
 without my advice ; and if I go soon to join old father Chevrel, 
 promise to consult young Lebas, your brother-in-law.'* 
 "Yes, father, I swear it." 
 
 At these words, spoken in a gentle voice, the old man kissed 
 his daughter on both cheeks. That night the lovers slept as 
 soundly as Monsieur and Madame Guillaume. 
 
 Some few months after this memorable Sunday the high 
 altar of Saint-Leu was the scene of two very different wed- 
 dings. Augustine and Theodore appeared in all the radiance 
 of happiness, their eyes beaming with love, dressed with ele- 
 gance, while a fine carriage waited for them. Virginie, who 
 had come in a good hired fly with the rest of the family, 
 humbly followed her younger sister, dressed in the simplest 
 fashion like a shadow necessary to the harmony of the pict- 
 ure. Monsieur Guillaume had exerted himself to the utmost 
 in the church to get Virginie married before Augustine, but 
 the priests, high and low, persisted in addressing the more 
 elegant of the tv/o brides. He heard some of his neighbors 
 highly approving the good sense of Mademoiselle Virginie, 
 who was making, as they said, the more substantial match, 
 and remaining faithful to the neighborhood ; while they fired 
 a few taunts, prompted by envy of Augustine, who was marry- 
 ing an artist and a man of rank; adding, with a sort of dis- 
 may, that if the Guillaumes were ambitious, there was an end 
 to the business. An old fan-maker having remarked that such 
 a prodigal would soon bring his wife to beggary, father Guil- 
 laume prided himself in petto for his prudence in the matter 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 3V 
 
 of marriage settlements. In tlie evening, after a splendid 
 ball, followed by one of those substantial suppers of which the 
 memory is dying out in the present generation, Monsieur 
 and Madame Guillaume remained in a fine house belonging to 
 them in the Rue du Colombier, where the wedding had been 
 held; Monsieur and Madame Lebas returned in their fly to 
 the old home in the Eue Saint-Denis, to steer the good ship 
 Cat and Racket. The artist, intoxicated with happiness, car- 
 ried off his beloved Augustine, and eagerly lifting her out 
 of their carriage when it reached the Rue des Trois-Freres, 
 led her to an apartment embellished by all the arts. 
 
 The fever of passion which possessed Theodore made a yeai' 
 fly over the young couple without a single cloud to dim the 
 blue sky under which they lived. Life did not hang heavy on 
 the lovers' hands. Theodore lavished on every day inexhaust- 
 ible fioriture of enjoyment, and he delighted to vary the 
 transports of passion by the soft languor of those hours of 
 repose when souls soar so high that they seem to have for- 
 gotten all bodily union. Augustine was too happy for re- 
 flection; she floated on an undulating tide of rapture; she 
 thought she could not do enough by abandoning herself to 
 sanctioned and sacred married love; simple and artless, she 
 had no coquetry, no reserves, none of the dominion which 
 a worldly-minded girl acquires over her husband by ingenious 
 caprice; she loved too well to calculate for the future, and 
 never imagined that so exquisite a life could come to an end. 
 Happy in being her husband's sole delight, she believed that 
 her inextinguishable love would always be her greatest grace 
 in his eyes, as her devotion and obedience would be a perennial 
 charm. And, indeed, the ecstasy of love had made her so 
 brilliantly lovely that her beauty filled her with pride, and 
 gave her confidence that she could always reign over a man 
 so easy to kindle as Monsieur de Sommervieux. Thus her 
 position as a wife brought her no knowledge but the lessons 
 of love. 
 
 In the midst of her happiness, she was still the simple 
 child who had lived in obscurity in the Rue Saint-Denis, and 
 
38 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 she never thought of acquiring the manners, the informa- 
 tion, the tone of the world she had to live in. Her words 
 being the words of love, she revealed in them, no doubt, a 
 certain pliancy of mind and a certain refinement of speech; 
 but she used the language common to all women when they 
 find themselves plunged in passion, which seems to be their 
 element. When, by chance, Augustine expressed an idea that 
 did not harmonize with Theodore's, the young artist laughed, 
 as we laugh at the first mistakes of a foreigner, though they 
 end by annoying us if they are not corrected. 
 
 In spite of all this love-making, by the end of this year, as 
 delightful as it was swift, Sommervieux felt one morning 
 the need for resuming his work and his old habits. His wife 
 was expecting their first child. He saw some friends again. 
 During the tedious discomforts of the year when a young 
 wife is nursing an infant for the first time, he worked, no 
 doubt, with zeal, but he occasionally sought diversion in the 
 fashionable world. The house which he was best pleased to 
 frequent was that of the Duchesse de Carigliano, who had 
 at last attracted the celebrated artist to her parties. When 
 Augustine was quite well again, and her boy no longer re- 
 quired the assiduous care which debars a mother from social 
 pleasures, Theodore had come to the stage of wishing to know 
 the joys of satisfied vanity to be found in society by a man 
 who shows himself with a handsome woman, the object of 
 envy and admiration. 
 
 To figure in drawing-rooms with the reflected lustre of 
 her husband's fame, and to find other women envious of her, 
 was to Augustine a new harvest of pleasures; but it was the 
 last gleam of conjugal happiness. She first wounded her 
 husband's vanity when, in spite of vain efforts, she betrayed 
 her ignorance, the inelegance of her language, and the nar- 
 rowness of her ideas. Sommervieux's nature, subjugated for 
 nearly two years and a half by the first transports of love, 
 now, in the calm of less new possession, recovered its bent 
 and habits, for a while diverted from their channel. Poetry, 
 painting, and the subtle joys of imagination have inalienable 
 
AT THE SIGN OB^ THE CAT AND BACKET 
 
 39 
 
 rights over a lofty spirit. These cravings of a powerful soul 
 had not been starved in Theodore during these two years; 
 they had only found fresh pasture. As soon as the meadows 
 of love had been ransacked, and the artist had gathered 
 roses and cornflowers as the children do, so greedily that he 
 did not see that his hands could hold no more, the scene 
 changed. When the painter showed his wife the sketches for 
 his finest compositions he heard her exclaim, as her father 
 had done, "How pretty!" This tepid admiration was not 
 the outcome of conscientious feeling, but of her faith on the 
 strength of love. 
 
 Augustine cared more for a look than for the finest pict- 
 ure. The only sublime she know was that of the heart. At 
 last Theodore could not resist the evidence of the cruel fact — 
 his wife was insensible to poetry, she did not dwell in his 
 sphere, she could not follow him in all his vagaries, his in- 
 ventions, his joys and his sorrows; she walked groveling in 
 the world of reality, while his head was in the skies. Com- 
 mon minds cannot appreciate the perennial sufferings of a 
 being who, while bound to another by the most intimate af- 
 fections, is obliged constantly to suppress the dearest flights 
 of his soul, and to thrust down into the void those images 
 which a magic power compels him to create. To him the tor- 
 ture is all the more intolerable because his feeling towards 
 his companion enjoins, as its first law, that they should have 
 no concealments, but mingle the aspirations of their thought 
 as perfectly as the effusions of their soul. The demands of 
 nature are not to be cheated. She is as inexorable as necessity, 
 which is, indeed, a sort of social nature. Sommervieux took 
 refuge in the peace and silence of his studio, hoping that the 
 habit of living with artists might mould his wife and develop 
 in her the dormant germs of lofty intelligence which some 
 superior minds suppose must exist in every being. But 
 Augustine was too sincerely religious not to take fright at the 
 tone of artists. At the first dinner Theodore gave, she heard 
 a young painter say, with the childlike lightness, which to 
 her was unintelligible, and which redeems a jest from the taini- 
 
40 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 of profanity, "But, madame, your Paradise cannot be more 
 beautiful than EaphaeFs Transfiguration! — Well, and I got 
 tired of looking at that." 
 
 Thus Augustine came among this sparkling set in a spirit 
 of distrust which no one could fail to see. She was a restraint 
 on their freedom. Now an artist who feels restraint is piti- 
 less ; he stays away, or laughs it to scorn. Madame Guillaume, 
 among other absurdities, had an excessive notion of the dignity 
 she considered the prerogative of a married woman; and Au- 
 gustine, though she had often made fun of it, could not help 
 a slight imitation of her mother's primness. This extreme 
 propriety, which virtuous wives do not always avoid, suggested 
 a few epigrams in the form of sketches, in which the harm- 
 less jest was in such good taste that Sommervieux could not 
 take offence; and even if they had been more severe, these 
 pleasantries were after all only reprisals from his friends. 
 Still, nothing could seem a trifle to a spirit so open as 
 Theodore's to impressions from without. A coldness insen- 
 sibly crept over him, and inevitably spread. To attain con- 
 jugal happiness we must climb a hill whose summit is a nar- 
 row ridge, close to a steep and slippery descent : the painter's 
 love was falling down it. He regarded his wife as incapable 
 of appreciating the moral considerations which justified him 
 in his own eyes for his singular behavior to her, and believed 
 himself quite innocent in hiding from her thoughts she could 
 not enter into, and peccadilloes outside the jurisdiction of a 
 bourgeois conscience. Augustine wrapped herself in sullen 
 and silent grief. These unconfessed feelings placed a shroud 
 between the husband and wife which could not fail to grow 
 thicker day by day. Though her husband never failed in 
 consideration for her, Augustine could not help trembling as 
 she saw that he kept for the outer world those treasures of 
 wit and grace that he formerly would lay at her feet. She 
 soon began to find a sinister meaning in the jocular speeches 
 that are current in the world as to the inconstancy of men. 
 She made no complaints, but her demeanor conveyed re- 
 proach. 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 41 
 
 Three years after her marriage this pretty young woman, 
 who dashed past in her handsome carriage, and lived in a 
 sphere of glory and riches to the envy of heedless folk inca- 
 pable of taking a just view of the situations of life, was a 
 prey to intense grief. She lost her color; she reflected; she 
 made comparisons ; then sorrow unfolded to her the first les- 
 sons of experience. She determined to restrict herself bravely 
 within the round of duty, hoping that by this generous con- 
 duct she might sooner or later win back her husband's love. 
 But it was not so. When Sommervieux, tired with work, 
 came in from his studio, Augustine did not put away her work 
 so quickly but that the painter might find his wife mending 
 the household linen, and his own, with all the care of a good 
 housewife. She supplied generously and without a murmur 
 the money needed for his lavishness; but in her anxiety to 
 husband her dear Theodore's fortune, she was strictly eco- 
 jnomical for herself and in certain details of domestic man- 
 agement. Such conduct is incompatible with the easy-going 
 habits of artists, who, at the end of their life, have enjoyed 
 ;it so keenly that they never inquire into the causes of their 
 ruin. 
 
 It is useless to note every tint of shadow by which the 
 brilliant hues of their honeymoon were overcast till they 
 were lost in utter blackness. One evening poor Augustine, 
 who had for some time heard her husband speak with enthu- 
 siasm of the Duchesse de Carigliano, received from a friend 
 certain malignantly charitable warnings as to the nature of 
 the attachment which Sommervieux had formed for this cele- 
 brated flirt of the Imperial Court. At one-and-twenty, in all 
 the splendor of youth and beauty, Augustine saw herself de- 
 serted for a woman of six-and-thirty. Feeling herself so 
 wretched in the midst of a world of festivity which to her was 
 a blank, the poor little thing could no longer understand the 
 admiration she excited, or the envy of which she was the 
 object. Her face assumed a different expression. Melan- 
 choly tinged her features with the sweetness of resignation 
 and the pallor of scorned love. Ere long she too was courted 
 
42 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND IlACIvET 
 
 by the most fascinating men; but she remained lonely an(i 
 virtuous. Some contemptuous words whigh escaped her hus- 
 band filled her with incredible despair. A sinister flash 
 showed her the breaches which, as a result of her sordid edu- 
 cation, hindered the perfect union of her soul with Theo- 
 dore's; she loved him well enough to absolve him and con- 
 demn herself. She shed tears of blood, and perceived, too 
 late, that there are mesalliances of the spirit as well as of 
 rank and habits. As she recalled the early raptures of their 
 union, she understood the full extent of that lost happiness, 
 and accepted the conclusion that so rich a harvest of love 
 was in itself a whole life, which only sorrow could pay for. 
 At the same time, she loved too truly to lose all hope. At 
 one-and-twenty she dared undertake to educate herself, and 
 make her imagination, at least, worthy of that she admired. 
 "If I am not a poet," thought she, "at any rate, I will under- 
 stand poetry." 
 
 Then, with all the strength of will, all the energy which 
 every woman can display when* she loves, Madame de Som- 
 mervieux tried to alter her character, her manners, and hei' 
 habits; but by dint of devouring books and learning un- 
 dauntedly, she only succeeded in becoming less ignorant. 
 Lightness of wit and the graces of conversation are a gift 
 of nature, or the fruit of education begun in the cradle. She 
 could appreciate music and enjoy it, but she could not sing 
 with taste. She understood literature and the beauties of 
 poetry, but it was too late to cultivate her refractoiy memory. 
 She listened with pleasure to social conversation, but she 
 could contribute nothing brilliant. Her religious notions and 
 home-grown prejudices were antagonistic to the complete 
 emancipation of her intelligence. Finally, a foregone conclu- 
 sion against her had stolen into Theodore's mind, and this 
 she could not conquer. The artist would laugh at those who 
 flattered him about his wife, and his irony had some founda- 
 tion; he so overawed the pathetic young creature that, in 
 his presence, or alone with him, she trembled. Hampered 
 by her too eager desire to please, her wits and her knowledge 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 43 
 
 vanished in one absorbing feeling. Even her fidelity vexed 
 the unfaithful husband, who seemed to bid her do wrong 
 by stigmatizing her virtue as insensibility. Augustine tried 
 in vain to abdicate her reason, to yield to her husband's 
 caprices and whims, to devote herself to the selfishness of his 
 vanity. Her sacrifices bore no fruil Perhaps they had both 
 let the moment slip when souls may meet in comprehension. 
 One day the young wife's too sensitive heart received one 
 of those blows which so strain the bonds of feeling that they \ 
 seem to be broken. She withdrew into solitude. But before 
 long a fatal idea suggested to her to seek counsel and comfort 
 in the bosom of her family. 
 
 So one morning she made her way towards the grotesque 
 fagade of the humble, silent home where she had spent her 
 childhood. She sighed as she looked up at the sash-window, 
 whence one day she had sent her first kiss to him who now 
 shed as much sorrow as glory on her life. Nothing was 
 changed in the cavern, where the drapery business had, how- 
 ever, started on a new life. Augustine's sister filled her 
 mother's old place at the desk. The unhappy young woman 
 met her brother-in-law with his pen behind his ear ; he hardly 
 listened to her, he was so full of business. The formidable 
 symptoms of stock-taking were visible all round him; he 
 begged her to excuse him. She was received coldly enough 
 by her sister, who owed her a grudge. In fact, Augustine, 
 in her finery, and stepping out of a handsome carriage, had 
 never been to see her but when passing by. The wife of the 
 prudent Lebas, imagining that want of money was the prime 
 cause of this early call, tried to keep up a tone of reserve 
 which more than once made Augustine smile. The painter's 
 wife perceived that, apart from the cap and lappets, her 
 mother had found in Virginie a successor who could uphold 
 the ancient honor of the Cat and Eacket. At breakfast she 
 observed certain changes in the management of the house 
 which did honor to Lebas' good sense ; the assistants did not 
 rise before dessert; they were allowed to talk, and the abun- 
 dant meal spoke of ease without luxury. The fashionable 
 
44 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKBTT 
 
 woman found some tickets for a box at the Francais, where 
 she remembered having seen her sister from time to time. 
 Madame Lebas had a cashmere shawL over her shonlderSj 
 of which the value bore witness to her husband's generosity 
 to her. In short, the couple were keeping pace with the 
 times. During the two-thirds of the day she spent there, 
 Augustine was touched to the heart by the equable happiness, 
 devoid, to be sure, of all emotion, but equally free from 
 storms, enjoyed by this well-matched couple. They had ac- 
 cepted life as a commercial enterprise, in which, above all, 
 they must do credit to the business. Not finding any great 
 love in her husband, Virginie had set to work to create it. 
 Having by degrees learned to esteem and care for his wife, 
 the time that his happiness had taken to germinate was to 
 Joseph Lebas a guarantee of its durability. Hence, when 
 Augustine plaintively set forth her painful position, she had 
 to face the deluge of commonplace morality which the tradi- 
 tions of the Rue Saint-Denis furnished to her sister. 
 
 "The mischief is done, wife," said Joseph Lebas ; "we must 
 try to give our sister good advice." Then the clever trades- 
 man ponderously analyzed the resources which law and custom 
 might offer Augustine as a means of escape at this crisis; 
 he ticketed every argument, so to speak, and arranged them 
 in their degrees of weight under various categories, as though 
 they were articles of merchandise of different qualities; then 
 he put them in the scale, weighed them, and ended by showing 
 the necessity for his sister-in-law's taking violent steps which 
 could not satisfy the love she still had for her husband; and, 
 indeed, the feeling had revived in all its strength when she 
 heard Joseph Lebas speak of legal proceedings. Augustine 
 thanked them, and returned home even more undecided than 
 she had been before consulting them. She now ventured 
 to go to the house in the Rue du Colombier, intending to 
 confide her troubles to her father and mother; for she was 
 like a sick man who, in his desperate plight, tries every pre- 
 scription, and even puts faith in old wives' remedies. 
 
 The old people received their daughter with an effusiveness 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 48 
 
 thai touched her deeply. Her visit brought them some little 
 change, and that to them was worth a fortune. For the last 
 four years they had gone their way in life like navigators 
 without a goal or a compass. Sitting by the chimney corner, 
 they would talk over their disasters under the old law of 
 maximum, of their great investments in cloth, of the way 
 they had weathered bankruptcies, and, above all, the famous 
 failure of Lecoc^, Monsieur Guillaume's battle of Marengo.' 
 Then, when they had exhausted the tale of lawsuits, they 
 recapitulated the sums total of their most profitable stock- 
 takings, and told each other old stories of the Saint-Denis 
 quarter. At two o'clock old Guillaume went to cast an eye on 
 the business at the Cat and Racket ; on his way back he called 
 at all the shops, formerly the rivals of his own, where the 
 young proprietors hoped to inveigle the old draper into some 
 risky discount, which, as was his wont, he never refused 
 point-blank. Two good Normandy horses were dying of their 
 own fat in the stables of the big house; Madame Guillaume 
 never used them but to drag her on Sundays ta high, mass at 
 the parish church. Three times a week the worthy couple kept 
 open house. By the influence of his son-in-law Sommervieux, 
 Monsieur Guillaume had been named a member of the con- 
 sulting board for the clothing of the Army. Since her hus- 
 band had stood so high in office, Madame Guillaume had 
 decided that she must receive; her rooms were so crammed 
 with gold and silver ornaments, and furniture, tasteless but 
 of undoubted value, that the simplest room in the house 
 looked like a chapel. Economy and expense seemed to be 
 struggling for the upper hand in every accessory. It was as 
 though Monsieur Guillaume had looked to a good investment, 
 even in the purchase of a candlestick. In the midst of this 
 bazaar, where splendor revealed the owner's v/ant of occu- 
 pation, Sommervieux's famous picture filled the place of 
 honor, and in it Monsieur and Madame Guillaume found 
 their chief consolation, turning their eyes, harnessed with 
 eye-glasses, twenty times a day on this presentment of their 
 past life, to them so active and amusing. The appearance 
 
46 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 of this mansion and these rooms, where everything had an 
 aroma of staleness and mediocrity, the spectacle offered by 
 these two beings, cast away, as it were, on a rock far from 
 the world and the ideas which are life, startled Augustine; 
 she could here contemplate the sequel of the scene of which 
 the first part had struck her at the house of Lebas — a life of 
 stir without movement, a mechanical and instinctive exist- 
 ence like that of the beaver; and then she felt an indefinable 
 pride in her troubles, as she reflected that they had their 
 source in eighteen months of such happiness as, in her eyes, 
 was worth a thousand lives like this; its vacuity seemed to 
 her horrible. However, she concealed this not very charitable 
 feeling, and displayed for her parents her newly-acquired ac- 
 complishments of mind, and the ingratiating tenderness that 
 love had revealed to her, disposing them to listen to her mat- 
 rimonial grievances. Old people have a weakness for this 
 kind of confidences. Madame Guillaume wanted to know 
 the most trivial details of that alien life, which to her seemed 
 almost fabulous. The travels of Baron de la Hontan, which 
 she began again and again and never finished, told her noth- 
 ing more unheard-of concerning the Canadian savages. 
 
 "What, child, your husband shuts himself into a room with 
 naked women ! And you are so simple as to believe that he 
 draws them?" 
 
 As she uttered this exclamation, the grandmother laid her 
 spectacles on a, little work-table, shook her skirts, and clasped 
 her hands on her knees, raised by a foot-warmer, her favorite 
 pedestal. 
 
 "But, mother, all artists are obliged to have models." 
 
 "He took good care not to tell us that when he asked leave 
 to marry you. If I had known it, I would never have given 
 my daughter to a man who followed such a trade. Eeligion 
 forbids such horrors; they are immoral. And at what time 
 of night do you say he comes home ?" 
 
 "At one o'clock — two " 
 
 The old folks looked at each other in utter amazement. 
 "Then he gambles?" snid Monsieur Guillaume. "In my 
 day only gamblers stayed out so late." 
 
AT THE SIGN^OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 47 
 
 Augustine made a face that scorned the accusation. 
 
 "He must keep you up through dreadful nights waiting 
 for him/' said Madame Guillaume. "But you go to bed, don't 
 you ? And when he has lost, the wretch wakes you." 
 
 "No, mamma, on the contrary, he is sometimes in very- 
 good spirits. Not unfrequently, indeed, when it is fine, he 
 suggests that I should get up and go into the woods." 
 
 "The woods ! At that hour ? Then have you such a small 
 set of rooms that his bedroom and his sitting-rooms are not 
 enough, and that he must run about ? But it is just to give 
 you cold that the wretch proposes such expeditions. He wants 
 to get rid of you. Did one ever hear of a man settled in life, 
 a well-behaved, quiet man galloping about like a warlock?" 
 
 "But, my dear mother, you do not understand that he must 
 have excitement to fire his genius. He is fond of scenes 
 which " 
 
 "I would makes scenes for him, fine scenes !" cried Mad- 
 ame Guillaume, interrupting her daughter. "How can you 
 show any consideration to such a man? In the first place, 
 I don't like his drinking water only; it is not wholesome. 
 Why does he object to see a woman eating? What queer 
 notion is that ! But he is mad. All you tell us about him 
 is impossible. A man cannot leave his home without a word, 
 and never come back for ten days. And then he tells you 
 he has been to Dieppe to paint the sea. As if any one painted 
 the sea! He crams you with a pack of tales that are too 
 absurd." 
 
 Augustine opened her lips to defend her husband; but 
 Madame Guillaume enjoined silence with a wave of her hand, 
 which she obeyed by a survival of habit, and her mother went 
 on in harsh tones : "Don't talk to me about the man ! He 
 never set foot in a church excepting to see you and to be mar- 
 ried. People without religion are capable of anything. Did 
 Guillaume ever dream of hiding anything from me, of speud- 
 ing three days without saying a word to me, and of chatter- 
 ing afterwards like a blind magpie?" 
 
 "My dear mother, you judge superior people too severely. 
 
48 AT THE S1G:^ of the cat and JftACKEJT 
 
 If their ideas were the same as other folks', they would not 
 be men of genius/' 
 
 "Very well, then let men of genius stop at home and not 
 get married. What ! A man of genius is to make his wife 
 miserable? And because he is a genius it is all right! 
 Genius, genius ! It is not so very clever to say black one 
 minute and white the next, as he does, to interrupt other 
 people, to dance such rigs at home, never to let you know 
 which foot you are to stand on, to compel his wife never to 
 be amused unless my lord is in gay spirits, and to be. dull 
 when he is dull." 
 
 "But, mother, the very nature of such imaginations '' 
 
 "What are such ^imaginations' ?" Madame Guillaume went 
 on, interrupting her daughter again, "Fine ones his are, 
 my word ! What possesses a man that all on a sudden, without 
 consulting a doctor, he takes it into his head to eat nothing 
 but vegetables? If indeed it were from religious motives, 
 it might do him some good — but he has no more religion than 
 a Huguenot. Was there .ever a man known who, like him, loved 
 Iiorses better than his fellow-creatures, had his hair curled 
 like a heathen, laid statues under muslin coverlets, shut his 
 shutters in broad day to work by lamp-light? There, get 
 along; if he were not so grossly immoral, he would be fit to 
 shut up in a lunatic asylum. Consult Monsieur Loraux, the 
 priest at Saint Sulpice, ask his opinion about it all, and he 
 will tell you that your husbaoid does not behave like a Chris- 
 tian." 
 
 "Oh, mother, can you believe ?" 
 
 "Yes, I do believe. You loved him, and yon can see none 
 of these things. But I can remember in the early days after 
 your marriage, I met him in the Champs-Elysees. He wns 
 on horseback. Well, at one minute he was galloping as hard 
 'as he could tear, and then pulled up to a walk. I said to 
 myself at that moment, '^There is a man devoid of judgment.' '' 
 
 "Ah, ha!" cried Monsieur Guillaume, '%ow wise I was to 
 have your money settled on yourself with such a queer fellow 
 loT a husband!" 
 
AT THE SIGN OF TUK OAT AND RACKET 49 
 
 When Augustine was so imprudent as to set forth her seri- 
 ous grievances against her husband, the two old people were 
 speechless with indignation. But the word ^^divorce" was 
 ere long spoken by Madame Guillaume. At the sound of the 
 word divorce the apathetic old draper seemed to wake up. 
 Prompted by his love for his daughter, and also by the ex- 
 citement which the proceedings would bring into his unevent- 
 ful life, father Guillaume took up the matter. He made him- 
 self the leader of the application for a divorce, laid down the 
 lines of it, almost argued the case ; he offered to be at all the 
 charges, to see the lawyers, the pleaders, the Judges, to move 
 heaven and earth. Madame de Sommervieux was frightened, 
 she refused her father^s services, said she would not be sepa- 
 rated from her husband even if she were ten times as mi- 
 Chappy, and talked no more about her sorrows. After being 
 overwhelmed by her parents with all the little wordless and 
 eonsoling kindnesses by which the old couple tried in vain 
 to make up to her for her distress of heart, Augustine went 
 ,away, feeling the impossibility of making a superior mind 
 i'.ntelligible to weak intellects. She had learned that a wife 
 must hide from every one, even from her parents, woes for 
 which it is so difficult to find sympathy. The storms and 
 .sufferings of the upper spheres are appreciated only by the 
 lofty spirits who inhabit there. In every circumstance we 
 can only be judged by our equals. 
 
 Thus poor Augustine found herself thrown back on the 
 horror of her meditations, in the cold atmosphere of her 
 home. Study was indiiferent to her, since study had not 
 brought her back her husband's heart. Initiated into the 
 secret of these souls of fire, but bereft of their resources, she 
 was compelled to share their sorrows without sharing their 
 pleasures. She was disgusted with the world, which to her 
 seemed mean and small as compared with the incidents of 
 passion. In short, her life was a failure. 
 
 One evening an idea flashed upon her that lighted up her 
 dark grief like a beam from heaven. Such an idea could 
 never have smiled on a heart less pure, less virtuous than 
 
^50 AT THE SIGN OF THE GAT AND RACKET 
 
 laers. She determined to go to the Duchesse de Carigliano, 
 not to ask her to give her back her husband's heart, but to 
 learn the arts by which it had been captured; to engage the 
 interest of this haughty fine lady for the mother of her lover's 
 children ; to appeal to her and make her the instrument of her 
 future happiness, since she was the cause of her present 
 ^vretchedness. 
 
 So one day Augustine, timid as she was, but armed with 
 supernatural courage, got into her carriage at two in the after- 
 noon to try for admittance to the boudoir of the famous 
 coquette, who was never visible till that hour. Madame de 
 Sommervieux had not yet seen any of the ancient and mag- 
 nificent mansions of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. As she 
 made her way through the stately corridors, the handsome 
 staircases, the vast drawing-rooms — full of flowers, though 
 it was in the depth of winter, and decorated with the taste 
 peculiar to women born to opulence or to the elegant habits 
 of the aristocracy, Augustine felt a terrible clutch at her 
 heart ; she coveted the secrets of an elegance of which she had 
 never had an idea; she breathed an air of grandeur which 
 explained the attraction of the house for her husband. When 
 she reached the private rooms of the Duchess she was filled 
 with jealousy and a sort of despair, as she admired the luxu- 
 rious arrangement of the furniture, the draperies and the 
 hangings. Here disorder was a grace, here luxury affected 
 a certain contempt of splendor. The fragrance that floated 
 in the warm air flattered the sense of smell without offending 
 it. The accessories of the rooms were in harmony with a view, 
 through plate-glass windows, of the lawns in a garden planted 
 with evergreen trees. It was all bewitching, and the art of 
 it was not perceptible. The whole spirit of the mistress of 
 these rooms pervaded the drawing-room where Augustine 
 awaited her. She tried to divine her rival's character from 
 the aspect of the scattered objects; but there was here some- 
 thing as impenetrable in the disorder as in the symmetry, 
 and to the simple-minded young wife all was a sealed letter. 
 All that she could discern was that, as a woman, the Duchess 
 wae a superior person. Then a painful thought came over her. 
 
AT THE SIGN OP THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 51 
 
 "Alas ! And is it true," she wondered, "that a simple and 
 [oving heart is not all-sufficient to an artist; that to balance 
 the weight of these powerful souls they need a union with 
 feminine souls of a strength equal to their own? If I had 
 been brought up like this siren, our weapons at least might 
 have been equal in the hour of struggle." 
 
 "But I am not at home !" The sharp, harsh words, though 
 spoken in an undertone in the adjoining boudoir, were heard 
 by Augustine, and her heart beat violently. 
 
 "The lady is in there," replied the maid. 
 
 "You are an idiot! Show her in," replied the Duchess, 
 whose voice was sweeter, and had assumed the dulcet tones 
 of politeness. She evidently now meant to be heard. 
 
 Augustine shyly entered the room. At the end of the 
 dainty boudoir she saw the Duchess lounging luxuriously on 
 an ottoman covered with brown velvet and placed in the 
 (Centre of a sort of apse outlined by soft folds of white muslin 
 ,)ver a yellow lining. Ornaments of gilt bronze, arranged 
 with exquisite taste, enhanced this sori of dais, under which 
 the Duchess reclined like a Greek statue. The dark hue 
 of the velvet gave relief to every fascinating charm. A sub- 
 dued light, friendly to her beauty, fell like a reflection rather 
 than a direct illumination. A few rare flowers raised their 
 perfumed heads from costly Sevres vases. At the moment 
 when this picture was presented to Augustine's astonished 
 eyes, she was approaching so noiselessly that she caught a 
 glance from those of the enchantress. This look seemed to say 
 to some one whom Augustine did not at flrst perceive, "Stay ; 
 you will see a- pretty woman, and make her visit less of a 
 bore." 
 
 On seeing Augustine, the Duchess rose and made her sit 
 down by her, 
 
 "And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit, madame ?" 
 she said with a most gracious smile. 
 
 "Why all this falseness ?" thought Augustine, replying only 
 with a bow. 
 
 Her silence was compulsory. The young woman saw before 
 
52 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND llACKET 
 
 her a superfluous witness of the scene. This personage waS;, 
 of all the Colonels in the army^ the youngest, the most fash- 
 ionahle, and the finest man. His face, full of life and youth, 
 but already expressive, was further enhanced by a small mous- 
 tache twirled up into points, and as black as jet, by a full 
 imperial, by whiskers carefully combed, and a forest of black 
 hair in some disorder. He was whisking a riding whip with 
 an air of ease and freedom which suited his self-satisfied ex- 
 pression and the elegance of his dress; the ribbons attached 
 to his button-hole were carelessly tied, and he seemed to 
 pride himself much more on his smart appearance than on 
 his courage. Augustine looked at the Duchesse de Carigliano, 
 and indicated the Colonel by a sidelong glance. All its mute 
 appeal was understood. 
 
 "Good-bye, then, Monsieur d'Aiglemont, we shall meet in 
 the Bois de Boulogne." 
 
 These words were spoken by the siren as though they were 
 the result of an agreement made before Augustine's arriva], 
 and she winged them with a threatening look that the officer 
 deserved perhaps for the admiration he showed in gazing at 
 the modest flower, which contrasted so well with the haughty 
 Duchess. The young fop bowed in silence, turned on the 
 heels of his boots, and gracefully quitted the boudoir. At 
 this instant, Augustine, watching her rival, whose eyes seemed 
 to follow the brilliant officer, detected in that glance a senti- 
 ment of which the transient expression is known to every 
 woman. She perceived v/ith the deepest anguish that her 
 visit would be useless; this lady, full of artifice, was too 
 greedy of homage not to have a ruthless heart. 
 
 "Madame," said Augustine in a broken voice, "the step I 
 am about to take will seem to you very strange; but there 
 is a madness of despair which ought to excuse an3d;hing. I 
 understand only too well why Theodore prefers your house 
 to any other, and why your mind has so much power over 
 his. Alas! I have only to look into myself to find more 
 than ample reasons. But I am devoted to my husband, mad- 
 ame. Two years of tears have not effaced his image from my 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 53 
 
 heart, though I have lost his. In my folly I dared to dream 
 of a contest with you ; and I have come to you to ask you by 
 what means I may triumph over yourself. Oh, madame/' 
 cried the young wife, ardently seizing the hand which her 
 rival allowed her to hold, "I will never pray to God for my 
 own happiness with so much fervor as I will beseech Him 
 for yours, if you will help me to win back Sommervieux's 
 regard — I will not say his love. I have no hope but in you. 
 Ah ! tell me how you could please him, and make him forget 
 
 the first days " At these words Augustine broke down, 
 
 suffocated with sobs she could not suppress. Ashamed of her 
 weakness, she hid her face in her handkerchief, which she 
 bathed with tears. 
 
 "What a child you are, my dear little beauty!" said the 
 Duchess, carried away by the novelty of such a scene, and 
 touched, in spite of herself, at receiving such homage from 
 the most perfect virtue perhaps in Paris. She took the 
 young wife's handkerchief, and herself wiped the tears from 
 her eyes, soothing her by a few monosyllables murmured with 
 gracious compassion. After a moment's silence the Duchess, 
 grasping poor Augustine's hands in both her own — hands 
 that had a rare character of dignity and powerful beauty — 
 said in a gentle and friendly voice: "My first warning is 
 to advise you not to weep so bitterly; tears are disfiguring. 
 We must learn to deal firmly with the sorrows that make us 
 ill, for love does not linger long by a sick-bed. Melancholy, 
 at first, no doubt, lends a certain attractive grace, but it ends 
 by dragging the features and blighting the loveliest face. 
 And besides, our tyrants are so vain as to insist that their 
 slaves should be always cheerful." 
 
 "But, madame, it is not in my power not to feel. How is 
 it possible, without suffering a thousand deaths, to see the 
 face which once beamed with love and gladness turn chill, 
 colorless, and indifferent? I cannot control my heart!" 
 
 "So much the worse, sweet child. But I fancy I know all 
 your story. In the first place, if your husband is unfaithful 
 to you, understand clearly that I am not his accomplice. If 
 
64 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 I was anxious to have him in my drawing-room, it was, I 
 own, out of vanity; he was famous, and he went nowhere. 
 I like you too much already to tell you all the mad things 
 he has done for my sake. I will only reveal one, because 
 it may perhaps help us to bring him back to you, and to pun- 
 ish him for the audacity of his behavior to me. He will 
 end by compromising me. I know the world too well, my 
 dear, to abandon myself to the discretion of a too superior 
 man. You should know that one may allow them to court 
 one, but marry them — that is a mistake! We women ought 
 to admire men of genius, and delight in them as a spectacle, 
 but as to living with them? Never. — No, no. It is like 
 wanting to find pleasure in inspecting the machinery of the 
 opera instead of sitting in a box to enjoy its brilliant illu- 
 sions. But this misfortune has fallen on you, my poor child, 
 has it not ? Well, then, you must try to arm yourself against 
 tyranny." 
 
 "Ah, madame, before coming in here, only seeing you as 
 I came in, I already detected some arts of which I had no 
 suspicion." 
 
 "Well, come and see me sometimes, and it will not be long 
 before you have mastered the knowledge of these trifles, im- 
 portant, too, in their way. Outward things are, to fools, 
 half of life ; and in that matter more than one clever man is 
 a fool, in spite of all his talent. But I dare wager you never 
 could refuse your Theodore anything !" 
 
 "How refuse anything, madame, if one loves a man?" 
 
 "Poor innocent, I could adore you for your simplicity. 
 You should know that the more we love the less we should 
 allow a man, above all, a husband, to see the whole extent 
 of our passion. The one who loves most is tyrannized over, 
 and, which is worse, is sooner or later neglected. The one 
 who wishes to rule should " 
 
 "What, madame, must I then dissimulate, calculate, be- 
 come false, form an artificial character, and live in it ? How 
 is it possible to live in such a way? Can you " she hesi- 
 tated; the Duchess smiled. 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 55 
 
 "My dear child/' the great lady went on in a serious tone, 
 "conjugal happiness has in all times been a speculation, a 
 business demanding particular attention. If you persist in 
 talking passion while I am talking marriage, we shall soon 
 cease to understand each other. Listen to me," she went on, 
 assuming a confidential tone. "I have been in the way of 
 seeing some of the superior men of our day. Those who have 
 married have for the most part chosen quite insignificant 
 wives. Well, those wives governed them, as the Emperor gov- 
 erns us; and if they were not loved, they were at least re- 
 spected. I like secrets — especially those which concern women 
 —well enough to have amused myself by seeking the clue to 
 the riddle. Well, my sweet child, those worthy women had the 
 gift of analyzing their husbands' nature; instead of taking 
 fright, like you, at their superiority, they very acutely 
 noted the qualities they lacked, and either by possessing those 
 qualities, or by feigning to possess them, they found means 
 of making such a handsome display of them in their hus- 
 bands' eyes that in the end they impressed them. Also, I 
 must tell you, all these souls which appear so lofty have Just 
 a speck of madness in them, which we ought to know how 
 to take advantage of. By firmly resolving to have the upper 
 hand and never deviating from that aim, by bringing all our 
 actions to bear on it, all our ideas, our cajoler}^, we sub- 
 jugate these eminently capricious natures, which, by the very 
 mutability of their thoughts, lend us the means of influenc- 
 ing them." 
 
 "Good heavens !" cried the young wife in dismay. "And 
 this is life. It is a warfare " 
 
 "In which we must always threaten," said the Duchess, 
 laughing. "Our power is wholly factitious. And we must 
 never allow a man to despise us; it is impossible to recover 
 from such a descent but by odious manoeuvring. Come," she 
 - added, "I will give you a means of bringing your husband 
 to his senses." 
 
 She rose with a smile to guide the young and guileless ap- 
 prentice to conjugal arts through the labyrinth of her palace. 
 
86 
 
 AT THE SIGN OP THE CAT AND RACKET 
 
 They came to a back-staircase, which led up to the reception 
 rooms. As Madame de Carigliano pressed the secret spring- 
 lock of the door she stopped, looking at Augustine with an 
 inimitable gleam of shrewdness and grace. "The Due de 
 Carigliano adores me/' said she. "Well, he dare not enter 
 by this door without my leave. And he is a man in the habit 
 of commanding thousands of soldiers. He knows how to face 
 a battery, but before me — ^he is afraid V' 
 
 Augustine sighed. They entered a sumptuous gallery, 
 where the painter's wife was led by the Duchess up to the 
 portrait painted by Theodore of Mademoiselle Guillaume. 
 On seeing it, Augustine uttered a cry. 
 
 "I knew it was no longer in my house,'' she said, "but — 
 here! 
 
 "My dear child, I asked for it merely to see what pitch 
 of idiocy a man of genius may attain to. Sooner or later 
 I should have returned it to you, for I never expected the 
 pleasure of seeing the original here face to face with the 
 copy. While we finish our conversation I will have it carried 
 down to your carriage. And if, armed with such a talis- 
 man, you are not your husband's mistress for a hundred years, 
 you are not a woman, and you deserve your fate." 
 
 Augustine kissed the Duchess' hand, and the lady clasped 
 her to her heart, with all the more tenderness because she 
 would forget her by the morrow. This scene might perhaps 
 have destroyed for ever the candor and purity of a less vir- 
 tuous woman than Augustine, for the astute politics of the 
 higher social spheres were no more consonant to Augustine 
 than the narrow reasoning of Joseph Lebas, or Madame Guil- 
 laume's vapid morality. Strange are the results of the false 
 positions into which we may be brought by the slightest mis- 
 take in the conduct of life! Augustine was like an Alpine 
 cowherd surprised by an avalanche; if he hesitates, if he 
 listens to the shouts of his comrades, he is almost certainly 
 lost. In such a crisis the heart steels itself or breaks. 
 
 Madame de Sommervieux returned home a prey to such 
 agitation as it is difiicult to describe. Her conversation with 
 
AT THE SIGN OP THE CAT AND RACKET 57 
 
 the Duchesse de Carigliano had roused in her mind a crowd 
 of contradictory thoughts. Like the sheep in the fable, full 
 of courage in the wolf's absence, she preached to herself, and 
 laid down admirable plans of conduct; she devised a thou- 
 sand coquettish stratagems; she even talked to her hus- 
 band, finding, away from him, all the springs of true 
 eloquence which never desert a woman; then, as she pictured 
 to herself Theodore^s clear and steadfast gaze, she began to 
 quake. When she asked whether monsieur were at home her 
 voice shook. On learning that he would not be in to dinner, 
 she felt an unaccountable thrill of joy. Like a criminal who 
 has appealed against sentence of death, a respite, however 
 short, seemed to her a lifetime. She placed the portrait in. 
 her room, and waited for her husband in all the agonies of 
 hope. That this venture must decide her future life, she 
 felt too keenly not to shiver at every sound, even the low 
 ticking of the clock, which seemed to aggravate her terrors by 
 doling them out to her. She tried to cheat time by various 
 devices. The idea struck her of dressing in a way which 
 would make her exactly like the portrait. Then, knowing 
 her husband's restless temper, she had her room lighted up 
 with unusual brightness, feeling sure that when he came in 
 curiosity would bring him there at once. Midnight had 
 struck when, at the call of the groom, the street gate was 
 opened, and the artist's carriage rumbled in over the stones 
 of the silent courtyard. 
 
 "What is the meaning of this illumination?" asked Theo- 
 dore in glad tones, as he came into her room. 
 
 Augustine skilfully seized the auspicious moment; she 
 threw herself into her husband's arms, and pointed to the 
 portrait. The artist stood rigid as a rock, and his e3^es 
 turned alternately on Augustine, on the accusing dress. The 
 frightened wife, half-dead, as she watched her husband's 
 nhangeful brow — that terrible brow — saw the expressive fur- 
 rows gathering like clouds; then she felt her blood curdling 
 in her veins when, with a glaring look, and in a deep hollow 
 voice, he began to question her: 
 
58 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND BACKET 
 
 ^^here did you find that picture ?" 
 
 "The Duchesse de Carigliano returned it to me/' 
 
 "You asked her for it?" 
 
 "I did not know that she had it." 
 
 The gentleness, or rather the exquisite sweetness of this 
 angel's voice, might have touched a cannibal, but not an artist 
 in the clutches of wounded vanity. 
 
 "It is worthy of her !" exclaimed the painter in a voice of 
 thunder. "I will be revenged !" he cried^ striding up and 
 down the room. "She shall die of shame; I will paint her! 
 Yes, I will paint her as Messalina stealing out at night from 
 the palace of Claudius." 
 
 "Theodore !" said a faint voice. 
 
 "I will kill her !" 
 
 "My dear " 
 
 "She is in love with that little cavalry colonel, because he 
 
 rides well " 
 
 "Theodore !" 
 
 "Let me be!" said the painter in a tone almost like a 
 roar. 
 
 It would be odious to describe the whole scene. In the 
 end the frenzy of passion prompted the artist to acts and 
 words which any woman not so young as Augustine would 
 have ascribed to madness. 
 
 At eight o'clock next morning Madame Guillaume, sur- 
 prising her daughter, found her pale, with red eyes, her hair 
 in disorder, holding a handkerchief soaked with tears, whiLL* 
 she gazed at the floor strewn with the torn fragments of a 
 dress and the broken pieces of a large gilt picture-frame. Au- 
 gustine, almost senseless with grief, pointed to the wreck with, 
 a gesture of deep despair. 
 
 "I don't know that the loss is very great !" cried the old 
 mistress of the Cat and Eacket. "It was like you, no doubt ; 
 but I am told that there is a man on the boulevard who 
 paints lovely portraits for fifty crowns." 
 
 "Oh, mother !" 
 
 "Poor child, you are quite right," replied Madame Guil- 
 
AT THE SIGN OB^ THE CAT AND RACKET 59 
 
 iaume, who misinterpreted the expression of her daughter's 
 glance at her. "True^, my child, no one ever can love you as 
 fondly as a mother. My darling, I guess it all; but confide 
 your sorrovs^s to me, and I will comfort you. Did I not tell 
 you long ago that the man was mad! Your maid has told 
 me pretty stories. Why, he must be a perfect monster 
 
 Augustine laid a finger on her white lips, as if to implore 
 a moment's silence. During this dreadful night misery had 
 led her to that patient resignation which in mothers and lov- 
 ing wives transcends in its effects all human energy, and per- 
 haps reveals in the heart of women the existence of certain 
 chords which God has withheld from men. 
 
 An inscription engraved on a broken column in the ceme- 
 tery at Montmartre states that Madame de Sommervieux died 
 at the age of twenty-seven. In the simple words of this 
 epitaph one of the timid creature's friends can read the last 
 scene of a tragedy. Every year, on the second of November, 
 the solemn day of the dead, he never passes this youthful 
 monument without wondering whether it does not need a 
 stronger woman than Augustine to endure the violent em- 
 brace of genius? 
 
 "The humble and modest flowers that bloom in the valley," 
 he reflects, "perish perhaps when they are transplanted too 
 near the skies, to the region where storms gather and the sun 
 is scorching." 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 To Henri de Balzac, his brother Honore, 
 
 The Comte de Fontaine, head of one of the oldest families 
 in Poitou, had served the Bourbon cause with intelligence 
 and bravery during the war in La Vendee against the Ee- 
 public. After having escaped all the dangers which threat- 
 ened the royalist leaders during this stormy period of modem 
 history, he was wont to say in jest, "I am one of the men who 
 gave themselves to be killed on the steps of the throne." And 
 the pleasantry had some truth in it, as spoken by a man left 
 for dead at the bloody battle of Les Quatre Chemins. Though 
 ruined by confiscation, the staunch Vendeen steadily refused 
 the lucrative posts offered to him by the Emperor Napoleon. 
 Immovable in his aristocratic faith, he had blindly obeyed 
 its precepts when he thought it fitting to choose a companion 
 for life. In spite of the blandishments of a rich but revolu- 
 tionary parvenu, who valued the alliance at a high figure, 
 he married Mademoiselle de Kergarouet, without a fortune, 
 but belonging to one of the oldest families in Brittany. 
 
 When the second revolution burst on Monsieur de Fon- 
 taine he was encumbered with a large family. Though it 
 was no part of the noble gentleman's views to solicit favors, 
 he yielded to his wife's wish, left his country estate, of which 
 the income barely sufficed to maintain his children, and came 
 to Paris. Saddened by seeing the greediness of his former 
 comrades in the rush for places and dignities under the new 
 Constitution, he was about to return to his property when he 
 received a ministerial despatch, in which a well-known mag- 
 nate announced to him his nomination as marechal de camp, 
 or brigadier-general, under a rule which allowed the officers 
 
 31\ 
 
62 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 of the Catholic armies to count the twenty submerged years 
 of Louis XVIII/s reign as years of service. Some days later 
 he further received, without any solicitation, ex officio, the 
 crosses of the Legion of Honor and of Saint-Louis. 
 
 Shaken in his determination by these successive favors, due, 
 as he supposed, to the monarch's remembrance, he was no 
 longer satisfied with taking his family, as he had piously 
 done every Sunday, to cry "Vive le Roi" in the hall of the 
 Tuileries when the royal family passed through on their way 
 to chapel; he craved the favor of a private audience. The 
 audience, at once granted, was in no sense private. The royal 
 drawing-room was full of old adherents, whose powdered 
 heads, seen from above, suggested a carpet of snow. There 
 the Count met some old friends, who received him somewhat 
 coldly; but the princes he thought adorable, an enthusiastic 
 expression which escaped him when the most gracious of his 
 masters, to whom the Count had supposed himself to be 
 known only by name, came to shake hands with him, and 
 spoke of him as the most thorough Vendeen of them all. 
 Notwithstanding this ovation, none of these august persons 
 thought of inquiring as to the sum of his losses, or of the 
 money he had poured so generously into the chests of the 
 Catholic regiments. He discovered, a little late, that he had 
 made war at his own cost. Towards the end of the evening 
 he thought he might venture on a witty allusion to the state 
 of his affairs, similar, as it was, to that of many other gen- 
 tlemen. His Majesty laughed heartily enough; any speech 
 that bore the hall-mark of wit was certain to please him ; but 
 he nevertheless replied with one of those royal pleasantriefi 
 whose sweetness is more formidable than the anger of a re- 
 buke. One of the King's most intimate advisers took an op- 
 portunity of going up to the fortune-seeking Vendeen, and 
 made him understand by a keen and polite hint that the time 
 had not yet come for settling accounts with the sovereign; 
 that there were bills of much longer standing than his on the 
 books, and there, no doubt, they would remain, as part of the 
 history of the Eevolution. The Count prudently withdrew 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 «3 
 
 from the venerable group, which formed a respectful semi- 
 circle before the august family; then, having extricated his 
 sword, not without some difficulty, from among the lean legs 
 which had got mixed up with it, he crossed the courtyard of 
 the Tuileries and got into the hackney cab he had left on the 
 quay. With the restive spirit, which is peculiar to the no- 
 bility of the old school, in whom still survives the memory 
 of the League and the day of the Barricades (in 1588), ho 
 bewailed himself in his cab, loudly enough to compromise 
 him, over the change that had come over the Court. "For- 
 merly," he said to himself, "every one could speak freely to 
 the King of his own little affairs; the nobles could ask him 
 a favor, or for money, when it suited them, and nowadays 
 one cannot recover the money advanced for his service with- 
 out raising a scandal ! By Heaven ! the cross of Saint-Louis 
 and the rank of brigadier-general will not make good the 
 three hundred thousand livres I have spent, out and out, 
 on the royal cause. I must speak to the King, face to face, 
 in his own room." 
 
 This scene cooled Monsieur de Fontaine's ardor all the 
 more effectually because his requests for an interview were 
 never answered. And, indeed, he saw the upstarts of the 
 Empire obtaining some of the offices reserved, under the old 
 monarchy, for the highest families. 
 
 "All is lost !" he exclaimed one morning. "The King has 
 certainly never been other than a revolutionary. But for 
 Monsieur, who never derogates, and is some comfort to his 
 faithful adherents, I do not know what hands the crown of 
 France might not fall into if things are to go on like this. 
 Their cursed constitutional system is the worst possible gov- 
 ernment, and can never suit France. Louis XVIII. and 
 Monsieur Beugnot spoiled everything at Saint Ouen." 
 
 The Count, in despair, was preparing to retire to his estate, 
 abandoning, with dignity, all claims to repayment. At this 
 moment the events of the 20th March (1815) gave warning 
 of a fresh storm, threatening to overwhelm the legitimate 
 monarch and his defenders. Monsieur de Fontaine, like one 
 
64 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 of those generous souls who do not dismiss a sei*vant in a 
 torrent of rain, borrowed on his lands to follow the routed 
 monarchy, without knowing whether this complicity in emi- 
 gration would prove more propitious to him than his past 
 devotion. But when he perceived that the companions of the 
 King^s exile were in higher favor than the brave men who 
 had protested, sword in hand, against the establishment of 
 the republic, he may perhaps have hoped to derive greater 
 profit from this journey into a foreign land than from active 
 and dangerous service in the heart of his own country. Nor 
 was his courtier-like calculation one of these rash specula- 
 tions which promise splendid results on paper, and are ruin- 
 ous in effect. He was — to quote the wittiest and most success- 
 ful of our diplomates — one of the faithful five hundred who 
 shared the exile of the Court at Ghent, and one of the fifty 
 thousand who returned with it. During the short banish- 
 ment of royalty. Monsieur de Fontaine was so happy as to 
 be employed by Louis XVIII., and found more than one 
 opportunity of giving him proofs of great political honesty 
 and sincere attachment. One evening, when the King had 
 nothing better to do, he recalled Monsieur de Fontaine's wit- 
 ticism at the Tuileries. The old Vendeen did not let such 
 a happy chance slip ; he told his history with so much vivacity 
 that a king, who never forgot anything, might remember it 
 at a convenient season. The royal amateur of literature also 
 observed the elegant style given to some notes which the dis- 
 creet gentleman had been invited to recast. This little suc- 
 cess stamped Monsieur de Fontaine on the King's memory 
 as one of the loyal servants of the Crown. 
 
 At the second restoration the Count was one of those special 
 envoys who were sent throughout the departments charged 
 with absolute jurisdiction over the leaders of revolt; but he 
 used his terrible powers with moderation. As soon as this 
 temporary commission was ended, the High Provost found 
 a seat in the Privy Council, became a deputy, spoke little, 
 listened much, and changed his opinions very considerably. 
 Certain circumstances, unknown to historians, brought him 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAT3X 
 
 65 
 
 into such intimate relations with the Sovereign, that one day, 
 as he came in, the shrewd monarch addressed him thus : "My 
 friend Fontaine, I shall take care never to appoint you to be 
 director-general, or minister. Neither you nor I, as em- 
 ployes, could keep our place on account of our opinions. 
 Eepresentative government has this advantage: it saves Us 
 the trouble We used to have, of dismissing Our Secretaries of 
 State. Our Council is a perfect inn-parlor, whither public 
 opinion sometimes sends strange travelers; however. We 
 can always find a place for Our faithful adherents." 
 
 This ironical speech was introductory to a rescript giving 
 Monsieur de Fontaine an appointment as administrator in 
 the office of Crown lands. As a consequence of the intelligent 
 attention with which he listened to his royal Friend's sar- 
 ssasms, his name always rose to His Majesty's lips when a 
 commission was to be appointed of which the members were 
 to receive a handsome salary. He had the good sense to hold 
 his tongue about the favor with which he was honored, and 
 knew how to entertain the monarch in those familiar chats 
 in which Louis XVIII. delighted as much as in a well- written 
 note, by his brilliant manner of repeating political anecdotes, 
 £'.nd the political or parliamentary tittle-tattle — if the expres- 
 f ion may pass — which at that time was rife. It is well known 
 lhat he was immensely amused by every detail of his Oouv- 
 ernementahilite — a word adopted by his facetious Majesty. 
 
 Thanks to the Comte de Fontaine's good sense, wit, and 
 taot, every member of his numerous family, however young, 
 ended, as he jestingly told his Sovereign, in attaching him- 
 self like a silkworm to the leaves of the Pay-List. Thus, 
 by the King's intervention, his eldest son found a high and 
 fixt,:d position as a lawyer. The second, before the restora- 
 tion a mere captain, was appointed to the command of a 
 legion on the return from Ghent; then, thanks to the con- 
 fusion of 1815, when the regulations were evaded, he passed 
 into the bodyguard, returned to a line regiment, and found 
 himself after the affair of the Trocadero a lieutenant-general 
 with a commission in the Guards. The youngest, appointed 
 
66 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 sous-prefet, ere long became a legal official and director of 
 a municipal board of the city of Paris, where he was safe 
 from changes in the Legislature. These bounties, bestowed 
 without parade, and as secret as the favor enjoyed by the 
 Count, fell unperceived. Though the father and his three 
 sons each had sinecures enough to enjoy an income in salaries 
 almost equal to that of a chief of department, their political 
 good fortune excited no envy. In those early days of the 
 constitutional system, few persons had very precise ideas of 
 the peaceful domain of the civil service, where astute favor- 
 ites managed to find an equivalent for the demolished abbeys. 
 Monsieur le Comte de Fontaine, who till lately boasted that 
 he had not read the Charter, and displayed such indigna- 
 tion at the greed of courtiers, had, before long, proved to 
 his august master that he understood^ as well as the King 
 himself, the spirit and resources of the representative system. 
 At the same time, notwithstanding the established careers open 
 to his three sons, and the pecuniary advantages derived from 
 four official appointments, Monsieur de Fontaine was the 
 head of too large a family to be able to re-establish his fortune 
 easily and rapidly. 
 
 His three sons were rich in prospects, in favor, and in 
 talent ; but he had three daughters, and was afraid of weary- 
 ing the monarch's benevolence. It occurred to him to men - 
 tion only one by one, these virgins eager to light their torches. 
 The King had too much good taste to leave his work incom- 
 plete. The marriage of the eldest with a Eeceiver- General, 
 Planat de Baudry, was arranged by one of those royal speeches 
 which cost nothing and are worth millions. One evening, 
 when the Sovereign was out of spirits, he smiled on hearing 
 of the existence of another Demoiselle de Fontaine, for whom 
 he found a husband in the person of a young magistrate, of 
 inferior birth, no doubt, but wealthy, and whom he created 
 Baron. When, the year after, the Vendeen spoke of Made- 
 moiselle Emilie de Fontaine, the King replied in his thin, 
 sharp tones, ''Amicus Plato sed magis arnica Natiof' Then, 
 a few days later, he treated his "friend Fontaine" to a 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 07 
 
 quatrain, harmless enough, which he styled an epigram, in 
 which he made fun of these three daughters so skilfully in- 
 troduced, under the form of a trinity. Nay, if report is to 
 be believed, the monarch had found the point of the jest in 
 the Unity of the three Divine Persons. 
 
 "If your Majesty would only condescend to turn the epi- 
 gram into an epithalamium ?" said the Count, trying to turn 
 the sally to good account. 
 
 •'Though I see the rhyme of it, I fail to see the reason," 
 retorted the King, who did not relish any pleasantry, how- 
 ever mild, on the subject of his poetry. 
 
 From that day his intercourse with Monsieur de Fontaine 
 showed less amenity. Kings enjoy contradicting more than 
 people think. Like most youngest children, Emilie de Fon- 
 taine was a Benjamin spoilt by almost everybody. The King's 
 coolness, therefore, caused the Count all the more regret, be- 
 cause no marriage was ever so difficult to arrange as that of 
 this darKng daughter. To understand all the obstacles we 
 must make our way into the fine residence where the official 
 was housed at the expense of the nation. Emilie had spent 
 her childhood on the family estate, enjoying the abuiidanc(i 
 which suffices for the joys of early youth ; her lightest wishes 
 had be^Q law to her sisters, her brothers, her mother, and even 
 her father. All her relations doted on her. Having com<.^ 
 to years of discretion just when her family was loaded with 
 the favors of fortune, the enchantment of life continued. 
 The luxury of Paris seemed to her just as natural as j», 
 wealth of flowers or fruit, or as the rural plenty which ha(,l 
 been the joy of her first years. Just as in her childhood shd 
 had never been thwarted in the satisfaction of her playful 
 desires, so now, at fourteen, she was still obeyed when she> 
 rushed into the whirl of fashion. 
 
 Thus, accustomed by degrees to the enjoyment of money, 
 elegance of dress, of gilded drawing-rooms and fine carriages, 
 became as necessary to her as the compliments of flattery, sin- 
 cere or false, and the festivities and vanities of court life. 
 Like most spoiled children, she tyrannized over those who 
 
68 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 loved her, and kept her blandishments for those who were in- 
 different. Her faults grew with her growth, and her parents 
 were to gather the bitter fruits of this disastrous education. 
 At the age of nineteen Emilie de Fontaine had not yet been 
 pleased to make a choice from among the many young men 
 whom her father's politics brought to his entertainments. 
 Though so young, she asserted in society all the freedom of 
 mind that a married woman can enjoy. Her beauty was so 
 remarkable that, for her, to appear in a room was to be its 
 queen; but, like sovereigns, she had no friends, though she 
 was everywhere the object of attentions to which a finer nature 
 than hers might perhaps have succumbed. Not a man, not 
 even an old man, had it in him to contradict the opinions 
 of a young girl whose lightest look could rekindle love in 
 the coldest heart. 
 
 She had been educated with a care which her sisters had 
 not enjoyed ; painted pretty well, spoke Italian and English, 
 and played the piano brilliantly; her voice, trained by the 
 best masters, had a ring in it which made her singing irre- 
 sistibly charming. Clever, and intimate with every branch 
 of literature, she might have made folks believe that, as Mas- 
 carille says, people of quality come into the world knowing 
 everything. She could argue fluently on Italian or Flemish 
 painting, on the Middle Ages or the Renaissance ; pronounced 
 at haphazard on books new or old, and could expose the de- 
 fects of a work with a cruelly graceful wit. The simplest 
 thing she said was accepted by an admiring crowd as a 
 fetfah of the Sultan by the Turks. She thus dazzled shal- 
 low persons; as to deeper minds, her natural tact enabled 
 her to discern them, and for them she put forth so much 
 fascination that, under cover of her charms, she escaped their 
 scrutiny. This enchanting veneer covered a careless heart; 
 the opinion — common to many young girls — that no one else 
 dwelt in a sphere so lofty as to be able to understand the 
 merits of her soul; and a pride based no less on her birth 
 than on her beauty. In the absence of the overwhelming 
 sentiment which, sooner or later, works havoc in a woman's 
 
THE UAiAj AT SCEAUX 
 
 69 
 
 heart, she spent her young ardor in an immoderate love of 
 distinctions, and expressed the deepest contempt for persons 
 of inferior birth. Supremely impertinent to all newly-created 
 nobility, she made every effort to get her parents recognized 
 as equals by the most illustrious families of the Saint-Ger- 
 main quarter. 
 
 These sentiments had not escaped the observing eye of 
 Monsieur de Fontaine, who more than once, when his two elder 
 girls were married, had smarted under Emilie's sarcasm. 
 Logical readers will be surprised to see the old Eoyaiist be- 
 stowing his eldest daughter on a Ecceiver-General, possessed, 
 indeed, of some old hereditary estates, but whose name was 
 not preceded by the little word to which the throne owed so 
 many partisans, and his second to a magistrate too lately 
 Baronified to obscure the fact that his father had sold fire- 
 wood. This noteworthy change in the ideas of a noble on the 
 verge of his sixtieth year — an age when men rarely renounce 
 their convictions — was due not merely to his unfortunate resi- 
 dence in the modern Babylon, where, sooner or later, country 
 folks all get their corners rubbed down; the Comte de Fon- 
 taine's new political conscience was also a result of the King^s 
 advice and friendship. The philosophical prince had taken 
 pleasure in converting the Vendeen to the ideas required by 
 the advance of the nineteenth century, and the new aspect 
 of the Monarchy. Louis XVIII. aimed at fusing parties as 
 Napoleon had fused things and men. The legitimate King, 
 who was not less clever perhaps than his rival, acted in a 
 contrary direction. The last head of the House of Bour- 
 bon was just as eager to satisfy the third estate and the crea- 
 tions of the Empire, by curbing the clerg}^, as the first of the 
 Napoleons had been to attract the grand old nobility, or to 
 endow the Church. The Privy Councillor, being in the secret 
 of these royal projects, had insensibly become one of the 
 most prudent and influential leaders of that moderate party 
 which most desired a fusion of opinion in the interests of the 
 nation. He preached the expensive doctrines of constitu- 
 tional government, and lent ail his weight to encourage the 
 
70 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 political see-saw which enabled his master to rule France in 
 the midst of storms. Perhaps Monsieur de Fontaine hoped 
 that one of the sudden gusts of legislation, whose unexpected 
 efforts then startled the oldest politicians, might carry him 
 up to the rank of peer. One of his most rigid principles 
 was to recognize no nobility in France but that of the peer- 
 age — the only families that might enjoy any privileges. 
 
 "A nobility bereft of privileges/' he would say, "is a tooi 
 without a handle.^' 
 
 As far from Lafayette's party as he was from La Bour- 
 donnaye's, he ardently engaged in the task of general recon- 
 ciliation, which was to result in a new era and splendid for- 
 tunes for France. He strove to convince the families who 
 frequented his drawing-room, or those whom he visited, how 
 few favorable openings would henceforth be offered by a civil 
 or military career. He urged mothers to give their boys a 
 start in independent and industrial professions, explaining 
 that military posts and high Government appointments must 
 at last pertain, in a quite constitutional order, to the younger 
 sons of members of the peerage. According to him, the peo- 
 ple had conquered a sufficiently large share in practical gov- 
 ernment by its elective assembly, its appointments to law- 
 offices, and those of the exchequer, which, said he, would al- 
 ways, as heretofore, be the natural right of the distinguished 
 men of the third estate. 
 
 These new notions of the head of the Fontaines, and the 
 prudent matches for his eldest girls to which they had led, 
 met with strong resistance in the bosom of his family. The 
 Comtesse de Fontaine remained faithful to the ancient be- 
 liefs which no woman could disown, who, through her 
 mother, belonged to the Eohans. Although she had for a 
 while opposed the happiness and fortune awaiting her two 
 eldest girls, she yielded to those private considerations which 
 husband and wife confide to each other when their heads are 
 resting on the same pillow. Monsieur de Fontaine calmly 
 pointed out to his wife, by exact arithmetic, that their resi- 
 dence in Paris, the necessity for entertaining, the magnifi- 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 71 
 
 cence of the house which made up to them now for the priva- 
 tions so bravely shared in La Vendee, and the expenses of 
 their sons, swallowed up the chief part of their income from 
 salaries. They must therefore seize, as a boon from heaven, 
 the opportunities which offered for settling their girls with 
 such wealth. Would they not some day enjoy sixty — eighty — 
 a hundred thousand francs a year? Such advantageous 
 matches were not to be m.et with every day for girls without 
 a portion. Again, it was time that they should begin to think 
 of economizing, to add to the estate of Fontaine, and re-estab- 
 lish the old territorial fortune of the family. The Countess 
 yielded to such cogent arguments, as every mother would 
 have done in her place, though perhaps with a better grace; 
 but she declared that Emilie, at any rate, should marry in 
 such a way as to satisfy the pride she had unfortunately con- 
 tributed to foster in the girl's young soul. 
 
 Thus events, which ought to have brought joy into the 
 family, had introduced a small leaven of discord. The Re- 
 ceiver-General and the young lawyer were the objects of a 
 ceremonious formality which the Countess and Emilie con- 
 trived to create. This etiquette soon found even ampler op- 
 portunity for the display of domestic tyranny; for Lieuten- 
 ant-General de Fontaine married Mademoiselle Mongenod, 
 the daughter of a rich banker; the President very sensibly 
 found a wife in a young lady whose father, twice or thrice a 
 millionaire, had traded in salt; and the third brother, faith- 
 ful to his plebeian doctrines, married Mademoiselle Grosse- 
 tete, the only daughter of the Receiver-General at Bourges. 
 The three sisters-in-law and the two brothers-in-law found 
 the high sphere of political bigwigs, and the drawing-rooms 
 of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, so full of charm and of per- 
 sonal advantages, that they united in forming a little court 
 round the overbearing Emilie. This treaty between interest 
 and pride was not, however, so firmly cemented but that the 
 young despot was, not unfrequently, the cause of revolts in 
 her little realm. Scenes, which the highest circles would not 
 have disowned, kept up a sarcastic temper among all the mem- 
 
72 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 bers of this powerful family; and this, without seriously 
 diminishing the regard they professed in public, degenerated 
 sometimes in private into sentiments far from charitable. 
 Thus the Lieutenant- General's wife, having become a 
 Baronne, thought herself quite as noble as a Kergarouet, and 
 imagined that her good hundred thousand francs a year gave 
 her the right to be as impertinent as her sister-in-law Emilie, 
 whom she would sometimes wish to see happily married, as 
 she announced that the daughter of some peer of France 
 had married Monsieur So-and-So with no title to his name. 
 The Vicomtesse de Fontaine amused herself by eclipsing 
 Emilie in the taste and magnificence that were conspicuous 
 in her dress, her furniture, and her carriages. The satirical 
 spirit in which her brothers and sisters sometimes received 
 the claims avowed by Mademoiselle de Fontaine roused her 
 to wrath that a perfect hailstorm of sharp sayings could 
 hardly mitigate. So when the head of the family felt a 
 slight chill in the King's tacit and precarious friendship, he 
 trembled all the more because, as a result of her sisters' de- 
 fiant mockery, his favorite daughter had never looked so high. 
 
 In the midst of these circumstances, and at a moment when 
 this petty domestic warfare had become serious, the monarch, 
 whose favor Monsieur de Fontaine still hoped to regain, was 
 attacked by the malady of which he was to die. The great 
 political chief, who knew so well how to steer his bark in 
 the midst of tempests, soon succumbed. Certain then of 
 favors to come, the Comte de Fontaine made every effort to 
 collect the elite of marrying men about his youngest daugh- 
 ter. Those who may have tried to solve the difficult problem 
 of settling a haughty and capricious girl, will understand the 
 trouble taken by the unlucky father. Such an affair, carried 
 out to the liking of his beloved child, would worthily crown 
 the career the Count had followed for these ten years at 
 Paris. From the way in which his family claimed salaries 
 under every department, it might be compared with the 
 House of Austria, which, by intermarriage, threatens to per- 
 vade Europe. The old Vendeen was not to be discouraged 
 
THE BALL AT SCBAUX 
 
 73 
 
 in bringing forward suitors, so much had he his daughter's 
 happiness at heart, but nothing could be more absurd thap 
 the way in which the impertinent young thing pronounced 
 her verdicts and judged the merits of her adorers. It might 
 have been supposed that, like a princess in the Arabian 
 Nights, Emilie was rich enough and beautiful enough to 
 choose from among all the princes in the world. Her objec- 
 tions were each more preposterous than the last: one had 
 too thick knees and was bow-legged, another was short- 
 sighted, this one's name was Durand, that one limped, and 
 almost all were too fat. Livelier, more attractive, and gayer 
 than ever after dismissing two or three suitors, she rushed 
 into the festivities of the winter season, and to balls, where 
 her keen eyes criticised the celebrities of the day, delighted 
 in encouraging proposals which she invariably rejected. 
 
 Nature had bestowed on her all the advantages needed 
 for playing the part of Celimene. Tall and slight, Emilie 
 de Fontaine could assume a dignified or a frolicsome mien 
 at her will. Her neck was rather long, allowing her to affect 
 beautiful attitudes of scorn and impertinence. She had cul- 
 tivated a large variety of those turns of the head and femi- 
 nine gestures, which emphasize so cruelly or so happily a hint 
 or a smile. Fine black hair, thick and strongly-arched eye- 
 brows, lent her countenance an expression of pride, to which 
 her coquettish instincts and her mirror had taught her to 
 add terror by a stare, or gentleness by the softness of her 
 gaze, by the set or the gracious curve of her lips, by the 
 coldness or the sweetness of her smile. When Emilie meant 
 to conquer a heart, her pure voice did not lack melody; but 
 she could also give it a sort of curt clearness when she was 
 minded to paralyze a partner's indiscreet tongue. Her col- 
 orless face and alabaster brow were like the limpid surface 
 of a lake, which by turns is rippled by the impulse of a 
 breeze and recovers its glad serenity when the air is still. 
 More than one young man, a victim to her scorn, accused her 
 of acting a part; but she justified herself by inspiring her 
 detractors with the desire to please her, and then subjecting 
 
74 
 
 THE "BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 them to all her most contemptuous caprice. Among the 
 young girls of fashion, not one knew better than she how to 
 assume an air of reserve when a man of talent was intro- 
 duced to her, or how to display the insulting politeness which 
 treats an equal as an inferior, and to pour out her imperti- 
 nence on all who tried to hold their heads on a level with 
 hers. Wherever she went she seemed to be accepting homage 
 rather than compliments, and even in a princess her airs and 
 manner would have transformed the chair on which she sat 
 into an imperial throne. 
 
 Monsieur de Fontaine discovered too late how utterly the 
 education of the daughter he loved had been ruined by the 
 tender devotion of the whole family. The admiration which 
 the world is at first ready to bestow on a young girl, but for 
 which, sooner or later, it takes its revenge, had added to 
 Emilie's pride, and increased her self-confidence. Universal 
 Gubservience had developed in her the selfishness natural to 
 spoilt children, who, like kings, make a plaything of every- 
 thing that comes to hand. As yet the graces of youth and 
 the charms of talent hid these faults from every eye; faults 
 all the more odious in a woman, since she can only please 
 by self-sacrifice and unselfishness; but nothing escapes the 
 eye of a good father, and Monsieur de Fontaine often tried 
 to explain to his daughter the more important pages of the 
 mysterious book of life. Vain effort ! He had to lament 
 his daughter's capricious indocility and ironical shrewdness 
 too often to persevere in a task so difficult as that of correct- 
 ing an ill-disposed nature. He contented himself with giving 
 her from time to time some gentle and kind advice; but he 
 had the sorrow of seeing his tenderest words slide from his 
 daughter's heart as if it were of marble. A father's eyes 
 are slow to be unsealed, and it needed more than one experi- 
 ence before the old Koyalist perceived that his daughter's 
 rare caresses were bestowed on him with an air of conde- 
 scension. She was like young children, who seem to say to 
 their mother, "Make haste to kiss me, that I may go to play." 
 In short;, Emilie vouchsafed to be fond of her parents. But 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 75 
 
 often, by those sudden whims, which seem inexplicable in 
 young girls, she kept aloof and scarcely ever appeared; she 
 complained of having to share her father's and mother's 
 heart with too many people ; she was jealous of every one, even 
 of her brothers and sisters. Then, after creating a desert 
 about her, the strange girl accused all nature of her unreal 
 solitude and her wilful griefs. Strong in the experience of 
 her twenty years, she blamed fate, because, not knowing 
 that the mainspring of happiness is in ourselves, she de- 
 manded it of the circumstances of life. She would have fled 
 to the ends of the earth to escape a marriage such as those 
 of her two sisters, and nevertheless her heart was full of hor- 
 rible jealousy at seeing them married, rich, and happy. In 
 short, she sometimes led her mother — who was as much a 
 victim to her vagaries as Monsieur de Fontaine — ^to suspect 
 that she had a touch of madness. 
 
 But such aberrations are quite inexplicable; nothing is 
 commoner than this unconfessed pride developed in the heavfc 
 of young girls belonging to families high in the social scale, 
 and gifted by nature with great beauty. They are almost 
 all convinced that their mothers, now forty or fifty years of 
 age, can neither sympathize with their young souls, nor con- 
 ceive of their imaginings. They fancy that most mothers, 
 jealous of their girls, want to dress them in their own way 
 with the premeditated purpose of eclipsing them or robbing 
 them of admiration. Hence, often, secret tears and dumb 
 revolt against supposed tyranny. In the midst of these woes, 
 which become very real though built on an imaginary basis^, 
 they have also a mania for composing a scheme of life, while 
 casting for themselves a brilliant horoscope ; their magic con- 
 sists in taking their dreams for reality ; secretly, in their long 
 meditations, they resolve to give their heart and hand to none 
 but a man possessing this or the other qualification; and 
 they paint in fancy a model to which, whether or no, the 
 future lover must correspond. After some little experience 
 of life, and the serious reflections that come with years, by 
 dint of seeing the world and its prosaic round, by dint of 
 
76 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 observing unhappy examples, the brilliant hues of their ideal 
 are extinguished. Then, one fine day, in the course of events, 
 they are quite astonished to find themselves happy without 
 the nuptial poetry of their day-dreams. It was on the strength 
 of that poetry that Mademoiselle Emilie de Fontaine, in her 
 slender wisdom, had drawn up a programme to which a 
 suitor must conform to be accepted. Hence her disdain and 
 sarcasm. J 
 "Though young and of an ancient family, he must be af. 
 peer of France," said she to herself. "I could not bear not 
 to see my coat-of-arms on the panels of my carriage among 
 the folds of azure mantling, not to drive like the princes 
 down the broad walk of the Champs-Elysees on the days of 
 Longchamps in Holy Week. Besides, my father says that 
 it will some day be the highest dignity in France. He must 
 be a soldier — but I reserve the right of making him retire; 
 and he must bear an Order, that the sentries may present 
 arms to us." 
 
 And these rare qualifications would count for nothing if this 
 creature of famcy had not a most amiable temper, a fine 
 figure, intelligence, and, above all, if he were not slender. 
 To be lean, a personal grace which is but fugitive, especially 
 under a representative government, was an indispensable 
 condition. Mademoiselle de Fontaine had an ideal standard 
 which was to be the model. A young man who at the first 
 glance did not fulfil the requisite conditions did not even get 
 a second look. 
 
 "Good Heavens ! see how fat he is !" was with her the ut- 
 most expression of contempt. 
 
 To hear her, people of respectable corpulence were inca- 
 pable of sentiment, bad husbands, and unfit for civilized so- 
 ciety. Though it is esteemed a beauty in the East, to be 
 fat seemed to her a misfortune for a woman; but in a man 
 it was a crime. These paradoxical views were amusing, 
 thanks to a certain liveliness of rhetoric. The Count felt 
 nevertheless that by-and-by his daughter's affections, of which 
 the absurdity would be evident to some women who were not 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 77 
 
 less clear-sighted than merciless, would inevitably become a 
 subject of constant ridicule. lie feared lest her eccentric 
 notions should deviate into bad style. He trembled to think 
 that the pitiless world might already be laughing at a young 
 woman who remained so long on the stage without arriving 
 at any conclusion of the drama she was playing. More than 
 one actor in it, disgusted by a refusal, seemed to be waiting 
 for the slightest turn of ill-luck to take his revenge. The in- 
 different, the lookers-on were beginning to weary of it; ad- 
 miration is always exhausting to human beings. The old 
 Vendeen knew better than any one that if there is an art 
 in choosing the right moment for coming forward on the 
 boards of the world, on those of the Court, in a drawing-room 
 or on the stage, it is still more difficult to quit them in the 
 nick of time. So during the first winter after the accession 
 of Charles X., he redoubled his efforts, seconded by his three 
 sons and his sons-in-law, to assemble in the rooms of his 
 official residence the best matches which Paris and the various 
 deputations from departments could offer. The splendor of 
 his entertainments, the luxury of his dining-room, and his 
 dinners, fragrant with truffies, rivaled the famous banquets 
 by which the ministers of that time secured the vote of their 
 parliamentary recruits. 
 
 The Honorable Deputy was consequently pointed at as a 
 most influential corrupter of the legislative honesty of the il- 
 lustrious Chamber that was dying as it would seem of indiges- 
 tion. A whimsical result ! his efforts to get his daughter mar- 
 ried secured him a splendid popularity. He perhaps found 
 some covert advantage in selling his truffies twice over. This 
 a^ccusation, started by certain mocking Liberals, who made 
 up by their flov/ of words for their small following in the 
 Chamber, was not a success. The Poitevin gentleman had 
 always been so noble and so honorable, that he was not once 
 the object of those epigrams which the malicious journalism 
 of the day hurled at the three hundred votes of the centre, 
 at the Ministers, the cooks, the Directors-General, the princely 
 Amphitryons, and the official supporters of the Yiliele Min- 
 istry. 
 
78 
 
 THE BALL AT SCBAUX 
 
 At the close of this campaign, during which Monsieur de 
 Fontaine had on several occasions brought out all his forces, 
 he believed that this time the procession of suitors would not 
 be a mere dissolving view in his daughter's eyes ; that it was 
 time she should make up her mind. He felt a certain in- 
 ward satisfaction at having well fulfilled his duty as a father. 
 And having left no stone unturned, he hoped that, among 
 so many hearts laid at Emilie's feet, there might be one 
 to which her caprice might give a preference. Incapable of 
 repeating such an effort, and tired, too, of his daughter's 
 conduct, one morning, towards the end of Lent, when the 
 business at the Chamber did not demand his vote, he deter- 
 mined to ask what her views were. While his valet was ar- 
 tistically decorating his bald yellow head with the delta of 
 powder which, with the hanging ''ailes de pigeon/' completed 
 his venerable style of hairdressing, Emilie's father, not with- 
 out some secret misgivings, told his old servant to go and 
 desire the haughty damsel to appear in the presence of the 
 head of the family. 
 
 Joseph," he added, when his hair was dressed, "take 
 away that towel, draw back the curtains, put those chairs 
 square, shake the rug, and lay it quite straight. Dust every- 
 thing. — Now, air the room a little by opening the window." 
 
 The Count multiplied his orders, putting Joseph out of 
 breath, and the old servant, understanding his master's in- 
 tentions, aired and tidied the room, of course the least cared 
 for of any in the house, and succeeded in giving a look of 
 harmony to the files of bills, the letter-boxes, the books and 
 furniture of this sanctum, where the interests of the royal 
 demesnes were debated over. When Joseph had reduced this 
 chaos to some sort of order, and brought to the front such 
 things as might be most pleasing to the eye, as if it were ? 
 shop front, or such as by their color might give the effect 
 of a kind of official poetry, he stood for a minute in the 
 midst of the labyrinth of papers piled in some places even on 
 the fioor, admired his handiwork, jerked his head, and went. 
 
 The anxious sinecure-holder did not share his retainer's 
 
THE BALL AT SCBAUX 
 
 79 
 
 favorable opinion. Before seating himself in his deep chair, 
 whose rounded back screened him from draughts, he looked 
 round him doubtfully, examined his dressing-gown with a 
 hostile expression, shook off a few grains of snuff, carefully 
 wiped his nose, arranged the tongs and shovel, made the fire, 
 pulled up the heels of his slippers, pulled out his little queue 
 of hair which had lodged horizontally between the collar of 
 his waistcoat and that of his dressing-gown, restoring it to 
 its perpendicular position; then he swept up the ashes of 
 the hearth, which bore witness to a persistent catarrh. 
 Finally, the old man did not settle himself till he had once 
 more looked all over the room, hoping that nothing could 
 give occasion to the saucy and impertinent remarks with 
 which his daughter was apt to answer his good advice. On 
 this occasion he was anxious not to compromise his dignity 
 as a father. He daintily took a pinch oi snuff, cleared his 
 throat two or three times, as if he were about to demand a 
 count out of the House; then he heard his daughter's light 
 step, and she came in humming an air from II Barhiere. 
 
 "Good-morning, papa. What do you want with me so 
 early?" Having sung these words, as though they were the 
 refrain of the melody, she kissed the Count, not with the 
 familiar tenderness which makes a daughter's love so sweet 
 a thing, but with the light carelessness of a mistress confident 
 of pleasing, whatever she may do. 
 
 "My dear child/^ said Monsieur de Fontaine, gravely, "I. 
 sent for you to talk to you very seriously about your future 
 prospects. You are at this moment under the necessity of 
 making such a choice of a husband as may secure you durable 
 happiness " 
 
 "My good father," replied Emilie, assuming her most coax- 
 ing tone of voice to interrupt him, "it strikes me that the 
 armistice on which we agreed as to my suitors is not yet ex- 
 pired." 
 
 "Emilie, we must to-day forbear from jesting on so impor- 
 tant a matter. For some time past the efforts of those who 
 most truly love you, my dt;ar child, have been concentrated 
 
80 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 on the endeavor to settle you suitably; and you would be 
 guilty of ingratitude in meeting with levity those proofs of 
 kindness which I am not alone in lavishing on you." 
 
 As she heard these words, after flashing a mischievously 
 inquisitive look at the furniture of her father's study, the 
 young girl brought forward the armchair which looked as 
 if it had been least used by petitioners, set it at the side of 
 the fireplace so as to sit facing her father, and settled herself 
 in so solemn an attitude that it was impossible not to read 
 in it a mocking intention, crossing her arms over the dainty 
 trimmings of a pelerine a la neige, and ruthlessly crushing its 
 endless frills of white tulle. After a laughing side glance at 
 her old father's troubled face, she broke silence. 
 
 "I never heard you say, my dear father, that the Govern- 
 ment issued its instructions in its dressing-gown. However," 
 and she smiled, "that does not matter ; the mob are probably 
 not particular, l^ow, what are your proposals for legislation, 
 and your official introductions ?" 
 
 "I shall not always be able to make them, headstrong girl ! 
 — Listen, Emilie. It is my intention no longer to compromise 
 my reputation, which is part of my children's fortune, b}' 
 recruiting the regiment of dancers which, spring after spring, 
 you put to rout. You have already been the cause of many 
 dangerous misunderstandings with certain families. I hope 
 to make you perceive more truly the difficulties of your posi- 
 tion and of ours. You are two-and-twenty, my dear child, 
 and you ought to have been married nearly three years since. 
 Your brothers and your two sisters are richly and happily 
 provided for. But, my dear, the expenses occasioned by these 
 marriages, and the style of housekeeping you require of your 
 mother, have made such inroads on our income that I can 
 hardly promise you a hundred thousand francs as a marrini^e 
 portion. From this day forth I shall think only of providina 
 for your mother, who must not be sacrificed to her children. 
 Emilie, if I were to be taken from my family^ Madame do 
 Fontaine could not be left at anybody's mercy, and ought to 
 enjoy the affluence which I have given her too late as the 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 81 
 
 reward of her devotion in my misfortunes. You see, my 
 child, that the amount of your fortune bears no relation to 
 your notions of grandeur. Even that would be such a sacrifice 
 as I have not hitherto made for either of my children; but 
 they have generously agreed not to expect in the future any 
 compensation for the advantage thus given to a too favored 
 child." 
 
 "In their position !" said Emilie, with an ironical toss of 
 her head. 
 
 "My dear, do not so depreciate those who love you. Only 
 the poor are generous as a rule ; the rich have always excellent 
 reasons for not handing over twenty thousand francs to a 
 relation. Come, my child, do not pout, let us talk rationally. 
 — Among the young marrying men have you noticed Mon- 
 sieur de Manerville ?" 
 
 "Oh, he minces his words — he says Zules instead of J ules ; 
 he is always looking at his feet, because he thinks them small, 
 and he gazes at himself in the glass ! Besides, he is fair. I 
 don't like fair men." 
 
 "Well, then. Monsieur de Beaudenord 
 
 "He is not noble ! he is ill made and stout. He is dark, 
 it is true. — If the two gentlemen could agree to combine their 
 fortunes, and the first would give his name and his figure to 
 the second, who should keep his dark hair, then — per- 
 haps " 
 
 "What can you say against Monsieur de Eastignac?" 
 
 "Madame de Nucingen has made a banker of him," she said 
 with meaning. 
 
 "And our cousin, the Yicomte de Portendnere ?" 
 
 "A mere boy, who dances badly ; besides, he has no fortune 
 And, after all, papa, none of these people have titles, I want, 
 at least, to be a countess like my mother," 
 
 "Have you seen no one, then, this winter—?'^ 
 
 "No, papa." 
 
 "What then do you want?" 
 "The son of a peer of France/' 
 
82 
 
 •THE BALL AT SCBAUX 
 
 "My dear girl, you are mad !" said Monsieur de Fontaine, 
 rising. 
 
 But he suddenly lifted his eyes to heaven, and seemed to 
 find a fresh fount of resignation in some religious thought; 
 then, with a look of fatherly pity at his daughter, who herself 
 was moved, he took her hand, pressed it, and said with deep 
 feeling: "God is my witness, poor mistaken child, I have 
 conscientiously discharged my duty to you as a father — con- 
 scientiously, do I say ? Most lovingly, my Emilie. Yes, God 
 knows ! This winter I have brought before you more than 
 one good man, whose character, whose habits, and whose 
 1;emper were known to me, and all seemed worthy of you. 
 My child, my task is done. From this day forth you are the 
 arbiter of your fate, and I consider myself both happy and 
 unhappy at finding myself relieved of the heaviest of paternal 
 functions. I know not whether you will for any long time, 
 now, hear a voice which, to you, has never been stern; but 
 remember that conjugal happiness does not rest so much on 
 brilliant qualities and ample fortune as on reciprocal es- 
 teem. This happiness is, in its nature, modest, and devoid 
 of show. So now, m}^ dear, my consent is given beforehand, 
 whoever the son-in-law may be whom you introduce to me; 
 but if you should be unhappy, remember you will have no 
 right to accuse your father. I shall not refuse to take proper 
 steps and help you, only your choice must be serious and 
 final. I will never twice compromise the respect due to my 
 white hairs." 
 
 The affection thus expressed by her father, the solemn tones 
 of his urgent address, deeply touched Mademoiselle de Fon- 
 taine; but she concealed her emotion, seated herself on her 
 father's knees — for he had dropped all tremulous into his 
 chair again — caressed him fondly, and coaxed him so en- 
 gagingly that the old man's brow cleared. As soon as Emilie 
 thought that her father had got over his painful agitation, 
 she said in a gentle voice : "I have to thank you for jour 
 graceful attention, my dear father. You have had your room 
 8et in order to receive your beloved daughter. You did not 
 
THE. BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 83 
 
 perhaps know that you would find her so foolish and so head- 
 strong. But, papa., is it so difficult to get married to a peer 
 of France? You declared that they were manufactured by 
 dozens. At least, you will not refuse to advise me." 
 
 "No, my poor child, no; — and more than once I may have 
 occasion to cry, ^Beware !^ Remember that the making of 
 peers is so recent a force in our government machinery that 
 the}/ have no great fortunes. Those who are rich look to 
 becoming richer. The wealthiest member of our peerage has 
 not half the income of the least rich lord in the English 
 Upper Chamber. Thus all the French peers are on the 
 lookout for great heiresses for their sons, wherever they may 
 meet with them. The necessity in which they find them- 
 selves of marrying for money will certainly exist for at least 
 two centuries. 
 
 "Pending such a fortunate accident as you long for — and 
 this fastidiousness may cost you the best years of your life— 
 your attractions might work a miracle, for men often marry 
 for love in these days. When experience lurks behind so 
 sweet a face as yours it may achieve wonders. In the first 
 place, have you not the gift of recognizing virtue in the 
 greater or smaller dimensions of a man's body? This is no 
 small matter ! To so wise a young person as you are, I need not 
 enlarge on all the difficulties of the enterprise. I am sure 
 that you would never attribute good sense to a stranger be- 
 cause he had a handsome face, or all the virtues because 
 he had a fine figure. And I am quite of your mind in 
 thinking that the sons of peers ought to have an air peculiar 
 to themselves, and perfectly distinctive manners. Though 
 nowadays no external sign stamps a man of rank, those young 
 men will have, perhaps, to you the indefinable something 
 that will reveal it. Then, again, you have your heart well 
 in hand, like a good horseman who is sure his steed cannot 
 bolt. Luck be with you, my dear!" 
 
 "You are making game of me, papa. Well, I assure you 
 that I would rather die in Mademoiselle de Conde's convent 
 than not be the wife of a peer of France." 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 She slipped out of her father's arms, and, proud of being 
 her own mistress, went off singing the air of Cara non du- 
 hitare, in the "Matrimonio Segreto." 
 
 As it happened, the family were that day keeping the 
 anniversary of a family fete. At dessert, Madame Planat, 
 the Eeceiver-General's wife, spoke with some enthusiasm of 
 a young American owning an immense fortune, who had 
 fallen passionately in love with her sister, and made through 
 her the most splendid proposals. 
 
 ^'^A banker, I rather think," observed Emilie carelesslyo 
 ^^I do not like money dealers." 
 
 '^But, Emilie," replied the Baron de Yillaine, the husband 
 of the Count's second daughter, "you do not like lawyers 
 either; so that if you refuse men of wealth who have not 
 titles, I do not quite see in what class you are to choose a 
 husband." 
 
 "Especially, Emilie, with your standard of slimness," added 
 the Lieutenant-General. 
 
 "I know what I want," replied the young lady. 
 
 "My sister wants a fine name, a fine young man, fine pros- 
 pects, and a hundred thousand francs a year," said the 
 Baronne de Fontaine. "Monsieur de Marsay, for instance." 
 
 "I know, my dear," retorted Emilie, "that I do not mean 
 to make such a foolish marriage as some I have seen. More- 
 over, to put an end to these matrimonial discussions, I hereby 
 declare that I shall look on anyone who talks to me of mar- 
 riage as a foe to my peace of mind." 
 
 An uncle of Emilie's, a vice-admiral, whose fortune had 
 just been increased by twenty thousand francs a year in con- 
 sequence of the Act of Indemnity, and a man of seventy, 
 feeling himself privileged to say hard things to his grand- 
 niece, on whom he doted, in order to mollify the bitter tone 
 of the discussion now exclaimed: 
 
 ' "Do not tease my poor little Emilie; don't you see she is 
 waiting till the Due de Bordeaux comes of age !" 
 
 The old man's pleasantry was received with general 
 laughter. 
 
THE BAIJ. AT SCEAUX 
 
 85 
 
 "Take care I don't marry you, old fool replied the 
 young girl, whose last words were happily drowned in the 
 noise. 
 
 "My dear children," said Madame de Fontaine, to soften 
 this saucy retort, "Emilie, like you, will take no advice but 
 her mother's." 
 
 "Bless me ! I shall take no advice but my own in a matter 
 which concerns no one but myself," said Mademoiselle de 
 Fontaine very distinctly. 
 
 At this all eyes were turned to the head of the family. 
 Every one seemed anxious as to what he would do to assert 
 his dignity. The venerable gentleman enjoyed much consid- 
 eration, not only in the world; happier than many fathers, 
 he was also appreciated by his family, all its members having 
 a just esteem for the solid qualities by which he had been 
 able to make their fortunes. Hence he was treated with the 
 deep respect which is shown by English families, and some 
 aristocratic houses on the continent, to the living representa- 
 tive of an ancient pedigree. Deep silence had fallen; and 
 the guests looked alternately from the spoilt girl's proud and 
 sulky pout to the severe faces of Monsieur and Madame de 
 Fontaine. 
 
 "I have made my daughter Emilie mistress of her own 
 fate," was the reply spoken by the Count in a deep voice. 
 
 Eelations and guests gazed at Mademoiselle de Fontaine 
 with mingled curiosity and pity. The words seemed to de- 
 clare that fatherly affection was weary of the contest with a 
 character that the whole family knew to be incorrigible. The 
 sons-in-law muttered, and the brothers glanced at their wives 
 with mocking smiles. From that moment every one ceased 
 to take any interest in the haughty girl's prospects of mar- 
 riage. Her old uncle was the only person who, as an old 
 sailor, ventured to stand on her tack, and take her broadsides, 
 without ever troubling himself to return her fire. 
 
 When the fine weather was settled, and after the budget 
 was voted, the whole family — a perfect example of the par- 
 liamentary families on the northern side of the Channel who 
 
86 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 have a footing in every government department, and ten 
 votes in the House of Commons — flew away like a brood of 
 young birds to the charming neighborhoods of Aulnay, An- 
 tony, and Chatenay. The wealthy Receiver-General had lately 
 purchased in this part of the world a country-house for his 
 wife, who remained in Paris only during the session. Though 
 the fair Emilie despised the commonalty, her feeling was 
 not carried so far as to scorn the advantages of a fortune ac- 
 quired in a profession; so she accompanied her sister to the 
 sumptuous villa, less out of affection for the members of her 
 family who were visiting there, than because fashion has or- 
 dained that every woman who has any self-respect must leave 
 Paris in the summer. The green seclusion of Sceaux an- 
 swered to perfection the requirements of good style and of 
 the duties of an official position. 
 
 As it is extremely doubtful that the fame of the '^Bal de 
 Sceaux" should ever have extended beyond the borders of 
 the Department of the Seine, it will be necessary to give 
 some account of this weekly festivity, which at that time was 
 important enough to threaten to become an institution. The 
 environs of the little town of Sceaux enjoy a reputation due 
 to the scenery, which is considered enchanting. Perhaps it 
 is quite ordinar}^ and owes its fame only to the stupidity 
 of the Paris townsfolk, who, emerging from the stony abyss 
 in which they are buried, would find something to admire 
 in ihe flats of La Beauce. However, as the poetic shades 
 of Aulnay, the hillsides of Antony, and the valley of the 
 Bieve are peopled with artists who have traveled far, by for- 
 eigners who are very hard to please, and by a great many 
 pretty women not devoid of taste, it is to be supposed that 
 the Parisians are right. But Sceaux possesses another attrac- 
 tion not less powerful to the Parisian. In the midst of a 
 garden whence there are delightful views, stands a large ro- 
 tunda open on all sides, with a light, spreading roof sup- 
 ported on elegant pillars. This rural baldachino shelters a 
 dancing-floor. The most stuck-up landowners of the neigh- 
 borhood rarely fail to make an excursion thither once or 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 87 
 
 twice during the season, arriving at this rustic palace jf 
 Terpsichore either in dashing parties on horseback, or In 
 the light and elegant carriages which powder the philosoph- 
 ical pedestrian with dust. The hope of meeting some women 
 of fashion, and of being seen by them — and the hope, less 
 often disappointed, of seeing young peasant girls, as wily aa 
 judges — crowds the ballroom at Sceaux with numerous 
 swarms of lawyers' clerks, of the disciples of ^sculapius, and 
 other youths whose complexions are kept pale and moist 
 by the damp atmosphere of Paris back-shops. And a good 
 many bourgeois marriages have had their beginning to the 
 sound of the band occupying the centre of this circular ball- 
 room. If that roof could speak, what love-stories could it 
 not tell ! 
 
 This interesting medley gave the Sceaux balls at that time 
 a spice of more amusement than those of two or three places 
 of the same kind near Paris ; and it had incontestable advan- 
 tages in its rotunda, and the beauty of its situation and its 
 gardens. Emilie was the first to express a wish to play at 
 being common folk at this gleeful suburban entertainment, 
 and promised herself immense pleasure in mingling with the 
 crowd. Everybody wondered at her desire to wander through 
 such a mob; but is there not a keen pleasure to grand people 
 in an incognito? Mademoiselle de Fontaine amused herself 
 with imagining all these town-bred figures; she fancied her- 
 self leaving the memory of a bewitching glance and smile 
 stamped on more than one shopkeeper's heart, laughed before- 
 hand at the damsels' airs, and sharpened her pencils for the 
 scenes she proposed to sketch in her satirical album. Sun- 
 day could not come soon enough to satisfy her impatience. 
 
 The party from the Villa Planat set out on foot, so as not 
 to betray the rank of the personages who were about to honor 
 the ball with their presence. They dined early. And the month 
 of May humored this aristocratic escapade by one of its finest 
 evenings. Mademoiselle de Fontaine was quite surprised 
 to find in the rotunda some quadrilles made up of persons 
 who seemed to belong to the upper classes. Here and there. 
 
88 
 
 THE BAI L AT SCEAUX 
 
 indeed, were some young men who look as thongh they must 
 have saved for a month to shine for a day; and she perceived 
 several couples whose too hearty glee suggested nothing con- 
 jugal; still, she could only glean instead of gathering a 
 harvest. She was amazed to see that pleasure in a cotton 
 dress was so very like pleasure rohed in satin, and that the 
 girls of the middle class danced quite as well as ladies — nay, 
 sometimes better. Most of the women were simply and suit- 
 ably dressed. Those who in this assembly represented the 
 ruling power, that is to say, the country-folk, kept apart with 
 wonderful politeness. In fact, Mademoiselle Emilie had to 
 study the various elements that composed the mixture before 
 i^he could find any subject for pleasantry. But she had not 
 time to give herself up to malicious criticism, nor opportunity 
 for hearing many of the startling speeches which caricaturists 
 <50 gladly pick up. The haughty young lady suddenly found 
 a flower in this wide field — the metaphor is reasonable 
 — whose splendor and coloring worked on her imagination 
 with all the fascination of novelty. It often happens that 
 we look at a dress, a hanging, a blank sheet of paper, with 
 so little heed that we do not at first detect a stain or a bright 
 spot which afterwards strikes the eye as though it had come 
 there at the very instant when we see it; and by a sort of 
 moral phenomenon somewhat resembling this, Mademoiselle 
 de Fontaine discovered in a young man the external perfec- 
 tions of which she had so long dreamed. 
 
 Seated on one of the clumsy chairs which marked the 
 boundary line of the circular floor, she had placed herself at 
 the end of the row formed by the family party, so as to be 
 able to stand up or push forward as her fancy moved her, 
 treating the living pictures and groups in the hall as if she 
 were in a picture gallery; impertinently turning her eye- 
 glass on persons not two yards away, and making her remarks 
 as though she were criticising or praising a study of a head, 
 a painting of genre. Her eyes, after wandering over the vast 
 moving picture, were suddenly caught by this figure, which 
 seemed to have been placed on purpose in one corner of the 
 
THE BALL AT SCIJAUX 
 
 89 
 
 canvas, and in the best light, like a person out of all propor- 
 tiou with the rest. 
 
 The stranger, alone and absorbed in thought, leaned 
 lightly against one of the columns that supported the roof; 
 his arms were folded, and he leaned slightly on one side 
 as though he had placed himself there to have his portrait 
 taken by a painter. His attitude, though full of elegance and 
 dignity, was devoid of affectation. Nothing suggested that 
 he had half turned his head, and bent it a little to the right 
 like Alexander, or Lord Byron, and some other great men, 
 for the sole purpose of attracting attention. His fixed gaze 
 followed a girl who was dancing, and betrayed some strong 
 feeling. His slender, easy frame recalled the noble propor- 
 tions of the Apollo. Fine black hair curled naturally over 
 a high forehead. At a glance Mademoiselle de Fontaine ob- 
 served that his linen was fine, his gloves fresh, and evidently 
 bought of a good maker, and his feet small and well shod 
 in boots of Irish kid. He had none of the vulgar trinkets 
 displayed by the dandies of the National Guard or the Love- 
 laces of the counting-house. A black ribbon, to which am 
 eye-glass was attached, hung over a waistcoat of the most 
 fashionable cut. Never had the fastidious Emilie seen a 
 man's eyes shaded by such long, curled lashes. Melanchohi' 
 and passion were expressed in this face, and the complexioi< 
 was of a manly olive hue. His mouth seemed ready to smile, 
 unbending the corners of eloquent lips; but this, far from 
 hinting at gaiety, revealed on the contrary a sort of patheti'? 
 grace. There was too much promise in that head, too much 
 distinction in his whole person, to allow of one's saying, 
 "What a handsome man!" or "What a fine man!" Onf: 
 wanted to know him. The most clear-sighted observer, on 
 seeing this stranger, could not have helped taking him for a 
 'clever man attracted to this rural festivity by some powerful 
 motive. 
 
 All these observations cost Emilie only a minute's atten- 
 tion, during which the privileged gentleman under her severe 
 scrutiny became the object of her secret admiration. She 
 
90 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 did not say to herself, "He must be a peer of France !" but, 
 "Oh, if only he is noble, and he surely must be " With- 
 out finishing her thought, she suddenly rose, and followed 
 by her brother the General, she made her way towards the 
 column, affecting to watch the merry quadrille; but by a 
 stratagem of the eye, familiar to women, she lost not a gesture 
 of the young man as she went towards him. The stranger 
 politely moved to make way for the newcomers, and went 
 to lean against another pillar. Emilie, as much nettled by 
 his politeness as she might have been by an impertinence, 
 uegan talking to her brother in a louder voice than good 
 'caste enjoined; she turned and tossed her head, gesticulated 
 eagerly, and laughed for no particular reason, less to amuse 
 her brother than to attract the attention of the imperturbable 
 stranger. None of her little arts succeeded. Mademoiselle 
 de Fontaine then followed the direction in which his eyes 
 were fixed, and discovered the cause of his indifference. 
 
 In the midst of the quadrille, close in front of them, a 
 pale girl was dancing ; her face was like one of the divinities 
 which Girodet has introduced into his immense composition 
 of French Warriors received by Ossian. Emilie fancied that 
 she recognized her as a distinguished milady who for some 
 months had been living on a neighboring estate. Her partner 
 was a lad of about fifteen, with red hands, and dressed in 
 nanl^een trousers, a blue coat, and white shoes, which showed 
 that the damseFs love of dancing made her easy to please 
 in the matter of partners. Her movements did not betray 
 her apparent delicacy, but a faint fiush already tinged her 
 white cheeks, and her complexion was gaining color. Made- 
 moiselle de Fontaine went nearer, to be able to examine the 
 young lady at the moment when she returned to her place, 
 while the side couples in their turn danced the figure. But 
 the stranger went up to the pretty dancer, and leaning over, 
 said in a gentle but commanding tone : 
 
 "Clara, my child, do not dance any more." 
 
 Clara made a little pouting face, bent her head, and finally 
 smiled. When the dance was over, the young man wrapped 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 91 
 
 her in a cashmere shawl with a lover's care, and seated her 
 in a place sheltered from the wind. Very soon Mademoiselle 
 de Fontaine, seeing them rise and walk round the place as if 
 preparing to leave, found means to follow them under 
 pretence of admiring the views from the garden. Her brother 
 lent himself with malicious good-humor to the divagations 
 of her rather eccentric wanderings. Emilie then saw the at- 
 tractive couple get into an elegant tilbury, by which stood 
 a mounted groom in livery. At the moment when, from his 
 high seat, the young man was drawing the reins even, she 
 caught a glance from his eye such as a man casts aimlessly 
 at the crowd; and then she enjoyed the feeble satisfaction 
 of seeing him twice turn his head to look at her. The young 
 lady did the same. Was it from jealousy? 
 
 imagine you have now seen enough of the garden," 
 said her brother. "We may go back to the dancing." 
 
 "I am ready," said she. "Do you think the girl can be a 
 relation of Lady Dudley's?" 
 
 "Lady Dudley may have some male relation staying with 
 her," said the Baron de Fontaine ; "but a young girl ! — !" 
 
 Next day Mademoiselle de Fontaine expressed a wish to 
 take a ride. Then she gradually accustomed her old uncle 
 and her brothers to escorting her in very early rides, excel- 
 lent, she declared, for her health. She had a particular tancy 
 for the environs of the hamlet where Lady Dudley was living. 
 Notwithstanding her cavalry manoeuvres, she did not meet 
 the stranger so soon as the eager search she pursued might 
 have allowed her to hope. She went several times to the 
 "Bal de Sceaux" without seeing the young Englishman who 
 had dropped from the skies to pervade and beautify her 
 dreams. Though nothing spurs on a young girl's infant pas- 
 sion so effectually as an obstacle, there was a time when Made- 
 moiselle de Fontaine was on the point of giving up her 
 strange and secret search, almost despairing of the success 
 of an enterprise whose singularity may give some idea of 
 the boldness of her temper. In point of fact> she might have 
 wandered long about the village of Chatenay wnhout meeting 
 
92 
 
 THE BALL AT SCBAUX 
 
 her Unknown. The fair Clara — since- that was the name 
 Emilie had overheard — was not English, and the stranger 
 who escorted her did not dwell among the flowery and fra- 
 grant bowers of Chatenay. 
 
 One evening Emilie, out riding with her nncle, who, during 
 the fine weather, had gained a fairly long truce from the 
 gout, met Lady Dudley. The distinguished foreigner had 
 with her in her open carriage Monsieur Vandenesse. Emilie 
 recognized the handsome couple, and her suppositions were 
 at once dissipated like a dream. Annoyed, as any woman 
 must be whose expectations are frustrated, she touched up her 
 horse so suddenly that her uncle had the greatest difficulty 
 in following her, she had set off at such a pace. 
 
 am too old, it would seem, to understand these youthful 
 spirits," said the old sailor to himself as he put his horse to 
 a canter; "or perhaps young people are not what they used 
 to be. But what ails my niece? Now she is walking at a 
 foot-pace like a gendarme on patrol in the Paris streets. One 
 might fancy she wanted to outflank that worthy man, who 
 looks to me like an author dreaming over his poetry, for he 
 has, I think, a notebook in his hand. My word, I am a 
 great simpleton ! Is not that the very young man we are in 
 search of !" 
 
 At this idea the old admiral moderated his horse's pace 
 so as to follow his niece without making any noise. He had 
 played too many pranks in the years 1771 and soon after, a 
 time of our history when gallantry was held in honor, not 
 to guess at once that by the merest chance Emilie had met 
 the Unknown of the Sceaux gardens. In spite of the film 
 which age had drawn over his gray eyes, the Comte de Kerga- 
 rouet could recognize the signs of extreme agitation in his 
 niece, under the unmoved expression she tried to give to her 
 features. The girl's piercing eyes were fixed in a sort of 
 dull amazement on the stranger, who quietly walked on in 
 front of her. 
 
 "Ay, that's it," thought the sailor. "She is following him 
 as a pirate follows a merchantman. Then, when she has lost 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAtTX 
 
 sight of him, she will be in despair at not knowing who it is 
 she is in love with, and whether he is a marquis or a shop- 
 keeper. Eeally these young heads need an old fogy like me 
 always by their side . . P 
 
 He unexpectedly spurred his horse in such a way as to 
 make his niece's bolt, and rode so hastily between her and 
 the young man on foot that he obliged hira to fall back on to 
 the grassy bank which rose from the roadside. Then, 
 abruptly drawing up, the Count exclaimed : 
 
 "Couldn't you get out of the way ?" 
 
 "I beg your pardon, monsieur. But I did not know that 
 it lay with me to apologize to you because you almost rode 
 me down." 
 
 "There, enough of that, my good fellow!" replied the 
 sailor harshly, in a sneering tone that was nothing less than 
 insulting. At the same time the Count raised his hunting- 
 crop as if to strike his horse, and touched the young fellow's 
 shoulder, saying, "A liberal citizen is a reasoner; every rea- 
 soner should be prudent." 
 
 The young man went up the bankside as he heard the 
 sarcasm; then he crossed his arms, and said in an excited 
 tone of voice, "I cannot suppose, monsieur, as I look at your 
 white hairs, that you still amuse yourself by provoking 
 duels " 
 
 '^hite hairs!" cried the sailor, interrupting him. "You 
 lie in your throat. They are only gray." 
 
 A quarrel thus begun had in a few seconds become so fierce 
 that the younger man forgot the moderation he had tried to 
 preserve. Just as the Comte de Kergarouet saw his niece 
 coming back to them with every sign of the greatest uneasi- 
 ness, he told his antagonist his name, bidding him keep 
 silence before the young lady entrusted to his care. The 
 stranger could not help smiling as he gave a visiting card 
 to the old man, desiring him to observe that he was living in 
 a country-house at Chevreuse; and, after pointing this out 
 to him, he humed away. 
 
 "You very nearly damaged that poor young counter- 
 
d4 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 jumper, my dear," said the Count, advancing hastily to meet 
 Emilie. "Do you not know how to hold your horse in? — And 
 there you leave me to compromise my dignity in order to 
 screen your folly; whereas if you had but stopped, one of 
 your looks, or one of your pretty speeches — one of those you 
 can make so prettily when you are not pert^ — would have set 
 everything right, even if you had broken his arm.'' 
 
 "But, my dear uncle, it was your horse, not mine, that 
 caused the accident. I really think you can no longer ride; 
 you are not so good a horseman as you were last year. — But 
 instead of talking nonsense '' 
 
 "Nonsense, by Gad! Is it nothing to be so impertinent 
 to your uncle?" 
 
 "Ought we not to go on and inquire if the young man is 
 hurt ? He is limping, uncle, only look 
 
 "No, he is running; I rated him soundly." 
 
 "Oh, yes, uncle ; I know you there 
 
 "Stop," said the Count, pulling Emilie's horse by the 
 bridle, "I do not see the necessity of making advances to 
 some shopkeeper who is only too lucky to have been thrown 
 down by a charming young lady, or the commander of La 
 Belle-PouUr 
 
 "Why do you think he is anything so common, my dear 
 uncle ? He seems to me to have very fine manners." 
 
 "Every one has manners nowadays, my dear." 
 
 "No, uncle, not every one has the air and style which 
 come of the habit of frequenting drawing-rooms, and I am 
 ready to lay a bet with you that the young man is of noble 
 birth." 
 
 "You had not long to study him." 
 
 "No, but it is not the first time I have seen him." 
 
 "Nor is it the first time you have looked for him," replied 
 the admiral with a laugh. 
 
 Emilie colored. Her uncle amused himself for some time 
 with her embarrassment; then he said: "Emilie, you know 
 that I love you as my own child, precisely because you are 
 the only member of the family who has the legitimate pride 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 95 
 
 of high birth. Devil take it, child, who could have believed 
 that sound principles would become so rare? Well, I will 
 be your confidant. My dear child, I see that this young 
 gentleman is not indifferent to you. Hush ! All the family 
 would laugh at us if we sailed under the wrong flag. You 
 know what that means. We two will keep our secret, and I 
 promise to bring him straight into the drawing-room/' 
 
 ^'When, uncle?" 
 . "To-morrow." 
 
 "But, my dear uncle, I am not committed to anything 
 
 "Nothing whatever, and you may bombard him, set fire to 
 him, and leave him to founder like an old hulk if you choose. 
 He won't be the first, I fancy ?" 
 
 "You are kind, uncle !" 
 
 As soon as the Count got home he put on his glasses, 
 quietly took the card out of his pocket, and read, "Maxi- 
 milien Longueville, Kue du Sentier." 
 
 "Make yourself happy, my dear niece," he said to Emilie., 
 "you may hook him with an easy conscience; he belongs to 
 one of our historical families, and if he is not a peer of 
 France, he infallibly will be." 
 
 "How do you know so much?" 
 
 "That is my secret." 
 
 "Then do you know his name?" 
 
 The old man bowed his gray head, which was not unlike 
 a gnarled oak-stump, with a few leaves fluttering about it, 
 withered by autumnal frosts ; and his niece immediately began 
 to try the ever-new power of her coquettish arts. Long 
 familiar with the secret of cajoling the old man, she lav- 
 ished on him the most childlike caresses, the tenderest names ; 
 she even went so far as to kiss him to induce him to di- 
 vulge so important a secret. The old man, who spent his 
 life in playing off these scenes on his niece, often paying 
 for them with a present of jewelry, or by giving her his box 
 at the opera, this time amused himself with her entreaties, 
 and, above all, her caresses. But as he spun out this pleasure 
 too long, Emilie grew angry, passed from coaxing to sar- 
 
96 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 casm and sulks; then, urged by curiosity, she recovered her- 
 self. The diplomatic admiral extracted a solemn promise 
 from his niece that she would for the future he gentler, less 
 noisy, and less wilful, that she would spend less, and, above 
 ail, tell him everything. The treaty being concluded, and 
 signed b}'' a kiss impressed on Emilie's white brow, he led her 
 into a corner of the room, drew her on to his knee, held the 
 2ard under the thumbs so as to hide it, and then uncovered the 
 letters one by one, spelling the name of Longueville; but he 
 firmly refused to show her anything more. 
 
 This incident added to the intensity of Mademoiselle de 
 Fontaine^s secret sentiment, and during chief part of the 
 night she evolved the most brilMant pictures from the dreams 
 with which she had fed her hopes. At last, thanks to chance, 
 to which she had so often appealed, Emilie could now see 
 something very unlike a chimera at the fountain-head of the 
 imaginary wealth with which she gilded her married life. 
 Ignorant, as all young girls are, of the perils of love and 
 marriage, she was passionately captivated by the externals of 
 marriage and love. Is not this as much as to say that her 
 feeling had birth like all the feelings of extreme youth — 
 sweet but cruel mistakes, which exert a fatal influence on the 
 lives of yoiing girls so inexperienced as to trust their own 
 judgment to take care of their future happiness? 
 
 Next morning, before Emilie was awake, her uncle had 
 hastened to Chevreuse. On recognizing, in the courtyard of 
 an elegant little villa, the young man he had so determinedly 
 insulted the day before, he went up to him with the press- 
 ing politeness of men of the old court. 
 
 "Why, my dear sir, who could have guessed that I should 
 have a brush, at the age of seventy-three, with the son, or 
 the grandson, of one of my best friends. I am a vice-admiral ^ 
 monsieur; is not that as much as to say that I think no more 
 of fighting a duel than of smoking a cigar? Why, in my 
 time, no two young men could be intimate till they had seen 
 the color of their blood ! But ^sdeath, sir, last evening, sailor- 
 like^ I had taken a drop too much grog on board, and I ran 
 
THE BALL AT SOKAUX 
 
 97 
 
 you down. Shake hands; I would rather take a hundred re- 
 buffs from a Longueville than cause his family the smallest 
 regret." 
 
 However coldly the young man tried to behave to the 
 Comte de Kergarouet, he could not long resist the frank cor- 
 diality of his manner, and presently gave him his hand. 
 
 ''You were going out riding/' said the Count. "Do not let 
 me detain you. But, unless you have other plans, I beg you 
 will come to dinner to-day at the Villa Planat. My nephew, 
 the Comte de Fontaine, is a man it is essential that you 
 should know. Ah, ha! And I propose to make up to you 
 for my clumsiness by introducing you to five of the prettiest 
 women in Paris. So, so, young man, your brow is clearing ! 
 I am fond of young people, and I like to see them happy. 
 Their happiness reminds me of the good times of my youth, 
 when adventures were not lacking, any more than duels. We 
 were gay dogs then ! Nowadays you think and worry ovei 
 everything, as though there had never been a fifteenth and a 
 sixteenth century." 
 
 "But, monsieur, are we not in the right? The sixteenth 
 century only gave religious liberty to Europe, and the nine- 
 teenth will give it political lib " 
 
 "Oh, we will not talk politics. I am a perfect old woman 
 — ultra you see. But I do not hinder young men from being 
 revolutionary, so long as they leave the King at liberty to dis^ 
 perse their assemblies." 
 
 When they had gone a little way, and the Count and his 
 companion were in the heart of the woods, the old sailor 
 pointed out a slender young birch sapling, pulled up his horse, 
 took out one of his pistols, and the bullet was lodged in the 
 heart of the tree, fifteen paces away. 
 
 "You see, my dear fellow, that I am not afraid of a duel," 
 he said with comical gravity, as he looked at Monsieur 
 Longueville. 
 
 "^^or am I," replied the young man, promptly cocking his 
 pistol ; he aimed at the hole made by the Comte's bullet;^ and 
 sent his own in close to it. 
 
98 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 'That is what I call a well-educated man/' cried the ad- 
 miral with enthusiasm. 
 
 During this ride with the youth, whom he already regarded 
 as his nephew, he found endless opportunities of catechizing 
 him on all the trifles of which a perfect knowledge consti- 
 tuted, according to his private code, an accomplished gentle- 
 man. 
 
 "Have you any debts he at last asked of his companion, 
 after many other inquiries. 
 
 "No, monsieur." 
 > ""^What, you pay for all you have?'' 
 
 "Punctually; otherwise we should lose our credit, and 
 every sort of respect." 
 
 "But at least you have more than one mistress? Ah, you 
 blush, comrade! Well, manners have changed. All these 
 notions of lawful order, Kantism, and liberty have spoilt 
 the young men. You have no Guimard no\\, no Duthe, no 
 creditors — and you know nothing of heraldry; why, my dear 
 young friend, you are not fully fledged. The man who does 
 not sow his wild oats in the spring sows them in the winter. 
 If I have but eighty thousand francs a year at the age of 
 seventy, it is because I ran through the capital at thirty. 
 Oh! with my wife — in decency and honor. However, youx 
 imperfections will not interfere with my introducing you 
 at the Pavilion Planat. Remember, you have promised to 
 come, and I shall expect you." 
 
 "What an odd little old man !" said Longueville to himself. 
 "He is so jolly and hale; but though he wishes to seem a 
 good fellow, I will not trust him too far." 
 
 Next day, at about four o'clock, when the house party 
 were dispersed in the drawing-rooms and billiard-roon), a 
 servant announced to the inhabitants of the Villa Planat, 
 "Monsieur de Longueville." On hearing the name of the 
 old admiral's protege, every one, down to the player who 
 was about to miss his stroke, rushed in, as much to study 
 Mademoiselle de Fontaine's countenance as to judge of this 
 phoenix of men, who had earned honorable mention to the 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 99 
 
 detriment of so many rivals. A simple but elegant style of 
 dress, an air of perfect ease, polite manners, a pleasant voice 
 with a ring in it which fonnd a response in the hearer's heart- 
 strings, won the good-will of the family for Monsieur 
 Longueville. He did not seem unaccustomed to the luxury of 
 the Eeceiver-General's ostentatious mansion. Though his 
 conversation was that of a man of the world, it was easy to 
 discern that he had had a brilliant education, and that his 
 Imowledge was as thorough as it was extensive. He knew 
 so well the right thing to say in a discussion on naval archi- 
 tecture, trivial, it is true, started by the old admiral, that 
 one of the ladies remarked that he must have passed through 
 the Nicole Poly technique. 
 
 "And I think, madame," he replied, "that I may regard it 
 as an honor to have got in." 
 
 In spite of urgent pressing, he refused politely but firmly 
 l[o be kept to dinner, and put an end to the persistency of the 
 (ladies by saying that he was the Hippocrates of his young 
 i«ister, whose delicate health required great care. 
 
 "Monsieur is perhaps a medical man?" asked one of 
 Emilie's sisters-in-law with ironical meaning. 
 
 "Monsieur has left the £lcole Polytechnique," Mademoiselle 
 de Fontaine kindly put in; her face had flushed with richer 
 color, as she learned that the yonng lady of the ball was 
 Monsieur Longueville's sister. 
 
 "But, my dear, he may be a doctor and yet have been to 
 the ^lcole Polytechnique — is it not so, monsieur?" 
 
 "There is nothing to prevent it, madame," replied the 
 young man. 
 
 Every eye was on Emilie, who was gazing with uneasy 
 curiosity at the fascinating stranger. She breathed more 
 freely when he added, not without a smile, "I have not the 
 honor of belonging to the medical profession; and I even 
 gave up going into the Engineers in order to preserve my in- 
 dependence." 
 
 "And you did well," said the Count. "But how can you 
 regard it as an honor to be a doctor?" added the Breton 
 
100 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 nobleman. '^Ah, my young friend, such a man as yon 
 
 "Monsieur le Comte, I respect every profession that has 
 a useful purpose.'^ 
 
 ^^ell, in that we agree. You respect those professions, 
 I imagine, as a young man respects a dowager." 
 
 Monsieur Longueville made his visit neither too long nor 
 too short. lie left at the moment when he saw that he had 
 pleased everybody, and that each one's curiosity about him 
 had been roused. 
 
 "He is a cunning rascal said the Count, coming into the 
 drawing-room after seeing him to the door. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Fontaine, who had been in the secret of 
 this call, had dressed with some care to attract the young 
 man's eye; but she had the little disappointment of finding 
 that he did not bestow on her so much attention as she thought 
 she deserved. The family were a good deal surprised at 
 the silence into which she had retired. Emilie generally dis- 
 played all her arts for the benefit of newcomers, her witty 
 prattle, and the inexhaustible eloquence of her eyes and at - 
 titudes. Whether it was that the young man's pleasing voic() 
 and attractive manners had charmed her, that she was se- 
 riously in love, and that this feeling had worked a change in 
 her, her demeanor had lost all its affectations. Being simple 
 and natural, she must, no doubt, have seemed more beauti- 
 ful. Some of her sisters, and an old lady, a friend of tbv 
 family, saw in this behavior a refinement of art. They sup- 
 posed that Emilie, judging the man worthy of her, intended 
 to delay revealing her merits, so as to dazzle him suddenhf 
 when she found that she pleased him. Every member of\ 
 the family was curious to know what this capricious creature 
 thought of the stranger; but when, during dinner, every one 
 chose to endow Monsieur Longueville with some fresh quality 
 which no one else had discovered. Mademoiselle de Fontaine 
 sat for some time in silence. A sarcastic remark of her uncle's 
 suddenly roused her from her apathy; she said, somewhat 
 epigrammatically, that such heavenly perfection must cover 
 some great defect, and that she would take good care how 
 she judged so gifted a man at first sight. 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 101 
 
 "Those who please everybody, please nobody," she added; 
 "and the worst of all faults is to have none." 
 
 Like all girls who are in love, Emilie cherished the hope 
 of being able to hide her feelings at the bottom of her heart 
 by putting the Argus-eyes that watched on the wrong tack; 
 but by the end of a fortnight there was not a member of the 
 large family party who was not in this little domestic secret. 
 When Monsieur Longueville called for the third time, Emilie 
 believed it was chiefly for her sake. This discovery gave her 
 such intoxicating pleasure that she was startled as she re- 
 flected on it. There was something in it very painful to her 
 pride. Accustomed as she was to be the centre of her world, 
 she was obliged to recognize a force that attracted her out- 
 side herself ; she tried to resist, but she could not chase from 
 iier heart the fascinating image of the young man. 
 
 Then came some anxiety. Two of Monsieur Longueville's 
 ([ualities, very adverse to general curiosity, and especially to 
 Mademoiselle de Fontaine's, were unexpected modesty and 
 discretion. He never spoke of himself, of his pursuits, or 
 of his family. The hints Emilie threw out in conversation, 
 and the traps she laid to extract from the young fellow some 
 facts concerning himself, he could evade with the adroitness 
 of a diplomatist concealing a secret. If she talked of paint- 
 ing, he responded as a connoisseur; if she sat down to play, 
 he showed without conceit that he was a very good pianist; 
 one evening he delighted all the party by joining his delight- 
 ful voice to Emilie's in one of Cimarosa's charming duets. 
 But when they tried to find out whether he were a profes- 
 sional singer, he baffled them so pleasantly that he did not 
 afford these women, practised as they were in the art of read- 
 ing feelings, the least chance of discovering to what social 
 sphere he belonged. However boldly the old uncle cast the' 
 boarding-hooks over the vessel, Longueville slipped away 
 cleverly, so as to preserve the charm of mystery; and it was 
 easy to him to remain the "handsome Stranger" at the Villa, 
 because curiosity never overstepped the bounds of good breed- 
 ing. 
 
102 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 Emilie, distracted by this reserve, hoped to get more out 
 of the sister than the brother, in the form of confidences. 
 Aided by her uncle, who was as skilful in such manoeuvres 
 as in handling a ship, she endeavored to bring upon the 
 scene the hitherto unseen figure of Mademoiselle Clara 
 Longueville. The family party at the Villa Planat soon ex- 
 pressed the greatest desire to make the acquaintance of so 
 amiable a young lady, and to give her some amusement. 
 An informal dance was proposed and accepted. The ladies 
 did not despair of making a young girl of sixteen talk. 
 
 Notwithstanding the little clouds piled up by suspicion 
 and created by curiosity, a light of joy shone in Emilie^s soul., 
 for she found life delicious when thus intimately connected 
 with another than herself. She began to understand the rela- 
 tions of life. Whether it is that happiness makes us better, 
 or that she was too fully occupied to torment other people, 
 she became less caustic, more gentle, and indulgent. Thij» 
 change in her temper enchanted and amazed her family. Per» 
 haps, at last, her selfishness was being transformed to love. 
 It was a deep delight to her to look for the arrival of heit 
 bashful and unconfessed adorer. Though they had not ut- 
 tered a word of passion, she knew that she was loved, anc'i 
 with what art did she not lead the stranger to unlock thn 
 stores of his information, which proved to be varied! Shi 
 perceived that she, too, was being studied, and that madii 
 her endeavor to remedy the defects her education had en- 
 couraged. Was not this her first homage to love, and a bitter 
 reproach to herself? She desired to please, and she was en- 
 chanting; she loved, and she was idolized. Her family, 
 knowing that her pride would sufficiently protect her, gave 
 her enough freedom to enjoy the little childish delights which 
 give to first love its charm and its violence. More than once 
 the young man and Mademoiselle de Fontaine walked, tete-d- 
 tete, in the avenues of the garden, where nature was dressed 
 like a woman going to a ball. More than once they had 
 those conversations, aimless and meaningless, in which the 
 emptiest phrases are those which cover the deepest feelings. 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 103 
 
 They often admired together the setting sun and its gorgeous 
 coloring. They gathered daisies to pull the petals off, and 
 sang the most impassioned duets, using the notes set down 
 by Pergolesi or Rossini as faithful interpreters to express 
 tiieir secrets. 
 
 The day of the dance came. Clara Longueville and her 
 brother, whom the servants persisted in honoring with the 
 noble de, were the principal guests. For the first time in her 
 life Mademoiselle de Fontaine felt pleasure in a young girl's 
 triumph. She lavished on Clara in all sincerity the gracious 
 petting and little attentions which women generally give each 
 other only to excite the jealousy of men. Emilie had, indeed, 
 an object in view ; she wanted to discover some secrets. But, 
 being a girl. Mademoiselle Longueville showed even more 
 mother-wit than her brother, for she did not even look as if 
 she were hiding a secret, and kept the conversation to subjects 
 unconnected with personal interests, while, at the same time, 
 she gave it so much charm that Mademoiselle de Fontaine 
 was almost envious, and called her "the Siren." Though 
 Emilie had intended to make Clara talk, it was Clara, in fact, 
 who questioned Emilie; she had meant to judge her, and she 
 was judged by her; she was constantly provoked to find that 
 she had betrayed her own character in some reply which Claza 
 had extracted from her, while her modest and candid manner 
 prohibited any suspicion of perfidy. There was a moment 
 \vhen Mademoiselle de Fontaine seemed sorry for an ill-judged 
 sally against the commonalty to which Clara had led her. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," said the sweet child, "I have heard so 
 much of you from Maximilien that I had the keenest desire to 
 know you, out of affection for him ; but is not a wish to know 
 you a wish to love you ?" 
 
 "My dear Clara, I feared I might have displeased you by 
 speaking thus of people who are not of noble birth." 
 
 "Oh, be quite easy. That sort of discussion is pointless in 
 these days. As for me, it does not affect me. I am beside 
 the question." 
 
 Ambitious as the answer might seem, it filled Mademoiselle 
 
104 
 
 THE BALL xiT SCEAUX 
 
 de Fontaine with the deepest joy ; for, like all infatuated peo- 
 ple, she explained it, as oracles are explained, in the sense 
 that harmonized with her wishes; she began dancing again 
 in higher spirits than ever, as she watched Longueville, whose 
 figure and grace almost surpassed those of her imaginary 
 ideal. She felt added satisfaction in believing him to be 
 well bom, her black eyes sparkled, and she danced with all 
 the pleasure that comes of dancing in the presence of the 
 being we love. The couple had never understood each other 
 so well as at this moment; more than once they felt their 
 finger tips thrill and tremble as they were married in the 
 figures of the dance. 
 
 The early autumn had come to the handsome pair, in 
 the midst of country festivities and pleasures; they had 
 abandoned themselves softly to the tide of the sweetest senti- 
 ment in life, strengthening it by a thousand little incidents 
 which any one can imagine ; for love is in some respects always 
 the same. They studied each other through it all, as much as 
 lovers can. 
 
 '^Well, well; a flirtation never turned so quickly into a 
 love match." said the old uncle, who kept an eye on the 
 two young people as a naturalist watches an insect in the mi- 
 croscope. 
 
 This speech alarmed Monsieur and Madame Fontaine. The 
 old Vendeen had ceased to be so indifferent to his daughter's', 
 prospects as he had promised to be. He went to Paris to 
 seek information, and found none. Uneasy at this mystery., 
 and not yet knowing what might be the outcome of the in- 
 quiry which he had begged a Paris friend to institute with 
 reference to the family of Longueville, he thought it his duty 
 to warn his daughter to behave prudently. The fatherly ad- 
 monition was received with mock submission spiced with 
 irony. 
 
 ''At least, my dear Emilie, if you love him, do not own it 
 to him." 
 
 "My dear father, I certainly do love him ; but I will await 
 your permission before I tell him so." 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 105 
 
 "But remember, Emilie, you know nothing of his family 
 or his pursuits." 
 
 "I may be ignorant, but I am content to be. But, father, 
 you wished to see me married; you left me at liberty to 
 make my choice; my choice is irrevocably made — what more 
 is needful?" 
 
 ^^It is needful to ascertain, my dear, whether the man of 
 your choice is the son of a peer of France," the venerable 
 gentleman retorted sarcastically. 
 
 Emilie was silent for a moment. She presently raised her 
 head, looked at her father, and said somewhat anxiously, "Are 
 not the Longuevilles ?" 
 
 "They became extinct in the person of the old Due de 
 Eostein-Limbourg, who perished on the scaffold in 1793. 
 He was the last representative of the last and younger 
 branch." 
 
 "But, papa, there are some very good families descended 
 from bastards. The history of France swarms with princes 
 bearing the bar sinister on their shields." 
 
 "Your ideas are much changed," said the old man, with a 
 smile. 
 
 The following day was the last that the Fontaine family 
 were to spend at the Pavilion Planat. Emilie, greatly dis- 
 turbed by her father's warning, awaited with extreme im- 
 patience the hour at which young Longueville was in the 
 habit of coming, to wring some explanation from him. She 
 went out after dinner, and walked alone across the shrub- 
 bery towards an arbor fit for lovers, where she knew that 
 the eager youth would seek her; and as she hastened thither 
 she considered of the best way to discover so important a 
 matter without compromising herself — a rather difficult 
 thing! Hitherto no direct avowal had sanctioned the feel- 
 ings which bound her to this stranger. Like Maximilien, 
 she had secretly enjoyed the sweetness of first love ; but both 
 were equally proud, and each feared to confess that love. 
 
 Maximilien Longueville, to whom Clara had communicated 
 her not unfounded suspicions as to Emilie's character, was by 
 
106 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 turns c'arried away b}^ the violence of a young man's passion^ 
 and held back by a wish to know and test the woman to 
 whom he would be entrusting his happiness. His love had 
 not hindered him from perceiving in Emilie the prejudices 
 which marred her young nature; but before attempting to 
 counteract them, he wished to be sure that she loved him, 
 for he would no sooner risk the fate of his love than of his 
 life. He had, therefore, persistently kept a silence to which 
 his looks, his behavior, and his smallest actions gave the 
 lie. 
 
 On her side, the self-respect natural to a young girl, aug- 
 mented in Mademoiselle de Fontaine by the monstrous vanity 
 founded on her birth and beauty, kept her from meeting the 
 declaration half-way, which her growing passion sometimes 
 urged her to invite. Thus the lovers had instinctively under- 
 stood the situation without explaining to each other their secret 
 motives. There are times in life when such vagueness pleases 
 youthful minds. Just because each had postponed speaking 
 too long, they seemed to be playing a cruel game of suspense. 
 He was trying to discover whether he was beloved, by the 
 effort any confession would cost his haughty mistress; she 
 every minute hoped that he would break a too respectful si- 
 lence. 
 
 Emilie, seated on a rustic bench, was reflecting on all that 
 had happened in these three months full of enchantment. 
 Her father's suspicions were the last that could appeal to her ; 
 she even disposed of them at once by two or three of those 
 reflections natural to an inexperienced girl, which, to her, 
 seemed conclusive. Above all, she was convinced that it was 
 impossible that she should deceive herself. All the summer 
 through she had not been able to detect in Maximilien a 
 single gesture, or a single word, which could indicate a vul- 
 gar origin or vulgar occupations ; nay more, his manner of dis- 
 cussing things revealed a man devoted to the highest inter- 
 ests of the nation. "Besides," she reflected, "an office clerk, 
 a banker, or a merchant, would not be at leisure to spend 
 a whole season in paying his addresses to me in the midst of 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 lov 
 
 woods and fields; wasting his time as freely as a nobleman 
 who has life before him free of all care." 
 
 She had given herself up to meditations far more interest- 
 ing to her than these preliminary thoughts, when a slight 
 rustling in the leaves announced to her that Maximilien 
 had been watching her for a minute, not probably without ad- 
 miration. 
 
 ^'Do you know that it is very wrong to take a young gir\ 
 thus unawares?'' she asked him, smiling. \ 
 
 "Especially when they are busy with their secrets," replied 
 Maximilien archly. 
 
 "Why should I not have my secrets? You certainly have 
 yours." 
 
 "Then you really were thinking of your secrets ?" he went 
 on, laughing. 
 
 "No, I was thinking of yours. My own, I know." 
 
 "But perhaps my secrets are yours, and yours mine," cried 
 the young man, softly seizing Mademoiselle de Fontaine's 
 hand and drawing it through his arm. 
 
 After walking a few steps they found themselves under a 
 dump of trees which the hues of the sinking sun wrapped 
 in a haze of red and brown. This touch of natural magic 
 lent a certain solemnity to the moment. The young man's 
 free and eager action, and, above all, the throbbing of his 
 surging heart, whose hurried beating spoke to Emilie's arm, 
 stirred her to an emotion that was all the more disturbing 
 because it was produced by the simplest and most innocent 
 circumstances. The restraint under which young girls of the 
 upper class live gives incredible force to any explosion of feel- 
 ing, and to meet an impassioned lover is one of the greatest 
 dangers they can encounter. Never had Emilie and Maxi- 
 milien allowed their eyes to say so much that they dared 
 never speak. Carried away by this intoxication, they easily 
 forgot the petty stipulations of pride, and the cold hesitancies 
 of suspicion. At first, indeed, they could only express them- 
 selves by a pressure of hands which interpreted their happy 
 thoughts. 
 
108 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 After slowly pacing a few steps in long silence, Made- 
 moiselle de Fontaine spoke. "Monsieur, I iiave a question 
 to ask you/' she said, trembling, and in an agitated voice. 
 "But, remember, I beg, that it is in a manner compulsory 
 on me, from the rather singular position I am in with regard 
 to my family/' 
 
 A pause, terrible to Emilie, followed these sentences, which 
 she had almost stammered out. During the minute while it 
 lasted, the girl, haughty as she was, dared not meet the 
 flashing eye of the man she loved, for she was secretly con- 
 scious of the meanness of the next words she added: "Are 
 you of noble birth ?" 
 
 As soon as the words were spoken she wished herself at the 
 bottom of a lake. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," Longueville gravely replied, and his face 
 assumed a sort of stern dignity, "I promise to answer you 
 truly as soon as you shall have answered in all sincerity a 
 question I vail put to you !" — He released her arm, and the 
 girl suddenly felt alone in the world, as he said: "What is 
 your object in questioning me as to my birth ?" 
 
 She stood motionless, cold, and speechless. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," Maximilien went on, "let us go nt "'irther 
 if we do not understand each other. I love you," he said, in 
 a voice of deep emotion. "Well, then," he added, as he heard 
 the joyful exclamation she could not suppress, "why ask me if 
 I am of noble birth?" 
 
 "Could he speak so if he were not?" cried a voice within 
 her, which Emilie believed came from the depths of her heart. 
 She gracefully raised her head, seemed to find new life in 
 the young man's ga^e, and held out her hand as if to rene.\«' 
 the alliance. 
 
 "You thought I cared very much for dignities ?'^ said she 
 with keen archness. 
 
 "I have no titles to offer my wife," he replied, in a half- 
 sportive, half-serious tone. "But if I choose one of high 
 rank, and among women whom a wealthy home has accus- 
 tomed to the luxury and pleasures of a fine fortune^ I know 
 
THE BALI. AT S(1EAUX 
 
 109 
 
 what such a choice requires of me. Love gives everything," 
 he added lightly, "but only to lovers. Once married, they 
 need something more than the vault of heaven and the carpet 
 of a meadow." 
 
 "He is rich," she reflected. "As to titles, perhaps he only 
 wants to try me. He has been told that I am mad about 
 titles, and bent on marrying none but a peer's son. My prig- 
 gish sisters have played me that trick." — "I assure you, mon- 
 sieur," she said aloud, "that I have had very extravagant 
 ideas about life and the world ; but now," she added pointedly, 
 looking at him in a perfectly distracting way, "I know where 
 true riches are to be found for a wife." 
 
 "I must believe that you are speaking from the depths of 
 your heart," he said, with gentle gravity. "But this winter, 
 my dear Emilie, in less than two months perhaps, I may be 
 proud of what I shall have to offer you if you care for the 
 pleasures of wealth. This is the only secret I shall keep 
 locked here," and he laid his hand on his heart, "for on its 
 success my happiness depends. I dare not say ours." 
 
 "Yes, yes, ours !" 
 
 Exchanging such sweet nothings, they slowly made their 
 way back to rejoin the company. Mademoiselle de Fontaine 
 had never found her lover more amiable or wittier: his 
 light figure, his engaging manners, seemed to her more charm- 
 ing than ever, since the conversation which had made her to 
 some extent the possessor of a heart worthy to be the envy 
 of every woman. They sang an Italian duet with so much 
 expression that the audience applauded enthusiastically. 
 Their adieux were in a conventional tone, which concealed 
 their happiness. In short, this day had been to Emilie like 
 a chain binding her more closely than ever to the Stranger's 
 fate. The strength and dignity he had displayed in the 
 scene when they had confessed their feelings had perhaps im- 
 pressed Mademoiselle de Fontaine with the respect without 
 which there is no true love. 
 
 When she was left alone in the drawing-room with her 
 father, the old man went up to her affectionately, held her 
 
110 
 
 THE BALI. AT SCEAUX 
 
 hands, and asked her whether she had gained any light as to 
 Monsieur Longueville's family and fortune. 
 
 "Yes, my dear father/' she replied, "and I am happier than 
 I could have hoped. In short, Monsieur de Longueville is the 
 only man I could ever marry." 
 
 "Very well, Emilie," said the Count, "then I know what 
 remains for me to do." 
 
 "Do you know of any impediment?" she asked, in sincere 
 alarm. 
 
 "My dear child, the young man is totally unknown to me; 
 but unless he is not a man of honor, so long as you love 
 him, he is as dear to me as a son." 
 
 "Not a man of honor!" exclaimed Emilie. "As to that, 
 I am quite easy. My uncle, who introduced him to us, will 
 answer for him. Say, my dear uncle, has he been a filibuster, 
 an outlaw, a pirate?" 
 
 "I knew I should find myself in this fix!" cried the old 
 sailor, waking up. He looked round the room, but his niece 
 had vanished "like Saint-Elmo's fires," to use his favorite 
 expression. 
 
 "Well, uncle," Monsieur de Fontaine went on, "how could 
 you hide from us all you knew about this young man? You 
 must have seen how anxious we have been. Is Monsieur de 
 Longueville a man of family ?" 
 
 "I don't know him from Adam or Eve," said the Comte 
 de Kergarouet. "Trusting to that crazy child's tact, I got 
 him here by a method of my own. I know that the boy 
 shoots with a pistol to admiration, hunts well, plays wonder- 
 fully at billiards, at chess, and at backgammon; he handles 
 the foils, and rides a horse like the late Chevalier de Saint- 
 Georges. He has a thorough knowledge of all our vintages. 
 He is as good an arithmetician as Bareme, draws, dances, and 
 sings well. The devil's in it ! what more do you want ? If 
 that is not a perfect gentleman, find me a bourgeois who 
 knows all this, or any man who lives more nobly than he 
 does. Does he do anything, I ask you ? Does he compromise 
 his dignity by hanging about an office, bowing down before 
 
THE BATJi AT SCBAUX 
 
 111 
 
 the upstarts you call Directors-General ? He walks upright. 
 He is a man. — However, 1 have just found in my waistcoat 
 pocket the card he gave me when he fancied I wanted to cut 
 his throat, poor innocent. Young men are very simple- 
 minded nowadays ! Here it is.^' 
 
 "Eue du Sentier, No. 5/' said Monsieur de Fontaine, try- 
 ing to recall among all the information he had received, 
 something which might concern the stranger. "What the 
 devil can it mean? Messrs. Palma, Werbrust & Co., whole- 
 sale dealers in muslins, calicoes, and printed cotton goods, 
 live there. — Stay, I have it: Longueville the deputy has an 
 ' interest in their house. Well, but so far as I know, Longue- 
 ville has but one son of two-and-thirty, who is not at all like 
 our man, and to whom he gave fifty thousand francs a year 
 that he might marry a minister's daughter; he wants to be 
 made a peer like the rest of ^em. — I never heard him men- 
 tion this Maximilien. Has he a daughter? What is this 
 girl Clara ? Besides, it is open to any adventurer to call him- 
 self Longueville. But is not the house of Palma, Werbrust 
 & Co. half ruined by some speculation in Mexico or the In- 
 dies? I will clear all this up.'' 
 
 "You speak a soliloquy as if you were on the stage, and 
 seem to account me a cipher," said the old admiral sud- 
 denly. "Don't you know that if he is a gentleman, I have 
 more than one bag in my hold that will stop any leak in his 
 fortune ?" 
 
 "As to that, if he is a son of Longueville's, he will want 
 nothing; but," said Monsieur de Fontaine, shaking his head 
 from side to side, "his father has not even washed ojffi the 
 stains of his origin. Before the Eevolution he was an at- 
 torney, and the de he has since assumed no more belongs to 
 him than half of his fortune." 
 
 "Pooh ! pooh ! happy those whose fathers were hanged !" 
 cried the admiral gaily. 
 
 Three or four days after this memorable day, on one of 
 those fine mornings in the month of November, which show 
 
112 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 the boulevards cleaned by the sharp cold of an early frost, 
 Mademoiselle de Fontaine, wrapped in a new style of fur cape,, 
 of which she wished to set the fashion, went out with two 
 of her sisters-in-law, on whom she had been wont to discharge 
 her most cutting remarks. The three women were tempted 
 to the drive, less by their desire to try a very elegant carriage, 
 and wear gowns which were to set the fashions for the win- 
 ter, than by their wish to see a cape which a friend had 
 observed in a handsome lace and linen shop at tjie corner of 
 the Eue de la Paix. As soon as they were in the shop the 
 Baronne de Fontaine pulled Emilie by the sleeve, and pointed 
 out to her Maximilien Longueville seated behind the desk,' 
 and engaged in paying out the change for a gold piece to 
 one of the workwomen with whom he seemed to be in con- 
 sultation. The "handsome stranger" held in his hand a 
 parcel of patterns, which left no doubt as to his honorable 
 profession. 
 
 Emilie felt an icy shudder, though no one perceived it. 
 Thanks to the good breeding of the best society, she com- 
 pletely concealed the rage in her heart, and answered her sis- 
 ter-in-law with the words, "I knew it," with a fulness of 
 intonation and inimitable decision which the most famous 
 actress of the time might have envied her. She went straight 
 up to the desk. Longueville looked up, put the patterns in 
 his pocket with distracting coolness, bowed to Mademoiselle 
 de Fontaine, and came forward, looking at her keenly. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," he said to the shopgirl, who followed him, 
 looking very much disturbed, "I will send to settle that ac- 
 count; my house deals in that way. But here," he whis- 
 pered into her ear, as he gave her a thousand-franc note, 
 "take this — it is between ourselves. — You will forgive me. 
 I trust, mademoiselle," he added, turning to Emilie. "You 
 will kindly excuse the tyranny of business matters." 
 
 "Indeed, monsieur, it seems to me that it is no concern of 
 mine," replied Mademoiselle de Fontaine, looking at him 
 with a bold expression of sarcastic indifference which might 
 have made any one believe that she now saw him for the first 
 time. 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 113 
 
 ''Do you really mean it?" asked Maximilien in a broken 
 voice. 
 
 Emilie turned her back upon him with amazing insolence. 
 These words, spoken in an undertone, had escaped the ears 
 of her two sisters-in-law. When, after buying the cape, the 
 three ladies got into the carriage again, Emilie, seated with 
 her back to the horses, could not resist one last compre- 
 hensive glance into the depths of the odious shop, where she 
 saw Maximilien standing with his arms folded, in the at- 
 titude of a man superior to the disaster that had so suddenly 
 fallen on him. Their eyes met and flashed implacable looks. 
 Each hoped to inflict a cruel wound on the heart of a lover. 
 In one instant they were as far apart as if one had been in 
 'China and the other in Greenland. 
 
 Does not the breath of vanity wither everything? Made- 
 ]noiselle de Fontaine, a prey to the most violent struggle that 
 can torture the heart of a young girl, reaped the richest har- 
 vest of anguish that prejudice and narrow-mindedness ever 
 isowed in a human soul. Her face, but just now fresh and 
 velvety, was streaked with yellow lines and red patches; the 
 I)aleness of her cheeks seemed every now and then to turn 
 green. Hoping to hide her despair from her sisters, she 
 would laugh as she pointed out some ridiculous dress or 
 passer-by; but her laughter was spasmodic. She was more 
 deeply hurt by their unspoken compassion than by any 
 satirical comments for which she might have revenged her- 
 self. She exhausted her wit in trying to engage them in 
 a conversation, in which she tried to expend her fury in 
 senseless paradoxes, heaping on all men engaged in trade the 
 bitterest insults and witticisms in the worst taste. 
 
 On getting home, she had an attack of fever, which at first 
 assumed a somewhat serious character. By the end of a 
 month the care of her parents and of the physician restored 
 her to her family. 
 
 Every one hoped that this lesson would be severe enough 
 to subdue Emilie's nature; but she insensibly fell into her 
 old habits and threw herself again into the world of fashion. 
 
114 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 She declared that there was no disgrace in making a mistake. 
 If she, like her father, had a vote in the Chamber, she would 
 move for an edict, she said, by which all merchants, and 
 especially dealers in calico, should be branded on the fore- 
 head, like Berri sheep, down to the third generation. She 
 wished that none but nobles should have a right to wear 
 the antique French costume, which was so becoming to the 
 courtiers of Louis XV. To hear her, it was a misfortune 
 for France, perhaps, that there was no outward and visible 
 difference between a merchant and a peer of France. And a 
 hundred more such pleasantries, easy to imagine, were rapidly 
 poured out when any accident brought up the subject. 
 
 But those who loved Emilie could see through all her 
 banter a tinge of melancholy. It was clear that Maximilien 
 Longueville still reigned over that inexorable heart. Some- 
 times she would be as gentle as she had been during the 
 brief summer that had seen the birth of her love ; sometimes, 
 again, she was unendurable. Every one made excuses for hei' 
 inequality of temper, which had its source in sufferings at 
 once secret and known to all. The Comte de Kergarouet 
 had some influence over her, thanks to his increased prodi- 
 gality, a kind of consolation which rarely fails of its effect 
 on a Parisian girl. 
 
 The first ball at which Mademoiselle de Fontaine appeared 
 was at the Neapolitan ambassador's. As she took her place in 
 the first quadrille she saw, a few yards aw^y from her, Maxi- 
 milien Longueville, who nodded slightly to her partner. 
 
 ^'Is that young man a friend of yours?'' she asked, with 
 a scornful air. 
 
 "Only my brother,'^ he replied. 
 
 Emilie could not help starting. "Ah !" he continued, "and 
 he is the noblest soul living " 
 
 "Do you know my name?" asked Emilie, eagerly inter- 
 rupting him. 
 
 "No, mademoiselle. It is a crime, I confess, not to re- 
 member a name which is on every lip — I ought to say in 
 every heart. But I have a valid excuse. I have but just 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 115 
 
 arrived from Germany. My ambassador, who is in Paris on 
 leave, sent me here this evening to take care of his amiable 
 wife, whom you may see yonder in that corner." 
 
 "A perfect tragic mask!" said Emilie, after looking at 
 the ambassadress. 
 
 "And yet that is her ballroom face !" said the young mm, 
 laughing. "I shall have to dance with her ! So I thought I 
 might have some compensation." Mademoiselle de Fon- 
 taine courtesied. "I was very much surprised," the voluble 
 young secretary went on, "to find my brother here. On ar- 
 riving from Vienna I heard that the poor boy was ill in bed, 
 and I counted on seeing him before coming to this ball; 
 but good policy will not always allow us to indulge family 
 affection. The Padrona della casa would not give me time 
 to call on my poor Maximilien." 
 
 "Then, monsieur, your brother is not, like you, in 
 diplomatic employment." 
 
 "i^o," said the attache, with a sigh, "the poor fellow sacri- 
 ficed himself for me. He and my sister Clara have renounced 
 their share of my father's fortune to make an eldest son of 
 me. My father dreams of a peerage, like all who vote for 
 the ministry. Indeed, it is promised him," he added in an 
 undertone. "After saving up a little capital my brother 
 joined a banking firm, and I hear he has just effected a 
 speculation in Brazil v/hich may make him a millionaire. 
 You see me in the highest spirits at having been able, by 
 my diplomatic connections, to contribute to his success. I 
 am impatiently expecting a dispatch from the Brazilian Lega- 
 tion, which v/ill help to lift the cloud from his brow. What 
 do you think of him?" 
 
 "Well, your brother's face does not look to me like that 
 of a man busied with money matters." 
 
 The young attache shot a scrutinizing glance at the ap- 
 parently calm face of his partner. 
 
 "What !" he exclaimed, with a smile, "can young ladies 
 read the thoughts of love behind a silent brow ?" 
 
 "Your brother is in love, then?" she asked, betrayed into 
 a movement of euriobitys 
 
116 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 "Yes; my sister Clara^ to whom he is as devoted as a 
 mother, wrote to me that he had fallen in love this summer 
 with a very pretty girl; but I have had no further news of 
 the affair. Would you believe that the poor boy used to 
 get up at five in the morning, and went off to settle his 
 business that he might be back by four o'clock in the country 
 where the lady was? In fact, he ruined a very nice thor- 
 oughbred that T had given him. Forgive my chatter, made- 
 moiselle; I have but just come home from Germany. For 
 a year I have heard no decent French, I have been weaned 
 from French faces, and satiated with Germans, to such a 
 degree that, I believe, in my patriotic mania, I could talk 
 to the chimeras on a French candlestick. And if I talk with 
 a lack of reserve unbecoming in a diplomatist, the fault is 
 yours, mademoiselle. Was it not you who pointed out my 
 brother? When he is the theme I become inexhaustible. I 
 should like to proclaim to all the world how good and 
 generous he is. He gave up no less than a hundred thou- 
 sand francs a year, the income from the Longueville prop- 
 erty." 
 
 If Mademoiselle de Fontaine had the benefit of these im- 
 portant revelations, it was partly due to the skill with which 
 she continued to question her confiding partner from the 
 moment when she found that he was the brother of hei' 
 scorned lover. 
 
 "And could you, without being grieved, see your brother 
 selling muslin and calico?" asked Emilie, at the end of the 
 third figure of the quadrille. 
 
 "How do you know that?" asked the attache. "Thank 
 God, though I pour out a flood of words, I have already 
 acquired the art of not telling more than I intend, like all 
 the other diplomatic apprentices I know." 
 
 "You told me, I assure you." 
 
 Monsieur de Longueville looked at Mademoiselle de Fon- 
 taine with a surprise that was full of perspicacity. A sus- 
 picion flashed upon him. He glanced inquiringly from his 
 brother to his partner, guessed everything, clasped his hands, 
 
THE BALL AT SOEAUX 
 
 117 
 
 fixed his eyes on the ceiling, and began to laugh, saying, 
 "I am an idiot! You are 'the handsomest person here; my 
 brother keeps stealing glances at you ; he is dancing in spite 
 of his illness, and you pretend not to see him. Make him 
 happy," he added, as he led her back to her old uncle. ^^1 
 shall not be jealous, but I shall always shiver a little at call- 
 ing you my sister " 
 
 The lovers, however, were to prove as inexorable to each 
 other as they were to themselves. At about two in the 
 morning, refreshments were served in an immense corridor, 
 where, to leave persons of the same coterie free to meet 
 each other, the tables were arranged as in a restaurant. By 
 one of those accidents which always happen to lovers. Made- 
 moiselle de Fontaine found lierself at a table next to that 
 at which the more important guests were seated. Maxi- 
 milien was one of the group. Emilie, who lent an attentive 
 ear to her neighbors' conversation, overheard one of those 
 dialogues into which a young woman so easily falls with a 
 young man who has the grace and style of Maximilien 
 Longueville. The lady talking to the young banker was a 
 Neapolitan duchess, whose eyes shot lightning flashes, and 
 whose skin had the sheen of satin. The intimate terms on 
 which Longueville affected to be with her stung Mademoiselle 
 de Fontaine all the more because she had just given her lover 
 back twenty times as much tenderness as she had ever felt 
 for him before. 
 
 "Yes, monsieur, in my country true love can make every 
 kind of sacrifice," the Duchess was saying, with a simper. 
 
 "You have more passion than Frenchwomen," said Maxi- 
 milien, whose burning gaze fell on Emilie. "They are all 
 vanity." 
 
 "Monsieur," Emilie eagerly interposed, "is it not very 
 wrong to calumniate your own country. Devotion is to be 
 found in every nation." 
 
 "Do you imagine, mademoiselle," retorted the Italian, with 
 a sardonic smile, "that a Parisian would be capable of fol- 
 lowing her lover all over the world?" 
 
118 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 ^^Oh, madame, let ns understand each other. She would 
 follow him to a desert and live in a tent, but not to sit in a 
 shop." 
 
 A disdainful gesture completed her meaning. Thus, under 
 the influence of her disastrous education, Emilie for the sec- 
 ond time killed her budding happiness, and destroyed its 
 prospects of life. Maximilien's apparent indifference, and a 
 woman's smile, had wrung from her one of those sarcasms 
 whose treacherous zest always led her astray. 
 
 "Mademoiselle,'' said Longueville, in a low voice, under 
 cover of the noise made by the ladies as they rose from the 
 table, "no one will ever more ardently desire your happi- 
 ness than I; permit me to assure you of this, as I am taking 
 leave of you. I am starting for Italy in a few days." 
 
 "With a Duchess, no doubt?" 
 
 "No, but perhaps with a mortal blow." 
 
 "Is not that pure fancy?" asked Emilie, with an anxious 
 glance. 
 
 "No," he replied. "There are wounds which never heal." 
 "You are not to go," said the girl, imperiously, and she 
 smiled. 
 
 "I shall go," replied Maximilien, gravely. 
 "You will find me married on your return, I warn you," 
 she said coquettishly. 
 "I hope so." 
 
 "Impertinent wretch !" she exclaimed. "How cruel a re- 
 venge !" 
 
 A fortnight later Maximilien set out with his sister Clara 
 for the warm and poetic scenes of beautiful Italy, leaving 
 Mademoiselle de Fontaine a prey to the most vehement re- 
 gret. The young Secretar}^ to the Embassy took up his 
 brother's quarrel, and contrived to take signal vengeance 
 on Emilie's disdain by making known the occasion of the 
 lovers' separation. He repaid his fair partner with interest 
 all the sarcasm with which she had formerly attacked Maxi- 
 milien, and often made more than one Excellency smile by 
 describing the fair foe of the counting-house, the amazon 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 119 
 
 who preached a crusade against bankers, the young girl whose 
 love had evaporated before a bale of muslin. The Comte d(? 
 Fontaine was obliged to use his influence to procure an ap- 
 pointment to Eussia for Auguste Longueville in order to pro- 
 tect his daughter from the ridicule heaped upon her by this 
 dangerous young persecutor. 
 
 Not long after, the Ministry being compelled to raise a 
 levy of peers to support the aristocratic party, trembling in 
 the Upper Chamber under the lash of an illustrious writer, 
 gave Monsieur Guiraudin de Longueville a peerage, with the 
 title of Vicomte. Monsieur de Fontaine also obtained a 
 peerage, the reward due as much to his fidelity in evil days 
 as to his name, which claimed a place in the hereditary 
 Chamber. 
 
 About this time Emilie, now of age, made, no doubt, some 
 f.erious reflections on life, for her tone and manners changed 
 perceptibly. Instead, of amusing herself by saying spiteful 
 things to her uncle, she lavished on him. the most affec- 
 i;ionate attentions ; she brought him his stick with a persever- 
 ing devotion that made the cynical smile, she gave him her 
 arm, rode in his carriage, and accompanied him in all his 
 drives; she even persuaded him that she liked the smell of 
 tobacco, and read him his favorite paper La Quotidienne in 
 the midst of clouds of smoke, which the malicious old sailor 
 intentionally blew over her; she learned piquet to be a match 
 for the old Count; and this fantastic damsel even listened 
 without impatience to his periodical narratives of the battles 
 of the Belle-Poule, the manoeuvres of the Vilh de Paris, M. 
 de Suffren's first expedition, or the battle of Aboukir. 
 
 Though the old sailor had often said that he knew his longi- 
 tude and latitude too well to allow himself to be captured 
 by a young corvette, one fine morning Paris drawing-rooms 
 heard the news of the marriage of Mademoiselle de Fontaine 
 to the Comte de Kergarouet. The young Countess gave 
 splendid entertainments to drown thought ; but she, no doubt, 
 found a void at the bottom of the whirlpool ; luxury was in- 
 elfectual to disguise the emptiness and grief of her sorrow- 
 
120 
 
 THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 ing soul; for the most part, in spite of tlie flashes of as- 
 amed gaiety, her beautiful face expressed unspoken melan- 
 choly. Emilie appeared, however, full of attentions and 
 consideration for her old husband, who, on retiring to his 
 rooms at night, to the sounds of a lively band, would often 
 say, "I do not know myself. Was I to wait till the age of 
 seventy-two to embark as pilot on board the Belle Emilie 
 after twenty years of matrimonial galleys?" 
 
 The conduct of the young Countess was marked by such 
 strictness that the most clear-sighted criticism had no fault 
 to find with her. Lookers on chose to think that the vice-ad- 
 miral had reserved the right of disposing of his fortune to 
 keep his wife more tightly in hand; but this was a notion 
 as insulting to the uncle as to the niece. Their conduct was 
 indeed so delicately judicious that the men who were most 
 interested in guessing the secrets of the couple could never 
 decide whether the old Count regarded her as a wife or a/3 
 a daughter. He was often heard to say that he had rescued 
 his niece as a castaway after shipwreck; and that, for his part, 
 he had never taken a mean advantage of hospitality when he 
 had saved an enemy from the fury of the storm. Thougli 
 the Countess aspired to reign in Paris and tried to keejj 
 pace with Mesdames the Duchesses de Maufrigneuse and de 
 Chaulieu, the Marquises d'Espard and d'Aiglemont, tht) 
 Comtesses Feraud, de Montcornet, and de Eestaud, Madame 
 de Camps, and Mademoiselle des Touches, she did not yield 
 to the addresses of the young Vicomte de Portenduere, who 
 made her his idol. 
 
 Two years after her marriage, in one of the old drawing- 
 rooms in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where she was ad- 
 mired for her character, worthy of the old school, Emilie 
 heard the Vicomte de Longueville announced. In the corner 
 of the room where she was sitting, playing piquet with the 
 Bishop of Persepolis, her agitation was not observed; she 
 turned her head and saw her former lover come in, in all the 
 freshness of youth. His father's death, and then that of his 
 brother, killed by the severe climate of Saint-Petersburg, had 
 
THE BALL AT SCEAUX 
 
 12i 
 
 placed on Maximilien's head the hereditary plumes of the 
 French peer's hat. His fortune matched his learning and 
 his merits; only the day before his youthful and fervid elo- 
 quence had dazzled the Assembly. At this moment he stood 
 before the Countess, free, and graced with all the advantages 
 she had formerly required of her ideal. Every mother with a 
 daughter to marry made amiable advances to a man gifted 
 with the virtues which they attributed to him, as they admired 
 his attractive person; but Emilie knew, better than any one, 
 that the Vicomte de Longueville had the steadfast nature 
 in which a wise woman sees a guarantee of happiness. She 
 looked at the admiral who, to use his favorite expression, 
 seemed likely to hold his course for a long time yet, and 
 cursed the follies of her youth. 
 
 At this moment Monsieur de Persepolis said with Epis- 
 copal grace: "Fair lady, you have thrown away the king of 
 hearts — I have won. But do not regret your money. I keep 
 )t for my little seminaries." 
 
 Paris, December 1820. 
 
THE PURSE 
 
 To Sofka. 
 
 "Have you observed, mademoiselle, that the painters and 
 sculptors of the Middle Ages, when they placed two figures in 
 adoration, one on each side of a fair Saint, never failed to give 
 them a family lilieness? When you here see your name among 
 those that are dear to me, and under whose auspices I place my 
 works, remember that touching harmony, and you will see in 
 this not so much an act of homage as an expression of the 
 ibrotherly affection of your devoted servant, 
 
 "De Balzac." 
 
 For souls to whom effusiveness is easy there is a delicious 
 hour that falls when it is not yet night, but is no longer day ; 
 the twilight gleam throws softened lights or tricksy reflec- 
 tions on every object, and favors a dreamy mood which 
 vaguely weds itself to the play of light and shade. The 
 silence which generally prevails at that time makes it par- 
 ticularly dear to artists, who grow contemplative, stand a few 
 paces back from the pictures on which they can no longer 
 work, and pass judgment on them, rapt by the subject whose 
 most recondite meaning then flashes on the inner eye of genius. 
 He who has never stood pensive by a friend^s side in such 
 an hour of poetic dreaming can hardly understand its in- 
 expressible soothingness. Favored by the clear-obscure, the 
 material skill employed by art to produce illusion entirely 
 disappears. If the work is a picture, the figures represented 
 seem to speak and walk; the shade is shadow, the light is day; 
 the flesh lives, eyes move, blood flows in their veins, and 
 
 (123) 
 
1^4 
 
 THE PURSE 
 
 stuffs have a changing sheen. Imagination helps the realism 
 of every detail, and only sees the beauties of the work. At 
 that hour illusion reigns despotically; perhaps it wakes at 
 nightfall ! Is not illusion a sort of night to the mind, which 
 we people with dreams? Illusion then unfolds its wings, it 
 bears the soul aloft to the world of fancies, a world full of 
 voluptuous imaginings, where the artist forgets the real world, 
 yesterday and the morrow, the future — everything down 
 to its miseries, the good and the evil alike. 
 
 At this magic hour a young painter, a man of talent, who 
 saw in art nothing but Art itself, was perched on a step- 
 ladder which helped him to work at a large high painting, 
 now nearly finished. Criticising himself, honestly admiring 
 himself, floating on the current of his thoughts, he then lost 
 himself in one of those meditative moods which ravish and 
 elevate the soul, soothe it, and comfort it. His reverie had no 
 doubt lasted a long time. Night fell. Whether he meant 
 to come down from his perch, or whether he made some ill- 
 judged movement, believing himself to be on the floor — the 
 event did not allow of his remembering exactly the cause of 
 his accident — he fell, his head struck a footstool, he lost con- 
 sciousness and lay motionless during a space of time of 
 which he knew not the length. 
 
 A sweet voice roused him from the stunned condition into 
 which he had sunk. When he opened his eyes the flash of a 
 bright light made him close them again immediately; but 
 through the mist that veiled his senses he heard the whis- 
 pering of two women, and felt two young, two timid hands 
 on which his head was resting. He soon recovered conscious- 
 ness, and by the light of an old-fashioned Argand lamp he 
 could make out the most charming girl's face he had ever 
 seen, one of those heads which are often supposed to be a 
 freak of the brush, but which to him suddenly realized the 
 theories of the ideal beauty which every artist creates for him- 
 self and whence his art proceeds. The features of the un- 
 known belonged, so to say, to the refined and delicate type 
 of Pmdhon's school, but had also the poetic sentiment which 
 
THE PURSE 
 
 125 
 
 Girodet gave to the inventions of his phantasy. The freshness 
 of the temples, the reguJar arch of the eyebrows, the purity of 
 outline, the virginal innocence so plainly stamped on every 
 feature of her countenance, made the girl a perfect creature. 
 Her figure was slight and graceful, and frail in form. Her 
 dress, though simple and neat, revealed neither wealth nor 
 penury. 
 
 As he recovered his senses, the painter gave expression to 
 his admiration by a look of surprise, and stammered some 
 confused thanks. He found a handkerchief pressed to his 
 forehead, and above the smell peculiar to a studio, he recog- 
 nized the strong odor of ether, applied no doubt to revive 
 him from his fainting fit. Finally he saw an old woman, look- 
 ing like a marquise of the old school, who held the lamp 
 and was advising the young girl. 
 
 ^'Monsieur," said the younger woman in reply to one of 
 the questions put by the painter during the few minutes when 
 he was still under the influence of the vagueness that the 
 shock had produced in his ideas, "my mother and I heard the 
 noise of your fall on the floor, and we fancied we heard a 
 groan. The silence following on the crash alarmed us, and we 
 hurried up. Finding the key in the latch, we happily took the 
 liberty of entering, and we found you lying motionless on the 
 ground. My mother went to fetch what was needed to bathe 
 your head and revive you. You huYe cut your forehead — 
 there. Do you feel it?'' 
 
 "Yes, I do now," he replied. 
 
 "Oh, it will be nothing," said the old mother. "Happily 
 your head rested against this lay-figure." 
 
 "I feel infinitely better," replied the painter. "I need 
 nothing further but a hackney cab to take me home. The 
 porter's wife will go for one." 
 
 He tried to repeat his thanks to the two strangers; but 
 dt each sentence the elder lady interrupted him, saying, "To- 
 morrow, monsieur, pray be careful to put on leeches, or to be 
 bled, and drink a few cups of something healing. A fall may 
 be dajigerous." 
 
126 
 
 THE rURSE 
 
 The young girl stole a look at the painter and at the pict- 
 ures in the studio. Her expression and her glances revealed 
 perfect propriety; her curiosity seemed rather absence of 
 mind, and her eyes seemed to speak the interest which women 
 feel, with the most engaging spontaneity, in everything which 
 causes us suffering. The two strangers seemed to forget the 
 painter's works in the painter's mishap. When he had re- 
 assured them as to his condition they left, looking at him 
 with an anxiety that was equally free from insistence and 
 from familiarity, without asking any indiscreet questions, 
 or trying to incite him to any wish to visit them. Their pro- 
 ceedings all bore the hall-mark of natural refinement and 
 good taste. Their noble and simple manners at first made no 
 great impression on the painter, but subsequently, as he re- 
 called all the details of the incident, he was greatly struck 
 by them. 
 
 When they reached the floor beneath that occupied by the 
 painter's studio, the old lady gently observed, "Adelaide, you 
 left the door open." 
 
 "That was to come to my assistance," said the painter, with 
 a grateful smile. 
 
 'TTou came down just now, mother," replied the young girl, 
 with a blush. 
 
 "Would you like us to accompany you all the way down- 
 stairs ?" asked the mother. "The stairs are dark." 
 "No, thank you, indeed, madame ; I am much better." 
 "Hold tightly by the rail." 
 
 The two women remained on the landing to light the young 
 man, listening to the sound of his steps. 
 
 In order to set forth clearly all the exciting and unexpected 
 interest this scene might have for the young painter, it must 
 be told that he had only a few days since established his 
 studio in the attics of this house, situated in the darkest and, 
 therefore, the most muddy part of the Eue de Suresnes, 
 almost opposite the Church of the Madeleine, and quite close 
 to his rooms in the Kue des Champs-Elysees. The fame his 
 
THE PURSE 
 
 127 
 
 talent had won him having made him one of the artists 
 most dear to his country, he was beginning to feel free from 
 want, and, to use his own expression, was enjoying his last 
 privations. Instead of going to his work in one of the studios 
 near the city gates, where the moderate rents had hitherto 
 been in proportion to his humble earnings, he had gratified a 
 wish that was new every morning, by sparing himself a long 
 walk, and the loss of much time, now more valuable than 
 ever. 
 
 No man in the world vrould have inspired feelings of 
 greater interest than Hippolyte Schinner if he would ever 
 have consented to make acquaintance ; but he did not lightly 
 entrust to others the secrets of his life. He was the idol of 
 a necessitous mother, who had brought him up at the cost of 
 the severest privations. Mademoiselle Schinner, the daugh- 
 ter of an Alsatian farmer, had never been married. Her 
 tender soul had been cruelly crushed, long ago, by a rich 
 man, who did not pride himself on any great delicacy in 
 his love affairs. The day when, as a young girl, in all the 
 radiance of her beauty and all the triumph of her life, she 
 suffered, at the cost of her heart and her sweet illusions, 
 the disenchantment which falls on us so slowly and yet so 
 quickly — for we try to postpone as long as possible our be- 
 lief in evil, and it seems to come too soon — that day was 
 a whole age of reflection, and it was also a day of religious 
 thought and resignation. She refused the alms of the man 
 who had betrayed her, renounced the world, and made a 
 glory of her shame. She gave herself up entirely to her 
 motherly love, seeking in it all her joys in exchange for 
 the social pleasures to which she bid farewell. She lived by 
 work, saving up a treasure in her son. And, in after years, 
 a day, an hour repaid her amply for the long and weary 
 sacrifices of her indigence. 
 
 At the last exhibition her son had received the Cross of the 
 Legion of Honor. The newspapers, unanimous in hailing an 
 unknown genius, still rang with sincere praises. Artists 
 themselves acknowledged Schinner as a master, and dealers 
 
128 
 
 THE PURSE 
 
 covered his canvases with gold pieces. At five-and-twenty 
 Hippolyte Schinner^ to whom his mother had transmitted 
 lier woman^s soul, understood more clearly than ever his 
 position in the world. Anxious to restore to his mother the 
 pleasures of which society had so long robbed her, he lived 
 for her, hoping by the aid of fame and fortune to see her 
 one day happy, rich, respected, and surrounded by men of 
 mark. Schinner had therefore chosen his friends among 
 the most honorable and distinguished men. Fastidious in the 
 selection of his intimates, he desired to raise still further 
 a position which his talent had placed high. The work to 
 which he had devoted himself from boyhood, by compelling 
 him to dwell in solitude — the mother of great thoughts — 
 had left him the beautiful beliefs which grace the early days 
 of life. His adolescent soul was not closed to any of the 
 thousand bashful emotions by which a young man is a being 
 apart, whose heart abounds in joys, in poetry, in virginal 
 hopes, puerile in the eyes of men of the world, but deep be- 
 cause they are single-hearted. 
 
 He was endowed with the gentle and polite manners which 
 speak to the soul, and fascinate even those who do not under- 
 stand them. He was well made. His voice, coming from, 
 his heart, stirred that of others to noble sentiments, and bore 
 witness to his true modesty by a certain ingenuousness of 
 tone. Those who saw him felt drawn to him by that attrac- 
 tion of the moral nature which men of science are happily 
 unable to analyze ; they would detect in it some phenomenon 
 of galvanism, or the current of I know not what fluid, and 
 express our sentiments in a formula of ratios of oxygen and 
 electricity. 
 
 These details will perhaps explain to strong-minded persons 
 and to men of fashion why, in the absence of the porter whom 
 he had sent to the end of the Eue de la Madeleine to call 
 him a coach, Hippolyte Schinner did not ask the man's wife 
 any questions concerning the two women whose kindness of 
 heart had shown itself in his behalf. But though he replied 
 Yes or No to the inquiries, natural under the circumstances. 
 
THE PURSE 
 
 129 
 
 which the good woman made as to his accident, and the 
 friendly intervention of the tenants occupying the fourth 
 floor, he could not hinder her from following the instinct of 
 her kind; she mentioned the two strangers, speaking of them 
 as prompted by the interests of her policy and the subter- 
 ranean opinions of the porter's lodge. 
 
 "Ah," said she, ^^they were, no doubt. Mademoiselle Lesei- 
 gneur and her mother, who have lived here these four years. 
 We do not yet know exactly what these ladies do; in the morn- 
 ing, only till the hour of noon, an old woman who is half 
 deaf, and who never speaks any more than a wall, comes in 
 to help them ; in the evening, two or three old gentlemen, with 
 loops of ribbon, like you, monsieur, come to see them, and 
 often stay very late. One of them comes in a carriage with 
 servants, and is said to have sixty thousand francs a year. 
 However, they are very quiet tenants, as you are, monsieur; 
 ,md economical ! they live on nothing, and as soon as a letter 
 :is brought they pay for it. It is a queer thing, monsieur, the 
 ifnother's name is not the same as the daughter's. Ah, but 
 when they go for a walk in the Tuileries, mademoiselle is very 
 ifmart, and she never goes out but she is followed by a lot 
 *;if young men; but she shuts the door in their face, and she 
 j.s quite right. The proprietor would never allow " 
 
 The coach having come, Hippolyte heard no more, and 
 went home. His mother, to whom he related his adventure, 
 dressed his wound afresh, and would not allow him to go to 
 the studio next day. After taking advice, various treatments 
 were prescribed, and Hippolyte remained at home three days. 
 During this retirement his idle fancy recalled vividly, bit 
 by bit, the details of the scene that had ensued on his fainting 
 fit. The young girl's profile was clearly projected against 
 the darkness of his inward vision; he saw once more the» 
 mother's faded features, or he felt the touch of Adelaide's, 
 hands. He remembered some gesture which at first had not 
 greatly struck him, but whose exquisite grace was thrown into 
 relief by memory ; then an attitude, or the tones of a melodious 
 voice, enhanced by the distance of remembrance, suddenly 
 
130 
 
 THE PUR8i£i 
 
 rose before him, as objects plunging to the bottom of deep 
 waters come back to the surface. 
 
 So, on the day when he could resume work, he went early to 
 his studio; but the visit he undoubtedly had a right to pay to 
 his neighbors was the true cause of his haste ; he had already 
 forgotten the pictures he had begun. At the moment when a 
 passion throws off its swaddling clothes, inexplicable pleasures 
 are felt, known to those who have loved. So some readers 
 will understand why the painter mounted the stairs to the 
 fourth floor but slowly, and will be in the secret of the throbs 
 that followed each other so rapidly in his heart at the mo- 
 ment when he saw the humble brown door of the rooms in- 
 habited by Mademoiselle Leseigneur. This girl, whose name 
 was not the same as her mother's, had aroused the young 
 painter's deepest sympathies; he chose to fancy some simi- 
 larity between himself and her as to their position, and at- 
 tributed to her misfortunes of birth akin to his own. All 
 the time he worked Hippol5rte gave himself veiy willingly 
 to thoughts of love, and made a great deal of noise to compel 
 the two ladies to think of him, as he was thinking of them, 
 He stayed late at the studio and dined there; then, at about 
 seven o'clock, he went down to call on his neighbors. 
 
 No painter of manners has ventured to initiate us — perhaps 
 out of modesty — ^into the really curious privacy of certain 
 Parisian existences, into the secret of the dwellings whence 
 emerge such fresh and elegant toilets, such brilliant women,, 
 who, rich on the surface, allow the signs of very doubtful 
 comfort to peep out in every part of their home. If, here, the 
 picture is too boldly drawn, if you find it tedious in places, 
 do not blame the description, which is, indeed, part and par- 
 cel of my story; for the appearance of the rooms inhabited 
 by his two neighbors had a great influence on the feelings 
 and hopes of Hippolyte Schinner. 
 
 The house belonged to one of those proprietors in whom 
 there is a foregone and profound horror of repairs and deco- 
 ration, one of the men who regard their position as Paris 
 house-owners as a business. In the vast chain of moral 
 
THE PURSE 
 
 135 
 
 species, these people hold a middle place between the miser 
 and the usurer. Optimists in their own interests, they are 
 all faithful to the Austrian status quo. If you speak of 
 moving a cupboard or a door, of opening the most indis- 
 pensable air-hole, their eyes flash, their bile rises, they rear 
 like a frightened horse. When the wind blows down a few 
 chimney-pots they are quite ill, and deprive themselves of an 
 evening at the Gymnase or the Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre^ 
 '^on account of repairs.^' Hippolyte, who had seen the per- 
 formance gratis of a comical scene with Monsieur Molineux as 
 concerning certain decorative repairs in his studio, was not 
 surprised to see the dark greasy paint, the oily stains, spots, 
 and other disagreeable accessories that varied the woodwork. 
 And these stigmata of poverty are not altogether devoid of 
 poetry in an artist's eyes. 
 
 Mademoiselle Leseigneur herself opened the door. On 
 recognizing the young artist she bowed, and at the same time, 
 with Parisian adroitness, and with the presence of mind that 
 pride can lend, she turned round to shut a door in a glass par- 
 tition through which Hippolyte might have caught sight of 
 some linen hung by lines over patent ironing stoves, an old 
 camp-bed, some wood-embers, charcoal, irons, a filter, the 
 household crockery, and all the utensils familiar to a small 
 household. Muslin curtains, fairly white, carefully screened 
 this lumber-room — a capJiarnaum, as the French call such a 
 domestic laboratory, — which was lighted by windows looking 
 out on a neighboring yard. 
 
 Hippolyte, with the quick eye of an artist, saw the uses, 
 the furniture, the general effect and condition of this first 
 room, thus cut in half. The more honorable half, which 
 served both as ante-room and dining-room, was hung with an 
 old salmon-rose-colored paper, with a flock border, the manu- 
 facture of Eeveillon, no doubt ; the holes and spots had been 
 carefully touched over with wafers. Prints representing the 
 battles of Alexander, by Lebrun, in frames with the gilding 
 rubbed oli. wer^ symmetrically arranged on the walls. In 
 
132 
 
 THE PURSE 
 
 the middle stood a massive mahogany table, old-fashioned in 
 shape, and worn at the edges. A small stove, whose thin 
 straight pipe was scarcely visible, stood in front of the chim- 
 ney-place, bnt the hearth was occupied by a cupboard. By 
 a strange contrast the chairs showed some remains of former 
 splendor ; they were of carved mahogany, but the red morocco 
 seats, the gilt nails and reeded backs, showed as many scars 
 as an old sergeant of the Imperial Guard. 
 
 This room did duty as a museum of certain objects, such as 
 are never seen but in this kind of amphibious household; 
 nameless objects with the stamp at once of luxury and penury. 
 Among other curiosities Hippolyte noticed a splendidly fin- 
 ished telescope, hanging over the small discolored glass that 
 decorated the chimney. To harmonize with this strange 
 (jollection of furniture, there was, between the chim- 
 mey and the partition, a wretched sideboard of painted 
 wood, pretending to be mahogany, of all woods the 
 most impossible to imitate. But the slippery red quarries, 
 ihe shabby little rugs in front of the chairs, and all 
 j;he furniture, shone with the hard rubbing cleanliness which 
 'lends a treacherous lustre to old things by making their de- 
 tects, their age, and their long service still more conspicuous. 
 An indescribable odor pervaded the room, a mingled smell 
 of the exhalations from the lumber room, and the vapors of. 
 the dining-room, with those from the stairs^ though the win- 
 dow was partly open. The air from the street fluttered the 
 dusty curtains, which were carefully drawn so as to hide the 
 window bay, where former tenants had testified to their pres- 
 ence by various ornamental additions — a sort of domestic 
 fresco. 
 
 Adelaide hastened to open the door of the inner room, where 
 she announced the painter with evident pleasure. Hippolyte, 
 who, of yore, had seen the same signs of poverty in his' 
 mother's home, noted them with the singular vividness of 
 impression which characterizes the earliest acquisitions of 
 memory, and entered into the details of this existence better 
 than any one else would have done. As he recognized the facts 
 
THE PURSE 
 
 133 
 
 of his life as a child, tlio kind young fellow felt neither 
 scorn for disguised misfortane nor pride in the luxury he 
 had lately conquered for his mother. 
 
 "Well, monsieur, I hope you no longer feel the effects of 
 your fall/' said the old lady, rising from an antique armchair 
 that stood by the chimney, and offering him a seat. 
 
 "No, madanie. 1 have come to thank you for the kind care 
 you gave me, and above all mademoiselle, who heard me fall.'' 
 
 As he uttered this speech, stamped with the exquisite stu- 
 pidity given to the mind by the first disturbing symptoms of 
 true love, Hippolyte looked at the young girl. Adelaide wa^ 
 lighting the Argand lamp, no doubt that she might get rid 
 of a tallow candle fixed in a large copper flat-candlestick, and 
 graced with a heavy fluting of grease from its guttering. She, 
 answered with a slight bow, carried the flat candlestick mid 
 the ante-room, came back, and after placing the lamp on th(!! 
 chimney shelf, seated herself by her mother, a little behind 
 the painter, so as to be able to look at him at her ease, whil(? 
 apparently much interested in the burning of the lamp; tb^ 
 flame, checked by the damp in a dingy chimney, sputtered 
 as it struggled with a charred and badly-trimmed wick. Hip- 
 polyte, seeing the large mirror that decorated the chimney- 
 piece, immediately fixed his eyes on it to admire Adelaide. 
 Thus the girl's little stratagem only served to embarrass them 
 both. 
 
 While talking with Madame Leseigneur, for Hippolyte 
 called her so, on the chance of being right, he examined the 
 room, but unobtrusively and by stealth. 
 
 The Egyptian figures on the iron fire-dogs were scarcely 
 visible, the hearth was so heaped with cinders; two brands 
 tried to meet in front of a sham log of firo-brick, as carefully 
 buried as a miser's treasure could ever be. An old Aubusson 
 carpet, very much faded, very much mended, and as worn as 
 a pensioner's coat, did not cover the whole of the tiled floor, 
 and the cold struck to his feet. The walls were hung with a 
 reddish paper, imitating figured silk with a yellow pattern. 
 In the middle of the wall opposite the windows the painter 
 
134 
 
 THE PURSE 
 
 saw a crack, and the outline marked on the paper of double- 
 doors, shutting off a recess where Madame Le&eigneur slept 
 no doubt, a faet ill disguised by a sofa in front of the door. 
 Facing the chimney, above a mahogany chest of drawers of 
 handsome and tasteful design, was the portrait of an officer 
 of rank, which the dim light did not allow him to see well; 
 but from what he could make out he thought that the fearful 
 daub must have been painted in China. The window-curtains 
 of red silk were as much faded as the furniture, in red and 
 yellow worsted work, if this room ^^contrived a double debt to 
 pay/' On the marble top of the chest of drawers was a costly 
 malachite tray, with a dozen coffee cups magnificently painted, 
 and made, no doubt, at Sevres. On the chimney shelf stood 
 the omnipresent Empire clock: a warrior driving the four 
 horses of a chariot, whose wheel bore the numbers of the 
 hours on its spokes. The tapers in the tall candlesticks were 
 yellow with smoke, and at each corner of the shelf stood a 
 porcelain vase crowned with artificial flowers full of dust and 
 Btnck into moss. 
 
 In the middle of the room Hippolyte remarked a card- 
 table ready for play, with new packs of cards. For an ob- 
 server there was something heartrending in the sight of this 
 misery painted up like an old woman who wants to falsify 
 her face. At such a sight every man of sense must at once 
 have stated to himself this obvious dilemma — either these 
 two women are honesty itself, or they live by intrigue and 
 gambling. But on looking at Adelaide, a man so pure-minded 
 as Schinner could not but believe in her perfect innocence, 
 and ascribe the incoherence of the furniture to honorable 
 causes. 
 
 "My dear," said the old lady to the young one, "I am cold ; 
 make a little fire, and give me my shawl." 
 
 Adelaide went into a room next the drawing-room, 
 where she no doubt slept, and returned bringing her mother 
 a cashmere shawl, which when new must have been very 
 eostly; the pattern was Indian; but it was old, faded, and 
 full of darns, and matched the furniture. Madame Lesei- 
 
THE PURSE 
 
 135 
 
 gneur wrapped herself in it very artistically, and with the 
 readiness of an old woman wlio wishes to make her words 
 seem truth. The young girl ran lightly off to the lumber- 
 room and reappeared with a bundle of small wood, which 
 she gallantly threw on the fire to revive it. 
 
 It would be rather difficult to reproduce the conversation 
 which followed among these three persons. H.ippolyte, guided 
 by the tact which is almost always the outcome of misfortune 
 suffered in early youth, dared not allow himself to make the 
 least remark as to his neighbors' situation, as he saw all about 
 him the signs of ill-disguised poverty. The simplest question 
 would have been an indiscretion, and could only be ventured 
 on by old friendship. The painter was nevertheless absorbed 
 in the thought of this concealed penury, it pained his generous 
 soul; but knowing how offensive every kind of pity may be, 
 even the friendliest, the disparity between his thoughts and 
 his words made him feel uncomfortable. 
 
 The two ladies at first talked of painting, for women easily 
 guess the secret embarrassment of a first call; they them.* 
 selves feel it perhaps, and the nature of their mind supplie?i 
 them with a thousand devices to put an end to it. By ques- 
 tioning the young man as to the material exercise of his art, 
 and as to his studies, Adelaide and her mother emboldened 
 him to talk. The indefinable nothings of their chat, animated 
 by kind feeling, naturally led Hippolyte to flash forth remark?;^ 
 or reflections which showed the character of his habits and 
 of his mind. Trouble had prematurely faded the old lady's 
 face, formerly handsome, no doubt ; nothing was left but the 
 more prominent features, the outline, in a word, the skeleton 
 of a countenance of which the whole effect indicated great 
 shrewdness with much grace in the play of the eyes, in which 
 could be discerned the expression peculiar to women of the old 
 Court ; an expression that cannot be defined in words. Those 
 fine and mobile features might quite as well indicate bad 
 feelings, and suggest astuteness and womanly artifice carried 
 to a high pitch of wickedness, as reveal the refined delicacy 
 of a beautiful soul. 
 
136 
 
 THE PURSE 
 
 Indeed, the face of a woman has this element of mj^stery 
 to puzzle the ordinary observer, that the difference between 
 frankness and duplicity, the genius for intrigue and the genius 
 of the heart, is there inscrutable. A man gifted with a pene- 
 trating eye can read the intangible shade of difference pro- 
 duced by a more or less curved line, a more or less deep dimple, 
 a more or less prominent feature. The appreciation of these 
 indications lies entirely in the domain of intuition ; this alone 
 can lead to the discovery of what every one is interested in con- 
 cealing. The old lady's face was like the room she inhabited ; it 
 seemed as difficult to detect whether this squalor covered vice 
 or the highest virtue, as to decide whether Adela'ide's mother 
 was an old coquette accustomed to weigh, to calculate, to sell 
 everything, or a loving woman, full of noble feeling and 
 amiable qualities. But at Schinner's age the first impulse 
 of the heart is to believe in goodness. And indeed, as he 
 studied Adelaide's noble and almost haughty brow, as he 
 looked into her eyes full of soul and thought, he breathed, 
 so to speak, the sweet and modest fragrance of virtue. In 
 the course of the conversation he seized an opportunity of 
 discussing portraits in general, to give himself a pretext for 
 examining the frightful pastel, of which the color had flown, 
 and the chalk in many places fallen away. 
 
 "You are attached to that picture for the sake of the like- 
 ness, no doubt, mesdames, for the drawing is dreadful?" he 
 said, looking at Adelaide. 
 
 "It was done at Calcutta, m great haste," replied the 
 mother, in an agitated voice. 
 
 She gazed at the formless sketch with the deep absorption 
 which memories of happiness produce when they are roused 
 and fall on the heart like a beneficent dew to whose refreshin,oc 
 touch we love to yield ourselves up; but in the expression 
 of the old lady's face there were traces too of perennial regret. 
 At least, it was thus that the painter chose to interpret her 
 attitude and countenance, and he presently sat down again 
 by her side. 
 
 "Madame," he said, "in a very short time the colors of that 
 
THE rURSE 
 
 137 
 
 pastel will have disappeared. The portrait will only survive 
 in your memory. Where you will still see the face that is dear 
 to you, others will see nothing at all. Will you allow me to 
 reproduce the likeness on canvas? It will be more perma- 
 nently recorded then than on that sheet of paper. Grant me, 
 I beg, as a neighborly favor, the pleasure of doing you this 
 service. There are times when an artist is glad of a respite 
 from his greater undertakings by doing work of less lofty 
 pretensions, so it will be a recreation for me to paint that 
 head.'^ 
 
 The old lady flushed as she heard the painter's words, and 
 Adelaide shot one of those glances of deep feeling which 
 seem to flash from the soul. Hippolyte wanted to feel some 
 tie linking him with his two neighbors, to conquer a right to 
 mingle in their life. His offer, appealing as it did to the 
 liveliest affections of the heart, was the only one he could 
 possibly make; it gratified his pride as an artist, and could 
 not hurt the feelings of the ladies. Madame Leseigneur 
 accepted, without eagerness or reluctance, but with the self - 
 possession of a noble soul, fully aware of the character of 
 bonds formed by such an obligation, while, at the same time, 
 they are its highest glo/y as a proof of esteem. 
 
 "I fancy," said the painter, "that the uniform is that of 
 a naval officer" 
 
 "Yes," she said, "that of a captain in command of a 
 vessel. Monsieur de Rouville — my husband — died at Batavia 
 in consequence of a wound received in a fight with an 
 English ship they fell in with off the Asiatic coast. He com- 
 manded a frigate of fifty-six guns, and the Revenge carried 
 ninety-six. Ihe struggle was very unequal, but he defended 
 his ship so bravely that he held out till nightfall and got 
 away. When I came back to France Bonaparte was not yet 
 in power, and I was refused a pension. When I applied 
 again for it, quite lately, I was sternly informed that if the 
 Baron de Rouville had emigrated I should not have lost him; 
 that by this time he would have been rear-admiral; finally, 
 bis Excellency quoted I know not what degree of forfeiture. 
 
138 
 
 THE PURSB 
 
 I took this step, to which I was urged by my friends, only for 
 the sake of my poor Adelaide. I have always hated the idea 
 of holding out my hand as a beggar in the name of a grief 
 which deprives a woman of voice and strength. I do not like 
 this money valuation for blood irreparably spilt " 
 
 ^'Dear mother, this subject always does you harm." 
 
 In response to this remark from Adelaide, the Baronne 
 Leseigneur bowed, and was silent. 
 
 "Monsieur,^' said the 3''oung girl to Hippolyte, "I had sup- 
 posed that a painter's work was generally fairly quiet?" 
 
 At this question Schinner colored, remembering the noise 
 he had made. Adelaide said no more, and spared him a false- 
 hood by rising at the sound of a carriage stopping at the 
 door. She went into her own room, and returned carrying 
 a pair of tall gilt candlesticks with partly burnt wax candles, 
 which she quickly lighted, and without waiting for the bell 
 to ring, she opened the door of the outer room, where she set 
 the lamp down. The sound of a kiss given and received 
 found an echo in Hippolyte^s heart. The young man's im- 
 patience to see the man who treated Adelaide with so much 
 familiarity, was not immediately gratified; the newcomers 
 had a conversation, which he thought very long, in an under- 
 tone, with the young girl. 
 
 At last Mademoiselle de Eouville returned, followed by two 
 men, whose costume, countenance, and appearance are a long 
 story. 
 
 The first, a man of about sixty, wore one of the coats in- 
 vented, I believe, for Louis XVIII., then on the throne, in 
 which the most difficult problem of the sartorial art had 
 been solved by a tailor who ought to be immortal. That artist 
 certainly understood the art of compromise, which was the 
 moving genius of that period of shifting politics. Is it not a 
 rare merit to be able to take the measure of the time ? This 
 coat, which the young men of the present day may conceive 
 to be fabulous, was neither civil nor military, and might 
 pass for civil or military by turns. Fleurs-de-lis were em- 
 broidered on the lapels of the back skirts. The gilt buttons 
 
THE PURSE 
 
 139 
 
 also bore fleurs-de-lis; on the shoulders a pair of straps cried 
 out for useless epaulettes; these military appendages were 
 there like a petition without a recommendation. This old 
 gentleman's coat was of dark blue cloth, and the buttonhole 
 had blossomed into many colored ribbons. He, no doubt, 
 always carried his hat in his hand — a three-cornered cocked 
 hat, with a gold cord — for the snowy wings of his powdered 
 hair showed not a trace of its pressure. He might have been 
 taken for not more than fifty years of age, and seemed to 
 enjoy robust health. While wearing the frank and loyal ex- 
 pression of the old emigres, his countenance also hinted at 
 the easy habits of a libertine, at the light and reckless passions 
 of the Musketeers formerly so famous in the annals of gal- 
 lantry. His gestures, his attitude, and his manner proclaimed 
 that he had no intention of correcting himself of his royalism, 
 of his religion, or of his love affairs. 
 
 A really fantastic figure came in behind this specimen of 
 "Louis XIV.'s light infantry" — a nickname given by the 
 Bonapartists to these venerable survivors of the Monarchy. 
 To do it Justice it ought to be made the principal object in 
 the picture, and it is but an accessory. Imagine a lean, drj^ 
 man, dressed like the former, but seeming to be only his re- 
 flection, or his shadow, if you will. The coat, new on the 
 first, on the second was old; the powder in his hair looked 
 less white, the gold of the fleurs-de-lis less bright, the shoulder 
 straps more hopeless and dog^s eared; his intellect seemed 
 more feeble, his life nearer the fatal term than in the former. 
 In short, he realized EivaroFs witticism on Champcenetz, 
 "He is the moonlight of me.'' He was simply his double, 
 a paler and poorer double, for there was between them aH 
 the difference that lies between the first and last impress^or^ 
 of a lithograph. 
 
 This speechless old man was a mystery to the painter, anaX 
 always remained a mystery. The Chevalier, for he was a 
 Chevalier, did not speak, nobody spoke to him. Was he a 
 friend, a poor relation, a man who followed at the old gaV 
 lanf s heels as a lady companion does at an old lady's ? Di;l 
 
140 
 
 THE PURSE 
 
 he fill a place midway between a dog, a parrot, and a friend? 
 Had he saved his patron's fortune, or only his life ? Was he 
 the Trim to another Captain Toby? Elsewhere, as at the 
 Baronne de Kouville's, he always piqued curiosity without 
 satisfying it. Who, after the Restoration, could remember 
 the attachment which, before the Revolution, had bound this 
 man to his friend's wife, dead now these twenty years ? 
 
 The leader, who appeared the least dilapidated of these 
 wrecks, came gallantly up to Madame de Rouville, kissed her 
 hand, and sat down by her. The other bowed and placed 
 himself not far from his model, at a distance represented by 
 two chairs. Adelaide came behind the old gentleman's arm* 
 chair and leaned her elbows on the back, unconsciously imi« 
 tating the attitude given to Dido's sister by Guerin in his 
 famous picture- 
 Though the gentleman's familiarity was that of a father, 
 his freedom seemed at the moment to annoy the young girl. 
 
 "What, are you sulky with me?" he said. 
 
 Then he shot at Schinner one of those side-looks full of 
 shrewdness and cunning, diplomatic looks, whose expression 
 betrays the discreet uneasiness, the polite curiosity of well- 
 bred people, and seems to ask, when they see a stranger, "Is 
 he one of us?" 
 
 "This is our neighbor," said the old lady, pointing to Hip- 
 polyte. "Monsieur is a celebrated painter, whose name must 
 be known to you in spite of your indifference to the arts." 
 
 The old man saw his friend's mischievous intent in sup- 
 pressing the name, and bowed to the young man. 
 
 "Certainly," said he. "I heard a great deal about his pic- 
 tures at the last Salon. Talent has immense privileges," ho 
 added, observing the artist's red ribbon. "That distinction, 
 which we must earn at the cost of our blood and long service, 
 you win in your youth; but all glory is of the same kindrod," 
 he said, laying his hand on his Cross of Saint-Louis. 
 
 Hippolyte murmured a few words of acknowledgment, and 
 was silent again, satisfied to admire with growing enthusiasm 
 the beautiful girl's head that charmed him so much. He 
 
THE PCIRSlfi 
 
 141 
 
 was soon lost in contemplation, completely forgetting the 
 extreme misery of the dwelling. To him Adelaide's face 
 stood out against a luminous atmosphere. He replied briefly 
 to the questions addressed to him, which, by good luck, he 
 heard, thanks to a singular faculty of the soul which some- 
 times seems to have a double consciousness. Who has not 
 known what it is to sit lost in sad or delicious meditation, lis- 
 tening to its voice within, while attending to a conversation 
 or to reading? An admirable duality which often helps us to 
 tolerate a bore ! Hope, prolific and smiling, poured out before 
 Aim a thousand visions of happiness; and he refused to con- 
 sider what was going on around him. As confiding as a 
 child, it seemed to him base to analyze a pleasure. 
 
 After a short lapse of time he perceived that the old lady 
 and her daughter were playing cards with the old gentleman. 
 As to the satellite, faithful to his function as a shadow, he 
 stood behind his friend's chair watching his game, and an.- 
 swering the player's mute inquiries by little approving nods, 
 repeating the questioning gestures of the other countenance. 
 
 "Du Halga, I always lose," said the gentleman. 
 
 "You discard badly," replied the Baronne de Eouville. 
 
 "For three months now I have never won a single game/ 
 said he. 
 
 "Have you the aces?" asked the old lady. 
 
 "Yes, one more to mark," said he. , 
 
 "Shall I come and advise you ?" said Adelaide. 
 
 "No, no. Stay where I can see you. By Gad, it would be 
 losing too much not to have you to look at !" 
 
 At last the game was over. The gentleman pulled out 
 his purse, and, throwing two louis d'or on the table, not 
 without temper — 
 
 "Forty francs," he exclaimed, "the exact sum. — Deuce take 
 it! It is eleven o'clock." 
 
 "It is eleven o'clock," repeated the silent figure, looking 
 at the painter. 
 
 The young man, hearing these words rather more distinctly 
 than all the others, thought it time to retire. Coming back 
 
142 
 
 THE PURSE 
 
 to the world of ordinary ideas, he foand a few comrr/onplace 
 remarks to make, took leave of the Baroness, her daughter, 
 and the two strangers, and went away, wholly possessed by 
 the first raptures of true love, without attempting to analyze 
 the little incidents of the evening. 
 
 On the morrow the young painter felt the most ardent de- 
 sire to see Adelaide once more. If he had followed the call 
 of his passion, he would have gone to his neighbor's door at 
 six in the morning, when he went to his studio. However, 
 he still was reasonable enough to wait till the afternoon. 
 But as soon as he thought he could present himself to Madame 
 de Eouville, he went downstairs, rang, blushing like a girl, 
 shyly asked Mademoiselle Leseigneur, who came to let him 
 in, to let him have the portrait of the Baron. 
 
 "But come in," said Adelaide, who had no doubt heard him 
 come down from the studio. 
 
 The painter followed, bashful and ont of countenance, not 
 knowing what to say, happiness had so dulled his wit. To see 
 Adelaide, to hear the rustle of her skirt, after longing for 
 a whole morning to be near her, after starting up a hundred 
 time — "I will go down now" — and not to have gone ; this was 
 to him life so rich that such sensations, too greatly prolonged, 
 would have worn out his spirit. The heart has the singular 
 power of giving extraordinary value to mere nothings. What 
 joy it is to a traveler ,to treasure a blade of grass, an un- 
 familiar leaf, if he has risked his life to pluck it! It is the 
 same with the trifles of love. 
 
 The old lady was not in the drawing-room. When the 
 young girl found herself there, alone with the painter, she 
 brought a chair to stand on, to take down the picture; but 
 perceiving that she could not unhook it without setting hei 
 foot on the chest of drawers, she turned to Hippolyte, and 
 said with a blush : 
 
 "I am not tall enough. Will you get it down 
 
 A feeling of modesty, betrayed in the expression of her 
 face and the tones of her voice, was the real motive of her 
 request; and the young man, understanding this, gave her 
 
THE PURSE 
 
 143 
 
 one of those glances of intelligence which are the sweetest 
 language of love. Seeing that the painter had read her soul, 
 Adelaide cast down her eyes with the instinct of reserve 
 which is the secret of a maiden's heart: Hippolyte, finding 
 nothing to say, and feeling almost timid, took down the pict- 
 ure, examined it gravely, carrying it to the light of the win- 
 dow, and then went away, without saying a word to Made- 
 moiselle Leseigneur but, "I will return it soon/' 
 
 During this brief moment they both went through one of 
 those storms of agitation of which the effects in the soul may 
 be compared to those of a stone flung into a deep lake. The 
 most delightful waves of thought rise and follow each other, 
 indescribable, repeated, and aimless, tossing the heart like 
 the circular ripples, which for a long time fret the waters, 
 starting from the point where the stone fell. 
 
 Hippolyte returned to the studio bearing the portrait. His 
 easel was ready with a fresh canvas, and his palette set, his 
 brushes cleaned, the spot and the light carefully chosen. 
 And till the dinner hour he worked at the painting with 
 the ardor artists throw into their whims. He went again 
 that evening to the Baronne de Kouville's, and remained from 
 nine till eleven. Excepting the different topics of conversa- 
 tion, this evening was exactly like the last. The two old men 
 arrived at the same hour, the same game of piquet was played, 
 the same speeches made by the players, the sum lost by Ade- 
 laide's friend was not less considerable than on the previous 
 evening ; only Hippolyte, a little bolder, ventured to chat with 
 the young girl. 
 
 A week passed thus, and in the course of it the painter's 
 feelings and Adelaide's underwent the slow and delightful 
 transformations which bring two souls to a perfect under- 
 standing. Every day the look with which the girl welcomed 
 her friend grew more intimate, more confiding, gayer, and 
 more open; her voice and manner became more eager and 
 more familiar. They laughed and talked together, telling 
 each other their thoughts, speaking of themselves with the 
 simplicity of two children who have made friends in a day^ 
 
144 THE rURSE 
 
 as much as if they had met constantly for three years. Schin- 
 ner wished tc be taught piquet. Being ignorant and a novice, 
 he, of course, made blunder after blunder, and, like the old 
 man, he lost almost every game. Without having spoken a word 
 of love the lovers knew that they were all in all to one an- 
 other. Hippolyte enjoyed exerting his power over his gentle 
 little friend, and many concessions were made to him by 
 Adelaide, who, timid and devoted to him, was quite deceived 
 by the assumed fits of temper, such as the least skilled lover 
 and the most guileless girl can affect; and which they con- 
 stantly play off, as spoilt children abuse the power they owe 
 to their mother's affection. Thus all familiarity between the 
 girl and the old Count was soon put a stop to. She under- 
 stood the painter's melancholy, and the thoughts hidden in 
 the furrows on his brow, from the abrupt tone of the few 
 words he spoke when the old man unceremoniously kissed 
 Adelaide's hands or throat. 
 
 Mademoiselle Leseigneur, on her part, soon expected her 
 lover to give a short account of all his actions; she was so 
 unhappy, so restless when Hippolyte did not come, she scolded 
 him so effectually for his absence, that the painter had to give 
 up seeing his other friends, and now went nowhere. Ade- 
 laide allowed the natural jealousy of women to be perceived 
 when she heard that sometimes at eleven o'clock, on quitting 
 the house, the painter still had visits to pay, and was to be 
 seen in the most brilliant drawing-rooms of Paris. This 
 mode of life, she assured him, was bad for his health; then, 
 with the intense conviction to which the accent, the emphasis, 
 and the look of one we love lend so much weight, she asserted 
 that a man who was obliged to expend his time and the 
 charms of his wit on several women at once could not be the 
 object of any very warm affection. Thus the painter was led, 
 as much by the tyranny of his passion as by the exactions of 
 a girl in love, to live exclusively in the little apartment where 
 everything attracted him. 
 
 And never was there a purer or more ardent love. On 
 both sides the same trustfulness, the same delicacy, gave their 
 
THE PURSE 
 
 145 
 
 passion increase without the aid of those sacrifices by which 
 many persons try to prove their affection. Between these two 
 there was such a constant interchange of sweet emotion that 
 they knew not which gave or received the most. 
 
 A spontaneous affinity made the union of their souls a 
 close one. The progress of this true feeling was so rapid that 
 two months after the accident to which the painter owed the 
 happiness of knowing Adelaide, their lives were one life. 
 From early morning the young girl, hearing footsteps over- 
 head, could say to herself, "He is there." When Hippolyte 
 went home to his mother at the dinner hour he never failed 
 to look in on his neighbors, and in the evening he flew there 
 at the accustomed hour with a lover's punctuality. Thus the 
 most tyrannical woman or the most ambitious in the matter 
 of love could not have found the smallest fault with the 
 young painter. And Adelaide tasted of unmixed and un- 
 bounded happiness as she saw the fullest realization of tho 
 ideal of which, at her age, it is so natural to dream. 
 
 The old gentleman now came more rarely ; Hippolyte, who 
 had been jealous, had taken his place at the green table, and 
 shared his constant ill-luck at cards. And sometimes, in the 
 midst of his happiness, as he considered Madame de Eouville'fc' 
 disastrous position — for he had had more than one proof of 
 her extreme poverty — an importunate thought would haunt 
 him. Several times he had said to himself as he went home, 
 "Strange ! twenty francs every evening ?" and he dared not 
 confess to himself his odious suspicions. 
 
 He spent two months over the portrait, and when it was 
 finished, varnished, and framed, he looked upon it as one of 
 his best works. Madame la Baronne de Eouville had never 
 spoken of it again. Was this from indifference or pride? 
 The painter would not allow himself to account for this si- 
 lence. He joyfully plotted with Adelaide to hang the pict- 
 ure in its place when Madame de Eouville should be out. So 
 one day, during the walk her mother usually took in the 
 Tuileries, iVdelaide for the first time went up to Hippolyte's 
 studio, on the pretext of seeing the portrait in the good 
 
146 
 
 THE PURSE 
 
 light in which it had been painted. She stood speechless 
 and motionless, but in ecstatic contemplation, in which all 
 a woman's feelings were merged. For are they not all com- 
 prehended in boundless admiration for the man she loves? 
 When the painter, uneasy at her silence, leaned forward to 
 look at her, she held out her hand, unable to speak a word, 
 but two tears fell from her eyes. Hippolyte took her hand, 
 and covered it with kisses; for a minute they looked at 
 each other in silence, both longing to confess their love, and 
 not daring. The painter kept her hand in his, and the same 
 glow, the same throb, told them that their hearts were both 
 beating wildly. The young girl, too greatly agitated, gently 
 drew away from Hippolyte, and said, with a look of the 
 utmost simplicity: 
 
 "You will make my mother very happy." 
 
 "What, only your mother?'' he asked. 
 
 "Oh, I am too happy." 
 
 The painter bent his head and remained silent, frightened 
 at the vehemence of the feelings which her tones stirred in 
 his heart. Then, both understanding the perils of the situa- 
 tion, they went downstairs and hung up the picture in its 
 place. Hippolyte dined for the first time with the Baroness, 
 who, greatly overcome, and drowned in tears, must needs em- 
 brace him. 
 
 In the evening the old emigre, the Baron de Eouville's old 
 comrade, paid the ladies a visit to announce that he had just 
 been promoted to the rank of vice-admiral. His voyages by 
 land over Germany and Eussia had been counted as naval 
 campaigns. On seeing the portrait he cordially shook the 
 painter's hand, and exclaimed, "By Gad ! though my old hulk 
 does not deserve to be perpetuated, I would gladly give five 
 hundred pistoles to see myself as like as that is to my dear old 
 Eouville." 
 
 At this hint the Baroness looked at her young friend and 
 smiled, while her face lighted up with an expression of sudden 
 gratitude. Hippolyte suspected that the old admiral wished 
 to offer him the price of both portraits while paying for his 
 
THE PURSE) 
 
 147 
 
 own. His pride as an artist, no less than his jealousy per- 
 haps, took offence at the thought, and he replied : 
 
 "Monsieur, if I were a portrait-painter I should not have 
 done this one." 
 
 The admiral bit his lip, and sat down to cards. 
 
 The painter remained near Adelaide, who proposed a dozen 
 hands of piquet, to which he agreed. As he played he ob- 
 served in Madame de Rouville an excitement over her game 
 which surprised him. Never before had the old Baroness 
 manifested so ardent a desire to win, or so keen a joy in 
 fingering the old gentleman's gold pieces. During the even- 
 ing evil suspicions troubled Hippolyte's happiness, and filled 
 him with distrust. Could it be that Madame de Eouville 
 lived by gambling? Was she playing at this moment to pay 
 off some debt, or under the pressure of necessity? Perhaps 
 she had not paid her rent. The old man seemed shrewd 
 enough not to allow his money to be taken with impunity. 
 What interest attracted him to this poverty-stricken house, 
 he who was rich? Why, when he had formerly been so 
 familiar with Adelaide, had he given up the rights he had 
 acquired, and which were perhaps his due ? 
 
 These involuntary reflections prompted him to watch the 
 old man and the Baroness, whose meaning looks and certain 
 sidelong glances cast at Adelaide displeased him. "Am I being 
 duped ?'' was Hippolyte's last idea — horrible, scathing, for he 
 believed it just enough to be tortured by it. He determined 
 to stay after the departure of the two old men, to confirm or 
 dissipate his suspicions. He drew out his purse to pay 
 Adelaide ; but, carried away by his poignant thoughts, he laid 
 it on the table, falling into a reverie of brief duration ; then, 
 ashamed of his silence, he rose, answered some commonplace 
 question from Madame de Rouville, and went close up to her 
 to examine the withered features while he was talking to her. 
 
 He went away, racked by a thousand doubts. He had gone 
 down but a few steps when he turned back to fe.ch the for- 
 gotten purse. 
 
 ''I left my purse here !" he said xo the young girl. 
 -I? 
 
148 
 
 THE PURSE 
 
 "No/' she said, reddening. 
 
 "I thought it was there," and he pointed to the card' 
 table. Not finding it, in his shame for Adelaide and the 
 Baroness, he looked at them with a blank amazement that 
 made them laugh, turned pale, felt his waistcoat, and said, 
 "I must have made a mistake. I have it somewhere no 
 doubt." 
 
 In one end of the purse there were fifteen louis d'or, and 
 in the other some small change. The theft was so flagrant, 
 and denied with such effrontery, that Hippolyte no longer 
 felt a doubt as to his neighbors' morals. He stood still on 
 the stairs, and got down with some difficulty ; his knees shook, 
 he felt dizzy, he was in a cold sweat, he shivered, and found 
 himself unable to walk, struggling, as he was, with the 
 iigonizing shock caused by the destruction of all his hopes. 
 And at this moment he found lurking in his memory a num- 
 ber of observations, trifling in themselves, but which cor- 
 i'oborated his frightful suspicions, and which, by proving the 
 ^jertainty of this last incident, opened his eyes as to the char- 
 acter and life of these two women. 
 
 Had they really waited till the portrait was given them 
 before robbing him of his purse ? In such a combination the 
 theft was even more odious. The painter recollected that 
 for the last two or three evenings Adelaide, while seeming 
 to examine with a girl's curiosity the particular stitch of the 
 worn silk netting, was probably counting the coins in the 
 purse, while making some light jests, quite innocent in appear- 
 ance, but no doubt with the object of watching for a moment 
 when the sum was worth stealing. 
 
 "The old admiral has perhaps good reasons for not marry- 
 mg Adelaide, and so the Baroness has tried " 
 
 But at this hypothesis he checked himselt, not finishing his 
 thought, which was contradicted by a very just reflection, 
 "If the Baroness hopes to get me to marry her daughter/' 
 thought he, "they would not have robbed me." 
 
 Then, clinging to his illusions, to the love that already 
 had taken such deep, root, he tried to find a justification in 
 
THE PURSE 
 
 149 
 
 some accident. "The purse must have fallen on the floor," 
 said he to himself, "or I left it lying on my chair. Or per- 
 haps I have it about me — I am so absent-minded He 
 searched himself with hurried movements, but did not find 
 the ill-starred purse. His memory cruelly retraced the fatal 
 truth, minute by minute. He distinctly saw the purse lying 
 on the green cloth; but then, doubtful no longer, he excused 
 Adelaide, telling himself that persons in misfortune should 
 not be so hastily condemned. There was, of course, some 
 secret behind this apparently degrading action. He would 
 not admit that that proud and noble face was a lie. 
 
 At the same time the wretched rooms rose before him, 
 denuded of the poetry of love which beautifies everything; 
 he saw them dirty and faded, regarding them as emblematic 
 of an inner life devoid of honor, idle and vicious. Are not 
 our feelings written, as it were, on the things about us ? 
 
 Next morning he rose, not having slept. The heartache, 
 that terrible malady of the soul, had made rapid inroads. To 
 lose the bliss we dreamed of, to renounce our whole future, is 
 a keener pang than that caused by the loss of known happi- 
 ness, however complete it may have been; for is not Hope 
 better than Memory? The thoughts into which our spirit 
 is suddenly plunged are like a shoreless sea, in which we may 
 swim for a moment, but where our love is doomed to drown 
 and die. And it is a frightful death. Are not our feelings 
 the most glorious part of our life? It is this partial death 
 which, in certain delicate or powerful natures, leads to the 
 terrible ruin produced by disenchantment, by hopes and pas- 
 sions betrayed. Thus it was with the young painter. He 
 went out at a very early hour to walk under the fresh shade 
 of the Tuileries, absorbed in his thoughts, forgetting every- 
 thing in the world. 
 
 There by chance he met one of his most intimate friends, 
 a school-fellow and studio-mate, with whom he had lived on 
 better terms than with a brother. 
 
 "Why, Hippolyte, what ails you ?" asked Fran9ois Souchet, 
 
150 
 
 THE rURSB 
 
 the young sculptor who had just won the first prize, and 
 was soon to set out for Italy. 
 
 "I am most unhappy/' replied Hippolyte gravely. 
 
 "Nothing but a love affair can cause you grief. Money, 
 glory, respect — you lack nothing." 
 
 Insensibly the painter was led into confidences, and con- 
 fessed his love. The moment he mentioned the Rue de 
 Suresne, and a young girl living on the fourth floor, "Stop, 
 stop," cried Souchet lightly. "A little girl I see every morn- 
 ing at the Church of the Assumption, and with whom I have 
 a flirtation. But, my dear fellow, we all know her. The 
 mother is a Baroness. Do you really believe in a Baroness 
 living up four flights of stairs ? Brrr ! Why, you are a relic 
 of the golden age ! We see the old mother here, in this ave- 
 nue, every day; why, her face, her appearance, tell every- 
 thing. What, have you not known her for what she is by the 
 way she holds her bag?" 
 
 The two friends walked up and down for some time, and 
 several young men who knew Souchet or Schinner joined 
 them. The painter's adventure, which the sculptor regarded 
 as unimportant, was repeated by him. 
 
 "So he, too, has seen that young lady !" said Souchet. 
 
 And then there were comments, laughter, innocent mock- 
 ery, full of the liveliness familiar to artists, but which pained 
 Hippol3i:e frightfully. A certain native reticence made him 
 uncomfortable as he saw his heart's secret so carelessly 
 handled, his passion rent, torn to tatters, a young and un- 
 known girl, whose life seemed to be so modest, the victim 
 of condemnation, right or wrong, but pronounced with such 
 reckless indifference. He pretended to be moved by a spirit 
 of contradiction, asking each for proofs of his assertions, and 
 their jests began again. 
 
 "But, my dear boy, have you seen the Baroness' shawl?" 
 asked Souchet. 
 
 "Have you ever followed the girl when she patters off to 
 church in the morning ?" said J oseph Bridau, a young dauber 
 in Gros' studio. 
 
THE PURSE 
 
 151 
 
 "Oh, the mother has among other virtues a certain gray 
 gown, which I regard as typical/' said Bixiou, the cari- 
 caturist. 
 
 "Listen, Hippolyte," the sculptor went on. "Come here at 
 about four o'clock, and just study the walk of both mother 
 and daughter. If after that you still have doubts ! well, no 
 one can ever make anything of you ; you would be capable 
 of marrying your porter's daughter." 
 
 Torn by the most conflicting feelings, the painter parted 
 from his friends. It seemed to him that Adelaide amd her 
 mother must be superior to these accusations, and at the bot- 
 tom of his heart he was tilled with remorse for having sus- 
 pected the purity of this beautiful and simple girl. He went 
 to his studio, passing the door of the rooms where Adelaidi} 
 was, and conscious of a pain at his heart which no man can 
 misapprehend. He loved Mademoiselle de Eouville so pas^ 
 sionately that, in spite of the theft of the purse, he still 
 worshiped her. His love was that of the Chevalier des 
 Grieux admiring his mistress, and holding her as pure, even 
 on the cart which carries such lost creatures to prison. "Why 
 should not my love keep her the purest of women? Why 
 abandon her to evil and to vice without holding out a resc iinfi: 
 hand to her?" 
 
 The idea of this mission pleased him. Love makes a gain 
 of everything. Nothing tempts a young man more than to 
 play the part of a good genius to a woman. There is some- 
 thing inexplicably romantic in such an enterprise which ap- 
 peals to a highly-strung soul. Is it not the utmost stretch of 
 devotion under the loftiest and most engaging aspect? Is 
 there not something grand in the thought that we love enough 
 still to love on when the love of others dwindles and dies ? 
 
 Hippolyte sat down in his studio, gazed at his picture 
 without doing anything to it, seeing the figures through tears 
 that swelled in his eyes, holding his brush in his hand, going 
 up to the canvas as if to soften down an effect, but not touch- 
 ing it. Night fell, and he was still in this attitude. Roused 
 from his moodiness by the darkness, he went downstairs, met 
 
152 
 
 THE PURSE 
 
 the old admiral on the way, looked darkly at him as he bowed, 
 and Hed. 
 
 He had intended going in to see the ladies, but the sight 
 of Adelaide's protector froze his heart and dispelled his 
 purpose. For the hundredth time he wondered what interest 
 could bring this old prodigal, with his eighty thousand francs 
 a year, to this fourth story, where he lost about forty francs 
 every evening ; and he thought he could guess what it was. 
 
 The next and following days Hippolyte threw himself into 
 his work, and to try to conquer his passion by the swift rush 
 of ideas and the ardor of composition. He half succeeded. 
 Study consoled him, though it could not smother the memories 
 of so many tender hours spent with Adelaide. 
 
 One evening, as he left his studio, he saw the door of the 
 ladies' rooms half open. Somebody was standing in the re- 
 cess of the window, and the position of the door and the 
 staircase made it impossible that the painter should pass 
 ivithout seeing Adelaide. He bowed coldly, with a glance 
 of supreme indifference; but judging of the girl's suffering 
 by his own, he felt an inward shudder as he reflected on the 
 bitterness which that look and that coldness must produce 
 in a loving heart. To crown the most delightful feast which 
 ever brought joy to two pure souls, by eight days of disdain, of 
 the deepest and most utter contempt ! — A frightful conclu- 
 sion. And perhaps the purse had been found, perhaps Ade- 
 laide had looked for her friend every evening. 
 
 This simple and natural idea filled the lover with fresh 
 remorse; he asked himself whether the proofs of attachment 
 given him by the young girl, the delightful talks, full of 
 the love that had so charmed him, did not deserve at least 
 an inquiry; were not worthy of some justification. Ashamed 
 of having resisted the promptings of his heart for a whole 
 week, and feeling himself almost a criminal in this mental 
 struggle, he called the same evening on Madame de Eouville. 
 
 All his suspicions, all his evil thoughts vanished at the 
 sight of the young girl, who had grown pale and thin. 
 
 ^'Good heavens! what is the matter?" he asked her, after 
 greeting the Baroness. 
 
THE PURSE 
 
 153 
 
 Adelaide made no reply, but she gave him a look of deep 
 melancholy, a sad, dejected look, which pained him. 
 
 "You have, no doubt, been working hard,-' said the old lady. 
 "You are altered. We are the cause of your seclusion. That 
 portrait had delayed some pictures essential to your reputa- 
 tion." 
 
 Hippolyte was glad to find so good an excuse for his rude- 
 ness. /' 
 
 "Yes,'' he said, "I have been very busy, but I have been 
 Buffering " 
 
 At these words Adelaide raised her head, looked at her 
 lover, and her anxious eyes had now no hint of reproach. 
 
 "You must have thought us quite indifferent to any good 
 or ill that may befall you ?" said the old lady. 
 
 "I was wrong," he replied. "Still, there are forms of pain 
 which we know not how to confide to any one, even to a 
 friendship of older date than that with which you honor 
 me." 
 
 "The sincerity and strength of friendship are not to be 
 measured by time. I have seen old friends who had not a 
 tear to bestow on misfortune," said the Baroness, nodding; 
 sadly. 
 
 "But you — what ails you?" the young man asked Ade- 
 laide. 
 
 "Oh, nothing," replied the Baroness. "Adelaide has sat up 
 late for some nights to finish some little piece of woman's 
 Work, and would not listen to me when I told her that a day 
 more or less did not matter " 
 
 Hippolyte was not listening. As he looked at these tw(» 
 noble, calm faces, he blushed for his suspicions, an.d ascribed 
 the loss of his purse to some unknown accident. 
 
 This was a delicious evening to him, and perhaps to her 
 (too. There are some secrets which young souls understand 
 so well. Adelaide could read Hippolyte's thoughts. Though 
 he could not confess his misdeeds, the painter knew them, 
 and he had come back to his mistress more in love, and more 
 affectionate, trying thus to purchase her tacit forgiveness. 
 
154 
 
 THE PURSE 
 
 Adelaide was enjoying such perfect, such sweet happiness, 
 that she did not think she had paid too dear for it with all 
 the grief that had so cruelly crushed her soul. And yet, this 
 true concord of hearts, this understanding so full of magic 
 charm, was disturbed by a little speech of Madame de Eou- 
 ville's. 
 
 "Let us have our little game," she said, "for my old friend 
 Kergarouet will not let me off." 
 
 These words revived all the young painter's fears; he col- 
 ored as he looked at Adelaide's mother, but he saw nothing 
 in her countenance but the expression of the frankest good- 
 nature; no double meaning marred its charm; its keenness 
 was not perfidious, its humor seemed kindly, and no trace of 
 remorse disturbed its equanimity. 
 
 He sat down to the card-table. Adelaide took side with 
 the painter, saying that he did not know piquet, and needed 
 n- partner. 
 
 All through the game Madame de Eouville and her daugh- 
 ter exchanged looks of intelligence, which alarmed Hippolyte 
 all the more because he was winning ; but at last a final hand 
 left the lovers in the old lady's debt. 
 
 To feel for some money in his pocket the painter took his 
 hands off the table, and he then saw before him a purse which 
 Adelaide had slipped in front of him without his noticing it ; 
 1;he poor child had the old one in her hand, and, to keep her 
 i?ountenance, was looking into it for the money to pay her 
 mother. The blood rushed to Hippolyte's heart with such 
 force that he was near fainting. 
 
 The new purse, substituted for his own, and which con- 
 tained his fifteen gold louis, was worked with gilt beads. The 
 rings and tassels bore witness to Adelaide's good taste, and 
 she had no doubt spent all her little hoard in ornamenting 
 this pretty piece of work. It was impossible to say with 
 greater delicacy that the painter's gift could only be repaid 
 by some proof of affection. 
 
 Hippolyte, overcome with happiness, turned to look at 
 .Adelaide and her mother, and saw that they were treinulous 
 
THE PURSE 
 
 155 
 
 with pleasure and delight at their little trick. He felt him- 
 self mean, sordid, a fool; he longed to punish himself, to 
 rend his heart. A few tears rose to his eyes ; by an irresistible 
 impulse he sprang up, clasped Adelaide in his arms, 
 pressed her to his heart, and stole a kiss; then with the sim- 
 ple heartiness of an artist, "I ask her for my wife !" he ex- 
 claimed, looking at the Baroness. 
 
 Adelaide looked at him with half-wrathful eyes, and Mad- 
 ame de Rouville, somewhat astonished, was considering her 
 reply, when the scene was interrupted by a ring at the bell. 
 The old vice-admiral came in, followed by his shadow, and 
 Madame Schinner. Having guessed the cause of the grief 
 her son vainly endeavored to conceal, Hippolyte's mother had 
 made inquiries among her friends concerning Adelaide. Very 
 justly alarmed by the calumnies which weighed on the young 
 girl, unknown to the Comte de Kergarouet, whose name she 
 learned from the porter's wife, she went to report them to the 
 vice-admiral ; and he, in his rage, declared "he would crop all 
 the scoundrels' ears for them." 
 
 Then, prompted by his wrath, he went on to explain to 
 Madame Schinner the secret of his losing intentionally at 
 cards, because the Baronne's pride left him none but these 
 ingenious means of assisting her. 
 
 When Madame Schinner had paid her respects to Madame 
 de Rouville, the Baroness looked at the Comte de Kergarouet, 
 at the Chevalier du Halga— the friend of the departed Comt- 
 esse de Kergarouet— at Hippolyte, and Adelaide, and said, 
 with the grace that comes from the heart, "So we are a family 
 party this evening." 
 
 Paris, May 183X 
 
MADAME FIRMIANI 
 
 To my dear Alexandre de Berny, from his old friend 
 De Balzac. 
 
 Many tales, rich in situations, or made dramatic by the 
 endless sport of chance, carry their plot in themselves, and 
 can be related artistically or simply by any lips without the 
 smallest loss of the beauty of the subject; but there are 
 some incidents of human life to which only the accents of 
 the heart can give life; there are certain anatomical details, 
 so to speak, of which the delicacy appears only under the 
 most skilful infusions of mind. Again, there are portraits 
 which demand a soul, and are nothing without the more 
 ethereal features of the responsive countenance. Finally, 
 there are certain things which we know not how to say, or to 
 depict, without I know not what unconceived harmonies that 
 are under the influence of a day or an hour, of a happy con- 
 junction of celestial signs, or of some occult moral predisposi- 
 tion. 
 
 Such revelations as these are absolutely required for the 
 telling of this simple story, in which I would fain interest 
 some of those naturally melancholy and pensive souls which 
 are fed on bland emotions. If the writer, like a surgeon by 
 the side of a dying friend, has become imbued with a sort 
 of respect for the subject he is handling, why should not the 
 reader share this inexplicable feeling? Is it so difficult to 
 throw oneself into that vague, nervous melancholy which sheds 
 gray hues on all our surroundings, which is half an illness, 
 though its languid suffering is sometimes a pleasure? 
 
 If you are thinking by chance of the dear friends you have 
 lost; if 3^ou are alone, and it is night, or the day is dying, 
 
 (157) 
 
158 
 
 MADAME FIRMIANI 
 
 read this narrative ; otherwise, throw the book aside, here. 
 If yon have never buried some kind aunt, an invalid or poor, 
 you will not understand these pages. To some, they will be 
 odorous as of musk; to others, they will be as colorless, as 
 strictly virtuous as those of Florian. In short, the reader 
 must have known the luxury of tears; must have felt the 
 wordless grief of a memory that drifts lightly by, bearing a 
 shade that is dear but remote ; he must possess some of those 
 remembrances that make us at the same time regret those 
 whom the earth has swallowed, and smile over vanished joys. 
 
 And now the author would have you believe that for all 
 the wealth of England he would not extort from poetry even 
 one of her fictions to add grace to this narrative. This is a 
 true story, on which you may pour out the treasure of your 
 sensibilities, if you have any. 
 
 In these days, our language has as many dialects as there 
 are men in the great human family. And it is a really curious 
 and interesting thing to listen to the different views or ver- 
 sions of one and the same thing, or event, as given by the 
 various species which make up the monograph of the 
 Parisian — the Parisian being taken as a generic term. Thus 
 you might ask a man of the matter-of-fact type, "Do you 
 know Madame Firmiani?" and this man would interpret 
 Madame Firmiani by such an inventory as this: "A large 
 house in the Eue du Bac, rooms handsomely furnished, fine 
 pictures, a hundred thousand francs a year in good securities, 
 and a husband who was formerly receiver-general in the de- 
 partment of Montenotte." Having thus spoken, j'^our matter- 
 of-fact man — stout and roundabout, almost always dressed in 
 black — draws up his lower lip, so as to cover the upper lip, 
 and nods his head, as much as to say, "Very respectable peo- 
 ple, there is nothing to be said against them." Ask him no 
 more. Your matter-of-fact people state everything in figures, 
 dividends, or real estate — a great word in their dictionary. 
 
 Turn to your right, go and question that young man, wha 
 belongs to the lounger specie: and repeat your inquiry. 
 
MADAME FIRMIANI 
 
 159 
 
 "Madame Firmiani says he. "Yes, yes, I know her very 
 well. I go to her evenings. She receives on Wednesdays; a 
 very good house to know." Madame Firmiani is always meta- 
 morphosed into a house. The house is not a mere mass of 
 stones architecturally put together ; no, this word, in the lan- 
 guage of the lounger, has no equivalent. And here your 
 lounger, a dry-looking man, with a pleasant smile, saying 
 clever nothings, hut always with more acquired wit than 
 natural wit, bends to your ear, and says with a knowing air 
 "I never saw Monsieur Firmiani. His social position con- 
 sists in managing estates in Italy. But Madame Firmiani 
 is French, and spends her income as a Parisian should. Sh(i 
 gives excellent tea ! It is one of the few houses where you 
 really can amuse yourself, and where everything they giv(3 
 you is exquisite. It is very difficult to get introduced, and 
 the best society is to be seen in her drawing-rooms." Then 
 the lounger emphasizes his last words by gravely taking a 
 pinch of snuff; he applies it to his nose in little dabs, and 
 seems to be saying: "I go to the house, but do not count on 
 my introducing you." 
 
 To folks of this type Madame Firmiani keeps a sort of inn 
 without a sign. 
 
 "Why on earth can you want to go to Madame Firmiani's? 
 It is as dull there as it is at Court. Of what use are brains 
 if they do not keep you out of such drawing-rooms, where, 
 with poetry such as is now current, you hear the most trivial 
 little ballad just hatched out." 
 
 You have asked one of your friends who comes under the 
 class of petty autocrats — men who would like to have the 
 universe under lock and key, and have nothing done without 
 their leave. They are miserable at other people's enjoyment, 
 can forgive nothing but vice, wrong-doing, and infirmities, 
 and want nothing but proteges. Aristocrats by taste, they 
 are republicans out of spite, simply to discover many inferiors 
 among their equals. 
 
 "Oh, Madame Firmiani, my dear fellow, is one of those 
 adorable women whom Nature feels to be a sufficient excuse 
 
160 
 
 MADAME FIRMIANI 
 
 for all the ugly ones she has created by mistake; she is be- 
 witching, she is kind ! I should like to be in power, to be 
 king, to have millions of money, solely (and three words are 
 whispered in your ear). Shall I introduce you to her?" 
 
 This young man is a Schoolboy, known for his audacious 
 bearing among men and his extreme shyness in private. 
 
 ''^Madame Firmiani cries another, twirling his cane in 
 the air. "I will tell you what I think of her. She is a 
 woman of between thirty and thirty-five, face a little passee, 
 fine eyes, a flat figure, a worn contralto voice, dresses a great 
 deal, rouges a little, manners charming; in short, my dear 
 fellow, the remains of a pretty woman which are still worthy 
 of a passion." 
 
 This verdict is pronounced by a specimen of the genus 
 'Coxcomb, who, having just breakfasted, does not weigh his 
 words, and is going out riding. At such moments a coxcomb 
 is pitiless. 
 
 "She has a collection of magnificent pictures in her house. 
 Go and see her," says another; "nothing can be finer." 
 
 You have come upon the species Amateur. This indi- 
 vidual quits you to go to Perignon's, or to Tripet's. To him 
 Madame Firmiani is a number of painted canvases. 
 
 A Wife. — "Madame Firmiani? I will not have you go 
 there." This phrase is the most suggestive view of all. — Mad- 
 ame Firmiani ! A dangerous woman ! A siren ! She dresses 
 well, has good taste ; she spoils the night's rest of every wife. 
 — The speaker is of the species Shrew. 
 
 An Attache to an Embassy. — "Madame Firmiani? 
 From Antwerp, is not she? I saw that woman, very hand- 
 some, about ten years ago. She was then at Rome." 
 
 Men of the order of Attaches have a mania for utterances 
 a la Talleyrand, their wit is often so subtle that their per- 
 ception is imperceptible. They are like those billiard players 
 who miss the balls with infinite skill. These men are not 
 generally great talkers; but when they talk it is of nothing 
 less than Spain, Vienna, Italy, or Saint-Petersburg. The 
 names of countries act on them like springs ; you press them, 
 and the machinery Dlavs all its tunes. 
 
MADAME FIRMIANI 
 
 161 
 
 ''Does not that Madame Firmiani see a great deal of the 
 Faubourg Saint-Germain?" This is asked by a person who 
 desires claims to distinction. She adds a de to everybody's 
 name — to Monsieur Dupin, senior, to Monsieur Lafayette; 
 she flings it right and left and spatters people with it. She 
 spends her life in anxieties as to what is correct; but, for her 
 sins, she lives in the unfashionable Marais, and her husband 
 was an attorney — but an attorney in the King's Court. 
 
 "Madame Firmiani, monsieur ? I do not know her." This 
 man is of the class of Dukes. He recognizes no woman who 
 has not been presented. Excuse him ; he was created Duke by 
 Napoleon. 
 
 '''Madame Firmiani? Was she not a singer at the Italian 
 opera house?" — A man of the genus Simpleton. The indi- 
 viduals of this genus must have an answer to everything. 
 They would rather speak calumnies than be silent. 
 
 Two OLD Ladies {the wives of retired lawyers). — The 
 First (she has a cap with bows of ribbon, her face is wrinkled, 
 her nose sharp, she holds a prayer-book, and her voice is 
 harsh). — "What was her maiden name? — this Madame 
 Firmiani ?" 
 
 The Second (she has a little red face like a lady-apple, 
 and a gentle voice). — "She was a Cadignan, my dear, niec(i 
 of the old Prince de Cadignan, and cousin, consequently, to 
 the Due de Maufrigneuse." 
 
 Madame Firmiani then is a Cadignan. Bereft of virtues, 
 fortune, and youth, she would still be a Cadignan; that, like 
 u prejudice, is always rich and living. 
 
 An Eccentric. — "My dear fellow, I never saw any clogj/ 
 in her ante-room; you may go to her house without compro- 
 mising yourself, and play there without hesitation; for if 
 there should be any rogues, they will be people of quality, 
 consequently there is no quarreling." 
 
 An Old Man of the species Observer. — "You go to 
 Madame Firmiani's, my dear fellow, and you find a handsome 
 woman lounging indolently by the fire. She vnll scarcely 
 move from her chair; she rises only to greet women, or am- 
 
162 
 
 MADAME FIRMiANl 
 
 bassadors, or dukes — people of importance. She is very 
 gracious, she charms you, she talks well, and likes to talk of 
 everything. She bears eYery indication of a passionate soul, 
 but she is credited with too many adorers to have a lover. 
 If suspicion rested on only two or three intimate visitors, 
 we might know which was her cavaliere servente. But she is 
 all mystery; she is married, and we have never seen her hus- 
 band ; Monsieur Firmiani is purely a creature of fancy, like 
 the third horse we «re made to pay for when traveling post, 
 and which we never see; Madame, if you believe the profes- 
 sionals, has the finest contralto voice in Europe, and has not 
 sung three times since she came to Paris; she receives num- 
 bers of people, and goes nowhere.'^ 
 
 The Observer speaks as an oracle. His words, his anec- 
 dotes, his quotations must all be accepted as truth, or you risk 
 being taken for a man without knowledge of the world, with- 
 out capabilities. He will slander you lightly in twenty draw- 
 ing-rooms, where he is as essential as the first piece in the 
 ))ill — pieces so often played to the benches, but which once 
 upon a time were successful. The Observer is a man of forty, 
 never dines at home, and professes not to be dangerous to 
 women; he wears powder and a maroon-colored coat; he can 
 .always have a seat in various boxes at the Theatre des 
 "Bouffons. He is sometimes mistaken for a parasite, but ho 
 has held too high positions to be suspected of sponging, and, 
 indeed, possesses an estate, in a department of which the name 
 has never leaked out. 
 
 ^'Madame Firmiani? Why, my dear boy, she was a mis- 
 tress of Murat's.'^ This gentleman is a Contradictory. They 
 supply the errata to every memory, rectify every fact, bet 
 you a hundred to one, are cock-sure of everything. You 
 catch them out in a single evening in flagrant delicts of 
 ubiquity. They assert that they were in Paris at the time 
 of Mallet's conspiracy, forgetting that half an hour before 
 they had crossed the Beresina. The Contradictories are al- 
 most all members of the Legion of Honor; they talk very 
 loud, have receding foreheads, and play high. 
 
MADAME FIRMIANI 
 
 163 
 
 "Madame Firmiani, a hundred thousand francs a year? 
 Are you mad? Keally some people scatter thousands a year 
 with the liberality of authors, to whom it costs nothing to give 
 their heroines handsome fortunes. But Madame Firmiani 
 is a flirt who ruined a young fellow the other day, and hin- 
 dered him from making a very good marriage. If she were 
 not handsome, she would be penniless.^' 
 
 This speaker you recognize : he is one of the Envious, and 
 we will not sketch his least feature. The species is as well- 
 known as that of the domestic felis. How is the perpetuity 
 of envy to be explained? A vice which is wholly unprofit- 
 able ! 
 
 People of fashion, literary people, very good people, and 
 people of every kind were, in the month of January 1824, 
 giving out so many different opinions on Madame Firmiani 
 that it would be tiresome to report them all. We have only 
 aimed at showing that a man wishing to know her, without 
 choosing, or being able, to go to her house, would have been 
 equally justified in the belief that she was a widow or a 
 wife — silly or witty, virtuous or immoral, rich or poor, gentle 
 or devoid of soul, handsome or ugly; in fact, there were as 
 many Mesdames Firmiani as there are varieties in social life, 
 i»r sects in the Catholic Church. Frightful thought! We 
 are all like lithographed plates, of which an endless number 
 of copies are taken off by slander. These copies resemble or 
 differ from the original by touches so imperceptibly slight 
 that, but for the calumnies of our friends and the witticisms 
 of newspapers, reputation would depend on the balance struck 
 by each hearer between the limping truth and the lies to 
 which Parisian wit lends wings. 
 
 Madame Firmiani, like many other women of dignity and 
 noble pride, who close their hearts as a sanctuary and scorn 
 the world, might have been very hardly judged by Monsieur 
 de Bourbonne, an old gentleman of fortune, who had thought 
 a good deal about her during the past winter. As it hap- 
 pened, this gentleman belonged to the Provincial Land- 
 owner class, folks who are accustomed to inquire into every- 
 
 '12 
 
164 
 
 MADAME FIRMIANI 
 
 thing, and to make bargains with peasants. In this business 
 a man grows keen-witted in spite of himself, as a soldier, in 
 'the long run, acquires the courage of routine. This inquirer, 
 a native of Touraine, and not easily satisfied by the Paris 
 dialects, was a very honorable gentleman who rejoiced in a 
 nephew, his sole heir, for whom he planted his poplars. Their 
 more than natural affection gave rise to m.uch evil-speaking, 
 which individuals of the various species of Tourangeau 
 formulated with much mother wit; but it would be useless 
 to record it; it would pale before that of Parisian tongues. 
 When a man can think of his heir without displeasure, as 
 he sees fine rows of poplars improving every day, his affec- 
 tion increases with each spadeful of earth he turns at the 
 foot of his trees. Though such phenomena of sensibility 
 may be uncommon, they still are to be met with in Tour- 
 aine. 
 
 This much-loved nephew, whose name was Octave de 
 Camps, was descended from the famous Abbe de Camps, so 
 well known to the learned, or to the bibliomaniacs, which is 
 not the same thing. 
 
 Provincial folks have a disagreeable habit of regarding 
 young men who sell their reversions with a sort of respectable 
 horror. This Gothic prejudice is bad for speculation, which 
 the Government has hitherto found it necessary to encourage. 
 Now, without consulting his uncle, Octave had on a sudden 
 disposed of an estate in favor of the speculative builders. 
 The chateau of Yillaines would have been demolished but foi 
 the offers made by his old uncle to the representatives of 
 the demolishing fraternity. To add to the testator's wrath . 
 a friend of Octave's, a distant relation, one of those cousins 
 irith small wealth and great cunning, who lead their pru- 
 dent neighbors to say, "I should not like to go to law with 
 him !" had called, by chance, on Monsieur de Bourbonne and 
 informed him that his nephew was ruined. Monsieur Octave 
 de Camps, after dissipating his fortune for a certain 
 Madame Firmiani, and not daring to confess his sins, had 
 been reduced to giving lessons in mathematics, pending 
 
MADAME FIHMIANI 
 
 165 
 
 his coining into his uncle's leavings. This distant cousin — 
 a sort of Charles Moor — had not been ashamed of giving 
 this disastrous news to the old country gentleman at the 
 hour when, sitting before his spacious hearth, he was digest- 
 ing a copious provincial dinner. But would-be legatees do 
 not get rid of an uncle so easily as they could wish. This 
 uncle, thanks to his obstinacy, refusing to believe the dis- 
 tant cousin, came out victorious over the indigestion brought 
 on by the biography of his nephew. Some blows fall on the 
 heart, others on the brain; the blow struck by the distant 
 cousin fell on the stomach, and produced little effect, as the 
 good man had a strong one. 
 
 Monsieur de Bourbonne, as a worthy disciple of Saint 
 Thomas, came to Paris without telling Octave, and tried to 
 get information as to his heir's insolvency. The old gentle- 
 man, who had friends in the Faubourg Saint- Germain — 
 the Listomeres, the Lenoncourts, and the Vandenesses — 
 heard so much slander, so much that was true, and so much 
 that was false concerning Madame Firmiani, that he deter- 
 mined to call on her, under the name of Monsieur de Roux- 
 ellay, the name of his place. The prudent old man took care, 
 in going to study Octave's mistress — as she was said to be — 
 to choose an evening when he knew that the young man was 
 engaged on work to be well paid for; for Madame Firmiani 
 was always at home to her young friend, a circumstance that 
 no one could account for. As to Octave's ruin, that, un- 
 fortunately, was no fiction. 
 
 Monsieur de Eouxellay was not at all like a stage uncle. 
 As an old musketeer, a man of the best society, who had his 
 successes in his day, he knew how to introduce himself with 
 a courtly air, remembered the polished manners of the past, 
 had a pretty wit, and understood almost all the roll of no- 
 bility. Though he loved the Bourbons with noble frankness, 
 believed in God as gentlemen believe, and read only the 
 Quotidienne, he was by no means so ridiculous as the Liberals 
 of his department would have wished. He could hold his 
 ovvn with men about the Court, so long as he was not expected 
 
166 
 
 MADAME FIRMIANI 
 
 to talk of Mose, or the play, or romanticism, or local color, 
 or railways. He had not got beyond Monsieur de Voltaire, 
 Monsieur le Comte de Buffon, Peyronnet, and the Chevalier 
 Gluck, the Queen's private musician. 
 
 "Madame," said he to the Marquise de Listomere, to whom 
 he had given his arm to go into Madame Firmiani's room, 
 "if this woman is my nephew's mistress, I pity her. How can 
 she bear to live in the midst of luxury and know that he is in 
 a garret? Has she no soul? Octave is a fool to have in- 
 vested the price of the estate of Villaines in the heart of 
 a 
 
 Monsieur de Bourbonne was of a Fossil species, and spoke 
 only the language of a past day. 
 
 "But suppose he had lost it at play?'' 
 
 "Well, madame, he would have had the pleasure of play- 
 ing."^ 
 
 "You think he has had no pleasure for his money? — ^Look, 
 here is Madame Firmiani." 
 
 The old uncle's brightest memories paled at the sight of 
 his nephew's supposed mistress. His anger died in a polit<i 
 speech wrung from him by the presence of Madame Firmiani. 
 By one of these chances which come only to pretty women, 
 it was a moment when all her beauties shone with particular 
 brilliancy, the result, perhaps, of the glitter of waxlights, 
 of an exquisitely simple dress, of an indefinable reflection 
 from the elegance in which she lived and moved. Only long 
 study of the petty revolutions of an evening party in a Paris 
 salon can enable one to appreciate the imperceptible shades 
 that can tinge and change a woman's face. There are mo- 
 ments when, pleased with her dress, feeling herself brilliant, 
 happy at being admired and seeing herself the queen of a 
 room full of remarkable men all smiling at her, a Parisian 
 is conscious of her beauty and grace; she grows the lovelier 
 by all the looks she meets ; they give her animation, but their 
 mute homage is transmitted by subtle glances to the man she 
 loves. In such a moment a woman is invested, as it were, 
 with supernatural power, and becomes a witch, an uncon- 
 
MADAME FIRMIANI 
 
 167 
 
 Bcious coquette; she involuntarily inspires the passion which 
 is a secret intoxication to herself, she has smiles and looks 
 that are fascinating. If this excitement which comes from 
 the soul lends attractiveness even to ugly women, with what 
 splendor does it not clothe a naturally elegant creature, finely 
 made, fair, fresh, bright-eyed, and, above all, dressed with 
 such taste as artists and even her most spiteful rivals must 
 admit. 
 
 Have you ever met, for your happiness, some woman whose 
 harmonious tones give to her speech the charm that is no less 
 conspicuous in her manners, who knows how to talk and to 
 be silent, who cares for you with delicate feeling, whose words 
 are happily chosen and her language pure? Her banter 
 flatters you, her criticism does not sting; she neither preaches 
 nor disputes, but is interested in leading a discussion, and 
 stops it at the right moment. Her manner is friendly and 
 gay, her politeness is unforced, her eagerness to please is not 
 servile ; she reduces respect to a mere gentle shade ; she never 
 tires you, and leaves you satisfied with her and yourself. You 
 will see her gracious presence stamped on the things she ci^i- 
 lects about her. In her home everj^thing charms the eye, and 
 you breathe, as it seems, your native air. This woman is quite 
 natural. You never feel an eifort, she flaunts nothing, her 
 feelings are expressed with simplicity because they are 
 genuine. Though candid, she never wounds the most sensi- 
 tive pride; she accepts men as God made them, pitying the 
 vicious, forgiving defects and absurdities, sympathizing with 
 every age, and vexed with nothing because she has the tact 
 to forefend everything. At once tender and lively, she first 
 constrains and then consoles you. You love her so truly, that 
 if this angel does wrong, you are ready to Justify her.— 
 Then you know Madame Firmiani. 
 
 By the time old Bourbonne had talked with this woman 
 for a quarter of an hour, sitting by her side, his nephew 
 was absolved. He understood that, true or false. Octave's 
 connection with Madame Firmiani no doubt covered some 
 mystery. Returning to the illusions of his youth, and judg- 
 
168 
 
 MADAME FlRMIANl 
 
 ing of Madame Firmiani's heart by her beauty, the old gen- 
 tleman thought that a woman so sure of her dignity as she 
 seemed, was incapable of a base action. Her black eyes 
 spoke of so much peace of mind, the lines of her face were 
 so noble, the forms so pure, and the passion of which she 
 was accused seemed to weigh so little on her heart, that, as 
 he admired all the pledges given to love and to virtue by 
 that adorable countenance, the old man said to himself, ^^y 
 nephew has committed some f olly/^ 
 
 Madame Firmiani owned to twenty-five. But the Matter- 
 of -facts could prove that, having been married in 1813 at 
 the age of sixteen, she must be at least eight-and-twenty in 
 1825. Nevertheless the same persons declared that she had 
 never at any period of her life been so desirable, so perfectly 
 a woman. She had no children, and had never had any ; the 
 hypothetical Firmiani, a respectable man of forty in 1813, 
 had, it was said, only his name and fortune to offer her. 
 So Madame Firmiani had come to the age when a Parisian 
 best understands what passion is, and perhaps longs for it 
 innocently in her unemployed hours; she had everything 
 that the world can sell, or lend, or give. The Attaches de- 
 clared she knew everything, the Contradictories said she had 
 yet many things to learn ; the Observers noticed that her hands 
 were very white, her foot very small, her movements a little 
 too undulating; but men of every species envied or disputed 
 Octave's good fortune, agreeing that she was the most aris- 
 tocratic beauty in Paris. 
 
 Still young, rich, a perfect musician, witty, exquisite ; wel- 
 comed, for the sake of the Cadignans, to whom she was re- 
 lated through her mother, by the Princesse de Blamont- 
 Chauvry, the oracle of the aristocratic quarter; beloved by 
 her rivals the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse her cousin, the 
 Marquise d'Espard, and Madame de Macumer, she flattered 
 every vanity which feeds or excites love. And, indeed, she 
 was the object of too many desires not to be the victim of 
 fashionable attraction and those delightful calumnies which 
 are wittily hinted behind a fan or in a v/hispered aside. 
 
MADAME FIRM I AN I 
 
 169 
 
 Hence the remarks with which this story opened were neces- 
 sary to mark the contrast between the real Firmiani and 
 the Firmiani known to the world. Though some women for- 
 gave her for being happy, others could not overlook her re- 
 spectability; now there is nothing so terrible, especially in 
 Paris, as suspicion without foundation; it is impossible to 
 kill it. 
 
 This sketch of a personality so admirable by nature can 
 only give a feeble idea of it; it would need the brush of an 
 Ingres to represent the dignity of the brow, the mass of 
 fine hair, the majesty of the eyes, all the thoughts betrayed 
 by the varying hues of the complexion. There was some- 
 thing of everything in this woman; poets could see in her 
 both Joan of Arc and Agnes Sorel; but there was also the 
 anknown woman — the soul hidden behind this decep- 
 tive mask — ^the soul of Eve, the wealth of evil, and the 
 treasures of goodness, wrong and resignation, crime and self- 
 .■^i-acrifice — the Dona Julia and Haidee of Byron's Don Juan. 
 
 The old soldier very boldly remained till the last in Mad- 
 ame Firmiani's drawing-room; she found him quietly seated 
 in an armchair, and staying with the pertinacity of a fly 
 that must be killed to be got rid of. The clock marked two 
 in the morning. 
 
 "Madame," said the old gentleman, just as Madame 
 Firmiani rose in the hope of making her guest understand 
 that it was her pleasure that he should go. "Madame, I am 
 Monsieur Octave de Camps' uncle." 
 
 Madame Firmiani at once sat down again, and her agita- 
 tion was evident. In spite of his perspicacity, the planter 
 of poplars could not make up his mind whether shame or 
 pleasure made her turn pale. There are pleasures which do 
 not exist without a little coy bashfulness — delightful emo- 
 tions which the chastest soul would fain keep behind a veil. 
 The more sensitive a wom^an is, the more she lives to conceal 
 her soul's greatest joys. Many women, incomprehensible in 
 their exquisite caprices, at times long to hear a name spoken 
 by all the world, while they sometimes would sooner bury it 
 
170 
 
 MADAME FIRMIANI 
 
 in their hearts. Old Bourbonne did not read Madame 
 Firmiani's agitation quite in this light; but forgive him; 
 the country gentleman was suspicious. 
 
 ^'Indeed, monsieur?" said Madame Firmiani, wi^h one of 
 those clear and piercing looks in which we men can never 
 see anything, because they question us too keenly. 
 
 "Indeed, madame; and do you know what I have been 
 told — I, in the depths of the country? That my nephew 
 has ruined himself for you; and the unhappy boy is in a 
 garret, while you live here in gold and silks. You will, I 
 hope, forgive my rustic frankness, for it may be useful to 
 you to be informed of the slander.'^ 
 
 "Stop, monsieur," said Madame Firmiani, interrupting 
 the gentleman with an imperious gesture, "I know all that. 
 You are too polite to keep the conversation to this subject 
 when I beg you to change it. You are too gallant, in the 
 old-fashioned sense of the word," she added, with a slightly 
 ironical emphasis, "not to acknowledge that you have no 
 right to cross-question me. However, it is ridiculous in me 
 to justify myself. I hope you have a good enough opinion 
 of my character to believe in the utter contempt I feel for 
 money, though I was married without any fortune what- 
 ever to a man who had an immense fortune. I do not know 
 whether your nephew is rich or poor; if I have received 
 him, if I still receive him, it is because I regard him as 
 worthy to move in the midst of my friends. All my friends, 
 monsieur, respect each other; they know that I am not so 
 philosophical as to entertain people whom I do not esteem. 
 That, perhaps, shows a lack of charity; but my guardian 
 angel has preserved in me, to this day, an intense aversion 
 for gossip and dishonor." 
 
 Though her voice was not quite firm at the beginning of 
 this reply, the last words were spoken by Madame Firmiani 
 with the cool decision of Celimene rallying the Misanthrope. 
 
 "Madame," the Count resumed in a broken voice, "I am 
 an old man — I am almost a father to Octave — I therefore 
 must humbly crave your pardon beforehand for the only 
 
MADAME FIRMIANI 
 
 171 
 
 qaestion I shall be so bold as to ask you ; and I give you my 
 word of honor as a gentleman that your reply will die here," 
 and he laid his hand on his heart with a really religious 
 gesture. "Does gossip speak the truth ; do you love Octave-?" 
 
 "Monsieur/' said she, "I should answer any one else with 
 a look. But you, since you are almost a father to Monsieur 
 de Camps, you I will ask what you would think of a woman 
 who, in reply to your question, should say. Yes. To confess 
 one's love to the man we love — when he loves us — well, well ; 
 when we are sure of being loved for ever, believe me, monsieur, 
 it is an effort to us and a reward to him ; but to any one else ! 
 
 if 
 
 Madame Firmiani did not finish her sentence; she rose, 
 bowed to the good gentleman, and vanished into her private 
 rooms, where the sound of doors opened and shut in succes- 
 sion had language to the ears of the poplar planter. 
 
 "Damn it !" said he to himself, "what a woman ! She is 
 tiiither a very cunning hussy or an angel;" and he went 
 down to his hired fly in the courtyard, where the horses were 
 pawing the pavement in silence. The coachman was asleep, 
 after having cursed his customer a hundred times. 
 
 Next morning, by about eight o'clock, the old gentleman 
 was mounting the stairs of a house in the Kue de I'Observance, 
 where dwelt Octave de Camps. If there was in this world a 
 man amazed, it was the young professor on seeing his uncle. 
 The key was in the door. Octave's lamp was still burning; 
 he had sat up all night. 
 
 "Now, you rascal," said Monsieur de Bourbonne, seating 
 himself in an armchair. "How long has it been the fashion 
 to make fools (speaking mildly) of uncles who have twenty- 
 six thousand francs a year in good land in Touraine? and 
 that, when you are sole heir? Do you know that fo'l^nerly 
 such relations were treated with respect ? Pray, have you any 
 fault to find with me? Have I bungled my business as an 
 uncle ? Have I demanded your respect ? Have I ever refused 
 you money? Have I shut my door in your face, saying you 
 had only come to see how I was? Have you not the most ac- 
 
172 
 
 MADAME FIRMIANI 
 
 commodating, the least exacting uncle in France ? — I will not 
 say in Europe, it would be claiming too much. You write 
 to me, or you don't write. I live on your professions of af- 
 fection. I am laying out the prettiest estate in the neighbor- 
 hood, a place that is the object of envy in all the department ; 
 but I do not mean to leave it you till the latest date pos- 
 sible — a weakness that is very pardonable ! And my gentle- 
 man sells his property, is lodged like a groom, has no servants, 
 
 keeps no style " 
 
 "My dear uncle " 
 
 "It is not a case of uncle, but of nephew. I have a right 
 to your confidence; so have it all out at once; it is the 
 easiest way, I know by experience. Have you been gambling ? 
 Have you been speculating on the Bourse? Come, say, 
 'Uncle, I am a wretch,' and we kiss and are friends. But if 
 you tell me any lie bigger than those I told at your age, I 
 will sell my property, buy an annuity, and go back to the 
 bad ways of my youth, if it is not too late." 
 
 "Uncle " 
 
 "I went last night to see your Madame Firmiani," said 
 the uncle, kissing the tips of all his fingers together. "She 
 is charming," he went on. "You have the Idng's warrant 
 and approval, and your uncle's consent, if that is any satis- 
 faction to you. As to the sanction of the Church, that I sup- 
 pose is unnecessary — the sacraments, no doubt, are too costly. 
 Come, speak out. Is it for her that you have ruined your- 
 self?" 
 
 "Yes, uncle." 
 
 "Ah! the hussy! I would have bet upon it. In my day 
 a woman of fashion could ruin a man more cleverly than 
 any of your courtesans of to-day. I saw in her a resuscitar 
 tion^.^(>^.the last century." 
 
 "Ifficlo," said Octave, in a voice that was at once sad and 
 gentle, "you are under a mistake. Madame Firmiani deserves 
 your esteem, and all the adoration of her admirers." 
 
 "So hapless youth is always the same!" said Monsieur de 
 Bourbonne. "Well, well! go on in your own way; tell me 
 
MADAME PIllMIANl 
 
 173 
 
 all the old stories once more. At the same time, you know. 
 I dare say, that I am no chicken in such matters." 
 
 "My dear uncle, here is a letter which will explain every- 
 thing," replied Octave, taking out an elegant letter-case — her 
 gift, no doubt. "When you have read it I will tell you the 
 rest, and y. >\i will know Madame Firmiani as the world knows 
 her not." 
 
 "I ha\ 3 not got my spectacles," said his uncle. "Read it 
 to me." 
 
 Octave began: "My dear love " 
 
 "Then you are very intimate with this woman?'' 
 
 "Why, yes, uncle?" 
 
 "And you have not quarreled?" 
 
 "Quarreled !" echoed Octave in surprise. "We are married 
 •r— at Gretna Green." 
 
 "Well, then, why do you dine for forty sous?" 
 
 "Let me proceed." 
 
 "Very true. I am listening." 
 
 Octave took up the letter again, and could not read cer- 
 tain passages without strong emotion. 
 
 " ^My beloved husband, you ask me the reason of my mel- 
 juicholy. Has it passed from my soul into my face, or have 
 you only guessed it ? And why should you not ? Our hearts 
 are so closely united. Besides, I cannot lie, though that 
 perhaps is a misfortune. One of the conditions of being loved 
 is, in a woman, to be always caressing and gay. Perhaps I 
 ought to deceive you; but I would not do so, not even if it 
 were to increase or to preserve the happiness you give me — 
 you lavish on me — under which you overwhelm me. Oh, m.y 
 dear, my love carries with it so much gratitude! And I 
 must love for ever, without measure. Yes., I must always 
 be proud of you. Our glory — a woman's glory — is all in the 
 man she loves. Esteem, consideration, honor, are they not 
 all his who has conquered everything? Well, and my angel 
 has fallen. Yes, my dear, your last confession has dimmed 
 my past happiness. From that moment I have felt myself 
 humbled through you — you, whom 1 believed to be the purest 
 
174 
 
 MADAME FIRMIANl 
 
 of men, as you are the tenderest and most loving. I must 
 have supreme confidence in your still childlike heart to make 
 an avowal which costs me so dear. What, poor darling, your 
 father stole his fortune, and you know it, and you keep it! 
 And you could tell me of this attorney's triumph in a room 
 full of the dumb witnesses of our love, and you are a gentle- 
 man, and you think yourself noble, and I am yours, and you 
 are two-and-twenty ! How monstrous all through ! 
 
 " ''I have sought excuses for you ; I have ascribed your in- 
 difference to your giddy youth; I know there is still much 
 of the child in you. Perhaps you have never yet thought 
 seriously of what is meant by wealth, and by honesty. Oh, 
 your laughter hurt me so much! Only think, there is a 
 family, ruined, always in grief, girls perhaps, who curse you 
 day by day, an old man who says to himself every night, 
 "I should not lack bread if Monsieur de Camps' father had 
 only been an honest man." ' " 
 
 "What !" exclaimed Monsieur de Bourbonne, interrupting 
 him, "were you such an idiot as to tell that woman the story 
 of your father's affair with the Bourgneufs? Women bettei: 
 
 understand spending a fortune than maJ^ing one " 
 
 "They understand honesty. Let me go on, uncle ! 
 " ^Octave, no power on earth is authorized to garble th(^ 
 language of honor. Look into your conscience, and ask it by 
 what name to call the action to which you owe your riches.' " 
 And the nephew looked at his uncle, who beat his head. 
 " 'I will not tell you all the thoughts that beset me ; they 
 can all be reduced to one, which is this: I cannot esteem a 
 man who knowingly soils himself for a sum of money whether 
 large or small. Five francs stolen at play, or six times a 
 hundred thousand francs obtained by legal trickery, disgrace 
 a man equally. I must tell you all: I feel myself sullied 
 by a love which till now was all my joy. From the bottom of 
 my soul there comes a voice I cannot stifle. I have wept 
 to find that my conscience is stronger than my love. You 
 might commit a crime, and I would hide you in my bosom 
 from human justice if I could; but my devotion would go 
 
MADAME FIKMIANI 
 
 175 
 
 no further. Love, my dearest, is, in a woman, llie most 
 unlimited confidence, joined to I know not what craving to 
 reverence and adore the being to whom she belongs. I have 
 never conceived of love but as a fire in which the noblest 
 feelings were yet further purified — a fire which develops them 
 to the utmost. 
 
 'I have but one thing more to say : Come to me poor, and 
 I shall love you twice as much if possible; if not, give me up. 
 If I see you no more, I know what is left to me to do. 
 
 *But, now, understand me clearly, I will not have you 
 make restitution because I desire it. Consult your conscience. 
 This is an act of justice, and must not be done as a sacrifice 
 to love. I am your wife, and not your mistress; the point 
 is not to please me, but to inspire me with the highest es- 
 teem. If I have misunderstood, if you have not clearly ex- 
 pained your father's action, in short, if you can regard your 
 fortune as legitimately acquired — and how gladly would I 
 persuade myself that you deserve no blame — decide as the 
 voice of conscience dictates ; act wholly for yourself. A man 
 who truly loves, as you love me, has too high a respect for 
 all the holy inspiration he may get from his wife to be dis- 
 honorable. 
 
 '^'I blame myself now for all I have written. A word 
 would perhaps have been enough, and my preaching instinct 
 has carried me away. So I should like to be scolded — not 
 much, but a little. My dear, between you and me are not 
 you the Power! You only should detect your own faults. 
 Well, master mine, can you say I understand nothing about 
 political discussion " 
 
 '^ell, uncle said Octave, whose eyes were full of tears. 
 
 ^'I see more writing, finish it." 
 
 "Oh, there is nothing further but such things as only a 
 lover may read." 
 
 "Very good," said the old man. "Very good, my dear 
 boy. I was popular with the women in my day; but I would 
 have you to believe that I too have loved ; et ego in Arcadia. 
 Still, I cannot imagine why you give lessons in mathematics.'' 
 
176 
 
 MADAME PIRMIANI 
 
 ^^My dear uncle, I am your nephew. Is not that as much as 
 to say that I have made some inroads on the fortune left 
 to me by my father? After reading that letter a complete 
 revolution took place in me, in one instant I paid up the 
 arrears of remorse. I could never describe to you the state 
 in which I was. As I drove my cab to the Bois a voice cried 
 to me, ^Is that horse yours ?' As I ate my dinner, I said to 
 myself, 'Have you not stolen the food?' I was ashamed of 
 myself. My honesty was ardent in proportion to its youth. 
 First I flew off to Madame Firmiani. Ah, my dear uncle, 
 that day I had such joys of heart, such raptures of soul as 
 were worth millions. With her I calculated how much I 
 owed the Bourgneuf family; and I sentenced myself, against 
 Madame Firmiani's advice, to pay them interest at the rate 
 of three per cent. But my whole fortune was not enough 
 to refund the sum. We were both of us lovers enough — 
 husband and wife enough — for her to offer and for me to 
 accept her savings " 
 
 "What, besides all her virtues, that adorable woman can 
 save money!'' cried the uncle. 
 
 "Do not laugh at her. Her position compels her to som(3 
 thrift. Her husband went to Greece in 1820, and died about 
 three years ago; but to this day it has been impossible to get 
 legal proof of his death, or to lay hands on the will he no 
 doubt made in favor of his wife ; this important document was 
 stolen, lost, or mislaid in a country where a man's papers 
 are not kept as they are in France, nor is there a Consul. 
 So, not knowing whether she may not some day have to 
 reckon with other and malignant heirs, she is obliged to be. 
 extremely careful, for she does not wish to have to give up her 
 wealth as Chateaubriand has just given up the Ministry. 
 Now 1 mean to earn a fortune that shall be mine, so as to 
 : restore my wife to opulence if she should be ruined." 
 
 "And you never told me — you never came to me. My dear 
 nephew, believe me I love you well enough to pay your honest 
 debts, your debts as a gentleman. I am the Uncle of the 
 fifth act — I will be revenged." 
 
MADAME FIRMIANl 
 
 ''I know your revenges, uncle ; but let me grow rich by my 
 own toil. If you wish to befriend me, allow me a thousand 
 crowns a year until I need capital for some business. I de- 
 clare at this moment I am so happy that all I care about is to 
 live. I give lessons that I may be no burden on any on^^. 
 
 "Ah, if you could but know with what delight I made resti- 
 tution. After making some inquiries I found the Bourgneufs 
 in misery and destitution. They were living at Saint- 
 Germain in a wretched house. The old father was manager 
 in a lottery office; the two girls did the work of the house 
 and kept the accounts. The mother was almost always ill. 
 The two girls are charming, but they have learnt by bitter 
 experience how little the world cares for beauty without for- 
 tune. What a picture did I find there! If I went to the 
 Aouse as the accomplice in a crime, I came out of it an honest 
 man, and I have purged my father's memory. I do not judge 
 him, uncle ; thei'e is in a lawsuit an eagerness, a passion which 
 may sometimes blind the most honest man alive. Lawyers 
 know how to legitimatize the most preposterous claims ; there 
 are syllogisms in law to humor the errors of conscience, and 
 judges have a right to make mistakes. My adventure was 
 a perfect drama. To have played the part of Providence, 
 to have fulfilled one of these hopeless wishes : ^If only twenty 
 thousand francs a year could drop from heaven!' — a wish 
 we all have uttered in jest ; to see a sublime look of gratitude, 
 amazement, and admiration take the place of a glance fraught 
 with curses; to bring opulence into the midst of a family 
 sitting round a turf fire in the evening, by the light of a 
 wretched lamp — No, words cannot paint such a scene. My 
 excessive justice to them seemed unjust. Well, if there be a 
 Paradise, my father must now be happy. — As for myself, I 
 am loved as man was never loved before. Madame Firmiani 
 has given me more than happiness ; she has taught me a deli- 
 cacy of feeling which perhaps I lacked. Indeed, I call her 
 Dear Conscience, one of those loYing names that are the out- 
 come of certain secret harmonies of spirit. Honesty is said to 
 pay ; I hope ere long to be rich myself ; at this moment I am 
 
178 
 
 MADAME FIEMIANl 
 
 bent on solving a great industrial problem, and if I succeed J 
 shall make millions." 
 
 "My boy, you have your mother's soul," said the old man, 
 hardly able to restrain the tears that rose at the remembrance 
 of his sister. 
 
 At this instant, in spite of the height above the ground 
 of Octave's room, the young man and his uncle heard the 
 noise of a carriage driving up. 
 
 "It is she ! I know her horses by the way they pull up." 
 
 And it was not long before Madame Firmiani made her 
 appearance. 
 
 "Oh !" she cried, with an impulse of annoyance on seeing 
 Monsieur de Bourbonne. "But our uncle is not in the way," 
 she went on with a sudden smile. "I have come to kneel at 
 my husband's feet and humbly beseech him to accept my 
 fortune. I have just received from the Austrian Embassy 
 a document proving Firmiani's death. The paper, drawn up 
 by the kind offices of the Austrian envoy at Constantinople, is 
 quite formal, and the will which Firmiani's valet had in keep- 
 ing for me is subjoined. — There, you are richer than I am, 
 for you have there," and she tapped her husband's breast, 
 "treasures which only God can add to." Then, unable to 
 disguise her happiness, she hid her face in Octave's bosom. 
 
 '''My sweet niece, we made love when I was young," said 
 the uncle, "but now you love. You women are all that is 
 good and lovely in humanity, for you are never guilty of your 
 faults ; they always originate with us." 
 
 Pabib, February 1831. 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 To Mademoiselle Anna de Hanska 
 
 Dear Child,— You, the joy of a whole house, you, whose whit€ 
 or rose-colored cape flutters in the summer like a will-o'-the-wisp 
 through the arbors of Wierzchownia, followed by the wistful 
 eyes of your father and mother— how can I dedicate to you a tale 
 ,full of sadness? But is it not well to tell you of sorrows such as 
 a girl so fondly loved as you are will never know? For some 
 Jay your fair hands may take them comfort. It is so difficult, 
 Anna, to find in the picture of our manners any incident worthy 
 to meet your eye, that an author has no choice; but perhaps you 
 may discern how happy you are from reading this tale, sent by 
 
 Your old friend, 
 
 De Balzac. 
 
 In October 1827, at break of day, a youth of about sixteen, 
 tvhose dress proclaimed him to be what modem phraseology 
 insolently calls a proletarian, was standing on a little square 
 in the lower part of the town of Provins. At this early hour 
 he could, without being observed, study the various houses 
 set round the Place in an oblong square. The mills on the 
 streams of Provins were already at work. Their noise, re- 
 peated by the echoes from the upper town, and harmonizing 
 with the sharp air and the clear freshness of the morning, 
 bewrayed the perfect silence — so complete that the clatter of 
 a diligence was audible, still a league away on the highroad. 
 
 The two longer rows of houses, divided by an arched avenue 
 of lime-trees, are artless in style, confessing the peaceful and 
 circumscribed life of the townsfolk. In this part of the town 
 
 13 
 
180 
 
 PiEHRETTK 
 
 there are no signs of trade. At that time there was hardly 
 a carriage-gate suggesting the luxury of the rich — or if there 
 were, it rarely turned on its hinges — excepting that of Mon- 
 sieur Martener, a doctor who was obliged to keep and use 
 a cab. Some of the fronts were graced by a long vine stem, 
 uchers with climbing roses growing up to the first floor, an'^ 
 scenting the windows with their large scattered bunches of 
 flowers. One end of this Square almost joins the High Street 
 of the lower town ; the other end is shut in by a street parallel 
 with the High Street, and the gardens beyond run down 
 to one of the two rivers that water the valley of Provins. 
 
 At this end, the quietest part of the Place, the young work- 
 man recognized the house that had been described to him — a 
 front of white stone, scored with seams to represent joins in 
 the masonry, and windows with light iron balconies, decorated 
 with rosettes painted yellow, and closed with gray Venetian 
 shutters. Above this fronts — a ground floor and a first floor 
 only — three attic windows pierce a slate-roof, and on one 
 of the gables twirls a brand-new weather-cock. This modern 
 weather-cock represents a sportsman aiming at a hare. The 
 front door is reached up three stone steps. On one side of the 
 door an end of leaden pipe spouts dirty water into a little 
 gutter, revealing the kitchen; on the other, two windows, 
 carefully guarded by gray wooden shutters in which heart- 
 shaped holes arc cut to admit a little light, seemed to our 
 youth to be those of the dining-room. In the basement 
 secured by the three steps, under each window is an air- 
 opening into the cellars, closed by painted iron shutters 
 pierced with holes in a pattern. Everything was then quite 
 new. An observer, looking at this house freshly repaired, 
 its still raw splendor contrasting with the antique aspect of 
 all the rest, would at once have seen in it the mean ideas 
 and perfect contentment of a retired tradesman. 
 
 The young fellow gazed at every detail with an expression 
 of pleasure mingled with sadness; his eyes wandered from 
 the kitchen to the garret with a look that denoted meditation. 
 Thje pink gleams of sunshine showed in one of the attic 
 
PllUKKETTE 
 
 181 
 
 windows a cotton curtain which was wanting to the others. 
 Then the lad's face brightened completely; he withdrew a 
 few steps, leaned his back against a lime-tree, and sang, 
 in the drawling tones peculiar to the natives of the West, 
 this ballad of Brittany, published by Bruguiere, a composer 
 to whom we owe some charming airs. In Brittany the young 
 swains of the villages sing this song to newly-married couples 
 on their wedding day : — 
 
 "We come to wish you every happiness, 
 To th' maister at your side. 
 As well as to the bride. 
 
 "You, mistress bride, are bound for life and death, 
 With a bright golden chaiu. 
 That none may breali in twain. 
 
 "Now you to fairs and junkets go no more; 
 Nay, you must stay at home, 
 While we may dance and roam. 
 
 "And do you Ijnow how trusty you must b(>. 
 And faithful to your mate, 
 To love him rathe and late? 
 
 "Then take this posy I have made for you. 
 Alack! for happy hours 
 Must perish like these flowers." 
 
 This national air, as sweet as that arranged by Chateau- 
 briand to the words Ma soeur, te souvient-il encore? sung in 
 a little town of la Brie in Champagne, could not fail to arouse 
 irresistible memories in a native of Brittany, so faithfully 
 does it paint the manners, the simplicity, the scenery of that 
 noble old province. There is in it an intangible melancholy, 
 caused by the realities of life, which is deeply touching. And 
 is not this power to av/aken a whole world of grave, sweet. 
 Bad things by a familiar and often cheerful strain, charac- 
 
182 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 teristic of those popular airs which are the superstitions of 
 music, if we accept the word superstition as meaning what 
 remains from the ruin of nations, the flotsam left by revolu- 
 tions ? 
 
 As he ended the first verse, the workman, who never took 
 his eyes off the curtain in the attic, saw no one astir. While 
 he was singing the second, it moved a little. As he sang the 
 words, "Take this posy,"^ a young girl's face was seen. A 
 fair hand cautiously opened the window, and the girl nodded 
 to the wanderer as he ended with the melancholy reflection 
 contained in the last two lines : 
 
 "Alack! for happy hours 
 Must perish like these flowers.*^ 
 
 The lad suddenly took from under his jacket, and held up 
 to her, a golden-yellow spray of a flower very common in 
 Brittany, which he had picked no doubt in a field in la Brie, 
 where it is somewhat rare — the flower of the furze. 
 
 "Why, is it you, Brigaut ?" said the girl in a low voice. 
 
 "Yes, Pierrette, yes. I am living in Paris ; I am walking 
 about France; but I might settle down here, since you are 
 here.'' 
 
 At this moment the window-fastening of the room on the 
 first floor, below Pierrette's, was heard to creak. The girl 
 showed the greatest alarm, and said to Brigaut, "Fly !" 
 
 The young fellow jumped like a frog to a bend in the street, 
 round a mill, before entering the wider street that is the 
 artery of the lower town ; but in spite of his agility, his hob- 
 nailed shoes, ringing on the paving-cobbles of Provins, made 
 a noise easily distinguished from the music of the mill, and 
 heard by the individual who opened the window. 
 
 This person was a woman. Ko man ever tears himself from 
 the delights of his morning slumbers to listen to a minstrel 
 in a round jacket. None but a maid is roused by a love son^. 
 And this was a maid — and an old maid. When she had 
 thrown open her shutters with the action of a bat, she looked 
 
PIERRETTK 
 
 183 
 
 about her on all sides, and faintly heard Brigant's steps as 
 he made his escape. Is there on earth anything more hideous 
 than the matutinal apparition of an ugly old maid at her 
 window? Of all the grotesque spectacles that* are the amuse- 
 ment of travelers as they go through little towns, is it not 
 the most nnpleasing? It is too depressing, too repulsive to 
 be laughed at. 
 
 This particular old maid, whose ear was so keen, appeared 
 bereft of the artifices of all kinds that she used to improve 
 herself; she had no front of false hair, and no collar. Her 
 headgear was the frightful little caul of black sarsnet which 
 old women draw over their skull, showing beyond her night- 
 cap, which had been pushed aside in her sleep. This untidi- 
 ness gave her head the sinister appearance ascribed by 
 painters to witches. The temples, ears, and nape, scarcely 
 concealed, betrayed their withered leanness, the coarse 
 wrinkles were conspicuous for a redness that did not charm 
 the eye, and that was thrown into relief by the comparative 
 whiteness of a bedgown tied at the throat with twisted tapes. 
 The gaps where this bedgown fell open revealed a chest like 
 that of some old peasant woman careless of her ugliness. The 
 fleshless arm might have been a stick covered with stuff. 
 Seen at the window, the lady appeared tall by reason of the 
 strength and breadth of her face, which reminded the specta- 
 tor of the extravagant size of some Swiss countenances. The 
 chief characteristic of the features, which presented a sin- 
 gular lack of harmony, was a hardness of line, a harshness 
 of coloring, and a lack of feeling in the expression which 
 would have filled a physiognomist with disgust. These pecu- 
 liarities, visible now, were habitually modified by a sort of 
 business smile, and a vulgar stupidity which aped good-nature 
 so successfully that the people among whom she lived might 
 easily have supposed her to be a kind woman. 
 
 She and her brother shared the ownership of this house. 
 The brother was sleeping so soundly in his room that the 
 Opera-house orchestra would not have roused him; and the 
 power of that orchestra is famous 1 The old maid put her 
 head out of the window, and raised her eyes to that of the 
 
184 
 
 PIERRETTiS 
 
 attic — eyes of a cold pale blue, with short lashes set m lids 
 that were almost always swollen. She tried to see Pierrette ; 
 but recognizing the futility of the attempt, she withdrew 
 into her room with a movement not unlike that of a tortoise 
 hiding its head after putting it out of its shell. The shutters 
 were closed again, and the silence of the Square was no more 
 disturbed but by peasants coming into the town, or early 
 risers. When there is an old maid in the house a watch-dog 
 is not needed ; not the smallest event occurs without her seeing 
 it, commenting on it, and deducing every possible conse- 
 quence. Thus this incident was destined to give rise to serious 
 inferences, and to be the opening of one of those obscure 
 dramas which are played out in the family, but which are 
 none the less terrible for being unseen — if indeed the name; 
 of drama may be applied to this tragedy of home-life. 
 
 Pierrette did not get into bed again. To her Brigaut'a 
 arrival was an event of immense importance. During the! 
 night — the Eden of the wretched — she escaped from the an» 
 noyances and fault-finding she had to endure all day. Lik(j 
 the hero of some German or Russian ballad, to her sleep 
 seemed a happy life, and the day a bad dream. This morn- 
 ing, for the first time in three years, she had had a happ}' 
 waking. The memories of infancy had sweetly sung their 
 poetr}^ to her soul. She had heard the first verse in hei' 
 dreams ; the second had roused her with a start ; at the third 
 she had doubted — the unfortunate are of the school of Saint 
 Thomas; at the fourth verse, standing at her window, bare- 
 foot, and in her shift, she had recognized Brigaut, the friend 
 of her childhood. 
 
 Yes, that was indeed the short square jacket with quaint 
 little tails and pockets swinging just' over the hips, the 
 classical blue-cloth jacket of the Breton; the waistcoat of 
 coarse knit, the linen shirt buttoned with a golden heart, the 
 wide-rolled collar, the earrings, heavy shoes, trousers of blue 
 drill, mottled in streaks of lighter shades; in short, all the 
 humble and durable items of a poor Breton's costume. The 
 large wliite horn buttons of the jacket and waistcoat had set 
 
PIBKRETTB 
 
 185 
 
 Pierrette's heart beating. At the sight of the branch of furze 
 the tears had started to her eyes; then a spasm of terror 
 clutched her heart, crushing the flowers of remembrance that 
 had blossomed for a moment. It struck her that her cousin 
 might have heard her rise and go to the window. She knew 
 the old woman, and made the signal of alarm to Brigaut, 
 which the poor boy had hastened to obey without understand- 
 ing it. Does not this instinctive obedience betray one of 
 those innocent and mastering affections such as are to be> 
 seen once in an age, on this earth where they bloom, like the 
 aloe-trees on Isola Bella, but two or three times in a century ? 
 Any one seeing Brigaut fly would have admired the artless 
 heroism of a most artless love. 
 
 Jacques Brigaut w^as worthy of Pierrette Lorrain, who 
 was now nearly fourteen — two children ! Pierrette could not 
 help weeping as she saw him take to his heels with the terror 
 inspired by her warning gesture. 
 
 She then sat down in a rickety armchair, in front of a 
 looking-glass above a little table. On this she set her elbows, 
 and remained pensive for an hour, trying to recall the Marais, 
 the hamlet of Pen-Hoel, the adventurous voyages on a pond 
 in a boat untied from an old willow-tree by little Jacques; 
 then the old faces — her grandmother and grandfather, her 
 mother's look of suffering, and General Brigaut's handsome 
 head ; a whole childhood of careless joy ! And this again was 
 a dream — the lights of happiness against a gray background. 
 
 She had fine light-brown hair, all in disorder, under a 
 little nightcap tumbled in her sleep, a little cambric cap with 
 frills that she herself had made. On each side curls fell over 
 her temples, escaping from their gray papers. At the back of 
 her head a thick plait hung down to her shoulders. The ex- 
 cessive pallor of her face showed that she was a victim to a 
 girlish ailment to which medical science gives the pretty name 
 of chlorosis, which robs the blood of its natural hue, disturb- 
 ing the appetite, and betraying much disorderment of the 
 whole system. This waxen hue was apparent in all the flesh- 
 tints. The whiteness of her neck and shoulders, the colorless- 
 
186 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 ness of an etiolated plant, accounted for the thinness of her 
 arms crossed in front of her. Pierrette's feet even loolced weak 
 and shrunken by disease; her shift, falling only on her calf, 
 showed the relaxed sinews, blue veins, and bloodless muscles. 
 As the cold air chilled her, her lips turned purple. The 
 mournful smile that parted her fairly delicate mouth showed 
 teeth of ivory whiteness, even and small, pretty transparent 
 teeth, in harmony with well-shaped ears and a nose that was 
 elegant, if a little sharp; her face, though perfectly round, 
 was very sweet. All the life of this charming countenance 
 lay in the eyes ; the iris, of a bright snuff-brown mottled with 
 black, shone with golden lights round a deep bright retina. 
 Pierrette ought to have been gay ; she was sad. Her vanished 
 gaiety lingered in the vivid modeling of her eyes, in the in- 
 genuous form of her brow, and the moulding of her short 
 chin. The long eyelashes lay like brushes on the cheeks worn 
 by debility; the whiteness, too lavishly diffused, gave great 
 purity to the lines and features of her countenance. The ear 
 was a little masterpiece of modeling; it might have been of 
 marble. 
 
 Pierrette suffered in many ways. Perhaps you would like 
 to have her story ? Here it is. 
 
 Pierrette's mother was a Demoiselle Auffray of Provins, 
 half-sister to Madame Rogron, the mother of the present 
 owners of this house. Monsieur Auffray, after marrying for 
 the first time at the age of eighteen, took a second wife at the 
 age of sixty-nine. The child of his first marriage was an 
 only daughter, ugly enough, who, when she was sixteen, mar- 
 ried an innkeeper of Provins named Rogron. By his sec- 
 ond marriage old Auffray had another daughter, but she 
 was very pretty. Thus the quaint result was an enormous 
 difference in age between Monsieur Auffray's two daughters. 
 The child of his first wife was fifty when the second was 
 born. By the time her father gave her a sister Madame 
 Rogron had two children of her own, both of full age. 
 
 The uxorious old man's younger child was married for 
 love, at eighteen, to a Breton officer named Lorrain, a cap- 
 
jPIERRETTH 
 
 187 
 
 tain in the Imperial Guard. Love often beg'ets ambition. 
 The captain, eager to get his colonelcy, exchanged into the 
 line. While the Major and his wife, comfortable enough 
 with the allowance given them by Monsieur and Madame 
 Auffray, were living handsomely in Paris, or running about 
 Germany as the Emperor's wars or truces might guide them, 
 old Aulfray, a retired grocer at Provins, died suddenly, be- 
 fore he had time to make his will. The good man's 
 estate was so cleverly manipulated by the innkeeper and his 
 wife that they absorbed the larger part of it, leaving to old 
 Auffray's widow no more than the house in the little Square 
 and a few acres of land. This widow, little Madame Lor- 
 rain's mother, was but eight-and-thirty when her husband 
 died. Like many other widows, she had an unwholesome wish 
 to marry again. She sold to her stepdaughter, old Madame 
 Eogron, the land and house she had inherited under her mar- 
 riage settlement, to marry a young doctor named ISTeraud, 
 who ran through her fortune, and she died of grief in great 
 poverty two years afterwards. 
 
 Thus Madame Lorrain's share of the Auffray property had 
 in great part disappeared, being reduced to about eight thou- 
 sand francs. 
 
 Major Lorrain died on the field of honor at Montereau, 
 leaving his widow, then one-and-twenty, burdened with a 
 little girl fourteen months old, and with no fortune but 
 the pension she could claim from Government, and what- 
 ever money might come to her from Monsieur and Madame 
 Lorrain, tradespeople at Pen-Hoel, a town of la Yendee, in 
 the district known as le Marais. These Lorrains, the parents 
 of the deceased officer, and Pierrette's paternal grandfather 
 and grandmother, sold building-timber, slates, tiles, cornices, 
 pipes, and the like. Their business was a poor one, either 
 from their incapacity or from ill-luck, and brought them 
 in a bare living. The failure of the great house of Colinet 
 at Nantes, brought about by the events of 1814, which caused 
 a sudden fall in the price of colonial produce, resulted in a 
 loss to them of eighty thousand francs they had placed on 
 
188 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 deposit. Their daughter-in-law was therefore warmly re- 
 ceived; the Major's widow brought with her a pension of 
 eight hundred francs, an enormous sum at Pen-Hoel. When 
 her half-sister and brother-in-law Eogron sent her the eight 
 thousand francs due to her, after endless formalities, pro- 
 longed by distance, she placed the money in the Lorrains' 
 hands, taking a mortgage, however, on a little house they 
 owned at Nantes, let for a hundred crowns a year, and worthy 
 perhaps, ten thousand francs. 
 
 Young Madame Lorrain died there after her mother's sec- 
 ond and luckless marriage, in 1819, and almost at the same 
 time as her mother. This daughter of the old man and his 
 young wife was small, fragile, and delicate; the damp air 
 of the Marais did not agree with her. Her husband's family, 
 eager to keep her there, persuaded her that nowhere else in 
 the world would she find a place healthier or pleasanter than 
 the Marais, the scene of Charette's exploits. She was so 
 well taken care of, nursed, and coaxed, that her death brought 
 honor to the Lorrains. 
 
 Some persons asserted that Brigaut, an old Vendeen, one 
 of those men of iron who served under Charette, Mercier, the 
 Marquis de Montauran, and the Baron du Guenic in the wars 
 against the Eepublic, counted for much in young Madame 
 Lorrain's submission. If this were so, it was certainly for 
 the sake of a most loving and devoted soul. And, indeed, all 
 Pen-Hoel could see that Brigaut, respectfully designated as 
 the Major — having held that rank in the Eoyalist army — 
 spent his days and his evenings in the Lorrains' sitting- 
 room by the side of the Emperor's Major's widow. Towards 
 the end the cure of Pen-Hoel allowed himself to speak of this 
 matter to old Madame Lorrain; he begged her to persuade 
 her daughter-in-law to marry Brigaut, promising to get him 
 an appointment as justice of the peace to the district of 
 Pen-Hoel, by the intervention of the Vicoiate de Kergarouet. 
 But the poor woman's death made the scheme useless. 
 
 Pierrette remained with her grandparents, who owed her 
 four hundred francs a year, naturally spent on her main- 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 189 
 
 tenance. The old people, now less and less fit for business, 
 had an active and pushing rival in trade, whom they 
 could only abuse, without doing anything to protect them- 
 selves. The Major, their friend and adviser, died six months 
 after young Madame Lorrain, perhaps of grief, or perhaps of 
 his wounds; he had had seven-and-twenty. Their bad 
 neighbor, as a good man of business, now aimed at ruining 
 his rivals, so as to extinguish all competition. He got the 
 Lorrains to borrow on their note of hand, foreseeing that 
 they could never pay, and so forced them, in their old age, 
 to become bankrupt. Pierrette's mortgage was second to a 
 mortgage held by her grandmother, who clung to her rights 
 to secure a morsel of bread for her husband. The house at 
 Nantes was sold for nine thousand five hundred francs, and 
 the costs came to fifteen hundred francs. The remaining 
 eight thousand francs came to Madame Lorrain, who invested 
 them in a mortgage in order to live at Nantes in a sort of 
 almshouse, like that of Sainte-Perine in Paris, called Saint- 
 Jacques, where the two old people found food and lodging 
 at a very moderate rate. 
 
 As it v/as impossible that they should take with them their 
 little destitute grandchild, the old Lorrains bethought them 
 of her uncle and aunt Eogron, to whom they wrote. The 
 Rogrons of Provins were dead. Thus the letter from the 
 Lorrains to the Eogrons would seem to be lost. But if there 
 is anything here below which can take the place of Provi- 
 dence, is it not the General Post-Office? The genius of the 
 Post, immeasurably supexior to that of the Public, outdoes 
 in inventiveness the imagination of the most brilliant novel- 
 ist. As soon as the Post has charge of a letter, worth, on 
 delivery, from three to ten sous, if it fails at once to find 
 him or her to whom it should be delivered, it displays a mer- 
 cenary solicitude v/hich has no parallel but in the boldest 
 duns. The Post comes, goes, hunts through the eighty-six de^- 
 partments. Difficulties incite the genius of its officials, who, 
 not unfrequently, are men of letters, and v/ho then throw 
 themselves into the pursuit with the ardor of the mathe- 
 
190 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 maticians at the National Observatory; they rummage the 
 kingdom. At the faintest gleam of hope the Paris offices are 
 on the alert again. Yon often sit amazed as you inspect 
 the scrawls that meandei over the letter, back and front — ■ 
 the glorious evidence of the administrative perseverance that 
 animates the Post-Office. If a man were to undertake what 
 the Post has accomplished, he would have spent ten thou- 
 sand francs in traveling, in time and in money, to recover 
 twelve sous. The Post certainly has more intelligence than 
 it conveys. 
 
 The letter written by the Lorrains to Monsieur Eogron, 
 who had been dead a year, was transmitted by the Post to 
 Monsieur Eogron, his son, a haberdasher in the Rue Saint- 
 Denis, Paris. This is where the genius of the Post-Office 
 shines. An heir is always more or less puzzled to kno^' 
 whether he has really scraped up the whole of his inheritance, 
 whether he has not forgotten some debt or some fragments, 
 The Revenue guesses everything; it even reads character. A 
 letter addressed to old Rogron of Provins was bound to pique 
 the curiosity of Rogron junior' of Paris, or of Mademoiselle 
 Rogron, his heirs. So the Revenue earned its sixty centimes. 
 
 The Rogrons, towards whom the Lorrains held out beseech- 
 ing hands though they were in despair at having to part from 
 their granddaughter, thus became the arbiters of Pierrette 
 Lorrain's fate. It is indispensable, therefore, to give some 
 account of their antecedents and their character. 
 
 Old Rogron, the innkeeper at Provins, on whom old Auffray 
 had bestowed the child of his first marriage, was hot-faced, 
 with a purple-veined nose, and cheeks which Bacchus had over- 
 laid with his crimson and bulbous blossoms. Though stout, 
 short, and pot-bellied, with stumpy legs and heavy hands, 
 he had all the shrewdness of the Swiss innkeepex, resembling 
 that race. His face remotely suggested a vast hail-stricken 
 vineyard. Certainly he was not handsome; but his wife was 
 like him. Never were a better matched couple. Rogron liked 
 good living and to have pretty girls to wait on him. He 
 was one of the sect of Egoists whose ways are brutal, and 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 191 
 
 who give themselves up to their vices and do their will in 
 the face of Israel. Greedy, mercenary, and by no means re- 
 fined, obliged to be the purveyor to his own fancies, he ate 
 up all he earned till his teeth failed him. Then avarice re- 
 mained. In his old age he sold his inn, collected, as we 
 have seen, all his father-in-law's leavings, and retired to the 
 little house in the Square, which he bought for a piece of 
 bread of old Auffray's widow, Pierrette's grandmother. 
 
 Eogron and his wife owned about two thousand francs a 
 year, derived from the letting of twenty-seven plots of land 
 in the neighborhood of Provins, and the interest on the price 
 of their inn, which they had sold for twenty thousand francs. 
 Old Auffray's house, though in a very bad state, was used 
 as it was for a dwelling by the innkeepers, who avoided re- 
 pairing it as they would have shunned the plague; old rats 
 love cracks and ruins. The retired publican, taking a fancy 
 for gardening, spent his savings in adding to his garden; 
 he extended it to the bank of the river, making a long square 
 shut in by two walls, and ending with a stone embankment, 
 below which the water-plants, left to run wild, displayed their 
 abundant flowers. 
 
 Early in their married life the Eogron couple had a son 
 and a daughter, with two years between them; everything 
 degenerates; their children were hideous. Put out to nurse 
 in the country as cheaply as possible, these unhappy little 
 ones came home with the wretched training of village life, 
 having cried long and often for their foster-mother, who 
 went to work in the fields, and who left them meanwhile shut 
 up in one of the dark, damp, low rooms which form the dwell- 
 ing of the French peasant. By this process the children's 
 features grew thick, and their voices harsh; they were far 
 from flattering their mother's vanity, and she tried to cor= 
 rect them of their bad. habits by a severity which, by com- 
 parison with their father's, seemed tenderness itself. They 
 were left to play in the yards, stables, and outhouses of the 
 inn, or to run about the town ; they were sometimes whipped : 
 sometimes they were sent to their grandfather Auffray, who 
 
192 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 loved them little. This injustice was one of the reasons that 
 encouraged the Rogrons to secure a large share of the "old 
 rascal's" leavings. Meanwhile, however, Rogron sent his 
 boy to school; and he paid a man, one of his carters, to save 
 the lad from the conscription. As soon as his daughter Sylvie 
 was twelve years old, he sent her to Paris as an apprentice 
 in a house of business. Two years later, his son Jerome- 
 Denis was packed olf by the same road. When his friends 
 the carriers, who were his allies, or the inn customers asked 
 him what he meant to do with his children, old Rogjon ex- 
 plained his plans with a brevity which had this advantage 
 over the statements of most fathers, that it was frank : 
 
 "When they are of an age to understand me, I shall just 
 give them a kick you know where, saying, 'Be off and ma.k)? 
 your fortune,' " he would reply, as he drank, or wiped his 
 mouth with the back of his hand. Then looking at the in- 
 quirer with a knowing wink, "Ha, ha V he would add, "they 
 are not greater fools than I am. My father gave me three kicks, 
 I shall give them but one. He put a louis into my hand, I will 
 give them ten ; so they will be better off than I was. — That's; 
 the right way. And after I am gone, what is left will bei 
 left; the notaries will find them fast enough. A pretty joke,,' 
 indeed, if I am to keep myself short for the children's sake ! 
 They owe their being to me; I have brought them up; I ask 
 nothing of them ; they have not paid me back, heh, neighbor ? 
 I began life as a carter, and that did not hinder me from 
 marrying that old rascal Auffray's daughter." 
 
 Sylvie was placed as an apprentice, with a premium of a 
 hundred crowns for her board, with some tradespeople in the 
 Rue Saint-Denis, natives of Proving. Two years later she 
 was paying her way ; though she earned no money, her parents 
 had nothing to pay for her food and lodging. . This, in the 
 Rue Saint-Denis, is called being "at par." Two years later 
 Sylvie was earning a hundred crowns a year. In the course of 
 that time her mother had sent her a hundred francs for 
 pocket-money. Thus, at the age of nineteen, Mademoiselle 
 Sylvie Rogron was independent. When she was twenty, she 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 193 
 
 was second '^young lady" in the house of Julliard, raw si Ik 
 merchants, at the sign of the Ver chinois (or Silkworm), in 
 the Eue Saint-Denis. 
 
 The history of the brother was like the sister's. Little 
 Jerome-Denis Kogron was placed with one of the largest 
 wholesale mercers in the Rue Saint-Denis^ the maison Guepin 
 at the Trois Quenouilles. While Sylvie, at twenty-one, was 
 forewoman with a thousand francs a year, J erome-Denis, bet- 
 ter served by luck, was, at eighteen, head shop-clerk, etirning 
 twelve hundred, with the Guepins, also natives of Provins. 
 The brother and sister met every Sunday and holiday, and 
 spent the day in cheap amusements. They dined outside 
 Paris ; they went to Saint-Cloud, Meudon, Belleville, or Vin- 
 cennes. 
 
 At the end of 1815 they united the money they had earned 
 by the sweat of their brow, and bought of Madame Guenee 
 the business and good-will of a famous house, the 8oeur 
 de famille, one of the best known retail haberdashers. The 
 sister kept the cash, the shop, and the accounts; the brother 
 was both buyer and head-clerk, as Sylvie was for some time 
 hei' own forewoman. In 1821, after five years' hard work, 
 (competition had become so lively in the haberdashery busi- 
 ness that the brother and sister had scarcely been able to pay 
 off the purchase money and keep up the reputation of Ihe 
 house. 
 
 Though Sylvie Rogron was at this time but forty, her 
 ugliness, her constant toil, and a peculiarly crabbed expres- 
 sion, arising as much from the shape of her features as from 
 her anxieties, made her look like a woman of fifty. Jerome- 
 Denis Rogron, at the age of thirty-eight, had the most idiotic 
 face that ever bent over a counter to a customer. His low 
 forehead, crushed by fatigue, was seamed by three arid fur- 
 rows. His scanty gray hair, cut very short, suggested the un- 
 utterable stupidity of a cold-blooded animal; in the gaze of 
 his blue-gray eyes there was neither fire nor mind. His 
 roundj flat face aroused no sympathy, and did not even bring 
 
194 
 
 PIEiRKETTE 
 
 a smile to the lips of those who study the varieties of Parisian 
 physiognomy; it was depressing. And while, like his father, 
 he was short and thick, his shape, not having the coarse 
 obesity of the innkeeper, showed in every detail an absurd 
 flabbiness. His father's excessive redness gave place in him 
 to the flaccid lividness acquired by people who live in airless 
 backshops, in the barred coops that serve as counting-houses, 
 always folding and unfolding skeins of thread, paying or 
 receiving money, harrying clerks, or repeating the same 
 phrases to customers. The small intelligence of this brother 
 and sister had been completely sunk in mastering their busi- 
 ness, in debit and credit, and in the study of the rules and 
 customs of the Paris market. Thread, needles, ribbon, pins, 
 buttons, tailors' trimmings, in short, the vast list of articles 
 constituting Paris haberdashery, had filled up their memory. 
 Letters to write and answer, bills and stock-taking, had ab- 
 sorbed all their capabilities. 
 
 Outside their line of business they knew absolutely nothing ; 
 they did not even know Paris. To them Paris was something 
 spread out round the Rue Saint-Denis. Their narrow 
 nature found its field in their shop. They knew very well 
 how to nag their assistants and shop-girls and find them at 
 fault. Their joy consisted in seeing all their hands as busy 
 on the counters as mice^s paws, handling the goods or folding 
 up the pieces. When they heard seven or eight young voices 
 of lads and girls simpering out the time-honored phrases 
 with which shop-assistants reply to a customer's remarks, it 
 was a fine day, nice weather. When ethereal blue brought life 
 to Paris, and Parisians out walking thought of no haberdash- 
 ery but what they wore, "Bad weather for business," the silly 
 master would observe. The great secret, which made Rogron 
 the object of his apprentices' admiration, was his art in tying, 
 untying, re-tying, and making up a parcel. Rogron could 
 pack a parcel and look out at what was going on in the street, 
 or keep an eye on his shop to its furthest depths; he had 
 seen everything by the time he handed it to the buyer, say- 
 ing, "Madame — nothing more this morning?" 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 195 
 
 But for his sister, this simpleton would have been ruined. 
 Sylvie had good sense and the spirit of trade. She advised 
 her brother as to his purchases from the manufacturers, and 
 relentlessly sent him off to the other end of France to make 
 a sou of profit on some article. The shrewdness, of which 
 every woman possesses more or less, having no duty to do for 
 her heart, she had utilized it in speculation. Stock to be 
 paid for ! this thought was the piston that worked this ma- 
 chine and gave it appalling energy. Rogron was never more 
 than head-assistant; he did not understand his business as 
 a whole; personal interest, the chief motor of the mind, had 
 not carried him forward one step. He often stood dismayed 
 when his sister desired him to sell some article at a loss, fore- 
 seeing that it would go out of fashion; and afterwards he 
 guilelessly admired her. He did not reason well or ill; he 
 was incapable of reasoning; but he had sense enough to submit 
 to his sister, and he did so for a reason that had nothing to 
 do with business. "She is the eldest," he would say. 
 Physiologists and moralists may possibly find in such a per- 
 sistently solitary life, reduced to satisfying mere needs, and 
 deprived of money and pleasure in youth, an explanation of 
 the animal expression of face, the weak brain, and idiotic 
 manner of this haberdasher. His sister had always hindered 
 his marrying, fearing perhaps that she might lose her in- 
 fluence in the house, and seeing a source of expense and ruin 
 in a wife certainly younger, and probably less hideous, than 
 herself. 
 
 Stupidity may betray itself in two ways — it is talkative or 
 it is mute. Mute stupidity may be endured; but Rogron's 
 was talkative. The tradesman had fallen into the habit of 
 scolding his assistants, of expatiating to them on the minutiae 
 of the haberdashery business and selling to "the trade," or- 
 namenting his lectures with the flat jokes that constitute the 
 hagout, the gab of the shops. (This word hagouty used for- 
 merly to designate the stereotyped repartee, has given way be- 
 fore the soldier's siang word blague or humbug.) Rogron, to 
 whom his little domxcstic audience were bound to listen, Ro- 
 
196 
 
 PIBRRETTB 
 
 gron, very much pleased with himself, had finally adopted a set 
 of phrases of his own. The chatterbox believed himself elo- 
 quent. The need for explaining to customers the tiling they 
 want, for finding out their wishes, for making them want the 
 thing they do not want, loosens the tongue of the counter- 
 jumper. The retail dealer at last acquires the faculty of pour- 
 ing out sentences in which words have no meaning, but which 
 answer their purpose. Then he can explain to his customers 
 methods of manufacture unknown to them, and this gives him 
 a sort of short-lived superiority over the purchaser; but apart 
 from the thousand and one explanations necessitated by the 
 thousand and one articles he sells, he is, so far as thought 
 is concerned, like a fish on straw in the sunshine. 
 
 Kogron and Sylvie — a pair of machines illicitly baptized — 
 had neither potentially nor actively the feelings which give 
 life to the heart. These two beings were utterly dry and 
 tough, hardened by toil, by privations, by the remembrance 
 of their sufferings during a long and weariful apprenticeship. 
 ,l?^"either he nor she had pity for any misfortune. Tliey were 
 :iiot implacable, but impenetrable with regard to anybody in 
 difficulties. To them virtue, honor, loyalty, eveiy human 
 reeling was epitomized in the regular payment of their ac- 
 counts. Close-fisted, heartless, and sordidly thrifty, the 
 'brother and sister had a terrible reputation among the traders 
 of the Eue Saint-Denis. 
 
 But for their visits to Provins, whither they went thrice a 
 year, at times when they could shut the shop for two or three 
 days, they would never have got shop-lads and girls. But 
 old Kogron packed off to his children every unhappy creature 
 intended by its parents to go into trade; he carried on for 
 them a business in apprentices in Provins, where he vaunted 
 with much vanity his children's fortune. The parents, 
 tempted by the remote hope of having their son or daughter 
 well taught and well looked after, and the chance of seeing 
 a child some day step into Eogron junior's business, sent the 
 youth who was in the way to the house kept by the old 
 bachelor and old maid. But as soon as the apprentices, man 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 197 
 
 or maid, for whom the fee of a himdred crowns was always 
 paid, saw any way of escaping from these galleys, they fled 
 with a glee which added to tlie terrible notoriety of the Ro- 
 grons. The indefatigable innkeeper always supplied them 
 with fresh victims. 
 
 From the age of fifteen Sylvie Rogron, accustomed to 
 grimace over the counter, had two faces — the amiable mask 
 of the saleswoman and the natural expression of a shriveled 
 old maid. Her assumed countenance was a marvelous piece 
 of mimicry; she smiled all over; her voice turned soft and 
 insinuating, and held the customers under a commercial spell. 
 Her real face was what she had shown between the two half- 
 opened shutters. It would have scared the bravest of the 
 Cossacks of 1815, though they dearly loved every variety of 
 rrenchwoman. 
 
 When the letter came from the Lorrains, the Rogrons, in 
 mourning for their father, had come into possession of the 
 house they had almost stolen from Pierrette's grandmother, 
 of the innkeepei^'s acquired land, and finally of certain sums 
 derived from usurious loans in mortgages on land in thfi 
 hands of peasant owners whom the old drunkard hoped to 
 dispossess. The charge on the business was paid off. The 
 Rogrons had stock to the value of about sixty thousand 
 francs in the shop, about forty thousand francs in their 
 cash-box or in assets, and the value of their good- 
 will. Seated on the bench, covered with striped green worsted 
 velvet, and fitted into a square recess behind the cash-desk, 
 with just such another desk opposite for the forewoman, the 
 brother and sister held council as to their plans. Every 
 tradesman hopes to retire. If they realized their whole stock 
 and business, they ought to have about a hundred and fifty 
 thousand francs, without counting their inheritance from old 
 Rogron. Thus by investing in the funds the capital at their 
 disposal, each of them would have three to four thousand 
 francs a year, even if they devoted the price of the business— 
 which would no doubt be paid in instalments — to restoring 
 
198 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 their paternal home. So they might go to Provins and li^e 
 there in a house of their own. 
 
 Their forewoman was the daughter of a rich farmer at 
 Donnemarie, who was burdened with nine children; thus he 
 was obliged to place them all in business, for his wealth, di- 
 vided among nine, would be little enough for each. But in 
 five years the farmer lost seven of his children, consequently 
 the forewoman had become an interesting person; so much 
 so, that Kogron had attempted, but vainly, to make her his 
 wife. The young lady manifested an aversion for the master 
 which nullified all his manoeuvres. On the other hand. Made- 
 moiselle Sylvie did not encourage the plan ; she even opposed 
 her brother's marriage, and wanted rather to have so clever 
 a woman as their successor. Eogron's marriage she postponed 
 till they should be settled at Provins. 
 
 No passer-by can understand the motive-power that under- 
 lies the cryptogamic lives of certain shopkeepers; as we look 
 at them we wonder, "On what, and wh}^ do they live? What 
 becomes of them? Where did they come from?" We lose 
 ourselves in vacancy as we try to account for them. To dis- 
 cover the little poetry that germinates in these brains and vivi- 
 fies these existences, we must dig into them ; but we soon reach 
 the tufa on which everything rests. The Paris shopkeeper 
 feeds on hopes more or less likely to be realized, and without 
 which he would evidently perish: one dreams of building or 
 managing a theatre, another struggles for the honors of the 
 Mairie; this one has a castle in the air three leagues from 
 Paris, a so-called park, where he plants colored plaster 
 statues and arranges fountains that look like an end of 
 thread, and spends immense sums; that one longs for pro- 
 motion to the higher grades of the National Guard. Provins, 
 an earthly paradise, excited in the two haberdashers the 
 fanaticism which the inhabitants of every pretty town in 
 France feel for their home. And to the glory of Champagne, 
 it may be said that this affection is amply justified. Provins, 
 one of the most charming spots in France, rivals Frangistan 
 and the valley of Cashmere; not only has it all the poetry 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 199 
 
 !>f Saadi, the Homer of Persia, Liit it also has pharmaceutical 
 treasures for medical science. The crusaders brought roses 
 from Jericho to this delightful valle3% where, by some chance, 
 the flowers developed new qualities without losing anything 
 of their color. And Provins is not only the Persia of France; 
 it might be Baden, Aix, Bath; it has mineral waters. 
 
 This is the picture seen year after year, which now and 
 again appeared in a vision to the haberdashers on the muddy 
 pavement of the Rue Saint-Denis. 
 
 After crossing the gray flats that lie between, la. Fert6- 
 Gaucher and Provins — a desert, but a fertile one, a desert of 
 wheat — you mount a hill. Suddenly, at your feet, you see 
 a town watered by two rivers; at the bottom of the slope 
 spreads a green valley broken by graceful lines and retreat- 
 ing distances. If you come from Paris you take Provins 
 lengthways ; you see the everlasting French highroad running 
 along the foot of the hill and close under it, owning its blind 
 man and its beggars, who throw in an accompanim^ent of 
 lamentable voices when you pause to gaze at this unexpectedly 
 picturesque tract of land. If you arrive from Troyes, you 
 come in from the plain. The castle and the old town, with its 
 rampart, climb the shelves of the hill. The new town lies 
 below. 
 
 There are upper and lower Provins; above, a town in the 
 air, with steep streets and fine points of view, surrounded 
 by hollow roads like ravines between rows of walnut-trees, 
 furrowing the narrow hilltop with deep cuttings: a silent 
 town this, clean and solemn, overshadowed by the imposing 
 ruins of the stronghold ; then, behind a town of mills, watered 
 by the A'oulzie and the Durtain, two rivers of Brie, narrow, 
 sluggish, and deep; a town of inns and trade, of retired 
 tradespeople, traversed by diligences, chaises and heavy carts. 
 These two towns — or this town — with its historical associa- 
 tions, with the melancholy of its ruins, the gaiety of its 
 valley, its delightful ravines full of unkempt hedgerows and 
 wildflowers, its river terraced with gardens, has so sure a 
 hold on the love of its children that they behave like the sons 
 
200 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 of Auvergne, of Savoy, of France. Though they leave Provins 
 to seek their fortune, they always come back to it. The 
 phrase, "To die in one's burrow," made for rabbits and faith- 
 ful souls, might be taken by the natives of Provins as their 
 motto. 
 
 And so the two Rogrons thought only of their beloved 
 Provins. As they sold thread, the brother saw the old town. 
 While packing cards covered with buttons, he was gazing 
 at the valley. He rolled and unrolled tape, but he was fol- 
 lowing the gleaming course of the rivers. As he looked at 
 his pigeon-holes, he was climbing the sunk roads whither of 
 old he fled to evade his father's rage, to eat walnuts, and to 
 cram on blackberries. The little Square at Provins above all 
 filled his thoughts; he would beautify the house; he dreamed 
 of the front he would rebuild, the bedrooms, the sitting-room, 
 the billiard-room, the dining-room; then of the kitchen gar- 
 den, which he would turn into an English garden with a 
 lawn, grottoes, fountains, statues, and what not? 
 
 The room.s in which the brother and sistor slept on the 
 second floor of the house, three windows wide and six stories 
 high — there are many such in the Rue Saint-Denis — had no 
 furniture beyond what was strictly necessary; but not a soul 
 in Paris had finer furniture than this haberdasher. As he 
 walked in the streets he would stand in the attitude of an 
 ecstatic, looking at the handsome pieces on show and examin- 
 ing hangings with which he filled his house. On coming 
 home he would say to his sister, "I saw a thing in such or such 
 a shop that would just do for us !" The next day he would 
 buy another, and invariably he gave up one month the choice 
 of the month before. The revenue would not have paid for 
 his architectural projects; he wanted everything, and always 
 gave the preference to the newest thing. When he studied 
 the balconies of a newly-built house, and the doubtful at- 
 tempts at exterior decoration, he thought the mowldings. 
 sculpture, and ornament quite out of place. "Ah !" he would 
 say to himself, "those fine things would look much better at 
 Provins than they do there." As he digested his breakfast 
 
PlEIUiETTIi] 
 
 201 
 
 on his doorstep, leaning his back against the shop side, with 
 a hazy eye the haberdasher saw a fantastic dwelling, golden 
 in the sunshine of his dream ; he walked in a garden, listening 
 to his fountain as it splashed in a shower of diamonds on a 
 round flag of limestone. He played billiards on his own table ; 
 he planted flowers. 
 
 When his sister sat, pen in hand, lost in thought, and for- 
 getting to scold the shopmen, she was seeing herself receiv- 
 ing the townsfolk of Provins, gazing at herself in the tall 
 mirrors of her drawing-room, and wearing astounding caps. 
 Both brother and sister were beginning to think that the 
 atmosphere of the Eue Saint-Denis was unwholesome, and 
 the smell of the mud in the market made them long for the 
 scent of the roses of Provins. They suffered alike from home- 
 sickness and monomania, both thwarted by the necessity for 
 selling their last remnants of thread, reels of silk, and but- 
 tons. The promised land of the valley of Provins attracted 
 these Israelites all the more strongly because they had for a 
 long time really suffered, and had crossed with gasping 
 breath the sandy deserts of haberdashery. 
 
 The letter from the Lorrains arrived in the middle of a 
 meditation on that beautiful future. The haberdashers 
 scarcely knew their cousin Pierrette Lorrain. The settlem.ent 
 of Auffray's estate, long since, by the old innkeeper, had taken 
 place when they were going into business, and Rogron never 
 said much about his money matters. Having been sent to 
 Paris so young, the brother and sister could hardly remem- 
 ber their aunt Lorrain. It took them an hour of genealogical 
 discussion to recall their aunt, the daughter of their grand- 
 father Auffray's second wife, and their mother's half-sister. 
 They then remembered that Madame Lorrain's mother was 
 the Madame Neraud who had died of grief. They concluded 
 that their grandfather's second marriage had been a disas- 
 trous thing for them, the result being the division of Auffray's 
 estate between two families. They had, indeed, heard sundry 
 recriminations from their father, who was always somewhat 
 of the grudging publican. The pair studied the Lorrains' 
 
20:2 
 
 PIEHRETTiJ 
 
 letter through the medium of these reminiscences, which werft 
 not in Pierrette's favor. To take charge of an orphan, a 
 girl, a cousin, who in any case would be their heiress in the 
 event of their neither of them marrying, — this was matter 
 for discussion. The question was regarded from every point 
 of view. In the first place, they had never seen Pierrette. 
 Then it would be very troublesome to have a young girl to 
 look after. Would they not be binding themselves to provide 
 for her? It would be impossible to send her away if they did 
 not like her. Would they not have to find her a liusband? 
 And if, after all, Eogron could find "a shoe to fit him" among 
 the heiresses of Provins, would it not be better to keep all 
 they had for his children? The shoe that would fit her 
 brother, according to Sylvie, was a rich girl, stupid and ugly, 
 who would allow her sister-in-law to rule her. The couple 
 decided that they would refuse. 
 
 Sylvie undertook to reply. Business was sufficiently press- 
 ing to retard this letter, which she did not deem urgent, and 
 indeed the old maid thought no more about it when the 
 forewoman consented to buy the business and stock-in-trade 
 of the Soeur de famille. 
 
 Sylvie Rogron and her brother had gone to settle in Provins 
 four years before the time when Brigaut's appearance brought 
 so much interest into Pierrette's life. But the doings of 
 these two persons in the country require a description no less 
 than their life in Paris; for Provins was fated to be as evil 
 an influence for Pierrette as her cousins' commercial ante- 
 cedents. 
 
 When a small tradesman who had come tO' Paris from 
 the provinces returns to the country from Paris, he inevitably 
 brings with him some notions ; presently he loses them in the 
 habits of the place where he settles do™, and where his 
 fancies for innovations gradually sink. Hence come those 
 slow, small, successive changes which are gradually scratched 
 by Paris on the surface of country-town life, and which are 
 the essential stamp of the change of a retired shopkeeper into 
 a confinned provincial. This change is a real distemper. No 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 203 
 
 email tradesman can pass witlioiit a shock from perpetual talk 
 to utter silence, from the activity of his Paris life to the 
 stagnation of the country. When the good folks have earned 
 a little money, they spend a certain amount on the passion 
 they have so long been hatching, and work off the last spasms 
 of an energy which cannot be stopped short at will. Those 
 who have never cherished any definite plan, travel, or throw 
 themselves into the political interests of the municipality. 
 Some go out shooting or fishing, and worry their farmers 
 and tenants. Some turn usurers, like old father Eogron, or 
 speculate, like many obscure persons. 
 
 The dream of this brother and sister is known to you; 
 they wanted to indulge their magnificent fancy for handling 
 the trowel, for building a delightful house. This fixed idea 
 had graced the Square of lower Provins with the frontage 
 which Brigaut had just been examining, the interior arrange- 
 ments of the house, and its luxurious furniture. The builder 
 drove never a nail in without consulting the Eogrons, with- 
 out making them sign the plans and estimates, without ex-- 
 plaining in lengthy detail the structure of the object under 
 discussion, where it was made, and the various prices. Ay 
 to anything unusual, it had always been introduced by Mon- 
 sieur Tiphaine or Madame Julliard the younger, or Monsieur" 
 Garceland, the Maire. Such a resemblance with some wealthy 
 citizen of Provins always carried the day in the builder's; 
 favor. 
 
 "Oh, if Monsieur Garceland has got one we will have it !''' 
 said Mademoiselle Sylvie. "It must be right; he had good, 
 taste.'' 
 
 "Sylvie, he suggests we should have ovolos in the cornice 
 of the passage." 
 
 "You call that an ovolo?" 
 "Yes, mademoiselle." 
 
 "But why ? What a queer name ! I never heard it before." 
 
 "But you have seen them?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Do you know Latin ?" 
 
204 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Well, it means egg-shaped ; the ovolo is egg-shaped." 
 
 "You are a queer crew, you architects!" cried Rogron. 
 "That, no doubt, is the reason you charge so much ; you don't 
 throw away your egg-shells !" 
 
 "Shall we paint the passage?" asked the builder. 
 
 "Certainly not !" cried Sylvie. "Another five hundred 
 francs !" 
 
 "But the drawing-room and the stairs are so nice, it is aj' 
 pity not to decorate the passage," said the builder. "Little 
 Madame Lesourd had hers painted last year." 
 
 "And yet her husband, being crown prosecutor, cannot stay 
 at Provins " 
 
 "Oh ! he will be President of the Courts here some day," 
 said the builder. 
 
 "And what do you think is to become of Monsieur Tiphaine 
 then?" 
 
 "Monsieur Tiphaine ! He has a pretty wife ; I am not un- 
 easy about him. Monsieur Tiphaine will go to Paris." 
 "Shall we paint the corridor?" 
 
 "Yes; the Lesourds will, at any rate, see that we are as 
 good as they are," said Rogron. 
 
 The first year of their residence in Provins was wholly 
 given up to these discussions, to the pleasure of seeing the 
 workmen busy, to the surprises and information of all kinds 
 that they got by it, and to the attempts made by the brother 
 and sister to scrape acquaintance with the most important 
 families in the town. 
 
 The Rogrons had never had any kind of society; they had 
 never gone out of their shop ; they knew literally no one in 
 Paris, and they thirsted for the pleasure of visiting. On their 
 return they found first Monsieur and Madame Julliard, of 
 the Ver chinois, with their children and grandchildren; then 
 the Guepin family, or, to be exact, the Guepin elan; the 
 grandson still kept the shop of the Trois Quenouilles; and 
 finally, Madame Guenw, who had sold them the business of 
 the Swur de famille; her three daughters were married in 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 205 
 
 Provins. These three great tribes — the Julliards, the 
 Guepins, and the Giienees — spread over the town like coueh- 
 grass on a lawn. Monsieur Garceland, the Maire, was Mon- 
 sieur Guepin's son-in-law. The Cure, Monsieur I'Abbe 
 Peroux, was own brother to Madame Julliard, who was a 
 Peroux. The President of the Court, Monsieur Tiphaine, 
 was brother to Madame Guenee, who signed herself "nee 
 Tiphaine." 
 
 The queen of the town was Madame Tiphaine junior, the 
 handsome only daughter of Madame Koguin, who was the 
 wealthy wife of a notary of Paris; but he was never men- 
 tioned. Delicate, pretty, and clever, married to a provincial 
 husband by the express management of her mother, who would 
 not have her with her, and had taken her from school only 
 a few days before her marriage, Melanie felt herself an exile 
 at Provins, where she behaved admirably well. She was al- 
 ready rich, and had great expectations. As to Monsieur 
 Tiphaine, his old father had advanced his eldest daughter, 
 Madame Guenee, so much money on account of her share 
 of the property, that an estate worth eight thousand francs 
 a year, at about five leagues from Provins, would fall to the 
 President. Thus the Tiphaines, ^vho had married on twenty 
 thousand francs a year, exclusive of the President's salary 
 and residence, expected some day to have twenty thousand 
 francs a year more. They were not out of luck, people said. 
 
 Madame Tiphaine's great and only object in life was to se- 
 cure her husband's election as deputy. Once in Paris, the 
 deputy would be made judge, and from the Lower Court she 
 promised herself he should soon be promoted to the High 
 Court of Justice. Hence she humored everybody's vanity, 
 and strove to please; more difficult still, she succeeded. The 
 young woman of two-and-twenty received twice a week, in 
 her handsome house in the old town, all the citizen class 
 of Provins. She had not yet taken a single awkward step 
 on the slippery ground where she stood. She gratified every 
 conceit, patted every hobby; grave with serious folks, and a 
 girl with girls, of all things a mother with the mothers, cheer- 
 
206 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 ful with the young wives, eager to oblige, polite to all; in 
 short, a pearl, a gem, the pride of Provins. She had not yet 
 said the word, but all the electors of the town awaited the 
 day when their dear President should be old enough, to nomi- 
 nate him at once. Every voter, sure of his talents, made him 
 his man and his patron. Oh yes, Monsieur Tiphaine would 
 get on; he would be Keeper of the Seals, and he would pro- 
 mote the interests of Provins. 
 
 These were the means by which Madame Tiphaine had 
 been so fortunate as to obtain her ascendency over the little 
 town of Provins. Madame Guenee, Monsieur Tiphaine's sis- 
 ter, after seeing her three daughters married — the eldest to 
 Monsieur Lesourd the public prosecutor, the second to Mon- 
 sieur Martener the doctor, and the third to Monsieur Auffray 
 the notary — had herself married again Monsieur Galardon, 
 the collector of taxes. Mesdames Lesourd, Martener, and 
 Auffray, and their mother Madame Galardon, regarded the 
 President as the wealthiest and cleverest man in the family. 
 The public prosecutor. Monsieur Tiphaine's nephew by mar- 
 riage, had the greatest interest in getting his uncle to Paris, 
 so as to be made President himself. Hence these four ladies 
 — for Madame Galardon adored her brother — formed a little 
 court about Madame Tiphaine, taking her opinion and advice 
 on every subject. 
 
 Then Monsieur Julliard's eldest son, married to the only 
 daughter of a rich farmer, was taken with a sudden passion, 
 a grande passion, secret and disinterested, for the President's 
 wife — ^that angel dropped from the sky of Paris. Melanie, 
 very wily, incapable of burdening herself with a Julliard, but 
 perfectly capable of keeping him as an Amadis and making 
 use of his folly, advised him to start a newspaper to which she 
 was the Egeria. So for two years now Julliard, animated by 
 his romantic passion, had managed a paper and run a dili- 
 gence for Provins. The newspaper, entitled La Ruche, The 
 Beehive, included literary, archaeological, and medical papers 
 concocted in the family. The advertisements of the district 
 paid the expenses; the subscriptions — about two hundred — 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 207 
 
 were all profit. Melancholy verses sometimes appeared in it, 
 unintelligible to the country people, and addressed "To 
 Her ! ! 1" with the three points of admiration. Thus the young 
 Julliard couple, singing the merits of Madame Tiphaine, had 
 allied the clan Julliard to that of the Guenees. Thencefor- 
 ward the President's drawing-room, of course, led the society 
 of the town. The very few aristocrats who lived at Provins 
 met in a single house in the old town, that of the old Comtesse 
 de Breautey. 
 
 During the first six months after their transplanting, the 
 Eogrons, by favor of their old-time connection with the 
 Julliards, the Guepins, and the Guenees, and by emphasizing 
 their relationship to Monsieur Auifray the notary — a great- 
 grandnephew of their grandfather's — were received at first 
 by Madame Julliard the elder and Madame Galardon; then, 
 not without difficulty, they found admission to the beautiful 
 Madame Tiphaine's drawing-room. Everybody wished to 
 know something about the Eogrons before inviting them to 
 call. It was a little difficult to avoid receiving tradespeople 
 of the Eue Saint-Denis, natives of Provins, who had come 
 back to spend their money there. Nevertheless, the instinct 
 of society is always to bring together persons of similar for- 
 tune, education, manners, acquaintance, and character. Now 
 the Guepins, the Guenees, and the Julliards were of a higher 
 grade, and of older family, than the Eogrons^ — the children 
 of a money-lending innkeeper who could not be held blame- 
 less in his private life, nor with regard to the Auffray in- 
 heritance. Auifray the notary, Madame Galardon's son-in-law, 
 knew all about it ; the estate had been wound up in his prede- 
 cessor's office. Those older merchants, who had retired twelve 
 years since, had found themselves on the level of education, 
 breeding, and manners of the circle to which Madame 
 Tiphaine imparted a certain stamp of elegance, of Paris var- 
 nish. Everything was homogeneous ; they all understood each 
 other, and knew how to conduct themselves, and talk so as 
 to be agreeable to the rest. They knew each other's char- 
 
208 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 acters, and were acciist(5ined to agree. Having been once re- 
 ceived by Monsieur Garceland the Maire, the Kogrons flat- 
 tered themselves that they should soon be on intimate terms 
 with the best society of the town. Sylvie learned to play 
 boston. Rogron, far too stupid to play any game, twirled 
 his thumbs and swallowed his words when once he had talked 
 about his house. But the words acted like medicine; they 
 seemed to torture him cruelly ; he rose, he looked as if he were 
 about to speak; he took fright and sat down again, his lips 
 comically convulsed. Sylvie unconsciously displayed her na- 
 ture at games. Fractious and complaining whenever she lost, 
 insolently triumphant when she won, contentious and fret- 
 ful, she irritated her adversaries and her partners, and was 
 a nuisance to everybody. 
 
 Eaten up with silly and undisguised envy, Rogron and his 
 sister tried to play a part in a town where a dozen families 
 had formed a net of close meshes ; all their interests, all their 
 vanities made, as it were, a slippery floor on which newcomers 
 had to tread very cautiously to avoid running up against some- 
 thing or getting a fall. Allowing that the rebuilding of their 
 house might cost thirty thousand francs, the brother and 
 sister between them would still have ten thousand francs a 
 year. They fancied themselves very rich, bored their ac- 
 quaintances to death with their talk of future splendor, and 
 80 gave the measure of their meanness, their crass ignorance, 
 and their idiotic jealousy. The evening they wexe introduced 
 to Madame Tiphaine the beauty — who had already watched 
 them at Madame Garceland's, at her sister-in-law's, Madame 
 Galardon's, and at the elder Madam^e Julliard's — the queen 
 of Provins said in a confidential tone to Julliard junior, who 
 remained alone with her and the President a few minutes 
 after every one was gone: 
 
 "You all seem to be much smitten with these Rogrons ?" 
 
 "I said the Amadis of Provins ; "they bore my mother ; 
 they overpower my wife; and when Mademoiselle Sylvie was 
 sent, thirty years ago, as an apprentice to my father, even 
 then he could not en^lure her." 
 
 '^But I have a very great mind," said the pretty lady, put- 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 200 
 
 ting a little foot on the bar of the fender, "to give them to 
 understand that my drawing-room is not an inn-parlor." 
 
 Julliard cast up his eyes to the ceiling as much as to say : 
 
 "Dear Heaven, what wit, what subtlety!" 
 
 "I wish my company to be select, and if I admit the 
 Rogrons it will certainly not be that." 
 
 "They have no heart, no brain, no manners," said the Presi- 
 dent. "When after having sold thread for twenty years, aa 
 my sister did, for instance " 
 
 "My dear, your sister would not be out of place in any 
 drawing-room," said Madame Tiphaine, in a parenthesis. 
 
 "If people are so stupid as to remain haberdashers to the 
 end," the President went on ; "if they do not cast their skin ; 
 if they think that *^Comtes de Champagne' means ^accounts 
 for wine,' as the Rogrons did this evening, they should stay at 
 home." 
 
 "They are noisome !" said J ulliard. "You might think 
 there was only one house in Provins. They want to crush 
 us, and, after all, they have hardly enough to live on." 
 
 "If it were only the brother," said Madame Tiphaine, "we 
 might put up with him. He is not offensive. Give him a 
 Chinese puzzle, and he would sit quietly in a corner. It would 
 take him the whole winter to put up one pattern. But Made- 
 moiselle Sylvie ! What a voice — like a hyena with a cold 1 
 What lobster's claws ! Do not repeat anything of this, 
 Julliard." 
 
 Wlien Julliard was gone, the little lady said to her hus- 
 band : 
 
 "My dear, there are enough of the natives that I am obliged 
 to receive; these two more would be the death of me; and 
 with your permission, we will deprive ourselves of the pleas- 
 ure." 
 
 "You are the mistress in your own house," said the Presi- 
 dent, "but we shall make many enemies. The Rogrons will 
 join the Opposition, which hitherto has had no solidity in 
 Provins. That Rogron is already hanging on to Baron Gou- 
 raud and Vinet the lawyer/* 
 
no 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 ''Heh !'* said Melanie, with a smile, "they will do you ser- 
 vice then. Where there are no enemies, there is no triumph. 
 A Liberal conspiracy, an illegal society, a fight of some kind, 
 would bring you into the foreground." 
 
 The President looked at his young wife with a sort of 
 alarmed admiration. 
 
 Next day every one at Madame Grarceland's said in every 
 one else's ear that the Rogrons had not had a success at Mad- 
 ame Tiphaine's, and her remark about the inn-parlor was 
 much applauded. Madame Tiphaine took a month before re- 
 turning Mademoiselle Sylvie's visit. This rudeness is much 
 remarked on in the country. Then, at Madame Tiphaine's, 
 when playing boston with the elder Madame Julliard, Sylvie 
 made a most unpleasant scene about a splendid misere hand, 
 on which her erewhile mistress caused her to lose — ma- 
 liciously and on purpose, she declared. Sylvie, who loved 
 to play nasty tricks on others, could never accept a return 
 in kind. Madame Tiphaine, therefore, set the example of 
 making up the card-parties before the Rogrons arrived, so that 
 Sylvie was reduced to wandering from table to table, watching 
 others play, while they looked at her askance mth meaning 
 glances. At old Madame Julliard's, whist was now the gam.e, 
 and Sylvie could not play it. The old maid at last under- 
 stood that she was an outlaw, but without understanding the 
 reason. She believed herself to be an object of jealousy to 
 everybody. 
 
 Ere long the Rogrons were asked nowhere; but they per- 
 sistently spent their evenings at various houses. Clever 
 people made game of them, without venom, quite mildly, lead- 
 ing them to talk utter nonsense about the ovolos in their 
 house, and about a certain cellaret for liqueurs, matchless in 
 Provins. Meanwhile they gave themselves the final blow. 
 Of course, they gave a few sumptuous dinners, as much in 
 return for the civilities they had received as to show off their 
 splendor. The guests came solely out of curiosity. The first 
 dinner was given to Monsieur and Madame Tiphaine, with 
 whom the Rogrons had not once dined; to Messie'irs and 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 211 
 
 Mesdames Julliard, father and son, mother and daughter-in- 
 law; to Monsieur Lesourd, Monsieur the Cure, Monsieur and 
 Madame Galardon. It was one of those provincial spreads, 
 where the guests sit at table from five o'clock till nine. Mad- 
 ame Tiphaine had introduced the grand Paris style to Provins, 
 the well-bred guests going away as soon as coffee had been 
 served. She had some friends that evening at home, and 
 tried to steal away, but the Eogrons escorted the couple to the' 
 very street; and when they returned, bewildered at having 
 failed to keep the President and his wife, the other guests ex- 
 plained Madame Tiphaine's good taste, and imitated it with 
 a promptitude that was cruel in a country town. 
 
 "They will not see our drawing-room lighted up !" cried 
 Sylvie, "and candle-light is like rouge to it." 
 
 The Rogrons had hoped to give their guests a surprise. No 
 one hitherto had been admitted to see this much-talked-of 
 house. And all the frequenters of Madame Tiphaine's 
 drawing-room impatiently awaited her verdict as to the mar- 
 vels of the ''Palais Rogron.'' 
 
 "Well," said little Madame Martener, "you have seen the 
 Louvre ? Tell us all about it." 
 
 "But all — like the dinner — will not amount to much." 
 
 "What is it like?" 
 
 "Well, the front door, of which we were, of course, re- 
 quired to admire the gilt-iron window frames that you all 
 know, opens into a long passage through the house, dividing 
 it unequally, since there is but one window to the street on the 
 right, and two on the left. At the garden end this passage 
 has a glass door to steps leading down to the lawn, a lawn with 
 a decorative pedestal supporting a plaster cast of the Sparta- 
 cus, painted to imitate bronze. Behind the kitchen the archi- 
 tect has contrived a little pantry under the staircase, which 
 we were not spared seeing. The stair, painted throughout 
 like yellow-veined marble, is a hollow spiral, just like the 
 stairs that in a cafe lead from the ground floor to the entresol. 
 This trumpery structure of walnut wood, really dangerously 
 light, and with banisters picked out with brass, was displayed 
 
212 
 
 to us as one of the seven new wonders of the world. The 
 way to the cellars is beneath. 
 
 *^0n the other side of the passage, looking on the street, 
 is the dining-room, opening by folding doors into the drawing- 
 room, of the same size, but looking on to the garden.'^ 
 
 "So there is no hall said Madame Auff ray. 
 
 *'The hall, no doubt, is the long passage where you stand in 
 a draught,'' replied Madame Tiphaine. "We have had the 
 eminently national, liberal, constitutional, and patriotic no- 
 tion," she went on, "of making use only of wood grown in 
 France ! In the dining-room, the floor, laid in a neat pattern, 
 is of walnut wood. The sideboards, table, and chairs are also 
 in walnut. The window curtains are of white cotton with 
 red borders, looped back with vulgar ropes over enormous pegs 
 u^ith elaborate dull-gilt rosettes, the mushroom-like object 
 standing out against a reddish paper. These magnificent 
 curtains run on rods ending in huge scrolls, and are held up 
 by lions' claws in stamped brass, one at the top of each pleat. 
 
 "Over one of the sideboards is a regular cafe clock, draped, 
 as it were, with a sort of napkin in bronze gilt, an idea that 
 quite enchants the Rogrons. They tried to make me admire 
 this device ; and I could find nothing better to say than that if 
 it could ever be proper to hang a napkin round a clock face, 
 it was, no doubt, in a dining-room. On this sideboard are 
 two large lamps, like those which grace the counters of grand 
 restaurants. Over the other is a highly decorative barometer, 
 which seems to play an important part in their existence ; Ro- 
 gron gazes at it as he might gaze at his bride-elect. Between 
 the windows the builder has placed a white earthenware stove 
 in a hideously ornate niche. The walls blaze with a splendid 
 paper in red and gold, such as you will see in these same res- 
 taurants, and Rogron chose it there no doubt on the spot. 
 
 "Dinner was served in a set of white-and-gold china; the 
 dessert service is bright blue with green sprigs; but they 
 opened the china closet to show us that they had 
 another service of stonev/are for everyday use. The linen 
 is in large cupboards facing the sideboards. Every- 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 213 
 
 thing is varnished, shining, new, and harsh in color. 
 Still, I 'Could accept the dining-room; it has a character 
 of its own which, though not pleasing, is fairly representa- 
 tive of that of the owners; but there is no enduring 
 the five engravings — those black-and-white things against 
 which the Minister of the Interior ought really to get a decree ; 
 they represent Poniatowski leaping into the Elster, the De- 
 fence of the Barriere de Clichy, Napoleon himself pointing 
 a gun, and two prints of Mazeppa, all in gilt frames of a 
 vulgar pattern suitable to the prints, which are enough to 
 make one loathe popularity. Oh ! how much I prefer Madame 
 Julliard's pastels representing fruits, those capital pastels 
 which were done in the time of Louis XV., and which har- 
 monize with the nice old dining-room and its dark, rather 
 worm-eaten panels, which are at least characteristic of the 
 country, and suit the heavy family silver, the antique china, 
 and all our habits. The country is provincial; it becomes 
 ridiculous when it tries to ape Paris. You may perhaps re- 
 tort, 'Vous etes orfevre, Monsieur JosseT — ^You are to the 
 manner born.' But I prefer this old room of my father-in-law 
 Tiphaine's, with its heavy curtains of green-and-white dam- 
 ask, its Louis XV. chimney-piece, its scroll pattern pier glass, 
 its old beaded mirrors and time-honored card-tables; my jars 
 of old Sevres, old blue, mounted in old gilding; my clock 
 with its impossible flowers, my out-of-date chandelier, and my 
 tapestried furniture, to all the splendor of their drawing- 
 room." 
 
 "^What is it like said Monsieur Martener, delighted with 
 the praise of the country so ingeniously brought in by the 
 pretty Parisenne. 
 
 "The drawing-room is a fine red — as red as Mademoiselle 
 Sylvie when she is angry at losing a misere/' 
 
 "Sylvie~red," sa,id the President, and the word took its 
 place in the vocabulary of the district. 
 
 "The window-curtains — red ! the furniture — red ! the chim- 
 ney-piece — red marble veined with yellow! the candelabra 
 and clock — red marble veined with yellow, and mounted in 
 
214 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 a heavy vulgar style; Eoman lamp-brackets supported on 
 Greek foliage ! From the top of the clock a lion stares down 
 on you, stupidly, as the Kogrons stare; a great good-natured 
 lion, the ornamental lion so called, which will long continue 
 to dethrone real lions; he spends his life clutching a black 
 ball exactly like a deputy of the loft. Perhaps it is a Con- 
 stitutional allegory. The dial of this clock is an extraordinary 
 piece of work. 
 
 ''The chimney glass is framed with applique ornaments, 
 which look poor and cheap, though they are a novelty. But 
 the upholsterer's genius shines most in a panel of red stuff 
 of which the radiating folds all centre in a rosette in the 
 middle of the chimney-board — a romantic poem composed 
 expressly for the Eogrons, who display it with ecstasy. From 
 the ceiling hangs a chandelier, carefully wrapped in a green 
 cotton shroud, and with reason ; it is in the very worst taste, 
 raw-toned bronze, with even more detestable tendrils of brown 
 gold. Under it a round tea-table of marble, with more yellow 
 than ever in the red, displays a shining metal tray, on which 
 glitter cups of painted china — such painting! — arranged 
 round a cut-glass sugar-basin, so bold in style that our grand- 
 children will open their eyes in amazement at the gilt rings 
 j-ound the edge and the diamond pattern on the sides, like a 
 mediaeval quilted doublet, and at the tongs for taking the 
 sugar, which probably no one will ever use. 
 
 "This room is papered with red flock-paper imitating vel- 
 vet, divided into panels by a beading of gilt brass, finished at 
 the corners with enormous palms. A chromo-lithograph 
 hangs on each panel, framed most elaborately in plaster cast- 
 ing of garlands to imitate fine wood-carving. The furniture 
 of elm-root, upholstered with satin-cloth, classically consists 
 of two sofas, two large easy-chairs, six armchairs, and six 
 light chairs. The console is graced by an alabaster vase, called 
 a la Medicis, under a glass shade, and by the much-talked-of 
 liqueur-case. We were told often enough that 'there is not 
 such another in Provins.' In each window bay, hung with 
 splendid red silk curtains and lace curtains besides, stands 
 
PIEIIRETTB 
 
 215 
 
 a card-table. The carpet is Aiibiisson; the Kogrons have not 
 failed to get hold of the crimson ground with medallions of 
 flowers, the vnlgarest of all the common patterns. 
 
 "The room looks uninhabited ; there are no books or prints 
 — none of the little things that furnish a table," and she 
 looked at her own table covered with fashionable trifles, 
 albums, and the pretty toys that were given her. "There are 
 no flowers, none of the little nothings that fade and are re- 
 newed. It is all as cold and dry as Mademoiselle Sylvie. 
 Buffon is right in saying that the style is the man, and cer- 
 tainly drawing-rooms have a style !" 
 
 Pretty Madame Tiphaine went on with her description by 
 epigrams; and from this specimen, it is easy to imagine the 
 rooms in which the brother and sister really lived on the 
 first floor, which they also displayed to their guests. Still., 
 no one could conceive of the foolish expenses into which the 
 cunning builder had dragged the Rogrons; the mouldings, 
 of the doors, the elaborate inside shutters, the plaster orna- 
 ments on the cornices, the fancy painting, the brass-gill- 
 knobs and bells, the ingenious smoke-consuming fireplaces, 
 the contrivances for the prevention of damp, the sham inlaid 
 wood on the staircase^ the elaborate glass and smith's work — 
 in short, all the fancy-work which adds to the cost of building., 
 and delights the common mind, had been lavished without 
 stint. 
 
 No one would go to the Rogrons' evenings ; their pretensions 
 were still-bom. There were abundant reasons for refusing; 
 every day was taken up by Madame Garceland, Madame Galar- 
 don, the two Julliard ladies, Madame Tiphaine, the Sous- 
 prefet, etc. The Rogrons thought that giving dinners was 
 all that was needed to get into society; they secured some 
 young people who laughed at them, and some diners-out, 
 such as are to be found in every part of the world ; but serious 
 people quite gave them up. Sylvie, alarmed at the clear loss 
 of forty thousand francs swallowed up without any return in 
 the house she called her dear house, wanted to recover the 
 sum by economy. So she soon ceased to give dinners that 
 
2t6 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 cost from thirty to forty francs, mthout the wine, as they 
 failed to realize her hope of forming a circle — a thing as dif- 
 ficult to create in the country as it is in Paris. Sylvie dis- 
 missed her cook, and hired a country girl for the coarser 
 work. She herself cooked "to amuse herself." 
 
 Thus, fourteen months after their return home, the brother 
 and sister had drifted into a life of isolation and idleness. 
 Her banishment from "the world" had roused in Sylvie^s 
 soul an intense hatred of the Tiphaines, Julliards, Auffrays^ 
 and Garcelands — in short, of everybody in Provins society, 
 which she stigmatized as a clique, with which she was on the 
 most distant terms. She would gladly have set up a rival 
 circle ; but the second-rate citizen class was composed entirely 
 of small tradespeople, never free but on Sundays and holi- 
 days; or of persons in ill-odor, like Vinet the lawyer and 
 Doctor Neraud; or of rank Bonapaiiists, like General 
 Gouraud; and Eogron very rashly made friends with these, 
 though the upper set had vainly warned him against them. 
 The brother and sister were obliged to sit together by the 
 lire of their dining-room stove, talking over their business, 
 ihe faces of their customers, and other equally amusing 
 matters. 
 
 The second winter did not come to an end without their 
 being almost crushed by its weight of dulness. They had 
 the greatest difficulty in spending the hours of their day. As 
 they went to bed at night, they thought, "One more over!" 
 They spun out the morning by getting up late and dressing 
 slowly. Eogron shaved himself every morning; he examined 
 his face and described to his sister the changes he fancied he 
 noted in it ; he squabbled with the maid over the temperature 
 of the hot water; he wandered into the garden to see if the 
 flowers were sprouting; he ventured down to the river-bank, 
 where he had built a summer-house; he examined the wood- 
 work of the house. Had it warped? Had the settling split 
 any of the panels? Was the paint wearing well? Then he 
 came in to discuss his anxieties as to a sick hen, or some spot 
 
PlEmiETTEJ 
 
 217 
 
 where the damp had left stains, talking to his sister, who 
 affected hurry in laying the table while she scolded the maid. 
 The barometer was the most useful article in the house to 
 Eogron; he consulted it for no reason, tapped it familiarly 
 like a friend, and then said, "Vile weather!" to which his 
 sister would reply, "Pooh, the weather is quite seasonable." 
 If anybody called, he would boast of the excellence of this 
 instrument. > 
 Their breakfast took up some little time. How slowly did 
 these two beings masticate each mouthful. And their diges- 
 tion was perfect; they had no cause to fear cancer of the 
 stomach. By reading the Ruche and the Constitutionnel 
 they got on to noon. They paid a third of the subscription 
 to the Paris paper with Vinet and Colonel Gouraud. Kogron 
 himself carried the paper to the Colonel, who lived in the 
 Square, lodging with Monsieur Martener; the soldier's long 
 stories were an immense delight to him. EogTon could only 
 wonder why the Colonel was considered dangerous. He was 
 such an idiot as to speak to him of the ostracism under which 
 he lived, and retail the sayings of the "clique." God only 
 knows what the Colonel — who feared no one, and was a3 
 redoubtable with the pistol as with the sword — had to say 
 of "la Tiphaine" and "her Julliard," of the ministerial 
 officials of the upper town — "men brought over by foreigners, 
 capable of anything to stick in their places, cooking the 
 lists of votes at the elections to suit themselves," and the 
 like. 
 
 At about two o'clock Eogron sallied forth for a little walL 
 He was quite happy when a shopkeeper, standing at his door., 
 stopped him with a "How d'ye do, Pere Eogron?" He gos- 
 siped, and asked, "What news in the town?" heard and re- 
 peated scandal, or the tittle-tattle of Provins. He walked 
 \to the upper town, or in the sunk roads, according to the 
 weather. Sometimes he met other old men airing themselves 
 in like manner. Such meetings were happy events. 
 
 There were at Provins certain men who were out of conceit 
 with the life of Paris, learned and modest men, living with 
 
218 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 their books. Imagine Eogron's frame of mind when he lis- 
 tened to a supernumerary judge named Desfondrilles, more 
 of an archaeologist than a lawyer, saying to a man of educa- 
 tion, old Monsieur Martener, the doctor's father, as he pointed 
 to the valley : 
 
 "Will you tell me why the idlers of all Europe flock to 
 Spa rather than to Provins, when the waters of Provins are 
 acknowledged to be superior by the whole French faculty 
 of medicine, and to have effects and an energy worthy of 
 the medical properties of our roses ?" 
 
 "What do you expect?" replied the man of the world, "it 
 is one of the caprices of Caprice, and just as inexplicable. 
 The wines of Bordeaux were unknown a hundred years ago. 
 Marechal Eichelieu, one of the grandest figures of the last 
 century, the Alcibiades of France, was made governor of 
 Guyenne. His chest was delicate — the world knew why — the 
 wine of the country strengthened and restored him to health. 
 Bordeaux at once made a hundred millions of francs a year, 
 and the Marshal extended the Bordeaux district as far as 
 Angouleme and as far as Cahors, in short, to forty leagues 
 in every direction ! Who knows where the vineyards of Bor- 
 deaux end ? — And there is no equestrian statue of the Marshal 
 at Bordeaux V 
 
 "Ah ! if such an event should take place at Provins in this 
 century or the next," Monsieur Desfondrilles went on, "I 
 hope that either oei the little Square in the lower town, or on 
 the castle, or somewhere in the upper town, some bas-relief 
 will be seen representing the head of Monsieur Opoix, the 
 rediscoverer of the mineral waters of Provins !" 
 
 "But, my dear sir, it would perhaps be impossible to re- 
 Viabilitate Provins," said old Monsieur Martener. "The town 
 is bankrupt." 
 
 At this Eogron opened his eyes wide, and exclaimed : 
 
 "What !" 
 
 "Provins was formerly a capital which, in the twelfth cen- 
 tury, held its own as a rival to Paris, when the Counts of 
 Champagne held their court here as King Rene held his in 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 219 
 
 Provence," replied the man of learning. '''In those days civ- 
 ilization, pleasure, poetry, elegance, women — in short, all the 
 splendor of social life was not exclusively restricted to Paris. 
 Towns find it as hard as houses of business to rise again from 
 rain. Nothing is left to Provins but the fragrance of its 
 historic past and that of its roses — and a sous-prefecture." 
 
 "Oh ! to think what France might be if she still had all her 
 feudal capitals!" said Desfondrilles. "Can our sous-prefets 
 fill the place of the poetic, gallant, and warlike race of Thi- 
 bault, who made Provins what Ferrara was in Italy, what 
 Weimar was in Germany, and what Munich would like to be 
 in our day?" 
 
 "Provins was a capital ?" asked Rogron. 
 
 "Why, where have you dropped from?" said Desfondrilles 
 the archaeologist. 
 
 The lawyer struck the pavement of the upper town where 
 they were standing with his stick: "Do not you know," he 
 cried, "that all this part of Provins is built on crypts ?" 
 
 "Crypts?" 
 
 "Yes, to be sure, crypts of unaccountable loftiness and. 
 extent. They are like cathedral aisles, full of pillars." 
 
 "Monsieur Desfondrilles is writing a great antiquarian 
 work in which he intends to describe these singular struct- 
 ures," said old Martener, seeing the lawyer mount his hobby. 
 
 Rogron came home enchanted to think that his house stood 
 in this valley. The crypts of Provins kept him occupied for 
 five or six days in exploring them, and for several evenings 
 afforded a subject of conversation to the old couple. Thus 
 Rogron generally picked up something about old Provins, 
 about the intermarriages of the families, or some stale polit- 
 ical news which he retailed to his sister. And a hundred 
 times over in the course of his walk — several times even of 
 the same person — he would ask, "Well, what is the news? 
 What has happened lately ?" When he came in he threw him- 
 self on a sofa in the drawing-room as if he were tired out, 
 but really he was only weary of his own weight. 
 
 He got on to dinner-time by going twenty times to and fro 
 
220 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 between the drawing-room and the kitchen, looking at the 
 clock, opening and shutting doors. So long as the brother 
 and sister spent the evenings in other houses they got through 
 the hours till bedtime, but after they were reduced to staying 
 at home the evening v/as a desert to traverse. Sometimes 
 people on their way hom.e, after spending the evening out, as 
 they crossed the little Place, heard sounds in the Rogrons* 
 house as if the brother were murdering the sister ; they recog- 
 nized them as the terrific yawns of a haberdasher driven to 
 bay. The two machines had nothing to grind with their rusty 
 wheels, so they creaked. 
 
 The brother talked of marrying, but with a sense of de- 
 spair. He felt himself old and worn; a wife terrified him. 
 (Sylvie, who understood the need for a third person in the 
 Aouse, then remembered their poor cousin, for whom no one in 
 Provins had ever inquired, for everybody supposed that little 
 Madame Lorrain and her daughter were both dead. Sylvie 
 Rogron never lost anything; she was too thoroughly an old 
 maid to mislay anything, whatever it might be. She affected 
 to have found the letter from the Lorrains so as to make it 
 natural that she should mention Pierrette to her brother, and 
 he was almost happy at the possibility of having a little girl 
 about the house. Sylvie wrote to the old Lorrains in a 
 half-business-like, half-affectionate tone, attributing the delay 
 in her answer to the winding up of their affairs, to their 
 move back to Provins, and settling there. She affected to be 
 anxious to have her little cousin with her, allowing it to be 
 understood that if Monsieur "Rogron should not marry, Pier- 
 rette would some day inherit twelve thousand francs a year. 
 It would be needful to have been, like Nebuchadnezzar, to 
 some extent a wild beast, shut up in a cage in a beast-garden 
 with nothing to prey on but butcher's meat brought in by the 
 keeper, or else a retired tradesman with no shop-clerks to 
 nag, to imagine the impatience v/ith which the brother and 
 sister awaited their cousin Lorrain. Three days after the 
 despatch of the letter they were already wondering when the 
 child w^ould arrive. 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 221 
 
 Sylvie discerned in her so-called generosity to her penniless 
 cousin a means of changing the views of Provins society with 
 regard to herself. She called on Madame Tiphaine, who had 
 stricken them with her disapproval, and who aimed at creating 
 an upper class at Provins, like tliat at Geneva, and blew the 
 trumpet to announce the advent of her cousin Pierrette, the 
 child of Colonel Lorrain, pitying her woes, and congratulating 
 herself as a lucky woman on having a pretty young heiress 
 to introduce in society. 
 
 ''You have been a long time discovering her," remarked 
 Madame Tiphaine, who sat enthroned on a sofa by her fire- 
 side. 
 
 Madame Garceland, in a few words spoken in an undertone 
 during a deal, revived the story of the Auffray property. The 
 notary related the innkeeper's iniquities. 
 
 '''Where is the poor little thing?'' asked the President po- 
 litely. 
 
 "In Brittany," said Kogron. 
 
 "But Brittany is a wide word!" remarked Monsieur 
 Lesourd, the public prosecutor. 
 
 "Her grandfather and grandmother wrote to us. — When 
 was it, my dear?" asked Rogron. 
 
 Sylvie, absorbed in asking Madame Garceland where she 
 had bought the stuff for her dress, did not foresee the effect 
 of her answer, and said, "Before we sold our business." 
 
 "And you answered three days ago, Mademoiselle Sylvie !" 
 exclaimed the notary. 
 
 Sylvie turned as red as the hottest coals in the fire. 
 
 "We wrote to the Institution of Saint- Jacques," replied 
 Rogron. 
 
 "There is a sort of asylum there for old people," said a 
 lawyer, who had been supernumerary judge at Nantes. "But 
 she cannot be there, for they only tal^e in persons who are 
 past sixty." 
 
 "She is there with her grandmother Lorrain," said Ro- 
 gron. 
 
 "She had a little money, the eight thousand francs left her 
 
222 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 by your father — no, I mean your grandfather/' said the 
 notary, blundering intentionally. 
 
 "Indeed!" said Eogron, looking stupid, and not under- 
 standing this sarcasm. 
 
 "Then you knew nothing of your first cousin's fortune or 
 position?" asked the President. 
 
 "If Monsieur Eogron had known it, he would not have left 
 her in a place which is no more than a respectable work- 
 house," said the judge severely. "I remember now that a 
 house belonging to Monsieur and Madame Lorrain was sold 
 at Nantes under an execution ; and Mademoiselle Lorrain lost 
 her claims, for I was the commissioner in charge." 
 
 The notary spoke of Colonel Lorrain, who, if he were 
 alive, would indeed be astonished to think of his child being 
 in an institution like that of Saint-Jacques. The Kogrons 
 presently withdrew, thinking the world very spiteful. Sylvie 
 perceived that her news had had no success; she had ruined 
 herself in everybody's opinion ; henceforth she had no hope of 
 making her way in the higher society of Provins. 
 
 From that day the Eogrons no longer dissembled their 
 hatred of the great citizen families of Provins, and of all their 
 adherents. The brother now repeated all the Liberal fables 
 which Lawyer Vinet and Colonel Gouraud had crammed him 
 with about the Tiphaines, the Guenees, the Garcelands, the 
 Guepins, and the Julliards. 
 
 "I tell you what, Sylvie, I don't see why Madame Tiphaine 
 should turn a cold shoulder on the Eue Saint-Denis : the best 
 of her beauty was made there. Madame Eoguin, her mother, 
 is a cousin of the Guillaumes of the Cat and Racket, who 
 gave over their business to their son-in-law Joseph Lebas. 
 Her father is that notary, that Eoguin, who failed in 1819, 
 and ruined the Birotteaus. So Madame Tiphaine's money is 
 stolen wealth ; for what is a notary's wife who takes her own 
 settlement out of the fire and allows her husband to become 
 a fraudulent bankrupt A pretty thing indeed ! Ah ! I under- 
 stand ! She got her daughter married to live here at Provins 
 through her connections with the banker du Tillet. And these 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 people are proud ! — Well ! However, that is what the world 
 is !" 
 
 On the day when Denis Rogron and his sister Sylvie thus 
 broke out in abuse of the clique, they had, without knowing 
 it, become persons of importance, and were on the highroad 
 to having some society; their drawing-room was on the point 
 of becoming a centre of interests which only needed a stage. 
 The retired haberdasher assumed historical and political dig- 
 nity, for, still without knowing it, he gave strength and unity 
 to the hitherto unstable elements of the Liberal party at 
 Provins. And this was the way of it : The early career of the 
 Rogrons had been anxiously observed by Colonel Gouraud 
 and the advocate Yinet, who had been thrown together by 
 their isolation and their agreement of ideas. These two 
 men professed equal patriotism, and for the same reasons 
 — they wanted to acquire importance. But though they were 
 anxious to be leaders, they lacked followers. The Liberals 
 of Provins comprised an old soldier who sold lemonade; an 
 innkeeper ; Monsieur Coumant, a notary, Monsieur Auff ray's 
 rival; Monsieur Neraud, a physician, Doctor Martener's 
 rival ; and some independent persons, farmers scattered about 
 the neighborhood, and holders of national stock. The Colonel 
 and the lawyer, glad to attract an idiot whose money might 
 help them in their manoeuvres, who would support their sub- 
 scriptions, who, in some cases, would take the bull by the 
 horns, and whose house would be useful as a town-hall 
 for the party, took advantage of the Rogrons' hostility towards 
 the aristocrats of the place. The Colonel, the lawyer, and 
 Rogron had a slight bond in their joint subscription to the 
 Constitutionnel; it would not be difficult for the Colonel to 
 make a Liberal of the ex-haberdasher, though Rogron knew 
 so little of political history that he had not heard of the 
 exploits of Sergeant Mercier ; he thought he was a friend and 
 brother. 
 
 The impending arrival of Pierrette hastened the hatching 
 of certain covetous dreams to which the ignorance and folly 
 of the old bachelor and old maid had given rise. The Colonel, 
 
224 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 seeing that Sylvie had lost all chance of getting her foot into 
 the circle of the Tiphaines, had an idea. Old soldiers have 
 seen so many horrors in so many lands, so many naked corpses 
 grimacing hideously on so many battle-fields, that an ugly 
 face has no terrors for them, so the Colonel took steady aim 
 at the old maid's fortune. This officer, a short, fat man, wore 
 rings in his ears, which were already graced by bushy tufts 
 of hair. His floating gray whiskers were such as in 1799 
 had been called "fins.'' His large, good-natured, red face was 
 somewhat frost-bitten, as were those of all who escaped at the 
 Beresina. His huge, prominent stomach had the flattened 
 angle below characteristic of an old cavalry officer; Gouraud 
 had commanded the second regiment of Hussars. His gray 
 moustache covered a huge mouth — a perfect trap — the only 
 word to describe that abyss ; he did not eat, he devoured ! A 
 sWord-cut had shortened his nose. His speech was in conse- 
 quence thick and deeply nasal, like that ascribed to Capuchin 
 friars. His hands, which were small, short, and broad, were 
 such as make a woman say, "You have the hands of a thorough 
 scamp." His legs, below such a huge bod}^, looked frail. 
 Within this active but clumsy body lay a cunning spirit, 
 entire experience of life and things, hidden under the ap- 
 parent carelessness ■ of a soldier, and, utter contempt for the 
 conventionalities of society. Colonel Gouraud had the pen- 
 sion of the Cross of the Legion of Honor, and two thousand 
 four hundred francs a year as half -pay — a thousand crowns 
 a year in all for his whole income. 
 
 The lawyer, tall and lean, had no talent but his political 
 opinions, and no income but the meagre profits of his busi- 
 ncss. At Provins solicitors plead their own cases. In view 
 of his opinions, the Court listened with small favor to Maitre 
 Vinet; and the most Liberal farmers, when entangled in 
 lawsuits, would rely on an attorney in favor with the Bench 
 rather than employ Vinet. This man was said to have led 
 astray a rich girl living near Coulommiers, and to have 
 compelled her parents to let hor marry him. His wife was 
 one of the Chargeboeufs, an old family of nobles in la Brie, 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 225 
 
 who took their name from the exploit of a squire in Saint 
 Ijouis' expedition to Egypt. She had incurred her parents' 
 displeasure, and they, to Yinet's knowledge, had arranged 
 to leave their whole fortune to their eldest son, charged, no 
 doubt, with a reversion in favor of his sister's children. Thus 
 this man's first ambitious scheme came to nothing. The 
 lawyer, soon haunted by poverty, and ashamed of not having 
 enough to enable his wife to keep up appearances, had 
 made vain efforts to get his foot into a ministerial career; 
 but the rich branch of the Chargeboeufs refused to assist him. 
 These Eoyalists were strictly moral, and disapproved of a 
 compulsory marriage ; besides, their would-be relation's name 
 was Vinet; how could they favor any one so common? So 
 the lawyer was handed on from one branch to another when 
 he tried to utilize his wife's interest with her relations. Mad- 
 ame Vinet found no assistance but from one of the family, 
 a widowed Madame Chargeboeuf, with a daughter, quite poor., 
 who lived at Troyes. And a day came when Vinet remem^ 
 bered the kind reception his wife met with from this lady. 
 
 Eejected by the whole world, full of hatred of his wife's 
 family, of the Government which refused him an appoint- 
 ment, and of the society of Provins, which would have nothing 
 to say to him, Vinet accepted his poverty. His venom fer- 
 mented and gave him energy to endure. He became a 
 liberal on perceiving that his fortune was bound up with 
 the triumph of the Opposition, and vegetated in a wretched 
 little house in the upper town, which his wife seldom quitted. 
 This girl, bom to a better fate, lived absolutely alone in her 
 home with her one child. There are cases of poverty nobly 
 met and cheerfully endured ; but Vinet, eaten up by ambition, 
 and feeling that he had wronged a young creature, cherished 
 a dark indignation; his conscience expanded to admit every 
 means to success. His face, still young, changed for the 
 worse. People were sometimes terrified in Court at the sight 
 of his fiat viperine head, with its wide mouth, and eyes that 
 glittered through his spectacles ; at hearing his sharp, shrill, 
 rasping voice, that wrung their nerves. His muddy com- 
 
226 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 plexion, patchy with sickly hues of yellow and green, revealed 
 his suppressed ambitions, his perpetual mortifications and 
 hidden penury. He could argue and harangue; he had no 
 lack of point and imagery; he was learned and crafty. Ac- 
 customed to indulge his imagination for the sake of rising 
 by hook or by crook, he might have made a politician. A 
 man who hesitates at nothing so long as it is legal is a strong 
 man, and in this lay Yinet's strength. 
 
 This coming athlete of parliamentary debate — one of the 
 men who were to proclaim the supremacy of the House of 
 Orleans — had a disastrous influence over Pierrette's fate. 
 At present he wanted to provide himself with a weapon by 
 founding a newspaper at Provins. After having studied the 
 Rogrons from afar, with the assistance of the Colonel, he 
 '3nded by reckoning on the brother. And this time he reck- 
 oned witvh his host; his poverty was to come to an end after 
 seven dolorous years, during which more than one day had 
 come round without bread. On the day when Gouraud an- 
 nounced to Vinet, on the little Square, that the Eogrons had 
 broken with the citizen aristocracy and official circles of the 
 old town, the lawyer nudged him significantly in the ribs. 
 
 "This wife or that, ugly or handsome, it must be all the 
 yame to you," said he. "You should marry Mademoiselle 
 Rogron, and then we could get something done here " 
 
 "I was thinking of it. But they have sent for the daughter 
 of poor Colonel Lorrain — their heiress," said Gouraud. 
 
 "You could make them leave you their money by will. You 
 would have a very nicely fitted house." 
 
 "And the child, after all! Well, we shall see," said the 
 Colonel, with a jocose and deeply villainous leer, which 
 showed a man of Vinet's temper how small a thing a little 
 girl was in the eyes of this old soldier. 
 
 Since her grandparents had gone into the asylum where 
 they were forlornly ending their days, Pierrette, young and 
 full of pride, was so dreadfully miserable at living there on 
 charity, that she was happy to learn that she had some rich 
 
Pierrette and he . . . had sketched their childish drean?s on the 
 veil of the future 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 227 
 
 connections. On hearing that she was leaving, Brigant, the 
 Major's son, the companion of her childhood, who was now 
 a joiner's apprentice at Nantes, came to give her the money 
 needful for her journey by coach — sixty francs, all the savings 
 of his odd earnings painfully hoarded; Pierrette accepted it 
 with the sublime indifference of true friendship, showing that 
 she, in similar circumstances, would have been hurt by thanks. 
 Brigaut had gone every Sunday to Saint- Jacques to play with 
 Pierrette, and to comfort her. The sturdy young workman 
 had already gone through his delightful apprenticeship to 
 the perfect and devoted care that we give to the object of 
 our involuntary choice and affection. More than once ere 
 now, Pierrette and he, on a Sunday, sitting in a corner of 
 the garden, had sketched their childish dreams on the veil 
 of the future; the young craftsman, mounted on his plane, 
 traveled round the world, making a fortune for Pierrette, 
 who waited for him. 
 
 So, in the month of October 1824, when Pierrette had 
 almost completed her eleventh year, she was placed in the 
 care of the guard of the diligence from Nantes to Paris by 
 the two old people and the young apprentice, all three dread- 
 fully sad. The guard was requested to put her into the coach 
 for Provins, and to take great care of her. Poor Brigaut ! 
 he ran after the diligence like a dog, looking at his dear 
 Pierrette as long as he could. In spite of the child's signals, 
 he ran on for a league beyond the to\^ni, and when he was 
 exhausted, his eyes sent a last tearful glance at Pierrette, who 
 cried when she could see him no more. Pierrette put her 
 head out of the window, and discerned her friend standing 
 squarely, and watching the heavy vehicle that left him be- 
 hind. 
 
 The Lorrains and Brigaut had so little knowledge of life 
 that the little Bretonne had not a sou left when she arrived 
 in Paris. The guard, to whom the child prattled of rich 
 relations, paid her expenses at an inn in Paris, made the 
 guard of the Troyes coach repay him, and desired him to 
 deliver Pierrette to her family and collect the debt, exactly 
 as if she wore a parcel bv carrier. 
 I6 
 
228 
 
 Four days after leaving Nantes, at about nine o'clock one 
 Monday evening, a kind, burly old guard of the Messageries 
 Eoyales took Pierrette by the" hand, and, while the coach was 
 unloading in the High Street such passengers and parcels 
 as were to be deposited at Provins, he led her, with no luggage 
 but two frocks, two pairs of stockings, and two shifts, to the 
 house pointed out to him by the office clerk as that of Made- 
 moiselle Eogron. 
 
 "Good-morning, mademoiselle, and gents all," said the 
 guard. "I have brought you a cousin of yours, and here she 
 be, and a pretty dear too. You have forty-seven francs to 
 pay. Though your little girl has no weight of baggage, 
 please to sign my way-book." 
 
 Mademoiselle Sylvie and her brother gave way to their de- 
 light and astonishment. 
 
 "Begging your pardon," said the guard, "my coach is 
 waiting — sign my sheet and give me forty-seven francs and 
 sixty centimes, and what you please for me and the guard 
 from Nantes, for we have taken as much care of her as if she 
 were our own. We have paid out for her bed and food, her 
 place in the coach here, and other little things." 
 
 "Forty-seven francs and twelve sous ?" exclaimed Sylvie. 
 
 "You're never going to beat me down ?" cried the guard. 
 
 "But where is the invoice ?" said Eogron. 
 
 "The invoice! — Here is my way-bill." 
 
 "You can talk afterwards, pay now!" said Sylvie to her 
 brother; "you see, you cannot help paying." 
 
 Eogron went to fetch forty-seven francs twelve sous. 
 
 "And nothing for us — for my pal and me?" said the- 
 guard. 
 
 Sylvie produced a two-franc piece from the depths of her 
 old velvet bag, where her keys lurked in bunches. 
 
 "Thank you — keep it," said the man. "We would rather 
 have looked after the little girl for her own sake." He took 
 up his sheet and went out, saying to the servant girl: "A 
 nice place this is ! There are crocodiles of that sort without 
 going to Egypt for 'em.'^ 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 229 
 
 "Those people are horribly coarse V said Sylvie, who had 
 heard his speech. 
 
 "Dame! they took care of the child," replied Adele, with 
 her hands on her hips. 
 
 "We are not obliged to live with him/' said Rogron. 
 
 "Where is she to sleep?" asked the maid. 
 
 Such was the reception that met Pierrette Lorrain on her 
 arrival at her cousins' house, while they looked at her with 
 a bewildered air. She was flung on their hands like a parcel, 
 with no transition between the wretched room in which she 
 had lived with her grandparents and her cousins' dining- 
 room, which struck her as palatial. She stood there mute 
 and shy. To any one but these retired haberdashers, the 
 little Bretonne would have been adorable in her frock of 
 ^joarse blue serge, a pink cotton apron, her blue stockings, 
 thick shoes, and white kerchief; her little red hands were 
 covered by knitted mittens of red wool edged with white 
 that the guard had bought for her. Her little Brittany cap. 
 which had been washed in Paris — it had got tumbled in the 
 course of the journey from Nantes — really looked like a glory 
 round her bright face. This native cap, made of fine cambric, 
 with a stiff lace border ironed into flat pleats, deserves a 
 description, it is so smart and so simple. The light, filtered 
 through the muslin and lace, casts a half shadow, a twilight 
 softness, on the face; it gives it the virginal grace which 
 painters try to find on their palettes, and which Leopold 
 Robert has succeeded in lending to the Raphael-like face of 
 the woman holding a child in his picture of the Reapers. 
 Within this setting of broken lights shone an artless rose and 
 white face, beaming with vigorous health. The heat of the 
 room brought the blood to her head, and it suffused the edge 
 of her tiny ears with fire, tingeing her lips and the tip of a 
 finely cut nose, while by contrast it made her bright com- 
 plexion look brighter than before. 
 
 "Well, have you nothing to say to us?" said Sylvie. "J 
 am your cousin Sylvie, and that is your cousin Denis." 
 
 "Are you hungry ?" asked Rogron. 
 
230 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 '^When did you leave Nantes?" asked Sylvie. 
 "She is dumb/' said Rogron. 
 
 "Poor child, she has very few clothes to her back!" ob- 
 served sturdy Adele, as she untied the bundle wrapped in a 
 handkerchief belonging to old Lorrain. 
 
 "Kiss your cousin/' said Sylvie. Pierrette kissed Rogron. 
 
 "Yes, kiss your cousin/' said Rogron. Pierrette kissed 
 Sylvie. 
 
 "She is scared by the journey, poor little thing; perhaps 
 she is sleepy," said Adele. 
 
 Pierrette felt a sudden and invincible aversion for her two 
 relations, a feeling she had never before known. Sylvie and 
 the maid went to put the little girl to bed in the room on 
 the second floor where Brigaut was to see the cotton curtain. 
 There were in this attic a small bed with a pole painted blue, 
 from which hung a cotton curtain, a chest of drawers of 
 walnut wood, with no marble top, a smaller table of the same 
 wood, a looking-glass, a common bed-table, and three wretched 
 chairs. The walls and sloping roof to the front were covered 
 with a cheap blue paper flowered with black. The floor was 
 painted and waxed, and struck cold to the feet. There wan 
 no carpet but a thin bedside rug made of selvages. The 
 chimney-shelf, of cheap marble, was graced with a mirror., 
 two candlesticks of copper gilt, and a vulgar alabaster vase 
 with two pigeons drinking to serve as handles; this Sylvie 
 had had in fier room in Paris. 
 
 "Shall you be comfortable here, child ?" asked Sylvie. 
 
 "Oh ! it is beautiful !" replied the little girl in her silvery 
 treble. 
 
 "She is not hard to please," muttered the sturdy peasant 
 woman to herself. "I had better warm the bed, I suppose ?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "Yes," said Sylvie, "the sheets may be damp." 
 
 Adele brought a head kerchief of her ovm when she came 
 up with the warming-pan; and Pierrette, who had hitherto 
 slept in sheets of coarse Brittany linen, was amazed at the 
 fine, soft cotton sheets. When the little girl was settled and 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 231 
 
 in bed, Adele, as she went downstairs, could not help exclaim- 
 ing, "All her things put together are not worth three francs, 
 mademoiselle !" 
 
 Since adopting her system of strict economy, Sylvie always 
 made the servant sit in the dining-room, so as to have but 
 one lamp and one fire. When Colonel Gouraud and Vinet 
 came, Adele withdrew to her kitchen. Pierrette's arrival 
 kept them talking for the rest of the evening. 
 
 ^^Ve must get her some clothes to-morrow," said Sylvie. 
 "She has hardly a stitch." 
 
 "She has no shoes but those thick ones she had on, and 
 they weigh a pound," said Adele. 
 
 "They wear them so in those parts," said Eogron. 
 
 "How she looked at the room, which is none so fine neither, 
 for a cousin of yours, mademoiselle !" 
 
 "So much the better; hold your tongue. You see she is 
 delighted with it." 
 
 "Lord above us ! what shifts ! They must rub her skin 
 raw. But none of these things are of any use," said Adele, 
 turning out the contents of Pierrette's bundle. 
 
 Till ten o'clock master, mistress, and maid were busy de- 
 ciding of what stuff and at wfiat price the shifts should be 
 made, how many pairs of stockings and of what quality, and 
 how many under-petticoats would be needed, and calculating 
 the cost of Pierrette's wardrobe. 
 
 "You will not get off for less than three hundred francs," 
 said Rogron to his sister, as he carried the price of each article 
 in his head from long practice, and added up the total from 
 memory. 
 
 "Three hundred francs !" exclaimed Sylvie. 
 
 "Yes, three hundred ; work it out yourself." 
 
 The brother and sister began again, and made it three hun- 
 dred francs without the sewing. 
 
 "Three hundred francs at one cast of the net !" cried Sylvie, ' 
 who went to bed on the idea so ingeniously expressed by this 
 proverbial figure of speech. 
 
 Pierrette was one of those children of love whom love has 
 
232 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 blessed with tenderness, cheerfulness, brightness, generosity, 
 and devotedness; nothing had as yet chilled or crushed her 
 heart; it was almost wildly sensitive, and the way she was 
 received by her relations weighed on it painfully. Though 
 Brittany had to her been a home of poverty, it had also been 
 a home of affection. Though the old Lorrains were the most 
 unskilful traders, they were the simplest,, most loving, most 
 caressing souls in the world, as all disinterested people are. 
 At Pen-Hoel their little grand-daughter had had no teaching 
 but that of nature. Pierrette went as she would in a boat 
 on the pools, she ran about the village or the fields with her 
 companion Jacques Brigaut, exactly like Paul and Virginia. 
 Both the children, spoiled and petted by every one, and as 
 free as the air, ran after the thousand joys of childhood; in 
 summer they went to watch the fishermen, they caught in- 
 sects, plucked flowers, and gardened; in winter they made 
 slides, built smart snow-palaces and snow-men, or made snow- 
 balls to pelt each other. They were everywhere welcome; 
 everybody smiled on them. 
 
 When it was time that they should learn something, mis- 
 fortunes came. Jacques, left destitute by his father's death, 
 was apprenticed by his relations to a cabinet-maker, and 
 maintained by charity, as Pierrette was soon after in the asy- 
 lum of Saint- Jacques. But even in this almshouse, pretty 
 little Pierrette had been made much of, loved, and kindly 
 treated by all. The child, thus accustomed to so much affec- 
 tion, no longer found, in the home of these longed-for and 
 wealthy relations, the look, the tone, the words, the manner 
 which she had hitherto met with in every one, even in the 
 guards of the diligences. Thus her amazement, already great, 
 was complicated by the changed moral atmosphere into which 
 she had been plunged. The heart can turn suddenly cold and 
 hot as the body can. The poor child longed to cry without 
 knowing what for. She was tired, and she fell asleep. 
 
 Accustomed to rise very early, like all country-bred chil- 
 dren, Pierrette awoke next morning two hours before the 
 cook. She dressed, trotted about her room over her cousin's 
 
PIERRETTE! 
 
 233 
 
 head, looked out on the little Square, and was going down- 
 stairs; she was astonished at the splendor of the staircase; 
 she examined every detail — the rosettes, the brass-work, the 
 mouldings, the painting, etc. Then she went down; she 
 could not open the garden door, so she came up again ; went 
 down once more when Adele was about, and sprang into the 
 garden. She took possession of it, ran to the river, was 
 amazed by the smnmer-house, went into the summer-house; 
 she had enough to see and wonder at in all she saw till her 
 cousin Sylvie was up. During breakfast Sylvie said to her : 
 
 "So it was you, little bird, who were trotting up and down- 
 stairs at daybreak, and making such a noise ? You woke me 
 so completely that I could not get to sleep again. You must 
 be very quiet, very good, and learn to play without making a 
 sound. Your cousin does not like noise.'' 
 
 "And you must take care about your feet," said Eogron. 
 ''^You went into the summer-house with muddy shoes, and left 
 your footsteps printed on the floor. Your cousin likes every- 
 thing to be clean. A great girl like you ought to be cleanly. 
 Were you not tanght to be clean in Brittany? To be sure, 
 when I went there to buy flax it was dreadful to see what 
 savages they were ! — She has a fine appetite at any rate," 
 isaid Rogron, turning to liis sister ; "you might think she had 
 not seen food these three days." 
 
 And so> from the very first, Pierrette felt hurt by her 
 cousins' remarks, hurt without knowing why. Her frank and 
 upright nature, hitherto left to itself, had never been used to 
 reflect; incapable, therefore, of understanding wherein her 
 cousins were wrong, she was doomed to tardy enlightenment 
 through suffering. 
 
 After breakfast, the couple, delighted by Pierrette^s aston- 
 ishment, and eager to enjoy it, showed her their fine drawing- 
 room, to teach her to respect its splendor. Unmarried people, 
 as a result of their isolation, and prompted by the craving 
 for something to interest them, are led to supply the place 
 of natural affections by artificial affections — the love of dogs, 
 cats, or canary birds, of their servant or their spiritual di- 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 rector. Thus Rogron and Sylvie had an immoderate affection 
 for the house and furnittire that had cost them so much. 
 Sylvie had taken to helping Adele every morning, being of 
 opinion that the vi^oman did not know how to wipe furniture, 
 to brush it, and make it look like new. This cleaning was 
 soon her constant occupation. Thus, far from diminishing 
 in value, the furniture was improved. Then the problem was 
 to use it without wearing it out, without staining it, without 
 scratching the wood, or chilling the polish. This idea ere 
 long became an old maid's monomania. Sylvie kept in a 
 closet woolen rags, wax, varnish, and brushes ; she learned to 
 use them as skilfully as a polisher; she had feather brooms 
 and dusters, and she could rub without fear of hurting her- 
 self, she was so strong! Her clear, blue eye, as cold and 
 hard as steel, constantly peered under the furniture, and you 
 were more likely to find a tender chord in her heart than a< 
 speck of flue under a chair. 
 
 After what had passed at Madame Tiphaine's, Sylvie coul(!/ 
 not possibly shirk the outlay of three hundred francs. During 
 the first week Sylvie was wholly occupied, and Pierrette con- 
 stantly amused, by the frocks to be ordered and tried on, 
 the shifts and petticoats to be cut out and made by needle- 
 women working by the day. Pierrette did not know how to 
 sew. 
 
 "She has been nicely brought up!" cried Eogron. "Do 
 you know nothing, child?" 
 
 Pierrette, who only knew how to love, answered but by a 
 pretty childish shrug. 
 
 "What did you do all day in Brittany?" asked Rogron. 
 
 "I played," she replied guilelessly. "Everybody played 
 with me. Grandmamma and grandpapa — and everybody told 
 me stories. Oh ! they were very fond of me." 
 
 "Indeed !" replied Rogron, "and so you lived like a lady." 
 
 Pierrette did not understand this tradesman's wit. She 
 opened her eyes wide. 
 
 "She is as stupid as a wooden stool," said Sylvie to Made- 
 moiselle Borain, the best workwoman in Provins. 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 £35 
 
 ''So young!" said the needlewoman, looking at Pierrette, 
 whose delicate little face looked up at her with a knowing ex- 
 pression. 
 
 Pierrette liked the workwoman better than her cousins ; she 
 put on prett}^ airs for them, watched them sewing, said quaint 
 things — the flowers of childhood, such as Rogron and Sylvie 
 had already silenced by fear, for they liked to impress all 
 dependants with a wholesome alarm. The sewing- worn en 
 were charmed with Pierrette. The outfit, however, was not 
 achieved without some terrible interjections. 
 
 "That child will cost us the eyes in our heads !" said 
 Sylvie to Rogron. 
 
 "Hold 3^ourself up child, do. The deuce is in it ! the 
 clothes are for you, not for me,'' said she to Pierrette, when 
 she was being measured or fitted. 
 
 "Come, let Mademoiselle Borain do her work; you won't 
 pay her day's wages !" she exclaimed, seeing the child ask 
 the head needlewoman to do something for her. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," asked Mademoiselle Borain, "must this 
 seam be back-stitched ?" 
 
 "Yes ; make everything strongly ; I do not want to have such 
 M piece of work again in a hurry.'^ 
 
 But it was the same with the little cousin as with the 
 house. Pierrette was to be as well dressed as Madame Garce- 
 land's little girl. She had fashionable little boots of bronze 
 kid, like the little Tiphaine girl. She had very fine cotton 
 stockings, stays by the best maker, a frock of blue reps, 
 a pretty cape lined with white silk, all in rivalry with young 
 Madame Julliard's little girl. And the underclothes were 
 as good as the outside show, Sylvie was so much afraid of the 
 keen and scrutinizing eye of the mothers of children. 
 Pierrette had pretty shifts of fine calico. Mademoiselle 
 Borain said that Madame the Sous-prefete's little girls wore 
 cambric drawers with embroidery and frilling — the latest 
 thing, in short; Pierrette had frilled drawers. A charming 
 drawn bonnet was ordered for her of blue velvet lined with 
 white satin, like the little Martener girl's. Thus Pierrette 
 
236 
 
 FIERKETTK 
 
 was the smartest little person in Provins. On Sunday, on 
 coming out from church, all the ladies kissed her. Mesdames 
 Tiphaine, Garceland, Galardon, Auffray, Lesourd, Martener, 
 Guepin, and JuUiard doted on the sweet little Bretonne. 
 This excitement flattered old Sylvie's vanity, and in her lav- 
 ishness she thought less of Pierrette than of gratified pride. 
 
 However, S3dvie was fated to find ofience in her little 
 cousin's success, and this was how it came about. Pierrette 
 was asked out, and, still to triumph over her neighbors, Sylvie 
 allowed her to go. Pierrette was called for to play games and 
 have dolls' dinner-parties with these ladies' children. Pier- 
 rette was a much greater success than the Eogrons; Made- 
 moiselle Sylvie was aggrieved that Pierrette was in demand 
 at other houses, but that no one came to see Pierrette at 
 home. The artless child made no secret of her enjoyinent 
 at the houses of the Tiphaines, the Marteners, the Galardons, 
 the Julliards, the Lesourds, the Auffrays, and the Garce- 
 lands, whose kindness contrasted strangely with the vexa- 
 tiousness of her cousins. A mother would have been glad 
 of her child's happiness ; but the Eogrons had taken Pierrette 
 to please themselves, not to please her; their feelings, far 
 from being paternal, were tainted with egoism and a sort 
 of commercial interest. 
 
 The beautiful' outfit, the fine Sunday clothes, and the 
 everyday frocks began Pierrette's misfortunes. Like all chil- 
 dren free to amuse themselves and accustomed to follow th(i 
 dictates of fancy, she wore out her shoes, boots, and frocks 
 with frightful rapidity, and, above all, her frilled drawers. 
 A mother when she scolds her child thinks of the child only ; 
 she is only hard when driven to extremities, and when the 
 child is in the wrong; but in this great clothes question, the 
 cousins' money was the first consideration; that was the real 
 point, and not Pierrette. Children have a dog-like instinct 
 for discerning injustice in those who rule them; they feel 
 without fail whether they are tolerated or loved. Innocent 
 hearts are more alive to shades than to contrasts ; a child that 
 does not yet understand evil knows when you offend the sense 
 
PIERRE1T13 
 
 237 
 
 of beauty bestowed on it by nature. The lessons that Pierrette 
 brought upon herself as to the behavior of a well-bred young 
 lady, as to modesty and economy, were the corollary of this 
 main idea — ^Tierrette is ruining us." 
 
 These scoldings, which had a fatal issue for Pierrette, led 
 the old couple back into the familiar commercial ruts from 
 which their home-life at Provins had led them to wandej, and 
 in which their nature could expand and blossom. After be- 
 ing used to domineer, to make remarks, to give orders, to 
 scold their clerks sharply, Rogron and his sister were perish- 
 ing for lack of victims. Small natures require despotism to 
 exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give 
 play to their heart. Now narrow minds can develop as well 
 through persecution as through benevolence; they can assure 
 themselves of their power by tyrannizing cruelly or benefi- 
 cently over others ; they go the way their nature guides them. 
 Add to this the guidance of interest, and you will have the 
 key to most social riddles. Pierrette now became very neces- 
 sary to her cousins' existence. Since her arrival the Rogrons 
 had been absorbed in her outfit, and then attracted by the 
 laovelty of companionship. Every new thing, a feeling, or 
 even a tyranny, must form its set, its creases. Sylvie began 
 by calling Pierrette "my child;" she gave up "my child" for 
 "Pierrette" unqualified. Her reproofs, at first sourly gentle, 
 became hard and sharp. As soon as they had started on this 
 road, the brother and sister made rapid progress. They were 
 no longer dull. It was not a deliberate scheme of malice and 
 cruelty; it was the instinct of unreasoning tyranny. They be- 
 lieved that they were doing good to Pierrette, as of old to 
 their apprentices. 
 
 Pierrette, whose sensitiveness was genuine, noble, and 
 overstrung, the very antipodes of the Rogrons' aridity, had 
 a horror of being blamed; it struck her so cruelly that tears 
 rose at once to her large, clear eyes. She had a hard struggle 
 to suppress her engaging liveliness, which charmed every one 
 out of the house. She might indulge it before the mothers of 
 her little friends ; but at home, by the end of the first month, 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 she began to sit silent, and Rogron asked her if she were ill. 
 At this strange question she flew off to the bottom of the gar- 
 den to cry by the river, into which her tears fell, as she was 
 one day to fall in the torrent of society. 
 
 One day, in spite of her care, the little girl tore hev best 
 reps frock at Madame Tiphaine's, where she had gone to 
 play one fine day. She at once burst into tears, foreseeing the 
 scolding that awaited her at home. On being questioned, 
 she let fall a few words about her terrible cousin Sylvie in 
 the midst of her tears. Pretty Madame Tiphaine had some 
 stuff to match, and she herself put in a new front breadth. 
 Mademoiselle Rogron heard of the trick, as she called it, 
 played on her by that limb of a little girl. From that day sh(? 
 would never let Pierrette visit any of the ladies. 
 
 The new life which Pierrette was to lead at Provins wais 
 fated to fall into three very distinct phases. The first 
 lasted three months, during which she enjoyed a kind of 
 happiness, divided between the old people's cold caresses, and 
 the scoldings, which she found scorching. The prohibition 
 that kept her from seeing her little friends, emphasizing the 
 necessity for beginning to learn everything that a well- 
 brought-up girl should know, put an end to the first phase 
 of Pierrette's life at Provins, the only period when she found 
 existence endurable. 
 
 The domestic changes produced at the Rogrons' house by 
 Pierrette's residence there were studied by Vinet and the 
 Colonel with the cunning of a fox bent on getting into a fowl- 
 house, and uneasy at discovering a new creature on the scene. 
 They both paid calls at long intervals, so as not to scare Made- 
 moiselle Sylvie ; they found various excuses for chatting with 
 Rogron, and made themselves masters of the situation with 
 an air of reserve and dignity that the great Tartufe might 
 have admired. The Colonel and the lawyer spent at the Ro- 
 grons' the evening of the very day when Sylvie had refused, in 
 very harsh terras, to let Pierrette go to Madame Tiphaine's. 
 On hearing of her refusal, the Colonel and the lawyer looked 
 at each other as folks who know their Provins. 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 239 
 
 ''She positively tried to make a fool of you?" said the law- 
 yer. "We warned Rogron long ago of what has now hap- 
 pened. There is no good to be got out of those people." 
 
 '^hat can you expect of the Anti-national Party?" cried 
 the Colonel, curling up his moustache and interrupting Vinet. 
 "If we had tried to get you away from them, you might have 
 thought that we had some malicious motive for speaking to 
 you so. But why, mademoiselle, if you are fond of a little 
 game, should you not play boston in the evenings at home in 
 your own house? Is it imposvsible to find any one in the 
 place of such idiots as the Julliards? Vinet and I play 
 boston; we will find a fourth. Vinet might introduce his 
 wife to you; she is very nice, and she is one of the Charge- 
 boeufs. You will not be like those apes in the upper town; 
 you will not expect a good little housewife, who is compelled 
 by her family's disgraceful conduct to do all her own house- 
 work, to dress like a duchess, — and she has the courage of a 
 lion and the gentleness of a lamb." 
 
 Sylvie Eogron displayed her long yellow teeth in a smile 
 at the Colonel, who endured the horrible phenomenon very 
 well, and even assumed a flattering air. 
 
 "If there are but four of us, we cannot play boston every 
 evening," replied she. 
 
 "Why, where else have I to go — an old soldier like me, who 
 has nothing to do, and lives on his pensions ? The lawyer 
 is free every evening. Besides, you will have company, I 
 promise you," he added, with a mysterious air. 
 
 "You have only to declare yourselves frankly opposed to 
 the Ministerial party in Provins, and hold your own against 
 them," said Vinet. "You would see how popular you would 
 be in Provins; you would have a great many people on your 
 side. You would make the Tiphaines furious by having an 
 Opposition salon. Well, then, let us laugh at others, if others 
 laugh at us. The 'clique' do not spare you, I can tell you." 
 
 "What do they say?" asked Sylvie. 
 
 In country towns there is always more than one safety-valve 
 by which gossip finds a vent from one set into another. Vinet 
 
240 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 had heard all that had been said about the Eogrons in the 
 drawing-rooms from which the haberdashers had been defini- 
 tively banished. The supernumerary judge Desfondrilles, 
 the archseologist, was of neither party. This man, like some 
 other independent members of society, repeated everything 
 he heard, out of provincial habit, and Vinet had had the 
 benefit of his chit-chat. The malicious lawyer_repeated Mad- 
 ame Tiphaine's pleasantries, with added venom. As he re- 
 vealed the practical jokes of which Sylvie and Rogron had 
 been the unconscious victims, he stirred the rage and aroused 
 the revengeful spirit of these two arid souls, craving some 
 aliment for their mean passions. 
 
 A few days later Vinet brought his wife, a well-bred woman, 
 shy, neither plain nor pretty, very meek, and very conscious 
 of her misfortune. Madame Vinet was fair, rather worn by 
 the cares of her penurious housekeeping, and very simply 
 dressed. No woman could have better pleased Sylvie. Mad- 
 ame Vinet put up with Sylvie's airs, and gave way to her like 
 a woman accustomed to give way. On her round forehead, 
 her rose-pink cheeks, in her slow, gentle eyes, there were traces 
 of those deep reflections, that clear-sighted thoughtfulness, 
 which women who are used to suffering bury under perfect 
 silence. The influence of the Colonel, displaying for Sylvie's 
 behoof courtieresque graces that seemed wrung from his sol- 
 dierly roughness, with that of the wily Vinet, soon made it- 
 self felt by Pierrette. The child, the pretty squirrel, shut 
 up in the house, or going out only with old Sylvie, was every 
 instant checl^ed by a "Don't touch that, Pierrette !" and by 
 incessant sermons on holding herself up. Pierrette stooped 
 and held her shoulders high; her cousin wanted her to be as 
 straight as herself, and she vfas like a soldier presenting arnis 
 to hie Colonel; she would sometimes give her little slaps on 
 her back to make her hold herself up. The free and light- 
 hearted child of the Marais learned to measure her movements 
 and imitate an automaton. 
 
 One evening, which marked the beginning of the second 
 period, Pierrette, whom the three visitors had not seen in the 
 
PIEtlllETTE) 
 
 241 
 
 drawing-room during the evening, came to kiss her cousins 
 and courtesy to the company before going to bed. Sylvia 
 coldly offered her cheek to the pretty little thing, as if to be 
 kissed and have done with it. The action was so cruelly sig- 
 nificant that tears started from Pierrette's eyes. 
 
 "Have you pricked yourself, my little Pierrette ?" said the 
 abominable Vinet. 
 
 "What is the matter with you?" asked Sylvic severely. 
 
 "Nothing," said the poor child, going to kiss Rogron. 
 
 "Nothing?" repeated Sylvie. "You cannot be crying for 
 nothing !" 
 
 "What is it, my little pet ?" said Madame Vinet. 
 
 "My rich cousin Sylvie does not treat me so well as my 
 poor grandmother !" 
 
 "Your grandmother stole your money," said Sylvie, "and 
 your cousin will leave you hers." 
 
 The Colonel and Vinet exchanged covert glances. 
 
 "I would rather be robbed and loved," said Pierrette. 
 
 "Very well,, you shall be sent back to the place you came 
 from." 
 
 "But what has the dear child done?" asked Madame 
 Vinet. 
 
 Vinet fixed his eye on his wife, with that terrible cold, 
 fixed stare that belongs to those who rule despotically. The 
 poor lonely woman, unceasingly punished for not having the 
 one thing required of her — namely, a fortune— took up her 
 cards again. 
 
 "What has she done?" cried Sylvie, raising her head with 
 a jerk so sudden, that the yellow wall-flowers in her cap were 
 shaken. "She does not know what to do next tc annoy us. 
 She opened my watch to examine the works, and touched the 
 wheel, and broke the mainspring. Madam listens to nothing. 
 All day long I am telling her to take care what she is about, 
 and I might as well talk to the lamp/' 
 
 Pierrette, ashamed -of being reprimanded in the presence 
 of strangers, went out of the room very gently. 
 
242 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 "I cannot think how to quell that child's turbulence," said 
 Rogron. 
 
 ^'Why, she is old enough to go to school/' said Madame 
 Vinet. 
 
 Another look from Vinet silenced his wife, to whom he 
 had been careful not to confide his plans 5»nd the Colonel's 
 with regard to the bachelor couple. 
 
 "That is what comes of taking charge of other people's 
 children," cried Gouraud. "You might have some of your 
 own yet, you or your brother; why do you not both marry?" 
 
 Sylvie looked very sweetly at the Colonel ; for the first time 
 in her life she beheld a man to whom the idea that she might 
 marry did not seem absurd. 
 
 "Madame Vinet is right !" cried Rogron, "that would keep 
 Pierrette quiet. A master would not cost much." 
 
 The Colonel's speech so entirely occupied Sylvie that she 
 did not answer her brother. 
 
 "If only you would stand the money for the Opposition 
 paper we were talking about, you might find a tutor for your 
 little cousin in the responsible editor. We could get that poor 
 schoolmaster who was victimized by the encroachments of the 
 priests. My wife is right ; Pierrette is a rough diamond that 
 needs polishing," said Vinet to Rogron. 
 
 "I fancied that you were a Baron," said Sylvie to the 
 Colonel, after a long pause, while each player seemed medita- 
 tive. 
 
 "Yes. But having won the title in 1814, after the battle 
 of Nangis, where my regiment did wonders, how could I find 
 the money or the assistance needed to get it duly registered ? 
 The barony, like the rank of general, which I won in 1815, 
 must wait for a revolution to secure them to me." 
 
 "If you could give a mortgage as your guarantee for the 
 money," said Rogron presently, "I could do it." 
 
 "That could be arranged with Cournant," replied Vinet. 
 "The newspaper would lead to the Colonel's triumph, and 
 make your drawing-room more powerful than those of Ti- 
 phaine and Co." 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 243 
 
 "How is that ?" asked Sylvie. 
 
 At this moment, while Madame Vinet was dealing, and the 
 lawyer explaining all the importance that the publication of 
 an independent paper for the district of Provins must confer 
 on Eogron, the Colonel, and himself, Pierrette was bathed in 
 tears. Her heart and brain were agreed; she thought Sylvie 
 far more to blame .than herself. The little Bretonne in- 
 stinctively perceived how unfailing charity and benevolence 
 should be. She hated her fine frocks and all that was done for 
 her. She paid too dear for these benefits. She cried with 
 rage at having given her cousins a hold over her, and deter- 
 mined to behave in such a way as to reduce them to silence, 
 poor child ! Then she saw how noble Brigaut had been to give 
 her his savings. She thought her woes had reached a climaj^, 
 not knowing that at that moment new misfortunes were being 
 plotted in the drawing-room. 
 
 A few days later Pierrette had a writing-master. She was 
 to learn to read, write, and do sums. Pierrette's education 
 involved the house of Rogron in fearful disaster. There was 
 ink on the tables, on the furniture, and on her clothes ; writ- 
 ing-books and pens strewn everywhere, powder on the uphol- 
 stery, books torn and dog-eared while she was learning her les- 
 sons. They already spoke to her — and in what a way ! — of the 
 necessity for earning her living and being a burden on no one. 
 As she heard these dreadful warnings, Pierrette felt a burn- 
 ing in her throat ; she was choking, her heart beat painfully 
 fast. She was obliged to swallow down her tears ; for each one 
 was reckoned with as an offence against her magnanimous 
 relations. Rogron had found the occupation that suited him. 
 He scolded Pierrette as he had formerly scolded his shopmen ; 
 he would fetch her in from the midst of her play to compel 
 her to study; he heard her repeat her lessons; he was the 
 poor child's fierce tutor. Sylvie, on her part, thought it her 
 duty to teach Pierrette the little she knew of womanly ae- 
 oomplishments. 
 
 JiTeither Rogron nor his sister had any gentleness of na- 
 ture. These narrow souls, finding a real pleasure in bullying 
 
244 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 the poor little tiling, elianged unconsciously from mildness 
 to the greatest severity. This severity was, they said, the 
 consequence of the child's obstinacy; she had begun too late 
 to learn, and was dull of apprehension. Her teachers did not 
 understand the art of giving lessons in a form suited to the 
 pupil's intelligence, which is what should distinguish private 
 from public education. The fault lay far less with Pierrette 
 than with her cousins. It took her an immensely long time 
 to learn the beginnings. For the merest trifle she was called 
 stupid and silly, foolish and awkward. Incessantly ill-used 
 by hard words, Pierrette never met any but cold looks from 
 the two old people. She fell into the stolid dulness of a sheep ; 
 she dared do nothing when she found her actions misjudged, 
 -misunderstood, misinterpreted. In everything she awaited 
 Sylvie's orders, and the expression of her cousin's will, keep- 
 ing her thoughts to herself and shutting herself up in passive 
 obedience. Her bright color began to fade. Sometimes she 
 complained of aches and pains. When Sylvie asked her. 
 Where ? the poor child, who felt generally ailing, replied, ^^All 
 over.^' 
 
 "Was ever such a thing heard of as aching all over? If you 
 were ill all over, you would be dead !" retorted Sylvie. 
 
 "You may have a pain in your chest," said Eogron the ex- 
 positor, "or in your teeth, or your head, or your feet, or your 
 stomach, but no one ever had pains everywhere. What do 
 you mean by 'all over?' Pain all over is pain nowhere. Do 
 you know what you are doing ? You are talking for talking's 
 sake." 
 
 Pierrette at last never spoke, finding that her artless girlish 
 remarks, the flowers of her opening mind, were met with 
 commonplace retorts which her good sense told her were 
 ridiculous. 
 
 "You are always complaining, and you eat like a fasting 
 friar !" said Rogron. 
 
 The only person who never distressed this sweet fragile 
 flower was the sturdy servant Adele. Adele always warmed 
 the little girl's bed, but in secret, since one evening wlien, 
 
PIEF.KETT15 
 
 245 
 
 being discovered in the act of thus ''spoiling" her master's 
 heiress, she was scolded by Sylvie. 
 
 "Children must be hardened ; that is the way to give them 
 strong constitutions. Have we been any the worse for it, my 
 brother and I?" said Sylvie. "You will make Pierrette a 
 peeky coddle !" — une picheline, a word of the Rogron vocabu- 
 lary to designate weakly and complaining persons. 
 
 The little angel's caressing expressions were regarded as 
 mere acting. The roses of affection that budded so fresh and 
 lovely in this young soul, and longed to open to the day, were 
 mercilessly crushed. Pierrette felt the hardest blows on the 
 tenderest spots of her heart. If she tried to soften these two 
 savage natures by her pretty ways, she was accused of ex- 
 pressing her tenderness out of self-interest. "Tell me plainly 
 what you want," Rogron would exclaim roughly; "you are 
 certainly not coaxing me for nothing." 
 
 Neither the sister nor the brother recognized affection, and 
 Pierrette was all affection. 
 
 Colonel Gouraud, anxious to please Mademoiselle Rogron, 
 declared her right in all that concerned Pierrette. Vinet no 
 less supported the old cousins in their abuse of Pierrette; he 
 ascribed all the reported misdeeds of this angel to the ob- 
 stinacy of the Breton character, and said that no power, no 
 strength of will, could ever conquer it. Rogron and his sis- 
 ter were flattered with the utmost skill by these two courtiers, 
 who had at last succeeded in extracting from Rogron the 
 surety money for the newspaper, the Provins Courrier, and 
 from Sylvie five thousand francs, as a shareholder. The 
 Colonel and Vinet now took the field. They disposed of a 
 hundred shares at five hundred francs each to the electors 
 who held State securities, and whom the Liberal journals 
 filled with alarms, to farmers, and to persons who were called 
 independent. They even extended their ramifications over the 
 whole department, and beyond it, to some adjacent townships. 
 Each shareholder subscribed for the paper, of course. Then 
 the legal and other advertisements were divided between the 
 Ruche and the Courrier. The first number eontaiixed a 
 
246 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 grandiloquent column in praise of Eogron, who was repre* 
 Bentecl as the Laffitte of Provins. 
 
 As soon as the public mind lound a leader, it became easy 
 to perceive that the coming elections would be hotly con- 
 tested. Madame Tiphaine was in despair. 
 
 ''Unfortunately," said she, as she read an article attack- 
 ing her and Monsieur Julliard, "unfortunately, I forgot that 
 there is always a rogue not far away from a dupe, and that 
 folly always attracts a clever man of the fox species." 
 
 As soon as the newspaper was to be seen for twenty leagues 
 round, Vinet had a new coat and boots, and a decent waist- 
 coat and trousers. He displayed the famous white hat af- 
 fected by Liberals, and showed his collar and cuffs. His wife 
 engaged a servant, and appeared dressed as became the wife 
 of an influential man ; she wore pretty caps. 
 
 Vinet, out of self-interest, was grateful. He and his friend 
 Cournant, notary to the Liberal side, and Auff ray's op- 
 ponent, became the Rogrons' advisers, and did them two 
 great services. The leases granted by old Rogron their father, 
 in 1815, under unfortunate circumstances, were about to fall 
 in. Horticulture and market-gardening had lately developed 
 enormously in the Provins district. The pleader and the 
 notary made it their business to effect an increase of fourteen 
 hundred francs a year on granting the new leases. Vinet 
 also won for them two lawsuits against two villages, relating to 
 plantations of trees, in which the loss of five hundred poplars 
 was involved. The money for the poplars, with the Rogrons' 
 savings, which for the last three years had amounted to six 
 thousand francs deposited at compound interest, was skilfully 
 laid out in the purchase of several plots of land. Finally, 
 Vinet proposed and carried out the eviction of certain peas- 
 ant proprietors, to whom Rogron the elder had lent mone}^ 
 and who had killed themselves with cultivating and manur- 
 ing their land to enable them to repay it, but in vain. 
 
 Thus the damage done to the Rogrons' capital by the re- 
 construction of their house Avas to a great extent remedied. 
 Their estates in the immediate neighborhood of the town. 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 247 
 
 chosen by their father as innkeepers know how to choose, cut 
 up into small holdings of which the largest was less than five 
 acres, and let to perfectly solvent tenants, themselves owners 
 of some plots of land mortgaged to secure the farm rents, 
 brought in at Martinmas, in November 182G, five thousand 
 francs. The taxes were paid by the tenants, and there were 
 no buildings to repair or insure against fire. 
 
 The brother and sister each possessed four thousand six 
 hundred francs in the five per cents; and as their selling 
 value was above par, Vinet exhorted them to invest the money 
 in land, promising them — seconded by the notary — that they 
 should not lose a farthing of interest by the transfer. 
 
 By the end of this second period life was so intolerable to 
 Pierrette — the indifference of all about her, the senseless fault- 
 finding and lack of affection in her cousins became so virulent, 
 she felt so plainly the cold chill of the tomb blowing upon 
 her, that she entertained the daring project of going away, 
 on foot, with no money, to Brittany to rejoin her grandfather 
 and grandmother. Two events prevented this: Old Lorrain 
 died, and Eogron was appointed Pierrette's guardian by a 
 family council held at Provins. If her old grandmother 
 had died first, it is probable that Eogron, advised by Vinet, 
 would have called upon the grandfather to repay the child's 
 eight thousand francs, and have reduced him to beggary. 
 
 "Why, you may inherit Pierrette's money," said Vinet with 
 a hideous smile. "You can never tell who will live or who 
 will die." 
 
 Enlightened by this speech, Eogron left the widow Lor- 
 rain no peace as Pierrette's debtor till he had made her secure 
 to the little girl the capital of the eight thousand francs by 
 a deed of gift, of which he paid the cost. 
 
 Pierrette was strangely affected by this loss. Just as the 
 blow fell on her she was to be prepared for her first Com- 
 munion, the other event which by its obligations tied her to 
 Provins. This necessary and simple ceremony was to bring 
 about great changes for the Eogrons. Sylvie learned that the 
 
248 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 cure. Monsieur Peroux, was instructing the little «^ulliards, 
 the Lesourds, Garcelands^ and others. She made it therefore 
 a point of honor to put Pierrette under the guidance of the 
 Abbe Peroux's superior, Monsieur Habert, a man who was 
 said to belong to thf Jesuit Congregation — very zealous for 
 the interests of the Church, much dreaded in Provins, and 
 Hiding immense ambition under the strictest severity of prin- 
 ciple. The priest's sister, an unmarried woman of about 
 thirty, had a school for girls in the town. The brother and 
 sister were much alike; both lean, sallow, atrabilious, with 
 black hair. 
 
 Pierrette, a Bretonne nurtured in the practice and poetry 
 of the Catholic faith, opened her heart and ears to the teach- 
 ing of this imposing priest. Suffering predisposes the mind 
 to devoutness ; and most young girls, prompted by instinctive 
 tenderness, lean towards mysticism, the obscurer side of re- 
 ligion. So the priest sowed the seed of the Gospel and the 
 dogmas of the Church in good ground. He completely 
 changed Pierrette's frame of mind. Pierrette loved Jesus 
 Christ as presented to girls in the Sacrament, as a celestial 
 bridegroom ; her moral and physical sufferings now had their 
 meaning ; she was taught to see the hand of God in everything. 
 Her soul, so cruelly stricken in this house, while she could 
 not accuse her cousins, took refuge in the sphere whither fly 
 all who are wretched, borne on the wings of the three Chris- 
 tian virtues. She gave up the idea of flight. Sylvie, amazed 
 at the alteration produced in Pierrette by Monsieur Habert, 
 becamie curious. And so, while preparing the child for Iier 
 first Communion, Monsieur Habert won to God the hitherto 
 wandering soul of Mademoiselle Sylvie. Sylvie became a 
 bigot. 
 
 Denis Rogron, over whom the supposed Jesuit could get 
 '^o hold — for at that time the spirit of his late lamented 
 Majesty Constitution the First was in some simpletons su- 
 preme above that of the Church — Denis remained faithful to 
 Colonel Gouraud, Yinet, and Liberalism. 
 
 Mademoiselle Rogron, of course, made acquaintance with 
 
FIERKETTE 249 
 
 Mademoiselle Habert, with whom she was in perfect sym.- 
 pathy. The two old maids loved each other like two loving 
 sisters. Mademoiselle Habert proposed to take Pierrette 
 under her care, and spare Sylvie the trouble and vexations 
 of educating a child; but the brother and sister replied that 
 Pierrette's absence would make the house feel too empty. The 
 Kogrons' attachment to their little cousin seemed excessive. 
 
 On seeing Mademoiselle Habert in possession, Colonel 
 Gouraud and Vinet ascribed to the ambitious priest, on his 
 sister's behalf, the matrimonial scheme imagined by the 
 Colonel. 
 
 "Your sister wants to see you married," said the lawyer to 
 ihe ex-haberdasher. 
 
 "And to whom?'^ said Eogron. 
 
 "To that old sibyl of a schoolmistress," cried the Colone), 
 curling his moustache. 
 
 "She has said nothing to me about it," said Eogron blankly. 
 
 A woman so determined as Sylvie was sure to make great 
 progress in the ways of salvation. The priest's influence soon 
 grew in the house, supported as it was by Sylvie, who man- 
 aged her brother. The two Liberals, very legitimately 
 iilarmed, understood that if the priest had determined to get 
 Eogron for his sister's husband — a far more suitable match 
 than that of Sylvie and the Colonel — he would urge Sylvie 
 to the excessive practice of religion, and make Pierrette go 
 into a convent. They would thus lose the reward of eighteen 
 months of efforts, meanness, and flattery. They took a ter- 
 rible dumb hatred of the priest and his sister, and yet, if 
 they were to keep up with them step for step, they felt the 
 necessity of remaining on good terms with them. 
 
 Monsieur and Mademoiselle Habert, who played both whist 
 and boston, came every evening. Their assiduity excited that 
 of the others. The lawyer and the soldier felt that they were 
 pitted against adversaries stronger than themselves, a pre- 
 conception which Monsieur Habert and his sister fully 
 shared. This situation was in itself a battle. Just as the 
 Colonel gave to Sylvie a foretaste of the unhoped-for joys of 
 
250 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 an offer of marriage — for she had brought herself to regard 
 Gouraud as a man worthy of her — so Mademoiselle Habert 
 wrapped the retired haberdasher in the cotton wool of her at- 
 tentionS;, her speeches, and her looks. Neither party could 
 say to itself the great word of great politicians, "Divide the 
 spoil !" each insisted on the whole prize. 
 
 Besides, the two wily foxes of the opposition at Provins — 
 an Opposition that was growing in strength — ^were rash 
 enough to believe themselves stronger than the Priesthood; 
 they were the first to fire. Vinet, whose gratitude was stirred 
 up by the claw-fingers of self-interest, went to fetch Made- 
 moiselle de Chargeboeuf and her mother. The two women, 
 who had about two thousand francs a year, lived veiy nar- 
 rowly at Troyes. Mademoiselle Bathilde de Chargeboeuf was 
 one of those splendid women who believe in marrying for 
 love, and change their minds towards their five-and-twentieth 
 year on finding themselves still unwedded. Vinet succeeded 
 in persuading Madame de Chargeboeuf to combine her two 
 thousand francs with the thousand crowns he was making 
 now that the newspaper was started, and to come and li^e 
 with him at Provins, where Bathilde, he said, might marry at 
 simpleton named Eogron, and, so clever as she was, rivitl 
 handsome Madame Tiphaine. 
 
 The reinforcement of Yinet's household and ideas by tht» 
 arrival of Madame and Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf gave the' 
 utmost cohesion to the Liberal party. Tliis coalition brought 
 consternation to the aristocracy of Provins and the Tiphaine 
 party. Madame de Breautey, in dismay at seeing two women 
 of family so misled, begged them to come to see her. She 
 bewailed the blunders committed by the Eoyalists, and was 
 furious with those of Troyes on learning the poverty of this 
 mother and daughter. 
 
 "What ! was there no old country gentleman who would 
 marry that dear girl, born to rule a chateau?" cried she. 
 "They had let her run to seed, and now she will throw herself 
 at the head of a Kogron !" 
 
 She hunted the department through and failed to find one 
 
IPIERRKTTE 
 
 251 
 
 gentleman who would marry a girl whose mother had but two 
 thousand francs a year. Then the "clique" of the Tiphaines 
 and the Sous-prcfet also set to work, but too late, to discover 
 such a man. Madame de Breautey inveighed loudly against 
 the selfishness that was eating up France^ the result of ma- 
 terialism and of the power conferred on money by the laws; 
 the nobility was nothing in these days ! Beauty was nothing ! 
 Eogrons and Vinets were defying the King of France ! 
 
 Bathilde had the indisputable advantage over her rival not 
 merely of beauty, but of dress. She was dazzlingly fair. 
 At five-and-twenty her fully-developed shoulders and splendid 
 modeling were exquisitely full. The roundness of her throat, 
 the slenderness of her articulations, the splendor of her fine 
 fair hair, the charm of her smile, the elegant shape of her 
 head, the dignity and outline of her face, her fine eyes under a 
 well-moulded brow, her calm and well-bred movements, and 
 her still girlish figure, all were in harmony. She had a fine 
 hand and a narrow foot. Her robust health gave her, per- 
 haps, the look of a handsome inn-servant ; '^ut that should be 
 no fault in Eogron's eyes," said pretty Madame Tiphaine. 
 
 The first time Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf was seen she 
 was dressed simply enough. Her dress of brown merino, 
 edged with green embroidery,, was cut low ; but a kerchief of 
 tulle, neatly drawn down by invisible strings, covered her 
 ishoulders, back, and bust, a little open at the throat, though 
 fastened by a brooch and chain. Under this fine network 
 Bathilde's beauty was even more attractive, more suggestive. 
 She took oif her velvet bonnet and her shawl on entering, 
 and showed pretty ears with gold eardrops. She had a little 
 cross and heart on black velvet round her neck, which con- 
 trasted with its whiteness like the black that fantastic nature 
 sets round the tail of a white Angora cat. She was expert 
 in all the arts of girls on their promotion : twisting her fingers 
 to arrange curls that are not out of place, displaying her 
 wrists by begging Eogron to button her cuff, which the hap- 
 less man, quite dazzled, bluntly refused to do, hiding his 
 agitation under assumed indifference. The bashfulness of the 
 
252 
 
 PIEKRETTE 
 
 only passion our haLerdasher was ever to know in his life 
 always gave it the demeanor of hatred. Sylvie, as well as 
 Celeste Habert, misunderstood it: not so the lawyer, the 
 superior man of this company of simpletons, whose only enemy 
 was the priest, for the Colonel had long been his ally. 
 
 Gouraud, on his part, thenceforth behaved to Sylvie as 
 Bathilde did to Rogron. He appeared in clean linen every 
 evening; he wore velvet collars, which gave effect to his mar- 
 tial countenance, set off by the corners of his white shirt col- 
 lar; he adopted white drill waistcoats, and had a new frock- 
 coat made of blue cloth, on which his red rosette was con- 
 spicuous, and all under pretence of doing honor to the fair 
 Bathilde. He never smoked after two o'clock. His grizzled 
 hair was brushed down in a wave over his ochre-colored skull. 
 In short, he assumed the appearance and attitude of a party 
 chief, of a man who was prepared to rout the enemies of 
 France — in one word, the Bourbons — with tuck of drum. 
 
 The satanical pleader and the cunning Colonel played a 
 still more cruel trick on Monsieur and Mademoiselle Habert 
 than that of introducing the beautiful Mademoiselle de 
 Chargeboeuf, who was pronounced by the Liberal party and 
 by the Breauteys to be ten times handsomer than the beauti- 
 ful Madame Tiphaine. These two great country-town politi- 
 cians had it rumored from one to another that Monsieur Ha- 
 bert agreed with them on all points. Provins before long 
 spoke of him as a "Liberal priest." Called up before the 
 Bishop, Monsieur Habert was obliged to give up his even- 
 ings with the Eogrons, but his sister still went there. Thence- 
 forth the Rogron drawing-room was a fact and a power. 
 
 And so, by the middle of that year, political intrigues were 
 not less eager than matrimonial intrigues in the Rogrons' 
 rooms. While covert interests, buried out of sight, were 
 fighting wildly for the upper hand, the public struggle won 
 disastrous notoriety. Everybody knows that the Villele min- 
 istry was overthrown by the elections of 1826. In the Provins 
 constituency, Vinet, the Liberal candidate — for whom Mon- 
 sieur Cournant had obtained his qualification by the purchase 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 253 
 
 of some land of which tlie price remained unpaid — came very 
 iear beating Monsieur Tiphaine. The President had a ma- 
 jority of only two. 
 
 Mesdames Vinet and de Chargebocuf, Vinet and the Colo* 
 nel^ were sometimes joined by Monsieur Cournant and his 
 wife ; then by Neraud the doctor, a man whose youth had been 
 very "stormy/' but who now took serious views of life; he 
 had devoted himself to science, it was said, and if the Liberals 
 were to be believed, was a far cleverer man than Monsieur 
 Martener. To the Rogrons their triumph was as inexplicable 
 as their ostracism had been. 
 
 The handsome Bathilde de Chargeboeuf, to whom Vinet 
 spoke of Pierrette as an enemy, was horribly disdainful to 
 the child. The humiliation of this poor victim was necessary 
 to the interest of all. Madame Vinet could do nothing for ^ 
 the little girl who was being brayed in the mortar of the 
 pitiless egotisms which the lady at last understood. But for 
 her husband's imperative desire she would never have come 
 to the Rogrons ; it grieved her too much to see their ill-usage 
 of the pretty little thing who clung to her, understanding 
 her secret good-will, and begged her to teach her such or such 
 a stitch or embroidery pattern. Pierrette had shown that 
 when she was thus treated she understood and succeeded to 
 admiration. But Madame Vinet was no longer of any use, 
 so she came no more. 
 
 Sylvie, who still cherished the notion of marriage, now re- 
 garded Pierrette as an obstacle. Pierrette was nearly four- 
 teen ; her sickly fairness, a symptom that was quite overlooked 
 by the ignorant old maid, made her lovely. Then Sylvie had 
 the bright idea of indemnifying herself for the expenses 
 caused by Pierrette by making a servant of her. Vinet, as 
 representing the interests of the Chargeboeufs, Mademoiselle 
 Habert, Gouraud, all the influential visitors, advised Sylvie 
 by ail means to dismiss Adele. Could not Pierrette cook and 
 keep the house in order? When there was too much to be 
 done, she need only engage the Colonel's housekeeper, a very 
 accomplished person, and one of the best cooks in Provins. 
 
254 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 Pierrette ought to learn to cook and to polish the floors, said 
 the baleful lawyer, to sweep, keep the house neat, go to mar- 
 ket, and know the price of things. The poor little girl, whose 
 unselfishness was as great as her generosity, offered it herself, 
 glad to pay thus for the hard bread she ate under that roof. 
 
 Adele went. Thus Pierrette lost the only person who might 
 perhaps have protected her. Strong as she was, from that 
 hour she was crushed body and soul. The old people had less 
 mercy on her than on a servant : she was their property ! She 
 was scolded for mere nothings, for a little dust left on the 
 corner of a chimney-shelf or a glass shade. These objects of 
 luxury that she had so much admired became odious to her. 
 In spite of her anxiety to do right, her relentless cousin Sylvie 
 always found some fault with everything she did. In two 
 years Pierrette never heard a word of praise or of affection. 
 Her whole happiness consisted in not being scolded. She 
 submitted with angelic patience to the dark moods of these 
 two unmarried beings, to whom the gentler feelings were all 
 unknown, and who made her suffer every day from her de- 
 pendency. This life in which the young girl was gripped, 
 as it were, between the two haberdashers as in the jaws of 
 a vise, increased her malady. She had such violent fits of 
 inexplicable distress, such sudden bursts of secret grief, that 
 her physical development was irremediably checked. And 
 thus, by slow degrees, through terrible though concealed suf- 
 ferings, Pierrette had come to the state in which the friend of 
 her childhood had seen her as he stood on the little Square 
 and greeted her with his Breton ballad. 
 
 Before entering on the story of the domestic drama in the 
 Kogrons' house, to which Brigaut's arrival gave rise, it will 
 be necessary, to avoid digressions, to account for the lad's set- 
 tling at Provins, since he is in some sort a silent personage on 
 the stage. 
 
 Brigaut, as he fled, was alarmed not merely by Pierrette's 
 signal, but also by the change in his little friend; hardly 
 could he recognize her, but for the voice, eyes, and movements 
 
PIKRRETTE 
 
 255 
 
 which recalled his lively little playfellow, at once so gay and 
 so loving. When he had got far away from the house, his legs 
 quaked under him, his spine felt on fire ! He had seen the 
 shadow of Pierrette, and not Pierrette herself. He made his 
 way up to the old town, thoughtful and uneasy, till he found 
 a spot whence he could see the Place and the house where 
 Pierrette lived; he gazed at it sadly, lost in thought as in- 
 finite as the troubles into which we plunge without knowing 
 where they may end. Pierrette was ill ; she was unhappy ; she 
 regretted Brittany ! What ailed her ? All these questions 
 passed again and again through Brigaut's mind, and racked 
 his breast, revealing to him the extent of his affection for his 
 little adopted sister: 
 
 It is very rarely that a passion between two children of 
 different sexes remains permanent. The charming romance 
 of Paul and Virginia no more solves the problem of this 
 strange moral fact than does that of Brigaut and Pierrette. 
 Modern history offers the single illustrious exception of the 
 sublime Marchesa di Pescara and her husband, who, destined 
 for each other by their parents at the age of fourteen, adored 
 each other, and were married. Their union gave to the six- 
 teenth century the spectacle of boundless conjugal affection, 
 never clouded. The Marchesa, a widow at four-and-thirty, 
 beautiful, witty, universally beloved, refused monarchs, and 
 buried herself in a convent, where she never saw, never heard, 
 any one but nuns. 
 
 Such perfect love as this blossomed suddenly in the heart 
 of the poor Breton artisan. Pierrette and he had so often 
 been each other's protectors, he had been so happy in giving 
 her the money for her journey, he had almost died of run- 
 ning after the diligence, and Pierrette had not known it! 
 The memory of it had often warmed him during the chill 
 hours of his toilsome life these three years past. He had im- 
 proved himself for Pierrette; he had learned his craft for 
 Pierrette; he had come to Paris for Pierrette, intending to 
 make a fortune for her. After being there a fortnight, he 
 could no longer control his longing to see her; he had walked 
 
256 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 from Saturday evening till Monday morning. He had in- 
 tended to return to Paris, but the pathetic appearance of his 
 little friend held him fast to Provins. A wonderful mag- 
 netism — 'still disputed, it is true, in spite of so many in- 
 stances — acted on him without his knowing it ; and tears filled 
 his eyes, while they also dimmed Pierrette's sight. If to her 
 he was Brittany and all her happy childhood, to him Pier- 
 rette was life ! At sixteen Brigaut had not yet learned to 
 draw or give the section of a moulding; there were many 
 things he did not know ; but at piecework he had earned from 
 four to five francs a day. So he could live at Provins; he 
 would be within reach of Pierrette ; he would finish learning 
 his business by working under the best cabinetmaker in the 
 town, and watch over the little girl. 
 
 Brigaut made up his mind at once. He flew back to Paris, 
 settled his accounts, collected his pass, his luggage, and his 
 tools. Three days later he was working for Monsieur Frap- 
 pier, the best carpenter in Provins. Energetic workmen, 
 steady, and averse to turbulency and taverns, are rare 
 enough to make a master glad to get a young fellow like. 
 Brigaut. To conclude his story on that score, by the end oi: 
 a fortnight he was foreman, lodging and boarding with Frap- 
 pier, who taught him arithmetic and linear drawing. The 
 carpenter lived in the High Street, about a hundred yardt' 
 from the little oblong Place, at the end of which stood the 
 Eogrons' house. 
 
 Brigaut buried his love in his heart, and was not guilty 
 of the smallest indiscretion. He got Madame Frappier to 
 tell him the history of the Eogrons; from her he learned 
 how the old innkeeper had set to v/ork to get the money 
 left by old Auffray. Brigaut was fully informed as to the 
 character of the haberdasher and his sister. One morning 
 he met Pierrette at market with Mademoiselle Sylvie, and 
 shuddered to see her with a basket on her arm full of pro- 
 visions. He went to see Pierrette again at church on Sunday, 
 where the girl appeared in all her best; there, for the first 
 time, Brigaut understood that Pierrete was Mademoiselle 
 LoiTain. 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 257 
 
 Pierrette saw her friend, but she made him a mysterious 
 signal to keep himself out of sight. There was a world of 
 meaning in this gesture, as in that by which, a fortnight 
 since, she had bidden him vanish. What a fortune he would 
 have to make in ten years to enable him to marry the com- 
 panion of his childhood, to whom the Rogrons would leave 
 a house, a hundred acres of land, and twelve thousand francs 
 a year, not to mention their savings ! The persevering 
 Breton would not tempt fortune till he had acquired the 
 knowledge he still lacked. So long as it was theory alone, 
 it was all the same whether he learned in Paris or at Provins, 
 and he preferred to remain near Pierrette, to whom he also 
 purposed to explain his plans and the sort of help she might 
 count on. Finally, he would certainly not leave her till he 
 understood the secret of the pallor which had already dimmed 
 the life of the feature which generally retains it longest — 
 the eyes; till he knew what caused the sufferings that gave 
 fier the look of a girl bowing before the scythe of Death, and 
 about to be cut down. 
 
 Her two pathetic signals, which were not false to their 
 friendship, but which enjoined the greatest caution, struck 
 terror into the lad's heart. Evidently Pierrette desired him 
 to wait, and not to try to see her, or there would be danger 
 '<md peril for her. As she came out of church she gave him 
 ii look, and Brigaut saw that her eyes were full of tears. 
 The Breton would more easily have squared the circle than 
 have guessed what had happened in the Rogrons' house since 
 his arrival. 
 
 It was not without lively apprehensions that Pierrette came 
 down from her room that day when Brigaut had plunged 
 into her morning dream like another dream. Having risen 
 and opened her window, Mademoiselle Rogron must have 
 heard the song and its words — compromising, no doubt, in 
 the ears of an old maid; but Pierrette knew nothing of 
 the causes that made her cousin so alert. Sylvie had good 
 
258 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 reasons for getting up and running to the window. For 
 about a week past strange secret events and cruel pangs of 
 feeling had agitated the principal figures in the Eogron salon. 
 These unknown events, carefully concealed b}^ all concerned^ 
 were to fall on Pierrette like an icy avalanche. 
 
 The realm of mysteries, which ought perhaps to be called 
 the foul places of the human heart, lies at the bottom of the 
 greatest revolutions, political, social, or domestic; but in 
 speaking of them it may be extremely useful to explain that 
 their algebraical expression, though accurate, is not faithful 
 so far as form is concerned. These deep calculations do not 
 express themselves so brutally as history reports them. Any 
 attempt to relate the circumlocutions, the rhetorical involu- 
 tions, the long colloquies, in which the mind designedly dark- 
 ens the light it casts, the honeyed words diluting the venom 
 of certain insinuations, would mean writing a book as long 
 as the noble poem called Clarissa Harlowe. 
 
 Mademoiselle Habert and Mademoiselle Eogron were 
 equally desirous of marrying ; but one was ten yesLTS younger 
 than the other, and probability allowed Celeste Habert to 
 think that her children would inherit the Rogrons' whole for- 
 tune. Sylvie was almost forty-two, an age at which marriage 
 has its risks. In confiding their ideas to each other to se- 
 cure mutual approbation. Celeste Habert, on a hint from 
 the vindictive Abbe, had enlightened Sylvie as to the possi- 
 bilities of the position. The Colonel, a violent man, with the 
 health of a soldier, a burly bachelor of forty-five, would no 
 doubt act on the moral of all fairy tales: they lived happy, 
 and had many children. This form of happiness alarmed 
 Sylvie; she was afraid of dying — a fear which tortures un- 
 married women to the utmost. 
 
 But the Martignac ministry was now established — the 
 second victory which upset the Villele administration. 
 Vinet's party held their head high in Provins. Vinet, now 
 the leading advocate of la Brie, carried all before him, to 
 use a colloquialism. Vinet was a personage; the Liberals 
 prophesied his advancement; he would certainly be a deputy 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 259 
 
 or public prosecutor. As to the Colonel, he would be Mayor 
 of Provins. Oh ! to reign as Madame Garceland reigned, 
 to be the Mayoress ! Sylvie could not resist this hope ; she 
 determined to consult a doctor, though it might cover her 
 with ridicule. The two women, one triumphant, and the 
 other sure of having her in leading-strings, invented one of 
 those stratagems which women advised by a priest are so 
 clever in planning. To consult Monsieur Neraud, the Lib- 
 eral physician. Monsieur Martener's rival, would be a blunder. 
 Celeste Habert proposed to Sylvie to hide her in a dressing- 
 closet while she. Mademoiselle Habert, consulted Monsieur 
 Martener, who attended the school, on her own account. 
 Whether he were Celeste's accomplice or no, Martener told 
 his client that there was some, though very little, danger for 
 a woman of thirty. "But with your constitution," he added, 
 "you have nothing to fear." 
 
 "And if a woman is past forty?" asked Mademoiselle 
 Celeste Habert. 
 
 "A woman of forty who has been married and had children 
 need fear nothing." 
 
 "But an unmarried woman, perfectly well conducted — for 
 example. Mademoiselle Eogron?" 
 
 "W ell conducted ! There can be no doubt," said Monsieur 
 Martener. "In such a case the safe birth of a child is a 
 miracle which God certainly works sometimes, but rarely." 
 
 "And why?" asked Celeste Habert. 
 
 Whereupon the doctor replied in a terrific pathological 
 description, explaining that the elasticity bestowed by Nature 
 on the muscles and joints in youth ceased to exist at a certain 
 age, particularly in women whose occupations had made 
 them sedentary for some years, like Mademoiselle Eogron. 
 
 "And so, after forty no respectable woman ought to 
 marry ?" 
 
 "Or she should wait," replied the doctor. "But then it is 
 hardly a marriage; it is a partnership. What else could 
 it be?" 
 
 In short, it was proved by this consultation, clearly, scien- 
 
260 
 
 PIKRRETTB 
 
 tifically, seriously, and rationally, that after the age of forty 
 a virtuous maiden should not rush into matrimony. 
 
 When Monsieur Martener had left, Mademoiselle Celeste 
 Habert found Mademoiselle Eogron green and yellow, her eyes 
 dilated, — in fact, in a frightful state. 
 
 "Then you truly love the Colonel?" said she. ~ » 
 
 "I still hoped,'' said the old maid. 
 
 "Well, then, wait," said Mademoiselle Habert, who knew 
 that time would be avenged on the Colonel. 
 
 The morality of this marriage was also doubtful. Sylvie 
 went to sound her conscience in the confessional. The stem 
 director expounded the views of the Church, which regards 
 marriage only as a means of propagating the race, reprobates 
 second marriages, and scorns passions that have no social 
 aim. Sylvie Eogron's perplexity was great. These mental 
 struggles gave strange force to her passion, and lent it the 
 unaccountable charm which forbidden joys have always had 
 for women since the time of Eve. 
 
 Mademoiselle Eogron's disturbed state could not escape the 
 lawyer's keen eye. One evening, after cards, Yinet went up 
 io his dear friend Sylvie, took her hand, and led her to sit 
 down with him on one of the sofas. 
 
 "Something ails you," he said in her ear. 
 
 She gloomily bent her head. The pleader let Eogron leave 
 the room, sat alone with the old maid, and got her to mske 
 a clean breast of it. 
 
 "Well played. Abbe! But you have played my game for 
 me," he said to himself after hearing of all the private con- 
 sultations Sylvie had held, of which the last was the most 
 alarming. 
 
 This sly legal fox was even more /errible in his explana- 
 tions than the doctor had been ; he advised the marriage, but 
 only ten years hence for greater safety. The law}^er vowed 
 that all the Eogron fortune should be Bathilde's. He rubbed 
 his hands, and his very face grew sharper as he ran after 
 Madame and Mademoiselle de Chargebceuf, whom he had left 
 to start homewards with their servant armed with a lantern. 
 
PIERRETTE 261 
 
 The ijifluence exerted by Monsieur Habert, the physician 
 of the soul, was entirely counteracted by Vinet, the physician 
 of the purse. Rogron was by no means devout, so the man of 
 the Church and the man of the Law, the two black gowns, 
 pulled him opposite ways. When he heard of the victory 
 carried off by Mademoiselle Habert, who hoped to marry 
 Rogron, over Sylvie, hanging between the fear of death and 
 the joy of becoming a baroness, Vinet perceived the possi- 
 bility of removing the Colonel from the scene of battle. He 
 knew Rogron well enough to find some means of making him 
 marry the fair Bathilde. Rogron had not been able to resist 
 the blandishments of Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf; Vinet 
 knew that the first time Rogron should be alone with Bathilde 
 and himself their engagement would be settled. Rogron had 
 come to the point of staring at Mademoiselle Habert, so shy 
 was he of looking at Bathilde. 
 
 Vinet had just seen how much Sylvie was in love with the 
 Colonel. He understood the depth of such a passion in an 
 old maid, no less eaten up by bigotry, and he soon hit on a 
 plan for ruining at one blow both Pierrette and the Colonel, 
 getting rid of one by means of the other. 
 
 Next morning, on coming out of Court, he met the Colonel 
 and Rogron walking together, their daily habit. 
 
 When these three men were seen together, their conjunction 
 always made the town talk. This triumvirate, held in horror 
 by the Sous-prefet, the Bench, and the Tiphaine partisans, 
 made a triad of which the Liberals of Provins were proud. 
 Vinet edited the Courrier single-handed ; he was the head of 
 the party; the Colonel, the responsible manager of the paper, 
 was its arm; Rogron, with his money, formed the sinews; 
 he was 'considered as the link between the managing com- 
 mittee at Provins and the managing committee in Paris. To 
 hear the Tiphaines, these three men were always plotting 
 something against the Government, while the Liberals ad- 
 mired them as defenders of the people. When the lawyer 
 saw Rogron returning to the Square, brought homewards 
 by the dinner-hour, he took the Colonel's arm and hindered • 
 him from accompanying the ex-haberdasher. 
 
262 
 
 PIERRETTBJ 
 
 "Xiook here, Colonel/' said he, ^^I am going to take a 
 great weight off your shoulders. Yon can do better than 
 msLTTj Sylvie; if you go to work the right way, in two years' 
 time you may marry little Pierrette Lorrain/' 
 
 And he told him the results of the Jesuit's manoeuvring. 
 
 "What a clever stroke — and reaching so far!" said the 
 Colonel. 
 
 "Colonel," said Vinet gravely, "Pierrette is. a charming 
 creature; you may be happy for the rest of your days. You 
 have such splendid health, that such a match would not, 
 for you, have the usual drawbacks of an ill-assorted marriage ; 
 still, do not imagine that this exchange of a terrible life 
 for a pleasant one will be easy to effect. To convert your 
 lady-love into your confidante is a manoeuvre as dangerous as, 
 in your profession, it is to cross a river under the enemy's 
 fire. Keen as you are as a cavalry officer, you must study the 
 ])Osition, and carry out your tactics with the superior skill 
 which has won us our present position. If I should one day 
 public prosecutor, you may command the department. 
 A-h! if only you had a vote, we should be further on our 
 way. I might have bought the votes of those two officials 
 by indemnifying them for the loss of their places, and we 
 '.should have had a majority. I should be sitting by Dupin, 
 Casimir Perier, and " 
 
 The Colonel had for some time past been thinking of Pier- 
 rette, but he hid the thought with deep dissimulation; his 
 roughness to Pierrette was only on the surface. The child 
 could not imagine why the man who called himself her 
 father's old comrade treated her so ill, when, if he met her 
 alone, he put his hand under her chin and gave her a fatherly 
 caress. Ever since Vinet had confided to him Mademoiselle 
 Sylvie's terror of marriage, Gouraud had sought opportunities 
 of seeing Pierrette alone, and then the rough officer was 
 as mild as a cat ; he would tell her how brave her father was, 
 and say what a misfortune for her his death had been. 
 
 A few days before Brigaut's arrival, Sylvie had found 
 Gouraud and Pierrette together. Jealousy had then entered 
 
PIEKRETTE 
 
 263 
 
 into her soul with monastic vehemence. Jealousy, which is 
 above all passions credulous and suspicious, is also that in 
 which fancy has most power; but it does not lend wit, it 
 takes it away; and in Sylvie jealousy gave birth to very 
 strange ideas. She conceived that the man who had sung 
 the words "Mistress Bride" to Pierrette must be the Colonel ; 
 and Sylvie thought she had reason to ascribe this serenade 
 to the Colonel, because during the last week Gouraud's man- 
 ner seemed to have undergone a change. This soldier was 
 the only man who,, in the solitude in which she had lived, 
 had ever troubled himself about her; hence she watched him 
 with all her eyes, all her understanding; and by dint of in- 
 dulging in hopes alternately flourishing and blighted, she 
 had given them so much scope that they produced the effect 
 on her of a moral mirage. To use a fine but vulgar expres- 
 sion, by dint of looking she often saw nothing. By turns she 
 rejected and struggled victoriously against the notion of 
 this chimerical rivalry. She instituted comparisons between 
 herself and Pierrette; she was forty, and her hair was gray; 
 Pierrette was a deliciously white little girl, with eyes tender 
 enough to bring warmth to a dead heart. She had heard it 
 said that men of fifty were fond of' little girls like Pierrette. 
 
 Before the Colonel had sown his wild oats and frequented 
 the Eogrons' drawing-room, Sylvie had heard at the Ti- 
 phaines' parties strange reports of Gouraud and his doings. 
 Old maids in love have the exaggerated Platonic notions 
 which girls of twenty are apt to profess ; they have never lost 
 the hard-and-fast ideas which cling to all who have no ex- 
 perience of life, nor learnt how social forces modify, erode, 
 and coerce such fine and lofty notions. To Sylvie the idea 
 of being deceived by her Colonel was a thought that ham- 
 mered at her brain. 
 
 So from the hour, that morning, which every celibate 
 spends in bed between waking and rising, the old maid had 
 thought of nothing but herself and Pierrette, and the song 
 which had aroused her by the words, "Mistress Bride." Like 
 a simpleton, instead of peeping at the lover through the Vene- 
 
264 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 tian shutters, she had opened her window, without reflecting 
 that Pierrette would hear her. If she had but had the com- 
 mon wit of a spy, she would have seen Brigautj and the fateful 
 drama then begun would not have taken place. 
 
 Pierrette, weak as she was, removed the wooden bars which 
 fastened the kitchen shutters, opened the shutters, and hooked 
 them back, then she opened tlie passage door leading into the 
 garden. She took the various brooms needed for sweeping 
 the carpet, the dining-room floor, the passage, the stairs, in 
 short, for cleaning everything with such care and exactitude 
 as no servant, not even a Dutch one, would give to her work ; 
 she hated the least reproof. To her, happiness consisted in 
 seeing Sylvie's little blue eyes, colorless and cold, with a look 
 — not indeed of satisfaction, that they never wore — only calm 
 when she had examined everything with the owner's eye, the 
 inscrutable glance which sees what escapes the keenest ob- 
 server. 
 
 By the time Pierrette returned to the kitchen her skin 
 was moist; then she put everything in order, lighted the 
 stove so as to have live charcoal, made the fire in her cousins' 
 rooms, and put hot water for their toilet, though she had 
 none for hers. She laid "the table for breakfast and lighted 
 the dining-room stove. For all these various tasl^s she had to 
 go to the cellar to fetch brushwood, leaving a cool place 
 to go to a hot one, or a hot place to go into the cold and 
 damp. These sudden changes, made with the reckless haste 
 of 3^outh, merely to avoid a hard word, or to obey some order, 
 aggravated the state of her health beyond remedy. Pierrette 
 did not know that she was ill. Still she felt the beginnings 
 of sufferings; she had strange longings, and hid them; a 
 passion for raw salad, which she devoured in secret. The 
 innocent child had no idea that this state meant serious dis- 
 ease, and needed the greatest care. Before Brigaut's arrival, 
 if Neraud, who might accuse himself of her grandmother's 
 death, had revealed this mortal peril to the little girl, she 
 would have smiled ; she found life too bitter not to smile at 
 death. But within these last few minutes, she, who added 
 
PIERHETTB 
 
 263 
 
 to her physical ailments the Breton home-sickness — a moral 
 sickness so well known, that colonels of regiments reckon on 
 it in the Bretons who serve in their regiments — she loved 
 Provins. The sight of that gold-colored flower, that song, 
 the presence of the friend of her childhood, had revived her 
 as a plant long deprived of water recovers after hours of 
 rain. She wanted to live; she did not believe that she had 
 suffered ! 
 
 She timidly stole into Sylvie's room, lighted the lire, left 
 the hot-water pot, spoke a few words, went to awake her 
 guardian, and then ran downstairs to take in the milk, the 
 bread, and the other provisions supplied by the tradesmen. 
 She stood for some time on the doorstep, hoping that Brigaut 
 would have the wit to return ; but Brigaut was already on the 
 road to Paris, She had dusted the drawing-room and was 
 busy in the kitchen, when she heard her cousin Sylvie coming 
 downstairs. Mademoiselle Eogron made her appearance in 
 a Carmelite gray silk dressing-gown, on her head a tulle cap 
 decorated with bows, her false curls put on askew, her night- 
 dress showing above the wrapper, her feet slipshod in her 
 slippers. She inspected everything, and came to her little 
 cousin, who was waiting to know what they would have for 
 breakfast. 
 
 '^So there you are. Miss Ladylove !" said Sylvie to Pier- 
 rette, in a half-merry, half-mocking tone. 
 "I beg your pardon, cousin?'^ 
 
 "You crept into my room like a sneak and out again in 
 the same way; but you must have known that I should have 
 something to say to you." 
 
 "To me?" 
 
 "You have had a serenade this morning like a princess, 
 neither more nor less." 
 
 "A serenade?" exclaimed Pierrette. 
 
 "A serenade?" echoed Sylvie, mimicking her. "And you 
 have a lover." 
 
 "Cousin, what do you mean by a lover?" Sylvie evaded 
 the question, and said: 
 
2m 
 
 PIERRETTE) 
 
 "Do you dare to say, mademoiselle, that a man did not 
 come under our windows and talk to you of marriage !" 
 
 Persecution had taught Pierrette the cunning indispensable 
 to slaves; she boldly replied, "I do not know what you 
 mean " 
 
 "Dog " added the old maid in vinegar tones. 
 
 "Cousin," said Pierrette humbly. 
 
 "And you did not get up, I suppose, and did not go bare= > 
 foot to your window? Enough to give you some bad illness. 
 Well, catch it, and serve you right ! — And I suppose you did 
 not talk to your lover?" 
 
 "No, cousin." 
 
 "I knew you had a great many faults, but I did not know 
 you told lies. Think of what you are about, mademoiselle. 
 You will have to tell your cousin Denis and me all about 
 the scene of this morning, and explain it too ; otherwise your 
 guardian will have to take strong measures." 
 
 The old maid, devoured by jealousy and curiosity, was try- 
 ing intimidation. Pierrette did as all people must who are 
 enduring beyond their strength — she kept silence. Silence 
 is to all creatures thus attacked the only means of salvation; 
 it fatigues the Cossack charges of the envious, the enemy's 
 savage rushes; it results in a crushing and complete victory. 
 What is more complete than silence? It is final. Is it not 
 one of the modes of the Infinite ? 
 
 Sylvie looked stealthily at Pierrette. The child colored; 
 but instead of flushing all over, the red lay in patches on 
 her cheeks, in burning spots of symptomatic hue. On seeing 
 these signals of ill-health, a mother would at once have 
 changed her note; she would have taken the child on her 
 knee, have questioned her, have acquired long since a thousand 
 proofs of Pierrette's perfect and beautiful innocence, have' 
 suspected her weakness, and understood that the blood and 
 humors diverted from their course were thrown back on the 
 lungs after disturbing the digestive functions. Those elo- 
 quent scarlet patches would have warned her of imminent 
 and mortal danger. But an old maid to whom the feelings 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 26*1 
 
 that guard the family, the needs of childhood, the care re- 
 quired in early womanhood were all unknown, could have 
 none of the indulgence and the pity that are inspired by the 
 thousand incidents of married and maternal life. The suf- 
 ferings of misery, instead of softening her heart, had made 
 it callous. 
 
 "She blushes — she has done wrong!'' thought Sylvie. So 
 Pierrette's silence received the worst construction. 
 
 "Pierrette," said she, "before your cousin Denis comes down 
 we will have a little talk. — Come," she went on in a milder 
 tone. "Shut the door to the street. If any one comes, they 
 will ring; we shall hear." 
 
 In spite of the damp fog rising from the river, Sylvie led 
 Pierrette along the graveled path that zigzagged between 
 the grass-plots, to the edge of the terrace built in a so-called 
 picturesque style of broken rockwork planted with flags and 
 other water-plants. The old cousin now changed her tactics ; 
 she would try to catch Pierrette by gentleness. The hyena 
 would play the cat. 
 
 "Pierrette," said she, "you are no longer a child ; you will 
 soon set foot in your fifteenth year, and it would not be at all 
 astonishing if you had a lover." 
 
 "But, cousin," said Pierrette, raising her eyes of angelic 
 sweetness to her cousin's cold, sour face, for Sylvie had put 
 on her saleswoman expression, "what is a lover?" 
 
 It was impossible to Sylvie to define to her brother's ward 
 with accuracy and decency what she meant by a lover; in- 
 stead of regarding the question as the result of adorable inno- 
 cence, she treated it as mendacious. 
 
 "A lover, Pierrette, is a man who loves you and wishes to 
 marry you." 
 
 "Ah !" said Pierrette. "In Brittany when two persons are 
 agreed, we call the young man a suitor !" 
 
 "Well, understand that there is not the smallest harm 
 in confessing your feeling for a man, my child. The harm 
 is in secrecy. Have you, do you think, taken the fancy of 
 any man who comes here?" 
 
 "I do not think so." 
 
26B 
 
 PIBRRETlTi] 
 
 **You do not love one of tliem?'* 
 "No one." 
 ''Quite sure?" 
 ''Quite sure." 
 
 "Look me in the face, Pierrette.'* 
 Pierrette looked at her cousin. 
 
 "And yet a man spoke to you from the Square this mom- 
 ing?" 
 
 Pierrette looked down. 
 
 "You went to your window, you opened it,, and spoke to 
 him." 
 
 "No, cousin; I wanted to see what the weather was like, 
 and I saw a countryman in the Square." 
 
 "Pierrette, since your first Communion you have improved 
 greatly, you are obedient and pious, you love your relations 
 and God; I am pleased with you, but I never have told you 
 so for fear of inflaming your pride." 
 
 The horrible woman mistook the dejection, the submission, 
 the silence of wretchedness for virtues ! One of the sweetest 
 things that brings comfort to the sufferer, to martyrs, to 
 artists, in the midst of the Divine wrath roused in them by 
 envy and hatred, is to meet with praise from some quarter 
 whence they have always had blame and bad faith. So Pier- 
 rette looked: up at her cousin with attentive eyes, and felt 
 ready to forgive her all the pain she had caused her. 
 
 '^But if it is all mere hypocrisy, if I am to find in you a 
 serpent I have cherished in my bosom, you would be an in- 
 famous, a horrible creature !" 
 
 "I do not think I have anything to blame myself for," said 
 Pierrette, feeling a dreadful pang at her heart on this sudden 
 transition from unexpected praise to the terrible accent of 
 the hyena. 
 
 "You know that lying is a mortal sin?" 
 "Yes, cousin." 
 
 "Well, then, you stand before God!" said the old maid, 
 pointing with a solemn gesture to the gardens and the sky. 
 "Swear to me that you do not know that countryman." 
 
PIBRRF/rTHi 
 
 26'.) 
 
 "I will not swear/' said Pierrette. 
 
 '^Ah ! he was not a countryman ! Little viper !" 
 
 Pierrette fled across the garden like a. startled fawn, ap- 
 palled by this moral dilemma. Her cousin called to her in 
 an awful voice. 
 
 ''The bell," she replied. 
 
 ''What a sly little wretch !" said Sylvie to herself. ''She 
 has a perverse nature, and I am sure now that the little ser- 
 pent has twisted herself round the Colonel. She has heard 
 us say that he is a Baron. A Baroness, indeed ! Little fool ! 
 Oh ! I will be rid of her by placing her as an apprentice, and 
 pretty soon too !" 
 
 Sylvie was so lost in thought that she did not see her 
 brother coming down the walk and contemplating the mischief 
 done by the frost to his dahlias. 
 
 "Well, Sylvie, what are you thinking about there? I 
 thought you were looking at the fishes ; sometimes they jum (> 
 out of the water." 
 
 '^No," said she. 
 
 "Well, how did you sleep?" and he proceeded to tell her 
 his dreams of the past night. "Do not you think that my face 
 looks patchy?" a favorite word with the Rogrons. Since 
 Rogron had loved — nay, we will not profane the word — had 
 desired Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf, he had been very 
 anxious about his appearance and himself. 
 
 At this moment Pierrette came down the steps and called 
 to them that breakfast was ready. On seeing her little 
 cousin, Sylvie's complexion turned green and 3^ellow; all her 
 bile rose. She examined the passage, and said that Pierrette 
 ought to have polished it with foot-brushes. 
 
 "I will polish it if you wish," replied the angel, not know- 
 ing how injurious this form of labor is to a young girl. 
 
 The dining-room was above blame. Sylvie sat down, and 
 all through -breakfast affected to want things that she never 
 would have thought of in a calmer frame of mind, seeking 
 for them simply to make Pierrette rise to fetch them, and 
 alwa.ys just as the poor child was beginning to eat. But mere 
 
270 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 nagging was not enough ; she sought some subject for fault- 
 finding, and fumed with internal rage at finding none. If 
 they had been eating eggs, she would certainly have com- 
 plained of the boiling of hers. She hardly replied to her 
 brother's silly talk, and yet she looked only at him ; her eyes 
 avoided Pierrette, who was keenly aware of this behavior. 
 
 Pierrette brought in the coffee for her cousins in a large 
 silver cup, which served to heat the milk in, mixed with 
 ^cream, in a saucepan of hot water. The brother and sister 
 then added, to their taste, the black coffee which was made 
 by Sylvie. When she had carefully prepared this dainty, 
 Sylvie detected in it a faint cloud of coffee dust; she care- 
 fully skimmed it off the tawny mixture and looked at it, 
 leaning over it to examine it more minutely. Then the 
 storm burst. 
 
 "What is the matter?" asked Rogron. 
 
 "The matter! Miss, here, has put ashes in my coffee. 
 Ashes in coffee are so nice ! . . . Well, well ! It is not 
 astonishing; no one can do two things at once. Much she 
 was thinking of the coffee! A blackbird might have flown 
 through the kitchen, and she would not have heeded it this 
 morning ! How should she see the ashes flying ? And then — • 
 only her cousin's ! — Much she cares about it !" 
 
 She went on in this way, while she elaborately laid on 
 the edge of her plate some fine coffee that had passed through 
 the filter, mixed with some grains of sugar that had not 
 melted. 
 
 "But, cousin, that is coffee," said Pierrette. 
 
 "So I am a liar now?" exclaimed Sylvie, looking at Pier- 
 rette, and scorching her by a fearful flash that her eyes could 
 dart when she was angry. 
 
 These temperaments, which passion has never exhausted, 
 have at command a great supply of the vital fluid. This 
 phenomenon of extreme brightness in her eye uhder the in- 
 fluence of rage was all the more confirmed in MademoisellG 
 Rogron because formerly, in her shop, she had had occasion 
 to try the power of her gaze by opening her eyes enormously 
 wide, always to fill her dependants with salutary 1 error. 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 271 
 
 '1 will teach yon to giro me the lie/' she went on; ''you, 
 who deserve to be sent away from table to feed by yourself 
 in the kitchen.'^ 
 
 "What is the matter with yon both ?" cried Rogron. "You 
 are as cross as two sticks this morning." 
 
 "Oh, my lady knows what I mean ! I am giving her time 
 to make up her mind before speaking to you about it, for I 
 am much kinder to her than she deserves." 
 
 Pierrette looked through the window out on to the Square, 
 so as not to meet her cousin's eyes, which frightened her. 
 
 "She pays no more heed than if I were talking to this 
 sugar-basin ! And she has sharp ears too ; she can speak 
 from the top of the house to answer some one below. . . . 
 She is that perverse! Your ward is aggravating beyond 
 words, and you need look for nothing good from her ; do you 
 hear me, Rogron?" 
 
 "What has she done that is so wicked ?" asked her brother. 
 
 "At her age too! It is beginning young!" cried the old 
 maid in a fury. 
 
 Pierrette rose to clear away, just to keep herself in counte- 
 nance; she did not know which way to look. Though such 
 language was nothing new to her, she never could get used to 
 it. Her cousin's rage made her feel as though she had com- 
 mitted some crime. She wondered what her rage would be 
 if she knew of Brigaut's escapade. Perhaps they would keep 
 Brigaut away. All the thousand ideas of a slave crowded 
 on her at once, thoughts swift and deep, and she resolved to 
 resist by absolute silence as to an incident in which her con- 
 science could see no evil. 
 
 She had to endure words so cruel, so harsh, insinuations 
 so insulting, that on her return to the kitchen she was seized 
 with cramp in the stomach and a violent attack of sickness. 
 She dared not complain ; she was not sure of getting any care. 
 She turned pale and faint, said that she felt ill, and went 
 up to bed, clinging to the banisters at every step, and believ- 
 ing that her last hour had come. "Poor Brigaut !" thought 
 she. 
 
272 
 
 PIEIiRKTTE 
 
 ^^She is ill/' said Eogron. 
 
 *^She ill! It is all megrims/' said Sylvie, loud enough 
 to be overheard. "She was not ill this morning, I can tell 
 you !" 
 
 This last shot was too much for Pierrette, who crept to 
 bed in tears, praying to God to remove her from this world. 
 
 For a month past Rogron had no longer carried the Coti- 
 stitutionnel to Gouraud; the Colonel obsequiously came to 
 fetch the newspaper, to make talk, and take Rogron out when 
 the weather was fine. Sylvie, sure of seeing the Colonel, 
 and being able to question him, dressed herself coquettishly. 
 The old maid thought she achieved this by putting on a 
 green gown, a little yellow cashmere shawl bordered with 
 red, and a white bonnet with meagre gray feathers. At the 
 hour when the Colonel was due, she settled herself in the 
 drawing-room with her brother, making him keep on his 
 dressing-gown and slippers. 
 
 "It is a fine morning, Colonel/' said Rogron, hearing 
 Gouraud's heavy step; "but I am not dressed, my sister 
 perhaps wanted to go out, she left me to mind the house; 
 wait for me." 
 
 Rogron went oif, leaving Sylvie with the Colonel. 
 
 "Where are you going? you are dressed like a goddess," 
 observed Gouraud, seeing a certain solemnity of expression 
 on the old maid's battered face. 
 
 "Yes, I was going out ; but as the child is not well, I must 
 stay at home." 
 
 "What is the matter with her?" 
 
 "I do not know; she asked to go to bed." 
 
 Gouraud's cautiousness, not to say his distrust, was con- 
 stantly on the alert as a result of his collusion with Vinet 
 The lawyer evidently had the best of it. He edited the paper, 
 he ruled it as a master, and applied the profits to the editing; 
 whereas the Colonel, the responsible stalking-horse, got little 
 enough. Who was to be the depute? Vinet. Who the 
 great electioneer? Vinet. Who was always consulted? 
 Vinet. 
 
PIBRRBTOE 
 
 278 
 
 Then he knew, at least as well as Vinet, the extent and 
 depth of the passion consuming Rogron for the fair Bathilde 
 de Chargeboeuf. This passion was becoming a mania, as 
 all the lowest passions of men do. Bathilde's voice made the 
 old bachelor thrill. Eogron, thinking only of his desire, con- 
 cealed it ; he dared not hope for such a match. The Colonel, 
 to sound him, had told Rogron that he was about to propose 
 for Bathilde's hand; Rogron had turned pale at the mere 
 thought of such a formidable rival; he had become cold to 
 Gouraud, almost hostile. Thus Vinet in every way ruled the 
 roast, while he, the Colonel, was tied to the house only by 
 the doubtful bond of a love which, on his part, was but 
 feigned, and on Sylvie's as yet unconfessed. When the lawyer 
 had divulged the priest's manoeuvre and advised him to thro\^ 
 over Sylvie and pay his addresses to Pierrette, Vinet had 
 humored his inclinations; still, as the Colonel analyzed the 
 true purport of this suggestion, and examined the ground 
 on which he stood, he fancied he could discern in his ally 
 some hope of making mischief between him and Sylvie, and 
 taking advantage of the old maid's fears to make the whole 
 of Rogron's fortune fall into Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf's 
 hands. 
 
 Hence, when Rogron left him alone with Sylvie, the Colo- 
 nel's acumen seized on the slight indications which betrayed 
 some uneasiness in Sylvie. He saw that she had planned to 
 be under arms and alone with him for a minute. Gouraud, 
 who already vehemently suspected Vinet of playing him 
 some malignant trick, ascribed this conference to a secret 
 suggestion of this legal ape; he put himself on his guard, 
 as v/hen he had been making a reconnaissance in the enemy's 
 country, keeping an eye on the whole prospect, listening for 
 the least sound, his mind alert, his hand on his weapon. It 
 was the Colonel's weakness never to believe a word said by 
 a woman; and when the old maid spoke of Pierrette, and 
 said she was in bed at midday, he concluded that Sylvie had 
 simply put her in disgrace in her room out of jealousy. 
 
'^The child is growing very pretty," said he, in an indiffer 
 ent tone. 
 
 "Yes, she will be pretty/' replied Mademoiselle Rogron. 
 
 "You ought now to send her to a shop in Paris/' added 
 the Colonel. "She would make a fortune. They look out 
 for very pretty girls now in the milliners' shops." 
 
 "Is that really your advice?" asked Sylvie, in an anxious 
 voice. 
 
 "Good ! I have hit it !" thought the Colonel. "Vinet's ad- 
 vice that Pierrette and I should marry by-and-by was only 
 intended to place me in this old witch's black-books. — Why/' 
 he said aloud, "what do you expect to do v/ith her ? Do you 
 not see a perfectly lovely girl, Bathilde de Chargeboeuf, of 
 noble birth, well connected, and left to become an old maid. 
 No one will have anything to say to her. Pierrette has noth- 
 ing; she will never marry. Do you suppose that youth and 
 beauty have any attraction for me, for instance? — for me, 
 who, as Captain of Artillery in the Imperial Guard from the 
 first day when the Emperor had a guard, have had my feet in 
 every capital in Europe, and known the prettiest women in 
 them all? — Youth and beauty — they are deuced common 
 and silly. Don't talk of them to me !" 
 
 "At eight-and-forty," he went on, adding to his age, "when 
 a man has gone through the retreat from Moscow and the 
 dreadful campaign in France, his loins are a bit weary; I 
 am an old fellow. ISTow, a wife like you would cosset me 
 and take care of me; her fortune, added to my few thousand 
 francs of pension, would secure me suitable comfort for my 
 old age, and I should like her a thousand times better than 
 a minx who would give me no end of trouble, who would be 
 thirty and have her passions when I should be sixty and have 
 the rheumatism. At my time of life we think of these things. 
 And, between you and me, I may add that if I marry, I should 
 hope to have no children." 
 
 Sylvie's face was transparent to the Colonel all through 
 this speech, and her reply was enough to assure him of 
 Vinet's perfidy. 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 275 
 
 ^'So you are not in love with Pierrette ?" she exclaimed. 
 
 "Bless me ! Are you crazy, my dear Sylvie ?" cried he. 
 "When we have lost all our teeth, is it the time to crack nuts ? 
 Thank God, I still have my wits, and know myself." 
 
 Sylvie would not then say more about herself ; she thought 
 lierself very wily in using her brother's name. 
 
 "My brother," said she, "had thought of your marrying 
 her." 
 
 "Your brother can never have had such a preposterous 
 notion. A few days ago, to find out his secret, I told him 
 that I was in love with Bathilde; he turned as white as your 
 collar." 
 
 "Is he in love with Bathilde?" said Sylvie. 
 
 "Madly ! And Bathilde certainly loves only his money." — 
 ("One for you, Vinet," thought Gouraud). — "What should 
 have made him speak of Pierrette? — No, Sylvie," he went 
 on, taking her hand and pressing it with meaning, "since you 
 have led to the subject" — he went close to her — "well" — ^he 
 kissed her hand; he was a cavalry colonel, and had given 
 proofs of courage— "know this: I want no wife but you. 
 Though the marriage will look like a marriage for money, I 
 feel true affection for you." 
 
 "But it was I who wished that you should marry Pierrette ; 
 and if T were to give her my money — what then. Colonel ?" 
 
 "But I do not want to have a wretched home, or to see, 
 ten years hence, some young whippersnapper, such as 
 Julliard, hovering round my wife, and writing verses to 
 her in the newspaper. I am too much a man on that score ; 
 I will never marry a woman out of all proportion too young." 
 
 "Well, Colonel, we will talk that over seriously," said 
 Sylvie, with a glance she thought amorous, and which w\ns 
 YQiy like that of an ogress. Her cold, raw purple lips parted 
 over her yellow teeth, and she fancied she was smiling. 
 
 "Here I am," said Rogron, and he led away the Colonel, 
 who bowed courteously to the old maid. 
 
 Gouraud was determined to hasten his marriage with 
 Sylvie, and so become master of the house; promising himself 
 -19 ~ 
 
 \ 
 
276 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 that, through the influence he would acquire over Sylvie dur* 
 ing the honeymoon, he would get rid both of Bathilde and 
 of Celeste Habert. So, as they walked, he told Rogron that he 
 had been making fun of him the other day; that he had no 
 intentions of winning Bathilde'S heart, not being rich enough 
 to take a wife who had no money. Then he confided his 
 projects; he had long since chosen S3dvie for her admirable 
 qualities; in short, he aspired to the honor of becoming his 
 brother-in-law. 
 
 "Oh, Colonel ! Oh, Baron ! If only my consent were 
 needed, it would be done as soon as legal delays should al- 
 low V cried Eogron, delighted to find himself relieved of this 
 terrible rival. 
 
 Sylvie spent the whole morning examining her own rooms 
 to see if there were accommodation for a couple. She 
 determined on building a second story for her brother, and 
 having the first floor for herself and her husband; but she 
 also promised herself, in accordance with the notions of 
 every old maid, to put the Colonel to some tests, so as to 
 judge of his heart and habits before making up her mind. 
 She still had doubts, and wanted to make sure that Pierrette 
 had no intimacy with the Colonel. 
 
 At dinner-time the girl came down to lay the cloth. Sylvie 
 had been obliged to do the cooking, and had spotted her gown, 
 exclaiming, "Curse Pierrette V' For it was evident, indeed, 
 that if Pierrette had cooked the dinner, Sylvie would not 
 have had a grease-stain on her silk dress. 
 
 "So here you are, you little coddle. You are like the 
 blacksmith's dog that sleeps under the forge and wakes at 
 the sound of a saucepan. So you want me to believe that 
 you are ill, you little story-teller 
 
 The one idea, "You did not confess the truth as to what 
 took place this morning, therefore everything you say is a 
 lie," was like a hammer with which Sylvie was prepared to 
 hit incessantly on Pierrette's head and heart. 
 
 To Pierrette's great astonishment, Sylvie sent her, after 
 dinner, to dress for the eveninaf. The liveliest imagination 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 277 
 
 is no match for the energy which suspicion gives to the mind 
 of an old maid. In such a case, the old maid beats politicians, 
 attorneys and notaries, bill-brokers and misers. Sylvie prom- 
 ised herself that she would consult Vinet after looking well 
 about her. She meant to keep Pierrette in the room, so as 
 to judge for herself by the child's face whether the Colone] 
 had told the truth. 
 
 The tirst to come were Madame de Chargeboeuf and her 
 daughter. By her cousin Vinet's advice, Bathilde had dressed 
 with twice her usual elegance. She wore a most becoming 
 blue cotton-velvet gown, the clear kerchief as before, bunches 
 of grapes in garnets and gold for earrings, her hair in ring- 
 lets, the artful necklet, little black satin shoes, gray silk 
 stockings, and Suede gloves, and then queenly airs and girlish 
 coquettishness enough to catch every Eogron in the river. 
 Her mother, calm and dignified, had preserved, as had 
 Bathilde, a certain aristocratic impertinence by which these 
 two women redeemed everything, betraying the spirit of their 
 caste. Bathilde was gifted with superior intelligence, though 
 Vinet alone had been able to discern it after the two months 
 that these ladies had spent in his house. When he had 
 sounded the depths of this girl, depressed by the uselessness 
 of her youth and beauty, but enlightened by the contempt 
 she felt for the men of a period when money was their sole 
 idol, Vinet exclaimed in surprise: 
 
 "If I had but married you, Bathilde, by this time I should 
 have been Keeper of the Seals; I would have called myself 
 Vinet de Chargeboeuf, and have sat on the right." 
 
 Bathilde had no vulgar aims in her wish to be married; 
 she would not marry for motherhood, nor for the sake of 
 having a husband; she would marry to be free, to have a 
 "responsible publisher," as it were — to be called Madam.e, 
 and to act as men act. Eogron to her was a name; she 
 thought she could make something of this imbecile creature — 
 a depute, v/ho might vote while she pulled the wires; she 
 wanted to be revenged on her family, who had paid little heed 
 
278 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 to a penniless girl. Vinet, admirin j; and encouraging her 
 ideas, had greatly extended and str.3i-igthened them. 
 
 "My dear cousin/^ said he, explrJaing to her the influence 
 exerted by women, and pointing out the sphere of action 
 proper to them, "do you suppose that Tiphaine, a profoundly 
 mediocre man, can by his own merits rise to sit on the lower 
 bench in Paris? It is Madame Tiphaine who got him re- 
 turned as deputy; it is she who will carry him to Paris. Her 
 mother, Madame Eoguin, is a cunning body, who does what 
 she pleases with du Tillet the banker, one of Nucingen's 
 chief allies, both of them close friends of Keller's; and these 
 three houses do great services to the Government or its most 
 devoted adherents; the offices are on the best possible terms 
 with these lynxes of the financial world, and men like those 
 know all Paris. There is nothing to hinder Tiphaine from 
 rising to be the Presiding Judge of one of the higher Courts. 
 — Marry Eogron; we will make him deputy for Provins as 
 soon as I have secured for myself some other constituency in 
 Seine-et-Marne. Then you will have a receivership — one of 
 those places where Eogron will have nothing to do but to 
 sign his nam.e. We will stick to the Opposition if it 
 triumphs; but if the Bourbons remain in power, 0 how 
 gently we will incline towards the centre! Besides, Eogron 
 will not live for ever, and you can marry a title by-and-by. 
 And then, if you are in a good position, the Chargeboeufs will 
 help us. Your poverty — like mine — has, no doubt, enabled 
 you to estimate what men are worth; they are to be made 
 use of only as post-horses. A man or a woman can take ua 
 from one stage to the next !" 
 
 Vinet had made a little Catherine de Medici of Bathilde. 
 He left his wife at home, happy with her two children, and 
 always attended Madame de Chargeboeuf and Bathilde to the 
 Eogrons'. He appeared in all his glory as the tribune of 
 Champagne. He wore neat gold spectacles, a silk waistcoat, 
 a white cravat, black trousers, thin boots, a black coat made 
 in Paris, a gold watch and chain. Instead of the Vinet of 
 old — pale, lean, haggard, and gloomy — he exhibited tho 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 Vinet of the day, in all the bravery of a political personage; 
 sure of his luck, he trod with the decision peculiar to a busy 
 advocate familiar with the caverns of justice. His small, 
 cunning head was so smartly brushed, and his clean-shaven 
 chin gave him such a finished though cold appearance, that he 
 looked quite pleasing, in the style of Robespierre. He might 
 certainly become a delightful public prosecutor, with an 
 clastic, dangerous, and deadly flow of eloquence, or an orator, 
 with all the subtlety of Benjamin Constant. The acrimony 
 and hatred which had formerly animated him had turned to 
 perfidious softness. The poison had become medicine. 
 
 "Good-evening, my dear, how are you?" said Madame de 
 Chargeboeuf to Sylvie. 
 
 Bathilde went straight to the fireplace, took off her hat, 
 looked at herself in the glass, and put her pretty foot on the 
 bar of the fender to display it to Rogron. 
 
 "What ails you, monsieur?" said she, looking at him. 
 "You give me no greeting ? Well, indeed ! I may put on a 
 velvet frock for your benefit . . 
 
 She stopped Pierrette, bidding her put her hat on a chair, 
 and the girl took it from her, Bathilde resigning it to her 
 as though Pierrette had been the housemaid. 
 
 Men are thought very fierce, and so are tigers ; but neither 
 tigers, nor vipers, nor diplomates, nor men of law, nor execu- 
 tioners, nor kings, can in their utmost atrocities come near 
 the gentle cruelt}^ the poisoned sweetness, the savage scorn 
 of young ladies to each other when certain of them think 
 themselves superior to others in birth, fortune, or grace, and 
 when marriage is in question, or precedence, or, in short, any 
 feminine rivalry. The "Thank you, mademoiselle," spoken 
 Dy Bathilde to Pierrette, was a poem in twelve cantos. 
 
 Her name was Bathilde, the other's was Pierrette; she was 
 a Chargeboeuf, the other a Lorrain! Pierrette was under- 
 sized and fragile, Bathilde was tall and full of vitality! 
 Pierrette was fed by charity, Bathilde and her mother lived 
 on their own money ! Pierrette wore a stuff frock with a 
 deep tucker, Bathilde dragged the serpentine folds of 
 
 \ 
 
280 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 her blue velvet; Bathilde had the finest shoulders in the 
 department, and an arm like a queen's, Pierrette's shoulder- 
 blades and arms were skinny; Pierrette was Cinderella^ 
 Bathilde the fair}^; Bathilde would get married, Pierrette 
 would die a maid ! Bathilde was worshiped, Pierrette had no 
 one to love her! Bathilde had her hair dressed — she had 
 taste, Pierrette hid her hair under a little cap, and knew 
 nothing of the fashions! Epilogue — Bathilde was every- 
 thing, Pierrette was nothing. The proud little Bretonne per- 
 fectly understood this cruel poem. 
 
 "Good-evening, child," said Madame de Chargeboeuf from 
 the summit of her grandeur, and with an accent given by 
 her narrow pinched nose. 
 
 Vinet put the crowning touch to these insulting civilities 
 by looking at Pierrette and saying, on three notes, "Oh, oh, 
 oh ! How fine we are this evening, Pierrette !" 
 
 "I !" said the poor child. "You should say that to your 
 cousin, not to me. She is beautiful !'' 
 
 "Oh, my cousin is always bea.utiful," replied the lawyer. 
 "Do not you say so, Pere Rogron ?" he added, turning to the 
 master of the house, and shaking hands with him. 
 
 "Yes,'' said Eogron. 
 
 "Why force him to say what he does not think? I never 
 was to his taste," replied Bathilde, placing herself in front 
 of Rogron. "Is not that the truth? — Look at me." 
 
 Rogron looked at her from head to foot, and gently closed 
 his eyes, like a cat when its poll is scratched. 
 
 "You are too beautiful," said he, "too dangerous to 
 look at." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 Rogron gazed at the fire-logs and said nothing. 
 
 At this moment Mademoiselle Habert came, followed by 
 the Colonel. Celeste Habert, everybody's enemy now, had 
 none but Sylvie on her side; but each one showed her all 
 the greater consideration, politeness, and amiable attention 
 because all were undermining her, so that she doubted be- 
 tween this display of civil interest and the distrust which 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 281 
 
 her t)rother had implanted in lier. The priest, though 
 standing apart from the theatre of war, guessed everything; 
 and so, when he perceived that his sister's hopes were at an 
 end, he became one of the Rogrons' most formidable antago- 
 nists. 
 
 Th^> reader can at once imagine what Mademoiselle Habert 
 was like on being told that even if she had not been mistress 
 — arch-mistress — of a school, she would still always have 
 looked like a governess. Governesses have a particular way 
 of putting on their caps. Just as elderly Englishwomen 
 have monopolized the fashion of turbans, so governesses have 
 the monopoly of these caps ; the crown of the cap towers above 
 the flowers, the flowers are more than artificial; stored care- 
 fully in a wardrobe, this cap is always new and always old, 
 even on the first day. These old maids make it a point of 
 honor to be like a painter's lay-figure; they sit on their 
 haunches, not on their chairs. When they are spoken to they 
 turn their whole body; and when their gowns creak, we are 
 tempted to believe that the springs of the machinery are out 
 of order. Mademoiselle Habert, a type of her kind, had a 
 hard eye, a set mouth, and under her chin, furrowed with 
 wrinkles, the limp and crumpled capstrings wagged and 
 frisked as she moved. She had an added charm in two moles, 
 rather large and rather brown, with hairs that she left to 
 grow like untied clemiatis. Finally, she took snuff, and with- 
 out grace. 
 
 They sat down to the toil of boston. Sylvie had opposite 
 to her Mademoiselle Habert, and the Colonel sat on one side, 
 opposite Madame de Chargeboeuf. Bathilde placed her- 
 self near her mother and Rogron. Sylvie put Pierrette be- 
 tween herself and the Colonel. Rogron opened another card- 
 table in case Monsieur Neraud should come, and Monsieur 
 Cournant and his wife. Vinet and Bathilde could both play 
 whist, which was Monsieur and Madame Cournant's game. 
 Ever since the Chargeboeuf ladies — as they say in Provins — 
 had been in the habit of coming to the Rogrons', the two 
 lamps blazed on the chimney-piece between the candelabr3 
 
282 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 and the clock, and the tables were lighted by wax lights 
 at two francs a pound, which, however, was paid by winnings 
 at cards. 
 
 "Now, Pierrette, my child, take your sewing," said Sylvie 
 with treacherous gentleness, seeing her wa.tch the Coloners 
 play. 
 
 In public she always pretended to treat Pierrette very 
 kindly. This mean deceit irritated the honest Bretonne, and 
 made her despise her cousin. Pierrette fetched her em-, 
 broidery ; but as she set the stitches, she looked now and then 
 at the Colonel's game. Gouraud seemed not to know that 
 there was a little girl at his side. Sylvie began to think 
 this indifference extremely suspicious. At a certain moment 
 in the game the old maid declared miser e in hearts ; the pool 
 was full of counters, and there were twenty-seven sous in 
 it besides. The Cournants and Neraud had come. The old 
 supernumerary judge, Desfondrilles — a man in whom the 
 Minister of Justice had discerned the qualifications for a 
 judge when appointing him examining magistrate, but who 
 was never thought clever enough for a superior position — 
 had for the last two months forsaken the Tiphaines, and 
 shown a leaning towards Vinet's party. He was now standing 
 in front of the fire, holding up his coat-tails, and gazing at 
 the gorgeous drawing-room in which Mademoiselle de Charge- 
 boeuf shone; for the setting of crimson looked as if it had 
 been contrived on purpose to show off the beauty of this 
 magnificent young woman. Silence reigned; Pierrette 
 watched the play, and Sylvie's attention was diverted by the 
 excitement of the game. 
 
 "Play that," said Pierrette to the Colonel, painting to a 
 heart. 
 
 The Colonel led from a sequence in hearts; the hearts 
 lay between him and Sylvie; the Colonel forced the ace, 
 though it was guarded in Sylvie's hand by five small cards. 
 
 "It is not fair play ! Pierrette saw my hand, and the Colo- 
 nel allowed her to advise him !" 
 
 "But, mademoiselle," said Celeste, "it was the Colonel's 
 game to lead hearts since he found that you had one !" 
 
283 
 
 The speech made Desfondrilles smile; he was a keen ob- 
 server, who amused hims(ilf with watching all the interests 
 at stake in Provins, where he played the part of Rigaudin 
 in Picard's play of la Maison en lotcrie. 
 
 "It was the Colonel's game/' Cournant put in, without 
 knowing anything about it. 
 
 Sylvie shot at Mademoiselle Habert a look of old maid 
 against old maid, villainous but honeyed. 
 
 "Pierrette, you saw my hand," said Sylvie, fixing her eyes 
 on the girl. 
 
 "No, cousin." 
 
 "I was watching you all," said the archaeological judge \ "I 
 can bear witness that the little girl saw no one's hand but the 
 Colonel's." 
 
 "Pooh! these little girls know very well how to steal a 
 glance with their sweet eyes," said Gouraud in alarm. 
 "Indeed !" said Sylvie. 
 
 "Yes," replied Gouraud; "she may have looked over your 
 hand to play you a trick. Was it not so, my beauty ?" 
 
 "No," said the honest Bretonne. "I am incapable of such 
 a thing! In' that case I should have followed my cousin's 
 game." 
 
 "You know very well that you are a story-teller and a 
 little fool into the bargain," said Sylvie. "Since what took 
 place this morning, who can believe a word you say? You 
 are a . . ." 
 
 Pierrette did not wait to hear her cousin end the sentence 
 in her presence. Anticipating a torrent of abuse, she rose, 
 went out of the room without a light, and up to her 
 room. Sylvie turned pale with rage, and muttered between 
 her teeth, "I will pay her out !" 
 
 "Will you pay your losses ?" said Madame de Chargebceuf. 
 
 At this moment poor Pierrette hit her head against the 
 passage door which the judge had left open. 
 
 "Good ! That serves her right !" cried S3dvie. 
 
 ^^hat has happened?" asked Desfondrilles. 
 
 "Nothing that she does not deserve," replied Sylvie. 
 
284 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 '^She has given herself some severe blow/' said Made- 
 moiselle Habert. 
 
 Sylvie tried to evade paying her stakes by rising to see 
 what Pierrette had done; but Madame de Chargeboenf 
 stopped her. 
 
 "Pay lis first/' said she, laughing ; "by the time you return 
 you will have forgotten all about it." 
 
 This suggestion, based on the bad faith the ex-haberdasher 
 showed in the matter of her gambling debts, met with gen- 
 eral approval. Sylvie sat down and thought no more of Pier- 
 rette; and no one was surprised at her indifference. All the 
 evening Sylvie was absent-minded. When cards were over, 
 at about half-past nine, she sank into an easy-chair by the 
 fire, and only rose to take leave of her guests. The Colonel 
 tortured her; she did not know what to think about him. 
 
 "Men are so false V said she to herself as she fell asleep. 
 
 Pierrette had given herself a frightful blow against the 
 edge of the door, just over her ear, where girls part their 
 hair to put the forepart into curl-papers. Next morning 
 there was a bad purple-veined bruise. 
 
 "God has punished you," said Sylvie at breakfast; "you 
 disobeyed me, you showed a great want of respect in not 
 listening to me, and in going away in the middle of my sen- 
 tence. You have no more than you deserve." 
 
 "Still," said Eogron, "you should put on a rag dipped in 
 salt and water." 
 
 "Pooh! It is nothing!" said Sylvie. 
 
 The poor child had come to the point when she thought 
 her guardian's remark a proof of interest. 
 
 The week ended as it had begun, in constant torment. 
 Sylvie became ingenious, and carried her refinement of 
 tyranny to an extreme pitch. The Illinois, Cherokees, and 
 Mohicans might have learnt of her. Pierrette dared not 
 complain of her indefinite misery and the pain she suffered 
 in her head. At tlie bottom of Sylvie's displeasure lay the 
 girl's refusal to tell anytbins: about Brigaut; and Pierrette, 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 285 
 
 with Breton obstinacy, was do tor mined to keep a very natural 
 silence. Every one can imagine what a glance she gave 
 Brigaut, who, as she believed, would be lost to her if he were 
 discovered, and whom she instinctively longed to keep near 
 her, happy in knowing that he was at Provins. What a 
 delight to her to see Brigaut again ! The sight of the com- 
 panion of her childhood was to her like the view an exile 
 gets from afar of his native land; she looked on him as a 
 martyr gazes at the sky when, during his torments, his eyes, 
 blessed with double sight, see through to heaven. 
 
 Pierrette's parting glance had been so perfectly intelligible 
 to the Major's son, that while he planed his boards, opened 
 his compasses, took his measurements, and fitted his pieces, 
 he racked his brains for some means of corresponding with 
 Pierrette. Brigaut at last hit on this extremely simple plan. 
 At a certain hour at night Pierrette must let down a string, 
 and he would tie a letter to the end of it. In the midst of 
 her terrible sufferings from two maladies, an abscess which 
 was forming in her head, and her general disorderment, 
 Pierrette was sustained by the idea of corresponding with 
 Brigaut. The same desire agitated both hearts; though 
 apart, they understood each other ! At every pang that made 
 her heart flutter, at every pain that shot through her brain, 
 Pierrette said to herself, ^'Brigaut is at hand!" and then 
 she could suffer without complaining. 
 
 On the next market-day after their first meeting in the 
 church, Brigaut looked out for his little friend. Though he 
 saw that she was pale, and trembling like a November leaf 
 about to drop from the bough, without losing his head he 
 went to bargain for some fruit at the stall where the terrible 
 Sylvie was beating down the price of her purchases. Brigaut 
 contrived to slip a note into Pierrette's hand, and he did it 
 naturally, while jesting with the market woman, and with 
 all the dexterity of a rake, as if he had never done anything 
 else, so coolly did he manage it, in spite of the hot blood that 
 sang in his ears and surged boiling from his heart, almost 
 bursting the veins and arteries. On the surface he had the 
 
286 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 determination of an old housebreaker, and within the quaking 
 heart of innocence, like mothers sometimes in their mortal 
 anguish, when they are gripped between two dangers, be- 
 tween two precipices. Pierrette felt Brigaut's dizziness; she 
 crushed the paper into her apron pocket; the pallor of her 
 cheeks changed to the cherry redness of a fierce fire. These 
 two children each unconsciously went through sensations 
 enough for ten commonplace love-affairs. That instant left 
 in their souls a wellspring of emotions. Sylvie, who did not 
 recognize the Breton accent, could not suspect a lover in 
 Brigaut, and Pierrette came home with her treasure. 
 
 The letters of these two poor children were destined to 
 serve as documents in a horrible legal squabble; for, but 
 for that fatal circumstance, they never would have been seen. 
 This is what Pierrette read that evening in her room: — 
 
 "My Dear Pierrette, — At midnight, when everyl»ody is 
 asleep, but when I shall be awake for your sake, I will come 
 every night under the kitchen window. You can let down 
 out of your window a string long enough to reach me, which 
 will make no noise, and tie to the end of it whatever you 
 want to write to me. I will answer you in the same way. 
 I knew that you had been taught to read and write by those 
 wretched relations who were to do you so much good, and 
 who are doing you so much harm! You, Pierrette, the 
 daughter of a Colonel who died for France, are compelled 
 by these monsters to cook for them ! That is how your 
 pretty color and your fine health have vanished. What has 
 become of my Pierrette? What have they done to her? I 
 can see plainly that you are not happy. 
 
 *^0h ! Pierrette, let us go back to Brittany. I can earn 
 enough to give you everything you need ; you may have three 
 francs a. day, for I earn from four to five, and thirty sous 
 are plenty for me. Oh! Pierrette, how I have prayed to 
 God for you since seeing you again. I have asked Him to 
 give me all your pain, and to grant you all the pleasures. 
 
 "What have you to do with them that they keep you? 
 
PIEliUETTE 
 
 28? 
 
 YouT grandirj other is more to you than they are. These 
 Eogrons aro venomous; they have spoilt all your gaiety. 
 You do not even walk at Provins as you used to move in 
 Brittany. Let us go home to Brittany. In short, here 1 
 am to serve you, to do your bidding; and you must tell me 
 what you wish. If you want money, I have sixty crowns 
 of ours, and I shall have the grief of sending them to you 
 by the string instead of kissing your dear hands respectfully 
 when I give you the money. Ah ! my dear Pierrette, the 
 blue sky has now for a long time been dark to me. I have 
 not had two hours of Joy since I put you into that ill-starred 
 diligence ; and when I saw you again, like a shade, that witch 
 of a cousin disturbed our happiness. However, we shall have 
 the t»omfort of praying to God together every Sunday; He 
 will perhaps hear uc the better. Not good-bye, dear Pierrette, 
 only till to-night." 
 
 This letter agitated her so greatly that she sat for above 
 an hour reading and re-reading it; but she reflected, not 
 without pain, that she Lad nothing to write with. So she 
 made up her mind to the difficult expedition from her attic 
 to the dining-room, where she could find ink, pen, and paper ; 
 and she accomplished it without waking Sylvie. A few min- 
 utes before midnight she j.ad finished this letter, which was 
 also produced in Court:— 
 
 "Mr Fri-l^nd, — Oh yes, my friend! For there is no one 
 but you, Jacques, and my grandmother, who loves me. God 
 ToTgive me, but you are the only two persons I love, one as 
 much as the other, neither more nor less. I was too little 
 to remember my mother; but you, Jacques, and my grand- 
 mother, and my grandfather too, God rest his soul, for he 
 {lufiered much from his ruin, which was mine too — ^in short, 
 you are the only two remaining, and I love you as much as 
 I am wretched! So to know how much I love you, you 
 would have to know how much I suffer; but I do not wish 
 tha1>— it would make you too unhappy. I am. spoken to as 
 
288 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 yon would not speak to a dog ; I am treated as if I were dirt r 
 and in vain I examine m3^self as if I were before God, I 
 cannot see that I am in fault towards them. Before you sang 
 the bride's song to me I saw that God was good in my misery ; 
 for I prayed to Him to take me out of this world, and as I 
 felt very ill, I said to myself, '^God has heard m,e !' 
 
 "But since you have come, Brigaut, I want to go away v/ith 
 you to Brittany to see my grandmamma, who loves me, though 
 they tell me she has robbed me of eight thousand francs. 
 Brigaut, if they are really mine, can you get them? But it 
 is all a lie; if we had eight thousand francs, grandmamma 
 would not be at Saint- Jacques. I would not trouble that 
 good saintly woman's last days by telling her of my miseries ; 
 it would be enough to kill her. Ah! if she could know that 
 they make her grandchild wash the pots and pans — she who 
 would say to me, 'Leave that alone, my darling,' when I 
 tried to help her in her troubles; 'leave it, leave it, my pet; 
 you will spoil your pretty little hands.' Well, my nails are 
 clean at any rate! Many times I cannot carry the market 
 basket, and the handle saws my arm as I come home from 
 market. 
 
 "At the same time, I do not think that my cousins are 
 cruel ; but it is their way always to be scolding, and it would 
 seem that I can never get away from them. My cousin 
 Eogron is my guardian. One day when I meant to run away, 
 as I was too miserable, and I told them so, my cousin Sylvie 
 answered that the police would go after me, that the law was 
 on my guardian's side; and I saw very clearly that cousins 
 can no more take the place of our father and mother than 
 the Saints can take the place of God. — My poor Jacques, 
 what use could I make of your money? Keep it for our 
 journey. Oh ! how I have thought of you and Pen-Hoel 
 and the large pool. We ate our cake first, out there, for I 
 think I am getting worse. I am very ill, Jacques. I have 
 such pains in my head that I could scream, and in my back 
 and my bones ; sometimes round my loins that half kills me ; 
 and I have no appetite but for nasty things, leaves and roots, 
 
PIERRETTE. 
 
 and I like the smell of printed paper. There are times when 
 I should cry if I were alone, for J may not do anything as 1 
 wish; I am not even allowed to cry. I have to hide myself 
 to offer up my tears to Him from whom we receive those 
 mercies which we call our afflictions. Was it not He who in- 
 spired you with the good idea of coming to sing the bride's 
 song under my window? — Oh! Jacques, cousin Sylvie, who 
 heard you, told me I had a lover. If you will be my lover, 
 love me very much; I promise always to love you, as in the 
 past, and to be your faithful servant, 
 
 "Pierrette Lorrain. 
 
 "You will always love me, won't you?" 
 
 The girl had taken a crust of bread from the kitchen, in 
 which she made a hole to stick her letter in, so as to weight 
 the thread. At midnight, after opening her window with 
 excessive caution, she let down her note with the bread, which 
 could make no noise by tapping against the wall or the shut- 
 ters. She felt the thread pulled by Brigaut, who broke it, 
 and then went stealthily away. When he was in the middle 
 of the Square she could see him, though indistinctly, in the 
 starlight ; but he could gaze at her in the luminous band pro- 
 jected by the candle. The two young things remained there 
 for an hour, Pierrette signaling to him to go away, he going 
 and she remaining, and he returned to his post, while Pier- 
 rette again waved to him to be gone. This was several times 
 repeated, till the girl shut her window, got into bed, and 
 blew out her light. 
 
 Once in bed, she went to sleep, happy though suffering; 
 she had Brigaut's letter under her pillow: She slept the 
 sleep of the persecuted, a sleep blessed by the angels, the 
 sleep of golden and far-away glories full of the arabesques 
 of heaven, which Eaphael dreamed of and drew. 
 
 Her delicate physical nature was so responsive to her moral 
 nature that Pierrette rose next morning as glad and light as a 
 lark, beaming and gay. Such a change could not escape 
 
200 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 Sylvie's eye ; this time, instead of scolding her, she proceeded 
 to watch her with the cunning of a raven. 
 
 "What makes her so happy?" was suggested by jealousy, 
 and not by tyranny. If Sylvie had not been possessed by 
 the idea of the Colonel, she would certainly have said as usual, 
 "Pierrette, you are very turbulent, or very heedless of what is 
 said to you.'^ The old maid determined to opy on Pierrette, 
 as only old maids can spy. The day passed in gloom and 
 silence, like the hour before a storm. 
 
 "So you are no longer so ailing, miss?" said Sylvie at 
 dinner. "Did not I tell you tliat she shams it all to worry 
 us?" she exclaimed, turning to her brother, without waiting 
 for Pierrette's reply. 
 
 "On the contrary, cousin, I have a sort of fever " 
 
 "What sort of fever? You are as gay as a linnet. You 
 have seen some one again perhaps ?" 
 
 Pierrette shuddered, and kept her eyes on her plate. 
 
 *'Tartufer cried Sylvie. "At fourteen! Already! What 
 A.i nature ! Why, you will be a wretch indeed !" 
 
 "I do not know what you mean," replied Pierrette, raising 
 lier fine luminous hazel eyes to her cousin's face. 
 
 "This evening," said Sylvie, "you will remain in the 
 dining-room to sew by a candle. You are in the way in the 
 <5'.rawing-room, and I will not have you looking over my hand 
 to advise your favorites." 
 
 Pierrette did not flinch. 
 
 "Hypocrite !" exclaimed Sylvie as she left the room. 
 
 Eogron, who could not understand what his sister was 
 talking about, said to Pierrette, "What is the matter between 
 you two? Try, Pierrette, to please your cousin; she is most 
 indulgent, most kind ; and if she is put out with you, certainly 
 you must be wrong. Why do you squabble? For my part, 
 I like a quiet life. Look at Mademoiselle Bathilde; you 
 should try to copy her." 
 
 Pierrette could bear it all; Brigaut would come, beyond 
 doubt, at midnight to bring his answer, and this hope was her 
 viaticum for the day. But she was exhausting her last 
 
PIEKRETTB 
 
 291 
 
 strength. She did not go to sleep; she sat up listening to 
 the clocks strike the hours, and fearing to make a sound. 
 At last twelve struck; she softly opened her window, and 
 this time she used a string she had made long enough by 
 tying several bits together. She heard Brigaut's step, and 
 when she drew up the string she read the following letter, 
 which filled her with joy: — 
 
 "My Dear Pierrette, — If you are in such pain, you must 
 not tire yourself by sitting up for me. You will be sure to 
 hear me call like a Chouan. My father luckily taught me 
 to imitate their cry. So I shall repeat it three times, and 
 you will know that I have come, and that you must let down 
 the string, but I shall not come again for some few days. I hope 
 then to have good news for you. Oh! Pierrette, not death! 
 What are you thinking of ? All my heart quaked ; I thought 
 T was dead myself at the mere idea. No,, my Pierrette, you 
 shall not die ; you shall live happy, and soon be rescued from 
 your persecutors. If I should not succeed in what I am at- 
 tempting, to save you, I would go to the lawyers and declare 
 in the face of heaven and earth how you are treated by your 
 cruel relations. 
 
 "I am certain that you have only to endure a few days 
 more: take patience. Pierrette, Brigaut is watching over 
 you, as he did in the days when we went to slide on the pond, 
 and I pulled you out of the deep hole where we were so 
 nearly lost together. Good-bye, my dear Pierrette; in a few 
 days we shall be happy, please God. Alas! I dare not tell 
 you of the only thing that may hinder our meeting. But 
 God loves us ! So in a few days I shall be able to see my dear 
 Pierrette in liberty, without a care, without any one hinder- 
 ing my looking at you, for I am very hungry to see you, 0 
 Pierrette ! Pierrette, who condescend to love me and to tell 
 me so. Yes, Pierrette, I will be your lover, but only when I 
 have earned the grand fortune you deserve, and till then I 
 will be no more to you than a devoted servant whom you may 
 command. Adieu. 
 
 "Jacques Brigaut," 
 
 -20 
 
292 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 This was what the young fellow did not tell Pierrette. He 
 had written the following letter to Madame Lorrain at 
 Nantes : — 
 
 '^Madame Lorrain, — Your granddaughter will die, killed 
 by ill-usage, if you do not come to claim her back. I hardly 
 knew her again; and to enable you to judge for yourself of 
 the state of things, I enclose in this letter one from Pierrette 
 to me. You are reported here to have your grandchild's for- 
 tune, and you ought to justify yourself on this point. In 
 short, if you can, come quickly; we may yet be happy, and 
 later you will find Pierrette dead. — I remain, with respect, 
 your humble servant, 
 
 "Jacques Brigaut. 
 "At Monsieur Frappier's, Master joiner. Grand' Rue, 
 Provins.'^ 
 
 Brigaut only feared lest Pierrette's grandmother might 
 be dead. 
 
 Though this letter from him, whom in her innocence she 
 called her lover, was almost inexplicable to Pierrette, she 
 accepted it with virgin faith. Her heart experienced the 
 feeling which travelers in the desert know when they see 
 from afar the palm grove round a well. In a few days her 
 miseries would be ended, Brigaut said it; she slept on the 
 promise of her childhood's friend; and yet, as she laid this 
 letter with the former one, a dreadful thought found dreadful 
 expression : 
 
 "Poor Brigaut," said she to herself, ^Tie does not know 
 the hole I have my feet in!" 
 
 Sylvie had heard Pierrette; she had also heard Brigaut 
 below the window; she sprang up, rushed to look out on the 
 Square through the shutter slats, and saw a man going away 
 towards the house where the Colonel lived. In front of that 
 Brigaut stopped. The old maid gently opened her door, went 
 upstairs, was amazed at seeing a light in Pierrette's room, 
 peeped through the keyhole, and could see nothing. 
 
PIEItKETTE 
 
 893 
 
 "Pierrette/' said she, ^^are you ill 
 
 "No, cousin/' said Pierrette, startled. 
 
 "Then why have you a light in your room at midnight? 
 Open your door. I must know what you are about." 
 
 Pierrette, barefoot, opened the door, and Sylvie saw the 
 skein of twine which Pierrette, never dreaming of being 
 caught, had neglected to put away. Sylvie pounced upon it. 
 
 "What do you use that for ?" 
 
 "Nothing, cousin." 
 
 "Nothing?" said she. "Very good. Lies again! You will 
 not find that the way to heaven. Go to bed ; you are cold." 
 
 She asked no more, but disappeared, leaving Pierrette ter- 
 ror-stricken by such leniency. Instead of an outbreak, Sylvie 
 had suddenly made up her mind to steal a march on the 
 Colonel and Pierrette, to possess herself of the letters, and 
 confound the couple who were deceiving her. Pierrette, in- 
 spired by danger, put the two letters inside her stays and 
 covered them with calico. 
 
 This was the end of the loves of Pierrette and Brigaut. 
 
 Pierrette was glad of her friend's decision, for Sylvie's sus- 
 picions would be disconcerted by having nothing to feed on. 
 And, in fact, Sylvie spent three nights out of her bed and 
 three evenings in watching the innocent Colonel, without dis- 
 covering anything in Pierrette's room, or in the house or out 
 of it, that hinted at their having any understanding. She 
 sent Pierrette to confession, and took advantage of her ab- 
 sence to hunt through everything in the child's room as dex- 
 terously and as keenly as the spies and searchers at the gates 
 of Paris. She found nothing. Her rage rose to the climax 
 of human passion. If Pierrette had been present, she would 
 certainly have beaten her without ruth. To a woman of 
 this temper, jealousy was not so much a feeling as a posses- 
 sion; she breathed, she felt her heart beat, she had emotions 
 in a way hitherto completely unknown to her; at the least 
 movement she was on the alert, she listened to the faintest 
 sounds, she watched Pierrette with gloomy concentration. 
 
294 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 '^That little wretch will be the death of me she would say. 
 
 Sylvie's severity to the child became at last the most re- 
 fined cruelty, and aggravated the miserable state in which 
 Pierrette lived. The poor little thing was constantly in a 
 fever, and the pain in her head became intolerable. By the 
 end of a week she displayed to the frequenters of the Ko- 
 grons' house a face of suffering which must certainly have 
 softened any less cruel egotism; but Doctor Neraud, advised 
 perhaps by Vinet, did not call for more than a week. The 
 Colonel, suspected by Sylvie, was afraid she might break off 
 their marriage if he showed the smallest anxiety about Pier- 
 rette; Bathilde accounted for her indisposition by simple 
 causes, in no way dangerous. 
 
 At last, one Sunday evening, when the drawing-room was 
 full of company, Pierrette could not endure the pain; she 
 fainted completely away ; and the Colonel, who was the first to 
 observe that she had lost consciousness, lifted her up and car- 
 ried her on to a sofa. 
 
 "She did it on purpose," said Sylvie, looking at Made- 
 moiselle Habert and the other players. 
 
 "Your cousin is very ill, I assure you," said the Colonel. 
 
 "She was very well in your arms," retorted Sylvie, with a 
 hideous smile. 
 
 "The Colonel is right," said Madame de Chargeboeuf ; "you 
 ought to send for a doctor. This morning in church every 
 one was talking of Mademoiselle Lorrain's state as they came 
 out — it is obvious." 
 
 "I am dying," said Pierrette. 
 
 Desfondrilles called to Sylvie to unfasten the girl's frock. 
 Sylvie complied, saying, "It is all a sham !" 
 
 She undid the dress, and was going to loosen the stays. 
 Then Pierrette found superhuman strength; she sat up, and 
 exclaimed, "No, no; I will go to bed." 
 
 Sylvie had touched her stays, and had felt the papers. 
 She allowed Pierrette to escape, saying to everybody, "Well, 
 do you think she is so very ill? It is all put on; you could 
 never imagine the naughtiness of that child." 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 295 
 
 She detained Vinet at the end of the evening; she was 
 furious, she was bent on revenge; she was rough with the 
 Colonel as he bid her good-night. Gouraud shot a glance at 
 Vinet that seenid to pierce him to the very bowels, and mark 
 the spot for a bullet. Sylvie begged Vinet to remain. When 
 they were alone, the old maid began : 
 
 "Never in my life, nor in all my days, will I marry the 
 Colonel r 
 
 "Now that you have made up your mind, I may speak. 
 The Colonel is my friend ; still, I am yours rather than his. 
 Eogron has done me services I can never forget. I am as 
 firm a friend as I am an implacable enemy. Certainly, when 
 once I am in the Chamber you will see how I shall rise, and 
 I will make Eogron a Receiver-General. — Well, swear to me 
 never to repeat a word of our conversation Sylvie nodded 
 assent. "In the first place, our gallant Colonel is an invet- 
 erate gambler.'' 
 
 "Indeed r said Sylvie. 
 
 "But for the difficulties this passion has got him into, he 
 might perhaps have been a Marshal of France," the lawyer 
 went on. "So he might squander all your fortune. But he 
 is a deep customer. Do not believe that married people have 
 ♦r have not children, and you know what will happen to you. 
 N"o. If you wish to marry, wait till I am in the Chamber, 
 •rind then you can marry old Desfondrilles, who will be presi- 
 dent of the Court here. To revenge yourself, make your 
 brother marry Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf; I will under- 
 take to get her consent ; she will have two thousand francs a 
 year, and you will be as nearly connected with the Charge- 
 boeuf s as I am. Take my word for it, the Chargeboeuf s will 
 call us cousins some day.'^ 
 
 "Gouraud is in love with Pierrette," replied Sylvie. 
 
 "He is quite capable of it," said Vinet ; "and quite capable 
 of marrying her after your death." 
 
 "A pretty little scheme !" said she. 
 
 "I tell you he is as cunning as the devil. Make your 
 brother marry, and announce that you intend to remain un- 
 
296 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 married and leave your money to your nephews or nieces*, 
 you will thus hit Pierrette and Gouraud by the same blow, and 
 you will see how foolish he will look.'^ 
 
 "To be sure/' cried the old maid ; "I can catch them. She 
 shall go into a shop, and will have nothing. She has not a 
 penny. Let her do as we did, and work.'* 
 
 Vinet having got his idea into Sylvie's head, and knowing 
 her obstinacy, left the house. The old maid ended by think- 
 ing that the plan was her own. 
 
 Vinet found the Colonel outside, smoking a cigar while 
 he waited for him. 
 
 "Hold hard !" said the Colonel. "You have pulled me to 
 pieces, but there are stones enough in the ruins to bury vou.'' 
 
 "Colonel r 
 
 "There is no *^ColoneF in the case. I am going to lead you 
 a dance. In the first place, you will never be deputy— — " 
 "Colonel r 
 
 "I can command ten votes, and the election depends 
 on 
 
 "Colonel, just listen to me. Is there no one in the world 
 but old Sylvie? I have just been trying to clear you. You 
 are accused and proved guilty of writing to Pierrette; she 
 has seen you coming out of your house at midnight to stand 
 below the girl's window " 
 
 "Well imagined !" 
 
 "She means her brother to marry Bathilde, and will keep 
 
 her fortune for their children." 
 "Will Eogron have any?" 
 
 "Yes," said Vinet. "But I promise to find you a young 
 and agreeable woman with a hundred and fifty thousand 
 francs. — Are you mad? Can you and I afford to quarrel? 
 Things have turned against you in spite of me; but you do 
 not know me." 
 
 "Well, we must learn to know each other," replied the 
 Colonel. "Get me a wife with fifty thousand crowns before 
 the elections — otherwise, your servant. I do not like awk- 
 ward bedfellows, and you have pulled all the blankets to 
 your side. Good-night." 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 291 
 
 "You will see/' said Vinet, shaking hands affectionately 
 with the Colonel. 
 
 At about one in the morning tliree clear, low hoots, like 
 those of an owl, admirably mimicked, sounded in the Place; 
 Pierrette heard them in her fevered sleep. She got up, quite 
 damp, opened her window, saw Brigaut, and threw out a ball 
 of silk, to which he tied a letter. 
 
 Sylvie, excited by the events of the evening and her own 
 deliberations, was not asleep; she was taken in by the owFs 
 cry. 
 
 "^^Ah! what a bird of ill-omen! — But, hark! Pierrette is 
 out of bed. What does she want?" 
 
 On hearing the attic window open, Sylvie rushed to her 
 own window and heard Brigaut 's paper rustle against the 
 \ihutters. She tied her jacket strings, and nimbly mounted 
 the stairs to Pierrette's room; she found her untying the 
 silk from round the letter. 
 
 "So I have caught you !" cried the old maid, going to the 
 window, whence she saw Brigaut take to his heels. "Give me 
 that letter." 
 
 "No, cousin," said the girl, who, by one of the stupendous 
 inspirations of youth, and sustained by her spirit, rose to the 
 dignity of resistance which we admire in the history of some 
 nations reduced to desperation. 
 
 "What, you will not?" cried Sylvie, advancing on her 
 cousin, and showing her a hideous face full of hatred, and 
 distorted by rage. 
 
 Pierrette drew 'back a step or two to have time to clutch 
 her letter in her hand, which she kept shut with invincible 
 strength. On seeing this, Sylvie seized Pierrette's delicate 
 white hand in her lobster's claws., and tried to wrench it 
 open. It was a fearful struggle, an infamous struggle, as 
 everything is that dares to attack thought, the only treasure 
 that God has set beyond the reach of power, and keeps as a 
 secret bond between the wretched and Him. self. 
 
 The two women, one dying, the other full of vigor, looked 
 steadfastly at each other. Pierrette's eyes flashed at her 
 
2^8 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 torturer such a look as the Templar's who received on his 
 breast the blows from a mace in the presence of Philippe 
 le Bel. The King could not endure that fearful gleam, and 
 retired appalled by it ; Sylvie, a woman, and a jealous woman, 
 answered that magnetic glance by an ominous glare. Awful 
 silence reigned. The Bretonne's clenched fingers resisted her 
 cousin's efforts with the tenacity of a steel vice. Sylvie 
 wrung Pierrette's arm, and tried to open her hand; as this 
 had no effect, she vainly set her nails in the flesh. Finally, 
 madness reinforced her anger; she raised Pierrette's fist to 
 her teeth to bite her fingers and subdue her by pain. Pierretti^ 
 still defied her with the terrifying gaze of innocence. The 
 old maid^s fury was roused to such a pitch that she was 
 blind to all else ; gripping Pierrette's arm, she beat the girl's 
 list on the window-sill, and on the marble chimney-piece, 
 as we beat a nut to crack it and get at the kernel." 
 
 ^^Help, help !" cried Pierrette ; "I am being killed." 
 
 "So you scream, do you, when I find you with a lover in the 
 middle of the night?" 
 
 And she hit again and again without mercy. 
 
 ''Help, help !" cried Pierrette, whose fist was bleeding. 
 
 At this moment there were violent blows on the street 
 door. Both equally exhausted, the two women ceased. 
 
 Eogron, aroused and anxious, not knowing what was hap- 
 pening, had got out of bed, gone to his sister's room, and 
 not found her; then he was alarmed, went down and opened 
 the door, and was almost upset by Brigaut, followed by what 
 seemed a phantom. 
 
 At the same instant Sylvie's eyes fell on Pierrette's stays; 
 she remembered having felt the papers in them; she threw 
 herself on them like a tiger on his prey, twisted the stays 
 round her hand, and held them up with a smile, as an 
 Iroquois smiles at his foe before scalping him. 
 
 "I am dying " said Pierrette, dropping on her knees. 
 
 "Who will save me?" 
 
 "I will," cried a woman with white hair, turning on Pier- 
 rette an aged, parchment face in which a pair of gray eye« 
 sparkle. 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 299 
 
 '^Ah, grandmother, you have come too late !" cried the poor 
 child, melting into tears. 
 
 Pierrette went to fall on her bed, bereft of all her strength, 
 and half killed by the reaction, which in a sick girl was in- 
 evitable after such a violent struggle. The tall withered 
 apparition took her in her arms as a nurse takes a child, and 
 went out, followed by Brigaut, without saying a word to 
 Sylvie, at whom, by a tragic glance, she hurled majestic 
 accusation. The sight of this dignified old woman in her 
 Breton costume, shrouded in her coiffe, which is a sort of 
 long cloak made of black cloth, and accompanied by the 
 terrible Brigaut, appalled Sylvie: she felt as if she had seen 
 death. 
 
 She went downstairs, heard the door shut, and found her- 
 self face to face with her brother, who said to her, "They 
 have not killed you then?" 
 
 "Go to bed," said Sylvie. "To-morrow morning we will 
 ,see what is to be done." 
 
 She got into bed again,, unpicked the stays, and read Bri- 
 gands two letters, which utterly confounded her. She went 
 to sleep in the strangest perplexity, never dreaming of the 
 terrible legal action to which her conduct was to give rise. 
 
 Brigaut^s letter to the widow Lorrain had found her in the 
 greatest joy, which was chequered when she read it. The poor 
 old woman, now past seventy, had been dying of grief at 
 having to live without Pierrette at her side; she only com- 
 forted herself for her loss by the belief that she had sacrificed 
 herself to her grandchild's interests. She had one of those 
 ever young hearts to which self-sacrifice gives strength and 
 vitality. Her old husband, whose only joy Pierrette had been, 
 had grieved for the child; day after day he had looked for 
 her and missed her. It was an old man's sorrow ; the sorrow- 
 old men live on^ and die of at last. 
 
 Everybody can therefore imagine the joy felt by this poor 
 woman, shut up in an almshouse, on hearing of one of those 
 actions which, though rare, still are heard of in France. 
 
300 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 After his failure Frangois Joseph Collinet, the head of 
 the house of Collinet, sailed for x^merica with his children. 
 He was a man of too much good feeling to sit down at 
 Nantes, ruined and bereft of credit, in the midst of the dis- 
 asters caused by his bankruptcy. From 1814 till 1824 this 
 brave merchant, helped by his children and by his cashier, 
 who remained faithful to him, and lent him the money to start 
 again, valiantly worked to make a second fortune. After 
 incredible efforts, that were crowned by success, by the 
 eleventh year he was able to return to Nantes and rehabilitate 
 himself, leaving his eldest son at the head of the American 
 house. He found Madame Lorrain of Pen-Hoel at Saint- 
 JacqueSj and beheld the resignation with which the most 
 hapless of his fellow-victims endured her penury. 
 
 '^God forgive you!" said the old woman, "since you give 
 me on the brink of the grave the means of securing my grand- 
 child's happiness. I, alas ! can never see my poor old man's 
 credit re-established.'' 
 
 Monsieur Collinet had brought to his creditor her capita] 
 and interest at trade rates, altogether about forty-two thou- 
 sand francs. His other creditors, active, wealthy, and capable 
 men, had kept themselves above water, while the Lorrains' 
 overthrow had seemed to old Collinet irremediable; he had 
 now promised the widow that he would rehabilitate her hus- 
 band's good name, finding that it would involve an expendi- 
 ture of only about forty thousand francs more. When this 
 act of generous restitution became known on 'Change at 
 Nantes, the authorities were eager to re-open its doors to 
 Collinet before he had surrendered to the Court at Eennes; 
 but the merchant declined the honor, and submitted to all the 
 rigor of the Commercial Code. 
 
 Madame Lorrain, then, had received forty-two thousand 
 francs the day before the post brought her Brigaut's letters. 
 As she signed her receipt, her first words were: 
 
 "Now I can live with my Pierrette, and let her marry poor 
 Brigaut, who will make a fortune out of my money !" 
 
 She could not sit still; she fussed and fidgeted, and wanted 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 SOI 
 
 to set out for Provins. And when, she had read the fatal 
 letters, she rushed out into the town like a mad thing, asking 
 how she could get to Provins with the swiftness of lightning. 
 She set out by mail when she heard of the Governmental 
 rapidity of that conveyance. From Paris she took the Troyes 
 coach; she had arrived at eleven that evening at Frappier's, 
 where Brigaut, seeing the old Bretonne's deep despair, at once 
 promised to fetch her granddaughter, after describing Pier> 
 rette's state in a few words. Those few words so alarmed the 
 old woman that she could not control her impatience; she 
 ran out to the Square. When Pierrette screamed, her grand- 
 mother's heart was pierced by the ciy as keenly as was 
 Brigaut's. The two together would no doubt have roused all 
 the inhabitants, if Eogron, in sheer terror, had not opened 
 the door. This cry of a girl in extremity filled the old woman 
 with strength as great as her horror; she carried her dear 
 Pierrette all the way to Frappier's, where his wife had hastily 
 arranged Brigaut's room for Pierrette's grandmother. So 
 in this miserable lodging, on a bed scarcely made, they laid 
 the poor child; she fainted away, still keeping her hand 
 closed, bruised and bleeding as it was, her nails set in the 
 flesh. Brigaut, Frappier, his wife, and the woman con- 
 templated Pierrette in silence, all lost in unutterable aston- 
 ishment. 
 
 "Why is her hand covered with blood?" was the grand- 
 mother's first question. 
 
 Pierrette, overcome by the sleep which follows such an 
 extreme exertion of strength, and knowing that she was safe 
 from any violence, relaxed her fingers. Brigaut's letter fell 
 out as an answer. 
 
 "They wanted to get my letter," said Brigaut, falling on 
 his knees and picking up the note he had written, desiring 
 his little friend to steal softly out of the Kogrons' house. 
 He piously kissed the little martyr's hand. 
 
 Then there was a thing wliieh made the joiners shud- 
 der: it was the sight of old Madame Lorrain, a sublime 
 spectre, standing by her child's bedside. Horror and venge- 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 anee fired mth fierce expression the myriad wrinkles that 
 furrowed her skin of ivory yellow; on her brow, shaded by 
 thin gray locks, sat divine wrath. With the powerful in- 
 tuition granted to the aged as they approach the tomb, she 
 read all Pierrette's life, of which indeed she had been think- 
 ing all the way she had come. 
 
 She understood the malady that threatened the life of her 
 darling. Two large tears gathered painfully in her gray- 
 and-white eyes, which sorrow had robbed of lashes and eye- 
 brows; two beads of grief that gave a fearful moisture to 
 those eyes, and swelled and rolled over those withered cheeks 
 without wetting them. 
 
 ^^They have killed her!" she said at last, clasping her 
 hands. 
 
 She dropped on her knees, which hit two sharp blows on the 
 floor; she was making a vow, no doubt^ to Sainte-Anne 
 d'Auray, the most powerful Madonna of Brittany. 
 
 "A doctor from Paris," she next said to Brigaut. "Fly 
 there, Brigaut. Go !" 
 
 She took the artisan by the shoulders and turned him round 
 with a despotic gesture. 
 
 "I was coming at any rate, my good Brigaut," she said, 
 calling him back. "I am rich. — Here !" She untied the ribbon 
 that fastened her bodice across her bosom, took out a paper, 
 in which were wrapped forty-two banknotes, and said, "Take 
 as much as you need; bring back the greatest doctor in Paris." 
 
 "Keep that," said Frappier; "he could not change a bank- 
 note at this hour. I have money; the diligence will pass 
 presently, he will be sure to find a place in it. But would 
 it not be better first to consult Monsieur Martener, who will 
 give us the name of a Paris physician ? The diligence is not 
 due for an hour; we have plenty of time." 
 
 Brigaut went off to rouse Monsieur Martener. He brought 
 the doctor back with him, not a little surprised to find Made- 
 moiselle Lorrain at Fra.ppier's. Brigaut described to him 
 the scene that had just taken place at the Rogrons'. The 
 loquacity of a despairing lover threw light on this domestic 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 303 
 
 arama^ though the doctor could not suspect its horrors or its 
 extent. Martener gave Brigaut the address of the famous 
 Horace Bianchon, and Jacques and his master left the room 
 an hearing the approach of the diligence. 
 
 Monsieur Martener sat down, and began by examining the 
 bruises and wounds on the girl's hand, which hung out of 
 bed. 
 
 ^^She did not hurt herself in such a way/' said he. 
 
 "No, the dreadful creature I was so unhappy as to trust 
 her with was torturing her," said the grandmother. "My 
 poor Pierrette was crying out, '^Ilelp ! Murder !' It was 
 enough to touch the heart of an executioner." 
 
 "But why?" said the doctor, feeling Pierrette's pulse. 
 "She is very ill," he went on, bringing the light close to the 
 bed. "We shall hardly save her," said he, after looking at 
 her face. "She must have suffered terribly, and I cannot 
 "understand their having left her without care." 
 
 "It is my intention," said the old woman, "to appeal to 
 justice. Had these people, who wrote to ask me for my grand- 
 daughter, saying that they had twelve thousand francs a year, 
 any right to make her their cook and give her work far be- 
 yond her strength?" 
 
 "They did not choose to see that she was obviously suffer- 
 ing from one of the ailments to which young girls are some- 
 times subject, and needed the greatest care !" cried Monsieur 
 Martener. 
 
 Pierrette was roused, partly by the light held by Madame 
 Frappier so as to show her face more clearly, and partly by 
 the dreadful pain in her head, caused by reactionary collapse 
 after her struggle. 
 
 "Oh, Monsieur Martener, I am very ill," said she, in her 
 pretty voice. 
 
 "Where is the pain, my child?" said the doctor. 
 "There," she replied, pointing to a spot on her head above 
 the left ear. 
 
 "There is an abscess !" cried the doctor, after feeling Pier- 
 rette's head for some time, and questioning her as to the pain. 
 
304 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 "You must tell us everything, my dear, to enable ns to cure 
 you. Why is your hand in this state? You did not injure 
 it like this yourself?" 
 
 Pierrette artlessly told the tale of her struggle with her 
 cousin Sylvie. 
 
 '^Make her talk to you," said the doctor to her grand- 
 mother, "and learn all about it. I will wait till the surgeon 
 arrives from Paris, and we will call in the head surgeon of 
 the hospital for a consultation. It seems to me very serious. 
 I will send a soothing draught to give Mademoiselle some 
 sleep. She needs rest." 
 
 The old Bretonne, left alone v^ith her grandchild, made her 
 tell everything, by exerting her influence over her, and ex- 
 plaining to her that she was rich enough for all three, so 
 that Brigaut need never leave them. The poor child con- 
 fessed all her sufferings, never dreaming of the lawsuit she 
 was leading up to. The monstrous conduct of these two 
 loveless beings, who knew nothing of family affection, re- 
 vealed to the old woman worlds of torment, as far from her 
 conception as the manners of the savage tribes must have 
 been to the first travelers who penetrated the sivannas of 
 America. 
 
 Her grandmother's presence, and the certainty of living 
 with her for the future in perfect ease, lulled Pierrette's 
 mind as the draught lulled her body. The old woman 
 watched by her, kissing her brow, hair, and hands, as the 
 holy women may have kissed Jesus while laying Him in the 
 sepulchre. 
 
 By nine in the morning Monsieur Martener went to the 
 ' President of the Courts, and related to him the scene of tli j 
 ^ past night between Sylvie and Pierrette, the moral and 
 physical torture, the cruelty of every kind inflicted by the 
 Eogrons on their ward, and the two fatal maladies v/hich had 
 been developed by this ill-usage. The President sent for the 
 notary. Monsieur Auffray, a connection of Pierrette's on her 
 mother's side. 
 
PI BURETTE 
 
 305 
 
 At this moment the war between the Vinet party and the 
 Tiphaine party was at its height. The gossip circulated 
 in Provins by the Eogrons and their adherents as to the 
 well-known liaison between Madame Roguin and du Tillct 
 the banker, and the circumstances of Monsieur Roguin's 
 bankruptcy — Madame Tiphaine's father was said to have 
 committed forgery — hit all the more surely because, though 
 it was scandal, it was not calumny. Such wounds pierce to 
 the bottom of things; they attacked self-interest in its most 
 vital part. These statements, repeated to the partisans of 
 Tiphaine by the same speakers who also reported to the 
 Rogrons all the sarcasms uttered by the "beautiful Madame 
 Tiphaine'^ and her friends, added fuel to their hatred, com- 
 plicated as it was with political feeling. 
 
 The irritation caused in France at that time by party 
 spirit, which had waxed excessively violent, was everywhere 
 bound up, as it was at Provins, with imperiled interests and 
 offended with antagonistic private feelings. Each coterie 
 eagerly pounced on anything that might damage its rival. 
 Party animosity was not less implicated than personal conceit 
 in even trivial questions, which were often carried to great 
 lengths. A whole town threw itself in some dispute, raising 
 it to the dignity of a political contest. And so the President 
 discerned, in the action between Pierrette and the Rogrons, 
 a means of confuting, discrediting, and humiliating the 
 owners of that drawing-room where plots were hatched 
 against the monarchy, and where the Opposition newspaper 
 had had its birth. 
 
 He sent for the public prosecutor. Then Monsieur Lesourd, 
 Monsieur Auffray the notary — appointed the legal guardian 
 of Pierrette — and the President of the Court discussed in the 
 greatest privacy, with Monsieur Martener, v/hat steps could 
 be taken. The legal guardian was to call a family council 
 (a formality of French law), and, armed with the. evidence 
 of the three medical men, would demand the dismissal of 
 Rogron from his guardianship. The case thus formulated 
 would be brought before the tribunal, and then Monsieur 
 
306 
 
 Lesourd would get it carried into the Criminal Court by de- 
 manding an inquiry. 
 
 By mid-day all Provins was in a stir over the strange re- 
 ports of what had taken place at the Kogrons' in the course 
 of the past night. Pierrette's screams had been remotely 
 heard in the Square, but they had not lasted long; no one 
 had got up; but everybody had asked in the morning, "Did 
 you hear the noise and screaming at about one o'clock ? What 
 was it?" Gossip and comment had given such magnitude to 
 the horrible drama that a crowd collected in front of Frap- 
 pier's shop, everybody cross-questioning the honest joiner, 
 who described the girl's arrival at his house with her hand 
 bleeding and her fingers mangled. 
 
 At about one in the afternoon a post-chaise, containing 
 Doctor Bianchon, by whom sat Brigaut, stopped at Frappier's 
 door, and Madame Frappier went off to the hospital to fetcli 
 Monsieur Martener and the head surgeon. Thus the reports 
 heard in the town received confirmation. 
 
 The Kogrons were accused of having intentionally mal- 
 treated their young cousin, and endangered her life. The 
 news reached Vinet at the Law Courts; he left his business 
 and hurried to the Eogrons'. Eogron and his sister had just 
 finished breakfast. Sylvie had avoided telling her brother 
 of her defeat during the night; she allowed him to question 
 her, making no reply but : "It does not concern you." And 
 she bustled to and fro between the kitchen and dining-room 
 to avoid all discussion. 
 
 She was alone when Vinet walked in. 
 
 "Do you know nothing of what is going on?" asked the 
 lawyer. 
 
 "No," said Sylvie. 
 
 "You are going to have a criminal action brought against 
 you for the way in which matters stand with Pierrette." 
 
 "A criminal action!" said Eogron, coming in. "Why? 
 What for?" 
 
 "In the first place," said Vinet, looking at Sylvie, "tell me 
 exactly, without subterfuge, all that took place last night, 
 
807 
 
 as though you were hefore God, for there is some talk of 
 cutting off Pierrette's hand/' 
 
 Sylvie turned ashy pale and shivered. 
 
 **Then there was something!" said the lawyer. 
 
 Mademoiselle Eogron told the story, trying to justify her- 
 self; but on being cross-questioned, related all the details of 
 the horrible conflict. 
 
 "If you have only broken her fingers, you will only appear 
 in the Police Court; but if her hand has to be amputated, 
 you will find yourself brought up at the Assizes. The Ti- 
 phaines will do anything to get you there." 
 
 Sylvie, more dead than alive, confessed her jealousy, and, 
 which was even harder to bring out, how her suspicions had 
 blundered. 
 
 "What a case for trial !" exclaimed Yinet. '^ou and your 
 brother may be ruined by it; you will be thrown over by 
 many of your friends even if you gain it. If you do not come 
 out clear, you will have to leave Provins." 
 
 "Oh ! my dear Monsieur Vinet — you who are such an able 
 lawyer," cried Eogron, horrified, "advise us, save us !" 
 
 Vinet dexterously fomented the fears of these two fools to 
 the utmost, and declared positively that Madame and Made- 
 moiselle de Chargeboeuf would hesitate to go to their house 
 again. To be forsaken by these two ladies would be a fatal 
 condemnation. In short, after an hour of magnificent ma- 
 noeuvring, it was agreed that in order to induce Vinet to save 
 the Rogrons, he must have an interest at stake in defending 
 him in the eyes of all Provins. In the course of the evening 
 Rogron's engagement to marry Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf 
 was to be announced. The banns were to be published on 
 Sunday. The marriage-contract would at once be drawn up 
 by Cournant, and Mademoiselle Eogron would figure in it 
 as abandoning, in consideration of this alliance, the capital 
 of her share of the estate by a deed of gift to her brother, 
 reserving only a life-interest. Vinet impressed on Eogron 
 and his sister the necessity of having a draft of this deed 
 drawn up two or three days before that event, so as to put 
 
 21 
 
SOS 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 Madame and Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf under the ne- 
 cessity, in public opinion, of continuing their visits to the 
 Eogrons. 
 
 "Sign that contract, and I will undertake to get you out of 
 the scrape/' said the lawyer. "It will no doubt be a hard 
 fight, but I will go into it body and soul, and you will owe 
 me a very handsome taper." 
 
 "Yes, indeed," said Eogron. 
 ' By half-past eleven the lawyer was empowered to act for 
 them, alike as to the contract and as to the management of 
 the case. At noon the President was informed that a sum- 
 mons was applied for by Vinet against Brigaut and the widow 
 Lorrain for abducting Pierrette Lorrain, a minor, from the 
 domicile of her guardian. Thus the audacious Vinet took 
 up the offensive, putting Eogron in the position of a man 
 having the law on his side. This, indeed, was the tone in 
 which the matter was commented on in the Law Courts. Th(3 
 President postponed hearing the parties till four o'clock. The 
 excitement of the town over all these events need not be de- 
 scribed. The President knew that the medical consultation 
 would be ended by three o'clock; he wished that the legal 
 guardian should appear armed with the physicians' verdict. 
 
 The announcement of Eogron's engagement to the fair 
 Bathilde de Chargeboeuf, and of the deed of gift added by 
 Sylvie to the contract, promptly made the Eogrons two ene- 
 mies — Mademoiselle Habert and the Colonel, who thus saw 
 all their hopes dashed. Celeste Habert and the Colonel re- 
 mained ostensibly friends to the Eogrons, but only to damage 
 them more effectually. So, as soon as Monsieur Martener 
 spoke of the existence of an abscess on the brain in the haber- 
 dashers' hapless victim. Celeste and the Colonel m.entioned the 
 blov/ Pierrette had given herself that evening when Sylvie 
 had driven her out of the room, and remembered Made- 
 moiselle Eogron's cruel and barbarous remarks. They related 
 various instances of the old maid's utter indifference to her 
 ward's sufferings. Thus these friends of the couple admitted 
 serious wrong, while affecting to defend Sylvie and her 
 brother. 
 
PIEiniETTE 
 
 309 
 
 Vinet had foreseen this storm; but Mademoiselle de 
 Chargeboeuf was about to acquire the whole of the llogroiis' 
 foi-tuue, and he promised himself that in a few weeks he 
 should see her living in the nice house on the Place, and 
 reign conjointly with her over Provins; for he was already 
 scheming for a coalition with the Breauteys to serve his own 
 ambitions. 
 
 From twelve o'clock till four all the ladies of the Tiphaine 
 faction — the Garcelands, the Guepins, the Julliards, Mes- , 
 dames Galardon, Guenee, and the sous-prefet's wife — all sent 
 to inquire after Mademoiselle Lorrain. Pierrette knew noth- 
 ing whatever of this commotion in the town on her behalf. 
 In the midst of acute suffering she felt ineffably happy at 
 finding herself between her grandmother and Brigaut, the 
 objects of her affection. Brigaut's eyes were constantly full 
 of tears, and the old woman petted her beloved grandchild. 
 
 God knows the grandmother spared the three men of science 
 none of the details she had heard from Pierrette about her 
 life with the Eogrons ! Horace Bianchon expressed his in- 
 dignation in unmeasured terms. Horrified by such barbarity, 
 he insisted that the other doctors of the town should be called 
 in; so Monsieur Neraud was present, and was requested, as 
 being Kogron's friend, to contradict if he could the terrible 
 inferences derived from the consultation, which, unfor- 
 tunately for Eogron, were unanimously subscribed to. 
 Neraud, who was already credited with having made Pier- 
 rette's maternal grandmother die of grief, was in a false 
 position, of which Martener adroitly took advantage, de- 
 lighted to overwhelm the Eogrons, and also to compromise 
 Monsieur Neraud, his antagonist. It is needless to give the 
 text of this document, which also was produced at the trial. 
 If the medical terms of Moliere's age were barbarous, those 
 of modern medicine have the advantage of such extreme plain 
 speaking, that an account of Pierrette's maladies, though 
 natural, and unfortunately common, would shock the ear. 
 The verdict was indisputably final, attested by so famous a 
 name as that of Horace Bianchon. 
 
310 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 After the Court sitting was over, the President remained 
 in his place, while Pierrette's grandmother came in with 
 Monsieur Anffra}^, Brigaut, and a considerable crowd. Vinet 
 appeared alone. This contrast struck the spectators, includ- 
 ing a vast number of merely inquisitive persons. Vinet, who 
 had kept his gown on, raised his hard face to the President, 
 settling his spectacles as he began in his harsh, sawing tones 
 to set forth that certain strangers had made their way into 
 the house of Monsieur and Mademoiselle Eogron by night, 
 and had carried away the girl Lorrain, a minor. Her guar- 
 dian claimed the protection of the Court to recover his ward. 
 
 Monsieur Auffray, as the guardian appointed by the 
 Court, rose to speak. 
 
 ^^If Monsieur le President,'' said he, "will take into his 
 consideration this consultation, signed by one of the most 
 eminent Paris physicians, and by all the doctors and sur- 
 geons of Provins, he will perceive how unreasonable is Mon- 
 sieur Eogron's claim, and what sufficient reasons induced the 
 minor's grandmother to release her at once from her tor- 
 mentors. The facts are these: A deliberate consultation, 
 signed unanimously by a celebrated Paris doctor, sent for in 
 great haste, and by all the medical authorities of the town, 
 ascribe the almost dying state of the ward to the ill-treatment 
 she had received at the hands of the said Eogron and his 
 sister. As a legal formality a family council will be held, 
 with the least possible delay, and consulted on the question 
 whether the guardian ought not to be held disqualified for his 
 office. We petition that the minor shall not be sent back 
 to her guardian's house, but shall be placed in the hands of 
 any other member of the family whom Monsieur le President 
 may see fit to designate." 
 
 Vinet wanted to reply, saying that the document of the 
 : consultation ought to be communicated to him that he might 
 contravene it. 
 
 "Certainly not to Vinet's side," said the President 
 severely, "but perhaps to the public prosecutor. The case 
 IB closed." 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 311 
 
 At the foot of the petition the President wrote the follow- 
 ing injunction : 
 
 "Inasmuch as that by a consultation unanimously signed 
 by the medical faculty of this town and by Doctor Bianchon 
 of the medical faculty of Paris, it is proved that the girl Lor- 
 rain, a minor, claimed by her guardian Eogron, is in a very 
 serious state of sickness brought on by the ill-usage and 
 cruelty inflicted on her in the house of her guardian and 
 his sister, 
 
 "We, President of the Lower Court of Justice at Provins, 
 "Decree on the petition, and enjoin that until the family 
 council shall have been held which, as the provisional guar- 
 dian appointed by the law declares, is at once to be convened, 
 the said minor shall not re-enter her guardian's residence, 
 but shall be transferred to that of the guardian appointed by 
 the law. 
 
 "And in the second place, in consideration of the minor's 
 present state of health, and the traces of violence which, 
 in the opinion of the medical men, are to be seen on her per- 
 son, we commission the chief physician and chief surgeon of 
 the Hospital of Provins to attend her; and in the event of 
 the cruelty being proved to have been constant, we reserve all 
 the rights and powers of the law, without prejudice to the 
 civil action taken by Autfray, the legalized temporary guar- 
 dian/' 
 
 This terrible injunction was pronounced by Monsieur le 
 President Tiphaine with a loud voice and distinct utterance. 
 
 "Why not the hulks at once?" said Vinet. "And all this 
 fuss about a little girl who carried on an intrigue with a 
 carpenter's apprentice! If this is the way the ease is con- 
 ducted," he added insolently, "we shall apply for other judg- 
 ment on the plea of legitimate suspicions." 
 
 Vinet left the Court, and went to the chief leaders of his 
 party to explain the position of Rogron, who had never given 
 his little cousin a finger-flip, and whom the tribunal had 
 treated, as he declared, less as Pierrette's guardian than as the 
 chief voter in Provins. 
 
312 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 To hear him, the Tiphaines were making much ado about 
 nothing. The mountain would bring forth a mouse. Sylvie, 
 an eminently religious and well-conducted person, had de- 
 tected an intrigue between her brother's ward and a car- 
 penter's boy, a Breton named Brigaut. The young rascal 
 knew very well that the girl would have a fortune from her 
 grandmother, and wanted to tamper with her. . . . 
 Vinet to talk of tampering ! . . . Mademoiselle Kogron, 
 who had kept the letters in which this little slut's wickedness 
 was made clear, was not so much to blame as the Tiphaines 
 tried to make her seem. Even if she had been betrayed into 
 violence to obtain a letter, which could easily be accounted 
 for by the irritation produced in her by Breton obstinacy, 
 in what was Rogron to blame ? 
 
 The lawyer thus made the action a party matter, and con- 
 trived to give it political color. x\nd so, from that evening, 
 there were differences of opinion on the question. 
 
 "If you hear but one bell, you hear but one note," said the 
 wise-heads. "Have you heard what Vinet has to say? He 
 explains the case very well." 
 
 Frappier's house was regarded as unsuitable for Pierrette 
 on account of the noise, which would cause her much pain in 
 the head. Her removal from thence to her appointed 
 guardian's house was as desirable from a medical as from 
 a legal point of view. This business was effected with the 
 utmost care, and calculated to make a great sensation. Pier- 
 rette was placed on a stretcher with many mattresses, car- 
 ried by two men, escorted by a Gray Sister holding in her 
 hand a bottle of ether, followed by her grandmother, Brigaut, 
 Madame Auffray, and her maid. The people stood at the 
 windows and in the doors to see the little procession pass. 
 'No doubt the state in which Pierrette was seen and her death- 
 like pallor gave immense support to the party adverse to the 
 Rogrons. The Auffravs were bent on showing to all the town 
 how right the President had been in pronouncing his in- 
 junction. Pierrette and her grandmother were established 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 313 
 
 on the second floor of Monsieur Auffray's house. The notary 
 and his wife lavished on them the generosity of the amplest 
 hospitality; they made a display of it. Pierrette was nursed 
 by her grandmother, and Monsieur Martener came to see her 
 again the same evening, with the surgeon. 
 
 From that evening dated much exaggeration on both sides. 
 The Rogrons' room was crowded. Vinct liad worked up the 
 Liberal faction in the matter. The two Chargeba3uf ladie? 
 dined with the Rogrons, for the marriage contract was to b( t 
 signed forthwith. Yinet had had the banns put up at the 
 Mairie that morning. He treated the business of Pierrette 
 as a mere trifle. If the Court of Provins could not judge it 
 dispassionately, the superior Court would judge of the facts, 
 said he, and the Auffrays would think twice before rushing 
 into such an action. Then the connection between the 
 Eogrons and the Chargeboeufs was of immense weight with 
 certain people. To them the Eogrons were as white as snow, 
 and Pierrette an excessively wicked little girl whom thej had 
 cherished in their bosom. 
 
 In Madam^e Tiphaine's drawing-room vengeance was taken 
 \m the horrible scandals the Vinet party had promulgated 
 for the last two years. The Rogrons were monsters, and the 
 guardian would find himself in the Criminal Court. In the 
 Square, Pierrette was perfectly well; in the upper town, she 
 must infallibly die ; at the Rogrons', she had a few scratches 
 on her hand; at Madame Tiphaine's, she had her fingers 
 smashed ; one would have to be cut off. 
 
 Next day the Courrier de Provins had an extremely clever 
 article, well written, a masterpiece of innuendo mixed up 
 with legal demurs, which placed the Rogrons above suspicion. 
 The Ruche, which came out two days later, could not reply 
 without risk of libel ; but it said that in a case like the present, 
 the best thing was to leave justice to take its course. 
 
 The family council was constituted by the Justice of the 
 Peace of the Provins district, as the legal President, in the 
 first place, of Rogron and the two Auffrays, Pierrette's next- 
 of-kin; then of Monsieur Ciprey, a nephew of Pierrette's 
 
314 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 maternal grandmother. He added to these Monsieur Habert, 
 the young girl's director, and Colonel Gouraud, who had 
 always given himself out to be a comrade of her father's, 
 Colonel Lorrain. The Justice's impartiality was hi^ghly ap- 
 plauded in including in this family council Monsieur Habert 
 and the Colonel, whom all the town regarded as great friends 
 of the Rogrons. In the difficult position in v/hich he found 
 himself, Eogron begged to be allowed the support of Maitre 
 "Vinet on the occasion. By this manoeuvre, evidently sug- 
 gested by Vinet, he succeeded in postponing the meeting of 
 the family council till the end of December. 
 
 At that date the President and his wife were in Paris, living 
 with Madame Roguin, in consequence of the sitting of the 
 Chambers. Thus the Ministerial party at Provins was bereft 
 of its head. Vinet had already quietly made friends with the 
 worthy examining judge. Monsieur Desfondrilles, in case 
 the business should assume the penal or criminal aspect that 
 Tiphaine had endeavored to give it. 
 
 For three hours Vinet addressed the family council; he 
 proved an intrigue between Brigaut and Pierrette, to justify 
 Mademoiselle Eogron's severity; he pointed out how natural 
 it was that the guardian should have left his ward under the 
 control of a woman; he dwelt on his client's non-interference 
 in the mode of Pierrette's education as conducted by Sylvie. 
 But in spite of Vinet's efforts, the meeting unanimously de- 
 cided on abolishing Rogron's guardianship. Monsieur 
 Auffray was appointed Pierrette's guardian, and Monsieur 
 Ciprey her legal guardian. 
 
 They heard the evidence given by Adele the maid, who 
 incriminated her former master and mistress; by Made- 
 moiselle Habert, who repeated Sylvie's cruel remarks the 
 evening when Pierrette had given herself the dreadful blow 
 that everybody had heard, and the comments on Pierrette's 
 health made by Madame de Chargeboeuf. Brigaut produced 
 the letter he had received from Pierrette, which established 
 their innocence. It was proved that the deplorable state in 
 which the minor now was resulted from the neglect of her 
 
PlEURETTIii 
 
 315 
 
 guardian, who was responsible in all that related to his ward. 
 Pierrette's illness had struck everybody, even persons in the 
 town who did not know the family. Thus the charge of 
 cruelty against Eogron was fully sustained. The matter 
 would be made public. 
 
 By Vinet's advice Eogron put in a protest against the con- 
 firmation by the Court of the decision of the family council. 
 The Minister of Justice now intervened, in consequence of 
 the increasingly critical condition of Pierrette Lorrain. This 
 singular case, though put on the lists forthwith, did not come 
 up for trial till near the month of March 1828. 
 
 By that time the marriage of Eogron to Mademoiselle de 
 Chargeboeuf was an accomplished fact. Sylvie was living 
 on the second floor of the house, which had been arranged to 
 accommodate her and Madame de Chargeboeuf; for the first 
 floor was entirely given up to Madame Eogron. The beautiful 
 Madame Eogron now succeeded to the beautiful Madame 
 Tiphaine. The effect of this marriage was enormous. The 
 town no longer came to Mademoiselle Sylvie's salon, but to the 
 beautiful Madame Eogron's. 
 
 Monsieur Tiphaine, the President of the Provins Court, 
 pushed by his mother-in-law, and supported by du Tillet 
 and by Nucingen, the Eoyalist bankers, found an opportunity 
 of being useful to the Ministry. He was one of the most 
 highly respected speakers of the Centre, was made a judge of 
 the Lower Court in the Seine district, and got his nephew 
 Lesourd nominated President in his place at Prowns. This 
 appointment greatly annoyed Monsieur Desfondrilles, still 
 an archaeologist, and more supernumerary than ever. The 
 Keeper of the Seals sent a protege of his own to fill Lesourd's 
 place. Thus Monsieur Tiphaine's promotion did not lead to 
 any advancement in the legal forces at Provins. 
 
 Vinet took advantage of these circumstances very cleverly. 
 He had always told the good folks of Provins that they were 
 only serving as a step-ladder to Madame Tiphaine's cunning 
 and ambition. The President laughed in his sleeve at his 
 friends. Madame Tiphaine secretly disdained the town of 
 Provins ; she would never come back to it. 
 
316 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 Monsieur Tiphaine pere presently died; his son inherited 
 the estate of le Fa}^, and sold his handsome house in the 
 upper town to Monsieur Julliard. This sale showed how little 
 he intended to eome back to Provins. Yinet was right! 
 Yinet had been a true prophet ! These facts had no little 
 influence on the action relating to Kogron's guardianship. 
 
 The horrible martyrdom so brutally inflicted on Pierrette 
 by two imbecile tyrants — which led, medically speaking, to 
 her being subjected by Monsieur Martener, with Bianchon's 
 approval, to the terrible operation of trepanning; the whole 
 dreadful drama, reduced to judicial statements, was left 
 among the foul medley known to lawyers as outstanding 
 cases. The action dragged on through the delays and inex- 
 tricable intricacies of "proceedings," constantly checked by 
 the quibbles of a contemptible lawyer, while the calumniated 
 Pierrette languished in suffering from the most terrible pains 
 known to medical science. We could not avoid these details 
 as to the strange variations in public opinion and the slow 
 march of justice, before returning to the room where she waii 
 living — where she was dying. 
 
 Monsieur Martener and the whole of the Auffray family 
 were in a very few days completely won by Pierrette's ador- 
 able temper, and by the old Bretonne, whose feelings, ideas, 
 and manners bore the stamp of an antique Roman type. This 
 matron of the Marais was like one of Plutarch's women. 
 
 The doctor desired to contend with Death, at least, for his 
 prey; for from the first the Paris and provincial physicians 
 had agreed in regarding Pierrette as past saving. Then 
 began between the disease and the doctor, aided by Pierrette's 
 youth, one of those struggles which medical men alone know ; 
 the rev/ard, in the event of success, is not in the pecuniary 
 profit, or even in the rescued sufferer ; it lies in sweet satis- 
 faction of conscience, and in a sort of ideal and invisible 
 palm of victory gathered by every true artist from the joyful 
 certainty of having achieved a fine work. The physician 
 makes for healing as the artist makes for the beautiful, urged 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 on by a noble sentiment wliich we call virtue. This daily 
 recurring battle had extinguished in this man, though a 
 provincial, the squalid irritation of the warfare going on 
 between the Vinet party and that of the Tiphaines, as happens 
 with men who have to fight it out with great suffering. 
 
 Monsieur Martener had at first wished to practise his pro- 
 fession in Paris; but the activity of the great city, the cal- 
 lousness produced at last in a doctor's mind by the terrific 
 number of sick people and the multitude of serious cases, had 
 appalled his gentle soul, which was made for a country life. 
 He was in bondage, too, to his pretty birthplace. So he had 
 come back to Provins to marry and settle there, and take 
 almost tender care of a population he could think of as a 
 large family. All the time Pierrette was ill he could not bear 
 to speak of her illness. His aversion to reply when every one 
 asked for news of the poor child was so evident, that at last 
 nobody questioned him about her. Pierrette was to him 
 what she could not help being — one of those deep, mysterious 
 poems, immense in its misery, such as occur in the terrible 
 life of a physician. He had for this frail girl an admiration 
 of which he would betray the secret to no one. 
 
 This feeling for his patient was infectious, as all true senti- 
 ments are ; Monsieur and Madame Auffray's house, so long as 
 Pierrette lived in it, was peaceful and still. Even the chil- 
 dren, who of old had had such famous games with Pierrette, 
 understood, with childlike grace, that they were not to be 
 noisy or troublesome. They made it a point of honor to be 
 good because Pierrette was ill. 
 
 Monsieur Auffray's house is in the upper town, below the 
 ruined castle; built, indeed, on one of the cliff-like knolls 
 formed by the overthrow of the old ramparts. From thence 
 the residents have a view over the valley as they walk in a 
 little orchard supported by the thick walls rising straight up 
 from the lower town„ The roofs of the houses rise to the 
 level of the wall that upholds this garden. Along this terrace 
 is a walk ending at the glass-door of Monsieur Auffray's 
 study. At the other end are a vine-covered arbor and a fig- 
 
3i3 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 tree, sheltering a round table, a bench, and some chairs, all 
 painted green. 
 
 Pierrette had a room over that of her new guardian. 
 Madame Lorrain slept there on a camp-bed by her grand- 
 child's side. From her window Pierrette could see the beau- 
 tiful valley of Provins, which she hardly knew — she had so 
 rarely been out of the Eogrons' sinister dwelling. Whenever 
 ,it was fine, she liked to drag herself, on her grandmother's 
 (arm, as far as this arbor. Brigaut, who now did no work, 
 came three times a day to see his little friend; he was ab- 
 sorbed in grief, which made him indifferent to life; he 
 watched for Monsieur Martener with the eagerness of a 
 spaniel, always went in with him and came out with him. 
 
 It would be difficult to imagine all the follies every 
 one was ready to commit for the dear little invalid. Her 
 grandmother, drunk with grief, hid her despair; she showed 
 the child the same smiling face as at Pen-Hoel. In her wish 
 to delude herself, she made her a Breton cap such as Pierrette 
 had worn when she came to Provins, and put it on her; the 
 girl then looked to her more like herself; she was sweet to 
 behold, with her face framed in the aureole of cambric edged 
 with starched lace. Her face, as white as fine white porce- 
 lain, her forehead on which suffering set a semblance of deep 
 thoughtfulness, the purity of outline refined by sickness, the 
 slowness and occasional fixity of her gaze, all made Pierrette 
 a master-work of melancholy. 
 
 The child was waited on with fanatical devotion; she was 
 so tender, so loving. Madame Martener had sent her piano 
 to Madame Auffray, her sister, thinking it might amuse Pier- 
 rette, to whom music was rapture. It was a poem to watch 
 her listening to a piece by Weber, Beethoven, or Herold, her 
 eyes raised to heaven in silence, regretting, no doubt, the life 
 she felt slipping from her. Monsieur Peroux the cure and 
 'Monsieur Habert, her two priestly comforters, admired her 
 pious resignation. 
 
 Is it not a strange fact, worthy of the attention alike of 
 philosophers and of mere observers, that a sort of seraphic 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 S19 
 
 perfection is characteristic of youths and maidens marked 
 amid the crowd with the red cross of death, like saplings in a 
 forest? He who has witnessed such a death can never remain 
 or become an infidel. These beings exhale, as it were, a 
 heavenly fragrance, their looks speak of God, their voice is 
 eloquent in the most trivial speech, and often sounds like a 
 divine instrument, expressing the secrets of futurity. When 
 Monsieur Martener congratulated Pierrette on having carried 
 out some disagreeable prescription, this angel would say in 
 the presence of all, and with what a look ! — 
 
 "I wish to live, dear Monsieur Martener, less for my own 
 sake than for my grandmother's, for my poor Brigaut's, and 
 for you all, who will be sorry when I die.^' 
 
 The first time she took a walk, in the month of November, 
 under a bright Martinmas sun, escorted by all the family, 
 Madame Auffray asked her if she were tired. 
 
 "Now that I have nothing to bear but the pain God sends 
 me, I can endure it. I find strength, to bear suffering in the 
 joy of being loved." 
 
 This was the only time she ever alluded, even so remotely, 
 to her horrible martyrdom at the Rogrons'; she never spoke 
 of them ; and as the remembrance could not fail to be painful, 
 no one mentioned their name. 
 
 "Dear Madame Auffray," said she one day at noon on the 
 terrace, while gazing at the valley lighted up by brilliant 
 sunshine and dressed in the russet tints of autumn, "my 
 dying days in your house will have brought me more happiness 
 than all the three years before." 
 
 Madame Auffray looked at her sister, Madame Martener, 
 and said to her in a whisper : 
 
 "How she would have loved !" 
 
 And, indeed, Pierrette's tone and look gave her words un- 
 utterable meaning. 
 
 Monsieur Martener kept up a correspondence with Doctor 
 Bianchon, and tried no serious treatment without his appro- 
 bation. He hoped first to restore the girl to normal health, 
 and then to enable the abscess to discharge itself through the 
 
320 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 ear. The more acute her pain was, the more hopeful he felt, 
 With regard to the first point he had some success, and that 
 was a great triumph. For some days Pierrette recovered 
 her appetite,, and could satisfy it with substantial food, for 
 which her unhealthy state had hitherto given her great aver- 
 sion; her color improved, but the pain in her heal was terri- 
 ble. The doctor now begged the great physician, his con- 
 sultee, to come to Provins. Bianchon came, stayed two days, 
 and advised an operation; he threw himself into all poor 
 Martener's anxiety, and went himself to fetch the famous 
 Desplein. So the operation was perforn:ied by the greatest 
 surgeon of ancient or modern times; but this terrible augur 
 said to Martener as he went away with Bianchon, his best- 
 beloved pupil: 
 
 "You can save her only by a miracle. As Horace has told 
 you, necrosis has set in. At that age the bones are still 
 so tender." 
 
 The operation was performed early in March 1828. All 
 that month Monsieur Martener, alarmed by the fearful tor- 
 ments Pierrette endured, made several journeys to Paris; hi 
 consulted Desplein and Bianchon, to whom he even suggested 
 a treatment resembling that known as lithotrity — the inser- 
 tion of a tubular instrument into the skull, by which a heroicr 
 remedy might be introduced to arrest the progress of decay.. 
 The daring Desplein dared not attempt this surgical feat; 
 which only despair had suggested to Martener. 
 
 When the doctor returned from his last journey to Paris, 
 his friends thought him crestfallen and gloomy. One fatal 
 evening he was com.pelled to announce to the Auffray family, 
 to Madame Lorrain, to the confessor, and to Brigaut, who 
 were all present, that science coald do no more for Pierrette, 
 that her life was in the hands of God alone. Her grand- 
 mother took a vow and begged the cure to say, every morning 
 at daybreak, before Pierrette rose, a mass which she and Bri- 
 gaut would attend. 
 
 The case came up for trial. While the Rogrons' victim 
 lay dying, Vinet was calumniating her to the Court The 
 
PIERRETTE 
 
 321 
 
 Court ratified the decision of the family council, and the 
 lawyer immediately appealed. The newly-appointed public 
 prosecutor delivered an address which led to an inquiry. 
 Eogron and his sister were obliged to find sureties to avoid 
 being sent to prison. The inquiry necessitated the examina- 
 tion of Pierrette herself. When Monsieur Desfondrilles went 
 to the Auffrays' house, Pierrette was actually dying ; the priest 
 was at her bedside, and she was about to take the last sacra- 
 ment. At that moment she was entreating all the assembled 
 family to forgive her cousins as she herself forgave them, 
 saying, with excellent good sense, that^judgment in such cases 
 belonged to God alone. 
 
 "Grandmother," said she, "leave all you possess to Brigaut" 
 — Brigaut melted into tears — "and," Pierrette went on, "give 
 a thousand francs to good Adele, who used to warm my bed on 
 the sly. If she had stayed with my cousins, I should be 
 alive . . 
 
 It was at three o'clock on Easter Tuesday, on a beautiful 
 day, that this little angel ceased to suffer. Her heroic grand- 
 mother insisted on sitting by her all night with the priests, 
 and sewing her winding-sheet on her with her old hands. 
 Towards evening Brigaut left the house and went back to 
 Frappier's. 
 
 "I need not ask you the news, my poor boy," said the car- 
 penter. 
 
 "Pere Frappier — yes ; it is all over with her, and not with 
 me r 
 
 The apprentice looked round the workshop at all the wood 
 store with gloomy but keen eyes. 
 
 "I understand, Brigaut," said the worthy Frappier. 
 "There — that is v/hat you want," and he pointed to some 
 two-inch oak planks. 
 
 "Do not help me. Monsieur Frappier," said the Breton. 
 "I will do it all myself." 
 
 Brigaut spent the night in planing and joining Pierrette's 
 coffin, and more than once he ripped off with one stroke a 
 long shaving wet with his tears. His friend Frappier smoked 
 
322 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 and watched him. He said nothing to him but these few 
 words when his man put the four sides together: 
 
 "Make the lid to slide in a groove, then her poor friends 
 will not hear you nail it down." 
 
 At daybreak Brigaut went for lead to line the coffin. By 
 a singular coincidence the sheets of lead cost exactly the sum 
 he had given to Pierrette for her journey from Nantes to 
 Provins. The brave Breton, who had borne up under the 
 dreadful pain of making a coffin for the beloved companion 
 of his childhood, overlaying each funereal board with all his 
 memories, could not endure this coincidence ; he turned faint, 
 and could not carry the lead-; the plumber accompanied him, 
 and offered to go with him and solder down the top sheet as 
 soon as the body should be laid in the coffin. 
 
 The Breton burned his plane and all the tools he had used 
 for the work, he wound up his accounts with Frappier, and 
 bade him good-bye. 
 
 The heroism which enabled the poor fellow, like the grand- 
 mother, to busy himself with doing the last services to the 
 dead, led to his intervening in the crowning scene which put 
 a climax to the Eogrons' tyranny. 
 
 Brigaut and the plumber arrived at Monsieur Auffray's 
 just in time to decide by brute force a horrible and shameful 
 legal question. The chamber of the dead was full of people^ 
 and presented a strange scene to the two workmen. The 
 Eogrons stood hideous by the victim's corpse to torture it 
 even in death. The body of the poor girl, sublime in its 
 beauty, lay on her grandmother's camp-bed. Pierrette's eyes 
 were closed, her hair smoothly braided, her body sewn into 
 a winding-sheet of coarse cotton. 
 
 By this bed, her hair in disorder, on her knees with out- 
 stretched hands and a flaming face, old Madame Lorrain Was 
 crying out: 
 
 "No, no ; it shall never be !" 
 
 At the foot of the bed were the guardian Monsieur Auffray, 
 the Cure Monsieur Peroux, and Monsieur Habert. Tapers 
 
PIERRETTE] 
 
 323 
 
 were still burning. Opposite the grandmother stood the hos- 
 pital surgeon and Monsieur Neraud, supported by the smooth- 
 tongued and formidable Vinet. A registrar was present. The 
 surgeon had on his dissecting apron ; one of his assistants had 
 opened his roll of instruments and was handing him a scalpel. 
 
 This scene was disturbed by the noise made by the fall of 
 the coffin, which Brigaut and the plumber dropped; and by 
 Brigaut himself, who, entering first, was seized with horror on 
 seeing old Madame Lorrain in tears. 
 
 "What is the matter?" asked Brigaut, placing himself by 
 her side, and convulsively clutching a chisel he had brought 
 with him. 
 
 "The matter!" said the old woman. "They want to open 
 my child's body, to split her skull — to rend her heart after her 
 death as they did in her lifetime !" 
 
 "Who ?" said Brigaut, in a voice to crack the drum of the 
 lawyer's ears. 
 
 "The Eogrons." 
 
 "By the God above us ! 
 
 "One moment, Brigaut," said Monsieur Auffray, seeing the 
 Breton brandish his chisel. 
 
 "Monsieur Auffray," said Brigaut, as pale as the dead girl, 
 "I listen to you because you are Monsieur Auffray. But at 
 this moment I would not listen to " 
 
 "Justice \" Auffray put in. 
 
 "Is there such a thing as J ustice ?" cried Brigaut. 
 
 "That — that is J ustice !" he went on, threatening the law- 
 yer, the surgeon, and the clerk with his chisel that flashed in 
 the sunlight. 
 
 "My good fellow," said the cure, "Monsieur Eogron's law-^ 
 yer has appealed to Justice. His client lies under a serious 
 accusation, and it is impossible to refuse a suspected person 
 the means of clearing himself. According to Monsieur Ko- 
 gron's advocate, if this poor child died of the abscess on 
 the brain, her former guardian must be regarded as guiltless ; 
 for it is proved that Pierrette for a long time concealed the 
 blow she had given herself " 
 
 22 
 
PIERRBTTK 
 
 'That will do !" said Brigaut. 
 "My client " Vinet began. 
 
 "Your client/' cried the Breton, "shall go to hell, and 1 
 to the scaffold; for if one of you makes an attempt to touch 
 her whom your client killed — if that sawbones does not put 
 bis knife away, I will strike him dead." 
 
 "This is overt resistance/' said Vinet; "we shall lay it be- 
 fore the Court." 
 
 The five strangers withdrew. 
 
 "Oh, my son !" said the old woman, starting up and throw- 
 ing her arms round Brigaut's neck, "let us bury her at once ; 
 they will come back." 
 
 "When once the lead is soldered," said the plumber, "per- 
 haps they will not dare." 
 
 Monsieur Auffray hurried off to his brother-in-law. Mon- 
 sieur Lesourd, to try to get this matter settled. Vinet wished 
 for nothing better. Pierrette once dead, the action as to the 
 fpardianship, which was not yet decided, must die a natural 
 ifleath, without any possibility of argument either for or 
 Mgainst the Rogrons; the question remained an open one. 
 J5o the shrewd lawyer had perfectly foreseen the effect his 
 demand would produce. 
 
 At noon Monsieur Desfondrilles reported to the Bench on 
 the inquiry relating to the Rogrons, and the Court pro- 
 nounced a verdict of no case, on self-evident grounds. 
 
 Rogron dared not show his face at Pierrette's funeral, 
 though all the town was present. Vinet tried to drag him 
 there; but the ex-haberdasher feared the excitement of uni^ 
 versal reprobation. 
 
 Brigaut, after seeing the grave filled up in which Pierrette 
 was laid, left Provins and went on foot to Paris. He ad- 
 dressed a petition to the Dauphiness to be allowed, in con- 
 sideration of his father's name, to enlist in the Royal Guard, 
 and was soon afterwards enrolled. When an expedition wa3 
 fitted out for Algiers, he again wrote to the Dauphiness, beg- 
 ging to be ordered on active service. He was then sergeant ; 
 Marshal Bourmont made him sub-lieutenant of the Line. 
 The Major's sou behaved like a man seeking death. But 
 
PIERttKTTE 
 
 325 
 
 death has hitherto respected Jacques Brigaut, who has dis- 
 tinguished himself in all the recent expeditions without being 
 once wounded. He is now at the head of a battalion in the 
 Line. There is not a more taciturn or a better officer. Off 
 duty he is speechless, walks alone, and lives like a machine. 
 Every one understands and respects some secret sorrow. He 
 has forty-six thousand francs, left him by old Madame Lor- 
 rain, who died in Paris in 1829. 
 
 Vinet was elected depute in 1830, and the services he has 
 done to the new Government have earned him the place of 
 Prosecutor-General. His influence is now so great that he 
 will always be returned as depute. Kogron is Receiver- 
 General in the town where Vinet exercises his high functions, 
 and by a singular coincidence Monsieur Tiphaine is the chief 
 President of the Supreme Court there; for the Judge un- 
 hesitatingly attached himself to the new dynasty of July. 
 The ex-beautiful Madame Tiphaine lives on very good terms 
 with the beautiful Madame Kogron. Vinet and President; 
 Tiphaine agree perfectly. 
 
 As to Rogron, utterly stupid, he says such things as this : 
 
 "Louis Philippe will never be really King until he can 
 create r.obles." 
 
 This speech is obviously not his own. 
 
 His failing health allows Madame Rogron to hope that ere 
 long she may be free to marry General the Marquis de 
 Montriveau, a peer of France, who is Governor of the depart- 
 ment, and attentive to her. Vinet is always in a hurry to con- 
 demn a man to death; he never believes In the innocence of 
 the accused. This man, born to be a public prosecutor, is 
 considered one of the most amiable men of his district, and 
 is not less successful in Paris and in the Chamber; at Coavi 
 he is the exquisite courtier. 
 
 General Baron Gouraud, that noble relic of our glorious 
 armies, has married — as Vinet promised that he should — a 
 Demoiselle Matifat, five-and-twenty years of age, the daughter 
 of a druggist in the Rue des Lombards, who had a fortune of 
 fifty thousand crowns. He is Governor — as Vinet prophesied 
 
326 
 
 — of a department close to Paris. He was made a peer of 
 
 France as the reward of his conduct in the riots under 
 Casimir Perier's Ministry. Baron Gouraud was one of the 
 generals who took the Church of Saint-Merry, delighted to 
 *^rap the knuckles" of the civilians who had bullied them for 
 fifteen years; and his zeal won him the Grand Cordon of'; 
 the Legion of Honor. 
 
 None of those who were implicated in Pierrette's death 
 have any remorse. Monsieur Desfondrilles is still an arch- 
 aeologist; but, to promote his own election, Attorney-General 
 Vinet took care to have him appointed President of the 
 Court. Sylvie holds a little court, and m.anages her brother's 
 affairs; she lends at high interest, and does not spend more 
 than twelve hundred francs a year. 
 
 From time to time, in the little Square, when some son 
 of Provins comes home from Paris to settle there, and is 
 seen coming out of Mademoiselle Rogron's house, some 
 former partisan of the Tiphaines will say, "The Rogrons had 
 a very sad affair once about a ward . . 
 
 "A mere party question," President Desfondrilles replies. 
 "Monstrous tales were given out. Out of kindness of heart 
 they took this little Pierrette to live with them, a nice child 
 enough, without a penny; Just as she was growing up she 
 had some intrigue with a joiner's apprentice, and would come 
 to her window barefoot to talk to the lad, who used to stand 
 just there, do you see ? The lovers sent each other notes by 
 means of a string. As you may suppose, in her state, and in 
 the months of October and November, that was quite enough 
 to upset a little pale-faced girl. The Rogrons behaved ad- 
 mirably; they never claimed their share of the child's in- 
 heritance; they gave everything to the grandmother. The 
 moral of it all, my friends, is that the devil always punishes 
 us for a good action." 
 
 "Oh! this is quite another story; old Frappier told it in a 
 very different way!" 
 
 "Old Frappier consults his cellar more than his memory,'' 
 remarked a frequenter of Mademoiselle Rogi'on's drawing- 
 room. 
 
PIERRPJTTE 
 
 327 
 
 *^ut then old Monsieur ITabert 
 
 "Oh! you know about his share in the matter?'* 
 "No/' 
 
 ''Why, he wanted to get his sister married to Monsieur 
 Rogron, the Eeceiver-General.'^ 
 
 Two men daily think of Pierrette — Doctor Martener and 
 Major Brigaut, who alone know the terrible truth. 
 
 To give that truth immense proportions, it is enough to 
 recall the fact that if we change the scene to the Middle Ages, 
 and to the vast theatre of Eome, a sublime girl, Beatrice 
 Cenci, was dragged to the scaffold for reasons and by intrigues 
 almost the same as those which brought Pierrette to the 
 tomb. Beatrice Cenci found none to defend her but an artist 
 — a painter. And to-day history and living people, on the evi- 
 dence of Guide Eeni^s portrait, condemn the Pope, and regard 
 Beatrice as one of the most pathetic victims of infamous 
 passions and factions. 
 
 And we may agree that the law would be a fine thing for 
 social roguery, if there were no God. 
 
 November 1830. 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 To DAVID, Sculptor, 
 
 The duration of the work on which I write your name— doubly 
 illustrious in our age— is most uncertain, while you inscribe mine 
 on bronze, which outlives nations even when stamped only by 
 the vulgar die of the coiner. Will not numismatists be puzzled 
 by the many crowned heads in your studio, when they find among 
 the ashes of Paris these lives, prolonged by you beyond tlie life 
 of nations, in which they will fancy they discover dynasties? 
 Yours is this divine prerogative— mine be the gratitude. 
 
 De Balzac. 
 
 In" the early autumn of 1826 the Abbe Birotteau, the prin- 
 cipal personage of this story, was caught in a shower on his 
 way home from the house where he had spent the evening. 
 He was just crossing, as fast as his burly weight permitted, 
 a little deserted square known as the Close, lying behind the 
 apse of Saint-Gatien at Tours. 
 
 The Abbe Birotteau, a short man of apoplectic build, and 
 now sixty years of age, had already had several attacks of 
 gout. Hence, of all the minor miseries of human life, that 
 which the worthy man held in most horror was the sudden 
 wetting of his shoes with their large silver buckles, and the 
 immersion of their soles. In fact, notwithstanding the flan- 
 nel lining in which he packed his feet in all weathers, with 
 the care a priest always takes of himself, they often got a 
 little damp; then, next day, the gout unfailingly gave him 
 proof of its constancy. 
 
 However, as the cobbles in the Close are always dry, and 
 as the Abbe had won three francs and ten sous at whist from 
 
 v329) 
 
THJJ VICAR OP TOURS 
 
 Madame de Listomere, he submitted to th^^ rain with resigna- 
 tion from the middle of the Place de rArcheveche, where it 
 had begun to fall heavily. Moreover, at this moment he was 
 brooding over his chimera, a longing already twelve years old, 
 a priest's day-dream ! A dream which, recurring every even- 
 ing, now seemed likely to find fulfilment; in short, he was 
 too well wrapped in the fur sleeves of a canon's robes to be 
 sensitive to the severities of the weather. In the course of 
 this evening the accustomed guests who met at Madame de 
 Listomere's had as good as promised him a nomination to 
 the canon's stall at present vacant in the Metropolitan Chap- 
 ter of Saint-Gatien, by proving to him that no one better 
 deserved it than he, whose claims were indisputable, though 
 so long ignored. If he had lost at cards, if he had heard that 
 the canonry was given to the Abbe Poirel, his rival, the good 
 man would have found the rain very cold; he might have 
 abused life. But he was in one of those rare moments when 
 delightful sensations make us forget everything. Though he 
 hastened his pace, it was in obedience to a mechanical im- 
 pulse, and truth — so indispensable in a tale of domestic life — 
 requires us to say that he was thinking neither of the shower 
 nor of the gout. 
 
 There were formerly round this Close, on the side by the 
 Grand' Eue, a number of houses standing within a wall, and 
 belonging to the Cathedral, inhabited by certain dignitaries 
 of the Chapter. Since the sequestration of ecclesiastical 
 property, the town has taken the alley dividing these houses 
 as a public way, by the name of Eue de la Psalette, leading 
 from the Close to the High Street. The name itself shows 
 that here formerly dwelt the precentor with his schools and 
 those who were within his jurisdiction. The left side of the 
 street is formed of one large house, its garden walls being 
 bridged by the flying buttresses of Saint-Gatien, which spring 
 from the ground of its strip of garden, making it doubtful 
 whether the Cathedral were built before or after that ancient 
 dwelling. But, by examining the mouldings and the shape 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 381 
 
 of the windows, the arch of the doorway, and the external 
 architecture of the house, darkened by time, an archaeologist 
 detects that it had aivvays been part and parcel of the mag- 
 nificent church to which it is wedded. An antiquarian — if 
 there were one at Tours, one of the least literary towns of 
 France — might even discern at the entrance to the passage 
 from the Close some traces of the covered archway which of 
 old served as an entry to these priestly dwellings, and which 
 .must have harmonized in character with the main edifice. 
 
 This house,, being to the north of Saint-Gatien, lies always 
 in the shadow of this vast Cathedral, on which time has cast 
 its gloomy mantle, stamped wrinkles, and set its damp chill, 
 its mosses, and straggling weeds. And it is perennially 
 wrapped in the deepest silence, broken only by the tolling of 
 the bells, the chanted service heard through the Cathedral 
 walls, or the cawing of jackdaws nesting at the top of the 
 belfries. The spot is a desert of masonry, a solitude full of 
 individuality, in which none could dwell but beings absolutely 
 mindless, or gifted with immense strength of soul. 
 
 The house in question had always been the home of Abbes, 
 and belonged to an old maid named Mademoiselle Gamard. 
 Although during the Terror the property had been bought 
 from the nation by Mademoiselle Gamard's father, as the 
 worthy maiden had for twenty years past let the rooms to 
 priests, no one, at the Eestoration, could take it ill that a 
 bigot should not surrender a piece of national property; re- 
 ligious persons may have supposed that she meant to bequeath 
 it to the Chapter, and the worldly saw no change in its uses. 
 
 It was to this house, then, that the Abbe Birotteau was 
 making his way ; he had lived in it for two years. His rooms 
 there had been till then, as the canonry was now, the object 
 of his desires, and his hoc erat in votis for a dozen years 
 before. To board with Mademoiselle Gamard and to be made 
 a canon were the two great aims of his life ; and perhaps they 
 completely sum up the ambitions of a priest who, regarding 
 himself as a pilgrim to eternity, can in this world wish for 
 no more than a good room, a good table, clean clothes, shoes 
 
832 
 
 THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 with silver buckles — all-sufficient for his animal needs — and 
 a canoniy to satisfy his pride, the indefinable feeling which 
 will accompany us, no doubt, into the presence of God, since 
 there are grades of rank among the saints. 
 
 But the Abbe Birotteau's desire for the rooms he now oc- 
 cupied, so trivial a feeling in the eyes of the worldly wise, 
 had been to him a perfect passion, a passion full of obstacles, 
 and, like the most criminal passions, full of hopes, joys, and 
 remorse. ^ 
 
 The arrangements and space in her house did not allow 
 Mademoiselle Gamard to take more than two resident board- 
 ers. Now, about twelve years before the day when Birotteau 
 went to lodge with this maiden lady, she had undertaken to 
 preserve in health and contentment Monsieur I'Abbe Trou- 
 bert and Monsieur I'Abbe Chapeloud. The Abbe Troubert 
 still lived, the Abbe Chapeloud was dead, and Birotteau had 
 been his immediate successor. 
 
 The late Abbe Chapeloud, in his lifetime Canon of Saint- 
 Gatien, had been the Abbe Birotteau's intimate friend. 
 Every time the priest had gone into the canon's rooms he 
 had unfailingly admired them, the furniture, and the books. 
 This admiration one day gave birth to a desire to possess 
 these fine things. The Abbe Birotteau had found it impossible 
 to smother this desire, which often made him dreadfully un- 
 happy when he reflected that only the death of his best friend 
 could satisfy this hidden covetousness, which nevertheless 
 constantly increased. 
 
 The Abbe Chapeloud and his friend Birotteau were not rich. 
 Both sons of peasants, they had nothing but the poor emolu- 
 ment doled out to priests, and their small savings had been 
 spent in tiding over the evil days of the Revolution. When 
 Napoleon re-established Catholic worship, the Abbe Chape- 
 loud was made Canon of Saint-Gatien, and the Abbe Birotteau 
 became vicaire, or mass-priest, of the Cathedral. It was then 
 that Chapeloud went to board with Mademoiselle Gamard. 
 When Birotteau first called on the Canon in his new residence, 
 he thought the rooms delightfully arranged, but that was 
 
THE VI6AU OF 'I OURg 
 
 all. The beginnings of this concupiscence for furniture 
 were like those of a real passion in a young man, which often 
 fit first is no more than cold admiration of the woman he 
 subsequently loves for ever. 
 
 These rooms, reached by a stone staircase, were on the side 
 of the house looking south. The Abbe Troubert inhabited 
 the ground floor, and Mademoiselle Gamard the first floor of 
 the main front to the street. When Chapeloud went in, the 
 rooms were bare and the ceilings blackened by smoke. The, 
 chimney fronts, clumsily carved in stone, had never been 
 painted. All the furniture the poor canon could at first put 
 in consisted of a bed, a table, some chairs, and his few books. 
 The apartment was like a fine woman in rags. 
 
 But two or three years later, an old lady having left the 
 Abbe Chapeloud two thousand francs, he laid out the money 
 in the purchase of an oak bookcase, saved from the destructioii 
 of an old chateau pulled down by the Bande noire (a com^ 
 pany vvho bought old buildings to demolish), and remarkable 
 for carvings worthy of the admiration of artists. The Abbe 
 made the purchase, fascinated less by its cheapness than bj; 
 its exact correspondence in size with the dimensions of his 
 corridor. His savings then allowed him completely to restore 
 this corridor, until now abandoned to neglect. The floor was 
 carefully waxed, the ceiling whitewashed, the wood-work 
 painted and grained to imitate the tone and knots of oak. 
 A marble chimney-shelf replaced the old one. The Canon 
 had taste enough to hunt up and find some old armchairs 
 of carved walnut wood. Then a long ebony table and two 
 little Boulle cabinets gave this library a finish full of char- 
 acter. 
 
 Within two 3^ears, the liberality of various devout persons, 
 and the bequests of pious penitents, though small, had filled 
 the shelves of the bookcase hitherto vacant. Finally, an 
 uncle of Chapeloud's, an old Oratorian, left him his collection 
 in folio of the Fathers of the Church, and several other large 
 works of value to an ecclesiastic. 
 
 Birotteau, more and more surprised by the successive 
 
834 
 
 THE VICAR OP TOURS 
 
 transformations in this formerly bare corridor, by degree-^ 
 became involuntarily covetous. He longed to possess this 
 study, so perfectly adapted to the gravity of priestly habits. 
 This passion grew day by day. Spending whole days, as he 
 often did, in working in this snuggery, he could appreciate 
 the silence and peace of it, after having at first admired its 
 comfortable arrangement. For the next few years the Abbe 
 Chapeloud used this retreat as an oratory which his lady 
 friends delighted to embellish. Later, again, a lady presented 
 to the Canon a piece of furniture in worsted work for his 
 bedroom, at which she had long been stitching under the 
 amiable priest's eyes without his suspecting its purpose. 
 Then Birotteau was as much dazzled by the bedroom as by 
 the library. 
 
 Finally, three years before his death, the Abbe Chapeloud 
 bad completed the comfort of his rooms by decorating the 
 drawing-room. Though simply furnished with red Utrecht 
 velvet, this had been too much for Birotteau. From the 
 day when the Canon's friend first saw the red silk cur- 
 tains, the mahogany furniture, the Aubusson carpet that 
 graced this large room, freshly painted, Chapeloud's apart- 
 ment became to him the object of a secret monomania. To 
 live there, to sleep in the great bed with silk curtains in 
 which the Canon slept, and have all his comforts about 
 him as Chapeloud had, seemed to Birotteau perfect happi- 
 ness; he looked for nothing beyond. Every feeling which 
 envy and ambition arouse in the souls of other men, was, in 
 that of the Abbe Birotteau, centered in the deep and secret 
 longing with which he wished for a home like that created for 
 himself by the Abbe Chapeloud. When his friend fell ill^ 
 it was no doubt sincere affection that brought Birotteau to 
 see him; but on first hearing of the Canon's sickness, and 
 while sitting with him, there rose from the depths of his 
 soul a thousand thoughts, of which the simplest formula 
 was always this, "If Chapeloud dies, I can have his rooms." 
 Still, as Birotteau had a good heart, strict principles, and a 
 narrow intellect, he never went so far as to conceive nf 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 335 
 
 means for getting his friend to leave him his library and 
 furniture. 
 
 The Abbe Chapeloud, an amiable and indulgent egoist, 
 guessed his friend's mania — which it was not difficult to 
 do, and forgave it — which for a priest would seem less easy. 
 Still, Birotteau, whoso friendship remained unaltered, never 
 ceased to walk day after day with the Cauon up and down 
 the same path in the Mall at Tours without curtailing by a 
 single minute the time devoted to this exercise for the last 
 twenty years. Birotteau thought of his involuntary wishes 
 as sins, and would have been capable, in sheer contrition, of 
 the utmost devotion for Chapeloud's sake. 
 
 The Canon paid his debt to this sincere and artless 
 brotherliness by saying, a few days before his death, to the 
 priest, who was reading to him from the Quotidienne, "You 
 will get the rooms this time. I feel that it is all over with 
 me." 
 
 In fact, by his will, the Abbe Chapeloud left his library 
 and furniture to Birotteau. The possession of these much- 
 longed-for things, and the prospect of being taken as a 
 boarder by Mademoiselle Gamard, greatly softened Birot- 
 teau's grief at the loss of his friend the Canon. He would 
 not perhaps have called him to life again, but he wept for 
 him. For several days he was like Gargantua, whose wife 
 died in giving birth to Pantagruel, and who knew not 
 whether to rejoice over his son's birth or to lament at hav- 
 ing buried his good Badebec, and made the mistake of re- 
 joicing at his wife's death and deploring the birth of Panta- 
 gruel. 
 
 The Abbe Birotteau spent the first days of his grief in. 
 verifying the volumes of his library, and enjoying the use 
 of his furniture, examining them, and saying in a tone, which, 
 unfortunately, could not be recorded, "Poor Chapeloud!" 
 In short, his joy and his grief were so absorbing that he 
 felt no distress at seeing the canonry bestowed on another, 
 though the lamented Chapeloud had always hoped that 
 Birotteau might be his successor. Mademoiselle Gamard re- 
 
336 
 
 THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 ceived the Abbe with pleasure as a boarder, and he thns en- 
 joyed thenceforth all the delights of material existence that 
 the deceased Canon had so highly praised. 
 
 Incalculable advantages ! For, to hear the late departed 
 Canon Chapeloud, not one of the priests who dwelt in the 
 town of Tours, not even the Archbishop himself, could be 
 the object of care so delicate or so precise as that lavished 
 by Mademoiselle Gamard on her two boarders. The first 
 words spoken by the Canon to his friend as they walked in 
 the Mall had almost always referred to the excellent dinner 
 he had just eaten; and it was a rare thing if, in the course 
 of the seven walks they took in the v/eek, he did not happen 
 to say at least fourteen times, ^^That good woman has cer- 
 tainly a vocation for taking charge of the priesthood/' 
 
 "Only think," said the Canon to Birotteau, "for twelve 
 successive years clean linen, albs, surplices, bands — nothing 
 has ever been missing. I always find everything in its 
 place and in sufficient numbers, all smelling of orris-root. 
 My furniture is constantly polished, and so well wiped 
 that for a long time past I have not known what dust 
 means. Did you ever see a speck in my rooms? Then 
 the fire-logs are well chosen, the smallest things are all 
 good; in short, it is as if Mademoiselle Gamard always had 
 an eye on my room. I cannot recollect in ten years ever 
 having had to ring twice for anything whatever. That I 
 call living! never to have to look for a thing, not even 
 for one's slippers ; always to find a good fire and a good table. 
 Once my bellows put me out, the nozzle had got burned; 
 I had not to complain twice. The very next day Mademoiselle 
 had bought me a nice pair of bellows and the pair of tongs 
 you see me use to put the fire together." 
 
 Birotteau's only reply was, "Smelling of orris-root !" That 
 smelling of orris-root always struck him. The Canon's 
 words painted a really ideal state of happiness to the poor 
 priest whose bands and albs nearly turned his brain; for 
 he had no sense of order, and not unfrequently forgot to be- 
 speak his dinner. And so, whenever he caught sight of 
 
THE VICAll OF TOUitS 
 
 Mademoiselle Gamard at Saint-Gatien, either while going 
 round for the offertory or while reading mass, he never failed 
 to give her a gentle and kindly glance such as Saint Theresa 
 may have raised to heaven. 
 
 Though the comfort which every creature desires, and 
 of which he had so often dreamed, had now fallen to his 
 lot, as it is difficult for any man, even for a priest, to live 
 without a hobby, for the last eighteen months the Abbe 
 Birotteau had substituted for his two gratified passions a 
 craving for a canonry. The title of canon had become to 
 him what that of a peer must be to a plebeian minister. And 
 the probability of a nomination, the hopes he had just been 
 encouraged in at Madame de Listomere's, had so effectually 
 turned his brain that it was only on reaching home that 
 he discovered that he had left his umbrella at her house. 
 Perhaps, indeed, but for the rain that fell in torrents, he 
 would not have remembered it then, so completely was he 
 absorbed in repeating to himself all that had been said on 
 the subject of his preferment by the members of the party 
 at Madame de Listomere's — an old lady with whom he spent 
 every .Wednesday evening. 
 
 The Abbe rang sharply as a hint to the maid not to keep 
 him waiting. Then he shrank into the corner by the door 
 so as to be splashed as little as possible; but the water 
 from the roof ran off precisely on the toes of his shoes, and 
 the gusts of wind blew on to liim squalls of rain not unlike 
 a repeated shower bath. After calculating the time neces- 
 sary^ for coming from the kitchen to pull the latch-string 
 under the door, he rang again, a very significant peal. "They 
 cannot have gone out," thought he, hearing not a sound 
 within. And for the third time he rang, again and again, 
 a peal that sounded so sharply through the house, and was 
 so loudly repeated by every echo in the Cathedral, that it 
 was impossible not to be roused by this assertive jangle. 
 And a few moments after it was not without satisfaction, 
 mingled with annoyance, that he heard the maid's wooden 
 
THE VICAU OF TOtTRS 
 
 shoes clattering over the pebbly stone floor. Still;, the gouty 
 priest^s troubles were not over so soon as he thought. In- 
 stead of pulling the latch, Marianne was obliged to unlock 
 the door with the huge ke}^, and draw back the bolts. 
 
 "How can you leave me to ring three times in such 
 weather?'^ said he to Marianne. 
 
 "Why, sir, as you see, the house was locked up. Every- 
 body has been in bed a long time ; it has struck a quarter to 
 ten. Mademoiselle must have thought you had not gone 
 out." 
 
 "But you yourself saw me go out. Besides, Mademoiselle 
 knows very well that I go to Madame de Listomere's every 
 Wednesday." 
 
 "Well, sir, I only did as Mademoiselle told me," replied 
 Marianne, locking the door again. 
 
 These words were a blow to the Abbe, which he felt all the 
 more keenly for the intense bliss of his day-dream. He 
 said nothing, but followed Marianne to the kitchen, to fetch 
 his bedroom candle, which he supposed would have been 
 brought down there. But instead of going to the kitchen, 
 Marianne lighted the Abbe up to his rooms, where he found 
 the candlestick on a table outside the door of the red draw- 
 ing-room, in a sort of ante-room, formed of the stair land- 
 ing, which the Canon had shut in for the purpose by a large 
 glass partition. Dumb with surprise, he hurried into his 
 bedroom, found no fire on the hearth, and called Marianne, 
 who had not yet had time to go downstairs. 
 
 "You have not lighted my fire ?" said he. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, sir ; it must have gone out again." 
 
 Birotteau looked again at the hearth, and saw plainly that 
 the ashes had been piled there since the morning. 
 
 "I want to dry my feet," he went on ; "make up the fire." 
 
 Marianne obeyed with the haste of a woman who wants to 
 go to sleep. While the Abbe himself hunted for his slippers, 
 failing to see them in the middle of his bed-rug, as usual, 
 he made certain observations as to the way Marianne was 
 dressed, which proved to a demonstration that she had not 
 
THE VICAH OF TOURS 
 
 just got out of bed, as she had asserted. And he then re- 
 membered that for about a fortnight past he had been 
 weaned from all the little attentions that had made life so 
 endurable for the last eighteen months. Now, as it is in the 
 nature of narrow minds to argue from minute things, he at 
 once gave himself up to deep reflections on these four inci- 
 dents, imperceptible to anybody else, but to him nothing less 
 than four catastrophes. The oversight as to his slippers, 
 Marianne^s falsehood with regard to the fire, the unaccus- 
 tomed removal of his candlestick to the table in the ante- 
 room, and the long waiting so ingeniously inflicted on him 
 on the threshold in the rain, were ominous of a complete 
 wreck of his happiness. 
 
 When the fire was blazing on the dogs, when his night- 
 lamp was lighted, and Marianne had left him without in- 
 quiring as usual, "Does Monsieur need anything further?" 
 the Abbe sank gently into his departed friend's roomy and 
 handsome easy-chair; still, his action as he dropped into 
 it was somewhat melancholy. The worthy man was op- 
 pressed by the presentiment of terrible disaster. His eyes 
 fell in succession on the handsome timepiece, the chest of 
 drawers, the chairs, curtains, and rugs, the four-post bed, 
 the holy-water shell and the crucifix, on a Virgin by le Valen- 
 tin, on a Christ by Lebrun — in short, on all the details of 
 the room; the expression of his face betrayed the pangs of 
 the tenderest farewell that a lover ever looked at his first 
 mistress, or an old man at his latest plantation. The Abbe 
 had just detected — a little late, it is true — the symptoms of 
 a covert persecution to which he had for about three months 
 been subjected by Mademoiselle Gamard, whose ill-will would 
 r.o doubt have been suspected sooner by a man of keener in- 
 telligence. 
 
 Have not all old maids a certain talent for emphasizing 
 the acts and words suggested to them by hatred? They 
 scratch as cats do. And not only do they hurt, but they 
 take pleasure in hurting, and in making their victim see 
 that they can hurt. While a man of the world would not 
 
840 
 
 TiiE vicau of Touits 
 
 have allowed himself to be clawed a second time, the worthy 
 Birotteau had taken several scratches in the face before he 
 had conceived of malignant purpose. 
 
 Imn^diately, with the inquisitorial shrewdness acquired 
 by priests, accustomed as they are to direct consciences and 
 to investigate trifles from the shades of the confessional, the 
 • Abbe Birotteau set to work to formulate the following 
 proposition — as though it were the basis of a religious con- 
 troversy. — Granting that Mademoiselle Gamard may have 
 forgotten Madame de Listomere's evening — that Marianne 
 had neglected to light my fire — that they thought I was at 
 home; as it is certain that I, myself, must have taken my 
 candlestick downstairs this morning ! ! ! — it is impossible that 
 Mademoiselle Gamard, seeing it in her sitting-room, could 
 have supposed I had gone to bed. Ergo, Mademoiselle 
 Gamard left me at the door in the rain on purpose; and by 
 having the candlestick carried up to my rooms she meant me 
 to know it. — "What does it mean?" he said aloud, carried 
 away by the gravity of the case, as he rose to take off his wet 
 clothes, and put on his dressing-gown and his nightcap. 
 Then he went from the bed to the fire gesticulating and jerk- 
 ing out such comments as these, in various tones of voice, 
 all ended in a falsetto pitch as though to represent points of 
 interrogation. 
 
 "What the deuce have I done? Why does she owe me a 
 grudge? — Marianne cannot have forgotten my fire; Made- 
 moiselle must have told her not to light it ! I should be child- 
 ish not to see from the tone and manner she assumes towards 
 me that I have been so unfortunate as to displease her. — 
 Nothing of the kind ever happened to Chapeloud ! — It will 
 be impossible for me to live in the midst of the annoyances 
 that . . . At my age too !" 
 
 He went to bed, hoping to clear up on the morrow the 
 cause of the hatred which was destroying for ever the happi- 
 ness he had enjoyed for two years after wishing for it so 
 long. Alas ! the secret motives of Mademoiselle Gamard's 
 feeling against him were destined to remain for ever unknown 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 841 
 
 to him; not because they were difficult to guess, but because 
 the poor man had not the simple candor which enables great 
 minds and thorough scoundrels to recognize and judge them- 
 selves. Only a man of genius or a master of intrigue ever 
 says to himself, "I was to blame/' Interest and talent are 
 the only conscientious and lucid counselors. 
 
 Now, the Abbe Birotteau, whose kindliness went to the 
 pitch of silliness, whose knowledge was a sort of veneer laid 
 on by patient work, who had no experience whatever of the 
 world and its ways, and who lived between the altar and the 
 confessional, chiefly engaged in deciding trivial cases of con- 
 science in his capacity of confessor to the schools of the town 
 and to some noble souls who appreciated him — the Abbe 
 Birotteau was, in short, to be regarded as a big baby to whom 
 the greater part of social customs were absolutely unknown. 
 At the same time, the selfishness natural to all human beings, 
 reinforced by the egoism peculiar to a priest, and by that of 
 the narrow life of a provincial town, had insensibly grown 
 strong in him without his suspecting it. If any one had 
 taken enough interest in searching the good man's soul to 
 show him that, in the infinitely small details of his existence 
 and the trivial duties of his private life, he failed essentially 
 in the self-sacrifice he professed, he would have punished and 
 mortified himself in all sincerity. 
 
 But those whom we offend, even unwittingly, reck not of 
 our innocence ; they desire and achieve revenge. Thus Birot- 
 teau, weak as he was, was doomed to suffer under the hand of 
 that great distributive Justice which always trusts the world 
 to carry out its sentences, known to many simpletons as the 
 misfortunes of life. 
 
 There was this difference between Canon Chapeloud and 
 .the Abbe: one was a witty and ingenious egotist, the other 
 an honest and clumsy one. When Monsieur Chapeloud had 
 ' come to board with Mademoisolle Gamard, he could perfectly 
 well gauge his landlady's character. The confessional had 
 enlightened him as to the bitterness infused into an old maid's 
 heart by the misfortune of finding herself outside society; 
 
342 
 
 THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 his behavior to Mademoiselle Gamard was shrewdly calcu= 
 lated. The lady being no more than eight-and-thirty, still 
 had those little pretensions which, in such discreet persons, 
 turn in later years into a high opinion of themselves. 
 
 The Canon understood that, to live comfortably with 
 Mademoiselle Gamard, he must always show her the same 
 respect and attention, and be more infallible than the Pope. 
 To attain this end he established no points of contact between 
 himself and her beyond what the strictest politeness re- 
 quired, and those necessarily subsisting between two persons 
 Jiving under the same roof. Thus, though he and the Abbe 
 Troubert regularly took their three meals a day, he had never 
 appeared at breakfast, but had accustomed Mademoiselle 
 Gamard to send up to him, in his bed, a cup of coffee with 
 milk. Then, he had avoided the boredom of supper by always 
 taking tea at some house where he spent the evening. Thus 
 he rarely saw his landlady at any time of the day excepting 
 at dinner, but he always came into the room a few minutes 
 before the hour. During this polite little visit, every day of the 
 twelve years he had spent under her roof he had asked her 
 the same questions and received the same answers. How 
 Mademoiselle Gamard had slept during the night, the break- 
 fast, little domestic events, the appearance of her face, the 
 health of her person, the weather, the length of the Church 
 services, the incidents of the morning's Mass, the health of 
 this or that priest, constituted the themes of this daily dia- 
 logue. 
 
 During dinner he always indulged her with indirect flat- 
 tery, going on from the quality of the fish, the excellence of 
 some seasoning, or the merits of a sauce, to those of Made- 
 moiselle Gamard and her virtues as a housekeeper. He was 
 sure of soothing all the old maid's conceits when he praised 
 the art with which her preserves were made, her gherkins 
 pickled, and the excellence of her Jam, her pies, and other 
 gastronomical inventions. Finally, the wily Canon never 
 quitted her yellow drawing-room without remarking that 
 there was not another house in Tours where the coffee was 
 so good as that he had lust been drinking. 
 
THE VTCAR OF TOURS 
 
 Thanks to this perfect comprehension of Mademoisel](! 
 Gamard's character, and this science of life as practised 
 by the Canon for those twelve years, no grounds had ever 
 occurred for a discussion on any matter of domestic disci- 
 pline. The Abbe Chapeloud had from the first discerned 
 every angle, every rasping edge, every asperity in this old 
 maid, and had so regulated the effect of the tangents where 
 they inevitably met, as to secure from her every concession 
 needed for peace and happiness in life. And Mademoiselle 
 Gamard would always say that Canon Chapeloud was a 
 most amiable man, very easy to live with, and full of wit. 
 
 As to the Abbe Troubert, the bigot never by any chance 
 spoke of him. Troubert had so completely fallen into the 
 routine of her life, like a satellite in the orbit of its planet, 
 that he had become to her a sort of mongrel creature between 
 those of the human and those of the canine species ; he filled 
 a place in her mind exactly below that occupied by her friends 
 and that filled by a fat asthmatic pug-dog to which she was 
 tenderly devoted; she managed him completely, and their 
 interests became so inextricably knit that many persons of 
 Mademoiselle Gamard's circle supposed that the Abbe Trou- 
 bert had an eye to the old maid's fortune, and was attaching 
 her to him by his constant patience, guiding her all the 
 more effectually because he affected to obey her, never allow- 
 ing her to see in him the faintest wish to rule her. 
 
 When the Canon died, the old maid, anxious to have a 
 boarder of quiet habits, naturally thought of this priest. 
 The Canon's will had not yet been opened when Mademoiselle 
 Gamard was already meditating giving the departed Canon's 
 upper rooms to her v/orthy Abbe Troubert, whom she thought 
 but poorly lodged on the ground floor. But when the Abbe 
 Birotteau came to discuss with her the written conditions 
 of her terms, she found that he was so much in love with the 
 lodgings for which he had long cherished a passion he might 
 now avow, that she did not venture to propose an exchange, 
 and affection gave way before the pressure of interest. To 
 console her favorite Abbe, Mademoiselle substituted a parquet 
 
344 
 
 THE VICAR OP TOURS 
 
 flooring in a neat pattern for the white Chateau-'Renaud 
 tiles in the ground-floor rooms, and rebuilt a chimney that 
 smoked. 
 
 The Abbe Birotteau had seen his friend Chapeloiid con- 
 stantly for twelve years, without its ever having occurred to 
 him to wonder why he was so excessively circumspect in his 
 intercourse with the old maid. When he came to live under 
 this saintly damsel's roof he felt like a lover on the verge of 
 happiness. Even if he had not been blinded by natural stu- 
 pidity, his eyes were too much dazzled by contentment for 
 him to be capable of gauging Mademoiselle Gamard or of 
 considering the due measure of his daily relations with her. 
 Mademoiselle Gamard, seen from afar, through the prism of 
 the material enjoyment the Abbe dreamed of finding with 
 her, appeared to him an admirable creature, a perfect 
 Christian, an essentially charitable soul, the woman of 
 the Gospel, the wise Virgin graced with the humble and mod- 
 est virtues which shed celestial fragrance over life. And 
 thus, with all the enthusiasm of a man who has reached a 
 long-wished-for goal, with the simplicity of a child and the 
 silly heedlessness of an old man devoid of worldly experience, 
 he came into Mademoiselle Gamard's life as a fly is caught in 
 a spider's web. 
 
 So the first day he was to dine and sleep in the old maid's 
 house he lingered in her drawing-room, as much in the wish 
 to make acquaintance with her as in the inexplicable embar- 
 rassment that often troubles shy people and makes them fear 
 lest they should be rude if they break ofl a conversation to 
 leave the room. So there he remained all the evening. An- 
 other old maid, a friend of Birotteau's, Mademoiselle Salo- 
 mon de Villenoix, came in the evening. Then Mademoiselle 
 Gamard had the joy of arranging a game of boston. The 
 Abbe, as he went to bed, thought he had had a very pleasant 
 evening. 
 
 As yet he knew Mademxoiselle Gamard and the Abbe Trou- 
 bert but very little, and saw only the surface. Few persons 
 ehow their faults unveiled at first. Generally everybody tries 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 845 
 
 to assume an attractive exterior. So Birotteau conceived the 
 delightful purpose of devoting his evenings to Mademoiselle 
 Gamard instead of spending them elsewhere. The lady had 
 some few years since conceived a desire which revived more 
 strongly every day. This desire, common to old men, and 
 even to pretty Y\^omen, had become in her a passion like that 
 «f Birotteau for his friend Chapeloud's rooms, and was 
 rooted in the old maid's heart by the feelings of pride, 
 egoism, envy, and vanity which are innate in. the worldly- 
 minded. This story repeats itself in every age. You have 
 but slightly to enlarge the circle at the bottom of which 
 these personages are about to move, to find the co-efficient 
 motive of events which happen in the highest ranks of 
 society. 
 
 Mademoiselle Gamard spent her evenings at six or eight 
 different houses by turns. Whether it was that she was an- 
 noyed at having to seek company, and thought that at her 
 age she had a right to expect some return ; whether her con- 
 ceit was affronted by her having no circle of her own; or 
 whether it was that her vanity craved the compliments and 
 amusements she saw her friends enjoying, — all her ambition 
 was to make her salo7i a centre of union towards which a 
 certain number of persons would tend every evening with 
 pleasure. When Birotteau and his friend Mademoiselle Salo- 
 mon had spent a few evenings in her room with the faithful 
 and patient Abbe Troubert, one night, as she came out of 
 Saint-Gatien, Mademoiselle Gamard said to the kind friends 
 of whom she had hitherto considered herself the slave, that 
 those who cared to see her might very well come once a week 
 to her house, where a sufficient party met already to make 
 up a game of boston ; that she could not leave her new boarder, 
 the Abbe Birotteau, alone; that Mademoiselle Salomon had 
 not yet missed a single evening of the week; that she be- 
 longed to her boarders; and that, etc., etc. 
 
 Her speech was all the more humbly haughty and volubly 
 sweet because Mademoiselle Salomon de Villenoix belonged 
 to the most aristocratic circle in Tours. Though Made- 
 
346 
 
 THE VICAR OP TOURS 
 
 moiselle Salomon came solely for the x\bbe's sake, Made^ 
 moiselle Gamard triumphed in having her in her drawing- 
 room. Thanks to the Abbe Birotteau, she found lierself on 
 the eve of succeeding in her great scheme of forming a circle 
 which might become as numerous and as agreeable as were 
 those of Madame de Listomere, of Mademoiselle Merlin de la 
 Blottiere, and other devout persons in a position to receive 
 the pious society of Tours. But, alas ! the Abbe Birotteau 
 brought Mademoiselle Gamard's hopes to an overthrow. 
 
 Now, if any persons, who have attained in life the enjoy- 
 ment of a iong-wished-for happiness, have entered into the 
 gladness the Abbe must have felt in lying down to rest in 
 Chapeloud's bed, they must also form a slight notion of 
 Mademoiselle Gamard's chagrin at the ruin of her cherished 
 scheme. After accepting his good fortune patiently enough 
 for six months, Birotteau deserted his home, carrying with 
 him Mademoiselle Salomon. 
 
 In spite of unheard-of efforts, the ambitious Gamard had 
 secured no more than five or six recruits, whose fidelity was 
 very problematical, and at least four unfailing visitors were 
 needed for regular boston. She was consequently obliged 
 to make honorable amends and return to her old friends, 
 for old maids are too poor company to themselves not to 
 crave the doubtful pleasures of society. 
 
 The causes of this defection are easily imagined. Though 
 the Abbe was one of those to whom Paradise shall one day 
 be opened in virtue of the words, "Blessed are the poor in 
 spirit," he, like many fools, could not endure the weariness 
 inflicted on him by other fools. Unintelligent persons are 
 like weeds that thrive in good ground ; they love to be amused 
 m proportion to the degree in which they weary themselves. 
 Being the incarnation of the dulness they suffer from, the 
 ^u-aving they perpetually feel to be divorced from themselves 
 produces the mania for excitement, the need to be where they 
 are not, which characterizes them as it does other creatures 
 who lack feeling, or whose lot is a failure, or who suffer by 
 their own fault. Without understanding too clearly the 
 
THE VICAll OF TOUnS 
 
 847 
 
 vacuity and nullity of Mademoiselle Gamard, or discerning 
 the smallness of her mind, poor Birottean discovered, too late 
 for happiness, the faults she had in common with all old 
 maids, as well as those personal to herself. 
 
 What is evil, in other people, contrasts so strongly with 
 what is good, that it generally strikes the eye before inflicting 
 a wound. This moral phenomenon might at need justify 
 the tendency that leads us all more or loss to evil speaking. 
 Socially speaking, it is so natural to satirize the faults of 
 others, that we ought to forgive the severe gossip to which 
 our own absurdities give rise, and wonder at nothing but 
 calumny. 
 
 But the good Abbe's eyes were never at the precise focus 
 which enables the worldly wise to see and at once evade their 
 neighbor's sharp tongues; to discover his landlady's faults, 
 he was obliged to endure the warning given by nature to all 
 its creatures, that of suffering. 
 
 Old maids, having never bent their temper or their lives 
 to other lives and other tempers, as woman's destiny requires;, 
 have for the most part a mania for making everything about 
 them bend to them. In Mademoiselle Gamard this feeling 
 had degenerated into despotism, but this despotism could only 
 be exerted in small things. For instance — out of a thousand 
 cases — the basket of counters and fish placed on the boston 
 table for the Abbe Birotteau niust be left on the spot where 
 she had put it, and the Abbe irritated her extremely by 
 moving it, as he did almost every evening. What was the 
 cause of this touchiness foolishly provoked by mere trifleSj 
 and what was its object? N'o one could say; Mademoiselle 
 Gamard herself did not know. 
 
 Though very lamblike by nature, the new boarder did not 
 like to feel the crook too often, any more than a sheep, espe- 
 cially a crook set with nails. Without understanding Canon 
 Troubert's amazing patience, Birotteau was anxious to escape 
 the bliss which Mademoiselle Gamard was bent on seasoning 
 to her own taste, for she thought she could compound happi- 
 ness as she could preserves ; but the luckless priest set to work 
 
B48 
 
 MB VICAK Or^ TOURS 
 
 very clumsily, as a result of his perfectly artless nature. 
 So the separation was not effected without some clawing and 
 pricking, to which the Abbe Birotteau tried to- seem in- 
 sensible. 
 
 By the end of the first year of his life under Mademoiselle 
 Gamard's roof the Abbe had fallen into his old habits, spend- 
 ing two evenings a week at Madame de Listo mere's, three 
 with Mademoiselle Salomon, and the other two with Made- 
 moiselle Merlin de la Blottiere. These ladies moved in the 
 aristocratic sphere of Tours society, to which Mademoiselle 
 Gamard was not admitted. So the landlady was excessively 
 indignant at the Abbe's defection, Avhich made her aware of 
 her small importance: any kind of selection implying some 
 contempt for the rejected object. 
 
 "Monsieur Birotteau did not find us good enough corn- 
 pan}^," the Abbe Troubert v/ould say to Mademoiselle Ga- 
 mard's friends when she was obliged to give up her "even- 
 ings." "He is a wit, a gourmet! He must have fashion, 
 luxury, brilliant conversation, the tittle-tattle of the town." 
 
 And such words always prompted Mademoiselle Gamard 
 to praise the Canon's excellent temper at the expense of 
 Birotteau's. 
 
 "He is not so clever when all is said," she remarked. 
 "But for Canon Chapeloud he would never have been re- 
 ceived by Madame de Listomere. Oh, I lost a great deal when 
 the Abbe Chapeloud died. What an amiable man! and so 
 easy to live with ! Indeed, in twelve years we never had the 
 smallest difficulty or disagreement." 
 
 Mademoiselle Gamard painted so unflattering a portrait 
 of Monsieur Birotteau that her innocent boarder was regarded 
 by this citizen circle, secretly hostile to the aristocratic class, 
 as an essentially fractious man, very difficult to get on with. 
 Then for a few weeks the old maid had the satisfaction of 
 hearing herself pitied by her female friends, who, without 
 believing a word of what they said, repeated again and again, 
 
THE VICAR OP TOURS 
 
 349 
 
 "How can you, who are so gentle and so kind, have inspired 
 him with such dislike? " or, "Bo comforted, dear Made- 
 moiselle Gamard, every one knows you too well " and so 
 
 forth. 
 
 Delighted, nevertheless, to escape spending an evening 
 each week in the Close — the most deserted and gloomy spot 
 in all Tours, and the most remote from the centre of life — 
 they all blessed the Abbe. 
 
 Love or hatred must constantly increase between two per- 
 sons who are always together: every moment fresh reasons 
 are found for loving or hating better. Thus to Mademoiselle 
 Gamard the Abbe Birotteau became unendurable. Eighteen 
 months after taking him as a boarder, just when the good 
 man believed he had found the peace of contentment in the 
 silence of aversion, and prided himself on having come so 
 comfortably to terms with the old woman, to use his expres- 
 sion, he was to her the object of covert persecution and 
 calmly planned animosity. 
 
 The four capital facts of the closed door, the forgotten 
 slippers, the lack of fire, the candlestick taken to his roomiS, 
 alone could betray the terrible enmity of which the last effects 
 were not to fall on him till the moment when they would be 
 irremediable. As he went to sleep, the good Abbe racked his 
 brain, but vainly — and, indeed, he must soon have come to 
 the bottom of it — to account for Mademoiselle Gamard's sin- 
 gularly uncivil behavior. In point of fact, as he had origi- 
 nally acted very logically, obeying the natural law of his ego- 
 ism, he could not possibly form a guess as to how he had of- 
 fended his landlady. While great things are simple to un- 
 derstand, and easy to express, the mean things of life need 
 much detail. The incidents which constitute the prologue, 
 as it were, to Ihis parochial drama, in which the passions 
 will be seen not less violent than if they had been excited 
 by important interests, necessitated this long introduction, 
 and any exact historian would have found it difficult to 
 abridge the trivial tale. 
 
850 
 
 THE VICAR OP TOURS 
 
 When he awoke next morning, the Abbe's thoughts were 
 so much set on the canonry, that he forgot the four circum- 
 stances which, the evening before, had appeared to him to be 
 sinister prognostics of a future full of disaster. Birotteau 
 was not the man to get up without a fire; he rang to an- 
 nounce to Marianne that he was awake, and wanted her; 
 then, as he was wont, he lay lost in a somnolent, half-dreamy 
 state, during which, as a rule, the woman made the fire, and 
 dragged him gently from his last doze by a hum of inquiry 
 and quiet bustle — a sort of music that he liked. 
 
 Half an hour went by, and Marianne had not appeared. 
 The Abbe, already half a Canon, was about to ring again, 
 when he stayed his hand on hearing a man's step on the 
 stairs. In fact, the Abbe Troubert, after discreetly tapping at 
 the door, at Birotteau 's bidding came in. This call did not 
 surprise him; the priests were in the habit of paying each 
 other a visit once a month. The Canon was at once amazed 
 that Marianne should not yet have lighted his quasi-col- 
 league's fire. He opened a window, called Marianne in a 
 rough tone, and bid her come up at once ; then, turning to his 
 brother priest, he said, "If Mademoiselle should hear that 
 yoTi have no fire, she would give Marianne a good scolding." 
 
 After this speech he inquired for Birotteau's health, and 
 asked him, in an insinuating voice, whether he had any re- 
 cent news that could encourage his hope of being made a 
 Canon. The Abbe explained to him what was being done, 
 and guilelessly told him who the personages were that 
 Madame de Listomere was canvassing, not knowing that 
 Troubert had never forgiven that lady for not inviting him 
 to her house — him — Canon Troubert, twice designate to be 
 made Vicar-General of the diocese. ^ 
 
 It would be impossible to meet with two figures offering 
 so many points of contrast as those of these two priests. 
 Troubert, tall and lean, had a bilious yellow hue, while 
 Birotteau was what is familiarly called crummy. His face, 
 round and florid, spoke of good-nature devoid of ideas; while 
 Troubert's, long and furrowed by deep wrinkles, wore at 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 851 
 
 times an expression of irony and scorn; still, attentive ex- 
 amination was needed to discover these feelings. The Canon 
 was habitually and absolutely placid, his eyelids almost always 
 lowered over a pair of orange-hazel eyes, whose glance was at 
 will very clear and piercing. Red hair completed this counte- 
 nance, which was constantly clouded under the shroud cast 
 over his features by serious meditations. Several persons 
 had at first supposed him to be absorbed in high and rooted 
 ambition; but those who thought they knew him best had ' 
 ended by demolishing this opinion, representing him as stulti- 
 fied by Mademoiselle Gamard's tyranny, or worn by long fast- 
 ing. He rarely spoke, and never laughed. When he hap- 
 pened to be pleasurably moved, a faint smile appeared and 
 lost itself in the furrows on his cheeks. 
 
 Birotteau, on the other hand, was all expansiveness, all 
 openness; he liked tidbits, and could be amused by a trifle 
 with the artlessness of a man free from gall and malice. The 
 Abbe Troubert at first sight inspired an involuntary feeling 
 of dread, while the Vicar made every one who looked at him 
 smile kindly. When the tall Canon stalked solemnly along 
 the cloisters and aisles of Saint-Gatien, his brow bent, his 
 eye stem, he commanded respect; his bowed figure harmo- 
 nized with the yellow vaulting of the cathedral; there was 
 something monumental in the folds of his gown, and worthy 
 of the sculptors art. But the good little Abbe moved withouf' 
 dignity, trotted and pattered, looking as if he rolled along. 
 
 And yet the two men had one point of resemblance. While 
 Troubert's ambitious looks, by making the world afraid of 
 him, had perhaps contributed to condemn him to the modest 
 dignity of a mere Canon, Birotteau's character and appearance 
 seemed to stamp him for ever as no more than a vicaire of the 
 Cathedral. The Abbe Troubert meanwhile, at the age of 
 fifty, by the moderation of his conduct, by the apparently 
 total absence of any ambition in his aims, and by his saintly 
 life, had dispelled the fears his superiors had conceived of 
 his supposed cleverness and his alarming exterior. Indeed, 
 for a year past, his health had been seriously impaired, so 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 that his early promotion to the dignity of Vicar-General to 
 the Archbishop seemed probable. His rivals even hoped for 
 his appointment, to enable them the more effectually to pre- 
 pare for their own, during the short span of life that might 
 yet be granted him by a malady that had become chronic. 
 Birotteau's triple chin, far from suggesting the same hopes, 
 displayed to the candidates who were struggling for the 
 canonry all the symptoms of vigorous health, and his gout 
 seemed to them the proverbial assurance of a long life. 
 
 The Abbe Chapeloud, a man of great good sense, whose 
 amiability had secured him the friendship of persons in good 
 society and of the various heads of the diocese, had always 
 opposed the elevation of the Abbe Troubert, secretly and 
 with much address; he had even hindered his admission to 
 any of the salons where the best set in Tours were wont to 
 meet, though during his lifetime Troubert always treated him 
 with great respect, and on all occasions showed him the ut- 
 most deference. This persistent submissiveness had not 
 availed to change the deceased Canon's opinion; during his 
 last walk with Birotteau, he had said to him once more : 
 
 ''Do not trust that dry pole Troubert! He is Sixtus V. 
 reduced to the scale of a bishopric." 
 
 This was Mademoiselle Gamard's friend and messmate, 
 who, the very day after that on which she had, so to speak, 
 declared war with poor Birotteau, had come to call on him 
 with every mark of friendliness. 
 
 "You must excuse Marianne/^ said Troubert as she came 
 in. "I fancy she did my room first. My place is very damp, 
 and I coughed a great deal during the night. — You are very 
 healthily situated here," he added, looking up at the 
 mouldings. 
 
 ''Oh, I am lodged like a Canon !" replied Birotteau with a 
 -smile. 
 
 "And I like a curate," replied the humble priest. 
 
 "Yes, but before long you will be lodged in the Arch- 
 bishop's Palace," said the good Abbe, who only wanted that 
 everybody should be happy. 
 
THE VICAII OF TOURS 
 
 353 
 
 ^'Oh ! or in the graveyard. Grod's will be done !" and Trou- 
 bert looked up to heaven with a resigned air. "I came/' he 
 went on, "to beg you to lend me the General Clergy List. 
 No one but you has the book at Tours." 
 
 "Take it out of the bookcase/' replied Birotteau, reminded 
 by the Canon's last words of all the joys of his life. 
 
 The tall priest went into the library, and remained, there 
 all the time the Abbe was dressing. Presently the breakfast- 
 bell rang, and Birotteau, reflecting that but for Troubert's 
 visit he would have had no fire to get up by, said to himself, 
 "He is a good man !" 
 
 The two priests went down together, each armed with an 
 enormous folio, which they laid on one of the consoles in 
 the dining-room. 
 
 "What in the world is that ?" asked Mademoiselle Gamard 
 in sharp tones, addressing Birotteau. "You are not going 
 to lumber up my dining-room with old books, I hope !" 
 
 "They are some books I wanted," said the Abbe Troubert. 
 "Monsieur is kind enough to lend them to me." 
 
 "I might have guessed that/' said she with a scornful 
 smile. "Monsieur Birotteau does not often study such big 
 books." 
 
 "And how are you, mademoiselle?" asked the Abbe in a 
 piping voice. 
 
 "Wh}^, not at all well," she replied curtly. "You were the 
 cause of my being roused from my first sleep,, and I felt 
 the effects all night." And as she seated herself. Made- 
 moiselle Gamard added, "Gentlemen, the milk will get cold." 
 
 Astounded at being so sourly received by his hostess when 
 he expected her to apologize, but frightened, as timid people 
 are, by the prospect of a discussion, especially when they 
 themselves are the subject of it, the poor Abbe took his place 
 in silence. Then, recognizing in Mademoiselle Gamard's 
 face the obvious symptoms of a bad temper, he sat warring 
 with his common-sense, which advised him not to submit to 
 her want of manners, while his nature prompted him to avoid 
 a quarrel. Birotteau, a prey to this internal struggle, began 
 
354 
 
 THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 by seriously studying the broad-green stripes painted on the 
 oilcloth cover, which, from immemorial habit, Mademoiselle 
 Gamard always left on the table during breakfast, heedless of 
 the frayed edges and scars innumerable that covered this 
 cloth. The two boarders were seated opposite each other, 
 in cane armchairs at each end of the table, a royal square; 
 the place between them being occupied by the landlady, who 
 towered above the table from a chair mounted on runners, 
 padded with cushions, and backing on the dining-room stove. 
 This room and the common sitting-room were on the ground 
 floor, under the Abbe Birotteau's bedroom and drawing-room. 
 When the Abbe had received from Mademoiselle Gamard 
 his cup of sweetened coffee, he felt chilled by the utter silence 
 in which he was doomed to perform the usually cheerful 
 function of breakfast. He dared not look either at Troubert's 
 expressionless face, nor at the old maid's threatening counte- 
 nance; so, to do something, he turned to the pug-dog, over- 
 burdened with fat, lying near the stove on a cushion whence 
 it never stirred, finding always on the left a little plate of 
 dainties, and on the right a saucer of clean water. 
 
 ^^Well, my pet," said he, ^^so you want your coffee !" 
 
 This personage, one of the most important members of the 
 li.ousehold, but not a troublesome one, since he never barked 
 now, and left the conversation to his mistress, looked up at 
 Birotteau with little eyes buried in the folds of fat that 
 crinkled his face. Then he cunningly shut them again. 
 
 To give the measure of the priest's discomfiture, it must be 
 explained that, being gifted with a voice and volubility as 
 resonant and meaningless as the sound of an india-rubber 
 ball, he asserted, without being able to give the faculty any 
 reason for his opinion, that speech favored digestion. Made- 
 moiselle Gamard, who shared this theory of hygiene, had 
 never hitherto failed to converse during meals, notwithstand- 
 ing their misunderstanding; but now for some few days 
 the Abbe had racked his wits in vain to ask her insidious 
 questions which might loosen her tongue. If the narrow 
 limits to which this story is restricted would allow of a report 
 
HIE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 855 
 
 in full of one of these conversations which always provoked 
 the Abbe Troubert's bitter and sardonic smiles, it would give 
 a perfect picture of the Boeotian existence of provincials. 
 Some clever men might perhaps be even pleased to know the 
 extraordinary amplitude given by the Abbe Birotteau and 
 Mademoiselle Gamard to their personal opinions on politics, 
 religion, and literature. There would certainly be some very 
 funny things to tell : such as their reasons, in 1820, for 
 doubting the death of Napoleon, or the conjectures which 
 led them to believe in the survival of Louis XVII., smuggled 
 away in a hollow log of wood. Who would not have laughed 
 to hear them asserting, with arguments peculiarly their own, 
 that the King of France alone spent the money collected in 
 taxes ; that the Chambers met to destroy the Clergy ; that 
 more than thirteen hundred thousand persons had perished 
 on the scaffold during the Revolution ? Then they discussed 
 the press, knowing nothing of how many newspapers were 
 issued, having not the smallest idea of what this modern 
 power is. Finally, Monsieur Birotteau listened respectfully 
 to Mademoiselle Gamard when she asserted that a man fed 
 m an egg every morning would infallibly die at the end 
 of a year, and that it had been known ; that a soft roll eaten 
 tvithout drinking for a few days would cure sciatica; that 
 all the workmen who had been employed in the destruction 
 of the Abbey of Saint-Martin had died within six months; 
 that a certain prefet had done his utmost in Bonaparte's 
 time to ruin the towers of Saint-Gatien, and a thousand 
 other absurd stories. 
 
 But at the present juncture Birotteau felt his tongue dead 
 within him; so he resigned himself to eating without trying 
 to converse. He soon thought that such silence was perilous 
 to his digestion, and boldly said, "This is excellent coffee !" 
 But the courageous act fell flat. 
 
 After looking at the narrow strip of sky above the garden, 
 between the two black buttresses of Saint-Gatien, the Abbe 
 again was brave enough to remark, "It will be finer to-day 
 than it was yesterday.'' 
 
 24 
 
356 
 
 THE VICAR OP TOURS 
 
 At this Mademoiselle Gamard did no more than cast one 
 of her most ingratiating glances at Monsieur Troiibert, and 
 then turn her eyes full of terrible severity on Birotteau, who 
 was happily looking down. 
 
 No being of the female sex was better able to assume the 
 elegiac attitude of an old maid than Mademoiselle Sophie 
 Gamard; but to do justice in describing a person whose 
 character will give the greatest interest to the trivial events 
 of this drama, and to the antecedent lives of the figures 
 playing a part in it, it will be well here to epitomize the ideas 
 of which the old maid is the outcome. The habits of life 
 form the soul, and the soul forms the countenance. If in 
 society, as in the universe, everything must have a purpose, 
 there yet are on this earth some existences of which the 
 use and purpose are undiscoverable ; morality and political 
 economy alike reject the individual that consumes without 
 producing, that fills a place on earth without diffusing either 
 good or evil — for evil, no doubt, is a form of good of which 
 the results are not immediately manifest. Very rarely does 
 an old maid fail to place herself by her own act in this class 
 of unproductive creatures. Now if the consciousness of work 
 done gives productive beings a sense of satisfaction which 
 helps them to endure life, the knowledge that they are a 
 burden on others, or even merely useless, must produce the 
 contrary effect, and give to the inert a contempt for them- 
 selves as great as that they provoke in others. This stern 
 social reprobation is one of the causes which, unknown to 
 themselves, contribute to implant in their soul the grievance 
 which is stamped on their faces. 
 
 A prejudice, not perhaps without a basis of truth, every- 
 where gives rise — and in France more than elsewhere — to 
 marked disfavor being felt towards a woman with whom no 
 man has chosen to share his fortunes, or to endure the woes 
 of life. And an age comes to unmarried women when the 
 world, rightly or wrongly^ condemns them on the strength 
 of the disdain to which they are victims. If ugly, the 
 amiability of their nature ought to have redeemed the im- 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 857 
 
 perfections of their persons; if pi'etty, their loneliness must 
 have its cause in serious reasons. It is hard to decide which 
 of the two classes is most to be contemned. If their single 
 life is deliberately chosen, if it is a determination to be in- 
 dependent, neither men nor mothers can forgive them for 
 having shirked the sacrifice of woman by refusing to know 
 the passions that make their sex pathetic. To reject its suf- 
 ferings is to forego its poetry, to cease to deserve the sweet 
 consolations to which a mother has always uncontested rights. 
 Then the generous feelings, the exquisite qualities of 
 woman, can only be developed by constant exercise. When 
 she remains unmarried, a creature of the female sex is a 
 self-contradiction: egoistical and cold, she fills us with 
 horror. 
 
 This pitiless verdict is unfortunately too just for old maids 
 to misinterpret its motives. These ideas germinate in their 
 heart as naturally as the effects of their desolate life are 
 imprinted on their features. Thus they wither, because the 
 constant expansion, or the happiness that blooms in a 
 woman's face and lends softness to her movements, has never 
 existed in them. Then they grow harsh and discontented, 
 because a creature that fails of its purpose is unhappy, it 
 suffers, and suffering brings forth viciousness. In fact, be- 
 fore an unmarried womian spites herself for her loneliness, 
 she accuses the whole world, and from accusation there is 
 but one step to the desire for revenge. 
 
 Again, the ill-grace that disfigures their persons is an in- 
 evitable outcome of their life. Never having felt the necessity 
 to please, elegance and good taste are unknown to them. 
 This feeling gradually leads them to choose everything to 
 suit their own convenience at the cost of what might be 
 agreeable to others. Without quite understanding their dis- 
 similarity to other women, at last they observe it and suffer 
 from it. Jealousy is an indelible passion in the female 
 heart. Old maids are jealous for nothing, and know only the 
 woes of the single passion which men can forgive in women 
 because it flatters them. Thus tormented on every side, and 
 
358 
 
 THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 compelled to reject the development of their nature, old maids 
 are always conscious of a moral uneasiness to which they 
 never become accustomed. Is it not hard at any age, es- 
 pecially for a woman, to read a feeling of repugnance on 
 every face, when it ought to have been her fate to inspire 
 none but sensations of kindliness in the hearts of those 
 about her? Hence an old maid's glance is always askance, 
 not so much from modesty as from fear and shame. 
 
 Now, it is impossible that a person perpetually at war with 
 herself, or at loggerheads with life, should leave others in 
 peace, and never envy their happiness. This world of gloomy 
 ideas lay complete in Mademoiselle Gamard's dull gray eyes ; 
 and the broad, dark circle in which they were set spoke of 
 the long struggles of her solitary life. All the wrinkles 
 on her face were straight lines. The form of her brow, head, 
 and cheeks was characterized by rigidity and hardness. 
 Without heeding them, she left the hairs, once brown, of 
 two or three moles on her chin to grow as they would. Her 
 thin lips scarcely covered her long but sufficiently white 
 teeth. She was dark, and her hair had once been black, 
 but terrible headaches had turned it white. This disaster 
 led her to wear a front; but not knowing how to put it on 
 so as to conceal the junction^ there often was a small gap 
 between her cap-border and the black ribbon that fastened 
 this half-wig, very carelessly curled. Her gown, of thin 
 silk in summer, of merinos in winter, and always of Car- 
 melite brown, fitted her ungraceful figure and thin arms 
 rather too closely. Her collar, always limp, betrayed a 
 throat whose reddish skin was as finely lined as an oak leaf 
 boked at in the light. 
 
 Her parentage accounted for the faults of her figure. She 
 was the daughter of a dealer in fire-logs, a peasant who had 
 nsen in the world. At eighteen she might have been fresh 
 and plump, but not a trace was now left either of the white 
 skin or the fine color she boasted of having then had. The 
 hues of her complexion had acquired the dull pallor com- 
 mon enough in very devout persons. An aquiline nose was 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 S59 
 
 ©f all her features that which most strongly expressed the 
 despotism of her ideas, just as the flatness of her forehead 
 re^vealed her narrowness of mind. Her movements had an 
 odd abruptness bereft of all grace; and only to see her pull 
 her handkerchief out of her bag and loudly blow her nose 
 would have told you what her character and habits were. 
 Fairly tall, she held herself very upright, justifying the re- 
 mark of a naturalist, who explains the stiffness of old maids 
 physiologically by declaring that all their joints anchylose. 
 She walked so that the motion did not distribute itself 
 equally over her whole person, or produce the graceful un- 
 dulations that are so attractive in a woman; she moved all 
 of a piece, so to speak, seeming to lift herself at every step, 
 like the statue of the Commendatore. In her moments of 
 good-humor she would give it out, as all old maids do, that 
 she could have been married, but that, happily, she had found 
 cut her lover's faithlessness in time, and she thus, without 
 knowing it, passed judgment on her heart in favor of her 
 sense of self-interest. 
 
 This typical figure of an old maid was suitably set against 
 a background of the grotesque pattern, representing Turkish 
 landscapes, of a satin wall-paper with which the dining- 
 room was hung. Mademoiselle Gamard habitually occupied 
 this room, ornamented by two consoles and a barometer. In 
 the place occupied by each priest was a little footstool in 
 worsted work of faded hues. 
 
 The public sitting-room, where she received company, was 
 worthy of her. The room will be at once familiar when it is 
 known that it went by the name of the yellow drawing-room ; 
 the hangings were yellow, the furniture and wall-paper yel- 
 low; on the chimney-shelf, in front of a mirror with a gilt 
 frame, candlesticks and a clock in cut glass reflected a hard 
 glitter to the eye. As to Mademoiselle Gamard's private 
 sanctum, no one had ever been allowed to enter it. It could 
 only be conjectured that it was full of the odds and ends, 
 the shabby furniture, the rags and tatters, so to speak, which 
 all old maids collect and cling to so fondly. 
 
360 
 
 THE VICAR OP TOURS 
 
 This was the woman who was destined to exert the greatest 
 influence over the Abbe Birotteau's latter days. Having 
 failed to exercise the energies bestowed on woman in the way 
 intended by nature, and urged by the need of expending 
 them, this old maid had thrown them into the sordid intrigue, 
 the petty tittle-tattle of provincial life, and the selfish schem- 
 ing which at last exclusively absorbs all old maids. 
 
 Birotteau, for his woe, had developed in Sophie Gamard 
 the only feelings this unhappy creature could possibly know, 
 those of hatred; these, till now latent, as a result of the calm 
 monotony of a country-town life, whose horizon was to her 
 more especially narrow, were presently to become all the 
 more intense for being wreaked on small things, and in a 
 narrow sphere of activity. Birotteau was one of those men 
 who are predestined to suffer everything, because, as they 
 never foresee anything, they can avoid nothing; everything 
 falls on them. 
 
 "Yes, it will be fine," the Canon replied after a pause, 
 seeming to come out of his meditations and to wish to fulfil 
 the laws of good manners. 
 
 Birotteau^ frightened at the time that had elapsed be- 
 tween the remark and the reply, since he, for the first tim.e 
 in his life, had swallowed his coffee without speaking, left 
 the dining-room, where his heart was held as in a vise. Feel- 
 ing his cup of coffee lie heavy on his stomach, he went to 
 walk, sadly enough, up and down the narrow box-edged 
 paths which marked out a star in the garden. But as he 
 turned after his first round, he saw the Abbe Troubert and 
 Mademoiselle Gamard standing at the glass door of the 
 drawing-room ; he with his arms crossed, as motionless as the 
 statue on a tomb, she leaning against the shutter-door. Both, 
 as they watched him, seemed to be counting the number of 
 his steps. 
 
 To a timid person there is nothing so distressing as being 
 the object of inquisitive inspection; when it is made by 
 ,the eyes of hatred, the sort of suffering it inflicts becomes 
 an intolerable martyrdom. Presently the Abbe fancied that 
 
THE VICAK OF TOURS 
 
 361 
 
 he was hindering Mademoiselle Gamard and the Canon from 
 taking their walk. This notion, inspired alike by fear and 
 by good-nature, acquired such proportions, that he abandoned 
 the place. He went away, already thinking no more of his 
 canonry, so greatly was he worried by the woman's madden- 
 ing tyranny. 
 
 By chance, and happily for him, he was kept very busy 
 at Saint-Gatien, where there were several funerals, a mar- 
 riage, and two baptisms. This enabled him to forget his 
 troubles. When his appetite warned him of the dinner hour, 
 he took out his watch in some alarm, seeing that it was some 
 minutes past four. He knew Mademoiselle Gamard's 
 punctuality, so he hurried home. 
 
 He saw the first course brought down again as he passed 
 the kitchen. Then on going into the dining-room, the old 
 maid said to him in a tone of voice which betrayed alike the 
 harshness of a reproof and the glee of finding her boarder 
 in fault, "It is half -past four. Monsieur Birotteau; you 
 knew we should not wait for you.^^ 
 
 The priest looked at the dining-room clock, and the ar- 
 rangement of the gauze wrapper, intended to protect it from 
 dust, showed him that his landlady had wound it in the 
 course of the morning, and had allowed herself the pleasure 
 of setting it faster than the clock of Saint-Gatien's. There 
 was nothing to be said. The least word of the suspicion he 
 had conceived would have sprung the most terrible and 
 plausible of those explosions of eloquence which Mademoiselle 
 Gamard, like all women of her class, could give vent to in 
 such cases. 
 
 The thousand-and-one vexations that a maid-servant can 
 inflict on her master, or a wife on her husband, in the daily 
 course of ,private life, were imagined by Mademoiselle Ga- 
 mard, who "heaped them on her border. The way in which she 
 plotted her conspiracies against the poor Abbe's domestic 
 comfort bore the stamp of deeply malignant genius. She 
 contrived never to be in the wrong. 
 
 By the end of a week after the opening of this tale. 
 
362 
 
 THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 his life in the house, and his position towards Mademoiselle 
 Gamard, revealed to him a plot, hatching for six months 
 past. So long as the old maid had been covert- in her re- 
 venge, and the priest could voluntarily keep up his self-deceit, 
 refusing to believe in her malevolent purpose, the moral ef- 
 fects had made no great progress in him. But since the in- 
 cidents of the displacement of the candlestick and the clock 
 put too fast, Birotteau could no longer doubt that he was 
 living under the rule of an aversion that kept an ever-watch- 
 ful eye on him. From this he rapidly sank into despair, for 
 ever seeing Mademoiselle Gamard's lean and talon-like fin- 
 gers ready to claw his heart. 
 
 The old maid, happy in living on a sentiment so teeming 
 with excitement as revenge is, delighted in hovering and 
 wheeling above the Abbe as a bird of prey hovers and 
 circles over a field mouse before seizing it. ' She had long 
 plotted a scheme which the bewildered priest could not pos- 
 sibly guess, and which she soon began to unfold, showing 
 the genius that can be displayed in small things by isolated 
 beings whose soul, incapable of apprehending the grandeur 
 of true piety, has lost itself in the trivialities of devotion. 
 The last and most frightful aggravation of his torments was 
 that the nature of them prohibited Birotteau, an effusive 
 man who loved to be pitied and comforted, from enjoying 
 the little solace of relating them to his friends. The small 
 amount of tact he owed to his shyness made him dread ap- 
 pearing ridiculous by troubling himself about such silly 
 trifles. At the same time, these silly trifles made up his 
 whole life, the life he loved, full of busy vacuity and vacuous 
 business, a dull, gray life, in which too strong a feeling was 
 a misfortune, and the absence of all excitement is happi- 
 ness. Thus the poor Abbe's paradise had suddenly become 
 a hell. In short, his torments were intolerable. 
 
 The terror with which he contemplated an explanation 
 with Mademoiselle Gamard grew daily, and the secret mis- 
 fortunes which blighted every hour of his old age injured 
 his health. One morning, as he put on his speckled blue 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 363 
 
 stockings, he observed that the circumference of his calf 
 had shrunk by eight lines. Appalled at such a terribly un- 
 mistakable symptom, he determined to make an effort to 
 persuade the Abbe Troubert to intervene officially between 
 himself and Mademoiselle Gamard. 
 
 When he found himself in the presence of the imposing 
 Canon, who came out of a study crammed with papers, where 
 he was always at work, admitting nobody, to receive him in a 
 bare room, the Abbe was almost ashamed to speak of Made- \ 
 moiselle Gramard's petty aggravations to a man who seemed 
 so seriously occupied. But after having suffered all the 
 misery of mental deliberation which humble, weak, or ir^ 
 resolute persons go through, even with regard to trifles, he 
 made up his mind to explain the position to the Canon, 
 not without feeling his heart swollen by extraordinary throbs. 
 Troubert listened with a cold, grave air, trying, but in vain, 
 to control some smiles, which, to intelligent eyes, might have 
 betrayed the satisfaction of a secret desire, A flash sparkled 
 in his eye when Birotteau described to him, with the eloquence 
 lent by true emotion, the bitterness that was incessantly 
 poured out for him; but Troubert at once covered his eyes 
 with his hands, a gesture common to great thinkers, and pre- 
 served his habitually dignified attitude. 
 
 When the Abbe ceased speaking he would have been puz- 
 zled indeed if he had tried to read any sign of the feelings 
 he imagined he should incite in this mysterious priest, on 
 his face, mottled now with yellow patches — yellower than 
 even his usual bilious complexion. After a moment's silence, 
 the Canon made one of those replies of which every word 
 must have been carefully studied to give them their full 
 bearing, but which subsquentl}^ showed to capable persons 
 the amazing depth of his mind and the power of his in- 
 tellect. 
 
 He finally crushed Birotteau by saying that all these things 
 surprised him the more, because, but for his brother's ex- 
 planation, he would never have discerned them. He ascribed 
 this dulness of perception to his important occupations, to 
 
364 
 
 THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 his work, and to the supremacy of certain lofty thoughts, 
 which did not allow of his heeding the trivialities of life. 
 He pointed out, but without assuming the airs of wishing 
 to censure the conduct of a man whose years and learning 
 commanded his respect, that "the hermits of old rarely 
 thought about their food, or their dwelling in the deserts, 
 where they gave themselves up to holy contemplation," and 
 that "in our days the priest could, in mind, make a desert 
 for himself in every place." Then, returning to Birotteau, 
 he remarked that "such squabbles were a quite new thing to 
 him. During twelve years nothing of the kind had ever 
 arisen between Mademoiselle Gamard and the venerated Abbe 
 Chapeloud. As for himself, he could, no doubt, act as moder- 
 ator between the priest and their landlady, since his friend- 
 ship for her did not overstep the limits imposed by the laws 
 of the Church on its faithful ministers; but then justice 
 would require that he should also h6ar Mademoiselle Gamard. 
 At the same time, he discerned no change in her; he had 
 always seen her thus; he had willingly yielded to some of 
 her vagaries, knowing that the excellent woman was kind- 
 ness and sweetness itself; these little caprices of temper 
 were to be ascribed to the sufferings caused by a pulmonary 
 trouble, of which she never spoke, resigning herself to it 
 as a true Christian." He ended by saying that "when he 
 should have lived a few years longer with Mademoiselle, 
 he would appreciate her better, and recognize the beauties of 
 her admirable character." 
 
 The Abbe Birotteau came away bewildered. Under the 
 absolute necessity of taking counsel with himself alone, he 
 gauged Mademoiselle Gamard by himself. The poor man 
 thought that by absenting himself for a few days this wo- 
 man's hatred would burn itself out for lack of fuel. So he 
 determined to go, as he had done before now, to spend 
 some time at a country place where Madame de Listomere 
 always went at the end of the autumn, a season when, in 
 Touraine, the sky is usually clear and mild. Poor man! 
 He was thus carrying out the secret wishes of liis terrible 
 
THE VICAR OIV TOUKS 
 
 365 
 
 enemy, whose schemes could not be thwarted by anything 
 short of monk-like endurance; while he, guessing nothing, 
 and not knowing his own business even, was doomed to fall 
 like a lamb under the first blow from the butcher. 
 
 Lying on the slope between the town of Tours and the 
 heights of Saint-Georges, facing the south, and sheltered 
 by cliffs, Madame do Listomere's estate combined all the' 
 charms of the country with the pleasures of the town. It 
 was not more than a ten-minutes' drive from the Bridge of 
 Tours to the gate of this house, known as VAlouette (the 
 Lark) — an immense convenience in a place where no one 
 will disturb himself for any earthly thing, not even in quest 
 of pleasure. 
 
 The Abbe Birotteau had been about ten days at I'Alouette, 
 when one morning, at the breakfast hour, the lodge- 
 keeper came to tell him that Monsieur Caron wished to speak 
 with him. Monsieur Caron was a lawyer employed by Made- 
 moiselle Gamard. Birotteau, not remembering this, and 
 conscious of no litigious difficulty to be settled with anybody 
 in the world, left the table, not without some anxiety, to 
 meet the lawyer ; he found him sitting modestly on the para- 
 pet of a terrace. 
 
 "Yo'ir intention of remaining no longer as a resident 
 under Mademoiselle Gamard's roof being now quite evi- 
 dent " the man of business began. 
 
 "Dear me, monsieur," cried Birotteau, interrupting him, 
 "I never thought of leaving her." 
 
 "And yet, monsieur," the lawyer went on, "you must cer- 
 tainly have expressed yourself to that effect to Mademoiselle, 
 since she has sent me to inquire whether you intend remain- 
 ing long in the country. The event of a prolonged absence not 
 having been provided for in your agreement, might give rise 
 to some discussion. Nov/, as Mademoiselle Gamard under- 
 stands it, your board " 
 
 "Monsieur," said Birotteau in surprise, and again inter- 
 rupting the lawyer, "1 did noi (hiulc it could be necessary to 
 take steps, almost legal in their nature to- — 
 
366 
 
 THE VICAU OF TOURS 
 
 "Mademoiselle Gamard, wishing to preclude any difficulty/' 
 said Monsieur Caron, "has sent me to come to an understand- 
 ing with you." 
 
 "Very well, if you will be so obliging as to call again to- 
 morrow, I, on my part, will have taken advice." 
 "So be it," said Caron with a bow. 
 
 The scrivener withdrew. The hapless priest, appalled by 
 the pertinacity of Mademoiselle Gamard's persecution, went 
 back to Madame de Listomere's dining-room looking quite 
 upset. At his mere appearance every one asked him, "Why, 
 Monsieur Birotteau, what is the matter ?" 
 
 The Abbe, greatly distressed, sat down without answering, 
 so overwhelmed was he by the ^^ague vision of his misfortune. 
 But after breakfast, when several of his friends had gathered 
 round a good fire in the drawing-room, Birotteau artlessly 
 told them the tale of his catastrophe. The hearers, who 
 were just beginning to be bored by their stay in the coun- 
 try, were deeply interested in an intrigue so completely in 
 keeping with provincial life. Everybody took the Abbe's 
 part against the old maid. 
 
 "Why !" cried Madame de Listomere, "do you not plainly 
 see that the Abbe Troubert wants your rooms?" 
 
 In this place the. historian would have a right to sketch 
 this lady's portrait ; but it occurs to him that even those 
 persons to whom Sterne's cognomology is unlniown could 
 surely not utter the three words Madame de LisTOM:fcRE 
 without seeing her — noble and dignified, tempering the au- 
 sterity of piety by the antique elegance of monarchical and 
 classic manners and polite distinction; kind, but a little for- 
 mal; speaking slightly through her nose; allowing herself 
 to read la Nouvelle Helo'ise, and to go to the play; still 
 wearing her own hair. 
 
 "The Abbe Birotteau must certainly not yield to that nag= 
 ging old woman !" cried Monsieur de Listomere, a lieutenant 
 in the navy, spending a holiday Avith his aunt. "If the Abbe 
 has any courage, and will follow my advice, he will soon have 
 recovered his peace of mind." 
 
 In short, everybody began to analyze Mademoiselle 
 
THE VICAR OF 'I OURS 
 
 367 
 
 Gramard's proceedings with the acumen peculiar to provin- 
 cials, who, it certainly cannot be denied, possess the talent 
 of laying bare the most secret human actions. 
 
 "You have not hit the mark," said an old landowner who 
 knew the country. "There is something very serious under 
 this which I have not yet mastered. The Abbe Troubert is 
 far too deep to be so easily seen through. Our good friend 
 Birotteau is only at the beginning of his troubles. In the 
 first place, would he be happy and left in peace even if he 
 gave up his rooms to Troubert? I doubt it. — If Caron came 
 to tell you," he went on, turning to the puzzled Abbe, "that 
 you had intended to leave Mademoiselle Gamard, with the 
 object of getting you out of her house. . . . Well, you 
 will have to go, willy nilly. That kind of man never risks a 
 chance; they only play when they hold the trumps." 
 
 This old gentleman, a certain Monsieur de Bourbonne, 
 epitomized provincial ideas as completely as Voltaire epito- 
 mized the spirit of his time. This withered little old man 
 professed in matters of dress all the indifference of a pro- 
 prietor whose estate has a quotable value in the department. 
 His countenance, tanned by the sun of Touraine, was shrewd 
 rather than clever. He was accustomed to weigh his words, 
 to consider his actions, and he concealed his deep caution 
 under a delusive bluntness. The very least observation was 
 enough to discover that, like a Norman peasant, he would 
 get the advantage in every stroke of business. He was great 
 in oenology — the favorite science of the Tourangeaux. He 
 had managed to extend the circle of one of his estates by tak- 
 ing in the alluvial land of the Loire without getting into a 
 lawsuit with the State. This achievement had established his 
 reputation as a clever man. If, charmed by Monsieur de 
 Bourbonne's conversation, you had asked his biography of one 
 of his fellow-provincials, "Oh ! he is a cunning old fox," 
 would have been the proverbial reply of all who envied him., 
 and they were many. In Touraine, as in most provinces, 
 jealousy lies at the base of the tongue. 
 
 Monsieur de Bourbonne's remark caused a brief silence. 
 
368 
 
 THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 during which the members of this little committee seemed 
 lost in thought. 
 
 At this juncture Mademoiselle Salomon de Villenoix was 
 announced. She had just come from Tours, prompted by 
 her wish to be of service to Birotteau, and the news she 
 brought completely changed the aspect of affairs. At the 
 moment when she came in, every one but the landowner was 
 advising Birotteau to hold his own against Troubert and 
 Gamard, under the auspices of the aristocratic party, who 
 would support him. 
 
 "The Vicar-General," said Mademoiselle Salomon, "who 
 has all the promotions in his hands, has just been taken ill, 
 and the Archbishop has commissioned Canon Troubert to 
 act in his place. The nomination to the canonry now de- 
 pends entirely on him. N'ow yesterda}^, at Mademoiselle de 
 la Blottiere's, the Abbe Poirel was speaking of the annoyances 
 Monsieur Birotteau occasioned to Mademoiselle Garaard, in 
 such a way as to seem to justify the neglect which will cer- 
 tainly fall on our good Abbe. *The Abbe Birotteau is a man 
 who badly needed the x\bbe Chapeloud,' said he, ^and since 
 
 that virtuous Canon's death it has been -proved that ' 
 
 Then came a series of suppositions and calumnies. — You un- 
 derstand ?" 
 
 "Troubert will be made Vicar-General," said Monsieur de 
 Bourbonne solemnly. ^ 
 
 "Come now," cried Madame de Listomere, looking at 
 Birotteau, "which would you prefer — to be made Canon, or 
 to remain with Mademoiselle Gamard?" 
 
 "To be made Canon," v/as the general outcry. 
 
 "A¥ell, then," Madame de Listomere went on, "the Abbe . 
 Troubert and Mademoiselle Gamard must be allowed to have 
 their way. Have they not conveyed to you indirectly by 
 Caron's visit that, provided you consent to leave your rooms, 
 you shall be made Canon? One good turn for anothei." 
 
 Everyone exclaimed at Madame de Listomere's acumen 
 and sagacity; but her nephew, the Baron de Listomere, said 
 in a comical tone to Monsieur de Bourbonne : 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 "I should have liked to see the battle between the Gamard 
 and the Birotteauf 
 
 But, for the Abbe's worse luck, the forces were not equal, 
 with the worldly-wise on one side, and the old maid upheld 
 by the Abbe Troubert on the other. The time was at hand 
 when the struggle would become more decisive, and assume a 
 greater scope and immense proportions. 
 
 By the advice of Madame de Listomere and most of her 
 adherents, who were beginning to take a passionate inter- 
 est in this intrigue flung into the vacuity of their country 
 life, a footman was despatched for Monsieur Caron. The 
 lawyer returned with amazing promptitude, a fact that 
 alarmed no one but Monsieur de Bourbonne. 
 
 "Let us adjourn any decision till we have fuller informa- 
 tion,'' was the advice of this Fabius in a dressing-gown, 
 whose deep reflections revealed to him some abstruse plan of 
 battle on the Tours chessboard. 
 
 He tried to enlighten Birotteau as to the perils of his 
 position. But the "old fox's" shrewdness did not subserve 
 the frenzy of the moment; he was scarcely listened to. 
 
 The meeting between the lawyer and Birotteau was brief. 
 The Abbe came in looking quite scared, and saying, "He re- 
 quires me to sign a paper declaring my decession." 
 
 "What barbarous word is that?" said the navy lieuten- 
 ant. 
 
 "And what does it mean?" cried Madame de Listomere. 
 
 "It simply means that the Abbe is to declare his readiness 
 to leave Mademoiselle Gamard's house," replied Monsieur de 
 Bourbonne, taking a pinch of snuff. 
 
 "Is that all ? — Sign it !" said Madame de Listomere to 
 Birotteau. "If you have really made up your mind to quit 
 her house, there can be no harm done by declaring your will." 
 —The Will of Birotteau ! 
 
 "That is true," said Monsieur de Bourbonne, shutting his 
 snuff-box with a dry snap, of which it is impossible to ren- 
 der the full meaning, for it was a language by itself. "But 
 
STO 
 
 l^HE ViCAR OF TOURS 
 
 writing is always dangerous/' lie added, placing the snuff- 
 box on the chimney-shelf with a look that terrified the 
 Abbe. 
 
 Birotteau was so bewildered by the uphea^/al of all his 
 ideas, by the swiftness of events which had come on him 
 and found him defenceless, and by the lightness with which 
 his friends treated the most cherished circumstances of his 
 lonely life, that he remained motionless, as if lost in the 
 moon, not thinking of anything, but listening and trying to 
 catch the sense of the hasty words everybody else was so 
 ready with. He took up Monsieur Caron's document, and 
 read it as though the lawyer's deed were in fact the object 
 of his attention ; but it was merely mechanical, and he signed 
 the paper by which he declared himself ready and willing 
 to give up his residence with Mademoiselle Gamard as well 
 as his board, as provided by the agreement between them. 
 When Birotteau had signed the deed, Caron took it, and 
 asked him where his client was to bestow the goods and chat- 
 tels belonging to him. Birotteau mentioned Madame de Lis- 
 toniere's house, and the lady by a nod consented to receive 
 the Abbe for some days, never doubting but that he would 
 ere long be made a Canon. The old landowner wished .to see 
 this sort of act of renunciation, and Monsieur Caron handed 
 it to him. 
 
 "Why," said he to the Abbe, after having read it, "is 
 there any written agreement between you and Mademoiselle 
 Gamard? Where is it? What are the conditons?" 
 
 "The paper is in my rooms," said Birotteau. 
 
 "Do you know its contents ?" the old gentleman asked the 
 lawyer. 
 
 "No, monsieur," said Monsieur Caron, holding out his 
 hand for the ominous document. 
 
 "Ah, ha!" said Monsieur de Bourbonne to himself, "you, 
 master law3^er, are no doubt informed of what that agree- 
 ment contains, but you are not paid to tell us." And he re- 
 turned the deed of "decession" to the lawyer. 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 "Where am I to put all my furniture?" cried Birotteau, 
 *'and my books, my beautiful library, my nice pictureri, 
 my red drawing-room — all my things, in short 
 
 And the poor man's despair at finding himself thus up- 
 rooted was so guileless, it so perfectly showed the purity of 
 his life, and his ignorance of the world, that Madame de 
 Listomere and Mademoiselle Salomon said, to comfort him, 
 and in the tone that mothers use when they promise a child 
 a plaything: 
 
 "There, there, do not worry yourself about such silly 
 trifles. We shall easily find you a home less cold and gloomy 
 than Mademoiselle Gamard's house. If no lodging is to be 
 found to suit you — ^well, one of us will take you as a 
 boarder. Come, play a hit at backgammon. You can call on 
 the Abbe Troubert to-morrow to ask his support, and you 
 will see how well he will receive you." 
 
 Weak-minded persons are reassured as easily as they are 
 frightened. So poor Birotteau, dazzled by the prospect of 
 living with Madame de Listomere, forgot the ruin, now ir- 
 remediably complete, of the happiness he had so long sighed 
 for, and so thoroughly reveled in. Still, at night, before 
 falling asleep, with the anguish of a man to whom a re- 
 moval, and the formation of new habits, were as the end of 
 the world, he tortured his mind to imagine where he could 
 find as convenient a home for his library as that corridor. 
 As he pictured his books astray, his furniture dispersed, and 
 his home broken up, he wondered a thousand times why 
 his first year at Mademoiselle Gamard's had been so delight- 
 ful, and the second so wretched. And again and again this 
 disaster was a bottomless pit in which his mind was lost. 
 
 The canonry no longer seemed to him a sufficient com- 
 pensation for so many misfortunes; he compared his life to 
 a stocking in which one dropped stitch leads to a ladder all 
 the way down the web. Mademoiselle Salomon was left to 
 him. But, losing all his old illusions, the poor priest no 
 longer dared believe in a new friend. 
 
872 
 
 THE VICAR OP TOURS 
 
 In the citta dolente of old maids there are several, especially 
 in France, whose life is a sacrifice nobly renewed day by day 
 to noble feeling. Some remain proudly faithful to a heart 
 which death untimely snatched from them; martyrs to love, 
 they learn the secret of womanliness of soul. Others suc- 
 cumb to a family pride which, to our shame, is daily waxing 
 less; they have devoted themselves to make the fortime of 
 a brother, or to the care of orphan nephews; such women 
 are mothers though remaining maids. These old maids rise 
 to the highest heroism of their sex, by consecrating every 
 womanly feeling to the worship of misfortune. They idealize 
 the concept of woman, by renouncing all the rewards of her 
 natural destiny, and accepting only its penalties. They live 
 enshrined in the beauty of their self-sacrifice, and men 
 reverently bow their heads before their faded forms. Made- 
 moiselle de Sombreuil is neither wife nor maid; she was, 
 and always will be, an embodied poem. 
 
 Mademoiselle Salomon was one of these heroic creaturefj. 
 Her sacrifice was religiously sublime, inasmuch as it would 
 remain inglorious after having been a daily anguish. Young 
 and handsome, she was loved; her lover lost his reason. For 
 five years she had devoted herself with the courage of love 
 to the mechanical joys of the unhappy man ; she was so fully 
 wedded to his madness that she did not think him mad. 
 
 She was a woman of simple manners, frank in speech, 
 with a pale face not devoid of character, though the features 
 were regular. She never spoke of the experiences of her life. 
 Only, now and then, the sudden shudder with which she 
 heard the narrative of some dreadful or melancholy incident 
 betrayed in her the fine qualities evolved by great sorrows. 
 .She had come to live at Tours after the death of her com- 
 panion in life. There she could not be appreciated at her 
 true value; she was regarded as a "good creature." She was 
 very charitable, and attached herself by preference to the weak 
 and helpless. For this reason she had, of course, the deepest 
 interest in the unhappy priest. 
 
 Mademoiselle Salomon de Villenoix, driving into town 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 373 
 
 early next morning, took Birotteau with her, set him down 
 on the Cathedral quay, and left him making his way towards 
 the Close, where he was in great haste to arrive, to save the 
 canonry, at any rate, from the shipwreck, and to superin- 
 tend the removal of his furniture. He rang, not without vio- 
 lent palpitations, at the door of the house, whither for four- 
 teen years he had been in the habit of coming, in which he 
 had dwelt, and whence he was now to be for ever exiled after 
 dreaming that he might die there in peace like his friend 
 Chapeloud. 
 
 Marianne was surprised to see him. He told her he had 
 come to speak to Monsieur Troubert, and turned towards the 
 ground-floor rooms in which the Canon lodged ; but Marianne 
 called out to him: 
 
 "The Abbe Troubert is not there^ Monsieur le Vicaire ; he 
 is in your old rooms." 
 
 These words were a fearful shock to Birotteau, who at last 
 understood Troubert's character, and the unfathomable depth 
 of revenge so slowly worked out, when he saw him quite at 
 home in Chapeloud's library, seated in Chapeloud's fine 
 Gothic chair — sleeping, no doubt, in Chapeloud's bed, using 
 Chapeloud's furniture, contravening Chapeloud's will, in 
 short, disinheriting Chapeloud's friend; — ^that very Chape- 
 loud who had for so long penned him in at Mademoiselle 
 Gramard's, hindered his advancement, and kept him out of 
 ihe drawing-rooms of Tours. By what magic wand had this 
 transformation been effected? Were these things no longer 
 Birotteau's? 
 
 Indeed, as he noted the sardonic expression with which 
 Troubert looked round on this library, Birotteau inferred 
 lhat the future Vicar-General was secure of possessing for 
 Bver the plunder of the two men he had so bitterly hated — 
 Chapeloud as an enemy, and Birotteau because in him he still 
 &aw Chapeloud. At the sight a thousand ideas surged up 
 in the worthy man's heart and wrapped him in a sort of 
 trance. He stood motionless, and, as it were, fascinated by 
 Iroubert's eye, which, was fixed on him. 
 
374 
 
 THE YICAR OF TOURS 
 
 "I cannot suppose, monsieur," said Birotteau at last, "that 
 you would wish to deprive me of the things that are mine. 
 Though Mademoiselle Gamard may have been impatient to 
 move you, she must surely be just enough to allow me time to 
 identify my books and remove my furniture." 
 
 "Monsieur," said the Canon coldly, and betraying no sort 
 of feeling in his face, "Mademoiselle Gamard told me yester- 
 day that you were leaving ; of the cause of it I know nothing. 
 If she moved me up here, it was because she was obliged to do 
 so. Monsieur TAbbe Poirel has taken my rooms. Whether 
 the furniture in these rooms belongs to mademoiselle, I know 
 not. If it is yours, you know her perfect honesty; the saintli- 
 ness of her life is a guarantee for it. 
 
 "As to myself, you know how plainly I live. For fifteen 
 years I slept in a bare room, never heeding the damp, which 
 is killing me by inches. At the same time, if you wish to 
 return to these rooms, I am ready to give them up to you." 
 
 As he listened to this terrible speech, Birotteau forgot the 
 matter of the canonry; he went downstairs as briskly as a 
 young man to find Mademoiselle Gamard, and met her at the ^ 
 bottom of the stairs in the large paved passage which joined 
 the two parts of the house. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," said he, bowing, and not heeding the 
 sour, sardonic smile that curled her lips, or the extraordinary 
 fire that gave her eyes a glare like a tiger's, "I cannot un- 
 derstand why you did not wait till I had removed my furni- 
 ture before -" 
 
 "What?" she exclaimed, interrupting him, "have not ali 
 your things been taken to Madame de Listomere's ?" 
 
 "But my furniture?" 
 
 "Did you never read your agreement ?" cried she, in tone^ 
 which ought to be expressed in musical notation to shov 
 now many shades hatred could infuse into the accentuation 
 of every word. 
 
 And Mademoiselle Gamard seemed to swell, her eyes 
 flashed once more, and her face beamed; her whole person* 
 thrilled with satisfaction. 
 
THE VICAR OP TOURS 
 
 The Abbe Troubert opened a window to see better to read 
 a folio volume. 
 
 Birottean stood as if thunderstricken. 
 
 Mademoiselle Gamard trumpeted at him, in a voice as shrill 
 as a clarion, the following words : — 
 
 "Was it not agreed that, in the event of your leaving my 
 house, yoar furniture was to become mine to indemnify me 
 for the dilference between what you paid me for your boards 
 and what I received from the late respectable Abbe Chape- 
 loud? Now, as Monsieur TAbbe Poirel has been made 
 Canon 
 
 At these last words Birotteau bowed slightly as if to take 
 leave; them he rushed out of the house. He was afraid lest, 
 if he staid any longer, he should faint, and so give his re- 
 Jentless foes a too great triumph. Walking like a drunken 
 man, he got back to Madame de Listomere's town house, 
 where, in a lower room, he found his linen, clothes, and 
 papers all packed into a trunk. At the sight of those relics 
 of his property, the unhappy priest sat down and hid his face 
 in his hands to hide his tears from the sight of men. The 
 Abbe Poirel was Canon ! He, Birotteau, found himself 
 homeless, bereft of fortune and furniture. 
 
 Happily, Mademoiselle Salomon happened to drive past. 
 The doorkeeper, understanding the poor man's despair, sig- 
 naled to the coachman. After a few words of explanation 
 between the lady and the porter, the Abbe allowed himself to 
 be led to his faithful friend, though he could only answer her 
 in incoherent words. Mademoiselle Salomon, alarmed by the 
 temporary derangement of a brain already so feeble, carried 
 him at once to TAlouette, ascribing these symptoms of mental 
 disturbance to the effect naturally produced on him by the 
 Abbe Poirel's promotion. She knew nothing of the hapless 
 Driest's agreement with Mademoiselle Gamard, for the ex- 
 cellent reason that he himself did not know its full bearing. 
 And as it is in the nature of things that comedy is often 
 mixed up with the most pathetic incidents, Birotteau's be- 
 wildered answers almost made Mademoiselle Salomon laugh. 
 
m 
 
 THE VICAR OP TOURS 
 
 *^Chapeloiid was right/'' said he ; 'Tie is a monster.** 
 "Who ?" said she. 
 
 "Chapeloud. He has robbed me of everything." 
 "Tlien you mean Poirel?" 
 "No, Troubert.'' 
 
 At length they reached I'Aloiiette, where the priest's friends 
 lavished on him such effusive kindness, that by the evening 
 he grew calmer, and they could extract from him an account 
 of all that had occurred that morning. 
 
 Monsieur de Bourbonne, always phlegmatic, naturally 
 asked to see the agreement which ever since the day before 
 had seemed to him to contain the key to the riddle. Birot- 
 teau brought the fatal document out of his pocket, and held 
 it out to the landowner, who read it hastily, presently com- 
 ing to a sentence in these terms : — 
 
 "Whereas there is a difference of eight hundred francs 
 a year between the price paid by the late Monsieur Chapeloud 
 and the sum for which the aforenamed Sophie Gamard 
 agrees to lodge and board, on the terms hereinbefore stated, 
 the said Frangois Birotteau; whereas the said Frangois Birot- 
 teau fully acknowledges that it is out of his power for somi? 
 years to come to pay the full price paid by Mademoiselle 
 Gamard's boarders, and more especially by the Abbe 
 Troubert; and, finally, whereas the said Sophie Gamard has 
 advanced certain sums of money, the said Birotteau hereby 
 pledges himself to bequeath to her, as an indemnity, the fur- 
 niture of which he may be possessed at the time of his de- 
 cease ; or in the event of his voluntary departing, for whatever 
 cause or reason, and quitting the premises at present let to 
 him, and no longer availing himself of the benefits contracted 
 for in the agreement made by Mademoiselle Gamard herein- 
 before " 
 
 "Heaven above us! What impudence P exclaimed Mon- 
 sieur de Bourbonne. "And what claws the said Sophie 
 Gamard has !" 
 
 Poor Birotteau, never conceiving in his childish brain of 
 any cause which could ever separate him from Mademoiselle 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 377 
 
 Gamard, had counted on dying under her roof. He had not 
 the least recollection of this clause, of v/hich the terms had 
 not even been discussed at the time when, in his eagerness to 
 lodge with the old maid, he would have signed all the docu- 
 ments she might have chosen to lay before him. His inno- 
 cence was so creditable, and Mademoiselle Gamard's conduct 
 so atrocious; there was something so deplorable in the fate 
 of this hapless sexagenarian, and his weakness made him 
 so pitiable, that in a first impulse of indignation Madame 
 de Listomere exclaimed, "I am the cause of your having 
 signed the act that has ruined you ; I ought to make up to you 
 for the comfort you have lost." 
 
 "But," said Monsieur de Bourbonne, "such proceedings 
 constitute a fraud ; there are grounds for an action " 
 
 "Good, Birotteau shall bring an action. If he loses it at 
 Tours, he will win it at Orleans ; if he loses it at Orleans, he 
 will win it at Paris !" cried the Baron de Listomere. 
 
 "If he means to bring an action, I should advise him first 
 to resign his benefice in the Cathedral," said Monsieur de 
 Bourbonne calmly. 
 
 "We will take legal advice," replied Madame de Listomere ; 
 "and we will bring an action if we ought. But this business 
 is so disgraceful for Mademoiselle Gamard, and may prove 
 so damaging to the Abbe Troubert, that we can surely effect 
 a compromise." 
 
 After mature deliberation, everybody promised to assist 
 the Abbe Birotteau in the struggle that must ensue between 
 him and the allies of his enemies. A confident presentiment, 
 an indescribable provincial instinct prompted every one to 
 combine the names of Troubert and Gamard. But not a soul 
 of those then assembled at Madame de Listomere's excepting 
 the "old fox," had any accurate notion of the importance of 
 such a conflict. 
 
 Monsieur de Bourbonne took the poor priest into a comer. 
 
 "Of all the fourteen persons present," said he in a low 
 voice, "not one will be still on 3^our side within a fortnight. 
 If you then want to call in help, you will perhaps find no one 
 
878 
 
 THE YICAR OF TOURS 
 
 but myself bold enough to undertake your defence, because 
 I know the country, men, and things, and, better still, their 
 interests. All your friends here, though full of good inten- 
 tions, are starting on the wrong road, which you can never 
 get out of. Listen to my advice. If you want to live in 
 peace, give up your office in Saint-Gatien and leave Tours. 
 Tell no one where you go, but seek a cure of souls far from 
 hence, where Troubert can never come across you." 
 
 "Leave ' Tours V cried the Abbe, with unspeakable dis- 
 may. 
 
 It was to him a form of death. Was it not tearing up all 
 the roots by which he held to the world? Celibates make 
 habits take the place of feelings. And when to this system of 
 ideas, by which they go through life rather than live, they 
 add a weak nature, external things have an astonishing do- 
 minion over them. Birotteau had really become a sort of 
 vegetable ; to transplant it was to endanger its guileless func- 
 tions. Just as a tree, in order to live, must always find the 
 same juices at hand, and always send its filaments into the 
 same soil, so Birotteau must always patter round Saint- 
 Gatien, always trot up and down the spot on the Mall where 
 he was wont to walk, always go through the same familiar 
 streets, and constantly frequent the three drawing-rooms 
 where evening after evening he played whist or backgammon. 
 
 "To be sure — I was not thinking," replied Monsieur de 
 Bourbonne, looking compassionately at the priest. 
 
 Before long all Tours knew that Madame la Baronne de 
 Listomere, widow of a Lieutenant-General, had given a home 
 to the Abbe Birotteau, Vicaire of Saint-Gatien. This fact, 
 on which several persons threw doubts, cut short all ques- 
 tions, and gave definiteness to party divisions, especially when 
 Mademoiselle Salomon was the first to dare speak of fraud 
 and an action at law. 
 
 Mademoiselle Gamard, with the subtle vanity and the 
 fanatical sense of personal importance that are character- 
 istic of old maids, considered herself greatly aggrieved by the 
 
THE VICAR OP TOURS 
 
 379 
 
 line of conclnct taken by Madame de Listomere. The Baron- 
 ess was a woman of high rank, elegant in her habits, 
 whose good taste, polished manners, and genuine piety were 
 beyond dispute. By sheltering Birotteau she formally gave 
 the lie to all Mademoiselle Gamard's asseverations, indirectly 
 censured her conduct, and seemed to sanction the Abbe's 
 complaints of his former landlady. 
 
 For the better comprehension of this story, it is necessary 
 here to explain how much power Mademoiselle Gamard de- 
 rived from the discernment and analytical spirit with which 
 old women can account to themselves for the actions of 
 others, and to set forth the resources of her faction. Escorted 
 by the always taciturn Abbe Troubert, she spent her even- 
 ings in four or five houses where a dozen persons were wont 
 to meet, allied by common tastes and analogous circum- 
 i5tances. There were two or three old men, wedded to the 
 Avhims and tittle-tattle of their cooks; five or six old maids, 
 who spent their days in sifting the words and scrutinizing 
 1;he proceedings of their neighbors and those a little below 
 them in the social scale ; and finally, several old women wholly 
 occupied in distilling scandal, in keeping an exact register 
 i>f everybody's fortune, and a check on everybody's actions. 
 They foretold marriages, and blamed their friends' conduct 
 quite as harshly as their enemies'. These persons, filling in 
 the town a position analogous to the capillary vessels of a 
 plant, imbibed news with the thirst of a leaf for the dew, 
 picked up the secrets of every household, discharged them 
 and transmitted them mechanically to Monsieur Troubert, 
 as leaves communicate to the plant the moisture they have 
 absorbed. Thus, every evening of the week, these worthy 
 bigots, prompted by the craving for excitement which ex- 
 ists in every one, struck an accurate balance of the position 
 of the town with a sagacity worthy of the Council of Ten, 
 and made an armed police out of the unerring espionage 
 to which our passions give rise. Then, as soon as they had 
 found the secret motive of any event, their conceit led them 
 to appropriate, severally, the wisdom of their Sanhedrim, and 
 
380 
 
 THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 to give importance to their gossip in their respective circles. 
 
 This idle and busybody assembly, invisible though om- 
 niscient, speechless but for ever talking, had at that time an 
 influence which was apparently harmless in view of its con- 
 temptibility, but which nevertheless could be terrible when 
 it was animated by a strong motive. Now it was a very long 
 time since any event had occurred within range of their 
 lives to compare in general importance to each and all with 
 the contest between Birotteau, supported by Madame de Lis- 
 tomere, and the Abbe Troubert with Mademoiselle Gamard. 
 In fact, the three drawing-rooms of Madame de Listomere, 
 Mademoiselle Merlin de la Blottiere, and Mademoiselle de 
 Villenoix, being regarded as a hostile camp by those where 
 Mademoiselle Gamard visited, there lay behind this quarrel a 
 strong party spirit with all its vanities. It was the struggle 
 of the Eoman Senate and people in a molehill, or a tempest 
 in a glass of water, as Montesquieu said in speaking of the 
 Eepublic of San Marino, where public officials held their 
 places but a day, so easy it was to seize despotic power. 
 
 But this storm in a teacup evolved as many passions in the 
 actors as would have sufficed to direct the largest social in^ 
 terests. Is it not a mistake to suppose that time flies swiftly 
 only to those whose hearts are a prey to such vast projects 
 as trouble life and make it boil ? The Abbe Troubert's hours 
 were spent as busily, flew loaded with thoughts as anxious, 
 and marked by despair and hopes as deep, as could the racking 
 hours of the man of ambition, the gamester, or the lover. 
 God alone knows the secret of the energy we put forth to win 
 the occult triumphs we achieve over men, or things, or our- 
 selves. Though we do not always know whither we are go- 
 ing, we know full well the fatigues of the voyage. Still, if 
 the historian may be allowed to digress from the drama he is 
 narrating, to assume for a moment the functions of the 
 critic — if he may invite 3^ou to glance at the lives of these 
 old maids and of these two priests, to investigate the causes 
 of the misfortune which vitiated their inmost core — ^you wil\ 
 perhaps find it proved to a demonstration that man must 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 381 
 
 necessarily experience certain passions if he is to evolve those 
 qualities which give nobleness to life, vi^hich expand its limits 
 and silence the selfishness natural to all beings. 
 
 Madame de Listomere returned to town, not knowing that 
 for five or six days past several of her friends had been 
 obliged to dispute a rumor concerning herself, and accepted 
 by some, though she would have laughed at it had she heard 
 of it, which attributed her affection for her nephew to almost 
 criminal causes. 
 
 She took the Abbe to see her lawyer, who did not think 
 an action an easy matter. The Abbe's friends, confident 
 in the feeling that comes of the justice of a good case, or 
 else dilatory about proceedings which did not concern them 
 personalty, had postponed the preliminary inquiry till the 
 day when they should return to Tours. Thus Mademoiselle 
 Gamard's allies had been able to make the first move, and 
 had told the story in a way unfavorable to the Abbe Birot- 
 teau. Hence the man of law, whose clients consisted ex- 
 clusively of the pious folks of the town, very much astonished 
 Madame de Listomere by urging her on no account to be 
 mixed up in such proceedings; and he closed the interview 
 by saying that ^Tie, at any rate, would not undertake the 
 case, because, by the terms of the agreement. Mademoiselle 
 Gamard was right in the eye of the law; that in equity, that 
 is to say, out of the jurisdiction of the Court,, Monsieur 
 Birotteau would appear in the eyes of the Bench and of all 
 honest folks to have fallen away from the meek, peace-loving, 
 and conciliatory character he had hitherto enjoyed; that 
 Mademoiselle Gamard, regarded as a gentle person and easy 
 to live with, had accommodated Birotteau by lending the 
 money needed to pay the succession duties arising from 
 Chapeloud's bequest, without demanding any receipt; that 
 Birotteau was not of an age, nor of a nature, to sign a docu- 
 ment without knowing what it contained and recognizing its 
 importance; and that as he had ceased to live at Made- 
 moiselle Gamard's after only two ^'■ears' residence, whereas 
 his friend Chapeloud had been with her for twelve years, 
 
382 
 
 THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 and Troubert for fifteen^ it could only be in accordance with 
 some plan best known to himself. That, consequently, the 
 action would be generally considered as an act of ingrati- 
 tude," etc. 
 
 After seeing Birotteau to the head of the stairs, the lawyer 
 detained Madame de Listomere a moment as he showed her 
 out, and besought her, as she loved her peace of mind, to 
 have nothing to do with the affair. 
 
 In the evening, however, the hapless Abbe, as miserable 
 as a criminal in the condemned cell at Bicetre while await- 
 ing the result of his petition to the court of appeal, could 
 not keep himself from telling his friends of the result of 
 his visit to the lawyer, at the hour before the card-parties 
 were made up, when the little circle were assembling round 
 Madame de Listomere's fire. 
 
 "I know no lawyer in Tours, excepting the solicitor for 
 the Liberal party, who would undertake the case, unless he 
 meant to lose it," exclaimed Monsieur de Bourbonne, "and 
 I do not advise you to embark on it." 
 
 "Well, it is a rascally shame !" said the navy lieutenant. 
 "I myself will take the Abbe to see that lawyer !" 
 
 "Then go after dark," said Monsieur de Bourbonne, inter- 
 rupting him. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "I have just heard that the Abbe Troubert is appointed 
 Vicar- General in the place of him who died the day before 
 yesterday." 
 
 "Much I care for the Abbe Troubert !" 
 
 Unluckily, the Baron de Listomere, a man of six-and- 
 thirty, did not see the sign made to him by Monsieur de 
 Bourbonne warning him to weigh his words, and pointing 
 significantly at a town councillor who was known to be a 
 friend of Troubert's. So the officer went on : 
 
 "If Monsieur Troubert is a rogue . . ." 
 
 "Dear me," said Monsieur de Bourbonne, "why bring the 
 Abbe Troubert's name into a matter with which he has no 
 concern whatever?" 
 
THE VICAR OP TOURS 
 
 383 
 
 "Nay," said the lieutenant, "is he not in the enjoyment 
 of the Abbe Birotteau's furniture? I remember having called 
 on Monsieur Chapeloud and seeing two valuable pictures. 
 Suppose they are worth ten thousand francs ? Can you believe 
 that Monsieur Birotteau ever intended to give, in return for 
 two years' board with this Gamard woman, ten thousand 
 francs, when the library and furniture are worth almost as 
 much more?" 
 
 The Abbe opened his eyes very wide on hearing that he 
 had ever owned such an enormous fortune. And the Baron 
 went on vehemently to the end. 
 
 "By Jove ! Monsieur Salmon, an expert from the Paris 
 gallery, happens to be here on a visit to his mother-in-law. 
 I will go to him this very evening with Monsieur FAbbe, and 
 beg him to value the pictures. From thence I will take him 
 to that lawyer." 
 
 Two days after this conversation the action had taken 
 ishape. The solicitor to the Liberal party, now Birotteau's 
 attorney, cast some obloquy on the Abbe's case. The Opposi- 
 tion to the Government, and some persons known to love 
 neither priests nor religion — two things which many people 
 fail to distinguish — took up the matter, and the whole town 
 was talking of it. The expert from Paris had valued the 
 Virgin by le Valentin, and the Christ by Lebrun, at eleven 
 thousand francs ; they were both choice examples. As to the 
 bookcase and the Gothic furniture, the fashionable taste, 
 daily growing in Paris, for that style of work gave them an 
 immediate value of twelve thousand francs. • In short, the 
 expert, on examination, estimated the contents of the rooms 
 at ten thousand crowns. 
 
 ISTow, it was obvious that as Birotteau had never intended 
 to give Mademoiselle Gamard this immense sum in payment 
 of the little money he might owe her in virtue of the stipu- 
 lated indemnity, there were grounds, legally speaking, for 
 a new contract, otherwise the old maid would be guilty of un- 
 intentional fraud. So the lawyer on Birotteau's behalf began 
 
384 
 
 THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 by serving a writ on Mademoiselle Gamard, formulating the 
 Abbe's case. This statement, though exceedingly severe, 
 and supported by quotations from leading judgments, and 
 confirmed by certain articles of the Code, was at the same 
 time a masterpiece of legal logic, and so evidently condemned 
 the old maid, that thirty or forty copies were maliciously 
 circulated in the town by the opposite party. 
 
 A few days after this commencement of hostilities be- 
 tween the old maid and Birotteau, the Baron de Listomere, 
 who, as commander of a corvette, hoped to be included in the 
 next list of promotions, which had been expected for some 
 time at the Navy Board, received a letter, in which a friend 
 informed him that there was, on the contrary, some idea in 
 the office of placing him on the Retired List. Greatly amazed 
 by this news, he at once set out for Paris, and appeared at 
 the Minister's next reception. This official himself seemed 
 no less surprised, and even laughed at the fears expressed by 
 the Baron de Listomere. 
 
 Next day, in spite of the Minister's words, the Baron in- 
 quired at the office. With an indiscretion, such as is not un- 
 frequently committed by heads of departments for their 
 friends, a secretary showed him a minute confirming the 
 fatal news, ready drawn up, but which had not yet been sub- 
 mitted to the Minister, in consequence of the illness of a head- 
 clerk. The Baron at once went to call on an uncle, who, 
 being a depute, could without delay meet the Minister at 
 the Chamber, and begged him to sound His Excellency as 
 to his views, since to him this meant the sacrifice of his 
 whole career. He awaited the closing of the sitting in his 
 uncle's carriage in the greatest anxiety. 
 
 Long before the end his uncle came out, and as they drove 
 home to his house he asked the Baron : — 
 
 "What the devil led you to make war against the priest- 
 hood ? The Minister told me at once that you had put your-1 
 self at the head of the Liberal party at Tours. Your opin- 
 ions are detestable, you do not follow the line laid down by 
 the Government, and what not! His phrases were as con- 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 385 
 
 fused as if he were still addressing the Chamber. So then 
 I said to him, ^Come, let us understand each other.' And 
 His Excellency ended by confessing that you were in a 
 scrape with the Lord High Almoner. In short, by making 
 some inquiries among my colleagues, I learned that you had 
 spoken with much levity of a certain Abbe Troubert, who, 
 though but a Vicar-General, is the most important person- 
 age of the province, where he represents the ecclesiastical 
 power. I answered for you to the Minister in person. — 
 My noble nephew, if you want to get on in the world, make 
 no enemies in the Church. 
 
 "Now, go back to Tours, and make your peace with this 
 devil of a Vicar-General. Remember that Vicars-General 
 are men with whom you must always live in peace. Deuce 
 take it ! When we are all trying to re-establish the Church, 
 to cast discredit on the priests is a blunder in a ship's lieuten- 
 ant who wants his promotion. If you do not make it up with 
 this Abbe Troubert, you need not look to me; I shall cast 
 you off. The Minister for Church Affairs spoke to me of the 
 man just now as certain to be a Bishop. If Troubert took 
 an aversion for our family, he might hinder my name from 
 appearing in the next batch of peers. — Do you understand ?" 
 
 This speech explained to the navy lieutenant what Trou- 
 bert's secret occupations were, when Birotteau so stupidly 
 remarked, "I cannot think what good he gains by sitting up 
 all night !" 
 
 The Canon's position, in the midst of the feminine sen- 
 ate which so craftily kept a surveillance over the province, 
 as well as his personal capabilities, had led to his being 
 chosen bj the Church authorities from among all the priests 
 in the town to be the unacknowledged proconsul of Touraine. 
 Archbishop, General, Prefet — high and low were under his 
 occult dominion. 
 
 The Baron de Listomere had soon made up his mind. 
 
 "I have no notion," said he to his uncle, "of receiving an- 
 other ecclesiastical broadside below the water-line." 
 
 Three days after this diplomatic interview between the 
 
386 
 
 THE VICAR OP TOURS 
 
 uncle and nephew, the sailor, who had suddenly returned 
 to Tours by the mail-coach, explained to his aunt, the very 
 evening of his arrival, all the danger that would be incurred 
 by the Listomere family if they persisted in defending that 
 idiot Birotteau. The Baron had caught Monsieur de Bour- 
 bonne at the moment when the old gentleman was taking 
 up his stick and hat to leave after his rubber. The "old 
 fox's" intelligence was indispensable to throw a light on the 
 reefs among which the Listomeres had been entangled; he 
 rose so early to seek his hat and stick, only to be stopped by 
 a word in his ear : 
 
 "Wait, we want to talk." 
 
 The young Baron's prompt return, and his air of satisfac- 
 tion, though contrasting with the gravity his face assumed 
 now and then, had vaguely hinted to Monsieur de Bourbonne 
 of some checks the lieutenant might have received in his 
 cruise against Gamard and Troubert. He manifested no sur- 
 prise on hearing the Baron proclaim the secret power pos- 
 sessed by the Vicar-General. 
 
 "I knew that," said he. 
 
 "Well, then,'^ exclaimed the Baroness, "why did you not 
 warn us?" 
 
 "Madame," he hastily replied, "if you will forget that I 
 guessed this priest's occult influence, I will forget that you 
 know it as well as I. If we should fail to keep the secret, 
 we might be taken for his accomplices; we should be feared 
 and hated. Do as I do. Pretend to be a dupe ; but look care- 
 fully where you set your feet. I said quite enough; you did 
 not understand me. I could not compromise myself." 
 
 "What must we do now?" said the Baron. 
 
 The desertion of Birotteau was not a matter of question; 
 it was the primary condition, and so understood by this coun- 
 cil of three. 
 
 "To effect a retreat with all the honors of war has always 
 been the greatest achievement of the most skilful generals,'' 
 said Monsieur de Bourbonne. "Yield to Troubert; if his 
 hatred is less than his vanity, you will gain an ally: but if 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 387 
 
 you yield too much, he will trample on your body, for, a? 
 Boileau says, ^Destruction is by choice the spirit of the 
 Church.' Make as though you were quitting the service, 
 and you will escape him. Monsieur le Baron. Dismiss Birot- 
 teau, madame, and you will gain Gamard her lawsuit. When 
 you meet the Abbe Troubert at the Archbishop's, ask him if 
 he plays whist; he will answer Yes. Invite him to play a 
 rubber in this drawing-room, where he longs to be admitted ; 
 he will certainly come. You are a woman; try to enlist this 
 priest in your interest. When the Baron is a ship's Captain, 
 his uncle a Peer of France, and Troubert a Bishop, you can 
 make Birotteau a Canon at your leisure. Till then yield; 
 but yield gracefully, and with a threat. Your family can 
 give Troubert quite as much assistance as he can give you; 
 you will meet half-way to admiration. And take soundings 
 constantly as you go, sailor !" 
 
 "Poor Birotteau !" said the Baronne. 
 
 ^'Oh! begin at once," said the old man as he took leave. 
 "If some clever Liberal should get hold of that vacuous brain, 
 he would get you into trouble. After all, the law would pro- 
 nounce in his favor, and Troubert must be afraid of the 
 verdict. As yet he may forgive you for having begun the 
 action, but after a defeat he would be implacable. — I have 
 spoken." 
 
 He snapped his snuff-box lid, went to put on his thick 
 shoes, and departed. 
 
 The next morning, after breakfast, the Baroness remained 
 alone with Birotteau, and said to him, not without visible 
 embarrassment :- 
 
 "My dear Monsieur Birotteau, I am going to make a re- 
 quest that you will think very unjust and inconsistent; but 
 both for your sake and for ours you must, in the first place, 
 put an end to your action against Mademoiselle G-amard by 
 renouncing your claims, and also quit my house." 
 
 As he heard these words the poor priest turned pale. 
 
 "I am the innocent cause of your misfortunes," she went 
 on; "and I know that but for my nephew you would never 
 -26 
 
388 
 
 THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 have begun the proceedings which now are working woe for 
 you and for us. Listen to me/* 
 
 And she briefly set forth the immense scope of this af- 
 fair, explaining the seriousness of its consequences. Her 
 meditations during the night had enabled her to form an idea 
 of what the Abbe Troubert's former life had been. Tlv'Vi 
 she could unerringly point out to Birotteau the web in which 
 he had been involved by this skilfully-plotted vengeance, 
 could show him the superior cleverness and power of the 
 enemy, revealing his hatred and explaining its causes; she 
 pictured him as crouching for twelve years to Chapeloud, 
 and now devouring and persecuting Chapeloud in the person 
 of his friend. 
 
 The guileless Birotteau clasped his hands as if to pray, 
 and wept with grief at this vision of human wickedness which 
 his innocent soul had never conceived of. Terrified, as 
 though he were standing on the verge of an abyss, he lis- 
 tened to his benefactress with moist and staring eyes, but 
 without expressing a single idea. She said in conclusion: 
 
 "I know how vile it is to desert you; but, my dear Abbe, 
 family duties must supersede those of friendship. Bend 
 before this storm, as I must, and I will prove my gratitude. 
 1 say nothing of 3^our personal concerns ; I undertake them ; 
 _70u shall be released from money difficulties for the rest of 
 your life. By the intervention of Monsieur de Bourbonne, 
 who will know how to save appearances, I will see that you 
 lack nothing. My friend, give me the right to throw you 
 over. I shall remain your friend while conforming to the 
 requirements of the world. — Decide." 
 
 The hapless Abbe, quite bewildered, exclaimed: 
 
 ''Ah! then Chapeloud was right when he said that if 
 Troubert could drag him out of his grave by the heels, he 
 Would do it! — He sleeps in Chapeloud's bed!" 
 
 "It is no time for lamentations," said Madame de Lis- 
 tomere. "We have no time to spare. Come " 
 
 Birotteau was too kind-hearted not to submit in any great 
 crisis to the impulsive self-sacrifice of the first moment. But, 
 
THE VICAR OP TOURS 
 
 389 
 
 in any case, his life already was but one long martyrdom. 
 He answered with a heartbroken look at his protectress, 
 which wrung her soul : 
 
 "I am in your hands. I am no more than a straw in the 
 street !" 
 
 The local word he used, hourrier, is peculiar to Touraine, 
 and its only liberal rendering is a straw. But there are 
 pretty little straws, yellow, shiny, and smart, the delight of 
 children; while a howrier' is a dirty, colorless, miry straw, 
 left in the gutter, driven by the wind, crushed by the foot 
 of every passer-by. 
 
 "But, madame," he went on, "I should not wish to leave 
 the portrait of Chapeloud for the Abbe Troubert. It was 
 done for me, and belongs to me; get that back for me, and 
 I will give up everything else." 
 
 "Well,'' said Madame de Listomere, "I will go to Made- 
 moiselle Gamard.'' She spoke in a tone which showed what 
 an extraordinary effort the Baronne de Listomere was mak- 
 ing in stooping to flatter the old maid's conceit. "And I 
 will try to settle everything," she went on. "I hardly dare 
 hope it.- — Go and see Monsieur de Bourbonne. Get him to 
 draw up your act of renunciation in due form, and bring it 
 to me signed and witnessed. With the help of the Arch- 
 bishop, I may perhaps get the thing settled." 
 
 Birotteau went away overpowered. Troubert had assumed 
 in his eyes the proportions of an Egyptian pyramid. The 
 man's hands were in Paris, and his elbows in the Close of 
 Saint-Gatien. 
 
 "He," said he to himself, "to hinder Monsieur le Marquis 
 de Listomere being made a peer of France! — And then, 
 'With the help of the Archbishop, perhaps get the thing 
 settled !' " 
 
 In comparison with such high interests, Birotteau felt 
 himself a grasshopper ; he was honest to himself. 
 
 The news of Birotteau's removal was all the more as- 
 tounding because the reason was un discoverable. Madame de 
 Listomere gave out that as her nephew wished to marry and 
 
390 
 
 THE VICAR OP TOURS 
 
 retire from the service, she needed the Abbe's room to add 
 to her own. No one as yet had heard that Birotteau had 
 withdrawn the action. Monsieur de Bourbonne's instruc- 
 tions were thus judiciously carried out. 
 
 These two pieces of news, when they should reach the ears 
 of the Vicar-General, must certainly flatter his vanity, by 
 showing him that, though the Listomere family would 
 not capitulate, it would at least remain neutral, tacitly 
 recognizing the secret power of the Church Council; and was 
 not recognition submission? Still, the action remained suh 
 judice. Was not this to yield and to threaten? 
 
 Thus the Listomeres had assumed an attitude precisely 
 similar to that of the Abbe Troubert in this contest; they 
 stood aside, and could direct their forces. 
 
 But a serious event now occurred, and added to their diffi- 
 culties, hindering the success of the means by which Mon- 
 sieur de Bourbonne and the Listomeres hoped to mollify the 
 Gamard and Troubert faction. On the previous day Made- 
 moiselle Gamard had taken a chill on coming out of the Ca- 
 thedral, had gone to bed, and was reported to be seriously 
 ill. The whole town rang with lamentations, excited by spu- 
 rious commiseration. "Mademoiselle Gamard's highly-strung 
 sensibilities had succumbed to the scandal of this lawsuit. 
 Though she was undoubtedly in the right, she was dying of 
 grief. Birotteau had killed his benefactress." This was the 
 sum and substance of the phrases fired off through the capil- 
 lary ducts of the great feminine synod, and readily repeated 
 by the town of Tours. 
 
 Madame de Listomere suffered the humiliation of call- 
 ing on the old woman without gaining anything by her visit. 
 She very politely requested to be allowed to speak to the 
 Vicar-General. Flattered, perhaps, at receiving a woman 
 who had slighted him, in Chapeloud's library, by the fire- 
 place over which the two famous pictures in dispute were 
 hanging, Troubert kept th^ Baroness waiting a minute, then 
 he consented to see her 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 391 
 
 No courtier, no diplomate, ever threw into the discussion 
 of private interests or national negotiations greater skill, dis- 
 simulation, and depth of purpose than the Baroness and the 
 Abbe displayed when they found themselves face to face. 
 
 Old Bourbonne, like the sponsor, in the Middle Ages, who 
 armed the champion, and fortified his courage by good coun- 
 sel as he entered the lists, had instructed the Baroness: 
 
 "Do not forget your part; you are a peacemaker, and not 
 an interested party. Troubert likewise is a mediator. Weigh 
 your words. Study the tones of the Vicar-General's voice. — 
 If he strokes his chin, you have won him." 
 
 Some caricaturists have amused themselves by represent- 
 ing the contrast that so frequently exists between what we 
 say and what we think. In this place, to represent fully the 
 interesting points of the duel of words that took place be- 
 tween the priest and the fine lady, it is necessary to disclose 
 the thoughts they each kept concealed under apparently 
 trivial speech. 
 
 Madame de Listomere began by expressing the regret she 
 felt about this lawsuit of Birotteau's, and she went on to 
 speak of her desire of seeing the affair settled to the satisfac- 
 tion of both parties. 
 
 "The mischief is done, madame," said the Abbe. "The 
 admirable Mademoiselle Gamard is dying." (''I care no more 
 for that stupid creature than for Prester John/' thought 
 he, ''hut I should like to lay her death at your door, and 
 burden your conscience, if you are silly enough to care.") 
 
 "On hearing of her illness," said the Baroness, "I desired 
 the Abbe to sign a withdrawal, which I have brought to that 
 saintly person." {''I see through you," thought she, ''you 
 old rascal; hut ive are no longer at the mercy of your va- 
 garies. As for you, if you accept the deed, you will have put 
 your foot in it; it will he a confession of complicity.") 
 
 There was a brief silence. 
 
 "Mademoiselle Gamard's temporal affairs are no concern 
 of mine," said the priest at length, closing the deep lids over 
 his eagle eyes to conceal his excitement. {"Ah, ha, you will 
 
392 
 
 THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 not catch me tripping! But God he praised, those cursed 
 lawyers will not fight out a case that might bespatter me! 
 But what on earth can the Listomeres want, that they are 
 so humble f) 
 
 "Monsieur/' replied the Baronne, "the concerns of Mon- 
 sieur FAbbe Birotteau interest me no more than those of 
 Mademoiselle Gamard do you. But, unluckily, religion might 
 suffer from their quarrels, and in you T see but a mediator, 
 while I myself come forward as a peacemaker . . 
 C'TFe can neither of us throw dust in the other's eyes. Mon- 
 sieur Troubert/' thought she. ^^Do you appreciate the epi- 
 gram in that reply 
 
 "Religion! madame," said the Vicar-General. "Religion 
 stands too high for man to touch it." (''Religion means me'* 
 thought he.) "God will judge us unerringly, madame," he 
 added, "and I recognize no other tribunal." 
 
 "Well, then, monsieur," replied she, "let us try to make 
 man's judgments agree with God's." C'Yes, Religion 
 means you.") 
 
 The Abbe Troubert changed his tone. 
 
 "Has not Monsieur your nephew just been to Paris?" 
 {''You heard of me there, I fancy," thought he; "I can crush 
 you — you who scorned me! You have come to surrender.") 
 
 "Yes, monsieur, thank you for taking so much interest in 
 him. He is returning to Paris to-night, ordered there by 
 the Minister, who is kindness itself to us, and does not wish 
 him to retire from the service." {''No, Jesuit, you will not 
 crush us," thought she; "we understand your little game.") 
 A pause. "I have not approved of his conduct in this affair,'' 
 she went on, "but a sailor may be forgiven for not under- 
 standing the law." {"Come, let us be allies," thought she; 
 "we shall gain nothing by squabbling.") 
 
 A faint smile dawned, and was lost, in the furrows of the 
 Abbe's face. 
 
 "He has done us some service by informing us of the value 
 of those two pictures," said he, looking at them; "they will 
 be a worthy ornament to the Lady Chapel," {"You fired 
 
THE VICaR of tours 
 
 39;} 
 
 an epigram at me, madame" thought he; "there are two for 
 you, and we are quits.") 
 
 "If you present them to Saint-Gatien, I would beg you 
 to allow me to offer to the Church two frames worthy of the 
 place and of the giiV {''I should like to make you confess 
 that you coveted Birotteaus property," thought she.) 
 
 "They do not belong to me/' said the priest, well on his 
 guard. 
 
 "Well, here is the deed that puts an end to all dispute/' 
 said Madame de Listomere, "and restores them to Made- 
 moiselle Gamard." She laid the document on the table. 
 {''You see, monsieur, how much I trust you," thought she.) 
 "It is worthy of you, monsieur, worthy of your fine character, 
 to reconcile two Christians, though I have ceased to take 
 much interest in Monsieur Birotteau.'' 
 
 "But he is your pensioner," said he, interrupting her. 
 
 "No, monsieur, he is no longer under my roof.'' {''My 
 hrother-in-law' s peerage and my nephew's promotion are 
 leading me into very mean actions," thought she.) 
 
 The Abbe remained unmoved, but his calm aspect was 
 a symptom of violent agitation. Only Monsieur d© Bour- 
 bonne had divined the secret of that superficial calm. The 
 priest was triumphant. 
 
 "Why, then, did you take charge of his act of renuncia- 
 tion?" he asked, moved by a feeling similar to that which 
 makes a woman fish for compliments. 
 
 "I could not help feeling some pity for him. Birotteau, 
 whose feeble character must be well known to you, entreated 
 me to see Mademoiselle Gamard in order to obtain from her, 
 
 as the price of the surrender of ," the Abbe frowned — • 
 
 "of his rights, as recognized by many distinguished lawyers, 
 the portrait — " the priest looked hard at Madame de Listo- 
 mere — "of Chapeloud," she said. "I leave it to you to Judge 
 of his claim to it . . ." {"You would lose if you fought 
 the case," thought she.) 
 
 The tone in which the Baroness uttered the words "dis- 
 tinguished lawyers," showed the priest that she knew the 
 
394 
 
 THE VICAR OP TOURS 
 
 enemy's strength and weakness. Madame de Listomere dis- 
 played so much skill to this experienced connoisseur, that 
 at the end of this conversation, which was carried on for 
 some time in the same ke}^, he went down to see Made- 
 moiselle Gamard to bring her answer as to the proposed bar- 
 gain. 
 
 Troubert soon returned. 
 
 "Madame/' said he, "I can but repeat the poor dying 
 woman's words. ^Monsieur I'Abbe Chapeloud showed me too 
 much kindness,' said she, ^for me to part from his portrait.' — 
 As for myself, if it were mine, I would not give it up to any 
 one. I was too faithfully attached to my poor dead friend 
 not to feel that I have a right to claim his likeness against 
 anybody in the world." 
 
 "Well, monsieur, do not let us fall out over a bad picture." 
 C*"/ care for it more than you do'' thought she.") "Keep 
 it ; we will have it copied. I am proud to have brought this 
 sad and deplorable lawsuit to an end, and I have personally 
 gained the pleasure of making your acquaintance. — I have 
 heard that you are a fine whist player. You will forgive a 
 woman for being curious," she added with a smile. "If you 
 will come and play occasionally at my house, you cannot 
 doubt that you will be heartily welcomed." 
 
 The Abbe Troubert stroked his chin. {^'He is caught; 
 Bourlonne was right," thought she, "he has his share of 
 vanity/') 
 
 In fact, the Vicar-General was at this moment enjoying 
 the delicious sensation which Mirabeau found irresistible 
 when, in the day of his power, he saw the gates of some 
 mansion which had formerly been closed against him, opened 
 to admit his carriage. 
 
 "Madame," replied he, "my occupations are too important 
 to allow of my going into society; but for you what would 
 not a man do?" {''It is all over with the old girl; I will 
 make up to the Listomeres, and do them a good turn if they 
 do me one," thought he. ''It is better to have them for friends 
 than for enemies") 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 395 
 
 Madame de Listomere went home, hoping that the Arch- 
 bishop would complete a pacification so happily begun. But 
 Birotteau was to gain nothing even by his renunciation. 
 Madame de Listomere heard next day that Mademoiselle 
 Gamard was dead. The old maid's will being opened, no one 
 was surprised to learn that she had constituted the Abbe 
 Troubert her universal legatee. Her property was estimated 
 at a hundred thousand crowns. The Vicar-General sent two 
 invitations to the service and burial to Madame de Listomere's 
 house — one for herself, and the other for her nephew. 
 
 "We must go," said she. 
 
 "That is Just what it means V exclaimed Monsieur de Bour- 
 bonne. "It is a test by which Monseigneur Troubert meant 
 to try you. Baron, you must go all the way to the grave," 
 he added to the navy lieutenant, who, for his sins, had not 
 yet left Tours. 
 
 The service was held, and was marked by ecclesiastical 
 magnificence. One person only shed tears. That was Birot- 
 teau, who, alone in a side chapel where he was not seen, be- 
 lieved himself guilty of this death, and prayed fervently 
 for the soul of the departed, bitterly bewailing himself be- 
 cause he had not obtained her forgiveness for having wronged 
 her. 
 
 The Abbe Troubert followed his friend's body to the grave 
 in which she was to be laid. Standing on its brink, he 
 delivered an address, and, thanks to his eloquence, gave monu- 
 mental dignity to his picture of the narrow life led by the 
 testatrix. The bystanders noted these words in the perora- 
 tion: 
 
 "This life, full of days devoted to God and to Eeligion — 
 this life, adorned by so many beautiful actions performed 
 in silence, so many modest and unrecognized virtues, was 
 iblighted by a sorrow which we would call unmerited if, here, 
 on the verge of eternity, we could forget that all our afflictions 
 are sent us by God. This holy woman's many friends, knowing 
 how noble was her guileless soul, foresaw that she could en- 
 dure anything excepting only such detraction as would affect 
 
396 
 
 THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 her whole existence. And so perhaps Providence has taken 
 her to rest in God only to rescue her from our petty griefs. 
 Happy are they who here on earth can live at peace with 
 themselves, as Sophie now reposes in the realms of the blest, 
 in her robe of innocence !" 
 
 "And when he had ended this grandiloquent discourse," 
 said Monsieur de Bourbonne, who reported all the details 
 of the funeral to Madame de Listomere that evening when, 
 the rubbers ended and the doors closed, they were left alonei^ 
 with the Baron, "imagine, if you can, that Louis XI. in a 
 priest's gown giving the holy-water sprinkler a final flourish 
 in this style" — and Monsieur de Bourbonne took up the tongs 
 and imitated the Abbe Troubert's movement so exactly that 
 the Baron and his aunt could not help smiling. "In this 
 alone," added the old man, "did he betray himself. Till then 
 his reserve had been perfect; but now, M^hen he had packed 
 away for ever the old maid he so utterly despised and hated, 
 almost as much perhaps as he had detested Chapeloud, he, 
 no doubt, found it impossible to hinder his satisfaction from 
 betraying itself in a gesture." 
 
 Next morning Mademoiselle Salomon came to breakfast 
 with Madame de Listomere, and as soon as she came in she 
 said quite sadly : 
 
 "Our poor Abbe Birotteau has just been dealt a dreadful 
 blow which reveals the most elaborately studied hatred. He 
 is made Cur^ of Saint-Symphorien." 
 
 Saint-Symphorien is a suburb of Tours lying beyond the 
 bridge. This bridge, one of the finest works of French archi- 
 tecture, is nearly two thousand feet long, and the open 
 squares at each end are exactly alike. 
 
 "Do you understand?" she added after a pause, amazed 
 at the coolness with which Madame de Listomere heard this 
 news. "The Abbe Birotteau will there be a hundred leagues 
 from Tours, from his friends, from everything. Is it not 
 exile, and all the more terrible because he will be torn from 
 the town that his eyes will behold every day, while he can 
 hardly ever come to it? He who, since his troubles, has 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 397 
 
 hardly been able to walk, will be obliged to come a league to 
 see us. At the present moment the poor man is in bed with 
 a feverish attack. The priest's residence at Saint-Symphorien 
 is cold and damp, and the parish is too poor to restore it. The 
 poor old man will be buried alive in a real tomb. What a 
 villainous plot 
 
 It will now, perhaps, suffice in conclusion of this story to 
 report briefly a few subsequent events, and to sketch a last 
 picture. 
 
 Five months later the Vicar-General was a bishop ; Madame 
 de Listomere was dead, leaving fifteen hundred francs a 
 year to the Abbe Birotteau. On the day when the Baroness' 
 will was read, Monseigneur Hyacinthe, Bishop of Troyes, 
 was about to leave Tours and take up his residence in his 
 diocese; but he postponed his departure. Furious at having 
 been deceived by a woman to whom he had offered a hand, 
 while she was secretly holding out hers to the man whom, 
 he chose to regard as an enemy, Troubert again threatened 
 to mar the Baron's career and hinder the Marquis de Listo - 
 mere from receiving his peerage. In full council, at thi) 
 Archbishop's palace, he uttered one of those priestly speeches^ 
 big with revenge, though smooth with honeyed mildness. 
 
 The ambitious lieutenant came to see this ruthless prelate, 
 who dictated hard terms no doubt, for the Baron's conduct 
 showed absolute subservience to the terrible Jesuit's will. 
 
 The new Bishop, by a deed of gift, bestowed Mademoiselle 
 Gamard's house on the Cathedral Chapter; he gave Chape- 
 loud's bookcase and books to the little Seminary; he dedi- 
 cated the two disputed pictures to the Lady Chapel; but he 
 kept the portrait of Chapeloud. No one could understand 
 this almost complete surrender of all Mademoiselle Gamard's 
 property. Monsieur de Bourbonne imagined that he secretly 
 kept all the actual money to enable him to maintain his rank 
 in Paris, if he should be called to sit on the Bench of Bishops 
 in the Upper Chamber. 
 
 At last, on the very day before Monseigneur Troubert left 
 Tours, the "old fox" detected the last nlot which these gifts 
 
398 
 
 THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 had covered, a coup de grace dealt by the most relentless 
 vengeance to the most helpless of victims. The Baron de 
 Listomere disputed Madame de Listomere's bequest to Birot- 
 teau on the ground of undue influence ! Within a few days 
 of the first steps being taken in this action, the Baron was 
 appointed to a ship with the rank of captain; the Cure of 
 Saint-Symphorien was, by an act of discipline, placed under 
 an interdict. His ecclesiastical superiors condemned him 
 by anticipation; so the assassin of the late Sophie Gamard 
 was a rogue as well ! Now, if Monseigneur Troubert had kept 
 the old maid's property, he could hardly have secured Birot- 
 teau's disgrace. 
 
 At the moment when Monseigneur Hyacinthe, Bishop of 
 'T^royes, was passing in a post-chaise, along the quay of Saint- 
 Symphorien, on his way to Paris, poor Birotteau had just 
 been brought out in an armchair to sit in the sun on a terrace. 
 The unhappy priest, stricken by his archbishop, was pale and 
 liaggard. Grief, stamped on every feature, had completely 
 altered the face, which of old had been so blandly cheerful 
 111 health had cast a dimness that simulated thought over his 
 eyes, which had been bright once with the pleasures of good 
 living, and devoid of any weight of ideas. This was but 
 the skeleton of that Birotteau who, only a year ago, vacuous 
 but happy, had waddled across the Close. The Bishop shot 
 a glance of contempt and pity at his victim; then he vouch- 
 safed to forget him, and passed on. 
 
 In other times Troubert would certainly have been a Hilde- 
 brand or an Alexander VI. Nowadays the Church is no 
 longer a political force, and does not absorb all the powers 
 of isolated men. Hence celibacy has this crying evil, that by 
 concentrating the powers of a man on one single passion, 
 namely, egoism, it makes the unwedded soul mischievous or 
 useless. 
 
 We live in a time when the fault of most governments is 
 that they make man for society rather than society for man. 
 A perpetual struggle is going on between the individual and 
 the system that tries to turn him to account, while he tries 
 to turn it to account for his own advantage; formerly, man 
 
THE VICAR OF TOURS 
 
 399 
 
 having really more liberty, showed greater generosity for 
 the public weal. The circle in which men move has insensibly 
 widened; the soul that can apprehend it synthetically will 
 never be anything but a grand exception, since, constantly, 
 in moral as in physical force, what is gained in extent is lost 
 in intensity. Society cannot be based on exceptions. 
 
 Originally, man was simply and solely a father; his heart 
 beat warmly, concentrated within the radius of the family. 
 Later on he lived for the Clan or for a small Eepublic ; hence 
 the grand historical heroism of Greece and Rome. Next, he 
 became the member of a caste, or of a religion, and often was 
 truly sublime in his devotion to its greatness; but then the 
 field of his interests was increased by the addition of every 
 intellectual realm. In these days his life is bound up with 
 that of a vast fatherland; ere long his family will be the 
 whole human race. 
 
 Will not this moral cosmopolitanism, the thing the Roman 
 Church hopes for, be a sublime mistake? It is so natural to 
 believe in that noble chimera — the brotherhood of men. But, 
 alas! the human machine has not such godlike proportions. 
 The souls that are vast enough to wed a sentiment that is 
 the prerogative of a great man will never be those of plain 
 citizens, of fathers of families. 
 
 Certain physiologists opine that if the brain expands, the 
 heart must necessarily shrink. That is a mistake. Is not 
 what looks like egoism in the men who bear in their breast 
 a science, a nation, or its laws, the noblest of passions? Is 
 it not, in a way, a motherhood of the people ? To bring forth 
 new races or new ideas, must they not combine in their power- 
 ful brain the breast of the mother with the force of God? 
 The history of an Innocent III., of a Peter the Great, of all 
 who have guided an epoch or a nation, would at need prove 
 to be, in the highest order of minds, the immense idea repre- 
 sented by Troubert in the depths of the Close of Saint- 
 Gatien. 
 
 Saint-Firmin, April 1832, 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 AND 
 
 HONORINE 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The second volume — the third part — of Les Celihataires 
 takes very high rank among its companions. As in most of 
 his best books^ Balzac has set at work divers favorite springs 
 of action, and has introduced personages of whom he has 
 elsewhere given, not exactly replicas — he never did that — 
 but companion portraits. And he has once more justified 
 the proceeding amply. Whether he has not also justified the 
 reproach, such as it is, of those who say thjat to see the most 
 congenial expression of his fullest genius, you must go to 
 his bad characters and not to his good, readers shall deter- 
 mine for themselves after reading the book. 
 
 It was the product of the year 1842, when the author was 
 at the ripest of his powers, and after which^ with the excep- 
 tion of Les Parents Pauvres, he produced not much of his 
 very best save in continuations and rehandlings of earlier ef- 
 forts. He changed his title a good deal, and in that MS. cor- 
 rection of a copy of the Comedie which has been taken, per- 
 haps without absolutely decisive authority, as the basis of the 
 Edition Definitive, he adopted La Rabouilleuse as his latest 
 favorite. This, besides its quaintness, has undoubted merit 
 as fixing the attention on one at least of the chief figures 
 of the book, while Un Menage de gargon only obliquely in- 
 dicates the real purport of the novel. Jean- Jacques Rouget 
 is a most unfortunate creature, who anticipates Baron Hulot 
 as an example of absolute dependence on things of the flesh, 
 plus a kind of cretinism, which Hulot, to do him justice, 
 
 (ix) 
 
 VOL. 4—27 
 
X 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 does not exhibit even in his worst degradation. But his 
 "bachelor establishment/' though undoubtedly useful for the 
 purposes of the story, might have been changed for something 
 else, and his personality have been considerably altered, with- 
 out very much affecting the general drift of the fiction. 
 
 Flore Brazier, on the other hand, the Rahouilleuse herself, 
 is essential, and with Maxence Grilet and Philippe Bridau 
 forms the centre of the action and the passion of the book. 
 She ranks, indeed, with those few feminine types, Valerie 
 Marneffe, La Cousine Bette, Eugenie Grandet, Beatrix, 
 Madame de Maufrigneuse, and perhaps Esther Gobseck, 
 whom Balzac has tried to draw at full length. It is to be 
 observed that though quite without morals of any kind, she 
 is not ah initio or intrinsically a she-fiend like Valerie or 
 Lisbeth. She does not do harm for harm's sake, nor even 
 directly to gratify spite, greed, or other purely unsocial and 
 detestable passions. She is a type of feminine sensuality of 
 the less ambitious and restless sort. Given a decent educa- 
 tion, a fair fortune, a good-looking and vigorous husband to 
 whom she had taken a fancy, and no special temptation, and 
 she might have been a blameless, merry, "sonsy" commcre, 
 and have died in an odor of very reasonable sanctity. Poverty, 
 ignorance, the Kougets (father and son), Maxence Gilet, and 
 Philippe Bridau came in her way, and she lived and died as 
 Balzac has shown her. He has done nothing more "in- 
 evitable;'^ a few things more complete and satisfactory. 
 
 Maxence Gilet is a not much less remarkable sketch, though 
 it is not easy to say that he is on the same level. Gilet is the 
 man of distinct gifts, of some virtues, or caricatures of vir- 
 tues, who goes to the devil through idleness, fulness of bread, 
 and lack of any worthy occupation. He is extraordinarily 
 unconventional for a French figure in fiction, even for a 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 xl 
 
 figure drawn by such a French genius as Balzac. But he 
 is also hardly to be called a great type, and I do not quite 
 see why he should have succumbed before Philippe as he did. 
 
 Philippe himself is more complicated, and, perhaps, more 
 questionable. He is certainly one of Balzac's -jieurs du mal; 
 he is studied and personally conducted from beginning to 
 end with an extraordinary and loving care; but is he quite 
 "of a piece"? That he should have succeeded in defeating 
 the combination against which his virtuous mother and 
 brother failed is not an undue instance of the irony of life. 
 The defeat of such adversaries as Flore and Max has, of 
 course, the merit of poetical justice and the interest of "dia- 
 mond cut diamond." But is not the terrible Philippe Bridau, 
 the "Mephistopheles d clieval" of the latter part of the book, 
 rather inconsistent with the common-place ne'er-do-weel of 
 the earlier? Not only does it require no unusual genius to 
 waste money, when you have it, in the channels of the drink- 
 ing-shop, the gaming-table, and elsewhere, to sponge for more 
 on your mother and brother, to embezzle when they are 
 squeezed dry, and to take to downright robbery when nothing 
 else is left; but a person who, in the various circumstances 
 and opportunities of Bridau, finds nothing better to do than 
 these ordinary things, can hardly be a person of exceptional 
 intellectual resource. There is here surely that sudden and 
 unaccounted-for change of character which the second-rate 
 novelist and dramatists may permit himself, but from which 
 the first-rate should abstain. 
 
 This, however, may be an academic objection, and cer- 
 tainly the book is of first-class interest. The minor charac- 
 ters, the mother and brother, the luckless aunt with her com- 
 bination at last turning up when the rascal Philippe has 
 stolen her stake-money, the satellites and abettors of Max in 
 
xii 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the club of "La Desoeuvrance," the slightly theatrical 
 Spaniard, and all the rest of them, are excellent. The book 
 is an eminently characteristic one — more so, indeed, than 
 more than one of those in which people are often invited to 
 make acquaintance with Balzac. 
 
 The third story of Les Celibataires has a rather more varied 
 bibliographical history than the others. The first part, that 
 dealing with the early misconduct of Philippe Bridau, was 
 published separately, as Les Deux Freres, in the Presse during 
 the spring of 1841, and a year or so later in volumes. It had 
 nine chapters with headings. The volume form also included 
 under the same title the second part, which, as Un Menage 
 de gargon en Province, had been published in the same news- 
 paper in the autumn of 1842. This had sixteen chapters in 
 both issues, and in the volumes two part-headings — one 
 identical with the newspaper title, and the other "A qui la 
 Succession ?" The whole book then took rank in the Comedie 
 under the second title, Un Menage de gargon, and retained 
 this during Balzac's life and long afterwards. In the Edition 
 Definitive, as observed above, he had marked it as La Ra- 
 houilleuse, after having also thought of Le Bonhomme 
 Rouget. For English use, the better known, though not last 
 or best title, is clearly preferable, as it can be translated, while 
 La Rahouilleuse cannot. 
 
 The other story included by the publishers in this volume 
 is of equally high merit. It heads a group of stories in 
 Scenes de la Vie Privee (cf. Index) which contains some of 
 the author^s very best work; indeed, it contains very little 
 that is much below his best. Honorine presents some of Bal- 
 zac's profoundest observations, better stated than is usual, 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 xlll 
 
 or at least invariable, with him. The best of all are certain 
 axioms, disputed rather than disputable, as to the difference 
 between men's and women's love. The book suffers to some 
 extent from that artistic fault of the recitation^ rather than 
 the story proper, to which he was so prone, and perhaps a 
 little from the other proneness — so constantly to be noted 
 in any complete critique of him — to exaggerate and idealize 
 good as well as ill. But it is — as his abomination, Sainte- 
 Beuve, said of another matter — an essai noble; and it is not — ■ 
 as Sainte-Beuve also said of that matter which had nothing 
 to do with Balzac — an essai pale. 
 
 Honorine was rather a late book. It appeared in La Presses 
 in the spring of 1843 with a motto from Madeinoiselle de. 
 Maupin and in six headless chapters. A year later it was? 
 published in two volumes by Potter, with forty headed chap- 
 ters or sections. In 1845 it took rank in the Scenes de lo. 
 Vie Privee of the Comedie. It was then accompanied by Le 
 Colonel Chalert, La Messe de I'Athee, and U Inter diction, 
 though they do not accompany it in the Edition Definitive. 
 
 G. S. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 , To Mo7isieur Charles Nodier, 
 
 ' Member of the French Academy, 
 
 Chief Librarian at the Arsenal. 
 
 Here, my dear Nodier, you have a book full of those incidents 
 which escape the action of the law under the shelter of domestic 
 privacy; but in which the finger of God, so often called Chance, 
 takes the place of human justice, while the moral is not the less 
 striking and instructive for being uttered by a satirist. The out- 
 come, to my mind, is a great lesson for the Family, and for 
 Motherhood. We shall perhaps discover too late the effects of 
 diminished paternal power. That authority, which formerly 
 ceased only on the father's death, constituted the one human 
 tribunal at which domestic crimes could be tried, and on great 
 occasions the Sovereign would ratify and carry out its decisions. 
 However tender and kind the mother may be, she can no more 
 supply that patriarchal rule than a woman can fill a man's place 
 on the throne; when the exception occurs, the creature is a 
 monster. 
 
 I have never, perhaps, drawn a picture which shows more 
 clearly than this how indispensable the stability of marriage is 
 to European Society, what the sorrows are of woman's weak- 
 ness, what dangers are involved in unbridled self-interest. It is 
 to be hoped that a society based solely on the power of money 
 may tremble when it sees the impotence of Justice over the com- 
 plications of a sj^stem which deifies success and condones every 
 means to achieve it: That it may have prompt recourse to the 
 
2 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Catholic Church for purification of the masses by religious feel- 
 ing, and by some education other than that of a lay University! 
 Enough fine characters, enough instances of great and noble 
 devotion will have been seen in my Scenes of Military Life; so 1 
 may be allowed here to show what depravity results from the 
 exigencies of war in certain minds which dare to act in private 
 life as they would on the field of battle. 
 
 You have studied our times with a sagacious eye, and your 
 philosophy betrays itself by more than one bitter reflection in the 
 course of your elegant pages; you, better than any one, have 
 appreciated the mischief done to the spirit of our nation by four 
 different political systems. > 
 
 I could not, therefore, place this narrative under the protection 
 of a more competent authority. Your name, perhaps, may 
 defend this work against the outcry it is sure to raise. Where is 
 there a sufferer who keeps silence when the surgeon uncovers 
 his most burning wounds? The pleasure of dedicating this drama 
 to you is enhanced by my pride in betraying your goodwill for 
 him who here signs himself one of your sincere admirers, 
 
 De Balzac. 
 
 In 1792 the citizens of Issoudun rejoiced in a doctor named 
 Rouget, who was regarded as a very deep fox. Some bold 
 folks asserted that he made his wife very unhappy, though 
 she was the handsomest woman in the town. Perhaps this 
 wife was rather a simpleton. In spite of the inquisitiveness 
 of friends, the gossip of outsiders, and the evil-speaking of 
 the envious, the circumstances of the household were little 
 known. Doctor RcJuget was one of the men of whom it is 
 commonly said that they are not easy to get on with." And 
 so, as long as he lived, little was said about him, and he was 
 treated civilly. 
 
 His wife, a Demoiselle Descoings, somewhat sickly as a 
 girl — one reason, it was said, why the doctor married her — 
 had first a son, and then a dauditer^ born as it happened ten 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 3 
 
 years after her brother, and not expected by the doctor, it was 
 always reported, though he was a medical man. This late- 
 born daughter was named Agathe. 
 
 These facts are so simple and commonplace that the histo- 
 rian hardly seems justified in placing them in the forefront 
 of his narrative; but if they remained unknown, a man of 
 Doctor Rouget's temper would be condemned as a monster, 
 as an unnatural father, whereas he simply obeyed certain 
 evil promptings which many persons defend under the terrible 
 axiom: A man must know his own mind. This masculine 
 motto has wrought misery for many wives. The Descoings, 
 the doctor's father and mother-in-law, wool-brokers, under- 
 took alike the sale for landowners, or the purchase for wool- 
 merchants of the golden fleeces of le Berry, and took com- 
 mission from both parties. They grew rich over this busi- 
 ness, and then avaricious — the moral of many lives. 
 
 Their son, Descoings junior, a younger brother of Madame 
 Eouget's, did not like Issoudun. He went to seek his fortune 
 in Paris, and set up as a grocer in the Rue Saint-Honore. 
 This was his ruin. But what is to be said ? A grocer is at- 
 tracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the re- 
 pulsion which renders it odious to artists. The social forces 
 which make for this or that vocation have been insufficiently 
 studied. It would be curious to know what leads a man tc 
 become a stationer rather than a baker, when he is no longer- 
 compelled, as among the Egyptians, to succeed to his father's 
 craft. Love had helped to form Descoings' vocation. He 
 had said to himself, "And I, too, will be a grocer !" when he 
 had also said something else on seeing his master's wife, a 
 beautiful creature, with whom he fell over head and ears in 
 love. With no auxiliary but patience and a little money sent 
 him by his father and mother, he married the widow of the 
 worthy Master Bixiou, his predecessor. In 1792 Descoings 
 was regarded as a prosperous man. 
 
 At that time the parents Descoings were still living. They 
 had retired from wool, and invested their wealth in buying 
 government stock — another Golden Fleece. Their son-in- 
 
4 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 law, almost sure ere long to be in mourning for his wife, sent 
 his daughter to his brother-in-law's house in Paris, partly 
 that she might see the capital, but also with a crafty purpose. 
 Descoings had no children. Madame Descoings, twelve years 
 older than her husband, was in excellent health, but she was 
 as fat as a thrush after the vintage; and the wily Eouget had 
 enough medical skill to foresee that Monsieur and Madame 
 Descoings, in contradiction to the philosophy of fairy-tales, 
 would live happy and have no children. The couple might 
 become devoted to Agathe. Now Doctor Rouget wanted to 
 disinherit his daughter, and flattered himself it might be done 
 if he transplanted her from home. 
 
 This young person, at that time the handsomest girl in 
 Issoudun, was not in the least like either her father or her 
 mother. Her birth had been the occasion of a mortal feud 
 between Doctor Rouget and his intimate friend. Monsieur 
 Lousteau, formerly a sub-delegate, who had just left Issoudun. 
 When a family migrates, the natives of a place so delightful 
 iis Issoudun have a right to inquire into the reasons of so un- 
 lieard-of a step. To believe some sharp tongues, Monsieur 
 ?.^ouget, a vindictive man, had sworn that Lousteau should die 
 ])y his hand alone. From a doctor the speech seemed as deadly 
 as a cannon-ball. When the National Assembly abolished 
 delegates, Lousteau left, and never returned to Issoudun, 
 After the removal of this family, Madame Rouget spent all 
 her days with Madame Hochon, the ex-sub-delegate's sister, 
 her daughter's godmother, and the only person to whom she 
 confided her woes. And what little the citizens of Issoudun 
 ever knew about the beautiful Madame Rouget was told by 
 this good soul, and not till after the doctor's death. 
 
 The first thing Madame Rouget said when her husband 
 spoke of sending Agathe to Paris was, "I shall never see my 
 child again !" — "And she was sadly right," worthy Madame 
 Hochon would add. 
 
 The poor mother then became as yellow as a quince, and her 
 condition by no means gave the lie to those who declared that 
 Rouget was killing her by inches. Thp ways of her gawky 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 3 
 
 ninny of a son must have contributed to the griefs of the un- 
 justly accused mother. Never checked, or perhaps egged on 
 by his father, the lad, who was altogether stupid, showed his 
 mother none of the attention nor the respect due from a son. 
 Jean- Jacques Eouget was like his father, but even worse ; and 
 the doctor was not very admirable^ either morally or physi- 
 cally. 
 
 The advent of charming Agathe Eouget brought no good 
 to her uncle Descoings. In the course of the week — or rather 
 of the decade, for the Republic had been proclaimed — he was 
 imprisoned on a hint from Eobespierre to Fouquier-Tinville. 
 Descoings, being rash enough to opine that the famine was un- 
 real, was fool enough to communicate his opinion — he imag- 
 ined that thought was free — to several of his customers, male 
 and female, as he served them over the counter. Citoyenne 
 Duplay, the wife of the carpenter with whom Eobespierre 
 lodged, and herself the Grand Citoyen's housekeeper, un- 
 happily for Descoings, honored his shop with her custom. 
 This citoyenne considered the grocer's views as an insult to 
 Maximilian the First. Ill pleased as she was by the manners 
 of the Descoings couple, this illustrious tricot euse of the Jac- 
 obin Club regarded Citoyenne Descoings' beauty as a kind of 
 aristocracy. She added venom to their language while repeat- 
 ing it to her benevolent and kind-hearted master. The grocer 
 was arrested on the usual charge of ^^monopolizing." 
 
 Descoings in prison, his wife made a stir to obtain his re- 
 lease ; but her efforts were so ill judged that any observer hear- 
 ing her appeal to the arbiters of his fate might have supposed 
 that all she asked was a decent way of getting rid of him. 
 Madame Descoings knew Bridau, one of the secretaries under 
 Eoland, Minister of the Interior, and the right-hand man of 
 all who succeeded to that office. She brought Bridau into the 
 field to save the grocer. This really incorruptible minister, one 
 of those virtuous dupes who are always so admirably disinter- 
 ested, took good care not to tamper with the men on whom 
 Descoings' fate depended ; he tried to explain ! Now, to ex- 
 yilain to the men of that time had about as much effect as 
 
6 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 though they had been asked to restore the Bourbons. The 
 Girondin Minister, at that time combating Kobespierre, said 
 to Bridau, "What business is it of yours And each man to 
 whom the worthy secretary applied made the same ruthless 
 reply, "What business is it of yours 
 
 Bridau very prudently advised Madame Descoings to keep 
 quiet; but she, instead of conciliating Eobespierre's house- 
 keeper, spouted fire and flame against the informer ; she went ^ 
 to see a member of the Convention, who was in fear for him- 
 self, and who said, "I will speak of it to Eobespierre." 
 
 On this promise the grocer's wife rested, and her protector 
 naturally did not speak. A few sugar-loaves, a few bottles of 
 good liqueur offered to Citoyenne Duplay would have saved 
 Descoings. 
 
 This little incident shows that in a revolution it is as dan- 
 gerous to trust for safety to an honest man as to a scoundrel ; 
 one can rely only on one's self. 
 
 Though Descoings died, he had the honor, at any rate, of 
 going to the scaffold with Andre de Chenier. There, no doubt, 
 grocery and poetry embraced for the first time in the flesh; 
 for they have always had, and will always have, their private 
 relations. Descoings' execution made a far greater sensation 
 than Andre de Chenier's. Thirty years elapsed before it was 
 recognized that France had lost more by Chenier's death than 
 by that of Descoings. 
 
 Robespierre's sentence had this good result — ^until 1830 
 grocers were still afraid of meddling in politics. 
 
 Descoings' shop was not more than a hundred yards from 
 Eobespierre's lodgings. The grocer's successor failed in busi- 
 ness ; Cesar Birotteau, the famous perfumer, established him- 
 self in the house. But, as if the scaffold had infected the 
 place with disaster, the inventor of the Compound Sultana 
 Paste and Eau Carminative was also ruined. The solution 
 of this problem is a matter for occult science. 
 
 In the course of the few visits paid by the head-clerk to the 
 luckless Descoings' wife, he was struck by the calm, cold, 
 artless beauty of Agathe Rouget. When he called to console 
 the widow, who was so far inconsolable as to retire from the 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 7 
 
 business after her second bereavement, he ended by marrying 
 the lovely girl in the course of a ^^decade," as soon as her 
 father could arrive, and he did not keep them waiting. The 
 doctor, delighted at seeing things turn out even better than he 
 had hoped, since his wife was the sole heir^s of the Descoings, 
 flew to Paris, not so much to be present at Agathe's marriage 
 as to see that the settlements were drawn to his mind. Citizen 
 Bridau, quite disinterested, and desperately in love, left this 
 matter entirely to the perfidious doctor, who took full advan- 
 tage of his son-in-law's infatuation, as will be seen in the 
 course of this history. 
 
 Madame Eouget, or, more accurately, the doctor, inherited 
 all the estate, real and personal, of old Monsieur and Madame 
 Descoings, who died within two years of each other. Finall}' , 
 Eouget got the better of his wife, for she died early in 1799. 
 And he had vineyards, and he bought farmland, and he ac- 
 quired iron- works, and he sold wool ! — His beloved son could 
 never do anything; he intended that the boy should be ii 
 landed proprietor, and allowed him to grow up in wealth and 
 folly, confident that he would know as much as the most 
 learned of them all in so far as that he would live and die 
 like other folks. 
 
 From the year 1799, the calculating heads of Issoudun said 
 that old Rouget had thirty thousand francs a year. After hi;*; 
 wife^s death the doctor still led a dissolute life, but with more 
 method, so to speak, and in the privacy of home-life. 
 
 The doctor, a man of strong v/ill, died in 1805. God knows 
 what the good people of Issoudun had then to tell of the 
 man's doings, and vv^hat stories were current of his horrible 
 private life. Jean- Jacques Rouget, whom his father had of 
 late kept tightly in hand, having discerned him to be a fool, 
 remained unmarried for sufficient reasons, of which the ex- 
 planation will form an important part of this story. His 
 celibacy was in part the doctor's fault, as will be seen later. 
 
 It is now necessary to consider the results of the vengeance 
 visited by the father on the daughter, whom he did not recog- 
 
8 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 nize as his, though you may take it for certain that she was his 
 legitimate offspring. Nobody at Issoudun had observed one 
 of those singular coincidences which make heredity a sort of 
 maze in which science loses herself. Agathe was very like 
 Doctor Rouget^s mother. Just as gout is commonly observed 
 to skip a generation, and to be transmitted from grandfather 
 to grandson, so, not unfrequently, a likeness does the same 
 as the gout. 
 
 Thus Agathe's eldest child, who was like his mother, in. 
 character resembled his grandfather, Doctor Rouget. We 
 will leave the solution of this problem also to the twentieth 
 century, with that of the nomenclature of microscopic organ- 
 isms, and our grandchildren will perhaps write as much more 
 nonsense as our learned Societies have already produced on 
 this obscure question. 
 
 Agathe Rouget, was universally admired for one of those 
 faces which, like that of Mary, the mother of the Lord, are 
 for ever virginal, even after marriage. Her portrait, still 
 hanging in Bridau's studio, shows a perfectly oval face, spot- 
 lessly fair, without even a freckle, notwithstanding her golden 
 hair. More than one artist, seeing the pure brow, the deli- 
 cate nose, the shapely ear, the long lashes to eyes of the deepest 
 blue, and infinitely mild — a face, in short, that is the embodi- 
 ment of placidity — asks the great painter to this day, "Is that 
 copied from one of Raphael's heads 
 
 No man ever made a better choice than did the Republican 
 official when he married this girl. Agathe was the ideal house- 
 wife, trained by a country life, and never parted from her 
 mother. She was pious without bigotry, and had no learning 
 but such as the Church allows to women. And she was a per- 
 fect wife in the vulgar sense of the word; indeed, her ig- 
 norance of life involved her in more than one misfortune. 
 The epitaph on the Roman matron, "She wrought needlework, 
 and kept the house," is an excellent account of her pure, 
 simple, and quiet life. 
 
 At the time of the Consulate, Bridau attached himself 
 fanatically to Napoleon, who made him head of a department 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 0 
 
 of state in 1804, a year before lioiiget's death. Rich with a 
 salary of twelve thousand francs and very handsome presents, 
 Bridau cared not at all for the disgraceful proceedings by 
 which the estate was wound up at Issoudun, and Agathe got 
 nothing. Six months before his death old Rouget had sold 
 part of his estate to his son, to whom he secured the remainder, 
 in part by deed of gift, and in part as his direct heir. An ad- 
 vance on her prospective inheritance of a hundred thousand 
 .francs secured under her marriage settlement represented 
 Agathe's share of her father's and mother's fortune. 
 
 Bridau idolized the Emperor. He devoted himself with the 
 zeal of a fanatic to carrying out the vast conceptions of this 
 modern demi-god, who, finding everything in France in ruins, 
 set to work to reconstruct everything. His subordinate never 
 said, "Stay, enough." Schemes, drafts, reports, precis, he 
 undertook the heaviest burdens, so happy was he to assist the 
 Emperor. He loved him as a man, he adored him as a 
 sovereign, and would never endure the slightest criticism of 
 his deeds or his schemes. 
 
 From 1804 to 1808 the official resided in a large and hand- 
 some apartment on the Quai Voltaire, close to his office and the 
 Tuileries. A cook and a man-servant composed the establish- 
 ment in the days of Madame Bridau's splendor. Agathe, 
 always up the first, went to market, followed by her cook; 
 while the man did the rooms she superintended the break- 
 fast. Bridau never went to the office before eleven o'clock. 
 As long as they both lived his wife found every day the same 
 pleasure in preparing for him a perfect breakfast, the only 
 meal he ate with enjoyment. All the year round, whatever the 
 weather might be, Agathe watched her husband from the 
 window on his way to the office, and never drew her head in 
 till he disappeared round the corner of the Rue du Bac. She 
 cleared the table herself, and looked round the rooms; then 
 she dressed and played with the children, or took them 
 for a walk, or received visitors till her husband returned. 
 When the head-clerk brought home pressing work she would 
 sit by his table in his study, as mute as a statue, and knitting 
 
10 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 as she watched him at work, sitting up as long as he did, and 
 going to bed a few minutes before he went. 
 
 Sometimes they went to the play, sitting in the official box. 
 On such occasions the pair dined at a restaurant; and the 
 scene it presented always afforded Madame Bridau the keen 
 delight it gives to persons unfamiliar with Paris. Compelled, 
 not unfrequently, to accept invitations to the huge formal 
 dinners given to her husband as head of a department, and 
 chief clerk of a section of the Ministry of the Interior — din- 
 ners which Bridau duly returned — Agathe then followed the 
 expensive fashions of the day; but on coming in she gladly 
 shed this ceremonial splendor, and relapsed at home into 
 provincial simplicity. Once a week, on Thursdays, Bridau 
 entertained his friends, and on Shrove-Tuesday he always 
 gave a grand ball. 
 
 This brief record is the whole history of a married life 
 fvhich saw but three events — the birth of two children, one 
 Ihree years younger than the other, and Bridau's death, which 
 took place in 1808; he was simply killed by night-work, just 
 h\s the Emperor was about to promote him in his office, and 
 to make him a Count and Privy Councillor. At this time 
 TsTapoleon was devoting his attention to home administration ; 
 ' he overloaded Bridau with work, and finally undermined this 
 valiant official's health. Napoleon, of whom Bridau had never 
 asked the least thing, had inquired into his style of living 
 and his fortune. On hearing that this devoted servant had 
 nothing but his salary, he understood that here was one of 
 those incorruptible creatures who gave dignity and moral 
 tone to his rule, and he intended to surprise Bridau by some 
 magnificent recompense. It was his anxiety to finish an 
 immense piece of work before Napoleon should start for 
 Spain that killed this worthy man, by bringing on an^tack 
 of acute fever. 
 
 On the Emperor's return, while in Paris for a few days pre- 
 paring for the campaign of 1809, on hearing of Bridau's 
 death, he exclaimed, "There are some men who can never be 
 replaced!" Struck by a devotion that could never have ex- 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 11 
 
 pected such dazzling rewards as he reserved for his soldiers, 
 Napoleon determined to create an Order, with handsome pen- 
 sions attached, for his Civil servants, as he had founded that 
 of the Legion of Honor for the Military. The impression 
 made on him by Bridau's death suggested the formation of the 
 Order of the Reunion; but he never had time to complete the 
 organization of this aristocratic class, which is now so utterly 
 forgotten that, on meeting with the name of this ephemeral 
 Order, most readers will wonder what was its badge; it was 
 worn with a blue ribbon. The Emperor styled it the Order 
 of the Reunion^ with the intention of combining the Order 
 of the Golden Fleece of Spain with that of the Golden Fleece 
 of Austria, But Providence, as a Prussian diplomate said, 
 was able to hinder such profanation. 
 
 The Emperor inquired into Madame Bridau's circum- 
 stances. The two boys had each a full scholarship at the 
 Lycee Imperial, and the Emperor charged all the cost of their 
 education to his privy purse. He then entered Madame 
 Bridau's name on the Pension List for four thousand francs 
 ji year, intending, no doubt, to provide ultimately for her two 
 i?ons. 
 
 After her marriage till her husband's death Madame Bridau 
 liad no correspondence whatever with Issoudun. Immedi- 
 flitely before the birth of her second boy she heard of her 
 mother's death. When her father died — she knew he had 
 loved her but little — the Emperor's coronation was imminent, 
 and the ceremony gave her husband so much to do that she 
 would not leave him. Jean- Jacques Eouget, her brother, 
 had never written her a word since she had quitted Issoudun. 
 Though grieved by this tacit repudiation by her family, 
 Agathe at last thought but seldom of those who never thought 
 of her at all. She received a letter once a year from her god- 
 mother, Madame Hochon, and answered it in commonplace 
 phrases, never heeding the warnings which the worthy and 
 ous woman gave her in veiled hints. 
 
 Some time before Doctor Rouget's death, Madame Hochon 
 had written to her goddaughter that she would get nothing 
 
 VOL. 4—28 
 
12 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 from her father^ unless she armed Monsieur Hochon with a 
 power of attorney. Agathe hated the idea of worrying her 
 brother. Whether Bridau supposed that this appropriation 
 was in conformity with the common law of the province of 
 Berry, or whether the clean-handed and upright husband 
 shared his wife's magnanimity and indifference to pecuniary 
 interests, he would not listen to Roguin, his attorney, who 
 advised him to take advantage of his high position to dispute 
 the will by which the father had succeeded in robbing his 
 daughter of her legal share. Husband and wife thus sanc- 
 tioned what was done at Issoudun. However, Roguin had 
 led the official to reflect on the damage to his wife's fortune. 
 The w^orthy man perceived that in the event of his death 
 Agathe would have nothing to depend on. He then looked 
 into his affairs, and found that between 1793 and 1805 he and 
 his wife had been obliged to draw out about thirty thousand 
 francs of the fifty thousand which old Rouget had given to 
 his daughter. He now invested the remaining twenty thou- 
 sand in the funds, which then stood at forty, so Agathe had. 
 about two thousand francs a year in State securities 
 Thus, as a widow, Madame Bridau could live very decent!} 
 on six thousand francs a year. Still very provincial, she was 
 about to dismiss the man-servant, keep only the cook, and 
 move to another set of rooms; but Madame Descoings, her 
 intimate friend, who persisted in calling herself her aunt, gave 
 up her apartment and came to live with Agathe, taking the 
 departed Bridau's study for her bedroom. The two widows 
 joined their incomes, and found themselves possessed of 
 twelve thousand francs a year. 
 
 Such an arrangement seemed simple and natural. But 
 nothing in life demands greater circumspection than arrange- 
 ments which seem natural ; we are always on our guard against 
 what appears extraordinary ; and so we see that men of great 
 experience, lawyers, judges, physicians, and priests attach 
 immense importance to such simple matters; and they are 
 thought captious. The serpent under flowers is one of the 
 finest emblems bequeathed to us by the ancients as a tvarning 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 13 
 
 for our conduct. How often does a simpleton exclaim, as an 
 excuse in his own eyes and those of others, "It was such a 
 simple matter, that any one would have been caught !" 
 
 In 1809 Madame Descoings, who never told her age, was 
 sixty-five years old. Spoken of in her day as La Belle 
 Epicure^ she was one of those rare women whom time spares, 
 and owed to an excellent constitution the privilege of preserv- 
 ing her beauty, though, of course, it could no longer bear seri- 
 ous examination. Of middle height, plump and fresh- 
 colored, she had fine shoulders, and a warmly fair skin. Her 
 light hair, tending to chestnut, showed no change of hue in 
 spite of Descoings' disastrous end. She was extremely dainty, 
 and liked cooking rich little dishes for her own eating; but 
 though she seemed devoted to the kitchen, she was also very 
 fond of the theatre, and, moreover, she indulged a vice which 
 she wrapped in the deepest mystery — she put into the lottery. 
 Is not the lottery, perhaps, the gulf which mythology has 
 figured under the bottomless vat of the Danaids ? 
 
 This woman — we may speak so of one who gambles in the 
 lottery — spent rather too much in dress, no doubt, like all 
 women who are so lucky as to remain youthful in advancing 
 years ; but with the exception of these little failings, she was 
 the easiest creature to live with. Eeady to agree with every- 
 body, never contradictory, she was attractive by her gentle 
 and contagious cheerfulness. She had especially one Parisian 
 characteristic which bewitches retired clerks and traders — she 
 understood a joke. If she did not marry a third husband, 
 that, no doubt, was the fault of the times. During the wars 
 of the Empire, marrying men found handsome and w^ealthy 
 girls too readily to trouble their heads about a woman of 
 sixty. 
 
 Madame Descoings tried to cheer Madame Bridau; she 
 made her go often to the play, or out driving; she provided 
 her with capital little dinners; she even tried to marry her 
 to her son Bixiou. Alas ! she was forced to confess to her the 
 terrible secret that had been so jealously kept, by herself, by 
 the departed Descoings, and by her lawyer. The youth- 
 
14 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 ful, dressy Madame Descoings, who owned to no more than 
 thirty-six, had a son of thirty-five named Bixiou, a widower, 
 and Major of the 31st foot, who was afterwards killed at 
 Dresden, as a colonel, leaving an only child, a boy. His 
 mother, who never saw her grandson but in secret, spoke of the 
 colonel as a son of her husband's by his first wife. Her con- 
 fession was an act of expediency; the colonel's boy, who was 
 at school at the Lycee Imperial with the two Bridaus, held 
 a half-scholarship. This youth, very sharp and knowing even 
 in his school-days, made a great reputation later as an artist 
 and a wit. 
 
 Agathe cared for nothing on earth but her children, and 
 would live only for them; she refused to marry again, alike 
 from good sense and from faithful attachment. But a woman 
 finds it easier to be a good wife than to be a good mother. A 
 widow has two duties of a contradictory nature — she is a 
 mother, and she ought to exert a father's power. Few women 
 are strong enough to understand and play this double part. 
 And so poor Agathe, with all her virtues, was the innocent 
 cause of many misfortunes. As a result of her lack of insight, 
 and the trustfulness habitual to lofty natures, Agathe was the 
 victim of Madame Descoings, who dragged her into over- 
 whelming disaster. This woman had a fancy for sets of 
 three numbers, and the lottery grants no credit to ticket 
 holders. As housekeeper, she could spend the money allotted 
 to the marketing in such ventures, and gradually increased 
 the debt in the hope of enriching her grandson, her dear 
 Agathe, and the young Bridaus. When it amounted to ten 
 thousand francs she staked higher sums, always hoping that 
 the favorite combination, which had not yet come out in ten 
 years, would cover the loss. Then the debt swelled rapidly. 
 It reached the sum of twenty thousand francs ; Madame Des- 
 coings lost her head, and her numbers did not come out. 
 
 Then she wished to pledge her fortune in order to repay 
 her niece, but her lawyer Eoguin showed her that this honest 
 scheme was impossible. The elder Eouget, at the death of 
 his brother-in-law Descoings, had taken over his liabilities 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 15 
 
 and assets, indemnifying the widow by a life-annuity, charged 
 on Jean-Jacques Kouget's estate. No usurer would consent 
 to lend twenty thousand francs to a woman of sixty-five on a 
 life interest worth about four thousand, at a time when ten 
 per ceni could be got anywhere. One morning Madame Des- 
 coings threw herself at her niece's feet, and with many sobs 
 confessed the state of a^fl^airs; Madame Bridan did not re- 
 proach her. She sent away the man-servant and the cook ; 
 sold all but the most indispensable furniture; sold out three- 
 quarters of her^tate securities, paid everything, and gave up 
 her apartment. 
 
 One of the most hideous corners of Paris is, beyond doubt, 
 the Rue Mazarine, between the crossing of the Rue Guenegaud, 
 to where it opens into the Rue de la Seine behind the Palais 
 de rinstitut. The tall, gray walls of the College and Library 
 presented to the city of Paris by Cardinal Mazarin cast chill 
 shadows over this strip of street ; the sun rarely shines on it, 
 the northerly blast sweeps through it. The poor ruined 
 widow went to lodge on the third floor of a house in this 
 damp, dark, cold spot. 
 
 Facing the house were the buildings of the Institute, where, 
 at that time, were the dens of the wild beasts known to the 
 townsfolk as artists, and to artists as raping — daubers, art stu- 
 dents. A man might go in a rapin, and might come out with 
 the prize scholarship at Rome. This transformation was not 
 effected without much amazing uproar at the time of year 
 when the competitors w^ere shut up in these cages. To take 
 the prize, the aspiring sculptor had to execute, within a 
 given time, a clay model of a statue; the painter, one of the 
 pictures you may behold at the Ecole des Beaux-arts; the 
 musician had to compose a cantata; the architect, a design 
 for a public bnilding. At the time when these lines are 
 penned, the menagerie has been transferred from those cold 
 and gloomy buildings to the elegant Palace of the Fine Arts, 
 a few yards from thence. 
 
 Madame Bridau's windows commanded a view of these 
 
16 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 barred cells, a singularly dreary outlook. To the north the 
 dome of the Institute closes in the prospect; looking up the 
 street, the only delectation for the eye is the line of hackney 
 cabs on the stand at the top of the Eue Mazarine. Indeed, 
 the widow at last placed three boxes of earth outside her 
 windows, in which she cultivated one of those aerial gardens, 
 so obnoxious to the regulations of the police, which somewhat 
 purify the light and air. 
 
 The house, backing against one in the Rue de Seine, is 
 necessarily shallow ; the staircase turns in a spiral. The third 
 floor is the top; three windows and three rooms — a dining- 
 room, a little sitting-room, and a bedroom ; at the back, on the 
 other side of the landing, a small kitchen ; under the roof two 
 boys' rooms, and a vast unused garret. Madame Bridau chose 
 this apartment for three reasons: the low rent„ only four 
 hundred francs, so she agreed for a nine years' lease ; the near- 
 ness of her boys' school, for it was not far from the Lycee 
 Imperial ; and finally, it was in the quarter where she was ac- 
 customed to live. The interior of the rooms was in harmony 
 with the building. The dining-room, hung with cheap 
 flowered paper in yellow and green, with an unpolished tile 
 floor, had the barest necessary furniture — a table, two 
 little sideboards, and six chairs brought from her old home. 
 The drawing-room was graced by an Aubusson carpet, given 
 to Bridau when his office was last refurnished. The widow 
 placed in it that common mahogany furniture, finished with 
 Egyptian heads, manufactured by the gross in 1806 by Jacob 
 Desmalter, and covered with silk damask with white conven- 
 tional roses. 
 
 Above the sofa, a portrait of Bridau in pastel, the work of 
 a friend, attracted the eye at once. Though the art was not 
 above criticism, the brow plainly showed the firmness of the 
 unknown great citizen. The calm look of his eyes, at once 
 proud and mild, was happily rendered ; the sagacity to which 
 the prudent lips bore witness, and the honest smile, the whole 
 tone of the man of whom the Emperor spoke as Justum et 
 fenacem, had been caught, if not with talent, at any rate with 
 
A BAOHELOirS ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 17 
 
 truth. As you looked at this portrait, you could see that this 
 man had always done his duty. His countenance expressed 
 the incorruptibility which must be granted to many of the 
 men employed during the Republic. 
 
 Opposite, over a card table, was the brilliantly-colored 
 picture of the Emperor by Vernet, in which Napoleon is seen 
 riding past swiftly, and followed by his escort. Agathe 
 allowed herself the luxury of two large bird-cages — one full of 
 canaries, and one of exotic birds; she had taken up this child- 
 like fancy since her loss — irreparable to her, and to many 
 others. 
 
 As to Agathe's bedroom, by the end of three months it had 
 become, what it remained till the luckless day when she was 
 obliged to leave it — a chaos which no description could re- 
 duce to order. Cats were at home in the armchairs; the 
 birds, sometimes set at liberty, left their traces on all the 
 furniture. The poor, kind soul strewed millet and groundsel 
 for them in all parts of the room; the cats found tidbits in 
 broken saucers. Clothes lay about. It was an atmosphere 
 of provincialism and fidelity. Everything that had belonged 
 to Bridau was carefully treasured there ; his writing apparatus 
 was kept with the care which the widow of a knight would have 
 devoted to his armor. This woman's touching worship may 
 be understood from a single fact — she had wrapped a pen in a 
 sealed packet and written on it, "The last pen used by my dear 
 husband." The cup from which he had drunk for the last 
 time was under glass on the chimney-shelf. At a later date 
 caps and "fronts" crowned the glass shades that covered these 
 treasured relics. 
 
 After Bridau's death, his young widow of five-and-thirty 
 never betrayed a trace of vanity or womanly pride. Parted from 
 the only man she had really known, esteemed, and loved, vv^ho 
 had never caused her the smallest pang, she no longer felt 
 herself a woman; she cared for nothing; she ceased to dress. 
 Nothing could be more unaffected or more complete than this 
 surrender of married happiness and personal care. Some 
 souls are endowed by love with the power of merging their 
 
18 A BACHELOH'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 individuality in another; and when the other is gone, life is 
 no longer possible. Agathe, who could henceforth live only 
 for her children, felt the deepest grief at seeing how many 
 privations they must suffer in consequence of her ruin. From 
 the day when she moved to the Eue Mazarine there was a 
 tinge of melancholy in her expression that was very touching. 
 She did indeed count a little on the Emperor, but he could do 
 no more than he was already doing; he allowed each boy, be- 
 sides his scholarship, six hundred francs a year out of his 
 privy purse. 
 
 As to the dashing Madame Descoings, she had an apart- 
 ment similar to her niece's on the second floor. She had 
 assigned to Madame Bridau a sum of a thousand crowns, to 
 be taken as a first charge on her annuity ; Roguin had taken 
 care of this for Madame Bridau, but it would be seven yearij 
 before this slow repayment could undo the mischief. Roguin,, 
 instructed to replace the fifteen hundred francs in dividends, 
 banked the sums he retained on this account. Madame Des- 
 coings, reduced to twelve hundred francs a year, lived poorly 
 enough with her niece. The two honest, helpless creatures 
 had a woman in for the morning's work only. The aunt, who 
 liked cooking, managed the dinner. In the evening, a few 
 friends, clerks in the office for whom Bridau had found places, 
 would come to play a game with the two widows. 
 
 Madame Descoings still clung to her three numbers, which 
 obstinately refused, as she said, ever to come out. She still 
 hoped, by one turn of luck, to repay all she had surreptitiously 
 borrowed from her niece. She loved the two little Bridaus 
 better than her grandson Bixiou, so strongly did she feel that 
 she had wronged them, and so greatly did she admire the 
 sweetness of her niece, who, at the very worst, never spoke the 
 lightest word of blame. And so it may be supposed that she 
 spoiled Joseph and Philippe. Like all persons who have a 
 vice to be forgiven, this old gambler in the Imperial lottery 
 would treat them to little dinners, cramming them with 
 dainties. A little later Joseph and Philippe could, with the 
 greatest ease, extract from her little gifts of money; the 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 19 
 
 younger to buy stumps, chalk, paper, and prints; the elder 
 for apple-puffs, marbles, balls of string, and knives. Her 
 passion had brought her down to being content with fifty 
 francs a month for all expenses, that she might gamble with 
 the remainder. 
 
 Madame Bridau on her part, out of motherly affection, did 
 not allow her expenses to exceed that sum. To punish herself for 
 her foolish confidence, she now heroically cut oE all her little 
 enjoyments. It often happens to a timid soul and narrow 
 intellect that a single experience of crushed feelings and 
 aroused suspicions leads to such an extreme development of a 
 failing that it acquires the consistency of a virtue. The Em- 
 peror might forget, she told herself; he might be killed in 
 battle — her pension would die with him. She shuddered as 
 she saw such probabilities of her children being left abso- 
 ,7utely penniless. Incompetent as she was to understand 
 Roguin^s calculations, when he tried to prove to her that in 
 {.^even years a charge of three thousand francs a year on 
 Madame Descoings' annuity would replace the securities she 
 had sold, she put no trust in the lawyer, or her aunt, or the 
 State; she relied only on herself and her own thrift. By 
 saving a thousand crowns a year out of her pension, in ten 
 years she would have thirty thousand francs, which would at 
 any rate secure her children fifteen hundred francs a year. At 
 six-and- thirty she had a right to hope that she might live 
 twenty years, and by carrying out this system she might leave 
 each of them enough for the bare necessities of life. 
 
 Thus the two widov/s had sunk from unreal opulence to vol- 
 untary penury — one under the influence of a vice, the other 
 under the promptings of the purest virtue. None of all these 
 trivial things are foreign to the deep lesson to be derived from 
 this story, founded on the sordid interests of common life, 
 but with a scope all the wider perhaps in consequence. 
 
 The view over the schools, the scampering art students in 
 the street, the need for looking at the sky, if only to turn 
 from the hideous outlook on every side of that m.ouldy street ; 
 the countenance of the portrait, full of soul and dignity in 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 spite of the amateurish handling; the association of the rich 
 coloring, harmonized by age, of this quiet and peaceful home, 
 the greenery of its hanging gardens, the poverty of the house- 
 hold, the mother's preference for her elder son, and her dis- 
 like to the younger boy's taste, — in short, the sum-total of 
 the incidents and circumstances which form the prologue to 
 the story, constituted perhaps the active causes to which we 
 owe Joseph Bridau, one of the great painters of the modern 
 French school. 
 
 Philippe, the elder of Bridau's two children, was strikingly 
 like his mother. Though fair-haired and blue-eyed, he had 
 a daring look which was often mistaken for high spirit and 
 courage. Old Claparon, who had entered the office at the 
 same time with Bridau, and was one of the faithful friends 
 who came in the evening to play a game with the two widows, 
 would say of Philippe two or three times in a month, as he 
 patted his cheek, "Here is a brave little man, who can always 
 say boo to a goose !" The child, thus encouraged, assumed 
 a sort of pluck out of bravado. His temper having taken 
 this bent, he became skilled in all physical exercises. By 
 dint of fighting at school, he acquired the hardihood and scorn 
 of pain which give rise to military courage, but, of course, 
 he also acquired the greatest aversion for study ; for a public 
 school can never solve the difficult problem of developing 
 equally and simultaneously the powers of the body and of the 
 mind. Agathe inferred from his purely superficial resem- 
 blance to her that they must agree in mind, and firmly be- 
 lieved that she should some day find in him her own refined 
 feeling, ennobled by a man's force of nature. 
 
 At the time when Madame Bridau moved to the gloomy 
 apartment in the Rue Mazarine, Philippe was fifteen, and 
 jihe engaging ways of a youth at that age confirmed his 
 mother's belief. Joseph, who was three years younger, was an 
 ugly likeness of his father. In the first place, his bushy black 
 hair was always ill-kempt wliatevcr was done to it; while 
 his brother, though he was never quiet, was always trim; 
 
I 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 21 
 
 then, by some inscrutable fatality — but a too persistent fatal- 
 ity grows into a habit — Joseph could never keep his clothes 
 clean ; dressed in a new suit, he made old clothes of them at 
 once. The elder, out of personal vanity, took care of hib 
 things. Unconsciously, the mother accustomed herself to 
 scold Joseph and hold up the example of his brother. So 
 Agathe did not always show the same face to her two boys; 
 and when she went to fetch them from school, she would say 
 of Joseph, "I wonder what state his things will be in V' All 
 these trifles drove her heart into the gulf of favoritism. 
 
 No one of all the very commonplace people who formed 
 the two widows' visiting circle — neither old du Bruel, nor 
 old Claparon, nor Desroches senior, nor even the Abbe Loraux, 
 Agathe's director, ever noticed Joseph's powers of observation. 
 Possessed by this taste, the future colorist paid no heed to 
 anything that concerned him ; and so long as he was a child, 
 this instinct looked so like stupidity that his father had been 
 somewhat uneasy about him. The extraordinary size of his 
 fikull, and the breadth of his forehead, had at first led them to 
 fear that the child had water on the brain. His face, still 
 so rugged, and odd enough to be thought ugly by those who 
 cannot see the intellectual purpose of a countenance, was, 
 during his boyhood, rather pinched. The features, which 
 developed later, seemed crushed together, and the intensity 
 with which the child studied everything puckered them still 
 more. Thus Philippe soothed all his mother's vanities, while 
 Joseph never won her a compliment. While J oseph was silent 
 and dreamy, Philippe could bring out those clever speeches 
 and repartees which tempt parents to believe that their chil- 
 dren will be remarkable men. The mother looked for wonders 
 from Philippe, she founded no hopes on Joseph. 
 
 Joseph's predisposition to art was brought to light by a 
 most commonplace incident. In 1812, during the Easter 
 holidays, as he was returning from a walk in the Tuileries 
 Gardens with his brother and Madame Descoings, he saw a 
 student scrawl a caricature of some professor on a wall, and 
 admiration of this chalk sketch, full of sparkling fun, riveted 
 
22 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 him to the spot. On the following day the boy placed him- 
 self at a window to watch the students going in by the door 
 in the Rue Mazarine ; he stole downstairs, and slipped into the 
 long courtyard of the Institute, where he saw a number of 
 statues and busts, marble rough-hewn, terra-cotta figures, 
 studies in plaster; he gazed at them in a fever of excitement, 
 for his instinct was roused, his vocation seethed within him. 
 He went into a large low room, the door standing open, and 
 there saw a dozen or so of lads drawing a statue; he was at 
 once the butt of their tricks. 
 
 "Pretty Dick ! pretty Dick V said the first to spy him, 
 flinging some bread crumbs at him. 
 
 "Whose brat is that 
 
 "Heavens, how ugly he is !" 
 
 In short, for a quarter of an hour Joseph stood the horse- 
 play of the studio — that of the great sculptor Chaudet; but 
 after making game of him, the pupils were struck by his 
 tenacity and his expression, and asked him what he wanted. 
 Joseph replied that he very much wished to learn to draw; 
 and thereupon everybody was by way of encouraging him, 
 The boy, taken in by this friendly tone, explained that he was 
 Madame Bridau's son. 
 
 "Oh ! then, indeed ! If you are Madame Bridau's son,'^ they 
 sang out from every corner of the studio, "you may become 
 a great man. Hurrah for Madame Bridau's son. Is your 
 mother pretty? To judge from your pumpkin head as a 
 specimen, she ought to be a sweet one to look at.^^ 
 
 "So you want to be an artist," said the eldest student, leav- 
 ing his place, and coming to Joseph to play him some trick. 
 "But you must be plucky, you know, and put up with dreadful 
 things. Yes, there are trials, tests that are enough to break 
 your legs and arms. All these fellows that you see — well, 
 every one of them has passed the tests. Now, that one, for 
 instance, he went for seven days and nights without food. 
 Come, let's see if you are fit to become an artist ?" 
 
 He took one of the boy's arms and placed it straight up in 
 the air, then he set the other at an angle as if about to striko 
 out. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 23 
 
 "^Wc call that the ordeal of the telegraph/' said he. "If 
 you stand like that without letting your arms sink, or chang- 
 ing your attitude for a quarter of an hour — well, you will 
 have shown that you have good pluck 
 
 "Now, little chap, show your mettle," said the others. 
 "By Jove, you must go through something to become an 
 artist." 
 
 Joseph, in all the good faith of a boy of thirteen, remained 
 motionless for about five minutes, and all the pupils looked 
 at him very gravely. 
 
 "Oh ! your arm is sinking," said one. 
 
 "Come, steady !" said another. 
 
 "By Jove, the Emperor Napoleon stood for at least a month, 
 just as you see him there," added a third, pointing to 
 Chaudet's fine statue. 
 
 The Emperor was standing holding the Imperial sceptre; 
 and this work was thrown down in 1814 from the column it 
 finished so nobly. 
 
 In about ten minutes the perspiration was standing on 
 Joseph's brow. At this moment a little man came in, bald, 
 pale, and fragile; respectful silence reigned in the studio. 
 
 "Now then, you scamps, what are you about?" he asked, 
 looking at the studio victim. 
 
 "The little chap is sitting to us," said the tall student who 
 had placed Joseph in position. 
 
 "Are not you ashamed of torturing a poor child so?" said 
 Chaudet, putting down Joseph's arms. "How long have you 
 been standing there?" he asked, with a friendly pat on the 
 boy's cheek. 
 
 "About a quarter of an hour.'' 
 
 "And what brings you here?" 
 
 "I want to be an artist." 
 
 "And where have you come from ; whom do you belong to 
 "From mamma's." 
 
 "Oh, ho ! from mamma's !" cried the pupils. 
 "Silence among the easels !" cried Chaudet. "What is 
 your mother?" 
 
24 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "She. is Madame Bridau. My papa, who is dead, was a 
 friend of the Emperor's. And if you will only teach me to 
 draw, the Emperor will pay whatever you ask." 
 
 ''His father was head of a department in the Ministry of 
 the Interior," cried Chaudet, struck by a reminiscence. 
 ''And you want already to be an artist ?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 ^ "Come here as often as you like; you may play here. Give 
 him an easel, paper, and chalk, and leave him to himself. 
 Remember, you pickles, that his father did me a service," 
 said the sculptor. "Here, you. Well-rope, go and buy some- 
 thing nice— some cakes and sugar-plums," he added, giving 
 some silver to the lad who had bullied Joseph. "We shall 
 soon see if you are an artist by the way you munch cabbage," 
 he went on, stroking Joseph's chin. 
 
 ^ Then he went the round of his pupils, Joseph following 
 him, listening and trying to understand. The treat was 
 brought; all the lads, the sculptor himself, and the child had 
 their share. Then Joseph was made much of, as he had be- 
 fore been made game of. This scene, in which the rough fun 
 and good heart of the artist tribe were revealed to him, as he 
 understood by instinct, made a prodigious impression on the 
 boy. This glimpse of Chaudet the sculptor, snatched away 
 by a too early death while the Emperor's patronage promised 
 him glory, was like a vision to Joseph. 
 
 The child said nothing to his mother of this escapade, but 
 every Sunday and Thursday he spent three hours in Chaudet's 
 studio. Madame Descoings, always ready to humor the 
 cherubs' fancies, henceforth gave Joseph charcoal, red chalk, 
 lithographs, and drawing-paper. At the Lycee Imperial the 
 budding artist sketched the masters, took portraits of his 
 school-fellows, scrawled on the dormitory walls, and was 
 astonishingly diligent in the drawing-class. Lemire, his 
 master there, astounded not merely by his talent, but by the 
 progress he made, came to speak to Madame Bridau of her 
 son's evident vocation. Agathe, a true provincial, and as 
 ignorant of art as she was accomplished in housekeeping, was 
 
She found Chaudet in his blue overall, modeling his latest siaiue 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 25 
 
 filled with alarms. When Lemire was gone, she burst into 
 tears. 
 
 "Oh!" she cried, as Madame Descoings came in, "I am un- 
 done ! Joseph, whom I meant to make a clerk, who has his way- 
 ready made for him in the Ministry of the Interior, and 
 guarded by the shade of his father, would have been at the 
 head of an office by the time he was five-and- twenty. — Well, 
 he is bent on being a painter — a beggar's trade. I always 
 knew that boy would bring me nothing but trouble !" 
 
 Madame Descoings had to confess that for some months 
 past she had been encouraging Joseph in his passion and 
 screening his stolen Sunday and Thursday visits to the School 
 of Art. At the Salon, whither she had taken him, the little 
 fellow's interest in the pictures was something miraculous. 
 
 "And if he understands painting at the age of thirteen, my 
 dear, your Joseph will be a man of genius." 
 
 "I daresay ; and see what genius brought his father to ! To 
 die, worked to death, at forty." 
 
 Late in the autumn, just as Joseph was reaching the age of 
 fourteen, Agathe, in spite of Madame Descoings' entreaties, 
 went across to see Chaudet, and insist that her son should not 
 be led into mischief. She found Chaudet in his blue over- 
 all, modeling his latest statue. He was barely civil in his re- 
 ception of the widow of the man who had once done him a 
 service in very critical circumstances, but his health was 
 already undermined ; he was working with the fevered energy 
 which enables a man to do in a few moments things which it 
 is difficult to achieve in as many months ; he had just hit on a 
 thing he had long been striving for, and handled his clay and 
 modeling tool with hasty jerks which, to Agathe, in her igno- 
 rance, seemed to be those of a maniac. In any other frame of 
 mind Chaudet would have laughed outright ; but as he heard 
 this mother blaspheming Art, bewailing the fate forced upon 
 her son, and requesting that he might never more be admitted 
 to the studio, he broke out in sacred fury. 
 
 "I am under obligations to your lamented husband; I 
 hoped to make him some return by helping your son, by 
 
26 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 watching over your little Joseph's first step in the noblest of 
 all careers V he exclaimed. "Yes, madame, I may tell you, 
 if you do not know it, that a great artist is a king, more than 
 a king; for, in the first place, he is happier, and he is inde- 
 pendent ; he lives as he pleases ; and besides, he rules over the 
 vvorld of imagination. Your son has a splendid future before 
 him ! Such talents as his are rare ; they are not revealed 
 so young in any artists but a Giotto, a Eaphael, a Titian, a* 
 Rubens, a Murillo — for he will be a painter, I think, rather 
 than a sculptor. Light of Heaven ! If I had such a boy, I 
 should be as happy as the Emperor is in being the father of 
 the King of Eome I — Well, madame, you are mistress of youi 
 child's fate. Go, make an idiot of him, a man who will only 
 put one leg before the other, a wretched scrivener; you will 
 be committing murder ! I only hope that, in spite of all your 
 efforts, he will alM^ays remain an artist ! A vocation is stronger 
 than all the obstacles opposed to its working. A vocation! 
 — the word means a call — Ah ! it is election by God ! 
 
 "But you will make your child miserable 
 
 He violently flung the handful of clay he had ceased to need 
 into a tub, and said to his model, "That will do for to-day." 
 
 Agathe looked up, and saw a naked woman sitting on a 
 stool, in a corner of the studio which had not yet come under 
 her eye. At the sight she fled in horror. 
 
 "You are not to let little Bridau come here any more,'' said 
 Chaudet to his pupils. "Madame his mother does not ap- 
 prove." 
 
 "Hoo-oo !" shouted the lads as Agathe closed the door. 
 
 "And Joseph has been going to that place !" said the poor 
 woman, in consternation at what she had seen and heard. 
 
 As soon as the students of painting and sculpture heard 
 that Madame Bridau would not allow her son to become an 
 artist, all their delight was to get Joseph to their own rooms. 
 In spite of the promise extracted from him by his mother 
 not to go any more to the Institute, the boy often stole into 
 a studio that Eegnauld used there, and was encouraged to 
 daub canvas. When the widow tried to complain, Cliaudet's 
 
A BACllELOirS ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 27 
 
 pupils told her that Ecgiiauld was not Chaudct, that she had 
 not made them the guardians of monsieur her son, and 
 laughed at her in a thousand ways. The rascally students 
 composed and sang a ballad on Madame Bridau in a hundred 
 and thirty-seven verses. 
 
 On the evening of that melancholy day, Agathe refused to 
 play cards, and sat in her armchair, a prey to such deep melan 
 choly, that the tears welled up to her beautiful eyes. 
 
 "What is the matter, Madame Bridau asked old Clapa- 
 ron. 
 
 "She believes that her son will have to beg his bread be- 
 cause he has the bump of painting," said Madame Descoings. 
 "But I have not the smallest misgiving as to my stepson's boy, 
 little Bixiou, though he too has a passion for drawing. Men 
 are made to fight their way." 
 
 "Madame is right," said Desroches, a hard, dry man, who in 
 spite of his abilities had never been able to rise in his office. 
 "I happily have but one son ; for with my salary of eighteen 
 hundred francs, and my wife, who makes barely twelve hun- 
 dred by her license to sell stamps, what would have become of 
 me? I have articled my boy to an attorney; he gets twenty- 
 five francs a month and his breakfast, and I give him the same 
 sum; he dines and sleeps at home. That is all he has; he 
 must needs go on, and he will make his way. I have cut out 
 more work for my youngster than if he v/ere at college, and 
 he will be an attorney some day; when I treat him to the 
 play he is as happy as a king, he hugs me ! . Oh ! I keep him 
 tight ! He has to account to me for all his money. You 
 are too easy with your children. If your boy wants to try 
 roughing it, let him alone ! He will turn out all right." 
 
 "For my part," said du Bruel, a retired head-clerk who 
 had just taken his pension, "my boy is but sixteen, and his 
 mother worships him. But I would not listen to a vocation 
 that declared itself at such an early age. I think boys want 
 directing." 
 
 "You, monsieur, are rich ; you are a man, and have but one 
 
 child," said Agathe. 
 VOL. 4 — 29 
 
2^ A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 ''On my honor," Claparon went on, "our children are our 
 tyrants (in hearts). Mine drives me mad; he has brought 
 me to ruin, and at last I have given him up altogether {inde- 
 pendence). Well, he is all the better pleased, and so am I. 
 The rascal was partly the death of his poor mother. He be- 
 came a commercial traveler, and it was the very life for him ; 
 no sooner was he in the house than he wanted to be out of it ; 
 lie never could rest, he never would learn. All I pray Heaven 
 is that I may die without seeing him disgrace my name! — 
 Those who have no children miss many pleasures, but they 
 also escape many troubles." 
 
 "J ust like a father !" said Agathe, beginning to cry again. 
 
 "What I tell you, my dear Madame Bridau, is to prove to 
 you that you must allow your boy to become a painter ; other- 
 wise you will lose your time " 
 
 "If you were capable of keeping him in hand," said the 
 harsh Desroches, "I would tell you to oppose his wishes ; but, 
 seeing you so weak with them, I say — let him daub and 
 scribble." 
 
 "Lost !" said Claparon. 
 
 "What ? Lost !" cried the unhappy mother. 
 
 "Oh yes, my Independence in hearts — that dry stick Des- 
 roches always makes me lose." 
 
 "Be comforted, Agathe," said Madame Descoings; "Joseph 
 will be a great man." 
 
 At the end of this discussion, which was like every earthly 
 discussion, the widow^s friends united in one opinion, which 
 by no means put an end to her perplexities. She was advised 
 to allow Joseph to follow his bent. 
 
 "And if he is not a man of genius," said du Bruel, who 
 was civil to Agathe, "you can always get him a place." 
 
 On the landing Madame Descoings, seeing out the three 
 old clerks, called them the "three Sages of Greece." 
 
 "She worries herself too much," said du Bruel. 
 
 "She may think herself only too lucky that her hoy will do 
 anything!" said Claparon. 
 
 "If only God preserves the Emperor," said Desroches, 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 29 
 
 Joseph will be provided for elsewhere. So what has she to be 
 anxious about 
 
 "She is afraid of everything where her children are con- 
 cerned/^ replied Madame Descoings. 
 
 "Well, dear little woman/^ she went on, as she re-entered the 
 room, "you see they are all of one mind. What have you to 
 cry for now ?" 
 
 "Oh ! if it were Philippe, I should have no fears. You do 
 not know what goes on in those studios. They actually have 
 naked women there 
 
 "But they have a fire, I hope,^' said Madame Descoings. 
 
 A few days later news came of the disastrous rout at Mos- 
 cow. Napoleon was returning to organize fresh armies and 
 call on France for further sacrifices. Now the poor mother 
 was tortured by very different alarms. Philippe, who did not 
 like college, was positively bent on serving the Emperor. A 
 review at the Tuileries, the last Napoleon ever held, of 
 which Philippe was a spectator, had turned his head. At 
 that period of military display the sight of the uniforms, the 
 authority of an epaulette, had an irresistible fascination for 
 some young men. Philippe believed himself to have the same 
 taste for military service that his brother had for the arts. 
 
 Unknown to his mother, he wrote to the Emperor a petition 
 in the following words : 
 
 "SiRE^ — I am the son of your Bridau ; I am eighteen years 
 old, and measure nearly six feet; I have stout legs, a good 
 constitution, and I wish to be one of your soldiers. I appeal 
 to your favor to be enrolled in the army, etc.'^ 
 
 Within twenty-four hours the Emperor had sent Philippe 
 to the Imperial Military School of Saint-Cyr; and six months 
 later, in November 1813, he called him out as sub-lieutenant 
 in a cavalry regiment. During part of the winter Philippe 
 remained in depot; but as soon as he had learned to ride he 
 set out full of ardor. In the course of the campaign in 
 France, he gained the lieutenancy in a skirmish of the ad- 
 vanced guard, when his headlong valor saved Ms Colonel 
 
so A BACHELOR'S ESTABLJSHMENT 
 
 The Emperor made him Captain after the battle of La Fere- 
 Champenoise, and placed him on the staff. Stimulated by 
 this promotion, at Montereau Philippe won the Cross. Then, 
 having witnessed Napoleon's farewell at Fontainebleau, and 
 being driven to fanaticism by the scene, Captain Philippe 
 refused to serve under the Bourbons. 
 
 When he went home to his mother in July 1814, he found 
 lier a ruined woman. In the course of the long vacation 
 Joseph's scholarship was cancelled; and Madame Bridau, 
 whose pension had been paid out of the Emperor's privy purse, 
 vainly applied for a clerkship for him in the offices of the 
 Ministry of the Interior. Joseph, more than ever devoted 
 to painting, was enchanted, and only besought his mother to 
 allow him to go to Monsieur Eegnauld's studio, promising 
 her that he would make a living. He was, he said, high 
 enough in the second class at school, and could get on without 
 rhetoric. 
 
 Philippe, a captain, and wearing an Order at nineteen, after 
 serving under Napoleon on two battlefields, immensely flat- 
 tered his mother's pride ; so, though he was rough, noisy, and 
 in reality devoid of all merit but the vulgar courage of a 
 slashing swordsman, to her he was the man of genius ; while 
 Joseph, who was small, sickly, and thin, with a rugged brow, 
 who loved peace and quiet, and dreamed of fame as an artist, 
 was doomed, as she declared, never to give her anything but 
 worry and anxiety. The winter of 1814-15 was a good one 
 for Joseph, who, by the secret interest of Madame Descoings 
 and of Bixiou, a pupil of Gros, vv^as admitted to work in that 
 famous studio, whence proceeded so many different types of 
 talent, and where he formed a close intimacy with Schinner. 
 
 Then came the great 20th of March; Captain Bridau, who 
 joined the Emperor at Lyons and escorted him back to the 
 Tuileries, was promoted to be Major of the Dragoon Guards. 
 After the battle of Waterloo, where he was wounded, but 
 slightly, and won the Cross of a Commander of the Legion of 
 Honor, he next found himself with Marechal Davoust at 
 Saint-Denis, and not with the army of the Loire; thus, by 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 31 
 
 the interest of Marccbal Davoust, he was allowed to retain 
 his Cross and his rank in the army, but he was put upon half- 
 pay. Joseph, uneasy about the future, studied meanwhile 
 with an ardor that made him ill more than once in the midst 
 of the hurricane of public events. 
 
 "It is the smell of paint/^ Agathe would say to Madame 
 Descoings. "He ought to give up work that is so bad for 
 his health." 
 
 All Agathe's anxieties were then centered in her son the 
 Lieutenant-Colonel. She saw him again in 1816, fallen from 
 his pay and profits of about nine thousand francs a year as 
 Major in the Emperor's Dragoon Guards, to half-pay amount- 
 ing to three hundred francs a month; she spent her little 
 savings in furnishing for him the attic over the kitchen. 
 
 Philippe was one of the most assiduous Bonapartists that 
 haunted the Cafe Lemblin, a thorough constitutional Boeotia. 
 There he acquired the habits, manners, and style of living 
 of half-pay officers ; nay, he outdid them, as any young man 
 <)f twenty was sure to do, solemnly vowing a mortal hatred of 
 the Bourbons ; he was not to be talked over, and even refused 
 such opportunities as were offered him of employment in the 
 field with his full rank. In his mother's eyes Philippe was 
 showing great strength of character. 
 
 "His father could have done no better," said she. 
 
 Philippe could live on his half-pay. He would cost his 
 mother nothing, while Joseph was entirely dependent on the 
 two widows. From that moment Agathe's preference for 
 Philippe was manifest. Hitherto it had been covert ; but the 
 persecution under which he suffered as a faithful adherent to 
 the Emperor, the memory of the wound her darling son had 
 received, his courage in adversity — which, voluntary as it was, 
 seemed to her noble adversity — brought out Agathe's weak- 
 ness. The words, "He is unfortunate," justified everything. 
 
 Joseph, whose nature overflowed with the childlike simplicity 
 which is superabundant in the youthful artist-soul, and who 
 had been brought up to admire his elder brother, far from 
 resenting his mother's favoritism, vindicated it by sharing 
 
82 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 in her worship of a ^Veteran" who had won !N"apoleon's 
 Orders in two battles — of a man wounded at Waterloo. How 
 could he doubt the superiority of this big brother, whom he 
 had seen in the splendid green-and-gold uniform of the Dra- 
 goon Guards, at the head of his squadron on the Champ de 
 Mai. And in spite of her preference, Agathe was a good 
 mother. She loved Joseph, but not blindl}^; she simply did 
 not understand him. Joseph worshiped his mother, whereas 
 Philippe allowed her to adore him. Still, for her the dragoon 
 moderated his military coarseness, while he never disguised 
 his contempt for Joseph, though expressing it not unkindly. 
 As he looked at his brother's powerful head,, too large for a 
 body kept thin by constant work, and still, at the age of seven- 
 teen, slight and weakly, he would call him *^the brat." His 
 patronizing ways would have been offensive but for the artist's 
 indifference, in the belief, indeed, that a soldier always had a 
 kind heart under his rough manners. The poor boy did not 
 yet know that really first-rate military men are as gentle and 
 polite as other superior persons. Genius is everywhere true to 
 itself. 
 
 'Toor child!" Philippe would say to his mother. "Don't 
 tease him ; let him amuse himself." And this contempt was 
 in his mother's eyes an evidence of brotherly affection. 
 
 *Thilippe will always love and protect his brother," she 
 thought. 
 
 In 1816 Joseph obtained his mother's permission to con- 
 vert the loft adjoining his bedroom into a painting room, and 
 Madame Descoings gave him a small sum to purchase such 
 things as were indispensable to his *'l)usiness" as a painter; 
 for in the minds of the two widows painting was but a trade. 
 Joseph, with the energy and zeal that are part of such a 
 vocation, arranged everything in his humble studio with his 
 own hands. The landlord, at Madame Descoings' request, 
 made a skylight in the roof. Thus the attic became a large 
 room^ and was painted chocolate-color by Joseph; he hung 
 some sketches against the walls; Agathe, not very willingly, 
 had a small cast-iron stove fixed ; and Joseph could now work 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 33 
 
 at home, not, however, neglecting Gros' studio or Schinner's. 
 
 The Constitutional party, consisting largely of half-pay 
 officers and the Bonapartists, were at that time frequently 
 engaged in riots round the House of Eepresentatives, in the 
 name of the Charter, which no one would hear of, and they 
 plotted sundry conspiracies. Philippe, who must needs get 
 mixed up in them, was arrested, but released for lack of evi- 
 dence; but the War Minister cut off his half -pay, reducing 
 him to what might be called punishment pay. France was no 
 longer the place for him ; Philippe would end by falling into 
 some trap laid by the Government agents. There was at that 
 time a great talk of these agents provocateurs. So, while 
 Philippe was playing billiards in cafes suspected of disaffec- 
 tion, losing his time, and getting into a habit of drinking 
 various liqueurs, Agathe lived in mortal terrors for the great 
 man of the family. 
 
 The ^''three Sages of Greece'^ were too well used to walking 
 the same way every evening, to mounting the stairs to the 
 widows' rooms, and to finding the ladies always expecting 
 -them, and anxious to ask them the news of the day, ever to 
 cease their visits; they came regularly to their game in the 
 little green drawing-room. The Ministry of the Interior, 
 thoroughly purged in 1816, had kept Claparon on its lists 
 as one of the trimmers who murmur in an undertone the news 
 from the Moniteur, adding, "Do not get me into trouble!" 
 Desroches, dismissed soon after his senior du Bruel, was still 
 fighting for his pension. These three friends, seeing Agathe's 
 despair, advised her to send the Colonel abroad. 
 
 "There is much talk of conspiracies, and your son, with his 
 character, will be the victim of some such affair, for there is 
 always some one to peach." 
 
 "The Devil I" said du Bruel, in a low voice, and looking 
 about him. "He is the stuff of which his Emperor used to 
 make his marshals, and he ought not to give up his calling. 
 Let him serve in the East, in the Indies " 
 
 "But his health ?" objected Agathe. 
 
 "Why does not he enter an office?" said Desroches. "So 
 
34 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 many private concerns are being started. I mean to get a 
 place as head-clerk in an Assurance Company as soon as my 
 pension is settled." 
 
 "Philippe is a soldier; he only cares for fighting," said 
 Agathe the warlike. 
 
 "Then he should be a good boy, and apply for active ser- 
 vice with " 
 
 "This crew ?" cried the widow. "Oh, you will never get me 
 to suggest it !" 
 
 "You are wrong," replied du Bruel. "My son has just been 
 helped on by the Due de Navarreins. The Bourbons are very 
 good to all who join them honestly. Your son will be appoint- 
 ed as Lieutenant-Colonel to a regiment." 
 
 "They will take none but noblemen in the cavalry, and he 
 will never be full colonel," cried Madame Descoings. 
 
 Agathe, in great alarm, implored Philippe to go abroad 
 and offer his services to some foreign power. Any one of 
 them would receive with favor an officer of the Emperor's 
 staff. 
 
 "Serve with foreigners?" cried Philippe in horror. 
 
 Agathe embraced her son fervently, exclaiming, "He is his 
 father all over." 
 
 "He is quite right," said Joseph. "A Frenchman is too 
 proud of his column to lead any foreign columns. Besides, 
 Napoleon may come back again yet." 
 
 To please his mother, a splendid idea occurred to Philippe : 
 He might join General Lallemand in the United States, and 
 co-operate in founding the Champ d'Asile, one of the most 
 disastrous hoaxes ever perpetrated under the name of a Na- 
 tional Fund. Agathe paid ten thousand francs, and went 
 with her son to le Havre to see him on board ship. 
 
 At the end of 1817, Agathe was managing to live on the six 
 hundred francs a year left to her in Government securities; 
 then, by a happy inspiration, she invested at once the ten 
 thousand francs that remained to her of her savings, and so 
 had seven hundred francs a year more. 
 
 Joseph wished to contribute to her act of sacrifice; he went 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 35 
 
 about dressed like a bum-bailiff, wearing thick shoes and blue 
 socks ; he wore uo gloves ; he burnt coal instead of wood ; he 
 lived on bread, milk, and cheap cheese. The poor lad never 
 heard a word of encouragement from anybody but old Madame 
 Descoings and from Bixiou, his school-fellow and fellow- 
 student, who was by this time employed in drawing capital 
 little caricatures, besides having a small place in a Govern- 
 ment office. 
 
 "How glad I was to see the summer of 1818 Bridau 
 would often say when speaking of these hard times. "The 
 sun saved my buying fuel.^' 
 
 He was already quite as good a colorist as Gros, and only 
 went to his master for advice; he was thinking of riding a 
 tilt at the classic school, of breaking free from Greek con- 
 ventionality and the leading strings which fettered an art 
 whose birthright is nature as it is, in the omnipotence of its 
 creativeness and its caprice. Joseph was making ready for the 
 struggle which, from the day when he first exhibited at the 
 Salon, was never more to cease. 
 
 It was a terrible year for them all. Roguin, the widows' 
 notary, disappeared, taking with him all the money kept back 
 during the past seven years from Madame Descoings' annuity, 
 which by this time ought to have been bringing them in two 
 thousand francs a year. Three days after this catastrophe there 
 came from New York a bill drawn on his mother by Colonel 
 Philippe. The poor fellow, swindled like so many more, had 
 lost everything in the scheme for the Champ d Asile. This 
 letter, by which Agathe, Madame Descoings, and Joseph all 
 were melted to tears, spoke of debts incurred at New York, 
 where his companions in misfortune had stood suret}^ for 
 him. 
 
 "And it is all my doing that he went !" cried the poor 
 mother, ingenious in finding excuses for Philippe's sins. 
 
 "I advise you not to send him often on such journej^s/^ 
 said old Madame Descoings to her niece. 
 
 Madame Descoings was heroic; she still paid Madame 
 Bridau a thousand crowns ; but ^she also still paid regularly to 
 
S6 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLIStlMEJNl^ 
 
 keep up the three numbers which had never come out sinc^i 
 1799. At this time she began to doubt the honesty of the 
 management. She accused the Government authorities, be- 
 lieving them quite capable of suppressing the issue of the 
 three numbers in the drawing so as to keep up the frenzied 
 deposits of the ticket-holders. 
 
 After a brief consideration of ways and means, it seemed 
 impossible to raise a thousand francs without selling some 
 shares. The two women talked of pledging their plate, some 
 of their house linen, or even part of the furniture that 
 they could do without. Joseph, terrified by these plans, went 
 to call on Gerard, and explained the situation ; the great painter 
 obtained a commission for him from the Master of the 
 Boyal Household to make two copies of the portrait of Louis 
 XVIII., at the price of five hundred francs each. Though 
 little addicted to liberality, Gros took his pupil to a shop 
 where Joseph got all the necessary materials. But the thou - 
 sand francs were to be paid only on delivery. Joseph set to 
 work and painted four little pictures in ten days; these hft 
 sold to the dealers, and brought his mother a thousand francs ; 
 she could meet the bill. A week later, another letter from the 
 Colonel announced to his mother that he was sailing on board 
 a packet, the captain having accepted his promise to pay, 
 Philippe added that he would need at least a thousand francs 
 more on disembarking at le Havre. 
 
 "Well," said Joseph to his mother, "I shall have finished 
 the copies ; you can take him the thousand francs." 
 
 "Dear Joseph !" cried Agathe, embracing him with tears. 
 "Then you really love that poor persecuted boy? He is our 
 glory and all our hope ! So young, so brave, and so unfortu- 
 nate ! Everything is against him; let us all three at any rate 
 be on his side." 
 
 "Painting is good for something after all, you see," cvied 
 Joseph, happy at having at last won his mother's permission 
 to become a great artist. 
 
 Madame Bridau flew to meet her beloved son. Colonel 
 Philippe. At le Havre she walked every day to a point be- 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 37 
 
 yond the round tower built by Francis I., every day imagin- 
 ing fresh and dreadful alarms as she watched for the Ameri- 
 can packet. None but mothers know how this kind of tor- 
 ment revives their first motherhood. The vessel came in one 
 fine morning in October 1819, without damage, without 
 having met the slightest squall. 
 
 The air of his native land, and the sight of his mother^ 
 must always have some effect, even on the coarsest soul, 
 especially after an exile full of disasters. Philippe gave way 
 to an effusiveness of feeling which made Agathe think to her- 
 self, "How much this one loves me V — Alas ! the young officer 
 loved but one creature in the world, and that was Colonel 
 Philippe. His ill-fortune in Texas, his stay in New York — 
 a place where speculation and self-interest are carried to the 
 highest pitch, where the coarsest selfishness becomes cyni- 
 cism, where each man, living for himself alone, is compelled 
 to tread his own path, where politeness does not 
 exist — in short, the smallest incidents of his expedition had 
 developed in Philippe all the bad tendencies of the disbanded 
 trooper. He was a bully, a drinker, a smoker, assert- 
 ive and rude; penury and privations had deteriorated him. 
 Also, the Colonel considered himself persecuted; the effect 
 of this belief on a man of low intelligence is to make 
 him an intolerant persecutor. To Philippe the whole uni- 
 verse began at his head and ended at his feet; the sun shone 
 for him alone. To crown all, his experience in New York, 
 interpreted by a man of action, had robbed him of every moral 
 scruple. 
 
 With beings of his stamp there are but two modes of ex- 
 istence : they are believers, or they are unbelievers ; they have 
 all the virtues of an honest man, or they are carried away by 
 every pressure of necessity ; then they get into a habit of re- 
 garding their smallest interests, and every passing wish 
 prompted by passion, as a necessity. On this plan a man may 
 go far. 
 
 In appearance, but in appearance only, the Colonel had 
 preserved the blunt, frank, easy-going manner of a soldier. 
 Thus he was a very dangerous man; he seemed as guileless 
 
88 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 as a child ; but having no one to think of but himself, he never 
 did anything without carefully considering what he had best 
 do, much as a wily prosecutor considers every twist and turn 
 of a tricky rogue. Words cost him nothing, and he would 
 give joii as many as you chose to believe. If a man should, 
 unluckily, be so rash as to take exception to the explanations 
 by which he would justify the discrepancies between his con- 
 duct and his speech, the Colonel, who was a first-rate shot, 
 ^\ ho could challenge the m.ost skilful swordsman, and who had 
 the cool head of a man to whom life is a matter of indifference, 
 was ready to demand satisfaction for the first sharp word. 
 Pending that, he looked like a man so ready for blows as to 
 make compromise impossible. His tall figure had become 
 burly, his face was tanned during his stay in Texas, and he 
 had caught the abrupt speech and peremptory tone of a man 
 who means to be respected in the midst of the populace of 
 New York. 
 
 Such as he was, plainly dressed, and his frame evidently 
 hardened by his recent hard life, Philippe was a hero in his 
 poor mother's eyes ; but he had, in fact, become what the com- 
 mon people plainly describe as "a bad lot.'' 
 
 Madame Bridau, startled by her darling son's destitute 
 condition, had a complete outfit made for him at le Havre ; as 
 she listened to the tale of his woes, she had not the heart to 
 check his eating, drinking, and amusing himself, as a man 
 was bound to drink and enjoy himself on his return from the 
 Champ d'Asile. 
 
 The occupation of Texas by the remnant of the Grand 
 Army was no doubt a splendid idea; but it was the men that 
 were found wanting rather than the conditions, since Texas 
 is now a Eepublican state of great promise. The experiment 
 made under the Restoration proved emphatically that the 
 interests of the Liberals were purely selfish, and in no sense 
 national; aiming at power, and at nothing else. Neither the 
 material, the place, the idea, nor the goodwill was lacking, 
 only the money and the support of that hypocritical party; 
 they had vast sums at their disposal, and would give nothing 
 when the reinstatement of an Emnire was at stake. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTAPJJSHMENT 
 
 Housewives of Agathe's stamp have the good sense which 
 enables them to see through such political frauds. The hap- 
 less mother saw the truth as she heard her son's story; for, 
 during his absence, her interest in the exile had led her to 
 listen to the pompous announcements of the Constitutional 
 newspapers, and to watch the vicissitudes of the braggart 
 subscription, which yielded scarcely a hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand francs when five or six millions were needed. The lead- 
 ers of the Liberal party very soon discovered that they were, 
 in fact, doing the job for Louis XVTII. by sending away the 
 glorious remnant of the French army, and they abandoned 
 to their fate the most devoted and ardent enthusiasts, who 
 tvere the first to go. Agathe never was able to explain to 
 Philippe that he had been the prey of fraud rather than of 
 persecution. In her belief in her idol she accused herself of 
 stupidity, and lamented the disasters of the times which had 
 fallen on Philippe. 
 
 And it was true that, until now, in all his misfortunes he 
 had been less a sinner than a victim to his fine temper and 
 energy, to the Emperor's overthrow, to the duplicity of the 
 Liberals and the vindictiveness of the Bourbons towards the 
 Bonapartists. All through the week they spent at le Havre — 
 a horribly expensive week — she never dared hint that he 
 should become reconciled to the King's Government and call 
 at the War Office ; she had enough to do to get him away from 
 le Havre, where living is very dear, and back to Paris, when 
 she had no money left but just enough for the journey. Mad- 
 ame Descoings and Joseph, who met them as they alighted 
 from the coach in the yard of the Messageries Royales, were 
 shocked at the change in Agathe. 
 
 "Your mother has grown ten years older in two months,'' 
 ?aid the old lady to Joseph, in the midst of the embracing, 
 while their trunks were taken down. 
 
 "Well, Granny Descoings, and how are you ?" was Philippe's 
 tender greeting to the grocer's widow, whom Joseph atfection- 
 ately addressed as Maman Descoings. 
 
 "We have no money to pay for the cab," said Agathe 
 piteously. 
 
40 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 ''But I have," replied the young painter. "My brother 
 is splendidly burnt V he exclaimed, looking at Philippe. 
 
 "Yes, I am colored like a pipe. But you have not altered, 
 little man/^ 
 
 Joseph, now one-and- twenty, and much appreciated by a 
 few friends who had stood by him in evil days, felt his 
 powers, and was conscious of his talent. In a little society 
 of young men devoted to science, letters, politics, and philo- 
 sophy, he represented painting; he was hurt by his brother's 
 contemptuous tone, emphasized by an incivility; Philippe 
 pulled his ear as if he were a mere child. Agathe observed 
 the sort of chill which came over Madame Descoings and 
 Joseph after their first affectionate warmth, but she set mat- 
 ters right by speaking of the privations endured by Philippe 
 during his exile. 
 
 Madame Descoings, anxious to make a high day in honor of 
 the return of the prodigal son, as she called him in her owji 
 mind, had prepared the best of dinners, to which she had in - 
 vited old Claparon and the elder Desroches. All the friends, 
 of the family were invited, and came in the evening. Josepli 
 had asked Leon Giraud, d'Arthez, Michel Chrestien, Fulgence 
 Kidal, and Bianchon, his friends of the coterie. Madame 
 Descoings had told Bixiou — her stepson, as she called him— 
 that the young people would play a game of ecarte. Tho 
 younger Desroches, sternly forced by his father to become a 
 law-student, also joined the party. Du Bruel, Claparon, Des- 
 roches, and the Abbe Loraux stared at the traveler, frightened 
 by his coarse face and manners, his voice husky with dram- 
 drinking, his vulgar language and looks. While Joseph was 
 setting out the card-tables, her most intimate friends gathered 
 round Agathe and asked her : 
 
 "What do you intend to do with Philippe ?" 
 
 "I do not know,'' said she. "But he is still determined not 
 to serve under the Bourbons." 
 
 "It is very difficult to find him a place in France. If he 
 will not re-enter the army, he will not easily find a pigeon- 
 hole ready for him in the civil service," said old du Bruel. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 41 
 
 ^^And only to listen to him is enough to prove thai he will 
 never make a fortune, like my son, by writing plays." 
 
 Agathe's glance in reply was enough to make them all un- 
 derstand how anxious she was as to Philippe's prospects; and 
 as neither of her friends had any suggestions to offer, they all 
 kept silence. The exile, young Desroches, and Bixiou were 
 playing, ecarte, a game that was then the rage. 
 
 "Maman Descoings, my brother has no money to play 
 with," said Joseph, in the kind and staunch old lady's ear. 
 
 The gambler in the lottery went to fetch twenty francs, and 
 gave them to the artist, who quietly slipped them into his 
 brother's hand. 
 
 All the guests arrived. Two tables were set for boston, 
 and the party grew lively, Philippe proved but a sorry 
 player. After winning a good deal at first, he lost, till, by 
 eleven o'clock, he owed fifty francs to young Desroches and 
 Bixiou. The noise and disputes over the ecarte more than 
 once disturbed the peaceful boston players, and they kept 
 covert watch over Philippe. The Colonel gave evidence of 
 isuch a bad spirit that, in his last wrangle with young Des- 
 toches — ^who was not very good-tempered either — the elder 
 Desroches, though his son was in the right, pronounced 
 against him, and desired him to play no more. Madame Des- 
 coings did the same with her grandson, who had begun firing 
 such keen witticisms that Philippe did not understand them ; 
 atill, they might have led this caustic satirist into danger if 
 by chance one of his barbed arrows had pierced the Colonel's 
 dense intelligence. 
 
 "You must be tired,'^ said Agathe to Philippe. *^^Come to 
 your room." 
 
 "Traveling forms the young !" said Bixiou, smiling, when 
 Agathe and the Colonel were out of the room. 
 
 Joseph, who rose with the dawn and went early to rest, did 
 not see the evening out. Next morning Agathe and her 
 friend, as they laid breakfast in the front room, could not help 
 thinking that evening company would cost them very dear if 
 Philippe went on playing "that game," as Madame Des- 
 
42 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 coings phrased it. The old woman, now seventy-six years of 
 age^ proposed to sell her furniture, to give up her rooms on the 
 second floor to the landlord — who was most willing to have 
 them — to take Agathe's drawing-room for her bedroom, and • 
 to use the other room as a sitting and dining-room in one. In 
 this way they could save seven hundred francs a year. This 
 retrenchment would enable them to allow Philippe fifty francs 
 a month while he was looking out for something to do, 
 Agathe accepted the sacrifice. 
 
 When the Colonel came dov»^n, after his mother had asked 
 him if he had been comfortable in his little room, the two 
 widows laid the state of affiairs before him. Madame Des- 
 coings and Agathe, by combining their incomes, had five thou- 
 sand three hundred francs a year, of which four thousand 
 were Madame Descoings' annuity. The old lady allowed 
 Bixiou six hundred francs a year — for the last six months 
 she had owned him to be her grandson — and six hundred to 
 Joseph; the rest, with Agathe's income, was spent in house- 
 keeping generally. All their savings were gone. 
 
 '^'Be quite easy,^^ said the Colonel; "I will look out for 
 some appointment. I will cost you nothing. All I want is a 
 crust and a crib for the present.^' 
 
 Agathe kissed her son, and his old friend slipped a hundred , 
 francs into his hand to pay the gambling debt of the evening 
 before. 
 
 Within ten days the sale of the furniture, the giving up of 
 the rooms, and the necessary changes in Agathe's dwelling 
 were affected with the rapidity to be seen only in Paris. Dur- 
 ing these ten days Philippe regularly made himself scarce 
 after breakfast, came in to dinner, went out in the evening, 
 and did not come home to bed till midnight. 
 
 This was the plan of life into which the soldier fell almost 
 mechanically, and which became a rooted habit: he had his 
 boots blacked on the Pont Neuf for the two sous he would 
 otherwise have spent in crossing by the Pont des Arts to the 
 Palais Royal, where, he took two liqueur ghisses of brandy 
 while reading the papers, an occupation absorbing him till 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 48 
 
 mid-day; at about noon he made his way by the Kue Vi- 
 vienne to the Cafe Minerve, at that time the headquarters of 
 the Liberals, and there he played billiards with some retired 
 fellow-olBcers. There, while he won or lost, Philippe always 
 got through three or four more glasses of various spirits, and 
 then smoked ten regie cigars as he wandered and lounged 
 about the streets. In the evening, after smoking a few pipes 
 at the Estaminet Hollandais, he went up to the gambling 
 tables at about ten. The waiter handed him a card and a 
 pin; he consulted certain experienced players as to the state 
 of the run on red or black, and staked ten francs at an op- 
 portune moment, never playing more than three times, whether 
 he won or lost. When he had won, as he commonly did, 
 he drank a tumbler of punch and made his way home to his 
 attic; but by this time he would be talking of smashing up 
 the ultras and the bodyguard, and sing on the stairs, "Preserve 
 the Empire from its foes." — His poor mother, as she heard 
 him, would say, "Philippe is in good spirits this evening," 
 and she would go up to give him a kiss, never complaining 
 of the reek of punch, spirits, and tobacco. 
 
 "You ought to be pleased with me, my dear mother," said 
 he one day towards the end of January. "I am sure I lead the 
 most regular life !" 
 
 Philippe had dined out five times with some old comrades. 
 These soldiers had talked over the state of their affairs, and 
 discussed the hopes they founded on the building of a sub- 
 marine vessel to be employed to deliver the Emperor. Among 
 the fellow-officers he here met again, Philippe was particu- 
 larly thick mth a former captain of the Dragoon Guard 
 named Giroudeau, in whose company he had first smelt gun- 
 powder. This officer of Dragoons was the cause of Philippe's 
 completing what Rabelais calls the devil's outfit, and adding 
 a fourth iniquity to his dram, his cigar, and his gambling. 
 
 One evening, at the beginning of February, Giroudeau took 
 Philippe after dinner to the Gaite Theatre, to a box sent to 
 a small theatrical paper belonging to his nephew Finot, for 
 
 VOL. 4 — 30 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 whom the old soldier kept the cash-box and the accounts, ad- 
 dressed and checked the papers. Dressed after the fashion 
 of the Bonapartist officers of the Constitutional opposition, in 
 loose, long coats with a square collar buttoned up to the chin, 
 hanging to their heels, and decorated with the rosette, armed 
 with a loaded cane hanging to the wrist by a plaited leather 
 3ord, the two troopers had treated themselves to a skinful, as 
 they expressed it, and opened their hearts to each other as 
 they went into the box. Through the haze of a considerable 
 number of bottles of wine and "nips" of sundry liqueurs, 
 Giroudeau pointed out to Philippe a plump and nimble little 
 damsel on the stage, known as Florentine, whose favors and 
 affections, as well as the box, were his through the all-pow- 
 erful influence of the paper. 
 
 "But, dear me," said Philippe, "how far does she carry her 
 favors for an old dappled-gray trooper like you?" 
 
 "Praise the Lord, I have never forgotten the old principles 
 of our glorious uniform!" said Giroudeau. "I never spent 
 two farthings on a woman." 
 
 "What next ?" cried Philippe, with a finger to his left eye. 
 
 "Quite true," said Giroudeau. "But, between ourselves, 
 ilhe paper has something to do with it. To-morrow you will 
 ^(se, in two lines, the management will be advised to give 
 Jtlademoiselle Florentine a pas seul. — On my word, my dear 
 boy, I am very happy," said Giroudeau. 
 
 "W ell," thought Philippe, "if this venerable Giroudeau, in 
 spite of a skull as bare as 3^our knee, his eight-and-forty years, 
 his corporation, his face like a wine-grower, and his nose like 
 a potato, can be sweetheart to a dancer, I ought to be the man 
 for the first actress in Paris. — Where are such articles to be 
 had?" he asked Giroudeau. 
 
 "I will take you this evening to see Florentine's humble 
 home. Though my Dulcinea gets but fifty francs a month 
 from the theatre, thanks to a retired silk mercer named 
 Cardot, who allows her five hundred francs a month, she is not 
 so badly set up." 
 
 "Why — what ?" said Philippe, jealous. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 45 
 
 "Pooh said Giroudcau. "True love is blind." 
 
 After the play Giroudeau took Philippe to see Mademoi- 
 selle Florentine, who lived in the Rue de Crussol, a stone's- 
 throw from the theatre. 
 
 "We must behave/' said Giroudeau; "Florentine has her 
 mother with her. As you may suppose, I cannot afford to 
 allow her one, and the good woman really is her mother. The 
 woman was a doorkeeper, but she does not lack brains, and 
 her name is Cabirolle. Call her madame; she is particular 
 about that." 
 
 Florentine had at her house that evening a friend of hers, 
 a certain Marie Godeschal, as lovely as an angel, as cold as a 
 ballet-dancer, and a pupil of Vestris, who promised her the 
 highest Terpsichorean distinctions. Mademoiselle Godeschal, 
 who was anxious to come out at the Panorama-dramatique, 
 under the name of Mariette, counted on the patronage of a 
 First Groom of the Chambers, to whom Vestris had long 
 promised to present her. Vestris, as yet still in full vigor, 
 did not think his pupil sufficiently advanced. Marie Gode- 
 schal was ambitious, and she made her assumed name of, 
 Mariette famous; but her ambition was praiseworthy. She 
 had a brother, a clerk in Derville the lav/yer's office. Orphans 
 and poor, but loving each other truly, the brother and sister 
 had seen life as it is in Paris ; he wished to become an attorney 
 so as to provide for his sister; she determined in cold blood 
 to be a dancer, and to avail herself of her beauty as well 
 as of her nimble legs to buy a connection for her brother. 
 Apart from their affection for each other, from their interests 
 and their life together, everything else was to them, as to the 
 ancient Romans and the Hebrews, barbarian, foreign, and 
 inimical. This beautiful affection, which nothing could ever 
 change, explained Mariette's life to those who knew her well. 
 
 The brother and sister lived at this time on the eighth floor 
 of a house in the Vieille Rue du Temple. Mariette had begun 
 learning at the age of ten, and had now seen sixteen summers. 
 Alas ! for lack of a little dress her dainty beauty, hidden under 
 an Angola shawl, perched on iron pattens, dressed in cotton 
 
46 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 print, and only moderately neat, could never be suspected by 
 any one but the Paris lounger in pursuit of grisettes and on 
 the track of beauty under a cloud. 
 
 Philippe fell in love with Mariette. What Mariette found 
 in Philippe was an officer of the Dragoon Guards and of the 
 Emperor^s staff, a young man of seven-and-twenty, and the 
 delight of proving herself superior to Florentine by the evi- 
 dent superiority of Philippe to Giroudeau. Both Florentine 
 and Giroudeau — he to give his comrade pleasure, and she 
 to procure a protector for her friend — urged Mariette and 
 Philippe to a ^Vater-color marriage." The Parisian expres- 
 sion d la detrempe is equivalent to the words "morgantic mar- 
 riage'^ applied, to kings and queens. 
 
 Philippe, as they went out, explained to Giroudeau how 
 poor he was. 
 
 "I will mention you to my nephew, Finot," said Giroudeau. 
 ^^Look here, Philippe, this is the day of black coats and fine 
 words; we must knock under. The inkstand is all powerful 
 now. Ink takes the place of gunpowder, and words are used in- 
 stead of shot. After all, these little vermin of editors are very 
 ingenious, and not bad fellows. Come to see me to-morrow at 
 the office; by that time I will have spoken two words about 
 you to my nephew. Before long you will have something to 
 do on some newspaper. Mariette, who will have you now be- 
 cause she has nothing else — make no mistake on that point — 
 no engagement, no hope of coming out, and whom I told that, 
 like me, you were going in for journalism — Mariette will 
 prove that she loves you for yourself, and you will believe her ! 
 Do as I do ; keep her from rising as long as you can. I was 
 so desperately in love that as soon as Florentine wanted to 
 dance a pas seul, I begged Finot to write her up ; but says my 
 nephew to me, ^She is clever, is she not? Well, the day she 
 first dances a step of her own she will show you across the 
 doorstep.' That's Finot all over. Oh, you will find him a 
 wide-awake chap." 
 
 Next day, at about four o'clock, Philippe made his way to 
 the Rue du Sentier, and up to a small room on the entresol. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 47 
 
 where he found Giroudeau shut up like a wild beast in a sort 
 of hen-coop with a wicket; it contained a little stove, a little 
 table, two little chairs, and some little billets for the fire. The 
 whole apparatus was dignified by these magical words, Office 
 for Subscribers, painted on the outside door in black letters, 
 and the word Cashier in running hand on a board hung on the 
 bars of the cage. Along the wall opposite the old trooper's 
 coop was a bench, on which an old soldier was eating a snack ; 
 he had lost an arm, and Giroudeau addressed him as Colo- 
 quinte (Colocynth), by reason, no doubt, of the Egyptian hue 
 of his face. 
 
 ^^Sweetly pretty said Philippe, looking about him. "What 
 business have you here — you who rode in poor Colonel 
 Chabert's charge at Eylau ? In the devil's name ! In all 
 the devils' names ! A superior officer . . ." 
 
 "Why, yes ! Eoo-ty too-too ! A superior officer signing 
 receipts in a newspaper office," said Giroudeau, settling his 
 black silk skull-cap. "And what is more, I am the respon- 
 sible editor of that rhodomontade," and he pointed to the 
 paper. 
 
 "And I, who once went to Egypt, now go to the Stamp 
 Office," said the pensioner. 
 
 "Silence, Coloquinte," said Giroudeau. "You are in the 
 presence of a brave man who carried the Emperor's orders at 
 the battle of Montmirail!" 
 
 "Pre-sent arms !" cried Coloquinte. "I lost my missing 
 arm there." 
 
 "Coloquinte, mind the shop; I am going upstairs to my 
 nephew." 
 
 The two soldiers went up to the fourth floor, to an attic at 
 the end of a passage, and found a young man with cold, color- 
 less eyes stretched on a shabby sofa. The civilian did not 
 disturb himself, though he offered cigars to his uncle and his 
 uncle's friend. 
 
 "My dear fellow," said Giroudeau, in a meek and gentle 
 voice, "here is the valiant Major of whom I spoke." 
 
 '^hat then?" saiii Finot. looking Philippe from head to 
 
48 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 foot, while the officer lost all his spirit, like Giroiideau, in the 
 presence of the diplomate of the press. 
 
 "My dear boy," said Giroudeau, trying to play the uncle, 
 "the Colonel has just come from Texas/' 
 
 "Oh! you were caught for Texas and the Champ d'Asile? 
 You were very young, too, to turn soldier-ploughman." 
 
 The sting of this witticism can be appreciated only by those 
 who can remember the flood of prints, screens, clocks, bronzes, 
 and casts to which the idea of the soldier-ploughm.an gave rise, 
 as a great allegory of the fate of Napoleon and his veterans, 
 which at last found vent in various satirical songs. The idea 
 was worth a million at least; you may still see the soldier- 
 ploughman on wall-papers in the depths of the provinces. 
 
 If this young man had not been Giroudeau's nephew, 
 Philippe would have smacked his cheeks. 
 
 "Yes, I was caught for it ; and I lost tv/elve thousand francs 
 and my time," replied he, trying to force a smile. 
 
 "And you still love the Emperor ?" 
 
 "He is my God !" replied Philippe Bridau. 
 
 "You are a Liberal?" 
 
 "I shall always side with the Constitutional Oppoidtion. 
 Oh, Foy ! Manuel ! Laffitte ! There are men for you. 
 They will rid us of these wretches who have sneaked in at the 
 heels of the foreigners." 
 
 "Well, then," said Finot coldly, "you must take the benefit 
 of your misfortunes, for you are a victim to the Liberals, my 
 good fellow. Remain a Liberal if you are set on your opin- 
 ions; but threaten the Liberals with divulging the madness 
 of the Texas scheme. You never got a farthing of the 
 national subscription, I suppose? Well, then, you are in a 
 splendid position : ask for the accounts of the fund. This is 
 what will happen: A fresh newspaper is now being started 
 by the Opposition under the auspices of the deputies of the 
 Left; you will be made cashier witli a thousand crowns a 
 year, a place for life. You have only to find twenty thou- 
 sand francs as security; get them, and in a week you will 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 4» 
 
 have a berth. I will advise them to silence you by making 
 them offer you the place — but cry out^ and cry loud V 
 
 Giroudeau allowed Philippe to go down a few steps before 
 him, pouring out thanks as he went, and said to his nephew : 
 "Well, you are a pretty fellow, you are! You let me hang 
 on here with twelve hundred francs a year " 
 
 "The paper will not live a year," replied Finot. "I have 
 something better for you." 
 
 "By heaven !" said PhiMppe to Giroudeau, "that nephew of 
 yours is no fool. I had never thought of taking the benefit of 
 my position, as he puts it." 
 
 That evening, at the Cafe Lemblin and the Cafe Minerve, 
 Colonel Philippe broke out in abuse of the Liberals who sent 
 a man to Texas, who talked gammon about the soldier-plough- 
 man, who left brave m.en to starve in misery after squeezino- 
 twenty thousand francs out of them, and driving them for 
 two years from pillar to post. 
 
 "I mean to ask for an account of the money subscribed for 
 the Champ d'Asile," he said to one of the regular customen'. 
 at the Cafe Minerve, who repeated it to the journalists of the. 
 Left. 
 
 Philippe did not go home to the Rue Mazarine; he went 
 to tell Mariette that he was about to be ero.ployed on a paper 
 with ten thousand subscribers, in which her Terpsichoreaii 
 ambitions should be ardently supported. Agathe and Mad 
 ame Descoings sat up for him. in an agony of terror, for the 
 Due de Berry had that moment been assassinated. 
 
 The Colonel walked in next day, a few minutes after break- 
 fast. When his mother expressed uneasiness at his absence, 
 he flew into a passion, and asked if he were of age or no. 
 
 "By heaven ! I come in with good news, and you all look as 
 solemn as hearses. The Due de Berry is dead ! Well, so 
 much the better! There is one less of them.. — I am going to 
 be cashier of a newspaper office, with a thousand crowns a 
 year, so you are free from all worry so far as I am concerned." 
 
 "Is it possible?" cried Agathe. 
 
 "Yes, if you can stand surety for twenty thousand francs- 
 
80 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 You have only to deposit your securities for thirteen hundred 
 francs a year, and you will draw your half-yearly dividends 
 all the same." 
 
 The two widows, who for two months past had been killing 
 themselves with wondering what Philippe was doing, and how 
 to find him employment, were so delighted at his prospects 
 that they thought no more of the various difficulties of the 
 hour. In the evening old du Bruel, Claparon, who was a 
 dying man, and the inflexible Desroches senior — the three 
 Sages of Greece — were unanimous. They advised the widow 
 to stand surety for her son. The paper having been started, 
 most fortunately, before the murder of the Due de Berry, 
 escaped the blow struck at the press by M. Decaze. The 
 widow Bridau's State securities for thirteen hundred francs 
 of dividends were deposited as a pledge for Philippe, and he 
 was appointed cashier. This good son then promised to pay 
 the widows a hundred francs a month for his board and lodg- 
 ing, and was regarded as the best of good boys. Those who 
 had thought ill of him congratulated Agathe. 
 
 "We judged him wrongly," they said. 
 
 Poor Joseph, not to be left in the lurch, tried to keep him- 
 self, and succeeded. 
 
 At the end of three months, the Colonel — who ate and 
 drank for four, who was very particular, and, under the pre- 
 text of his paying, led the two widows into expensive living — 
 had not contributed a farthing. Neither his mother nor 
 Madame Descoings would remind him of his promise, out of 
 delicate feeling. The year went by, and not one of the crown 
 pieces, which Leon Gozlan picturesquely calls a tiger with five 
 claws, had passed from Philippe's pocket to the housekeeping. 
 On this point, to be sure, the Colonel had silenced his scruples 
 uf conscience : he rarely dined at home. 
 
 "And, after all, he is happy," said his mother. "He is easy, 
 lie has an appointment." 
 
 Through the influence of the theatrical articles, written by 
 Vernou, a friend of Bixiou's, of Finot's, and Giroudeau's, 
 
A BAiJllELOirS ESTABLISHMENT 51. 
 
 Mahette came out; not indeed at the Panorama- dramatique, 
 but at the Porte Saint-Martin, where she was a success even 
 by the side of Begrand. Among the directors of that theatre 
 there was just then a wealthy and luxurious general, who, 
 being in love with an actress, had become an impresario for 
 her sake. There are ahvays in Paris men in love with some 
 actress, dancer, or singer, who make themselves theatrical 
 managers for love's sake. This general knew Philippe and 
 Giroudeau. By the help of the two newspapers, Finot's and 
 Phihppe's, Mariette's debut was arranged by the three officers, 
 with all the greater ease because, as it would seem, such 
 passions are always reciprocally helpful in matters of folly. 
 
 Bixiou, ever mischievous, had soon told his grandmother 
 and the pious Agathe that Philippe the cashier, the bravest 
 of the brave, was the lover of Mariette the famous dancer at 
 the Porte Saint-Martin. The stale news fell like a thunder- 
 clap on the two widows. In the first place, Agathe's religious 
 sentiments made her look on the women of the stage as brands 
 of hell, and then they both believed that such women ate gold, 
 drank pearls, and devoured the finest fortunes. 
 
 ^" Why said J oseph to his mother, "do you suppose that 
 Philippe would be such a fool as to give any money to 
 Mariette ? Such women only ruin rich men." 
 
 "There is a talk already of securing Mariette at the Opera- 
 house," said Bixiou. "But don't be alarmed, Madame 
 Bridau; the corps diplomatique haunts the Porte Saint- 
 Martin, and that handsome girl will soon throw over your son. 
 They say there is an ambassador who is desperately in love 
 with Mariette. — There is some other news. Old Claparon is 
 dead, and is to be buried to-morrow; and his son, who is a 
 banker, and rolling in gold and silver, has ordered a third- 
 class funeral. The fellow has no breeding. Such a thing 
 could not happen in China !" 
 
 Philippe, with an eye to profit, proposed to marry the 
 dancer ; but being on the eve of an engagement at the Opera, 
 Mademoiselle Godeschal refused him, either because she 
 guessed the Colonel's motive, or because she understood that 
 independence was necessary to her fortunes. 
 
52 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Throughout the remainder of this year Philippe came to 
 see his mother twice a month at most. Where was he? At 
 his office, at the theatre, or with Mariette. No light was shed 
 on his proceedings in the home in the Eue Mazarine. 
 
 Giroudeau, Finot, Bixiou, Vernou, and Lousteau saw him 
 leading a life of pleasure. Philippe was at every party given 
 by Tullia, one of the first singers at the Opera ; by Florentine, 
 who took Mariette's place at the Porte Saint-Martin; by 
 Florine and Matifat, Coralie and Camusot. From four 
 o'clock, when he left his office, he amused himself till mid- 
 night; for there was always some ploy arranged the day be- 
 fore, a good dinner given by somebody, an evening at cards, 
 or a supper-party. Philippe lived in his element. 
 
 But this carnival, which lasted for eighteen months, was 
 not devoid of cares. The fair Mariette on her debut at the 
 Opera, in January 1821, subjugated one of the most brilliant 
 dukes of Louis XVIII.'s court. Philippe tried to hold his 
 own against the duke; but, notwithstanding some luck at the 
 gaming-table, as the month of April came round his passion 
 compelled him to borrow from the cash-box of the newspaper. 
 Iq the month of May he owed eleven thousand francs. In 
 the course of that fatal month Mariette went to London, 
 to make what she might out of the milords, while the 
 temporary Opera-house was being built in the Rue le Pel- 
 letier. Philippe the ill-starred still loved Mariette in spite 
 of her flagrant infidelities — such things happen; she, on her 
 part, had never seen anything in him but a rough and brain- 
 less soldier, the first rung of the ladder, on which she did not 
 mean to stay long. Also, as she had foreseen the day when 
 Philippe would have no more money, the dancer had been 
 clever enough to secure supporters among journalists, which 
 made it unnecessary for her to cling to Philippe ; still, she felt 
 the gratitude peculiar to women of her stamp to the man who 
 had been the first to level the obstacles in the dreadful career 
 of an actress. 
 
 Philippe, thus obliged to let his terrible mistress go to 
 London without beinis able to follow her, returned to his 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 53 
 
 winter quarters, to use his own expression, and came home to 
 his attic in the Rue Mazarine; there he made many gloomy 
 reiiections as he went to bed and got up again. He felt it 
 impossible to live otherwise than as he had been living for 
 this year past. The luxury of Mariette's life, the dinners 
 and suppers, the evenings spent behind .the scenes, the high 
 spirits of wits and journalists, the turmoil he had lived in, 
 and all the flattering effect on his senses and on his vanity, — 
 this existence, which is to be found only in Paris, and which 
 offers some new sensation every day, had become more than a 
 habit to Philippe ; it was a necessity, like tobacco and drams. 
 Indeed, he plainly perceived that he could not live without 
 this constant enjoyment. 
 
 The idea of suicide passed through his mind, not on account 
 of the deficit which would be discovered in his balance, but by 
 reason of the impossibility of being with Mariette and living 
 in the atmosphere of pleasures in which he had wallowed 
 for the last twelvemonth. Full of these gloomy notions, ho 
 made his appearance, for the first time, in his brother's studio, 
 and found Joseph at work, in a blue blouse, copying a picture 
 for a dealer. 
 
 "So that is the way pictures are made said Philippe as an 
 opening. 
 
 "No,"' said Joseph, ^^Dut that is the way they are copied.^^ 
 "How much do you get for that 
 
 "Oh, never enough. Two hundred and fifty francs; but I 
 study the master's method ; I learn by it, I find out the secrets 
 of the trade. — There is one of my pictures," he went on, 
 pointing with the handle of his brush to a sketch of which the 
 paint was still wet. 
 
 "And how much a year do you pocket now ?" 
 
 "Unfortunately, I am as yet unknown excepting to the 
 painters. Schinner is giving me a helping hand ; he is to get 
 me some work at the chateau de Presles, where I am going in 
 October to paint some arabesques and borders and ornaments 
 for the Comte de Serizy, who pays very well. With pot- 
 boilers like this, dealers' orders, I may make eighteen hundred 
 
54 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 to two thousand francs before long, all clear profit. But T 
 shall send that picture in to the next exhibition ; if it is liked, 
 I am a made man. My friends think well of it." 
 
 "I am no judge,^^ said Philippe in a quiet tone, which made 
 Joseph look up at him. 
 
 "What is the matter?" he asked, seeing his brother look 
 pale. 
 
 "I want to know how long it would take you to paint my 
 portrait." 
 
 "Well, if I worked at nothing else, and the light were good, 
 I could do it in three or four days." 
 
 "That is too long. I can only give you a day. My poor 
 mother is so fond of me that I should wish to leave her my 
 likeness. But say no more about it." 
 
 ^^hy, are you going away again?" 
 
 "Going, never to return,'^ said Philippe, with affected cheer- 
 fulness. 
 
 "Come, Philippe, my dear fellow, what ails you? If it is 
 anything serious, I am a man, and I am not a simpleton. I 
 am preparing for a hard struggle, and if discretion is needed 
 I can hold my tongue." 
 
 "Can I rely upon it?" 
 
 "On my honor." 
 
 "You will never say a word to any living being ?" 
 "Never." 
 
 "Well, then, I am going to blow my brains out.'* 
 "What, are you going to fight a duel ?" 
 "I am going to kill myself." 
 "Why?" 
 
 "I have taken eleven thousand francs out of the cash-box, 
 and I must give in my accounts to-morrow; my deposit- 
 money will be diminished by half ; my poor mother will be 
 reduced to six hundred francs a year. That, after all, is 
 nothing; I might be able later to give her back a fortune. 
 But I am disgraced; I will not live disgraced." 
 
 "You will not be disgraced if you pay; but you will lose 
 your place; you will have nothing left but the five hundred 
 
^ BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 55 
 
 francs pension attached to your Cross. Still, you can live 
 on five hundred francs." 
 
 "Good-bye," cried Philippe, who hurried downstairs, and 
 would not listen. 
 
 Joseph left his work, and went down to join his mother 
 at breakfast; but Philippe's confession had spoiled his appe- 
 tite. He took Madame Descoings aside, and told her the 
 dreadful news. The old woman gave a loud cry of dismay, 
 dropped a pipkin full of milk that she had in her hand, and 
 sank on to a chair. Agathe hurried in. With one exclama- 
 tion and another, the fatal facts were told to the mother. 
 
 "He ? To fail in honesty ! Bridau's son has taken money 
 that was entrusted to his keeping !" 
 
 The widow was trembling in every limb ; her eyes seemed to 
 grow larger in a fixed stare; she sat down, and burst into 
 tears. 
 
 "Where is he?" she cried between her sobs. "Perhaps he 
 has thrown himself into the Seine !" 
 
 "You must not despair," said Madame Descoings, "because 
 the poor boy has come in the way of a bad woman, and sh(3 
 made a fool of him. Dear me ; that often happens ! Until 
 he came home Philippe had been so constantly unlucky, he 
 had so few chances of being happy and loved, that we need 
 not wonder at his passion for this creature. All passions 
 lead to excess. I have something of the kind in my life for 
 which I blame myself, and yet I think myself an honest 
 woman. One fault does not constitute a vice ! Besides, after 
 all, only those who do nothing at all never make any mis« 
 takes." 
 
 Agathe was so overwhelmed by despair that the old lady 
 and Joseph were obliged to make light of Philippe's crime by 
 telling her that such things occur in every family. 
 
 "But he is eight-and-twenty," cried Agathe; "he is no 
 longer a child!" a cry of anguish betraying what the poor 
 woman thought of her son's conduct. 
 
 "I assure you, mother, that he thinks of nothing but your 
 grief and the wrong he has done," said Joseph. 
 
56 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 '^Oh, great God ! Bring him back. Only let him live, and 
 I will forgive him all !" cried the poor mother, who in fancy 
 beheld a horrible picture of Philippe dragged dead out of the 
 river. 
 
 For some minutes awful silence reigned. The day was 
 spent in dreadful suspense. All three flew to the sitting- 
 room window at the least noise, and gave themselves up to 
 endless conjectures. 
 
 While his family were in this des23air, Philippe was calmly 
 setting everything in order in his office. Pie had the impu- 
 dence to hand in his accounts, saying that, for fear of mis- 
 chance, he had kept eleven thousand francs at his lodgings. 
 The rascal left at four o'clock, taking five hundred francs 
 more from the cash-box, and coolly went up to the gambling 
 tables, where he had not been seen since his appointment, for 
 he had at least understood that a cashier must not frequent 
 a gambling hell. His subsequent conduct will show that he 
 resembled his grandfather Eouget rather than his admirable 
 father. He might perhaps have made a good general ; but in 
 private life he was one of those deep-dyed scoundrels who 
 shelter their audacity and their evil deeds behind the screen 
 of strict legalit}^, and under the reticence of the family roof. 
 
 Philippe was perfectly calm during this critical venture. 
 At first he won, and picked up as much as six thousand 
 francs; but he let himself be dazzled by the hope of ending 
 his anxieties at one stroke. He left the game of trente-et- 
 quarante on hearing that at the roulette table there had been 
 a run of sixteen on the black; he staked five thousand francs 
 on the red, and black turned up again for the seventeenth 
 time. The Colonel then staked his remaining thousand 
 francs on the black, and won. Notwithstanding this aston- 
 ishing intuition of the chances, his head was not clear; he 
 felt this, and yet he would go on ; but the spirit of divination 
 which guides players, enlightening them b}^ flashes, was 
 already exhausted. It was now intermittent — the gamester's 
 ruin. Intuition, like the rays of the sun, acts only in an in- 
 flexibly straight line; it can guess right only on condition 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 of never diverting its gaze; the freaks of chance disturb it. 
 PhiHppe lost everything. After so severe an ordeal the most 
 reckless spirit or the boldest must collapse. 
 
 As he went home Philippe thought the less of his promise 
 to kill himself, because he had never really meant it. He 
 had forgotten his lost appointment, his impaired deposit- 
 money, his mother, and Mariette — the cause of his ruin ; "he 
 walked on mechanically. When he went in, his mother, 
 bathed in tears, Madame Descoings, and Joseph threw their 
 arms round his neck, hugged him, and led him with rejoicing 
 to a seat by the fire. 
 
 "Good!" thought he; "the announcement has had its 
 effect.'' 
 
 The wretch put on an appropriately dolorous face, with all 
 the more ease because his evening's play had considerably 
 upset him. On seeing her atrocious Benjamin pale and 
 dejected, his mother knelt down by him, kissing his hands, 
 pressing them to her heart, and looking long in his face with 
 her eyes full of tears. 
 
 "Philippe," she said in a choked voice, "promise not to 
 kill yourself ; we will forget everything." 
 
 Philippe looked at his unnerved brother, at Madame Des- 
 coings with a tear in her eye, and he said to himself, "They 
 are good souls!" Then he lifted up his mother, seated her 
 on his knee, clasped her to his heart, and whispered as he 
 kissed her, "You have given me new life !" 
 
 Madame Descoings contrived to produce a very good dinner, 
 adding a couple of bottles of old wine and a little West Indian 
 liqueur, a treasure remaining from her former stock-in-trade. 
 
 "Agathe, we must let him smoke his cigars," said she at 
 dessert. And she handed Philippe some cigars. 
 
 The two poor souls believed that by giving this fellow every 
 comfort he would learn to love his home and stay there, ane 
 they tried to accustom themselves to tobacco smoke, which 
 they abominated. This immense sacrifice was not even sus- 
 pected by Philippe. 
 
58 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT^ 
 
 Next day Agathe had aged by ten years. Her alarms once 
 relieved, reflection followed, and the poor woman had not 
 closed an eye throughout that dreadful night. She was now 
 reduced to an income of six hundred francs. Madame Des- 
 coings, like all fat women who love good eating, had an 
 obstinate catarrh and cough, and was growing heavy ; her step 
 on the stairs sounded like a pavior's hammer; she might die 
 at a moment's notice, and four thousand francs would perish 
 with her. Was it not preposterous to count on that source of 
 supply ? What was to be done ? What would become of her ? 
 Agathe, resolved to be a sick-nurse rather than to be a burden 
 on her children, was not thinking of herself. But what 
 would Philippe do, reduced to his five hundred francs of pen- 
 sion attached to the Cross of the Legion of Honor ? 
 
 By contributing a thousand crowns a year for the last 
 eleven years, Madame Descoings had more than twice repaid 
 her debt, and she was still sacrificing her grandson's interests 
 to those of the Bridau family. Agathe, though all her strict 
 and honest sentiments were outraged, in the midst of this 
 dire disaster still could ask herself as she thought of her son, 
 "Poor boy, could he help it? He is faithful to his oath as 
 a soldier. It is my fault for not getting him married. If I 
 had found him a wife, he Vv^ould not have formed a connection 
 with this dancer. He had such a strong nature !" . . . 
 
 The old tradeswoman, too, had reflected during the night 
 as to the means of saving the honor of the family. At day- 
 break she got out of bed, and crept to her friend's room. 
 
 "It is not your part, nor Philippe's, to manage this delicate 
 matter," said she. "Though our two old friends, Claparon 
 and du Bruel, are dead, we still have old Monsieur Desroches, 
 who has good judgment, and I will go to him this morning. 
 Desroches must report that Philippe has been the victim of 
 his confidence in a friend, and that his weakness in such 
 cases quite unfits him for the post of cashier. What has 
 happened once may happen again : Philippe prefers to retire, 
 thus he will not be dismissed." 
 
 Agathe, seeing in this official lie a cloak for Philippe's 
 
A iSACHELOil'S ESTABLISHMENT fSO 
 
 honor, at any rate in the eyes of strangers, embraced the olc' 
 lady, who .went out to settle the dreadful business. Philippe 
 had slept the sleep of the just. 
 
 "She is a sharp one !" said he with a smile, when Agathe 
 explained to her son why breakfast was late. 
 
 Old Desroches, the last friend left to those two poor women, 
 still remembered, in spite of his hard nature, that it was 
 Bridau who had given him his place, and he executed the 
 delicate task proposed to him with the skill of an accomplished 
 diplomate. He came to dine with the family, and to remind 
 Agathe that she must go on the morrow to the Treasury in 
 the Rue Vivienne to sign the transfer of the securities to be 
 sold, and take out the coupons for six hundred francs, her 
 remaining dividends. The old man did not leave this hapless 
 household till he had obtained Philippe's signature to a 
 petition to the Minister of War begging to be reinstated in 
 active service. Desroches pledged his word to the two women 
 that he would forward the petition through the departments 
 of the War Office, and take advantage of the Duke's triumph 
 over Philippe with the dancer to secure that great man's in- 
 terest. 
 
 '^Vithin three months he will be lieutenant-colonel in the 
 Due de Maufrigneuse's regiment, and you will be rid of him." 
 
 Desroches went home loaded with blessings by the two 
 women and Joseph. 
 
 As to the newspaper, as Finot had prophesied, two months 
 later it had ceased to appear. Thus, to the world, Philippe's 
 defalcation had no results. But Agathe's motherly feeling 
 had been deeply wounded. Her belief in her son once shaken, 
 she lived in perpetual terrors, mitigated by satisfaction when 
 she found that her sinister anticipations were unfounded. 
 
 When men like Philippe, gifted, with personal courage, but 
 moral cowards and sneaks, see the course of affairs around 
 them following its usual channel after a plunge in which their 
 moral status has almost perished, this acceptance of the situa- 
 tion by their family or friends is an encouragement. The}^ 
 are sure of impunity ' their perverted mind, their gratified 
 
 VOL. 4—31 
 
 I 
 
60 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENt 
 
 passions, lead tliem to consider how they succeeded in evading 
 the social law, and they become atrociously clever.. Thus, a 
 fortnight after, Philippe, once more an idle man and a 
 lounger, inevitably returned to the life of cafes, to his sittings 
 relieved by drams, his long games of billiards v/ith punch, 
 his nightly visit to the gaming-tables, where he risked a 
 small stake at a lucky moment, and pocketed such little 
 winnings as sufficed to pay for his dissipations. He made a 
 display of economy to deceive his mother and her friend, 
 wore an almost filthy hat, hairless at the edges of the crown 
 and brim, patched boots, a threadbare greatcoat, on which the 
 red rosette scarcely showed, so darkened was it by long wear 
 and soiled with splashes of spirits or of coifee. His greenish 
 buckskin gloves lasted a long time, and he never cast off his 
 satin stock till it looked like tow. 
 
 Mariette was this man's only love, and the dancer's faith- 
 lessness did much to harden his heart. Now and then, when 
 he won more than he expected, or if he were supping with his 
 friend Giroudeau, Philippe would court a Venus of the 
 street, out of a sort of brutal scorn for all her sex. Still, he 
 kept regular hours, breakfasted and dined at home, and came 
 in every night at about one. Three months of this wretched 
 life restored Agathe to some little confidence. 
 
 As for Joseph, who was at work on the splendid picture to 
 which he owed his reputation, he lived in his studio. On 
 the word of her grandson, who firmly believed in Joseph's 
 triumph,, Madame Descoings lavished maternal care on the 
 painter; she carried up his breakfast in the morning, ran his 
 errands, blacked his boots. The artist never appeared till 
 dinner-time, and gave his evenings to his friends of the 
 Artistic Society. He also read a great deal; he was giving 
 himself the thorough and serious education which a man gets 
 only from himself, and which every man of talent does, in 
 fact, give himself between the ages of twenty and thirty. 
 Agathe, seeing so little of Joseph, and feeling no uneasiness 
 about him, lived in Philippe only, since he alone gave her 
 those alternations of rising fears and terrors allayed which 
 
A BACHELOirS ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 61 
 
 are, to a certain extent, the very life of feeling, and as 
 necessary to motherhood as love is. 
 
 Desroches, who came about once a week to call on the 
 widow of his old friend and chief, could give her hopes : the 
 Due de Maufrigneuse had applied, for Philippe to be ap- 
 pointed to his regiment, the War Minister had asked for a 
 report ; and as the name of Bridau was not to be found on any 
 police-list or in any criminal trial, in the early part of the 
 year Philippe would get his papers and orders to join. To 
 succeed in this matter, Desroches had stirred up all his ac- 
 quaintances; his inquiries at the head-office of the police led 
 to his hearing that Philippe was to be seen every night in the 
 gaming-houses; and he thought it wise to communicate the 
 secret to Madame Descoings, but to her alone, begging her to 
 keep an eye on the future lieutenant-colonel, to whom any 
 scandal might be ruin; for the moment, the War Minister 
 would not be likely to ask whether Philippe were a gambler. 
 And once enrolled under the regimental flag, the officer would 
 give up a passion that was the result of want of occupation. 
 
 Agathe, who now had no company in the evening, read her 
 prayers by the fire; while Madame Descoings read her for- 
 tune by the cards, interpreting her dreams, and applying the 
 rules of the Cabala to her stakes. The lighthearted and 
 obstinate old woman never missed a drawing of lottery- 
 tickets ; she still staked on the same three numbers which had 
 never yet been drawn. This set of numbers was now nearly 
 twenty-one years old — it would soon be of age. Its holder 
 based high hopes on this trivial fact. One of the numbers 
 had never come out at any drawing of either of the wheels 
 ever since the lottery was founded, so she staked heavily on 
 this number, and on every combination of the three figures. 
 The bottom mattress of her bed was the hiding-place for the 
 poor old creature's savings ; she unsewed it, pushed in the gold 
 piece she had saved on her necessities, neatly wrapped in 
 wool, and sewed it up again. She was resolved, at the last 
 Paris drawing, to risk all her savings on the combinations of 
 her cherished three numbers. 
 
62 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 This passion, universally condemned, has never been duly 
 studied. No one has understood this opium to poverty. 
 Did not the lottery, the most puissant fairj; in the world, give 
 rise of magical hopes? The turn at roulette, which gives 
 the player a vision of limitless gold and enjoyments, only 
 lasted as long as a lightning flash ; while the lottery gave five 
 days of life to that glorious gleam. What social power can, 
 in these days, make you happy for five days, and bestow on 
 you in fancy all the delights of civilized life — for forty sous ? 
 Tobacco, a mania a thousand times more mischievous than 
 gambling, destroys the body, undermines the intellect, 
 stupefies the nation ; the lottery caused no misfortunes of that 
 kind. The passion was compelled to moderation by the in- 
 terval between the drawings, and by the particular wheel 
 the ticket-holder might affect. Madame Descoings never 
 staked on any but the Paris wheel. In the hope of seeing 
 the three numbers drawn which she had kept in hand for 
 twenty years, she had subjected herself to the greatest priva- 
 tions to enable her to stake freely on the last drawing of the 
 year. 
 
 When she had cabalistic dreams — for all her dreams did 
 not bear on the numbers of the lottery — she would go and tell 
 them to Joseph; he was the only being who would listen to 
 her, not merely without scolding her, but saying the kindly 
 words by which artists can soothe a monomania. All really 
 great minds respect and sympathize with genuine passions; 
 they understand them, finding their root in the heart or the 
 brain. As Joseph saw things, his brother loved tobacco and 
 spirits, his old Maman Descoings loved lottery-tickets, his 
 mother loved God, young Desroches loved lawsuits, old Des- 
 roches loved fly-fishing; every one, said he, loves something. 
 What he loved was ideal beauty in all things ; he loved Byron's 
 poetry, Gericault's painting, Eossini's music, Walter Scott's 
 romances. 
 
 "Every man to his taste, maman," he would say, 'T)ut your 
 thrce-pounder hangs fire." 
 
 "It will not miss. You shall be a rich man, and my little 
 Bixiou as well!" 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 63 
 
 ''Give it all to your grandson/' cried Joseph. "After all, 
 do you as you please/' 
 
 "Oh, if it comes out, I shall have enough for everybody. 
 To begin with, you shall have a fine studio ; you shall not have 
 to give up going to the Opera in order to pay your models 
 and colorman. — Do you know, child," she went on, "that 
 you have not given me a very creditable part in that picture 
 of yours ?" 
 
 Joseph, from motives of economy, had used Madame Des- 
 coings as the model for a head in his splendid painting of a 
 young courtesan introduced by an old woman to a Venetian 
 senator. This work, a masterpiece of modern art, mistaken 
 for a Titian by Gros himself, prepared the younger painters 
 to recognize and proclaim Joseph's superiority in the Salon 
 of 1823. 
 
 "Those who know you, know well what you are,'^ said h^t 
 gaily, "and why should you care about those who do not 
 know you ?" 
 
 In the last ten years the old woman's face had acquired 
 the mellow tone of an Easter pippin. Her wrinkles had 
 become set in the full flesh that had grown cold and pulpy. 
 Her eyes, full of sparkle still, seemed animated by a youthful 
 and eager thought, which might the more easily be regarded 
 as one of greed, because there is always some little greed in 
 a gambler. Her plump features betrayed deep dissimulation, 
 and a dominant idea buried far down in her heart. Her 
 passion required secretiveness. The movement of her lips gave 
 a hint of gluttony. Thus, though she was in fact the worthy 
 and kindhearted woman we have seen, the eye might be mis- 
 taken in her. She was a perfect model for the old woman 
 Joseph wished to represent. 
 
 Coralie, a young actress of exquisite beauty, who died in 
 the bloom of her youth, the mistress of a friend of Bridau's, 
 Lucien de Rubempre, a young poet, had given him the idea of 
 this subject. This fine work was sometimes called an 
 imitation, but it was a splendid scene as a setting for three 
 portraits. Michel Chrestien, a youthful member of the 
 
64 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Artistic Society, had lent his Eepnbliean countenance as a 
 model for the senator, and Joseph gave it some touches of 
 maturity, as he slightly exaggerated the expression of Mad- 
 ame Descoings' face. 
 
 This great picture, which was to become so famous, and 
 to give rise to so much animosity, jealousy, and admiration, 
 was only begun ; J oseph, compelled to suspend his work on it, 
 and to execute commissions for a living, was busy copying 
 pictures by the old masters, thus studying all their methods ; 
 no painter handles his brush more learnedly. His good sense 
 as an artist had counseled him to conceal from Madame Des- 
 coings and from his mother the amount of money he was be- 
 ginning to make, seeing that each had a road to ruin — one in 
 Philippe, and the other in the lottery. The peculiar coolness 
 shown by the soldier in his downfall, the way in which he had 
 counted on his pretended purpose of suicide — which Joseph 
 had seen through — the mistakes he had made in the career 
 he ought never to have abandoned, in short, the smallest de- 
 tails of his conduct, had at last opened J oseph's eyes. 
 
 Such insight is rarely lacking in painters. Occupied day 
 after day in the silence of the studio, in work which leaves 
 the mind, to a certain extent, free, they grow in some sort 
 womanly ; their thoughts wander round the small facts of life, 
 and detect their covert meaning. 
 
 Joseph had bought a fine old cabinet — they were yet the 
 fashion — to decorate a corner of his studio, where the light 
 played on the panels in relief, and gave lustre to a master- 
 piece of some sixteenth century craftsman. Inside it he 
 found a secret drawer, where he hoarded a small sum in case 
 of need. With the easy trustfulness of an artist, he was ac- 
 customed to keep the cash he allowed himself for pocket- 
 money in a skull that lay on one of the divisions of this 
 cabinet; but, since his brother's return, he found a constant 
 discrepancy between the sums he spent and the balance left. 
 The hundred francs a month melted with extraordinary ra- 
 pidity. On finding nothing when he had spent but fort}'' or 
 fifty francs, the first time he said to himself, "My money has 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 65 
 
 gone traveling post, it would seem !" The next time he care- 
 fully noted his expenses ; but in vain did he count, like Eobert 
 Macaire, "Sixteen and five make twenty-three," it would not 
 come right. 
 
 On finding it a third time still more seriously wrong, he 
 mentioned the painful subject to his Maman Descoings, who 
 loved him, as he felt, with that maternal affection, tender, 
 trusting, credulous, and enthusiastic, which his mother did 
 not feel, however kind she might be, and which is as needful 
 to an artist at the opening of his career as a hen's care is to 
 her chicks till they are fledged. To her only could he confide 
 his horrible suspicions. He w^as as sure of his friends as of 
 himself; Madame Descoings would certainly never take any- 
 thing to risk in the lottery; and the poor soul wrung her 
 hands at the thought as he said, "Only Philippe could com- 
 mit this petty household theft." 
 
 "Why does not he ask me for what he wants?" exclaimed 
 Joseph, mixing the paints on his palette in utter confusion 
 of colors, without heeding what he was doing. "Should I 
 refuse to give him money ?" 
 
 "But it is robbing an infant !" cried the old woman, with 
 horror expressed in her face. 
 
 "No," replied Joseph, "he can have it; he is my brother; 
 my purse is his, but he ought to ask me." 
 
 "Place a fixed sum of money there this morning and don't 
 touch it," said Madame Descoings; "I shall know who comes 
 to the studio, and if nobody comes in but Philippe you will 
 know for certain." 
 
 Thus, by next day, Joseph had proof of the forced loans 
 levied on him by his brother. Philippe came up to the studio 
 in his brother's absence and took the little cash he needed. 
 The artist feared for his little hoard. 
 
 "Wait a bit, wait a bit, I will catch you out, my fine rascal 
 said he to Madame Descoings, with a laugh. 
 
 "Quite right; we ought to punish him, for I have found 
 a deficit occasionally in my own purse. But, poor boy, he 
 must have his tobacco ; he has made a habit of it." 
 
66 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 ^Toor boy ! and poor boy indeed !" retorted the artist. "I 
 am beginning to agree Avith Fulgence and Bixiou — Philippe 
 is always dragging at us. First he gets mixed tip in a riot, 
 and has to be sent to America, and that costs my mother 
 twelve thousand francs; then he has not the wit to find any- 
 thing in the wilds of the New World, and it costs just as 
 much to get him home again; under the pretext of having 
 repeated two words from Napoleon to a general, he believes 
 himself a great soldier, and bound to sulk with the Bourbons ; 
 meanwhile he can travel,, and amuse himself, and see the 
 world! I am not to be caught with such bird-lime as the 
 story of his woes; he does not look like a man who has not 
 made himself comfortable wherever he was ! 
 
 *^^Then my fine fellow has a capital place found for him; 
 be lives like Sardanapalus with an opera girl, robs the till 
 of a newspaper, and costs his mother another twelve thou- 
 sand francs. Certainly, so far as I am concerned, what need 
 I care? But Philippe will bring the poor mother to want. 
 He treats me like the dirt under his feet because I never was 
 in the Dragoon Guards ! And it will be my part, perhaps, to 
 maintain that poor dear mother in her old age, while, if he 
 goes on as he has begun, the retired officer will end I don't 
 know where. 
 
 'bixiou said to me, ^Your brother is a nice rogue !' Well, 
 J' our grandson is right; Philippe will play some reckless trick 
 yet that will compromise the honor of the family, and then 
 there will be ten or twelve thousand francs more to pay ! He 
 gambles every evening; w^hen he comes in as drunk as a lord 
 he drops pricked cards on the stairs, on which he has noted 
 the turns of red and black. Old Desroches is doing all he 
 can to get Philippe reinstated in the army ; but, for my part, 
 I believe he would be in despair at having to serve again. 
 Could you have believed that a boy with such beautiful clear 
 blue eyes, and a look like the Chevalier Bayard, would ever 
 have turned out such a scoundrel?" 
 
 Notwithstanding the caution and coolness with which Phil- 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 67 
 
 ippe staked his money every evening, he was occasionally 
 cleaned out, as players say. Then, prompted by an irresist- 
 ible craving to have his stake for the evening, ten francs, he 
 helped himself in the house to his brother's money, to any 
 Madame Descoings might leave about, or to his mother's. 
 Once already the poor widow had seen through her first sleep 
 a terrible vision : Philippe had come into her room and emp- 
 tied the pocket of her dress of all the money in it. She had 
 pretended to be asleep, but she had spent the rest of that night 
 in tears. She saw the truth. "One fault does not constitute 
 a vice," Madame Descoings had said ; but after constant lapses 
 the vice was plainly visible. Agathe could no longer doubt; 
 her best-beloved son had neither feeling nor honor. 
 
 The day after this dreadful vision, before Philippe went 
 out after breakfast, she called him into her room and be- 
 sought him in suppliant tones to ask her for the money he 
 should need. But his demands became so frequent that now, 
 for above a fortnight, Agathe's savings had been exhausted. 
 She had not a farthing; she thought of seeking work. For 
 several evenings she had discussed with Madame Descoings 
 the means of making money by her needle; indeed, the poor 
 mother had already asked at a shop — Le Pere de Famille — for 
 fancy-work to fill in, an employment by which she might earn 
 about a franc a day. In spite of her niece's absolute secrecy, 
 the old woman had easily guessed the reasons for this eager- 
 ness to make money by such feminine arts. Indeed, the 
 change in Agathe's appearance was sufficiently eloquent; her 
 fresh complexion was faded, the skin was drawn over the 
 temples and cheek-bones, her forehead was seamed, her eyes 
 lost their lustre,, some inward fire was evidently consuming 
 her, and she spent the night in tears. 
 
 But what most deeply ravaged her was the necessity for 
 silence as to her pain, her anxieties, and her apprehensions. 
 She never went to sleep till Philippe had come in ; she listened 
 for him in the street; she had studied the differences in his 
 voice, in his step, in the very tone of his cane rattling on the 
 paving-stones. She knew everything, exactly the degree of 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 intoxication that he had reached, quaking as she heard him 
 stumble on the stairs. One night she had picked up some gold 
 pieces on the spot where he had let himself fall. When he 
 had drunk and won, his voice was husky and his stick 
 dragged; but when he had lost, there was something short, 
 crisp, and furious in his footstep ; he would sing a tune in a 
 clear voice, and carry his cane shouldered like a musket. At 
 breakfast, if he had been winning, his expression was cheerful 
 and almost affectionate; he jested coarsely, still he jested, 
 with Madame Descoings, with Joseph, and his mother; if 
 he had lost, on the contrary, he was morose, his speech was 
 curt and sharp, his gaze hard, and his gloom quite alarming. 
 
 This life of debauchery and the habit of drink left their 
 mark day by day on the countenance that had once been so 
 handsome. The veins in his face were purple, his features 
 grew thick, his eyes lost their lashes, and looked dry. And 
 then Philippe, careless of his person, carried with him the 
 miasma of smoke and spirits, and a smell of muddy boots, 
 which to a stranger would have seemed the last stamp of 
 yqualor. 
 
 "You ought to have a complete new suit of clothes from 
 head to foot," said Madame Descoings to Philippe one day 
 early in December. 
 
 "And who is to pay for them said he bitterly. "My poor 
 mother has not a sou ; I have five hundred francs a year. It 
 would cost a yearns pension to buy me an outfit, and I have 
 pledged it for three years to come . . 
 
 "What for said Joseph. 
 
 "A debt of honor. Giroudeau borrowed a thousand francs 
 from Florentine to lend to me. — I am not well got up, it must 
 be confessed ; but when you remember that Napoleon is at St. 
 Helena, and sells his plate to buy food, the soldiers that re- 
 main faithful to him may very well walk in boot-tops," said 
 he, showing his boots without heels, and he walked off. 
 
 "He is not a bad fellow," said Agathe; "he has good feel- 
 ings." 
 
 "He may love the Emperor and still keep himself cleai^" 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 6d 
 
 eaid Joseph. "If he took some care of himself and his clothes, 
 he would look less like a tramp." 
 
 "Joseph, you ought to be indulgent to your brother/' said 
 Agathe. "You can do just what you like, while he certainly 
 is out of his place." 
 
 "x\nd why did he leave it?" asked Joseph. "What does it 
 matter whether the flag shows Louis XVIII. 's bugs or Napo- 
 leon's cockyoly bird if the bunting flies for France ? France 
 is France ! I would paint for the devil. A soldier ought to 
 fight, if he is a soldier, for love of the art. If he had stayed 
 quietly in the army, by this time he would be a general." 
 
 "You are unjust," said Agathe. "Your father, who adored 
 the Emperor, would have approved of what he did. However, 
 he agrees to rejoin the army. God alone knows what is costs 
 your brother to commit what he considers an act of treason." 
 
 Joseph rose to go up to his studio; but Agathe took his 
 hand, saying: 
 
 "Be good to your brother ; he is so unfortunate." 
 
 When the artist entered his studio, followed by Madame 
 Descoings, who begged him to spare his mother's feelings, re- 
 marking how much she was altered, and what acute mental 
 suffering this alteration betrayed, they found Philippe there, 
 to their great surprise. 
 
 "Joseph, my boy," said he in an airy way, "I am desper- 
 ately in want of money. By the piper ! I owe thirty francs 
 for cigars at the tobacconist's, and I dare not pass the cursed 
 shop without paying. I have promised to pay at least ten 
 times." 
 
 "All right ! I like this way best," said J oseph. "Take it 
 out of the death's head." 
 
 "Oh, I took all that last night after dinner." 
 "There were forty-five francs " 
 
 "That is just what I made it," replied Philippe. "I found 
 them there. Was that wrong?" he asked. 
 
 "No, my dear fellow, no," said the artist. "If you were 
 rich, I should do as you do; only, before helping myself, I 
 should ask if it were convenient to you." 
 
70 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 ^'It is very humiliating to have to ask/' replied Philippe. 
 "I would sooner you should take it as I do, and say nothing. 
 It shows more confidence. In the army, when a comrade 
 dies, if he has a good pair of boots and you have a bad pair, 
 you exchange with him.'' 
 
 "Yes, but you don't take them while he is aiive !" 
 
 '^A mere quibble !" retorted Philippe with a shrug. "So 
 you have no money ?" 
 
 "No," said Joseph, determined not to show his hoard. 
 
 "In a few days we shall all be rich," said the old woman. 
 
 "Oh yes ! You really believe that your three numbers will 
 come out on the 25th at the Paris drawing ! You must put 
 in a large stake if you mean to make us all rich." 
 
 "A natural ternion for two hundred francs will bring out 
 three millions, to say nothing of the doublets and the single 
 drawings." 
 
 "At fifteen thousand times the stake — ^yes, it is exactly two 
 hundred francs !" cried Philippe. 
 
 The old woman bit her lip ; she had dropped an imprudent 
 hint. 
 
 In fact, as he went downstairs, Philippe was asking him- 
 self: 
 
 "Where has that old witch hidden the money for her lottery 
 tickets ? It is sheer waste of money, and I could make such 
 good use of it ! On four stakes of fifty francs each I might 
 make two hundred thousand francs. And it is far more cer- 
 tain than the drawing of three numbers in a lottery !" 
 
 He wondered where Madame Descoings would be likely to 
 hide her hoard. 
 
 On the eve of the great Church Festivals, Agathe always 
 went to church and stayed there a long time, at confession no 
 doubt, and in preparing for Communion. It was now Christ- 
 mas Eve. Madame Descoings would certainly go out to buy 
 Bome extra treat for supper, but perhaps she would pay for 
 her ticket at the same time. The lottery was drawn every 
 five days, on the wheels, in turn, of Bordeaux, Lyons, Lille, 
 Strasbourg, and Paris. The Paris drawing took place on the 
 
A BACIIELOnVS ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 n 
 
 25th of each month; the lists were closed at midnight on the 
 24th. The soldier studied the case, and set liimself to watch. 
 
 At about noon Philippe came in. Madame Descoings was 
 gone out, but she had taken the door-key. This was no 
 difficulty. Philippe, saying that he had forgotten something, 
 begged the woman at the lodge to go to fetch a locksmith, who 
 lived close by in the Eue Guenegaud, and who opened the 
 door. Philippe's first idea was to search the bed ; he unmade 
 it, felt the mattresses before examining the frame, and in the 
 bottom, mattress he felt the gold pieces wrapped in paper. He 
 had soon unsewn the ticking and picked out twenty napoleons ; 
 then, without wasting time in sewing it up again, he remade 
 the bed neatly enough to prevent the old woman's observing 
 anything wrong. 
 
 The gambler made off on a light foot, intending to play 
 three times, at intervals of three hours, and for ten minutes 
 only each time. The great gamblers, ever since 1786, when 
 the gambling-houses were first opened, the formidable 
 gamblers who were the terror of the bank, and who fairly ate 
 money at the tables, to use the familiar expression in such 
 places, never played by any other rule. But before achieving 
 this experience they lost fortunes. All the philosophy of 
 those who farmed the concern and all their profit was derived 
 from the rules ; from the non-liability of the bank ; from ties 
 called draws, of which half the winnings remained in its 
 possession; and from the villainous fraud authorized by the 
 State, which made it optional to take or reject the players' 
 stakes. In a word, the bank, while refusing to play with a 
 rich and cool hand, devoured the whole fortune of any player 
 w^ho was so persistently foolish as to allow himself to be in- 
 toxicated by the rapid whirl of its machinery, for the dealers 
 at trente-et-quarante worked almost as fast as the roulette 
 could. 
 
 Philippe had at last succeeded in acquiring that presence 
 of mind which enables a commander-in-chief to keep a keen 
 ^ye and a calm brain in the midst of the whirligig of things. 
 He had achieved those high politics of gambling which, it 
 
72 
 
 A BACHELOirS ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 may be said incidentally, enabled a thousand men in Paris to 
 look night after night into a gulf without turning giddy. 
 
 With these four hundred francs Philippe was determined 
 to make his fortune in the course of the day. He hid two 
 hundred francs in his boots, and kept two hundred in his 
 pocket. By three o'clock he was at the gambling-house, where 
 the Palais-Koyal theatre nov>^ stands, where the bankers com- 
 monly held the largest reserve. Half an hour after he came 
 out, having won seven thousand francs. He went to see 
 Florentine, paid her five hundred francs that he owed her, 
 and invited her to supper after the play at the Kocher de 
 Cancale. On his way back, he went through the Kue du 
 Sentier to tell his friend Giroudeau of the projected 
 festivity. 
 
 At six o'clock Philippe had won twenty-five thousand 
 francs, and at the end of ten minutes kept his word to him- 
 self and went away. In the evening, at ten, he had won 
 seventy-five thousand francs. After the supper, which was 
 splendid, Philippe, drunk and confident, returned to the 
 tables at about midnight. Then, against the rule he had 
 made, he played for an hour and doubled his winnings. The 
 bank, from whom his mode of play had wrung a hundred and 
 fifty thousand francs, watched him with curiosity. 
 
 "Will he go away or will he stay?" the men asked <iach 
 other by a glance. "If he stays, he is done for." 
 
 Philippe believed that luck was with him, and stayed. At 
 three in the morning the hundred and fifty thousand francs 
 had returned to the cash-box. 
 
 The Colonel, who had drunk a good deal of grog while 
 playing, went out in a state of intoxication, which the nipping 
 cold aggravated to the utmost; but a waiter followed him,, 
 picked him up, and carried him to one of the horrible places 
 svhere, inscribed on a lamp, the notice may be read, "Beds by 
 the night." The waiter paid for the ruined gambler, who was 
 laid on a bed in his clothes, and remained there till Christ- 
 mas night. The managers of the gambling-houses treated 
 regular customers and high players with respect. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 73 
 
 Philippe did not wake till seven that evening, his mouth 
 furred, his face swelled, and racked with nervous fever. His 
 strong constitution enabled him to get on foot to his mother^s 
 home, whither he had unwittingly brought sorrow, despair, 
 ruin, and death. 
 
 The day before, when dinner was ready, Madame Descoings 
 and Agathe waited two hours for Philippe. They did not 
 sit dov/n till seven o'clock. Agathe almost always went to her 
 room at ten; but as she wished to attend midnight mass, she 
 went to lie down directly after dinner. The old aunt and 
 Joseph remained together in the little sitting-room which 
 now served all purposes, and she begged him to work out the 
 sum of her much-talked-of stake, her monster stake on the 
 famous ternion. She meant to go for the double numbers 
 and first drawings, so as to combine all the chances. After 
 smacking her lips over the poetry of this master-stroke, and 
 pouring out both cornucopias at the feet of her adopted 
 favorite; after telling him all her dreams, proving that she 
 could not fail to win, wondering only how she should endure 
 such good fortune, or wait for it from midnight till ten next 
 morning, Joseph, who did not see where the four hundred 
 francs were to come from, mentioned the matter. The old 
 woman smiled and led him into the old drawing-room, now 
 her bedroom. 
 
 "You will see \" said she. 
 
 Madame Descoings hastily stripped her bed, and went for 
 her scissors to unstitch the mattress ; she put on her spectacles, 
 looked at the ticking, and found it unsewn. On hearing the 
 old woman heave a sigh that came from the depths of her 
 bosom, and seemed choked by the blood rushing to her heart, 
 Joseph instinctively held out his arms to the poor old lottery- 
 gambler, and laid her senseless on a chair, calling to his 
 mother to come. Agathe sprang up, put on her dressing- 
 gown, and hurried in; by the light of a tallow candle she 
 applied every common remedy for a fainting fit — eau de 
 Cologne on her aunt's temples, cold viater on her forehead, 
 burnt feathers under her nose; at last slie saw her revive. 
 
74 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "They were there this morning; he has taken them — that 
 wretch !" 
 
 "What?^^ asked Joseph. 
 
 "I had twenty lonis in my mattress, my savings for two 
 years. Only Philippe can have taken them . . 
 
 "But when?'^ cried the mother, quite crushed; "he has not 
 been in since breakfast." 
 
 "I should be glad to be mistaken," said the old woman. 
 "But this morning, in Joseph's studio, when I spoke of my 
 stake in the lottery I had a warning. I was wrong not to go 
 down and take out my little lucky-penny and put it into the 
 lottery at once. I meant to do it, and I forget what hindered 
 me. — Good God ! And I went to buy cigars for him !" 
 
 "But," said Joseph, "our front-door was locked. Besides, 
 it is so vile that I v/ill not believe it. Philippe watched you 
 'i>ut, unsewed your mattress, premeditated ! No." 
 
 "I felt them there this morning when I made my bed after 
 )*reakfast," said Madame Descoings. 
 
 Agathe, quite horror-stricken, went downstairs to ask 
 ivhether her son had come in during the day, and the door- 
 keeper told her Philippe^s fable. The mother, struck to the 
 Jieart, came up again completely altered. As white as her cot- 
 '/,on shift, she walked as we fancy ghosts may walk, noiselessly, 
 slowly, as if by the impulse of a superhuman power, and yet 
 almost mechanically. She held a candle in her hand, which 
 lighted up her face and her eyes fixed in despair. Without 
 knowing it, she had pushed her hair over her brow with her 
 hands, and this detail made her so beautiful in her horror that 
 Joseph stood riveted by this image of anguish, this vision of 
 a statue of terror and dejection. 
 
 "Aunt," said she, "take my spoons and forks; I have six 
 sets, that will make up the sum, for it was I who took it for 
 Philippe ; I thought I could replace it before you should find 
 it out. Oh ! I have suffered !" 
 
 She sat down. Her dry fixed gaze wavered a little then. 
 
 "It is he who has done the trick," said Madame Descoings 
 in an undertone to Joseph. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 75 
 
 "No, no/^ repeated Agathe. "Take the silver, sell it ; it is 
 of no use to me ; we can use yours." 
 
 She went into her room, took up the plate-box, found it 
 very light, opened it, and saw a pawn ticket. The poor 
 mother gave a dreadful cry. J oseph and Madame Descoings 
 hastened in, glanced at the box, and the mother's heroic false- 
 hood was in vain. They all three stood silent, avoiding even 
 a glance. At that moment, with a gesture almost of mad- 
 ness, Agathe laid her finger on her lips to seal the secret which 
 no one would divulge. Then all three went back to the 
 sitting-room fire. 
 
 "I tell you, my children, I am heart-broken," said Madame 
 Descoings. "My numbers will be drawn, I am quite positive ! 
 I am not thinking of myself, but of you two ! — Philippe is a 
 monster," she went on, turning to her- niece. "He does not 
 love you, in spite of all you have done for him. If you do 
 not find some means to protect yourself, the wretch will turn 
 you into the street. Promise me to sell your stock, realize 
 the capital, and sink it in an annuity. By taking that step 
 you will never be a burden on Joseph. Monsieur Desroches 
 wants to set up his son in an office, and the boy" (he was now 
 «ix-and-twenty) "has found one. He will take your twelve 
 thousand francs and pay you an annuity." 
 
 Joseph seized his mother's candlestick and hurried up to 
 the studio; he came down with three hundred francs. 
 
 "Here, Maman Descoings," said he, ofi'ering her his little 
 hoard, "it is no business of ours to inquire what you do with 
 your money; we owe you what is missing, and here it is — 
 almost all of it." 
 
 "I ! — take your little treasure, the result of your privations, 
 which distress me so much! Are you mad, Joseph?" cried 
 the old woman, evidently torn by her stupid belief in the luck 
 of her numbers in the State lotter}^, and what seemed to her 
 the sacrilege of such a proceeding. 
 
 "Oh ! do what you will with it," said Agathe, moved to tears 
 by this action of her true son's. 
 
 Madame Descoings took Joseph's head in her hands and 
 
 kissed his forehead. 
 VOL. 4—32 
 
76 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "My child, do not tempt me/' she said ; "I should only lose 
 it. The lottery is a fool's game !" 
 
 Never was anything so heroical said in any of the obscure 
 dramas of private life. Was it not, in fact, the triumph of 
 affection over an inveterate vice ? 
 
 At this minute the bells began to toll for midnight mass. 
 
 "Besides, it is too late," added the old woman. 
 
 "Oh!" cried Joseph; "here are your cabalistic calcula- 
 tions." 
 
 The magnanimous artist seized the tickets, flew downstairs, 
 and away to pay the stake. When he was gone, Agathe and 
 Madame Descoings melted into tears. 
 
 "He is gone !" exclaimed the old gambler. "But it will 
 all be his, for it is his money." 
 
 Joseph, unluckily, did not in the least know where to find 
 the lottery-ticket offices, which those who frequented them 
 knew as well in Paris as, in these days, smokers know the 
 tobacco shops. The painter rushed wildly on, looking at the 
 lamp signs. When he asked some one he met to tell hini'. 
 where there was a lottery-office, he v/as told that they were^ 
 closed, but that one by the steps of the Palais Eoyal some - 
 times remained open a little later. The artist flew to the 
 Palais Eoyal ; the office was shut, 
 
 "Two minutes sooner and you could have paid in your 
 stake," said one of the ticket-criers who stood at the bottom 
 of the steps, shouting these strange words, "Twelve hundred 
 francs for forty sous !" and selling ready numbered tickets. 
 
 By the glimmer of a street lamp and the lights in the Cafe 
 de la Eotonde, Joseph examined these tickets to see whether 
 by chance either of them bore Madame Descoings' pet num- 
 bers; but he could not find one, and returned home in grief 
 at having done in vain all that lay in his power to please the 
 old woman, to whom he related his disappointments. 
 
 Agathe and her aunt went off to mass at Saint-Germain- 
 des-Pres. Joseph went to bed. No one kept Christmas Eve. 
 Madame Descoings had lost her head; Agathe's heart was 
 for ever broken. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ES rABLTSHMENT 
 
 77 
 
 The two women rose late. Ten o'clock was striking when 
 Madame Descoings bestirred herself to get breakfast, which 
 was not ready till half-past eleven. By that time the long 
 frames hanging outside the lottery-ticket offices showed an 
 array of figures. If Madame Descoings had had her ticket, 
 she would have gone by half-past nine o'clock to the Eue Neuve 
 des Petits Champs to learn her fate, which was decided in a 
 house next door to the offices of the Minister of Finance, on ai 
 spot now occupied by the Square and the Yentadour theatre. 
 
 Every time the lottery was drawn, the curious could see at 
 the door of this building a posse of old women, cooks, and old 
 men, who at that time constituted as strange a spectacle as 
 that of the stock-holders forming a queue on the day when 
 dividends are paid at the Treasury. 
 
 "Well, so you are rolling in riches !" exclaimed old Des- 
 roches, coming in just as Madame Descoings was swallowing 
 her last mouthful of coffee. 
 
 "How?" cried poor Agathe. 
 
 "Her three numbers have come out," said he, holding out 
 a list of numbers written on a scrap of paper, such as office 
 clerks kept by the hundred in the paper-tray on their desks. 
 
 Joseph read the list. Agathe read the list. Madame Des- 
 coings read nothing. She fell back as if stricken by light- 
 ning; seeing her face change and hearing her cry, old Des- 
 roches and Joseph carried her to her bed. Agathe went for 
 a doctor. The poor woman had fallen in a fit of apoplexy, 
 and she did not recover consciousness till about four in the 
 afternoon. Old Doctor Haudry, her physician, pronounced 
 that, notwithstanding this amelioration, she would do well to 
 settle her affairs and think of her religious duties. She had 
 uttered but two words, "Three millions !" 
 
 Old Desroches, to whom Joseph explained the circum- 
 stances with the necessary reservations, spoke of numbers of 
 lottery-gamblers who had in the same way missed a fortune 
 on the day when by some fatality they had failed to pay up 
 their stakes; still, he understood how mortal a blow this must 
 be after twenty years of perseverance. 
 
78 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 At five o'clock, when perfect silence reigned in the littk 
 dwelling, and when the dying woman, watched by Joseph at 
 the foot of her bed, and Agathe at her pillow, was expecting 
 her grandson, whom Desroches had gone to seek, the sound 
 of Philippe's step and walking-stick echoed on the stairs. 
 
 "There he is, there he is !" cried Madame Descoings, sitting 
 up in bed, and suddenly recovering the use of her paral}zed 
 tongue. 
 
 Agathe and Joseph were impressed by the impulse of horror 
 which so vehemently roused the sick woman. Their miserable 
 expectations were wholly justified by Philippe's appearance; 
 by his purple, vacant face, his uncertain gait, and the horrible 
 look of his eyes with deep red rims, glazed and yet wild-look- 
 ing; he was shivering violently with fever, and his teeth 
 chattered. 
 
 "What the devil !" he exclaimed. "Neither bit nor sup, and 
 my throat is on fire. Well, what's up now? The foul fiend 
 puts his hoof in all that concerns us. My old Descoings in 
 bed, and making eyes at me as big as saucers " 
 
 "Be silent, sir," said Agathe, rising. "At least you ma]r 
 respect the misery you have caused." 
 
 "Hallo ! Sir f said he, looking at his mother. "My dea:r 
 little mother, that is not kind; do you no longer love youi: 
 boy?" 
 
 "Are you worthy to be loved? Have you forgotten what 
 you did yesterday? You may look out for a lodging for 
 yourself; you shall no longer live with me. From to-mor- 
 row," she added, "for in such a state as you are in it would 
 be difficult " 
 
 "To turn me out ? — So you are going to play the melodrama 
 of the Banished Son?" he went on. "Dear, dear! Is that 
 how you take it ? Well, you are all a pretty pack of owls ! What 
 harm have I done? Cleaned out the old woman's mattress 
 for her. We don't keep money in wool, deuce take it. — And 
 where is the crime? Did not she take twenty thousand 
 francs, I should like to know? Are not we her creditors? I 
 have taken so much on account ; that's all." 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 79 
 
 ''Oh, God ! oh, God \" cried the dying woman, clasping her 
 hands in prayer. 
 
 "Hold your tongue !" said Joseph, rushing at his brother 
 and clapping his hand over his mouth. 
 
 "Right about face, half turn to the left, you dirty little 
 painter \" replied Philippe, laying his heavy hand on J oseph's 
 shoulder, turning him round, and landing him in an arm- 
 chair. "That is not the way to meddle with the moustache 
 of a Major of Dragoons of the Imperial Guard." 
 
 "She has repaid me all she owed me," cried Agathe, rising* 
 and turning an angry face to her son. "Besides, that is no- 
 body's business but mine. • You are killing her. Go," she 
 added with a gesture that exhausted all her force, "and never 
 let me see you again. You are a viilian !" 
 
 "I am killing her?" 
 
 "Yes; her numbers were drawn in the lottery, and you 
 stole the money she would have staked." 
 
 "Oh, if she is dying of a lost chance, then it is not I who 
 am killing her," retorted the drunkard. 
 
 "Go, I say," said Agathe; "you fill me with horror. You 
 have every vice ! Good God, and is this my son?" 
 
 A hollow croak from Madame Descoings' throat had aggra- 
 vated Agathe's wrath. 
 
 "And yet I still love you, mother, though you are the cause 
 of all my misfortunes," said Philippe. "And you can turn 
 me out of doors on a Christmas Day, the birthday of What d'ye 
 call him — Jesus ! — What did you do to Grandpapa Rouget, 
 your father, that he turned you out and disinherited you ? If 
 you had not offended him in some way, we should have been 
 rich, and I should not have been reduced to the depths of 
 misery. What did you do to your father, I should like to 
 know, you who are so good? You see, I may be a very good 
 boy, and be turned out of doors nevertheless — I, the glory of 
 the family " 
 
 "Its disgrace!" cried Madame Descoings. 
 
 "Leave the room, or kill me !" cried Joseph, rushing on hi.s 
 brother with the fury of a lion. 
 
HO 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "Good God ! good God !" cried Agathe, trying to separate 
 the brothers. 
 
 At this moment Bixioii and I>octor Haudry came in. 
 J oseph had knocked down his brother, and Philippe was lying 
 on the floor. 
 
 "He is a perfect wild beast !" he said. "Not a word, or 
 I'll " 
 
 "I will remember this," bellowed Philippe. 
 
 "A little family difference ?" said Bixiou. 
 
 "Pick him up/' said the physician; ^Tie is as ill as the old 
 lady ; undress him, put him to bed, and pull his boots off." 
 
 "That is easily said," observed Bixiou. "But they must be 
 cut off : his legs are swelled " 
 
 Agathe brought a pair of scissors. When she had slit the 
 boots, which at that time were worn outside tight-fitting 
 trousers, ten gold pieces rolled out on to the floor. 
 
 "There — there is her money," muttered Philippe. "Blasted 
 idiot that I am, I forgot the reserve fund ! So I too missed 
 fire!" 
 
 The delirium of high fever now came upon Philippe, who 
 began to talk wildly. Joseph, with the help of the elder Des- 
 roches, who came in presently, and of Bixiou, got the wretched 
 man up to his own room. Doctor Haudry was obliged to write 
 a line begging the loan of a strait-waistcoat from the hospital, 
 for his mania increased to such a pitch that they feared he 
 might kill himself — he was like a madman. 
 
 By nine o'clock peace was restored. The Abbe Loraux and 
 Desroches did what they could to comfort Agathe, who sat 
 by her aunt's pillow, and never ceased crying; but she only 
 listened and shook her head, preserving obstinate silence; 
 only Joseph and Madame Descoings knew the depth and ex 
 tent of the inward wound. 
 
 "He will do better, mother," said Joseph at last, when Des- 
 roches and Bixiou were gone. 
 
 "Oh!" cried the poor woman, '^Dut he is right. Philippe 
 is right ! My father cursed me ; I have no right. . . Here 
 is the money," she went on to Mndame Descoings, adding 
 Joseph's three hundred francs to the two hundred found in 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 81 
 
 Philippe's possession. "Go and see if your brother wants 
 something to drink," she said to Joseph. 
 
 "Will you keep a promise made to a dying woman?" asked 
 the old woman, feeling that her mind was going. 
 
 "Yes, aunt." 
 
 "Then swear to me to hand over your money to that young 
 Desroches for an annuity. You will miss my little income^ 
 and from all I hear you say I know you will let that wretch 
 squeeze you to the last sou " 
 
 "Aunt, I swear it." 
 
 The old woman died on the 31st of December, five days 
 after the fatal blow so innocently dealt her by the elder Des- 
 roches. The five hundred francs, all the money there was in 
 the house, barely sufficed to pay the expenses of her 
 :r'uneral. She left a very little plate and furniture, of which 
 Madame Bridau paid the value to her grandson. 
 
 Eeduced now to eight hundred francs a year, the annuity 
 j)aid her by the younger Desroches — who concluded the pur- 
 chase of a business, at present without clients, and took her 
 twelve thousand francs as capital — Agathe- gave up her rooms 
 'Dn the third floor and sold all but the most necessary furni- 
 ture. When, at the end of a month, Philippe was con- 
 valescent, his mother coldly explained to him that the ex- 
 penses of his illness had absorbed all hei ready money ; hence- 
 forth she must work for her living, and she entreated him in 
 the most affectionate manner to rejoin the army and provide 
 for himself. 
 
 "You might have saved yourself your sermon," said 
 Philippe, looking at his mother with eyes cold from utter in- 
 difference. "I have very clearly seen that neither you nor 
 my brother love me in the least. I am alone in the world 
 now ! Well, I prefer it so." 
 
 "Prove yourself worthy to be loved," replied the poor 
 mother, wounded to the quick, "and we shall love you again." 
 
 "Fiddlesticks !" said he, interrupting her. 
 
 He took his old hat, all worn at the edges, and his stick, 
 Btuck the hat over his ear, and went downstairs whistling. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "Philippe ! where are you off to without any money cried 
 his mother, who could not restrain her tears. "Here " 
 
 She held out a hundred francs done up in paper. Philippe 
 came up the steps he had gone down and took the money. 
 
 "And you do not kiss me ?" said she, melting into tears. 
 
 He clasped her to his breast, without any of the effusive 
 feeling which alone gives value to a kiss. 
 
 "And where are you going?" said Agathe. 
 
 "To Florentine, Giroudeau's mistress. They really are 
 friends !" he replied coarsely. 
 
 He went. Agathe returned to her room, her knees quaking, 
 her eyes dim, her heart in a vise. She fell on her knees, be- 
 sought God to protect her unnatural son, and abdicated the 
 burden of motherhood. 
 
 In February 1822 Madame Bridau had established her- 
 self in the bedroom formerly occupied by Philippe, over the 
 kitchen of her third-floor rooms. The painter's bedroom and 
 studio were on the opposite side of the landing. Seeing his 
 mother reduced so low, Joseph was determined that she should 
 be as comfortable as possible. After his brother had left he 
 took the arrangement of the attic in hand, and gave it an 
 artistic stamp. He put in a carpet; the bed, very simply 
 arranged, but with exquisite taste, had a character of 
 monastic simplicity. The walls, hung with cheap chintz, 
 judiciously chosen of a color to harmonize with the furniture, 
 which was cleaned to look like new, made the little room look 
 neat and elegant. He had a door made to shut in the landing, 
 and hung it with a curtain. The window was screened by a 
 blind that subdued the light. Thus, though the poor mother's 
 life was restricted to the simplest expression which a woman's 
 life in Paris can be reduced to, Agathe was at any rate 'setter 
 off than anybody in a similar position, thanks to her son. 
 
 To spare his mother the worst fatigues of housekeeping, 
 Joseph took her to dine every day at a table d'hote in the Rue 
 de Beaune frequented by ladies of respectability, deputies, and 
 men of title, where the charge for each person was ninety 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 83 
 
 francs a month. Agathe, having only the breakfast to pro- 
 vide, fell into the same habits for her son as she had kept up 
 for his father. In spite of Joseph's pious fibs, she somehow 
 found out that her dinner cost about a hundred francs a 
 month. Horrified by this enormous expenditure, and never 
 supposing that her son could earn much by "painting naked 
 women,^^ by the influence of her director, the Abbe Loraux, 
 she obtained the promise of a place with seven hundred francs 
 a year, in a lottery-ticket office granted by Government to the 
 Comtesse de Bauvan, the widow of a Chouan leader. 
 
 These lottery offices, bestowed on widows who had friends 
 at Court, not unfrequently were the whole support of a 
 family who managed the business of it. But, under the 
 Restoration, the difficulty of finding rewards in the gift of a 
 constitutional Government for all the services that had been 
 done, led to the practice of giving to impoverished ladies of 
 rank not one, but two such lottery-ticket offices, of which the 
 emoluments might be from six to ten thousand francs. In 
 such cases the widow of a general or a nobleman did not keep 
 the ticket-office herself; she had managers with a sort of part- 
 nership. When these managers were unmarried men they 
 could not help having a clerk under them,, for the office 
 always had to be kept open till midnight, and the accounts 
 required by the Minister of Finance were very elaborate. 
 
 The Comtesse de Bauvan, to whom the Abb6 Loraux ex- 
 plained Madame Bridau's position, promised that if her 
 present manager should leave, Agathe should have the re- 
 version ; meanwhile she bargained for a salary of six hundred 
 francs for the widow. Compelled to be at her work by ten 
 in the morning, poor Agathe had scarcely time to dine; she 
 returned to her office at seven in the evening, and never 
 stirred out again before midnight. Never once for two years 
 did Joseph fail to call for his mother and take her home, and 
 he often fetched her to dinner. His friends would see him 
 leave the Opera, the Italiens, or the most splendid drawing- 
 rooms, to be in the Rue Vivienne before midnight. 
 
 Agathe soon fell into the monotonously regular way of 
 
84 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 life, which often is a comfort and support to sorrow-stricken 
 souls. In the morning, after tidying her rpom, where there 
 were now no cats or little birds, she cooked the breakfast at a 
 corner of her fireplace, and laid it in the studio, where she ate 
 it witli her son. She then arranged Joseph's bedroom, took 
 off her fire, and brought her sewing into the studio, sitting 
 by the little stove, and leaving the room if he had a visitor 
 or a model. Though she knew nothing of art or its processes, 
 she liked the stillness of the place. In this matter she made 
 no advance; she affected nothing; she was always greatly 
 astonished at the importance attached to color, composition, 
 and drawing. When one of the members of Joseph's little 
 club, or one of his artist friends, was discussing such matters 
 — Schinner, Pierre Grassou, or Leon de Lora, a very young 
 student then known by the name of Mistigris — she would 
 come and look on attentively, and never discover what could 
 give occasion to such big words and hot arguments. 
 
 She made her son's linen, mended his stockings and socks ; 
 she even went so far as to clean his palette, collect his paint- 
 ing-rags, and keep the studio in order. And seeing his mother 
 so intelligently careful of these little details, Joseph loaded 
 her v/ith kindness. If the mother and son did not meet half- 
 way on questions of art, they were closely united by affection. 
 
 The mother had a scheme. One morning when she had 
 made much of Joseph while he was sketching an enormous 
 picture — which he subsequently painted, but which fell fiat 
 — she ventured to say aloud : 
 
 "Oh, dear ! I wonder what he is doing ?" 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 "Philippe.'^ 
 
 "By Jove! the fellow is having a hard time. It will do 
 him good." 
 
 "But he has had hard times before, and perhaps that was 
 what spoilt him for us. If he were happy, he would be good." 
 
 "My dear mother, you fancy that he was in distress while 
 he was away, but you are mistaken; he lived at hig ease in 
 'New York, as he still does here " 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 85 
 
 "But if he were in want, near us, that would be dread- 
 ful 
 
 "Yes," said Joseph; "and for my part, I am willing to give 
 him money, but I will not see him. He killed poor Aunt 
 Descoings." 
 
 "Then you would not paint his portrait ?" 
 
 "For you, mother, I would suffer martyrdom. I would 
 remember only the one fact that he is my brother." 
 
 "His portrait as a Captain of Dragoons, on horseback?" 
 
 '^Vell, I have a fine horse there, copied from Gros, and I do 
 not know what to do with it." 
 
 "Then go to his friend and find out what has become of 
 him." 
 
 "I will." 
 
 Agathe rose; her scissors, everything fell on the floor; she 
 came to kiss Joseph on his forehead and shed two tears on his 
 hair. 
 
 "That boy is your passion," said he. "We all have our ill- 
 starred passion !" 
 
 That evening Joseph went to the Kue du Sentier at about 
 four o'clock, and there he found his brother, filling Girou- 
 deau's place. The elder captain of Dragoons had been trans- 
 ferred as cashier to a weekly paper managed by his nephew. 
 Though Finot was still proprietor of the little daily paper 
 for which he had issued shares, though the shares were all 
 in his own hands, the ostensible owner and editor was a friend 
 of his named Lousteau, the son, as it happened, of the sub- 
 delegate from Issoudun on whom Bridau's grandfather 
 (Doctor Rouget) had wanted to be revenged, and conse- 
 quently Madame Hochon's nephew. 
 
 To oblige his uncle, Finot had given him Philippe as 
 deputy, paying him, hov/ever, only half the salary. Every 
 day at five o'clock Giroudeau checked the balance and carried 
 off the money taken during the day. Coloquinte, the old 
 soldier who served as messenger, and who ran the errands, also 
 kept an eye on Major Philippe. Philippe, however, was 
 behaving himself. A salary of six hundred francs and a pen- 
 
80 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 sion of five hundred were enough for him to live on, all the 
 more because a fire was provided for him during the day, and 
 in the evenings he could go to the play on the free list, so he 
 had nothing to pay for but food and lodging. Coloquinte 
 was going out, loaded with stamped papers, and Philippe was 
 brushing his green linen office cuffs, when Joseph walked in. 
 
 "Lord ! Here is the brat," said Philippe. "Well, we will 
 dine together; you shall come to the Opera, Florine and 
 Florentine have a box. I am going with Giroudeau ; you will 
 be of the party, and I will introduce jou to Nathan." 
 
 He took up his loaded cane, and wetted the end of a cigar. 
 
 "I cannot avail myself of your invitation ; I must look after 
 my mother. We dine at the table d'hote/* 
 
 "Well, and how is she, poor dear thing ?" 
 
 "She is pretty well," said the painter. "I have made a 
 new portrait of my father and one of Aunt Descoings. I 
 have finished one of myself, and- 1 should like to give my 
 mother one of you in the uniform of the Imperial Dragoon 
 Guards." 
 
 "All right." 
 
 "But you must come and sit " 
 
 "I am obliged to be here, in this hen-coop, every day fronv 
 nine till five." 
 
 "Two Sundays will be enough." 
 
 "All right, young 'un," replied Napoleon's ere while staff - 
 officer, as he lighted his cigar at the porter's lamp. 
 
 When Joseph described Philippe's position to his mother, 
 as they went together to their dinner in the Rue de Beaune, 
 he felt her hand tremble on his arm ; joy lighted up the faded 
 face ; the poor woman drew breath as though she had been re- 
 lieved of some enormous burden. Next day she was full of 
 little attentions for Joseph, pjompted by her happiness and 
 gratitude; she dressed his studio with flowers, and bought 
 two vases. 
 
 The first Sunday when Philippe was to sit, Agathe took 
 care to provide an excellent breakfast. She placed everything 
 on the table, not forgetting a flask of brandy, not more than 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 87 
 
 half full. She then hid herself behind a screen, in which 
 she made a small hole. The ex-dragoon had sent his uniform 
 the day before, and she could not refrain from hugging it. 
 When Philippe mounted, in full dress, on one of the stuffed 
 horses kept by saddlers, which Joseph had hired, Agathe, 
 not to betray herself, was obliged to hide the slight noise of her 
 weeping under the voices of the two brothers as they talked. 
 
 Philippe sat for two hours before and two hours after 
 breakfast. At three in the afternoon he put on his ordinary 
 dress, and, while smoking a cigar, again invited his brother 
 to dine with him at the Palais Royal. He jingled the gold in 
 his pockets. 
 
 "STo,"^ said Joseph. "You frighten me when I see you with 
 gold about you." 
 
 "By Heaven! Then you still have a bad opinion of me 
 here?" roared the Lieutenant- Colonel in a voice of thunder. 
 "Do you think a man can never save ?" 
 
 "^sTo, no," said Agathe, coming out of her hiding-place, and 
 kissing her son "We will go and dine with him, J oseph." 
 
 Joseph dared not scold his mother ; he dressed, and Philippe 
 took them to the Rue Montorgueuil, where, at the Rocher de 
 Cancale, he gave them a splendid dinner, for which the bill 
 ran up to a hundred francs. 
 
 "The Devil!" said Joseph uneasily. "With a salary of 
 eleven hundred francs a year you manage, like Ponchard in 
 the Dame Blanche, to save enough to purchase an estate !" 
 
 "Pooh, I am in luck," said the dragoon, who had drunk an 
 enormous quantity of wine. 
 
 On hearing this speech, made on the doorstep just as they 
 were getting into a hackney coach to go to the play — for 
 Philippe had proposed to take his mother to the Circus, the 
 only entertainment of the kind allowed her by her director — 
 Joseph tightened his hand on his mother's arm. Agathe at 
 once said she felt unwell, and declined to go to the theatre, so 
 Philippe took her and his brother to the Rue Mazarine. When 
 she found herself alone with Joseph in their attic, she sat 
 long lost in thought. 
 
88 
 
 A BACHELOK'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 On the next Sunday Philippe came again to sit. This time 
 his mother sat in the room with the brothers. She brought 
 in the breakfast, and could ask the trooper various questions. 
 She then learnt that the nephew of her mother's old friend, 
 Madame Hochon, figured in a small way in literature. 
 Philippe and his ally Giroudeau lived in the society of jour- 
 nalists, actresses, and publishers, and, as cashiers, met with 
 some respect. Philippe, who always took drams of kirsch 
 while sitting after breakfast, talked freely. He boasted of 
 becoming a person of importance again ere long. But at a 
 question from Joseph as to his pecuniary means he kept 
 silence. 
 
 As it happened, the next day was a great holiday, and the 
 paper was not to come out, so Philippe, to get the thing done 
 with, proposed to come and sit again on the morrow. Joseph 
 explained to him that the Salon would open before long, 
 that he had not money enough to buy frames for his pictures, 
 and could only earn it by finishing a copy of a Rubens re- 
 quired by a picture-dealer named Magus. The original be- 
 longed to a rich Swiss banker, who had lent it only for ten 
 days. Next day would be the last ; it was therefore absolutely 
 necessary to put otf the sitting till the following Sunday. 
 
 "And that is it?" said Philippe, looking at a painting by 
 Rubens that stood on an easel. 
 
 "Yes,'' said Joseph. "That is worth twenty thousand 
 f ranee. That is what genius can do. There are such squares 
 of canvas that are worth a hundred thousand francs.'' 
 
 "Well, I like your copy best," said the dragoon. 
 
 "It is fresher," said Joseph, laughing; "but my copy is 
 only worth one thousand francs. I must have to-morrow to 
 give the old tone and look of the original, that they may be 
 indistinguishable." 
 
 "Good-bye, mother," said Philippe, embracing Agathe, "till 
 next Sunday." 
 
 On the following day Ellie Magus was to come for his copy. 
 A friend of Joseph's, who often worked for the dealer, 
 Pierre Grassou, wished to see the copy finished. To play 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 him a trick, Joseph jDut his copy, glazed with a particular 
 varnish, in the place of the original, which he set np on his 
 easel. Pierre Grassou de Fougeres was completely taken in 
 and amazed at the extraordinary imitation. 
 
 "Will yon take in old Magus ?" said Pierre Grassou. 
 
 "That remains to be seen," said Joseph. 
 
 But the dealer did not come, and it was late. Agathe was 
 to dine with Madame Desroches, who had just lost her hus-^ 
 band ; so Joseph proposed to Grassou to come and dine at his 
 table d'hote. On going out he left the key of the studio, as 
 he always did, with the woman who kept the house door. 
 
 "I am going to sit to my brother this evening,^' said 
 Philippe to this woman an hour later. "He will be in 
 presently, and I will wait for him in the studio." 
 
 The woman gave him the key. Philippe went up, took the 
 copy, thinking it was the original, came down, gave back the 
 key, explaining that he had forgotten something, and went off 
 with the Rubens to sell it for three thousand francs. He had 
 taken the precaution of telling Elie Magus, from his brother, 
 not to call till the next day. At night, when Joseph came in 
 after fetching his mother from Madame Desroches', the porter 
 told him of Philippe's vagaries, coming away almost as soon 
 as he had gone in. 
 
 "If he has not had the good taste to take the copy, I am a 
 ruined man !" exclaimed the painter, at once guessing the 
 theft. He flew up the three flights of stairs and into the 
 studio, and exclaimed, "Thank God ! He has been what he 
 will be to the end — a fool and a knave." 
 
 Agathe, who had followed Joseph, did not understand this 
 exclamation ; but when her son explained it, she simply stood 
 still, dry-eyed. 
 
 "I have but one son !" she said in a weak voice. 
 
 "We have always avoided disgracing him before strangers," 
 replied Joseph. "But we must now tell the porter he is never 
 to be admitted. Henceforth we must carry our keys. — I will 
 finish the portrait from memory, there is little to be done to 
 
 it:' 
 
90 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENl- 
 
 ''^Leave it as it is ; it would make me too unhappy," replied 
 his mother, stricken to the heart, and appalled by such mean- 
 ness. 
 
 Philippe knew what the price of this copy was needed for, 
 knew the gulf of difficulty into which he was flinging his 
 brother, and nothing had deterred him. After this last crime, 
 Agathe would never mention Philippe; her face assumed a 
 look of bitter, deep, and concentrated despair. One thought' 
 was killing her. ^ 
 
 "Some day," she said to herself, "we shall see the name of 
 Bridau in the criminal courts." 
 
 Two months after this, just before Agathe entered on her 
 duties at the lottery office, a soldier called one morning to see 
 Madame Bridau, who was at breakfast with Joseph, announc- 
 ing himself as a friend of Philippe's on urgent business. 
 
 When Giroudeau mentioned his name the mother and son 
 quailed, all the more because the ex-dragoon had a rough, 
 weather-beaten sailor's countenance that was anything rather 
 than reassuring. His ashy gray eyes, his piebald moustache, 
 the remaining tufts of hair brushed up ' round his butter- 
 colored bald head, had an indescribably unwholesome and li- 
 centious look. He wore an old iron-gray overcoat, with the 
 rosette of an officer of the Legion of Honor ; it was buttoned 
 with difficulty over a stomach like a cook's, quite in keeping 
 with a mouth that opened from ear to ear, and broad shoulders. 
 This frame was carried on a pair of thin legs. His com- 
 plexion, with the high color on the cheek-bones, betrayed a 
 jovial life. The lower part of his cheeks was deeply wrinkled, 
 and overlapped his worn black velvet collar. Among other 
 decorative touches, the ex-dragoon had in his ears an enormous 
 pair of gold earrings. 
 
 "What a sot !" said Joseph to himself. 
 
 "Madame," said Finot's uncle and cashier, "your son is in 
 such an unfortunate predicament that his friends cannot help 
 applying to you to beg you to share the very considerable ex- 
 penses he involves them in. He can no longer do his work for 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 91 
 
 the paper; and Mademoiselle Florentine of the Porte Saint- 
 Martin has given him a room in a miserable attic in the Rue 
 Vendome, where she lives. Philippe is dying ; if you and his 
 brother cannot pay for the doctor and the medicine, we shall 
 be obliged, for his own sake and cure, to have him taken to 
 the Capacins. But we will keep him ourselves for three hun- 
 dred francs; he must positively have a nurse; he goes out in^ 
 the evening while Mademoiselle Florentine is at the theatre, 
 and he takes irritant drinks, bad for his malady, and contrary 
 to rule. And we are attached to him ; it really makes us un- 
 happy. The poor fellow has pledged his pension for three 
 years; a substitute has been found for the moment to fill his 
 place, and he gets no pay. But he will kill himself, madame, 
 if we cannot put him in the asylum kept by Doctor Dubois. 
 It is a decent place and the charge is ten francs a day. Flor- 
 entine and I will pay for half a month's treatment there, do 
 you pay the rest. . . . Come, it will not be for more than 
 /;wo months." 
 
 "Indeed, monsieur, as a mother I cannot but be eternally 
 grateful for all you are doing for my son," replied Agathe. 
 "But that son has cut himself off from my affection; and as 
 for money — I have none. To avoid being a burden on this 
 son, who works night and day, and is killing himself, who de- 
 serves all his mother's love, I am going, the day after to-mor- 
 row, into a lottery ticket office as assistant clerk. — At my age !" 
 
 "And you, young man ?" said the trooper to Joseph. "Come, 
 will not you do as much for your brother as a dancer at the 
 Porte Saint-Martin and an old soldier ?" 
 
 "Look here!" said Joseph, out of patience. "Would you 
 like me to tell you in the plainest language what was the pur- 
 pose of your visit ? You came to try to fleece us." 
 
 "Well, then, to-morrow your brother will go to the 
 hospital." 
 
 "He will be very well looked after," said Joseph. "If ever 
 1 should be in the same plight, I should go there myself !" 
 
 Giroudeau went away, much disappointed, but also very 
 Beriously grieved at having to send a man who had been on 
 VOL, 4—33 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTAfeLISHMEKl' 
 
 ISTapoleon's staff at the battle of Montereau to the hospital of 
 the Capucins. 
 
 Three months after thiS;, one morning towards the end of 
 July, Agathe, on her way to her office, crossing the Pont 
 Nenf to save the toll of a son on the Pont des Arts, saw a man 
 lounging by the shops of the Quai de Ecole as she walked 
 . along by the river parapet. He wore the livery of the second 
 degree of poverty, and she was startled, for she thought he 
 resembled Philippe. 
 
 There are, in fact, three degress of poverty in Paris. First, 
 that of the men who keep up appearances, and who have the 
 future before them; the poverty of young men, artists, men 
 of the world who are down on their luck. The symptoms of 
 this kind of want are visible only to the microscope of the 
 most practised observer. These people constitute the knight- 
 hood of poverty ; they still ride in a cab. In the second rank 
 are old men, to whom everything is a matter of indifference, 
 who, in the mionth of June, display the Cross of the Legion 
 of Honor on an alpaca coat. This is the poverty of old 
 annuitants, old clerks living at Sainte-Perine, careless now 
 about their appearance. Last comes poverty in rags, the 
 poverty of the common people, and the most poetical of all; 
 studied by Callot and Hogarth, by Murillo, Charlet, Raffet, 
 Gavarni, Meissonier ; adored and cultivated by Art, especially 
 at the Carnival ! 
 
 The man in whom the unhappy Agathe fancied she recog- 
 nized her son had, as it were, one foot on each of these two 
 lowest steps. She saw a horribly starchless collar, a mangy 
 hat, broken and patched boots, a threadbare overcoat with 
 buttons that had lost their mould, while their empty gaping 
 or twisted skins matched the torn pockets and greasy collar. 
 Traces of flue on the cloth plainly revealed that if there were 
 anything in those pockets, it could only be dust. Out of a 
 pair of ripped iron-gray trousers the man drew hands as dirty 
 as a workman's. Over his breast a knitted woolen undervest, 
 tawny with long wear, of which the sleeves came below those 
 of the coat, and the edge was pulled outside the trousers, 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 93 
 
 served visibly and undoubtedly as a substitute for linen. 
 Philippe wore a shade over his eyes of green silk stretched on 
 wire. His head, almost bald, his color, and hollow cheeks 
 showed that he had just come out of that dreadful hospital. 
 
 His blue military coat, though white at the seams, still 
 displayed his Rosette. Thus every passer-by looked at this 
 veteran, a victim of the Government no doubt, with curiosity, 
 mingled with pity; for the Rosette attracted the eye, and 
 suggested honorable fears for the Legion of Honor, even in 
 the most rabid ultras. At that time, though an attempt had 
 been made to cast a slur on the Order by reckless promotions, 
 not more than fifty-three thousand persons in France had the 
 right to display it. 
 
 Agathe was thrilled to the marrow. Though she could not 
 possibly love this son of hers, she still could suffer acutely 
 through him. Touched by a last gleam of motherly feeling, 
 she shed tears as she saw the dashing staff-officer make as 
 though he would go into a tobacconist's to buy a cigar, and 
 stop on the threshold; he had felt in his pockets and found 
 nothing. Agathe hastily crossed the road, drew out her 
 purse, pushed it into Philippe's hand, and fled as if she had 
 committed a crime. 
 
 For two days after she could eat nothing; she constantly 
 saw before her the horrible vision of her son dying of hunger 
 in Paris. 
 
 "When he has spent the money in my purse, who will give 
 him any?" thought she. "Giroudeau was not deceiving us; 
 Philippe has just come out of the hospital." 
 
 She no longer saw her poor aunt's murderer, the scourge 
 of the family, the domestic thief, the gambler, drunkard, low 
 debauchee; what she saw was a discharged patient dying of 
 hunger, a smoker bereft of tobacco. At seven-and-forty she 
 looked like a woman of seventy. Her eyes grew dim in tears 
 and prayer. 
 
 But this was not the last blow to be dealt her by this dread- 
 ful son; her worst anticipations were to be realized. A con- 
 spiracy was discovered of officers on service, and the para- 
 
94 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 graphs of the Moniteur containing the details of the arrests 
 were shouted in the streets. In the recesses of her little 
 coop, in the lottery office in the Eue Vivienne, Agathe heard 
 the name of Philippe Bridau. She fainted away; and the 
 head-clerk, understanding her grief and the necessity for her 
 taking some action, gave her a fortnight^s leave of absence. 
 
 "Ah, my dear ! We, with our austerity, have driven him to 
 this,^^ she said to Joseph, as she went to lie down. 
 
 "I will go to see Desroches," said Joseph. 
 
 The artist went off to place his brother's case in the hands 
 of Desroches, who was regarded as the craftiest and astutest 
 attorney in Paris, and who had rendered good service to 
 various persons of importance, among others to des Lupeaulx, 
 at that time Chief Secretary in a Minister's office. Mean- 
 while Giroudeau came to call on the widow, who trusted him 
 this time. 
 
 "Madame," said he, "find twelve thousand francs, and your 
 son will be released for want of evidence. We have only 
 to purchase the silence of two witnesses." 
 
 "I will get them," said the poor mother, not knowing how 
 or whence. 
 
 Inspired by the danger, she wrote to her godmother Mad- 
 ame Hochon to beg them of Jean-Jacques Rouget, to save 
 Philippe. If Rouget should refuse, she entreated Madame 
 Hochon to lend her the money, promising to repay it in two 
 years. By return of post she received the following letter : — 
 
 "My dear Child, — Though your brother has, first and last, 
 forty thousand francs a year, to say nothing of the money 
 he has saved in the last seventeen years, which Monsieur 
 Hochon estimates at more than six hundred thousand francs, 
 he will not spend two farthings on the nephews he has never 
 seen. As for me — ^you cannot know that so long as my hus- 
 band lives I shall never have six francs to call my own. 
 Hochon is the greatest miser in Issoudun ; I do not know what 
 he does with his money; he docs not give his grandchildren 
 twenty francs in a year. To borrow it I should have to ask 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 95 
 
 his leave, and he would not give it. I have not even at- 
 tempted to speak with your brother, who keeps a woman, 
 whose very humble servant he is. It is pitiable to see how the 
 poor man is treated in his own house when he has a sister and 
 nephews. 
 
 "I have hinted to you several times that your presence at 
 Issoudun might save your brother, and rescue from the 
 clutches of that hussy a fortune of forty or even sixty thou- 
 sand francs a year; but you do not answer me, or seem not 
 to have understood me. So I write to you to-day without any 
 circumlocution. I sympathize deeply with the misfortune 
 that has come upon you, but J can give you nothing but pity, 
 my dearest child. 
 
 "This is why I can do nothing to help you : Hochon, at the 
 age of eighty-five, eats his four meals a day, sups off hard- 
 boiled eggs and salad, and is as brisk as a rabbit. I shall 
 have lived all my days — for he will write my epitaph — with- 
 out ever having had twenty francs in my purse. If you like 
 to come to Issoudun to combat the influence of your brother's 
 concubine, though there are good reasons why Eouget should 
 not receive you into his house, I shall find it difficult to obtain 
 my husband's permission to invite you to mine. Still, you 
 can come; he will give way on that point. I know a way of 
 getting what I want in some things, and that is by talking of 
 my will. This seems to me so atrocious that I have never yet 
 had recourse to it ; but for you I v/ould do the impossible. I 
 hope your Philippe will get out of the scrape, especially if you 
 have a good advocate; but come to Issoudun as soon as you 
 can. Eemember that your brother, at fifty-seven, is older 
 and more frail than Monsieur Hochon. So the case is urgent. 
 
 "Already there are rumors of a will depriving you of your 
 inheritance; but by Monsieur Hochon's account there is yet 
 time to procure its revocation. 
 
 "Farewell, my little Agathe. God be with you. And rely 
 on your godmother too, for she loves you. 
 
 "Maximilienne liocHON^ nee Lousteau= 
 
96 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 ''P. S. — Has my nephew ."Etienne, who writes for the papers.^ 
 and is intimate, I am told, with your son Philippe, ever been 
 to pay his respects to you ? — But only come, and we w ill talk 
 about him/^ 
 
 This letter gave Agathe much to think about; of course 
 she shov/ed it to Joseph, to whom she was obliged to confide 
 Girou dean's suggestion. The artist, who was cautious when 
 his brother was concerned, pointed out to his mother that she 
 ought to lay it all before Desroches. Struck by the truth of 
 this remark, she and her spn went next day, at six in the 
 morning, to call on Desroches in the Rue de Bussy. 
 
 The lawyer, as lean as his father before him, with a harsh 
 voice, a coarse skin, pitiless eyes, and a face like a ferret's 
 licking the blood of murdered chickens off its lips, sprang like 
 a tiger when he heard of Giroudeau's call. 
 
 "Bless me, mother Bridau," he cried in his shrill, hard 
 voice, "how long will you continue to be the dupe of youi 
 cursed scoundrel of a son? Do not give him a farthing. .1 
 will be responsible for Philippe ; it is to save him in the future 
 that I shall leave him to the sentence of the superior Court. 
 You quail at the idea of his being found guilty, but God grant 
 that his counsel may fail to get him off. You, go to Issoudun; 
 save your fortune and that of your children. If you do not 
 succeed, if your brother has made his will in that woman's 
 favor, and you cannot get him to revoke it — well, at any rate, 
 collect the materials for proving undue influence, and I will 
 conduct the case. But there! You are too good a woman 
 to know how to find out the grounds for such an action. In 
 the holidays I will go myself to Issoudun — if I possibly can." 
 
 And this "I will go myself" made the artist shiver in his 
 skin, 
 
 Desroches winlced at Joseph as a sign that he should let 
 his mother go downstairs first, and detained him for an in- 
 stant. 
 
 "Your brother is a base wretch ; he, voluntarily or involun- 
 tarily, is the cause of the discovery of the conspiracy ; for the 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 07 
 
 rascal is so cunning that it is impossible to find out the truth 
 about it. Fool or traitor — I leave you to choose between 
 them. He will no doubt be placed under the eye of the de- 
 tective police; but that is all. Be quite easy; I alone know 
 even this much. Hurry off to Issoudun with your mother. 
 You have all your wits ; try to save the inheritance.^' 
 
 "Come, poor mother, Desroches is right," said Joseph, re- 
 joining Agathe on the stairs. "I have sold my pictures; let 
 us set out for le Berry, as you have a fortnight's leave." 
 
 Having written to her godmother to announce their arrival, 
 Agathe and Joseph started next day for Issoudun, leaving 
 Philippe to his fate. The diligence went down the Eue dc 
 FEnfer to take the Orleans road. When Agathe saw the 
 Luxembourg, whither Philippe had been transferred, she 
 could not help saying : 
 
 "After all, but for the Allies he would not be there now !" 
 
 Many sons would have given an impatient shrug or smiled 
 in pity; but Joseph, who was alone with her in the coupe of 
 the diligence, threw his arms round her, and pressed her to 
 his heart, saying, "Oh, mother ! you are a mother as Raphael 
 was a painter ! And you always will be a dear goose of a 
 mother !" 
 
 Aroused from her troubles by the amusement of the jour- 
 ney, Madame Bridau was presently obliged to think of the 
 purpose of her visit. Of course, she re-read Madame 
 Hochon's letter, which had so strongly excited Desroches. 
 Struck by such words as "concubine" and "hussy," traced 
 by the pen of an old woman of seventy, as pious as she was re- 
 spectable, to designate the woman who was absorbing Jean- 
 J acques Rouget's fortune, while he himself was spoken of as a 
 poor creature, she began to wonder how her presence at Is- 
 soudun could avail to save her inheritance. Joseph, an artist, 
 poor and disinterested, knew little of the law, and his mother's 
 exclamation puzzled him. 
 
 "Before sending us off to protect our inheritance, our 
 friend Desroches would have done well to explain to us how 
 we can be robbed of it," said he. 
 
08 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "So far as my memory serves me — but my head was full 
 of the notion of Philippe in prison, without a pipe even per- 
 haps, and on the eve of standing his trial before the superior 
 court" — said Agathe, "I fancy Desroches said we were to 
 collect materials for an action against undue influence if it 
 should appear that my brother has made his will in favor of 
 thi s — this — wom an. " 
 
 "A good joke for Desroches!" cried Joseph, ^^ell, if we 
 'can make nothing of it, I will ask him to go himself." 
 
 "Do not let us rack our brains for nothing," said Agathe. 
 "When we are there, my godmother will advise us." 
 
 This conversation, held at the moment when, after changing 
 coach at Orleans, Madame Bridau and Joseph were entering 
 the district of Sologne, sufficiently betrays the incapacity of 
 both the artist and his mother to play the part the terrible 
 attorney had assigned to them. 
 
 But on returning to Issoudun after an absence of thirty 
 years, Agathe found the manners of the place so altered, that 
 a slight sketch of the life of the town is indispensable. With- 
 out such a picture, it would be difficult to understand Madame 
 Hochon's real heroism in trying to help her goddaughter^, 
 or Jean-Jacques Eouget's extraordinary position. 
 
 Though the doctor had made his son regard Agathe as a 
 stranger, still, in a brother, there was something rather ex- 
 traordinary in living for thirty years without giving his sister 
 any sign of his existence. This silence must evidently have its 
 cause in some unusual circumstances which any relations but 
 Agathe and Joseph would long since have insisted on know- 
 ing. And, in fact, there was a certain connection between the 
 state of the town and the Bridaus' concerns, which will come 
 to light in the course of this narrative. 
 
 With all due respect to Paris, Issoudun is one of the oldest 
 towns in France. Notwithstanding historical prejudice, which 
 insists on regarding the Emperor Probus as the Noah of Gaul, 
 Caesar v/rites of the fine wine of Champ-Fort (de Campo 
 Forti), one of the finest vintages of Issoudun. Kigord men- 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 99 
 
 tions the town in terms which allow of no doubt as to its large 
 population and extensive commerce. Still, these two author- 
 ities would give Issoudun a moderate antiquity in comparison 
 with its really immense age. Excavations, lately made by a 
 learned archaeologist of the town. Monsieur Armand Peremet, 
 have led to the discovery of a basilica of the fifth century — 
 probably the only example in France — under the famous 
 tower of Issoudun. This church preserves in the materials 
 of which it is built the record of a previous civilization; for 
 the stones are those of a Eoman temple of earlier date. And, 
 indeed, the researches of this antiquary show that Issoudun, 
 like all French towns of which the name, ancient or modern, 
 ends in dun — dunum, contains in its name a certificate of 
 native origin. The syllable dun, attaching to every hill con- 
 secrated to the religion of the Druids, shows it to have been 
 a Celtic military and religious centre. The Eomans then 
 may have built at the foot of the Dun of the Gauls a temple 
 to Isis ; hence, according to Chaumon, the name of the town, 
 Ts-sous-dun (Is[is]-under-hill) — Is' being an abbreviated 
 form of Isis. 
 
 Eichard Coeur de Lion undoubtedly built the famous tower, 
 where he coined money, over a basilica of the fifth century, 
 the third sanctuary of the third religion of this ancient city. 
 He made use of the church as a base which he needed to add 
 to the height of his ramparts, and preserved it by covering 
 it with his feudal fortifications as with a cloak. Issoudun 
 next became the seat of the transient authority of the Routiers 
 and Cottereaux, bands of brigands with which Henri II. op- 
 posed his son Eichard when he rebelled as Count of PoitoUo 
 The history of Aquitaine, not having been written by the 
 Benedictines, will now probably never be written, as there are 
 no more Benedictines. Hence it is well to throw every pos- 
 sible light on these archgeological obscurities whenever an 
 opportunity offers. 
 
 There is still further evidence of the ancient importance of 
 Issoudun in the use rxiade of the little Tournemine river, 
 Thich has been raised for a considerable distance on an aque- 
 
100 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 duct several yards above the natural level of the Theols, the 
 stream that encircles the town. This work is, beyond ques- 
 tion, due to Eoman engineers. Finally, the quarter lying 
 to the north of the castle is intersected by a road known for 
 two thousand years as the Eue de Rome ; and the inhabitants 
 of the suburb, who are certainly of a quite distinct type in 
 race, blood, and features, call themselves the direct descend- 
 ants of the Romans. They are almost all vine-dressers, and 
 singularly stern in their manners, owing, perhaps, to their 
 origin, and perhaps also to their triumph over the Cottereaux 
 and Routiers, whom they exterminated in the twelfth cen- 
 tury in the plain of Charost. 
 
 After the outbreak in 1830, France was too much agitated 
 to pay any attention to the rebellion among the vine-growers 
 of Issoudun, which was very serious, though the details were 
 never published, and for very good reasons. In the first place, 
 the citizens of Issoudun would not allow any troops to enter 
 the city. They chose to be responsible for it themselves, after 
 the usage and traditions of the citizen-class in the Middle 
 Ages. The authorities were forced to succumb to a populace 
 supported by six of seven thousand vine-dressers, who had 
 burnt all the archives and the tax-offices, and who went from 
 street to street, dragging about an excise officer of the octroi, 
 saying at each lamp-chain, ^'Thh is the place to hang him.^^ — 
 The unhappy man was delivered from these wretches by the 
 National Guard, who saved his life by taking liim to prison 
 on the pretext of trying him. The General of the forces only 
 got in by coming to terms with the vine-dressers, and it needed 
 some courage to walk through the mob ; for as soon as he ap- 
 peared outside the Town-hall a man of the Roman suburb 
 put his pruning scythe — a large curved knife at the end of a 
 pole used for lopping trees — round his neck, crying out, "No 
 more tax-gatherers, or we yield nothing." And the laborer 
 would have pruned off the head of a man whom sixteen years 
 of fighting had spared, but for the prompt intervention of one 
 of the leaders of the rebellion, who obtained a promise that 
 the Chambers should be asked to suppress the "cellar-rats" 
 — or excise men. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 101 
 
 In the fourteenth century Issoudun could still boast of 
 seventeen thousand inhabitants^ the remnant of a population 
 of nearly double that number in Rigord^s time. Charles 
 VII. had a residence there; it still exists, and v/as knov/n as 
 the Maison du roy so late as the eighteenth century. This 
 town, at that time the central mart of the wool-trade, sup- 
 plied the greater part of Europe with the raw material, be- 
 sides manufacturing it on a large scale into cloth, hats, and 
 excellent gloves, called Chevreautin. In the time of Louis 
 XIV. Issoudun, the birthplace of Baron and of Bourdaloue, 
 was always mentioned as a home of elegance, pure French, 
 and good society. Poupart, the priest, in his History of 
 Sancerre, speaks of the inhabitants of Issoudun as remark- 
 able among all the natives of le Berry for their acumen and 
 mother-wit. 
 
 At the present day this brilliancy and wit have totally dis- 
 appeared. Issoudun, though its wide extent bears witness 
 to its former im-portance, claims but twelve thousand souls, 
 including the vine-dressers of four extensive suburbs — Saint- 
 Paterne, Vilatte, Rome, and les Alouettes, little towns in 
 themselves. The inhabitants, like those of Versailles, have 
 elbow-room in the streets. Issoudun still is the centre of the 
 wool-trade of le Berry, a business now in danger from the im- 
 provements which are being generally introduced in the breed 
 of sheep which the Berriclion will not adopt. The vineyards 
 of Issoudun yield a wine which is consumed in two depart- 
 ments; and which, if it were only made as wine is made in 
 Burgundy and Gascony, w^ould be one of the best vintages in 
 France. But, alas! "We do as our fathers did!^' — that is 
 the law of the land. So the vine-growers leave the stalks in 
 the liquor during fermentation, v/hich ruins the flavor of a 
 wine that might be the source of renewed wealth, and an 
 opening for the industry of the district. Thanks to the rough- 
 ness communicated to the wine by the wood, and which is said 
 to diminish with age, it may be kept for a century! Thi^ 
 reason, assigned by the vine-grower, is important enough to 
 the science of the manufacture to be recorded here; Guiliaume 
 
102 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 le Breton has, in fact, celebrated this property in a few lines 
 in his Philippide. 
 
 Thus the decay of Issondun is accounted for by its per- 
 verse stagnation, carried to imbecility, as one single fact 
 will show. When the direct road was contemplated from 
 Paris to Tonlouse, it was obvious that it should run from 
 Vierzon to Chateauroux, past Issoudun. This is shorter than 
 the line actually taken by Vatan. But the bigwigs of the 
 town, and the Municipal Council of Issoudun — which, it is 
 said, still sits — petitioned for its passing through Vatan; 
 objecting that if their town lay on the highroad, the price 
 of provisions would rise, and they might be obliged to pay 
 thirty sous for a fowl. 
 
 No analogous act is recorded of any land but the wildest 
 districts of Sardinia, a country formerly so populous and 
 rich, and now so deserted. When King Charles Albert, with 
 a laudable intent to civilize the land, proposed to connect 
 Sassari, the second town in the island, with Cagliari, by a fine 
 and magnificent highroad, the only road existing in this 
 wild Savanna, the direct line was planned to pass Bonorva, 
 a district inhabited by a refractory race very like our subject 
 Arab tribes, and, in fact, descended from the Moors. When 
 they saw themselves within an ace of being caught by civiliza- 
 tion, the savages of Bonorva, without taking the trouble to 
 discuss the matter, signified their opposition to the plan. The 
 Government disregarded this announcement. The first engi- 
 neer who attempted to take a bee-line had a bullet in his 
 brain, and died by his stake. No questions were asked; but 
 the road made a bend that lengthens it by eight leagues. 
 
 At Issoudun the increasingly low price of the wine, all 
 consumed on the spot, while gratifying the citizen's wish to 
 live cheaply, is bringing about the ruin of the vine-growers, 
 v/ho are more and more oppressed by the cost of cultivation 
 and the excise; in the same way, ruin threatens the wool- 
 trade of the district, in consequence of the impossibility of 
 improving the breed of sheep. The country folks have a 
 rooted horror of every kind of change, even of that which 
 may serve their interests* 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 303 
 
 A traveler from Paris found a laborer in the country who 
 was dining off an enormous quantity of bread, cheese, and 
 vegetables. He proved to him that by substituting a certain 
 proportion of meat he would be nourished better and cheaper, 
 he would do more work, and waste his capital of strength, 
 more slowly. The man of Berry admitted the accuracy of the 
 calculation. — "But only consider the jaw, sir,'' said he. — "The 
 jaw?'' — "Why, yes, sir; how people would tattle !" 
 
 "He would have been the talk of the district," said the 
 owner of the land on which the incident occurred. "They 
 would think he was as rich as a townsman. In short, he is 
 afraid of public opinion, of being pointed at, of being sup- 
 posed to be ailing or ill. — That is what we all are in this part 
 of the world." 
 
 Country-town folk often echo these last words with a feeling 
 of covert pride. 
 
 And while ignorance and routine are insuperable in the 
 country, where the peasantry are left to themselves, Issoudun, 
 as a town, has settled into absolute social stagnation. Being 
 obliged to make head against waning fortunes by sordid 
 economy, each family lives for itself alone. Again, the society 
 there is now for ever bereft of the contrast that gives distinc- 
 tion to manners. The town is no longer the scene of that 
 antagonism of two classes which gave vitality to the Italian 
 states in the Middle Ages. Issoudun has no men of birth. 
 The Cottereaux, the Koutiers, the Jacquerie, the religious 
 wars, and the Revolution have completely exterminated the 
 nobility. The town is very proud of this triumph. To keep 
 down the cost of living, Issoudun has persistently refused to 
 be made a garrison town ; thus it has lost that means of inter- 
 course with the times, besides losing the profit that is derived 
 from the presence of the military. 
 
 Until 1756 Issoudun was one of the gayest of garrison 
 towns. A judicial drama, which was the talk of France 
 at that time, deprived the town of its soldiery; the case of 
 the Lieutenant-General of the district against the Marquis 
 de Chapt, whose son, a dragoon officer, was put to death. 
 
 ^ 
 
104 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 justly perhaps, but traitorously, for some amorous misde- 
 meanor. 
 
 The occupation by the 44th half-brigade, forced upon it 
 during the civil war, was not such as to reconcile the in- 
 habitants to the soldier tribe. 
 
 Bourges, of which the population is annually diminish- 
 ing, is a victim to the same social atrophy. Vitality is fail=- 
 ing in these large bodies. The State is no doubt to blame. 
 It is the duty of a Government to detect such sores in the 
 body politic, and to remedy them by sending men of energy 
 to the affected spots to change the state of things. Alas! 
 far from this, such fatal and funereal peacefulness is a source 
 of satisfaction! Besides, how is it possible to send fresh 
 chiefs or capable judges? Who nowadays would care to be 
 buried in a district where he can earn no credit for the good 
 to be done ? If by chance an ambitious outsider is appointed 
 to such a place, he is soon swamped by the power of inertia, 
 and tunes him^self to the pitch of the dreadful provincial, 
 life. Issoudun Vv^ould have benumbed Napoleon. 
 
 As a result of this state of things, the district of Issoudun, 
 in 1822, was under the administration of men all natives of \(\ 
 Berry. Government authority was therefore nil or impotent, 
 excepting in those cases, of course very rare, of which th(! 
 evident importance demands the intervention of the law. 
 Monsieur Mouilleron, the public prosecutor, was related to 
 everybody, and his deputy belonged to a family in the town. 
 The President of the Criminal Court, before he had risen to 
 such dignity, had made himself famous by one of those 
 speeches which, in the provinces, crown a man with a fool's 
 cap for the rest of his life. At the end of a case for the 
 prosecution which would entail capital punishment, he said to 
 the prisoner: "My poor Pierre, the case is clear; you will 
 have your head cut off. Let that be a lesson to you.'' The 
 superintendent of police, who had held the post ever since the 
 Kestoration, had relations all over the district. 
 
 Finally, not only had religion no influence whatever, but 
 the cure was not respected. The townsfolk — ^Liberals, back- 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 105 
 
 biters, and ignorant — repeated more or less absurd stories 
 about the poor man's conduct to his housekeeper. The chil- 
 dren went to his catechizing all the same, and were admitted 
 to their first Communion; all the same, there was a school; 
 Mass was said and festivals were kept; the taxes were paid, 
 the only thing Paris requires of the provinces ; and the Maire 
 passed resolutions; but all these acts of social life were mere 
 matters of routine. Thus the flabbiness of official life was 
 in admirable harmony with the moral and intellectual con- 
 dition of the place. The sequel of this narrative will show 
 the results of a state of things less exceptional than might be 
 supposed. Many towns in France, especially in the south, 
 are very like Issoudun. And the state to which the triumph 
 of the middle class had brought this town — the chief town of 
 its district (or arrondissement) — awaits all France, and even 
 Paris, if the citizen class continues to be master of the home 
 and foreign policy of our country. 
 
 Now a word as to the topography of Issoudun. The town 
 extends north and south on a hillside that curves towards the 
 Chateauroux road. At the foot of the slope a canal was con- 
 structed at the time when the place was prosperous, to supply 
 the factories, or to flood the trenches below the ramparts; it 
 is known as la Riviere forcee, the Borrowed Stream, its waters 
 being diverted from the Theols. The borrowed stream forms 
 an artificial branch, returning to the natural river below the 
 Koman suburb at a point where it is met by the Tournemine 
 and some other affluents. These little brooks of rushing 
 water irrigate meadows of some extent, which lie on all sides 
 below the yellow or white hills closely dotted with black 
 specks, for such is the aspect of the vine-land of Issoudun dur- 
 ing seven months of the year. The vine-dressers layer the 
 vines every year, and leave nothing but a hideous stump, with- 
 out any prop, at the bottom of a funnel of earth. Thus, on 
 arriving from Vierzon, Vatan, or Chateauroux, the eye, 
 wearied by the monotonous plain, is agreeably surprised by the 
 appearance of the meadowland of Issoudun, the oasis of this 
 part of the country, supplying vegetables for ten leagues 
 
106 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 roundo Below the suburb of Eome stretches one vast market^ 
 garden exclusively devoted to kitchen produce, and divided 
 into the Upper and Lower Baltan. 
 
 A broad, long avenue, with side-walks planted with poplars, 
 leads from the town, across the fields, to an ancient convent 
 called Frapesle where an English garden — unique in the 
 district — bears the high-sounding name of Tivoli. Here, on 
 Sundays, fond couples wander to breathe their confidences. 
 
 Traces of the former splendor of Issoudun can, of course, 
 be discerned by an attentive observer, and the most conspicu- 
 ous are the divisions of the town. The castle, which of old 
 was a town of itself, with its walls and moats, constitutes a 
 distinct quarter even now, entered only through the old gates, 
 or quitted by three bridges over the arms of the two rivers ; this 
 alone has the aspect of an old town. The walls still show 
 their formidable masonry, here and there crowned with houses. 
 Above the castle rises the tower which was the citadel. The 
 conqueror of the town lying round these two fortified strong- 
 holds had still to take both the tower and the castle. Nor did 
 the .nastery of the castle secure that of the tower. The sub^ 
 urb of Saint-Paterne beyond the tower, shaped like a palette, 
 and encroaching on the fields, is so large that it must in early 
 age<5 have been the original township. Since the Middle Ages 
 Issoudun, like Paris, has climbed a hill and spread outside 
 the tower and the castle. 
 
 In 1822 this notion still derived some certainty from the 
 existence of the beautiful Church of Saint-Paterne, only re- 
 cently pulled down by the son of the man who purchased it 
 from the nation. This building, one of the prettiest ex- 
 amples of Eomanesque Church architecture in France, was 
 destroyed without any one having drawn the porch front, 
 which was in perfect preservation. The only voice that was 
 raised to save the building found no echo, neither in the town 
 nor in the department. 
 
 Though the castle-precincts of Issoudun have all the char- 
 acter of an old place, with its narrow streets and ancient 
 houses, the town, properly so called, which was taken and burnt 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 107 
 
 tgain and again at different periods, and especially during 
 the Fronde, when it was burnt to the ground, has now a 
 modern aspect. Broad streets, as compared with the other 
 quarters, and well-built houses form a contrast with the an- 
 cient castle striking enough to have earned Issoudun, in some 
 geographies, the epithet of pretty. 
 
 In a town thus constituted, devoid even of commercial 
 activity, of taste for the arts, of scientific interest, vv^here 
 every one sits at home, it could not but happen- -and it did in 
 fact happen — that at the time of the Eestoration, in 1816, 
 when the war was over, many of the young men of the place 
 had no career before them, and did not know what to do with 
 themselves pending their marriage, or their coming into their 
 parents' money. Bored to death at home, these young people 
 found no means of diversion in the town; and since, as the 
 proverb has it, young men must sow their wild oats, they per- 
 formed the operation at the expense of the town itself. It 
 was difficult to do much by broad daylight ; they would have 
 been recognized, and, the cup of their misdemeanors once full, 
 they would at their first serious offence have found them- 
 selves in the hands of the police; so they very judiciously, 
 preferred to play their mischievous pranks at night. And 
 thus, among these old ruins left by so many departed phases 
 of civilization, a vestige of the farcical spirit that character- 
 ized the manners of the past flashed like a dying flame. 
 These young men took their pleasure as Charles IX. and his 
 courtiers, or Henry V. and his companions, were wont to take 
 theirs, in a form of amusement common of old in many 
 provincial towns. 
 
 Having become confederates by their need of mutual help 
 and defence and the desire to invent practical jokes, the 
 friction of wits developed among them a pitch of mischievous- 
 ness which is natural to the young,, and may be noticed even 
 in animals. Their confederacy gave them also the little en- 
 joyment that comes of the mystery of a standing conspiracy. 
 They called themselves "The Knights of Idlesse." All through 
 the day these young monkeys were little saints ; they affected 
 VOL. 4—34 
 
108 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 excessive quietude; besides, they slept late in the mornings 
 after nights when they had carried out some cruel trick. 
 The Knights of Idlesse began by common practical jokes, such 
 as unhooking and changing shop-signs, ringing at doors, hurl- 
 ing a cask left outside a door into a neighbor's cellar with a 
 prodigious clatter, and waking the folks by a noise like the 
 explosion of a mine. At Issoudun, as in many places, the way 
 into the cellars is through a trap-door close to the entrance 
 from the street, closed by a huge lid with hinges, and fastened 
 with a heavy padlock. These Bad Boys, at the end of 1816, 
 had not got beyond the practical jokes played everywhere by 
 young men and lads. But in January 1817 the Order of 
 Idlesse had a Grand Master, and distinguished itself by cer- 
 tain pranks which until 1823 were the terror of Issoudun, or, 
 at any rate, kept the citizens and craftsmen in perpetual 
 alarms. 
 
 This leader was one Maxence Gilet, called Max for short; 
 and his antecedents, no less than his strength and youth, 
 destined him for the part. Maxence Gilet was supposed to be 
 the natural son of Lousteau, Madame Hochon's brother, the 
 Bub-delegate whose gallantries had left many memorials, and 
 who had incurred, as we know. Doctor Kouget's hatred a 
 propos to Agathe's birth. But before this quarrel the friend- 
 ship between the two men had been so close that, to use a phrase 
 of the country and period, where one went the other would go. 
 So it was always said that Max might just as well be the 
 doctor's son as Lousteau's ; but he belonged to neither of them, 
 for his father was a handsome young dragoon officer in 
 garrison at Bourges. However, as a consequence of their 
 intimacy, happily for the boy, the two men were always 
 disputing for the paternity. 
 
 Max's mother, the wife of a clog-maker in the Roman sub- 
 urb, was for her soul's destruction amazingly beautiful, with 
 the beauty of a true Trasteverina, the only thing she had to 
 bequeath to her boy. Madame Gilet, before Max's birth in 
 1788, had long pined for this boon from heaven, which was 
 maliciously ascribed to the gallantries of the two men — no 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 109 
 
 doubt to set them at loggerheads. Gilet, a hardened old sot, 
 winked at his wife's misconduct by such collusion and toler- 
 ance as are not exceptional in the lowest class. The woman 
 herself, hoping to secure their protection for the child, took 
 good care not to enlighten the supposed fathers. In Paris 
 she would have been a millionaire ; at Issoudun she sometimes 
 was well off, sometimes wretchedly poor, and at last scorned by 
 all. 
 
 Madame Hochon, Monsieur Lousteau's sister, paid about 
 ten crowns a year towards Max's schooling. This liberality, 
 which Madame Plochon could not allow herself in conse- 
 quence of her husband's avarice, was naturally attributed 
 to her brother, then living at Sancerre. When Doctor Rouget. 
 whose son was not a success, observed how handsome Max was, 
 he paid the school expenses of the "young rascal," as he 
 called him, till 1805. As Lousteau had died in 1800, and the 
 doctor seemed to gratify a feeling of pride by paying the boy's 
 schooling for five years, the question of paternity remained 
 unsettled. 
 
 Indeed, Maxence Gilet, the cause of many jests, was soon 
 forgotten. And this is his story. In 1806, a year after 
 Doctor Rouget's death, the boy, who seem.ed born to a life of 
 adventure, and who was indeed gifted with extraordinary 
 strength and agility, had committed a number of more or less 
 rash acts of mischief. He and Monsieur Hochon's grand- 
 sons were already in league to drive the tradesf oiks to frenzy ; 
 he gathered all the neighbors' fruit before the owners, making 
 nothing of scaling a wall. This imp had no match in athletic 
 exercises; he played prisoner's base to perfection; he could 
 have coursed and caught axhare. He had an eye worthy of 
 Leather-Stocking, and had a passion for sport. Instead of 
 doing his lessons, he passed all his time in shooting at a mark. 
 He spent all the money he could extract from the old doctor 
 in buying powder and shot for a worn-out pistol given to him 
 by Gilet the clog-maker. 'Nov/, in the autumn of 1806, Max, 
 by this time seventeen, committed an involuntary murder 
 one evening at nightfall by coming upon a young woman iij 
 
110 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 her garden, where he was stealing fruit, and frightening her 
 into a miscarriage. Being threatened by the clog-maker 
 with the guillotine — the old man no doubt wanted to be rid of 
 him — Max ran off, and never stopped till he reached Bourges, 
 joined a regiment on the march to Spain, and there enlisted. 
 No further notice was taken of the young woman's death. 
 
 A lad of Max's disposition was certain to distinguish him- 
 self; and he did so, with such effect that, after three cam- 
 paigns, he returned as a captain, for the little learning he had 
 picked up had served him well. In 1809, in Portugal, he was 
 left for dead on an English battery which his company had 
 taken, but could not hold. Max, a prisoner, was sent by the 
 English to the Spanish hulks at Cabrera, the worst of all. 
 
 An application was indeed made on his behalf to the Em- 
 peror for the Cross of the Legion of Honor and the rank of 
 Major, but Napoleon was just then in Austria; he kept all 
 his favors for the dashing actions that were done under his 
 own eye ; he had no liking for men who were taken prisoners, 
 and was not best pleased with the state of affairs in Portugal. 
 
 Max was left on the hulks from 1810 to 1814. In the 
 course of those four years he v/as utterly demoralized ; for the 
 hulks were the galle3^s minus the crime and disgrace. In the 
 first place, to secure his own freedom of action and defend 
 himself against the corruption that was rampant in those 
 foul prisons, unworthy of any civilized nation, the handsome 
 young captain killed in duels — for duels were fought on a 
 space six yards square — seven bullies and tyrants of whom he 
 rid his ship, to the great joy of their victims. Max reigned in 
 the hulk, thanks to the prodigious skill he acquired in han- 
 dling his weapons, to his personal strength and cleverness. But 
 he, in his turn, committed some arbitrary acts, and had ad- 
 herents who took his part and became his flatterers. In this 
 school of misery, where embittered nature dreamed only of 
 revenge, and where the sophistries hatched in these seething 
 brains found a warrant for every evil purpose. Max became 
 utterly depraved. He listened to the counsel of those who 
 aimed at fortune at any price, and did not shrink from 
 
A BACHELOirS ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 111 
 
 criminal deeds so long as they could be committed without 
 proof. 
 
 At last, at the peace, he was released, perverted though 
 guiltless, capable of becoming a great politician in public 
 life, or a scoundrel in private life, as circumstances might 
 direct. 
 
 On his return to Issoudun he heard of the deplorable end of 
 his parents. Like all people who give way to their passions, 
 and lead, as the saying goes, a short life and a merry one, the 
 Gilets had died in hospital in the most dire poverty. Almost 
 immediately after the news of Napoleon^s landing at Cannes 
 ran through France, Max thought he could not do better than 
 go to Paris and ask for his Cross and his promotion. The 
 Marshal who was then at the head of the War Office re- 
 membered Captain Gilet's brave conduct in Portugal ; he gave 
 him his commission with the ranl^ of Major of Infantry ; but 
 he could not obtain the Cross for him. ^^The Emperor says 
 you will be sure to win it in the first fight,f^ said the Marshal. 
 And, in fact, the Emperor put down the brave Captain's 
 name for that honor after the battle of Fleurus, where Gilet 
 distinguished himself. After the battle of Waterloo, Gilet 
 retired with the army on the Loire. When the revision took 
 place, Marshal Feltre would grant him neither his promotion 
 nor his Cross. 
 
 Napoleon's soldier came home to Issoudun in a state of 
 exasperation that may be easily imagined; he refused to 
 serve at all without his Cross and the rank of Major. The 
 authorities thought this a monstrous demand from a young 
 man of five-and-twenty, who at that rate might be a Colonel 
 at thirty. So Max sent in his papers. Thus the Major — for 
 the Bonapartists recognized among themselves the promotions 
 conferred in 1815 — lost the pittance designated as half -pay 
 that was doled out to the officers of the army of the Loire. 
 At the sight of this handsome young fellow, whose whole pos- 
 sessions were twenty napoleons, Issoudun bestirred itself in 
 his favor, and the Maire gave him a place in his office with a 
 ^salary of six hundred francs. Max, after holding this ap- 
 
112 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 pointment for about six months, retired of his own accord, 
 and was succeeded by a captain named Carpentier, wlio, like 
 himself, had remained faithful to Napoleon. - • 
 
 Gilet, already Grand Master of the Knights of Idlesse, 
 had entered on a life which lost him the regard of the best 
 families in the town ; not that they said anything to him, for 
 he was violent, and dreaded by everybody, even by those officers 
 of the old army who had, like him, refused to serve, and had 
 come home to plant cabbages in le Berry. 
 
 The small affection felt for the Bourbons by the good folks 
 of Issoudun is not surprising after what has here been said. 
 And, in proportion to its size, there were more Bonapartista 
 in this little town than anywhere else. As is well knov/n, 
 almost all the Bonapartists became Liberals. At Issoudun, 
 or in the neighborhood, there were perhaps a dozen officers 
 in the same position as Maxence, who liked him so well as to 
 regard him as their chief; vath the sole exception of Car- 
 pentier, his successor, and of a certain Monsieur Mignonnet, 
 ex-captain of the Artillery of the Guard. Carpentier, a 
 cavalry officer, who had risen from the ranks, very soon 
 married, thus allying himself with one of the most important 
 families of the town — that of Borniche-Herau. Mignonnet, 
 a student of the Ecole Poly technique, had belonged to a corps 
 which fancies itself superior to all others. There were in the 
 Imperial armies two tones of feeling among the military. A 
 strong party had an immense contempt for the mere citizen, 
 the pequin, the plain-clothes-man, such as the noble felt for 
 the villein, the conquering race for the conquered. These 
 were not over-strict in observing the code of honor in their 
 intercourse with civilians, and a man who had cut down a 
 bourgeois was not too severely blamed. The others, and 
 among them the artillery, as a result perhaps of its republican- 
 ism, did not adopt this view, which tended indeed to divide 
 France into tv/o parts — Military France and Civilian France, 
 Hence, though Major Potel and Captain Eenard, two officers 
 living in the Poman quarter, whose views as to civilians never 
 varied, were Maxence Gilct's friends through thick and thin^ 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Major Mignorinet and Captain Carpentier sided with the 
 townsfolks in regarding Max's conduct as unworthy of an 
 **ofhcer and a gentleman." 
 
 Major Mignonnet, a little dry man of much dignity, gave 
 his mind to the problems which the steam- engine seemed likely 
 to solve, and lived very simply in the quiet society of Monsieur 
 and Madame Carpentier. His gentle manners and scientific 
 pursuits gained him the consideration of the whole town. 
 And it was currently said that these two gentlemen were a 
 very different sort from Major Potel and Captain Eenard, 
 Maxence, and the rest who frequented the Cafe Militaire and 
 kept up the rough manners and traditions of the Empire. 
 
 Thus, at the time v/hen Madame Bridau revisited Issoudun, 
 Max was an outlaw from the citizen world. The young fellow 
 indeed so far sentenced himself that he never intruded himself 
 on the circle known as the club, and did not complain of the 
 reprobation of which he was the object, though he was the 
 youngest, and smartest, and best-dressed m^an in Issoudun, 
 spent a good deal of money, and even had a horse — a creature 
 as strange at Issoudun as Lord Byron's was at Venice. 
 
 It will presently be seen how it had come to pass that 
 Maxence, poor and unholpen, had been enabled to become the 
 man of fashion of Issoudun; for these disgraceful mxCan?, 
 which earned him the contempt of timid or pious persons, were 
 linked with the interests which had brought Agathe and 
 Joseph from Paris. To judge from his braggart bearing 
 and the expression of his countenance. Max cared little enough 
 for public opinion; he no doubt counted on being revenged 
 some day, and reigning over those who now scorned him. 
 
 Besides, though the better class might misprize him, the 
 admiration his character commanded among the populace was 
 a counterpoise to that opinion; his courage, his fine appear- 
 ance, his decisiveness, delighted the mob; but, indeed, his 
 depravity was not known to them, nor v/as its extent suspected 
 even by the townsfolk. 
 
 Max, at Issoudun, played a part very similar to that of the 
 Armorer in The Fair Maid of Perth; he was the champion 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 of Bonaparte and the Opposition. He was locked to on 
 great occasions as the good men of Perth looked to Smith. 
 A fray gave the hero and the victim of the hundred days his 
 opportunity. 
 
 In 1819 a battalion commanded by some Royalist officers, 
 lads just out of Maison Rouge, marched through Issoudun ^n 
 their way to relieve the garrison at Bourges. Not knowing 
 what to do in such a constitutional town, the officers went to- 
 pass the time at the Cafe Militaire. There is such a resort 
 for soldiers in every provincial town. That of Issoudun, 
 standing in a corner of the parade-ground under the walls, 
 and kept by the widow of an officer, naturally served as a sort 
 of club for the Bonapartists of the place, half-pay officers and 
 others who were of Max's way of thinl^ing, and who were 
 allowed, by the feeling of the town, to display their adoration 
 of the Emperor. After 1816 a banquet was held at Issoudun 
 every year to celebrate the anniversary of Napoleon's corona- 
 tion. 
 
 The first three Royalists who dropped in asked for ncAVS- 
 papers, naming, among others, the Quotidienne and the Dra- 
 peau hlanc. But the opinions of the town, and especially of 
 t,he Cafe Militaire, did not encourage Royalist newspapers. 
 The Cafe could only produce the Commerce^ the name assumed 
 for a few years by the Constitutionnel when that paper was 
 suppressed by law. But since, in the first number published 
 under that title, its leader opened with these words, "The 
 Commerce is essentially constitutional in its views," it was still 
 familiarly called the Constitutionnel. Every subscriber at 
 once saw the joke which bid them pay no attention to the 
 name over the door ; the wine would be of the old tap. 
 
 The stout mistress perched at her desk told the Royalists 
 that she had not the papers they asked for. 
 
 "What papers do^ you take then?" said one of the officei'S, 
 a captain. 
 
 The waiter^ a small youth in a blue cloth jacket and a 
 coarse linen apron, produced the Commerce. 
 
 "Oh ! so that is your paper ! Have you no other 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 115 
 
 ''No/' said the waiter, ^'^that is the only one." 
 
 The Captain tore the hostile sheet into fragments, threw 
 it on the floor, and spat upon it, saying, '^Bring the dominoes !" 
 
 Within ten minutes news of the insult offered to the Con- 
 stitutional Opposition and Liberalism generally in the person 
 of the sacrosanct paper, which waged war on the priesthood 
 with the courage and wit we all know, was flying along the 
 streets and flashing like light into every house ; every one was 
 telling the tale. The same sentence rose to every lip: "Kun 
 and tell Max !" 
 
 Max was soon informed. The officers had not finished 
 their game of dominoes when Max, accompanied by Major 
 Potel and Captain Eenard, entered the Cafe; while a fol- 
 lowing of thirty young fellows, eager to see the end of the 
 matter, remained, for the most part, outside in groups on the 
 Parade. The Cafe soon was full. 
 
 "Waiter, bring me my paper," said Max very quietly. 
 Then a little comedy was played. The stout woman said in 
 a timid and conciliatory tone : 
 
 "I have lent it. Captain." 
 
 "Go and fetch it !" cried one of Max's companions. 
 
 "Cannot you do without the paper?" said the waiter. 
 "We have not got it." 
 
 The young officers were laughing and stealing side-glances ' 
 at the town party. ■ 
 
 "It is torn up !" exclaimed a young Bonapartist, looking 
 at the Captain's feet. 
 
 "Who has dared to tear up the newspaper ?" asked Max in 
 a voice of thunder, his eyes flashing, and his arms crossed as 
 he rose. 
 
 "And we have spit upon it too," replied the three Royalists, 
 rising and facing Max. 
 
 "You have insulted the Avhole town!" said Max, turning 
 pale. 
 
 "Well, what of that ?" said the youngest of the three. 
 
 With a neatness, a boldness, and a swiftness which the 
 young men could not guard against, Max dealt two slaps t«* 
 the foremost man as they stood, saying: 
 
116 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 *'Do you understand French?" 
 
 They went out to fight in the Allee de Frapesle, three 
 against three. Potel and Eenard would not hear of allow- 
 ing Max to fight it out alone with the Koyalists. Max killed 
 his man ; Potel wounded his so severely that the unhappy lad, 
 a man of good birth^ died next day in the hospital, whither 
 they carried him. As for the third, he got off with a sword- 
 cut, and wounded Captain Eenard, his opponent. The bat-, 
 talion went on to Bourges that night. This affair, much' 
 talked about in the country, crowned Maxence Gilet as a hero. 
 
 The Knights of Idlesse, all young — the eldest was not five- 
 and-twenty — admired Maxence. Some of them, far from 
 sharing the rigid prudery of their families with regard to 
 Max, envied him greatly, and thought him a very fortunate 
 iflian. Under such a leader the Order did wonders. From 
 liie month of January 1817 not a week passed but the town 
 was in a pother over some fresh prank. Max, as a point of 
 honor, imposed certain conditions on the Knights; by-laws 
 were drawn up. These young devils became as prompt as 
 disciples of Amoros, as tough as kites, skilled in every kind 
 of exercise, as strong and as dexterous as malefactors. They 
 were adepts in the business of creeping over roofs, scaling 
 liouse-walls, jumping and walking without a sound, spreading 
 mortar, and building up doors. They had an arsenal of 
 ladders, ropes, tools, and disguises. The Knights of Idlesse, 
 in short, achieved the very ideal of ingenious mischief, not 
 only in the execution, but in the invention of the tricks they 
 played. They were at last inspired by that genius of malig- 
 nity in which Panurge took such delight, which provokes every 
 one to laugh, and makes the victim so ridiculous that he dare 
 not complain. The men, all respectably connected, had, of 
 course, means of information in private houses which enabled 
 them to obtain such intelligence as could serve them in the 
 perpetration of their rascality. 
 
 One very cold night these demons incarnate carried a 
 large stove out into the courtyard of a house, and stoked 
 it so effectually that the fire lasted till morning. Then it 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 117 
 
 was rumored in the town that Monsieur So-and-so (a noted 
 miser!) had been trying to warm his yard. 
 
 Sometimes they lay in ambush in the High Street, or the 
 Eue Basse, the two arteries, as it were, of the town, into 
 which run a great number of smaller cross streets. Squat- 
 ting, each at the corner of a side street, under the wall, putting 
 their heads out when every household was in its first sleep, 
 they would shout in a tone of terror from one end of the town 
 to the other : 
 
 "What is the matter? Oh, what is the matter?" The re- 
 peated question would rouse the citizens, who soon appeared 
 in their shirts and night-caps, candle in hand, catechizing 
 each other, and holding the strangest colloquies with the 
 most bewildered faces ever seen. 
 
 There was a poor bookbinder, very old, who believed in 
 demons. Like most provincial artisans, he worked in a 
 little low shop. The Knights, disguised as devils, invaded 
 his shop at night, put him into his waste-paper box, and left, 
 him shrieking like three men at the stake. The poor maix 
 roused all the neighbors, to whom he related these apparitions 
 of Lucifer, and the neighbors could never undeceive him. 
 The binder very nearly went mad. 
 
 In the depths of a severe winter the confederates de- 
 molished the chimney-pot of the tax-collector, and replaced it 
 in the course of the night ; it was exactly the same ; they made 
 no noise and left not the slightest trace of their work. The 
 chimney was, however, so arranged inside as to fill the room 
 with smoke. The tax-collector endured this for two months 
 before discovering v/hy his chimney, which had always worked 
 properly and given him perfect satisfaction, should play such 
 tricks ; and he had to reconstruct it. 
 
 One day they stuffed trusses of straw sprinkled with 
 sulphur, and greasy paper into the chimney of an old bigot, 
 a friend of Madame Hochon's. Next morning, on lighting 
 her fire, the poor old lady, a quiet, gentle creature, thought 
 she had lighted a volcano. The firemen came, the whole town 
 rushed in; and as there were among the firemen some of the 
 
118 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Knights of Idlesse, they deluged the poor soul's house, and put 
 her in fear of drowning after the fear of fire. She fell ill of 
 the shock. 
 
 When they wished to keep any one up all night, under 
 arms and in mortal terror, they sent anonymous letters warn- 
 ing him of a plan to rob him; then they crept one by one 
 under his wall or past his windows whistling signals to each 
 other. 
 
 One of their most successful hoaxes, which amused the 
 town hugely, and is talked of to this day, was sending to all 
 the possible heirs of a very miserly old woman, who was ex- 
 pected to leave a large fortune, a few lines announcing her 
 death, and inviting them to come punctually at a certain 
 hour, when seals would be affixed. About eighty persons 
 arrived from Vatan, Saint-Florent, Yierzon, and the neigh- 
 borhood, all in deep mourning, but in very good spirits — men 
 with their wives, widows with their sons, children with their 
 parents, some in gigs, some in basket-carriages, some in old 
 tax-carts. Imagine the scenes between the old lady's ser- 
 vant and the first-comers ! Then the consultations at the 
 lawyer's ! — It was like a riot in the town. 
 
 At last one day the Sous-prefet began to think this state of 
 things intolerable, all the more so because it was impossible to 
 ascertain who ventured to perpetrate these pleasantries. Sus- 
 picion, indeed, rested on the guilty youths; but as the 
 National Guard was at that time a mere name at Issoudun, 
 as there was no garrison, and as the lieutenant of police had 
 not more than eight gendarmes at his command, and kept 
 no patrol, it was impossible to obtain proofs. The Sous- 
 prefet was at once placed on "the order of the night," to be 
 treated as obnoxious. This functionary was in the habit oi 
 eating two new-laid eggs for breakfast. He kept fowls in 
 his yard, and he crowned his mania for eating new-laid eggs 
 by insisting on cooking them himself. Neither his wife, 
 nor the maid, nor any one, according to him, could cook an 
 egg as it ought to be done; he watched the clock, and 
 boasted that in this particular he could beat all the world- 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 119 
 
 For two years he had boiled his own eggs with a success that 
 was the subject of much jesting. Then, every night for a 
 month the eggs were taken from his hens and hard-boiled 
 eggs put in their place. The poor man was at his wit's end, 
 and lost his reputation as the egg-boiling Sous-prefet. 
 Finally, he had something else for breakfast. 
 
 Still, he never suspected the Knights of Idlesse; the trick 
 was too neatly done. Max hit on a plan for greasing his 
 stove-pipes every night with oil saturated with such vile 
 odors that it v.'as impossible to live in the house. Nor was 
 this all ; one morning his wife, wishing to attend mass, found 
 her shawl stuck together inside by some glue so tenacious that 
 she was obliged to go without it. The official begged to be 
 transferred. His cowardice and submission established be- 
 yond question the occult and farcial sway of the Knights of 
 Idlesse. 
 
 Between the Rue des Minimes and the Place Misere there 
 existed at that time a part of the town enclosed between the 
 Borrowed Stream at the bottom and the rampart above — the 
 part extending from the Parade to the crockery market. 
 This sort of misshapen square was occupied by wretched- 
 looking houses, closely packed and divided by alleys so narrow 
 that two persons could not walk abreast. This part of the 
 town, a sort of Court of Miracles, was inhabited by poor 
 people, or such as carried on the least profitable trades, 
 lodging in the hovels and wretched tenements expressively des- 
 ignated as maison borgnes — purblind houses. It was, no 
 doubt, at all times a spot accursed, the den of evil livers, for 
 one of these lanes is called Rue du Bourreau, or Hangman's 
 Alley. It is certain that the town executioner had here his 
 house, with its red door, for more than five centuries. The 
 executioner's man lives there still, if public report may be 
 believed, for the townspeople never see him. None but the 
 vine-dressers keep up any communication with this mysteri- 
 ous personage, who inherits from his predecessors the gift of 
 healing fractures and wounds. The women of the town held 
 high festival here of old, when the place gave itself the airs 
 
X20 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 of a capital. Here dwelt the dealers in second-hand articles, 
 which never seem to find a buyer, old-clothes vendors, with 
 their malodorous display ; in short, all the mongrel population 
 that herds in some such corner of almost every town, under 
 the dominion of one or two Jews. 
 
 At the corner of one of these dark passages, in the least 
 dead-alive part of the suburb, there was, from 1815 till 1823, 
 and perhaps even later, a beer-shop kept by a woman known 
 as Mother Cognette. The beer-shop occupied a house not 
 ill built of courses of w^hite stone filled in with rubble and 
 mortar, and consisting of one story and an attic. Over the 
 door shone an immense branch of a fir-tree gleaming like 
 Florentine bronze. As if this "bush" were not sufficiently 
 explicit, the eye was caught by a blue board, fastened to the 
 architrave, on which the words "Good March beer" were legible 
 above a picture representing a soldier offering to a very lightly 
 draped woman a jet of foam spouting from a jug into the 
 glass she holds, and forming a curve like the arch of a bridge, 
 the whole so gorgeously colored as to make Delacroix faint. 
 
 The ground floor consisted of a large front room, serving 
 both as kitchen and dining-room; the provisions needed for 
 carrying on the business hung to hooks from the rafters. Be- 
 hind this room a ladder-stair went up to the first floor; but, 
 at the foot of the stairs, was a door opening into a small 
 narrow room, lighted from one of those provincial back-yards 
 which are more like a chimney, so narrow, dark, and high are 
 they. This little room, screened by a lean-to, and hidden 
 from all eyes by the surrounding walls, was the hall where 
 the Bad Boys of Issoudun held their full court. Old Cognet 
 ostensibly entertained the country people there on market 
 days ; in reality, he played host to the Knights of Idlesse. 
 
 This old Cognet, formerly a groom in some rich house, had 
 married la Cognette, originally a cook in a good family. The 
 suburb of Rome still uses a feminine form of the husband's 
 name for the wife, in the Latin fashion, as in Italy and 
 Poland. By combining their savings, Cognet and his wife 
 had been able to buy this house and set up as tavern-keepers. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 121 
 
 La Cognette, a woman of about forty, tall and buxom, with 
 turn-up nose, an olive skin, hair as black as jet, brown eyes, 
 round and bright, and an intelligent, merry face, had been 
 chosen by Maxence Gilet to be the Leonarde of the Order for 
 the sake of her good humor and her talents as a cook. Cognet 
 himself was about fifty-six, thick-set, submissive to his wife, 
 and, to quote the joke she constantly repeated, he could not 
 help seeing straight, for he was blind of one eye. 
 
 For seven years, from 1816 to 1823, neither husband nor 
 wife ever let out a word as to what was done or plotted every 
 night on their premises, and they were always very much at- 
 tached to all the Knights. Their devotion was indeed perfect, 
 but it may seem less admirable when we consider that their 
 interest was a guarantee for their silence and affection. At 
 whatever hour of the night the members of the Order came 
 to la Cognette^s, if they knocked in a particular way, Father 
 Cognet, recognizing the signal, rose, lighted the fire and the 
 candles, opened the door, and went to the cellar for wine 
 laid in expressly for the Order, while his wife cooked them a 
 first-rate supper, either before or after the exploits planned 
 the night before, or during the day. 
 
 While Madame Bridau was on her way from Orleans to 
 Issoudun, the Knights of Idlesse were preparing one of their 
 most famous tricks. An old Spaniard, a prisoner of war, 
 who, at the peace, had remained in France, where he carried 
 on a small trade in seeds, had come to market early, and had 
 left his empty cart at the foot of the tower. Maxence was the 
 first to arrive at the meeting-place fixed for the evening under 
 the tower, and was presently asked in a low voice, "What is 
 doing to-night?" 
 
 "Old Fario's cart is out here," replied he. "I almost broke 
 my nose against it. Let us get it up the knoll to the foot of 
 the tower, and after that we will see." 
 
 When Eichard built the tower of Issoudun, he founded 
 it, as has been said, on the remains of a basilica which oc- 
 cupied the site of the Koman temple and the Celtic Dun, 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 These ruins, each representing a long series of centuries, 
 formed a large mound, full of the monuments of inree ages. 
 Thus Richard Coeur de Lion's tower stands on the top of a 
 cone sloping equally steeply on all sides, and to be ascended 
 only by zigzag paths. To represent its position in a few 
 words, the tower may be compared to the Obelisk of Luxor 
 on its base. The base of the tower of Issoudun, concealing so 
 many archaeological treasures as yet unknown, is above eighty 
 feet high on the side next the town. In an hour the cart had 
 been taken to pieces and hoisted bit by bit to the top of the 
 hill at the foot of the tower, by means something like that of 
 the soldiers who carried the guns up the pass of Saint- 
 Bernard. The cart was put together again, and all traces 
 of the operations so carefully effaced that it would seem to 
 have been carried there by the devil, or by a stroke of a 
 fairy's wand. After this great achievement, the Knights, being 
 hungry and thirsty, made their way to la Cognette's, and were 
 soon seated round the table in the low narrow room, laughing 
 by anticipation at the face Fario would make when, at about 
 ten o'clock in the morning, he should go to look for his cart. 
 
 The Knights, of course, did not play these antics every 
 night. The talents of Sganarelle, Mascarille, and Scapin 
 rolled into one would not have been able to invent three hun- 
 dred fc.nd sixty-five practical jokes a year. In the first place., 
 circumstances were not always favorable; the moon was too 
 bright; or theii last prank had been too annoying to sober 
 folks; or one or another would refuse his co-operation w):en 
 some relation was the chosen victim. But, though the rascals 
 did not meet every night at la Cognette's, they saw each other 
 every day, and were companions in such lawful pleasures as 
 hunting or the vintage in autumn, and skating in winter. 
 
 Among this group of a score of youths who thus protested 
 against the social somnolence of the town, some were more 
 especially intimate with Max than the others, or made him 
 their idol. A man of this temper often infatuates those 
 younger than himself. Now Madame Hochon's two grand- 
 sons, Frangois Hochon and Baruch Boi'niche, were his 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 123 
 
 devotees. The two boys regarded Max as almost a cousin, 
 accepting the views of the neighbors as to his left-handed 
 relationship to the Lousteaus. Max was free with his loans 
 of money denied them by their grandfather Hochon for their 
 amusements ; he took them out shooting, and gave them some 
 training; in fact, his influence over them was paramount to 
 that of home. They both were orphans, and though of age, 
 lived under the guardianship of their grandfather, in con- 
 sequence of certain circumstances to be explained when the 
 great Monsieur Hochon appears on the scene. 
 
 At this moment Frangois and Baruch — we will call them 
 by their Christian names to make the story clearer — were 
 seated, one on the right hand, and one on the left of Max, at 
 the middle of the supper-table, that was wretchedly lighted by 
 the fuliginous glimmer of four dips, eight to the pound. The 
 party, consisting of not more than eleven of the Knights, had 
 drunk a dozen to fifteen bottles of various wines. Baruch, 
 whose name suggests a survival of Calvinism at Issoudun, 
 said to Max at the moment when the wine had set all tongues 
 wagging: 
 
 "You are about to be threatened at the very centre 
 
 "What do you mean by that ?" asked Max. 
 
 "Why, my grandmother has had a letter from Madame 
 Bridau, her goddaughter, announcing her arrival on a visit 
 with her son. My grandmother arranged two rooms yester- 
 day for their reception.'^ 
 
 "And what is that to me said Max, taking up his glass, 
 emptying it at a gulp, and setting it down on the table with a 
 comical flourish. 
 
 Max was now four-and-thirty. One of the candles stood' 
 near him, and cast its light on his martial countenance, 
 illuminating his forehead, and showing off' his fair com- 
 plexion, his flashing eyes, and his hair crisply waved, and as 
 black as jet. This hair stood up strongly and naturally, 
 curling back from his brow and temples, and clearly marking 
 the outline of growth which our grandfathers called the five 
 points. Notwithstanding such a striking contrast of black 
 VOL. 4-35 
 
124 
 
 A BACHELOH'S ESTA^LlSttMEM 
 
 and white, Max had a very sweet face, deriving its charm from 
 its shape, much like that given by Eaphael to his Virgin's 
 faces, and from a finely-shaped month, on which a gentle 
 smile was apt to linger, a set expression which Max had 
 gradually adopted. The fine color that flushes the faces of 
 the Berrichons added to his genial look, and when he laughed 
 outright he displayed two-and-thirty teeth worthy to grace 
 the mouth of a fine lady. He was tall and well proportioned, 
 neither stout nor thin. His hands, kept with care, were white 
 and not unshapely, but his feet were those of the Eoman 
 suburb, of a foot soldier under the Empire. He would have 
 made a fine general of division ; he had shoulders that would 
 have been the fortune of a field-marshal, and a breast broad 
 enough to display all the Orders of Europe. Intelligence 
 gave purpose to all his movements. And then, attractive by 
 nature, like almost all children of a passion, the noble blood 
 of his real father came out in him. 
 
 "But do not you know. Max,'' cried a youth at the bottom 
 of the table, the son of a retired surgeon-major named Goddet, 
 the best doctor in the town, "that Madame Hochon's god- 
 daughter is Rouget's sister? And if she and her son the 
 painter are coming here, it is no doubt to get back her share 
 (jf the old man's fortune, and then good-bye to your harvest !" 
 
 Max frov/ned. Then v/ith a glance that went from face to 
 face all round the table, he studied the effect on his com- 
 panions of this address, and again he said, "What is that to 
 me?" 
 
 "But," Francois began again, "it seems to me that if old 
 Eouget were to alter his will, supposing he has made one in 
 favor of la Rabouilleuse . . ." 
 
 Here Max cut his faithful follower short with these 
 words : — 
 
 "When, on my arrival here, I heard you mentioned as one 
 of the cinq-Hochons (cinq-cochons = five pigs), as the pun 
 on your name has it — and has had it these thirty years — I 
 told the man who called you so to shut up, my dear Frangois, 
 and that so emphatically, that no one at Issoudun has ever 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 125 
 
 repeated that idiotic jest, at any rate not in my presence! 
 And this is the return you make : you make use of a name of 
 contempt in speaking of a woman you know me to be attached 
 to." 
 
 Never had Max said so much as to his intimacy with the 
 woman of whom Frangois had just spoken by the nickname 
 commonly given to her in Issoudun. As a former prisoner on 
 ithe hulks, Max had enough experience, and as Major in the 
 Grenadier Guards he had learned enough of honor, to under- 
 stand the origin of the contempt for him in the town. He 
 had never allowed any one whatever to say a word to him with 
 reference to Mademoiselle Flore Brazier, Jean- Jacques 
 Eouget's servant-mistress, so vigorously designated by good 
 Madame Hochon as a hussy. Moreover, Max was well known 
 to be too touchy to be spoken to on the subject unless he began 
 it, and he never had begun it. In short, it was too dangerous 
 to incur Max's anger or displeasure for even his most intimate 
 friends to banter him about la Eabouilleuse. 
 
 When something was once said of a connection between 
 Max and this girl in the presence of Major Potel and of 
 Captain Eenard, the two officers with whom he lived on terms 
 of equality, Potel had replied : 
 
 "If he is J ean- Jacques Eouget's half-brother, why should, 
 he not live with him ?" 
 
 *'And besides," added Eenard, "the girl is a morsel for a. 
 king; supposing he loves her, where is the harm? Does not 
 young Goddet pay court to Madame Fichet to make the 
 daughter his wife as a reward for such a penance ?" 
 
 After this well-merited lecture, Frangois could not recover 
 the thread of his ideas, and he was yet more at fault when 
 Max gently added: 
 
 "Well, go on " 
 
 "Certainly not!" cried Frangois. 
 
 "You are angry for nothing. Max," said young Goddet. 
 "Is it not an understood thing that here, at la Cognette's, we 
 may all say what we please? Should we not all become the 
 mortal foes of any one of us who remembered outside these 
 
126 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 walls anything that is said, thought, or done here? All the 
 town speaks of Flore Brazier by the nickname of la Rabouil- 
 leuse ; if Frangois let it slip out by accident, is that a crime 
 against the Order of Idlesse 
 
 "No," said Max, "only against our personal friendship. 
 = — But I thought better of it ; I remembered we were in Idlesse. 
 I told him to go on." 
 
 There was utter silence. The pause was so uncomfortable 
 for all present that Max exclaimed: "I will go on for him" 
 (sensation), "for all of you" (amazement), "and tell you what 
 you are thinking" (great sensation). "You think that Flore, 
 la Rabouilleuse, Flore Brazier, Daddy Rouget's housekeeper 
 — for they call him Pere Rouget ! — an old bachelor, who will 
 never have any children ! — you think, I say, that this woman 
 has supplied me with everything since I came to Issoudun. 
 If I have three hundred francs a month to toss out of window; 
 if I can treat you often as I am doing this evening, and have 
 money to lend to you all, I must get the cash out of Madame 
 Brazier's purse ? Well, then, by Heaven ! Yes, and again 
 yes. — Yes, Mademoiselle Brazier has taken deadly aim at the 
 old man's fortune." 
 
 "From father to son she will have richly earned it," said 
 Goddet in his corner. 
 
 "You believe," Max went on, after smiling at Goddet's 
 remark, "that I have laid a plot to marry Flore after the old 
 man's death, and that then his sister, and this son, of whom 
 I never heard till this instant, will endanger my future 
 prospects ?" 
 
 "That's it," cried Frangois. 
 
 "So we all think round this table," said Baruch. 
 
 "Well, be calm, my boys," replied Max; "forewarned is 
 forearmed. Now, I speak to the Knights of Idlesse. If, to 
 be rid of these Parisians, I need the support of the Order, will 
 you lend me a hand? Oh, within the limits we have pre- 
 scribed for our pranks," he quickly added, seeing a slight 
 hesitancy. "Do 3^ou suppose I want to murder or poison 
 them ? — Thank God, I am not a fool ! And supposing, after 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 127 
 
 all, that the Bridaus should win the day, and Flore should get 
 no more than she has, I should be satisfied with that, do you 
 hear? I like her well enough to prefer her to Mademoiselle 
 Fichet, if Mademoiselle Fichet would have anything to say to 
 me r 
 
 Mademoiselle Fichet was the richest heiress of Issoudun; 
 and the daughter's hand formed a large item in young God- 
 det's passion for her mother. 
 
 Plain speaking is so precious, that the eleven Knights rose 
 as one man. 
 
 "You are of the right sort. Max 
 
 "That is something like. Max. We will be the Knights of 
 Salvation.'^ 
 
 "Down with the Bridaus 
 "We will bridle the Bridaus V 
 
 "After all, a sweetheart has been known to have three hus- 
 bands r 
 
 "Deuce take it, old Lousteau was fond of Madame Rouget, 
 and there is less harm in courting a housekeeper free and un- 
 fettered V 
 
 "And if old Rouget was Max's father more or less, it is all 
 in the family 
 
 "Opinions are free!'' 
 "Hurrah for Max !" 
 "Down with cant !" 
 
 "Let us drink the fair Flore's health !" 
 
 Such were the eleven answers, acclamations, or toasts that 
 broke from the eleven Knights of Idlesse, the outcome, it must 
 be owned, of their very low standard of morality. We see 
 now what Max's object had been in establishing himself as 
 Grand Master of the Order. While inventing practical jokes, 
 and making himself agreeable to the youth of the principal 
 families. Max hoped to secure their suffrages in the day of his 
 rehabilitation. He rose with a grace, lifted his glass full of 
 Bordeaux, and all awaited his next speech. 
 
 "For all the ill I wish you, I only hope you may all get 
 wives to compare with the fair Flore! As to the incursion 
 
128 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 of relations, for the present I am not alarmed; and later, 
 we shall see!^^ 
 
 "We must not forget Fario's cart !" 
 
 "Oh, that is safe enough, by J ove !" said Goddet. 
 
 "I will see to the fitting conclusion of that joke/' cried Max. 
 "Be early at the market, and come and let me know when the 
 old fellow comes to look for his cart.'' 
 
 The clocks were striking half -past three in the morning*, 
 the Knights went away in silence to find their way home, 
 hugging the wall, and not making a sound, all being shod 
 with list shoes. 
 
 Max slowly walked up to the Place Saint-Jean in the upper 
 part of the town, between the Porte Saint-Jean and the Porte 
 Villa te, the rich citizens' quarter. Major Gilet had dis- 
 sembled his fears, but this news had hit him hard. Since his 
 stay above or below decks he had acquired a power of dissimu- 
 lation as great and deep as his depravement. In the first 
 place, and above all, the forty thousand francs a year in land 
 owned by Eouget was the whole of Gilet's passion for Flore 
 Brazier, of that you may be sure ! It may easily be seen from 
 his mode of conduct what confidence she had led him to feel 
 in her future fortune, as based on the old bachelor's affection. 
 At the same time, the news that the legitimate heirs were on 
 their way was enough to shake Max's faith in Flore's in- 
 fluence. The savings of the last seventeen years still stood in 
 Eouget's name. Now if the will, which Flore declared had 
 long since been executed in her favor, should be revoked, these 
 savings at any rate might be secured if they were invested in 
 the name of Mademoiselle Brazier. 
 
 "In all these seven years, that idiot of a girl has never 
 spoken a word about nephews and a sister!" said Max to him 
 self, as he turned out of the Rue Marmouse into the Rue 
 TAvenier. "Seven hundred and fifty thousand francs in the 
 hands of ten or twelve different notaries, at Bourges, Vierzon, 
 and Chateauroux, cannot be drawn out or invested in State 
 securities within a week without its being known in a land of 
 'jaw.' To begin with^ we must pack off the relations; but 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 129 
 
 once quit of them, we must make haste and secure that for- 
 tune. Well, I must think it over." 
 
 Max was tired. He went into Rouget's house with a latch- 
 key, and crept noiselessly to bed, saying to himself, "To-mor- 
 row my ideas will be clearer." 
 
 It will not be useless here to explain whence the Sultana of 
 the Place Saint-Jean had obtained the nickname of la Ra- 
 bouilleuse, and how she had gained the command of the 
 Rouget establishment. 
 
 As he had advanced in years, the old doctor, father of 
 Jean- Jacques and of Madame Bridau, had become aware of 
 his son's utter stupidity. He then held him very tight, trying 
 to force him into habits w^hich would take the place of Vv^isdom ; 
 but by this means, without knowing it, he was preparing him 
 to be tame under the first tyrant that might succeed in getting 
 the halter round his neck. One day, as he rode home from 
 his rounds, the wily and vicious old man saw a lovely little 
 girl on the skirt of the water-meadow by the avenue to Tivoli. 
 On hearing the horse, the child rose up from the bottom of 
 one of the channels, which, seen from the height of Issoudun, 
 look like silver ribbons on a green dress. Starting up like a 
 naiad, the girl displayed to the doctor one of the sweetest 
 virgin heads that ever painter dreamed of. Old Rouget, who 
 knew the whole neighborhood, did not know this miracle of 
 beauty. The child, almost naked, wore a tattered and scanty 
 petticoat full of holes, and made of cheap woolen stuff, striped 
 brown and white. A sheet of paper, fastened down by an 
 osier vv^ithy, served her for a hat. Under this paper, scrawled, 
 over with strokes and O's, fully justifying its name of scrib- 
 bling paper, was gathered up the most beautiful golden hair 
 that any daughter of Eve could desire, fastened in a twist 
 >with a horse's curry-comb. Her pretty sunburnt bosom^ 
 scarcely covered by the rags of a handkerchief that had once 
 been a bandana, showed its whiteness below the sunburn. The 
 petticoat, pulled through between the legs and fastened by a 
 coarse pin, looked a good deal like a swimmer's bathing 
 
130 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 drawers. Her feet and legs, visible through the clear water, 
 were characterized by a slenderness worthy of the sculptors of 
 the Middle Ages. This fair body, from exposure to the sun, 
 had a rosy hue which was not ungraceful ; the neck and bosom 
 were worthy to be covered by a silken shawL Finally, the 
 nymph had blue eyes^ shaded by lashes whose expression would 
 have brought a painter or a poet to his knees. The doctor, 
 enough of an anatomist to know a lovely figure, perceived 
 that all the arts would be losers if this exquisite person were 
 destroyed by field labor. 
 
 "Where do you come from, little one? I never saw you 
 before," said the old doctor of sixty-two. 
 
 The scene took place in the month of September 1799. 
 
 "I belong to Vatan," replied the girl. 
 
 On hearing a town accent, an ill-looking man, about two 
 hundred yards away, standing in the upper waters of the 
 stream, raised his head. 
 
 "Now, then, what are you at, Flore he called out. "Jab- 
 bering there instead of working; all the basketful will get 
 off.r 
 
 "And what do you come here for from Vatan?" asked the 
 doctor, not troubling himself about this interruption. 
 
 "I rabouille for my uncle Brazier there." 
 
 Rabouiller is a local word of le Berry, which perfectly 
 describes the process it is meant to represent — the action of 
 stirring the waters of a brooklet by beating them with a sort 
 of large racket made of the branch of a tree. The crayfish, 
 frightened by the commotion, of which they fail to see the 
 purpose, hastily escape up stream, and in their agitation rush 
 into the nets, which the poacher has placed at a proper dis- 
 tance. Flore Brazier held her racket, or rdbouilloir, with- the 
 unconscious grace of innocence. 
 
 "But has your uncle got leave to fish for crayfish?*' 
 
 "^Well, and aren't we under the Eepublic one and indi- 
 visible ?" shouted uncle Brazier from where he stood. 
 
 "We are under the Directory," said the doctor ; "and I know 
 of no law which will allow a man from Vatan to come and 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT ISi 
 
 fish within the limits of the Commune of Issoudun." Then 
 he said to Flore, "Is your mother living, child 
 
 "No, sir, and my father is in hospital at Bourges; he went 
 mad after getting a sunstroke on his head in the fields 
 
 "How much do you earn 
 
 "Five sous a day all the season for crayfish — I goes to 
 Braisne, ever so far, to beat the waters. Then in harvest- 
 time, I gleans; and in winter, I spins/' 
 
 "You are about twelve, I suppose?" 
 
 "Yes, sir/' 
 
 "Would you like to come with me? You shall be well 
 fed, nicely dressed, have pretty shoes " 
 
 "No, no. My niece has got to stay wi' me. I have her in 
 charge before God and man," said uncle Brazier, who had 
 come down to his niece and the doctor. "I am her guardiart, 
 I am." 
 
 The doctor preserved his gravity, suppressing a smile, 
 which would certainly have been too much for any one else at 
 the sight of uncle Brazier. This "guardian" had on a 
 peasant's broad hat, ruined by the sun and rain, riddled like 
 a cabbage leaf on which many caterpillars have resided, and 
 sewn up with white cotton. Under this hat was a dark hollow 
 face, in which mouth, nose, and eyes were four darker spots. 
 His worn jacket was like a piece of patchwork, and hi„s 
 trousers were of sacking. 
 
 "I am Doctor Eouget," said the physician ; "and, since you 
 are the child's guardian, bring her to my house, Place Saint- 
 Jean; it will not be a bad day's work for you or for her either." 
 
 And without another word, feeling quite sure that he 
 should see uncle Brazier in due course with the pretty Eabouil- 
 leuse, Doctor Rouget spurred his horse on the road to Issou- 
 dun. And, in fact, just as he was sitting down to dinner, 
 his cook announced Citoyen and Citoyenne Brazier. 
 
 "Sit down," said the doctor to the uncle and niece. 
 
 Flore and her guardian, both barefoot, looked round the 
 doctor's dining-room with eyes amazed; and this was why. 
 
 The house, inherited by Rouget from old Descoings, stands 
 
132 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 in the middle of one side of the Place Saint- Jean, a long and 
 very narrow square planted with a few sickly-looking lime- 
 trees. The houses here are better built than in any other part 
 of the town, and Descoings' is one of the best. This house, 
 facing Monsieur Hochon's, has three windows on the front 
 towards the square, on the first floor, and below them a car- 
 riage gate into the courtyard, behind which the garden lies 
 Under the archway of this carriage gate is a door into a large 
 room with two windows to the street. The kitchen is behind 
 this room, but cut off by a staircase leading to the first floor 
 and attics above. At an angle with the kitchen are a wood- 
 house, a shed vv^here the washing was done, stabling for two 
 Jiorses, and a coach-house ; and above them are lofts for corn, 
 hay, and oats, besides a room where the doctor's man-servant 
 dept. 
 
 The room so much admired by the little peasant girl and 
 her uncle was decorated with carved wood in the style executed 
 under Louis XV., and painted gray, and a handsome marble 
 vchimney-piece, above which Flore could see herself in a large 
 glass reaching to the ceiling, and set in a carved and gilt 
 frame. On the panels, at intervals, hung a few pictures, the 
 spoil of the Abbeys of Deols, of Issoudun, of Saint-Gildas, of 
 la Free, of Chezal-Benoit, of Saint-Sulpice, and of the con- 
 vents of Bourges and Issoudun, which had formerly been en- 
 riched by the liberality of kings and of the faithful with 
 precious gifts and the finest works of the Eenaissanee. Thus, 
 among the pictures preserved by Descoings and inherited 
 by Kouget, there v/as a Holy Family by Albano, a Saint 
 Jerome by Domenichino, a Head of Christ by Gian Bellini, 
 a Virgin by Leonardo da Vinci, Christ bearing the Cross by 
 Titian, from the Marchese di Belabre's collection — he who 
 stood a siege and had his head cut off under Louis XIII. : a 
 Lazarus by Veronese, a Marriage of the Virgin by the Priest 
 of Genoa, two Church pictures by Rubens, and a copy from 
 Perugino by Perugino himself, or by Raphael; finally, two 
 Correggios and an Andrea del Sarto. The Descoings had 
 chosen these from, among three hundred, the spoils of 
 
A BACHELOR'^^ ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 133 
 
 churches, not in the least knowing their value, and selecting 
 them solely for their better condition. Several had not 
 merely magnificent frames, but were under glass. It was the 
 beauty of the frames, and the value which the panes seemed 
 to suggest, that had led to their choice. 
 
 Thus the furniture of the room was not devoid of the 
 luxury so much prized in our days, though not at that time 
 valued at Issoudun. The clock standing on the chimney- 
 shelf between two superb silver chandeliers was distinguished 
 by a solemn magnificence that betrayed the hand of Boule. 
 The armchairs in carved wood, fitted with worsted-work done 
 by devout ladies of rank, would be highly prized in these days, 
 for they all bore coronets and coats of arms. Between the 
 two windows stood a handsome console, brought from some 
 chateau, and on it an enormous Chinese jar, in which the 
 doctor kept his tobacco. 
 
 Neither Eouget, nor his son, nor the cook, nor the man- 
 servant, took the least care of these treasures. They spit 
 into a fireplace of beautiful workmanship, and the gilt mould- 
 ings were variegated with verdigris. A pretty chandelier, 
 partly of porcelain, was speckled, like the ceiling, with black 
 spots, showing that the flies were at home there. The Des- 
 coings had hung the windows with brocade curtains, stripped 
 from the bed of some Abbot. To the left of the door a cabinet 
 worth some thousands of francs served as a sideboard. 
 
 '^Now, Fanchette,^^ said the doctor to his cook, "bring two 
 glasses, and fetch us something good.^^ 
 
 Fanchette, a sturdy country servant, who was regarded as 
 superior even to la Cognette and the best cook in Issoudun, 
 fiew with an alacrity that testified to the doctor's despotic rule, 
 and also to some curiosity on her part. 
 
 "What is an acre of vine-land worth in your parts?'' said 
 the doctor, pouring out a glass of wine for Brazier. 
 
 "A hundred crowns in hard cash." 
 
 "Well, leave your niece here as maid-servant; she shall 
 have a hundred crowns for wages, and you, as her guardian, 
 shall take the mone y 
 
134 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "Every year?'^ said Brazier, opening his eyes as large as 
 saucers. 
 
 "I leave the matter to your conscience/' replied the doctor. 
 "She is an orphan. Till she is eighteen Flore will have none 
 of the money.'' 
 
 "She is goin' on for twelve," said the uncle ; "that makes it 
 up to six acres of vine-land. But she is sweetly pretty, as 
 mild as a lamb, very strong, very quick, very obedient. Poor 
 creetur, she was the apple of his eye to my poor brother." 
 
 "And I will pay a year in advance," said the doctor. 
 
 "Lord A'mighty, make it two years, and us'll consider it 
 settled. She will be better off with you than down at our 
 place, for my wife whacks her, she can't abide her. There's 
 only me that purtects her, poor dear little creetur — as inno- 
 cent as a new-born babe !" 
 
 On hearing this speech, the doctor, struck by the word in- 
 nocent, signed to uncle Brazier, and led him out into the 
 courtyard, and from thence into the garden, leaving the little 
 Eabouilleuse looking at the table between Fanchette and Jean- 
 Jacques, who cross-questioned her, and to whom she artlessly 
 related her meeting with the doctor. 
 
 "Well, honey, good-bye," said uncle Brazier on his return, 
 kissing Flore on the forehead. "You may thank me for a 
 good job in leaving you with this kind and generous father of 
 the poor. You've got to obey him like as you would me. Be 
 a very good girl, and do what he tells you." 
 
 "Get the room over mine ready," said the doctor to Fan- 
 chette. "This little Flore, who is certainly well named, will 
 sleep there from this evening. To-morrow we will send for 
 a shoemaker and a needlewoman. N"ow, lay a place for her 
 at once ; she will keep us company." 
 
 That evening nothing was talked of in Issoudun but the 
 introduction of a little "Eabouilleuse" into Doctor Eouget's 
 household. The nickname stuck to Mademoiselle Brazier in 
 this land of mocking spirits, before, during, and after her 
 rise to fortune. 
 
 The doctor aimed, no doubt, at doing for Flore, in a small 
 
A BACHEI^OR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 185 
 
 way, what Louis XV. did on a large scale for Mademoiselle 
 de Eomans ; but he set to work too late, Louis XV. was still 
 young, while the doctor was on the verge of old age. 
 
 From twelve years old to fourteen the charming peasant 
 girl enjoyed unmixed happiness. Nicely dressed, in infinitely 
 better clothes than the richest Miss in Issoudun, she had a 
 gold watch and trinkets, given her by the doctor to encourage 
 her in her studies, for she had a master to teach her reading, 
 ^writing, and account-keeping. But the almost animal life 
 led by the peasantry had given Flore such an aversion for the 
 bitter cup of learning, that the doctor got no further with her 
 education. 
 
 His intentions with regard to this girl whom he was polish- 
 ing, teaching, and training with a care that was all the more 
 pathetic, because he had been supposed incapable of tenderness, 
 were variously interpreted by the vulgar gossips of the town, 
 whose tattle gave rise, as in the matter of Agathe^s and Max's 
 parentage, to serious mistakes. It Ib not easy for the popula* 
 tion of a town to disentangle the truth from a thousand con- 
 jectures in the midst of contradictory comments, and among 
 all the hypotheses to which a single fact gives rise. In the 
 provinces, as formerly among the politicians of la petite 
 Provence at the Tuileries, everything must be accounted for, 
 and at last everybody knows everything. But each individual 
 clings to the view of affairs that he prefers; that is the only 
 true one, he can prove it, and believes his own version ex- 
 clusively. Hence, notwithstanding the unscreened life and 
 the espionage of a country town, the truth is often obscured, 
 and can be detected only by the impartiality of the historian, 
 or of a superior mind looking down from a higher point of 
 view. 
 
 "What do you suppose that old ape wants, at his age, of a 
 child of fifteen ?" said one and another, two years after Flore's 
 arrival. 
 
 "What indeed?" replied a third; "his high days are long 
 since past and gone.'' 
 
 "My dear fellow, the doctor is disgusted with his idiot of a 
 
1S6 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 son. and he cannot get over his hatred of Agathe; in that 
 dilemma perhaps he has been such a good boy these two years 
 past in order to marry the girl; and he might have a boy by 
 her, strong and sturdy and wide awake like Max," observed a 
 wisehead. 
 
 "Get along! Do you suppose that after leading such a 
 life as Lousteau and Rouget did between 1770 and 1787, a 
 man of sixty-two is likely to have children ? Not a bit of it ; 
 the old wretch has read his old testament, if only from a 
 medical point of view, and he knows how King David warmed 
 himself in his old age. That is all, my good fellow." 
 
 "They say that Brazier, when he is fuddled, boasts at 
 Vatan that he stole the child," cried one of those people who 
 prefer to believe the worst. 
 
 "Bless me ! neighbor, and what won't folks say at Issou- 
 dun?" 
 
 From 1800 to 1805, for five years, the doctor had the 
 pleasure of educating Flore without the worry which Made- 
 moiselle de Romans is said to have given to Louis the Well- 
 beloved by her ambitions and pretensions. The little Ra- 
 bouilleuse was so happy, comparing the position she now was 
 in with the life she would have led with her uncle, that she 
 submitted, no doubt, to her master's requirements, as an 
 Eastern slave does. 
 
 With all respect to the writers of idyls and to philan- 
 thropists, the sons of the soil have but vague notions of cer- 
 tain virtues; their scruples have their root in self-interest, 
 not in any feeling for the good and beautiful ; brought up to 
 look forward to poverty, to incessant toil and want, the 
 prospect makes them regard everything as allowable that can 
 rescue them from the hell of hunger and everlasting laboi, 
 3specially if it is not prohibited by law. If there are ex- 
 ceptions, they are rare. Virtue, socially speaking, is mated 
 with ease, and begins with education. Flore Brazier was, 
 therefore, an object of envy to every girl for six leagues 
 round Issoudun, though in the eye of religion her conduct 
 was in the highest degree reprehensible. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 137 
 
 Flore, born in 1787, was brought up amid the Saturnalia 
 of 1793 and 1798, whose lurid light was reflected on a land 
 bereft of priesthood, worship, altars, or religious ceremonies, 
 where m^arriage was a civil contract, and wliere revolutionary 
 axioms left a deep impression, especially at Issoudun, where 
 rebellion is traditional. Catholic worship was hardly re- 
 established in 1802. The Emperor had some difficulty in 
 finding priests; even in 1806 many a parish in France was 
 ttill in widowhood, so slov/ly could a clergy decimated by the 
 scaffold be reinstated after such violent dispersal. Hence, 
 in 1802, there was nothing to accuse Flore but her own con- 
 science. In uncle Brazier's ward was not conscience likely to 
 prove w^eaker than interest? Though the cynical doctor's 
 age led him, as there is every reason to suppose, to respect this 
 maiden of fifteen, she was not the less regarded as a very wide- 
 awake young person. However, some people insisted on find- 
 ing a certificate of innocence in the cessation of the doctor's 
 care and kindness ; for the last two years of his life he treated 
 her with more than coldness. 
 
 Old Kouget had killed enough people to be able to foresee 
 his own end. His notary, finding him on his deathbed, 
 wrapped in the cloak of encyclopedist philosophy, urged him 
 to do something for the young girl, then seventeen years old. 
 
 "Very good, make her of age, emancipate her," said he. 
 
 The reply is characteristic of this old man, who never failed 
 to point his sarcasm wdth an allusion to the profession of the 
 man he was answering. By veiling his evil deeds under a 
 witticism he obtained forgiveness for them in a part of the 
 world where wit ahvays wins the day, especially when it is 
 backed up by intelligent self-interest. The notary heard in this 
 speech the concentrated hatred of a man whom Nature had 
 balked of an intended debauch, and his revenge on the inno- 
 cent object of his senile affection. This opinion w^as, to some 
 extent, confirmed by the doctor's obduracy; he left nothing 
 to la Eabouilleuse, saying with a bitter smile, "Her beauty 
 is wealth enough !" when the notary again pressed the matter. 
 
 Jean-Jacques Rouget did not mourn for the old man, but 
 
138 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Flore did. The doctor had made his son very unhappy, es- 
 pecially since he had come of age, which was in 1791 ; whereas 
 he had given the little peasant girl the material happiness 
 which is the ideal of laboring folk. When, after the old man 
 was buried, Fanchette said to Flore, "Well, what is to become 
 of you now that monsieur is gone ?" Jean- Jacques' eyes beamed, 
 and for the first time in his life his stolid face lighted up, 
 seemed to shine with a flash of thought, and expressed a 
 feeling. 
 
 "Leave her with me," said he to Fanchette, who was clear- 
 ing the table. 
 
 Flore, at seventeen, still had that refinement of figure and 
 face, that elegance of beauty which had bewitched the doctor ; 
 women of the world know how to preserve it, but in a peasant 
 girl it fades as swiftly as the flowers of the field. At the same 
 time, the tendency to become stout, which comes to all hand- 
 some country women when they do not lead a life of toil and 
 ] privation in the ojjen fields and sunshine, was already notice- 
 able in Flore. Her bust was large, her round, white shoulders 
 were richly moulded and finely joined to a throat that al- 
 ready showed fat wrinkles. But the shape of her face was 
 Sitill pure, and her chin as yet delicately cut. 
 
 "Flore,'' said J ean- Jacques in agitated tones, "you are quite 
 used to this house 
 
 "Yes, Monsieur Jacques." 
 
 On the very verge of a declaration, the heir felt his tongue 
 tied by the remembrance of the dead man but now laid in his 
 grave, and wondered to what lengths his father's benevolence 
 might have gone. Flore, looking at her new master, and in- 
 capable of imagining his simplicity, waited for some minutes 
 for J ean- Jacques to proceed ; but she presently left him, not 
 knowing what to think of his obstinate silence. Whatever 
 education she might have had from the doctor, it was many 
 a day before she understood the character of his son, of whom 
 this, in a few words, is the history. 
 
 At his father's death, Jacques, now thirty-seven years old, 
 was as timid and as submissive to parental discipline as any 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 139 
 
 boy of twelve. This timidity will account for his childhood, 
 youth, and life to such readers as might not otherwise believe 
 in such a character, or the facts of a story which is common, 
 alas ! in every rank of life — even among princes, for Sophie 
 Dawes was taken up by the last of the Condes in a worse posi- 
 tion than that of la Rabouilleuse. There are two kinds of 
 timidity — timidity of mind, and timidity of the nerves; 
 physical timidity, and moral timidity. Each is independent 
 of the other. The body may be frightened and quake while 
 the mind remains calm and bold, and vice versa. This is the 
 key to many eccentricities of conduct. When both kinds 
 meet in the same man he will be good for nothing all his life. 
 This utter timidity is that of the person of whom we say, 
 "He is imbecile." Still, this imbecility sometimes covers 
 great qualities though suppressed. To this double infirmity 
 perhaps do we owe certain monks who have lived in ecstasy. 
 This unhappy moral and physical disposition may be pro- 
 duced by the perfection of the bodily organs and of the soul, 
 as well as by certain defects, as yet not fully studied. 
 
 Jean-Jacques' timidity arose from a certain torpor of his 
 faculties, which a first-rate tutor, or a surgeon like Desplein, 
 would have roused. In him, as in cretins, the sensual side 
 of love had absorbed the strength and energy which his in- 
 telligence lacked, though he had sense enough to conduct him- 
 self through life. The violence of his passion, stripped of the 
 ideal, in which it blossoms in other young men, added to his 
 timidity. He never could make up his mind to go courting, 
 to use a familiar expression, to any woman in Issoudun. Now 
 no young girl or woman could make advances to an under- 
 sized man, with a vulgar face, which two prominent green- 
 gooseberry eyes would have made ugly enough, if pinched 
 features and a sallow complexion had not made him look old 
 before his time. In fact, the vicinity of a woman annihilated 
 the poor boy, who was goaded by his passion as vehemently 
 as he was bridled by the few notions he had derived from his 
 education. Halting between two equal forces, he did not 
 know what to say, and dreaded to be asked a question, so 
 
140 
 
 A BACHELOK'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 terrified v^as he at having to reply. Desire, which generally 
 loosens a man's tongue, froze his. 
 
 So Jean- Jacques lived solitary and sought solitude, not 
 finding it irksome. The doctor saw, too late to remedy them, 
 the disastrous results of this temperament and character. He 
 would gladly have seen his son married; but as that would 
 have been to subject him to a rule which would soon be 
 despotic, he could not but hesitate. Would not that be to 
 hand over his fortune to the management of a stranger, an 
 unknown woman ? Now "he well knew how difficult it is to 
 foresee, from a study of a young girl, exactly what the woman's 
 character may become. And so, while looking about him for 
 a daughter-in-law whose education or whose ideas should 
 be a sufficient guarantee, he tried to guide his son into the 
 paths of avarice. Failing intelligence, he hoped thus to give 
 this simpleton a guiding instinct. He began by accustoming 
 him to a mechanical existence, and gave him fixed notions 
 as to the investment of money ; then he spared him the chie;i' 
 difficulties of the management of landed estate by leaving 
 all his lands in capital order, and let on long leases. And 
 for all that, the principal fact, which was to be paramoum 
 in this poor creature's life, escaped the doctor's penetration — • 
 Jean- Jacques was passionately in love with la Rabouilleuse. 
 
 Nothing could, indeed, be more natural. Flore was the 
 only v/oman with whom the young man came in contact, the 
 only woman he ever saw at his ease, gazing on her in secret, 
 and watching her from hour to hour; for him Flore was the 
 light of his father's house; without knowing it, she afforded 
 him the only pleasures that gilded his youth. Far from being 
 jealous of his father, he was delighted by the education he 
 bestowed on Flore; was not the wife he needed an approach- 
 able woman who would need no courting ? For passion, be it 
 observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelli- 
 gence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth. 
 In the least human soul we always find the animal instinct 
 which, in its persistency, is like a thought. 
 
 Next day, Flore, who had meditated on her master's silence, 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 expected some important communication; but, though he 
 hovered about her, looking at her with covert, amorous glances, 
 Jean-Jacques found nothing to say. At last, at dessert, the 
 master began again as he had begun yesterday. 
 
 "You are comfortable here ?" he asked Flore. 
 
 "Yes, Monsieur Jean." 
 
 "Well, stay then." 
 
 "Thank you. Monsieur Jean." 
 
 This strange state of things lasted for three weeks. One 
 night, when not a sound broke the stillness, Flore, waking 
 by chance, heard the regular breathing of a man at her door, 
 and was frightened at finding J can- J acques lying on the mat 
 like a dog, having, no doubt, made some little hole at the 
 bottom of the door to see into the room. 
 
 "He is in love with me," thought she ; "but he will get the 
 rheumatism at this game." 
 
 Next day Flore looked at her master in a marked way. This 
 speechless and almost instinctive love had touched her; she 
 no longer thought the poor simple creature so hideous, in 
 ^pite of the ulcer-like spots on his temples and forehead, the 
 terrible coronal of vitiated blood. 
 
 "You do not want to go back to the open fields, I suppose ?" 
 said Jean- Jacques, when they wt,re alone. 
 
 "Why do you ask ?" said she, looking at him. 
 
 "I wanted to know " replied Rouget, turning the color 
 
 of a boiled lobster. 
 
 "Do you want me to go ?" she asked. 
 
 "ISTo, mademoiselle." 
 
 "Well, then, what is it you want to know ? You have some 
 reason " 
 
 "Yes, I wanted to know 
 
 "What?" said Flore. 
 
 "You would not tell me." 
 
 "Yes, on my word as an honest woman." 
 
 "Ah! That is the point," said Rouget alarmed. *^ou 
 are an honest woman ?" 
 
 "By Heaven!" 
 
142 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "Yes^really?" 
 "Since I say it !" 
 
 "Come, now. Are you the same now as you were when you 
 stood there, barefoot, brought here by your uncle 
 
 "A pretty question, on my word!'^ exclaimed Flore, red- 
 dening. 
 
 The heir bent his head in silence, and did not look up again. 
 Flore, astounded at finding her reply, so flattering to the 
 man, received with such consternation, left the room. 
 
 Three days later, at the same hour, for they both seemed 
 to regard the dessert as the scene of battle, Flore was the 
 first to say to her master, "Are you vexed with me for any- 
 thing?" 
 
 "No, mademoiselle," he replied. "No ... on the 
 contrary " 
 
 "You seemed so much annoyed the other day at hearing that 
 I was an honest girl " 
 
 "No; I only wanted to know . . . but you would not 
 tell me." 
 
 "On my honor," said she, "I will tell you the whole truth.'* 
 "The whole truth about ... my father " said 
 
 he in a choked voice. 
 
 "Your father," said she, looking straight into her master^s 
 
 eyes, "was a good fellow; he loved a laugh. . . . Well, 
 
 a little. . . . Poor dear man, it was not for want of will. 
 
 And then he had some grievance against you, I don't know 
 
 what, and he had intentions — oh! unfortunate intentions. 
 
 — He often made me laugh ; well ! that is all. And what 
 
 then?" 
 
 "Well, then, Flore," said the heir, taking the girl's hand, 
 "since my father was nothing to you " 
 
 "Why, what did you suppose he was to me?" she ex° 
 claimed, in the tone of a girl offended by an insulting sug- 
 gestion. 
 
 "Well, then, listen to me." 
 
 "He was my benefactor, that was all. Ah ! he would hare 
 liked to make me his wife . . . but " 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 148 
 
 "But/' said Kouget, taking her hand again, for she hud 
 pulled it away, "since he was nothing of the .kind, you can 
 stay here with me?" 
 
 "If you like/' said she, looking down. 
 
 "No, no. It is if you like, you/' replied Kouget. "Yes, 
 you may be — mistress here. All that is here shall be yours ; 
 you shall take care of my fortune ; it will be the same as your 
 own. For I love you, and I always have loved you, from the 
 moment when you first came in — here — there — barefoot.'' 
 
 Flore made no reply. The silence became awkward, and 
 Jean- Jacques then uttered this odious argument: 
 
 "Come, it would be better than going back to the fields^ 
 wouldn't it ?" he asked, with manifest eagerness. 
 
 "Dame ! Monsieur Jean, as you please," said she. 
 
 But notwithstanding this "as you please," poor Rouget was 
 no forwarder. Men of that type must have a certainty. The 
 effort it is to them to confess their love is so great, and costs 
 them so dear, that they know they can never do it again. 
 Hence their attacliment to the first woman who accepts them. 
 
 Events can only be inferred from the results. Ten months 
 after his father's death, Jean- Jacques was another man; his 
 pallid, leaden-hued face, disfigured by little boils on the 
 temples and forehead, had lighted up, grown clear-skinned, 
 and acquired a rosy tinge. His countenance shone with hap- 
 piness. Flore insisted on her master's taking the greatest 
 care of his person, and made it a point of honor to herself 
 that he should be neatly dressed ; she would look after him as 
 he went out for a walk, standing on the doorstep till he was 
 out of sight. All the town observed this alteration, which 
 had made a new creature of Jean-Jacques Eouget. 
 
 "Have you heard the news?" asked one and another in 
 Issoudun. 
 , "Why— what?" 
 
 "Jean has inherited everything from his father, even la 
 Eabouilleuse " 
 
 "Did you suppose that the old doctor was not sharp enough 
 to leave his son a housek^^eDer ?" 
 
141 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "She is a perfect treasure for Rouget, that is certain/^ was 
 the general cr;jr. 
 
 "She is a crafty one! She is very handsome; she will 
 make him marry her." 
 
 "What luck that girl has had r 
 
 "It is the luck that only comes to handsome girls." 
 
 "Pooh, nonsense ! So you fancy. But there was my uncle, 
 Borniche-Herau ; well, you hav»e heard speak of Mademoiselle 
 Ganivet; she was as ugly as the seven deadly sins, and he left 
 her no less than a thousand crowns a year 
 
 "Bah! that was in 1778!'' 
 
 "All the same, Rouget is a fool ; his father left him at least 
 forty thousand francs a year. He might have married Made- 
 moiselle Herau.'' 
 
 "The doctor tried that on, but she would have nothing to 
 say to it ; Rouget is too great an idiot " 
 
 "An idiot ! Women are very happy with men of that sort." 
 
 "Is your wife happy 
 
 Such were the comments current in Issoudun. Though, 
 after the manners and customs of the provinces, the world 
 began by laughing at this quasi-marriage, it ended by ad- 
 miring Flore for devoting herself to this poor creature. This 
 was how Flore Brazier rose to sovereignty over the house of 
 Rouget, "from father to son/' to quote the words of Goddet 
 junior. It will now not be useless to sketch the history of her 
 rule for the better information of other bachelors. 
 
 The only person in Issoudun to complain of Flore Brazier's 
 installation as queen on Jean- Jacques Rouget^s hearth was 
 old Fanchette; she protested against such an immoral state 
 of affairs, and took the part of outraged decency. To be sure, 
 she felt humiliated at her age at having for her mistress a 
 Rabouilleuse, a girl who had come to the house without a 
 shoe to her foot. Fanchette had three hundred francs a year 
 from securities in the funds, for the doctor had made her 
 invest her savings, and her late master had left her an 
 annuity of a hundred crowns, so she could live comfortably; 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENl? 
 
 145 
 
 and she left the house nine niontlis after her old master's 
 funeral, on the 15th of April 180G. To the perspicacious 
 reader, this will seem to mark the date when Flore ceased to 
 be "an honest girl." 
 
 La Rabouilleuse, keen enough to foresee Fanchette's de- 
 fection — for there is nothing like exercise of power to in- 
 culcate politics — had made up her mind to do without a 
 maid. For the last six month she had, without betraying it, 
 been studying the culinary arts which made Fanchette a 
 cordon bleu v/orthy to cater for a doctor. As epicures, doctors 
 may rank with bishops. Doctor Eouget had perfected Fan- 
 chette. In the country the lack of occupation, and the 
 monotony of life, are apt to turn an active mind to cooking. 
 Dinners are not so luxurious as in Paris, but they are better ; 
 \;he dishes are studied and thought out. Buried in the coun- 
 try, there are Caremes in petticoats, undiscovered geniuses, 
 who know how to turn out a simple dish of beans worthy of 
 ■\he approving nod with which Eossini welcomes a perfectly 
 i.uccessful effort. 
 
 The doctor, while studying for his degree at Paris, had 
 followed Rouelle^s course of chemistry, and had picked up 
 luome notions, which he turned to account in culinary chem- 
 istry. He is remembered at Issoudun for various improve- 
 ments little known beyond the limits of le Berry. He dis- 
 covered that an omelette is far more delicate when the white 
 and yolk of the eggs are not beaten together in the rough-and- 
 ready fashion in which most cooks perform the operation. 
 By his recipe, the white should be beaten to a stiff froth, and 
 the yolk added by degrees. Then it should not be cooked in 
 a frying-pan, but in a cagnard of china or earthenware. A 
 cagnard is a sort of thick dish on four feet, which, when it is 
 placed on the charcoal stove, allow the air to surround it, and 
 prevent its cracking. In Touraine, the cagnard is called a 
 cauquemarre. Rabelais, I think, speaks of a cauquemarre for 
 cooking the coquecigrues, which shows the high antiquity of 
 the utensil. The doctor had also discovered a way of pre- 
 
146 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 venting the barnt flavor of brown sauce, but this secret, which 
 he unfortunately kept in his own kitchen, has been lost. 
 
 Flore, born with the gift of frying and roasting, the two 
 arts which neither study nor experience can acquire, was soon 
 Fanchette's superior. In making herself a cordon bleu, she 
 was thinking of Jean- J acques' comfort ; still, she too, it must 
 be owned, was not a little greedy. Like all uneducated per- 
 sons, being unable to occupy her brain, she expended her 
 energies in the house. She rubbed up the furniture, restored 
 its lustre, and kept everything throughout the house in a state 
 of cleanliness worthy of Holland. She directed the ava- 
 lanches of dirty linen, and the deluge known as a great wash, 
 which, in the French provinces, takes place but three times 
 a year. She examined the linen with a housewifely eye, and 
 mended it with care. Then, anxious to initiate herself by 
 degrees into the secrets of wealth, she mastered the small 
 knowledge of business possessed by Rouget, and increased it 
 by talking with Monsieur Heron, the late doctor's notary. 
 Thus she could give her little Jean-Jacques excellent advice. 
 Sure, as she was, of remaining mistress of the position, she 
 nursed the poor fellow's interests with as much care and parsi- 
 mony as if they had been her own. She had nothing to fear 
 from her uncle's demands. Two months after the doctor's 
 death. Brazier died of a fall as he came out of the tavern 
 where, since fortune had visited him, he passed all his time. 
 Flore's father was also dead ; thus she served her master with 
 all the affection due from an orphan who was happy to be able 
 to make herself a home and find some interest in life. 
 
 This period was paradise to poor Jean-Jacques, who ac- 
 quired the easy habits of an animal existence, graced by a 
 sort of monastic regularity. He slept very late in the morn- 
 ing; Flore, who was up at daybreak to buy provisions or do 
 the work of the house, woke her master in time for him to 
 find breakfast ready as soon as he was dressed. After break- 
 fast, at about eleven o'clock, J can- J acques took a walk, chatted 
 with any one he met, came home by three o'clock to read the 
 papers — that of the department^ and a Paris paper, which hQ 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 147 
 
 received three days after publication, greasy from thirty hands 
 through which they had passed, dirty from the snuffy noses 
 that smeared them, brown from the many tables they had 
 lain on. Thus our bachelor got to the dinner-hour, and he 
 spent as long a time as he could over it. Flore told him 
 stories of the town, and all the current gossip she had picked 
 up. By eight o'clock the lights were out. Early to bed is, 
 in the country, a common form of saving in candles and firing, 
 but it tends to stupefy folks by an abuse of bed; too much 
 sleep deadens and stultifies the mind. 
 
 Such, for nine years, was the life of these two beings — a 
 life at once busy and vacuous, of which the chief events were 
 a few journeys to Bourges, to Vierzon, to Chateauroux, or even 
 a little further, when neither Monsieur Heron nor the notaries 
 of those towns had any mortgages to offer. Kouget invested 
 his money in first mortgages at five per cent, with substitu- 
 tion in favor of the wife when the lender should marry. He 
 never advanced more than a third of the real value of the 
 estate, and he had bills drawn to his order representing an 
 additional two and a half per cent, for dates at intervals dur- 
 ing the loan. These were the rules impressed on him by his 
 father. Usury, the drag on peasant ambitions, is eating up 
 the land, and this charge of seven and a half per cent seemed 
 so reasonable, that Jean- Jacques Eouget could pick and 
 choose ; for the notaries, who extracted handsome commissions 
 from the clients for whom they got money so cheap, would 
 give the old fellow notice. 
 
 During these nine years, Flore gradually, insensibly, and 
 without intending it, had acquired absolute dominion over her 
 master. From the first she treated Jean-Jacques with great 
 familiarity; then, without failing in respect, she gained the 
 upper hand by such manifest superiority of intelligence and 
 power, that he became his servant's servant. This grown- 
 up child went half-way to meet this dominion, by allowing 
 himself to be so much waited on, that Flore treated him as 
 a mother treats her son. And at last his feeling for her was 
 that which makes a mother's care necessary to a child. But 
 
148 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 there were other and far stronger bonds. In the first placej 
 Flore managed all business matters, and carried on the house. 
 Jean- Jacques relied on her so absolutely for every kind of 
 stewardship that;, without her, life would have seemed to him 
 not difficult, but impossible. The woman had also become 
 necessary to his existence; she humored all his fancies — she 
 knew them so well ! He liked to see the happy face that 
 always smiled on him; the only face that ever had smiled on 
 him, or that ever would smile on him ! Her happiness, purely 
 material, expressed by the common phrases that are the back- 
 bone of language in the households of le Berry, and expansive 
 in her splendid person, was, in a way, the reflection of his 
 own. The state into which Jean-Jacques collapsed when he 
 saw Flore clouded by some little annoyance betrayed to the 
 woman the extent of her power; and she, to secure it, would 
 try to exert it. In women of that kind use always means 
 abuse. La Eabouilleuse, no doubt, made her master play his 
 part in some of the scenes that lie buried in the mystery of 
 private life, and of which Otway has shown a specimen in 
 the midst of his tragedy of Venice Preserved between tho 
 Senator and Aquilina — a scene that gives the magnificence 
 of horror. And then Flore saw herself so secure in her em- 
 pire, that she never thought of getting the old bachelor to 
 marry her, unfortunately for him and for herself. 
 
 By the end of 1815, at the age of twenty-seven, Flore was 
 in the fullest bloom of her beauty. Buxom and fair, as white- 
 skinned as a farmeress of le Bessin, she was the ideal of what 
 our forefathers would have called a splendid wench. Her 
 beauty, somewhat of the inn-servant order, but filled-out and 
 well-fed, gave her some resemblance, apart from Mademoiselle 
 Georges' imperial beauty, to that actress at her best. Flore 
 had the same beautiful, dazzling white arms, the fulness of 
 outline, the pulpy sheen, the delicious modeling, but all less 
 classically severe. The expression of her face was tender 
 and sweet. Her eye could not command respect, like that 
 of the most beautiful Agrippine who has ever trod the boards 
 
A BACHELOirS ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 149 
 
 of the Theatre Frangais since Ilacine's time; it invited to 
 sensual joys. 
 
 In 1816 la Rabouilleuse first saw Maxence Gilet, and fell 
 in love with him at first sight. Her heart was pierced by the 
 mythological dart — that admirable symbol of a natural fact 
 which the Greeks inevitably represented thus, having never 
 conceived of the chivalrous ideal and melancholy passion 
 begotten of Christianity. Flore was at this time too hand- 
 some for Max to scorn such a conquest. And thus, at eight- 
 and-twenty, the girl first knew real love, idolatrous, infinite 
 love, the love which includes every mode of loving from that 
 of Gulnare to that of Medora. As soon as the penniless 
 ofiicer understood the respective positions of Flore and Jean- 
 Jacques Eouget, he saw something better than a mere love 
 affair in a connection with la Eabouiileuse. And so, for the 
 better security of his future prospects, he was more than con- 
 tent to lodge under Rouget's roof, seeing how weakly a 
 creature the old fellow was. 
 
 Flore's passion could not fail to have its influence on Jean- 
 Jacques' life and surroundings. For a month Eouget, who 
 had become excessively afraid of her, saw Flore's smiling and 
 friendly face grown gloomy and cross. He endured the brunt 
 of intentional ill-temper exactly like a married man whose 
 wife is contemplating a betrayal. When in the midst of her 
 most spiteful outbreaks the hapless man made so bold as to 
 ask the cause of this change, her eyes flashed with fires of 
 hatred, and her voice was hard with aggressive tones of scorn, 
 such as poor Jean-Jacques had never met nor heard. 
 
 "By Heaven !" she exclaimed, "you have neither heart nor 
 soul. For sixteen years have I been wasting my youth here, 
 and I never discovered that you had a stone there !" and she 
 struck her heart. "For two months past you have seen that 
 brave Major coming here, a victim to the Bourbons, who was 
 cut out for a General, and who is down on his luck, driven 
 into a hole of a place like this, where Fortune is too poor to 
 go out walking. He is obliged to sit, stuck to a chair all day 
 in an office, to earn what? Six hundred wretched francs — 
 
150 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 a handsome income! And you, who have six hundred and 
 fifty-nine thousand francs in snug investments, and sixty 
 thousand francs a year — not to say that, thanks to me, you 
 don't spend a thousand crowns a year for everything in- 
 cluded, even my clothes — in short, everything — ^you never 
 think of offering him shelter here, where the whole top floor 
 is empty ! No, you would let the rats and mice keep up a 
 dance there rather than put a human being in, and he a man 
 your father always regarded as his son! — Do you want to 
 know what you are ? Well, I will tell you — you are a fratri- 
 cide ! And you think I don't know why ? You saw that I 
 felt an interest in him, and that nettled you ! For all that 
 you seem such a blockhead, you have more cunning in you 
 than the cunningest, and that is what you are. . . . Very 
 well then, I do take an interest in him ... a warm one 
 at that . . r 
 "But, Flore . . 
 
 "Oh, there is no ^but, Flore,' in the case. You may go 
 and look for another Flore — if you can find one! — For may 
 this glass of wine poison me if I don't turn out of your hovel 
 of a house! I shall have cost you nothing, thank God, dur- 
 ing the twelve years I have stayed in it, and you have had 
 your comforts cheap ! Anywhere else I could have earned 
 my living by working as I do here ; washing, ironing, taking 
 care of the linen, going to market, cooking, looking after your 
 interests in every way, slaving to death from morning till 
 night. — And this is what I get !" 
 
 "But, Flore . . 
 
 "Oh yes, Flore indeed! A pretty Flore you will get, at 
 fifty-one, as you are, and in very bad health, and stooping so 
 that it is frightful to see — I know all about it. And with all 
 that you are not so very amusing . . 
 
 "But, Flore . . 
 
 "There, leave me in peace." 
 
 And she left the room, slamming the door with such 
 violence that the house rang with it and seemed to shake on 
 its foundations. Jean- Jacques Rouget opened it very gently, 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 151 
 
 and more gently still went into the kitchen where Flore was 
 muttering. 
 
 "But, Flore," said this sliecp, "this is the very first I have 
 heard of your wishes; how can you tell whether I will or will 
 not?" 
 
 "In the first place/' she went on, "we ought to have a man 
 in the house. It is known that you have ten, fifteen, twenty 
 thousand francs, and if any one wanted to rob you we should 
 be murdered. For my part, I have no wish to wake up one 
 fine morning cut into four quarters, like the poor servant girl 
 who Avas fool enough to try to defend her master. Well ! 
 But if it were known that we had a man on the premises who 
 is as brave as Csesar, and has the use of his hands — Max 
 could settle three thieves while you were talking about it. — 
 Well, I say, I should sleep easier. People will cram you with 
 nonsense. Here, I am in love with him ; there, I adore him ! 
 Do you know what you have got to say ? Well, just tell them 
 that you know all that, but your father told you on his death- 
 bed to take care of his poor Max. Then every one must hold 
 their tongue, for the flagstones of Issoudun could tell you that 
 your father paid for his schooling — so there ! For nine years 
 I have eaten your bread . . ." 
 
 "Flore, Flore . . ." 
 
 "And more than one young fellow in this town has come 
 to me a-courtin' — so there ! — And one offers me a gold chain, 
 and another a gold watch: '^Dear little Flore, if you only 
 would come away from that old idiot of a Eouget,' that is the 
 sort of thing they say of you ! 'What, I ! leave him ? — I 
 should think so ! such an innocent as that. — Wh}^, what would 
 become of him?' I have always answered. 'No, no, where 
 a Nanny is tethered, she must eat . . .' " 
 
 "Yes, Flore, I have no one in the world but you, and I am 
 only too happy. If it will give you pleasure, child, we will 
 have Maxence Gilct in the house ; he can eat with us . . 
 
 "By Heaven ! I should hope so !" 
 
 "There, there, don't be angry . . 
 
 "Enough for one is enough for two," said she, laughing. 
 
152 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "But now, if you are nice, do you know what you will 
 do, my dear old boy? You will take a turn in front of the 
 Mairie at about four o'clock, and manage to meet Major Gilet. 
 and ask him to dinner. If he makes any difficulties, tell him 
 it is to please me ; he is too polite to refuse that. And then, 
 over your dessert, if he talks of his misfortunes, or of the 
 hulks — and you can surely have sense enough to lead up to 
 the subject — you will offer him a home here. If he makes 
 any objection, never mind; I will find a way to persuade 
 him " 
 
 As he slowly paced the Boulevard Baron, Rouget, so far as 
 he was capable, thought over this incident. If he were to part 
 with Flore — and the mere idea made him dizzy — what woman 
 could he find to take her place? Marry? At his age he 
 would be married for his money, and even more cruelly 
 handled by a legitimate wife than he was by Flore. Moreover, 
 the notion of being bereft of her affection, even if it were a 
 delusion, was intolerably painful. So he was as charming to 
 Major Gilet as he knew how to be. As Flore had wished, the 
 invitation was given in the presence of witnesses, so as to 
 leave Max's honor clear. 
 
 Flore and her master were reconciled; but from that day 
 Jean- Jacques was aware of shades of demeanor proving a 
 complete change in la Rabouilleuse's affection for him. 
 
 For about a fortnight Flore complained loudly to the trades- 
 people, at market, and to her gossips, of Monsieur Eouget's 
 tyranny in taking it into his head to have his natural half- 
 brother under his roof. But no one was taken in by this farce, 
 and Flore was considered an extremely shrewd and wily 
 creature. 
 
 Old Eouget was made very happy by the installation of 
 Max as a member of the household, for in him he had a com- 
 panion who was most carefully attentive to him without 
 servility. Gilet chatted, talked politics, and sometimes 
 walked out with him. 
 
 As soon as the officer was quite at home, Flore refused to 
 be cook any longer ; "kitchen work spoiled her hands," she said 
 
A BACHELOirS ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 155 
 
 By desire of the Grand Master of the Order, hi Cognotte found 
 a relation of her own, an old maid, whose nriaster, a cure, had 
 just died, leaving her notln'ng, an excellent cook, who would 
 devote herself through life and death to Flore and Max. And, 
 in the name of these two potentates, la Cognette could promise 
 her relation a pension of three hundred francs after ten years 
 of good, honest, and loyal service. La Vedie, who was sixty, 
 vvas remarkable for a face deeply marked by smallpox and of 
 suitable ugliness. 
 
 When she assumed her functions Flore became Mademoiselle 
 Brazier. She wore stays, she dressed in silk, in fine 
 woolen stuffs, or in cambric, according to the season. She 
 had collars, costly kerchiefs, embroidered caps and lace 
 tuckers, wore dainty boots, and kept herself in an elegant and 
 handsome style that made her look younger. She was now 
 like a rough diamond that has been cut and set by the jeweler 
 to show off its value. She Vv^as anxious to do Max credit. By 
 the end of that year, 1817, she had procured a horse from 
 Bourges, said to be of English breed, for the poor Major, who 
 was tired of going about on foot. Max had picked up in the 
 neighborhood a man, a Pole named Kouski, formerly a lancer 
 in the Imperial Guard, and now reduced to misery, who Yias 
 only too glad to find a berth at Monsieur Eouget's as the 
 Major's servant. Max was Kouski's idol, especially after the 
 fray with the three Eoyalists. So after 1817 the Rouget 
 household consisted of five persons, three of them idle; and 
 the expenses amounted to about eight thousand francs a 
 year. 
 
 By the time when Madame Bridau came back to Issoudun 
 to save her inheritance, as Maitre Desroches expressed it, sc 
 seriously endangered, Pere Eouget,as he v/as comm.only called, 
 had by degrees lapsed into an almost vegetative existence. To 
 begin with, from the day when Max was at home in the house. 
 Mademoiselle Brazier kept house with quite Episcopal luxury. 
 Rouget, thus led into high living, and tempted by the excel- 
 lent dishes concocted by la Vedie, ate more and more every 
 
154 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 day. Notwithstanding such abundant and nutritious feed' 
 ing, he did not get fat. He grew every day more bent, like a 
 man tired out — perhaps by the effort of digestion — and his 
 eyes sank in puffy circles. Still, v/hen, in his walks, any one 
 asked after his health: "I never was better in my life/' was 
 always his reply. As he had always been known to have a 
 most limited intellect, the gradual deterioration of his facul- 
 ties was not observed. His love for Flore was the one 
 ^'motion that kept him alive ; he existed only for her ; his weak- 
 ness before her knew no measure; he obeyed her every look 
 and watched this creature's movements as a dog watches his 
 master's least gesture. And, as Madame Hochon said, Pere 
 Eouget, at fifty-seven, looked older than Monsieur Hochon, 
 who was eighty. 
 
 As may easily be supposed, Max's rooms were worthy of so 
 charming a youth. And in six years, year by year, the Major 
 had made the comfort of his lodgings more perfect, and 
 added grace to the smallest details, as much for his own sake 
 as for Flore's. Still, it was only the comfort of Issoudun; 
 painted floors, wall-papers of some elegance, mahogany furni- 
 ture, mirrors in gilt frames, muslin curtains with red bands 
 to loop them, an Arabian bedstead with curtains hung as a 
 country upholsterer arranges them for a wealthy bride, and 
 which then seemed the height of magnificence, but which are 
 to be seen in the commonest fashion-plates, and are so general 
 now that in Paris even petty dealers will not have them when 
 they marry. Then — an unheard-of thing, which gave rise 
 to much talk in Issoudun — there was matting on the stairs, 
 to deaden noise no doubt ! And, in fact. Max, as he came 
 in before daybreak, woke nobody, and Eouget never suspected 
 his lodger's share in the dark deeds of the Knights of Idlesse. 
 
 At about eight in the morning Flore, in a pretty pinJc- 
 striped cotton wrapper and a lace cap, her feet in furred 
 slippers, gently opened Max's bedroom door, but seeing him 
 asleep, she stood a moment by the bed. 
 
 "He came in so late," thought she; "at half -past three. A 
 man must be made of iron to be able to stand such racket 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 155 
 
 as that ! And isn't he strong too ? — The love of a man ! I 
 wonder what they were doing last night !" 
 
 "You, my little Flore/' said Max, waking as a soldier wakes, 
 inured by the vicissitudes of war to find all his wits and his 
 presence of mind however suddenly he may be roused. 
 
 "You are sleepy ; I am going . . 
 
 "No, stay ; there are serious things " 
 
 "You have done something too mad last night?" 
 
 "Ah, pooh! The matter in hand concerns that old fool. 
 Look here; you never mentioned his family. Well, they are 
 .2oming here — his family is coming, to cut us out no doubt." 
 
 "Oh, I will give them a startler !" said Flore. 
 
 "Mademoiselle Brazier," said Max gravely, "matters are 
 too serious to be taken at a rush. Send me up my coffee; 
 I will have it in bed, where I will consider what proceedings 
 we must take. . . . Come back at nine, and we will talk 
 it over. Meanwhile behave as if you had heard nothing." 
 
 Startled by this news, Flore left Max, and went to make 
 his coffee; but a quarter of an hour later Baruch rushed in 
 and said to the Grand Master, "Fario is looking for his cart." 
 
 Max was dressed in five minutes, went downstairs, and with 
 an air of lounging for his pleasure, made his way to the foot 
 of the tow^er hill, where he saw a considerable crowd. 
 
 "What is the matter ?" said Max, making his way through 
 the mob to speak to the Spaniard. 
 
 Fario, a small, shriveled man, was ugly enough to have 
 been a grandee. His very fier}^, very small eyes, very close 
 together, would have earned him at Naples a reputation for 
 the evil eye. The little man seemed gentle because he was 
 grave, quiet, and slow in his movements; and he was com- 
 monly spoken of as honhomme, good old Fario. But his com- 
 plexion, of the color of gingerbread, and his gentle manner, 
 concealed from the ignorant, but betrayed to the knowing, 
 his character as a half-Moorish peasant from Granada, who 
 had not yet been roused from his torpid indifference. 
 
 "But are you sure," said Max, after listening to the lamenta- 
 tions of the seed-merchant, "that you brought your cart? For, 
 
 thank Heaven, we have no thieves in Issoudun . . ." 
 VOL. 4—37 
 
156 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "I left it there . . 
 
 "But if the horse was harnessed to it, may he not have gone 
 away with the cart 
 
 "There is my horse," said Fario, pointing to his steed stand- 
 ing harnessed about thirty yards off. 
 
 Max solemnly went to the spot, so as to be able by looking 
 up to see the foot of the tower, for the people had collected at 
 the bottom of the hill. Everybody followed him, and this 
 was what the rascal wanted. 
 
 "Has any one by mistake put a cart in his pocket?" cried 
 Frangois. 
 
 "Come, feel, turn them out !" said Baruch. Shouts of 
 laughter rose on all sides. Fario swore; now in a Spaniard 
 an oath means the last pitch of fury. 
 
 "Is yours a light cart ?" asked Max. 
 
 "Light?" retorted Fario. "If all those who are laughing 
 at me had it over their toes, their corns would not hurt them 
 again." 
 
 "Well, but it must be devilish light," replied Max, pointing 
 to the tower, "for it has flown to the top of the hill." 
 
 At these words all looked up, and for a moment there was 
 almost a riot in the market-place. Every one was pointing 
 to this magical vehicle. Every tongue was wagging. 
 
 "The Devil has a care for the innkeepers, who are all 
 doomed to perdition," said Goddet to the speechless owner; 
 "he wants to teach you not to leave carts about instead of 
 putting up at the inn." 
 
 At this speech the mob howled, for Fario was reckoned 
 miserly. 
 
 "Come, my good man," said Max, "do not lose heart. We 
 will go up and see how the cart got there. The deuce is in 
 it ! We will lend you a hand. Will you come, Baruch ? — 
 You," he added in a whisper to Frangois, "clear every one out 
 of the way, and mind there is no one standing below when 
 you see us at the top." 
 
 Fario, with Max, Baruch, and three more of the Knights, 
 climbed up to the tower. During the scramble, which was 
 
A BACHELOR'S PJSTABLISIIMENT 
 
 157 
 
 not free from danger, Max remarked to Fario that there were 
 no tracks, nor anything to show how the cart had been got 
 up. And Fario began to believe in some magic ; he had quite 
 lost his head. On reaching the top and examining matters, 
 the feat seriously seemed quite impossible. 
 
 "And however shall we get it down again?" said the 
 Spaniard, whose little eyes expressed positive terror, while 
 his tawny hollow face, which looked as if it could never 
 change color, turned pale. 
 
 "Well," said Max, "I see no difficulty in that." 
 
 And taking advantage of Fario's bewilderment, he took the 
 cart up by the shafts, giving it a tilt with his strong arms 
 so as to give it impetus; then, at the moment when he let it 
 go, he shouted in a voice of thunder, "Look out below !" But 
 there was no danger. The crowd, warned by Frangois, and 
 eager with curiosity, had withdrawn to a little distance to 
 see what was going on on the knoll. The cart smashed in 
 picturesque style, broken into a thousand pieces. 
 
 "There, it is down again !" said Baruch. 
 
 "Ah, blackguards, thieves, villains !" yelled Fario. "It 
 was you who got it up, 1^11 be bound !" 
 
 Max, Baruch, and their three comrades began to laugh at 
 the Spaniard's abuse. 
 
 "We wanted to do you a service," said Max haughtily. "To 
 save your damned cart I ran the risk of going down on the top 
 of it, and this is how you thank me. What country do you 
 come from, pray?" 
 
 "From a country where we do not forgive an injury," re- 
 plied Fario, quivering with rage. "My cart may serve you a 
 turn to take you to the Devil ! Unless," he added, as mild 
 as a lamb, "you like to replace it by a new one ?" 
 
 "We Avill talk about it," said Max, going down the hill. 
 
 When they were at the bottom, and had rejoined the first 
 group of laughers. Max took Fario by the jacket-button, and 
 isaid : 
 
 '^Yes, my good Fario, I will make you a present of a 
 splendid cart if you will give me two hundred and fifty francs ; 
 
158 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 I won't guarantee that, like this one, it is warranted for a 
 tumbler's trap." 
 
 This jest, however, touched Fario no more than if he were 
 concluding an ordinary bargain. 
 
 "Dame!" he replied calmty, "you will give me francs 
 enough to replace my poor cart, and you will never spend 
 Pere Rouget's money in a better cause." 
 
 Max turned white and lifted his formidable fist to strike 
 Fario; but Baruch, who knew that such a blow would not 
 fall only on the Spaniard, whisked him off like a feather, say- 
 ing to Max in an undertone, "Don't play the fool !" 
 
 The Major, recalled to order, began to laugh, and said to 
 Fario, "Though I have by accident damaged your cart, you 
 are trying to slander me, so we are quits." 
 
 "Not yet," muttered Fario. "But I am glad to have found 
 out what my cart is worth !" 
 
 "Ah, ha ! Max, you have found your match !" said a by- 
 stander, who was not a member of the Order. 
 
 "Good-bye, Monsieur Gilet; you have not heard the last of 
 your clever trick!" said the Spaniard, mounting his horse 
 and disappearing in the midst of a loud hurrah ! 
 
 "I will keep the iron tires for you," cried a wheelwright, 
 who had come out to study the effects of the fall. One of the 
 shafts was standing upright, planted in the ground like a 
 tree. 
 
 Max was pale and thoughtful, stung to the heart by the 
 Spaniard's speech. For five days at Issoudun Fario's cart 
 was the talk of the town. It was fated to travel far, as 
 young Goddet said, for it made the round of the province, 
 where the pranks of Max and Baruch were much discussed. 
 Hence, even a week after the event, the Spaniard was still 
 the talk of the departments and the subject of much "jaw," 
 a fact to which he was keenly alive. Max and la Rabouilleuse, 
 too, as a result of the vindictive Spaniard's retort, were the 
 subject of endless comments, whispered indeed at Issoudun, 
 but loudly spoken at Bourges, at Vatan, at Vierzon, and at 
 Chateauroux. Maxence Gilet knew the country well enough 
 to imagine how envenomed these remarks must be. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 159 
 
 "No one can hinder their talking/' thought he. "Ah! 
 that was a bad night's work." 
 
 "Well, Max/' said Frangois, taking his arm, "they are to 
 be here to-night." 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 "The Bridans. My grandmother has just had a letter 
 from her goddaughter." 
 
 "Listen to me, my boy/' said Max in his ear; "I have 
 thought this business over very seriously. Neither Flore nor I 
 must appear to have any ill-feeling towards the Bridaus. If 
 the heirs leave Issoudun, it is your people, the Hochons, who 
 must seem to be the cause. Study these Paris folks well ; and 
 when I have taken their measure, to-morrow at la Co- 
 gnette's we will see what can be done with them, and how we 
 can make a breach between them and your grandfather." 
 
 "The Spaniard has found the joint in Max's harness/' said 
 Baruch to his cousin Francois as they went in, looking at his 
 friend entering Kouget's door. 
 
 While Max was thus occupied, Flore, notwithstanding her 
 companion's counsel, had been unable to control her rage; 
 without knowing whether she was seconding or interfering 
 with Max's plans, she broke out against the poor old bachelor. 
 When J can- Jacques incurred his nurse's displeasure, he found 
 himself suddenly bereft of all the little cares and vulgar 
 petting which were the joy of his life. In short, Flore put 
 her master in disgrace. No more little affectionate words 
 with which she was wont to grace her conversation, in various 
 tones, with more or less tender glances — my puss, my chicken, 
 my good old dog, my spoilt boy. No more familiar tu. A 
 vous, short and cold, and ironically respectful, would pierce 
 the unhappy man's heart like a knife. This vous was a 
 declaration of war. 
 
 Then, instead of helping him to dress, giving him his 
 things, anticipating his wishes, looking at him with the sort 
 of admiration women know how to convey — and the broader 
 it is, the more gratifying — saying, "You are as fresh as a 
 
160 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 rose ! Come, you look wonderfully well ! How fine you are, 
 old man !" — instead of entertaining him while he dressed with 
 the fun and follies that amused him, Flore left him to manage 
 for himself. If he called her, she would answer from the 
 bottom of the stairs : 
 
 "Well, I can't do two things at once — get your breakfast 
 and wait on you in your room. Aren't you old enough to 
 dress yourself 
 
 "Good God! How have I offended her?" the old fellow 
 wondered, on receiving one of these rebuffs, when he called 
 for some hot water to shave himself. 
 
 "Vedie, take up some hot water to monsieur,'' cried Flore. 
 
 "Vedie?" said the poor man, bewildered by his dread 
 of the wrath impending over him. "Vedie, what is the mat- 
 ter with madame this morning ?" 
 
 Flore insisted on being called madame by her master, by 
 Vedie, Kouski, and Max. 
 
 "She has heard something seemingly not much to your 
 credit," replied Vedie, putting on a very pathetic air. "You 
 are very foolish, monsieur. There, I am but a poor servant, 
 and you may tell me not to be poking my nose into your con- 
 cerns; but you may hunt through all the women in the world, 
 like the King in Holy Writ, and you will never find her like. 
 You ought to kiss the place where she has set her foot. . . 
 I tell you, if you vex her, it will be enough to break your own 
 heart ! And there really were tears in her eyes." 
 
 Vedie left the poor man quite annihilated; he sank into 
 a chair, gazing into space like a man melancholy mad, and 
 forgot to shave himself. These alternations of hot and cold 
 affected the poor feeble creature, who lived only through his 
 hold on love, like the deadly chill produced by a sudden pas- 
 sage from tropical heat to polar cold. They were moral 
 pleurisies which exhausted him like so many illnesses. Flore 
 only in the whole world could act upon him so, for to her 
 alone he was as kind as he was silly. 
 
 "What ! You have not shaved yet ?" said she, opening the 
 door. She made Pere Rouget start violently; from being 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 161 
 
 pale and limp, he suddenly turned red for a moment, but 
 dared not resent this attack. 
 
 '^Your breakfast is waiting. But you may go down in your 
 dressing-gown and slippers — you will breakfast by yourself." 
 
 And she vanished without waiting for a reply. To make 
 the poor man breakfast alone was one of the punishments 
 which most deeply distressed him; he liked to talk while he 
 was eating. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, Eouget 
 was seized with a fit of coughing, for excitement had stirred 
 his rheum. 
 
 "Oh yes, you may cough !" said Flore in the kitchen, not 
 caring whether her master heard her or no. "My word ! the 
 old wretch is strong enough to weather it without any one 
 troubling theirselves about him ! If he ever coughs his soul 
 up, it won't be in our time." 
 
 Such were the amenities with which la Kabouilleuse favored 
 Eouget in her fits of rage. The poor man sat down in deep 
 dejection at a corner of the table in the middle of the room, 
 looking at his old furniture and old pictures with a desolate 
 air. 
 
 "You might have put on a necktie !" said Flore, coming 
 in. "Do you think a neck like yours is pretty to see — redder 
 ssnd more wrinkled than a turkey-cock's." 
 
 "But what have I done?" he asked, raising his pale green 
 eyes full of tears, and confronting Flore's cold look. 
 
 "What have you done ?" she echoed. "And you don't know ? 
 What a hypocrite ! Why, your sister Agathe — who is as much 
 your sister as I am sister to the Tower of Issoudun, if you 
 can believe your father, and who is nothing on earth to you — 
 is coming from Paris with her son, that wretched tu'penny 
 painter, and they're coming to see you " 
 
 "My sister and nephews are coming to Issoudun?" said 
 he, quite bewildered. 
 
 "Oh yes; you may pretend to be astonished, to make me 
 believe that you did not write to them to come! That is a 
 very thin trick. Don't be afraid, we won't interfere with your 
 Paris friends, for we shall have shaken the dust off our feet 
 
162 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 before they set theirs within these walls! Max and I shall 
 be gone never to return ! As to your will — I will tear it in 
 four quarters under your nose, under your beard, do you 
 hear? You may leave your goods to your family, as we are 
 not your family. After that you will see whether you are 
 loved, for your own sake, by people who have not seen you foi 
 thirty years, or have never seen you at all ! Your sister will 
 not fill my place — a double-distilled bigot \" 
 
 ^^If that is all, my pretty Flore,'^ said the old man, "I shall 
 see neither my sister nor my nephews. I swear to you sol- 
 emnly that this is the first word I have heard of their arrival, 
 and it is a got-up thing arranged by Madame Hochon, the old 
 bigot r 
 
 Max, who had heard Pere Rouget's reply, suddenly came in, 
 saying in a hectoring tone, "What is the matter ?" 
 
 "My good Max,^^ the old man went on, only too glad to 
 purchase the Major's adhesion, for, by agreement with Flore, 
 he was always to take Rouget^s part, "I swear to you, by all 
 that is sacred, that I have only this instant heard the news. 
 I never wrote to my sister; my father made me promise to 
 leave her nothing, to give it rather to the Church — in short, 
 I refuse to see either my sister Agathe or her sons." 
 
 "Your father was wrong, my dear J ean- Jacques, and mad- 
 ame is yet more wrong," replied Max. "Your father had 
 his own reasons — ^he is dead, his hatred ought to die with him. 
 Your sister is your sister, your nephews are your nephews. 
 You owe it to yourself to receive them cordially, and you owe 
 it to us too. What would be said in Issoudun? Sss — • 
 thunder! I have enough on my shoulders; the only thing 
 wanting is to give rise to a report that we keep you shut up, 
 that you are not a free agent, that we have incensed you 
 against your heirs, that we are trying to possess ourselves of 
 your fortune. . . . The Devil may take me if I don't 
 desert from the service at the very next calumny ; one is quite 
 enough ! — Let us have breakfast." 
 
 Flore^ as meek as a mouse, helped Vedie to lay the table. 
 Rouget, filled with admiration for Max, took him by both 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 163 
 
 hands, led him into a window bay, and said to him in an un- 
 dertone : 
 
 "Ah, Max, if I had a son, I should not love him so well as I 
 love you. Flore was right in saying that you two are my 
 family. . . . You have a sense of honor. Max, and all 
 you have said is very right 
 
 "You ought to entertain your sister and your nephew," said 
 Max, interrupting him, "but ought not to alter your will ; thus 
 you will satisfy your father and everybody else.'' 
 
 "Come, my little dears V cried Flore, in cheerful tones, "the 
 salmis will be cold. There, old boy, there is a wing for you," 
 she said, smiling on J ean- J acques. 
 
 At this speech the old fellow's long face lost its cadaverous 
 lints, a treacly smile played on his flabby lips ; but he coughed 
 again, for the joy of being received again into favor excited 
 him as greatly as being in disgrace. Flore sprang up, 
 imatched a little cashmere shawl off her shoulders, and 
 wrapped it round the old man's throat as a comforter, 
 saying: 
 
 "It is silly to upset yourself so over trifles. Here, foolish 
 
 old boy, that will do you good — it has been next my heart 
 f> 
 
 ^^hat a good soul !" said Eouget to Max, while Flore went 
 off for a black velvet cap to cover the old fellow's almost bald 
 head. 
 
 "As good as she is handsome," replied Max; '^ut a little 
 hasty, like all those who carry their heart in their hand." 
 
 The reader may feel inclined to find fault with the 
 crudities of this picture, and to think that the displays of la 
 Rabouilleuse's temper are marked by some truths which the 
 painter should leave in the shade? Well; this scene, a hun- 
 dred times repeated with horrible variations, is in all its 
 coarse and repulsive veraciousness the type of that which 
 every woman will play, on whatever rung of the social ladder 
 she may stand, if any kind of self-interest has diverted her 
 from the path of obedience, and she has seized the reins of 
 power. To women as to great politicians— the end justifies 
 
164 A BACHELOil'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 any means. Between Flore Brazier and a duchess, between 
 the duchess and the richest tradesman's wife, between the 
 tradesman's wife and the most splendidly kept woman, there 
 are no differences but those due to education and to the atmos- 
 phere in which they live. A fine lady's sulks take the place 
 of Flore's violence ; in every rank bitter taunts, witty sarcasms, 
 cold disdain, hypocritical whining, affected quarrels, are quite 
 as successful as the low abuse of this Madame Everard of 
 Issoudun. 
 
 Max told the story of Fario with so much drollery that he 
 made the old fellow laugh. Vedie and Kouski, who had come 
 up to listen to the tale, exploded in the passage. As for 
 Flore, she laughed hysterically. After breakfast, while Jean- 
 Jacques was reading the papers — for they now subscribed 
 to the Constitutionnel and the Pandore — Max took Flore up 
 to his room. 
 
 '^Are you certain," said he, "that he has never made an- 
 other will since he named you as his legatee ?" 
 
 "He has no v/riting things," said she. 
 
 "He may have dictated one to some notary," said Max. "If 
 he has not done so, we must be prepared for the contingency. 
 So receive the Bridaus as well as possible; but meanwhile 
 we must try, as soon as we can, to realize all the money out on 
 mortgage. Our notaries will be only too glad to effect the 
 transfers ; that is what they eat and drink by. State securities 
 are going up every day ; we are to conquer Spain and deliver 
 Ferdinand VII. from his Cortes, so next year they may per- 
 haps be above par. So if will be a good stroke of business 
 to invest the old man's seven hundred and fifty thousand 
 francs in the funds at 89. Only try and get them put into 
 your name. It will always be something saved from the fire.'^ 
 
 "A capital idea," said Flore. 
 
 "And as on eight hundred and ninety thousand francs he 
 will draw fifty thousand francs a year, you must get him to 
 borrow a hundred and forty thousand francs for two years, 
 to be repaid in two instalments. Thus in two years we shall 
 be drawing a hundred thousand francs from Paris and ninety 
 thousand here, so we risk nothing." 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 165 
 
 "Without you, my splendid Max, what would have become 
 of us !" said she. 
 
 "Oh, to-morrow evening, at la Cognette's, after I have seen 
 this Paris couple, I wijl find some means of making the 
 Hochons themselves see them off the premises.^' 
 
 "Oh, you are so clever! You are an angel, a love of a 
 manr 
 
 The Place Saint- Jean is situated half-way down a street 
 called la Grande Narette in the upper part, and la Petite 
 Narette below. In le Berry the word Narette means the 
 same sort of highway as the Genoese Salita, a street built 
 on a steep slope. Between the Place Saint-Jeanandthe Vilatie 
 gate, the Narette is excessively steep. Old Monsieur Hochon's 
 house is opposite to that where lived Jean- Jacques Eouget. 
 What was going on at Pere Eouget's could often be seen out of 
 the drawing-room window where Madame Hochon sat, and 
 vice versa, when the curtains were undrawn or the doors left 
 open. 
 
 Hochon's house is so much like Eouget's that they were, 
 no doubt, built by the same architect. Hochon, long ago 
 the collector of taxes at Selles, was born at Issoudun, and re- 
 turned thither to marry the sister of the sub-delegate, the 
 gallant Lousteau, exchanging his post at Selles for a similar 
 one at Issoudun. He had retired before 1787, and so escaped 
 the storms of the Eevolution, while fully supporting its prin- 
 ciples, like all honest men who shout on the winning side. It 
 was not for nothing that Monsieur Hochon had a reputation 
 for avarice. But would it not be mere vain repetition to 
 describe him? One of the miserly acts, which made him 
 famous, will, no doubt, be enough to paint Monsieur Hochon 
 at full length. 
 
 At the time of his daughter's marriage to a Borniche — she 
 was since dead — it was necessary to give a dinner to the Bor- 
 niche family. The bridegroom, who expected to inherit a fine 
 fortune, died soon after of grief at having failed in busi- 
 ness, and yet more at his father's and mother's refusal to 
 
166 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 help him. These old Borniches were still living, delighted 
 to have seen Monsieur Hochon take the guardianship of his 
 grandchildren on account of his daughter's settlement, which 
 he had succeeded in saving. 
 
 On the day when the marriage contract was to be signed^ 
 all the relations of both families had assembled in the draw- 
 ing-room — the Hochons on one side, and the Borniches on 
 the other, all in their Sunday best. In the midst of reading 
 the contract, very solemnly performed by young Heron the 
 notary, the cook came in and asked Monsieur Hochon for some 
 pack-thread to truss the turkey — an important item in the 
 bill of fare. The old tax-collector pulled out of the depths 
 of his coat-pocket an end of string, which had, no doubt, 
 tied up some parcel, and gave it to her ; but before the woman 
 had reached the door, he called out, "Gritte, let me have it 
 back V Gritte is a local abbreviation of Marguerite. 
 
 This will enable you to understand Monsieur Hochon, and 
 the joke perpetrated by the town on the name of the family, 
 consisting of the father, mother, and three children— -Zes cinq 
 coclions, the five pigs. 
 
 As years went by old Hochon became more and more nig- 
 gardly and careful, and he was now eighty-five years of age. 
 He was one of those who will stoop in the street, in the midst 
 of an animated conversation, to pick up a pin, saying, "That 
 is a woman's wage !" and stick it into his coat cuff. He com- 
 plained bitterly of the inferior quality of cloth nowadays, re- 
 marking that his coat had lasted only ten years^ Tall, lean, 
 and bony, with a yellow complexion, speaking little, reading 
 little, never fatiguing himself, as ceremonious as an Oriental, 
 he maintained a rule of strict sobriety in his household, doling 
 out food and drink to his fairly numerous family, consisting 
 of his wife nee Lousteau, of his grandson Baruch and grand- 
 daughter Adolphine, the heirs of the old Borniches, and of his 
 other grandson, Frangois Hochon. 
 
 His eldest son, caught for the army in 1813 by the levy of 
 men of respectable birth who escaped the conscription, and 
 who were enrolled under the name of guards of honor, was 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 167 
 
 killed at the battle of Hanau. The heir-presumptive had 
 married, very young, a rich woman, hoping thus to evade any 
 call to arms ; but then he ran through all his money, foresee- 
 ing the end. His wife, who followed the French army at a 
 distance, died at Strasbourg in 1814, leaving debts which old 
 Hochon would not pay, quoting to the creditors the axiom of 
 a past code, "Women are minors/^ 
 
 So follcs could still say les cinq Hochons, smce the house- 
 hold consisted of three grandchildren and two grandparents ; 
 and the ,iest still survived, for in the country no jest grows 
 too stale. Gritte. now sixty years old, managed ail the work 
 of the house. 
 
 The house, though spacious, was scantily furnished. How- 
 ever, Madame Bridau could be very decently lodged in two 
 rooms on the second floor. Old Hochon now repented of 
 having kept two beds in these rooms, and belonging to each 
 an old armchair in unvarnished wood^ with a worsted-work 
 seat, and a walnut wood table, on which stood a wide-mouthed 
 water jug in a basin edged with blue. The old man kept 
 his apples and winter pears, his quinces and medlars, on straw 
 in these two rooms, where the rats and mice had a high time, 
 imd there was a strong flavor of fruit and mice. Madame 
 Hochon had everything cleaned; the paper, where it had 
 fallen from the walls, was stuck on again with wafers; she 
 furnished the windows with muslin blinds cut out of some old 
 skirts of her own. Then, when her husband refused to buy 
 two little list rugs, she placed her own bedside rug for her 
 little Agathe, talking of this mother of past seven-and-f orty as 
 "Poor child V\ 
 
 Madame Hochon borrowed two bed-tables from the Bor- 
 niches, and most daringly hired from a second-hand shop two 
 old chests of drawers with brass handles. She possessed two 
 pairs of candlesticks, made of some scarce wood by her father, 
 who had had a passion for turning. From 1770 to 1780 it 
 had been the fashion among rich people to learn a trade ; and 
 Monsieur Lousteau the elder, head commissioner of subsidies, 
 was a turner, as Louis XVI. was a locksmith. These candle- 
 
168 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 sticks were decorated with rings in brier-root, peach, and 
 apricot wood. Madame Hochon risked these precious relics ! 
 
 All these preparations and this great sacrifice added to 
 Monsieur Hochon's serious mien; he did not yet believe that 
 the Bridaus would come. 
 
 On the very morning of the day made famous by the trick 
 played on Fario, Madame Hochon said to her husband after 
 breakfast : 
 
 "I hope, Hochon, that you will make Madame Bridau, my 
 goddaughter, properly welcome." Then, after assuring her- 
 self that her grandchildren had left the room, she added : "I 
 am mistress of my own fortune; do not compel me to in- 
 demnify Agathe by my will for an unpleasant reception." 
 
 "And do you suppose, madame," said Hochon gently, "that 
 at my age I do not know how to behave with decent civility." 
 
 "You know: very well what I mean, old fox! Be kind to 
 our guests, and remember how truly I love Agathe " 
 
 "Yes, and you truly loved Maxence Gilet, who is going ij) 
 swallow whole the fortune that ought to be your Agathe^s'. 
 Ah ! you cherished a serpent in your bosom then ! — After al] , 
 the Eougets^ money was fated to belong to some Lousteau or 
 another." 
 
 Having made this allusion to the supposed parentage of 
 Agathe and of Max, Hochon was about to leave the room; 
 but old Madame Hochon, still slender and upright, wearing 
 a mob cap with bows, and her hair powdered, with a shot- 
 silk petticoat, tight sleeves, and high-heeled slippers, set her 
 snuff-box down on her little table, and said: 
 
 "Really, Monsieur Hochon, how can a clever man like you 
 repeat the nonsense which, unluckily, destroyed my poor 
 friend's peace of mind, and cost my poor goddaughter her 
 share of her father's fortune ? Max Gilet is not my brother's 
 son, and I often advised him to save the money he spent on 
 him. And you know as well as I do that Madame Rouget 
 was virtue itself " 
 
 "Well, the daughter is worthy of her mother, for she seems 
 to me a great goose. After losing all her money, she brought 
 
A BACilELOK'S ESTABLISHMENT 169 
 
 up her sons so well that one of them is in prison awaiting 
 his trial before the supreme court for a conspiracy a la Berton. 
 As to the other — worse and worse ! he is a painter. — If your 
 proteges remain here till they have extracted that idiot Rouget 
 from the clutches of la Rabouilleuse and Gilet, we shall get 
 through more than one bushel of salt with them." 
 
 "That will do^ Monsieur Hochon ; but you might wish them 
 success !" 
 
 Monsieur Hochon took up his hat and his ivory-handled 
 cane, and went out, amazed by this alarming speech, for he 
 had not supposed his wife to be so determined. Madame 
 Hochon, on her part, took her prayer-book to read the order 
 of service, her great age hindering her from going to mass 
 every morning. It was with difficulty that she got to church 
 on Sundays and high festivals. Since receiving Agathe's 
 reply she had added to her regular prayers a special inter- 
 cession, beseeching God to open the eyes of Jean- Jacques 
 Houget, to bless Agathe, and to grant success to the under- 
 taking to which she had been driven. 
 
 Concealing the fact from her two grandsons, whom she 
 regarded as parpaillots (renegades), she had requested the 
 cure to say masses for nine days, attended by her granddaugh- 
 ter Adolphine Borniche, who put up her grandmother's 
 prayers in the church as her proxy. 
 
 Adolphine, now eighteen, having stitched by her grand- 
 mother's side for seven years, in this chill home of methodical 
 and melancholy regularity, was all the more ready to per- 
 form the neuvaine, because she hoped to inspire some tender 
 feeling in Joseph Bridau, the painter so little understood by 
 Monsieur Hochon, and in whom she took a keen interest, were 
 it only on account of the monstrous ideas her grandfather 
 attributed to the young Paris artist. 
 
 Old people, wise people, the magnates of the town, and 
 fathers of families, all approved of Madame Hochon's con- 
 duct; and their good wishes for her goddaughter and for 
 Agathe's sons were reinforced by the secret contempt they had 
 Icng felt for the proceedings of Maxence Gilet. So the advent 
 
170 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 of Pere Eouget^s sister and nephew gave rise to two factions ir 
 Issoudun: that of the older and upper citizen class^ who 
 could only watch events and hope for the best without helping 
 matters; and that of the Knights of Idlesse and Max's par- 
 tisans, who were, unfortunately, capable of doing much mis- 
 chief to undermine the Parisians. 
 
 On this day, then, Agathe and J oseph got out of the coach at 
 the office of the Messageries, Place Misere, at three in the 
 afternoon. Though tired, Madame Bridau felt young again at 
 the sight of her native town, where at every step she found 
 some reminiscence and impression of her girlhood. In the 
 state of mind prevailing at Issoudun the arrival of the Pa- 
 risians was known all over the town within ten minutes. 
 
 Madame Ilochon appeared at the front gate to receive her 
 goddaughter, and kissed her as if she had been a child of her 
 own. After seventy-two years of a life as empty as it was 
 monotonous, with nothing to look back upon but the coffins 
 of her three children, all dying in misfortune, she had culti- 
 vated a sort of artificial motherhood for the girl who, as sh(! 
 expressed it, had for sixteen years lived in her pocket. In the 
 gloom of a provincial life she had cherished this old regard, 
 this child's life, and all its memories, just as if Agathe were 
 still with her, and she took a passionate interest in all that 
 concerned the Bridaus. 
 
 Agathe was led in triumph into the drawing-room, where 
 worthy Monsieur Hochon stood as cold as a raked-out oven. 
 
 ^'^Here is Monsieur Hochon; how do you think he is look- 
 ing?" 
 
 "Why, exactly as he did when I left him,'^ said Agathe. 
 
 "Ah, it is evident you have come from Paris, you pay com- 
 pliments," said the old man. 
 
 The family were introduced : first, little Baruch Borniche, 
 a tall youth of two-and-twenty ; then little Frangois Hochon, 
 now twenty-four; and lastly, little Adolphine, who blushed, 
 and did not know what to do with her hands, and especially 
 with her eyes, for she did not wish to appear to stare at 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 171 
 
 Joseph Bridau, who was airxiously examined by the two lads 
 and by old Hochon, but from different points of view. The 
 miser was reflecting, "He must have just come out of a hos- 
 pital ; he will eat like a fever-patient." 
 
 The two young men were saying to themselves, "What a 
 brigand ! What a head ! We shall have our hands full !" 
 
 "Here is my son the painter, my good J oseph," said Agathe 
 finally, introducing the artist. 
 
 There was a little sigh in the emphasis on the word "good,'' 
 which betrayed Agathe's heart; she was thinking of the 
 prisoner at the Luxembourg. 
 
 "He looks ill/' cried Madame Hochon; "he is not like 
 
 "No, madame," said Joseph, with the rough simplicity of 
 an artist, "I am like my father, only uglier !" 
 
 Madame Hochon pressed Agathe's hand, which she was 
 holding, and gave her a look. That grasp, that glance were 
 meant to convey: 
 
 "Ah, my child, I quite understand your preferring that 
 scapegrace Philippe." 
 
 "I never saw your father, my dear boy," replied Madame 
 Hochon aloud ; '^ut that you are your mother's son is enough 
 to make me love you. Besides, you have talent, from what the 
 late Madame Descoings used to write to me ; she was the only 
 person to give me any news of you in these latter times." 
 
 "Talent?" said the artist; "no, not yet; but with time 
 and perseverance I may some day win both glory and for- 
 tune." 
 
 "By painting ?" said Monsieur Hochon, with deep irony. 
 
 "Come, Adolphine," said Madame Hochon, "go and see 
 about getting the dinner served." 
 
 "Mother," said Joseph, "I will go and carry up our trunks, 
 which have just come." 
 
 "Hochon, will you show Monsieur Bridau the rooms," said 
 the grandmother to Francois. 
 
 As dinner was not till four, and it was now but half-past 
 three, Baruch went round the town giving news of the Bridaus* 
 
 VOL. 4—38 
 
t72 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 arrival, describing Agathe's dress, and, above all, Joseph^ 
 whose hollow cheeks and sickly, strongly-marked features were 
 like the ideal portrait of a brigand. In every house that 
 day Joseph was the sole subject of conversation. 
 
 "Old Rouget^s sister must have met an ape somewhere be- 
 fore her son was born; he is just like a monkey." — "He has a 
 face like a brigand, and eyes like a basilisk." — ".They say he is 
 extraordinary to behold, quite alarming." — "All Paris artists 
 are the same." — "They are as spiteful as cunning asses, and 
 as vicious as apes." — "It is in the nature of their calling." — 
 "I have just seen Monsieur Beaussier, who says he would not 
 for worlds meet him at night in the woods. He saw him in 
 the diligence." — "He has hollows in his face like a horse, and 
 he waves his arms like a madman." — "That fellow is capable 
 of any crime; it is his fault, perhaps, that his brother, who 
 was a fine handsome man, has gone to the bad. Poor Mad- 
 ame Bridau, she does not look very happy with him. Sup- 
 pose we take advantage of his being here to have our likeness 
 drawn ?" 
 
 The result of these opinions, sown broadcast in the town as 
 if by the winds, was a devouring curiosity. All who had 
 a right to call on the Hochons promised themselves that they 
 would do so that evening, to inspect the Parisians. The ar- 
 rival of these two persons in a stagnant town like Tssoudun 
 was as startling as the fall of the Log among the Frogs. 
 .- After placing his mother's luggage and his own in the two 
 attic rooms, and looking round them, Joseph studied the 
 silent house, where the stairs, walls, and panels, bare of adorn- 
 ment, shed a chill, and there was not a thing beyond what was 
 strictly necessary. But when, on going downstairs, he found 
 Monsieur Hochon himself cutting a slice of bread for each 
 person, he understood for the first time Moliere's Harpagon. 
 
 "We should have done better at the inn," thought he. 
 
 The dinner confirmed his apprehensions. After a soup, 
 so thin that quantity was evidently preferred to quality, a 
 dish of bouilli was served — fresh-boiled beef — triumphantly 
 wreathed with parsley. The vegetables cooked with it, served 
 
A BACHPJLOK'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 178 
 
 in a separate dish, were part of the bill of fare. The meat 
 crowned the table, and was flanked by three other dishes; 
 hard eggs on sorrel opposite the vegetables, and a salad, ready 
 dressed with nut-oil, opposite little cups of custard flavored 
 with burnt oats as a substitute for vanilla — as much like 
 vanilla as chicory is like Mocha. Butter, and radishes on 
 little plates at the opposite ends, black radishes and gherkins, 
 completed the display, which Madame Hochon highly ap- 
 proved. The good old lady nodded at her husband, as a 
 hostess happy to see that, at any rate for the first day, he had 
 done things in style. The old man responded with a look and 
 a shrug, easily interpreted to mean : 
 
 "You see what recklessness you lead me into !" 
 
 As soon as the bouilli had been dissected by Monsieur 
 Hochon into slices as thin as the sole of your slipper, it was 
 removed to make way for three pigeons. The wine was of the 
 vintage of 1811. At a hint from her grandmother, Adolphine 
 had graced each end of the table with a bunch of flowers. 
 
 "Well, make the best of a bad job thought the artist, aH 
 he looked at the table. And he began to eat like a man who 
 had breakfasted at Vierzon at six in the morning, off an 
 execrable cup of coffee. 
 
 When J oseph had eaten his bread and asked for some more, 
 Monsieur Hochon rose, slowly felt for a key in the depths of 
 his coat-pocket, opened a cupboard behind him, flourished the 
 stump of a twelve-pound loaf, ceremoniously cut off another 
 slice, which he divided in two, put it on a plate, and passed 
 the plate across the table to the young painter, with the 
 silence and composure of an old soldier, who says to him- 
 self at the beginning of a battle, "Well, I may be dead by to- 
 night." 
 
 Joseph took half the slice, and understood that he must 
 never again ask for more bread. No member of the family 
 was surprised at this scene, which to Joseph seemed so pre- 
 posterous. 
 
 The conversation went on. Agathe heard that the house 
 she was born in, her father's house before he had inherited 
 
174 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 that of the Descoings, had been bought by the Bomiches, and 
 she expressed a wish to see it again. 
 
 •^The Borniches will call this evening, no doubt," said her 
 godmother. "All the town will come to inspect you/' she 
 added to Joseph, "and they will ask you to their houses." 
 
 i^'or dessert the maid brought in the famous soft cheeses 
 of Touraine and le Berry, made of goat's milk, which so 
 exactly reproduce, in a sort of niello, the veining of the vine- 
 leaves on which they are served, that engraving might very 
 well have been invented in Touraine. On each side of the 
 little cheeses Gritte ceremoniously served some walnuts and 
 some rocky biscuits. 
 
 "Come, Gritte, bring us some fruit," said Madame Hochon. 
 
 "Madame, there is no rotten fruit left," replied Gritte. 
 
 Joseph shouted with laughter, as if he had been in his 
 studio with his own companions, for he understood at once that 
 the precaution of beginning first on damaged fruit had de- 
 generated into a habit. 
 
 "Oh, we can eat it all the same !" said he, with the dash of 
 spirit of a man who feels that he must speak. 
 
 "Pray go for some. Monsieur Hochon," said the old lady. 
 
 Monsieur Hochon, much annoyed by the artist's remark, 
 fetched some small peaches, some pears, and late plums. 
 
 "Adolphine, go and cut some grapes," said Madame Hochon 
 to her granddaughter. 
 
 Joseph looked at the two young men with an expression 
 that seemed to say, "And is it to such a diet as this that you 
 owe your blooming appearance ?" 
 
 Baruch understood this keen glance, and could not help 
 smiling, for his cousin Hochon and he had displayed moderate 
 appetites. The food at home was a matter of indifference to 
 men who supped three times a week at la Cognette's. And 
 just before dinner, Baruch had had notice that the Grand 
 Master of the Order had summoned a full meeting at mid- 
 night to have a splendid supper, as he required their co-opera- 
 tion. 
 
 This banquet of welcome offered to his guests by old Hochon 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 175 
 
 explains how necessary these midnight festivities were for 
 the maintenance of these two great fellows, who had fine ap- 
 petites, and who never missed one. 
 
 "We will have some liqueurs in the drawing-room/^ said 
 Madame Hochon, rising, and signing to Joseph to give her 
 his arm. They went out first, and she was able to say to the 
 painter, "Well, my poor boy, your dinner will not give you an 
 indigestion; but I had great difficulty in procuring it for 
 you ! You will find lenten fare here ; just enough to eat to 
 keep you alive, and that is all. So just make the best of it." 
 
 The frank simplicity of the old lady, thus pronouncing 
 judgment on her own house, pleased the painter. 
 
 "I shall have lived fifty years with that old man without 
 ever having heard twenty crowns jingle in my purse. Oh, 
 if it were not for the hope of saving your fortune, I would 
 never have invited your mother and you to stay in my 
 prison !" 
 
 "But. how is it that you are still alive?" said the painter 
 artlessly, with the light-heartedness that never deserts a 
 French artist. 
 
 "Ah, indeed," said she. "I pray." 
 
 J oseph felt a thrill as he heard these words, which gave the 
 old woman such dignity in his eyes that he drew back two or 
 three steps to look in her face ; he saw it radiant, full of such 
 tender serenity, that he said to her : 
 
 "I will paint your portrait " 
 
 "No, no," said she. "I have hated life on earth too much 
 to wish to remain on it in a picture." 
 
 As she spoke the sad words in a light tone, she took from 
 a cupboard a flask containing black-currant brandy, a house- 
 hold liqueur prepared by herself, for she had had the recipe 
 from the famous Sisterhood who also created the Issoudun 
 cakes, one of the greatest achievements of French confection- 
 ery, which no chef, cook, pastry-cook, or confectioner has ever 
 been able to imitate. Monsieur de Eiviere, the Ambassador to 
 Constantinople, ordered immense numbers every year for 
 Mahmoud's seraglio. Adolphine held a small lacquer tray 
 
176 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 full of little old-fashioned glasses with an engraved pattern 
 and a gilt rim; as her grandmother filled them, she carried 
 them round. 
 
 ''Glasses round. — Father will have some !" cried Agathe 
 gaily, reminded of her young days by this time-honored cere- 
 mony. 
 
 "Hochon will go presently to his club to read the papers; 
 we shall have a little time to ourselves/' said the old lady in a 
 low voice. 
 
 In fact, ten minutes later, the three women and Joseph 
 were left to themselves in the drawing-room. Its floor was 
 never polished, only swept, while the tapestried panels, in oak 
 frames, with deep ogees and mouldings, and all the simple 
 heavy furniture, stood before Madame Bridau exactly as she 
 had left them. The Monarchy, the Revolution, the Empire, 
 and the Restoration, respecters of few things, had respected 
 this room^ where their splendors and disasters had left not 
 a trace. 
 
 "Ah, godmother, my life has been cruelly storm-tossed in 
 comparison with yours exclaimed Madame Bridau, surprised 
 to see even a canary bird, which she had known alive, stuffed 
 and standing on the chimney-shelf between the old clock and 
 the old brass branched candlesticks and silver taper stands. 
 
 "My child,'' replied the old lady, "storms are in the heart. 
 The greater and the more needed is our resignation, the 
 greater must our inmost struggles be. — But we will not talk 
 of me, but of your affairs. You are indeed exactly opposite 
 the foe," she went on, pointing to the windows of old Rouget's 
 house. 
 
 "They are sitting down to dinner," remarked Adolphine. 
 
 The young girl, almost a recluse, was constantly looking 
 out of window, hoping to catch some light shed by chance 
 on the enormities ascribed to Maxence Gilet, to la Rabouil- 
 leuse, and to Jean- Jacques, of which a hint now and again 
 reached her ears v/hen she was sent away while they were 
 discussed. The old lady now told her granddaughter to leave 
 her with Monsieur and Madame Bridau till the first visitor 
 should come. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 177 
 
 "For I know my Issoiidun," said she, looking at the two 
 Parisians ; "we shall have ten or twelve batches of inquisitive 
 callers this evening/^ 
 
 Madame Kochon had hardly had time to give them the 
 events and particulars concerning the extraordinary influence 
 exerted over Jean-Jacques Rouget by la Rabouilleuse and 
 Maxence Gilet — not with the synthetic brevity with which 
 they have here been narrated, but with the addition of a thou- 
 sand comments, descriptions, and hypotheses lent to them by 
 good and evil tongues in the town — when Adolphine an- 
 nounced the approach of the Borniches, the Beaussiers, the 
 Lonstean-Prangins, the Fichets, the Goddet-Heraus, fourteen 
 persons in all, who loomed in the distance. 
 
 "So, you see, my dear child," said the old lady in conclusion, 
 "that it will be no small matter to drag this fortune out of the 
 wolfs mouth " 
 
 "It seems to me so difficult, with such a scoundrel as you 
 have described, and a slut like that young witch, that it must 
 be impossible," said Joseph. "We should have to remain at 
 Issoudun a year at least to combat their influence and undo 
 their power over my uncle. — No fortune is worth so mucli 
 vexation, to say nothing of having to stoop to a thousand 
 dishonorable tricks. My mother has but a fortnight's leave 
 of absence; her appointment is a certainty, and she must not 
 risk losing it. In the month of October I have some im- 
 portant work to do which Schinner has secured for me in a 
 nobleman^s house. And to me, madame, yon see, fortune lies 
 in my paint-brnshes." 
 
 This speech was received with profound amazement. Mad- 
 ame Hochon, though relatively superior to the place she lived 
 in, did not believe in painting. She looked at her goddaugh- 
 ter, and again grasped her hand. 
 
 "This Maxence is a second edition of Philippe," said Joseph 
 in his mother's ear; "but with more policy, more style than 
 Philippe has." — "Well, madame," he added aloud, "we shall 
 not long put Monsieur Hochon out of his way by staying 
 here/^ 
 
178 
 
 A BACHELOR^S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "Oh, you are young; you know nothing of the world/' said 
 the old lady. "In a fortnight, with a little political ma- 
 noeuvring, you may do something. Listen to my advice, and 
 act as I may direct you.'' 
 
 "Oh, very gladly!'' cried Joseph. "I am conscious of in- 
 effable incapacity in domestic tactics ; and I am sure I do not 
 know what Desroches himself would advise us to do if, for 
 instance, my uncle refuses to see us to-morrow." 
 
 Mesdames Borniche, Goddet-Herau, Beaussier, Lousteau- 
 Prangin, and Fichet, graced by their husbands, now came in. 
 
 After the usual greetings, and when the fourteen persons 
 had found seats, Madame Hochon could not avoid introduc- 
 ing to them her goddaughter Agathe and Joseph Bridau. 
 Joseph remained on a sofa, and gave himself up to a covert 
 study of the sixty faces which from half-past five till nine 
 came to sit to him gratis, as he said to his mother. And 
 Joseph's attitude throughout this evening in regard to the 
 patricians of Issoudun did nothing to alter the views of the 
 little town in regard to him. Every one left chilled by his 
 ironical gaze, uncomfortable under his smile, or alarmed by 
 his face, sinister, no doubt, to people who could not discern 
 the eccentricity of genius. 
 
 At ten o'clock, when everybody went to bed, the old lady 
 detained her goddaughter in her room till midnight. Then, 
 knowing that they were alone, the two women, while telling 
 each other the troubles of their lives, made an exchange of 
 suffering. As she measured the vastness of the solitude in 
 which all the powers of a beautiful soul had been spent un- 
 recognized, as she heard the last utterances of an intelligence 
 that had missed its opportunities, as she learned the sorrows 
 of a heart so essentially generous and charitable, but whose 
 generosity and charity had never had full play, Agathe no 
 longer regarded herself as the more unfortunate of the two, as 
 she perceived how much mitigation and minor happiness her 
 Paris life had afforded in the midst of the discipline ap- 
 pointed her by God. 
 
 "You who are so pious, godmother, tell me my faults," said 
 she. "Tell me what it is that Gad is Dunishiny- me for." 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 179 
 
 ''He prepares us, my child/' replied the old lady as raid- 
 night struck. 
 
 At midnight the Knights of Idlesse were making their 
 way, one by one, like shades, to meet under the trees of the 
 Boulevard Baron, and walked to and fro, talking in low 
 whispers. 
 
 "What is up was the first question of each newcomer. 
 "I fancy,'' said Frangois, "that all Max intends is to give 
 us a feed." 
 
 "No. Matters are looking awkward for him and la Ka- 
 bouilleuse. He has concocted some plot against these Pa- 
 risians no doubt " 
 
 "It would be good fun to pack them off again." 
 
 "My grandfather," said Baruch, "is in a fright already at 
 having two more mouths to fill, and he would jump at any 
 excuse " 
 
 "Well, Knights !" cried Max in a low voice as he came up, 
 "why are you gazing at the stars ? They will not distil kirsch 
 on our heads. To la Cognette's ! To la Cognette's V 
 
 "To la Cognette's !" 
 
 The shout as of one voice produced a fearful din, that swept 
 across the little town like the hue of soldiers rushing on an 
 assault ; then utter silence fell. Next morning more than one 
 person would say to his neighbor : "Did you hear that fearful 
 yell last night at about one o'clock? I thought there was ;i 
 fire somewhere." 
 
 A supper worthy of la Cognette cheered the eyes of the two- 
 and-twenty guests, for the Order was present in all its num- 
 bers. At two in the morning, when they were beginning to 
 siroter, a word of their own peculiar slang, fairly descriptive 
 of the art of drinking in sips and slowly tasting the wine, 
 Max addressed the meeting : — 
 
 "My dear boys, this morning, in consequence of the never- 
 to-be forgotten trick we played with Fario's cart, your Grand 
 Master was so grossly insulted on a point of honor by that base 
 corn-dealer, and a Spaniard to boot — Ah, those hulks ! — that 
 
180 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 I am determined to let that miscreant feel the whole weight 
 of my vengeance, within the strict limits of our sports. After 
 considering the matter all day, I have hit on a plan for playing 
 him a capital trick, a trick that is enough to drive him mad. 
 While avenging the Order attacked in my person, we may feed 
 certain animals worshiped by the Egyptians, little beasts which 
 are, after all, God's creatures though men persecute them 
 unjustly. Good comes of evil, and evil of good; such is the 
 divine law ! I require you each and all, under pain of your 
 humble servant and Grand Master's displeasure, to procure, 
 as secretly as possible, twenty rats, or if possible, lady rats 
 expecting families by God's grace. You must collect your 
 contingent within three days. If you can get more, the 
 surplus will be acceptable. Keep these interesting rodents 
 without food, for it is essential that the dear little beasts 
 should be ravenously hungry. Observe, I include as rats, 
 mice and field-mice. If we multiply twenty by twenty- 
 two, we shall have more than four hundred accomplices, 
 who, when turned out in the old church of the Ca- 
 puchins, where Fario has stored all the seed-corn he has just 
 laid in, will consume a certain quantity of it. But we must 
 look sharp ! — Fario is to deliver a large parcel of seeds in a 
 week; now what I want is that my Spanish friend, who is 
 traveling round for orders, should find a fearful waste. 
 
 "Gentlemen, the merit of this invention is not mine," he 
 went on, noting signs of general approbation. " ^Kender unto 
 Caesar the things which are Ca9sar's, and unto God the things 
 that are God's.' This is an imitation of Samson's foxes in the 
 Bible. But Samson was an incendiary, and consequently 
 not a philanthropist; while we, like the Brahmins, are the 
 protectors of a persecuted race. Mademoiselle Flore Brazier 
 has already set all her mouse-traps, and Kouski, my right 
 hand, is hunting field-mice — I have spoken." 
 
 "I know," said Goddet junior, "where to get an animal as 
 good as forty rats single-handed." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "A squirrel/' 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 18) 
 
 "And I cnn contribute a small monkey who will eat corn 
 till he bursts/' said a novice. 
 
 "No good !" said Max. "It will be known where the beasts 
 come from.'' 
 
 "In the course of the night," said young Beaussier, "we 
 might bring in one pigeon from the pigeon-house of each farm 
 in the neighborhood, by putting it through a hole made in the 
 roof, and there soon would be thousands of pigeons." 
 
 "Well, then, for a week Fario's corn-store is the order of 
 the night," said Gilet, smiling at the tall youth Beaussier 
 junior. "You know that they are astir early at Saint-Pa- 
 terne. Mind no one is to go there without having put the 
 soles of his list-shoes on hind part before. Our good knight 
 Beaussier, the inventor of the pigeon trick, takes the command. 
 For my part, I will take care to leave my mark on the grain. 
 I leave it to you to be quarter-masters general to the forces 
 of ]*ats. If the shop-boy sleeps in the old church, his com^ 
 panions must make him drunk; and do it cleverly, so as to 
 get him far away from the banquet to be provided for the 
 rodents." 
 
 "And you say nothing about the Parisians ?" asked Goddet. 
 
 "Oh !" said Max, "they must be studied. At the same 
 time, I will give my fine fowling-piece, that came to me from 
 the Emperor, a first-class article from the Versailles factory— > 
 it is worth two thousand francs — to any one who will hit upon 
 a plan for playing these Parisians some trick to get them 
 into such bad odor with Monsieur and Madame Hochon that 
 the old folks should pack them off, or that they should go 
 of their own accord; without causing too much annoyance, 
 iiowever, to the ancestors of my good friends Frangois and 
 Baruch.'' 
 
 "All right, I will think it over," said young Goddet, who was 
 passionately addicted to shooting. 
 
 "And if the inventor of the ploy does not want the gun, 
 he may have my horse," added Maxence. 
 
 Thenceforth twenty brains were vainly racked to concoct 
 some plot against Agathe and her son, in conformity with this 
 
182 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 programme. But the devil alone, or some chance, could suc- 
 ceed ; the conditions of the case made it so difficult. 
 
 Next morning Agathe and Joseph came downstairs a min- 
 ute before the second breakfast at ten o'clock. The meal 
 called the first breakfast consisted of a cup of milk and a slice 
 of bread and butter, eaten in bed, or on getting up. 
 
 While waiting for Madame Hochon, who, in spite of old 
 age, carefully went through all the ceremonies employed in 
 their toilet by the duchesses of Louis XV. 's reign, Joseph 
 saw, on the threshold of the house opposite, Jean-Jacques 
 Rouget standing squarely in the doorway. He, naturally, 
 pointed him out to his mother, who could not recognize her 
 brother, so little was he like what he had been when they 
 parted. 
 
 ^^There is your brother,^^ said Adolphine, who had given her 
 grandmother her arm. 
 
 "What an idiot V' cried Joseph. 
 
 Agathe clasped her hands and looked up to Heaven. 
 
 "What have they brought him to ? Good Heavens ! is that 
 a man of fifty-seven?'^ 
 
 She wished to look at him attentively, and then saw Flore 
 Brazier come up behind him, her hair dressed without a cap, 
 and displaying, through the gauze of a kerchief trimmed 
 with lace, snowy shoulders and a dazzling bosom; she was 
 dressed as elaborately as a rich courtesan, wearing a tightly- 
 fitting gown of grenadine — a silk stuff then very fashionable 
 — with gigot sleeves, and magnificent bracelets on her wrists. 
 A gold chain meandered over the bodice of la Rabouilleuse, 
 who had brought Jean- Jacques his black silk cap that he 
 might not catch cold — it was evidently a got-up scene. 
 
 "What a lovely woman cried Joseph. "Of a rare kind, 
 too ! Made to be painted, as we say ! What flesh-tints, what 
 splendid coloring! What a skin, what curves, and what 
 shoulders! She is a magnificent Caryatid! And a perfect 
 model for a Titian's Venus !" 
 
 To Adolphine and Madame Hochon this might have been 
 Greek; but Agathe, behind her son, made a sign to them as 
 much as to say that she was accustomed to this jargon. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 183 
 
 "You think a woman lovely who is robbing you of a for- 
 tune!" exclaimed Madame Hochon. 
 
 *'That does not prevent her being a splendid model ! 
 Exactly full enough, without the hips or bust having become 
 coarse " 
 
 "My dear, you are not in your studio," said Agathe. 
 'Adolphine is here " 
 
 "To be sure, I beg pardon; but, really, all the way 
 from Paris along the road I saw none but apes " 
 
 "But my dear godmother," said Agathe, "how can I see 
 my brother ? For if that creature is with him " 
 
 "Pooh !" said J oseph. "I will go to see him. For, indeed, 
 I don't think him quite such an idiot if he has wit enough 
 to gladden his eyes with a Venus worthy of Titian." 
 
 "If he were not an idiot," said Monsieur Hochon, coming 
 in, "he would have married comfortably, have had a family, 
 and you would have had no chance at all of his fortune. 
 Some good comes out of evil." 
 
 "That is a good idea of your son's; he can go first to call 
 on his uncle," said Madame Hochon. "He will give him to 
 understand that if you go he must receive you alone." 
 
 "And so affront Mademoiselle Brazier?" said Moj 
 Hochon. "No, no, madame. Put up with this 
 you do not get the fortune, try to secure a le| 
 
 The Hochons were no match for M 
 middle of breakfast the Pole arriv( 
 master. Monsieur Rouget, addre^ 
 Bridau. 
 
 Here is the letter which 
 iMnd read :- 
 
 1"My dear Sister, — 
 \ "I hear through sj 
 can guess the reas( 
 ame Hochon's hi 
 shall be recei: 
 first to call 
 
184 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 to keep the house. I offer you my affectionate respects. I 
 should be delighted to meet your son, whom I shall hope to 
 see at dinner with me to-day, for young men are less precise 
 than women as to the company they meet. He will give me 
 great pleasure by coming accompanied by Messieurs Baruch 
 Borniche and Frangois Hochon. 
 
 "Your affectionate brother, 
 
 ''J.-J, Kouget/' 
 
 ''Say that we are at breakfast, that Madame Bridau will 
 send an answer presently, and the gentlemen accept the in- 
 vitation," said Monsieur Hochon to the maid. And the old 
 man laid his finger on his lip to impress silence on all the 
 party. 
 
 When the house-door was shut. Monsieur Hochon, having 
 no suspicion of the alliance between his grandsons and Max- 
 ence, shot one of his keenest glances at his wife and Agathe. 
 
 "He no more wrote that," said he, "than I am able to pay 
 down twenty-five louis. — The soldier is our correspondent." 
 
 "What does it all mean?" said Madame Hochon. "Never 
 mind, we will answer it. You, monsieur," she added, turn- 
 
 the painter, "will dine there, I hope ; but if " 
 
 stopped short at a look from her husband, 
 ith of his wife's affection for Agathe, old 
 should leave her goddaughter some 
 losing all the Eouget property, 
 the elder, the miser hoped to 
 ' one day master of everything. 
 So Madame Hochon had 
 :ract some concessions from 
 would make a will, 
 pests. The Eouget for- 
 fact enormous; and 
 see it in the hands 
 disreputable out- 
 vied, the sooner 
 wggle, which 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 till now had been only a scheme of his wife^s, had actually 
 begun between the rightful heirs and the unrighteous 
 schemers. Monsieur Hochon's mind had waked up from the 
 sleep induced by provincial life. Madame llochon was quite 
 agreeably surprised when, that very morning, she understood, 
 from some kindly expression of old Hochon's with regard 
 to her goddaughter, that this competent and wily auxiliary 
 was on the side of the Bridaus. 
 
 By noon the combined talents of Monsieur and Madame 
 Hochon, of Agathe and Joseph — a good deal surprised to 
 find the two old people so careful in their choice of words — 
 had brought to birth the following reply for the especial bene^ 
 fit of Flore and Maxence : — 
 
 "My dear Brother, — 
 
 "If I have waited thirty years without revisiting this town, 
 or keeping up any intercourse with any one in it, not even with 
 you, the fault lies not alone with the strange and false ideas my 
 father had formed against me, but partly with the misfortunes 
 and with the happiness of my life in Paris; for, though God 
 made me a happy wife. He has sorely stricken me as a mother. 
 You cannot but know that my son, your nephew Philippe, 
 lies under a capital charge of treason in consequence of his 
 devotion to the Emperor. Hence, you will not be surprised 
 to hear that a widow, compelled to earn her living by accept- 
 ing a humble employment in a lottery office, should have come 
 to seek consolation and substantial help from those who have 
 known her from her birth. 
 
 "The profession taken up by the son who is with me is 
 one of those which demand great talent, great sacrifices, and 
 long study before leading to any success. Glory precedes 
 fortune in this career. Is not this as much as to say that 
 even if J oseph makes his name famous, he will still be poor ? 
 
 "I, your sister, my dear Jean- Jacques, would have endured 
 in silence the effects of our father's injustice, but forgive me 
 as a mother for reminding you that you have two nephews — ■ 
 one who served on the Emperor^s staff at the battle of Men- 
 
186 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 tereau, and fought with the Imperial Guard at Waterloo, and 
 who is now in prison ; the other who, from the age of thirteen, 
 has been led by a vocation into a difficult though splendid 
 career. 
 
 "So I thank you, my dear brother, with heartfelt warmth, 
 for your letter, both on my own account and on Joseph's ; he 
 will certainly wait on you at your invitation. Ill health ex- 
 cuses everything, my dear Jean- Jacques ; I will see you in your 
 own house. A sister is always at home in her brother's house, 
 whatever life he may choose to lead. 
 
 "Accept my affectionate regards, 
 
 "Agathe Eouget." 
 
 "There, the battle has begun. When you go there," said 
 Itlonsieur Hochon, "you can speak plainly to him about his 
 nephews." 
 
 The letter was delivered by Gritte, who returned in ten 
 lainutes to report to her superiors all she had been able to 
 see or hear, as is the custom in the provinces. 
 
 "Madame," said she, "since last evening, all that part of the 
 house that madame had left 
 
 "Madame — who ?" asked old Hochon. 
 
 "Oh, they call la Kabouilleuse madame over there," replied 
 Gritte. 
 
 "She had left the drawing-room and everything that was 
 about Monsieur Rouget in a dreadful state; but since yester- 
 day the house is all to rights again, as it was before Monsieur 
 Maxence came there. You could see yourself in everything. 
 Vedie told me that Kouski was out on horseback by six this 
 morning; he came in about nine, bringing in provisions. 
 Indeed, there is to be the best of dinners, a dinner fit for the 
 Archbishop of Bourges. Little pans are standing in big pans, 
 and everything in order in the kitchen. ^I mean to treat my 
 nephew handsomely,' the old fellow said, and made them tell 
 him all they were doing. The Eougets were highly flattered 
 by the letter, it would seem ; madame came out to tell me so. 
 Oh, she is dressed ! Such a dress ! I never saw anything 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 187 
 
 handsomer! Madame has diamonds in her ears — two dia- 
 monds worth a thousand crowns apiece, Vedie told me — and 
 lace ! and rings on her fingers, and bracelets good enough for 
 a shrine, and a silk gown fit for an altar-front ! And then 
 says she to me: ^Monsieur is delighted to think his sister is 
 so read}^ and willing, and I hope she will allow us to entertain 
 her as she deserves. And we look forward to her good opin- 
 ion of us when she hears how welcome we make her son. And 
 monsieur is most impatient to see his nephew.^ — Madame 
 had little black satin shoes and stockings ! Oh, really won- 
 derful. Like flowers on the silk, and holes like lace, and 
 you see the pink flesh through. In short, she is up to the 
 nines ! With such a dear little apron in front of her, that 
 Vedie told me that apron alone cost two years of our 
 wages 
 
 "Come, come, we must get ourselves up !" said the artist, 
 smiling. 
 
 "Well, Monsieur Hochon, and what are you thinking 
 about ?" said the old lady, when Gritte had left the room. 
 
 Madame Hochon pointed to her husband sitting with hit? 
 head in his hands, and his elbows on the arms of his chair, 
 lost in thought. 
 
 "You have a Maitre Benin to deal with," said the old man. 
 "You, young man, with your notions, are no match in a 
 struggle with a scoundrel of such skill as Maxence. What- 
 ever I may say, you are sure to make some blunder; but, at 
 any rate, tell me this evening all you see, hear, and do. Go — 
 and God be with you ! Try to have a few minutes alone with 
 your uncle. If, in spite of all you can do, you fail in that, 
 it will throw some light on their scheme ; but if you are alone 
 with him for one instant — alone, without being overheard, 
 mind you! — You must speak very plainly to him as to his 
 position — which is not a becoming one — and plead your 
 mother's cause.'' 
 
 At four o'clock Joseph crossed the straits which divided the 
 Hochons' house from the Rougets', the avenue of sickly lime- 
 trees, two hundred feet long, and as wide as the Grande 
 VOL. 4—39 
 
188 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Narette. When the nephew appeared, Kouski, in freshly 
 blacked boots, black trousers, white waistcoat, and black coat, 
 led the way to announce him. 
 
 The table was ready laid in the sitting-room, and Joseph, 
 who easily identified his uncle, went straight up to him and 
 embraced him, bowing to Flore and Maxence. 
 
 "We have never met since I came into the world, my dear 
 uncle," said the painter gaily. "But better late than never." 
 
 "You are very welcome, my dear boy," said the old man, 
 looking at his nephew with a bewildered air. 
 
 "Madame," said Joseph to Flore with an artist's enthusi- 
 asm, "this morning I was envying my uncle the pleasure he 
 enjoys of admiring you every day." 
 
 "Is not she beautiful?" said the old man, his dull eyes 
 almost sparkling. 
 
 "Beautiful enough to be a painter^s model." 
 
 "Nephew," said the old man, his elbow being nudged by 
 Flore, "this is Monsieur Maxence Gilet, a man who served 
 the Emperor, like your brother, in the Imperial Guard." 
 
 Joseph rose and bowed. 
 
 "Your brother, I think, was a dragoon, and I was only a 
 mud-crusher," said Maxence. 
 
 "On horseback or on foot," observed Flore, "you risked 
 your skin all the same." 
 
 Joseph studied Max as narrowly as Max studied Joseph. 
 Max was dressed like the young men of fashion of the day, 
 for he had his clothes from Paris. A pair of sky-blue cloth 
 trousers, very fully pleated, made the best of his feet by show- 
 ing only the tips of his boots and his spurs. His waist was 
 firmly held by a white waistcoat with fancy, gold buttons, laced 
 behind to serve as a belt; this waistcoat, buttoning to the 
 throat, set off his broad chest, and his black satin stock obliged 
 him to hold his head up like a soldier. His black coat was 
 extremely well cut. A handsome gold chain hung from his 
 waistcoat pocket, where a flat watch scarcely showed. He was 
 playing with one of the patent watch-keys just invented by 
 Breguet. 
 
A BACHELOri'R ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 189 
 
 ''He is a very good-looking fellow !" said Joseph to himself, 
 admiring as an artist the face full of life, the appearance of 
 strength, and the keen gray eyes inherited by Max from his 
 gentleman father. '^J\Iy uncle must be a deadly old bore, 
 and that handsome girl has sought compensation. It is a 
 case of three in a boat, that is very clear." 
 
 At this moment Baruch and Frangois came in. 
 
 "You have not yet seen the Tower of Issoudun ?" said Flore 
 to Joseph. "Well, if you like to take a little walk till dinner 
 is ready, which will not be for an hour yet, we will show you 
 the great curiosity of the town " 
 
 "With pleasure," said the artist, unable to discern the 
 smallest objection. 
 
 While Flore was putting on her bonnet, her gloves, and her 
 cashmere shawl, Joseph suddenly caught sight of the pictures, 
 and started to his feet as if some enchanter had touched him 
 with his v/and. 
 
 "Ah, ha! so you have pictures, uncle?" said he, looking at 
 the one that had struck him. 
 
 "Yes," said the old fellov,^, "they came to me from the Des - 
 coings, who, during the Revolution, bought up some of the 
 pickings of the convents and churches of le Berry." 
 
 But Joseph was not listening. He went from picture to 
 picture. 
 
 "Magnificent!" he exclaimed. "V\^hy, what a fine thing! 
 That man did not spoil canvas. Bless me, why, better and 
 better ; as we see them at Nicolet's " 
 
 "There are seven or eight more, very large ones, in the loft, 
 that were kept for the sake of the frames," said Gilet. 
 
 "Let me see them," cried the artist, and Maxence took him 
 to the loft. 
 
 Joseph came down in raptures. Max said a word in la 
 Rabouilleuse's ear, and she led the old man to the window; 
 Joseph caught these words spoken in an undertone, but still 
 so that he could hear them : 
 
 "Your nephew is a painter ; 5^ou can do nothing with these 
 pictures. Be good-natured, and give them to him." 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "It would seem," said Kouget, leaning on Flore's arm, and 
 coming to the spot where his nephew stood in ecstasies before 
 an Albano, — "it would seem that you are a painter " 
 
 "Only a smudger as yet/' said Joseph. 
 
 "Whatever is that?" said Flore. 
 
 "A beginner/' said Joseph. 
 
 "Well," said J ean- J acques, "if these pictures can be of any 
 use to you in your business, I will give them to you. . . . 
 But without the frames. The frames are gilt, and then they 
 are quaint; I will put " 
 
 "Why, of course, uncle/' cried Joseph, enchanted, "you 
 will put copies into them, which I will send you, and which 
 shall be of the same size." 
 
 "But that will take time, and you will want canvas and 
 paints," said Flore. "It will cost you money. Come, Pere 
 Kouget, suppose you offer your nephew a hundred francs for 
 each picture; there are twenty-seven here, and I think there 
 are eleven more in the loft, which are enormous, and ought to 
 cost double — say four thousand francs for the lot. Yes, your 
 uncle may very well spend four thousand francs on the copies, 
 since he is to keep the frames. You will have to get frames 
 too, and they say the frames cost more than the pict- 
 ures; there is gold on them. ... I say, monsieur," 
 Flore went on, shaking the old man's arm, "listen, that is not 
 dear: your nephew will charge you four thousand francs for 
 quite new pictures in the place of your old ones. ... It 
 is a civil way of making him a present of the money," said she 
 in his ear. "He does not strike me as being very flush " 
 
 "Very well, nephew, I will pay you four thousand francs 
 for the copies " 
 
 "No, no/' said Joseph honestly. "Four thousand francs 
 and the pictures is too much ; for the pictures, you see, are of 
 value." 
 
 "Why, accept it, booby/' said Flore, "since he is your 
 uncle . . ." 
 
 "Very well, I accept it/' said Joseph, quite bewildered, 
 for he had recognized one picture as by Perugino. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 161 
 
 So the artist looked quite gleeful as he went out, giving 
 his arm to la Rabouilleuse, which perfectly suited Max's pur- 
 pose. Neither Floie, nor Rouget, nor Max, nor any one at 
 Issoudun had any idea of the value of the pictures, and the 
 wily Max believed that he had purchased very cheaply Flore's 
 triumph as she marched proudly arm in arm with her master's 
 nephew, on the best possible terms with him, in the eyes of the 
 astonished townsfolk. People came to their doors to see the 
 victory of la Rabouilleuse over the family. This astounding 
 fact made the deep sensation on which Max had built his 
 hopes. So when the uncle and nephew went in at about five, 
 the talk in every household was of the perfect alliance be- 
 tween Flore and Max and Pere Rouget's nephew. And the 
 story of the gift of the pictures and the four thousand francB 
 was all over the town already. 
 
 The dinner, to which Lousteau, one of the judges, and the 
 Mayor of Issoudun, was invited, was really splendid; it wai^ 
 one of the country meals which last five hours. The finest 
 wines gave spirit to the conversation. Over the dessert, at 
 nine o'clock, the painter, seated between Flore and Max, op- 
 posite his uncle, was almost hail-fellow with the officer, whom 
 he thought the best of good souls. At eleven o'clock Joseph 
 went home, a little screwed. As to old Rouget, Kouski carried 
 him to bed dead drunk; he had eaten like a traveling actor, anc\ 
 drunk like the sands of the desert. 
 
 "Well, now," said Max, left alone with Flore, "is not this 
 better than sulking with them? The Bridaus are well re- 
 ceived; they will get some little presents, and, loaded with 
 favors, they can only sing our praises; they will go quietly 
 away, and leave us quietly where we are. To-morrow morn- 
 ing Kouski and I between us will take out all those pictures, 
 and send them over for the painter to see them when he wakes ; 
 we will put the frames in the loft, and have the room repapered 
 with one of those varnished papers, with scenes on it from 
 Telemaque, such as I saw at Monsieur Mouilleron's." 
 
 "Why, that will be ever so much nrettier !" cried Flore. 
 
192 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Joseph did not wake till noon next day. From his bed he 
 saw the pictures leaning one above another, having been 
 brought in without his hearing anything. While he was ex- 
 amining them afresh, and recognizing them as masterpieces, 
 studying the handling of each master, or finding their sig- 
 natures, his m^other went to thank her brother and to see him, 
 urged to do so by old Hochon, who, knowing all the blunders 
 committed by Joseph the evening before, despaired of the 
 Bridaus' prospects. 
 
 "You have to deal with two very sharp customers. In all 
 my life I never met with so sly a fox as that soldier. War is the 
 making of these youths, it would seem. Joseph walked into 
 the trap. He appeared arm in arm with la Eabouilleuse. 
 They have shut his mouth, no doubt, with wine, some rubbishy 
 pictures, and four thousand francs. Your artist has not cost 
 Maxence dear.'' 
 
 The cunning old man had laid down a line of conduct for 
 his wife's goddaughter, instructing her to seem to agree with 
 Maxence and cajole Flore, so as to become to some extent 
 familiar with her, and obtain a few minutes' talk alone with 
 her brother. Madame Bridau v/as very well received by Jean- 
 J acques, tutored by Flore. The old man was in bed, ill from 
 the excesses of the previous evening. As Agathe could not 
 attack him on serious questions at the very first moment. Max 
 had thought it correct and handsome to leave the brother and 
 sister to themselves. He had calculated judiciously. Poor 
 x\gathe found her brother so ill that she would not deprive 
 him of Mademoiselle Brazier's attentions. 
 
 "Besides," she said to the old man, "I should wish to know 
 the person to whom I am indebted for my brother's happi- 
 ness." 
 
 These words gave the poor fellow evident pleasure ; he rang 
 and sent for Madame Brazier. Flore, as may be supposed, 
 was not far off. The female antagonists exchanged salutes. 
 La Eabouilleuse displayed the most obsequious care, the 
 tenderest attentions; she thought monsieur's head was too 
 low, and rearranged the pillows; she was like a wife of yester- 
 day. And the old man overflowed with emotion. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 193 
 
 "We owe you mucli gratitude, mademoiselle/^ said Agathe, 
 "for all the marks of attachment you have so long given to 
 my brother, and for the care with which you provide for his 
 happiness/^ 
 
 "It is very true, my dear Agathe/' said the old man, "she 
 made me first know happiness; and she is a woman full of 
 admirable qualities." 
 
 "And so, brother, you cannot reward her too highly; you 
 ought to have made her your wife. Yes ! I am too religious 
 a woman not to wish that I might see you obey the precepts 
 of religion. You would both be the happier if you were not 
 at war with law and morality. I came here, my dear brother, 
 to appeal for help in very great trouble; but do not imagine 
 that we intended to make the slightest remarks on the way in 
 which you may dispose of your fortune." 
 
 "Madame," said Flore, "v/e know that your father was un- 
 just to you. Your brother can tell you," she added, staring 
 hard at her victim, "that the only quarrels we have ever had, 
 he and I, have been about you. I tell monsieur that he owes 
 you part of the fortune of which you were robbed by my poor 
 benefactor — for he was my benefactor, your father was," and 
 she put on a tearful voice, "and I shall never forget him — ^bui; 
 your brother, madame, has listened to reason " 
 
 "Yes," said old Rouget, "when I make my will, you will not 
 be forgotten " 
 
 "We will not talk of that, brother ; you do not know yet whai; 
 my character is " 
 
 From these beginnings the upshot of this first visit may be 
 imagined. Eouget invited his sister to dinner for the nexl; 
 day but one. 
 
 During these three days the Knights of Idlesse caught aiA 
 enormous number of rats, mice, and field-mice, which were 
 turned out starving one fine night among the seed-corn, to 
 the number of four hundred and thirty-six, among them 
 many mothers with young. Not satisfied with having quar- 
 tered these pensioners on Fario, the Knights made some holes 
 in the roof of the old chapel, and put in ten pigeons brought 
 
194 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 from ten different farmsteads. The creatures held high 
 festival, with all the greater freedom because Fario's boy was 
 led away by another young rascal, with whom he drank from 
 morning till night, taking no care whatever of his master's 
 merchandise. 
 
 Madame Bridau, in opposition to old Hochon's opinion, 
 believed that her brother had not yet made his will ; she pur- 
 posed asking him what his intentions were with regard to 
 Mademoiselle Brazier, on the first opportunity she might find 
 of taking a walk with him alone; for Max and Flore con- 
 stantly beguiled her with this hope, which was always deceived. 
 
 Though the Knights of the Order all tried to hit on a 
 scheme for putting the two Parisians to flight, they devised 
 nothing but impossible follies. 
 
 Hence at the end of a week, half of the time the Bridaus 
 were to spend in Issoudun, they were no further forward than 
 on the first day. 
 
 "Your lawyer does not know what a country town is," said 
 old Hochon to Madame Bridau. "What you came here to do 
 cannot be done in fourteen days, nor in fourteen months. You 
 would have to be constantly with your brother, and instil into 
 him some ideas of religion. You can only undermine the 
 fortress guarded by Flore and Maxence by sapping it through 
 a priest. That is my opinion, and it is high time you should 
 act on it.'' 
 
 "You have strange ideas of the priesthood," said Madame 
 Hochon to her husband. 
 
 "Oh!" cried the old man. "There you are, you godly 
 people !" 
 
 "God will not bless any endeavor that is based on sacrilege," 
 said Madame Bridau. "To make use of religion for such 
 a Oh ! We should be worse than Flore !" 
 
 This conversation took place at breakfast, and Frangois 
 and Baruch both listened with open ears. 
 
 "Sacrilege !" cried old Hochon. "But if some good Abbe, 
 as clever as some I have known, understood the predicament 
 in which you stand, he vv^ould not regard it as sacrilege to lead 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 195 
 
 home to God your brother's erring soul, to bring him to true 
 repentance for his sins, to persuade him to send away the 
 woman who is the cause of the scandal — providing for her, 
 of course — to point out to him that his conscience would rest 
 in peace if he only left a few thousand francs a year to the 
 Archbishop's little Seminary, and the remainder of his for- 
 tune to his legitimate heirs." 
 
 The passive obedience exacted by the old miser from his 
 children, and handed down to his grandchildren, who had in- 
 deed been left to his guardianship, and for whom he was amass- 
 ing a large fortune — doing by them, he was wont to say, as he 
 would do by himself — did not allow of the faintest sign of 
 astonishment or disapproval on the part of Baruch and 
 Frangois ; but they exchanged glances full of meaning, telling 
 each other how fatal this idea would be to Max's interests. 
 
 "The truth is, madame," said Baruch, "if you wish to in- 
 herit your brother's property, the only real way is this — you 
 must remain at Issoudun as long as is necessary to employ 
 him " 
 
 "Mother," Joseph put in, "you will do well to write all this 
 to Desroches. For my part, I look for nothing more from my 
 uncle than what he has so kindly given me." 
 
 After assuring himself of the great value of the thirty-nine 
 pictures, Joseph had carefully unmounted the canvases, had 
 pasted paper over them, laid them one over another flat in a 
 huge case, and addressed it by carrier to Desroches, to whom 
 he meant to send a letter of advice. This precious load had 
 been sent off the day before. 
 
 "You are cheaply paid off," said Monsieur Hoehon. 
 
 "But I shall have no difficulty in getting a hundred and 
 fifty thousand francs for the pictures," said Joseph. 
 
 "A painter's notion !" said Monsieur Hochon, looking dubi- 
 ously at Joseph. 
 
 "Listen," said Joseph, turning to his mother, "I am going 
 to write to Desroches and explain the state of affairs here. If 
 he advises you to stay, you shall stay. As to your place in the 
 office, we can always find something else as good 
 
196 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "My dear boy/' said Madame Hochon, as they rose from 
 table, "I do not know what your uncle's pictures may be, but 
 they ought to be good, judging by the places they came from. 
 If they are worth even forty thousand francs, a thousand 
 francs apiece, tell nobody. Though my grandchildren are 
 discreet and well brought up, they might, without meaning 
 any mischief, talk about this supposed treasure-trove; all Is- 
 soudun would hear of it, and the foe must not suspect the. 
 truth. You really behave like a child I" 
 
 In point of fact, by midday many persons in Issoudun, and 
 foremost of all Maxence Gilet, had been informed of Joseph's 
 opinion, which led to a great hunt for old pictures that had 
 lain forgotten, and to the disinterment of some execrable 
 daubs. Max repented of having prompted the old man to 
 give away the pictures ; and his rage against the rightful heirs, 
 on learning old Hochon's scheme, was increased by what he 
 called his stupidity. Keligious influence on this feeble crea- 
 ture was the only thing to be dreaded. Hence the warning 
 given him by his two allies confirmed Max in his determina- 
 tion to realize all Eouget's mortgages,' and to borrow on his 
 land so as to invest in State securities at once. But he con- 
 sidered the necessity for getting rid of the Parisians as even 
 more pressing. Now the talents of a Mascarille or a Scapin 
 would have found this a hard problem to solve. 
 
 Flore, counseled by Max, began to say that monsieur tired 
 himself too much by taking walks ; that at his age he needed 
 carriage exercise. This was necessary as a pretext for the 
 expeditions to be made, without the neighbors knowing it, to 
 Bourges, Vierzon, Chateauroux, and Vatan, wherever this 
 scheme for calling in his investments might require that 
 Eouget, Max, and Flore should go. So by the end of the v/eek 
 all Issoudun was startled by the news that Pere Eouget had 
 sent to Bourges for a carriage, a step which the Knights of 
 Idlesse interpreted in favor of la Eabouilleuse. Flore and Max 
 purchased a hideous traveling-chaise with rickety windows? 
 and a split leather hood, that had seen two-and-twenty years^ 
 and nine campaigns ; this they bought at a sale on the death 
 
A BACHELOIi'S I<:STABLISHMENT 
 
 107 
 
 of a colonel, a great friend of Marshal Bcrtrand^s, who, during 
 the absence of the Emperor's faithful follower, had under- 
 taken the charge of his estates in le Berry. This vehicle, 
 painted dark-green, v/as not unlike a barouche, but the pole 
 had been altered and shafts subsiitutod, so that it could be 
 drawn by one horse. It was now one of those carriages which 
 reduced fortunes have made so fashionable, which, indeed, 
 were honestly designated as demi-f or tunes, for they were 
 originally called seringues. The lining of this demi-f ortune, 
 sold as a barouche, was moth-eaten; the trimmings were like 
 a pensioner's stripes; it rattled like old iron; but it cost no 
 more than four hundred and fifty francs, and Max bought 
 of the troops in garrison at Bourges a strong, well-broken 
 mare to draw it. He had this vehicle repainted dark-brown, 
 and found a fairly good set of second-hand harness, and the 
 town of Issoudun was agitated from top to bottom, on the 
 watch for Pere Eouget's ^*^turn-out." 
 
 The first time the good m.an made use of his barouche the 
 noise brought every household to the front door, and all the 
 windows were full of peeping heads. The second time he 
 drove as far as Bourges, where, to avoid all further trouble 
 in connection with the transactions, advised — or, if you will, 
 commanded — by Flore Brazier, he signed in the notary's office 
 a power of attorney in favor of Maxence Gilet, enabling him 
 to transfer all the moneys m.entioned in the document. Flore 
 undertook to settle v/ith monsieur as to the loans in Issoudun 
 and the immediate neighborhood. Eouget went to the first 
 notary in Bourges and desired him to find him a hundred and 
 forty thousand francs on the security of his land. 
 
 No one at Issoudun knew anything about these proceed- 
 ings, so quietly and cleverly carried out. Max, a good horse= 
 m.an, could get to Bourges and back between five in the morn- 
 ing and five in the afternoon on his horse, and Flore never 
 left the old man. Old Rouget had consented without demur 
 to the alterations which Flore had suggested to him; but he 
 insisted that the bond bearing fifty thousand francs a year 
 interest should stand as life-interest only in Mademoiselle 
 
198 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Brazier's name, and that the capital should remain his abso- 
 lutely. The tenacity displayed by the old man in the private 
 struggle which arose over this question made Max very un- 
 easy, for he fancied he could discern in it some reflections 
 inspired by the sight of his natural heirs. 
 
 In the midst of these great changes, which Max hoped to 
 conceal from the prying townsfolk, he forgot the corn-dealer. 
 Fario was preparing to deliver his orders, after much travel-' 
 ing and bargaining, with a view to raise the price of seed- 
 corn. But the day after his return to Issoudun, living op- 
 posite the Capuchin chapel, he saw the roof black with pigeons. 
 He cursed himself for having neglected to examine the roof, 
 and hastily went across to his store-house, where he found 
 half his corn devoured. Myriads of traces left by mice, rats, 
 and field-mice betrayed another cause of the ruin. The church 
 was a perfect Noah's ark. But the Spaniard turned as white 
 as linen with fury when, on trying to calculate the extent of the 
 loss and damage, he discovered that the lower strata of grain 
 were soaked and sprouting, from a quantity of water having 
 been injected into the heart of the corn-heaps by means of a 
 tin tube — an idea of Max's. Pigeons and rats might be ac- 
 counted for by animal instinct; but in this last piece of 
 malice the hand of man was evident. 
 
 Fario sat down on an altar-step in a side chapel, and hid 
 his head in his hands. After half an hour's meditations — 
 a Spaniard's meditations — on looking up, he saw the squirrel 
 which young Goddet had insisted on placing there as boarder, 
 playing with its tail on the transom supporting the roof- 
 beam. The Spaniard rose calmly, showing his shop-clerk a 
 face as impassive as an Arab's. Fario made no lamentation. 
 He went home, found some laborers to pack the good corn, 
 and spread what was damp in the sun to dry, so as to save as 
 much as possible; then he set to work to deliver his orders, 
 calculating the loss at three-fifths. But as his own trans- 
 actions had sent prices up, he lost again in repurchasing those 
 three-fifths ; thus his total loss was of more than half. 
 
 The corn-dealer^ who had no enemies, unerringly attributed 
 
A BACHELOK'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 109 
 
 this piece of revenge to Gilet. It was clear to him that Max 
 and some others, the inventors of so many nocturnal pranks, 
 had undoubtedly dragged his cart up to the tower, and amused 
 themselves by ruining him ; his loss, indeed, amounted to a 
 thousand crowns, almost all the capital he had laboriously 
 accumulated since the peace. Inspired by the hope of revenge, 
 the man put forth all the perseverance and acumen of a spy 
 who has been promised a handsome reward. Lurking in am- 
 bush by night in the town, he obtained absolute proof of the 
 proceedings of the Knights of Idlesse ; he saw them, he counted 
 them; he watched their trysts, and their suppers at la Co- 
 gnette's; then he hid himself to witness one of their tricks, 
 and became familiar with their nocturnal doings. 
 
 In spite of his rides and his anxieties. Max would not 
 neglect this business of the night ; in the first place, to prevent 
 any one suspecting the grand financial operations carried on 
 with Pere Rouget's investments; and, in the second place, to 
 keep his friends up to the mark. Now the Order had agreed 
 to achieve a stroke which should be talked of for years. On a 
 certain night every watch-dog in the town and suburbs was to 
 have a pill of poison. Fario overheard them as they came out 
 of la Cognette's, chuckling beforehand over the success of this 
 practical joke, and the universal mourning to be caused by 
 this massacre of the innocents. Besides, what fears this 
 general execi^ Jon would give rise to, by hinting at sinistei' 
 designs on the houses thus deprived of their guardians ! 
 
 "Fario's cart will be quite forgotten perhaps," said Goddet. 
 
 Fario no longer needed this speech to confirm his suspicions ; 
 besides, he had laid his plans. 
 
 After a stay of three weeks, Agathe, like Madame Hochon, 
 recognized the truth of the old miser's views — it would take 
 years to counteract the influence exerted over her brother by 
 la Rabouilleuse and Max. Agathe had made no progress in 
 Jean- Jacques' confidence; she had never been left alone with 
 him. On the contrary, Mademoiselle Brazier triumphed over 
 the heirs by taking Agathe out driving in the carriage, seated 
 
200 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTA^ISHMBNT 
 
 by her on the back seat, while Monsieur Eouget and his nephew 
 sat in front. Mother and son anxiously awaited a reply to 
 their confidential letter to Desroches. 
 
 On the very eve of the da}^ when the watch-dogs were to be 
 poisoned, Joseph, who was dying of weariness at Issoudun, 
 received two letters — one from Schinner, the great painter, 
 whose age allowed of a closer and more intimate acquaint- 
 ance than with Gros, their master, and the other from Des- 
 roches. This was the first, bearing the stamp of Beaumont- 
 &ur-Oise : — 
 
 "My dear Joseph, — I have finished the most important 
 paintings in the Chateau de Presles for the Comte de Serizy. 
 I have left the borders and decorative panels; and I have so 
 {Strongly recommended you to the Count, and to Grindot, his 
 architect, that you have only to pack up your brushes and 
 come. The prices agreed on will satisfy you. I am off to 
 Italy with my wife, so you can have Mistigris to help you. 
 The young rascal is clever; I place him at your service. He 
 is as lively as a Pierrot already at the idea of enjoying himself 
 at Presles. Farev/ell, my dear Joseph ; if I am away and send 
 nothing to the next Salon, you must fill my place. Yes, dear 
 Jojo, your picture is a masterpiece, I am sure of it; but a 
 masterpiece that will raise a hue and cry of ^Romanticism!' 
 and you are preparing a life for yourself like that of the devil 
 in holy water. But, after all, as that rogue Mistigris says — 
 he transposes or puns on every proverb — life is bad to beat. 
 What on earth are you doing at Issoudun? Farewell. — 
 Your friend, 
 
 "SCHINNER." 
 
 This was Desroches' letter: — 
 
 "My DEAR Joseph, — Your Monsieur Hochon seems to me 
 an old man of great good sense, and you give me a high idea 
 of his intelligence ; he is perfectly right. And, since you ask 
 my opinion, I think your mother should stay at Issoudun 
 
A BACIIPILOK'S KSTAP.)V[P,Il>.fKNT 
 
 201 
 
 with Madame Hochon, paying a small sum, say four hundred 
 francs a year, as compensation for her board. Madame 
 Bridau, I should say, should be entirely guided by Monsieur 
 Hochon's advice. But your excellent mother will be full of 
 scruples in opposition to people who have none, and whose con- 
 duct shows a masterly policy. That Maxence is a dangerous 
 fellow, you are right there ; he is a man of far stronger temper 
 than Philippe. This rascal makes his vices serve his for= 
 iunes; he does not amuse himself for nothing, like your 
 brother, whose frolics were never of any use. All you tell 
 me appalls me, for I could not do much by going to Issoudun. 
 Monsieur Hochon, acting through your mother, will be of 
 more use than I can be. 
 
 "As for you, you may as well come home; you are of no 
 good at all in a business requiring constant alertness, minute 
 observation, servile attentions, discretion in speech, and dis- 
 simulation in looks, — all quite antipathetic to an artist. li' 
 they tell you there is no will, they have had one made a long 
 time since, you may be sure. But wills are not irrevocable; 
 and as long as your imbecile uncle lives, he will certainly be 
 open to the influence, of remorse and religion. Your fortune 
 will be the result of a pitched battle between the Church and 
 la Eabouilleuse. A moment will inevitably come when that 
 woman will lose her power over the old man, and religion will 
 be all-powerful. So long as your uncle has made nothing 
 over to them by deed of gift, nor altered his investments and 
 holdings, at the moment when religion gets the upper hand 
 everything will be possible. 
 
 "You had better beg Monsieur Hochon to keep an eye as 
 far as possible on your uncle's possessions. It is important to 
 ascertain whether he holds mortgages, and how and in whose 
 name the deeds are drawn. It is so easy to fill an old man 
 with fears for his life when he is stripping himself of his 
 property in favor of strangers, that a rightful heir with a 
 very little cunning can nip such spoliations in the bud. But 
 is your mother, with her ignorance of the world, her dis- 
 interestedness, and her religious ideas, a likely person ta 
 manage such an intrigue ? 
 
202 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "In short, I can only explain the position. What you have 
 done so far must have given the alarm, and perhaps your 
 antagonists are taking steps to protect themselves." 
 
 "That is what I call sound advice, kindly given!" cried 
 Monsieur Hochon, proud of finding himself appreciated by a 
 Paris attorney. 
 
 "Oh, Desroches is a capital good fellow," said Joseph. 
 
 "It might be useful to show that letter to the two women," 
 said the old man. 
 
 "Here it is," said Joseph, giving the letter to Hochon. "As 
 for me, I will be off to-morrow, and will go to take leave of 
 my uncle." 
 
 "Ah!" said Monsieur Hochon, "I see that in a postscript 
 Monsieur Desroches desires you to burn the letter." 
 
 "Burn it after showing it to my mother," said the painter. 
 
 Joseph Bridau dressed, crossed the little avenue, and was 
 shown in to his uncle, who was just finishing breakfast. 
 Max and Flore were at table with him. 
 
 "Do not disturb yourself, my dear uncle; I have come to 
 lake leave of you." 
 
 "You are going ?" said Max with a look at Flore. 
 
 "Yes, I have some work to do at Monsieur de Serizy's 
 (jhateau, and I am all the more eager because he has a long 
 vmough arm to be of service to my poor brother with the 
 Supreme Court." 
 
 "Well, well; work," said the old man, with a stupid look, 
 and indeed Rouget seemed to Joseph extraordinarily altered. 
 "You must work. I am sorry you are going " 
 
 "Oh, my mother will remain some time yet," replied 
 J oseph. 
 
 Max gave his lips a twist, which conveyed to the house- 
 keeper, "They are going to act on the plan Baruch spoke of." 
 
 "I am very glad I came," Joseph went on, "for I have haa 
 the pleasure of making your acquaintance, and you have en- 
 riched my studio." 
 
 '*Yes^ indeed !" said la Eabouilleuse, "instead of enlighten* 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 203 
 
 ing your uncle as to the value of the pictures, which is said to 
 be more than a hundred thousand francs, you packed them 
 off to Paris pretty quick. Poor, dear man, he is like a 
 child. . . . Why, I have just been told that there is at 
 Bourges a little Poulet — I mean a Poussin — which was in the 
 Cathedral before the Kevolution, and that alone is worth 
 thirty thousand francs.'^ 
 
 ^^That was not right, nephew," said the old man, at a nod 
 from Max, which Joseph could not see. 
 
 "Come now, honestly/^ said the soldier, laughing, "on your 
 honor, what do you suppose your pictures are worth? By 
 Jove! you have jockeyed your uncle very prettily. Well, you 
 had a right to do it. Uncles are made to be plundered. 
 Nature bestowed no uncles on me ; but, by all that^s holy, if I 
 had any, I would not spare them V 
 
 "Did you know, monsieur," asked Flore of Eouget, "how 
 much your pictures were worth? — How much did you say. 
 Monsieur Joseph ?" 
 
 "Well," said the painter, turning as red as a beetroot, "the 
 pictures are worth a good round sum." 
 
 "It is said that you valued them at a hundred and fifty 
 thousand francs to Monsieur Hochon. Is that true?" 
 
 "Yes," said the painter, as candid as a child. 
 
 "And had you any intention," said Flore to the old man, 
 "of giving your nephew a hundred and fifty thousand francs ?" 
 
 "Never, never," cried Eouget, on whom Flore had fixed a 
 steady eye. 
 
 "It is quite easily settled," said the painter. ^^I will send 
 them back to you, uncle." 
 
 "No, no, keep them," said the old fellow. 
 
 "I will send them back, uncle," repeated Joseph, offended 
 by the insulting silence of Maxence Gilet and Flore Brazier. 
 "I have in my brush the means of making my fortune, with- 
 out owing anything to anybody — even to my uncle. I wish 
 you good-day, mademoiselle. Good-morning, monsieur." 
 
 And Joseph recrossed the road in a state of irritation which 
 an artist may conceive of. All the Hochon family were in the 
 
 VOL. 4 — 40 
 
204 
 
 A BACHELOii'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 sitting-room. Seeing Joseph gesticulating and muttering to 
 himself, they inquired what was the matter. Then, before 
 Barnch and Frangois, the painter, as open as the day, repeated 
 the scene he had just gone through, wliich, in a couple of 
 hours, was the talk of the whole town, every one embroidering 
 the story with more or less impudent additions. Some main* 
 tained that the painter had been roughly handled by Max, 
 others that he had been insolent to Mademoiselle Brazier, and 
 that Max had turned him out of the house. 
 
 ^^Oh, what a child your boy is I" said Hochon to Madame 
 Bridau. "The simple fellow has been fooled by a scene got 
 up for the day when he should be leaving. Why, Max and 
 la Eabouilleuse have known for this fortnight past what the 
 value of the pictures is, since J oseph was so silly as to men- 
 tion it in the presence of my grandsons, who were only too 
 eager to repeat it to all the world. Your artist ought to have 
 left without notice." 
 
 "My son is right to restore the pictures if they are so valu« 
 able," said Agathe. 
 
 "If they are worth two hundred thousand francs, by hiS' 
 account," said old Hochon, "he is an idiot for allowing him- 
 self to be compelled to return them; for, at any rate, you 
 would have had that much of the property, whereas, as mat- 
 ters stand, you will get nothing I — And this is almost reason 
 enough for your brother to refuse to see you again." 
 
 Between midnight and one in the morning the Knights of 
 Idlesse began their distribution of free rations to the dogs of 
 the town. This memorable expedition ended only at three 
 in the morning, and then the mischievous wretches met for 
 supper at la Cognette's. At half-past four, in the morning 
 twilight, they crept home. At the instant when Max turned 
 out of the Kue de I'Avenier into the Grand' Eue, Fario, in 
 ambush in a recess, stabbed him with a knife, aiming straight 
 at the heart, pulled out the weapon, and fled to the moat by la 
 Villate, where he wiped the knife on his handkerchief. The 
 Spaniard then rinsed the handkerchief in the Borrowed 
 
A iiACHELOK'S ESTABJLiSilMiilNT 
 
 205 
 
 Stream, and quietly went home to Saint-Paterne, where lie 
 went to bed, getting in at a window he had left unfastened; 
 his new shop-boy woke him next morning, finding him sound 
 asleep. 
 
 Max as he fell uttered a fearful shriek, too genuine to be 
 misunderstood. Lousteau-Prangin, the son of a magistrate, 
 a distant relation of the late sub-delegate, and young Goddet, 
 who both lived at the bottom of the Grand^ Rue, ran up the 
 street again as fast as they could fly, saying "Max is being 
 killed ! Help !" — But not a dog barked, and the inhabitants, 
 inured to the tricks of these night-birds, did not stir. 
 
 When the two Knights came up Max had fainted. It was 
 necessary to call up Monsieur Goddet the elder. Max had 
 recognized Fario; but when, at five in the morning, he had 
 fully recovered his wits, seeing himself surrounded by several 
 persons, and feeling that the wound was not mortal, it sud- 
 denly struck him that he might take advantage of this at- 
 tempted murder, and he exclaimed in a feeble voice, "I fancied 
 I saw the eyes and face of that damned painter.'^ 
 
 Upon this, Lousteau-Prangin ran off to fetch his father, the 
 examining judge. Max was carried home by old Cognet, the 
 younger Goddet, and two men whom they got out of bed. La 
 Cognette and Goddet senior walked by the side of Max, who 
 was laid on a mattress placed on two poles. Monsieur Goddet 
 would do nothing till Max was in his bed. 
 
 Those who carried him naturally looked across at Hochon's 
 house while Kouski was getting up, and they saw the woman- 
 servant sweeping. In this house, as in most country places, 
 the door was opened at a very early hour. The only words 
 Max had spoken had aroused suspicion, and the surgeon called 
 across the road : 
 
 "Gritte, is Monsieur Joseph Bridau in bed ?" 
 
 "Dear me," said she, "he went out at about half-past 
 four; he walked up and down his room all night. I can't 
 think what had taken him." 
 
 "A pretty fellow, is your painter !" said one and another. 
 
 And the party went in, leaving the woman in constema- 
 
206 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 tion ; she had seen Max lying on the mattress^ his shirt stained 
 with blood, apparently dying. 
 
 What had "taken" Joseph and disturbed him all night, 
 every artist will understand. He pictured himself as the talk 
 of Issoudun; he was supposed to be a sharper, anything but 
 what he wanted to be — an honest felloAV, a hard-working 
 artist. He would have given his own picture to be able to fly 
 like a swallow to Paris and fling his nucleus pictures in Max's 
 face. To be the victim and be thought the spoiler! What 
 a mockery! And so at daybreak he had rushed out of the 
 house, and was pacing the avenue of poplars leading to Tivoli 
 to walk off his excitement. While the innocent youth was 
 promising himself, by way of consolation, never to set foot 
 in the place again, Max was preparing for him a catastrophe 
 full of horror to a sensitive mind. 
 
 As soon as Monsieur Goddet had probed the wound, and 
 ascertained that the knife, turned by a little pocket-book, hail 
 happily missed aim, though it had left a frightful gash, h\\ 
 did as all doctors do, and especially country surgeons — he gav»j 
 himself airs of importance, and "could not answer for thii 
 patient's life." Then, after dressing the rascally soldier'ti 
 wound, he went away. This medical verdict he repeated to Ui 
 Rabouilleuse, to Jean-Jacques Rouget, to Kouski, and Vedie. 
 La Rabouilleuse went back to her dear Max drowned in tears, 
 while Kouski and Vedie informed the crowd assembled at the 
 door that the captain was as good as done for. The result 
 of this news was that above two hundred persons collected 
 in groups on the Place Saint-Jean and in the upper and lower 
 Narette. 
 
 "I shall not be in bed a month," said Max to Flore, "and I 
 know who struck the blow. But we will take advantage of it 
 to get rid of the Parisians. I said I fancied I had recognized 
 the painter; so pretend that I am dying, and try to have 
 J oseph Bridau arrested ; we will give him a taste of prison for 
 a couple of days. I think I know the mother well enough 
 to feel sure that she will be off to Paris then post-haste with 
 her painter. Then we need no longer fear the volley of priests 
 they talked of firing at our old idiot." 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 207 
 
 When Flore Brazier went down, she found the mob quite 
 prepared to receive the impression she wished to make 
 on them; she appeared before them with tears in her eyes, 
 and remarked that the painter, "who for that matter looked 
 bad enough for anything,^' had quarreled fiercely with Max the 
 day before about the pictures he had "boned" from Pere 
 Eouget. "That brigand — for you have only to look in his face 
 to feel sure — thinks that if Max were out of the way, his uncle 
 would leave him his fortune. As if," added she, "a brother 
 wasn't closer than a nephew ! Max is Doctor Eouget's son ; 
 the old man owned up as much afore he died." 
 
 "Ay, he thought he could do the trick before he left; he 
 planned it very neatly: he is going to-day," said one of the 
 Knights of Idlesse. 
 
 "Max has not a single enemy in the town," observed an- 
 other. 
 
 "Besides, Max recognized the painter," said la Rabouilleuse. 
 
 '^here is that damned Parisian ? Let us find him," cried 
 one and another. 
 
 "Find him? Why, he stole out of Monsieur Hochon's 
 house before daylight." 
 
 One of the Knights at once ran off to find Monsieur Mouille- 
 ron. The crowd was still swelling, and voices grew threat- 
 ening. Excited groups filled the whole of the Grande 
 Narette; others stood in front of the Church of Saint- Jean. 
 A mob filled the Villate gate where the lower Narette ends. 
 It was impossible to stir above or below the Place Saint-Jean. 
 It was like the fag-end cf a procession. And Messieurs 
 Lousteau-Prangin and Mouilleron, with the Superintendent 
 of Police, the Lieutenant of the Gendarmerie, and his ser- 
 geant with two gendarmes, had some difficulty in getting to 
 the spot, which they reached between two hedges of the 
 populace, whose shouts and yells could not fail to prejudice" 
 them against the "Parisian," to whom circumstantial evidence 
 pointed so strongly though he was unjustly accused. 
 
 After an interview between Max and the lawyers, Mon- 
 sieur Mouilleron sent the Superintendent of Police and the 
 
208 
 
 A BACHELOR^S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 sergeant, with one gendarme, to examine what, in the language 
 of police reports, is called the Scene of the Crime. Then 
 Mouilleron and Loustean-Prangin, escorted by the lieutenant, 
 crossed from. Pere Eouget's house to Monsieur Hochon^ 
 which was guarded at the garden entrance by two gendarmes^ 
 while two more were posted at the street-door. The mob was 
 still collecting ; the whole town was in a hubbub in the Grand' 
 Rue. 
 
 Gritte had long since flown, breathless with terror, to her 
 master's room, exclaiming : 
 
 "Monsieur, they are going to rob the house. — All the town 
 is in a riot ! — Monsieur Maxence Gilet is killed ; he is going to 
 die ! — And they say that it was Monsieur Joseph that stabbed 
 him r 
 
 Monsieur Hochon hastily dressed and came down ; but see- 
 ing the furious crowd, he at once retreated within doors 
 and barred the entrance. On questioning Gritte, he ascertained 
 that his guest, after v/alking about all night in great excite- 
 ment, had gone out before daylight, and that he had not 
 come in. Much alarmed, he went to his wife's room; the 
 noise had just roused her, and he told her the horrible report 
 f which, true or false, had brought all Issoudun out to the 
 
 Place Saint-Jean. 
 
 "Of course he is innocent !" said Madame Hochon. 
 
 "But before his innocence is proved, the mob may force their 
 way in and rob us," said Monsieur Hochon, who had turned 
 ashy pale. He had gold in his cellars. 
 
 "And Agathe?" 
 
 "She is sleeping like a marmot." 
 
 "Ah, so much the better !" said Madame Hochon ; "I only 
 wish she could sleep on till this matter is cleared upo Such 
 a blow might kill the poor child." 
 
 But Agathe soon woke; she came down half-dressed, for 
 Gritte's hints and concealments, when she questioned the 
 woman, had sickened her heart and brain. She found Mad- 
 ame Hochon pale, and her eyes full of tears, standing at ane 
 of the drawing-room windows with her husband. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ES'J^AliLISHMENT 
 
 209 
 
 "Courage, my child ! God sends as all our troubles," said 
 
 the old lady. ^^Joseph is accused " 
 
 "Of what?" 
 
 "Of a wicked deed he cannot possibly have done/^ said Mad- 
 ame Hoclion. 
 
 On hearing this speech, and seeing the lieutenant of the 
 watch come in with Messieurs Lousteau-Prangin and Mouille- 
 Ton, Agathe fainted away. 
 
 "Look here," said Monsieur Hochon to his wife and Gritte, 
 "just carry Madame Bridau away. Women are only a trouble 
 under such circumstances. Go away, both of you, with her, 
 and sta}^ in your room. — Gentlemen, pray be seated," added 
 the old man. "The mistake to which we owe this visit will, 
 I hope, soon be cleared up." 
 
 "Even if it is a mistake,^' said Monsieur Mouilleron. "the 
 mob are so madly exasperated, and excited to such a pitch, 
 that I am alarmed for the accused. — I wish I could get him to 
 |;he Court-house, and soothe the public mind." 
 
 "Who could have imagined that Monsieur Maxence Gilet 
 • tvas so much beloved?" said Lousteau-Prangin. 
 
 "There are twelve hundred people at this moment pouring 
 •out of the Roman suburb," said the lieutenant, "so one of my 
 men has just told me — and shrieking for the assassin's 
 death." 
 
 "Where is your guest?" asked Monsieur Mouilleron. 
 "He is gone for a walk in the country, I believe," said 
 Hochon. 
 
 "Call back Gritte," said the examining judge gravely. 
 "I hoped that Monsieur Bridau might not have left the 
 house. You know, of course, that the crime was committed 
 only a few yards from this house, just at daybreak ?" 
 
 While Monsieur Hochon went to fetch Gritte, the three 
 functionaries exchanged glances full of meaning. 
 
 "I never took to that painter's face," said the lieutenant to 
 Monsieur Mouilleron. 
 
 "Listen to me," said the lawyer to Gritte, as she came in. 
 
210 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 •^You saw Monsieur Joseph Bridau go out this morning, I 
 am told r 
 
 "Yes, sir," replied she, shaking like a leaf. 
 "At what hour?" 
 
 "Directly after I got up ; for he was tramping in his room 
 all night, and he was dressed when I came down/' 
 "Was it daylight?" 
 "Twilight/^ 
 
 "And he seemed excited ?" 
 
 "I should think he did ! — He seemed to me quite how-come- 
 you-so." 
 
 "Send one of your men for my clerk," said Lousteau- 
 Prangin to the lieutenant, "and tell him to bring forms " 
 
 "Good God ! don't be in a hurry," said Monsieur Hochon. 
 "The young man's excitement may be accounted for without 
 any premeditated crime. He is starting for Paris to-day in 
 consequence of a matter in which Gilet and Mademoiselle 
 Flore Brazier chose to doubt his honesty." 
 
 "Yes, the business about the pictures," said Monsieur Mou- 
 illeron. "It was the cause of a vehement quarrel yesterday, 
 and artists are always ready to catch fire under the thatch, as 
 they say." 
 
 "Who in all Issoudun would have any interest in killing 
 Max?" said Lousteau. "Nobody; no jealous husband, no 
 one whatever, for the man has never injured any one." 
 
 "But what was Monsieur Gilet doing in the streets at half- 
 past four in the morning ?" said Monsieur Hochon. 
 
 "Look here. Monsieur Hochon, leave us to manage our own 
 business," replied Mouilleron. "You do not know all. Max 
 saw and knew your painter " 
 
 At this instant a roar started from the bottom of the town^ 
 increasing as it rolled up the Grande Narette like the advance 
 of a peal of thunder. 
 
 "Here he is ! — here he is ! They have got him !" These 
 words stood out clearly above the deep bars of a terrific growl 
 from the mob. In fact, poor Joseph Bridau, coming quietly 
 home past the mill at Landrole to be in time for breakfast, was 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 211 
 
 seen as he reached the Place Misere by everybody at once. 
 Happily for him, two men at arms came running down to 
 rescue him from the mob of the Eoman suburb, who had al- 
 ready seized him roughly by the arms, threatening to kill him. 
 
 '^Make way ! Clear out V said the gendarmes, calling two 
 others to come and walk one in front and one behind Bridau. 
 
 ^'You see, monsieur,^^ said one of the four who had taken 
 hold of him, "our skin is in danger at this moment as much 
 as yours. Innocent or guilty, we must protect you against the ^ 
 riot caused by the murder of Captain Gilet ; these people will 
 not be satisfied with accusing you ; they believe you to be the 
 assassin as sure as death. Monsieur Gilet is worsliiped by 
 those men — look at them; they would love to execute justice 
 on you themselves. We saw them in 1830 when they thrashed 
 the excise men ; it was no joke, I can tell you." 
 
 Joseph Bridau turned as pale as death, and collected all 
 his strength to keep on his feet. 
 
 "After all," said he, "I had nothing to do with it. Come 
 
 on r 
 
 And he had to bear his cross ! He was the object of yells, 
 abuse, threats of death, at every step of the horrible walk from 
 the Place Misere to the Place Saint- Jean. The gendarmes 
 were obliged to draw their swords to intimidate the angry 
 crowd who threw stones at them. The force barely escaped 
 being hurt, and some of the missiles hit J oseph's legs, shoul- 
 ders, and hat. 
 
 "Here we are," said one of the men, as they went into Mon- 
 sieur Hochon^s room; "and it was not an easy job, Lieuten- 
 ant." 
 
 "Now, the next thing is to disperse this crowd, and I see 
 but one way, gentlemen," said the officer to the magistrates. 
 "It is to get Monsieur Bridau to the Palais de Justice by 
 making him walk between you. I and all my men will keep 
 close round you. It is impossible to answer for what may 
 happen when you are face to face with six thousand furious 
 creatures." 
 
 "You are right," said Monsieur Hochon, still quaking for 
 his gold. 
 
212 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "If that is the best way you have at Issoudun of protect- 
 ing innocence, I must congratulate you!" said Joseph. "I 
 have already been within an ace of being stoned " 
 
 "Do you want to see your host's house attacked and pil- 
 laged said the lieutenant. "Could we, with our swords, offer 
 effectual resistance to a surge of men driven on by a posse of 
 angry people who know nothing of the forms of justice 
 i "Oh ! come on, gentlemen ; we will talk it out afterwards/* 
 said Joseph, who had recovered his presence of mind. 
 
 "Make way, my friends," said the lieutenant, "he i? 
 arrested ; we are going to take him to the Palais de Justice." 
 
 "Eespect the law, my good fellows !" said Monsieur Mouille- 
 ron. 
 
 "Would not you sooner see him guillotined ?" said one of the 
 gendarmes to a menacing group. 
 
 "Ay, ay!" cried an infuriated bystander. "Guillotine 
 him!" 
 
 "He is to be guillotined !" repeated some women. 
 
 At the bottom of the Grande Narette they were saying : 
 
 "They are taking him off to be guillotined; the knife waf? 
 found upon him ! Oh ! the wretch ! — That is your Parisian ! 
 — Why, he has crime written on his face !" 
 
 Though Joseph's blood seethed in his head, he walked from 
 the Place Saint- Jean to the Palais de Justice with admirable 
 coolness and dignity. He was, nevertheless, glad enough when 
 he found himself in Monsieur Lousteau-Prangin's office. 
 
 "I need hardly tell you, gentlemen, I suppose, that I am 
 innocent," said he, addressing Monsieur Mouilleron, Monsieur 
 Lousteau-Prangin, and the clerk. "I can only beg you to help 
 me to prove mv innocence. I know nothing about the mat- 
 ter " 
 
 When the judge had explained to Joseph all the evidence 
 against him, ending with Max's deposition, Joseph was 
 astounded. 
 
 "Why," said he, "I did not leave the house till past five; I 
 walked down tlie Grand' Eue, and at half-past five I was gaz- 
 ing at the front of your parish church at Saint-Cyr. I stopped 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 213 
 
 to speali for a moment to the bell-riDger, who was about to 
 toll the AngeluSj asking him some questions about the build- 
 ing, which had struck me as quaint and unfinished. Then 
 I crossed the vegetable market, where the women were already 
 collecting. From thence I went by the Place Misere and the 
 Pont-aux-Anes to the mill of Landrdle, where I quietly 
 watched the ducks for five or six minutes; the miller's men 
 must have noticed me. I sav/ some women coming to the 
 washing-place; they must be there still; they began to laugh 
 at me, remarking that I was no beauty; I replied that an 
 ugly case might contain jewels. I went along the avenue as 
 far as Tivoli, v/here I talked to the gardener. . . . Verify 
 all these statements, and do not arrest me, I beg, for I give 
 you my word of honor to remain in your office till you are con- 
 vinced of my innocence." 
 
 This rational statement, made without any hesitation, and 
 with the ease of a man sure of his case, made some impression 
 on the lawyers. 
 
 "Well, v/e must summons and find all these people," said 
 Monsieur Mouilleron, "but that is not to be done in a day. 
 LVIake up your mind, in your ov/n interest, to remain in the 
 lock-up of the Palais de Justice." 
 
 "Then let me write to reassure my mother, poor woman. — 
 Oh, you may read the letter !" 
 
 The request was too reasonable to be refused, and Joseph 
 wrote these few lines : 
 
 "Do not be uneasy, my dear mother; the mistake of which 
 I am the victim will be easily cleared up, and I have given the 
 clue. To-morrow, or perhaps this evening, I shall be free. I 
 emxbrace you ; and say to Monsieur and Madame Hochon how 
 grieved I am by this worry, which is indeed no fault of mine, 
 for it is the result of some mistake which I do not yet under- 
 stand." 
 
 When this letter arrived, Madame Bridau was half-dead 
 of nervous terrors, and the remedies Monsieur Goddet was 
 persuading her to sip had no effect whatever. But the read- 
 ing of this letter was like a balm ; after a few hysterical sobs 
 Agathe sank into ^e quiescence that succeeds such a. crisis. 
 
214 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 When Monsieur Goddet came again to visit his patient, he 
 found her regretting having left Paris. 
 
 "God is punishing me/' said she, with tears in her eyeSo 
 "Oh, my dear godmother, ought I not to have trusted in Him, 
 and have looked to His mercy for my brother's fortune ?''* 
 
 "Madame," said Hochon in her ear, "if your son is innocent. 
 Max is an utter villain, and we shall not overmatch him in the 
 business ; so go back to Paris." 
 
 "And how is Monsieur Gilet going on?" asked Madame 
 Hochon of the doctor. 
 
 "The wound is serious, but not mortal. A month of care, 
 and he will be all right again. I left him writing to Mon- 
 sieur Mouilleron to request him to release your son," said he 
 to Madame Bridau. "Oh ! Max is a good fellow. I told him 
 what a state you were in ; and then he remembered a detail of 
 the murderer's dress, which proved to him that he could not 
 be your son ; the assassin had on list shoes, and it ib perfectly 
 certain that your son went out walking in boots." 
 
 "Ah ! God forgive him the ill he has done me !" 
 
 At nightfall a man had left a note for Gilet, written in a 
 feigned hand, and in these words : 
 
 "Captain Gilet must not leave an innocent man in the 
 hands of the law. The person who dealt the blow promises not 
 to repeat it if Monsieur Gilet delivers Monsieur Joseph 
 Bridau without denouncing the real culprit.'* 
 
 On reading this letter, which he burnt, Max wrote to Mon- 
 sieur Mouilleron a note mentioning the remark he had made to 
 Monsieur Goddet, begging him to release J oseph, and to come 
 and see him that he might explain matters. 
 
 By the time this note reached Monsieur Mouilleron, 
 Lousteau-Prangin had already proved the truth of Joseph's 
 account of himself, by the evidence of the bell-ringer, of a 
 market-woman, of the washerwomen, the men of the mill, 
 and the gardener from Frapesle. Max's letter finally demon- 
 strated the innocence of the accused, whom Monsierr Mouille- 
 ron himself escorted back to Monsieur Hochon's. Joseph 
 was received by his mother with such eager tenderness, that, 
 
A BACHELOR S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 215 
 
 like the husband in la Fontaine's fable, this poor misprized 
 son was thankful to chance for an annoyance which had 
 secured him such a demonstration of affection. 
 
 "Of course," said Monsieur Mouilleron, with an all-know- 
 ing air, "I saw at once, by the way you faced the mob, that you 
 were innocent; but in spite of my convictions, you see, when 
 you know what Issoudun is, the best way to protect you was 
 to take you to prison as we did. I must say you put a good 
 face on the matter." 
 
 "I was thinking of something else," replied the artist sim- 
 ply. "I know an officer who told me that he was once arrested 
 in Dalmatia under somewhat similar circumstances, on his 
 way home from an early morning walk, by an excited mob. — 
 The similarity struck me, and I was studying all those heads 
 with the idea of painting a riot in 1793. . . . And then 
 I was saying to myself, ^Greedy wretch ! you have got no more 
 than you deserve for coming fortune-hunting instead of paint- 
 ing in your studio ' " 
 
 "If you will allow me to offer you a piece of advice," said 
 the public prosecutor, "you will get into a post-chaise this 
 evening at eleven o'clock — the postmaster will let you have one 
 — and get back to Paris by diligence from Bourges." 
 
 "That is my opinion too," said Monsieur Hochon, who was 
 dying to be rid of his guest. 
 
 "And it is my most earnest wish to be out of Issoudun, 
 though I leave my only friend here,'* replied Agathe, taking 
 Madame Hochon's hand and kissing it. "When shall I see 
 you again?" 
 
 "Ah! my child, we shall never meet again till we meet 
 above! We have suffered so much here," she added, in an 
 undertone, "that God will have pity on us." 
 
 A moment after, when Monsieur Mouilleron had been over 
 to see Max, Gritte greatly astonished Monsieur and Madame 
 Hochon, Agathe, Joseph, and Adolphine by announcing a call 
 from Monsieur Rouget. Jean- Jacques had come to take leave 
 of his sister, and to offer her the carriage to take her to 
 Bourges. 
 
216 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "Ah, your pictureb have done us an ill turn," said Agathe. 
 
 '^Keep them, sister," said the old man, who did not yet be- 
 lieve in the value of the paintings. 
 
 "Neighbor Eouget," said Monsieur Hochon, "our relations 
 are our best friends and protectors, especially when they are 
 such as your sister Agathe and your nephew Joseph." 
 
 "Perhaps so," said the old fellow, in bewilderment. 
 
 ^'You must be thinking of making a Christian end," said 
 Madame Hochon. 
 
 "Oh, Jean- J acques, what a day this has been !" said Agathe. 
 
 "Will you accept my carriage ?" asked Rouget. 
 
 "No, brother," replied Madame Bridau. "Thank you, all 
 the same. I v/ish you good health !" 
 
 Rouget allowed his sister and nephew to embrace him, then 
 he w^nt av/ay after a cool leave-taking. 
 
 Barach, at a word from his grandfather, had hurried off 
 to the posting-house. At eleven that evening the two Pa- 
 risians, packed into a wicker chaise with one horse ridden 
 by a postilion, left Issoudun. Adolphine and Madame 
 Hochon had tears in their eyes ; they alone regretted Agathe 
 and Joseph. 
 
 "They are gone !" cried Frangois Hochon, going into Max's 
 room with la Rabouilleuse. 
 
 "Well, the trick is done said Max, weakened by fever. 
 
 "But what did you say to old Mouilleron?" asked Fran- 
 gois. 
 
 "I told him that I had almost given my assassin just cause 
 to wait for me at a street corner; that the man was quite 
 capable, if the law were at his heels, of killing me like a dog 
 before he could be caught. In consequence, I begged Mou- 
 illeron and Prangin to pretend to be hunting him down, but in 
 fact to leave the man alone, unless they wanted to see me a 
 dead man." 
 
 "I hope now. Max," said Flore, "that you will remain quiet 
 at night for some little time." 
 
 "Well, we are quit of the Parisians at any rate," cried Max. 
 "Ihti man who stabbed me did not iinr.gine he was doidg us 
 such good service." 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 217 
 
 Next clay, witli the exception of a few very quiet and re- 
 served people who shared the views of Monsieur and Madame 
 Hochon, all the town rejoiced over the departure of tho 
 Bridaus, though it was due to a deplorable mistake, as if tho 
 event were a triumph of the provinces over Paris. Some of 
 Max's friends expressed themselves in hard terms. 
 
 ^^Well, indeed ! Did those Parisians imagine that we are 
 all idiots, and that they had only to hold out a hat for fortunes 
 to pour into it." 
 
 "They came in search of wool, and they have gone away 
 shorn, for the nephew is not to his uncle's taste." 
 
 "And they had the advice of a Paris lawyer, if you 
 please " 
 
 "Oh, ho! They had laid a plan then?" 
 
 "Why, yes, a plan to get round Pere Rouget; but the Pa- 
 l isians saw that they were not equal to it, and their kwyer 
 won't laugh at the natives of le Berry " 
 
 "But it is abominable, you know !" 
 
 "That is your Parisian !" 
 
 "La Rabouilleuse saw that she was attacked, and she da- 
 fended herself ^" 
 
 "And quite right too !" 
 
 To every one in the town Agathe and Joseph were "Pa- 
 risians" — strangers — foreigners. They preferred Max and 
 Flore. 
 
 With what satisfaction Agathe and Joseph found them- 
 selves at home in their little lodging in the Rue Mazarine may 
 be imagined. In the course of the journey the artist had re- 
 covered his spirits, crushed for a time by the scene of his 
 arrest, and by twenty hours in prison ; but he could not rally 
 his mother. Agathe could the less get over it, because the 
 trial for military conspiracy before the Supreme Court was 
 coming on. 
 
 Philippe's conduct, in spite of the skill of an advocate rec- 
 ommended by Desroches, gave rise to suspicions unfavorable 
 to his reputation. So,, as soon as Joseph had reported to Des- 
 
218 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 roches all that had occurred at Issoudun, he started forthwith, 
 accompanied by Mistigris, for the Comte de Serizy's chateau, 
 so as to hear nothing of this trial, which lasted twenty days. 
 
 It is useless here to enlarge on facts which are part of con- 
 temporary history. Whether it was that he played a part 
 dictated to him, or that he turned King^s evidence, Philippe's 
 sentence was to police surveillance for five years ; and he was 
 required to set out, the very day he was released, for Autun, 
 the town assigned to him as his place of residence during 
 those five years. The sentence was a form of detention similar 
 to that of prisoners on parole, who are confined within the 
 walls of a town. 
 
 On hearing that the Comte de Serizy, one of the peers ap- 
 pointed by the Upper Chamber to sit on the commission, was 
 employing Joseph to decorate his house at Presles, Desroches 
 craved an audience of this minister, and found him very well 
 inclined to help Joseph, whose acquaintance he happened to 
 have made. Desroches explained the pecuniary difficulties of 
 the two brothers, mentioning the good service done by their 
 father, and the way in which he had been forgotten under the 
 Restoration. 
 
 "Such injustice as this, monseigneur,'' said the attorney, 
 "is a permanent source of irritation and discontent. You 
 knew the father ; then put it in the power of his sons to acquire 
 a fortune.'' 
 
 He then briefly set forth the state of the family affairs at 
 Issoudun, craving that the all-powerful vice-president of the 
 Council would take some steps to persuade the Chief Com- 
 missioner of Police to transfer Philippe from Autun to Is- 
 soudun as a place of exile. Finally, he mentioned Philippe's 
 abject poverty, and begged a pension of sixty francs a month, 
 which the War Office might, in common decency, grant to a re- 
 tired Lieutenant-Colonel. 
 
 "I will get all you ask done," said the Count, "for it all 
 seems to me quite just." 
 
 Three days after, Desroches, armed with the necessary 
 warrants, went to fetch Philippe from the prison cell of the 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTA.BLISHMENT 219 
 
 Supreme Court, and took him to his own house in the Eue 
 de Bethizy. There the young attorney gave the dreadful sol- 
 dier one of those unanswerable sermons in which a lawyer 
 places things in their true light, using the crudest language to 
 epitomize the facts of his clients' conduct, to analyze their 
 ideas, and reduce them to the simplest expression, when he 
 takes enough interest in a man to preach to him. After 
 crushing the Emperor's staff-officer by accusing him of reck- 
 less dissipation, and of causing his mother's misfortunes and 
 the death of old Madame Descoings, he told him how matters 
 stood at Issoudun, explaining them from his own point of 
 view, and thoroughly unveiling the schemes and the character 
 of Maxence Gilet and la Eabouilleuse. The political outlaw, 
 who was gifted with keen perceptions in such matters, listened 
 far more intently to this part of Desroches' lecture than to the 
 first.- 
 
 "This being the state of affairs,'' said the lawyer, "you may 
 repair so much as is reparable of the mischief you have done 
 to your excellent family — since you cannot restore to life the 
 poor woman whose death lies at your door; but you alone 
 can " 
 
 "But how can I do it ?" asked Philippe. 
 
 "I have interceded for you to be quartered at Issoudun in- 
 stead of at Autun." 
 
 Philippe's face, grown very thin, and almost sinister, fur- 
 rowed as it was by suffering and privation, was suddenly 
 lighted up by a flash of satisfaction. 
 
 "You alone, I was saying, can rescue your uncle Rouget's 
 fortune, of which, by this time, half, perhaps, has disappeared 
 in the maw of that wolf called Gilet," Desroches went on. 
 "You know all the facts; now 3^ou must act upon them. T 
 suggest no scheme; I have no ideas on the subject. Besides, 
 every plan might need modifying on the scene of action. You 
 have a very strong adversary ; the rascal is very astute, and the 
 way in which he tried to get back the pictures given to Joseph 
 by your uncle, and succeeded in casting the odium of a crime 
 on your poor brother, reveals an unscrupulous opponent. 
 VOL. 4 — 41 
 
220 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Sc be prudent; try to behave yourself in your own interest, 
 if you cannot otherwise control yourself. — Without saying a 
 word to Joseph, whose pride as an artist would rise in arms, 
 I sent the pictures back to Monsieur Hochon, writing to him 
 to deliver them only to you. — Maxence Gilet is brave . . 
 
 "So much the better/' said Philippe ; "I trust to the rascal's 
 courage to enable me to succeed^ for a coward would go away 
 from Issoudun.'' 
 
 "Very good. Now, think of your mother, whose love for 
 you is worthy of worship ; and of your brother, whom you have 
 used as your milch-cow . . 
 
 "What ! he mentioned those trifles to you cried Philippe. 
 
 "Come, come; I am a friend of the family, and I know 
 more about you than they do.'' 
 
 "What do you know ?" asked Philippe. 
 
 "You turned traitor to your fellow-conspirators . . 
 
 "I !" cried Philippe ; "I ! a staff -officer of the Emperor's ! 
 Get along! We took in the Chamber of Peers, the lawyers, 
 the Government, and the whole blessed boiling ! The King's 
 men sav/ nothing but the blaze . . ." 
 
 "So much the better if it is true," replied the lawyer. "But, 
 you see, the Bourbons cannot be overthrown; they have 
 Europe on their side ; and you should try to make your peace 
 with the War Office. — Oh ! you will when you are a rich man. 
 To grow rich, you and your brother must get hold of your 
 uncle. If you want to bring a matter requiring so much skill, 
 judgment, and patience to a good end, you have enough to 
 keep your hands full all your five years " 
 
 "No, no," interrupted Philippe, "the thing must be done 
 quickly. That Gilet may get possession of my uncle's money 
 and invest it in that woman's name, then all would be lost." 
 
 "Well, Monsieur Hochon is a shrewd, clear-sighted man. 
 Take his advice. You have your pass for the journey, your 
 place is taken by the Orleans dilgence for half-past seven, 
 your trunk is packed. — Come to dinner." 
 
 "I have not a thing but what I stand up in," said Philippe, 
 opening his wretched blue great-coat. "But I want three 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 221 
 
 things, which I would ask you to beg my friend Giroudeau, 
 Finot's uncle, to send after me — my cavalry sword, my rapier, 
 and my pistols/^ 
 
 "You want a good deal besides,'' said the lawyer with a 
 shudder, as he looked at his client. "You shall have three 
 months advanced pay to get you decent clothing." 
 
 "Hallo! are you here, Godeschal?" cried Philippe, recog- 
 nizing Mariette's brother in Desroches' head-clerk. 
 
 "Yes; I have been with Monsieur Desroches these two 
 months." 
 
 "And he will stay here, I hope," said Desroches, "till he 
 buys a practice." 
 
 "And Mariette ?" said Philippe, touched by the thought of 
 her. 
 
 "She is waiting for the new house to be opened." 
 
 "It would not cost her much to see me once more," said 
 Philippe. "However, as she pleases !" 
 
 After the scanty dinner, paid for by Desroches, who was giv- 
 ing his head-clerk his board, the two young lawyers saw the 
 political outlaw into the coach, and wished him good luck. 
 
 On the 2nd of November, All Soul's Da}^ Philippe Bridau 
 presented himself before the head of the police at Issoudun 
 to have his pass countersigned on the day of his arrival ; then, 
 by that functionary's instructions, he found a lodging in the 
 Eue de I'Avenier. 
 
 The news immediately spread through Issoudun that one 
 of the officers involved in the late conspiracy was quartered in 
 the town, and the sensation was all the greater because it was 
 understood that this officer was the brother of the painter who 
 had been so unjustly arrested. Maxence Gilet, by this time 
 quite recovered from his wound, had carried through the diffi- 
 cult business of calling in the moneys placed on mortgage 
 by Pere Rouget, and having them invested in the funds. The 
 loan of a hundred and forty thousand francs, raised by the old 
 man on his land, had produced a great sensation, for in the 
 country everything is known. On behalf of the Bridaus, 
 
222 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Monsieur Hochon, shocked at this necessity, questioned old 
 Monsieur Heron, Rougefs notary, as to the object of this 
 change of investments. 
 
 "If JPere Rouget changes his mind, his heirs will owe me a 
 votive offering," cried Monsieur Heron. "But for me, the 
 old man would have invested the capital of fifty thousand 
 francs a year in the name of Maxence Gilet. But I told Made- 
 moiselle Brazier that she had belter be satisfied with the will, 
 or risk an action for undue influence, seeing the abundant proof 
 of their manoeuvring afforded by the transfers made in every 
 direction. To gain tim.e I advised Maxence and his mistress 
 to let people forget this sudden change in the old boy's 
 habits." 
 
 "Ah! constitute yourself the ally and protector of the 
 Bridaus, for they are penniless," said Monsieur Hochon, who 
 could not forgive Max for the terrors he had endured when 
 fearing that his house would be pillaged. 
 
 Maxence Gilet and Flore Brazier, untouched by all mis- 
 giving, made light of the advent of old Rouget's elder nephew. 
 The moment Philippe should cause them any anxiety, they 
 knew they could transfer the securities to either of themselves 
 by making Rouget sign a power of attorney. If he should 
 alter his will, fifty thousand francs a year was a very hand- 
 some plum of consolation, especially after burdening the real 
 estate with a mortgage of a hundred and forty thousand 
 francs. 
 
 The morning after his arrival Philippe called on his uncle 
 at about ten o'clock ; he was bent on exhibiting himself in his 
 dreadful old clothes. And, indeed, when the discharged patient 
 from the hospital, the prisoner from the Luxembourg, entered 
 the sitting-room, Flore Brazier felt her heart chill at his repul- 
 sive appearance. Gilet, too, felt that shock to the mind and 
 feelings by which Nature v/arns us of some latent hostility or 
 looming danger. While Philippe had acquired an indescrib- 
 ably sinister expression of countenance from his late misfor- 
 tunes, his dress certainly added to the effect. The wretched 
 blue overcoat was buttoned in military style up to his chin. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 223 
 
 for melancholy reasons indeed, but it showed too plainly what 
 it was meant to hide. The edge of his trousers, fringed like 
 a pensioner's coat, revealed abject squalor. His boots left 
 damp blots of muddy water oozing from the gaping seams. 
 The gray hat the Colonel held showed a hideously greasy 
 lining. His walking-stick, a cane that had lost its varnish, 
 had stood, no doubt, in all the corners of the cafes of Paris^ 
 and its battered ferrule must have dipped in many a mud- 
 heap. From a stiff velvet collar that showed the paper lining, 
 rose a head exactly like Frederick Lemaitre when made up for 
 the last act of la Vie d'un Joiieur; the breakdown of a still 
 powerful man was visible in a coppery complexion that looked 
 green in patches. Such complexions are to be seen in the 
 faces of debauchees who have spent many nights at play ; their 
 eyes are surrounded by a dark, sooty ring, the eyelids vinous 
 rather than red, the brow ominous from all the ruin it betrays. 
 Philippe's cheeks were furrowed and hollow, for he had 
 scarcely recovered from his hospital treatment. His head 
 was bald, a few locks left at the back ended by his ears. The 
 pure blue of his glittering eyes had assumed a cold, steely hue. 
 
 "Good-morning, uncle," said he in a husky voice; "I am 
 your nephew, Philippe Bridau. This is how the Bourbons 
 treat a lieutenant-colonel, a veteran of the old army, a man 
 who carried the Emperor's orders at the battle of Montereau. 
 I should be ashamed if my greatcoat were to fall open, on 
 mademoiselle's account. After all, it is the rule of the game ! 
 We chose to begin it again, and we were beaten. — I am resid- 
 ing in your town by orders of the police, on full pay and 
 allowances of sixty francs a month. So the good people of 
 Issoudun need not fear that I shall raise the price of victuals. 
 — I see you are in good and fair compan}^" 
 
 "Oh ! so you are my nephew . . said Jean-Jacques. 
 
 "But pray ask the Colonel to stay to breakfast," said Flore. 
 
 "Xo, madame, thank you," replied Philippe ; "I have break- 
 fasted. Besides, I would sooner cut my hand off than ask my 
 uncle for a bit of bread or a single centime after what hap- 
 pened in this town to my brother and my mother. At the 
 
224 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 same time, I did not think it seemly that I should live in 
 Issoudun without paying my respects to him now and then. 
 But for the rest, you can do as you please/' said he, holding 
 out his hand, in which Rouget placed his for Philippe to 
 shake, "just as you please; I shall take no exception so long 
 as the honor of the Bridaus is untouched." 
 
 Gilet could watch the Lieutenant-Colonel at his leisure, 
 for Philippe avoided looking in his direction in a very pointed 
 way. Though the blood boiled in his veins, it was very im- 
 portant to Max that he should behave with that prudence of 
 great diplomates which so often resembles cowardice, and not 
 flare out like a young man ; he sat calm and cold. 
 
 "It would not be seemly," said Flore, "that you should live 
 on sixty francs a month under the very nose of your uncle 
 with forty thousand francs a year, and who has behaved so 
 handsome to Monsieur Gilet, the Captain here, his natural 
 half-brother " 
 
 "To be sure, Philippe," said the old fellow, "we must see 
 about it." 
 
 At the introduction thus affected by Flore, Philippe bowed 
 almost timidly to Gilet, who bowed too. 
 
 "Uncle, I have some pictures here to return to you. They 
 are at Monsieur Hochon's. You will, I hope, do me the 
 pleasure of coming to identify them some day or other." 
 
 Having spoken these words in a dry tone. Lieutenant - 
 Colonel Philippe Bridau went away. 
 
 His visit made a deeper impression on Flore's mind, and 
 on Gilet's too, than mere dismay at the first sight of this 
 dreadful old campaigner. As soon as Philippe had slammed 
 the door with the violence of a supplanted heir, Flore and 
 Gilet hid behind the curtains to watch him as he crossed over 
 from his uncle's house to the Hochons'. 
 
 "What a blackguard !" said Flore, with a questioning glance 
 at Gilet. 
 
 "Yes, unfortunately there were some men like that in the 
 Emperor's armies ; I settled seven of them on the hulks/' said 
 Gilet. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 225 
 
 "I hope that you will pick no quarrel with this one," said 
 Mademoiselle Brazier. 
 
 "That one !" retorted Max. "He is a mangy dog, — but 
 he would like a bone/' he added, addressing old Rouget. "If 
 his uncle will trust my opinion, he will get rid of him with a 
 present; he will not leave you in peace. Papa Rouget." 
 
 "He smelt of horrible tobacco," said the old man. 
 
 "He smelt your money too," said Flore in a peremptory 
 tone. "My opinion is that you should decline to receive him^.^^ i 
 
 "I am sure I am quite willing," said the old man. 
 
 "Monsieur," said Gritte, going into the room where the 
 Hochon family were sitting after breakfast, "here is that Mon- 
 sieur Bridau you spoke about." 
 
 Philippe entered with much politeness, in the midst of per- 
 fect silence, produced by general curiosity. Madame Hochon 
 vshuddered from head to foot on beholding the author of all 
 /Vgathe's woes, and the cause of good old Madame Descoings' 
 rleath. Adolphine, too, was unpleasantly startled; Baruch 
 and Francois looked at each other with surprise. Old Hochon 
 preserved his presence of mind, and offered Madame Bridau's 
 son a seat. 
 
 "I have come," said Philippe, "to recommend myself to 
 your good graces, for I have to arrange matters so as to live 
 i;a this town for five years on sixty francs a month allowed me 
 by France." 
 
 "It can be done," said Monsieur Hochon. 
 
 Philippe talked on indifferent subjects, and conducted him- 
 self perfectly well. He spoke of Lousteau the journalist, the 
 old lady's nephew, as a perfect eagle, and her favor was com- 
 pletely v/on when she heard him declare that the name of 
 Lousteau would be famous. Then he did not hesitate to con- 
 fess the errors of his ways; in reply to a friendly reproof 
 administered by Madame Hochon in an undertone, he said 
 that he had thought much while in prison, and promised her 
 to be quite another man for the future. 
 
 In response to a word from Philippe, Monsieur Hochon 
 went out with him- When the miser and the soldier were oa 
 
226 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 the Boulevard Baron^ at a spot where no one could overhear 
 them, the Colonel said : — 
 
 "Monsieur, if you will take my word for it, we had better 
 never discuss business or certain persons excepting when walk- 
 ing out in the country, or in places where we can talk with- 
 out being heard. Maitre Desroches impressed upon me how 
 great is the power of gossip in a small town. I do not wish 
 that you should be suspected of helping me by your advicCj 
 though Desroches enjoined on me that I should ask it, and 
 I beg you to give it me freely. We have a powerful enemy 
 opposed to us; we must neglect no precaution that may 
 enable us to defeat him. To begin with, excuse me if I call 
 no more. A little distance between us will leave you clear 
 of any suspicion of influencing my conduct. When I require 
 to consult you, I will walk past your house at half -past nine, 
 just as you are finishing breakfast. If you see me carrying 
 my stick as we shoulder arms^ that will convey to you that 
 we are to meet by chance at some spot where we may talk, and 
 which you will tell me of." 
 
 "All that seems to me the idea of a prudent man who means 
 to succeed," said the old man. 
 
 "And I shall succeed, monsieur. To begin with, can you 
 tell me of any officers of the old army living here who are not 
 allies of that Maxence Gilet, and with whom I may make 
 acquaintance ?" 
 
 "There is a Captain of the Artillery of the Guard, a Mon- 
 sieur Mignonnet, who was cadet from the Ecole Polytech- 
 nique, a man of about forty, who lives quietly ; he is a man of 
 honor, and denounces Max, whose conduct seems to him 
 unworthy of a soldier." 
 
 "Good r said Philippe. 
 
 "There are not many officers of that stamp," Monsieur 
 Hochon went on. "I can think of no one else but a cavalry 
 captain." 
 
 "That was my corps," said Philippe. "Was he in the 
 Guards?" 
 
 "Yes," said Monsieur Hochon. "In 1810 Carpentier was 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 227 
 
 Quartermaster-General of the Dragoons ; he left that regiment 
 and entered the Line as second lieutenant, where he rose to 
 be captain." 
 
 "Giroudeau perhaps may know him," thought Philippe. 
 
 ^^Monsieur Carpentier took the place at the Mairic which 
 Maxence threw up, and he is a friend of Major Mignon- 
 net's." 
 
 ^*^And what can I do here for my living ?" 
 
 "I believe that an Insurance Company is about to be started 
 for the Department of the Cher ; you might find employment 
 there, but it would not be more than fifty francs a month at 
 the best." 
 
 "That will do for me." 
 
 By the end of the week Philippe had a new coat, waistcoat, 
 and trousers of blue Elbeuf cloth, bought on credit for monthly 
 payments; boots too, leather gloves, and a hat. Giroudeau 
 sent him some linen from Paris, his weapons, and a letter of 
 introduction to Carpentier, who had served under the former 
 Captain of Dragoons. This letter secured to Philippe 
 Carpentier's good offices, and he introduced him to Mignonnet 
 as a man of the highest merit and noblest character. Philippe 
 soon won the admiration of these two worthy officers by con- 
 fiding to them some details of the conspiracy for which he had 
 been tried ; it had been, as every one knows, the last attempt 
 of the old army to rebel against the Bourbons; for the case 
 of the Sergeants of la Eochelle falls under another category. 
 
 After 1822 the soldiery, who had learned a lesson from the 
 fate of the conspiracy of August 19th, 1820, and of Berton's 
 and Caron's plots, made up their mind to await the turn of 
 events. This last scheme, the younger sister of that of the 
 19th of August, was identically the same, but recomposed of 
 better elements. Like the first, it was kept absolutely secret 
 from the King's Government. The conspirators, once more 
 found out, were clever enough to reduce a really far-reaching 
 enterprise to the semblance of a mere petty barrack mutiny. 
 The north of France was to be the scene of this conspiracy, 
 in which several regiments of cavalry, artillery, and infantry 
 
228 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 were implicated. The frontier fortresses were to be all seized 
 at once by surprise. In the event of success, the treatidfe of 
 1815 were to be nullified by the immediate federation of 
 Belgium, which was to be torn from the Holy Alliance as the 
 outcome of a military compact among soldiers. Two thrones 
 were at once to founder in this swift whirlwind. 
 
 Of this formidable scheme planned by clever heads, with 
 which some Great Personages v/ere mixed up, nothing came 
 but a case for the Supreme Court. Philippe Bridau con- 
 sented to screen his betters, who vanished at the moment 
 when their plans were discovered — either by some treachery 
 or by chance; and they, in their seats in the Chambers, had 
 only promised their co-operation to crown success at the very 
 heart of Government. 
 
 To relate the scheme which the confessions of the Liberals, 
 in 1830, divulged in all its depth, and in its immense rami- 
 fications, unknov/n to the initiated of the baser class, would 
 be to intrude on the domain of histor}^ and would lead to too 
 long a digression. This outline will suffice to explain the 
 twofold part played by Philippe. The Emperor's staff-officer 
 was to have led an outbreak in Paris, intended merely to mask 
 the real conspiracy and to keep the Government busy at its 
 centre, while the great movement took place in the north. 
 Afterwards he was put forward to break the connection be- 
 tween the two plots by betraying only some unimportant 
 secrets; his destitute appearance and broken health were 
 admirably calculated to throw discredit and contempt on the 
 enterprise in the eyes of the authorities. This part was well 
 suited to the precarious position of this unprincipled gambler. 
 Feeling that he had one foot in each party, the wily Philippe 
 played the good apostle to the King's Government, and yet did 
 not lose the esteem of men standing high in his own party; 
 but he promised himself that at a future day he would follow 
 up the line that might offer the greater advantages. 
 
 These revelations as to the vast extent of the real con- 
 spiracy made Philippe a man of the highest importance in 
 the eyes of Carpentier and Mignonnet, for his devotedness 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 220 
 
 showed a political sense worthy of the best days of the Con- 
 vention. Thus, in a few days, the cunning Bonapartist be- 
 came the iviend of these two men, whose respectability cast 
 its reflection on him. By the recommendation of Monsieur 
 Carpentier and Monsieur Mignonnet he at once got the ap- 
 pointment mentioned by Hochon in the Mutual Insurance 
 Society of the Department of the Cher. His work was to 
 keep the books, as in a tax-collector's office, to fill in printed 
 circulars with names and numbers, and send them off, and to 
 issue policies of insurance; thus he was not employed for 
 more than three hours daily. 
 
 Mignonnet and Carpentier secured the admission of this 
 visitor to Issoudun to their club, where his air and manners, 
 quite in accordance v/ith the high opinion these two officers 
 had formed of this leader of conspiracies, gained him the 
 respect which is paid to often deceptive appearances. Philippe, 
 whose conduct w^as the result of much deliberation, had 
 meditated in prison on the disadvantages of a dissolute life. 
 He had not needed Desroches' lecture to perceive the necessity 
 for conciliating the good opinion of the tov/nspeople by honest, 
 decent, and cleanly conduct. Delighted to cast reflections on 
 Max by living as respectably as Mignonnet, he also wished to 
 lull Max by deceiving him as to his character. He meant to 
 be looked upon as a nincompoop, by affecting disinterested 
 generosity while circumventing the enemy and aiming at his 
 uncle's fortune; whereas his mother and his brother, who were 
 really disinterested, generous, and magnanimous, had been 
 accused of cunning while acting with artless simplicity. 
 
 Philippe's greed had been fired in proportion to his uncle's 
 wealth, which Monsieur Hochon expatiated on in detail. In 
 the first private conversation he had held with this old man 
 they had fully agreed that, above all things, Philippe must not 
 rouse Max's suspicions ; for all would be lost if Max and Flore 
 carried off their victim, even to Bourges. 
 
 Once a week Colonel Bridau dined with Captain Mignonnet, 
 another day with Carpentier, and every Thursday with Mon- 
 sieur Hochon. He was soon invited to other houses, and by 
 
230 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 the end of three weeks had only his breakfast to pay for. He 
 never mentioned his uncle, nor la Eabouilleuse, nor Gilet, 
 unless it were to make some inquiry with reference to his 
 mother's or Joseph's stay in the town. Finally, the three 
 officers, the only men wearing the ribbon of the Legion of 
 Honor — Philippe having the superior decoration of the 
 rosette, which gave him a marked superiority in everybody's 
 eyes, very noticeable in a country town — would take their 
 daily walk together at the same hour before dinner, keeping 
 themselves to themselves, to use a homely phrase. 
 
 This attitude, this reserve and calm demeanor, produced 
 an excellent effect in Issoudun. Max's adherents all looked 
 upon Philippe as a sahreur, a swashbuckler, an expression 
 used by soldiers to attribute the coarsest kind of courage to 
 a superior officer, while denying him the capacity for com- 
 mand. 
 
 "He is a very respectable man," said the elder Goddet to 
 Max. 
 
 "Pooh!" replied Captain Gilet, "his behavior before the 
 Court shows him to be either a dupe or a spy; he is, as you 
 say, fool enough to have been the dupe of those who were play- 
 ing for high stakes." 
 
 After getting his appointment, Philippe, aware of the 
 gossip of the place, was anxious to conceal certain facts as far 
 as possible from his neighbors' knowledge; he therefore took 
 rooms in a house at the end of the Faubourg Saint-Paterne, 
 with a very large garden attached. There, in perfect secrecy, 
 he would practise sword-play with Carpentier, who had been 
 instructor in a regiment of foot before his promotion to the 
 Imperial Guard. After having thus recovered his old supe- 
 riority, Philippe learned from Carpentier certain secret tricks 
 which would enable him to meet the most accomplished oppo- 
 nent without any fear. He next took to pistol practice with Mi- 
 gnonnet and Carpentier, for amusement, as he said, but in re- 
 ality to lead Maxence to believe that, in the event of a duel, he 
 relied on that weapon. Whenever Philippe met Gilet he ex- 
 pected him to salute, and renlied by lifting the front of his 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 231 
 
 hat with his finger in a cavalier fashion, as a colonel does to 
 a private. 
 
 Maxence Gilet never gave any sign of annoyance or dis- 
 satisfaction; he never uttered a single word on the subject at 
 la Cognette's, where he still had little suppers, though since 
 Fario's knife-thrust the nocturnal pranks were for a time 
 pretermitted. Still, at the end of a certain time, Lieutenant- 
 Colonel Bridau's contempt for Major Gilet was a patent fact, 
 and discussed by some of the Knights of Idlesse who were less 
 closely attached to Maxence than were Baruch, Frangois, and 
 two or three more. It was a matter of general surprise to see 
 Max the vehement and fiery behaving so meekly. No one at 
 Issoudun, not even Potel or Eenard, ventured to mention so 
 delicate a matter to Gilet. Potel, really disturbed by such a 
 public misunderstanding between two officers of the old guard, 
 represented Max as quite capable of hatching some plot in 
 which the Colonel might get the worst of it. By PoteFs 
 account some new pitfall might be expected, afte^ ivhat Max 
 liad done to be rid of the mother and brother — for the Fario 
 affair was no longer a mystery. Monsieur Hochon had not 
 failed to expose Gilet^s atrocious game to all the wise heads 
 of the town. Monsieur Mouilleron, too, the hero of a piece 
 of town gossip, had confidentially revealed the name of Gilet's 
 would-be murderer, if only to find out the causes of Fario's 
 hatred of Max, so as to keep justice on the alert in case of 
 further events. Thus, while discussing the Colonel's attitude 
 towards Max, and endeavoring to guess what might come of 
 this antagonism, the town regarded them by anticipation as 
 adversaries. 
 
 Philippe, who was anxiously investigating the details of his 
 brother's arrest, and the antecedent history of Gilet and la 
 Kabouilleuse, ended by forming a somewhat intimate alliance 
 with Fario, who was his neighbor. After carefully studying 
 the Spaniard, Philippe thought he might trust a man of his 
 temper. Their hatred was so absolutely in unison that Fario 
 placed himself at Philippe's service, and told him all he 
 knew of the feats of the Knights of Idlesse. Philippe, on his 
 
232- 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 part, promised that, if he should succeed in obtaining such 
 influence over his uncle as Gilet now exerted, he would in- 
 demnify Fario for all his losses, and thus secured.his fidelity. 
 Maxence had therefore a formidable enemy to meet — some one 
 who could talk to him, as they say in those parts. The town 
 of Issoudun, excited by rumor, foresaw a struggle between 
 these two men who, be it observed, held each other in utter 
 contempt. 
 
 One morning, towards the end of November, Philippe, meet- 
 ing Monsieur Hochon at noon in the Avenue de Frapesle, said 
 to him: 
 
 "I have discovered that your grandsons Baruch and Fran- 
 gois are the intimate allies of Maxence Gilet. The young 
 rogues take part at night in all the pranks played in the town. 
 And so, through them, Maxence knew everything that went 
 on in your house when my brother and mother were staying 
 with^you.'^ 
 
 "And what proof have you of anything so shocking ?" 
 
 "I heard them talking at night as they came out of a taven', 
 Your two grandsons each owe Maxence a thousand crown?*, 
 The villain desired the poor boys to find out what our plan;? 
 are. He reminded them that it was you who proposed to be- 
 siege my uncle through the priesthood, and said that no one 
 could advise me but you — for, happily, he regards me as a 
 mere fighting-cock." 
 
 "What ! My grandchildren . . 
 
 "Watch them," said Philippe; "you will see them coming 
 home to the Place Saint-Jean at two or three in the morning, 
 as sodden as champagne-corks, and walking with Maxence." 
 
 "So that is why the rascals are so abstemious !" said Mon- 
 sieur Hochon. 
 
 "Fario told me something of their nocturnal habits," said 
 Philippe. "But for him I should never have guessed it. — 
 My uncle is evidently oppressed by the most horrible tyranny, 
 to judge from the few words my Spaniard overheard Max 
 saying to your boys. I suspect that Max and la Rabouilleuse 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 233 
 
 have a plan for grabbing the State securities for fifty thou- 
 sand francs a year and going off to be married I don't know 
 where, after plucking that wing from the pigeon. It is high 
 time to find out what is going on in my uncle's house, but I 
 do not know how to set about it." 
 
 "I will think it over," said the old man. 
 
 Philippe and Monsieur Hochon then went opposite ways, 
 seeing other people approaching. 
 
 Never, at any period of his life, had Jean- Jacques Eouget 
 been so miserable as since his nephew Philippe's first visit. 
 Flore, in great terror, had a presentiment of some danger 
 hanging over Max. Tired of her master, and fearing that he 
 would live to a great age, as her criminal practices had so 
 little effect on him, she hit on the very simple plan of leaving 
 the place and going to Paris to be married to Maxence, after 
 extracting from Rouget the bonds bearing fifty thousand 
 francs a year. The old fellow, warned not indeed by any 
 care for his heirs, nor by personal avarice, but by his passion 
 for Flore, refused to give her the securities, pointing out that 
 he had left her everything. The unhappy man knew how 
 devotedly she loved Maxence, and he foresav/ that she would 
 desert him as soon as she should be rich enough to marry. 
 When, after lavishing her tenderest coaxing, Flore found her 
 request denied, she tried severity: she never spoke to her 
 master, she sent Vedie to wait upon him, and the woman one 
 morning found the old man with his eyes red from having 
 wept all night. For a week Pere Eouget had his breakfast 
 alone, and heaven knows how ! 
 
 So, the day after his conversation with Monsieur Hochon, 
 when Philippe paid his uncle a second visit, he found him 
 much altered. Flore remained in the room near the old man, 
 on w^hom she shed tender glances, speaking kindly to him, 
 and playing the farce so well, that Philippe understood the 
 dangers of the situation merely from the solicitude paraded 
 for his benefit. Gilet, whose policy it was to avoid any col- 
 lision with Philippe, did not appear. After studying Pere 
 Rouget and Flore with a keen eye, the Colonel decided on a 
 bold stroke. 
 
234 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 ^'Good-bye, my dear uncle/' he said, rising, so as to seen> 
 about to leave. 
 
 "Oh, do not go yet/' cried the old man, who was basking 
 in Flore's pretended affection. "Dine with us, Philippe." 
 
 "I will, if you will first take an hour's walk with me." 
 
 "Monsieur is very ailing," said Mademoiselle Brazier. "He 
 would not go out driving just now," she added, turning to 
 the old man, and looking at him with the fixed gaze that some- 
 times quells a madman. 
 
 Philippe took Flore by the arm, made her look at him, and 
 gazed at her just as fixedly as she had stared at her victim. 
 
 "Tell me, mademoiselle," said he, "am I to infer that my 
 uncle is not free to come for a walk alone with me." 
 
 "Of course he is, monsieur," said Flore, who could hardly 
 make any other reply. 
 
 "Well, then, come, uncle. Now, mademoiselle, give him his 
 hat and stick." 
 
 "But, as a rule, he never goes out without me. Do yoU;> 
 monsieur ?" 
 
 "Yes, Philippe, yes ; I always want her " 
 
 "We had better go in the carriage," said Flore. 
 
 "Yes, let us go in the carriage," cried the old man in his 
 anxiety to reconcile his two tyrants. 
 
 "Uncle, you will come for a walk, and with me, or I come 
 here no more. For the town will be in the right; you are 
 under Mademoiselle Flore Brazier's thumb. — My uncle loves 
 you, well and good," he went on, fixing a leaden eye on Flore. 
 "You do not love him — that too is quite in order. But that 
 you should make the old man miserable ? There we draw the 
 line. Those who want to inherit a fortune must earn it. — Now, 
 uncle, are you coming?" 
 
 Philippe saw an agony of hesitancy depicted on the face of 
 the poor helpless creature, whose eyes wandered first to Flore 
 and then to his nephew. 
 
 "So that is how it stands !" said the Colonel. "Very good ! 
 Good-bye, uncle. As for you, mademoiselle — your servant !" 
 
 He turned round quickly as he reached the door, and again 
 detected a threatening gesture from Flore to his uncle. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 235 
 
 "TJnci'e/' said he, "if you will come for a walk with Jiie, I 
 will meet you at your door. I am going to Monsieur Hochon 
 for ten minutes. ... If you and I do not get our walk, 
 I will back myself to send some people walking I could name." 
 
 And Philippe crossed the avenue to call on the Ilochons. 
 
 Any one can imagine the scene in the family which re- 
 sulted from Philippe's revelation to Monsieur Ilochon. At 
 nine o'clock that morning old Monsieur Heron had made his 
 appearance with a bundle of paj^ers, and found a fire in the 
 large room, lighted by the master's orders, quite against the 
 general rule. Madame Hochon, dressed at this unconscion- 
 able hour, was sitting in her armchair by the fire. The two 
 grandsons, warned by Adolphine of a storm gathering over 
 their heads since yesterday, had been ordered to stay at home. 
 Having been summoned by Gritte, they were chilled by the 
 paraphernalia of ceremony displayed by their grandparents, 
 whose cold wrath had hung over them for the past twenty- 
 four hours. 
 
 "Do not rise for them,'^ said the old man to Monsieur 
 Heron. "You see before you two wretches unworthy of for- 
 giveness." 
 
 "Oh ! grandpapa !" said Frangois. 
 
 "Silence," said the solemn old man. "I know all about 
 your life at night and your intimacy with Monsieur Maxence 
 Gilet; but you will not meet him again at la Cognette's at 
 one in the morning, for you are not to go out of this house 
 again till you set out for your respective destinations. — So 
 you ruined Fario ? You have many a time been within an ace 
 of finding yourselves in a criminal court ? — Be silent !" he ex- 
 claimed, seeing Baruch open his mouth. "You both owe 
 money to Monsieur Maxence, who for six years past has been 
 supplying you with it for your debaucheries. — Listen, now, to 
 the accounts of my guardianship; we will talk afterwards. 
 You will see from these documents whether you can play tricks 
 with me, play tricks on the family and the laws of family 
 honor by betraying the secrets of the house, and repeating 
 to Monsieur Maxence Gilet what is said and done in it ! For 
 
236 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 a thousand crowns you play the spy ! For ten thousand you 
 would no doubt commit murder! Indeed, did you not 
 almost kill Madame Bridau? for Monsieur Gilet knew full 
 well that it was Fario who had stabbed him when he accused 
 my guest Monsieur Joseph Bridau of the attempt. And 
 when that gallows-bird committed such a crime, it was because 
 he had learned from you that Madame Agathe intended to re- 
 main here. — ^You, my grandsons, to play the spy for such a 
 man ! You, street-bullies ! Did you not know that your 
 worthy chief already, in 1806, had caused the death of a poor 
 young creature? I will have no assassins or robbers in my 
 house. You will just pack up your things and go elsewhere 
 to be hanged !" 
 
 The two young men were as white and rigid as plaster 
 ■j mages. 
 
 "Begin, Monsieur Heron,^' said the miser to the notary. 
 The old lawyer read out an account of Hochon's guardian- 
 aip, whence it appeared that the entire unencumbered for- 
 me of the two Borniche children amounted to seventy thou- 
 ind francs, the money settled on their mother ; but Monsieur 
 'lochon had lent his daughter considerable sums, and, as 
 epresenting the lenders, had a lien on part of his grand- 
 children's fortune. The share remaining to Baruch came to 
 twenty thousand francs. 
 
 "There, you are a rich man," said his grandfather. "Take 
 your money and walk alone ! I remain free to bestow my 
 wealth and Madame Hochon's — for she agrees with me on 
 every point in this matter — on whomsoever I please, on our 
 dear Adolphine. Yes, she shall marry a peer's son if we choose, 
 for she will have all we possess !" 
 
 "And a very fine fortune it is," added Monsieur Heron. 
 "Monsieur Maxence Gilet will indemnify you !" said Mad- 
 ame Hochon. 
 
 "I see myself scraping twenty-sous pieces together for such 
 a coiTple of ne'er-do-weels !" exclaimed Monsieur Hochon. 
 "Forgive me," stammered Baruch. 
 
 "Forgive me this once, and never no more/' repeated the 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 2?7 
 
 old man, mocking the voice of a child. "Yes, and if I forgive 
 you, off you go to Monsieur Maxence to tell him what has 
 befallen you and put him on his guard. . . . No, no, my 
 little gentlemen. I shall have means of knowing how you 
 conduct yourselves. As you behave, I shall behave. It is not 
 by the good conduct of a day or of a month that I shall judge 
 you, but by that of many years. I am strong on my feet, hale 
 and hearty. I hope to live long enough yet to see which way 
 you go. — You, the capitalist/' he added to Baruch, "will go to 
 Paris to study banking with Monsieur Mongenod. Woe to 
 you there if you do not walk straight : they will keep an eye 
 on you. Your money is in the hands of Mongenod & Sons; 
 here is a cheque on them for the whole sum. So now release 
 me by signing your account, which is closed by a receipt in 
 full," said he, taking the paper out of Heron's hands and giv- 
 ing it to Baruch, 
 
 "As for you, Frangois Hochon, you owe me money instead 
 of having any to receive," said the old man, addressing his 
 other grandson. "Monsieur Heron, will you read him his 
 statement ; it is clear — quite clear." 
 
 The reading took place in utter silence. 
 
 "I am sending you to Poitiers, with six hundred francs a 
 year, to study law," said his grandfather, when the notary 
 ended. "I was prepared to make life easy for you; now you. 
 must become an advocate to make your living. Ah, ha ! my 
 young rascals, for six years you have taken me in ! Well, it 
 took me just an hour in my turn to overtake you. I have 
 seven-league boots !" 
 
 J ust as old Monsieur Heron was leaving, carrying with him 
 the signed releases, Gritte announced Monsieur le Colonel 
 Philippe Bridau. Madame Hochon left the room, taking her 
 grandsons with her "to the confessional," as old Hochon ex- 
 pressed it, and to ascertain what effect this scene had had on 
 them. 
 
 Philippe and the old man went to the window and talked 
 in low tones. 
 
 "I have been considering the position of your affairs," said 
 
238 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Monsieur Hochon, looking across to the house opposite. "1 
 have just been talking them over with Monsieur Heron. The 
 bond bearing fifty thousand francs interest can only be sold 
 by the holder himself, or by his order. Now, since you came, 
 your uncle has signed no such order in any lawyer's office ; and 
 as he has not been out of Issoudun, he has signed none else- 
 where. If he gave any one a power of attorney in this place, 
 we should know of it at once ; if he did it elsewhere, we should 
 hear of it all the same, for it would have to be stamped, and 
 our good Monsieur Heron has means of information. So if 
 the old man should go out of the town, follow him, find out 
 where he has been, and we will take steps to discover what he 
 has done." 
 
 "The power has not been given," said Philippe. "They are 
 tr3dng for it, but I hope to prevent its being executed. No, 
 it will not be executed !" cried Philippe, seeing his uncle ap- 
 pear on his doorstep. He pointed him out to Monsieur 
 Hochon, and hastily told him of the events — so trivial and so 
 important — of his visit to Eouget. "Maxence is afraid of 
 me," he added, "but he cannot keep out of my way. Mi- 
 gnonnet tells me that all the officers of the old army keep high 
 festival at Issoudun every year on the anniversary of the Em- 
 peror's coronation. Well, then, two days hence Max and I 
 must meet." 
 
 "If he can get the power of attorney by the morning of 
 the 1st of December, he will be off to Paris by the mail, and 
 leave the anniversary to take care of itself." 
 
 "True; then I must get hold of my uncle; but I have an 
 eye that settles idiots," said Philippe, making Monsieur 
 Hochon quail under a villainous glare. 
 
 "If they are allowing him to walk out with you, Maxence 
 has no doubt hit on some other plan for winning the game,'^ 
 said the old miser. 
 
 "Oh! Fario is on the watch," replied Philippe, "and not 
 only he. The Spaniard discovered for me, in the neighbor- 
 hood of Vatan, one of my old soldiers to whom I once did a 
 service. No one suspects that Benjamin Bourdet is at the 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 239 
 
 Spaniard's orders, and Fario has placed one of his horses 
 at Benjamin's service." 
 
 "If you were to kill the monster who perverted my grand- 
 sons, you would be really doing a good action." 
 
 "By this time, thanks to me, all Issoudun knows what 
 Monsieur Maxence has been at by night for these six years 
 past," replied Philippe, "and tongues are wagging about him 
 pretty freely. Morally he is a ruined man." 
 
 The moment Philippe had left his uncle, Flore went to 
 Max's room to relate to him the smallest details of the visit 
 paid by this audacious nephew. 
 
 "What is to be done ?" said she. 
 
 "Before having recourse to extreme measures, which would 
 be a duel with that long corpse of a man," replied Maxence, 
 "we must play for double or quits by a daring stroke. Let 
 the old simpleton go out with his nephew." 
 
 "But that great hound does not beat about the bush," cried 
 Flore; "he will call a spade a spade." 
 
 "Just attend to me," said Maxence, in his most strident 
 tones. "Do you suppose that I have not listened at doors 
 and considered our position ? Send to old Cognet for a con- 
 veyance and a horse, now, this minute ! All must be done in 
 five minutes. Put all that is yours into the cart, take Vedie, 
 and be off to Vatan; take the twenty thousand francs he has 
 in his desk. If I bring the old boy to Vatan, do not consent 
 to return here till he has signed the power of attorney. Then 
 I will sneak off to Paris while you come back to Issoudun. — 
 When Jean- Jacques comes in from his walk and finds that 
 you are gone, he will lose his head and want to run after you. 
 Very good — and I will talk to him then !" 
 
 While this plot was being laid, Philippe, arm in arm with 
 his uncle, had taken him for a walk on the Boulevard Baron. 
 
 "There are two great schemers at loggerheads," said old 
 Hochon to himself, watching the Colonel supporting his uncle. 
 *'I am curious to see the end of this game, where the stake is 
 ninety thousand francs a year." 
 
 "My dear uncle," said Philippe, whose phraseology had 
 
240 
 
 A BACHELOR^S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 some flavor of his Paris associates, '^jou are in love with that 
 minx, and you show devilish good taste, for she is a stunning 
 armful. Instead of cosseting you, she makes you trot round 
 like her footman — and that again is natural enough; she 
 would like to see you six feet under the daisies to marry 
 
 Maxence, whom she worships " 
 
 "Yes, Philippe, I know all that, but I love her all the 
 same/' 
 
 "Well, I have svv orn by my mother's body — and she is 3'our 
 sister, sure enough," Philippe went on, — "to make your Ea- 
 bouilleuse as pliant as my glove, and just what she must have 
 been before that blackguard, who is unworthy ever to have 
 served in the Imperial Guard, came sponging on your house- 
 hold " 
 
 "Oh ! if you could only do that !" said the old man. 
 
 "It is easy enough," replied Philippe, cutting him short. 
 "I will kill Maxence like a dog — but — on one condition." 
 
 "What is that?" asked old Kouget, looking at his nephew 
 with a blank expression. 
 
 "Do not sign the povrer of attorney they are asking for be- 
 fore the 3rd of December; drag on only till then. Those two 
 vultures want your license to sell out your stock of fifty thou- 
 sand francs a year, solely to go and get married in Paris, and 
 there have a high time with your million." 
 
 "I am very much afraid of it," said Rouget. 
 
 "Well, then, whatever they may do to you, put off signing 
 it till next week." 
 
 "Yes, but when Flore talks to me she upsets me so that 
 it turns my brain. I tell you, she has a way of looking at me 
 that makes her blue eyes seem like Paradise, and I am no 
 longer my own master, particularly as there are days when 
 she leaves me in disgrace." 
 
 "Well, if she is all honey, just be satisfied to promise her 
 the document, and give me notice the day before you sign it. 
 Maxence will never be your representative — ^unless he has 
 killed me. If I kill him, you may take me to live with you 
 in his place, and I will make your beauty dance at a word or 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 24] 
 
 a look. Yes, Flore shall be fond of you, or, by God, if she 
 vexes you, I will give her a hiding." 
 
 "Oh! that I would never allow. A blow to Flore would 
 fall on my heart." 
 
 "And yet it is the only way to train a woman or a horse. 
 A man who makes himself feared is loved and obeyed. This 
 is all I wanted to say in your private ear. — Good-morning, 
 gentlemen," said he to Mignonnet and Carpentier. "I am 
 taking my uncle for a little walk you see, and trying to teach 
 him ; for we live in an age when the young people are obliged 
 to educate their grandparents." 
 
 Greetings were exchanged. 
 
 "You behold in my dear uncle the results of an unfortunate 
 passion,^' the Colonel went on. "He is about to be despoiled 
 of his fortune and left stripped like Baba — ^you know to whom 
 I allude. The good man knows of the plot, but he cannot 
 make up his mind to do without his Nanna for a few days 
 to baffle her," and Philippe frankly explained the position in 
 which his uncle stood. 
 
 "You see, gentlemen," said he in conclusion, "that there 
 are not two ways of setting my uncle free. Colonel Bridau 
 must kill Major Gilet, or Major Gilet must kill Colonel 
 Bridau. The day after to-morrow is the anniversary of the 
 Emperor's coronation ; I count on you so to arrange the seats 
 at the banquet that I may be opposite to Major Gilet. You 
 will, I hope, do me the honor to act as my seconds." 
 
 "We will put you in the chair and sit on each side of you. 
 Max, as vice-president, will be opposite to you," said Mignon- 
 net. 
 
 "Oh, the scoundrel will have Major Potel and Captain 
 Eenard for his seconds," said Carpentier. "In spite of all 
 that is rumored in the tovm about his nocturnal excursions, 
 those two capital fellows have stood by him before now ; they 
 will be faithful to him " 
 
 "You see, uncle, how well the pot is simmering," said 
 Philippe. "Sign nothing before the 3rd, for, by the day after^ 
 
242 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 you shall be free, happy, adored by Flore^, and rid of your 
 finance minister/^ 
 
 "You do not know him, nephew,^^ exclaimed Eouget in 
 dismay. "Max has killed nine men in duels." 
 
 "Yes, but he was not robbing them of a hundred thousan(? 
 francs a year," replied Philippe. 
 
 "A bad conscience spoils a man's hand," said Mignonnet 
 aententiously. 
 
 "Within a few days," said Philippe, "you and la Eabouil- 
 ieuse will be living together like hearts a la fleur d'orange, 
 as soon as she has got over her grief ; for she will wriggle like 
 a worm, and yelp, and melt into tears ; but let the tap run !" 
 
 The two officers supported Philippe's arguments, and tried 
 their utmost to put some heart into Pere Eouget, with whom 
 they walked for about two hours. At last Philippe escorted 
 his uncle home, saying as his last word : "Come to no decision 
 without consulting me. I know what women are. I paid 
 for one more dearly than Flore will ever cost you. And she 
 taught me how to manage the fair sex for the rest of my days. 
 Women are just naughty children; they are inferior animals 
 to men; we must make them afraid of us, for our worst fate 
 is to be led by the nose by those little brutes !" 
 
 It was about two in the afternoon when the old man went 
 in. Kouski opened the door to him, in tears, or, at any rate, 
 in obedience to Maxence^s orders, seeming to weep. 
 
 "What is the matter?" asked Jean- Jacques. 
 
 "Oh, monsieur ! madame is gone away with Vedie.'* 
 
 "Go-o-one ?" said the old man, in a voice of anguish. 
 
 The blow was so tremendous, that Eouget sat down on one 
 of the steps of the stairs. A moment after, he rose, looked in 
 the sitting-room, in the kitchen, went up to his own room, 
 walked through all the bedrooms, came back into the sitting- 
 room, sank into an armchair, and burst into tears. 
 
 "Where is she?" he cried, in the midst of sobs. "Where 
 is she? Where is Max?" 
 
 "I do not know," replied Kouski. "TJie Major went out 
 without saying a word/' 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 243 
 
 Gilet, very astutely, had thought it diplomatic to wander 
 round the town. By leaving the old man alone in his despair, 
 he made him feel how deserted he was, and so made him 
 amenable to his counsels. But to hinder Philippe from sup- 
 porting his uncle at this crisis, Max had desired Kouski to 
 let no one into the house. Flore being away, the old man had 
 neither bit nor bridle, and the situation was excessively 
 critical. 
 
 During his walk through the town Max saw himself avoided 
 by many persons who, only the day before, would have been 
 most eager to come and shake hands with him. There was a 
 general reaction against him. The feats of the Knights of 
 Idlesse were on every tongue. The story of Joseph Bridau^s 
 arrest, which was now explained, cast dishonor on Max, whose 
 life and deeds had, in this one day, met with their due reward. 
 Gilet met Major Potel, who was looking for him, and who wae 
 quite beside himself. 
 
 "What is wrong, Potel?'' 
 
 "My dear fellow, the Imperial Guard is blackguarded all 
 through the town ! The very clerks are abusing you, and that 
 rebounds on me, and goes to my heart." 
 
 "What are they complaining of ?" asked Max. 
 
 "Of the tricks you played at night.'' 
 
 "As if a little amusement were forbidden 
 
 "Oh ! that is nothing," said Potel. 
 
 Potel was an officer of the stamp of those who said to st 
 burgomaster, "Pooh ! if we burn your town, we will pay foi' 
 it I" so he was not much concerned by the pranks of the 
 Order. 
 
 "What else?" said Gilet. 
 
 "The Guard is divided against itself ! That is what breaks 
 my heart. It is Bridau who has unchained the town against 
 you. The Guard against the Guard ? N'o ; that is all wrong. 
 You cannot retreat, Max; you must meet Bridau. I declare 
 I longed to pick a quarrel with that great scoundrel, and settle 
 him out of hand ; then these black coats would not have seen 
 the Guard against the Guard. In war I say nothing against 
 
I 
 
 244 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 it; two brave fellows have a squabble, they fight it out, and 
 there are no counter-jumpers by to laugh them to scorn. — No, 
 that long rascal never was in the Guards. A man of the Guard 
 ought not to behave so before all these townsfolk against 
 another man of the Guard. Oh ! the Guard is scoffed at, and 
 at Issoudun too, where it used to be respected !" 
 
 "Come, Potel, do not fuss over nothing," said Max. "Even 
 if you should not see me at the anniversary dinner " 
 
 "What! you are not coming to Lacroix's the day after to-, 
 morrow?" cried Potel, interrupting his friend. "Why, you 
 will be called a coward; you will seem to be keeping out of 
 Bridau's way! No, no. The foot grenadiers of the Guard 
 must not retreat before the dragoons of the Guard ! Arrange 
 your other business as you will, but be there !" 
 
 "One more to send to the shades?" said Max. "Come, I 
 think I can manage my business and be there too. — For," said 
 he to himself, "the power of attorney must not be made out to 
 me. As old Heron said, that would look too much like 
 robbery." 
 
 The lion, thus entangled in the net laid for him by Philippe 
 Bridau, set his teeth with an inward quiver; he. avoided the 
 eye of the persons he met, and went home by the Boulevard 
 Villate, muttering as he walked. "Before I fight I will get 
 those securities," said he to himself. "If I fall, that money, 
 at any rate, shall not go to that Philippe. I will have it 
 placed in Flore's name. By my advice the child must go 
 straight to Paris ; and there, if she likes, she may marry the 
 son of some marshal who has had the sack. I will have the 
 power of attorney made out to Baruch, who will not transfer 
 the stock without my orders." 
 
 We must do Max the justice to say that he never looked 
 calmer than when his blood and brain were seething. Never 
 in any soldier were the qualities that make a great general 
 comlDined in a higher degree. If he had not been checked in 
 his career by being taken prisoner, the Emperor would have 
 found in this fellow a man of the sort needful to a vast enter- 
 prise. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 245 
 
 On going into the room where the victim of all these tragi- 
 comic scenes still sat sobbing, Max inquired the cause of his 
 despair; he was greatly astonished; he knew nothing; he 
 heard, with well-acted surprise, of Flore's departure, and cross- 
 questioned Kouski to throw some light on the purpose of this 
 unaccountable journey. 
 
 "Madame just said this,'' said Kouski ; "I was to tell mon- 
 sieur that she had taken the twenty thousand francs in gold 
 that were in his desk, thinking that Monsieur would not 
 grudge it her as wages for these two-and-twenty years." 
 
 "As wages said Eouget. 
 
 "Yes," said Kouski. "*0h, I shall never come back!' 
 She went away saying so to Vedie— for poor Vedie, who is 
 greatly attached to monsieur, was putting it to madame. ^No, 
 no,' says she, ^he has not the least aif ection for me ; he let his 
 nephew treat me like the scum of the earth !' and she was cry - 
 ing too — ever so !" 
 
 "What do I care for Philippe !" cried the old man, whom 
 Max was watching. "Where is Flore ? How can we find out 
 where she is ?" 
 
 "Philippe, whose advice you are so ready to take, will help 
 you," said Maxence coldly. 
 
 "Philippe?" said the old man; "what can he do with the 
 poor child? There is no one but you, my good Max, who 
 can find Flore; she will come with you; you will bring her 
 back to me." 
 
 "I do not wish to find myself in antagonism with Monsieur 
 Bridau," said Max. 
 
 "By Heaven !" cried Eouget, "if that is all — he has promised 
 me that he will kill you." 
 
 "Ah, ha !" laughed Gilet, "we will see " 
 
 "My dear fellow," said the old man, "find Flore; tell her 
 I will do whatever she wishes " 
 
 "She must have been seen passing by somewhere in the 
 town," said Maxence to Kouski. "Serve dinner, put everything 
 on the table, and then go from place to place, making inquiries, 
 and tell us at dessert what road Mademoiselle Brazier has 
 taken.'' 
 
246 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 This order soothed the poor man for a minute ; for he was 
 whimpering like a cliild that has lost its nurse. At this mo- 
 ment Max, whom Rouget hated as the cause of all his mis- 
 fortunes, appeared to him as an angel. A passion like 
 Rouget^s for Flore is strangely like a child's. At six o'clock 
 the Pole, who had simply taken a walk, came in and announced 
 that Flore had set out for Vatan. 
 
 I "Madame is gone back to her native place, that is clear,^' 
 said Kouski. 
 
 "Will you come to Vatan this evening asked Max of the 
 old man. "The road is bad, but Kouski drives well, and you 
 will make up your quarrel better at eight o'clock this evening 
 than to-morrow morning." 
 
 "Let us be off,^' cried Rouget. 
 
 "Put the horse in very quietly, and try to prevent the town 
 hearing all about this foolish business, for Monsieur Rouget's 
 dignity," said Max. "Saddle my horse, and I will ride 
 ■■ ihead," he added in Kouski's ear. 
 
 Monsieur Hochon had already sent news of Mademoiselle 
 Brazier's departure to Philippe Bridau, who rose from table 
 at Monsieur Mignonnet's to hurry back to the Place Saint- 
 Jean, for he guessed at once the purpose of this skilful 
 strategy. When Philippe went to his uncle's door Kouski 
 called to him out of a first-floor window that Monsieur Rouget 
 could receive no one. 
 
 "Fario," said he to the Spaniard, who was walking in the 
 Grande Narette, "go and tell Benjamin to set out on horse- 
 back ; I must positively know where my uncle and Maxence are 
 going." 
 
 "They are putting the horse to the barouche," said Fario. 
 who had been watching Rouget's house. 
 
 "If they start for Vatan," replied Philippe, "find a second 
 horse for me, and return with Benjamin to Monsieur Mignon- 
 net's house." 
 
 "What do you purpose doing?" asked Monsieur Hochon, 
 who came out of his house on seeing Philippe and Fario on 
 the Place. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 247 
 
 general's skill, my dear Monsieur Ilochon, consists not 
 merely in keeping a sharp lookout on the enemy's move- 
 ments, but also in guessing his intentions from his move- 
 ments, and constantly modifying his own plan as fast as the 
 foe upsets it by some unexpected tactics. Look here; if my 
 uncle and Maxence go out together in the chaise, they are 
 going to Vatan; Maxence will have promised to reconcile 
 him to Flore, who fugit ad salices — for this manoeuvre is 
 General Virgil's. If this is their game, I don't know what I 
 shall do. But I have the night before me, for my uncle can- 
 not sign a power of attorney at ten o'clock at night; notaries 
 are in bed. 
 
 "If, as the pawing of a second horse suggests to me. Max is 
 going ahead to give Flore her instructions before she sees 
 my uncle — as seems necessary and probable — the rascal is 
 done for ! You will see how we play a return match in the 
 game of inheritance, we soldiers. And since, for this last 
 hand in the game, I need an assistant, I am going back to 
 Mignonnet's to make arrangements with my friend Carpen- 
 tier." 
 
 After shaking hands with Monsieur Hochon, Philippe went 
 down the Petite Narette to see Major Mignonnet. Ten min- 
 utes later. Monsieur Hochon saw Maxence set out at a hard 
 gallop ; and being curious, as old men are, he was so much 
 interested that he remained standing at the window waiting 
 to hear the rattle of the demi-fortune, which was soon audible. 
 Eouget's impatience brought him out twenty minutes after 
 Max. Kouski, in obedience to his real master, was driving 
 slowly — at any rate, in the town. 
 
 "If they get off to Paris, all is lost !" said Monsieur Hochon 
 to himself. 
 
 At this moment a little boy from the Eoman suburb came to 
 Monsieur Hochon's door; he had a letter for Baruch. The 
 old man's two grandsons, very humble since the morning, had 
 of their own accord stayed at home. Eeflecting on the future, 
 they well understood how wise they would be to humor their 
 grandparents. Baruch could not but know how great his 
 
248 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 grandfather Hochon's influence would be over his grandfather 
 and grandmother Borniche; Monsieur Hochon would not 
 fail to secure the lion's share of all their money to Adolphine 
 if his conduct should justify them in founding their hopes on 
 such a grand marriage as they had threatened him with that 
 morning. Baruch, being much richer than Francois, had 
 much to lose; so he was in favor of complete submission, 
 making no conditions but that his debt to Max should be paid. 
 
 Frangois' prospects were entirely in his grandfather's 
 hands; he had no fortune to look for but from him, sinoe, 
 from the account of his guardianship, the youth was his 
 debtor. So the two young men made solemn promises, their 
 repentance being stimulated by their damaged prospects, and 
 Madame Hochon had reassured them as to the money they 
 owed to Maxence. 
 
 "You have played the fool V said she. "Repair the mis- 
 chief by good conduct, and Monsieur Hochon will be molli- 
 fied.^' 
 
 Thus, when Frangois had read the letter over Baruch's 
 shoulder, he said in his ear : 
 
 "Ask grandpapa what he thinks of it.'' 
 
 "Here," said Baruch, handing the letter to the old man. 
 
 "Eead it to me ; I have not got my spectacles." 
 
 "My dear Friend, — 
 
 "I hope you will not hesitate, in the serious position in 
 which' I am placed, to do me a service by accepting the office 
 of Monsieur Eouget's attorney. Pray be at Vatan by nine 
 o'clock to-morrow. I shall no doubt send you to Paris; but 
 be quite easy, I will give you money for the journey, and join 
 you ere long, for I am almost certain to be obliged to leave 
 Issoudun on the 3rd of December. Adieu; I rely on your 
 friendship, and you may rely on mine. 
 
 "Maxence." 
 
 ^'God be praised !" said Monsieur Hochon, "that idiot's for- 
 tune is safe from the clutches of those devils !" 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 249 
 
 ''It must be so, since you say it," observed Madame Hochon, 
 "and I thank God for it; He no doubt has heard my prayers. 
 The triumph of the wicked is always brief." 
 
 "Go to Vatan, and accept the office of attorney to Monsieur 
 Rouget/' said the old man to Baruch. "You will be desired 
 to transfer stock bearing fifty thousand francs interest to the 
 name of Mademoiselle Brazier. Set out for Paris, but stop 
 at Orleans, and wait till you hear from me. Tell no one 
 whatever where you put up, and go to the last inn you see in 
 the Faubourg Bannier, even if it is but a carrier^s house of 
 call." 
 
 "Hey day !" cried Frangois, who had rushed to the window 
 at the sound of carriage- wheels in the Grande Narette ; "here 
 is something new! Pere Rouget and Monsieur Philippe 
 have come home together in the carriage, Benjamin and Mon- 
 sieur Carpentier following them on horseback " 
 
 "I will go across," cried Monsieur Hochon, his curiosity 
 getting the upper hand of every other feeling. 
 
 Monsieur Hochon found old Rouget in his room, writing the 
 following letter from his nephew^s dictation : — 
 
 "Mademoiselle, — 
 
 "If you do not set out the instant you receive this letter 
 to return to me, your conduct will show so much ingratitude 
 for all my kindness, that I shall revoke my will in your favor, 
 and leave my whole fortune to my nephew Philippe. You 
 must also understand that if Monsieur Gilet is with you at 
 Vatan, he can never again live under my roof. I intrust this 
 letter to Monsieur Carpentier to be delivered to you, and 1 
 hope you will listen to his advice, for he will speak to you as 
 I should myself. 
 
 "Yours affectionately, 
 
 "J.-J. Rouget.'' 
 
 "Captain Carpentier and I happened to meet my uncle," 
 said Philippe to Monsieur Hochon with bitter irony. "He 
 was so foolish as to intend going to Vatan to seek Made- 
 
HBO A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 moiselle Brazier and Major Gilet. I explained to my uncle 
 that he was running head foremost into a trap. Will not that 
 woman throw him over as soon as he shall have signed the 
 power of attorney she insists on to enable her to transfer to 
 herself the stock for fifty thousand francs a year? By writing 
 this letter, will he not see her back here to-night, under his 
 roof— -the fair deserter ! I promise I will make mademoiselle 
 as pliant as a reed for the rest of her life, if only my uncle 
 will allow me to take the place of Monsieur Gilet, who, in my 
 opinion, is certainly not in the right place here. Am I not 
 right ? — And my uncle wrings his hands 
 
 ^^My good neighbor," said Monsieur Hochon, ''you have 
 taken the best means for securing peace in your house. If 
 you will listen to me, you will destroy your will, and then 
 you will see Flore once more all that she was in former 
 days." 
 
 "No ; she will never forgive me for making her so unliappy," 
 said the old man, weeping ; "she will never love me again." 
 
 "Yes, she will love 3^ou, and heartily too," said Philippe. 
 "I will see to that." 
 
 "But open your eyes, man!" said Monsieur Hochon to 
 Kouget. "They only want to rob you and desert you !" 
 
 "Oh, if I were only sure of that !" said the poor creature. 
 
 "Look here. This is a letter written by Maxence to my 
 grandson Borniche," said old Hochon. "Read it." 
 
 "The wretch !" exclaimed Carpentier, as he heard the letter 
 which Eouget read through his tears. 
 
 "Is that clear enough, uncle?" asked Philippe. "I tell 
 you, bind the minx to you by interest and you will be adored— 
 as you can be— half thread and half cotton !" 
 
 "She is too fond of Maxence; she will throw me over!" 
 said the old man piteously. 
 
 "I tell you, uncle, by the day after to-morrow either I or 
 Maxence v/ill have ceased to leave our tracks on the streets 
 of Issoudun " 
 
 "Well," said the poor fellow, "go. Monsieur Carpentier; 
 if you promise me that she will come back, go. You are a 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 251 
 
 man to be depended on; say to her all you think fit in my 
 name." 
 
 •''Captain Carpentier will whisper in her ear that I am 
 having a lady here from Paris who is a little gem of youth 
 and beauty," said Philippe, "and the minx will come back 
 as fast as she can drive." 
 
 The Captain set out, driving himself in the old chaise; 
 Benjamin accompanied him on horseback, for Kouski was not 
 to be found. Though the two officers had threatened him with 
 an action and the loss of his place, the Pole had fled to Vatan 
 on a hired horse, to warn Maxence and Flore of their ad- 
 versary's bold game. 
 
 Carpentier, who did not choose to return with la Eabouil- 
 leuse, was to ride back on Benjamin's horse when he had 
 carried out his mission- 
 On hearing of Kouski's desertion, Philippe said to Ben- 
 jamin : 
 
 "You can take his place here this evening. Try to climb 
 up at the back of the chaise without being seen by Flore, no 
 as to be here by the time she is." 
 
 "Things are shaping ! Daddy Hochon !" said the Colonel. 
 "There will be fun at the banquet the day after to-morrow." 
 
 "And you will settle yourself here," said the old miser. 
 
 "I have told Fario to send in all my things. I shall sleep 
 in the room that opens on to the same landing as Gilet's ; my 
 uncle agrees." 
 
 "Oh! what will come of all this?" cried the old man in 
 dismay. 
 
 "Mademoiselle Flore Brazier will come of it, within a few 
 hours, as mild as a Paschal lamb," replied Monsieur Hochon. 
 
 "God grant it !" said Jean-Jacques, drying away his tears. 
 
 "'It is now seven o'clock," said Philippe. "The queen of 
 your heart will be here by about half-past eleven. You will 
 see no more of Gilet ; will you not be as happy as a Pope ? — 
 Tf you want me to succeed," Philippe added in Monsieur 
 Hochon's ear, "remain with us till that she-ape comes; you 
 will help me to keep the old fellow at the sticking-point ; and 
 VOL. 4-43 
 
252 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 then, between us, we can make Mademoiselle la Rabouilleuse 
 understand where her true interests lie." 
 
 Monsieur Hochon kept Philippe company, seeing that there 
 was sense in his request ; but they both had their hands full, 
 for Pere Rouget gave himself up to childish lamentations, 
 which were not checked by the arguments Philippe repeated 
 ten times over: 
 
 "Well, uncle, if Plore comes back and is affectionate to you, 
 you will admit that I am right. You will be made much of ; 
 you will keep your income ; 3^ou will be guided for the future 
 by my advice, and all will go on like Paradise." 
 
 When at half-past eleven the sound of wheels was heard 
 in the Grande Narette, the question was whether the carriage 
 had returned empty or full. Rouget's face wore an expres- 
 sion of indescribable anguish, which gave way to the reaction 
 of excessive joy when, as the chaise turned to come in, he saw 
 in it the two women. 
 
 ^'Kouski," said Philippe, giving his hand to Flore to get 
 out, "you are dismissed from Monsieur Rouget's service. You 
 are not to sleep here to-night, so pack your things; Benjamin 
 here will fill your place." 
 
 "So you are master?" said Flore, with a sneer. 
 
 "By your leave !" retorted Philippe, holding Flore's huDd ar^ 
 in a vise. "Come with me; we have to rabouiller our hearts, 
 you and I." 
 
 Philippe led the woman, dumfounded, out a few yards on 
 to the Place Saint-Jean. 
 
 "Now, my beauty; the day after to-morrow Gilet will be 
 sent to the shades below by this right arm," said the officer, 
 holding it out, "or he will have caught me off my guard. If I 
 fall, you will be the mistress in my uncle's house — lene sit! 
 If I am left standing on my pegs, you have got to keep him in 
 happiness of the very first quality. Otherwise, I know plenty 
 of Rahouilleuses in Paris, prettier than you, without any in- 
 justice to you, for they are but seventeen ; they would make my 
 uncle very happy, and not fail to take my part. Begin your 
 task this very evening, for if the old man is not as lively as 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 253 
 
 a chaffinch to-morrow, I have only one thing to say to you — 
 and mark my words — There is only one way of killing a man 
 without the law having a word to say to it, and that is by 
 fighting a duel ; but when it comes to a woman — I know three 
 ways of getting rid of her. There, my pigeon \" 
 
 All through this address Flore had been shaking like an 
 ague-patient. 
 
 "Kill Max she said, looking at Philippe in the moon- 
 
 i light. 
 
 "Now, go. See, here is my uncle . . 
 
 In fact, old Eouget, in spite of all that Monsieur Hochon 
 could say, had come out into the street to take Flore by the 
 hand, as a miser might have sought his treasure. He led 
 her into the house and into his room, and locked the door. 
 
 "This is good Saint-Lambert's Day, those who leave must 
 stay away,'^ said Benjamin to the Pole. 
 
 "Oh, my master will shut all your mouths,^' retorted Kouski, 
 going off to join Max, who put up at the Hotel de la Poste. 
 
 Next day, from nine till eleven, all the women were gos- 
 siping at the house-doors. All through the town nothing was 
 talked of but the wonderful rcA^olution carried out the day be- 
 fore in Pere Rouget's household. The upshot of these dis- 
 cussions was everywhere the same. 
 
 "What will happen between Max and Colonel Bridau at the 
 Anniversary banquet to-morrow 
 
 To Vedie, Philippe spoke a few words — "An annuity of six 
 hundred francs — or dismissal ?' which reduced her to neutral- 
 ity for the time between two such formidable powers as 
 Philippe and Flore. 
 
 Knowing Max's life to be imperiled, Flore was sweeter to 
 old Rouget than even in the early days of their housekeeping. 
 Alas ! in love affairs, interested fraud overrides sincerity, and 
 (hat is why so many men pay clever beguilers so dear. La 
 Rabouilleuse remained invisible next morning till breakfast 
 time, when she came down, giving her arm to Pere Rouget. 
 The tears rose to her eyes as she saw in Max's seat the terrible 
 veteran with his gloomy blue eye and ominously calm face. 
 
254 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "What ails you, mademoiselle?" said he, after wishing his 
 uncle good-morning. 
 
 '^hat ails her, nephew, is that she cannot bear the idea of 
 yonr fighting Major Gilet " 
 
 "I have not the slightest wish to kill your Gilet/' replied 
 Philippe. "He has only to clear out of Issoudun and ship 
 himself to America with a parcel of merchandise ; I should be 
 the first to advise you to give him some money to invest in the 
 best class of goods, and to wish him good luck ! He will make 
 a fortune, and it would be more creditable than running riot 
 through the town o' nights — not to mention playing the devil 
 in your house." 
 
 "Well, that is very handsome, eh!" said Eouget, turning 
 to Flore. 
 
 "To A-me-ri-ca !" said she, sobbing. 
 
 "He would be better off kicking his heels in New York than 
 tucked up in a deal box in France. But, of course, you may 
 say he is a crack hand ; he may kill me !" remarked the 
 Colonel. 
 
 '^ill you allow me to speak to him?" said Flore, in a 
 quite humble and submissive tone, to Philippe. 
 
 "Certainly, and he may come and take away all his things. 
 But I shall stay with my uncle meanwhile; for I do not 
 intend to leave the old man any more," replied Philippe. 
 
 "Vedie," called Flore, "run to the Poste, woman, and tell 
 the Major that I beg him to " 
 
 "To come and fetch away his things," said Philippe, in- 
 terrupting Flore. 
 
 "Yes, yes, Vedie. That will be the best excuse for asking 
 him to come ; I want to speak to him." 
 
 Fear so completely overpowered hatred in this woman, and 
 her dismay at meeting a strong and ruthless will, when hither- 
 to she had always met with adulation, was so great that 
 she was beginning to give way before Philippe, as poor old 
 Eouget had given way before her. She awaited with anxiety 
 Vedie's return; but Vedie came back with a positive refusal 
 from Max, who begged Mademoiselle Brazier to send all his 
 possessions to the Hotel de la Poste. 
 
A BACHELOR'S KSTAIiLKSHMENT 
 
 255 
 
 "Will you let me take them to him?" she asked old 
 Eouget. 
 
 "Yes — but you promise to come back V said the old man. 
 
 "If mademoiselle is not here by mid-day, at one o'clock 
 you will give me a power of attorney to transfer your securi- 
 ties/' said Philippe, looking at Flore. "Take Vedie for the 
 sake of appearances, mademoiselle. Henceforth we must 
 guard my uncle's honor." 
 
 Flore could get nothing out of Maxence. The Major, in 
 his disgust at having allowed himself to be ousted from his 
 disgraceful position before the eyes of the whole town, was too 
 proud to retreat before Philippe. La Kabouilleuse combated 
 his arguments by proposing to her lover that they should fly 
 together to America ; but Gilet, who did not want Flore witli- 
 out Pere Rouget's fortune, while he would not let the womaji 
 see to the bottom of his heart, persisted in saying that he 
 meant to kill Philippe. 
 
 '•'^e have committed a stupid blunder,'^ said he. "We ought 
 to have gone, all three of us, to spend the winter in Paris. 
 But how could we imagine from looking at that gaunt carcasH 
 that things would turn out as they have done? Events have 
 come with such a rush, that it has turned my brain. I took 
 the Colonel for a swashbuckler without two ideas; that was. 
 my mistake. Since I was not sharp enough in the first in- 
 stance to double like a hare, I should be a coward now if 
 I yielded an inch to the Colonel; he has ruined me in the 
 opinion of the town ; only his death can rehabilitate me." 
 
 "Go to America v/ith forty thousand francs. I will find 
 some way of getting rid of that savage; I will join you there; 
 it will be much wiser . . ." 
 
 "What would people think of me?" he exclaimed, stung 
 by the thought of the "jaw." "No. Besides, I have already 
 settled nine. That fellow can be no great duelist, it seems to 
 me. He left school to go into the army; he was always in 
 the wars till 1815, since that he has been traveling in America; 
 so my bull-dog can never have set foot in a fencing school, 
 while I have no match at sword-play. The cavalry sword 
 
256 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 is his arm ; I shall seem magnanimous by proposing it — for I 
 shall try to make him insult me, and I will make short work 
 of him. Decidedly that is the best thing to do. Be easy ; we 
 shall be masters again the day after to-morrow." 
 
 Thus with Max a foolish point of honor outweighed rational 
 policy. Flore was at hom^e by one o'clock, and shut herself 
 into her room to cry at her ease. All that day gossip wagged 
 its tongue freely in Issoudun, for a duel between Maxence 
 and Philippe was considered inevitable. 
 
 "Ah! Monsieur Hochon," said Mignonnet, who met the 
 old man on the Boulevard Baron, where the Captain was walk- 
 ing with Carpentier, "we are very anxious, for Gilet is equally 
 strong with all weapons." 
 
 "Never mind," said the old provincial diplomate, "Philippe 
 has managed the whole business very well — and I never should 
 have believed that that long, free-and-easy rascal would have 
 succeeded so quickly. Those two fellowa rolled up to meet 
 each other like two storm-clouds " 
 
 "Oh," said Carpentier, "Philippe is a very deep customer. 
 His conduct before the Supreme Court was a masterpiece of 
 skill." 
 
 "Hallo ! Captain Eenard," said a tov/nsman, "they say that 
 wolves do not eat each other, but it seems that Max is going 
 to try a ripping match with Colonel Bridau. It will be no 
 child's play between men of the old Guard !" 
 
 "And you can laugh at it, you townsmen. Because the poor 
 fellow liked a lark at night, you owe him a grudge," said 
 Major Potel. "But Gilet is a man who could never stay in 
 such a hole as Issoudun without finding something to do." 
 
 "Well, well, gentlemen," said another, "Max and the Colonel 
 have played the game out. Was not the Colonel bound to 
 avenge his brother Joseph ? Do you remember Max's treach- 
 ery towards that poor fellow?" 
 
 "Bah! an artist!" said Renard. 
 
 "But Pere Rouget's leavings are in the balance. They sa} 
 that Monsieur Gilet was about to pounce on fifty thousand 
 francs a year when the Colonel went to live under his uncle's 
 roof/' 
 
I 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 257 
 
 "Gilet — steal anybody's money? — Look here, Monsieur 
 Canivet, do not say that anywhere but here, or we will make 
 you eat your words without any sauce to them." 
 
 But worthy Colonel Bridau had the good wishes of all the 
 townspeople. 
 
 On the morrow, at about four o'clock, the officers of the 
 Imperial army who resided at Issoudun, or in the neighbor- 
 hood, were walking to and fro on the market-place, in front 
 of an eating-house kept by one Lacroix, waiting for Philippe 
 Bridau. The banquet in honor of the anniversary of the 
 Coronation was fixed for five o'clock, military time. Several 
 gvoups were discussing Maxence's affairs and his eviction 
 from Eouget's house, for the private soldiers had also agreed 
 to hold a meeting at a tavern on the Place. Of all the officers, 
 Potel and Eenard alone attempted to defend their friend. 
 
 "Is it our part to interfere in what goes on between two 
 heirs ?" said Renard. 
 
 "Max is soft to women," remarked Potel the cynic. 
 
 "Swords will be draw^n before long," said a retired sub- 
 lieutenant, wtto now cultivated a market-garden in the upper 
 Baltan. "Though Monsieur Maxence was a fool to go to live 
 with Pere Rouget, he would be a coward to take his dismissal 
 like a servant without asking the reason." 
 
 "Certainly," replied Mignonnet drily. "When an act of 
 folly fails, it becomes a crime." 
 
 Max, who presently joined the old Bonapartist soldiers, was 
 received with very significant silence. Potel and Renard 
 each took an arm, and led Max a little way off to talk to him, 
 At this moment Philippe appeared in the distance in full 
 dress; he dragged his cane with an imperturbable air that 
 contrasted with the deep attention Max was obliged to give to 
 what his two last friends were saying. Philippe shook hands 
 with Mignonnet, Carpentier, and a few others. This re- 
 ception, so unlike that which Max had just met with, finally 
 dispelled from the mind of the latter certain dawnings of 
 cowardice — or of prudence, if you please — to which Flore's en- 
 
258 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 treaties, and, above all, her affection, had given rise when 
 at last he had been left face to face with himself. 
 
 "We will fight," said he to Captain Eenard, "and to the 
 death! So talk to me no more; leave me to play my part 
 out." 
 
 After these words, spoien in a fever of excitement, the 
 three men rejoined the other groups of officers. Max bowed 
 first to Bridau, who returned the compliment with a very cold 
 stare. 
 
 "Come, gentlemen; to dinner," said Major Potel. 
 
 "And to drink to the imperishable glory of the little Crop- 
 head, who is now in the paradise of the brave," cried Eenard. 
 
 All the party, feeling that the business of dinner would put 
 them in better countenance, understood the little Light-horse 
 Captain's intentions. They hurried into the long, low dining- 
 room of the Kestaurant Lacroix, of which the windows looked 
 out on the market-place. Each guest at once took his seat at 
 table, and the adversaries found themselves face to face, as 
 Philippe had requested. Several of the youth of the town, 
 especially the ex-Knights of Idlesse, somewhat uneasy as to 
 what might take place at this dinner, walked about outside, 
 discussing the critical position in which Philippe had con- 
 trived to place Maxence Gilet. They deplored the collision, 
 \»(hile admitting that a duel was necessary. 
 
 All went well till dessert, though the two fighting men kept 
 a sort of watch on each other, not far removed from uneasi- 
 ness, in spite of the apparent cheerfulness of the meal. Pend- 
 ing the quarrel, which both, no doubt, were meditating, 
 Philippe was admirably cool, and Max boisterously gay; but, 
 to the connoisseur, each was playing a part. 
 
 When dessert was on the table, Philippe said : 
 
 "Fill your glasses, my friends; I claim permission to pro- 
 pose our first toast." 
 
 "He said 'My friends' ; do not fill your glass," said Renard 
 in Max's ear. 
 
 But Max poured out some wine. 
 
 "The Grand Army!" cried Philippe with genuine en* 
 thusiasm. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 259 
 
 "The Grand Army !" was repeated like one word by every 
 voice. 
 
 At this moment in the doorway there appeared eleven 
 private soldiers, among them Benjamin and Kouski, who all 
 repeated, "The Grand Army 
 
 "Come in, boys; we are going to drink to his health," said 
 Major Potel. 
 
 The old soldiers came in, and remained standing behind the 
 officers. 
 
 "You see, he is not really dead!'' said Koiiski to an old 
 sergeant, who had, no doubt, been deploring the Emperor's 
 long agony, now at last ended. 
 
 "I claim the second toast," said Major Mignonnet. 
 
 A few of the dessert dishes were disturbed to keep up ap- 
 pearances. Mignonnet rose. 
 
 "To those who tried to reinstate his son !" said he. 
 
 Every one, with the exception of Maxence Gilet, lifted his 
 glass to Philippe Bridau. 
 
 "It is my turn," said Max, rising. 
 
 "Max ! — it is Max !" they were saying outside. Deep 
 silence reigned within and on the market-place, for Gilet's 
 temper led them to expect some provocation. 
 
 "May we all meet here again this day twelvemonth !" and 
 he bowed ironically to Philippe. 
 
 "He is coming on !" said Kouski to his neighbor. 
 
 "The Paris police did not allow you to hold such banquets 
 as this," said Major Potel to Philippe. 
 
 "Why the devil need you speak of the police to Colonel 
 Bridau?" asked Maxence Gilet insolently. 
 
 "Major Potel meant no harm on his part," said Philippe, 
 with a bitter smile. The silence was so complete that a fly 
 would have been heard if there had been any. 
 
 "The police is sufficiently afraid of me," said Philippe, "to 
 have sent me to Issoudun, a place where I have had the good 
 luck to find a few of the right old sort. But it must be con- 
 fessed that there is not much amusement to be found here. 
 For a man who was not averse to the ladies I have come off 
 
260 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 but badly. However, I will save my money for the pretty 
 dears — for I am not one of the men who find their fortune 
 in a feather-bed, and Mariette of the opera-house cost me no 
 end of money." 
 
 "Is it for my benefit that you say that, my dear Colonel 
 said Max, firing a glance like an electric shock at Philippe. 
 
 ■'"'If the cap fits, Major Gilet." 
 
 "Colonel, my two friends here, Eenard and Potel, will call 
 to-morrow morning 
 
 "On Mignonnet and Carpentier," interrupted Philippe, 
 waving his hand to his two neighbors. 
 
 "Now," said Max, "go on with the toasts." 
 
 Neither of the antagonists had raised his voice above the 
 ordinary tone of conversation; nothing was solemn but the 
 silence in which they were heard. 
 
 "Look here, you fellows," said Philippe, looking at the 
 privates, "remember, our affairs are nc concern of the town- 
 folks ! — Not a word of what has just been said ; it must re- 
 main a secret with the old Guard." 
 
 "They will obey orders, Colonel," said Renard; "I will 
 answer for them." 
 
 "Long live the youngster ! May he reign in France /" cried 
 Potel. 
 
 "Death to the Englishman !" added Carpentier, and this 
 toast was enthusiastically drunk. 
 
 "Shame on Hudson Lowe !" said Captain Renard. 
 
 The dessert went off very well, with ample libations. The 
 two antagonists regarded it as a point of honor that this duel, 
 in which an immense fortune was at stake, while the combat- 
 ants ^YQTQ both men so noted for their courage, should have 
 no feature in common with a vulgar quarrel. Two gentle- 
 men, in the best sense, could not have behaved better than 
 Max and Philippe. The expectations of the young men and 
 townspeople who had gathered on the market-place were dis- 
 appointed. 
 
 All the guests, as brother-soldiers, kept the secret of the 
 episode at dessert. At ten o'clock the two principals were in- 
 
jeick it up! " he said, pausing in the fight 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 261 
 
 formed that the sword was tlie weapon decided on. The spot 
 selected for the meeting was behind the apse of the Capuchin 
 chapel, at eight next morning. Goddet, who had been present 
 at the dinner, having formerly served as surgeon-major, had 
 been requested to attend. Whatever came of it, the seconds 
 agreed that the fighting was not to last for more than ten 
 minutes. ^ 
 
 At eleven o'clock that night, to the ColonePs great surprise 
 just as he was going to bed. Monsieur Hochon brought his wif<? 
 over to see him. 
 
 "We know what is happening,^' said the old lady, her eye? 
 full of tears, "and I have come to beseech you not to go out 
 to-morrow morning without saying your prayers. Lift up 
 your soul to God." 
 
 "Yes, madame," said Philippe, to whom old Hochon was 
 signaling from behind his wife. 
 
 "That is not all," said Agathe's godmother ; "I put myself 
 in your poor mother's place, and I have deprived myself of my 
 most precious possession. Look here !" and she held out to 
 Philippe a tooth fastened to a piece of black velvet em* 
 broidered with gold, to which two ends of green ribbon were 
 sewn ; after showing it to Philippe, she replaced it in a little 
 bag. "It is a relic of Saint Solange, the patron saint of le 
 Berry; I saved it at the time of the Revolution; wear it on 
 your breast to-morrow." 
 
 "Can it protect me against a sword-stroke ?" asked Philippe. 
 
 "Yes," replied the old lady. 
 
 "Then I can no more wear that paraphernalia that I could 
 wear a breastplate," cried Agathe's son. 
 
 "What does he mean?" asked Madame Hochon of her hus- 
 band. 
 
 "He says it is not fair play," replied old Hochon. 
 "Very well ; say no more about it," said she. "I will pray 
 for you." 
 
 "Well, madame, a mouthful of prayers and a straight thrust 
 can do no harm," said the Colonel, making as though he would 
 pierce Monsieur Hochon through the heart 
 
?62 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 The old lady insisted on kissing Philippe on the forehead. 
 Then^ as she went out, she gave Benjamin ten crowns, all the 
 money she had, to induce him to ser/ the relic into his master's 
 trousers-pocket. Which Benjamin did, not believing in the 
 virtue of the bone — for his master, said he, had a much larger 
 one to pick with Gilet — but because he v/as bound to fulfil a 
 commission so handsomely paid for. Madame Hochon went 
 home firmly trusting in Saint Solange. 
 
 At eight next morning, in overcast weather, Max, with his' 
 two seconds and Kouski, arrived on the little plot of grass 
 which at that time surrounded the apse of the old Capuchin 
 church. There they found Philippe and his party with Ben- 
 jamin. Potel and Mignonnet measured twenty-five paces. At 
 each end of the line the two men marked a crease with a spade. 
 Neither of the combatants could retreat beyond the mark 
 under pain of cowardice ; each man was to stand on his line, 
 and advance as far as he pleased, when the seconds cried 
 ^'Go !" 
 
 *^'Shall we take our coats off ?" said Philippe coldly to Gilet. 
 "By all means. Colonel," said Maxence, with the confidence 
 f an old hand. 
 
 The two men kept on only their trousers, the flesh showing 
 pink through their cambric "shirts. Armed with cavalry 
 iwords, carefully chosen of the same weight — about three 
 pounds, and the same length — three feet, the two men took 
 :heir stand, their swords pointed downwards, awaiting the 
 signal. Both were so calm, that in spite of the cold their 
 muscles quivered no more than if they had been of bronze. 
 Goddet, the four seconds, and the two soldiers felt an in- 
 voluntary thrill. 
 
 "They are a fine couple !" 
 
 The exclamation broke from Major Potel. 
 
 At the moment when the word "Go V' was spoken, Maxence 
 caught sight of Fario's ominous face ; he was looking at them 
 from the hole made by the Knights of the Order to put the 
 pigeons through into his store. Those eyes, from which hatred 
 and revenge shot like two showers of flame, dazzled Max. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 203 
 
 The Colonel made straight for his antagonist, putting him- 
 self on guard in such a way as to secure the advantage. 
 Experts in the art of killing know that the more skilful of two 
 swordsmen can take the upper hand, to use an expression that 
 suggests hy a figure of speech the effect of the superior guard. 
 This attitude, which allows a man in some degree to see what 
 is coming, so effectually proclaims a duelist of the first class 
 that a sense of his own inferiority sank deep into Max's soul, 
 producing that flutter of mind which is the ruin of a gambler 
 when, face to face with a master-hand or a man in luck, he is 
 disconcerted, and plays worse than usual. 
 
 "Ah, the wretch V said Max to himself. "He is more than 
 my match. I am done for !" 
 
 Max tried a circular flourish, wielding his sword with the 
 skill of a player at single stick ; he wanted to dazzle Philippe's 
 eye and strike his weapon, so as to disarm him; but at the 
 first touch he felt that the Colonel had a wrist of iron, as 
 flexible as a steel spring. Maxence had to find some other 
 gtroke; and he, wretched man, w^anted to think, while 
 Philippe, whose eyes sparkled more vividly than the flashing 
 steel, parried every attack as coolly as a fencing master in 
 pads in a school of arms. 
 
 Between two men, when both are so skilful as these com- 
 batants, the issue depends on a circumstance somewhat like 
 that which decides the event of the horrible kicking matches 
 among the common people, known as the Savate. The victory 
 depends on a false move, on a mistake in the distance, as 
 sudden as a lightning flash, which must be followed up in- 
 stantly. For a certain time, as short to the spectators as it 
 seems long to the adversaries, the fight consists in watchful- 
 ness- absorbing every power of mind and body, but hidden 
 under feints apparently so slow and so cautious that it might 
 be supposed that neither of the men meant business. This 
 instant, followed by a swift and decisive struggle, is agonizing 
 to the skilled beholder. Max presently parried badly, and the 
 Colonel struck the sword out of his hand. 
 
 "Pick it up !" he said, pausing in the fight. "I am not the 
 man to kill a disarmed foe." 
 
264 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 It was the sublime of ruthlessness. This generosity showed 
 such certain superiority that it was regarded as the cleverest 
 design by the lookers-on. In fact, when Max took up his 
 guard again he had lost his presence of mind, and again, of 
 course, found himself below the high guard which threatened 
 him while covering his adversary. Then he hoped to retrieve 
 his shameful defeat by a daring blow; he no longer tried to 
 guard himself; he took his sword in both hands and rushed 
 furiously on the Colonel, to wound him mortally, while allow- 
 ing himself to be killed. Though Philippe received a sword- 
 stroke which cut his forehead and part of his face, he split 
 Max^s skull obliquely by a terrible swashing cut, intended to 
 break the murderous blow Max meant to deal him. These two 
 frantic cuts ended the fight in nine minutes. Fario came 
 down to feast his eyes on the sight of his enemy's death- 
 struggle, for in a man so powerful as Max the muscles twitch 
 frightfully. Philippe was carried to his uncle's house. 
 
 Thus died one of those men destined to achieve great things 
 if he had but remained in the position to which he was fitted ; 
 a man who was a spoilt child of nature, endowed with courage, 
 cool blood, and the political astuteness of a C^sar Borgia. 
 But education had not given him that loftiness of mind and 
 conduct without which no achievement is possible in any walk 
 of life. He was not regretted, for the insidious action of his 
 adversary — a more worthless creature than himself — had suc- 
 ceeded in lowering him in public regard. His death put an 
 end to the exploits of the Knights of Idlesse, to the great satis- 
 faction of the town of Issoudun. Philippe got into no trouble 
 in consequence of this duel, which indeed appeared to be the 
 outcome of divine vengeance, and of which the details were 
 discussed through all the neighborhood with unanimous 
 praise of the two antagonists. 
 
 "They ought to have killed each other," said Monsieur 
 Mouilleron. "That would have been a good riddance for the 
 Government." 
 
 Flore Brazier's position would have been a very embarrass- 
 ing one but for the severe illness produced by Max's death; 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMP]NT 
 
 she had an attack on the brain, complicated by dangerous 
 inflammation, brought on by the fatigues and shocks of the 
 last three days. If she had been in her usual health, she 
 might perhaps have fled from the house where, just beneath 
 her, in Max's room and Max's bed, lay Max's murderer. For 
 three months she hovered between life and death under the 
 treatment of Monsieur Goddet, who also attended Philippe. 
 
 As soon as Philippe could hold a pen he wrote the following 
 letters : — 
 
 "To Monsieur Desroches, Attorney-at-Law 
 
 "I have already killed the more venomous of the two beasts, 
 not without getting a hole in my head from a sword-cut, but 
 the rascal happily struck with a dead hand. There remains 
 another viper with whom I must try to come to some under- 
 standing, for to my uncle she is as his very gizzard. I was 
 much afraid lest this Eabouilleuse, who is devilish handsome, 
 should take herself off, for my uncle would have gone after 
 her; but the shock which came upon her at an evil moment 
 has nailed her to her bed. If God were gracious to me. He 
 would take her to Himself while she repents of her sins. 
 Meanwhile, thanks to Monsieur Hochon — the old man is well 
 — I have the doctor on my side, named Goddet, a good apostle, 
 who opines that an uncle's inheritance is better placed in his 
 nephew's hands than in those of such a minx. Monsieur 
 Hochon exerts some influence over one Fichet, who has a 
 rich daughter, on whom Goddet has an eye as a wife for his 
 son; so that the thousand-franc note that has been dangled 
 before him for curing my nut has little to do with his de- 
 votion. This Goddet, formerly Surgeon-Major in the Third 
 Line Eegiment, has also been ^talked to' by my friends, two 
 brave officers, Mignonnet and Carpentier, so that he is hum- 
 bugging his other patient. 
 
 " There is a God after all, you see, my dear,' says he, feel- 
 ing her pulse. 'You have caused a great misfortune; you 
 must repair the mischief. The hand of God is in all this. 
 
266 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 (What the hand of God is made to do is incredible !) Religion 
 is religion; submit, bo resigned; to begin with, it will calm 
 your mind, and do as much to cure you as my drugs. Above 
 all, remain here to take care of your master. And then, for- 
 give ! Forgiveness is the law of the Christian.' 
 
 "This Goddet has promised that he will keep la Rabouii- 
 leuse in bed for three months. Perhaps the woman will in- 
 sensibly become accustomed to our living under the same roof. 
 I have secured the cook on my side. The abominable old 
 thing tells her mistress that Max would have made life very 
 hard for her. She declares that she heard the dead man say 
 that if after the old man's death he should be obliged to marry 
 Flore, he did not mean to clog his career with a hussy. And 
 the cook even insinuated that Max v/ould have found means 
 to get rid of her. 
 
 "So all is well. My uncle, by old Hochon's advice, has de- 
 /stroyed his will." 
 
 ''To Monsieur Giroudeau, at Mademoiselle Florentine's, Rue 
 de Vendome au Marais. 
 "My old Comrade, — Find out whether that little puss 
 Cesarine is engaged, and try to persuade her to be in readi- 
 ness to come to Issoudun as soon as I ask her. The little 
 slut must then start by return of post. She must get herself 
 up respectably, and shed everything that smacks of the side- 
 scenes ; she would have to figure in the country as the daughter 
 of a brave soldier killed on the field of honor. So the 
 primmest behavior, a school-girl fit-out, and first-class virtue, 
 — these are the order of the day. If I should need her, and if 
 she is a success, at my uncle's death she shall have fifty thou- 
 sand francs. If she is busy, explain the case to Florentine, 
 and find me, between you, some little walking lady who can 
 play the part. 
 
 "I had my scalp peeled in the duel with my fortune-grabber, 
 and it has given my eye a twist. I will tell you all about it. 
 Ah! old man, we will see good times yet, and have plenty 
 of fun with others — not the same others. If you can forward 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 267 
 
 me five hundred flimsies, I can find use for them. Ta-ta, old 
 cock. Light your pipe with this document. It must be un- 
 derstood that the officer's daughter hails from Chateauroux, 
 and professes to be in need of help. However, I hope not to 
 be obliged to have recourse to this dangerous game. Ke- 
 member me to Mariette and all our friends.'' 
 
 Agathe, on hearing from Madame Hochon, hastened to 
 Issoudun, and was received by her brother, who gave her 
 Philippe's old room. The poor mother, whose heart was soft 
 again towards her villainous son, enjoyed a few happy days 
 while hearing the citizens of Issoudun sing the Colonel's 
 praises. 
 
 "After all, dear child," said Madame Hochon on the day 
 of Agathe's arrival, "youth must have its day. The follies of 
 soldiers who served the Emperor cannot be the same as those 
 of sons looked after by respectable fathers. If only you 
 could know all the tricks that wretch Max would play here by^ 
 night ! Now, thanks to your son, Issoudun breathes and' 
 sleeps in peace. Judgment came late to Philippe, but it 
 came ; as he told us, three months' imprisonment in the Lux- 
 embourg leaves a little ballast in the brain ; in short, his con- 
 duct here has delighted Monsieur Hochon, and he has won 
 general respect. If your son can but remain a little while 
 out of the way of the temptations of Paris, he will end by 
 giving you every satisfaction." 
 
 Agathe, as she heard these comforting words, looked at her 
 godmother with eyes full of happy tears. 
 
 Philippe played the good boy to his mother; he wanted to 
 make use of her. This astute diplomatist did not want to 
 have recourse to Cesarine unless he found himself the object of 
 Flore's aversion. He understood that Flore was an admirable 
 tool, moulded by Maxence, and to his uncle a habit of life; 
 he meant to make use of her rather than of a Parisian, who 
 might have made the old man marry her. Just as Fouche 
 advised Louis XVIII. to lie between Napoleon's sheets rather 
 than to grant the Charter, Philippe would have liked to lie 
 VOL. 4—44 
 
t6S A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 quietly between Gilet's sheets. Still, he did not wish to cast 
 a slur on the reputation he had just made in the province. 
 Now, to carry on Max's relations with la Rabouilteuse would 
 be as odious on his part as on the woman's. He might, with- 
 out discredit, live under his uncle's roof and at his uncle's 
 expense, in consideration of his relationship; but he could 
 have nothing to say to Flore unless she were rehabilitated. 
 In the meshes of these difficulties, the admirable plan occurred 
 to him of making la Rabouilleuse his aunt. So, with this 
 scheme unrevealed, he begged his mother to go to see the 
 woman and show her some affection, treating her as a sister- 
 in-law. 
 
 "I confess, my dear mother,^' said he, with a sanctimonious 
 air, and looking at Monsieur and Madame Hochon, who had 
 come to sit with their dear Agathe, "that my nucleus way of 
 life is unseemly ; he has only to legalize matters to win the re- 
 spect of the town for Mademoiselle Brazier. Would it not be 
 better for her to be Madame Eouget than the housekeeper- 
 mistress of an old bachelor ? Is it not a simpler matter to ac- 
 quire legal rights by marriage than to try to oust a family of 
 legitimate heirs ? — If you, Monsieur Hochon, or some worthy 
 priest, would speak of this affair, it would put an end to a 
 scandal that offends respectable people. Then Mademoiselle 
 Brazier would be made happy by finding herself welcomed by 
 you as a sister and by me as an aunt." 
 
 Next day Madame Hochon and Agathe stood by Mademoi- 
 selle Flore Brazier's bedside, where they set forth to the in- 
 valid and to Rouget all Philippe's admirable sentiments. 
 The Colonel was lauded throughout the town as a man of 
 lofty and excellent character, especially in his conduct with 
 regard to Flore. For a whole month the advantages to be 
 derived from her marriage with old Rouget were impressed 
 on Flore by Pere Goddet, her doctor — a powerful influence 
 over the mind of a patient — by good Madame Hochon speak- 
 ing in behalf of religion, and by the gentle and pious Agatho. 
 
 Then when, fascinated by the idea of being Madame Rouget 
 and a respectable and respected citizen's wife, she was only 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 eager to be well and celebrate the wedding, it was not difficult 
 to make her understand that she could not become one of the 
 old family of liouget by turning Philiijpe out of doors. 
 
 "And, after all/^ said old Goddet, "is it not to him that you 
 owe this high preferment? Max would never have allowed 
 you to marry Pere Rouget. And then/' he whispered in her 
 ear, "if you have children, will not Max be avenged? The 
 Bridaus will get nothing/^ 
 
 Two months after the fatal event, in February 1823, the 
 invalid, by the advice of all about her, and implored by 
 Eouget, received Philippe, whose scar made her weep, but 
 whose manner to her, softened almost to affection, soothed her 
 greatly. By Philippe's desire he was left alone with his 
 future aunt. 
 
 "My dear girl," said the soldier, "I, from the first, have 
 advised that you should marry my uncle ; and if you consent, 
 it can be done as soon as you are recovered '' 
 
 "So I am told," said she. 
 
 "It is only natural that as circumstances compelled me 
 to do you an injury, I want to do you as much good as 
 possible. A fortune, a position, and a family are worth more 
 than you have lost. At my uncle's death you would not long 
 have been that fellow's wife, for I have heard from his 
 friends that he had no happy lot in store for you ! Look here, 
 my dear child, let us understand each other. We will all 
 live happily. You are to be my aunt — nothing but my aunt. 
 
 "You must take care that my uncle does not forget me 
 in his will; on my part, you shall see how I will have you 
 provided for in the settlements. Keep calm, think it over; 
 we will speak of it again. As you see, the most sensible people, 
 all the town, advise you to abandon an illegal position ; and 
 nobody objects to your seeing me. Every one understands 
 that in life sentiment must give way to interest. You will 
 be handsomer than ever on your marriage day. Your illness, 
 by leaving you pale, has given you a distinguished air. If my 
 uncle were not so desperately in love with you, on my honor," 
 said he, rising and kissing her hand, "you would be the wife of 
 Colonel Bridau." 
 
270 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Philippe went away, leaving this last speech in Florets mind 
 to arouse a vague idea of revenge, which smiled on the woman, 
 who was almost happy at having seen this terrible personage 
 at her feet. Philippe had just played, in little, the scene that 
 Eichard III. plays with the queen he has lately made a 
 widow. The upshot of the scene shows that interest wrapped 
 up in feeling strikes very deeply into the heart, and dispels 
 the most genuine grief. This is how, in private life, Nature 
 allows herself to accomplish what in works of genius is a 
 master-stroke of art ; interest is the means by which she works, 
 the genius of money. 
 
 Thus, in the beginning of April 1823, Jean- Jacques 
 Eouget^s room presented the spectacle of a magnificent dinner 
 in honor of the signing of a marriage-contract between Made- 
 moiselle Flore Brazier and the old bachelor. No one was at 
 all surprised. The guests were Monsieur Heron; the four 
 witnesses — Messieurs Mignonnet, Carpentier, Hochon, ami 
 the elder Goddet; the Maire and the parish priest; Agathe 
 Bridau, Madame Hochon, and her friend Madame Borniche, 
 that is to say, the two old women who were authoritative in 
 Issoudun. And the bride was keenly alive to this concession, 
 won for her by Philippe, the ladies regarding it as a mark 
 of protection needed by a penitent damsel. Flore was daz- 
 zlingly beautiful. The cure, who had for a fortnight been 
 catechizing the ignorant Eabouilleuse, was to give her next 
 morning her first Communion. 
 
 This wedding was the subject of the following article, pub- 
 lished in the J ournal du Cher at Bourges, and in the J ournal 
 de rindre at Chateauroux : — 
 
 "Issoudun. 
 
 "The religious movement is making progress in le Berry. 
 All the friends of the Church and respectable people in this 
 town collected yesterday to witness a ceremony, by which one 
 of the chief landowners in this part of the country put an end 
 to a scandalous state of affairs dating from a time when re- 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 271 
 
 ligion was a dead letter in these parts. This issue, due to 
 the enlightened zeal of the ecclesiastics of this town, will, w^e 
 hope, find imitators, and put an end to these discreditable 
 "unsanctitied unions, begun at the most disastrous period of 
 the Eevolutionary misrule. 
 
 *^One thing is noteworthy in the case of which we write; 
 it was brought about by the urgency of a Colonel of the Im- 
 perial Army, quartered in our town by a sentence of the Su- 
 preme Court, who, by this marriage, may forfeit his uncle's 
 fortune. Such disinterestedness is rare enough in our day to 
 deserve to be made public/' 
 
 Under the contract Rouget settled on Flore a sum of a 
 hundred thousand francs, and an annuity in case of widow- 
 hood of thirty thousand francs. After the wedding, which 
 was splendid, Agathe went back to Paris, the happiest of 
 mothers, and there gave to Joseph and Desroches what she 
 called the good news. 
 
 "Your son is much too deep not to lay hands on her in- 
 heritance," replied the attorney, when he had heard Madame 
 Bridau out. "And you and your poor J oseph will never have 
 a farthing of your brother's fortune." 
 
 "You will always be the same — ^you and Joseph — always 
 unjust to that poor boy," said his mother. "His conduct 
 before the Court was that of a great politician. He succeeded 
 in saving a great many heads ! — Philippe's errors are the 
 outcome of want of occupation ; his great powers lie idle ; but 
 he has learned how injurious faults of conduct must be to a 
 man who wants to rise in the world, and he has ambition, I 
 am sure ; nor am I the only person who believes in his future. 
 Monsieur Hochon is firmly convinced that Philippe has a high 
 destiny." 
 
 "Oh yes," said Desroches, "if he chooses to apply his utterly 
 perverse intelligence to making a fortune he will succeed, for 
 he is capable of anything, and men of that stamp get on fast." 
 
 "And why should he not succeed by honest means?" said 
 Madame Bridau. 
 
272 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "You will see," answered Desroches. "Lucky or unlucky 
 Philippe will always be the man of the Eue Mazarine, th 
 murderer of Madame Descoings, the household thief. But 
 be easy; he will seem perfectly honest in the eyes of the 
 world." 
 
 On the day after the marriage Philippe took Madame 
 Eouget by the arm, when his uncle had gone upstairs to dress, 
 for the couple had come down to breakfast, Flore in a wrapper, 
 and the old man in his dressing-gown. 
 
 "Aunt-in-law," said he, leading her into a window recess, 
 "you are now a member of the family. Thanks to me, the 
 lawyers have taken care of you. Now come ! no nonsense. I 
 mean to play the game with the cards on the table. I know 
 all the tricks you could play me, and I shall keep a sharper 
 eye on you than any duenna. As to what goes on in the 
 house, I shall sit there, by Heaven ! like a spider in the middle 
 of its web. — Now^ this will show you that while you were ii 
 'bed, unable to move hand or foot, I could have had you turne.'i' 
 out of doors without a sou. Read this." 
 
 And he held out to Flore the following letter : — 
 
 "My dear Boy, — Florentine, who has at last come out at 
 the Opera, in the new house, in a pas de trois with Marietta 
 and Tullia, has never forgotten you, any more than Florine, 
 who has finally thrown over Lousteau and taken up with 
 Nathan. These two sly-boots have found you the sweetest 
 creature in the world, a child of seventeen, as pretty as an 
 English girl, as prim as a lady at her tricks, as cunning as 
 Desroches, as trustworthy as Godeschal; and Mariette has 
 rigged her out, and wishes you good luck. There is no 
 woman living who could hold her own against this angel, 
 concealing a demon; she will be able to play any part, to get 
 round your uncle, and make him crazy with love. She has 
 the heavenly expression that poor Coralie had; she can cry, 
 she has a voice that would extract a thousand-franc note fvovc 
 a heart of the hardest granite, and the hussy swigs down 
 champagne with the best of us. She is a jewel of a girl; she 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 273 
 
 is under obligations to Mariette, and is anxious to make some 
 return. After gulping dov/n the fortunes of two P]nglish- 
 men, one Russian, and a Roman prince, Mademoiselle P]sther 
 is just now in very low water. If you give her ten thousand 
 francs, she will be content. She said just now, *Well, I have 
 never had a citizen to wheedle; it will be practice for me!' 
 Finot knows her well, Bixiou, des Lupeaulx, all our set, in 
 fact. If there were any fortunes left in France, she would 
 be the most famous courtesan of modern times. 
 
 "My style smacks of Nathan, Bixiou, and Finot, who are 
 playing the fool with the above-named Esther, in the most 
 splendid rooms you can imagine, which have just been ar- 
 ranged a la Florine by old Lord Dudley, Marsay's real father, 
 \vhom the clever little actress has quite bowled over, thanks 
 to the costume of her new part. Tullia is still with the Due 
 de Rhetore, Mariette with the Due de Maufrigneuse, so they 
 between them can get you a ticket-of-leave on the King's fete 
 day. Try to have your uncle safe under the daisies by next 
 Saint-Louis' Day, come back with the fortune, and spend 
 some of it with Esther and your old friends, who sign in a 
 body to remind you of their existence. 
 
 "Nathan, Florine, Bixiou, Finot, Mariette, 
 "Florentine, Giroudeau, Tullia." 
 
 This letter quivered in Madame Rouget^s hands in a way 
 that betrayed her agitation of mind and body. The aunt 
 dared not look at the nephew, who fixed on her a pair of eyes 
 full of terrible expression. 
 
 "I have full confidence in you," said he. "You see that 
 I have; but I must have something in return. I made you 
 my aunt in order to marry you some day. You are worth 
 quite as much as Esther to my uncle. A year hence we must 
 go to Paris, the only place where beauty can live. You wdll 
 enjoy yourself rather more than you do here, for it is a per- 
 petual carnival. I shall rejoin the army and be made a 
 general, and you will be a great lady. That is your future; 
 work it out. — But I must have a pledge of our alliance. 
 
274 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Within one month you must procure for me my uncle's power 
 of attorney under the pretext of relieving you and him alike 
 of the cares of money. One month after I must have a special 
 power to transfer his stock. When once the securities are in 
 my name, we shall have an equal interest in marrying each 
 other some day. All that, my fair aunt, is plain and precise. 
 There must be no ambiguity between you and me. I may 
 marry my aunt-in-law after a year's widowhood, whereas 
 I could not marry a disreputable nobody.'^ 
 
 He left the room without awaiting her answer. When, an 
 hour later, Vedie came in to clear away the breakfast, she 
 found her mistress pale and in a perspiration in spite of the 
 cool season. Flore was feeling like a woman who has fallen 
 to the bottom of a precipice ; she saw nothing before her but 
 blackness, and on that blackness, as in some dark beyond, 
 flitted monstrous things, indistinctly seen, and filling h(ir 
 with terror. She felt the damp chill of these caverns. She 
 was instinctively afraid of this man, and nevertheless a voice 
 cried to her that she deserved to have him for her master., 
 She could not struggle against fate; Flore Brazier, for 
 decency's sake, had rooms in Pere Rouget's house, hut 
 Madame Rouget belonged to her husband, and so was bereft 
 of the inestimable independence that a housekeeper-mistress? 
 preserves. 
 
 In this dreadful position she hoped she might have a child ; 
 but in the last five years Jean- Jacques had become absolutely 
 decrepit. This marriage was to the poor old man what Louis 
 XII.'s second marriage was to him. Again, the constant 
 watchfulness of such a man as Philippe, who i ^ nothing to 
 do, for he gave up his employment, made any kind of 
 vengeance impossible. Benjamin was an innocent but de- 
 voted spy. La Vedie quaked in Philippe's presence. Flore 
 was alone and helpless. To crown all, she was afraid of 
 death; without knowing how Philippe could make away with 
 her, she guessed that the suspicion of a coming heir would 
 be her death-warrant; the sound of that voice, the covert flash 
 of that gambler's eye, the soldier's slightest movement — treat- 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 275 
 
 ing her as he did with the politest brutality — made her 
 shudder. As to the power of attorney demanded by the 
 ferocious Colonel, who was a hero in the eyes of Issoudun, 
 he had it as soon as he asked for it; for Flore fell under his 
 dominion as France had fallen under that of Napoleon. 
 
 Rouget meanwhile, like a moth whose feet are caught in 
 the burning wax of a taper, was fast wasting his remaining 
 strength ; and his nephew, looking on at this lingering death, 
 was as unmoved as the diplomatists who, in 1814, watched the 
 convulsions of Imperial France. 
 
 Philippe, who had no belief in Napoleon II., then wrote 
 the following letter to the War Minister, and Mariette got it 
 delivered by the Due de Mauf rigneuse : — 
 
 "MONSEIGNEUR, — 
 
 ''^Napoleon no longer lives. I remained faithful to him 
 after taking the oath; but now I am at liberty to offer my 
 services to His Majesty. If your Excellency would con- 
 descend to explain my conduct to His Majesty, the King will 
 imderstand that it has conformed to the laws of honor, if not 
 to those of the realm. The King, who thought it but natural 
 tliat his aide-de-camp. General Rapp, should mourn for his 
 f'ormer master, will no doubt be equally indulgent to me. 
 Napoleon was my benefactor. 
 
 "I therefore entreat your Excellency to take into considera- 
 tion my request for employment with my full rank, assuring 
 you of my entire submission. This will show you, monsei- 
 gneur, that the King will find me the most faithful of his sub- 
 jects. 
 
 "Accept, I beg, the expression of respect with which I have 
 the honor to remain 
 
 "Your Excellency's 
 
 "Most obedient and most humble servant, 
 "Philippe Bridau. 
 
 "Formerly Major of Brigade in the Dragoon Guards ; Officer 
 of the Legion of Honor, under surveillance of the State 
 Police of Issoudun." 
 
276 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 With this letter was a request for permission to visit Paris 
 on urgent private affairs, supported by Mouilleron, who 
 annexed letters from the Maire, the Sous-prefet, and the 
 Superintendent of Police at Issoudun, who all spoke in praise 
 of Philippe, and dwelt on the article written on the occasion 
 of his uncle^s marriage. 
 
 A fortnight later, at the time when the picture exhibition 
 was opened, Philippe received the permit he had asked for, 
 and a letter, in which the War Minister informed him that, 
 by the King's orders, he was, as a first favor, reinstated on the 
 Army List as Lieutenant-Colonel. 
 
 Philippe moved to Paris with his aunt and old Rouget,. 
 whom he carried off to the Treasury three days after their 
 arrival to sign the transfer of the State bond, which thus be- 
 came his own property. The feeble old man and la Eabouil- 
 leuse were flung by their nephew into frantic dissipations 
 and the dangerous company of indefatigable actresses, jour- 
 nalists., artists, and women of equivocal character, among 
 whom Philippe had spent his youth, and where old Eouget 
 found Rabouilleuses enough to be the death of him. Girou- 
 deau undertook that Pere Rouget should die the happy death 
 made famous since, it is said, by a Marshal of France. Lolotte, 
 one of the handsomest "walking ladies" at the Opera, was 
 Rouget's bewitching assassin. The old man died after a 
 splendid supper given by Florentine ; and whether the supper 
 or Mademoiselle Lolotte finished off the old provincial, it is 
 difficult to decide. Lolotte ascribed his death to a slice of 
 paU de foie gras; and as the Strasbourg pie could make no 
 rejoinder, it is taken as proved that the good man died of in- 
 digestion. 
 
 Madame Rouget found herself in her element in this ex- 
 cessively free-and-easy society; but Philippe gave her 
 Mariette for a chaperon, and she did not allow the widow to 
 play the fool, though her mourning was lightened by some 
 flirtations. 
 
 In October 1823 Philippe, armed with a power of attorney 
 from his aunt, returned to Issoudun to v/ind up his uncle's 
 
A BACHELOR'S KS'I AliLISHMENT 271 
 
 estate, a business quickly accomplished, for in March 1824 
 he was in Paris with sixteen hundred thousand f rancs, the 
 net value in hard cash of his deceased uncle's estate, not in- 
 clusive of the valuable pictures, which had nevei been moved 
 from old Hochon's keeping. Philippe banked his money 
 with Mongenod & Son, the house in which young Baruch 
 Borniche had found a berth, and of whose solvency and hon- 
 esty old Hochon had given a satisfactory report. This firm' 
 hook the sixteen hundred thousand francs at six per cent per 
 annum, on condition of three months' notice being given 
 previous to withdrawal of the capital. 
 
 One fine day Philippe went to request his mother's presence 
 at his marriage, the witnesses being Giroudeau, Finot, 
 Nathan, and Bixiou. By the marriage contract Madame 
 Eouget, widow, settled all her possessions on her husband 
 in the event of her dying childless. There were no letters of 
 formal announcement, no party, no display, for Philippe had 
 his own schemes ; he took rooms for his wife in the Kue Saint- 
 Georges, an apartment sold ready furnished by Lolotte, which 
 Madame Bridau the younger thought delightful, but where 
 her husband rarely set foot. 
 
 Without letting anybody know what he was doing, Philippe 
 purchased for two hundred and fifty thousand francs a house 
 in the Eue de Clichy, at a time when no one suspected the 
 value which property in that part of the town would attain — 
 a magnificent mansion, for which he paid fifty thousand 
 crowns down, the rest to be paid oft' in two years. He spent 
 enormous sums on the interior and in furnishing it, devoting 
 to this his whole income for two years. The splendid pictures, 
 cleaned and restored, and valued at three hundred thousand 
 francs, were displayed to full advantage. 
 
 The accession of Charles X. had raised to greater favor 
 than ever the Due de Chaulieu's family; and his eldest son, 
 the Due de Ehetore, often met Philippe at Tullia's. In the 
 person of Charles X. the elder branch of the Bourbons sup-^ 
 posed itself to be definitely seated on the throne, and it fol- 
 lowed the advice given at an earlier time by Marshal Gouvion 
 
278 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Saint-Cyr to secure the attachment of the soldiers of the Em- 
 pire. Philippe, who, no doubt, gave valuable information 
 as to the conspiracies of 1820 and 1822, was appointed Lieu- 
 tenant-Colonel in the Due de Maufrigneuse's regiment. This 
 delightful grand gentleman felt himself under an obligation 
 to help the man who had robbed him of Mariette. The corps 
 de ballet were not without some knowledge of this promotion. 
 
 It had, moreover, been decided by the wisdom of Charles 
 X.'s privy council that His Royal Highness the Dauphin 
 should assume a slight tinge of Liberalism. Hence the great 
 Philippe, now the satellite of the Due de Maufrigneuse, was 
 presented not only to the Dauphin, but also to the Dauphiness, 
 who was not ill disposed towards blunt manners and military 
 men with a character for fidelity. Philippe quite appreciated 
 the Dauphin's part, and he took advantage of the first per- 
 formance of this assumed Liberalism to get himself appointed 
 aide-de-camp to a marshal in favor at Court. 
 
 In January 1827 Philippe, transferred to the King's Body- 
 guard as Lieutenant-Colonel of the regiment to which the 
 Due de Maufrigneuse had been appointed, solicited the honor 
 of being allowed to assume a title. Under the Restoration 
 ennoblement became almost a right of the commoners who 
 were promoted to the Guards. Colonel Bridau, having just 
 bought the estate of Brambourg, craved permission to entail 
 the property with the title of Count. This favor he obtained 
 by taking advantage of his connections in the highest circles, 
 appearing with a gorgeous display of carriages and liveries, 
 in short, with the air and style of a lord. 
 
 No sooner did Philippe, Lieutenant-Colonel of the most 
 dashing cavalry regiment of the Guards, see his name in the 
 Army List as Comte de Brambourg than he took to hanging 
 about the house of Lieutenant-General the Comte de Sou- 
 langes, and paying attention to his younger daughter, Made- 
 moiselle Amelie de Soulanges. The insatiable Philippe, sup- 
 ported by the mistresses of the most influential men, next 
 craved the honor of being made aide-de-camp to Monseigneur 
 the Dauphin. He had the audacity to say to the Dauphiness 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 279 
 
 that "an old officer, wounded in many a battle and familiar 
 with war on a grand scale, might on occasion be of use to His 
 Koyal Highness." 
 
 Philippe, who could take the tone of any servility, was, 
 in these high circles, exactly v/hat he ought to be, just as he 
 had been a second Mignonnet at Issoudun. He lived in the 
 greatest style, gave splendid entertainments and dinners, 
 admitting to his house none of his old friends whose position 
 might compromise his prospects. Thus he was pitiless to the 
 companions of his debaucheries. He refused point-blank 
 when Bixiou asked him to speak a word in favor of Giroudeau, 
 who wished to rejoin the service when Florentine threw him 
 over. 
 
 "He cannot behave himself," said Philippe. 
 
 "So that was what he said of me !" cried Giroudeau. "And 
 I relieved him of his uncle !" 
 
 "We will serve him out," said Bixiou. 
 
 Philippe wanted to marry Mademoiselle Amelie de 
 Soulanges, to be made a general, and to have the command 
 of a regiment of the Bodyguard. He asked for so much 
 that, to keep him quiet, he was made Commander of the 
 Legion of Honor, and of the Order of Saint-Louis. 
 
 One evening Agathe and J oseph, walking homewards in the 
 rain, saw Philippe drive past in uniform, covered with Orders ; 
 he was lounging in a corner of his handsome coupe, lined with 
 yellow silk, and with a coat-of-arms on the panel surmounted 
 by a Count's coronet, on his way to an entertainment at the 
 Elysee-Bourbon ; he splashed his mother and brother, recog- 
 nizing them with a patronizing nod. 
 
 "He is going it ; he is going it ! the old rogue !" said Joseph 
 to his mother. "At the same time he might send us some- 
 thing better than the mud in our faces." 
 
 "He is in such a splendid position, so far above us, that 
 we must not owe him a grudge if he forgets us," said Madame 
 Bridau. "To climb so steep a hill, he must have so many 
 obligations to fulfil, so many sacrifices to make, that he may 
 well be unable to come to see us even while thinking of us." 
 
280 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "My dear fellow/' said the Due de Maufrigneuse one even- 
 ing to the new Comte de Brambourg. "I am sure that your 
 proposal will be taken in good part; but to marry Made- 
 moiselle Amelie de Soulanges you must be a free man. What 
 have you done with your wife 
 
 "My wife said Philippe, with a gesture, a look, an accent 
 such as Frederick Lemaitre afterwards conceived of in one of 
 his most terrible parts. "Alas ! I have the melancholy cer- 
 tainty of losing her. She has not a week to live. Ah ! my 
 dear Duke, you do not know what it is to have married be- 
 neath you ! A woman who had been a cook, who has the 
 tastes of a cook, and who brings dishonor on me, — I am much 
 to be pitied. But I have had the honor of explaining the 
 situation to Madame the Dauphiness ; the necessity arose some 
 time since for saving a million of francs, which my uncle had 
 left by will to this creature. Happily, my wife has taken to 
 drams ; at her death I become the possessor of a million in the 
 hands of Messrs. Mongenod; I have more than thirty thou- 
 sand francs in the five per cents; and my estate — entailed — 
 which brings in forty thousand francs a year. If, as every- 
 thing leads us to suppose. Monsieur de Soulanges receives 
 a Marshal's baton, 1, with the title of Comte de Brambourg, 
 am in a position to become general and a peer of France. 
 It will be a fitting retirement for an aide-de-camp to the 
 Dauphin.'' 
 
 After the Salon of 1823 the painter to the King, one of the 
 kindest-hearted men of his day, had obtained for Joseph's 
 mother a lottery-ticket office in the neighborhood of the Halle. 
 Subsequently Agathe was fortunate enough to be able to 
 exchange, without paying any premium, with the holder of a 
 similar office in the Kue de Seine, in a house where Joseph 
 look a studio. The widow now, in her turn, employed a clerk, 
 and cost her son nothing. Still, in 1828, though at the head 
 of a very good lottery office, which she owed to Joseph's fame, 
 Madame Bridau did not yet believe in his glory — which, in- 
 deed, was hotly disputed, as all true glory is. The great painter, 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 281 
 
 always struggling with his passions, wanted much; he could 
 not earn enough to keep up the luxur}' required by his posi- 
 tion in society, and by his distinguished eminence in the 
 younger school. Though he had warm adherents in his 
 friends of the Art Society, and in Mademoiselle des Touches, 
 he did not appeal to the Philistine. This Creature, in whose 
 hands the money lies nowadays, never loosens his purse- 
 strings for talent that can be questioned; and Joseph saw the 
 classicists and the Institute arrayed against him, with critics 
 who waited on these two powers. Besides, the Comte de 
 Brambourg affected amazement when any one spoke to him of 
 Joseph. So the courageous artist, though upheld by Gros and 
 Gerard, who secured him the Cross during the Salon of 1827, 
 had few commissions. If the Minister of the Interior and the 
 Royal Establishments were little inclined to purchase his 
 large pictures, the dealers and wealthy foreigners still less 
 cared to be burdened with them. Besides, as we know, 
 Joseph allows himself to be rather too*" much led away by 
 fancy, and. the result is an inequality of work, of which his 
 enemies take advantage to dispute his talent. 
 
 "Painting on the heroic scale is in a bad way," said his 
 friend Pierre Grassou, as he turned out daubs to the taste of 
 the Philistines, whose rooms were ill suited to large canvases. 
 
 "What you want is a cathedral to decorate,'' Schinner 
 would say, "then you would reduce criticism to silence by 
 some great work." 
 
 All these speeches, which frightened good Agathe, con= 
 firmed her first opinion of Joseph and Philippe. Facts were 
 on the side of the woman, who was still so entirely provincial ; 
 was not Philippe, her favorite child, at last the great man of 
 the family ? She looked on the sins of the boy's youth as the 
 aberrations of genius. Joseph, whose efforts left her un- 
 moved — for she saw too much of them in their early state 
 to admire them when finished — seemed to her no further 
 forward in 1828 than in 1816. Poor Joseph owed money; 
 he was crushed under the weight of debt ; he had taken up a 
 thankless calling that brought no returns. In short, Agathe 
 
282 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 could not imagine why an Order should have been bestowed 
 on Joseph. 
 
 Philippe, with strength enough never to go to the gaming 
 table, and invited to Madame's entertainments, the splendid 
 Colonel, who at reviews and in processions rode past in a 
 gorgeous uniform, gaudy with two red ribbons, realized 
 Agathe's maternal dreams. One day at a public ceremonial 
 Philippe had wiped out the odious picture of his poverty on 
 the Quai de Fficole, by passing his mother on the same spot, 
 preceding the Dauphin, with his aigrette, and his shako, and 
 his pelisse splendid with gold-lace and fur. While to the 
 artist she had become a sort of devoted Grey Sister, Agathe 
 no longer felt herself a mother excepting to the dashing aide- 
 de-camp to His Eoyal Highness Monseigneur the Dauphin. 
 In her pride of Philippe she could have believed that she 
 owed her easier means to him, forgetting that the lottery 
 office had come to her through J oseph. 
 
 One day Agathe saw her poor artist so much worried by the 
 heavy total of his colorman's bill, that, while cursing the arts, 
 she longed to release him from his debts. The poor woman, 
 who kept house on the proceeds of her lottery tickets, took 
 good care never to ask Joseph for a farthing. Thus, she had no 
 money; but she trusted to Philippe^s kind heart and purse. 
 For three years, from day to day, she had expected a visit 
 from her son; she pictured him bringing her an enormous 
 sum, and rejoiced in advance over the delight of giving it to 
 Joseph, whose opinion of Philippe remained unchanged, 
 as did that of Desroches. 
 
 So, without Joseph's knowledge, she wrote to Philippe the 
 following letter : — 
 
 "To Monsieur le Comte de Brambourg. 
 
 "My dear Philippe, — For five years you have never given 
 your mother the smallest thought. That is not kind. You 
 ought to remember the past, if only for the sake of your ex- 
 cellent brother. Joseph now is in need of money, while you 
 are swimming in opulence; he works, while you rush ivovn 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 28H 
 
 party to party. You possess the whole of my brotherV^ for- 
 tune. In short;, from what little Borniche tells me, you have 
 two hundred thousand francs a year. Well, then, come and 
 see Joseph. In the course of your visit leave in the death's- 
 head a score of thousand-franc notes. You owe us that much, 
 Philippe; your brother will nevertheless feel himself much 
 obliged to you, to say nothing of the pleasure you will give 
 your mother. 
 
 "Agathe Bridau nee Kouget.^' 
 
 Two days after the maid brought up to the studio, where 
 poor Agathe had just breakfasted with J oseph, the following 
 dreadful note : — 
 
 "My dear Mother, — I cannot marry Mademoiselle 
 Amelie de Soulanges with a handful of walnut shells, when 
 behind the name of Comte de Brambourg there lies that of 
 your son 
 
 "Philippe Bridau." 
 
 As she sank almost fainting on the studio sofa, Agathe 
 dropped the letter. The slight rustle of the paper as it fell, 
 and Agathe^s low but terrible cry, startled Joseph, who was 
 painting away vehemently on a sketch. He looked round 
 the edge of his canvas to see what was happening. Seeing 
 his mother lying there, the painter put dow^n his palette and 
 brushes, and flew to raise her, almost a corpse. He took 
 Agathe in his arms, carried her on to the bed in her room, 
 and sent the maid to fetch his friend Bianchon. As soon as 
 Joseph could question his mother, she confessed her letter to 
 Philippe and his reply to her. The artist went to pick up 
 the note, of which the concise brutality had broken the frail 
 heart of the poor mother by overturning the towering edifice 
 raised by her maternal preference. 
 
 Joseph came back to his mother's bedside, and had the wit 
 to be silent. He never mentioned his brother during the 
 three weeks while his poor mother lay, not ill indeed, but 
 
 VOL.4— 4^ 
 
284 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 dying. Indeed, Bianchon, who came every day and attended 
 the poor woman with the devotion of a true friend, told 
 Joseph the truth on the first day. 
 
 "At her age/' said he, "and in the position in which your 
 mother will find herself, we must only try to make death as 
 easy to her as possible." 
 
 Agathe, indeed, felt herself so surely called to God, that 
 on the very next day she begged the religious care of old 
 Abbe Loraux, her spiritual director for two-and-twenty years^ 
 As soon as she was alone with him, after pouring all her 
 sorrow into his heart, she repeated what she had said to her 
 godmother, what she was constantly saying : 
 
 "How have I angered God? Do I not love Him with all 
 my soul ? Have I not walked in the way of salvation ? What 
 is my sin? And if I am so guilty of an error I am un- 
 conscious of, have I time now to repair it ?" 
 
 "No,'' said the old man in a mild voice. "Alas ! your life 
 seems blameless, and your soul unspotted ; but God's eye, poor 
 suffering woman, is more penetrating than that of His min- 
 isters. I myself see clearly now, but too late — for you have 
 blinded me till now." 
 
 As she heard this speech, uttered by lips from which hither- 
 to no words but those of peace and honey had fallen for her, 
 Agathe sat up in bed, with wide eyes full of terror and 
 distress. 
 
 "Speak, speak !" she cried. 
 
 "Be comforted," said the old priest. "From the manner 
 of your punishment you may look for forgiveness. God is 
 severe in this world only on His chosen few. Woe unto those 
 whose misdeeds find favoring chances; they will be kneaded 
 again in human form till they in their turn are sternly 
 punished for mere mistakes and ripen into food -for heaven. 
 Your life, my daughter, has been one long mistake. You 
 fell into the pit you dug for yourself, for we always fail on the 
 side we ourselves have weakened. You gave all your heart 
 to a wretch in whom you saw your glory, and you have mis- 
 prized the child who is your true glory. Your injustice has 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 285 
 
 been so deep that you have not observed this striking contrast; 
 your means of living even liave come to you from Joseph, while 
 your other son has constantly plundered you. Your poorer 
 son, who loves you without the rev/ard of equal tenderness, 
 gives you your daily bread ; while the rich man, who has never 
 cared for you, and who scorns you, longs for your death/' 
 
 "Oh ! for that matter " she put in. 
 
 "Yes,'' the priest went on, "your humble condition in- 
 terferes with the schemes of his pride. — As a mother, this is 
 your crime ! As a woman, your sufferings and sorrows 
 promise you the joy and peace and the Lord. Your son 
 Joseph is so noble, that his affection has never been dimin- 
 ished by the injustice of your favoritism; love him as he 
 deserves. Give him your whole heart during these last days. 
 And pray for him — I will go and pray for you." 
 
 The mother's eyes, unsealed by so firm a hand, looked back 
 with a retrospective glance on the whole of her past life. En- 
 lightened by this sudden flash, she perceived the involuntary 
 wrong she had done, and melted into tears. The old priest 
 was so much moved by the spectacle of an erring and repent- 
 ant creature, sinning solely by ignorance, that he left the room 
 not to betray his compassion. 
 
 About two hours after the confessor's departure, Joseph 
 came into his mother's room. He had beeil to a friend to 
 borrow the necessary money to pay his most pressing debts, 
 and he crept in on tiptoe, believing that his mother was asleep. 
 He then sat down in an armchair, without being seen by the 
 sick woman. 
 
 A sob, broken by the words, "Will he ever forgive me?" 
 made Joseph start up wdth the cold perspiration down his 
 back, for he thought his mother was in the delirium that pre- 
 cedes death. 
 
 "What is the matter, mother?" he cried, terrified to see 
 her eyes red with weeping and her woe-stricken face. 
 
 "Oh, Joseph ! can you forgive me, my child ?" cried she. 
 "What do you mean ?" asked the artist, 
 "I have not loved you as you deserved " 
 
286 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "What a preposterous idea!" cried he. "You have not 
 
 loved me ? Have we not lived together these seven years ? 
 
 Have you not kept house for me for seven years^ Do I not 
 see you every day ? Do I not hear your voice ? Are you not 
 the gentle and indulgent sharer of my poverty ? — You do not 
 understand painting! Well, but that is not to be taught. 
 x4nd only yesterday I was saying to Grassou, ^The thing that 
 comforts me in all my struggles is that I have such a good 
 mother ; she is just what an artist's wife ought to be ; she takes 
 care of everything; she looks after all my creature comforts 
 without making any fuss ' " 
 
 "No, Joseph, no. You have loved me, and I have never 
 returned you tenderness for tenderness. Oh! how I wish I 
 might live ! . . . Give me your hand.'' 
 
 Agathe took her son's hand, kissed and held it to her heart, 
 gazing at him for a long time, her blue eyes radiant with the 
 affection she had hitherto always kept for Philippe. The 
 painter, who had studied expression, was so struck by the 
 change, and saw so plainly that his mother's heart had opened 
 to him, that he put his arms round her and hsld her clasped 
 for some seconds, saying like a crazy creature, "Oh, mother, 
 mother !" 
 
 "Ah, I feel I am forgiven!" said she. "God must surely 
 ratify a son's forgiveness of his mother." 
 
 "You must keep calm; do not worry yourself. It is all 
 over now. I feel that I am enough loved at this moment 
 for all the past," cried Joseph, laying his mother gently on the 
 pillows. 
 
 During a fortnight, while life and death were contending 
 for the saintly creature, she had for Joseph such looks, sucii 
 impulses of soul and expressions of gesture, as revealed love 
 so perfect that a whole life seemed contained in each outburst. 
 The mother now thought only of her son ; she counted herself 
 as nothing, and, upheld by love, no longer felt her sufferings. 
 She made artless speeches like a child's. D'Arthez, Michel 
 Chrestien, Fulgence Kidal, Pierre Grassou, and Bianchon 
 came to keep Joseph company, and often held discussions in 
 an undertone in the sick woman's room. 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 287 
 
 "Oh! how I wish I knew what was meant by color!'' she 
 exclaimed one evening when she heard them talking about a 
 picture. 
 
 Joseph's conduct on his part was sublime towards his 
 mother ; he scarcely left her room ; he cherished Agatlie in his 
 heart; he responded to her tenderness with equal tenderness. 
 It was to the painter's friends one of those beautiful spectacles 
 which can never be forgotten. These men, who all were 
 examples of the union of real talent and noble character, were 
 for Joseph and his mother all that they ought to be — angels 
 who prayed with him and wept with him — not that they said 
 prayers or shed tears, but they were one with him in thought 
 and act. Joseph, an artist as noble in feeling as in gifts, read 
 in certain of ^is mother's looks a longing hidden deep in her 
 heart ; and he said one day to d'Arthez, "She was too fond of 
 that robber Philippe not to want to see him again before she 
 dies . . ." 
 
 Joseph requested Bixiou, who was a figure in the Bohemian 
 world which Philippe would occasionally frequent, to make 
 that infamous parvenu promise to assume, out of pity, some 
 show of affection, so as to wrap the poor mother's heart in a 
 shroud graced by illusion. Bixiou, as a student of human 
 nature, a misanthropic scoffer, was ready and willing to un- 
 dertake such a mission. When he had explained Agathe's 
 situation to the Comte de Brambourg, who received him in a 
 bedroom hung with yellow silk damask, the Colonel burst out 
 laughing. 
 
 "What the devil do you want me to do there?" cried he. 
 "The only service the good woman can do me is to kick the 
 bucket as soon as possible, for she would cut a bad figure at 
 my wedding with Mademoiselle de Soulanges. The less family 
 I have to show, the better for me ! As you may well suppose, 
 I only wish I could bury the name of Bridau under all the 
 tombstones in Pere-Lachaise. 
 
 "My brother ruins me by proclaiming my real name to the 
 world. But you, at any rate, are too clever not to understand 
 my position. Come, now — if you were to be elected depuly, 
 
288 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 you have a ready tongue of your own ; you would be as much 
 feared as Chauvelin, and you might be made Comte Bixiou, 
 Director of the Beaux Arts. If you had achieved that, and if 
 your grandmother Descoings were still alive, how would you 
 like to have that good woman at your elbow — a woman like 
 Madame Saint-Leon? Would you offer her your arm in the 
 Tuileries ? Would you introduce her to the noble family you 
 might seek to enter ? By Heaven ! I tell you, you would wish 
 her six feet under ground, packed in a wrapper of lead. — 
 Come, breakfast with me, and we will talk of something else. 
 I am a parvenu, my dear fellow, and I know it. I do not 
 mean to display my baby-clothes ! — My son, now, will be 
 luckier than I ; he will be a fine gentleman. The rascal will 
 wish me dead, and I quite expect it, or he will be no son of 
 mine." 
 
 He rang the bell ; a footman came in, to whom he said : 
 "My friend will breakfast with me. Send up something 
 elegant." 
 
 "But the fashionable world would not see you in your 
 mother's room," retorted Bixiou. "What would it cost you to 
 pretend to love the poor woman for a few hours ?" 
 
 "All my eye !" said Philippe, with a wink. "They have sent 
 you. I am an old bird, and not to be caught with chaff. My 
 mother wants to conjure me with her last breath to fork out 
 something for Joseph ! Thank you for nothing." 
 
 When Bixiou repeated this scene to Joseph, the poor painter 
 felt chilled to the very soul. 
 
 "Does Philippe know that I am ill?" said Agathe in a 
 lamentable voice the evening of the very day when Bixiou had 
 given an account of his errand. 
 
 Joseph left the room choked with tears. The Abbe Loraux, 
 who was at the patient's side, took her hand and pressed it as 
 he replied, "Alas ! my child, you have never had but one son," 
 
 On hearing these words, which she understood, Agathe had 
 an attack that was the beginning of the end. She died twenty 
 hours after. In the wanderings of her mind before death the 
 words escaped her, "Who does Philippe take after ?" 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 28ft 
 
 Joseph alone followed his mother to the grave. Philippe 
 had gone to Orleans on regimental business, scared from Paris 
 by the following letter, addressed to him by Joseph as their 
 mother breathed her last : 
 
 "Wretch, — My poor mother is dead of the shock your letter 
 caused. Put on mourning. But pretend to be ill ; I will not 
 have her murderer to stand at my side by her coffin. 
 
 "Joseph B.'' 
 
 The painter, who had lost all heart for his painting, though 
 his deep grief perhaps needed the sort of mechanical diversion 
 that work brings with it, was surrounded by friends, who 
 agreed among themselves not to leave him to solitude. Thus 
 Bixiou, who loved J oseph as truly as a scoffer can love any one, 
 was one of a group of friends in Joseph's studio one day, a 
 fortnight after the funeral. At this moment the maid bustled 
 in, and handed to Joseph a letter, brought, as she said, by an 
 ■jld woman who would wait for the answer in the porter's 
 lodge : 
 
 "Monsieur, — Whom I do not venture to call my brother, 
 1 must apply to you, were it only by reason of the name I 
 bear " 
 
 J oseph turned the page, and looked at the signature at the 
 end. These words, "Comtesse Flore de Brambourg," made 
 his blood run chill, for he foresaw some fresh abomination 
 of his brother's doing. 
 
 "That wretch," said he, "would outdevil the Devil ! And 
 that is a man of honor — that can hang a peck of tinsel on its 
 breast — that spreads its tail at Court instead of being 
 flogged at the cart's tail! — And this precious scoundrel is 
 Monsieur le Comte !" 
 
 "There are many like him," said Bixiou. 
 
 "And besides that, this Eabouilleuse deserves nothing from 
 me," J oseph went on. "She is not worth a curse ; she would 
 
290 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 have left me to have my head chopped off like a fowl without 
 ever saying ^He is innocent/ 
 
 As Joseph tossed away the letter, Bixiou nimbly caught it, 
 and read it aloud : — 
 
 — Is it becoming that Madame la Comtesse de Brambourg, 
 whatever her faults may be, should be sent to die in a hospital ? 
 If that is to be my fate, if that is the Count's wish and yours, 
 so be it; but then, as you are a friend of Doctor Bianchon's^ 
 get his introduction to get me into a hospital. The woman 
 who takes you this letter, monsieur, has been eleven days 
 running to the Hotel de Brambourg in the Rue de Clichy 
 without being able to obtain any help from my husband. The 
 state in which I am prevents my employing an attorney so as 
 to obtain by law what is due to me and to die in peace. Indeed, 
 nothing can save me; I know it. So if you will positively 
 have nothing to say to your unhappy sister-in-law, give me 
 money enough to enable me to put an end to my days; for 
 your brother, I see, wishes my death, and always has wished 
 it. Though he told me he knew three certain ways of killing 
 a woman, I had not the wit to foresee the means he has taken. 
 
 "If so be you should honor me with a little assistance, and 
 judge for yourself of the misery I am in, I am living in the 
 Rue du Houssay, at the corner of the Rue Chantereine, on the 
 fifth floor. If I do not pay my arrears of rent to-morrow, 
 I must turn out. And where am I to go, monsieur? May 
 I sign myself, 
 
 "Your sister-in-law, 
 
 "Comtesse Flore de Brambourg/' 
 
 '^hat a foul pit of infamy!" said Joseph. *^hat is 
 
 there behind it?" 
 
 "Have the woman up first; that will be a worthy preface 
 to the story no doubt," said Bixiou. 
 
 A minute after there appeared on the scene a woman whom 
 Bixiou described as walking rags. She was, in fact, a 
 mass of clothes and old gowns, one over another, bordered 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 261 
 
 with mud from the weather, the whole mounted on thick legs 
 and splay feet, with patched stockings and shoes, from which 
 the water oozed through many cracks. To crown this mass 
 of rubbish was such a head as Charlet has given to his 
 sweepers, helmeted with a hideous bandana, worn threadbare 
 even in the creases. 
 
 *^What is your name asked Joseph, while Bixiou sketched 
 the woman as she stood, leaning on an umbrella of the year 
 II. of the Republic. 
 
 "Madame Gruget, at your service. I have drawed my 
 dividends in my day, my little gentleman,^' said she to Bixiou, 
 whose covert smile offended her. "If my pore girl hadn't 
 been so unlucky as to be too fond of a man, I shouldn^t look 
 so as you see me. She made a hole in the water, saving your 
 presence, my pore Ida. And then I was fool enough to go in 
 for lottery tickets, four numbers, and sticking to them, and 
 that is why at seventy years old, my good monsieur, I am 
 idck-nurse at ten sous a day and my food " 
 
 "But not your clothes," said Bixiou. "My grandmother 
 dressed herself, besides keeping up a snug little ternion." 
 
 "But out of my ten sous I have to pay for a furnished 
 room . . r 
 
 "And what has she got — this lady you are nursing ?" 
 
 "She has got nothing, monsieur, by way of money I mean ; 
 for she has got some complaint that frightens the doctors. — 
 She owes me sixty days' pay, and that is why I stay with her. 
 Her husband, who is a Count — for she is a Countess — will 
 pay the bill, no doubt, when she is dead, and counting on that, 
 I have lent her all I had . . . But I have nothing left, 
 and I have put everything up the spout. She owes me forty- 
 seven francs and twelve sous, besides the thirty francs wages, 
 and as she wants to choke herself off with charcoal : ^That is 
 not right,' says I — more by token I told the woman in the 
 lodge to keep an eye on her while I was out, for she is capable 
 of throwing herself out of window." 
 
 "But what is the matter with her?" said Joseph. 
 
 "Well, sir, the doctor came from the Sisters ; but as to what 
 
292 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 IS the matter/^ said Madame Gruget, with a prudish air — "he 
 said she must go to the hospital — and she wouldn't get ovei 
 it." 
 
 "We will go and see about it," said Bixiou. 
 
 "Here/' said Joseph, "here are ten francs." 
 
 After putting his hand into the famous death's-head and 
 taking out all his change, the painter walked to the Rue 
 Mazarine, where he took a hackney cab and went off to Bian- 
 chon, whom he fortunately found at home, while Bixiou set 
 out for the Rue de Bussy to fetch their friend Desroches. The 
 four friends met an hour after in the Rue du Houssay. 
 
 "That Mephistopheles on horseback called Philippe Bridau," 
 said Bixiou to his three friends as they climbed the stairs, 
 "has steered his bark in a cunning way to get rid of his wife. 
 Our friend Lousteau, as you know, only too glad to get a thou- 
 sand-franc note every month from Philippe, kept Madame 
 Bridau in the company of Florine, Mariette, Tullia, and la 
 Yal-Noble. As soon as Philippe saw his Rabouilleuse ac- 
 customed to dress and expensive pleasures, he gave her no 
 more money, but left her to make it — ^you may imagine how 
 Thus by the end of eighteen months Philippe left his wife 
 to sink a little lower, from quarter to quarter; and at last, 
 by the help of a splendid young subaltern, he suggested to her 
 a taste for dram-drinlving. As he rose his wife sank, and 
 the Countess is now in the kennel. The woman born in the 
 fields is hard to kill ; I do not know how Philippe set to work 
 to get rid of her. I am curious to study this little drama, for 
 I owe the fellow a revenge. Alas ! my friends," Bixiou went 
 on, in a tone that left his three companions doubtful whether 
 he spoke in joke or in earnest, "to get rid of a man you have 
 only to inoculate him with a vice. 
 
 " *^She loved balls too well and that was her death,' said 
 \^ictor Hugo. There you are. My grandmother loved lottery 
 gambling; Pere Rouget loved a petticoat, and Lolotte was 
 the death of him ! Madame Bridau, poor creature, loved 
 Philippe, and by Philippe she has perished. Oh, Vice ! Vice ! 
 — My friends, do you know what vice is ? It is the Bonneau 
 of death." 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 293 
 
 ^Then you will die of a jest !" said Desroches, smiling at 
 Bixiou. 
 
 Above the fourth floor the young men mounted one of those 
 upright stairways like ladders which lead up to the attics of 
 many houses in Paris. Though Joseph, who had seen Flore 
 so handsome, was prepared for a dreadful contrast, he could 
 not conceive of the hideous spectacle that presented itself 
 to his artistic gaze. Under the sharp slope of a garret, witli 
 no paper on the walls, and on a camp-bed with a meagre 
 mattress stuffed perhaps with flock, the three men saw a 
 woman as green as a body two days drowned, and as emaci- 
 ated as a consumptive patient within two hours of death. 
 This malodorous carcass wore a common checked handker- 
 chief bound round a head bereft of hair. The caverns of her 
 hollow eyes were red, and the lids like the skin that lines an 
 egg-shell. As to the form that had once been so beautiful, 
 it was a squalid skeleton. 
 
 On seeing her visitors, Flore drew across her bosom a rag 
 of muslin that had probably been a window-blind, for it was 
 edged with rust from the iron rod. The furniture consisted 
 of two chairs, a wretched chest of drawers, on which a tallow 
 candle was set in a potato, some dishes strewn on the floor, 
 and an earthen fire-pot in the corner of an otherwise empty 
 hearth. Bixiou saw the remains of the half-quire of paper 
 purchased at the grocer's for the letter which the two women 
 had no doubt concocted between them. The word loathsome 
 is but a positive degree for which there is no superlative to 
 express the effect produced by this abject scene. 
 
 When the dying woman saw Joseph, two large tears fell 
 down her cheeks. 
 
 "She can still weep,'' said Bixiou. "A strange sight indeed 
 —tears flowing from a bag of dominoes. It explains Moses' 
 miracle." 
 
 "Is not she dried up !" cried J oseph. 
 
 "By the fires of repentance," said Flore. "I can have no 
 priest, I have nothing, not even a crucifix to see the Image of 
 God. Oh! monsieur," she went on, uplifting arms like two 
 
294 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 carved wooden sticks, "I have been very wicked, but God never 
 punished any one as He has punished me ! Philippe killed 
 Max, who had bidden me to do horrible things, and now he is 
 killing me too. God is using him as a scourge for me ! Be- 
 have yourself well, for we all have our Philippe." 
 
 "Leave me alone with her," said Bianchon ; "I want to find 
 out if her complaint is curable." 
 
 "If she can be cured, Philippe Bridau will be mad with 
 rage," said Desroches. "I will have an affidavit prepared as 
 to the state his wife is in; he has not taken any steps against 
 her for adultery; she has all her conjugal rights; he must 
 face the scandal of a trial. First of all, we will have Madame 
 la Comtesse conveyed to Doctor Dubois' Home for the Sick 
 in the Eue du Faubourg Saint-Denis; she will there be 
 nursed in luxury. Then I shall call upon the Count for 
 reinstatement under her husband's roof." 
 
 "Bravo^ Desroches !" cried Bixiou. "What joy to be able 
 to do good that will hurt so much!" 
 
 Ten minutes later Bianchon came down and said to his 
 friends: "I am off at once to Desplein; he can save this 
 woman by an operation. Ah ! he will see that she is taken 
 good care of, for the habit of drinking spirits has developed 
 in her a splendid disease that we thought was extinct." 
 
 "You wretch of a doctor, get along ! As if she had but one 
 disease," said Bixiou. 
 
 But Bianchon was already in the courtyard, so great was 
 his haste to go and tell the grand news to Desplein. Two 
 hours later Joseph's unhappy sister-in-law was carried to the 
 private hospital founded by Doctor Dubois, which was sub- 
 sequently bought by the city of Paris. 
 
 Three weeks later the Hospital Gazette contained an ac-^ 
 count of one of the boldest attempts of modern surgery in 
 operating on a patient mentioned under the initials F. B. 
 The subject died, much more of the weakness consequent on 
 prolonged privations than as a result of the operation. 
 
 The Comte de Brambourg at once went in deep mourning 
 to call on the Comte de Soulanges, and inform him of the 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 295 
 
 melancholy loss he had sustained. It was whispered in the 
 fashionable world that the Comte de Soulanges was allowing 
 his daughter to marry a parvenu of distinguished merit, who 
 was to be made Marechal de Camp and Colonel of a regiment 
 of the Bodyguard. De Marsay announced the news to Eas- 
 tignac, who spoke of it at a supper at the Eocher de Cancale 
 where he met Bixiou. 
 
 ''That shall never be !" said the cunning artist to himself. 
 
 If among the friends Philippe had cut adrift there were 
 some who, like Giroudeau, could not revenge themselves, he 
 had proved himself unwary in offending Bixiou, whose wit 
 secured him a reception everywhere, and who never forgave 
 a slight. Now at the Eocher de Cancale, in the presence of 
 highly respectable persons at supper there, Philippe had re- 
 plied when Bixiou asked him to invite him to the Hotel de 
 Brambourg, "You may come to my house when you are a 
 minister." 
 
 "Must I also become a Protestant to get into your house ?" 
 teplied Bixiou lightly; but he said to himself, "Though you 
 may be a Goliath, I have a sling, and plenty of stones to 
 fling." 
 
 Next day the practical joker dressed at the house of an 
 actor, a friend of his, and was metamorphosed by the omnipo- 
 tent art of "make-up" into a secularized priest in green spec- 
 tacles ; then he took a fly and drove to the house of the Comte 
 de Soulanges. Bixiou, treated by Philippe as a buffoon, 
 meant to play a trick on him. 
 
 Being admitted by the Comte de Soulanges on his urgent 
 plea that he had an important matter to lay before the Count, 
 Bixiou played the part of a venerable personage charged with 
 an important secret. In an assumed voice he related the 
 history of the dead Countess^ illness, of which Bianchon had 
 given him the particulars, that of Agathe's death, that of old 
 Eouget's death, of which the Comte de Brambourg had 
 boasted, and that of old Madame Descoings' end; the story 
 of the "loan" from the cash-box of the newspaper, and the 
 facts as to Philippe's general conduct in his worst times. 
 
296 
 
 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 "Monsieur le Comte, do not give him your daughter till you 
 have made every inquiry; question his former friends — ■ 
 Bixiou, Captain Giroudeau, and others." 
 
 Three months after this the Comte de Brambourg enter- 
 tained a party at supper: du Tillet, Nucingen, Eastignac, 
 Maxime de Trailles, and de Marsay. The host was taking- 
 very easily the half-consolatory speeches made to him by 
 guests concerning his rupture with the house of Soulanges. 
 
 "You can do better," said Maxime. 
 
 "What fortune would be expected to qualify a man to marry 
 a demoiselle de Grandlieu ?" asked Philippe of de Marsay. 
 
 "To qualify you ? — They would not let you have the ugliest 
 of the six for less than ten million francs/' replied de Marsay 
 insolently. 
 
 "Pooh !" said Rastignac ; "but with two hundred thousand 
 francs a year you may have Mademoiselle de Langeais, the 
 Marquis' daughter; she is ugly, she is thirty, and has not a 
 sou of her ov/n. That ought to satisfy you." 
 
 "I shall have ten millions within two years' time," replied 
 Philippe Bridau. 
 
 "It is January 16th, 1829," cried du Tillet, smiHng. "I 
 have been working for ten years, and I have not so much, not 
 I!" 
 
 "We will advise each other, and you will see how I manage 
 money matters." 
 
 "Why, how much have you altogether ?" asked Nucingen. 
 
 "If I sold my securities and everything, excepting my estate 
 and this house, which I could not and will not risk, as they 
 are secured by entail, I could certainly handle three millions." 
 
 Nucingen and du Tillet looked at each other; then after 
 this keen flash, du Tillet said to Philippe : 
 
 "My dear Count, we will work in partnership if you like." 
 
 De Marsay caught the glance that du Tillet had shot at 
 Nucingen, and which said, "Those millions are ours !" 
 
 In fact, these two great financiers were at the very centre 
 of political affairs, enabling them to gamble on the Bourse 
 at a given date and with absolute certainty, against Philippe, 
 
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 297 
 
 when the chances would seem to him to be in his favor, while 
 in reality they were in theirs. 
 
 The chance came. In July 1830 du Tillet and Nucingen 
 had enabled the Comte de Brambourg to make fifteen hundred 
 thousand francs; he no longer distrusted them, and thought 
 their advice sound. Philippe, who had risen by the Restora- 
 tion, and who was misled by intense contempt for civilians, 
 believed in the success of the new decrees, and would play 
 for a rise; while Nucingen and du Tillet, who expected a 
 Ee volution, played against him for a fall. But the two shrewd 
 partners affected to agree with Colonel the Comte de Bram- 
 bourg, and seemed to share his convictions; they held out 
 hopes of his doubling his millions, and arranged to win them 
 from him. Philippe fought like a man to whom victory 
 means four million francs. His zeal was so conspicuous that 
 he was ordered to return to Saint-Cloud with the Due de 
 Maufrigneuse to sit in council. This mark of favor saved 
 Philippe; for he wanted, on July 25th, to sweep the Boule- 
 vards with a charge of cavalry, and he would no doubt have 
 fallen to a bullet from his friend Giroudeau, who commanded 
 a body of the adversary. 
 
 Within a month nothing of his immense fortune remained 
 to Colonel Bridau but his mansion, his estate, his pictures, 
 and furniture. He was fool enough too, as he said, to be- 
 lieve in the re-establishment of the elder branch, to which 
 he remained faithful till 1834. Then, on seeing Giroudeau. 
 a Colonel, Philippe, prompted by very intelligible jealousy, 
 rejoined the service. In 1835 he, unfortunately, was ap- 
 pointed to the command of a regiment in Algiers, where for 
 three years he was left in a post of danger, hoping to win his 
 general's epaulettes ; but a malignant influence — that of Gen- 
 eral Giroudeau — left him where he was. Philippe, by this 
 time grown hard, carried military severity to an extreme, and 
 was detested in spite of his Murat-like bravery. 
 
 At the beginning of the fatal year 1839, while turning to 
 harry the Arabs in the course of a retreat before superior 
 numbers, he rushed on the foe, sujjported by one company 
 
298 A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 only. They fell upon a body of Arabs; the struggle was 
 bloody, frightful, hand to hand, and very few of the French 
 horse escaped. Seeing that their Colonel was surrounded, 
 those who were at some little distance did not deem it wise 
 to perish in a vain attempt to rescue him. They heard his 
 shout, "Help! Your Colonel!— A Colonel of the Empire!'' 
 followed by fearful cries, but they got back to their regiment. 
 Philippe died a horrible death, for they cut off his head, when 
 he fell hacked almost to pieces by yataghans. 
 
 Joseph, who was married about this time by the good 
 offices of the Comte de Serizy to the daughter of an old 
 millionaire farmer, inherited the house and the estate of 
 Brambourg, which his brother had been unable to sell, though 
 he would gladly have deprived him of his inheritance. What 
 gave the painter most pleasure was the fine collection of 
 pictures. Joseph, whose father-in-law adds daily to his 
 hoards, has already an income of sixty thousand francs. 
 Though he paints splendid pictures, and is always doing ser- 
 vices to his fellow-artists, he 'is not yet a member of the In ■ 
 stitute. In consequence of a clause in the parchment of 
 entail, he is now Comte de Brambourg, which often makes 
 him burst out laughing among his friends in his studio. 
 
 "Fine birds make fine feathers," his friend Leon de Lora 
 will then remark; for even now that he is famous as a land- 
 scape painter, he has not given up his old trick of perverting 
 proverbs, and he told Joseph a prvpos of the modesty with 
 which he accepted the favors of fortune, "Never mind. A 
 feast is as good as enough." 
 
 Fabis, November 1842. 
 
HONORINE 
 
 To Monsieur Achille Deveria. 
 An affectionate remembrance from the Author. 
 
 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 ai 
 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 compre- 
 hension, 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, hav(i 
 owned to pleasure at seeing the custom-house officers of theii* 
 native land, which may seem the most daring hyperbole ol' 
 patriotism. 
 
 This preamble is intended to recall to such Frenchmen as 
 have traveled the extreme pleasure they have felt on occasion- 
 ally 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 
 VOL. 4—46 (299) 
 
300- 
 
 HONORINB 
 
 Seine are not really Paris. To find Paris again! Do you 
 know what that means, 0 Parisians? It is to find — not in- 
 deed 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 keep- 
 oake views of Genoa. This palazzo is one of the magnificent 
 •villas on which Genoese nobles were wont to spend millions 
 ixt 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 
 women 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 d.i Negro, 
 
HONORINE 
 
 301 
 
 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 cliildren — silent because sleep has 
 fallen on them — the French Ambassador and his wife, a sec- 
 retary to the Embassy who believes himself to be crushed and 
 mischievous; finally, two Parisians, who have come to take 
 leave of the ConsuFs 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 comxC 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 busi- 
 ness. 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 Cam- 
 pagna. She had come by the Simplon, and was returning 
 by the Cornice road to Marseilles. She had stopped at Genoa, 
 again on the landscape painter's account. The Consul-Gen- 
 eral 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 min- 
 utes. 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 
 
302 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 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 under- 
 stand 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 men- 
 tioned. 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 ConsuFs 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 justify- 
 ing 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 
 
HONORINE 
 
 303 
 
 the town for two years, and after certain steps taken by the 
 Ambassador during his visits to the Genoese Court, the mar- 
 riage 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 knew 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 Consults 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 de- 
 grading 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. 
 
 II 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 for- 
 tunes. In accordance with a promise made by the Ambas- 
 sador 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 
 
304 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 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 crea- 
 tures in Italy. Michael Angelo took his models in Genoa for 
 the tomb of Giuliano. Hence the fulness and singular plac- 
 ing 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 fazzioU. 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. 
 Eecall 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 fiowers, 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, 
 CamilJe wondered v/hy 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 
 
HONORINE 
 
 305 
 
 fortune of a hundred odd thousi^nd francs a year. But, at 
 the same time, she had discerned, by many of the little noth- 
 ings 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 con- 
 summate diplomatists. 
 
 In discussing literature, they spoke of the perennial stock- 
 in-trade of the republic of letters — vv'oman'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 three 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 tliis 
 way ?'^ said Leon de Lora. 
 
 ''Cava 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 : — 
 
806 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 "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 yon that the father confessor of a 
 Eoyal 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 1834, 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 intro- 
 duce 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, 
 i\he memory of your good works ?' 
 
 " 'We need say nothing of that inheritance,' he replied, smil- 
 ing. '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 ti) 
 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 
 ulear sky.' 
 
 " 'Are you the Count's director ?' 
 
 ^ *If I were, could I place you with him ? What priest 
 
HONORINE 
 
 807 
 
 could be capable of taking advantage of the secrets which he 
 learns at the tribunal of repentance ? No ; you owe this po- 
 sition 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 thou- 
 sand four hundred francs, rooms in his house, and an allow- 
 ance 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 the 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, Eue Payenne, and 
 he hardly ever entertained. His private life escaped publi(3 
 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 ag*;; 
 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 
 
308 HONOlilNE 
 
 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 parsi- 
 mony, 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 v/ould 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 com- 
 prehended in the ripening of a youth ! Ho^^^lrany 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 
 
HONORINE 
 
 protectress, who would rescue me trom the paths of danger, 
 which a young man of two-and-twenty can hardly lielp tread- 
 ing, however prudent and well brought up he may be. 1 
 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 dis- 
 illusion 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 con- 
 quer 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 V And if you could then have seen the dancing light 
 that gilded his gray eyes, the smile that relaxed his tine 
 lips, puckering the corners of his mouth, the adorable expres- 
 sion 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 states- 
 man'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.' 
 
310 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 "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 cobble- 
 stones were hidden in 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 
 indiiferent air of this servant allowed me to assume that 
 the handsome stables, where of old so many horses had whin- 
 nied, now sheltered two at most. The handsome fagade 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 Lahranche at the Theatre Frangais 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 
 throu I ante-rooms, drawing-rooms opening one out of the 
 otb ith carpetless parquet floors, and furnished with such 
 
HONORINE 
 
 811 
 
 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 FHostal,' said Lahranche, 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, 
 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 I'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 ob- 
 served. 
 
 "'Very good, very good!' said the Count, looking at me 
 from head to foot. 'Monsieur I'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 
 
312 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 kindliness. His forehead, perhaps too spacious, was as in^ 
 timidating 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 tur- 
 quoise blue, were as keen and bright as those of the Prince 
 de Talleyrand — which I admired at a later time — and en- 
 dowed, like the Prince's, with the faculty of becoming ex- 
 pressionless to the verge of gloom; and they added to the 
 singularity of a face that was not pale but yellow. This com- 
 plexion 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 Peni- 
 tents {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, in- 
 terrupting 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 will 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 Am- 
 bassador, the distinguished lady, and the two Frenchmen), 
 
HONORINE 
 
 313 
 
 "real statesmen, poets, a general who has commanded armies 
 — in short, all really great minds are simple, and their sim- 
 plicity 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 tempera- 
 ture — allov/ me the w^ord — 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 tincle. 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 periv/inkle 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 re- 
 turned 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/ 
 
314 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 '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 nucleus 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 stu- 
 dents 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 em- 
 ployment 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 nec- 
 essarily watches the man who makes use of him. That man's 
 tastes, passions, temper, and manias become the subject of in- 
 voluntary 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 ex- 
 traordinary 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 is was easy to mistake it. Just as 
 when walking through forest-lands certain soils give forth. 
 
HONORINE 
 
 S15 
 
 under our feet a sound which enables us to guess whether the} 
 are dense masses of stone or a void ; so intense egoism, though 
 hidden under the flowers of politeness, and subterranean cav- 
 erns eaten out by sorrow sound hollow under the constant touch 
 of familiar life. It was sorrow and not despondency that 
 dvv^elt 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 
 vet more of self-sacrifice; but this great and stern judge 
 pitied them, or admired them, not with transient enthu. 
 siasm, 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, hold- 
 ing converse with a star seen by himself alone ! 
 
 "I detected many dark riddles in his ordinary life. He 
 
 Vol. 4—47 
 
316 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 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 states- 
 man, 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 v/as faded like these dying flowers, whose almost 
 decaying fragrance mounted strangely to his brain. The 
 Count loved his country; he devoted himself to public in- 
 terests 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. Notwithstand- 
 ing his efforts, my patron did not succeed in stifling the move- 
 ments 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, suffer, and am 
 silent.' The escort of respect and admiration which attended 
 him ; the friendship of workers as valiant as himself — Grand- 
 ville and Serizy, both presiding judges — had no hold over the 
 Count: either he told them nothing, or they knew all. Im- 
 passible and lofty in public^ the Count betrayed the man only 
 
HONORINE 
 
 31? 
 
 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 am- 
 bition; 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 sometim.es wet 
 with tears ? How could the waters of that living spring flow 
 over the burning strand without being dried up by the subter- 
 ranean 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 sa- 
 gacious 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 V Now and then Comte 
 Octave's melancholy was surly and gruff.. If these spurts of 
 temper offended me, he could get over it without tliinking of 
 
318 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 asking my pardon ; but then his manners were gracious to thti 
 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 in- 
 cluding 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 ser- 
 vants. 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 com- 
 forts of modern life ; he had fine horses, supplied by a coach- 
 man 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 in- 
 cluding 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 dis- 
 honored. 
 
 " 'I am no longer astonished,^ said he, on hearing of these 
 results, %t the fortunes made by my servants. In seven years 
 I have had two cooks, who have become rich restaurant- 
 keepers.' 
 
 "'And in seven years you have lost a hundred thousand 
 francs,' replied I. 'You, a judge, who in your court sign 
 summonses against crime, encouraged robbery in your own 
 house.' 
 
 "Early in the year 1826 the Count had, no doubt, ceased 
 to watch me, and we were as closely attached as two men 
 
HONORINE 
 
 319 
 
 can be when one is subordinate to the other. He had never 
 spoken to me of my future prospects^ but be had taken an in- 
 terest, 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 ho corrected them^ 
 showing the difference between his interpretation of the law^ 
 his views and mine. When at last I had produced a docu- 
 ment 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 chang} 
 occurs in my life, perhaps you will take the place of a son.' 
 
 "Comte Octave had introduced me to the best houses m 
 Paris, whither I went in his stead, with his servants and car- 
 riage, on the too frequent occasions when, on the point of 
 starting, he changed his mind, and sent for a hackney cab io 
 take him — Where? — that was the mystery. By the welcome 
 I met with I could judge of the Count's feelings towards mo, 
 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 hiivL 
 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 my- 
 self, 'Had I better ask my uncle for the money, or put my con- 
 fidence 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 ac- 
 count of my year's salary?' 
 
 " 'No/ said he, with the sweetest smile; 'when a man plays 
 
320 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 in society, he must have a gambling purse. Draw six thou 
 sand 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 re- 
 turned in a carriage — I, his secretary ! Was so pious a man a 
 })rey to vices hidden under hypocrisy ? Did he expend all the 
 ])owers 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 Vv-ere all the better founded be- 
 cause 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 hie 
 garden, to and fro, like a man to whom a walk is the hippo- 
 gryph 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 hard- 
 ness of a turquoise, had that velvety softness of the blue r2ri- 
 
HONORINE 
 
 323 
 
 winkle, 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 un- 
 happy 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 com- 
 mittee 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 
 
322 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 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 
 'laudron,' said I. 'Do not be alarmed ; the Abbe Fontanon 
 1^1 no longer second priest at Saint-Paul ' 
 
 " 'Well, let us dine,' replied the President de Grandville. 
 'ii bigot frightens me, but there is no one so cheerful as a 
 truly pious man.' 
 
 "We went into the drawing-room. The dinner was delight- 
 ful. Men of real information, politicians to whom business 
 gives both consummate experience and the practice of speech, 
 are admirable story-tellers, when they tell stories. With them 
 there is no medium ; they are either heavy, or they are sublime. 
 In this delightful sport Prince Metternich is as good as 
 Charles Nodier. The fun of a statesman, cut in facets like 
 a diamond, is sharp, sparkling, and full of sense. Being 
 sure that the proprieties would be observed by these three 
 superior men, my uncle allowed his wit full play, a refined 
 wit, gentle, penetrating, and elegant, like that of all men 
 who are accustomed to conceal their thoughts under the black 
 robe. And you may rely upon it, there was nothing vulgar 
 nor idle in this light talk, which I would compare, for its 
 effect on the soul, to Rossini's music. 
 
 "The Abbe Gaudron was^ as M. de Grandville said, a Saint 
 Peter rather than a Saint Paul, a peasant full of faith, a« 
 
HONORINE 
 
 323 
 
 square on his feet as he was tall, a sacerdotal of whose igno- 
 rance in matters of the world and of literature enlivened the 
 conversation by guileless amazement and unexpected ques- 
 tions. They came to talking of one of the plague spots of 
 social life, of which we were just now speaking — adultery. 
 My uncle remarked on the contradiction which the legislators 
 of the Code, still feeling the blows of the revolutionary 
 storm, had established between civil and religious law, and 
 which he said was at the root of all the mischief. 
 
 " 'In the eyes of the Church,' said he, 'adultery is a crime ; 
 in those of your tribunals it is a misdemeanor. Adultery 
 drives to the police court in a carriage instead of standing at 
 the bar to be tried. Napoleon's Council of State, touched 
 with tenderness towards erring women, was quite inefficient. 
 Ought they not in this case to have harmonized the civil and 
 the religious law, and have sent the guilty wife to a convent, 
 as of old ?' 
 
 " 'To a convent V said M. de Serizy. 'They must first haw 
 created convents, and in those days monasteries were bein;!: 
 turned into barracks. Besides, think of what you sa}^, M , 
 FAbbe — give to God what society would have none of ?' 
 
 " 'Oh V said the Comte de Grandville, 'you do not know 
 France. They were obliged to leave the husband free to take 
 proceedings : well, there are not ten cases of adultery brought 
 up in a year.' 
 
 "'M. I'Abbe preaches for his own saint, for it was Jesus 
 Christ who invented adultery,' said Comte Octave. 'In the 
 East, the cradle of the human race, woman was merely a 
 luxury, and there was regarded as a chattel; no virtues were 
 demanded of her but obedience and beauty. By exalting the 
 soul above the body, the modern family in Europe — a daughter 
 of Christ — invented indissoluble marriage, and made it a 
 sacrament.' 
 
 "'Ah! the Church saw the difficulties,' exclaimed M. de 
 Grandville. 
 
 " 'This institution has given rise to a new world,' the Count 
 went on with a smile. 'But the practices of that world will 
 
324 
 
 HONORINB 
 
 never be that of a climate where women are marriageable at 
 seven years of age, and more than old at five-and-twenty. 
 The Catholic Church overlooked the needs of half the globe. 
 — So let lis discuss Europe onl}^ 
 
 " 'Is woman our superior or our inferior ? That is the 
 real question so far as we are concerned. If woman is our 
 inferior, by placing her on so high a level as the Church does, 
 fearful punishments for adultery were needful. And formerly ^ 
 that was what was done. The cloister or death sums up early 
 legislation. But since then practice has modified the law, as 
 is always the case. The throne served as a hotbed for adul- 
 tery, and the increase of this inviting crime marks the decline 
 of the dogmas of the Catholic Church. In these dayis, in cases 
 where the Church now exacts no more than sincere repentance 
 from the erring wife, society is satisfied with a brand-mark 
 instead of an execution. The law still condemns the guilty, 
 but it no longer terrifies them. In short, there are two 
 standards of morals : that of the world, and that of the Code. 
 Where the Code is weak, as I admit with our dear Abbe, the 
 world is audacious and satirical. There are so few judges 
 who would not gladly have committed the fault against which 
 they hurl the rather stolid thunders of their "Inasmuch.^' The 
 world, which gives the lie to the law alike in its rejoicings, in 
 its habits, and in its pleasures, is severer than the Code and 
 the Church; the world punishes a blunder after encouraging 
 hypocrisy. The whole economy of the law on marriage seems 
 to me to require reconstruction from the bottom to the top. 
 The French law would be perfect perhaps if it excluded 
 daughters from inheriting.' 
 
 " 'We three among us know the question very thoroughly,' 
 said the Comte de Grandville with a laugh. T have a wife 
 I cannot live with. Serizy has a wife who will not live with 
 him. As for you, Octave, yours ran away from you. So we 
 three represent every case of the conjugal conscience, and, no 
 doubt, if ever divorce is brought in again, we shall form the 
 committee.' 
 
 "Octave's fork dropped on his glass, broke it, and broke his 
 
HONOIUNE 
 
 325 
 
 plate. He had turned as pale as death, and flashed a thun- 
 derous glare at M. de Grand ville, by which he hinted at my 
 presence, and which I caught. 
 
 " Torgive me, my dear fellow. I did not see Maurice/ 
 the President went on. ^Serizy and I, after being the wit- 
 nesses to your marriage, became your accomplices; I did 
 not think I was committing an indiscretion in the presence 
 of these two venerable priests.' 
 
 "M. de Serizy changed the subject by relating all he had 
 done to please his wife without ever succeeding. The old man 
 concluded that it was impossible to regulate human sym- 
 pathies and antipathies; he maintained that social law was 
 never more perfect than when it was nearest to natural law. 
 Now, Nature takes no account of the affinities of souls; her 
 aim is fulfilled by the propagation of the species. Hence, the 
 Code, in its present form, was wise in leaving a wide latitude 
 to chance. The incapacity of daughters to inherit so long 
 as there were male heirs was an excellent provision, whether 
 to hinder the degeneration of the race, or to make house- 
 holds happier by abolishing scandalous unions and giving the 
 sole preference to moral qualities and beauty. 
 
 " 'But then,' he exclaimed, lifting his hand with a gesture 
 of disgust, 'how are we to perfect legislation in a country 
 which insists on bringing together seven or eight hundred 
 legislators ! — After all, if I am sacrificed,' he added, 'I have 
 a child to succeed me.' 
 
 " 'Setting aside all the religious question,' my uncle said, 
 'I would remark to your Excellency that Nature only owes 
 us life, and that it is society that owes us happiness. Are 
 you a father?' asked my uncle. 
 
 " 'And I — have I any children ?' said Comte Octave in a 
 hollow voice, and his tone made such an impression that there 
 was no more talk of wives or marriage. 
 
 "When coffee had been served, the two Counts and the two 
 priests stole away, seeing that poor Octave had fallen into a 
 fit of melancholy, which prevented his noticing their dis- 
 appearance. My patron was sitting in an armchair by the 
 fire, in the attitude of a man crushed. 
 
326 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 '^'You now know the secret of my life/ said he to me on 
 noticing that we were alone. ^After three years of married 
 life, one evening when I came in I found a letter in which 
 the Countess announced her flight. The letter did not lack 
 dignity, for it is in the nature of women to preserve some 
 virtues even when committing that horrible sin. — The story 
 now is that my wife went abroad in a ship that was wrecked; 
 she is supposed to be dead. I have lived alone for seven 
 years ! — Enough for this evening, Maurice. We will talk 
 of my situation when I have grown used to the idea of speak- 
 ing of it to you. When we suffer from a chronic disease, it 
 needs time to become accustomed to improvement. That im- 
 provement often seems to be merely another aspect of the con- 
 plaint.' 
 
 "1 went to bed greatly agitated ; for the mystery, far from 
 being explained, seemed to me more obscure than ever. I 
 foresaw some strange drama indeed, for I understood that 
 .there could be no vulgar difference between the woman the 
 Count could choose and such a character as his. The events 
 which had driven the Countess to leave a man so noble, so 
 amiable, so perfect, so loving, so worthy to be loved, must 
 have been singular, to say the least. M. de Grandville's re- 
 mark had been like a torch flung into the caverns over which 
 I had so long been walking; and though the flame lighted 
 them but dimly, my eyes could perceive their wide extent! 
 I could imagine the Count's sufferings without knowing their 
 depth or their bitterness. That sallow face, those parched 
 temples, those overwhelming studies, those moments of absent- 
 mindedness, the smallest details of the life of this married 
 bachelor, all stood out in luminous relief during the hour of 
 mental questioning, which is, as it were, the twilight before 
 sleep, and to which any man would have given himself up, as 
 I did. 
 
 '^Oh ! how I lovedmy poor master ! Heseemed tome sublime. 
 I read a poem of melancholy, I saw perpetual activity in the 
 heart I had accused of being torpid. Must not supreme grief 
 always come at last to stagnation ? Had this judge, who had 
 
HONORINE 
 
 327 
 
 SO much in his power, ever revenged liimself ? Was he feeding 
 himse] f on her long agony ? Is it not a remarkable thing in 
 Paris to keep anger always seething for ten years? What 
 had Octave done since this great misfortune — for the separa- 
 tion of husband and wife is a great misfortune in our day, 
 when domestic life has become a social question, which it 
 never was of old ? 
 
 "We allowed a few days to pass on the watch, for great 
 sorrows have a diffidence of their own; but at last, one even- 
 ing, the Count said in a grave voice : 
 
 " 'Stay/ 
 
 "This, as nearly as may be, is his story. 
 
 " *My father had a ward, rich and lovely, who was sixteen 
 at the time when I came back from college to live in this old 
 house. Honorine, who had been brought up by my mother, 
 was just awaking to life. Full of grace and of childish ways, 
 she dreamed of happiness as she would have dreamed of 
 jewels ; perhaps happiness seemed to her the jewel of the soul. 
 Her piety w^as not free from puerile pleasures ; for everything, 
 even religion, was poetry to her ingenuous heart. She looked 
 to the future as a perpetual fete. Innocent and pure, no 
 delirium had disturbed her dream. Shame and grief had 
 never tinged her cheek nor moistened her eye. She did not 
 even inquire into the secret of her involuntary emotions on a 
 fine spring day. And then, she felt that she was weak and 
 destined to obedience, and she awaited marriage without wish- 
 ing for it. Her smiling imagination knew nothing of the cor- 
 ruption — necessary perhaps — which literature imparts by 
 depicting the passions; she knew nothing of the world, and 
 was ignorant of all the dangers of society. The dear child 
 had suffered so little that she had not even developed her 
 courage. In short, her guilelessness would have led her to 
 walk fearless among serpents, like the ideal figure of Inno- 
 cence a painter once created. We lived together like two 
 brothers. 
 
 " 'At the end of a year I said to her one day, in the garden 
 
328 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 of this house, by the basin, as we stood throwing crumbs to the 
 fish: 
 
 " * "Would 3^ou like that we should be married ? With me 
 you could do whatever you please, while another man would 
 make you unhappy." 
 
 " ' "Mamma/' said she to my mother, who came out to join 
 us, "Octave and I have agreed to be married " 
 
 " ^ "What ! at seventeen ?" said my mother. "No ; you 
 must wait eighteen months ; and if eighteen months hence you 
 like each other, well, your birth and fortunes are equal, you 
 can make a marriage which is suitable, as well as being a love 
 match.'' 
 
 " ^When I was six-and-twenty, and Honorine nineteen, we 
 were married. Our respect for my father and mother, old 
 folks of the Bourbon Court, hindered us from making this 
 house fashionable, or renewing the furniture ; we lived on, as 
 we had done in the past, as children. However, I went into 
 society; I initiated my wife into the world of fashion; and I 
 regarded it as one of my duties to instruct her. 
 
 " recognized afterwards that marriages contracted under 
 such circumstances as ours bear in themselves a rock against 
 which many affections are wrecked, many prudent calcula- 
 tions, many lives. The husband becomes a pedagogue, or, if 
 you like, a professor, and love perishes under the rod which, 
 sooner or later, gives pain; for a j^oung and handsome wife, 
 at once discreet and laughter-loving, will not accept any 
 superiority above that vvdth which she is endowed by nature. 
 Perhaps I was in the wrong ? During the difficult beginnings 
 of a household I, perhaps, assumed a magisterial tone? On 
 the other hand, I may have made the mistake of trusting too 
 entirely to that artless nature; I kept no watch over the 
 Countess, in whom revolt seemed to me impossible ? Alas ! 
 neither in politics nor in domestic life has it yet been ascer- 
 tained whether empires and happiness are wrecked by too 
 much confidence or too much severity ! Perhaps, again, the 
 husband failed to realize lionorine's girlish dreams? Who 
 can tell, while happy days last, what precepts he has neg- 
 lected?' 
 
flONORINE 
 
 329 
 
 "I remember only the broad outlines of the reproaches the 
 Count addressed to himself, with all the good faith of an 
 anatomist seeking the cause of a disease which might be over- 
 looked by his brethren ; but his merciful indulgence struck me 
 then as really worthy of that of Jesus Christ when lie 
 rescued the woman taken in adultery. 
 
 " *It was eighteen months after my father^s death — ^my 
 mother followed him to the tomb in a few months — when the 
 fearful night came which surprised me by Honorine's fare- 
 well letter. What poetic delusion had seduced my wife ? Was 
 it through her senses ? Was it the magnetism of misfortune 
 or of genius ? Which of these powers had taken her by storm 
 or misled her ? — I would not know. The blow was so terrible, 
 that for a month I remained stunned. Afterwards, reflection 
 counseled me to continue in ignorance, and Honorine's mis- 
 fortunes have since taught me too much about all these things. 
 — So far, Maurice, the story is commonplace enough ; but one 
 word will change it all : I love Honorine, I have never ceased 
 to worship her. From the day when she left me I have lived 
 on memory ; one by one I recall the pleasures for which Honor- 
 ine no doubt had no taste. 
 
 " ^Oh !' said he, seeing the amazement in my eyes, ^do not 
 make a hero of me, do not think me such a fool, as a Colonel 
 of the Empire would say, as to have sought no diversion. 
 Alas, my boy ! I was either too young or too much in love ; 
 I have not in the whole world met with another woman. 
 After frightful struggles with myself, I tried to forget ; money 
 in hand, I stood on the very threshold of infidelity, but there 
 the memory of Honorine rose before me like a white statue. 
 As I recalled the infinite delicacy of that exquisite skin, 
 through which the blood might be seen coursing and the nerves 
 quivering ; as I saw in fancy that ingenuous face, as guileless 
 on the eve of my sorrows as on the day when I said to her, 
 "Shall we marry?" as I remembered a heavenly fragrance, 
 the very odor of virtue, and the light in her eyes, the pretti- 
 ness of her movements, I fled like a man preparing to violate 
 a tomb, who sees emerging from it the transfigured soul of the 
 
330 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 dead. At consultations, in Court, by night, I dream so in- 
 cessantly of Honorine that only by excessive strength of mind 
 do I succeed in attending to what I am doing and saying. 
 This is the secret of my labors. 
 
 " 'Well, I felt no more anger with her than a father can 
 feel on seeing his beloved child in some danger it has im- 
 prudently rushed into. I understood that I had made a 
 poem of my wife — a poem I delighted in with such intoxica- 
 tion, that I fancied she shared the intoxication. Ah ! Maurice, 
 an indiscriminating passion in a husband is a mistake that 
 may lead to any crime in a wife. I had no doubt left all the 
 faculties of this child, loved as a child, entirely unemployed; 
 I had perhaps wearied her with my love before the hour of 
 loving had struck for her ! Too young to understand that in 
 the constancy of the wife lies the germ of the mother's de- 
 votion, she mistook this first test of marriage for life itself, 
 jnd the refractory child cursed life, unknown to me, not dar- 
 : Qg to complain to me, out of sheer modesty perhaps ! In so 
 . ruel a position she would be defenceless against any man 
 ■ ;ho stirred her deeply. — And I, so wise a judge as they say — 
 1, who have a kind heart, but whose mind was absorbed — I 
 1 luderstood too late these unv/ritten laws of the woman's code, 
 I read them by the light of the fire that wrecked my roof, 
 ^rhen I constituted my heart a tribunal by virtue of the law, 
 for the law makes the husband a judge : I acquitted my wife, 
 and I condemned myself. But love took possession of me as a 
 passion, the mean, despotic passion which comes over some old 
 men. At this day I love the absent Honorine as a man of 
 sixty loves a woman whom he must possess at any cost, and yet 
 I feel the strength of a young man. I have the insolence of 
 the old man and the reserve of a boy. — My dear fellow, 
 society only laughs at such a desperate conjugal predicament. 
 Where it pities a lover, it regards a husband as ridiculously 
 inept; it makes sport of those who cannot keep the woman 
 they have secured under the canopy of the Church, and before 
 the Maire's scarf of office. And I had to keep silence. 
 
 " 'Serizy is happy. His indulgence allows him to see his 
 
HONOEINB 
 
 331 
 
 wife; he can protect and defend her; and, as he adores her, 
 he knows all the perfect joys of a benefactor whom nothing 
 can disturb, not even ridicule, for he pours it himself on his 
 fatherly pleasures. "I remain married only for my wife's 
 sake," he said to me one day on coming out of court. 
 
 " 'But — I have nothing ; I have not even to face ridicule, 
 I who live solely on a love which is starving ! I who can never 
 find a word to say to a woman of the world ! I who loathe 
 prostitution ! I who am faithful under a spell ! — But for my 
 religious faith, I should have killed myself. I have defied the 
 gulf of hard work ; I have thrown myself into it, and come out 
 again alive, fevered, burning, bereft of sleep ! ' 
 
 "I /annot remember all the words of this eloquent man, to 
 whom passion gave an eloquence indeed so far above that of 
 the pleader that, as I listened to him, I, like him, felt my 
 clieeks wet with tears. You may conceive of my feelings 
 M hen, after a pause, during which we dried them away, he 
 fiaished his story with this revelation : — 
 
 " 'This is the drama of my soul, but it is not the actual 
 
 iWing drama which is at this moment being acted in Paris ! 
 
 The interior drama interests nobody. I know it ; and you will 
 
 (yae day admit that it is so, you, who at this moment shed 
 
 toars with me; no one can burden his heart or his skin with 
 
 ^.nother's pain. The measure of our sufferings is in our- 
 
 ifelves. — You even understand my sorrows only by very vague 
 
 analogy. Could you see me calming the most violent frenzy 
 
 of despair by the contemplation of a miniature in which I can 
 
 see and kiss her brow, the smile on her lips, the shape of her 
 
 face, can breathe the whiteness of her skin ; which enables me 
 
 almost to feel, to play with the black masses of her curling 
 
 hair? — Could you see me when I leap with hope — when I 
 
 writhe under the myriad darts of despair — when I tramp 
 
 through the mire of Paris to quell my irritation by fatigue? 
 
 I have fits of collapse comparable to those of a consumptive 
 
 patient, moods of wild hilarity, terrors as of a murderer who 
 
 meets a sergeant of police. In short, my life is a continual 
 
 paroxysm of fears, joy, and dejection. 
 VOL. 4 — 4b 
 
332 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 " ^As to the drama — it is this. You imagine that I am 
 occupied with the Council of State, the Chamber, the Courts, 
 Politics. — Why, dear me, seven hours at night are enough 
 for all that, so much are my faculties overwrought by the life 
 I lead ! Honorine is my real concern. To recover my wife 
 is my only study; to guard her in her cage, without her sus- 
 pecting that she is in my power ; to satisfy her needs, to supply 
 the little pleasure she allows herself, to be always about her 
 like a sylph without allowing her to see or to suspect me, for 
 if she did, the future would be lost, — that is my life, my true 
 life. — For seven years I have never gone to bed without going 
 first to see the light of her night-lamp, or her shadow on the 
 window curtains. 
 
 " ^She left my house, choosing to take nothing but the dress 
 she v/ore that day. The child carried her magnanimity to the 
 point of folly ! Consequently, eighteen months after her 
 flight she was deserted by her lover, who was appalled by the 
 cold, cruel, sinister, and revolting aspect of poverty — tho 
 coward! The man had, no doubt, counted on the easy and 
 luxurious life in Switzerland or Italy which fine ladies in- 
 dulge in when they leave their husbands. Honorine has sixty 
 thousand francs a year of her own. The wretch left the dear 
 creature expecting an infant, and without a penny. In the 
 month of [N'ovember 1820 I found means to persuade the best. 
 accoucheur in Paris to play the part of a humble suburban 
 apothecary. I induced the priest of the parish in which 
 the Countess was living to supply her needs as though he were 
 performing an act of charity. Then to hide my wife, to 
 secure her against discovery, to find her a housekeeper who 
 would be devoted to me and be my intelligent confidante — it 
 was a task worthy of Figaro ! You may suppose that to 
 discover where my wife had taken refuge I had only to make 
 up my mind to it. 
 
 "^After three months of desperation rather than despair, 
 the idea of devoting myself to Honorine with God only in 
 my secret, was one of those poems which occur only to the 
 heart of a lover through life and death! Love must have 
 
HONORINB 
 
 333 
 
 its daily food. And ought I not to protect this child, whose 
 guilt was the outcome of my imprudence, against fresh disaster 
 — to fulfil my part, in short, as a guardian angel ? — At the age 
 of seven months her infant died, happily for her and for me. 
 For nine months more my wife lay between life and death, 
 deserted at the time when she most needed a manly arm ; but 
 this arm,^ said he, holding out his own with a gesture of 
 angelic dignity, Vas extended over her head. Honorine was 
 nursed as she would have been in her own home. When, on 
 her recovery, ^le asked how and by whom she had been assisted, 
 she was told — "By the Sisters of Charity in the neighborhood 
 — by the Maternity Society — by the parish priest, who took an 
 interest in her." 
 
 " 'This woman, whose pride amounts to a vice, has shown 
 a power of resistance in misfortune, which on some evenings 
 I call the obstinacy of a mule. Honorine was bent on earn- 
 ing her living. My wife works ! For five years past I have 
 lodged her in the Eue Saint-Maur, in a charming little house, 
 where she makes artificial flowers and articles of fashion. 
 She believes that she sells the product of her elegant fancy- 
 work to a shop, where she is so well paid that she makes twenty 
 francs a day, and in these six years she has never had a mo- 
 ment's suspicion. She pays for everything she needs at about 
 the third of its value, so that on six thousand francs a year 
 she lives as if she had fifteen thousand. She is devoted to 
 flowers, and pays a hundred crowns to a gardener, who costs 
 me twelve hundred in wages, and sends me in a bill for two 
 thousand francs every three months. I have promised the 
 man a market-garden with a house on it close to the porter's 
 lodge in the Rue Saint-Maur. I hold this ground in the 
 name of a clerk of the law courts. The smallest indis- 
 cretion would ruin the gardener's prospects. Honorine has 
 her little house, a garden, and a splendid hothouse, for a rent 
 of flve hundred francs a year. There she lives under the 
 name of her housekeeper, Madame Gobain, the old woman 
 of impeccable discretion whom I was so lucky as to find, and 
 whosQ affection Honorine has won. But her zeal, like that of 
 
334 HONORINE 
 
 the gardener, is kept hot by the promise of reward at the mo- 
 mert of success. The porter and his wife cost me dreadfully 
 dear for the same reasons. However, for three years Honorine 
 has been happy, believing that she owes to her own toil all the 
 luxury of flowers, dress, and comfort. 
 
 " ^Oh ! I know what you are about to say,' cried the Count, 
 seeing a question in my eyes and on my lips. 'Yes, yes; I 
 have made the attempt. My wife was formerly living in the 
 Faubourg Saint-Antoine. One day when, from what Go- 
 bain told me, 1 believed in some chance of a reconciliation, 
 I wrote by post a letter, in which I tried to propitiate my 
 wife — a letter written and re-written twenty times ! I will 
 not describe my agonies. I went from the Rue Payenne to 
 the Eue de Reuilly like a condemned wretch going from the 
 Palais de Justice to his execution, but he goes on a cart, and 
 I was on foot. It was dark — there was a fog ; I went to meet 
 Madame Gobain, who was to come and tell me what my wife 
 had done. Honorine, on recognizing my writing, had thrown 
 the letter into the fire without reading it. — "Madame Gobain,'' 
 she had exclaimed, "I leave this to-morrow." 
 
 " 'What a dagger-stroke was this to a man who found in- 
 exhaustible pleasure in the trickery by which he gets the 
 finest Lyons velvet at twelve francs a yard, a pheasant, a fish, 
 a dish of fruit, for a tenth of their value, for a woman so 
 ignorant as to believe that she is paying ample wages with two 
 hundred and fifty francs to Madame Gobain, a cook fit for a 
 bishop. 
 
 " 'You have sometimes found me rubbing my hands in the 
 enjoyment of a sort of happiness. Well, I had just succeeded 
 in some ruse worthy of the stage. I had just deceived my wife 
 — I had sent her by a purchaser of wardrobes an Indian shawl, 
 to be offered to her as the property of an actress who had 
 hardly worn it, but in which I — the solemn lawyer whom you 
 know — ^had wrapped myself for a night! In short, my life 
 at this day may be summed up in the two words which ex- 
 press the extremes of torment — I love, and I wait! I have 
 in Madame Gobain a faithful spy on the heart I worship. I 
 
HONORINE 
 
 335 
 
 go every evening to chat with the old woman, to hear from her 
 all that Honorine has done during the day, the lightest word 
 she has spoken, for a single exclamation might betray to me 
 the secrets of that soul which is wilfully deaf and dumb. 
 Honorine is pious ; she attends the Church services and prays, 
 but she has never been to confession or taken the Communion ; 
 she foresees what a priest would tell her. She will not listen 
 to the advice, to the injunction, that she should return to me. 
 This horror of me overwhelms me, dismays me, for I have 
 never done her the smallest harm. I have always been kind 
 to her. Granting even that I may have been a little hasty when 
 teaching her, that my man's irony may have hurt her legiti- 
 mate girlish pride, is that a reason for persisting in a de- 
 termination which only the most implacable hatred could 
 have inspired? Honorine has never told Madame Gobain 
 who she is; she keeps absolute silence as to her marriage, so 
 that the worthy and respectable woman can never speak a 
 word in my favor, for she is the only person in the house who 
 knows my secret. The others know nothing; they live under 
 the awe caused by the name of the Prefect of Police, and their 
 respect for the power of a Minister. Hence it is impossible 
 for me to penetrate that heart ; the citadel is mine, but I can- 
 not get into it. I have not a single means of action. An act 
 of violence would ruin me for ever. 
 
 " ^How can I argue against reasons of which I know noth- 
 ing ? Should I write a letter, and have it copied by a public 
 writer, and laid before Honorine ? But that would be to run 
 the risk of a third removal. The last cost me fifty thousand 
 francs. The purchase was made in the first instance in the 
 name of the secretary whom you succeeded. The unhappy 
 man, who did not know how lightly I sleep, was detected by 
 me in the act of opening a box in which I had put the private 
 agreement; I coughed, and he was seized with a panic; next 
 day I compelled him to sell the house to the man in whose 
 name it now stands, and I turned him out. 
 
 " ^If it were not that I feel all my noblest faculties as a 
 man satisfied, happy, expansive; if the part I am playing 
 
536 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 were not that of divine fatherhood; if I did not drink in 
 delight by every pore^, there are moments when I should be- 
 lieve that I was a monomaniac. Sometimes at night I hear 
 the jingling bells of madness. I dread the violent transitions 
 from a feeble hope, which sometimes shines and flashes np, 
 to complete despair, falling as low as man can fall. A few 
 days since I was seriously considering the horrible end of the 
 story of Lovelace and Clarissa Harlowe, and saying to myself, 
 If Honorine were the mother of a child of mine, must she not 
 necessarily return under her husband's roof? 
 
 " 'And I have such complete faith in a happy future, that 
 ten months ago I bought and paid for one of the handsomest 
 houses in the Faubourg Saint-Honore. If I win back 
 Honorine, I will not allow her to see this house again, nor 
 the room from which she fled. I mean to place my idol in a 
 new temple, where she may feel that life is altogether new. 
 That house is being made a marvel of elegance and taste. I 
 have been told of a poet who, being almost mad with love for 
 an actress, bought the handsomest bed in Paris without 
 knowing how the actress would reward his passion. Well, 
 one of the coldest of lawyers, a man who is supposed to be 
 the gravest adviser of the Crown, was stirred to the depths 
 of his heart by that anecdote. The orator of the Legislative 
 Chamber can understand the poet who fed his ideal on 
 material possibilities. Three days before the arrival of Maria 
 Louisa, ISTapoleon flung himself on his wedding bed at Com- 
 piegne. All stupendous passions have the same impulses. 
 I love as a poet — as an emperor !' 
 
 "As I heard the last words, I believed that Count Octave's 
 fears were realized; he had risen, and was walking up and 
 down, and gesticulating, but he stopped as if shocked by the 
 vehemence of his own words. 
 
 " 'I am very ridiculous,' he added, after a long pause, look- 
 ing at me, as if craving a glance of pity. 
 
 " 'No, monsieur, you are very unhappy.' 
 
 " 'Ah yes !' said he, taking up the thread of his con^ 
 fidences. 'From the violence of my speech you may, you 
 
HONOKINE 
 
 337 
 
 must believe in the intensity of a physical passion which for 
 nine years has absorbed all my faculties; but that is nothing 
 in comparison with the worship I feel for the soul, the mind, 
 the heart, all in that woman that is not mere woman; the 
 enchanting divinities in the train of Love, with whom we pass 
 our life, and who form the daily poem of a fugitive delight. 
 By a phenomenon of retrospection I see now the graces of 
 Honorine's mind and heart, to which I paid little heed in the 
 time of my happiness — like all who are happy. From day 
 to day I have appreciated the extent of my loss, discovering 
 the exquisite gifts of that capricious and refractory young 
 creature who has grown so strong and so proud under the 
 heavy hand of poverty and the shock of the most cowardly 
 desertion. And that heavenly blossom is fading in solitude 
 and hiding ! — Ah ! The law of which we were speaking,' he 
 went on with bitter irony, ^the law is a squad of gendarmes 
 — my wife seized and dragged away by force ! W ould not 
 that be to triumph over a corpse? Eeligion has no hold on 
 her; she craves its poetry, she prays, but she does not listen 
 to the commandments of the Church. I, for my part, have 
 exhausted everything in the way of mercy, of kindness, of love ; 
 I am at my wits' end. Only one chance of victory is left to 
 me; the cunning and patience with which bird-catchers at 
 last entrap the wariest birds, the swiftest, the most capricious, 
 and the rarest. Hence, Maurice, when M. de Grandville's 
 indiscretion betrayed to you the secret of my life, I ended 
 by regarding this incident as one of the decrees of fate, one 
 of the utterances for which gamblers listen and pray in the 
 midst of their most impassioned play. . . . Have you 
 enough affection for me to show me romantic devotion ?' 
 
 " see what you are coming to. Monsieur le Comte,' said I, 
 interrupting him ; guess your purpose. Your first secretary 
 tried to open your deed box. I know the heart of your second 
 — he might fall in love with your wife. And can you devote 
 him to destruction by sending him into the fire? Can any 
 oiie put his hand into a brazier without burning it ?' 
 
 " *You are a foolish boy,' replied the Count. *I will send 
 
338 
 
 HONOKINB 
 
 you well gloved. It is no secretary of mine that will be 
 lodged in the Kue Saint-Maur in the little garden-house which 
 I have at his disposal. It is my distant cousin, Baron do 
 FHostal, a lawyer high in office . . 
 
 "After a moment of silent surprise, I heard the gate bell 
 ring, and a carriage came into the courtyard. Presently the 
 footman announced Madame de Courteville and her daughter. 
 The Count had a large family connection on his mother's 
 side. Madame de Courteville, his cousin, was the widow of a 
 judge on the bench of the Seine division, who had left her a 
 daughter and no fortune whatever. What could a woman of 
 nine-and-twenty be in comparison with a young girl of twenty, 
 as lovely as imagination could wish for an ideal mistress ? 
 
 " 'Baron, and Master of Appeals, till you get something 
 better, and this old house settled on her, — would not you have 
 enough good reasons for not falling in love with the Countess ?' 
 he said to me in a whisper, as he took me by the hand and in- 
 troduced me to Madame de Courteville and her daughter. 
 
 "I was dazzled, not so much by these advantages of which 
 I had never dreamed, butbyAmeliede Courteville, whose beauty 
 was thrown into relief by one of those well-chosen toilets 
 which a mother can achieve for a daughter when she wants 
 to see her married. 
 
 "But I will not talk of myself," said the Consul after a 
 pause. 
 
 "Three weeks later I went to live in the gardener's cottage, 
 which had been cleaned, repaired, and furnished with the 
 celerity which is explained by three words: Paris; French 
 workmen ; money ! I was as much in love as the Count could 
 possibly desire as a security. Would the prudence of a young 
 man of five-and-twenty be equal to the part I was undertaking, 
 involving a friend's happiness ? To settle that matter, I may 
 confess that I counted very much on my uncle's advice; for 
 I had been authorized by the Count to take him into con- 
 fidence in any case where I deemed his interference necessary. 
 I engaged a garden; I devoted myself to horticulture; 1 
 worked frantically, like a man whom nothing can divert, turn- 
 
HONORINE 
 
 339 
 
 ing up the soil of the market-garden, and appropriating the 
 ground to the culture of flowers. Like the maniacs of Eng- 
 land, or of Holland, I gave it out that I was devoted to one 
 kind of flower, and especially grew dahlias, collecting every 
 variety. You will understand that my conduct, even in the 
 smallest details, was laid down for me by the Count, whose 
 whole intellectual powers were directed to the most trifling 
 incidents of the tragi-comedy enacted in the Eue Saint-Maur. 
 As soon as the Countess had gone to bed, at about eleven at 
 night. Octave, Madame Gobain, and I sat in council. I heard 
 the old woman^s report to the Count of his wife's least pro- 
 ceedings during the day. He inquired into everything: her 
 meals, her occupations, her frame of mind, her plans for the 
 morrow, the flowers she proposed to imitate. I understood 
 what love in despair may be when it is the threefold passion of 
 'the heart, the mind, and the senses. Octave lived only for 
 that hour. 
 
 "During two months, while my work in the garden lasted, 
 L never set eyes on the little house where my fair neigh- 
 bor dwelt. I had not even inquired whether I had a neighbor, 
 ilhough the Countess' garden was divided from mine by a 
 paling, along which she had planted cypress trees already 
 four feet high. One fine morning Madame Gobain announced 
 to her mistress, as a disastrous piece of news, the intention, 
 expressed by an eccentric creature who had become her neigh- 
 bor, of building a wall between the two gardens, at the end of 
 the year. I will say nothing of the curiosity which consumed 
 me to see the Countess ! The wish almost extinguished my 
 budding love for Amelie de Courteville. My scheme for 
 building a wall was indeed a serious threat. There would be 
 "ao more fresh air for Honorine, whose garden would then be 
 a sort of narrow alley shut in between my wall and her own 
 little house. This dwelling, formerly a summer villa, was like 
 a house of cards ; it v/as not more than thirty feet deep, and 
 about a hundred feet long. The garden front, painted in the 
 German fashion, imitated a trellis with flowers up to the 
 second floor, and was a really charming example of the Pom- 
 
340 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 padour style, so well called rococo. A long avenue of limes 
 led up to it. The gardens of the pavilion and my plot of 
 ground were in the shape of a hatchet, of which this avenue 
 was the handle. My wall would cut away three-quarters of 
 the hatchet. 
 
 "The Countess was in despair. 
 
 " ^My good Gobain/ said she, %hat sort of man is this 
 florist?' 
 
 " '^On my word,' said the housekeeper, do not know 
 whether it will be possible to tame him. He seems to have a 
 horror of women. He is the nephew of a Paris cure. I have 
 seen the uncle but once ; a fine old man of sixty, very ugly, but 
 very amiable. It is quite possible that this priest encourages 
 his nephew, as they say in the neighborhood, in his love of 
 flowers, that nothing worse may happen ' 
 
 ^^^Why— what?' 
 
 " *W ell, your neighbor is a little cracked !' said Gobain, 
 tapping her head ! 
 
 "Now a harmless lunatic is the only man whom no woman 
 ever distrusts in the matter of sentiment. You will see how 
 wise the Count had been in choosing this disguise for me. 
 
 " ^What ails him then ?' asked the Countess. 
 
 " *^He has studied too hard,' replied Gobain ; ^he has turned 
 misanthropic. And he has his reasons for disliking women — ^ 
 well, if you want to know all that is said about him ' 
 
 " *Well,' said Honorine, ^madmen frighten me less than sane 
 folks ; I will speak to him myself ! Tell him that I beg him to 
 come here. If I do not succeed, I will send for the cure.' 
 
 "The day after this conversation, as I was walking along 
 my graveled path, I caught sight of the half -opened curtains 
 on the first floor of the little house, and of a woman's face 
 curiously peeping out. Madame Gobain called me. I hastily 
 glanced at the Countess' house, and by a rude shrug ex- 
 pressed, *What do I care for your mistress!' 
 
 " ^Madame,' said Gobain, called upon to give an account of 
 her errand, 'the madman bid me leave him in peace, saying 
 that even a charcoal seller is master in his own premises, es- 
 pecially when he has no wife.' 
 
HONORINE 
 
 341 
 
 ^He is perfectly right/ said the Countess. 
 
 " 'Yes, but he ended by saying, "I will go," when I told him 
 that he would greatly distress a lady living in retirement, 
 who found her greatest solace in growing flowers.' 
 
 ''Next day a signal from Gobain informed me that I was ex- 
 pected. After the Countess' breakfast, when she was walking 
 to and fro in front of her house, I broke out some palings, 
 and went towards her. I had dressed myself like a country- 
 man, in an old pair of gray flannel trousers, heavy wooden 
 shoes, and shabby shooting coat, a peaked cap on my head, 
 a ragged bandana round my neck, hands soiled with mould, 
 and a dibble in my hand.- 
 
 " 'Madame,' said the housekeeper, 'this good man is your 
 neighbor.' 
 
 "The Countess was not alarmed. I saw at last the woman 
 whom her own conduct and her husband's confidences had 
 made me so curious to meet. It v/as in the early days of 
 May. The air was pure, the weather serene; the verdure 
 of the first foliage, the fragrance of spring formed a setting 
 for this creature of sorrow. As I then saw Plonorine I under- 
 stood Octave's passion and the truthfulness of his description, 
 'A heavenly flower!^ 
 
 "Her pallor was what first struck me by its peculiar tone of 
 white — for there are as many tones of white as of red or blue. 
 On looking at the Countess, the eye seemed to feel that tender 
 skin, where the blood flowed in the blue veins. At the slightest 
 emotion the blood mounted under the surface in rosy flushes 
 like a cloud. When we met, the sunshine, filtering through 
 the light foliage of the acacias, shed on Honorine the pale 
 gold, ambient glory in which Raphael and Titian, alone of 
 all painters, have been able to enwrap the Virgin. Her brown 
 eyes expressed both tenderness and vivacity; their brightness 
 seemed reflected in her face through the long downcast lashes. 
 Merely by lifting her delicate eyelids, Honorine could cast a 
 spell ; there was so much feeling, dignity, terror, or contempt 
 in her way of raising or dropping those veils of the soul. She 
 could freeze or give life by a look. Her light-brown hair. 
 
342 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 carelessly knotted on her head, outlined a poet's brow, high, 
 powerful, and dreamy. The mouth was wholly voluptuous. 
 And to crown all by a grace, rare in France, though common 
 in Italy, all the lines and forms of the head had a stamp of 
 nobleness which would defy the outrages of time. 
 
 "Though slight, Honorine was not thin, and her figure 
 struck me as being one that might revive love when it believed 
 itself exhausted. She perfectly represented the idea conveyed 
 by the word mignonne, for she was one of those pliant little 
 women who allow themselves to be taken up, petted, set down, 
 and taken up again like a kitten. Her small feet, as I heard 
 them on the gravel, made a light sound essentially their own, 
 that harmonized with the rustle of her dress, producing a 
 feminine music which stamped itself on the heart, and re- 
 mained distinct from the footfall of a thousand other women. 
 Her gait bore all the quarterings of her race with so much 
 pride, that, in the street, the least respectful working man 
 would have made way for her. Gay and tender, haughty and 
 imposing, it was impossible to understand her, excepting as 
 gifted with these apparently incompatible qualities, which, 
 nevertheless, had left her still a child. But it was a child 
 who might be as strong as an angel ; and, like the angel, once 
 hurt in her nature, she would be implacable. 
 
 "Coldness on that face must no doubt be death to those 
 on whom her eyes had smiled, for whom her set lips had 
 parted, for those whose soul had drunk in the melody of that 
 voice, lending to her words the poetry of song by its peculiar 
 intonation. Inhaling the perfume of violets that accom- 
 panied her, I understood how the memory of this wife had 
 arrested the Count on the threshold of debauchery, and how 
 impossible it would be ever to forget a creature who really 
 was a flower to the touch, a flower to the eye, a flower of 
 fragrance, a heavenly flower to the soul. . . . Honorine 
 inspired devotion, chivalrous devotion, regardless of reward. 
 A man on seeing her must say to himself: 
 
 " 'Think, and I will divine your thought ; speak, and I will 
 obey. If my life, sacrificed in torments, can procure you one 
 
HONORINE 
 
 343 
 
 day's happiness, take my life ; I will smile like a martyr at the 
 stake, for I shall offer that clay to God, as a token to A^hich a 
 father responds on recognizing a gift to his child/ Many 
 women study their expression, and succeed in producing 
 effects similar to those which would have struck you at first 
 sight of the Countess; only, in her, it all was the outcome 
 of a delightful nature, that inimitable nature went at once 
 to the heart. If I tell you all this, it is because her soul, her 
 thoughts, the exquisiteness of her heart, are all we are con- 
 cerned with, and you would have blamed me if I had not 
 sketched them for you. 
 
 "I was very near forgetting my part as a half-crazy lout, 
 clumsy, and by no means chivalrous. 
 
 am told, madame, that you are fond of flowers V 
 'I am an artificial flower-maker,' said she. 'After grow- 
 ing flowers, I imitate them, like a mother who is artist enough 
 to have the pleasure of painting portraits of her children. 
 . . . That is enough to tell you that I am poor and unable 
 to pay for the concession I am anxious to obtain from you ?' 
 
 " 'But how,' said I, as grave as a judge, 'can a lady of such 
 rank as yours would seem to be, ply so humble a calling? 
 Have you, like me, good reasons for employing your fingers 
 so as to keep your brains from working?' 
 
 " 'Let us stick to the question of the wall/ said she, with a 
 smile. 
 
 " 'Why, we have begun at the foundations,' said I. 'Must 
 not I know which of us ought to yield to the other in behalf 
 of our suffering, or, if you choose, of our mania ? — Oh ! what 
 a charming clump of narcissus ! They are as fresh as this 
 spring morning !' 
 
 "I assure you, she had made for herself a perfect museum 
 of flowers and shrubs, which none might see but the sun, and 
 of which the arrangement had been prompted by the genius 
 of an artist; the most heartless of landlords must have treated 
 it with respect. The masses of plants, arranged according 
 to their height, or in single clumps, were really a joy to the 
 soul. This retired and solitary garden breathed comforting 
 
344 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 scents, and suggested none but sweet thoughts and graceful 
 nay, voluptuous pictures. On it was set that inscrutable sign- 
 manual, which our true character stamps on everything, as soon 
 as nothing compels us to obey the various hypocrisies, neces- 
 sary as they are, which Society insists on. I looked alternately 
 at the mass of narcissus and at the Countess, affecting to be 
 far more in love with the flowers than with her, to carry out 
 my part. 
 
 ^So you are very fond of flowers T said she. 
 
 " ^Tliey are,^ I replied, 'the only beings that never disap- 
 point our cares and affection.^ And I went on to deliver 
 such a diatribe while comparing botany and the world, that 
 we ended miles away from the dividing wall, and the Countess 
 must have supposed me to be a wretched and wounded sufferer 
 worthy of her pity. However, at the end of half an hour my 
 neighbor naturally brought me back to the point ; for women, 
 when they are not in love, have all the cold blood of an ex- 
 perienced attorney. 
 
 " 'If you insist on my leaving the paling,' said I, 'you will 
 learn all the secrets of gardening that I want to hide; I am 
 seeking to grow a blue dahlia, a blue rose; I am crazy for 
 blue flowers. Is not blue the favorite color of superior souls ? 
 We are neither of us really at home; we might as well make 
 a little door of open railings to unite our gardens. . . . 
 You, too, are fond of flowers; you will see mine, I shall see 
 yours. If you receive no visitors at all, I, for my part, have 
 none but my uncle, the Cure of the White Friars.' 
 
 " 'No,' said she, 'I will give you the right to come into my 
 garden, my premises, at any hour. Come and welcome; you 
 will always be admitted as a neighbor with whom I hope to 
 keep on good terms. But I like my solitude too well to 
 burden it with any loss of independence.' 
 
 " 'iVs you please,' said I, and with one leap I was over the 
 paling. 
 
 " 'Nov/, of what use would a door be?' said I, from my own 
 domain, turning round to the Countess, and mocking her 
 with a madman's gesture and grimace. 
 
HONORINB 
 
 345 
 
 "For a fortnight I seemed to take no heed of my neighbor. 
 Towards the end of May, one lovely evening, we happened 
 both to be out on opposite sides of the paling, both walking 
 slowly. Having reached the end, we could not help exchanging 
 a few civil words; she found me in such deep dejection, lost 
 in such painful meditations, that she spoke to me of hope- 
 fulness, in brief sentences that sounded like the songs with 
 which nurses lull their babies. I then leaped the fence, 
 and found myself for the second time at her side. The 
 Countess led me into the house, wishing to subdue my sad- 
 ness. So at last I had penetrated the sanctuary where every- 
 thing was in harmony with the woman I have tried to de- 
 scribe to you. 
 
 "Exquisite simplicity reigned there. The interior of the 
 little house was just such a dainty box as the art of the 
 eighteenth century devised for the pretty profligacy of a fine 
 gentleman. The dining-room, on the ground floor, was 
 painted in fresco, with garlands of flowers, admirably and 
 marvelously executed. The staircase was charmingly 
 decorated in monochrome. The little drawing-room, opposite 
 che dining-room, was very much faded ; but the Countess had 
 hung it with panels of tapestry of fanciful designs, taken off 
 old screens. A bath-room came next. Upstairs there was 
 but one bedroom, with a dressing-room, and a library which 
 she used as her workroom. The kitchen was beneath in the 
 basement on which the house was raised, for there was a 
 flight of several steps outside. The balustrade of a balcony 
 in garlands a la Pompadour concealed the roof ; only the lead 
 cornices were visible. In this retreat one v/as a hundred 
 leagues from Paris. 
 
 "But for the bitter smile which occasionally played on the 
 beautiful red lips of this pale woman, it would have been 
 possible to believe that this violet buried in her thicket of 
 flowers was happy. In a few days we had reached a certain 
 degree of intimacy, the result of our close neighborhood and 
 of the Countess' conviction that I was indifferent to women. 
 A look would have spoilt all, and I never allowed a thought 
 
846 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 of her to be seen in my eyes. Honorine chose to regard me as 
 an old friend. Her manner to me was the outcome of a kind 
 of pity. Her looks, her voice, her words, all showed that she 
 was a hundred miles away from the coquettish airs which 
 the strictest virtue might have allowed under such circum- 
 stances. She soon gave me the right to go into the pretty 
 workshop where she made her flowers, a retreat full of books 
 and curiosities, as smart as a boudoir where elegance em- 
 phasized the vulgarity of the tools of her trade. The Couiit- 
 ess had in the course of time poetized, as I may say, a thing 
 which is at the antipodes to poetry — a manufacture. 
 
 ^Terhaps of all the work a woman can do, the making of 
 artificial flowers is that of which the details allow her to 
 display most grace. For coloring prints she must sit bent 
 over a table and devote herself, with some attention, to this 
 half painting. Embroidering tapestry, as diligently as a 
 woman must who is to earn her living by it, entails con- 
 sumption or curvature of the spine. Engraving music is one 
 of the most laborious, by the care, the minute exactitude, and 
 the intelligence it demands. Sewing and white embroidery 
 do not earn thirty sous a day. But the making of flowers 
 and light articles of wear necessitates a variety of movements, 
 gestures, ideas even, which do not take a pretty woman out of 
 her sphere; she is still herself; she may chat, laugh, sing, or 
 think. 
 
 "There was certainly a feeling for art in the way in which 
 the Countess arranged on a long deal table the myriad-colored 
 petals which were used in composing the flowers she was to 
 produce. The saucers of color were of white china, and 
 always clean, arranged in such order that the eye could at 
 once see the required shade in the scale of tints. Thus the 
 aristocratic artist saved time. A pretty little cabinet with a 
 hundred tiny drawers, of ebony inlaid with ivory, contained 
 the little steel moulds in which she shaped the leaves and some 
 forms of petals. A fine Japanese bowl held the paste, which 
 was never allowed to turn sour, and it had a fitted cover with a 
 hinge so easy that she could lift it with a finger-tip. The wire, 
 
HONORINE 
 
 347 
 
 of iron and brass, lurked in a little drawer of the table be- 
 fore her. 
 
 "Under her eyes, in a Venetian glass, shaped like a flower- 
 cup on its stem, was the living model she strove to imitate. 
 She had a passion for achievement; she attempted the most, 
 difficult things, close racemes, the tiniest corollas, heaths, 
 nectaries of the most variegated hues. Her hands, as swift 
 as her thoughts, went from the table to the flower she was 
 making, as those of an accomplished pianist fly over the keys. 
 Her fingers seemed to be fairies, to use Perrault's expression, 
 so infinite were the different actions of twisting, fitting, and 
 pressure needed for the work, all hidden under grace of 
 movement, while she adapted each motion to the result with 
 the lucidity of instinct. 
 
 "I could not tire of admiring her as she shaped a flower 
 from the materials sorted before her, padding the wire stem 
 and adjusting the leaves. She displayed the genius of a 
 painter in her bold attempts; she copied faded flowers and 
 yellowing leaves; she struggled even with wildflowers, the 
 most artless of ail, and the most elaborate in their simpli- 
 city. 
 
 " 'This art,' she would say, 'is in its infancy. If the women 
 of Paris had a little of the genius which the slavery of the ha- 
 rem brings out in Oriental women, they would lend a complete 
 language of flowers to the wreaths they wear on their head. To 
 please my own taste as an artist I have made drooping 
 flowers with leaves of the hue of Florentine bronze, such as are 
 found before or after the winter. Would not such a crown on 
 the head of a young woman whose life is a failure have a 
 certain poetical fitness? How many things a woman might 
 express by her head-dress ! Are there not flowers for 
 drunken Bacchantes, flowers for gloomy and stern bigots, 
 pensive flowers for women who are bored? Botany, I be- 
 lieve, may be made to express every sensation and thought 
 of the soul, even the most subtle.' 
 
 "She would employ me to stamp out the leaves, cut up 
 
 material, and prepare wires for the stems. My affected desire 
 VOL. 4 — 49 
 
348 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 for occupation made me soon skilful. We talked as we worked. 
 When I had nothing to do, I read new books to her, for I had 
 my part to keep up as a man weary of life, worn out with 
 griefs, gloomy, sceptical, and soured. My person led to ador- 
 able banter as to my purely physical resemblance — with the 
 exception of his club foot — to Lord Byron. It was tacitly 
 acknowledged that her own troubles, as to which she kept the 
 most profound silence, far outweighed mine, though the causes 
 I assigned for my misanthropy might have satisfied Young or 
 Job. 
 
 "I will say nothing of the feelings of shame which tor- 
 mented me as I inflicted on my heart, like the beggars in the 
 street, false wounds to excite the compassion of that enchant- 
 ing woman. I soon appreciated the extent of my devoted- 
 ness by learning to estimate the baseness of a spy. The 
 expressions of sympathy bestowed on me would have comforted 
 the greatest grief. This charming creature, weaned from the 
 world, and for so many years alone, having, besides love, 
 treasures of kindliness to bestow, offered these to me with 
 childlike effusiveness and such compassion as would inevitably 
 have filled with bitterness any profligate who should have 
 fallen in love with her; for, alas, it was all charity, all sheei' 
 pity. Her renunciation of love, her dread of what is called 
 happiness for women, she proclaimed with equal vehemence 
 and candor. These happy days proved to me that a woman's 
 friendship is far superior to her love. 
 
 "I suffered the revelations of my sorrows to be dragged 
 from me with as many grimaces as. a young lady allows her- 
 self before sitting down to the piano, so conscious are they of 
 the annoyance that will follow. As you may imagine, the 
 necessity for overcoming my dislike to speak had induced the 
 Countess to strengthen the bonds of our intimacy; but she 
 found in me so exact a counterpart of her own antipathy to 
 love, that I fancied she was well content with the chance which 
 had brought to her desert island a sort of Man Friday. 
 Solitude was perhaps beginning to weigh on her. At the 
 same time, there was nothing of the coquette in her ; nothing 
 
HONORING 
 
 S40 
 
 survived of the woman; she did not feel that she had a heart, 
 she told me, excepting in the ideal world where she found 
 refuge. I involuntarily compared these two lives — hers and 
 the Count's: — his, all activity, agitation, and emotion; hers, 
 all inaction, quiescence, and stagnation. The woman and the 
 man were admirably obedient to their nature. My mis- 
 anthropy allowed me to utter cynical sallies against men and 
 women both, and I indulged in them, hoping to bring Hon- 
 orine to the confidential point ; but she was not to be caught 
 in any trap, and I began to understand that mulish obstinacy 
 which is commoner among women than is generally sup- 
 posed. 
 
 "'The Orientals are right,' I said to her one evening, 
 'when they shut you up and regard you merely as the play- 
 things of their pleasure. Europe has been well punished for 
 having admitted you to form an element of society and for 
 accepting you on an equal footing. In my opinion, woman 
 is the most dishonorable and cowardly being to be found. 
 Nay, and that is where her charm lies. Where would be the 
 pleasure of hunting a tame thing ? When once a woman has 
 inspired a man's passion, she is to him for ever sacred ; in his 
 eyes she is hedged round by an imprescriptible prerogative. 
 In men gratitude for past delights is eternal. Though hf; 
 should find his mistress grown old or unworthy, the woman 
 still has rights over his heart ; but to you women the man you 
 have loved is as nothing to you ; nay, more, he is unpardonable 
 in one thing — he lives on ! You dare not own it, but you all 
 have in your hearts the feeling which that popular calumny 
 called tradition ascribes to the Lady of the Tour de ISTesle: 
 ''What a pity it is that we cannot live on love as we live on 
 fruit, and that when we have had our fill, nothing should 
 survive but the remembrance of pleasure !" ' 
 
 " 'God has, no doubt, reserved such perfect bliss for Para- 
 dise,' said she. 'But,' she added, 'if your argument seems 
 to you very witty, to me it has the disadvantage of being 
 false. What can those women be who give themselves up to 
 a succession of loves ?' she asked, looking at me as the Virgin 
 
350 
 
 HONORINB 
 
 in Ingres' picture looks at Louis XIII. offering her his king- 
 dom. 
 
 " *You are an actress in good faith/ said I, 'for you gave 
 me a look just now which would make the fame of an 
 actress. Still, lovely as you are, you have loved; ergo, you 
 forget.' 
 
 " *I !' she exclaimed, evading my question, *I am not a 
 woman. I am a nun, and seventy-two years old !' 
 
 " 'Then, how can you so positively assert that you feel more 
 keenly than I ? Sorrov/ has but one form for women. The 
 only misfortunes they regard are disappointments of the 
 heart.' 
 
 "She looked at me sweetly, and, like all women when stuck 
 between the issues of a dilemma, or held in the clutches of 
 truth, she persisted, nevertheless, in her wilfulness. 
 
 " 'I am a nun,' she said, 'and you talk to me of a world 
 where I shall never again set foot.' 
 
 " 'Not even in thought ?' said I. 
 
 " 'Is the world so much to be desired ?' she replied. 'Oh ! 
 when my mind wanders, it goes higher. The angel of per- 
 fection, the beautiful angel Gabriel, often sings in my heart. 
 If I were rich, I should work, all the same, to keep me from 
 soaring too often on the many-tinted wings of the angel, and 
 wandering in the world of fancy. There are meditations 
 which are the ruin of us women ! I owe much peace of mind 
 to my flowers, though sometimes they fail to occupy me. On 
 some days I find my soul invaded by a purposeless expectancy ; 
 I cannot banish some idea which takes possession of me, 
 which seems to make my fingers clumsy. I feel that some 
 great event is impending, that my life is about to change; I 
 listen vaguely, I stare into the darkness, I have no liking for 
 my work, and after a thousand fatigues I find life once more 
 —everyday life. Is this a warning from heaven? I ask my- 
 self ' 
 
 "After three months of this struggle between two diplo- 
 mates, concealed under the semblance of youthful melancholy, 
 and a woman whose disgust of life made her invulnerable, I 
 
HONORINB 
 
 851 
 
 told the Count that it was impossible to drag this tortoise 
 out of her shell; it must bo broken. The evening before, in 
 our last quite friendly discussion, the Countess had exclaimed : 
 
 " ^Lucretia's dagger wrote in letters of blood the watch- 
 word of Avoman's charter: Liberty!' 
 
 'Trom that moment the Count left me free to act. 
 
 " have been paid a hundred francs for the flowers and 
 caps I made this week!' Honorine exclaimed gleefully one 
 Saturday evening when I went to visit her in the little 
 sitting-room on the ground floor, which the unavowed pro- 
 prietor had had regilt. 
 
 ''It was ten o'clock. The twilight of July and a glorious 
 moon lent us their misty light. Gusts of mingled per- 
 fumes soothed the soul; the Countess was clinking in her 
 hand the five gold pieces given to her by a supposititious 
 dealer in fashionable frippery, another of Octave's accom- 
 plices found for him by a ;judge, M. Popinot. 
 
 " 'I earn my living by amusing myself/ said she ; 'I am free, 
 when men, armed with their laws, have tried to make u^j 
 slaves. Oh, I have transports of pride every Saturday ! In 
 short, I like M. Gaudissart's gold pieces as much as Lord 
 Byron, your double, liked Mr. Murray's.^ 
 
 " ^This is not becoming in a woman,' said I. 
 
 " Tooh ! Am I a woman ? I am a boy gifted with a soft 
 soul, that is all ; a boy whom no woman can torture — ■— 
 
 " 'Your life is the negation of your whole being,' I re- 
 plied. 'What? You, on whom God has lavished His 
 choicest treasures of love and beauty, do you never wish ' 
 
 " 'For what ?' said she, somewhat disturbed by a speech 
 which, for the first time, gave the lie to the part I had 
 assumed. 
 
 "'For a pretty little child, with curling hair, running, 
 jplaying among the flowers, like a flower itself of life and love, 
 and calling you mother !' 
 
 "I waited for an answer. A too prolonged silence led me 
 to perceive the terrible effect of my words, though the dark- 
 ness at first concealed it. Leaning on her sofa, the Countess 
 
352 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 had not indeed fainted, but frozen under a nervous attack of 
 which the first chill, as gentle as everything that was part 
 of her, felt, as she afterwards said, like the influence of a 
 most insidious poison. I called Madame Gobain, who came 
 and led away her mistress, laid her on her bed, unlaced her, 
 undressed her, and restored her, not to life, it is true, but to 
 the consciousness of some dreadful suffering. I meanwhile 
 walked up and down the path behind the house, weeping, and 
 doubting my success. I only wished to give up this part of 
 the bird-catcher which I had so rashly assumed. Madame 
 Gobain, who came down and found me with my face wet with 
 tears, hastily went up again to say to the Countess : 
 
 " ^What has happened, madame ? Monsieur Maurice is 
 crying like a child.^ 
 
 "Eoused to action by the evil interpretation that might be 
 put on our mutual behavior, she summoned superhuman 
 strength to put on a wrapper and come down to me. 
 
 " 'You are not the cause of this attack,' said she. *I am 
 
 subject to these spasms, a sort of cramp of the heart ^ 
 
 'And will you not tell me of your troubles T said I, in a 
 voice which cannot be affected, as I wiped away my tears. 
 "Have you not just now told me that you have been a mother, 
 and have been so unhappy as to lose your child T 
 
 " 'Marie !' she called as she rang the bell. Gobain came 
 
 in. 
 
 " 'Bring lights and some tea,' said she, with the calm de- 
 cision of a Mylady clothed in the armor of pride by the dread- 
 ful English training which you know too well. 
 
 "When the housekeeper had lighted the tapers and closed 
 the shutters, the Countess showed me a mute countenance; 
 her indomitable pride and gravity, worthy of a savage, had 
 already reasserted their mastery. She said : 
 
 "'Do you know why I like Lord Byron so much? It is 
 because he suffered as animals do. Of what use are com- 
 plaints when they are not an elegy like Manfred's, nor bitter 
 mockery like Don Juan's, nor a reverie like Childe Harold's? 
 Nothing shall be known of me. My heart is a poem that I 
 Jay before God.' 
 
HONORINB 
 
 353 
 
 " ^If 1 chose ' said I. 
 
 'Ur she repeated. 
 
 " *I have no interest in anything/ I replied, 'so I cannot 
 be inquisitive; but, if I chose, I could know all your secrets 
 by to-morrow.' 
 
 "'I defy you!' she exclaimed, with ill-disguised uneasi- 
 ness. 
 
 " 'Seriously?' 
 
 " 'Certainly,' said she, tossing her head. 'If such a crime 
 is possible, I ought to know it.' 
 
 " 'In the first place, madame,' I went on, pointing to her 
 hands, 'those pretty fingers, which are enough to show that 
 you are not a mere girl — were they made for toil ? Then you 
 call yourself Madame Gobain, you, who, in my presence the 
 other day on receiving a letter, said to Marie : "Here, this is 
 for you ?" Marie is the real Madame Gobain ; so you conceal 
 your name behind that of your housekeeper. — Fear nothing, 
 madame, from me. You have in me the most devoted friend 
 you will ever have: Friend, do you understand me? I give 
 this word its sacred and pathetic meaning, so profaned in 
 France, where we apply it to our enemies. And your friend, 
 who will defend you against everything, only wishes that you 
 should be as happy as such a woman ought to be. Who can 
 tell whether the pain I have involuntarily caused you was 
 not a voluntary act?' 
 
 " 'Yes,' replied she with threatening audacity, 'I insist on it. 
 Be curious, and tell me all that you can find out about me; 
 but,' and she held up her finger, 'you must also tell me by 
 what means you obtain your information. The preservation 
 of the small happiness I enjoy here depends on the steps you 
 take.' 
 
 " 'That means that you will fly ' 
 
 " 'On wings !' she cried, 'to the New World ' 
 
 '"Where you will be at the mercy of the brutal passions 
 you will inspire,' said I, interrupting her. 'Is it not the very 
 essence of genius and beauty to shine, to attract men's gaze, 
 to excite desires and evil houghts? Paris is a desert with 
 
354 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 Bedouins; Paris is the only place in the world where those 
 who must work for their livelihood can hide their life. What 
 have you to complain of? Who am I? An additional ser- 
 vant — M. Gobain, that is all. If you have to fight a duel, 
 you may need a second.^ 
 
 " ^Never mind ; find out who I am. I have already said 
 that I insist. Now, I beg that you will/ she went on, with the 
 grace which you ladies have at command/' said the Consul, 
 looking at the ladies. 
 
 " 'Well, then, to-morrow, at the same hour, I will tell you 
 what I may have discovered,^ replied I. 'But do not there- 
 fore hate me ! Will you behave like other women ?' 
 
 " 'What do other women do ?' 
 
 " 'They lay upon us immense sacrifices, and when we have 
 made them, they reproach us for it some time later as if it 
 were an injury.' 
 
 " 'They are right if the thing required appears to be a 
 sacrifice!' replied she pointedly. 
 
 " 'Instead of sacrifices, say efforts and ' 
 
 " 'It would be an impertinence,' said she. 
 
 " 'Forgive me,' said I. 'I forget that woman and the Pope 
 are infallible.' 
 
 " 'Good heavens !' said she after a long pause, 'only two 
 words would be enough to destroy the peace so dearly bought, 
 and which I enjoy like a fraud ' 
 
 "She rose and paid no further heed to me. 
 
 "'Where can I go?' she said. 'What is to become of me? 
 —Must I leave this quiet retreat, that I had arranged with 
 such care to end my days in ?' 
 
 " 'To end your days !' exclaimed I with visible alarm. 'Has 
 it never struck you that a time would come when you could 
 no longer work, when competition will lower the price of 
 flowers and articles of fashion ?•' 
 
 " 'I have already saved a thousand crowns,' she said. 
 
 " 'Heavens ! what privations such a sum must represent !' 
 I exclaimed. 
 
 " 'Leave me/ said she;> 'till to-i -'^rrow. This evening I am 
 
HONORINE 
 
 355 
 
 not myself; I must be alone. Must I not save my strength in 
 case of disaster? For, if you should learn anything, others 
 besides you would be informed, and then — Good-night,' she 
 added shortly, dismissing me with an imperious gesture. 
 
 " *The battle is to-morrow, then,' I replied with a smile, 
 to keep up the appearance of indifference I had given to the 
 scene. But as I went down the avenue I repeated the words : 
 
 " The battle is to-morrow.' 
 
 "Octave's anxiety was equal to Honorine's. The Count 
 and I remained together till two in the morning, walking to 
 and fro by the trenches of the Bastille, like two generals who, 
 on the eve of a battle, calculate all the chances, examine the 
 ground, and perceive that the victory must depend on an op- 
 portunity to be seized half-way through the fight. These 
 two divided beings would each lie awake, one in the hope, the 
 other in agonizing dread of reunion. The real dramas of life 
 are not in circumstances, but in feelings; they are played in 
 the heart, or, if you please, in that vast realm which we ought 
 to call the Spiritual World. Octave and Honorine moved and 
 lived altogether in the world of lofty spirits. 
 
 "I was punctual. At ten next evening I was, for the 
 first time, shown into a charming bedroom furnished with 
 white and blue — the nest of this wounded dove. The 
 Countess looked at me, and was about to speak, but was 
 stricken dumb by my respectful demeanor. 
 
 " 'Madame la Comtesse,' said I with a grave smile. 
 
 "The poor woman, who had risen, dropped back into her 
 chair and remained there, sunk in an attitude of grief, which 
 I should have liked to see perpetuated by a great painter. 
 
 " 'You are,' I went on, 'the wife of the noblest and most 
 highly respected of men; of a man who is acknowledged to 
 be great, but who is far greater in his conduct to you than 
 he is in the eyes of the world. You and he are two lofty 
 natures. — Where do you suppose yourself to be living?' I 
 asked her. 
 
 " 'In my own house,' she replied, opening her eyes with a 
 wide stare of astonishment. 
 
356 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 " 'In Count Octave's/ I replied. *You have been tricked. 
 M. Lenormand, the usher of the Court, is not the real owner ; 
 he is only a screen for your husband. The delightful se- 
 clusion you enjoy is the Count's work, the money you earn 
 is paid by him, and his protection extends to the most trivial 
 details of your existence. Your husband has saved you in 
 the eyes of the world; he has assigned plausible reasons for 
 your disappearance; he professes to hope that you were not 
 lost in the wreck of the Cecil e, the ship in which you sailed 
 for Havana to secure the fortune to be left to you by an 
 old aunt, who might have forgotten you; you embarked, 
 escorted by two ladies of her family and an old man-servant. 
 The Count says that he has sent agents to various spots, 
 and received letters which give him great hopes. He takes 
 as many precautions to hide you from all eyes as you take 
 yourself. In short, he obeys you . . 
 
 " '^That is enough,' she said. 'I want to know but one thing 
 more. From whom have you obtained all these details?' 
 
 " ^Well, madame, my uncle got a place for a penniless 
 youth as secretary to the Commissary of police in this part 
 of Paris. That young man told me . every thing. If you 
 leave this house this evening, however stealthily, your hus- 
 band will know where you are gone, and his care will 
 follow you everywhere. — How could a woman so clever as 
 you are believe that shopkeepers buy flowers and caps as dear 
 as they sell them? Ask a thousand crowns for a bouquet, 
 and you will get it. No mother's tenderness was ever more 
 ingenious than your husband's ! I have learned from the 
 porter of this house that the Count often comes behind the 
 fence when all are asleep, to see the glimmer of your night- 
 light ! Your large cashmere shawl cost six thousand francs — 
 your old-clothes-seller brings you, as second hand, things fresh 
 from the best makers. In short, you are living here like Venue 
 in the toils of Vulcan ; but you are alone in your prison by the 
 devices of a sublime magnanimity, sublime for seven years 
 past, and at every hour.' 
 
 "The Countess was trembling as a trapped swallow trembles 
 
HONORINE 
 
 351 
 
 while, as you hold it in your hand, it strains its neck to look- 
 about it with wild eyes. She shook with a nervous spasm, 
 studying me with a defiant look. Her dry eyes glittered with 
 a light that was almost hot: still, she was a woman! The 
 moment came when her tears forced their way, and she wept — 
 not because she was touched, but because she was helpless; 
 they were tears of desperation. She had believed herself in- 
 dependent and free; marriage weighed on her as the prison 
 cell does on the captive. 
 
 " will go V she cried through her tears. *He forces me 
 to it ; I will go where no one certainly will come after me.' 
 
 " 'What/ I said, ^you would kill yourself ? — Madame, you 
 must have some very powerful reasons for not wishing to 
 return to Comte Octave.' 
 
 " 'Certainly I have !' 
 
 " 'Well, then, tell them to me ; tell them to my uncle. Ii< 
 us you will find two devoted advisers. Though in the con- 
 fessional my uncle is a priest, he never is one in a drawing- 
 room. We will hear you ; we will try to find a solution of the 
 problems you may lay before us ; and if you are the dupe or 
 the victim of some misapprehension, perhaps we can clear the 
 matter up. Your soul, I believe, is pure; but if you hav(^ 
 done wrong, your fault is fully expiated. ... At an}' 
 rate, remember that in me you have a most sincere friend. 
 If you should wish to evade the Count's tyranny, I will find 
 you the means ; he shall never find you.' 
 
 " 'Oh ! there is always a convent !' said she. 
 
 " 'Yes. But the Count, as Minister of State, can procure 
 your rejection by every convent in the world. Even though 
 he is powerful, I will save you from him — ; but — only when 
 you have demonstrated to me that you cannot and ought not 
 to return to him. Oh! do not fear that you would escape 
 his power only to fall into mine,' I added, noticing a glance 
 of horrible suspicion, full of exaggerated dignity. 'You shall 
 have peace, solitude, and independence; in short, you shall 
 be as free and as little annoyed as if you were an ugly, cros^ 
 old maid. I myself would never be able to see you without 
 your consent.' 
 
358 
 
 HONORtNB 
 
 " 'And how? By what incans ?' 
 
 " 'That is my secret. 1 am not deceiving you, of that you 
 may be sure. Prove to me that this is the only life you can 
 lead, that it is preferable to that of the Comtesse Octave, richc 
 admired, in one of the finest houses in Paris, beloved by hei 
 husband, a happy mother . . . and I will decide in your 
 favor.' 
 
 '' 'But,' said she, 'will there never be a man who under- 
 stands me T 
 
 " 'No. And that is why I appeal to religion to decide be- 
 tween us. The Cure of the White Friars is a saint, seventy- 
 five years of age. My uncle is not a Grand Inquisitor, he is 
 Saint J ohn ; but for you he will be Fenelon — the Fenelon who 
 said to the Due de Bourgogne : 'Eat a calf on a Friday by all 
 means, monseigneur. But be a Christian.' 
 
 " 'Nay, nay, monsieur, the convent is my last hope and my 
 only refuge. There is none but God who can understand me. 
 No man, not Saint Augustine himself, the tenderest of the 
 Fathers of the Church, could enter into the scruples of my 
 conscience, which are to me as the circles of Dante's hell, 
 whence there is no escape. Another than my husband, a 
 different man, however unworthy of the offering, has had all 
 my love. No, he has not had it, for he did not take it ; I gave 
 it him as a mother gives her child a wonderful toy, which 
 it breaks. For me there never could be two loves. In some 
 natures love can never be on trial; it is, or it is not. When 
 it comes, when it rises up, it is complete. — Well, that life of 
 eighteen months was to me a life of eighteen years; I threw 
 into it all the faculties of my being, which were not im- 
 poverished by their effusiveness ; they were exhausted by that 
 delusive intimacy in which I alone was genuine. For me 
 the cup of happiness is not drained, nor empty ; and nothing 
 can refill it, for it is broken. I am out of the fray ; I have no 
 weapons left. Having thus utterly abandoned myself, what 
 am I ? — the leavings of a feast, I had but one name bestowed 
 on me, Honorine, as I had but one heart. My husband had 
 the young girl, a worthless lover had the woman — there is 
 
IIONOIIINE 
 
 859 
 
 nothing left ! — Then let myself be loved ! that is the great 
 idea you mean to utter to me. Oh ! but I still am something, 
 and I rebel at the idea of being a prostitute! Yes, by the 
 light of the conflagration I saw clearly; and I tell you — well, 
 I could imagine surrendering to another man's love, but to 
 Octave's? — No, never.' 
 
 *^ 'Ah ! you love him,' I said. 
 
 " 'I esteem him, respect him, venerate him ; he never has 
 done me the smallest hurt ; he is kind, he is tender ; but I can 
 never more love him. However,' she went on, 'let us talk 
 no more of this. Discussion makes everything small. I 
 will express my notions on this subject in writing to you, for 
 at this moment they are suffocating me; I am feverish, my 
 feet are standing in the ashes of my Paraclete. All that I 
 see, these things which I believed I had earned by my labor, 
 now remind me of everything I wish to forget. Ah ! I must 
 fly from hence as I fled from my home.' 
 
 " 'Where will you go ?' I asked. 'Can a woman exist un- 
 protected ? At thirty, in all the glory of your beauty, rich in 
 powers of which you have no suspicion, full of tenderness to 
 be bestowed, are you prepared to live in the wilderness where 
 I could hide you ? — Be quite easy. The Count, who for nine 
 years has never allowed himself to be seen here, will never go 
 there without your permission. You have his sublime de- 
 votion of nine years as a guarantee for your tranquillity. You 
 may therefore discuss the future in perfect confidence with 
 my uncle and me. My uncle has as much influence as a 
 Minister of State. So compose yourself; do not exaggerate 
 your misfortune. A priest whose hair has grown white in the 
 exercise of his functions is not a boy ; you will be understood 
 by him to whom every passion has been confided for nearly 
 fifty years now, and who weighs in his hands the ponderous 
 Jieart of kings and princes. If he is stern under his stole, in 
 the presence of your flowers he will be as tender as they are, 
 and as indulgent as his Divine Master.' 
 
 "I left the Countess at midnight ; she was apparently calm, 
 but depressed, and had some secret purpose which no per- 
 
860 HONORINE 
 
 spicacity could guess. I found the Count a few paces off, in 
 the Kue Saint-Maur. Drawn by an irresistible attraction, 
 he had quitted the spot on the Boulevards where we had agreed 
 to meet. 
 
 ^What a night my poor child will go through !' he ex- 
 claimed, when I had finished my account of the scene that had 
 just taken place. ^Supposing I were to go to her !' he added ; 
 supposing she were to see me suddenly V 
 
 " '^At this moment she is capable of throwing herself out of 
 the window,^ I replied. ^The Countess is one of those Lu- 
 cretias who could not survive any violence, even if it were done 
 by a man into whose arms she could throw herself.' 
 
 " ^You are young,' he answered ; *you do not know that in a 
 soul tossed by such dreadful alternatives the will is like 
 waters of a lake lashed by a tempest; the wind changes every 
 instant, and the waves are driven now to one shore, now to the 
 other. During this night the chances are quite as great that 
 on seeing me Honorine might rush into my arms as that she 
 would throw herself out of the window.' 
 
 " *And you would accept the equal chances,' said I. 
 
 " ^Well, come,' said he, have at home, to enable me to 
 wait till to-morrow, a dose of opium which Desplein prepared 
 for me to send me to sleep without any risk !' 
 
 "Next day at noon Gobain brought me a letter, telling me 
 that the Countess had gone to bed at six, worn out with 
 fatigue, and that, having taken a soothing draught prepared 
 by the chemist, she had now fallen asleep. 
 
 "This is her letter, of which I kept a copy — for you, made- 
 moiselle," said the Consul, addressing Camille, "know all the 
 resources of art, the tricks of style, and the efforts made in 
 their compositions by writers who do not lack skill; but you 
 will acknowledge that literature could never find such lan- 
 guage in its assumed pathos; there is nothing so terrible as 
 truth. Here is the letter written by this woman, or rather 
 by this anguish 
 
HONOKINB 
 
 861 
 
 " 'Monsieur Maurice, — 
 
 " *I know all your uncle could say to me ; he is not better 
 informed than my own conscience. Conscience is the in- 
 terpreter of God to man. I know that if I am not reconciled 
 to Octave, I shall be damned ; that is the sentence of religious 
 law. Civil law condemns me to obey, cost what it may. If 
 my husband does not reject me, the world will regard me as 
 pure, as virtuous, whatever I may have done. Yes, that much 
 is sublime in marriage ; society ratifies the husband's forgive- 
 ness; but it forgets that the forgiveness must be accepted. 
 Legally, religiously, and from the world's point of view I 
 ought to go back to Octave. Keeping only to the human 
 aspect of the question, is it not cruel to refuse him happiness, 
 to deprive him of cliildren, to wipe his name out of the 
 Golden Book and the list of peers? My sufferings, my re- 
 pugnance, my feelings, all my egoism — for I know that I am 
 an egoist — ought to be sacrificed to the family. I shall be a 
 mother ; the caresses of my child will wipe away many tears ! 
 I shall be very happy ; I certainly shall be much looked up to. 
 I shall ride, haughty and wealthy, in a handsome carriage! 
 I shall have servants and a fine house, and be the queen of 
 as many parties as there are weeks in the year. The world 
 will receive me handsomely. I shall not have to climb up 
 again to the heaven of aristocracy, I shall never have come 
 down from it. So God, the law, society are all in accord. 
 
 " ^ ''What are you rebelling against I am asked from 
 the height of heaven, from the pulpit, from the judge's bench, 
 and from the throne, whose august intervention may at need 
 be invoked by the Count. Your uncle, indeed, at need, would 
 speak to me of a certain celestial grace which will flood my 
 heart when I know the pleasure of doing my duty. 
 
 " 'God, the law, the world, and Octave all wish me to live, 
 no doubt. Well, if there, is no other difficulty, my reply cuts 
 the knot: I will not live. I will become quite white and in- 
 nocent again ; for I will lie in my shroud, white with the 
 blameless pallor of death. This is not in the least "mulish 
 obstinacy." That mulish obstinacy of which you jestingly 
 
HONORINB 
 
 accused me is in a woman the result of confidence, of a visioi 
 of the future. Though my husband, sublimely generous, may 
 forget all, I shall not forget. Does forgetfulness depend on 
 our will ? When a widow re-marries, love makes a girl of her ; 
 she marries a man she loves. But I cannot love the Count. 
 It all lies in that, do not you see ? 
 
 " *Every time my eyes met his I should see my sin in them, 
 even when his were full of love. The greatness of his gen- 
 erosity would be the measure of the greatness of my crime. 
 My eyes, always uneasy, would be for ever reading an in- 
 visible condemnation. My heart would be full of confused 
 and struggling memories ; marriage can never move me to the 
 cruel rapture, the mortal delirium of passion. I should kill 
 my husband by my coldness, by comparisons which he would 
 guess, though hidden in the depths of my conscience. Oh! 
 on the day when I should read a trace of involuntary, even of 
 suppressed reproach in a furrow on his brow, in a saddened 
 look, in some imperceptible gesture, nothing could hold me : I 
 should be lying with a fractured skull on the pavement, and 
 find that less hard than my husband. It might be my own 
 over-susceptibility that would lead me to this horrible but 
 welcome death; I might die the victim of an impatient mood 
 in Octave caused by some matter of business, or be deceived 
 by some unjust suspicion. Alas ! I might even mistake some 
 proof of love for a sign of contempt ! 
 
 *^ ^What torture on both sides ! Octave would be always 
 doubting me, I doubting him. I, quite involuntarily, should 
 give him a rival wholly unworthy of him, a man whom I 
 despise, but with whom I have known raptures branded on 
 me with fire, which are my shame, but which I cannot forget, 
 
 " ^Have I shown you enough of my heart ? No one, mon- 
 sieur, can convince me that love may be renewed, for I neither 
 can nor will accept love from any one. A young bride is like 
 a plucked flower; but a guilty v/ife is like a flower that had 
 been walked over. You, who are a florist, you know whether 
 it is ever possible to restore the broken stem, to revive the 
 faded colors, to make the sap flow again in the tender vessels 
 
HONORINB 
 
 883 
 
 of which the whole vegetative function lies in their perfect 
 rigidity. If some botanist should attempt the operation, could 
 his genius smooth out the folds of the bruised corolla? If 
 he could remake a flower, he would be God ! God alone can 
 remake me ! I am drinking the bitter cup of expiation ; but 
 as I drink it I painfully spell out this sentence : Expiation is 
 not annihilation. 
 
 " *In my little house, alone, I eat my bread soaked in tears ; 
 but no one sees me eat nor sees me weep. If I go back to 
 Octave, I must give up my tears — they would offend him. Oh ! 
 monsieur, how many virtues must a woman tread under foot, 
 not to give herself, but to restore herself to a betrayed hus- 
 band? Who could count them? God alone; for He alone 
 can know and encourage the horrible refinements at which the 
 angels must turn pale. Nay, I will go further. A woman 
 has courage in the presence of her husband if he knows noth- 
 ing ; she shows a sort of fierce strength in her hypocrisy ; she 
 deceives him to secure him double happiness. But common 
 knowledge is surely degrading. Supposing I could exchange 
 humiliation for ecstasy ? Would not Octave at last feel that 
 my consent was sheer depravity? Marriage is based on 
 esteem, on sacrifices on both sides; but neither Octave nor I 
 could esteem each other the day after our reunion. He would 
 have disgraced me by a love like that of an old man for a 
 courtesan, and I should for ever feel the shame of being a 
 chattel instead of a lady. I should represent pleasure, and not 
 virtue, in his house. These are the bitter fruits of such a sin. 
 I have made myself a bed where I can only toss on burning 
 coals, a sleepless pillow. 
 
 " 'Here, when I suffer, I bless my sufferings ; I say to God, 
 "1 thank Thee V' But in my husband's house I should be full 
 of terror, tasting joys to which I have no right. 
 ) " 'All this, monsieur, is not argument ; it is the feeling of a 
 soul made vast and hollow by seven years of suffering. 
 Finally, must I make a horrible confession? I shall always 
 feel at my bosom the lips of a child conceived in rapture and 
 joy, and in the belief in happiness, of a child I nursed for 
 VOL. 4— 5o 
 
364 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 seven months, that I shall bear in my womb all the days of 
 my life. If other children should draw their nourishment 
 from me, they would drink in tears mingling with the milk, 
 and turning it sour. I seem a light thing, you regard me as 
 a child — Ah yes ! I have a child's memory, the memory which 
 returns to us on the verge of the tomb. So, you see, there 
 is not a situation in that beautiful life to which the world 
 and my husband's love want to recall me, which is not a false 
 position, which does not cover a snare or reveal a precipice 
 down which I must fall, torn by pitiless rocks. For five years 
 now I have been wandering in the sandy desert of the future 
 without finding a place convenient to repent in, because my 
 soul is possessed by true repentance. 
 
 " ^Keligion has its answers ready to all this, and I know them 
 by heart. This suffering, these difficulties, are my punishment, 
 she says, and God will give me strength to endure them. 
 This, monsieur, is an argument to certain pious souls gifted 
 with an energy which I have not. I have made my choice 
 between this hell, where God does not forbid my blessing 
 Him, and the hell that awaits me under Count Octave's 
 roof. 
 
 ^One word more. If I were still a girl, with the expe- 
 rience I now have, my husband is the man I should choose ; but 
 that is the very reason of my refusal. I could not bear to blush 
 before that man. What ! 1 should be always on my knees, he 
 always standing upright ; and if we were to exchange positions, 
 I should scorn him ! I will not be better treated by him in 
 consequence of my sin. The angel who might venture under 
 such circumstances on certain liberties which are permissible 
 when both are equally blameless, is not on earth; he dwells 
 in heaven! Octave is full of delicate feeling, I know; but 
 even in his soul (which, however generous, is a man's soul 
 after all) there is no guarantee for the new life I should lead 
 with him. 
 
 " Tome, then, and tell me where I may find the solitude, 
 the peace, the silence, so kindly to irreparable woe?, which you 
 promised me.' 
 
HONOKINE 
 
 865 
 
 "After making this copy of the letter to preserve it com- 
 plete, I went to the Kue Payenne. Anxiety had conquered 
 the power of opium. Octave was walking up and down his 
 garden like a madman. 
 
 " 'Answer that V said I, giving him his wife's letter. 'Try 
 to reassure the modesty of experience. It is rather more 
 difficult than conquering the modesty of ignorance, which 
 curiosity helps to betray.' 
 
 " 'She is mine V cried the Count, whose face expressed 
 joy as he went on reading the letter. 
 
 "He signed to me with his hand to leave him to himself. 
 I understood that extreme happiness and extreme pain obey 
 the same laws; I went in to receive Madame de Courteville 
 and Amelie, who were to dine with the Count that day. How- 
 ever handsome Mademoiselle de Courteville might be, I felt, 
 on seeing her once more, that love has three aspects, and that 
 the women who can inspire us with perfect love are very rare. 
 As I involuntarily compared Amelie with Honorine, I found 
 the erring wife more attractive than the pure girl. To Ho- 
 norine's heart fidelity had not been a duty, but the inevitable ; 
 while Amelie would serenely pronounce the most solemn 
 promises without knowing their purport or to what they bound 
 her. The crushed, the dead woman, so to speak, the sinner 
 to be reinstated, seemed to me sublime ; she incited the special 
 generosities of a man's nature ; she demanded all the treasures 
 of the heart, all the resources of strength; she filled his life 
 and gave the zest of a conflict to happiness ; whereas Amelie, 
 chaste and confiding, would settle down into the sphere of 
 peaceful motherhood, where the commonplace must be its 
 poetry, and where my mind would find no struggle and no 
 victory. 
 
 "Of the plains of Champagne and the snowy, storm-beaten 
 but sublime Alps, what young man would choose the chalky, 
 monotonous level? No; such comparisons are fatal and 
 wrong on the threshold of the Mairie. Alas ! only the ex- 
 perience of life can teach us that marriage excludes passion, 
 that a f?^.mily cannot have its foundation on the tempests of 
 
366 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 love. After having dreamed of impossible love, with its in- 
 finite caprices, after having tasted the tormenting delights of 
 the ideal, I saw before me modest reality. Pity me, for what 
 could be expected ! At five-and- twenty I did not trust myself ; 
 but I took a manful resolution. 
 
 "I went back to the Count to announce the arrival of his 
 relations, and I saw him grown young again in the reflected 
 light of hope. 
 
 " ^What ails you, Maurice T said he, struck by my changed 
 expression. 
 
 " ^Monsieur le Comte ' 
 
 " 'No longer Octave ? You, to whom I shall owe my life, 
 my happiness 
 
 " '^My dear Octave, if you should succeed in bringing the 
 Countess back to her duty, I have studied her welF — (he 
 looked at me as Othello must have looked at lago when lago 
 first contrived to insinuate a suspicion into the Moor's mind) 
 — 'she must never see me again; she must never know that 
 Maurice was your secretary. Never mention my name to her, 
 or all will be undone. . . . You have got me an appoint- 
 ment as Maitre des Eequetes — well, get me instead some 
 diplomatic post abroad, a consulship, and do not think of my 
 marrying Amelie. — Oh ! do not be uneasy,' I added, seeing him 
 draw himself up, 'I will play my part to the end.' 
 
 '' 'Poor boy !' said he, taking my hand, which he pressed, 
 while he kept back the tears that were starting to his eyes. 
 
 " 'You gave me gloves,' I said, laughing, 'but I have not 
 put them on; that is all.' 
 
 "We then agreed as to what I was to do that evening at 
 Honorine's house, whither I presently returned. It was now 
 August ; the day had been hot and stormy, but the storm hung 
 overhead, the sky was like copper; the scent of the flowers 
 was heavy, I felt as if I were in an oven, and caught my- 
 self wishing that the Countess might have set out for the 
 Indies; but she was sitting on a wooden bench shaped like a 
 sofa, under an arbor, in a loose dress of white muslin fastened 
 with blue bows, her hair unadorned in waving bands over her 
 
HONOKINE 
 
 367 
 
 cheeks, her feet on a small wooden stool, and showing a little 
 way beyond her skirt. She did not rise ; she showed me with 
 her hand to the seat by her side, saying : 
 
 " 'Now, is not life at a deadlock for me T 
 
 " 'Life as yon have made it,^ I replied. 'But not the life 
 I propose to make for you ; for, if you choose, you may be very- 
 happy. . . / 
 
 " 'How T said she ; her whole person was a question. 
 
 " 'Your letter is in the Count^s hands.' 
 
 "Honorine started like a frightened doe, sprang to a few paces 
 off, walked down the garden, turned about, remained standing 
 for -some minutes, and finally went in to sit alone in the draw- 
 ing-room, where I joined her, after giving her time to get ac- 
 customed to the pain of this poniard thrust. 
 
 " 'You — a friend ? Say rather a traitor ! A spy, perhaps, 
 sent by my husband.' 
 
 "Instinct in women is as strong as the perspicacity of great 
 men. 
 
 " 'You wanted an answer to your letter, did not you ? And 
 there was but one man in the world who could write it. You 
 must read the reply, my dear Countess; and if after reading 
 it you still find that your life is a deadlock, the spy will prove 
 himself a friend; I. will place you in a convent whence the 
 Count's power cannot drag you. But, before going there, let 
 us consider the other side of the question. There is a law, 
 alike divine and human, which even hatred affects to obey, 
 and which commands us not to condemn the accused v/ithout 
 hearing his defence. Till now you have passed condemnation, 
 as children do, with your ears stopped. The devotion of seven 
 years has its claims. So you must read the answer your hus- 
 band will send you. I have forwarded to him, through my 
 uncle, a copy of your letter, and my uncle asked him what his 
 reply would be if his wife wrote him a letter in such terms. 
 Thus you are not compromised. He will himself bring the 
 Count's answer. In the presence of that saintly man, and in 
 mine, out of respect for your own dignity, you must read it, 
 or you will be no better than a wilful, passionate child. You 
 
368 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 must make this sacrifice to the world, to the law, and to 
 God/ 
 
 '^As she saw in this concession no attack on her womanly 
 resolve, she consented. All the labor of four or five months 
 had been building up to this moment. But do not the Pyra- 
 mids end in a point on which a bird may perch ? The Count 
 had set all his hopes on this supreme instant, and he had 
 reached it. 
 
 "In all my life I remember nothing more formidable than 
 my uncle's entrance into that little Pompadour drawing- 
 room, at ten that evening. The fine head, with its silver hair 
 thrown into relief by the entirely black dress, and the divinely 
 calm face, had a magical effect on the Comtesse Honorine; 
 she had the feeling of cool balm on her wounds, and beamed 
 in the reflection of that virtue which gave light without know- 
 ing it. 
 
 " '^Monsieur the Cure of the White Friars,^ said old Gobain. 
 " 'Are you come, uncle, with a message of happiness and 
 peace ?' said I. 
 
 " 'Happiness and peace are always to be found in obedience 
 to the precepts of the Church,' replied my uncle, and h*i 
 handed the Countess the following letter: — 
 
 *' 'My dear Honorine, — 
 
 " 'If you had but done me the favor of trusting me, if you 
 had read the letter I wrote to you five years since, you would 
 have spared yourself five years of useless labor, and of priva- 
 tions which have grieved me deeply. In it I proposed an 
 arrangement of which the stipulations will relieve all your 
 fears, and make our domestic life possible. I have much to 
 reproach myself with, and in seven years of sorrow I have 
 discovered all my errors. I misunderstood marriage. I 
 failed to scent danger when it threatened you. An angel 
 was in the house. The Lord bid me guard it well ! The Lord 
 has punished me for my audacious confidence. 
 
 " 'You cannot give yourself a single lash without striking 
 me. Have mercy on me, my dear Honorine. I so fully appre- 
 
HONORINE 
 
 369 
 
 ciated your susceptibilities that I would not bring you back 
 to the old house in the Rue Payenne, where I can live without 
 you, but which I could not bear to see again with you. I am 
 decorating, with great pleasure, another house, in the Faubourg 
 Saint-Honore, to which, in hope, I conduct not a wife whom I 
 owe to her ignorance of life, and secured to me by law, but a 
 sister who will allow me to press on her brow such a kiss 
 as a father gives the daughter he blesses every day. 
 
 " ^Will you bereave me of the right I have conquered from 
 your despair — that of watching more closely over your needs, 
 your pleasures, your life even ? Women have one heart alwayi? 
 on their side, always abounding in excuses — their mother's ; 
 you never knew any mother but my mother, who would have 
 brought you back to me. But how is it that you never guessed 
 that I had for you the heart of a mother, both of my mothe:c 
 and of your own? Yes, dear, my affection is neither mean 
 nor grasping ; it is one of those which will never let any annoy- 
 ance last long enough to pucker the brow of the child it wor- 
 ships. What can you think of the companion of your child- 
 hood, Honorine, if you believe him capable of accepting kisses 
 given in trembling, of living between delight and anxiety ? Do 
 not fear that you will be exposed to the laments of a suppliant 
 passion ; I would not want you back until I felt certain of my 
 own strength to leave you in perfect freedom. 
 
 " ^Your solitary pride has exaggerated the difficulties. You 
 may, if you will, look on at the life of a brother, or of a father, 
 without either suffering or joy; but you will find neither 
 mockery nor indifference, nor have any doubt as to his inten- 
 tions. The warmth of the atmosphere in which you live will 
 be always equable and genial, without tempests, without a pos- 
 sible squall. If, later, when 3^ou feel secure that you are as 
 much at home as in your own little house, you desire to try 
 some other elements of happiness, pleasures, or amusements, 
 you can expand their circle at your will. The tenderness of a 
 mother knows neither contempt nor pity. What is it ? Love 
 without desire. Well, in me admiration shall hide every sen- 
 timent in which you might see an offence. 
 
370 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 " ^Thus, living side by side^ we may both be magnani- 
 mous. In you the kindness of a sister, the affectionate thought- 
 fulness of a friend, will satisfy the ambition of him who 
 wishes to be your life's companion ; and you may measure his 
 ienderness by the care he will take to conceal it. Neither you 
 nor I will be jealous of the past, for we may each acknowledge 
 that the other has sense enough to look only straight for- 
 ward. 
 
 " ^Thus you will be at home in your new house exactly as 
 you are in the Eue Saint-Maur; unapproachable, alone, oc- 
 cupied as you please, living by your own law; but having in 
 addition the legitimate protection, of which you are now 
 exacting the most chivalrous labors of love, with the considera- 
 tion which lends so much lustre to a woman, and the fortune 
 which will allow of your doing many good works. Honorine, 
 when you long for an unnecessary absolution, you have only 
 to ask for it ; it will not be forced upon you by the Church or 
 by the Law; it will wait on your pride, on your own impul- 
 sion. My wife might indeed have to fear all the things you 
 dread; but not my friend and sister, towards whom I am 
 bound to show every form and refinement of politeness. To 
 see you happy is enough happiness for me ; I have proved this 
 for these seven years past. The guarantee for this, Honorine, 
 is to be seen in all the flowers made by you, carefully pre- 
 served, and watered by my tears. Like the quipos, the tally 
 cords of the Peruvians, they are the record of our sorrows. 
 
 " *If this secret compact does not suit you, my child, I have 
 begged the saintly man who takes charge of this letter not 
 to say a word in my behalf. I will not owe your return to 
 the terrors threatened by the Church, nor to the bidding of 
 the Law. I will not accept the simple and quiet happiness 
 that I ask from any one but yourself. If you persist in con- 
 demning me to the lonely life, bereft even of a fraternal 
 smile, which I have led for nine years, if you remain in your 
 solitude and show no sign, my will yields to j^ours. Under- 
 stand me perfectly : you shall be no more troubled than you 
 have been until this day. I will get rid of the crazy fellow 
 
HONOKINB 
 
 871 
 
 who has meddled in your concerns, and has perhaps caused 
 you some annoyance . . 
 
 "^Monsieur/ said Honorine, folding up the letter, which 
 she placed in her bosom, and looking at my uncle, ^thank you 
 very much. I will avail myself of Monsieur le Comte^s per- 
 mission to remain here ' 
 
 " ^Ah V I exclaimed. 
 
 "This exclamation made my uncle look at me uneasily, and 
 won from the Countess a mischievous glance, which en- 
 lightened me as to her motives. 
 
 "Honorine had wanted to ascertain whether I were an actor, 
 a bird snarer; and I had the melancholy satisfaction of de- 
 ceiving her by my exclamation, which was one of those cries 
 from the heart which women understand so well. 
 
 " *Ah, Maurice,' said she, 'you know how to love.' 
 
 "The light that flashed in my eyes was another reply which 
 would have dissipated the Countess' uneasiness if she still, 
 had any. Thus the Count found me useful to the very last. 
 
 "Honorine then took out the Count's letter again to finish 
 reading it. My uncle signed to me, and I rose. 
 
 " 'Let us leave the Countess,' said he. 
 
 " 'You are going already, Maurice ?' she said, without look- 
 ing at me. 
 
 "She rose, and still reading, followed us to the door. On 
 the threshold she took my hand, pressed it very affectionately, 
 and said, 'We shall meet again . . .' 
 
 "'No,' I replied, wringing her hand, so that she cried 
 out. 'You love your husband. I leave to-morrow.' 
 
 "And I rushed away, leaving my uncle, to whom she said : 
 
 " 'Why, what is the matter with your nephew ?' 
 
 "The good Abbe completed my work by pointing to his 
 head and heart, as much as to say, 'He is mad, madame ; you 
 must forgive him !' and with all the more truth, because he 
 really thought it. 
 
 "Six days after, I set out with an appointment as vice-consul 
 in Spain, in a large commercial town, where I could quickly 
 
372 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 qualify to rise iu the career of a consul, to which I now re- 
 stricted my ambition. After I had established myself there, 
 I received this letter from the Count : — 
 
 " ^My dear Maurice, — 
 
 " *If I were happy, I should not write to you, but I have 
 entered on a new life of suffering. I have grown young 
 again in my desires, with all the impatience of a man of forty, 
 and the prudence of a diplomatist, who has learned to moder- 
 ate his passion. When you left I had not yet been admitted 
 to the pavilion in the Kue Saint-Maur, but a letter had prom- 
 ised me that I should have permission — the mild and melan- 
 choly letter of a woman who dreaded the agitations of a meet- 
 ing. After waiting for more than a month, I made bold 
 to call, and desired Gobain to inquire whether I could be 
 received. I sat down in a chair in the avenue near the lodge, 
 }ny head buried in my hands, and there I remained for almost 
 an hour. 
 
 " ^ ^^Madame had to dress,^' said Gobain, to hide Honorine's 
 Tiesitancy under a pride of appearance which was flattering 
 1o me. 
 
 " ^During a long quarter of an hour we both of us were 
 possessed by an involuntary nervous trembling as great as that 
 \diich seizes a speaker on the platform, and we spoke to each 
 other sacred phrases, like those of persons taken by surprise 
 who "make believe^^ a conversation. 
 
 (£ i "You see, Honorine,'^ said I, my eyes full of tears, "the 
 ice is broken, itnd I am so tremulous with happiness that you 
 must forgivd the incoherency of my language. It will be 
 so for a long time yet." 
 
 (( i "'j'j^gj.g -g crime in being in love with your wife," said 
 she with a forced smile. 
 
 " ' "Do me the favor," said I, "no longer to work as you 
 do. I have heard from Madame Gobain that for three weeks 
 you have been living on your savings; you have sixty thou- 
 sand francs a year of your own, and if you cannot give me 
 back your heart, at least do not abandon your fortune to me." 
 
 " ^ "I have long known your kindness," said she. 
 
HONORINE 
 
 373 
 
 « < "Though you should prefer to remain here/' said I, "and 
 to preserve your independence; though the most ardent love 
 should find no favor in your eyes, still, do not toil." 
 
 " 'I gave her three certificates for twelve thousand francs 
 a year each ; she took them, opened them languidly, and after 
 reading them through she gave me only a look as my reward. 
 She fully understood that I was not offering her money, but 
 freedom. 
 
 " * "I am conquered,'^ said she, holding out her hand, which 
 I kissed. "Come and see me as often as you like." 
 
 " *So she had done herself a violence in receiving me. Next 
 day I found her armed with affected high spirits, and it took 
 two months of habit before I saw her in her true character. 
 But then it was like a delicious May, a springtime of love that 
 gave me ineffable bliss; she was no longer afraid; she was 
 ntudying me. Alas ! when I proposed that she should go to 
 England to return ostensibly to me, to our home, that she 
 fahould resume her rank and live in our new residence, she 
 was seized with alarm. 
 
 " ^ "Why not live always as we are ?" she said. 
 
 " 'I submitted without saying a word. 
 
 " ' "Is she making an experiment ?" I asked myself as I 
 left her. On my way from my own house to the Eue Saint- 
 Maur thoughts of love had swelled in my heart, and I had 
 said to myself, like a young man, "This evening she will 
 yield." 
 
 " 'All my real or affected force was blown to the winds by 
 a smile, by a command from those proud, calm eyes, un- 
 touched by passion. I remembered the terrible words you once 
 quoted to me, "Lucretia's dagger wrote in letters of blood the 
 watchword of woman's charter — Liberty !" and they froze me. 
 I felt imperatively how necessary to me was Honorine's con- 
 sent, and how impossible it was to wring it from her. Could 
 she guess the storms that distracted me when I left as when 
 I came ? 
 
 " 'At last I painted my situation in a letter to her, giving 
 up the attempt to speak of it. Honorine made no answer, 
 
374 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 and she was so sad that I made as though I had not written. 
 I was deeply grieved by the idea that I could have distressed 
 her : she read my heart and forgave me. And this was how. 
 Three days ago she received me, for the first time, in her own 
 blue-and-white room. It was bright with flowers, dressed, 
 and lighted up. Honorine was in a dress that made her be- 
 witching. Her hair framed that face that you know in its 
 light curls; and in it were some sprays of Cape heath; she 
 A^ore a white muslin gown, a white sash with long floating 
 ends. You know what she is in such simplicity, but that da}'- 
 she was a bride, the Honorine of long past days. My joy 
 was chilled at once, for her face was terribly grave ; there were 
 fires beneath the ice. 
 
 " * "Octave," she said, "I will return as your wife when 
 you will. But understand clearly that this submission has its 
 dangers. I can be resigned " 
 
 " '^I made a movement. 
 
 a i Yes," she went on, "I understand : resignation offends 
 you, and you want what I cannot give — Love. Religion and 
 pity led me to renounce my vow of solitude ; you are here !" 
 She paused. 
 
 " ' "At first," she went on, "you asked no more. Now you 
 demand your wife. Well, here I give you Honorine, such as 
 she is, without deceiving you as to what she will be. — What 
 shall I be? A mother? I hope it. Believe me, I hope it 
 eagerly. Try to change me; you have my consent; but if I 
 should die, my dear, do not curse my memory, and do not set 
 down to obstinacy what I should call the worship of the Ideal, 
 if it were not more natural to call the indefinable feeling which 
 must kill me the worship of the Divine! The future will 
 be nothing to me; it will be your concern; consult your own 
 ,mind." 
 
 ^ " ^And she sat down in the calm attitude you used to ad- 
 mire, and watched me turning pale with the pain she had 
 inflicted. My blood ran cold. On seeing the effect of hei 
 words she took both my hands, and, holding them in her own, 
 she said : 
 
HONORINB 
 
 3Y6 
 
 " ' '^Octave, I do love you, but not in the way you wish to be 
 loved. I love your soul. . . . Still, understand that 1 
 love you enough to die in your service like an Eastern slave, 
 and without a regret. It will be my expiation." 
 
 'She did more ; she knelt before me on a cushion, and in 
 a spirit of sublime charity she said : 
 
 " ' "And perhaps I shall not die V 
 
 " 'For two months now I have been struggling with myself. 
 What shall I do? My heart is too full; I therefore seek a 
 friend, and send out this cry, "What shall I do ' 
 
 "I did not answer this letter. Two months later the news- 
 papers announced the return on board an English vessel of 
 the Comtesse Octave, restored to her family after adventures 
 by land and sea, invented with sufficient probability to arouse 
 no contradictiou. 
 
 "When I moved to Genoa I received a formal announce- 
 ment of the happy event of the birth of a son to the Count 
 and Countess. I held that letter in my hand for two hours, 
 sitting on this terrace — on this bench. Two month after, 
 urged by Octave, by M. de Grandville, and Monsieur de 
 Serizy, my kind friends, and broken by the death of my 
 uncle, I agreed to take a wife. 
 
 "Six months after the revolution of July I received this 
 letter, which concludes the story of this couple : — 
 
 " 'Monsieur Maurice, — I am dying though I am a mother 
 —perhaps because I am a mother. I have played my part 
 as a wife well ; I have deceived my husband. I have had hap- 
 piness not less genuine than the tears shed by actresses on the 
 stage. I am dying for society, for the family, for mar- 
 riage, as the early Christians died for God! I know not of 
 what I am dying, and I am honestly trying to find out, foi 
 I am not perverse ; but I am bent on explaining my malady to 
 you — you who brought that heavenly physician your uncle, 
 at whose word I surrendered. He was my director ; I nursed 
 
KONORINiJ 
 
 him in his last illness, and he showed me the way to heaven, 
 bidding me persevere in my duty. 
 
 " 'And I have done my duty. 
 
 do not blame those who forget. I admire them as 
 strong and necessary natures ; but I have the malady of mem- 
 ory ! I have not been able twice to feel that love of the heartj 
 which identifies a woman with the man she loves. To the last, 
 moment, as you know, I cried to your heart, in the confes- 
 sional, and to my husband, "Have mercy V But there was no 
 mercy. Well, and I am dying, dying with stupendous courage. 
 No courtesan was ever more gay than I. My poor Octave is 
 happy; I let his love feed on the illusions of my heart. I 
 throw all my powers into this terrible masquerade ; the actress 
 is applauded, feasted, smothered in flowers; but the invisible 
 rival comes every day to seek its prey — a fragment of my life, 
 r am rent and I smile. I smile on two children, but it is the 
 elder, the dead one, that will triumph ! I told you so before 
 The dead child calls me, and I am going to him. 
 
 " 'The intimacy of marriage without love is a position in 
 which my soul feels degraded every hour. I can never weep 
 or give myself up to dreams but when I am alone. The 
 exigencies of society, the care of my child, and that of Octave's 
 happiness never leave me a moment to refresh myself, torene-w' 
 my strength, as I could in my solitude. The incessant need! 
 for watchfulness startles my heart with constant alarms. I 
 have not succeeded in implanting in my soul the sharp-eared 
 vigilance that lies with facility, and has the eyes of a lynx. 
 It is not the lip of one I love that drinks my tears and kisses 
 my eyelids; it is a handkerchief that dries them; my burn- 
 ing eyes are cooled with water, and not with tender lips. It 
 is my soul that acts a part, and that perhaps is why I am 
 dying ! I lock up my griefs with so much care that nothing 
 is to be seen of it; it must eat into something, and it has 
 attacked my life. 
 
 "'I said to the doctors, who discovered my secret, 'TVfake 
 me die of some plausible complaint, or I shall drag my hus- 
 band with me." 
 
HONORINE 
 
 377 
 
 " 'So it is quite understood by M. Despleiu, Eianchon, and 
 myself that I am dying of the softening of some bone which 
 science has fully described. Octave believes that I adore him, 
 do you understand? So I am afraid lest he should follow 
 me. I now write to beg you in that case to be the little 
 Count^s guardian. You will lind with this a codicil in which 
 I have expressed my wish ; but do not produce it excepting in 
 case of need, for perhaps I am fatuously vain. My devotion 
 may perhaps leave Octave inconsolable but willing to live. 
 — Poor Octave ! 1 wish him a better wife than I am, for he 
 deserves to be well loved. 
 
 " *Since my spiritual spy is married, I bid him remember 
 what the liorist of the line Saint-Maur hereby bequeaths to 
 him as a lesson : May your wife soon be a mother ! Fling her 
 into the vulgarest materialism of household life; hinder her 
 from cherishing in her heart the mysterious flower of the 
 Ideal — of that heavenly perfection in which I believed, that 
 enchanted blossom with glorious colors, and whose perfume 
 disgusts us with reality. I am a Saint-Theresa who has not 
 been suffered to live on ecstasy in the depths of a convent, with 
 the Holy Infant, and a spotless winged angel to come and go 
 as she wished. 
 
 " 'You saw me happy among my beloved flowers. I did 
 not tell you all : I saw love budding under your affected mad- 
 ness, and I concealed from you my thoughts, my poetry ; I did 
 not admit you to my kingdom of beauty. Well, well ; you will 
 love my child for love of me if he should one day lose his 
 poor father. Keep my secrets as the grave will keep them. 
 Do not mourn for me; I have been dead this many a day, if 
 Saint Bernard was right in saying that where there is no more 
 love there is no more life.^ ^' 
 
 ''And the Countess died,^^ said the Consul, putting away 
 the letters and locking the pocket-book. 
 
 "Is the Count still living?" asked the Ambassador, "for 
 since the revolution of July he has disappeared from the 
 political stage/' 
 
S78 
 
 HOJ^OniNE 
 
 "Do you remember, Monsieur de Lora/' said the Consul- 
 General, "having seen me going to the steamboat with " 
 
 "A white-haired man ! an old man ?" said the painter. 
 
 "An old man of forty-five, going in search of health and 
 amusement in Southern Italy. That old man was my poor 
 friend, my patron, passing through Genoa to take leave of me 
 and place his will in my hands. He appoints me his son's 
 guardian. I had no occasion to tell him of Honorine's 
 wishes." 
 
 "Does he suspect himself of murder?" said Mademoiselle 
 des Touches to the Baron de I'Hostal. 
 
 "He suspects the truth," replied the Consul, "and that is 
 what is killing him. I remained on board the steam packet 
 that was to take him to Naples till it was out of the roadstead ; 
 a small boat brought me back. We sat for some little time 
 taking leave of each other — for ever, I fear. God only knows 
 how much we love the confidant of our love when she who 
 inspired it is no more. 
 
 " ^That m^n,^ said Octave, ^holds a charm and wears an 
 aureole.^ The Count went to the prow and looked down on 
 the Mediterranean. It happened to be fine, and, moved no 
 doubt by the spectacle, he spoke these last words: ^Ought 
 we not, in the interests of human nature, to inquire what is the 
 irresistible power which leads us to sacrifice an exquisite 
 creature to the most fugitive of all pleasures, and in spite of 
 our reason ? In my conscience I heard cries. Honorine was 
 not alone in her anguish. And yet I would have it ! ... I 
 am consumed by remorse. In the Eue Payenne I was dying 
 of the joys I had not ; now I shall die in Italy of the joys I 
 have had. . . . Wherein lay the discord between two 
 natures, equally noble, I dare assert ?' " 
 
 For some minutes profound silence reigned on the terrace. 
 
 Then the Consul, turning to the two women, asked, "Was 
 she virtuous ?" 
 
 Mademoiselle des Touches rose, took the Consul's arm, went 
 a few steps away, and said to him : 
 
 "Are not men wrong too when they come to us and make 
 
HONORINB 
 
 379 
 
 a young girl a wife while cherishing at the bottoni of their 
 heart some angelic image, and comj^aring us to those un- 
 known rivals, to perfections often borrowed from a remem- 
 brance, and always finding us wanting 
 
 "Mademoiselle, you would be right if marriage were based 
 on passion; and that was the mistake of those two, who will 
 soon be no more. Marriage with heart-deep love on both 
 sides would be Paradise." 
 
 Mademoiselle des Touches turned from the Consul, and 
 was immediately joined by Claude Vignon, who said in her 
 ear: 
 
 "A bit of a coxcomb is M. de FHostal." 
 
 "N"o," replied she, whispering to Claude these words : "for 
 he has not yet guessed that Honorine would have loved him. 
 — Oh I" she exclaimed, seeing the Consul's wife approaching, 
 "his wife was listening ! Unhappy man V 
 
 Eleven was striking by all the clocks, and the guests went 
 home on foot along the seashore. 
 
 "Still, that is not life," said Mademoiselle des Touches. 
 "That woman was one of the rarest, and perhaps the most 
 extraordinary exceptions in intellect — a pearl! Life is made 
 up of various incidents, of pain and pleasure alternately. The 
 Paradise of Dante, that sublime expression of the ideal, that 
 perpetual blue, is to be found only in the soul ; to ask it of the 
 facts of life is a luxury against which nature protests every 
 hour. To such souls as those the six feet of a cell, and the 
 kneeling chair are all they need." 
 
 "You are right," said Leon de Lora ; "but good-for-nothing 
 as I may be, I cannot help admiring a woman who is capable, 
 as that one was, of living by the side of a studio, . under a 
 painter's roof, and never coming down, nor seeing the world, 
 nor dipping her feet in the street mud." 
 
 "Such a thing has been known — for a few months," said 
 Claude Vignon, with deep irony. 
 
 "Comtesse Honorine is not unique of her kind," replied 
 the Ambassador to Mademoiselle des Touches. "A man, nay, 
 and a politician, a bitter writer, was the object of such a 
 
 VOL. 4-51 
 / 
 
880 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 passion; and the pistol shot which killed him hit not him 
 alone; the woman who loved lived like a nun ever after." 
 
 "Then there are yet some great souls in this age!" said 
 Camille Manpin, and she stood for some minutes pensively 
 leaning on the balustrade of the quay. 
 
 Pabis, January 1843. 
 
\ 
 
 I