THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 HONOUK 1)K BAI-ZAC 
 (In Ills working garb.l 
 
 FaoNTiBPiKCE— Volume One.
 
 THE 
 
 HdlMAN GOMCBY 
 
 BEING THE BEST NOVELS FROM THE 
 "COMEDIE HUMAINE" OF 
 
 HONORE DE BALZAC 
 
 THE PURSE 
 COUSIN PONS 
 
 WHY THE ATHEIST PRAYED 
 THE MYSTERY OF LA GRANDE 
 BRETECHE 
 
 ALBERT SAVARUS 
 THE HOUSE OF THE TENNIS- 
 PLAYING CAT 
 A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA 
 MODESTE MIGNON 
 
 ILLUSTRATED WITH SIXTEEN ENGMYINGS ON WOOD FKOM THE 
 
 BEST FRENC][ EDITION 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION DESCRIPTIVE OF THE AUTHOR's STUPENDOUS 
 
 AND BRILLIANT WORK 
 BY 
 
 JULIUS CHAMBERS 
 
 IN THREE V0LaMES-V0l2aME 0NE 
 
 New York : 
 PETER FENELON COLLIER.
 
 Copyright, 1893, 
 By Peteb Fenelox Collier 
 
 All rights reserved.
 
 Contents of Volume One. 
 
 INTRODUCTION—" LA CoMEDiE HuMAiNE " AND ITS Ethical Puepose 5 
 
 2 SCENES OF PRIVATE LIFE. 
 
 ' PAGE 
 
 Y" 1— THE PURSE 17 
 
 Wi 2— COUSIN PONS 34 
 
 8— WHY THE ATHEIST PRAYED 217 
 
 4— MYSTERY OP LA GRANDE BR^TECHE 826 
 
 5-ALBERT SAVARUS 237 
 
 6— HOUSE OP THE TENNIS-PLAYING CAT 297 
 
 7— A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA 328 
 
 8— MODESTE MIGNON 335 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Frontispiece— Honors de Balzac (in his working garb). 
 
 COUSIN PONS: 
 
 La Cibot and Ri5;monencq. 
 
 SCHMUCKE AND PONS— " The flaneurs of the quarter had nick-named them 'The Pair of 
 Nut-Crackers.' " 
 
 THE HOUSE OF THE TENNIS-PLAYING CAT: 
 M. GuiLLAUME—The Typical Merchant. (Drawn by Meissonier.) 
 
 (3)
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 BALZAC AND THE COMEDY OF LIFE. 
 
 " The magnitude of a plan that embraces at once a study and criticism of society, an analysis 
 of its evils, and a discussion of its principles, justifies me, I think, in giving to my work the title 
 under which it will appear — 'The Human Comedy.' It, is ambitious, I grant you. But do I not 
 succeed ? Here is the work ; let the public judge." — Balzac, in the original Preface to the 
 Coviplete Edition of his Works. Paris, July, IS42. 
 
 HoNORE DE Balzac, like Horace, had 
 an excellent opinion of his own work, and 
 never was chary of expressing it. The 
 scheme was too ambitious to be completed 
 in the short span of one life, and he, de- 
 spite his remarkable energy, failed to 
 fully realize his hopes. His character 
 bristled with eccentricities, and his career 
 \vas a tissue of contradictions. He was a 
 wild spendthrift, but his appreciation of 
 the value of money in constructing plots, 
 and his skill at financiering — in fiction — 
 are shown in many of his novels.* One 
 thing may be said of him without fear of 
 contradiction : he was a defender of the 
 home ; he believed it to be the source of 
 all good, as well as the nest of human 
 misery — the nurserj^ of unhappiness. 
 
 From an ethical point of view, Balzac's 
 morals are faultless. He was a realist, as 
 Erail Zola is to-day ; but with a refine- 
 ment of imagination and a facility of 
 mental analysis that Zola does not pos- 
 sess. He hated vulgarity and crime, and 
 made it so odious that several of his most 
 disagreeable books might be issued as re- 
 ligious tracts. A score of biographies of 
 Balzac have been issued, but the editor 
 of the present edition would recommend 
 
 * Examples, for instance, "Eugenie Grandet," 
 "Cesar Birotteau," "The Marriage Contract," 
 and " Gaudissart II." 
 
 the one written by Theophile Gautier, the 
 only man of Balzac's day beside Victor 
 Hugo large enough in brain and repu- 
 tation to write the life of The Master of 
 the Modern Novel. Gautier's biography 
 was written after Balzac's death, and 
 wiiile it is eulogistic, it is fair and justly 
 critical. 
 
 In outlining the scope of the wonderful 
 series of books to which Balzac himself 
 refers in the preface to the original edi- 
 tion, quoted above, it is proper to explain 
 exactly what Balzac undertook. He had 
 written and published about thirty novels 
 before he attracted attention ; and it was 
 not until 1827 that he conceived the idea 
 of a great work that should dissect the 
 human heart as a demonstrator uses the 
 scalpel in a lecture room. He planned 
 a series of one hundred stories, which 
 he classified under tlie eight great 
 heads : — Scenes from Private, Provincial, 
 Parisian, Political, Military and Country 
 Life, with Philosophical and Analytical 
 Studies. Of these, the Scenes from Politi- 
 cal, Military and Country Life were in- 
 complete at the 'time of the author's 
 death. The one hundred novels of this 
 series were written in the twenty years 
 between* 1827 and 1847. Balzac had a 
 general idea of the plan upon which he 
 was building liis great structure, and 
 wrote the stories in whatever order best 
 
 (5)
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 suited his mercurial temperament. The 
 final classiflcalion which they were to 
 take in "The Human Comedy " bore no 
 relation whatever to the order in which 
 the}- were produced. During some of the 
 yeai's he worked witli superhuman enersry, 
 turning out as many as six or eight com- 
 plete novels, while in other years he 
 would be satisfied with two or three. 
 
 We cannot do better than to give at 
 this stage a complete list of the novels 
 composing this work; and, in addition, we 
 have added to thcur names the date of 
 original publication, whenever obtainable, 
 to indicate the order in which the books 
 appeared. It lias been deemed best to 
 quote the original French titles : — 
 
 PLAN OF " LA COMfiDIE HUMAINE." 
 
 Scenes FROM Private Life:— L.aMaison duChat- 
 qui-pelotte (1839), Le Bal de Sceaux (1829). La 
 Bourse (1832), La Vendetta (1830), Madame Firmi- 
 ani (1831). Una Double Famille (1830), La Paix du 
 Menage (1839), La Fausse Maltresse (1843), Etude 
 de fenime (1830), Autre etude de femme (1830), 
 La Grande Breteche (1830), Albert Savarus (1843), 
 Memoire.s de Deux Jeunes Mariees (1841), Une Fille 
 d'Eve (1838), La Fomme de Trente Ans (1835), 
 La Femme abandonnee (1832), La Grenadiere 
 (1832), Le Message (1833), Gobseck (1830), Le 
 Contrat de Mariage (1835), Un Debut dans la Vie 
 (1842), Modeste Mignon (1844), Beatrix (1844), 
 Honorine (1843), Le Colonel Chabert (1832), La 
 Messe de I'Athee (1886), L'Interdictioa (1836), 
 Pierre Grassou (1839). 
 
 Scenes from Provincial Life : — Ursule Mirouet 
 (1841), Eugenie Grandet (1833); Les Celibataires :— 
 Pierrette (1839), Le Cure de Tours (1839), and Un 
 Menage de Gargon (1842) ; Les Parisiens en Pro- 
 vince : — L'illustre GauJissart (1832), Muse du De- 
 partement ; Les Rivalites : — La Vieille Fille (1830), 
 Le Cabinet des Antiques (1837) ; Le Lys dans 
 la Vallee (1835); Illusions Perdues : — Les Deux 
 Poetes, Un grand Homme de Province a Paris, 
 1st and 2d parts. Eve et David (all in 1843). 
 
 Scenes from Parisian Life :— Esther Heureuse, 
 A combien I'aniour revient aux Vieillards, Ou 
 menent les mauvais Chemins (all in 1843) ; La 
 Derniure Incarnation de Vautrin, Un Prince de 
 la Boheme (1845). Un Homme d'affaires (184.5), 
 Gaudissart II. (1844). Les Comediens sans le 
 Savoir (1840), Histoir des Treize. Ferragus (1833), 
 Duc-hesse de Langeais (1834), Fille aux veux d'Or 
 (1834), Le Pere Goriot (1834). Cesar* Bu-otteau 
 (1887). LaMaisonNucingen (1837), Les Secrets de 
 la Princesse de Cadignan (1839). Les Employes, 
 Sarrasine (1830), Facino Cane (1836), Les Parents 
 
 pauvres : — La Cousine Bette (1846), and Le Cousin 
 Pons (1846). 
 
 Scenes from Political Life : — Une Tenebreuse 
 Affaire (1841). Un Episode sous la Terreur (1831), 
 L'Envers de I'Histoire Contemporaine (1845), Ma- 
 dame de la Clianterie, L'luitie. Z. Marcas (1840), 
 le Depute d'Arcis. 
 
 Scenes from Military Life :— Les Cliouans 
 (1837), and Une Passion dans le desert (1832). 
 
 Scenes from Country Life :— Le Medecin de 
 Campagn (1833), Le Cure de Village (1845), and 
 Les Paysans (1847). 
 
 PHiLOSOPmcAL Stijdies :— La Peau de Chagrin 
 (1830), La Recherche de TAbsolu (1834), Christ en 
 Flandre(1831), Melmoth reconcilie (1835), Le Chef- 
 d'oeuvre inconnu (1832), L'Enfant Maudit (1836), 
 Gambara (1837), Massimilla Doni (1839), Les Ma- 
 rana (1832), Adieu (1830), Le Requisitionnaire 
 (1831), El Verdugo, Un Drame au bord de la nier 
 (1834), L'Auberge Rouge (1831), L'Elixir de Longue 
 Vie (1830), Maitre Cornelius (1831), Sur Catherine 
 de Medicis (1838), Le Martyr Calviniste, La Confi- 
 dence des Ruggieri, Les deux Reves, Louis Lambert 
 (1833), Les Proscrits (1831), and Seraphita (1833). 
 
 Analytical Studies :— Physiologie du Mariage 
 (1829), and Petites Miseres de la vie Conjugale. 
 
 From tliese eight great classes we have 
 selected six, and from each of these six 
 sub-divisions have taken one or more 
 novels. It is unnecessary to say that 
 the choice had to be made with great 
 care, because there are blemishes in some 
 of the works that render them undesir- 
 able for translation. " The Human Com- 
 edy " contains very little humor^ — if we 
 except "A Start in Life," in which are 
 the author's own experiences in a law- 
 yer's office, " The Illustrious Gaudissart" 
 and '-The Old Maid." Rather does it 
 deal with avarice, covetousness and pas- 
 sion, than the tender emotions of human 
 life. Indeed, this masterpiece of human 
 ingenuity contains more tragedy than 
 comedj'. 
 
 We can only attempt a few words in 
 relation to each of the stories comprising 
 this stupendous work, covering, in its sev- 
 eral editions, from twenty to fifty-three 
 volumes. " The House of the Tennis- 
 Playing Cat" we reprint. "The Ball 
 at Sceaux " is quite well known, the 
 scene being laid at the quaint little vil- 
 lage among the hills, thirty miles from 
 Paris, now reached over tlie crookedest 
 railroad in France. Parisians of to-day
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 visit the place on Sundays, and remember 
 it chiefly because of the Restaurant Rob- 
 inson, where dinners are served in little 
 booths, hig-h among- the tree-tops. " The 
 Purse " is one of the most charming little 
 bits of innocence and nature in all Balzac. 
 Wc have chosen to begin these volumes 
 with it, and we think the touch of hu- 
 manity that permeates it will justify its 
 selection as the opening chapter in " The 
 Human Comedy." 
 
 " A Double Family," the next novel in 
 the series, is constructed along the lines 
 made familiar by a host of other writers, 
 but contains so many objectionable feat- 
 ures that it is omitted. The plot may 
 be outlined, however : — One family is 
 legitimate, tlie other illegitimate. The 
 father is a man of integrity, and after- 
 ward becomes a distinguished jurist. 
 Balzac shows distinctly how this man 
 was driven from his home by the harsh- 
 ness and coldness of his wife ; and, true 
 to his ethical purity, he also makes it 
 clear that tlie new love was more un- 
 worthy of him than the first. The 
 climax is reached when one of the natu- 
 ral sons, who is accused of a serious 
 crime, is brought before one of the legiti- 
 mate sons, sitting as a legal functionary. 
 The father appears boldly in court c^nd 
 confesses his shame and humiliation. 
 From a French point of view, the novel 
 is supposed to inculcate a highly moral 
 lesson, and the skill with which this story 
 is handled is wonderful. Caroline, the 
 real hero of this tale, is drawn as on a 
 steel plate — so carefully that not a line 
 is wanting. 
 
 " Why tlie Atheist Prayed " is remark- 
 able because in it is told the eai-ly life of 
 the great surgeon, Bianchon, who reap- 
 pears in so many subsequent volumes. 
 For this reason it has been inserted 
 ahead of its order as fixed by the author. 
 "A Second Study of Woman" contains 
 a striking dissertation on the decadence 
 of great families and the disappearance 
 of the society grande ' dame after the 
 Revolution of July, with an etching, 
 made in Balzac's most characteristic 
 style, of the type of woman who suc- 
 ceeded her. 
 
 " The Mystery of La Grande Breteche," 
 an old chateau on the banks of the river 
 Loir, is a bit of condensed horror. Like 
 "A Piece of an Ass's Skin," it may be 
 described as a fantasy and an improba- 
 bilitj', such as Poe and Hoffmann delight- 
 ed to write. Candidly, we do not think 
 these tales ought to be in this series at 
 all, as, with these two exceptions, Balzac 
 deals with the real and moves his charac- 
 ters about in the living current of human 
 life. Of course we do not forg-et " Ursule 
 Mirouet," who, as tlie first of the provin- 
 cial heroines, gives lier name to a " goody- 
 good}'^ " story, such as Richardson might 
 have composed, and forms the background 
 for a conventional ghost storj'. There 
 is no incongruity in the introduction of 
 ghosts into novels depicting human suffer- 
 ing or struggle. 
 
 To again take up the chain, as Balzac 
 laid it down, we reach "Albert Savarus," 
 which we have reprinted in full. It con- 
 tains one of those descriptions of country- 
 town society in which Balzac shone to 
 such great advantage, and the hero and 
 heroine form two very strong figures for 
 an analytical mind such as the author's. 
 Incidentally, it introduces a charming de- 
 scription of life at the Grande Chartreuse, 
 probabh' the most famous monastery in 
 the world. The next novel in the series 
 is "The History of Two Marriages "—a 
 story of two brides, each the exact an- 
 tithesis of the other, though educated in 
 the same convent. The style is defective, 
 because Balzac does not show as a master 
 in dealing with story-telling by corre- 
 spondence. The letters of these young 
 women cover reams of paper in some 
 instances — an error of fact that cannot be 
 overlooked. The book is interesting, just 
 as a case of St. Vitus's dance might be. 
 One of the ladies is perfectly lovable, 
 and the other is utterly detestable. "A 
 Daughter of Eve " relates how a man of 
 the world and a loving husband rescues 
 his young wife from a false position, and 
 saves a scandal through great tact and 
 cleverness. 
 
 Passing rapidly over the five short 
 stories that follow, we come to "The 
 Marriage Contract," interest in which
 
 8 
 
 INTnODUCTlOX. 
 
 contors aho>it the preparation of the anti- 
 nuptial obli.uations by two notaries, one 
 of the old and the other of the new school. 
 In this stoi-y Balzac shows the results of 
 liis leg-al training-, and more especially of 
 his irksome clerical duties in a notary's 
 office. The interests of the about-to-he 
 husband serioush* conflict with those of 
 his intended bride, and the young- notary, 
 who appears for the young girl's mother 
 (she having dissipated her daughter's 
 fortune), prepares a cunningly baited de- 
 ception for the bridegroom, which is only 
 f(3iled by the sagacity of the old and ex- 
 perienced notary. After the w^edding, a 
 system of impoverishment begins at once, 
 and the husband is eventually shorn like 
 a lamb. "A Start in Life " further dis- 
 closes the tricks of the legal profession, 
 and is, in several respects, the most hu- 
 morous of all the books that Balzac has 
 ■written. A young man begins life vith 
 thoroughly developed vanity, of which he 
 is eventually cured by heroic treatment. 
 It twice proves his ruin in business, but 
 he is finally induced to enter the army, 
 wherein he attains distinction. 
 
 "Modeste Mignon " is as near an ap- 
 proach to the English idea of a novel as 
 it would be possible for any Frenchman 
 to write. It is purely and simply a love 
 tale. Mignon might be Susan Jane Jones. 
 She dwells with her blind mother in the 
 strictest seclusion at Havre. Her father 
 is abroad seeking his fortune, and .she 
 takes advantage of the blindness of her 
 mother to fall in love with Canalis, a 
 celebrated poet, whose verses are the 
 fad of the day, but whose face she never 
 has seen, except in a shop-window litho- 
 graph. She sends him a letter under an 
 assumed name and gets disagreeably en- 
 tangled. Canalis hands the first letter 
 over to his private secretary to answer. 
 The young man conducts the correspond- 
 ence with Mignon in his master's name, 
 eventually falls in love with the girl, who 
 finds in the sham poet a far more at- 
 tractive person than the real one proves 
 to be, when she Ilnally beholds him. Just 
 as the embarrassment is becoming criti- 
 cal, Mignon 's father opportunely returns 
 to Havre, rescues her, and the story 
 
 ends pleasantly with the marriage of the 
 "soft" young girl and the rather too 
 experienced secretary. 
 
 Of " Beatri.K " very little need be said. 
 Its whole atniosphere is unreal and de- 
 ceptive. In many respects it is so com- 
 plicated that it is almost impossible to 
 disentangle the several threads of the 
 story. The book is redeemed by one of 
 Balzac's marvel ously clever word paint- 
 ings of a corner of Brittany, unvisited 
 by strangers prior to the advent of rail- 
 roads. The tone of the book, however, is 
 thoroughly unworthy of the great author. 
 " Honorine " is a dainty bit of domestic 
 drama of true Parisian character. Briefly, 
 it is the storj'' of a husband who, although 
 deserted by a heartless and unworthy 
 wife years before the tale opens, and 
 herself forsaken in turn, watches over 
 the erring woman and secretly provides 
 for every want of hers. It is the stoi-y 
 of a love that could not be destroyed by 
 cruelty or deception. Its weak point is 
 that the honorable and sagacious hus- 
 band attempts to woo the frivolous wo- 
 man back to him by deputy, employing 
 a messenger who is utterly' unworthy- of 
 his confidence. He is successful, and the 
 repentant wife dies at peace. 
 
 " Colonel Chabert "is in many respects 
 a chef d'oeuvre. It ought to be univer- 
 sally known, though it is very painful and 
 sad. He is the French Colonel Newcome, 
 and it is no disparagement of Thackeray 
 to say that Chabert rises to a loftier 
 pinnacle of self-sacrificing manhood than 
 does his hero. The magnanimous English- 
 man gives up fortune and friends from an 
 exaggerated point of honor and calmly 
 goes to die in an almshouse ; Balzac's 
 hero not onlj' sacrifices all these, but 
 name, fame and personal identity, because 
 of an infamous woman, whose conduct had 
 literally' disgusted him with life. In this 
 book we have the picture of an honest and 
 skillful lawyer, who appears in many 
 scenes in "The Human Comedy " under 
 the name of Derville. The fate of poor 
 Chabert extorts from Derville the re- 
 markable comment : "There exists," says 
 he, " in society three men who cannot 
 possibly esteem the world : the priest.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the doctor and the lawyer. They wear 
 black, perhaps, because they are in mourn- 
 ing for all the virtues and for all the illu- 
 sions." 
 
 With this comment of an old lawyer 
 upon the three great professions, we may 
 pass to a consideration of the Scenes 
 from Provincial Life, the second grand 
 sub-division of "'The Human Comedy," 
 which, Balzac says, "represent theage of 
 passion, scheming, self-interest and am- 
 bition." Of "Ursule Mirouet " we have 
 alreadj^ spoken. Ursule is an orphan, 
 adopted by Dr. ilinorel, of Nemours, an 
 amiable old man, with the serious moral 
 defect that he has absolutely no religion 
 whatever. From this condition of con- 
 firmed atheism he is converted by his 
 ward, just as he would be in a Sunday- 
 school book. On the doctor's death, a 
 will which was supposed to be in exist- 
 ence, providing for her maintenance, can- 
 not be found because it has been secreted 
 by one of the heirs. At this point the 
 gentle-hearted doctor's shade appears to 
 Ursule and reveals the contemptible con- 
 duct of the thief, after which the law 
 makes things easy for the young girl. 
 Incidentally, Ursule is beloved of a very 
 charming young man, and they get mar- 
 ried after the fortune is found and "live 
 happily forever after." The fact that 
 the book is dedicated by Balzac to his 
 niece would seem to indicate that it is 
 intended for the consumption of young 
 ladies. The really admirable passages in 
 the book are found in those portions de- 
 picting the greediness and the avarice of 
 the relatives of the amiable old doctor to 
 possess themselves of portions of his es- 
 tate. The next novel in the series is the 
 famous and immortal " Eugenie Gran- 
 det," which we reprint in full. Much 
 that is sad and painful might be omitted 
 without sacrificing the beauty of the 
 story. The heartless character of the 
 miserly husband and father is brought 
 out with a painful fullness that makes 
 it in places very disti'essing reading ; but 
 the pictures of the Grandet household 
 can never be foi'gotten. As a cap-sheaf 
 to these two stories, which have both been 
 sad in several ways, we have "Pierrette." 
 
 She is a young woman of angelic beauty 
 and saintliness, adopted by two horrible 
 people, an old bachelor and an old maid, 
 brother and sister. Though thej' are her 
 cousins, they neglect her, persecute her, 
 and finally do her to death. " Pierrette " 
 was dedicated to the wealthy Russian 
 lady. Countess Eva de Hanska, who in 
 1850 became Balzac's wife. After com- 
 pleting this story it seems quite natural 
 to study the sufferings of " The Cure of 
 Tours," who is only one priest worried 
 b^' another with de^^lish ingenuit3'. 
 
 From this point, the ground clears and 
 becomes brighter. In ••'A Bachelor's Es- 
 tablishment " we see a rich old imbecile 
 completely under the thumb of a pert and 
 pretty young housekeeper. Strange to say, 
 the interest in the storj' centers wholly in 
 the family of the bachelor's sister. Agathe 
 Bridau, a thoroughly virtuous and amiable 
 woman, is a widow and the mother of two 
 sons. The elder, Philippe, is an officer of 
 the Imperial Guards, and a thoroughly 
 developed blackguard ; the younger is a 
 simple-minded artist and an affectionate 
 son. Of course, anybody who has studied 
 life need not be told that Phillipe is the 
 mother's favorite. Her heart goes out 
 to him whenever he is accused of wrong- 
 doing, and she finds a ready explanation 
 for all his waywardness. After ruining 
 his mother, robbing his brother, and 
 causing the death of his aunt, he is put 
 under police surveillance for five j'ears 
 because of his connection with a Bona- 
 partist plot. From that point he de- 
 velops into a thoroughly hardened villain. 
 He eventually becomes a personage of 
 distinction and very rich, when he natu- 
 rally evolves the ingratitude that has 
 been latent in his character from the 
 beginning, cuts his mother and brother, 
 and forsakes his wretched wife. True to 
 his ethical instincts, Balzac punishes the 
 scapegrace by giving him a miserable 
 death in Algeria. 
 
 Now for a gleam of real comedy. ■■ The 
 Illustrious Gaudissart " is the -stctim of 
 a hoax, and we extract manj'^ a hearty 
 laugh at his expense. The scene of "The 
 Muse of the Department" might be laid 
 in Washington, where there are many of
 
 10 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the frail sisterhood who resemble the 
 heroine of this story. She is not a trag'ic 
 muse, but a verj' naug-litj- one. " The 
 Old Maid " is decidedly in a comic vein. 
 An English critic has very truthfully said 
 that this storj- is " worthy of being the 
 joint production of Stern and Swift, for 
 it combines the naive droller^' of the first 
 with the caustic cj'nicism of the second." 
 The hero, the Chevalier de Valois, boasts 
 of an enormous nose, wears diamond ear- 
 rings, stuffs his ears with wool, and gives 
 the most careful attention to his toilet, 
 in the vain hope of persuading- the maiden 
 lad3' to become his wife ; but when she 
 refuses him, peremptorily, lie goes to 
 pieces like the Deacon's one horse shaj'. 
 Madame Cormon, though she is an old 
 maid, is good, simple, and hot-blooded, 
 and longs ardently for a husband ; but 
 she is so absurdly ignorant that she 
 becomes utterly distrustful of mankind, 
 and defeats her own purpose bj- her 
 suspicion. 
 
 An old maid of another sort appears in 
 "The Cabinet of Antiques." This lady 
 is a patrician who has remained single in 
 order to devote herself to the orphan son 
 of her brother ; but the young scapegrace 
 commits iovgery, is arrested at Alengon, 
 where the scene of the storj^ is laid. An 
 old notary again saves the honor of the 
 family, and the French sj^stem of juris- 
 diction is again gone into at much too 
 great length. A fact which Balzac al- 
 ways delighted to dwell upon; namely, 
 that it made very little difference to a 
 lawyer whether his client was guilty or 
 innocent, is brought out. In this case 
 the guilt or innocence of tlie party ac- 
 cused had very little to do with his fate, 
 the influence he was able to bring to bear 
 deciding it. 
 
 A thing of real beauty is " The Lilj^ of 
 the Valley." Its author pronounces it 
 " one of the most highly finished stones 
 of the edifice." It deals with the old 
 struggle between love and duty in the 
 breast of a beautiful but unhappy woman. 
 Duty and virtue are ever victorious, al- 
 though death finallj' enables the heroine 
 to triumph. Madame de Mortsauf is a 
 model of purity, though a conjugal mar- 
 
 tyr, and her portrait is painted with 
 pathos and power. 
 
 We now reach the " Lost Illusions," 
 2)resented in two sub-divisions. It is the 
 longest, the most varied, and most com- 
 pletely' elaborated work from Balzac's 
 jicn. Indeed, several critics have spoken 
 of it as an epitome of the entire "Human 
 Comedy." The four longest stories as- 
 sociated under this head would make a 
 library' in themselves. Briefly, this is the 
 story of Lucien, a poet of Angouleme, 
 whose Bunthorn-like genius and manly 
 beauty are supported by the money of his 
 sister Eve, the daughter of a poor widow 
 but the wife of a rich printer, named 
 David. Sechard, David's father, was nn 
 ignorant, drunken, miserly old publisher, 
 who sold his business to his son, a talent- 
 ed, modest and amiable young man, on 
 very harsh terms. David believes in Lu- 
 cien, foresees his greatness and willingly 
 assists in the scheme to exploit him. The 
 young and handsome poet is patronized by 
 Madame de Bargeton, a great ladj' of the 
 neighborhood, who is naturally bored by 
 the country folk and longs for some idol 
 upon which to lavish her enthusiasm. The 
 relations between the poet and the lady 
 are wholly proper ; but the country people 
 are censorious and start a scandal. One 
 of the distinguished citizens, overheard by 
 the husband of madame, is called out and 
 shot in a duel. After this, of course, the 
 atmosphere becomes too warm for the 
 great lady, and she removes to her house 
 in Paris, taking the poet witli her. Thus 
 the scene shifts from the country to the 
 French metropolis. The disillusionment 
 of the poet now begins. He finds that 
 Madame de Bargeton is not what his 
 fancy had painted her. Though an ex- 
 ceedingly proper and modest woman in 
 the country, in the city she develops en- 
 tirely different phases of character. An 
 old flame of hers soon separates her from 
 Lucien. The poet observes that his ideal 
 woman is lean, faded and gawky ; the 
 lady likewise discovers that her ideal 
 genius is awkward, ill-bred and badly 
 dressed. Thrown overboard by his pa- 
 troness, the luckless poet finds it impos- 
 sible to secure a publisher for his sonnets.
 
 IXTRODUCTION. 
 
 11 
 
 He tries several methods of earning- a liv- 
 ing- when he finds that poetry will not 
 secure it for liim, and, among others, 
 journalism. The way in which Balzac 
 writes about Parisian journalism is 
 enough to sicken any reader with it as 
 a vocation. Disclosures in 1892 reg-ard- 
 ing tlie Panama Canal scandal indicate 
 that the Paris press is as corrupt to-day 
 as in Balzac's time. Balzac had pre- 
 tended to edit one or two papers and 
 magazines, but it is very doubtful if he 
 ever did any executive newspaper work. 
 He had no scruples about monej'-get- 
 ting, and, like many another amateur in 
 journalism and law, saw a rich field for 
 the blackmailer's art. According- to Bal- 
 zac, any man who ventured into the news- 
 paper profession in Paris was utterh' lost 
 to honor, honesty and self-respect. Im- 
 mediatel}' Lucien has attained a footing- 
 on a newspaper, he starts out as a black- 
 mailer and begins to lampoon his former 
 patroness and Monsieur Chatelet, her new 
 infatuation. He flirts with the g-reat act- 
 resses of the day, and cuts his former pro- 
 tector in public ; but his rise is like the 
 flight of a rocket : he soars for a time 
 among the clouds of adulation and then 
 falls like a stick, extinguished. What 
 else was to have been expected ? It is 
 the same way in America. Lucien loses 
 his footing- in the newspaper business, as 
 he deserves to, is insulted by a former 
 friend, challenges him and is despei'ately 
 wounded in a duel ; he suffers from penur3- 
 and despair, and finally returns to Ang-ou- 
 leme on foot. The love story of David 
 and Eve, which is used to g-arnish the 
 ^eater tale, is far more attractive than 
 that of Lucien. It is impossible to out- 
 line it, but Lucien is the cause of much 
 suffering- to both of them, and eventu- 
 ally brings financial ruin upon David, 
 his brother-in-law. It is impossible, of 
 course, to give any idea of the life and 
 soul which Balzac imparts to this bare 
 outline. The w^eakness of Lucien, the un- 
 failing- love of Eve, the sincei'C devotion 
 of David, the miserly craftiness of the 
 old printer, and the frivolity of Madame 
 de Bargeton, supply the human intei'est in 
 this work. 
 
 In the two books that follow, and which 
 are utterly unworthy of Balzac, we find 
 one of the greatest characters in "The 
 Human Comedj*." We refer to "The 
 terrible A^autrin." He is the antithesis 
 in French fiction of Jean Valgean, the 
 hero of " Les Miserables," the master- 
 piece of Victor Hugo. Vautrin, known 
 under several aliases, is a convict who 
 masquerades in the guise of a priest. 
 He crosses the plane of several other 
 novels in the series, memorable among 
 which is "Pere Goriot." This terrible 
 character is really the hero of the two 
 books that follow " Lost Illusions." Fall- 
 ing into the hands of the police eventually-, 
 Vautrin chooses to serve the law against 
 which he can no longer successfully con- 
 tend, and instead of the chief of a gang 
 of robbers he becomes the Chief of Police. 
 We can imagine how Balzac must have 
 chuckled to himself, and how his chubby 
 cheeks must have shaken as he lunged at 
 the municipality with such a master-stroke 
 of irony ! 
 
 A splendid opportunitj' to utilize the 
 services of Vautrin occurs in " The His- 
 tory of the Thirteen," which demonstrates 
 the possibHitj' of a cabal of men carrying 
 out their own purposes in utter defiance 
 of the law. New York under the fast set 
 led by Jim Fisk between the j-ears 1865 
 and 1871 (when he was killed) furnishes 
 a picture quite similar in color to that in 
 " The Girl with the Golden Eyes." New 
 Yorkers who had shuddered at the wan- 
 tonness and dissipation of the Pai'isians, 
 revolted against that era and rejoiced 
 that the fall of its figure-head ended. the 
 orgies of the period. 
 
 Of the Scenes from Parisian, or City, 
 Life, we have reprinted enough to show 
 their wonderful beauty and variety. This 
 division of the work sounds every depth 
 of social horror, exalts e\erj^ human 
 virtue, and deals in an utterly' reckless, 
 though very attractive, manner with the 
 whims, ambitions, malice and sordidness 
 of humanity. As a critic of mankiud Bal- 
 zac is remorseless ! When a woman was 
 bad in Balzac's eyes, she was capable of 
 anything ; no meanness that brought re- 
 venge, no treachery that deprived a rival
 
 12 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of a lover, no depravity that insured social 
 success was to be hesitated at. " Pere 
 Goriot" (or "Old Pop Goriot," as the 
 arg-ot of the cheap boarding--house where 
 he lived would have had it.) was the in- 
 carnation of fatherhood, as understood 
 by the Balzacian mind. His might be 
 another name for Lear, moving- in a lower 
 ethical atmosphere, actuated by the same 
 paternal love and without personal ambi- 
 tion. This story, strangely enough, was 
 given a wrong place in the series by the 
 author, because in the point of date we 
 make therein our first acquaintance with 
 Vautrin ; we also meet Dr. Bianchon, 
 the noble - hearted physician, and M. 
 Kastignac. Some of these names have 
 been encountered through many of the 
 preceding stories. At least, this book 
 should have been placed by Balzac before 
 the "Lost Illusions." Having despoiled 
 himself of all his property for the benefit 
 of his two worthless daughters, poor old 
 Goriot is left to die tilone in a garret. 
 The way in which Balzac wrings the 
 chords of human sympathy for the friend- 
 k^ss old man is even more masterly than 
 Shakespeare's treatment of the same situa- 
 tion under the names of Lear, Began, and 
 Goneril. There is no Cordelia in this tale. 
 We reprint " Cesar Birotteau," a 
 story of the champion of shop-keeping 
 honor. The full title of this very re- 
 markable story is "The Grandeur and 
 the Decadence of Cesar Birotteau." Bir- 
 otteau was a manufacturer of jjerfumery 
 and rose to great wealth, the climax of 
 his social elevation being a ball, which is 
 minutely described ; after that event his 
 descent to penury and utter wretchedness 
 follow fast and fearfully. The mental 
 sutfej-ings that the honest old tradesman 
 endured are depicted with photographic 
 accuracy. The book ends happily, how- 
 ever, by the paj-ment of Birotteau"s debts, 
 and his resumption of active life. When 
 this occurs, his joj' is more extravagant 
 than was his grief. It kills him. We 
 have included the mystery of " Facino 
 Cane " in this class for the same reason, 
 doubtless, that Balzac did — not because 
 it is a Parisian story but merel3- because 
 it is related in a cafe of that city. Out 
 
 the noxious quagmire of the "Cousin 
 Betty" (which we dare not reproduce) 
 appears the flg'ure of a true and much- 
 abused wife, but the rest of the tale, al- 
 though one of the most popular in France, 
 exposes the social corruptions as merci- 
 lessly as does Zola in " La Teri-e." 
 
 "Cousin Pons" has been frequently, 
 translated ; it is moral and quite interest- 
 ing. We have included it in these vol- 
 umes among the Scenes from Private Life 
 because of several characters therein who 
 make their fii-ct appearance in this story. 
 
 "A Mysterious Affair," with which the 
 Scenes in Political Life open, contains one 
 of Balzac's most remarkable heroines, 
 Laui'ence de Cinq Cygne. Not only is she 
 beautiful but she is courageous. Though 
 thoroughly womanly in her heroism, she 
 is masculine in her endui-ance. She is a 
 sort of Jean d'Acre in society. The whole 
 ■^tory is decidedly tragic, but full of pathos 
 rather than hori'or. In " The Wrong 
 Side of Contemporaneous History " Bal- 
 zac again exalts virtue — "plain virtue," 
 as he calls it — in the person of Mademoi- 
 selle de Chanterie, in many ways the most 
 sublime woman in "The Human Comedy. " 
 Unliappy as a wife, wretched as a mother, 
 persecuted by everybody, apparently for- 
 gotten by God, she never despairs of man 
 or doubts the Almighty ; she sinks her 
 own miserj' in the divine mission of char- 
 ity. " Z. Marcas " is a curious little story, 
 the chief interest in which to Americans 
 will grow out of the fact that Balzac dis- 
 covered the name on a sign during one 
 of his midnight walks, rushed home and 
 wrote the story at one sitting out of the 
 phantasmagoria that the name had con- 
 jured up. 
 
 The Scenes from Militars- Life, which 
 we reprint in full, consist of one splendid 
 story and a fragment. Balzac's declared 
 intention to complete that portion of his 
 woi'k was unfortunately prevented by 
 death. " Les Chouans " is a story of the 
 revolution in the Vendee, and is filled with 
 incidents of ^that semi-barbaric struggle. 
 We reprint Mr. George Saintsbury's mas- 
 terly translation. The blind devotion of 
 the ignorant but frantically loyal peas- 
 ants is wonderfully portrayed, together
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 13 
 
 with the chivalrous heroism of the Royal- 
 ist chieftain. When we remember that 
 Balzac was a Monarchist who would have 
 enjoyed tlie era of Louis XIV., we cannot 
 wonder at his frequent exultation of the 
 Royalists at the expense of the Repub- 
 licans. A passionate and exciting- love 
 intrigue is interwoven with the Vendean 
 war, which in many ways relieves it of 
 its horrors. The " Passion in the Desert " 
 is a mere fragment, and we reprint it only 
 on account of its weirdness and its abso- 
 lute originalitj'. Balzac refers to the 
 storj' as that of " A Frenchman in 
 Egypt." We have inserted "Doomed 
 to Live," an episode of the Peninsular 
 War, in this division. 
 
 Li the Scenes of Countrj'- Life, which, 
 Balzac declares, represent the evening 
 of life, we have three tales, of which 
 "The Country Doctor" is the first. It 
 is really a long and rather dull essay on 
 philanthrop3' and good local government, 
 illustrated by the historj'^ of the conver- 
 sion of a wretched village into a busy, 
 thriving and populous distinct bj' the 
 benevolence and energy of the country 
 doctor. "The Cure of the Village" is 
 somewhat similar in idea but more com- 
 plicated, and is rendered verj' readable by 
 the introduction of a mysterious crime. 
 "The Peasantry," which completes the 
 Scenes of Country Life, is in many ways 
 remarkable. We have reprinted it in full. 
 A very rich landed proprietor, the Count 
 Montcornet, who dwells upon an extensive 
 estate, has incurred the jealousy of the 
 surrounding peasantry. Thej' unite in a 
 concerted plot to drive hiui out of their 
 counti'y and to secure the sub-division of 
 his immense domain. The count is an 
 old soldier of Napoleon, and, as may be 
 imagined, is not disposed to surrender 
 readily. He makes a long and gallant 
 fight, in which he is always in the right, 
 but the insidious and secret methods em- 
 ployed by his antagonists are such that 
 he is finally defeated, robbed and cast 
 out upon the world a wanderer. The 
 peasantry stop at no means to secure 
 their ends. The insatiable greed of the 
 richer class of peasants is drawn with 
 an etcher's art. So graphic is the narra- 
 
 tive that it suggests in the reader's mind 
 the picture of the count in the center of 
 a great web, surrounded by a host of vi- 
 cious and remorseless spiders intent upon 
 his destruction. M. Gaboreau imitated 
 this story in "La Clique d'Or." There 
 is more instruction in " The Peasantry " 
 than in anj' other one volume in " The 
 Human Comedy." It was the author's 
 last work, and is really the climax of his 
 scheme. 
 
 The Philosophical and Analytical studies 
 that follow are mere epilogues. " The 
 Bit of Ass's Skin " has been before re- 
 ferred to. It is a story of the Poe order, 
 something like this: — A young man, 
 about to commit suicide, becomes pos- 
 sessed of a talisman that will gratify 
 every wish, but at each exercise of de- 
 sire the piece of ass's skin, which serves 
 as a talisman, contracts, and as it shrinks 
 so does his life. He accepts the conditions 
 very much as Faust made his compact 
 with the devil. Being on the verge of 
 the grave, anjiihing that bettered his 
 condition seemed welcome. The talis- 
 man proves to be a gift from the Evil 
 One, and its recipient goes the same way 
 as his famous predecessor in the realm of 
 fiction. He grows to love life, and as the 
 shagreen shrinks smaller and smaller he 
 struggles against his fate, like a poor 
 wretch strapped in the electric chair at 
 Sing Sing. The fact that the story is an 
 impossibility condemns it as a part of 
 "The Human Comedy." The "Rtv 
 searches into the Absolute" errs on the 
 opposite side of simplicity and is wanting 
 in romantic interest. It is full of meta- 
 physics, and deals with a search for the 
 philosopher's stone. The book has often 
 been translated and is so well known that 
 we do not feel justified in reproducing it in 
 these volumes. Marguerite Claes, daugh- 
 ter of the monomaniac, is a fine specimen 
 of filial love. We reprint four of the 
 shorter stories in this sub-division, though 
 we have taken the liberty of inserting 
 them among the six other divisions. 
 "Louis Lambert" is a Swedenborgian 
 rhapsody, chiefly interesting as an ex- 
 ample of Balzac's varied study and wide 
 range of I'eading.
 
 14 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The Analytical studies deal with the 
 miseries of married life, and they are 
 so un-American in treatment that they 
 would have no interest whatever to our 
 readers. Balzac regarded the marriage 
 state as one of constant antagonism, and 
 believed that the feud always existed, open 
 or hidden. In America, marriage is re- 
 garded as a sacred and beautiful institu- 
 tion, sanctioned of God and blessed by 
 man, and we cannot understand the 
 phases of French life in which love- 
 matches are rare and marriage is a 
 matter of convenience and arbitration. 
 
 In the running review, which we have 
 here concluded, of Balzac's Comedy of 
 Human Life, we believe we have shown 
 the stupendous scope of the work, the 
 great variety of topics and characters 
 treated, and have, in a measure, at least, 
 combated the prevalent opinion that Bal- 
 zac was essentially an immoral writer. 
 He found French society in a very dis- 
 organized condition, and he wrote of it 
 as he found it. Like a Napoleon in the 
 field of letters, he rose from the social 
 
 disintegration that followed the Revo- 
 lution, and he described the French 
 people as they w'ere, always leaning to 
 the side of monarchy because he sincerely 
 believed that the stronger the govern- 
 ment the more secure the individual. He 
 was an industrious workman and, as one 
 of his most severe critics said of him, 
 "was too laborious a slave to the pen. 
 to find time to be personally immoral." 
 
 The ti'anslations have been made by 
 Mr. George Saintsbury, the distinguished 
 English scholar and critic ; E. P. Robins, 
 Mrs. Frederick M. Dey, Mrs. B. M. Sher- 
 man, and the editor. 
 
 The publisher and editor of this edition 
 of Balzac take pride in sa^-iiig that it does 
 not contain a word that can do harm, 
 and they have great pleasure in bringing 
 to the acquaintance of many thousand 
 American readers this Shakespeare of 
 prose fiction, whose imperishable name 
 will grow brighter with each new century. 
 
 Julius Chambers. 
 
 New York, January 1, 1893. 
 
 THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. 
 
 HoNORE DE Balzac was born at Tours 
 on the 20lh of May, 1799. There was no 
 authority for the aristocratic de in his 
 name. He inserted it himself. He was 
 a dreaming and solitary child, refusing to 
 play with his two sisters, and taking no 
 notice of the toys that were given him. 
 There was one exception ; he would spend 
 hours in a sort of ecstasy playing on a 
 violin, the strains he produced, discordant 
 to others, sounding to him divine melo- 
 dies. This passion for music he retained 
 all his life ; two of his philosophic studies 
 on the subject, "Gambara" and "Mas- 
 similla Doni," are among his most delicate 
 work. His faculty for reading showed it- 
 self at the age of five, when he read the 
 Holy Scriptures with absorbing interest. 
 He possessed himself with great rapidity 
 of the contents of every book that fell 
 into his hands. Science, philosophy, and 
 
 religion were his principal study, and he 
 even read dictionaries from end to end. 
 He was sent to the Oratorian College 
 at Vendome ; while there, at the age of 
 eleven, he w^rote a treatise on the Will, 
 which his teacher, with the true instinct 
 of a schoolmaster, burned. He would also 
 contrive to be punished in the lock-up, in 
 order to devote himself at leisure to the 
 books he preferred. To his reminiscences 
 of these days are due his marvelous pro- 
 duction, " Louis Lambert." His memory 
 retained the minutest details, consequently 
 this excessive reading produced a sort of 
 congestion in an undeveloped brain. At 
 the age of fourteen he was apparent]}' so 
 stupefied that it was necessary to remove 
 hiui from school. Yet he already had 
 glimpses of his futui'e fame. "You will 
 see," he once said to his sisters, "some 
 day I shall be famous."
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 15 
 
 About this time, in 1813, the family re- 
 moved to Paris, where young- Balzac was 
 sent to a well-known "pensionnat." At 
 the age of eighteen he received the diplo- 
 mas of bachelor and of licentiate of let- 
 ters, and then went through the courses 
 of law at the Sorbonne and the College 
 of France, simultaneously. Meanwhile, 
 in obedience to his parents, he worked in 
 the office of an advocate, and afterward 
 of a notary. 
 
 As he was completing his twenty-first 
 year, his parents required him to adopt 
 the profession of a notary' ; this he abso- 
 lutely refused to do, declaring that he had 
 long made up his mind to be an author. 
 
 " Do you know," said his father, " that 
 in literature if a man is not a master he is 
 a mere 'hack ' ? " 
 
 " Then I will be a master," said he. 
 
 Finding it impossible to move him, his 
 parents returned to the country, leaving 
 him with a very small allowance alone in 
 Paris. 
 
 His way of life and his privations at this 
 time are graphically' described in his let- 
 ters to his favorite sister Laure, afterward 
 Madame de Surville. His first garret was 
 in the Rue de Lesdiguieres. He frequently 
 did not go out for weeks at a time farther 
 than the nearest grocer, and that only in 
 order to buy coffee, which he consumed 
 at night while he read or wrote. He had 
 scarcely any fire, even in winter, and very • 
 little to eat. From the hard life that he 
 led at this time he contracted a tendency' 
 to violent attacks of toothache, recurring 
 all through his life. 
 
 His first literary production was a 
 drama called " Cromwell," which he read 
 to a company of friends ; they pronounced 
 it wortliless. After this he published, 
 chiefly under fictitious names, about thirty 
 novels, ten of which are now included un- 
 der the title "Works of Youth." 
 • At the age of twenty-five, as his pen 
 did not bring in sufficient to keep him, he 
 resolved to make enough by other means 
 to enable him to write as ho willed. He 
 borrowed funds from an old college friend, 
 and started a publishing business, but 
 owing to lack of interest with the book- 
 sellers it failed. His friend, not discour- 
 
 aged, lent him more money, and his 
 father, pleased that he was starting on 
 another career, added thirtj' thousand 
 francs. With this capital he opened a 
 printing-house in the Rue Marais-Saint- 
 Germain, where he set up twelve presses 
 and a type foundry. Under his direction 
 the most assiduous labor was expended 
 on every part of the establishment. Soon 
 after, the severe laws of the Restoration 
 restricting the liberty of the press were 
 enacted, and ruined the undertaking. 
 
 He was thus forced to return to litera- 
 ture, not only in order to live, but to pay 
 the debts which he had contracted in 
 trade. He was overburdened with debt 
 until the last year of his life. Among the 
 books in his library was one bound like 
 his own works, bearing the title "La 
 Tragedie Humaine; " it contained an ac- 
 count of his expenditures. 
 
 In 1827 he published, under the editor- 
 ship of a kindly "libraire," Monsieur 
 Levavasseur, the first book that was well 
 received, "Les Chouans." He now de- 
 voted himself entirely to the work of his 
 life — a history of the manners of his time. 
 As Dante has followed the development 
 of God's counsels in the " Commedia, " 
 called by posterity "divine," so Balzac 
 has laboriously analyzed the machinery 
 of human society in his " Comedie Hu- 
 manie." Nor did his literary work end 
 with this vast idea ; he started at least 
 two reviews, was the author of numerous 
 articles, four dramas, and many grotesque 
 tales after the manner of his great coun- 
 tryman Rabelais. These last are col- 
 lected in three volumes under the title of 
 "The Droll Stories." 
 
 The care and labor which he expended 
 on his works was immense. He wrote 
 the outline of his story down the middle 
 of a very wide sheet of paper, filled it in 
 both sides with additions, and then sent 
 it to be printed. This method he repeated 
 until he was satisfied. It is known that 
 the proofs of one of his stories ("Pier- 
 rette ") were thus corrected seventeen 
 times ; the cost of correction amounted to 
 three or four hundred francs more than 
 was realized by the sale of the book. His 
 mode of working was the despair of the
 
 16 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 compositors, who used to stipulate in their 
 agreements that they should never be 
 kept at work on Monsieur de Balzac's 
 manuscripts for more than two hours at 
 a time. 
 
 His characters were to him, as they 
 become to his readers, living realities. 
 " Come," said he one day at his sister's 
 when the conversation had turned on the 
 doings of some acquaintances or political 
 personages, " let us now talk about real 
 people and real sorrows ; let us talk of 
 'Eugenie Grandet,'" and he proceeded 
 to discuss the lovely characters in " La 
 Comedie Humaine." The number of per- 
 sons in that great work amounts to five 
 thousand, many of them appearing or 
 referred to again and again in different 
 stories. 
 
 In person Balzac was handsome, strong, 
 and healthy ; his capacity for enduring 
 fatigue enormous. The portrait used in 
 this volume is from the first complete 
 Paris edition of " The Human Comedy." 
 Though he was continually harassed by 
 bis creditors, a moment of joy made him 
 forget weeks of anxiety. The charm of 
 his personality and his persuasiveness 
 were so extraordinary that he induced 
 men of sober judgment to consent to the 
 wildest schemes. These he was perpctu- 
 aUj^ occupied in inventing in order to get 
 rich ; now it was the finding of the great 
 Mogul's jewel, now it was a mine or the 
 cultivation of opium in Corsica, now it 
 was the discovery of perpetual motion, 
 and now a plan for destroying the credit 
 of the German banking-houses. It is re- 
 markable that two of his schemes actu- 
 TkWy made the fortune of persons to whom 
 he incautiously intrusted them. He was 
 
 a man easily deceived and incapable of 
 deception. 
 
 In 1834 he became a candidate for the 
 Academic. This enlightened institution 
 rejected him Avith the excuse that his 
 affairs were not in a flourishing state. 
 There could scarcely be a more startling 
 example of the futility of State establish- 
 ments for the encouragement of literature 
 or art. 
 
 The anecdotes told of Balzac are count- 
 less. A recent volume entitled " An 
 Englishman in Paris" is larded with 
 them. His strange appearance and un- 
 usual habits have made his personality 
 attractive and familiar. During the time 
 that he was writing a story he used to go 
 to bed at half-past five, after his dinner, 
 and got up at eleven or twelve. Then, 
 clad in the monastic habit which he had 
 adopted as a dressing-gown, he wrote 
 until nine in the morning. When he was 
 not writing he frequentlj' spent the night 
 walking about Paris or in the country, 
 just as Dickens walked about London and 
 the Kentish hills. 
 
 In the year 1850 his dreams of wealth 
 were realized ; he married a rich Russian 
 lady, the Countess Eva de Hanska, to 
 whom he had dedicated "Pierrette" ten 
 years before. But close on the heels of 
 riches came death. Feeling his strength 
 fail him he hurried to Paris, and died 
 there four months after his marriage, in 
 the same year, 1850. 
 
 In religious opinion he was a pro- 
 nounced Catholic ; in politics a depided 
 Monarchist. 
 
 This greatest writer of modern fiction 
 in any language has been little known 
 to Americans.
 
 SCENES OF PRIVATE LIFE. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE PURSE. 
 
 There is a delicious moment for minds 
 given to expansion — the moment when 
 night exists not yet, and day exists no 
 long-er; when the glimmering t^\'ilight 
 casts over every object its soft tints or 
 its fantastic reflections, and invites a 
 reverie vagxiely wedded with the play of 
 light and shade . The silence which almost 
 always reigns at this instant renders it 
 more particularly dear to the artist, who, 
 collecting his thoughts, places himself at 
 some paces from his work, on which he 
 can labor no longer, and criticises it, 
 growing enraptured with the subject, 
 whose true significance flashes then on 
 the inner eye of genius. He who has not 
 stood pensive by the side of a friend dur- 
 ing this moment of poetic dreams, can 
 with difficulty comprehend its unspeaka- 
 ble privileges. Favored by the clair 
 obscur, the material means emploj^ed 
 by art to produce the effect of realities 
 disappear entirely. If it is a picture, the 
 personages represented seem to walk and 
 talk; the shade becomes shadow, the 
 light daylight, the flesh is alive, the eyes 
 move, the blood rims in the veins, and the 
 dress stuffs ghsten. Imagination comes 
 to the aid of every detail and sees only 
 the beauties of the work. At this hour 
 illusion reigns despotically, to be dis- 
 pelled, perhaps, by nightfall. Is not 
 illusion a sort of mental night which we 
 people with visions ? Then, illusion spreads 
 her wings ; she carries off the soul into a 
 world of fancies, a world fertile in volup- 
 tuous caprices, and where the artist for- 
 
 gets the world positive, yesterday and 
 tc-morrow, the future, everything, even 
 to his troubles, hght and heavy. 
 
 At this magic hour, a j'oung painter — 
 a man of talent, who followed his art for 
 the sake of art alone — had mounted on the 
 double ladder he made use of to paint a 
 large, tall picture, almost finished. There, 
 criticising and admiring himself in good 
 faith, floating on the current of his 
 thoughts, he sank into one of those 
 meditations which enchant and exalt the 
 soul, caressing and consoling it. His 
 reverie doubtless lasted long. Night fell. 
 Whether he had intended to come off the 
 ladder, or whether he had made an im- 
 prudent movement, fancying himself on 
 the floor — for the result did not permit 
 him to have a very clear idea of the cause 
 of his accident — he fell. His head struck 
 on a stool ; he lost consciousness, and re- 
 mained without movement during a lapse 
 of time whose duration was unknown to 
 him. A soft voice awoke him from the 
 species of torpor in which he was plunged. 
 As soon as he reopened his eyes, the sight 
 of a bright hglit made him quickly shut 
 them again ; but through the veil which 
 enveloped his senses, he could hear the 
 whispering of two women, and feel two 
 young, two timid hands, on which his 
 head reposed. He soon regained con- 
 sciousness, and was able to perceive, by 
 the glimmer of one of those old lamps 
 called o double courant d'air, the most 
 delicious young girl's head he had ever 
 seen — one of these heads which often pass 
 
 (17)
 
 18 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 for a caprice of the pencil, but which sud- 
 denly realized for him those theories of 
 ideal beauty each artist creates for him- 
 self, and from which he derives his talent. 
 The countenance of the unknown belonged, 
 so to speak, to the fine and delicate type 
 of the school of Prudhon, and possessed 
 also the poetry with which Gii'odet en- 
 dows his fancy portraits. The freshness 
 of the temples, the regularity of the eye- 
 brows, the purity of the outlines, the 
 chastity strong'lj^ stamped on every feat- 
 ure of this countenance, made of the young 
 girl a perfect creature. Her figure was 
 slight and supple ; the contour was deli- 
 cate. Her dress, plain and clean, an- 
 nounced neither riches nor poverty. On 
 coming to himself, the painter expressed 
 his admiration by a look of surprise, and 
 murmured some confused thanks. He 
 found his forehead bound with a handker- 
 cliief, and recognized, notwithstanding the 
 peculiar odor of an atelier, the strong smell 
 of ether, doubtless used to restore him from 
 his swoon ; and at length he saw an old 
 woman, who looked like a marquise of 
 the ancien regime, and was holding the 
 lamp and giving directions to the young 
 unknown. 
 
 " Sir," replied the young girl to one of 
 the inquiries made by the painter during 
 the moment in which he was still a prey 
 to all the confusion of ideas produced by 
 his fall, " my mother and I heard the 
 noise of your fall on the floor, and we 
 thought we distinguished a groan. The 
 sUence which succeeded alarmed us, and 
 we made haste up. Finding the key in 
 the door, we fortunately ventured in, and 
 found you stretched on the ground with- 
 out motion. My mother went to get 
 everything necessary to make a bandage 
 and restore you. You are wounded on 
 the forehead — ^there. Do you feel it ? " 
 
 "Yes, now," said he. 
 
 "Oh, it will be nothing," put in the 
 old mother. " Your head, luckily, struck 
 against this model." 
 
 "1 feel infinitely better," replied the 
 painter. " I only want a cab to return 
 home. The portier will go and fetch me 
 one." 
 
 He wanted to reiterate his thanks to 
 
 the two unknown; but at every speech 
 the old lady interrupted him with, " Take 
 care you put on some leeches to-morrow, 
 sir, or have yourself bled ; take some medi- 
 cine; take care of yourself. Falls are 
 dangerous." 
 
 The young girl glanced stealthily at 
 the painter and at the pictures in the 
 atelier. Her countenance and her looks 
 revealed a perfect modesty ; her curiosity 
 was rather absence of mind , and her eyes 
 seemed to express that interest which 
 women take, with such graceful impul- 
 siveness, in all our misfortunes. The two 
 unknown seemed to forget the painter's 
 works in the presence' of tlie painter's 
 sufferings. When he had reassured them 
 as to his state, they left, after examining 
 him with a solicitude cquallj^ devoid of 
 obtrusivencss and familiarity, without 
 asking anj' indiscreet questions, or seek- 
 ing to inspire him with a desire to become 
 acquainted with them. Their actions were 
 marked with an exquisite simplicity and 
 good taste. Their manners, noble yet 
 simple, produced at first little effect on 
 the painter ; but afterward, when he 
 was thinking- over all the circumstances 
 of this event, he was much struck by 
 them. 
 
 Oil arriving at the floor below that on 
 which the atelier of the painter was sit- 
 uated, the old lady exclaimed softly, 
 " Adelaide, you have left the door open." 
 
 " It was to come to my assistance," 
 replied the painter, with a smile of grati- 
 tude. 
 
 "You came down just now, mother," 
 answered the young girl, blushing. 
 
 "Shall we accompany you to the bot- 
 tom ? " said the mother to the painter. 
 " The staircase is dark." 
 
 "Thank you, madame, I am much 
 better." • 
 
 " Take hold of the banister." 
 
 The two women remained on the mat 
 to light the young man, listening to the 
 sound of his footsteps. 
 
 In order to explain how attractive and 
 unexpected this scene was to the painter, 
 we must add that he had been only a few 
 days installed in his atelier at the top of 
 this house, situated in the darkest and
 
 THE PURSE. 
 
 19 
 
 muddiest part of the Rue de Suresnes, 
 almost in front of the Church of the 
 Madeleine, a few steps frona his apart- 
 ments, which were in the Rue des 
 Champs Elysees. The celebrity he had 
 acquired by his talents having rendered 
 him one of the artists dearest to France, 
 he was just getting- beyond the reach of 
 want, and enjoying, to use his own ex- 
 pression, his last privations. Instead of 
 going to work in one of those ateliers 
 situated near the barriers, whose moder- 
 ate rent had formerly been in proportion 
 to the modesty of his earnings, he had 
 satisfied a wish of daily recurrence by 
 saving himself a long walk and a loss of 
 time become more precious than ever to 
 him. 
 
 Nobody in the world would have in- 
 spired more interest than Hippolj'te 
 Schinner, if he would have consented to 
 make himself known ; but he did not 
 lightly disclose the secrets of his life. Ho 
 was the idol of a poor mother who had 
 brought him up at the price of the hard- 
 est privations. Mademoiselle Schinner, 
 the daughter of an Alsatian farmer, had 
 never been married. Her tender heart 
 had once been cruelly outraged \>y a rich 
 man, who did not pride himself on any 
 great delicacy in his amours. The day on 
 which this j'oung girl, in all the splendor 
 of her beauty and in all the pride of her 
 life, underwent, at the expense of her 
 heart and its fairest illusions, that disen- 
 chantment which comes upon us so slowly 
 and yet so sharply (for we try to post- 
 pone as long as possible our belief in evil, 
 and it always seems to come too suddenly) 
 — this day was a whole age of reflections, 
 and it was also a day of religious ideas 
 and of resignation. She refused the 
 alms of the man who had deceived her, 
 renounced the world, and made her fault 
 her pride. She gave herself up entirely 
 to maternal love, seeking in that, instead 
 of the enjoyments of society to which she 
 had bidden adieu, all her pleasures. She 
 lived by her labor, accumulating a treas- 
 ure in her son ; and later on, one'day, one 
 hour repaid her for all the long and slow 
 sacrifices of her poverty'. At the last 
 Exhibition, her son had received the cross 
 
 of the Legion of Honor. The papers, 
 unanimous in favor of an unknown tal- 
 ent, resounded still with smcere praises. 
 The artists themselves recognized Schin- 
 ner as a master, and the dealers covered 
 his pictures with gold. 
 
 At five and twentj', Hippolyte Schin- 
 ner, to whom his mother had transmitted 
 her woman's nature, understood better 
 than ever his position in the world. 
 Wishing to restore his mother to the en- 
 joyments of which society- had so long 
 deprived her, he lived for her, hoping by 
 dint of glory and fortune to see her, one 
 day, happy, rich, esteemed, and sur- 
 rounded by celebrated men. Thus, Schin- 
 ner had chosen his friends from the most 
 honorable and distinguished men. Par- 
 ticular in the choice of his acquaintance, 
 he wished still further to elevate his posi- 
 tion, which his talent had already raised 
 so high. Bj' forcing him to remain in 
 solitude, the mother of great ideas, the 
 hard work to which be had been devoted 
 from his j'outh had allowed him to retain 
 the simple faith which embellishes the 
 first season of our life. His youthful 
 mind was not unacquainted with anj' one 
 of the thousand forms of chastity which 
 make the young man a being apart, 
 whose heart abounds in felicities, in poe- 
 sies, in virgin desires, weak in the eyes of 
 worn-out natures, but profound because 
 they are simple. He was endowed with 
 those soft and polished mannei's which 
 become the mind so well, and seduce even 
 those who cannot understand them. He 
 was well made. His voice, which sprang 
 from the heart, touched the noble senti- 
 ments of other hearts, and bore witness 
 to a true modesty by a certain candor of 
 accent. On looking nt him, you felt your- 
 self drawn toward him by one of those 
 moral attractions which the savants, fort- 
 unately, cannot analyze ; they would find 
 in it some phenomenon of galvanism, or 
 the action of some unknown fluid, and 
 would regulate our sentiments by the 
 proportions of oxygen and electricity-. 
 These details will perhaps enable people 
 of a bold character, and men famed for 
 their neckties, to understand why, during 
 the absence of the portier, whom he had
 
 20 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 sent to the bottom of the Rue de la Mad- 
 eleine for a cab, Hippolj'te Schinner did 
 not ask a sing-le question of the portiere 
 about the two persons who had shown 
 him so much good nature. But, although 
 he only answered " Yes " and " No " to 
 the questions, natural in such a case, 
 which were asked him by this woman 
 about his accident and the friendly inter- 
 ference of the lodgers who occupied the 
 fourth floor, he could not prevent her 
 from obeying the instinct of a porter; 
 she would talk to him about the two un- 
 known, in the interests of her policy, and 
 according to the subterranean judgment 
 of her lodge. 
 
 " Ah ! " said she, " it was, no doubt, 
 Mademoiselle Leseigneur and her mother, 
 who have been living here four years. 
 We don't know yet what these ladies are. 
 In the morning, an old charwoman, who 
 is as deaf and talks as much as a stone 
 wall, comes to do for them up to twelve 
 o'clock ; in the evening, two or three old 
 gentlemen, decorated* like you, sir — and 
 one of them has got his carriage and 
 servants, and is worth sixty thousand 
 francs a year, they say — come to see 
 them, and sometimes stop very late. 
 Altogether they are very quiet tenants, 
 like you, sir ; and, besides, they are eco- 
 nomical, and live on almost nothing. 
 Directly a letter comes, they pay for it. 
 It's queer, sir, that the mother goes by 
 a different name to the daughter. Ah ! 
 when they go to the Tuileries, mademoi- 
 selle is very smart, and never goes out 
 without being followed by the young fel- 
 lows; but she shuts the door in their face, 
 and quite right too. The landlord would 
 not allow—" 
 
 The cab came up ; Hippolyte heard no 
 more, and returned home. His mother, 
 to whom he related his adventure, re- 
 dressed his wound, and did not allow him 
 to go to his atelier the next day. After 
 a consultation, divers prescriptions were 
 given, and Hippolyte remained three days 
 in the house. During this seclusion, his 
 unoccupied imagination reproduced in 
 
 * Decore — wearing tlie ribbon of the Legion of 
 Honor or some other order. 
 
 lively colors, and, as it were, in frag- 
 ments, the detaUs of the scene which 
 followed his fainting. The profile of the 
 young girl stood out strongly on the 
 background of his inner vision. He saw 
 the withered face of the mother, or felt 
 again the hands of Adelaide ; he recalled 
 a gesture which had not struck him at 
 first, but whose exquisite grace was thrown 
 into relief by recollection ; then an atti- 
 tude, or the tone of a melodious voice 
 embeUished by the perspective of mem- 
 orj^, suddenly reappeared like an object 
 which, after sinking to the bottom of the 
 water, returns to the surface. And so, 
 the first day he could resume work, he 
 returned earlier to the atelier ; but the 
 visit he was incontestibly entitled to pay 
 his neighbors was the true cause of his 
 haste. He had already forgotten his 
 half-painted picture. At the moment 
 when passion throws off its swaddling 
 clothes, it falls into those inexpressible 
 pleasures which those who have loved 
 can understand. Thus, some people will 
 know why the painter slowly mounted 
 the stairs of the fourth floor, and will be 
 in the secret of the palpitations which 
 rapidly succeeded each other in his heart, 
 the moment he saw the brown door of 
 the modest apartments inhabited by 
 Mademoiselle Leseigneur. This young 
 girl, who did not bear the name of her 
 mother, had awoke a thousand sym- 
 pathies in the breast of the young 
 painter ; he tried to see a similarity of 
 position between her and himself, and 
 endowed her with the misfortunes of his 
 own origin. 
 
 Even while at work, Hippolyte gave 
 himself up very complacently to thoughts 
 of love, and made a great deal of noise to 
 compel the two ladies to think about him 
 as he was thinking of them. He stayed 
 very late at the atelier, dined there, and 
 then, about seven o'clock, went down to 
 see his neighbors. 
 
 No painter of manners has dared to 
 initiate us, perhaps from modesty, into 
 the really curious interiors of certain 
 Parisian existences — into the secrets of 
 those dwellings from which issue such 
 fresh and elegant toilets, such briUiant
 
 THE PURSE. 
 
 women, who, rich out of doors, betray on 
 all sides at home the signs of an equivocal 
 fortune. If the picture is here too can- 
 didly drawn, if you find it too much spun 
 out, do not accuse the description wliich 
 is, so to speak, incorporated with the 
 story ; for the aspect of the apartments 
 inhabited by his two neighbors had a 
 great deal of influence on the sentiments 
 and hopes of Hippolyte Schinner. 
 
 The house belonged to one of those 
 landlords in whom there exists a pro- 
 found horror of repairs and embellish- 
 ments, one of those men who consider 
 tlieir position of a Parisian landlord as 
 a trade. In the great chain of moral 
 species, these people hold a middle place 
 between the miser and the usurer. Opti- 
 mists by calculation, they are all faithful 
 to the statu quo of Austria. If you talk 
 about moving a cupboard or a door, or 
 opening the most necessary of ventilators, 
 their ej-es sparkle, their bile is stirred ui>, 
 they rear hke frightened horses. When 
 the wind blows down some of their chim- 
 ney-pots, they fall ill, and abstain from 
 going to the Gymnase or the Porte St. 
 Martin on account of repairs. Hippol_>i;e, 
 who, on account of certain embelUsh- 
 nients to be made in his atelier, had had 
 gratis a comic scene with the Sieur Moli- 
 neux, was not astonished at the dark and 
 greasy shades, the oily tints, the spots, 
 and other disagreeable accessories which 
 decorated tlie wooden fittings. Besides, 
 these stigmas of poverty are not without 
 poetry in the eyes of an artist. 
 
 Mademoiselle Leseigneur came herself 
 to open the door. On recognizing the 
 young painter, she bowed to him ; and at 
 the same time, with Parisian dexterity 
 and the presence of mind given by pride, 
 she turned to close the door of a glazed 
 pai'tition, tlirough which Hippolyte might 
 have caught sight of some linen hanging 
 on the ropes above the economical stove, 
 an old folding-bed, the braise, the coals, 
 the flat-irons, the filter, the crockery, and 
 all the utensils peculiar to small establish- 
 ments. Tolerably clean muslin curtains 
 carefully concealed this capharnaum — a 
 word used to designate familiarly these 
 species of laboratories — badly lighted be- 
 
 sides by a borrowed light from a neigh- 
 boring courtyard. With the rapid glance 
 of an artist, Hippolji;e perceived the des- 
 tination, the fiu'niture, the general effect, 
 and the state of this fli'st room cut in two. 
 The honorable part, which served at once 
 as antechamber and dining-room, was 
 papered with an old "aurora-colored" 
 paper, vnth a velvet border, no doubt 
 manufactured by Reveillon, the holes and 
 spots in which had been carefully hidden 
 v>'ith wafers. Prints, representing the 
 battles of Alexander by Lebrun, but in 
 worn - out gilt frames, symmetrically 
 adorned the walls. In the middle of 
 this room was a solid mahogany table, 
 of old-fashioned shape, and worn at the 
 edges. A small stove, whose upright, 
 unbent pipe was scarcely perceptible, 
 stood in front of the fireplace, wliich was 
 turned into a cupboard. By an odd con- 
 trast, the chairs displayed some vestiges 
 of past splendor; they were of car%-ed 
 mahogany, but the red morocco of the 
 seat, the gilt nails, and gimp showed 
 scars as numerous as those of a sergeant 
 of the Old Guard. This room served as 
 a museum for certain things which are 
 only met with in these sorts of amphibious 
 households, objects without a name, par- 
 taking at once of luxury and poverty. 
 
 Among other curiosities, Hippol^'te re- 
 marked a magnificently ornamental tele- 
 scope, hanging above the little greenish 
 glass which decorated the chimney-. To 
 match this strange piece of furniture, 
 there was a shabby buffet, pointed like 
 mahogany — the wood of all others most 
 difficult to imitate — between the chimney 
 and tlie partition. But the red * and 
 slippery floor, the little bits of shabby 
 carpet placed before the chairs, the furni- 
 ture, everything, shone with that labori- 
 ous cleanliness which lends a false luster 
 to old things, while showing up still more 
 strongly their defects, their age, and long 
 service. There reigned in this room an 
 indefinable odor, resulting from the ex- 
 halations of the capharnaxim , mixed with 
 
 * In the old-fashioned houses of Paris the floors 
 were sometimes of red tiles, and never carpeted 
 all over.
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY 
 
 the vapors of the diningr-room and the 
 staircase, although the window was left 
 open and the street air stirred the muslin 
 curtains, which were carefully drawn in 
 order to hide the embrasure, where pre- 
 ceding tenants had left signs of their 
 presence in divers incrustations or spe- 
 cies of domestic frescoes. 
 
 Adelaide quickly opened the door of 
 the other room, into which she intro- 
 duced the painter with a certain pleas- 
 ure. Hii)polyte, who had formerly seen 
 in liis mother's time the same signs of 
 indigence, remarked them with the singu- 
 lar vivacity which characterizes the first 
 acquisitions of memor^^ and entered, far 
 better than another could have done, into 
 the details of this existence. On recog- 
 nizing the familiar objects of his infancy, 
 this good young man felt neither con- 
 tempt for this hidden misery, nor pride 
 in the luxui-y he had just won for his 
 mother. 
 
 " Well, sir, I hope yon do not feel the 
 effects of your fall," said the old mother, 
 rising from an old-fashioned easy-chair 
 placed at the corner of the chimney, and 
 offering him a seat. 
 
 " No, niadame. I am come to thank 
 you for your kind offices, and particu- 
 lai^ly mademoiselle, who heard me fall." 
 
 In making this speech, stamped with 
 the adorable stupidity which springs 
 from the first embarrassment of real 
 love, Hippohte looked at the young 
 girl. Adelaide was lighting the lamp 
 ci double courant d'air, no doubt in 
 order to render invisible a candle stuck 
 in a large brass candlestick, and orna- 
 mented with some striking designs by 
 an extraordinarj' g-uttering. She bowed 
 slightly, went to put the candlestick in 
 the antechamber, returned to place the 
 lamp on the chimney, and sat down by 
 her mother, a little behind the painter, 
 in order to be able to look at him at her 
 ease, while appearing- very much occu- 
 pied with the burning up of the lamp, 
 whose flame, damped by tlie moisture of 
 a dull glass, sputtered and struggled 
 with a black and badlj- cut wick. Seeing 
 the large glass which adorned the chim- 
 ney, Hippol^'te quickly cast his eyes on 
 
 it to admire Adelaide. Thus, the little 
 ruse of the young girl only served to em- 
 barrass them both. 
 
 Willie talking to Madame Leseigneur — 
 for Hippolyte gave her this- name at all 
 hazards — he examined the drawing-room, 
 but decentl^^ and stealthily. You could 
 scarcely see the Egyptian figures of the 
 iron andirons in a hearth full of cinders, 
 on which two brands tried to keep to- 
 gether before a sham log of brick, buried 
 as carefullj^ as the treasure of a miser. 
 An old Aubusson carpet, much mended, 
 much faded, and .as well-worn as a pen- 
 sioner's coat, did not cover all'tlie floor, 
 which struck cold to the feet. Tlie walls 
 were ornamented with a reddish paper, 
 representing a China silk with a yellow 
 pattern. In the middle of the wall, op- 
 posite the windows, the painter saw a 
 chink and the break produced in the 
 paper by the two doors of an alcove, 
 in which Madame Leseigneur slept, no 
 doubt, which were scarcely masked by 
 a sofa placed before them. Opposite the 
 chimney, over a mahogany chiffonier of 
 a style not without richness and good 
 taste, hung the portrait of a soldier of 
 high rank, which the feeble light did not 
 allow the painter to see distinctly, but, 
 from what he could perceive, he fancied 
 this frightful daub must have been 
 painted in China. At the windows, the red 
 silk curtains were as discolored as the red 
 and yellow tapestry of the furniture of this 
 double-functioned room. On the marble 
 of the chiffonier stood a valuable mala- 
 chite salver, containing a dozen coffee- 
 cups magniflcentlj^ painted, and manu- 
 factured, no doubt, at Sevres. On the 
 mantelpiece figured the eternal clock of 
 the empire, a warrior guiding the four 
 horses of a chariot, whose wheel bears 
 at every spoke the number of an hour. 
 The wax candles in the candelabra were 
 turned yellow b^' the smoke, and at each 
 corner of the mantelpiece was a porcelain 
 vase surmounted by flowers, full of dust 
 and garnished with moss. In the middle 
 of the room, Hippolj'te remarked a card- 
 table all iDrepared, with some new cards 
 on it. There was something inexpres- 
 sibly affecting to an observer in the sight
 
 THE PURSE. 
 
 23 
 
 of this poverty painted like an old woman 
 who tries to make her face lie. At this 
 spectacle, every man of sense would have 
 proposed to himself secreth", and from 
 the beginning', this species of dilemma : 
 either these two women are honesty it- 
 self, or they live by intrig-ue and play. 
 But on looking at Adelaide, a young man 
 as pure as Schiuner would believe in the 
 most pei'fect innocence, and attribute 
 the incongruities of this furnishing to 
 the most honorable causes. 
 
 "My child," said the old lady to the 
 young girl, " I am cold ; make up the 
 fire, and give me my shawl.'' 
 
 Adelaide went into the adjacent room, 
 where, no doubt, she slept, and returned, 
 bringing to her mother a cashmere shawl 
 which must have cost a great deal when it 
 was new, for the pattern was Indian; but, 
 old, faded, and full of darns, it harmonized 
 with the furniture. Madame Leseigneur 
 put it on ver^' artistically, and with the 
 tact of an old woman who wishes the truth 
 of her words to be believ^ed. The young 
 girl ran nimblj' to the capharmaum, and 
 reappeared with a handful of small wood, 
 which she threw boldlj' on the fire to make 
 it burn up. 
 
 It would be difficult to transcribe the 
 conversation which took place between 
 these three persons. Guided b^' the tact 
 almost always acquired by a childhood 
 spent in misfortune, Hippolyte carefully' 
 avoided the least observation relative to 
 the position of his neighbors, seeing 
 around hiui the sj-mptoms of an embar- 
 rassment so badly disguised. The most 
 simple question might have been indis- 
 creet, unless from the mouth of an old 
 friend. Nevertheless, the painter was 
 profoundly affected by this hidden mis- 
 ery ; his generous heart suffered ; but, 
 knowing how offensive any kind of pity, 
 even the most friendly, may appear, he 
 felt ill at ease from the discordance which 
 existed between his thoughts and his 
 words. The two ladies talked at first 
 about painting, for women divine so well 
 the secret embarrassment of a first visit ; 
 perhaps tliey feel it themselves, and their 
 feminine instinct furnishes them with a 
 thousand resources for putting- an end to 
 
 it. While questioning the young man 
 about the material process of his art, 
 and about his studies, Adelaide and her 
 mother inspired him with courage to talk. 
 The indefinable workings of their conver- 
 sation, animated with benevolence, led on 
 Hippolyte quite naturally to let fall re- 
 marks or reflections which indicated the 
 nature of his habits and his heart. 
 
 Grief had prematurely aged the face of 
 the old lady, doubtless handsome in its 
 day ; but there remained nothing but the 
 striking features, the outline — in a word, 
 the skeleton of a countenance which, taken 
 altogether, indicated great refinement ; 
 much grace in the play of the eyes, which 
 recalled the expression peculiar to the wo- 
 men of the old court, and which no words 
 can define. These features, so small and 
 so refined, might just as well denote an 
 evil disposition, and indicate feminine cun- 
 ning and craft carried to a high degree of 
 perversity, as reveal the delicacy of a noble 
 mind. In fact, the feminine physiognomy 
 is so far embarrassing to common observ- 
 ers, that the difference between frankness 
 and duplicity, between the spirit of in- 
 trigue and the spirit of honor, is imper- 
 ceptible. The man endowed with pene- 
 trating insight divines the imperceptible 
 shades produced hy a profile more or less 
 bold, a dimple more or less hollow, a feat- 
 ure more or less arched or prominent. 
 The appreciation of these diagnostics is 
 entirelj' in the domain of intuition, which 
 alone can discover what everybody' is in- 
 tei'ested in concealing. It was the same 
 with the countenance of the old lady as 
 with the apartments she inhabited ; it 
 seemed as difficult to tell whether their 
 poverty sheltered viciousness or strict pro- 
 bity, as to decide whether the mother of 
 Adelaide was an old coquette, accustomed 
 to weigh everything, to calculate everj'- 
 thing, and to sell ever\'thing, or an affec- 
 tionate woman, full of nobility and amiable 
 qualities. But at the age of Schinner, the 
 first impulse of the heart is to believe in 
 good ; and in contemplating the noble and 
 almost disdainful brow of Adelaide, and 
 looking into her eyes full of soul and of 
 thought, he inhaled, so to speak, the sweet 
 and modest perfume of virtue.
 
 24 
 
 THE HUMAX COMEDY. 
 
 In the middle of the conversation, he 
 seized the opportunity of talking- about 
 portraits in general, in order to luive a 
 rig'ht to examine the frightful pastel, the 
 colors of which had all faded, and the 
 principal part of its surface fallen a\va3^ 
 
 " You prize this picture, no doubt, for 
 the sake of the likeness, ladies, for the 
 drawing is hoi*rible," said he, looking at 
 Adelaide. 
 
 "It was done at Calcutta, in great 
 haste," replied the mother in a voice of 
 emotion. 
 
 She gazed at the shapeless sketch with 
 the profound abstraction caused by the 
 I'ecoUections of happiness, when they 
 awake and fall on the heart, like a be- 
 neficent dew to whose refreshing influence 
 we love to abandon ourselves ; but there 
 were also in the expression of the counte- 
 nance of the old lady the vestiges of an 
 eternal mourning. At least, tlie painter 
 chose thus to interpret the attitude and 
 the phj'siognomy of his neighbor, by whose 
 side he came and sat down. 
 
 "Madame," said he, "in a very short 
 time the colors of this pastel will liave 
 disappeared. The portrait will exist no 
 longer except in your memory. Where 
 you see a face dear to 3'ou, others will 
 perceive nothing. Will you permit me to 
 transfer this likeness to canvas ? It will 
 be more firmly fixed on that than it is on 
 this paper. Allow me, as a neighbor, the 
 pleasure of rendering yo\x this service. 
 There are always liours in which an artist 
 is happy to amuse himself, after his grand 
 compositions, hy works of a less elevated 
 chai'acter, and it will be an amusement 
 for me to reproduce this head." 
 
 The old lady heard these words with a 
 start of joy, and Adelaide cast on the 
 painter one of those concentrated glances 
 which seem to be an emanation of the 
 soul. Hippolyte wislied to attach himself 
 to his two neighbors by some tie, and to 
 obtain the right of mingling with their 
 life. His offer, addressed to the warmest 
 affections of the heart, was the onl^' one 
 he could possibly make ; it gratified his 
 artist's pride, and could not offend the 
 two ladies. Madame Leseigneur accepted 
 it without eagerness or reluctance, but 
 
 with the con.scientiousness of great minds 
 which comprehend the extent of the ties 
 formed by such obligations, and consti- 
 tute them a magnificent eulogj', a proof 
 of esteem. 
 
 " This uniform," said the painter, 
 "seems to be that of a naval oniccr?" 
 
 " Yes," said she ; " it is that of a post 
 captain. Monsieur de Rouville, my hus- 
 band, died at Batavia, of a wound received 
 in a combat with an English vessel which 
 he encountered on the coast of Asia. He 
 commanded a frigate of fift^'-six guns, 
 and thei?et;en(/ewas a ship of ninety-six. 
 The combat was very unequal, but he de- 
 fended himself so courag-eously that he 
 kept it up until night enabled him to 
 escape. When I returned to France, 
 Bonaparte was not yet in power, and 
 the^' refused me a pension. When I re- 
 newed my application lately, the minister 
 hai'shly told me tliat if the Baron de Rou- 
 ville had emigrated, I should not have lost 
 him : that he would doubtless have been 
 a rear admiral by this time ; in short, his 
 excellency' concluded by referring me to I 
 don't know what law of forfeiture. I only 
 took this step, to which I was urged by 
 my friends, for the sake of my poor Ade- 
 laide. I have alwaj^s had a repugnance 
 to hold out my hand in the name of an 
 affliction which deprives a woman of 
 speech and strength. I do not like this 
 pecuniary valuation of blood irreparably' 
 si^illed." 
 
 " Mamma, this subject of conversation 
 always upsets 3'ou." 
 
 At this remark of Adelaide's the Bar- 
 oness Leseigneur de Rouville bowed her 
 head and remained silent. 
 
 "Sir," said the young gii-l to Hip- 
 polyte, " I thought that a painter's work 
 was not generally very noisy." 
 
 At this question Schinner began to 
 blush at the remembrance of the disturb- 
 ance he had made. Adelaide did not 
 finish, and spared him some falsehood by 
 rising suddenly at the sound of a carriage 
 which stopped at the door. She went into 
 her room, and returned immediately car- 
 rying two gilt candlesticks, holding half- 
 burned wax-candles, which she quickly 
 lighted ; and without waiting for the
 
 THE PURSE. 
 
 25 
 
 ringing of the bell, slie opened the door 
 of the first room, and left the lamp there. 
 The sound of a kiss given and received 
 re-echoed in the heart of Hippolyte. The 
 impatience of the j'oung man to see the 
 person who treated Adelaide so familiarl.y 
 was not very quickly satisfied ; the new 
 arrivals had a whispered conversation 
 with the 3'ouug girl, which appeared very 
 long to him. 
 
 At length Mademoiselle de Ron villa re- 
 appeared, followed hx two men whose cos- 
 tume, physiognomy, and aspect were a 
 history- in themselves. The first, aged 
 about sixty, wore one of those coats in- 
 vented, I believe, for Louis XVIII., then 
 reig-ning', and in which the most difficult 
 of sumptuary problems was solved by a 
 tailor who ought to have been immortal. 
 This ai'tist recog-nized, assuredly, the art 
 of transition, which was the sole genius 
 of this politically shifting age. Is it not 
 a rare merit to be able to judge one's 
 epoch ? 
 
 This coat, which the young men of the 
 day may take for a myth, was neither 
 civil nor military, and might pass by 
 turns for military or for civil. Embi'oid- 
 ered fleurs-de-lis ornamented the flaps of 
 the tails; the gilt buttons were likewise 
 fleur-de-lised. On the shoulders, two 
 empty sti"aps demanded useless epaulets. 
 These two military emblems looked like a 
 petition without an address. With the 
 old man, the button-hole of this coat, 
 which was made of blue cloth, was adorned 
 with several ribbons. No doubt he alwaj'S 
 held in his hand his three-cornered hat 
 trimmed with gold coi'd, for the snow_y 
 locks of his powdered hair showed no 
 trace of the pressure of a hat. He did 
 not look more than fifty, and appeared 
 to enjoy robust health. While pi'oclaim- 
 ing the frank and loyal character of the 
 old emigrants, his physiognomy also de- 
 noted the easy and libertine manners, the 
 gay passions and carelessness, of those 
 mousquetaires formerl3- so celebrated in 
 the annals of gallantry. His actions, his 
 gait, his manners announced that he 
 would not easily give up either his royal- 
 ism, or his religion, or his amours. 
 
 A truly fantastic figure followed this 
 
 imposing voltigeur de Louis XIV. (such 
 was the nickname given by the Bonapart- 
 ists to these noble remains of the Mon- 
 archy) ; but in order to paint it properly, 
 it would have to be made the principal 
 object of a picture in which it is only an 
 accessory. Imagine a lean and dried-up 
 personage, dressed like the first, but being 
 only, so to speak, his reflection, or his 
 shadow, if you like. The coat of the one 
 was new ; the other's was old and faded. 
 The powder of the hair seemed less white 
 in the second, the gold of the fleurs-de-lis 
 less shining, the shoulder-straps more de- 
 spairing and more shriveled up, the intel- 
 lect weaker, the life further advanced to- 
 ward the fatal term, than in the first. In 
 short, he realized the saj'ing of Rivarol 
 about Champcenetz : " He is my moon- 
 light." He was only the double of the 
 other — a pale and poor double, for there 
 existed between them the same difference - 
 as between the first and the last impres- 
 sion of a lithograph. This dumb old man 
 was a mysterj' to the painter, and re- 
 mained a constant mystery. The cheva- 
 lier — for he was a chevalier — did not 
 speak, and nobody spoke to him. Was 
 he a friend, a poor relation, a man 
 who accompanied the old gallant like 
 an old lady's companion? Was he the 
 medium between the dog, the parrot, 
 and the friend ? Had he saved the fort- 
 une, or only the life of his benefactor ? 
 Was he the Trim of another Captain 
 Toby ? Elsewhere, as at the Baroness de 
 Rouville's, he always excited curiosity 
 without ever satisfying it. Who could 
 recollect, under the Restoration, the at- 
 tachment which, before the Revolution, 
 united this chevalier to his friend's wife, 
 dead twenty years ago ? 
 
 The personage who appeared the most 
 modern of these two ancient men ad- 
 vanced gallantly toward the Baroness 
 de Rouville, kissed her hand, and sat 
 down beside her. The other bowed and 
 placed himself at a distance represented 
 by two chaii's from his original. Ade- 
 laide came and leaned her elbows on the 
 back of the chair occupied bv the old 
 gentleman, imitating, without knowing 
 it, the attitude given by Guerin to the
 
 26 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 sister of Dido in his celebrated picture. 
 Although the familiaritj' of the old gen- 
 tleman was that of a father, his liberties 
 appeared for the moment to displease the 
 young girl. 
 
 *■ Well, are you cross with me ? " said 
 he. 
 
 Then he cast on Schinner one of those 
 oblique glances, full of shrewdness and 
 cunning — a diplomatic glance, whose ex- 
 pression betrayed the prudent anxietj', 
 the polite curiosity of well-bred people, 
 who seem to inquire, on seeing an un- 
 known, 'Ms he one of us ? " 
 
 " You see a neighbor of ours," said the 
 old lady, pointing to Hippolyte. "This 
 gentleman is a celebrated painter, whose 
 name must be known to you in spite of 
 your indifference to the arts." 
 
 The gentleman noticed the ingenuity of 
 his old friend in the omission of the name, 
 and bowed to the j'oung man. 
 
 "Cei^tainly," said he, " I have heard a 
 great deal of his pictures at the last Ex- 
 hibition. Talent has great privileges, 
 sir," added he, looking at the artist's 
 red ribbon. " This distinction, which we 
 have to win at the price of our blood and 
 long services, you obtain while you are 
 young'. But all honoi's are kindred," 
 added he, putting his hand on his cross 
 of St. Louis. 
 
 Hippolyte murmured some words of 
 thanks, and relapsed into silence, con- 
 tenting himself with admiring with in- 
 creasing enthusiasm the splendid head 
 of the young girl, "by which he was 
 charmed. Ho soon became absorbed in 
 this contemplation, and thought no more 
 of the poorness of the place. For him, 
 the face of Adelaide was encircled by a 
 luminous atmosphere. He replied briefly 
 to the questions addressed to him, which 
 he fortunately' heard, thanks to a singu- 
 lar faculty of the mind, whose ideas maj' 
 sometimes become in a manner divided. 
 To whom has it not happened to remain 
 plunged in a reverie, either voluptuous or 
 sad, and hear its voice within his breast, 
 wliile listening to a conversation or a 
 reading ? Admirable dualism, which often 
 helps us to have patience with bores ! 
 Fertile and smiling, hope spread before 
 
 him a thousand thoughts of happiness, 
 and he no longer wished to notice any- 
 thing around him. A child, full of confl- 
 dence, it seemed to him a shame to ana- 
 lyze pleasure. After a certain lapse of 
 time, lie perceived that the old lady and 
 her daughter were playing at cards with 
 the old gentleman. As to the latter's 
 satellite, keeping up his character of a 
 shadow, he stood behind his friend, ab- 
 sorbed in his game, replying to the mute 
 questions addressed to him hy the player 
 by little grimaces of approval which re- 
 plied to the interrogatory movements of 
 the other physiognomy. 
 
 "Du Halga, I always lose," said the 
 gentlema-n. 
 
 " You put out badly," replied the 
 Baroness de Rouville. 
 
 "For three months I have not won a 
 single game of you," he returned. 
 
 "Monsicnir le Comte, have j'ou the 
 aces ? " asked the old lad3'. 
 
 "Yes. One more scored," said he. 
 
 "Will you let me give you my advice ?" 
 said Adelaide. 
 
 "No, no; keep in front of me. Ventre 
 de biche ! it would be losing too much not 
 to have j'ou in sight." 
 
 At last the game came to an end. The 
 gentleman took out his purse, and throw- 
 ing two louis on the table, said pettishly', 
 " Fortj;' francs — as good as gold. And, 
 diantre! it is eleven o'clock." 
 
 "It is eleven o'clock," said the silent 
 personage, looking at the painter. 
 
 The 3'oung man, hearing this last word 
 rather more distinctly th;ni the others, 
 bethought him that it was time to retire. 
 Re-entering the world of ordinaiy ideas, 
 he took advantage of an opportunity to 
 join in the conversation, took leave of the 
 baroness, her daughter, and the two un- 
 known, and went away, a prey to the first 
 delights of true love, without seeking to 
 analyze the little incidents of the evening. 
 
 The next daj', the j'oung painter ex- 
 perienced a most violent desire to see 
 Adelaide again. If he had listened to his 
 passion, he would have called on his neigh- 
 bors at six in the morning, when he came 
 to his atelier. He had sense enough, how- 
 ever, to wait till the afternoon. But, as
 
 THE PURSE. 
 
 soon as he tliou|^hfc ho mi.ght present him- 
 self at Madame de Rouville's, he went 
 down ; rang- the bell, not without some 
 strong- palpitations of the heart ; and, 
 blushing- like a j'oung girl, timidly asked 
 Mademoiselle Leseig-neur, who had come 
 to open the door to him, for the portrait 
 of the Baron de Rouville. 
 
 " Come in, please," said Adelaide, who, 
 no doubt, had heard him come down from 
 his atelier. 
 
 The painter followed her, bashful and 
 confused, not knowing- what to say. So 
 nujch happiness made him stupid. To see 
 Adelaide, to listen to the rustle of her 
 dress, after ha\'ing- longed all the morning- 
 to be near her, after having got up a hun- 
 dred times and said, "I will go down ! " 
 and not going- down, was, for hun, such 
 a rapturous existence, that such sensa- 
 tions, too much prolong'ed, would have 
 exhausted his senses. The heart has the 
 singular power of putting- an extraordi- 
 nary price upon trifles. What joy for a 
 traveler to pick a blade of grass, an un- 
 known leaf, if he has risked his life in the 
 search for them ! It is the same with the 
 trifles of love. 
 
 The old lady was not in the room. 
 When the young girl found herself alone 
 with the paintei', she brought a chair to 
 get down the portrait ; but, on perceiving- 
 that she could not unhook it without 
 putting her foot on the chiffonier, she 
 turned to Hippolyte, and said with a 
 blush — 
 
 "I am not tall enough — will you get 
 it?" 
 
 A sentiment of modesty, proved by the 
 expression of her countenance and the 
 accent of her voice, was the true motive 
 of her request ; and the young- man, so 
 understanding it, gave her one of those 
 intelligent looks which are the softest 
 language of love. Seeing- that the painter 
 had understood her, Adelaide cast down 
 her eyes with a movement of pride, the 
 secret of which belongs to maidens. Not 
 finding a word to say, and almost abashed, 
 the painter took the picture, examined it 
 gravely by the light of the window, and 
 went awaj', without saying- any more to 
 Mademoiselle Leseigneur than — 
 
 "1 will soon bring it you back again." 
 
 During this rapid instant, they both of 
 them experienced one of those strong agi- 
 tations whose effects upon the mind may 
 be compared to those caused by a stone 
 thrown into a lake. The sweetest reflec- 
 tions arise and succeed each other, in- 
 definite, multiplied, and aimless, agitating 
 the heart like the retreating circles which 
 for a long while ruffle the water, starting 
 from the sjjot where the stone was thrown 
 in. 
 
 Hippolj'te returned to his atelier armed 
 with the portrait. Already his easel was 
 provided with a canvas, a palette was 
 charged with colors ; the brushes were 
 cleaned, and the place and the light 
 chosen ; and until dinner time he worked 
 at the portrait with the ardor which 
 artists infuse into their caprices. He re- 
 turned the same evening to the Baroness 
 de Rouville's, and sta^-ed from nine till 
 eleven. 
 
 Except the different subjects of conver- 
 sation, this evening exactly resembled 
 the previous one. The two old men ar- 
 rived at the same time, the same game 
 at piquet took place, the same phrases 
 were spoken by the players, the sum lost 
 by Adelaide's friend was as large as that 
 lost the evening before ; only Hippolyte, 
 grown a little bolder, ventured to talk to 
 the young girl. 
 
 Tlius passed a week, during which the 
 sentiments of the painter and of Adelaide 
 went through those delicious and gradual 
 transformations which lead the mind to a 
 perfect understanding. Thus, day by 
 day, the look with which Adelaide wel- 
 comed her friend became more friendly, 
 more confiding, more gay, more frank; 
 her voice, her manners, grew more sig- 
 nificant and more familiar. Tii(>y both 
 laughed and chatted, communicated their 
 thoughts to each other, and talked about 
 themselves with the simplicity of two 
 children who, in the space of one day, 
 have become as good friends as if they 
 had known each other for three years. 
 Schianer tried to learn piquet. Ignorant, 
 and a perfect novice, he naturallj' made 
 blunder on blunder ; and, like the old 
 man, he lost nearly everj' game. With-
 
 28 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 out having' yet confided to each other 
 their love, the two lovers knew that they 
 belong-ed to each other. Hippol^'te took 
 pleasure in exercising his power over his 
 timid love. Manj^ concessions were made 
 to him by the timid and devoted Ade- 
 laide, "who was the dupe of those sham 
 estrangements which the least skillful 
 lover or tlie most simple young- girl can 
 invent, and of which thej' avail them- 
 selves continually, as spoiled children 
 abuse their power over their mother's 
 love. 
 
 Thus, all familiarities soon ceased be- 
 tween the old count and Adelaide. The 
 young girl understood the displeasure of 
 the painter, and the ideas hidden in the 
 lines of his foi^ehead, in the brusk accent of 
 the few words he uttered, when the old man 
 kissed without ceremon^^ the hands or the 
 cheek of Adelaide. On her side, Made- 
 moiselle Leseigneur soon required from 
 her lover a rigid account of his slightest 
 actions. She was so unhappy, so uneasy 
 when Hippolj'te did not come, she knew 
 so well how to scold him for his absences, 
 that tbe painter ha4 to give up visiting 
 his friends, and went no more into so- 
 ciety, Adelaide allowed a woman's nat- 
 ural jealousy to show itself on learning 
 that sometimes, after leaving Madame de 
 Eouville's at eleven o'clock, the painter 
 made some more visits, and appeared in 
 the most brilliant salons of Paris. That 
 kind of life, she told him, was bad for his 
 health ; and then, with that profound 
 conviction to which the accent, the 
 actions, and the looks of a loving girl 
 give so much power, she insisted that a 
 man obliged to bestow on several women 
 at once his time and the charms of his 
 mind, could not be the subject of a very 
 strong affection. Tlie painter was thus 
 led on, as much by the despotism of pas- 
 sion as by the exactions of a loving young 
 g-irl, to live only in this little household, 
 where everything pleased him. In short, 
 never was love moi'e pure or more ardent. 
 An equal faith and an equal delicacy' on 
 each side kept this passion growing, 
 without the help of those sacrifices by 
 which many people seek to prove their 
 love. There existed between them a con- 
 
 tinual exchange of sensations so sweet, 
 that they never knew which gave and 
 which received the most. An involun- 
 tar3' inclination kept their hearts always 
 closely united. 
 
 Tlie pi'ogress of this g-enuine sentiment 
 was so rapid that, two months after the 
 accident to which the painter was indebted 
 for the happiness of knowing- Adelaide, 
 their life had become one and the same 
 life. In the morning, when the young 
 girl heard footsteps above her, she could 
 say to herself, "He is there." When 
 Hippoh'te returned to his mother's at 
 dinner time, he never missed coming to 
 greet his neighbors ; and in the evening 
 he arinved at the usual hour, with the 
 punctuality of a lover. Thus, the most 
 tyrannical and most exacting of women 
 in her love could not have made the 
 slightest reproach to the j'oung- painter ; 
 and Adelaide tasted a boundless and un- 
 alloyed happiness in seeing the ideal of 
 which it is so natural to dream at her 
 age realized to its fullest extent. The 
 old gentleman came le.ss frequentlj', the 
 jealous Hippolyte having replaced him of 
 an evening at the card-table, and in his 
 constant ill-luck with the cards. Still, in 
 the midst of his happiness, while thinking 
 of the disastrous situation of Madame de 
 Rouvillc — for he had acquired more than 
 one proof of her distress — he was seized 
 b3'^ an annoj-ing idea. Already he had 
 said to himself several times, on return- 
 ing home, "What! twenty francs every 
 evening?" And he dared not avow to 
 himself his odious suspicions. 
 
 He took two months to paint the por- 
 trait, and when it was finished, varnished, 
 and framed, he looked upon it as one of 
 his best works. The Baroness de Rou- 
 ville had not said a word more to him 
 about it. Was it f orgetfulness or pride ? 
 The painter did not wish to explain to 
 himself the reason of this silence. He 
 plotted joyously with Adelaide to put the 
 portrait in its place during the absence of 
 Madame de Rouville. 
 
 So one day, during the walk which her 
 mother generally took in the Tuileries, 
 Adelaide went upstairs alone, for the first 
 time, to the painter's studio, under the
 
 THE PURSE. 
 
 29 
 
 pretext of seeing the portrait in the fav- 
 orable hght in which it had been painted. 
 She remained mute and motionless, g-iven 
 up to a delicious contemplation in which 
 all a woman's sentiments are merged in 
 one. Are they not all summed up in a 
 boundless admiration for the beloved one ? 
 When the painter, uneasy at this silence, 
 bent forward to look at the young girl, 
 she gave him her hand, without being 
 able to say a word, but two tears fell 
 from her eyes. Hippolyte took the hand, 
 covered it with kisses, and for a moment 
 they looked at each other in silence, both 
 of them wishing to avow their love, but 
 not daring. The painter kept the hand 
 of Adelaide in his, and then a mutual 
 warmth and a mutual emotion showed 
 them that both their hearts beat equallj^ 
 strongly. Too deeply agitated, the young 
 girl withdrew herself gently from Hippo- 
 lyte, and said, with a look full of naivete. 
 
 "You will make my mother very 
 happy." 
 
 "What! your mother only? " asked he. 
 
 "Oh, me? I am too happy already." 
 
 The painter bent his head and kept si- 
 lence, alarmed at the violence of the sen- 
 timents which the accent of this speech 
 awoke in his heart. Then, understanding, 
 both of them, the danger of this situation, 
 they went down and put the portrait in 
 its place. 
 
 Hippolyte dined for the first time with 
 the baroness, who, in her emotion, and 
 all in tears, wanted to embrace him. In 
 the evening the old emigrant, an old com- 
 rade of the Baron de Rouville, paid a visit 
 to his two friends, to inform them that he 
 had been made a vice-admiral. His ter- 
 restrial navigations across Germany and 
 Russia had been allowed to reckon as 
 naval campaigns. At the sight of the 
 portrait, he shook the painter cordially 
 by the hand, and exclaimed — 
 
 "On my honor, although my old car- 
 case is not worth preserving, I would 
 gladly give five hundred pistoles to see 
 myself as well done as my old friend Rou- 
 ville." 
 
 At this proposition the baroness gave 
 her friend a look, and smiled, while al- 
 lowing the signs of a sudden gratitude to 
 
 appear on her countenance. Hippolyte 
 thought he could discei-n that the old ad- 
 miral wished to offer him the price of the 
 two portraits in paying for his own. His 
 artist's pride, as much as his jealousj^, 
 perhaps, took offense at this idea, and he 
 replied — 
 
 "If I painted portraits, sir, I should 
 not have taken this one." 
 
 The admiral bit his lips, and sat down 
 to his game. 
 
 The painter remained by Adelaide, who 
 proposed a rubber at piquet, and he ac- 
 cepted. While playing himself, he re- 
 marked in Madame de Rouville an ardor 
 for play which surprised him. Never be- 
 fore had this old baroness manifested so 
 ardent a desire to win, nor so lively a 
 pleasure is fingering the gold pieces of 
 the gentleman. During- the evening, evil 
 suspicions arose to disturb the happiness 
 of Hippolyte and inspire him with dis- 
 trust. Did Madame de Rouville live by 
 play, then ? Was she not plnj-ing, at 
 this moment, to pay off some old debt, or 
 urged by some necessity ? Perhaps she 
 had not paid her rent. This old man ap- 
 peared quite knowing enougli not to allow 
 his monej^ to be filched with impunitj'. 
 What interest attracted this rich man to 
 this poor house ? These involuntary re- 
 flections incited him to watch the old man 
 and the baroness, whose airs of intelli- 
 gence and certain oblique looks cast on 
 Adelaide and himself displeased him. 
 " Are thej deceivmg me ? " was for 
 Hippolj'te a last idea, horrible and de- 
 grading, and in which he believed exactly 
 enough to be tortured b^' it. He wished 
 to sta\' until after the departure of the 
 two old men, to confirm his suspicions or 
 to dissipate them. He took out his purse 
 to pay Adelaide, but, carried away b}' his 
 bitter thoughts, he put it on the table and 
 fell into a reverie, which did not last long. 
 Then, ashamed of his silence, he rose, re- 
 plied to a trifling question of Madame de 
 Rouville, and came to her side in order to 
 be able, while chatting, to observe more 
 closely this old countenance. He went 
 away a prej^ to a thousand uncertainties. 
 After having gone down a few stairs, he 
 came back to get his foi'gotten purse.
 
 30 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 " I left my purse with you," said he to 
 the young girl. 
 
 "No," she answered, blushing. 
 
 " I thought'it was there," replied he, 
 pointing to the card-table. 
 
 Asliauied, for Adelaide's sake and the 
 baroness's, not to see it there, he looked 
 at them witli a stupefied air which made 
 them laugh, turned pale, and continued, 
 feeling his waistcoat, "I was mistaken; 
 I dare say I have got it." 
 
 In one end of this purse there were fif- 
 teen louis, and in the other some small 
 change. The theft was so flagrant, and 
 so impudenth' denied, that Hippolyte had 
 no more doubt as to the morality of his 
 neighbors. He stopped on the stairs, and 
 got down them with difficulty ; his legs 
 trembled, he turned giddy, he perspired, 
 he shivered, and found himself quite un- 
 able to walk, struggling with the frightful 
 commotion caused by the overthrow of all 
 his hopes. From this moment he recalled 
 to his memory a crowd of observations, 
 slight in appeai'ance, but which corrobo- 
 rated his hideous suspicions, and which, 
 by proving the reality of this last act, 
 opened his eyes to the character and the 
 life of these two women. Had they waited, 
 then, until the portrait was given to steal 
 the purse ? If planned, the robbery seemed 
 far more odious. The painter remembered, 
 for his misfortune, that, for two or three 
 evenings, Adelaide, while appearing to 
 examine with a young girl's curiosity the 
 peculiar make of the worn-out silk netting, 
 had probably ascertained the money con- 
 tained in the purse while making remarks, 
 innocent in appearance, but, no doubt, 
 with the object of watching for the mo- 
 ment when the sum would be large enough 
 to be abstracted. 
 
 " The old admiral has excellent reasons, 
 perhaps, for not marrying Adelaide ; and 
 then the baroness has tried to — " At this 
 supposition he stopped short, and did not 
 even finish his thought, which was demol- 
 ished by a very just reflection. " If the 
 baroness," he thought, "hoped to marry 
 her daughter to me, they would not have 
 robbed me." Then he tried, so as not to 
 have to renounce his illusions and his love, 
 already so deeply rooted, to find some 
 
 justification in chance. " My purse must 
 have fallen on the ground," he said to 
 himself ; "it has caught on my chair. 
 Perhaps I have got it; I am so forgetful." 
 He felt himself all over, with rapid move- 
 ments, but did not find the accursed purse. 
 His cruel memory recalled momentarily 
 the fatal truth. He saw distinctly his 
 purse spread on the table ; but, doubting 
 the theft no longer, he still made excuses 
 for Adelaide, saying to himself that we 
 ought not to judge the unfortunate so 
 quickly. No doubt, thei-e was a secret 
 in 'this action apparently so degrading. 
 He would not admit that this proud and 
 noble countenance was a lie. Neverthe- 
 less, this miserable dwelling appeared to 
 him denuded of the poesies of love, which 
 embellishes ever>i:hing. He saw it soiled 
 and stained, and considered it the repre- 
 sentative of an inner life, ignoble, unoc- 
 cupied, and vicious. Are not our senti- 
 ments, so to say, written on the things 
 which surround us ? 
 
 The next morning, he got up without 
 having slept. The heartache, that serious 
 moral malady, had made enormous prog- 
 ress in him. To lose a dreamed-of happi- 
 ness, to renounce an entire future, is a 
 pang much more acute than that caused 
 by the ruin of a felicity already experi- 
 enced, however complete it may have 
 been. Is not hope always better than 
 remembrance ? The meditations into 
 which -the soul suddenly falls are then 
 like a sea without a shore, on the bosom 
 of which we maj' float for a moment, but 
 in which our love must drown and perish. 
 And it is a fearful 'death. Are not our 
 sentiments the most brilliant part of our 
 life ? From this partial death proceed, 
 in certain delicate or powerful organi- 
 zations, the awful ravages produced by 
 hopes and passions betrayed. Thus it 
 was with the young painter. He went 
 out early in the morning to walk in the 
 cool shades of the Tuileries, absorbed in 
 his thoughts, forgetting everj'thing in 
 the world. There, by chance, he met 
 one of his most intimate friends, an old 
 companion at school and in the studio, 
 with whom he had agreed better than 
 with a brother.
 
 THE PURSE. 
 
 31 
 
 " Well, Hippolyte, what is the matter 
 with you?" said FraiiQols Suchet, a 
 young sculptor, who had just obtained 
 the grand prize, and was soon to start 
 for Italy. 
 
 " I am very unhappy," replied Hippo- 
 lyte, gravely. 
 
 "It is only a love affair that could up- 
 set you. Money, glory, consideration — 
 nothing else fails you." 
 
 Insensibly, confidences began, and the 
 painter avowed his love. The moment 
 he mentioned the Rue de Suresnes, and 
 a young girl who lived on the fourth 
 floor — 
 
 "Halt there!" cried Suchet, gayly. 
 " It is a little girl I come to the As- 
 sumption every morning to see, and to 
 whom I am making love. Why, my dear 
 fellow, we all know her. Her mother is 
 a baroness. Do 3'ou believe in baronesses 
 lodging on the fourth floor ? B-r-r-r ! 
 Ah, well, you are a man of the golden 
 age. We see the old mother here, in the 
 avenue, every daj'. Why, she has got a 
 face and a style that tells everything. 
 What ! you have not guessed what she 
 is from the way she holds her bag ? " 
 
 The two friends walked about for a 
 long time, and several young men who 
 knew Suchet or Schinner joined them. 
 The adventure of the painter, considered 
 of very little importance, was related to 
 them by the sculptor. 
 
 "And he, too," said he, "has seen this 
 little girl ! " 
 
 There were observations, laughter, and 
 jokes, innocent and stamped with the 
 gayety familiar to artists, but which 
 made Hippolyte suffer horribly. A cer- 
 tain baslifulness of disposition made him 
 ill at ease on seeing the secret of his heart 
 treated so lightly, his passion torn into 
 tatters ; an unknown young girl, whose 
 life appeared so modest, subject to judg- 
 ments, true or false, given with so much 
 carelessness. He feigned to be moved by 
 a spirit of contradiction ; he demanded 
 seriously from each the proofs of his 
 assertions, and the joking recommenced. 
 
 " But, my dear fellow, have you seen 
 the baroness's shawl?" said Suchet. 
 
 " Have you followed the little one when 
 
 she trots to the Assumption of a morn- 
 ing ? " said Joseph Bridau, a young color- 
 grinder from the atelier of Gros. 
 
 ' ' Ah ! the mother possesses, among 
 other virtues, a certain gray dress which 
 I look upon as a tj-pe," said Bixiou, the 
 maker of caricatures. 
 
 " Listen, Hippolyte," resumed the sculp- 
 tor. " Come here about four o'clock, and 
 just analyze the walk of the mother and 
 daughter. If you have any doubts after 
 that, well, they will never make an>i;hing 
 of you, and you will be capable of marry- 
 ing the daughter of your porteress." 
 
 A prey to the most conflictiiig senti- 
 ments, the painter quitted his friends. 
 Adelaide and her mother, it seemed to 
 him, ought to be above these accusations, 
 and he felt remorse from the bottom of 
 his heart, for having suspected the purity 
 of this young girl, so beautiful and so 
 simple. He came to his studio, passed by 
 the door of the apartments which con- 
 tained his Adelaide, and felt a pang at the 
 heart, in which no man is mistaken. He 
 loved Mademoiselle de Rouville so pas- 
 sionately that, in spite of the robbery of 
 the purse, he adored her still. His love 
 was like that of the ChevaUer des Grieux 
 admiring and purifying his mistress even 
 in the cart which takes abandoned women 
 to prison. " Why should not my love 
 render her the purest of all women ? Why 
 abandon her to evil and vice, without 
 holding out to her a friendly hand?" 
 This mission pleased him. Love turns 
 everything to its own advantage. Noth- 
 ing tempts a young man more than to 
 play the part of good genius to a woman. 
 There is a certain something romantic in 
 the enterprise which suits excitable dis- 
 positions. Is it not the most comprehen- 
 sive devotion in the most graceful and 
 elevated form ? Is there not a grandeur 
 in knowing that we love enough to love 
 still when the love of others fades out and 
 dies ? 
 
 Hippolyte sat down in his studio, looked 
 at his picture without doing anything to 
 it, only seeing the figures through the 
 tears that hung in his eyes, always hold- 
 ing his brush in his hand, advancing to- 
 ward the canvas as if to soften a tint, and
 
 32 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 not touching: it. Nig'ht surprised him in 
 this attitude. Eoused fi'om his reverie by 
 tlie darl^ness, he went down, met the old 
 admiral on the staircase, g-ave him a som- 
 ber look in bomng to him, and rushed 
 away. He had intended to call on his 
 neighbors, but the sight of the protector 
 of Adelaide froze his heart and put his 
 resolution to flight. He asked himself, 
 for the hundredth time, what interest 
 could attract this old man of loose man- 
 ners, with eighty thousand li\T:'es a year, 
 to this fourth story, where he lost about 
 forty francs every evening. This interest 
 he thought he could guess. The next and 
 the following days, Hippoljiie threw him- 
 self into hard work, to try and combat his 
 passion by the rush of ideas and the heat 
 of conception. He succeeded by half. 
 Study consoled him, but without having 
 the power to smother the memory of so 
 many delightful hours spent with Ade- 
 laide. 
 
 One evening, on leaving his studio, he 
 found the door of the apartments of the 
 two ladies ajar. Some one was standing 
 in the embrasure of the window. The 
 position of the door and the staircase did 
 not allow of his passing without seeing 
 Adelaide. Ho bowed coldly, giving her a 
 look full of indifference ; but, judging the 
 3'oung girl's sufferings by his own, he 
 shuddered internally on thinking of the 
 bitterness this look and this coldness must 
 cast into a loving heart. To crown the 
 sweetest liours that had ever rejoiced two 
 pure souls by a week of disdain, and by 
 the most profound and entire contempt ! 
 Frightful conclusion. Perhaps the purse 
 had been found, and perhaps every even- 
 ing Adelaide had expected her friend. 
 This idea, so simple and natural, caused 
 fresh remorse to the lover ; he asked him- 
 self whether the proofs of attachment the 
 young girl had given him, whether the 
 rapturous conversations impregnated 
 with a love, which had charmed him, 
 did not deserve at least an inquir\'— were 
 not worth a justification. Ashamed of 
 having resisted for a week the wishes of 
 his heart, and feeling almost guilty on 
 account of this combat, he called the same 
 evening on Madame de Rouville. All his 
 
 suspicions, all his evil thoughts, vanishe 
 at the sight of the young girl, pale ano 
 fallen away. 
 
 " Ah, good Heaven ! what is the matter 
 with you ? " he said to her, after havinj^ 
 saluted the baroness. 
 
 Adelaide answei'ed nothing, but she 
 gave him a look full of melancholy — a 
 sad, dejected look, which gave him pain. 
 
 "You have, no doubt, been working 
 hard," said the old ladj'. "You are 
 altered. We are the cause of your se- 
 clusion. That portrait has delayed some 
 pictures of importance to 3'our reputa- 
 tion." 
 
 Hippolyte was happy to find so good an 
 excuse for his impoliteness. 
 
 "Yes," said he, "I have been very 
 hwsy, but I have been ill." 
 
 At these words, Adelaide raised her 
 head and looked at her lover ; her anxious 
 eyes reproached him no more. 
 
 " And you supposed that we were quite 
 indifferent to any good or bad fortune 
 that might happen to you ? " said the old 
 lady. 
 
 "I was wrong," replied he. "Yet 
 there are troubles which .cannot be con- 
 fided to any one, not even to a fiiendship 
 less recent than that witli which you 
 honor me." 
 
 " The sincerity and the strength of 
 friendship cannot be measured by time. 
 I have seen old friends not shed a tear 
 for each other in misfortune," said the 
 baroness, shaking her head. 
 
 " But what is the matter with you ? " 
 inquired the young -man of Adelaide. 
 
 "Oh, nothing," replied the baroness. 
 " Adelaide has been spending some nights 
 in finishing a piece of ladj^'s work, and 
 would not believe me when I told her that 
 a day more or less was of little conse- 
 quence." 
 
 Hippolyte was not listening. On seeing 
 these two faces, so noble and so pure, he 
 blushed for his suspicions, and attributed 
 the loss of his purse to some unknown 
 accident. This evening was delicious for 
 him, and perhaps also for her. There are 
 some secrets that young hearts compre- 
 hend so well ! Adelaide guessed the 
 thoughts of Hippolyte. Without wish-
 
 THE PURSE. 
 
 33 
 
 ng to avow his faults, the painter ac- 
 kuowled^ed them ; he returned to his 
 mistress more loving and more affection- 
 ate, endeavoring thus to purchase a tacit 
 'Jardon. Adelaide tasted a joy so perfect 
 and so sweet, that it did not seem too 
 dearly bought by all the torture which 
 had so cruelly torn her heart. The veri- 
 table harmony of their souls, that under- 
 standing- full of magic, was nevertheless 
 disturbed by a word from the Baroness de 
 Rouville. " Shall we have our little 
 game?" said she; "for my old Kerga- 
 rouet sulks with' me." 
 
 This phrase aroused all the fears of the 
 young painter, who blushed on looking at 
 the mother of Adelaide ; but he only saw 
 on her face the expression of an unaf- 
 fected good nature. No evil design de- 
 stroyed its charm ; there was no treach- 
 ery in its slyness ; its sharpness seemed 
 kindly, and no remorse disturbed its calm. 
 He sat down to the cai'd-table. Adelaide 
 wished to share in the painter's stakes, 
 pretending that he did not know piquet 
 and wanted a partner. Madame de Rou- 
 ville and her daughter made signs to each 
 other during the game, vt^hich made Hip- 
 polyte all the more uneasy because he was 
 winning ; but, in the end, the last hand 
 rendered the two lovers the debtors of the 
 baroness. Having to get some change 
 out of his pocket, the painter took his 
 hands off the table, and then he saw be- 
 fore him a purse, which Adelaide had 
 slipped there without his notice. The 
 poor girl was holding the old one, and, to 
 keep herself in countenance, was looking 
 in it for the money to pay her mother. 
 All Hippolj^te's blood rushed so suddenly 
 to his heart that he nearly lost conscious- 
 ness. The new purse substituted for his, 
 and which contained his fifteen louis, was 
 worked in gold beads. The slides, the 
 tassels, everything attested the good 
 taste of Adelaide, who, without doubt, 
 had spent her winnings on the ornaments 
 of this charming piece of work. 
 
 It was impossible to say with more 
 delicacy that the gift of the painter could 
 only be recompensed by a proof of affec- 
 tion. When Hippolyte, overwhelmed 
 with happiness, turned his eyes on Ade- 
 laide and the baroness, he saw them trem- 
 bling with pleasure and rejoicing- in this 
 amiable piece of trickery. He felt himself 
 little, mean, and foolish ; he would have 
 liked to be able to punish himself, to tear 
 his breast. Tears came into his eyes ; he 
 got up, and, by an irresistible impulse, 
 took Adelaide in his arms, pressed her to 
 his heart, snatched a kiss, and then, with 
 the bluntness of an artist, " I ask her of 
 you for my wife," he cried, looking at the 
 baroness. 
 
 Adelaide turned on the painter eyes 
 half angr^', and Madame de Kouville 
 was trying to find an answer, when 
 this scene was interrupted by the sound 
 of the bell. 
 
 The old vice-admiral appeared, followed 
 by his shadow and Madame Schinner. 
 After having divined the cause of the 
 grief which her son vainly endeavored to 
 hide from her, the mother of Hippolyte 
 had made inquiries of some of her friends 
 about Adelaide. Justly alarmed at the 
 calumnies which hung over the young 
 girl unknown to the Count de Kergarouet, 
 whose name was told her by the portiere, 
 she went to tell them to the vice-admiral, 
 who, in his rage, would have liked, he said, 
 to cut off the scoundrel's ears. Animated 
 hy his indignation, the admiral confided 
 to Madame Schinner the secret of his vol- 
 untary losses at cards — that the pride of 
 the baroness left him only this ingenious 
 means of assisting her. 
 
 When Madame Schinner had saluted 
 Madame de Rouville, the latter looked at 
 the Count de Kergarouet, the Chevalier 
 du Halga (the old lover of the Countess 
 de Kergarouet), Hippolyte, and Adelaide, 
 and said, with the grace that comes from 
 the heart, " It seems we are a familj' party 
 to-night." 
 
 BiALZAe— B
 
 34 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEUr. 
 
 tl. 
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 A GLORIOUS RELIC OF THE EMPIRE. 
 
 About three o'clock in the afternoon of 
 a day in October, 1844, a man, whose age 
 was about sixty (though everj' one would 
 have taken him to be oldei'), mig-ht have 
 been seen wending his way along the 
 Boulevard des Italiens. His nose was in 
 the air and his lips were pursed up, like 
 those of a merchant who has just struck 
 a good bargain, or of a young man leav- 
 ing his sweetheart in high good-humor 
 with himself. Now, at Pai-is, this eleva- 
 tion of the nose and pursing of the lips 
 are the strongest indications of self-satis- 
 faction that a man can possiblj^ exhibit. 
 
 So soon as those persons, who, seated 
 on chairs, line the Boulevard des Italiens, 
 day after day, and resign themselves to 
 the charm of analyzing the passers-by, 
 had caught sight of the old man in the 
 distance, that peculiar smile, which char- 
 acterizes the denizen of Pai-is, began to 
 steal over their faces. 'Tis a smile that 
 teems with irony, ridicule, or S3nnpathy, 
 according to circumstances ; but only rare 
 and living curiosities can summon it to 
 the features of the Parisian, whose eyes 
 are feasted, even to satiety, with every 
 species of spectacle. 
 
 A certain smart retort will explain the 
 value, from an archaeological point of 
 view, of this old fellow, and the cause 
 of the smile which, on his appearance, 
 flashed, echo-like, from face to face. 
 Hyacinthe, an actor celebrated for his 
 sallies, being asked, on a certain occasion, 
 where he had those hats made, the mere 
 sight of which was wont to set the play- 
 house in a roar, replied, "I do not get 
 them made ; I keep them." Even so, 
 
 among the million actors of whom the 
 Grand Parisian Company consists, there 
 is full many an unconscious Hyacinthe 
 who, retaining in his attire all the ab- 
 surdities of some particular period, bursts 
 upon 3'our astonished gaze, the complete 
 personification of an epoch, as, chewing 
 the cud of bitter grief over the treachery 
 of some quondam friend, you are saunter- 
 ing along, and extorts from you a burst 
 of merriment. 
 
 By preserving, in certain details of his 
 apparel, a quixotic fidelity to the fashions 
 of the year 1806, the pedestrian in ques- 
 tion recalled, without being a positive 
 caricature of, the imperial era ; and herein 
 lies a distinction the subtilty of which 
 lends, in the eye of a close observer, a 
 peculiar value to apparitions of this kind. 
 But the combination of minute details, to 
 which we are now referring, would fail to 
 arrest the attention of persons not en- 
 dowed with the analj'tic power that dis- 
 tinguishes the connoisseur in fldnerie ; 
 and, to evoke laughter while he was still 
 at a distance, our pedestrian must have 
 presented some such glaring extrava- 
 gance of garb as actors aim at in 
 order to secure a round of applause 
 when first they step on to the stage. 
 And such a glaring extravagance this 
 pedestrian did indeed exhibit. Over a 
 greenish coat, garnished with buttons of 
 white metal, this lean and gaunt old man 
 wore a hazel-colored spencer ! A man 
 with a spencer in 1844 ! Why, 'tis much 
 the same thing as if Napoleon Bonaparte 
 had deigned to revisit the glimpses of the 
 sun for a couple of hours ! 
 
 The spencer, as its name imports, was 
 invented by a certain lord who wa.s, 
 doubtless, vain of his good figure. Be-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 35 
 
 fore the peace of Amiens, the Englishman 
 in question had solved the problem how 
 to cover the upper part of the hoAy with- 
 out overwhelming it beneath the weight 
 of that hideous box-coat which is now 
 Avearing out the remnant of its days on 
 the backs of the old hackney-coachmen 
 of<Paris. But since fine figures are the 
 exception, not the rule, the spencer, as a 
 fashion for the male sex, had, in spite of 
 its English origin, but a transient triumph 
 in France. 
 
 At sight of this spencer, the men of 
 from forty to fifty indulged their fancies 
 by dressing its wearer in imaginary top- 
 boots and imaginary breeches of green 
 kerseymere, tied with an imaginary 
 bunch of ribbons, and thus once more 
 beheld themselves in the costume of their 
 youth ; the old ladies called to mind their 
 former conquests ; while, as for the young 
 men, they simply asked themselves why 
 this aged Alcibiades had cut away the 
 tail of his overcoat. So thoroughlj^ was 
 the whole aspect of the old man in keep- 
 ing with the spencer that you would at 
 once have pronounced him to be an Em- 
 pire-man, just as we are in the habit of 
 talking about Empire-furniture. But he 
 was a symbol of the Empire to those 
 only, who, having known that magnifi- 
 cent and imposing epoch, at least de visu, 
 possessed the indispensable qualification 
 of a somewhat accurate recollection of its 
 fashions. The interval of time that sepa- 
 rates us from the Empire is already so 
 wide that it is not given to every one to 
 recall it, in all its Gallo-Gi'eek reality. 
 
 In the indulgence of that species of bra- 
 vado adopted by the bureaucracy and 
 civilians in general under the Empire, by 
 way of retort to the bravado of military 
 men, this old fellow carried his hat upon 
 the back of his head, so as to expose al- 
 most the whole of his forehead. The hat, 
 moreover, was a shocking twelve-and-six- 
 penny silk hat, whose nether brim two 
 large long ears had stained with whitish 
 splotches that defied the brush, while the 
 silken covering of the hat, having been, 
 as usual, unskillfully applied to the paste- 
 board shape, was puckered here and there, 
 and seemed, in spite of the careful hand 
 
 that groomed it morning after morning, 
 to be suffering from an attack of leprosy. 
 
 Beneath this hat, thus precariously 
 worn, stretched a sheepish comical face, 
 such as you may see upon the shoulders 
 of a Chinese squab, and nowhere else. 
 This vast visage, which was as full of 
 pits as a skimming-ladle is full of holes — 
 of pits so deep that they actually cast 
 shadows — resembled a Roman mask dug 
 out of the earth, and violated every rule 
 of anatomy. Scan the features as you 
 might, your eye discovered not a trace of 
 framework in them. Bones the face seem- 
 ingly' had none, but where they should 
 haA'e been, your eye encountered flat ge- 
 latinous curves of flesh, and wandered 
 thence, to find flaccid spherical knobs 
 usurping the place of what, in an_y ordi- 
 nary physiognomy, would have been a 
 hollow ; while, like some erratic bowlder, 
 that commands a plain, a huge Don Quix- 
 ote nose — the kind of nose which (as Cer- 
 vantes must have noticed) indicates a 
 congenital devotion to noble aims, that 
 is apt to degenerate into gullibility — stood 
 boldly out, the most prominent feature 
 in this grotesque countenance, through 
 which, as through a large flat toad-stool, 
 peered a pair of sad gray eyes, surmount- 
 ed by two red lines that did duty for eye- 
 brows. The ugliness of this old man, 
 however (all comic as it was), did not ex- 
 cite derision ; the extreme melancholy that 
 welled over from the poor fellow's faded 
 eyes appealed directly to the scoffer's 
 heart, and froze the joke upon his lips. 
 The thought would at once suggest itself, 
 that Nature had peremptorily forbidden 
 this poor creature, under pain of exciting 
 a woman's laughter or disgust, to breathe 
 a single syllable of love. In the pres- 
 ence of such a misfortune a Frenchman 
 is dumb ; for, to a Fi"enchman, the most 
 cruel of all misfortunes is — to lack the 
 power to win a woman's favor ! 
 
 The dress of this man, thus branded by 
 the hand of Nature, was that of all poor 
 gentleraen^a class which the wealthy 
 often strive to ape. Over his shoes he 
 wore a pair of gaiters, which were fash- 
 ioned like those of the Imperial Guard, 
 and doubtlessly helped him to keep down
 
 3G 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 his washing-bill. There were reddish tints 
 about his black cloth trousers, each Avhitc 
 and shiny fold of which said, as plainly as 
 their cut, that three years had elapsed 
 since they were bought. Ample as they 
 were, they failed to conceal a certain 
 leanness, which (to judge from the old 
 fellow's sensual mouth, whose full thick 
 lips disclosed, at every smile, two rows of 
 pearl-white teeth that would have done no 
 discredit to a shark) was the resuit of a 
 constitutional tendency rather than of a 
 Pythagorean diet. Beneath his double- 
 breasted waistcoat of black cloth he wore 
 a second waistcoat, which was white, and 
 beneath this, again, in the third rank, 
 blazed the red margin of a knitted vest ; 
 so that one was irresistibly reminded of 
 Garat's five Avaistcoat^. An enormous 
 white muslin cravat, whose pretentious 
 bow had been devised by some dandy to 
 charm "the charming women " of the 
 year 1809, rose so high above the old 
 man's chin that his face seemed, as it 
 were, ingulfed in the folds of the cravat. 
 A chain of plaited silk, to imitate hair, 
 spanned the old man's shirt-front, and 
 protected his watch from a robbery that 
 no one was likely to attempt. His green- 
 ish coat, though irreproachably tidy, was 
 some three years senior to the trousers ; 
 but its black velvet collar and white metal 
 buttons had been recently renewed, and 
 thus told a tale of minute domestic care- 
 fulness. 
 
 This trick of fixing the hat upon the 
 occiput, the triple waistcoat, the immense 
 cravat in which the chin lay buried, the 
 gaiters, the metal buttons on the greenish 
 coat — all these insignia of the fashions of 
 the Empire harmonized with the exploded 
 perfumes of Incroyable foppery, with an 
 indefinable tenuity in the folds of the old 
 man's garments, and a certain all-per- 
 vading primness and precision that re- 
 called tho school of David and the fragile 
 furniture of Jacob. Nor did it require a 
 second glance to discover that the person 
 thus attired was either a gentleman gov- 
 erned by some secret vice,^r one of those 
 men with small fixed incomes, whose ex- 
 penditure is restrained by the scantiness 
 of their resources within limits so narrow 
 
 and so nicely adjusted that a broken pane, 
 a torn coat, or that philanthropic pesti- 
 lence — a collection for the poor — will leave 
 them without pocket-money for a whole 
 month. 
 
 Had 3'ou been upon the spot, you would 
 assui-edly have asked j'ourself how it came 
 to pass that a smile was lig'hting up tljis 
 uncouth countenance, whose liabitual cast, 
 like that of all who are involved in an ob- 
 scure struggle for the common necessaries 
 of life, would naturally be cold and sad. 
 But had you noticed the paternal care be- 
 stowed by this singular old man upon the 
 evidently' valuable object v.'hich he was 
 holding in his right hand, beneath the 
 two left skirts of his double coat, in order 
 to guard the treasure from casual blows ; 
 and, more especially, had you observed 
 that his face wore the busy look assumed 
 bj' the idler, when engaged in the execution 
 of a commission, j'ou would have sur- 
 mised that the old man must have recov- 
 ered some article as jirecious as the lap- 
 dog of a marchioness ; and that, with all 
 the bustling gallantry of an Empire-man, 
 he was conveying it in triumiDh to the 
 " charming woman " of sixty, who has 
 not yet learned to dispense with the daily 
 visit of her admirer. Paris is the onl^' city 
 in the world in which you can ei;counter 
 such scenes — scenes which convert its 
 boulevards into a perpetual drama, acted 
 by the Frejich people, gratis, for the 
 benefit of Art, 
 
 II. 
 
 THE END OF A WINNER OF THE GRAND 
 PRIX DE ROME. 
 
 Judging from the build of this raw- 
 boned person, you would have experienced 
 some difficulty, the audacious spencer not- 
 withstanding, in classing him among the 
 artists of Paris^a hoAy of men who 
 closely resemble the Parisian street Arab, 
 in so far as they possess the privilege of 
 working the imaginations of sober-sided 
 citizens into ecstasies of what, since the 
 old drolatic word miroholant has been 
 restored to its ancient honors, may be
 
 COUSIN- PONS. 
 
 37 
 
 termed most miroholant mirth. Yet an 
 artist our pedestrian undoubtedly was, 
 and a grand-prize man to boot ; the com- 
 poser of the cantata which, first after 
 the re-establishment of the Academie de 
 Rome, carried off the laurel at the Insti- 
 tute — in short, this pedestrian was no less 
 a man than M. Sylvain Pons ! the com- 
 poser of certain celebrated romances 
 which our mothers used to warble, of two 
 or tliree operas which were put upon tlie 
 stage in 1815 and 1816, and of sundry un- 
 published scores besides. Now, in the lat- 
 ter autumn of his life, this worthy man 
 was conductor of the orchestra of a boule- 
 vard theater. Thanks to his ugliness, he 
 also held the post of music-master in sev- 
 eral boarding-schools for young ladies. 
 His salary and fees for out-door lessons 
 were his only sources of revenue. An 
 out-door tutor at his time of life ! What 
 a world of mysteries in that prosaic po- 
 sition ! ' 
 
 Thus, then, this last of the spencer- 
 wearers bore, upon his outer man, some- 
 thing bej'ond the mere symbols of the 
 imperial epoch. There was a grand les- 
 son to be learned from the three waist- 
 coats which he wore. He exhibited him- 
 self, gratis, as one of the numerous victims 
 of the sinister and fatal system called 
 competition, which, after a barren proba- 
 tion of one hundred years, still reig-ns- 
 supreme in France. This Intelligence- 
 Press was invented bj^ Poisson de Ma- 
 rigny, Madame de Pompadour's brother, 
 who, in or about the year 1746, was ap- 
 pointed director of the Fine Arts. 
 
 Now just cast up — you may do it on 
 3'our fingers — the names of the men of 
 genius furnished to us from the ranks of 
 the laureates during the past century. In 
 the first place, let governments and acad- 
 emies do what they will, it is impossible 
 that their combinations should do the 
 work of those miracles of chance to which 
 great men owe their origin. That origin 
 is, of all the mysteries of g-eneration, the 
 most inscrutable to the all-searching 
 analysis which we, in these modern 
 times, have set on foot. Again, the 
 Egyptians are said to have invented 
 ovens for hatching chickens ; now what 
 
 would you think of these Egyptians if 
 they had omitied to provide these chick- 
 ens with appropriate food so soon as they 
 were hatched ? Yet it is precisely thus 
 that France is acting. She first en- 
 deavors to produce artists by means of 
 the hot-house of competition ; and then, 
 the sculptor, painter, engraver, or com- 
 poser once manufactured by this purelj' 
 mechanical process, she recks as little of 
 him as the evening dandy recks of the 
 flowers with which he decked his button- 
 hole in the morning. 
 
 It turns out, after all, that the real 
 men of talent are Greuze or Watteau, 
 Felicien David or Pagnest, Gericault or 
 Decamps, Auber or David d 'Angers, Eu- 
 gene Delacroix or Meissonier — men who 
 trouble themselves little about grand 
 prizes, men who ai"e reared in the open 
 air under the rays of that invisible sun 
 which is called — ^^''ocation. 
 
 From Rome (whither he was sent to be 
 manufactured into a great musician) Syl- 
 vain Pons brought back a taste for an- 
 tiquities and beautiful works of art. He 
 had a wonderful amount of knowledge 
 concerning all those objects (masterpieces 
 of the hand and of the fancj") which have 
 recently acquired, in popular parlance, 
 the collective appellation of bric-a-bi'ac. 
 
 Thus then it came to pass that, in the 
 year 1810, this son of Euterpe returned to 
 Paris, an enthusiastic collector, laden with 
 pictures and picture-frames, statuettes, 
 sculptures in ivory and wood, enamels, 
 china, etc. These various acquisitions, 
 together with the cost of their carriage, 
 had absoi'bed the major part of Pons's 
 patrimony. The fortune which he had in- 
 herited from his mother he had spent in 
 a similar manner, during the tour which 
 he made in Italy, after the exph'ation of 
 his three years' official residence in Rome. 
 He wished to pay a leisurely visit to 
 Venice, Milan, Florence, Bologna, and 
 Naples, sojourning in each of those cities 
 as a dreamer and philosopher, with all 
 the heedlessness of an artist who looks 
 to his talent for a livelihood, just as a 
 courtesan coxmts upon her beauty. 
 
 During tlijs glorious journey Pons was 
 as happy as a man can be, who, while full
 
 38 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 of feeling' and of delicacy, is debarred, by 
 his excessive plainness, from "success 
 with women ' ' (to use the phrase current 
 in the j^ear of grace 1809), and who finds 
 the realities of life altogether inferior to 
 his ideal. 
 
 But Pons had settled in his ovra mind 
 how to deal with the discord that existed 
 between the pitch of his heart and that 
 of the external world. It was, doubt- 
 lessly, in this correct appreciation of the 
 beautiful, lying pure and fresh in the very 
 depths of his heart, that those ingenious, 
 subtle, and graceful melodies, which earned 
 for him the reputation that he enjoj'ed 
 from 1810 to 1814, had their source. 
 When any one becomes famous in France, 
 through a certain vogue, from the fashion 
 of the hour, from the ephemeral follies of 
 the metropolis, lo ! up springs a crop 
 of Ponses. No country under the sun is 
 so severe toward all that is truly great ; 
 so contemptuously indulgent toward all 
 that is really little. It is possible that 
 Pons, though quiclvly overtaken by floods 
 of German harmony and the florid fertility 
 of the Rossinian school, maj', even so late 
 as the year 1824, have been recognized as 
 an agreeable composer, and known to 
 fame as the author of a few romances 
 (his last productions of the kind) ; but 
 judge what must have been his position 
 in 1831 ! As for his position in 1844 — the 
 year that ushered in the one single stir- 
 ring incident of his obscure existence— he 
 was then reduced to the value of an ante- 
 diluvian quaver. In that .year, although 
 he still composed, for a trifling remuner- 
 ation, divers pieces for his own theater 
 and two or three neighboring theaters, 
 Ms very existence was utterly unknowh 
 to the music-sellers. 
 
 But in spite of this neglect the worthy 
 man did ample justice to contemporary 
 masters of his art. The able execution 
 of some choice morceaux would bring 
 tears to his eyes. Yet his religious en- 
 thusiasm did not, as in the case of Hoff- 
 mann's Kreislers, reach the verge of in- 
 sanit3^ ; Pons veiled his raptures ; his 
 enjoj'ment, like that of the Hashish-eater 
 and the Theriaki, was pui%ly internal. 
 Now the genius of admiration, of com- 
 
 prehension — the only faculty that renders 
 an ordinary man the brother of a great 
 creator — is so rare in Paris (where idea 
 succeeds idea as traveler succeeds traveler 
 at an inn) that Pons has a claim upon our 
 respectful esteem. The worthy fellow's 
 faihire may appear unnatural ; but he 
 himself candidly admitted his weakness 
 as a harmonist; he had neglected the 
 study of counterpoint ; and thus, when, 
 by dint of renewed application, he might 
 have maintained his rank among modern 
 composers, and become — not a Rossini 
 indeed, but — a Horold, the orchestration 
 of these more modern times, with its 
 measureless development, seemed to Pons 
 to be beyond his reach. Indeed, he found, 
 in the pleasures of a collector of curiosi- 
 ties, so vast a set-off against his bank- 
 ruptcy of giory^ that, had he been com- 
 pelled to choose between the possession 
 of his curiosities and the fame of Rossini, 
 he would have preferred — will it be be- 
 lieved ?• — his darling cabinet ! In forming 
 his collection, the old composer put into 
 practice the axiom of Chenavard, that 
 learned collector of choice engravings, 
 who maintained that one can derive no 
 pleasure from gazing at a Ruysdael, a 
 Hobbema, a Holbein, a Raphael, a Mu- 
 rillo, a Greuze, a Sebastian del Piombo, 
 a Giorgione or an Albert Durer, if the 
 cost of its purchase exceeded fifty francs. 
 Pons did not recognize the possibility of 
 giving more than a hundred francs for 
 any object whatever ; and to induce him 
 to give even fifty francs for one, it must 
 have been worth at least three thousand. 
 The most beautiful thing in the world, 
 if its pi'ice amounted to three hundred 
 francs, had no existence for Pons. Pass- 
 ing rare, indeed, had been his opportuni- 
 ties ; but the three essentials to success 
 were his. He had the legs of a stag, the 
 leisure of the Jldtieur, and the patience of 
 the Jew ! 
 
 This system, pursued during a period 
 of forty years, not at Paris only, but also 
 at Rome, had borne fruit. By spending 
 about two thousand francs on bric-a-brac 
 in each year since his return from Rome, 
 Pons had amassed a complete collection 
 of masterpieces, the catalogue of which
 
 COUSIX PONS. 
 
 39 
 
 reached the fabulous fig-ure 1,907. Be- 
 tween 1811 and 1816, in the course of his 
 wanderings through Paris, he had picked 
 up, for ten francs apiece, various objects, 
 each of which would, nowadays, be worth 
 from a thousand to twelve hundred francs. 
 His collection consisted partly of pictures 
 culled from among the forty-five thousand 
 which are annually put up for sale in the 
 auction rooms of Paris ; partly of soft 
 Sevres porcelain purchased from the hardy 
 children of Auvergne — those satellites of 
 the Bande-Noire who brought the marvels 
 of Pompadour-France to Paris in wagons. 
 In short. Pons had collected the relics of 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ; 
 doing full justice to the talent and genius 
 of the French school, to the Lepautres, 
 the Lavallee-Poussins, etc. — those Great- 
 Unknowns, who created the stjle Louis- 
 Quinze and the style Louis-Seize, and 
 whose works form the basis of the so- 
 called inventions of the artists of to-day, 
 who are to be seen stooping perpetuall}' 
 over the treasures of the Cabinet des 
 Estampes, with a view to the production 
 of original works, which are simply — 
 clever imitations ! 
 
 For many of his knick-knacks Pons was 
 indebted to those exchanges which are a 
 source of unspeakable delight to the col- 
 lector; for the pleasure of buying curi- 
 osities is, after all, merely a secondary 
 pleasure; the prime, the pi'incipal, pleas- 
 ure is, to barter them. Pons, it was, who 
 first set the example of collecting snuff- 
 boxes and miniatures ; but, unknown to 
 fame as a bric-a-brac-ologist (for he 
 neither attended sales nor frequented 
 the shops of the well-known dealers), he 
 was entirely ignorant of the marketable 
 value of his treasures. 
 
 The late Dusommerard had done his ut- 
 most to strike up an intimacy with the 
 old composer ; but the prince of bric-a- 
 brac died without having succeeded in 
 gaining- access to the Pons Museum — the 
 only museum that will bear comparison 
 with the celebrated collection of M. Sau- 
 vageot, between whom and Pons (as be- 
 tween their respective museums) there 
 were certain points of resemblance. For 
 M. Sauvageot, like Pons, was a musician 
 
 of limited means, who, fired by Pons's 
 love of art and Pons's hatred of the illus- 
 trious plutocrats who form cabinets of 
 antiquities in order that they may enter 
 into adroit competition with the regular 
 dealers, has adopted Pons's system and 
 method of procedure. For all these 
 specimens of cunning workmanship, these 
 miracles of industry. Pons (in common 
 with his rival, his competitor, his an- 
 tagonist) cherished in his heart a pas- 
 sion insatiable as that of the miser, 
 strong as that of a lover for a beauti- 
 ful mistress. As for a re-sale in the auc- 
 tion-rooms of the Rue des Jeuneurs, under 
 the hammer of the auctioneer, </ia^ seemed 
 to Pons to amount to nothing less than 
 the crime of Lese-bric-a-brac ! He kept 
 his museum, with the intention of deriv- 
 ing^ from it hourly pleasure ; for those 
 minds which Nature has endowed with 
 the power of admiring great works of 
 art, possess the sublime faculty of the 
 genuine lover. The object of their pas- 
 sion yields to them the self-same pleasure 
 yesterday, to-daj-, and forever. Satiet3' 
 is unknown to them ; and masterpieces, 
 fortunately, are perennially j'oung. 
 
 From all that precedes, the reader will 
 gather that the object which the old man 
 was carrying with such paternal care was 
 one of those dazzling " finds "' which we 
 bear off — with how much rapture, you, 
 oh, ye amateurs ! understand full well ! 
 
 At the first outlines of this biogi'aphical 
 sketch, every reader will be tempted to 
 exclaim : "Well, in spite of his ugliness, 
 this must be the happiest fellow in the 
 world." And it is undoubtedly true that 
 a mental counter-irritant, in the form of 
 a mania, is a sovereign remedy for ennui 
 and the spleen. All ye who can no longer 
 drink from that vessel which has in every 
 age been termed the cup of pleasure, 
 apply yourselves to the task of collecting 
 — no matter what ; even postage-stamps 
 have been collected — and you will find the 
 solid ingot of happiness coined into small 
 change. A mania ! wiiv, 'tis pleasure 
 idealized ! Do not, however, envy the 
 worthy Pons, since here, as in all kindred 
 cases, the feeling would be based upon a 
 misconception.
 
 40 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 For this man, who was the very incar- 
 nation of delicacy — this man, whose moral 
 being- drew its only sustenance from an un- 
 wearied admiration of the finest achieve- 
 ments of human toil — thatg-lorioussti'ug-- 
 g-le with the forces of Nature — -was the 
 slave of that sin which, of all the seven 
 deadly sins, God Avill surely punish with 
 the least severitj^ : Pons was a gourmand. 
 His slender means, combined with his 
 passion for bric-a-brac, entailed upon him 
 a dietetic regime so thoroughly distaste- 
 ful to his appreciative palate that at the 
 out.set the old bachelor had solved the 
 difficulty by dining- out every day of his 
 life. Now, in the days of the Empire, 
 celebrities, either on account of their 
 scarcitj"^ and their slender political pre- 
 tensions or for some other reason, were 
 in far greater request than they are in 
 this degenerate age ; and moreover, it 
 was so easy to achieve reputation as a 
 poet, an author, or a musician, then ! 
 
 In those days Pons, who was regarded 
 as a proba'ble rival of the Nicolos, the 
 Paers and the Bertons, received so many 
 invitations that he was compelled to jot 
 them down in a memorandum-book, just 
 as an advocate makes a note of the ' cases 
 to which he has to attend. By way of 
 supporting his character as an artist. 
 Pons presented copies of his musical ro- 
 mances to all his Amphitryons ; played 
 the piano for them ; brought them tickets 
 for boxes at the Feydeau (one of the thea- 
 ters for which he worked), got up concerts 
 at their houses, and would sometimes — 
 when he was among relatives — even im- 
 provise a little ball, and fiddle for the 
 dancers with his own illustrious fingers. 
 Those were the days when the finest men 
 in France used to exchange sword-cuts 
 with the finest men of the coalition ; hence 
 Pons's ugliness passed for originality, in 
 accordance with the grand law promul- 
 gated by Moliijre in the famous couplet 
 that he has pvit into the mouth of Eliante. 
 When Pons had rendered a service to some 
 fine ivoman, he would sometimes hear 
 himself styled "a charming man;" but 
 that phrase was the Ultima Thule of his 
 good fortune. 
 
 During this phase of his existence — a 
 
 phase that lasted for about six yeai's — 
 that is to say, from 1810 till 181G— Pons 
 contracted the fatal habit of dining well, 
 at the expense of hosts who never counted 
 cost, who procured first fruits for him, 
 uncorked for him their choicest wines, set 
 before him the most exquisite desserts, 
 cofl'ee and liqueurs, and, in short, treated 
 him as hosts did treat their guests under 
 the Empire, that epoch when many a 
 private household imitated the splendor 
 of the Idngs and queens of whom Paris 
 was then full, even to overflowing. For 
 in those days it was the fashion to play 
 at the game of royalty just as it is now 
 the fashion to play at the game of Par- 
 liament, by creating a host of societies 
 with their presidents, vice-presidents, and 
 secretaries ; such as the Flax Societj^, the 
 Viniculturai Society, the Sericicultural 
 Society, the Agricultural Society, the 
 Industrial Society, and so forth ; until 
 at length the craze has risen to such a 
 pitch that we are actually on the hunt for 
 social evils, in order that we may form 
 the doctors of those evils into a society ! 
 A stomach trained as Pons's stomach 
 had been trained, exercises an inevitable 
 influence on the moral natui-e of a man, 
 and corrupts him in direct proportion to 
 tlie proficiency' of his stomach in things 
 culinary. Sensuality, lurking in every 
 corner of the heart, holds undisputed 
 sway, boldly combats the dictates of the 
 will, drowns the voice of honor, and in- 
 sists, at all costs, on the satisfaction of 
 its cravings. No pen has ever yet de- 
 scribed the exactions of the gullet ; under 
 the specious guise of the necessity of sup- 
 porting life, they escape the cj'e of liter- 
 ary criticism. Yet the number of persons 
 who have been ruined by the table is in- 
 calculable. From this point of view the 
 table, at Paris, is the rival of the court- 
 esan. The former represents income, and 
 the latter expenditure. When Pons, de- 
 clining as his reputation declined, sunk 
 from the position of an ever-welcome 
 guest to that of a mere parasite, he found 
 himself unable to exchange the well-spread 
 board for the Spartan broth of an eigh- 
 teen-pennj' eating-house. Unhappy wight! 
 He shuddered at the thought that his in-
 
 COUSIX POXS. 
 
 41 
 
 dependence could be secured only at so 
 great a sacrifice. He felt that, leather 
 than foreg'o his habitual good-cheer, the 
 re.ifular succession of each "earliest arri- 
 val " in the market, the delicate and dain- 
 ty little dishes, in short, which (to employ 
 a vulgar but expressive term) he was ac- 
 customed to guzzle, he was capable of 
 making the meanest concessions. True 
 bird of plunder, flying away when his 
 crop was full, and warbling an air by Avay 
 of thanks. Pons even found a certain 
 pleasure in living well at the expense of 
 that society' which demanded of him — 
 what? Empty compliments. Like all 
 bachelors who hate their own domiciles, 
 and pass their lives in the domiciles of 
 others. Pons was well versed in those 
 conventional forms and social grimaces 
 which, in the world, pass muster for sen- 
 timents, and he would tender compliments 
 as a sort of small change. Persons he 
 judged as if they had been sacks with 
 labels on them ; he trusted implicit^ to 
 the label, and thrust no curious hand 
 into the sack. 
 
 This \evy tolerable state of affairs lasted 
 for a decade. But what a decade it was ! 
 It was a rainy autumn, throug-hout the 
 whole of which Pons, by dint of rendering 
 himself indispensable in all the houses 
 that he frequented, contrived to dine 
 gratis. But it was a sinister career on 
 which he embarked when he began to un- 
 dertake the execution of innumerable com- 
 missions and to discharge, many a time 
 and oft, the functions of a hall porter or 
 a domestic servant. Repeatedly intrusted 
 with the carrying out of purchases, he 
 became the spy — of one family upon an- 
 other. Yet his manifold journeys and 
 meannesses procured him no credit what- 
 ever. "Pons is a bachelor" (so the 
 phrase would run), " and doesn't know 
 what on earth to do with his time ; he's 
 only too glad to trot to and fro for us. 
 But for that what wo%ild become of 
 him?" 
 
 Nor was the chill that old age diffuses 
 around it slow in setting in. 'Tis a con- 
 tagious east wind, producing its depress- 
 ing effects upon the moral temperature, 
 especially when the old man, who biings 
 
 the chill with him, is poor and plain. For 
 to be old and poor and plain — is not that 
 a threefold poverty ? This, then, was the 
 winter of Pons's life — \\inter, red-nosed 
 winter, with its pallid cheeks and multi- 
 form numbnesses. 
 
 From 1S3G tUl 1S43 the invitations ad- 
 dressed to Pons were few and far between. 
 The families which still admitted him to 
 their tables, far from courting the society 
 of the parasite, now merely tolerated it, 
 just as we tolerate a tax ; while as to 
 giving Pons any credit for his services — 
 even for his substantial services — no one 
 ever even dreamed of such a thing. ITie 
 family circles, in which the old man's 
 orbit lay, had no respect whatever for 
 the Arts, worshiped nothing save tangi- 
 ble results, and valued those things — and 
 those things only — which they had won 
 for themselves since the Revolution of 
 July ; in other words, wealth and a con- 
 spicuous social position. Now, since Pons 
 was deficient in that elevation of mind 
 and manner which inspires the bourgeois 
 bosom with respectful fear, he had now, 
 naturally enough, sunk some degrees be- 
 low zero, though without becoming an 
 object of absolute contempt. Keen indeed 
 was the torture to which he was exposed 
 in the bourgeois circle that he frequented; 
 but, like all timid persons, he concealed 
 his sufferings, and finally acquired a habit 
 of suppressing his feelings and turning' 
 his heart into a kind of sanctuary wherein 
 he would take refuge. Now this is a 
 phenomenon which many supei-ficial jier- 
 sons translate by the word egotism, and 
 it must be admitted that the resemblance 
 between the hermit and the egotist is 
 sufficient^ striking to give these calum- 
 niators a show of reason as against the 
 man of feeUng ; especially at Paris, where 
 the citizen of the world obsei-ves nothing, 
 where all is rapid as the rolling wave, 
 and fleeting as — a Ministry ! 
 
 Thus then it happened that on the in- 
 dictment—the retrospective indictment — 
 for egotism preferred against him, Cousin 
 Pons was found guilty ; for societj-, in the 
 long run, invariably convicts those whom 
 it has once accused. Is it possible to 
 gauge the crushing influence upon tha
 
 42 
 
 THE HUM AX COMEDY. 
 
 timid of undeserved disfavor ? Who can 
 hope to succeed in painting the misfort- 
 unes of Timidity? This situation— a sit- 
 uation which, day hy daj', was growing 
 worse — will account for the dejection 
 stamped upon the features of this poor 
 musician, who was living upon conces- 
 sions that were most degrading'. Still, 
 every hase compliance extorted by a pas- 
 sion from its subject is a bond of union; 
 the greater its demands, the stronger are 
 the links that bind j-ou to it; ever^' sacri- 
 fice 3'ou make tends to form a negative, 
 imaginary hoard which looks to you. like 
 untold wealth. When some bourgeois, 
 spacious in the possession of — stupidity — 
 had bestowed upon Pons a glance of inso- 
 lent patronage, how revengefully would 
 the old musician sip his glass of port, 
 and roll the quail cm gratin -on his 
 tongue, with the muttered reflection : 
 "After all, I have not paid for this too 
 dearly!" 
 
 Still, even in this existence, the eye of 
 the moralist will detect some extenuating 
 circumstances. A certain amount of satis- 
 fied desire is essential to the sustenance 
 of life. A passionless man, the just man 
 made perfect, is " a faultless monster," 
 a semi-angel with undeveloped wings. 
 Angels are all head in the Catholic mj-- 
 thologj^ ; but here on earth the just man 
 made perfect is that InsulTerable Grandi- 
 son, for whom the Venus of the crossways 
 would find herself unsexed. Now, if we 
 except the few commonplace adventures 
 that Pons had met with In the course of 
 his Italian tour — adventures that ought 
 to be ascribed to climatic inflLiences — he 
 had never encountered a woman's favor- 
 ing smile; such, indeed, is the funereal 
 destiny of manj^ a man ; but, as for Pons, 
 he was a monster from his very birth ! 
 This artist with the tender heart, who was 
 so prone to reveiie and so full of delicacy-, 
 finding himself thus doomed to play the 
 part imposed upon him by his features, 
 resigned all hope of ever being loved. To 
 him celibacy was a matter of necessity 
 rather than of choice. Good living, then 
 — that vice of virtuous monks — held out 
 her arms to him, and he rushed to her 
 embrace with the same headlong alacrity 
 
 that he liad shown in devoting himself to 
 art, and in his worship of music. What 
 woman is to other's, good cheer and bric- 
 a-brac were to Pons ; for as to music, 
 music was his bread-winner; and find me, 
 if you can, the man who loves thfc calling 
 whereby he lives. In the long run 'tis 
 with a profession as it is with marriage : 
 we end hy being sensible only to its draw- 
 backs. 
 
 Brillat-Savarin has deliberately vindi- 
 cated the passion of the epicure ; but 
 perhaps he has failed to lay sufficient 
 stress upon the real pleasure M'hicli we 
 experience at the dinner-table. Digestion, 
 by calling into play all the forces of the 
 human frame, becomes, as it Avere, an in- 
 ternal combat which, in the case of the 
 gastrolater, is on a level with the intensest 
 joj's of love. So vast is the demand made 
 upon the vital energies by the process of 
 digestion, that the brain is obliterated for 
 the benefit of that second brain which has 
 its seat in the diaphragm, and intoxica- 
 tion ensues from the sheer inactivity' of 
 all the faculties. The boa-constrictor, for 
 example, that has swallowed a bull, is so 
 completely drunk that it will passivgiA' 
 allow itself to be killed ; and where is the 
 man past iovty who dares to work after 
 dinner ? Accordingl3', all great men have 
 been abstemious. Invalids in a state of 
 convalescence after a severe illness, to 
 whom we are obliged to administer nig- 
 gardly rations of carefully selected food, 
 must have frequently expei'ienced the 
 species of stomach-drunkenness that a 
 single chicken's wing will produce. The 
 prudiMit Pons, whose sole sensual delight 
 was centered in the play of the gastric 
 juices, was habitually in the condition of 
 these convalescent invalids. He exacted 
 from good cheer all the sensations that it 
 can bestow ; and, up to the date of which 
 Ave are speaking, he had enjoyed them 
 every day. But no one can bid farewell 
 to a habit. Many a suicide has paused on 
 the very threshold of death, at the thought 
 of the cafe to which he resorts for his 
 nightly game of dominoes.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 43 
 
 III. 
 
 THE PAIR OF NUT-CRACKERS. 
 
 In 1835 chance compensated Pons for 
 the indifference of tlie fair sex by furnish- 
 ing: hiui with what, in colloquial phrase- 
 oloft-y, is termed "an old man's walking-- 
 stick." In that year this old fellow — who 
 had been born old — found in friendship a 
 staff of life, and contracted a matrimonial 
 alliance of that sort from which, and from 
 which alone, social arrangements did not 
 exclude him ; he married an old man who, 
 like Pons himself, was a musician. But 
 for the existence of La Fontaine's divine 
 fable, this sketch would have been en- 
 titled "The Two Friends." So to have 
 entitled it, however, would have amounted 
 to a literary crime — to a sacrileg-e from 
 which every genuine man of letters must 
 needs recoil. The masterpiece of our 
 French ^sop — a masterpiece which is 
 at once the outpouring- of his heart and 
 the storj' of his dreams, deserves the ex- 
 clusive right of bearing that title forever. 
 Y«s, the page on which the poet has en- 
 graved these three words, " The Two 
 Friends," is one of those inviolable do- 
 mains — a temple as it were — which gen- 
 eration after generation will enter with 
 respect, and the whole world will visit as 
 long as typography endures. 
 
 Pons's friend was a pianoforte teacher. 
 His mode of life and his habits' chimed in 
 with those of Pons so well that the latter 
 used to say that, unfortunately for his 
 happiness, he had met his friend too late ; 
 for their acquaintanceship, which had 
 been struck up at a prize-distribution in 
 some young ladies' school, did not date 
 further back than the j-ear 1834. Never, 
 perhaps, had two such congenial spirits 
 met upon the wide ocean of humanitj' — 
 that ocean whose earliest waters welled 
 up in the terrestrial paradise, in opposi- 
 tion to the will of God. In a very short 
 time the two musicians became indispen- 
 sable one to the other. In the space of 
 eight days, mutual confidences made 
 them, as it were, a pair of brothers — in 
 short, previously to this time Schmucke 
 no more believed in the existence of such 
 
 a person as Schmucke than Schmucke be- 
 lieved in the existence of such a person as 
 Pons. 
 
 We have already said enough to de- 
 scribe these two worthies ; but since there 
 are intellects that have no taste for syn- 
 thetical conciseness, a brief demonstration 
 is necessary to convince the unbelieving. 
 
 This pianist, then, like everj' other pian- 
 ist, was a German ; just as the great 
 Listz and the great Mendelssohn are Ger- 
 mans ; just as Steibelt, Mozart and Dus- 
 scck, Meyer, Doelher, Thalberg, Hiller, 
 Leopold Mayer, Crammer, Zimmerman, 
 and Kalkbrenner are Germans ; just as 
 Hertz, Woetz, Karr, Wolff, Pixis, Clara 
 Wieck, and — to be more specific — just as 
 all Germans are Germans. Now, although 
 Schmucke was a great composer, he could 
 not rise above the rank of a teacher of 
 music ; for the audacity necessary to a 
 man of genius who would make his mark 
 was entirely foreign to Schmucke's dis- 
 position. The simplicity which charac- 
 terizes many Germans is not continu- 
 ous ; it is intermittent. When they have 
 reached a certain age, the naivete they 
 then exhibit is drawn from the som-ces 
 that supplied their youth (much as water 
 is supplied to a canal), and is employed 
 to irrigate their successes, artistic, scien- 
 tific, or pecuniary — in fact, they use it as 
 a shield to protect them fi'om suspicion. 
 In France, certain cunning folks adopt 
 the stupidity of the "Parisian grocer as a 
 substitute for this German simplicity. 
 But as for Schmucke, he had really re- 
 tained all the artlessness of his childhood, 
 just as Pons retained, in his attire, the 
 relics of the imperial epoch — that is to 
 saj', quite unconsciously. 
 
 This true and noble German was per- 
 former and audience, both in one. He 
 played to and for himself. He lived in 
 Paris just as a nightingale dwells in its 
 forest ; and for a space of twenty years 
 sung on — sole member of his tribe — until 
 the moment when he encountered Pons 
 and found in him a second self. (See 
 "Une Fille d'Eve.") 
 
 Pons and Schmucke liad a copious and 
 an equal store of that childish senti- 
 mentalitv which distinguishes the Ger-
 
 44 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 mans. They both had a passion for 
 flowers ; they both felt for natural 
 scenery' that admiration which induces 
 the children of the Fatherland to plant 
 their g-ardens with big' bottles, to reflect, 
 in miniature, tlie landscape which lies as 
 larg-e as life under their very eyes. Both 
 Schmucke and Pons had that propensitj^ 
 for investig'ation which leads the German 
 savant to undertake — in his g-aiters ! — a 
 journey of a hundred leag'ues in order to 
 verify a fact that stares him in the face, 
 from the margin of the well beneath the 
 courtyard jasmine. And lastly, both of 
 them exhibited that passion for attaching 
 a psychical sig'niflcance to the veriest tri- 
 fles in creation which gives birth to the 
 inexplicable works of John Paul Richter, 
 the drunken revels that Hoffman has com- 
 mitted to print, and the folio fences with 
 which a German will encumber the very 
 simplest questions, delving down into the 
 profoundest depths, at the bottom of 
 which all that we can discover is — a Ger- 
 man ! Pons and Schmucke were both good 
 Catholics ; they accompanied each other 
 to mass regularly, and went through the 
 routine of their religious duties like a 
 couple of children who never had to un- 
 burden their consciences to their confes- 
 sor. They implicitly believed that music 
 -^the lang'uag'e of heaven — bore to ideas 
 and sentiments the same relation that 
 ideas and sentiments bear to ordinary 
 speech ; and interminable were the con- 
 versations which, putting their theory 
 into practice, the two old men held ^dth 
 one another, talking to each other in 
 amoebcean orgies of music, in order, after 
 the manner of lovers, to demonstrate, one 
 to another, that of which they were al- 
 ready entirely convinced. Schmucke was 
 as thoroug-hly absent-minded as Pons 
 was observant; if Pons was a collector, 
 Schmucke was, as certainly, a dreamer; 
 if Pons rescued beautiful objects belong-- 
 ing to the world of matter, Schmucke 
 studied the beauties that belong to the 
 world of mind. Pons would have espied 
 and purchased a porcelain cup ere 
 Schmucke, musing on some strain .from 
 Rossini, Bellini, Beethoven, or Mozart, 
 and ransacking the world of sentiment 
 
 for the origin or the counterpart of the 
 musical phrase that was running- in his 
 head, had g-ot through the operation of 
 blowing- his nose. But Schmucke, the 
 thrifty dreamer, whose savings were at 
 the mercy of his mental distraction, and 
 Pons, whose passion made him prodigal, 
 were both landed in the same predicament, 
 on the thirty -first of December. St. Sylves- 
 ter's day in each revolving- year always 
 .surprised them, both with empty purses. 
 It is possible that, but for this friend- 
 ship. Pons -would have succumbed to his 
 afflictions ; but so soon as he found a 
 heart into which he could pour his sor- 
 rows, life became endurable to him. The 
 first time that he bi-eathed his troubles 
 into Schmucke's ear, the worthy German 
 advised him to live, as he himself lived, 
 on bread and cheese, at home, rather 
 than g-o out and eat dinners which cost 
 him so dear. Alas ! Pons did not venture 
 to confess to Schmucke that, in his org-an- 
 ism, heart and stomach were at war; 
 that his stomach readilj^ tolerated that 
 which tortured his heart ; and that, cost 
 what it might, he must have a g-ood din- 
 ner to relish, just as a man of gallantry 
 must have a mistress to torment. It took 
 Schmucke some time to gain a thoroug-h 
 knowledge of Pons's character ; for 
 Schmucke <vas too intensely German 
 to possess that rapidity of observation 
 which stamps the Frenchman ; but when, 
 at length, Schmucke did understand his 
 friend, he loved the poor fellow all the 
 more on account of his failing- — in fact, 
 there is no stronger bond of friendship 
 than for one of two friends to believe 
 himself superior to the other. Not even 
 an angel could have breathed a word of 
 disapprobation at the sight of Schmucke 
 rubbing- his hands when he discovered 
 how firm a hold the love of good living 
 had gained upon his friend Pons. In fact, 
 on the very next morning- after this dis- 
 covery, the worthy German added to the 
 ordinary breakfast sundry' dainties, which 
 he himself had brought in, and continued 
 to provide his friend with fresh ones 
 every day ; for, since Pons and Schmucke 
 had foregathered, they breakfasted to- 
 gether in their own lodgings.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 45 
 
 To suppose that the two friends had 
 escaped that Parisian ridicule which never 
 yet spared anything or anybody, would 
 argue a complete ignorance of Paris. 
 Schmucke and Pons, in uniting their 
 riches and their poverty, had conceived 
 the economical idea of Uving together; 
 and each paid a moiety of the rent of a 
 set of apartments which were very un- 
 equally divided between them. Their 
 rooms formed a part of a quiet house in 
 the quiet Rue de Normandie, in the Ma- 
 rais. As they often went out together, 
 and strolled side by side along the same 
 boulevards, the idlers of the quarter had 
 nicknamed them " The Pair of Nut-Crack- 
 ers." This sobriquet renders it superflu- 
 ous to paint the portrait of Schmucke 
 here ; he was to Pons what the Nurse 
 of Niobe (the celebrated statue in the 
 Vatican) is to the Venus of the Tribune. 
 
 Madame Cibot, the portress of this 
 house, was the pivot of " The Pair of Nut- 
 Crackers; " but so important is the part 
 she plays in the drama which terminated 
 in the dissolution of this twin existence, 
 that it is better to reserve her portrait 
 till the moment when she enters on the 
 scene. 
 
 That which remains to be said about 
 the moral nature of these two beings, is of 
 a character less readily to be compre- 
 hended than anything which has gone 
 before, by ninety-nine out of a hundred 
 readers, in the forty-ninth year of this 
 nineteenth century. This comparative 
 incomprehensibility may be attributed to 
 the prodigious development of the finan- 
 cial element in human nature — a develop- 
 ment due to the introduction of railways. 
 Now what remains to be said is but little ; 
 yet is it highly important. In fact, the 
 problem is, to convey to the mind of the 
 reader an adequate idea of the extreme 
 sensitiveness of these two hearts ; and 
 here let us borrow an illustration from 
 the railways — -wei-e it only by way of 
 recouping the capital which thej' are con- 
 stantly borrowing from us. 
 
 The trains which we are now accus- 
 tomed to see, speeding along their iron 
 roads, grind to powder, in their progress, 
 minute particles of gravel. Now let such 
 
 a minute particle — a particle too minute 
 for a pas.seng-er to see — be introduced into 
 his renal system, and he will experience 
 the pangs of that most frightful malady, 
 the gravel, which is often fatal. Now 
 that identical particle which, to our ex- 
 isting body social, traveling along its 
 metallic path, with all the rapidity of a 
 locomotive, is nothing more than a mere 
 imperceptible atom of gravel, causing no 
 appreciable annoyance, generated in Pons 
 and Schmucke, who were incessantly ex- 
 posed to its irritating influence, a kind of 
 gravel of the heart. Sensitive, in the ex- 
 treme, to the sufferings of others, each of 
 these two poor creatures wept over his 
 inability' to aid ; while, in regard to his 
 own feelings, each of them was acutely, 
 almost morbidly, susceptible. Neither 
 old age, nor the continual spectacles pre- 
 sented by the drama of Parisian life — in 
 short, nothing, had had power to harden 
 these two pure, fresh, and child - like 
 hearts. The longer they lived, the more 
 keen became their personal sufferings. 
 Thus it is (alas that thus it should be !) 
 with uncorrupted natures, with tranquil 
 thinkers, and with genuine poets, who 
 have held themselves aloof from all excess. 
 
 Since the time when these two old men 
 had set up their tents together, they had 
 imported into their occupations (which 
 were almost identical) the harmony of 
 movement that marks the paces of a pair 
 of Pai'isian hacks. Winter and summer, 
 Pons and Schmucke rose at seven o'clock, 
 and, breakfast over, sallied forth to give 
 the usual lessons in the schools which thej' 
 served, where thej' supplied each other's 
 place, in case of need. Toward noon, if 
 his presence were required at a rehearsal. 
 Pons would wend his way to his theater ; 
 but all his leisure moments were devoted 
 to fldnerie. Then, in the evening, the 
 two friends would meet at the theater, 
 where Pons had found a berth for 
 Schmucke, after this wise : 
 
 When Pons and Schmucke first met 
 each other, Pons had just obtained, with- 
 out even asking for it, that field-marshars 
 baton of obscure composers — a conduct- 
 or's wand. It had been conferred upon 
 the poor musician through the influence
 
 46 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 of Count Popiiiot — tlien a Minister — at 
 the time when that bourgeois hero of the 
 Revolution of July procured a theatrical 
 license for one of those friends, the sight 
 of whom bring's a blush to the cheek of 
 the successful adventurer, when, as he 
 rolls along in his carriage, he espies some 
 companion of his youth, a poor pedestrian, 
 strapless and down at heel, clad in a coat 
 of problematical hue, and embarked in 
 speculations altogether too vast for his 
 diminished capital. This friend of Count 
 Popinot's, a quondam commercial trav- 
 eler, had, in by -gone days, rendered im- 
 portant services to the celebrated firm of 
 Popinot ; and Anselm Popinot, who, after 
 being twice a Minister, was now a count 
 and a peer of France, not only acknowl- 
 edged the Illustrious Gaudissard, but, bet- 
 ter still, resolved to place the former bag- 
 man in a position to renew his wardrobe 
 and replenish his purse ; for the heart of 
 the whilom druggist had not been cor- 
 rupted, either by political life or the vani- 
 ties of the court of the Citizen King. 
 Gaudissard, who was still, as of yore, de- 
 voted to the ladies, asked that the license 
 of a theater, then in a state of insolvency, 
 might be transferred to him ; and the 
 Minister, while acceding to his request, 
 took care to send him certain aged ad- 
 mirers of the fair sex, wealth^'- enough to 
 form a bod^' of substantfal sleeping part- 
 ners, with a passion for feminine attrac- 
 tions. The name of Pons, who was a 
 constant guest at the Hotel Popinot, was 
 inserted in the license ; and when, in the 
 year 1834, the association, of which Gau- 
 dissard was the leading member, and 
 which, by the way, made a fortune, em- 
 braced the notion of realizing, upon the 
 boulevard, that grand idea, an opera for 
 the people, it was found that the ballet- 
 music and the incidental music of the 
 fair^'^ pieces required a tolerable con- 
 ductor, endowed with some slight talent 
 as a composer : so Pons became the leader 
 of the orchestra. Now the management 
 which preceded the Gaudissard partner- 
 ship had been too long in a state of 
 bankruptcy' to boast a copyist. So Pons 
 introduced Schmucke to the theater,- in 
 the capacity of superintendent of the 
 
 scores — an obscure post, which demands, 
 however, a sound knowledge of music. 
 Acting on the advice of Pons, Schmucke 
 concluded, with the chief of the corre- 
 sponding department at the Opera-Co 
 mique, an arrangement whereby the old 
 German escaped the purely mechanical 
 part of the work. 
 
 Wonderful were the results produced by 
 the co-operation of Schmucke and Pons. 
 Schmucke, whose strong point, like that 
 of all Germans, was harmony, looked after 
 the instrumentation of the pieces, to which 
 Pons supplied the airs. Yet, though the 
 fresh unhackneyed beautj' of certain mor- 
 ceaux, which served as an accompaniment 
 to two or three successful plays, made a 
 forcible impression on the connoisseurs, 
 the word progress furnished a sufficient 
 explanation of the phenomenon ; they 
 never inquired the names of the compos- 
 ers : so Pons and Schmucke were merged 
 in glory, just as some persons are drowned 
 in their own baths. Now at Paris, espe- 
 cially since 1830, no one can succeed with- 
 out elbowing quibuscunque viis, and with 
 no gentle violence, a most formidable co- 
 hort of competitors ; no ordinary strength 
 of loin will serve your turn ; and as for our 
 two friends, they were sutTering from that 
 gravel of the heart which clogs all ambi- 
 tious efforts. 
 
 As a general rule. Pons did not make 
 his appearance in the orchestra of his 
 theater till about eight o'clock — the hour 
 at which the pieces that draw commence, 
 and demand the despotic rule of the baton 
 for their overtures and incidental music. 
 This indulgence exists in most of the minor 
 theaters ; but Pons's disinterestedness, in 
 all his dealings with the managers, was 
 such, that he could well afford to take 
 matters easily. Schnmcke, moreover, was 
 always ready, in any emergency, to take 
 the place of Pons. 
 
 As time rolled on, Schmucke's position 
 in the orchestra had gained stability. The 
 Illustrious Gaudissard had tacitly recog- 
 nized the usefulness of Pons's collaborator; 
 and since a piano had now become a sine 
 qud non in the orchestra of a theater of 
 any pretensions, a piano was introduced 
 and placed near to the conductor's desk ;
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 47 
 
 in that spot Schmucke — a spontaneous 
 supernumerary — installed himself, and 
 plaj'ed the instrument gratis. When 
 once the character of this unambitious 
 and unassuming old German was known, 
 all tl\e musicians accepted him without a 
 murmur ; and thereupon the manager 
 gave Schmucke a small salary for pre- 
 siding over those instruments, which, 
 though often necessary', are not to be 
 found in the orchestras of the boulevard 
 theaters — such instruments, for example, 
 as the piano, the viola, the English horn, 
 the violoncello, the harp, the Spanish 
 castanets, the bells, and the various in- 
 ventions of Sax, etc. ; for if the Germans 
 do not understand how to play upon the 
 grand instruments of Libert^^ it cannot 
 be denied that they have a natural ap- 
 titude for plajang on every possible 
 instrument of music. 
 
 The two old artists, who were very 
 much beloved at the theater, led a philo- 
 sophical existence there. They wore 
 scales upon their eyes, in order that they 
 miglit be blind to all those ugly blots 
 that must disfigure a theatrical troupe 
 wliich includes a corps de ballet among 
 its members — a frightful combination, 
 born of the exigencies of the treasury, to 
 be the plague of managers, authors, and 
 musicians alike. The high respect which 
 the worthy and retiring Pons entertained 
 both for himself and for others,, had won 
 him the esteem of all Avith whom he came 
 into contact ; and indeed it is true that, 
 in every sphere of society, a life of puritj' 
 and stainless honesty extorts admiration, 
 even from the most corrupt ; and that, 
 at Paris, a fine example of virtue meets 
 with the same success as a big diamond 
 or a rare curiosity. Not an actor, not 
 an author, no, not the most unblushing 
 of the ladies of the ballet, would have 
 even dreamed of hoaxing or playing anA- 
 practical joke upon Pons or Pons"s friend. 
 As for Pons, he would occasionally stroll 
 into the greenroom of the theater; but 
 Schmucke's knowledge of the building 
 was confined to the underground pas- 
 sages that led from the exterior of the 
 house to the orchestra. When the 
 worthy old German was on duty he 
 
 would sometimes cast a venturesome 
 glance at the body of the house, and ad- 
 dress a question or two to the first flute 
 (a j'oung man who had been born at 
 Strasbourg, the scion of a German fami- 
 \y from Kehl). Schmucke's questiou 
 would have reference to those eccentric 
 personages who are, almost invariably-, 
 to be seen in the stage-boxes. Little by 
 little the child-like mind of Schmucke 
 (whose education in things social was 
 undertaken by this flutist) was induced 
 to admit that the existence of the lorette 
 was not entirely- a fable, that there was 
 such things as illicit marriages, that first 
 ladies of the ballet might be recklessly' 
 extravagant, and that box-keepers did 
 occasionally carry on a little contraband 
 commerce. To this worth_y old man, the 
 very innocencies of vice seemed to be the 
 ne plus ultra of Babylonian depravitj"^ ; 
 and he greeted their rehearsal with a 
 smile, such as he would have accorded 
 to a Chinese arabesque. The intelli- 
 gent reader will not need to be informed 
 that Pons and Schmucke were both — to 
 use a word that is very much in fasli- 
 ion — exploit es ; but what they lost in 
 monej"^ they gained in esteem, and in 
 the good offices that were rendered to 
 them. 
 
 After the success of a certain ballet, 
 which laid the foundation of the fortune 
 acquired by the Gaudissard partnership, 
 the managers sent Pons a silver group 
 that was said tobethe work of Benvenuto 
 Cellini, and the price of which was so 
 high, that it formed the topic of a green- 
 room conversation. That price was no 
 less than twelve hundred francs ! The 
 poor worthy fellow wanted to return the 
 gift : and Gaudissard had a world of 
 trouble in inducing him to accept it. 
 "Ah!" exclaimed Gaudissard to his 
 partner, "if we could but find actors of 
 the same description ! ■'' This twin exist- 
 ence, that was outwardly so unrufiied, 
 was, nevertheless, troubled, but it was 
 troubled solely' hy the vice which Pons 
 hugged so lightly — his ai'dent passion 
 for dining out. Accordingly, whenever 
 Schmucke happened to be at home while 
 Pons was dressing for dinner, the wor-
 
 48 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 thy German would, inwardly, bewail the 
 fatal habit : " If it onl_y made him vat- 
 ter!' he would frequently ejaculate. 
 And he would ponder over plans for cur- 
 ing' Pons of his degrading vice ; for that 
 exquisite sense of smell which distin- 
 guishes the dog belongs — in things moral 
 — to the genuine friend ; he scents from 
 afar the sorrows of his friend, divines 
 the hidden source^ of those sorrows, and 
 broods over their remedy. 
 
 Pons, who still retained, upon the little 
 finger of his right hand, the diamond ring 
 which, though it is now become ridicu- 
 lous, fashion permitted the beaus of the 
 Empire to wear ; Pons, in whose compo- 
 sition there was far too much of the 
 troubadour and the Frenchman for his 
 peace of mind, did not exhibit, in his coun- 
 tenance, that divine serenity which miti- 
 g-ated the fearful ugliness of Schmucke. 
 Hence the German had g-athered, from 
 the melancholy expression of his friend's 
 features, the growing difiBculties that ren- 
 dered his profession of parasite more pain- 
 ful from day to day. In fact it was very 
 natural that, in October, 1844, the num- 
 ber of houses in which Pons could count 
 upon a dinner should be extremely limit- 
 ed ; and the poor conductor, being now 
 reduced to the necessity of confining his 
 evolutions to the family circle, had, as we 
 shall see, given to the Vi^ord family far too 
 extensive a meaning. 
 
 The wliilom prize-man was cousin-ger- 
 man to the first wife of Monsieur Camu- 
 sot, the wealthy silli-mercer of the Rue 
 des Bourdonnais. That lady had been a 
 Mademoiselle Pons and sole heiress of one 
 of the celebrated Pons Brothers, Court 
 Embroiderers — a house in which the fa- 
 ther and mother of our musician had had 
 'an interest. Indeed, they it was who — 
 before the revolution of 1798 — had founded 
 the business, which subsequent^, in 1815, 
 was sold to Monsieur Rivet by the father 
 of the first Madame Camusot. Her hus- 
 band, who had retired from business ten 
 years before the opening of this scene, was 
 now, in 1844, a member of the General 
 Council of Manufacturers, a deputy, etc., 
 etc. Pons, having acquired the friendship 
 of the Camusot tribe, considered himself 
 
 the cousin of the silk-mercer's children by 
 his second wife ; although, as a matter 
 of fact, the poor musician Avas not even 
 connected with them. 
 
 The second Madame Camusot was a 
 Mademoiselle Cardot. Pons, accordingly', 
 as being a relative of the Camusots, in- 
 troduced himself into the numerous family 
 of the Cardots — another tribe of bourgeois, 
 which, with all its alliances, formed a com- 
 plex society, no less powerful than that of 
 the Camusots. 
 
 Cardot, the notary, brother of the sec- 
 ond Madame Camusot, had married a 
 Mademoiselle Chiffreville. Now, the well- 
 known family of Chiffre\Tlle — the queen 
 of the trade in chemical products — had 
 business relations \\ith the wholesale 
 druggists, of whom Monsieur Anselm 
 Popinot, M'ho, as every one knows, was 
 carried by the Revolution of July into the 
 very innermost circle of dynastic poUtics, 
 was the leading spirit. 
 
 Thus our friend Pons, following in 
 the wake of the Camusots and Cardots, 
 planted himself upon the Chift'revilles, 
 and, through them, upon the Popinots ; 
 always — be it understood — in his capacity 
 of cousin to the cousins. 
 
 This slight glimpse of the old man's 
 social relations — in this their final stage — 
 will exiDlaiu how it came to pass that, in 
 the year 1844, he still retained a footing 
 in the establishments : 
 
 Firstly, of Monsieur le Comte Popinot, 
 peer of France, ex-Minister of Agriculture 
 and Commerce ; 
 
 Secondly, of Monsieur Cardot, ex-nota- 
 ry, mayor, and deputy for one of the 
 arrondissements of Paris; 
 
 Thirdly, of Monsieur Camusot, senior, 
 deputy, member of the Council-General 
 of Manufactures, and on the high-road to 
 the peerage ; 
 
 Fourthly, of Monsieur Camusot, junior, 
 son of Camusot, senior, by. his first wife, 
 and therefore the real, in fact the only 
 real, cousin of Pons — even this cousin was 
 a cousin once removed. 
 
 The younger Camusot, who, to distin- 
 guish himself from his father and his half- 
 brother, had added to his own name that 
 of his estate (De Marville), was, in 1844,
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 49 
 
 President of one of the Divisions of the 
 Court Eoyal of Paris. The ex-notary 
 Cardot had married his daughter to Ber- 
 thiar, his successor, and Pons, as a chent 
 of the office, had managed to retain a seat 
 at this table. He termed it a dinner par- 
 devcmt notaire. 
 
 Such was the botirgeois firmament 
 which Pons styled his family, and in 
 which, by dint of many a painful effort, 
 he had preserved the right of plying knife 
 and fork. Of the ten houses which our 
 artist frequented, the house of President 
 Camusot owed him the warmest welcome ; 
 for that was the object of his most assid- 
 uous attentions. But, unfortunately, the 
 president's wife, a daughter of the late 
 Monsieur Thirion, groom of the chamber 
 to Louis XVIII. and Charles X., had 
 never given a cordial reception to her 
 husband's first cousui once removed. In 
 his attempts to mollify this formidable 
 relative. Pons had simply wasted his time ; 
 for after giving gratuitous lessons to 
 Mademoiselle Camusot, he found that he 
 could not make a musician of the young 
 lady, who, by the way, had a slight ten- 
 dencj' to red hair. 
 
 Now it was to the house of his cousin 
 the president that Pons, with his hand 
 protecting his precious treasure, was, at 
 the moment when our story opens, wend- 
 ing his way. On entering the house he 
 always fancied himself at the Tuileries ; 
 so profoundly was he impressed by the 
 solemn green draperies, the carmelite- 
 colored hangings, the Wilton cai'pets and 
 somber furniture of this abode ; in which 
 everything exhaled an atmosphere of 
 magisterial severity. Yet — strange phe- 
 nomenon ! — at Popinot's house in the Rue 
 Basse-du-Rempart Pons felt quite at home, 
 doubtlessly on account of the objects of 
 art to be found there ; for the former 
 Minister had, since his introduction to the 
 political world, imbibed the mania for col- 
 lecting fine Avorks of art — by way of op- 
 position, no doubt, to the art of politics, 
 which secretly collects the very foulest 
 works of man. 
 
 IV. 
 
 ONE OF THE THOUSAND JOYS OF A 
 COLLECTOR. 
 
 The President de Marville lived in the 
 Rue de Hanovre, in a house that his wife 
 had bought ten j-ears ago, after the de- 
 mise of both her parents, who left her 
 their savings, amounting to about one 
 hundred and fift\' thousand francs. 
 
 This house, whose street-front, in con- 
 sequence of its northern aspect, is some- 
 what gloomj', has, at the back, a south- 
 ern aspect that looks upon a court, be- 
 yond which lies a good garden. The 
 president occupied the whole of the first 
 floor, which, in the reign of Louis Quinze, 
 had formed the habitation of one of the 
 wealthiest financiers of the period. The 
 second floor was let to a rich old lady ; 
 and thus this abode presents the dignified 
 and tranquil appearance that becomes 
 the dwelling of a judge. 
 
 The remnants of the magnificent estate 
 of Marville, to the acquisition of which 
 the president had devoted the savings of 
 twenty years, as well as the fortune which 
 he had inherited from his mother, con- 
 sisted of the chateau itself — one of those 
 splendid monuments which are still to be 
 met with in Normandy — and a substan- 
 tial farm let at a rental of twelve thou- 
 sand francs. The chateau st;inds in a 
 park of about two hundred and fifty 
 acres. This luxury, which, in these 
 times, ma J' be called princely, costs the 
 president three thousand francs per an- 
 num ; so that the estate yields a net in- 
 come of nine thousand francs only. These 
 nine thousand francs, together with the 
 president's salary, brought his income up 
 to a total of twenty thousand francs — a 
 sum which would seem to be adequate, 
 especially when it is considered that, as 
 the only issue of his father's first mar- 
 riage, Monsieur de Marville would come 
 in for one half of his father's fortune. 
 
 But residence in Paris, and the expenses 
 entailed on the president and his wife by 
 their social position, swallowed up almost 
 the whole of their income. Indeed, up to 
 the year 1843, they had been hard pushed 
 to make both ends meet.
 
 50 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 Tins inventory will show the reader 
 vfhy Mademoiselle de Marville, a young- 
 lad^' of twenty -three summers, notwith- 
 standing- her portion, which amounted to 
 100,000 francs, and her expectations, so 
 frequently and skillfully (though fruit- 
 lessly) held fortli hy way of bait, still 
 remained unmarried. 
 
 For the last five years Cousin Pons 
 had listened to the lamentations of Mad- 
 ame la Presidente, who was doomed to 
 behold all the deputy judges married, 
 and the new judges of the tribunal made 
 happy fathers, while she had been spend- 
 ing- her time and energies in a fruitless 
 attempt to dazzle with Mademoiselle de 
 Marville's expectations the unenchanted 
 gaze of young Viscount Popinot, the eld- 
 est son of the prince of the drug trade, 
 for whose benefit — at least so said the 
 envious ones of the Rue des Lombards — 
 quite as much as for the benefit of the 
 younger branches of the royal family, 
 the Revolution of July had been brought 
 about. 
 
 When Pons had reached the Rue Choi- 
 seul, and was just on the point of turning 
 into the Rue de Hanovre, there stole over 
 him that inexplicable sensation which 
 oft^n besets the pure in heart, and inflicts 
 on them tortures as keen as any that the 
 greatest criminal can experience at sight 
 of a gendarme. The question — " How 
 will the president's wife receive me ? " — 
 was the sole source of Pons's sufferings. 
 That fragment of gravel which lacerated 
 the fibers of his heart had never worn it- 
 self round ; on the contrary', its ang-les 
 had grown sharper ; and the servants of 
 this mansion had incessantly whetted the 
 edges of the stonelet. In fact, the slight 
 esteem which the Camusots entertained 
 for Pons, his demonetization— so to speak 
 — among- the members of this family, in- 
 fluenced its servants, who, without being 
 positively rude to Pons, regarded him as 
 a variet}'^ of the species pauper. 
 
 His principal foe was a certain Made- 
 leine Vivet, a thin and shriveled spinster, 
 who acted as lady's-maid to Madame de 
 Marville and her daughter. This Made- 
 leine, spite of her blotchy complexion — 
 perhaps, indeed, in consequence of that 
 
 complexion and her viperme length of 
 body — had taken it into her head to be- 
 come Madame Pons. But in vain did 
 Madeleine parade, before the ej-es of the 
 old bachelor, the twenty thousand francs 
 which she had contrived to scrape to- 
 gether. Pons refused a happiness that 
 was so deeply tinged with — red. So this 
 Dido of the antechamber, who wanted to 
 become the cousin of her master and mis- 
 tress, played the poor musician manj' a 
 scurvy trick. When she heard the worthy 
 man upon the staircase — " Here comes 
 the sponger ! " she would exclaim ; taking 
 care that, if possible, he should overhear 
 her. If (in the absence of the footman) 
 she waited at table, she took care to give 
 her victim plenty of water and very little 
 wine ; and she filled his glass so full that 
 it was a hard matter for him to convey 
 it to his lips without spilling some of its 
 contents. Then she would forget to serve 
 him, until the president's wife — in a voice 
 that made her husband blush — would 
 order her to do so ; or else she would 
 upset the sauce over his clothes. In 
 short, it was a case of war carried on by 
 an inferior, certain of impunity, against 
 an unfortunate superior. 
 
 In the double capacity of housekeeper 
 and lady's-maid, Madeleine had followed 
 the fortunes of Monsieur and Madame 
 Camusot since their marriage. She had 
 seen them in all the penury of their first 
 start in life, at the time when the^' lived 
 in the provinces, and Monsieur Camusot 
 was a judge of the tribunal of Alengon. 
 She had lightened the burden of existence 
 for them, when, in 1828, Monsieur Camu- 
 sot threw up the presidency of the tri- 
 bunal of Mantes, and came to Paris, 
 where he was appointed ajvge dHnstruc- 
 tion. Madeleine, therefore, was far too 
 intimately connected with the family to 
 lack grounds for wreaking vengeance on 
 it. Beneath her (^esire to play her 
 haughty and amliitious mistress the 
 trick of becoming her husband's cousin, 
 there lurked, beyond a doubt, one of 
 those covert hatreds which are bom of 
 a trifle, small as the pebble that sets the 
 avalanche in motion. 
 
 " Here is your cousin Pons, madame,
 
 cousiy PONS. 
 
 51 
 
 and still in that spencer of his. He really 
 ought to tell me how he has managed to 
 preserve it during- these five-and-twent^- 
 years." Such was Madeleine's intima- 
 tion to her mistress. 
 
 Hearing a man's footstep in the little 
 room that lay between her drawiug-room 
 and bedchamber, Madame Camusot looked 
 at her daughter and shrugged her shoul- 
 ders. 
 
 " You alwaj-s contrive to give me warn- 
 ing so cleverly, Madeleine, as to leave me 
 no time to determine how to act," said 
 Madame Camusot. 
 
 '• John is out, madame ; I was alone ; 
 and when Monsieur Pons I'ang the bell I 
 opened the door to him. As he is almost 
 one of the family, I could not prevent his 
 following me. He is outside now, taking 
 off his spencer." 
 
 "Mj- poor Minette," quoth the lady to 
 her daughter, "we are fairly caught; now 
 we shall have to dine at home." Then 
 seeing how utterly woe-begone her dear 
 Minette appeared, she resumed : 
 
 "Come, shall we rid ourselves of him 
 for good ? " 
 
 "Oh! poor man!" repUed Mademoi- 
 selle Camusot, " would you deprive him 
 of one of his dinners?" 
 
 Hereupon the little anteroom resounded 
 with the affected cough of a man who 
 adopts this method of saying, " I can 
 overhear you." 
 
 " Well, show him in," said Madame 
 Camusot, shrugging her shoulders. 
 "You have called so early, cousin," 
 said Cecile Camusot, assuming a slight- 
 ly coaxing air — " you have called so 
 early that you have come upon us just 
 as mamma was going to dress." 
 
 Cousin Pons, on whom the movement 
 of the siioulders had not been thrown 
 away, was so deeply wounded that he 
 could find no compliment to utter, and 
 took i-efuge in the profound remark : 
 " You are as charming as ever, little 
 cousin." Then turning to the matron 
 and bowing, he continued : " You will 
 bear me no grudge, dear cousin, for 
 coming a little earlier than usual, for 
 I have brought you what you did me 
 the pleasure to ask me for." 
 
 forgotten aU 
 
 said Madame Camusot, 
 
 And poor Pons, who excruciated the 
 president, the president's wife, and Ce- 
 cile, every time that he called them 
 "cousin," drew from the side-pocket of 
 his coat an exquisite little oblong box of 
 Saint-Lucia wood divmely carved. 
 
 " Oh ! I had entirely' 
 about it ! 
 dryly. 
 
 Now, was not this an atrocious thing to 
 say ? Was not this a stealing of aU merit 
 from the pains taken by her relation, 
 whose only fault was that he was a 
 poor relation ? 
 
 "But," pursued she, "you are ex- 
 tremely kind, cousin. Am I much in 
 your debt for this Uttle bit of trump- 
 ery ? " 
 
 This question made Pons wince inter- 
 nallj'; he had looked upon this httle 
 trinket as an oblation that would pay 
 for all his dinners. 
 
 " I thought that you would allow me to 
 offer it to you as a present," said he, with 
 emotion. 
 
 " What do you mean ? What do you 
 mean?" exclaimed the ladj-.' "Come 
 now, don't let there be any ceremony 
 between us; we know each other quite 
 well enough to speak frankly to one an- 
 other : I know that you are not rich 
 enough to provide the sinews of war ; is 
 it not sufficient that you should have in- 
 curred trouble and loss of time in going 
 about from shop to shop ? " 
 
 "My dear cousin, I don't think that 
 you would care to have this fan, if you 
 were called upon to give for it what it is 
 worth," replied the poor man in his wrath, 
 " for it is one of Watteau's masterpieces ; 
 both of its sides were painted by him. But 
 make ^our mind easy, cousin ; the fan did 
 not cost me the hundredth part of its value 
 as a work of art." 
 
 To say to a rich person : " You are 
 poor," is like telling the archbishop of 
 Granada that his sermons are rubbish. 
 Madame de Marville was far too proud of 
 her husband's position, of being the owner 
 of the estate of Marville, and of her invi- 
 tations to the court balls, not to be cut to 
 the very quick b^' such an observation, 
 especially when it emanated from a mis-
 
 52 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 erable musician, in regard to whom she 
 assumed the part of Ladj' Bountiful. 
 
 "Then the people of whom you buy 
 these tiling's must be very stupid," said 
 the lady, with marked emphasis. 
 
 " There is no such thing in all Paris as 
 a stupid shopkeeper," replied Pons, al- 
 most dryly. 
 
 "It is you who arc so clever, then," 
 said Cccile, in order to put an end to the 
 discussion. 
 
 " I am clever enough, little cousin, to 
 know the liandiwork of Lancret, Pater, 
 Watteau, and Greuze ; but, moreover, I 
 was stimulated by a desire to please j-our 
 dear mamma." 
 
 Vain and ignorant, Madame Camusot 
 did not wish to have the appearance of 
 receiving even a trifle from the hands 
 of her parasite ; and her ignorance stood 
 her in good stead ; the very name of 
 Watteau was unknown to her. 
 
 If anything can prove the enormous 
 self-esteem of the collector (which as- 
 suredly takes rank with any, for it rivals 
 the self-esteem of the author), 'tis the 
 hardihood displayed by Pons in thus hold- 
 ing his own against his cousin for the 
 first time in the course of twenty years. 
 Amazed at his own audacity, Pons re- 
 sumed a pacific mien, while he pointed 
 out to Cecile, in detail, the beauties of 
 the delicate carving of the branches of 
 the marvelous fan. But to explain the 
 heartfelt trepidation which seized upon 
 the worthy man, we must give a slight 
 sketch of Madame la Presidente. 
 
 At the age of forty-six, Madame de 
 Marville, who had once been fair, plump 
 and fresh — short she always was — had 
 become skinny. Her bulging forehead 
 and retreating mouth, ha\'ing lost the 
 delicate redeeming tints of youth, now 
 gave to her face, that had always worn a 
 disdainful look, an air of sullenness. Ha- 
 bitual and unresisted despotism in her 
 own house had rendered her features hard 
 and disagreeable ; while Time had changed 
 her once fair hair to a harsh chestnut color. 
 Her eyes, still keen and caustic, had a look 
 of magisterial arrogance, big with sup- 
 pressed envy. In fact, the wife of the 
 president found that, amid the circle of 
 
 successful bourgeois with whom Pons 
 dined, she was almost poor. She could 
 not forgive the wealthy wholesale drug- 
 gist (the former President of the Tri- 
 bunal of Commerce) for having succes- 
 sively attained the rank of deputy, of 
 minister, of count and peer. She could 
 not forgive her father-in-law for having, 
 to the detriment of his eldest son, pro- 
 cured his own nomination as deputy of 
 his o^\^l arrondissement at the time when 
 Popinot was raised to the peerage. She 
 had been in Paris eighteen years, and was 
 still waiting for her husband to be ap- 
 pointed Counselor of the Court of Cassa- 
 tion, a post from which he was shut out 
 on account of his limited capacity, which 
 was notorious at the palace. The gen- 
 tleman who in 1844 occupied the post of 
 Minister of Justice regretted that Ca- 
 musot had been made a president in 1834 ; 
 but, to mitigate the evil, he had been rele- 
 gated to the criminal department, where, 
 thanks to his technical training as a 
 juge cV instruction, he did good work 
 by making short work of the accused. 
 These various crosses had so worn and 
 worried Madame de Marville (who, by the 
 way, labored under no delusion with re- 
 gard to her husband's capacity) that they 
 ha€l ended hy making her quite terrible. 
 Her disposition, which was originally 
 overbearing, was now soured. Aged 
 rather than old, she assumed all the 
 harshness and dryness of a brusk, with 
 a view to extorting, through the fear 
 which she inspired, all that the world 
 was Inclined to withhold. Sarcastic to 
 excess, she had few friends; but she pos- 
 sessed a good deal of influence ; for she 
 had gathered round her a circle of old 
 female pietists, of her own stamp, who, 
 with an ej'-e to reciprocity, lent her their 
 support. Thus the relations of poor Pons 
 toward this devil in petticoats were ex- 
 actly like those which exist between a 
 pupil and a master who speaks only 
 through the rod ; so that the lady was 
 entirely at a loss to understand the sud- 
 den boldness of her cousin ; she was 
 completely ignorant of the value of the 
 fan. 
 
 " And pray where did you find this ? "
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 53 
 
 inquired Cecile, as she examined the 
 treasure. 
 
 "In the Rue de Lappe, in theshop of a 
 broker who had just brought it from a 
 chateau near Dreux, that has just been 
 pulled down. The name of the chateau is 
 Aulnay ; Madame de Pompadour occasion- 
 ally stayed there, before she built Menars. 
 They have preserved some of the most 
 splendid woodwork that was ever known ; 
 it is so beautiful that Lienard, our cele- 
 brated wood-carver, has retained two oval 
 frames for models, as being' the ne plus 
 ultra of the art. Ah ! there were treas- 
 ures there, indeed ! My broker found his 
 fan in an inlaid bonheur-du-jour , which I 
 should have bought if I collected such 
 things : but that is far bej'ond my reach! 
 Why. a piece of furniture by Reisener is 
 worth three or four thousand francs ! In 
 Paris people are beginning to understand 
 that the famous inlayers (French and 
 German) of the sixteenth, seventeenth, 
 •and eighteenth centuries, produced veri- 
 table pictures in wood. The merit of a 
 collector consists in getting the start of 
 fashion. Mark what I say : five years 
 hence the Frankenthal porcelain, which I 
 have been collecting for the last twenty 
 years, will be twice as dear as the soft 
 porcelain of Sevres." 
 
 "What do you mean by Frankenthal ?" 
 asked Cecile. 
 
 "It is the name of the china manufac- 
 tory of the Elector Palatine; 'tis older 
 than our Sevres works ; just as the fam- 
 ous gardens of Heidelberg, which Turenne 
 destroyed, had the misfortune to exist 
 Ijefore the gardens of Versailles were laid 
 out. Sevres has imitated Frankenthal to 
 a considerable extent. We must, in jus- 
 tice, admit that the Germans produced, in 
 Saxony and the Palatinate, some admir- 
 able works, before we did." 
 
 Mother and daughter looked at each 
 other, as if Pons had been talking Chi- 
 nese : for the ignorance and narrow- 
 ness of the Parisians are beyond con- 
 ception. They learn what we try to 
 teach them onlj' when they want to be 
 taught. 
 
 "And how do you recognize Franken- 
 thal porcelain ? " 
 
 " Why the signature!'^ exclaimed Pons, 
 with animation. "' All these exquisite 
 masterpieces are signed. Frankenthal 
 china has a C and a T (Charles-Theo- 
 dore) intertwined, and surmounted by a 
 prince's coronet ; old Dresden has the 
 two swords and the ordinal number in 
 gold ; Vincennes used to sign with a 
 horn ; Vienna has a V fermed and 
 barred ; Berlin has the double bar ; 
 Mayence the wheel ; Sevres the double 
 LL ; while the queen's porcelain has an 
 A (which stands for Antoinette) sur- 
 mounted by the royal crown. In the 
 eighteenth centur\', aU the sovereigns 
 of Europe competed with one another in 
 the manufacture of porcelain ; they stole 
 each other's workmen. Watteau de- 
 signed services for the Dresden works, 
 and his productions now command exor- 
 bitant prices (one needs to know them 
 well ; for nowadays Dresden is reproduc- 
 ing and imitating them). In those daj^s 
 some admirable things were produced, 
 things the like of which will never see 
 the light again." 
 
 " What nonsense ! " 
 
 "' l!iay, cousin ; 'tis as I say. There are 
 certain kinds of marquetry and porcelain 
 that will never again be produced, any 
 more than the pictures of Raphael, Titian, 
 Rembrandt, Van E,yck, and Cranach will 
 be reproduced. Why ! the Chinese are 
 extremely skillful, extremelj- clever — are 
 they not ? Well, ihey are now producing 
 copies of their choicest china, that which 
 is known as Grand-Mandarin ; well ! two 
 vases of Grand-Mandarin, of the largest 
 size, are worth six thousand, eight thou- 
 sand, nay, even ten thousand francs ! and 
 3'^ou can get a modern copy for two hun- 
 dred fi'ancs ! " 
 
 " You must be joking ! " 
 
 " Cousin, these prices astonish you : 
 but they are a mere nothing. Not only 
 does a complete dinner service for twelve;, 
 made of soft Sevres ware (which is not 
 porcelain), fetch a hundred thousand 
 francs ; but that is the invoic(> price. Such 
 a service cost fifty thousand livres at 
 Se\Tes in 1750. I have seen the original 
 invoices." 
 
 "Let us come back to this fan," said
 
 54 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 Cecile, in whose eyes the trinket had the 
 fault of looking too old. 
 
 '•You see/' said Pons, "I began my 
 hunt directly your dear mamma did me 
 the honor to ask me for a fan. I exam- 
 ined all the dealers' shops in Paris, with- 
 out finding- anything that was reallj' fine ; 
 for I Avanted to give Madame la Presi- 
 dente a chef-d'ceuvre, and I did think of 
 offering her the fan of Marie Antoinette 
 — the most beautiful of all celebrated 
 fans ; but yesterdaj"^ I was dazzled hy 
 this divine masterpiece, which must cer- 
 tainly have been bespoken by Louis 
 Quinze himself. Now, why did I go to 
 the Rue de Lappe, to search for a fan in 
 the shop of an AuTergnat, who deals in 
 copper, old iron, and gilt furniture ? Well, 
 for my own part, I believe that works of 
 art have minds ; that thej^ know an ama- 
 teur when they see him, that they beckon 
 to him, that they call out to him : ' Hist ! 
 hist ! "' Here Madame Camusot indulged 
 in another shrug of the shouldei's, and 
 looked at her daughter; but this rapid 
 pantomime escaped Pons's notice. 
 
 "I know them all, these rascals ! 'What 
 novelty have you, Daddy Monisti'ol ? Have 
 you any door-lops ? ' I said to this dealer, 
 who allows me just to cast an eye over 
 his purchases, before the wholesale buy- 
 ers come. In answer to my inquiiy, Mon- 
 istrol told me how Lienard, who was 
 doing some very fine carving for ro3'alty, 
 in the chapel of Dreux, had, at the sale of 
 Aulnay, rescued the carved wood-work 
 from the Paris dealers, who were on the 
 lookout for porcelain and inlaid furniture. 
 ' I didn't pick up much,' replied Monistrol, 
 'but that,' said he, pointing to the hon- 
 heur-du-jour, 'will pay the expenses of 
 my journey.' 'Tis a perfect marvel, with 
 designs by Boucher, executed in marque- 
 try most artistically ; one feels inclined to 
 go down on one's knees befoi-e it. ' Look 
 here, sir,' says Monistrol, ' I have just 
 come across this fan in a little diawer, 
 which was . locked, and had no kej% so 
 that I had to force it open. You might 
 perhaps tell me where I can sell it.' And 
 •io saying, forth he pulls this little box 
 of cai'ved Saint-Lucia wood. ' Look ! ' 
 says he, 'it's in that Pompadour style 
 
 that looks like flowered Gothic' 'Yes,' 
 said I, ' the box is pretty ; the box might) 
 suit me ; for as to the fan, my worthy 
 Monistrol, I have no Madame Pons to 
 give the old trinket to ; besides, one can 
 buy new ones that are verj' pretty ; they 
 paint these vellums, nowadays, marvel- 
 oush% and very cheap. Are jo\x aware 
 that there are two thousand painters in 
 Paris ? ' And so saying I carelesslj' opened 
 the fan, suppressing my admiration, and 
 looking with a cold eye at these little 
 pictures, the freedom and finish of which 
 are exquisite : I held in my hand the fan 
 of Madame Pompadour ! — a work that 
 had taxed the energies of Wattcau to the 
 very utmost ! ' How much do you want 
 for the piece of furniture ? ' I inquired. 
 ' Oh ! a thousand francs ; I have been of- 
 fered that for it already.' I then named, 
 as the price of the fan, a sum proportioned 
 to the probable expenses of his journey. 
 Thereupon we looked each other full in 
 the face, and I saw that my man was 
 caught. Quick as thought I clap the 
 fan into the box, to prevent the Auver- 
 gnat from examining it, and I go into 
 ecstasies over the workmanship of the 
 box, which is certainly a perfect gem. 
 ' If I buy the fan, 'tis onlj' for the sake 
 of the box ; it is only tlie box that tempts 
 me, look you. As for the honheur-du- 
 jour, you will get more than a thousand 
 francs for that ; look at the chiseling of 
 this copper; what models! You may 
 make a good tiling out of that ; it has 
 never been copied ; everything that was 
 made for Madame de Pompadour was 
 unique.' And my man, warming up over 
 his bonlieur-du-jour, forgets all about 
 the fan, and allows me to have it for 
 nothing, in exchange for my revelation 
 of the beauties of the piece of furniture 
 by Reisener. So there you are ! But it 
 requires a lot of practice to be able to 
 drive such bargains. It is a struggle of 
 eye against eye ; and what an eye is the 
 eye of a Jew or an Auvergnat ! " 
 
 The wonderful acting, the animation of 
 the old man, as he narrated the triumph 
 of his subtiltj' over the ignorance of the 
 broker, formed a subject fit for the brush 
 of a Dutch artist. But it was all thrown
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 55 
 
 away upon Madame Camusot and her 
 daug-hter, who, while they exchanged 
 glances that betokened indifference and 
 disdain, mentalh'' exclaimed : " What an 
 original ! " 
 
 "And that sort of thing amuses you ?" 
 asked the president's wife. 
 
 This question froze poor Pons ; he felt 
 inclined to strike the woman. 
 
 "Whjr, niy dear cousin," replied he, 
 " it is a masterpiece-hunt— a hunt in the 
 course of which you find yourself con- 
 fronted by adversaries who defend the 
 game ! "Tis a case of ruse against ruse ! 
 A masterpiece defended b}' a Norman, an 
 Auvergnat, or a Jew ! — why 'tis like the 
 fairj' tales in which you find a princess 
 guarded by enchanters ! " 
 
 '•' And how do you know that this fan is 
 by Watt— what d'ye call him ? " 
 
 "Watteau, dear cousin ; one of the 
 greatest of French painters in the eigh- 
 teenth century ! Look here — don't j-ou 
 perceive the signature ? " said Pons, 
 pointing to one of the principal scenes, 
 representing a round, danced by great 
 ladies disguised as peasant girls, and by 
 grand gentlemen in the gai^b of shep- 
 lierds. " How seductive ! What warmth ! 
 What coloring ! And 'tis all executed at 
 a single stroke, like a writing-master's 
 flourish. There is not a trace of effort in 
 it ! And see, on the other side, you have 
 a ball in a drawing-room ! What decora- 
 tions ! And then how well it is preserved ! 
 You see the ferule is of gold, and is fin- 
 ished off on either side with a little ruby, 
 which I have polished ! " 
 
 " That being so, cousin, I cannot ac- 
 cept from you so valuable a present. 
 You had better sell the fan, and invest 
 the proceeds," said Madame Camusot, 
 though she was longing to keej) tlie 
 magnificent fan. 
 
 "It is high time," said the worthy 
 man, recovering all his self-possession, 
 " that that which has been in the service 
 of Vice should be placed in the hands of 
 Virtue. It will have taken a century to 
 work that miracle. You may rely on 
 this, that no princess at court will have 
 anything that can compare with this 
 masterpiece ; for, unfortunately, it is 
 
 characteristic of human nature to do 
 more for a Pompadour than for a virtu- 
 ous queen." 
 
 "Very well; I accept the fan," said 
 Madame Camusot, smiling. " Cecile, my 
 little angel, go and help Madeleine to see 
 that the dinner is worthy of our cousin." 
 
 The president's wife wished to square 
 accounts with Pons ; and this direction, 
 which, in violation of all the dictates of 
 good taste, was uttered aloud, looked so 
 like the discharging of a debt that poor 
 Pons blushed like a young girl caught 
 tripiDing. It was some time ere this peb- 
 ble, of abnormal size, ceased "to rattle in 
 the old man's heart. 
 
 Cecile, meanwhile, a j'oung lady with a 
 decided tendency to red hair, and whose 
 somewhat formal manner recalled her 
 father's judicial gravity, and had a touch 
 of her mother's dryness, now disappeared, 
 leaving poor Pons alone, to tackle the 
 terrible Madame Camusot. 
 
 ONE OF THE THOUSAND AFFRONTS A PARA- 
 SITE HAS TO ENDURE. 
 
 "My little Lili is very pleasing," said 
 Madame Camusot, still using the childish 
 abbreviation that had formei'ly been ap- 
 plied to CecUe's name. 
 
 "Charming," replied the musician, 
 twiddling his thumbs. 
 
 " I can't understand the times we live 
 in at all," pursued the lady. "What 
 is the use of having a president of the 
 Court Roj'al of Paris, a commander of 
 the Legion of Honor, for your father, 
 and, for your grandfather a millionaire 
 deputy, who is sure some day to be a 
 peer of France, and is at the head of the 
 wholesale sillc trade, I should very much 
 like to know ? " 
 
 The zeal of thet president on behalf of 
 the new dynasty had recently procured 
 him a contmander's ribbon — a favor which 
 certain envious persons ascribed to the 
 friendship that existed between him and 
 Popinot.
 
 5G 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 That Minister, notwithstanding his 
 modesty, had, as we have seen, allowed 
 himself to be made a count — " For nw 
 son's sake" — said he to his numerous 
 friends. 
 
 "In these days," replied Pons, "the 
 one thing' needful is — money. 'Tis ouh' 
 the rich who are respected and — " 
 
 " How would it have been then if 
 Heaven had spared my poor little 
 Charles?" 
 
 '• Oh ! with two children, you would be 
 poor ! " I'oplied the cousin. "That is the 
 result of ihe equal division of property ; 
 but make your mind easy ; Cecilc will 
 make a good match after all. I know of 
 no young lady so highly accomplished." 
 
 You see to what a degree Pons had 
 learned to degrade his intellect, when he 
 was beneath the roof of his Amphitryons. 
 When there he echoed their ideas, wuth 
 vapid comments of his owia, like the 
 chorus in a Greek play. He did not 
 dare to give rein to that originality 
 which is characteristic of the artist, and 
 which had, in his youth, flowed freely 
 from his lips, in subtle strokes of wit, 
 though it was now well-nigh extin- 
 guished, thx'ough his habitual self-efface- 
 ment, and was checked, whenever it 
 appeared, as in the scene which we have 
 just described. 
 
 " But though my dowry was only 
 twenty thousand francs / found a hus- 
 band—" 
 
 "111 the year 1819, cousin," interrupted 
 Pons, "and then it was you, a woman of 
 intellect, a young lady patronized by 
 Louis XVIII. ! " 
 
 " But still mj' daughter is a perfect 
 angel, and a girl of talent ; she is full of 
 heart, and she has a marriage portion 
 of a hundred thousand francs, to say 
 nothing of her large expectations ; yet 
 she remains upon our hands — " 
 
 Madame de Marville went on talking 
 about her daughter and herself for twenty 
 minutes; abandoning hgrself to the lamen- 
 tations peculiar to mothers who are 
 "under the dominion" of daug-hters in 
 want of a husband. Throughout the 
 period of twenty years, during which the 
 old musician had been in the habit of din- 
 
 ing from time to time at the house of Ca- 
 musot, his only cousin, he had waited — 
 and waited in vain — to hear a single &y\- 
 lable about his own affairs, his mode of 
 life, his health. Nor was this all. Where- 
 ever he went he was used as a kind of 
 conduit-pipe for domestic confidences ; his 
 reticence being guaranteed b}' his well- 
 known discretion — an enforced disci'etion, 
 for a single bold word would have closed 
 the doors of ten houses against him for- 
 ever. His part of listener, therefore, was 
 backed up by unwavering acquiescence ; 
 he greeted every statement with a smile ; 
 he never attacked, he never defended, any 
 one. AVith him, evei'y one was in the 
 right. Accordingly he had ceased to be 
 reckoned as a man ; he was — a stomach ! 
 
 In the course of her long tirade the 
 wife of the president acknowledged to 
 her cousin, with due precaution, that she 
 was inclined to accept, almost without 
 inquiry', any suitor who might seek her 
 daughter's hand. She even went so far 
 as to treat a man of forty-eight as an 
 eligible husband, provided only that he 
 had an income of twenty thousand francs. 
 
 "Cecile," she said, "is in her twenty- 
 third year, and should she be so unlucky 
 as to remain single until she is twenty- 
 five or twentj'-six, it would be no easy 
 matter to get her married. In such a 
 case people will ask themselves how it is 
 that a j'oung woman has remained upon 
 the shelf so long. Indeed there is already 
 a great deal too much talk in our circle 
 about Cecile 's position ; we have ex- 
 hausted all the ordinary excuses, such as, 
 'She is veiy young," 'She is perfectly 
 happ\' at home,' 'She is hard to please, 
 she wants to marry a man of family.' 
 People are beginning to laugh at us, I 
 feel suite of it. Besides, Cecile is tired of 
 waiting ; she sutTers, poor little — " 
 
 " Suffers ! In wliat way ? " asked Pons, 
 stupidly. 
 
 "Why," replied her mother, in the 
 tones of a duenna, "she feels mortified at 
 seeing all her companions married before 
 her." 
 
 " But what has happened, cousin, since 
 the last time I had the pleasure of dining 
 here, that you should be thinking of men
 
 cousm PONS. 
 
 of forty-eight?" humbly inquired the 
 poor musician. 
 
 " Why, this has happened," said Mad- 
 ame de Marville. " We were to have had 
 an interview with a counselor of the court, 
 who lias a son aged thirty, and whose 
 fortune is considerable. Monsieur de Mar- 
 ville would, by sacrificing a certain sum, 
 have procured for the son the post of 
 referendary at the Court of Accounts, 
 where he is already employed as a super- 
 numei-ary ; wlien, lo, and behold ! thej' 
 come and tell us that the young fellow 
 has been mad enough to rush off to Italy, 
 on the track of a duchess from Mabille. 
 It is merely a refusal in disguise. They 
 think that a young man, who, in conse- 
 quence of the death of his mother, is in 
 the present enjoyment of an income of 
 thirty thousand francs, is too good for us. 
 So you must pardon us our bad temper, 
 dear cousin ; you came upon us in the 
 very midst of the crisis." 
 
 While Pons was cudgeling his brains 
 for one of those complimentary rejoinders 
 which always came to him too late, when 
 he was in the presence of an Amphitryon 
 whom he feared, in came Madeleine, who 
 handed Madame Camusot a little note, 
 and stood waiting for the answer. The 
 billot ran as follows : 
 
 " How would it be, dear mamma, if we 
 were to pretend that this little note has 
 been sent to us from the Palace of Justice 
 by my father, directing you to take me 
 with you to dine at his friend's, with a 
 view to renemng the negotiations for my 
 marriage ? Cousin Pons would then go 
 away and leave us at liberty to prosecute 
 our plans with reference to the Popinots." 
 
 "By whom did your master send this 
 note ? " asked the president's wife, em- 
 phatically. 
 
 "By one of the palace attendants," 
 replied Madeleine, the lean, unblushingly. 
 
 By this answer to her mistress's ques- 
 tion the old waiting-woman intimated that 
 she had helped the disconcerted damsel to 
 hatch this little plot. 
 
 " Say that my daughter and I will be 
 there at half-past five." 
 
 So soon as Madeleine had left the room 
 Madame Camusot turned to Pons with 
 that look of mock amenity which excites, 
 in a sensitive mind, a sensation akin to 
 that produced by a mixture of vinegar 
 and milk upon the palate of an epicure, 
 and said : 
 
 "My dear cousin, dinner has been or- 
 dered ; but you must eat it without our 
 company; for my husband writes to in- 
 form me that the marriage scheme is on 
 foot again, and that we are to dine with 
 the counselor. You know well that jo\x 
 and I don't stand upon ceremony with one 
 another. Make yourself perfectly at home 
 here. (You see how frank I am with you, 
 from whom I have no secrets.) I am sure 
 you would not like to be the cause of my 
 Uttle angel's marriage being frustrated, 
 would you ? " 
 
 "I, cousin, I ; who, on the contrary, 
 would like to find a husband for her ; but 
 in the sphere in which I move — " 
 
 "Your chances are certainly very 
 slig'ht," chimed in Madame Camusot, in- 
 solently. " So j-ou will stay, won't you? 
 Cecile will keep you company while I am 
 di-essing." 
 
 " Oh ! cousin, I can dine elsewhere," 
 said the good fellow ; for though great 
 was the pain he felt at the manner in 
 which the lady taxed him v.-ith his indi- 
 gence, his horror at the prospect of being 
 left to the tender mercies of the servants 
 was greater still. 
 
 " But why dine elsewhere ? Dinner is 
 ready ; the servants would eat it if you 
 didn't." 
 
 When Pons heard this terrific phrase, 
 he jumped up as if he had received the 
 discharge of a galvanic batterj', bowed 
 distantly to his cousin, and went in search 
 of his spencer. The door of Cecile's bed- 
 room, which opened into the little ante- 
 room, stood ajar : so that Pons, glancing 
 at the mirror in front of him, saw the 
 young lady shaking her sides with laugh- 
 ter and communicating witli her mother 
 by means of nods and gestui'es which 
 plainly showed the old musician that he 
 was the victim of some unworthy hoax. 
 Restraining his tears, he slowly descended 
 the staircase, knowing that he had re-
 
 58 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 ceived his dismissal from that house, 
 though ignorant why he had received it. 
 "I am too old now," said he to himself. 
 " The world hates old age and poverty — 
 two ugly things. In future I will go no- 
 where without an invitation." Heroic 
 phrase ! 
 
 The door of the kitchen, which wasujion 
 the ground-floor opposite to the porter's 
 lodge, was frequentlj'^ left open ; as it 
 often is in those houses which are occupied 
 by their owners, and of which the car- 
 liage gates are always shut. So Pons 
 could hear the laug-literof the cook and &f 
 the footman, to whom Madeleine was re- 
 tailing the trick that had been played 
 upon Pons — for she did not suppose he 
 would evacuate the place so promptly. 
 The footman, for his part, highly approved 
 of the joke that had been perpetrated at 
 the expense of the constant visitor, who, 
 as the footman said, never gave him more 
 than half a crown by way of Christmas- 
 box ! " 
 
 " Yes ; but still, if he takes the hump 
 and don't come back any more, it will be 
 three francs out of our pockets on New- 
 year's-day," remarked the cook. 
 
 " And pray how is he to know anything 
 about it ? " said the footman, in answer 
 to the cook. 
 
 "Bah!" said Madeleine. "A little 
 sooner or a little later, what does it mat- 
 ter to us f The folks at whose houses he 
 dines are so heartily sick of him that he'll 
 soon be sent about his business by them 
 one and all." 
 
 Just at this moment the voice of the 
 old musician was heard calling to the 
 portress. "The string, if you please." 
 This doleful cry was received in the 
 kitchen with the deepest silence. 
 
 "He was listening," said the footman. 
 
 " Well, so much the worser, or rather 
 so much the better," retorted Madeleine. 
 " He's a regular scum." 
 
 The poor man — whom not a word of 
 what passed in the kitchen had escaped 
 — overheard this last phrase also ; and 
 proceeded homeward in a state closely 
 resembling that of an old woman after 
 a desperate struggle with a murderer. 
 Muttering to himself, he hastened onward 
 
 with convulsive speed ; for wounded honor 
 hurried him along like a straw driven be- 
 fore a hurricane, until at five o'clock he 
 found himself upon the Boulevard du 
 Temple without in the least knowing how 
 he got there ; yet, sti-ange to saj', he did 
 not feel in the slightest degree hungry. 
 But in order that the reader may under- 
 stand the revolution in Pons's domestic 
 arrangements that his return home at 
 this unwonted hour was about to pro- 
 duce, the promised information about 
 Madame Cibot must here be given. 
 
 VI. 
 
 specimen of the porter (male and 
 female). 
 
 The Rue de Normandie is one of those 
 streets in the midst of which a man may 
 easily' fancy himself in the country. It 
 is a street in which the grass grows lux- 
 uriantly, in which a passenger creates a 
 sensation, and the inhabitants of which 
 all know each other. The houses in it 
 were built in the reign of Henri Quatre, 
 at a time when it was intended to build a 
 quarter, each of whose streets should bear 
 the name of a province, and in the center 
 of which there was to be a grand square 
 dedicated to France. The idea of the 
 Quartier dc I'Europe was a plagiary of 
 this scheme ; for the world is perpetually 
 repeating itself in all places and in all 
 things — even in matters of speculation. 
 
 The house in which the two musicians 
 dwelt was originally an old mansion with 
 a court in front of it and a garden in the 
 rear ; but a street fagade was added to 
 it during that part of the last century 
 when the Marais was in so much vogue. 
 The two friends occupied the whole of the 
 second floor of the original mansion. 
 
 This double house belonged to a Mon- 
 sieur Pillerault, an octogenaiian, who left 
 the management of it entirely in the 
 hands of Monsieur and Madame Cibot, 
 who had acted as his door-keepers for six- 
 and-tvi^enty years. Now since the emolu- 
 ments of a porter in the Mai'ais are not
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 59 
 
 I 
 
 sufficient to enable him to live upon them 
 alone. Monsieur Cibot to his perquisites— 
 the sou in the livre and the fagot in the 
 load — added the produce of his personal 
 industry ; he was what many a porter 
 is — a tailor. As time rolled on Cibot 
 gave- up worldug as a journe^'man ; for, 
 in consequence of the confidence reposed 
 in him by the small shop-keepers in the 
 neighborhood, he acquired the exclusive 
 privilege of patching, renovating, and 
 fine-drawing all coats to be found within 
 a perimeter of three streets. His lodge 
 was large and healthy, having a bedroom 
 annexed to it ; so that the Cibot house- 
 hold was regarded by all the gentlemen 
 who exercised the functions of porter in 
 the neighborhood as one of the most 
 highly favored establishments of its 
 kind. 
 
 Cibot was a short, stunted little man, 
 who, by dint of sitting day after day, 
 with his legs crossed Turk-wise beneath 
 him upon a table that was exactly on a 
 level with the grated window that looked 
 upon the street, had acquired a complex- 
 ion that was almost olive-colored. His 
 
 • 
 
 trade brought him in about two shillings 
 a day, and he still pursued it in spite of 
 his fiftj'-eight years ; but then fifty -eight 
 is the prime of life for a porter ; when he 
 has reached that age his lodge has be- 
 come to him what the shell is to the 
 oyster, and moreover — he is knotcn in 
 the district! 
 
 Madame Cibot, who had once been fa- 
 mous as the pretty oyster-girl of the 
 Cadran-Bleu, had quitted her post in 
 that establishment for the sake of Cibot 
 when she had attained the age of twenty- 
 eight, and had run the gauntlet of all 
 those adventures which a pretty oyster- 
 girl encounters without the trouble of 
 seeking them. The beauty of women be- 
 longing to the lower classes is short- 
 lived ; especiall3' when they posted, like 
 an espalier-tree, at the door of a restau- 
 rant, where their features grow coarse 
 through exposure to the heat-rays of the 
 kitchen, and their skin is interpenetrated 
 by the contents of many a half-emptied 
 wine-bottle, shared with the waiters of 
 the establishment ; in fact, no flower 
 
 matures more rapidly than that of a 
 pretty oyster-girl. 
 
 Fortunately for Madame Cibot, mar- 
 riage and the life of a portress came to 
 her in time to preserve her charms ; and 
 accordingly a perfect model for Rubens, 
 she retained a masculine style of beauty 
 which her rivals' of the Rue de Normandie 
 sought to disparage, calling her '• a great 
 fat lollop." The tones of her skin might 
 be compared to the appetizing glaze upon 
 lumps of Isigny butter, while, notwith- 
 standing her stoutness, she displayed an 
 incomparable agility in the exercise of 
 her calling. Madame Cibot had now ar- 
 rived at that time of life when women of 
 her type are obliged to — shave ; in other 
 words, she was forty-eight. A portress 
 with a mustache is one of the strongest 
 guarantees for order and security that a 
 landlord can possibly have ! Had Dela- 
 croix but seen Madame Cibot, leaning 
 proudly on the handle of her broom, he 
 would assuredh' have painted her in the 
 character of Bellona ! Singular as the 
 statement may appear, it was ordained 
 that the position of the Cibots, baron and 
 feme (to use the legal st^'le) should one 
 day influence the destiny of the two 
 friends. The faithful historian there- 
 fore is obliged to enter into sundry 
 details concerning the porter and his 
 wife. 
 
 The house which they superintended 
 brought in about eight thousand francs 
 a year ; for, in that part of it which abut- 
 ted on the street, there were three com- 
 plete sets of apartments occupying the 
 whole depth of the building ; whUe in the 
 old mansion that stood between court and 
 garden there were three other sets. Then, 
 in addition, there was a shop that opened 
 on to the street and was occupied by a 
 marine store dealer named Remonencq, 
 who, having for some months past as- 
 sumed the rank of an old curiosity dealer, 
 was so well acquainted with Pons's at- 
 tainments in bric-a-brac-ology that from 
 the recesses of his shop he would bow to 
 the old musician as he passed to and from 
 the house. The rental of the house then 
 being about eight thousand francs, the 
 sou per livre yielded about four hundred
 
 60 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 francs per annum to the Cibots, who, 
 moreover, had nothing to pay for lodg-- 
 ing or fuel. Now, since Cibofs earning-s 
 amounted, on an everage, to between 
 seven and eight hundred francs a year, 
 the income of the worthy couple (Chiist- 
 mas-boxes included) reached a total of 
 sixteen hundred fi-ancs, every doit of 
 which they spent ; for the scale of living 
 was higher than that of the lower orders. 
 " We can live but once," was a favorite 
 saying with Madame Cibot, who, born 
 during the Revolution, was, as is clear, 
 quite ignorant of the catechism. 
 
 Throug-h her connection with the Cad- 
 ran-Bleu, this portress with the scornful 
 orange-colored eye had acquired — and she 
 still retained — a certain skill in the art of 
 cookery which made her husband an object 
 of QTXYy to all his fellow-poi'ters. Thus it 
 came to pass that the Cibots, having ar- 
 rived at full maturity, and being indeed 
 on the verge of old age, had not laid by 
 even so much as a hundred francs. Well 
 clothed and well fed, they were, more- 
 over, looked up to in the neighborhood 
 by reason of their six-and-twenty years 
 of unimpeachable integrity. If they had 
 no money neither did thej' owe a single 
 centime, or nune centime, as Madame 
 Cibot phrased it ; for the good lady, in 
 talking, was lavish of her n's. Thus she 
 would sa^' to her husband : " You n'are 
 n'a love." Why? As well might jou 
 ask the reason of her indifference with 
 regard to religion. 
 
 But while both of the Cibots prided 
 themselves on their open and above- 
 board mode of life, on the esteem in 
 which they were held throughout six 
 or seven neighboring streets, and on 
 the liberty, which their landlord con- 
 ceded to them, of ruling the house ac- 
 cording to their own good will and 
 pleasure, thej' groaned in secret over 
 their lack of invested capital. Cibot 
 complained of pains in his hands and 
 legs, and Madame Cibot was heard to 
 lament that her "poor Cibot" was still 
 obliged to work at his time of life. The 
 day is coming when, after thirty years 
 of such a life, a porter wiU accuse the 
 government of injustice, and deem him- 
 
 self entitled to be enrolled in the Legion 
 of Honor ! 
 
 Whenever the tittle-tattle of the dis- 
 trict spread abroad the news that such 
 and such a servant, after eight or ten 
 years' service, had been put down in a 
 will for an annuity of three or four hun- 
 dred francs, lodge after lodge resounded 
 with lamentations, which may give some 
 idea of the envy that pervades, tlie hum- 
 bler walks of life in Paris. "Ah! it 
 never happens to its porters to be men- 
 tioned in a wiU ! We haven't a chance ! 
 And yet Ave ai'e more useful than ser- 
 vants. Ours is a position of trust ; we 
 help to make monej" ; 'tis we who guard 
 the granary-; and yet we are treated 
 just like dogs, and there's an end of 
 it." "Life is all chance work," Cibot 
 would say, as he took a coat home. " If 
 I had only left Cibot to look after the 
 lodge," Madame Cibot would exclaim, 
 as with her hands resting on her salient 
 hips she stood chatting to a neighbor, 
 "if I had but left Cibot to look after the 
 lodge, and taken a situation as cook, we 
 should have had as good as thirty' thou- 
 sanfl francs invested by this time ! I've 
 made a mess of life all along o' living 
 rent free in a good snug lodge, and want- 
 ing for nothing." 
 
 When, in 1836, the two friends came 
 and occupied in common the second story 
 of the old mansion, thej' caused a kind of 
 revolution in the Cibot household ; for 
 both Schtuucke and Pons having been 
 accustomed to employ the porter or 
 portress of the house in which they 
 lived as their housekeeper, were entirely 
 of one mind when they installed them- 
 selves in the Rue de Normandie as to 
 coming to some arrangement with Mad- 
 ame Cibot. Madame Cibot, accordingly, 
 became their housekeeper at a salary- of 
 twenty -five francs per month — that is to 
 say, twelve and a half francs for each of 
 them. 
 
 After the lapse of a year the promoted 
 poi'tress reigned supreme over the estab- 
 lishment of the two old bachelors just as 
 she reigned supreme over the house of 
 Monsieur PiUerault, the great-uncle of 
 Madame la Comtesse Popinot ; their busi-
 
 cousm PONS. 
 
 61 
 
 ness was her business ; and she always 
 spoke of them as "Mj'two gentlemen." 
 In short, when she found that the Pair 
 of Nut-Crackers were gentle as lambs, 
 eas^-going and unsuspicious, in fact 
 thorough children, she obeyed the in- 
 stincts , of her heart — the heart of a 
 woman of the people — and began to jiro- 
 tect and worship her " two gentlemen ; " 
 and to serve them with a devotion so 
 genuine that she even gave tliem a few 
 words of warning and shielded them from 
 all the impositions which swell the cost of 
 living in Paris. Thus for five-and-twenty 
 francs a month the two bachelors un- 
 designedly and unwittingh' obtained a 
 mother; and — the value of that "mother" 
 once perceived — proceeded to acknowledge 
 it by artless eulogies and thanks and by 
 little presents, which all tended to lighten 
 the bonds of this domestic alliance. Mad- 
 ame Cibot set a thousand times as much 
 store on being appreciated at her true 
 value as she did upon being paid: and 
 this sentiment, as eveiwbody knows, in- 
 variably'' makes up for slender wages. 
 Cibot undertook errands, repairs, all that 
 appertained to his department, in connec- 
 tion with the wants of his wife's "two 
 gentlemen," for half price. 
 
 To conclude, in tlie second year after 
 the installation of Pons and Schmucke in 
 the Rue de Normandie a fresh element of 
 friendship was introduced into the alli- 
 ance between the porter's lodge and the 
 second floor. In the indulgence of his in- 
 dolence and his desire to shirk the mate- 
 rial cares of life, Schmucke made a bar- 
 gain with Madame Cibot, whereby for 
 fifteen sous a day — that is, forty -five 
 francs per month, she undertoolv to pro- 
 vide him with breakfast and dinner ; 
 whereupon Pons, finding that his friend's 
 breakfast was very satisfactory, followed 
 suit by making an arrangement to pay 
 eighteen francs a month for breakfast. 
 This system of provisioning, which swelled 
 the gross revenues of the lodge to the ex- 
 tent of about ninetj' francs per month, 
 made the two tenants inviolable beings, 
 angels, cherubim, gods. Indeed, it is 
 very doubtful whether the King of the 
 French — who knows something of the sub- 
 
 ject — be served so well as were the Pair of 
 Nut-Crackers. The milk thej- drank came 
 unwatered from the can ; they saw the 
 newspapers of the tenants of the first and 
 third floors gratis — for the occupants of 
 those floors rose late, and would have 
 been told, in case of emergencj', that their 
 papers had not ye\> come — and, moreover, 
 Madame Cibot kept the clothes, the 
 rooms, the landing outside the rooms, in 
 short all the belongings and surroundings 
 of the two old men in a state of Flemish 
 neatness. As for Schmucke, he was hap- 
 pier than he had ever hoped to be ; Mad- 
 ame Cibot made life easj' to him : he gave 
 her sis fi'ancs a month to look to the 
 washing and mending of his linen, and 
 fifteen francs a month he spent upon 
 tobacco. These tjiree items of expendi- 
 ture reached a monthly total of sixtj'-six 
 francs ; which multiplied by twelve makes 
 seven hundred and ninety-two francs ; add 
 two hundred and twenty francs for rent 
 and taxes, and you have a total of one 
 thousand and twelve francs. Schmucke's 
 clothes were made by Cibot, and the mean 
 cost of these necessaries was a hundred 
 and fifty francs; so that this profound 
 philosopher lived upon twelve hundred 
 francs a year. How many persons in 
 Europe, whose one idea is to go and live 
 at Paris, will be agreeably surprised to 
 learn that it is possible to live there in 
 comfort on an income of twelve hundred 
 francs in the Rue de Normandie in the 
 Marais under the wing of a Madame 
 Cibot ! 
 
 When Madame Cibot saw old Pons re- 
 turning home at five in the evening she 
 was utterly astounded. Not only was 
 the thing itself unprecedented, but "her 
 gentleman " passed her without saluting 
 her. 
 
 " Well, Cibot ! " said she to her hus- 
 band, '• Monsieur Pons must either have 
 come in for a milUon or gone mad I " 
 
 "It certainly looks like it," rephed 
 Cibot, dropping a coatsleeve in which he 
 was inserting what in tailors' slang is 
 called a poniard. 
 
 •
 
 62 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 I 
 
 VII. 
 
 A LIVING COPY OF THE FABLE OF THE 
 TWO PIGEONS. 
 
 At the wery moment when Pons had 
 terminated his automatic journej' home- 
 ward, Madame Cibot was putting the fin- 
 ishing touch to Schmuclvo"s dinner, which 
 consisted of a certain ragout whose savor 
 pervaded the entire coui't. The dish con- 
 sisted of pieces of boiled beef bought at a 
 cook-shop — which did a httle in the re- 
 graling line — and fricasseed with butter 
 and fineljr chopped onions until the meat 
 and onions had entirely absorbed the but- 
 ter, so as to give this porter's dainty the 
 appearance of a fry. This dish concocted 
 con amore by Madame Cibot for her hus- 
 band and Schniucke, between whom she 
 divided it, sufficed, when flanked by a 
 bottle of beer and a morsel of cheese, for 
 the wants of the old German music-mas- 
 ter ; and rest assured that not even King 
 Solomon himself in all his glory dined any 
 better than Schmucke did. This dish of 
 beef fricasseed with onions ; fragments of 
 chicken in ragout ; at one time some cold 
 meat dressed with vinegar and parsley 
 and a bit of fish served up with a sauce 
 of Madame Cibot's own invention — a 
 sauce so piquant that with it a mother 
 might have eaten her own baby quite un- 
 suspectingly — at another a slice or two of 
 venison ; such according to the quantity 
 and quality of the provisions re-sold by 
 the restaurants on the boulevard to the 
 cook-shop in the Rue Boucherat ; such 
 was the usual fare of Schmucke ; who 
 accepted without a murmur whatever 
 "goot Montame Zipod " provided for 
 him. And good Madame Cibot had, day 
 by day, curtailed the bill of fare until she 
 had brought it within the purchasing- 
 power of twenty sous. 
 
 " I'll go and find n'out what'n has hap- 
 pened to him, poor dear man," quoth 
 Madame Cibot to her spouse, " for here's 
 Monsieur Schmucke's dinnerquite ready." 
 
 Thereupon Madame Cibot covered the 
 deep earthenware dish with a plate of 
 common cliina, and, in spite of her age, 
 contrived to reach the apartments of the 
 
 two friends just as Schmucke was opening 
 the door for Pons. 
 
 '•Vat is de matter wit you, mein goot 
 friend ? " said the German, startled at 
 the total alteration in Pons's counte- 
 uance. 
 
 " I will tell you all : but first- I am 
 going to dine with you." 
 
 " To tine ! To tine!" exclaimed the 
 enraptured Schmucke. "But no; dat is 
 imbossible," added he, as the thought of 
 his friend's gastrolatr^' occurred to him. 
 
 At this juncture the old German caught 
 sight of Madame Cibot (who, in the exer- 
 cise of her rights as lawful [house] wife, 
 was listening to the conversation), and 
 one of those bright ideas, which flash into 
 the mind of genuine friendship only, oc- 
 curred to him. Darting to the door, he 
 dragged her out on to the landing, and 
 said ■ to her : 
 
 " Montame Zipod, dis goot Bons lofs 
 goot tings ; go to de Gatran-Bleu ; order 
 ein nice little tinner ; anjovies, maggaroni 
 — ein feast fit for Lugullus ! " 
 
 "What may that be? " inquired Mad- 
 ame Cibot. 
 
 "Why! Feal a la pourcheoise," re- 
 plied Schmucke, " ein goot feesh, ein bot- 
 tle of glai'et, all de best tings dat dey 
 have : some grogettes of rise, and some 
 smoked bagon ! Bay for it ; but say not 
 one wort, I will rebay you to-morrow 
 morning. ' ' 
 
 When Schmucke returned to the room 
 his face wore a joyous expression, and he 
 was rubbing his hands : but as he listened 
 to the recital of the unlooked-for troubles 
 that had just swept down upon the heart 
 of his friend, the features of the old Ger- 
 man gradually resumed an expression of 
 amazement. He tried to console Pons by 
 painting the world from a Schmuckean 
 point of view; Paris was simply a per- 
 petual whirlwind ; Parisians, both men 
 and women, were borne along in a waltz 
 of furious rapidity ; one ought to be quite 
 independent of the world, which regards 
 outward appearances only, and cares noth- 
 mg for " de inner man," said Schmucke. 
 Then he proceeded to relate for the hun- 
 dredth time how the only three pupils 
 whom he had ever loved, and who had a
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 63 
 
 tender regard for him^young ladies for 
 whom he would lay down his life, and 
 who were even so good as to allow him 
 a small yearly pension of nine hundi'ed 
 francs, to which each contributed her 
 share of about three hundred francs — 
 had entirely forgotten to come and see 
 him, and had not been able to receive him 
 when he called upon them any time dur- 
 ing the last three 3'ears : it is true that 
 Schmucke used to call upon these ladies 
 of fashion at ten o'clock in the morning : 
 and, moreover, that the quarterly install- 
 ments of his allowance were paid into the 
 hands of notaries. 
 
 "And yet," pursued Schmucke, " dey 
 have hearts of gold ; in fact dey are my 
 leetle Saint Ceeilias, jarming ladies, Mon- 
 tame de Bordentuere, Montame de Fen- 
 tenesse, and Montame di Tillet. When I 
 see dem it is in de Jambs-Elysees, and 
 dey do not see me ; but dey do lofe me 
 veil, and I could go and tine wit dem ; 
 day would be ferry glat ; I gould go to 
 deir gountry seats ; but I moche prefer 
 to be wit my friend Bons, begause I gan 
 see him whenever I like, and effery taj^" 
 
 Pons seized the hand of Schmucke, and, 
 placing it between his own hands, gave it 
 a squeeze which was intended to convej' 
 all the feelings that he could not express 
 in words ; and for several minutes the 
 two friends remained thus hand in hand, 
 like two lovers meeting after a protracted 
 separation. 
 
 "Tine here effery tay ! " resumed 
 Schmucke, who was silently invoking a 
 blessing on the crueltj"^ of Madame Camu- 
 sot. " Gome now ! we will pric-a-prac 
 togedder ; and de tevil will neff er put his 
 tail into our home." 
 
 In order that the reader may under- 
 stand the full heroism of the words — 
 "we will pric-a-prac togedder" — he 
 should be informed that Schmucke's igno- 
 rance of bric-a-brac-ology was ci'ass. It 
 was only the strength of his friendship 
 that had preserved him from breaking 
 some of the objects contained in the salon 
 and closet that had been given up to 
 Pons as a museum. Schmucke — whose 
 whole mind was devoted to music, who 
 composed music for his own sake — looked 
 
 upon all the little knickknacks of his friend 
 much as a fish (supposing that a fish could 
 receive a card of invitation) might look 
 upon a flower-show at the Luxembourg. 
 He respected these wonderful works, 
 simply because Pons showed so much 
 respect for them when he was dusting his 
 treasures; and Schmucke, would respond 
 to the ecstasies of his friend with a — 
 "Yes, it is ferry pretty" — just as a 
 mother replies, with fond unmeaning 
 phrases, to the gestures of a child that 
 is too young to talk. Since the two 
 friends had lived together. Pons had 
 bartered his time-piece for another, to 
 Schmucke's knowledge, no fewer than 
 seven times ; and on each occasion had 
 gained by the exchange. Pons now pos- 
 sessed a magnificent time-piece hy Boule, 
 an ebony time-piece inlaid vnt\\ copper 
 and carved, a time-piece in Boule's fii'st 
 manner; (for Boule had two manners, 
 just as Raphael had three : in his first 
 manner Boule married copper to ebony ; 
 in his second, against his own conviction, 
 he devoted himself to tortoise-shell, and 
 accomplished marvels, in endeavoring to 
 outdo his competitors, the inventors of 
 tortoise-shell marquetrj'). But Schmucke, 
 in spite of Pons's learned dissertations, did 
 not perceive the slightest difference be- 
 tween the magnificent time-piece fn Boule's 
 first manner, and its six predecessors. 
 Still, seeing how much pleasure Pons de- 
 rived from these baubles, as Schmucke 
 termed them, Schmucke took more care 
 of them than Pons himself did. 
 
 We need not, then, be astonished that 
 Schmucke's heroic exclamation should 
 have had power to subdue the despair of 
 Pons ; the old German's — "We will pric- 
 a-prac togedder " — meant : " I will spend 
 money on bric-a-brac if you will dine at 
 home, with me." 
 
 "Dinner is on the table, gentlemen," 
 said Madame Cibot, entering the room 
 and making the announcement with won- 
 derful aplomb. 
 
 Pons's surprise, when he saw and tasted 
 the dinner provided for him through 
 Schmucke's friendly care, may be readily 
 imagined. But the feelings which Pons 
 now experienced — feelings that arise but
 
 64 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 rarely in a lifetime — are never called forth 
 by that calm unvarying' devotion whereby 
 one friend perpetually intimates to an- 
 other — '* In me, j'ou have a second self ; " 
 — for to that one g-rows accustomed. No; 
 such feelings as these owe their origin to 
 the contrast between sucli proofs as Pons 
 was now receiving- of the happiness of 
 home life, and the brutalities that we 
 meet with in society. It is the world, it 
 4s the world that incessantly renews tlie 
 ties which bind lover to lover and friend 
 to friend — when noble heart is wedded to 
 noble heart \)y love or friendship. 
 
 Even thus it was with Pons and 
 Schmucke, both of whom were affected 
 even to tears. Not a word passed be- 
 tween them ; but thej- loved each other 
 more than ever, and, from time to time, 
 exchanged a friendly little nod, which 
 acted like a healing balm poured into the 
 wounds inflicted by Madame Camusot's 
 "pebble," on tlie heart of Pons. 
 Schmucke, meanwhile, was rubbing his 
 hands with such violence as seriously to 
 endanger the skin ; he had hit upon one 
 of those inventions which surprise a Ger- 
 man only when it has been suddenly 
 hatched in a brain congealed by the re- 
 spect due to the sovereign princes of the 
 Fatherland . 
 
 " Mein goot Bons !" — ^began Schmucke. 
 
 " I know what you are going to say ; 
 3'ou wish us to dine together everj^ day." 
 
 " I wish dat I were rich enough to giff 
 you soche a dinner, effery day," replied 
 the worthy German in a melancholy tone. 
 
 Madame Cibot, to whom Pons occa- 
 sionally gave an order for the boulevard 
 theaters, and thus raised himself, in her 
 affections, to a level with her boarder 
 Schmucke, now interposed with the fol- 
 lowing suggestion : 
 
 "Asking parding, gentlemen," said 
 she, "for three francs, I can provide a 
 dinner for two — without wine — every daj'; 
 a dinner fit to make you lick your plates 
 as clean as if they had been washed." 
 
 "De fact is," replied Schmucke, "dat 
 on de tings dat Madame Zipod gooks for 
 me, I tine petter dan de folks who eat de 
 king's Actuals." 
 
 Animated by his hopes, the habitually 
 
 respectful German went so far as to imi- 
 tate the irreverence of the minor journals 
 by ridiculing the fixed tariff of the roj'al 
 table. 
 
 "Indeed?" said Pons. "Well, I will 
 try the experiment to-morrow." 
 
 When Schmucke heard this promise he 
 sprang from one end of the table to the 
 other, dragging with him tablecloth, 
 dishes and bottles, and clasped Pons in 
 an embrace the intensity of which can be 
 compared only to tlie eager combination 
 of one gas with another, for which it has 
 a chemical affinity. 
 
 " What happiness ! " cried Schmucke; 
 while Madame Cibot, who also was 
 touched, proudly remarked : 
 
 " Then it is settled that monsieur will 
 dine here every day ! " 
 
 Unconscious of the event to which she 
 was indebted for the realization of her 
 dream, the worthy matron went down to 
 her lodge, and entered it with an air 
 worthy of Josepha herself, when she first 
 appears upon the scene, in the opera of 
 "William Tell." Dashing down the plates 
 and dishes. Dame Cibot called out to her 
 husband : 
 
 "■ Cibot, go and fetch two small cups of 
 coffee from the Cafe Turc ! And tell the 
 waiter who serves it that they are for 
 me ! " 
 
 Then sitting down, and placing her 
 hands upon her powerful knees, Madame 
 Cibot glanced through the window, at 
 the wall that faced the house, and ex- 
 claimed : 
 
 " I will go this very evening and consult 
 Madame Fontaine!" Madame Fontaine 
 was fortune-teller to all the cooks, ladies'- 
 maids, footmen, porters, etc., etc., in the 
 Marais — " Since these two gentlemen came 
 here, we have put two thousand francs 
 into the savings bank; in eight years! 
 What luck I Now, must I give Monsieur 
 Pons full value for his money, and so 
 attach him to his home ? Mistress Fon- 
 taine's hen will tell me that." 
 
 Not having seen any relatives call upon 
 Pons or Schmucke during the course of 
 nearly three years, Madame Cibot cher- 
 ished the hope that she would be remem- 
 bered in the wills of "her gentlemen;"
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 65 
 
 and actuated bj' this avaricious thought 
 — a tardy g-rowth among- her mustaches 
 of hitherto untainted probity — she had 
 served the old men with redoubled zeal. 
 By g-oing out to dine, Pons had, up to this 
 date, avoided that complete subjection 
 in which the portress desired to hold " her 
 gentlemen." The nomad existence led by 
 the old troubadour-collector, had put to 
 flight the vague ideas of captivation which 
 had flitted through the brain of Madame 
 Cibot ; but, from the date of this memor- 
 able dinner, they developed into a for- 
 midable scheme. 
 
 After the lapse of a quarter of an hour, 
 Madame Cibot re-appeared in the dining- 
 room, armed with two cups of excellent 
 coffee, flanked by two liqueur-g-lasses of 
 kirschenwasser. 
 
 '•■ Long liff Montame Zipod ! " cried 
 Schmucke; '•' she guessed what I wanted." 
 
 After the parasite had indulg-ed in sun- 
 dry Jeremiads, which Schmucke com- 
 bated, by just such coaxing phrases as 
 the home-keeping pigeon must have ad- 
 dressed to the pigeon who went abroad, 
 the two friends sallied forth together. 
 Schmucke did not like to leave his friend 
 alone, in the state to which he had been 
 reduced, by the conduct of the Camusot 
 household (masters and servants). He 
 knew Pons's disposition well, and felt 
 that, seated in the orchestra, on his con- 
 ductor's stool, he might be assailed by 
 reflections of the most gloomy descrip- 
 tion, which would destroy the good effect 
 of his return to the nest. As Schmucke 
 accompanied Pons home, at about twelve 
 o'clock at night, he passed his arm 
 through that of Pons, and, treating him 
 as a lover treats the mistress whom he 
 idolizes, pointed out to him where the 
 pavement ended and where it recom- 
 menced, and warned him when thej' came 
 to a gutter. Schmucke could have wished 
 that the streets were paved with down, 
 that the sky were blue, that the angels 
 would fill the ears of Pons with the music 
 which they played to him; for he had 
 conquered, in the heart of Pons, the last, 
 the only province that was not alreadj' 
 his ! 
 
 During three months nearly, Pons dined 
 
 Balzac — C 
 
 with Schmucke every day. But, in the 
 first place, this alteration in his mode of 
 life compelled him to curtail his expendi- 
 ture on bric-a-brac, by about eightj"^ francs 
 per month (for, in addition to the forty- 
 flve francs which he paid for his dinner, 
 his wine cost him flve-and-thirty francs) ; 
 and, in the second place, spite of the 
 attentions and German witticisms of 
 Schmucke, the old ai-tist missed the 
 dainty dishes, the liqueurs, the excellent 
 coffee, the chit-chat, the artificial pohte- 
 ness, the society and the scandal of the 
 houses in which he formerly dined. We 
 cannot, in the decline of life, shake off a 
 habit of thirty-six years' standing. 'Tis 
 but an ungenerous fluid that a hogshead 
 of wine, at a hundred and thirty francs 
 the hogshead, pours into the cup of an 
 epicure ; so that ever^" time Pons earned 
 his glass to his lips, he recalled, with a 
 thousand keen regrets, the choice vintages 
 of his Amphitryons. And lastly, at the 
 expiration of three months, the cruel 
 pangs, which had wellnigh broken Pons's 
 sensitive heart, were deadened; he had 
 forgotten all but the attractions of so- 
 ciety, just as an aged lover mourns for 
 the flagrantly unfaithful mistress whom 
 he has been compelled to abandon ! 
 
 Although Pons did his best to conceal 
 the profound melancholy to which he was 
 a prej-, it was sufflcientl.y obvious that 
 the old musician was the victim of one of 
 those inexplicable maladies, whose seat is 
 in the mind. In order to throw some 
 light upon this species of nostalgia, aris- 
 ing from the rupture of a habit, suffice it 
 to point out one of those thousand trifles 
 which enmesh the mind in an unyielding 
 net-work, just as a coat of mail incases 
 the body in steel : 
 
 One of the keenest delights, then, of 
 Pons's former life — a delight that is com- 
 mon to all diners-out — was the surprise, 
 the impression made upon the palate by 
 the extraordinary dish, the dainty with 
 which, in bourgeois circles, the mistress 
 of the house crowns the repast when she 
 wants to give the dinner a festive air. 
 The stomach-seated joy was now lost to 
 Pons ; for Madame Cibot piqued herself 
 upon presenting him with a verbal bill
 
 66 
 
 THE HCVAX COMEDY. 
 
 of fare. Thus the periodic stimuhis of 
 PoDs's life was wholly gone : his diuuer 
 pmceeded without that element of sur- 
 prise, which forn\erly, in the houses of 
 our forefathei-s. was known as " the cov- 
 ei-eti dish I " Now all this was quite un- 
 intelligible to Schmucke : Pous's delicacy 
 of feeling deteri-ed him from complaining:; 
 and, if there be anything in the world 
 more melancholy than neglected genius, 
 "tis a stomach that is not undei-stood ! 
 Unrequited love — that threadbare catas- 
 trophe — is based upon an artificial want ; 
 for if we are foi-saken by the creature, 
 we can love the Creator : He has treas- 
 ures in abundance to dispense. But the 
 stomach I — no, there is nothing that can 
 be compaivd to the sutferings of the stom- 
 ach ; for, before all things — Life I Pons 
 mourned over the loss of certain creams 
 — genuine poems ; certain white sauces 
 — masterpieces of art ; certain trufiled 
 fowls — sweet as love's young dream; and. 
 above all, those celebrated carps of Rhine 
 which are to be had only in Paris, and 
 oh I with what condiments I At inter- 
 vals, when his thoughts reverted to Count 
 Popinot's cook, he would ejaculate — 
 •• Oh, Sophie ! " The casual passenger 
 who overheanl this sigh would have sup- 
 posed that the worthy man was think- 
 ing of his mistress ; but he was thinkmg 
 of something far more rare — a well-fed 
 carp I a plump carp served up with a cer- 
 tain sauce, thin in the tureen, thick upon 
 the tongue — a sauce that merited the 
 Prix Montyon. Brooding over the mem- 
 ory of these dinners of other days, the old 
 musician — victim of the homesickness of 
 the stomach — lost a good deal of flesh. 
 
 Towai-d the end of January, 1S45, that 
 is to say, at the beginning of the fourth 
 month of Pons's probation, theyoung flut- 
 ist, who. like the vast majority of Germans, 
 was christened Wilhelm, and — to distin- 
 guish him from all the "SVilhelms. though 
 it by no means distinguished him from all 
 the Schwabs — was suriiameti Schwab, 
 deemed it necessary to enlighten Schmucke 
 as to the condition of the leader of the 
 orchestra, which was attracting a good 
 deal of attention at the theater. On the 
 occasion, therefore, of a certain first rep- 
 
 resentation, when the old Grcrraan was 
 necess;xrily pre^sent. Wilhelm Schwab s;iid 
 to him, pointing to old Pons, who was 
 gloomily taking his place at his desk : 
 "Poor old Pons is breaking; there is 
 something wrong with him ; his eye is 
 diUl, and the movements of his arm aie 
 feebler than they used to be." 
 
 •' It is always so, when beoblc are 
 sigsty," replied Schmucke. 
 
 Like that mother of whom we read in 
 '• The Chronicles of the Cauong-ate," 
 whose desire to have her son with her 
 for twenty-four houi-s longer leads to his 
 being shot, Schmucke was capable of 
 sacrificing Pons to the pleasure of seeing 
 him at diimer every day. 
 
 "Every one belonging to the theater is 
 uneasy; and, as our first danseuse. Made- 
 moiselle Hcloise Brisetout, remarks, he 
 doesn't make any noise when he blows 
 his nose, now." 
 
 Formerly, when the old musician blew 
 his nose, he seemed to be playing on 
 the horn ; so loud was the sound which 
 he drew from his long and deep proboscis 
 beneath the handkerchief: in fact, one of 
 the most common groimds of complaint 
 against Cousin Pons, on the part of Mad- 
 ame Camusot, was this very noise. 
 
 •• I woot gilT almost anyting to zave him; 
 he finds life wearisome,"' said Schmucke. 
 
 "Upon my woixi," said "Wilhelm' 
 Schwab, •• Monsieur Pons seems, to me, 
 to be so superior to us poor devils, that 
 I did not dare to in\ite him to my wed- 
 ding : I am going to be married." 
 
 " Married I How ? In what way ? "' 
 inquired Schmucke. 
 
 '•Oh I in all loyalty and honor." re- 
 plied Wilhelm Schwab, who fancied that 
 Schmucke's question covered a joke — a 
 joke of which that perfect Christian was 
 utterly incapable. 
 
 "Now, gentlemen, to your places," 
 said Pons, glancing at his little ai'my in 
 the orchestra, when he heard the tinkle 
 of the manager's bell. 
 
 Thereupon the band struck up the over- 
 ture to " La Fiancee du Diable," a fairy- 
 piece that had a run of a couple of hundred 
 nights. At the first entr'acte Wilhelm 
 and Schmucke found themselves alone t ^
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 67 
 
 gether in the deserted orchestra. The 
 atmosphere of the house re.g-istered 32° 
 Reaumur. 
 
 "Will j'ou dell me your storj'?" said 
 Schmucke to Wilhclm. 
 
 "Look ; do you see that j^oung' man in 
 tho stag-e-box there ? Do you recog-nize 
 him?" 
 
 "Not in de least." 
 
 "Ah ! because he has a pair of yellow 
 gloves on, and is surrounded with the 
 halo of affluence ; but for all that, it is my 
 friend Fritz Brunner, of Frankfort-on- 
 Main." 
 
 " What ! de berson who used to gome 
 into de org-hestra and sit bezide 'you to 
 see de play ? " 
 
 " The very same. Isn't such a meta- 
 morphosis quite incredible ? " 
 
 The hero of the promised story was one 
 of those Germans in whose faces you can 
 trace the somber sarcasm of Goethe's 
 Mephistopheles and the jolly good-fellow- 
 ship of the romances of Auguste Lafon- 
 taine, of pacific memory; cunning and 
 simplicity ; the keen commercial spirit 
 and the studied recklessness of a member 
 of the Jockey club ; but, above all, that 
 distaste for life that puts a pistol into the 
 hand of Wertlier, wear3' of Charlotte — 
 much more wearj' of the German princes. 
 Fritz Brunner's face, in truth, was typical 
 of Germany ; it was a medley of Israel- 
 itisli guile and of simplicity, of stupidity 
 and courage, of that knowledge which 
 begets disgust, and that experience which 
 stands disarmed before the merest puer- 
 ility. An excessive use of beer and of 
 tobacco had left their traces on the feat- 
 ures ; and then — to heighten all these 
 antitheses — there was a diabolical sparkle 
 in the fine but faded azure CN'es. While 
 dressed with all the elegance of the 
 banker, Fritz Brunner was conspicuouslj' 
 bald. The scanty locks that penury and 
 dissipation had spared clustered in bright 
 red curls on each side of liis head ; so that 
 when the days of his financial restoration 
 dawned, he still retained the privilege of 
 paying the barber. His face, once fresh 
 and handsome, had now contracted a 
 certain harshness of tone which, height- 
 ened by a red mustache and tawny beard, 
 
 gave to the features an almost sinister 
 aspect. In Brunner's strife with sorrow, 
 his pure blue eyes — those eyes in which 
 an enraptured mother had once beheld 
 a divine replica of her own — had lost their 
 pristine clearness. Now this premature 
 philosopher, this young old man, was the 
 work of a step-mother. 
 
 Here begins the curious history of a 
 prodigal son of Frankfort-on-Main, the 
 .strangest and the most extraordinary 
 phenomenon that ever presented itself in 
 that sage, though central, city. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 PRODIGAL SONS, WHEN THEY HAIL FROM 
 FRANKFORT-ON-MAIN, END BY BECOM- 
 ING BANKERS AND MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 Mr. Gideon Brunner, the father of 
 our Fritz, was one of those celebrated 
 innkeepers of Frankfort-on-Main, wlio 
 conspire with the bankers to bleed, ac- 
 cording to law, the purse of the trav- 
 eler. This worthy Calvinist had married 
 a converted Jewess, and owed the ele- 
 ments of his fortune to her marriage 
 portion. When her bo^' Fiitz was twelve 
 3'ears old, the Jewess died, leaving him 
 to the guardianship of his father, and 
 the supervision of his uncle, a furrier at 
 Leipsic, and head partner in the firm of 
 Virlaz & Co. This uncle, who was by no 
 means so pliable as his furs, insisted on 
 Brunner senior placing young Fritz's 
 fortune — which consisted of a pile of 
 marcs banco — in the house of Al-Sart- 
 child, and there leaving it. 
 
 By way of revenging himself for this 
 Israelitish exigence, Brunner senior mar- 
 ried again, under the pretext that it was 
 impossible for him to manage his vast 
 hotel without the helping hand and ej'e 
 of a woman. His second wife, the 
 daughter of another innkeeper, he took 
 to be a pearl ; little did he know the 
 nature of an only daughter, the idol of 
 her father and her mother. The second 
 Mrs. Brunner was what all j'oung Ger- 
 man women are, when they happen to
 
 68 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 be frivolous and malicious. She dissi- 
 pated her fortune, and avenged the first 
 Mrs. Brunner, by making lier husband's 
 home the most miserable of all homes 
 within the territory of the free city of 
 Frankfort-on-Main, whose millionaires 
 ('tis said) are going to pass a municipal 
 law to compel the women to devote their 
 attentions exclusively to houie and family-. 
 
 Tliis German lady loved the various 
 kinds of vinegar, to which the Germans 
 apply the general term Rhine wine. She 
 loved Parisian knickknacks for the toilet, 
 and had a passion for riding and for dress. 
 In fact, the only costly things she did not 
 love were — women. 
 
 She contracted an aversion for little 
 Fritz, and would have driven him mad, 
 if that young product of Calvinism and 
 Judaism had not had Frankfort for his 
 birthplace, and the house of Virlaz, of 
 Leipsic, as his guardian ; but Uncle 
 Virlaz, being entirely wrapped up in 
 his furs, confined his vigilance to the 
 marcs banco ; and left the child to the 
 tender mei'cies of its step-mother. 
 
 This hyena was all the more infuriated 
 against the cherub-child of the beautiful 
 Madame Brunner, inasmuch as she her- 
 self remained childless. Actuated \)y a 
 diabolical motive, this criminal German 
 woman launched young Fritz, so soon as 
 he had attained his majority, into the 
 most anti - Germanic dissipations ; her 
 hope being that Englisli horses, Rhine 
 vinegar, and Goethe's " Margarets " 
 would deal the finishing blow to the 
 child of the Jewess and his fortune ; for 
 Uncle Virlaz had left a fine inheritance 
 for his little Fritz as soon as he should 
 become of age. But if the gaming-tables 
 of the German Watei-s and the friends of 
 Fritz's German Wines — among which 
 friends we must include Wilhelm Schwab 
 — managed to knock down the Virlaz capi- 
 tal, the youthful prodigal survived, to 
 serve — in accordance with the will of the 
 Lord — as an awful warning to youths in 
 the city of Frankfort-on-Main ; where 
 every family used his name as a scare- 
 crow, to confine its children, prudent and 
 alarmed, within the limits of its iron 
 strong-room, lined with marcs banco. 
 
 Instead of dj'ing in the prime of life, 
 Fritz Brunner had the pleasure of seeing 
 his step-mother inten-ed in one of those 
 charming cemeteries, in which the Ger- 
 mans, under the pretense of showing re- 
 spect to their departed friends, abandon 
 themselves to their unbridled passion for 
 horticulture. 
 
 The second Mrs. Brunner having pre- 
 deceased her parents, Brunner senior had 
 absolutely nothing to show for all the 
 money that she had extracted from hLs 
 strong-box, and all the troubles she had 
 caused him — troubles so heavj'^, that this 
 innkeeper with the constitution of a Her- 
 cules, was, at the age of sixty-seven, as 
 emaciated as if he had been attacked bj' 
 the famous poison of the Borgia s. 
 
 To miss his wife's fortune after endur- 
 ing his wife for ten j'ears, tui'ned this inn- 
 keeper into a second ruin of Heidelberg, 
 a ruin which underwent ('tis true) con- 
 tinual rei)airs from the rechnungs of the 
 guests ; just as the ruins of Heidelberg 
 are repaired, with a view to keeping up 
 the enthusiasm of the tourists, who come 
 in troops to see these ruins that are so 
 well kept up. 
 
 The old man's condition was as much 
 talked about at Frankfort as a bank- 
 ruptcy would have been. People would 
 point at Brunner and say, "See to wliat 
 a state a bad wife, whose fortune one 
 does not come in for, and a son educated 
 in the French style, may reduce a man." 
 
 In Italy and Germany every misfortune 
 that happens is imijuted to the French ; 
 thej' are the target for every bullet; 
 "but the God pursuing his career " (etc., 
 etc., as in the ode of Lefranc de Pompig- 
 nan). 
 
 The effects of the anger of the landlord 
 of the Grand Hotel of Holland did not 
 exhaust themselves upon the tourists, 
 whose bills {rechnungs) bore the imprint 
 of his grievances. When his son was 
 completelj'- ruined, Gideon, regarding him 
 as the indirect cause of all his father's 
 misfortunes, refused him bread and 
 water, salt, fire, house-room, and — the 
 pipe ! (the refusal of which, by a father, 
 who is an innkeeper and a German, is the 
 ne plus ultra of paternal malediction).
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 69 
 
 The authorities of the district, not tak- 
 ing into consideration the original short- 
 comings of the father, and looking upon 
 him as one of the most unfortunate of men 
 in Frankfort-on-Main, espoused his cause, 
 expelled Fritz from the territorj^ of that 
 free city, and declared against him, a 
 German feud. 
 
 The law is neither more humane, nor 
 wiser, at Frankfort, than it is elsewhere 
 — although that city is the seat of the 
 Germanic Diet. How seldom does a judge 
 ascend the stream of crime and misery', in 
 order to discover who held the urn whence 
 the first trickling tributary flowed ! If 
 Brunner forgot his son, his son's friends 
 followed the example of Brunner. Whence 
 sprung this German with the deeply tragic 
 face who had landed in elegant Paris amid 
 all the hustle of a first representation, and 
 was there, in a stage-box alone ? Such 
 was the question which the joui'nalists, 
 the lions, and sundry Parisian ladies 
 among the audience, were putting to 
 themselves. Ah ! if the story that has 
 just been told could have been acted in 
 front of the prompter's box, for the bene- 
 fit of that assembly, it would have made 
 a far finer drama than the fairj' piece, 
 "La Fiancee du Diable"; although it 
 would have been (not the first but) the 
 two hundred thousandth representation 
 of the sublime parable that was acted in 
 Mesopotamia, three thousand years before 
 the birth of Christ. 
 
 When Fritz was expelled from Frank- 
 fort, he went on foot to Strasbourg, and 
 there encountered something that the 
 prodigal sou of Scripture did not encoun- 
 ter in the land of Holy Writ ; something 
 that reveals the superioritj' of Alsace, 
 prolific in generous hearts, to prove to 
 Germany the beauty of the combination 
 of French wit and German solidity. Wil- 
 helm Schwab, who had just succeeded to 
 the fortune of his father and mother, now 
 master of a hundred thousand francs, re- 
 ceived Fritz with open arms, open heart, 
 open house, and open purse. To attempt 
 to describe the sensations of Fritz at the 
 moment when, dustj', miserable, quasi- 
 leprous as he was, he found, on the other 
 bank of the Rhine, a real, substantial 
 
 twenty-franc piece in the hand of a gen- 
 uine friend, would be to undertake an ode 
 such as Pindar only could launch into the 
 world — in Greek — to fan the embers of 
 expiring fi'iendship. Add the names of 
 Fritz and Wilhelm to those of Damon 
 and Pythias, of Castor and Pollux, of 
 Pylades and Orestes, of Dubi'euil and 
 Pmeja, of Schmucke and Pons, and to 
 all the fancy names we give to the two 
 friends of the Mouomotapa (for La Fon- 
 taine, like a man of genius, as he was, 
 has placed before us semblances of men 
 without substance and without reality). 
 You may add tliese two new names to 
 our roU of celebrities, with all the more 
 propriety, in that Wilhelm devoured his 
 heritage in company with Fritz, just as 
 Fritz had drunk his in company with 
 Wilhelm — smoking at the same time (be 
 it always understood) every species of 
 tobacco that is grown. 
 
 Improbable as it may seem, the two 
 friends consumed this heritage in the 
 breweries of Strasbourg, after the most 
 foolish and most \Tdgar' fashion possible 
 — in the society of the ballet-girls of the 
 Strasbourg Theater, and of certain Alsa- 
 tian damsels, who had worn their little 
 brooms to the \evy stump. 
 
 At the same time, not a morning 
 dawned but they would say to each 
 other : " This may be all very well; but 
 we must pull up, come to some resolution, 
 and do something with the money that is 
 left." " Oh ! just this one day," Fritz 
 would remark, " but to-morrow." '• Oh, 
 yes, to-morrow !" 
 
 In the life of the debauchee, To-day is 
 a tremendous coxcomb ; To-morrow is a 
 great coward, scared by the courage of 
 his predecessor ; To-day is the swash- 
 buckler of the old comedy ; To-morrow 
 is the phantom of our existing panto- 
 mimes. When the two friends had come 
 to their last thousand-franc note they 
 booked places at the Messageries which 
 are called royal, and so reached Paris, 
 where they found quarters at the Hotel 
 du Rhin in the Rue du Mail, which was 
 kept by one Graff, formerly head-waiter 
 to Gideon Brunner. On the strength of 
 Graff's recommendation, Keller Brothers
 
 70 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 engag-ed Fritz as one of their clerks, at a 
 salary of six hundred francs a year. 
 
 Now Graff, the landlord of the Hotel 
 du Rhin, is a brother of Graff, the cele- 
 brated tailor. The tailor took Wilhelm 
 into his service as bookkeeper. Graff, 
 the hotel-keeper, deemed these two posts 
 not nearly g'ood enoug-h for the two 
 prodig-al sons, when he called to mind 
 his own apprenticeship at the Hotel du 
 Hollande. 
 
 These two facts — the recognition of a 
 poor friend by a rich one, and the interest 
 taken by a German innkeeper in a fel- 
 low-countryman without a farthing, may 
 lead some persons to suppose that this 
 history is a romance ; but, in these days 
 truth is all the more like fiction, in that 
 fiction takes such incredible pains to re- 
 semble truth. 
 
 Fritz, clerk at a salary of six hundred 
 francs, and Wilhelm, bookkeeper at the 
 same remuneration, found it very difficult 
 to exist in a city so seductive as Paris; so, 
 in 1837, after they had been in Paris two 
 3'ears, Wilhelm, who had g'reat talent as 
 a flutist, and was desirous of sometimes 
 having' a little butter on his bread, joined 
 the orchestra over which Pons presided. 
 As for Fritz, he could supplement his in- 
 come only by the exercise of that financial 
 capacity with which, as a scion of the 
 Virlaz stem, he was endowed. In spite 
 of his application — perhaps on account of 
 his talents — it was not till 1843 that the 
 Franlifortian succeeded in getting- two 
 thousand francs a year. Penurj', that di- 
 vine step-mother, did for these two young- 
 men what their own mothers had been 
 unable to do for them ; she taught them 
 economy, Icnowledge of the world, knowl- 
 edge of life ; she gave them that grand, 
 that potent education of chastisement, 
 which she imparts to all men destined to 
 be great ; all of whom are unhappy in 
 their youth. 
 
 Fritz and Wilhelm, being but ordinary 
 men, did not lay to heart all the lessons 
 of Penury' ; they did their best to keep 
 out of the way of her blows ; they found 
 her bosom flinty and her arms lean, nor 
 could they extract from those arms the 
 good fairy Urgela who yields to the ca- 
 
 resses of men of g-enius. But they did 
 learn the full value of Fortune, and re- 
 solved to clip her wings, if ever sho 
 returned to their door. 
 
 " Well ! Father Schmucke, I can ex- 
 plain the whole matter in one word," pur- 
 sued William (who had told the whole of 
 this story to the pianist, in German). 
 " Brunncr senior is dead. He was, un- 
 avowedly to his son and to Monsieur 
 Graff (with whom we lodge), one of the 
 original promoters of the Baden railways, 
 out of which he made immense profits. 
 He leaves a fortune of £160,000. This is 
 the last night that I shall play the flute. 
 But for its being- a first night I should 
 have left some days ago, but I did not 
 wish my part in the music to be want- 
 ing." 
 
 "Dat is right, young- man," said 
 Schmucke. "But whom are you going 
 to marry ? " 
 
 " The daughter of Monsieur Graff, our 
 host, the landlord of the Hotel du Rhin. 
 I have loved Mademoiselle Emilie these 
 seven years; she has read so many im- 
 moral novels that she has refused every 
 offer for my sake, without knowing what 
 might be the upshot. The young lady 
 will be very rich, for she is sole heiress of 
 the Graffs, who are tailors, in the Rue 
 de Richelieu. Fritz is going to give me 
 five times what we squandered together 
 at Strasbourg — five hundred thousand 
 francs ! A million francs he devotes to 
 the establishment of a bank, to which 
 Monsieur Graff, the tailor, contributes five 
 hundred thousand francs ; the father of 
 my future wife permits me to invest her 
 portion (which amounts to two hundred 
 and fift^^ thousand francs) in the same 
 establishment, and wiU invest an equal 
 sum on his own account. Thus the house 
 of Brunner, Schwab & Co. will have a 
 capital of two million five hundred thou- 
 sand francs. Fritz has just bought shares 
 in the Bank of France to the amount of 
 fifteen hundred thousand francs, to guar- 
 antee our account there. But that is not 
 the whole of Fritz's fortune; there are, 
 besides, some houses at Frankfort, which 
 belonged to his father, and are reckoned 
 to be worth a million francs. He has
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 already let the Grand Hotel du Hollande 
 to a cousin of the Graffs." 
 
 " You look very sadly at j'our friend," 
 replied Schmucke, who had listened to 
 Wilhelm attentively' ; " are j-ou envious 
 of him ? " 
 
 "I am, not envious; but I am jealous 
 for Fritz's happiness," said Wilhelm. 
 " Is that the face of a man who is happy ? 
 I dread Paris on his account. I wish he 
 would do as I am doing'. The old Adam 
 may awake in him again. Of our two 
 heads, 'tis not his that has acquired the 
 greater share of ballast. That toilet, 
 that eyeglass, all that sort of things 
 makes me uneasy; he has looked at noth- 
 ing in the theater, except the lorettes. 
 Ah ! if you only knew how difficult it is 
 to persuade Fritz to marry ! He has a 
 horror of that which in France is termed 
 ' faire la cour.' We shall have to 
 launch him into married life, as — in En- 
 gland — they launch a man into eternity, 
 that is to say — with a halter round his 
 neck." 
 
 Amid the tumult that marks the con- 
 clusion of a first representation " the 
 flute " gave the invitation to his con- 
 ductor, and Pons accepted it with glee. 
 For the first time in three months, 
 Sclimucke saw a smile on the face of his 
 frieud. He conducted Pons back to the 
 Rue de Normandie in silence ; for by that 
 gleam of joy he recognized the intensitj' 
 of the malady from which his friend was 
 suffering. That a man so truly noble, so 
 disinterested as Pons, a man of such ele- 
 vated sentiments, should have such weak- 
 nesses was an inexplicable puzzle to the 
 stoical Schmucke ; terribly sad he grew, 
 for he felt that — in the interests of Pons's 
 happiness — he ought to renounce the 
 pleasure of seeing his " goot Bo7is " sit- 
 ting opposite to him at the dinner-table 
 every day ; and Schmucke did not know 
 whether he could bear to make so great 
 a sacrifice. This notion drove hiui mad. 
 
 The proud silence maintained by Pons, 
 stationed on the Mount Aventine of the 
 Rue de Normandie, had, necessarily, at- 
 tracted the notice of Madame Camusot ; 
 but once freed from her parasite, she 
 troubled herself but little about him. 
 
 She, in common with her " charming 
 daughter," fancied that her cousin had 
 fathomed the trick of her little Lili ; 
 but with the president things were very 
 different. 
 
 President Camusot de JIarville, a short, 
 stout little man who, since his promotion, 
 had grown solemn, was an admirer of 
 Cicero, and preferred the Opera Comique 
 to the Italian Opera; compared actor 
 with actor ; followed in the footsteps of 
 the ruck ; repeated, as his own, all the 
 articles in the ministerial journal ; and, in 
 giving his decisions, paraphrased the ideas 
 of the councilor who preceded him. This 
 magistrate, the leading features of whose 
 character were sufficiently well known, 
 and who was forced by his position to 
 take a serious view of every subject, had 
 a particular regard for family ties. Like 
 most husbands who are entirely governed 
 by their wives, the president affected, in 
 minor matters, an independence which his 
 wife did not infringe. 
 
 During a whole month he was contented 
 with the commonplace reasons assigned 
 by his wife for Pons's disappearance ; but 
 at length he began to think it strange 
 that the old musician — a friend of forty 
 years' standing — had discontinued his 
 visits, immediately after making so con- 
 siderable a present as the fan of Madame 
 de Pompadour. At the Tuileries, where 
 this fan, which Count Popinot had recog- 
 nized as a masterpiece, was handed round, 
 it had procured for Madame Camusot 
 sundry compliments extremely gratifying 
 to her vanity. The beauties of its ten 
 ivory branches, each of which was carved 
 with inimitable delicacy, were pointed out 
 to her in detail. At Count Popinot's a 
 certain Russian lady — the Russians al- 
 ways fancy themselves in Russia — offered 
 Madame Camusot six thousand francs for 
 tliis extraordinary fan ; she was amused 
 at seeiug it in such hands, for it was un- 
 doubtedl3' fit for a duchess. 
 
 " One cannot deny our poor cousin the 
 credit of thoroughly understanding these 
 little bits of trumpery," quoth Cecile to 
 her father the morning after the Russian 
 princess's offer. 
 
 "Little hits of trumpery!" exclaimed
 
 72 
 
 THE HUMAX COMEDY. 
 
 the president ; "why, the State is about 
 to give three hundred thousand francs for 
 the collection of the late Monsieur Con- 
 seiller Dusommerard, and to contribute, 
 in conjunction with the city of Paris, half 
 a million of francs toward the ijurchasing 
 and repairing of the Hotel Cluny, in order 
 to house ' these little hits of trumpery .' " 
 
 '"These little bits of trumpery,' my 
 dear child, are often the only traces that 
 remain to us of civilizations that have 
 perished. An Etruscan vase, a necklace 
 (which are worth, one, fortj^ thousand ; 
 the other, fifty thousand francs) are ' lit- 
 tle bits of trumpery' that reveal to us 
 the perfection of the ai'ts at the time of 
 the siege of Troy, while proving to us that 
 the Etruscans were Trojans who had taken 
 refuge in Italy." 
 
 Such Avas the style of the stout little 
 president's wit ; he assailed his wife and 
 daughter with clumsy irony. 
 
 " The combination of acquirements 
 which ' these little bits of trumpery ' de- 
 mand is a science which is called Archte- 
 ology . Now, Archasol ogy emb races a rchi- 
 tecture, sculpture, painting, the art of 
 working in the precious metals, the ce- 
 ramic art, the ai-t of cabinet-making 
 (quite a modern art), lace, tapestry — in 
 short, evevj product of human labor." 
 
 "Cousin Pons is quite a savmit then ?" 
 said Cecile. 
 
 " Ah ! by the way, that reminds me ; 
 why don't we ever see him now ? " in- 
 quired the president, with the air of a 
 man under the influence of an emotion, 
 produced by a thousand forgotten im- 
 pressions, which suddenly coalesce, and — 
 to use a term common among sportsmen 
 — font balle. 
 
 '• Oh ! he must be huffed about some 
 trifle or other," replied Madame Camu- 
 sot. " Perhaps I have not shown myself 
 sufficiently appreciative of the gift of 
 this fan ; I am, as you know, ver^' igno- 
 rant—" 
 
 " You ! one of Servin's most accom- 
 plished pupils ! You ! not know Wat- 
 teau ! " interrupted the president. 
 
 " I know David, Gerard, Gros ; and 
 Girodet and Guerin and Monsieur de For- 
 bin and Turpin de Crisse — " 
 
 "You ought to have — " 
 
 "What ought I to have done, mon- 
 sieur ? " asked the ladj-, looking at her 
 husband with a Queen of Sheba air. 
 
 "Known what Watteau is, my dear; 
 he is very much the fashion," resumed 
 the president, with a humilitj- which 
 showed how great were his obligations 
 to his wife. 
 
 This conversation occurred some days 
 before the first representation of " The 
 Fiancee du Diable," when all the mem- 
 bei's of the band were struck by Pons's 
 sickly appearance. But, in the interim, 
 those persons who were accustomed to 
 see Pons at their tables, and to emploj'- 
 him as a messenger, had been making- 
 inquiries ; and there had arisen, in the 
 circle in which the old man's orbit lay, a 
 feeling of uneasiness which was increased 
 by the fact that several persons had seen 
 him at his post in the theater. In spite 
 of the pains taken by Pons to avoid his 
 former acquaintances when he came 
 across them in his walks, he one day 
 found himself face to face with the quon- 
 dam minister, Count Popinot, at the shop 
 of Monistrol, one of those famous and 
 audacious dealers of the new Boulevard 
 Beaumarchais, whom Pons had once men- 
 tioned to Madame Camusot, and whose 
 wily enthusiasm from da3' to day raises 
 the price of curiosities ; which (they say) 
 are becoming so scarce that it is now 
 impossible to find any. 
 
 "My dear Pons, why do we never see 
 you now ? You have quite forsaken us ; 
 and Madame Popinot does not know what 
 to make of your desertion of us." 
 
 " There is a certain house, Monsieur le 
 Comte," replied poor Pons — "the house 
 of a relative — in which I have been made 
 to understand that a man of mj' years is 
 an incumbrance to society. I Avas never 
 received with any great show of polite- 
 ness ; but, at all events, up to that time 
 I had never been actually insulted. I 
 never asked any one for a farthing," he 
 added, with all an artist's piide. " In 
 return for certain attentions, I frequently 
 made myself useful to those from whom 
 I received them ; but it would seem that 
 I was laboring under a delusion ; that I
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 was liable to unlimited tax and toll, in 
 return for the honor which my friends — 
 ray relatives — conferred upon me, by ad- 
 mitting- me to their tables. Well ! I have 
 resigned mj^ office of parasite. I find 
 every day in m3'' own home that which no 
 table could offer me — a g-enuine friend ! " 
 
 These words, imbued as they were with 
 all that bitterness which the old artist 
 was still capable of infusing- into them by 
 the aid of tone and gesture, made so deep 
 an impression on the peer that he took the 
 worthy musician aside and said to him : 
 
 " Come now, my old friend, what has 
 happened to you ? Can you not impart 
 to me in confidence what it is that has 
 wounded you ? You will allow me to 
 point out to you that at my house you 
 have never been treated otherwise than 
 with respect." 
 
 "You are the onlj' exception that I 
 make," said the worthy man, " and, be- 
 sides, you are a grreat nobleman, a states- 
 man ; the demands on your time and at- 
 tention would, if need were, have furnished 
 an excuse for ever3-thing." 
 
 Yielding to the influence of the diplo- 
 matic tact acquired by Popinot in the 
 management of men and in the conduct 
 of business. Pons was at length induced 
 to recount the wrong-s that he had suffered 
 in the house of the President de Marville ; 
 and Popinot so heartily espoused the vic- 
 tim's cause that, on reaching home, he 
 immediately mentioned the matter to 
 Madame Popinot. That worthy and ex- 
 cellent woman expostulated with Madame 
 de Marville the next time that the two 
 ladies met ; and the ex-minister, on his 
 part, having made some observations on 
 the subject to the president, a family ex- 
 planation took place at the house of the 
 Camusots de Marville. Now, although 
 Camusot was not entirely master in his 
 own house, neither his wife nor his daugh- 
 ter could deny the justice of a remon- 
 strance that had so solid a foundation 
 both of law and fact ; so they kissed the 
 rod and blamed the servants. The serv- 
 ants having been summoned and censured, 
 found grace onlj' by making- a clean breast 
 of the whole matter ; thus pi'oving to the 
 president how entirely justified Cousin 
 
 Pons was in remaining at home. Under 
 these circumstances the president acted 
 as all men under petticoat-government 
 would have acted ; he displayed his dig- 
 nity as a husband and a judge, by an- 
 nouncing to his servants that they would 
 be dismissed (and thus lose all the advan- 
 tages that might accrue to them from 
 their long stay in his service) unless, from 
 that time forth, his cousin Pons and all 
 who did him (the president) the honor to 
 visit at his house, were treated as he him- 
 self was treated, as he himself was treated 
 — an expression that drew a smile from 
 Madeleine. 
 
 " Indeed, you have but one chance of 
 escape," said the president; "you must 
 disarm my cousin by apologizing to him. 
 Go and tell him that your remaining here 
 depends entirely on him ; for I shall send 
 you all away, unless he forgives you." 
 
 IX. 
 
 PONS TAKES MADAME LA PRESIDENTE 
 
 A WORK OF ART A LITTLE MORE 
 
 PRECIOUS EVEN THAN A PAN. 
 
 The next day the president set off be- 
 times to pay a visit to his cousin before 
 the sitting of the court. The appearance 
 of Monsieur le President de Marville, 
 heralded by Madame Cibot, was quite 
 an event. Pons, who never, in the 
 whole course of his life, had received the 
 honor of a visit from the president, felt 
 that reparation was at hand. 
 
 "My dear cousin," said the president, 
 after the customary compliments had 
 been interchanged, "I have at last dis- 
 covered the cause of your secession. 
 Your conduct increased — if that be pos- 
 sible — the esteem in which I hold you. 
 Now I will say but one word on this 
 point : ray servants are all under notice 
 to quit ; ray wife and daughter are in 
 despair ; they want to see you, and offer 
 you an explanation. I can assure you 
 that throughout the whole of this affair 
 there has been one innocent person, and 
 that person is a certain cldci'ly judge you 
 wot of ; don't punish me then for the es-
 
 74 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY, 
 
 capade of a giddy little girl who wanted 
 to dine with the Popinots ; especially' see- 
 ing- that I am come to sue for peace, with 
 an acknowledgment that we — and we 
 alone — are in the wrong. After all, a 
 friendship of thirty-six years' standing 
 — even supposing that it has received 
 a shock — is not without its rights. Come 
 now, sign the treaty of peace hy dining 
 with us this evening." 
 
 Hereupon Pons contrived to get en- 
 tangled in a diffuse reply, and wound up 
 hj' announcing that he was engaged to be 
 present that evening at the troth-partj' 
 of one of the performers in his orchestra, 
 who was flinging his flute to limbo in order 
 to become a banker. 
 
 "Well, then, to-morrow." 
 
 " My cousin, Madame la Comtesse Popi- 
 not has sent me an invitation for to- 
 morrow, couched in the most flattering 
 terms — " 
 
 '•Then the day after to-morrow," per- 
 sisted the president. 
 
 " The dduy after to-morrow, my first 
 flute's partner — a German — a Monsieur 
 Brunner — returns the betrothed the civil- 
 ity that he received from them to-day." 
 
 " Your amiability' affords an ample ex- 
 planation of the zeal with which people 
 compete for the pleasure of your com- 
 pany-," said the president. Then, after 
 a moment's pause, he added : '•' Well, 
 then, let it be next Sunday, se'unight, 
 as we saj' at the palace." 
 
 " Why, on that day we are going to 
 dine with a Monsieur Graff, the father- 
 in-law of the flutist — " 
 
 "Well, be it Saturday then; between 
 that time and this you will find time to 
 reassure a little girl, who has already 
 been crying over her fault. All that 
 even God demands is penitence ; will you 
 be more exacting with poor little Cecile 
 than the Omnipotent Himself ? " 
 
 Pons, thus assailed at his weakest 
 points, took refuge in phrases that were 
 moi'e than polite, and escorted the presi- 
 dent to the head of the stairs. An hour 
 later the president's servants found their 
 way in a body to Pons's lodgings. As 
 the manner of servants is, they cringed, 
 they cajoled, they even cried ! As for 
 
 Madeleine, she led Monsieur Pons aside, 
 and throwing herself resolutely at his 
 feet: " 'Twas I, monsieur," said she, 
 " 'twas I who did it all ; and monsieur 
 knows full well that I love him," she 
 added, bursting into a flood of teai's. 
 " It is to the revengeful feelings boiling 
 within me that monsieur must attribute 
 all this unhapijy business. We shall lose 
 our annuities ! — monsieur, I was mad, 
 and I should not like my fellow-servants 
 to suffer for my madness. I see noV 
 quite plainly that fate did not intend me 
 for monsieur's wife. I have argued the 
 matter with myself ; I own I have looked 
 too high, but, monsieur, I love yon still. 
 For ten years vay one dream of happiness 
 has been to make you happy, and to look 
 after all that you have here ! Oh, if mon- 
 sieur only knew how much I love him ! 
 but he must have read it in all my acts of 
 malice : if I were to die to-morrow — what 
 would they find ? A will, monsieur, in 
 j-our favor ; yes, monsieur, a will in your 
 favor — in my trunk, under my jewels ! " 
 By touching this chord Madeleine awak- 
 ened in the bosom of the old bachelor that 
 feeling of gratified vanity to which the 
 fact of having inspired a passion, even in 
 a person who is distasteful to us, will al- 
 ways give rise. Having generously for- 
 given Madeleine, Pons extended his for- 
 giveness to all the other servants, and 
 told them that he would speak to his 
 cousin Madame Camusot, in order to save 
 them from being sent away. Thus then, 
 to his ineffable delight. Pons found himself 
 restored to all his habitual enjoyments, 
 without having stooped to any act of 
 meanness : instead of his going to the 
 world, the world had come to him ; his 
 character, therefore, would gain, instead 
 of losing, dignity. But when he came to 
 explain his triumph to his friend Schmucke, 
 Pons had the mortification of seeing him 
 look sad and full of unuttered doubts. 
 Nevertheless, at sight of the sudden 
 change that had taken place in Pons's 
 countenance, the worthy German acqui- 
 esced in the immolation of the pleasure 
 which he had derived from having his 
 friend all to himself for nearly four 
 months.
 
 COUSIN POXS. 
 
 Moral uialacUes are in one respect far 
 less terrible than physical — they are in- 
 stantaneously cured by the g-ratification 
 of the desii'e from whose defeat they 
 spring:. On this morning- Pons became 
 cjuite a different being ; the melancholy 
 moribund old man gave place to the self- 
 contented Pons whom we saw conveying 
 the fan of M;ul;ime de Pompadour to Mad- 
 ame de Marville. Schmucke, meanwhile, 
 pondered deeply over this phenomenon, 
 3-et failed to comprehend it ; for the genu- 
 ine stoic will never understand thecourte- 
 sanry of the Frenchman. Now Pons was 
 a genuine Frenchman of the Empire, in 
 whom the gallantr\' of the eigliteenth 
 century was combined with the devotion 
 to the fair sex so highl^^ extolled in the 
 romances " Partant pour la SjTie," etc., 
 etc., etc. Schmucke buined his sorrows 
 in his heart, and covered them with the 
 flowers of German philosophy; but within 
 eight days he turned quite yellow, and 
 Madame Cibot had to resort to strategj' 
 in order to introduce the doctor of the 
 district to Schmucke's sick-room. This 
 doctor feared that the old German was 
 suffering from an icterus, and left Mad- 
 ame Cibot staggered by that learned word 
 which, being interpreted, simply means 
 the jaundice. 
 
 And now — for the first time, probably, 
 in the course of their acquaintance — the 
 two friends were about to dine out to- 
 gether ; though, so far as Schrauclce was 
 concerned, this dinner was merely a trip 
 to Germany. In fact Johann Graff, the 
 landlord of the Hotel du Rhin, and his 
 daughter Emilie, Wolfgang Graff the 
 tailor, and his wife, Fritz Brunner and 
 Wilhem Schwab, were Germans one and 
 all — Pons and the notary being the only 
 French people admitted to the banquet. 
 The tailor and his spouse, who owned a 
 splendid mansion in the Rue de Riche- 
 lieu between the Rue Neuve-des-Petits- 
 Champs and the Rue Villedo, had under- 
 taken the bringing- up of their niece, 
 whose father, not unreasonably, enter- 
 tained a ver^' strong dislike to his daugh- 
 ter's coming into contact with the heter- 
 ogeneous crowd that haimts a hostehy. 
 These worthy tailor folks, who loved the 
 
 child as if she had been their own, gave 
 up the ground-floor of their abode to the 
 j-ouug couple. 'Twas in this spot also 
 that the banking-house of Brunner, 
 Schwab & Co. was to have its headquar- 
 ters. These details had been settled 
 about a month pre%iouslj' ; for that was 
 the time required for realizing the fortune 
 of Brunner, the author of all this felicity ; 
 and during the interval, the home that 
 was to receive the young couple had been 
 richly redecorated and furnished at the 
 expense of the celebrated tailor. The 
 wing that connected the old mansion 
 between court and garden, with a fine 
 house abutting on the street, had been 
 converted into bank-offices. 
 
 As the two friends journeyed from the 
 Rue de Normandie to the Rue Richelieu 
 Pons abstracted from the absent-minded 
 Schmucke the details of this new edition 
 of the story of the prodigal son, for whom 
 Death had killed the fatted — innkeeper. 
 Pons, under the influence of his recent rec- 
 onciliation with his nearest relatives, was 
 immediately' fired with the desire to unit* 
 Fritz Brunner and Cecile Camusot in the 
 bonds of wedlock. As chance would have 
 it, the notarj' of the brothers Graff was 
 no other than the son-in-law and suc- 
 cessor of Cardot, formerly second head- 
 clerk in Cardot's office, and a person with 
 whom Pons frequently dined. 
 
 "What, is it j'ou. Monsieur Berthier ? "* 
 said the old musician, holding out his 
 hand to his ex-Amphitryon. 
 
 " And pray whj- have you ceased to do 
 us the honor of dining with us, as you 
 formerly did?" inquired the notary. " My 
 wife was anxious about you. Then we 
 saw you at the first representation of 
 ' The Fiancee du Diable,' and our anxiety 
 was converted into curiosity." 
 
 "Old men are sensitive," replied the 
 worthy man. "They have the demerit 
 of being just a centurj^ behind the age ; 
 but what is to be done ? It is quite as 
 much as they can do to represent one 
 epoch ; they cannot belong to the epoch 
 in which they die." 
 
 " Ah ! " said the notary, with a know- 
 ing look, "one hare and one century at 
 a time, eh? "
 
 76 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 " Oh, by the way, whj" don't you find 
 a husband for m}' cousin Cecile de Mar- 
 ville ? " asked the wortliy man, tal<ing- 
 the young' notary into a corner of tlie 
 room. 
 
 " Ahj wliy indeed ? " replied the notary. 
 " In this age, when luxury has penetrated 
 even to our porters' lodges, young men 
 pause before uniting- their destiny to that 
 of a daughter of a president of the Court 
 Roj'al of Paris, when that daughter's 
 portion is only a hundred thousand francs. 
 In the class in which the husband of Made- 
 moiselle de Marville must be sought for, 
 you cannot find a woman who costs her 
 husband only three thousand francs a 
 year. The interest on such a portion, 
 then, will barely defray the annual ex- 
 penses of the lady's toilet. A bachelor 
 with an income of fifteen or twenty thou- 
 sand francs lives in a pretty entresol ; the 
 world does not expect him to make any 
 display ; he may do with a single servant ; 
 he can devote his whole income to his 
 amusements; the only decorum he need 
 study, he can buy — at his tailor's. Ca- 
 ressed by all far-seeing mothers, he is one 
 of the kings of fashionable Pai-is. 
 
 "A wife, on the other hand, needs an 
 establishment ; she monopolizes the car- 
 riage ; if she goes to the play she wants 
 a box, whereas the bachelor pays for a 
 stall only. In fact the wife is the exclu- 
 sive representative of the fortune which 
 formerly the bachelor represented alone. 
 Suppose that your married couple have 
 thirty thousand francs a year ; as things 
 are now, the rich bachelor deg:enerates 
 into a poor devil who has to count the 
 cost of a trip to Chantilh'. Are there 
 any children ? then the parents are posi- 
 tively poor. Now seeing- that Monsieur 
 and Madame de Marville are barely flftj', 
 the expectatioyis are purely reversionary 
 for fifteen or twenty years ; no bachelor 
 cares to carrj' them in his portfolio so 
 long as that ; and let me tell you that a 
 calculating spirit has so deeplj-^ corroded 
 the hearts of the unsophisticated young 
 sparks who dance the polka at Mabillc 
 with lorettes, that all marriageable young- 
 men studj' the two aspects of the j^roblem 
 without needing our exposition of the sub- 
 
 ject. And between j'ou and me. Made- 
 moiselle de Marville leaves the hearts of 
 her suitors quite calm enoug-h to allow 
 their heads to work ; and the result is 
 that they all of them indulge in these 
 anti-matrimonial reflections. If any young- 
 fellow in possession of his senses and — an 
 income of twenty thousand francs — foi^ms 
 a quiet little programme of marriage in 
 harmonj^with his ambitious ideals, Made- 
 moiselle de Marville does not at all cor- 
 respond to it — " 
 
 " And why not ? " asked the astonished 
 musician. 
 
 "Oh!" replied the notary, "in these 
 days almost every bachelor, though he 
 be as plain as you and I are, my dear 
 Pons, has the impudence to expect a wife 
 with a marriage portion of six hundred 
 thousand francs, with good blood in her 
 veins, plenty of g-ood looks, wit and edu- 
 cation — a g:irl without a flaw — in short, a 
 paragon." 
 
 " Then mj- cousin will have g-reat diffi- 
 culty in finding a husband ? " 
 
 "She will not find one until her father 
 and mother can make up their minds to 
 add Marville to her portion ; had fhej 
 been willing to do that, she would now 
 be Vicomtesse Popinot — but see, here is 
 Monsieur Brunner ; we are going to read 
 the part nership deed of the house of Brun- 
 ner & Co., and also the contract of mar- 
 riage." 
 
 When the persons present had been 
 introduced to one another and the cus- 
 tomai'.y compliments interchanged. Pons 
 —who had been requested by the relatives 
 of the parties to sig-n the contract as a 
 witness — heard the deeds read. The 
 party adjourned to the dining--room at 
 about half-past five. The dinner was one 
 of those sumptuous entertainments which 
 men of business g-ive when they fling- 
 away its cares for a season. The viands 
 clearly showed that Graff, the landlord of 
 the Hotel du Rhin, had relations with the 
 best provision dealers in Paris. Never 
 had Pons or Schmucke witnessed such 
 good cheer. There were dishes on the 
 table that were fit to ravish the mind — 
 German paste of unexampled delicacy, 
 smelts incomparably fried, a Geneva
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 rt 
 
 ferra with the g'enuine Genevese sauce, 
 and then there was a sauce for plum-pud- 
 ding: that would have astounded the fa- 
 mous London physician who is said to have 
 invented it. The company did not leave 
 the dinner table until ten o'clock. The 
 quantity of Rhine wines and of French 
 wines consumed would have astonished 
 the dandies ; for the amount of fluids 
 which a German can imbibe, without ex- 
 hibiting a single trace of exhilaration, 
 transcends all knowledge. To gain any 
 idea of it one must dine in Germany and 
 behold bottle follow bottle (as wave suc- 
 ceeds to wave on some lovely Mediter- 
 ranean strand), disappear just as if the 
 Germans possessed tlie absorbent powers 
 of sponge and sand. But this process 
 goes on harmoniously unaccompanied by 
 French noise and clatter : the talk re- 
 mains as frigid as the rhetoric of a 
 money-lender; the faces flush after the 
 fashion of those of the brides whom we 
 see in the frescos of Cornelius or Schnor, 
 that is to say — imperceptibly; while 
 tales of the past flow from the lips as 
 slowly as the smoke curls upward from 
 the pipe. 
 
 At about half - past ten. Pons and 
 Schmucke were seated on a bench, in the 
 garden, with the quondam flutist between 
 them. They were discussing — with a very 
 hazy notion of what they were talking 
 about — their respective dispositions, opin- 
 ions, and misfortunes. In the midst of 
 this hotch-potch of confidences, Wilhelm 
 mentioned his anxiety to get Frit? mar- 
 ried, and dilated on the topic with vinous 
 eloquence and force. 
 
 "What say you to the following pro- 
 gramme for your friend?" whispered 
 Pons to Wilhelm. "A charming young 
 lady, full of good sense ; age twentj'- 
 four ; family of the highest distinction ; 
 father occupying one of the hig'hest seats 
 on the judicial bench ; marriage portion, 
 one hundred thousand francs ; expecta- 
 tions, a million francs." 
 
 " Stop ! I will go and mention it to 
 Fritz at once," replied Wilhelm. 
 
 Thereupon the two musicians beheld 
 Brunner and his friend walking round 
 and round the garden, passing and re- 
 
 passing, and alternatel3' .speaking and 
 listening. Pons's head was somewhat 
 heavy — though he was not actually drunk 
 — but his intellect was as active as its cor- 
 poreal envelope was inert. Through the 
 diaphanous haze that wine produces, he 
 watched Fritz Brunner, and was bent 
 upon tracing in his features indications 
 of a desire for the joys of married life. 
 Schwab lost no time in bringing his friend 
 and partner and ijresenting him to Mon- 
 sieur Pons ; whereupon Fritz Brunner 
 thanked the old gentleman for the trouble 
 he deigned to take in the matter. A con- 
 versation then ensued, in the course of 
 which the two old bachelors. Pons and 
 Schmucke, lauded marriage to the skies 
 and — with the utmost possible innocence 
 — gave vent to the double entendre, that 
 " marriage is the end of man." When 
 amid the service of ices, tea, punch and 
 cakes in the future apartments of the be- 
 trothed, the worthy tradesmen, nearly all 
 of whom were drunk, learned that the 
 sleeping partner in the banking-house was 
 about to follow the example of his associ- 
 ate, the hilarity of the evening reached 
 its climax. 
 
 It was two o'clock in the morning when 
 Pons and Schmucke wended their way 
 homeward along the boulevards, philoso- 
 phizing, as the^- went, on the musical ar- 
 rangement of things mundane until all 
 trace of meaning was entirely lost. 
 
 On the morrow Pons repaired to the 
 house of the president — his heai't over- 
 flowing with the profound delight that 
 arises from returning good for evil. Poor 
 dear good soul ! He assuredly attained 
 to the sublime, as every one will admit, 
 since we live in an age when the Montyon 
 prize is awarded to those who do their 
 duty by following the precepts of the 
 Gospel. 
 
 " Ah ! They will be under deep obliga- 
 tions to their parasite," he said to him- 
 self as he reached the Rue de Choiseul. 
 
 A man not wrapped up, as Pons was, 
 in measureless content, a man of the 
 world, a suspicious man would, on re- 
 tui-ning to that house under such circum- 
 stances, have observed Madame Camusot 
 and her daughter. But the poor musician
 
 rs 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 was a child, a guileless artist whose faith 
 in the non-existence of moral deformity 
 equaled his devotion to jesthetical beauty; 
 and accordingly the worthy man was en- 
 chanted with the blandishments lavished 
 on him by Cecile and her mother. He 
 who for the last twelve years had looked 
 on while vaudeville, comedy and drama 
 were being performed, was completely 
 taken in by the grimaces of the social 
 comedy : long familiarity with them had, 
 no doubt, dulled his perceptive faculties 
 in that regard. The covert hatred that 
 Madame Camusot bore her husband's 
 cousin since she had placed herself in the 
 wrong may be easily imagined by those 
 who frequent Parisian society and have 
 grasped the aridity — both mental and 
 physical — of Madame Camusot (ardent 
 only in the pursuit of distinctions, and 
 rabid with virtue), her hollow piety and 
 arrogance — the arrogance of a woman 
 who rules the roast at home. It will be 
 understood, then, that all the demonstra- 
 tive attentions of mother and daughter 
 cloaked a formidable thirst for vengeance 
 — vengeance that was obviously only de- 
 ferred. For the first time in her life 
 Amelie was in the wrong, and the hus- 
 band, whom she henpecked, in the right: ; 
 and — to crown all — she was compelled to 
 make a show of affection toward the in- 
 strument of her defeat ! Such a situation 
 has no analogue except in the enmities 
 that smolder for long years in the sacred 
 college of cardinals or in the chapters of 
 the heads of religious orders. When, at 
 three o'clock, the president returned from 
 the palace. Pons had scarcely' finished his 
 account of the marvelous incidents that 
 led to his becoming acquainted with 
 Frederick Brunner, of the dinner of yes- 
 terday evening, which had lasted till 
 morning, and of all that concerned the 
 aforesaid Frederick Brunner. Cecile, in- 
 deed, had come to the point at once by 
 asking questions as to Brunner's style of 
 dress, his height, his figure, the color of 
 his hair and ej'es; and then, having con- 
 jectured that Frederick was a man of 
 distinguished appearance, she proceeded 
 to express her admiration of his generous 
 disposition. 
 
 " To give five hundred thousand francs 
 to his companion in misfortune ! Oh ! 
 mamma, I shall have a carriage and a 
 box at the Italian Opei-a." 
 
 And as she thought of the realization 
 of all her mother's ambition on her be- 
 half and the accomplishment of the hopes 
 that she had given up hoping, Cecile be- 
 came almost pretty. As for Madame 
 Camusot, she contented herself with ut- 
 tering the single phrase : " My dear little 
 daughter, j-ou may be a wife within a 
 fortnight." 
 
 All mothers who have daughters of 
 twenty - three, address them as little 
 daughters ! 
 
 " Still, we must ' have time to make 
 some inquiries," said the president; "I 
 will never give my daughter to the first 
 man who happens to present himself." 
 
 "As to inquiries," replied the old artist, 
 " the deeds were prepared and signed in 
 Berthier's office ; and as to the young 
 man himself, you know, my dear cousin, 
 what you yourself said to me. Well, 
 Brunner is over forty ; one half of his 
 head is hairless ; he seeks, in family life, 
 a haven of refuge from the storms of fate; 
 I did not deter him from entering that 
 haven ; every man to his taste." 
 
 " Then there is all the more reason for 
 our seeing Mr. Frederick Brunner," re- 
 plied the president. " I don't want to 
 bestow my daughter's hand on some 
 valetudinarian. ' ' 
 
 "Well, cousin," said Pons, still ad- 
 dressing Madame Camusot, "you shall 
 have an opportunity of deciding as to 
 the eligibility of my suggested suitor 
 within five days' time, if you be so 
 minded ; for, viewing the subject as you 
 do, a single interview will enable you to 
 arrive at a conclusion." 
 
 Here Cecile and Madame Camusot 
 made a gesture indicative of their de- 
 light. 
 
 "Frederick," continued Cousin Pons, 
 " Frederick, who is a very distinguished 
 amateur, has begged me to allow him to 
 examine my little collection. You have 
 never seen my pictures and curiosities : 
 come and see them," added Pons, ad- 
 dressing his two relatives ; " you can
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 79 
 
 visit my apartments as two ladies in- 
 troduced by my friend Schmucke ; and 
 you will form the acquaintance of the 
 intended without being compromised. 
 Frederick need not have any idea as to 
 who you really are." 
 
 " Admirable ! " exclaimed the president. 
 
 The attentions showered upon the for- 
 merly despised parasite may be easily 
 imagined. On this day, at all events, the 
 poor man toas the cousin of Madame la 
 Presidente. Drowning her hatred in the 
 flood of her delight, the glad mother 
 found looks and smiles and words that 
 threw the good man into ecstasies ; partly 
 on account of the pleasure which he was 
 conferring, and partly on account of the 
 future of which he caught a glimpse. 
 Would he not, in the houses of Brunner, 
 Schwab, and Graff, find dinners resem- 
 bling that which signalized the signing of 
 the marriage-contract? He saw before 
 him a land flowing with milk and honey 
 — a marvelous succession of " covered 
 dishes," gastronomic surprises, and ex- 
 quisite wines. 
 
 " If Cousin Pons is the cause of our 
 carrying through such a piece of business 
 as this," said the president to his wife, 
 when Pons had taken his departure, "we 
 ought to secure him an income equal to 
 his salary as conductor." 
 
 " Certainly," said Madame de Marville. 
 
 It was, therefore, agreed and decided 
 that in case the intended suitor found fa- 
 vor in Cecile's c^-cs she should undertake 
 the task of inducing the old musician to 
 accept this mean munificence. The presi- 
 dent, who was anxious to have authentic 
 proof of the fortune of Mr. Frederick 
 Brunner, went next day to Berthier the 
 notary. Berthier, who had received an 
 Intimation from Madame Camusot, had 
 sent for his new cUent, Schwab, the ex- 
 flute. Dazzled at the prospect of such an 
 alliance for his friend — we know how 
 great is the respect of a German for 
 social distinctions : in Germany a woman 
 is Mrs. General, Mrs. Counselor, Mrs. 
 Advocate So-and-so — dazzled by this 
 prospect, Schwab was as complaisant as 
 a collector who thinks that he is over- 
 reaching a dealer in curiosities. 
 
 " As I intend to settle my estate of 
 Marville on my daughter," said Cecile's 
 father to Schwab, " I should above all 
 things desire that the marriage should 
 take place under the regime dotal. That 
 being so, I should expect Monsieur Brun- 
 ner to invest a million francs in land in 
 order to increase the estate of Marville, 
 and so constitute a dotal landed property 
 which would render my daughter and her 
 children independent of the fortunes of 
 the bank." 
 
 Berthier rubbed his chin as he thought 
 to himself: "The pi-esident knows what 
 he is about." Schwab, after having had 
 the effect of the regime dotal explained 
 to him, did not hesitate to answer for his 
 friend. The dotal clause carried out a 
 wish which he had heard expressed by 
 Fritz, namely, that he could discover 
 some plan for securing himself from ever 
 relapsing into his former penury. 
 
 " There is at this very time as much as 
 twelve hundred thousand francs' worth of 
 farms and pasture land for sale," said the 
 president. 
 
 " A million francs invested in Bank of 
 France shares will be enough to guarantee 
 our account there," said Schwab. "Fritz 
 does not want to employ more than two 
 million francs in business ; he will do what 
 you wish. Monsieur le President." 
 
 The president made his wife and 
 daughter almost mad with delight when 
 he told them this news. Never had so 
 rich a prize shown itself so docile in the 
 matrimonial net. 
 
 " You will be Madame Brunner de Mar- 
 ville," said the father to his daughter; 
 " for I will get permission for your hus- 
 band to add that name to his own, and, 
 later on, he will have letters of naturali- 
 zation. If I am made a peer of France, 
 he will succeed me ! " 
 
 Madame Camusot devoted five daj'S to 
 the preparation of her daughter's toilet. 
 On the day of the projected interview she 
 dressed Cecile with her own hands, equip- 
 ping her as carefully as the admiral of 
 the blue equipped the yacht of England's 
 queen when she started on her trip to 
 Germany. 
 
 Pons and Schwab, on their part, cleaned
 
 80 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 and dusted the Pons Museum, the apart- 
 ments and funuturc, as actively as if thej' 
 had been sailors swabbing' the decks of the 
 admiral's flag--ship. Thei'e was not a speck 
 of dust to be seen on the carved wood ; 
 every bit of copper gleamed with the 
 polishing it had undergone; the glass 
 coverings of the crayons were so clean 
 that while pi'otecting, ihey transparently 
 displaj'cd the works of Latour, of Greuze 
 and of Liautard — Liautard, the illustrious 
 author of "The Chocolate Pot," the mir- 
 acle of this style of painting-, which is, 
 alas, so fugitive. Tlie inimitable enamel 
 of the Florentine bronzes glistened. The 
 stained windows glowed in all their glori- 
 ous hues. Everything shone after its 
 kind, and breathed its music to the soul 
 in that concert of masterpieces, arranged 
 by two musicians, both of whom were 
 poets, and poets of equal rank. 
 
 A GERMAN IDEA. 
 
 Knowing, and being skillful enough to 
 evade, the difficulties of a first appear- 
 ance on the scene, the two women were 
 the first to arrive; for they wished to 
 feel at home. Pons introduced his friend 
 Schmucke to his two relatives ; in whose 
 eyes the old German seemed no better 
 than an idiot. Engrossed as they were 
 with the idea of a suitor who was a four- 
 fold millionaire, the two dunces paid very 
 little attention to the art lectures of the 
 worthy Pons. They gazed with an eye 
 of indifference upon Petitot's enamels, 
 displayed in the red velvet fields of three 
 marvelous frames. The flowers of Van 
 Huysum and of David de Heim, the in- 
 isects of Abraham Mignon, the Van 
 Ejxks, the Albert Duikers, the genuine 
 Cranachs, tlie Giorgione, the Sebastien 
 del Piombo, the Backhuysen, the Hob- 
 bema, the Gericault, the rarities of paint- 
 ing, failed, one and all, to pique their 
 curiosity : for they were waiting for the 
 sun that was to light up these treasures. 
 Yet the beauty of certain Etruscan jewels 
 
 and the intrinsic value of the snuff-boxes 
 did astonish them. The^' were in ecsta- 
 sies — of complaisance — over some Floren- 
 tine bronzes which they had in their 
 hands, when in came Madame Cibot and 
 announced — " Monsieur Brunner." With- 
 out turning round they profited by a su- 
 perb Venetian mirror, framed in enor- 
 mous pieces of carved ebonj', to examine 
 this phenix of aspiring swains. 
 
 Fredei'ick, who had received a liint from 
 Wilhelm, had made the most of the little 
 hair that still remained to him; he wore 
 a becoming pair of trousers of a color that 
 was soft though somber, a very elegant 
 silk waistcoat, the cut of which was en- 
 tirely new, an open-woi-k shirt of linen, 
 woven by the hand of some Friesland wo- 
 man, and a blue cravat with white stripes. 
 His watch-chain and the handle of his 
 cane were the handiwork of Florent and 
 Chanor, while, as for the coat. Father 
 Gralf himself had made it, and of the 
 finest cloth. Gloves of Swedish leather 
 bespoke the man who had already de- 
 voured his maternal fortune. The mere 
 gleam of his varnished boots was enough 
 to sugg-est the little low-hung bx'ougham 
 of the banker, even if the ears of the two 
 sly gossips had not already heard the 
 rumbling of its wheels upon the pavement 
 of the deserted Rue de Normandie. 
 
 When the debauchee of twenty is a 
 chrysalis that is to develop into a banker, 
 that debauchee at forty is a man of ob- 
 servation; and the observing faculty of 
 Frederick Brunner was all the more acute 
 in that he was perfectly well aware to 
 what good account a German may turn 
 his naivete. On this eventful morning he 
 had the pensive air of a man who is hesi- 
 tating as to whether he shall embrace a 
 married life or continue the dissipated 
 career of a bachelor. Such a physiog- 
 nonij^ on the shoulders of a Frenchified 
 German seemed to Cecile superlatively 
 romantic. In the child of the Virlazes 
 slie detected a Werther. (Where can 
 you find a young girl who does not intro- 
 duce a little romance into the history of 
 her marriage ?) When Brunner grew en- 
 thusiastic at the sight of the magnificent 
 works of art — the fruit of forty years of
 
 ,!li;N"Mi'i' 
 
 La Cibot asd Kemosencq. 
 
 Balzac, Volume One. 
 
 CocsiN Pons.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 81 
 
 patient search — and — to Pons's intense 
 delight — rated them at their real value, 
 as no one had till then, Cecile deemed her- 
 self the happiest of womankind. "He 
 must be a poet ! " said Mademoiselle de 
 Marville to herself. " He can see millions 
 in this bric-a-brac." A poet is a man 
 who does not reckon ; who allows his wife 
 to pull the purse-strings ; a man easily 
 managed ; a man to be amused \vith tri- 
 fles. 
 
 Every pane in the two windows of the 
 old man's room was of Swiss stained glass. 
 The smallest of the panes was worth a 
 thousand francs, and there were sixteen 
 of these masterpieces, which are, nowa- 
 days, the goal of many a voyage of dis- 
 covery. 
 
 In 1815 these panes might have been 
 bought for from six to ten francs apiece ! 
 The value of the sixt^^ pictures — undoubt- 
 ed originals not retouched, but just as 
 they came from the master's hand — of 
 which this glorious collection consisted, 
 could be tested only by the fierce competi- 
 tion of the auction-i'oom. Each picture 
 was incased in a frame of immense value ; 
 and there were specimens of every kind of 
 frame : there was the Venetian frame, with 
 its heavy ornaments, resembling those of 
 the English plate of these days ; there was 
 the Roman frame, so remarkable on ac- 
 count of that which artists term its fla- 
 fia; there was the Spanish frame, with 
 its bold foliage ; there were Flemish 
 frames and German frames, with their 
 naive figures ; there were tortoise-shell 
 frames inlaid with pewter, copper, mo- 
 ther-of-pearl or ivory ; there wei'e fi'ames 
 in ebony, in boxwood, and in copper; 
 there was the frame Louis Treize, the 
 frame Louis Quinze, the frame Louis 
 Seize — in short a unique collection of the 
 veiy finest models. More fortunate than 
 the curators of the treasures of Dresden 
 and Vienna, Pons was the pi'oud pos- 
 sessor of a frame by the celebrated 
 Brustolone, the Michael Angelo of wood. 
 
 It was quite natural that Mademoiselle 
 de Marville should require an explanatory 
 description of each fresh curiosity that 
 presented itself and that Brunner should 
 initiate her into the knowledge of these 
 
 marvels. Her exclamations were so naive; 
 she seemed so pleased to learn from Fred- 
 erick's lips the value and the beauties of 
 a picture, a piece of sculpture or a bronze, 
 that the German fairly thawed, and his 
 face resumed its youthful appearance. 
 In short, both he and Cecile went further 
 than they intended at this first meeting — 
 which of course was treated as a chance 
 meeting from first to last. 
 
 The seance lasted three hours. When 
 it was over Brunner offered his arm to 
 Cecile to conduct her down the staircase. 
 As with prudent deliberation she descended 
 the stairs still chattering about the Fine 
 Arts, she embraced the opportunity of 
 expressing her surprise at the admiration 
 of her intended for the gewgaws of 
 Cousin Pons. 
 
 "You think, then," said she, "that 
 what we have just seen is worth a great 
 deal of money ? " 
 
 "Why, mademoiselle, if your cousin, 
 Monsieur Pons, were willing to sell me 
 his collection I would give him eight hun- 
 dred thousand francs for it this very 
 evening ; and I should not have made a 
 bad bargain either; the sixty pictures 
 alone would fetch more than that at a 
 public sale." 
 
 " I believe it, since j'ou tell me so," re- 
 plied Cecile; "and indeed j-ou must be 
 right, since j'ou took more notice of the 
 collection than of anything else." 
 
 "Oh, mademoiselle ! " exclaimed Brun- 
 ner, "my only answer to your reproach 
 will be to ask Madame Camusot to allow 
 me to call upon her in order that I may 
 have the pleasui-e of seeing you again." 
 
 " How clever she is, the little darling! " 
 thought Madame Camusot, who was close 
 at her daughter's heels. "We shall be 
 most delighted to see you, monsieur," 
 she added aloud. "I hope that you will 
 come with our cousin Pons and dine with 
 us. My husband, the president, will be 
 delighted to make your acquaintance. 
 Thank you. Cousin Pons ; " and so say- 
 ing, she squeezed Pons's arnj in so signifi- 
 cant a manner that the consecrated phrase. 
 "We are friends in life and in death," 
 would not have expres.sed so nmch. The 
 glance which accompanied this " Thank
 
 82 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 you, cousin," was equivalent to an em- 
 brace. 
 
 After Brunner had seen the young lady 
 to lier carriag-e, and the carriage — a hired 
 brougham— had turned the corner of the 
 Rue Chariot, Brunner began to talk bric- 
 a-brac to Pons, who was talking marriage 
 to Brunner. 
 
 "So you see no impediment?" re- 
 marked Pons. 
 
 "Oh!" replied Brunner, "the little 
 girl is insignificant, and the mother rather 
 affected ; we will see about it." 
 
 "A handsome fortune to come," ob- 
 served Pons ; " more than a million in 
 expect — " 
 
 " Let's postpone the subject till Mon- 
 day!" replied the millionaire. "If you 
 care to sell your collection of pictures, I 
 would willingly give five or six hundred 
 thousand francs — " 
 
 " Indeed ! " cried the worthy man, who 
 did not know he was so rich. " But no ; 
 I could not part with that which makes 
 my happiness — I could onlj'- sell my col- 
 lection, to be delivered after my decease." 
 
 " Well, we will see about it." 
 
 "Tliere are two pieces of business 
 afloat," said the collector, who was 
 thinking only of the marriage. 
 
 Brunner now took leave of Pons and 
 was whirled away in his well-appointed 
 equipage. Pons watched the brougham 
 as it receded : he did not notice Remo- 
 nencq, who was sitting on the doorstep, 
 smoking his pipe. 
 
 Wishing to take her father's advice, 
 Madame Camusot de Marville went that 
 very evening to his house, and there 
 found the Popinots. Eager to gratify a 
 little feeling of revenge, very natural in 
 a mother who has fail6d in her endeavor 
 to catch the scion of a wealthy familj^ 
 she announced that Cecile was on the 
 point of making a splendid match. 
 "Whom is Cecile going to marry then ?" 
 was the question that passed from mouth 
 to mouth ; and thereupon Madame la 
 Presidente, without supposing that she 
 was telling her secret, dropped so many 
 little hints, and whispered so many little 
 confidences — which Madame Berthier took 
 care to confirm — that on the following 
 
 day people were saying, in the bourgeois 
 empyrean in which Pons's gastronomic 
 orbit lay — " Oh ! Cecil de Marville is 
 going to be married to a young German, 
 who is about to become a banker, from 
 pure philanthropy, for he has a fortune of 
 four million francs. He is a hero of ro- 
 mance, a genuine Werther, a charming, 
 good-hearted fellow, who has sown his 
 wild oats, and has fallen madly in love 
 with Cecile ; it is a case of love at first 
 sight, and all the more likely to be last- 
 ing, inasmuch as Cecile was surrounded 
 by rivals — all the painted Madonnas of 
 Cousin Pons," etc., etc. 
 
 On the next day but one after the in- 
 terview at Pons's rooms, sundrj' persons 
 presented themselves to offer their con- 
 gratulations to Madame Camusot ; their 
 sole object being to discover whether 
 the golden tooth really existed. There- 
 upon the wife of the president performed 
 the following admirable variations (which 
 mothers may consult, as we used former- 
 ly to consult "The Complete Letter- 
 Writer"). 
 
 Thus, to Madame ChifTreville she said : 
 "A marriage is not made until the bride 
 and bridegroom have returned from the 
 mairie and the church ; and we have, as 
 yet, gone no further than an interview ; 
 so I rely on your friendship not to talk 
 about our hopes." 
 
 "You are very fortunate, Madame la 
 Presidente ; it is no easy matter to find 
 husbands for our daughters in these 
 times ! " 
 
 ' ' Well ! you know, it is a mere ac- 
 cident ; but marriages often come about 
 in that way." 
 
 "Ah! so you have found a husband 
 for Cecile ? " said Madame Cardot. 
 
 "Yes," replied Madame Camusot, who 
 fully understood all the malice of that so; 
 "we were somewhat fastidious ; that was 
 what retarded Cecile 's establishment in 
 life. But now we have found all we re- 
 quired ; fortune, amiability, good disposi- 
 tion, and an agreeable person ; and I 
 must say, that my dear little daughter 
 deserved all that. Monsieur Brunner is 
 a charming young man, full of distinc- 
 tion ; he is fond of luxury, knows what
 
 cousm PONS. 
 
 83 
 
 life is, and dotes upon Cecilc ; in fact he 
 loves her sincerely. And, spite of his 
 three or four millions, Cecile has accepted 
 him. Our ambition did not soar so high, 
 certainly, but, ' store is no sore.' " 
 
 " 'Tis not the money that weighs with 
 us ; it is the love which my daughter has 
 inspired," said Madame Camusot to Mad- 
 ame Lebas. " Monsieur Brunner is in so 
 great a hurry, that he wants the wedding 
 to take place immediately after the ex- 
 piration of the interval required by law." 
 
 " He is a foreigner—" 
 
 " He is, madame ; jet I own that I am 
 quite contented. Why ! Monsieur Brun- 
 ner will be to me a son rather than a 
 son-in-law. His delicacy is really quite cap- 
 tivating. You cannot conceive the alac- 
 rity with which he embraced the proposal 
 that he should marry under the regime 
 dotal. What a great safeguard for fami- 
 lies that is I Monsieur Brunner will lay 
 out twelve hundred thousand francs in 
 pasture land, which will some day be 
 added to Marville." 
 
 And on the following day there were 
 other variations on the same theme. 
 Monsieur Brunner was a grand seigneur, 
 and was acting altogether like a grand 
 seigneur ; he never counted cost ; and if 
 Monsieur de Marville could obtain letters 
 of naturalization for him — and the Min- 
 ister owed Monsieur Camusot a little 
 scrap of legislation — the son-in-law would 
 become a peer of France. No one knew 
 the extent of Monsieur Brunner's fortune ; 
 he had the finest horses and the finest 
 carriages in Paris; etc., etc. 
 
 The pleasure that the Camusots took, 
 in proclaiming their hopes, showed how 
 unexpected was their triumph. 
 
 Immediately after the interview at 
 Cousin Pons's lodgings. Monsieur de 
 Marville, at the instigation of his wife, 
 persuaded the minister of justice, the 
 chii'f judge of his own court, and the at- 
 torney-general to dine with hitn on the 
 day fixed for the introduction of this 
 phenix of sons-in-law to the family circle ; 
 and, notwithstanding the brief notice they 
 had received, the three grandees accepted 
 the invitation ; for they all fully under- 
 stood the part assigned to them by pater- 
 
 familias, and gladlj- lent him their aid. 
 In France, a mother of a family, who is 
 fishing for a rich son-in-law, may count 
 on receiving ready help. The Count and 
 Countess Popinot, also, contributed by 
 theii" presence to the splendor of the oc- 
 casion (though they thought that to in- 
 vite them showed a certain want of good 
 taste). The dinner-party consisted of 
 eleven persons ; for Cecile 's grandfather, 
 Camusot senior, and his wife, were indis- 
 pensable members of a reunion, which, 
 from the standing and position of its 
 members, was intended to bind Monsieur 
 Brunner by a definitive engagement, from 
 which it would be impossible for him to 
 secede. He had already, as we have seen, 
 been described as one of the richest of 
 German capitalists, as a man of taste — 
 did he not love the dear little daughter ? 
 — and as the future rival of the Nucingens, 
 the Kellers, and the Du Tillets. 
 
 "To-day is our reception day," said 
 Madame la Presidente, with stupid sim- 
 plicity', as she ran over the names of tlie 
 guests to the man whom she regarded as 
 her son-in-law. '' We have none but inti- 
 mate friends here to-day. First, there is 
 mj' husband's father, who, as you know, 
 is about to be made a peer ; then, there 
 are the Count and Countess Popinot, 
 whose son's suit to Cecile we rejected, 
 on account of his not being rich enough, 
 though we are still very good friends; 
 there are the minister of justice, our chief 
 president, our attorney -general — our 
 friends, in short. We shall be obliged 
 to dine rather late, on account of the 
 House, which never rises till six o'clock." 
 
 Brunner looked at Pons in a significant 
 manner, and Pons rubbed his hands, as 
 much as to say, " You see what sort of 
 friends ivehavc, I have ! " 
 
 Madame Camusot (like a clever woman, 
 as she was) had something to say to her 
 cousin in private, in order to leave Cecile 
 alone with her Werther for a moment. 
 Cecile chattered away, and skillfully con- 
 trived that Frederick should catch a 
 glimpse of a German dictionaiy, a Ger- 
 man grammar and a Goethe which she 
 had hidden. 
 
 " Ah ! you are learning German ! " said
 
 84 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 Brunner, turning red. (It is only French 
 women who can invent these little traps.) 
 
 " Oh ! " cried .Cecile, " how mischievous 
 j'ou are ! It is not rig-lit, sir, to ransack 
 my little hiding-places in that way. I 
 want to read Goethe in the original : I 
 began learning German two j'ears ago." 
 
 " Then the grammar must be extremely 
 difficult to master ; for there are only ten 
 pages cut," replied Brunner naively; 
 whereupon Cecile blushed, and turned 
 away in order to hide her confusion. Now 
 tokens such as these, no German can 
 possibly withstand; and accordingly Brun- 
 ner seized the hand of Cecile, drew her, 
 all disconcerted as she was, within the 
 range of his regard, and gazed at her, as 
 lovers do gaze at one another, in the 
 romances of Auguste Lafontaine of pudi- 
 bund memory. 
 
 "You are adorable!" he murmui'cd. 
 The rebellious gesture with which Cecile 
 greeted these words meant : "And what 
 are ymt,, then ? Who could help loving 
 you ? " 
 
 When her mother and Pons rejoined 
 her, she whispered to the former : "All's 
 well, mamma." 
 
 The appearance presented by a family 
 during such an evening beggars descrix)- 
 tion. Ever^' one was pleased to see a 
 mother securing a good match for her 
 child. Brunner, who pretended not to 
 understand anything, Cecile who under- 
 stood everything, and the president who 
 went about fishing for congratulations, 
 each and all received double-meaninged — 
 or double-barreled — felicitations. When 
 Cecile, in an undertone, and in the most 
 ingenious and gingerlj'^ manner possible, 
 imparted to Pons her father's intentions 
 with reference to the annuity of twelve 
 hundred francs, all the blood in the old 
 man's body seemed to be tingling- in his 
 ears ; he felt as if all the gas-jets in the 
 footlights of his theater were flaring be- 
 fore his eyes, and he flatly declined the 
 ofTer, assigning- as a reason for his refusal 
 the revelation which had fallen from 
 Brunner's lips as to the value of the Pons 
 Museum. 
 
 The minister, the chief president, the 
 attorney-general, all the bus3' folk, now 
 
 withdrew ; and, verj"- shortly afterward, 
 Camusot senior and the ex-notary Cardot, 
 supported hy his son-in-law Bertliier, were 
 the onlj' guests — Pons and Brunner ex- 
 cepted — that remained in the room. The 
 worth}^ Pons, finding himself quite en 
 famille, and yielding, as men of feeling 
 invariably do yield, to the impulse of the 
 moment, most inopportunely thanked the 
 president and Madame de Mai'ville for 
 the olTer that Cecile had just convej^ed to 
 him ; whereupon Brunner, to whom this 
 annuity, thus offered, seemed like a pre- 
 mium, was struck by an Israelitish re- 
 flection, and assumed an attitude which 
 betokened the more than frigid reverie of 
 the calculator. 
 
 " Whether I come to terms with our 
 friend Brunner about my collection, or 
 keep it; the collection, or its proceeds, will, 
 in any case, belong to your familj'^," said 
 Pons, when he had informed his astonished 
 relatives that he possessed so large a fort- 
 une. 
 
 The overindulgence of both father and 
 mother toward Cecile — the idol of the 
 household — had not escaped the observa- 
 tion of Brunner; neither did the favora- 
 ble change in the beai-ing of all these 
 ignoramuses toward the man thus pro- 
 moted from a state that was branded 
 with paui)erism to affluence fail to iui- 
 press him : accordingly, he began to 
 amuse himself, by exciting the surprise 
 of these worthy bourgeois, and extorting 
 ejaculations of wonder from their lips. 
 
 "I told Mademoiselle Cecile that Mon- 
 sieur Pons's pictures were worth that 
 sum to me; but, having regard to the 
 price which all that is uniciue in art has 
 reached in these days, there is no fore- 
 seeing how much this collection might 
 fetch if it were put up for public compe- 
 tition. The sixty pictures would sell for 
 a million francs ; I saw several that were 
 worth fifty thousand francs apiece." 
 
 " It is a good thing to be your inhcri- 
 tant," said the quondam notary to Pons. 
 
 "But m.y inheritant is my cousin 
 Cecile," rejjlied Pons, still persisting in 
 his claim to relationship. 
 
 Every one seemed to be seized with a 
 sudden admiration for the old musician.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 85 
 
 " She will be a veiy rich heiress," said 
 Cardot, laughing- ; and off he went. 
 
 Camusot senior, the president, Madame 
 Camusot, Cecile, Brunnei", Berthier and 
 Pons were now left together \>y the rest 
 of the party ; for it was presumed that 
 a formal demand for Cecile's hand would 
 now be made. And, in fact, so'soon as 
 the persons just mentioned were alone, 
 Bruuner opened fire with an inquiry 
 which seemed to Cecile's relatives to 
 augur well. 
 
 "I believe I was given to understand," 
 said Brunner, addressing Madame Camu- 
 sot, " that Mademoiselle Cecile is an only 
 daughtei- — " 
 
 "Certainly," replied the lady, pi'oudly. 
 
 "You will meet with no difliculties in 
 anj' quarter," said the worthy Pons, 
 in order to determine Brunner to formu- 
 late his request. 
 
 But Brunner suddenly became thought- 
 ful ; a fatal silence diffused the strangest 
 chill among the assembled group ; had 
 Madame Camusot admitted that her 
 little daughter was epileptic, things 
 could not have been worse. The presi- 
 dent, thinking that his daughter was 
 best away, made a sign to Cecile, which 
 she interpreted correctly by leaving the 
 room. Brunner still remained silent ; 
 the persons present began to stare at 
 one another ; and the situation became 
 mast embarrassing. Thereupon Camusot 
 senior (who was a man of experience), 
 guessing that some difficulties had su- 
 pervened, took the German into Madame 
 Camusot 's room, under pretense of show- 
 ing liim the fan which Pons had discov- 
 ered, and motioned to his son, his daugh- 
 ter-in-law, and Pons io leave him and 
 Brunner alone tog-ether. 
 
 "There is the masterpiece ! " said the 
 old silk-merchant, pointing to the fan. 
 
 "It is worth five thousand fi-ancs," re- 
 plied Brunner, after having examined it. 
 
 " Did 3^ou not come here, monsieur, 
 with the intention of asking for my 
 granddaughter's hand ? " pursued the 
 future peer of .France. 
 
 " I did, monsieur," said Brunner ; " and 
 I entreat you to believe that no alliance 
 could be more flattering to me than this. 
 
 I shall never find a young ladj' hand- 
 somer, more amiable, or more to my 
 taste than Mademoiselle Cecile ; but — " 
 
 "Oh! no buts," said old Camusot; 
 "or if there are to be any buts, trans- 
 late them at once, my dear sir — " 
 
 "Monsieur," pursued Brunner, serious- 
 ly, "I am heartily glad that there is no 
 engagement on either side ; for the qual- 
 ity of being an only daughter — a quahty 
 that is so valuable in the e_yes of every 
 one, except myself — forms an insuperable 
 impediment — " 
 
 "What, sir," broke in the astounded 
 grandfather, " do you convert that which 
 is an immense advantage into a positive 
 drawback ? Your conduct is really so ex- 
 traordinary that I should be extremelj' 
 glad to hear your reasons for it." 
 
 " Sir," replied the German, phlegmati- 
 cally, " I came here, this evening, with 
 the intention of asking Monsieur le Presi- 
 dent for his daughter's hand : I wished 
 to insure to Mademoiselle Cecile a brilliant 
 future, bj' offering her as much of my 
 fortune as she should be willing to accept; 
 but an only daughter is a child who lias 
 been allowed, through parental indul- 
 gence, to do as she pleased, and has 
 never known what it is to be thwarted 
 in her wishes. This familj^ resembles 
 many families, in which I, formerly, had 
 an opportunitj^ of studj'ing the worship 
 that is offered to this species of divinity; 
 not only is your granddaughter the idol 
 of the household, but it is Madame la 
 Presidente who wears the — j'ou know 
 what ! Sir, these ej'es of mine have seen 
 my father's home turned into a hell from 
 this very cause : m\' step-mother — the 
 fountain from which all my misfortunes 
 flowed— an only daughter, the idol of her 
 parents, the most cluirming of brides, 
 turned out an incarnate flend. I have no 
 doubt that Mademoiselle Cecile is an ex- 
 ception to my general rule ; but I am no 
 longer a young man; lama man of forty; 
 and the disparity of our ages involves 
 difficulties which prevent me from confer- 
 ring happiness on a young lady who is 
 accustomed to be obeyed by Madame la 
 Presidente, and to wliom JIadame la Presi- 
 dente listens as to an oracle. By what
 
 86 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 right could I exact from Mademoiselle 
 Cecile an entire change of habits and 
 ideas ? Instead of a father and mother, 
 accustomed to bow to her lightest caprice, 
 she would find in me an egotistical quad- 
 ragenarian : if she resists that egotism, 
 'tis the quadragenarian who will be van- 
 quished. As a man of honor, therefore, 
 I withdraw my suit. I desire, moreover, 
 to take upon mj'self all the blame of this 
 rupture ; if, however, it should be neces- 
 sary to explain why I have paid but one 
 visit to this house — " 
 
 "If such, monsieur, be the motives of 
 your conduct," interposed the future 
 peer, " however singular they may ap- 
 pear, they are at least plausible — " 
 
 " I beg, monsieur, that you will not 
 cast the slightest doubt upon my sincer- 
 ity', " replied Brunner, emphatically, in- 
 terrupting Monsieur Camusot. " If j'ou 
 know of some poor girl, one of an over- 
 numerous family, one who, though por- 
 tionless, has been well brought uji — and 
 there are many such girls in France — I 
 am quite ready to marry her, if her dis- 
 position be such as to promise me happi- 
 ness." 
 
 During the silence which succeeded this 
 announcement, Frederick Brunner quitted 
 Cecile's grandfather, and, having politely 
 taken leave of the president and his wife, 
 departed. A living commentary on the 
 parting salutation of her Werther, Cecile 
 now reappeared, pale as a person at the 
 point of death. Concealed in her mother's 
 wardrobe she had overheard every word 
 that had been uttered. 
 
 " Refused," she murmured in her mo- 
 ther's ears. 
 
 "And on what ground?" demanded 
 Madame Camusot of her embarrassed 
 father-in-law. 
 
 " Upon the pretty pretext that only 
 daughters are spoiled children," replied 
 the old man. "And he is not altogether 
 wrong," added he, embracing this oppor- 
 tunitj' of attacking his daughter-in-law, 
 who had been boring him to death for 
 twenty years. 
 
 " This will kill my daughter! and you 
 will be her murderer!" said Madame 
 Camusot, addressing Pons, while she sup- 
 
 ported her daughter, who thought proper 
 to justify her mother's language by sink- 
 ing into her arms. 
 
 The president and his wife dragged Ce- 
 cile to an armchair, where she completed 
 her fainting fit. The grandfather rang 
 for the sei'vants. 
 
 XL 
 
 PONS BURIED IN GRAVEL. 
 
 "I DETECT the plot which that gen- 
 tleman has brewed," said the furious 
 mother, pointing to Pons. 
 
 At these words, Pons sprung up as if 
 the last trumpet had resounded in his 
 ears. 
 
 " That gentleman," pursued Madame 
 Camusot, whose eyes resembled two 
 fountains of green bile, " that gentleman 
 has seen fit to revenge a harmless joke 
 with an insult. Who will believe that 
 this German is in his right mind ? Either 
 he is the accomplice of an atrocious act of 
 vengeance, or he is mad. I hope, Mon- 
 sieur Pons, that, for the future, j-ou will 
 spare us the pain of seeing you in a house 
 into which j-ou have endeavored to intro- 
 duce shame and dishonor." 
 
 Pons, who was nov/ changed into a 
 statue, kept his eyes fixed upon a rose 
 in the pattern of the carpet, and twiddled 
 his thumbs. 
 
 " Well ! you are still there, you mon- 
 ster of ingratitude ! " cried Madame Ca- 
 musot, looking round. "We shall never 
 be at home — neither your master nor I 
 — if this gentleman should ever call ! " 
 she added, speaking to the servants, and 
 pointing to Pons, " Go you, John, and 
 fetch the doctor, and you, Madeleine, 
 bring some hartshorn, quick ! " 
 
 In Madame Camusot's view of the mat- 
 ter, the reasons assigned by Brunner were 
 mere pretexts, concealing reasons that 
 were unavowed ; but that rendered the 
 rupture of the proposed marriage all the 
 more certain. With that rapidity of 
 thought which women are wont to dis- 
 play in critical emergencies, Madame
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 87 
 
 Camusot had hit upon the only feasible 
 plan for retrieving the check she had sus- 
 tained, namely, to charge Pons with an 
 act of premeditated revenge. This device 
 — an infernal de\ice, so far as Pons was 
 concerned — saved the honor of the family. 
 Constant in her hatred of Pons, she had 
 clothed a woman's mere suspicion with 
 the garb of absolute truth. Women, for 
 the most part, have a creed of their own 
 and a morality of their own ; thej' believe 
 in the objective reality of everything 
 that it suits their interests and passions 
 to believe. Madame Camusot, however, 
 went a gi'eat deal further than that ; she 
 consumed the whole evening in forcing 
 upon the president her own convictions ; 
 and on the morrow, the magistrate was 
 thorouglily persuaded of his cousin's 
 guilt. Now no one will deny that the 
 conduct of Madame Camusot was execra- 
 ble ; yet, there is not a mother, who, in 
 like circumstances, would not act as Mad- 
 ame Camusot acted. Every mother will 
 sacrifice the honor of a stranger to that 
 of her own daughter; the means eraploj^ed 
 will be different; the result to be achieved 
 will be the same. 
 
 The musician rushed downstairs with 
 great rapidity ; but as he made his way 
 toward the boulevard, and thence onward 
 to the theater, his steps were slow. Me- 
 chanically he entered the play - house ; 
 mechanically he stepped into his place ; 
 mechanically he conducted the orchestra. 
 During the entr'acts, he replied so vague- 
 ly to the questions addressed to him by 
 Schmucke, that Schmucke kept his un- 
 easiness to himself ; for he thought that 
 Pons had fairly taken leave of his senses. 
 For a man so childlike as Pons was, the 
 scene which had just occurred assumed 
 all the dimensions of a catastrophe. To 
 arouse a hideous hate there where he had 
 meant to introduce happiness, was a com- 
 plete subversion of existence. From the 
 eyes, from the gestures, and from the 
 voice of Madame Camusot he had learned 
 — at last — that she was his deadly foe. 
 
 On the morrow, Madame Camusot came 
 to a decisive resolution, which suited the 
 nature of the case, and was indorsed with 
 her husband's approbation. It was re- 
 
 solved that Cecile's portion should be 
 made to comprise the estate of Marville, 
 the hotel in the Rue de Hanovre, and a 
 hundred thousand francs in cash. In the 
 course of the morning, Madame Camusot, 
 fully understanding that the only mode of 
 repairing such a defeat as she had sus- 
 tained was hy a ready-made match, went 
 to call upon the Countess Popinot, to 
 whom she told the tale of Pons's fright- 
 ful vengeance and of the terrible hoax 
 that he had concerted. Everything 
 seemed credible when the reason assigned 
 for the breaking off of the match was the 
 fact of Cecile's being an only daughter. 
 At the close of her harangue, Madame 
 Camusot dexterously displaj'ed the ad- 
 vantages of being called Popinot de Mar- 
 ville, and the magnificence of the marriage 
 portion. Regard being had to the value 
 of landed property in Normandy, and cal- 
 culating interest at two per cent, the 
 estate of Marville represented a capital 
 of about nine hundred thousand francs ; 
 and the hotel in the Rue de Hanovre was 
 valued at two hundred and fifty thousand 
 francs. No reasonable family could re- 
 ject such an alliance ; and, according)}', 
 Count Popinot and his wife accepted it. 
 Then, as having a personal interest in the 
 reputation of the family of which they 
 were about to form a part, they promised 
 to assist in explaining the catastrophe 
 which had occurred on the pi'eceding 
 evening. 
 
 So now, in the house of this identical 
 Camusot senior, Cecile's grandfather, and 
 in the presence of those identical persons, 
 who, but a few days before, had been 
 gathered together in that veiy house, and 
 had heard from the lips of Madame Ca- 
 musot the Brunner-litany, the same Mad- 
 ame Camusot, whom every one shrunk 
 from accosting, boldly anticipated all the 
 difficulties of an explanation. 
 
 "Really," said she, "in these days it 
 is impossible to take too many precautions 
 when it is a question of marriage ; and 
 more especially where one has foreigners 
 to deal with." 
 
 "And why, madame ? " said a lady. 
 
 " What has happened to j'ou ? " asked 
 Madame Chiffreville.
 
 88 
 
 THE HUMAJY COMEDY. 
 
 "What? Do you mean to say you 
 haven't heard of our adventure with this 
 fellow, Brunner, who had the audacitj' to 
 aspire to the hand of Cecile ? He is the 
 son of a German tavern-keeper ; his uncle 
 used to sell rabbit-skins." 
 
 " Is it possible ? And you so prudent !" 
 exclaimed a lady. 
 
 "These adventurers are so cunning! 
 But we have learned the whole story from 
 Berthier. This German has a friend — a 
 poor wretch of a flute-player ! He is on 
 intimate terms with a man who keeps a 
 lodging--house in the Rue du Mail, and with 
 tailors. We discovered that he has led 
 a hfe of the grossest debauchery ; and no 
 fortune can suffice for a scamp who has 
 already' squandered all that he inherited 
 from his mother — " 
 
 " Why, your daughter would have led 
 a most miserable life ! " said Madame 
 Berthier. 
 
 " And how did he contrive to get in- 
 troduced to you?" inquired the aged 
 Madame Lebas. 
 
 " Oh, tlirough a bit of revenge, on the 
 part of Monsieur Pons ; he, it was, who 
 introduced to us this worthy- gentleman, 
 in order to make us look ridiculous. This 
 Brunner — Brunner, by - the - by, means 
 Fountain, and they palmed him off upon 
 us as a grand seigneur, forsooth. This 
 Brunner is a man of broken constitution, 
 a man with a bald head and bad teeth ; 
 so that to see him, even once only, was 
 quite enough to put me upon my guard." 
 
 " But how about this large fortune that 
 you mentioned?" said a young woman, 
 timidly. 
 
 "The fortune is not so large as it is said 
 to be. The tailors, the lodging-house 
 keeper, and he, all clubbed together, and 
 scraped out their cash-boxes to form a 
 bank. What is a bank nowadays — that 
 is to say, to start one ? Why, it is merely 
 a license to become a bankrupt. A wo- 
 man goes to bed a millionaire, and wakes 
 to find herself stripped of everything but 
 her paraphernalia. Our opinion of this 
 gentleman was formed as soon as we 
 heard him speak, naj% directly we caught 
 sight of him ; you can tell, from his 
 very gloves, from his very overcoat, that 
 
 he is nothing but a common workman, 
 whose father kept a German cook-shop ; 
 that he is a low-minded fellow, who drinks 
 beer, and smokes — (oh ! madame ! would 
 you believe it ?)—five-and-twenty pipes a 
 day ! What a destiny for my poor Lili ! 
 The very thought of it makes me shudder 
 even now. But God preserved us from 
 it ! Besides, Lili had no love for the man. 
 Now could we, I ask 3'ou, expect such a 
 hoax on the part of a relative, of one 
 who was a constant visitor at our house, 
 who had been dining with us twice a week 
 for the last twenty years ; a man whom 
 we have loaded with favors, and who 
 played his part so thoroughly that he 
 actually named Cecile as his heir in the 
 presence of the keeper of the seals, the 
 attorney-general and the first president. 
 This Brunner and Monsieur Pons had 
 agreed to represent each other to be mil- 
 lionaires. No, I do assure you, all you 
 ladies would have been taken in by this 
 artist's hoax ! " 
 
 Within a few weeks after this gather- 
 ing, the united families of Popinot and 
 Camusot and their adherents had gained 
 an easy victory in society ; for no one 
 there undertook the defense of the 
 wretched Pons, the parasite, the sullen 
 schemer, the miser, the pretended good 
 fellow, who now lay buried beneath a 
 mountain of contempt, and was regarded 
 as a viper nursed in the bosom of the 
 familj^ — as a man of almost unparalleled 
 depravity — a dangerous buffoon, whom it 
 was desirable entirely to forget. 
 
 About a month after the Werther — who 
 was no Werther — had declined the match, 
 poor Pons, just risen from a sick-bed, to 
 which he had been confined by a nervous 
 fever, was sunning himself along the 
 boulevards, leaning on Schmucke's arm. 
 None of the loungers on the Boulevard 
 du Temple laughed at the Pair of Nut- 
 Crackers now — the broken aspect of the 
 one and the touching solicitude of the 
 other on behalf of his convalescent friend 
 were not subjects for ridicule. 
 
 When the two friends had reached the 
 Boulevard Poissonniere, Pons hatl re- 
 gainsd a little color through breathing 
 the air of the boulevards, which is so
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 89 
 
 bracing; for wherever there is a dense 
 throng of human beings the atmosphere 
 is so vitahzing that the exemption from 
 mala aria of the noisome Ghetto, which 
 swarms with Jews, is notorious at Rome. 
 Perhaps, also, the siglit of that which had 
 been a source of daily delight to him — the 
 grand panorama of Parisian life — exer- 
 cised a restorative influence on the sick 
 man. The two friends were walking 
 arm-in-arm ; but from time to time Pons 
 would leave Schmucke's side to go and 
 examine the novelties recently exposed 
 for sale in the shop windows. Quitting 
 Schmucke's arm in front of the Varieties 
 Theater to make one of these excursions. 
 Pons found himself face to face with 
 Count Popinot, whom he accosted in the 
 most respectful manner ; for the ex-Minis- 
 ter was one of those men for whom Pons 
 entertained the highest respect and es- 
 teem. 
 
 "Ah, monsieur!" replied the peer of 
 France with great severity, "I cannot 
 understand how j'ou can be so wanting 
 in tact as to salute a person connected 
 with the family which j'ou have tried to 
 cover with disgrace and ridicule \>j an act 
 of revenge such as artists well know how 
 to devise. Understand, monsieur, that 
 from this daj' foi'th you and I must be 
 strangers to one another. Madame la 
 Comtesse Popinot. shares the indignation 
 with which your conduct toward the Mar- 
 villes has inspired the whole circle." 
 
 Ha\ing thus delivered himself, the 
 former Minister passed on, leaving Pons 
 thunderstruck. The passions. Justice 
 and the Government, invariably fail to 
 take into consideration the condition of 
 the beings whom they punish. The states- 
 man, impelled by family interests to anni- 
 hilate Pons, was blind to the physical 
 weakness of this formidable foe. 
 
 " What is the madder wid you, my boor 
 friend? " cried Schmucke, turning as pale 
 as Pons himself. 
 
 " I have just received another dagger- 
 thrust in vay heart," replied the worthy 
 man, leaning heavily on Schmucke's arm ; 
 "I do believe that it is onh- the good God 
 Himself who has the right to do good ; 
 and that that is why all those who meddle 
 
 w^ith what is His business only are so 
 cruelly punished for their conduct." 
 
 This artist's sarcasm was a supreme 
 effort on the part of this excellent creat- 
 ure, who wished to dissipate the terror 
 imprinted on the features of his friend. 
 
 "I belief so too," replied Schmucke, 
 with simplicity. 
 
 The whole matter was quite incompre- 
 hensible to Pons, to whom neither the 
 Camusots nor the Popinots had sent an^' 
 invitation to be present at Cecile's wed- 
 ding. On the Boulevard des Italiens he 
 saw Monsieur Cardot coming toward him ; 
 but, warned by the allocution of the peer 
 of France, Pons took good care not to 
 stop this personage, with whom he had 
 dined once a fortnight during the past 
 year, and confined himself to bowing to 
 Monsieur Cardot; but the mayor and 
 deputy simply looked at Pons with an 
 Indignant air, and did not return his salu- 
 tation. 
 
 "Go and ask him what is the grievance 
 that they all have against me ?" said poor 
 Pons to Schmucke, who knew all the de- 
 tails of the catastrophe which had over- 
 taken Pons. 
 
 '•' Monsire," said Schmucke to Cardot, 
 astutely, "my friend Bons has just re- 
 govered from an illness, and no doubt 
 you did not recognize him." 
 
 " Oh, perfectly," said Cardot. 
 
 "But what have you to rebroage him 
 wid ? " 
 
 " Your fi'iend is a monster of ingrati- 
 tude ; and that he still Uves is only an- 
 other confirmation of the proverb, ' 111 
 weeds grow apace.' The world is quite 
 justified in its distrust of artists ; they 
 are as malignant and as mischievous as 
 monkeys. Your friend has cndoavored 
 to disgrace his own family, and to blast 
 the reputation of a young lady in order 
 to revenge a harmless joke ; I am resolved 
 to have nothing more to do with him ; I 
 will endeavor to forget that I liave ever 
 know'n him — that such a person exists. 
 These sentiments, monsieur, are those of 
 all the members of my family and his 
 family, and of those persons who did 
 Monsieur Pons the honor to receive him 
 as their guest."
 
 90 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 " But, monsire, you are a reazonaple 
 mann ; and iff you will allow me, I will 
 eg'splain de madder — " 
 
 "Remain his friend if you have the 
 heart to do so ; you are free to do as 
 you please, monsieur ; but do not go be- 
 yond that, for I deem it m3' duty to warn 
 you that I shall extend my reprobation 
 to those who may attempt either to ex- 
 cuse or to defend him." 
 
 "To chuzdify him ? " said Schmucke. 
 
 "Yes; for his conduct is as unjustifi- 
 able as it is unqualiflable." And with 
 this repartee the deputy for the Seine 
 pursued his path, unwilling- to listen to 
 a single syllable further. 
 
 When Sclimucke had repeated these 
 savage imprecations to poor Pons, the 
 latter said, with a smile : "Well, I have 
 already the two powers of the state 
 against me." 
 
 " Efferj'ding is againzt us," groaned 
 Schmucke. "Let us go away, to afoid 
 meeting any oder beasts." 
 
 This was the first time in the whole 
 course of his lamb-like existence that 
 Schmucke had been known to give vent 
 to such an expression. Never, until now, 
 had his almost God-like mildness been 
 disturbed ; he would have greeted with a 
 smile — an artless smile — any misfortune 
 that might have happened to himself; 
 but to see his noble Pons, that " mute 
 inglorious " Aristides, that meek, unmur- 
 muring man of genius, that soul so full of 
 the milk of human kindness, that jewel 
 of loving-kindness, that heart of purest 
 gold, maltreated, roused within him all 
 the indignation of Alceste, and made him 
 term his friend's Amphitryons — beasts ! 
 In a man of his pacific disposition, that 
 excitation was equivalent to all Orlando's 
 rage. With wise precaution, Schmucke 
 induced Pons to turn back to the Boule- 
 vard du Temple, whither Pons allowed 
 himself to be led ; for he was now in the 
 condition of a combatant who has ceased 
 to count the blows that he receives. As 
 chance would have it, nothing in the 
 world was to be wanting to the combina- 
 tion against the poor musician. The so- 
 cial avalanche that overwhelmed him was 
 to include every element — the house of 
 
 peers, the chamber of deputies, the fam- 
 ily, the stranger, the strong, the weak, 
 yea, even the innocent ! 
 
 As Pons was on his way homeward on 
 the Boulevard Poissonniere, he saw com- 
 ing toward him the daughter of this 
 ver^' Monsieur Cardot — a young lady who 
 had suffered enough misfortunes to render 
 her indulgent. She had made a faux- 
 pas that had been kept secret ; and had 
 resigned herself to be her husband's 
 slave. Among all the ladies who pre- 
 sided over the houses at which Pons 
 dined, Madame Berthier was the onlj' one 
 whom he called hy her Christian name : 
 he addressed her as Felicie ; and at times 
 he fancied that she understood him. This 
 gentle creature seemed annoyed at meet- 
 ing her cousin Pons — for, as a cousin, 
 Pons was treated, in spite of the absence 
 of all relationship between him and the 
 family of his cousin's second wife — but 
 being unable to avoid him, Felicie Ber- 
 thier stopped and confronted the dying- 
 man. 
 
 " I did not think that you were wicked, 
 cousin," said Felicie; "but if only one 
 quarter of what I hear said about you be 
 true, you must be thoroughly false. Oh ! 
 do not attempt to justify yourself," added 
 she, with emphasis, observing Pons's gest- 
 ure ; " it would be useless for two reasons; 
 fii-st, because I have forfeited the right to 
 condemn, to judge, or to accuse an.y one, 
 knowing, as I do, from my own case, that 
 those who seem to be most completely in 
 the wrong may have excuses to offer ; and 
 secondly, because your explanations would 
 be unavailing. Monsieur Berthier, who 
 drew up the contract of marriage between 
 Mademoiselle de Marville and Viscount 
 Popinot, is so indignant with you that if 
 he knew that I have spoken even a single 
 word to you, that I have addressed you 
 even for the last time, he would certainly 
 scold me. Everj'body is against you." 
 
 "So I perceive, madame," replied the 
 poor musician in a voice broken by emo- 
 tion. Then bowing respectfully to the 
 notary's wife, he weariedly resumed his 
 joumieyto the Rue de Normandie, leaning 
 so heavily upon Schmucke's arm that the 
 old German could not fail to feel that his
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 91 
 
 friend was making a brave attempt to 
 bear up against physical exhaustion. 
 This third encounter was, as it were, a 
 verdict pronounced hy the Lamb that re- 
 poses at the feet of God : the wrath of 
 this angel of tlie poor — this symbol of tlie 
 peoples — is the final utterance of Heaven ! 
 After this the two friends reached home 
 without exchanging a single word. There 
 are certain critical occasions in life when 
 all that we can bear is to feel that our 
 friend is near us. Spolcen consolation 
 serves on\y to iri-itate the wound b3^ ex- 
 posing its depth. The old pianist pos- 
 sessed, as 3'ou may see, the genius of 
 friendsliip ; the delicacy of those who, 
 having suffered much, well know the 
 mood of those who suffer. 
 
 It was decreed that this should be the 
 last walk that the worthy Pons should 
 ever take. His original malady was im- 
 mediately succeeded b^- another. Pons's 
 temperament was of that kind which is 
 called sanguino-bilious : the bile now 
 passed into his blood ; he was attacked 
 by a violent inflammation of the liver. 
 These two successive maladies being the 
 only ailments from which Pons had ever 
 suffered, he knew no doctor ; so the feel- 
 ing and devoted Madame Cibot hit upon 
 an idea which in any case would have 
 been excellent, and was, in its incipience, 
 even motherly : she called in the doctor 
 of the district. 
 
 There is in every district in Paris a 
 doctor whose name and residence are 
 known to the poor, to the small shop- 
 keepers, and to the porters of the vicinity 
 only ; and who is, therefore, called the 
 district doctor. This doctor, who acts 
 as accoucheur and blood-letter, is the 
 "servant of all work" of the medical 
 profession. The district doctor, who can- 
 not choose but be good to the poor, and 
 has, by dint of long practice, acquired 
 considerable skill in his vocation, is gen- 
 ei-ally liked. Dr. Poulain, having been 
 introduced to the sick-room bj'' Madame 
 Cibot and recognized by Schmucke, lent 
 a careless ear to the complaints of the 
 old musician who throughout the night 
 had been scratching his skin, now com- 
 pletely callous. The state of the eyes, 
 
 which were surrounded by yellow circles, 
 corresponded with this symptom. 
 
 "You have experienced some violent 
 grief within the last two days, have you 
 not? " said the doctor to his patient. 
 
 "Alas, yes," replied Pons. 
 
 " You are suffering from the disor- 
 der which that gentleman so narrowly 
 escaped," said Poulain, pointing to 
 Schmucke. "1 mean the jaundice. But 
 it will be a mere trifle," he added, as 
 he proceeded to write a prescription. 
 Notwithstanding this last most reassur- 
 ing phrase, the doctor had cast at his 
 patient one of those Hippocratean glances 
 in which a sentence of death (veiled 
 though it may be by conventional S3'm- 
 pathy) may always be read by the eyes 
 of those who are interested in knowing 
 the truth. Madame Cibot, accordinglj', 
 who scrutinized the doctor's glance with 
 all the keen penetration of a spy, was 
 not deceived by the tone in which his 
 I'emark was uttered, nor by the hypo- 
 critical mask that he assumed ; she 
 therefore followed Dr. Poulain when he 
 went away, and when they had reached 
 the landing, inquired : 
 
 " Do you really think it will be a mere 
 trifle ? " 
 
 " My dear Madame Cibot, your patient 
 is a dead man ; not on account of the in- 
 vasion of the bile into the blood, but on 
 account of his moral prostration. How- 
 ever, with a great deal of care, the patient 
 maj' yet recover ; he should be got awaj' 
 from here and taken for a trip — " 
 
 "And where is the money to come 
 from?" inquired the portress. "All he 
 has is his berth; and his friend lives 
 upon a small allowance from certain 
 grand ladies to whom he's been of some 
 service, according to his own account — 
 some very charitable ladies. It's just 
 two children as I've been looking after 
 these nine years." 
 
 " My life is spent in attending people 
 who die — not from their illnesses, but 
 from that great and incurable disease, 
 the want of money. In how many a 
 garret am I compelled, far from exact- 
 ing payment for my visit, to leave half 
 a crown upon the chimney-piece ! "
 
 92 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 "Poor, dear Monsieur Poulain ! " ex- 
 claimed Madame Cibot. " Ah, if you 
 only had a hundred thousand francs a 
 year, like certain screws in this quarter, 
 wlio n'are just so many devils let loose 
 from hell, you'd he the ag'ent of the good 
 God here n'on earth ! " 
 
 Tlie doctor, who, thanks to the good 
 will of those worthy g-entlemen the poi*- 
 ters of his arrondissement, had succeeded 
 in getting together a little connection 
 which brought him barely enough to live 
 upon, here raised his eyes to heaven and 
 thanked Madame Cibot by a grimace 
 worthy of Tartuffe himself. 
 
 "You say, then, my dear Monsieur 
 Poulain, that with great care our dear 
 patient may pull round ? " 
 
 " Yes ; unless the inner man has sus- 
 tained too severe a shock from the grief 
 he has undergone." 
 
 " Poor man ! who could have caused 
 him grief? He's a brave fellow, who 
 n'hasn't his like on earth, except his 
 friend. Monsieur Schmucke ! I'll find 
 n'out wliat has brought him to this 
 pass ; and I warrant / gives a good 
 dressing to the folks who've been and 
 riled my gentleman.'' 
 
 " Listen to me, my dear Madame Ci- 
 bot," said the doctor, who was now 
 standing on the step of the carriage- 
 gate; "one of the principal features of 
 the disease from which your ' gentleman ' 
 is suffei'ing is a constant irritability over 
 trifles ; and as it is not probable that he 
 can call in a nurse, jou will have to look 
 after him yourself. So you understand ? " 
 
 " Ish it about Moshieur Ponsh sliat you 
 are shpeaking? " asked the dealer in old 
 iron, who was engaged in smoking- his 
 pipe, and now, as he uttered the question, 
 rose from the stone on which he was sit- 
 ting to join in the conversation of the 
 portress and the doctor. 
 
 "Yes, Daddj' Remonencq," replied 
 Madame Cibot to the Auvergnat. 
 
 " Well, shen ! he ish ricslier than Mo- 
 shieur Monishtrol, and slie lordsh of she 
 curioshitiesh. I knowsh enough about 
 art to tell you shat she dear man hash 
 treasshures ! " 
 
 "WeU," said Madame Cibot to Re- 
 
 monencq, " I thought 3'ou was a-laugh- 
 ing at me the other day when 1 showed 
 you all those antiqualities, while my 
 gentlemen were out." 
 
 At Paris, where the very paving-stones 
 have ears, where ever^^ door has a tongue, 
 where the window-bars have eyes, nothing 
 is more dangerous than a conversation in 
 fi'ont of a carriage-gate. The parting 
 words there uttered, which are to the 
 preceding conversation what the post- 
 scrijot is to a letter, are sure to contain 
 avowals that are fraught with danger 
 alike to those who make, and to those 
 who overhear them. 
 
 A single illustration of this truth may 
 serve to corroborate that which this his- 
 tory i^resents. 
 
 XII. 
 
 "GOLD IS A CHIMERA." — (WORDS BY M. 
 SCRIBE, MUSIC BY MEYERBEER, SCEN- 
 ERY BY REMONENCQ.) 
 
 One of the most celebrated hair-dress- 
 ers of- the imperial epoch — an epoch dur- 
 ing- which men devoted a great deal of 
 attention to the hair and its arrangement 
 — was one day leaving a certain house 
 wherein he had just been dressing the 
 hair of a pretty woman, and of which all 
 the principal occupants gave him their 
 support. Among these there was a cer- 
 tain old bachelor, armed with a — house- 
 keeper who hated the lawful heirs of her 
 master. A consultation of the most fa- 
 mous physicians of the day— who were 
 not as yet called the princes of the sci- 
 ence — had just been held over the case of 
 the ci-devant young man who was sei-i- 
 ously ill. It so hapiDened that the doctors 
 and the hair-dresser left the house at the 
 very same moment ; and that the doctors, 
 halting on the step of the carriage-gate, 
 began to chatter to each other, as thej'^ 
 do when the consultation farce is over; 
 that is to say, in all scientific sincerity 
 and truth. "He is a dead man," said 
 Dr. Haudry. "Miracles apart, he has 
 not a month to live," I'eplied Desplein. 
 These words the barber overheard.
 
 COUSLV POiYS. 
 
 93 
 
 Now this barber, like all other barbers, 
 kept a good understanding with the ser- 
 vants of his employers. Spurred by an 
 exorbitant desire to grow rich, he imme- 
 diately returns to the apartments of the 
 ci-devant young man, and promises the 
 servant-mistress a handsome premium if 
 she can persuade her master to sink a 
 large part of his fortune in an annuity. 
 Now the moribund old bachelor, who was 
 fifty-six according to the calendar, but 
 twice that age, regard being had to his 
 amorous campaigns, possessed, among 
 other propertj', a magnificent mansion 
 situated in the Rue Richelieu, and then 
 worth two hundred and fifty thousand 
 francs. This mansion — the object of the 
 barber's greed — was sold to him in con- 
 sideration of an annuity of thirtj' thou- 
 sand francs. 
 
 The transaction in question occurred in 
 1806. In 1846 the barber— who has now 
 retired and is seventy yeai's of age — is 
 still paying the annuity. Now, seeing 
 that the ci-devant young man is at pres- 
 ent ninet.y-six, is in his dotage, and has 
 married his Madame Everard, he may ve- 
 main upon his legs a long time yet ; and 
 since the barber gave something- like thirty 
 thousand francs to the aforesaid lad 3% the 
 house has stood him in more than a mil- 
 lion francs ; but it is now worth from eight 
 to nine himdred thousand francs. 
 
 Remonencq, like this barber, had over- 
 heard the last words addressed to Pons 
 by Brunner upon the gate-step on the daj' 
 when that phenLx of suitors had his first 
 interview with Cecile ; and these last 
 words had filled the Auvei-gnat with a 
 desire to penetrate into the Pons Muse- 
 um. Being on good terms with the Cibots, 
 it was not long ere he was introduced into 
 the rooms of the two friends during their 
 absence. Dazzled by so much wealth, 
 Remonencq saw that there was '"'a stroke 
 of business to be done " — which is dealer's 
 slang for " a fortune to be stolen " — and 
 he had been pondering over the matter 
 for five or six days. 
 
 "I am sho much in earnesht," said he 
 to Madame Cibot and Dr. Poulain, "zhat 
 we will talk she matter over, and if zish 
 good shentlemansh wansh an annuishy of 
 
 fifty thousandsh francshs, I will give you 
 a hamper of ordinary winesh, if you 
 will—" 
 
 " What can you be thinking about ? " 
 said the doctor to Remonencq. " An an- 
 nuitj' of fifty thousand francs ! But if 
 the worthy man is so rich and is attended 
 bj' me and nursed by Madame Cibot, why, 
 he may recover — for liver complaints are 
 the concomitant drawbacks of very strong 
 constitutions — " 
 
 "Did I shay fifty? Why a shentle- 
 mansh — zhare on zhe very shtep of your 
 gate — oft'ered him sheven hundred shou- 
 sand francsh, and for zhe pictui-esh onlj' 
 — fouchtra ! " 
 
 When Madame Cibot heard this declara- 
 tion of Remonencq's she looked at Dr. 
 Poulain with a very strange expression 
 on her face : the devil was kindling a sin- 
 ister flame in those orange-colored eyes 
 of hers. 
 
 " Come, don't let's listen to such idle 
 tales," resumed the doctor, who was very 
 glad to learn that his patient was abler to 
 pay him for all the visits he was about 
 to make. 
 
 " Monsheur le docteure, if my dear 
 Madame Shibot, shinsh zhe shentlemans 
 ish in bed, will allow me to bring my 
 exshpert, I am sure to find zhe money in 
 two houi'sh' time, even if it ish a question 
 of sheven hundred shousand francsh — " 
 
 "All right, my friend," replied the doc- 
 tor. "Come, Madame Cibot, take good 
 care not to exasperate the patient; you 
 must put on your armor of patience ; for 
 everj'thing will irritate and weary him — 
 even your attentions. You must be pre- 
 pared to find him grumbling at every- 
 thing." 
 
 " He will be very hard to please if he 
 does," said the portress. 
 
 "Now, mark well what I say," pursued 
 the doctor, authoritatively. " The life of 
 Monsieur Pons is in the hands of those 
 who have the care of him. So I shaU 
 come to see him perhaps twice a day ; I 
 shall commence my rounds with him — " 
 
 The doctor had suddenly passed from 
 the supreme inditTerence with which he 
 regarded the fate of his pauper patients 
 to the most tender solicitude. The ear-
 
 94 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 nestness of the speculator had impressed 
 him with the idea that this fortune mig-ht 
 be a reality. 
 
 "He shall be waited on like a king," 
 replied Madame Cibot, with factitious en- 
 thusiasm. 
 
 The portress waited until the doctor 
 had turned into the Rue Chariot ere she 
 resumed the conversation with Remo- 
 nencq. The old-iron dealer meanwhile 
 was finishing- his pipe, with his back lean- 
 ing against the jamb of his shop-door. 
 He had not taken up this position unde- 
 signedly. He wanted the portress to 
 come to him. 
 
 This shop, which had formerly been 
 used as a cafe, had undergone no altera- 
 tion since the Auvergnat had taken it on 
 lease. The words CAFE DE NORMAN- 
 DIE were still legible on the long entab- 
 lature which surmounts the glass front- 
 age of all modern shops. The Auvergnat 
 iad got some house-decorator's appren- 
 tice to paint (gratis, no doubt) the words: 
 Bemonencq, ferrailleur, achete les mar- 
 chandises d'occasion, in the space left 
 beneath the words CAFE DE NORMAN- 
 DIE. As a matter of course, the mir- 
 rors, tables, stools, what-nots, and all 
 the furniture of the Cafe de Normandie 
 had been sold. Remonencq had hired, at 
 an outlay of six hundred francs, the bare 
 shop, the back parlor, the kitchen, and, 
 on the mezzanine floor, a single room 
 that had once been the bedroom of the 
 head -waiter at the cafe. The other 
 rooms belonging to the cafe now formed 
 part of a separate letting. The only ves- 
 tiges of the original splendor of the cafe 
 were a plain light-green paper in the 
 shop, and the strong iron bars of the 
 shop-front with their bolts. 
 
 When Remonencq first came to the 
 place in 1831, after the Revolution of 
 July, he started with a display of cracked 
 bells, chipped dishes, old iron, superan- 
 nuated scales, and ancient weights, ren- 
 dered obsolete by the law establishing 
 new weights and measures — a law which 
 only the state itself infringes ; for it sanc- 
 tions the circulation of one-sou and two- 
 sou pieces coined in the reign of Louis 
 XVI. Then this Auvergnat, of five Au- 
 
 vergnat power, began to purchase kitchen 
 ranges, old picture-frames, old bits of 
 copper and chipped porcelain. Gradual- 
 ly, by dint of filling and emptying and 
 filling and emptying again, the shop 
 began to bear a close resemblance to 
 Nicolet's farces : the character of its 
 contents improved. 
 
 The wonderful and infallible scheme 
 adopted hy the dealer in old iron — a 
 scheme whose results are patent to the 
 ej^es of any lounger sufficiently philo- 
 sophical to note the arithmetical pro- 
 gression in value of the wares with which 
 these intelligent shops are stocked — was 
 this ; tin, argand lamps and earthen- 
 ware give place to picture-frames and 
 copper ; these again make way for porce- 
 lain ; then, speedily, the shop, that for a 
 brief space figured as a daubeum, is met- 
 amorphosed into a museum. At last, 
 some fme day the grimy windows are 
 cleaned, the interior of the shop is reno- 
 vated, the Auvergnat doffs his velvet and 
 his vests, and sports a frock-coat ! There 
 is he to be seen, looking like a dragon 
 guarding his treasure. He is surrounded 
 by masterpieces ; he has developed into a 
 subtle connoisseur ; he has decupled his 
 capital ; he is not to be taken in by any 
 artifice ; he is perfectly familiar with all 
 the tricks of the ti-ade. There sits the 
 monster like some old dowager surrounded 
 by a bevy of pretty girls, whom she is 
 offering to the highest bidder in the 
 matrimonial market ! The beauties, the 
 miracles of art, make no impression what- 
 ever on this man, who is, at the same 
 time, coarse and subtle ; who bullies the 
 ignorant while calculating what he can 
 make out of them. Turned comedian, he 
 affects a passion for his pictures and mar- 
 quetries, or pretends to be poor, or in- 
 vents fictitious purchase prices and olfers 
 to show (imaginary) sale notes. He is 
 a very Proteus ; in the course of one brief 
 hour he is Jocrisse, Janot, Clown, Mondor, 
 Harpagon, or Nicodemus. 
 
 At the beginning of the fourth j'ear 
 after his installation, Remonencq's shop 
 contained some valuable time-pieces, suits 
 of armor, and old pictui-es, which were 
 protected, when Remonencq himself was
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 95 
 
 away, by his sister, a stout ugly woman, 
 who, in answer to her brother's summons, 
 had traveled from Auverg-ne on foot. This 
 sister. La Remonencq (a sort of idiot, with 
 vacant gaze, and dressed like a Japanese 
 idol), never abated a single centime of the 
 prices fixed by her brother. She attended 
 to the household duties also, and solved 
 the apparently insoluble problem — how 
 to live upon the fogs of the Seine. Re- 
 monencq and his sister subsisted upon 
 bread and herrings, potato peelings and 
 scraps of vegetables, picked up from the 
 heaps of refuse left by the eating-house 
 keepers near the posts outside their doors. 
 Bread included, the brother and sister 
 lived on less than sixpence a day; and that 
 sixpence La Remonencq earned with her 
 needle and spinning-wheel. 
 
 Such was the origin of the business of 
 Remonencq, who had first come to Paris 
 as a commissionaire, and from 1835 to 
 1831 had executed the commissions of the 
 curiosity-dealers of the Boulevard Beau- 
 marchais and the coppersmiths of the Rue 
 de Lappe. And such is the normal his- 
 tor}^ of many a dealer in curiosities. The 
 Jews, the men of Normand\', of Auvergne 
 and of Savoy — four distinct races — have 
 (one and all) the same instincts, and adopt 
 the same means of growing rich. To 
 spend nothing, to be content with small 
 profits, and to pile interest on profit — that 
 is their charter ; and their charter is more 
 than a mere name. 
 
 Remonencq, now reconciled with his 
 former employer, Monistrol, whose trade 
 was with the wholesale dealers, was now 
 accustomed to chiner — that is the techni- 
 cal word— in the precinct of Paris, which, 
 as is well known, comprises an area of 
 forty leagues. After being in business for 
 fourteen years he possessed a capital of 
 «ixty thousand francs, besides a well- 
 stocked shop. Having no chance custom 
 in the Rue de Normandie, a spot to which 
 he clung on account of the lowness of his 
 rent, he sold his wares to the dealers, con- 
 tenting himself with moderate profits. All 
 his business was transacted in the Au- 
 vergne dialect, known by the name of 
 charabia. Remonencq indulged in a day- 
 dream ! His day-dream was — to have a 
 
 shop upon the boulevard. He wanted to 
 become a rich curiositj'-dealer, so that he 
 might, some day, sell direct to the ama- 
 teurs. He was, moreover, a formidable 
 man of business. His face was almost 
 impenetrable; for, in the first place, it 
 was covered — in consequence of his being 
 his own joumej-man — with a thick coating 
 composed of iron filings and perspiration ; 
 and, in the second, habitual hard work 
 had given to his features that stoical im- 
 passiveness which distinguishes the vet- 
 erans of the war 1799. Physically, Remo- 
 nencq was a short, thin man, whose little, 
 cold blue ej'es were placed in his head like 
 those of a pig, and betokened the concen- 
 trated avarice and crafty cunning of the 
 Jew without that superficial humility 
 which conceals his profound contempt for 
 the Christian. 
 
 The relations subsisting between the 
 Cibots and the Remonencqs Tvere those 
 of the obliger and the obliged. Madame 
 Cibot, who implicitly believed that the 
 two Auvergnats were exceedingly' poor, 
 sold them the leavings of Schmucke and 
 Cibot at prices fabulously low. The Re- 
 monencqs paid her two centimes and a 
 half for a pound of dry crusts and 
 bread-crumbs, one centime and a half 
 for a porringer full of potatoes, and so 
 on in proportion. The wily Remonencq 
 was never supposed to do any business on 
 his own account : he always pretended that 
 he was merely Monistrol's agent, and com- 
 plained that the wealthj' dealers barely 
 allowed him to exist ; so the Cibots sin- 
 cerely' pitied the Remonencqs. After 
 eleven years' wear, the velvet jacket, 
 velvet waistcoat, and velvet trousers of 
 the Auvergnat still held together; but 
 these three garments, which are charac- 
 teristic of the men of Auvergne, were 
 covered with patches, inserted, gratui- 
 toush', by Cibot. It is clear that all the 
 Jews are not in Israel. 
 
 "■ Ai'en't you making game of me, Re- 
 monencq?" said the portress. "Is it pos- 
 sible as Monsieur Pons can have so large a 
 fortune and lead the life he leads ? Whj', 
 he hasn't a hundred francs about him ! " 
 
 " Amateursh are alwaysh like that," 
 replied Remonencq, sententiously.
 
 96 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 " So yoii reallj' n'and truly believe as 
 my g-entleman has seven hundred thou- 
 sand francs' worth of — " 
 
 "Yesh, in picturesh alone — he hash 
 one, which, if he wanted fifty shousliand 
 francshs for it, I would find shem, if I 
 had to shtrangle myshelf for shem. You 
 know well zhe little framesh of enameled 
 copper full of red velvet in which zhere 
 are portraitsh. Well, zhen, zhe3' are 
 enamelsh by Pettitotte, which moncheir, 
 zhe minishter of zhe Government, who 
 wash a drug'g'isht, would give three 
 shoushand francshsh apiecsh — " 
 
 "There are thirty of them in the two 
 frames ! " exclaimed the portress, with 
 dilating eyes. 
 
 " Well slien judgosh of his ti'eashure ! " 
 
 Madame Cibot, seized with vertigo, 
 turned right-about-face. In a moment, 
 the idea of being remembered in Pons's 
 will, of being placed on an equal footing 
 with all the servant-mistresses, whose 
 annuities had excited so much cupidity 
 throughout the Marais, sprung up in her 
 mind. Slie pictured herself living- in one 
 of the communes on the outskirts of Paris; 
 flaunting it in a villa ; looking after her 
 poultiy and her garden ; and spending 
 her declining years in regal state ; she 
 and her jjoor Cibot, who, like all neglected 
 and uncomprehended angels, deserved so 
 much happiness. 
 
 In the abrupt and naive right-about- 
 face movement of the portress, Remo- 
 nencq read the certain success of his 
 scheme. The principal difficulty to be 
 surmounted by the chineur, is the diffi- 
 culty of gaining admission to the houses 
 containing the treasures that he is in 
 search of ; for the chineur is a man who 
 is on the lookout for opportunities. {Clii- 
 neur is derived from the verb chiner= to 
 go in search of anything that may turn 
 up, and conclude advantageous bargains 
 with ignorant owners.) No one would 
 credit the number of tiicks a la Scapin, 
 of Sganarelle dodges, of Dorine-like al- 
 Uirements played off or brought to bear 
 by the cJiineur in order to effect an en- 
 trance into the houses of the gentry. 
 They are genuine comedies fit for 
 the stage, and their basis always is. 
 
 as in this case, the rapacity of ser- 
 vants. For thirty francs in money, or 
 money's worth, the servant will bring 
 about a bargain, out of Avhich the chi- 
 neur will realize a profit of one or two 
 thousand francs. The history of the ac- 
 quisition of such and such a service of old 
 Sevres {ptite tendre) would exhibit the 
 chineur surpassing the Congress of Mun- 
 ster in diplomatic artifice, and the Con- 
 ventions of Nimeguen, Utrecht, Ryswick 
 and Vienna in the exercise of intelligence. 
 Then, the acting of the chineur is much 
 more frank than that of the diplomatist ; 
 while, for probing all the profoundest 
 depths of self-interest, the former has at 
 his command means quite as effective as 
 those that ambassadors are at so much 
 pains to invent in order to bring about 
 the rupture of the most closely cemented 
 alliances. 
 
 " I have shtirred up Dame Shibot and 
 no mishtake," said Remonencq to his sis- 
 ter, as he saw her resuming her seat upon 
 a chair which had parted with every scrap 
 of its original straw ; "and now I will go 
 and conshult zhe only pershon A'iho uiider- 
 shtandsh zhe matter^our Chew, our good 
 Chew who lent ush money at only fifteen 
 per shent ! " 
 
 Remonencq had read Madame Cibot's 
 inmost thoucrhts. With women of her 
 stamp to will is to act. They shrink 
 from nothing that may conduce to the 
 success of their plans ; in a moment, in 
 the twinkling of an eye, they pass from 
 the strictest probity to depravitj' the 
 most profound. Integrity, moreover (like 
 all our other qualities), is of two kinds : 
 there is a negative integrity and a posi- 
 tive integritj'. The integrity of a Mad- 
 ame Cibot is of the negative kind.: such 
 persons are upright until they have an 
 oppox-tunit.y of becoming rich. Positive 
 integrity is that which is always knee- 
 deep in temptation, and never succumbs : 
 such is the integi'ity of the cashier. 
 Through the sluice that had been opened 
 by the Belial-like harangue of the dealer 
 in old iron, a flood of bad designs rushed 
 into the brain and into the heart of this 
 portress. Mounting, or rather — to use 
 the exact word — flying, from the lodge to
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 97 
 
 the apartments of her "two gentlemen," 
 Dame Cibot made her appearance, with 
 a hypocritical expression of pity on her 
 face, at the threshold of the room in which 
 Pons and Schmucke were moaning: in con- 
 cert. When the latter saw the house- 
 keeper come in, he motioned to her not 
 to breathe, in the presence of the sick 
 man, a single syllable of the doctor's 
 real opinion ; for the friend, the excellent 
 German, had re:Kl the expression of the 
 doctor's eye. Madame Cibot replied to 
 Schmucke's g-esture by a motion of the 
 head that was meant to indicate the deep- 
 est sorrow. 
 
 "Well, my dear sir, and how do you 
 find yourself ? " inquired the dame. 
 
 So saying-, the portress placed herself 
 at the foot of the bed, with her arms 
 akimbo, and her eyes fixed lovingly upon 
 the invalid; but, oh! what golden scin- 
 tillations gleamed in those orbs ! To the 
 eye of an observer, the glance of a tiger 
 could not have been more terrible. 
 
 "Oh! I am verj'' bad!" replied poor 
 Pons ; '• I don't feel the slightest desire 
 to eat. Oh ! the world ! the world ! " 
 cried he, squeezing the hand of Schmucke, 
 who, seated at the bed's head, was hold- 
 ing Pons's hand in his, and doubtless list- 
 ening to an account of the origin of Pons's 
 illness. 
 
 "' Ah I my dear Schmucke, how much 
 better would it have been if I had fol- 
 lowed your advice, dined here every day 
 since we foregathered, and given up this 
 society which is now crushing me, as a 
 dung-cart crushes an egg — and for what 
 reason ? " 
 
 "Come, come, my dear sir, no com- 
 plaints," said Madame Cibot; "the doc- 
 tor has told me the truth." 
 
 Here Schmucke gave a tug at the por- 
 tress's gown. 
 
 "Well! you may get over it, if j-ou 
 are well looked after. Make your mind 
 easj' ; you have a good friend by your 
 side ; and, without wishing to brag, a 
 woman as'll take n'as much care n'of 
 you as a mother takes of her first baby. 
 I pulled Cibot through an illness, when 
 Monsieur Poulaiu had given him up, and 
 had thrown — as the saying- is — the sheet 
 Bai^ac— D 
 
 over his nose, and he had been left for 
 dead. Well, you, who n'haven't come to 
 that pass yet, thank God ! — though you 
 n'are bad enough, to be sure — j'ou just 
 trust to me; I'll pull you through, witli- 
 out any one's help. Now do be quiet; 
 don't toss .yourself about like that." So 
 saying, she drew the bed-clothes over the 
 hands of the invalid. "Come, my little 
 man," pursued she, " Monsieur Schmucke 
 and me'll pass the night there, at your 
 pillow. You will be better cared for than 
 a prince, n'and — besides — you are rich 
 enouglr not to stint yourself of anything 
 that your disorder requires. I've come 
 to an arrangement with Cibot, which — 
 poor dear man ! what on earth would he 
 do without me ? — well, I've made him 
 listen to reason, and we n'are, both of 
 us, so fond of you that he's given me 
 leave to spend the night here — and, for a 
 man hke him, that's no slight sacrifice, 
 look you ! for he loves me now as much 
 as ever he did the first day we were mar- 
 ried. I don't know how it is; it must be 
 the lodge ; both of us always side by side ! 
 Now don't uncover yourself like that," 
 she exclaimed, dartmg to the 'head of the 
 bed, and drawing the clothes over Pons's 
 chest. "If 3'ou don't behave well and do 
 whatever Monsieur Poulain orders — for 
 Monsieur Poulain"s the very image of the 
 good God upon earth, do you see? — I'll 
 have nothing more to do with you : you 
 must obej- me." 
 
 "Yes, Montame Zibod, he will opey 
 you," interposed Schmucke; "for he 
 wants to liff, for de zake of his goot 
 friend Schmucke, I warrant him." 
 
 "Above all things, don't irritate j'our- 
 self," said Madame Cibot; "for your 
 disease will make j'ou n'irritable enough 
 in all conscience without your making 
 matters wor§e. God sends us our afflic- 
 tions, my dear good sir; He punishes us 
 for our faults ; you've got some sweet 
 little faults to reproach yourself with, no 
 doubt ! " (Here the sick man shook his 
 head.) " Oh, come ! come I you must have 
 been n"in love when you was young ; 
 you've had your frolics; perhaps the 
 fruit of your passion may be knocking 
 about somewhere or other now, without
 
 98 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 fire, food or home — you men are such 
 monsters ! one day all love, and then — 
 frist !— all's over — no more thought for 
 anj'thing- ; no, not even while the child's 
 at the breast ! Alas, for us poor wo- 
 men ! " 
 
 "But no one, except Schmucke, and 
 my poor mother, ever loved me," said 
 poor Pons, disconsolately. 
 
 " Oh ! come now, come now, you ain't 
 a saint, you know ! You was j'oung once, 
 and you must have been n'a vei'y good- 
 looking' young fellow in your time. When 
 you was twenty — consideinng how good 
 you are — I should have been n'in love 
 with you myself ! " 
 
 "I was always as ugly as a toad ! " 
 said Pons, in sheer despair. 
 
 " Oh ! it's your modesty as makes you 
 say that ; for I must say you n'have that 
 in j'our favor; you n'are modest ! " 
 
 "No, no, my dear Madame Cibot ; I 
 tell you once more, I was always ugly ; 
 I have never been loved — " 
 
 " And yon want to make me believe 
 that, do you ? " said the portress. " You 
 want to make me believe at this time of 
 day, that, at j'our n'ag-e, you n'are as 
 spotless as the pattern girl of the village ! 
 Tell that to the marines ! You, n'a musi- 
 cian ! a theater man ! Whj% if a wo- 
 man were to tell me so, I wouldn't believe 
 her — that I wouldn't ! " 
 
 " Montame Zibod ! Montame Zibod ! you 
 will egzazberate him," cried Schmucke, 
 seeing that Pons was twisting and wrig- 
 gling about in his bed like a worm. 
 
 "Hold your tongue, you n'also," cried 
 Madame Cibot. "You n'are a pair of 
 old rakes. Plain as you may be, both 
 of you, there's no lid so poor but finds 
 its pot ! as the proverb says. Cibot 
 managed to find his way into the good 
 graces of one of the prettiest oyster-girls 
 in Paris — you n'are a deal better-looking 
 than Cibot — and then you n'are such a 
 good soul: come now, j'ou've plaj^ed j'our 
 little pranks in your time, and God is 
 punishing you for forsaking your children, 
 like Abraham — " 
 
 Here the exhausted sufferer found 
 strength to make another gesture of 
 dissent. 
 
 " But make your mind easy ; you may 
 Uve as long as Methuselah, for all that." 
 
 "Oh ! leave me alone, leave me alone !" 
 cried Pons. '• I have never known what 
 it is to be loved. I never had a child ; 
 I am alone in the world." 
 
 " Really and truly, now ? " said the 
 portress ; " for you are so kind-hearted 
 that the women — who love a kind heart, 
 mind you, that's what wins 'em — well, it 
 did seem to me impossible that in your 
 best days — " 
 
 "Take her away," whispered Pons to 
 Schmucke ; " she jars my nerves ! " 
 
 "Ah ! well then. Monsieur Schmucke 
 has some children, I'll be bound, you 
 n'are all alike, you old bachelors — " 
 
 " I! " cried Schmucke, springing to his 
 feet, " J.'— why— " 
 
 " What, do you mean to say that j'ou 
 also have got neither kith nor kin ? W^hy. 
 3'ou two must have come into the world 
 just like a couple of mushrooms." 
 
 "Come now, come along with me," 
 replied Schmucke; and, suiting the action 
 to the word, he heroicallj' put his arm 
 round Madame Cibot's waist, and, heed- 
 less of her cries, walked her off into the 
 salon. 
 
 XHI. 
 
 A TREATISE ON THE OCCITLT SCIENCES. 
 
 " What, would you take advantage of 
 a poor woman, at you?- time of life ? ' ' 
 cried Madame Cibot, struggling in 
 Schmucke's arms. 
 
 "Don't shout!" said Schmucke. 
 
 " You, the best of the two ! " continued 
 Madarne Cibot. " Ah ! I did wrong to 
 talk aloout love to two n'old men who 
 have never been n'in love," she cried, 
 catching the glare of anger in Schmucke's 
 eyes. ' ' To the rescue ! To the rescue ! 
 I'm being carried off ! " 
 
 "You are a vool," said the German. 
 " Come, now, dell me what did de doctor 
 zay ? " 
 
 " You treat me in this brutal fashion," 
 said Dame Cibot, weeping, but restored 
 to liberty, "' me as would go through fire
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 99 
 
 and water to serve you two gentlemen ! 
 Ah, well ! They say that we come to 
 know what men are by n'experience — 
 liow true that is ! My poor Cibot would 
 never serve me in this fashion. And me 
 too a-treating- you as if you was my own 
 children ; for I've no children of my own, 
 and it was onlj' yesterday, as I was a-say- 
 ing' to Cibot : 'My friend, God knew well 
 what He was about in denying us chil- 
 dren, for I've two children up there.' 
 There now, by the holy cross of God, 
 upon my mother's soul, those were my 
 very words — " 
 
 "Yes, yes, but what did the doctor 
 say ? " persisted Schmucke, furiously ; 
 and, for the first time in his life, he 
 stamped his foot. 
 
 "Oh!" replied Madame Cibot, draw- 
 ing Schmucke into the dining-room, "he 
 said that our dearly beloved duck of a 
 love of an n'invalid would be in great 
 danger of dying unless he was well 
 nursed ; but I'm here, in spite of j'our 
 brutality — for brutal you n'are — and so I 
 tell you, you, whom I took to be so gen- 
 tle. So that's your disposition, is it ? 
 You'd take advantage of a woman, at 
 your time of life, would you, you big 
 rascal ? " 
 
 "7 a rasgal ? Don't j'ou know dat I 
 ioffe no one put Bons ? " 
 
 " Well and good ; then you'll leave me 
 alone, won't j'ou ? " said the dame, smil- 
 ing at Schmucke. "You'd better, for 
 Cibot would break all the bones in an\' 
 one's hody as tried to take liberties with 
 me." 
 
 " Nurse Bons well, m^' leetle Montame 
 Zibod," returned Schmucke, trying to 
 get hold of Madame Cibot's hand. 
 
 "Ah ! you would, would you, again ? " 
 
 " Now lizzen to me ; all dat I have 
 shall bo 3'ours, if we zave him." 
 
 "Very well, I'm going to the apothe- 
 cary's to get what's wanted — for look'ee 
 here, sir, this illness'll cost money ; and 
 how n'are you going to manage ? " 
 
 " I vill vork ; I zhould like Bons to be 
 nursed like a prinze." 
 
 " And so he shall, my dear Monsieur 
 Schmucke; and, look j-ou, don't worry 
 yourself about anything ; Cibot and I 
 
 have got two thousand francs laid by ; 
 you're welcome to them ; I have been 
 spending money of my own on you two 
 for a long time past — there ! " 
 
 " Egzellent woman ! " cried Schmucke, 
 wiping his eyes ; " what a heart she 
 has ! " 
 
 " Dry those tears, which do me proud, 
 for that is my recompense," said Dame 
 Cibot, melodramatically. " I am the 
 most disinterested creature in the world ; 
 but don't \e go into the room with tears 
 in your eyes ; for that would make Mon- 
 sieur Pons believe that he's worse nor he 
 really is." 
 
 Schmucke, who was touched by this 
 proof of delicacy, now at last succeeded 
 in getting hold of Madame Cibot's hand, 
 and wrung it. 
 
 "' Spare me ! " said the quondam oyster- 
 girl, with a tender glance at Schmucke. 
 
 "Bons," said the worthy German, 
 when he had regained the bedroom, 
 "Montame Zibod is eln angel; she is a 
 dalkative angel, I admid ; but still she Ls 
 ein angel." 
 
 "You think so, do 3'ou ? — I have grown 
 suspicious, this last month," replied the 
 invalid, shaking his head. "After so 
 many mishaps as I have had, one ceases 
 to believe, except in God and you ! " 
 
 " Ged well, and we will all tree liff like 
 gings," said Schmucke. 
 
 " Cibot," said the portress to her hus- 
 band, as, panting for breath, she entered 
 the lodge. "Ah ! my friend, our fortune 
 is made. My two gentlemen have no 
 heirs, no love-children, no nothing ; what 
 do you say to that ? Oh! I'll go to Mad- 
 ame Fontaine's and have my fortune told; 
 so as we may know what our income will 
 be!" 
 
 "Wife," said the httle tailor, "it's ill 
 waiting for a dead man's shoes." 
 
 " Ah I you want to torment me, do 
 you?" said the dame, giving Cibot a 
 friendly tap. "I know's what I know! 
 Monsieur Poulain has given Monsieur 
 Pons up ! and we shall be rich ; my name 
 will be mentioned in the will ; I'll take 
 my oath of it. Ply j-our needle, and look 
 after your lodge — you won't have to do 
 that sort of work very much longer !
 
 100 
 
 THE HUMAN' COMEDY, 
 
 We'll retire into the country ; we'll go 
 and live at Batignolles. N'a nice house, 
 n'a nice garden, as you'll amuse yourself 
 by looking after ; n'I'll have a servant to 
 wait upon me ! " 
 
 "Well, neighbor, and how are shings 
 going on up yonder?" inquired Remonencq. 
 " Do you know what zhe collection ish 
 worth?" 
 
 " No, no, not yet. I don't go that way 
 to work, my good fellow. I began by 
 finding out more n 'important things than 
 that—" 
 
 "More important shings shan shat?" 
 ejaculated Remonencq. " What can be 
 more important shan shat ? " 
 
 "Come, come, my imp, leave me to 
 steer my own boat," said the portress, 
 authoritativel3\ 
 
 " But sho mush per shent on this sheven 
 hundred shousand francsh, and you would 
 have enough to keep you in idlenessh for 
 zhe resht of j^ou daj'sh ! " 
 
 " Make ^-our mind easy. Daddy Remo- 
 nencq; when it is necessary to know what 
 all the things the old fellow has got to- 
 gether are worth, we will see — " 
 
 The portress, after having gone to the 
 druggist's to get tlie medicine ordered by 
 Doctor Poulain, put off her consultation 
 with Madame Fontaine until the morrow, 
 thinking that she would find the faculties 
 of the oracles fresher and brighter if she 
 paid her visit the first thing in the morn- 
 ing before any one else was there — for 
 there is often quite a crowd of people at 
 Madame Fontaine's. 
 
 After having been, during a period of 
 forty years, the rival of the celebrated 
 Mademoiselle Lenormand, whom she sur- 
 vived, Madame Fontaine was now the 
 oracle of the Marais. It is not easy to 
 conceive what the fortune-teller is to the 
 lower classes of Paris, or how vast is the 
 influence she exercises over the conduct 
 of the uneducated ; for cooks, portresses, 
 workingmen, all those denizens of the 
 French metropolis who live upon hope, 
 are in the habit of consulting those privi- 
 leged beings who possess the strange and 
 unexplained power of reading the future. 
 Faith in the occult sciences is much more 
 widely diffused ihan men of science, ad- 
 
 vocates, notaries, doctors, magistrates 
 and philosophers imagine. Some popular 
 instincts are indeUble. Of these, that in- 
 stinct which has been so stupidly termed 
 superstition, is in the very blood of the 
 people, just as it is in the minds of their 
 superiors. There are in Paris seveial 
 statesmen who consult fortune-tellers. 
 
 To the skeptical, judicial astrology — a 
 queer colligation of words by-the-by — is 
 nothing more nor less than the taking ad- 
 vantage of an innate feeling, which is one 
 of the strongest of all human feelings — 
 curiosit3\ The skeptic, then, entirely 
 denies the existence of any relation what- 
 ever between the destinj^ of an individual 
 and the configuration of that destiny 
 yielded by the seven or eight principal 
 methods which judicial astrology com- 
 prises. But tlie occult sciences have shared 
 the fate of the numerous natui-al phe- 
 nomena that freethinkers and materialist 
 philosophers, or, in other words, those 
 who recognize nothing but solid and 
 tangible facts, the outcome of the cucur- 
 bite and the scales of modern physics and 
 modern chemistry, have refused to accept; 
 though sciences exist and continue to be 
 practiced; though, since the study of them 
 has, for the last two centuries, been neg- 
 lected by the most highly gifted minds, 
 those sciences have made no progress. 
 
 Now, confining our attention to what 
 may i^ossibly be accomplished \>y means 
 of divination : — To believe that the ante- 
 cedent events of a man's life, the secrets 
 known to him and to him only, can be ini- 
 mediatelj' represented by cards, which he 
 shuflies and cuts, and the fortune-teller 
 separates, according to certain mysterious 
 laws, into sundrj' packets, is absurd ; but 
 we must not forget that steam locomo- 
 tion was condemned as absurd, that aerial 
 navigation is still condemned as absurd ; 
 that gunpowder, printing, spectacles, en- 
 graving, and the last grand discovery, 
 the daguerreotype, were all condemned 
 as absurd. If any one had gone to Napo- 
 leon and told him that a building or a 
 human being is perpetually, and at all 
 times, represented by an atmospheric 
 image; that every object in existence has, 
 suspended in the air, a spectral picture of
 
 cousm PONS. 
 
 101 
 
 itself that can be seen, that can be seized. 
 Napoleon would have shut the man up in 
 Chai'enton, just as Richelieu found a lodg- 
 ing in Bicetre for Solomon de Canx, when 
 the Norman martyr submitted to him 
 that immense discovery, steam naviga- 
 tion. Yet this is precisely what Daguerre 
 has proved by his invention. 
 
 Now, if God has written each man's 
 destinj', upon his phj'siognomy, in char- 
 acters that are legible to the eyes of cer- 
 tain clairvoyants — the word ph3"siognomy 
 being taken to mean the expression of the 
 body in its entirety — why should not the 
 hand, which represents human action in 
 its totality, and is the sole instrument of 
 its manifestation, present a synopsis of 
 the whole physiognomj' ? Hence the sci- 
 ence of chiromancy. Does not societj' 
 imitate God ? From the aspect of a 
 man's hand, to foretell to him what the 
 events of his life will be, is not a more 
 extraordinary feat, on the part of him 
 who is endow-ed with the faculties of the 
 seer, than to tell a soldier that he will 
 fight, an advocate that he will plead, a 
 shoemaker that he wiU make shoes or 
 boots, or a husbandman that he will ma- 
 nure and cultivate the soil. Let us take 
 a striking example. Genius manifests 
 itself so conspicuously that the most ig- 
 norant persons, as they walk the streets 
 of Paris, can tell a great artist when 
 thej' encounter one. He is like a moral 
 sun, whose rays illumine all they meet. 
 Is not the man of feeble intellect recog- 
 nizable by impressions exactly contrary 
 to those produced by the man of genius ? 
 The average man, again, attracts little 
 or no attention. Most persons who ob- 
 serve social life in Paris can tell a man's 
 profession as he approaches them. Now- 
 adays, the mysteries of the witches' Sab- 
 bath, so well depicted by the painters of 
 the sixteenth centuiy, are mystai'ies no 
 longer. The Egyptian women or men — 
 the progenitors of the modern gj-psies — 
 that peculiar race which emigrated from 
 the East Indies — simply drugged their 
 clients with hashish. The effects pro- 
 duced by that conserve are quite sufHcient 
 to account for the riding on broomsticks, 
 the flying up chimneys, the real visions, 
 
 so to speak, of old women turned into 
 young ones, the furious dances and the 
 delightful music which constituted the 
 vagaries of the reputed devil-worshipers. 
 
 At the present day we stand indebted 
 to the occult sciences for so many well- 
 established and authenticated facts that, 
 sooner or later, these sciences will have 
 regular professors, just as chemistry and 
 astronomy now have. It is strange in- 
 deed that at a time when we are estab- 
 lishing at Paris professorships of Slavonic 
 and Mantchu, and professorships of'litei'- 
 atures, so unprofessable as those of the 
 north — which, instead of giving, ought to 
 be receiving lessons, and the professors of 
 which do nothing but repeat eternal arti- 
 cles on Shakespeare and the sixteenth 
 century — it is passing strange that the 
 study of the occult philosophy, one of 
 the glories of the ancient university, 
 has not been restored under the name 
 of Anthropology. In this respect Ger- 
 many, that land which is at once so 
 mature and so infantile, has outstripped 
 France ; for in Germany this science — a 
 science which is much more useful than 
 the various philosophies, which are, after 
 all, but one and the same thing — is regu- 
 larly taught. 
 
 That certain beings should have the 
 power of predicting future events from 
 their germinal causes (just as the great 
 inventor detects an industry or a science 
 in some natural phenomenon which eludes 
 the observation of the common herd) is 
 no longer regarded as one of those exorbi- 
 tant exceptions which set people talking ; 
 it is the effect of an unknown faculty 
 which might, in some sort, be deemed the 
 somnambulism of the mind. 
 
 If this proposition, on which, the various 
 methods of deciphering the future rest, 
 be deemed absurd, the fact itself remains. 
 Observe, that to predict the important 
 events of the future is not a more extra- 
 ordinarj' exhibition of power on the part 
 of the seer than ,to read the past ; for, 
 according to the skeptics, the past and 
 the future are alike beyond our ken. But 
 if past events have left their traces be- 
 hind' them, it is but rational to presume 
 that coming events must have their roots
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 ,.i ohe present. When a fortune-teller 
 h;is once related to you, with the utmost 
 minuteness of detail, facts in your past 
 career which are known to yourself onl^', 
 he can certainly foretell I he events that 
 existing' causes will produce. The moral 
 world is fashioned, so to speak, on the 
 pattern of the physical world ; allowing- 
 for tiiirerences of medium, we may expect 
 to find the same phenomena in both. 
 Accordingl.y, just as bodies do really pro- 
 ject themselves into the atmosphere, and 
 there create those specters which the 
 daguerreotj'pe seizes and fixes as they 
 fly, so do ideas — which are real and 
 operative entities — imprint themselves 
 upon that which we are bound to call 
 the atmosphere of the spiritual world, 
 do there produce effects and do there 
 spectrally exist — one is forced to coin 
 phrases to describe phenomena hitherto 
 unnamed — whence it follows tliat certain 
 exceptionally gifted beings may, without 
 any dilflcultj'^, perceive these ideal forms 
 or traces of ideas. 
 
 As to the means employed for the pro- 
 duction of visions, those means will not 
 bo found to enshroud any very profound 
 mj'stery when it is considered that 'tis 
 the hand of the inquirer himself that ar- 
 ranges the objects by aid of which he is 
 made to represent the accidents of his ex- 
 istence. As a matter of fact, in the ma- 
 terial world there is an unbroken sequence 
 of cause and effect. There every move- 
 ment has its corresponding cause ; everj'^ 
 cause is an integral part of the one great 
 whole ; and, consequentlj'^, that one great 
 whole is represented by the least move- 
 ment. Rabelais, the greatest intellect of 
 modern times — Rabelais, that epitome 
 of Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Aristotle, 
 and Dante, said, three centuries ago : 
 "Man is a microcosm." Three centuries 
 later, Swedenborg, the great prophet of 
 Sweden, said that the earth was a man. 
 The prophet therefore concurred with the 
 precursor of infidelity in the grandest of 
 all formulae. As in the life of our planet, 
 so in human life, fate is the arbiter of all 
 things. The smallest, the most trivial, 
 incidents are subject to it. Under its in- 
 fluence, then, great events, grand designs. 
 
 great thoughts are reflected in the most 
 insignificant actions, and with such fidelity 
 that, if some conspirator shuffle and cut a 
 pack of cards, he will write upon them 
 th(! secrcit of his conspiracy in characters 
 legible to the seer who is called gypsy, 
 fortune-teller, charlatan, etc., etc. Once 
 admit the doctrine of fatality, that is to 
 say, the concatenation of causes, judicial 
 astrology follows and becomes — what it 
 formerly w^as — a vast science ; for it in- 
 volves the possession of that deductive 
 faculty which made Cuvier so great ; 
 though that fine genius did not exercise 
 the faculty' spontaneously as the seer 
 does, but during studious nig-hts spent in 
 the seclusion of the closet. 
 
 Judicial astrology or divination reigTied 
 for seven centuries, not, as now, over the 
 poor and the uneducated, but over the 
 highest intellects — over sovereigns, over 
 queens, over the wealthj'. Animal mag- 
 netism, one of the greatest sciences of 
 antiquity, is an offshoot from the occult 
 sciences, just as chemistry sprung from 
 the alembic of the alchemist. Craniol- 
 ogy, physiognomy, neurology, all derive 
 their orig-in from the occult sciences ; and 
 the illustrious creators of these apparently 
 new sciences fell into one mistake only — 
 the mistake of all inventors — that of posi- 
 tivel3'- systematizing isolated facts whose 
 generating cause has not yet been discov- 
 ered. One day the Catholic Church, mod- 
 ern philosophy, and the law united their 
 forces, to proscribe, to persecute, and to 
 ridicule the mj'steries of the Cabala and 
 its adepts; and the result was a deploi*- 
 able lacuna of a hundred years' duration 
 in the stud^'^ and the sovereig-ntj^ of the 
 occult sciences. But be that as it may, 
 the people and manj' intelligent persons, 
 especially women, continue to pay tribute 
 to the mysterious powers of those who cah 
 raise the veil that hides the future from 
 our sight. To them these votaries go 
 to purchase hope, courage, fortitude ; to 
 purchase that which only religion can 
 give ; so that this science is still prac- 
 ticed, though not without certain risks. 
 In these days, thanks to the toleration 
 preached b3'^ the encyclopedists of the 
 eighteenth century, the sorcerer is exempt
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 103 
 
 from torture; he is amenable to the tri- 
 bunals of correctional police only ; nor is 
 he amenable even to them unless he have 
 I'ecourse to fraudulent maneuvers by 
 frightening- his customers with intent to 
 extort money from them, which amounts 
 to swindling. Unfortunately swindling-, 
 and even greater offenses, often accom- 
 pany' the exercise of this sublime faculty ; 
 for the following reasons : The admirable 
 endowments that characterize the seer 
 are often to be found in persons to whom 
 the epithet brute is applied. These brutes 
 are the chosen vessels which God fills with 
 those elixirs which surprise humanitj'. 
 From the ranks of these brutes come our 
 prophets, such men as Saint Peter and 
 Peter the Hermit. 
 
 Whenever thought preserves its in- 
 tegrity, is not split up into fragments, 
 is not dissipated in conversation, in in- 
 trigue, in. literary work, in scientific 
 fancies, in administrative labors, in ef- 
 forts to invent, or in military operations, 
 it is ready suddenly- to burst forth in rays 
 of prodigious intensity, rays that are 
 latent as the brilliant facets of the dia- 
 mond lie hid in the uncut stone. Let 
 some particular event occur ; the stored 
 intelligence begins to kindle, finds wings 
 to traverse space, and eyes divine that 
 nothing can escape. Yesterday 'twas 
 but a lump of carbon ; to-day, trans- 
 formed by the jet of mysterious fluid 
 that permeates it, it is a scintillating- 
 gem. Persons of superior cultivation, 
 persons every side of whose intellect is 
 cut and polished, are unequal (except 
 through one of those miracles in which 
 God sometimes indulges) to the display 
 of this supreme force. Thus the male 
 or female soothsayer is almost alwaj'S 
 a mendicant of uncultivated intellect, a 
 being of coarse exterior, a stone that 
 has been rolled in the torrents of priva- 
 tion and in the ruts of life, where the 
 only drain upon the vital force has been 
 physical suffering. In fact, the type of 
 the prophet, of the seer, is Martin the 
 Laborer, who made Louis XVIII. tremble 
 by telling him a secret which onl^- the 
 king could know ; or 'tis a Mademoiselle 
 Lenormand, or (like Madame Fontaine) 
 
 a cook ; an imbecile negress, a herdsman, 
 the constant companion of horned beasts, 
 or a fakir, seated by the side of some 
 pagoda, and developing the mind to the 
 utmost limits of its unknown somnam- 
 bulistic powers In- mortifying the body. 
 (It is in Asia that the heroes of the occult 
 sciences have ever been encountered.) 
 Now such persons — who may, in a cer- 
 tain sense, be said to fulfill the phj-sical 
 and chemical functions of electrical con- 
 ductors, which are now inert metals, and 
 now channels filled with m\-sterious fluids 
 — such persons, in their ordinary state, 
 retain their ordinarj- character, and 
 when, the inspiration having departed, 
 they resume that character, they fre- 
 quently resort to schemes and practices 
 which subject them to fine and imprison- 
 ment, nay, sometimes lead them even 
 into the dock, and thence to the galleys, 
 as in the case of the notorious Balthazar. 
 In conclusion — and what stronger proof 
 of the enormous influence exercised by 
 cartomancy over the minds of the com- 
 mon i)eople could there be ? — it depended 
 upon the hoi-oscope cast by Madame Fon- 
 taine for Madame Cibot, whether the 
 poor musician should live or die. 
 
 Although in a history so extensive and 
 so loaded with details, as a complete his- 
 tory of French society in the nineteenth 
 centurj' must necessarily be, certain repe- 
 titions are inevitable, it is superfluous to 
 describe the den of Madame Fontaine, 
 since a description of it has alreadj' been 
 given in "Les Comediens sans Ic savoir." 
 All that need here be said is tliat Madame 
 Cibot walked into Madame Fontaine's 
 house in the Rue Vieille du Temple, just 
 as the regular frequenters of the Cafe 
 Anglais walk into that restaurant to gret 
 their breakfast. Madame Cibot. who was 
 a very old customer of Madame Fon- 
 taine's, often introduced to her young 
 women and gossips devoured by curi- 
 osity. 
 
 The old abigail who acted as provost to 
 the fortune-teller threw open tlic door of 
 the sanctuary without giving lier mistress 
 any warning, and exclaimed : 
 
 " 'Tis Madame Cibot ! Step in, mad- 
 ame," she added; "my mistress is alone."
 
 104 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY, 
 
 " Well, my darling, and pray wliat is 
 it briiig:s you here so earl 3' ? " inquired the 
 soi'ceress. 
 
 Madame Fontaine, who was seventj'- 
 eight 3'ears old, deserved the appellation 
 sorceress; she resembled one of tlie Parcae. 
 
 "My blood is completijly turned; let 
 me have the grand pack," cried Madame 
 Cibot. "My whole fortune is at stake." 
 
 And she proceeded to explain the posi- 
 tion in which she stood, and asked for a 
 prediction as to the outcome of her sordid 
 hope. 
 
 " You don't know what the grand pack 
 is, do you ? " inquired Madame Fontaine, 
 solemnly'. 
 
 "No; I'm not rich enough to have seen 
 that farce played ! A hundred francs, 
 forsooth ! Asking your pardon — where 
 should I get a hundred francs from ? But 
 to-day the grand pack I must have ! " 
 
 " I don't often use it, my darling," re- 
 plied Madame Fontaine. "I onlj^ show it 
 to worthy customers on great occasions ; 
 and then I get twent^'-five louis for it ; 
 for it wearies me, it wears me out, look 
 you. The spirit seizes me thei'e, in the 
 stomach. It is just like going to the 
 witches' Sabbath, as they used to say." 
 
 " But when I tell you, my good Mad- 
 ame Fontaine, that mj' future n'is in- 
 volved — " 
 
 '■' Well, well ; for you, who have 
 brought me so many customers, I will 
 consult the Spirit," replied Madame 
 Fontaine, whose decrepit face assumed 
 a terrified expression that was perfectly 
 genuine. 
 
 Thereupon she quitted her old and 
 greasy armchair at the corner of the 
 fireplace, and walked to her table, which 
 was covered with a green cloth complete- 
 ly threadbare. On the left side of this 
 table was to be seen an enormous toad 
 asleep, and close behind the toad stood an 
 open cage tenanted by a black hen with 
 niffli'd plumage. 
 
 ■• Aslitaroth, mj' boy, come here," said 
 the crone, as with a knitting-needle she 
 gave the toad a tap on the back, to which 
 he replied with a glance of intelligence. 
 "And you, too. Miss Cleopatra ! Atten- 
 tion ! " she pursued, tapping the old hen 
 
 upon its beak. Madame Fontaine then 
 lapsed into meditation and remained mo- 
 tionless for a few seconds ; she looked like 
 a corpse ; her eyes turned till nothing was 
 seen of them but the whites. Then her" 
 whole body stiffened, and she exclaimed, 
 in a sepulchral voice: "I am here!" 
 After having automatically^ strewed some 
 millet about for Cleopatra, she took her 
 grand pack of cards, shuffled them con- 
 vulsively, and with a deep-drawn sigh 
 made Madame Cibot cut them. At the 
 sight of this image of death, as, crowned 
 with a greasy turban and wrapped in an 
 unsig'htly bed-gown, it kept its eyes fixed 
 on the millet-seed which the black hen 
 was pecking at, and summoned Aslitaroth 
 to crawl about over the scattered cards, 
 Madame Cibot felt her back turn cold ; 
 she shuddered. 'Tis only firm conviction 
 that can give rise to deep emotions. 
 " To be or not to be " a fundholder ; that 
 was the question, as Shakespeare would 
 have said. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 A CHARACTER FROM ONE OF HOFFMAN S ' 
 
 STORIES. 
 
 After the lapse of seven or eight min- 
 utes, during which the sorceress opened, 
 and in a hollow voice read from the pages 
 of a conjui'ing book, examined the seed 
 that was left, and marked the route taken 
 by the retreating toad, she proceeded to 
 decipher the meaning of the cards with 
 her colorless ej'es. 
 
 "You will succeed," said the crone; 
 "although nothing will turn out as you 
 expect. You will have a great deal to do. 
 But you will reap the fruit of your labors. 
 You will behave very badly ; but it will 
 be with you as it is with all those who, 
 being brought into contact with sick folks, 
 are on the lookout for a legacy. You will 
 be aided in your evil work by considerable 
 personages. Later on, you Avill repent, in 
 the agonies of death ; for j'ou will die, 
 murdered by two escaped convicts (one of 
 them, a little man with red hair, and the 
 other, an old man quite bald) for the sake
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 105 
 
 of the fortune you will be supposed to 
 have, by the people of the villag-e to which 
 3'ou will retire with your second hus- 
 band. Now, my daughter, j-ou may 
 pursue your course or remain quiet, as 
 you please." 
 
 Thereupon the internal excitement that 
 had kindled torches in the hollow ej'es of 
 the skeleton that was outwardl3' so cold, 
 subsided. When the horoscope had been 
 announced, Madame Fontaine experienced 
 a kind of bewilderment, and looked exactly 
 like an awakened somnambulist. She 
 gazed all round her, with an air of as- 
 tonishmeut; then, recognizing Madame 
 Cibot, she seemed surprised to find her a 
 prey to the horror depicted in her feat- 
 ures. 
 
 " Well, my daughter," said the sorcer- 
 ess, in a voice quite different from that 
 which she had used when prophesying, 
 " are you satisfied ? " 
 
 Madame Cibot looked with a dazed ex- 
 pression at the inquirer, and found herself 
 unable to reply. 
 
 "Ah ! you tvould have the grand pack ; 
 I treated you as an old acquaintance. 
 Give me a hundred francs ; but — " 
 
 " Cibot ! die ! " cried the portress. 
 
 " I have told you some terrible things, 
 then?" said Madame Fontaine, with the 
 utmost ingenuovisness. 
 
 "I should think so!" said Madame 
 Cibot, taking from her pocket a hundred 
 francs and laying them on the table. 
 "To die, murdered!" 
 
 " Ah ! you see, you woitld have the 
 grand pack. But take comfort ; the 
 people whom the cards kill do not al- 
 ways diet" 
 
 " But is it possible, Mistress Fontaine ?" 
 
 " Oh ! my little beauty, I know nothing 
 about the matter ! You wished to knock 
 at the door of the future ; I merely pulled 
 the string, that's all ; and he came ! " 
 
 " He, who's he .?" asked Madame Cibot. 
 
 "Why, the Spirit, of course," replied 
 the .sorceress, impatiently. 
 
 "■ Adieu, Mistress Fontaine ! " cried the 
 portress. "Little did I know what the 
 grand pack was ; you have thoroughly' 
 frightened me, indeed you n'have ! " 
 
 " Mistress doesn't put herself into that 
 
 condition twice a month," said the ser- 
 vant, as she accompanied the portress 
 to the landing. " She would die of the 
 exertion; it tires her so much. Now she 
 will eat a dish of cutlets and sleep for 
 three hours." 
 
 As Madame Cibot pursued her way 
 tuhrogh the streets, she did what all 
 those who seek advice of any kind in- 
 variably' do ; she believed all that told in 
 her favor, and doubted the reahty of the 
 predicted misfortunes. On the morrow, 
 fortified in her resolutions, she bethought 
 her to move heaven and earth in order 
 that she might grow rich by securing the 
 gift of a portion of the Pons Museum. To 
 devise such measures as might conduce to 
 the success of her scheme, was, for a time, 
 her only thought. The phenomenon which 
 we explained but now, namely, the con- 
 centration of the mental faculties in com- 
 mon people, who not being called upon, 
 as their betters are, for the dail^' expendi- 
 ture of their intellectual capital, find it 
 intact when that powerful engine — the 
 fixed idea — begins to sway their spirits, 
 now manifested itself in a remarkable 
 manner in the conduct of Madame .Cibot. 
 Just as the fixed idea produces marvelous 
 escapes and miracles of sentiment, so cu- 
 pidity, worldng on the brain of this por- 
 tress, rendered her as potent as a Nucingen 
 on the verge of bankruptcy-, as acute, be- 
 neath her apparent stupidity, as the 
 seductive La Palferine. 
 
 Some days after her interview with 
 Madame Fontaine, seeing Remonencq 
 engaged in opening his shop at about 
 seven o'clock in the morning, she sidled 
 up to him and said to him : 
 
 "What are we to do in order to find 
 out the value of the things up yonder in 
 my gentlemen's rooms ? " 
 
 "Oh! that's easy enough," said the 
 curiosity-dealer in that revolting patois, 
 the reproduction of which is not essential 
 to the clearness of the narrative ; "if you 
 will deal frankly with me, I will name a 
 valuer, a very honest man, who will know 
 what the pictures are worth, almost to a 
 pennj'." 
 
 " Who's that ? " 
 
 "Monsieur Magus, a Jew, who never
 
 106 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 does any business now except by way of 
 amusement." 
 
 Elie Mag-US, whose name is so well 
 known in the "Comeclie Humaine " that 
 it is unnecessary to describe him, had re- 
 tired from the business of dealer in pict- 
 ures and curiosities, and, in his capacity 
 of tradesman, had followed in the foot- 
 steps of Pons the amateur. Those cele- 
 brated valuers, the late Henry, Messieurs 
 Pigeot and Moret, Theret, Georges and 
 Roehn — in short, the experts of the Mu- 
 seum — were mere children as compared 
 with Elie Magus, who could smell a chef- 
 d'oeuvre under a coating- of dirt a hundred 
 years old, and knew all the schools of 
 painting and the stj^le of every painter. 
 
 This Jew, who had come to Paris from 
 Bordeaux, had given up business in 1835, 
 without giving up his poverty-stricken 
 exterior. This he retained faithful, as 
 most Jews are, to the traditions of the 
 race. During the Middle Ages, the Jews, 
 in order to divert suspicion, were com- 
 pelled to be perpetually complaining, 
 whining, and pleading poverty; and these 
 exploded necessities became (as ah^ays 
 happens) a popular instinct, an endemic 
 vice. Elie Magus, by dint of buying and 
 selling diamonds, bartering pictures and 
 lace, choice curiosities and enamels, fine 
 sculpture and old jewelry, had secretlj' 
 amassed a large foi'tune in this branch of 
 trade, which is now so extensively carried 
 on. In fact, the number of dealers in 
 Paris is now ten times as large as it was 
 twenty years ago. Paris is the city in 
 which all the curiosities in the world fore- 
 gather. As to pictures, there are only 
 three cities in which thej'- are sold — Rome, 
 London, and Paris. 
 
 Elie Magus dwelt in the Chaussee des 
 Miiiimes, a street leading to the Place 
 Royale. In that street, whose magni- 
 tude belies its name, he owned an old man- 
 sicm which he had bought in 1831 for an 
 old song, as the saying is. This magnifi- 
 cent edifice contained a most luxurious 
 suite of rooms which had been fitted up 
 during the Louis Quinze period. In fact, 
 it was the old Hotel de Maulincourt. It 
 had been built b^^ that celebrated presi- 
 dent of the Cour des Aides, and had es- 
 
 caped destruction during the Revolution 
 bj^ reason of its position. Now since, in 
 defiance of tlie laws of Israel, th^ old 
 Jew had made up his mind to turn l?ind- 
 owncr, you may be sure that he had ex- 
 cellent reasons for his conduct. The old 
 man had done what we all do in our de- 
 clining 3'ears ; he "had developed a passion, 
 which had grown into a mania. Although 
 he was as great a miser as his deceased 
 friend Gobseck, he allowed himself to be- 
 come infected with a passionate admira- 
 tion for the masterpieces in which he 
 dealt ; but his taste for them had grown 
 more and more refined and fastidious, 
 until it had become one of those passions 
 which are permitted only to sovereigns 
 who are wealthy and love the Arts. Just 
 as the second king of Prussia cared little 
 for a grenadier under six feet high, and 
 would spend enormous suins in order to 
 add to his animated museum of grena- 
 diers a specimen who reached that stand- 
 ard, so the enthusiasm of the retired 
 picture-dealer was aroused only by the 
 faultless specimens of the painter's art — 
 specimens that had never been retouched 
 by an inferior hand, and were first-rate of 
 their kind. Elie Magus accordingly went 
 to every important sale, attended every 
 mart, and traveled all over Europe. This 
 gold-enamored, ice-cold heart warmed up 
 on beholding a masterpiece, just as an ex- 
 hausted voluptuarj'- kindles at the sight of 
 a peerless beauty, and devotes himself to 
 the discovery of such paragons. This 
 Don Juan of the picture-gallery, this 
 idolater of the ideal, found in his enthusi- 
 astic admiration joys superior to those 
 that the contemplation of gold yields to 
 the miser. Elie Magus lived in a seraglio 
 of beautiful pictures ! 
 
 These masterpieces were lodged as be- 
 fits the children of princes. In the old 
 Hotel de Maulincourt they occupied the 
 whole of the first story, which Elie Magus 
 had caused to be restored with remark- 
 able splendor ! The window-curtains were 
 of the finest Venetian gold brocade ; the 
 most magnificent products of the Savon- 
 nerie carpeted the floors. The jiictures, 
 to the number of about one hundred, were 
 inclosed in the most splendid frames.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 107 
 
 which had been tastefully regilded bj' the 
 only conscientious gilder. that Elie could 
 find in all Paris — Servais, to wit, whom 
 the old Jew had instructed in the art of 
 gilding- with English gold (which is infi- 
 nitelj' superior to that of the French gold- 
 beaters). Servais is, as a gilder, what 
 Thouvenin was as a book-binder — an 
 artist who loves his craft. The windows 
 of this first floor were protected by shut- 
 ters lined with sheet iron. Magus himself 
 occupied a couple of attics on the second 
 floor — two meanly furnished rooms, en- 
 cumbered with his rags, and redolent of 
 Jewish habits ; for as the commencement 
 of his life had been, even so was its close. 
 
 On the ground-floor, which was entirely 
 taken up by the pictures that the Jew 
 still continued to barter, and by the pack- 
 ing-cases in which they had been sent from 
 abroad, there was a vast studio Avherein 
 Moret, the most skillful of our picture 
 cleaners — a man who ought to be em- 
 plo3'ed by the authorities of the Museum 
 — spent almost the whole of his time in 
 working for Magus. On this floor also 
 were the apartments of Elie's daughter, 
 the child of his old age, a Jewess who was 
 beautiful with the beauty common to all 
 Jewesses in whose features the pure Asi- 
 atic type is reproduced. Noemi was under 
 the protecting care of two female ser- 
 vants, both of whom were fanatics, and 
 of Jewish extraction. A Polish Jew named 
 Abramko, who, through some extraordi- 
 nary fi'eak of fortune, had been compro- 
 mised by the course of events in Poland, 
 and had been saved b^'' Elie Magus, as a 
 matter of speculation, was Noemi's ad- 
 vanced guard. This Abramko, the porter 
 of this silent, drear, and desolate abode, 
 occupied a lodge garrisoned b}' three ex- 
 tremely ferocious dogs, one of which was 
 a Newfoundland, another a Pyreneandog, 
 and the third an English bull-dog. 
 
 The Jew, who used to quit his home 
 without any feeling of uneasiness, to 
 sleep soundly ahd dread no attack, either 
 upon his daughter — his chief treasure — or 
 upon his pictures, or upon his gold, had 
 good reasons for this freedom from anx- 
 iety which was based upon the following 
 deeply planned precautions : Abramko 's I 
 
 wages were raised eight pounds every 
 year; he was not to receive a single doit 
 at the death of Magus, who was bringing 
 him up to be the money-lender of the 
 neighborhood ; he never opened the door 
 to any caller without subjecting him to a 
 preliminary scrutiny through a grated 
 window. Abramko, a man of herculean 
 build, worshiped Magus as Sancho Panza 
 worshiped Don Quixote. The dogs were 
 chained up during the day, but at night- 
 fall Abramko unchained them ; where- 
 upon, in accordance with the cunning 
 calculations of the Jew, one of them 
 would station himself in the garden, at 
 tlie foot of a post, on the top of which 
 a bit of meat was hooked ; the second 
 would plant himself in the court at the 
 foot of a similar post, and the third in 
 the large salon on the ground-floor. 
 The reader will at once perceive that 
 these dogs, whose untutored instinct led 
 them to guard the house, were themselves 
 guarded by tlieir Imnger. The fairest 
 female of their race would not have 
 seduced them from their posts at the 
 foot of their greased poles, which they 
 did not quit to sniff at anything. Did 
 a stranger present himself, the three 
 dogs forthwith imagined that he had de- 
 signs upon their food, the food which was 
 never lowered to them until Abramko rose 
 in the morning. This infernal submissive- 
 ness on the part of the dogs was attend- 
 ed by Immense advantages. They never 
 barked ; the genius of Magus had pro- 
 moted them to the rank of savages ; they 
 had become as sullenly taciturn as Mo- 
 hicans. Now mark the result. One day 
 certain malefactors, encouraged by the 
 prevailing silence, took it into their heads 
 tliat they would have little difficulty in 
 cleaning out the cash-box of the Jew. 
 The one who was selected to lead the 
 attack mounted the garden wall, and was 
 in the act of descending, when the bull- 
 dog, who had heard the whole proceeding 
 without, up to that point, interfering, n« 
 sooner found the gentleman's foot within 
 reach of his canine jaws than he bit it 
 clean off and eat it. The robber had 
 courage enough to recross the wall ani 
 walk upon the bleeding stump until lie
 
 103 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 reached his comrades, and, falling- faint- 
 ing- into their arms, was by them borne 
 off. This charming^ little episode of " The 
 Parisian Nights" was duly chronicled in 
 tlie "'Gazette des Tribunaux," under the 
 head of " Doings in Paris," and was taken 
 for a puff. 
 
 JIag-us, who was now seventy-five years 
 of age, mig-ht well live to be a hundred. 
 Rich as he was, he lived as the Remo- 
 nencqs lived. Three thousand francs cov- 
 ered his annual expenses, including- his 
 extravagances on behalf of his daughter. 
 The old man led a life of the severest 
 regularitj-. He rose with the sun, and 
 made his breakfast on bread rubbed with 
 garlic. That carried him on till the din- 
 ner hour. He always dined at home, and 
 with monastic frugality. The interval 
 between his rising- and noon was em- 
 ployed by the monomaniac in pacing up 
 and down the apartment that contained 
 his masterpieces. There he dusted every- 
 thing, furniture as well as pictures ; and 
 never did his admiration flag. Then he 
 would g:o down to his daug-hter's room, 
 and having- drunk deep of the pleasures 
 of jiaternity, would set off on his rambles 
 through Paris, attend sales, visit exhibi- 
 tions, and so forth. When he stumbled 
 on a masterpiece, in a state which satis- 
 fled his self-imposed conditions, the blood 
 began to course more quickly through his 
 veins ; here was a cunning stroke of busi- 
 ness to be done, a transaction to be car- 
 ried through, a battle of Mareng-o to be 
 gained ! In order to secure this new sul- 
 tana for a moderate sum he would heap 
 artifice on artifice. Magus had his own 
 private map of Europe — a map on which 
 the local habitation of every masterpiece 
 is marked— and he instructed his co-relig- 
 ionists in each localitj^ to keep a watchful 
 eye upon the business on his behalf — for 
 a consideration. If Magus took a world 
 of trouble how vast was his reward ! 
 
 For it is Magus who possesses the two 
 lost pictures of Raphael which the Ra- 
 phaelites have sought with so much per- 
 sistence ; Mag-US is the owner of the orig-- 
 inal portrait of Giorgione's mistress — the 
 woman for whose sake the artist died ; 
 and the so-called originals are but copies 
 
 of this illustrious picture which, in Magus's 
 opinion, is worth no less than five hundred 
 thousand francs. Mag-us is tlie owner 
 of Titian's masterpiece, "The Burial of 
 Chi"ist," a picture that was painted for 
 Charles V., and sent by the great artist 
 to the great emperor accompanied by a 
 letter which is throughout in Titian's 
 handwriting, and is gummed to the bot- 
 tom of the picture. Magus possesses the 
 original painting, the rough sketch from 
 which all the portraits of Philip II. were 
 taken. His other pictures, to the number 
 of ninety-seven, are all of similar rank 
 and distinction. So that Magus laughs 
 to scorn our poor Museum, ravaged as it 
 is by the solar rays which, passing through 
 windows that act like so man\' lenses, 
 corrode the finest pictures. The only 
 admissible method of lighting a picture- 
 gallery is to light it from the ceiling. 
 With his own hand did Magus open and 
 close the shutters of his museum, bestow- 
 ing ;is much care upon it as he bestowed 
 upon his other idol — his daughter. Ah I 
 full well did the old picture-maniac un- 
 derstand the laws that govern paintings ! 
 According to him, masterpieces had a 
 life peculiar to themselves ; the^' changed 
 with the changing hour ; their beauty 
 depended on the light that shone upon 
 them ; the old man talked about his pict- 
 ures as the Dutch used to talk about 
 their tulips, and would i^ay a visit to such 
 and such a painting at the moment when 
 it was to be seen in all its glory under the 
 influence of a clear bright sky. 
 
 Clad in a wretched little coat, a silk 
 waistcoat of ten years' standing, and a 
 greas\' pair of trousers, this little old 
 man with the bald head, the hollow 
 cheeks, the quivering beard of prickly 
 white, the pointed threatening chin, the 
 toothless mouth, eye bright as that of his 
 own dogs, thin bony hands, obelisk-nose, 
 and cold and wrinkled skin-, as he stood 
 smiling at these beautiful creations of 
 genius, was a living pictui^e among all 
 those inanimate pictures. A Jew in the 
 midst of three millions of mone\' will ever 
 be one of the flnest spectacles in the re- 
 pertory of humanity. Our great actor 
 Robert Medal, sublime as he is, cannot 
 
 ^
 
 COUSIX FO]^S. 
 
 100 
 
 soar to that poetic height ! There are 
 more of sucli originals as Magus in Paris 
 than in any other city in the world. The 
 eccentricities of London always wind up 
 by becoming disgusted with the objects 
 of their adoration, just as they become 
 disgusted with life; while your Parisian 
 monomimiac, on the contraiy, dwells with 
 his chimera in a happj' state of intellect- 
 ual communion. At Paris you will en- 
 counter many a Pons and many an Elie 
 ilagus, most shabbily dressed creatures, 
 with noses (like that of the permanent 
 secretary of the French Academy) point- 
 ing due west, and who seem to be with- 
 out cares and without sensations, who 
 never look at a woman or a shop, walk 
 about, so to speak, hap-hazard, with 
 nothing in their pockets, and — to all out- 
 ward seeming — nothing in their pates. 
 •'To what tribe of Parisian can these 
 folks belong?" you ask yourself. Well, 
 these men are millionaires, collectors, the 
 most impassioned people in the world, 
 people who are quite capable of pushing 
 forward into the miry region of the police- 
 court — as Elie Magus actually did one fine 
 day, in Germany — in their eagerness to 
 possess a cup, a picture, or some rare coin. 
 
 Such then was the expert to whom 
 Madame Cibot was, with much mysterj^, 
 conducted by Remonencq, who was in 
 the habit of consulting Elie Magus when- 
 ever they met on the boulevard, and to 
 whom the Jew, well knowing the trust- 
 worthiness of the former commissionaire, 
 had, on sundry occasions, advanced money 
 through Abrainko. The Chaussee des 
 Minimes being only a few steps fi'om the 
 Rue de Normandie, the two accomplices 
 in the stroke of business to be done, 
 reached their destination in ten minutes. 
 
 '•' You are going to see the wealthiest 
 retired curiosity -dealer and the greatest 
 connoisseur in Paris," said Remonencq to 
 the lady. 
 
 Madame Cibot was astounded at find- 
 ing herself in the presence of a little old 
 man, dressed in a great-coat too mucJi 
 worn to be worthy of Cibot's amending 
 hand, and occupied in watching his pict- 
 ure-restorer, a painter, who was engaged 
 in touching up a picture in a bare room 
 
 on the vast ground-floor which we have 
 mentioned. When she caught the glance 
 of those eyes, which were as full of calcu- 
 lating mischief as those of a cat, she 
 tremblod . 
 
 " What do you want, Remonencq ? " 
 inquired the Jew. 
 
 ' ' I want some pictures valued : and 
 you are the only person in Paris who can 
 tell a poor coppersmith like me what he 
 may venture to give for them when he 
 has not hundreds and thousands as you 
 have." 
 
 "Where are they? " asked Elie Magus. 
 
 " This is the portress of the house ; she 
 is the gentleman's housekeeper, and I 
 have made arrangements with her — " 
 
 " What is the name of the owner of the 
 pictures?" 
 
 " Monsieur Pons," said Madame Cibot. 
 
 '•'I don't know him," replied Magus, 
 assuming an ingenuous air, and with his 
 own foot gently pressing that of his pict- 
 ure-cleaner. 
 
 Moret, who, being a painter, knew the 
 value of the Pons Museum, had bruskly 
 raised his head. This httle bit of by-plaj' 
 could have been hazarded only in the 
 presence of persons such as Remonencq 
 and Madame Cibot. The Jew, using his 
 eyes as a gold-weigher uses his scales, 
 had appraised the moral value of the 
 portress at a glance. Both she and her 
 accomplice were necessarily ignorant of 
 the fact that the worthy Pons and ilagus 
 had often taken the length of each other's 
 claws. In fact, these two ferocious ama- 
 teurs were envious of each other. Tlie 
 old Jew had, accordingly, just experienced 
 a sort of mental dazzlement. He had 
 never hoped to penetrate into so well- 
 guarded a harem. The Pons Museum 
 was the only museum in Paris that could 
 be compared with that of Magus. The 
 same idea that had occurred to Pons had 
 occurred to Jlagus; only it occuired to 
 him twenty years later. But as being 
 that hybrid, a tradesman-amateur, he, 
 like the late Dusommerard, had been ex- 
 chided from the Pons Museum. Pons 
 and Magus were both imbued with the 
 same jealous feeling ; both of them 
 shunned that publicity which the owners
 
 110 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 of collections generallj' court. To be en- 
 abled to examine the gallery of the poor 
 musician afforded Elie Magus as much 
 delight as a lover of the fair sex would 
 derive from a surreptitious visit to the 
 boudoir in which a jealous friend had se- 
 questered a beautiful mistress. 
 
 The gi-eat respect evinced )ay Remonencq 
 for this strange personage, and the spell 
 that all genuine power — even though it 
 be mj-sterious — exerts, rendered Madame 
 Cibot supple and submissive: she dropped 
 the autocratic tone tliat she adopted in 
 the lodge in lier intercourse with her 
 two gentlemen and with the other occu- 
 pants of the house, accepted Magus's 
 conditions, and promised to introduce 
 him into the Pons Museum that veiy 
 Ao.\. Now, this was admitting the enemy 
 into the very citadel itself ; this Avas 
 equivalent to plunging a dagger into 
 the heart of Pons, who, for ten years 
 past, had laid upon Madame Cibot a 
 strict injunction not to allow any one 
 whomsoever to enter his apartments, 
 and had always taken his keys -with 
 him when he went out; and this injunc- 
 tion Madame Cibot had obej-ed so long 
 as she shared the opinions of Schmucke 
 in the matter of bric-a-brac. Indeed tlie 
 worthy Schmucke, by treating all these 
 magnificent works as mere gewgaws and 
 bewailing Pons's mania, had instilled his 
 own contempt for the old rubbish into the 
 mind of the portress, and thus secured 
 the Pons Museum from invasion for many 
 a year. 
 
 Since Pons had been confined to his bed, 
 Schmucke had acted as his deputy, both 
 at the tlieater and in the schools that 
 Pons attended. The poor German, who 
 saw his friend only in the morning and at 
 dinner-time, tried to meet all demands by 
 keeping together both Pons's connection 
 and his own. But the task exhausted 
 all the old man's energies, diminished as 
 they were by his overwhelming grief. 
 Seeing the poor man so dejected, the 
 pupils and the theatrical folk — to aU of 
 whom Schmucke had communicated the 
 fact of Pons's illness — asked him about 
 the health of the patient ; and so pro- 
 found was the sorrow of the old pianist 
 
 that even the indifferent assumed that 
 affectation of concern which is the Pari- 
 sian's tribute to capital catastrophes. 
 
 As with Pons so Avith Schmucke, the 
 vital principle itself was attacked. Nor 
 was it only from his own pangs that 
 Schmucke suffered : he suffered also with 
 his suffering friend. His mind was so full 
 on the subject that he would talk about 
 Pons during a full half of the time that 
 should have been devoted to the lesson he 
 was giving ; he would so naively break olf 
 in the middle of an explanation to ask 
 himself how his fiiend was faring, that 
 his youthful pupil would find herself list- 
 ening to a disquisition on Pons's ailments. 
 In the interval between two lessons, 
 Schmucke would rush off to the Rue de 
 Normandie to spend a quarter of an hour 
 by the bedside of his friend. Scared at 
 the emptiness of the joint cash-box, and 
 alarmed by Madame Cibot, who during 
 the last fortnight had been doing her best 
 to swell the expenses of the sick-room, the 
 old pianist found that a new-born coui'age, 
 for which he would never have given him- 
 self credit, enabled him to rise superior to 
 his troubles. Now, for the first time in 
 the whole course of his career, he wanted 
 to get money ; in order that there mig-ht 
 be no dearth of it at home. When one of 
 his 3'oung \^(iy pupils, who felt a genuine 
 pity for the two friends, asked Schmucke 
 how he could bear to leave Pons all alone, 
 he replied with the sublime simplicity of 
 the dupe : " Matemoiselle, we have Mon- 
 tame Zibod ! ein treasure ! ein bearl ! 
 Bons is gared for as if he were ein 
 brinze!" Now, dii'ectly Schmucke was 
 engaged in trotting from street to street. 
 Dame Cibot became mistress of the apart- 
 ments and the invalid. How was it pos- 
 sible for Pons, who had eaten nothing for 
 a fortnight, who was lying prostrate in 
 his bed, who was so feeble that, whenever 
 the bed required making, Madame Cibot 
 was obliged to raise him in her arms and 
 place him in an easA'-chair — how was it 
 possible for Pons to keep a watchful eye 
 upon that self-styled guardian angel ? As 
 a matter of course. Dame Cibot paid her 
 visit to Elie Magus while Schmucke was 
 at breakfast. 
 
 I
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 She was back ag-ain in time to witness 
 the parting: between Schmucke and the 
 patient ; for since the revelation of Pons's 
 potential wealth. Dame Cibot had stuck 
 closely to her old bachelor ; she brooded 
 over him. Ensconced in a snug' arm- 
 chair at the foot of the bed, she treated 
 Pons — by way of amusing- him — to a flood 
 of gossip such as women of her stamp ex- 
 cel in. She had grown coaxing, g-entle, 
 attentive, anxious, and had thus, with 
 Machiavellian skill, obtained an influence 
 over Pons's mind, as we shall see. 
 
 XV. 
 
 PRATTLE AND POLITICS OF OLD 
 PORTRESSES. 
 
 Scared by the prediction that was the 
 outcome of Madame Fontaine's manipula- 
 tion of the grand pack. Dame Cibot had 
 entered into a compact with herself to 
 secure the object that she had in view — 
 namely, a legacy under Pons's will — hy 
 .gentle measures, and without resorting 
 to overt acts of villainy. During a period 
 of ten years she had remained ignorant 
 of the value of the Pons Museum, and 
 now, finding' that the accumulated at- 
 tachment, integrity, and disinterested- 
 ness which she had displaj'ed during 
 those years was standing to her credit, 
 she resolved to discount this magnificent 
 security. Sincp the day when Remo- 
 nencq, by using a phrase that w'as elo- 
 quent of g-old, had hatched in the heart 
 of this woman a sei'pent which had lain 
 there in its shell for five-and-twenty j-ears 
 — namely, the desire to be rich — she had 
 nourished the reptile on all the evil leaven 
 which lurks in the inmost recesses of the 
 human soul. We shall now see how she 
 proceeded to carry out the counsel which 
 tlie serpent was hissing' into her ear. 
 
 '• Well ! and has our cherub drank 
 plenty of stuff ? Is he any better? " she 
 inquired of Schmucke. 
 
 " He is not going' on well, not well, my 
 tear Montame Zibod," replied the Ger- 
 man, as he wiped away a tear. 
 
 " Bah ! You frighten yourself need- 
 lessly, my dear sir. You must take 
 things as they come. If Cibot were 
 actually at the point of death, I shouldn't 
 be so downcast as you are. Come ! our 
 cherub has a good constitution ; and 
 then, you see, it seems he's led a prudent 
 life ; you don't know what an ag'e people 
 as have lived prudently run to. He is 
 very ill, that's for certain ; but, with the 
 care n'l take of him, I shall manage to 
 pull him round. So make your mind 
 easy, and go and see after your busi- 
 ness; I'll keep him company and see as 
 he drinks his quarts of barley-water." 
 
 '■■ If it were nod for you, I should tie 
 of anxiety," said Schmucke, pressing the 
 hand of his worthy housekeeper in a 
 manner that was intended to intimate 
 his trust in her; whereupon Madame 
 Cibot went into Pons's bedroom wiping 
 her eyes. 
 
 " What is the matter, Madame Cibot ?" 
 said Pons. 
 
 '•' It's Monsieur Schmucke as upsets 
 me," said the portress. " He cries about 
 you as if j-ou were a dead man ! Now, 
 though true it is that you're not well, 
 you're not so bad that people need cry 
 over you; but still I feel it very much. 
 My God ! what a fool I am to be so fond 
 of people and to care more for you than I 
 do for Cibot ! For, after all, you're noth- 
 ing to me; we're not any ways related 
 to each other — except through the first 
 woman. Well, I vow and declare, your 
 illness has given me quite a turn : upon 
 my word and honor it has. I'd stand to 
 have my hand cut off — my left hand, of 
 course — here under your very nose if I 
 could see you a-coming' and a-going', 
 a-eating and a-cheating of the dealers 
 as you've been n'accustomed to. If I'd 
 ha' had a child I think I should have 
 loved it n'as I love you; there now! 
 Come, do drink, my pet ; come now, a 
 good glassful. Will you drink, monsieur ? 
 The first thing Monsieur Poulain said 
 w;is : 'If Monsieur Pons don't want to 
 go to Pere-Lachaise. he must drink as 
 many pailfuls of water as an Auvergnat 
 sells in a day.' So come now, drink I " 
 •'But, my good Cibot, lam drinking;
 
 112 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 I drink till nxy stomach is literally 
 drovvBcd." 
 
 "There, that's right," said the por- 
 tress, taking' the empty glass. " You'll 
 got \v(!ll if you do that ! Monsieur Pou- 
 lain had a patient like yoM as was de- 
 serted T)y his children, and hadn't no one 
 to look after him, and he died of this same 
 complaint, and all for the want of drink- 
 ing ! (So, you see, you must drink, my 
 duck !) Which, thej' buried him, two 
 months a gone ! Do you know that if 
 you was to die, my dear sir, you'd take 
 that worthy man, Monsieur Schmucke, 
 with you ; 'pon my word and honor, he's 
 just like a child, he is. Ah ! how he does 
 love you, the dear lamb ! No ! no woman 
 loves a man so much as that. He's quite 
 lost all relisli for his victuals, and he's 
 grown that thin within the last fortnight, 
 ay, as thin as t/om are, and you're naught 
 but skin and bone. It makes me feel quite 
 jealous, for I'm very fond of you myself ; 
 though I haven't come to that yet; I 
 haven't lost my n'appetite ; n'on the con- 
 trarj', quite the reverse. Forced as I am 
 to keep on a-rijnning up and downstairs, 
 my logs get so tired that of an evening I 
 sink down just like a lump o' lead. Then 
 there's that there poor Cibot of mine, 
 don't I neglect him for your sake, which 
 Mademoiselle Remonencq gets him his 
 A'ictuals, which he grumbles at me be- 
 cause they aren't nice. Well, then, I 
 says to him, as how we ought to put up 
 with things for the sake of other folks, 
 and that you're too ill to be left alone. 
 In the first place, you're not well enough 
 to do without a nurse ! But you don't 
 catch me allowing a nurse to come in 
 here, when I've looked after j'ou and been 
 your housekeeper myself these ten years. 
 And they all so fond of their stomachs, 
 too, which they eat you out of house and 
 home, and want wine and sugar and their 
 foot-warmei's and their comforts. And 
 then there thej^ rob their patients unless 
 their patients put them down for some- 
 thing in their wills. Just put a nurse 
 in here to-daj' and see whether there 
 wouldn't be a picture or something else 
 missing to-morrow — " 
 
 "Oh! Madame Cibot," cried Pons, 
 
 quite beside himself; "don't leave me! 
 Don't let anything be touched ! " 
 
 " Here I am," said Dame Cibot; "and 
 here I'll stop, as long as I've got anj' 
 strength left. Make your mind easy ! 
 Didn't Monsieur Poulain, who's got an 
 eye on your treasures may be, didn't he 
 want to get a nurse for you ? Ah ! didn't 
 I just give him a look, that's all ? • There's 
 no one but me as'll suit Monsieur Pons,' 
 I says to him ; ' he knows my ways as I 
 know his'n.' And with that he held his 
 tongue. But a nurse ; why, them nurses 
 are all of 'em thieves ! How I hates 
 them women ! I'll just show you now 
 w'hat schemers they are. Well, then, an 
 old gentleman — now mark you, it was 
 Monsieur Poulain as told me this — well, 
 a Madame Sabatier, a woman of thirty- 
 six, who once sold slippers at the palace 
 — 3'ou must remember the shop gallerj'' 
 at the palace that has been pulled down ? " 
 (Pons nodded his head by way of assent.) 
 "Well, this woman then didn't get on 
 well along of her husband, which he 
 drunk everything-, and died of spontane- 
 ous imbustion ; well, she was a handsome 
 woman in her time, no doubt — one must 
 tell the truth, jo\x know — but that did her 
 no good ; though it is said that she had 
 friends among the advocates. Well, as I 
 was a-sa3ing, when she came to grief she 
 took to monthly nursing ; j'os, sir, and 
 she lives in the Rue Barre du Bee. Wellj 
 then, you must know, she went out to 
 nurse an n'old g-entleman, who'n, no of- 
 fense to you, sir, had something the mat- 
 ter with his lurinary liver, and they used 
 to sound him, just for all the world as if 
 he'd been a n 'artesian well ; which he 
 wanted so much waiting" on, that she was 
 used to sleep on a folding-bed in his room. 
 Would you believe it now ? But no doubt 
 you'll tell me : ' Men have no respect for 
 anything or anj'body, they're so selfish ! ' 
 Well, as she was a-talking to him — for 
 she was always there, you understand ; 
 she cheered him up, told him stories, 
 made him prattle, just like you and me 
 are jabbering away now ; well, she finds 
 out as his nephews— for the patient had 
 some nephews — were regular monsters as 
 caused him a lot of worry, and — to cut
 
 SCHMUCKE AND PoNS 
 
 ' The flaneurs of the quarter had iiick-uanied them 
 
 ' The Pair ot Nut-Crackers." " 
 
 Balzac, Volume Oue. 
 
 Cofsis Poms.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 113 
 
 a long tale short — as it was his nephews 
 
 as was the cause of his illness. 
 
 " Well, vay dear sir, she saved that 'ere 
 gentleman and became his wife, and they 
 have a child now as is superb, and which 
 Madame Bordevin, what keeps the butch- 
 er's shop in the Rue Chariot, which she's 
 related to the lady, stood god-mother. 
 There's luck for you, now ! As for me, 
 I'm married ; but I haven't got no child, 
 and I must say it's all Cibot's fault, for 
 he's overfond of me ; for if I wished — but 
 I'll say no more. What on earth would 
 have become of us, me and my Cibot, if 
 we'd had a familj-, us as haven't a half- 
 penny that we can call our own, n'after 
 thirty years' honesty, my dear sir ? But 
 what consoles me is as I haven't a far- 
 thing of any one else's money ; I've never 
 wronged nobody. Look here, now, let's 
 just suppose, which I'm free to saj' it, see- 
 ing as how you'll be upon j'our pegs again 
 in six weeks' time, a-sauntering along the 
 boulevards; well, then, we'll suppose as 
 you puts me down for something in your 
 will ; well, I should never rest till I"d 
 found out your lawful heirs so as I might 
 give it back to them ; I've such a horror 
 of money as I don't earn by the sweat of 
 my brow. You'll say to me, no doubt : 
 ' Don't you go for to torment yourself like 
 that. Mistress Cibot ; you've worked hard 
 for it ; you've looked after them two gen- 
 tlemen n'as if they'd been your own chil- 
 dren ; you've saved 'em as much as a 
 thousand francs a j^ear.' For do you 
 know, sir, there's many a cook as 'ud 
 have laid by a snug ten thousand francs 
 by this time, if they'd stood in my shoes. 
 'Well, then, sure enough, it's only fair as 
 this good gentleman should leave you a 
 little annuity.' I'm only a-supposing as 
 some one was to saj' that to me, you 
 know. Well, no ; for my part, I'm quite 
 disinterested ; I can't understand how 
 there can be such things as women as 
 do good with an eye to the main chance. 
 Why, that isn't doing good at all ; is it, 
 my dear sir? It's true as I don't go to 
 church : I've no time to go ; but my con- 
 science tells me what it's right to do, for 
 all that. Now, don't go for to toss your- 
 self about like that, my kitten ! Don't j 
 
 scratch yourself ! My God, how yellow 
 you are, to be sure ; why, you're that 3-el- 
 low you're wellnigh brown. What a queer 
 thing it is that in twenty days folks should 
 turn as yellow as a lemon I Well, as I 
 was a-saying, honesty is the poor man's 
 store ! one mtist have something to bless 
 themselves with! Well, now, even sup- 
 posing as the worst came to the worst, I 
 should be the very first to tell you as j-ou 
 ought to give all your belongings to Mon- 
 sieur Schmucke. It's your duty so to do; 
 for he's j^our whole family all in one ! 
 Ah ! and he loves you too, he does, just 
 as a dog loves his master." 
 
 "Oh, yes!" said Pons. "He is the 
 only person who has ever loved me in the 
 whole course of my life — " 
 
 " Oh, monsieur ! " cried Dame Cibot. 
 " That's not at all pretty of you. What 
 about me ? Don't I love you ? " 
 
 "I don't say that, mj' dear Madame 
 Cibot." 
 
 " There now, aren't you just a-going 
 for to treat me as if I was n'a mere ser- 
 vant, a common cook, just as if I'd no 
 feelings whatever ? Oh ! my God ! Work 
 yourself fit to split for a couple of old 
 fellows for eleven years ! Do naught but 
 look after their comforts !— which I ran- 
 sacked ten green-grocers' shops and got 
 myself becalled all sorts of names just to 
 get you good fromage de Brie, which I 
 went all the way to the market to get yon 
 fresh butter ; yes, and j-ou may take sucli 
 care of everything ; which in all these ten 
 years I haven't so much as broken or 
 chipped a single thing ; yes, and you may 
 be like a mother is to her childi-en ! — and 
 what does it all come to ? Why ! you 
 hears a 'Mj' dear Madame Cibot,' which 
 just shows you as there isn't one spark of 
 feeling for you in the buzzom of the old 
 gentleman as you've been a nursing like 
 you'd nurse the son of a king: for the 
 little king of Rome was never looked 
 after as j-ou've been — will you make me 
 a bet that he was as well looked after as 
 you are ? — well, the proof is that he died 
 in the very prime of his life. Look you, 
 sir, you aren't just — you're ungrateful I 
 just because I'm nothing but a poor 
 poi'tress. Ah ! m^* God I even you
 
 114 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY 
 
 too think as we're not a bit better 
 than dogs — " 
 
 '•But, my clear Madame Cibot— " 
 
 " Come, now, you're a learned man ; 
 now just explain to me how 'tis us poor 
 porter-folk are treated like that ; that no 
 one gives us credit for having any feel- 
 ings at all, and that we're despised at a 
 time when there's so much talk about 
 equality. Ain't I as good as any other 
 woman ? Me as was one of the prettiest 
 women in Paris, and as was called the 
 handsome oyster girl, and received a 
 declaration of love seven or eight times 
 in the course of the day ? Ay, and if I 
 cared so to do, even now ! Whj-, look 
 you, sir ; you know that dwarf of an old 
 iron-dealer what lives near the entrance- 
 gate ; well, if I were a widow, which, in 
 course, is n'only a supposition, he'd marry 
 me with his eyes shut ; for he's opened 
 them so wide at me that he's never tired 
 of saying to me : ' Oh ! what lovely arms 
 you've got, Madame Cibot. I dreamed, 
 only last night, that they was bread and 
 that I was butter spread upon 'em.' Look 
 here, sir; there's a pair of arms for you !" 
 And suiting the action to the word, Mad- 
 ame Cibot turned up her sleeve, and dis- 
 {ilayed the finest arm that could possibly 
 be seen, an arm that was as white and 
 fresh as the hand itself was red and 
 wrinkled — a plump, round, dimpled arm, 
 which, denuded of its case of common 
 merino, as a sword is drawn from its 
 scabbard, was enough to dazzle Pons, 
 who scarcely ventured to do more than 
 glance at it — " Yes," pursued the dame, 
 " and an arm as has opened as many 
 hearts as my knife did oj'sters ! Well, 
 that arm belongs to Cibot ; and I've done 
 wrong to neglect the poor dear man, who'd 
 throw himself overa precipidge at the first 
 word as I uttered, for your sake, monsieur, 
 you as calls me my dear Madame Cibot, 
 when I'd do unpossibilities for you — " 
 
 "But do listen to me," said the sick 
 man ; "I can't call you my mother or 
 my wife — " 
 
 " No, never again, as long as I lives, 
 nor as long as I breathe, will I get at- 
 tached to nobody — " 
 
 "But do let me speak," pleaded Pons. 
 
 "Look you, in the first place, I have 
 spoken to Schmucke ! " 
 
 "Ah, Monsieur Schmucke! Now there's 
 a heart for you!" said she. "Yes, fte 
 loves me, he does; because he's poor. 
 It's monej"- as makes people unfeeling; 
 and you are rich ! Well, then, have a 
 nurse, and see what a life she'll lead you I 
 Why, she'll torment you like a cock- 
 chafer — if the doctor says that you must 
 be made drink, she'll give you nothing but 
 solid food ; she'll just bury you first and 
 rob you afterward ! You don't deserve 
 to have a Madame Cibot ! Come, now ! 
 when Monsieur Poulain comes to see you, 
 you just ask him for a nurse ! " 
 
 "But in the name of all that's sacred, 
 listen to me ! " cined the indignant pa- 
 tient. '• I did not refer to women when 
 I spoke of my friend Schmucke, did I ? 
 I know well enough that you and he are 
 the only two persons who sincerely love 
 me — " 
 
 " Will you just have the goodness not 
 to flare up like that?" exclaimed Mad- 
 ame Cibot, making a rush at Pons, and 
 compelling him, by main force, to lie down 
 again. 
 
 "■ But how can I help being fond of 
 you ? " said poor Pons. 
 
 " You are fond of me, then, really ? 
 Come, come, j'ou must excuse me, mon- 
 sieur," said she, weeping and wiping her 
 eyes. " Yes, yes, you love me, as you 
 might love a servant to whom you leave 
 an annuity of six hundred francs, just as 
 you might throw a bit of bread to a dog." 
 
 " Oh ! Madame Cibot," cried Pons ; 
 "what do 3'ou take me for ? You do not 
 know me ! " 
 
 "Ah! then you love me more than 
 that?" resumed Madame Cibot; "you 
 love your good stout Cibot like a mother? 
 Well, that's just how it is ; I am your 
 mother, and you two are just mj-- chil- 
 dren I Ah ! if I only knew who it is that 
 has caused j'ou all this trouble, I'd get 
 myself sent to the assizes, or even to the 
 police-court, for I'd tear their eyes out 
 for 'em. Those people deserve to be put 
 to death at St. James's barrier; and 
 even that's too good for such miscreated 
 wretches ! You so kind-hearted and so
 
 COUSIN POXS. 
 
 115 
 
 gentle, for you n'have a heart of gold : 
 you were created and sent into the world 
 to make some woman happy — j'es, you 
 would have made her happy, that you 
 would— any one can see that ; you are 
 just cut out for it. Now, as for mj'self, 
 when I saw how you jogged along with 
 Monsieur Schmucke,- says I to myself : 
 ' Yes ! Monsieur Pons has missed his vo- 
 cation ; he was cut out to he a good hus- 
 band.' Come now, you are fond of the 
 ladies, aren't j'ou ? " 
 
 "Ah! yes," said Pons; "and I never 
 met a woman who loved me — " 
 
 " Really now, you don't mean to say 
 so ? " cried Dame Cibot, as, with an en- 
 ticing air, she went up to Pons and seized 
 his hand; "j'ou don't know what it is 
 to n'have a sweetheart ? Is it possible ? 
 Now, for my part, if I were in your place, 
 I shouldn't like to quit this world for 
 n'another without having known what's 
 the greatest n'happiness on n'earth. Poor 
 duck ! If I weren't what I have been, 
 upon my word and honor I'd leave Cibot 
 for your sake ! Whj', with such a nose 
 as 3'ou n'have — for you n'have a very 
 fine nose — how did you manage, my poor 
 cherub ? You will tell me, perhaps, as 
 it isn't n'every woman who knows how 
 to choose a man, n'and it's a vast pity as 
 they should marry as they do, at random ; 
 it really is. Now, for my part, I thought 
 as you n'had sweethearts by the dozen, 
 ballet-girls, n'actresses, and duchesses. 
 Yes, when I saw you a-going out, which 
 I would say to Cibot : ' Look, there's 
 Monsieur Pons a-going to look after the 
 ladies.' Upon my word and honor that's 
 exactly what I used to say, so firm was 
 my belief as you was a favorite with the 
 women ! Why, you were sent into the 
 world to love and to be loved ! I could 
 see that much, look you, my dear little 
 sir, the very day as j^ou first dined here. 
 Ah ! wasn't your n'heart full when you 
 saw the pleasure as you was a-giving to 
 Monsieur Schmucke ! And him, too, as 
 was a-crying over it even the next day 
 when he says to me: 'Montame Zibod, 
 he tined here ! ' Which I declare that I 
 cried likewise, like a fool as I was. Ah ! 
 and how cut up he was when you began 
 
 your town-skippings again ! and took to 
 dining out again ! Poor man ! never was 
 such distress seen ! Ah ! right you are 
 indeed to make him your heir ! Why, 
 he's as good as an entire family, the dear 
 good man ! Don't j-ou forget him ; for, 
 if you do, God won't admit you'n into 
 paradise; for He won't admit any one 
 n'as hasn't shown themselves grateful to 
 their friends, by leaving them legacies." 
 
 Pons made some vain attempts to re- 
 ply ; but Dame Cibot talked as the wind 
 blows. We have discovered a method of 
 stopping steam-engines ; but it will puz- 
 zle inventive genius to find out a method 
 of stopping the tongue of a portress. 
 
 " I know exactly what you're going to 
 say," continued she. "But making one's 
 will, when one is ill, doesn't kill a body ; 
 and if I wei-e in your shoes, I wouldn't, 
 in case of an n'accident, leave the poor 
 lamb to take care of himself; for that's 
 just what he is — the good creature of the 
 good God ; he knows naught about any- 
 thing. I wouldn't leave him at the mercy 
 of a pack of rascally men of business, and 
 of j^our relations, which the^-'re all a lot 
 of scums. See now, is there a single one 
 of them who has been to see you during 
 the last three weeks ? And you would 
 leave j'our property to them.' Are you 
 aware that what is here is worth the 
 trouble of leaving to some one ? at least 
 so they say." 
 
 " Oh ! I know that," said Pons. 
 
 "Remonencq, who knows you are an 
 amateur, and is a dealer himself, says as 
 he would willingly pay you an annuity of 
 thirty thousand francs, in order to have 
 your pictures when you're dead and gone. 
 There's a bit of business for you ! If I 
 were you, I'd close with the offer ! But 
 I believed that he was making game of 
 me when he said that. You ouglit to 
 n'inform Monsieur Schmucke of the value 
 of all these things ; for he's a man as is 
 as easilj' deceived as a child ; he hasn't 
 the faintest notion of the value of these 
 fine things of j-ours ! He has so little 
 idea of it that lie would go and give 'em 
 all awaj' for a mere nothing ; unless he 
 kept 'em, out of pure love to you, all his 
 life; that is to say, if he survives you;
 
 116 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 but j-our death will be the death of him ! 
 But I shuU be here ! Vll defend him 
 against the whole world ; me and Cibot 
 tos-ether." 
 
 "Dear Madame Cibot!" exclaimed 
 Pons, quite touched by this terrible 
 chatter which seemed to him to be im- 
 bued with the unaffected feeling- charac- 
 teristic of the poor. " What would have 
 become of me but for you and Schmucke ?" 
 
 '•'Ah, yes. We n'are really the only 
 friends you have on earth. That's quite 
 true ! But two kind hearts are worth 
 all the relations in the world. Don't talk 
 to me about relations ! They are like the 
 tongue, as the old actor says, a world of 
 goodness and iniquitJ^ Where are these 
 relations of yours ? Have you got any 
 relations ? If you have, I never set ej^es 
 on 'em." 
 
 "It is they who have laid me on this 
 bed of sickness ! " cried poor Pons, with 
 profound bitterness. 
 
 '•Ah ! then you have some relations ! " 
 cried Madame Cibot, springing up as if 
 the armchair in which she was sitting 
 had been of iron and had suddenly be- 
 come red-hot. "Ah, well! they are 
 mighty well-bred people, these relations 
 of yours, I must say ! Why, these twenty 
 da3-s, j-cs, these twenty days this very 
 morning, have you been Ij'ing on your 
 death-bed, and they haven't come to in- 
 quire about you yet ! That coffee's a lit- 
 tle too strong, that is ! Why, if I were 
 in your place, I'd rather leave my money 
 to the Foundling Hospital than give them 
 a single farthing I " 
 
 " Well, my dear Madame Cibot, I in- 
 tended to leave all I possess to my first 
 cousin once removed, the daughter of my 
 first cousin. President Camusot ; you 
 know whom I mean — the judge who came 
 here one morning about two months 
 ago-" 
 
 "Oh, yes! the stout little man what 
 sent his servants here to beg your pardon 
 — for his wife's stupidity- — yes, and didn't 
 the ladj^'s-maid ask me a lot of questions 
 about you, the conceited old minx; I 
 should have just liked to dust her velvet 
 mantle for her with my broomstick ! A 
 lad^-'s-maid with a velvet mantle, indeed ! 
 
 Was such a thing ever n'heard of? No ! 
 upon my honor the world is turned topsy- 
 turvy ! What are revolutions made for, 
 n'l should like to know ? Dine twice a 
 day, if you can, and welcome, you scoun- 
 drels of plutoscraps ! But what /say is 
 that the laws are n'useless, that nothing 
 is sacred, if Louis Philippe doesn't keep 
 folks in their proper places ; for surely, if 
 we n'are n'all equal, as we n'are — ^^aren't 
 we ? — a lady's-maid has no right to n'have 
 a velvet mantle, when here am I, Madame 
 Cibot, with a character for thirty years' 
 honesty, haven't got no velvet mantle ! 
 It's a fine thing, 1 7nust say ! We n'ought 
 to be n'able to tell what folks arc \)y their 
 dress. A lady's-maid is only a ladj''s- 
 maid, when n'all's said and done; just as 
 I'm only a portress. What do we n'have 
 spinach-seed epaulets n'in the milingtaiy 
 for'n ? Every man to his grade, say I ! 
 Now, shall I just let you'n into the secret 
 of 3,11 this ? Well, France has just gone 
 to perdition, that's the long- and short of 
 it ! Now, under the Emperoi- — eh, mon- 
 sieur ? — things were very differentlj' man- 
 aged. Well, as I was a-saj'ing to Cibot : 
 'Now, look you, a famil}^ as allows its 
 lady's-maid to wear velvet mantles must 
 be a bowelless lot — " 
 
 "Bowelless! Yes; that's the very 
 word," said Pons ; and thereupon he 
 proceeded to relate his grievances and 
 troubles to Madame Cibot, who exploded 
 with invectives against Pons's relatives, 
 exhibited, as sentence by sentence of the 
 sad recital fell from his lips, the most 
 marked s^nnpathj', and wound up by 
 bursting into a flood of tears ! 
 
 In order to understand this sudden in- 
 timacy between the old musician and 
 Madame Cibot, it will suffice for the 
 reader to picture to himself the situation 
 of a bachelor, who, for the first time in 
 his life, is attacked by a serious illness 
 and stretched upon a sick bed. There he 
 lies, alone in the wide world, thrown en- 
 tirely upon his own resources, condemned 
 to get through the da^- as best he can, 
 without any extraneous aid, and finding 
 the hours pass all the more slowly, in 
 that he is the victim of the indefinable 
 discomforts of hepatitis— sl disorder that
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 117 
 
 is enough to cast a black shadow upon the 
 very brightest existence. Cut off from 
 his numerous occupations, the patient 
 falls into what may be termed the atro- 
 phy of Paris ; he regrets all that that 
 city offers gratis to the ej^es and ears of 
 its denizena. The deep and tenebrous 
 solitude that surrounds him, his com- 
 plaint — a complaint that tells upon the 
 moral, more even than on the physical 
 man, the emptiness of the life he leads, 
 all combine to induce the solitary bach- 
 elor (especially if his character be nat- 
 urally weak and his heart sensitive and 
 credulous) to attach himself to his nurse, 
 just as a drowning man clings to a plank. 
 Accordingly, Pons listened with rapture 
 to the gossip of IMadame Cibot. To him, 
 Schmucke, Madame Cibot and Doctor 
 Poulain formed the whole of humanity, 
 in like manner as his chamber was his 
 universe. If ox-dinary patients invariably 
 restrict their attention to objects within 
 the immediate sphere of their observa- 
 tion, and if their individuality exerts it- 
 self in subordination to the objects and 
 persons by which they are surrounded, 
 judge to what straits an old bachelor, 
 whose affections are unengaged and who 
 has never known what love is, may, under 
 similar circumstances, be reduced. After 
 a three weeks' illness. Pons had arrived 
 at such a pass that he would, at times, 
 regret not having married Madeleine Vi- 
 vet ! Can it then be matter of surprise, 
 that, during these weeks, Madame Cibot 
 made great progress in the good graces 
 of the invalid who, but for her, would 
 have given himself up for lost ; for as to 
 Schmucke, he was simply a second Pons 
 to the poor patient. The wonderful art 
 — and it was unconscious art^of Madame 
 (yibot consisted in this ; that she gave 
 expression' to Pons's own idea. 
 
 "Ah! there is the doctor," cried she, 
 hearing the bell ring ; and so saying she 
 left Pons alone ; for the ring told her that 
 the Jew and Remonencq had arrived. 
 
 "Don't make a noise, gentlemen," 
 said she; "so as he mayn't hear any- 
 thing ; for wherever his treasure is in 
 question, he's as touchj' as a man can 
 be." 
 
 '• Oh ! a mere walk round will be suf- 
 ficient," replied the Jew, who was armed 
 with his magnifying lens and an opera- 
 glass. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 A COUNCIL OF CORRUPTION. 
 
 The salon containing the main portion 
 of the Pons Museum was one of those old 
 salons that the architects employed by 
 the ancient nobility of France used to 
 design. This salon was twentj'-five feet 
 wide, thirty feet long, and thirteen feet in 
 height. Pons's pictures, sixty-seven in 
 number, were all hung upon the four 
 walls of this paneled chamber, whose 
 panels were painted white and gold, 
 though the white had turned j'ellow and 
 the gold red beneath the touch of time, 
 and thus harmonized with the pictures 
 instead of marring their effect. Fourteen 
 statues, of which some stood upon columns 
 and some on buhl pedestals, adorned the 
 corners of the room and the spaces be- 
 tween the pictures ; while carved ebony 
 sideboards, of trulj^ regal richness, lined 
 the walls, breast high. These sideboards 
 held, the curiosities ; w-hile a range of cre- 
 dences, made of carved wood, occupied the 
 middle of the salon and offered to the 
 eye of the spectator the rarest products 
 of human skill, ivory-work, wood-work, 
 bronzes, enamels, jewelry, porcelain, etc., 
 etc. 
 
 Inimediatelj' on entering this sanctum, 
 the Jew walked straight up to four mas- 
 terpieces, which he recognized as the 
 gems of the collection and as the pro- 
 ductions of masters of whose work he 
 had no specimens. These four pictures 
 were to Elie Magus what those desid- 
 erata which send the naturalist scamper- 
 ing from east to Occident, through tropic, 
 desert, pampas, savannah and '• forest 
 primeval " are to the naturalist. 
 
 The first of these pictures was a Sebas- 
 tian del Piombo, the second a Fra Bar- 
 tolomeo della Porta, the third a landscape 
 by Hobbema, and the fourth, the portrait 
 of a woman by Albert Durer— four dia-
 
 118 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 monds ! In the domain of painting-, Se- 
 bastian del Piombo is, as it were, a lu- 
 minous point, in which three schools of 
 painting- meet and displaj' their most re- 
 markable qualities. This artist was a 
 "Venetian painter, who went to Rome for 
 the purpose of catching the style of Ra- 
 phael, under the tuition of Michael An- 
 g-elo, who wanted to make Piombo Ra- 
 phael's rival, so that Angelo might, in 
 the person of one of his lieutenants, wage 
 war with the sovereign pontiff of the art 
 of painting. Thus, in the few pictures 
 which this indolent man of genius conde- 
 scended to paint, pictures whose cartoons 
 were, it is said, designed by Michael An- 
 gelo himself, Piombo combined the color- 
 ing of the Venetian school, the composi- 
 tion of the Florentine school, and the 
 style of Raphael. To what perfection 
 Sebastian del Piombo, armed as he was 
 with this triple power, managed to at- 
 tain, may be learned from a careful study 
 of his portrait of Baccio Bandinelli in the 
 Paris Museum. That portrait may safely 
 be compared with Titian's "Man with a 
 Glove," with the "Portrait of an Old 
 Man" (in which Raphael has united his 
 own excellence to that of Correggio), and 
 with the " Charles VIII." of Leonar-do da 
 Vinci. Piorabo's picture will lose nothing 
 by the comparison. These four pearls are 
 equal in water, in orience, in roundness, 
 in brilliance, and in value. Human art 
 can go no further. In these productions 
 it is superior even to nature itself, which 
 gave to the original but an ephemeral 
 existence. 
 
 Now, Pons possessed a picture painted 
 by this great genius, Piombo; another 
 gem from his imperishable, but incurably 
 indolent, pallet. This picture was a 
 "Knight of Malta Praying." It was on 
 slate; and in point of freshness, finish, 
 and depth of treatment, superior even to 
 the portrait of Baccio Bandinelli. The 
 Fra Bartolomeo was a picture of the Holj' 
 Family-, and might, with many a connois- 
 seur, have passed for a picture by Raphael. 
 The Hobbema would have fetched sixtj' 
 thousand francs in the auction-room. As 
 ' for the Albert Durer, this " Portrait of a 
 Woman" was similar to the celebrated 
 
 Holzschuer of Nuremberg, for which the 
 kings of Bavaria, of Holland and of Prus- 
 sia, at various times, offered two hundred 
 thousand francs, in vain. Is this picture 
 a portrait of the wife or daughter of the 
 Chevalier Holzschuer, the friend of Albert 
 Durer ? This hj^pothesis would seem to be 
 a certainty' ; for the woman in Pons's pict- 
 ure is represented in such an attitude that 
 the picture apparently requires a pendant, 
 and the jiainted coat of arms is arranged 
 in the same way in both portraits. Fi- 
 nally, the cetatis suce XLI. is in exact 
 accordance with the age indicated in the 
 portrait so religiously observed by the 
 house of Holzschuer of Nuremberg, and 
 of which an engraving has recently been 
 completed . 
 
 Tears stood in the ej'es of Elie Magus 
 as he turned them now to one, now to an- 
 other, of these four masterpieces. 
 
 " I will give you a bonus of two thou- 
 sand francs for each of tliese pictures, if 
 you can get them sold to me for forty 
 thousand francs !" he whispered to Dame 
 Cibot, who was amazed at this foi-tune 
 which seemed to have fallen from tlie 
 clouds. 
 
 The admiration, or — to speak more 
 accurately^ — the delirium, of Magus had 
 so disturbed his intellect, and so com- 
 pletely routed his habitual cupiditj', that 
 the Jeio entirely disappeared, as may be 
 seen. 
 
 " And what am I to have ? " asked 
 Remonencq, who knew nothing about 
 pictures. 
 
 "Everything here is of the same cali- 
 ber," slyly whispered the Jew to Re- 
 monencq. "Take any ten pictures, hap- 
 hazard, on the same terms, and you are 
 a made man ! " 
 
 These three thieves were still gazing at 
 each other, under the influence of that 
 delight which is of all delights the keen- 
 est, namely, the realization of our hopes 
 of fortune, when the voice of the sick 
 man resounded in their ears, in tones 
 that vibrated like the sound-waves of a 
 bell. 
 
 "Who is there ? " cried Pons. 
 
 "Monsieur! get into bed again, at 
 once," cried Madame Cibot, darting- up
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 119 
 
 to Pons, and forcing him to go back to 
 bed. " How now I Do j'ou want to kill 
 yourself? "Well, it wasn't Monsieur Pou- 
 lain ; it's that honest fellow Remonencq, 
 who's so uneasy about you that he's come 
 to hear how you're a-getting on. Folks 
 are so fond of you that there's not a soul 
 in the house as isn't quite put out about 
 you. Pray what made you take fright ?" 
 
 "Why, it seems to me that there are 
 several of you in there," said the patient. 
 
 "Several! Come, now, that's rich! 
 Why, you must be dreaming 1 You'll end 
 bj' going mad; 'pon mj' word n'and honor, 
 j-ou will! Stay a moment; just look— " 
 So .saying. Dame Cibot flew to the door 
 and opened it, making- a sign to Magus 
 to withdraw, and beckoning Eeraonencq 
 forward. 
 
 " Well ! my dear sir," said the Auverg- 
 nat, taking the cue that Madame Cibot 
 had given him ; " I am come to hear how 
 3'ou are getting on ; for the whole house 
 is in a mortal funk about you — No one 
 likes Death to find his way into a house ! 
 And, in short. Daddy Monistrol, whom 
 you know well, directed me to tell you 
 that if 3'ou wanted cash, he was readj' to 
 oblige you — " 
 
 " He has sent you hither to steal a 
 glance at my knickknacks," said the old 
 collector, with distrustful acerbity'. 
 
 In cases of liver disease, the patient al- 
 most invariabh- imbibes some special an- 
 tipathy for the time being; he concen- 
 trates his ill-humor on some particular 
 person or thing. Now Pons imagined 
 that people had designs upon his treas- 
 ure ; and his fixed idea was to keep an 
 eye upon it. He would send Schmucke 
 almost every other minute to see that no 
 one had slipped into the sanctuary. 
 
 " Your collection is certainly quite fine 
 enough to attract the notice of the chi- 
 neurs," replied Remonencq, astutely. 
 '■ For my own pai't, I don't know much 
 about the curiosity branch of high art, 
 but your reputation as a connoisseur, 
 monsieur, stands so high, that, though I 
 don't know much about such matters, 
 I'm quite willing to deal with you with 
 my eyes shut. If you should be in want 
 of money at any time— for nothing costs 
 
 so much as these cursed illnesses : why 
 there's my sister now, in no more than 
 ten days, spent as much as fifteen-pence 
 on physic, when her blood was turned, 
 which she'd have got well right enough 
 without it. The doctors are swindlers, 
 who lake advantage of our condition 
 to—" 
 
 " Good-by, monsieur; thank j'ou," in- 
 terrupted Pons, glancing uneasily at the 
 dealer in old iron. 
 
 "I'll go as far as the door with him ; 
 just to see as he doesn't lay bis hand on 
 anj-thing," said Dame Cibot. 
 
 '■'Yes, yes," said Pons, thanking Mad- 
 ame Cibot with a look. 
 
 Madame Cibot closed the bedroom door 
 behind her, and, by so doing, reawakened 
 all Pons's suspicions. She found Magus 
 standing motionless in front of the four 
 pictures. His immobility, his admiration 
 can be xmderstood by those only whose 
 minds are open to the bemi ideal, and 
 susceptible of those emotions which per- 
 fection in art is capable of exciting ; by 
 those — and only those — who on visiting 
 the museum will stand agaze, for hours 
 together, before the " Joconda " of Leo- 
 nardo da Vinci, the '•' Antiope " of Cor- 
 reggio — the masterpiece of that painter 
 —Titian's mistress, the "Holy Family" 
 of Andrea del Sarto, the " Children sur- 
 rounded by Flowers," of Domenichino, 
 the little camayeu of Raphael, and his 
 "Portrait of an Old Man,'' those great- 
 est masterpieces in the whole range of 
 painting. 
 
 "Steal away without making any 
 noise," said Madame Cibot. 
 
 Thereupon the Jew slowly retreated, 
 walking baclrsvard, and keeping his ej-es 
 fixed upon the pictures ; just as a lover 
 keeps his eyes fixed upon the sweetheart 
 to whom he bids adieu. When Magus 
 had reached the landing, Madame Cibot, 
 in whose brain the Jew's silent contempla- 
 tion of the pictures had given rise to cer- 
 tain ideas, tapped him on his bony arm, 
 and said : 
 
 "You must give me four thousand 
 francs for each picture ! otherwise noth- 
 ing can be done — " 
 
 "I am so poor," said Magus. "If I
 
 120 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 wanl to have these pictures, it is for the 
 love of them only, purely and simply for 
 the love I bear to art, m^- pretty dame ! " 
 
 "You are so lean, my honej', that I can 
 quite understand j'our love for the pict- 
 ures. But if 3-ou don't promise me six- 
 teen thousand francs to-daj', in the pres- 
 ence of Remonencq here, it'll be twenty 
 thousand francs to-morrow." 
 
 "I promise you the sixteen thousand," 
 replied the Jew, terrified at the rapacitj'^ 
 of this portress. 
 
 "What is there as a Jew can swear 
 on?" quoth Dame Cibot to Remonencq. 
 
 "Oh ! you may trust him," replied the 
 old-iron dealer; "he's as honest a man 
 as I am myself." 
 
 " Well then ! and now for you," said 
 the portress. " If I g-et some of the pict- 
 ures sold to you, what will yoti g-ive me ? " 
 
 "Half my iirofits," replied Remonencq 
 promptly. 
 
 " I should prefer something dov»-n ; I'm 
 not in business," replied the portress. 
 
 "You seem to understand business un- 
 commonly well," said Elie Magus, with a 
 smile ; " 3'ou would make a famous trades- 
 woman." 
 
 "I offer to take her into partnership, 
 person and property both," said the Au- 
 vergnat, seizing the plump arm of Mad- 
 ame Cibot and patting it with sledge- 
 hammer force. "The only capital I ask 
 for is her good looks ! You are wrong 
 to stick to your Turk of a Cibot and his 
 needle ! Can a little porter enrich a fine 
 woman like you ? Ah ! what a figure you 
 would cut in a shop on the boulevards^ 
 surrounded hy curiosities, jabbering away 
 to the amateurs and wheedling them out 
 of their money ! Turn your back upon 
 the lodge, as soon as you've feathered 
 your nest here, and you'll see what we 
 two will do between us ! " 
 
 "Feathered my nest!" exclaimed 
 Dame Cibot. "Why, I'm incapable of 
 taking the worth of a pin ! Do you hear 
 what I say, Remonencq ? " cried the por- 
 tress ; "■ I'm known in the quarter for an 
 honest woman, yah ! " 
 
 As she uttered these words her eyes 
 were all ablaze. 
 
 " There, there ! make your mind easy," 
 
 said Elie Magus. " This Auvergnat looks 
 as if he respected you too well to wish to 
 offend 3'ou." 
 
 " Ah ! wouldn't she just know how 
 to manage the customers for you ! " ex- 
 claimed Remonencq. 
 
 "Now be just, my little fellows," re- 
 joined Madame Cibot with returning 
 good temper ; "and judge for yourselves, 
 what my sitiwation here n'is like. Here 
 n'have IbcQU a-wearing myself out these 
 ten years for the sake of these two old 
 boys, and never received no more than a 
 few fine words for my pains. Why, here's 
 Remonencq'll tell you, as I feed the two 
 old fellows by contact, and that I loses 
 from twenty' to thirtj- sous a day by it, 
 as all my savings have gone that way ; 
 yes, by my mother's soul — which she was 
 the only parient as I ever knew — it's as 
 true as I'm a living woman, as true n'as 
 there's daylight aTjove us at this moment ; 
 and may my coffee be my poison if I lie 
 to the tune of one centime ! Well, then, 
 here's one on 'em a-going to die, isn't 
 there ? And of these two men, as I've 
 been a real mother to, he's the richest I 
 Well, now, would you believe it, my dear 
 sir : here have I been a-telling of him as 
 he's a dead man, any time this last three 
 weeks (for, you must know. Monsieur 
 Poulain has given him up), and yet the 
 shabby fellow no more saj's anything 
 n'about mentioning of me in his will than 
 as if I was an n'utter stranger to him ! 
 Upon mj' word and n 'honor we never 
 gets our dues unless we takes 'em, as I'm 
 an n'honest woman, we don't ; for are you 
 a-going to put any trust in the heirs ? — 
 it's not likely ! Now just let me tell you 
 — for hard words break no bones — all 
 people are scoundrels ! " 
 
 "Right you are," said Elie Magus, 
 grimly ; " and 'tis we, after aU, who are 
 the honest folks." 
 
 " Let me have my say," pursued Dame 
 Cibot ; " I'm not talking about you ; 
 Pressingt persons are always accepted ! 
 as the old actor says. I swear to you 
 that these two gentlemen n'are already 
 in my debt to the tune of about three 
 thousand francs, and that my little sav- 
 ings has all gone in medicine and in their
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 121 
 
 concerns, and where should I be n" if thej' 
 wasn't to repay the advances as I've 
 made — I'm so stupid, with my honesty, 
 as I don't dare to say one word to 'em 
 about the matter. Now, you n'as are in 
 business, my dear sir, would you advise 
 me to g:o to an n'advocate ? " 
 
 "An advocate!" cried Remonencq, 
 "you know a great deal more than all 
 1he advocasts j>ut together!" 
 
 At this point, the conversation was in- 
 terrupted by the noise caused by the faU 
 of some heavy body upon the dining--i'oom 
 floor — a noise that roused the echoes of 
 the spacious staircase. 
 
 '• Oh, m.x God I" exclaimed Dame Cibot, 
 " what can have happened ? It seems to 
 me as it must be Monsieur Pons as has 
 just taken a ticket for the pit ! " 
 
 Thereujion she gave a shove to her two 
 companions, who hastily ran downstairs, 
 while Dame Cibot herself darted into the 
 dining--room and there beheld Pons 
 stretched at full leng-th upon the floor, 
 with nothing' but his night-shirt upon 
 him, and in a swoon ! Taking the old 
 bachelor in her arms, she raised him from 
 the floor and carried him — light as a 
 feather — to his bed. Having installed 
 the dying man therein, she proceeded 
 to restore animation by applying burned 
 feathers to his nose and bathing his 
 temples with eau-de-Cologne. So soon 
 as she saw that Pons's eyes were open, 
 and that consciousness was restoi'ed, she 
 placed her hands upon her hips, and thus 
 began : 
 
 "Without slippers, and without a rag 
 upon 3'ou, except \o\xy shirt ! Whj-, it's 
 enough to give you your death ! And 
 wherefore do jom mistrust me ? If this 
 is to be the game, monsieur, adieu ! After 
 waiting on you for ten years, after a-spend- 
 ing my own money on your private af- 
 fairs, which all my savings is gone that 
 way, just to save poor Monsieur Schmucke 
 from being worried, which the poor man 
 goes up and down stairs crying like a 
 child — this is my reward ! You play the 
 spy — Well ! God has punished you for 
 it ; and it serves j-ou right ! And me 
 a-straiuing of myself, to carry you in 
 nxy arms, and a-runuing the risk of being 
 
 n'injured for the rest o' my days. Oh ! 
 and didn't 1 leave the door open ? " 
 
 "Whom were you talking to?" said 
 Pons. 
 
 "Xow there's a pretty notion for a 
 man to take into his head ! " cried Dame 
 Citot. " What next, I should like to 
 know ? Am I your slave ? Am I bound 
 to account to you for n'everything I do ? 
 Do you know that if you worry me n'in 
 this way, I'll leave you to shift for your- 
 self ; and you can just hire a nurse ! " 
 
 Terrified b^' this menace. Pons, imwit- 
 tingly, allowed Madame Cibot to perceive 
 to what lengths she might go armed with 
 that Damoclean sword. 
 
 "It is onl3^ my disease!" said Pons, 
 piteously. 
 
 " Yes, that's all very fine ! " said Mad- 
 ame Cibot roughlj-, marching off and leav- 
 ing poor Pons alone in great perplexity. 
 Remorse, admiration for the clamorous 
 self-sacrifice of his nurse, and self-accusa- 
 tion, combined to banish from his mind 
 all consciousness of the terrible aggrava- 
 tion of his maladj' consequent upon his 
 fall on the dining-room floor. Madame 
 Cibot met Schmucke coming upstairs, and 
 thus accosted him : 
 
 " Well, monsieur, I've got some very 
 bad news to tell you, and no mistala.'. 
 Monsieur Pons is taking leave of his 
 senses! Only fancy; he got out o' bed, 
 and followed me, and fell flat upon the 
 floor at full length, I do assure you ; ask 
 hiui why he did it, he knows nothing 
 whatever n'about it. He's in a bad 
 way." 
 
 Schmucke listened to Madame Cibot as 
 if she were talking Hebrew. 
 
 "' I made an n'exertion, which I shall 
 feel it to the end of my born da^-s ! " 
 added Madame Cibot, pretending to be 
 in acute pain ; for it had occurred to her 
 that she might make a little capital by 
 acting on an idea that had fortuitously 
 presented itself to her when she felt that 
 her muscles were a trifle strained. " I 
 am so stupid," she continued. "When 
 I saw him a-lying there upon the ground. 
 I takes him up in my arms and I carries 
 him to his bed, just as if he'd been a child 
 — there now! But now I feel as I've
 
 122 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 strained myself ! Oh ! I feel quite ill ! 
 I'm gomg down to the lodge ; see to our 
 patient. I shall send Cibot to fetch Doc- 
 tor Poulain to mo ! I'd rather die than 
 be a cripple." 
 
 And so saying, Madame Cibot clutched 
 the balustrade and rolled, rather than 
 walked, downstairs ; indulging, as she 
 went, in a thousand contortions and in 
 groans so heartrending that the startled 
 occupants of the house quitted their re- 
 spective habitations and thronged the 
 landings of the staircase. Schmucke — 
 his eyes streaming with tears— supported 
 the sufferer and related to the onlookers 
 the story of the portress's self-sacriflce : 
 nor was it long ere the whole house, nay, 
 the whole neighborhood, was ringing with 
 the sublime exploit of Madame Cibot, who 
 — so the rumor ran — had incurred a fatal 
 strain by carrying one of the Nut-Crackers 
 in her arms. On returning to Pons's bed- 
 side, Schmucke informed the invalid of the 
 desperate state of their factotum ; where- 
 upon the two friends looked at one an- 
 other, and said : " What will become of 
 us, without her?" Schmucke, seeing 
 how much Pons had suffered through his 
 escapade, did not venture to scold him. 
 
 "Dat file pric-a-prac ; I would rader 
 purn de whole of it, dan loze mein friend," 
 exclaimed he, on learning tlie cause of 
 Pons's mishap. "Diztruzt Montame Zi- 
 bod, who lends us her zavings ! Dat is not 
 right ; put it is de disease — " 
 
 "Ah! what a disease it is ! I am 
 changed; I feel that I am," said Pons. 
 " I should be sorry to cause j'ou any pain. 
 my good Schmucke." 
 
 "Grumple at me!" said Schmucke, 
 "and leaf Montame Zibod in bease." 
 
 Doctor Poulain made short work of the 
 infirmity with which Madame Cibot was, 
 according to her own account, threatened- 
 and this semi-miraculous cure added great 
 luster to his reputation in the Marais. In 
 mentioning the matter to Pons, the doc- 
 tor attributed the cure to the excellent 
 constitution of the patient, who, to the 
 intense satisfaction of her two gentlemen 
 resumed her duties, in their behalf, on the 
 seventh day after the misadventure. The 
 whole event increased the influence — the 
 
 tyranny — of the portress over the estab- 
 lishment of the Pair of Nut-Crackers cent 
 per cent. During her seven days absence, 
 they had run into debt. She paid the 
 debt, and took advantage of the occasion 
 to obtain from Schmucke (ah, how read- 
 ily !) an acknowledgment for the two 
 thousand francs, which she represented 
 herself to have lent the two friends. 
 
 "Ah, what a wonderful doctor Mon- 
 sieur Poulain is ! " said Dame Cibot to 
 Pons. "Depend upon it, he'll pull you 
 through, my dear sir ; for sure enough 
 he's dragged me out of my cofRn ! Poor 
 Cibot thought it was all up with me : 
 well, as Monsieur Poulain must have told 
 you, when I was a-laying stretched upon 
 my bod I thought of nothing but j'ou : 
 'Oh God,' sajs I to myself, 'take me, 
 and let my dear Monsieur Pons live.' " 
 
 "Poor dear Madame Cibot, you narrow- 
 ly escaped being a criijplo on my account." 
 
 " Ah ! yes. If it hadn't 'a' been for 
 Monsieur Poulain, I should have been in 
 the deal shift as is a-waiting for all of us. 
 Well, well ! we must put up with the 
 consequences of our n'own folly, as the old 
 actor puts it ! We must take things n'as 
 they come, philosophical. How did you 
 get on without me ? " 
 
 "Schmucke nursed me," replied the 
 invalid; "but our poor nurse, and our 
 connection, suffered in consequence — I 
 really don't know how he managed." 
 
 " Keeb yourself galm, Bons ! " cried 
 Schmucke. " Daddy Zibod agted as our 
 banger." 
 
 "Oh! Don't mention t]|iat, my dear 
 lamb ; you n'are, both of you, our chil- 
 dren," replied Dame Cibot. " Our sav- 
 ings are in good keeping in your hands, 
 and no mistake. You're safer nor the 
 Bank of France. As long as we've a bit 
 of bread to eat, half of it's yours — the 
 thing isn't worth speaking about." 
 
 "Boor Montame Zibod !" said Schmucke, 
 as he went away. But Pons hold his peace. 
 
 "Would you believe now, my cherub," 
 said Dame Cibot to her patient, seeing 
 that he was ill at ease, "would you be- 
 lieve that when I was a-dying (for I was 
 pretty nigh face to face with Madame 
 Flatnose !) what tormented me most was
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 123 
 
 a-leaving' of you two alone to shift for 
 yourselves, and a-leaving of my poor 
 Cibot without a farthing ? My savings 
 is such a mere trifle, that I only mention 
 them with references to my death n'and 
 to Cibot, who's an n'angel! Ay, that 
 poor creature nursed me like a queen, and 
 cried over me like a calf. But I trusted 
 to you, on the word of an honest woman, 
 I did. Says I to myself: 'AU right, Ci- 
 bot ; my gentlemen'll never let you want 
 for bread.' " 
 
 To this direct appeal ad testamentum 
 Pons vouchsafed no reply ; and the por- 
 tress waited silentl^^ to hear what he 
 would say. At length the answer came : 
 
 " I will recommend you to Schmucke," 
 said the patient. 
 
 "Ah ! " cried the portress, "whatever 
 you do will be sure to be right ; I jjuts 
 m^' faith in you, in your g-ood heart. 
 Don't let's ever talk about the thing, for 
 you n'humiliate me, my dear cherub ; 
 think about getting well ! You'll live 
 longer than the rest of us." 
 
 Profound was the anxiety which now 
 took possession of Madame Cibot ; and 
 she resolved to obtain, from her gentle- 
 man, an explicit declaration of his inten- 
 tions with regard to her legacy. Her 
 first stejj toward carrying her resolution 
 into effect, was to sally forth and call 
 upon Dr. Poulain that very evening, after 
 Schmucke — who since Pons had been taken 
 ill always had his meals by his friend's 
 bedside— had finished dinner. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 THE HISTORY OP EVERY DEBUT AT PARIS. 
 
 Doctor Poulain lived in the Rue 
 d'Orleans, whei-e he occupied a small 
 ground-floor comprising an anteroom, a 
 dimwing-room, two bedrooms, a pantry, 
 a kitchen, a servant's room, and a little 
 cellar. The pantry, which was contigu- 
 ous to the anteroom, and communicated 
 with one of the bedrooms — the doctor's — 
 had been converted into a study. This 
 suite of apartments formed part of the 
 
 wing of a house — an enormous pile, built 
 in the days of the Empire, on the site of 
 an ancient hotel, the garden of which still 
 existed and was apportioned betweea the 
 three tenements into which the ground- 
 floor of the building was divided. 
 
 The rooms inhabited by the doctor had 
 undergone no alteration for forty j-ears. 
 Paint, paper, decorations, all savored of 
 the imperial epoch. The glasses and their 
 frames, the patterns of the paper, the 
 ceilings and the paint were dim with 
 smoke and daubed with the accumulated 
 dirt of forty years. Yet this little habi- 
 tation in the depths of the Marais cost its 
 occupier forty pounds a year. 
 
 lu the second of the two bedrooms, 
 Madame Poulain, the doctor's mother, 
 aged sixty-seven, was spending the years 
 that yet remained to her. She worked 
 for the breeches-makers. She stitched 
 gaiters, leather breeches, braces and 
 belts, in short, all the appurtenances of 
 and belonging to those now unfashionable 
 garments. Occupied as she was with 
 household duties and the superintendence 
 of the only servant that her son emploj-ed, 
 she never left the precincts of her dwell- 
 ing, but took an occasional airing in the 
 little garden to which a glass door in the 
 drawing-room gave access. She had now 
 been a widow for twenty j'ears. 
 
 On the death of her husband she sold 
 the good-wDl and stock in trade of her 
 breeches-manufactory to her foreman, 
 who reserved for lier work enough to 
 enable her to earn about fifteenpence a 
 day. Urged hy a desire to place her only 
 son — no matter at what cost — in a position 
 superior to that which his father had 
 occupied, the Widow Poulain had shrunk 
 from no sacrifice which might further the 
 education of her hoy. Proud of her JE&- 
 culapius, and believing in his future suc- 
 cess, she«steadily pursued tlie path of total 
 self-denial, and found her happiness in 
 ministering to her son and hiving by 
 money for him. Her one day-dream ^as 
 his welfare, and, moreover, she loved him 
 with an intelligent love that is beyond 
 the reach of many mothers. Madame 
 Poulain never forgot that she had been a 
 common workwoman , and since the good
 
 124 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 , lady spoke in S, Just as Madame Cibot 
 spoke in N, and was loath tliat her son 
 should be injured through an3' ridicule or 
 contempt that she might excite, she 
 would, of her own accord, take refuge 
 in her own room when it so happened 
 that any distinguished patient came to 
 consult her son; or when any of his school- 
 fellows or hospital companions presented 
 themselves; so that the defective educa- 
 tion of the mother — a defect that was 
 amply redeemed hy her dublime affection 
 for her offspi-ing — never raised a blush 
 upon the doctor's cheek. The sale of 
 the good-will and stock in trade of the 
 breeches-manufactory had produced some 
 twenty thousand francs, which the widow 
 invested in the public funds in the year 
 1820 ; and the dividends, amounting to 
 eleven hundred francs, constituted her 
 only independent means. Under these 
 circumstances, no one will be surprised to 
 learn that during many j'ears the widow's 
 neighbors in the Rue d'Orleans were, at 
 certain times and seasons, edified by the 
 spectacle of the family linen hanging on 
 the clothes-lines in the little garden. The 
 servant and Madame Poulain, between 
 them, did the washing at home, at a 
 trifling cost. But this detail of domestic 
 economy did the doctor a great deal of 
 harm. How could so poor a man be a 
 man of talent ? 
 
 The eleven hundred francs were ab- 
 sorbed by house rent ; so that, at start- 
 ing, Madame Poulain— a stout little old 
 woman, with a kintl heart — had to meet, 
 out of the proceeds of her own unaided 
 industiy, all the expenses of the humble 
 home. At length, after twelve years' 
 perseverance in his stony path. Dr. Pou- 
 lain managed to scrape together about 
 three thousand francs a year ; so that his 
 mother had an income of about five thou- 
 sand francs with which to make both ends 
 meet. Those who know what Paris is, 
 are well aware that such an income is 
 just sufficient to procure the necessaries 
 of life. 
 
 The drawing-room (which served as a 
 patient's waiting-room) was meanly fur- 
 nished. It contained the inevitable ma- 
 hogany sofa covered with yellow Utrecht 
 
 velvet, flowered. Add to this four arm- 
 chairs, six ordinary chairs, a console and 
 a tea-table, and the inventory is com- 
 plete. All these valuables had been se- 
 lected by the deceased breeches-maker, 
 and formed part of his estate at his de- 
 cease. The time-piece, which was never 
 I'eleased from its dome of glass, was in 
 the form of a lyre, and was flanked by a 
 pair of Egyptian candelabra. To what 
 process of preservation the window-cui-- 
 tains of this apartment had been sub- 
 jected, was a question which forced itself 
 upon the observer ; but that they had 
 contrived to hang together for a period 
 of abnormal length was obvious from 
 their texture and their pattern : they 
 were of yellow calico stamped with red 
 roses, and came from the manufactory at 
 Jouj'. Nov,' it was in the year 1809 that 
 Obercamjif received the compliments of 
 the emperor on account of these atrocious 
 products of the cotton trade ! The doc- 
 tor's study was furnished in the same 
 style, with furniture that had already 
 seen service in the paternal chamber, and 
 gave the room a meager, chilly, poverty- 
 stricken aspect. Now in this age, when 
 the advertisement is all-powerful, when 
 we gild the lamp-posts in the Place de la 
 Concorde, in order that the pauper may 
 fancy himself a wealtlw citizen, and find 
 comfort in the illusion, what patient will 
 believe in the skill of a lAysician who has 
 neither fame nor — furniture ? 
 
 The antechamber was used as a dining- 
 room ; and the servant worked in it, when 
 not engaged in the discharge of her culi- 
 nary functions, or in relieving the solitude 
 of the doctor's mother. Enter this room, 
 and a glance at the scanty sand-colored 
 muslin curtains of the window, which 
 looks on the court, revealed to you the 
 decent penury that reigned in this drear 
 abode, which was a desert during half the 
 day. Those cupboards must conceal the 
 mouldy pate, the chipped plate, the imme- 
 morial cork, the napkin that has done duty 
 for a week ; in short all those venial igno- 
 minies that are to be found in small 
 Parisians households, and thence find 
 their way, directly, to the ragman's creel. 
 Under these circumstances, and in these
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 125 
 
 days when the crown-piece nestles at the 
 bottom of eveiy heart, and rings in ever\' 
 phrase that is uttered, the doctor, who 
 was now thirty-, and had a mother with- 
 out connections of any Ivind, very natur- 
 ally remained unmarried. In his inter- 
 course with the various families to which 
 his professional duties inti^oduced him, he 
 had never — throughout ten long years — 
 encountered even the slightest foundation 
 for a castle in the air ; for the people 
 whom Dr. Poulain attended occupied a 
 sphere in which the dailj^ routine of exist- 
 ence was similar to that to which he him- 
 self was accustomed. The only establish- 
 ments he saw — those of minor clerks and 
 petty manufacturers — resembled his own 
 establishment. His richest patients were 
 the butchers, the bakers, the large retail 
 dealers of the district ; and these good 
 people genei'allj' imputed their recovery 
 to the operations of Dame Nature, in 
 order to reduce to a couple of shillings 
 the fee of the doctor who came to visit 
 them on foot. In the medical profession 
 the carriage is more important than the 
 cure. 
 
 A commonplace and uneventful life tells, 
 in the long- run, upon the most adven- 
 turous spirit. A man molds himself to 
 the shape required by his lot, and accepts 
 the yoke of a humdrum existence. Thus, 
 after a ten years' practice of his profes- 
 sion. Dr. Poulain pursued his Sisyphean 
 calling without feeling the extreme de- 
 jection that, in the earlier portion of his 
 career, had filled his cup with bitterness. 
 Yet he too had his day-dream. At Paris 
 every person has a day-dream. Remo- 
 nencq had his day-dream ; Madame Cibot 
 hers. Dr. Poulain's day-dream took the 
 form of a hope that he might be sum- 
 moned to the sick-bed of some wealthy 
 and powerful patient, and obtain through 
 the influence of this patron-patient — whom 
 he would of course succeed in curing — the 
 post of chief physician to a hospital, or of 
 physician in ordinary to a prison, or a 
 boulevard theater, or a government oflBce. 
 It was in this way, indeed, that he had 
 procured his appointment as a physician 
 to the mairie. Introduced by Madame 
 Cibot, he had attended and cured M. Pil- 
 
 lerault, the owner of the house to which 
 the Cibots were attached as porters. M. 
 Pillerault, who was grandunclc, on the 
 mother's side, to the Countess Popinot, 
 the wife of the Minister, became interested 
 in the fortunes of the young doctor, whose 
 hidden penury the old man had fathomed 
 when he went to thank the physician for 
 his attentions. 
 
 Actuated by this feeling, M. Pillerault 
 induced his grandnephew the Minister — 
 who adored his old uncle — to give Dr. Pou- 
 lain the berth which he had now occupied 
 for five years. The slender emoluments 
 of this office came just in the very nick of 
 time to prevent the doctor from resort- 
 ing to that desperate measure — emigra- 
 tion ; which, to a Frenchman, is almost 
 as bad as death. Dr. Poulain took good 
 care to pay Count Popinot a visit of ac- 
 knowledgment, but finding that that 
 statesman's medical attendant was the 
 illustrious Bianchon,* the poor doctor 
 fully understood that to solicit employ- 
 ment in that quarter would be a veiy 
 hopeless enterprise. After having nursed 
 the flattering hope of securing the patron- 
 age of an influential Minister — one of those 
 twelve or fifteen great cards that, during 
 the last sixteen years, a powerful hand 
 has been shuffling on the green cloth of 
 the council-table — Dr. Poulain found him- 
 self once more immersed in the Marais, 
 and doomed to potter about among the 
 small tradesmen and the poor of the dis- 
 trict, and to act as registrar of deaths at 
 a salary' of twelve hundred francs per 
 annum. 
 
 Dr. Poulain, who had distinguished 
 himself as a resident medical student, 
 and had developed into a careful practi- 
 tioner, \>y no means lacked experience. 
 Moreover, if his patients died, their death 
 gave rise to no scandal ; and he had an 
 opportunity of studying every species of 
 disease in animd vili. You may readUy 
 imagine on what a regimen of gall he 
 lived ! And accordingh' the expression 
 of his face — a face which was naturally 
 long and melancholy — was, sometimes, 
 positively fearful. Picture to yourself 
 
 * See " Why the Atheist Prayed."
 
 126 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 the eyes of Tartuffe glittering thi-ough 
 a mask of yellow parchment, stamped 
 with all the bitterness of Alceste ; picture 
 to yourself the bearing, the attitude, and 
 the glance of this man, who, knowing 
 that he was quite as good a doctor as 
 the illustrious Bianchon, found himself 
 fixed in an obscure position by a hand of 
 iron. Dr. Poulain could not help compar- 
 ing his gains — which even on luckj' days 
 did not exceed ten francs — with those of 
 Bianchon who made his five or six hun- 
 dred francs per diem ! That reflection 
 will explain all that envious hate that 
 seethes in the bosom of the democrat. 
 Nor could this victim of repressed am- 
 bition charge himself with any remiss- 
 ness. He had already tried to make a 
 fortune \>y the invention of purgative 
 pilules resembling those of Morison. He 
 had intrusted the working of this specula- 
 tion to one of his fellow-students, a resi- 
 dent student who had turned druggist. 
 But this druggist fell in love Avith a bal- 
 let-girl at the opera, and became a bank- 
 rupt, and the patent of invention for the 
 purgative pilules, having been taken out 
 in his name, the magnificent discovery 
 went to enrich his successor. The former 
 resident student scampered off to Mexico 
 — the land of gold — taking with him a 
 thousand francs of poor Poulain's sav- 
 ings ; and when the poor fellow went to 
 the figurante to ask for his monej', she 
 treated him — by way of consolation stakes 
 — as if he had been a money-lender. Since 
 Poulaui had had the good fortune to cure 
 old Pillerault, his services had not been 
 sought by any wealthy patient. So he 
 had to run about the Marais on foot, like 
 a hungry cat, and, in a round of twenty 
 visits, would find only two that jdelded 
 him a fee of fortj' sous apiece. To him 
 the liberal patient was that fairy bird 
 which, in every region under the sun, 
 goes by the name of the white black- 
 bird. 
 
 The young briefless barrister, the young 
 doctor without connection are the two 
 most striking personifications of that 
 genteel Despair which is peculiar to Paris 
 — that chilly dumb Despair that walks 
 about clad in black coat and trousers, 
 
 whose shiny seams recall tlie zinc that 
 roofs the attic in which it hides. The 
 well-worn satin waistcoat, the well-saved 
 hat, old gloves and calico shirt, complete 
 the livery. 'Tis a perfect poem of misery, 
 as somber as the secret cells of the Con- 
 ciergerie. The penurj' of others — of the 
 poet, the artist, the actor, the musician 
 — is relieved by. the gayety that Art 
 brings in her train, and by the light- 
 heartedness which prevails thi'oughout 
 Bohemia — that avenue to the Thebaides 
 of genius : but the features of these two 
 black-coated figures, that steal about on 
 foot, and belong to two professions whose 
 members live by the sufferings of hu- 
 manity and see only its weaker and its 
 baser sides — the features of the strug- 
 gling barrister and struggling doctor — 
 are frequently marked by a defiant and 
 sinister expression, and reveal their min- 
 gled hatred of the wealthy and eagerness 
 for wealth in glances that dart from their 
 ej'es like the first tongues of flame emitted 
 by a smoldering conflagration. When 
 two men, who were friends at school, en- 
 counter one another after an interval of 
 twenty years, the rich one shuns the 
 pauper who was once his comrade, does 
 not recognize him, shudders at the 
 thought of the abyss that destiny has 
 placed between them. The one has trav- 
 eled through life, borne along by Fort- 
 une's prancing steeds or throned on 
 the golden clouds of triumph ; the other 
 has plodded his weary waj' through sub- 
 terraneous paths, " the common shores " 
 of Paris, and is stained with all their 
 "sable tokens." Ah ! how many of Dr. 
 Poulain's former friends avoided him at 
 the sight of that waistcoat and that coat. 
 
 The reader will now find no difficulty 
 in understanding whj' Dr. Poulain plaj'ed 
 his part so perfectly in the little comedy 
 which might be entitled : "Dame Cibot's 
 peril." 
 
 All greeds and ail ambitions have a 
 freemasonry of their own. When the 
 doctor not only failed to discover any 
 organic lesion of any kind in Madame 
 Cibot, but found that her pulse was ad- 
 mirably regular, and that her movements 
 were entirely free from constraint, and
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 127 
 
 yet heard her screaming as if in pain, he 
 saw at once that she had a motive for 
 pretending to be at the point of death. 
 Knowing that the speedy cure of a serious 
 (imaginar^^) illness would cause his name 
 to he talked about in the arroudissement, 
 he exaggerated Madame Cibot's vision- 
 ary rupture and talked about reducing it 
 by taking it in time. In short, he admin- 
 istered fictitious remedies, and performed 
 a fantastic operation, which were crowned 
 with complete success. Having ransacked 
 the arsenal of Desplein's extraordinaiy 
 cures, and hit upon an out-of-the-way 
 case, he proceeded to treat Madame Ci- 
 bot by the same method, modestly gave 
 the credit of its successful issue to the 
 eminent surgeon, and represented himself 
 as his imitator. 
 
 Such is the audacity of the Parisian 
 debutant ! He turns everything into a 
 ladder, -wherewith to reach his theater 
 of action. But since all things — even the 
 rungs of a ladder — wear out in time, the 
 aspirants of every profession are at their 
 wit's end for wood to make steps with. 
 
 At certain times the Parisian mutinies 
 against success. Tired of erecting ped- 
 estals, he sulks like a spoiled child, and 
 resolves to have no more idols ; or, to be 
 strictly accurate, men of talent are not 
 alwaj"S forthcoming to feed his infatua- 
 tion. There are faults in the veins that 
 supplies us with men of genius. When 
 such a fault occurs the Parisian begins 
 to kick ; he is not content to be always 
 adorning or adoring mediocrity. 
 
 When Madame Cibot, with her habit- 
 ual bruskness, bounced into the doctor's 
 dining-room, she surprised him and his 
 aged mother at the dinner-table discuss- 
 ing a corn-salad — the cheapest of all 
 salads — while their dessert was limited to 
 an acuteangled triangle of Brie cheese 
 which was flanked on one side by a dish 
 containing a meager supply of figs, fil- 
 berts, almonds, and raisins (commonly 
 called les q^iatre-mendiants) and a plen- 
 tiful supply of raisin-stalks, and on the 
 other side by a dish of common apples. 
 
 " You need not go away, mother," said 
 the doctor, detaining Madame Poulain by 
 placing his hand upon her arm ; " this is 
 
 Madame Cibot, of whom you have heard 
 
 me speak." 
 
 •• My respects to you, madame ; my 
 duty to you, monsieur," said Dame Cibot, 
 as she seated herself in the chair which 
 the doctor offered her. "Ah ! this good 
 lady is your mother ; she's most fortunate 
 in having such a clever son ; for he's my 
 savior, madame ; he pulled me n'out of 
 the pit of—" 
 
 When the widow heard this eulogy upon 
 her son from the lips of the portress, she 
 thought Madame Cibot a charming per- 
 son. 
 
 "Well, it's to tell you, dear Doctor 
 Poulain, between ourselves, as poor Mon- 
 sieur Pons is a-going on very badh' in- 
 deed, and I want to have a word with 
 3'ou in relation to him—" 
 
 "Let us go into the drawing-room," 
 said Dr. Poulain, intimating to Madame 
 Cibot, by a significant gesture, that the 
 sei-vant was present. 
 
 So soon as Madame Cibot was in the 
 drawing-room she entered into a lengthy 
 exposition of her relations with the Pair 
 of Nut-Crackers ; she repeated, with 
 divers embellishments, the story of her 
 loan to them, and recounted the immense 
 services which she had rendered to 
 Messrs. Pons and Schmucke during the 
 last ten years. According to her show- 
 ing, those two old men would not have 
 been alive but for her maternal care. 
 She posed as an angel and told so manj- 
 tear-besprinkled falsehooas that at length 
 old Madame Poulain became deeply af- 
 fected. 
 
 '•' You understand, my dear sir," said 
 Madame Cibot in conclusion, "as it's 
 highly n'important I should know n'ej?- 
 actly what Monsieur Puns intends to do 
 for me in case he should happen to die ; 
 which of course I don't want him so to do 
 scarcely; for j-ou see, madame, looking 
 after these two innocents is my very life ; 
 but if one of them goes I'll look after the 
 other. Nature built me for the rival of 
 maternittj. If I hadn't some one to take 
 an n 'interest in and to make a child of I 
 don't know whatever would become o' 
 me. Well then, if Monsieur Poulain was 
 willing he might do me a service, as I
 
 128 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 should be very grateful for, bj'^ putting- in 
 a word for nie with Monsieur Pons. Mj' 
 God ! a thousand francs a year for life, is 
 that too much, I should liUo to know ? It 
 'ud be just so much in Monsieur Sclimucke's 
 pocket. Well, now, our dear invalid told 
 nie as he'd recommend me to this poor 
 German, who, therefore, n'according to 
 his idea, would be his heir. But what 
 can one do with a man as can't tack two 
 ideas together in French, and who, be- 
 sides, may take it into his head to run olT 
 to Germany; he'll be so cut up by the 
 death of his friend?" 
 
 "My dear Madame Cibot," replied the 
 doctor, whose face now wore a very 
 solemn aspect, " doctors have nothing- 
 whatever to do with such matters as you 
 have mentioned, and I should be sus- 
 pended from the practice of my profes- 
 sion if it were known that I had meddled 
 with the testamentary arrangements of 
 one of my patients. The law forbids a 
 doctor to accept a legacy from his pa- 
 tient—" 
 
 "What a fool of a law ! for what is 
 there to hinder me from sharing my 
 legacy with you?" replied Dame Cibot, 
 without a moment's hesitation. 
 
 •■ I will go yet further," said the doc- 
 tor; "my conscience as a medical man 
 forbids mo to talk to Monsieur Pons about 
 his death. In the first place, his position 
 is not sufficiently critical for that; and, in 
 the second, such language coming from 
 me would cause him a shock that might 
 do him substantial injury, and so render 
 his case desperate." 
 
 "But I make no bones about telling 
 him to set his affairs in order — and n'it 
 makes him not a penny the worse. 
 He's accustomed to it ! You needn't be 
 afraid," said Madame Cibot. 
 
 "Don't say another word to me upon 
 the subject, my dear Madame Cibot ! 
 Matters of this kind are not within the 
 province of the physician ; they are for 
 the notary — " 
 
 '• But, mj' dear Monsieur Poulain, sup- 
 pose as Monsieur Pons was to ask you 
 how he is of his own n'accord. and whether 
 he would do well to take his precautions. 
 That being- so, would you refuse to tell 
 
 him as it's a n'excellent way to get well 
 ag-ain to n'have all .your affairs ship-shape? 
 Then 3'ou might just slip in one little word 
 about me — " 
 
 " Oh ! if he begins talking to me about 
 making- his will, I shall not dissuade him 
 from doing so," said Dr. Poulain. 
 
 "Well, then, that matter's settled!" 
 cried Madame Cibot. " I came to thank 
 you for the trouble 3'ou took in ray case," 
 she added, slipping into the doctor's hand 
 a curl-paper containing- three pieces of 
 gold. " That's all as I'm able to do 
 just now. Ah ! if I was only rich j'ou 
 should be rich too, dear Doctor Poulain ; 
 you u'as is the image of the good God on 
 earth — Ah ! madame, j^ou've g-ot an n'an- 
 g-el for a son." 
 
 So saying-. Dame Cibot rose ; Madame 
 Poulain bowed to her in high g-ood-humor, 
 and the doctor escorted her as far as the 
 landing. There this fearful Lady Mac- 
 beth of the street was enlightened by a 
 ray of intellig-ence that came direct from 
 hell. She perceived that the doctor must 
 be her accomplice since he accepted an 
 honorarium for the cure of a simulated 
 malady. 
 
 "Why, my dear Monsieur Poulain," 
 she said to him ; " after having- pulled 
 me round after my accident, would j'ou 
 decline to save me from want by saying 
 of a few words ? " 
 
 The doctor felt that he had allowed 
 the devil to get hold of one of his hairs, 
 and that that hair was being twisted 
 round the ruthless horn of the red claw. 
 Startled by the notion of losing his integ- 
 rit3' for so mere a trifle, he responded 
 to Dame Cibot's diabolical suggestion bj' 
 another equally diabolical. 
 
 "Listen to me, my dear Madame Ci- 
 bot," said he, taking the good lady back 
 into his apartments and conducting her 
 to his study. " I am about to pay the 
 debt of gratitude I owe you for having 
 got me my post at the mairie — " 
 
 "We will go shares," said Madame 
 Cibot, emphatically. 
 
 " In what ? " asked the doctor. 
 
 "In the old man's fortune," replied the 
 portress. 
 
 "You evidently don't know me," re-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 139 
 
 plied the doctor, posing as Valerius Pub- 
 licola. "Don't mention that subject to 
 me again. I have an old school-fellow, 
 a very clever young man who is all the 
 more friendly toward me because our lot 
 in life has been the same. While I was 
 studying medicine he was learning law ; 
 while I was a resident student at the hos- 
 pital, he was engrossing deeds in the office 
 of a solicitor, Maitre Couture. His father 
 was a shoe-maker, just as mine was a 
 manufacturer of breeches ; so, you may 
 be sure, ho did not meet with much sj'm- 
 pathy from those about him ; and, what 
 is more, he found no capital ; for after all 
 it is only through exciting sympathy that 
 one gets capital. The best he could do 
 was to treat for a provincial practice at 
 Mantes. Now so little do provincial folks 
 understand a Parisian Intellect that my 
 friend was constantly in hot water among 
 them—" 
 
 " The scoundrels ! " exclaimed Madame 
 Cibot. 
 
 " Yes, " pursued the doctor; "for the 
 good people of Mantes combined against 
 him with such effect that he was forced to 
 sell his practice on account of some mat- 
 ters that were misrepresented so as to 
 make him appear to be in the wrong ; the 
 king's attornej^ interfered ; he belonged 
 to the neighborhood, and made common 
 cause with the natives of the place. This 
 poor young man, whose name is Fraisier, 
 who is even more lean and more thread- 
 bare than I am, and has no better house 
 over his head, has taken refuge in our 
 arrondissement. He is obliged to plead 
 — for he is an advocate — before the Juge 
 de paix, and in the ordinary police-courts. 
 He lives close by — in the Rue de la Perle. 
 If you go to number nine and mount to the 
 third storj% you will see, when you reach 
 the landing, the words : CABINET DE 
 MONSIEUR FRAISIER, in gilt letters 
 on a little square of red morocco. Frai- 
 sier's business is almost exclusively con- 
 fined to the litigation of the porters, the 
 artisans, and the poor inhabitants of our 
 arrondissement. His charges are very 
 moderate. He is a man of honor ; for I 
 need hardly tell you that, with his abili- 
 ties, he would now be driving his carriage 
 
 Balzac — E 
 
 if he were a rogue. I shall see my friend 
 Fraisier this evening ; go to him early 
 to-morrow morning. He knows Monsieur 
 Louchard the bailiff. Monsieur Tabareau 
 the bailiff of tlio Justice depaix, Monsieur 
 Vitel the Juge de paix, and Monsieur 
 Trognon the notary. He has already 
 won a position among the most reputable 
 professional men of the district. If he 
 undertakes your business and you can get 
 him to act as Monsieur Pons's legal ad- 
 viser, you will find in him, I can assure 
 you, a second self. Only, let me warn 
 3'ou, not to propose to him, as j'ou did 
 to me, a mutual agreement of a dishonor- 
 able character ; at the same time, I may 
 tell you that he is an intelligent man, and 
 that you and he will be able to cohie to 
 some understanding. Then, as regards 
 the remuneration of his services, I will 
 act as your intermediary' — " 
 
 Madame Cibot looked at the doctor 
 with a knowing look, and inquired : 
 
 " Isn't he the legal gentleman as pulled 
 Madame Florimond what keeps the haber- 
 dasher's shop in the Rue Vieille du Temple 
 out of the mess as she got into over the 
 estate of the gentleman what — " 
 
 " That's the ver^' man," said the doctor. 
 
 "N'isn't it a shame," cried Madame 
 Cibot, "that after he'd been and gone 
 and got her a n'income of two thousand 
 francs she should have gone and jilted 
 him when he n'asked her to marry him, 
 and should have thought as she was quits 
 with him (as they saj- she did) by giving 
 him a dozen hoUand shirts, two dozen 
 handkerchiefs, and — in short, a n'outfit !" 
 
 "My dear Madame Cibot," replied the 
 doctor, "the outfit you speak of cost a 
 thousand francs ; and Fraisier, wlio was 
 at that time just commencing business in 
 this district, was sadly in want of an out- 
 fit. Besides, Madame Florimond paid liis 
 bill of costs without caviling at a single 
 item ; and that piece of business was the 
 means of bringing Fraisier a good many 
 other clients; so that he has his hands 
 quite full of business now ; though. I must 
 admit, it is of much the same description 
 as my own — there isn't much to choose 
 between his connection and mine — " 
 
 " It is only tlie just as sullers here be-
 
 130 
 
 THia HUM Ay COMEDY. 
 
 low ! " replied the portress. " Well, g-ood- 
 by and thank j'ou, my dear Monsieur 
 Poulain." 
 
 And now begins the drama — or (if you 
 will) the tragi-comedy — of the death of 
 an old bachelor who, by the irresistible 
 force of circumstances, has become the 
 helpless prey of the avaricious being's 
 now g-rouj)ed around his dj'ing- bed. 
 
 Leag'ued and allied with them are the 
 keenest of all passions — the passion of the 
 picture-maniac, the g-reed of Fraisier (the 
 portrait of whom, as he appeared in his 
 den, will make you shudder), and the 
 thirst for gold of an Auvergnat, who, to 
 become a capitalist, was prepared for 
 anything, even crime. This, the earlier 
 portion of my narrative serves, in some 
 sort, as an introduction to this tragi- 
 comedy, while the dr^amatis personce in- 
 clude all the characters who have hitherto 
 occupied the stage. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 A MAN OF LAW. 
 
 Among odd freaks of custom, the de- 
 basement of words is one that would 
 require volumes for its explanation. 
 Write to a solicitor, styhng him a 
 homme de lot, and you will offend him 
 as gravely as you would a colonial mer- 
 chant were you to send him a letter 
 addressed : Monsieur So-and-so, Grocer. 
 There are a great many men of the 
 world — and they surelj' ought to be 
 perfectly familiar with these subtle tech- 
 nicalities of the art of living ; since, if 
 they are ignorant of these, thej^ are 
 ignorant of all things — who are entirely 
 unaware that to call an author a homme 
 de leitres is the most galling insult that 
 you can offer him. The word monsieur is 
 the most striking example of the life and 
 death of words. Monsieur means mon- 
 seigneur. This title, monsieur, which was 
 formerly so important (and is still, when 
 transformed from sieur into sire, reserved 
 exclusively for monarclis), is now applied 
 to everybody ; although, strange to say, 
 
 mcssire (which is nothing more than the 
 word monsieur doubled, and is its equiv- 
 alent) provokes indignant articles in the 
 Republican journals when it occurs in an 
 invitation to a funeral. Magistrats, con- 
 seillers, jurisconsultes, juges, avocats, 
 officiers ministeriels, avoues, huissiera, 
 conseils, hommes d'affaires, agents d'af- 
 faires, and defenseurs — such are the 
 various species into which the class of 
 persons who administer the law and carry 
 its decisions into operation are divided. 
 The two lowest rungs of this legal ladder 
 ai-e the practicien and the homme de loi. 
 The practicien, who is vulgarly called 
 recors (bum-bailiff), is the fortuitous 
 homme de justice ; his office is to assist 
 in the execution of the sentence in a civil 
 suit ; he may be called the casual common 
 hangman of the civil courts. 
 
 As for the homme de loi, he is the very 
 oi)probrium of the profession. He is in 
 the legal what the homme de lettres is 
 in the literary' world. The competition 
 which consumes every profession in 
 France has invented a corresponding 
 set of disparaging terms. Every voca- 
 tion has its appropriate stigma. The 
 contempt which brands the expressions 
 homme de lettres and homme de loi does 
 not, however, extend to their plurals. 
 One may use the terms les gens de let- 
 tres, les gens de loi without wounding 
 anybody's feelings. But to resume ; at 
 Paris each profession has its Omegas — 
 persons who lower the calling- to the level 
 of the streets — the level of the lowest 
 ranks. The homme de loi, the pettifog- 
 ging agent, accordingly still exists in 
 certain quarters of the town ; just as 
 the market has its petty usurer who 
 stands in the same relative position to 
 the princes of the banking- world as Mon- 
 sieur Fraisier did to the Society of Avoues. 
 Strange as it may seem, the common 
 people are as reluctant to resort to the 
 ministerial officers of the law as they are 
 to enter a fashionable restaurant ; on the 
 other hand, thej^ repair to the agent as 
 readily as to the pot-house. 
 
 There is one general law for every so- 
 cial sphere — the law of equality. It is 
 only the choicest spirits that delight in
 
 UOUSIN PONS. 
 
 131 
 
 scaling the summits of societ3^ ; who do 
 not suffer when they find themselves in 
 the presence of their superiors ; who make 
 good their footing much as Beaumarchais 
 secured his, by dropping the watch of the 
 grand seigneur who was trying to make 
 hi in feel his inferiority'. Hence the suc- 
 cessful adventurer, especially' the adven- 
 turer who leaves behind him every frag- 
 ment of the swaddling clothes in which he 
 once was wrapped, is a colossal exception 
 to the general rule. 
 
 Six o'clock the next morning found Mad- 
 ame Cibot in the Rue de la Perle, examin- 
 ing the house which sheltered her future 
 legal adviser, the Sieur Fraisier, the 
 homme de lot. It was one of those old 
 houses whicli the petite bourgeoisie of 
 bygone days used to live in. The en- 
 trance to the house lay through a pas- 
 sage. The ground-floor (part of whicli 
 was taken up by the porter's lodge and 
 by the shop of a cabinet-maker whose 
 work - rooms and warehouses trenched 
 upon a small interior court) was cut in 
 two by the passage and the staircase, 
 whose walls were so damp and so in- 
 crusted with saltpeter that the house 
 appeared to be suffering from leprosy. 
 
 Madame Cibot went straight to the 
 lodge, where she found one of Cibot's 
 brother-porters — a shoe-maker — together 
 with his wife and two young children, all 
 packed into a space of ten feet square, 
 which was lighted only by a window look- 
 ing on to the little court. When once 
 Dame Cibot had announced her name and 
 calling, and mentioned her house in the 
 Rue de Normandie, it was not long ere a 
 thorough understanding was established 
 between the two women. After a quar- 
 ter of an hour's gossip, dui'ing which Mon- 
 sieur Fraisier's portress was> preparing 
 breakfast for the shoe-maker and the two 
 children, Madame Cibot turned the con- 
 versation on to the subject of the inmates 
 of the house, and mentioned the homme 
 de loi. 
 
 " I am come to consult him on busi- 
 ness," said she ; " one of his friends. Doc- 
 tor Poulain, said as he would mention my 
 name to Monsieur Fraisier. You know 
 Doctor Poulain, don't you ? " 
 
 " I should think I did ! " said the por- 
 tress of the Rue de la Perle. •' He saved 
 my little girl when she had the croup." 
 
 "Ay, and he saved me too, madame. 
 What sort of a man might this Monsieur 
 Fraisier be? " 
 
 " He's a man from whom we find it no 
 easy matter to get the inonej' we've paid 
 for the postage of his letters when the 
 end of the month comes, my good lady." 
 
 The intelligent Dame Cibot required no 
 further answer. 
 
 " It's possible to be poor and n'honest," 
 said she. 
 
 "I should hope so," replied Fraisier's 
 portress ; "we are not rolling in gold or 
 silver, no, nor yet in copper, neither ; but 
 we don't owe a farthing to any soul alive." 
 
 This was a kind of language which Mad- 
 ame Cibot was quite at home in. 
 
 " Well, mj' dear," she pursued, " I sup- 
 pose I can trust him, can't I ? " 
 
 "Ah, indeed you can; when Monsieur 
 Fraisier wants to do any one a good turn, 
 I've heard Madame Florimond say that 
 he hasn't his fellow — " 
 
 " Then, why didn't she marry him ? " 
 asked Dame Cibot, with emphasis, '• since 
 she owed her fortune to him ? It's some- 
 thing for a woman as keeps a small hab- 
 erdasher's shop to become the wife of a 
 n'advocate — " 
 
 " Whj', indeed ? " said the portress, as 
 she led Madame Cibot into the passage. 
 " You are going up to see him, ai-cn't 
 you, madame ? Well I when j'ou get into 
 his room j'ou'll know the reason why ! " 
 
 The staircase, which was lighted by 
 sash-windows looking on to a small court, 
 revealed the fact that with the exception 
 of the landlord and the Sieur Fraisier, 
 the inmates of the house were engaged 
 in mechanical operations. The muddy 
 stairs, strewed with shreds of copper, 
 broken buttons, scraps of gauze, and 
 fragments of esparto grass, disclosed the 
 nature of the several trades that were 
 carried on in the house, while the walls 
 of the upper stories wei-e disfigured with 
 caricatures — the handiwork of the ap- 
 prentices. 
 
 The last words of the portress had ex- 
 cited Madame Cibot's curiosity, and had
 
 132 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 thus naturally determined her to consult 
 Dr. Poulain's friend. Whether she should 
 employ him or not was a question, the 
 decision of which she reserved until she 
 had seen him. 
 
 " I sometimes ask myself how Madame 
 Sauvage can bear to remain in his ser- 
 vice," said the portress, by Avay of com- 
 mentarj', as slie followed Madame Cibot 
 upstairs; "I am going- up with you, 
 niadame," she added, "for I am taking- 
 the landlord's milk and his newspaper up 
 to his apartments." 
 
 On reaching the second story above the 
 entresol. Dame Cibot found herself before 
 a most disreputable - looking door of a 
 dubious red color, and incaked to the 
 width of about two inches and a half 
 with that dark-brown layer of dirt that 
 results from the oft-repeated application 
 of the hand, and forms an eye-sore which 
 the architect has endeavored to banish 
 from elegant apartments by placing 
 plates of glass above and below the key- 
 holes. The wicket of this door was so 
 clogged with rubbish resembling that 
 which restaurateurs have devised in or- 
 der to give an appearance of age to bot- 
 tles which are still in their early youth, 
 that it served no other end than that of 
 procuring for the door the nickname of 
 prison-door — a nickname, by the way, 
 that was thoroughly in keeping with the 
 club - shaped iron bindings, formidable 
 hinges and large-headed nails with which 
 the door was garnished. These append- 
 ages must have been invented by some 
 miser or by some pamphleteer at feud 
 with the whole world. 
 
 When Madame Cibot pulled the gi'easj'- 
 oUve-shaped handle of the door-bell its 
 faint tinkle showed that the bell-metal 
 was cracked. Indeed, every object was 
 in perfect harmony with the broad out- 
 lines of this hideous picture. The sound 
 of heavy footsteps and the asthmatic 
 breathing of a portly woman now fell 
 upon the ear of Madame Cibot, and lo ! 
 Madame Sauvage appeared ! Madame 
 Sauvage was exactly like one of those old 
 hags whom Adrien Brauwer has invented 
 for his '■ Witches starting for Sunday." 
 She was five feet six ; her face had a mili- 
 
 tary aspect, and was far more hairy than 
 Dame Cibot's. Madame Sauvage was mor- 
 bidly stout, wore a hideous dress of cheap 
 cotton, wrapped her head in a turban, 
 still put her hair in cui-1-papcrs made out 
 of the jirinted circulars received by her 
 employer, and adorned her ears with 
 I'ings or rather cart-wheels of gold. This 
 female Cerberus held in her hand a bat- 
 tered tin saucepan. The various odors of 
 the staircase received an addition to their 
 number from the spilled milk; but this 
 last odor, in spite of its sickening acridity, 
 was almost imperceptible among so many 
 smells. 
 
 "And what might your pleasure be, 
 medeme ? " inquired Madame Sauvage ; 
 and as she put the question, the deadly 
 look she cast at Madame Cibot was inten- 
 sified b}' the appearance of her chronically 
 bloodshot eyes. The fact is that Dame 
 Cibot was too well dressed to please 
 Madame Sauvage. 
 
 "Monsieur Fraisier's friend. Doctor 
 Poulain, has sent me here to see Mon- 
 sieur Fraisier." 
 
 " Walk in, medeme," rephed Dame 
 Sauvage, with a sudden access of polite- 
 ness, which showed that she had been 
 forewarned of this early call. And, after 
 having dropped a theatrical courtesy, the 
 serai-masculine servant of Sieur Fraisier 
 abruptly threw open the door of the study 
 that looked on to the street, and in which 
 the quondam solicitor of Mantes was 
 seated. 
 
 This study was an exact counterpart 
 of those small offices of third-rate bailiffs 
 where the pigeon-holes are of blackened 
 wood, where the papers have lain so long- 
 undisturbed that, in the language of the 
 clerks' room, they have grown beards ; 
 where the red tape droops dejectedly ; 
 where the paper-cases bear traces of the 
 gambols of mice, while the floor is gray 
 with dust, and the ceiling yellow with 
 smoke. 
 
 All tarnished was the pier-glass in Mon- 
 sieur Fraisier's studj^ and meager was 
 the log of wood that rested on the cast- 
 iron firedogs. The time-piece, of modern 
 marquetrj' work, liad evidently been 
 picked up at some execution sale, and
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 133 
 
 was worth about sixty francs. The de- 
 sign of the- chimney-candlesticks that 
 flanked the time-piece was a clumsy ro- 
 coco, and the zinc of which they were 
 composed peeped through its coat of 
 paint in several places. 
 
 Monsieur Fraisier himself was a lean, 
 unhealthy httle man with a rubicund 
 face, whose pustules betrayed the un- 
 wholesome condition of his blood. He 
 had an inveterate habit of scratching his 
 right arm, and his wig was placed so far 
 back upon his head as to disclose a large 
 area of brick-colored cranium of most 
 forbidding aspect. 
 
 On Madame Cibofs entrance Fraisier 
 rose from the cane armchair in which he 
 was sitting on a round cushion of green 
 morocco, and assuming an engaging air 
 and a honeyed tone of voice, remarked, 
 as he brought forward a chair: "Mad- 
 ame Cibot, I believe ? " 
 
 " Yes, monsieur, " replied the portress, 
 whose ordinary self-possession had en- 
 tirely deserted her. She was daunted \>y 
 the timbre of his voice, which was not 
 unlike that of the door-bell, and by a 
 glance that was greener even than the 
 greenish eyes of her future counsel. 
 
 Madame Cibot was now no longer at a 
 loss to understand whj^ Madame Flori- 
 mond had declined the honor of becoming 
 Madame Fraisier. 
 
 " Poulain has mentioned your name to 
 me, my dear madame," said the homme 
 de loi, in that affected tone which is popu- 
 larly^ called petite voix, and which, in 
 spite of all his efforts to soften it, re- 
 mained harsh and thin as common coun- 
 try wine. 
 
 As he uttered these words, the man of 
 law endeavored to adjust his habiliments 
 by drawing the skirts of his dressing-gown 
 over his bony knees, which were cased in 
 excessively thi-eadbare swanskin. The 
 dressing-gown iu question was old, and 
 here and there its lining impertinently 
 peeped through the rents in the printed 
 calico of which it was made. In spite of 
 Fi-aisier's efforts the weight of the lining 
 dragged the skirts of the gown apart, 
 and thus exposed to view a close-fitting 
 flannel vest, black with long wear. With 
 
 a somewhat coxcombical air, Fraisier pro- 
 ceeded to tie the cord of the refractory 
 dressing-gown tightly round his waist, so 
 as to display his reed-like figure ; then 
 taking up the tongs, he effected a junc- 
 tion between a pair of brands that, like 
 two brothers who have had a quarrel, had 
 long been disunited; then finally, as if 
 some thought had suddenly' occurred to 
 him, he jumped up from his seat and 
 called out : 
 
 " Madame Sauvage ! " 
 
 "Well, what is it?" 
 
 " I am not at home to anybod.y." 
 
 "Well, you needn't tell me that," re- 
 plied that virago, in a commanding tone 
 of voice. 
 
 " It is my old wet-nurse," said the dis- 
 concerted man of law. 
 
 " Old and inweterate ugly still," re- 
 plied the ex-heroine of the market. 
 
 Fraisier laughed at the pun, and pro- 
 ceeded to bolt the door, hi order that his 
 housekeeper might not come in and inter- 
 rupt Dame Cibot's confidential communi- 
 cations. 
 
 "Well, madame, w-ill you be good 
 enough to explain your business to me," 
 said Fraisier, seating himself, and still 
 endeavoring to adjust his dressing-gown. 
 " A person who comes to me with a rec- 
 ommendation from the only friend I have 
 in the world, may reXy upon me — a^' — 
 implicitly." 
 
 Madame Cibot harangued for a quarter 
 of an hour without any, even the slightest, 
 interruption, from the man of law, whose 
 air was precisely' that of a recruit listen- 
 ing, with both ears, to a veteran of the 
 old guard. This silence and submissive- 
 ness on the part of Fraisier, and the 
 attention which he paid to the cataract 
 of talk (of which we have had samples in 
 the scenes between Cibot and poor Pons) 
 induced the suspicious portress to lay 
 aside some of the prejudice which so many 
 repulsive details had instilled into her 
 mind. When, at length, she had finished 
 her narrative and was waiting for some 
 ad\ice, the little lawyer, who all this time 
 had been studying his future client with 
 his green, black-speckled eyes, was seized 
 with a churchyard cough, and was obliged
 
 134 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 to have recourse to a delf bowl half full of 
 herb-juice, which he completely drained. 
 
 '• But for Poulain I should, ere now, 
 have been in my grave, my dear Madame 
 Cibot," remarked Fraisier, by way of 
 answer to the motherly glances of the 
 portress ; " but he tells me he will restore 
 me to health — " 
 
 The man of law seemed to have entirely 
 forg-otten all the confidences of his client, 
 who now began to think of leaving- so 
 confirmed a valetudinarian to his own 
 devices. 
 
 '• Madame," resumed the whilom solici- 
 tor of Mantes with a sudden access of 
 sei'iousness, '■' where a succession is in 
 question there are two points to be con- 
 sidered ; first, whether the estate be 
 worth the ti-ouble one is about to take ; 
 and secondly, who are the lawful heirs ; 
 for, if the succession be the booty, the 
 heirs represent the foe." 
 
 Thereupon Dame Cibot brought Remo- 
 nencq and Elie Magus into play, and 
 stated that those two cunning confeder- 
 ates valued the collection of pictures at 
 six hundred thousand francs. 
 
 "Are they prepared to give that 
 amount for it ? " asked the former solici- 
 tor of Mantes ; " for, do you see, madame, 
 we men of business don't believe in pict- 
 ures ; a picture, look you, is two francs' 
 worth of canvas or a hundred thousand 
 francs' worth of painting ! Now, the 
 pictures which are worth a hundred 
 thousand francs are well known ; and 
 what grand, mistakes have been made 
 with regard to all, even the most cele- 
 brated, valuables of this kind ! Why, 
 a well-known financier, whose gallery 
 was bepraised, visited, even engraved, 
 engraved! mark you, was thought to 
 have expended millions on his collection ; 
 he dies (for die one must) well, his genuine 
 pictures realized only two hundred thou- 
 sand francs ! You must bring these gen- 
 tlemen to me. Now what about the 
 heirs ? " 
 
 So sajang, Fraisier resumed his atten- 
 tive attitude. When ho heard the name 
 of President Camusot, he shook his head 
 and made a grimace which riveted the 
 attention of Dame Cibot ; she tried to 
 
 read that brow, that atrocious physiog- 
 nomy, and found it nothing but what we 
 call in business a tete de hois. 
 
 "Yes, my dear sir," repeated Dame 
 Cibot, " my Monsieur Pons is own cousin 
 to President Camusot de Marville ; he re- 
 minds me of the relationship twice a day. 
 The first wife of Monsieur Camusot, the 
 silk mercer — " 
 
 " Who has just been made a peer of 
 France — " 
 
 " Was a Demoiselle Pons, cousin-ger- 
 man to Monsieur Pons." 
 
 " The^' are first cousins once re- 
 moved — " 
 
 "They're nothing whatever to each 
 other now; they've had a fall out." 
 
 Now Monsieur Camusot de Marville, 
 before he came to Pai'is, had been for 
 five years president of the tribunal at 
 Mantes ; and had done more than leave 
 behind him in that town the mere recol- 
 lection of his name ; he had kept up a 
 connection with the place in the person 
 of the judge with whom, of all the judges 
 of his court, he had been most intimate. 
 The judge in question had succeeded Ca- 
 musot in the presidency of the coui't ; and 
 was its president still. To him, therefore, 
 Fraisier was thoroughly well known. 
 
 " Are you aware, madame," said Frai- 
 sier, when Dame Cibot had closed the 
 rudd,y flood-gates of her impetuous mouth, 
 " are you aware that you would have for 
 your principal antagonist a man who has 
 it in his power to send people to the scaf- 
 fold ? " 
 
 At these words the portress started up 
 from her chair as if she had been a Jack- 
 in-the-box. 
 
 "Calm yourself, my dear lady," re- 
 sumed Fraisier. " That j'ou should not 
 know what powers a president of the crim- 
 inal division of the Parisian Court Roj'al 
 possesses is perfectly natural, but 3'ou 
 ought to have been aware that Monsieur 
 Pons has a legal heir natural. Monsieur 
 de Marville is the one sole heir of your 
 patient ; but he is collateral heir in the 
 third degree ; hence Monsieur Pons may, 
 without infringing the law, dispose of his 
 fortune as he pleases. You are also ig- 
 norant of the fact that the daughter of
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 135 
 
 President Camusot was married at least 
 six weeks ago to the eldest son of Count 
 Popinot, peer of France, and ex-minister 
 of agriculture and commerce — one of the 
 most influential statesmen of the day. 
 This matrimonial alliance renders the 
 president still more formidable than he 
 would be as sovereign of the Assize Court 
 merely." 
 
 Again did Madame Cibot quake when 
 she heard this phrase. 
 
 '•■ Yes, 'tis he who sends people to that 
 place," pursued Fraisier; "ah, my dear 
 lad^', you don't know what a red i-obe is ! 
 It is bad enough, in all conscience, to have 
 a plain black g"0wn arra^'ed against one ! 
 If you behold me here ruined, bald, half 
 dead; why 'tis because I unwittingly 
 offended an insignificant provincial pro- 
 cui'ator-royal. I was compelled to sell 
 my practice at a sacrifice, and was only 
 too glad to escape with the loss of my 
 fortune only. Had I taken it into my 
 head to offer any resistance, I should 
 have had viy advocate's gown stripped 
 off my back. You have still something 
 more to learn, and it is this : had we 
 to deal with President Camusot single- 
 handed, that would be a mere trifle ; but, 
 let me tell you. President Camusot has a- 
 ivife ; and, if you found j'ourself face to 
 face with that wife, you would tremble as 
 much as if j'our foot were on the first 
 step of the scaffold ; the xery hairs of 
 your head would stand on end. So re- 
 vengeful is Madame Camusot that she 
 would spend ten years in entangling you 
 in some snare which would be j'our ruin. 
 She sets her husband to work just as a 
 child will spin a top. In the course of 
 her life she has caused a charming young 
 man to commit suicide in the Concierge- 
 rie ; completely whitewashed a count who 
 was charged with forger\', and well-nigh 
 brought about the interdiction of one of 
 the greatest noblemen of the court of 
 Charles X. Her latest exploit was to 
 procure the dismissal of Monsieur Gran- 
 ville, the attorney-general — " 
 
 " The gentleman what lived in the 
 Vieille Rue du Temple at the corner of 
 the Rue Saint Francois ? " asked Dame 
 Cibot. 
 
 " The very same. They say she wants 
 to get her husband made Minister of Jus- 
 tice, and I don't know that she won't 
 succeed. If she took it into her head to 
 send the pair of us to the Assize Court, 
 and thence to the galleys, 1—7, who am 
 as innocent as the unborn babe — would 
 get a passport and go to the United 
 States ; so well do I know what justice 
 is. Now, my dear Madame Cibot, the 
 president's wife, in order to secure for 
 her only daughter the hand of young Vis- 
 count Popinot (who, they saj-, is to be the 
 heir of your landlord. Monsieur Pille- 
 rault), has so entirely stripped herself of 
 her fortune that she and her husband are 
 now obliged to live upon the bare salary 
 of the president. And do you, my dear 
 lady, imagine that, under these circum- 
 stances, Madame Camusot will allow the 
 succession of your Monsieur Pons to slip 
 through her fingers ? Why, I would 
 rather face a battery of guns charged 
 with grape-shot than have such a wo- 
 man for my adversary — " 
 
 "But they've had a split," interposed 
 Dame Creot. 
 
 "What does that matter?" replied 
 Fraisier. " All the more reason why she 
 should look after the money. To kill a 
 relative against whom one has a grievance 
 is — something ; but to come in for his 
 fortune is — delightful ! " 
 
 "But the good man hates his heirs. 
 He keeps on telUng me that these folks — I 
 remember their names. Monsieur Cardot, 
 Monsieur Berthier, etc. — have crushed 
 him as if he had been an egs under a 
 dung-cart." 
 
 " Have you a fancy to be crushed like 
 that ? " 
 
 " My God ! my God ! " exclaimed the 
 portress. "Ah! well might Madame Fon- 
 taine say as I sliould meet with diffi- 
 culties ; but still she told me as I should 
 succeed — " 
 
 " Listen to me, my dear Madame Cibot ; 
 as to j'our getting a matter of thirty 
 thousand francs, it is possible you may ; 
 but as to the succession, you mustn't even 
 think of it. We talked your affair over — 
 Doctor Poulaiu and I— yesterday even- 
 ing-"
 
 136 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 Here, Madame Cibot made anotlier 
 bound upon her chair. 
 
 " Well, well ! what is the matter with 
 you? " 
 
 " Why, if 5'ou knew all about my busi- 
 ness, whj' did you let me jabber away like 
 
 a mag-pie 
 
 ?" 
 
 " Madame Cibot ; I knew all about j'our 
 business, but I knew nothing about Ma- 
 dame Cibot ! So many clients, so many 
 characters — " 
 
 On hearing- these words Madame Cibot 
 looked at her future adviser with a pecul- 
 iar look — a look which divulged all her 
 suspicions and by no means escaped the 
 notice of Fraisier. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 fraisiek's point. 
 
 "To resume, then, "said Fraisier, "our 
 friend Poulain was introduced by you to 
 old Monsieur Pillerault, the great-uncle 
 of Madame Popinot — that is one of your 
 claims to ray good offices. Now, mark 
 what I say ; Poulain . goes to see your 
 landlord once a fortnight, and it is from 
 him that the doctor learned all these de- 
 tails. The retired merchant was present 
 at the wedding of his great-grandnephew 
 (for he is an uncle who has a fortune to 
 leave, let me tell you ; he has a good fif- 
 teen thousand francs a year, and for the 
 last five-and-twenty years has lived the 
 life of a monk ; he spends barely three 
 thousand francs per annum). Well, he 
 it was who told Poulain all about the 
 marriage. It would seem that all this 
 shindy was entirely caused by your 
 worthy musician himself, from a feeling 
 of spite against the president's family. 
 He who listens to one bell only hears but 
 one sound : now your invalid protests 
 that he is innocent, but the world re- 
 gards him as a monster." 
 
 " And a monster he may well be for 
 n'aught I know ; it wouldn't surprise me 
 one bit," exclaimed Dame Cibot. " Only 
 just fancy ; here have I been a-spending 
 my own money on him any time these 
 
 last ten years, as he well knows ; all my 
 savings he has, and he won't put me 
 down for n'a penny in his will ; no, sir, 
 that he won't ; he's that stubborn he's a 
 reg'lar mule. Here have I been a-talk- 
 ing to him on the subject for the last ten 
 days, and the lubber won't budge a single 
 inch, no, not no more than if he was a 
 lottery teme. He just keeps his teeth 
 clinched, and looks at me just as if — • 
 Why the most he's said to me, was 
 as he'd recommend me to Monsieur 
 Schmucke." 
 
 " Then it is his intention to make a will 
 in favor of this Schmucke, is it ? " 
 
 " He'll give him everything — •" 
 
 " Listen to me, my dear Madame 
 Cibot ; I must, in order to form a de- 
 finitive opinion and a plan, get to know 
 Monsieur Schmucke, see the objects of 
 which the estate consists, and have a 
 conference with the Jew you speak of; 
 and then allow me to be j^our guide — " 
 
 " We will see about it, my good Mon- 
 sieur Fraisier." 
 
 " What do you mean by : 'we will see 
 about it ? ' " cried Fraisier, darting a 
 viper glance at Dame Cibot, and speaking 
 in his natural tone of voice. " Come now! 
 am I or am I not your counsel ? Let us 
 thoroughly understand one another." 
 
 Dame Cibot saw that she was found 
 out, and felt a cold shiver run down her 
 back. Seeing that she was at the mercy 
 of a tiger she said : " You have my n'en- 
 tire confidence." 
 
 " We solicitors are accustomed to the 
 treachery of our clients. Now examine 
 3'our position well ; it is superb. If 3'ou 
 follow my advice to the letter, 3'ou will 
 have twenty or thirty thousand francs 
 out of this estate, I warrant you. But 
 there is another side to this beautiful 
 medal. Suppose that Madame Camusot 
 should learn that Monsieur Pons's estate 
 is worth a million francs, and that you 
 want to get a slice of it — for there are 
 always persons to be found who take upon 
 them to say things of this kind — " added 
 Fraisier, parenthetically. 
 
 This parenthesis, preceded and followed 
 bj' a pause, made Dame Cibot shiver — she 
 jumi^ed to the conclusion that Fraisier
 
 cousm PONS. 
 
 137 
 
 himself would undertake the ofiBce of in- 
 former. 
 
 " In that case, my dear client, in ten 
 minutes old Pillerault would be prevailed 
 on to turn you out of the lodg'e, and you 
 would have a couple of hours to pack up 
 your traps." 
 
 "What odds would that be to me?" 
 said Dame Cibot, starting- to her feet and 
 assuming- a Bellona attitude. " I should 
 remain with the two gentlemen n'as their 
 confidential housekeeper." 
 
 "Yes, and that being so, a trap would 
 be laid for j'ou, and you would wake up 
 some fine morning- to find yourself in a 
 cell, you and your husband, charged with 
 some capital crime — " 
 
 "Me," cried Dame Cibot, "me, as 
 don't owe nobody a single centime, me ! 
 me'.—" 
 
 And she went on speaking for five min- 
 utes, while Fraisier watched the grand 
 artist as she executed her concerto of 
 self-laudation. He was cool and satiri- 
 cal ; his eye pierced Dame Cibot as if it 
 had been a stiletto ; he laughed inwardly, 
 and, as he laughed, his dry wig quivered. 
 He was Robespierre, the Robespierre of 
 the daj's when that Gallic Sylla wrote 
 quatrains. 
 
 "And why, and wherefore, and on 
 what pretext?" asked Dame Cibot in 
 conclusion. 
 
 " Do you wish to know how you might 
 come to be guillotined — ? " 
 
 Pale as a corpse. Dame Cibot sunk back 
 into her chair ; for these words fell, as if 
 they had been the blade of the law itself, 
 upon her neck. She stared at Fraisier 
 with bewildered eyes. 
 
 " Now listen to me attentively', my dear 
 child," resumed Fraisier, suppressing all 
 outward expression of the satisfaction 
 that he derived from his client's terror. 
 
 " I would rather let the whole thing 
 rest — " murmured Madame Cibot, mak- 
 ing an efl'ort to rise, when Fraisier im- 
 periously interposed : 
 
 "Stop," said he. "You oug-ht to be 
 informed of the risk you run ; it is my 
 duty to give you the benefit of my knowl- 
 edge. Well then, let us take it that you 
 are dismissed by Monsieur Pillerault ; 
 
 there can be no doubt of that, can there ? 
 You enter the service of these two gen- 
 tlemen ; good ! That in itself is a dec- 
 laration of war between Madame Ca- 
 musot and you. You on 3'our part are 
 determined to do j'our utmost to get 
 hold of this succession, to make some- 
 thing- out of it by hook or by crook — " 
 
 Here Dame Cibot made a gesture of 
 dissent. 
 
 "Oh, I'm not blaming j'ou ; that's no 
 part of mj' business," said Fraisier in an- 
 swer to his client's gesture. "But this 
 enterprise is a combat, and you will be 
 induced to go to greater lengths than 
 you imagine. Under such circumstances, 
 people get intoxicated with their own 
 idea; they hit hard — " 
 
 Here Madame Cibot indulged in another 
 gesture of repudiation, and drew her- 
 self up. 
 
 " Come, come now, little mother," pur- 
 sued Fraisier, with horrible familiarity, 
 "you would go great lengths now, you 
 know you would — " 
 
 "Oh ! then you take me for a thief, do 
 you?" 
 
 " Come now, mother, you have an I O 
 U of Monsieur Schmucke's that cost you 
 very little. Ah ! ah ! j'ou see, j-ou're at 
 confession here, my prettj'- dame. Don't 
 deceive your confessor, especially when 
 that confessor has the power of readings 
 your very heart." 
 
 Dame Cibot was terrified at the perspi- 
 cacity of this man ; she now clearly per- 
 ceived the motive of the profound attention 
 with which he had listened to her. 
 
 "Well ! " resumed Fraisier, "you need 
 not hesitate to admit that, in this race for 
 a fortune, Madame Camusot will not suffer 
 herseK to be outstripped bj' you. You 
 will be watched ; spies will be set upon 
 your actions. You carry j-our point and 
 are mentioned in Monsieur Pons's will — 
 granted. Nothing could be better. But 
 one fine day in walks ^ladame Law and 
 collars some barley water, at the bottom 
 of which some arsenic is found ; you and 
 your husband are arrested, tried — con- 
 demned, for having attempted to murder 
 Monsieur Pons, in order that you might 
 pocket j-our legacy. I once defended a
 
 138 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 pool- woman at Vei'sailles, who was to 
 the full as innocent as you would be in 
 the case supposed ; matters stood exactly 
 as I have just stated them ; and yet, all 
 that I could do for her was just to save 
 her from the scaffold; the poor wretch 
 was condemned to twenty years' hard 
 labor, and is now at Saint Lazare under- 
 g^oiiig' her sentence ! " 
 
 The terror of Madame Cibot had now 
 reached its climax. Pale and hag-g-ai-d, 
 she kept her eyes fixed upon the lean 
 little g-reen-eyed lawyer, much as the 
 poor Moorish woman, convicted of in- 
 fidelity to her religion, must have gazed 
 at the inquisitor when she heard herself 
 sentenced to be burned alive. 
 
 " You saj', then, dear Monsieur Frai- 
 sier, that by leaving of matters entirely 
 in your hands, and n'intrusting the care 
 of my n'interests to you, I should come 
 in for something', without having' any- 
 thing' to fear ? " 
 
 "I guarantee you thirty thousand 
 francs," said Fraisier, with the assured 
 air of a man who perfecth' well knows 
 what he is talking about. 
 
 "And, after all," resumed Dame Cibot 
 in her most wheedling- tones, " you knows 
 how fond I am of dear Di-. Poulain ; it 
 was him as told me to come to you, and 
 sure I am the worthy man didn't send 
 me liere to be told as I'm going to be 
 guillotined for poisoning people." 
 
 Here Madame Cibot burst into a flood 
 of tears ; for this vision of the guillotine 
 had made her very blood run cold ; her 
 nerves were in a state of agitation ; her 
 heart sunk within her; she entirelj"^ lost 
 her head. Fraisier, on the other hand, 
 enjoj-ed his triumph. When he had seen 
 his client hesitating, he felt that this 
 piece of business was on the point of slip- 
 ping through his fingers, and resolved to 
 tame Madame Cibot, to terrifj' her, to 
 stun her, to bind her hand and foot, and 
 have her entirely under his control. The 
 portress, having stepped into that stud^' 
 (as a fly throws itself into a spider's web) 
 was doomed to remain there, entram- 
 meled and enmeshed, to feed the ambition 
 of this little homme de lot. In fact, 
 Fraisier was resolved to extract, from 
 
 this piece of business, money enough to 
 live upon in his old age, independence, 
 enjoyment, and social consideration. He 
 and Poulain, on the i^revious evening, had 
 maturely weighed and carefully — micro- 
 scopically — examined the whole matter ; 
 the doctor had informed his friend Frai- 
 sier what manner of man Schmucke was, 
 and the active minds of Fraisier and 
 Poulain had tested every hj'ijothesis, and 
 scanned each favorable feature of the 
 enterprise, and each attendant risk. 
 " The fortunes of both of us are involved 
 in this business ! " Fraisier had exclaimed 
 in a paroxysm of enthusiasm ; and he had 
 promised Poulain the post of chief phy- 
 sician to some hospital, and himself the 
 post of juge de paix to the arrondisse- 
 ment. 
 
 To become a juge de paix! was, to this 
 man of great capacity, to this doctor of 
 laws in want of socks, a chimera so diffi- 
 cult to mount, that he thought of it as 
 the advocate who has fought his way into 
 the chamber of deputies thinks of the 
 robe of the chancellor, as the Italian priest 
 thinks of the tiara. 'Tvvas a mania ! 
 Monsieur Vitel, the juge de paix in whose 
 court Fraisier practiced was a valetudi- 
 narian of sixty-nine, and talked about 
 retiring. Fraisier would chat to Poulain 
 about succeeding Monsieur Vitel, much 
 as Poulain would chat to Fraisier about 
 the wealthy heiress whom Poulain was to 
 rescue from the jaws of death, and marry. 
 Few persons have even the remotest idea 
 how keen is the competition for those 
 places the occupation of which is com- 
 patible with residence in Paris. To live 
 in Paris is a universal wish. Does a 
 licensed tobacco-shop or a stamp-shop fall 
 vacant ? A hundred women rise, like one 
 man, and set all their friends in motion, 
 in order to obtain the berth ! Is there a 
 probability of a vacancy in one of the four- 
 and-twenty tax-collectorships of the me- 
 tropolis ? There is a tumult of rival 
 ambitions in the chamber of deputies i 
 These places are filled up by the coun- 
 cil ; nominations to them are affairs of 
 state! Now the annual salary of ajtige de 
 paix at Paris is about six thousand francs. 
 The registry attached to this tribunal is
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 139 
 
 a post worth a hundred thousand francs. 
 It is of all judicial offices one of the most 
 eag-erly coveted. Fraisier, once appointed 
 a juge de paix, and having the chief phy- 
 sician of some hospital for a friend, would 
 be certain to find a rich wife for himself, 
 and a wife for Doctor Poulain also ; thej 
 would lend each other a helping- hand 
 in turn. Night had passed its leaden 
 roller over all the thoughts of the former 
 sohcitor of Mantes ; a formidable scheme 
 had germinated iu his mind — a prolific 
 scheme fertile iu harvests and abounding 
 in intrigues. Of this drama Dame Cibot 
 was the mainspring- ; so that it was ab- 
 solutely necessary that the revolt of this 
 instrument should be suppressed. That 
 revolt was unexpected ; but, as we have 
 seen, the quondam solicitor, b\' exerting 
 all the powers of his maleficent nature, 
 had brought the audacious portress to his 
 feet. 
 
 " Come now, m3'' dear Madame Cibot, 
 dismiss your fears," said he, taking her 
 hand in his. The touch of this hand, 
 which was as cold as the skin of a 
 snake, produced a terrible impression on 
 the portress, and brought about a physi- 
 cal reaction which subdued her mental 
 emotion. She thought that Ashtaroth, 
 Madame Fontaine's toad, would be less 
 dangerous to handle than this jar of 
 poisons, capped with a reddish wig and 
 speaking with the voice of a creaking 
 door. 
 
 '■' Don't suppose that I am causing you 
 unnecessary alarm," resumed Fraisier, 
 after noting this new gesture of repug- 
 nance on the part of Madame Cibot. 
 " The affairs which have procured Mad- 
 ame Camusot so terrible a reputation are 
 so perfectly well known at the palace, 
 that you can ask any one j'ou please 
 about them. The great nobleman, who 
 was within an ace of being interdicted, is 
 the Marquis d'Espard. 'Twas the Mar- 
 quis d'Esgrignon whom she rescued from 
 the galleys. The young man who — rich, 
 handsome, full of promise, and on the eve 
 of marriage with a young lady belonging 
 to one of the first families in France — 
 committed suicide bj' hanging himself in 
 one of the cells of the Conciergerie, was 
 
 the celebrated Lucien de Rubempre, whose 
 case caused a ferment throughout the 
 whole of Paris at the time. There, too, 
 it was a question as to a succession — the 
 succession of a kept mistress, the famous 
 Esther, who left several millions behind 
 her. This young man was accused of 
 having poisoned her, for he was ap- 
 pointed heir under her will. Yet the 
 young poet was not in Paris when the 
 girl died ; he did not even know that he 
 was her heir I — it is impossible to be more 
 innocent than that. Well, after being 
 subjected to an interrogatory by M. 
 Camusot, the j'oung man hanged him- 
 self in his cell. The Law resembles 
 Medicine ; it has its victims. In the 
 former case one dies for Society ; in the 
 latter, for Science," said Fraisier with a 
 ghastly smile. " Well ! you see that I 
 know the danger. Law has already 
 ruined 7ne — me, a poor obscure little 
 solicitor. My experience has cost me 
 dear ; it is entirely at j'our service — " 
 
 "In faith, no thank you," said Dame 
 Cibot ; " I'll give up everything. I shall 
 have made an ungrateful man the more — 
 I only wants my due! I've a thirty j-eans' 
 character for n'honesty, monsieur. My 
 Monsieur Pons says that he'll recommend 
 me in his will to his friend Schmucke; very 
 well, I'll end my days in peace, in the ser- 
 vice of that worthy German — " 
 
 Fraisier was overshooting the mark ; 
 he had discouraged Dame Cibot, and 
 found himself obliged to efface the ter- 
 rible impression that had been made 
 upon her. 
 
 "Don't let us despair of anything," 
 said he; "go quietl3' home; it's all 
 right ; we wiU steer the matter into a 
 safe port ! " 
 
 " But what am I to do, then, good 
 Monsieur Fraisier, in order that I may 
 n'have an annuity and — ?" 
 
 '- — No remorse," said Fraisier emphat- 
 ically, taking the words out of Dame 
 Cibot's mouth. "Why, it is precisely 
 for that purpose that professional men 
 were invented. In these cases, there's 
 nothing to be gained unless you keep 
 within the limits of the law. You don't 
 know the law ; / do. Under my guid-
 
 140 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 ance you will have legality on your side ; 
 you will hold j-our own unmolested, so far 
 as mankind are concerned ; for as to your 
 conscience, that is your own lookout." 
 
 "Well, say on," replied Dame Cibot, 
 whom this language had rendered not 
 only inquisitive but cheerful. 
 
 " I don't know what to say ; I have 
 not studied the possibilities of the case ; 
 I have confined my attention to its diffi- 
 culties. Your first care, look you, must 
 be to get the will made, and in §o doing 
 you will not be on the wrong track ; but 
 before all, let us know in whose favor 
 Pons will dispose of his fortune, for if 
 it should turn out that j'ou are his 
 heiress — " 
 
 "No, no, he doesn't love me ! Ah ! if 
 I had only known the value of his baubles, 
 and what he told me n'about his love 
 affairs, I should be quite easy in my 
 mind to-day — " 
 
 "Well," said Fraisier, "pursue your 
 course, all the same. D^nng folks take 
 strange fancies into their heads, my dear 
 Madame Cibot ; they cheat many an ex- 
 pectation. Let him make his will, and 
 we'll see what is to be done afterward. 
 But, first of all, we must get the objects 
 composing the inheritance valued. So, do 
 you introduce me to the Jew and this 
 Remonencq; they will be extremelj' ser- 
 viceable to us. Repose every confidence 
 in me, I am entirely yours. I am the 
 friend of my client, ay, up to the very 
 hilt, when that client is friendly to me. 
 I am eitlier friend or foe ; that's my char- 
 acter." 
 
 " Very well, I shall place myself quite 
 in 3' our hands," said Dame Cibot; "and 
 as to your fees, Monsieur Poulain will — •" 
 
 "Oh, don't mention them," said Frai- 
 sier. * ' Take care to keep Poulain in at- 
 tendance on the patient ; the doctor is one 
 of the most honest and one of the most 
 upright men I know ; and, look you, we 
 are in need of a man there whom we can 
 rely on. Poulain is a better man than I ; 
 I have grown wicked." 
 
 "You look like it," said Dame Cibot ; 
 " but for my part, J would trust j-ou — " 
 
 "And you would do rightly' ! " replied 
 Fraisier ; " come and see me whenever 
 
 anything turns up, and keep your course; 
 3'ou are a clever woman, and all will go 
 well." 
 
 " Good-by, dear Monsieur Fraisier; and 
 wishing 3'ou good health. Your servant.'' 
 
 Fraisier escorted his client to the door 
 of his apartments. There, he did as the 
 doctor had done on the preceding even- 
 ing ; he clinched the matter in a parting 
 word to the portress. 
 
 "If you could manage to get Monsieur 
 Pons to ask for my ad\'ice, that would 
 be a great step in advance." 
 
 " I'll try," replied Dame Cibot. 
 
 "Mj' J0II3' dame," replied Fraisier, 
 leading the portress back into his study, 
 " I am well acquainted with Monsieur 
 Trognon, the notary' ; he is the notary of 
 the district ; if Monsieur Pons has no 
 notary, mention Monsieur Trognon ; in- 
 sure his being selected." 
 
 " I take you," replied Dame Cibot. 
 
 As she withdrew, she overheard the 
 rustling of a dress, and the sound of 
 heavy footsteps, that would gladl^^ have 
 rendered themselves light. When she 
 found herself alone in the street once 
 more and had walked a certain distance, 
 she regained her liberty of thought. Al- 
 thougli she could not entirelj' shake off 
 the influence of this conference, and al- 
 though she still stood in great awe of the 
 scaffold, the law, and the judges, she 
 came to a \evy natural determination — a 
 determination the effect of which would 
 be to place her in a position of tacit an- 
 tagonism to her formidable adviser. 
 
 "What need is there for me to take 
 any one into partnership?" said she to 
 herself. " Let me feather my own nest 
 first ; and when I have done that I will 
 accept whatever they offer me for playing 
 tlieir game." 
 
 This reflection was (as we shall see) 
 destined to hasten the end of the unfort- 
 unate musician. 
 
 XX. 
 
 DAME CIBOT AT THE THEATER. 
 
 " Well ! my dear Monsieur Schmucke," 
 said the portress, as she entered the
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 141 
 
 rooms of her two gentlemen ; '•' and how 
 is our dear darling of a .patient getting 
 on?" 
 
 "Nod well," replied the German; 
 " Bons's mind has peen wandering all 
 night long." 
 
 " What has he been a-saying, then ? " 
 
 "Mere nonzenze ! Dat he wizhed me 
 to have all his fortune, on condition dat 
 I would zell noding. And den he cried. 
 Boor man ! it made me feel quide un- 
 habby ! " 
 
 " Oh, that will go off ! my dear duckie !" 
 ^ replied the portress. " I've kept you 
 a-waiting for your breakfast, seeing as 
 how it's past nine o'clock ; but you 
 mustn't scold me ; for I've had a heap 
 of matters to attend to on your account, 
 d'ye see. We were out of every blessed 
 thing ; so I've been and got a little 
 
 monej' 
 
 " How ? " inquired the pianist. 
 
 "What about my uncle, eh ? " 
 
 " What ungle ? " said Schmucke. 
 
 " Wliy, the scheme ! " 
 
 '•' What zgheme ? " 
 
 " Lord bless the good man ! how simple 
 he is, to be sure. No, really, 'pon my 
 word, you're a saint, a love, a n 'arch- 
 bishop of innocence, a man as is fit to be 
 stuffed and put under a glass case, as the 
 old actor says. What ! d'ye mean to tell 
 me that j^ou've been in Paris these nine- 
 and-twenty years, and seen— let me see — 
 why, you must have seen the Revolution 
 of July, and don't know what the vionde- 
 piete is ? — the office where they lend you 
 monej'^ on ^-our rags ! I've taken all our 
 silver spoons and forks there, eight of 
 'era, thread pattern. Bah ! Cibot can 
 use Algerian metal at his meals; it's 
 quite the fashion, as the saj'ing is. And 
 it's not worth while a-saj'ing anything 
 about the business to our dear cherub ; 
 it 'ud only worrit him and make him turn 
 yellow ; and he's quite fretful enough as 
 it is. Let's save him first, and see what's 
 to be done n'afterward. We must take 
 things n'as they come — war times, war 
 measures; ain't I right ? " 
 
 " Goot woman, nople heart I" exclaimed 
 the poor musician, as he took Dame Ci- 
 bot's hand and pressed it to his heart, 
 
 while the expression of his features showed 
 that he was deeply touched. This angel 
 of goodness raised his eyes to heaven : 
 they were full of tears. 
 
 "Drop that, father Schmucke. You 
 n'are quite absurd. That's a pretty thing 
 to make a fuss about, that is I Why, I'm 
 a n'old daughter of the people I am, I 
 carry my heart in my hand. I've plenty 
 of tJiat, d'ye see," exclaimed she, clapping 
 her hand to her bosom; "just like you 
 two gentlemen, which you're hearts of 
 gold." 
 
 "Fader Schmucke," echoed the mu- 
 sician ; " nay, after gauging de fer^' deps 
 of zorrow ant weebing tears of bloot, to 
 mount into de heavens, it is too moche for 
 me ! I shall not surfife Bons — " 
 
 " In faith, I verily believe you ; you're 
 a-killing of yourself. Now listen to me, 
 my duckie." 
 
 " Duckie ! " repeated Schmucke. 
 
 " Well then, my dear little fellow ! " 
 
 " Tear little velloio ! " 
 
 "My pippin then, if you like it better." 
 
 " It is not de leazt bit blainer." 
 
 " Never mind ; only let me take care of 
 you and be your guide ; or else, if you go 
 on as j'ou're going on now, I shall have 
 two patients on my hands instead of one. 
 In my poor opinion, we ought to do what 
 is to be done here, turn and turn about. 
 You can't go on a-giving lessons in town : 
 it wears you n'out, and makes \-ou fit for 
 nothing here, where we shall have to sit 
 up all night, seeing as how Monsieur 
 Pons is a-getting worse and worse. To- 
 day I'll step round to all j'our customers 
 and tell 'em as you're ill, eh ? Then you 
 can spend the night at the bedside of our 
 poor lamb, and .you can get your rest in 
 the morning, from five o'clock till, say. 
 two in the afternoon. J'll do the most 
 tiring part of the work — the day duty ; 
 seeing as I must get your breakfast and 
 dinner, look after the sick man, get him 
 out of bed, change his linen, and give him 
 his medicine. For really I couldn't hold 
 out ten days longer as I'm a-going on now; 
 and we've been worrited to death for the 
 last month over him. And what on earth 
 would become of you if I was to fall ill ? 
 And you, too, there, why it's enough to
 
 142 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 frigrhten anj-body to see how j'ou look, 
 along- o' sittiug up with Monsieur Pons 
 just one night — " 
 
 So saying, she led Schmucko to the 
 looking'-irlass, and Schmucke found that 
 he was indeed mucli altered. 
 
 " Well then, if you agrees to what I 
 say, I'll go and get your breakfast ready 
 in a jilTy. Then you can continue to look 
 after your patient till two o'clock. But 
 In the meantime, give me n'a list of your 
 customers and I'll very soon square mat- 
 ters so as 3'ou'U have a fortnight's libert3'. 
 When I come back, j'ou can go to bed and 
 rest yourself till the evening." 
 
 This suggestion was so full of wisdom 
 that Schmucke forthwith gave in his ad- 
 hesion to it. 
 
 "Not a word to Monsieur Pons; for 
 you know as he'd give himself up for lost 
 if we told him as how that he must knock 
 off going to the theater and giving lessons 
 for a time. The poor man would take it 
 into his head as he'd never get his pupils 
 back again — and a pack o' nonsense — and 
 Monsieur Poulain says as we sha'n't save 
 our Benjamin unless we keeps him as quiet 
 as a mouse." 
 
 "Well, well, do you get de breakfast 
 while I go ant brebare de list and giff you 
 de Addresses. You are quite right ; I 
 zhould suggumb." 
 
 An hour after this conversation took 
 place, Madame Cibot, tricked out in all 
 her finery, set off in a milord, much to 
 Remonencq's amazement. She reckoned 
 that she would worthily' impersonate the 
 confidential housekeeper of the Pair of 
 Nut-Crackers in all the boarding-schools 
 and other establishments wherein the 
 young lady pupils of the two musicians 
 were to be found. It is unnecessarj' 
 to reproduce the multifarious gossip to 
 which Dame Cibot treated the school- 
 mistresses and private families that she 
 visited. Suffice it to say that it resem- 
 bled the variations of a musical theme. 
 We will confine ourselves to the rehearsal 
 of the scene which occurred in the mana- 
 gerial sanctum of the Illustrious Gaudis- 
 sard, into which the portress succeeded 
 in penetrating, though not without en- 
 countering the most stupendous obsta- 
 
 cles ; for, at Paris, managers of theaters 
 are less easy of access than ministers and 
 kings ; nor is it difficult to divine the 
 reason why they raise such formidable 
 barriers between themselves and the 
 common herd of mortals : whereas a 
 king has to protect himself only against 
 ambition, the theatrical manager has to 
 shield himself from the aggressive vanity 
 of the actor and the author ! 
 
 Tlie intimacy which was very soon 
 struck up between the door-keeper of the 
 tlieater and Dame Cibot enabled her, 
 however, to clear every gulf. Porters, ^ 
 like all folks who have a common calling, 
 understand one another perfectly. Every 
 condition in life has its shibboleths even 
 as it has its terms of obloquy and badges 
 of disgrace. 
 
 "Ah! madame," quoth Dame Cibot, 
 " you are portress to the theater ; I am 
 only the humble portress of a house in 
 the Rue de Normandie, in which your 
 conductor Monsieur Pons lodges. Ah ! 
 how happy I should be n'if I were in your 
 shoes ; to see the actors and the ladies of 
 the ballet and the n'authors a-passing in 
 and out ! That is, as the old actor said, 
 the field-marshal's baton of our calling." 
 
 " And how is w^orthy Monsieur Pons 
 getting on ? " inquired the portress. 
 
 "Why, he isn't getting on at all; ifs 
 now two months since he was out of bed, 
 and he'll leave the house feet foremost, 
 sure enough." 
 
 " It will be a great loss — " 
 
 "Yes, he's sent me here to explain his 
 position to your manager; try \o let me 
 get speech of him, my darling." 
 
 "A lady from Monsieur Pons to see 
 you ! " Thus did the page who attended 
 the manager's x^rivate room announce 
 Madame Cibot, who was recommended 
 to him by the portress. Gaudissard had 
 just arrived at the theater to be present 
 at a rehearsal . As chance would have it, 
 no one wanted to speak with him, and 
 not only the authors of the piece, but the 
 actors and actresses, were late. He was 
 delighted to have news of his conductor, 
 and, with a Napoleonic gesture, indicated 
 to the page that Dame Cibot was to be 
 admitted.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 143 
 
 Tliis quondam commercial traveler, now 
 at tie head of a much-frequented theater, 
 was cheating his associates in the under- 
 taking. He regarded them very much in 
 the light in which a man regards his law- 
 ful wife. The development of his financial 
 talent had reacted on his person. Gau- 
 dissard, now grown stout and sturdy, and 
 displacing on his cheeks the heightened 
 color produced by good living and pros- 
 perity, had been palpably metamorphosed 
 into a Mondor. "We are becoming a 
 regular Beaujon ! " he would say, endeav- 
 oring to forestall ridicule by being the 
 first to laugh at himself — " Oh ! you are 
 only Turcaret, as yet," replied Bixiou, 
 who often acted as Gaudissard's deputy, 
 in relation to the first lady of the ballet — 
 the celebrated Heloise Brisetout. In short, 
 the ex-lLLUSTRious Gaudissakd worked 
 the theater exclusivelj', and without the 
 slightest compunction, in his own inter- 
 ests. He had started by collaborating in 
 the production of sundry ballets, vaude- 
 villes and dramatic pieces, and liad bought 
 up the interests of his coadjutors for a 
 trifling sum, by taking advantage of those 
 necessities which often hold the author in 
 their relentless grip. Tacked on to dramas 
 which drew, these pieces and vaudevilles 
 brought a few gold coins into Gaudissard's 
 pocket every day ; then he contrived, by 
 means of an agent, to make a profit on 
 the sale of tickets, besides appropriating 
 as manager's perquisites a certain num- 
 ber of tickets — enough to enable him to 
 titlie the profits. 
 
 These three species of managerial im- 
 posts, to say nothing of the sale of boxes 
 and the presents that Gaudissard received 
 from fourth-rate actresses ambitious of 
 plaj-ing some insignificant part — that of 
 a page or a queen for example— swelled 
 his third share of the profits to such an 
 extent that his copartners (who were 
 entitled to the other two-thir.ds) took 
 scarceh' a tenth part of the actual returns 
 of the theater. Still even this tenth rep- 
 resented a profit of fifteen per cent 
 on the capital invested. And accord- 
 ingly, Gaudissard, backed by this divi- 
 dend of fifteen per cent, prated about his 
 intelligence, his probity, his zeal and the 
 
 good fortune of his partners. When 
 Count Popinot, with a show of interest in 
 the matter, asked Monsieur Matifat, Gen- 
 eral Gouraud, son-in-law to Matifat, and 
 Crevel, whether they were satisfied with 
 Gaudissard, Gouraud, who had been made 
 a peer of France, replied : 
 
 "They say that he robs us ; but he's so 
 witty, and so good a fellow that we are 
 quite contented." 
 
 "Then it's the fable of La Fontaine 
 over again," said the former Minister 
 with a smile. 
 
 Gaudissard employed his capital in 
 speculations quite unconnected with the 
 theater. He had formed a correct opinion 
 of the Graffs, the Schwabs, and the Brun- 
 ners, and took shares in the railway 
 schemes projected by their firm. He 
 cloaked his astuteness with the bluff and 
 devil-may-care bearing of tlie libertine 
 and voluptuary, and seemed to think only 
 of enjoyment and the adornment of his 
 person ; but, at the same time, nothing 
 escaped hira ; and he turned to good ac- 
 count the vast business experience which 
 he had acquired as a bagman. This par- 
 venu, who, even in his own eyes, was 
 little better than a charlatan, lived in a 
 luxurious suite of rooms, which had been 
 arranged for him \)y the decorator of his 
 theater, and in which he gave suppers and 
 other festive entertainments to the celeb- 
 rities of the day. 
 
 Fond of show and hking to do things 
 handsomely, he affected to be an easy- 
 going man, and seemed all the less for- 
 midable, in that he had retained — to use 
 his own expression — the plating of his 
 original vocation, wliile lining thatp/a<- 
 ing with the slang of the greenroom. 
 Now theatrical artists when at their the- 
 aters are in the habit of calhng a spade a 
 spade ; Gaudissard, accordingly borrowed 
 from the greenroom — which has a wit of 
 its own — enough good tilings to enable 
 him, with the help of a rate in aid from 
 the moidant pleasantry of the commercial 
 room, to pass for a superior man. At 
 the time of which we are writing he was 
 thinking of selhng his license, and— to 
 employ his own phrase— pass /«f7 on to 
 other avocations. His ambition was to
 
 144 
 
 TUB HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 be managing director of some railway, 
 to become a grave and reverend member 
 of society, to procure some government 
 appointment, and marry Mademoiselle 
 Minard, the daughter of one of the 
 wealthiest mayors in Paris. He hoped 
 to be made a deputy for some place upon 
 his line, and to make his way, by means 
 of Popinot's inlluencc, to a seat at the 
 Council of State. 
 
 " Whom have I the honor of address- 
 ing?" inquired Gaudissard, arresting, 
 with a managerial glance, the approach 
 of Madame Cibot. 
 
 " I am Monsieur Pons's confidential 
 hous(.'keeper, monsieur," replied Dame 
 Cibot. 
 
 " Well, and how is the good old fellow 
 getting on ? " 
 
 " Badly, monsieur, very badly." 
 
 " Oh, the devil ! the devil ! I'm sorry 
 for that. I'll go and see him ; for he's 
 one of those exceptional men — " 
 
 " Oh ! yes, monsieur ; a regular angel, 
 to be sure. I still sometimes ask myself 
 how such a man could be in a theater — " 
 
 "Why, madame, the theater is a 
 school of morality," said Gaudissard. 
 "Poor Pon.s — ('Pon my word of honor, 
 a man must have gone to seed ere he 
 could take up with this creature) — He 
 is a model man ; and, as for talent, vf'hy — 
 When do you think he will be able to re- 
 sume his duties ? for the theater, unfort- 
 unately, resembles the diligences, which, 
 full or empty, start at the appointed 
 times. The curtain here rises at six 
 o'clock every evening, and, let us be as 
 sympathetic as we may, that Avon't pro- 
 'duce good music. Come, tell me how he 
 is?" 
 
 " Alas ! my good sir," said Dame Cibot 
 taking out her handkerchief and applying 
 it to her eyes, "it ig very shocking to 
 •have to say it, but I believe as we shall 
 have the misfortune to lose him, although 
 ■we nurse him like the n 'apple of our e^'e 
 —Monsieur Schraucke and me ; which in- 
 deed I am come to tell you as you must not 
 count upon that good Monsieur Schmucke 
 any longer, for he is going to sit up every 
 night. One can't help going on just as if 
 there was some hope, and a-trying to save 
 
 the dear good man from dying — but the 
 doctor has given him \i\\ — " 
 
 " And what is he dying of? " 
 
 " Of grief, of the jaundice, of the liver 
 complaint — ay, and all that mixed up 
 witli a heap of family matters." 
 
 "And of a doctor," said Gaudissard; 
 " he ought to have called in Monsieur 
 Lebrun, our own doctor; tiiat would 
 have cost him nothing — " 
 
 " Monsieur Pons has a doctor as is a 
 regular God — but what can a doctor, 
 however clever he may'n be, do against 
 so man^'' causes ? " 
 
 " I was greatly in need of the worthy 
 Pair of Nut-Crackei^s for the music of my 
 new fairy piece — " 
 
 " Is it anything as I can do for them ?" 
 asked Diime Cibot, witli an air that would 
 have done no dishonor to Jocrisse. 
 
 Gaudissard burst into a roar of laugh- 
 ter. 
 
 "Monsieur, I am their confidential 
 housekeeper, and there are a number of 
 things as these gentlemen — " 
 
 Hearing Gaudissard 's noisy mirth, a 
 woman who was outside exclaimed : 
 " Since you are laughing, one may come 
 in, old man." And with these words, the 
 principal lady of the ballet bounced into 
 the room and flung herself on to the only 
 sofa it contained. This first lady was 
 Heloisc Brisetout, who was wrapped in 
 one of those magnificent scarfs which are 
 called Algeriens. 
 
 "What is it makes you laugh? Is 
 it this lady ? What sort of an engage- 
 ment is she on the lookout for ? " said 
 the daitseuse, survej'ing Madame Cibot 
 with one of those glances with which one 
 artiste is wont to scan another, and which 
 ought to be transferred to canvag. 
 
 Heloise, a young woman who had a 
 great turn for literature, was well known 
 in Bohemia, and was on intimate terms 
 with several great artists, and was en- 
 dowed with elegance, subtilty, and grace 
 — possessed more wit than is usually al- 
 lotted to principal ladies of the ballet. 
 As she put her question she applied a 
 vinaigrette to her nose. 
 
 " Let me tell you, madame, as all 
 women are equal, when they n'are hand-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 145 
 
 some ; and if I don't sniff tlio plague out 
 of a smelliiig'-bottle, and if I don't put 
 powdered brick-dust on my cheeks — " 
 
 "Considering- what Nature has already 
 done for you in that direction, that woukl 
 he an audacious pleonasm, my child ! " 
 said Heloise, smirking at the manager. 
 
 '• I am an honest woman — " 
 
 "So much the worse for you," said 
 Heloise. " 'Tisn't every one who can 
 get hold of a protector, by jingo ; but I 
 have one, madame, and a famous one he 
 is, too ! " 
 
 " What do you mean by your ' so much 
 the worse ? ' It's all verj' fine for you to 
 wear Algeriens on j'our shoulders and to 
 rig yourself out. But for all that, you'll 
 never receive so many declarations of love 
 as I've had in my time, medeme ! And 
 you'll never be a match for the pretty 
 oyster-girl at the Cadran-Bleu." 
 
 Here the danseuse rose suddenly from 
 her seat, threw herself into the attitude 
 of a soldier porting arms, and carried the 
 back of her right hand to her forehead, as 
 a private soldier does when he salutes his 
 general. 
 
 "What ! " exclaimed Gaudissard ; " are 
 you the pretty oyster-girl that mj' father 
 used to talk to me about ? " 
 
 " If so, madame knows neither the 
 cachucha nor the polka, then ? Madame 
 must be over fifty ! " said Heloise, assum- 
 ing a dramatic pose, and declaiming the 
 line : 
 
 " Cinna, let us be friends 1 " 
 
 " Come, Heloise, madame is not in trim, 
 leave her alone." 
 
 "Is this lady the Nouvelle Heloise?" 
 asked the portress with an air of as- 
 sumed simplicitj' that was replete with 
 sarcasm. 
 
 " Not bad for the old one ! " cried 
 Gaudissard. 
 
 " It's as old as the hills," retorted the 
 danseuse. "That joke has gray mus- 
 taches ; find us another, old girl, or— take 
 a cigarette." 
 
 "Excuse me, madame," said Dame Ci- 
 bot ; " I am too downhearted to keep the 
 game alive ; my two gentlemen are very 
 ill, and in order to provide them with food 
 
 and spare them worry, I've pawned even 
 my husband's clothes this morning; see, 
 here's the ticket — " 
 
 "Oh, now the affair is taking a dra- 
 matic turn," cried the fair Heloise. 
 "What is it all about?" 
 
 "Madame breaks in upon us like — " 
 
 "Like a first lady of the ballet," said 
 Heloise. " You see I am prompting you, 
 medeme." 
 
 " Come, come, I am pressed for time," 
 cried Gaudissard. " We have had enough 
 nonsense of that sort. This lady, Heloise, 
 is the confidential housekeeper of our poor 
 conductor, who is dying. She is come to 
 tell me that I mustn't count upon liis re- 
 appearing here ; I am in a difncult3' — " 
 
 " Oh ! poor fellow ! we must give him 
 a benefit." 
 
 " That would be liis ruin ! " said Gau- 
 dissard. "Next morning he might find 
 himself twenty pounds in debt to the in- 
 fu'maries, which won't recognize the ex- 
 istence in Paris of any other sufferers than 
 those they themselves relieve. No, look 
 here, vay good woman, since you are go- 
 ing to compete for the Montyon prize — " 
 
 Here Gaudissard interrupted himself to 
 ring the bell, and said to the page who 
 forthwith answered the summons : 
 
 "■ Tell the treasurer to send me a forty- 
 pound note. Take a seat, madame," he 
 added, turning to Madame Cibot. 
 
 "All! see the poor woman is crying. 
 That's foolish," exclaimed the danseuse. 
 " Come now, mother, cheer up, we'll go 
 and see him. I say, you Chinee," said 
 she to the manager, as she drew him 
 aside into a corner of the room, "you 
 mean to give me the chief part in the 
 ballet of ' Ariadne,' don't you ? You are 
 going to get married, and you know how 
 I can plague you ! " 
 
 " Heloise, my heart is like a frigate ; it 
 is sheathed with copper." 
 
 " I will show the children I have had 
 \iy you ! I will borrow some on purpose 1" 
 
 "I have made a clean breast of our 
 attachment — " 
 
 " Be a good fellow and give Pons's berth 
 to Garaugeot ; the poor lad has talent, 
 and he is penniless. I promise you peace 
 if you will."
 
 146 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 "But wait till Pons is dead; the old 
 fellow xn^v recover yet." 
 
 "Oh! as for that, monsieur, certainly 
 not," said Dame Cibot. " Since last 
 Tiight, when his mind beg-an to wander, 
 he's been delirious. Unfortunately, it 
 will soon be all over." 
 
 '•'At all events, let Garangeot fill the 
 post in the interim," said Heloise. "He 
 has the whole of the press at his back." 
 
 At this moment in came the treasurer 
 with two twenty-pound notes in his hand. 
 
 " Give them to madame," said Gaudis- 
 sard. " Farewell, my g-ood woman, take 
 good care of the dear fellow, and tell him 
 that I will come to see him to-morrow or 
 the daj' after — as soon as ever I can." 
 
 "' A man overboard," cried Heloise. 
 
 " Ah ! monsieur, hearts like \' ours are 
 onh'- to be found at theaters. May God 
 bless you ! " 
 
 "To what account am I to carry this ?" 
 inquired the treasurer. 
 
 " I will give you a written voucher ; 
 carry it to the gratuity account." 
 
 Before she left the room. Dame Cibot 
 bowed ceremoniously to the danseuse, 
 and overheard Gaudissard address the fol- 
 lowing question to his former mistress : 
 
 " Is Garangeot strong enough, think 
 you, to knock off the music of our ballet, 
 'The Mohicans,' for me in twelve days? 
 If he gets me out of the fix, he shall be 
 Pons's successor ! " 
 
 Thus did the portress (who received a 
 larger recompense, for having wrought 
 so much mischief, than she would have 
 derived from the doing of a good action) 
 suppress, at one fell swoop, all the re- 
 sources of the two friends, and deprive 
 them of their livelihood in case of Pons's 
 restoration to health. This treachei'ous 
 maneuver was certain to bring about, 
 within a few days, the result which Dame 
 Cibot desired — namely, the sale of the 
 pictures coveted b^- Elie Magus. In order 
 to realize this preliminarj'^ spoliation, it 
 was needful for the portress to lull the 
 formidable ally whom she had called in — 
 the advocate Fraisier, and to insure the 
 absolute silence of Elie Magus and Re- 
 monencq. As to the latter, he had gradu- 
 ally succumbed to one of those all-absorb- 
 
 ing passions to which the uneducated are 
 liable, when, coming to Paris from the 
 depths of their provinces, they bring 
 with them the fixed ideas engendered "by 
 the seclusion of country life, the sordid 
 ignoi-ance of primitive natures, and the 
 crude desii-es that isolation has converted 
 into domineering tyrants. 
 
 The masculine beauty of Madame Ci- 
 bot, her vivacity' and Billingsgate wit, 
 had attracted the attention of the broker, 
 and inspired him with a desire to take her 
 away from Cibot, and make her his con- 
 cubine — a species of bigamy much more 
 common among the lower orders of Paris 
 than is generally supposed. But avarice, 
 acting like a slip-knot, gained day b^' A&y 
 a firmer hold upon the heart, and ended 
 by disturbing the head of Remonencq. 
 Thus, by calculating the commission that 
 was to be .paid to Dame Cibot by Elie 
 Magus and himself at forty thousand 
 francs, he became imbued with the desire 
 of making her his lawful spouse, and so 
 o'erleaped the boundary that separates 
 the simple delict from crime. In the 
 course of the long pipe-inspired reveries 
 in which he indulged, seated on his door- 
 step, he was led, by this purely commer- 
 cial passion, to long for the death of the 
 little tailor. 
 
 If the little tailor died, Remonencq 
 saw, in perspective, his capital wellnigh 
 tripled ; and then the thought occurred 
 to him, how excellent a tradeswoman 
 Dame Cibot would make, and what a 
 fine figure she would cut in a magnificent 
 shop upon the boulevard. This twofold 
 covetousness intoxicated Remonencq. He 
 hired an imaginary shop upon the Boule- 
 vard de la Madeleine, and filled it with 
 the choicest objects in the collection of 
 the deceased Pons. After having slum- 
 bered in golden sheets, and seen miUions 
 in the blue spirals of his pipe, he awoke 
 to And himself face to face with the little 
 tailor who was sweeping the court, the 
 gatewaj', and the pavement in front of 
 the house, while the Auvergnat was tak- 
 ing .down the shutters of his shop, and 
 arranging the goods in his window ; for 
 since Pons had been laid up, Cibot acted 
 as his wife's substitute in the performance
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 147 
 
 of those functions which she had taken 
 upon herself. This olive-hued, copper-col- 
 ored, stumpy little tailor, then, the Au- 
 vergnat considered as the only impedi- 
 ment to happiness, and he put to himself 
 the question, " How am I to g-et rid of 
 him?" This growing- passion rendered 
 Dame Cibot extremely proud of herself — 
 for she was verging- upon that time of life 
 when women begin to understand that it 
 is possible for them to g-row old . 
 
 One fine morning:, then, as soon as Dame 
 Cibot was up, she fixed a g-aze of pensive 
 scrutiny on Remonencq as he was eng-ag-ed 
 in arrang-ing- the knickknacks in his shop- 
 front. She was curious to learn how far 
 his passion for her would carry him. 
 
 " Well ! " said the Auverg-nat, making 
 up to her ; " are things going- on as j'ou 
 would have them ? " 
 
 '• It's you as makes me uneasy," replied 
 Dame Cibot ; " you are getting me into a 
 scrape," she added ; " the neighbors will 
 come to notice the sheep's eyes as you 
 make at me." 
 
 Thereupon she quitted the gate-way, 
 and plunged into the innermost recesses 
 of Remonencq's shop. 
 
 " What an idea ! " .said the Auvergnat. 
 
 " Come here ; I want to speak to you," 
 said Dame Cibot. " Monsieur Pons's 
 heirs are astir, and fhey may cause us 
 a good deal of bother. God only knows 
 what would happen if they was to send a 
 lot of professional men to poke their noses 
 into everything like so many Iiounds. I 
 can't persuade Monsieur Schmucke to sell 
 a few of the pictures n'unless you love me 
 well enough to keep it dark — oh, so dark 
 that you wouldn't split even if your head 
 was on the block — both as to where the 
 pictures come from and who it was as 
 .sold them to j'ou. You know that when 
 once Monsieur Pons is dead and buried, if 
 they find fifty-three pictures instead of 
 sixty-seven, no one'll know how many 
 there were ! Besides, if Monsieur Pons 
 sold 'cm during his life'time no one could 
 say a word about it." 
 
 "Yes, it's all the same to ?»e," replied 
 Remonencq ; " but Monsieur Elie Magus 
 will require receipts in regular form." 
 
 " Oh, you shall have your receipt too, 
 
 begging your parding ! Do you suppose 
 as it will be me that'll write it out for 
 you ? It will be Monsieur Schmucke. But 
 you must tell your Jew to be as mum as 
 you are yourself." 
 
 " We will bo as mute as fishes. It's 
 quite in the way of our trade. Now, for 
 my part, I can read, but I can't write, 
 and that's why I want a well-taught and 
 clever woman like you for my wife I /, 
 who have never thought of anything be- 
 yond getting enough to keep me in my 
 old age, should like to have some little 
 Remonencqs now. Give your Cibot the 
 slip—" 
 
 "Why, here comes your Jew," said the 
 portress; "now we can arrange mat- 
 ters." 
 
 " Well, my dear lady," said Elie Magus, 
 who had been coming every third daj' to 
 know when he could buy the pictures, 
 "how do we stand now?" 
 
 "' Haven't you seen any one wlio has 
 spoken to you about Monsieur Pons and 
 his gewgaws ? " asked Dame Cibot. 
 
 "I have had a letter from an advocate," 
 replied Elie Magus; " but, as he seemed to 
 me to be a sharp practitioner, who goes 
 in for pettifogging, and I distrust such 
 fellows, I did not answer his letter. At 
 the end of three days he came to see me, 
 and left a card ; I told my porter that I 
 should never be * at home ' when that 
 man called." 
 
 "Oh, you darling Jew!" said Dame 
 Cibot, who was but imperfectly ac- 
 quainted with the prudence of Elie 
 Magus. " Well, my little men, in a 
 few days' time Til cajole Monsieur 
 Schmucke into selling you seven or 
 eight pictures — ten at the outside — but 
 on two conditions ; and the first is ab- 
 solute silence ! It'll be Monsieur Schmucke 
 what sent for you, eh, monsieur ? It'll be 
 Monsieur Remonencq as suggested to Mon- 
 sieur Schmucke that you should be the 
 buyer ? In short, whatever happens, I 
 shall have had naught to do with the 
 matter. You'll give forty-six thousand 
 francs for the four pictures, eh ? " 
 
 "So be it," sighed the Jew. 
 
 " Very good,'" said the portress. " The 
 second condition is that you hand over
 
 148 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 fortj'-threc thousand francs to me, and 
 that you buy the pictui-es of Monsieur 
 Schmucke for three thousand francs only. 
 Rcinonencq hcre'U buy four for two thou- 
 sand francs, and will hand nie over the 
 balance. But besides that, look you, dear 
 Monsieur Mag-us, I've been the means of 
 you n'and Remonencq doing- a g-ood stroke 
 of business on condition that we all three 
 g-o shares in the profits. I'll n'introduce 
 this advocate to you ; or he will, no doubt, 
 come here if he's asked. You'll value all 
 Monsieur's Pons's belonging's at the prices 
 as you can afford to give for 'em, in order 
 that this Monsieur Fraisier may be sure 
 of the value of the propertj-. Only, mind 
 you, he mustn't, on no account, come here 
 before our sale takes place." 
 
 "That's understood," said the Jew; 
 " but it will take some time to examine 
 the things and put a price upon them." 
 
 "You will have half a day for that. 
 Come, that's mj' lookout. Talk the mat- 
 ter over and settle it between you, 1113^ 
 lads; then the day after to-morrow the 
 thing may be done. I'm a-going to see 
 this here Fraisier and have a chat with 
 him ; for he learns all that goes on hei^e 
 through his friend. Dr. Poulain, and it's 
 no light task to keep the beggar quiet." 
 
 When Dame Cibot was midwaj^ between 
 the Rue de Normandie and the Rue de la 
 Perle she met Fraisier, who was making 
 for her abode; so impatient was he to 
 gather — to use his own phrase — the ele- 
 ments of the affair. 
 
 "Why ! I was on my waj' to your 
 place," said Dame Cibot. 
 
 Fraisier complained about not having 
 been received by Elie Magus; but the 
 spark of distrust, which was beginning- 
 to gleam in the eyes of the man of law, 
 •was extinguished by the portress telling 
 him that Magus had onlj' ju.st returned 
 from a journej', and that on the da^' after 
 to-moiTow, at latest, she would bring him 
 and Fraisier together in Pons's rooms, so 
 that the value of the collection might be 
 ascertained. 
 
 " Deal with me franklj'," said Fraisier ; 
 "it is more than probable that the in- 
 terests of Monsieur Pons's heirs will be 
 confided to my care. In that position 
 
 I shall be far better able to be of use 
 to you." 
 
 These words were uttered in so dry a 
 tone that Dame Cibot trembled. It was 
 obvious that this hungry limb of law 
 would maneuver, on his part, just as she 
 was maneuvering on hers ; so she resolved 
 to hasten the sale of the pictures. Dame 
 Cibot was right in her conjectures. The 
 advocate and the doctor had gone to the 
 expense of an entirely new suit for Frai- 
 sier, in order that he might present him- 
 self in suitable attire before Madame 
 Camusot de Marville. The time I'equired 
 for the making of the clothes was the 
 only cause which retarded this interview 
 — an interview that would decide the fate 
 of the two friends. It was Fraisier's in- 
 tention, after his visit to Madame Cibot 's, 
 to go to the tailor's and try on his coat, 
 waistcoat, and trousers. He found those 
 garments finished and awaiting him ; 
 went home, donned a new wig, and, at 
 about ten o'clock in the morning, started, 
 in a hir.ed cabriolet, for the Rue de Hano- 
 vre, where he hoped to obtain an audi- 
 ence from Madame Camusot. Fraisier in 
 a white cravat, yellow gloves, and a 
 new wig, Fraisier scented with Portugal 
 water, resembled those poisons which are 
 placed in cut-glass vials and covered with 
 white kid ; they are daintily labeled ; the 
 very string that binds the stopper is 
 natty ; but for these very reasons they 
 appear all the more dangerous. Frai' 
 sier's trenchant aspect, his pimply face, 
 his cutaneous affection, green eyes, and 
 the odor of evil that hung about him wei-e 
 as conspicuous as clouds against an azure 
 sky. When he was in his study, as he 
 had appeared to Dame Cibot, he was the 
 common knife used by the assassin to 
 perpetrate his crime ; but at the door of 
 Madame Camusot he resembled the ele- 
 gant dagger that a young lady carries in 
 her little dunkerque. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 FEAISIEE IN BLOSSOM. 
 
 A GREAT change had occurred in the 
 Rue de Hanovre. Viscount and Vis-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 149 
 
 countess Popinot — the ex-minister and 
 his wife — luid been unwilling that the 
 President and Madame Camusot should 
 quit the house which they had settled 
 on their daughter and go into lodgings. 
 The president and his wife, therefore, 
 installed themselves upon the second- 
 floor, which was left vacant bj' the de- 
 parture of the old lady — its former tenant 
 — who wished to pass the closing years of 
 her existence in the country. Thus Ma- 
 dame Camusot — who retained in her ser- 
 vice Madeleine Vinet, the man-servant, 
 and the cook, had gone back to the penury 
 from which she had started — a penury 
 that was alleviated by the fact that she 
 inhabited, rent free, a suite of rooms that 
 would liave cost four thousand francs a 
 year, and by her husband's salary of ten 
 thousand francs. This aurea mediocritas 
 was, in itself, by no means satisfactory 
 to Madame de Marville, who would have 
 had her fortune in keeping with her 
 ambition ; but this was not her only 
 grievance ; the cession of all the family 
 property to Cecile involved the loss of the 
 president's eligibilit}- to the chamber of 
 deputies. Now, Amelie wanted her hus- 
 band to be a deputy' — for she did not 
 readily abandon her projects — nor did slie 
 even yet despair of securing the pres- 
 ident's election for the arrondissement 
 in which Marville is situated. 
 
 Accordingly^ for the last two months 
 she had been importuning Monsieur le 
 Baron Camusot — for the new peer of 
 France had obtained the title of baron — 
 to advance the sum of a hundred thousand 
 francs out of her husband's expectant 
 patrimony, in order, as she said, that he 
 might buy a small estate inclosed by the 
 estate of Marville, and producing a clear 
 rental of about two thousand francs. She 
 and her husband would then have a home 
 of their own in close proximity to the resi- 
 dence of their children, while the estate 
 of Marville would to that extent be 
 rounded and increased. Madame Camu- 
 sot made capital with her father-in-law 
 out of the state of denudation to which 
 she had been reduced by her endeavors to 
 secure the hand of Viscount Popinot for 
 her daughter. She asked the old man 
 
 whether he could bear to see the path 
 that led to the supreme honors of the 
 magistracy, honors which would in future 
 be reserved for those who had a strong 
 parliamentarj' position, to remain closed 
 to his eldest son ; and pointed out to him 
 that the concession she implored would 
 enable her husband to take up such a po- 
 sition, and so make himself formidable to 
 the Ministry. " These people," she said, 
 "give nothing, except to those who twist 
 their neckties for them until their tongues 
 hang out. They are an ungrateful set. 
 What do they not owe to Camusot ? 
 Camusot, by forcing on the issue of the 
 ordonnances of July, brought about the 
 elevation of the House of Orleans — " 
 
 In reply to all this, the old man pleaded 
 that he was involved in railway specula- 
 tions bej-ond his means, and postponed 
 this act of liberality — the necessity of which 
 he admitted— until an anticipated rise 
 in the value of his railway shares should 
 have occurred. This quasi-promise, which 
 the president's wife had extorted a few 
 days previously to Fraisier's visit, had 
 filled her with despair. It was doubtful 
 whether the ex-proprietor of Marville 
 would be in time for the re-election of 
 the chamber; for it was necessary that 
 he should have been in possession of his 
 qualification for a j'ear, at least, before 
 presenting himself to the electors. 
 
 Fraisier had no difficulty in obtaining 
 access to Madeleine Vinet. These two 
 viperine natures recognized each other as 
 having been hatched from the same egg. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," said Fraisier, in hon- 
 ej-ed accents. " I should like to have a 
 moment's audience with Madame la Pres- 
 idente in regard to a matter in which she 
 is personally interested, and which alTects 
 her fortune. Be sure you tell her that it 
 is a question of a succession. I have not 
 the honor of being known to Madame la 
 Presidente, so that the mention of my 
 name would carry no weight with it. It 
 is not my custom to leave my office, but 
 I know the attentions that are due to the 
 wife of a president, and have therefore 
 taken the trouble to come here in person ; 
 and that the more because the affair does 
 not admit of the slightest delay."
 
 150 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 Put in this form, and repeated and am- 
 plified hy tlie lady's-maid, the application 
 naturally elicited a favorahlc reply. Now, 
 this was a critical moment for Fraisier's 
 twofold ambition, and according-ly, in 
 spite of his intrepidity as a little provincial 
 solicitor full of self-assertion, asperity, 
 and keenness, his sensations resembled 
 those of the commander of an army when 
 engaging in a battle that may decide a 
 campaign. As Fraisier passed into the 
 little drawing-room in which Araelie was 
 waiting for him, he experienced what no 
 sudoriGc, however potent, had hitherto 
 been able to produce upon his refractor^' 
 skin, whose pores were clogged by hideous 
 maladies — he felt a slight perspiration 
 upon his back and on his forehead, and 
 mentally ejaculated : 
 
 '•■ If my fortune be not made, my body 
 is saved, for Poulain assured me that \x\y 
 health would be re-established whenev(;r 
 the action of the skin should be restored. 
 Madame," he began, so soon as he caught 
 sight of Madame Camusot, who presented 
 herself at the audience in demi-toilet, then 
 pausing, he bowed to the lady with all the 
 deference whereby ministerial officers ac- 
 knowledge the superior standing of those 
 whom they accost. 
 
 "Be seated, monsieur," said Madame 
 Camusot, who saw at a glance that Frai- 
 sier belonged to the legal world. 
 
 " Madame la Presidente, if I have taken 
 the liberty of addressing mj-self to you in 
 a matter of importance which concerns 
 Monsieur le President, it is because I am 
 thoroughly convinced that, occupying the 
 high position which he does. Monsieur de 
 Marville would very likely leave things to 
 take their natural course, and thus incur 
 a loss of from seven to eight hundred 
 thousand francs, a sum which ladies, who 
 in mj' humble opinion understand private 
 affairs far better than magistrates do, 
 will not despise — " 
 
 " You said something about a succes- 
 sion — " interrupted Madame Camusot. 
 
 Amelie, who was dazzled by the magni- 
 tude of the sum, and wanted to conceal 
 her astonishment and delight, followed 
 the example of those impatient readers 
 who skip to the conclusion of a romance. 
 
 "Yes, madame, a succession that was 
 lost to you — ay, utterly, irretrievably' lost 
 — but which I am able, or shall be able, 
 to restore to you." 
 
 " Proceed, monsieur," said Madame de 
 Marville coldly, examming Fraisier from 
 head to foot and scrutinizing him with a 
 sagacious eye. 
 
 "I know your eminent abilities, ma- 
 dame ; I come from Mantes. Monsieur 
 Leboeuf, the president of the tribunal 
 there — the friend of Monsieur de Marville 
 — can give him some information as to 
 who and what I am — " 
 
 At these words, Madame Camusot drew 
 herself up in a manner so cruelly signifi- 
 cant that Fraisier was compelled to insert 
 a hurried parenthesis in his discourse. 
 
 " — A lady so distinguished as j'ourself, 
 madame, will at once understand why I 
 begin by talking about myself. That is 
 the shortest way of coming to the suc- 
 cession." 
 
 To this subtle remark Madame Camu- 
 sot replied only by a gesture. Encour- 
 aged by this gesture to tell his story, 
 Fraisier resumed : 
 
 " I was formerly a solicitor at Mantes, 
 madame. My practice was, naturally, all 
 that I had to depend upon, for I bought 
 the practice of Monsieur Levroux, with 
 whom you were doubtless acquainted — " 
 
 Madame Camusot bowed. 
 
 " — With the money which I borrowed, 
 and ten thousand francs of my own, I 
 quitted Desroches — one of the ablest so- 
 licitor's in Paris — whose chief clerk I had 
 been for six years. I had the misfortune 
 to incur the displeasure of the procurator- 
 royal of Mantes, Monsieur — " 
 
 "Olivier Vinet— " 
 
 " — Son of the procurator-general ; yes, 
 madame. He was paying his addresses 
 to a little ladj'— " 
 
 " He ! " 
 
 '•' — Madame Vatinelle — " 
 
 " Ah, Madame Vatinelle — she was very 
 pretty and very — in my time — " 
 
 " — She had a penchant for your humble 
 servant : inde irce," pursued Fraisier. 
 " I was energetic, I wanted to reimburse 
 ray friends and to get married ; I wanted 
 business ; I hunted it up ; and I very soon
 
 cousm PONS. 
 
 151 
 
 managed to brew more business for my- 
 self than all the other ministerial officers 
 at Mantes put tog-ether. Bah ! the result 
 was that all the solicitors and notaries — 
 ay, and even the bailiffs — of Mantes, en- 
 tered into a league against me. You are 
 well aware, madame, that in our execra- 
 ble calling, when a man's ruin is desired, 
 'tis easily accomplished. I was caught 
 acting for both parties in a certain case. 
 It IS just a trifle irregular, I admit; but 
 at Paris the thing is done in certain cases; 
 for here solicitors play into each other's 
 hands. They don't at Mantes. Monsioru 
 Bouyonnet — to whom I had already' done 
 that little favor — was imped by his con- 
 freres and spurred on b^^ the procurator- 
 royal to betray me — you see that I don't 
 attempt to hide anything from you. In 
 fact it was a general tolle ; I was a 
 rogue ; I was painted blacker than Marat. 
 I was compelled to sell my practice, and I 
 lost my all. I am now in Paris, where I 
 have tried to get together a business con- 
 nection ; but my health is so bad that I 
 can scarcely reckon on two hours' ease 
 out of the twenty- -four. I have but one 
 ambition now, and it is of the humblest 
 character. You, madame, will perhaps 
 some daj^ be the wife of the keeper of the 
 seals, or of a chief president ; as for me, 
 poor sorrj^ creature that I am, mj only 
 desire is to have some post in which I can 
 tranquilly pass the days that yet remain 
 to me — some cul-de-sac, some quiet berth 
 in which one vegetates. I should like to 
 be a juge de paix at Paris. 
 
 " 'Tis a very simple matter for you and 
 Monsieur le President to obtain my nomi- 
 nation to that post ; for you must cause 
 the keeper of the seals enough annoyance 
 to render him willing to oblige you. That 
 is not all, madame," added Fraisier, with 
 a gesture, seeing that Madame Camusot 
 was on the point of speaking. " The 
 doctor who attends the old man, whose 
 fortune Monsieur le President should in- 
 herit, is a friend of mine — you perceive 
 that we are coming to the point — Well, 
 this doctor, whose co-operation is indis- 
 pensable to us, is in a position strictly 
 analogous to mine — plenty of talent, no 
 opportunities ! 'Tis through him that 
 
 I came to know how deeply j'our inter- 
 ests are suffering ; for even while I ad- 
 dress you, it is probable that all is at an 
 end — that the will which disinherits Mon- 
 sieur le President is made. Now, this 
 doctor wants to be appointed chief phy- 
 sician to some hospital or to some public 
 schools ; in short, you will understand, he 
 longs for a position in Paris precisely and 
 analogous to that which I covet. I trust 
 that you will pardon me for having 
 touched upon these two delicate topics ; 
 but in this business there must not be 
 any — even the slightest — ambiguity. 
 This doctor, moreover, is a person who 
 is held in high esteem, a skillful man — 
 a man who saved the life of Monsieur 
 Pillerault, the great-uncle of your son- 
 in-law. Monsieur le Vicomte Popinot. 
 Now if you are so good as to promise me 
 these two places — that of juge de paix 
 for mj'self, and the medical sinecure for 
 my friend — I undertake to secure you 
 this succession almost intact — I say 
 almost intact, because it will be subject 
 to the_ charges which must be created m 
 favor of the legatee and sundr3' other 
 persons whose concurrence is absolutely 
 necessary. You will not be called upon 
 to fulfill your promises until /shall have 
 fulfilled mine." 
 
 Here Madame Camusot, who had just 
 folded her arms, after the fashion of a 
 person who is forced to listen to a lecture, 
 unfolded them, looked at Fraisier, and 
 observed : 
 
 "Monsieur, you display a meritorious 
 perspicuity in all that relates to j'ourself ; 
 but as regards me and my affairs I must 
 say, your obscurity is quite — " 
 
 "Madame," replied Fraisier, "two 
 words will suffice to explain everj-thing. 
 Monsieur le President is the sole and 
 single heir, in the third degree, of Mon- 
 sieur Pons. That gentleman is very ill 
 and is on the point of making his will — if 
 indeed he has not already made it — in 
 favor of his friend, a German named 
 Schmucke. The value of the succession 
 exceeds seven hundred thousand francs. 
 Within three days I hope to have the 
 most accurate information as to the 
 amount of — "
 
 152 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 "If this be so," remarked Madame 
 Camusot in an aside— she was quite as- 
 tounded at the possibility of the value of 
 the estate being' so large—" if this be so, 
 I committed a grand mistake in quarrel- 
 ing with him and crushing him." 
 
 " Not so, madame ; for but for that 
 rupture he would now be as merr^- as a 
 lark, and would ouUive you. Monsieur le 
 President, and mj-self into the bargain. 
 Providence," added he, by way of disguis- 
 ing the hideous idea to which he had just 
 given vent — "Providence has its own 
 mysterious ways ; let us not attempt to 
 fathom them ! As for us professional 
 men, we are prone to take a plain, matter- 
 of-fact view of things. Now, madame, 
 you will see that Monsieur de Marville, 
 holding the high judicial position he does, 
 would not stir, could not stir in this mat- 
 ter, things being as they are. He is at 
 daggers drawn with his cousin ; you have 
 shut your door in Pons's face ; you have 
 banished him from society'. You had, no 
 doubt, most excellent reasons for acting 
 as you did ; but the old man fa lis, ill, he 
 bequeaths his goods and chattels to his 
 only friend. A pi'esident of one of the 
 Courts Royal of Paris cannot raise any 
 objection to a duly executed will made 
 under such circumstances. 
 
 "Yet, between you and me, madame, 
 when one has an equitable right to a suc- 
 cession of seven or eight hundred thou- 
 sand francs — it may be a million for aught 
 I know — and one is the sole heir desig- 
 nated by the law, it is disagreeable in the 
 extreme to be done out of one's own. But 
 then, in order to avert this catastroj^jhe, 
 one gets mixed up in all sorts of unworthy 
 intrigues — intrigues that are extremely 
 knotty and full of difficulties; while at 
 the same time it is so absolutely neces- 
 sary to have dealings with the dregs of 
 society, servants, underlings, and so forth, 
 and to come into such close contact with 
 them, that no Parisian solicitor or notary 
 can prosecute such an undertaking. It 
 requires a briefless advocate like me — an 
 advocate of solid and sterling capacitj', 
 who is devoted to his client, and whose 
 position is, unfortunatelj', such as to place 
 him on a level with the kind of persons to 
 
 whom I have alluded. My business lies 
 wholly with the small shop-keepers, ar- 
 tisans, and common people of my arron- 
 dissement. Yes, madame ; such are the 
 straits to which I have been i-educed by 
 the enmity of a procurator-royal, who is 
 at the present moment assistant pro- 
 curatoi'-royal here in Paris. He never 
 forgave me my advantage over him. I 
 know you, madame ; I know the solidity 
 of your i:)atronage, and I saw, in this ser- 
 vice to be rendei'ed to 3'ou, the termination 
 of my sufferings, and the triumph of my 
 friend. Doctor Poulain — " 
 
 Fraisier stopped ; but Madame Camu- 
 sot, absorbed in thought, did not open her 
 lips. It was a moment of fearful anguish 
 to Fraisier. 
 
 Vinet, one of the orators of the center, 
 who had been procurator-general for six- 
 teen years, and had been mentioned over 
 and over again as likely to be appointed 
 to the chancellorship, was the father of 
 Vinet, the former procurator of Mantes, 
 who for the last twelve months had held 
 the post of assistant procurator-royal at 
 Paris. Now Vinet, the father, was an an- 
 tagonist of the rancorous Madame Caniu- 
 sot — for the haughty procurator-general 
 took no pains whatever to conceal his 
 contempt for President Camusot. This, 
 however, was a circumstance which Frai- 
 sier did not and could not know. 
 
 " Have you nothing to reproach your- 
 self with bej'ond the fact of having acted 
 for both parties in a certain case?" in- 
 quired Madame Camusot, looking fixedly 
 at Fraisier. 
 
 "Madame le Presidente can have an 
 interview with Monsieur LebcBuf : Mon- 
 sieur Leboeuf took my part." 
 
 "Are 3'ou sure that Monsieur Leboeuf 
 will give a good account of you to Mon- 
 sieur de Marville and Monsieur le Comte 
 Popinot ? " 
 
 "I will answer for that ; especially as 
 Monsieur Olivier Vinet is no longer at 
 Mantes ; for between you and me the 
 woi'thy Monsieur Leboeuf had a secret 
 dread of that little magistrate. More- 
 over, with your permission, Madame la 
 Presidente, I will go to Mantes and see 
 Monsieur Leboeuf. That will not occasion
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 153 
 
 anj' delay, since two or three days must 
 elapse before I can learn the exact value 
 of the succession. It is my wish and it 
 is my duty to conceal from Madame la 
 Presidente all the secret spring's of this 
 affair ; but is not the reward which I ex- 
 pect for my devotion to your interests a 
 guarantee for my success ? " 
 
 '•' Very well, then, get Monsieur Lebceuf 
 to say a good word for you, and if the 
 succession be so considerable as you rep- 
 resent it — and I nmst confess I have vay 
 doubts upon the point — I promise you 
 the two appointments — in case you suc- 
 ceed, be it always understood — " 
 
 "I answer for our success, madame. 
 Only you will be so good as to send for 
 ^our notary and solicitor when I require 
 their aid ; to furnish me with a letter of at- 
 torney', enabling me to act in the name of 
 Monsieur le President ; and to direct those 
 two gentlemen to follow my instructions 
 and not to undertake anj'thing on their 
 own account." 
 
 "The responsibility rests entirely on 
 your shoulders," said Madame Camusot, 
 solemnly ; " j'ou must bo plenipotentiary. 
 But is Monsieur Pons ver^' ill ?" she in- 
 quired with a smile. 
 
 '• Indeed, madame, he might recover, 
 especially since he is attended by a man 
 so conscientious as Doctor Poulain ; for 
 vay friend is a perfectly innocent spy_, act- 
 ing under my directions in your interests, 
 madame ; he is quite capable of saving 
 the old musician. But, by the bedside of 
 the patient there is a portress who, to 
 gain thirty thousand francs, would push 
 him into his grave — I don't mean that 
 she would actually murder him, that she 
 would give him arsenic for instance ; no, 
 she will not be so charitable as that ; she 
 will do worse ; she will morally assassi- 
 nate hira by causing him a tliousand fits 
 of irritability in the course of the day. In 
 the countrjr, surrounded b}' silence and 
 tranquillity, well nursed and cared for hy 
 attentive friends, the poor old man would 
 pull round again ; but, plagued as he is 
 by a Madame Everard, who in her youth 
 was one of the thirty pretty oyster-girls 
 whom Paris has rendered famous — a 
 covetous, garrulous, coarse creature, who 
 
 trios to torment him into making a will 
 under which she would come in for a good 
 
 round sum — the sufferer will inevitably be 
 attacked by induration of the liver — it is 
 possible that calculi are already forming 
 in it — and the necessaiy result will be an 
 operation to extract them, w'hich the 
 patient will not survive. The doctor — 
 a noble fellow — is in a fearful position. 
 He ought to get this womt^n dismissed — " 
 
 "But this MegaM-a must be a perfect 
 monster," exclaimed Madame Camusot, 
 assuming her melodious falsetto. 
 
 This parallelism between t\m t(?rrible Ma- 
 dame Camusot and himself was a source of 
 silent amusement to Fraisier ; he well knew 
 what to make of these sweet, factitious 
 modulations of a voice that was naturally 
 dissonant. He was irresistiblj' reminded 
 of a certain president, the hero of one of 
 Louis the Eleventh's stories — a story that 
 in its last phrase unmistakably bears that 
 monarch's imprimatur. The president in 
 question was blessed with a wife cut out 
 on the genuine Xartippe pattern ; but not 
 being gifted with the philosophic tempera- 
 ment of Socrates, he caused salt to be 
 mingled with his horses' oats, and ordered 
 that no water should be given to them. 
 When his wife was traveling along the 
 banks of the Seine to her country seat, 
 the horses rushed to the water to drink 
 and took her with them ; whereupon the 
 magistrate returned thanks to God for 
 having so naturally relieved him of his 
 better half. At the present moment Ma- 
 dame do Marville was offering thanks to 
 God for having planted by Pons's side a 
 woman who could relieve her of him so 
 honorably. 
 
 " I would not care even for a million 
 if it must cost me the slightest loss of 
 honor. Your friend should enlighten 
 Monsieur Pons and get this portress 
 sent away." 
 
 " In the first place, madame. Messieurs 
 Schmucke and Pons believe this woman 
 to be an angel, and would dismiss my 
 friend instead of her. In the second 
 place, this atrocious oyster-woman is 
 the doctor's benefactress : she it was 
 who introduced him to Jlonsieur Pille- 
 rault. Poulain directs the woman to be
 
 154 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 as gentle as possible to the patient, but 
 his very recommendations point out to 
 the creature tlic means of ag-g-ravating 
 the nuxlady." 
 
 "What does your friend think of my 
 cousin's condition ? " inquired Madame 
 Camusot. 
 
 The precision of Fraisier's answer and 
 the perspicacity which he displayed in 
 penetrating' the innermost thoug'hts of a 
 heart that was as avaricious as Dame 
 Cibot'Sj made. Madame Camusot quake. 
 
 "In six weeks/' said Fraisier, "the 
 succession will fall in."' 
 
 Madame Camusot looked down. 
 
 " Poor man ! " said she, vainly endeav- 
 oring- to assume a sympathetic air. 
 
 " Has Madame la Presidente any com- 
 mands for Monsieur Leboeuf ? I shall at 
 once take train for Mantes." 
 
 "Yes; just wait where you are for a 
 minute, I will write and ask him to dine 
 with us to-morrow ; I want to see him, 
 and make an ari-ang-ement with him 
 whereby the injustice from which you 
 have suffered may be redressed." 
 
 When Madame Camusot had left the 
 room, Fraisier, who saw himself already 
 clothed with the dig-nity of juge de paix, 
 was no long-er like the same man ; he 
 seemed to have grown stout ; he inhaled 
 deep draughts of the atmosphere of hap- 
 piness and the favoring- breezes of pros- 
 perity. He imbibed from the hidden 
 fountains of Will fresh and potent doses 
 of that divine essence ; like Remonencq, 
 he felt that, to attain his ends, he would 
 not shrink from committing a crime, pro- 
 vided only that it left behind it no evi- 
 dence of its commission. In the presence 
 of Madame Camusot he had displayed a 
 bold front, turning conjecture into real- 
 ity, and making random assertions with 
 the single object of getting her to intrust 
 him with the salvage of this succession, 
 and securing her influence. Representa- 
 tive as he was of two intense miseries 
 and two aspirations equally intense, he 
 spurned with a disdainful foot his squalid 
 dwelling in the Rue de la Perle. A fee of 
 three thousand francs from Dame Cibot, 
 a, fee of five thousand francs from the 
 president loomed in the distance. There 
 
 was enough to provide him with a decent 
 abode ! And, to crown all, he would be 
 able to discharge his debt of obhgation 
 to Dr. Poulain ! 
 
 Some of those harsh and vindictive char- 
 acters Avboni suffering or illness has ren- 
 dered spiteful are capable of exhibiting 
 with equal violence sentiments of a totally 
 opposite description. Richelieu was as 
 good a fi'iend as he was a cruel foe. Even 
 so Fraisier's gratitude to Poulain, for 
 the aid which the doctor had afforded him, 
 was such that he would have allowed him- 
 self to be hacked to pieces to do Poulain a 
 good turn. 
 
 Whe'n Madame Camusot returned to the 
 room with a letter in her hand, and (un- 
 observed by Fraisier) had a good view of 
 him as he sat dreaming of a life of happi- 
 ness and plenty, she thought him less ugly 
 than he had appeared to be at the first 
 glance ; and besides, was he not about to 
 render her a service? We look upon o'ur 
 own instrument in a light very different 
 from that in which we regard the instru- 
 ment of our neighbor. 
 
 "Monsieur Fraisier," said the lady; 
 "you have proved to me that you are a 
 man of talent ; I believe that you can also 
 be candid." 
 
 Fraisier replied to this appeal with a 
 most eloquent gesture. 
 
 "Well, then," pursued Madame Camu- 
 sot, " I call upon 3'ou to give me a candid 
 answer to this question : Will your meas- 
 ures in any way compromise either Mon- 
 sieur de Marville or myself ? " 
 
 " I should not have come to 3'ou, ma- 
 dame, if I should some day be compelled to 
 repi-oach myself with having thrown any 
 mud on you — were the spot upon yovw 
 reputation no bigger than a pin's head — 
 for there it would look as big as the moon. 
 You appear to forget, madame, that be- 
 fore I can be made a juge de paix at 
 Paris, I must first acquit myself to j-our 
 satisfaction. I have received one lesson 
 in the course of my life. It was far too 
 severe to allow me to expose myself to 
 the chance of undergoing another such 
 castigation. Now for the last word, ma- 
 dame ; all my proceedings, in so far as 
 they affect you, shall be submitted to
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 155 
 
 you for youi' approval before they are 
 taken." 
 
 " Very good ; here is the letter for 
 Monsieur Lebceuf. I now await informa- 
 tion as to the value of the succession." 
 
 " That is the very kernel of the mat- 
 ter," said Fraisier, bowing' to Madame 
 Camusot with all the gi-ace that was 
 compatible with his physiognomy. 
 
 " What a merciful dispensation of 
 Providence ! " said Madame Camusot 
 de Marville to herself. " Ah ! I shall 
 be rich after all ! Camusot will be a 
 deputy ; for if we get Fraisier to can- 
 vass for us in the arrondissement of 
 Bolbec, he will secure us a majority. 
 What an ag-ent ! " 
 
 " What a merciful dispensation of Provi- 
 dence ! " said Fraisier to himself as he 
 descended the staircase ; " and what an 
 artful jade is this Madame Camusot ! 
 She is just the very woman I wanted to 
 find ! And now to business." 
 
 And awaj^ he sped to Mantes, there to 
 win the g-ood graces of a man whom he 
 scarcety knew. But Fraisier was count- 
 ing on Madame Vatinelle — to whom, alas, 
 he could trace back all his misfortunes — 
 and there is this resemblance between 
 the sorrows of love and the protested 
 bill of a substantial debtor ; the latter 
 bears interest, and the former inspire it. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 A CAT3TION TO OLD BACHELORS. 
 
 Thrke days afterward, wliile Schmucke 
 was asleep — for Madame Cibot and the 
 old musician had already begun to share 
 the burden of nursing and sitting up with 
 the sufferer — Dame Cibot had had what 
 she called a bit of a tiff with poor Pons. 
 It may be useful to point out a painful 
 peculiarity^ of hepatitis. Persons who 
 are attacked more or less severel3' with 
 this disease of the liver, are apt to be 
 hasty and choleric ; and the liver is mo- 
 mentarily relieved by these gusts of pas- 
 sion, just as the patient, in a sudden 
 access of fever, is conscious of being ab- 
 
 normally strong. When the paroxysm 
 is over, a weakness — which the doctors 
 term collapsus — sets in ; and the full ex- 
 tent of the injury sustained by the system 
 then becomes apparent. Thus it happens 
 that in diseases of the liver, and especially 
 in those which have their origin in pro- 
 found mental suffering, the patient's fits 
 of irritation arc followed by exhaustion 
 that is all the more dangerous on account 
 of the strict diet to which he is subjected. 
 
 In these cases all the humors of the 
 body are agitated by a kind of fever ; for 
 the fever is not in the blood nor in the 
 brain. This morbid susceptibility of the 
 whole system produces a feeling of depres- 
 sion that makes the sufferer loathsome to 
 himself. In such a crisis every trifle causes 
 a dangerous irritation. Now Dame Cibot, 
 a woman of the people, without experience 
 and without education, did not believe — 
 spite of the admonitions of the doctor — in 
 these tortures inflicted on the nervous 
 system by the humors of the body. Mon 
 sieur Poulain's explanations were, in her 
 opinion, mere doctors' crotchets. Like 
 all ignorant persons, she was resolutely 
 bent on making tlie patient eat; and she 
 would have secretly fed him on ham. 
 omelets, and vanilla chocolate, but for 
 the following unqualified declaration from 
 the lips of Dr. Poulain : 
 
 "Give Monsieur Pons but a single 
 mouthful of food, and you will kill him 
 as surely as if you fired a pistol at him." 
 
 The obstinacy of the lower classes in 
 this respect is so great that the repug- 
 nance of the ailing poor to going into a 
 hospital arises from the belief that per- 
 sons are starved to death there. The 
 mortality caused by the secret supplies of 
 eatables conveyed by women to their hus- 
 bands has been found so great that hospi- 
 tal physicians have been compelled to 
 subject to tlie strictest search all those 
 who come on visiting days to see the 
 patients. Dame Cibot, with a view to 
 bringing about the temporary quarrel 
 that was necessary to the realization 
 of her immediate profits, gave her ac- 
 count of her visit to the theater, not 
 omitting her tiff with ila demoiselle 
 Heloise, the first ladv of the ballet.
 
 156 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 " But what did you go there for? " in- 
 quii-ed the patient for the third time. 
 He found it impossible to stop Madame 
 Cibot when she had once fairly embarked 
 upon the stream of her eloquence. 
 
 '• And then, when I luid given her a bit 
 of my mind, Mademoiselle Heloise, who 
 saw what I was, caved in, and we be- 
 came the best frieuds in the world. Now, 
 you ask me what I went there for ? " said 
 Dame Cibot, repeating Pons's question. 
 
 There are certain babblers — and these 
 are babblei-s of g-enius — who glean each 
 interruption, objection, and remark in 
 this fashion, and store them up as prov- 
 ender to feed llu'ir talk; as if it were 
 possible that its fount should fail. 
 
 "Why, I went there to get your Mon- 
 sieur Gaudissai'd out of a mess ; he's in 
 want of some music for a ballet, and \o\x 
 are hardly in a condition, my darling, to 
 scribble away and do what is required of 
 you. So I hcaixl as how a Monsieur Ga- 
 rangeot would be called in to set ' The 
 Mohicans ' to music — " 
 
 " Oarangeot / " echoed the furious 
 Pons. "Oarangeot! a man without a 
 particle of talent ; I wouldn't have him 
 as a first violin ! He has plentj^ of wit, 
 and writes very good musical notices ; 
 but as for composing an air, I defy him 
 to do it ! And who the devil put it into 
 your head to go to the theater ? " 
 
 '■What an obstinate demon it is, to be 
 sure ! Look here, my pussy, don't boil 
 over like milk porridge. Could you, I 
 n'ask, write music in the state you'i'e in ? 
 Why, you can't have seen yourself in the 
 glass ? Would 3'ou like just to have a 
 peep at the glass? Wh^', you're nothing 
 but skin and bone — you're as weak as a 
 sparrow — and yet you fancy as you can 
 jot down your notes — why, you couldn't 
 even tot tip my bills — and, by the way, 
 that reminds me that I must send up the 
 third floor's bill ; he owes us seventeen 
 francs, and even seventeen francs is not 
 to be sneezed at ; for, when we've paid 
 the druggist we sha'n't have as much as 
 twenty francs left. Well, I was bound to 
 tell this man, who seems a, thorough good 
 fellow — a regular Roger Bontemps as 
 would just suit me to a T — {he'll never 
 
 have the liver complaint, he won't) ! — 
 well, I was bound, as I was a-saying, to 
 let him know how j'ou was. Bless my 
 heart and soul, you are far from well, I 
 can tell you, and so he has just put some 
 one in your place for a little while." 
 
 "Put some one in my place!" ex- 
 claimed Pons, in a terrific voice, sitting 
 up in bed. 
 
 Sick folks in general, and especially 
 those who are within the compass of 
 Death's scythe, cling to their situations 
 with a tenacity equal to the energy dis- 
 played by beginners in endeavoring to 
 obtain them. Thus, to this poor mori- 
 bund old man, his supersession seemed a 
 kind of preliminary death. 
 
 '•But," pursued he, "the doctor tells 
 me that I ani going on as well as possible! 
 and that I shall soon return to my old 
 life. You have killed, ruined, assassi- 
 nated me ! " 
 
 " Tut, tut, tut, tut ! there you go," 
 exclaimed Dame Cibot. "So, I'm your 
 destroyer, am I ? These are the pretty 
 things 3'ou're always a-saying about me 
 to Monsieur Schmucke when my back's 
 turned. I hear what you say, I do ! 
 You're a monster of ungi'atitude ! " 
 
 " But you don't understand that if I 
 waste even a fortnight over my conva- 
 lescence I shall be told, on returning to 
 the theater, that I am an old fogy, a 
 veteran ; that my day has gone by, that 
 I am a relic of the Empire, a fossil, a 
 guy ! " cried this invalid who panted for 
 life. " Garangeot will have been making 
 friends from the box-offlce up to the very 
 cradling of the theater ! He has lowered 
 the pitch for some actress without a 
 voice ; he has licked Monsieur Gaudis- 
 saud's shoes ; he has got his friends to 
 praise everybody in the newspaper cri- 
 tiques ; yes, and in a shop like that, Ma- 
 dame Cibot, people will find hair upon a 
 billiard-ball ! What devil was it that in- 
 spired you with the idea of going to the 
 theater ? " 
 
 "Why, goodness gracious me ! Haven't 
 I and Monsieur Sclimucke been talking the 
 matter over for the last week ? What 
 would you n'have, I'd like to know ? 
 You've no thought for any one but your-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 157 
 
 self. You're that selfish that you'd kill 
 other folks to cure yourself ! Why, there's 
 that poor Monsieur Schmucke has been 
 a-vvearing' his very life out for the last 
 month ; he's worn his very feet off his 
 legs ; he can't go out anywhere now to 
 give lessons or do duty at the theater ; 
 why, you don't notice anything- that goes 
 on ! He looks after you at night as I do 
 during the day-time. Why, if I'd gone 
 on a-setting up with j'ou at uiglit, as I 
 tried to do at first, thinking, as I did, as 
 there was scarce anything the matter with 
 you, I should now have to lie in bed the 
 whole blessed day long ! And who'd look 
 after the house and the larder then, I 
 should like to know ? Pray, what on 
 earth would you have ? Illness is illness, 
 and there's an end of the business ! " 
 
 " It's impossible for Schmucke to have 
 had such an idea — " 
 
 " Now I suppose you want to make out 
 that it was me as took it into my head ? 
 What ? D'ye think as we're made of 
 iron ? Why, if Monsieur Schmucke had 
 carried on his business by going and 
 giving- seven or eight blessed lessons and 
 spending the evening- at the theater a-di- 
 recting of that there orchestra from half- 
 past six till half-past eleven, he'd have 
 been carried off in ten days. Do you want 
 the worthy man to die, him as would shed 
 his blood for you ? By the authors of my 
 being, there never was such a patient as 
 you ! What have you done with your 
 wits ? Have you taken 'em to the Mont- 
 de-Piete and i^ledged 'em ? Every one 
 here does their utmost for you, and yet 
 you're discontented ! Why, you must 
 want to drive us stai'k, staring mad ; I'm 
 quite done up as it is without any further 
 trouble ! " 
 
 Dame Cibot's rhetoric might flow un- 
 checked; indignation had tied poor Pons's 
 tongue. He turned and twisted about 
 in his bed, and feebl^^ articulated a few 
 ejaculations. In point of fact he was 
 dying. 
 
 But now that the quarrel had reached 
 this pitch, a sudden change supervened, 
 and a tender scene ensued. The nurse 
 threw herself upon the patient, and, plac- 
 ing her hands upon his head, compelled 
 
 him to lie down, and drew the bedclothes 
 over him. 
 
 " How on earth can people work them- 
 selves into such a stage ? After all, my 
 pussy, it's only your complaint. It's just 
 as worthy Monsieur Poulain says. Come 
 now, do be quiet. Do be pleasant, my 
 good little fellow. You're the idol of 
 every one as comes anywhere near you — 
 why, the doctor himself comes to see you 
 twice a day ! What would he say if he 
 found you in this state of n'exciteraent ? 
 You throw me quite off my hinges ! It 
 ain't right of you to do so — indeed it ain't. 
 When one has Mother Cibot for a nurse 
 one ought to behave decently to her — you 
 shout and talk, and you know that it" s 
 forbidden. Talking n'irritates you. And 
 whj' lose your temper ? You're n'alto- 
 gether in the wrong — you're always 
 a-flustering me ! Come now, let's just 
 argue the point rationally ! If Monsieur 
 Schmucke and I— who love you n'as I love 
 my own little bowels — thought that we 
 was a-doing the cori-ect thing ! well, my 
 cherub, that's all right, ain't it ? " 
 
 " It's impossible that Schnmcke can 
 have told you to go to the theater with- 
 out consulting me." 
 
 "Am I to go and wake the poor fellow 
 who"s sleeping like the just, and call him 
 to witness ?" 
 
 " No ! no ! " exclaimed Pons. " If my 
 good and affectionate Schmucke came to 
 that decision, I am, perhaps, worse than 
 I thought I was." Here Pons cast a 
 glance of intense melancholy at the ob- 
 jects of art which adorned his chamber, 
 and added : 
 
 " Then I suppose I nmst bid adieu to my 
 dear pictm-es, to all those tilings which I 
 have come to regard as friends. Oh, can 
 it be true ? can it be true ? " 
 
 At these words Dame Cibot — that 
 atrocious actress — placed her handker- 
 chief before her eyes. This mute re- 
 sponse plunged the sufferer into a som- 
 ber reverie. Beaten down by these two 
 blows— the loss of his berth and the pros- 
 pect of death— planted as they were in 
 such sensitive spots— his social position 
 and the condition of his health — he sunk 
 into a state of exhaustion so extreme
 
 158 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 that, lacking' strength to be angry, he 
 lay sad and still, like a consumptive man 
 whose final pangs are over, and from 
 whom life is ebbing placidly awaA-. 
 
 Seeing that her victim was entirely sub- 
 dued. Dame Cibot said to him : " Let me 
 tell you, in Monsieur Schmucke's inter- 
 ests, as .you would do well to send for the 
 notary of the district — Monsieur Trognon, 
 who n'is a very worthj' man." 
 
 "You are always talking to me about 
 this Trognon," said the sick man. 
 
 " Oh ! well, it's all one to me — he or 
 n'any one else — for anything that you 
 will leave me ! " 
 
 The portress tossed her head bj' way of 
 showing her supreme contempt for riches; 
 and silence was restored. 
 
 At this moment Schmucke, who had 
 been asleep for more than six hours, was 
 awakened by a sensation of hunger, and, 
 getting out of bed, came into Pons's room 
 and gazed at him for some moments in 
 silence ; for Madame Cibot had placed 
 her finger on her lips and whispered : 
 "Hush ! " She then left her seat, and 
 g'oing close up to the German, in order 
 that she might breathe her words into his 
 ear, said : " Thank God ! he's a-going 
 to sleep now ; he's as vicious as a red 
 donkey ! " 
 
 "What can you egspect ; he is to pe 
 excused on de score of his illness — " 
 
 "No; on the contrary-, I'm extremely- 
 patient," interposed the victim, in a dole- 
 ful voice which betrayed terrible exhaus- 
 tion. " But, my dear Schmucke, she has 
 positively been to the theater to get me 
 dismissed — " 
 
 He paused for lack of strength to con- 
 tinue. Dame Cibot took advantage of 
 the pause to indicate to Schmucke by 
 means of a gesture the state of a man's 
 head when his wits are wandering, and 
 said : 
 
 " Don't contradict him ; it would be the 
 death of him." 
 
 "And she pretends," continued Pons, 
 looking at the honest German, " that it 
 was you who sent her there." 
 
 "Yez," replied the heroic Schmucke, 
 "it was nezezzary. Dont speag — allow 
 uz to safe you ! It is folly to wear your- 
 
 zelf out wid work when you have a treaz- 
 ure ; ged well again, and we will zell some 
 brig-a-brag, and we will end our lifes 
 qiiiedly in zome znug corner, with this 
 goot Montame Zipod to look after us — " 
 
 "She has bewitched you ! " said Pons, 
 in lugubrious accents; then, thinking 
 that Madame Cibot had left the room 
 since he had lost sight of her — she had 
 placed herself behind the bedstead so 
 that she might make signs to Schmucke 
 without being seen by Pons — the patient 
 added : " She assassinates me ! " 
 
 " What ? " exclaimed Dame Cibot, with 
 flaming eyes, and arms akimbo, " I as- 
 sassinate you, do I ? So that's the re- 
 ward I get for being as faithful to j-ou as 
 a poodle dog ! Good God Almighty ! " 
 And bursting into tears, she sunk into an 
 armchair — a tragical movement which 
 gave Pons a fatal turn. "Well," said 
 she, rising from the chair, and glaring at 
 the two friends with the ej-e of an enraged 
 woman — eyes that seem to emit at once 
 pistol-shots and poison — "well, I'm sick 
 and tired of slaving mj-self to death here 
 without giving satisfaction. You shall 
 hire a nurse ! " (At these words the two 
 friends looked at each other in dismay.) 
 " Oh, j'es, it's all mighty fine for j-ou to 
 look at each other like a couple of actors. 
 I mean what I say. I goes and I asks 
 Doctor Poulain to find you a nurse ; and 
 we'll settle our accounts together. You'll 
 repay me the money as I've spent in these 
 here rooms, and that I'd never have asked 
 3'ou for again — me as went to Monsieur 
 Pillerault to borrow another five hundred 
 francs ! " 
 
 " It's his melatj^," said Schmucke, rush- 
 ing- up to Madame Cibot, and putting- his 
 arm round her waist. "Do be batient ! " 
 
 "Oh, as for you, you're an angel; I 
 could kiss the verj' ground you tread 
 upon," said she. "But Monsieur Pons 
 never liked me; he n'always hated me. 
 Besides, he may think as I wants to be 
 remembered in his will." 
 
 " Hush ! you are going de way to kiU 
 him," said Schmucke. 
 
 " Good-by, monsieur! " said Dame Ci- 
 bot, going up to Pons and darting at him 
 a withering- glance. " For aU the ill-will
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 159 
 
 I bears you, may you get well again. 
 When you can be kind to me and can 
 believe as what I do is for the best, I'll 
 come back again. Till then I shall just 
 staj' at home. You were my child ; since 
 when have 3'ou seen children turn round 
 upon their own mothers ? No, no. Mon- 
 sieur Schmucke, I won't listen to a sin- 
 gle word. I'll bring 3-0U your dinner and 
 wait upon you ; but you must get a nurse 
 for Monsieur Pons ; ask Monsieur Poulain 
 to find you one." 
 
 And she flounced out of the room, slam- 
 ming the doors behind her with so much 
 violence that the frail and precious works 
 of art shook again. 
 
 The sufferer heard the clatter of por- 
 celain — and to him, in his torture, the 
 sound was what the coup de grdce used 
 to be to those who were broken on the 
 wheel. 
 
 An hour afterwaixl Dame Cibot, instead 
 of coming to Pons's bedside, called to 
 Schmucke through the bedroom-door to 
 teU him that his dinner was ready for 
 him in the dining-room. Thither the 
 poor German repaired with wan face and 
 weeping eyes. 
 
 '• My boor Bons is bezide himzelf,"' said 
 he; "for he makes out that you are a 
 flUain. It's his disease," added he, in 
 order to soothe Dame Cibot, without ac- 
 cusing Pons. 
 
 " Oh ! I've had quite enough of liis 
 disease ! Hear what I have to say; he's 
 neither father, husband, brothei", nor 
 child of mine ; and he's taken a dislike 
 to me: well, that's cxuite enough for me! 
 As for you, n'l'd follow you'n to the 
 other end of the world, look you ; but 
 when one gives one's life, one's heart, 
 and all a body's savings and neglects a 
 body's husband — which there's Cibot ill — 
 and then hears one's self called a villain 
 — why that coffee's a little too strong for 
 my liking — " 
 
 "Goffee?" 
 
 "Yes, coffee, I say! But don't let's 
 waste breath in idle talk ; let's come to 
 plain matters of fact. Well, then, you 
 owes me for three months at a hundred 
 and ninety francs a month ; that makes 
 five hundred and seventy francs ; then 
 
 there's the rent as I've paid twice — 
 which here's the receipts — six hundred 
 francs including the sou per livre and 
 taxes ; that's wellnigh twelve hundred 
 francs ; then, there's the two thousand 
 francs, without interest you understand ; 
 in all, three thousand one hundred and 
 ninety-two francs. And then, consider, 
 you ought to have at least two thousand 
 francs in hand to pay for the nurse and 
 the doctor and medicine and the nurse's 
 victuals. That's why I borrowed a thou- 
 sand francs from Monsieur Pillerault." 
 And with these words she produced the 
 two twenty-pound notes that Gaudissard 
 had given her. 
 
 Schmucke listened to this financial 
 statement with an astonishment that 
 can easily be conceived ; for he knew as 
 much about monej' matters as a cat 
 knows about music. 
 
 "Montame Zipod, Bons is not in his 
 zenzes. Egscuse him, gontinue to nurze 
 him, gontinue to be our Brovidenze — I 
 entreat you on iny knees." 
 
 And the German prostrated himself 
 before Dame Cibot and kissed the hands 
 of this savage. 
 
 "Listen to me, m^' good pussy," said 
 she, raising Schmucke from the ground, 
 and kissing him on the forehead : "Here's 
 Cibot laid up ; he's in bed ; I've just sent 
 for Dr. Poulain to him. Under these cir- 
 cumstances I must put vay affairs in trim. 
 Besides which, when Cibot saw me go 
 back to the lodge crying, he up and flew 
 into such a rage that he's against letting 
 me put nxy foot inside this place again. 
 It"s he as is a-asking for his money, and 
 after all it is his, you know ! We women 
 have nothing to do with sucli matters. 
 But paying- him his money — three thou- 
 sand two hundred francs — that'll keep 
 him quiet perhaps. It's his whole fort- 
 une, poor man, his savings during twenty- 
 six years' housekeeping, the fruits of the 
 sweat of his brow. He must have his 
 money to-morrow, it's no use sluifHing 
 about the business. You don't know Ci- 
 bot : when he is angry he's quite capable 
 of committing murder. Well ! I may, 
 perhaps, manage to get him to allow me 
 to go on attending on you two. Make
 
 160 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 your mind easj', I'll let him go on at me 
 as much as ever he chooses ; I'll suffer 
 that martyrdom for your sake — for you're 
 an angel, j'ou are." 
 
 " No, I am onlj' a boor man who lofes 
 his friend, and woot gife his life to zave 
 him." 
 
 " Yes, but how about money ? My 
 good Monsieur Schmucke, let's suppose 
 you don't give me a farthing, still, you 
 must scrape together three thousand 
 francs for your n'actual wants. Good- 
 ness mo, do you know what I'd do if I 
 were in your shoes ? I wouldn't make 
 any bones about it ; but I'd just take and 
 sell seven or eight wretched pictures and 
 stick some of those as are in your room, 
 with their faces turned to the wall, in 
 their places; for one picture's just as good 
 as another, isn't it ? " 
 
 "But why should I do dat?" asked 
 Schmucke. 
 
 " Why, you see, he's that artful — of 
 course I know it's all along of his com- 
 plaint, for when he's well, he's a regular 
 lamb — that he might take it into his head 
 to get up and ferret about, and if it hap- 
 pens he should get as far as the salon, 
 although to be sure he's that weak that 
 he can't cross the threshold of his door, 
 he'd find the number of pictures all 
 right ! " 
 
 "Dat is quite true," said Schmucke. 
 
 "But we'll tell him about the sale of 
 the pictures when he's got quite well 
 again. If you want to make a clean 
 breast of the sale, you can lay the whole 
 blame on my shoulders, on the needcessity 
 of pajing me. Come, mj' back is broad 
 enough — " 
 
 " I gan not dizpose of things which do 
 not pelong to me," replied the worthy 
 German, with simplicity. 
 
 "Well then I shall summons you at 
 once, 3'ou and Monsieur Pons." 
 
 " Why, dat will kill him—" 
 
 " Make your choice ! Sell the pictures, 
 and tell him afterward — you can show him 
 the summons." 
 
 ' ' Ferry veil, zummons us — that will be 
 my egscuze — I will show him de judg- 
 ment." 
 
 At seven o'clock in the evening of that 
 
 very day Schmucke was called out by 
 Madame Cibot who, in the interim, had 
 consulted a bailiff. The German found 
 himself confronted \>y Monsieur Taba- 
 reau, who demanded payment of the 
 amount due; and when Schmucke, with 
 fear and trembling, had made his an- 
 swer to the demand, he was served with 
 a summons calling upon himself and Pons 
 to appear before the tribunal and listen 
 to judgment for the amount due. The 
 aspect of this official and of the stamped 
 paper scribbled with hieroglyphics pro- 
 duced so great an effect on Schmucke 
 that he offered no further resistance to 
 the sale. 
 
 "Zell de bigdures," said he, with tears 
 in his eyes. 
 
 At six o'clock next morning, Eli Magus 
 and Remonencq were busy unhooking the 
 pictures which they had respectively' 
 chosen. Tv/o strictlj' formal receipts, for 
 two thousand five hundred francs each, 
 were given in the following terms : " I, 
 the undersigned, acting on behalf of Mon- 
 sieur Pons, do hereby acknowledge the 
 receipt of the sum of two thousand five 
 hundred francs from Monsieur Elie Magus 
 for four pictures sold to him by me ; the 
 said sum being to be employed oh behalf 
 of Monsieur Pons. One of these pictures, 
 which is ascribed to Durer, is the portrait 
 of a Avoman ; the second, which is of the 
 Italian school, is also a portrait; the third 
 is a Dutch landscape by Breughel; and 
 the fourth a Florentine picture represent- 
 ing ' The Holy Family, ' by an unknown 
 master." 
 
 The receipt given hy Remonencq was 
 couched in the same terms, and comprised 
 a Greuze, a Claude Lorrain, a Rubens, 
 and a Van Dyck, disguised under the de- 
 scription of pictures of the French and 
 Flemish schools. 
 
 " Dis money would make one belief that 
 dese gewgaws are worth zomething," said 
 Schmucke, when the five thousand francs 
 were handed to him. 
 
 " Oh ! the collection is certainly worth 
 something ; I would willingly give a hun- 
 dred thousand francs for the lot," said 
 Remonencq. 
 
 The Auvergnat was asked to replace
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 161 
 
 the eight pictures by an equal number of 
 pictures of similar size. This little service 
 he performed by making a selection from 
 among' the inferior pictures, which Pons 
 had placed in Schmucke's I'oom, and fix- 
 ing them in the emptj- frames. When 
 once Elie Magus had the four master- 
 pieces safely in his possession, he induced 
 Madame Cibot to accompany him to his 
 house, under the pretext that they had to 
 square accounts. But as soon as she was 
 there, he began to plead poverty ; he 
 found flaws in the pictures, said that it 
 would be necessary to put new backs to 
 them, and concluded bj' offering her a 
 commission of thirty thousand francs 
 only. This he prevailed on her to accept 
 by flourishing before her eyes those daz- 
 zling bits of paper on which the bank has 
 engraved the magic words Mille Francs! 
 Magus decreed that Remonencq should 
 give a like sum to Dame Cibot — which 
 sum he lent to Remonencq on the security' 
 of a deposit of his four pictures. These 
 four pictures of Remonencq's seemed to 
 Magus so magnificent that he could not 
 make up his mind to part with them ; so 
 the next day he went to the broker, and 
 paid him six thousand francs by way of 
 premium ; whei-eupon Remonencq gave 
 him a sale note making the four pictures 
 over to him. 
 
 Madame Cibot, who was now worth 
 sixty-eight thousand francs, once more 
 swore her two co-conspirators to the pro- 
 foundest secrecy. She begged the Jew to 
 tell her how so to invest her money that 
 no one should know that she possessed it. 
 
 "Buj'^ shares in the Orleans railway. 
 They are now thirty francs below par; 
 you will double your capital within three 
 years, and your money will be in the form 
 of a few scraps of paper, which you can 
 keep in a portfolio." 
 
 "Stay here. Monsieur Magus, while I 
 go to the agent of Monsieur Pons's fami- 
 ly- ; he wants to know what sum you 
 would give for all the rattle-traps up 
 yonder ; I will go and bring him to 
 you." 
 
 "Ah ! if she were only a widow ! " said 
 Remonencq to Magus. " She would ex- 
 actly suit me, for she is rich now — " 
 
 Balzac — P 
 
 " Especially if she puts her money into 
 Orleans railway stock ; it will be doubled 
 in two years' time. I have invested mj' 
 little savings in it ; 'tis mj' daughter's 
 portion," said the Jew. "Come, let's 
 take a turn upon the boulevard, while we 
 are waiting for the advocate — " 
 
 " If God would but take Cibot, who is 
 already very unwell," said Remonencq, 
 " I should have a glorious wife to keep 
 my shop for me, and might go in for 
 business on a large scale." 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 BEAUTIES OF AN ANNUITY. 
 
 "Good-day, dear Monsieur Fraisier," 
 said Dame Cibot, in a wheedhng voice, as 
 she entered her counsel's study. " Well, 
 and what is this as your portress tells 
 me — that you are gomg to leave this 
 place ? " 
 
 " Yes, my dear Madame Cibot, I have 
 taken the first-floor rooms in the house 
 occupied by Dr. Poulain. They are the 
 rooms directly above his. I want to bor- 
 row from two to three thousand francs, 
 in order that I may furnish the suite 
 properly ; for it is really very handsome ; 
 the landlord has redecorated it through- 
 out. As I told j-ou, I am now intrusted 
 with the interests of tlie President de 
 Marville, as well as with yours. I am on 
 the point of giving up the business of a 
 general agent, and am about to be placed 
 upon the roll of advocates ; so I must be 
 well housed. The advocates of Paris 
 won't allow anj' one to be enrolled unless 
 he has decently furnished apartments, a 
 library, and so forth. I am a doctor of 
 laws, I have completed my term of pro- 
 bation, and have already secured some 
 influential patrons. Well, and how do we 
 stand now ?" 
 
 " Wfll you accept my little hoard ? It 
 is in the savings bank," saitl Dame Cibot. 
 " I haven't much— only three thousand 
 francs— the fruit of twenty-five years' 
 pinching and scraping— you could give 
 me a bill of exchange, as Remonencq puts
 
 162 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 it ; for as for mc, I'm quite ig-norant, I 
 know naught but what I'm told." 
 
 " No ; the statutes of the order of advo- 
 cates forbid a member of the order to put 
 his name to a bill of cxchang'e ; I will g-ive 
 you a receipt bearing interest at five per 
 cent, and you can return it to me if I 
 succeed in getting j'ou an annuity of 
 twelve hundred francs out of old Pons's 
 estate." 
 
 Dame Cibot, caught in the trap, held 
 her tongue. 
 
 "Silence gives consent," pursued Frai- 
 sier. " Bring me the money to-morrow." 
 
 " Oh ! I shall be only too glad to paj' 
 you your fees in advance ; it's a way of 
 making sui-e of my n'annuity," said Dame 
 Cibot. 
 
 "Where are we now ? " said Fraisier, 
 nodding his head aflBrmatively. "I saw 
 Poulain yesterday evening; it would seem 
 that you are leading your patient along 
 at a very pretty pace; One more on- 
 slaught like that of yesterday, and 
 stones will begin to form in the gall 
 bladder. Now, do be gentle with him, 
 dear Madame Cibot ; it doesn't do to lay 
 up a stock of remorse. It shortens life." 
 
 "Don't talk to me n'about your re- 
 morse ! I suppose 3'ou're going to cram 
 your guillotine down my throat again ? 
 Monsieur Pons is an obstinate old fellow ! 
 You don't know him ! It's he as makes 
 me cut up rough. There's no man living 
 more malicious than he is. His relations 
 were quite right; he's sullen, revengeful, 
 and o'stinate ! Monsieur Magus is at 
 the house, as I told you, and is a-wait- 
 ing for you." 
 
 " Good ! I shall be there as soon as 
 you are. The amount of your annuity 
 depends upon the value of this collection. 
 If it turns out to be worth eight hundred 
 thousand francs, your annuity will be 
 fifteen hundred francs — whv, it's a fort- 
 une ! " 
 
 " Well, I'll go and tell them to value 
 the things honesth'." 
 
 An hour later, while Pons (under the 
 influence of a sedative draught ordered 
 by the doctor, and administered by 
 Schmucke, but doubled in quantity by 
 Dame Cibot without Schmucke 's knowl- 
 
 edge) w^as buried in a profound slumber, 
 those three gallows-birds — Fraisier, Re- 
 monencq, and Magus — were engaged in 
 examining, piece by piece, the seventeen 
 hundred objects of which the old musi- 
 cian's collection was compossd. Schmucke 
 had gone to bed ; so these three ravens, on 
 the scent of their carrion, were masters of 
 the situation. 
 
 " Don't make a noise," exclaimed Dame 
 Cibot, whenever Magus grew enthusiastic 
 and entered into a discussion with Re- 
 monencq while enlightening the latter as 
 to the value of some beautiful work of art. 
 
 The sight of these four different cupidi- 
 ties, appraising their succession, during 
 the slumbers of him whose death was the 
 object of their greedj' expectations, was 
 enough to rend the heart. The valuation 
 of the property contained in the salon 
 occupied three hours. 
 
 " Every object here is worth, on an 
 average, a thousand francs," said the 
 greasy old Jew. 
 
 " Why, that makes seventeen hundred 
 thousand francs!" cried the astounded 
 Fraisier. 
 
 "Not to me," pursued Magu.s, whose 
 eyes grew suddenly cold and steel-like. 
 " I would not give more than eight hun- 
 dred thousand francs ; since it is impossi- 
 ble to say how long one might have to 
 keep the things on hand. There are some 
 masterpieces here which it would take ten 
 years to get rid of ; so that the cost price 
 is doubled, at compound interest ; but I 
 would give eight hundred thousand francs 
 ready money." 
 
 "There are some enamels, and some 
 gold and silver snuff-boxes, and some 
 miniatures and stained glass, besides," 
 remarked Remonencq. 
 
 "Can we look at them?" asked Fraisier. 
 
 " I'U just step in and see if he's fast 
 asleep," replied Dame Cibot ; and, at a 
 sign from her, the three birds of prey en- 
 tered the bedroom. 
 
 "The masterpieces are there," said 
 Magus, pointing to the salon, while every 
 hair in his white beard quivered, " but 
 here are the riches ! And what riches 
 they are, too ! Monarchs have nothing 
 finer among their treasures."
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 163 
 
 At sig-ht of the snuff-boxes the eyes of 
 Remonencq kindled and shone like a pair 
 of carbuncles ; while Fraisier, cool and 
 calm as a serpent erect upon its tail, 
 thrust forward his flat head, and assumed 
 the attitude in which painters are wont to 
 depict Mephistopheles. These three con- 
 trasted money-grubbers, each of whom 
 thirsted for g-old as devils thirst for the 
 dews of Paradise, cast an unconcerted but 
 simultaneous glance at the owner of all 
 this wealth ; for Pons had made a move- 
 ment in his sleep, as of one troubled with 
 the nightmare. 
 
 Suddenh-, under the magnetic influence 
 of these three diabolic rays, the patient 
 opened his eyes, and began to utter pierc- 
 ing shrieks. 
 
 " Thieves ! Thieves ! Look ; there they 
 are," shouted he. " Police ! Murder ! " 
 
 It was clear that his dream had not 
 been cut short, though he was wide 
 awake ; for he had started up in bed, with 
 eyes dilated, blank and motionless, and 
 could not stir. 
 
 EUe Magus and Remonencq made for 
 the door, but having reached it they 
 were nailed to the spot by the words : 
 
 '•■ Magus here I — I am betrayed." 
 
 The sick man had been awakened by 
 his instinct for the preservation of his 
 treasure — an instinct which is quite as 
 strong a^ that of self-preservation. 
 
 " Madame Cibot, who is that gentle- 
 man ? " he exclaimed, shuddering at the 
 very sight of Fraisier, who did not at- 
 tempt to move. 
 
 '• My stars, how could I shut the door 
 in his face ? " cried the dame, winking at 
 Fraisier, and making a sign to him. 
 " The gentleman came here only a min- 
 ute since, as the representative of your 
 family — " 
 
 Fraisier rewarded Dame Cibot with a 
 gesture of admiration. 
 
 " Yes, monsieur, I came here on behaK 
 of Madame de Marville, her husband and 
 her daughter, to express to you their re- 
 gret ; by the merest chance thej"^ have 
 been informed of your illness, and they 
 would like to nurse you themselves. They 
 want you to go to Marville for the benefit 
 of your health ; Madame la Vicomtesse 
 
 Popinot— the little Cecile of whom you are 
 so fond — will act as your nurse there; she 
 took your part, and has removed the mis- 
 apprehension under which her mother was 
 laboring." 
 
 " And so my heirs have sent you here, 
 have they, with the most skillful connois- 
 seur, the keenest expert, in all Paris, for 
 your g-uide ? " exclaimed the indignant 
 Pons. " Hah I the jest is excellent ! " 
 pursued he, laughing Uke a madman. 
 " You have come to appraise my pictures, 
 my curiosities, my snuff-boxes, my mini- 
 atures ! Appraise away ! You have a 
 man with you who not only knows all 
 about everything of the kind, but can 
 purchase too, for he is a millionaire ten 
 times over. My dear relations will not 
 have long to yait for my succession," 
 added he with profound irony ; " they 
 have given me the finishing stroke. Ah, 
 Madame Cibot, j-ou call yourself my 
 mother, and you introduce the dealers, 
 my rival and the Camusots into my apart- 
 ments while I am asleep — away with you, 
 one and aU ! " 
 
 And so saying, the poor man, over- 
 stimulated by the twofold influence of 
 anger and of fear, got out of bed, emaci- 
 ated as he was. 
 
 " Lean on m3' arm, monsieur," said 
 Dame Cibot, rushing up to Pons, in order 
 to save him from falling; "pray calm 
 yourself; the gentlemen are gone." 
 
 " I will have a look at the salon," said 
 the dying man. 
 
 Dame Cibot motioned to the three ra- 
 vens to take fhght ; then seizing hold of 
 Pons, she lifted him in her arms, as if he 
 had been a feather, and totally disregard- 
 ing his cries, put him into bed again ; 
 then, seeing that the unhappy collector 
 was quite exhausted, she went and closed 
 the door of the apartments. Pons's three 
 tormentors were still upon the landing; 
 and when Dame Cibot saw them, and 
 overheard Fraisier saying to Magus: 
 "Write me a letter, signed by both of 
 you, undertaking to give niae hundred 
 thousand francs down for Monsieur Pons's 
 collection, and we will take care that you 
 secure a goodly- profit," she told them to 
 await her return. Thereupon, Fraisier
 
 164 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 •whispered a word — only a word — which 
 no one caught, into the ear of the por- 
 tress, and went down, with the two deal- 
 ers, to the lodfje. 
 
 "Are they gone, Madame Cibot ?" said 
 the unhappy Pons, when the portress 
 went back to him. 
 
 " Gone ? — who ? " she inquired. 
 
 " Those men."' 
 
 " What men ? So you've been seeing- 
 men now, have you ? " quoth the dame. 
 " You've just had a violent attack of 
 fever, and would have thrown yourself 
 out of the window if it hadn't been for 
 me ; and now 3'ou keep on talking- to me 
 about some men. Are j^ou always going 
 to be like that ? " 
 
 "What ! do you mean to say that there 
 wasn't a person there jusfanow — a gentle- 
 man who said he had been sent here hy 
 my family ? " 
 
 " Are you going to talk me down 
 again?" said she. "My word, do you 
 know where you ought to be put ? In 
 Charenton ! — you see men — " 
 
 "Yes, Elie Mngus. Reraonencq — " 
 
 " Oh ! as for Remonencq — you may 
 n'have seen him; for he came up to tell 
 me as my poor Cibot is so ill that I shall 
 have to leave 3'ou to yourself to get well 
 again, as best you can. Mj' Cibot before 
 everybody, look you ! When ray man is 
 ill, I know nothing about n'any one else. 
 Do try to keep quiet, and go to sleep for 
 a couple of hours, for I've told 'em to 
 send for Doctor Poulain, and I'll come 
 back with him. Come now, do drink your 
 draught and be prudent." 
 
 " Do you mean to tell me there was no 
 one in my room standing there — when I 
 woke just now?" 
 
 " Not a soul ! " replied she, "you must 
 have caught the reflection of Monsieur 
 Remonencq in your mirrors." 
 
 "You are right, Madame Cibot," said 
 the sick man, becoming as mild as a 
 lamb. 
 
 "Well! now you are rational — adieu, 
 my cherub, keep quiet, I'll be with you 
 again in an instant." 
 
 When Pons heard the sound of the 
 shutting of the outer door, he summoned 
 up all his remaining strength to rise from 
 
 his bed ; for, said he to himself : " They 
 are deceiving me. I am being plundered. 
 Schmucke is a mere child ; he would allow 
 tlieni to take him and tie him in a bag ! " 
 
 And the sick man, fired with a desire 
 to clear up the fearful scene, which seemed 
 to him too vivid to be a mere vision, man- 
 aged to crawl to the door of his room. 
 Opening the door with great difficulty, 
 he found himself in the salon. There the 
 sight of his beloved pictures, his statues, 
 his Florentine bronzes and his porcelains 
 rewifled him. Robed in a dressing-gown, 
 the collector (whose legs were bare while 
 his head was burning) continued to make 
 the tour of the two alleys formed by the 
 row of credences and bureaus which di- 
 vided the salon into two equal parts. At 
 the first all-embracing glance of the 
 owner's eye, the objects in the museum 
 were counted and the collection seemed 
 intact. Pons was just upon the very 
 point of going back to bed, when his eye 
 suddenly fell upon a portrait by Greuze, 
 in a place that was formerly occupied 
 by Sebastian del Piombo's "Knight of 
 Malta." 
 
 Swift as the forked lightning cleaves the 
 stormy sky, suspicion fiashed across his 
 mind. He looked to the places appropri- 
 ated to his eight principal pictures, and 
 found that those pictures had all disap- 
 peared to make room for others. A black 
 veil suddenly spread itself over the poor 
 man's eyes ; he was seized with a faint- 
 ing fit, and fell upon the floor. So deep 
 was the swoon, that Pons lay for two 
 whole hours upon the spot where he had 
 fallen, and was found there \)y Schmucke, 
 when he awoke and left his bedroom, to 
 pay a visit to his sick friend. It cost 
 Schmucke a world of trouble to raise the 
 moribund musician and get him into bed 
 again ; but when the words that he ad- 
 dressed to that ha If -inanimate figure 
 received no answer, save a few vague 
 stutterings and a vacant stare, the poor 
 German, instead of losing his self-posses- 
 sion, showed himself a hero of friendship. 
 
 Under the influence of despair, this 
 child-man was inspired with one of those 
 ideas which occur to lovmg women and 
 to mothers. He warmed some finger-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 165 
 
 napkins — for he managed to find some 
 fing-er-napkins ! — folded some of them 
 round Pons's hands, applied others to the 
 pit of his stomach, then, taking- the cold 
 damp forehead between his hands he in- 
 voked life with a potency of volition worthy 
 of Apollonius of Tyana. He kissed the 
 eyes of his friend just as the Marys of the 
 great Italian sculptors kiss the Saviour, 
 in those bass-reliefs which are called pieta. 
 These divine efforts, this transfusion of 
 one life into another, this labor, as of ma- 
 ternal love and womanly passion, were 
 crowned with complete success ; at the 
 end of half an hour. Pons had been warmed 
 into the likeness of a living man once 
 more ; the light of life i-eturned to his 
 eyes ; and the organs of the body, stimu- 
 lated by external heat, resumed their 
 functions. 
 
 Schmucke then gave Pons a mixture of 
 barlej'-water and wine, and thereupon the 
 spirit of life infused itself into the body 
 and understanding once more beamed 
 upon the brow that had been insensible 
 as stone. Pons was now conscious of the 
 sacred self-devotion and energetic friend- 
 ship to which he owed his resurrection. 
 
 " But for you I was a dead man ! " said 
 he, as the tears of the worthy German — 
 who was crying and laughing at one and 
 the same time— fell gentlj-^ on his face. 
 
 When poor Schmucke, whose strength 
 was now quite exhausted, heard these 
 words — words which he had waited for 
 in all the delirium of hope, which is, to 
 the full, as potent as the delirium of de- 
 spair — he collapsed like a rent balloon. 
 
 It was now his turn to fall, and sinking 
 into an armchair, he joined his hands to- 
 gether, and offered thanks to God in fer- 
 vent prayer. In his opinion a miracle had 
 been wrought. He did not believe in the 
 efficacy of his acted prayer; but he did 
 believe in the power of the God whom he 
 had invoked. The miracle, however, was, 
 after all, a natural phenomenon, often 
 verified by doctoi's. A patient surrounded 
 by a circle' of loving friends, and nursed 
 by those who are concerned to save his 
 life, will recover ; while another, who, in 
 all other respects, is similarly situated, 
 but is nursed by hirelings, will succumb. 
 
 Physicians will not admit that this differ- 
 ence is the result of spontaneous magnet- 
 ism ; they attribute the beneficial effects 
 to intelligent nursing and faithful obedi- 
 ence to their injunctions; but many a 
 mother knows full well the \irtue of these 
 ardent projections of one abiding and per- 
 sistent wish. 
 
 " My good Schmucke — " 
 
 " Don't talk ; I can understand you wid 
 my heart ; reboze j'ourzelf, reboze your- 
 zelf," said the musician, smiling. 
 
 " Poor friend ! Noble being ! Child of 
 God — living in God ! Sole creature that 
 has ever loved me ! " said Pons, in broken 
 sentences, and in tones to which his voice 
 had never been attuned before. 
 
 The soul, preparing to take flight, 
 poured itself forth in these words — words 
 that caused Schmucke almost as much 
 delight as love itself has it in its power 
 to confer. 
 
 "Liff ! liff !" he cried. "And I will 
 begome a lion ! I will work for bod of 
 uz." 
 
 " Listen to me, my good, faithful, and 
 admirable friend ; let me speak ; time 
 presses, for I am a doomed man ; I shall 
 not survive these reiterated crises." 
 
 Schmucke wept like a child. 
 
 " Listen to me now," said Pons ; "you 
 will have time for weeping afterward. As 
 a Christian it is j-our duty to submit. 
 Now, I have been robbed, and Cibot is 
 the robber. Before I leave you, I am 
 bound to enlighten you on worldly mat- 
 ters of whicli you know nothing. Eight 
 pictures, of considerable value, have been 
 taken." 
 
 " Forgiff me ; it was I dat zold dem." 
 
 " You.'" 
 
 " Yez, J," said the poor German. " We 
 were zummoned." 
 
 " Summoned ? By whom ? " 
 
 " Wait a moment ! " 
 
 Hereupon Schmucke went in search of 
 the stamped document left by the bailiff; 
 and returned with it in his hand. 
 
 Pons read the jargon attentively, al- 
 lowed the paper to slip from his hand, 
 and was silent. Tliis keen observer of 
 the material products of human skill had 
 hitherto neglected the moral aspect of
 
 166 
 
 THh! HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 thinj^s ; now, at length, he counted every 
 thread in the web which Dam(> Cibot had 
 woven. The verve of the artist, the in- 
 telhg-ence of the pupil of the Academy 
 of Rome, all his youthful energy returned 
 to him for a few moments. 
 
 ' ' My good Schmucke, obey me as a 
 soldier obeys his ofQcer. Listen to me ! 
 Go down to the lodge and tell this dread- 
 ful woman that I should like to see the 
 envoy of my cousin the president again ; 
 and that if he doesn't return, my inten- 
 tion is to bequeath my collection to the 
 museum ; tell her that I am on the point 
 of making my will." 
 
 Schmucke performed the commission ; 
 but no sooner had he opened his lips than 
 Dame Cibot began to smile. 
 
 '"Our dear patient had an attack of 
 raging fever, my dear Monsieur Schmucke, 
 and took it n'into his head as there was 
 some folks in his room. 'Pon my word 
 as an honest woman no one has been here 
 n'on behalf of our dear sufferer's rela- 
 tions." 
 
 With this answer Schmucke returned 
 to Pons, and repeated it to him word for 
 word. 
 
 "She is more clever, more cunning, 
 more astute and Machiavellian than I 
 imagined," said Pons with a smile. " She 
 lies even in her lodge ! Just fancy ; she 
 brought hither, this very morning, a Jew 
 named Elie Magus, Remonencq, and a 
 third person whom I do not know, but 
 who is more hideous than both the others 
 put together. She counted on my being 
 asleep, to appraise the value of my suc- 
 cession ; it so happened that I awoke and 
 saw the trio poising my snuff-boxes in 
 their hands. In short, the sti'anger said 
 he had been sent here by the Camusots ; 
 I entered into conversation with him. 
 That infamous Cibot maintained that I 
 was dreaming. Mj^ good Schmucke, I 
 was not dreaming ! I heard the man 
 distinctly', he spoke to me ; the two deal- 
 ers took fright and made for the door. 
 Now I expected Dame Cibot would con- 
 tradict herself ; but my attempt to make 
 her do so has failed. I will lay another 
 trap into which the wicked woman is sure 
 to fall. You, my poor friend, take this 
 
 Cibot to be an angel ; whereas she is a 
 woman who, out of pure greed, has been 
 slowly murdering me during the last 
 month. I was loath to believe in the 
 existence of so much wickedness in a 
 woman who had served us faithfully for 
 several years. That unwillingness has 
 been my ruin. How much did you get 
 for the pictures ? " 
 
 " Five thousand francs ! " 
 
 " Good God ! they were worth twenty 
 times as much ! " cried Pons. " Thej' 
 were the very flower of my collection. 
 I have no time to bring an action ; be- 
 sides, I should have to put you forward 
 as the dupe of these scoundrels. A law- 
 suit would be the death of you ! You 
 don't know what a court of justice is ! 
 'tis the common sewer of every infamy ! 
 Hearts such as yours sicken and succumb 
 at the sight of so many horrors. And 
 besides, you will be rich enough as mat- 
 ters stand. Those pictures cost me four 
 thousand francs, and I have had them 
 six-and-thirty years. But we have been 
 robbed in the most skillful fashion possi- 
 ble. I am on the brink of the grave ; my 
 only care is for you — for you the best of 
 creatures. Now, I will not have you 
 plundered. I say you, because all that 
 I have is yours. Therefore I tell j'ou 
 that you ought to trust no one ; and jou 
 have never distrusted any one in the 
 whole course of your life. You are, I 
 know, under God's protection ; but He 
 may forget j'ou for a moment, and then 
 you will be pillaged like a merchantman 
 by a pirate. Dame Cibot is a monster ; 
 she is killing' me ! and you regard her as 
 an incarnate angel. Now, I want you to 
 see her in her true colors ; so go and beg 
 her to mention the name of a notary who 
 will receive my will, and I'll show her to 
 you with her hands in the money-bag." 
 
 Schmucke listened to Pons as if Pons 
 had been relating the Apocalypse. If 
 Pons's theory were correct, and there 
 really existed a being so depraved as Ma- 
 dame Cibot must then needs be, her exist- 
 ence was tantamount, in Schmucke's eyes, 
 to a total negation of Providence. 
 
 " My boor friend Pons is so ill dat he 
 wants to mague his wiU ; go and fetch a
 
 CuDsm PONS. 
 
 167 
 
 notar3'," said the German to Madame 
 Cibot, as soon as he reached the porter's 
 lodge. 
 
 These words were uttered in the pres- 
 ence of several persons, for Cibot's con- 
 dition was wellnigh desperate ; Remo- 
 nencq, Remonencq's sister, two portresses 
 who had hurried to the scene from neigh- 
 boring' houses, three of the servants of 
 the various lodgers in the houses and the 
 occupant of the first floor of the street 
 fagade were standing in the gate-way. 
 
 " Ah ! You may just go and fetch a 
 notary yourself and get your will made 
 by any one you like," said Dame Cibot, 
 with tears in her eyes. " I sha'n't budge 
 from my poor Cibot's bedside when he's 
 a-dying. I'd give all the Ponses as is 
 in the world to save Cibot — a man as 
 never caused me, no, not two ounces of 
 trouble during thirty years that we've 
 lived together man and wife ! " 
 
 And she retired into the lodge, leaving 
 Schmucke quite dumfounded. 
 
 "Monsieur," said the first-floor lodger 
 to Schmucke, " is Monsieur Pons so verj' 
 ill, then ? " 
 
 The name of this lodger was Jolivard ; 
 he was a registry-clerk in the offices of 
 the Palace of Justice. 
 
 "He was almost dying a few minutes 
 ago," replied Schmucke, in deep distress. 
 
 '•' Monsieur Trognon, the notary, lives 
 close by, in the Rue Saint Louis. He is 
 the notary of the Quarter," observed 
 M. Jolivard. 
 
 "Would you like me to go and fetch 
 him ? " said Remonencq to Schmucke. 
 
 "I should be ferry clad if you woot," 
 replied Schmucke ; '' for if Montame Zipod 
 gannot nurze my friend, I should not like 
 to leaf him in the stade in which he is." 
 
 "Madame Cibot told us that he was 
 going mad," pursued Jolivard. 
 
 " Bons, mad ? " exclaimed Schmucke, 
 terror-stricken. "He never was more 
 zensible in his life ; and it iz just dat 
 which magues me uneazj' about his 
 health." 
 
 So keen was the interest which all the 
 members of the little group naturally took 
 in this conversation, that it i-emained en- 
 graved upon their memories. Schmucke 
 
 did not know Fraisior, and therefore paid 
 no attention to his Satanic head and glist- 
 ening eyes. Fraisier it was, who, by whis- 
 pering two words in Madame Cibot's ear, 
 had prompted the wonderful scene tliat 
 she had acted — a scene the conception of 
 which was, perhaps, beyond the range of 
 h(!r unaided abilities, but which she had 
 plaj^ed with all the superiority of a mas- 
 ter in the art. To make Pons pass for a 
 lunatic was one of the corner-stones of the 
 edifice built by the homme de lot. That 
 moi-ning's incident had been of immense 
 sei'vice to Fraisier; and, but for him, it. 
 is possible that Dame Cibot might, in her 
 confusion, have betrayed hei'self when the 
 innocent Schmucke came to lay a snare 
 for her by begging her to recall the fam- 
 ily emissary. Remonencq, meanwhile, who 
 saw Dr. Poulain approaching, was only 
 too glad of an excuse for getting away ; 
 why, we will proceed to explain. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 THE TRICKS OF A TESTATOR. 
 
 Rkmonencq had, for the last ten days, 
 taken upon himself to play the part of 
 Providence — an assumption which is pe- 
 culiarly^ distasteful to Dame Justice, who 
 claims a monopoly of that role. But Re- 
 monencq's desire was, at any cost, to rid 
 himself of the only obstacle that stood 
 between him and happiness ; and for him, 
 happiness consisted in marrying the at- 
 tractive portress, and tripling his capi- 
 tal. Now the sight of the little tailor 
 swallowing his barley-water had sug- 
 gested to Remonencq the idea of con- 
 verting the indisposition of his rival into 
 a mortal malady' . His trade as an old- 
 iron dealer supplied him with the means. 
 
 One morning as, with liis back leaning 
 against the jamb of his shop-door, he was 
 smoking his pipe, and dreaming of that 
 splendid shop on the Boulevard de la Ma- 
 deleine, wherein Madame Cibot was to 
 queen it in gorgeous attice, Remonencq's 
 eyes fell upon a copper nuidle verj- much 
 oxidized. The idea of economically cleans-
 
 168 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 in,g- this rundlc in Cibot's barley-water 
 suddenly flashed across his mind ; so hav- 
 ing tied a small piece of pack-thread to 
 this bit of copper — (which was about as 
 large as a crown-piece) — he, every daj% 
 while Dame Cibot was engaged in attend- 
 ing to her two gentlemen, went to the 
 lodge to inquire how his friend the tailor 
 was getting on ; and during this visit, 
 which lasted several minutes, gave the 
 copper rundle a bath ; and when he went 
 away, drew it out of the barley-water by 
 means of the pack-thread. This slight 
 admixture of oxidized copper (commonly 
 called verdigi'is) secretly introduced a 
 deleterious element into the health-con- 
 ferring barley-water. The proportions of 
 the dose were homeopathic it is true ; but 
 its ravages were incalculable. The I'e- 
 sults of this felonious homeopathj^ were 
 these : upon the third day poor Cibot's 
 hair began to fall off, his teeth began to 
 tremble in their sockets, and the whole 
 economy of his s\'stem was deranged by 
 these imperceptible doses of poison. 
 
 Doctor Poulain noticed the effects of 
 this decoction, and racked his brains in 
 the endeavor to detect their cause ; for he 
 was sufficiently skillful to recognize the 
 fact that some destructive agent was at 
 work. Clandestinely removing the re- 
 mainder of the barley-water, he analyzed 
 it himself; but he found no foreign sub- 
 stance in it, for as chance would have it, 
 Remonencq, scared by the results of his 
 handiwork, had refrained on that' par- 
 ticular day from introducing the fatal 
 rundle into the barley-water. Dr. Pou- 
 lain satisfied the demands of his own con- 
 science, and of science, by supposing that, 
 in consequence of a sedentary life, passed 
 in a damp lodge, the blood of this tailoi-, 
 squatted on a table in front of that grated 
 window, had grown thoroughly impure, 
 partly from want of exercise, and partly 
 (and principally') from the inhalation of 
 the effluvia of a fetid gutter ; for the 
 Rue de Normandie is one of those old 
 and ill - paved streets into which the 
 municipal authorities of Paris have not, 
 as yet, introduced any pillar-fountains, 
 and in which the refuse water of the 
 houses that line the street is suffered to 
 
 form a black and sluggish stream, and. 
 oozing beneath the paving - stones, to 
 create that kind of mud whick is peculiar 
 to Paris. 
 
 As for Dame Cibot, she trotted hither 
 and thither and to and fro ; while her 
 husband, indefatigable toiler as he was, 
 was always planted before the window, 
 in one unvarying posture, like a fakir. 
 Hence the knees of the tailor were an- 
 chylozed ; the blood had stagnated in the 
 bust, while the legs had become so crooked 
 and shrunken as to be wellnigh useless. 
 
 Thus the pronounced copper color of 
 Cibot's complexion, had, for a long time 
 past, presented the appearance of natural 
 disease. To Dr. Poulain the wife's excel- 
 lent health and the illness of her husband 
 constituted the most ordinary phenome- 
 non possible. 
 
 " What can be the matter with my 
 poor Cibot ? " was the inquiry addressed 
 by the dame to Dr. Poulain. 
 
 " My dear Madame Cibot," replied the 
 doctor, "your husband is dying of the 
 porter's disease : his atrophy shows an 
 incurable vitiation of the blood." 
 
 A crime without an object — a crime in- 
 spired by no greed of gain, prompted by 
 no motive whatever — ! These reflections 
 dispelled the suspicions which had oi'igi- 
 nally presented themselves to Dr. Pou- 
 lain's mind. Who could wish for Cibot's 
 death ? His wife ? Why, the doctor had 
 seen her tastejier husband's barley-water 
 when she sweetened it. A great many 
 crimes escape society's avenging hand ; 
 principally those which resemble that of 
 Remonencq, in being perpetrated without 
 the appalling proofs supplied by acts of 
 violence, such as the effusion of blood, 
 strangling, blows and other clumsy de- 
 vices. In the absence of these, and 
 where the crime is without apparent 
 motive, and occurs among the lower 
 classes, impunity is all the more likely. 
 
 A crime is always brought to light by 
 its precursors — by open hate or patent 
 greed, known to the persons beneath 
 whose observation our lives are passed. 
 But situated as were the little tailor, Re- 
 monencq, and Dame Cibot, no one, save 
 the doctor, had any interest in ferreting
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 169 
 
 out the cause of death. The aiUng gate- 
 keeper with the coppei'-colored skin, who 
 had no propertj% and whose wife adored 
 him, was without a foe as he was without 
 a fortune. The motives by which the 
 broker was actuated, the passion which 
 influenced him were (lil<e the fortune of 
 Dame Cibot) buried in obscurity-. The 
 doctor indeed thoroughly understood the 
 portress and the feehngs by which slie 
 was guided ; he believed her quite capable 
 of tormenting Pons, but he knew that it 
 was not her interest, and that she had not 
 sufficient force of character, to commit a 
 crime. Moreover, she swallowed a spoon- 
 ful of the barley-water every time that 
 she gave her husband his dose, during the 
 doctor's visits. Poulain, therefore, the 
 only person who could throw any light 
 upon the subject, beheved that the strange 
 symptoms that had attracted his notice 
 were due to some accidental complications, 
 to one of those extraordinary exceptions 
 which render medicine so perilous a call- 
 ing. And, in fact, the state of health of 
 the little tailor, cribbed, cabined, and con- 
 fined as he had been, was so bad that this 
 imperceptible addition of oxide of copper 
 was enough to put an end to him. The 
 gossips and neighbors, moreover, acted in 
 such a way as to clear Remonencq from 
 suspicion ; thej' satisfactorily accounted 
 for this sudden death. 
 
 "Ah," cried one, "I said long since 
 that Monsieur Cibot was not in good 
 health." 
 
 *•■ He worked a deal too much, did that 
 man ; he overheated his blood," cried 
 another. 
 
 " He wouldn't listen to what I said to 
 him," exclaimed one of the neighbors. 
 " I advised him to get out on Sundays, 
 and make Monday a holiday ; for two 
 holidays a week are none too many 
 sure??/." 
 
 In fact the mmor of the Quarter, which 
 is so denunciatory, and to which the Law 
 listens, through the ears of the police- 
 officer — that monarch of the lower orders 
 —gave a perfectly rational explanation of 
 the death of the little tailor. Neverthe- 
 less, the pensive look and restless ej-es of 
 Monsieur Poulain caused Remonencq con- 
 
 siderable embarrassment; so, when he saw 
 the doctor drawing near, it was with the 
 greatest alacrity that he offered to act as 
 Schmucke's messenger to this Monsieur 
 Trognon — whom Fraisier knew. 
 
 "I shall be back again before the will 
 is made," whispered Fraisier to Dame 
 Cibot. "Notwithstanding your trouble, 
 we must keep an e^'e on the main chance." 
 
 The Uttle solicitor, who whisked away 
 with all the lightness of a shadow, met 
 Ills friend the doctor. 
 
 "Well, Poulain," said he, "everything 
 is going on well. We are safe ! I will tell 
 you hoiv, this evening. Choose your post, 
 and you shall have it ! As for me, I am 
 a juge de paix. Tabareau won't withhold 
 his daughter from me now. As to you, 
 I undertake to find a wife for you in Made- 
 moiselle Vitel, the granddaughter of our 
 juge de paix. 
 
 Leaving Poulain plunged in the stupe- 
 faction resulting from this language Frai- 
 sier bounded, like a ball, on to the boule- 
 vard. Hailing an omnibus, he found him- 
 self within ten minutes deposited by that 
 coach of modern times at the top of the 
 Rue de Choiseul. It was about four 
 o'clock, and Fraisier felt certain of find- 
 ing Madame de Marville alone; for the 
 judges hardly ever leave the palace be- 
 fore five o'clock. 
 
 Madame de Marville received Fraisier 
 with an amount of politeness which 
 showed that Monsieur Leboeuf had, in 
 accordance with the promise he had made 
 to Madame Vaiinelle, given a favorable 
 report of the quondam solicitor of Mantes. 
 Amelie's manner to Fraisier was almost 
 caressing (just as the Duchesse de Mont- 
 pensier's must have been to Jacques Clem- 
 ent) — for the little solicitor was Madame 
 de MarviUe's dagger. 
 
 But when Fraisier produced the joint 
 letter whereby Elie Magus and Remo- 
 nencq agreed to take the whole of Pons's 
 collection and to give for it a lump sum 
 of nine hundred thousand francs in ready 
 money, Madame de JIarville directed at 
 the little law-agent a glance eloquent of 
 that amount — a perfect wave of avarice 
 that rolled to the very feet of the so- 
 licitor.
 
 170 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 " Monsipur le President has commis- 
 sined im^ to invite j'ou to dine with us to- 
 morrow/' said the ladj- ; "we shall be 
 quite a family party ; your fellow-g-uests 
 will be Monsieur Godoschal, the successor 
 of my solicitor Maitre Desroches; Ber- 
 thier, our notary ; my daughter, and my 
 son-in-law. After dinner we — that is to 
 say, you, I, the notary and the solicitor — 
 will hold the little conference which you 
 desired, and will furnish you with the 
 necess;uy powers. Those two g-entlemen 
 will follow j^our instructions, as you re- 
 quired, and will take care that the whole 
 business is properly conducted. You will 
 receive Monsieur de Marville's power of 
 attornej- whenever you require it — " 
 
 " I shall want it against the day of the 
 demise." 
 
 "It shall be held in readiness." 
 
 " Madame la Presidente," said Fraisier, 
 " if I ask for a power of attorney, if I de- 
 sire that your own solicitor should not 
 appear in this matter, 'tis not so much 
 in my own interests as in yours that I 
 act thus. When I devote myself to smy 
 one, I devote myself body and soul ; and 
 therefore, madame, I expect, in return, 
 the same loyalty, the same confidejice at 
 the hands of my patrons — clients is a 
 word I dare not use in the case of your- 
 self and Monsieur de Marville. You mig-ht 
 imagine that in acting- as I am, my ob- 
 ject is to keep the affair in my own hands ; 
 not so, madame ; but should any repre- 
 hensible steps be taken in the matter 
 (for where a succession is in question, 
 one is sometimes tempted into g-oing- a 
 little too f;ir — especially when one is 
 drag-ged on bj^ a weight of nine hundred 
 thousand francs) — well, in that case you 
 could not disavow such a man as Maitre 
 Godeschal, who is integ-rity personified ; 
 but you could throw the whole blame on to 
 the shoulders of a paltry little law-ag-ent." 
 
 Madame de Marville looked with an eye 
 of admiration upon Fraisier. 
 
 " You will rise very high, or sink very 
 low," she said to him. "Were I in your 
 position, instead of looking out for this 
 shelf, the office of juge de paix, I should 
 like to be procurator-royal at Mantes ! 
 and go in for a great career ! " 
 
 "Let me take my own course, ma- 
 dame ! The office of juge de paix 4s a 
 parson's nag to Monsieur Vitel — to me it 
 will be a war-horse." 
 
 'Twas thus that Madame Camusot was 
 induced to make to Fraisier this final 
 confidential communication : 
 
 "You seem to me," said .she, "to be 
 so entirely' devoted to our interests, that 
 I am about to initiate you into the diffi- 
 culties of our position, and into our hopes. 
 At the time of the projected match be- 
 tween our daughter and a certain •adven- 
 turer, who has since turned banker, the 
 president was extremely anxious to in- 
 crease the Marville estate \>y purchasing- 
 certain pasture-land which was then for 
 sale. We parted with this mag-niflcent 
 hotel, in order, as .you are aware, to se- 
 cure the marriage of our daughter ; but, 
 she being an only child, it is my anxious 
 wish to acquire what is left of these beau- 
 tiful pasture-lands. They have already 
 been sold in part ; they belong to an 
 Englishman, who, after having lived 
 upon the spot for twenty years, is on 
 the point of returning to England. He 
 built the most charming cottage upon a 
 most delightful site, between the park 
 of Marville and the meadows, which for- 
 met'lj' belonged to the estate ; and in 
 order to form a park, he bought up 
 coach-houses, copses, and ' gardens at 
 fabulous prices. This dwelling-house, 
 with its appurtenances, forms a feature 
 in the landscape, and it lies close to the 
 walls of mj'^ daughter's park. One might 
 buy the house and the pastures for seven 
 hundred thousand francs; for the net 
 rental of the meadows is but twenty 
 thousand francs. But if Mr. Wadmann 
 hears that ive are- the purchasers, he 
 will be sure to want two or three hun- 
 dred thousand francs more, for he stands 
 to lose that amount if, as is usual in the 
 provinces, the residence be thrown in — " 
 
 " Why, madame, you may, in my opin- 
 ion, so fully count on the succession being 
 yours, that I am ready to play the part 
 of purchaser on your behalf, and I under- 
 take to secure the estate for you, on the 
 lowest possible terms, \)y private con- 
 tract, just as if the transaction were
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 ITl 
 
 effected for a dealer in land. It is in 
 that capacity that I shall present myself 
 to the Eng-lishman. I understand these 
 matters. At Mantes the3' constituted 
 my specialty. The returns of the prac- 
 tice had been doubled by Vatinelle, for I 
 must tell you that it was in his name that 
 I usetl to act." 
 
 '• Hence your acquaintanceship with 
 little Madame "Vatinelle. That notary 
 must be a wealthy man, by this time." 
 
 "Yes, but Madame "Vatinelle is very 
 extravag-ant. Well, you may dismiss all 
 anxiet}', madame ; I will serve you up the 
 Englishman, done to a turn." 
 
 " If you could bring' about that result, 
 you would have an eternal claim upon 
 my gratitude. Good-by, dear Monsieur 
 Fraisier, until to-morrow." 
 
 Fraisier's parting bow to Madame de 
 Marville was not so servile as it had been 
 on the previous occasion. 
 
 ''■ So, to-morrow I am going to dine with 
 the President de Marville," said Fraisier 
 to himself. " Come, I have these folks in 
 my clutches. Only, in order to be com- 
 pletely master of the situation, I ought to 
 be counsel to this German, in the person 
 of Tabareau, the bailiff of the jiuje de 
 paix! This Tabareau who will not let 
 me marry his daug-hter — an o\\\y daughter 
 — will give her to me, if I aui a juge de 
 paix. Mademoiselle Tabareau, that tall 
 red-haired consumptive girl, is the ownei", 
 in her mother's right, of a house in the 
 Place Royale ; that will qualify me to be 
 a deputy. At her father's death, she will 
 come in for a good six thousand francs a 
 year, in addition. She is not handsome, 
 'tis true ; but good God ! when one passes 
 from zero to an income of eighteen thou- 
 sand francs, one must not look too closely 
 at the plank that carries one over ! " 
 
 And as he threaded his way along the 
 boulevards to the Rue de Normandie, 
 Fraisier abandoned himself to the current 
 of his golden dream, to the happy pros- 
 pect of being forever bej'ond the reach of 
 want. He thought of bringing about a 
 match between Mademoiselle Vitel, the 
 daughter of the juqe de paix, and his 
 friend Poulain. He saw himself — leagued 
 with his friend the doctor— as one of the 
 
 monai-chs of the Quarter ; he would rule 
 the elections municipal, military, and po- 
 litical. Ah ! how short the boulevards 
 seem when, as we trot along them, our 
 fond ambition, mounted on fancy's steed, 
 trots at our side ! 
 
 When Schmucke returned to the bed- 
 side of his friend he told Pons that Cibot 
 was dying, and that Remonencq had un- 
 dertaken to fetch Monsieur Trognon, the 
 notary. Pons was forcibly impressed by 
 the mention of this name, the name which 
 Cibot had so often hurled at him in the 
 course of her interminable harangues as 
 that of a notary who was the very incar- 
 nation of integritj\ And now the patient 
 (whose misgivings, since the events of the 
 morning, had become unqualified) was 
 struck by a brilliant idea wliich put the 
 finishing touch to his scheme for deceiv- 
 ing Madame Cibot, and completely un- 
 masking her to the credulous Schmucke. 
 
 "Schmucke," said he, taking the hand 
 of the poor German, who was dazed hy 
 such an accumulation of news and events ; 
 " the house must be in a state of complete 
 commotion ; if the porter is at the point 
 of death, we are pretty well free for some 
 moments — that is to say, free from spies; 
 for spied ^ve are, you may rely upon it ! • 
 Go out, take a cabriolet, drive to the . 
 theater, and tell Mademoisalle Heloise 
 Brisetout, owr premiere danseuse, that I 
 wjint to see her before I die. Tell her to 
 come here at half-past ten, when her duty 
 is over. Go thence to your two friends 
 Schwab and Brunner, and beg them to 
 present themselves here at nine o'clock 
 in the naorning, to inquire after, my 
 health — just as if they were accidentally 
 passing by — and to come up and see me — " 
 
 Now the plan formed by the old artist, 
 who felt that he was dying, was this : He 
 wanted to make Schmucke a rich man, by 
 constituting hira his universal legatee ; 
 and, with a view to shielding Schmucke, 
 as far as possible, from all trouble and 
 vexation, Pons purposed to himself to dic- 
 tate his will to a notary, in the presence 
 of witnesses, so as to exclude the supposi- 
 tion that he was not of sound disposing 
 mind, and to deprive the Camusots of all 
 pretext for contesting the final disposition
 
 173 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 of his property. This name, Trognon, 
 sug-g-ested to him that there was some 
 machination on foot; he believed in the 
 existence of some scheme for introducing 
 into the will some formal defect, of some 
 premeditated act of treachery on the part 
 of Madame Cihot ; so he resolved to em- 
 ploy this Trognon to dictate to him a 
 holograph will, which he would seal and 
 lock up in one of the drawers of his com- 
 mode. 
 
 Pons's idea was to get Schmucke to 
 secrete himself in one of the closets of 
 the alcove, whence he might see Dame 
 Cibot pouncing on the will, breaking its 
 seal, reading and resealing it. Then, at 
 nine o'clock on the following morning, he 
 intended to revoke and annul the holo- 
 graph will, by means of a strictly formal 
 and indisputable testament, rriade in the 
 presence of a notary. When Dame Cibot 
 treated him as a lunatic and visionary, he 
 read, in this her conduct, the vicarious 
 hatred, vengeance, and greed of Madame 
 Camusot ; for, stretched on a bed of sick- 
 ness, as the poor man had been for two 
 long months, he had beguiled his tedious 
 hours of solitude and sleeplessness by 
 sifting, so to speak, the events of his 
 life with the riddle of 7-eflection. 
 
 It has been a common practice with 
 sculptors, both ancient and modern, to 
 place on either side of the tomb a genius 
 holding a kindled torch. These torolies, 
 while they illumine the path of death, ex- 
 hibit to the eyes of the dying the picture 
 of their sins and errors in its proper light. 
 'Tis a grand idea that sculpture thus em- 
 bodies ; it forumlates a phenomenon of 
 human life. The death-bed has a wisdom 
 of its own. It is a matter of common ob- 
 servation that, stretched on that couch, 
 artless girls of the most tender age will 
 display the sapience of the centenarian, 
 develop the gift of prophecj', pass judg- 
 ment on the members of their families, 
 and read the hearts of the most accom- 
 plished hypocrites. This is the poetry of 
 Death. 
 
 But — strange it is and well worthy of 
 remark^there are two ways of dying. 
 This poetic vaticination, this power of 
 looking forward into the future, or back- 
 
 ward into the past, is strictlj' confined to 
 invalids whose bodily organs only are at- 
 tacked ; to those who perish through the 
 destruction of such portions of the system 
 as subserve the material processes of life 
 exclusively. Thus, persons attacked by 
 gangrene (as Louis Quatorze was), con- 
 sumptive patients, persons who, IDce Pons, 
 die fi^om fever, or, like Madame de Mort- 
 sauf, from inflammation of the stomach ; 
 those who, like soldiers, are cut off by 
 wounds in the full tide of life and health ; 
 all these enjoy, to the very last, a sublime 
 lucidity of mind ; the manner of their 
 deaths fills us with astonishment and 
 admiration. 
 
 Those, on the other hand, who perish 
 from diseases that may be termed intel- 
 lectual, whose maladies are seated in the 
 brain, in that nervous apparatus which 
 serves to convey the fuel of thought from 
 the bodjr to the mind ; these persons die 
 altogether ; their minds and bodies foun- 
 der side by side. The former (souls unen- 
 cumbered by substance) bring before our 
 very eyes the specters that we read of in 
 the Bible ; the latter are mere corpses. 
 Pons, who had never known a woman's 
 love — Pons, that epicure-Cato, that just 
 man almost made perfect, now at last saw 
 through and through the heart of Ma- 
 dame Camusot, and found it made of cells 
 of gall ; he came to understand the world 
 just as he was upon the very point of 
 quitting it. 
 
 Accordingly, like the light-hearted ar- 
 tist he was, finding food for mirth and 
 mockery in all that happens. Pons had, 
 during the last few hours, cheerfully se- 
 lected the part he was to play. The last 
 ties that bound him to existence — the 
 chains of admiration, the potent fetters 
 that linked the connoisseur to. the master- 
 pieces of art — had been broken on that 
 very morning. When Pons found that 
 Dame Cibot had robbed him, he had re- 
 nounced, in a spirit of Christian resigna- 
 tion, the pomps and vanities of art, and 
 bidden a long farewell to his collection 
 and to his friendships with the creators 
 of so many beautiful works. After the 
 fashion of our ancestors, who reckoned 
 death among the festivals of the Chris-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 173 
 
 tian, Pons wished to think exclusively of 
 his approaching end. In his love for 
 Schuiucke, he desired to extend his protec- 
 tion to the poor old German, even from 
 the grave. It was this fatherly idea that 
 led Pons to select the premiere danseuse 
 of his theater, as an ally in his struggle 
 with the traitors by whom he was sur- 
 rounded, traitors who would assuredlj^ 
 show no mercy to his universal legatee. 
 
 Heloise Brisetout was endowed with 
 one of those natures which remain true, 
 even when placed in a false position. She 
 belonged to the school of Jennj' Cadine 
 and of Josepha, and would have played 
 her tributary admirers any trick ; but, as 
 a comrade, she was stanch and leal, and 
 she stood in awe of no human power or 
 authority whatever ; for the weakness of 
 then*, one and all, experience had revealed 
 to her, schooled as she had been by her 
 encounters with police constables at the 
 singidarly wnrural Bal Mabille, and dur- 
 ing the Carnival. 
 
 ''If she has thrust her protege, Ga- 
 rangeot, into my place, she will, for that 
 very reason, feel all the more bound to 
 serve rae." Such was Pons's unspoken 
 reflection. 
 
 Amid the turmoil that reigned in the 
 porter's lodge it was easy for Schmucke 
 to pass out unobserved. He returned 
 with the utmost celeritj', as he did not 
 like to leave Pons long alone. Just as 
 Schmucke came back. Monsieur Trognon 
 arrived to make the will ; and, although 
 Cibot was in the throes of death, his wife 
 accompanied the notary and ushered him 
 into the bedroom. She then retired of her 
 own accord, leaving Schmucke, Monsieur 
 Trognon and Pons together ; but arming 
 herself with a small hand-glass of curious 
 workmanship, she ensconced herself near 
 the door, which she left ajar. Thus she 
 was so placed as to be able not only to 
 hear what was said but to see all that oc- 
 curred at this extremely critical moment. 
 
 '•Monsieur." said Pons, " I am in full 
 possession of all my faculties — unfort- 
 unately for me, for I feel that I am 
 dj-ing, and— such, doubtless, is the will 
 of God— not one of tiie pangs of death is 
 spared me! This is Monsieur Schmucke—" 
 
 The notary bowed to Schmucke. 
 
 " He is the only friend I have on 
 earth," continued Pons, "and I wish to 
 make him my universal legatee. Tell me 
 in what form my will should be made, in 
 order that my friend (who is a German 
 and entirely ignorant of our laws) may 
 inherit my fortune, without being exposed 
 to any litigation." 
 
 "Everything may be litigated, mon- 
 sieur," said the notary. " That is the 
 drawback to all human laws. But in 
 the matter of wills, there is one which 
 cannot be disputed — " 
 
 " Which is that ? " inquired Pons. 
 
 "A will made before a notary-, in the 
 presence of witnesses who certify that 
 the testator is in full possession of all 
 his faculties, the testator having neither 
 wife nor children nor father nor brother — " 
 
 " I have none of those ties ; all my affec- 
 tions are concentrated upon my dear friend 
 Schmucke, here — " 
 
 Schmucke was weeping. 
 
 " Well then, since the law allows you, 
 if you have none but remote collateral 
 relatives, freely to dispose of your estate, 
 Subject to the dictates of morality — for 
 you must have seen wills impugned on 
 the score of the testator's eccentricity — 
 a will made before a notary is indisput- 
 able. There, the identity of the testator 
 cannot be denied, the notary has estab- 
 lished his sanity, and the signature is 
 beyond dispute. A holograph will, how- 
 ever, if formal and clearly expressed, is 
 tolerably' safe." 
 
 " For reasons known to myself, I decide 
 in favor of a holograph will, to be written 
 by me at your dictation, and placed in the 
 custody of m^-^ friend here. Can that be 
 done ? " 
 
 "Unquestionably," said the notary. 
 " Will you write while I dictate ? " 
 
 "Schmucke,'" said Pons, "give me my 
 little buhl inkstand. Dictate in an under- 
 tone, monsieur ; for," added he, •• we may 
 be overheard." 
 
 " Tell me, then, in the first place, what 
 are your intentions," said the notary. 
 
 After the lapse of ton minutes. Dame 
 Cibot (whom Pons was watching in a 
 mirror) saw the testament sealed after it
 
 174 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 had been examined by the notary', while 
 Schmucke was lighting a candle. Pons 
 then handed the will to Schmucke, telling 
 him to lock it up in a secret drawer in 
 Pons's writing-desk. The testator then 
 called for the kc^' of the writing-desk, 
 and tjing it in the corner of his handker- 
 chief, put the handkerchief under his pil- 
 low. Thereupon the notary, whom Pons 
 had, out of politeness, appointed executor, 
 and to whom he had bequeathed a valua- 
 ble picture (one of those legacies which 
 the law permits a notary to accept), left 
 the room and found Madame Cibot in the 
 salon. 
 
 " Well, monsieur ! and has Monsieur 
 Pons remembered me?" 
 
 "Surely, my dear, you don't expect a 
 notary to betray the secrets confided to 
 him," replied M. Trognon. "All that I 
 can tell you is that a good many avari- 
 cious folks will be disappointed and a good 
 many expectations defeated. Monsieur 
 Pons has made an excellent Avill, a most 
 sensible will, a patriotic will, that has ray 
 warmest approbation." 
 
 It is quite impossible to imagine the 
 pitch of curiositj' at which Madame Cibot, 
 stimulated by these words, had now ar- 
 rived. She went down to the lodge and 
 spent the night at Cibot's bedside ; her 
 intention being to get Mademoiselle Re- 
 monencq to relieve her between two and 
 three o'clock in the morning, when she 
 herself would go upstairs and read the 
 will. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 THE SHAM WILL. 
 
 The visit of Mademoiselle Heloise Brise- 
 tout at half -past ten in the evening seemed 
 to Dame Cibot to be quite in the ordinar.y 
 course of events ; but she was so direly 
 afraid of the clanseuse mentioning the 
 thousand francs which Gaudissard had 
 placed in her maternal hands that as she 
 conducted the first lady of the ballet to 
 Pons's apartments, she overwhelmed her 
 on the wa\' wnth attentions and flatteiy 
 meet for a queen. 
 
 "Ah, my dear! " said Heloise, as she 
 mounted the stairs, " I assure you that 
 you are far more attractive on j-our own 
 ground than at the theater. I do conjure 
 3'ou to stick to your vocation." 
 
 Heloise had driven to the Rue de Nor- 
 mandie under the escort of Bixion, her 
 sweetheart, and was most magnificently 
 dressed ; for she was on her way to an 
 evening party at the house of Mariette, 
 one of the most illustrious premieres dan- 
 seuses of the opera. Indeed, Monsieur 
 Chapoulot, a retired lace manufiicturer 
 of the Rue St. Denis (who occupied the 
 first floor, and was just returning with 
 his daughter from the Ambigu Comique) 
 and Madame Chapoulot were alike amazed 
 at beholding" so gorgeous a toilet and so 
 beautiful a creature upon their staircase. 
 
 "Who is she, Madame Cibot?" in- 
 quired Madame Chapoulot. 
 
 " Oh, a good-for-nothing creature ! a 
 mere jumper, that folks may see, half- 
 naked, anj^ evening for fortj' sous," re- 
 plied the portress in a whisper. 
 
 " Victorine, my darling," said Madame 
 Chapoulot to her daughter, "make room 
 for the lady to pass." 
 
 This cry of maternal alarm did not 
 escape the ear of Heloise. She turned 
 round and said to the lady : 
 
 "Your daughter, madame, must sureh' 
 be worse than tinder, since you are afraid 
 she may catch fire bj' merely touching 
 me." 
 
 Heloise looked pleasantly at Monsieur 
 Chapoulot, and smiled. 
 
 "Well, I must say that she is very 
 pretty off the stage," said that gentle- 
 man, wiio showed no inclination to quit 
 the landing ; but Madame Chapoulot 
 pinched her husband hard enough to 
 make him cry out, and pushed him into 
 their apartments. 
 
 "Here is a second floor which has 
 usurped the appearance of being a 
 fourth floor," said Heloise. 
 
 "Ah, but then mademoiselle is accus- 
 tomed to I'ising," said Dame Cibot, as 
 she opened the door of Pons's rooms. 
 
 "Well, old fellow," said Heloise, as 
 she entered the bedroom, and saw the 
 poor musician lying stretched out at full
 
 COUSIN POXS. 
 
 175 
 
 length, pale, and with shrunken features, 
 " you're not so well as you should bo then ? 
 Everybody' at the theater is anxious about 
 you ; but you know what life is ! How- 
 ever good-hearted one may be, every one 
 has business of some sort to attend to, 
 and one cannot find a spare hour for look- 
 ing up one's friends. Gaudissard talks 
 about coming here every day, and then, 
 morning after morning, he is driven to 
 his wits' end by his managerial duties. 
 Nevertheless, we are all fond of you." 
 
 "Madame Cibot," said the sufferer, 
 " do me tlie favor to leave mademoiselle 
 and us alone together ; we have to talk 
 about theatrical matters and about my 
 post of conductor — Schnmcke will be good 
 enough to see madame to her carriage." 
 
 At a sign from Pons, Schmucke led 
 Madame Cibot to the door and bolted it 
 behind her. 
 
 " Ah ! the scoundrel of a German ; he 
 too is getting spoiled, ' ' quoth Dame Cibot 
 to herself, when she heard the significant 
 sound of the drawn bolts. "It's Mon- 
 sieur Pons what sets him on to do these 
 horrid things. But you shall pay me for 
 it, my little friends," said she to herself 
 as she descended the stairs. " Bah ! if 
 this mountebank of a dancer mentions 
 the thousand francs, I'll tell the old boys 
 it's nothing but an actor's joke." 
 
 And so sajang, she resumed her seat 
 near the pillow of poor Cibot, who was 
 complaining that his stomach was on 
 fire ; for Remonencq had just been giv- 
 ing him a draught during his wife's 
 absence. 
 
 " My dear child," said Pons to the dan- 
 seuse, while Schmucke was engaged in 
 dismissing Dame Cibot, •' I trust en- 
 tirely to you to choose me an honest 
 notary-, who will come here at half-past 
 nine to-morrow morning to receive my 
 will. I want to leave mj' whole fortune 
 to my friend Schmucke. Should he be 
 tormented by any one 'tis on this notary 
 that 1 reckon to advise and to defend him. 
 That is why I desire to have a notary of 
 high reputation and great wealth — one 
 who is altogether above the temptations 
 which sometimes seduce the legal practi- 
 tioner from the right path ; for in this 
 
 notary, my poor legatee must find a prop 
 to lean upon. I distrust Berthier, Car- 
 dot's successor, and you who know so 
 many people — " 
 
 "Ah, I have it! " said the danseuse. 
 " The man you want is Leopold Hanne- 
 quin, notary to Florine and the Comtesse 
 de Bruel — a virtuous man who doesn't 
 know what a lorette is. He's a sort of 
 second-hand father, a worthy man who 
 saves one from playing Old Harry with 
 the money one gets. I call him the father 
 of the rats, for he has imbued all my 
 friends with principles of economy. To 
 begin with, he has an income of sixty 
 thousand francs indepetidently of his pro- 
 fession, my dear fellow. Then, he ia 
 a notary of the old school. He is a 
 notary when he walks and when he 
 sleeps; all his children must needs he 
 little notaries and notaresses born. In 
 short, he's a dull, heavy, pedantic man ; 
 but — he's a man whom no earthly power 
 can bend when he is in the exercise of his 
 functions. He never kept a mistress ; he 
 is a fossil paterfamilias, and his wife wor- 
 ships him and is true to him, although she 
 is a notary's wife. What can you have 
 more ? There's nothing better to be had 
 in Paris — in the way of notaries. He is pa- 
 triarchal, 'tis true ; he's not at all absurd 
 and amusing, as Cardot used to be with 
 Malaga ; but then he will never give his 
 creditors the slip like that little thing- 
 a-bob who lived with Antonia. I will 
 send him here to-morrow morning at 
 eight o'clock, so jo\x may sleep in peace. 
 In the first place, I hope you'll get well, 
 and write some more pretty music for 
 us; but, after all, life's a sad business 
 in these days when contractoi-s haggle 
 and kings play for pence and ministers 
 pilfer and rich folks go in for cheese-par- 
 ing. Artists too have none of this left," 
 said she, clapping her hand to her heart ; 
 " it is high time to die — good-by, old man!" 
 
 " Above and beyond all, Heloise, I beg 
 you to maintain the strictest secrecj-." 
 
 " This isn't a matter that relates to the 
 theater ! 'Tis a thing that is sacred to 
 an artist," said she. 
 
 "Who is your present protector, child? " 
 asked Pons.
 
 176 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 " The mayor of your arrondissement, 
 Monsieur P>aiido\-er, wlio is every whit as 
 stupid as Crevel deceased; for I suppose 
 you are aware that Crevel, one of Gaudis- 
 sard's former partners, died a few days 
 since, and hasn't left me a fraction — no, 
 not even so much as a pot of pomatum ! 
 That's what causes me to say that the 
 times wo live in are diss-usting." 
 
 "And what did he die of ? " 
 
 " Of his wife — ! If he had stuck to me, 
 he would have been alive now. Good-h^', 
 my dear old fellow ! I talk to you about 
 kicking' the bucket, because I can see 
 that, in a fortnight's time, we shall have 
 you trotting along the boulevards, and 
 smelling out your pretty little curiosities 
 once more ; for you're not ill, your eA'es 
 are brighter now than I ever knew them." 
 
 And off went the premiere danseuse, 
 fully convinced that her protege, Garan- 
 geot, was permanently installed in the 
 post of leader of the orchestra. Garan- 
 g'eot was her cousin-german. 
 
 Every door was ajar, and every family 
 was on the alert as the premiei'e danseuse 
 went downstairs. Her visit was quite an 
 event in that house. 
 
 Like a bull-dog which never lets go a 
 bit of meat into which he has once set 
 his teeth, Fraisier was stationed in the 
 lodge, cheek hj jowl with Madame Cibot, 
 when the ballet-dancer passed under the 
 entrance gateway and called for the door 
 to be opened. He knew that the will had 
 been made ; he had just been gauging 
 Dame Cibot's mental condition ; for Mai- 
 tre Trognon, the notary, had been as reti- 
 cent about the will to Fraisier as he had 
 been to Madame Cibot. It was quite nat- 
 ural that the man of law should observe 
 the danseuse as she passed out ; and he 
 secretly resolved to turn to good account 
 this visit in extremis. 
 
 "My dear Madame Cibot," said Frai- 
 sier ; " this is for you the critical mo- 
 ment." 
 
 "Ah, yes," said she, "my poor dear 
 Cibot! To think that he'll not live to 
 enjoy whatever I may come in for!" 
 
 "The thing is to find out whether Mon- 
 sieur Pons has left yo\x anything; whether, 
 in fact, your name is mentioned in the will 
 
 or whether you have been forgotten," con- 
 tinued Fraisier. " I represent the natural 
 heirs of the testator, and, in any case, it 
 is only through tliem that you will get 
 a single farthing ; for the will is a holo- 
 graph, and is, consequently, anything 
 but indisputable. Do you happen to 
 know where our patient has put it?" 
 
 " Yes ; in a secret drawer of his writ- 
 ing-desk, and he's taken the key of it, 
 and he's tied it up in the corner of his 
 handkerchief, and he's been and stuck 
 the handkerchief under his pillow. I saw 
 the whole thing." 
 
 " Is the will sealed up ? " 
 
 "Alas, yes." 
 
 "To obtain possession of a will sur- 
 reptitiously and to suppress it is a crime; 
 but to take a peep at it is onh' a delict ; 
 and in anj' case what does it amount to ? 
 a peccadillo which no one can swear to ! 
 Is our friend a heavj' sleeper ? " 
 
 "He is; but when you wanted to have 
 a good look at his collection and value the 
 lot, he must have been sleeping as sound 
 as a top, and yet he awoke. Howsomevcr, 
 I'll see what can be done. This morning 
 I'll go n'up to relieve Monsieur Schmucke- 
 at four o'clock, and if you'll come you can 
 have ten minutes to look at the will — " 
 
 "Well, that's settled, then; I will get 
 up at four o'clock, and I'll knock gent- 
 
 ly-" 
 
 " Mademoiselle Remonencq, who'll take 
 my place near Cibot, will know who it is, 
 and will pull the door-string : but rap at 
 the window so as not to wake anj' one." 
 
 "Agreed," said Fraisier; "you will 
 have a light, won't you ? a candle will be 
 quite enough." 
 
 At midnight the poor old German, seat- 
 ed in an armchair and almost broken- 
 hearted, was watching Pons, whose feat- 
 ures, contracted like those of a djang man, 
 wore an expression of exhaustion so in- 
 tense that he seemed to be on the verj' 
 verge of dissolution. 
 
 " I think that I have just sufficient 
 strength to last till to-morrow evening," 
 said the sufferer, philosophically'. " My 
 death - struggle will come, my dear 
 Schmucke, to - morrow night, no doubt. 
 So soon as the notary and your two friends
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 i 1 1 
 
 have left me, you will go and fetch our 
 good Abbe Duplanty, the curate of Saint 
 Francis. Tiie worthy man does not know 
 that I am ill ; and I should like to receive 
 the holy sacraments to-morrow at mid- 
 day." 
 
 After along pause Pons resumed? "God 
 has not seen fit that my life should be 
 what I had dreamed it might be. I should 
 have been so fond of my wife, mj- children, 
 my family — if I had had them ! To be 
 loved and cherished by a few beings, in 
 some quiet nook — that was my sole am- 
 bition ! Life is bitter to every one ; for I 
 have seen people b'essed with all that I 
 have vainly longed for, and yet not happy. 
 Toward the close of my career, the good 
 God bestowed upon me the unexpected 
 consolation of meeting with such a friend 
 as you ; and indeed, mj' dear Schmucke, 
 I cannot reproach myself with having mis- 
 understood or undervalued you ; I have 
 given you my heart and all the affection 
 that was at my command. No, Schmucke, 
 do not weep, or I must hold mj^ tongue ; 
 and it is so sweet to me to talk to you 
 about ourselves. Had I attended to what 
 you said to me, I should have Uved ; I 
 should have quitted the world and my old 
 habits of life, and should have escaped the 
 mortal wounds I have received. Now, I 
 wish to think of you exclusively — " 
 
 "You are wrong — " 
 
 "Do not gainsa.y me, but listen to me, 
 dear friend. You are as simple and as 
 candid :is a child of six years old that has 
 never left its mother's side — 'tis a frame 
 of mind that is worth3'^ of all respect ; it 
 seems to me that God Himself should 
 take charge of beings such as 30U are. 
 But still men are so wicked that it is mj^ 
 duty to put you on your guard against 
 them. You are, therefore, on the point 
 of losing your noble ti-ustfulness, your 
 sacred unsuspectingness — that ornament 
 of the pure in heart which is given only 
 to genius, and to beings like yourself. 
 You are shortly about to see Madame 
 Cibot (who was watching us closely 
 through the half-open door) come and 
 take this pretended will. I presume that 
 the wretch will undertake this expedition 
 this morning when she thinks you are 
 
 asleep. Now, mark well what I say, and 
 follow my instructions to the very letter. 
 Do you hear me? " asked the sick man. 
 
 Overwhelmed with grief and seized 
 with a fearful palpitation of the heart, 
 Schmucke had allowed his head to sink 
 upon the back of his armchair, and 
 seemed to have fainted. 
 
 " Yez," said the German, bowed down 
 beneath the weight of his sorrow ; "yez, 
 I hear what you saj-. But it is az if you 
 were two hundred yards away from me — 
 it zeems az if I were going wid you into 
 de grave." 
 
 He drew near to Pons, and taking his 
 hand and clasping it between his own 
 hands, breathed to himself a fervent 
 prayer. 
 
 "What are you muttering there in 
 German ? " » 
 
 "I was braying to God to take us to 
 Himself togeder," replied Schmucke sim- 
 ])\y, when his prayer was ended. 
 
 With great difficulty (for he was suffer- 
 ing fearful pains in the liver) Pons man- 
 aged to stoop low enough to imprint a 
 kiss upon Schmuckc's forehead. In that 
 kiss Pons poured forth his whole soul in a 
 blessing upon that being who in heart and 
 mind resembled the Lamb that reposes at 
 the feet of God. 
 
 "Now listen to me, my good Schmucke ; 
 dying men must be obej-ed — " 
 
 " I am liztening." 
 
 "The communication between your 
 rooms and mine is through a little door 
 in j-our alcove, opening into one of the 
 closets of my alcove." 
 
 "Yez, but de clozet is grammed with 
 hictures." 
 
 " Go and clear the door at once, and 
 make as little noise as possible." 
 
 "Yes," said Schmucke. 
 
 "Clear the passage at each end, both 
 your end and mine ; then leave your door 
 ajar. When Dame Cibot comes to re- 
 lieve guard at my bedside — she m.iy ver\- 
 likely come an hour earlier tlian usual 
 this morning — ^go awaj' to bed as usual, 
 and seem to be very tired. Try to look 
 sleepy. As soon as she has settled her- 
 self in her armchair, go through your lit- 
 tle door and remain on watch there; raise
 
 178 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 the small muslin curtain of this glass 
 door, and narrowly observe what takes 
 place. Do you understand ? " 
 
 " Yez, I know what you mean ; you be- 
 lieve dat de wicked woman Avill purn de 
 will—" 
 
 "I don't know what she will do with 
 it, but I am sure that henceforth you 
 won't take her for an angel. Now play 
 me some music, delig-ht me with one of 
 your improvisations ; 'twill give you 
 something to do, you will get rid of your 
 gloomy ideas, and will fill the void of 
 this sad night with one of your poems — " 
 
 Schmucke took his seat at the piano. 
 He was now in his element, and the mu- 
 sical inspiration arising from the tremor 
 of his grief, aided bj^ the excitement re- 
 sulting from that grief, soon bore the 
 worthy German beyond the bounds of 
 this material world. The themes that he 
 invented were sublime, and he adorned 
 them with capriccios, executed, now with 
 all the sweetness and Raphaelesque per- 
 fection of Chopin, now with all the fire 
 and Dantesquc majesty of Liszt, the two 
 ])(>rformers Avhose musical organization 
 most closely resembles that of Paganini. 
 When execution arrives at this degree of 
 faultlessness the performer seems to be 
 placed upon a level with the poet ; he is 
 to the composer what the actor is to the 
 •author — a divine translator of a divine 
 work. But on this particular night, dur- 
 ing which Schmucke gave Pons a fore- 
 taste of the concerts of Paradise— of that 
 exquisite music which steals the instru- 
 ments from the grasp of Saint Cecilia 
 and strews them on the jasper floor of 
 heaven, the old German was both Bee- 
 thoven and Paganini — the creator and 
 the inter pi-etcr both in one. 
 
 Inexhaustible as the nightingale, sub- 
 lime as the heaven beneath which it 
 sings, various and leaf\' as the forest 
 wliich it fills witli its magic melodies, 
 Schmucke surpassed himself and plunged 
 tlie old musician, who was listening to 
 him, into the ecstasj^ which Raphael has 
 depicted in that painting which is one of 
 the sights of Bologna. But this musi- 
 cal poem was interrupted "by a frightful 
 ringing of bells. The house-maid of the 
 
 first-floor lodgers came up to entreat 
 Schmucke to put a stop to that witches' 
 Sabbath. Madame, Monsieur and Made- 
 moiselle Chapoulot were all awake and 
 could not get to sleep again ; and they 
 begged to say that the day was quite 
 long Enough for the rehearsal of theat- 
 rical music, and that in a house situated in 
 theMarais it was not proper to sirMwi upon 
 the piano at night. As a matter of fact, 
 it was about three o'clock in the morning. 
 
 At half-past three the previsions of 
 Pons — who might well have been sup- 
 posed to have overheard the conference 
 between Fraisier and Dame Cibot— were 
 realized by the entrance of the portress. 
 The patient directed at Schmucke a 
 glance of intelligence which meant : 
 "Did I not guess correctly ?" and forth- 
 with assumed the position of one who is 
 buried in the profoundcst slumber. 
 
 So firm was Dame Cibot's belief in the 
 simplicity of Schmucke (and here by the 
 way we may note tliat this artlessness is 
 one of the greatest resources, and the 
 cause of the success of the plots of chil- 
 dren) that that estimable creature could 
 not possibly suspect his good faith, when 
 he approached her, and said, with an air 
 in which sorrow was blended with elation : 
 
 "He has had a terriple night; he has 
 been tevilishly egzited. I was opliged to 
 blay in order to galm him, and de lotchers 
 on de first-floor zent up to dell me to be 
 guiet. It is frightful ; for de life of my 
 friend was at stake. I am zo dired from 
 having blay ed all night long dat I am dead 
 beat dis morning." 
 
 " My poor Cibot, too, is very bad ; an- 
 other such day as yesterday and there will 
 be no hopes of him. But what can one do ? 
 God's will be done ! " 
 
 "You are sudge an honest greature, 
 and have sudge a goot heart, dat if Fader 
 Zibod dies I will dague you to lifl" with 
 me," said the artful Schmucke. 
 
 When the artless and upright begin to 
 dissemble they are truly formidable — as 
 formidable as children whose snares are 
 laid with all the skill which savages dis- 
 play. 
 
 " Well, get you to bed now, my little 
 man," said Dame Cibot. "Your n'eyes
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 179 
 
 are that weary that they are as big as my 
 
 fist. Ah ! there is but one thing' as could 
 console me for the loss of Citaot, and that 
 would be the thought that I should n'end 
 my days with a worthy man like you. 
 Don't you put yourself about, I'll lead 
 that Madame Chapoulot a prettj' dance. 
 Is it for a retired milliner to give herself 
 such airs and graces ? " 
 
 Thereupon Schmucke went and took up 
 the post of observation which he liad pre- 
 pared for himself. Dame Cibot had left 
 the door ajar, and Fraisier glided in and 
 gently closed it so soon as Schmucke had 
 shut himself in his own room. The ad- 
 vocate was provided with a candle and a 
 piece of very fine brass wire, wherewith 
 to unseal the will. Dame Cibot experi- 
 enced very little difficulty in removing the 
 kej' that was tied in the handkerchief 
 which lay beneath Pons's pillow ; inas- 
 much as the old musician had designedly' 
 allowed the handkerchief to peep from 
 beneath the bolster, and aided Dame 
 Cibot's maneuvers by h'ing with his head 
 over the edge of the bedstead and in a 
 position that rendered it a ver^' simple 
 matter to capture the handkerchief. Hav- 
 ing secured the key, Dame Cibot marched 
 straight to the writing-desk, opened it as 
 noiselessly as possible, discovered the 
 spring of the secret drawer, and rushed 
 into the salon, with the will in her hand. 
 This circumstance excited Pons's curi- 
 osity to the very highest degree. As for 
 Schmucke, he trembled from head to foot 
 as if he had been committing some crime. 
 
 " Go back to your post," said Fraisier, 
 as he took the will from Dame Cibot ; 
 '• for if he should wake he ought to find 
 you there." 
 
 When Fraisier (with an adroitness 
 which showed that this was not his 
 maiden effort of this kind) had unsealed 
 the envelope, he read, with profound 
 astonishment, the following singular 
 document : 
 
 " This is my will. 
 
 "This fifteenth day of April, one thou- 
 sand eight hundred and forty-five, being 
 of sound mind, as this testament drawn 
 up with the assistance of Monsieur Trog- 
 
 non, notary-, will prove, I, feeling that I 
 must shortly succumb to the illness from 
 which I have been suffering since the 
 commencement of the mouth of February 
 last, have thought fit, inasmuch as I de- 
 sire to dispose of my goods and chattels, 
 to make my last will as follows. I have 
 frequently been struck by the evils to 
 which the masterpieces of the painter 
 are exposed— evils which frequently in- 
 volve the total destruction of those mas- 
 terpieces. I have been seized with a 
 feeling of pity for the beautiful pictures 
 which are doomed to travel perpetually 
 from clime to clime without ever finding 
 a home in one certain spot, to which 
 those who admire them may repair to 
 view them. It has always been mj' 
 opinion that the reallj' immortal pages 
 of the great masters ought to be na- 
 tional propertj^ and should be continu- 
 ally offered to the eyes of men, just as 
 light (which is God's masterpiece) is 
 granted to all his childi'en. 
 
 " Now, inasmuch as I have spent my 
 life in choosing and gathering together 
 sundry pictures, which are the glorious 
 productions of the greatest masters ; since 
 these pictures are perfect, and have never 
 been either repainted or retouched, I have 
 dwelt with pain upon the tliought, that, 
 after having been the delight of nij- ex- 
 istence, they are doomed to be sold by 
 auction, and to be scattered, some in En- 
 gland, some in Russia — dispersed hither 
 and thitlier, as they were before they 
 were brought together by me. I have 
 therefore determined to save them from 
 these misfortunes, them and the magnifi- 
 cent frames in which they are inclosed, 
 and which are all of them the handiwork 
 of cunning workmen. 
 
 "Actuated, therefore, by these mo- 
 tives, I give and bequeath to the king 
 the pictures comprised in my collection 
 as a contribution to the museum at the 
 Louvre, charged — if the bequest be ac- 
 cepted — with the payment of an annu- 
 ity of two thousand four hundred francs 
 to my friend Monsieur Schmucke. If 
 the king, as trustee of the uuisenm, dis- 
 claims the legacy burdened with this 
 cliarge, then the said pictures shall form
 
 ISO 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 part of the bequest which I herebj' make 
 to my friend Schmucke, of all the prop- 
 erty' of wliieh I am possessed on condition 
 that he shall make over the 'Monkey's 
 Head ' by Goya, to my cousin. President 
 Camusot, and the flower picture by Abra- 
 ham Mignon, being' a studj' of tulips, to 
 Monsieur Trognon, notary, whom I here- 
 hx appoint executor of this my testament, 
 and upon further condition, that he pays 
 to Madame Cibot, who has been my 
 housekeeper for ten years, an annuitj' of 
 two lumdred francs. Lastly, my friend 
 Schmucke will make over the ' Descent 
 from the Cross,' by Rubens, being the 
 sketch of his celebrated picture at Ant- 
 werp, to mj' parish church for the orna- 
 mentation of one of its chapels, as a 
 token of gratitude for the kindness of 
 Monsieur Duplanty the curate, to whom 
 I am beholden for the power of dying a 
 Christian and a Catholic," etc., etc. 
 
 '"Tis absolute ruin ! " exclaimed Frai- 
 sier to himself ; " the ruin of all my hopes. 
 Ah ! I begin to believe all that Madame 
 Camusot told me about the malignity of 
 this old artist ! "' 
 
 " Well ? " said Dame Cibot, coming in. 
 
 " Your gentleman is a monster ; he has 
 given everything to the museum, to the 
 State. Now, one cannot bring an action 
 against the State ! The will cannot be 
 set aside. We are robbed, ruined, plun- 
 dered, murdered ! " 
 
 "What has he given me ? " 
 
 "An annuity of two hundred francs." 
 
 " That's a fine tale, indeed ! Why, he's 
 no end of a scamp ! " 
 
 " Go and see if there's an end of him," 
 said Fraisier. " I am about to i-eplace 
 the will of your scamp in its envelope." 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 WHEREIN DAME SAUVAGE REAPPEARS. 
 
 The moment that Madame Cibot's back 
 was turned, Fraisier clapped the will into 
 his pocket and supplied its place in the 
 envelope with a sheet of blank paper. 
 
 He then resealed the envelope so skill- 
 fully that he triumphantly exhibited the 
 seal to Madame Cibot on her return and 
 asked her whether she could detect the 
 slightest trace of the operation. Dame 
 Cibot took the envelope, fingered it, and 
 feeling that it was full, heaved a pro- 
 found sigh. She had fondly hoped that 
 Fraisier would himself have burned the 
 fatal document. 
 
 " Well, and what is to be done now, my 
 dear Monsieur Fraisier? " she inquired. 
 
 " Oh ! that is' your concern ! / am not 
 the heir; but if I had the least claim to 
 all that," continued he, pointing to the 
 collection, " I know full well what I should 
 do." 
 
 " That's precisely what I'm a-asking of 
 you," said Dame Cibot, stupidly. 
 
 "There's a fire in the grate," said 
 Fraisier, as he rose to depart. 
 
 "Well, when all's said and done, no 
 one but you and me'U know anything 
 about the matter ! " said Dame Cibot. 
 
 " It can never be proved that there 
 was any will in existence," replied the 
 man of law. 
 
 " And how about j'ou ? " 
 
 " Me ? — if Monsieur Pons dies intestate, 
 I guarantee you a hundred thousand 
 francs." 
 
 "Ah, yes, of course," .said she; "people 
 promise you heaps of gold, and wlicn 
 they've got what they want they hagg-le 
 with you just as — " 
 
 She stopped short, and it was high 
 time, for she was just on the point of 
 mentioning Elie Magus to Fraisier. 
 
 "Well, I'm off," said Fraisier. "In 
 your interests it won't do for me to be 
 seen in these rooms ; but we will meet 
 below in the lodge." 
 
 WJ*6n she had closed the outer door, 
 Dame Cibot returned with the envelope 
 in her hand, fully intending to throw it 
 into the fire, but when .she had reached 
 the bedroom and was making for the fire- 
 place, she felt both her arms suddenly pin- 
 ioned, and found herself with Pons on one 
 side of her and Schmucke on the other. 
 The friends had planted themselves on 
 either side of the door, with their backs 
 against the partition.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 181 
 
 " Oh ! " screamed Dame Cibot, and fell 
 upon the floor In hideous convulsions — 
 real or feigned ; the truth was never 
 known. 
 
 This spectacle produced so strong an 
 impression upon Pons, that he was seized 
 with a mortal faintness ; and Schraucke, 
 leaving- Dame Cibot where she lay, made 
 haste to get Pons into bed again. The 
 two friends trembled like men who in the 
 execution of some painful project have 
 overtaxed their strength. When Pons 
 was in bed and Schmucke had partially 
 regained his equanimity, his attention 
 was attracted by the sound of some one 
 sobbing; and lo, Dame Cibot, on her 
 knees, was weeping bitterly and stretch- 
 ing out her liands to the two friends, 
 was addressing entreaties to them in 
 most expressive dumb show. 
 
 " It's only idle curiosity ! dear Mon- 
 sieur Pons," said she, so soon as she saw 
 that the attention of the two friends was 
 directed toward her; "the besetting sin 
 of women, you know ! But I found I 
 couldn't read j-our will, and I was a-go- 
 ing to replace it — " 
 
 "Away wid you!" said Schmucke, 
 starting to his feet, and towering with 
 his towering indignation, "you are ein 
 monzder ! you have tried to gill my goot 
 Bons. He is right ! you are worze dan a 
 monzder ; you are accurzed ! " 
 
 When Dame Cibot perceived the horror 
 depicted on the face of the candid German, 
 she rose from her knees, proud as Tar- 
 tuffe, darted at Schmucke a glance that 
 made him tremble, and left the room, 
 taking with her, concealed in the folds of 
 her dress, a beautiful little picture by 
 Metzu, which Elie Magus had greatly 
 admired, terming it "a diamond." In 
 the lodge Dame Cibot found Fraisier, who 
 was waiting for her in the hope that she 
 would have burned the envelope and the 
 blank sheet of paper which he had substi- 
 tuted for the will. Great was his aston- 
 ishment to see his client terror-stricken, 
 and, to all appearances, entirely upset. 
 
 " What has happened ? " said he. 
 
 "What has happened, dear Monsieur 
 Fraisier ?— Why, just this has happened ; 
 that under pretense of giving me sound 
 
 advice, and acting as my guide, you have 
 caused me to lose all cliance of getting 
 my n"annuity and the confid.'nce of these 
 gentlemen — " 
 
 And she launched forth upon one of 
 those torrents of woi-ds in which she was 
 unrivaled. 
 
 " Don't waste your breath in talking 
 nonsense," said Fraisier dryly, cutting 
 his client short. "The facts I the facts ! 
 and quickly." 
 
 "Well then, this was what happened." 
 And she told him exactly what had oc- 
 curred. 
 
 "I haven't caused you to lose any- 
 thing," replied Fraisier. "These two gen- 
 tlemen must have had some doubts about 
 your honesty ; else they would not have 
 laid this trap for j'ou ; they were waiting 
 for and watching you ! You arc keeping 
 something back from me," added the 
 man of law, casting a tiger glance at 
 the portress. 
 
 " Me keep anything back from j'ou I 
 After aU as you and me have done to-, 
 gether ! " 
 
 "But, my darling, /have done nothing 
 that is reprehensible," said Fraisier, thus 
 manifesting his intention to deny his 
 nocturnal visit to Pons's rooms. 
 
 Dame Cibot felt as if the roots of her 
 hair were so many red-hot wires while the 
 rest of her body was as cold as ice. 
 
 "What? " exclaimed she, dumfounded. 
 
 "Here is the criminal process, ready to 
 hand ! You have rendered 3'ourself liable 
 to be prosecuted for stealing a will," re- 
 plied Fraisier, coolly. 
 
 Dame Cibot met this assertion with a 
 gesture of horror. 
 
 "Take courage," pursued Fraisier; 
 " you have nie for your counsel. My 
 only object was to show you how easy 
 it is, in one way or another, to expose 
 yourself to what I told you of in our Ih^t 
 interview. Come now, what have you 
 done to this German, who is so unsuspect- 
 ing, to lead him to secrete himself in the 
 room without your knowledge ? " 
 
 " Nothing at all. It all comes of what 
 happened the other day when I kept on 
 telling Monsieur Pons that he had seen 
 double. Ever since that day these gentle-
 
 182 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 men have changed their manner to me 
 n'altogether ; so that you are the cause 
 of all my misfortunes ; for if I had lost 
 my hold upon Monsieur Pons, I was, at 
 least, sure of the German, for he talked 
 about niarrying me, or of taking me to 
 live with him, which it's all one and the 
 sime thing." 
 
 This explanation was so plausible that 
 Fraisier was obliged to rest contented 
 with it. 
 
 "Cheer up," he resumed; "I have 
 promised you a fortune, and I will keep 
 my word. Up to 'this moment, every- 
 thing connected with this affair was prob- 
 lematical ; now it is as good as bank- 
 notes ; you will have an annuity of twelve 
 hundred francs, at least. But you must 
 obey my orders, my dear Madame Cibot, 
 and execute them with intelligence." 
 
 " I will, dear Monsieur Fraisier," said 
 the portress with all the suppleness of 
 • servility. She was completely cowed. 
 
 "Well! good-by then," said Fraisier, 
 quitting the lodge, and carrying off the 
 dangerous will in his pocket. 
 
 He returned home in great exultation, 
 for the will was a most formidable weapon 
 in his hands. 
 
 " I shall now have an excellent guar- 
 antee for the good faith of Madame de 
 Marville," thought he. "If she should 
 take it into her head to break her prom- 
 ise, she would lose the succession." 
 
 At early dawn, Remonencq, having 
 opened his shop and left it to the care of his 
 sister, went, as he had been in the habit 
 of doing for some days past, to see how 
 his good friend Cibot was faring. He 
 found the portress examining the picture 
 by Metzu. She was asking herself how 
 a little bit of painted wood could possibly 
 be worth so much money. 
 
 " Ah ! ah ! " said Remonencq, looking 
 over Madame Cibot's shoulder, " that's 
 the only picture which Monsieur Magus 
 was sorry at not having ; he said that if 
 he owned that little thing, nothing would 
 be wanting to complete his happiness." 
 
 "What would he give for it? " asked 
 Dame Cibot. 
 
 " Now, if you promise to marry me 
 within a year of j'our widowhood," re- 
 
 plied Remonencq, " I will undertake to 
 get twenty thousand francs for it from 
 Elie Magus, and, if you don't marry me, 
 you will never be able to sell the picture 
 for more than a thousand francs." 
 
 " And why ? " 
 
 " Because you would be obliged to give 
 a receipt as the owner of the picture, and 
 that would involve you in a lawsuit with 
 the heirs. If you were my wife, I should 
 sell it myself to Monsieur Magus, and all 
 that is required of a dealer is an entry in 
 his purchase-book, and I shall enter the 
 picture as sold to me by Monsieur 
 Schmucke. Come now, let me put the 
 bit of wood in my shop — if your husband 
 should die, you might get into trouble 
 about it, whereas no one would think it 
 odd for me to have a picture in my place. 
 You know me w^ell enough to trust me ; 
 besides, if you wish it, I will give you a 
 receipt." 
 
 Caught as she was, in this act of crimi- 
 nality, the avaricious porl-ress closed with 
 Remonencq's offer, and thus forever bound 
 herself to him. 
 
 "You are quite right," said she, lock- 
 ing up the picture in her chest of drawers. 
 " Bring me your receipt." 
 
 "Neighbor," said the broker, in an 
 undertone, leading the portress to the 
 step of the gatewaj^, "I can plainly see 
 that we shall not save the life of our poor 
 friend Cibot ; Dr. Poulain gave no hopes of 
 him yesterday evening, and said that he 
 would not last out the daj'. It's very sad, 
 no doubt; but after all you were not in 
 your proper place here. Your place is 
 in a fme shop in the Boulevard des Capu- 
 cines. Are you aware that I have made 
 nearly a hundred thousand francs in the 
 last ten years, and if j'ou have an equal 
 amount one of these days, I undertake to 
 make a fine fortune for you — if you are 
 my wife. You would be a lady, well 
 waited on by my sister, who would look 
 after the housekeeping, and — " 
 
 Here the broker was intemipted b^tthe 
 heartrending groans of the little tailor, 
 who was just beginning to feel the agonies 
 of death. 
 
 " Go along with j'ou," said Dame Cibot; 
 " 3'ou n'are a monster, to talk to rac about
 
 COUSIN POXS. 
 
 183 
 
 such things, while my poor husband is 
 dying- in such dreadful pain — " 
 
 "Ah, it's because I love you to distrac- 
 tion, and would do an^'thing to get you." 
 
 '• If you loved me, you wouldn't say 
 anji:hing to me just now," replied she. 
 
 And Remonencq returned to his shop, 
 sure that Dame Cibot would be his wife. 
 
 At about ten o'clock there was a sort 
 of tumult at the door of the house ; for 
 the sacraments were being administered 
 to Cibot. All the friends of the little 
 tailor, the porters and portresses of the 
 Rue de Normandie and of the adjacent 
 streets, encumbered the lodge, the en- 
 trance gateway, and the street front of 
 the house. Under these circumstances the 
 successive arrivals of M. Leopold Hanne- 
 quin, accompanied by one of his brother 
 notaries, and of Schwab and Brunner, at- 
 tracted no attention. They reached Pons's 
 apartments unobserved by Madame Cibot; 
 for it was to the portress of the adjoining 
 house that the notary applied for informa- 
 tion as to which story Pons occupied, she 
 it was who directed him to the second- 
 floor. As to Schwab's companion, Brun- 
 ner, he had already- paid a visit to the Pons 
 Museum ; he therefore passed on without 
 making any inquiries, and showed the way 
 to his partner Schwab. 
 
 Pons now formally revoked the will 
 which he had made on the previous even- 
 ing, and appointed Schmucke his univer- 
 sal legatee. As soon as the ceremony was 
 over and Pons had expressed his gratitude 
 to Schwab and Brunner, and earnestly' 
 commended the interests of Schmucke ^o 
 Monsieur Leopold Hannequin, the old 
 musician sunk into a state of utter pros- 
 tration — the result of the energy he had 
 exerted during the night-scene with 
 Dame Cibot, and in this the final act of 
 the drama of social life. So intense was 
 his exhaustion that Schmucke begged 
 Schwab to go and inform the Abbe Du- 
 planty ; for the old German did not like 
 to quit the bedside of his dying friend, 
 and Pons was asking that the sacraments 
 might be administered to him. 
 
 Dame Cibot, meanwhile, who had been 
 excluded from the apartments of the two 
 friends, was seated at the foot of her 
 
 husband's bed, and had wholly neglected 
 to prepare Schmucke"s brealcfast. But 
 the events of the morning, and the spec- 
 tacle of Pons's calm dissolution— for the 
 old musician was facing death like a hero 
 —had so wrung the heart of Schmucke 
 that he felt no sensation of hunger. To- 
 ward two o'clock, however, the portress, 
 having seen nothing of the old German, 
 was induced by curiosity quite as much 
 as by concern on Schmucke's account, to 
 ask Remonencq's sister to go and see 
 whether the old German wanted any- 
 thing. Just at that very moment the 
 Abbe Duplanty (having heard the poor 
 mu.sician's last confession) was adminis- 
 tering to him the rite of extreme unction; 
 so that the ceremony was disturbed by 
 Mademoiselle Remonencq's repeated ring- 
 ing. Now, seeing that Pons, in his dread 
 of being robbed, had prevailed upon 
 Schmucke to swear that he would allow- 
 no one to enter the apartments, the old 
 German took no heed of Mademoiselle 
 Remonencq's reiterated applications to 
 the bell-handle ; whereupon that lady 
 went downstairs in great alarm, and 
 told Dame Cibot that Schmucke had. 
 not opened the door to her. 
 • This circumstance (which was suffi- 
 ciently striking) did not escape the ob- 
 servation of Fraisier, who, ever since 
 brealcfast-time had been stationed in the 
 porter's lodge, where he had held an un- 
 broken conference with his friend. Dr. 
 Poulain. Schmucke — so thought the man 
 of law — Schmucke (to whom a death-bed 
 was a noveltj') was on the point of being 
 subjected to all the inconveniences which 
 surround the denizen of Paris, who is 
 suddenh"^ brought face to face with death 
 — inconveniences which are greatly en- 
 hanced by the want of aid and the 
 absence of an agent. It was at this 
 crisis then, that the idea of being himself 
 the mainspring of all Schmucke's move- 
 ments occurred to' Fraisier, who knew 
 full well that, under such circumstances, 
 relatives who are genuinely distressed 
 lose their heads entirely. We will now 
 relate how the two friends. Dr. Poulain 
 and Fraisier, set to work to achieve the 
 desired result.
 
 184 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 The beadle of Saint Francis's, one Can- 
 tinel by name, who had formerly been a 
 dealor in g-lass, lived in the Rue d'Or- 
 leans, in the house adjoining that in 
 which Dr. Poulain's apartments were 
 situated. Now, it so happened that Ma- 
 dame Cantinet, oni; of the pew-openers 
 at Saint Francis's, had been attended 
 by Dr. Poulain gratuitously. She con- 
 sequently felt very much indebted to 
 him, and had often impai-ted to him the 
 whole story of her misfortunes. The Pair 
 of Nut-Crackers who, on Sundays and 
 saints' days, regularly attended the ser- 
 vices at Saint Francis's, were on excellent 
 terms with the beadle, the Swiss, the dis- 
 penser of holy water ; in short, with all 
 the members of that ecclesiastical militia 
 which, in Paris, is dubbed with the title 
 of le bas clerge — a class of persons to 
 whom the faithful are in the habit of pre- 
 sent ing small gratuities when years have 
 ripened the acquaintanceship. Schmucke, 
 accord ingly, was as well known to Madame 
 Cantinet as Madame Cantinet was to him. 
 
 Now, in Madame Cantinet's side there 
 were two thorns, which enabled Fraisier 
 to use her as a blind and passive tool. 
 Cantinet junior was stage-struck : turn- 
 ing his back upon the ranks of the Church 
 Militant and the beadlehood that was 
 probably in store for him, he had en- 
 rolled liimself among the ballet-dancers 
 at tlie Cirque-Olympique and was leading 
 a devil-may-care existence that wellnigh 
 broke his mother's heart. Her purse too 
 had often been emptied b^' his forced 
 loans. Cantinet senior, her husband, 
 was the slave of two vices — drunkenness 
 and indolence — and had thereby been 
 coinpc'lled to give up his business. But 
 the wretch, instead of learning wisdom 
 from misfortune had, in the exercise of 
 his functions as beadle, found food for 
 his favorite foibles. He never did anj' 
 work, but drank so hard with the coach- 
 men who drove the wedding-parties to the 
 church, with the undertaker's men, and 
 with the parson's pensioners, that his 
 face was scarlet even at noon. 
 
 Thus Madame Cantinet, after having 
 (as she said) brought her husband a por- 
 tion amounting to twelve thousand francs, 
 
 found herself doomed to an old age of pen- 
 ury. The story of her wrongs had been 
 dinned into the ears of Dr. Poulain a hun- 
 dred times ; and it occurred to him that 
 Madame Cantinet might be serviceable in 
 facilitating the introduction of Madame 
 Sauvage as cook and char-woman into 
 the estabUshment of Pons und Schmucke. 
 To introduce Madame Sauvage point- 
 blank was out of the question, for the 
 mistrust of the Pair of Nut-Crackers had 
 become quite absolute ; that was made 
 abundantlj' clear to Fraisier by the re- 
 fusal to open the door to Mademoiselle 
 Remonencq. But that the pious musi- 
 cians would accept, without the slightest 
 hesitation, the services of any person 
 recommended bj' the Abbe Duplantj', 
 seemed equally clear to Fraisier and 
 Poulain. According to their plan, Ma- 
 dame Cantinet was to be accompanied by 
 Madame Sauvage; and, once introduced 
 into the citadel, Fraisier's housekeeper 
 would be as efficient as Fraisier himself. 
 
 When the Abbe Duplantj- had reached 
 the entrance gateway on his way out, he 
 was dela^-ed for a moment b.y the crowd 
 of Cibot's friends who had gathered there 
 to show the interest the^' felt in the old- 
 est and most respected concierge of the 
 Quarter. 
 
 Dr. Poulain bowed to the abbe, and, 
 taking him aside, said to him : 
 
 " I am just going to paj' a visit to poor 
 Monsieur Pons ; he may pull through yet, 
 if we can persuade him to submit to an 
 operation for the extraction of the stones 
 \thich have formed in the gall-bladder. 
 They are palpable to the touch, and give 
 rise to an irritation wliich must terminate 
 fatally, unless the cause is removed; but 
 it is perhaps not yet too late to attempt 
 the operation. You ought to use your 
 influence over your penitent to induce him 
 to undergo the operation. I will answer 
 for his recovery, unless some unfavorable 
 accident should supervene." 
 
 " As soon as I have taken the holy pyx 
 back to the church, I will return," said the 
 Abbe Duplanty; "for Monsieur Schmucke's 
 state of mind is such that he is in need of 
 religious consolation." 
 
 " I have just learned that he is thrown
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 18J 
 
 upon his own resources," said Dr. Poulain. 
 " The worthy German had a httle alter- 
 cation with Madame Cibot this morning' ; 
 but since she has acted as the housekeeper 
 of these two gentlemen for ten years, the 
 misunderstanding- will, no doubt, be mere- 
 ly temporary ; still, in the meantime, he 
 must not be left to his own devices, in the 
 position which he will be called upon to 
 face. To look after . him is a work of 
 charity. I say, Cantinet," cried the doc- 
 tor, summoning the beadle, "askj'our wife 
 whether she is willing to nurse Monsieur 
 Pons, and act as Monsieur Schmucke's 
 housekeeper for a few days, in the place 
 of Madanae Cibot — who, hy the way, even 
 if this little quarrel had not arisen, would 
 still have been oblig-ed to find a substi- 
 tute. Madame Cantinet is an honest 
 woman," added the doctor, addressing' 
 the Abbe Duplanty. 
 
 "Oh, 3'ou couldn't make a better 
 choice," replied the worthy priest; "for 
 Madame Cantinet enjoys the confidence 
 of the authorities as collector of the pew- 
 rents." 
 
 A few minutes later Doctor Poulain, 
 seated at the bedside of Pons, was watch- 
 ing his expiring agonies. Schmucke be- 
 sought his friend to allow the operation 
 to be performed. But he besought in 
 vain. The only replies vouchsafed by the 
 old musician to the supplications of the 
 poor bi'oken-hearted German were a shake 
 of the head, and now and then a gesture 
 of impatience. Finally', collecting all his 
 strength, the dying man cast a terrible 
 glance at Schniucke, and exclaimed : 
 '•■ Surelj' you might let me die in peace ! " 
 
 This look, this language, caused poor 
 Schmucke a pang that almost killed him ; 
 but taking Pons's hand, he gently kissed 
 it, and retaining it between his own hands, 
 endeavored once again to communicate 
 his vital heat to the body of his friend. 
 Just at that moment Dr. Poulain, hearing 
 the bell ring, went to the door and ad- 
 mitted the Abbe Duplanty. 
 
 " Our poor invalid is just entering upon 
 his death-struggle. A few hours heuce 
 he will be dead ; you will, no doubt, send 
 a priest to watch by the body to-night. 
 But it is high time to call in Madame 
 
 Cantinet and a char-woman to help Mon- 
 sieur Schmucke; he is utterly incapable 
 of giving a single thought to any sub- 
 ject ; I tremble for his reason, and there 
 is some valuable property here which 
 ought to be in the custody of honest 
 folks." 
 
 The Abbe Duplanty, good, easy, unsus- 
 pecting priest, was struck by the justice 
 of Dr. Poulain 's observations. He enter- 
 tained, moreover, a vei-y favorable opinion 
 of thedoctor of the district. Accordingly, 
 he went to the threshold of the chamber 
 of death, and made a sign for Schmucke 
 to come and speak to him. Schmucke 
 could not make up his mind to resign 
 Pons's hand, which was contracting and 
 clutching the hand of Schmucke, as if the 
 dying man were tumbhng over a preci- 
 pice, and were ready to catch at any- 
 thing that would arrest his fall. But 
 the dying, as every one is aware, are 
 subject to an hallucination which iiupels 
 them — like persons trying to rescue their 
 most precious property' from the flames 
 of a conflagration — to fasten on every- 
 thing that comes in their wa^'. Thus it 
 came to pass that Pons released the hand 
 of Schmucke, and seizing the bedclothes, 
 gathered them about his body with a 
 hurried movement that was instinct with 
 avarice. 
 
 " What will you do when you are left 
 alone with your dead friend ? " asked the 
 worthy clergyman, when Schmucke, thus 
 released, went to hear what he had to 
 say. "You have no Madame Cibot 
 now — " 
 
 " She is a monzder who has murdered 
 Bons ! " said Schmucke. 
 
 " But you must have some one by your 
 side," replied Dr. Poulain, " for some one 
 must sit up with the body to-night." 
 
 "J will zit up; I will bray to Got! " 
 replied the guileless German. 
 
 " But you must eat ! — who is there to 
 do your cooking for you now ? " observed 
 the doctor, 
 
 " Grief takes away my abbedide ! " re- 
 plied Schmucke, artlessly. 
 
 "But," said Poulain, "you will have 
 to go, accompanied by witnesses, and 
 report the death; the body must be
 
 186 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 stripped and wrapped in a shroud ; the 
 • funeral must be ordered ; and food pre- 
 pared for the nurse who looks after the 
 body and the priest who sits up with it. 
 Can you do all that yourself? In the 
 capital of the civilized world, people do 
 not die like dogs ! " 
 
 Schmucke's ej'es grew big with fright. 
 He was seized with a brief access of in- 
 sanity. 
 
 "But Bons will not die — I will zave 
 him ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 " You cannot hold out long without 
 getting a little sleep, and then who is to 
 take your place ? for Monsieur Pons must 
 be attended to. There must be some one 
 to give him his draughts, and to prepare 
 his medicine — " 
 
 " Ah ! dat is true," said the German. 
 
 "Well then," resumed the Abbe Du- 
 plantj', " I think of sending Madame Can- 
 tinet to you ; she is a worthy, honest 
 wom^n — " 
 
 So completely was Schmucke bewildered 
 by the enumeration of his social duties to 
 his dead friend, that he could have wished 
 to die with Pons. 
 
 " He's a mere child ! " remarked Pou- 
 lain to the Abbe Duplanty. 
 
 " A ghild ! " echoed Sclimucke, me- 
 chanically. 
 
 "Well," said the curate, "I will go 
 and speak to Madame Cantinet and send 
 her to you." 
 
 "You needn't put yourself to that 
 trouble," said the doctor; "she lives 
 close by me, and I am going home." 
 
 Death is like an invisible assassin, with 
 whom the dying carry on a combat. In 
 the death-throes they receive their final 
 wounds, and in the effort to retuim those 
 wounds they struggle. Pons liad now 
 reached this final stage ; he began to 
 utter gi'oans, interspersed with shrieks ; 
 whereupon Schmucke, the Abbe Duplanty 
 and Poulain hastened to the bedside of 
 the dying man. All at once Pons re- 
 ceived in the center of vitaUty that final 
 blow which severs the bonds that unite 
 the body to the soul ; regained, for a few 
 moments the perfect calm which ensues 
 when the death-struggle is over, and, re- 
 stored to himself with all the serenity 
 
 of death upon his countenance, glanced 
 almost ga\'ly at those who stood around 
 him. 
 
 "Ah ! doctor, I have had a hard time 
 of it, but you were right, I am better 
 now. Thanks, my good abbe ; I was 
 asking myself where Schmucke was.J" 
 
 " Schmucke has eaten nothing since 
 four o'clock yesterday afternoon ; you 
 had no one to wait upon you, and it 
 would be dangerous to call Madame 
 Cibot in again — " 
 
 " She is capable of anj^ atrocity ! " said 
 Pons, who made no attempt to disguise 
 the horror with which the mere mention 
 of Dame Cibot's name inspired him. 
 "You are right; Schmucke requires 
 the assistance of some one who is thor- 
 oughly trustworthy." 
 
 Hereupon Poulain interposed : "' The 
 Abbe Duplanty and I have laid our 
 heads together, and — " 
 
 " Oh ! thank you," said Pons. " I had 
 not thought about the matter." 
 
 " — And the abbe suggested the name 
 of Madame Cantinet — " 
 
 "Oh! the pew-opener!" cried Pons. 
 "Yes, she is an excellent creature." 
 
 " She has no love for Madame Cibot," 
 resumed the doctor, " and she will take 
 good care of Monsieur Schmucke — " 
 
 " Send her to me, dear Monsieur Du- 
 planty — her and her husband; then I 
 shall feel easy. She won't steal any- 
 thing that is here." 
 
 Schmucke had now repossessed himself 
 of Pons's hand and was gleefuUj^ clasping 
 it. He believed that his friend was re- 
 stored to health. 
 
 "Let us be off. Monsieur I'Abbe," 
 said the doctor; "I will send Madame 
 Cantinet here forthwith; I understand 
 these matters ; 'tis very likely that she 
 will not find Monsieur Pons alive." 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 DEATH IN ITS STERN REALITY. 
 
 While the Abbe Duplantj- was engaged 
 in prevailing on the dj'ing man to engage
 
 cousix pojsrs. 
 
 187 
 
 Madame Cantinet in the capacity of 
 nurse, Fraisier had summoned the pew- 
 opener to his ofELce, and was subjecting 
 her to his corrupting- conversation and to 
 the influence of his pettifogging artifices 
 — an influence not easily resisted. Accord- 
 ingly, Madame Cantinet, a lean, bilious- 
 looking woman with big teeth and pallid 
 lips, a woman who, in common with many 
 women in the lower ranks of life, had 
 been rendered stupid by misfortune, and 
 had come to such a pass that even the 
 smallest daily gains seemed affluence to 
 her, was easily persuaded to introduce 
 Madame Sauvage as charwoman. Frai- 
 sier's housekeeper had already received 
 the word of command ; and had promised 
 to weave a net-work of iron about the two 
 musicians, and to watch them as a spider 
 watches a fly that h^ been caught in the 
 spider's web. A licensed tobacco -shop 
 was to be Madame Snuvage's reward. 
 It was thus that Fraisier pui-posed to 
 himself to get rid of his pretended nurse, 
 and in her person to place a spy and a 
 policeman at Madame Cantinet's elbow. 
 As there was a servant's room and a 
 small kitchen attached to the suite of 
 apartments occupied by the two friends. 
 Dame Sauvage would be able to find 
 sleeping accommodation, and to do such 
 cooking as Schmucke might require. 
 
 Pons had just drawn his last breath 
 when the two women arrived, escorted by 
 Dr. Poulain. The German was still clasp- 
 ing between his hands the hand of his 
 departed friend, fi'om which the warmth 
 of life was gradually receding. He mo- 
 tioned to Madame Cantinet to be silent ; 
 but the martial aspect of Madame Sau- 
 vage threw him so entirely off his guard 
 that he suffered a gesture— such as that 
 masculine lady was thoroughly familiar- 
 ized with — to escape hira. 
 
 "This lady," said Madame Cantinet, 
 •' is a person recommended by Monsieur 
 Duplanty ; she has been cook to a bishop, 
 and is honesty itself ; she will look after 
 the cookery." 
 
 "Oh, you may speak up now," cried 
 the burly and asthmatic Madame Sauv- 
 age ; "the poor gentleman is dead ! he 
 has just gone ! " 
 
 At these words Schmucke uttered a 
 piercing shriek ; he could feel the ice-cold 
 hand of Pons growing rigid, and he kept 
 his eyes fixed upon those of Pons, the ex- 
 pression of which would soon have driven 
 him mad but for the interposition of Ma- 
 dame Sauvage, who, accustomed, as she 
 doubtlessly was, to scenes of this descrip- 
 tion, approached the bed, holding in her 
 hand a looking-glass which she placed 
 before the dead man's lips. When she 
 saw that no breath escaped from them to 
 dim the surface of the mirror, she snatched 
 Schmucke's hand away from that of the 
 corpse, exclaiming, as slie did so : 
 
 '■ Let it go, monsieur, can't j'ou ? or 
 j'ou won't be able to get your hand away 
 at all. You don't know how stiff the 
 bones will grow ! Dead folks grow cold 
 quickh', I can tell j'ou. If one don't lay 
 out the body while it is still warm one, 
 has to break the limbs later on — " To 
 close the eyes, then, of the poor dead musi- 
 cian, fell to the lot of this terrible woman, 
 who forthwith proceeded, as is the wont 
 of those who follow the calling of sick- 
 nurse — a calling to which she had devoted 
 herself for the last ten years — to undress 
 Pons and to lay him out at full length, 
 placing the arms and hands close to the 
 'sides of the corpse, and drawing the bed- 
 clothes over its face. All this was done 
 with the cool and practiced skill of a shop- 
 man making up a parcel of goods. 
 
 "I want a sheet to wrap him in; where 
 is one to be found?" she inquired of 
 Schmucke, who was dismayed at her pro- 
 ceedings. He had seen religion treating 
 with the most profound respect the being 
 who was destined to so loftj' a futui-e be- 
 yond the skies. This species of packing, 
 in the course of which his friend was 
 treated as a thing, caused Schmucke a 
 pang that was enough to destroy the very 
 elements of thought. 
 
 "Do what you bleaze ! " he mechani- 
 cally replied. 
 
 This was the first time that this un- 
 sophisticated creature had seen any per- 
 son die; and this person was Pons, his 
 only friend, the only being who had un- 
 derstood and loved him ! 
 
 "Well, then, I shall go and ask Ma-
 
 188 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 dame Cibot where the sheets are to be 
 found," said Dame Sauvag-e. 
 
 "We shall want a folding--bed for this 
 ladj' to sleep upon," said Madame Can- 
 tinet to Schmucke, who merely nodded 
 his head and burst into tears. Thereupon, 
 Madame Cantinet left the poor man in 
 peace ; but in an hour's time she came 
 back to him and said: "Have you any 
 money, monsieur, that you can give me 
 to make some purchases with ? " 
 
 Schmucke turned to Madame Cantinet 
 a face whose expression would have dis- 
 armed the fiercest hate. He pointed to 
 the white, wan, sharpened features of the 
 corpse as if they were a sufficient answer 
 to ever3' question : 
 
 " Take everything, and let me weep 
 and praj'," said he, sinking- down upon 
 his knees. 
 
 Madame Sauvage meanwhile had rushed 
 away to announce the death of Pons to 
 Fraisier. Fraisier, on hearing this news, 
 jumped into a cabriolet and drove straiglit 
 to Madame Camusot's to bespeak, for the 
 morrow, the power of attorney authoriz- 
 ing him to act on behalf of the heirs. 
 
 " Monsieur," said Madame Cantinet to 
 Schmucke after an hour had elapsed since 
 her former question ; " I have been to 
 Madame Cibot, who must be familiar 
 with your household arrangements, to 
 ask where I can lay my hands on what 
 is wanted ; but as she has just lost her 
 husband she wellnigh killed me with 
 abuse. Will you be good enough to 
 listen to me, monsieur — " 
 
 Schmucke merely stared at thq woman, 
 who was all unconscious of the barbarity 
 of her conduct ; for the common people 
 are accustomed passively to submit to 
 the acutest moral suffering. 
 
 "Monsieur, we are in want of some 
 linen for a shroud, and of money to buy 
 a folding-bed for this lady, a kitchen- 
 range, plates, dishes, and glasses ; for 
 we shall have a priest passing the night 
 here, and the ladj' can find absolutely 
 nothing in the kitchen." 
 
 " Why, monsieur," chimed in Dame 
 Sauvage, "I must have some firewood 
 and coals to prepare the dinner, and I 
 can find nothing at all. There is nothing 
 
 very astonishing in that, however, being 
 as Dame Cibot found ever3'thing for you." 
 
 "But, my good lady," said Madame 
 Cantinet, pointing to Schmucke, who 
 was lying in a state of total insensibility 
 at the feet of the corpse ; "you wiU not 
 believe me when I tell you that he won't 
 reply to any question." 
 
 "Well, then, my darling," said Dame 
 Sauvage; "since that is so, I will show 
 you what we do in these cases." 
 
 Hereupon Dame Sauvage, having exam- 
 ined the room with a glance, just as rob- 
 bers throw around them in order to dis- 
 cover the hiding places that are likelj' to 
 contain money, "went straight to Pons's 
 commode, opened the top drawer, and 
 there discovered the purse in which 
 Schmucke had placed what remained of 
 the money produced by the sale of the 
 pictures. Taking up the purse she showed 
 it to Schmucke, who gave a mechanical 
 sign of assent. 
 
 " Here is some money, my darling ! " 
 said Dame Sauvage to Madame Cantinet. 
 " I will count it and take what is neces- 
 saiy to buy what we lack^wine, food, 
 candles, everything, in short, for nothing 
 have they now. Search the chest of 
 drawers for a sheet to wrap the body in. 
 Well miglit they tell me that this poor 
 gentleman was simple-mmded. Simple- 
 minded, good lack ! I can't tell exactly 
 what he is : but he is worse than simple- 
 minded. He is like a new-born babe ; we 
 shall have to feed him with pap — " 
 
 Schmucke watched the two women and 
 their proceedings exactly as a lunatic 
 might have watched them. Broken down 
 with grief, and plunged into a quasi-cata- 
 leptic state, he kept his e^'es fixed upon the, 
 fascinating face of Pons, the contours of 
 which had gained in purity under the in- 
 fluence of the absolute repose of death. 
 Schmucke longed to die ; he was utterly 
 indifferent to all terrestrial things. Had 
 the room been wrapped in flames, he would 
 not have budged an inch. 
 
 " There are twelve hundred and fifty -six 
 francs," said Dame Sauvage to Schmucke, 
 who merely shrugged his shoulders. But 
 when Dame Sauvage wanted to sew the 
 body in the shroud and to measure the
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 189 
 
 sheet against the corpse, so that she 
 might cut it to the proper length before 
 she began to stitch it, there ensued be- 
 tween her and the poor German a fearful 
 struggle. Schmucl^e behaved exactly like 
 a dog that bites all those who attempt 
 to touch his master's corpse ; till Dame 
 Sauvage, losing all patience, seized the 
 old man, thrust him into an armchair, and 
 held him there with herculean force. 
 
 "Now, now, my darling," cried she to 
 Madame Cantinet. "Do you sew the 
 body in its shroud." 
 
 When the operation was complete, Dame 
 Sauvage restored Schmucke to his former 
 position at the foot of the bed, and said 
 to him: "Do you understand? It was 
 absolutely necessary to truss the poor 
 man like a corpse, as he is" 
 
 Schmucke began to cry ; and the two 
 women, leaving him to his own devices, 
 proceeded to take possession of the kitchen, 
 which they very soon stocked with all the 
 necessaries of life. Having made out a 
 preliminarj- bill of three hundred and 
 sixty francs. Dame Sauvage set to work 
 to prepare a dinner for four persons, and 
 what a dinner it was, to be sure ! There 
 was the cobbler's pheasant — a fat goose — 
 to form the staple of the meal ; a sweet 
 omelet ; a green salad ; and the prescrip- 
 tive soup and houilli, the ingredients of 
 which were so superabundant that the 
 broth looked like the jelly of meat. 
 
 At nine o'clock in the evening the priest 
 sent by the curate to watch by Pons's 
 body presented himself, accompanied by 
 Cantinet, who brought with him four 
 wax tapers and some of the church can- 
 dlesticks. The priest found Schmucke 
 stre>+-ched out at full length upon the bed 
 beside the body of his friend, and holding 
 it tightly clasped in his arms. Yielding 
 to the authority of religion, and to that 
 only, Schmucke tore himself away from 
 the corpse, and sunk upon his knees, 
 while the priest cozily ensconced himself 
 in the armchair. AVhile the latter was 
 reading prayers, and Schmucke, kneeling 
 before the corpse, was beseeching God to 
 work a miracle, and unite him to Pons so 
 that they might both be buried in one 
 grrave, Madame Cantinet had marched 
 
 off to the Temple to buy a folding bed- 
 stead and a complete set of bed furniture 
 for Madame Sauvage; for the purse of 
 twelve hundred and fifty-six francs was 
 in a state of pillage. At eleven o'clock 
 Madame Cantinet came to see whether 
 Schmucke would like a morsel to eat ; but 
 the German made a sign that he wished 
 to be left alone. 
 
 "Supper is waiting for you. Monsieur 
 Pastelot," said the pew-opener, turning 
 to the priest. 
 
 When Schmucke found himself alone 
 there stole over his features a smile re- 
 sembling that of a madman who finds 
 himself at liberty to gratify some longing 
 as fantastic as the whims of a pregnant 
 woman ; he threw himself upon the body 
 of his friend, and once more clasped it 
 in a close embrace. ^ When at midnight 
 the priest returned and reprimanded 
 Schmucke, the latter relinquished his 
 hold upon the corpse, and resumed his 
 praj^ers. At daybreak the priest de- 
 parted ; and at seven in the morning Dr. 
 Poulain paid Schmucke a kindly visit, and 
 pressed him to eat ; but the German re- 
 fused. 
 
 " If you don't eat something now, you 
 will feel famished on your return ; " said 
 the doctor, "for you must go to the 
 mairie, accompanied by the witness, to 
 report the death of Monsieur Pons, and 
 have it duly registered." 
 
 " I ! " cried the German, in dismay. 
 
 " Who else ? You can't avoid the ne- 
 cessity, since you are the only person who 
 was present when he died — " 
 
 "I gannot walk," replied Schmucke, 
 invoking the aid of Dr. Poulain. 
 
 "Take a vehicle," gently replied the 
 hypocritical doctor. "I have already 
 given a certificate of the decease. Ask 
 some one in the house to go with you. 
 These two ladies will look after the apart- 
 ments while you are away." 
 
 It is extremely difficult to picture to 
 one's self the full extent of the sutfering 
 to which the exactions of the law subject 
 the genuine mourner. 'Tis enough to 
 make one hate civilization, to make one 
 prefer the customs of savages. 
 
 At nine o'clock Madame Sauvage con-
 
 190 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 trived to get Schmucke downstairs by 
 supporting: him under the arm-pits ; but 
 when he had taken his seat in the hack- 
 ney coach he was obliged to beg- Renio- 
 nencq to go with him to the mairie to 
 register the death of Pons. In Paris, in 
 tlie metropohsof this land which is intoxi- 
 cated with the love of equality, inequality 
 of rank stares you in the face, go where 
 you may, do what you will. This per- 
 sistent force of circumstances obtrudes 
 itself upon our notice, even in the events 
 that death brings in its train. Among 
 the wealthy, some friend, relative, or pro- 
 fessional man relieves the mourner from 
 the burden of these harrowing details; 
 but, like taxes, they fall in full force upon 
 the poor — those helpless i^roletarians who 
 have to bear the brunt of suffering. 
 
 "Ah ! you have ggod reason to regret 
 him,"' said Remonencq by way of response 
 to a plaintive cry from the poor martyr ; 
 " for he was a fine fellow, a thoroughly 
 honest man ; and he leaves a noble col- 
 lection behind him, too ; but do you know, 
 monsieur, that you, being as j'ou are a 
 foreigner, will bo placed in a ver^' uncom- 
 fortable position ; for folks are a-saying 
 in all quarters that you are Monsieur 
 Pons's heir." 
 
 Schmucke did not hear one syllable of 
 what was said to him. His grief was so 
 profound as to border on insanity. There 
 is a tetanus of the mind as well as of the 
 body. 
 
 '• And you would do well to get a 
 lawyer or some professional man to 
 act as your i-eprescntative," pursued 
 Remonencq. 
 
 "A professional man !" echoed Schmucke 
 mechanically. 
 
 "You will find that you'll want some 
 one to represent you. If I was you, now, 
 I should get a man of experience — some 
 man who is known in the Quarter — some 
 one as you can trust. For my part, in 
 all vay little business matters I employ 
 Tabareau, the bailiff. And if you gave a 
 power of attorney to his managing clerk 
 you wouldn't be worried, not one bit." 
 
 This suggestion, which Fraisier had 
 prompted, and the offer of which Remo- 
 nencq and Dame Cibot had mutually ar- 
 
 ranged, dwelt in Schmucke's memory; 
 for on those occasions when (flgurativelj' 
 speaking) sorrow m&y be said to freeze 
 the mind by arresting the normal current 
 of ideas, the memory retains all such im- 
 pressions as it accidentally receives. Yet 
 while Schmucke was listening to Remo- 
 nencq, the old German g-azed at him with 
 an eye from which all trace of intelligence 
 had so entirely vanished that the broker 
 held his tongue. 
 
 " If he remains in this idiotic condition," 
 thought Remonencq, " it will be an eas3'' 
 matter for me to buy all the rattle-traps 
 up yonder for a hundred thousand francs 
 if he is the owner of them. Here we are 
 at the mairie, monsieur," said he, aloud. 
 
 Remonencq was forced to help Schmucke 
 out of the hackney coach and to support 
 him in their progress to tlie office of the 
 registrar of births, deaths, and mar- 
 riages. 
 
 Arrived there, Schmucke found himself 
 in the midst of a wedding-party; nor 
 was this all ; he was obliged to wait till 
 his turn came ; for by one of those coin- 
 cidences that so often occur at Paris, the 
 clerk had five or six deaths to register. 
 During this interval the poor German 
 must have undergone an agony scarcely 
 less inteiise than that of the Saviour of 
 mankind. 
 
 "Are you Monsieur Schmucke?" in- 
 quired a man dressed in black, addressing 
 himself to the German, who was astounded 
 at the mention of his name. At the pei- 
 son who thus accosted him Schmucke 
 stared with the dazed expression with 
 which he had encountered the remarks of 
 Remonencq. 
 
 "What do you want with him? " said 
 the broker to the stranger. " Can't j'ou 
 leave the man alone? Don't j'ou see that 
 he is in trouble? " 
 
 "You have just lost yowc friend, mon- 
 sieur, and you would like to raise a fitting 
 monument to his memory ; for you are 
 his heir," said the stranger; "I am sure 
 monsieur would not like to act shabbily- ; 
 monsieur will no doubt purchase a plot of 
 ground in perpetuity for a grave. Then 
 Monsieur Pons was such a friend to the 
 arts ! It would be a great pity not to
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 191 
 
 place upon his tomb Music, Painting, and 
 Sculpture — three beautiful figures at the 
 foot of the grave, bathed in tears — " 
 
 Reraonencq here indulged in a repellent 
 gesture worthy of a son of Auvergne, to 
 which the niau responded b}' another ges- 
 ture which might be called a commercial 
 g-esture, and said as plainly as words 
 could have said: "Can't you let me 
 transact vay business? " 
 
 The broker perfectly' understood it. 
 
 " I am agent to the house of Sonet & 
 Co., funeral monument contractors," pur- 
 sued the tout, whom Walter Scott would' 
 have nicknamed Young Mortality. " If 
 monsieur should think fit to intrust us 
 with the order, we would save hina the 
 trouble of going into the city to purchase 
 the ground needed for the interment of 
 the friend whom the Arts have lost — " 
 
 Remonencq nodded his head by way 
 of expressing his assent, and nudged 
 Schmucke's elbow. 
 
 " It happens to us every day to under- 
 take, on behalf of families, the due exe- 
 cution of all formalities," pursued the 
 tout, encouraged by the Auvergnat's 
 gesture. " In the first moment of sor- 
 row it is very difficult for an heir to at- 
 tend in person to these details, and we 
 are accustomed to perform these little 
 services for our clients. Our monuments, 
 monsieur, are charged for at so much per 
 meter, either in freestone or marble. We 
 open the ground for family graves. We 
 undertake everything at the most rea- 
 sonable prices. It was our house that 
 executed the magnificent monument of 
 the beautiful Esther Gobseck and Lucien 
 de Rubempre, one of the most magnifi- 
 cent ornaments of Pere-Lachaise. We 
 employ the very best workmen; and," 
 added he (as he saw another man dressed 
 in black approaching, with the view of 
 putting in a word for some other firm in 
 the marble and sculpture line), "I invite 
 monsieur to be on his guard against the 
 small corttractors, who turn out nothing 
 but trumpery." 
 
 It has often been said that death is the 
 end of a journey ; but it is not generally 
 known how thoroughly apposite is the 
 metaphor as applied to death in Paris. A 
 
 corpse, especially if it be the corpse of a 
 man of quality, is greeted on the somber 
 shore very much as a traveler disembark- 
 ing in a seaport town is besieged and 
 badgered by all the hotel touts in the 
 place. Since philosophers and those fam- 
 ilies which, being convinced of their per- 
 petuity, build themselves sepulchers just 
 as they build themselves mansions, stand 
 alone in taking any thought of death and 
 of the social consequences that death in- 
 volves, it always comes too soon ; and this 
 the more, in that a very intelligible senti- 
 ment precludes expectant heirs from treat- 
 ing it even as a possible event. Hence it 
 almost invariably happens that those who 
 have the misfortune to lose father, mo- 
 ther, wife, or child, are immediately as- 
 sailed by business touts who take advan- 
 tage of the confusion of distress to snap 
 an order. In bygone days the funeral 
 monument contractors (whose estabUsh- 
 ments are all grouped together in the 
 vicinity of the world-famed cemetery of 
 Pere-Lachaise, and have there formed a 
 street which might well be called the Rue 
 des Tombeaux) used to beset the heirs in 
 the neighborhood of the grave or as they 
 issued from the cemetery ; but urged by 
 competition — which is the genius of com- 
 merce — these contractors imperceptibly 
 gained ground, and have nowadays in- 
 vaded the city itself and pushed on as far 
 as the approaches to the various mairies. 
 In fact, into the very house of death do 
 the touts of these enterprising men of 
 business force their way, a design for a 
 gravestone in their hands. 
 
 "7 am doing business with this gentle- 
 man," said the tout of the firm of Sonet 
 & Co. to the supervening tout. 
 
 '• Pons deceased ! Whore are the wit- 
 nesses ? " sung out the attendant at the 
 registrj^ 
 
 " Come, monsieur," said the tout, 
 addressing Remonencq. 
 
 Remonencq begged the man to raise 
 Schmucke, who remained seated on the 
 bench like a mass of inanimate matter. 
 The two men led him to tlxe railing behind 
 which the registrar shelters himself from 
 the public grief. Remonencq — Schmucke's 
 temporary providence — was assisted in his
 
 192 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 task bj' Dr. Poulain, who had presented 
 himself for the purpose of supphing- the 
 necessary information as to Pons's age 
 and place of birth. The German knew 
 one fact and only one — Pons had been his 
 friend ! When the signatures had been 
 affixed, Reinonencq and the doctor, fol- 
 lowed by the tout, proceeded to place the 
 poor German in the carriage, into which 
 the zealous tout, in his anxiety to secure 
 the order for the stone, likewise slipped. 
 Dame Sauvage was on the lookout at the 
 entrance gateway, and she, with the help 
 of Reuionencq and the tout of Messrs. 
 Sonet & Co., carried the almost fainting 
 Schmucke to his rooms. 
 
 "He is going to swoon," cried the tout, 
 who was anxious to bring to a conclusion 
 the piece of business which, according to 
 him, was already on foot. 
 
 " You are quite right ! " replied Dame 
 Sauvage. " He has done nothing but 
 cry for the last twentj'-four hours, and 
 has refused all nourishment. There is 
 nothing like grief for exhausting the 
 stomach." 
 
 "Now, my dear client," said the tout 
 of Messrs. Sonet, " do just take a little 
 broth ; you have so many things to do, 
 you know ; jou have to go to the Hotel 
 de Ville to buy the ground on which you 
 are about to erect a monument in com- 
 memoration of this friend of the Arts, 
 and in token of your gratitude." 
 
 "Whj^ such conduct is not rational," 
 said Madame Cantinet, bringing in some 
 broth and a piece of bread. 
 
 "Bethink you, my dear sir," said Ro- 
 monencq, "bethink you, if you are so 
 weak as all that, to get some one to act 
 as your agent ; for you have your hands 
 full of business; the funeral must be 
 ordered ! SureZ^/, you don't want your 
 friend to be buried like a pauper." 
 
 "' Come, come, my good sir," said Dame 
 Sauvage ; and seizing a favorable moment 
 when Schmucke'shead was reclining- upon 
 the back of the armchair, she poured a 
 spoonful of soup into his mouth and began 
 to feed the reluctant German as if he had 
 been a child. 
 
 " Now, if you were wise, sir, you would 
 call some one in to act as your represen- 
 
 tative, since your desire is quietly to 
 abandon yourself to youv grief." 
 
 "■ Since monsieur intends to erect a 
 magnificent monument to the memory 
 of his friend, all he need do is to author- 
 ize me to take the necessary steps, and 
 I will do—" 
 
 " What is all this about ? What is all 
 this about ?" interposed Dame Sauva-ge. 
 " Monsieur has given you an order ? Who 
 are you, pray ? " 
 
 " One of the agents of the firm of Sonet 
 & Co., my good lady, the largest con- 
 tractors for funeral monuments in Paris," 
 said the tout, taking from his pocket a 
 card which he presented to Dame Sauvage. 
 
 "Well, well, all right, all right; we 
 will .send to you when it is convenient; 
 but you mustn't take advantage of this 
 gentleman's condition. You can see 
 clearly that he is not in full possession 
 of his senses — " 
 
 " If you can manage to secure us the 
 order," whispered the tout of Messrs. 
 Sonet & Co., to Madame Sauvage, as he 
 led her out on to the landing, " I am 
 authorized to offer you fortj^ francs." 
 
 " Well, give me your address," said the 
 mollified Dame Sauvage. 
 
 Schmucke, finding himself alone, and 
 feeling all the better for the bread and 
 soup which he had at least swallowed if 
 he had not digested, now hurried back to 
 Pons's room and resumed his prayers. 
 He was plunged in the profoundest abys- 
 ses of sorrow when he was recalled from 
 his state of utter self-forgetfulness by a 
 young man clad in black who was say- 
 ing to him for the eleventh time : " Mon- 
 sieur — " an interpellation which the more 
 readily attracted the attention of the old 
 man in that he at the same time felt a 
 tug a* his coat-sleeve. 
 
 "What do you want now ? " 
 
 " Monsieur, we ai'e indebted to Doctor 
 Gannal for a sublime discovery ; far be it 
 from us to contest his glorj' ; he has re- 
 newed the miracles of Egypt ; but at the 
 same time, certain improvements have 
 been introduced, and the results we have 
 obtained are quite surprising. Therefore, 
 if 3^ou wish to see your friend again, just 
 as he was when alive — "
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 193 
 
 "Zee him again!" exclaimed Schmucke. 
 " Will he zbeak to me ? " 
 
 "Well, not exactly. He will do everj'^- 
 thing hut speak," replied the embalmer's 
 tout. "And then he will remain to all 
 eternity in the state in which he is when 
 the embalmment takes place. The opera- 
 tion occupies only a few minutes ; an incis- 
 ion in the carotid arterj^ and the injection 
 are all that is requisite ; but it is high time 
 to begin ; if you were to delay the opera- 
 tion for another quarter of an hour jon 
 would be deprived of the sweet satisfac- 
 tion of ha\"ing preserved the body." 
 
 "Away wid you to de tefil ! " said 
 Schmucke ; " Pons is a zbirit, and dat 
 zbirit is wid God ! " 
 
 "That fellow hasn't a grain of grati- 
 tude in him," said the stripling tout of 
 one of the rivals of the celebrated Gan- 
 nal, as he passed through the carriage 
 gatewaj'. "He declines to have his 
 friend embalmed ! " 
 
 "What can you expect, monsieur," 
 said Dame Cibot, who had just had her 
 darling embalmed. "The man is an 
 heir, a legatee. When once the dead 
 man's goose is cooked he is nothing 
 whatever to them folks." 
 
 xxvni. 
 
 HOW PEOPLE DIE IN PARIS. 
 
 An hour afterward Schmucke beheld 
 Madame Sauvage, followed by a man 
 Avho was dressed in black and looked like 
 a workman, enter the apartment. 
 
 "Monsieur," said she, "Cantinet has 
 been good enough to send this gentleman 
 here ; he is the coffln-maker to the par- 
 ish." 
 
 The coffin-maker bowed with an air of 
 commiseration and condolence, but still, 
 like a man who is sure of his ground, and 
 knows himself to be indispensable, he 
 ^azed with the eye of a connoisseur at 
 the corpse. 
 
 "How would monsieur like the thing 
 to be made ? Of deal, plain oak, or oak 
 lined with lead ? Oak lined with lead is 
 
 Balzac — G 
 
 the correct thing. The body is of aver- 
 age length," said the coCan-maker, who 
 began to handle the feet of the corpse in 
 order to take its measure. 
 
 "Five feet six and a half," added he. 
 " Monsieur no doubt intends to order a 
 funeral service at church?" 
 
 Schmucke shot at the man a succession 
 of glances resembhng those of a madman 
 meditating an assault. 
 
 " Sir," said Dame Sauva'ge, "you really 
 ought to employ somebody to take all 
 these matters of detail off your hands." 
 
 " Yez," assented the victim at last. 
 
 " Shall I go and fetch Monsieur Taba- 
 reau to you ; for your hands will soon be 
 quite full ? Monsieur Tabareau, d'ye see, 
 is the most trustworthy man in the dis 
 trict." 
 
 " Yes, Monsieur Dapareau ! His name 
 has peen mentioned to me," repUed 
 Schmucke. 
 
 "■ Well, then, monsieur will be at peace 
 and at liberty to indulge his grief after 
 one conference with his proxy." 
 
 At about two o'clock Monsieur Taba- 
 reau's managing clerk, a young man who 
 intended to become a bailiff, modestly 
 presented himself to Schmucke. Aston- 
 ishing are the privileges of youtli ; it never 
 inspires horror ! This young man, whose 
 name was Villeinot, seated himself by 
 Schmucke's side and waited for a fitting 
 opportunity of speaking to him. This re- 
 serve made a very favorable impression 
 on Schmucke. 
 
 "Monsieur," said the youth, " I am the 
 managing clerk of Monsieur Tabareau, 
 who has confided to me the task of look- 
 ing after your interests in this place, and 
 attending to all the details of your friend's 
 interment. Is it your good pleasure that 
 I should do so ? " 
 
 " You will not zave my life, for I have 
 not long to liff ; but you will leave me 
 in beace, will you not ? " 
 
 " Oh, you shall not be exposed to a 
 single interruption," replied Villeniot. 
 
 " Well, what nuizt I do to zegure dat?" 
 
 "Sign this document appointing Mon- 
 sieur Tabareau your proxy in all matters 
 relating to the succession." 
 
 "Goot, goot, gitf it to me," said the
 
 194 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 German, eager to sign the document 
 without a moment's delaj'. 
 
 " No, no ; I must first read the deed 
 over to you." 
 
 "Read on." 
 
 Without having paid the slightest at- 
 tention to the language of this general 
 authority, Schmucke executed it; and 
 the youth then proceeded to take 
 Schmucke "s orders with reference to 
 the purchase of the plot of ground 
 (which the German hoped might serve 
 as his grave also) and with respect to 
 the funeral service at the church. Ville- 
 mot assured Schmucke that he would 
 not be molested any further and would 
 not be asked to find any money. 
 
 "I would giff all dat I bozzezz to be 
 left alone," said the unhappy man; and 
 he once more threw himself upon his 
 knees before the body of his friend. 
 
 Thus then, Fraisier was triumphant ; 
 the legatee was unable to stir hand or 
 foot beyond the circle within which Ma- 
 dame Sauvage and Villemot held him in- 
 closed. 
 
 There is no sorrow sleep cannot subdue. 
 Accordingly when the day was drawing 
 to a close, Dame Sauvage found Schmucke 
 fast asleep, stretched at full length across 
 the foot of the bed on which the body of 
 Pons was lying. Raising him in her arms 
 she laid him in his own bed, and, having 
 tucked him up with motherly care, left 
 him. Schmucke slept till morning. When 
 he awoke, or rather, when, after this 
 brief truce, he was restored to the con- 
 sciousness of his misfortunes, Pons's 
 body was lying beneath the carriage 
 gatewa.y in such a state as is accorded 
 to third-class funerals. In vain, there- 
 fore, did Schmucke search for the body 
 of his friend in these apartments, which 
 now seemed to him quite vast, and void 
 of all save harrowing mementos. 
 
 Dame Sauvage, who ruled the old Ger- 
 man with all the authority that a nurse 
 exercises over her urchin, insisted on his 
 eating some breakfast before he set out 
 for church ; and while the poor victim 
 was forcing himself to eat, she lifted up 
 her voice and with lamentations worthy 
 of Jeremiah himself called Schmucke's 
 
 attention to the fact that he had no black 
 coat to put on ; and indeed, it must be 
 confessed that Schmucke's wardrobe, 
 under the care of Madame Cibot, had, 
 before Pons had fallen ill, arrived pari 
 passu with Schmucke's dinner at its 
 simplest expression — to wit, two pairs of 
 trousers and two coats ! 
 
 " Do you mean to say that you ai'e 
 going to attend Monsieur Pons's funeral 
 dressed as you are ? Why, its an outrage 
 on decency, gross enough to make the 
 whole Quarter cry shame upon you ! " 
 
 " How would you have me go, den ? " 
 
 " Why, in mourning, to be sure ! " 
 
 "In mourning?" 
 
 " The usages of society — " 
 
 " De uzages of zoziet^'^ ! Mudge I gai'e 
 for all zudge trivialities ! " said the poor 
 man, who was now worked up to the high- 
 est pitch of exasperation that a child- 
 like mind bowed down with sorrow can 
 attain. 
 
 " Why, 'tis a pei"fect monster of in- 
 gi^atitude," quoth Dame Sauvage, turn- 
 ing to a gentleman who had suddenly 
 entered the room, and whose aspect made 
 Schmucke shudder. 
 
 This functionary ,who was magnificently 
 arrayed in coat and waistcoat of black 
 cloth, black breeches, black silk stock- 
 ings, white ruffles, silver chain with pen- 
 dant medal, the primmest of white muslin 
 cravats and white gloves ; this typical 
 official, stamped with one uniform stamp 
 for all sorts and conditions of mourners, 
 held in his hand an ebony wand, the sym- 
 bol of his functions, while beneath his left 
 arm he carried a three-cornered hat 
 decked with a tri-color cockade. 
 
 "I am the master of the ceremonies,'' 
 said this personage, in subdued tones. 
 
 The routine of his daily duties had ac- 
 customed this man to the conduct of 
 funerals and brought him into close con- 
 tact with groups of relatives plung-cd in a 
 common sorrow — real or feigned. Hence 
 he, like all his compeers, had contracted 
 a habit of speaking in low and gentle ac- 
 cents ; his mission was to be decent, pol- 
 ished, and conventional, like a statue 
 representing the genius of death. His 
 announcement caused Schmucke a nerv-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 195 
 
 ous tremor akin to that which the sig'ht 
 of the public executioner would have 
 excited. 
 
 "Monsieur, are you the son, the bro- 
 ther, or the father of the deceased?" 
 inquired the man of office. 
 
 "I am all dat, and more — I am his 
 friend!" said Schmucke, weeping pro- 
 fuselj'. 
 
 "Are you the heir of the deceased?" 
 asked the master of the ceremonies. 
 
 "De heir?" echoed Schmucke. "All 
 worldly matters are alike to me." And 
 he relapsed into the attitude characteris- 
 tic of his dull despair. 
 
 "Where are the relatives, the friends ? " 
 inquired the master of the ceremonies. 
 
 "Dere dey are, all of dem ! " cried 
 Schmucke. "' Dose friends never gauzed 
 my boor Bons anj- zuffering' ! Dey are 
 all he gared for bezides me ! " 
 
 "He is mad, monsieur," said Dame 
 Sauvag-e to the master of the ceremonies. 
 "Proceed, it is wasting time to listen to 
 what he says." 
 
 Schmucke had now resumed his seat, 
 and, having subsided into his previous idi- 
 otic condition, was mechanically drjing 
 his tears. At this moment Villemot, 
 Maitre Tabareau's managing clerk, came 
 into the room ; whereupon the master of 
 the ceremonies, recognizing in him the 
 person who had given the directions for 
 the funeral, said to him : " Well, mon- 
 sieur, it is time to start ; the hearse is at 
 the door ; but I own I have rarely wit- 
 nessed such a funeral as this. Where arc 
 the relatives and friends of the deceased?" 
 
 "We have been somewhat pushed for 
 time," repUed Monsieur Villemot. "This 
 gentleman's grief was so profound that he 
 took no thought of anything ; but there 
 is only one relative — " 
 
 The master of the ceremonies cast a 
 look of sympathy at Schmucke. That 
 expert in sorrow was at no loss to distin- 
 guish the genuine from the false ; so he 
 went up to Sclimucke and said to him : 
 "Come, my dear monsieur, take courage ! 
 Think of the respect that is due to the 
 memory of your friend." 
 
 "We forgot to issue in\'itations ; but I 
 took care to send a special messenger to 
 
 Monsieur le President de Mar\'ille, the one 
 relation whom you heard me allude to. 
 There are no friends— I do not suppose 
 that the people connected with the theater 
 in which the deceased acted as conductor 
 of the orchestra, Avill come. But I be- 
 lieve that this gentleman is his universal 
 legatee." 
 
 " Then he must be chief mourner," said 
 the master of the ceremonies. 
 
 " You haven't a black coat ? " said he, 
 interrogatively, as his eye fell upon 
 Schmucke's costume. 
 
 " Dere is noting but mourning in my 
 heart," said the poor German ; "mourn- 
 ing so deep dat I can feel dat I am dying. 
 Got \'l11 not witdold from me de fafor of 
 uniting me to my friend in de grafe, and 
 I tank Him for it ! " 
 
 So saying, he clasped his hands to- 
 gether. 
 
 "I have told our Board (which has 
 already introduced so many improve- 
 ments)," resumed the master of .the 
 ceremonies, addressing VUlemot, "that 
 they ought to set up a vestiary and lend 
 out mourning costumes for hire — 'tis a 
 desideratum that becomes more and more 
 urgent everj^ day. But since this gentle- 
 man is the heir, he ought to wear the 
 mourning cloak, and that which I have 
 brouglit with me will envelop liim from 
 head to foot, so that no one will be able 
 to detect the unsuitability of his dress. 
 Will you have the goodness to stand up?" 
 said he, turning to Schmucke. 
 
 Schmucke rose, but his legs gave way 
 beneath him. 
 
 " Do 1J0U support him," said the master 
 of the ceremonies to the managing clerk, 
 " since 3'ou are acting as his proxy." 
 
 Villemot placed his arms beneath those 
 of Schmucke, and thus supported him ; 
 while the master of the ceremonies, tak- 
 ing one of those ample, but hideous, sable 
 mantles which are worn by heirs when 
 they follow the hearse from the house of 
 death to the church, fastened it under 
 Schmucke's chin by means of a couple of 
 black silk strings. 
 
 And lo, Schmucke in the garb of heir ! 
 
 " And now, we have a serious difllculty 
 to surmount," said the master of the cere-
 
 196 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 monies. "There are four pall-tassels to 
 be held. If no one attends the funeral, 
 who is to hold them ? It is now half -past 
 ten," said he, after consulting his watch. 
 " They are waiting for us at the church." 
 
 "Ah ! Here comes Fraisier ! " ex- 
 claimed Villemot, most imprudently. 
 
 But there was no one present to pick 
 up this confession of simplicity. 
 
 " Who is this gentleman ? " asked the 
 master of the ceremonies. 
 
 "Oh! he's the family." 
 
 " What family ? " 
 
 " The disinherited family. He is the 
 proxy of Monsieur le President Camusot." 
 
 " Good ! " said the master of the cere- 
 monies, with an air of satisfaction. " We 
 shall have at least two pall-bearers ; you 
 will be one, and he will be the second." 
 
 Delighted at finding a couple of pall- 
 bearers, the master of the ceremonies 
 went and fetched two pairs of splendid 
 white deerskin gloves and politely handed 
 a pair, first to Fraisier and then to Ville- 
 mot. 
 
 " Will each of you two gentlemen oblige 
 me by holding one of the pall-tassels? " 
 .said he. 
 
 Fraisier, ostentatiously attired in a com- 
 plete suit of black — Fraisier, with his white 
 tie and semi-official aspect, was enough to 
 make one shudder. There were a hun- 
 dred writs in his very look. 
 
 "Most willinglj^ monsieur," was his 
 reply. 
 
 " If two other persons would but pres- 
 ent themselves, we should have four pall- 
 bearers," said the master of the cere- 
 monies. 
 
 At this critical moment in came the in- 
 defatigable tout* of Messrs. Sonet & Co., 
 followed hy the only person who had not 
 forgotten Pons, and bethought him of 
 paying the last tribute of respect to the 
 memory of the poor musician. This man 
 was a *iupemumerary at the theater, 
 whose office was to lay the music on the 
 stands in the orchestra, and to whom 
 Pons, knowing him to be a married man 
 with a family, had been in the habit of 
 
 • Tout, racing slang, a stableboy who pretends 
 to sell information about the horses. 
 
 presenting a monthly donation of five 
 francs. 
 
 "Ah ! Dobinard " {Topinard), exclaim- 
 ed Schmucke, when he recognized the 
 young man, "you love Bons, then ! " 
 
 " Why, monsieur, every day, as sure as 
 morning came, I have come here to learn 
 how Monsieur Pons was going on." 
 
 " Effenj day ! Boor Dobinard ! " said 
 Schmucke, squeezing the understrapper's 
 hand. 
 
 " But no doubt they took me for a rela- 
 tive of Monsieur Pons's, and received me 
 with a very bad grace. It was no use my 
 saying that I belonged to the theater, 
 and that I came to hear how Monsieur 
 Pons was getting on ; they told me that 
 they weren't to be taken in in that fash- 
 ion. I asked to be allowed to see the poor 
 invalid, but I was never permitted to go 
 up to his rooms." 
 
 " Dat infamous Zibod ! " said Schmucke, 
 pressing the horny hand of the underling 
 of the theater to his heart. 
 
 "He was the king of men, was that 
 worthy Monsieur Pons. Not a month 
 passed that he didn't give me five francs. 
 He knew that I had a wife and three 
 children. My wife is waiting at the 
 church." 
 
 "I will zhare my pread wid you ! " ex- 
 claimed Schmucke, in his joy at having 
 near him a man to whom Pons was dear. 
 
 " Will you hold one of the tassals of the 
 pall, monsieur?" said the master of the 
 ceremonies. "We shall then have four 
 pall-bearers." 
 
 For the master of the ceremonies had 
 easily prevailed upon the tout of Messrs. 
 Sonet & Co. to be one of the pall-bearers. 
 That worthy, even had he been reluctant 
 to undertake the office, could not have 
 resisted its tempting perquisites — the 
 splendid pair of gloves ! 
 
 " It is now a quarter to eleven ! We 
 must really go down at once ; the priests 
 are waiting for us," said the master of 
 the ceremonies. 
 
 Thereupon the six persons we have 
 named began to march downstairs. 
 
 "Take care to secure the outer door 
 and remain in the apartments," said the 
 atrocious Fraisier to the two women who
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 197 
 
 were standing on the landing; "espe- 
 cially if you want to oe appointed custo- 
 dian, Madame Cantinet. Ah ! ah ! 'tis 
 forty sous a day in your pocket ! " 
 
 Through one of those coincidences 
 which are by no means infrequent in 
 Paris, the entrance gateway was en- 
 cumbered by two catafalques — and there- 
 fore by two funerals — that of Cibot, the 
 defunct porter, and that of Pons. No 
 one visited the brilliant catafalque of the 
 friend of the Arts, there to pay a tribute 
 of affection ; whereas all the porters in 
 the neighborhood crowded in, to sprinkle 
 \\o\y water on the mortal remains of the 
 deceased porter. This contrast between 
 the throng attendant on the funeral of 
 Cibot and the solitude that surrounded 
 the body of Pons was conspicuous, not 
 only at the door of the house, but also in 
 the street. There the only mourner who 
 followed Pons's coffin was Schmucke, who 
 was suppoi'ted by an undertaker's man ;' 
 for he staggered with weakness at every 
 step. From the Rue de Normandie to 
 the Rue d'Orleans (in which street the 
 church of St. Francis is situated) the 
 two funerals passed along, between two 
 hedges of inquisitive spectators ; for in 
 this district, as we have already re- 
 marked, every incident is an event. 
 Hence the splendid white hearse, with 
 its depending scutcheon on which a large 
 P was embroidered, and its solitary 
 mourner, on the one hand, and the plain 
 hearse adopted in funerals of the cheapest 
 class, with its accompanying crowd, on 
 the other, failed not to elicit considera- 
 ble comment. Fortunate it was that 
 Schmucke, dazed by the faces that 
 thronged the windows, and \)y the two 
 long rows of congregated quidnuncs, was 
 deaf to every word that was uttered, and 
 saw the vast concourse only through a 
 haze of tears. 
 
 " Ah ! 'tis the Nut-Cracker," exclaimed 
 one, " the musician, you know ! " 
 
 " Who are the pall-bearers, then ? " 
 
 " Oh ! nothing but actors ! " 
 
 "See, there is poor Daddy Cibofs fu- 
 neral ! Well, there's one hard-working 
 man the less ! What a cormorant for 
 work he was I " 
 
 " Ay, he never went out at all ! " 
 
 '•No, he didn't keep Saint-Monday." 
 
 "Ah ! how fond he was of his wife, to 
 be sure I " 
 
 "Yes, indeed; she's greatly to be 
 pitied ! " 
 
 Remonehcq, following in the wake of 
 his victim's hearse, received many a con- 
 dolence for the loss of his neighbor. 
 
 Thus the two funerals reached the 
 church. There Cantinet co-operated with 
 the Swiss to shield Schmucke from the 
 importunities of the mendicants. Ville- 
 mot had promised the legatee that he 
 should not be molested, and Villemot, 
 true to his word, kept a watchful e\'e 
 upon his client, and disbursed all the 
 necessary expenses. The escort of from 
 sixty to eighty persons, that accompanied 
 the humble hearse containing the corpse 
 of Cibot, followed it to the cemetery. 
 When Pons's funeral issued from the 
 church it was followed by four mourning 
 coaches — one for the clergj^ and the three 
 others for the relatives of the deceased. 
 
 But one carriage was quite sufficient : 
 for the tout of Messrs. Sonet & Co. had 
 rushed off, while the funeral service was 
 in progress, to report the departure of 
 the procession to M. Sonet, in order that 
 he might be in readiness to present the 
 design for the monument and an estimate 
 of its cost to the universal legatee as he 
 quitted the cemetery. Fraisier, Villemot, 
 Schmucke, and Topinard occupied one 
 coach ; the other coaches, instead of re- 
 turning to the undertaker's, drove to 
 Pere-Lachaise, empty. Tliis superfluous 
 procession of unoccupied carriages is a 
 verj^ common phenomenon. When the 
 deceased is a person unknown to fame, 
 and there is consequently but a sparse 
 collection of mourners, there are always 
 too many mourning coaches. Deep, in- 
 deed, mu.st have been the love inspired by 
 the dead, during their lifetime, to induce 
 the world of Paris — Paris, whore every 
 one would like to add a twentj'-flfth hour 
 to the day— to follow a friend or a reki- 
 tive as far as the cemetery ! But the 
 drivers would lose their drink-money if 
 they shirked their duties; so, full or 
 empty, the coaches go from the hous>e
 
 198 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 to the church, from the church to the 
 cemetery, and from the cemetery back 
 ag-ain to the house ; and there the drivers 
 claim their drink-mone3'. The number of 
 persons to ^vhom Death is a drinking-- 
 trough is inconceivable. When the fu- 
 neral ceremony is over, beadles, sextons, 
 sprinklers of holy water, paupers, coffln- 
 bearers, coachmen, grave-diggers — all 
 these absorbent organisms — scramble, 
 distended with liquor, into a hearse and 
 are driven away. 
 
 From the door of the church (where 
 the legatee, as soon as he appeared, was 
 assailed by a swarm of beggars — whom 
 the Swiss immediately repelled) to the 
 cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, poor Schmucke 
 was borne along much as criminals used 
 to be dragged from the palace to the 
 Place de Greve. He seemed to be fol- 
 lowing his own funeral, as he sat in the 
 coach clasping the hand of Topinard, the 
 only man who shared his genuine sorrow 
 for the death of Pons. Topinard, mean- 
 while deeply impressed with the lienor of 
 ha\Tiig been selected as one of Pons's 
 pall-bearers — Topinard, pleased with his 
 ride— Topinard, the proud possessor of a 
 pair of white deerskin gloves, was begin- 
 ning to regard the day of Pons's funeral 
 as one of the red-letter days of his exist- 
 ence. Schmucke, plunged in the pro- 
 foundest sorrow, but deriving some sup- 
 port from the contact of the hand whose 
 owner had a heart, 'passively submitted 
 to be driven to the cemetery^ust as an 
 ill-starred calf is trundled unresisting to 
 the shambles. Now, those who have had 
 the misfortune to follow many a relative 
 to the last resting-place, are well aware 
 that, during the journey from the church 
 to the grave, all hypocrisy is laid aside ; 
 for the distance to be traversed is fre- 
 quently considerable— as, for example, it 
 often is between the church where the 
 service has been performed and the 
 Cimetierc de I'Est, which is conspicuous 
 among Parisian cemeteries, as the focus 
 of every kind of variety and pomp, and is 
 crowded with sumptuous sepulchers. The 
 conversation is started by the indifferent ; 
 and, in the end, the saddest listen to and 
 are amused bv it. 
 
 " Monsieur le President had gone down 
 to court, when the procession set forth," 
 quoth Fraisier to Villemot, " and I 
 deemed it unnecessary to call him away 
 from his duties at the palace, since he 
 could not have joined us in time. Inas- 
 much as he — the natural and lawful heir 
 — has been disinherited in favor of Mon- 
 sieur Schmucke, I thought it quite suf- 
 ficient that he should be represented by 
 his proxy." On hearing these words 
 Topinard pricked up his ears. 
 
 " Who was that queer fellow who held 
 the fourth tassel ? " said Fraisier to Ville- 
 mot. 
 
 '• Oh ! he's the tout of a firm of tomb- 
 stone contractors who want to get an 
 oi'der for a tomb to be adorned with three 
 marble fig-ures representing Music, Paint- 
 ing and Sculpture, weei^ing over the grave 
 of the deceased." 
 
 "Not at all a bad idea," replied Frai- 
 sier. "The old fellow certainly deserves 
 it ; but such a monument as that will 
 cost seven or eight thousand francs." 
 
 "Oh! no doubt it will." 
 
 " If Monsieur Schmucke gives the order 
 it cannot in an^^ way affect the estate ; 
 for such expenses as those would soon eat 
 up a succession." 
 
 " It might give rise to an action ; but 
 you would win it." 
 
 "Well, then," replied Fraisier, "it is 
 his lookout ! It would be a good trick to 
 play these contractors," whispered he to 
 Villemot ; " for if the wUl be set aside, 
 as I warrant it will be — or if no will were 
 forthcoming, who is to pay them?" 
 
 Villemot greeted this suggestion with a 
 monke3'"s grin ; and thereupon the man- 
 aging clerk of Monsieur Tabareauand the 
 man of law proceeded to hold a whispered 
 conversation tog-ether. But, spite of their 
 precautions and the rumbling of the coach, 
 the supernumerary, versed as he was in 
 all the intrigues of the greenroom, guessed 
 that the two limbs of law were bent upon 
 involving' the poor German in some diffi- 
 culty, and finally caught the significant 
 word, Clichy ! Thereupon, the honest 
 and worthy underling of the theater re- 
 solved that he would take Pons's friend 
 under his wing.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 199 
 
 On reaching the cemetery — in which 
 Villemot, aided hy the tout of Messrs. 
 Sonet & Co., had bought from the mu- 
 nicipality a plot of ground about ten feet 
 three-quarters square, on the plea that 
 he was about to erect thereon a splendid 
 monument — Schmucke was conducted, hy 
 the master of the ceremonies, through a 
 crowd of sightseers, to the grave into 
 which Pons's remains were about to be 
 lowered ; but at sight of the rectangular 
 hole, over which hung Pons's coffin, sus- 
 pended on ropes which four men held in 
 their hands, while the priest uttered the 
 final prayer, the hapless German was so 
 intensely affected that he swooned. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 WHAT IS CALLED "OPENING A SUCCES- 
 SION" CONSISTS IN ''CLOSING"' 
 EVERY DOOR. 
 
 ToPiNARD, the tout of Messrs. Sonet & 
 Co., and M. Sonet himself carried the poor 
 German into the marble-merchants' es- 
 tablishment, where he received the most 
 assiduous and generous attention at the 
 hands of Madame Sonet and Madame 
 Vitelot, the wife of Monsieur Sonet's 
 partner. Topinard stood his ground, 
 for he had seen Fraisier (whose face 
 seemed to him to savor strongly of the 
 gallows) in close converse with the tout of 
 Messrs. Sonet & Co. 
 
 After the lapse of an hour — that is to 
 say, at about half-past two — the poor 
 harmless German recovered conscious- 
 ness. Schmucke thought that he had 
 been dreaming for the last two days, 
 and that he would wake to find Pons 
 still alive. His forehead was piled with 
 wet cloths; he was plied with smelling- 
 salts and vinegar, till at length he opened 
 his eyes. Then Madame Sonet made him 
 drink some good strong broth; for the 
 marble-merchants had not omitted to 
 set the pot-au-feu upon the fire. 
 
 " We don't often come across clients 
 who feel so keenly as all that ; still we 
 do occasionally meet them, once in two 
 
 j'ears or so ! "' said the lady. At last 
 Schmucke began to talk about getting 
 back to the Rue de Normandie. 
 
 Thereupon Sonet produced the design 
 and said: "This, monsieur, is the drawing 
 which Vitelot has made expressly for you; 
 he sat up all night over it ! But he was 
 in a happy vein. It will be a very fine 
 monumenet — " 
 
 " It will be one of the finest in Pere- 
 Lachaise ! " cried little Madame Sonet. 
 " But then it is yonv duty to show respect 
 to the memory of a friend who has left 
 you his whole fortune — " 
 
 Now, this design, which was supposed 
 to have been made expressly for Pons, 
 had, as a matter of fact, been prepared 
 for De Marsaj', the celebrated minister : 
 but his widow, being desirous that his 
 monument should be designed by Stid- 
 mann, the design prepared by these manu- 
 factui'ers of monuments was rejected ; for 
 a commonplace monument was disgusting 
 to the widow. The three figures were 
 originally intended to r#present the three 
 days of the Revolution of July, during 
 which the ^eat /minister came to the 
 front. By introducing sundry modifica- 
 tions, Sonet and Vitelot had since con- 
 trived to make the three glorious days 
 represent the Army, Finance, and the 
 Family, for the monument of Charles 
 Keller— a monument which also was in- 
 trusted to the skill of Stidmann. For the 
 last eleven years had this design been 
 from time to time adapted to meet the 
 varj'ing predicaments of several bereaved 
 families ; but by counter-drawing, Vite- 
 lot had managed to transform the three 
 figures into the genii of Music, Sculpture 
 and Painting. 
 
 " It's a mere trifle if you take into con- 
 sideration the amount of workmanship 
 and the setting up; but it won't take 
 more than six months," said Vitelot. 
 "Here is the estimate and specification, 
 monsieur — seven thousand francs, ex- 
 clusive of the workmen's wages." 
 
 " If monsieur would like it in marble."' 
 chimed in Sonet, whose specialty was 
 marble, " it will come td Welve thousand 
 francs, and monsieur will immortalize his 
 friend and self together."
 
 200 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 " I have just this moment heard that 
 the will will be disputed, and that the 
 heirs will be restored to their rights," 
 whispered Topinard to Vitelot ; "you 
 had better go and see Monsieur le Presi- 
 dent Camusot, for tiiis poor inoffensive 
 creature won't have a farthing." 
 
 " You are always bringing us clients 
 of that kind ! " said Madame Vitelot, 
 turning round upon and beginning to 
 quarrel with the tout. 
 
 Leaning on Topinard's arm, Schmucke 
 walked back to the Rue de Normandie, 
 for the mourning coaches had already 
 driven back thither. 
 
 "Do not leaf me !" said Schmucke to 
 Topinard, who so soon as he had confided 
 the poor musician to the care of Madame 
 Sauvage, wanted to get away. 
 
 " It is four o'clock, my dear Monsieur 
 Schmucke, and I must go home to dinner 
 —my wife, who is a box-keepei', won't 
 know what has become of me. You 
 know, the theater opens at a quarter 
 to six." 
 
 " Yez, I know — but conzider, I am alone 
 in de vorld, widout a^friend. You, who 
 have mourned for Bons, gif me a little 
 guidance ; I am in profound darkness, 
 and Bons said that I was zurrounded by 
 rogues." 
 
 " Yes, I very soon found that out ; I 
 have just saved you from being sent to 
 Clichy ! " 
 
 '• Gligy ? " exclaimed Schmucke ; " I 
 don't understand you." 
 
 " Poor man ! Well! Make your mind 
 easy ; I will come and see you. Good- 
 by." 
 
 "Atieu! for a little while!" said 
 Schmuche, sinking down as if he were 
 weaiy unto death. 
 
 "Adieu ! mossieu !" quoth Dame Sauv- 
 age to Topinard, in a manner that made 
 a forcible impression on the supernumer- 
 ary. 
 
 " Ah ! what is the matter with you, 
 Mrs. Housel^eeper ? " cried Topinard jo- 
 cosely. "There j'ou stand like a villain 
 in a melodrama." 
 
 "Villain youreelf ! " quoth the dame. 
 " Why do you come here interfering .' I 
 suppose you'll be wanting to undertake 
 
 Monsieur Schmucke's business ; and to 
 bleed him ? " 
 
 " Bleed him, indeed ! — your humble 
 servant ! " — retorted Topinard, proudl3% 
 " I am but a poor super at the theater, 
 but I love artists, and, let me tell you, I 
 have never asked any one for a farthing ! 
 Have I asked you to give me anything ? 
 Do I owe you anything — eh, old girl? " 
 
 " You are a super, and your name is — 
 what ? " asked the virago. 
 
 " Topinard, very much at your ser- 
 vice — " 
 
 "Many thanks to you," said Dame 
 Sauvage, "and present my compliments 
 to medeme if you are a married man, 
 mosieur. I know all I wanted to know, 
 now." 
 
 "What ails you, my beauty' ? " said 
 Madame Cantinet, coming forward. 
 
 " Wl\at ails me, little one ? Whj' just 
 this, that you must stay here and look 
 after the dinner, while I proceed to put 
 my foot into that gentleman's affairs — 
 tliat's what's the matter with me ! " 
 
 "He's down below talking to poor 
 Madame Cibot, who's crying her very 
 eyes out," replied Dame Cantinet. 
 
 Dame Sauvag-e ran downstairs so hasti- 
 ly that t\\ey trembled beneath lier feet. 
 
 " Monsieur," said she to Fraisier, draw- 
 ing him some little distance away from 
 Dame Cibot, and pointing to Topinard as 
 the supernumerary passed out, proud of 
 having already discharged the debt he 
 owed his benefactor, by emploj'ing a 
 greenroom artifice — for every one con- 
 nected with the stage has a certain fund 
 of wit and humor — to save the friend of 
 that benefactor from falling into a trap. 
 In fact the supernumerary secretly re- 
 solved that he would protect the unsus- 
 pecting musician of his orchestra against 
 the snares that would be laid for him. 
 
 " You see that little wretch ? " pursued 
 Dame Sauvage, " 'tis a sort of a kind of 
 an honest man who wants to poke his 
 nose into Monsieur Schmucke's affairs — " 
 
 " Who is he ? " asked Fraisier. 
 
 "Oh ! a mere nobody — " 
 
 " In business, there is no such thing as 
 a mere nobody." 
 
 "Well," said the dame, "he's an un-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 201 
 
 . derling at the theater ; his name in Topi- 
 nard." 
 
 " Good ! " said Fraisier, "go on as you 
 have begun, Madame Sauvage, and you 
 will have your tobacco-shop." 
 
 Thereupon, Fraisier resumed his con- 
 versation -with Madame Cibot — " I say 
 therefore, my dear client, that you have 
 been placing a double game with us, and 
 that we are in no way bound to keep 
 terms with a partner who deceives us." 
 
 "And in what way have I deceived 
 you, pray?" said Dame Cibot, with her 
 arms akimbo. "Do you think that you're 
 a-going to frighten me mth your vinegar 
 looks and freezing airs ? You're just try- 
 ing to forge excuses for going away from 
 your word, and you call yourself a gentle- 
 man. Shall I tell you what you are ? 
 You're a scamp. Yes, yes, you may 
 scratch your arm as much as jo\x please ; 
 but put that in your fob — " 
 
 " Now let's have no angry words, my 
 pet," said Fraisier. " Listen to me ! 
 You have feathered j-our nest. This 
 very morning while the preparations for 
 the funeral were in train, I found this 
 duplicate catalogue, which is, through- 
 out, in the handwriting of Monsieur Pons ; 
 and, by the merest chance, my eye en- 
 countered this ; " and opening the cata- 
 logue, Fraisier read aloud these words : 
 
 " ' No. 7. Magnificent portrait painted 
 on marble, by Sebastian del Piombo in 
 1546, sold by a family which had carried 
 it off from the cathedral of Terni. This 
 portrait, the companion to which was a 
 bishop, bought by an Englishman, repre- 
 sents a Knight of Malta praying, and was 
 placed over the tomb of the Rossi family'. 
 But for its date the picture might be as- 
 cribed to Raphael. This little painting 
 appears to me to be superior to the por- 
 trait of Baccio Bandinelli in the museum, 
 which is somewhat faded, whereas the 
 Knight of Malta is extremel3' fresh in 
 consequence of the preservation of the 
 coloring on the Lavagna (Slate).' 
 
 "I found, on examination," resumed 
 Fraisier, "that place No. 7 was occupied 
 by the portrait of a lady (signed Char- 
 din), which had no No. 7 ! While the 
 master of the ceremonies was making up 
 
 his quorum of pall-bearers, I verified the 
 pictures, and there are eight ordinary 
 pictures, without numbers, in the places 
 allotted to works which were described 
 as masterpieces by the late Monsieur 
 Pons, and are now no longer to be found. 
 Finally" there is missing a little picture on 
 wood, by Metzu, which is described as a 
 chef-d'oeuvre — " 
 
 " Was J the custodian of the pictures ? " 
 asked Dame Cibot. 
 
 " No ; but j'ou were the confidential 
 housekeeper in charge of Monsieur Pons's 
 establishment, and if robbery has been 
 committed — " 
 
 "Robbery indeed! Let me just n'in- 
 form you, monsieur, that the pictures were 
 sold by Monsieur Schmucke, in obedience 
 to the directions of Monsieur Pons, n'and 
 to supply his wants." 
 
 '• To whom were thej^ sold ? " 
 
 "• To Messieurs EUe Magus and Remo- 
 nencq." 
 
 " For how much ? " 
 
 "Why, I really don't remember." 
 
 " Now listen to me, my dear Madame 
 Cibot," pursued Fraisier. "You have 
 feathered your nest, and feathered it well I 
 I shall keep my eye upon you ; I have you 
 in my power. Serve me, and I will hold 
 my tongue. In any case, you under- 
 stand, you mustn't expect to receive any- 
 thing from Monsieur le President Camu- 
 sot, since you have thought fit to plunder 
 him." 
 
 " I felt quite sure as it would aU tuni 
 to pudding bones, as far as I was con- 
 cerned, my dear Monsieur Fraisier," re- 
 plied Dame Cibot, mollifled by the words 
 I ivill hold my tongue. 
 
 " There you are now," said Remonencq, 
 coming to the rescue, " picking a quarrel 
 with madame ; It isn't right. The sale of 
 the pictures was arranged, at Monsieur 
 Pons's free wiU and pleasure, between him- 
 self and Magus and me ; it took us three 
 days to come to terms with the deceased, 
 who positively dreamed about his pictures ! 
 We have formal receipts for the money, 
 and if, as always happens, we gave ma- 
 dame a few forty-franc pieces, she had 
 no more than wo are in the habit of giv- 
 ing to the servants of the gentry -folks
 
 202 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 witli whom we do a bit of business. Ah ! 
 my dear sir, if you think as you are im- 
 posing on a helpless woman, you'll find 
 youi'self very much mistaken ! Do you 
 take me, Mr. Pettifogger? Monsieur 
 Magus rules the market, and if you don't 
 give way to madame, if you don't give 
 her what you promised her, I'll he at 
 your heels when the collection is sold, and 
 you'll see what you'll lose if you have 
 Monsieiu- Magus and mo against you— 
 us as can raise all the dealers against 
 you. Instead of seven or eight hundred 
 thousand francs, j'ou won't get even so 
 much as two hundred thousand ! " 
 
 " All right ! All right ! We'll see about 
 that! We won't sell at all," said Frai- 
 sier, "or, if we do, we'll sell in London." 
 
 " We know London quite well ! " said 
 Remonencq ; " and Monsieur Magus has 
 quite as much influence there as he has in 
 Paris." 
 
 " Good-by, madame, I will settle your 
 business for j'ou," said Fraisier, "unless 
 3'ou continue to do exactly what I tell 
 you," he added. 
 
 "You little pickpocket—" 
 
 "Take care," said Fraisier, "I shall 
 soon be a juge de paix." 
 
 Thus, with mutual menaces, the force of 
 which was correctly appreciated by each 
 of them, did these two worthies part. 
 
 "Thank you, Remonencq," said Dame 
 Cibot. " It's very pleasant for a poor 
 widow to find some one n'as'U take her 
 part." 
 
 That evening, at about ten o'clock, 
 Gaudissard summoned to his private 
 room the attendant on the orchestra of 
 the theater. When Topinard presented 
 himself, the manager was standing with 
 his back to the fire-place, in a Napoleonic 
 attitude which he had cultivated since he 
 had assumed the direction of a host of 
 actors, dancers, figuranti, musicians, and 
 machinists, and been called upon to deal 
 with authors. His habit was to pass his 
 right hand beneath his waistcoat and 
 grasp the left brace, while he presented 
 the three-quarter face and gazed at va- 
 cancy. 
 
 " How now, Topinard ; have you a pri- 
 vate income? " 
 
 "No, monsieur." ; 
 
 " Then you are on the lookout for a 
 better place ? " inquired the manager. 
 
 '•No, monsieur — " replied the super- 
 numerary, turning pale. 
 
 " What the devil ! your wife is box- 
 keeper on the first tier. I showed my 
 respect for my ruined predecessor by 
 retaining her services. I gave you day- 
 work by making you lamp-cleaner to the 
 greenroom, and you have the musical 
 scores to look tifter into the bargain. 
 Nor is that all. You have an allowance 
 of twenty sous to represent the monsters 
 and lead the troops of devils when we 
 bring hell upon the stage ! Your posi- 
 tion is the ewxy of all the supers in the 
 house, and yo\x are regarded with no fav- 
 orable e^'e by your colleagues, my friend. 
 You have enemies in the theater — " 
 
 " EHemies ! " exclaimed Topinard. 
 
 " — And you have three children, the 
 eldest of whom plays children's parts, 
 and has an allowance of fifty cen- 
 times !— " 
 
 "Monsieur — " 
 
 " — ^Let me speak," cried Gaudissard, 
 in a voice of thunder. " Holding the 
 position you do, yo\x want to leave the 
 theater — " 
 
 "Monsieur — " 
 
 " — You must needs poke your nosa into 
 business matters and thrust your finger 
 into succession-pies ! Why, you luckless 
 wight, you'll be crushed like an egg. I 
 have a patron in the person of his Excel- 
 lency Monseigneur le Comte Popinot — a 
 man of talent and of high character, 
 whom the king has been wise enough to 
 summon to his council-table. Well, this 
 statesman this first-rate politician — I am 
 speaking of Count Popinot — has married 
 his son to the daughter of the President 
 de Marville, one of the most estimable and 
 one of the most esteemed of the judges of 
 the highest grade, one of the luminaries 
 of the court at the palace — ^_you know the 
 palace, don't you ? Well, then, this Mon- 
 sieur de Marville is the natural heir of his 
 cousin Pons, our former conductor, whose 
 funeral you attended this morning. Now 
 observe ; I don't blame you for having 
 gone to pay this last tribute of respect to
 
 CO U SIX PONS. 
 
 203 
 
 the poor fellow ; but you will lose ■ your 
 berth if you interfere in the affairs of our 
 worthy Monsieur Schmucke, toward whom 
 I entertain the most friendly feelings, but 
 who will shortly find himself placed in a 
 very delicate position in relation to the 
 natural heirs of Pons. And since this 
 German is of very little consequence to 
 me, while the president and Count Popi- 
 not are of a g-reat deal of consequence to 
 me, I recommend you to leave the worthy 
 German to unravel his own affairs. The 
 Germans have a special Providence of 
 their own, and you would be entirely out 
 of place as a subaltern deity. So remain 
 as you are — a super! You can't do 
 better ! " 
 
 "Enough, Monsieur le Directeur," said 
 Topinard, deeply grieved. Thus was 
 Schmucke, who expected that the humble 
 supernumerary, the only being, himself ex- 
 cepted, who had shed a tear over Pons's 
 grave, would pay him a visit on the mor- 
 row, deprived of the onlj' protector that 
 chance had sent him. When that mor- 
 row dawned upon the luckless German 
 and he gazed upon the empty rooms, he 
 felt the immensity of the loss that he had 
 sustained. On the two preceding days, 
 the hurry of events and the turmoil that 
 death brings in its train had involved 
 Schmucke in the bustle and commotion 
 that furnishes distraction to the eye. 
 But in the silence that follows the burial 
 of a friend, a father, a son, or a woman 
 who was dear to us — the dull, cold silence 
 of the morrow— there is something that 
 is terrible — something that is icy. Poor 
 Schmucke was drawn to Pons's chamber 
 by an irresistible attraction ; but, unable 
 to endure the sight of the apartment, he 
 immediately withdrew, and returned to 
 the dining-room, where Madame Sauvage 
 was laying breakfast. Schmucke placed 
 himself at the table, but could eat noth- 
 ing. Suddenly there came a smart ring 
 at the bell, and three men in black en- 
 tered, unopposed either \)y Madame Can- 
 tinet or Madame Sauvage. This trio con- 
 sisted of Monsieur Vitel the juge de paix, 
 his registrar and — Fraisier, who now, in 
 consequence of the check he had sus- 
 tained, through the execution of a formal 
 
 will which destroyed that formidable 
 weapon— the testament that he had so 
 audaciously stolen— was more lean and 
 hungry than ever. 
 
 " We have come to affix the seals of the 
 law here, monsieur," said the juge de 
 paix to Schmucke, mildly. 
 
 Schnuicke, to whom these words were 
 so much Greek, cast a timorous glance at 
 the three men. 
 
 "We have come at the instance of 
 Monsieur Fraisier, advocate, the pro.x^' 
 of Monsieur Camusot de Marville, who is 
 the natural heir to his cousin the late 
 Monsieur Pons," added the registrar. 
 
 "The collections are there, in the large 
 salon and in the bedroom of the deceased," 
 said Fraisier. 
 
 "Well, then, let us go in," said the 
 juge de paix. "Excuse us, monsieur; 
 pray go on with your breakfast ; don't 
 let us interfere with you." 
 
 The interruption of these three men in 
 black had frozen the poor German with 
 terror. • 
 
 "This gentleman," said Fraisier, dart- 
 ing at Schmucke one of those poisonous 
 glances wherewith he was wont to mes- 
 merize his victims, just as a spider mes- 
 merizes a fly, "this gentleman, who has 
 managed to procure the making of a will 
 par devant notaire in his favor, must be 
 fully prepared for some opposition from 
 the family of the testator. A family docs 
 not passively submit to spoliation at the 
 hands of a foreigner; and we shall see 
 which will be victorious, monsieur ; fraud 
 and corruption or the family ! We, as 
 the natural heirs, are entitled to demand 
 the afHxatiou of the seals ; and affixed the 
 seals shall be; and, moreover, it is my 
 intention to see that this protective meas- 
 ure is carried out with the utmost possible 
 rigor ; and so it shall be." 
 
 "Mein Got! Mein Got! what zin 
 againzt Heaven have I gommitted ? " 
 cried the inoffensive Schmucke. 
 
 " You are the talk of the whole house,'" 
 said Dame Sauvage. " ^\1lile you were 
 asleep, there came a little stripling, 
 dressed in black, a little puppy who said 
 he was managing clerk to Monsieur Han- 
 nequin ; and he insisted on speaking to
 
 204 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 you; but as you were asleep and so 
 thoroughly worn out with the ceremony 
 of yesterday, I told him that you had 
 g-iven a power of attorney to Monsieur 
 Villemot, managing- clerk to Monsieur 
 Tabareau, and that he must go and see 
 Villemot if business was his game. ' Ah,' 
 said the young man, ' so much the better, 
 I shall soon come to an understanding 
 with him. We are going to deposit the 
 will in court as soon as we have exhibited 
 it to the president.' Thereupon, I begged 
 him to send Monsieur Villemot to us as 
 soon as ever he could. Make your mind 
 easy, my dear sir," continued Dame 
 Sauvage, "you'll find folks to stand up 
 for you ; you won't be fleeced just as much 
 as people choose ; you'll have some one on 
 your side who has teeth and claws ! Mon- 
 sieur Villemot will soon show 'em what's 
 what ! For my part, I've already had a 
 tiff with that low-lived creature. Mother 
 Cibot, a portress, forsooth, who must 
 needs take upon herself to pass judg- 
 ment on her lodgers, and ^'ho main- 
 tains that you've filched this fortune 
 from the lawful heirs, that you kept 
 Monsieur Pons shut up and made a mere 
 tool of him, and that he was racing mad. 
 I gave her a fine wigging, the wicked 
 \iTetch, I promise you ! ' You're a thief 
 and a scum ! ' I says to her, saj's I ; ' and 
 you'll find yourself in the dock, on account 
 of what you've stolen from your gentle- 
 men.' And then she shut her mug." 
 
 ' ' Monsieur, ' ' said the registrar, coming 
 in to look for Schmucke ; " do you wish 
 to be preseTit while the seals are being 
 affixed in the chamber of the deceased ? " 
 
 •'Go on! Go on!" said Schmucke. 
 " I brczume dat I shall be allowed to die 
 in beaze? " 
 
 "People are alwaj's at liberty to die," 
 said the registrar, "and successions form 
 the bulk of our business ; but I have seldom 
 seen a universal legatee follow his testator 
 into the grave." 
 
 ''J shall follow mine,'^ said Schmucke, 
 who, after the repeated blows he had re- 
 ceived, felt intolerable pangs in the region 
 of the beart. 
 
 "Ah! hei'e is Monsieur Villemot!" 
 exclaimed Dame Sauvage. 
 
 " Monsir Fillemod," said the hapless 
 German, "will you rebrezent me?" 
 
 " I hurried hither to tell you that the 
 will is perfectly formal, and will no doubt 
 be upheld by the court, which will put you 
 in possession of the estate — and a fine 
 fortune you will have." 
 
 "1 a fine fortune!" ejaculated Schmucke, 
 horrified at being suspected of cupidity. 
 
 " Meanwhile," said Dame Sauvage, " I 
 should like to know what the juge de jiaix 
 is about, with his tapers and little bits of 
 tape." 
 
 " Oh ! He is affixing the seals. Come, 
 Monsieur Schmucke ; you have a right to 
 be present." 
 
 " No ! No ! do you go dere instead." 
 
 " But wherefore the seals, if monsieur 
 is in his own house, and if everything be- 
 longs to him?" quoth Dame Sauvage, 
 laying down the law after the fashion of 
 women, who, one and all, interpret 'the 
 code according to their own good pleasure. 
 
 "But monsieur is not in his own house, 
 madame ; he is in Monsieur Pons's house; 
 everything will belong to him, no doubt ; 
 but when one is legatee, one cannot take 
 possession of the property composing the 
 succession without what is called a writ 
 of possession. That writ is issued by the 
 court. Now, if the heirs who have been 
 ousted from the succession, by the volun- 
 tary act of the testator, oppose the writ 
 of possession, there arises a lawsuit. And, 
 inasmuch as it is uncertain to whom the 
 succession will be awarded, all the goods 
 and chattels of the deceased are placed 
 under seal, and the respective notaries of 
 the heirs and legatee will proceed to take 
 the inventory in due course of law. Do 
 you see ? " 
 
 On hearing this jargon for the first 
 time in the course of his life, Schmucke 
 entirely lost his head. He allowed it to 
 sink on to the back of the armchair in 
 which he was seated ; it felt so heavy 
 that he could not support its weight. Vil- 
 lemot, meanwhile, entered into conversa- 
 tion with the registrar, and, with all the 
 imperturbability of the professional law- 
 yer, looked on during the apposition of 
 the seals — a ceremony which, in the ab- 
 sence of any relative, is generally accom-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 205 
 
 panied bj' a running commentary of jokes 
 and remarks about the objects which are 
 boiiig- thus locked up until the day arrives 
 for their distribution. 
 
 At leng1;h the four men of law closed 
 the door of the salon, and returned to the 
 dining-room, whither the registrar betook 
 himself. Schmucke mechanically watched 
 the operation, which consists in affixing 
 the official seal of the juge de paix to 
 either end of a piece of tape stretched 
 across the aperture, in the case of folding- 
 doors ; and in placing the seal upon the 
 two lips of the chink, in the case of cup- 
 boards and of single doors. 
 
 " Let's pass on to this room, now," 
 said Fraisier, pointing to the door of 
 Schmucke's chamber, which opened into 
 the dining-room. 
 
 '■' Why, that is monsieur's own room !" 
 exclaimed Dame Sauvage, rushing for- 
 ward and placing herself between the 
 door and the men of law. 
 
 " Here is the lease of the apartments," 
 said the hideous Fraisier. "We found it 
 among the papers, and it is not made out 
 in the names of Messieurs Pons and 
 Schmucke, but in the name of Monsieur 
 Pons alone. The whole suite of rooms 
 forms part of the succession, and — more- 
 over," added he, opening the door %i 
 Schmucke's chamber, "look. Monsieur le 
 Juge de Paix, the room is full of pict- 
 ures." 
 
 " So it is," said the juge de paix, thus 
 at once giving judgment in favor of Frai- 
 sier. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 " STRAWBERRIES. 
 
 "Stop a moment, gentlemen," said 
 Villemot. "Do you suppose that j'ou 
 will be allowed to turn the universal lega- 
 tee out of house and home, while his right 
 to that character is as j'et uncontested ? " 
 
 "But it is contested," said Fraisier;* 
 "we oppose the delivery of the bequest." 
 
 " Upon what grounds ? " 
 
 • The reader will bear in mind that Fraisier 
 meuas a strawberry plant. 
 
 " You shall soon learn, young man ! " 
 said Fraisier, satirically. " We do not, 
 as matters now stand, refuse permission 
 to the legatee to remove from this room 
 whatever he is prepared to claim as his 
 own private property ; but placed under 
 seal the room must be ; and this gentle- 
 man may e'en go and find shelter where- 
 ever he chooses." 
 
 "Not so," said Villemot. "Monsieur 
 Schmucke will continue to occupy his own 
 room ! " 
 
 "How so, pray? " 
 
 "Why," replied Villemot, "I shall ap- 
 plj^ for an interlocutory judgment, -with a 
 %aew to obtaining a declaration that we are 
 joint lessees of these apartments, and you 
 sha'n't turn us out of them. Remove the 
 pictures ; separate that which belonged 
 to the deceased from my client's property, 
 if you like — but here my client shall re- 
 
 mam 
 
 ? " 
 
 "Young man ! " 
 
 '• I wUl go away ! " said the old musi- 
 cian, whose energies returned to him when 
 he heard this disgusting altercation. 
 
 " You had better ! " said Fraisier. " It 
 will save you some expense, for you would 
 lose the day — the lease is perfectly regu- 
 lar." 
 
 " The lease ! the lease ! " cried Villemot. 
 "What's the use of tallying about the 
 lease. 'Tis a question of bona-fides — " 
 
 " 'Tis a question that cannot be deter- 
 mined, like a criminal case, b}- the e^^- 
 dence of ordinary witnesses. Are you 
 prepared to involve yourselves in a maze 
 of reports, verifications, interlocutory 
 judgments, and an independent suit?" 
 
 "No! no!" cried Schmucke; "I will 
 degamp, I will go away." 
 
 Schmucke's life— though Schmucke him- 
 self was unconscious of the fact — was that 
 of a cynic philosopher, so extreme was its 
 simplicity. His whole outfit consisted of 
 two pairs of shoes, one pair of boots, two 
 complete suits, twelve shirts, twelve neck- 
 cloths, twelve handkerchiefs, four under- 
 vests, and a superb pipe, which Pons had 
 given him, together with an embroid- 
 ered tobacco-pouch. Roused by the fever 
 of indignation to an abnormal pitch of 
 excitement, he went into his room, and
 
 206 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 collecting all his baggage, placed it on a 
 chair. 
 
 " All dat is mine ! " said he, with a sim- 
 plicity worthy of Cincinnatus. "De biano 
 also is mine." 
 
 " Madame," said Fraisier to Dame Sauv- 
 age, "get some one to help you to re- 
 move this piano, and place it on the 
 landing." 
 
 "You are a great deal too harsh," said 
 Villemot to Fraisier ; " Monsieur le Juge 
 de Paix has the exclusive right to order 
 what is to be done ; he is sovereign judge 
 in this matter." 
 
 "There is valuable property there," 
 said the registrar, pointing to the room. 
 
 "Besides, monsieur quits the apart- 
 ments of his own free will and pleasure," 
 remarked t\ie juge de paix. 
 
 "I never saw such a client in all my 
 life ! " said the indignant Villemot, turn- 
 ing round upon Schmucke. " You are as 
 soft as pulp." 
 
 " What does it matter where one dies," 
 said Schmucke as he retired from the 
 apartments. "Dese men have digere' 
 fazes — I will zend for my boor trifles." 
 
 " Where is monsieur going to ? " 
 
 "Wherever Got bleazes ! " replied the 
 universal legatee, with a gesture of in- 
 difference that was sublime. 
 
 "Take care to let me know," said Vil- 
 lemot. 
 
 "Follow Mm," whispered Fraisier to 
 the chief clerk. 
 
 Madame Cantinet was appointed guard- 
 ian of the seals ; and out of the cash found 
 upon the premises she received an advance 
 of fifty francs. 
 
 "All goes well," remarked Fraisier to 
 Monsieur Vitel as soon as Schmucke was 
 out of hearing. " If you are prepared to 
 resign your ofQce in my favor, go and call 
 upon Madame de Marville ; j-ou will have 
 no difficulty in arranging matters with 
 her." 
 
 "Your antagonist is a man of dough ! " 
 said the juge de paix, pointing to 
 Schmucke, who had halted in the court 
 to take one last long lingering look at 
 the windows of the apartments. 
 
 "Yes, the thing is safe now," replied 
 Fraisier. "You need not hesitate to 
 
 marrj' your granddaughter to Poulain ; 
 he will be chief phj'sician to the Quinze- 
 Vingts Hospital." 
 
 " We'll see about it ! Good-by, Mon- 
 sieur Fraisier," said the juge de paix, 
 with an air of jolly good-fellowship. 
 
 " Tliere is a man of talent for you ! " 
 said the registrar. "He will travel far — 
 tlie knowing dog." 
 
 It was now eleven o'clock. Mechani- 
 cally did the old German glide into the 
 route that he and Pons used to pursue 
 together; and as he paced along he 
 thought of Pons : Pons's image was per- 
 petually before his mind ; Pons seemed to 
 be walking at his side. 
 
 Just as Schmucke reached the front of 
 his theater, out popped Topinard, who 
 had just finished cleaning the lamps of 
 all the brackets. While thus engaged he 
 had been pondering over the t^'ranny of 
 the manager. 
 
 "Ah ! dis is exactly what I wanted !" 
 cried Schmucke, stopping the poor super- 
 numerary. " Dobinard, you have a lodg- 
 ing, have you not ? " 
 
 "Yes, monsieur." 
 
 " A home of your own ? " 
 
 "Yes, monsieur." 
 
 "Can you give me board and lodging? 
 Oh ! I shall be a goot paj'master ; I have 
 an income of nine hundred francs — and 
 then I have not long to liff. I shall giff 
 you ferry little trouble. I can eat al- 
 most anj'thing ! My bibe is my only 
 bassion. And zince you are de only ber- 
 zon who has zhared my grief for de deat 
 of Bons, I lofe 3'ou 1 " 
 
 "I should be only too glad to do as 
 you wish, monsieur ; but I must tell j'ou 
 that Monsieur Gaudissard has given me a 
 fine wigging — " 
 
 "A wigging? " 
 
 " I mean that he has soused my head — " 
 
 "Zouzed your head ? " 
 
 " Yes ; scolded me for taking an inter- 
 est in you ; therefore, if 3'ou come to live 
 with me, we must keep it very dark ! But 
 I doubt whether you would stay with me; 
 for little do you know what the home of 
 a poor devil such as I am is like." 
 
 " I brefer de humble home of a man of 
 feeling who has mourned for Bons to de
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 207 
 
 Tuileries in de zoziety of men wid de faces 
 of tig-ers ! I have just left Bons's rooms 
 full of tig-ers who are going' to defour 
 eferyting ! " 
 
 *• Come along- with me, monsieur," said 
 the supernumerary, " and see for yourself. 
 But — Well, after all, there is a loft — 
 Let us consult Madame Topinard." 
 
 Schmucke followed Topinard as a sheep 
 follows its shepherd. Topinard conducted 
 him into one of those frightful localities 
 that migTit fitly be termed the cancers of 
 Paris. This spot is called Bordin Town. 
 "Tis a narrow passage lined by houses 
 such as builders run up as a matter of 
 speculation. It has an outlet into the Rue 
 de Bondy, in that part of the street which 
 is overshadowed by the immense pile of 
 the Porte-Saint-Martin Theater — one of 
 the warts of Paris. This passage, the path 
 of which is hollowed out and sunk below 
 the le\'el pavement of the street, slopes 
 down toward the Rue des Mathurins-du- 
 Temple. The town is bounded by an inner 
 street which runs at right angles to the 
 main street, so that the two streets to- 
 gether form a T. 
 
 These two narrow rows of buildings 
 contain about thirty houses six or seven 
 stories high. In the inner courts of these 
 houses, and in each of the tenements into 
 which they are divided there is a shop, a 
 work-room, or a manufactory of some 
 kind or other. In fact, Bordin Town is 
 the Faubourg Saint Antoine in miniature. 
 Here there is a furniture-maker, there a 
 brass-cutter; here theatrical costumes are 
 fashioned, there a glass-blower or a china- 
 painter has fixed his quarters ; in short, 
 Bordin Town turns out from its dim re- 
 cesses the article Paris in all its fanciful 
 varieties. This passage, like Commerce 
 itself, is dingy but productive. It swarms 
 with passengers, carts and draj's. Its 
 aspect is repellent, and in strict keeping 
 with its aspect is the teeming- population 
 of the place — a manufacturing population, 
 Avhose dexterity in handicraft is counter- 
 balanced by the stupidity that handicraft 
 engenders. It was on account of the 
 lowness of the rents that Topinai-d had 
 pitched his tent in this quarter, which, 
 fiom an industrial point of view, might 
 
 be called a flourishing quarter. His abode 
 was situated in the second house on the 
 left-hand side of the entry. The rooms 
 he occupied were upon the sixth-floor, and 
 looked out upon that belt of gardens, 
 which still exist as appendages to the 
 three or four large mansions that are to 
 be found in the Rue de Bondy. 
 
 Topinard 's apartments consisted of a 
 kitchen and two other rooms. The first 
 of these was the children's room, and 
 contained two little bedsteads of white 
 wood and a cradle. The second room 
 was occupied by Topinard and his spouse. 
 The kitchen did duty both as a breakfast- 
 room and a dining-room. Above these 
 apartments there was a kind of attic, six 
 feet high, roofed -with zinc, and having a 
 sky-light for a window. Access to this 
 attic was obtained by means of a stair- 
 case of white wood — a staircase which in 
 builders' slang would be called " amiller's 
 ladder." This room, which was intended 
 for a servant's room, entitled Topinard 's 
 lodgings to be styled a complete suite, 
 and raised the rental to the sum-total of 
 four hundred francs. At the entrance to 
 the apartments there was a kind of arched 
 vestibule, lighted by a small round win- 
 dow in the wall of the kitchen and formed 
 by the junction of the outer door of the 
 kitchen and the door of the first room — 
 three doors in all. This vestibule served 
 to conceal the kitchen. A familj- of five 
 persons (three of whom were children) 
 found shelter in these apartments, whicli 
 were hung with hideous paper at six sous 
 the piece, floored with bricks, garnished 
 with fire-places of that particular descrip- 
 tion called fire-places a la capucine, and 
 painted with common paint, to imitate 
 wood. 
 
 The deep scratches inflicted on such 
 portions of the walls as were within the 
 reach of the children's arms may be readi- 
 ly imagined : but the rich Avould find a 
 difliculty in picturing to themselves the 
 simplicity of the kitchen range, wliich 
 consisted of a nieat-hastener. a boiler, a 
 gridiron, a stew-pan, two or three coffee- 
 pots and a fr3nng-pan. The crockery, of 
 white and brown earthenware, was worth 
 at least twelve francs. The table did
 
 208 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 duty both as a kitchen table and a dining- 
 room tabic into the bargain. The furni- 
 ture consisted of a couple of chairs and a 
 couple of stools. The stock of wood and, 
 coal was stowed away beneath the cook- 
 ing-stove, while in another corner of the 
 room stood the tub, wherein, at night- 
 time, the family linen underwent frequent 
 lavation. Thi; room in which the childix'n 
 found a local habitation was traversed by 
 clothes-lines and adorned with playbills 
 and witli engravings extracted from 
 newspapers or from the prospectuses of 
 illustrated works. It was obvious that 
 the elder little Topinard (whose school- 
 books encumbered one corner of the 
 room) acted as superintendent of the 
 household when six o'clock came and fa- 
 ther and mother were called awaj' to the 
 theater. In full many a humble family, 
 a child of six or seven years is called upon 
 to play the part of mother in relation to 
 its sister and brothers. 
 
 This slight sketch will suffice to show 
 that the Topinards were (as the now 
 proverbial saying runs) poor but honest. 
 Topinard was about forty jj^ears old, and 
 his companion (who had formerly been a 
 chorus leader at the theater, and mistress 
 of the insolvent manager, Gaudissard's 
 immediate predecessor) was about thirty. 
 Lolotte had been a handsome woman ; 
 but the misfortunes which overtook the 
 late manager had reacted upon her to 
 such an extent that she found herself re- 
 duced to the necessity of contracting a 
 (stage) marriage with Topinard. She 
 entertained no doubt that, so soon as 
 the joint savings of herself and her com- 
 panion should reach the sum-total of a 
 hundred and fift^'' francs, Topinard would 
 fulfill his vows hy making her his lawful 
 wife — were it only for the sake of legiti- 
 matizing his children, whom he idolized. 
 When Madame Topinard had any leisure 
 time in tlie morning she plied her needle 
 for the wardrobe of the theater. By dint 
 of superhuman labor these two coura- 
 geous supernumeraries contrived between 
 them to realize an annual income of nine 
 hundred francs. 
 
 When Topinard and Schmucke had 
 reached the third-floor, Topinard, as 
 
 each fi'esh flight of stairs presented it- 
 self, cried out to his companion by way 
 of encouragement : " One story more ! " 
 But so profound was Schmucke's sorrow 
 that he did not even know whether he 
 were going upstairs or down. 
 
 At the moment when Topinard, Avho, 
 like all persons of his degree, was dressed 
 in white holland, opened the door of the 
 room, the voice of Madame Topinard was 
 heard exclaiming : " Come now ! childi'en, 
 be quiet, here comes papa ! '"' And since 
 the children, no doubt, did exactly what 
 they pleased with papa, the eldest con- 
 tinued to command a charge — a souve- 
 nir of the Cirque Olympique — with the 
 broomstick as a war-horse, while the sec- 
 ond went on blowing a tin whistle, and 
 the third brought up the rear-guard of 
 the army as well as his little legs would 
 let him. The mother meanwhile was busy 
 stitching a theatrical costume. 
 
 " Silence ! " shouted Topinard, in a for- 
 midable voice. "Silence, or I shall strike !" 
 ("I am always obliged to saj' that to 
 thorn," he whispered to Schmucke.) 
 
 "Look here, my darling," said the 
 supernumerary to the box-opener, " here 
 is Monsieur Schmucke, the fi'iend of tliat 
 poor Monsieur Pons. He does not know 
 where to go to, and would like to live 
 with us. I warned him that we were 
 anything but swells, that we lived on a 
 sixth story, and had nothing better than 
 a loft to offer him ; but it was all to no 
 purpose; he had set his heart upon it — " 
 
 Schmucke meanwhile had seated himself 
 in the chair which the woman had brought 
 forward for him ; and the children, cowed 
 by the advent of a stranger, had formed 
 a little group and betaken themselves to 
 the silent, exhaustive, but rapid scrutiny 
 characteristic of childhood, which, like 
 the dog, is guided \>y instinct rather than 
 by reason. Schmucke, on his part, fell to 
 studying this graceful little group ; one 
 member of which — the trumpeter — was 
 a little girl with magnificent light hair. 
 
 " Zhe looks like a little German girl ! " 
 said Schmucke, beckoning the child to come 
 to him. 
 
 "The gentleman will be very uncom- 
 fortable in the loft," said the box-opener.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 209 
 
 " If I were not obliged to keep the chil- 
 dren under vay eye, I would gladly oflFer 
 him our room." 
 
 She then ojiened the door of her own 
 room and ushered Schmuckeinto it. This 
 room contained all the luxury that the 
 e.stablishment could boast. There was a 
 mahogany bedstead furnished with cur- 
 tains of blue calico fringed with white. 
 The window-curtains also were made of 
 blue calico of the same kind and pattern. 
 The chest of drawers, writing-table and 
 chairs, though all of them were of plain 
 mahogany, were in apple-pie order. On 
 the mantel-shelf there were a time-piece 
 and two candelabra — articles which had 
 evidently been presented to Lolotte in 
 former days by the bankrupt manager, 
 whose portrait, an execrable daub by 
 Pierre Grassou, hung upon the wall 
 above the chest of drawers. It was 
 natural enough that the children, for- 
 bidden as they were to enter this sanc- 
 tum, should seize this chance of catching 
 a stolen glimpse of it. 
 
 " Now, monsieur would be very com- 
 fortable here,'' said the box-opener. 
 
 "No, no!" replied Schmucke. "Ah, 
 no ; my days are numbered ; all I need is 
 some nook wherein to die." 
 
 The door of the sanctum having been 
 closed, the party mounted to the attic. 
 Directly Schmucke reached it, he ex- 
 claimed : " Ah ! dat is egzactly what I 
 want. Before I went to live wid Bons 
 I was never better lodged dan dat." 
 
 " Very well, then ; all we have to do is 
 to buj-^ a truckle-bed, a couple of mat- 
 tresses, a bolster, a piUow, two chairs, 
 and a table. That won't kill any one — it 
 may come to a hundred and fifty francs ; 
 basin, jug, and a small carpet for the bed- 
 side included." 
 
 So the whole matter was arranged ; 
 only — the hundred and fifty francs were 
 not forthcoming. 
 
 But as Schmucke was within a stone's- 
 throw of the theater, it very naturally 
 occurred to him, seeing how poor his new 
 friends were, to go thither and claim the 
 salary due to liim from the manager. So 
 to the theater he foi'thwith repaired and 
 there found Gaudissard. 
 
 The manager received Schmucke with 
 the somewhat overstrained politeness 
 which he habitually displayed toward the 
 artists of his theatei-, and was astonished 
 at Schmucke's demanding a month's sal- 
 ar3'. Nevertheless, his claim appearing, 
 on examination, to be well-founded, the 
 manager exclaimed : 
 
 " Well ! deuce take it, my worthy 
 friend ! The Germans, it seems, always 
 know how to reckon, even when they are 
 in tears. I thought you would have been 
 sensible of my present of a thousand 
 francs — a full year's salary — which I 
 sent you, and that it would make us 
 quits ! " 
 
 " We did not receive a zingle farding," 
 said the worthy German ; " and if I have 
 applied to you for money it is because I 
 am in de street and have not one farding. 
 To whom did you intrust de brezent ? " 
 
 " To your portress ! " 
 
 "To Madame Zibod ! " exclaimed the 
 musician. " Why, she killed Bons — 
 robbed him, zold him. She tried to burn 
 his will. She is a fillain, a monzder ! " 
 
 " But, my good fellow, how comes it 
 that you are in the street and without a 
 shelter when you are the universal lega- 
 tee. That is not logical, as we say." 
 
 " Dey turned me out-of-doors. I am a 
 foreigner. I know noting of your law — " 
 
 "Poor old man !" thought Gaudissard, 
 who foresaw what was likelj^ to be the 
 issue of so unequal a combat. " Now 
 listen to me," said he, aloud. " Shall I 
 tell you what you ought to do ? " 
 
 " I have an agent." 
 
 " Well, then ; enter into a compromise 
 with the legal heirs at once. They will 
 give you a certain sum down, and an an- 
 nuity, and you will live in peace—" 
 
 " Dat is all I want ! " replied Schmucke. 
 
 "Well, then, leave me to make the 
 necessary arrangements on your behalf." 
 said Gaudissard, to whom Fraisier, on 
 the previous evening, had imparted his 
 modus opei-andi. 
 
 Gaudissard 's idea was that he would 
 be able to ingratiate himself with the 
 j'outhful Viscountess Popinot and her 
 mother bj^ bringing this dirty piece of 
 business to a conclusion. I shall be a
 
 aio 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 councilor of state, at the very least," 
 said he to himself. 
 
 "You have my authority to act for 
 me—" 
 
 "Well, then, just let's see how mat- 
 ters stand. In the firet place, here are a 
 hundred pounds," said the Napoleon of 
 tlie boulevard theaters, taking- from his 
 pocket fifteen louis and presenting- them 
 to the old musician. " Those belong to 
 you ; 'tis six months' salary in advance. 
 You can return them to me iii case of 
 your throwing up the theater. Now let 
 us reckon ; what are your annual ex- 
 penses ? What do 3'ou require to live 
 upon comfortably ? Come now, arrange 
 for a Sardanapalian existence ! " 
 
 "I only want a summer suit and a win- 
 ter suit — " 
 
 "Three hundred francs," said Gau- 
 dissard. 
 
 " Shoes, four pairs — " 
 
 "Sixty francs." 
 
 "Stocking-s." 
 
 "Twelve pairs — that's thirty - six 
 francs." 
 
 "SLx shirts." 
 
 " Six calico shirts, twent-four francs ; 
 the same number of linen ones, forty- 
 eight ; say seventy - two francs. We 
 have g-ot to four hundred and sixty- 
 eight frnncs ; let's say five hundred 
 francs, including neckcloths and hand- 
 kerchiefs ; then one hundred francs for 
 washing — six hundred francs. Now, 
 what do you require to live upon ? 
 Three francs a day?" 
 
 "No, dat is too much ! " 
 
 " Well, but you will have to Duy hats. 
 That makes fifteen hundred francs ; and 
 five hundred francs for rent, two thou- 
 sand. Would you like me to procure you 
 an annuity of two thousand francs, well 
 secured ? " 
 
 "Den, dere is my tobacco." 
 
 "Two thousand four hundred francs! 
 Ah, Daddy Schmucke. You call it to- 
 bacco, do you? Well, you shall have 
 your tobacco. Then the annuity is to be 
 two thousand four hundred francs." 
 
 " Dat is not all. I want a zertain zum 
 in ready money ! " 
 
 (" Ah ! The premium of course ! Oh, 
 
 these Germans ! They call themselves 
 simple! The old Robert Macaire," said 
 Gaudissard to himself.) "Well, what 
 do you want?" repeated he. "But 
 mind you, this must be all." 
 
 "I want de money to bay a zagred 
 debt," said Schmucke. 
 
 ("A debt, eh?" said Gaudissard to 
 himself. " What a rascal it is ! Why, 
 he's worse than a young hopeful ! He's 
 g-oing to invent some bills of exchange 
 now ! We shall have to put a stop to 
 this. This Fraisier don't take a compre- 
 hensive view of things !) What debt are 
 you referring to, my g-ood fellow ? Say 
 on ! " 
 
 ' ' Dere is but one man who zhared my 
 grief for Bons's death ; he has a nice little 
 g-irl with magnificent hair; zhe reminded 
 me, at onze, of de genius of my dear Ger- 
 manj^ which I oug-hb never to have left. 
 Baris is not g:oot for de Germans. Dey 
 only get laug-hed at here !" said Schmucke, 
 nodding- his head with the air of one who 
 is thoroug-hly persuaded that he has a 
 clear insight into the ways of this wicked 
 world. 
 
 "He is mad," said Gaudissard to him- 
 self. 
 
 And a tear stole to the eye of the man- 
 ager, who felt a twinge of compassion for 
 the inoffensive, artless old man. 
 
 " Ah ! you understand me, Monzir le 
 Tirecdir ! Well, dis man wit de little girl 
 is Dobinard ; Dobinard who attends to de 
 orgeztra, and lights de lamps. Bons liked 
 him and used to help him. He is de only 
 berzon who followed de funeral of my only 
 friend to de church and to de zemetery. I 
 want tree touzand francs for him and tree 
 touzand francs for de little girl — " 
 
 "Poor man ! " said Gaudissard, aside. 
 
 Relentless parvenu as he was, Gaudis- 
 sard was touched by Schmucke 's magna- 
 nimity, and by his gratitude for an act 
 which, though it would have seemed the 
 veriest trifle in the eyes of the world, out- 
 weighed (like Bossuet's glass of water) 
 the victories of conquerors in the estima- 
 tion of this meek and humble Christian. 
 Beneath all Gaudissard 's vanity, beneath 
 his burning thirst for success, beneath his 
 fierce desire to place himself on a level
 
 COUSIX PONS. 
 
 ni 
 
 with his friend Count Poplnot, there lay 
 a good heart and a kindly disposition. 
 He therefore rescinded his rash judgment 
 in regard to Schmucke and passed over to 
 his side. 
 
 "You shall have all you ask for. But, 
 my dear Schmucke, I will do even more 
 than that ; Topinard is a man of integrity, 
 is he not ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ; I saw him hut now in his 
 humble home, where he lives contentedly 
 among his children." 
 
 " I will give him the post of treasurer — 
 for Daddy Baudrand is on the point of 
 lea%ang us." 
 
 "Oh, may Got bless JO^x ! " exclaimed 
 Schmucke. 
 
 "Well, then, mj' good and worthy- fel- 
 low, join me at four o'clock this after- 
 noon at the house of Berthier, the notary ; 
 all shall be in readiness, and you will be 
 beyond the reach of want for the rest of 
 your days. You shall have your six thou- 
 sand francs, and you shall hold the same 
 position under Garangeot as you held 
 under Pons, and at the same salary." 
 
 "No," said Schmucke, "I shall not 
 liff ; I have no heart for anyting ; I feel 
 dat my healt is undermined." 
 
 " Poor sheep ! " moralized Gaudissard, 
 as he bowed to the departing Schmucke. 
 " WeU, after all, one Lives on mutton cut- 
 lets; and as the sublime Beranger puts 
 it : ' Poor sheep, poor sheep, ye are doomed 
 to be shorn ! ' " and humming this politi- 
 cal opinion with a view to subduing his 
 emotion, the manager told the office page 
 to send his carriage round. 
 
 When he had reached the foot of the 
 staircase, he called out to the coachman : 
 "Kue de Hanovre." The man of ambi- 
 tion had reappeared in his totality. The 
 council of state loomed before his eyes. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 THE BITTER END. 
 
 While Gaudissard was on his way to 
 the Rue de Hano%Te, Schmucke was en- 
 gaged in buying some flowers and cakes 
 
 for Topinard 's children. His heart wa« 
 almost light as he took these offerings 
 home ; and, as he uttered the words : •• I 
 make you a present of de gakes," a smile 
 played upon his lips which for three long 
 months had knowTi no smile — a smile that 
 would have made an observer shudder. 
 
 " I make you a present of de gakes on 
 one gondition." 
 
 "You are too good, monsieur," said 
 the mother. 
 
 " De little gu'l must giff me a kiss, and 
 put de flowers in her hair and arrange 
 her hair as de little German girls do." 
 
 " Olga, my child, do exactly what this 
 gentleman asks you," said the box-opener 
 with an air of severity. 
 
 "Don't speak grossly to my little Ger- 
 man girl," pleaded Schmucke; for the 
 sight of the little creature brought his 
 dear Germany before his eyes. 
 
 "Three commissionaires are on their 
 way here with all the rattle-traps upon 
 their shouldere," said Topinard, bursting 
 
 into the room. 
 
 "Ah ! " said Schmucke. " Here are two 
 hundred francs to pa}' for them all, vay 
 friend. But — you have a gentle greature 
 for your mate ; j-ou will marry her, won't 
 you ? I will giff you tree tousand francs ; 
 de little girl shall liave a marriage bor- 
 tion of tree tousand francs, which you can 
 invest in her name. And you are not to 
 be a supemumerarj' any longer — you are 
 to be de treasurer of de teatcr." 
 
 " Jto have Daddy Baudrand's place ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Who told you so?" 
 
 "Monsir Cautissard." 
 
 "Oh! it's enough to make one mad 
 with joy ! Here, Rosalie, I say, won't 
 the folks at the theater be vexed ! But 
 it can't be true," he added. 
 
 " Our benefactor mustn't be huddled 
 away in an attic." 
 
 "Bah ! for the few days dat I have to 
 liff it A\ill be quite goot enough," said 
 Schmucke. " Goot^by. I am going to 
 de zemetery to see what dej- have done 
 wit Bons, and to order zome flowers for 
 his grafe." 
 
 Madame Camusot meanwhile was a 
 prey to the liveliest alarms. Fraisier,
 
 21^ 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 Godeschal, and Berthier were in consulta- 
 tion at her house. Berthier the notary, 
 and Godeschal the solicitor, considered 
 that the will drawn up by two notaries in 
 the presence of two witnesses was (in con- 
 sequence of the clear and concise manner 
 in wliich it had been framed by Leopold 
 Hannequin) quite beyond the reach of 
 attack. According to the worthy Gode- 
 schal, Schmucke, even if his present ad- 
 viser succeeded in throwing dust in his 
 eyes, would, sooner or later, learn how 
 matters really stood ; were it only from 
 the lips of one of those advocates who, in 
 order to distinguish themselves, have re- 
 course to acts of generosity and delicacy. 
 The two ministerial officers, therefore, ere 
 they quitted the house of Madame Camu- 
 sot, advised her to beware of Fraisier, 
 about whose character they had, very 
 naturally, instituted certain inquiries. 
 While this caution Avas being given, Frai- 
 sier, who had just returned from witness- 
 ing the apposition of the seals, was draw- 
 ing up a summons in the jjresident's studj', 
 into which he had been ushered by Madame 
 Camusot at the instigation of the two 
 ministerial officers to whom the whole 
 alfair seemed (to use their own expres- 
 sion) too dirty for a president to meddle 
 v/ith, and who were consequently arLdous 
 to express their opinion to Madame Camu- 
 sot without being overheard by Fraisier. 
 
 "Well, madame, what has become of 
 the two gentlemen ? " inquired the quon- 
 dam solicitor of Mantes. 
 
 "Why, they have flown, after giving 
 me a parting recommendation to throw 
 \ip the whole concern ! " replied Madame 
 de Marville. 
 
 "Throw it up!'' exclaimed Fraisier, 
 in accents of concentrated rage. "Just 
 listen to this, madame.',' 
 
 And so saying, he read aloud the fol- 
 lowing document : 
 
 " On the petition of etc., etc. (I omit 
 the verbiage.) Whereas, a will has been 
 deposited in the hands of Monsieur le 
 President of the tribunal of first instance, 
 which will was received by Maitre Leo- 
 pold Haniiequin and Maitre Alexandre 
 Crottat, notaries of Paris, accompanied 
 
 bj' two witnesses (to wit) : Messieurs 
 Brunner and Schwab, foreigners domi- 
 ciled at Paris, by which said will Mon- 
 sieur Pons (deceased) has disposed of Ijis 
 estate to the prejudice of the petitioner 
 his lawful and natural heir, and in favor 
 of one Monsieur Schmucke, a German ; 
 
 "And whereas, the petitioner under- 
 takes to prove that the said will is the 
 outcome of the most odious undue influ- 
 ence, and the result of maneuvers which 
 the law condemns; and whereas, it will 
 be shown hy the evidence of certain emi- 
 nent personages that the intention of the 
 testator was to bequeath his fortune to 
 Mademoiselle Cecile, daughter of the said 
 Monsieur de Marville ; and the will which 
 the petitioner claims to have set aside 
 was extorted from the weakness of the 
 testator when he was in a state of abso- 
 lute imbecility ; 
 
 "And whereas, Monsieur Schmucke, 
 with a view to procuring this universal 
 bequest, kept the testator in the closest 
 seclusion, and prevented the family of the 
 testator from obtaining access to his 
 deathrbed ; and moreover, when once he 
 had achieved his object, proceeded to acts 
 of flagrant ingratitiule which scandalized 
 the inhabitants of the house in which he 
 dwelt and of the surrounding neighbor- 
 hood, who were accidentally present in 
 order to pay their last respects to the 
 porter of the house in which the testator 
 died ; 
 
 "And, whereas facts of still greater 
 import, facts of which the petitioner is at 
 the present moment engaged in obtaining 
 proof, will be formally averred before the 
 judges of the tribunal ; 
 
 " I, the undersigned bailiff, etc., etc., do 
 hereby, in the said name, etc., etc., sum- 
 mon the said Monsieur Schmucke, etc., 
 etc., to appear before the judges of the 
 first chamber of the tribunal, to be pres- 
 ent at the declaration that the will re- 
 ceived by Maitres Hannequin and Crottat, 
 being the outcome of the most conspicu- 
 ous undue influence, will be regarded as 
 void and of none effect, and I do more- 
 over, in the said name protest against 
 the quality and capacity of universal 
 legatee which the said Monsieur Schmucke
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 213 
 
 might assume, inasmuch as I have heard 
 the petitioner oppose, as in fact he does, 
 by liis petition of this day's date presented 
 to Monsieur le President, oppose the de- 
 livery of possession to the said Monsieur 
 Schmuclce, and I have left a copy of these 
 presents (the costs of wliicli amount to, 
 etc., etc.) with him, etc., etc." 
 
 "Now, Madame la Presidente, I know 
 my man; and when he has read this billet- 
 doux he will come to terms ; he'll con- 
 sult Tahareau, and Tabareau will tell him 
 to accept our offer. Are you prepared 
 to grant the annuit^-^ of three thousand 
 francs? " 
 
 "Undoubtedly. I only wish I were on 
 the point of paying the first quarter of it." 
 
 " That will be the case before three days 
 are over our heads ; for this summons will 
 overtake him when he is under the stun- 
 ning influence of recent sorrow, for he 
 regrets Pons, does the poor man. He 
 took the loss very much to heart." 
 
 "Can the summons, when once issued, 
 be withdrawn?" said Madame de Mar- 
 villc. 
 
 "Assuredlj', ma dame ; it is always 
 open to one to desist." 
 
 "Well, then, you can go on, monsieur," 
 said Madame de Marville. " Pursue your 
 couvse. Yes, the purchase which you have 
 arranged forme is well worth the trouble. 
 I have, moreover, settled the business of 
 Vitel's resignation, but you will paj' Vitel 
 his sixty thousand francs out of the pro- 
 ceeds of Pons's estate. So you see, suc- 
 cess is essential." 
 
 "You have his resignation?" 
 
 " Yes, monsieur ; Monsieur Vitel relies 
 upon Monsieur de Marville." 
 
 "Very good, madame; I have already 
 released you from the payment of the 
 sixty thousand francs which, I calculated, 
 must be given to this vile i^ortress, this 
 Madame Cibot. But I still wish to secure 
 the tobacco shop for Madame Sauvage, 
 and the nomination of my friend Poulain 
 to the vacant post of chief pliysician to 
 the Quinze-Vingts." 
 
 "Agreed! Everything is arranged." 
 
 "Well, then, 'tis all settled," said Frai- 
 sier. " Every one is on your side in this 
 
 matter ; even Gaudissard, the theatrical 
 manager to whom I paid a visit yester- 
 day, and who promised me that he would 
 crush a cei-tain supernumerary who might 
 interfere with our projects." 
 
 "Oh, I know all about it. Monsieur 
 Gaudissard is read^' to do anything for 
 the Popinots ! " 
 
 Fraisier now took leave of Madame de 
 Marville. Unfortunately he did not meet 
 Gaudissard, and the fatal summons was 
 launched without dela3\ 
 
 The avaricious will comprehend, as read- 
 ily as the upright will condemn, the elation 
 of Madame de Marville when, twenty min- 
 utes after Fraisier's departure, Gaudis- 
 sard arrived and informed her of his 
 conversation with poor Schmucke. Ma- 
 dame de Marville indorsed with her ap- 
 probation all that had been done ; and 
 felt unboundedly thankful to the man- 
 ager for scattering all lier compunctious 
 visitings of nature by sundry remarks 
 which seemed to her to be full of good 
 sense. 
 
 " As I was on my way hither, Madame 
 la Presidente," said Gaudissard, "it oc- 
 curred to me that, after all, this poor 
 devil wouldn't know what on earth to do 
 with his fortune ! He is a being of pa- 
 triarchal simplicity ! He is artless, he is 
 a German ; he reall\' ought to be stuffed 
 and put under a glass case like a little 
 waxen image of our Saviour. I mean to 
 saj^ that, in my opmion, even as matters 
 now stand, he scarcely knows what to do 
 with his two thousand five hundred francs 
 a year, and that you are supplying him 
 with temptations to dissipation — " 
 
 "' It shows," said Madame de Marville, 
 "a very noble heart to eniich the young 
 man who is sorry for the death of our 
 cousin. For my part, I deeply regret the 
 little misunderstanding which set us at 
 loggerheads — Monsieur Pons and me. If 
 he had onlj- come back, all would have 
 been forgiven. If you only knew — my hus- 
 band positively misses him. Monsieur de 
 Marville was quite upset at not having 
 been informed of his decease, for he has a 
 religious regard for family duties ; he 
 would have attended the service and fol- 
 lowed the funeral even to the grave, and I
 
 21* 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 myself would have been present at the 
 funeral mass — " 
 
 "Well, then, fair laclj'," said Gaudis- 
 sard ; " will you be good enough to have 
 the deed drawn up. I will bring the Ger- 
 man to you at four o'clock. Commend 
 me, madamc, to the good graces of your 
 charming daughter the Viscountess Popi- 
 not ; and beg her to tell my illustrious 
 friend (her worthy and excellent father- 
 in-law) how thoroughly devoted I am to 
 him and his ; and entreat him to continue 
 his valuable favors to me. I owe my very 
 existence to his uncle the judge, and my 
 fortune to him ; would that I might be 
 indebted to you, madame, and to j'our 
 daughter for that consideration which 
 attaches to persons of influence and stand- 
 ing. I want to abandon the stage and 
 become a man of solid position." 
 
 "You are so already, monsiem*," said 
 Madame de Marville. 
 
 "Charming!" exclaimed Gaudissard, 
 as he kissed the lady's skinny hand, and 
 withdrew. 
 
 At four o'clock there were gathered to- 
 gether in the private office of Monsieur 
 Berthicr, the notary ; firstly, Fraisier 
 (by whom the deed of compromise had 
 been drawn up) ; secondly, Tabareau, 
 Schmucke's proxj^ ; and thirdly (piloted 
 to the spot by Gaudissard) Sclimucke 
 himself. The six thousand francs which 
 Schmucke had asked for, and the six hun- 
 dred francs of the first quarterly install- 
 ment of the annuity, Fraisier had carefully 
 arrayed in bank-notes upon the notarj^'s 
 desk, under the very eyes of the poor 
 German, who, dazzled by the sight of so 
 much money, paid not the slightest atten- 
 tion to the reading of the document. In- 
 deed, it must be confessed that the poor 
 fellow, whom Gaudissard had pounced 
 upon just as he was returning from the 
 cemetery (where he had talked to Pons 
 and promised to rejoin him) was not in 
 full possession of all his faculties, which 
 had already been severely shaken by so. 
 many shocks. He took no heed, tl^ere- 
 fore, of the preamble of the deed, wherein 
 he was represented as being assisted by 
 Maitre Tabareau, his agent and adviser, 
 and the grounds of the suit instituted by 
 
 the president in the interests of his daugh- 
 ter were recapitulated. 'Twas a sorry 
 part that the poor German was called 
 upon to play ; for by signing the deed he 
 admitted the justice of Fraisier's fearful 
 imputations. But Schmucke was so re- 
 joiced at the sight of the money for 
 Topinard's family, and so happy in the 
 thought of enriching, according to his 
 contracted ideas, the only man who cared 
 for Pons, that not one word of the com- 
 promise that was to terminate the suit 
 reached his ears. 
 
 In the very midst of the reading of the 
 deed, a clerk came into the office and said 
 to his employer: "Monsieur, there is a 
 man outside who wants to speak to Mon- 
 sieur Schmucke." 
 
 At a gesture from Fraisier, the notary 
 significantly shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "Never interrupt us when engaged in 
 signing deeds. Inquire the name of this 
 — is it a man or a gentleman ? Is it a 
 creditor? " 
 
 Tlie clerk disappeared ; then returned 
 and said : "He insists upon speaking to 
 Monsieur Schmucke." 
 
 "His name? " 
 
 "His name is Topinard." 
 
 "I'll go. Don't hesitate to sign," said 
 Gaudissard to Schmucke. " Conclude the 
 matter. I'll go and see what he wants 
 with us." 
 
 Gaudissard had understood Fraisier's 
 gesture. Both of them suspected danger. 
 
 " What is it that brings you here ? " 
 said the manager to the supernumerary. 
 " It Avould seem as if you didn't care 
 about being treasurer? The principal 
 qualification for a treasurer is — discre- 
 tion." 
 
 " Monsieur ! " 
 
 " Go and attend to ,your own business. 
 You will never be anj-thing if you meddle 
 with that of others." 
 
 " Monsieur, I will not eat bread every 
 mouthful of which would stick in my 
 throat. Monsieur Schmucke ! " shouted 
 he. At the sound of Topinard's voice, 
 Schmucke, who had signed the deed, 
 came out with his monej^ in his hand. 
 " Dis is for de little German girl and 
 you," said he.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 215 
 
 "Oh! my dear Monsieur Schmucke, 
 you have been enriching' a pack of mon- 
 sters — a set of people who would rob 3'ou 
 of your g-ood name. See, I took that to 
 a worthy man — a solicitor who knows 
 this Fraisier — and he says that it is your 
 dutj' to punish so much wickedness by 
 defending' the action, and that they will 
 give way. Read." 
 
 And so saving, this impi'udent friend 
 gave Schmucke the summons which had 
 been sent to him at Bordin Town. 
 Schmucke took the paper, read it, and 
 seeing how he was therein treated, and 
 being an entire stranger to the amenities 
 of legal procedure, received a mortal 
 blow. This pebble stopped the action 
 of his heart, and he fell exhausted into 
 tlie arms of Topinard. 
 
 At the time when this happened the 
 pair were standing under the notary's 
 entrance gateway ; so Topinard hailed a 
 passing hackney-carriage and placed the 
 poor German in it. Schmucke was suffer- 
 ing the pangs attendant on a serious con- 
 gestion of the brain ; everything swam 
 before his sight, but he had still strength 
 to hold out the money to Topinard. 
 
 Schmucke did not immediately succumb 
 to this first attack ; but he never recov- 
 ered his reason ; all his movements were 
 purely automatic ; he ceased to eat, and, 
 at the end of ten days, died without a 
 mui'mur, for he could not speak. He was 
 nursed by Madame Topinard and buried 
 obscurely at Topinard's expense. Topi- 
 nard was the only person who followed 
 the body of this child of Germany to its 
 last I'estmg-place. 
 
 Fraisier, who has been made a juge de 
 paix, and is on the most intimate terms 
 with the family of Monsieur de Mar\alle, 
 stands high in the esteem of Madame la 
 Presidente. She does not wash him to 
 marry Tabareau's daughter, and prom- 
 ises to find a far better match for the 
 able man to whom she is beholden, not 
 for the acquisition of the pasture-land at 
 MarviUe and the cottage only, but also 
 for the Section of IMonsieur de Marville, 
 who was returned to the chamber of dep- 
 uties at the general election in 1346. 
 
 Every one Avill no doubt be anxious to 
 
 learn what became of the heroine of this 
 hLstoiy— a hi.story the details of which 
 are, alas, too true ; and which proves that 
 the chief of all social forces is character. 
 That heroine is, as you, oh, ye amateurs, 
 connoisseurs, and dealers, will at once 
 perceive, the Pons collection. In order 
 to learn its fate, all we need do is to listen 
 to a conversation which was held a few 
 days since at the house of Count Popinot, 
 when he was exhibiting his magnificent 
 collection to some foreigTiers. 
 
 "Monsieup le Comte," said a distin- 
 guished foreigner, "you are the owner of 
 treasures." 
 
 "Oh, my lord," said Count Popinot, 
 modestly, "so far as regards pictures, no 
 one (I will not say in Paris, but) in 
 Europe, can lay to his soul the flattering 
 unction that he can compete with a cer- 
 tain obscure individual, a Jew named Elic 
 Magus, an aged maniac, the prince of 
 Ijicture-maniacs. He has collected more 
 than a hundred pictures such as to dis- 
 courage amateurs from attempting to 
 form collections. France ought really to 
 sacrifice seven or eight millions of francs, 
 and purchase this gallery when the rich 
 old fellow dies. But as regards curiosi- 
 ties, my collection will bear talking 
 about — " 
 
 "But how can a man so bus}' as you 
 are, and whose original fortune was so 
 honorably acquired in trade — " 
 
 "In the drug trade," interposed Popi- 
 not. " How can such a man. you would 
 say, continue to dabble in — drugs ? " 
 
 "Nay," replied the foreigner. "But, 
 how do you find time to look for these 
 things ? Curiosities don't walk into your 
 house." 
 
 " My father-in-law had the nucleus of a 
 collection before my marriage," said the 
 Viscountess Popinot. "He loved the 
 Arts, and was fond of masterpieces, but 
 the principal part of his treasures came 
 through me I " 
 
 " Through you, madame ? Is it pos- 
 sible that one so young should have been 
 infected with these vices?" 
 
 The Russians are so imitative that all 
 the evils of civilization find an echo with 
 them. Bric-a-bracomania is quite the rage
 
 216 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 at St. Petersburg ; and in consequence of 
 the intrepidity which is natural to Rus- 
 sians, they have caused so great a rise in 
 the article (as Remonencq would say) 
 that collections will become impossible. 
 This particula r Russian pi'ince had come 
 to Paris simply and solely with a view to 
 forming a collection. 
 
 " Prince," said the Viscountess Popinot, 
 " this treasure came to me through the 
 death of a cousin, who was very fond of 
 me, and had spent upward of forty j-ears 
 (reckoning from 1805) in piling up in 
 every land under the sun (and especially 
 in Italy) all these masterpieces." 
 
 "What was his name?" inquired the 
 nobleman. 
 
 "Pons," replied President Camusot. 
 
 "He was a charming man," said Ma- 
 dame Camusot in her dulcet falsetto ; " a 
 man of the greatest talent and originalitj', 
 combined with much kindness of heart. 
 This fan, which you admire, my lord, and 
 which once belonged to Madame de Pom- 
 padour, was placed in my hands one fine 
 morning by Monsieur Pons, who accom- 
 panied the gift with a charming little 
 phrase, which you will pardon me for not 
 repeating." 
 
 As Madame de Marville uttered tliese 
 words, she looked at her daughter. 
 
 " Tell us what the little phrase was, 
 Madame la Vicomtesse," said the Russian 
 prince. 
 
 " The little phrase is worthy of the fan, ' ' 
 replied the Adscountess (whose "little 
 phrase " was stereotj-ped). " He said to 
 my mother that it was high time that 
 that which had been in the hands of Vice 
 should be placed in the hands of Virtue." 
 
 The nobleman looked at Madame Camu- 
 sot de Marville with an air of doubt that 
 was extremely flattering to so lean a lady. 
 
 " Monsieur Pons was so attached to us 
 that he dined with us three or four times 
 a week," resumed Madame Camusot; 
 " we knew how to appreciate him, and 
 artists enjoy the society of those who can 
 appreciate their humor. My husband, 
 moreover, was his only kinsman ; and 
 when this fortune came to Monsieur de 
 Marville, who in no way expected it, Mon- 
 
 sieur Popinot chose to buj' the whole col- 
 lection rather than allow it to be sold by 
 auction ; while we, for our part, preferred 
 disposing of it in that way, for it would be 
 so extremely painful to witness the dis- 
 persion of those beautiful things which 
 afforded so much amusement to our dear 
 cousin. Elie Magus acted as valuer on 
 that occasion, and thus it was, my lord, 
 that I was enabled to become the owner 
 of the cottage built by j'our uncle, and in 
 which we hope that yon will do us the 
 pleasure of being our guest." 
 
 A year has elapsed since Gaudissard 
 transferred to other hands the license of 
 the theater over which he presided, but 
 M. Topinard is still its treasurer. Mon- 
 sieur Topinard, however, has grown mo- 
 rose, misanthropical, and taciturn ; he is 
 supposed to have committed some crime ; 
 while the ill-natured wags of the theater 
 maintain that his chagrin arises from 
 his having married Lolotte. The very 
 name of Fraisier makes the worthy Topi- 
 nard start. It may perhaps be considered 
 singular that the only heart worthy of 
 Pons's should be found among the hum- 
 blest employes of a boulevard theater. 
 
 The prediction of Madame Fontaine 
 made so forcible an impression upon Ma- 
 dame Remonencq that she is unwilling 
 to retire into the country and remains in 
 her magnificent shop on the Boulevard de 
 la Madeleine. She is once more a widow. 
 As a matter of fact, the Auvergnat, hav- 
 ing taken the precaution to have the mar- 
 riage contract so drawn up that all the 
 property should go to the survivor, placed 
 a liqueur glass of vitriol within his wife's 
 reach, in the expectation that she would 
 make a mistake. She, however, having, 
 with the very best intentions in the world, 
 changed the position of the glass, it was 
 Romonencq himself who swallowed its 
 contents. This end — a fitting end for 
 such a miscreant — is an argument in 
 favor of the existence of Providence — 
 that Providence which (on account per- 
 haps of its too frequent introduction into 
 dramatic catastrophes) painters of life 
 are accused of forgetting. 
 
 Excuse the errors of the transcriber I
 
 WHY TEE ATHEIST PRAYED. 
 
 217 
 
 m. 
 
 WHY THE ATHEIST PRAYED. 
 
 Doctor Bianchox, a phj-sician to whom 
 science is indel^ted for a grand physio- 
 logical theory, and who, thoug-h still a 
 youug man, is considered one of the ce- 
 lebrities of the School of Paris (itself a 
 center of light to which all the physicians 
 of Europe pay homage), had practiced 
 surgery for a long time before he devot- 
 ed himself to medicine. His early studies 
 were directed by one of the greatest of 
 French surgeons, a man who passed 
 through the scientific world like a meteor 
 — the celebrated Despleins. As his ene- 
 mies themselves acknowledge, an intrans- 
 mittable method was buried in his tomb. 
 Like all men of genius he had no heirs ; 
 he can'ied — and he carried away every- 
 thing with him. 
 
 The fame of a surgeon is like the fame 
 of an actor ; it exists only as long as they 
 live, and their talent is no longer appre- 
 ciable after they have disappeared. Act- 
 ors and surgeons, like great singers also, 
 and those masters who increase the power 
 of music tenfold by their execution, are 
 all heroes of the moment. Despleins him- 
 self is a proof of this similarity between 
 the destinies of these transitory geniuses; 
 his name, yesterday so celebrated, is to- 
 day almost forgotten ; it will last only in 
 his special sphere, and will not pass be- 
 yond it. But are not unheard-of circum- 
 stances required for the name of a savant 
 to pass beyond the domain of his science 
 into the general historj^ of humanity ? 
 Had Despleins that universality of knowl- 
 edge which makes a man the Word, the 
 Expression of an age ? 
 
 Despleins possessed a divine glance ; he 
 penetrated into the patient and his dis- 
 ease by a natural or acquired tuition 
 which enabled him to seize the diagnos- 
 
 tics peculiar to the individual, and taking 
 into consideration the atmospheric condi- 
 tions and the peculiarities of the tempera- 
 ment, to determine the precise time, the 
 hour, the minute for an operation to take 
 place. In order thus to proceed in con- 
 cert with nature, had he studied the 
 incessant juncture between beings and 
 elementary substances contained in the 
 atmosphere or furnished by the earth for 
 their absorption and preparation by man, 
 in order that he may draw from them a 
 peculiar expression ? Did he proceed by 
 that deductive and analogical power to 
 which the genius of Cuvier is due ? — How- 
 ever that may be, he made himself the 
 confidant of the flesh, by reMng on the 
 present he comprehended it in the past 
 and the future. But did he sum up all 
 science in his own person as Hippocrates, 
 Galen, and Aristotle did ? Has he led a 
 whole school to new worlds? No. If it 
 is impossible to deny that this perpetual 
 observer of human chemistry possessed 
 the ancient science of magisra — that is to 
 say, the knowledge of the elements in 
 fusion, of the causes of life, of life before 
 life, of what from its preparations it will 
 be before it is, still it is but just to admit 
 that evei'j'thing in him was pei*sonal ;• he 
 was isolated in his life by egoism, and to- 
 daj' his egoism is the suicide of his fame. 
 Upon his tomb rises no sonorous statue 
 pi'oclaiming to the future the mysteries 
 which genius seeks at its expense. But 
 perhaps the talent of Despleins was part 
 and parcel of his belief, and consequently 
 mortal. To him the terrestrial atmos- 
 phere was a generative bag ; he could see 
 the earth like an egg in its shell; and not 
 bemg able to decide whether the egg or 
 the fowl came fli"st, he admitted neither
 
 218 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 the shell nor the egg. He believed nei- 
 ther in the animal anterior nor in the 
 spirit posterior to man. 
 
 Despleins was not in douht, he afQrmed. 
 In his frank, mimixed atheism he was like 
 so many savants, the best men in the 
 world, but invincible atheists, such athe- 
 ists as religious men will not acknowledge 
 can exist. This opinion could not be other- 
 wise in a man accustomed from early youth 
 to dissect the being par excellence before, 
 duiing, and after his life, to search him 
 through all his organization, without find- 
 ing that single soul which is so necessa- 
 ry to religious theories. Recognizing in 
 man a cerebral center, a nervous center, 
 and an aerosanguineous center, the two 
 former supplying each other's places so 
 well that he was convinced during the 
 last two or three days of his life that the 
 sense of hearing was not absolutely nec- 
 essarj' for hearing, nor the sense of sight 
 absolutely necessary for seeing, and that 
 the solar plexus could replace them be- 
 yond suspicion of any change ; • Despleins, 
 I say, finding two souls in man, confirmed 
 his atheism by this fact, although it still 
 proves nothing on the subject of God. 
 This man, it is said, died in the final im- 
 penitence of, unhappily, so many fine 
 geniuses ; may God forgive them ! 
 
 The life of this really great man be- 
 trayed many pettinesses, to use the phrase 
 of enemies anxious to diminish his reputa- 
 tion, but which it would be more correct 
 to call apparent contradictions. Never 
 having had any cognizance of the motives 
 on which men of higher intellect act, the 
 envious or stupid immediately seize upon 
 some superficial contradictions in order 
 to . draw up an indictment on which thej' 
 obtain a momentary verdict. If, later on, 
 success crowns the combinations they have 
 attacked, by demonstrating the relation 
 of the preparations to the results, still a 
 few of their advance guard of calumnies 
 always survive. 
 
 Thus, in our own time. Napoleon was 
 condemned by his contemporaries when 
 he stretched out the wings of his eagle 
 over England ; 1822 was necessarj^ to ex- 
 plain 1804 and the flat bottom boats at 
 Boulogne. 
 
 In the case of Despleins, Ids reputation 
 and scientific knowledge bemg unassail- 
 able, his enemies found ground for attack 
 in his extraordinary temper and his moral 
 character ; as a matter of fact he certainly 
 did possess that quality which the English 
 call "eccentricity." At times he dressed 
 superbly, like Crebillon, the tragic writer, 
 then all at once he would affect a strange 
 indifference in the matter of clothes ; 
 sometimes he apijcared in a carriage, 
 sometimes on foot. He was by turns 
 brusk and kind, though apparently 
 hard and stingy ; yet he was capable 
 of offering his fortune to his masters 
 when they were in exile, and they act- 
 ually did him the honor of accepting it 
 for a few days. No man has been the 
 object of more contradictory judgments. 
 Although, for the sake of a cordon noir, 
 which physicians have no business to 
 solicit, he was capable of dropping a^ 
 book of Hours out of his pocket at 
 court, it is certain that, inwardly, he 
 laughed at the whole thing. He had a 
 profound contempt for mankind, for he 
 had studied them from above and below ; 
 he had caught them with their true ex- 
 pressions in the midst of the most seri- 
 ous and of the pettiest actions of life. 
 
 The qualities of a great man are often 
 consolidate. If among these giants one 
 has more talent than esprit, still his 
 esprit has a wider range than that of 
 a man whom one simply calls "a man of 
 esprit.'' All genius presupposes intui- 
 tion ; this intuition may be directed to 
 some special subject ; but a man who 
 can see a flower must be able to see the 
 sun. The doctor who is asked by a cour- 
 tier whose life he has saved, " How is the 
 emperor?" and answers, "The courtier 
 is recovering, the man will follow ! " is 
 not only a surgeon or a physician, he is 
 also prodigiously spirituel. Thus the 
 close and patient observer of humanity 
 will justify the exorbitant pretensions of 
 Despleins, and will believe him — as he be- 
 lieved himself— to have been as capable 
 of making quite as great a minister as he 
 was a surgeon. 
 
 Of all the pupils that Despleins had at 
 his hospital, Horace Bianchon was one of
 
 WHY THE ATHEIST PRAYED. 
 
 219 
 
 those to whom he was most warmly at- 
 tached. Before going- into residence at 
 the Hotel Dieu, Horace Bianchon was a 
 student of medicine, and lodged in the 
 Latin Quarter at a wretched pension, 
 known under the name of La Maison Vau- 
 quer. At this place the poor youth ex- 
 perienced the pangs of that acute poverty 
 which acts as a sort of cresset from which 
 young men of great talent should come 
 forth refined and incorruptible, hke dia- 
 monds that can be subjected to any shock 
 without breaking. In the violent flames 
 of passions, just freed from restraint, 
 they acquire habits of the most unswerv- 
 ing probitj^ and accustom themselves by 
 means of the constant labor where^^■ith 
 they have baffled and confined their ap- 
 petites to those struggles which await on 
 genius. Horace was a straightforward 
 young man, incapable of double-dealing 
 in a question of honor, going straight to 
 the point without palavering, and as 
 ready to pawn his cloak for a friend as 
 to give him his working time or his even- 
 ings. He was one of those friends who 
 do not trouble themselves about what 
 they receive in exchange for, what thej' 
 give, bemg certain of receiving in their 
 turn more than they have given. Most 
 of his friends had that inward respect for 
 him which unobstrusive goodness inspires, 
 and many of them wei'e afraid of his cen- 
 sure. 
 
 But Horace displayed his good qualities 
 without priggishness. He was neither a 
 Pui'itan nor a preacher; he swore with a 
 will when he gave advice, and was quite 
 ready to take good cheer if the occasion 
 offered. He was good company, not 
 more prudish than a trooper, open and 
 straightforward — not like a sailor — a 
 sailor nowadays is a wilr diplomatist — 
 but like a fine young man who has noth- 
 ing in his life to hide, he held his head 
 high, and walked on with a light heart. 
 In fact, to sum up everything in a word, 
 Horace was the Pylades of more than one 
 Orestes — creditors serving nowadays as 
 the nearest representation of the ancient 
 Furies. He wore his povei-t3' with that 
 gayety which is perhaps one of the great- 
 est elements of courage, and, like all 
 
 those who have nothing, he contracted 
 few debts. As sober as a camel, and as 
 watchful as a stag, his ideas and his con- 
 duct were equally unwavering. 
 
 The happiness of Bianchons life began 
 on the day on which the famous surgeon 
 received a proof of the faults and good 
 qualities which, the one as much as the 
 other, made Doctor Horace Bianchon 
 doubly precious to his friends. When the 
 chief clinical lecturer takes a ^-oung man 
 under his wing, that j'oung man has, as 
 they say, his foot in ttie stirrup. 
 
 Despleins did not fail to take Bianchon 
 with him as his assistant to wealthy 
 houses, where some present almost al- 
 waj's found its way into the pupil's purse, 
 and where the mysteries of Parisian life 
 were insensibly revealed to his provincial 
 experience. He kept him in his study 
 during consultations, and gave him em- 
 ployment there. Sometimes he would 
 send him to accompany a rich patient to 
 the baths. In fact, he nursed a practice 
 for him. Consequently, at the end of a 
 certain time, the despot of surgery had a 
 seid. These two men, one at the height 
 of his celebrity and at the head of his 
 own science, enjoying an immense fortune 
 and an immense reputation ; the other, a 
 humble Omega, without either fortune or 
 fame — became intimates. The great Des- 
 pleins told his assistant everything. He 
 knew if such and such a woman had sat 
 on a chair by the master, or on the fa- 
 mous couch which stood in the studj', and 
 on which he slept. He knew thoroughly 
 the great man's temperament — half hon, 
 half bull— which at lafet developed and 
 amplified his bust to such a degree as to 
 cause his death by enlargement of the 
 heart. He studied the strange comers 
 of that busy life, the projects of its sordid 
 avarice, the hopes of the politician hid- 
 den beneath the savant ; he could foresee 
 the deceptions which awaited the one 
 sentiment buried in a heart not so much 
 bronzen as bronzed. 
 
 One day Bianchon told Despleirts that 
 a poor water-carrier of le quartier Saint 
 Jacques had a terrible illness caused by 
 fatigue and poverty ; the poor Auvergnat 
 had eaten nothing but potatoes during
 
 220 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 the great winter of 1S21. Despleins left 
 all his patients; he flew, at the risk of 
 breaking- his horse's wind, followed by 
 Bianchon, to the poor nuin"s, and himself 
 had him carried into the private hospital 
 founded by the celebrated Dubois, in le 
 faubourg Saint Denis. He went and at- 
 tended the man, and when he had cured 
 him gave him the necessary sum to buy 
 a horse and a water-cart. This Auverg- 
 nat was remarkable for an original trait. 
 One of his friends fell ill, so he promptly 
 brought him to his benefactor, saying, 
 "I could not beiir for him to go to any 
 one else." 
 
 Despleins, crabbed as he was, grasped 
 the water-carrier's hand, and said, '• Bring 
 them all to me." Then he got this son of 
 Le Cantal taken in at the Hotel Dieu, and 
 took the greatest care of him while he 
 was there. Bianchon had already several 
 times noticed in his chief a predilection 
 for Auvcrgnats, and especially for water- 
 carriers ; but as Despleins made his duties 
 at the Hotel Dieu a sort of point of honor, 
 he did not see anything so \cvy strange 
 in it. One day as Bianchon was crossing 
 la place Saint Sulpice, he caught sight of 
 his master going into the church. Des- 
 pleins, who at that time never went a 
 step out of his cabriolet, was on foot, 
 and slipped out of la rue du Petit Lion 
 as if he had been into a house of doubtful 
 reputation. Naturally seized with curi- 
 osity, the assistant, who knew his mas- 
 ter's opinions, and was un cahaniste en 
 dyable (with a y, which seems in Rabelais 
 to imply a superiority in devylrie), slipped 
 also into Saint Sulpice. He was not a 
 little astonished at seeing the great Des- 
 pleins — that atheist without pity for the 
 angels; in fact, the dauntless desireur 
 kneeling humbly on his knees, and where? 
 In the chapel of the Virgin, at which he 
 was hearing a mass. He gave for the 
 expenses of the ceremony, he gave for the 
 poor, as serious all the time as if he had 
 been performing an operation. 
 
 Bianthon did not like to appear to be 
 sp\ing upon the first surgeon of the Hotel 
 Dieu, so he went away. It chanced that 
 Despleins had invited him to dinner that 
 very daj^ not at his own house, but at 
 
 a restaurant. At dessert Bianchon suc- 
 ceeded by skillful maneuvering in bring- 
 ing the conversation round to the subject 
 of the mass. 
 
 Despleins reveled in giving vent to his 
 atheistic caprices ; he poured forth a flood 
 of Voltairian pleasantry, or — to be move 
 exact — a horrible parodj^ of Le Citateur. 
 
 " Ho ! ho ! " said Bianchon to himself. 
 " What has become of my morning de- 
 vot?" He kept silence; he doubted 
 whether it was his chief that he had 
 seen at Saint Sulpice. Despleins would 
 not have taken the trouble to lie to Bian- 
 chon ; they knew each other too well ; 
 they had already exchanged thoughts on 
 equally' serious subjects, and discussed 
 systems de natura rerum, probing or 
 dissecting them with the knives and 
 scalpel of incredulity. Three months 
 passed ; Bianchon did not follow this up, 
 although the fact remained stamped in 
 his memory. He determined to watch 
 Despleins. He made a note of the day 
 and the hour when he had caught him 
 going into Saint Sulpice, and determined 
 to be there the j'ear following at the same 
 day and hour to see if he couid catch him 
 again. If he did, the regular recurrence 
 of his devotion would justify a scientific 
 investigation, for it would not be becom- 
 ing in so great a man to show a direct 
 contradiction between his thought and 
 his action. 
 
 The following year, at the day and hour 
 named, Bianchon, who was by this time 
 Despleins's assistant no longer, saw his 
 friend's cabriolet stopping at the corner 
 of la rue de Tournon and la rue du 
 Petit Lion ; from there Despleins crept 
 along the walls of St. Sulpice, and again 
 lieai'd his mass at the altar of the Virgin. 
 It certainly was Despleins ! the chief sur- 
 geon, the atheist in pelto, the chance 
 devot. The plot was thickening. The 
 famous savant's persistency complicated 
 it all. 
 
 When Despleins had gone out, Bianchon 
 went up to the sacristan who had come 
 to unvest the chapel, and asked him 
 whether the gentleman was a regular 
 attendant there. 
 
 "I have been here for twenty years, "
 
 WHY THE ATHEIST PRAYED. 
 
 221 
 
 said the sncristan, "and all that time 
 Monsieur Despleins has come four times 
 a year to hear this mass ; he founded it 
 himself." 
 
 "A foundation by him!" said Bian- 
 chon, as he walked away. "It's a great 
 mj'stery^ — a thing enough of itself to 
 make a doctor incredulous." 
 
 Some time passed hy before Doctor 
 Bianchon, although he was Despleins's 
 friend, was in a position to talk to him 
 of this strange incident in his life. If 
 they met in consultation or in society, it 
 was difficult to find that moment of con- 
 fidence and solitude when one sits with 
 one's feet on the fire-dogs and one's head 
 resting on the back of an armchair, when 
 two men tell each other their secrets. 
 
 At last, seven years later, after the 
 Revolution of 1830, when the people 
 rushed upon the archbishop's palace, 
 when Republican inspiration drove them 
 to destroy the gilded crosses that flashed 
 up like lightning in this immense ocean of 
 houses, when disbelief side by side with 
 sedition stalked the streets, Bianchon 
 caught Despleins ' again going into Saint 
 Sulpice. The doctor followed, and took a 
 place near his friend without making him 
 the least sign or showing the least sur- 
 prise. They heard the votive mass to- 
 gether. 
 
 "Tell me, mon cAer,""said Bianchon to 
 Despleins, when they were outside the 
 church, "what is the reason for this capw- 
 cinade of yours ? I have now caught aou 
 three times going to mass — you! You 
 must give me a reason for this mysterious 
 proceeding, and explain the flagrant in- 
 consistency between your opinions and 
 your practice. You don't believe in God, 
 and yet you go to mass ! My dear mas- 
 ter, you are really bound to answer 
 me." 
 
 " I am like many devots, men pro- 
 foundly religious in appearance, but quite 
 as much atheists as we are, you and I." 
 
 Then came a torrent of epigrams on 
 certain pohtical personages, the best 
 known of whom represent in this century 
 a second edition of Moliere's "TartufTe." 
 
 "I did not ask for all that," said Bian- 
 chon. "I want to know the reason for 
 
 what you have just been doing here ; why 
 did you found this mass ? " 
 
 "Ma fois, mon cher ami," said Des- 
 pleins. " I am on the brink of the grave, 
 so it is as well that I should speak to you 
 of the beginning of my life." 
 
 At this moment Bianchon and the great 
 man happened to be in la rue des Quati-e- 
 Vents, one of the most hoj-rible streets in 
 Paris. Despleins pointed tithe sixth story 
 of one of those houses like an obelisk, with 
 a side door opening into an alley, at the 
 end of which is a tortuous staircase lit by 
 inside lights — well named, jotirs de souf- 
 f ranee. It was a greenish-colored house; 
 on the basement lived a furniture dealer, 
 who seemed to lodge a different misery- on 
 each of his floors. Despleins raised his 
 arm with an emphatic gesture and said 
 to Bianchon : "' I lived up there for two 
 years ! " 
 
 "I know it; D'Arthez lived there. I 
 used to come here almost every day when 
 I was a youth; we used to call it ' Le bocal 
 aux grands liommes.' Well ? " 
 
 "The mass that I have just heard is 
 connected with events which took place 
 at the time when I lived in the garret in 
 which you tell me D'Arthez used to live; 
 the one with the window where the line 
 with the clothes on it is floating over the 
 pot of flowers. I had such a rough start, 
 my dear Bianchon, that I can dispute the 
 palm of the sufferings of Paris with any 
 one. I have endured everything : hun- 
 ger, thirst, want of mone^', of clothes, of 
 boots and shoes, and of linen — all the 
 hardest phases of poverty. I have blown 
 on my numbed fingers in that ' hocal aux 
 grands hommes ' — I should like to go with 
 you and see it again. I worked through 
 one winter when I could see my head 
 steaming and a cloud of my own breath 
 rising like j'ou see the breath of horses on 
 a frosty day. I do not know where a man 
 gets his support from to enable him to 
 offer any resistance to such a life. I was 
 alone, without help, without a sou either 
 to buy books or to pay the expenses of my 
 medical education. Not having a friend, 
 my irritable, gloomy, restless tempera- 
 ment stood in my way. No one was will- 
 ing to see in my irritability the labors and
 
 222 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY 
 
 difficulties of a man who, from the bottom 
 of the social state where he is, is toiling 
 to reach the surface. But — I can say 
 this to tjou; before you I have no need 
 of disguise — I had that foundation of 
 noble sentiments and vivid sensibil- 
 itj', which will always be the appan- 
 age of men who are strong enough 
 to climb to any summit whatever, af- 
 ter having tradged for a long time 
 through the sloughs of poverty. 1 could 
 get nothing from my family, nor my 
 home, beyond the meager allowance they 
 made me. At this time then, all I had 
 to eat in the morning was a little loaf 
 which the baker in la rue du Petit Lion 
 sold me cheaper, because it had been 
 baked the evening before, or the evening 
 before that. This I crumbled into some 
 milk ; so my morning meal onlj' cost me 
 two sous. I oni^- dined every other day, 
 at a pension where the dinner cost six- 
 teen sous. In this way I only spent nine 
 sous a day. You know as well as I do 
 what care I had to take of my clothes, 
 and my boots and shoes ! I don't know 
 whether we feel later as much trouble 
 over the treason of a comrade as we feel 
 — you have felt it too — at the sight of the 
 mocking grin of a shoe that is coming un- 
 sewed, or at the sound of a split in the 
 lining of an overcoat. I drank nothing 
 but water. I had the greatest respect 
 for the cce/es. Zoppi seemed to me a sort 
 of Promised Land where the Luculli of 
 the pays latin alone had rights of pres- 
 ence. Should I ever be able, I said to 
 myself sometimes, to take a cup of coffee 
 and cream there, and play a game of 
 dominoes ? Well, I carried into my work 
 the fever with which my poverty inspired 
 me. I tried to acquire positive details of 
 knowledge, that I might possess an im- 
 mense personal value, and so deserve the 
 place I was to reach on the daj' when I 
 passed out of my state of nothing-ness. 
 I consumed more oil than bread ; the 
 light that lit me during those stubborn 
 nights cost me more than my food. The 
 struggle was long, obstinate, and without 
 any consolation. I awoke no sympathy 
 about me. In oi'der to make friends, a 
 j'omig man must mix with his fellpws, 
 
 possess a few sous to be able to go and 
 drink with them, and go with them every- 
 where where students do go ! I had 
 nothing ! and no one in Paris realizes 
 what a nothing ' nothing ' is. If ever 
 there was an occasion which might be- 
 tray my poverty', I experienced that nerv- 
 ous contraction of the gullet which makes 
 a patient believe that a ball is rising np 
 into the larjmx out of the oesophagus. 
 Later on I met those people who were 
 born rich, who have never wanted for 
 anything, and do not know the problem 
 of this rule of three : 'A young man is to 
 crime as a hundred sou piece is to x-' 
 These gilded idiots say to me : ' Then 
 why did you get into debt? Why did 
 you contract such onerous obligations ? ' 
 They remind me of the princess who, 
 knowing that the people wei'e starving 
 for bread, said : ' Why don't they buy 
 brioches ? ' I should very much like to 
 see one of these rich people, who complain 
 that I charge them too much for operat- 
 ing — yes, I should like to see him alone in 
 Paris without a sou or a scrap of baggage, 
 without a friend and witBout credit, forced 
 to work with his five fingers to live. 
 What would he do ? Where would he go 
 to stay his hunger ? Bianchon, if you have 
 seen me sometimes hard and bitter, it 
 was that I was lajing my former troubles 
 upon the callousness and egoism of which 
 I have had thousands of proofs in high 
 quarters ; or I may have been thinking 
 of the obstacles that hate and envy and 
 jealousy and calumny have raised between 
 me and success. At Paris, as soon as cer- 
 tain people see you ready to put your foot 
 in the stirrup, some of them catch you by 
 your coat-tail ; others loose the buckle of 
 the girth so that you may fall and break 
 your head; another takes the shoes off your 
 horse; another steals your whip; the 
 least treacherous is the one you can see 
 coming vip to shoot you, with 1 he muzzle of 
 his pistol close to you. You have enough 
 talent, mon cher enfant, to know very 
 soon the horrible, incessant warfare that 
 mediocrity wages against a man of greater 
 power. If you lose twenty-five louis one 
 evening, the next morning you will be 
 accused of being a gambler, and your best 
 
 1,
 
 Wliy THE ATHEIST PRAYED. 
 
 223 
 
 friends will say that tlie night before you 
 lost twenty-five thousand francs. If your 
 head is bad, you will pass for a lunatic. 
 If you feel irritable, you will be unbear- 
 able. If, in order to resist this army of 
 pigmies, you collect your superior forces, 
 ^your best friends will cry out that you 
 want to eat up ever\i;hing, that you think 
 you have a right to domineer and play 
 the tjTant. In short, your good qualities 
 wiU become faults, your faults will be- 
 come vices, and your ^ices will be crimes. 
 If you have saved a man, you will have 
 killed him ; if your patient recovers, it 
 will be certain that you have assured the 
 present at the expense of the future ; if 
 he is not dead, he will die. Stumble, and 
 ■you will have fallen. Invent whatever 
 you will, claim your just rights, you will 
 be a sharp man, a man difficult to deal 
 ■ftith, a man who won't let young men 
 get on. So you see, mon cher, if I do not 
 believe in God, much less do I believe in 
 man. You recognize in me, don't you? 
 an entirely different Despleins from the 
 Despleins whom every one abuses. But 
 don't let us stir up the mud ! 
 
 "Well, I lived in that house; I was 
 hard at work so as to be able to pass my 
 first examination ; I hadn't got a stiver. 
 I had come to one of those last extremities 
 when, you know, a man says, ' I must en- 
 list.' I had one hope. I was expecting 
 a trunk full of linen from my home — a 
 present from one of those old aunts who, 
 knowing nothing about Paris, think of 
 one's shirts, mider the idea that with 
 thirty francs a month their nephew lives 
 on ortolans. The trunk arrived while I 
 was at the school ; the carriage cost forty 
 francs. The porter, a German shoe- 
 maker, who lodged in a loft, had paid 
 the money and kept the ti'unk. I went 
 for a wallv in la rue des Fosses Saint Ger- 
 main des Pres, and in la rue de I'Ecole de 
 Medicine, but I could not invent a strata- 
 gem which would deliver me up my tnmk, 
 without mj^ being obliged to give the forty 
 francs, which I should naturally have 
 paid after having sold the linen. My 
 stupidity in this taught me that I had 
 no other vocation than surgerj'. Delicate 
 minds which exercise their power in a 
 
 lofty sphere are wanting in that spirit of 
 intrigue which is so fertile in resource and 
 combination ; f/te^r talent Ls chance ; they 
 do not seek— they ^'ncZ. Well, at night I 
 returned. My neighbor, a water-carrier, 
 named Bourgeat, a man from Saint Flour, 
 was going in at the same moment. We 
 knew each other in the way that two 
 lodgei's get to know each other who have 
 rooms on the same landing and hear each 
 other sleeping, coughing, and dressing, 
 until at last they get used to one another. 
 My neighbor informed me that the land- 
 lord, whom I owed for three terms, had 
 turned me out ; I had to pack off on the 
 following day. He himself had notice to 
 quit on account of his trade. The night 
 I spent was the most miserable in my 
 life. Where was I to get a messenger to 
 carry my few belongings and my books ? 
 How was I to pay a messenger and the 
 carter ? Where was I to go ? I asked 
 myself these unanswerable questions 
 again and again, through my tears, 
 like madmen repeating their refrains. I 
 fell asleep. Poverty has a divine sleep 
 of its own, full of beautiful dreams. 
 The next morning, while I was eating 
 my bowl of bread crumbled into milk, 
 Bourgeat comes in and says in his bad 
 French— 
 
 '• • 3fonchieur rEtudiant, I'm a poor 
 fellow, a foundling from the hospital at 
 Chian Flour ; I've no father or mother, 
 and I"ve never been rich enough to marry. 
 You've not a lot of people belonging to 
 j'ou neither ; you've not got anj'thing to 
 speak of. Look here, I've got a hand- 
 cart down below which I've hired for two 
 chous an hour. It'll hold all our things : 
 if you're agreeable, we'll look out for a 
 place where we can lodge together, as 
 we're driven out of this. After ,t11. it's 
 not such a paradise on earth.' 
 
 "'I know that, my good Bourgeat.' I 
 said ; ' but I am in great difficulties. 
 Down below I have got a trunk con- 
 taining linen worth a hundred ecus; with 
 that I should be able to pay the landlord 
 and also what I owe the porter, but I 
 haven't got a hundred sous.' 
 
 " ' Hm! I've got some chink,' he an- 
 swered cheerfully, showing me a filthy old
 
 lii 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 leather purse. ' You'd better keep j^our 
 linen.' 
 
 •• Bourg-eat paid for my three terms and 
 his own, and settled with the porter. Then 
 he put our furniture and my linen on to 
 his barrow and pushed it through the 
 streets, stopping- before every house where 
 there was a placard hung- out. /went 
 up to see if the place to let would be likely 
 to suit us. At midday we were still wan- 
 dering about le quartier Latin without 
 having found anything. Tlie price was a 
 great obstacle. Bourgeat proposed that 
 we should dine at a wine shop ; we left 
 our barrow at the door. 
 
 "Toward evening I discovered in la 
 cour de Bohan, passage du Commerce, 
 two rooms separated by a staircase, at 
 the top of a house, under the tiles. We 
 could have lodgings for sixty francs a 
 year each. Here, then, we settled down, 
 ■ I and ray humble friend . We dined to- 
 gether. Bourgeat, who earned about 
 fifty sous a day, possessed about a hun- 
 dred ecus. He would soon have been able 
 to realize his ambition and bu^^ a horse 
 and water-cart. When he discovered my 
 situation, for he could draw out my se- 
 crets with a depth of cunning and a kind- 
 ness the memor3^ of which even now 
 touches my heai-t, he gave up for some 
 time the ambition of his whole life. Bour- 
 geat had worked in the streets since he 
 was twenty -two ; he sacrificed his hun- 
 dred ecus to my future." 
 
 Here Despleins pressed Bianchon's arm. 
 
 '•' He gave me the necessary mone^' for 
 my examinations. He understood, mon 
 ami, that I had a mission — that the needs 
 of my intelligence exceeded his own. He 
 took charge of me ; he called me his petit; 
 he lent me the money necessar3'^ for my 
 purchases of books ; sometimes he would 
 come in very quietly to watch me at work; 
 in short, he took all the care of a mother 
 that I might be able to have plenty of 
 wholesome nourishment instead of the 
 bad and insufficient food to which I had 
 been condemned. 
 
 '•■ Bourgeat was a man of about forty, 
 with the face of a mediaeval burgher, a 
 promment forehead, and a head that a 
 painter might have taken as a model for 
 
 Lycurgus. The poor man felt his heart 
 big with dormant affection ; he had never 
 been loved except by a poodle, which had 
 died a short time before. He was always 
 talking to me about it, and used to ask 
 me if I thought the Church would consent 
 to say masses for the repose of its soul. 
 He said his dog was a true Christian ; it 
 had accompanied him to church for twelve 
 years without ever having barked. It 
 listened to the organ without opening its 
 mouth, sitting quietly by him with an 
 air which made him believe that it was 
 praying with him. This man centered all 
 his affections on me ; he accepted me as 
 a being who came in trouble ; he became 
 the most attentive of mothers to me, the 
 most delicate of benefactors, in short, the 
 ideal of that virtue which delights in its 
 own work. If I met him in the streets he 
 cast on me a look of intelligence full of 
 inconceivable nobleness. On these occa'- 
 sions he walked as if he were carrying 
 nothing; it seemed to make him happy 
 to see me in good health and well clad. 
 In fact, his was the devotion of the peo- 
 ple, the love of the grisette, carried into 
 a higher sphere. He did my commissions, 
 woke me at night at certain hours, cleaned 
 my lamp, and polished our landing; he 
 was as good a servant as he was a father, 
 as neat as an English girl. He kept 
 house ; like Philopoemen, he sawed up 
 our wood ; doing- everything m a sim- 
 ple waj^ of his own without ever compro- 
 mising his dignity, for he seemed to feel 
 that the end he had in view could ennoble 
 whatever he did. When I left this good 
 man to enter at the Hotel Dieu as a resi- 
 dent, I cannot describe the sadness and 
 gloom he felt at the thought that he could 
 no longer live with me ; but he consoled 
 himself with the prospect of saving up 
 the money necessary for the expenses of 
 mj' thesis, and made me promise to come 
 on the days when we had leave, to see 
 him. He was proud of me ; he loved me 
 for my own sake, and for his own too. If 
 you were to look up my thesis, j^ou would 
 see that it was dedicated to him. During 
 the last year of my term of residence I 
 had earned enough money to repay the 
 noble Auvergnat all I owed him, by buy-
 
 WHF THE ATHEIST P BATED. 
 
 225 
 
 ing him a horse and water-cart. He was 
 furiously angry to think that I was de- 
 priving- myself of the money, and yet en- 
 chanted at seeing his wishes reahzed ; he 
 laughed and scolded me together, looking 
 at the horse and water-cart, and saying, 
 as he wiped away a tear, ' It's too bad. 
 Oh ! what a splendid cart ! you ought not 
 to have done it. . . . The horse is as 
 strong as an Auvergnat.' I never saw 
 anything more touching than this scene. 
 Bourgeat absolutel}' insisted on buying 
 me the case of instruments mounted in 
 silver which you have seen in my study; 
 to me it is the most precious thing I pos- 
 sess. Although elated at my first suc- 
 cess, he never let the least word escajie 
 him or the least sign that implied : ' This 
 man is due to me.' And j'et without him 
 poverty would have killed me. The poor 
 man was killing himself for me ; he had 
 eaten nothing but bread rubbed with gar- 
 lic, so that I might have enough coffee 
 for my vigils. He fell ill. As you may 
 imagine, I spent the nights at his bedside ; 
 I pulled him through the first time, but 
 he had a relapse two years afterward, 
 and in spite of the most devoted care, in 
 spite of the greatest efforts of science, he 
 had to give in. No king was ever nursed 
 as he was. Yes, Bianchon, I tried things 
 unheard of before to snatch that life from 
 death. I would have made him live, as 
 much as anything that he might witness 
 his own work, that I might realize all his 
 prayers for him, that I might satisfy the 
 only feeling of gratitude that has ever 
 filled my heart and extinguish a fire which 
 burns me even now. 
 
 "Bourgeat," continued Despleins, who 
 was visibly moved, after a pause, " my 
 second father, died in my arms. He left 
 me ever;y^hing he possessed by a will he 
 had had made b.y a scrivener, dated the 
 year when we went to lodge in la cour de 
 Rohan. He had all the faith of a char- 
 coal burner; he loved the Blessed Virgin 
 as he would have loved his wife. Though 
 he was an ardent Catholic, he had never 
 said a word to me about my irreligion. 
 He besought me, when he was in danger, 
 to spare no painS that he might have the 
 
 assistance of the Church. I had a mass 
 said for him. every day. He would often 
 express to me during the night fears as to 
 his future ; he was afraid that he had not 
 lived a holy enough life. Poor man ! he 
 toiled from morning till night. To whom 
 else could Paradise, if there is a Paradise, 
 belong? He received the sacraments like 
 the saint he was, and his death was worthy 
 of his life. No one followed his funeral 
 except me. When I had placed my onlj' 
 benefactor in the earth, I pondered how 
 I could perform my obligations to him. 
 I remembered that he had no family or 
 friends, or wife, or children ; but he be- 
 lieved ; he had a religious conviction. 
 Had I any right to dispute it ? He had 
 spoken to me timidly about masses said 
 for the repose of the dead. He had not 
 chosen to impose that duty upon me, 
 thinking that it would be like asking for 
 a return for his devotion. As soon as I 
 could establish a foundation, I gave the 
 necessary sum to Saint Sulpice for having 
 four masses a j^ear said there. As the 
 onl}^ thing I could offer Bourgeat in satis- 
 faction of his pious wishes, I go in his 
 name, on the day on which this mass is 
 said at the beginning of every season, and 
 recite for him the necessary prayers. I 
 say with the good faith of a doubter : 
 ' My God, if there is a sphere where Thou 
 puttest after their death those who have 
 been perfect, think of good Bourgeat ; 
 and if there is anything for him to suffer, 
 give me his sufferings that he may enter 
 more quickly into what is called Paradise.' 
 That, mon cher, is all that a man of my 
 opinions can allow himself. God cannot 
 be annoyed with me. I swear to you, I 
 would give mj^ fortune for the belief of 
 Bourgeat to enter into my brain." 
 
 Bianchon, who attended Despleins in 
 his last illness, dares not affirm now that 
 the celebrated surgeon died an atheist. 
 Those who beheve will like to think that 
 the humble Auvergnat will have come to 
 open to him the door of heaven, as he 
 formerly opened to him the door of that 
 earthly temple over which is written, 
 Aux grands homines la patrie Hcon- 
 naissante. 
 
 Balzac— II
 
 226 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 IV. 
 
 MYSTERY OF LA GRANDE BRETECHE. 
 
 On the banks of the Loire, about a 
 stone's throw from Vendome, stands an 
 old brown house, with a very steep roof. 
 Even the stinking tan-yards and the 
 wretched taverns found on the outskirts 
 of almost all small towns have no place 
 here ; the isolation is complete. At the 
 back of this dwelling', leading down to 
 the bank of the river, is a garden. The 
 box, once clipped to mark the walks, 
 grows now as it will; some willows 
 sprung from the Loire have formed a 
 boundary with their rapid growth, and 
 almost hide the house ; plants which we 
 call weeds make the sloping bank beauti- 
 ful with their luxuriant growth ; the fruit 
 trees, unpruned for ten years, form a 
 thicket with their suckers, and yield no 
 harvest ; the espaliers have grown as 
 bushy as a hedge of elms ; paths once 
 sanded are covered -with purslain — or 
 rather, of the paths themselves there is 
 left no trace. From the brow of the hOl 
 hang, as it were, the ruins of the ancient 
 castle of the Dukes of Vendome ; it is the 
 only place whence the eye can penetrate 
 into this retreat. 
 
 It is said that this strip of land was 
 once — at a date difficult to fix exactlj' — 
 the delight of a gentleman who spent his 
 time in the cultivation of roses and tulips ; 
 in fact, in horticulture generally, espe- 
 cially devoting himself to the rarer fruits. 
 An arbor — or rather, the ruins of one — is 
 still visible, and in it a table which time 
 has not yet entirely destroyed. ' The sight 
 of this garden which is no more, reminds 
 one of the negative enjojanentof life spent 
 peacefully in the country, just as one 
 guesses at the story of a successful mer- 
 chant from the epitaph on his tomb. To 
 complete the sad and sweet thoughts 
 
 which fasten here upon the soul, one of 
 the walls bears a sun-dial inscribed with 
 this legend, "Ultimam cogita " — such is 
 the reminder of its somewhat matter-of- 
 fact Christianity. The roofs of this house 
 are utterly ruinous, the shutters are al- 
 ways closed, the balconies full of swal- 
 lows' nests, the doors forever shut ; tall 
 grasses etch with their green outline the 
 cracks Ln the pavement, the bolts are red 
 with rust. Summer and winter the sun 
 and the moon and the snow have cracked 
 the wood and shrunk the planks and 
 gnawed away the paint. Here silence 
 and gloom hold their untroubled sway, 
 only birds, and cats, and rats, and mice, 
 and martens roam here unmolested, and 
 fight their battles, and prey upon each 
 other. Over all an invisible hand has 
 \\antten the one word — Mystery . 
 
 If you were driven by your curiosity to 
 go round and look at the house on the 
 other side, from the road, you would no- 
 tice a wide-arched door, through which 
 the children of the neighborhood have 
 made plenty of peep-holes — I learned aft- 
 erward that this door had been past re- 
 pair ten years before — and through these 
 irregular chinks you could see the perfect 
 harmony there is between the garden 
 front and the front looking on to the 
 courtyard. Here is the same reign of dis- 
 order — ^the flagstones are edged with tufts 
 of grass, enormous cracks run like fur 
 rows over the walls, the blackened coping 
 is interlaced with festoons of countless 
 wall plants, the stones of the steps are 
 unjointed, the gutters are broken, the 
 cord of the bell has rotted away. Has 
 fire from heaven passed through this 
 dwelling ? Did some tribunal decree that 
 this habitation should be sown with salt ?
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LA GRANDE BRETECHE. 
 
 227 
 
 Has man betrayed France in this place — 
 insulted God ? These are the questions 
 one asks here ; only the reptiles writhe 
 and answer not. This empty, desolate 
 house is a vast enigma, and no man knows 
 the clew. It was formerly a small manor, 
 and bears the name of La Grande 
 Breteche. 
 
 During' my stay at Vendome, where 
 Despleins had left me to take care of a 
 rich patient, the sight of this strange 
 dwelling- became one of my keenest pleas- 
 ures. It was more than a ruin ; to a rutu 
 are attached at least some remembrances 
 of incontestable authenticity ; but this 
 habitation still standing, slowly decaying 
 beneath an avenging hand, held within it 
 a secret — a thought unknown. At the 
 least its mere existence was the sign of 
 some strange caprice. Many a time of an 
 evening I resolutely approached the now 
 wild hedge-row which protected the tn- 
 closure. I braved the tearing thorns, and 
 ti'od this garden without an owner, and 
 entered this possession no longer public or 
 private. I stayed there whole hours gaz- 
 ing upon its disorder. Not even for the 
 sake of learning the story — which I felt 
 certain would give an explanation of this 
 strange scene — -would I have made a 
 single inquiry of any of the gossips of 
 Vendome. There I composed charming 
 romances ; I gave myself up to little de- 
 bauches of melancholy which delighted 
 my heart. 
 
 If I had Icnown the cause of this de- 
 sertion (perhaps a commonplace story 
 enough), I should have lost the intoxica- 
 tion of these my unpublished poems. To 
 me this retreat represented the most 
 varied pictures of human life clouded by 
 misery. Now it had the air of a cloister 
 without inmates ; now the peace of a cem- 
 etery without the dead and all their chat- 
 tering epitaphs ; one day it was a lazar- 
 house, the next the palace of the Atridae; 
 but above all it was the country with its 
 hour-glass existence and its conventional 
 ideas. I have often wept, I never laughed 
 there. More than once I felt an involun- 
 tary terror when I heard above my head 
 the duU whir of the wings of some be- 
 lated wood-dove. There the soil is so 
 
 dank you must defy the lizards and 
 vipers and frogs that walk abroad in 
 all the wild liberty of Nature. Above 
 aU, you must not mind the cold ; at cer- 
 tain moments you feel as though a man- 
 tle of ice were cast upon A'our shoulders, 
 like the commandant's hand upon Don 
 Juan's neck. 
 
 One evening, just at the moment I was 
 finishing a tragedj' by which I was ex- 
 plaining to mj-self the phenomenon of 
 this sort of woe in effigy, the wind vurned 
 an old rusty weathercock, and the cr^' it 
 gave forth sounded like a groan bursting 
 from the depth of the house ; I shivered 
 with terror. 
 
 I returned to my inn overpowered with 
 gloomy thoughts. When I had supped, 
 my hostess came with a mysterious air 
 into my room and said, "Monsieur, Mon- 
 sieur Regnault is here." "Who is Mon- 
 sieur Regnault ? " " Wh}-! does not mon- 
 sieur know Monsieur Regnault? Ah, 
 that's very odd," she said, and went 
 away. Suddenly I saw before me a long 
 lean man ; he entered the room like a 
 ram gathering itself up to butt at a rival; 
 he presented a receding forehead, a little 
 pointed head, and a sallow face, not unUke 
 a glass of dirty water ; he might have 
 passed for a ministerial beadle. This 
 man, who was quite unknown to me, 
 wore a black coat, very much worn at 
 the seams, but he had a diamond in the 
 bosom of his shirt and gold rings in his 
 ears. 
 
 "Monsieur, whom have I the honor of 
 addressing?" said I. 
 
 He seated himself upon a chair, ar- 
 ranged himself before my fire, placed his 
 hat on my table, rubbed his hands to- 
 gether and said, "Ah! it's very cold. 
 Monsieur, I am Monsieur Regnault." I 
 bowed, saying to myself, " II bondo cani ! 
 let's see." 
 
 "I am," said he, "a notai-y in Ven- 
 dome." 
 
 "I am charmed to hear it, monsieur,'' 
 said I, " but I am not in a position to 
 make a will, for reasons known to my- 
 self." 
 
 "Just one moment! " he replied, liais- 
 ing his hand as if to impose silenoe.
 
 228 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 " Allow mc, monsieur, allow me ! I 
 learn that you have occasionally gone 
 to walk in the garden of La Grande 
 Breteche." 
 
 "Yes, monsieur." 
 
 "Just one moment ! " said he, repeat- 
 ing his gesture ; " this of itself constitutes 
 an actionable offense. Monsieur, I am 
 come in the name and as executor under 
 the will of niadame, the late Comtesse 
 de Merret, to request you to discontinue 
 your visits. Just one moment ! I am 
 no Turk ; I do not wish to make a crime 
 of it ; besides, you may very well be igno- 
 rant of the circumstances which oblige 
 me to allow the finest mansion in Ven- 
 dome to fall into ruins. However, mon- 
 sieur, you appear to be a man of education, 
 and you ought to know that the laws for- 
 bid trespass on an inclosed estate under 
 heavy penalties. A hedge is as good as 
 a wall. However, the state in which the 
 house now stands may serve as an excuse 
 for your curiosity. Nothing would give 
 me more pleasure than to leave you free to 
 come and go as you please in the house ; 
 but, charged as I am to carry out the 
 wishes of the testatrix, I have the honor, 
 monsieur, to request you not to enter that 
 garden again. Monsieur, smce the open- 
 ing of the will I have not myself set foot 
 in that house, though it belongs — as I 
 had the honor of informing you — to the 
 estate of Madame de Merret. All we did 
 was to make an inventory of the doors 
 and windows, in order to assess the taxes, 
 which I pay annually out of capital des- 
 tined by the late Madame la Comtesse for 
 that purpose. Ah, my dear monsieur, her 
 will made a great talk in Vendome ! " 
 
 Here the worthy man stopped to blow 
 his nose. I respected his loquacity, under- 
 standing perfectly that the estate of Ma- 
 dame de Merret was the most important 
 event in his life — his whole reputation, his 
 glory, his restoration. Then, after all, I 
 must saj' good-bj' to my fine reveries and 
 romances. However, I did not rebel 
 against the satisfaction of learning the 
 truth in an official manner. 
 
 "Monsieur,"' I said, " would it be indis- 
 creet if I asked you the reason for this 
 eccentricity? " 
 
 At these words a look expressing all the 
 pleasure of a man accustomed to mount- 
 ing his hobby, passed over the notary's 
 face. He pulled up his shirt collar with 
 a sort of self-satisfied air, took out his 
 snuff-box, opened it, offered me some 
 snuff, and on m^' refusal seized a large 
 pinch himself. He was happy I 
 
 The man who has not got a hobby 
 knows nothing of the profit one can get 
 out of life. A hobby is the exact mean 
 between passion and monomania. 
 
 At this moment I understood that 
 charming expression of Sterne's in all 
 its meaning. I had a complete idea of 
 the joy with which, by the aid of Trim, 
 Uncle Toby bestrode his charger. 
 
 "Monsieur," said Monsieur Kegnault, 
 " I was formerly senior clerk to Maitre 
 Roguin, in Paris — an excellent oflice. 
 Perhaps you have heard speak of it ? 
 No ! Well, a most unfortunate bank- 
 ruptcy- rendered it notorious. Not hav- 
 ing sufficient capital to carry on business 
 in Paris, considering the price to which 
 practices went up in 1816, I came here 
 and pui'chased the office of my predeces- 
 sor. I had relations here in Vendome, 
 among others a very rich aunt who gave 
 me her daughter in marriage. Monsieur," 
 he continued after a slight pause, " three 
 months after I had been enrolled before 
 Monseigneur le Oarde des sceaux, I was 
 summoned one night just as I was going 
 to bed (this was before my marriage) by 
 Madame la Comtesse de Merret to her 
 clidteau, le Chateau de Merret. Her 
 lady's-maid, a fine young woman, now 
 servant in this hotel, was at my door in 
 Madame la Comtesse's caZec/ie. Ah ! just 
 on3 moment ! I ought to have told you, 
 monsieur, that Monsieur le Conite de 
 Merret had gone to Paris, and died there 
 two months before I came here. He died 
 miserably. The day of his departure Ma- 
 dame la Comtesse had left La Grande 
 Breteche and had it dismantled. Some 
 people even declare that she burned all 
 the furniture, hangings — in short all the 
 goods and chattels generally ivhatsoever 
 adorning the premises now in the ten- 
 ancy of the said sieur — (Dear me, what 
 am I saying ? Beg pardon, I was think-
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LA GRANDE BRETECHE. 
 
 229 
 
 ing I was drawing- up a lease.) Yes," he 
 repeated, " they say she had them burned 
 in the meadow at Merret. Have 3'ou been 
 to Merret, monsieur ? No," said he, an- 
 swering the question himself. "Ah! it's 
 a very fine place ! For about three 
 months before, Monsieur le Comte and 
 Madame la Comtesse had been living in 
 a strange manner. They no longer re- 
 ceived any one ; madame lived on the 
 ground-floor and monsieur on the first 
 stor3^ After Madame la Comtesse was 
 left alone she never showed herself again, 
 except at church ; later she refused to see 
 her friends who came to visit her at home 
 in her chdteau. She was already very 
 much changed when she left La Grande 
 Breteche and went to live at Merret. 
 The dear woman (I say ' dear ' because 
 this diamond comes to me from her, 
 otherwise I never saw her but once). 
 Well, the good lady was very ill. No 
 doubt she had given up all hope of re- 
 covery, for she died without wishing anj' 
 doctors to be called in ; indeed, many of 
 our ladies here thought that she was not 
 quite right in the head. As you may im- 
 agine then, monsieur, my curiosity was 
 especially excited when I was informed 
 that Madame de Merret needed my as- 
 sistance — and I was not the only person 
 who took interest in this story. 
 
 "Although it was late, the whole town 
 knew that same evening that I had gone 
 to Merr-et. On the road I addressed a 
 few questions to the lad^^'s-maid, but her 
 answers were very vague ; however, she 
 told me that the cure of Merret had come 
 during the day and administered the 
 Last Sacraments to her mistress, and 
 that it seemed impossible that she could 
 live through the night. I arrived at the 
 chateau about eleven o'clock. I went up 
 the great staircase, then, after traversing 
 vast, gloomj^ apartments, cold and damp 
 enough for the devil, I reached the prin- 
 cipal bed-chamber, where Madame la 
 Comtesse lay. After all the reports 
 that had been going about (I should 
 never have finished, monsieur, if I were 
 to repeat all the stories that are told 
 about her), I expected to see a sort of 
 coquette. Just fancy, I had the greatest 
 
 difficulty to discover at all where she was, 
 in the great bed in which she lay. True, 
 she had one of those antique Argant 
 lamps for Ught, but the chamber was 
 enormous, with an ancten regime frise 
 so covered with dust that the very sight 
 of it made one cough. Ah ! but you've 
 not been to Merret I Well ! monsieur, 
 the bed is one of those old-fashioned 
 ones, with a high canopy trimmed with 
 figured chintz. A small night table stood 
 by the bedside, and I noticed on it a ' Fol- 
 lowing of Christ,' which, by the way, I 
 afterward bought for my wife, as well as 
 the lamp ; there was also a large couch 
 for her confidential servant, and two 
 chairs. No fire, mind ! This was all the 
 furniture; it wouldn't have filled ten 
 lines of an inventory. Ah, mon cher 
 monsieur, if you had seen, as I did then, 
 this vast room, hung with brown, you 
 would have fancied you had been trans- 
 ported into a scene of a romance come 
 true. It was icy, more than icy — fune- 
 real," he added, raising his arm with a 
 theatrical gesture and pausing. "After 
 looking for some time and going close up 
 to the bed, at last I discovered Madame 
 de Merret, thanks again to the lamplight 
 which fell full upon her pillows. Her 
 face was as yellow as wax ; it was just 
 like a pair of clasped hands. She had on 
 a lace cap which showed her beautiful 
 hair; then, it was as white as thread. 
 She was sitting up, though she seemed 
 to do so with great difficulty. Her great 
 black eyes, dulled with fever no doubt, 
 and already almost dead, scarcely moved 
 under the bones where the eyebrows are 
 — here ! " said he, pointing to the arch of 
 his eyes. " Her brow was wet, her hands 
 were fleshless, mere bones covered with 
 a fuie, tender skin ; all her veins and 
 muscles stood out prominentlj'. She 
 must have been very beautiful once, 
 but at the moment I was seized with a 
 feeling — I don't laiow how — at the sight 
 of her. The people who laid her out said 
 that they had never seen a creature so 
 utterly fleshless alive. She really was 
 terrible to behold ! Disease had made 
 such ravages upon her she was nothing 
 more than a phantom. Her lips were a
 
 230 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 livid purple ; they seemed motionless 
 even when she spoke. Although iny 
 profession takes mo now and again to 
 the bedsides of the dying- in order to as- 
 certain their last wishes, so that I am 
 not unfamiliar with these scenes, yet I 
 must say that the lamentations of the 
 ■families and the agonies of the dying- 
 which I have witnessed are as nothing- 
 compared to this desolate and silent wo- 
 man in her vast chateau. I could not 
 hear the faintest sound, I could not even 
 see the least movement of the bed-clothes 
 from the breathing of the sick woman ; 
 I too stood perfectly motionless, absorbed 
 in looking at her, in a sort of stupor. I 
 could iviwcy I was there now. At last 
 her great Gyes moved ; she tried to lift 
 lier rig-ht hand, but it fell back on the 
 bed, and these words passed out of her 
 mouth like a sig-h — her voice was a voice 
 no more — ' I have waited very impatiently 
 for you.' Her cheeks flushed feverishly. 
 It was a struggle for her to speak. ' Ma- 
 dame,' 1 said. She made me a sig-n to be si- 
 lent, and at the same moment the old house- 
 keeper rose from her couch and whispered 
 ui my ear : ' Do not speak ; Madame la 
 Comtesse is not in a state to bear the least 
 sound; if you spoke you might agitate 
 her.' I sat down. After a few moments 
 Madame de Merret gathered up all her 
 i-emaining strength and moved her right 
 arm ; she put it with immense difficulty 
 under her bolster ; then she paused for a 
 moment ; then she made one last effort 
 to draw out her hand ; she took out a 
 sealed paper, and as she did so the sweat 
 fell in drops from her forehead. 'I in- 
 trust my will to you,' she said. 'All, my 
 God, ah ! ' This was all. She seized a 
 crucifix which lay on her bed, raised it 
 quickly to her lips, and died. The ex- 
 pression of those motionless eyes makes 
 me shudder still ; she must have suffered 
 terribly ! There was joy in her last look, 
 and the joy remained graven upon her 
 dead eyes. I took away the will with 
 me ; when it was opened I found that 
 Madame de Merret had named me her 
 executor. She bequeathed the whole of 
 her property to the hospital at Vendome, 
 with the exception of a few indi^idual 
 
 leg-acies. Her directions relatively to 
 La Grande Breteche were as follows : — 
 She directed me to leave the house for a 
 period of fifty years — reckoned from the 
 day of her death — in the exact state in 
 which it should be found at the moment 
 of her decease ; she forbade any entry into 
 the apartments by any person whatso- 
 ever, and also the least repair ; she even 
 set aside the interest of a certain sum 
 wherewith, if necessary, to engag-e keep- 
 ers, in order to insure the fulfillment of 
 her intentions in their entirety. At the 
 expiration of this term of years, if the 
 wishes of the testatrix have been carried 
 out, the house is to pass to my heirs, for 
 monsieur is aware that notaries are not 
 allowed to accept a legacy; if they are 
 not carried out. La Grande Breteche re- 
 turns to the heirs-at-law, with the charge 
 that they are to fulfill the conditions indi- 
 cated in the codicil annexed to the will, 
 which codicil is not to be opened until 
 the expiration of the said fifty j^ears. 
 The will ihas never been disputed, and 
 so — ; " at this word, and without finish- 
 ing his sentence, that oblong- notary sur- 
 veyed me with an air of triumjih, and I 
 made him quite happy by addressing- him 
 a few compliments. 
 
 "Monsieur," I finished by saying- to 
 him, "you have made such a vivid im- 
 pression upon me that I fancy I can see 
 this dying woman paler than her own 
 sheets ; her gleaming eyes make me 
 afraid ; I shall dream of her to-nig-ht. 
 But you will have formed some conject- 
 ures concerning the dispositions contained 
 in this eccentric will ? " 
 
 "Monsieur," said he, with comic re- 
 serve, " I never allow myself to judge of 
 the conduct of persons who have honored 
 me with the gift of a diamond." 
 
 I soon untied the tongue of the scrupu- 
 lous notary, and he communicated to me, 
 amid long digressions, all the observa- 
 tions made by the profound politicians of 
 both sexes .whose judgments are law in 
 Vendome. But these observations were 
 so contradictor^^ and so diffuse, that, in 
 spite of the interest which I took in this 
 authentic history, I very nearly fell 
 asleep. The notary, no doubt accustomed
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LA GRANDE BRETECHE. 
 
 231 
 
 to listen himself, and to make his clients 
 and fellow-townsmen listen too, to his 
 dull voice and monotonous intonation, 
 began to triumph over ray curiositj', when 
 happily he got up to leave. 
 
 "Ha, ha, monsieur," said he, upon the 
 staircase, "there are many people who 
 would like to be alive in forty -five years' 
 time, but — just one moment ! " and he 
 put the first finger of his right hand to 
 his nose, as if to say, "Pay great atten- 
 tion to this," and said in a slj'^ way, " To 
 get as far as that, one must start before 
 sixty." 
 
 I was drawn from my apathy \)y the 
 last sally — the notarj' thought it prodig- 
 iously witty ; then I shut my door, sat 
 down in my armchair, and put my feet 
 on the flLre-dogs of the grate. 
 
 I was soon deep in a romance a la Anne 
 Radcliffe, founded on the juridical hints 
 given by Monsieur Regnault. Presently 
 my door, handled bj' the dexterous hand 
 of a woman, turned on its hinges; my 
 hostess came in, a good-humored, jovial 
 woman, who had missed her vocation ; 
 she was a Fleming, and ought to have 
 been born in a picture by Teniers. 
 
 "Well, monsieur," said she, "I suppose 
 Monsieur Regnault has been droning over 
 his old story again about La Grande 
 Breteche?" 
 
 "Yes, he has, mere Lepas." 
 
 " What has he been telling you ? " 
 
 I repeated to her in a few words the 
 gloomy, chilling story of Madame de 
 Merret. After each sentence my hostess 
 stretched out her neck and looked at me 
 with an innkeeper's own shrewdness — a 
 sort of happy mean between the instinct 
 of a gendarme, the craft of a spy, and the 
 shiftiness of a shopkeeper. When I had 
 finished I added, 
 
 "My dear dame Lepas! you seem to 
 me to know something more about it 
 yourself, or else why should you have 
 come up to see me?" 
 
 " No, on my word of honor I as sure as 
 my name's Lepas." 
 
 " No, don't swear to it ; your eyes are 
 big with a secret. You knew Monsieur 
 Merret; what was he like?" 
 
 "Lord bless you. Monsieur de Merret was 
 
 a fine man ; you never got to the end of 
 him, he was so long — a worthy gentleman 
 come from Picardie, but, as we say here, 
 ' II avait la tete pres du bonet.' He 
 paid everything ready monej-, so that he 
 might never come to words with any one; 
 you see he was a bit quick ! Our ladies 
 here all thouglit him very pleasant." 
 
 "Because he was clever?" said I. 
 
 "Likelj' enough," said she. 
 
 "You may imagine, monsieur, there 
 must have been a something about him, 
 as they say, for Madame de Merret to 
 have married him. I don't want to hurt 
 the other ladies, but she was the richest 
 and prettiest young ladj' in all Vcndome; 
 she had near on twenty thousand livres 
 a 3'ear. The whole town went to see the 
 wedding. The bride was a delicate, win- 
 ning creature — a real jewel of a wife. 
 All ! they made a fine couple in their 
 time ! " 
 
 "Were they happy together? " 
 
 " Hm ! perhaps they were and perhaps 
 they weren't, as far as one could tell; but 
 you can imagine they didn't hob-nob with 
 such as we. Madame de Merret made a 
 good wife, and very kind. I dare say she 
 had a good bit to put up -with at times 
 from her husband's tantrums ; but though 
 he was a bit stern, we liked him well 
 enough. Bah ! it's his quality that made 
 him like that ; when a man's noble, j-ou 
 know — " 
 
 " Then there must certainly- have been 
 some catastrophe for Monsieur and Ma- 
 dame de Merret to have separated so ab- 
 ruptly ? " 
 
 " I never said anj'thing about a catas- 
 trophe, monsieur. I don't know anj'thing 
 about it." 
 
 " All right ! Now I am certain that 
 you do know about it." 
 
 " Well, monsieur, I am going to tell 
 you all I know. When I saw Monsieur 
 Regnault go up to sec you, I felt certain 
 that he would talk to ^'ou about Madame 
 de Merret, with reference to La Gi-ande 
 Breteche. This put it into my head to 
 consult monsieur, for you seemed to me 
 to be a comfortable man, who would not 
 betray a poor woman like me that has 
 never done harm to any one — and yet
 
 232 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 find myself tormented by my conscience. 
 I have never up to now dared to open my 
 mouth about it to the people in this place; 
 tlioy"re all a pack of g-ossips, with tong-ucs 
 like vineg-ar. In fact, monsieur, I have 
 never yet had a traveler stay in my house 
 as long as you have, or any one to whom 
 I could tell the history of the fifty thou- 
 sand francs — " 
 
 "My dear dame Lepas," I answered, 
 checking- the flow of her words, "if your 
 confidence is of a nature to compromise 
 me I wouldn't be burdened with it for 
 all the world." 
 
 '•You needn't be afraid," said she, in- 
 terrupting me, "you will see." 
 
 This readiness made me think that I 
 was not the only person to whom our 
 good hostess had communicated the 
 secret of which I was to be the sole de- 
 pository ; however, I settled myself to 
 listen. 
 
 "Monsieur," said she, "when the em- 
 peror sent some Spanish prisoners here — 
 prisoners of war or others — I had one 
 to lodge at the expense of the govern- 
 ment, a young Spaniard sent to Vendome 
 on parole. In spite of his parole, he had 
 to go eveiy day to report himself to the 
 sub-prefect. He was a Spanish grandee 
 — excuse me a minute — he bore a name 
 ending in ' os ' and ' dia.' I think it was 
 Bagos de Feredia, but I wrote it down in 
 my register ; if you would like to, j'ou can 
 read it. Ah ! he was a handsome young 
 man for a Spaniard, who are all uglj^— so 
 they saj'. He couldn't have been more 
 than five feet two or three inches, but he 
 was well made. He had the smallest 
 hands ! — which he took such cai'e of — you 
 should have seen — he had as many brushes 
 for his hands as a woman has for the 
 whole of her toilet. He had long black 
 hair, gleaming eyes, rather an olive com- 
 plexion — but I admired that. He wore 
 the finest linen I ever saw on any one — 
 and I have had princesses to lodge here, 
 and among others le General Bertrand, 
 le Due and la Duchesse d'Albrantes, Mon- 
 sieur Decazes, and the king of Spain. He 
 did not eat much; but one couldn't be 
 angry with him, he had such gentle cour- 
 teous manners. Oh ! I was very fond of 
 
 him, although he didn't say two words in 
 the day ; and one couldn't get the least 
 conversation with him. If one tried to 
 talk to him, he didn't answer. It was a 
 fad — a mania ; they're all like it, so I'm 
 told. He read his breviary like a priest ; 
 he went regularly to mass and to all the 
 offices; and where doj'ou think he knelt ? 
 — (we noticed this afterward) — why, not 
 two steps from Madame de Merret's 
 chapel. As he took his seat there ever 
 since the first time he went into the church, 
 no one imagined there could be anything 
 in it ; besides, the poor young man never 
 raised his nose out of his book of prayers. 
 Then, monsieur, in the evening he used to 
 walk on the hill in the ruins of the castle. 
 It was his only amusement, poor man ; it 
 must have reminded him of his own coun- 
 try — Spain is nothing but mountains, so 
 I've heard. From the fii*st days of his 
 detention he was alwaj-s late at night. I 
 was anxious, when I saw he didn't come 
 in until just on the stroke of midnight; 
 but we all got accustomed to his fancies. 
 He took the kej' of the door, and we didn't 
 sit up for him any longer. He lodged in 
 the house we have in la rue des Casernes. 
 Then one of our stable-boys told us that 
 one evening when he was going to wash 
 the horses, he believed he had seen the 
 Spanish grandee swimming like a fish 
 some distance off in the river. When he 
 came back I Avarned him to mind the 
 weeds. He seemed annoyed at having 
 been seen in the water. At last, monsieur, 
 one da}', or rather one morning, we found 
 he was not in his bedroom ; he had not 
 returned. After hunting about every- 
 where, I saw some writing in the drawer 
 of his table, and with it fifty of the Span- 
 ish gold pieces they call portugals, equal 
 to about fifty thousand francs ; and after- 
 ward in a little sealed box some diamonds, 
 worth about ten thousand francs. Well, 
 this writing said that in case he did not 
 come back he left us the money and the 
 diamonds, and charged us to have masses 
 said to thank God for his escape and his 
 safety. At that time I still had my hus- 
 band with me, and he ran out to search 
 for him. Now comes the oddest part of 
 the story. He brought back the Span-
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LA GRANDE BRETECHE. 
 
 233 
 
 iard's clothes, which he had found under 
 a larg-e stone in a sort of palisade on the 
 bank of the river, on the chateau side, 
 almost opposite La Grande Breteche. 
 My husband had got there so early that 
 no one had seen them. When he had 
 read the letter, he burned the clothes, 
 and we gave out according' to Count 
 Feredia's desire that he had escaped. 
 The sub-prefect set the whole gendar- 
 merie at his heels ; but, pooh ! they 
 never caught him. Lepas believed the 
 Spaniard was drowned ; but I don't, mon- 
 sieur. I believe he had something to do 
 with that affair of Madame de Merret, 
 seeing that Eosalie told me that the cru- 
 cifix which her mistress was so fond of 
 that she had it buried %\ith her was made 
 of ebony and silver. Now during the first 
 days of Monsieur Feredia's stay here he 
 had a crucifix of ebony and silver, which 
 I never saw among his things again. 
 Now, monsieur, you don't really think 
 I need have any remorse about the fif- 
 ty thousand francs ? They really are 
 mine?" 
 
 " Certainly. — Then you've never tried 
 to question Rosalie," I said. 
 
 " Haven't I though, monsieur ; but 
 what am I to do ? That girl ! she's — a 
 wall. She laiows something-, but there's 
 no getting anything out of her." 
 
 After tallcing to me for a few minutes 
 more my hostess left me, tortured bj' 
 vague and gloomy thoughts. I felt a ro- 
 mantic curiosity, and yet a sort of relig- 
 ious horror, like the profound sensation 
 which takes hold of us when we go into a 
 church at night. Under the lofty arches 
 we perceive through the gloom a far-off 
 flickering light, an uncertain form glides 
 by us, we hear the rustle of a gown or a 
 cassock — ^before we know it, we have sliud- 
 dered. La Grande Breteche, with its rank 
 weeds, its wornout casements, its rusted 
 ironwork, its deserted chambei's, its closed 
 portals, rose up suddenly, fantastically be- 
 fore me. I would try to penetrate into 
 this mysterious dwelling, by seeking for 
 the knot of its solemn historj', the drama 
 that had slain three human beings. 
 
 Rosalie was now the most interesting 
 person to me in Vendome. In spite of 
 
 the glow of health which beamed from 
 her chubby face, I discovered, after clcsc 
 scrutiny, the trace of hidden thoughts. 
 She held withm her the elements either 
 of hope or remorse; her behavior sug- 
 gested a secret, like those pious women 
 who pray to excess, or a girl who has 
 killed her child and is always hearmg its 
 last cr>^ Yet her attitudes were simple 
 and awkward. There was nothing crim- 
 inal in her broad foolish smile, if only ab 
 the sight of her sturdy bust, covered with 
 a red and blue check kerchief, and in- 
 closed, impressed, and inlaced in a violet 
 and white striped gown, you coufd not 
 have failed to think she was innocent. 
 
 "No," thought I, "I shaU not leave 
 Vendome until I know the whole history 
 of La Grande Breteche. I will woo Ros- 
 alie, if it be absolutely necessary, to gain 
 my end." 
 
 •' Rosalie," said I one day. 
 
 "Yes I if you please, monsieur." 
 
 " You are not married ? " She gave a 
 little start. 
 
 "Oh, I shan't want for a husband, 1 
 can tell you, monsieur, when the whim 
 takes me to make a fool of myself," said 
 she, laughing. 
 
 She quickly recovered from her inward 
 emotion, for every woman, from a fine 
 lady to a tavern drudge inclusively, has 
 a sangfroid especialh' their own. 
 
 "You are fresh and attractive enough 
 not to lack lovers ! But tell me, Rosalie, 
 how was it j'ou took a place at an inn 
 after you had been with Madame de Mer- 
 ret ? Didn't she leave you any pension ?" 
 
 " Oh yes, monsieur ; but my place is 
 the best in all Vendome." 
 
 This was one of those answers that 
 judges and bai'risters call dilatory. It 
 appeared to me, with regard to this ro- 
 mantic story, that Rosalie stood on the 
 middle square of the chessboard ; she was 
 at the very center both of the interest and 
 of the ti'uth of it ; she seemed to be bound 
 up in the knot. It was no ordinary inqui- 
 sition I was attempting ; this girl was like 
 the last chapter of a romance. So from 
 this moment Rosalie became the object of 
 my predilections. By dint of studying 
 her, I noticed in her — as one does in all
 
 234 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 the women whom we make our chief 
 thoiigrht — a number of good qualities. 
 She w:is neat, dili.gent, pretty — of course 
 t liat g-oes without saj'ing ;— in fact, she 
 was soon endowed with all the attrac- 
 tions which our desire attributes to wo- 
 men, in whatever situation they may be 
 placed. A fortnight after the notary's 
 visit, one morning, I said to Rosalie : 
 
 "Come, tell me all you know about 
 Madame de Merret ! " 
 
 " Oh, don't ask me that. Monsieur 
 Horace," she answered with terror. 
 Her pretty face grew dark, her bright 
 vivid Coloring faded, and her eyes lost 
 all their soft and innocent luster. 
 
 "Well," she said, "as you wish it, I 
 will tell you ; but whatever you do, keep 
 the secret ! " 
 
 " Done ! my child ; I will keep all thy 
 s(!crets with the integrity of a robber, 
 which is the loyalest that exists." 
 
 " If you don't mind," said she, " I had 
 rather j'ou kept them with your own." 
 So she arranged her kerchief, and settled 
 herself as one does to tell a tale, for 
 certainly an attitude of confidence and 
 security is a necessity in story-telling. 
 
 The best stories are told at a not too 
 early hour, and just as we are now, at 
 table. No one ever told a story well, 
 standing or fasting. But if it were nec- 
 essary to reproduce faithfully the diffuse 
 eloquence of Rosalie, a whole volume 
 would scarcely be enough. Now, since 
 the event thus confusedly related to me 
 bears exactly the same relation to the 
 notary's and Madame Lepas's gossip as 
 the mean terms in arithmetical propor- 
 tion bear to the extreme, I have nothing 
 more to do than to tell it again in a few 
 words ; so I abridge. 
 
 The bedroom which Madame de Merret 
 occupied at La Breteche was situated on 
 the ground floor. In it, sunk in the wall, 
 about four feet deep, was a small closet 
 which she used for a wardrobe. Three 
 months before the evening when the cii"- 
 curastances took place which I am about 
 to relate to you, Madame de Merret was 
 so seriously indisposed that her husband 
 left her to sleep alone in her room, and 
 went himself to sleep In a room on the 
 
 first floor. On this evening, by one of 
 those chances impossible to foresee, he 
 came home from his club (where he went 
 to read the papers and talk politics with 
 the country gentlemen) two hours later 
 than he was accustomed to. His wife 
 thought that he had already come in and 
 gone to bed, and was asleep. But there 
 had been a rather animated discussion on 
 the subject of the invasion of France ; the 
 game of billiards too had proved an excit- 
 ing one, and he had lost forty francs. 
 This was an enormous sum at Veiidome 
 where every one hoards and morals are 
 kept within bounds of most praiseworthy 
 moderation ; j^erhaps this is the source 
 of that true contentment which Parisians 
 do not appreciate. For some time Mon- 
 sieur de Merret had contented himself 
 with inquiring from Rosalie whether his 
 wife had gone to bed, and on her always 
 answering in the afflrmative, he went 
 straight to his own room with that sim- 
 plicit3' which comes of habit and confi- 
 dence. But that night, when he came in, 
 the fancy took him to go and tell his ill- 
 luck to Madame de Merret, and also per- 
 haps receive her sympathy. Now during 
 dinner he had observed that Madame 
 de Merret was very becomingly dressed ; 
 and he remarked to himself as he came 
 from his club that his wife's indisposi- 
 tion must have passed off, and that her 
 convalescence had made her more beauti- 
 ful than before. You see he noticed this, 
 as husbands do everything, a little late 
 in the day. At this moment Rosalie was 
 in the kitchen, engaged in watching the 
 cook and the coachman play out a difhcult 
 hand at hrisque; so instead of calling her, 
 Monsieur de Merret placed his lantern on 
 the bottom step of the stairs, and by its 
 light directed his steps toward his wife's 
 bedroom. His footsteps were easy to recog- 
 nize as they rang in the vaulted corridor. 
 At the moment he turned the handle of 
 his wife's door, he thought he heard the 
 door of the closet I have mentioned shut ; 
 but when he came in Madame de Merret 
 was alone, standing before the fireplace. 
 Her husband in his simplicitj^ thought to 
 himself that it was Rosalie in the ward- 
 I robe, but yet a suspicion jangled like a
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LA GRANDE BRETECHE. 
 
 235 
 
 chime in his ears, and made him distrust- 
 ful. He looked at his wife ; he saw in her 
 e^^es a sort of troubled, fierce expression. 
 "You are late to-night," said she. In 
 her voice, before so pure and gracious, 
 there seemed to him to have come a subtle 
 change. He made no reply, for at that 
 moment Rosalie came in. It was a thun- 
 derbolt to him. 
 
 He paced up and down the room, his 
 arms folded, going from one window to 
 the other with measured tread. " Have 
 you had bad news, or are you in pain ? " 
 she asked timidlj^ while Rosalie un- 
 dressed her. He kept silence. "You 
 can go," said Madame de Merret to her 
 ladj^'s-raaid ; " I will put in my curl- 
 papers myself." She divined some evil 
 from the very look on her husband's face, 
 and wished to be alone with him. When 
 Rosalie was gone — or ostensibly gone, for 
 she waited for some minutes in the conn- 
 dor — Monsieur de Merret came and sat 
 dowTi beiore his wife, and said coldly, 
 "Madame, there is some one in your 
 wardrobe." She looked calmly at her 
 husband, and said simply, " ISTo, mon- 
 sieur." This "No" wounded Monsieur 
 de Merret to the quick ; he did not believe 
 it, and yet his wife had never seemed to 
 him purer or holier than she looked at 
 that moment. He rose and went to open 
 the closet. Madame de Merret took his 
 hand and stopped him, looked at him with 
 a melancholy air, and said in a voice of 
 extreme emotion, " Remember, if you do 
 not find any one there, all will be over 
 between us ! " The incredible dignity 
 stamped upon the figure of his wife re- 
 stored him to a profound sense of esteem 
 for her, and inspired him with one of those 
 resolves which only need a vaster stage to 
 become immortal. 
 
 "No, Josephine," said he, " I will not 
 go. In either case we should be parted 
 forever. Listen ! I know all the purity 
 of thy soul ; I know that thou leadest a 
 holy life, that thou wouldst not commit 
 a mortal sin to save thyself from death."' 
 At these words Madame de Merret looked 
 at her husband with a wild light in her 
 eyes. " Stop, here is thy crucifix," added 
 the man. ' ' Swear to me before God that 
 
 there is no one there. I will tnist you — 
 I will never open that door." Madame 
 de Merret took the ci-ucifLx and said, "I 
 swear." "Louder," said her hu.sband ; 
 "and repeat, 'I swear before God there 
 is no one in that wardrobe.' " She re- 
 peated the phrase unmoved. 
 
 "It is well," said Monsieur de Merret 
 coldly. 
 
 After a moment's silence : " That's a 
 very fine thing you have, I have not 
 noticed it before," said he, examining 
 the crucifix, which was of ebony and 
 silver, and very finely car\-ed. 
 
 " I picked it up at Duvivier's ; he 
 bought it of a Spanish religieiix last 
 summer, when that troop ot Spani.sh 
 prisoners passed through Vendome." 
 
 "Oh !" said Monsieur de Merret, and 
 hung up the crucifix upon the nail again : 
 then he rang the bell. Rosalie did not 
 keep him waiting. Monsieur de Merret 
 went quickly to meet her, drew her into 
 the embrasure of the wandow which looked 
 out on the garden, and said, in a low 
 voice : " I know that Gorenflot wants to 
 marry you, tliat it's only your po^•erty 
 which prevents your setting up house, 
 and that you have refused to marry him 
 if he can't manage to make himself a 
 master mason — very well ! go and fetch 
 him ; tell him to come here with his 
 trowel and his other tools. Manage so 
 as to wake no one in his house except 
 him, and you'll make a much finer fort- 
 une than you ever even coveted. Above 
 all, go out of this house without chatter- 
 ing; if you do not — " and he frowned. 
 Rosalie went ; he called her back. " Stop, 
 take my latch-key," said he. 
 
 " Jean !" thundered Jlonsieur de Mer- 
 ret in the corridor. 
 
 Jean, who served both as coachman 
 and confidential servant, left his game of 
 hrisque, and came. 
 
 " Go, all of 3'ou, to bed," said his mas- 
 ter, making him a sign to come up close 
 to him : then he added, in a low voice. 
 " When they arc all asleep — asleep, mind 
 — come down and tell me." 
 
 Monsieur de Merret, who had not lost 
 sight of his wife all tlie time he was giv- 
 ing his orders, came back quietly to her
 
 236 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 before the fire, and proceeded to relate 
 the events of liis billiard match and their 
 discussions at the club. When Eosalio 
 came back, she found Monsieur and 
 Madame de Merret talking amicably to- 
 gether. 
 
 The count had recently had ceilings 
 made to all the rooms on the ground floor, 
 which he used for receptions. It was this 
 circumstance that had suggested to him 
 the plan he proceeded to carry into exe- 
 cution. 
 
 "Monsieur, Gorenflot is here," said 
 Rosalie in a low voice. 
 
 "Let him come in," said the Picard 
 aloud. 
 
 Madame de Merret grew a little pale 
 when she saw the mason. 
 
 "Gorenflot," said her husband, "go 
 and get some bricks from under the coach- 
 house, and bring enough to wall up the 
 door of that closet ; you can use some of 
 the plaster I have by me, for plastering 
 the wall." 
 
 Then he drew Rosalie and the work- 
 man aside, and said to them, in a low 
 voice : " Listen, Gorenflot, you will sleep 
 here to-night, but to-morrow morning 
 you shall have a passport to go abroad 
 to a town which I will name. I shall send 
 you six thousand francs for the journey. 
 You will remain for ten years in this 
 town ; if the place does not please you, 
 yovL can settle in another, provided only 
 that it is in the same country. You will 
 pass through Paris, wait for me there ; 
 there I will settle on you, by deed, six 
 thousand francs more, which shall be 
 paid you on your return, if you have ful- 
 filled the conditions of our bargain. For 
 this sum you must keep the most abso- 
 lute silence about what you are going to 
 do to-night. As to you, Rosalie, I will 
 give you ten thousand francs, not to be 
 Ijaid over to you until the day of your 
 marriage, and then only on condition 
 that you marry Gorenflot ; but to marry, 
 you must be silent ; if not, you get no 
 dowry." 
 
 "Rosalie," said Madame de Merret, 
 " come and do my hair." 
 
 Her husband paced quietly from one 
 end of the room to the other, watching 
 
 the door, the mason, and his wife, but 
 without displaying any offensive distrust. 
 Gorenflot could not help making some 
 noise. While the workman was unload- 
 ing his bi'icks, and her husband was at 
 the end of the room, Madame de Merret 
 seized the opportunity of saying to Rosa- 
 lie : " A thousand francs a year for you, 
 my dear child, if thou canst tell Goren- 
 flot to leave a chink near the bottom." 
 Then she said aloud, and with perfect 
 composure, " Go and help him ! " 
 
 Monsieur and Madame de Merret re- 
 mained silent during the whole time Goren- 
 flot took to wall up the door. With the 
 husband, this silence arose from calcula- 
 tion; he did not wish to give his wife a 
 chance of saying anjiihing which might 
 have a double meaning. With Madame de 
 Merret, it was prudence or pride. When 
 the wall had reached half the necessary 
 height, the cunning mason seized an op- 
 portunity when Monsieur de Merret's 
 back was turned, and gave one of the 
 two ijanes of glass in the door a blow 
 with his pick. This made Madame de 
 Merret understand that Rosalie had 
 spoken to Goi-enflot. Then they all three 
 saw the sad dark face of a man, with 
 black hair and gleaming eyes. Before 
 her husband had turned round, the poor 
 woman had time to make a sign with her 
 head to the stranger. Bj^ this sign she 
 would have said to him : " Hope ! " 
 
 At four o'clock, just before daylight, 
 the wall was finished. The mason re- 
 mained in the house, guarded by Jean, 
 and Monsieur de Merret went to bed in 
 his wife's room. The next morning, while 
 he was getting up, he said carelessly : 
 " The deuce ! I must go to the mayor 
 and get that passport." He put his hat 
 on his head, took three steps to the door, 
 then turned round and took the crucifix. 
 His wife trembled with delight. "He is 
 going to Duvivier's," she thought. As 
 soon as he had gone out, Madame de Mer- 
 ret rang for Rosalie. "The pick, the 
 pick ! " she cried in a voice of terror ; " to 
 work ! I saw how Gorenflot began j'^es- 
 terday; we shall have time to make a 
 hole and stop it up again." In the twink- 
 ling of an eye Rosalie had brought her
 
 ALBERT SAVARUS. 
 
 237 
 
 mistress a sort of marline, and she be- 
 gan to set to work to pull down the wall 
 with an energy of which no words could 
 give the least idea. She had already dis- 
 lodged some of the bricks ; she was 
 gathering up her strength for a still more 
 vigorous blow, when she saw Monsieur de 
 Merret standing behind her. She fell on 
 the floor in a swoon. 
 
 "Lay madame on the bed," said the 
 Picard coldly. 
 
 Foreseeing what would happen during 
 his absence, he had laid a trap for his wife. 
 He had really written to the mayor and 
 sent for Duvivier. In fact the jeweler 
 arrived just after the disorder in which 
 the room lay had been cleared away. 
 
 "Duvivier," he asked, "did you not 
 
 buy some crucifixes from those Spaniards 
 when they passed through the town ? " 
 
 "No, monsieur." 
 
 Monsieur darted the look of a tiger at 
 his wife, and she returned it. "Jean," 
 he added, " have my meals ser\'ed in Ma- 
 dame de Merret's room ; she is ill. I shall 
 not leave her until she is restored to 
 health." 
 
 The cruel Picard remained for twenty 
 days close to his wife. During the first 
 part of the time, if any sound came from 
 the walled-up wardrobe, and Josephine 
 began to implore him to have mercy on 
 the dying stranger, he prevented her from 
 saying a single word by answering, " Tou 
 swore upon the crucifix that no one was 
 there." 
 
 V. 
 
 ALBERT SAVARUS. 
 
 One of the few salons frequented by the 
 archbishop of Besangon, under the Res- 
 toration, was that of Madame the Baron- 
 ess de Watteville, for whom he had a pe- 
 culiar affection on account of her religious 
 sentiments. A word about this lady, per- 
 haps the most important feminine person- 
 age of Besangon. 
 
 Monsieur de Watteville, a descendant of 
 the famous Watteville, the most fortunate 
 and most illustrious of murderers and rene- 
 gades (his extraoi'dinary adventures are 
 much too historical to be related here) — 
 Monsieur de Watte%ille of the nineteenth 
 century was as gentle and quiet as his 
 ancestor of the grand age had been fiery 
 and turbulent. After having lived in the 
 Comte * like a wood-louse in the crack of 
 a panel, he had married the heiress of the 
 celebrated family of De Rupt. Mademoi- 
 selle de Rupt united estates worth twenty 
 thousand francs a year to the ten thou- 
 sand francs a year in real property of the 
 
 * A district of France, formerlj' a province called 
 the Comte, of which Besangon is the chief place. 
 
 Baron de Watteville. The arms of the 
 Swiss gentleman (the Watte\ilk;s are 
 Swiss) were placed en abime on the an- 
 cient escutcheon of the De Rupts. This 
 marriage, decided on ever since 1802, took 
 place in 1815, after the second Restora- 
 tion. Three. years after the birth of a 
 daughter, all the relations of Madame de 
 Watteville were dead and their inheri- 
 tances fallen in. They then sold the house 
 of Monsieur de Watteville to establish 
 themselves in the Rue de la Pi'efecture, 
 in the handsome Hotel de Rupt, whose 
 vast gardens extend to the Rue du Per- 
 ron. Madame de Watteville, devout as 
 a young girl, became still more a devotee 
 after her marriage. She is one of the 
 queens of the saintly fraternity which 
 imparts to the best society of Besancoa 
 a somber air and prudish manners in 
 harmony with the character of the city. 
 Monsieur the Baron de Watteville, a 
 spare, thin man of no intellect, appeared 
 wornout, without anybody knowing by 
 what — for he reveled in a gross igno- 
 rance — but as his wife was of an ar^'lj^^.
 
 238' 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 fair complexion, and an angular disposi- 
 tion become proverbial (they still say 
 " As pointed as Madame de Watteville "), 
 some scoffers in the mairistracy main- 
 tained that tlie baron had worn himself 
 out ag-ainst this rock. Rupt evidently 
 comes from i-upes. Intelligent observers 
 of social nature will not fail to remark 
 that Rosalie was the only fruit of the 
 nnion of the De Wattevilles and De Rupts. 
 
 Monsieur de Watteville passed his life 
 in an elegant turner's shop ; he took to 
 turning ! As a supplement to this exist- 
 ence, he indulged in the mania of making 
 collections. To philosophic medical men, 
 given to the study of insanitj^, this ten- 
 dency to collect is a first sign of mental 
 alienation, when it is exercised on trifles. 
 The Baron de Watteville amassed the 
 shells and geological fragments of the 
 district of Besangon. People fond of con- 
 tradicting, particularly the women, said 
 of Monsieur de Watteville, "He has a 
 noble mind ! He saw, from the start of 
 his manied life, that he would not be able 
 to get the upper hand of his wife, so he 
 threw himself into a mechanical occupa- 
 tion and into good living." 
 
 The Hotel de Rupt was not without a 
 certain splendor worthy of the time of 
 Louis XIV., and recalled the nobility of 
 the two families united in 1815. It shone 
 with an ancient luxury which did not know 
 it was the fashion. The crystal lusters 
 cut in the shape of leaves, the hangings, 
 the damask, the carpets, the gilded furni- 
 ture — everything was in harmon3'^ with 
 the old liveries and the old servants. Al- 
 though served in tarnished family plate, 
 surrounding a glass epergne ornamented 
 with Saxony china, the fare was exquisite. 
 The wines chosen \)y Monsieur de Watte- 
 ville, who, to fill up his time and introduce 
 a little variety into his existence, had ap- 
 pointed himself his own cellarman, en- 
 joyed a sort of departmental celebrity. 
 The fortune of Madame deWatte\ille was 
 considerable, for that of her husband, 
 which consisted of the estate of Rouxey, 
 worth about ten thousand francs a year, 
 had not been augmented by any inheri- 
 tance. It is needless to observe that the 
 
 ^-ntimate acquaintance of Madame de 
 end 
 
 Watteville with the archbishop had in- 
 stalled at her table the three or four re- 
 markable or intelligent abbes of the arch- 
 bishopric who did not object to good 
 living. 
 
 At a dinner of ceremony, given in re- 
 turn for I know not what marriage feast, 
 at the beginning of the month of Septem- 
 ber, 1834, at the moment when the women 
 were ranged in a cii'cle before the chim- 
 ney of the salon, and the men in groups 
 at the windows, there was heard an ex- 
 clamation at tlie sight of Monsieur I'Abbe 
 de Grancey, who was announced. 
 
 "Well, how goes the cause?" they 
 cried. 
 
 "Won," replied the vicar - general. 
 " The decree of the court, which we de- 
 spaired of — ^j'ou know why " (this was an 
 allusion to the composition of the royal 
 court since 1830 : the Legitimists had 
 neai'ly all resigned) — "the decree is just 
 given in our favor on all points, and re- 
 verses the judgment of Fii-st Listance." 
 
 "Everybody thought 3'ou were lost." 
 
 "And so we were without me. I told 
 our counsel to go off to Paris; and I 
 was able to take, at the moment of 
 battle, a new counsel, to whom we owe 
 the gain of our cause — an extraorkinary 
 man." 
 
 " In Besancon ? " said Monsieur de 
 Watteville, innocently. 
 
 "In Besancon," replied the Abbe de 
 Grancey. 
 
 " Ah, yes, Savaron ! " said a handsome 
 young man, sitting by the baroness, and 
 named De Soulas. 
 
 " He sat up five or six nights, he de- 
 voured the papers and briefs ; he had 
 seven or eight conferences of several 
 hours with me," resumed Monsieur de 
 Grancej', who reappeared at the Hotel 
 de Rupt for the first time in three weeks. 
 ' ' In short. Monsieur Savaron has just com- 
 pletely beaten the celebrated counsel our 
 adversaries had sent to Paris for. This 
 young man was marvelous, according to 
 the judges. Thus, the chapter is doubly 
 a conqueror ; it has conquered in law and 
 also in politics ; it has vanquished Liber- 
 alism in the person of the defender of our 
 hotel de ville. ' Our adversaines,' said
 
 ALBERT SAVARUS 
 
 239 
 
 our advocate, ' must not expect to find 
 everywhere a disposition to ruin arch- 
 bishoprics.' The president was obliged 
 to order silence. All the Bisontines ap- 
 plauded. Thus, the buildings of the old 
 convenu remain the pi'opert^' of the chap- 
 ter of the cathedral of Besan^on. Mon- 
 sieur Savarin afterward invited his bro- 
 ther barrister from Paris to dinner, on 
 leaving the court. The latter, on accept- 
 ing, said, ' All honor to all conquerors,' 
 and congratulated him on his triumph 
 without rancor." 
 
 "But where did you discover this ad- 
 vocate?" said Madame de Watteville. 
 " I never heard his name." 
 
 "But you can see his windows from 
 here," replied the vicar-general. "Mon- 
 sieur Savaron lives in the Rue du Perron; 
 the garden of his house has the same 
 party wall as j'ours." 
 
 "He does not belong to the Comte," 
 said Monsieur de Watteville. 
 
 " He belongs so little to anywhere, that 
 nobody knows where he comes from," 
 said Madame de Chavoncourt. 
 
 " But what is he ? " asked Madame de 
 Watteville, taking the arm of Monsieur 
 de Soulas to go into the dining-room. 
 "If he is a stranger, by what chance has 
 he come to settle at Besancon ? It is a 
 very singular idea for a barrister." 
 
 "Verj^ singular!" repeated young 
 Amedee de Soulas, whose biography be- 
 comes necessary to the comprehension 
 of this history. 
 
 From time immemorial France and En- 
 gland have kept up an exchange of frivoli- 
 ties, the more persistent because it escapes 
 the tyranny of the custom-house. Tlie 
 fashion we call English in Paris is called 
 French in London, and vice versa. The 
 enmity of the two peoples ceases on two 
 points, the question of words and that of 
 di-ess. "God save the King," the na- 
 tional air of England, is a piece of music 
 composed by Lulli for the chorus of 
 "Esther" or "Athalie." The pamers 
 brought by an Englishwoman to Paris 
 were invented in London, we know why, 
 by a Frenchwoman, the famous Duchess 
 of Portsmouth. They began by making 
 fun of them to such an extent that the 
 
 first Englishwoman who appeared m the 
 Tuileries was nearly crushed by the crowd; 
 but they were adopted. This fashion 
 tyrannized over the women of Europe for 
 half a century. At the peace of 1815, 
 they laughed for a whole year at the long 
 waists of the English — all Paris went to 
 see Pothier and Bninet in the " Anglaises 
 pourrire ;" but in 181G and 1817, the waist- 
 bands of the French, which confined their 
 bosoms in 1814, descended by degrees until 
 they rested on their hips. In ten years, 
 England has made us two little linguistic 
 presents. To the incroyable, the merveil- 
 leux, and the elegant, those three heirs of 
 the pet its-mattres, whose etj^mology Ls 
 rather indecent, have succeeded the 
 dandy, then the lion. The lion has not 
 produced a lioness. The lionne is due to 
 the famous song of Alfred de Musset : 
 
 " Avez vous vu clans Barcelone . . . 
 C'est ma maitresse et ina lionne." 
 
 There has been a fusion, or, if you will, a 
 confusion, between the two terms and the 
 two dominant ideas. When an absurdity 
 amuses Paris, which devours as many 
 chefs-d'oeuvre as absurdities, it is diffi- 
 cult for the provinces to do without it. 
 Thus, as soon as the lion exhibited in 
 Paris his mane, his beard and his mus- 
 tache, his waistcoats, and his eye-glass 
 held without the help of the hands, by 
 the contraction of the check and the eye- 
 brow, the capitals of some of the depart- 
 ments immediately had their swh-lions 
 who protested, by the elegance of their 
 trouser-straps, against the slovenliness of 
 their compatriots. 
 
 Thus Besancon rejoiced, in 1834. in a 
 lion in the person of Monsieur Amedee 
 Sylvain Jacques de Soulas — ^written Sou- 
 leyas during the Spanish occupation. 
 Amedee de Soulas is perhaps the only 
 person in Besancon who is descended from 
 a Spanish family. Spain sent her people 
 into the Comte to look after lier alTaii-s, 
 but very few Spaniards settled there. 
 The Soulases remained there on account 
 of their alliance with Cardinal Granvelle. 
 Young Monsieur de Soulas was always 
 talking of leaving Besancon — a dull, 
 bigoted, unintellectual city, a war-like
 
 240 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 and garrison city, whose manners and 
 customs, however, and whose physiogno- 
 my are worth describing. This avowed 
 intention permitted liim to hve, as a man 
 uncertain of his future, in three rooms, 
 very slightly furnished, at the end of the 
 Rue Neuve, at tlie spot where it joins the 
 Rue d<! la Prefecture. 
 
 Young Monsieur de Soulas could not 
 dispense with a tigc^r. This tiger was the 
 son of one of his farmers, a little, thick- 
 set boy, fourteen years old, named Baby- 
 las. The lion dressed his tiger very well: 
 a short coat of iron-gray cloth, with a 
 varnished leather belt, breeches of bright 
 blue plush, red waistcoat, varnished top- 
 boots, a round hat with a black band, and 
 yellow buttons with the arms of Soulas. 
 Amedee gave this boy white cotton gloves, 
 his washing, and thirty-six francs a month 
 to keep himself, which appeared monstrous 
 to the work-girls of Besan^on. Four 
 hundred and twenty francs to a child of 
 fifteen, without reckoning perquisites ! 
 The perquisites consisted of the sale of the 
 old clothes, of a "tip" when Soulas ex- 
 changed one of his horses, and the sale of 
 the manure. The two horses, managed 
 with sordid economy, cost, one with the 
 other, eight hundred francs a year. The 
 accounts for things supplied from Paris, 
 such as perfumerj'', cravats, jewelry, 
 pots of blacking, and clothes, reached 
 twelve hundred francs. If you add to- 
 gether groom or tiger, horses, superfine 
 get-up, and a rent of six hundred francs, 
 you will get a total of three thousand 
 francs. Now, the father of young Mon- 
 sieur de Soulas had not left him more than 
 four thousand francs a year, the i^roduce 
 of some rather poor and small farms, 
 which required keeping in repair, and 
 whose repairs imposed an unpleasant un- 
 certainty on their revenue. The lion had 
 scarcely three francs a day left for his liv- 
 ing, his pocket money, and card money. 
 But he often dined out, and breakfasted 
 with remarkable frugality. When he was 
 absolutely obliged to dine at his own ex- 
 pense, he sent his tiger to the eating-house 
 for two dishes, on which he did not spend 
 more than twenty-five sous . Young Mon- 
 sieur de Soulas passed for a dissipated 
 
 fellow who had his follies, while the poor 
 devil, to make the two ends of the year 
 meet, had to exert an ingenuity and a 
 talent that would have been the glory of 
 a good housekeeper. They did not yet 
 know, particularly at Besangon, how far 
 six francs' worth of varnish put on to 
 boots or shoes, yellow gloves at fifty sous 
 cleaned in the most profound secrecy to 
 make them last three times, neckties at 
 six francs which last three months, four 
 waistcoats at twenty-five francs, and 
 trousers which fit well over the boot, im- 
 pose on a capital. How should it be other- 
 wise, since we see, in Paris, the women 
 bestowing a marked attention on fools 
 who visit them and take precedence of 
 the most remarkable men, by virtue of 
 those frivolous advantages which can be 
 purchased for fifteen louis, including hair- 
 dressing and a fine linen shirt ? 
 
 If this unfortunate young man appears 
 to you to have become a lion at a cheap 
 rate, learn that Amedee de Soulas had 
 been three times to Switzerland by public 
 and private conveyance, twice to Paris, 
 and once from Paris to London. He 
 passed for an accomplished traveler, and 
 could say, " In England, where I have 
 been," etc. The dowagers said to him, 
 "You, who have been in England,'' etc. 
 He had even penetrated into Lombardy 
 and the shelves of the Italian lakes. He 
 read the new works. To sum up, while 
 he was cleaning his gloves, the tiger 
 Babylas told visitors, " Master is study- 
 ing." Accordingly, they had tried to 
 discredit young Amedee de Soulas by the 
 help of the expression, " He is a man of 
 advanced ideas." Amedee possessed the 
 talent of descanting with Bisontine grav- 
 ity' on the commonplace topics of the day, 
 which gave him the credit of being one of 
 the most enlightened members of the no- 
 bility. He carried on his person jewelry 
 of the latest fashion, and in his head 
 ideas hall-marked by the press. 
 
 In 1834 Amedee was a young man of 
 five and twenty, of middling height, dark, 
 with a strongly developed chest, shoul- 
 ders to match, well-rounded thighs, a 
 foot already fat, plump white hands, 
 whiskers all round his face, mustaches
 
 ALBERT SAVARUS. 
 
 241 
 
 which rivaled those of the garrison, a 
 large, good-natured, ruddy face, a flat 
 nose, brown eyes without expression ; for 
 the rest, nothing Spanish about him. He 
 was rapidly advancing toward a corpu- 
 lence fatal to his pretensions. His nails 
 were cultivated, his beard was trimmed, 
 the smallest details of his dress were ar- 
 ranged with English particularity. Ac- 
 cordingly, Amedee de Soulas was con- 
 sidered the handsomest man in Besancon. 
 A hair-dresser, who came to him at a 
 regular hour (another luxury of sixty 
 francs a year), proclaimed him the sov- 
 ereign arbiter in all matters of taste and 
 elegance. Amedee slept late, dressed, 
 and went out on horseback about mid- 
 day to practice pistol-shooting at one of 
 his farms. He attached the same impor- 
 tance to this occupation as Lord Byi'on 
 did in his latter days. Then he returned 
 at three o'clock on his horse, to the ad- 
 miration of the grisettes and of every- 
 body who happened to be at their win- 
 dows. After some pretended studies, 
 which appeared to occupy him until four 
 o'clock, he dressed to go out to dinner, 
 passed the evening in the salons of the 
 Bisontine aristocracy, jilaying whist, 
 and came home to bed at eleven. No 
 existence could possibly be more open, 
 more steady, or more irreproachable, for 
 ,he went to church punctually on Sundays 
 and fete-Asuys. 
 
 In order that you may comprehend 
 how exacting was this life, it is neces- 
 sary to explain Besancon in a few words. 
 No town offers a more deaf and dumb 
 resistance to progress. At Besancon, the 
 offlcials, the functionaries, the military 
 — in short, everybody sent there by the 
 government, by Paris, to occupy a post 
 of any sort — are designated in a body by 
 the expressive name of the Colony. The 
 Colony is the neutral ground, the only 
 one where, as at church, the noble and 
 the middle-class society of the town can 
 meet. On this ground commence, over a 
 word, a look, or a gesture, those hatreds 
 of house to house between women noble 
 and plebeian, which last until death, and 
 enlarge still more the impassable gulfs 
 which separate the two classes. With 
 
 the exception of the Clermont Mont-Saint 
 Jeans, the BeaufTremonts, the De Sceys, 
 the Gramonts, and a few others, who 
 only inhabit the Comte by their estates, 
 the Bisontine nobility does not date further 
 back than two centuries, the epoch of the 
 conquest by Louis XIV. These people 
 are essentially parliamentary, stiff, stuck- 
 up, grave, positive, and haughty, to a 
 degree with which nothing can compare, 
 not even the court of Vienna ; for the 
 Bisontines in this respect would put the 
 Viennese to shame. Victor Hugo, No- 
 dier, Fourier, the glories of tlie town, are 
 never mentioned ; nobody thinks anything 
 of them. The marriages of the nobility 
 are arranged from the cradles of the chil- 
 dren, so strictly are the most trifling, as 
 well as the most important, matters set- 
 tled beforehand. Never has a stranger 
 or an intruder crept into one of these 
 houses, and to get colonels or oflicers of 
 title belonging to the best families of 
 France (when they happened to be in 
 garrison) received into them has required 
 efforts of diplomacj' which Prince Talley- 
 rand would have been glad to know, in 
 order to make use of them at a congress. 
 In 1834 Amedee was the onl\' one who 
 wore straps in Besancon. This explains 
 at once the lionism of young Monsieur de 
 Soulas. In brief, a little anecdote will 
 make j'ou understand Besancon. 
 
 Some time before the daj- on which this 
 history commences, the prefecture had felt 
 the necessity of getting fi'om Paris an 
 editor for then* paper, in order to defend 
 themselves against the little ''Gazette," 
 which the great " Gazette " had laid at 
 Besancon, and against the '-Patriote," 
 which the Republic kept sputtering 
 there. Paris sent a young man igno- 
 rant of the Comte, who came out with 
 an article {premier Besangon) in the 
 style of the Charivari. The leader of 
 the moderate party, a member of the 
 town council, sent for the journalist and 
 said to him — 
 
 " Learn, sir, that we are serious — more 
 than serious, tedious. We do not want 
 to be amused, and we are furious at hav- 
 ing laughed. Be as hard to digest as the 
 thickest amplifications of the ' Revue des
 
 242 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 Deux Mondcs,' and you will scarcch' be 
 up to the tone of the Bisontines." 
 
 The editor took the warning, and talked 
 the most incomprehensible philosophic 
 jarg'on. He had a perfect success. 
 
 If young Monsieur de Soulas did not 
 lose in the estimation of the salons of 
 Besancon, it was pure vanity on their 
 part ; the aristocracy was g-lad to have 
 the air of modernizing- itself, and to be 
 able to present to the noble Parisians 
 traveling in the Comt^ a 3'oung man who 
 resembled tliem— almost. All this hidden 
 labor, all this powder thrown into people's 
 eyes, this apparent folly, and this latent 
 prudence had an end, without which the 
 Bisontine lion Avould not have belonged 
 to the province. Amedee wanted to ar- 
 rive at a favorable marriage by proving, 
 some day, that his farms were not mort- 
 gaged, and that he had saved money. He 
 wanted to occupy the attention of the 
 town, to be its handsomest and most ele- 
 gant man, in order to obtain first the 
 notice, and then the hand, of Mademoi- 
 selle Rosalie de Watteville. 
 
 In 1830, at the moment when j^oung 
 Monsieur de Soulas began his profession 
 of a dandy, Rosalie was fourteen. 
 
 In 1834, then. Mademoiselle de Watte- 
 ville had attained the age when a young 
 person is easily struck by the peculiarities 
 which attracted to Amedee the attention 
 of the town. There are a great many 
 lions who become lions by calculation 
 and on speculation. The Wattevilles, 
 with an income of fifty thousand francs 
 a year for the last twelve years, did not 
 spend more than four-and-twenty thou- 
 sand a year, although they entertained 
 the best society of Besancon on Mondays 
 and Fridays. They gave a dinner on 
 Monday, and a soiree on Friday. To 
 what a sum would not six-and-twenty 
 thousand francs, annually economized, 
 and invested Avith the prudence which 
 distinguishes these old families, amount 
 in twelve yeai's ? It was pretty generally 
 believed that Madame de Watteville, satis- 
 lied Avith the amount of her landed prop- 
 erty, had put her economies into the Three 
 per Cents in 1830. The fortune of Rosa- 
 lie would amount then, according to the 
 
 best informed, to twenty thousand francs 
 a year. 
 
 For five years, the lion had worked like 
 a mole to establish himself in the good 
 graces of the severe baroness, while living 
 in a stj'le to flatter the self-love of Made- 
 moiselle de WattevUle. The baroness was 
 in the secret of the contrivances by which 
 Amedee managed to keep up liis position 
 in Besancon, and esteemed him for them. 
 Soulas had put himself under the wing of 
 the baroness when she was thirty. He 
 had had the audacity to admire her and 
 make her his idol then ; he had now grad- 
 ually attained the privilege, he alone of 
 all the woi^ld, of relating to her the high- 
 spiced anecdotes which nearly' all devotees 
 love to hear, authorized as they are by 
 their great virtues to contemplate the 
 abyss without falling into it, and the 
 snares of the devil without being caught 
 in them. Do you understand why this 
 lion did not indulge in the slightest in- 
 trigue? He crystalized his life, he lived 
 almost in the street, in order to play the 
 part of a sacrificed lover to the baroness, 
 and enable her to indulge the spirit in 
 the sins she denied to the flesh. A man 
 who possesses the privilege of dropping 
 naughty things into the ear of a devotee 
 is always a charuiing man in her eyes. 
 If this exemplary lion had known the 
 human heart better, he might without 
 danger have allowed himself some little 
 intrigues with the grisettes of Besancon, 
 who looked upon him as a king ; it would 
 probably only have helped on his affairs 
 with the severe and prudish baroness. 
 To Rosalie this Cato appeared extrav- 
 agant; he professed a life of elegance, he 
 showed her in perspective the brilliant 
 part of a woman of fashion at Paris, to 
 which he would go as a deputy. These 
 knowing maneuvers were crowned with 
 full success. In 1834, the mothers of the 
 fortj^ noble families which composed the 
 choice society of Besancon quoted Mon- 
 sieur de Soulas as the most charming 
 young man of Besancon ; nobody dared 
 to set himself up against the cock of the 
 Hotel de Rupt, and all Besancon re- 
 garded him as the future spouse of Ros- 
 alie de Watteville. There had already
 
 ALBERT S A VARUS. 
 
 M3 
 
 been some words exchanged between the 
 baroness and Amedee, which the pre- 
 tended incapacity of the baron rendered 
 almost a guarantee. 
 
 Mademoiselle Rosalie de Watteville, 
 whom her fortune (vvhicli would some 
 day be enormous) invested with con- 
 siderable importance, brought up witliin 
 the walls of the Hotel de Rupt — which 
 her mother rarely quitted, so strongly 
 was she attached to the dear archbishop 
 —had been strictly kept under by an ex- 
 clusively religious education, and by tlie 
 despotism of her mother, who managed 
 her severely on principle. Rosalie knew 
 absolutely nothing. Is it knowing any- 
 thing to have studied geography in 
 Guthrie, sacred history, ancient history, 
 the history of France, and the four rules, 
 the whole passed through the sieve by 
 an old Jesuit? Drawing, music, and 
 dancing were forbidden, as more likely 
 to corrupt than embellish life. The 
 baroness taught her daughter all the 
 stitches possible in tapestry and femi- 
 nine handiwork : sewing, embroider^-, 
 and knitting. At seventeen, Rosalie 
 had read nothing but the " Lettres Edi- 
 fiantes ■' and works on heraldry'. Never 
 had a newspaper sullied her sight. She 
 heard mass every morning- at the cathe- 
 dral, to which she was taken by her 
 mother ; came home to breakfast, studied, 
 after a little walk in the garden, and re- 
 ceived visitors, seated bj' the baroness, 
 until dinner time ; then afterward, ex- 
 cept on Mondays and Fridays, she ac- 
 companied Madame de Watteville to 
 the soirees, without being able to talk 
 more than was allowed by the maternal 
 regulations. 
 
 At eighteen Mademoiselle de Watte- 
 ville was a young g'irl, fi-ail, slender, flat, 
 fair, white, and of the greatest insignifi- 
 cance. Her eyes, of a pale blue, were 
 embellished by the play of the eyelids, 
 which, when lowered, produced a shade 
 on the cheek ; freckles impaired the effect 
 of her forehead, otherwise well shaped. 
 Her face exactly resembled the saints of 
 Albert Durer and the painters before 
 Perugino — the same full, though slender, 
 shape, the same delicacy saddened by ecs- 
 
 tasy, the same severe simplicity. Every- 
 thing about her, even her attitude, re- 
 called those virgins whose beauty appears 
 in its mystic luster only to the eye of the 
 attentive connoisseur. She had fine, but 
 red, hands, and the prettiest foot— the 
 foot of an aristocrat. She generally wore 
 simple cotton dresses, but on Sundays 
 and fetes her mother allowed her silk 
 ones. Her bonnets, made at Besancon, 
 rendered her almost ugly ; while her 
 mother endeavored to borrow grace, 
 beauty, and elegance from the milliners 
 of Paris, from whence she procured all 
 the shghtest articles of dress, by the care 
 of young Monsieur de Soulas. Rosalie 
 had never worn silk stockings nor boots, 
 but cotton stockings and leather shoes. 
 On gala days she was dressed in a muslin 
 frock, with no head-dress, and had bronzed 
 leather shoes. This education, and the 
 modest demeanor of Rosahe, concealed 
 a character of iron. Pliysiologists and 
 profound observers of human nature will 
 tell you, to your great astonisliment, per- 
 haps, that humorous characters, wit, and 
 genius reappear in families at great inter- 
 vals, absolutely like what are called lie- 
 reditary maladies. Thus talent, like the 
 gout, sometimes jumps over two genera- 
 tions. We have an illustrious example 
 of this phenomenon in George Sand, in 
 whom are revived the puissant and in- 
 ventive genius of Marshal de Saxe, whose 
 natural granddaughter she is. The de- 
 cisive character, the romantic audacity, 
 of the famous Watteville were renewed 
 in the character of his great-niece, still 
 further aggravated by the tenacity and 
 the family pride of the De Rupts. But 
 these qualities, or these defects, if you 
 will, were as profoundly hidden in this 
 young girl's mind, appax'ently soft and 
 feeble, as the boiling lava in a mountain 
 before it becomes a volcano. Madame de 
 Watteville alone, perhaps, suspected tliis 
 legacy of the two races. She behaved 
 so severely' to her Rosalie, that she replied 
 one ilay to the archbishop, who reproached 
 her with treating her too harshly — 
 
 "Leave me to manage her, monseig- 
 neur; I know her. She has got moie 
 than one Beelzebub in her body."
 
 244 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 The baroness watched her daughter 
 all the more because she thoug-lit her 
 honor as a mother pledged. In short, 
 she had nothing else to do. Clotilde de 
 Rupt, then thirty-five years old, and al- 
 . most the widow of a husband who turned 
 egg-cups in all sorts of wood, who set his 
 heart- on making rings with six streaks in 
 ironwood, and manufactured snuff-boxes 
 for his friends, coquetted in all iimocence 
 and honor with Amedee de Soulas. When 
 this young man was in the house she sent 
 away and recalled her daughter in turns, 
 and tried to surprise in this young heart 
 a movement of jealousy, in order to have 
 an opportunity of quelling it. She imi- 
 tated the police in their dealings with the 
 Republicans ; but it was in vain. Rosalie 
 did not give way to any sort of insurbor- 
 dination. Then the austere devotee re- 
 proached her daughter with her complete 
 Insensibility. Rosalie knew her mother 
 well enough to know that, if she had ap- 
 peared to like young Monsieur de Soulas, 
 she would have drawn down on herself a 
 sharp reproof. So, to all her mother's 
 provocation, she replied by phrases of the 
 sort improperly called Jesuitical ; for the 
 Jesuits were strong and able, and these 
 reticences are the ramparts behind which 
 weakness shelters itself. Then the mother 
 accused her daughter of dissimulation. If, 
 by misfortune, a spark of the true char- 
 acter of the Watteville and De Rupt 
 broke out, the mother armed herself 
 with the respect due from children to 
 their parents to restore Rosalie to pas- 
 sive obedience. This secret combat took 
 place in the most seci-et precincts of do- 
 mestic life, with closed doors. 
 
 The vicar-general, the dear Abbe de 
 Grancey, the friend of the late archbishop, 
 however able he might be in his capacity 
 of grand penitentiarj'^ of the diocese, could 
 not tell whether this struggle had en- 
 gendered a hatred between the mother 
 and daughter, whether the mother was 
 jealous beforehand, or whether the court- 
 ship of the daughter in the person of the 
 mother by Amedee had not gone beyond 
 the bounds. In his character of friend of 
 the family, he did not confess either the 
 mother or the daughter. Rosalie, a little 
 
 too much chastised, morally speaking, on 
 account of young Monsieur de Soulas, to use 
 a familiar expression, could not bear him. 
 Accordingly, when he addressed his con- 
 versation to her, endeavoring to surprise 
 her heart, she received him pretty coldlj-. 
 This repugnance, visible only to the eyes 
 of her mother, was a continual subject of 
 reprimand. 
 
 " Rosalie, I do not know why you show 
 so much coldness to Amedee. Is it be- 
 cause he is the friend of the family', and 
 pleases your father and me ? " 
 
 "Ah, mamma," answered the poor 
 child one daj', " if I treated him well, 
 should I not be still more in the wrong ?" 
 
 "What is the meaning of that?" ex- 
 claimed Madame de Watteville. " What 
 do you mean by such words ? Your 
 mother is unjust, perhaps, and would 
 be, in any case, according to you. Never 
 let your mouth utter such an answer to 
 your mother ! " etc. 
 
 This quarrel lasted three hours and 
 three-quarters. Rosalie remarked it. 
 The mother became pale with rage, 
 and sent Rosalie to her room, where 
 Rosalie studied the meaning of this 
 scene without being able to discover it 
 — she was so innocent ! Thus, young 
 Monsieur de Soulas, whom all the town 
 of Besancon thought very near the end 
 toward which he was straining, cravats 
 spread, hy force of pots of varnish — the 
 end which made him use up so much black 
 pomade for his mustaches, so many fine 
 waistcoats, horse-shoes, and stays (for 
 he wore a leather waistcoat, the lion's 
 stays) — Amedee was further from it 
 than the first comer, although he had 
 the worthj'- and noble Abbe de Grancey 
 in his favor. Besides, Rosalie did not 
 yet know, at the moment when this his- 
 toYy begins, that the young Count Ame- 
 dee de Soulas was destined for her. 
 
 "Madame," said Monsieur de Soulas, 
 addressing the baroness, giving the soup, 
 which was a little too hot, time to cool, 
 and affecting to render his narrative 
 quasi-romantic, " one fine morning the 
 mail deposited at the Hotel National a 
 Parisian who, after having looked about 
 for apartments, decided on the first floor
 
 ALBERT SAVARUS. 
 
 245 
 
 of the house of Mademoiselle Galard, 
 Rue du Perron. Then the stranger went 
 straight to the mairie to deposit a dec- 
 laration of domicile, real and political. 
 Afterward he had himself inscribed in 
 the list of counsel practicing in the court, 
 presenting certificates quite in order ; 
 and he left with all his new confreres, 
 with all the ministerial ' officers, with all 
 the judges of the court, and all the mem- 
 bers of the tribunal, a card on which is 
 inscribed, 'Albert Savaron.' " 
 
 "The name of Savaron is celebrated," 
 said Mademoiselle de Watteville, very 
 strong in heraldry. "The Savarons de 
 Savarus are one of the oldest, the noblest, 
 and the richest families in Belg'ium." 
 
 " He is a Frenchman and a troubadour, ' ' 
 resumed Amedee de Soulas. "If he 
 wants to take the arms of Savaron de 
 Savarus, it must be with a bar. There 
 is only a demoiselle Savarus in Belgium, 
 a rich, marriageable heiress." 
 
 " The bar is indeed a sign of bastardy ; 
 but the bastard of a Count of Savarus is 
 noble," replied Rosalie. 
 
 "That will do, mademoiselle," said the 
 baroness. 
 
 "You wanted her to know heraldry-," 
 said Monsieur de Watte\ille, " and she 
 knows it well." 
 
 " Pray go on, Monsieur de Soulas." 
 
 " You can conceive that in a town 
 where everything is classed, defined, 
 known, placed, reckoned up, and num- 
 bered, as at Besancon, Albert Savaron 
 was received by our barristers without 
 difficult}'. Every one contented himself 
 with saying, ' Here's a poor devil who 
 does not know Besancon. Who the devil 
 can have advised him to come here ? 
 What does he mean to do? To send 
 his card to the magistrates instead of 
 calling himself ! What a blunder ! ' Ac- 
 cordingly, three days afterward, no more 
 Savaron. He has taken the late Monsieur 
 Galard's old valet-de-chambre, Jerome, 
 who can do a little cooking, for his ser- 
 vant. People have forgotten Albert Sav- 
 aron all the more readily because nobody 
 has seen or met him since." 
 
 " Does he not go to mass, then ? " said 
 Madame de Chavoncourt. 
 
 " He goes on Sundays to St. Pierre, but 
 to the first mass at eight o'clock. He 
 gets up every night between one and two 
 o'clock, works until eight, then he break- 
 fasts, and afterward works again. He 
 walks in the garden, and goes round it 
 fifty or sixty times; then he goes in, 
 dines, and goes to bed between six and 
 seven." 
 
 " How do you know all that ? " said 
 Madame de Chavoncourt to Monsieur de 
 Soulas. 
 
 " In the first place, madame, I live in 
 the Rue Neuve, at the corner of the Rue 
 du Perron ; I look on to the house in 
 which this mysterious personage lodges ; 
 and then there are mutual confabulations 
 between mj' tiger and Jerome." 
 
 "You talk to Babylas, then ? " 
 
 "What would you have me do when I 
 am out riding ? " 
 
 " Well, how was it you cho.se a stranger 
 for your counsel ?" said the baroness, thus 
 turning the conversation, to the vicar-gen- 
 eral. 
 
 " The first president did this advocate 
 the turn of appointing him to defend 
 officially' a half-imbecile peasant accused 
 of forgery. Monsieur Savaron got the 
 poor man acquitted, by proving his in- 
 nocence and , showing that he had been 
 the tool of the real culprits. Not only 
 was his theory triumphant, but it neces- 
 sitated the arrest of two of the witnesses, 
 who were found guilty and condemned. 
 His pleadings struck the court and the 
 Jury. One of them, a merchant, the next 
 day confided to Monsieur Savaron a diffi- 
 cult case, which he won. In the situation 
 in which we were placed by the impossi- 
 bility of Monsieur Berryer's coming to 
 Besancon, Monsieur de Garcenault ad- 
 vised us to have this Monsieur Albert 
 Savaron, and predicted our success. As 
 soon as 1 had seen him and heard him, I 
 had faith in him; and I was not deceived." 
 
 "Is there anj'thing extraordinary about 
 him, then ?" inquired Madame de Chavon- 
 court. 
 
 "Certainly, madame," answered the 
 vicar-general. 
 
 "Well, then, tell us all about it," said 
 Madame de Watteville.
 
 246 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 "The first time I saw him," said the 
 Abbe de Grancej', " he received me in 
 tlie room next to the antechamber (g-ood 
 Monsieur Galard's old salon), which he 
 lias had painted in old oak, and which I 
 found entirely covered with law-books, 
 contained in bookcases also painted like 
 old wood. The painting' and the books 
 are the only luxuries in this apartment, 
 for the furniture consists of a bui^eau of 
 old carved wood, six old tapestry arm- 
 chairs, Carmelite colored curtains with 
 green borders to the windows, and a 
 g-reen carpet on the floor. The stove of 
 the antechamber also warms this library. 
 While waiting there for him, I did not 
 figure to mj'self our advocate with a 
 youthful mien. This singular frame is 
 really in harmony with the picture ; for 
 when Monsieur Savaron came, he wore 
 a black merino dressing-g'own tied with 
 a girdle of red cord, red slippers, a red 
 flannel waistcoat, and a red skull-cap. 
 
 " The livery of the devil I " exclaimed 
 Madame de Watteville. 
 
 "Yes," said the abbe, "but a superb 
 head : black hair, already mingled with 
 white — hair like St. Peter and St. Paul 
 have in our pictures, in thick and glossy 
 curls as stiff as horse-hair; a neck as 
 white and round as a woman's ; a mag- 
 nificent forehead, divided by the strong' 
 furrow which great projects, great ideas, 
 and deep meditations trace on the brow 
 of great men ; an olive complexion veined 
 with red marks ; a square nose, eyes of 
 fire, and hollow cheeks marked with two 
 long Imes full of sufferings ; a mouth 
 with a sardonic smile, and a small chin, 
 sharp and too short; crow's-feet on the 
 temples ; sunken eyes rolling in their 
 orbits like two globes of fire : but, in 
 spite of all these indications of violent 
 passions, an air of calm and profound 
 resignation, a voice of penetrating sweet- 
 ness, and which surprised me in court by 
 its flexibility — the true orator's voice, 
 now pure and measured, now insinuating, 
 and thundering when necessary, next 
 adapting itself to sarcasm, and becoming 
 then cutting. Monsieur Albert Savaron is 
 of middle height, neither stout nor thin. 
 Finallj'-, he has a bishop's hand. The 
 
 second time I went to see him, he received 
 me ill his room, which is next to the li- 
 brary, and smiled at m^- astonishment on 
 seeing a shabby wash-stand, an old carpet, 
 a school-bo3''s bedstead, and calico cur- 
 tains to the windows. He came out of 
 his cabinet, into Avhich nobody ever pene- 
 trates, Jerome told me, who never enters 
 it, and contented himself with knocking 
 at tlie door. Monsieur Savaron himself 
 locked the door before me. The third 
 time he was breakfasting in his library, 
 in the most frugal style ; but this time, 
 as he had spent the night in examining 
 our papers, as I was with our lawyer, as 
 we were to spend a long time together, 
 and dear Monsieur Girardet is verbose, I 
 was able to study this stranger. Cer- 
 tainlj^, he is no ordinary man. There is 
 more than one secret behind these features 
 at once terrible and gentle, patient and 
 impatient, full and hollow. I found that 
 he stooped slightly, like all men who have 
 something heavy to carry." 
 
 "Wh^' has this eloquent man left 
 Paris ? With what intentions has he 
 come to Besancon ? Has nobody told 
 him how little chance of success there 
 is for strangers? They will make use 
 of him, but the Bisontines will not let 
 him make use of them. Why, when he 
 had come, did he take so little trouble 
 that it required the caprice of the first 
 president to bring him into notice? " said 
 the handsome Madame de Chavoncourt. 
 
 "After having closely studied this 
 'noble head,'" resumed the Abbe de 
 Grancey, giving his interrupter a sly 
 look, which left her to suppose that he 
 did not tell all he knew, " and particu- 
 larly after having heard his reply this 
 morning to one of the eagles of the Paris 
 bar, I think that this man will produce a 
 great sensation some day." 
 
 " What is he to us ? Your cause is 
 gained and you have paid him," said 
 Madame de Watteville, observing her 
 daughter, who, ever since the vicar-gen- 
 eral had been speaking, had seemed to 
 hang on to his lips. 
 
 The conversation took another turn, and 
 no more was said about Albert Savaron. 
 
 The portrait sketched by the most able
 
 ALBERT SAVARUS. 
 
 247 
 
 of the vicars-general of the diocese had all 
 the atti'action of romance for Rosalie, 
 because it really contained a romance. 
 For the first time in her life, she encount- 
 ered the exceptional and the marvelous, 
 long-ed for by all youthful imag-inations, 
 and irresistibly attractive to the lively 
 curiosity of Rosalie's age. What an 
 ideal being was this Albert, somber, 
 suffering, eloquent, and studious, com- 
 pared by Mademoiselle de Watteville to 
 this great chubby-cheeked count, burst- 
 ing with health, playing the gallant, 
 talking about elegance in the face of 
 the splendor of the old Counts de Rupt ! 
 Amedee onl3'' brought her quarrels and 
 scoldings ; besides, she knew him only 
 too well, and this Albert Savaron offered 
 many a riddle to guess at. 
 
 '•'Albert Savaron de Savarus," she re- 
 peated to herself. And then to see him, to 
 catch a glimpse of him ! It was the desire 
 of a young girl until then without desires. 
 She revolved in her heart, in her imagina- 
 tion, and in her head, the minutest expres- 
 sions of the Abbe de Grancey — for every 
 word had struck home. "A fine fore- 
 head ? " she said to herself, looking at the 
 forehead of every man sitting at the table. 
 "1 don't see a single fine one. Monsieur 
 de Soulas's is too prominent. Monsieur 
 de Grancej^'s is fine ; but he is seventy and 
 has no hair — you can't tell where his fore- 
 head finishes." 
 
 "What is the matter, Rosalie ? You 
 are not eating." 
 
 "I am not hungiy, mamma," said she. 
 "A bishop's hands?" she continued to 
 herself. " I cannot remember our hand- 
 some archbishop's, although he confirmed 
 me." At length, in the midst of her wan- 
 derings to and fro in the labyrintli of her 
 memory, she recollected, shhiing through 
 the trees of the neighboring gardens, a 
 lighted window which she had seen from 
 her bed when she woke by chance in the 
 night. " It was his light, then," she said 
 to herself, " I shall be able to see him ! I 
 shall see him." 
 
 '■■ Monsieur de Grancey, is the chapter 
 suit quite finished?" said Rosalie, quite 
 unconnectedl.v, to the vicar-general dur- 
 ing a moment of silence. 
 
 Madame de Watteville rapidly ex- 
 changed looks with the vicar-general. 
 
 "And how can that concern you, my 
 dear child ? " said she to Rosalie, with 
 a feigned gentleness that rendered her 
 daughter circumspect for the rest of her 
 days. 
 
 " They can appeal, but our adversaries 
 will think twice about that," answered 
 the abbe. 
 
 " I should never have believed that 
 Rosalie could be thinking about a law- 
 suit all dinner time," said Madame de 
 Watteville. 
 
 "Nor I either," said Rosalie with a 
 laughable air of abstraction. " But Mon- 
 sieur de Grancey' was so absorbed in it 
 that I became interested." 
 
 The\' rose from table, and the company- 
 returned to the salon. For the whole 
 of the evening, Rosalie listened to hear 
 whether they would talk about Albert 
 Savaron ; but beyond the congratulations 
 addressed by each new-comer to the abbe 
 on the gain of the cause, and with which 
 no one mingled the praises of the counsel, 
 he was not mentioned. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Watteville awaited the 
 night with impatience ; she had promised 
 herself to get up between two and three 
 in the morning, to look at the windows 
 of Albert's study. When this hour was 
 come, she felt almost a pleasure in con- 
 templating the gleam thrown by the 
 advocate's candles through the almost 
 leafless trees. By the aid of the excellent 
 sight a young girl always possesses, and 
 which curiosit}- seems to extend, she saw 
 Albert writing. She thought she could 
 distinguish the color of the furniture, 
 which seemed to be red. The chimney 
 sent up over the roof a thick column of 
 smoke. 
 
 " While all the world sleeps, he watches 
 — like God ! " she said to herself. 
 
 The education of girls comprises prob- 
 lems so grave, for the future of a nation 
 depends on its mothei-s, that for a long 
 while the University of France has under- 
 taken the task of taking no notice of them. 
 Here is one of these problems : Ought we 
 to enlighten young girls? Ought we to 
 restrict their understanding? The i-e-
 
 248 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 ligious sj'stem is, of course, restrictive. 
 If you enligliten them, you make demons 
 of them prematurely; if 3-00 prevent them 
 from ihinking-, you arrive at the sudden 
 explosion so well painted in the character 
 of Agnes by Moliere, and you put this 
 pent-up intelligence, so fresh and so per- 
 spicacious, rapid and consistent as a 
 sa%'age, at the mercj"^ of an accident — a 
 fatal crisis brought about in the case of 
 Mademoiselle de Watteville by the im- 
 prudent sketch indulged in at table by one 
 of the most prudent abbes of the prudent 
 chapter of Besancon. 
 
 The next morning, while dressing. Mad- 
 emoiselle de Watteville necessarily saw 
 Albert Savaron walking in the garden 
 adjoining that of the Hotel de Rupt. 
 
 "What would have become of me," 
 thought she, "if he had lived an,ywhere 
 else ? Here I can at least see him. What 
 is he thinking about ? " 
 
 After having seen at a distance this 
 extraordmarj' man, the only one whose 
 physiognomy stood out vigorously from 
 the mass of Bisontine faces hitherto no- 
 ticed, Rosalie jumped rapidly to the idea 
 of penetrating into his home life, of learn- 
 ing the reason of so much mystery, of 
 hearing this eloquent voice, and obtaining 
 a glance from those splendid eyes. She 
 wished to do all this — but how ? 
 
 The whole day long, she stitched away 
 at her embroideiy with the obtuse atten- 
 tion of a young girl who seems, like Agnes, 
 to be thinking about nothing, but who is 
 reflecting on everj'thing so carefully that 
 her stratagems are infallible. From this 
 profound meditation, there resulted in 
 Rosalie a desire to go to confession. The 
 next morning, after mass, she had a little 
 conference at St. Pierre with the Abbe 
 Giroud, and wheedled him so well that 
 the confession was appointed for Sunday 
 morning, at half-past seven, before the 
 eight o'clock mass. She told a dozen lies 
 to be able to be in the church, just once, 
 at the time the barrister came to hear 
 mass. Finally, she was taken with an 
 excessive affection for her father; she 
 went to see him in his workshop, and 
 asked him a thousand questions about the 
 art of turning, in order to get to advise 
 
 her father to turn something large — some 
 coluums. After having got her fathei' on 
 to spiral columns, one of the difficulties of 
 the turner's art, she advised him to take 
 advantage of a large heap of stones, 
 which happened to be in the middle of the 
 garden, to have a grotto buUt, on which 
 he could place a little temple in the style 
 of a Belvedere, for which his spiral col- 
 umns could be made use of, and would 
 shine in the eyes of all his friends. 
 
 In the midst of the joy this enterprise 
 caused this poor man without an occupa- 
 tion, Rosalie said, embracing him, "Mind 
 you don't tell mamma who you got the 
 idea from ; she would scold me." 
 
 "You need not fear," replied Monsieur 
 de Watteville, who groaned under the 
 oppression of the terrible daughter of the 
 De Rupts quite as much as his daughter. 
 
 And so Rosalie attained the certainty 
 of soon seeing erected a charming observ- 
 atoiy, 'from which the eye could jDlunge 
 into the cabinet of the barrister. And 
 there are men for whom young girls per- 
 form similar feats of diplomacy, and who, 
 for the most part, like Albert Savaron, 
 know nothing about them. 
 
 The Sundaj', so impatiently awaited, 
 arrived, and the toilet of Rosalie was 
 performed with a care which drew a smOe 
 from Mariette, the maid of Madame and 
 Mademoiselle de Watteville. 
 
 " This is the first time I have seen made- 
 moiselle so particular," said Mariette. 
 
 "You make me think," said Rosalie, 
 giving Mariette a look which planted 
 poppies on the waiting-maid's cheeks, 
 " that there are days on which you also 
 are more particular than on others." 
 
 On leaving the portico, in crossing the 
 courtyard, in passing through the gate- 
 way, in walking through tlie street, Ros- 
 alie's heart beat as if with the presenti- 
 ment of a great event. She had not 
 Icnown until then what it was to walk in 
 the streets. For a moment she had be- 
 lieved her mother would read her projects 
 on her brow, and forbid her going to con- 
 fession. She felt new blood in her feet ; 
 she raised them as if she were walkmg on 
 fire ! Of course, she had made an ap- 
 pointment for a quarter-past eight with
 
 ALBERT S A VARUS. 
 
 249 
 
 her confessor, and told her mother eight, 
 in order to be able to wait about a quarter 
 of an hour for Albert. She g-ot to the 
 church before mass, and, after saying a 
 short praj^er, she went to see whether the 
 Abbe Giroud was in his confessional, 
 simplj' to be able to look about, and man- 
 aged to place herself where she could see 
 Albert the moment he entered the church. 
 
 A man must be atrociously ugly not to 
 appear handsome in the disposition to 
 which curiosity had brought Mademoi- 
 selle de Watteville. Now, Albert Sav- 
 aron, already very remarkable, made 
 all the more impression on Rosalie that 
 his conduct, his demeanor, everj'thing, 
 even to his dress, had that indefinable 
 something which can only be explained 
 by the word mystery. He entered. The 
 church, until then somber, appeared to 
 Rosalie as if illuminated. Tlic young girl 
 was charmed bj' the slow and almost 
 solemn gait of the people who carry a 
 world on their shoulders, and Avhose pro- 
 found gaze and gestures agree in express- 
 ing a desolating or a dominating idea. 
 Rosalie understood then the words of the 
 vicar-general to their full extent. Yes, 
 these yellowish-brown eyes, shot with 
 threads of gold, veiled an ardor which 
 betrayed itself by sudden jets. Rosalie, 
 with an imprudence which Mariette re- 
 marked, placed herself in the path of 
 the advocate, so as to exchange a glance 
 with him ; and this courted glance 
 changed her blood, for her blood seethed 
 and boiled as if its heat had been doubled. 
 As soon as Albert had taken his seat. 
 Mademoiselle de Watteville had quickly 
 chosen her place, so as to see him per- 
 fectly during all the time the Abbe Giroud 
 left her. When Mariette said, " There is 
 Monsieur Giroud," it seemed to Rosalie 
 that this time had not been more than a 
 few minutes. When she came out of the 
 confessional, the mass was finished ; Al- 
 bert had left the church. 
 
 "The vicar-general is right," thought 
 she: "he suffers ! Why has this eagle, 
 for he has the eyes of an eagle, swooped 
 down upon Besaucon ! Oh, I must know 
 everything; but how ? " 
 
 Under the Arc of this new desire, Rosalie 
 
 put ill the stitches of her tapestry work 
 with admirable nicety, and these were her 
 meditations beneath an air of candor which 
 simulated simplicity well enough to deceive 
 Madame de Watteville. 
 
 Since the Sunday when Mademoiselle de 
 Watteville had received this glance, or, 
 if you will, this "baptism of fire" — Na- 
 poleon's magnificent expression, which 
 may be applied to love — she urged on the 
 affair of the Belvedere hotly. 
 
 "Mamma," said she, when once there 
 were two columns turned, " my father 
 has got a singular idea in his head. He 
 is turning columns for a Belvedere, which 
 he intends to have erected by making use 
 of the heap of stones which is in the mid- 
 dle of the garden. Do you approve of it? 
 It seems to me that — " 
 
 " I approve of everything j'our father 
 does," replied Madame de AVatteville 
 sharply, " and it is the duty of a wife to 
 submit to her husband, even if she does 
 not approve of his ideas. Why should I 
 oppose a thing, which is indifferent in 
 itself, from the moment it amuses Mon- 
 sieur de Watteville ? " 
 
 "But from there we shall see into Mon- 
 sieur de Soulas's house, and Monsieur 
 de Soulas will see us when we are there. 
 Perhaps people will talk — " 
 
 "Do you aspire to manage your par- 
 ents, RosaUe, and to know more than 
 they about life and proprietj- ? " 
 
 " I say no more, mamma. And, be- 
 sides, my father says the grotto will make 
 a room whore we can be cool and have 
 our colTce." 
 
 " Your father has had excellent ideas," 
 replied Madame de Watteville, who wanted 
 to go and see the colunms. 
 
 She gave her approbation to the baron's 
 project, and pointed out, for the erection 
 of the building, a place at the end of the 
 garden, where you could not be seen by 
 Monsieur de Soulas, but could see into 
 Monsieur Albert Savaron's admirably 
 well. A builder was sent for. who under- 
 took to make a grotto, with a path of 
 three feet wide leading to its summit, and 
 periwinkles, iris, vibnriuim. ivy, honey- 
 suckle, and ivy grape growing in the rock- 
 work. The baroness conceived the idea
 
 250 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 of having the interior of the grotto deco- 
 rated with rustic woodwork, then all the 
 fashion for flower-stands, and putting up 
 a looking-glass at the end, with a covered 
 divan and a checkered bark table. Mon- 
 sieur de Soulas proposed to have the floor 
 made of asphalte. Rosalie thought of 
 having a rustic wood chandelier suspended 
 from the roof. 
 
 '• The Wattevilles are liaving some- 
 thing charming made in their garden," 
 they said in Besancon. 
 
 " They are rich. They can well spend 
 a thousand crowns on a fancy." 
 
 " A thousand crowns ! " exclaimed Ma- 
 dame de Chavoncourt. 
 
 "Yes, a thousand crownis," said young 
 Monsieur de Soulas. "They have got a 
 man from Paris to rusticate the interior ; 
 but it will be very pretty. Monsieur de 
 WattevUle himself is making the chande- 
 lier ; he is carving the wood." 
 
 " Thej' say Berquet is going to build a 
 cellar," said an abbe. 
 
 "No," replied j^oung Monsieur de 
 Soulas. " He is laying the foundation 
 of the work in cement, so that there may 
 be no dampness." 
 
 "You know the least thing that goes 
 on in the house," said Madame de Chavon- 
 court angrily, looking at one of her great 
 girls, ready to be married a yenv ago. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Watteville, who ex- 
 perienced a feeling of pride in thinking 
 of the success of her Belvedere, recog- 
 nized in herself an eminent superiority to 
 all that surrounded her. Nobody had 
 imagined that a young girl, considered 
 dull and silh", had simply wanted to see 
 a little more closely into the cabinet of 
 the advocate Savaron. 
 
 The startling speech of Albert Savaron 
 for the chapter of the cathedral was all 
 the more promptly forgotten that it 
 aroused the Qxwy of the bar. Besides, 
 faithful to his retirement, Savaron did 
 not show himself anj-where. Havang no 
 touters and seeing nobody, he increased 
 the chances of oblivion, already pretty 
 abundant for a stranger in a town like 
 Besancon. However, he spoke three times 
 in the Tribunal of Commerce, in three 
 complicated cases which would have to go 
 
 to the court. He thus got as clients four 
 of the largest merchants of the town, 
 who recognized in him so much sense, and 
 what the provinces call good judgment, 
 that they gave him their business. The 
 daj' that the house of Watteville inau- 
 gurated their Belvedere, Savaron also 
 erected his monument. Thanks to the 
 secret relations which he had established 
 with the high commerce of Besancon, he 
 founded a fortnightlj' review, called the 
 "Revue de TEst," by means of forty shares 
 of five hundred francs each, placed in the 
 hands of his first ten clients, whom he 
 impressed with the necessity of promot- 
 ing the destinj^ of Besancon, the town 
 which ought to concentrate the traffic 
 between Mulhouse and Lj'on, the capital 
 point between the Rhine and the Rhone. 
 
 To compete with Strasbourg, ought not 
 Besancon to be a center of enlightenment 
 as well as a center of commerce ? The 
 elevated questions relatmg to the inter- 
 ests of the East could only be discussed in 
 a " Review." What a triumph to snatch 
 from Strasbourg and Dijon their literary 
 mfluence and contend with Parisian cen- 
 tralization ! These considerations, put 
 forward by Albert, were repeated b^' the 
 ten merchants, who took to themselves 
 the credit of them. 
 
 The barrister Savaron did not commit 
 the blunder of using his own name. He 
 left the financial direction to his first 
 client. Monsieur Boucher, related through 
 his wife to one of the largest publishers 
 of important ecclesiastical works ; but he 
 reserved to himself the editorshii^, with 
 a share, as the founder, in the profits. 
 Commerce made an appeal to Dole, to 
 Dijon, to Salins, to Neufchatel, the Jura, 
 Bourg, Nantua, Lons-le-Saulnier. They 
 invited assistance from the intelligence 
 and the efforts of all studious men in the 
 three provinces of Bugey, Bresse, and the 
 Comte. Thanks to the relations of com- 
 merce and confraternity, a hundred and 
 fiftj'^ subscriptions were taken up, and in 
 consideration of the cheapness. The " Re- 
 view " cost eight francs a quarter. To 
 avoid wounding provincial self-love, the 
 barrister had the good sense to make 
 the literarv direction of this "Review"
 
 ALBERT SAVARUS. 
 
 251 
 
 the object of the desires of the eldest son 
 of Monsieur Boucher, a young' man of 
 two and twenty, very eager for fame, to 
 whom the snares and troubles of literary 
 management were entii'ely unkno\vn. Al- 
 bert kept the upper hand in secret, and 
 made Alfred his lieutenant. Alfred was 
 the only person in Besancon with whom 
 the king of the bar became familiar. Al- 
 fred came to confer with Albert of a 
 morning in the garden on the contents 
 of the number. It is needless to say that 
 the first number contained a meditation 
 by Alfred, ^hich was approved of by 
 Savaron. In his conversation with Al- 
 fred, Albert allowed great ideas to escape 
 him, and the subjects of articles of which 
 young Boucher availed himself; so that 
 the merchant's son thought he was tak- 
 ing advantage of the great man ! Albert 
 was a man of genius, a profound politi- 
 cian, to Alfred. The merchants, enchant- 
 ed with the success of the '■ Review," 
 only had to pay up three-tenths of their 
 shares. Two hundred subscriptions moi'e, 
 and the "Review" would pay Ave per 
 cent dividend to its shareholders, the 
 editing not being paid for. The editing 
 was beyond price. 
 
 At tlie third number, the " Review " 
 had obtained the exchange with all the 
 papers in France, which Albert i-ead at 
 home. This third number contained a 
 tale signed A. S., and attributed to the 
 famous advocate. Xotwithstauding the 
 sUght attention the high society of 
 Besancon accorded to the " Review," 
 which was accused of Liberalism, this 
 novel, the first hatched in the Comte, 
 was discussed at Madame de Chavon- 
 court's in the middle of the winter. 
 
 '•'Father," said Rosalie, "there is a 
 " Review " published in Besancon. You 
 ought to subscribe to it. And keep it in 
 your room, for mamma would not let me 
 read it ; but you will lend it to me." 
 
 Eager to obey his dear Rosalie, who for 
 five months had given him so many proofs 
 of filial affection. Monsieur de Wattoville 
 went himself to pay a year's subscription 
 to the " Rc\-iie de I'Est," and lent the four 
 numbers which had already appeared to 
 his daughter. During the night Rosalie 
 
 was able to devour this tale, the first she 
 had ever read in her life. But, then, she 
 had only begun to live for two months I 
 Accordingly, tlie effect produced on her 
 by this work must not be judged by ordi- 
 nary data. Without prejudging the more 
 or less of merit in this composition, due 
 to a Parisian who brought into the prov- 
 ince the stjie — the brilliance, if you will 
 — of the new school of literature, it could 
 not help being a chef-d'oeuvre to a young 
 girl devoting her virgin intelligence and 
 her pure heart to a first work of this nat- 
 ure. Besides, from what she had heard 
 of it, Rosalie had conceived by intuition 
 an idea which singularly heightened the 
 value of this novel. She hoped to find in 
 it the sentiments, and perhaps something 
 of the life, of Albert. From the first 
 pages this opinion of hers acquired so 
 much consistency that, after having fin- 
 ished this fragment, she felt certain she 
 did not deceive herself. 
 
 Here, then, is this narrative, in which, 
 according to the critics of the Chavon- 
 court circle, Albert had imitated certain 
 modern writers who, for want of inven- 
 tion, relate their own joys and their own 
 griefs, or the mysterious events of their 
 existence. 
 
 LOVE'S AMBITION. 
 
 " In 1823, two young men, who had 
 arranged to make the tour of Switzer- 
 land, started from Lucerne one fine 
 morning in Jul}', in a boat rowed bj* 
 three men. They were going to Fluelen, 
 proposing to stop at all the celebrated 
 spots on the Lake of the Four Cantons. 
 
 "The landscapes which border the 
 water from Lucerne to Fluelen present 
 all the combinatiotis that the most exact- 
 ing imagination can demand from mount- 
 ains and rivers, from lakes and rocks, 
 from streams and verdure, from ti-ees 
 and torrents. You have, by turns, aus- 
 tere solitudes and graceful promenades, 
 smiling and coquettish plains, forests 
 placed like plumes on the perpendicular 
 granite, cool and solitary bays which 
 gradually disclose themselves, valleys 
 whose treasures appear embellished by a 
 dreamy distance.
 
 252 
 
 THE HUMAX COMEDY. 
 
 " In passing before the cliarining little 
 town of Gersau, one of the two friends 
 made a prolonged observation of a 
 wooden house, which seemed to have 
 been recently built, surrounded by a pal- 
 ing, situated on a promontory, and almost 
 bathed by the water. As the boat passed 
 befoi-e it, a woman's head appeared from 
 the back of the rooni situated on the top 
 floor of this house, to observe the effect of 
 the boat on the lake. One of the young 
 men caught the glance xavy indilferently 
 thrown bj'^ the unknown. 
 
 '•'Let us stop here,' said he to his 
 friend. ' We were going to make Lu- 
 cerne our headquarters for exploring 
 Switzerland. You will not object, Leo- 
 pold, to my changing my mind and stay 
 ing here in charge of the baggage ? You 
 will then be able to do just as you like. 
 As for me, my voyage is finished. Boat- 
 men, put back and land us at this village; 
 we will breakfast there. I will go and 
 fetch all our luggage from Lucerne ; and 
 you will know, before leaving here, which 
 house I am lodging in, so as to be able to 
 find me on your return." 
 
 " 'Here, or at Lucerne,' said Ltopold ; 
 ' it does not matter enough for me to pre- 
 vent your obeying a caprice.' 
 
 ' ' These two young men were two friends 
 in the true sense of the word. They were 
 the same age, had been to the same school, 
 and, after having finished the study of 
 the law, they were employing the vaca- 
 tion for the classic tour of Switzerland. 
 In accordance with the paternal will, 
 Leopold was destined to the iirofession of 
 a notary in Paris. His upright mind, his 
 gentleness, the tranquillitj^ of his char- 
 acter, and his intellect, guaranteed his 
 docility. Leopold saw himself a notary 
 at Paris ; his life was spread out before 
 him like one of those high-roads which 
 traverse the plains of France. He em- 
 braced it to its fullest extent with a resig- 
 nation full of philosophy. 
 
 " The character of his companion, wliom 
 we will call Rodolphe, offered a contrast 
 to his, whose antagonism had, no doubt, 
 had the effect of drawing closer the ties 
 which united them. Rodolphe was the 
 natural son of a great nobleman, who 
 
 was surprised \)y a premature death with- 
 out having been able to take measures to 
 provide for a Avoman tenderly beloved, 
 and for Rodolphe. Thus ruined by a 
 stroke of fate, the mother of Rodolphe 
 had recourse to an heroic expedient. She 
 sold all that she possessed through the 
 munificence of the father of her child, 
 made up a sum of a hiuidred and odd 
 thousand francs, invested it in an annuity 
 on her own life at a high rate, and pro- 
 cured herself in this way an income of 
 about fifteen thousand francs, making 
 resolution to devote it all to the education 
 of her son, in order to endow him witli 
 the personal advantages most likely to 
 insure his fortune, and to lay by a capital 
 for him, by dint of economy, by the time 
 he had attained his majority'. It was 
 bold^ it was relying on her own life ; but 
 without this boldness it would, no doubt, 
 have been impossible for this good mother 
 to live and ijroperly educate her child — 
 her only hope, her future, and the sole 
 source of her joys. The issue of one of 
 the most charming Parisians and a man 
 remarkable among the aristocracy of 
 Brabant, the fruit of an equal and mutual 
 passion, Rodolphe was afflicted with an 
 excessive sensibility. From his infancy 
 he had manifested the greatest ardor in 
 everj^thing. In him, desire became a 
 superior force and the mainspring of the 
 whole being, the stimulant of the imagina- 
 tion, the cause of his actions. 
 
 In spite of the efforts of an intelligent 
 mother, who was alarmed when she per- 
 ceived such a predisposition, Rodolphe 
 desired as a poet imagines, as a savant 
 calculates, as a painter sketches, as a 
 musician composes melodies. Tender as 
 his mother, he rushed with unheard-of 
 violence and imagination toward the ob- 
 ject desired ; he devoured time. While 
 dreaming of the accomplishment of his 
 projects, he always passed over the means 
 of execution. ' When my son has chil- 
 dren,' said the mother, 'he will want 
 them full grown at once.' This noble ai*- 
 dor, properly directed, enabled Rodolphe 
 to make a brilliant scholar, and to be- 
 come what the English call a perfect gen- 
 tleman. His mother was proud of him.
 
 ALBERT SAVARUS. 
 
 253 
 
 while always dreading some catastrophe 
 if ever a passion took possession of his 
 heart, at once so tender and so sensitive, so 
 violent and so good. Therefore, this pru- 
 dent woman had encourag-ed the friend- 
 ship which bound Leopold to Rodolphe 
 and Rodolphe to Leopold, seeing" in the 
 cool and devoted notary a guardian, a 
 confidant, who might replace her to a 
 certain point with Rodolphe, if she should 
 unhappily be taken from him. Still hand- 
 some at fortj'-thi'ee, the mother of Ro- 
 dolphe had inspired Leopold with the 
 most lively affection. This circumstance 
 rendered the j'oung men still more inti- 
 mate. 
 
 " So Leopold, who knew Rodolphe well, 
 was not surprised to see him stopping at 
 a village and giving up the projected ex- 
 cursion to Saint Gothai-d, for the sake of 
 a glance cast from the top of a house. 
 While their breakfast was being prepared 
 at the Swan Inn, the two friends strolled 
 through the village, and arrived at the 
 part nearest to the charming new house, 
 where, while looking about and chatting 
 with the inhabitants, Rodolphe discovered 
 a family of small tradespeople disposed to 
 take him as a boarder, according to the 
 general custom in Switzerland. They 
 offered him a room with a view of the 
 lake and the mountains, and from which 
 you could catch the magnificent view of 
 one of those prodigious windings which 
 recommend the Lake of the Four Can- 
 tons to the admiration of tourists. This 
 house was separated, by an open space 
 and a small harbor, from the new house 
 in which Rodolphe had caught a glimpse 
 of the face of his fair unknown. For a 
 hundred francs. a month, Rodolphe was 
 supplied with all the necessaries of life. 
 But, in consideration of the expenses to 
 which the Stopfers would be put, Ihey re- 
 quired the pajmient of three months in 
 advance. You have only got to rub a 
 Swiss, and the usurer appears. 
 
 After breakfast Rodolphe installed him- 
 self on the spot, by putting into his room 
 all the things he had brought for his ex- 
 cursion to St. Gothard, and looked down 
 on the departure of Leopold, who, in the 
 spirit of order, was going to perform the 
 
 excursion on Rodolphe's account and his 
 own. When Rodolphe, seated on a rock 
 fallen on the shore, could no longer see 
 Leopold's boat, he examined, but from 
 below, the new house, hoping to perceive 
 the unknown. Alas ! he went in again 
 without the house having shown a sign 
 of life. At the dinner offered him by 
 Monsieur and Madame Stopfer, retired 
 coopers, he questioned them about the 
 neighborhood, and in the end learned all 
 he wanted to know about the unknown, 
 thanks to the chattering of his hosts, who 
 emptied the scandal-bag without much 
 pressing. 
 
 The unknown was called Fanny Love- 
 lace. This name, which is pronoimced 
 Loveless, belongs to several old English 
 families ; but Richardson has created one 
 whose celebrity eclipses all the others. Miss 
 Lovelace had come to reside on the lake 
 for her father's health, the doctors hav- 
 ing ordered him the air of the canton of 
 Lucerne. These two English people, who 
 had arrived with no other servant but a 
 little girl of fourteen, very much attached 
 to Miss Fanny — a little dumb girl who 
 waited on her very cleverly — had made 
 arrangements, before the last winter, with 
 Monsieur and Madame Bergmann, for- 
 merly head gardenei's to his excellency 
 Count Borromeo at Isola Bella and Isola 
 Madre, on the Lago Maggiore. 
 
 "These Swiss, worth about a thousand 
 crowns a year, let the upper storj' of their 
 house to the Lovelaces at two hundred 
 francs a year for three years. Old Love- 
 lace, an old man of ninety, very mfirm, 
 and too poor to afford certain expenses, 
 seldom went out. His daughter, to sup- 
 port him, translated English books, and, 
 they said, wrote books hei-self . Thus, the 
 Lovelaces did not venture either to hire 
 boats to go on the lake, or horses, or 
 guides to explore the neighborhood. A 
 poverty which imposed such privations 
 excited the compassion of the Swiss, all 
 the more that they lost an opportunity of 
 profit. The cook of the house provided 
 for the three English at the rate of a hun- 
 dred francs a month, everj-thing included. 
 But it was believed in Gersau that the 
 former gardeners, despite their preten-
 
 254 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 sions to gentility, made use of the name 
 of their cook to realize the profits of this 
 agreement. The Bcrgmanns had con- 
 structed admirable gardens and a mag- 
 nificent hothouse around their habitation. 
 The flowers, the fruits, and the botanic 
 rareties of this habitation had determined 
 tlie young miss to choose it on her pass- 
 age through Gersau. They put down at 
 nineteen the age of Miss Fanny, who, be- 
 ing the old man's last child, would nat- 
 urally be idolized by him. Only two 
 months ago, she had procured a piano on 
 hire which came from Lucerne, for she 
 appeared music mad. 
 
 "'She is fond of flowers and music,' 
 thought Rodolphe, 'and she is unmar- 
 ried ? What good fortune ! ' 
 
 "The next day, Rodolphe sent to ask 
 permission to visit the hothouses and 
 gardens, which were beginning to enjoy a 
 certain celebrity. This permission was 
 not granted immediately. These retired 
 gardeners asked, for a wonder, to see Ro- 
 dolphe's passport, and he sent it imme- 
 diately. The passport was not returned 
 until the next day, by the cook, who 
 communicated to him that her master 
 would be pleased to show him his es- 
 tablishment. 
 
 " Rodolphe did not enter the Berg- 
 manns' without a certain shock, experi- 
 enced onl3' by people of strong emotions, 
 and who display in a moment as much 
 passion as some men expend in their whole 
 life. Dressed with care to please the old 
 gardeners of the Borromean isles — for he 
 saw in them the guardians of his treasure 
 — he went through the gardens, looking 
 from time to time at the house, but with 
 prudence. The two old proprietors mani- 
 fested a very visible mistrust. But his 
 attention was soon excited by the little 
 English dumb girl, in whom his sagacity, 
 though still yoimg, recognized a daughter 
 of Africa, or at least a Sicilian. This 
 young girl had the golden tint of an 
 Havanna cigar, eyes of fire, Armenian 
 eyelids, eyelashes of an anti - Britannic 
 length, hair more than black, and, under 
 this almost olive skin, nerves of remark- 
 able strength and febrile vivacitj'. She 
 cast on Rodolphe searching looks of in- 
 
 credible boldness, and followed his slight- 
 est movements. 
 
 "'To whom does this little Moor be- 
 long ? ' said he to the respectable Madame 
 Bergmann. 
 
 "'To the English people," answered 
 Monsieur Bergmann. 
 
 " ' She certainly was not born in En- 
 gland ! ' 
 
 " ' Perhaps the^'have brought her from 
 India,' replied Madame Bergmann. 
 
 "'I have been told that young Miss 
 Lovelace is fond of music. I should be 
 delighted if, during my stay on the lake, 
 to which I am condemned by the doctor's 
 orders, she would allow me to practice 
 with her.' 
 
 " ' They do not see and do not wish to 
 see anybody,' said the old gardener. 
 
 " Rodolphe bit his lips, and went away 
 without having been invited to enter the 
 house, nor taken to that part of the gar- 
 den situated between the house front and 
 the edge of the promontor3\ On this side 
 of the house, above the first story, there 
 was a wooden gallery, covered by the 
 roof, which had an excessive projection, 
 like the roof of a chalet, and went all 
 round the four sides of the building, in 
 the Swiss fashion. Rodolphe had greatlj' 
 praised tliis elegant construction, and ex- 
 tolled the view f I'om this gallery ; but it 
 was all in vain. When he had taken leave 
 of the Bergmanns, he felt himself a fool, 
 like every man of Avit and imagination 
 disappointed by the failure of a plan on 
 whose success he had reckoned. 
 
 " In the evening he naturally went on 
 the lake in a boat. Coasting the prom- 
 ontory, he went as far as Brunnen and 
 Schwitz, and returned at jiightfall. From 
 a distance he perceived the window open 
 and strongly lighted. He could hear the 
 sound of the piano and the accents of a 
 delicious voice. He stopped the boat to 
 abandon himself to the charm of listening 
 to an Italian air divinely sung. When 
 the song had ceased, Rodolphe landed, 
 and dismissed the boat and the boat- 
 men. At the risk of wetting his feet, he 
 went and seated himself under the bank 
 of granite worn away by the waters and 
 crowned by a strong hedge of thorny
 
 ALBERT SAVARUS. 
 
 255 
 
 acacias, along- which an alley of young 
 lime trees stretched into the Berg-manns' 
 g-arden. At the end of an hour he heard 
 talking- and walking- above his head, but 
 the words which reached his ear were all 
 Italian, and pronounced by two young 
 female voices. He took advantage of the 
 moment when the two interlocutricos were 
 at one end to i-each the other without 
 noise. After half an hour of efforts, he 
 attained the end of the avenue, and, 
 without being seen or heard, succeeded 
 in taking- a position from which he could 
 see the two women without being seen by 
 them when they came toward him. Wliat 
 was the astonishment of Rodolphe on 
 recognizing- in one of the two women the 
 little dumb girl. She was talking to Miss 
 Lovelace in Italian. It was eleven at 
 nig-ht. The stillness on the lake and 
 around the habitation was so profound 
 that the two women might well believe 
 themselves in safety : in all Gersau, only 
 their own eyes would be open. Rodolphe 
 thought the dumbness of the young girl 
 must be a necessary imposition. From 
 the way in which they spoke Italian, 
 Rodolphe guessed that it was the mother 
 tongue of the two, and he concluded that 
 the Eng-lish disg-uise must be a stratagem. 
 
 " ' They are Italian refugees,' said he — 
 ' exiles — who, no doubt, are in fear of the 
 Austrian or Sardinian police. The young 
 gii-l waits till night to be able to walk 
 about and converse in security.' 
 
 "Thereupon he threw himself into the 
 hedge, and crawled like a serpent to find 
 a passage between two acacia roots. At 
 the risk of leaving his coat behind him, 
 or seriousl3' hurting his back, he got 
 through the hedge, while the pretended 
 Miss Fanny and her pretended dumb girl 
 were at the other end of the avenue ; and 
 then, when they had got to within twenty 
 paces of him without seeing him — for he 
 was in the shadow of the hedge, then 
 strongl3'- lighted up by the moon — he sud- 
 denly rose up. 
 
 "'Fear nothing,' said he, in French, 
 to the Italian; "lam no spy. You are 
 refugees. I have guessed it. I myself 
 am a Frenchman, whom a single glance 
 from you has fixed at Gersau. ' 
 
 " Rodolphe, stung by the pain of some 
 steel instrument piercing his side, fell to 
 the ground. 
 
 " ' Nel lago con pietra,' * said the 
 terrible mute. 
 
 " ' All ! Gina,' exclaimed the Italian. 
 
 " 'She has mtssed me,' said Rodolphe, 
 withdrawing from the wound a stiletto 
 which had struck against a rib; 'but a 
 little higher, and it would have gone 
 through my heart. I was wrong, Fran- 
 cesca,' said he, remembering the name 
 little Gina had several times pronounced. 
 'I am not angrj' with her. Do not scold 
 her ; the pleasure of speaking to you is 
 weU worth a stiletto-cut ; only show me 
 m^' wa.y. I must return to the Stopfers' 
 house. Be at ease, I will say nothing.' 
 
 " Francesca, having recovered from her 
 astonishment, assisted Rodolphe to raise 
 himself, and said some words to Gina, 
 whose eyes filled with tears. The two 
 girls forced Rodolphe to sit down on a 
 bench and take off his coat, waistcoat, and 
 cravat. Gina opened his shirt and vio- 
 lently sucked the wound. Francesca, 
 wlio had left them, returned with a large 
 piece of sticking-plaster, which she ap- 
 plied to the wound. 
 
 "'You will be able to get as far as 
 your house now,' said she. 
 
 "Each of them took hold of an arm, 
 and Rodolphe was conducted to a little 
 gate, the kej' of which happened to be 
 in the pocket of Franccsca's apron. 
 
 " ' Does Gina speak French ? ' said Ro- 
 dolphe to Francesca. 
 
 " 'No ; but do not excite yourself,' said 
 Francesca, with a little air of impatience. 
 
 "'Let me see you,' replied Rodolphe 
 with emotion, 'for, perhaps, it will be a 
 long while before I can come — ' 
 
 " He leaned on one of the gate-posts 
 and gazed at the fair Italian, who allowed 
 herself to be looked at for an instant in 
 the deepest silence and the loveliest night 
 that had ever shone on this lake, the king 
 of all Swiss lakes. Francesca was, in- 
 deed, the classic Italian, .such as the im- 
 agination desires, represents, or dreams, 
 if you will, all Italians. What struck 
 
 * " Into the lake with a stone."
 
 256 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 Rodolphe at once was the eleg'ance and 
 grrace of her figure, whose vigor was dis- 
 played, despite its apparent frailty, in its 
 elasticity. An amber p:illor spread over 
 the face betra^'ed a sudden interest, which, 
 however, did not efface the voluptuous- 
 ness of two limpid eyes of velvet black- 
 ness. Two hands, the loveliest that ever 
 a Greek sculptor hud attached to the pol- 
 ished arm of a statue, held Rodolphe by 
 tlie arm, and their whiteness was con- 
 trasted with the blackness of his coat. 
 The imprudent Frenchman could onl3' 
 just perceive the elongated, oval shape 
 of the face, whose sorrowful and slight- 
 ly opened mouth disclosed brilliant teeth 
 between two full lips fresh and ruddy. 
 The beauty of the outlines of this face 
 guaranteed to Francesca the durability of 
 its splendor ; but what struck Rodolphe 
 most was the adorable unconsti^aint, the 
 Italian frankness of this girl, who g-ave 
 herself up entirely to her companion. 
 
 " Francesca spoke to Gina, who gave 
 her arm to Rodolphe as far as the Stop- 
 fers' house, and fled like a swallow when 
 she had rung the bell. 
 
 " ' These patriots do not strike with 
 light hands,' said Rodolphe to himself, 
 feeling the pain of his wound when he 
 was alone in bed. ' Nel lago ! Gina 
 would have thrown me into the lake with 
 a stone round ray neck ! ' 
 
 " In the morning, he sent to Lucerne 
 for the best surgeon ; and when he came, 
 enjoined on him the most profound se- 
 crecy, giving him to understand that 
 honor required it. Leopold returned from 
 his excursion the day his friend left his 
 bed. Rodolphe made him up a story, 
 and got him to go to Lucerne for their 
 luggage and letters. Leopold brought 
 back the most fatal, the most terrible 
 news. Rodolphe's mother was dead. 
 While the two friends were going- from 
 Bale to Lucerne the fatal letter, written 
 by Leopold's father, had arrived there the 
 day of their departure for Fluelen. In 
 spite of the precautions taken by Leopold, 
 Rodolphe was seized with a nervous fever. 
 As soon as the future notary saw his friend 
 out of danger, he left for France, pi'ovided 
 with a power of attorney. Rodolphe was 
 
 thus enabled to remain at Gersau, the 
 only place in the world where his grief 
 could be calmed. The situation of the 
 j-oung Frenchman, his despair, and the 
 circumstances which rendered this loss 
 more terrible for him than for any other, 
 were known, and drew upon him the com- 
 passion and interest of all Gersau. Every 
 morning the sham mute came to see the 
 Frenchman, in order to be able to report 
 to her mistress. 
 
 " When Rodolphe was able to go out, 
 he went to the Bergmanns', to thank Miss 
 Fanny Lovelace and her father for the in- 
 terest they had shown in his affliction and 
 his Illness. For the first time since his 
 establishment with the Bergmanns, the 
 old Italian allowed a stranger to pene- 
 trate Into his apartments, where Rodolphe 
 Avas received with a cordiality due to his 
 misfortunes and his character of a French- 
 man, which precluded all suspicion. Fran- 
 cesca appeared so lovely in the full light 
 during the first evening, that she cast a 
 ray of light on this desponding heart. 
 Her smiles strewed over his mourning 
 the roses of hope. She sang, not gay 
 airs, but grave and sublime melodies ap- 
 propriate to the state of Rodolphe's heart, 
 and he remarked this touching considera- 
 tion. About eight o'clock, the old man 
 left the two young people alone, without 
 any appearance of distrust, and retired to 
 his own room. When Francesca was tired 
 of singing, she took Rodolphe to the ex- 
 terior gallery, fi'om which the sublime 
 view of the lake was visible, and made a 
 sign to him to sit down by her side on a 
 rustic wood seat. 
 
 " ' Would it be impertinent to ask your 
 age, cara Francesca? " said Rodolphe. 
 
 " 'Nineteen,' she answered. 
 
 " 'If anything in the world could lessen 
 my grief, ' continued he, ' it would be the 
 hope of obtaining j'ou from youv father, 
 whatever may be the state of your fort- 
 une. Lovelj' as you are, you seem to me 
 richer than the daughter of a prince, and 
 I tremble in avowing the sentiments with 
 which you have inspired me ; but they 
 are profound — they are eternal.' 
 
 " ' Zitto,' said Francesca, putting one 
 of the fingers of her right hand on her
 
 ALBERT S A VARUS. 
 
 257 
 
 lips. ' Do not go any further. I am not 
 free ; I have been married three years.' 
 
 "A profound silence reigned for some 
 instants between them. When the Italian, 
 alarmed at the attitude of Rodolphe, drew 
 nearer to him, she found he had fainted 
 awaj'. 
 
 " ' Povero! ' she said to herself, ' and I 
 thoug-ht he was cold ! ' 
 
 " She went to get her salts, and restored 
 Rodolphe by making him inhale them. 
 
 " ' Married ! ' said Rodolphe, looking 
 at Francesca. His tears fell in abun- 
 dance. 
 
 " ' Child,' said she, ' there is hope. My 
 husband is — ■' 
 
 "•Eighty?' said Rodolphe. 
 
 "'No,', she replied, smiling; 'sixty- 
 five. He put on the mask of age to de- 
 ceive the police.' 
 
 "'Dear one,' said Rodolphe, 'a few 
 more emotions like this, and I must die. 
 Only after twenty yeai's of acquaintance 
 will you know the strength and power of 
 my heart, and the nature of its aspira- 
 tions after happiness. This plant does 
 not shoot up with more eagerness to blos- 
 som in the rays of tlie sun,' said he, 
 pointing to a Virginian jessamine which 
 covered the balustrade, ' than I have be- 
 come attached for the last month to you. 
 I love you with an unequaled love. This 
 love will be the secret spring of my life, 
 and perhaps I shall die of it.' 
 
 " ' Oh, Frenchman ! Frenchman ! ' said 
 she, commenting his exclamation with a 
 little grimace of incredulity. 
 
 '• ' Must I not wait for you, and receive 
 you from the hands of time ? ' continued 
 he with gravity. ' But know this : if you 
 are sincere in the words which have es- 
 caped you, I will wait for you faithfullj^ 
 without allowing any other sentiment to 
 spring up in ray heart. ' 
 
 " She looked at him slyly. 
 
 " ' Nothing,' said he, ' not even a fancy. 
 I have got my fortune to make ; it must 
 be a splendid one, for your sake. Nature 
 had created you a princess — ' 
 
 " At this vord Francesca could not re- 
 strain a faint smile, which gave a most 
 charming expression to her countenance, 
 a something artful, which the great 
 
 Balzac— I 
 
 Leonardo has so well depicted in his ' Jo- 
 conde.' This smile made Rodolphe pause. 
 
 "'Yes,' resumed he, 'you must suffer 
 from the privations to which exile has 
 reduced you. Ah I if you would render 
 me the happiest of men, and sanctify my 
 love, you would have me as a friend. 
 Have I not a right to be your friend ? 
 My poor mother has left me her savings 
 of sixty thousand francs ; accept half of 
 them.' 
 
 " Francesca looked at him steadily. 
 This piercing glance went to the bottom 
 of Rodolphe's soul. 
 
 " We are not in want of anything ; my 
 work provides our luxuries,' replied she, 
 in a grave voice. 
 
 " ' Can I allow Francesca to work ? ' 
 cried- he. ' Some day you wUl return to 
 your country, and yoii will recover all you 
 have left behind you.' Again the young 
 Italian looked at Rodolphe. 'And you 
 will repay me what you have deigned to 
 borrow of me,' added he, with a look full 
 of delicacy. 
 
 " ' Let us quit this subject of conversa- 
 tion,' said she, with an incomparable no- 
 bilitj^ of gesture, of look, and of attitude. 
 ' Make a brilhant fortune ; be one of the 
 remarkable men of your country ; I desire 
 it. Glory is a flying bridge which may 
 serve to cross an abyss. Be ambitious — 
 you must. I believe you have noble and 
 powerful abilities, but employ them rather 
 for the good of humanity than to obtain 
 me ; you wiU be greater in my eyes. ' 
 
 " During this conversation, which lasted 
 two hours, Rodolphe discovered in Fran- 
 cesca the enthusiasm for liberal ideas and 
 the worship of liberty which had pro- 
 duced the triple revolution of Naples, 
 Piedmont, and Spain. On leaving, he 
 was conducted to the gate by Giua, the 
 sham mute. At eleven o'clock nobody 
 was about in the village ; no indiscretion 
 was to be feared. Rodolphe drew Gina 
 into a corner, and asked her softly, in 
 bad Italian — 
 
 " ' Who are your masters, my giii ? 
 Tell me, and I will give you this bright 
 new piece of gold.' 
 
 " ' Sir,' replied the girl, taking the coin, 
 'master is the famous bookseller. Lam-
 
 258 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 porani of Milan, one of the chiefs of the 
 revolution — t he conspirator Austria would, 
 most like to have in the Spielberg.' 
 
 " ' The wife of a bookseller ? Ali ! so 
 much the better,' thoug-ht he; 'we are 
 on a level. And to what family does she 
 belong?' continued he, aloud, 'for she 
 has the air of a queen.' 
 
 "'All the Italian women are like that,' 
 answered Giua, proudly. 'Her father's 
 name is Colonna.' 
 
 "Emboldened by the humble condition 
 of Francesca, Rodolphe had an a\^^ling 
 put to his boat and some cushions in the 
 stem. When this alteration was effected, 
 Rodolplie came and proposed to Fran- 
 cesca an excursion on the lake. The 
 Italian accepted, no doubt to keep up 
 her character of a young miss in the 
 eyes of the village; but she took Gina. 
 
 " The slightest actions of Francesca 
 Colonna betrayed a superior education 
 and the highest social rank. From the 
 manner in which the Italian seated her- 
 self at the end of the boat, Rodolphe felt 
 to some extent .separated from her, and 
 his premeditated familiarities dropped be- 
 fore the expression of the true pride of 
 nobility. Bj' a look, Francesca created 
 herself a princess, with all the privileges 
 she would have enjoyed in the Middle 
 Ages. She seemed to have guessed the 
 secret thoughts of this vassal who had 
 the audacity to constitute himself her 
 protector. Already, in the furniture of 
 the salon in which Francesca had re- 
 ceived him, in her dress, and in the most 
 trifling articles she made use of, Rodolphe 
 had recognized the indications of a lofty 
 nature and a high fortune. All these ob- 
 servations recurred at once to his memory, 
 and he became pensive after having been, 
 so to speak, repulsed bj' the dignity of 
 Francesca. Gina, her scarcely adolescent 
 confidante, seemed to wear a mocking 
 expression wliile looking aside or stealthi- 
 ly at Rodolphe. This visible discordance 
 between the condition and the manners of 
 the Italian was a new enigma to Rodolphe, 
 who suspected some fresh trick, like the 
 sham dumbness of Gina. 
 
 " ' Where would you like to go, Signora 
 Lamporani ? ' said he. 
 
 " ' To Lucerne,' answered Francesca, in 
 French. 
 
 " ' Good ! ' thought Rodolphe. ' She 
 is not surprised at hearing mo mention 
 her name. She had, no doubt, antici- 
 pated my question to Gina, the cunning 
 one ! What have I done to offend you ? ' 
 said he at length, coming to seat himself 
 by her, and seeking by a gesture a hand 
 which Francesca withdrew. ' You are 
 cold and ceremonious — what we should 
 call, in conversation, cutting.' 
 
 '"It is true,' replied she, smiling; 'I 
 am wrong. It is not right ; it is vulgar. 
 You would say in French it is not artistic. 
 It is better to explain one's self than to 
 keep up hostile or cold feelings toward a 
 friend ; and you have already proved 
 your friendship. Perhaps I have gone 
 too far with you. You must have taken 
 me for a very common person.' 
 
 "Rodolphe made repeated signs of 
 denial. 
 
 " 'Yes,' said this bookseller's wife, con- 
 tinuing without taking any notice of the 
 pantomime, which, however, she saw well 
 enough; 'I have perceived it, and, nat- 
 urall3% I have drawn back. Well, I will 
 put an end to it all by a few words of pro- 
 found truth. Be well assured, Rodolphe; 
 I feel in myself the strength to stifle a 
 sentiment which would not be in harmony 
 with the ideas or the prescience I have of 
 real love. I can love as we know how to 
 love in Italy ; but I know my duty. No 
 intoxication will make nie forg-et it. Mar 
 ried without my own consent to this poor 
 old man, I might avail myself of the lib- 
 ert}' he leaves me with so much generos- 
 ity ; but three 3'ears of marriage are 
 equivalent to an acceptance of conjugal 
 faith, and the most \aolent passion would 
 not make me express, even involuntarily, 
 a desire to be free. Emilio knows mj' 
 character. He knows that, except my 
 heart, which belongs to me and which I 
 can dispose of, I would not allow my hand 
 to be touched. That is why I have just 
 refused it to you. I must be loved, awaited 
 with fidelity, nobilitj', and aulor, while ac- 
 cording nothing but an infinite tenderness, 
 whose expression must not exceed the 
 limits of the heart — the privileged ground.
 
 ALBERT SAVARUS. 
 
 259 
 
 All these things well understood — oh ! ' 
 continued she, with a g-irlish gesture, 
 * then I will be coquettish, laughing, and 
 plaj'ful as a child who does not know the 
 danger of familiarity.' 
 
 "This declaration, perfectly frank and 
 clear, was made in a tone, and with an 
 accent, and accompanied by looks which 
 stamped it with the most profound truth. 
 
 '•'A Princess Colonna could not have 
 spoken better,' said Rodolphe, with a 
 smile. 
 
 "'Is that,' said she, with a haughty 
 air, 'a reproach on the lowuess of my 
 birth ? Does your love require a coat-of- 
 arms? In Milan the greatest names, 
 Sforza, Canova Visconti, Trivalzio, Ur- 
 sini, are written up over the shops ; there 
 are Archintos apothecaries; but, believe 
 that, in spite of my condition as a shop- 
 keeper, I have the feelings of a duchess.' 
 
 "'A. reproach? No, madame ; I in- 
 tended it for a compliment.' 
 
 " * By comparison ? ' said she, archly. 
 
 '"Ah! believe me,' resumed he, 'and 
 torment me no longer. If my words do 
 not properly express my feelings, my love 
 is absolute, and comprises infinite obedi- 
 ence and respect.' 
 
 "She inclined her head as if satisfied, 
 and said, ' You accept the treaty-, then ? ' 
 
 "'Yes,' said he. 'I comprehend that, 
 in a rich and powerful feminine organiza- 
 tion, the faculty of loving cannot be lost, 
 and that you would restrain it from deli- 
 cacy. Ah, Francesca, a mutual passion, 
 at my age and with a mistress so sub- 
 lime, so regally lovely as you, is the ac- 
 complishment of all ray hopes. To love 
 you as you desire to be loved, is it not a 
 safeguard for a young man against all 
 base follies ? Is it not throwing his ener- 
 gies into a noble passion, of which here- 
 after he maj- be proud, and which will 
 leave him only fair memories? If you 
 knew with what colors, with what poesy 
 you have just clothed the mountains of 
 Pilatus and the Rigi, and this magnifi- 
 cent basin — ' 
 
 '•' ' I wish to know it,' said she, with an 
 Italian simplicity which is always backed 
 by a little slyness. 
 
 " ' Well, then, this hour will cast its 
 
 radiance over my whole life, like a dia- 
 mond on the brow of a queen.' 
 
 "As her only answer, Francesca placed 
 her hand in that of Rodolphe. 
 
 " ' Oh, dearest, ever dearest, say you 
 have never loved ! ' 
 
 " ' Never ! ' 
 
 "'And you permit me to love you 
 nobly, awaiting all from Heaven ? ' he 
 asked. 
 
 "She gently lowered her head. Two 
 large tears rolled down Rodoiphe's cheeks. 
 
 " ' Well, what ails you ?' said she, drop- 
 ping her imperial character. 
 
 " 'I have no longer a mother to tell 
 how happy I am. She has quitted the 
 earth without- seeing what would have 
 soothed her last moments.' 
 
 " 'What?' said she. 
 
 " 'Her love i-eplaced by an equal love.' 
 
 ' ' Povero mio ! ' exclaimed the Ital- 
 ian with emotion. 'Believe me,' she re- 
 sumed, after a pause, ' it is a very delight- 
 ful thing, and a very great element of 
 fidelity, for a woman to know that she 
 is ever^'thing on earth to the man she 
 loves ; to see him alone, without family, 
 with nothing in his heart but his love ; 
 in short, to have him all to herself.' 
 
 "When two lovers understand each 
 other so well, the heart experiences a 
 delicious quietude, a sublime tranquillity. 
 Certainty is the base required by human 
 sentiments, for it is never wanting to re- 
 ligious sentiment : man is always certain 
 of being requited b\' God. Love only be- 
 lieves itself in safety through this likeness 
 to Divine love; and you must have fully ex- 
 perienced them to comprehend the delights 
 of this moment, always unique in a life. 
 It returns no more, alas ! than the emo- 
 tions of youth. To believe in a woman ; 
 to make her your religion on earth, the 
 spring of 3'our life, the secret luminary 
 of your least thoughts — is it not to 
 be born a second time? A young man 
 then mingles with his love some of 
 that he feels for his mother. Ro- 
 dolphe and Francesca for some time kept 
 profound silence, answering each other 
 in soft looks full of thought. They sym- 
 pathized with each other in the midst of 
 one of the finest spectacles of Nature,
 
 260 
 
 THE HUMAX COMEDY. 
 
 whose richness, explained by that of their 
 own hearts, enabled them to enjjravo on 
 their memories the most fugitive impres- 
 sions of this imique hour. There had not 
 been tlie sligrhtest appearance of coquetry 
 in the conduct of Francesca. Everything 
 ■was noble, grand, and without reserve. 
 This grandeur forcibly struck Rodolphe, 
 who recognized in it the difference which 
 distinguishes the Italian from the French 
 woman. The waters, the earth, the heav- 
 ens, the woman, all was grandiose and 
 placid, even their love, in the midst of 
 this picture, vast in its extent, rich in its 
 details, and in which they sharpness of the 
 snow_y peaks, their rigid forms clearly 
 marked upon the azure, recalled to Ro- 
 dolphe the conditions to which his happi- 
 ness was to be confined : a rich countiy 
 surrounded by snow. 
 
 " This soft intoxication of the soul was 
 to be disturbed. A boat was coming from 
 Lucerne. Gina, who had been looking at- 
 tentively at it for some time, made a sign 
 of joy, remaining faithful to her character 
 of a mute. The boat came near, and when 
 at last Francesca was able to see the faces 
 in it, ' Tito ! ' she cried, perceiving a young 
 man. She got up andTemained standing, 
 at the risk of being drowned. ' Tito, Tito ! ' 
 she cried, waving her handkerchief. 
 
 " Tito ordered his boatmen to row, and 
 the two boats went on in the same direc- 
 tion. The Italian and Tito talked with so 
 much vivacity, in a dialect so unknown to 
 a man who scarcely knew book Italian 
 and had never been in Italy, that Ro- 
 dolphe could neither understand nor guess 
 at any part of this conversation. The 
 beautj^ of Tito, the familiarity of Fran- 
 cesca, the joyous air of Gina, all dis- 
 pleased him. Besides, a man is not in 
 love if he does not feel annoyed at seeing 
 himself left for another, whoever it may 
 be. Tito smartlj' threw a little leather 
 bag, no doubt full of gold, to Gina, and 
 then a packet of letters to Francesca, 
 who began to read them, making a sign 
 of adieu to Tito. 
 
 "'Turn back immediately to Gersau,' 
 said she to the boatmen ; ' I must not 
 leave my poor Emilio to pine ten minutes 
 more than I can help.' 
 
 " ' What has happened to you ? ' asked 
 Rodolphe, when he saw the Italian finish- 
 ing her last letter. 
 
 " ' La Ubertlt ! " cried she, with the en- 
 thusiasm of an ai'tist. 
 
 " ' E denaro ! ' answered like an echo 
 Gina, who was able to speak at last. 
 
 "'Yes,' resumed Francesca, 'no more 
 misery ! It is eleven months now that 
 I have had to work, and I was beginning 
 to get tired of it. Decidedly I am not a 
 literarj' character.' 
 
 " ' What is this Tito ? ' said Rodolphe. 
 " ' The secretary of state of the finan- 
 cial department of the jioor business of 
 Colonna, otherwise called the son of our 
 ragjonato. Poor fellow ! he could not 
 get to us by the Saint Gothard, nor by 
 Mont Cenis, nor by the Simplon ; he came 
 by sea, by Marseille. He had to cross all 
 through France. In short, in three weeks 
 we shall be at Geneva and living at our 
 ease. Come, Rodolphe,' said she, seeing 
 the sadness spread oyer the face of the 
 Parisian, ' is not the Lake of Geneva as 
 good as the Lake of the Four Cantons ? ' 
 " ' Permit me to bestow a regret on this 
 delicious house of the Bergraanns,' said 
 Rodolphe, pointing to the promontorj'. 
 
 " 'You must come and dine with us, to 
 multiply your souvenirs, ^oyero mio,' said 
 she. ' It is a fete to-day. We are no 
 longer in danger ; my mother tells me 
 that in a year, perhaps, we shall be am- 
 nestied. Oh, la cara patria ! ' 
 
 "These three words set Gina crj-ing. 
 ' Another winter here and I should have 
 been dead ! ' she said. 
 
 " 'Poor little child of Sicily,' said Fran- 
 cesca, placing her hand on Gina's head 
 with a gesture and an affection which 
 made Rodolphe long to be so caressed, 
 although it was without love. 
 
 " The boat came ashore ; Rodolphe 
 leaped on to the sand, held out his hand 
 to the Italian, accompanied her to the 
 gate of the Bergmanns' house, and went 
 home to dress, so as to get back the 
 sooner. 
 
 " Finding the bookseller and his wife 
 sitting in the outer gallery, Rodolphe with 
 difficulty repressed a start of surprise at 
 the sight of the prodigious change the
 
 ALBERT SAVARUS. 
 
 261 
 
 good news had worked in the man of 
 ninety. He saw before him a man of 
 about sixty, perfectly well preserved ; a 
 spare Italian, straight as an I, his hair 
 ^txM black, though scanty, and disclosing 
 a white scalp, fiery eyes, white and per- 
 fect teeth, the face of a Caesar and a dip- 
 lomatic mouth, with a half -sardonic smile 
 — the nearly alwaj's false smile under 
 which a well-bred man conceals his true 
 sentiments. 
 
 " ' Here is my husband ta his natural 
 shape,' said Francesca, gravely. 
 
 " 'It is quite a new acquaintance,' re- 
 plied Rodolphe at a nonplus. 
 
 ' ' ' Quite, ' said the bookseller. ' I have 
 acted on the stage, and I can play tlie old 
 man perfectly. Ah ! I used to play at 
 Paris, in the time of the empire, with 
 Bourienne, Madame Murat, Madame 
 d'Ab^-antes, e tutti quanti. Ever^iihing 
 one has taken the trouble to learn in one"s 
 youth, even the most frivolous things, 
 may turn out useful. If my wife had not 
 received a masculine education, which is a 
 contradiction in Italy, I should have had 
 to turn wood-cutter for a living here. 
 Povera Francesca ! who could hav^e told 
 me that some day she would support me?'' 
 
 "Listening to this worthy bookseller, 
 so easy, so affable, and so lively, Ro- 
 dolphe suspected some mystification, and 
 maintained the watchful silence of a man 
 who has been duped. 
 
 " ' Che avete, signor ? ' Francesca 
 archlj^ asked him. 'Does our happiness 
 distress you ? ' 
 
 " 'Your husband is a young man,' he 
 whispered in her ear. 
 
 "She burst into a fit of laughter, so 
 frank and so catching that Rodolphe was 
 all the more dumfouuded. 
 
 "'He is only sixty-five, at your ser- 
 vice,' said she; 'but still, I assure you, 
 that is something reassuring.' 
 
 '"I dio not like to hear you joking 
 about a love so sacred as that whose con- 
 ditions you have fixed yourself.' 
 
 " 'Zitto ! ' said she, stamping her foot 
 and looking whether her husband was 
 listening to thein. 'Never disturb the 
 peace of this man who is dear to me, as 
 open as a chUd, and with whom I do as I 
 
 like. He is under my protection,' she 
 added. 'If you knew with what nobility 
 he risked his life and his fortune, because 
 I was a Liberal ! For he does not share 
 my political opinions. Is that loving, 
 Mister Frenchman ? But they are like 
 that in their family. The j-ounger bro- 
 ther of Emilio was deceived by the woman 
 he loved, for a charming young man. He 
 ran his sword through his heart, and ten 
 minutes previously Le said to his valet, 
 "I could easily kill m}' rival, but that 
 would give too much pain to la diva." ' 
 
 " This combination of nobility and jest- 
 ing, of grandeur and childishness, made 
 Francesca at this moment the most at- 
 tractive creature in the jvorld. The din- 
 ner, as well as the evening, was stamped 
 with a gayety justified by the deliverance 
 of the two refugees, but which grieved 
 Rodolphe. 
 
 " ' Can she be a trifler ? ' he said to him- 
 self on returning to the Stopfers' house. 
 ' She sympathized with mj' grief, and I — 
 I cannot espouse her joy.' He blamed 
 himself, and justified this young girl- 
 wife. ' She is without the slightest hypoc- 
 Tisy, and gives waj' to he? impressions,' 
 he said to himself, ' and I would have her 
 like a Parisian I ' 
 
 " The next and the following days — for 
 three weeks, in fact — Rodolphe passed all 
 his time at the Bergmanns' house, ob- 
 serving Francesca without having in- 
 tended to observe her. Admiration, in 
 certain characters, is not unaccompanied 
 by a sort of penetration. The young 
 Frenchman recognized in Francesca an 
 imprudent young girl, the true woman's 
 nature still untamed, struggling at some 
 moments with her love, and at other mo- 
 ments giving way to it. The old man 
 behaved to her as a father to his child, 
 and Francesca showed him a deeply felt 
 gratitude which revealed an instinctive 
 nobility. This situation and this woman 
 presented to Rodolphe an impenetrable 
 enigma, whose solution moi-e and more 
 strongly attracted him. 
 
 "These Inst days were full of secret 
 fetes, mingled with melancholy — of rup- 
 tures and quarrels more charming than 
 the hours when Rodolphe and Francesca
 
 262 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 were perfectly- agreed. In short, he was 
 more and more captivated by the charm 
 of this unreasoning- affection alwaj's con- 
 sistent with itself, by this love jealous of 
 a shadow — already ! 
 
 "'You are very fond of luxury,' said 
 he, one evening, to Francesca, who had 
 manifested a desire to leave Gersau, 
 where many things were wanting. 
 
 "'I!' said she. 'I like luxury as I 
 like art — as I like a picture of Raphael's, 
 a fine horse, a fine daj', or the Bay of 
 Naples. — Emilio,' said she, 'have I ever 
 complained during our days of distress 
 here ? ' 
 
 "'You would not have been j-ourself,' 
 said the old booliseller, gravely. 
 
 " 'After all, is it not natural for shop- 
 keepers to long for greatness ? ' continued 
 she, darting a mischievous glance both at 
 Rodolphe and hor husband. 'M3' feet,' 
 said she, putting out two charming little 
 feet — ' arc they made for enduring fatigue? 
 My hands ' — she stretched out a hand to 
 ■Rodolphe — ' are these hands made for hard 
 work? Leave us,' said she to her hus- 
 band ; ' I want to speak to him.' 
 
 "The eld miln went into the salon with 
 sublime good nature; he was sure of his 
 wife. 
 
 " ' I do not wish you,' said she to 
 Rodolphe, 'to accompany us to Geneva. 
 Geneva is a city of scandals. Although 
 I am fai- above the tittle-tattle of society, 
 I will not be calumniated — not for my own 
 sake, but for his. I make it my pride to 
 be the glory of this old man, my only pro- 
 tector after aU. We are going to leave. 
 You remain here for some days. When 
 you come to Geneva, make acquaintance 
 with m3' husband first, and let him intro- 
 duce you to me. Let us hide our un- 
 changeable and profound affection from 
 the eyes of the world. I love you. You 
 know it ; and this is how I will prove it : 
 5'ou shall never discover in my conduct 
 the slightest thing that could arouse your 
 jealousy.' 
 
 " She drew him into the corner of the 
 gallery, took him by the head, kissed him 
 on the forehead, and disappeared, leaving 
 him stupefied. 
 
 " The next day, Rodolphe learned that 
 
 the inmates of the Bergmanns' house had 
 left at the break of day. From that mo- 
 ment, residence at Gersau appeared un- 
 supportable, and he started for Vevay by 
 the longest road, traveling faster than^ 
 he ought to have done; but, attracted 
 by the waters of the lake where the fair 
 Italian awaited him, he arrived about 
 the end of October at Geneva. To avoid 
 the inconveniences of the city, he lodged 
 in a house situated at Eaux-Vives, out- 
 side the ramparts. Once installed, his 
 first care Avas to ask his host, a retired 
 jeweler, if some Italian refugees from 
 Milan had not lately come to stay at 
 Geneva. 
 
 '"Not that I know of,' his host told 
 him. ' The Prince and Princess Colonna 
 of Rome have taken the residence of 
 Monsieur Jeanrenaud, one of the finest 
 on the lake, for three years. It is situ- 
 ated between the Villa Diodati and the 
 residence of Monsieur Lafln de Dieu, 
 which is let to the Vicomtesse de Beau- 
 seant. Prince Colonna has taken it for 
 his daughter and his son-in-law, Prince 
 Gandolphini, a Neapolitan or Sicilian, if 
 you like, a former partisan of King Murat 
 and a victim of the last revolution. These 
 are the last arrivals at Geneva, and they 
 are not Milanese. It required strong in- 
 terest and the protection accorded by the 
 Pope to the Colonna family, to obtain 
 from the foreign i^owers and the king of 
 Naples permission for the Prince and 
 Princess Gandolphini to reside here. 
 Geneva wUl not do anything to dis- 
 please the Holy Alliance, to which she 
 owes her independence. Our part is not 
 to offend foreign courts. There are a 
 great many foreigners here — Russians, 
 English.' 
 
 " ' There are even Genevese.' 
 
 " ' Yes, sir. Our lake is so fine ! Lord 
 BjTon lived here about seven yeai-s ago, 
 at the Villa Diodati, whicli everybody' 
 goes to see now, like Coppet and Fer- 
 ney.' 
 
 " ' Could you not ascertain whether, 
 during the last week, a bookseller of 
 Milan and his wife, named Lamporani, 
 one of the chiefs of the last revolution, 
 have come here ? '
 
 ALB Eli l ' SA VAR US. 
 
 263 
 
 "'I can ascertain by going to the 
 strangers' club,' said the retired jew- 
 eler. 
 
 "Rodolphe's first excursion was natu- 
 rally to the Villa Diodati, the residence 
 of Lord Byron, which the recent death 
 of the great poet had endowed with still 
 more attraction. Is not death the conse- 
 cration of genius ? The road which from 
 Eaux-Vives follows the shores of the 
 Lake of Geneva is, like all the roads in 
 Switzerland, rather narrow, and in cer- 
 tain places, owing to the rocky nature of 
 the ground, there is scarcely room enough 
 left for the carriages to pass. At some 
 paces from the Jeanrenauds' house, close 
 to which he had arrived without knowing 
 it, Rodolphe heard behind him the noise 
 of a carriage, and, finding himself in a 
 species of gorge, he climbed on to the 
 point of a rock to leave a free passage. 
 Naturally, he looked at the carriage 
 coming toward him, an elegant caleche 
 drawn by two magnificent English horses. 
 He was thunderstruck at seeing, at- the 
 back of this caleche, Francesca, divinely 
 dressed, by the side of an old lady as stiff 
 as a cameo. A chasseur, dazzling with 
 gold, was holding on behind the car- 
 riage. Francesca recognized Rodolphe, 
 and smiled at finding him there, perched 
 like a statue on its pedestal. The car- 
 riage, which the lover was enabled to fol- 
 low with his eyes by climbing the height, 
 turned to enter the gate of a country 
 house, to which he ran. 
 
 " 'Who lives here?' he asked the gar- 
 dener. 
 
 "'The Prince and Princess Colonna, 
 as well as the Prince and Princess Gan- 
 dolphini.' 
 
 " ' Is it not they who have just gone 
 in?' 
 
 '"Yes, sir.' 
 
 "In a moment the veil fell from the 
 eyes of Rodolphe ; he saw through the 
 past clearly. 
 
 "'Provided,' said the thunderstruck 
 lover to himself, 'that this is her last 
 mystification ! ' 
 
 " He trembled lest he should have been 
 the plaything of a caprice, for he had 
 heard speak of what a cappriccio is to an 
 
 Italian. But what a crime in the eyes of 
 a woman, to have treated as a shopkeeper 
 a princess of princely birth — to have 
 taken the daughter of one of the most 
 illustrious families of the Middle Ages for 
 the wife of a bookseller ! The conscious- 
 ness of his faults redoubled Rodolphe's 
 desire to know whether he would be dis- 
 owned, repulsed. He asked for the Prince 
 Gandoljihini, sending up his card, and 
 was immediately received by the sham 
 Lamporani, who came to meet him, and 
 welcomed him with perfect grace, with 
 Neapolitan affability, and took him on to 
 a terrace from which you could|sec Geneva, 
 the Jura and its slopes studded with villas, 
 and, beyond, the shores of the lake to a 
 ■wide extent. 
 
 " ' My wife is faithful to lakes, .you see,' 
 said he, after having described the coun- 
 try to his guest. ' We have a sort of 
 concert to-night,' added he, returning 
 towai'd the magnificent house of Jean- 
 renaud ; ' I hope you will do the princess 
 and myself the pleasure of coming. Two 
 months of misery gone through together 
 are equal to years of friendship.' 
 
 " Although devoured by curiosity, Ro- 
 dolphe did not venture to ask to see the 
 princess; he returned slowly to Eaux- 
 Vives, thinking of the evening. In a few 
 hours, his love, however immense already, 
 was aggrandized by his anxiet3'^ and by 
 the expectation of coming events. He 
 understood now the necessity of becoming 
 illustrious, to raise himself to the height, 
 sociallj' speaking, of his idol. Francesca 
 appeared very grand in his eyes from the 
 unaffectedness and simplicitj- of her con- 
 duct at Gersau. The naturally haughty 
 air of the Princess Coluniui dismayed Ro- 
 dolphe. who would have the father and 
 motlicr of Fra ncesca for enemies — at least, 
 he must expect it ; and the mj'stery the 
 Princess Gandolphini had so strongly im- 
 pressed upon him now appeared an ad- 
 mirable proof of alTection. By taking 
 precautions for the future, did not Fran- 
 cesca clearly say that she loved Ro- 
 dolphe? 
 
 •'At last nine o'clock struck ; Rodolphe 
 was able to get into a carriage and say, 
 with an emotion easv to understand, ' To
 
 2G4 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 the Jeanrenauds' house, the Prince Gan- 
 dolphini's ! ' 
 
 "At last he entered the salon, full of 
 foreigners of the highest distinction, and 
 where he remained of necessity among 
 a group near the door — for at the moment 
 they were singing a duet from Rossini. 
 
 "At last he could see Francesca, but 
 without being seen by her. The princess 
 was standing two steps from the piano. 
 Her marvelous hair, so long and so abun- 
 dant, was confined in a circlet of gold. 
 Her face, lighted up by the candles, was 
 radiant with the whiteness peculiar to t4ie 
 Italians, and which only produces its full 
 effect by candlelight. She was in ball 
 dress, exposing to admiration her charm- 
 ing shoulders, the figui'e of a young girl, 
 and the arms of an antique statue. Her 
 sublime beauty was beyond all possible 
 rivalry, although there were present some 
 charming English and Russians, the pret- 
 tiest women of Geneva, and some other 
 Italians, among whona shone the illustri- 
 ous Princess of Varese and the famous 
 singer Tinti, who was singing at the mo- 
 ment. 
 
 " Rodolphe, leaning against the door- 
 way, gazed at the princess, darting at 
 her that fixed, persistent, and attractive 
 glance charged with the whole power of 
 the human will concentrated in the senti- 
 ment called desire, but which then as- 
 sumes the character of a violent com- 
 mandment. Did the lire of this glance 
 reach Francesca ? Was Francesca ex- 
 pecting every moment to see Rodolphe ? 
 At the end of a few minutes she cast a 
 glance toward the door, as if attracted by 
 this current of love, and her eyes, with- 
 out hesitation, encountered the eye of 
 Rodolphe. A slight shudder agitated 
 this magnificent face and this splendid 
 frame. The mental shock had its reac- 
 tion; Francesca blushed. Rodolphe lived, 
 as it were, a whole life in tliis exchange, 
 so rapid that it can only be compared to 
 a flash of lightning. But what can com- 
 pare with his happiness ? He was be- 
 loved ! The sublime princess kept, in the 
 face of the world, in the splendid Maison 
 Jeanrenaud, the promise given by the 
 poor exQe, the capricious girl of the 
 
 Maison Bergmann. The intoxication of 
 such a moment renders a man a slave for 
 life ! A sly smile, elegant and artful, 
 frank and triumphant, agitated the lips 
 of the Princess Gandolphini, who, at a 
 moment when she thought herself un- 
 observed, gave Rodolphe a look which 
 seemed to beg his pardon for having de- 
 ceived him as to her station. When the 
 piece was finished, Rodolphe was able to 
 get to the prince, who graciously con- 
 ducted him to his wife. Rodolphe went 
 through the ceremony of an official pres- 
 entation to the Prince and Princess Colon- 
 na and Fi^ancesca. When this was over, 
 the princess had to take part in the fa- 
 mous quatuor 'Mi manca la voce,' which 
 was executed by her, by Tinti, by Geno- 
 vese the famous tenor, and by a cele- 
 brated Italian prince then in exile, whose 
 voice, if he had not been a prince, would 
 have made him one of the princes of art. 
 
 "'Sit down there,' said Francesca to 
 Rodolphe, pointing to her own chair. 
 ' Oime ! I am afraid there is a mistake 
 in the names ; for the last few moments 
 I have been the Princess Rodolphini.' 
 
 " This was said with a grace, a charm, a 
 simplicity', which recalled by this avowal, 
 cloaked in a jest, the happy days of Ger- 
 sau. Rodolphe experienced the delicious 
 sensation of listening to the voice of the 
 woman he adored, and being so near to 
 her that his cheek was almost brushed 
 by the stuff of her dress and the gauze of 
 her scarf. But when at such a moment, 
 ' Mi manca la voce ' is being sung, and 
 this quartet is executed by the finest 
 voices of Italy, it is easy to understand 
 how tears came to moisten Rodolphe's 
 eyes. 
 
 " In love, as in ever^-thing else perhaps, 
 there are certain facts, infinitesimal in 
 themselves, but the result of a thousand 
 trifling circumstances anterior, and whose 
 significance becomes immense when re- 
 ferred to the past and connected with the 
 future. You have felt a thousand times 
 the worth of the person beloved ; but a 
 trifle — the perfect union of the kindred 
 souls during a promenade by a word, by 
 an unexpected proof of love — carries the 
 sentiment to its highest degree. In short,
 
 ALBERT S A VARUS. 
 
 265 
 
 to explain this moral fact by an image 
 which, from the first ages of the world, 
 has had the most incontestable success, 
 there are, in a long chain, necessary 
 points of junction, at which the cohesion 
 is stronger than in the series of rings. 
 This recognition between Rodolphe and 
 Francesca during this evening, in the face 
 of the world, was one of those supreme 
 points which connect tlie future with the 
 past, which rivet more strongly on the 
 heart real attachments. Perhaps it was 
 of these sparse rivets that Bossuet spoke, 
 when he compared to them the rarity of 
 the happy moments of our life — he whose 
 love was so ardent and so secret. 
 
 " Next to the pleasure of admiring the 
 beloved object comes that of seeing her 
 admired by all. Rodolphe enjoyed them 
 both at once. Love is a treasure of recol- 
 lections, and although that of Rodolphe 
 was already full, he added to it some 
 precious pearls — smiles bestowed aside 
 on him alone, furtive glances, inflections 
 of voice in singing which Francesca cre- 
 ated for him, but which made the Tinti 
 pale with jealousy, so much were they 
 applauded. Accordingly, all his power 
 of desire, the special feature of his char- 
 acter, was concentrated on the lovely 
 Roman, who became unalterably the 
 source and the object of all his thoughts 
 and all his actions. Rodolphe loved as 
 all women dream of being loved, with a 
 strength, a constancy, a cohesion, which 
 made of Francesca the very substance of 
 his heart. He felt her mingled with his 
 blood as a purer blood, with his soul as a 
 more perfect soul. She would henceforth 
 imderlie the slightest efforts of liis life, 
 like the golden sand of the Mediterranean 
 under the water. In short, the slightest 
 aspiration of Rodolphe was an active 
 hope. 
 
 " At the end of a few days Francesca 
 admitted this immense love ; but it was 
 so natural, so thoroughlj^ mutual, that 
 she was not surprised at it. She was 
 worthy of it. 
 
 "'What is there surprising,' said she 
 to Rodolphe, while walking with him on 
 the terrace of her garden, after having 
 surprised one of those movements of self- 
 
 conceit so natural to the French in the 
 expression of their sentiments — 'what is 
 there marvelous in your loving a young 
 and beautiful woman, who is artiste 
 enough to be able to earn her living like 
 the Tinti, and who is able to gratify your 
 vanitj'? Where is the boor who would 
 not become an Amadis ? But that is not 
 the question between us. What you have 
 got to do is to love with constancy, with 
 persistence, and at a distance for years, 
 with no other pleasure than that of know- 
 ing yourself beloved.' 
 
 •" ' Alas ! ' said Rodolphe, ' will you not 
 consider my fidelity destitute of merit, 
 seeing me absorbed by the toils of a de- 
 vouring ambition ? Do you think I should 
 be wUling to see you exchange some day 
 the grand name of the Princess Gandol- 
 phini for that of an unknown man? I 
 shall strive to become one of the most 
 celebrated men of my country, to be rich, 
 to be great, so that you may be as proud 
 of my name as of your own name of 
 Colonna.' 
 
 '•' ' I should be very sorry not to see 
 you mth these sentiments in j^our heart,' 
 she answered, with a cliarming smile. 
 ' But do not wear yourself out with the 
 labors of ambition. Keep young. They 
 say that pohtics soon make a man old,' 
 
 '•' The rarest quality in women is a cer- 
 tain gayety which docs not diminish their 
 tenderness. Tliis mingling of a profound 
 sentiment with the gayety of youth added 
 at this moment adorable attractions to 
 Francesca. Here is the key to her char- 
 acter. She laughs and grows tender; 
 she gets excited, and returns to delicate 
 railleiy with an impulsiveness and an 
 ease which constitute her the charming 
 and delicious person whose reputation, 
 indeed, has spread far beyond Italy; she 
 conceals muler her feminine graces a pro- 
 found ei-udition, due to the extremely 
 monotonous and almost monastic life she 
 led in the old castle of the Colonnas. 
 This I'ich heiress was originally destined 
 to the cloister, being the fourth child of 
 the Prince and Princess Colonna, but the 
 death of her two brothei-s and her elder 
 sisters suddenly drew her from her seclu- 
 sion to be one of tlie best matches in the
 
 26(5 
 
 Tilt: HUMAX COMEDY. 
 
 Roman States. Her elder sister having 
 been affianced to the Prince Gandolphini, 
 ono of the richest landowners of Sicily, 
 Francesca was given to him so as not to 
 interfere with family arrang-emeuts. The 
 Colonnas and the Gandolphinis had al- 
 ways intermarried. From nine to six- 
 teen, Francesca, educated \iy a monsig- 
 nore of the family, had read the whole 
 library of the Colonnas, to keep her ar- 
 dent imagination occupied bj' the study 
 of science, art, and literature. But she 
 acquired, in the course of these studies, 
 that taste for independence and liberal 
 ideas which made her throw herself, as 
 well as her husband, into the revolution. 
 Rodolphe did not yet know that, without 
 counting five living languages, Francesca 
 knew Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. This 
 charming creature had admirably com- 
 prehended that one of the first conditions 
 of erudition in a woman is to keep it care- 
 fully concealed. 
 
 "Rodolphe remained the whole winter 
 at Geneva. This winter passed like a 
 day. When the spring arrived, notwitli- 
 standing the exquisite delight arising 
 from the society of a woman of talent, 
 prodigiously learned, young, and lively, 
 the lover underwent cruel sufferings, sup- 
 ported, however, with courage, but which 
 sometimes showed themselves on his phy- 
 siognomj-, which peeped out in his man- 
 nei*s and conversation, perhaps because 
 he did not tliink they were shared by her. 
 At times he was irritated while admiring 
 the calmness of Francesca, who, like the 
 English, seemed to take a pride in allow- 
 ing no expression to appear on her face, 
 whose serenitj^ defied love. He would 
 have had her agitated. He accused her 
 of having no feeling, believing in the 
 prejudice which ascribes to the Italian 
 women a feverish excitability. 
 
 "'I am a Roman,' Francesca gravelj' 
 answered him one day, taking seriously 
 some of Rodolphc's jesting on this sub- 
 ject. 
 
 •'There was a depth in the accent of 
 this answer which gave it the appearance 
 of a fierce irony, and made Rodolphe's 
 heart beat. The month of May displayed 
 the treasures of its youthful verdure ; the 
 
 sun at times had as much strength as in 
 the middle of the summer. The two 
 lovers were then leaning on a stone 
 balustrade which, at a part of the ter- 
 race where the ground is perpendicular 
 to the lake, surmounts tlie wall of a. 
 staircase by which you descend to get 
 into a boat. From the neighboring villa, 
 which has a nearly similar landing-place, 
 gilded out, like a swan, a yawl, with its 
 flaming flag, its pavilion with crimson 
 canopy, beneath which a charming wo- 
 man was indolently seated on red cush- 
 ions, with fresh flowers in her hair, 
 accompanied by a young man dressed 
 like a sailor, who rowed with all the 
 more grace that he was under the eyes 
 of this woman. 
 
 '"They are happy!' said Rodolphe, 
 with a bitter accent. ' Claire de Bour- 
 gogne, the last of the only house that 
 could rival the house of France — ' 
 
 " ' Oh, she is of a bastard branch ; and, 
 besides, through the Avomen — ' 
 
 " 'At all events, she is the Vicomtesse 
 de Beauseant, and did not — ' 
 
 " 'Hesitate, you mean, to bury herself 
 with Monsieur Gaston de Nueil,' said the 
 daughter of the Colonnas. 'She is only 
 a Frenchwoman, and I am an Italian, my 
 dear sir.' 
 
 " Francesca quitted the balustrade, 
 leaving Rodolphe there, and Avent to 
 the end of the terrace, from which an 
 immense extent of the lake is embraced. 
 Seeing her walk slowly, Rodolphe had a 
 suspicion that he had wounded this spirit, 
 innocent but not ignorant, at once so 
 proud and so humble. He turned cold. 
 He followed Francesca, who signed to 
 him to leave her alone ; but he took no 
 notice of the admonition, and surprised 
 her in the act of drying her tears. Tears 
 from such a resolute nature ! 
 
 " ' Francesca,' said he, taking her hand, 
 ' is there a single regret in your heart ? ' 
 
 " She kept silence, and disengaged her 
 hand, in which she held her embroidered 
 handkerchief, to dry her eyes again. 
 
 " 'Pardon me,' he went on ; and, with 
 a sudden impulse, he put his lips to her 
 eyes to stop her tears with his kisses. 
 
 " Francesca was not even aware of this
 
 ALBERT SAV Alius. 
 
 267 
 
 passionate movement, so violently was 
 she ag-itated. Rodolphe, believing in her 
 compliance, grew bolder ; he seized Fran- 
 cesca by the waist, pressed her to his 
 lieart, and snatched a kiss. But she dis- 
 engaged herself by a magnificent move- 
 ment of offended modesty, and at two 
 steps off, looking at him without anger, 
 but with resolution — 'Leave here to- 
 night,' she said ; 'we shall not see each 
 other again before Naples.' 
 
 " Notwithstanding the severity of this 
 order, it was religiously executed, for 
 Francesca desired it. 
 
 " On his return to Paris, Rodolphe found 
 awaiting him the portrait of tlie Princess 
 Gandolphini, done by Schinner, as Schin- 
 ner can paint portraits. This artist had 
 passed through Geneva on his waj' to 
 Italy. As he had positively refused to 
 take the portraits of several women, Ro- 
 dolphe did not believe that the prince, 
 who was excessively desirous of his wife's 
 portrait, would be able to vanquish the 
 repugnance of the celebrated painter; but 
 Francesca had, no doubt, fascinated him, 
 and obtained from hiin what was almost 
 a prodigy — an original portrait for Ro- 
 dolphe and a copy for Emilio. This is 
 what he learned from a charming and 
 delicious letter, in which imagination 
 made itself amends for the restraint im- 
 posed by the religion of conventionalitj'. 
 The lover answered it. Thus began an 
 uninterrupted correspondence between 
 Rodolphe and Francesca, the only pleas- 
 ure they allowed themselves. 
 
 "Rodolphe, the prey of an ambition 
 legitimized by his love, immediately set 
 to work. He sought fortune in the first 
 place, and embarked in an enterprise 
 into which he threw all his abilities and 
 all his capital; but he had to struggle 
 with the inexperience of youth against 
 a duplicity which triumphed over him. 
 Three years were lost in a vast enter- 
 prise — three years of effort and courage. 
 
 "The Villele ministry succumbed at the 
 same time as Rodolphe. Immediately, the 
 intrepid lover resolved to demand from 
 politics what business had refused him; 
 but before venturing into the storms of 
 this carreer, he went, wounded and suf- 
 
 fering, to have his wounds healed and re- 
 new his courage, to Naples, where the 
 Prince and Princess Gandolphini had been 
 recalled and restored to their property on 
 the accession of the king. In the middle 
 of his struggle it was a repose full of 
 bliss. He passed three months at the 
 Villa Gandolphini, cradled in hope. 
 
 " Rodolphe recommenced the edifice of 
 his fortune. Aln^ady his talents had 
 been remarked ; he was about, at last, to 
 realize the hopes of his ambition. A post 
 of eminence had been promised to his zeal, 
 as a recompense for his devotion and for 
 services rendered, when the storm of Julj', 
 1830, broke out and his bark foundered 
 again. 
 
 "She and God — these are the only 
 witnesses of the most courageous efforts 
 and the most audacious attempts of a 
 young man endowed with abilities, but 
 to whom, hitherto, the aid of the pro\i- 
 dence of fools, good luck, has been denied ; 
 and this indefatigable athlete, sustained 
 by love, is about to recommence fresh 
 combats, lighted on by a ray of affection 
 and a constant heart ! Lovers, pray for 
 him ! " 
 
 On finishing this narrative, Mademoi- 
 selle de Watteville felt her cheeks on Ore ; 
 fever was in her veins. She wept, but 
 with rage. This tale, inspired by the 
 literature of the day, was tlie first piece 
 of reading of the kind that Rosalie had 
 been permitted to devour. Love was 
 painted in it — if not with the hand of a 
 master, at least hy a man who appeared 
 to relate his own impressions; and the 
 truth, even unskillfully told, must always 
 touch a virgin heart. This was the se- 
 cret of the terrible agitation, of the fever 
 and the tears of Rosalie : she was jealous 
 of Francesca Colonna. She did not doubt 
 the sincerity' of this poem. Albert had 
 taken a pleasure in relating the birth of 
 his passion, while concealing, no doubt, 
 the names, and perhaps the places. Ros- 
 alie was seized with an infernal curiosity. 
 What woman would not, like her, have 
 wished to know the real name of her 
 rival? For she loved ! In residing these 
 pages, contagious to her, She had said to
 
 268 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 herself the solemn word, " I love ! " She 
 loved Albert, and she felt in her heart a 
 gnawing- desire to dispute him, to snatch 
 hini away from this unknown rival. She 
 rellectcd that she did not know music, 
 and that she was not handsome. 
 
 "He will never love me," she said to 
 herself. This word i-edoubled her desire 
 to know whether she was not mistaken — 
 if Albert really loved an Italian princess, 
 and was loved by her. During- this fatal 
 nig-lit, the spirit of rapid decision which 
 distinguished the famous Watteville de- 
 veloped itself undiminished in his heiress. 
 She conceived some of those extravag'ant 
 plans around which, indeed, hovers the 
 imagination of all young girls, when, in 
 the midst of the solitude to which they 
 are confined by imprudent mothers, th.ey 
 are excited by a capital event which the 
 s^'stem of compression to which they have 
 been subjected has not been able to fore- 
 see or to prevent. She thought of de- 
 scending with a ladder, b^^ the kiosk, into 
 the garden of the house in which Albert 
 lived — of taking advantage of the advo- 
 cate's sleep to look through his window 
 into the interior of his cabinet. She 
 thought of writing to him. She thought 
 of bursting the bonds of Bisontine society, 
 by introducing Albert into the salon of 
 the Hotel de Rupt. This enterprise, 
 which would have appeared the heig-ht 
 of impossibility to the Abbe de Grancey 
 himself, was the affair of an idea. 
 
 " Ah ! " said she to herself, " my father 
 has got into disputes at his estate of 
 Rouxey ; I will go there ! If he has not 
 gone to law, I will make him ; and then 
 Ae will come to our house," she exclaimed, 
 springing from her bed to the window, to 
 look at ihe enchanted light which illumi- 
 nated Albert's night. 
 
 It was striking one; he was still asleep. 
 
 " I shall see liim when he gets up. Per- 
 haps he will come to the Avindow." 
 
 At this moment Mademoiselle de Watte- 
 ville was the witness of an event which 
 must place in her hands the means of ar- 
 riving at a knowledge of Albert's secrets. 
 By the light of the moon, she perceived 
 two arms stretched out from the kiosk, 
 and which were assisting Jerome, Al- 
 
 bert's servant, to get over the wall and 
 come into the kiosk. In the accomplice 
 of Jerome, Rosalie immediately recog- 
 nized Mariette, the ladj^'s-maid. 
 
 " Mariette and Jerome !" 3:iid she to 
 herself. " An ugly woman like Mariette ! 
 The^' must certainlj'^ be ashamed of each 
 other." 
 
 If Mariette was horridly ugly and thir- 
 ty-six years old, she had inherited several 
 pieces of land. Having been seventeen 
 years in the service of Madame de Watte- 
 ville, who esteemed her much on accoupt 
 of her devoutness, her honesty, and her 
 long standing in the house, she had no 
 doubt economized and invested her wages 
 and perquisites. Now, at the rate of 
 about ten louis a year, she must be worth, 
 reckoning the compound interest and her 
 inheritances, about ten thousand francs. 
 In the eyes of Jerome, ten thousand 
 francs changed the laws of optics : he 
 saw in Mariette a fine figure. He did 
 not see the holes and seams a frightful 
 small-pox had left in her plain, flat face ; 
 for him the distorted mouth was straight ; 
 and since the advocate Savaron, by tak- 
 ing him into his service, had brought him 
 close to the Hotel de Rupt, he had laid 
 regular siege to the devout lady's-maid, 
 who was as stiff and prudish as her mis- 
 tress, and, like all ugly old mil ids, more 
 exacting than the best-looking girls. 
 
 If the noctm-nal scene of the kiosli is 
 now made intelligible to intelligent people, 
 it was not at all so to Rosalie, who, never- 
 theless, acquired the most dangerous of 
 all knowledge, that taught by a bad ex- 
 ample. A mother brings up her daughter 
 severely, keeps her under her wings for 
 seventeen years, and in an hour a servant 
 destroys this long and arduous toil, some- 
 times hj a word, often by a gesture ! 
 Rosalie went to bed again, not without 
 reflecting on all the advantages she might 
 derive from her discovery. The next 
 morning, going to mass accompanied by 
 Mariette (the baroness was indisposed), 
 Rosalie took her maid's arm, which con- 
 siderably astonished the Comtoise. 
 
 "Mariette," she said to her, "is Je- 
 rome in his master's confidence ? " 
 
 "I don't know, mademoiselle."
 
 ALBERT SAVARUS. 
 
 269 
 
 "Don't play the innocent with me," 
 answered Mademoiselle de Watteville, 
 sharply. "You allowed him to embrace 
 you last night in the kiosk. I am no 
 longer astonished at your so highly ap- 
 proving of my mother's plans for its 
 embellishment. ' ' 
 
 Rosalie felt the tremor which seized 
 Mariette by that of her arm. , 
 
 "I do not mean you any harm," said 
 Rosalie in continuation. " Reassure your- 
 self ; I will not say a word to my mother, 
 and j'ou can see Jerome as often as you 
 like." 
 
 "But, mademoiselle," answered Mari- 
 ette, "it is all quite right and proper. 
 Jerome has no other intentions than to 
 marry me," 
 
 " But wliy do you have meetings in the 
 middle of the night, then ? " 
 
 Mariette, floored, could not find an 
 answer. 
 
 " Listen, Mariette. I mj'self am in love 
 also ! I love in secret and all alone. I am, 
 after all, the only child of my father and 
 mother ; so you have more to hope for 
 from me than from anybody else in the 
 world." 
 
 " Certainly, mademoiselle, j'ou may 
 reckon on us for life and death," cried 
 Mariette, delighted at this unforeseen 
 result. 
 
 " In the first place, silence for silence," 
 said Rosalie. " I do not want to marry 
 Monsieur de Soulas ; but I require, and 
 absolutelj', a certain thing. My protection 
 is only to be obtained at this price." 
 
 " What ? " asked Mariette. 
 
 " I want to see the letters Monsieur 
 Savaron sends to the post by Jerome." 
 
 "But what for?" asked Mariette, 
 alarmed. 
 
 "Oh, only to read them; and you will 
 put them into the post yourself afterw&rd. 
 It will only delay them a little, that is 
 all." 
 
 At this moment Mademoiselle de Watte- 
 ville and Mariette entered the church, and 
 each of them indulged in her reflections 
 instead of reading the ordinary of the 
 mass. 
 
 "Mj' God ! how many sins are there in 
 all this ? " said Mariette to herself. 
 
 Rosalie, whose mind, and head, and 
 heart were upset by the reading of the 
 tale, looked upon it, at last, as a sort of 
 history written for her rival. By dint of 
 reflecting, as children do, on the same 
 thing, she eventually thought that the 
 "Revue de TEst " must be sent to Al- 
 bert's beloved . 
 
 "Oh ! " she said to herself, on her knees, 
 her head buried in her hands, and in the 
 attitude of a person absorbed in prayer, 
 " oh, how am I to get my father to exam- 
 ine the list of the people to whom this 
 review is sent? " 
 
 After breakfast, she walked round the 
 garden with hei- father, coaxing him, and 
 got him into the kiosk. 
 
 "Do 30a think, dear old papa, that our 
 ' Revue ' is sent abroad ? " 
 
 " It has only just started." 
 
 "Well, I bet it is." 
 
 " It is scarcely possible." 
 
 " Go and see, and take down the names 
 of the foreign subscribers." 
 
 Two hours afterward. Monsieur de 
 WatteviHe said to his daughter, " I am 
 right ; there is not yet a single subscriber 
 in foreign countries. They hope to have 
 some at Neuchatel, at Berne, and at Ge- 
 neva. They do send a copy to Italy, but 
 gnitis, to a Milanese ladj', at her country 
 house on the Lago Maggiore at Belgirate." 
 
 " Her name ? " said Rosalie, eagerly. 
 
 "The Duchess of Argaiolo-" 
 
 "Do you know her, father? " 
 
 " I have heard of her. She is Princess 
 Soderini by birth. She is a Florentine, a 
 very great Indy, and quite as rich as her 
 husband, who possesses one of the finest 
 fortunes in Lombardy. Their viUa on the 
 Lago Maggiore is one of the curiosities of 
 Italy." 
 
 Two days later, Mariette handed the 
 following letter to Mademoiselle de Watte- 
 ville :— 
 
 Albert Savaron to Leopold Hannequin. 
 
 " Well, 3'es, my dear friend, I am at 
 Besancon, while ^'ou thought I was trav- 
 eling. I would not tell you anj'thing until 
 the moment when success was beginning, 
 and it has dawned. Yes, dear Leopold, 
 after so many abortive enterprises in
 
 270. 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 which I have expended the purest of my 
 blood, in -which I have thrown away so 
 many eflorts, consumed so much courag-e, 
 I have resolved to do like you — to take 
 the beaten path, the high-road, the long- 
 est and the surest. What a start I see 
 you give on your notarial chair ! But do 
 not believe that there is anj^thing of any 
 sort changed in my inner life, the secret 
 of which is known to you alone in the 
 world, and with the reserve imposed by 
 her. I did not tell you so, my friend, but 
 I was horriblj'^ wornout at Paris. The 
 result of the first enterjirise, on which I 
 placed all my hopes, and which turned 
 out unsuccessful through the profound 
 rascality of my two partners, who com- 
 bined- to cheat and plunder me — me, to 
 whose activity evcrj^thing was due ! — 
 made me give up the pursuit of pecuniary 
 fortune, after having thus wasted three 
 years of my life, of which one was spent 
 in lawsuits. Perhaps I should have come 
 worse off if I had not been obliged to study 
 the law at twenty years of age. I have 
 wished to become a politician, sofely to be 
 some day included in an edict on the peer- 
 age under the title of Count Albert Sa- 
 varon de Savarus, and to revive in France 
 a great name which has become extinct in 
 Belgium, although lam neither legitimate 
 nor legitimized . " 
 
 "Ah! I was sure of it; he is of noble 
 blood ! " exclaimed Rosalie, dropping the 
 letter. 
 
 " You knew how hard I studied — what 
 ^ an obscure but devoted and useful jour- 
 nalist, what an admirable secretary, I 
 was to the statesman, who, on his part, 
 was faithful to me in 1829. Thrust back 
 again into obscurity by the revolution of 
 July, just as my name was beginning to 
 emerge — at the moment when, as a maitre 
 des requetes, I was about at last to be- 
 come a part, as a necessary wheel, of the 
 political machine— I committed the blun- 
 der of remaining faithful to the van- 
 quished, of combating for them, without 
 them. Ah ! why was I only three and 
 thirty, and how was it I didn't beg 
 you to render me eligible ! I concealed 
 from you all my devotedness and my 
 perils. What could I do ? I had faith. 
 
 We should not have agreed. Ten months 
 ago, while you always saw me so gay and 
 happy, writing my political articles, I 
 was in despair. I found m.yself, at seven 
 and thirtjs with two thousand francs for 
 m3' whole fortune, without the least celeb- 
 rity-, having just failed in a noble enter- 
 prise, a dailj' paper which only satisfied a 
 want of the future, instead of addressmg 
 itself to the passions of the moment. I 
 no longer knew what to do; and I felt my 
 own powers ! I went about, sad and de- 
 jected, in the solitary- places of that Paris 
 which had deserted me, thinking of my 
 disappointed ambitions, but. without aban- 
 doning them. Oh, what letters, stamped 
 with rage, did I not write then to her, 
 mj' second conscience, my other self ! At 
 times I said to myself, ' Why have I made 
 out so vast a prog-ramme for my life ? 
 Whj' desire all ? Why not await happi- 
 ness while devoting myself to some quasi- 
 mechanical occupation ? ' 
 
 " I cast my eyes then on a humbh; ap- 
 pointment by which I could get a living. 
 I was about to have the management of 
 a newspaper under an editor who did not 
 know much, an ambitious man of wealth, 
 when I was seized with terror. ' Would 
 she accept for her husband a lover who 
 had sunk so low ? ' I said to myself. This 
 i-eflection sent me back again to two and 
 twenty. 
 
 " Oh, dear Leopold, how the soul wears 
 itself out in tliese perplexities ! What 
 must the caged eagles suffer then, the 
 imprisoned lions ? They suffer all that 
 Napoleon suffered, not at St. Helena, but 
 on the quaA' of the Tuileries, on the 10th 
 of August, when he saw Louis XVL de- 
 fending himself so badly — he who knew 
 how to put down sedition, as he afterward 
 did on the same spot, in Vendemiaire. 
 Well, ray life has been this day's suffer- 
 ings spread over four years. How many 
 speeches to the Chamber have I not de- 
 livered to the deserted alleys of the Bois 
 de Boulogne ? These useless improvisa- 
 tions have at least sharpened my tongue, 
 and accustomed my mind to put its ideas 
 into words. During these secret torments 
 j'ou were getting married, you were com- 
 pleting the payment for your business,
 
 ALBERT S A VARUS. 
 
 271 
 
 and j^ou were becoming adjoint to the 
 mayor of your arrondissement, after hav- 
 ing won the cross by getting wounded 
 at St. Merri. 
 
 '• Listen I When I was quite a little 
 fellow, :md tormented the cock-chafers, 
 there was a movement of these poor in- 
 sects which almost gave me the fever. 
 It was when I saw them making repeated 
 efforts to t;ike wing, but without being 
 able to fly, although they succeeded in 
 moving their wings. We used to say, 
 ' They are counting!' Was it sympathy ? 
 Was it a vision of the future? Oh, to 
 spread one's wings, and not to be able to 
 fly ! That bus been my fate ever since 
 the splendid enterprise with which the^^ 
 disgusted me, but which has since en- 
 riched four families. 
 
 '• In short; seven months ago, I resolved 
 to make myself a name at the bar of 
 Paris, seeing what openings had been 
 left by the promotion of so many barris- 
 ters to high offices. But, remembering 
 the rivalries I had already observed in 
 the bosom of the press, and how difficult 
 it is to get on in a career of any sort in 
 Paris, the arena where so many cliam- 
 pions encounter, I took a I'esolution cruel 
 for myself, but of sure effect, and perhaps 
 more rapid than any other. You had 
 thoroug'lily explained to me, in our con- 
 versations, the constitution of society at 
 Besancon ; the impossibility of a stranger 
 getting on there, causing the slightest 
 sensation, marrying, penetrating into 
 society, or succeeding in anything what- 
 ever. It was there I resolved to go and 
 plant my flag, reasonably thinking that 
 I should there escape competition, and 
 find myself the only one secretly canvass- 
 ing for election. The Comtois will not 
 receive the stranger ; the stranger will 
 not receive tliem. They refuse to admit 
 him into tlieir salons ; he will never go 
 into them. He will never show himself 
 anywhere, not even in the streets ! But 
 there is a class which elects members ; it 
 is the commercial class. I will specially 
 study "commercial questions, which I 
 know something of already. I will gain 
 causes: I will arrange differences; I will 
 become the first advocate of Besancon. 
 
 Later on, I will start a ' Review, ' in which 
 I will defend the interests of the province, 
 or I will create, support, or revive them. 
 When I have acquired, one by one, enough 
 votes, my nam'e will come out of the urn. 
 They will disdain for some time the un- 
 known barrister, but something will hap- 
 pen to bring him to light — a gratuitous 
 speech in court, an affair the other barris- 
 ters will not undertake. If I once speak, 
 I am sure of success. 
 
 "Well, my dear Leopold, I packed up 
 my library in eleven boxes, I bought the 
 law-books which might be useful to me, 
 and put the whole, as well as my furni- 
 ture, on the road to Besancon. I took out 
 my certificates, I made up a thousand 
 crowns, and came to wish you good-by. 
 The mail dropped me at Besancon, where 
 in the space of three daj's. I selected a 
 small suite of apartments looking on to 
 a garden. I arranged sumptuously the 
 mysterious cabinet, in which I spend my 
 days and nights, in which shines the por^ 
 trait of my idol, of her to whom my life 
 is consecrated, who absorbs it, who is the 
 source of vny efforts, the secret of my 
 courage, the cause of mj' talent. Then, 
 when the furniture and books arrived, I 
 took an intelligent servant, and remained 
 for five months like a dormouse in the 
 winter. 
 
 " I had been inscribed on the list of 
 advocates. At last, I was officially ap- 
 pointed to defend a poor devil at the as- 
 sizes, no doubt in order to hear me speak, 
 at all events, once ! One of the most in- 
 fluential merchants of Besancon was on 
 the jury; he had a complicated case going 
 on. I used all my efforts in this cause to 
 impress this man, and I had the most 
 complete success in the world. My client 
 was innocent ; I had the two culprits, who 
 were among the witnesses, dramatically 
 arrested. Even the court joined in the 
 admiration of the public. I was able to 
 save the self-love of thejugre d' instruction 
 by showing the almost impossibility of de- 
 tecting a plot so well laid. I got my great 
 merchant for a client, and I gained hiui 
 his cause. The chapter of the cathedral 
 selected me for counsel in a heavj' case 
 with the town, which had been going on
 
 272 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 for four years ; I won it. In these cases, 
 I became the g'reatest advocate of Franche 
 Comte. But I enshroud my life in the 
 most profound mystery, and thus conceal 
 my pretensions. I have contracted habits 
 which relieve me from accepting anj' in- 
 vitation. I can only be consulted from 
 six to eight in the morning- ; I go to bed 
 after dinner, and worlv during the night. 
 
 "The vicar-general, a man of intelli- 
 gence and great influence, who confided to 
 me the cause of the chapter, already lost 
 in the first stage, naturall3' spoke of grati- 
 tude. 'Sir,' I said to him, 'I will win 
 your cause ; but I want no fee. I want 
 more ' (sudden start of the abbe) . ' Know 
 that I lose enormously by appearing as 
 the adversary of the town. I came here 
 in order to go back a deputy ; I only take 
 commeix'ial cases because the commercial 
 men return the members, and they will 
 mistrust me if I plead for the priests— 
 for you are the priests to them. If I ac- 
 cept your case, it is because I was, in 
 1828, private secretary to such a min- 
 istry ' (fresh movement of astonishment 
 on the part of my abbe) — ' maitre des 
 requetes, under the name of Albert de 
 Savarus ' (another movement). 'I have 
 remained" faithful to monarchical prin- 
 ciples, but as you do not possess a ma- 
 jority in Besancon, I must acquire votes 
 among the tradesmen. Therefore, the 
 fee I ask of you is the votes that you 
 maj' be able to procure me at the op- 
 portune moment and in secret. Let us 
 keep each other's secret, and I will plead, 
 gratis, all the affairs of all the priests in 
 the diocese. Not a word of my antece- 
 dents, and let us be true to each other.' 
 
 " When he came to thank me, he handed 
 me a five hundred franc note, and said in 
 my ear, 'The votes still hold good.' In 
 the five conferences we have had, I have 
 made a friend, I believe, of the vicar-gen- 
 eral. Now, overwhelmed with business, 
 I only undertake the merchants', saying 
 that commercial questions are my special- 
 t}'. These tactics connect me with the 
 commercial men, and allow me to court 
 the influential people. Thus, all goes 
 well. In a few months I shall have 
 found in Besancon a house to buy, which 
 
 will give me the electoral qualification, 
 I reckon on you to lend me the capital 
 necessary for this purcliase. If I die, if I 
 fail, there would not be loss enough to be 
 a consideration between us. The rents 
 will pay you the interest ; and, besides, 
 I shall take care to wait for a good op- 
 portunity, so that you may not lose any- 
 thing by this necessar\' mortgage. 
 
 "Ah! my dear Leopold, never did 
 gambler, having the remains of his fort- 
 une in his pocket, and playing with it 
 at the Cercle des Strangers, in one last 
 nightfrom which he will rise either rich or 
 ruined, feel in his ears the perpetual sing- 
 ing, on his hands the nervous dampness, 
 in his head tlie fevered agitation, in his 
 body the internal tremors, that I experi- 
 ence every day while playing my last 
 stake in the game of ambition. Alas ! 
 my dear and only friend, I have been 
 fighting now for nearly ten years. This 
 combat with men and things, in which I 
 have incessaijtly exerted all ni}- strength 
 and all my energy, in which I have so 
 worn out the springs of desire, has under- 
 mined me, so to speak, internally. With 
 all the appearance of health and strength, 
 I feel myself ruined. Every day carries 
 away a shred of my inner life ; at? each 
 new elTort, I feel that I shall never be 
 able to repeat it. I have no more strength 
 or power left, except for happiness, and if 
 that does not come and place its crown of 
 roses on my head, the me I am will exist 
 no longer. I shall become a ruined ob- 
 ject ; I should no longer desire anj-thing 
 in the world, nor wish to be anj^hing in 
 it. You know that power and glory, the 
 immense moral fortune I pursue, is only 
 secondary ; it is for me the means of hap- 
 piness, the pedestal of my idol. 
 
 "To expire on reaching the goal, like 
 the ancient runner ; to see fortune and 
 death arrive together at the threshold ; 
 to obtain the object of our love when love 
 is extinct ; to possess no longer the power 
 of enjojonent, when we have earned the 
 means of happiness — oh, how many men 
 have undergone this destiny ! 
 
 " There is certainly a moment when 
 Tantalus stops, folds his arms, and de- 
 fies the infernals, rejecting his part of
 
 ALBERT S A VARUS. 
 
 273 
 
 an eternal dupe. I should be at this 
 l)omt if anything were to upset nw plans ; 
 if, after having bowed myself to the dust 
 of the proAince, having- crawled like a 
 hungiy tiger round these merchants, 
 these electors, to get their votes ; if, 
 after having worked up dry cases, having 
 given my time — a time that I might have 
 spent on the Lago Maggiore, looking at 
 the waters she looks at, reposing under 
 lier eyes, listening to her voice— I did not 
 bound to the tribune, to conquer there the 
 glory that must surround the name which 
 is to succeed that of Argaiolo. More than 
 that, Leopold ; there are days when I 
 feel a vaporous languor ; a mortal disgust 
 rises from the depths of my soul, above 
 all when, in long reveries, I have plunged 
 by anticipation into the midst of the joys 
 of happy love ! Does desire, then, only 
 inspire us with a certain dose of strength, 
 ^ and will it perish under a too great effu- 
 sion of its substance ? After all, at this 
 moment my life is fair, lighted on b^' 
 faith, bj' work, and by love. Adieu, my 
 friend ; I embrace your children, and j'ou 
 will recall to the recollection of your 
 excellent wife Your Albert." 
 
 Rosalie read this letter twice over, and 
 its general sense was engraved on her 
 heart. Siie penetrated suddenly- into the 
 previous life of Albert, for her quick in- 
 telligence explained its details and enabled 
 her to take in its whole extent. By com- 
 paring this confidence with the tale pub- 
 lished in the "Review," she understood 
 Albert thoroughly. She natui'ally ex- 
 agg'erated the proportions, already so 
 grand, of this noble soul and this power- 
 ^ ful will : and her love for Albert became 
 then a passion whose violence was in- 
 creased by all the force of her youth, by 
 the dullness of her solitude, hy the secret 
 energy of her character. To love is an 
 effect of the law of nature in a young 
 girl, but when her longing for affection 
 is fixed on an extraordinary man, it is 
 mingled with the enthusiasm which over- 
 flows in youthful hearts. Accordingly, 
 ilademoiselle de Watteville arrived in a 
 few days at a quasi-morbid and very 
 dangerous phase of amatory' excitement. 
 
 The baroness was very satisfied with her 
 daughter, who, under the empire of her 
 profound preoccupation, no longer re- 
 sisted her, appeared devoted to her vari- 
 ous feminine occupations, and realized her 
 beau ideal of an obedient daughter. 
 
 The barrister spoke two or three times 
 a week. Although overwhelmed with 
 business, he contrived to appear in court, 
 to conduct the commercial litigation and 
 the "Review," and remained in a pro- 
 found mystery-, comprehending that the 
 more his influence was silent and con- 
 cealed, the more real it would be. But he 
 neglected no means of success, studying 
 the list of Bisontine electors and discover- 
 ing their interests, their characters, their 
 various friendships, and their antipathies. 
 Did ever a cardinal who wanted to be pope 
 take so much trouble ? 
 
 One evening, Mariette, when she came 
 to dress Rosalie for a soiree brought her, 
 not without groaning over this abuse of 
 confidence, a letter whose address made 
 Mademoiselle de Watteville tremble, and 
 turn pale, and blush. 
 
 A Madame la Duchesse d' Argaiolo, 
 Nee Princesse Soderini, 
 a Belgirate, 
 
 Lac Majeur, 
 
 lUdie. 
 
 This address fiashed on her eyes as the 
 Mane, Thecel, Fhares, must have flashed 
 on the eyes of Belshazzar. After having 
 hidden the letter, Rosalie went down to go 
 with her mother to Madame de Chavon- 
 court's, and dm-ing the whole of this 
 eternal evening she was assailed by re- 
 morse and scruples. She had already felt 
 shame at having violated the secrecy of 
 Albert's letter to Leopold. She had asked 
 herself several times whether, knowing 
 this crime, infamous inasmuch as it was 
 necessarily unpunished, the noble Albert 
 could have an\' esteem for her. Her con- 
 science energeticallj^ answered her, "No I" 
 She had expiated her fault by doing self- 
 imposed penance. She fasted ; she morti- 
 fied hei-self by remaining on her knees, 
 with her arms crossed, antl saying prayers 
 for several hours. She had compelled 
 Mariette to the same acts of repentance.
 
 274 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 The truest asceticism mingled with her 
 passion, and rendered it all the more 
 dangiTous. 
 
 •• Shall I read or shall I not read the 
 letter? " she asked herself while listening 
 to the little De Chavoncourts. One was 
 sixteen, and the other seventeen and a 
 half. Rosalie looked upon her two friends 
 as little girls, because thcj' were not 
 secretly in love. ''' If I read it," she said 
 to lierself, after having vibrated for an 
 liour between yes or no, '• it will certainly 
 he the last. Since I have done so much 
 to know what he writes to his friend, why 
 should I not know what he writes to her ? 
 If it is a horrible crime, is it not a proof 
 of love? Oh, Albert, am I not your 
 wife ? " 
 
 When Rosalie was in bed, she opened 
 the letter, dated from day to day, so as 
 to give the duchess a faithful picture of 
 the life and sentiments of Albert. 
 
 "35th. 
 
 "My dear Life!— All goes well. To 
 the conquests I had already made I have 
 just added a precious one; I have rendered 
 a service to one of the most influential per- 
 sonages at the elections. Lilce the critics, 
 who make reputations without ever being 
 able to make one for themselves, he 
 makes deputies without ever being able 
 to become one. The good man wished 
 to pi'ove his gratitude at a cheap rate, 
 almost without untying his purse-string, 
 by asking me, ' Would you like to go into 
 the Chamber ? I can get you elected a 
 deputy.' ' If I were to resolve to embrace 
 a political career,' I answered him very 
 hypocritically, ' it would be to devote my- 
 self to the Comte, which I love, and 
 where I am appreciated.' 'Well, we will 
 decide you, and we shall have an influence 
 in the Chamber through j'ou, for you will 
 shine there.' 
 
 " Thus, my beloved angel, whatever 
 ^■ou may say, my perseverance will be 
 crowned with success. In a little while, 
 I shall speak from the summit of the 
 French tribune to my country and to 
 Europe. My name will be wafted to you 
 by the hundred voices of the French 
 press. 
 
 " Yes, as you tell me, I came to Bes- 
 ancon old, and Besancon has aged me 
 still more ; but, like Sextus V., I shall be 
 young on the morrow of my election. I 
 shall enter on my true life, into my proper 
 sphere. Shall we not be then on an equal- 
 ity ? The Count Savaron de Savarus, 
 ambassador to I don't know where, may 
 surelj' marry a Princess Soderini, widow 
 of the Duke d'Argaiolo-. Triumph brings 
 back 3'outh to men fortifietl by inces.sant 
 combats ? Oh, my life, with what joy did 
 I rush from my library to my cabinet, to 
 your dear portrait, to which I told my 
 progress before writing- to you ! Yes, my 
 owH votes, those of the vicar-general, 
 those of the people I shall oblige, and 
 those of this client, already assure my 
 election. 
 
 " 26th. 
 
 " We have entered on the twelfth year 
 since the happy night when, by a look, the 
 fair duchess ratified the promises of the 
 proscribed Francesca. Ah ! dearest, you 
 are thirty -two ; I am thirty-five ; the 
 good duke is seventy-seven — that is to 
 say, his age is ten years more than our 
 two — and he is still in good health. I 
 have nearly as much patience as love ; 
 and, besides, I want a few years more to 
 raise my fortune to the height of your 
 name. You see, I am gay ; I joke to-day. 
 Such is the effect of hope. Sadness or 
 gayety, everything comes from j'ou. The 
 hope of getting on always brings me back 
 to the morrow of the day I saw you for 
 the first time, in which my life became 
 attached to yours, like the earth to the 
 sun. Qual pianto these eleven years, for 
 it is the twenty-sixth of December, the 
 anniversary^ of my arrival at your villa on 
 the Lake of Constance. For eleven years 
 now I have been bewailing myself, and 
 j'^ou shining above me like a star placed 
 beyond the reach of a mortal. 
 
 " 27th. 
 
 " No, dearest, do not go to Milan ; stay 
 at Belgirate. Milan frightens me. I do 
 not like the abominable Milanese habit of 
 chatting every evening at the Scala with 
 a dozen people, among whom it would be 
 singular if one did not saj' some sweet 
 thinsrs to vou. For me, solitude is like
 
 ALBERT S A VARUS. 
 
 275 
 
 the piece of amber, in the bosom of which 
 an insect lives eternally in its unchang'e- 
 able beauty. The body and soul of a 
 woman remain thus pure and in the sym- 
 metry of their youth. Is it the Tedeschi 
 tliat you regret ? 
 
 "28th. 
 
 " Your statue will never be finished, 
 then ? I should like to have you in marble, 
 in painting, in miniature, in every style 
 to deceive iny impatience. I am still ex- 
 pecting the view of Belgirate from the 
 south, and that from the gallery. The^' 
 are the only ones wanting. I am so busy 
 that I can say nothing but a nothing to- 
 day, but this nothing is ever^iihing. Was 
 it not out of nothing that God made the 
 world ? This nothing is a word, the word 
 of God : I love you ! 
 
 "30th. 
 
 " Ah ! I have received your journal. 
 Thanks for your punctuality. You felt 
 pleased, then, at seeing the details of our 
 first acquaintance thus published ? Alas ! 
 although they were disguised, I was ter- 
 ribly afraid of offending you. We had no 
 novel, and a ' Revue ' without a novel is 
 a beauty without hair. XJninventive by 
 nature, and in despair, I took the only- 
 poesy in my soul, the only adventure in 
 my memory ; I brought it down to a 
 readable tone, and I never ceased to think 
 of you while writing the only literary 
 production which will ever come from my 
 lieart — I do not say from my pen. Did 
 not the transformation of the ferocious 
 Sormano into Gina make .you laugh ? 
 
 "You ask, how is my health? Why, 
 much better than in Paris. Although I 
 work tremendously, the calmness of the 
 scene has an influence on the soul. What 
 fatigues and ages one, dear angel, is the 
 .•ingiiish of deceived vanity, the perpetual 
 irritations of Paris life, the contests of 
 rival ambitions. Peace is a balm. If 
 you knew what pleasure your letter has 
 given me, that nice long letter in which 
 you tell the trifling incidents of your life ! 
 No ; you will never know, j'ou women, to 
 what an extent a real lover is interested 
 b^' these trifles. The sight of the scrap 
 of your new dress gave me immense 
 pleasure. Can it be a matter of indiffer- 
 
 ence to know how yon are dressed, whether 
 3'our noble brow is wrinkled, whether our 
 authors amuse you, whether the songs 
 of Canalis affect you ? I read the books 
 you read. There is nothing, even to your 
 excursion on the lake, which does not 
 interest me. Your letter is noble and gen- 
 tle as your soul. O heavenly- and con- 
 stantly adored flower ! could I have lived 
 without these dear letters, which, for 
 eleven years, have sustained me on my 
 difficult path like a ray of light, like a 
 perfume, like a regular chant, like a di- 
 vine food, like everything that consoles 
 and charms life? Do not fail me. If you 
 knew my anxiety on the eve of the day 
 I receive them, and the suffering the delay 
 of a day causes me ! Is she ill ! Is it 
 he? I am between Paradise and Gehenna; 
 I go mad. O mia cava diva ! Continue 
 to cultivate music, exercise your voice, 
 study. I am charmed with the conform- 
 ity of studies and hours which causes us, 
 although separated by the Alps, to live 
 in precisely the same manner. This idea 
 charms me and gives me courage. When 
 I pleaded for the first time — I have not 
 told 3'^ou- so before — I fancied you were 
 listening to me, and I suddenh' felt the 
 movement of inspiration which elevates 
 the poet above humanity. If I go to the 
 Chamber, j'ou must come to Paris to be 
 present at my debut. 
 
 " 30tti, Evening. 
 "My God ! how I love you ! Alas ! I 
 have staked too much on my love and my 
 hopes. An accident which should upset 
 tliis overloaded bark would destroy my 
 life. It is three years since I have seen 
 you, and at the idea of g'oing- to Belgirate 
 my heart beats so violently I am obliged 
 to stop. To see j^ou ; to hear that infan- 
 tine and caressing voice ; to embrace with 
 the ej-es that ivory skin so dazzling in the 
 light, and beneath which beats your noble 
 heart ; to admire your finsers running 
 over the keys ; to receive your whole soul 
 in a look, and your heart in the accent of 
 an ' Oime ' or an 'Alberto ' : to walk to- 
 gether among your orange trees in flower; 
 to live for some months in the bosom of 
 this sublime scene — that is life. Oh, what 
 folly to run after power, fame, fortune !
 
 27G 
 
 THE HUMAN" COMEDY 
 
 It is all at Belffirate : there is poetrjs 
 there is glory. I oug^bt to have made my- 
 self your steward, or, as the dear tyrant 
 whom we cannot hate proposed, lived 
 thert^ as cavaliere servente. which our 
 ardent passion did not permit us to accept. 
 Adieu, my angel. You will pardon me 
 my next fit of sadness for the sake of this 
 gayety, falling like a ray from the torch 
 of hope, wliich until now had appeared a 
 will-o'-the-wisp." 
 
 " How^ he loves!" exclaimed Rosalie, 
 letting fall the letter, which seemed too 
 hea\y to hold. After eleven years, to 
 write like this ! " 
 
 " Marie tte," said Mademoiselle de 
 Watteville to the lady's-maid, the next 
 morning, "go and put this letter in the 
 post. Tell Jerome I know all I wanted to 
 know, and he is to be faithful to Monsieur 
 Albert. We will confess these sins with- 
 out saying to whom the letters belonged, 
 or where they were going. I have done 
 very wi'ong ; I am the only culprit." 
 
 " You have been crjing, mademoiselle," 
 said Mariette. 
 
 " Yes ; and I should not like my mother 
 to notice it. Give me some very cold 
 water." 
 
 In the midst of her storms of passion, 
 Rosalie often listened to the voice of her 
 conscience. Touched by this admirable 
 fidelity of two hearts, she had just said 
 her prayers, and told lierself there was 
 nothing left for her but to resign lierself, 
 to respect the happiness of two beings 
 worthy of each other, resigned to their 
 fate, awaiting everything from God, with- 
 out giving way to criminal wishes or ac- 
 tions. She felt herself better, she experi- 
 enced an internal satisfaction, after having 
 taken this resolution. Inspired by the rec- 
 titude natural to j'outh. She was en- 
 couraged in it by a J'oung girl's re- 
 flection : she was sacrificing herself for 
 him. 
 
 " She does not know how to love," she 
 thought. " Ah ! if it were me, I would 
 sacrifice everything to a man who loved 
 me hke that. To be loved ! When and 
 by whom shall I be loved myself ? This 
 little Monsieur de Soulas is only in love 
 
 with my fortune ; if I were poor, he would 
 pay no attention to me." 
 
 " Rosalie, my girl, what are you tliink- 
 ing about,? You are going beyond the 
 line," said the baroness to her daughter, 
 who was making worked slippers for the 
 baron. 
 
 Rosalie spent the whole of the winter of 
 1834-1835 in secret conflicts ; but in the 
 spring, in the month of April, the period 
 at which she attained her nineteenth year, 
 she sometimes said to herself that it would 
 be a great thing to triumph over a Duch- 
 ess d'Argaiolo. In silence and solitude, 
 the prospect of this struggle rekindled 
 her passion and her evil thoughts. She 
 strengthened in advance her romantic 
 temerity by forming plans on plans. Al- 
 though such characters are exceptional, 
 there exist, unfortunately, far too many 
 Rosalies, and this history ought to be an 
 example to Ihem. 
 
 During this winter, Albert Savarus 
 had silenth' made immense progress in 
 Besancon. Sure of success, he awaited 
 with impatience the dissolution of the 
 Chamber. He had won over, among the 
 juste-milieu party, one of the makers of 
 Besancon, a rich contractor who wielded 
 great influence. 
 
 The Romans everywhere took enormous 
 pains and expended immense sums to get 
 an excellent and unlimited water supply 
 in all the cities of their empire. At Bes- 
 ancon they drank the water of Arcier, a 
 mountain situated at a j'retty good dis- 
 tance from Besancon. Besancon is a town 
 situated in the hollow of a horseshoe de- 
 cribed by tlie Doubs ; so that to re-estab- 
 lish the aqueduct of the Romans, in order 
 to drink the water the Romans drank, in 
 a town watered by the Doubs, is one 
 of those absurd ideas which could only 
 take in a province where the most ex- 
 emplary gravity reigns. If this fancy 
 got hold of the hearts of the Bisontines, 
 it would necessitate a large expenditure, 
 and this expenditure would be to the prof- 
 it of the influential man. Albert Savaron 
 de Savarus decided that the Doubs was 
 good for nothing but to flow under sus- 
 pension bridges, and that the onlj^ drinka- 
 ble water was that of Arcier. Articles
 
 ALBERT SAVARUS. 
 
 appeared in the " Revue de I'Est," which 
 were only the expression of the ideas of 
 Bisontine commerce. The nobles and the 
 citizens, t\\c juste milieu and the Legiti- 
 mists, the Government and the Opposi- 
 tion—in short, all the world was perfeeth' 
 agreed in wanting to drink the water of 
 Arcier, and possess a suspension bridge. 
 The question of the Arcier water was the 
 order of the day at Besancon. At Besan- 
 con, as in the two railways to Versailles, 
 as in existing abuses, there were hidden 
 interests which gave a powerful vitality 
 to the idea. The reasonable people, few 
 in number, besides, who opposed this proj- 
 ect were treated as blockheads. Nothing 
 was talked about but the two plans of the 
 barrister Savaron. 
 
 After eighteen months of subterranean 
 toil, this ambitious man had succeeded, 
 then, in the most stationary town in 
 France and the most obdurate to stran- 
 gers, in stirring it profoundly, in making, 
 according to a vulgar expression, sun- 
 shine and rain there, in exercising- a posi- 
 tive influence without having gone out- 
 side his own door. He had solved the 
 singular problem of being a power in a 
 place without being popular. During this 
 winter he gained seven causes for eccle- 
 siastics in Besancon. So that, at some 
 moments, he breathed by anticipation the 
 air of the Chamber. His heart swelled 
 at the thought of his coming triumph. 
 This immense desire, which made him 
 bring so many interests on the scene, and 
 invent so many stratagems, was absorb- 
 ing the last energies of his soul, strained 
 beyond measure. They applauded his 
 disinterestedness; he accepted without 
 observations the fees of his clients. But 
 this disinterestedness was moral usury ; 
 he expected a reward of more considera- 
 tion to him than all the gold in the world. 
 He had bought, professedly to render a 
 sei'vice to a merchant whose affairs were 
 embarrassed, in the month of October, 
 1834, and with the funds of Leopold Han- 
 nequin, a house which rendered him eligi- 
 ble for election. This profitable invest- 
 ment did not appear to have been either 
 sought or desired. 
 
 ' ' You are indeed a really remarkable 
 
 man," said the Abbe de Grancey, who 
 naturally watched anil understood the 
 barrister, to Sa varus. The vicar-general 
 had come to introduce to him a canon 
 who required his advice. '■ You are," 
 said he, "a, priest who is not in his right 
 road." 
 
 This saying struck Savarus. 
 
 On her side, Rosalie had decided, in her 
 weak girl's strong head, to bring Mon- 
 sieur de Savarus into the salon, and intro- 
 duce him into the societj'^ of the Hotel 
 de Rupt. She limited her desires as yet 
 to seeing Albert and listening to him. 
 She had compromised, so to speak, and 
 compromises are often onlj' truces. 
 
 The Rouxeys, the jDatrimonial' estate of 
 the Wattevilles, was worth ten thousand 
 francs a year net, but in other hands it 
 would have produced much more. The 
 carelessness of the baron, whose wife 
 would have, and had, an income of forty 
 thousand francs, left the Rouxeys under 
 the management of a sort of Maltre 
 Jacques, an old seiwant of the house of 
 Watteville, named Modinier. Still, when- 
 ever the baron and baroness felt inclined 
 to go into the country, the3' went to the 
 Rouxeys, the situation of which is very 
 picturesque. The house, the park — in 
 fact, everything had been created b}^ the 
 famous Watteville, who, in his active old 
 age, was passionately fond of this mag- 
 nificent spot. 
 
 Between two little Alps, two peaks 
 whose summits are bare, and which are 
 called the Great and the Little Rouxey, in 
 the middle of a gorge through which the 
 waters of these mountains descend and 
 flow on to mingle with the delicious 
 sources of the Doubs, Watteville had had 
 the idea of constructing an enormous 
 dam, leaving two weirs for the overflow 
 of the waters. Above his dam, he ob- 
 tained a lovelj' lake, and below it, two 
 cascades which, uniting at some yards 
 from their fall, fed a charming stream, 
 with which he watered tlie parched, ira- 
 cultivatcd vallej' formerly devastated hy 
 the torrent from the Rouxeys. This lake, 
 this valley, and these moimtains he shut 
 in by an inclosure, and built himself a 
 hermitage on the dam, which he made
 
 78 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 three acres in width, bring'inff to it all the 
 earth that, had to be dug- out to make the 
 bed of the stream and the canals for irri- 
 gation. When the Baron de Watteville 
 made himself the lake above his dam, he 
 was the proprietor of the two Rouxej'S, 
 but not of the higlier valley which he thus 
 inundated, through which there had al- 
 waj'S been a way, and which terminates 
 in a horseshoe at the foot of the Dent 
 de Vilard. But this savage old man in- 
 spired so much terror that, during his 
 whole life, there wus no complaint on the 
 part of the inhabitants of Les Riceys, a 
 little village situated on the other side of 
 the Dent de Vilard. When the baron 
 died, he 'had united the slopes of the 
 two Rouxeys to the foot of the Dent 
 de Vilard, by a strong wall, in order 
 not to inundate the two valleys which 
 opened into the gorge of the Rouxeys, to 
 the right and left of the peak of Vilard. 
 He died, having made a conquest of the 
 Dent de Vilard. His heirs constituted 
 themselves the protectors of the village 
 of Riceys and thus maintained the usurpa- 
 tion. The old murderer, the old i-enegade, 
 the old Abbe Watteville, had finished 
 his career in planting trees, and making 
 a splendid road, cut in the flank of one of 
 the two Rouxeys, and which ran into the 
 high-road. Attached to this park and 
 this habitation were grounds very ill cul- 
 tivated, cottages on the two mountains, 
 and uncultivated woods. It was wild and 
 solitary, under the protection of nature, 
 abandoned to the chances of vegetation, 
 but full of sublime pastures. You can 
 now picture to. yourself the Rouxeys. 
 
 It is quite unnecessary to encumber this 
 history by recounting the prodigious ef- 
 forts, and the stratag'ems stamped with 
 genius, by which Rosalie attained her end 
 without exciting suspicion. Suffice it to 
 say that, in obedience to her mother, she 
 left Besancon in the month of May, 1835, 
 in an old carriage drawn by two big hired 
 horses, and went with her father to the 
 Rouxeys. 
 
 Love explains everything to young 
 girls. When, on rising the morning after 
 her arrival at the Rouxeys, Mademoiselle 
 de Watteville looked from the window of 
 
 her room on to the fair sheet of water, 
 from which arose vapors exhaled like 
 fumes, and which hovered among the firs 
 and larches, crawling along the two peaks 
 to gain their summits, she gave vent to 
 a cry of admiration. 
 
 They fell in love while thej' were among 
 the lakes ; she is on a lake ! Decidedly, 
 a lake is full of love. 
 
 A lake fed by the snows shows the tints 
 of an opal and the transparency of an 
 enormous diamond ; but when it is shut 
 in, like that of the Rouxeys, between two 
 blocks of granite clothed with firs, when 
 there reigns over it the silence of a sa- 
 vanna or a steppe, it extorts from every 
 one the cry just uttered by Rosalie. 
 
 "We owe this," said her father, "to 
 the famous Watteville." 
 
 " Upon my honor," said the young 
 girl, "he wanted to atone for his crimes. 
 Let us get into the boat and go to the 
 end," said she ; "we shall get an appe- 
 tite for breakfast." 
 
 The baron sent for two young garden- 
 ers who knew how to row, and took with 
 him his first minister Modinier. The lake 
 was six acres and sometimes ten or twelve 
 in width, and four hundred acres in 
 length. 
 
 Rosalie soon got to the further end, 
 which was boimded by the Dent de Vilard, 
 the Jungfrau of this Uttle Switzerland. 
 
 "Here we are, monsieur le baron," 
 said Modinier, making a sign to the two 
 gardeners to make the boat fast; "will 
 you come and see?" 
 
 " See what ? " asked Rosalie. 
 
 "Oh, nothing," said the baron. "But 
 you are a sensible girl ; we have our 
 secrets together, and I may tell you 
 what is worrying mj^ mind. Since 1830, 
 difficulties have arisen between the com- 
 mune of Riceys and me, precisely on ac- 
 count of the Dent de Vilard, and I want 
 to settle them without your mother's 
 knowledge; for she is obstinate, and is 
 capable of getting into a passion, par- 
 ticularly if she knows that the mayor 
 of Rice^'s, a Republican, got up the dis- 
 pute to gratify his peeple." 
 
 Rosalie had courage enough to disguise 
 her 303', in order to have all the more in-
 
 ALBERT SAVARUS. 
 
 279 
 
 flucnce on her father. " What dispute ?" 
 said she. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," said Modinier, "the 
 people of the Riceys have for a long time 
 had a right of pasture and wood-cutting 
 on their side of the Dent de Vilard. Now, 
 Monsieur Chantonnil, their mayor ever 
 since 1830, asserts that the whole of the 
 Dent belongs to his commune, and main- 
 tains that a hundred and odd years ago 
 there was a right of way over our lands. 
 You comprehend that in that case we 
 should no longer be in our own house. 
 And then this savage would say next, 
 what the old inhabitants of the Riceys 
 say, that the site of the lake had been 
 appropriated by the Abbe de Watte- 
 ville. Why, it would be the ruin of the 
 Rouxeys." 
 
 " Alas ! my child, between ourselves, 
 it is true," said Monsieur de Watteville, 
 frankly. "This estate is a usurpation 
 consecrated by time ; therefore, to avoid 
 all further disputes, I intended to pro- 
 pose to settle amicably my boundaries on 
 this side of the Dent de Vilard, and then 
 I would build a wall." 
 
 ' ' If j'ou give way before the Republic, 
 it will devour you. It was for you to 
 threaten the Riceys." 
 
 " That is just what I was saying to 
 monsieur yesterday evening," replied 
 Modinier. " But, to support this opin- 
 ion, I proposed to him to come and see 
 whether there were not, either on this 
 side of the Dent or the other, at any part 
 of it, traces of an inclosure." 
 
 For a hundred years both sides had 
 been making the most of the Dent de 
 Vilard, the species of pai'ty wall between 
 the commune of the Riceys and tlie 
 Rouxeys, which did not produce a great 
 deal, without coming to extremities. The 
 object in litigation being covered with 
 snow six months out of the twelve, was 
 of a nature to keep the question cool. So 
 it required all the ai-dor inspired by the 
 Revolution of 1830 in the defenders of the 
 people to reanimate this affair, through 
 which Monsieur Chantonnil, mayor of 
 the Riceys, hoped to dramatize his ex- 
 istence on the quiet frontier of Switzer- 
 land, and immortalize his administration. 
 
 Chantonnil, as his name indicates, was of 
 Neuchatel origin. 
 
 "My dear father," said Rosalie, on 
 getting into the boat again, " I agree 
 with Modinier. If you want to obtain 
 the joint property of the Dent de Vilard, 
 it is necessary to act with vigor, and ob- 
 tain a judgment which will make you safe 
 against the proceedings of this Chanton- 
 nil. Why should you be afraid? Get 
 the famous Savaron for your counsel ; 
 secure him at once, so that Chantonnil 
 may not confide to him the interests of 
 his commune. The man who won the 
 cause of the chapter against the town 
 will certainly be able to win that of the 
 Wattevilles against the Riceys ! Be- 
 sides," said she, "the Rouxeys will be 
 mine some day (as far off as possible, I 
 hope). Well, do not leave me any law- 
 suits. I like this place, and I shall often 
 inhabit it. I shall enlarge-it as much as 
 lean. On these banks," said she, point- 
 ing to the bases of the two Rouxeys, "I 
 will have clumps of trees planted ; I will 
 make charming English gardens of them. 
 Let us go to Besancon, and not come 
 back without the Abbe de Grancey, Mon- 
 sieur Savaron, and my mother, if she 
 likes. Then you will be able to come to a 
 decision ; but, in your place, I should have 
 decided already. You bear the name of 
 a Watteville, and you are afraid of a com- 
 bat ! If you lose the cause, then I wUl 
 never say a word to reproach you." 
 
 " Oh, if you take it in that light, I am 
 quite wUling ; and I will see the advo- 
 cate." 
 
 " Besides, a lawsuit is verj' amusing. 
 It gives an interest to jm\Y life ; you go 
 and come and bustle about. Will you not 
 have a thousand steps to take to get at 
 the judges ? We never saw the Abbe de 
 Grancey for more than three weeks, he 
 was so busy ! " 
 
 " But the whole existence of the chapter 
 was at stake," said Monsieur de Watte- 
 ville. " And, besides that, the self-esteem, 
 the conscience of the archbishop, evei-y- 
 thing that priests live for, was concerned. 
 This Savaron does not know what he has 
 done for the chapter; he has saved it." 
 
 "Listen to me," she whispered. "If
 
 280 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 you have Monsieur Savaron for you, you 
 will win, will you not ? Well, let, me g-ive 
 you a piece of advice. You can only g-et 
 hold of • ilonsieur Savai'on through Mon- 
 sieur de Grancey. If j'ou think I am 
 right, let us speak to the dear abbe 
 together, without my mother being at the 
 conference ; for I know a means of induc- 
 ing him to get us Monsieur Savaron." 
 
 " It will be very diEEicult not to mention 
 it to your mother." 
 
 "The Abbe de Grancey will undertake 
 that afterward ; but make up your mind 
 to promise your vote to the barrister Sav- 
 aron at the next election, and you will 
 see." 
 
 "Go to the elections ! Take the oath !" 
 exclaimed the Baron de Watteville. 
 
 " Bah ! " said she. 
 
 " And what will j^our mother say ? " 
 
 " Perhaps she will order you to do it," 
 answered Rosalie, who knew from the 
 letter of Albei't to Leopold the pi-omises 
 made by the vicar-general. 
 
 Four days after, the Abbe de Grancey 
 popped upon Albert de Savaron very 
 early in the morning, having given no- 
 tice of his visit the day before. The old 
 priest came to retain the great advocate 
 for the house of Watteville — a step which 
 rev(>als the tact and adroitness secretly 
 brought into i^lay by Rosalie. 
 
 " What can I do for j'ou, monsieur the 
 vicar-general ? '•' said Savarus. 
 
 The abbe, who rattled through his 
 business with admirable good humor, 
 was coldly listened to by Albert. 
 
 " My dear abbe," answered he, " it is 
 impossible for me to undertake the inter- 
 ests of the house of Watteville, and you 
 will understand why. The part I have 
 to plaj^ here consists of keeping the 
 strictest neutrality. I do not want to 
 show any colors, and must remain an 
 enigma until the eve of my election. 
 Now, to plead for the Wattevilles would 
 be nothing in Paris; but here — here, 
 where ever^•thing is commented upon — 
 everybody would set me down as the 
 representative of your faubourg Saint 
 Germain." 
 
 " What, do you believe that you will 
 be able to remain unknown on the day of 
 
 election, when the candidates attack each 
 other ? People must know then that your 
 name is Savaron de Savarus, that you 
 have been mattre des requetes, and that 
 you are a supporter of the Restoration." 
 
 " On the day of election," said Savarus, 
 " I shall be everything it is necessary to 
 be. I intend to speak at the preliminary 
 meetings." 
 
 "If Monsieur de Watteville and his 
 partj' support j'ou, you will have a hun- 
 dred compact votes, and rather more 
 reliable ones- than those on which you 
 reckon. You can always sow division 
 among interests, but you cannot split up ' 
 convictions." 
 
 "Oh, the deuce!" resumed Savarus. 
 " I love you, and would do a great deal 
 for you, father. Perhaps we may come 
 to terms with the devil. Whatever may 
 be the nature of Monsieur de Watteville's 
 business, we may, by employing Girardet 
 and giving him instructions, dela^- pro- 
 ceedings until after the elections. I will 
 only undertake to plead on the day after 
 my election." 
 
 " Do one thing," said the abbe. "Come 
 to the Hotel de Rupt. There is a young 
 girl of nineteen there, who will one day 
 have an income of a hundred thousand 
 francs, and you will appear to be paying 
 your addresses to her." 
 
 " Ah ! the young girl I see so often in 
 the kiosk." 
 
 "Yes, Mademoiselle Rosalie," resumed 
 the Abbe de Grancey. "You are am- 
 bitious. If you please her, you will be 
 everything an ambitious man desires to 
 be — who knows? perhaps a minister. A 
 man can always be a minister when he 
 combines a fortune of a himdred thousand 
 francs a year with your astounding 
 abilities." 
 
 "Monsieur I'Abbe," said Albert, warm- 
 ly, "if Mademoiselle de Watteville had 
 three times as large a fortune and adored 
 me, it would be impossible for me to marry 
 her." 
 
 "Are you married, then? " asked the 
 Abbe de Grance.y. 
 
 "Not in church, nor at the mairie," 
 said Savarus, "but morally." 
 
 " That is worse, when one is as strongly
 
 ALBERT S A VARUS. 
 
 2S1 
 
 attached as j'ou seem to be," replied the 
 abbe. " What is not done can be undone. 
 Do not rest your fortune and your plans 
 on the will of a woman, any more than a 
 wise man waits for a dead man's shoes to 
 start on a journej-." 
 
 "Let us leave Mademoiselle de Watte- 
 ville alone," said Albert, gravely, "and 
 settle our arrangements. For your sake, 
 whom I love and respect, I will plead, but 
 after the elections, for Monsieur de Watte, 
 ville. Until then j^our business will be 
 managed by Girardet, according to m^' 
 instructions. That is all I can do for 
 you." 
 
 "But there are questions which can 
 only be decided after an inspection of the 
 locality'," said the vicar-general. 
 
 "Girai'det will go," replied Savarus. 
 " I camiot allow myself, in the midst of a 
 town I know so well, to take a step of 
 a nature to compromise the immense in- 
 terests concealed behind my election." 
 
 The Abbe de Grancey, on leaving Sav- 
 arus, gave him a sly look, by which he 
 seemed to laugh at the compact policy of 
 the young athlete, while admiring his 
 resolution. 
 
 ' •' Ah ! I have dragged mj^ father into 
 a lawsuit ! Ah ! I have done all this to 
 get you here ! " said Rosalie to herself, 
 from the height of the kiosk, looking at 
 the barrister in his cabinet the day after 
 the conference between Albert and the 
 Abbe de Grancej', the result of which had 
 been communicated to her by her father. 
 " I have committed mortal sins, and you 
 will not enter the salon of the Hotel de 
 Rupt, and I shall not hear your splendid 
 voice ! You put conditions on your assist- 
 ance when the Wattevilles and the Rupls 
 ask for it ! Well, God knows I would 
 have been satisfied with these small pleas- 
 ures—to see you, to hear you, to goto the 
 Rouxej'S with you, and have them conse- 
 crated for me by your presence. I did 
 not want anj' more. But now I will be 
 your wife! Yes, yes; look at hei' por- 
 traits, examine her salons, her room, the 
 four fronts of her villa, the views in her 
 gardens! You are waiting for her statue! 
 I will turn her to marble herself for you. 
 Besides, this woman cannot love. Art, 
 
 science, literature, singing, and music 
 have taken up half her senses and her in- 
 tellect. Besides, she is old ; she is more 
 than thirtj', and my Albert would be un- 
 happy ! " 
 
 "What makes you stay there, Rosa- 
 lie?" said her mother, interrupting the 
 reflections of her daughter. "Monsieur 
 de Soulas is in the salon, and remarked 
 your attitude, which certainly betrayed 
 more thoughts than you ought to have 
 at your age." 
 
 "Is Monsieur de Soulas an enemy of 
 thought?" asked she. 
 
 " You were thinking, then ? " said Ma- 
 dame de Watteville. 
 
 "Why, yes, mamma." 
 
 "Why, no, you were not thinking. You 
 were looking at the windows of this bar- 
 rister with an interest which is neither 
 proper nor decent, and which Monsieur 
 de Soulas, least of all persons, ought to 
 remark." 
 
 " But whj' ? " said Rosalie. 
 
 "Well," said the baroness, "it is time 
 that you knew our intentions. Amedee 
 admires j'ou, and you will not be badly 
 off as Countess de Soulas." 
 
 Pale as a lUy, Rosalie made no answer 
 to her mother, the violence of her disajj- 
 pointed sentiments rendered her so thoi"- 
 oughly stupid. But in the presence of 
 this man, whom she hated so deeply since 
 an instant ago, she put on the indefinable 
 smile that dancers put on for the public. 
 In short, she was able to laugh, she had 
 strength to conceal her rage, which calmed 
 itself down, for she resolved to employ 
 this great silly young fellow for her owti 
 purposes. 
 
 " Monsieur Amedee," she said to him, 
 during a moment when the bai'oness w^s 
 in advance of them in the garden, affect- 
 ing to leave the young people alone, " you 
 did not know, then, that Monsieur Albert 
 Savaron de Savarus is a Legitimist ? " 
 
 "A Legitimist?" 
 
 " Before 1830 he was maitre des re- 
 quetes to the Council of State, attached 
 to the presidency of the CouncU of Minis- 
 ters, and in favor with the dauphin and 
 dauphiness. It would have been good of 
 you not to say anything against him, but
 
 282 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 it would be still better to go to the elec- 
 tions this 3'ear, to support him and pre- 
 vent that poor Monsieur de Chavoucourt 
 from representing the town of Besaucon." 
 
 " But why do you take such a sudden 
 interest in this Savaron ? " 
 
 " Monsieur Albert de Savarus, the nat- 
 ural son of tlie Count de Savarus (pray 
 keep this piece of indiscretion secret), if 
 he is elected deputy, will be our counsel 
 in the affair of the Rouxeys. The Rouxeys, 
 my father tells me, will be my property. 
 I should like to live there ; it is charming ! 
 I should be in despair at seeing this mag- 
 nificent creation of the great Watteville 
 destroj-ed." 
 
 " Diajitre ! " said Amedee to himself, 
 on leaving the Hotel de Rupt, "this 
 heiress is not quite such a fool as her 
 mother thinks her." 
 
 Monsieur de Chavoncourt is a Royalist 
 who belongs to the famous 221. Accord- 
 ingly, from the very day of the Revolu- 
 tion of July, he preached the salutary 
 doctrine of taking the oath and combat- 
 ing the actual order of things, after the 
 example of the Tories against the Whigs 
 in England. This doctrine was not 
 adopted by the Legitimists, who, in their 
 defeat, had the good sense to differ in 
 opinion and rely on the vis inertice and 
 on Providence. Exposed to the suspicion 
 of his part}'. Monsieur de Chavoncourt 
 appeared to the members of the juste 
 milieu the most satisfactory choice to 
 make ; they preferred the triumph of his 
 moderate opinions to the ovation of a 
 Republican who united the votes of the 
 enthusiasts and the patriots. Monsieur 
 de Chavoncourt, a man very much es- 
 teenaed in Besancon, represented an old 
 pjirliamentary family; his fortune, of 
 about fifteen thousand francs a year, 
 did not offend anybodj^ none the less be- 
 cause he had a son and three daughters. 
 Fifteen tliousand francs a year are nothing 
 with such encumbrances. Now when, 
 under these circumstances, the father of 
 a familj' remains incorruptible, it is dif- 
 ficult for the electors not to esteem him. 
 Electors manifest a passionate admiration 
 for the beau ideal of parliamentary virtue, 
 quite as much as the pit for the repre- 
 
 sentation of generous sentiments it very 
 seldom practices. Madame de Chavon- 
 court, then forty years of age, was one 
 of the fine women of Besancon. During 
 the sessions, she lived poorly on one of 
 her estates, in oi'der to make up by her 
 economies for the expenses of Monsieur 
 de Chavoncourt at Paris. In the winter, 
 she entertained her friends honoi'ably one 
 day in the week, the Tuesday ; but with 
 a thorough knowledge of her duties as 
 mistress of tlie house. Young Chavon- 
 court, aged twenty-two, and another 
 young gentleman, named Monsieur de 
 VaucheUes, no richer than Amedee, and 
 also his schoolfellow, were exceedingly 
 intimate. They went together to Gran- 
 ville ; they went out shooting- together ; 
 they were so well known as inseparables 
 that they were invited into the country 
 together. 
 
 Equally intimate with the young Cha- 
 voncourts, Rosalie knew that these three 
 young men had no secrets from each 
 other. She said to herself that if Mon- 
 sieur de Soulas committed an indiscretion, 
 it would be with his two intimate friends. 
 Now, Monsieur de VaucheUes had his 
 plans prepax-ed for his marriage as Ame- 
 dee had for his ; he wanted to marry 
 Victoire, the eldest of the young Chavon- 
 courts, on whom an old aunt would settle 
 an estate of seven thousand francs a year 
 and a hundred thousand francs in raonej' 
 by the marriage contract. Victoire was 
 the goddaughter and the favorite of this 
 aunt. Evidently, then, young Chavon- 
 court and VaucheUes would warn Mon- 
 sieur de Chavoncourt of the peril he would 
 be placed in by the pretensions of Albert. 
 But this was not enough for Rosalie ; she 
 wrote, with her left hand, an anonj'mous 
 letter to the prefect of the department, 
 signed A friend of Louis Philippe, in 
 which she infoi-med liim of the secret 
 candidature of Monsieur Albert de Sav- 
 arus, explaining the dangerous support a 
 Royalist orator would lend to Bei'ryer, 
 and exposing the deepness of the conduct 
 pursued by the advocate at Besancon for 
 the last two years. The prefect was an 
 able man, a personal enemy of the Royal- 
 ist party, and devoted by conviction to
 
 ALBERT S A VARUS. 
 
 283 
 
 the Government of July ; in short, one of 
 those men who make the Minister of the 
 Interior in the Rue de Grenelle say, "We 
 have got a good prefect at Besancon." 
 This prefect read the letter, and, accord- 
 ing to request, burned it. 
 
 Rosahe wanted to make Albert lose his 
 election, in order to keep him for five 
 years more at Besancon. 
 
 The elections were at that time a party 
 struggle, and, in order to triumph, the 
 minister chose his ground in choosing the 
 moment of the contest. Accordingly, the 
 elections would not take place before the 
 end of thi'ee months. When a man's 
 whole life depends upon an election, the 
 time which elapses between the decree for 
 the convocation of tlie electoral colleges 
 and the day fixed for their operations is a 
 time during which his ordinary life is sus- 
 pended. And Rosalie well understood 
 how much latitude the preoccupations of 
 Albert during these months would leave 
 her. She obtained from Mariette, whom, 
 as she afterward confessed, she promised 
 to take into her service, as well as Jerome, 
 to deliver to her the letters sent by Albert 
 to Italy, and the letters for him that 
 came from that couutrj^. And all the 
 time she was executing these plans this 
 astonishing girl was making slippers for 
 her father, with the most innocent air in 
 the world. She even redoubled her can- 
 dor and innocence, knowing all the effect 
 of her candid and innocent looks. 
 
 "My daughter grows charming," said 
 the Baroness de Watteville. 
 
 Two months before the elections, a 
 meeting was held at the house of Mon- 
 sieur Boucher, senior, composed of the 
 contractor (who was looking forward to 
 the works of the bridge and the Arcier 
 water supply), of the father-in-law of 
 Monsieur Boucher, of Monsieur Granel 
 (the influential man to whom Savarus 
 laad rendered a ser^•ice, and who was to 
 propose him 'as a candidate), of the at- 
 tomej- Girardet, of the printer of the 
 " Re\Tie de I'Est," and of the president of 
 the Tribunal of Commerce. In short, 
 this meeting comprised twenty-seven of 
 those personages called in the provinces 
 "big wigs." Each of them represented 
 
 an average of six votes ; but, on reckon- 
 ing them, they were taken as ten, for 
 people always begin by exaggerating to 
 themselves their own influence. Among 
 these twenty-seven persons, one belonged 
 to the prefect, some false friend who 
 wanted a favor from the minister for his 
 friends or himself. At this first meeting 
 it was agreed to choose the barrister Sav- 
 aron for candidate, with an enthusiasm 
 nobody could have hoped for in Besancon. 
 
 While waiting at home for Alfred 
 Boucher to come and fetch him, Albert 
 chatted with the Abbe de Grancey, who 
 was interested in this immense ambition. 
 Albert had recognized the enormous polit- 
 ical capacity of the priest, and the priest, 
 moved by the prayers of the young man, 
 had consented to act as his guide and 
 counsel in this supreme struggle. The 
 chapter did not like Monsieur de Chavon- 
 court ; for the brother-in-law of his wife, 
 who was president of the tribunal, had 
 caused the loss of the famous suit in the 
 first stage. 
 
 "You are betrayed, my dear chUd," 
 -said the astute and respectable abbe, in 
 that soft, calm voice habitual to aged 
 priests. 
 
 "Betrayed!" exclaimed the lover, 
 struck to the heart. 
 
 "And by whom I know not," replied 
 the priest. " The prefecture is acquainted 
 with your plans, and looks over your 
 hand. For the moment I can give jou 
 no advice. Such affairs as this require 
 consideration. As to this evening, at 
 this meeting anticipate the attacks that 
 will be made on you. Relate all your 
 former life ; you will thus diminish the 
 effect that this discovery would produce 
 tn the Bisontines." 
 
 " Oh, I expected this ! " said Savarus, • 
 in a broken voice. 
 
 "You would not profit by my advice. 
 You had the oppoi-tunity of appearing at 
 the Hotel de Rupt. You don't know what 
 you would have gained." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " The unanimity of the Royalists : a 
 momentary agreement to go to the elec- 
 tions; in short, more than a hundred 
 votes. By adding to these what we call
 
 284 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY.. 
 
 among' ourselves the ecclesiastical votes, 
 you would have been not yet elected, but 
 sure of the election by ballot. In such a 
 case, you parley; you progress." 
 
 On entering-, Alfred Boucher, who an- 
 nounced the decision of the preliminary 
 meeting with great enthusiasm, found the 
 vicar-general and the advocate cold, calm, 
 and grave. 
 
 "Adieu, Monsieur I'Abbe," said Al- 
 bert; "we will go into your affair more 
 thoroug-hly after the elections." 
 
 And the advocate took Alfred's arm, 
 after having significantly pressed the 
 hand of Monsieur de Grancey. The priest 
 looked at this ambitious man, whose face 
 wore the sublime air of a general catch- 
 ing the sound of the first cannon-shot of 
 the battle. He lifted his eyes to heaven, 
 and said to himself on leaving, " What a 
 splendid priest he would make ! " 
 
 Eloquence is not to be found at the bar. 
 Seldom does the advocate put forth the 
 full powers of his soul, otherwise he would 
 perish in a few years. Eloquence is sel- 
 dom to be found in the jjulpit in these 
 days ; but it is to be found in certain sit- . 
 tings of the Chamber of Deputies, tvhen 
 the ambitious man risks all or nothing, 
 or, stimg by a thousand darts, breaks 
 out at a given moment. And it is still to 
 be found, assuredly, in certain privileged 
 beings in the fatal crisis when their pre- 
 tensions are about to fail or succeed, and 
 when they are obliged to speak. And so, 
 at this meeting, Albert Savarus, feeling 
 the necessity of making himself faithful 
 followers, developed all the faculties of 
 his soul, all the resources of his mind. 
 He entered the room well, without awk- 
 wardness or arrogance, without weakness 
 or timidity, but with gravity, and found 
 .himself, without surprise, in the midst of 
 upward of thirty persons. The rumor 
 of the meeting and its decision had already 
 attracted some docile sheep to the fold. 
 Before listening to Monsieur Boucher, who 
 wanted to deliver a speech respecting the 
 resolution of the Boucher committee, Al- 
 bert demanded silence by making signs 
 and pressing the hand of Monsieur 
 Boucher, as if to warn him of suddenly 
 arisen danger. 
 
 "My young friend Alfred Boucher has 
 just announced to me the honor you have 
 done me ; but, before this decision be- 
 comes final," said the advocate, " I think 
 it my duty to explain to j'ou what your 
 candidate is, in order to leave you still 
 free to withdraw your promises if my 
 declarations disturb your conscience." 
 
 This exordium had the effect of causing 
 a profound silence to reign around. Some 
 people considered the movement very 
 noble. 
 
 Albert explained his former life, an- 
 nouncing his real name and his employ- 
 ment under the Restoration, declaring 
 himself a new man since his arrival at 
 Besancon, and pledging -himself for the 
 future. This improvisation, they say, 
 kept all the audience breathless. These 
 men, whose interests were so opposite, 
 were all subjugated by the admirable elo- 
 quence which sprang boiling from the 
 heart and soul of this ambitious man. 
 Admiration prevented all reflection. They 
 only understood one thing, the tiling that 
 Albert wanted to get into their heads. 
 
 Was it not better for a city to be repre- 
 sented by one of those men destined to 
 govern society', than by a mere voting 
 machine? A statesman is himself a 
 power; an ordinary, but incorruptible, 
 deputy is only a conscience. What a 
 glory for Provence to have discovered 
 Mirabeau — to have returned, after 1830, 
 the only statesman produced by the Revo- 
 lution of July ! 
 
 Under the pressure of this eloquence, 
 all the auditors believed in its power to 
 become a magnificent political instrument 
 in their representative. They all saw 
 Savarus the minister in Albert Savaron. 
 Divining the secret calculations of his 
 hearers, the skillful candidate gave them 
 to understand that they would acquire, 
 themselves in the first place, the right of 
 making- use of his influence. 
 
 This profession of faith, this declaration 
 of ambition, this account of his life and 
 character, was, according to the only man 
 capable of judging Savarus, and who has 
 since become one of the notabilities of 
 Besancon, a masterpiece of -skill, of senti- 
 ment, of warmth, of interest, and of se-
 
 ALBERT S A VARUS. 
 
 285 
 
 duction. This whirlwind carried away 
 the electors. Never did man have such a 
 triumph. But, unfortunately, speech, a 
 sort of weapon forclose quarters, hasonl^y 
 an immediate effect. Reflection destroys 
 oratory when oratory has not triumphed 
 over reflection. If they had voted then 
 and there, assuredly the name of Albert 
 would have leaped from the urn. For the 
 moment, he was the conqueror. But he 
 had to conquer like this every day for two 
 months. Albert went away panting, for 
 breath. Applauded by the Bisontines, he 
 had obtained the grand result of killhig in 
 advance the damaging remarks to which 
 his antecedents might give rise. The 
 trade of Besancon constituted the barrister 
 Savaron de Savarus its candidate. The 
 enthusiasm of Alfred Boucher, contagious 
 at first, would, in the long run, become 
 embarrassing. 
 
 The prefect, alarmed at this success, 
 began to reckon up the number of the 
 ministerial votes, and contrived to procure 
 a secret interview with Monsieur de Cha- 
 voncourt, in order to coalesce with com- 
 mon interest. Every daj^, and without 
 Albert being able to discover how, the 
 votes of the Boucher committee dimin- 
 ished. A month before the election, Al- 
 bert found himself with scarcely sixty 
 votes. Nothing could resist the slow 
 operations of the prefecture. Three or 
 four clever men said to the clients of 
 Savarus, " Will the deputy plead and win 
 j'our causes? Will he give you his ad- 
 vice ? Will he draw j'our deeds and 
 ' agreements? You will make him your 
 slave for five years longer if, instead of 
 sending him to the Chamber, you only 
 give him the hope of getting there in 
 five years' time." This calculation was 
 all the more injurious to Savarus that it 
 liail alread^^ been made by some of the 
 merchant's wives. The persons interested 
 in the affair of the bridge and the Arcier 
 water did not resist a conference with an 
 adroit ministerial, who proved to them 
 that the protection for them was the pre- 
 fecture, and oot an adventurer. Every 
 da3'' was a defeat for Albert, although 
 every day was a battle, planned bj' him, 
 but carried out by his lieutenants — a 
 
 battle of words, of speeches, of maneu- 
 vers. He dared not go to the vicar-gen- 
 eral's, and the vicar -general did not 
 make his appearance. Albert got up 
 and went to bed in a fever, with his 
 brain on fire. 
 
 At length arrived the day of the first 
 contest, what is called a preliminary 
 meeting, at which the votes are counted, 
 at which the candidates calculate their 
 chances, and at which the skillful can 
 foresee their fall or their success. It is 
 a decorous hustings scene, without the 
 populace, but terrible. The emotions, if 
 they do not find physical expression as in 
 England, are none the less profound. The 
 English manage matters by force of fists; 
 in France they are managed by force of 
 phrases. Our neighbors have a battle; 
 tlie French risk their fate on cold combi- 
 nations elaborated with care. This po- 
 litical proceeding is carried on in a style 
 inverse to the character of the two nations. 
 
 The Radical party had its candidate; 
 Monsieur de Chavoncourt came forward ; 
 and then came Albert, who was accused 
 by the Radicals and b^' the Chavoncourt 
 committee of being an uncompromising 
 member of the Right, a double of Berryer. 
 The ministry had its candidate, a devoted 
 man, made use of to keep the pure minis- 
 terial votes together. The votes, thus 
 divided, came to no result. The Repub- 
 lican candidate had twenty votes, the 
 ministry mustered fifty, Albert counted 
 seventj^. Monsieur de Chavoncourt ob- 
 tained sixty-seven. But the perfidious 
 prefecture had made thirty of its most 
 devoted supporters vote for Albert, in 
 order to deceive its antagonist. The 
 voters for Monsieur de Chavoncourt, com- 
 bined with the eighty real voters for the 
 perfecture, became masters of the election, 
 if the perfect could only win over a few 
 votes from the Radical partj\ A hun- 
 dred and sixty votes were wanting, those 
 of Monsieur de Grancey and the Legiti- 
 mists. A preliminary meeting at the 
 elections is what a general rehearsal is at 
 the theater, the most deceitful thing in 
 the world. 
 
 Albert Savarus returned home, keeping 
 a good countenance, but death struck.
 
 286 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 He had had the sense, the genius, or the 
 luck to win over, during- the last fort- 
 night, two devoted adherents — the father- 
 in-law of Girardet, and a very cunning 
 old merchant to whom he was sent by 
 Monsieur de Grancey. These two good 
 nieti became his spies — passed themselves 
 ofT as the uaost ardent enemies of Savarus 
 in the opposing camps. Toward the end 
 of the preparatory^ sitting, they informed 
 Savarus, through the medium of Monsieur 
 Boucher, that thirty unknown voters were 
 carrying on against him, in his own party, 
 the devices which they were exercising on 
 his account among the others. 
 
 A criminal going to execution does not 
 suffer what Albert suffer-ed on returning 
 home from the hall in which his fate had 
 been put to the test. The despairing 
 lover would allow no one to accompany 
 him. He walked alone through the 
 streets, between eleven and twelve. At 
 one in the morning, Albert, from whom 
 for three nights sleep had fled, was seated 
 in his library in a Voltaire chair, his face 
 as pale as if he were about to expire, his 
 hands drooping in an attitude of abandon- 
 ment worthy of a Magdalen. Tears hung 
 in his long eyelashes, those tears which 
 wet the eyes but do not run down the 
 cheek ; intense thouglit absorbs them, 
 the fires of the soul devour them. Alone 
 he could weep. He perceived then, in the 
 kiosk, a white form which reminded him 
 of Francesca. 
 
 " And it is three months since I have 
 received a letter from her! What has 
 become of her ? I have been two months 
 without writing to her, but I gave her 
 notice of it. Is she ill ? O my love ! 
 my life ! will you ever know what I have 
 suffered ? What a fatal organization is 
 mine! Have I got an aneurism?" he 
 asked himself, feeling his heart beat so 
 violently that its pulsations resounded 
 through the silence like light grains of 
 sand falling on a big drum. 
 
 At this moment three discreet knocks 
 were heard on Albert's door. He im- 
 mediately went to open it, and almost 
 swooned with joy on seeing the vicar- 
 general with a joyous air, an air of 
 triumph. He seized the Abbe de Gran- 
 
 cey, without saying a word, held him in 
 his arms, embraced him, and allowed his 
 head to fall on the shoulder of the old 
 man ; and he became a child again — he 
 wept as he had wept on learning that 
 Francesca Soderini was married. He ex- 
 hibited his weakness only to this priest, 
 whose face was radiant with the dawn of 
 hope. The priest had been sublime, and 
 as astute as sublime. 
 
 "Pardon, dear abbe, but j^ou come at 
 one, of those moments when a man gives 
 way — for do not believe that mine is a 
 vulgar ambition." 
 
 " Yes, I know," replied the abbe; '•' you 
 have written 'Love's Ambition!' Ah! 
 my child, it was a hopeless love that made 
 a priest of me in 1786, at two and twenty. 
 In 1788 I was a cure. I know what life 
 is. I have already refused three bishop- 
 rics; I wish to die at Besancon." 
 
 "Come and see her,'' exclaimed Sava- 
 rus, taking the candle and showing the 
 abbe into the magnificent cabinet, in 
 which was placed the portrait of the 
 Duchess d'Argaiolo, which he lighted up. 
 
 " She is one of those women who are 
 born to reign ! " said the vicar, compre- 
 hending all the affection Albert showed 
 him by this mute confidence. "But there 
 is a host of pride on that brow ; it is im- 
 placable. She would never forgive an in- 
 jury ! She is an archangel Michael, the 
 angel of judgment, the inflexible angel. 
 ' All or nothing ' is the motto of those 
 angelic characters. There is something 
 divinely untamed in this countenance." 
 
 "You have imagined her exactly," ex- 
 claimed Savarus. " But, my dear abbe, 
 for more than twelve years she has reigned 
 over my life, and I have not a thought 
 with which to reproach myself." 
 
 "All! if you had done as much for 
 God," said the abbe with simplicity. 
 " Let us talk about your affairs. For 
 the last ten days I have been at work for 
 you. If 3'ou are really a politician, you 
 will follow my counsels this time. You 
 would not be in j'our present position, if 
 you had gone when I told yQu to the Hotel 
 de Eupt ; but you will go to-morrow. I 
 shall introduce you to-night. The estate 
 of the Eouxeys is threatened ; you must
 
 ALBERT SAV Alius. 
 
 287 
 
 plead in two days. The election will not 
 take place for three days. They will take 
 care not to complete the organization of 
 the bureaux the fii-st day ; we shall have 
 several scrutinies, and you will come in 
 at the final biillot." 
 
 "And how?" 
 
 " By winning the cause of the Eouxeys, 
 you will g'et eig-hty Legitimist votes ; add 
 them to the thirt,y votes of which I can 
 dispose, and we get to a hundred and 
 ten. Now, as there still remain to 3'ou 
 twenty of the Boucher committee, j'ou 
 will possess altogether a hundred and 
 thirty." 
 
 ' 'Well, "said Albert, ' ' we want seventy- 
 five more." 
 
 "Yes," said the priest, "for all the 
 rest belong to the ministry. But, my 
 child, you have got two hundred votes, 
 and the ministry has only a hundred and 
 eighty." 
 
 " I have got two hundred votes ? " said 
 Albert, who remained stupefied with as- 
 tonishment, after having started to his 
 feet as if shot up by a spring. 
 
 " You have the votes of Monsieur de 
 Cbavoncourt," replied the abbe. 
 
 "And how?" 
 
 "You marry Mademoiselle Sidonie de 
 Chavoncourt." 
 
 "Never! " 
 
 " You marry Mademoiselle Sidonie de 
 Chavoncourt," repeated the priest, coldly. 
 
 "But see ! she is implacable," said Al- 
 bert, pointing to Francesca. 
 
 " You marry Mademoiselle de Chavon- 
 court," repeated the priest, calmlj-, for 
 the third time. 
 
 This time Albert understood. The vicar- 
 general would not implicate himself in the 
 plan which found favor at last with this 
 politician driven to despair. A word more 
 would have compromised the dignitj' and 
 probit.v of the priest. 
 
 " You will find to-morrow at the Hotel 
 de Rupt 'Madame de Chavoncourt and her 
 second daughter. You will thank her for 
 what she is about to do for j'ou ; you will 
 tell her that j'our gratitude is boundless 
 — ^that you belong to her, body and soul. 
 Are not your future interests hencefor- 
 ward those of her family ? You are dis- 
 
 interested ; you have so much confidence 
 in yourself that you look upon a nomi- 
 nation as depnty as a sufficient marriage 
 portion. You will have a combat with 
 Madame de Chavoncourt ; she will try to 
 make you pledge jourself. In this even- 
 ing, my son, is your whole future. But, 
 understand, I have nothing to do with it ; 
 I am onlj^ responsible for the Legitimist 
 votes. I have won over for you Madame 
 de Watteville, and that means all the 
 aristocracy of Besaucon. Amedee de 
 Soulas and Vauchelles, who will vote for 
 you, have brought over the young people ; 
 Madame de Watteville wUl get you the 
 old ones. As for my votes, they are in- 
 fallible." 
 
 " Who has influenced Madame de Cha- 
 voncourt, then ? " asked Savarus. 
 
 " Do not question me," replied the abbe. 
 " Monsieur de Chavoncourt, who has got 
 three daughters to marry, is incapable of 
 augmenting his fortune. If Vauchelles 
 marries the first without a portion, on 
 account of the old aunt, who will finance 
 the marriage contract, what is to be done 
 with the two others ? Sidonie is sixteen, 
 and you have treasures in your ambition. 
 Some one has said to Madame de Chavon- 
 court that it would be better to marry 
 her daughter than to send her husband 
 to waste monej' at Paris. This some one 
 manages Madame de Chavoncourt, and 
 Madame de Chavoncourt manages her 
 husband." 
 
 "Enough, dear abbe, I understand. 
 Once elected, I shall have some one's 
 fortune to make, and by making it a 
 splendid one I shall be released from my 
 word. You have in me a son, a man who 
 will owe you all his happiness. My God ! 
 what have I done to deserve so mucli real 
 friendshiiD ? " 
 
 "You have procured the triumph of the 
 chapter," said the vicar-general, with a 
 suule. "Now, keep all this as secret as 
 the tomb. We are nothing ; we do noth- 
 ing. If they knew that we meddled with 
 the elections, we should be eaten up raw 
 by the puritans of the Left, who do woree, 
 and blamed by some of our own side, who 
 want everything. Madame de Chavon- 
 court does not suspect my participation
 
 288 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 in all this. I have only confided in Ma- 
 dame de Watte ville, on whom we may 
 rely as on ourselves." 
 
 "I will bring' you the duchess for you 
 to give us your blessing ! " exclaimed the 
 votaiy of ambition. 
 
 After having shown out the old priest, 
 Albert retired to rest in the cradle of 
 power. 
 
 At nine o'clock in the evening- of the 
 next day, as every one may imagine, the 
 salons of Madame the Bai'oness de Watte- 
 ville were filled with the Bisontine aris- 
 tocracy, specially convoked. The excep- 
 tion of taking- part in the elections to 
 please the daughter of the De Rupts was 
 being discussed. It was known that the 
 former maitre des requetes, the secretary 
 of one of the most faithful ministers of 
 the elder branch, was to be introduced. 
 Madame de Chavoncourt had come with 
 her second daughter, Sidonie, divinely 
 dressed ; while the eldest, sure of her 
 suitor, had not had recourse to any of 
 the artifices of the toilet. The Abbe de 
 Grancey showed his fine noble counte- 
 nance from group.to group, listening, and 
 apparently meddling in nothing, but utter- 
 ing those incisive phrases which sum up 
 and decide the question. 
 
 "If the elder branch returns,"' said he 
 to an old statesman of seventy, '' what 
 politicians will it find ? Alone on his 
 bench, Berryer does not know what to 
 do ; if he had sixty supporters, he would 
 be able to embarrass the Government on 
 a great many occasions, and Inight upset 
 ministries ! They are going to elect the 
 Duke de Fitz-James at Toulouse. You 
 will make Monsieur de Wattevillegain his 
 cause. If you vote for Monsieur de Sav- 
 arus, the Republicans will vote with you 
 rather than with the juste milieu" etc., 
 etc. 
 
 At nine o'clock, Albert had not arrived. 
 Madame de Watteville was disposed to 
 consider such tardiness an insult. 
 
 "Dear baroness," said Madame de 
 Chavoncourt, "do not let us make such 
 serious affairs depend on a trifle. A var- 
 nished boot that is a long while drying — 
 or perhaps a consultation detains Mon- 
 sieur de Savarus." 
 
 Rosalie gave Madame de Chavoncourt 
 a queer look. 
 
 "She is very kind to Monsieur de Sav- 
 arus," she whispered to her mother. 
 
 "Because," replied the baroness, with 
 a smile, "there is a marriage on foot 
 between Sidonie and Monsieur de Sav- 
 arus." 
 
 Mademoiselle de Watteville suddenlj' 
 moved toward a window which looked 
 on to the garden. 
 
 At ten o'clock, Albert de Savarus still 
 had not appeared. The storm which had 
 been rumbling burst. Some of the nobles 
 sat down to play, fuiding the state of 
 things intolerable. The Abbe de Grancey, 
 who did not know what to think, went 
 toward the wmdow in which Rosalie was 
 hidden, and said aloud, in his extreme 
 stupefaction, "He must be dead." The 
 vicar-general went out into the garden, 
 followed by Monsieur de Watteville and 
 his daughter, and they all three Avent up 
 to the kiosk. Everything was shut up at 
 Albert's ; no light was visible. 
 
 "Jerome!" cried Rosalie, seeing the 
 servant in the courtyard. 
 
 The Abbe de Grancey looked at her 
 with astonishment. 
 
 "Where is your master ? " said she to 
 the servant, who had come to the foot of 
 the wall. 
 
 " Gone away in a post-chaise, mademoi- 
 selle." 
 
 "He is lost," exclaimed the Abbe de 
 Grancey, " or happy ! " 
 
 The joy of triumph was not well enough 
 suppressed on Rosalie's countenance for 
 the vicar-general not to divine it, but he 
 feigned not to notice anything. 
 
 " What call this young girl have had 
 to do with all this ? " the priest asked 
 himself. 
 
 They all three returned to the salons, 
 when Monsieur de Watteville aimounced 
 the strange, the singular, the astounding 
 news of the departure of the barrister 
 Albert Savaron de Savarus in a post- 
 chaise, without any one knowing the mo- 
 tives of this disappearance. At half-past 
 eleven, there remained only fifteen per- 
 sons, among whom were Madame de 
 Chavoncourt and the Abbe de Godenars
 
 ALBERT SA VARUS. 
 
 289 
 
 (another vicar-general, a taan of about 
 forty who wanted to be a bishop), the 
 two young' Misses de Chavoncourt and 
 Monsieur de Vauchelles, the Abbe de 
 Grancey, Rosalie, Amedee de Soulas, and 
 a retired functionary, one of the most 
 influential personages of the high society 
 of Besancon, who took a great interest in 
 the election of Albert Savarus. The Abbe 
 de Grancey placed himself by the side of 
 the baroness in order to look at Rosalie, 
 whose face, generally pale, now showed a 
 feverish color. 
 
 "What can have happened to Monsieur 
 de Savarus ? " asked Madame de Chavon- 
 court. 
 
 At this moment, a servant in liverj^ 
 brought a letter on a silver waiter to the 
 Abbe de Grancey. 
 
 " Read it," said the baroness. 
 
 The vicar-general read the letter, and 
 saw Rosalie suddenly turn as white as 
 her handkercliief. 
 
 "She recognizes the writing," he said 
 to himself, after having given the young 
 girl a look over his spectacles. He folded 
 up the letter and cooUj^put it in his pocket 
 without saying a word. In three minutes 
 he received from Rosalie three looks which 
 sufficed to tell him all. " She loves Al- 
 bert Savarus ! " thought the vicar-gen- 
 eral. He g-ot up, bowed, took a few 
 steps toward the cl*oor, and iia the second 
 salon he was rejoined by Rosalie, who 
 said to him — " 
 
 '• Monsieur de Grancey, it is from 
 Albert!" 
 
 " How can you know his Avriting well 
 enough to distinguish it so far off ? " 
 
 The young girl, caught in the depths 
 of her impatience and her passion, gave 
 an answer the abbe thought sublime. 
 
 "Because I love him! What is the 
 matter ? " she said, after a pause. 
 
 "He abandons his election," replied 
 the abbe. 
 
 Rosalie placed her finger on her lips. 
 "1 claim the secrecj' of a confession," 
 said she, before entering the salon. " If 
 there is no election, there will be no mar- 
 riage with Sidonie ! " 
 
 The next morning, while going to mass, 
 Mademoiselle de Watteville learned from 
 
 Balzac — J 
 
 Mariette part of the circumstances which 
 had caused the disappearance of Albert 
 at the most critical moment of his life. 
 " Mademoiselle, in the morning there 
 arrived at the Hotel National, from 
 Paris, an old gentleman in his own car- 
 riage — a handsome carriage, with four 
 horses, an outrider, and a servant. In 
 fact, Jerome, who saw the carriage when 
 it was going away, maintains that he 
 could only have been a prince or a 
 milord." 
 
 " Was there a closed coronet on the 
 carriage ? " said RosaUe. 
 
 "I do not know," said Mariette. 
 " While it was striking two, he came to 
 Monsieur Savarus's house and sent up 
 his card; and, on seeing it, monsieur, 
 Jerome says, tui-ned as white as a sheet, 
 and told them to show him in. As he 
 locked the door himself, it is impossible 
 to know what the old gentleman and 
 the barrister said to each other, but they 
 remained together about an hour ; after 
 which the old gentleman, accompanied 
 by the barrister, called up the servant. 
 Jerome saw this servant go out with an 
 immen.se parcel, four feet long, which 
 looked like a large sheet o{ canvas. The 
 old gentleman had a large bundle of 
 papers in his hands. The barrister, 
 paler than if he were dying — he who is 
 so proud and so dignified — was in a piti- 
 able state. But he behaved so respect- 
 full\' to the old gentleman that he could 
 not have been more ceremonious with the 
 king. Jerome and Monsieur Albert Sav- 
 aron accompanied this old man to his 
 carriage, which was all ready, with its 
 four horses harnessed. The courier 
 started on the stroke of three. Mon- 
 sieur went straight to the prefecture, 
 and from there to Monsieur Gentillefs, 
 who sold him the old traveling carriage 
 of the late Madame de Saint Vier ; then 
 he ordered post horses at six o'clock. He 
 went home again to pack up ; no doubt, 
 he wrote several letters; finally, he ar- 
 ranged all his affairs with Monsieur Gi- 
 rardet, who came and stayed tUl seven 
 o'clock. Jei'ome took a note to Monsieur 
 Boucher's, where monsieur was expected 
 to dinner; and then, at half-past seven.
 
 290 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 the barrister went awaj', leaving' Jerome 
 three month's wages, and telling him to 
 look for a place. He left his keys with 
 Monsiem- Girardet, whom he accompanied 
 home, and where, Jerome says, he had 
 .'lome soup, for Monsieur Girardet had not 
 dined at half-past seven. Wlien Monsieur 
 Savaron grot into his carriag-e again, he 
 was like a corpse. Jerome, who natur- 
 ally' saluted his master, heai-d him say 
 to the postilion, 'The Geneva road.' " 
 
 " Did Jerome inquire the stranger's 
 name at the Hotel National ?" 
 
 " As the old gentleman was on\y pass- 
 ing through, they did not ask him for it. 
 The servant, no doubt according to orders, 
 did not seem to be able to speak French." 
 
 " And the letter the Abbe de Grancey 
 received so late ? " said Rosalie. 
 
 " It was, no doubt, Monsieur Gii^ardet 
 who must have sent it to him ; but Jerome 
 says that poor Monsieur Girardet, who is 
 very fond of the bai'rister Savaron, was 
 quite as much upset as he. He who came 
 with myster\' goes away with mystery, 
 Mademoiselle Galard saj'S." 
 
 From the date of this narrative. Made- 
 moiselle de Watteville had a pensive and 
 abstracted air, which was visible' to all 
 the world. It is needless to speak of the 
 sensation the disappearance of the barris- 
 ter Savaron caused in Besancon. It was 
 known that the prefect had consented, 
 with the best grace in the world, to send 
 him immediately a foreign passport, for 
 by this means he got rid of his onty ad- 
 versary. The next day, Monsieur de 
 Chavoncourt was at once elected by a 
 majority of a hundred and forty votes. 
 
 " Jean went away as he came," said an 
 elector, on learning the flight of Albert 
 Savaron. 
 
 This event served to fortify the preju- 
 dices which exist at Besancon against 
 strangers, and which, two years before, 
 had been cor^-oborated with regard to the 
 affair of the Republican journal ; and in 
 ten days afterward no more was heard 
 about Albert de Savarus. Three persons 
 only, the attorney Girardet, the vicar- 
 general, and Rosalie, were seriously af- 
 fected by this disappearance. Girardet 
 knew that the stranger with white hair 
 
 was the Prince Soderini, for he had seen 
 his card, and he told the vicar-general ; 
 but Rosalie, much better informed than 
 they, had known for three months the 
 news of the death of the Duke d'Argaiolo. 
 
 In the month of April, 183G, nobody 
 had had any news or heard anything of 
 Monsieur Albert de Savarus. Jerome 
 and Mariette were about to be mari'ied, 
 but the baroness confidentially told her 
 maid to wait until the marriage of her 
 daughter, and then the two ceremonies 
 could take place together. 
 
 "It is time to get Rosalie married," 
 said the baroness one day to Monsieur de 
 Watteville; "she is nineteen, and she 
 has altered terribly the last few months." 
 
 "I don't know what is the matter with 
 her," said the baron. 
 
 '•' When fathers do not know what is 
 the matter with their daughters, mothers 
 guess it," said the baroness. "We must 
 mari-y her." 
 
 " I am quite willing," said the baron ; 
 "and, for my part, I will give her the 
 Rouxeys, now that the tribunal has ar- 
 ranged matters between us and the com- 
 mune of the Riceys hy fixing my bounda- 
 ries at three hundred metres from the 
 foot of the Dent de Vilard. They are 
 digging a dyke to receive all the watef 
 and carry it into the lake. The commune 
 has not appealed, and the judgment is 
 final." 
 
 " You have not yet guessed," said the 
 baroness, ' ' that this judgment costs me 
 thirty thousand francs, which I had to 
 give to Chantonnil. That is all this peas- 
 ant wanted ; he appears to win the cause 
 for his commune, and he sells us peace. 
 If you give away the Rouxeys, you will 
 have nothing left," said the baroness. 
 
 "I don't want much," said the baron; 
 " I am going fast." 
 
 " You eat like an ogre." 
 
 "Exactly so. It is no use eating; I 
 feel my legs getting weaker and weaker.' 
 
 "That is from turning," said the bar- 
 oness. 
 
 " I don't know," said the baron. 
 
 "We will marry Rosalie to Monsieur 
 de Soulas. If you give her the Rouxej'S, 
 reserve to yourself a life interest; I will
 
 ALBERT SAVARUS 
 
 291 
 
 gfive them fifteen thousand francs a year 
 in the funds. Our children will live here, 
 and I do not see that they will be much 
 to be pitied." 
 
 "No, I will g-ive them the Rouxeys 
 altogether. Rosalie is fond of the Rou- 
 xe^'S." 
 
 " You are very odd with your daughter! 
 You do not ask me if I am fond of the 
 Rouxej-s." 
 
 Rosalie, summoned on the spot, learned 
 that she was to marry Monsieur Amedee 
 de Soulas in the early part of the month 
 of* May. 
 
 " I thank you, mother, and you, father, 
 for having thought of my settlement, but 
 I do not wish to be married. I am very 
 happy to stay with you." 
 
 "A mere excuse!" said the baroness. 
 " You do not like Monsieur the Count de 
 Soulas; that is all." 
 
 "If you wish to know the truth, I will 
 never marry Monsieur de Soulas." 
 
 " Oh ! the never of a girl of nineteen ! " 
 said the baroness, with a bitter smile. 
 
 "' The never of Mademoiselle de Watte- 
 ville," replied Rosalie, with a firm accent. 
 " My father does not intend, I think, to 
 marry mo without mj' consent ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, indeed ! " said tlje poor baron, 
 looking affectionately at his daughter. 
 
 "Oh! well," answered tlie baroness, 
 sharply, restraining the rage of a devotee 
 surprised at seeing herself unexpectedly 
 defied, "take on yourself, Monsieur de 
 Watte^^lle, to provide for your daughter. 
 Thuik on it well, mademoiselle ; if you do 
 not marry according to my wishes, you 
 will get nothing from me for your estab- 
 lishment." 
 
 The quarrel thus commenced between 
 IMadame de "Watteville and the baron, 
 who supported his daughter, went so far 
 that Rosalie and her father were obliged 
 to spend tlie fine season at the Rouxeys — 
 living in the Hotel de Rupt became insup- 
 portable to them. It became known then 
 in Besancon that Mademoiselle de Watte- 
 ville had positively refused Monsieur the 
 Count de Soulas. After their marriage, 
 Jerome and Mariette went to the Rouxeys, 
 to succeed Modinier some day. The baron 
 repaired and restored the hermitage ac- 
 
 cording to the taste of his daughter. On 
 learning that these repah's had cost about 
 sixty thousand francs, that Rosalie and 
 her father were building a hot-house, the 
 baroness recognized a certain leaven of 
 canning in her daughter. The baron 
 bought several adjoining pieces of ground, 
 and a small estate of the value of thirty 
 thousand francs. Madame de Watteville 
 was told that, away from her, Rosalie 
 showed herself a superior girl ; she studied 
 the means of improving the Rouxeys, had 
 a habit made, and rode on horseback. 
 Her father, whose happiness she studied, 
 who complained no longer of his health, 
 and got fat, accompanied her in her rides. 
 On the approach of the fete of the baron- 
 ess, who was named Louise, the vicar- 
 general came to the Rouxeys, no doubt 
 sent \>y Madame de Watteville and Mon- 
 sieur de Soulas to neg"otiate a peace be- 
 tween the mother and daughter. 
 
 " That little Rosalie has got a head on 
 her shoulders," they said in Besancon. 
 
 After ha^'ing nobly paid the ninety thou- 
 sand francs expended on the Rouxeys, the 
 baroness remitted to her husband about 
 a thousand francs a month to live there. 
 She did not want to put herself in the 
 wrong. The father and daughter were 
 perfectly willing to return to Besancon 
 on the 15th of August, to stay then until 
 the end of the month. When the vicar- 
 general took Rosalie aside, after dinner, 
 to open the question of the marriage, 
 gi\-ing her to understand that she must 
 not reckon any longer on Albert, of whom 
 nothing had been heard for a year, he was 
 cut short by a gesture from Rosalie. This 
 eccentric girl seized Monsieur de Grancey 
 by the arm, and led him to a seat under 
 a clump of rhododendrons, from which 
 the lake was visible. 
 
 "Listen, dear abbe — you whom I love 
 as much as my father, for aou have 
 shown 3'our affection for my Albert — I 
 must at last confess it. I have com- 
 mitted crimes to become his wife, and 
 he must be my husband. Look here ! 
 Read this." 
 
 She held out to him a number of the 
 " Gazette " which she had in the pocket of 
 her apron, pointing to the following ax-
 
 292 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 tide under the heading- of Florence, the 
 25th of May :— 
 
 "The marriag-e of His Grace the Duke 
 de Rhotore, eldest son of His Grace the 
 Duke de Chaulieu, late ambassador, with 
 Her Grace the Duchess d'Argaiolo, Prin- 
 cess Soderini by birth, was celebrated 
 with great splendor. The numerous en- 
 tertainments given on the occasion of this 
 marriage still enliven the city of Florence. 
 The fortune of the Duchess d'Argaiolo is 
 one of the most considerable in Italy, the 
 late duke ha%ing left her his universal 
 legatee." 
 
 "The woman he loved is married," said 
 she. " I separated them ! " 
 
 " You ! And how ? " said the abbe. 
 
 Rosalie was about to answer, when a 
 loud cry, uttered by two gardeners and 
 preceded by tlie sound of a bodj' falling' 
 into the water, interrupted her. She g-ot 
 up and ran off, exclaiming, " Oh, my 
 father ! " She could see nothing of the 
 
 baron. 
 
 « 
 
 Wishing to get at a fragment of gran- 
 ite in which he thought he could perceive 
 the print of a shell, a fact which would 
 have upset some system of g-eology. Mon- 
 sieur de Watteville had got on the slop- 
 uig bank, lost his equilibrium, and rolled 
 into the lake, whose g-reatest depth was 
 naturally at the foot of the causeway. 
 The gardeners had infinite trouble to get 
 a pole within the baron's reach by beat- 
 ing about the spot where the water was 
 bubbling ; but at last they dragged him 
 out, covered with mud, into which he had 
 sunk verj' deeply, and got all the deeper 
 into by his struggles. Monsieur de 
 Watteville had dined copiouslj- ; diges- 
 tion had commenced, and it was inter- 
 rupted. When he had been undressed, 
 washed, and put to bed, he was in a 
 state so visibly dangerous, that two ser- 
 vants got. on horseback and went off, one 
 to Besancon, the other to fetch the near- 
 est doctor. When Madame de Watteville 
 arrived, eight hours after the accident, 
 with the fii-st surgeons and physicians of 
 Besancon, they found Monsieur de Watte- 
 ville in a desperate state, notwithstand- 
 ing the judicious treatment of the doctor 
 of the Rouxeys. Fear had caused a seri- 
 
 ous effusion on the brain, and the inter- 
 rupted digestion had completed the de- 
 struction of the poor baron. 
 
 This death, which would not have taken 
 place, said Madame de Watteville, if her 
 husband had remained at Besancon, was 
 attributed by her to the resistance of her 
 daughter, to whom she took an aversion., 
 giving herself up to a grief and regret 
 evidently exaggerated. She called the 
 baron her dear lamb ! The last Watte- 
 ville was buried on an isle in the lake of 
 the Rouxeys, where the baroness erected 
 a small Gothic monument in white mar- 
 ble, similar to that of Heloise at Pere-la- 
 Chaise. 
 
 A month after this event, the baroness 
 and her daughter were living at the Hotel 
 de Rupt in somber silence. Rosalie was 
 a prey to serious remorse, which did not 
 show itself outwardly ; she accused her- 
 self of the death of her father, and sus- 
 pected another misfortune, still greater 
 in her eyes, and very certainly her work — 
 for neither the attorney' Girardet, nor the 
 Abbe de Grancey, had been able to pro- 
 cure anj' information as to the fate of 
 Albert. This silence was fearful. In a 
 paroxj'sm of repentance, she felt com- 
 pelled to rev(jal to the vicar-general the 
 horrible contrivances \>y which she had 
 separated Albert and Frances'ca. It was 
 very simple and very formidable. Made- 
 moiselle de Watteville had suppressed the 
 letters of Albert to the duchess, and the 
 one in which Francesca announced to her 
 lover the illness of her husband, telling- 
 him that she would not be able to answer 
 him during the time that she should de- 
 vote, as was her dutj', to the djing man. 
 
 Accordingly, during the time that Al- 
 bert was engrossed in the elections, the 
 duchess had only written two letters to 
 him — that in which she informed him of 
 the danger of the Duke d'Argaiolo, and 
 that in which she told him she was a 
 widow — two noble and sublime letters, 
 which Rosalie kept. After having prac- 
 ticed for several nights, she had succeeded 
 in perfectly imitating Albert's writing. 
 For the real letters of this faithful lover 
 she had substituted three letters, the 
 drafts of which, exhibited to the old
 
 ALBERT SAVARUS. 
 
 293 
 
 priest, made him shudder, so thoi'ough- 
 ly did the genius of evil appear in all 
 its perfection. Rosalie, holding the pen 
 of Alhert, prepared the duchess for the 
 change in the Frenchman, apparently 
 false, and she replied to the news of the 
 death of the Duke d'Argaiolo by the 
 news of the coming marriage of Albert 
 with Mademoiselle de Watteville. The 
 two letters would cross each other, and 
 did cross each othor. The infernal skill 
 with which the letters were written so 
 surprised the vicar-general that he read 
 them over again. To the last, Francesca, 
 wounded to the heart by a girl who wished 
 to kill the love of her rival, had answered 
 in these simple words : " You are free. 
 Farewell!" 
 
 '•Purely moral crimes, which give no 
 hold to human justice, are the most in- 
 famous and the most odious," said the 
 Abbe de Grancey severely. " God often 
 punishes them here below, and that is 
 the reason of the frightful misfortunes 
 which appear inexplicable to us. Of*all 
 the secret crimes enshrouded in the mys- 
 tery of private life, one of the most dis- 
 honorable is that of breaking the seal 
 of a letter, or surreptitiously reading it. 
 Every person, whoever it may be, and by 
 whatever motive impelled, who ventures 
 on such an act, has cast an ineffaceable 
 stain on his or her honor. Can you com- 
 prehend the touching and divine story of 
 the young page, falsely accused, and car- 
 rying a letter in which is the order for 
 his death, who sets out on Ids way with- 
 out an evil thought, and whom Pro\'i- 
 dence takes under His protection and 
 saves miraculouslj', as we say ? Do you 
 know in what the miracle consists ? Vir- 
 tue has a halo as powerful as that of in- 
 nocent childhood. I tell you these things 
 without wishing to admonish you," said 
 the old priest to Rosalie, with profound 
 sadness. " Alas ! I am not now the grand 
 penitentiary; j-ou are not kneeling at the 
 feet of God : I am a friend terrified at the 
 apprehension of your punishment. What 
 has become of poor Albert ? Has he not 
 killed himself? He concealed an unheard- 
 of violence under his aflected calmness. I 
 comprehend that the old Prince Soderini, 
 
 the father of the Duchess d'Argaiolo, 
 came to demand the letters and portraits 
 of his daughter. That was the thimder- 
 bolt that fell on Albert's head, who, no 
 doubt, went to endeavor to justify him- 
 self. But how is it that, in fourteen 
 months, he has sent us no news?" 
 
 "Oh, if I marry him, he will be so 
 happy ! " 
 
 '■ Happy ? He does iu)t love you. Be- 
 sides, you wUl not have such a very large 
 fortune to bring him. Your mother has 
 the most profound aversion for you ; you 
 gave her a savage answer, which wounded 
 her and will ruin you, when she told you 
 yesterday that obedience was the only 
 means of repairing your faults, and re- 
 minded you of the necessitj' of marrjong, 
 and mentioned Amedee. ' If you are so 
 found of him, marry him yourself, mother!' 
 — did you or did you not say this to her 
 face ? " 
 
 •'Yes," said Rosalie. 
 
 " Well, I know her," resumed Monsieur 
 de Grancey. In a few months she will be 
 Countess de Soulas. She will certainly 
 have children; she will give forty thou- 
 sand francs a year to Monsieur de Soulas ; 
 she will give him further advantages, and 
 reduce j'our interest in her property, as 
 much as she can. You will be poor ail 
 her life, and she is only thirty-eight ! 
 Your whole property will consist of the 
 estate of the Rouxeys, and the few rights 
 the liquidation of your father's succession 
 may .leave you, if, indeed, your mother 
 consents to give up her claims on the 
 Rouxeys. You have already managed 
 affairs very badly with regard to the 
 material interests of your life ; with re- 
 gard to the sentimental, I consider it 
 entirelj- unhinged. Instead of coming to 
 your mother — " 
 
 Rosalie made a fierce movement of the 
 head. 
 
 " To your mother," continued the vicar- 
 general, " and to religion^ who, on the 
 first movement of your heart, Avould have 
 enlightened, counseled, and guided .you, 
 j-ou have endeavored to a<"t alone, igno- 
 rant of life and only listening to pas- 
 sion ! " 
 
 These words of wisdom alarmed Made-
 
 294 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 moiselle de Vv^atteville. "But what shall 
 I do ? " said she, after a pause. 
 
 " In order to make reparation for your 
 faults, we must know the extent of them," 
 replied tlie ahbe. 
 
 "Well, then, I will write to the only 
 man who could have anj' knowledge of 
 the fate of Albert — to Monsieur Leopold 
 Hannequin, a notary at Paris, the friend 
 of his youth." 
 
 " Do not write any more, except to ren- 
 der homage to the truth," replied the 
 vicar-general. "Confide to me the true 
 letters and the false ones ; explain everj'-. 
 thing to me in detail, as you would to the 
 director of your conscience, leaving me to 
 find the means of expiating your faults, 
 and rel3'ing upon me. I will see — But, 
 above all, restore to this unfortunate man 
 his innocence toward the being whom he 
 has made his deity on this earth. For, 
 after having lost his happiness, Albert 
 must still be anxious for his justifica- 
 tion." 
 
 Rosalie promised to obey the Abbe de 
 Grancej-, hoping that his proceedings 
 might perhaps result in restoring Albert 
 to her. 
 
 A short time after the confession of 
 Mademoiselle de Watteville, a clerk of 
 Monsieur Leopold Hannequin's came to 
 Besancon, provided with a power of at- 
 tornej' from Albert, and went straight 
 to Monsieur Girardet's, to request him to 
 sell the house belonging to Monsieur Sav- 
 aron. 
 
 The attorney undertook the business 
 out of regard for the barrister. The 
 clerk sold the furniture and was able to 
 pay off with the proceeds what Albert 
 owed Girardet, who, at the time of the 
 inexplicable departure, had advanced him 
 five thousand francs, undertaking also to 
 get in what was owing to him. When 
 Girardet asked what had become of this 
 noble and valiant athlete, in whom he had 
 taken so much Interest, the clerk, an- 
 swered that nobody knew but his princi- 
 pal, and that the notary had appeared 
 very much affected by the contents of 
 the last letter written by Monsieur Albert 
 de Savarus. 
 
 On learning this news, the vicar-general 
 
 wrote to Leopold. Here is the answer of 
 1 he worthy fiotary : — 
 
 "A Monsieur I' Abbe de Grancey, vicar- 
 general of the diocese of Besangon. ' 
 
 " Paris. 
 " Alas ! sir, it is not in the power of 
 any one to restore Albert to the life of 
 the world. He has renounced it. He is 
 a novice at the Great Chartreuse, near 
 Grenoble. You know still better than I, j 
 who have just learned it, that everything 
 dies oh the threshold of this cloister. Fore- 
 seeing mj^ visit, Albert interposed the gen- 
 eral of the Carthusians between all my 
 efforts and himself. I know this noble 
 heart well enough to bo certain that he 
 is the victim of an odious plot, invisible 
 to us. But all is over. Madame the 
 Duchess d'Argaiolo, now Duchess de 
 Rhetore, seems to have carried her cru- 
 elty very far. At Belgirate, where she 
 was no longer to be found when Albert 
 reached there, she had left orders to lead 
 liini to believe that she was living in 
 London. From London, Albert went to 
 seek for the duchess at Naples ; from 
 Naples, to Rome, where she became en- 
 gaged to the Duke de Rhetore. When 
 Albert did meet Madame d'Argaiolo, it 
 was at Florence, at the moment of the 
 celebration of her marriage. Our poor 
 friend fainted away in the church, and 
 has never been able, even when his life 
 was in danger, to obtain an explanation 
 from this woman, whose heart must be 
 made of something inhuman . Albert trav- 
 eled for .seven months in search of a bar- 
 barous creature who took a pleasure in 
 escaping from hijn. He neither knew 
 where nor how to catch her. 1 saw our 
 poor friend on his passage through Paris, 
 and if you had seen him as I did, you 
 would have perceived that not a word 
 must be said on the subject of the duchess, 
 unless you wished to bring on a crisis in 
 which his reason would have been in dan- 
 ger. If lie had known his crime, he migiit 
 have found the means of justification ; but, 
 falsely accused of being married, what 
 could he do ? Albert is dead, quite dead, 
 to the world. He wished for repose ; let 
 us hope' that the profound silence and
 
 ALBERT S A VARUS. 
 
 295 
 
 prayer into which ho has t hi^own himself 
 raaj' insure his happiness in anothi'r form. 
 If you knew him, sir, you must pity him 
 deeply, and also pity his friends. — Re- 
 ceive," etc. 
 
 Immediately on the receipt of this letter, 
 the good vicar-general wrote to the gen- 
 eral of the Carthusians, and this was the 
 answer from Albert Savarus : 
 
 " Brother Albert to Monsieur I' Abbe de 
 Orancey, Vicar-general of the dio- 
 cese of Besancon. 
 
 " From the Great Chartreuse. 
 
 "I recognize, dear and much loved 
 vicar-general, your kind disposition and 
 still youthful heart in everything that the 
 reverend father the general of our order 
 has just communicated to me. You have 
 divined the only wish that remained in 
 the innermost recess of my heai"t relative 
 to the things of this world — to have justice 
 done to my sentiments by her who has so 
 ill-treated me ! But, in leaving me at 
 libertj'^ to make use of your offer, the gen- 
 eral wished to know whether my vocation 
 was firm. He had tlie signal kindness to 
 tell me so on seeing me decided to raain- 
 tt\,in an absolute silence in this respect. 
 If I had given way to the temptation of 
 rehabilitating the man of tlie world, the 
 monk would have been dismissed from the 
 monastery. Grace was certainly mani- 
 fested ; but, although short, the combat 
 was none the less sharp nor cruel. Is not 
 that saying clearly enough that I cannot 
 re-enter the world ? And the pardon you 
 ask of me for the author of so many evils 
 is full and entire, without a thought of ill- 
 will. I will pray to God to pardon this 
 young lady, as I pardon heV, just as I 
 shall pray Him to grant a happy life to 
 Madrfme de Rhetore. 
 
 "Ah ! whether it be death or the self- 
 willed hand of a young girl determined on 
 making herself loved, or whether it be one 
 of those blows attributed to chance, must 
 we not always obey God ? Misfortune 
 creates in some souls a vast desert in 
 which the Divine Voice resounds. I have 
 discovered too late the relations between 
 
 this life and that which awaits us ; I am 
 thoroughly' wornout. I could not have 
 served in the I'anks of the Church mili- 
 tant, and I cast the remains of a life 
 almost extinguished at the foot of the 
 sanctuary. This is the last time I shall 
 write. Only you, who loved me and whom 
 I loved so much, could have made me 
 break the law of oblivion that I imposed 
 on myself on entering the metropolis of 
 Saint Bruno, but you are always particu- 
 larly named in the praj'ers of 
 
 " Brother Albert. 
 
 "November, 1836." 
 
 " Perhaps all is for the best," said the 
 Abbe de Grancey to himself. 
 
 When he had communicated this letter 
 to Rosalie, who kissed with a pious fervor 
 the passage that contained her pardon, he 
 said to her, " Well, now that he is lost to 
 you, will you not reconcile yourself with 
 your mother by marrying the Count de 
 Soulas?" 
 
 "Albert must order me to do it," she 
 said. 
 
 " You see it is impossible to consult him ; 
 the general would not allow it." 
 
 " If I were to go and see him ? " 
 
 "Nobody can see the Carthusians. 
 And, besides, no woman, except the 
 queen of France, can enter the Char- 
 treuse," said the abbe. "So j'ou have 
 no excuse for not marrying- j'oung Mon- 
 sieur de Soulas." 
 
 " I will not be the cause of unhappmess 
 to my mother," replied Rosalie. 
 
 " Satan ! " exclaimed the vicar-general. 
 
 Toward the end of this winter, the ex- 
 cellent Abbe de Grancey died. There was 
 no longer, between Madame de Watteville 
 and her daughter, this friend who inter- 
 posed between those two characters of 
 iron. The ^event foreseen by the vicar- 
 general took place. In the month of April, 
 1S3T, Madame de Watteville married Mon- 
 sieur de Soulas at Paris, to which she went 
 by the advice of Rosalie, who behaved 
 charmingly and kindly to her mother. 
 Madame de Watteville thought it was 
 affection in her daughter, who wished to 
 see Paris solely for the purpose of indulg- 
 ing in a terrible vengeance ; she thought
 
 296 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 only of avenging Savanis bj^ making a 
 mai"tyr of her rival. 
 
 Mademoisello do Wattevillc, who had 
 nearly attained the age of twenty-onOj 
 had been declared of ago. Her mother, 
 in order to settle accounts with her, had 
 relin(iuished her rights on the Rouxeys; 
 and the daughter had given her mother 
 a discharge as to the succession of the 
 Baron de Watte ville. Rosalie had en- 
 couraged her mother to marry the Count 
 de Soulas, and to benefit him. 
 
 "Let us each have our liberty," she 
 said to her. 
 
 Madame de Soulas, although uneasy 
 about the intentions of her daughter, was 
 nevertheless touched by the nobility of 
 her proceedings. She made her a present 
 of six thousand francs a year in the funds, 
 to satisfy her conscience. As Madame the 
 Countess de Soulas had an income of forty- 
 eight thousand francs from landed prop- 
 erty, and no power to alienate it so as to 
 diminish the portion of Rosalie, Mademoi- 
 selle de Watteville was still a match of 
 eighteen hundred thousand francs. The 
 RoMxe\'s might produce, with the pur- 
 chases of the baron and some improve- 
 ments, twenty thousand francs a year, be- 
 sides the advantages of the house, and the 
 fines and reserved rights. Accordingly, 
 Rosalie and her mother, who soon acquired 
 the tone and fashions of Paris, were easily 
 introduced into the best society. The 
 golden key, the words "Eighteen hun- 
 dred thousand francs," embroidered on 
 the corsage of Mademoisello de AVatte- 
 ville, were of much more service to the 
 Countess de Soulas than her pretensions 
 i la De Rupt, her misplaced pride, and 
 even her rather fine-drawn family con- 
 nections. 
 
 About the month of Februarj^ 1838, 
 Rosalie, to whom a great many young 
 men paid assiduous court, realized the 
 project which had brought her to Paris. 
 She wished to meet the Duchess de Rhe- 
 tore, to see this marvelous woman, and 
 to plunge her into eternal remorse. Ac- 
 cordingly, Rosalie displayed a dazzling 
 elegance and coquetry, in order to place 
 herself on a footing of equality with the 
 duchess. The first meeting took place at 
 
 the ball given annually, ever since 1830, 
 for the pensioners of the former civil list. 
 
 A young man, instigated by Rosalie, 
 said to the duchess, pointing her out, 
 "■ There is a very remarkable young girl, 
 with a very strong mind. She drove into 
 a cloister at the Great Chartreuse a man 
 of great capacitj^ Albert de Savarus, 
 whose existence was shattered by her. 
 It is Mademoiselle de Watteville, the fa- 
 mous heiress of Besancon." 
 
 The duchess turned pale, and Rosalie 
 rapidly exchanged with her one of those 
 glances which, between woman and 
 woman, are more mortal than the pistol- 
 shots of a duel. Francesca Soderini, who 
 suspected the innocence of Albert, imme- 
 diately left the ball-room, hastily quitting 
 her interlocutor, who was incapable of 
 guessing the terrible wound he had just 
 given the beautiful Duchess de Rhetore. 
 
 " If you wish to know any more about 
 Albert, come to the ball at the Opera on 
 Tuesday next, with a marigold in your 
 hand." 
 
 This anonymous letter, sent by Rosalie 
 to the duchess, brought the unhappy 
 Italian to the ball, when Mademoiselle de 
 Watteville placed in her hands all Al- 
 bert's letters — the one written by the 
 vicar-general to Leopold Hannequin, as 
 well aS the answer of the notary, and 
 even that in which she had confessed ev- 
 er\'thing to Monsieur de Grance,y. 
 
 "I will not be the only one to suffer; 
 for we have been quite as cruel, one as 
 the other," she said to her rival. 
 
 After having enjoyed the stupefaction 
 painted on the lovely face of the duchess, 
 Rosalie made her escape, appeared no 
 more in society, and returned with her 
 mother to Besancon. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Watteville, who lives 
 alone on her estate of the Rouxevs, riding- 
 on horseback, hunting, refusing her. two 
 or three offers a .year, coming four or five 
 times every winter to Besancon, occupied 
 in improving her estate, passed for an 
 extremely eccentric person. She is one 
 of the celebrities of the east. 
 
 Madame de Soulas has tAvo children, a
 
 HOUSE OF THE TENNIS-PLAYING CAT. 
 
 297 
 
 boy and a g^irl. She has got younger; 
 but young Monsieur de Soulas has got 
 considerably older. 
 
 "My fortune costs me dear,"' said he 
 to young Chavoncourt. " To know a de- 
 votee thoroughly, unfortunately, you must 
 marry her." 
 
 Mademoiselle de Watteville behaves 
 like a truly extraordinary girl. They say 
 of her, "She has her crotchets." She 
 goes every year to look at the walls of the 
 Great Chartreuse. Perhaps she intends 
 to imitate her grand-uncle, by scaling the 
 walls of this convent to get at her hus- 
 band, as Watteville got over the walls of 
 his monastery to recovery his liberty. 
 
 In 1841 she left Besancon with the in- 
 tention, it was said, of being married : 
 
 but no one ever knew the true cause of 
 this voyage, from which she returned in 
 a state which forbade her ever to reap- 
 pear in the world. 
 
 By one of those hazards to which the 
 old Abbe de Grancey had alluded, she 
 happened to be on the Loire, on board the 
 steamer whose boiler blew up. Made- 
 moiselle de Watteville was so severely in- 
 jured that she lost her right arm and her 
 left leg ; her face bears frightful scai-s, 
 which deprive her of her beauty ; her 
 health, subjected to such horrible trials, 
 leaves her very few days without suffer- 
 ing. In short, at the present day she 
 never quits the hermitage of the Rouxeys, 
 where she leads a life entirely devoted to 
 works of religion. 
 
 VI. 
 
 HOUSE OF THE TENNIS-PLAYING CAT. 
 
 On the Rue Saint Denis, near the comer 
 of the Rue du Petit Lion, stood one of 
 those precious houses that enable histo- 
 rians to reconstruct by analogy ancient 
 Paris. The tottering walls of this rickety 
 building were made motley with hiero- 
 glyphics. What other name could the 
 lounger give to the X's and V's traced 
 on its front hy the transverse or diag-onal 
 pieces of wood showing through the paint 
 in small parallel cracks ? Evidently, when- 
 ever the lightest cai'riage passed by, each 
 of these joists shook in its mortise. This 
 venerable edifice was surmounted \ij a 
 triangular roof, of which, before long, no 
 model can be found in Paris. This roof, 
 warped by the inclemency of the Parisian 
 climate, projected three feet over the 
 street, as much to guard the threshold 
 of the door from the rain as to shelter 
 the wall of a garret and its unsilled win- 
 dow. This upper stoiy was constructed 
 of boai'ds nailed one upon another like 
 slates. 
 
 On a rainy morning in March, a young 
 man, carefully wrapped in his cloak, stood 
 
 under the awning of a shop opposite this 
 old house, which he examined with the 
 enthusiasm of an archaeologist. This rem- 
 nant of sixteenth-century life offered the 
 observer more than one problem to puzzle 
 over. Each story presented some peculi- 
 arity : On the first, four tall, narrow win- 
 dows, close together, had wooden panes 
 in their lower part, in order to produce 
 that dim light by the aid of which a skill- 
 ful tradesman imparts to his stuffs the 
 color desired by his customers. The young 
 man seemed disdainful enough toward this 
 essential portion of the house; his eyes 
 had not yet rested upon it. The windows 
 of the second story, whose raised blinds 
 allowed a glimpse, through large panes of 
 Bohemian glass, of some small red muslin 
 curtains, mterested him equally. His at- 
 tention was directed , especially at the thu'd 
 story, to some humble casements, the 
 rudely joined wood of which made it wor- 
 tliy a place in the Conservatory of Arts 
 and Manufactures as a specimen of the 
 early efforts of French carpentry. These 
 casements had little panes of so green a
 
 298 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 color that, but for his excellent sight, the 
 youngr man could not have perceived the 
 cloth curtains with blue squares that con- 
 cealed the mysteries of this apartment 
 from profane eyes. 
 
 The observer, wearied by his unavailing- 
 contemplation or by the silence in wliich 
 the house was buried, as well as all that 
 part of towTi, occasionally dropped his 
 g-lance toward the lower floors. An in- 
 voluntary smile then curled his lips, as he' 
 saw the shop and its many ludicrous feat- 
 ures. A large piece of wood, horizontally 
 supported upon four pillars that seemed 
 bent under the weight of the decrepit 
 house, had been set olT "by as many coats 
 of different paints as the cheek of an old 
 duchess. In the middle of this broad, 
 delicately carved beam there was an an- 
 tique picture representing a cat playing 
 tennis. 
 
 This painting was the cause of the 
 young man's merriment. And yet the 
 cleverest of modern painters could not 
 have invented a more comical caricature. 
 The animal held a racket as large as him- 
 self in one of his f6re-paws, and stood 
 erect on his hind-paws ready to strike an 
 enormous ball that a man in an embroid- 
 ered coat was about to toss toward him. 
 The drawing, colors, accessories — all had 
 been so treated as to make one believe 
 that the artist had desired to make fun 
 of the tradesman and of the passers-by. 
 Time had made this ingenious painting 
 more grotesque by some uncertainties 
 that were well fitted to disturb truth- 
 loving strollers. Thus, the cat's spotted 
 tail was cut up in such a manner that 
 it might have been taken for a looker-on 
 at the game — so big, long, and bushy were 
 the tails of our ancestors' cats. At the 
 right of the picture, on an azure back- 
 ground that imperfectly disguised the 
 rottenness of the wood, the passers read : 
 " Guillaume " and at the left : " Successor 
 of M. Chevrel." The sun and the rain 
 had corroded the greater part of the or- 
 molu parsimoniously applied on the letters 
 of this inscription, in which the U's re- 
 placed the F's, and reciprocally, according 
 to the rules of our ancient orthography. 
 In order to bring down the pride of those 
 
 who believe the world is becoming more 
 intelligent from day to day, and modern 
 charlatanism surpasses everything, it may 
 be here remarked, that these signs, whose 
 etymologj'^ seems strange to more than 
 one Parisian merchant, are the dead pict- 
 ures of the living pictures, by the aid of 
 which our enterprising ancestors suc- 
 ceeded in enticing customer's into their 
 shops. Thus the Spinning Pig, the Green 
 Ape, etc., w^re animals in cages, whose 
 cleverness astonished the people passing, 
 and whose education proved the fifteenth 
 century shop-keeper's patience. Curiosi- 
 ties of this kind enriched their lucky pos- 
 sessors more speedily than such signs as 
 — Providence, Good Faith, Grace of 
 God, and Beheading of St. John the 
 Baptist, that may still be seen in the Rue 
 Saint Denis. 
 
 The unknown man, however, did not 
 stand there to admire this cat, which a 
 moment's attention would have sufficed 
 to engrave upon the memory. This young 
 geiftleman had his peculiarities as well. 
 His mantle, folded in the style of ancient 
 drapery, allowed a glimpse of an elegant 
 pair of shoes, the more remarkable amid 
 the Parisian mud, because he wore white- 
 silk stockings, the spots on which evi- 
 denced his impatience. Doubtless he had 
 just come from some wedding-party' or 
 ball, for at this early hour he carried- 
 white gloves in his hand, and the ringlets 
 of his black hair, out of curl and hanging 
 over his shoulders, showed it had been 
 dressed a la Caracalla, a fashion dlie as 
 much to David's school of painting as to 
 that infatuation for Greek and Roman 
 forms that marked the first years of the 
 present century. 
 
 Despite the noise made by a few belated 
 Idtchen-gardeners galloping toward the 
 great market, this busj^ street had then 
 a calm whose magic is known oul.y to 
 those who have strolled through deserted 
 Paris at such hours as its clatter, silenced 
 for a time, is born again and may be heard 
 in the distance like the gruff voice pf the 
 sea. 
 
 This singular young man must have 
 been as interesting to the people of the 
 Tennis- Playing Cat as the Tennis-Play-
 
 HOUSE OF THE TENNIS-PLAYING CAT. 
 
 299 
 
 ing Cat was to him. A cravat of daz- 
 zling' whiteness made his troubled face 
 look paler than it really was. The fire, 
 alternately dull and sparkling, of his 
 black eyes harmonized well with the odd 
 contours of his visage, with his large and 
 sinuous mouth, which contracted in smil- 
 ing. His brow, frowning in violent vex- 
 ation, had something unpleasant about 
 it. Is not the brow the most character- 
 istic feature of a man ? Whenever .that 
 of the unknown expressed passion, the 
 wrinkles forming in it caused a sort of 
 terror by the vigor with which they were 
 pronounced ; but when he regained his 
 calmness, so easily disturbed, there 
 breathed in it a luminous charm which 
 made attractive this physiognomy where 
 joy, grief, love, anger, disdain, burst 
 forth in so contagious a manner that 
 the coldest of men must have been im- 
 pressed. 
 
 This unknown gentleman was so vexed 
 at the moment that the window of the 
 attic was hastily opened that he did not 
 notice appearing there three merry faces, 
 plump, white, and rosy, but as common- 
 place as are the figures of Commerce 
 sculptured on monuments. These three 
 faces, framed by the window, reminded 
 one of the heswls of chubby angels scat- 
 tered through the clouds that accompany- 
 thev Eternal Father. The apprentices 
 breathed in the exhalations of the street 
 with an eagerness that demonstrated how 
 hot and mephitic must be the air of their 
 garret. After pointing out this strange 
 sentinel, the shop-boy, who was apparent- 
 ly the jolliest, disappeared, and came back 
 holding in his hand an instrument whose 
 inflexible metal has of late been replaced 
 by supple leather ; then the}' all assumed 
 a malicious expression in looking at the 
 idler, and sprinkled him with a fine and 
 whitish rain the perfume of which proved 
 that these three chins had just been 
 shaved. Standing on tip-toe and drawing 
 back in their garret to enjoy their victim's 
 wrath, the shop-boys stopped laughing as 
 they saw the heedless disdain with which 
 the young man shook his cloak, and the 
 profound contempt depicted on his counte- 
 nance when he lifted his eyes to the empty 
 
 window. Just at that moment a white and 
 delicate hand raised the lower part of one 
 of the rude casements of the third story, 
 by sliding it up and fastening it with an 
 arrangement which often unexpectedly 
 lets fall the heavy sash that it ought to 
 hold fast. The man in the street was re- 
 warded for his long waiting. 
 
 A young girl's face, fresh as one of 
 those white chalices that flower upon the 
 bosom of waters, showed itself, crowned 
 with a quilling of rumpled muslin that 
 gave her head a look of admirable inno- 
 cence. Although covered with a brown 
 stuff, her neck and shoulders could be 
 perceived, thanks to the slight interstices 
 produced by her tossing about in sleep. 
 No expression of constraint marred the 
 artlessness of that face, or the serenity of 
 those eyes — similar to those immortalized 
 in advance by the sublime compositions 
 of Raphael. Here was the same grace 
 and the same tranquillity that have now 
 become proverbial in his Madonnas. 
 There existed a charming contrast be- 
 tween the youth of this figure's cheeks, 
 on which sleep had put in relief, as it 
 were, a superabundance of life, and the 
 old age of that massive window with its 
 rude shapes and blackened sUl. Like 
 those flowers of the day which in the 
 morning have not yet unfolded their tu- 
 nic rolled up b^' the cold of night, the 
 hardly-awake young woman let her blue 
 ej'es roam over the neighboring roofs and 
 looked up at the sky ; then, by the force 
 of habit, she lowered them to the somber 
 regions of the street, where they encoun- 
 tered at once the eyes of her adorer. 
 Coquetry doubtless made her suffer at 
 being seen in undress ; she stepped back 
 hastily-, the worn window - fastening 
 slipped, the sash dixjpped with a rapid- 
 ity which, in our time, has given a bad 
 name to this simple invention of our an- 
 cestors, and the vision disappeared. 
 
 To the young man-the most brilliant of 
 the morning's stars seemed to have been 
 suddenly obscured by a cloud. 
 
 During- these slight occurrences, the 
 heavy inside shutters guarding the light 
 shop-windows of the Tennis-Plaijing Cat 
 were taken down as if by magic. The old
 
 300 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 door with its knockor was thrown back 
 upon the inner wail of the house by a ser- 
 vant, probablj'- contemporary with the 
 sig-n, who with a trembling hand at- 
 tached to it the square piece of cloth on 
 which was embroidered in yellow silk the 
 name of " Guillaume, Successor of M. 
 Che\Tel." 
 
 It would have been difficult for a 
 strang'er to g-ness the kind of business 
 carried on by M. Guillaume. Through 
 the big iron bars protecting his shop on 
 the outside, one could barely discern pack- 
 ages wrapped in brown cloth and as nu- 
 merous as are the herrings crossing the 
 ocean. Notwithstanding the apparent 
 simplicitj'- of this Gothic fagade, M. Guil- 
 laume was, of all the dry-goods dealers 
 of Paris, the one whose store was always 
 the best stocked, whose business was the 
 most extensive, and whose commercial 
 repute labored under not the least sus- 
 picion. If any of his fellow-tradesmen 
 took government contracts without hav- 
 ing the requisite quantity of cloth, he was 
 always ready to furnish them with it, how- 
 ever considerable might be the number of 
 pieces called for. The wily merchant 
 knew a thousand ways of appropriating 
 the biggest profit without being obliged, 
 like them, to run after influential persons, 
 to have recourse to mean tricks or rich 
 bribes. If his fellow-tradesmen could 
 only pay him in excellent notes with 
 rather a long time to run, he referred 
 them to his notary as an accommodating 
 person, and managed to extract a second 
 profit from them by this expedient, which 
 made the merc]\ants of the Rue Saint 
 Denis say as a proverb : " God deliver 
 you from M. Guillaume's notary ! " to in- 
 dicate an extortionate discount. 
 
 The old merchant happened to be stand- 
 ing on the threshold of his shop, as by a 
 miracle, at the very moment the domestic 
 withdrew. Monsieur Guillaume looked 
 at the Rue Saint Denis, the neighboring 
 shops, and the weather, like a man land- 
 ing at Havre and seeing France once 
 more after a long voyage. Thoroughly 
 convinced that nothing had changed dur- 
 ing his sleep, he then noticed the man 
 doing sentry duty, who, on his side, con- 
 
 templated the patriarch of the dry-goods 
 business as Humboldt must have exam- 
 ined the first electrical eel he saw in 
 America. Monsieur Guillaume wore large 
 black-velvet breeches, dyed stockings, and 
 square shoes with silver buckles. His 
 square-cut coat, with square skirts and a 
 square collar, enveloped his slightly pro- 
 tuberant bodj'^ with a greenish cloth gar- 
 nished with big buttons of a metal, natu- 
 rally white, but reddened by use. His 
 gray hairs were so exactly flattened 
 down and combed out over his yellow 
 skull that they made it look like a 
 plowed field. His little green eyes, as 
 piercing as a gimlet, blazed under two 
 arches marked with a slight red for want 
 of eyebrows. Anxiety had traced on his 
 forehead horizontal wrinkles as niunerous 
 as the folds of his coat. This sallow face 
 indicated patience, commercial wisdom, 
 and the species of crafty cupidity that is 
 called for in business. At this period one 
 saw less rarely than in our day those old 
 families keeping up, like precious tradi- 
 tions, the manners and distinctive cos- 
 tumes of their professions, and going on 
 amid the new civilization like those geo- 
 logical remains found by Cuvier in the 
 quarries. 
 
 The head of the Guillaume family was 
 one of these notable guardians of ancient 
 customs ; he might be surprised regret- 
 ting the "provost of the tradesmen," 
 and never did he speak of a judgment, of 
 the tribunal of commerce without calling 
 it the sentence of the consuls. The fii'st 
 one to rise in his house, no doubt by virtue 
 of these customs, he calmly awaited the 
 coming of his three shop-boys, in order to 
 scold them if they were late. These youth- 
 ful disciples of Mercury knew nothing 
 more fearful than tlte silent sharpness 
 with which their master scrutinized their 
 faces and movements, on Monday morn- 
 ing, to discover proofs or traces of their 
 escapades. But at this moment the old 
 dr^'-goods dealer paid no attention to his 
 apprentices ; he was busily seeking the 
 motive of the solicitude with which that 
 young man in silk stockings and mantle 
 cast eyes alternatelj' upon his sign and 
 upon the depths of his shop. The light 

 
 HOUSE OF THE TENNIS-PLAYING CAT. 
 
 301 
 
 becoming' brighter, allowed a view there 
 of the office, railed off, surrounded by old 
 g'reen-silk curtains, where were kept the 
 hug-e books— mute oracles of the business. 
 
 The too inquisitive stranger seemed to 
 hanker after this little place. So great a 
 fondness for his house appeared suspicious 
 to a merchant who had suffered under 
 the system of the Maximum. Monsieur 
 Guillaume therefore supposed, naturally 
 enoug-h, that this sinister personage had 
 designs upon the cash of the Tennis- 
 Playing Cat. 
 
 After discreetly enjoying' the mute duel 
 which was taking place between his mas- 
 ter and the unknown, the senior shop-boy 
 ventured to step out upon the sidewalk, 
 Avhere M. Guillaume stood watching the 
 young man g-azing' stealthily up at the 
 casements of the third story ; he took two 
 steps into the street, raised his eyes, and 
 thought he detected Mademoiselle Augus- 
 tirie Guillaume hurriedly drawing back 
 out of sight. Displeased by the sharp- 
 ness of his head clerk, the merchant gave 
 him a glance askance ; but suddenly the 
 mutual fears excited in the tradesman's 
 heart and that of his devoted clerk by 
 this stranger's presence were quieted. 
 
 The unknown hailed a carriage on its 
 ■way to a neighboring' square, and quickly 
 jumped into it, affecting the utmost in- 
 difference. This departure poured balm 
 upon the spirits of the other clerks, some- 
 wluit disturbed at encountering' once more 
 the victim of their sport. 
 
 " Well, young men, -what are you stand- 
 ing there for with your arms crossed?" 
 said Monsieur Guillaume to his three neo- 
 phites. "In old tim.es, when I was with 
 Monsieur Chevrel, by this hour I had 
 already examined more than two whole 
 pieces of cloth." 
 
 "It must have been light earlier then ?" 
 said the second clerk, who had charge of 
 this part of the business. 
 
 The old merchant coidd not help srail- 
 ijig. Although two of these three young 
 men, intrusted to his care by their fa- 
 thers, wealthy manufacturers of Louviers 
 and Sedan, had only to ask for a hundred 
 thousand francs to have them oia the day 
 they should be of age to set up for them- 
 
 selves, Guillaume thought it his A\xty to 
 hold them under the ferule of an antique 
 despotism unknown in our days, to those 
 brilliant modern shops, where the clerks 
 aspire to be rich at thirty ; he made them 
 work like neg'roes. Alone these three 
 clerks had to accomplish as much as 
 would have completely wornout ten of 
 the employes whose sybaritism nowadays 
 swells the columns of the expense account. 
 No noise disturbed the peace of this sol- 
 emn house, where the hinges seemed to 
 be always oiled, and where the smallest 
 bit of furniture had that scrupulous clean- 
 liness indicative of severe order and econ- 
 omy. Often, the jolliest of the clerks had 
 amused himself with writing' on the Gruy- 
 ere cheese which was given them for 
 breakfast, and which they were glad to 
 let well alone, the date of its primitive 
 reception. 
 
 This touch of malice and a few similar 
 ones sometimes made the younger of 
 Guillaume's two daughters smile — the 
 pretty maid who had just appeared to 
 the enchanted .stranger. 
 
 Though each of the apprentices, even 
 the oldest one, paid a good price for his 
 board, he would never have been bold 
 enough to remain at his master's table a 
 moment after dessert had been served. 
 When Madame Guillaume spoke of mix- 
 ing the salad, these poor young men 
 trembled in thinking with what parsi- 
 mony her prudent hand had a knack of 
 pouring in the oil. They must never take 
 it into their heads to pass a night out of 
 the house without giving, a long time in 
 advance, a plausible excuse for such an 
 irregularity. Every Sunday, and in regu- 
 lar rotation, two chn-ks accompanied the 
 Guillaume family to mass at Saint-Leu 
 and to vespers. Mesdemoiselles Virginio 
 and Augustine, modestly robed in calico, 
 each took a clerk's arm and walked on 
 ahead, under the scrutinizing eyes of 
 their mother, who brought up the rear of 
 this little domestic procession with her 
 husband, tramed by her to carry two 
 large prayer-books bound in black mo- 
 rocco. 
 
 The second clerk had no salary. 
 
 As for the one whom twelve years of
 
 302 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 perseverance and discretion had initiated 
 into the secrets of the house, he received 
 eight hundred francs as a compensation 
 for his labors. At certain family festivals 
 he was .sTutifled with a few presents, to 
 which Madame Guillaume's dry and 
 wrinkled hand alone gave value ; knit 
 purses which she took care to stuff with 
 cotton in order to show off their open- 
 work desig-ns, strongly made suspenders, 
 or verj' heavy pairs of silk stockings. 
 Sometimes, but rarely, this prime-minister 
 was allowed to share in the pleasures of 
 the family, either when it made an ex- 
 cursion into the countrj', or when, after 
 months of waiting, it decided to use its 
 right, in hiring a box at the theater, to 
 ask after some play that Paris no longer 
 thought of. As for the other three clerks, 
 the barrier of respect that in old times 
 separated a master dry-goods dealer from 
 his apprentices was so strongly fixed be- 
 tween them and the old merchant that it 
 would have been easier for them to steal 
 a piece of cloth than to disturb this au- 
 gust etiquette. 
 
 Such reserv^e may seem ridiculous now- 
 adays : but these old houses were schools 
 of manners and of probity. The masters 
 adopted their apprentices. A j'oung 
 man's linen was looked after, mended, 
 and sometimes renewed by the mistress 
 of the house. If a clerk became ill, truly 
 maternal care was bestowed upon him. 
 In case of danger, the master lavished 
 his money to call in the most celebrated 
 doctors ; since he felt responsible for m.ore 
 than merely the morals and knowledge of 
 these young men to their parents. If one 
 of them, honorable in character, chanced 
 to fall in love, these old merchants knew 
 how to appreciate the intelligence which 
 they had developed ; and they did not 
 hesitate to intrust the happiness of their 
 daughter to the man whom they had long 
 intrusted with their fortune. 
 
 Guillaume was one of these old-fashioned 
 individuals, and if he had their oddities, 
 he had also all their good qualities ; so 
 Joseph Lebas, his head clerk, an orphan 
 Without fortune, was in his mind the 
 future husband of Virginie, his older 
 daughter. 
 
 But Joseph did not share the sj'mmet- 
 rical thoughts of his master, who would 
 not for the world have married off his sec- 
 ond daughter before his first. The un- 
 fortunate clerk felt his heart completely 
 captivated by Mademoiselle Augustine, 
 the younger daughter. In order to jus- 
 tify this passion, which had grown up in 
 seci'et, it is necessary to penetrate more 
 deeply into the precincts of the absolute 
 government that held sway over the old 
 draper's house. 
 
 Guillaume had two daughters. The 
 elder. Mademoiselle Virginie, was quite 
 the picture of her mother. Madame Guil- 
 laume, the daughter of Monsieur Chevrel, 
 sat so bolt upright on the bench behind 
 her counter that more than once she had 
 heard people wager in jest that she was 
 impaled. Her lean and long visage gave 
 evidence of excessive devoutness. With- 
 out charms or amiable manners, Madame 
 Guillaume habitually ornamented her al- 
 most sexagenary head with a cap of an 
 invariable shape, and garnished witli lap- 
 pets like a widow's cap. All the neigh- 
 borhood called her the guardian sister of 
 the convent. Her words were few, and 
 her gestures had something of the jerki- 
 ness of the Morse telegraphic alphabet. 
 Her eye, as sharp as a cat's, seemed to 
 bear a grudge against everybody because 
 its owner was ugly. 
 
 Mademoiselle Virginie, brought up like 
 her young sister under their mother's des- 
 potic laws, had attained the age of twen- 
 ty-eight years. Youth lessened the un- 
 comely' look which the likeness to her 
 mother sometimes gave her face ; but the 
 maternal rigor had endowed her with two 
 great qualities that might counterbalance 
 everything — she was sweet and patient. 
 
 Mademoiselle Augustine, hardly eigh- 
 teen years old, resembled neither her 
 father nor mother. She was one of 
 those girls who, by the absence of all 
 physical bond of union with their parents, 
 inspire a belief in the old woman's say- 
 ing: "God bestows children." Augus- 
 tine was small, or, to picture her moi'e 
 exactly, delicate and pretty. Graceful 
 and abounding in frankness, a man of 
 the world could only have reproached
 
 HOUSE OF THE TENNIS-PLAYING CAT. 
 
 303 
 
 this charming creature with awkward 
 g-estures or certain commonplace atti- 
 tudes, and occasionally^ with embarrass- 
 ment. Her silent and unmoved face gave 
 expression to the passing melancholy that 
 possesses all j'oung ^wooien too weak to 
 venture resistance to a mother's will. 
 Always modestly dressed, the two sisters 
 could not satisfy their innate woman's 
 coquetry except by a luxury of neatness, 
 which was wonderfully becoming to them 
 and put them in harmony with those shin- 
 ing counters, with those shelves where the 
 old domestic permitted not a speck of dust, 
 and with the antique simplicity of evevy- 
 thing to be seen around them. Obliged 
 b^' their way of life to seek the elements 
 of happiness in persevering work, Augus- 
 tine and Virginie had hitherto given only 
 satisfaction to their mother, who private- 
 ly congratulated herself upon her two 
 daughters' perfection of character. It is 
 easy to imagine the results of the edu- 
 cation the^' had received. Brought up 
 for business, accustomed to hear only 
 wretched, mercantile ai'guments and cal- 
 culations ; having studied only grammar, 
 book-keeping, a little Jewish and French 
 history, and reading solely such authoi'S 
 as were permitted by their mother, their 
 ideas had not gi'own to be very extensive. 
 They could keep house perfectly ; they 
 knew the prices of things ; they under- 
 stood the difficulties in the way of accu- 
 mulating money ; they were economical, 
 and had a great respect for the qualities 
 of the merchant. In .spite of their father's 
 wealth, they ^vere as skillful in mending 
 as in embroidering. Often tlieir mother 
 spoke about teaching them how to cook, 
 so that they might be able to order a din- 
 ner and scold a cook with a proper under- 
 standing of the subject. 
 
 Ignorant of the world's pleasures and 
 beholding how the exemplaiy life of their 
 parents glided away, they rarely cast a 
 glance beyond the confines of this ances- 
 tral house wliich was the whole universe 
 to their molher. The social gatherings 
 occasioned by familj- solemnities formed 
 all the future of their earthly joys. 
 
 When the large drawing-room in the 
 second story was to receive Madame 
 
 Roguin, who was once a Mademoiselle 
 Chevrel, fifteen years younger than her 
 cousin, and who wore diamonds: tiie j'oung 
 Rabourdin, second chief clerk in the De- 
 partment of Finance ; M. Cesar Birot- 
 teau, the wealthy perfumer, and his wife, 
 Imown as Madame Cesar ; M. Camusot, 
 the richest dealer in silks of the Rue des 
 Bourdonnais, and his father-in-law. Mon- 
 sieur Cardot ; two or three old bankers, 
 and a few irreproachable ladies, the prep- 
 arations necessitated by the way the 
 plate, the Dresden china, the wax candles, 
 and the glass-ware were packed away 
 made a diversion in the monotonous life 
 of these three women, who went and 
 came and bustled about as actively as 
 do nuns for the reception of their bishop. 
 Then, when night found all three worn 
 out with wiping, rubbing, unpacking, and 
 putting in place the ornaments of the en- 
 tertaisment, the two girls helped their 
 mother to go to bed*, and Madame Guil- 
 laume said to them : 
 
 " We liave done nothing to-day, my 
 children ! " 
 
 Whenever, in these solemn parties, the 
 guardian sister of the convent allowed 
 dancing, restricting the games of Boston, 
 whist, and backgammon to her own cham- 
 ber, this concession was accounted a most 
 unexpected felicity, and caused a happi- 
 ness equal to that of going to the two or 
 three great balls where Guillaume took 
 his daughters in carnival time. Finally, 
 once in the year, the honest dry-goods 
 merchant gave an entertainment, on 
 which he spared no expense. However 
 rich and elegant might be the people in- 
 vited, they were very careful not to be 
 absent ; for the most considerable houses 
 in business had recourse to the immense 
 credit, the wealth, or the great experience 
 of Monsieur Guillaume. But the two > 
 daughters of this worthy tradesman did 
 not profit as much as might have been 
 supposed from tlie lessons which the 
 world offers to young- people. The^- wore 
 at these parties — recorded, moreover, on 
 the register of bills payable of the house 
 — such sliabby gowns that they were 
 forced to blush. Their manner of danc- 
 ing had nothing remarkable about it.
 
 304 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 and the maternal supervision did not 
 allow them to carry on a conversation 
 with th(>ir partners otherwise than b^' 
 "yes" and "no." Then the law of the 
 old sign of the Tennis-Playing Cat com- 
 manded them to be in bed at eleven 
 o'clock, the very hour when balls and 
 entertainments begin to grow animated. 
 Thus their pleasures, in appearance con- 
 formable enough to their father's fortune, 
 often became insipid from circumstances 
 inherent in the habits and principles of 
 the family. 
 
 As for their ordinaiy life, a single re- 
 mark will fully characterize it. Madame 
 Guillaume I'equired that her two daugh- 
 ters should be dressed early in the morn- 
 ing:, that they should go do'svnstairs eveiy 
 day at the same hour, and she subjected 
 all their doings to a conventual regu- 
 larity. HoM'ever, Augnstine had received 
 from fate a soul lofty enough to ft^l the 
 emptiness of such aif existence. At times 
 her blue eyes were raised as if to question 
 the depths of that dark staircase and of 
 those damp stores. After fathoming' this 
 cloisteral silence, she seemed to listen 
 from afar to confused revelations of that 
 passionate life which places a liigher value 
 upon sentiments than upon things. At 
 these moments a color came into her face, 
 her listless hands let the white muslin 
 fall on the polished oak of the counter, 
 and soon her mother would say to her, 
 in a voice that remained always Sharp, 
 even in its sweetest accents : 
 
 " Aug-ustioe ! wh3',what are you think- 
 ing of, my dear ? " 
 
 Perhaps " Hippolyte, Count of Doug- 
 las," and the " Count of Comminges," 
 two novels found by Augustine in the 
 cupboard of a cook recently discharged 
 by Madame Guillaume, contributed to 
 •H the development of this j'oung lady's 
 ideas, for she had secretly devoured them 
 during the long nights of the preceding 
 winter. Augustine's expressions of vague 
 desire, her .sweet voice, her jasmine com- 
 plexion, and her blue eyes had therefore 
 kindled in poor Lebas's soul a love as vio- 
 lent as it was respectful. By a caprice 
 easy to understand, Augustine felt not 
 the slightest liking for the orphan ; it 
 
 might have been because she did not 
 know that he was in love with her. By 
 way of retaliation, the head-clerk's long 
 legs, auburn hair, big hands, and robust 
 build had awakened a secret admiration 
 in Mademoiselle Vu^inie, who, despite 
 her fifty thousand crowns of dowry, was 
 not yet asked in marriage by anybody. 
 Nothing could be more natural than these 
 two inverted passions born amid the si- 
 lence of that dark shop as violets flower 
 in- the depths of the woods. The mute 
 and constant contemplation that united 
 these young peoples' eyes b^' their urgent 
 need of distraction in the midst of plod- 
 ding labor and a religious peace, must 
 sooner or later have excited feelings of 
 love. The habit of seeing a face makes 
 one discover in it insensibly the qualities 
 of the soul, and ends hy effacing its 
 defects. 
 
 "At the rate this man is going on, it 
 will not be long before our girls have to 
 get down on their knees to beg for a 
 suitor," said Monsieur Guillaume to him- 
 self on reading the first decree by which 
 Napoleon anticipated on the classes of 
 conscripts. 
 
 From that day, in despair at seeing his 
 elder daughter fade away, the old mer- 
 chant called to mind his having married 
 Mademoiselle Chevrel in very nearlj' such 
 a situation as Joseph Lebas and Virginie 
 were in. What a good thing it would be 
 to marry his daughter and to pay off a 
 sacred debt \>y showing unto an orphan 
 the kindness which he had himself re- 
 ceived in old times from his predecessor 
 under the same circumstances ! Thirtj'- 
 tliree years old, Joseph Lebas thought of 
 the obstacles that a difference of fifteen 
 years put between Augustine and him- 
 self. Too clear-sighted, moreover, not to 
 guess at Monsieur Guillaume's plans, he 
 was well enough acquainted with his in- 
 exorable principles to know that never 
 would the younger daughter be married 
 before the elder one. The poor clerk, 
 whose heart was as excellent as his legs 
 were long and his chest was broad, suf- 
 fered therefore in silence. 
 
 Such was the state of affairs in this 
 little republic which, in the heart of the
 
 .M. GUILLAUMK 
 The typical merchaut. 
 
 Balzac, Volume One. 
 
 The House of the Tennis Flavwo Cat.

 
 HOUSE OF THE TE:SNIS-P LAYING CAT. 
 
 305 
 
 Rue Saint Denis, resembled somewhat a 
 branch of the Trappist Order. 
 
 But to give an exact account of external 
 events as well as of emotions, it is neces- 
 sary to go back to a few months 'before 
 the scene with which this story begins. 
 At the hour of twilight, a young man, 
 passing before the dark shop of the Ten- 
 nis-Playing Cat, stopped a moment to 
 contemplate a picture which would have 
 fascinated all the painters of the world. 
 The store, not being yet lighted, formed 
 a black foreground, at the back of which 
 could be seen the merchant's dining-room. 
 An astral lamp shed there that yellow 
 light which imparts such a charm to the 
 paintings of the Dutch school. The white 
 linen, the silver and glass-ware, formed 
 brilliant accessories that were further 
 embellished by the sharp contrasts be- 
 tween light and shadow. The face of 
 the father of the family and that of his 
 wife, tlie visages of the clerks and Augus- 
 tine's regular features, a stout, chubby- 
 cheeked girl standing two steps away 
 from her, composed such a curious group; 
 these heads were so original, and each 
 personage had so open an expression ; the 
 peace, the quiet, and the modest life of 
 this family were so plainly evident that 
 an artist accustomed to delineating nature 
 could not but feel desperately anxious to 
 reproduce this fortuitous scene. The 
 passer was a .young painter who had won 
 the great prize for painting, seven years 
 before. He was just home from Rome. 
 His soul, nurtured on poetry, his eyes, 
 sated with Raphael and Michael Angelo, 
 thirsted for simple nature after a long 
 residence in the pompous country where 
 art spreads its magnificence on all sides. 
 False or just, this was his personal feel- 
 ing. Long given up to the ardor of Ital- 
 ian passions, his heart demanded one of 
 those modest and serene maids whom, un- 
 fortunately, he had only been able to find 
 in paintings at Rome. From tlie enthusi- 
 asm of soul inspired hy the artless picture 
 which he beheld, he passed naturally to a 
 profound admiration for its principal 
 figure. Augustine seemed pensive and 
 did not eat. The lamp was so arranged 
 that the light fell full upon her face ; her 
 
 form appeared to move in a circle of fire 
 which set off more vividlj' the contours of 
 her head and illuminated it in an almost 
 supernatural manner. The artist invol- 
 untarily compared her to an exiled angel 
 recalling heaven to her mind. An almost 
 unknown sensation, a limpid and bubbling 
 love, overflowed his heart. 
 
 After standing a moment as if crushed 
 by the weight of his thonghts, he tore 
 himself away from his happiness, went 
 home, could not eat, and could not sleep. 
 
 On the next day he entered his studio 
 not to leave it imtil he had deposited on 
 canvas the witchery of this scene which 
 bad quite taken possession of him. His 
 happiness was incomplete as long as he 
 did not own a portrait of his idol. He 
 passed several times before the house of 
 the Tennis- Playing Cat; he ventured 
 even to enter once or twice on a pretended 
 errand of purchase, in order to have a 
 nearer view of the fascinating creature 
 sheltered under Madame Guillaume's 
 wing. During eight whole months, ab- 
 sorbed by his love and his brushes, he 
 remained invisible to his most intimate 
 friends, forgetting society, books, the 
 theater, music, and his dearest habits. 
 
 One morning Girodet, disregarding the 
 servants' instructions, which artists \m- 
 derstand and manage to elude, forced his 
 way in and startled him witli this ques- 
 tion : " Wliat are you going to put in 
 the Salon?" 
 
 The artist seized his friend's hand, led 
 liim into his studio, uncovered a small 
 easel-picture and a poi^trait. After a 
 slow and eager contemplation of the two 
 mastei-pieces, Girodet fell on his comrade's 
 neck and embraced him without finding 
 a word to say. His emotions could only 
 be expressed as he felt them, from soul to 
 soul. 
 
 "Are you in love ? " asked Girodet. 
 
 Both of them knew that the finest por- 
 traits of Titian, Raphael, and Leonardo 
 da Vinci are due to those inspired feelings 
 which, under different conditions, give 
 rise indeed to all masterpieces. The only 
 repl3' the j^oung artist made was to bow 
 his head. 
 
 '■ You are a happy man to be able to
 
 30G 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY 
 
 fall in love here, just after coming- home 
 from Italy ! I don't advise you to exhibit 
 such works in the Salon," added the great 
 painter. " You see these two pictures 
 would not be felt there. These true col- 
 ors, this prodigious amount of labor, can- 
 not 3'et be appreciated ; the iiublic is no 
 longer accustomed to such depth. The 
 ])ictures w^e paint, my good friend, are 
 mei'e daubs, mere screens. Well, let us 
 rather make verses and translate the 
 classics ! Tliere is more glorj'^ to be looked 
 for from that than from our unluckj'^ 
 canvases." 
 
 Despite this charitable advice, the two 
 pictures wore exhibited. The interior 
 created a revolution in painting. It 
 gave birth to those genre pictures, the 
 prodigious number of which in all our 
 exhibitions might lead one to believe that 
 they are turned out by some purely me- 
 chanical processes. As for the portrait, 
 there are few artists who do not retain 
 • some recollection of that living canvas 
 which became as much of a favorite with 
 the public, sometimes judging justly in 
 a body, as with Girodet himself. The 
 two pictures were surrounded by an 
 immense crowd. Women said it was as 
 much as your life was worth to get near 
 them. Speculators and great noblemen 
 olfered to cover the two paintings with 
 double Napoleons ; the artist obstinately 
 refused to sell them, and refused to make 
 any copies of them. He was offered an 
 enormous amount for the pei'mission to 
 engrave them ; the dealers were no more 
 successful than the amateurs had been. 
 
 Although this affair created a sensa- 
 tion, it was not of a nature to make its 
 way into the little desert of the Rue Saint 
 Denis ; nevertheless, when calling on Ma- 
 dame Guillaume, the notary's wife spoke 
 of the exhibition before Augustine, whom 
 she was vei-y fond of, and explained to her 
 all about it. Madame Roguin's tattle 
 naturally inspired in Augustine a desire 
 to see the pictures and the hardihood to 
 secretl}'- ask her cousin to accompany her 
 to the Louvi'e.* The cousin succeeded in 
 
 * Where trie annual exhibitions were then heUi, 
 the Pnlais il'Indiistre being of very recent con- 
 st ruction. — Editor. 
 
 the negotiations which she opened with 
 Madame Guillaume for obtaining permis- 
 sion to tear her young cousin away from 
 her dull labors during about two hours. 
 The gitl therefore penetrated through the 
 crowd to the portrait that had won the 
 prize. A shiver made her tremble like a 
 birch-leaf when she recognized herself. 
 She felt afraid, and looked around her to 
 get back to Madame Roguin, from whom 
 she had been separated by a press of 
 people. 
 
 Just at this moment her frightened eyes 
 fell upon the blazing face of the young 
 painter. She remembered all at once the 
 looks of a passer-by whom she had often 
 noticed with some curiosity, supposing 
 that it was a new neighbor. 
 
 "You see what love has inspired me to 
 do ! " said the artist in the timid creat- 
 ure's ear ; and she was quitp terrified by 
 his words. 
 
 She mustered up a supernatural courage 
 to cleave her way through the throng and 
 join her cousin, who was still busily strug- 
 g-lingwith the mass of humanity that pre- 
 vented her reaching the picture. 
 
 "You Avill be crushed to death," ex- 
 claimed Augustine ; " let us go ! " . 
 
 But there are certain times at the Salon 
 when two women are not always free to 
 direct their steps in the galleries. Made- 
 moiselle Guillaume and her cousin were 
 pushed to within a few feet of the second 
 picture in consequence of the erratic course 
 that the crowd compelled them to take. 
 Chance willed that they should have to- 
 gether the opportunity to approach the 
 canvas which fashion, agreeing this time 
 with talent, made famous. 
 
 The exclamation of surprise uttered by 
 the notary's wife was lost in the commo- 
 tion and buzzing of the multitude. Au- 
 gustine shed tears involuntarily at the 
 sight of this wonderful scene, and, in- 
 spired by an almost inexplicable feeling, 
 she laid her finger upon her lips on per- 
 ceiving close at hand the young artist's 
 rapturous face. The unknown lesponded 
 by a nod of his head, and pointed out 
 Madame Roguin as the disturber of their 
 happiness, in order to show Augustine 
 that she was understood. This panto-
 
 HOUSE OF THE TENNIS-PLAYING CAT. 
 
 307 
 
 mime was like a firebrand to the poor girl, 
 who thought herself criminally \\Tong 
 when she imagined that a sort of agree- 
 ment had JLisfc been made between herself 
 and the artist. The stifling heat, the 
 sight of so many brilliant toilets, and 
 Augustine's amazement at the bright 
 colors, the multitude of living and painted 
 faces, the profusion of gilt frames, made 
 her experience a sort of intoxication that 
 redoubled her fears. She would, perhaps, 
 have fainted away if, in spite of the chaos 
 of her sensations, there had not sprung 
 up at the bottom of her heart an unknown 
 joy which made her whole being alive. 
 Nevertheless, she supposed herself under 
 the sway of that demon whose terrible 
 snares had been predicted to her by the 
 thundering words of preachers. That 
 moment was to her a moment of mental 
 distraction. She saw this young man, 
 radiant with happiness and love, follow 
 her to her cousin's carriage. 
 
 Preyed ujion by an entirely new excite- 
 ment, by an intoxication that gave her 
 over to nature, Augustine listened to the 
 eloquent voice of her heart, and glanced 
 several times at the young painter, be- 
 traying the trouble that possessed her. 
 Never had the glow of her cheeks formed 
 a sharper contrast to the whiteness of 
 her skin. The artist then perceived her 
 beauty in its full flower, her modesty in 
 all its glory. Augustine felt a species of 
 joy, mingled with terror, as she thought 
 that her presence caused the felicity of 
 the man whose name was on all lips, and 
 whose talent gave immortality to fleeting 
 images. 
 
 She was loved ! It was impossible for 
 her to doubt it. 
 
 When she could no longer see the artist, 
 those simple words still soimded within 
 her heart : " You see what love . has in- 
 spired me to do ! " and its palpitations, 
 growing stronger, seemed pain to her, 
 while her more ardent blood awakened 
 powers unknown in her being. She pre- 
 tended to have a severe headache in order 
 to escape answering her cousin's questions 
 about the pictures ; but on reaching home, 
 Madame Koguin could not refrain from 
 spealdng to Madame Guillaume of the 
 
 celebrity obtained by the Tennis-Playing 
 Cat, and Augustine trembled all over at 
 hearing her mother say that she would 
 go to the Salon to see her house then;. 
 The young woman again insisted that 
 she was indisposed, and obtained permis- 
 sion to leave the room. 
 
 "That is what you get running after 
 all these sights," exclaimed Monsieur 
 GuUlaume ; "headaches! Is it then so 
 very amusing to see in a painting what 
 you can look at any day in our street ? 
 Don't talk to me about artists ; they are 
 like your authors, they starve to death I 
 What in creation do they want to take 
 my house for and slander it in their pict- 
 ures ? " 
 
 " That may make us sell a few more 
 yards of cloth," said Joseph Lebas. 
 
 This remark did not prevent the arts 
 and thought from being once more con- 
 demned in the tribunal of commerce. 
 
 As may be well imagined, tliese dis- 
 courses did not give much hope to Augus- 
 tine, who was absorbed during the night 
 \>y her first meditation on love. The 
 events of the daj' were like a dream, 
 which it pleased her to reproduce in 
 thought. She was initiated into the 
 feai's, hopes, remorse ; into all the un- 
 dulations of sentiment that ever beguile 
 so simple and timid a heart as was hers. 
 
 What a void she recognized in this dark 
 house, and what a treasure she found in 
 her own soul ! To be the wife of a man 
 of talent, and to shai'e in his glory I 
 What ravages such an idea must have 
 made in the heart of a child brought up 
 in the bosom of this family ! What hope 
 must it not have awakened in a young 
 person who, hitherto bred on vulgar prin- 
 ciples, had yet longed for a life of elegance ! 
 A ray of sunlight had fallen into this 
 prison. Augustine was all at once in 
 love. So many different feelings were 
 awakened in her at the same time that 
 she succumbed without stopping to cal- 
 culate. At the age of eighteen, does not 
 love interpose its prism between the world 
 and the eyes of a young woman ? Inca- 
 pable of divining the rude shocks result- 
 ing from the alliance of a loving woman 
 with a man of imagination, she thought
 
 308 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY 
 
 herself called upon to make this man's 
 happiness, without taking note of a.ny 
 incompatibility between herself and him. 
 To her the present was the whole future. 
 
 When her father and mother came home 
 next daj' from the Salon, their glum faces 
 indicated disappointment. First, the two 
 pictures had been withdrawn by the 
 , painter; then, Madame Guillaume had 
 lost her cashmere .shawl. To learn that 
 the pictures had disappeared immediately 
 after her visit to the Salon, was for Au- 
 gustine the revelation of a delicacy of feel- 
 ing which women know how to appreciate, 
 even instinctively. 
 
 That morning when, on his waj^ home 
 from a ball, Theodore de Sommervieux — 
 such was the name that fame had wafted 
 into Augustine's heart — was sprinkled b^^ 
 the clerks of the Tennis-Playing C'ai,while 
 he waited for the appearance of his artless 
 beloved, who certainly did not know he 
 was there, the two lovers saw one an- 
 other for the fourth time onlj^ since the 
 scene in the Salon. The obstacles opposed 
 by the regulations of the Guillaume house- 
 hold to the artist's fiery character im- 
 parted an easily imagined \aolence to his 
 passion for Augustine. How could one 
 come near a joung lady seated at a 
 counter between two such women as 
 Mademoiselle Vii-ginie and Madame Guil- 
 laume ? How was a correspondence to 
 be carried on with her when her mother 
 never left her ? 
 
 Skillful, as all lovers are, in contriving 
 misfortunes for himself, Theodore imag- 
 ined a rival in one of the clerks, and sup- 
 posed the others to act in the interests of 
 his rival. If he should escape so many 
 • Arguses, he saw himself coming to grief 
 under the sharp eyes of the old merchant 
 or of Madame Guillaume. Everywhere 
 obstacles, everywhere despair ! The very 
 A'iolence of his passion prevented the j'oung 
 painter from hitting upon those ingenious 
 expedients which, in prisoners as in lovers, 
 seem to be the last effort of reason excited 
 by a savage longing for libert}^ or by the 
 fii'e of love. 
 
 Theodore, therefore, roamed about that 
 pa rt of town with the restlessness of a mad- 
 man — as if motion could suggest artifices 
 
 to him. After thoroughly racking his 
 brains, he managed to think of bribing 
 the chubby-cheeked servant-girl. So a 
 few letters were exchanged, at long in- 
 tervals, during the fortnight following 
 the unlucky morning when M. Guillaume 
 and Theodoi-e had had such a good A'iew 
 of one another. By this time the two 
 young people had agreed to see each other 
 at a certain hour of the daj^ and on Sun- 
 day, at Saint Leu, during mass and 
 vespers. Augustine had sent her dear 
 Theodore a list of the relatives and friends 
 of the family, and the J'oung painter en- 
 deavored to get access to them, in order, 
 if it were possible, to interest in his love 
 affair one of those souls so wrapped up in 
 money and business, that a true passion 
 must have seemed to them a most mon- 
 strous and unheard-of soi^t of speculation. 
 
 Nothing, however, was changed in the 
 habits of the Tennis-Playing Cat. If 
 Augustine was absent-minded, if, con- 
 trary to all obedience to the laws of the 
 domestic charter, she went upstairs to 
 her room to make signals with a pot of 
 flowers ; if she sighed, if she grew pensive, 
 nobody, not even her. mother, noticed it. 
 This circumstance ^vill cause some sur- 
 prise to those who have understood the 
 spirit of tills house, where a thought 
 tinged with poetry must have produced 
 such a contrast to the persons and things; 
 where no one was allowed a gesture or a 
 glance without its being seen and ana- 
 lyzed . 
 
 Nothing, however, could have been 
 more natural. The quiet vessel sailing 
 the stormy ocean of the Parisian market, 
 under the flag of the Tennis-Playing Cat, 
 was just then the prey of one of those 
 tempests which might be called equi- 
 noctial in consequence of their periodical 
 recurrence. During a foi'tnight, the five 
 men of the crew% Madame Guillaume, and 
 Mademoiselle Virginie applied themselves 
 to that arduous undertaking known as 
 taking account of stock. All the bales of 
 merchandise were moved about, and the 
 number of yards in each piece was meas- 
 ured to ascertain preciselj' the value of 
 what was left. The tag appended to the 
 package was carefully examined to see
 
 HOUSE OF THE TENNIS-PLAYING CAT. 
 
 309 
 
 when the g'oods had been boug-ht . A new 
 price was fixed on them. 
 
 Always bustling around, his yardstick 
 in his hand, his pen over his ear, M. Guil- 
 laume was lil\e a captain commanding- the 
 working of his ship.* His shrill voice, 
 passing throug'h a speaking-tube to ques- 
 tion the deep hatchways of the lower 
 warehouse, shouted out those barbarous 
 commercial expressions which can only be 
 reproduced by enigmas : " How much of 
 H-N-Z ?— Sold out.— What is left of Q-X ? 
 — Two yards. — What price ? — Five-flve- 
 three.— Put all of J-J, all of M-P. and the 
 rest of V-D-0 at three A." A thousand 
 other phrases quite as intelligible were 
 roared around the counters like verses of 
 modern poetr\^ which romanticists quote 
 to keep up their enthusiasm for one of 
 their poets. In the evening, Guillaume, 
 closeted with his clerk and his wife, bal- 
 anced up the accounts, carried forward 
 the balances, dunned the debtors in 
 arrears, and made out bills. All three 
 were busy with that immense labor, the 
 result of which filled but a square piece of 
 foolscap paper, and proved to the liouse 
 of Guillaume that there was so much in 
 money, so much in merchandise, so much 
 in drafts and notes ; that it did not o\s-e a 
 sou ; that there were debts due it of one 
 hundred or two hundred thousand francs ; 
 that the capital had been increased ; that 
 the farms, houses, and rents were to be 
 rounded out, repaired, or doubled. 
 
 From all this resulted the necessity of 
 beginning again vnth more ardor than 
 ever to accumulate more money, without 
 its ever occurring to these plodding ants 
 to ask themselves : "What is the use ? " 
 
 Thanks to this annual turmoil, the fort- 
 unate Augustine escaped investigation 
 from hei" Arguses. 
 
 At last, one Saturday evening, the tak- 
 ing account of stock was finished. The 
 figures of the total assets showed ciphers 
 enough for Guillaume on this occasion to 
 relax the strict rule which, the whole year 
 through, prevailed at dessert. The shrewd 
 dry -goods dealer rubbed his hands and 
 
 * See Meissonier's portrait of M. Guillaume. — 
 Editor. 
 
 allowed his clerks to remain at the table. 
 Each man of the crew had scarcely come 
 to the end of his small glass of home-made 
 liquor when the rumbling of a carriage 
 was heard. The family was going to see 
 " Cinderella " at the Varietes Theatre, 
 while the two youngest clerks received 
 each six-francs and permission to go 
 where he pleased, provided he should be 
 in the house by midnight. 
 
 In spite of this dissipation, on Sunday 
 morning the old merchant shaved himself 
 at six o'clock, put on his chestnut coat, 
 the resplendent color of which alwa^'s 
 caused him the same satisfaction, and 
 attached the gold buckles to his ample 
 silk small-clothes ; then, toward seven 
 o'clock, when all was still asleep within 
 the house, he made liis way to the little 
 room opening- out of his store, on the first 
 story. It WHS lig'lited by a window, with 
 thick iron bars that gave upon a small 
 square courtyard so shut in by black 
 walls that it was very like a well. The 
 old man of business himself threw open 
 these sheet-iron shutters that he knew so 
 well, and raised the half of the -window 
 by sliding it up. The icy air of the yard 
 came in and cooled the hot atmosphere of 
 the I'oom, which exhaled the odor peculiar 
 to ofl&ces. The tradesman stood there, 
 his hand resting upon ^he soded arm of a 
 cane-seat and leather-covered chair, quite 
 faded from its primitive color, and he 
 seemed to hesitate about sitting down. 
 He looked with some emotion art the 
 dbuble desk, where his wife's place was 
 arranged opposite his o-wn by means of a 
 small arcade made in the wall. He gazed 
 at the numbered boxes, the string, the 
 tools, the stamps for marking goods, the 
 cash-box — objects of immemorial origin — 
 and imagined he saw himself once more 
 before the called-back shade of Monsieur 
 Chevrel. He brought out the same stool 
 on which in days of yore he had sat in 
 his dead master's presence. This black- 
 leather stool, from which the hair had 
 long been slipping out at the comers 
 without getting- lost, his trembling hand 
 set at the very place where his predeces- 
 sor had put it ; then, with an agitation 
 difiicult to describe, he pulled the bell-
 
 310 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 rope that led to the head of Joseph Le- 
 bas's bed. When this decisive blow had 
 been struck, the old man, finding these 
 memories no doubt too oppressive, took 
 up three or four bills of exchange that 
 had been presented him — and he looked 
 at them without seeing- them — when Jo- 
 seph Lebas suddenly appeared. 
 
 "Sit down there,"' said Guillaume to 
 him, pointing toward the stool. As the 
 old dry-goods dealer had never made his 
 clerk take a seat before him, Joseph Le- 
 bas started. 
 
 " What do you think of these drafts ? " 
 asked Guillaume. 
 
 " They will not be paid." 
 
 "How so?" 
 
 "Why, I heard day before yesterday 
 that Etienne & Co. were paying out 
 gold." 
 
 "Oh ! oh ! " exclaimed the tradesman ; 
 "they must be very sick to show their 
 bile. Let us talk of something else. 
 Joseph, our inventoi-y is finished." 
 
 " Yes, sir ; and the dividend is one of 
 the finest you have had." 
 
 "Don't use those new words. You 
 must say 'proceeds,' Joseph. Do you 
 know, my boy, that we ai'e indebted to 
 you a bit for these results ? And I don't 
 want that you should be working on a 
 salary any' longer. Madame Guillaume 
 has suggested to me the idea of offering 
 you an interest in the business. Now, 
 Joseph, 'Guillaume & Lebas' — wouldn't 
 that be a fine name for the firm? We 
 might add, also, ' and Company,' to round 
 out the signatui'e." 
 
 The tears came into Joseph Lebas's eyes, 
 and he strove to conceal them. 
 
 "Ah, Monsieur Guillaume! how have 
 I deserved such kindness ? I only do my 
 duty. It was so much for j-outo take any 
 interest in a poor orph — ." 
 
 He brushed the cuff of his left sleeve 
 with his right sleeve, and dared not look 
 at the old man, who smiled as he thought 
 that this modest young man no doubt 
 needed, like himself in old times, to be 
 encouraged to make the explanation com- 
 plete. 
 
 " However," resumed Virginie's father, 
 "you don't deserve this favor very much. 
 
 Joseph. You don't put as much con- 
 fidence in me as I do in you." (The clerk 
 suddenly raised his head.) " You hav(; 
 the secret of the cash-box. For two years 
 I have told you about almost all my affairs. 
 I have let you travel to the factories ; and 
 so far as you are concerned I have nothing 
 to reproach myself with. But you — You 
 have a liking for some one, and you 
 haven't breathed a single word to me 
 about it." (Joseph Lebas blushed.) "Ah! 
 ah! " exclaimed Guillaume, "you thought 
 you could hoodwink an old fox like me, 
 did you ? Yet you saw me guess the 
 Lecoq failure ! " 
 
 " What, monsieur," rejoined Joseph Le- 
 bas, looking at his master as attentively 
 as his master looked at him — "what, do 
 you know whom I love ? " 
 
 " I know all about it, you scapegrace," 
 said the respectable and sly tradesman, 
 pinching the tip of his ear ; " and I for- 
 give .you. I did just the same thing my- 
 self.'"' 
 
 " And you will let me have her? " 
 
 "Yes, with fifty thousand crowns, and 
 I will leave you as much more ; and we 
 will start on a new account, with a new- 
 name for the firm. We will make things 
 more lively, my boy I " cried the old shop- 
 keeper, standing up and throwing his arms 
 about. " See here, my son-in-law, there 
 is nothing like business. The people who 
 ask what pleasure there is in it are fools. 
 To have a keen scent for business ; to 
 know how to stand at the head of the 
 market; to wait anxiously, as in gam- 
 bling, to see whether Etienne & Co. are 
 going to fail ; to behold a whole regiment 
 of the Imperial Guard march by dressed 
 in your cloth; to give your neighbor a 
 whack, fairly and squarely, of course ; 
 to manufacture more cheaply than others 
 can ; to follow up some business project 
 that begins small, grows, staggers, and 
 succeeds ; to be acquainted, like the chief 
 of police, with all the resources of busi- 
 ness houses, so as not to go off on the 
 wrong track ; to stand firm amid wrecks : 
 to have friends hy correspondence in all 
 the manufacturing cities — is not all that 
 a perpetual game, Joseph ? Why, that 
 is life itself ! I shall die in the traces, as
 
 HOUSE OF THE TENNIS-PLAYING CAT. 
 
 311 
 
 old Chevrel did, and I shall bo all the 
 better for it." 
 
 In tlic heat of his greatest improvisa- 
 tion, Father Guillaume scarcely' g-lanced 
 at his clerk, who was weeping- hot teai's. 
 
 '•Well, Joseph, my poor boy, what is 
 the matter with you ? " 
 
 "Ah! I love her so much — so much. 
 Monsieur Guillaume, that my heart fails 
 me, I think." 
 
 "Well, my boy," said the affected 
 tradesman, " you are more fortunate than 
 you think, indeed, for she is in love with 
 you. I am sure of it." And he winked 
 with both his little green eyes as he looked 
 at his clerk. 
 
 " Mademoiselle Aug-ustme ! Mademoi- 
 selle Augustine ! " cried Joseph Lebas in 
 Ins enthusiasm. He was about to rush 
 out of the room, when he felt himself 
 stopped by an iron grasp, and his as- 
 tounded master brought him back vigor- 
 ously. 
 
 " What has Augustine to do in this 
 matter ? " askted Guillaume : and his voice 
 ininiediately made the unhappy Joseph 
 Leb-.is's blood run cold. 
 
 " Isn't she — the one — I love ?" answered 
 the stammering clerk. 
 
 Quite put out by his want of perspi- 
 cacity, Guillaume sat doA\Ti again and 
 buried his peaked head in both his hands 
 to ponder on the odd position he found 
 himself in. Abashed and in despair, 
 Joseph Lebas remained standing. 
 
 "Joseph," resumed the merchant with 
 cold dignity, " I was speaking to you 
 about Virginic. Love does not come at 
 one's bidding, I know. I am acquainted 
 with your discretion ; we will forget all 
 about it. I shall never let Augustine 
 marry before Virginie. Your interest in 
 the business will be ten per cent.'" 
 
 The clerk, to whom love gave I know 
 not what degi-eo of courage and eloquence, 
 clasped his hands, began talking, and 
 spoke to Guillaume for a quarter of an 
 hour with so much warmth and feeling 
 tliat the situation changed. If it had been 
 a question of some business matter, the 
 old merchant would have had fixed rules 
 for making up his mind : but. buffeted a 
 thousand leagues away from commerce. 
 
 upon the sea of sentiment, and without a 
 compass, he wavered irresolutely before 
 so original an event, as he said to himself. 
 Influenced by his natural kindness, he beat 
 somewhat to windward. 
 
 " But, my gracious, Joseph, you know 
 well enough that I had my two children 
 ten years apart ! Mademoiselle Chevrel 
 was not exactly a beauty, yet she has no 
 reason to complain of me. Do as I did, 
 then. Don't cry about it, anyway; aren't 
 you foolish ? What is it you want ? Per- 
 haps it may all be arranged : we shall 
 see. There is always some way of getting 
 out of a fix. We men are not always the 
 sentimental lovers of our wives. Do you 
 understand me ? Madame Guillaume is a 
 very religious person, and — Well, dear 
 me, my ohild. you may give your arm to 
 Augustine this morning when j-ou go to 
 mass." 
 
 Such were the words uttered rather at 
 random by Guillaume. The permission 
 endjng them delighted the love-smitten 
 clerk ; he was already thinking of one of 
 his friends for Mademoiselle Virginie when 
 he left the smoky room, shaking the hand 
 of his future father-in-law and informing 
 him, with a knowing look, that all would 
 be arrang-ed for the best. 
 
 " What will Madame Guillaume think ?" 
 This idea troubled the honest merchant 
 prodigiously when he was alone. 
 
 At breakfast, Madame Guillaume and 
 Virginie, whom the tradesman had pro- 
 visionally left in ignorance of liis disap- 
 pointment, looked rather maliciously at 
 Joseph Lebas, who was not a little em- 
 barrassed. 
 
 The clerk's modesty won him the friend- 
 ship of his mother-in-law. The matron 
 became so gay that she looked smilingly 
 atM. Guillaume, and allowed lierself some 
 of those little jokes of immemorial usage 
 in such simple-minded families. She 
 raised the question whether Virginie and 
 Joseph were of the same height, in order 
 to ask them to stand back to back. These 
 preparatory fooleries brought gloom to 
 the face of the head of the family, and he 
 pretended such a love of decorum that 
 he ordered Augustine to take the head- 
 clerk's arm in going to Saint-Leu. Ma-
 
 312 
 
 THE HUM AX COMEDY. 
 
 dame Guillaume, astonished by this mas- 
 culine delicacy, honored her husband with 
 an approving- nod of her head. The pro- 
 cession set out from the house, therefore, 
 in an order that could sugg-est no mali- 
 cious interpretation to the neighbors. 
 
 " Don't you think. Mademoiselle Augus- 
 tine," said the clerk, tremblingly, "that 
 the wife of a merchant with a good credit, 
 such as M. Guillaume has, for example, 
 might amuse herself a little more than 
 your mother does — might weardiamond.s, 
 and ride in her carriage ? For \ny part, 
 if I were married, I should want to have 
 all the trouble, and to see my wife happy. 
 I would not put her at my counter. You 
 see, in the dry-goods business, women are 
 no longer as necessary as the}' used to be. 
 M. Guillaume was right in actiiig as he 
 has done, and besides it was his wife's 
 taste. But if a woman laiows how to 
 lend a hand at the bookkeeping, the cor- 
 respondence, the retail trade, the orders, 
 and her housekeeping, so as not to reniain 
 idle, that is enough. At seven o'clock, 
 when the shop was closed, I should amuse 
 myself ; I should go to the theater and 
 out into society. But you are not listen- 
 ing to me?" 
 
 "Yes, indeed. Monsieur Joseph. What 
 did you say about painting ? That is a 
 beautiful profession." 
 
 " Yes, I am acquainted with a master 
 house-painter. Monsieur Lourdois, and he 
 has some mone3\" 
 
 Thus chatting, the family arrived at 
 Saint Leu's Church. There Madame 
 Guillaume reasserted her rights, and put 
 Augustine beside herself for the first time. 
 Virginie took her place upon the fourth 
 chair, at the side of Lebas. 
 
 During the sermon all went well between 
 Augustine and Theodore, who was stand- 
 ing behind a pillar and prajnng fer\'ently 
 to his Madonna ; but, at the elevation 
 of the Host, Madame Guillaume noticed 
 rather late that her daughter Augustine 
 was holding her prayer-book upside down. 
 She made ready to scold her sharply, when, 
 lowering her veil, she interrupted her read- 
 ing and began to look in the direction 
 where her daughter's eyes seemed to be 
 fixed. With the aid of her eye-glasses 
 
 she saw the young artist, whose aristo- 
 cratic elegance indicated rather some 
 cavalry captain out on leave than any 
 tradesman of that quarter of the city. 
 It would be difficult to ijicture the violent 
 state of mind that Madame Guillaume fell 
 into, after flattering herself that her 
 daughters had been perfectly brought 
 up, when she recognized in Augustme's 
 heart a clandestine love, the danger of 
 which was exaggerated to her by her 
 prudery and ignorance. She thought her 
 daughter depraved to the heart's core. 
 
 "Just keep your book open at the right 
 place, mademoiselle," said she, in a voice 
 low but shaking with anger. 
 
 She snatched the tell-tale prayer-book 
 away quickh', and gave it back with the 
 letters right side up. 
 
 " Don't .you be so unluckj-as to set j-our 
 eyes anywhere else than on j'our praj'ers, ' ' 
 she added; "if you do, 3'ou'll have to 
 settle with me. After mass j'our father 
 and I will have something to say to 
 3'ou." 
 
 These words were like a clap of thunder 
 to poor Augustine. She felt a faintness 
 come over her ; but, divided between the 
 pain she felt and her fear of making a 
 scene in church, she had the courage to 
 conceal her anguish. It was easy, how- 
 ever, to divine the agitated state of her 
 mind by seeing her prayer-book tremble 
 and the tears drop on every page as it 
 was turned. From the fiery glance cast 
 upon him by Madame Guillaume, the art- 
 ist became aware of the peril his love was 
 falling into, and he quitted the church, 
 with rage in his heart, determined to dare 
 ever>i:hing. 
 
 "Go to 3'our room, mademoiselle!" 
 said Madame Guillaume to her daughter 
 when they reached home; "we will call 
 you; and don't you venture to leave it." 
 
 The conference the husband and the 
 wife had together was so secret that 
 nothing of it transpired at first. But, 
 Virginie, who had encouraged her sister 
 by a thousand kind remarks, pushed her 
 complacence so far as to steal close up to 
 her mother's chamber door, behind which 
 the discussion was taking place, in order 
 to overhear a few sentences. At the first
 
 HOUSE OF THE TEXNIS-PLAYIXG CAT. 
 
 313 
 
 trip she made from the third to the second 
 story, she heard her father crying out : 
 
 "Madame, do you want to kill your 
 daughter ? " 
 
 '•My poor child,'" said Virg-inie to her 
 weeping sister, ' ' papa is standing up for 
 you ! " 
 
 "And what are they going to do to 
 Theodore? " asked the innocent creature. 
 
 The inquisitive Virginie went down- 
 stairs again, but this time she remained 
 longer; she learned that Lebas was in 
 love with Augustine. 
 
 It was written that, on this memorable 
 da}% a liouse ordinarily quiet enough 
 should be a veritable pandemonium. 
 
 M. Guillaume drove Joseph Lebas to 
 despair by confiding to him Augustine's 
 love for a stranger. Lebas, who had in- 
 structed his friend to ask for the hand of 
 Mademoiselle Virginie, saw his hopes up- 
 set. Mademoiselle Virginie, overwhelmed 
 by the knowledge that Joseph had in 
 some sort refused her, was attacked \>y 
 a headache. The dissension appearing in 
 the explanation between Monsieur and 
 Madame Guillaume, when, for the third 
 iLine in their lives, they found themselves 
 of difterent opinions, manifested itself in 
 a terrible manner. 
 
 Finally, at four o'clock in the after- 
 noon, Augustine, pale, trembling, and 
 with red eyes, made her appearance be- 
 fore her father and mother. The poor 
 child related artlessly the too brief story 
 of her love. Reassured by a few words 
 from her father, who promised to listen to 
 her in silence, she gained a certain cour- 
 age in pronouncing before her parents the 
 name of her dear Theodore de Sommer- 
 vieux ; and she put a malicious emphasis 
 upon the aristocratic particle.* Giving 
 herself up to the new charm of talking 
 about her feelings, she mustered up bold- 
 ness enough to decl;ire with innocent firm- 
 ness that she loved Monsieur de Sommer- 
 vieux, that she had written to him to that 
 effect, and, with tears in her eyes, she 
 added : "It would make me very unhappy 
 to marry anybody else." 
 
 * Just as did Balzac himself, by inserting the de 
 in his name. — EDrrOK. 
 
 " But, Augustine, is it possible that you 
 don't know what a painter is ? "' cried her 
 mother in horror. 
 
 "' Madame Guillaume ! " said the old 
 father to silence his wife. " Augustine," 
 he went on, " artists are generally men 
 upon the verge of star\'ation. They are 
 too great spendthrifts ever to be anything 
 but worthless fellows. The late Monsieur 
 Joseph Vernet was a customer of mine, 
 also the late Monsieur Lekain and the late 
 Monsieur Noverre. Ah ! if you knew how 
 many tricks that Monsieur Noverre, Mon- 
 sieur the Chevalie* de Saint-Georges, and, 
 above all. Monsieur Philidor, played on 
 poor Father Che\Tel ! They were funny 
 chaps, I know that ; they all have the 
 gift of talk and good manners. Ah ! 
 never was your Monsieur Sumer — 
 Somm— " 
 
 "De Somraervieux, father ! " 
 
 "' Well, De Sommervieux, then ! Never 
 was he as agreeable with you as Monsieur 
 the Chevalier de Saint-Georges was with 
 me the very da^' I obtained a judgment 
 against him from the consuls. And thej^ 
 were people of quality in old times." 
 
 " But, father. Monsieur Theodore is of 
 noble birth, and he has written me that 
 he is rich. His father was called the 
 Chevalier de Sommervieux before the 
 Revolution." 
 
 At these words, Monsieur Guillaume 
 looked at his terrible better-half, who, 
 like an angry female, was tapping the 
 floor with the tip of her foot and keeping 
 a gloomy silence ; she even avoided cast- 
 ing her angry eyes upon Augustine, and 
 seemed to leave to Monsieur Guillaume 
 the whole responsibilitj' of so serious an 
 affair, since her advice was not listened 
 to. 
 
 Nevertheless, in spite of her apparent 
 composure, when she saw her husband 
 resigning himself so quietlj' to a catas- 
 trophe which was not in the line of busi- 
 ness, she cried out : 
 
 "Indeed, monsieur, you are very weak 
 with your daughters — but — " 
 
 The noise of a carriage stopping at the 
 door suddenly interrupted the lecture 
 which the old merchant was already 
 dreading. In a moment, Madame Roguin
 
 514 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 was in the middle of the room and look- 
 ing at tlie three actors ia this domestic 
 scene. 
 
 '• I know all, cousin,'" she said, with an 
 air of protection. 
 
 Madame Roguin had one fault, that of 
 thinking that the wife of a Parisian no- 
 tary could play the part of a ladj' of 
 studied elegance. 
 
 " I know all," she repeated, "and I 
 come into this Noah's ark like the dove 
 with the olive-leaf. I have read that alle- 
 gory' in the 'Genie du Christianisme,'" 
 said she, turning rounti toward Madame 
 Guillaume; "the comparison ought to 
 please you, cousin. Do you know," she 
 added, smiling upon Augustine, "that 
 this Monsieur de Sommervieux is a charm- 
 ing man ? He has given me this morning 
 my portrait executed in a masterly man- 
 ner. It is worth at least six thousand 
 francs. ' ' 
 
 At these words, she gently tapped Mon- 
 sieur Guillaume's arm. The old merchant 
 could not help puckering up his lips into 
 a pout that was peculiar to him. 
 
 "I know Monsieur de Sommervieux 
 ver3' well," resumed the dove. '• For 
 a fortnight he has been coming to my 
 evenings, and he is a great attraction. 
 He has related all his troubles to me, 
 and has chosen me for his advocate. 
 Tins very morning I have leai'ncd that 
 he adores Augustine ; and he shall have 
 her. Ah ! cousin, don't shake your head 
 like that lo saj' no. Let me tell you that 
 he will be made a baron, and that he has 
 just been appointed chevalier of the Legion 
 of Honor by the emperor himself at the 
 Salon. Roguin has become his notary, 
 and knows all about his affairs. Well, 
 Monsieur de Sommervieux is the owTier 
 of landed propertj^ that yields an income 
 of twelve thousand livres. Are you aware 
 that the father-in-law of a man like that 
 can amount to something — mayor of his 
 arrondissement, for example ? Haven't 
 you seen Monsieur Dupont made a count 
 qf the empire and a senator, merely for 
 coming in his capacity of mayor to greet 
 the emperor at his entrance into Vienne ? 
 Oh ! this marriage must be brought 
 about. I adore this fine young man. 
 
 His behavior toward Augustine is seen 
 only in novels. Yes, little one, you shall 
 be happy, and not a soul but what would 
 like to be in your place. The Duchess of 
 Carigliano comes to my evenings, and she 
 just dotes on Monsieur de Sommervieux. 
 Some gossiping tongues say she is there 
 only on his account ; as if a duchess of 
 yesterday were out of place in the house 
 of a Chevrel, whose family has a hundred 
 years of perfect respectability back of it. 
 Augustine," continued Madame Roguin, 
 after a short pause, " I have seen the 
 porti'ait. Heavens ! how beautiful it is ! 
 Do' you know that the emperor wanted 
 to see it ? He said, laughingh', to the 
 vice-constable, that if there were many 
 women like that at his court, while such 
 a number of kings were visiting it, he 
 would guarantee to keep peace always in 
 Europe. Isn't that flattering ? " 
 
 The storms by which this day had com- 
 menced were to resemble those of nature 
 by ending in pleasant and serene weather. 
 Madame Roguin displayed such powers of 
 seduction in her talk, she mnnaged to 
 strike so many strings at once in the dry 
 hearts of Monsieur and Madame Guil- 
 laume, that she at last found one to give 
 her the advantage. 
 
 At this strange period, commerce and 
 finance had more than ever the foolish 
 mania for forming alliances with the 
 great noblemen ; and .the generals of 
 the empire profited very well by this 
 state of things. Monsieur Guillaume 
 was particularly opposed to this deplox'- 
 able passion. His favorite axioms were 
 that, to attain happiness, a woman ought 
 to maiTy a man of her own station ; sooner 
 or later, one was sure to be punished for 
 trying to climb too high ; love held out 
 so little against the annoyances of living 
 together, that very good qualities must 
 exist in husband and wife for them to be 
 happy ; one of the two must not know 
 more than the other, because, above all, 
 it was necessary to understand one an- 
 other ; if the husband spoke Greek and 
 the wife Latin, they ran the risk of starv- 
 ing to death. He had invented this sort 
 of a proverb : He compared the mar- 
 riages thus made to those ancient stuffs
 
 HOUSE OF THE TENmS-PLAYIXG CAT. 
 
 315 
 
 of silk and wool in which the silk always 
 ended by cutting- up the wool. However, 
 tliere is so much vanitj' at the bottom of 
 a man's heart, that the prudence of the 
 pilot who guided the Tennis-Playing Cat 
 so well, succumbed under Madame Ro- 
 guin"s aggressive volubility. The severe 
 Madame Guillaume was the first to find 
 reasons, in her daughter's inclination, for 
 departing from her principles and for con- 
 senting to receive Monsieur de Sommer- 
 vieux, whom she promised herself to sub- 
 ject to a rigorous examination. 
 
 The old merchant went in search of 
 Joseph Lebas, and informed him of the 
 condition of affairs. At half-past six 
 o'clock, the dining-room made famous 
 by the painter united under its glass roof 
 Madame and Monsieur Roguin, the young 
 painter and his charming Augustine, Jo- 
 seph Lebas, patiently accepting his happi- 
 ness, and Mademoiselle Virginie, whose 
 headache had ceased. Monsieur and Ma- 
 dame Guillaume beheld in the future their 
 children established and the destinies of 
 the Tennis-Playing Cat intrusted to skill- 
 ful hands. 
 
 Their satisfaction was at its height when 
 TheodM'e, at dessert, made them a pres- 
 ent of the wonderful picture whi:h they 
 had not yet seen, and which represented 
 the interior of this old shop, to which so 
 much happiness was due. 
 
 " That is very pretty' ! " exclaimed Guil- 
 laume. "Just to think that somebody 
 was willing to give thirty tliousand francs 
 for that ! " 
 
 " But the lappets of my cap are there, 
 to be sure ! " put in Madame Guillaume. 
 
 '•' And those goods all spread out," add- 
 ed Lebas ; "it seems as if one might take 
 hold of them with his hand." 
 
 "Draperies alwaj-s look very well," 
 
 answered the painter. "We should be 
 
 only too happy, we modern artists, if 
 
 we could attain the perfection of antique 
 
 , ' drapery." 
 
 " So you like dry -goods ? " cried Father 
 Guillaume. "Well! well! I'll shake hands 
 with you on that, my 3'oung friend. Since 
 you have some respect for business, we 
 .shall understand one another. Ah ! why 
 should people despise it ? The world com- 
 
 menced witli it, for Adam sold Paradise 
 for an apple. That was not a very suc- 
 cessful speculation, indeed ! " 
 
 And the old merchant burst into a loud, 
 hearty laugh, excited by the champagne 
 which he sent around the table so gener- 
 ously. The bandage covering the young 
 artist's e^'es was so thick that he thought 
 his future relatives-in-law very amiable. 
 He did not disdain to enliven them bj' a 
 few sallies of wit in good taste. And he 
 became a general favorite. In the even- 
 ing, when the very substantially fur- 
 nished drawing-room, as Guillaume ex- 
 pressed it, was deserted; while Madame 
 Guillaume went from the table to the 
 mantelpiece, from chandeUer to candle- 
 stick, hurriedly blowing out the hghts, 
 the honest merchant, Avhose head was 
 always clear, immediately business or 
 money came into question, drew his 
 daughter Augustine toward him, and, 
 after seating her on his knees, spoke to 
 her as follows : 
 
 " My dear child, you shall many your 
 Sommervieux, since you wish it ; you 
 may be allowed to risk your capital of 
 happiness. I don't mean, however, tok»be 
 altogether carried away by these thirty 
 thousand francs earned by spoiUng good 
 canvases. The money that comes in so 
 quickly goes out in the same way. Did 
 I not hear this young madcap say this 
 evening that, if money was round, it was 
 so that it might roll? It may be round 
 for extravagant people, but it is flat for 
 the economical people that pile it up. 
 Now, my child, this fine fellow talks tfi 
 giving you carriages and diamonds. He 
 has the monej-, and he maj^ spend it on 
 you, if he likes ! I have nothing to say 
 against that. But, as for what I give 
 you, I don't want the money I have 
 scraped together with so much trouble to 
 be squandered on carriages and gewgaws. 
 The man that spends too much is never 
 rich. With the hundred thousand crowns 
 of your dowry you can't quite buy all 
 Paris. It does not matter that you will 
 some day inherit a few hundred thousand 
 francs ; I shall make you wait for them, 
 you may depend, as long as possible. 
 Consequently, I took your suitor aside
 
 316 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 into a corner, and a man who could man- 
 ag-o the Lecoq failure did not find it very 
 hard to make an artist consent to having 
 his wife's property settled on herself. I 
 shall have a sharp eye on the contract 
 to get the settlements all rig-ht that he 
 proposes to make on you. Well, my 
 child, I expect to be a grandfather, in- 
 deed, and I want to beg-in thinking^ of 
 mj'^ grandchildren at once. Swear to me 
 right here that you will never sig-n any 
 paper about nione^' without my advice ; 
 and, if I follow after Father Chevrel too 
 soon, swear to me that you will consult 
 young- Lebas, your brother-in-law. Prom- 
 ise me that." 
 
 "Yes, father, I promise." 
 
 At these words, spoken in a soft voice, 
 the old man kissed his daughtei- on both 
 cheeks. That night all the lovers slept 
 almost as peacefullj^ as Monsieur and 
 Madame Guillaume. 
 
 A few months after this memorable 
 Sunday, the high altar of Saint Leu 
 witnessed two very different marriag-es. 
 Augustine and Theodore appeared there 
 in all the radiance of happiness, their 
 eyes shining with love, elegantly dressed, 
 and waited for by a splendid equipage. 
 Coming in a good livery coach with her 
 family, Virginie, leaning on her father's 
 arm, followed her young sister humbly 
 and in the simplest attire, like a shadow 
 necessary to the harmony of the picture. 
 
 Monsieur Guillaume had taken all the 
 pains imaginable at the church to have 
 Virginie married before Augustine ; but 
 he was pained to see on every occasion 
 the higher and lower clergy address first 
 the more elegant of the brides. He heard 
 some of his neighbors particularly ap- 
 prove of the good sense shown by Made- 
 moiselle Virginie, who made, they said, 
 the more substantial marriage and re- 
 mained faithful to her part of the town ; 
 while they threw out taunts, prompted 
 by envy, at Augustine, who married an 
 artist and a nobleman. They added, in 
 a sort of dismay, that if the Guillaumes 
 had ambition, it would be the ruin of the 
 dry-goods business. An old dealer in fans 
 having said that this spendthrift would 
 soon bring him down to abject poverty, 
 
 Father Guillaume congratulated himself 
 in petto on his prudence in the matri- 
 monial agreements. In tlie evening, after 
 a sumptuous ball, followed by one of 
 those abundant suppers the memory of 
 which is beginning to be lost in the pres- 
 ent generation. Monsieur and Madame 
 Guillaume remained in their Rue du 
 Colombier house, where the wedding- 
 feast had come ofi*. Monsieur and Jila- 
 dame Lebas returned in their hired car- 
 riage to tlie old house on the Rue Saint 
 Denis to guide the fortunes of the Tennis- 
 Playing Cat. The artist, intoxicated with 
 happmess, took his dear Augustine in his 
 arms, lifted her out quickly, when their 
 coupe reached the Rue des Trois-Freres, 
 and carried her into apartments which 
 had been beautified by all the arts. 
 
 The fire of passion possessing Theodore 
 made the young couple pass nearly a 
 whole year without the lightest clouds 
 coming tp dim the azure of the heaven 
 under which they lived. Life had noth- 
 ing dull about it for these two lovers. 
 Theodore lavished over every da,Y incred- 
 ible embellishments of pleasure ; he de- 
 lighted to var^' the transports of affec- 
 tion with the soft languor of repose, when 
 souls are launched so high in ecstasy that 
 they seem to forget the corporal union. 
 Incapable of reflection, the happy Augus- 
 tine lent herself to the happiness of the 
 passing days. She was too much in love 
 to calculate for the future, and did not 
 imagine that so delicious a life could ever 
 come to an end. Happy in being now 
 the sole pleasure of her husband, slie 
 thought that this inextinguishable love 
 would always be for her the most beauti- 
 ful of all adornments, as her devotion and 
 obedience would be an eternal attraction. 
 
 In fine, the felicitj'^ of love had made 
 her so brilliant that her beauty- inspired 
 her with pride, and gave her the con- 
 sciousness of always being able to reign 
 over a man so easj' to set on fire as Mon- 
 sieur de Sommervieux. Thus her position 
 as a wife brought her no other lessons 
 than those of love. In the bosom of this 
 happiness, she was still the same ignorant 
 little girl who used to live obscurely in 
 the Rue Saint Denis ; and she did not
 
 HOUSE OF THE TENNIS-PLAtlNG CAT. 
 
 ZYi 
 
 dream of acquiring the manners, the edu- 
 cation, and the tastes of the societ^^ in 
 which she was to live. Her words were 
 words of love ; she assuredly displayed 
 in them a sort of suppleness of mind and 
 a certain delicacy of expression, but she 
 used the language common to all women 
 when they find themselves plunged into 
 the passion that seems to be their ele- 
 ment. 
 
 If, by chance, an idea jarring with those 
 of Theodore was expressed by Augustine, 
 the j-oung artist laughed at it, as ' one 
 laughs at a foreigner's first mistakes, 
 which end by becoming wearisome, if they 
 are not corrected. In spite of so much 
 love, at the expiration of this year, as 
 charming as it was fleeting, Sommervieux 
 realized one morning the necessity- of re- 
 suming his old labors and habits. His 
 wife was in an interesting condition. He 
 looked up his friends once more. During 
 the long sufferings of the year when, for 
 the first time, a young wife gives life to 
 her child, he worked with ardor, of course ; 
 but, occasionally, he went back into the 
 world in search of some distractions. 
 
 The house he most willingly visited was 
 that of the Duchess of Carigliano, who 
 had at last succeeded in attracting the 
 celebrated artist. 
 
 When Augustine was restored to health, 
 when her son no longer claimed that as- 
 siduous attention which keeps a mother 
 from the pleasures of the world, Theodore 
 had come to feel a craving for that enjoj'- 
 ment of self-love g-iven us by society', when 
 we appear in it with a beautiful woman, 
 the object of envy and admiration. To 
 show herself in drawing-rooms with the 
 splendor borrowed from her husband's 
 glorj', to see other women grow jealous 
 of her, was to Augustine a new harvest 
 of pleasure ; but it was the last glimmer 
 of her conjugal happiness. 
 
 She began by offending her husband's 
 vanity when, despite vain efforts, she let 
 out her ignorance, the incorrectness of 
 her language, and the narrowness of her 
 ideas. Overpowered during almost two 
 and a half years by the first transports of 
 love, Sommervieux's character resumed, 
 with the tranquillity of a less j'oung pos- 
 
 session, its natural bent and the habits 
 temporarily turned out of their ordinary 
 course. Poetry, painting, and the exqui- 
 site; pleasures of imagination possess im- 
 prescriptible rights over cultured minds. 
 These needs of a strong soul had not been 
 satisfied in Theodore during these two 
 years ; they had merely found a new pas- 
 ture. When the fields of love had been 
 traversed, when the artist had, like a child, 
 picked roses and blue-bonnets with such 
 aviditjr that he did not notice his hands 
 could no longer hold them, the scene 
 changed. If the painter showed his wife 
 the sketches of his most beautiful pict- 
 ures, he heard her cry out, as Father 
 Guillaume might 'have done : "It is ver^' 
 pretty ! " This dispassionate admiration 
 did not proceed from a conscientious feel- 
 ing, but from her reliance upon the word 
 of love. Augustine preferred a glance to' 
 the finest picture. The only sublimity 
 she knew was that of the heart. 
 
 At length, Theodore could not shut his 
 eyes to the conviction of a cruel truth — 
 his wife was not affected by poetry, she 
 did not dwell in his sphere, she did not 
 follow him in all his caprices, improvisa- 
 tions, joys and griefs ; she walked earth 
 to earth in the real world, while he car- 
 ried his head in the skies. Ordinary minds 
 cannot appreciate the ever renewed suf- 
 ferings of a being who, united to another 
 by the closest of bonds, is obliged to keep 
 back unceasingly the most cherished ex- 
 pansions of his thought, and to crush' 
 down the images that a magic power 
 forces him to create. This torture is all 
 the more cruel to him because his affection 
 for his companion requires, as its first 
 law, that one should hide nothing from 
 the other, and that the effusions of thought 
 should be mingled as well as the outpour- 
 ings of the soul. The will of natui'e is not 
 to be evaded with impunity ; it is as inex- 
 orable as necessity, which is surely a sort 
 of social nature. Sommervieux sought 
 refuge in the calm and silence of his 
 studio, hoping that the habit of living 
 with artists might cultivate his wife and 
 develop in her the benumbed germs of 
 higher intelligence, which some superior 
 minds believe to be latent in all beings ;
 
 318 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 but Augustine was too sinccrelj' relig-ious 
 not to take alarm at the tone of the artists. 
 
 At the first dinner Theodore gave, she 
 heard a young painter say, with that 
 childish frivolity which she could not un- 
 derstand, and which absolves a jest from 
 all irreligion : 
 
 "But, madame, your paradise is not 
 more beautiful than Raphael's ' Trans- 
 figuration ? ' Yet I got tired of looking 
 at that." 
 
 Augustine brought, therefore, into this 
 intellectual society a spirit of distrust 
 which escaped no one. She was an em- 
 barrassment. Embarrassed artists are 
 merciless ; they either fly or scoff. 
 
 Madame Guillaume had, among other 
 weaknesses, that of carrying to excess the 
 dignity which seemed to her the proper 
 thing for a married woman ; and, al- 
 though she had often made fun of it, 
 Augustine could not refrain from a slight 
 imitation of her mother's prudery. This 
 exaggeration of modesty, not always 
 avoided by virtuous women, suggested a 
 few roughly-penciled epigrams, the inno- 
 cent raillery of which was in too good 
 •taste for Sommervieux to get angry at 
 tliem. If these jests had been even more 
 savage, they were, after all, onlj^ a sort 
 of revenge taken on him by his friends. 
 But nothing could be slight to a mind re- 
 ceiving outside impressions as easily as 
 that of Theodore. Consequently he began 
 insensibly to feel a coldness that could 
 only go on increasing. To arrive at con- 
 jugal happiness, a mountain must be 
 climbed, the narrow summit of which \S 
 very near a slope as steep as it is slipperj^, 
 and the painter's love was descending this 
 slope. He judged his wife incapable of 
 appreciating the moral considerations 
 that justified, in his own eyes, the singu- 
 larity of his manners toward her, and 
 deemed himself quite innocent in hiding 
 from her thoughts which he did not under- 
 stand and faults not to be excused before 
 the tribunal of the average woman's con- 
 science. Augustine shut herself up in dull 
 and silent pain. These secret feelings in- 
 terposed between husband and wife a veil 
 that was to thicken from day to day. 
 
 Although her husband was not wanting 
 
 in kindness to her, Augustine could not 
 help trembling as she saw him reserve for 
 society the treasures of wit and grace 
 which he was wont of old to lay at her 
 feet. Soon, she gave an unpleasant inter- 
 pretation to the bright sayings that pass 
 current in the world about the inconstancy 
 of men. She did not complain, but her 
 attitude was equivalent to reproaches. 
 
 Three years after her maiTiage, this 
 young and handsome woman, who rode by 
 so brilliantly in her brilliant equipage, 
 who lived in a sphere of glory and wealth 
 envied by so many people thoughtless and 
 incapable of justly estimating the condi- 
 tions of life, was the prey of violent griefs. 
 Her color paled ; she reflected, she com- 
 pared ; then unhappiness unfolded to her 
 the first texts of experience. She resolved 
 to remain courageously within the circle 
 of her duties, hoping that this generous 
 conduct would make her sooner or later 
 recover her husband's love ; but this was 
 not to be. 
 
 When Sommervieux, weary of labor, 
 emerged from his studio, Augustine did 
 not conceal her work so promptly but that 
 the painter could see his wife was mend- 
 ing, with the care of a good housekeeper, 
 the linen of the house and his own. She 
 furnished, liberally and without a mur- 
 mur, the money necessary for her hus- 
 band's extravagance ; but, in her desire 
 to guard her dear Theodore's fortune, she 
 showed herself economical on her own ac- 
 count and in certain details of domestic 
 management. This conduct is incompati- 
 ble with the free-and-easy ways of artists, 
 who, at the end of their career, have en- 
 joyed life so much that they never ask 
 themselves the reason of their ruin. It is 
 idle to note each of the shades of color 
 through which the brilliant tint of their 
 honeymoon faded awaj^ and left them in 
 deep darkness. 
 
 One evening, the saddened Augustine, 
 who had long been hearing her husband 
 speak enthusiastically of the Duchess of 
 Carigliano, received from a lady friend 
 some wiclcedly charitable information con- 
 cerning the nature of the attachment 
 which SoraraerAieux had conceived for 
 this celebrated coquette of the Imperial
 
 HOUSE OF THE TENNIS-PLAYING OAT. 
 
 319 
 
 Court. At the age of twenty-one, in all 
 the splendor of youth and beautj', Augus- 
 tine saw herself betrayed for a woman of 
 thirty-six. Feeling wretched in the midst 
 of society and its, to her, desolate enter- 
 tainments, the poor child understood noth- 
 ing of the admiration she excited nor of 
 the envy she inspired. Her face "took on 
 a new expression. Melancholy infused into 
 her features the sweetness of resignation 
 and the pallor of a despised love. 
 
 It was not long before attention was 
 paid her by the most fascinating of men ; 
 but .she remained lonely and pure in heart. 
 Some contemptuous words dropped bj- her 
 husband gave her incredible despair. A 
 fatal light made her catch a glimpse of 
 the want of contact which, in consequence 
 of the deficiencies of her education, pre- 
 vented the perfect union of her soul with 
 Theodore's ; she had love enough to ab- 
 solve him and to condemn herself. She 
 wept tears of blood, and realized, only too 
 late, that there are misalliances of intel- 
 lect as well as misalliances of manners 
 and I'ank. Musing on the spring-tide de- 
 lights of her marriage she comprehended 
 the extent of her past happiness, and 
 agi'eed within herself that so rich a 
 harvest of love was a whole life, which 
 could only be atoned for by unhappiness. 
 Yet she loved too sincerelj' to lose all 
 hope ; and, at twentj'-one years of age, 
 she ventured to undertake to complete 
 her education and to make her imagina- 
 tion at least worthy of the one she ad- 
 mired. 
 
 "If I am not a poet," she said to her- 
 self, " at least I am g'oing to understand 
 poetry." 
 
 And, displaying now that strength of 
 will and that energy which all women 
 possess whenever thej' are in love, Ma- 
 dame de Sommervieux attempted to 
 change her character, her manners, and 
 her habits; but in devouring volumes 
 and studying bravelj'^ she onlj' succeeded 
 in becoming less ignorant. Alertness of 
 mind and the graces of conversation are 
 a gift of nature or the fruit of an educa- 
 tion commenced in the cradle. She could 
 appi-eciate music and enjoy it, but could 
 not sing with taste. She understood 
 
 literature and the beauties of poetry, 
 but it was too late for her to enrich her 
 rebellious memory with them. She list- 
 ened with pleasure to the chat of society, 
 but she contributed nothing brilliant to it 
 herself. Her religious ideas and the prej- 
 udices of her youth militated against the 
 complete emancipation of her intelligence. 
 At length there had sprung up a feeling 
 against her in Theodore's mind which slie 
 could not vanquish. The artist laughed at 
 the people who praised up his wife to him, 
 and his merriment had some basis. He 
 awed this j^oung and touching creature 
 so much that she trembled in his presence 
 or when they were talking together. Em- 
 barrassed by her excessive desire of pleas- 
 ing, she felt her mind and her knowledge 
 melt away in mere feeling. Augustine's 
 fidelity', even, was displeasing to this un- 
 faithful husband, who seemed to want 
 her to commit faults by accusing hei' 
 virtue of a lack of sensibilit3\ Augus- 
 tine tried in vain to abdicate her rea.son. 
 to bend to her husband's caprices and 
 fancies, and to devote herself to the self- 
 ishness of his vanity ; she did not reap 
 the fruit of her sacrifices. Perhaps the^' 
 had both let the moment pass when two 
 souls can understand each other. At last, 
 the young wife's too sensitive heart re- 
 ceived one of those blows that ■wrench the 
 bonds of attachment so forcibly as to 
 make one believe them broken. She felt 
 herself isolated ; but soon a fatal thought 
 sugge.sted to her that she should seek 
 consolation and counsel in the bosom of 
 her familJ^ 
 
 One morning, therefore, she turned her 
 steps toward the grotesque fagade of tlie 
 humble and quiet house where her child- 
 hood had been spent. She sighed as she 
 saw once more that casement, from which 
 she had long ago thrown a first kiss to 
 the man who was now shedding over her 
 life as much glory as unhappiness. Notli- 
 ing was changed in the den where thi> 
 dry-goods business was going on as flour- 
 ishingly as ever. Augustine's sister oc- 
 cupied her hiother's place at the old 
 counter. The afflicted young woman met 
 her brother-in-law with his pen back of 
 his ear, and she was hardly listened to,
 
 320 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 so busy did he appear to be. The foi-mid- 
 ablo signs of a general taking account of 
 stock were manifest around him ; so he 
 left her, begging her to excuse him. She 
 was received coldly enough by her sister, 
 who bore her somewhat of a grudge. In 
 truth, Augustine, brilliant, and alighting 
 from a handsome carriage, had never 
 come to see her sister except in passing. 
 The wife of the prudent Lebas imagined 
 that money was the real cause of this 
 early visit, and she maintained an air of 
 i-eserve that made Augustine smile more 
 than once. The painter's wife saw that, 
 save for the lappets on the cap, her 
 mother had found in Virginie a successor 
 sure to keep up the antique honor of the 
 Tennis-Playing Cat. At luncheon, she 
 noticed certain changes in the i-egulations 
 of the house that did honor to the good 
 sense of Joseph Lebas ; the clerks did not 
 rise at dessert, they were given the lib- 
 erty of talking, and the abundance of 
 the table announced comfort without ex- 
 travagance. The elegant young woman 
 found there tickets for a box at the Fran- 
 gais, where she remembered having seen 
 her sister at long intervals. Madame 
 Lebas wore over her shoulders a cash- 
 mere shawl, the magnificence of which 
 proved her husband's generosity toward 
 her. The couple, indeed, progressed with 
 their century. Augustine was soon pene- 
 trated with emotion on realizing, during 
 two-thirds of this day, the equable happi- 
 ness, without enthusiasm, it is true, but 
 yet without storms, which this well- 
 matched pair enjoyed. 
 
 They hnd taken up life like a commer- 
 cial enteriorise, where it is chiefly neces- 
 sary to give strict attention to business. 
 Not having encountered an excessive love 
 in her husband, the wife had applied her- 
 self to bringing it to life. Insensibly 
 induced to esteem and cherish Virginie, 
 the time it required for happiness to ap- 
 pear was a guarantee of its duration to 
 Joseph Lebas and his wife. Therefore, 
 when the plaintive Augustine set forth 
 her painful situation, she had to endure 
 the flood of commonplaces which the 
 moral philosophj' 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 merchant analyzed in 
 a dull way the resources which the laws 
 and customs might offer Augustine for 
 coming out of this ci'isis; he numbered, 
 so to speak, his remarks on them, ar- 
 ranged them in categories according to 
 their imjiortance, as if it had been a ques- 
 tion of merchandise of different qualities ; 
 then he put them in the scales, weighed 
 them, and concluded by developing the 
 necessity for his sister-in-law to make up 
 her mind to something desperate, which 
 did not at all satisfy the love she still felt 
 for her husband ; and this feeling was 
 roused in all its strength when she heard 
 Joseph Lebas talking of legal proceedings. 
 
 Augustine thanked her two friends, 
 and went back home more undecided 
 even than she had been before consulting 
 them. She ventured then to go to the 
 old house in the Rue du Colombier, with 
 the intention of confessing her miseries to 
 her father and mother ; for she resembled 
 those sick people in such a desperate strait 
 that they try all sorts of prescriptions, 
 and even trust themselves to old women's 
 remedies. The aged couple received their 
 daughter with a show of feeling that quite 
 moved her. This visit brought them a 
 distraction, and was as good as money to 
 them. For four j-ears they had been 
 going through hfe like navigators with- 
 out aim and without compass. Seated at 
 their fireside, thej^ related to one another 
 all the disasters of .the Maximum, their 
 former purchases of dry- goods, the way 
 thej^ had avoided bankruptcies, and espe- 
 cially that famous Lecoq failure— Father 
 Guillaume's battle of Marengo. When 
 they had exhausted the old lawsuits, they 
 recapitulated the amounts of their most 
 profitable inventories, and told each other 
 the old stories of the Saint Denis Quarter. 
 
 At two o'clock, Father Guillaumewent 
 to take a look at the establishment of the 
 Tennis-Playing Cat; on the way back, 
 he stopped at all the shops in other days 
 his rivals, and their young proprietors had 
 hopes of enticing the old merchant into 
 some risky discount, which, as was his 

 
 HOUSE OF THE TENNIS-PLAYING CAT. 
 
 321 
 
 custom, he never positively refused. Two 
 g-ood Norman horses were dying- of fat in 
 tlie stable of the house ; Madame Guil- 
 laume never used them, except when she 
 was drawn to the high mass of her parish 
 Gvery Sunday. Three times a week this 
 respectable couple had companj^ to din- 
 ner. 
 
 Through the influence of his son-in-law, 
 Sommerv'ieux, Father Guillaume had been 
 appointed a member of the advisory com- 
 mittee for the uniforming of the troops. 
 Since her husband had thus found a place 
 high up in the administration, Madame 
 Guillaume had taken a resolution to keep 
 up appearances. Her apartments were 
 encumbered with so many g-old and silver 
 ornaments, and so many pieces of taste- 
 less furniture of a certain value, that the 
 simplest room there resembled a chapel. 
 Economy' and extravagance seemed to 
 contend in each of the accessories of this 
 house. One would have said that Mon- 
 sieur Guillaume had had in view an in- 
 vestment of his money, even when he was 
 buying a candlestick. In the midst of 
 this bazaar, the richness of which gave 
 evidence of the couple's lack of occupa- 
 tion, Sommervieux's celebrated picture 
 had obtained the place of honor, and was 
 a great comfort to Monsieur and Madame 
 Guillaume, who, twenty times in the course 
 of the day, turned eyes tricked out with 
 eye-glasses toward this imag-e of their 
 former life, to them so stirring- and 
 amusing-. 
 
 The sight of this house and of these 
 apartments, where everj^hing- had a 
 flavor of old age and mediocritj', the 
 spectacle presented 'by these two beings 
 seemingly cast ashore upon a golden 
 rock far from the world and from life- 
 giving- ideas, surprised Augustine. She 
 contemplated at this moment the second 
 part of the picture whose beginning had 
 struck her in the house of Joseph Lebas — 
 the picture of a life, restless, although 
 without advance ; a species of mechanical 
 and instinctive existence similar to that 
 of beavers. She had then I know not 
 what kind of a pride in her owTi sorrows, 
 remembering they had their source in 
 eighteen months of happiness which was 
 
 Balzac— K 
 
 worth in her eyes a thousand such exist- 
 ences as this, with its apparently horrible 
 void ; but she concealed this rather un- 
 charitable feeling, and put forth for her 
 aged parents the new graces of her mind, 
 the coquettishness of tenderness which 
 love had revealed to her, and favorably 
 disposed them to listen to her matrimo- 
 nial grievances. The old people had a 
 weakness for this sort of confidences. 
 Madame Guillaume wished to be informed 
 of the slightest details of this strange 
 life, which, to her, had something fabu- 
 lous about it. The travels of the Baron 
 de la Hontan, which she was alwa^ys com- 
 mencing without ever finishing, had noth- 
 ing more unprecedented to tell her about 
 the savages of Canada. 
 
 " What, child, your husband shuts 
 himself up with women, and you are silly 
 enough to believe he is drawing them ? " 
 
 At this exclamation, the grandmother 
 laid her glasses upon a little work- 
 stand, shook out her skii'ts, and placed 
 her clasped hands on her knees, elevated 
 by a foot-stove, her favorite pedestal. 
 
 "But, mother, all painters are obliged 
 to have models." 
 
 "He took good care not to tell us all 
 about that when he asked your hand in 
 marriage. If I had known it, I should not 
 have given my daughter to a man en- 
 gaged in such a trade. Our religion for- 
 bids such horrors ; they are not moral. 
 And at what time did you say he came 
 home at night .'' "' 
 
 "About one or two o'clock." 
 
 The husband and wife looked at one 
 another in deep astonishment. 
 
 "So he gambles? " said Monsieur Guil- 
 laume. " It was only the gamblers, in 
 my time, who went home so late." 
 
 Augustine pouted her lips a little to re- 
 pel this accusation. 
 
 "He must make you spend some tire- 
 some nights waiting for him," resumed 
 Madame Guillaume. "But, no, you go 
 to bed, don't you ? And when he has 
 lost money, the monster wakes you up." 
 
 "No, mother; he is sometimes, on the 
 contrary, verj' cheerful. Quite often, 
 when it is a fine night, he asks me to 
 get up and take a walk in the woods."
 
 322 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 "In the woods, at such hours? You 
 must have very small apartments, if his 
 chamber and drawing- -rooms are not 
 enough, and he has to run out of doors 
 in that way. But it is to make you catch 
 cold that the rascal proposes such excur- 
 sions to you. He wants to get rid of you. 
 Was there ever a steady man, in a regu- 
 lar business, who galloped about so like a 
 were-wolf ? "' 
 
 "But, mother, jou don't understand 
 that he needs excitement to develop his 
 talent. He is very fond of scenes 
 which — " 
 
 " Ah ! I should make him have some 
 fine scenes, that I should ! " exclaimed 
 Madame Guillaume, interrupting her 
 daughter. "How can you have any 
 patience with such a man ? For one 
 thing, I don't like it that he drinlcs only 
 water. That is not healthy. Why does 
 he show such an aversion to looking at 
 women when they are eating? What a 
 strange soi-t of man ! He must be crazy. 
 All that you have told us about him isn't 
 possible. A man cannot start out from 
 his house without breathing a word and 
 not come home until ten days afterward. 
 He told you that he had been in Dieppe to 
 paint the sea. Does the sea need paint- 
 ing? It is all humbug what he makes 
 you swallow." 
 
 Augustine opened her mouth to defend 
 her husband, but Madame Guillaume 
 silenced her with a wave of the hand, a 
 remnant of habit causing her to obey ; 
 and her mother cried out in a dry tone : 
 
 "Well, don't talk to me about that 
 man ! He has never set foot inside a 
 church, except to see you and to marry 
 you. People without religion are capable 
 of anything. Did Guillaume ever dream 
 of keeping a secret from me, of going 
 three whole daj's without saying bo to 
 me, and after that of chattering like a 
 one-eyed magpie ? " 
 
 " My dear mother, you judge these 
 clever people too severely. If they had 
 just such ideas as others, they would no 
 longer be people of talent." 
 
 " Well, let the people of talent keep to 
 themselves and not get married . Do you 
 mean to tell me that a man of talent is to 
 
 make his wife miserable, and, because he 
 has talent, it is to be all right ? Talent ! 
 talent ! There is not so very much talent 
 in saying black and white every minute 
 like him ; in cutting off other people's 
 words ; in beating the drum in one's own 
 house ; in never letting you know what 
 foot you are to dance on; in forcing a 
 woman not to amuse herself until her 
 husband happens to be in good spirits, 
 and to be sad as soon as ever he is sad." 
 
 "But, mother, it is the characteristic 
 of these imaginations — " 
 
 " What are these imaginations ? " re- 
 sumed Madame Guillaume, again inter- 
 rupting her daughter. " He has a fine 
 imagination, upon my word ! What kind 
 of a man is it, that suddenly, without 
 consulting his physician, takes the notion 
 into his head to eat only vegetables ? If 
 it were on account of religion, his dieting 
 might be of some use to him ; but he 
 hasn't any more religion than a Hugue- 
 not. Was there ever a man seen like 
 him, to love horses more than he loves 
 his fellow-beings; to have his hair friz- 
 zled like a heathen's, to cover up statues 
 with muslin, to shut his windows in broad 
 day so as to work by lamplight ? I must 
 saj', if he were not so grossly immoral, it 
 would be well to put him in the insane 
 asylum. Consult Monsieur Loraux, the 
 vicar of Saint Sulpice ; ask what he thinks 
 of it all, and he will tell j'ou that j'our 
 husband does not act lilce a Christian." 
 
 "Oh, mother! can you believe — " 
 
 " Yes, I do believe it ! You have loved 
 him, and you don't notice these things. 
 But, soon after he was married, I remem- 
 ber meeting him in the Chanips-Elysees. 
 He was on horseback. Well, sometimes 
 he would gallop as fast as he could go, 
 and then he would stop and ride on at 
 a snail 's-pace. I said to myself at that 
 time : ' There is a man who hasn't any 
 judgment.' " 
 
 "Ah!" cried Monsieur Guillaume, 
 as he rubbed his hands, " how lucky it 
 was I had your property settled upon 
 you when you married such an original 
 genius ! " 
 
 When Augustine was imprudent enough 
 to recount the real grievances which she
 
 HOUSE OF THE TEH NIS-P LAYING CAT. 
 
 323 
 
 had to complain of against her husband, 
 the two elderly people remained mute with 
 indignation. The word divorce was soon 
 pronounced b^' Madame Guillaume. At 
 the word divorce the retired merchant 
 was waked up, as it were. Stimulated 
 by his love for his daughter, and also by 
 the excitement a lawsuit would impart to 
 his uneventful life. Father Guillaume be- 
 gan to speak. He put himself at the head 
 of the petition for a divorce, managed it, 
 almost did the pleading ; he offered his 
 daughter to pay all the expenses, to inter- 
 view the judges, the attorneys and coun- 
 selors — to move heaven and earth. Ma- 
 dame de Sommervieux, in alarm, refused 
 her father's services; said that she did 
 not want to be separated from her hus- 
 band, even if she were ten times more un- 
 happy, and had nothing further to tell 
 of her sorrows. After her parents had 
 overwhelmed her with all those mute and 
 comforting little attentions by which the 
 two old people endeavored to indemnify 
 her, but in vain, for the pangs of her 
 heart, Augustine went away feeling the 
 impossibility of obtaining a fair judgment 
 of superior men from weak minds. She 
 learned that a woman must hide from all 
 the world, even from her own parents, 
 misfortunes that encounter sympathy 
 with so great difficulty. The storms and 
 sufferings of the higher spheres are only 
 appreciated by the noble minds who in- 
 habit them. In everything, we can only 
 be judged by our peers. 
 
 The poor Augustine found herself once 
 moi^e, therefore, in the chill atmosphere 
 of her home, and delivei-ed up to the hor- 
 ror of her own meditations. Study was 
 nothing more to her, since study had not 
 won back her husband's heart for her. 
 Initiated into the secrets of these fierj'- 
 souls, but deprived of their resources, she 
 participated strongly in their pains with- 
 out sharing their pleasures. She had be- 
 come disgusted with the world, which 
 seemed to her mean and small in presence 
 of the events of passion. Her life was 
 indeed a failure. 
 
 One evening she was struck with a 
 thought that came to light up her dark 
 sorrows like a celestial sunbeam. This 
 
 idea could only have been favored bj' a 
 heart as pure and virtuous as was hers. 
 She resolved to call upon the Duchess of 
 Carigliano, not to ask for her husband's 
 heart again, but to be informed of the 
 artifices which had robbed her of it ; to 
 interest this proud woman of the world 
 in the mother of her friend's children ; to 
 move her and make her an accomplice of 
 her future happiness, as she was the in- 
 strument of her present unhappiness. 
 One day, therefore, the timid Augustine, 
 steeled with a superhuman courage, got 
 into her carriage at two o'clock in the 
 afternoon to tr^^ to make her way into the 
 boudoir of the celebrated coquette, who 
 was never visible before that hour. Ma- 
 dame de Sommervieux was not j-et ac- 
 quainted with the antique and sumptuous 
 mansions of the Faubourg Saint Germain. 
 As she traversed these majestic vestibules, 
 these grand staircases, these immense 
 drawing-rooms, ornamented with flowers 
 despite the inclemency of winter, and 
 decorated with the taste peculiar to 
 women who are born in opulence, or with 
 the elegant habits of high life, Augustine 
 felt a fearful sinking of her heart. She 
 envied the secrets of this splendor, of 
 which she had never had any idea ; she 
 breathed an air of grandeur that explained 
 to her the attraction this house had for 
 her husband. When she reached the 
 duchess's smaller apartments, she ex- 
 perienced jealousy and a sort of despair 
 in her admiration Of the sumptuous ar- 
 rangement of the furniture, the draperies, 
 and the hanging-stuffs. Disorder there 
 became graceful, and luxury affected a 
 species of disdain for wealth. The per- 
 fumes diffused through this mild atmos- 
 phere flattered the sense of smell without 
 offending it. The furnishings of the 
 rooms were in perfect harmonj^ with a 
 view through the clearest of glass upon 
 the lawns of grounds planted with green 
 trees. Everything was charming, and 
 the calculation in it all was not felt. The 
 genius of the mistress of the house showed 
 itself to the full in the drawing-room 
 where Augustine was waiting. She 
 sought to divine the character of her 
 rival by looking at the objects scattered
 
 324 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 about ; but there was something impene- 
 trable in the disorder, as well as in the 
 symmetry, and it was to the simple 
 Aug-ustine a sealed letter. All that she 
 could see there was that the duchess was 
 a superior woman, as women go. Then a 
 painful thought occurred to her. 
 
 "Alas ! is it true," said she to herself, 
 "that a loving and simple heart does not 
 suffice for an artist ; and, to balance the 
 weight of these strong souls, must they 
 be united to feminine souls whose power 
 is equal to their own ? If I had been 
 brought up like this siren, our arms, at 
 least, would be well matched in the hour 
 of our strife." 
 
 " But lam not at home ! " 
 
 These sharp and short words, though 
 pronounced in a low tone in the adjoining 
 boudoir, were audible to Augustine, and 
 her heart beat more rapidly. 
 
 "The lady is right here," replied the 
 chamber-maid. 
 
 "You haven't anj^ sense. Let her 
 come in, then," answered the duchess; 
 and her voice, becoming sweeter, took 
 on the kindly accent of politeness. Evi- 
 dently, she was now desirous of being 
 heard. 
 
 Augustine went forward timidly. In 
 the midst of this bright boudoir, she saw 
 the duchess reclining luxuriously upon an 
 ottoman of green velvet, placed in the 
 center of a kind of half-circle formed by 
 the soft folds of muslin hung upon a 
 yellow background. • Ornaments in gilt 
 bronze, arranged with exquisite taste, 
 raised still fui-ther this sort of dais, under 
 which the duchess was posed like an an- 
 tique statue. The dark color of the 
 velvet allowed her to lose no means of 
 fascination. A twilight, becoming to 
 her beauty, seemed to be rather a re- 
 flection than a light. Some rare flow- 
 ers lifted their scented heads above the 
 richest of Sevres vases. At the moment 
 this picture was presented to the aston- 
 ished Augustine's eyes, she was stepping 
 so softly that she managed to surprise a 
 glance from the enchanti-ess. This glance 
 seemed to say to a person whom the 
 painter's wife did not at first percieve : 
 " Stay here ; you are going to see a 
 
 pretty woman, and you will make her 
 visit less tiresome for me." 
 
 At the sight of Augustine, the duchess 
 rose and had her sit down beside herself. 
 
 " To what am I indebted for the pleas- 
 ure of this visit, madame?" said she, 
 with a most gracious smile. 
 
 "Why so much falseness?" thought 
 Augustine, and she responded only by an 
 inclination of her head. 
 
 This silence was unavoidable. The 
 young woman saw before her one witness 
 too many to this scene. This personage 
 was, of all the colonels in the army, the 
 youngest, the most eleg'ant, and the best 
 built. His half-civilian dress showed off 
 the graces of his person. His face, full of 
 life and youth, and very expressive al- 
 ready, was still further enlivened by a 
 small mustache, turned up at the ends and 
 as black as jet ; by a well-developed im- 
 perial ; by side-whiskers carefuUj' combed, 
 and by a forest of black hair m pict- 
 uresque confusion. He was toying with 
 a riding- whip, manifesting an easiness and 
 freedom that suited the satisfied look of 
 his physiognomy, as well as the elegance 
 of his toilet. The ribbons in his button- 
 hole were knotted rather disdainfully, and 
 he appeared much vamer of his handsome 
 figure than of his bravery. Augustine 
 looked at the Duchess of Carigliano and 
 indicated the colonel by a glance, the 
 meaning of which was understsod at once. 
 
 "Well,good-by, D'Aiglcmont; we shall 
 meet again in the Bois de Boulogne." 
 
 These words were spoken by the siren 
 as if the^^ were the result of an agreement 
 made previous to Augustine's arrival ; 
 she accompanied them with a threatening 
 look, which the officer deserved, perhaps, 
 for the admiration he showed in gazing at 
 the modest flower that contrasted so well 
 with the haughty duchess. The young- 
 fop bowed in silence, turned on the heels 
 of his boots, and dashed g-racefully out 
 of the boudoir. Just at that moment, 
 Augustine, watching her rival follow the 
 brilliant officer with her eyes, surprised 
 in this glance a sentiment whose fleeting 
 expressions are well-known to all women. 
 She thought, with the deepest distress, 
 that her visit was destined to be of no
 
 HOUSE OF THE TENNIS-PLAYING CAT. 
 
 325 
 
 avail ; this crafty duchess was too g:i'eedy 
 of homag'e not to liave a pitiless heart. 
 
 " Madame," said Augustine, in a broken 
 voice, " the step I am now taking- toward 
 you will seem very strange to you ; but 
 despair has its madness, and must render 
 everything excusable. I understand only 
 too well why Theodore prefers your house 
 to any other, and why your mind has so 
 much influence over him. Alas ! I have 
 merely to look within myself to find more 
 than sufficient reasons. But I adore my 
 husband, madame. Two years of tears 
 have not effaced his image from my heart, 
 although I have lost his. In my distrac- 
 tion, I have dared to conceive the idea of 
 strug-gling with you ; and I come to you 
 to ask you hy what means I can triumph 
 over yourself. Oh, madame ! " cried the 
 young- woman, ardently seizing upon the 
 hand of her rival, who let her take it. 
 "I shall never pray to God for my own 
 happiness with as much fervor as I will 
 implore Him for j'ours, if you will help 
 me to reconquer, I do not say the love, 
 but the friendship of Sommervieux. I 
 have no further hope but in you. Ah ! 
 tell me, how have you been able to please 
 him, and to make him forget the early 
 days of — " 
 
 At these words, Augustine, choking 
 with uncontrollable sobs, was obliged to 
 stop. Ashamed of her weakness, she hid 
 her face in her handkerchief and deluged 
 it with her tears. 
 
 " What a child you are, my dear little 
 beauty ! " said the duchess, who, charmed 
 bj' the novelty of this scene, and moved, 
 despite herself, by receiving- the homage 
 done her by the most perfect virtue per- 
 haps in Paris, took the young- wife's hand- 
 kerchief and herself began to Avipe the 
 weeping- ej^es, soothing her with a few 
 monosjdlables murmured with gracious 
 
 pity- 
 After a moment's silence, the coquette, 
 imprisoningpoor Aug-ustine's pretty hands 
 between her own, which had a rare char- 
 acter of noble beauty and power, said to 
 her in a sweet and affectionate voice : 
 
 " As a first piece of advice, I will coun- 
 sel you not to cry so; tears spoil one's 
 beaut3\ You must set yourself resolutely' 
 
 against such g-riefs as bring- on illness, for 
 love does not stay long b^^ a bed of pain. 
 Melancholy imparts in the beginning a 
 certain gi'ace which is pleasing, but it 
 ends by lengthening out the features and 
 withering the most fascinating of all faces. 
 Then, our tj'rants have self-love enough to 
 want their slaves to be always cheerful." 
 
 " Ah ! madame, my feelings do not rest 
 alone with me. How can one, without 
 suffering a thousand deaths, see a face 
 wan, colorless, and indifferent that was 
 once wont to beam with love and joy ! I 
 cannot command my heart." 
 
 " So much the worse, my dear beauty ; 
 but I believe I already know all your storj'. 
 To begin with, you may rest assured that 
 if your husband has been unfaithful to you, 
 I am not his accomplice. If I have been 
 glad to see him in my drawing-room, it 
 was, I will confess, from a sort of vanity ; 
 he was famous and went nowhere. I like 
 you too much already to tell you all the 
 follies he has committed on my account. 
 I shall reveal to you only a single one, be- 
 cause it may, perhaps, help vis to bring 
 him back to you, and to punish him for 
 the audacity he has shown toward me. 
 He would compromise me in the end. I 
 know too much about the world, my dear, 
 to wish to put myself at the discretion of 
 too superior a man. You know that we 
 must let them pay court '_to us, but it is 
 a mistake to marry them. We women 
 ought to admire men of genius, to enjoy 
 them like a play, but to live with them — 
 never ! Nonsense ! that would be trying 
 to take pleasure in looking at the machin- 
 ery of tlie opera mstead of staymg in 
 one's box and enjoying- from there its bril- 
 liant illusions. But in your case, my poor 
 cliild, the "mischief is done, isn't it ? Well, 
 you must endeavor to take up arms against 
 tjTanny." 
 
 " Ah ! madame, before coming in here 
 and seeing you I have learned to know 
 some artifices which I did not suspect." 
 
 " Well, come and see me occasionally, 
 and it will not be long before j'ou possess 
 the science of these trifles which are in- 
 deed rather important. External things 
 are half of life to fools ; and, as far as 
 that goes, more than one man of talent is
 
 32C 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 a fool, notwithstanding all his intellect. 
 But I will wager that .you have never 
 been able to refuse Theodore anj'thing." 
 
 "How can one, madame, refuse any- 
 thing to the man one loves ? " 
 
 " You poor innocent, I shall adore you 
 for your simplicity. You must know, 
 then, that the more we are in love, the 
 less must we let the man perceive, espe- 
 cially' a husband, the extent of our pas- 
 sion. It is the most loving one that is 
 tyrannized over, and, what is worse, is 
 sooner or later deserted." 
 
 " What, madame, must we then dis- 
 simulate, calculate, turn false, make our- 
 selves an artificial character, and that for 
 all the time ? Oh ! how can people live 
 so? Can you?" 
 
 She hesitated, and the duchess smiled. 
 
 "My dear," resumed the great lady, in 
 a grave voice, "married happiness has 
 alwaj'S been a speculation, an affair de- 
 manding particular attention. If you 
 continue to talk passion when I am talk- 
 ing to you about marriage, we shall not 
 understand one another pretty soon. 
 Listen to me," she went on to say, 
 in a confidential sort of tone. " I have 
 been enabled to see some of the famous 
 men of our time. The married ones, with 
 a few exceptions, had wedded women of 
 no account. Well, these women ruled 
 them as the emperor rules us, and were, 
 if not loved, at least respected by them. 
 I am fond enough of secrets, especially 
 of those that concern us, to have amused 
 myself in seeking the solution of this 
 enigma. Well, my angel, these good 
 women had the talent to analyze the 
 character of their husbands. Without 
 being frightened, like you, by their su- 
 periorities, thej' had adroitly remarked 
 the qualities wanting in them ; and 
 whether they possessed these qualities, 
 or merely feigned to have them, thej^ 
 found means to make such a great dis- 
 play of them to their husbands' eyes that 
 they ended by imposing upon them. 
 Now, you must know, too, that these 
 souls which appear so great have all a 
 bit of folly in them, and we ought to be 
 able to make the most of it. Taking the 
 firm resolution to lord it over them, never 
 
 swerving from this purpose, shaping to- 
 ward it all our actions, ideas, coquetries, 
 we master these eminently capricious 
 minds, Avhich, by the very mobility of 
 their thoughts, furnish us with the means 
 of influencing them." 
 
 "Oh, heavens!" cried the affrighted 
 young woman. " So that is life ! It is 
 a combat." 
 
 "Where one must always threaten," 
 resumed the duchess, laughingly, ." our 
 power is all artificial; also one must never 
 let one's self be despised by a man, for it 
 is impossible to rise from such a fall ex- 
 cept by odious maneuvers. Come," she 
 added, " I am going to give you the 
 means of putting your husband in chains." 
 
 She rose to guide smilingly the young 
 and innocent apprentice in conjugal wHes 
 through the labyrinth of her small palace. 
 They both came to a private staircase 
 leading to the reception-rooms. When 
 the duchess had opened the spring of the 
 door, she stopped, looked at Augustine 
 with an inimitable air of slyness and 
 grace. 
 
 " There, the Duke of Carighano adores 
 me, yet he dares not enter by this door 
 without my permission — and he is a man 
 who is in the habit of commanding thou- 
 sands of soldiers. He is equal to facing 
 batteries, but before me — be is afraid." 
 
 Augustine sighed. Thej' reached a 
 sumptuous gallery, where the painter's 
 wife was conducted by the duchess before 
 the portrait which Theodore had made of 
 Mademoiselle Guillaume. At sight of it, 
 Augustine uttered a cry. 
 
 "I knew very well that it wasn't m 
 our house anymore," said she; "but — 
 here ! " 
 
 " My dear child, I exacted it merely' to 
 see to what degree of stupidity a man of 
 genius can go. Sooner or later, it would 
 have Ijeen sent back to j'ou by me, for I 
 was not expecting the pleasure of seeing 
 here the original before the copy. While 
 we are finishing our conversation, I will 
 have it taken to 3'our carriage. If, armed 
 with this talisman, you are not mistress 
 over your husband for a hundred years, 
 you are not a woman, and you will de- 
 serve vour fate."
 
 HOUSE OF THE TENNIS-PLAYING CAT. 
 
 32' 
 
 Augustine kissed the duchess's hand, 
 and the duchess pressed her to her heart 
 and kissed her with a tenderness all the 
 more marked because it was to be for- 
 gotten on the morrow. 
 
 This scene would perhaps have forever 
 ruined the candor and purity of a woman 
 less virtuous than Augustine, to whom 
 the secrets revealed by the duchess might 
 l^rove equally salutary and fatal, for the 
 crafty policy of the higher social spheres 
 was no more suited to Augustine than 
 was Josej^h Lebas's narrow reason or 
 Madame Guillaume's silly morality. A 
 strange effect of the false positions where 
 the least misconstructions of life place us I 
 Augustine then resembled a shepherd of 
 the Alps surprised by an avalanche ; if he 
 hesitates, or if he stops to listen to his 
 companion's cries, he is most frequently 
 lost. In these great crises the heart 
 breaks, or turns to stone. 
 
 Madame de Sommervieux went home in 
 a state of agitation that it would be diffi- 
 cult to describe. Her conversation with 
 the Duchess of Carigliano awakened a 
 throng of contradictory ideas in her mind. 
 She was like the sheep in the fable— full 
 of courage in the absence of the wolf. She 
 harangued herself and traced out admir- 
 able plans of conduct ; she imagined a 
 thousand stratagems in coquetry ; she 
 even talked to her husband, finding, far 
 away fi'om him, all the resources of that 
 true eloquence which never abandons wo- 
 men ; then, in thinking of Theodore's 
 sharp and clear glance, she began to 
 tremble. When she inquired if her hus- 
 band were at home, her voice failed her. 
 Learning that he was not coming to din- 
 ner, she felt a tinge of inexplicable joy. 
 Like the criminal appealing ag-ainst his 
 sentence of death, a respite, however 
 short it might be, seemed to her a whole 
 life. She placed the portrait in her cham- 
 ber, and waited for her husband, giving 
 herself up to all the pangs of hope. She 
 was too well aware that this experiment 
 was to decide her entire future not to 
 shudder at every sort of noise, even at 
 the murmur of her clock, which seemed 
 to weigh upon her teri'ors by measuring 
 them to her. She endeavored to cheat 
 
 time by a thousand artifices. She was 
 seized with the idea of making a toilet 
 that might render her similar to the por- 
 trait in every particular. Then, knowing 
 her husband's restless character, she had 
 her apartment lighted up. in an unusual 
 manner, certain that on coming home 
 curiositj' would bring him to her. It 
 struck midnight, when, at the coach- 
 man's cry, the door of the house was 
 opened. The painter's carriage rolled in 
 on the pavement of the silent courtyard. 
 
 " What is the meaning of this illumina- 
 tion ? " asked Theodore, in a joyous voice, 
 as he entered his wife's chamber. 
 
 Augustine skillfully took advantage of 
 so favorable a moment ; she fell upon her 
 husband's neck, and pointed out the por- 
 trait to him. The artist remained as 
 motionless as a rock, and his eyes were 
 directed alternately toward Augustine 
 and toward the accusing canvas. The 
 timid and half-dead wife watched the 
 changing brow — her husband's terrible 
 brow — and saw the expressive -mnnkles 
 gi'adually accumulate on it like clouds ; 
 then she thought she felt the blood curd- 
 ling in her veins when, b3' a blazing glance 
 and a profoundly hollow voice, she was 
 questioned. 
 
 " Where did you find this picture ? " 
 
 " The Duchess of Carigliano gave it to 
 me." 
 
 " Did j^ou ask her for it ? " 
 
 " I did not know she had it." 
 
 The sweetness, or rather the enchant- 
 ing melody, of this angel's voice might 
 have softened cannibals, but not an artist 
 writhing with the torture of his wounded 
 vanity. 
 
 "That is worthy of her!" exclaimed 
 the artist, in thundering tones. " I shall 
 have my revenge," he said, as he strode 
 about. " She shall die of shame. I will 
 paint her ! yes, I will picture her with the 
 features of Messalina stealing out in the 
 night from the palace of Claudius." 
 
 " Theodore ! " said a dying voice. 
 
 "I will kill her." 
 
 "My dear!" 
 
 " She is in love with that little cavalry 
 colonel, because he rides horeeback so 
 well."
 
 328 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 " Theodore ! " 
 
 "Oh, let me alone ! " said the painter 
 to his wife, with a sound of voice that 
 almost resembled the roar of a wild 
 beast. 
 
 It would be odious to paint this whole 
 scene, at the end of which the fury of 
 wratii suggested to the artist words and 
 acts that an older woman than Augustine 
 would have attributed to insanit3^ 
 
 Toward eight o'clock on the morning 
 of the next day, Madame Guillaume sur- 
 prised her daughter, pale, with red eyes, 
 hair in disorder, holding in her hand a 
 handlverchief soalied with tears, gazing 
 on tlie floor at the scattered fragments 
 of a torn canvas and tlie pieces of a great 
 shattered gilt frame. Augustine, nearly 
 insensible from grief, pointed at these re- 
 mains with a gesture of despair. 
 
 " And there perhaps is a great loss ! " 
 cried the old regent of the Tennis-Play- 
 ing Cat. " It was a good likeness, that 
 is true ; but I have learned tliat there is 
 on the Boulevard a man who makes 
 charming portraits for fifty crowns." 
 
 "Ah, mother!" 
 
 "Poor child, j'ou are right!" replied 
 Madame Guillaume, who mistook the ex- 
 pression of the glance her daughter gave 
 her. " Well, my dear, there is no such 
 tender love as a mother's. My darling, I 
 
 can guess everything ; but come and con- 
 fide your griefs to me — I will comfort you. 
 Haven't I already told you that that man 
 is crazy ? Your chambermaid has related 
 some pretty stories to me ; indeed he is a 
 real monster! " 
 
 Augustine laid a finger upon her pallid 
 lips, as if to imijlore her mother for a mo- 
 ment's silence. During this terrible niglit, 
 miser3' had made her find that patient 
 resignation which, in mothers and in lov- 
 ing women, surpasses in its effects human 
 energy, and perhaps reveals in the heart 
 of women the existence of certain strings 
 that God has refused to man. 
 
 An inscription engraved upon a cippus 
 in the cemetery of Montmartre indicates 
 that Madame de Sommervieux died at the 
 age of twenty-seven. In the simple lines 
 of this epitaph a friend to this timid creat- 
 ure sees the last act of a drama. Every 
 year, on the solemn second of November, 
 he never passes by this marble without 
 asking himself whether stronger women 
 are not needed than was Augustine for 
 the powerful embraces of genius. 
 
 "Humble and modest flowers growing 
 up in valleys die, perchance," he says to 
 himself, "when they are transplanted too 
 near the heavens — the regions where tem- 
 pests arise, where the sun is scorching." 
 
 VII. 
 
 A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA. 
 
 The path leading from Le Croisic to 
 Batz town was not a beaten way ; a puff 
 of wind was enough to efface every trace 
 left by the cart-wheels or tlae print of 
 the horses' hoofs. However, our guide's 
 practiced eye was able to discover it by 
 the spoor of cattle and sheep. This path 
 in some places went down to the sea, and 
 in others rose toward the fields, accord- 
 ing to the lay of the land and the position 
 of the rocks which it skirted. 
 
 It was noon, and we had only gone half- 
 way. 
 
 "We can rest over there," I said, 
 pointing to a headland composed of lofty 
 rocks. It looked as if we might find a 
 nook there. 
 
 When the fisherman, whose eyes fol- 
 lowed the direction of my finger, heard 
 this, he shook his head, and said : "There 
 is some one there. Every one who goes 
 from Batz town to Le Croisic, or from Le 
 Croisic to Batz town, always goes round 
 another way, so as not to pass him." 
 
 The man murmured these words in a 
 low tone that suggested mystery.
 
 A TRAGEDY Bt THE SEA 
 
 329 
 
 " Is it a robber, then, or a murderer ? " 
 
 Our guide's only answer was a deep, 
 hollow exclamation, which redoubled our 
 curiosity. 
 
 " But if we do go \)y, will anything: hap- 
 pen to us ? " 
 
 "Oh! no." 
 
 " Will you g-o by with us ? " 
 
 " No, monsieur." 
 
 " Well, we will go, if you can assure us 
 that there is no danger." 
 
 "I could not say that," answered the 
 fisherman ciuickh'. " I only know that 
 he who is there will not say anything to 
 you, and will do you no harm. Good 
 God ! only he won't stir an inch from 
 where he sits." 
 
 " What is he then ? " 
 
 "A man! " 
 
 I never heard two syllables uttered in 
 such a tragic tone. At that moment we 
 were about twenty paces from a creek in 
 which the sea was tossing. Our guide 
 took the road that skirted the i-ocks ; we 
 Avent on straight in front of us, but Pau- 
 line took my arm. Our guide hastened 
 his steps, in order to reach the place 
 where the two paths met, at the same 
 time that we did. He evidently divined 
 that after we had seen the man we should 
 walk on quickly. This circumstance in- 
 flamed our curiosity", which then became 
 so burning that our hearts beat as if we 
 had been struck by a feeling of terror. In 
 spite of the heat of the day, and a sort 
 of fatigue caused by our walk through the 
 sands, our souls were still filled with the 
 indescribable languor of intense delight. 
 They were full of pure pleasui-e that can 
 only be expressed by comparing it to the 
 pleasure one feels in listening to exquisite 
 music, such music as the " Andiamo mio 
 ben " of Mozart. The melting together 
 of two hearts in one pure thought is like 
 the blending of two beautiful voices in 
 song. 
 
 To be able to appreciate fully the emo- 
 tion that seized us afterward, you must 
 have shared the half voluptuous delight 
 into which our morning's ramble had 
 plunged us. Sit for a while and watch 
 a wood-dove, with all its beautiful shades 
 of color, perched on a branch that sways 
 
 above a rivulet, and you wUl cry aloud 
 with grief when you see it struck to the 
 heart by the iron claws of a hawk and 
 borne away with speed, swift as powder 
 drives a bullet from a gun. 
 
 AVe soon reached a small cave, in front 
 of which was a narrow ledge, a hundred 
 feet above the sea, protected from the 
 fury of the waves by a sheer wall of rock. 
 Before we had gone two steps on this 
 platform, we felt an electric shiver run 
 through us, not unlike the start one gives 
 at a sudden noise in the middle of a still 
 night. 
 
 We saw seated on a piece of rock a man 
 who looked at us. 
 
 His glance darted from his bloodshot 
 eyes like the flash of a cannon. The stoic 
 stillness of his limbs I can only liken to 
 the unchanging piles of granite amid 
 which he sat. His whole body remained 
 rigid, as if he had been turned into stone ; 
 only his eyes moved slowly. After cast- 
 ing upon us this look which had moved 
 us so strongly, he withdrew his eyes and 
 fixed them on the ocean stretched out 
 at his feet. In spite of the light that 
 streamed upward from it, he gazed upon 
 it without lowering his eyelids, as the 
 eagle is said to gaze upon the sun. He 
 did not raise his eyes again. Try and 
 recall, my dear uncle, one of those old 
 butts of oak that time has stripped of all 
 its branches, whose knotted trunk rears 
 its fantastic form by the side of some 
 lonely road ; it will give you a true 
 likeness of this man. His was the frame 
 of Hercules in ruins, the face of Olympian 
 Zeus wasted by age, and grief, and coarse 
 food, and the hard life of them that toil 
 on the sea; it was as it were charred by 
 a thundeibolt. I looked at his hard and 
 hairy hands, and I saw the sinews like 
 bands of iron. In his whole frame were 
 manifest signs of the same natural power. 
 
 In a corner of the little cave I noticed 
 a great heap of moss, and a sort of rough 
 shelf formed by chance in the face of the 
 granite. On this shelf stood an earthern 
 pitcher covered with the fragment of a 
 round loaf. Never had my imagination 
 — when it bore me into the deserts where 
 the first Christian hermits dwelt — drawn
 
 330 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 a picture of grander relig-ion or more 
 terrible repentance. Even you, my dear 
 uncle, who have experience of the confes- 
 sional, have never perhaps seen such noble 
 remorse ; here was remorse drowned in 
 the waves of supplication, the perpetual 
 supplication of dumb despair. 
 
 This fisherman, this mariner, this rough 
 Breton was sublime ; I knew it, but I 
 knew not whj'. Had those eyes wept? 
 That hand, like the hand of a roug-h-hewn 
 statue, liad it struck ? That rugged brow, 
 stamped with fierce iiitegritj', whereon 
 strength had left the impress of the gen- 
 tleness that is the heritage of all true 
 streng-th — that brow, scarred deep with 
 furrows, was it in harmou3' with a great 
 heart ? Why did the man sit there in 
 granite ? Why had the granite passed 
 into the man? Which was humanity, 
 which was stone ? 
 
 A world of thought took possession of 
 our brains. As our guide had antici- 
 pated, we passed on quickly in silence. 
 When we met he must have seen that 
 we were filled with horror and astonish- 
 ment, but he did not confront us with the 
 truth of his predictions ; he only said — 
 
 " You have seen him ? " 
 
 " What is the man ? " said I. 
 
 " The people call him ' The man under 
 a vow.' " 
 
 You can imagine the movement with 
 which our heads turned toward the fish- 
 erman at these words ! He was a simple 
 man ; be understood our mute interroga- 
 tion, and this is what he told us. I tr\' 
 to preserve his own words and the pojiular 
 character of the storj'. 
 
 '■'Madame, people at Le Croisic, and 
 Batz too, believe that this man has been 
 guilty of some crime and is performing 
 the penance given him b3^ a well-known 
 rector whom he went to confess to be- 
 yond Nantes. Others believe that Cam- 
 Ijremer — that is his name — is under a 
 spell, and that he communicates it to 
 any one who passes him to leeward. For 
 this reason many people look to see in 
 what quarter the wind is before they will 
 pass the rock. If there's a gale," and he 
 pointed to the northwest, " they would not 
 go on, not if they were going to fetch a 
 
 bit of the true cross ; they are afraid and 
 turn back. Others, the rich people at Le 
 Croisic, say that Cambremer has made 
 a vow, so he is called 'The man under 
 a vow.' There he is night and day; he 
 never goes. This talk has a smack of 
 truth. Look," said he, turning round to 
 point us out a thing we had not noticed 
 before, "there, on the left, he has set up 
 a wooden cross, to show that he is under 
 the protection of God and the Blessed 
 Virgin and the Saints. He would not be 
 let alone as he is, if it were not that the 
 terror he causes every one makes him as 
 safe as if he were guarded by a regiment 
 of soldiers. 
 
 "He has not spoken a word since he 
 shut himself up, as it were, out there in 
 the open. He lives upon bread and water 
 which his brother's child, a little wench 
 of twelve years old, takes him every 
 morning. He has made a will and left 
 her all his goods — a pretty creature she 
 is too, a little slip of a maid, as gentle as 
 a lamb, and as pretty spoken as could be. 
 Her eyes are as blue — and as long as 
 that," said he, holding up his thumb, 
 " and her hair is like a cherub's. If you 
 ask her, ' Tell me, Perotte ' (that's what 
 we call Pierrette ; she is dedicated to 
 Saint Pierre. Carabremer's name is 
 Pierre ; he is her godfather) — ' Tell me, 
 Perotte,' he went on, 'what does uncle 
 say to thee ? ' she'll answer, ' He says 
 nothing to me, never — nothing at all.' 
 ' Well, and what does he do ? ' ' He 
 kisses me on the forehead, on Sundays.' 
 ' Thou'rt not afraid, then ? ' ' Why ! ' 
 she says, 'he is my godfather ! He won't 
 let any one else take him his food but 
 me.' 
 
 " Perotte declares that he smiles when 
 she comes, but you might as well talk of 
 a sunbeam in a sea-fog, for it's said he's 
 as gloomy as storm." 
 
 "But," said I, "you are exciting our 
 curiosity', not satisfying it. Do you know 
 what it was that brought him to this ? 
 Was it grief ? or repentance ? or mad- 
 ness ? or crime ? is he — ? " 
 
 "Ah, monsieur, scarcely any one but 
 I and my father know the truth about it. 
 My mother, who is now dead, was ser\'ant
 
 A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA. 
 
 331 
 
 to the justice to whom Cambremer told 
 the whole story. The people at the port 
 say that the priest to whom he made his 
 confession only gave him absolution on 
 that condition. My poor mother over- 
 heard Cambremer w'ithout intending' to, 
 because the justice's parlor was next the 
 kitchen. She heard it, and she is dead ; 
 and the judge who heard it, he too is dead. 
 My mother made us promise — father and 
 me — never to speak of it to the people 
 about here ; but I can tell you this : the 
 evening my mother told us the story the 
 hairs of my head stood on end." 
 
 " Well, tell us the story, my good fel- 
 lov/ ; we will not mention it to any one." 
 
 The fisherman looked at us and con- 
 tinued thus : " Pierre Cambremer, whom 
 3'ou saw there, is the eldest of the Cam- 
 bremers. They have all been seafarers, 
 fathers and sons, for generations. As 
 their name shows, the sea has ahvaj's 
 given way to them. The one you have 
 seen was a fisherman, with craft of his 
 own ; he had boats in which he used to 
 go sardine fishing, and he even fished for 
 deep sea fish for the dealers. He would 
 have fitted out a ship and fished for cod, 
 if he had not loved his wife so much. She 
 was a beautiful woman, a Brouin from 
 Guerande — splendid she was — and a kmd 
 heart too. She was so fond of her hus- 
 band that she could never bear him to 
 leave her longer than was necessarj' for 
 the sardine fishing. Stop ! They lived 
 down there — there," said the fisherman, 
 going up on a mound, in order to point 
 out an island in a sort of little mediter- 
 ranean between the dunes on which we 
 were walking and the salt marshes of 
 Guerande. "Do you see that house? 
 That was his house. Jacquette Brouin 
 and Cambremer had only one child, a 
 boy, whom they loved — how much shall 
 I say ? — like an only child ; fhey were 
 quite mad about him. How often we 
 used to see them at the fair buying him 
 all the finest toys ! It was a folly, every 
 one told them so. Little Cambremer soon 
 saw he could do anji:hing he liked, and 
 grew up as vicious as a red ass. If any 
 one came to his father and said, • Your 
 son has almost killed little So-and-so ! ' 
 
 he'd only laugh jind say, ' Bah, he'll 
 make a fine sailor ! he'll command the 
 king's fleet one day.' Or another would 
 say, ' Pierre Cambremer, do you know 
 that your lad has put out Pougaud's 
 little girl's eye ? ' ' There'll be a lad for 
 the girls ! ' said Pierre. Nothing was 
 wrong with him. Then at ten years 
 old the 3'oung whelp would fight every 
 one he met ; he'd wring the fowls' necks 
 and kill the pigs for sport. I"ll swear he 
 wallowed in blood like a pole-cat ! ' He'll 
 make a splendid soldier,' said Cambre- 
 mer ; "he has got a taste for blood.' 
 
 " You see, I remembered all this after- 
 ward," said the fisherman. "And so 
 did Cambremer," he added after a pause. 
 
 " By the time Jacques Cambremer was 
 fifteen or sixteen he was — well ! a perfect 
 shark. He used to go and plaj' the fool 
 and kick up his heels at Guerande and 
 Savenay. Next he wanted coin ; so he 
 set to robbing his mother, and she didn't 
 dai'e to say a word of it to her husband. 
 Cambremer was an honest man ; if a 
 man had given him two sous too much 
 on a bill, he would go twenty leagues to 
 return them. 
 
 " At la.st, one day his mother was 
 plundered of ever^^thing while his father 
 was away fishing ; their son carried off 
 the dresser, the crockery, the sheets, the 
 linen ; he left nothing but the four walls. 
 He sold the whole of it to go on the spree 
 with to Nantes. The poor woman cried 
 over it for days and nights. His father 
 would have to be told when he came back, 
 and she was afraid of his father — not for 
 herself — you may be sure ! When Pierre 
 Cambremer came back and saw his house 
 furnished with things lent to his wife, he 
 said, 'What in the world is all this?' 
 His poor ■wife was more dead than alive. 
 At last she said, 'We have been robbed.' 
 ' And wiiere's Jacques ? ' ' Jacques is 
 away on the spree.' No one knew where 
 the good-for-nothing fellow had gone. 
 ' He's too fond of his larks,' said Pierre. 
 
 "Six months afterward the poor father 
 heard that his son was going to be taken 
 before the justice at Nantes. He jour- 
 neyed there on foot (it's quicker than by 
 sea), laid hands on his son, and brought
 
 333 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 him back. Ho dithi't ask him, ' What 
 have j-ou been doing' ? ' He only said, ' If 
 thou dost not stay here for two years with 
 thy mother and me, and keep straight, 
 and go fishing and Uve like an honest 
 man, thou 'It have me to deal with.' The 
 mad fellow, counting on his parent's folly, 
 made an ugly face at his father. There- 
 upon Pierre gave him a cuff on the side 
 of his head that laid up Master Jacques 
 for sLx months. Meanwhile the poor mo- 
 ther was pining away with grief. 
 
 " One night she was sleeping peacefully 
 beside her husband when she heard a 
 noise ; she raised herself in bed, and got 
 a blow from a knife in her arm. Slie 
 cried out ; they brought a light, and 
 Pierre Cambremer saw that his wife was 
 wounded. He believed it to be the blow 
 of a robber— as if there were any robbers 
 in our parts ! Why, you might carry ten 
 thousand francs in gold from Le Croisic 
 to Saint-Nazare under your arm, and no 
 fear of any one even asking you what 
 you had there. Pierre went to look for 
 Jacques, but couldn't find him anywhere. 
 The next morning- the villain actually had 
 the face to come back and say that he 
 had been at Batz. I ought to tell j'ou 
 that his mother did not know where to 
 hide her money ; Cambremer placed his 
 with Monsieur Dupolet at Croisic. Their 
 son's pranks had cost them pounds upon 
 pounds ; they were half ruined ; it was a 
 hard thing for people who had about 
 twelve thousand livres altogether, count- 
 ing- their little island. No one knows 
 how much Cambremer had to give at 
 Nantes to get his son off. The whole 
 family was in bad luck. Cambremer's 
 brother had met with misfortunes and 
 wanted help. To console him Pierre told 
 him that Jacques should marry Perotte 
 (the younger Cambremer's child). Then, 
 to hell) iiiii to gain a living he employed 
 him at his fishing, for Joseph Cambremer 
 was reducetl to work for his bread. His 
 wife had died of fever, so he had to pay 
 for the months of Perotte's weaning. 
 Pierre Cambremer's Avife too owed as 
 much as a hundred francs to different 
 people, for the little one, for linen and 
 clothes, and for two or three months' 
 
 wages to big Frelu, who nursed Perotte. 
 Well, Cambremer's wife had sewn a 
 Spanish coin into the wool of her mat- 
 tress, with ' For Perotte ' written on it. 
 She had had a fine education, and could 
 write like a clerk ; she had taught her son 
 to read ; it was that was the ruin of him. 
 No one knows how it was, but that good- 
 for-nothing Jacques had sniffed gold ; he 
 had taken it and gone to run riot at Le 
 Croisic. The good man Cambremer — as 
 ill-luck would have it — came home with 
 his boat, and as he was landing he saw a 
 bit of paper floating on the water; he 
 picked it up and took it to his wife ; she rec- 
 ognized the words in her own writing, and 
 fell down on the floor. Cambremer said 
 nothing, went to Le Croisic, and heard 
 there that his son was playing billiards ; 
 then he asked to see the woman that kept 
 the cafe, and said to her, 'Jacques will 
 pay 3^ou with a certain gold piece which I 
 told him not to pa}' awaj' ; if you will re- 
 turn it to me I will Avait at the door and 
 give 3'ou silver for it instead.' The good 
 woman brought him the coin. Cambremer 
 took it. 'Good,' said he, and returned 
 home. The whole town knew that much. 
 But this is what I know, and the rest can 
 only just guess at. He told his wife to 
 set their downstair room in order ; he 
 made a fire in the grate, lighted two dips, 
 and set two chairs on one side of the 
 hearth and a stool on the other. Then he 
 told his wife to lay out his wedding clothes, 
 and bade her rig herself out in hers. He 
 put on his clothes, and whenhe was dressed 
 he Avcnt for his brother and told him to 
 keep watch outside the house, and warn 
 him if he heard anj^ sound on either of the 
 two beaches — this one and the one by the 
 marsh de Guerande. When he thoug-ht 
 his wife had dressed herself, he went in 
 again, loaded his gun, and hid it in the 
 chimney-corner. Presently Jacques came 
 home ; he was late ; he had been drinking 
 and gambling till ten o'clock ; he had got 
 brought aci-oss at Carnouf Point. His 
 uncle heard him shouting on the beach by 
 the marshes and went to fetch him, and 
 brought him over without saying any- 
 thing. When he came in, his father 
 points to the stool and saj's, 'Sit down 

 
 A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA. 
 
 333 
 
 there. Thou art before thy father and 
 mother whom thou hast offended ; they 
 must be thy judg-es.' Jacques beg'an to 
 howl, because Cambremcr's face had a 
 strang-e set look. His mother sat as stiff 
 as an oar. ' If thou dost cry or budge an 
 inch, if thou dost not sit there as straight 
 as a mast on thy stool,' said Pierre, tak- 
 ing aim at his son with his gun, ' I'll kill 
 thee like a dog.' The son became as 
 dumb as a fish ; the mother said no word. 
 ' Look here,' said Pierre to his son ; ' here 
 is a piece of paper which has been used to 
 wrap up a Spanish gold piece in ; the gold 
 piece was in thy mother's bed ; thy mother 
 was the only person who knew where she 
 had put it; I found the i^aper floating on 
 the water when I landed ; thou hast just 
 given— this very evening — this Spanish 
 gold piece to la mere Fleurant, an(t thj' 
 mother cannot find her piece, in the bed. 
 Explain.' Jacques said that he had not 
 taken his mother's piece, and that his 
 piece he had by him, left over from Nan- 
 .tes. 'So much the better,' said Pierre. 
 ' How canst thou prove that to us ? ' 'I 
 had it.' 'Thou didst not take thy mo- 
 ther's ? ' ' No. ' ' Canst thou swear it on 
 thy eternal salvation ? ' He was going to 
 swear; his mother raised her eyes and 
 looked at him and said, ' Jacques, my 
 child, take care ; do not swear what is not 
 true; thou canst amend, and repent; 
 there is still time.' She wept. 'You're 
 a nice one,' said he; 'you have always 
 tried to get me into scrapes.' Cambremcr 
 turned pale. ' What thou hast just said 
 to thy mother will make thy account all 
 the heavier. Let's come to the point ! 
 Art going to swear?' 'Yes.' 'Wait a 
 minute,' said he. ' Had thy coin got this 
 cross on it that the sardine merchant put 
 on ours when he gave it us ? ' Jacques 
 was getting sober; he began to cry. — 
 'We've talked enough,' said Pierre; 'I 
 am not going to say anj^thing about what 
 thou hast done before, but I don't choose 
 that a Cambremer should die in the 
 market-place at Le Croisic. Say thj' 
 prayers, and let's make haste. There's 
 a priest coming in a minute to hear thy 
 confession.' His mother had gone out; 
 she could not stay to hear her son con- 
 
 demned. When she was gone, Cam- 
 bremer, the uncle, came with the rec- 
 tor of Piriac ; but Jacques would have 
 nothing to say to him. He was a cun- 
 ning one; he knew his father well 
 enough to be sure he would not kill 
 him without confession. 'Thank j'ou, 
 monsieur,' said Cambremer, seeing that 
 Jacques was obstinate, ' please to excuse 
 us, but I wanted to give vay son a lesson ; 
 I beg you not to say anj'thing about it. 
 As to thee,' he said to Jacques, 'if thou 
 dost not mind — the first time it'll be for 
 good and all. I shall put an end to it 
 without confession.' He sent him to bed. 
 The lad believed this, and imagined that 
 he would be able to set himself to riglits 
 with his father. He slept ; the father 
 watched . When he saw that his son was 
 in a deep sleep, he covered his mouth with 
 tow, bound it round tightly with a piece 
 of a sail, and then tied his hands and feet. 
 He raved, 'he wept blood, 'as Cambremer 
 told the justice. You may imagine, his 
 mother threw herself at his father's feet. 
 ' He is judged,' said he ; ' thou must help 
 me to put him into the boat.' She re- 
 fused. Cambremer put him in bj' him- 
 self, forced him down into the bottom of 
 the boat, and tied a stone to his neck. 
 Then he rowed out of the cove — out to 
 the open sea till he was as far out as the 
 rock where ho now sits. By that time 
 the poor mother had got her brother-in- 
 law to take her out there. She cried out 
 as loud as she could ' Mercj-,' but it was 
 only like throwing a stone at a wolf. It 
 was moonlight ; she saw the father throw 
 their son, to whom her bowels still yearned, 
 into the sea ; and as there was no wind 
 she heard Pish ! then nothing, not a trace, 
 not a bubble. No, the sea doesn't tell 
 secrets. Cambremer landed to quiet his 
 wife's groans, and found her half dead. 
 It was impossible for the two brothei-s to 
 carrj' her ; they were obliged to put her 
 in the boat which had just been used for 
 her son, and rowed her round by the 
 Le Croisic channel. Ah, well ! la belle 
 Brouin, as she was called, did not last a 
 week ; she died entreating her husband to 
 burn the cursed boat. Oh ! he did it too. 
 As for him, it was all up with him ; he
 
 334 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 didn't know what he wanted. When he 
 walked, he staggered hke a man who 
 couldn't stand wine. Then he took a ten 
 days' journey, and when he came back, 
 sat down where you have seen him, and 
 since he has been there he hasn't spoken 
 a word." 
 
 The fisherman did not take more than 
 a minute or two to tell us this stoi-y, and 
 told it even moi-e simply than I have writ- 
 ten it. The people make few reflections 
 when they tell a tale ; fhey relate the 
 fact that has impressed them, and only 
 translate it into words as they feel it. 
 Tliis narative was as keen and incisive as 
 th^ blow of a hatchet. 
 
 We returned to Le Croisic bj' the salt 
 marshes. Our fisherman, become as 
 silent as ourselves, led us through the 
 bewildering paths. Our souls hud under- 
 gone a change. We were both plunged 
 in gloomy thoughts, saddened \)y this 
 drama which explained the sudden pre- 
 sentiment we had felt at the sight of Cam- 
 bremer. We both knew enough of the 
 •world to divine that part of those three 
 lives concerning which our guide had been 
 silent. 
 
 The miseries of the three rose up be- 
 fore us as plainly as if we had seen them 
 in the scenes of a drama that reached its 
 climax in the father's expiation of his 
 necessary crime. We dared not look at 
 the rock where the unhappy man sat, a 
 terror to the whole country. Clouds be- 
 gan to darken the sky, and a mist i-ose on 
 the horizon while we walked through the 
 most gloomy and melancholy scenery I 
 ever beheld. We trod on soil that seemed 
 sick and unwholesome, the salt marshes, 
 that may well be called the scrofulous 
 places of the earth. The ground is 
 divided into unequal squares, each in- 
 
 cased in a deep cutting of gray earth, and 
 each full of brackish water, on the sur- 
 face of which the salt collects. These 
 artificial pits are divided witliin by bor- 
 ders, whereon the workmen walk armed 
 with long rakes. By the aid of these 
 rakes they skim off the brine and carry 
 it to round platforms contrived at certain 
 distances, when it is ready to be formed 
 into heaps. For two hours we walked by 
 the side of this gloomy chess-board, where 
 the abundance of salt chokes all vegeta- 
 tion, and where no one is to be seen, except 
 her-e and there a few paludiers — the name 
 given to the cultivators of the salt. These 
 men, or rather this class of Bretons, wear 
 a special dress, a white jacket, not unlike 
 a brewer's. They marrj' only among 
 themselves ; there is no instance of a 
 gill • of this tribe having married any 
 other man than a paludier. The hoi"- 
 rible ajipea ranee of these swamps, with 
 the mud thus raked in regular patches, 
 and the gray earth shunned by every 
 Breton flower, was in harmony with the 
 pall that had been cast upon our souls. 
 When we reached the place where one 
 has to cross the arm of the sea formed 
 by the irruption of its waters into this 
 basin and no doubt serving to replenish 
 the salt marshes, the sight of even such 
 meager vegetation as adorns the sands on 
 the beach was a delight to us. As we 
 were crossing, we could see in the middle 
 of the lake the island on which the Cam- 
 bremers had lived. We turned away our 
 heads. 
 
 On arriving at our hotel we noticed a 
 billiard table in one of the ground-floor 
 rooms, and when we learned that it was 
 the only public billiard table in Le Croisic, 
 we made our preparations for leaving dur- 
 ing the night. The next day we were at 
 Guerande.
 
 MODESTE MIQNON. 
 
 335 
 
 VIII. 
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 In the beginning of the month of Oc- 
 tober, 1829, Monsieur Simon Babylas La- 
 tournelle, notary, was going along the 
 road from Havre to Ingouville, arm in 
 arm with his son ; his wife was also with 
 him, and was followed, as by a page, by 
 the head clerk, a little dwarf named Jean 
 Butscha. When the four, of whom two 
 at least passed over the same road every 
 evening, reached a place where the road 
 turned upon itself, in a fashion that the 
 Italians call cornice, the notary looked 
 carefully around him, on both sides, be- 
 fore and behind, to see whether any one 
 could hear him, and then cautiously low- 
 ered his voice. 
 
 " Exupere," he said to his son, " I want 
 you to try and execute carefully and intel- 
 ligently a little maneuver which I am 
 about to explain to you, without trying 
 to understand what it means ; but if you 
 happen to guess anything, throw the 
 knowledge into that Styx which should 
 be the receptacle of all secrets belonging 
 to another, in the mind of every notary 
 and every man who is destined for the 
 magistracy. After having presented your 
 respects and duty to Madame and Made- 
 moiselle Mignon, to Monsieur and Madame 
 Dumay, and to Monsieur Gobenheim if he 
 is at the Chalet, Monsieur Dumny will 
 take you aside into a corner as soon as he 
 has an opportunity. You may gaze at Ma- 
 demoiselle Mignon all the time he is talk- 
 ing to you, if 3'ou like. (I will permit it.) 
 My worthy friend will ask you to go and 
 take a walk. Come back again at nine 
 o'clock, as if you were in haste. When you 
 return from the walk you must tr\' to imi- 
 tate the panting of a man who is out of 
 
 bi'eath, and you must go and whisper to 
 him, quite low, but in such a way that 
 Mademoiselle Modesto can hear you : — 
 "The young man is coming ! " 
 
 Exupere was to start for Paris the 
 next morning, to begin his law studies. 
 This approaching departure had decided 
 Latournelle to propose his son to his 
 friend Dumay as an accomplice in the 
 conspiracy of which this order gives a 
 glimpse. 
 
 '•■ Is Mademoiselle Modeste suspected of 
 carr^'ing on an intrigue ? " asked Butscha, 
 timidly. 
 
 "Hush! Butscha," said Madame La- 
 tournelle, taking her husband's arm. 
 
 Madame Latournelle, the daughter of 
 a clerk of one of the lower courts, deemed 
 herself sufficiently authorized by her birth 
 to call herself a descendant of a parlia- 
 mentary familj'. This explains w^hy the 
 woman, already too blotched and pim- 
 pled, attempted to give herself the maj- 
 esty of the tribunal whose judgments 
 were recorded by her father. She took 
 snuff, held herself as straight as a stick, 
 posed as a distinguished person, and was 
 like a mummy who has been momen- 
 tarily restored to activity by the use of 
 g-alvanism. 
 
 She attempted to give aristocratic 
 tones to her sharp voice, but she scarcelj' 
 succeeded in concealing her own want of 
 education. Her utility as a member of 
 society was demonstrated by the flower- 
 laden bonnets and frizzled curls which she 
 wore, and the dresses which she chose. 
 How would merchants dispose of these 
 productions if there were no Madame La- 
 tournelles ? All the foibles of this worthy 
 woman, who was really charitable and 
 pious, might have passed unnoticed if it
 
 336 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 had not been for the fact that Nature, 
 which sometimes pleases itself b^' gro- 
 tesque creations, had endowed her with 
 the height of a drum-major, in order to 
 make her oddities conspicuous. 
 
 She had never been away from Havre ; 
 she believed in the infalllbilit3' of the 
 place ; she bought everything there, 
 even to her dresses. She called herself a 
 Normande to the ends of her fingers, and 
 she venerated her father and adored her 
 hiisband. The little Latournelle had had 
 the temerity to marry her after she had 
 reached the age of thirty-three, and they 
 had had one son. As Latournelle might 
 have obtained almost anywhere the sixty 
 thousand francs of dowry which had been 
 given by the registry clerk, his remark- 
 able intrepidity was attributed to a de- 
 sire to escape the invasion of the Minotaur, 
 which he could have scarcely eluded b3' 
 himself, if he had had the imprudence to 
 marry a young and pretty girl. Tlie 
 notary had good-naturedly recognized 
 the good qualities of Mademoiselle Agnes 
 (she was named Agnes), and had reflected 
 liow soon a woman's beauty passes in the 
 eyes of her husband. 
 
 As for the insignificant young man 
 upon whom the registrj^ clerk had be- 
 stowed his Norman name at baptism, 
 Madame Latournelle still felt such as- 
 tonishment at having given birth to a 
 son at the age of thirty-five years and 
 seven months, that she would have given 
 him the milk fi*om her own breast even 
 now, if he had wanted it ; this hyperbole 
 is the onl.y one which can express her 
 maternal foolishness. " How beautiful 
 my son is," .she would say to her little 
 friend Modeste, pointing him out when 
 they were on the way to mass, while 
 Exupere Avalked before them. " He re- 
 sembles you," Modeste Mignou would 
 reply, in exactly the same way in which 
 she would have said: "What dreadful 
 weather ! " 
 
 The portrait of this person will be 
 necessary before long, since Madame 
 Latournelle had been for three years the 
 chaperon of the young girl for whose feet 
 the notarj' and Dumay his friend were 
 about to spread one of those snares called, 
 
 in the " Phj'siology of Mai-riage," mouse- 
 traps. 
 
 As for Latournelle, he was a good little 
 man, as cunning as the purest honesty 
 would permit ; strangers always took 
 him for a knave when they saw tlie 
 strange physiognomy to which all Havre 
 was by this time accustomed. Some 
 trouble with his sight compelled the 
 worthy notaiy to wear green spectacles 
 to help his eyes, which were alwaj'S red. 
 Each arch of his eyebrows, which were 
 thinly covered with down, extended from 
 the brown frame of the glass, thus mak- 
 ing a double circle. If one has never 
 observed upon the face of some passer-by 
 the effect jiroduced by these two parallel 
 circumfei'ences, separated by an empty 
 space, one cannot easily imagine what a 
 puzzle such a face is ; particularly when 
 it is pale and hollowed, and ends in a 
 point like that of Mephistopheles ; a type 
 which painters have copied on the masks 
 of cats. For that is what Babj'las Latour- 
 nelle resembled. 
 
 Above these atrocious green spectacles 
 rose a bald crown, all the more artful in 
 appearance since the wig, apparently en- 
 dowed with motion, Avas indiscreet enough 
 to permit ijvhite hairs to escape on all 
 sides, as it I'csted unevenly upon the fore- 
 head. Knowing this estimable Norman, 
 dressed in black, and mounted upon his 
 two legs like a beetle upon two pins, to 
 be one of the most honest men in the 
 world, it was difficult to discover the 
 reason for these contradictions in physi- 
 ognomy. 
 
 Jean Butscha, a poor natural son who 
 had been deserted, and who had been 
 taken and cared for by the registry clerk 
 Labrosse and his daughter, had become a 
 head clerk by dint of industry ; he lived 
 with his patron, who gave him a salary' of 
 nine hundred francs ; he had lost all sem- 
 blance of youth ; he was a dwarf — and he 
 made an idol of Modeste ; he would have 
 given his life for her. This poor being, 
 whose round eyes were j^ressed between 
 thick eyelids, who was pock-marked, bur- 
 dened with a shock of crisp, curly hair, 
 and embarrassed by his enomnous hands, 
 had met no looks save those of pity from
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 337 
 
 the time he was a child ; and tliis fact is 
 sufiicient to explain his whole character. 
 He was silent, reserved, exemplary in 
 conduct, and religious. He was a traveler 
 in that immense extent of country called, 
 upon the map of Tenderness, '• Love with- 
 out hope"; and he wandered upon the 
 arid and sublime heig-hts of Desire. 
 
 Modeste had dubbed the grotesque clerk 
 the ''Mysterious Dwarf." This sobriquet 
 caused Butscha to read Walter Scott's 
 romance, and made him say to Modeste 
 one day : " Will you accept, against an 
 evil daj', a rose from j^our mj-sterious 
 dwarf?" But Modeste suddenly flung 
 the soul of her adorer back into its dwell- 
 ing of mud by one of those terrible glances 
 which young girls know how to bestow 
 upon those who do not please them. But- 
 scha himself had but a lowly opinion of 
 his own merits ; and he, as well as his 
 mistress, had never been out of Havre. 
 
 It may be as well, in the interest of 
 those who are not acquainted with Havre, 
 to say a few words relating to the des- 
 tination of the Latournelle family, of 
 which the head clerk was evidently a 
 member. Ingouville is to Havre what 
 Montmartre is to Paris, a high hill, at 
 the foot of which the city is spread out ; 
 with this difference, that the sea and the 
 Seine surround it ; that it is hopelessly 
 inclosed by fortifications, and that the 
 mouth of the river, the port and the har- 
 bor present a very different sight from the 
 fifty thousand houses of Paris. At the 
 foot of Montmartre an ocean of slate roofs 
 lies in motionless blue waves; at Ingou- 
 ville, the sea is like moving ropfs, swaj-ed 
 by the winds. 
 
 This line of hills, which, from Rouen to 
 the sea, bordei'S the river, leaving a more 
 or less restricted margin between itself 
 and the water, contains numberless pict- 
 uresque treasures in its towns, its ra- 
 vines, its valleys and its prairies; it has 
 been of immense value to Ingouville since 
 181G, at which time the prosperity of Havre 
 began. The place became the Auteuil, 
 the Ville d'Avray, the Montmorency of 
 merchants, who built themselves villas on 
 the terraces of the vast amphitheater, 
 where they could breathe the sea air. 
 
 perfumed with the flowers of their mag- 
 nificent gardens. These bold speculators 
 rested there from the fatigues of their 
 counters, and from the close atmosphere 
 of the houses in which they had been liv- 
 ing, built close against each other, with- 
 out space, sometimes even without a 
 courtyard, as the increasing population 
 of Havre, the inflexible line of its ram- 
 parts and the growth of the harbor made 
 it necessary for them to be built. They 
 left sadness at Havre, and found 303' at 
 Ingouville. 
 
 The law of social development gave a 
 mushroom growth to the faubourg of 
 Graville, which is to-day larger than 
 Havre itself, and which winds down the 
 hill like a serpent. At its crest, Ingou- 
 ville has only one street, and the houses 
 which overlook the Seine necessarily' have 
 an immense advantage over those on the 
 other side of the way, whose view is 
 masked by them, but which stand on 
 tip-toe, like spectators at the play, in 
 order to see over the heads of those in 
 front. Nevertheless, there exist there, 
 as everywhere, gradations of i-ank. A 
 few houses on the summit have a supe- 
 rior position, or possess a right of view 
 which forces their neighbor to keep his 
 building down to a required height. Then 
 again, the irregular line of rock is cut by 
 the roads which make the amphitheater 
 habitable ; and through these vistas some 
 of the dwellings have a view of the town, 
 the liver, or the sea. 
 
 Although the hill does not end in a per- 
 pendicular descent, it terminates in a suf- 
 ficiently abrupt cliff. At the end of the 
 road which winds along the summit there 
 are ra\ines in which may be seen a few vil- 
 lages, Sainte-Adresse and two or three 
 Saints something or other, and some 
 creeks where the ocean ebbs and flows. 
 This end of Ingouville, which is almost 
 deserted, forms a striking contrast with 
 the beautiful villas which look out over 
 the vallej' of the Seine. Do the mer- 
 chants fear the effects of the wind upon 
 vegetation? or do they draw back before 
 the expense of reclaiming these steeps? 
 Whatever may be the reason, the tourist 
 is surprised to see a bare and ravine-cut
 
 338 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 coast at the west of Ingouville, like a 
 beg-gar in rags beside a richly dressed, 
 perfumed beautj'. 
 
 In 1839, one of the last houses on the 
 side of the sea, which is doubtless in the 
 center of the Ingouville of to-day, was, 
 and perhaps is still, called "t|he Chalet." 
 This was originally a house devoted to a 
 concierge, with his little garden before 
 it. The proprietor of the villa to which 
 it belonged, a house with a park, gardens, 
 an aviarj-, hot-houses and lawns, fancied 
 the idea of altering this little house to 
 make it in harmony with his own dwell- 
 ing, and rebuilt it on the model of a cot- 
 tage. He separated this cottage from his 
 own lawn, with its flowers, its garden- 
 borders and terraces, by a low wall, 
 along which he planted a hedge to con- 
 ceal it. 
 
 Behind this cottage, which Avas, in spite 
 of all his efforts, named the Chalet, there 
 were kitchen-gardens and orchards. This 
 Chalet, without its cows or dairy, was 
 separated from the road by a fence whose 
 palings were concealed by a luxuriant 
 hedge. On the other side of the road the 
 opposite house had a similar fence and 
 hedge, which gave the Chalet a view of 
 Havre. 
 
 This little house was the despair of 
 Monsieur Vilquin, the proprietor of the 
 villa. The creator of this country-seat, 
 which breathed so plainly of the wealth 
 of its owner, had extended his domains 
 inland in order, as he himself said, to 
 avoid having his gardeners in his pockets. 
 When the Chalet was finished, it was fit 
 only for the habitation of a friend. Mon- 
 sieur Mignon, the former proprietor, was 
 very fond of his cashier, and it will be 
 seen that his affection was reciprocated ; 
 Monsieur Mignon therefore offered him 
 the dwelling. Believing in doing things 
 according to form, Dumay insisted upon 
 having a lease for a dozen years, at a rent 
 of three hundred francs, and Monsieur 
 Mignon signed it willinglj', saying : 
 
 " My dear Dumay, you must not forget 
 that you have now promised to live in my 
 house for twelve years." 
 
 By reason of certain events which will 
 be duly related, the property of Monsieur 
 
 Mignon, who was at one time the richest 
 merchant in Havre, was sold to Vilquin, 
 one of his opponents in business. In his 
 delight at gaining possession of the cele- 
 brated villa Mignon, the new proprietor 
 forgot to ask for a cancellation of the 
 lease. Dumay, rather than hinder the 
 sale, would have signed am'thing that 
 Vilquin had chosen to exact; but when 
 the deeds were once passed, he clung to 
 his lease as to a vengeance. He remained 
 therefore in Vilquin's pocket, as it were, 
 in the heart of his family, observing him, 
 annoying him, irritating him like a gad- 
 fly. Every morning when he looked out 
 of his window, Vilquin experienced a feel- 
 ing of annoyance as he saw this little 
 bijou of a dwelling, this Chalet which had 
 cost sixty thousand francs, and which 
 sparkled like a Tn\yy in the sunshine. 
 
 The comparison is not inapt, for the 
 architect had built the little house of the 
 reddest of red bricks, marked off with 
 white. The window-frames were a bright 
 green, and the woodwork was of yellow- 
 ish brown. The roof projected several 
 feet. A pretty little detached gallery ran 
 along the first floor, and a veranda with 
 glass sides projected from the middle of 
 the fagade. The ground-floor contained a 
 prettj' salon, which was separated from 
 the dining-room b^^ the landing of a 
 wooden staircase whose design and orna- 
 ments were of elegant simplicity. The 
 kitchen was behind the dining-room, and 
 there was a room back of the salon which 
 was used as a bedroom by Monsieur and 
 Madame Dumay. On the first floor the 
 architect had arranged two large sleeping 
 rooms, with a dressing-room attached to 
 each, to which the veranda served as a 
 salon. Above these, and imder the eaves, 
 which were like two cards tilted against 
 each other, were two rooms in the man- 
 sard for servants, each lighted by a round 
 window, and sufficiently spacious. 
 
 Vilquin had had the pettiness to build 
 a wall between the cottage and the 
 kitchen - gardens ; and since that had 
 been done, the small amount of land 
 which was secured to the Chalet by the 
 lease resembled a Paris garden. The out- 
 buildings, which had been erected and
 
 MOD EST E MIGNON. 
 
 339 
 
 painted to correspond with the Chalet, 
 stood with their backs to the wall. 
 
 The interior of this charming' dwelling' 
 was in harmony with its exterior. The 
 salon, inlaid with hard wood, seemed to 
 wondering' eyes like a painting- in imita- 
 tion of Chinese lacker-ware. On black 
 backgrounds framed in g^old shone the 
 many-colored birds, the impossible green 
 foliage and the fantastic desig-ns of the 
 Chinese. The little dining-room was en- 
 tirely in Northern wood, cut and carved 
 like the beautiful chalets of Russia. The 
 little anteroom, formed by the landing 
 and well of the staircase, was painted to 
 represent old wood, in Gothic ornaments. 
 The bedrooms, with their chintz hang-- 
 ings, were delightful in their simple rich- 
 ness. The room where the cashier and 
 his wife slept was sheathed in wood, and 
 paneled like the cabin of a steamboat. 
 These furnishings explained Vilquin's 
 wrath. He would have liked to put his 
 daughter and her husband in the cottage. 
 This desire became known to Dumay, and 
 will serve to explain later his Breton ob- 
 stinacy. 
 
 The entrance to the Chalet was through 
 a little iron latticed gate, whose spear- 
 heads rose for a few inches above the 
 fence and the hedge. The little garden, 
 about equal in length to the lawn, was 
 then full of flowers, roses, dahlias, the 
 most beautiful and the rarest productions 
 of the hot-house ; for it was another of 
 Vilquin's grievances that the elegant, 
 fanciful little hot-house belonged to the 
 Chalet, and separated, or, if you will, 
 
 united, the villa Vilquin to the cottage. 
 
 Dumay found his relaxation from the 
 fatigues of business in caring for this 
 hot-house, and Modeste found one of her 
 great pleasures among its exotic treas- 
 ures. The billiard-room of the villa Vil- 
 quin, which was a sort of gallery, for- 
 merly communicated -with this hot-house 
 through an immense aviary in the form 
 of a turret ; but after the construction of 
 the wall which shut him off from a view 
 of the gardens, Dumay walled up the door 
 of communication. "Wall for wall," he 
 said. 
 
 In 1827 Vilquin offered Dumaj' a salary 
 
 of six thousand francs, and an indemnity 
 of ten thousand more if he would relin- 
 quish the lease. The cashier refused, 
 although Gobenheim, a former clerk of 
 his master's, only gave him three thou- 
 sand. Dumay was a Breton who had 
 been transplanted by destiny into Nor- 
 mandy. Imagine, therefore, the hatred 
 which the Norman Vilquin, a man worth 
 three millions, felt for the tenants of the 
 Chalet ! Fancy what a crime it was to 
 demonstrate to the rich man the impo- 
 tence of his wealth ! Vilquin, whose de- 
 spair was the talk of Havre, had just 
 proposed to make Dumay a present of a 
 beautiful dwelling, and this oS'er had 
 been also refused. Ha^Te began to grow 
 uneasy at this obstinacy, which it ex- 
 plained by saying: "Dumay is a Breton." 
 As for the cashier, he had an idea th-at 
 Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon would 
 not be fittingly lodged anywhere else. 
 His two idols now inhabited a temple 
 which was worthy of them, and they had 
 the advantage of dwelling in a sumptuous 
 hut where dethroned kings might have 
 preserved the majesty of circumstance 
 around them, a species of dignity which 
 is usually denied to those who have fallen 
 from better days. Perhaps as the story 
 goes on, the reader will not regret hav- 
 ing known in advance something about 
 the home and the companions of Modeste; 
 for at her age, people and things have as 
 much influence over the future as char- 
 acter; and indeed, the character often 
 receives ineffaceable impressions from 
 them. 
 
 II. 
 
 By the way in which the Latournelles 
 entered the Chalet, a stranger might 
 have known that the^^ came there every 
 evening. 
 
 " Ah ! are you here already ? " said 
 the notary, as he saw in the salon a 
 young banker of Havre, Gobenheim, a 
 relative of Gobenheim Keller, the chief 
 of the great Paris house. 
 
 This young man had a pale face ; he 
 was one of tliose blondes with black eyes
 
 340 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 whose motionless gaze has something 
 fascinating about it ; he was temperate 
 both in his speech and in his life ; he was 
 dressed in black, and was as thin as a 
 consumptive, although vigorously framed. 
 He cultivated the family of his former 
 master and the house of his cashier less 
 tlirough afCection than self-interest. They 
 played whist there at two sous the point ; 
 he was not obliged to wear a dress-coat ; 
 he accepted nothing but glasses of eau 
 sucree, and therefore was not obliged 
 to return any civilities. This apparent 
 devotion to the Mignons gave the im- 
 pression that Gobenheim had a heart, 
 and released him from the necessity of 
 going into the fashionable world of 
 Havre, where he would meet with use- 
 less expenses, which would disarrange 
 his domestic life. 
 
 This disciple of the golden calf went 
 to bed every evening at half-past ten, 
 and rose at five o'clock in the morning. 
 And furthermore, as he could rely uix)n 
 the discretion of Latournelle and Butscha, 
 Gobenheim could propound knotty prob- 
 lems to them, receive gratuitous advice 
 from tlie notaiy, and get a just idea of 
 the value of the gossip of the street. 
 This gold-catcher, as Butscha called 
 him, belonged to that class of substances 
 which chemistry terms absorbents. Since 
 the catastrophe to the house of Mignon, 
 where the Kellers had placed him to learn 
 the principles of maritime commerce, no 
 one at the Chalet had ever asked him to 
 do even the most trivial thing ; his reply 
 was well known. The fellow looked at 
 Modeste as he Avould have examined a 
 two-sous lithograph. Butscha, whose 
 wit was sometimes shown by clever 
 little sayings timidly uttered, once re- 
 marked of him : "He is one of the pis- 
 tons of the immense machine called 
 Commerce." 
 
 The four Latournelles saluted with the 
 greatest respect an old lady dressed in 
 black velvet, who did not rise from the 
 armchair where she was seated, for both 
 her eyes were covered with the yellow 
 film produced by cataract. Madame 
 Mignon may be briefly described. She 
 attracted instant attention hy her face, 
 
 for she was one of those mothers whose 
 blameless lives defy the strokes of des- 
 tiny, but who have served as a target for 
 its arrows, and are members of the un- 
 numbered tribe of Niobes. Her well- 
 curled, well-cared-for blonde wig suited 
 her white face, which was as cold as 
 those of the wives of burgomasters, 
 painted by Hals or Mirevelt. Her care- 
 ful toilet, her velvet boots, her lace col- 
 lar and her carefully arranged shawl, all 
 bore witness of Modeste's solicitude for 
 her mother. 
 
 When silence was once more restored 
 in the pretty salon, Modeste, seated near 
 her mother, and embroidering a fichu for 
 her, became for a moment the center of 
 observation. This curiositj^ hidden be- 
 neath the ordinary' salutations and in- 
 quiries common between people who have 
 just met, even though they see each other 
 every day, might have betrayed the do- 
 mestic plot against the young girl, even 
 to an indifferent eye ; but Gobenheim, 
 who was more than indifferent, noticed 
 nothing, and proceeded to light the can- 
 dles upon the card table. Dumay's atti- 
 tude made the situation a terrible one for 
 Butscha, the Latournelles, and particu- 
 larly Madame Dumay, who knew her 
 husband to be capable of firing upon 
 Modeste's lover, even as he would upon 
 a mad dog. After dinner the cashier had 
 gone to walk, followed by two magnifi- 
 cent Pj'renees dogs, whom he suspected 
 of treachery, and whom he had left with 
 a former tenant of Monsieur Mignon's. 
 Then, a few moments before the entrance 
 of the Latournelles, he had taken his pis- 
 tols from the head of his bed and placed 
 them on the chimney-piece, without at- 
 tracting- Modeste's attention. The young 
 girl did not take the least notice of these 
 pi-eparations, singular though they were. 
 
 Although he was short, thick-set and 
 pock-marked, with a way of speaking in 
 a low tone, as if lie were listening- to him- 
 self, this Breton, a former lieutenant of 
 the Guard, had so much resolution and 
 coolness plainly graven upon his face 
 that no one had ventured to take a lib- 
 erty with him during the twenty years 
 that he was in the army. His small.
 
 MODESTE MIGXON. 
 
 341 
 
 calm blue ej-es were like two pieces of 
 steel. His ways, his look, his speech, his 
 manner, were all in keeping with liis 
 short name of Dumay. His phj'sical 
 strength, which was well-known to 
 every one, put him beyond all danger 
 of attack. He was able to kill a man 
 with one blow of his fist, and had per- 
 formed that feat at Bautzen, where he 
 had found himself, unarmed, face to face 
 with a Saxon, behind his company. 
 
 At the present moment, the firm yet 
 gentle expression of the man's face had 
 reached a kind of tragic sublimity ; his 
 lips were as pale as his face, indicating a 
 tumult within him, which was mastered 
 by his Breton will ; a perspiration, slight 
 but perceptible, which every one saw and 
 guessed to be cold, moistened his brow. 
 The notary knew that a drama before the 
 criminal courts might result from these 
 indications. In fact, the cashier was play- 
 ing a part, in connection with Modeste 
 Mignon, which involved sentiments of 
 honor and loyalty of far greater impor- 
 tance than mere social laws ; proceeding 
 from one of those compacts which, in case 
 disaster came of it, could be judged only 
 ill a higher court than one of eai'th. The 
 majority of dramas lie I'eally in the ideas 
 which we form of things. Events which 
 seem to us dramatic are only the subjects 
 which our souls convert into tragedy or 
 comedy according to our characters. 
 
 Madame Latournelle and Madame Du- 
 ma^-, who were detailed to watch Modeste, 
 had a certain unnaturalness of demeanor 
 and a quiver in their voices which the girl 
 did not notice, so absorbed was she in her 
 embroidery. Modeste placed each thread 
 of cotton with a precision that would have 
 driven an ordinary embroidcress to de- 
 spair. Her face expressed the pleasure 
 which the smooth petals of a completed 
 flower caused her. The dwarf, seated be- 
 tween his mistress and Gobenheim, re- 
 strained his emotion as he asked himself 
 how he could get at Modeste, in order to 
 whisper a word of warning to her. 
 
 In taking her place in front of Madame 
 Mignon, Madame Latournelle had, with 
 the diabolical intelligence of a devotee to 
 dutj', isolated Modeste. Madame Mig- 
 
 non, who was naturally silent on account 
 of her blindness, showed by her unusual 
 pallor that she understood the proof 
 which her daughter was about to expe- 
 rience. Perhaps she disapproved of the 
 stratagem at the last moment, even while 
 acknowledging its necessity. Hence her 
 silence. She was inwardly mourning. 
 Exiipere, who was to spring the trap, 
 was entirely ignorant of the piece in 
 which chance had given him a part. 
 Gobenheim, by reason of his character, 
 showed an indifference equal to that of 
 Modeste herself. For a spectator who 
 knew what was going on behind the 
 scenes, this contrast between the com- 
 plete ignorance of some and the quivering 
 expectation of others would have been 
 sublime. In these days, more than ever 
 before, do romance writers arrange ef- 
 fects like these, as they have a perfect 
 right to do ; for nature is alwaj's stronger 
 than they. In this particular case, social 
 nature, which is a nature within nature, 
 was amusing itself by making truth more 
 interesting than fiction ; just as torrents 
 describe fanciful curves which are forbid- 
 den to painters, and accomplish feats of 
 strength by loosening or polishing stones 
 in a manner to surprise sculptors and 
 architects. 
 
 It was eight o'clock. At that season, 
 twilight was just closing in. On this par- 
 ticular evening, the sky was cloudless, the 
 warm air caressed the earth, the air was 
 balmy with the breath of the flowers, and 
 the creaking of the sand could be heard 
 beneath the feet of some returning prome- 
 naders. The sea shone like a mirror. 
 There was so little wind that the lighted 
 candles upon the table burned quieth',' 
 although the windows were partly open. 
 This salon, this evening, this abode, were 
 a fitting frame for the portrait of the 
 young girl, who was being as attentively 
 observed by all these people as a painter 
 would study the Margheinta Doni, one of 
 the glories of the Pitti Palace. Modeste, 
 a flower inclosed like that of Catullus — 
 was she worth all these precautions ? 
 
 You have seen the cage ; now behold 
 the bird ! 
 
 Twenty \'ears of age, slender and deli-
 
 342 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 cate as one of those sirens which are in- 
 vented by English artists for their " Boolcs 
 of Beauty." Modeste, hke her mother 
 before her, was a coquettish embodiment 
 of that grace which is so little understood 
 in France, which is there called sentimen- 
 tality, but which the Germans know to be 
 that poetry of the heart which comes to 
 the surface, manifesting itself by affecta- 
 tions if the owner is silly, but in divine 
 beauties of manner if she be spirituelle. 
 She was remarkable for her pale gold 
 hair, and she belonged to that typo of 
 women who are called, probably in mem- 
 ory of Eve, celestial blondes, whose satin- 
 like skin resembles silk paper over the 
 flesh, who shiver at a cold look and blos- 
 som beneath a warm one, and who make 
 the hand jealous of the eye. 
 
 Beneath her hair, which was soft and 
 light as a feather, and curled in the En- 
 glish style, her forehead, which was per- 
 fect in shape and drawing, was full of 
 thought and calm, although luminous 
 with intelligence ; but where could an- 
 other be found so transparently pure ? 
 It seemed, like a pearl, to have an orient. 
 
 The eyes, which were gray -blue in color, 
 were clear as those of a child, shoXving 
 all the mischief and all the innocence of 
 childhood, harmonizing with the arch of 
 the eyebrows, which was faintl\^ indicated 
 by lines like those made with a pencil 
 upon Chinese faces. This innocent candor 
 was still further shown around the eyes 
 and on the temples, by tints of mother- 
 of-pearl, with blue veins, the privilege of 
 these delicate complexions. The face of 
 that oval so often chosen by Raphael for 
 his Madonnas was distinguished by the 
 quiet and sober tints of the cheeks, modest 
 as a Beng'al rose, upon which the long 
 lashes of transparent ej'elids cast shadows 
 mingled with light. The neck, now bend- 
 ing over, was almost too delicate, of a 
 milky whiteness, recalling those vanish- 
 ing lines beloved of Ijconardo da Vinci. 
 A few slight blemishes, like the patches 
 of the eighteenth century, betrayed the 
 fact that Modeste was a child of earth, 
 and not one of those creations di'eamed 
 of in Italy b^' the angelic school. Her 
 lips, although at once delicate and full, 
 
 were slightlj^ mocking and somewhat 
 voluptuous; her figure, supple without 
 being fragile, had no fears for maternity 
 like that of those young girls who seek 
 beauty by the extreme pressure of a 
 corset. Dimity and steel and lacings de- 
 fined but did not manufacture the serpen- 
 tine lines of her elegant figure, graceful 
 as that of a young poplar swaying in 
 the wind. 
 
 A dress of pearl gray, with cherry- 
 colored trimmings, made with a long 
 waist, modestly outlined the corsage and 
 covered the shoulders, winch were still 
 rather thin, with a guimpe that showed 
 only the first curves which joined the 
 neck to the shoulders. At the sight of 
 this ethereal and intelligent face, which 
 was made more positive by the delicate 
 lines of a Grecian nose with rose-colored 
 nostrils ; where the poetry of the almost 
 mystical forehead was half contradicted 
 by the voluptuous expression of the 
 mouth ; where candor disputed the pro- 
 found and varied depths of the eyQ with 
 a finished mockery, an observer would 
 have thought that this young girl, with 
 her alert and quick ear, which started at 
 the least sound, and a nostril ready to 
 catch the celestial perfumes of the ideal, 
 was destined to be the theater of a com- 
 bat between the poetry of the dawn and 
 the labors of the day, between fancy and 
 reality. Modeste was the cui'ious, modest 
 young girl, knowing her destinj', and full 
 of chastity, the Virgin of Spain rather 
 than that of Raphael. 
 
 She lifted her head as she heard Dumay 
 say to Exupere : 
 
 " Come here, young man ! " 
 
 As she watched them talking in a corner, 
 she believed that it was a question of some 
 errand to be done in Paris. She looked at 
 the friends around her, as if astonished at 
 their silence, and exclaimed in a perfectly 
 natural manner : 
 
 " Well, are you not going to play ? " at 
 the same time pointing to the green table 
 which the grand Madame Latournelle 
 called the altar. 
 
 "Let us begin to play," said Dumay, 
 who had just dismissed the young Exu- 
 pere.
 
 MODESTE MIGXON. 
 
 343 
 
 " You sit there, Butscha," said Madame 
 Latournelle, separating- the clerk by the 
 lengi:h of the table from the group formed 
 by Madame Mig-non and her daughter. 
 
 "And you come here," said Dumay to 
 his wife, placing- her near himself. 
 
 Madame Dumay, a little American of 
 thirty-six j^ears old, furtively wiped awaj' 
 a few tears; she adored Modeste and 
 feared a catastrophe. 
 
 "You are not very gay this evening-," 
 continued Modeste. 
 
 " We are going- to play," returned Go- 
 benheini, who was arranging his cards. 
 
 However interesting the situation may 
 be, it will become still more so by explain- 
 ing- the position of Dumay relative to Mo- 
 deste. If the brevity of this recital renders 
 it dull, we crave pardon by reason of a 
 desire to complete this scene promptly, 
 and by the necessity of relating the argu- 
 ment by which all dramas are regulated. 
 
 III. 
 
 Anne Francois Bernard Dumay was 
 born at Vannes. He enlisted as a soldier 
 in 1799, in the army of Italy. His fathef" 
 was president of the revolutionary tribu- 
 nal, and displayed so much energy that 
 the place became too hot to hold the son 
 after the father, who was a rascally avo- 
 cat, died upon the scaffold after the 9th 
 Thermidor. His mother died of grief, and 
 then Anne sold everything that he pos- 
 sessed and hastened to Italy at the age 
 of twenty-two, when the French army 
 was beginning to give way. 
 
 In the department of Var he met a 
 young man who was also in search of 
 glory, believing a battlefield less peril- 
 ous than his own Provence. Charles 
 Mignon, the last of that noble family to 
 whom Paris owes the street and the 
 hotel built by Cardinal Mignon, had for 
 a father a shrewd and cunning man who 
 desired to save the estate of La Bastie, a 
 pretty little feudal manor, from the claws 
 of the Revolution. Like all the cowards 
 of that epoch, the Count de la Bastie, 
 who had become the Citizen Mignon, be- 
 
 lieved that it was safer to cut off other 
 people's heads than to allow them to cut 
 ofl' his. The false terrorist disappeared 
 at the time of the 9th Thermidor, and 
 was put upon the list of emigrants. The 
 estate of La Bastie was sold, and the tur- 
 reted towers of the dishonored chateau 
 were leveled with the ground. The Citi- 
 zen Mignon was discovered at Orange 
 and massacred with his wife and all his 
 childi-en except Charles Mignon, whom 
 he had sent to seek an asylum for him 
 in the Upper Alps. 
 
 Overcome by the frightful intelligence, 
 Charles waited in a valley of Mont Gin- 
 evra until the times should become less 
 perilous; he remained there until 1T99, 
 living upon the few louis which his father 
 had put into his hand when he started. 
 At last, when he was twenty -three years 
 old, and without any other fortune than 
 his fine appearance, that southern beauty- 
 which, when it is in perfection, reaches 
 the sublime (whose type is Antinous, the 
 illustrious favorite of Adrien), he resolved 
 to hazard upon the red cloth of war his 
 Provencal audacity, which he, like so 
 many others, mistook for a vocation. 
 When he Avas on his way to the head- 
 quarters of the army, which was then 
 at Nice, he met the Breton. 
 
 The two men became comrades, both 
 through the similarity of their destinies 
 and the contrast in their characters. 
 They drank out of the same cup, and ate 
 from the same biscuit, and in the peace 
 which followed the battle of Marengo 
 they were both made sergeants. When 
 the war began again, Charles Mignon 
 succeeded in entering the cavalrj', and 
 lost sight of his comrade. In 1813 he was 
 an oificer of the Legion of Honor, and 
 major of a cavalry regiment : he hoped 
 to regain his title of Count de la Bastie, 
 and to be made colonel by the emperor. 
 He was, however, taken prisoner by the 
 Russians, and sent, like so many others, 
 to Siberia. His companion on the jour- 
 nej"- was a poor lieutenant in whom he 
 recognized Anne Dumay. This man had 
 no decorations, although he was a brave 
 man ; he was unfortunate, like so many 
 others of the rank and file, the wool-epau-
 
 344 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 leted ones, that canvas of men upon 
 which Napoleon painted the empire. 
 While they were in Siberia the lieutenant- 
 colonel, in order to kill time, taught arith- 
 metic and writing to the Breton, whose 
 father had not thought it worth while to 
 educate him. Charles found in his old 
 comrade one of those rare heai'ts into 
 which he could pour both his griefs and 
 his joys. 
 
 The son of Provence finally met the 
 fate which awaits all fine fellows. In 
 1804, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, he was 
 beloved by Bettina Wallenrod, the only 
 daughter of a banker, and he married her 
 all the more willingly since she was rich 
 and a beauty, while he himself was only 
 a lieutenant, \\\\,\\ no other fortune than 
 the excessively problematical future of a 
 soldier of that peinod. The father, a de- 
 cayed baron (there is always a baron in 
 a German bank), was charmed to learn 
 that the handsome lieutenant represented 
 in his own person the family of Mignons 
 of La Bastie, and approved of the choice 
 of the blonde Bettina, whom a painter 
 (there was one in Frankfort then) had 
 lately painted as an ideal of Germany. 
 The banker forthwith named his future 
 grandsons Counts of La Bastie Wallen- 
 rod, and placed a sufficient sum in the 
 French funds to give his daughter an in- 
 come of thirty' thousand francs. This 
 dowry made a very small hole in his capi- 
 tal, the value of money being then very 
 low. The Empire, following the policy of 
 many other debtors, rarely paid its divi- 
 dends ; Charles, therefore, felt rather un- 
 easy at this investment, for he had not as 
 much faith as the baron in the imperial 
 eagles. Faith, and the admiration which 
 is only an ephemeral belief, rarely sur- 
 vives when brought into close contact 
 with its idol. The machine which is ad- 
 mired by the traveler is distrusted by the 
 mechanic; and the stokers of the Na- 
 poleonic engine were the officers of the 
 armj' — if, indeed, they were not its fuel. 
 
 The Baron Wallenrod Tustall Barten- 
 stild promised to assist the young house- 
 hold, however. Charles loved Bettina as 
 much as she loved him, and that is saj'- 
 ing a good deal; but when a Provencal 
 
 becomes enthusiastic, everj'thing in him 
 rises tO' the level of his exalted senti- 
 ments. But how could he help adoring 
 that blonde loveliness, which looked as if 
 it had escaped from one of Albert Durer's 
 pictures, and which was furthermore 
 joined to an angelic character and a 
 fortune renowned in Frankfort ? 
 
 At the period when he confided his sor- 
 rows to the Breton, Charles had had four 
 children, of whom only two daughters 
 were living. Dumay, without knowing 
 them, loved these two little daughters 
 out of sheer sympathy. The elder, named 
 Bettina Caroline, was boru in 1805 ; the 
 other, Marie Modesto, in 1808. The un- 
 fortunate lieutenant-colonel, without any 
 news of his loved ones, returned on foot, 
 in 1814, across Russia and Prussia, ac- 
 companied by the lieutenant. The two 
 friends, between whose heai'ts there ex- 
 isted no dilTerence of rank, reached Frank- 
 fort just as Napoleon was landing at 
 Cannes. 
 
 Charles found his wife in Frankfort, 
 but she was in mourning ; she had had 
 the misfortune to lose her father, by 
 whom she was adored, and who would 
 have liked to see her alwaj's happy, even 
 at his death-bed. He did not survive the 
 disasters of the Empire. When he was 
 seventy-two years old he speculated in 
 cottons, believing in the genius of Napo- 
 leon, not knowing that genius is as often 
 beyond events as at the bottom of them. 
 The last of the Wallenrods had purchased 
 almost as many bales of cotton as the 
 emperor had lost men in the glorious 
 campaign in France. 
 
 Glad to have saved his wife and daugh- 
 ters from the general shipwreck, Mignon 
 went back to Paris, and was made by 
 the emperor lieutenant - colonel in the 
 cuirassiers of the Guard, and commandei- 
 of the Legion of Honor. It was the 
 dream of the colonel to become count 
 and general after Napoleon's first vic- 
 tory, but the dream was overwhelmed by 
 the waves of blood at Waterloo. The 
 colonel, slightlj' wounded, retired to the 
 Loire, and left Tours before the army 
 disbanded . 
 
 In the spring of 1816, Charles Mignon
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 345 
 
 sold out of the funds, and realized nearlj' 
 four hundred thousand francs, with which 
 he resolved to go and seek his fortune in 
 America, and leave the country' where 
 Napoleon's soldiers were already begin- 
 ning- to feel persecution. He was accom- 
 panied from Paris to Havre by Dumay, 
 whose life he had saved, as often hap- 
 pened in the chances of war, by taking 
 him up on his saddle in the rout after the 
 battle of Waterloo. Dumay shared the 
 opinions and the discouragement of 
 the colonel ; and the poor fellow idolized 
 the two little girls, and followed Charles 
 like a spaniel ; and the latter, thinking 
 that the habit of obedience, joined to the 
 honestj' and the faithful attachment of 
 the lieutenant, would make him a faithful 
 and useful servant, proposed to him to 
 put himself under his orders in civil life. 
 
 Dumay was delighted to be adopted by 
 a familj' with whom he expected to have 
 the relations of the mistletoe to the oak. 
 
 While thej^ were waiting for an oppor- 
 tunity to embark, choosing among the 
 ships and debating the chances offered 
 by their destinations, the colonel heard 
 rumors of the brilliant destiny which was 
 reserved for Havre after the peace. 
 While listening to the talk of two citi- 
 zens, he saw the means of fortune, and 
 became at once a shipping-merchant, a 
 banker, and a landed proprietor ; he 
 bought lands and houses for two hundi'ed 
 thousand francs, and sent to New York 
 a vessel laden with French silks which he 
 bought at Lyons for a low figure. Dumay 
 was his agent, and went on the ship. 
 While the colonel was installing himself 
 and his family in the finest house on the 
 Rue Royale, and learning the elements of 
 banking with the activity and extraor- 
 dinary intelligence of a native of Pro- 
 vence, Dumay was making two fortunes, 
 for he returned with a consignment of 
 cotton that he had bought at a ridicu- 
 lously low price. Tliis double operation 
 was woi'th an enormous amount of money 
 to the house of Mignon. 
 
 Then the colonel bought the villa at In- 
 gouville, and rewarded Dumay by giving 
 him a modest house on the Rue Royale. 
 The subordinate had brought fi'om New 
 
 York, with his bales of cotton, a prettj' 
 little woman who was attracted by the 
 Frenchman. Miss Grummer had about 
 four thousand dollars, or twenty thou- 
 sand francs, which Dumaj- placed with 
 his colonel. Dumay, who had become 
 the right hand of the shipping-merchant, 
 soon learned to keep his books, a science 
 which, according to himself, belongs to 
 the sergeant-majors of commerce. 
 
 This open-hearted soldier, who had been 
 neglected by fortune for twentj^ years, 
 thought himself the luckiest man in the 
 world when he became proprietor of a 
 house which the generosity of his chief 
 filled with pretty furniture, and which 
 was supplemented by the twelve hun- 
 dred francs of income which he had in 
 the funds, and by his salary of thirty-six 
 hundred francs. In his wUdest dreams 
 Lieutenant Dumay had never hoped for 
 such happiness; but it was still more 
 satisfaction to him to see hin:iself the 
 pivot upon which revolved the richest 
 commercial house in Havre. Madame 
 Dumay had the misfortune to lose all her 
 children at birth, and she therefore at- 
 tached herself to the two Mignon girls 
 with as much love as Dumay himself, 
 who would have preferred them to his 
 own daughters if he had had any. 
 
 Every year Dumay placed two thousand 
 francs or more in the house of Mignon. 
 When the annual balance sheet was ex- 
 amined, the patron added something to 
 the cashier's account with a gratification 
 which corresponded Avith his services. In 
 1824, the cashier's credit amounted to fifty- 
 eight thousand francs. It was then that 
 Charles Mignon, count of La Bastie, al- 
 though the title was never used, over- 
 whelmed his cashier by lodging him in 
 the Chalet, where Modeste and her mo- 
 ther were livmg quietlj' at the time this 
 story opens. 
 
 The deplorable state of Madame Mig- 
 non, who had .still been beautiful at the 
 time of her husband's departure, was 
 caused by the catastrophe to which 
 Charles's absence was due. It had taken 
 three years for grief to break down the 
 gentle German woman ; but it was a grief 
 that gnawed at her heart like a worm at
 
 346 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 the heart of fruit. The explanation is 
 easily found. Two children, who had 
 died in infancy, were mourned by a 
 heart that could not forg'et. Her hus- 
 band's exile to Siberia was to the loving 
 wife a daily death. The misfortunes of 
 the rich house of Wallenrod, and the 
 death of the wealthy banker, a ruined 
 man, at a time when she was uncertain 
 as to her husband's fate, was a dreadful 
 blow. The excessive jo^^ which she felt 
 at her husband's return nearly killed her. 
 Then came the second fall of the Empire, 
 and the proposed expatriation, which 
 were like a relapse of the same fever to 
 her. Finally, there came ten years of 
 continued prosperity, the enjoyment of 
 her house, the handsomest in Havre, the 
 dinners, balls and fetes of the prosperous 
 merchant, the elegances of the villa Mig- 
 non, and the great consideration and re- 
 spectful esteem which her husband pos- 
 sessed ; and all these things, together 
 with the entire affection of her husband, 
 who returned her unique love in kind, 
 reconciled the poor woman to life. And 
 then, just when she had least expected it, 
 when she was looking forward to a peace- 
 ful evening after a stormy day, an un- 
 looked-for catastrophe, which was buried 
 in the heart of this double family, and to 
 which we shall soon refer, had come as 
 the forerunner of renewed trials. 
 
 In January, 182C, in the midst of a 
 fete, when Charles Mignon was the choice 
 of all Havre as its deputy', three letters, 
 from New York, Paris and London, had 
 shattered, like so many blows of a ham- 
 mer, the glass of the palace of prosper- 
 ity. In ten minutes ruin had swooped 
 down with its vulture wings upon their 
 great happiness, as the cold fell upon the 
 great army in 1812. In a single night, 
 which Dumay and Charles Mignon spent 
 in going over the accounts, the latter 
 took his resolve. The whole property, 
 not excepting the furniture, would be suf- 
 ficient to pay everything. 
 
 "Havre," said the colonel, "will never 
 see me afoot. Dumaj% I will take your 
 sixty thousand francs at six per cent." 
 
 "Take it at three, colonel." 
 
 "At nothing, then," replied Mignon, 
 
 peremptorilJ^ " I will give j'ou a share 
 in my new undertakings. The Modeste, 
 which is no longer mine, sails to-morrow ; 
 the captain will take me with him. I 
 charge you with the care of my wife and 
 daughter. I shall never write ; no news 
 is good news." 
 
 Dumay, who still preserved his military 
 characteristics, did not ask his colonel a 
 single question about his plans. 
 
 " I believe," he said to Latournelle, 
 with a little knowing air, " that the 
 colonel has his plans all made." 
 
 On the next day, at daybreak, he ac- 
 companied the colonel on board the ship 
 La Modeste, bound for Constantinople. 
 There, on the poop of the vessel, the Bre- 
 ton said to the Provencal : 
 
 "What are jouv final orders, colonel ? " 
 
 "Let no man approach the Chalet," 
 said the father, with difficult}' restraining 
 his emotion. "Dumaj', guard my last 
 child for me, as a bull-dog would guard 
 it. Death to any one who would try to 
 harm my second daughter ! Nothing, 
 not even the scaffold, would prevent me 
 from joining you." 
 
 "■ Colonel, you may rest easy. I under- 
 stand you. You will find Mademoiselle 
 Modeste as you left her, or I shall be dead. 
 You know me, and you know my two 
 Pyrenees dogs. No one shall get at your 
 daughter. Your pardon for having said 
 so much." 
 
 The two soldiers embraced each other 
 like men who have been in Siberia to- 
 gether. 
 
 That same day the " Courrier-Havre " 
 published this terrible, simple, energetic 
 notice : 
 
 " The house of Charles Mignon has sus- 
 pended paj'ment. But the undersigned 
 assignees engage to pay all liabilities. 
 On and after this date, holders of notes 
 may obtain the usual discount. The sale 
 of the landed estates will cover the current 
 indebtedness. 
 
 " This notice is given for the honor of 
 the house, and to prevent any disturbance 
 in the money-market of Havre. 
 
 " Monsieur Charles Mignon sailed this 
 morning on the Modeste for Asia Minor,
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 347 
 
 leaving full powers with the undersigned 
 to sell all his property, including the per- 
 sonal. 
 
 "DuMAY, assignee of the Bank ac- 
 counts, 
 " Latottrnelle, notary, assignee of 
 the city and suburban property, 
 " GoBENHEiM, assignee of the com- 
 mercial propertj'." 
 
 Latournelle had owed his prosperity to 
 the goodness of Monsieur Mignon, who 
 had lent him one hundred thousand 
 francs in 1817 to buy the finest law 
 practice in Havre. The poor man, who 
 had no property of his own, was then 
 forty 3-ears of age, with no prospect of 
 being other than head-clerk for the rest 
 of his daj^s. He was the only man in 
 Havre whose devotion could be compared 
 with that of Duraay. As for Gobenheim, 
 he profited b,y the liquidation to carry on 
 a part of Monsieur Mignon's business, 
 which lifted his own little bank into 
 prominence. 
 
 While universal regrets for the dis- 
 aster were expressed at the Exchange, 
 on the wharves, and in private houses, 
 and while praises of such an irreproach- 
 able, honorable, and beneficent man filled 
 every mouth, Latournelle and Dumay, si- 
 lent and active as ants, sold land, turned 
 property into money, paid debts, and 
 settled up affairs. Vilquin showed his 
 generosity by purchasing the \-illa, the 
 town-house, and a farm ; and Latournelle 
 made the most of his liberality by charg- 
 ing him a good price. Society wished to 
 visit Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon ; 
 but they had already obej'ed the father's 
 last wishes by taking refuge in the Chalet, 
 where they went on the very morning of 
 his departure, which had been at first 
 concealed from them. Not wishing to 
 be shaken in his resolution by his grief 
 at parting from them, the brave man 
 said farewell to his wife and daughter 
 Avhile they slept. Three hundred visiting 
 cards were left at the house. A fortnight 
 later, as Charles had predicted, complete 
 forgetfulness settled down upon the Cha- 
 let, and proved to these women the grand- 
 eur and wisdom of his resolution. 
 
 Dumay caused his master to be repre- 
 sented by agents Ln New York, Paris and 
 London, and followed up the settlement 
 of the three banking-houses whose failure 
 had caused the ruin of the Havre house, 
 thus realizing five hundred thousand 
 francs between 1826 and 1828, an eighth 
 of Charles's whole fortune ; then, accord- 
 ing to the directions which had been 
 given him on the night of his master's 
 departure, he sent that sum in the be- 
 ginning of the year 1828 to New York 
 through the house of Mongenod, to the 
 credit of Monsieur Mignon. All this was 
 done with military obedience, except in 
 a matter of withholding thirty thousand 
 francs for the personal expenses of Ma- 
 dame and Mademoiselle Mignon as the 
 colonel had ordered him to do, but which 
 Dumay had not done. The Breton sold 
 his town house for twenty' thousand 
 francs, which sum he gave to Madame 
 Mignon, believing that the more capital 
 he sent to his colonel the sooner the latter 
 would return. 
 
 " A man might perish for the want 
 of thirty thousand francs," Dumay re- 
 marked to Latournelle, who bought the 
 little house at its full value, where an 
 apartment was always kept ready for 
 the inhabitants of the Chalet. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Such was to the celebrated house of 
 Mignon at Havre the result of the crisis 
 of 1825-26, which convulsed the principal 
 business centers in Europe and caused, it 
 will he remembered, the ruin of several 
 Parisian bankers, and among others that 
 of the president of the chamber of com- 
 merce. 
 
 It is therefore easj'' to understand how 
 this great disaster, coming suddenly at 
 the close of ten years of bourgeois sov- 
 ereignty, might well have been the death 
 of Bettina Wallenrod, who was again 
 separated from her husband and igno- 
 rant of his fate — to her as adventurous 
 and perilous as the exile to Siberia. But 
 tlie grief which was dragging her to the 
 grave was far other than these visible
 
 348 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 sorrows. The caustic that was slowly 
 eating- into the poor mother's heart lay 
 beneath a stone in the little graveyard of 
 Ingouville, on which was inscribed : — 
 
 BETTINA CAROLINE MIGNON. 
 
 DIED AGED TWENTY-TWO. 
 
 PRAY FOR HEE. 
 
 1827. 
 
 This inscription is for a young- girl what 
 many another epitaph has been for the 
 dead, an index to an unknown book. 
 Here is the book, in its terrible brevitj^ ; 
 and it will explain the oath exacted and 
 taken when the colonel and the lieutenant 
 bade each other farewell. 
 
 A .young man of charming appearance, 
 named Georges d'Estourny, came to 
 Havre for the commonplace purpose of 
 being near the sea, and there he saw^ 
 Caroline Mignon. A soi-disant fashion- 
 able Parisian is never without introduc- 
 tions, and he was invited through a friend 
 of the Mignons to a fete given at Ingou- 
 ville. He fell in love with Caroline and 
 her fortune, and in thi'ee months he had 
 accomplished his purpose and enticed her 
 awaj'. The father of a family of daugh- 
 ters should no more allow a young man 
 Avhom he does not know to enter his home 
 than he should leave books and papers 
 lying- about which he has not read. A 
 young girl's innocence is like milk, which 
 may be turned by a clap of thunder, an 
 evil odor, a hot day, a mere breath, a 
 nothing. 
 
 When Charles Mignon read his eldest 
 daughter's farewell letter, he instantly 
 dispatched Madame Dumay to Paris. The 
 family gave out that a journey to another 
 climate had suddenly been ordered by 
 their physician ; and the physician him- 
 self snstained the excuse, though unable 
 to prevent the society of Havre from talk- 
 ing about the absence. " Such a vigorous 
 young girl ! with the complexion of a 
 Spaniard, and that black hair ! — she con- 
 sumptive ! " "Yes, they s&y she was 
 imprudent in some way." "Ah, ah!" 
 cried a Vilquin. "I am told she came 
 back in a perspiration from a riding 
 party, and drank iced water ; at least, 
 that is what Dr. Troussenard saj'S." 
 
 When Madame Dumay returned to 
 Havre the catastrophe of the failui-e had 
 taken place, and society paid no further 
 attention to Caroline's absence, or to the 
 return of the cashier's wife. At the be- 
 ginning of 1827 the newspapers rang with 
 the trial of Georges D'Estournj', who was 
 found guilty of cheating at cards. The 
 young corsair escaped into foreign parts 
 without paying any attention to Made- 
 moiselle Mignon, who had ceased to be of 
 value since the failure at Havre. Caro- 
 line heard of his infamous desertion and 
 of her father's ruin almost at the same 
 time. She returned home mortally ill, 
 and wasted awaj' at the Chalet in a few 
 days. Her death at least jirotected her 
 reputation. The illness that Monsieur 
 Mignon had alleged to be the cause of 
 her absence, and the doctor's order send- 
 ing her to Nice, were now generally be- 
 lieved. Up to the last moment the mo- 
 ther hoped to save her daughter's life. 
 Caroline was her darling, as Modeste was 
 the father's. There was something touch- 
 ing in the two preferences. Caroline was 
 the image of Charles, while Modeste was 
 the reproduction of her mother. Both 
 parents continued their love for each 
 other in their children. Caroline, a daugh- 
 ter of Provence, inherited from her father 
 the beautiful hair, black as a raven's 
 wing, which is so much admired in the 
 women of the South, together with the 
 brown eye, almond-shaped and brilliant 
 as a star, the olive complexion, the velvet 
 skin as of some golden fruit, the arched 
 instep, and the Spanish waist from which 
 the short basque skirt fell crisply. Both 
 mother and father were proud of the 
 charming contrast between the sisters. 
 "A devil and an angel ! " they said to 
 each other, laughing, little thinking it 
 prophetic. 
 
 After weeping for a month in the soli- 
 tude of her own room, where she would 
 see no one, the poor mother came forth 
 at last with injui^ed eyea. Before losing 
 her sight altogether she persisted, in 
 spite of the wishes of her friends, in visit- 
 ing her daughter's grave. That image 
 remained vivid in the darkness which now 
 fell upon her, as the red spectrum of the
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 349 
 
 last object upon which we have gazed 
 shines in our eyes when we close them in 
 full daylight. This terrible and double 
 misfortune made Dumay, not less de- 
 voted, but more anxious about Modesto, 
 now the only daughter of her father, al- 
 though he was unaware of his loss. Ma- 
 dame Dumay, idolizing Modeste, like all 
 women who have been deprived of chil- 
 dren, cast her motherliness about the 
 girl — without, however, disregarding the 
 commands of her husband, who distrust- 
 ed female intimacies. Those commands 
 Avere brief. " If any man, of any age, or 
 any rank whatever," Dumay had said, 
 "speaks to Modeste, ogles her, makes 
 love to her, he is a dead man. I will 
 blow his brains out and give myself up to 
 the authorities ; my death may save her. 
 If you do not wish to see my head cut olT, 
 you must take my place in watching her 
 when I am obliged to go out." 
 
 For three years Dumay had examined 
 his pistols every night. He seemed to 
 have shared his oath with the Pyrenean 
 liounds, two animals of uncommon sa- 
 gacity. One slept inside the Chalet, and 
 the other was stationed in a kennel which 
 he never left, and where he never barked ; 
 but terrible would have been the moment 
 had the pair made their teeth meet in 
 some unknown adventurer. 
 
 The life led by mother and daughter at 
 the Chalet can readily be imagined . Mon- 
 sieur and Madame Latournelle, often ac- 
 companied by Gobenlieim, came almost 
 every evening to visit their friends and 
 play whist. The conversation turned on 
 the gossip of Havre and the pettj^ events 
 of provincial life. The little company 
 separated between nine and ten o'clock. 
 Modeste helped her motlier to retire, and 
 together they said their praj^ers, spoke 
 of their hopes, and talked of the dear 
 absent one. After kissing her mother, 
 the girl went to her own room about ten 
 o'cloclc. The next morning she prepared 
 her mother for the day with the same 
 care, the same prayers, the same conver- 
 sation. To Modeste's praise be it said, 
 that from the day when the terrible in- 
 firmity deprived her mother of her sight, 
 she had been like a servant to her, dis- 
 
 playing at all times the same solicitude ; 
 never wearying of the duty, never think- 
 ing it monotonous. Such constant devo- 
 tion, combined with a tenderness rare 
 among young girls, was thoroughly ap- 
 preciated by those who witnessed it. To 
 the Latournelle family, and to Monsieur 
 and Madame Dumay, Modeste was, in 
 soul, the pearl of great price. 
 
 On sunny daj's, between breakfast and 
 dinner, Madame Mignon and Madame 
 Dumay took a little walk to the seashore. 
 Modeste accompanied them, for two arms 
 wez-e needed to support the blind mother. 
 About a month before the scene in the 
 midst of whicli this explanation comes 
 like a parenthesis, Madame Mignon had 
 taken counsel with her only friends, Ma- 
 dame Latournelle, the notary, and Dumay, 
 while Madame Dumay carried Modeste in 
 another direction for a long walk. 
 
 " Listen to what I have to say," said 
 the blind woman. "My daughter is in 
 love. I feel it ; I see it. There is a singu- 
 lar change in her and I do not see how it 
 is that none of you have perceived it." 
 
 " In the name of all that's honorable—" 
 cried the lieutenant. 
 
 " Don't interrupt me, Dumay. For the 
 last two months Modeste talces as much 
 care of her personal appearance as if she 
 expected to meet a lover. She has grown 
 extremelj'^ fastidious about her shoes ; she 
 wants to set off her pretty feet ; she 
 scolds Madame Gobet, the shoemaker. 
 It is the same thing witli her milliner. 
 Some days my poor darling is anxious 
 and watchful, as if she expected some 
 one. Her voice has curt tones when she 
 answers a question, as though she wei'e 
 interrupted in tlie current of her thoughts 
 and secret expectations. Then, when this 
 awaited lover comes — " 
 
 " Good heavens ! " 
 
 " Sit down, Dumaj'," said the blind 
 woman. " Well, then Modeste is gay. 
 Oh ! she is not gay to your sight ; j'ou 
 cannot catch these gradations ; they are 
 too deUcate for eyes that see only the 
 outside of nature. Her gayety betrays 
 itself to me by the tones of her voice, by 
 certain accents which I alone can catch 
 and understand. Modeste then, instead
 
 350 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 of sitting- still and thoughtful, gives vent 
 to an inward activity by impulsive move- 
 ments — in short, she is happy. There is 
 a grace, a charm in the very ideas she 
 utters. Ah, my friends, I know happi- 
 ness as well as I know sorrow. By the 
 kiss my Modesto gives me I can guess 
 what is passing within her. I know 
 whether she has received what she was 
 looking for, or whether she is uneasy and 
 expectant. There are many shades in a 
 kiss, even in that of an innocent young 
 girl. Modeste is innocence itself ; but 
 hers is now the innocence of knowledge, 
 not of ignorance. I may be blind, but 
 my tenderness is clairvoyant, and I charge 
 j^ou to watch over my daughter." 
 
 Dumay, now actually ferocious, the 
 notary', in the character of a man bound 
 to ferret out a mj'stery, Madame Latour- 
 nelle, the deceived chaperon, and Ma- 
 dame Dumay, sharing her husband's 
 fears, became at once a set of spies, and 
 Modeste from this day forth was never 
 left alone for an instant. Dumay jiassed 
 his nights under her window wrapped in 
 his cloak like a jealous Spaniard ; but 
 ^\ith all his military sagacity he was 
 unable to detect the least suspicious 
 sign. Unless she loved the nightingales 
 in Vilqum's park, or some prince Lutin, 
 Modeste could have seen no one, and could 
 have neither given nor received a signal. 
 Madame Dumay, who never went to bed 
 till she knew Modeste was asleep, watched 
 the road from the upper windows of the 
 Chalet with a vigilance equal to her hus- 
 band's. Under these eight Argus eyes 
 the blameless child, whose least motions 
 were studied and analyzed, came out of 
 the ordeal so fully acquitted of all criminal 
 conversation that the four friends declared 
 to each other privately that Madame Mi- 
 gnon was foolishly overanxious. Madame 
 Latournelle, who always took Modeste to 
 church and brought her back again, was 
 commissioned to tell the mother that she 
 was mistaken about her daughter. 
 
 " Modeste," she said, " is a young girl 
 of very exalted ideas ; she becomes enthu- 
 siastic over the poetry of one writer or 
 the prose of another. You were not able 
 to judge the impression made upon her by 
 
 that scaffold symphony, ' The Last Hours 
 of a Convict ' [the saying was Butscha's, 
 who supplied wit to his benefactress with 
 a lavish hand] ; but she seemed to me all 
 but crazy with admiration for that Mon- 
 sieur Hugo. ■ I'm sure I don't know 
 where such people [Victor Hugo, Lamar- 
 tine, Byron being such people to the Ma- 
 dame Latournelles] get their ideas. Mo- 
 deste kept talking to me of Childe Harold, 
 and as I did not wish to get the worst of 
 the ai'gument I was silly enough to ti'y 
 to read the thing, in order to be able to 
 reason with her. Perhaps it was the 
 fault of the translator, but it actuallj'^ 
 turned my stomach ; I was dazed ; I 
 couldn't possibly' finish it. Why, the 
 man talks about comparisons that hov/1, 
 rocks that vanish, and waves of war ! 
 However, as he is only a traveling En- 
 glishman., we must expect absurdities 
 — though his are i-eally inexcusable. He 
 takes you to Spain, and sets you in the 
 clouds above the Alps, and makes the 
 torrents talk, and the stars ; and then 
 there are too many virgins ! I have no 
 patience with it ! Then, after Napoleon's 
 campaigns, we have sonorous brass and 
 flaming cannon-balls, I'olling along- from 
 page to page. Modeste tells me that all 
 that bathos is put in by the translator, 
 and that I ought to read the book in 
 English. But I certainly shall not learn 
 English to read Lord Byron when I didn't 
 learn it to teach Exupere. I much prefer 
 the novels of Ducray-Dumenil to all these 
 English romances. I'm too good a Nor- 
 man to fall in love with foreign things — 
 above all when they come from England." 
 
 Madame Mignon, notwithstanding her 
 melancholy, could not help smiling at 
 the idea of Madame Latournelle reading 
 Childe Harold. The stern scion of a par- 
 liamentary house accepted the smile as 
 an approval of her doctrines. 
 
 "And, therefore, my dear Madame 
 Mignon," she went on, "you have taken 
 Modeste's fancies, which are nothing but 
 the results of her reading, for a love- 
 affair. She is twenty years old. Girls 
 fall in love with themselves at that age ; 
 they dress to see themselves well dressed. 
 I remember I used to put a man's hat on
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 351 
 
 my little sister, who is now dead, and 
 pretend we were monsieur and madaiiie. 
 You had a very happy 3'outli in Franli:- 
 fort ; but let us be just — Modeste is living' 
 here without the slightest amusement. 
 Her slightest wish is gratified, it is true, 
 but still she knows she is shut up and 
 watched, and the life she leads would give 
 her no pleasures at all if it were not for 
 the amusement she gets out of her books. 
 She loves no one but you. You ought to 
 be very glad that she gets enthusiastic 
 over the corsairs of Byron and the ro- 
 mantic heroes of Walter Scott and your 
 own Germans, Egmont, Goethe, Werther, 
 Schiller, and all the other ' ers.' " 
 
 " Well, madame, what do you say 
 to that?" asked Dumay, respectfully, 
 alarmed at Madame Mignon's silence. 
 
 '•■ Modeste is not only inclined to love, 
 but she loves some man," answered the 
 mother, obstinately. 
 
 "Madame, my life is at stake, and you 
 must allow me — not for my sake, but for 
 my wife, my colonel, and all of us — to try 
 and find out whether it is the mother or 
 the watch-dog who is mistaken." 
 
 " It is you, Dumay. Ah ! if I could 
 but see my daug-hter ! " cried the poor 
 woman. 
 
 " But whom could she possibly love ? " 
 asked the notary. " I'll answer for my 
 Exupere." 
 
 " It can't be Gobenheim," said Dumay, 
 " for since the colonel went away he has 
 not spent nine hours a week in this house. 
 Besides, he never thinks of Modeste — that 
 five-franc-piece of a man ! His uncle Go- 
 benheim-Keller is all the time writing- him, 
 'Get rich enough to marry a Keller.' 
 With that idea in his mind, there is no 
 fear that he even knows which sex Mo- 
 deste belongs to. Those are the only men 
 who ever come here. I don't count 
 Butscha, poor little hump-back ! I am 
 very fond of him. He is your Dumay, 
 madame," he added to Madame Latour- 
 nelle. " Butscha knows very well that a 
 mere glance at Modeste would cost him 
 a Breton ducking. Not a soul has any 
 communication with this house. Madame 
 Latournelle, who takes Modeste to church 
 ever since your — your great misfortune. 
 
 madame, has carefully watched her lately 
 on the way and all through the service, 
 and has seen nothing suspicious. In 
 short, if I must confess the truth, I have 
 myself raked all the paths about the 
 house every evening for the last month, 
 and found no trace of footsteps in the 
 morning." 
 
 " Rakes are neither costly nor difficult 
 to handle," remarked the daughter of 
 Germany. 
 
 " But the dogs? " cried Dumay. 
 
 " Lovers know how to find philters for 
 them," answered Madame Mignon. 
 
 "If you are right, I might as well blow 
 my brains out," exclaimed Dumay, "for 
 I should be lost." 
 
 "Why so, Dumay?" said the bhnd 
 woman. 
 
 "Ah, madame, I could never meet my 
 colonel's eye if he did not find his daugh- 
 ter — particularly now that she is his only 
 daughter — as pure and virtuous as she 
 was when he said to me on the vessel, 
 'Let no fear of the scaffold hinder you, 
 Dumay, if the honor of my Modeste is 
 at stake.' " 
 
 "Ah! I recognize you both there," 
 said Madame Mignon, much moved. 
 
 " 111 wager my salvation that Modeste 
 is as pure as she was in her cradle," ex- 
 claimed Madame Dumay. 
 
 "Well, I shall make certain of it," re- 
 plied her husband, " if Madame la Com- 
 tesse will allow me to employ certain 
 means ; for old troopers understand 
 strategy." 
 
 " 1 will allow you to do anj'thing that 
 shall enlighten us, if it does no injury to 
 my last child." 
 
 "What are j^ou going to do, Anne ? " 
 asked Madame Dumay ; " how can j'ou 
 discover ayounggii'l's secret if she means 
 to hide it ? " 
 
 "Obey me, all of you ! " cried the lieu- 
 tenant. " I shall need everybodj'." 
 
 If this rapid sketch were cleverly de- 
 veloped it would give a whole picture of 
 manners and customs in which many a 
 family could recognize the e^-ents of their 
 own history ; but it must suffice as it is 
 to explain the importance of the few de- 
 tails heretofore given about persons and
 
 352 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 thing's on the memorable evening- when 
 the old soldier had pitted himself ag-ainst 
 the young girl, intending to wrench from 
 the recesses of her heart the secret of 
 a love and a lover seen only by a blind 
 mother. 
 
 An hour went by in solemn stillness, 
 interrupted only by the cabalistic phrases 
 of the whist - players : "Spades!" 
 " Trumped ! " " Cut ! " " How are hon- 
 ors ? " " Two to four." " Whose deal ? " 
 — phrases which represent in these days 
 the intense emotions of European aristoc- 
 racy. Modeste continued to work, with- 
 out apparently wondering at her mother's 
 silence. Madame Mignon's handkerchief 
 slipped from her lap to the floor ; Butscha 
 darted forward to pick it up, and as he 
 returned it he whispered in Modeste's ear, 
 "Take care !" Modeste raised a pair of 
 wondering eyes, whose puzzled glance 
 filled the poor cripple with joy unspeak- 
 able. " She is not in love !" he whispered 
 to himself, rubbing his hands until he 
 nearly rubbed the skin off. Just then 
 Exupere tore through the garden and 
 the house, plung-ed into the salon like 
 an avalanche, and said to Dumay in an 
 audible whisper, "The young- man is 
 here ! " Dumay sprang for his pistols 
 and rushed out. 
 
 " Good God ! suppose he kills him ! " 
 cried Madame Dumay, bursting into tears. 
 
 "What is the matter ?" asked Modeste, 
 looking innocently at her friends and not 
 betraying the slightest fear. 
 
 "It is all about a young man who is 
 hanging round the house," cried Madame 
 Latournelle. 
 
 "Well!" said Modeste, "why should 
 Dumay kill him?" 
 
 " Sancta simplicita!" ejaculated But- 
 scha, looking at his master as proudly as 
 Alexander contemplates Babylon in Le- 
 brun's picture. 
 
 "Where are you going, Modeste?" 
 asked the mother as her daughter rose 
 to leave the room. 
 
 " To get ready for your bedtime, mam- 
 
 ma," answered Modeste, in a voice as 
 pui-e as the tones of a harmonica. 
 
 " You haven't paid your expenses," 
 said the dwarf to Dumay when he re- 
 turned. 
 
 "Modeste is as pure as the Virg-in on 
 our altar," cried Madame Latournelle. 
 
 " Good God ! such excitements wear 
 me out," said Dumay; "and yet I'm a 
 strong- man." 
 
 " May I lose twenty-five sous if I under- 
 stand a word of what you are saying-," 
 remarked Gobenheim. "' You act as if 
 you were crazy." 
 
 " And yet it is all about a treasure," 
 said Butscha, standing- on tip-toe to whis- 
 per in Gobenheim 's ear. 
 
 "Dumay, I am sorry to say that I am 
 still almost sure of what I told j"ou," per- 
 sisted Madame Mignon. 
 
 "It is for you, now, to prove that we 
 are mistaken, madame," said Dumay 
 calmly. 
 
 Discovering- that the matter in ques- 
 tion w^as only Modeste's honor, Goben- 
 heim took his hat, bowed, and walked off, 
 carrying- his ten sous with him — there be- 
 ing- evidentlj' no hope of another rubber. 
 
 " Exupere, and you, too, Butscha, may 
 leave us," said Madame Latournellei 
 " Go back to Havre ; you will g-et there 
 n time for the last piece at the theater. 
 I'll pay for your tickets." 
 
 When the four friends were alone with 
 Madame Mignon, Madame Latournelle, 
 after looking- at Dumay, who being a Bre- 
 ton understood the mother's obstinacy, 
 and at her husband who was playing- 
 with the cards, felt herself authorized to 
 speak. 
 
 " Come, Madame Mignon, tell us what 
 decisive thing has come into your mind." 
 
 " Ah, my good friend, if you were a 
 musician you would have undei-stood Mo- 
 deste's language as I do, when she speaks 
 of love." 
 
 The piano of Mignon's daughters was 
 among the few articles of furniture which 
 had been moved from the town house to 
 the Chalet. Modeste sometimes con- 
 jured away her weariness by practicing, 
 without a master. She was a born mu- 
 sician, and played to enliven her mother.
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 353 
 
 She sang- by nature, and loved the Ger- 
 man airs which her mother taught her. 
 From these lessons and these attempts at 
 self-instruction came a phenomenon not 
 uncommon to natures with a musical vo- 
 cation ; Modeste composed, as far as a 
 pereon ignorant of the laws of harmonj' 
 can he said to compose, tender little lyric 
 melodies. Melody is to music what im- 
 agery and sentiment are to poetry, a 
 flower that may blossom spontaneously. 
 Nations have had melodies before har- 
 mony — botany came later than flowers. 
 In like manner, Modeste, who knew noth- 
 ing of the painter's art except what she 
 had seen her sister do in water-color, 
 would have stood subdued and fascinated 
 before the pictures of Raphael, Titian, 
 Rubens, Murillo, Rembrandt, Albert Dii- 
 rer, Holbein — the great ideals of many 
 lands. Lately, for at least a month, Mo- 
 deste had warbled the songs of nightin- 
 gales, attempts whose poetry and meaning 
 had roused the attention of her mother, 
 already surprised by her sudden eagerness 
 for composition and her fancy for putting 
 airs to unknown words. 
 
 " If your suspicions have no other 
 foundation," said Latournelle to Madame 
 Mignon, '"'I pity your susceptibility." 
 
 "When a Breton girl sings," said Du- 
 may, gloomily, "the lover is not far off." 
 
 " I will let you hear Modeste when she 
 is improvising," said the mother, '• and 
 you shall judge for yourselves — " 
 
 "Poor girl!" said Madame Dumay, 
 "if she only knew our anxiety she would 
 be deeply distressed ; she would tell us 
 the truth — especially if she knew what it 
 means for Dumay." 
 
 " My friends, I will question my daugh- 
 ter to-morrow," said Madame Mignon ; 
 " perhaps I shall obtain more b.y ten- 
 derness than you have discovered by 
 trickery." 
 
 Was the comedy of the " Fille mal 
 Gardee " being played here — as it is 
 everywhere and forever — under the noses 
 of these faithful 'spies, these honest Bar- 
 tholos, these vigilant Pyrenean hounds, 
 without their being able to ferret out, 
 detect, nor even surmise the lover, the 
 love affair, the smoke of the fire. It was 
 
 Balzac — L 
 
 not the result of a struggle between the 
 jailers and the prisoner, between the des- 
 potism of a dungeon and the liberty of a 
 victim — it was simply the never-ending 
 repetition of the first scene played when 
 the curtain of Creation rose ; it was Eve 
 in Paradise. 
 
 And now, which of the two, the mother 
 or the watch-dog, was right ? 
 
 None' of the persons who were about 
 Modeste could undei-stand that maiden 
 heart — for the soul and the face were in 
 harmon3\ The girl had transported her 
 existence into a world as much denied and 
 disbelieved in in these days of ours ^s the 
 new world of Christopher Columbus in 
 the sixteenth century. Fortunately, she 
 kept her own counsel, or they would have 
 thought her crazy. But first we must 
 explain the influence of the past upon her 
 nature. 
 
 Two events had formed the soul and 
 developed the intelligence of this young 
 girl. Monsieur and Madame Mignon, 
 warned by the fate that had overtaken 
 Caroline, had resolved, just before the 
 failure, to marry Modeste. They had 
 chosen the son of a rich banker, formerly 
 of Hamburg, but established in Havre 
 since 1815 — a man, moreover, who was 
 under obligations to them. This young 
 man, whose name was Francisque Althor, 
 the dandy of Havre, endowed with a cer- 
 tain vulgar beauty in which the middle 
 classes delight, well-made, well-fleshed, 
 and with a fine complexion, abandoned his 
 betrothed so hastily on the day of her 
 father's failure that neither Modeste nor 
 her mother nor either of the Dumays had 
 seen him since. Latournelle had ventured 
 a question on the subject to Jacob Althor, 
 the father ; but he had onlj' shrugged his 
 shoulders and replied, " I really don't 
 know what you mean." 
 
 This answer, told to Modeste in order 
 to give her experience, was a lesson which 
 she learned all the more readily because 
 Latournelle and Dumay made many and 
 long comments on the cowardly desertion. 
 The daughters of Charles Mignon, like 
 spoiled children, had all their wishes grat- 
 ified ; they rode on horseback, kept their 
 own horses and grooms, and otherwise
 
 354 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 enjoyed a perilous liberty. Seeing herself 
 in possession of an official lover, Modcste 
 had allowed Francisque to kiss her hand, 
 and take her by the waist to mount her. 
 She accepted his flowers and all the little 
 proofs of tenderness with which a lover is 
 provided ; she even worked him a purse, 
 believing- in such tics — strong indeed to 
 noble souls, but cobwebs for tlie Goben- 
 heims, the Vilquins, and the Altho'rs. 
 
 In the spring- which followed the re- 
 moval of Madame Mig-iion and her daugh- 
 ter to the Chalet, Francisque Althor came 
 to dine with the Vilquins. Happening to 
 see IVIodeste over tlie wall at the foot of 
 the lawn, he turned away his head. Six 
 weeks later he married the eldest Made- 
 moiselle Vilquin. In tliis way Modesto, 
 young, beautiful, and of high birth, learn- 
 ed the lesson that for tliree months she 
 had been nothing more than Mademoiselle 
 Million. Her well-known povert 3^ became 
 a sentinel defending the approaches to the 
 Chalet fully as well as the prudence of 
 the Dumaj's, or the vigilance of the La* 
 tournelles. The talk of the town ran for 
 a time on Mademoiselle Mignon's posi- 
 tion only to insult her with such speeches 
 as : 
 
 "Poor girl ! what will become of her? 
 — an old maid, of course." 
 
 " What a fate ! to have had the world 
 at her feet ; to have had the chance to 
 marry Francisque Althor— and now, no- 
 body willing to take her ! " 
 
 "After a life of luxury', to come down 
 to such poverty- — " 
 
 And these insults were not uttered in 
 secret or left to Modeste's imagination; 
 she heard them spoken more than once by 
 the young men and women of Havre as 
 thej' walked to Ingouville, and, knowing 
 that Madame Mignon and her daughter 
 lived at the Chalet, talked of them as 
 they passed the prettj' little house. 
 Friends of the Vilquins expressed surprise 
 that the mother and daughter were will- 
 ing to live on in the midst of the scenes 
 of their former splendor. From behind 
 her closed blinds Modeste sometimes heard 
 such insolence as this : — 
 
 "I don't see how they can live there," 
 some one would say as he paced the villa 
 
 lawn — perhaps to assist Vilquin in getting | 
 rid of his tenant. 
 
 " What do you suppose they live on ? 
 What can they do there ? " 
 
 "I am told the old woman has become 
 blind." 
 
 " Is Mademoiselle Mignon still prettj' ? 
 Dear me, how dashing-, she used to be ! 
 Well, she hasn't any horses now." 
 
 Most young girls on liearing these spite- 
 ful and silly speeches, born of an envy 
 that now rushed, peevish and driveling, 
 to avenge the past, would have felt the 
 blood mount to their foreheads ; others 
 would have wept; some would have grown 
 angry; but Modeste smiled, as we smile 
 at the theater while listening to the 
 actors. Her pride could not descend to 
 the level of such speeches. 
 
 The other event was more serious than 
 this mercantile cowai-dice. Bettina Caro- 
 line died in the arms of her younger sis- 
 ter, who had nursed her with the devotion 
 of girlhood, and the curiosity of an un- 
 tainted imagination. In the silence of 
 long- nights the sisters exchanged many 
 confidences. With what dramatic inter- 
 est was poor Bettina invested in the eyes 
 of the innocent Modeste ! Bettina knew 
 passion through sorrow only, and she 
 was dj'ing because she had loved. To 
 young girls every man, scoundrel though 
 he be, is still a lover. Passion is the one 
 thing absolutely real in the things of life, 
 and it insists on its supremacy. Georges 
 d'Estourny,' gamblei', criminal, a^id de- 
 bauchee, remained alwaj's in the memorj' 
 of the sisters, the elegant Parisian of the 
 fetes of Havre, the admired of the wo- 
 menkind (Bettina believed she had car- 
 ried him off from the coquettish Madamt! 
 Vilquin), and Bettina's happy lover. Such 
 adoration in young gii-ls is stronger than 
 all social condemnations. To Bettina's 
 thinking, justice had been deceived j if 
 not, how could it have condemned a man 
 who had loved her for six months ? — loveil 
 her to distraction in the m^-sterious re- 
 treat to which Georges had taken her in 
 Paris — that he might be at liberty to go 
 his own way. Thus the dying girl had 
 inoculated her sister with love. They 
 had often talked of the great drama of
 
 MODESTE MlGNOy. 
 
 355 
 
 passion which imagination still further 
 enhances ; and Bettina carried with her 
 to the i;Tave her sister's purity, leaving 
 her, if not informed, at least devoured 
 with curiosity. 
 
 Nevertheless, remorse had set its fangs 
 too sharply in Bettina's heart not to force 
 her to warn her sister. In the midst of 
 her own confessions she had never failed 
 to preach duty and implicit obedience to 
 Modeste. On the evening of her death 
 she implored her to remember the tears 
 that soaked her pillow, and not to imitate 
 a conduct which so much suffering could 
 scarcely expiate. Bettina accused her- 
 self of having brought a curse upon the 
 family, and died in despair at being un- 
 able to obtain iier father's pardon. Not- 
 withstanding the consolations of religion, 
 softened by sucli repentance, she cried in 
 heartrending tones with her latest breath : 
 '• O father ! father ! " "Never give your 
 heart without your hand," she said to 
 Modeste an hour before she died ; "and 
 above all, accept no attentions from any 
 man without the advice of papa and 
 mamma.'' 
 
 These words, so earnest in their truth, 
 uttered in the hour of death, had more 
 effect upon Modeste than if Bettina had 
 exacted a solemn oath. The dying girl, 
 farseeing as a prophet, drew from be- 
 neath her pillow a ring- which she had 
 sent by hef faithful maid, Frangoise 
 Cochet, to be engraved in Havre with 
 these words, "Think of Bettina, 1827." 
 A few moments before she drew her last 
 breath she placed it on her sister's finger, 
 begging her to keep it there until she 
 married. Thus there had been between 
 these two young g'irls a strange commin- 
 gling of bitter remorse and the artless 
 visions of a fleeting springtime too early 
 blighted by the keen north wind of deser- 
 tion ; 3'et their tears, regrets, and mem- 
 ories were always subordinate to their 
 horror of evil. 
 
 Nevertheless, this drama of the poor 
 young girl returning to die under a roof 
 of elegant poverty, the failure of her fa- 
 ther, the baseness of her betrothed, and 
 the blindness of her mother, had touched 
 onh' the surface of Modestc's life, by 
 
 which alone the Duraays and the La- 
 tournelles judged her ; for no devotion of 
 friends can take the place of a mother's 
 eye. The monotonous life in the dainty 
 little Chalet, surrounded by the choice 
 flowers which Dumay cultivated ; the 
 family customs, as regular as clock- 
 work, the provincial decorum, the games 
 at whist while the mother knitted and 
 the daughter sewed, the silence, broken 
 only by the roar of the sea in the equi- 
 noctial storms — all this monastic tran- 
 quillity concealed an inner and tumult- 
 uous life, that of ideas, of the spiritual 
 bemg. We sometimes wonder how it is 
 possible for young girls to do wrong ; but 
 those who do so have no blind mother 
 to send her plummet line of intuition to 
 the depths of the subterranean fancies of 
 a virgin heart. The Dumays slept when 
 Modeste opened her window, as it were 
 to watch for the passing of a man — the 
 man of her dreams, the expected knight 
 who was to mount her behind him and 
 ride away under the fire of Dumay's 
 pistols. 
 
 ilodeste was much depressed after her 
 sister's death, and she flung herself into 
 the practice of reading, until her mind 
 became sodden in it. Brought up to 
 speak two languages, she was as pro- 
 ficient in German as in PYench ; she had 
 also, together with her sister, learned 
 English from Madame Dumay. Being 
 very little overlooked in the matter of 
 reading by the people about her, who 
 had no literary knowledge, Modeste fed 
 her soul on the modern masterpieces of 
 three literatures, English, French, and 
 German. Lord Byron, Goethe, Schiller, 
 Waiter Scott, Hugo, Lamartine, Crabbe, 
 Moore, the great works of the 17th and 
 18th centuries, history, drama, and Ac- 
 tion, from Astreea to Manon Lescaut, 
 from Montaigne's Essays to Diderot, 
 from the Fabliaux to the Nouvelle He- 
 loise, the thoughts of three lands crowded 
 with confused images that girlish head, 
 sublime in its cold guilolessnoss, its na- 
 tive chastity, from which there sprang 
 full-armed, brilliant, sincere, and strong, 
 an overwhelming admiration for genius. 
 To Modeste a new book was an event j a
 
 356 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 masterpiece that would have horrified 
 Madame Latournelle made lier happy — 
 yet sad, if the great worlt did not play 
 havoc with her heart. A lyiic instinct 
 bubbled in that girlish soul, so full of the 
 beautiful illusions of youth. But of this 
 radiant existence not a gleam reached the 
 surface of daily life ; it escaped Dumaj^ 
 and his wife, as well as the Latournelles ; 
 the ears of the blind mother alone caught 
 the crackling of its flame. 
 
 The profound disdain which Modeste 
 now conceived for ordinary men gave to 
 her face a look of pride, an untamed shj'- 
 ness, which tempered her Teutonic sim- 
 plicity, and accorded well with a peculiar- 
 ity of her head. The hair growing in a 
 point above the forehead seemed the con- 
 tinuation of a slight line which tliought 
 had ah'cady furrowed between the eye- 
 brows, and made the expression of un- 
 tamability perhaps a shade too strong. 
 The voice of this charming child, whom 
 her father, delighting in her wit, was 
 wont to call his " little proverb of Sol- 
 omon," had acquired a wonderful flex- 
 ibility through the practice of three 
 languages. This advantage was still 
 further enhanced by a natural bell-like 
 tone both sweet and fresh, which touched 
 the heart as delightfully as it did the 
 ear. If the mother could no longer see 
 the signs of a noble destiny upon her 
 daugliter's brow, she could study the 
 transitions of her soul's development in 
 the accents of that voice attuned to love. 
 
 VI. 
 
 To the insatiable period of Modeste's 
 reading succeeded the exercise of that 
 strange faculty with which lively im- 
 aginations are endowed — the power of 
 making herself an actor in a dream-ex- 
 istence ; of representing to her own mind 
 the things desired so vividly that they 
 seemed actually to attain reality ; in 
 short, to enjoy by thought — to live out 
 her years within her mind ; to marry ; 
 to grow old ; to attend her own funeral 
 like Charles V.; to play within herself 
 
 the comedy of life and, if need be, that of 
 death. Modeste was plajdng by herself 
 the comedy of Love. She fancied herself 
 adored to the summit of her wishes 
 throughout all phases of social life. 
 Sometimes as the heroine of a dark ro- 
 mance, she loved the executioner, or some 
 wretch who ended his da^'s upon the scaf- 
 fold, or, like her sister, a Parisian dandy 
 without a penny, whose struggles were 
 all beneath a garret-roof. Sometimes 
 she was Ninon, scorning men amid 
 continual fetes ; or some applauded act- 
 ress, or gaj' adventuress, exhausting the 
 luck of Gil Bias, or the triumphs of 
 Pasta, Malibran, and .Florine. Then, 
 weary of horrors and excitements, she 
 returned to actual life. She man-ied a 
 notary, she eat the plain brown bread of 
 an honest life, she saw h(jrself a Madame 
 Latournelle; she accepted a jDainful exist- 
 ence, she bore the burdens of a bread- 
 winner. After that she went back to the 
 romances : she was loved for her beauty ; 
 a son of a peer of France, an eccentric, 
 artistic young man, divined her heart, 
 and recognized the star which the genius 
 of a De Stael had planted on her brow. 
 Her father returned, possessing millions. 
 Authorized by his experience, she put her 
 lovers to certain tests, while carefully 
 guarding her own independence ; she 
 owned a magnificent chateau, servants, 
 horses, carriages, the choicest of every- 
 thing that luxury could bestow, and kept 
 her suitors uncertain until she was forty 
 years old, at which age she made her 
 choice. 
 
 This edition of the Arabian Nights 
 lasted nearly a year, and taught Modeste 
 the sense of satiety through thought. 
 She .held her life too often in her hand, 
 she said to herself philosophically and 
 with too real a bitterness, too seriously, 
 and too often, ' ' Well, what comes after- 
 ward ? " not to have plunged to her waist 
 in the deep disgust which all men of g-enius 
 feel when they try to extricate themselves 
 by intense toil from the work to which 
 they have devoted themselves. If it had 
 not been for her youth and her rich nature, 
 Modeste would have entered a cloister. 
 But this sense of satiety cast her, satu-
 
 MODESTE MIGNOJS'. 
 
 357 
 
 rated as she still was with Catholic spirit- 
 ualitj% into the love of Good, the infinity 
 of heaven. She thoujjht of charity as 
 the true occupation of life ; but she cow- 
 ered in the gloomy dreariness of finding 
 in it no food for the fancy that lay crouch- 
 ing in her heart like an insect at the bot- 
 tom of a cal^'x. Meanwhile she sat tran- 
 quilly sewing garments for the children 
 of the poor, and listening, absently to the 
 grumblings of Monsieur Latournelle when 
 he reproached Dumay for "cutting out " 
 the thirteenth card or drawing his last 
 trump. 
 
 Her religious faith drove Modeste for a 
 time into a singular track of thought. 
 She imagined that if she became sinless 
 (speaking ecclesiastically) she would at- 
 tain to such a state of sanctity that God 
 would hear her and accomplish her desires. 
 "Faith," she thought, "can remove 
 mountains; Christ has said so. The 
 Saviour led his apostle upon tlie waters 
 of the lake Tiberias ; and I, all I ask of 
 God is a husband to love me ; that is 
 easier than walking upon the sea." She 
 fasted through the next Lent, and did 
 not commit a single sin ; then she said to 
 herself that on a certain day coming out 
 of chui'ch she would meet a handsome 
 young man who was worthy of her, of 
 whom her mother would approve, and 
 who would fall madly in love with her. 
 When the day came on which she had, as 
 it wei'e, summoned God to send her an 
 angel, she was persistently^ followed by a 
 rather disgusting beggar ; moreover, it 
 rained heavily, and not a single young 
 man was in the streets. On another oc- 
 casion she went to walk on the jetty to 
 see the English travelers land : but each 
 Englishman had an Englishwoman, nearly' 
 as handsome as Modeste herself, who saw 
 no one at all resembling a wandering 
 Childe Harold. Tears overcame her, as 
 she sat down like Marius on the ruins of 
 her imagination. But on the day when 
 she subpoenaed God for the third time 
 she firmly believed that the Elect of her 
 dreams was within the church, hiding, 
 perhaps out of delicacjs behind one of the 
 pillars, round all of which she dragged 
 Madame Latournelle on a tour of inspec- 
 
 tion. After this failure, she deposed the 
 Deity from omnipotence. She often held 
 conversations with this imaginary lover, 
 inventing questions and answers, and 
 bestowing upon him a great deal of wit 
 and intelligence. 
 
 The excessive ambition of her heart, 
 hidden within these romances, were the 
 real explanation of the prudent conduct 
 which the good people who watched over 
 Modeste so much admired ; they might 
 have brought her any number of j'oung 
 Althors or Vilquins, and she would never 
 have stooped to such clowns. She wanted, 
 purely and simply, a man of genius — talent 
 seemed to her a very small thing ; just as 
 a lawyer is nothing to a girl who aims for 
 an embassador. She desired wealth, but 
 only to cast it at the feet of her idol. In- 
 deed, the golden background of these 
 visions was far less rich than the treasury' 
 of her own heart, filled with womanly 
 delicacy ; for its dominant desire was to 
 bestow happiness and wealth upon some 
 Tasso, some Milton, Jean-Jacques Rous- 
 seau, Murat, or Christopher Columbus. 
 
 Ordinary miseries did not seriously touch 
 this youthful soul, who longed to extin- 
 guish the fires of those martyrs who were 
 ignored and rejected in their own day. 
 She thirsted for the unknown sufl'erings, 
 the great griefs of thought. Sometimes 
 she imagined balms of Gilead, soothing 
 melodies which might have allaj-ed the 
 savage misanthropy of Eousseau. Or she 
 fancied herself the wife of Lord Byron ; 
 guessing intuitively his contempt for the 
 real, she made herself as fantastic as the 
 poetry of Manfred, and provided for his 
 skepticism hy making him a Catholic. 
 Modeste attributed Moliero's melancholy 
 to the women of the seventeenth century. 
 "■ Why is there not some one woman," she 
 asked herself, "loving, beautiful, and 
 rich, ready to stand beside each man of 
 genius and be his slave, like Lara, the 
 mysterious page ? " She had, as the 
 reader perceives, fully understood ilpian- 
 to, which the English poet chanted by the 
 mouth of his Gulnare. Modeste greatly 
 admired the behavior of the young En- 
 glishwoman who offered herself to Cp^- 
 billon, the son, and whom he married.
 
 358 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 The ston- of Sterno and Eliza Draper was 
 her life and happiness for several months. 
 She imagined herself the heroine of a like 
 romance, and many a time she rehearsed 
 in imag'ination the sublime role of Eliz:i., 
 The sensibility so charmingly expressed 
 in that delightful correspondence filled her 
 eyes with tears which, it is said, are lack- 
 ing in those of the most spirituel of 
 English writers. 
 
 Modeste existed for some time on a 
 comprehension, not onlj' of the works, but 
 of the characters of her favorite authors 
 — Goldsmith, the author of Obermann, 
 Charles Nodier, Maturin. The poorest 
 and the most suffering among them were 
 her deities ; she guessed their trials, she 
 initiated herself into a destitution where 
 the thoughts of genius brooded, and poured 
 upon it the treasures of her heart ; she 
 fancied herself the author of the material 
 well-being of these great men, martj-rs 
 to their own talents. This noble com- 
 passion, this intuition of the struggles of 
 toil, this worship of genius, are among 
 the rarest perceptions that ever flutterred 
 through the souls of women. They are, 
 in the first place, a secret between the 
 woman and God, for they are hidden ; in 
 them there is nothing striking, nothing 
 that gratifies the vanit\' — that powerful 
 auxiliary to all action among the French. 
 
 Out of this third period of the develop- 
 ment of lier ideas, there was born in Mo- 
 deste a passionate desire to penetrate to 
 the heart of one of these abnormal beings ; 
 to understand the working of the thoughts 
 and the hidden griefs of genius — to know 
 not onlj' what it wanted but what it was. 
 At the period when this story begins, 
 these vagaries of fancy, these excursions 
 of her soul into the void, these feelers put 
 forth into the darkness of the future, the 
 impatience of an ungiven love to reach a 
 goal, the nobility of all her thoughts of 
 life, the decision of her mind to suffer in 
 a sphere of higher things instead of flound- 
 ering- in the marshes of provincial life like 
 lier mother, the pledge she had made to 
 herself never to fail in conduct, but to 
 respect her father's hearth and bring it 
 nothing but happiness — all this world of 
 feeling and sentiment had lately' come to 
 
 a climax and taken shape. Modeste 
 wished to be the friend and companion 
 of a poet, an artist, a man in some waj' 
 superior to the crowd of men. But she 
 intended to choose him — not to give him 
 her heart, her life, her infinite tenderness 
 freed from the trammels of passion, until 
 she had carefully and deeply- studied him. 
 
 She began this pretty romance b^' simply 
 enjoying it. Profound tranquillity settled 
 down upon her soul. Her cheeks became 
 softly colored, and she was the beautiful 
 and noble image of Germany, such as we 
 have lately seen her, the glory of the 
 Chalet, the pride of Madame Latournelle 
 and the Dumays. 
 
 Modeste was then living a double exist- 
 ence. She performed with humble, loving 
 cai'e all the minute duties of the homely 
 life at the Chalet, using them as a rein to 
 guide the poetry of her ideal life, like the 
 Carthusian monks who labor methotlically 
 on material things to leave their souls the 
 freer to develop in prayer. All great 
 minds have bound themselves to some 
 form of mechanical toil in order to gain 
 the greater mastery of thought. Spinosa 
 ground glasses for spectacles ; Bayle 
 counted the tiles on the roof ; Montes- 
 quieu gardened. The bod3- being thus 
 subdued, the soul could spread its wings 
 in all security. 
 
 Madame Mignon, who could read her 
 daughter's soul, was therefore right. 
 Modeste loved ; she loved with that rare 
 platonic love, so little understood, the first 
 illusion of a young girl, the most delicate 
 of all sentiments, a very dainty of the 
 heart. She drank deep draughts from 
 the chalice of the unknown, the impos- 
 sible, the visionary. She admired the 
 blue plumage of that bird in the paradise 
 of young girls, which sings at a distance, 
 which no hand can touch, no gun can coy- 
 er, as it flits across the sight ; whose 
 magic colors, like sparkling jewels, dazzle 
 the eye, and which youth never sees again 
 when Reality, the hideous hag, appears 
 with witnesses accompanied by the mayor. 
 To live the very poetry of love nnd not to 
 see the lover — ah, what sweet intoxica- 
 tion ! what visionary rapture ! a chimera 
 with flowing mane and outspread wings !
 
 MOD EST E MIGNON. 
 
 359 
 
 The following is the puerile and even 
 silly event which decided tlie future life 
 of this 3'oung- girl. 
 
 Modeste saw in a boolvSeller"s window a 
 lithographic portrait of one of her favor- 
 ites, CanaUs. We all know how false sucli 
 pictures are- — the fruits of a shameless 
 speculation, which seizes upon the person- 
 ality of celebrated individuals as if tlieir 
 faces were public property. 
 
 In this instance Canalisy sketched in a 
 B^'rouic pose, was offering to public ad- 
 miration his floating locks, his bare throat, 
 and the unfathouiable bi'ow which every 
 bard ought to possess. Victor Hugo's 
 forehead will make more persons shave 
 their heads than the number of incipient 
 marshals ever killed by the glory of Napo- 
 leon. This face (poetic through mei-can- 
 tile necessity) caught Modeste's ej'c. The 
 day on which she bouglit tlio portrait one 
 of Arthez's best books happened to be 
 publislied. We ai'e compelled to admit, 
 though it may be to Modeste's injury, 
 that she hesitated long between the il- 
 lustrious poet and the illustrious prose- 
 writer. Which of these celebrated men 
 was free ? — that was the question. 
 
 Modeste began by securing the co-opera- 
 tion of Frangoise Cochet, a maid taken 
 from Havre and brought back again by 
 poor Bettina, whom Madame Mignon and 
 Madame Dumay ilow employed by the 
 da}', and who lived in Havre. Modeste 
 took her to her own room and assured her 
 that she would never cause her parents 
 any grief, and that she should never pass 
 the limits imposed upon a j-oung girl? 
 As to Fran§oise herself she would be well 
 provided for after the return of Monsieur 
 Mignon, on condition tliat slie would do a 
 certain service and keep it an inviolable 
 secret. What was it ? Why, a very little 
 thing — perfectly innocent. All that Mo- 
 deste wanted of her accomplice was to put 
 certain letters into the post, and to bring 
 back those which would be directed to 
 Frangoise Cochet. The agreement made, 
 Modeste wrote a polite note to Dauriat, 
 publisher of the poems of Canalis, asking, 
 in the interest of that great poet, if he 
 were married. She requested the pub- 
 lisher to address his answer to Mademoi- 
 
 selle Frangoise Cochet, paste restante, 
 Havre. 
 
 Duriat, incapable of taking the epistle 
 seriously, wrote a reply in presence of 
 four or five journalists who happened to 
 be in his office at the time, each of whom 
 added his particular stroke of wit to the 
 production. 
 
 " Mademoiselle— Canalis (Baron of), 
 Constant Cyr Melchior, member of the 
 French Academy, born in 1800, at Canalis 
 (Correze), five feet four inches in height, 
 in good condition, vaccinated, spotless 
 birth, has given a substitute to the con- 
 scription, enjoys perfect health, owns a 
 small patrimonial estate in the Correze, 
 and wishes to marry, but the lady must 
 be wealthj'. 
 
 " He beareth per pale, gules an ax 
 or, sable three shells argent, surmounted 
 b}' a baron's coronet ; supporters, two 
 larches, vert. Motto : Or et fer (never 
 auriferous). 
 
 "The first Canalis, who went to the 
 Holy Land with the First Crusade, is 
 cited in the chronicles of Auvergne as 
 being armed only with an ax on account 
 of the family indigence, which to this day 
 weighs heavily on the race ; hence the es- 
 cutcheon, without a doubt. This noble 
 baron, who is also famous for having dis- 
 comfited avast number of infidels, died 
 near Jerusalem, without or or fer, as 
 naked as a worm, on the plains of Ascalon, 
 ambulances not being then invented. 
 
 '• The chateau of Canalis (the domain 
 yields a few chestnuts) consists of two 
 dismantled towers, united by a piece of 
 wall covered by a fine ivj', and is taxed at 
 twenty-two francs. 
 
 " The undersigned (publisher) calls at- 
 tention to the fact that he pays ten thou- 
 sand francs for every volume of poetry 
 written by Monsieur de Canalis, who does 
 not give his shells for nothing. 
 
 " The singer of the Correze lives in the 
 Rue de Paradis-Poissoniere, number 29, 
 which is a highly suitable location for a 
 poet of the angelic school. 
 
 "Several noble ladies of the Faubourg' 
 Saint-Germain are said to take the path 
 to Paradise and protect its god. The
 
 3G0 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 king, Charles X., thinks so highly of 
 this great poet as to believe him capable 
 of helling to govern tlie country ; lie has 
 lately made him offlcer of the Legion of 
 Honor, and (what pays him better) presi- 
 dent of the court of Claims at the foreign 
 office. These functions do not hinder this 
 great genius from drawing an annuity of 
 three thousand francs out of the fund for 
 the encouragement of arts and belles let- 
 tres. This monetary success has occa- 
 sioned in literatui-e an eighth plague 
 which Egypt escaped — that of verses. 
 " The last edition of the works of 
 Canalis, printed on vellum, royal 8vo, 
 from the press of Didot, with illustra- 
 tions by Bixiou, Joseph Bridau, Schinner, 
 Sommervieux, etc., is in five volumes, 
 price, nine francs j)ost-paid." 
 
 This letter fell like a cobble-stone on a 
 tulip. A poet, secretary of claims, get- 
 ting a stipend in a public office, drawing 
 an annuity, seeking a decoration, adored 
 by the women of the Faubourg Saint- 
 Germain — was that the muddy minstrel 
 lingering along the quaj's, sad, dreamy, 
 worn with toil, and re-entering his garret 
 fraught with poetry ? However, Modeste 
 perceived the irony of the envious book- 
 seller, who said : " I invented Canalis ; 
 I made Nathan ! " Besides, she re-read 
 her hero's poems — verses extremely se- 
 ductive, and full of hj^pocrisy, which 
 require a word of analysis, were it only 
 to explain her infatuation. 
 
 Canalis may be distinguished from 
 Lamartine, chief of the angelic school, 
 by a wheedling tone like that of a sick- 
 nurse, a treacherous sweetness and a 
 delightful discipline. The chief with his 
 strident cry is an eagle ; Canalis, rose 
 and white, is a flamingo. In him women 
 find the friend they seek, their interpre- 
 ter, and a safe confidant ; a being who 
 understands them, and who explains them 
 to themselves. The wide margins given 
 by Dauriat to the last edition were 
 crowded with Modeste's penciled senti- 
 ments, expressing her sympathy with 
 this tender and dreamy spirit. Canalis 
 did not possess the gift of life; he could 
 not breathe existence into his creations ; 
 
 but he knew how to calm vague suffer- 
 ings like those which assailed Modeste. 
 He .spoke to j'ouhg girls in their own 
 language ; he could allay the anguish of 
 a bleeding wound and lull the moans and 
 sobs of woe. His gift did not lie in stir- 
 ring- words, nor in the remedy of strong 
 emotions ; he contented himself with say- 
 ing in harmonious tones which compelled 
 belief, " I suffer with you ; I understand 
 you ; ceme with me ; let us weep together 
 beside the brook, beneath the willows." 
 And they followed him ! They listened 
 to his empty and sonorous poetry like 
 infants to a nurse's lullaby. Canalis, 
 like Nodier, enchanted the reader by an 
 artlessness which was genuine in the 
 prose writer and artificial in the poet ; 
 by his tact, his smile, the shedding of his 
 rose-leaves, and his infantile philosophy'. 
 He counterfeited so well the language of 
 early youth that he led one back to the 
 prairie-land of illusions. We can be piti- 
 less to the eagles, requiring from them 
 the quality of the diamond, incorruptible 
 perfection ; but as for Canalis, we take 
 him for what he is and let the rest go. 
 He seems a good fellow ; the affectations 
 of the ang'elic school have given him suc- 
 cess, just as a woman succeeds when she 
 plays the ingenue cleverly, and simulates 
 surprise, youth, innocence betraj^ed, the 
 wounded angel. 
 
 Modeste, recovering her first impres- 
 sions, renewed her confidence in that 
 soul and in that countenance as ravish- 
 ing as the face of Bernardin de Saint- 
 Pierre. She paid no further attention 
 to the publisher. And so, about the 
 beginning of the month of August she 
 wrote the following letter to this Dorat 
 of the sacristy, who still ranks as a star 
 of the modern Pleiades. 
 
 " To Monsieur de Canalis— I have 
 often wished to write to you, monsieur, 
 to tell you how much I admire your 
 genius. I feel the need of expressing to 
 you the admii'ation of a poor country 
 girl, lonely in her little corner, whose 
 only happiness is to read 3'our thoughts. 
 I have read Rene, and I come to you. 
 Sadness leads to reverie. How many
 
 MOD EST E MIGNON. 
 
 361 
 
 other women are sending you the liom- 
 ag-e of their secret thoug-lits ? What 
 chance have I for notice among so many ? 
 What will this paper, filled with my soul, 
 be to you, any more than the perfumed 
 letters which already beset you. I am 
 more at a disadvantage than any others, 
 for I wish to remain unknown and yet to 
 receive j'our entire confidence — as though 
 you had long known me. 
 
 " Answer my letter and be friendly 
 with me. I cannot promise to make my- 
 self known to you, though I do not posi- 
 tiv-ely say I will not some day do so. 
 
 "What shall I add? Do you see the 
 
 effort which it has been to me to write 
 
 this letter ? Permit me to offer you my 
 
 hand — that of a friend, ah ! a true friend. 
 
 " Your servant, O. d'Este M. 
 
 " P. S. — If you do me the favor to an- 
 swer this letter address your repfy, if you 
 please, to Mademoiselle F. Cochet, poste 
 restante, Havre." 
 
 VII. 
 
 All young girls, whether romantic or 
 otherwise, can imagine with what impa- 
 tience Modeste lived through the next 
 few days. The air was full of tongues 
 of fire. The trees were like a plumage. 
 She was not conscious of a body ; she 
 hovered in space, the earth flew from 
 beneath her feet. Full of admiration for 
 the post-office, she followed her little 
 sheet of paper on its way ; she was 
 happy, as we all are happy at twenty 
 years of age, in the first exercise ,of our 
 will. She was possessed, as in the Middle 
 Ages. She imagined the poet's study; 
 she saw him unsealing her letter ; and 
 then followed myriads of suppositions. 
 
 After sketching the poetry we cannot 
 do less than give the profile of the poet. 
 Canalis was a short, spare man, with an 
 air of good-breeding, a dark-complex- 
 ioned, moon-shaped face, and rather a 
 small head like that of a man who has 
 more vanity than pride. He loved luxury, 
 rank, and splendor. Money was of more 
 importance, to him than to most men. 
 
 Proud of his birth, even more than of his 
 talent, he destroyed the value of his an- 
 cestors by making too many pretensions 
 — after all, the Canalis are not Navar- 
 reins, nor Cadignans, nor Grandlieus, nor 
 Negrepelisses. 
 
 Nature, however, helped him out in his 
 pretensions. He had those eyes of East- 
 ern effulgence which we demand in a poet, 
 a delicate charm of manner, and a vibrant 
 voice ; yet a natural charlatanism almost 
 destroyed the effect of all these advan- 
 tages. He was a bom comedian. He 
 put forward his well-shaped foot, because 
 the attitude had become a habit ; he used 
 exclamatory terms because they were a 
 part of himself ; he posed dramatically, 
 because he had made that deportment his 
 second nature. Such defects as these are 
 not incompatible with a general benevo- 
 lence and a certain quality of errant and 
 purely ideal chivalry, which distinguishes 
 the paladin from the knight. Canalis 
 had not devotion enough for a Don 
 Quixote, but he had too much elevation 
 of thought not to put himself on the 
 nobler side of questions and things. His 
 poetry, which took the town by storm on 
 all occasions, reallj' injured the man as a 
 poet; for he was not without mind, but 
 his talent prevented him from developing 
 it; he was overweighted by his reputa- 
 tion, while aiming to appear greater than 
 it. Thus, as often happens, the man was 
 entirely out of accord with the products 
 of his thought. The author of these naive, 
 caressing, tender little lyrics, these calm 
 idyls pui-e and cold as the surface of a lake, 
 these verses so essentially feminine, was 
 an ambitious little creature in a tightly 
 buttoned frock-coat, with the air of a 
 diplomat seeking political influence, redo- 
 lent of the musk of aristocracy', full of 
 pretension, thirsting for a fortune, in 
 order to possess the income necessary to 
 his ambition, already spoiled b3' a double 
 success, the crowns of myrtle and of 
 laurel. He had a Government situation 
 worth eight thousand francs, three thou- 
 sand francs' annuit\' from the literary 
 fund, two thousand from the Academy, 
 three thousand more from the paternal 
 estate (less the taxes and the cost of
 
 362 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 keeping' it in order) — a total fixed income 
 of fifteen thousand francs, plus the ten 
 thousand broug-ht in each j'cai', on an 
 average, by liis poetry ; in all twenty-five 
 thousand francs. And all this was for 
 Modestc's hero so jirecarious and iiisuffl- 
 cient an income thai he usually spent from 
 five to six thousand francs more every 
 year ; but the king's privy purse and the 
 secret funds of the foreign office had 
 hitherto supplied the deficit. He wrote 
 a hymn for the king's coronation which 
 earned him a whole silver service — having 
 refused a sum of money on the ground 
 that a Canalis owed his duty to the sov- 
 ereign. 
 
 But about this time Canalis had , as the 
 joui-nalists say, exhausted his budget. He 
 felt himself unable to invent any new 
 form of poetry ; his Ij're did not have 
 seven strings ; it had only one ; and hav- 
 ing played on that one string so long, the 
 public allowed him no other alternative 
 than to hang himself with it, or to be 
 silent. De Marsaj', who did not like 
 Canalis, made a remark whose poisoned 
 shaft touched the poet to the quick of his 
 vanity. "Canalis," he said, " always re- 
 minds me of that brave man whom Fred- 
 erick the Great called up anil commended 
 after a battle because his trumpet had 
 never ceased tooting its one little tune." 
 Canalis desired to become a politician, 
 and he made capital of a journey he had 
 taken to Madrid as secretary to the em- 
 bassy of the Due de Chaulieu ; though it 
 was really made, according to Parisian 
 gossip, in the capacity of " attache to the 
 duchess." How many times a sarcasm 
 or a single speech has decided a man's 
 life. 
 
 CoUa, the late president of the Cisal- 
 pine republic, and the best lawyer in 
 Piedmont, was told by a friend when he 
 was forty j'ears of age that he knew 
 nothing of botany. He was piqued, be- 
 came a second Jussieu, cultivated flow- 
 .,'rs, and compiled and published " The 
 Flora of Piedmont," in Latin, the work 
 of ten years. " I'll master De Marsay 
 some of these days!" thought the crushed 
 poet; "after all. Canning and Chateau- 
 briand are both politicians." 
 
 Canalis would gladly have brought 
 forth some great political work, but he 
 was afraid of the French press, whose 
 criticisms are savage upon any writer 
 who takes four alexandrines to express 
 one idea. Of all the poets of our day only 
 three, Hugo, Theophilc Gautier, and De 
 Vigny^ have been, able to win the double 
 glory of poet and prose-writer, like Racme 
 and Voltaire, Moliere and Rabelais — a 
 rare distinction in the literature of France, 
 which ought to g'ive a man a rig-ht to the 
 crowning title of poet. 
 
 The bard of the Faubourg Saint-Ger- 
 main, therefore, was doing- a wise thing- 
 in trjnng- to shelter his little chariot be- 
 neath the protecting roof of the present 
 government. When he became jjresident 
 of the court of Claims at the foreign 
 office, he stood in need of a seci^etai-y — a 
 friend wjao could take his place in vai-ious 
 ways ; cook up his interests with pub- 
 lishers, see to his glory in the newspapers, 
 help him if need be in politics — in short, 
 be his cat's-paw and satellite. In Paris 
 many men of celebrity in art, science, 
 and litei'ature have one or more train- 
 bearers, captains of the guard, chamber- 
 lains as it were, who live in the sunshine 
 of their presence — aides-de-camp intrusted 
 with delicate missions, permitting- them- 
 selves to be compromised if necessary ; 
 toiling at the pedestal of the idol ; not ex- 
 actl^r his servants, nor yet his equals ; 
 bold in his defense, first in the breach, ' 
 covering- all retreats, occupied with his 
 affairs, and devoted to him just so long- 
 as their illusions last, or until they have 
 got all they wanted. Some of these satel- 
 lites perceive a little ing-ratitude in their 
 great man ; others feel that they are 
 simply made tools of ; many weary of the 
 life; very few remain contented witli that 
 sweet equality of feeling- and sentiment 
 which is the only reward tliat should be 
 looked for in an intimacj' with a superior 
 man — a reward that contented Ali when 
 Mohammeil raised him to himself. 
 
 Many, misled hy vanity, think them- 
 selves as capable as their patron. Pure 
 devotion, such as Modeste conceived it, 
 without money and without price, and 
 more especially without hone, is rai-e.
 
 MODESTE MIGXON. 
 
 363 
 
 Nevertheless there are Mennevals to be 
 found, more perhaps in Paris than else- 
 where, men wlio value a life in the back- 
 ground with its peaceful toil : Benedic- 
 tines who have wandered into our social 
 world, which offers them no monastery. 
 These brave, meek hearts bear in their 
 actions and in their hidden lives the 
 poetry that writers express. They are 
 poets themselves in soul, in tenderness, 
 in their lonely and tender meditations — 
 as truly poets as others of the name on 
 paper, who fatten in the fields of litera- 
 ture at so much a verse ; like Lord Byron, 
 like all who live, alas ! by ink, the Hippo- 
 crene water of to-day, for want of a 
 better. 
 
 Attracted b^- the fame of Canalis, also 
 by the prospect of political interest, and 
 advised thereto by Madame d'Espard, 
 who acted in the matter for the Duchesse 
 de Chaulieu, a young lawyer of the court 
 of Claims constituted himself gratuitous 
 secretary to the poet, who welcomed and 
 petted him very much as a broker ca- 
 resses his first dabbler in the funds. The 
 beginning of this companionship bore a 
 very fair resemblance to friendship. The 
 young man had already held the same 
 relation to a nlinister, who went out of 
 office in 1827, taking care before he did 
 so to appoint his young secretary to a 
 place in the foreign office. Ernest de la 
 Briere, then about twentj'-seven years of 
 age, was decorated with the Legion of 
 Honor but was without other means than 
 his salary ; he was accustomed to the 
 management of business and had learned 
 a good deal of life during his four years 
 in a minister's cabinet. Kindly, amiable, 
 and almost over-modest, with a heart 
 full of pure and sound feelings, he was 
 averse to putting himself in the fore- 
 ground. He loved his country, and 
 wished to serve her, but notoriety' abashed 
 him. To him the place of secretary to a 
 Napoleon was far more desirable than 
 that of prime minister. As soon as he 
 'became the friend and seci-etary of Cana- 
 lis he did a great amount of labor for 
 him, but hy the end of eighteen months 
 he recognized the barrenness of a nature 
 that was poetic through literary- expres- 
 
 sion onl3'. The truth of the old proverb, 
 "The gown does not make the monk," 
 is eminently .shown in literature. It is 
 extremel3' rare to find among literary 
 men a nature and a talent that are in 
 perfect accord. The faculties are not the 
 man himself. This disconnection, whose 
 phenomena are amazing, proceeds from 
 an unexplored, possibly an unexplorable 
 my.stery. The bi'ain and its products of 
 all kinds (for in art the hand of man is a 
 continuation of his brain) are a world 
 apart, which flourishes beneath the cra- 
 nium in absolute independence of senti- 
 ments, feelings, and all virtue of citizens, 
 fathers, and pi-ivate life. This, however 
 true, is not absolutely so ; nothing is ab- 
 solutely true of man. It is certain that 
 a debauched man will dissipate his talent, 
 that a drunkard will waste it in libations: 
 while, on the other hand, no man can 
 give himself talent b^- wholesome living : 
 nevertheless it is all but j^roved that Vir- 
 gil, the painter of Love, never loved a 
 Dido, and that Rousseau, the model citi- 
 zen, had enough pride to have furnished 
 an entire aristocracy. On the other hand 
 Raphael and Michael^Angelo do present 
 the glorious spectacle of genius in accord 
 with character. 
 
 Talent in men is therefore, in all moral 
 points, verj' much what beauty is in wo- 
 men — simply a promise. Let us, there- 
 fore, doubly admire the man in whom 
 both heart and character equal the per- 
 fection of his genius. 
 
 When Ernest discovered beneath the 
 poet an ambitious egoist, the worst spe- 
 cies of egoist (for there are some amiable 
 forms of the vice), he felt a delicacy in 
 leaving him. Honest natures cannot 
 easily break the ties that bind them, 
 especially if they have been assumeil vol- 
 untarily. The secretary was therefore 
 still living in domestic relations with the 
 poet when Modeste's letter arrived — in 
 such relations, however, as involved a 
 perpetual sacrifice of his feelings. La 
 Briere admitted the frankness with which 
 Canalis had laid himself bare before him. 
 Moreover, the defects of the man, who 
 will always be considered a great poet 
 during his lifetime and flattered like Mar-
 
 364 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 montel, were only the reverse side of his 
 brilliant qualities. Without his vanity 
 and his pretensions it is possible that he 
 mig-ht never have acquired the sonorous 
 diction which is so useful and even neces- 
 sary an instrument in political life. His 
 cold-bloodedness bordered upon rectitude 
 and loyalty ; his ostentation had a lining 
 of generosity. Society profited by the 
 results; the motives concerned God. 
 
 But when Modeste's letter arrived, 
 Ernest deceived himself no longer as to 
 Canalis. The pair had just finished 
 breakfast and were talking together in 
 the poet's study, which was on the 
 ground-floor of a house standing back 
 in a courtyard, and overlooked a garden. 
 
 "There!" exclaimed Canalis, "I was 
 telling Madame de Chaulieu the other 
 daj^ that I ought to bring out another 
 poem ; I knew admiration was running 
 short, for I have had no anonj'mous let- 
 ters for a long time." 
 
 " Is it from an unknown woman ? " 
 
 " Unknown ? yes ! — a D'Este, in Havre ; 
 evidently a feigned name." 
 
 Canalis passed the letter to La Briere. 
 The little poem, -ft-ith all its hidden en- 
 thusiasms, which was poor Modeste's 
 heart, was disdainfully handed over, with 
 the gesture of a spoiled dand3\ 
 
 "It is a fine thing," said the lawyer, 
 " to have the power to attract such feel- 
 ings ; to force a poor woman to step out 
 of the habits which nature, education, and 
 the world dictate to her, to break through 
 conventions. What pri^aleges genius wins! 
 A letter such as this, written by a young 
 girl — a genuine young girl — without hid- 
 den meanings, with real enthusiasm — " 
 
 "Well? "said Canalis. 
 
 " Whj', a man might suffer as much as 
 Tasso and yet feel recomi^ensed," cried La 
 Briere. 
 
 " That is all very well, my dear fellow, 
 for a first letter of that kind, and even a 
 second ; but how about the thirtieth ? 
 And suppose you find out that these 
 young enthusiasts are little jades ? Im- 
 agine a poet rushing along the brilliant 
 path in search of her, and finding at the 
 end of it an old Englishwoman sitting on 
 a mile-stone and offering you her hand I 
 
 Or suppose this post-office angel should 
 really be a rather ugly girl in quest of 
 a husband ? Ah, my boj' ! the efferves- 
 cence then goes down." 
 
 "I begin to perceive," said La Briere, 
 smiling, "that there is something poison- 
 ous in glory, as there is in certain dazzling 
 flowers." 
 
 "And then," resurrfed Canalis, "all 
 these women, even when they are simple- 
 minded, have ideals, and one rarely an- 
 swers to it. They never say to themselves 
 that a poet is a vain man, as I am accused 
 of being ; the^^ cannot conceive what it is 
 for an author to be at the mercy of a fev- 
 erish excitement, which makes him dis- 
 agreeable and capricious ; thej' want him 
 to be always grand, always noble ; it 
 never occurs to them that genius is a 
 disease, or that Nathan lives with Flo- 
 rine ; that D'Arthez is too fat, and Jo- 
 seph Bridau is too thin ; that Beranger 
 limps, and that their own particular 
 deity may have the snuffles ! A Lucien 
 de Rubempre, poet and cupid, is a phoenix. 
 And why should I go in search of compli- 
 ments only to pull the string of a shower- 
 bath of cold looks from some disillusioned 
 female ? " 
 
 "Then the true poet,'* said La Briere, 
 "ought to remain hidden, like God, in 
 the center of his worlds, and be only seen 
 in his own creations." 
 
 "Then glory would cost too dear," an- 
 swered Canalis. " There is some good in 
 life. As for that letter," he added, tak- 
 ing a cup of tea, " I assure j'ou that when 
 a noble and beautiful woman loves a poet 
 she does not hide in the corner boxes, 
 like a duchess in love with an actor ; she 
 feels herself sufficiently protected by her 
 beauty, her fortune and her name to dare 
 to say openly, like all epic poems : ' I am 
 the nymph Calypso, enamored of Tele- 
 machus.' Mystery is the resource of lit- 
 tle minds. For my part I no longer an- 
 swer incognitos." 
 
 "How I should love a woman who 
 came to seek me ! " cried La Briere, wath 
 emotion. "To all you say I reply, my ^ 
 dear Canalis, that it cannot be an ordi- 
 nary girl who aspires to a distinguishe(J 
 man ; such a girl has too little trust, too 
 \
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 365 
 
 much vanitj' ; she is too faint-hearted. 
 Onh- a star, a — " 
 
 •• — princess!" cried Canalis, bursting 
 into a shout of laughter ; " only a prin- 
 cess can descend to him. My dear fellow, 
 that doesn't happen once in a hundred 
 years. Such a love is like that flower 
 that blossoms every century. Princesses, 
 if they are young-, rich, and beautiful, 
 have something else to think of; they 
 are surrounded, like all rare plants, by a 
 hedge of fools, well-bred idiots as hollow 
 as elder-bushes ! My dream, alas ! the 
 crystal of my dream, garlanded from 
 hence to the Correze with roses — ah ! I 
 cannot speak of it — it is in fragments 
 at my feet, and has long been so. No, 
 no, all anonymous letters are begging 
 letters ; and what sort chances ! Write 
 yourself to that young woman, if you 
 suppose her young and pretty, and j'ou'll 
 find out. I can't reasonably be expected 
 to love every woman ; Apollo, at any 
 rate he of Belvedere, is a delicate con- 
 sumptive who must take care of his 
 health." 
 
 '• But when a woman writes to you in 
 this way her excuse must be in her con- 
 sciousness that she is able to eclipse in 
 tenderness and beautj' everj' other wo- 
 man," said Ernest, "and I should think 
 you might feel some curiosity — " 
 
 '•'Ah," said Canalis, "permit me, my 
 juvenile friend, to abide by the beautiful 
 duchess, who makes all my happiness." 
 
 " You are right, too right I " replied 
 Ernest. However, the young secretary 
 read and re-read Modeste's letter, striving 
 to guess the mind of its hidden writer. 
 
 "There is not the least fine-writing 
 here," he said, "she does not refer to 
 genius; she speaks to your heart. This 
 fragrance of modesty — this proposed 
 agreement, would tempt me — " 
 
 "Sign it!" cried Canalis, laughing; 
 "answer the letter and go to the end of 
 the adventure yourself. You shall tell 
 me the result three months hence — if the 
 affair lasts so long." 
 
 Four days later Modeste received the 
 following letter, written on extremely 
 fine paper, protected by two envelopes, 
 and sealed with the arms of Canalis. 
 
 " Mademoiselle— The admiration for 
 fine works (allowing that my books are 
 such) implies something so holy and sin- 
 cere as to protect you from all light jest- 
 ing, and to justify before the sternest 
 judge the step j-ou have taken in writing 
 to me. 
 
 "But first I must thank you for the 
 pleasure which such proofs of sj^mpathy 
 always afford, even though we may not 
 merit them — for the maker of verses and 
 the true poet are equally certain of the 
 intrinsic worth of their writings — so 
 readily does self-esteem lend itself to 
 praise. The best proof of friendship that 
 I can give to an unknown lady in ex- 
 change for a faith which allays the sting 
 of criticism, is to share with her the har- 
 vest of my own experience, even at the 
 risk of dispelling her most vivid illusions. 
 
 "Mademoiselle, the most beautiful crown 
 for a young girl is the flower of a pure 
 and saintly and irreproachable life. Are 
 you alone in the world ? If you are, there 
 is no need to say more. But if you have 
 a family, a father or a mother, thinlc of 
 all the grief that might come to them 
 from such a letter as j'ours addressed to 
 a poet whom j'ou do not know personally. 
 All MTiters are not angels ; they have 
 many defects. Some are frivolous, heed- 
 less, foppish, ambitious, dissipated ; and, 
 no matter how imposing innocence may 
 be, nor how chivalrous the French poet, 
 you will meet. with manj^ a degenerate 
 troubadour in Paris readj- to cultivate 
 your affection only to betray it. By such 
 a man your letter would be interpreted 
 otherwise than it is by me. He would 
 see a thought that is not in it, which you, 
 in your innocence, have not suspected. 
 There are as many natures as there are 
 writers. I am deeply flattered that 3X)u 
 have judged me capable of understand- 
 ing you ; but had you chanced to fall 
 upon a hypocrite, a scoffer, one whose 
 books maj' be melancholy while his life 
 is a perpetual carnival, you would have 
 foimd as the result of your generous im- 
 prudence an evil-minded man. the fre- 
 quenter of green-rooms, perhaps the hero 
 of some gay resort. In the bower of cle- 
 matis where you dream of poets you
 
 366 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 cannot smell the odor of the cigar which 
 drives all poetry from the manuscript, 
 any more than when, in making- your 
 toilet for the ball, you ornament yourself 
 with the sparkling- products of the jew- 
 eler's art, you can realize the streng-th of 
 the workmen in the humble worksliops 
 where tliose radiant flowers of toil blos- 
 som forth into beautj-. 
 
 "But let us look still further. How 
 could the dreamy, solitary life you lead, 
 doubtless by the seashore, interest a poet, 
 whose mission it is to imagine all, since 
 he must paint all ? What reality can 
 equal imagination ? The young girls of 
 the poets are so ideal tliat no living 
 daughter of Eve can compete with them. 
 And now tell me what will you gain— you, 
 a 3'oung girl, brought up to be the vir- 
 tuous mother of a familj^— if you learn to 
 comprehend the terrible agitations of a 
 poet's life in this dreadful capital, which 
 may be defined by one sentence — the hell 
 which men love. 
 
 " If the desire, to brighten the monoto- 
 nous existence of a curious young girl has 
 led you to take your pen in hand and 
 wi'itc to me, has not the step itself the 
 appearance of degradation ? What mean- 
 ing am I to give to your letter ? Are you 
 one of a rejected caste, and do ymi seek 
 a friend far away from you? Or, are 
 you afflicted with personal ugliness, yet 
 possessed of a noble soul which has no 
 confidant? You have said too much, or 
 too little. Either let us drop this corre- 
 spondence, or, i[ you continue it, tell me 
 more than in the letter you have now 
 written me. 
 
 " But, mademoiselle, if you are young, 
 if you are beautiful, if you have a home, 
 a family, if in your heart you have the 
 precious ointment, the spikenard, to pour 
 out, as did Magdalene on the feet of 
 Jesus, let yourself be won by a man 
 worthy of you ; become what every pure 
 young girl should be — a good Avoman, 
 the virtuous mother of a family. A poet 
 is the saddest conquest that a girl can 
 make ; he h:is too much vanity, too many 
 angles that will sharply wound a woman's 
 proper pride, and kill a tenderness which 
 has no experience of life. The wife of a 
 
 poet should love him long before she 
 marries him ; she should train herself 
 to the charity of angels, to their forbear- 
 ance, to all the virtues of motherhood. 
 Such qualities, mademoiselle, are but 
 germs in a young girl. 
 
 " Listen to the whole truth — do I not 
 owe it to j-ou in return for your intoxicat- 
 ing flatterj' ? If it is a glorious thing to 
 marry a man who is celebrated, remem- 
 ber also that you must soon discover a 
 superior man to be, in all essentials, like 
 other men. He is therefore all the less 
 likely to realize hopes, since prodigies 
 are expected of him. He becomes like 
 a woman whose beauty is overpraised, 
 and of whom we say : ' I thought her 
 far more lovely.' She has not warranted 
 the portrait painted by the f;iiry to whom 
 I owe your letter — the fairy whose name 
 is Imagination. 
 
 " The qualities of the mind live and 
 thrive only in an invisible sphere; the wife 
 of a poet sees onlj' their inconveniences ; 
 she sees the jewels manufactured, but she 
 never wears them. If the glory of an 
 exceptional position fascinates you, hear 
 me now when I tell you that its pleasures 
 are soon at an end. You will suffer 
 when you find so many asperities in a 
 nature which, from a distance, you 
 thought equable, such coldness at a 
 shining summit. Moreover, as women 
 never set their feet within the world of 
 real difficulties, they cease to appreciate 
 what they once admired as soon as they 
 think they see the inner mechanism of it. 
 
 "I close with a last thought, in which 
 there is no disguised entreaty ; it is the 
 covmsel of a friend. The exchange of 
 souls can take place only between per- 
 sons who are resolved to hide nothing 
 from each other. Would you show your- 
 self for such as you are to an unknown 
 man ? I dare not follow out the conse- 
 quences of that idea. 
 
 " Deign to accept, mademoiselle, the 
 homage which we owe to all women, even 
 those who are disguised and masked." 
 
 So this was the letter she had worn be- 
 tween her flesh and her corset above her 
 palpitating heart throughout one whole
 
 MODE ST E MIGNON. 
 
 367 
 
 day ! For this she had postponed the 
 reading' until the midnig-ht hour when 
 the lioLisehold slept, after having- waited 
 for the solemn silence with the eager 
 anxiety of an ijnngination on fire ! For 
 this she had blessed the poet, and had 
 read in imagination a thousand -letters 
 ere she opened one — fancying- all things, 
 except this di-op of cold water falling- 
 upon the vaporous forms of her illusion, 
 and dissolving them as prussic acid dis- 
 solves life. There was nothing- to do but 
 to hide herself in her bed, blow out her 
 candle, bury her face in the sheets and 
 weep ! 
 
 All this happened during the- first 
 days of July. Modeste presentl3' got 
 up, walked across the room and opened 
 the window. She wanted air. The fra- 
 g-rance of the flowers came up to her with 
 that freshness of odor peculiar to flowers 
 in the night. The sea, lighted by the 
 moon, sparkled like a mirror. A night- 
 ing-ale w-as singing- in a tree in Vilquin's 
 park. " Ah, there is the poet ! " thought 
 Modeste, her anger at once subsiding. 
 Bitter reflections chased each other 
 thi'ough her mind. She was cut to the 
 quick; she wanted to re-read the letter, 
 and lit a candle ; she studied the care- 
 fully composed sentences ; and heard in 
 them at last the voice of the outer world. 
 
 "He is right, and I am wrong," she 
 said to herself. " Bi^ who could ever 
 believe that \uider the starry mantle of 
 a poet I should find nothing but one of 
 Moliere's old men ? " 
 
 When a woman or young girl makes an 
 error of good ta.ste, she conceives a deadly 
 hatred to the witness, the author, or the 
 object of her fault. And so the true, the 
 natural, the untamed Modeste conceived 
 within her soul an unquenchable desire to 
 fling herself ag-ainst that rig^hteous spirit, 
 to drive it into some fatal inconsistency, 
 and so return blow for blow. This pure 
 child, whose head alone had been mis- 
 g-uided — piirtly by her reading, partly by 
 her sister's sorrows, and more perhaps 
 by the dangerous meditations of her soli- 
 tary life^was suddenly surprised by the 
 flickering of a ray of sunshine aci'oss her 
 face. She had been standing- for three 
 
 hours on the shores of the vast sea of 
 Doubt. Nights like these are never for- 
 g-otten. Modeste walked straight to her 
 little Chinese table, a gift from her father, 
 and wrote a letter dictated by the spirit 
 of vengeance w-hich palpitates in the 
 hearts of young g-irls. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " To Monsieur de Canalis : 
 
 " Monsieur — You are certainly a g-reat 
 poet, and you are something more — an 
 honest man. After showing- such loyal 
 frankness to a young g-irl who was upon 
 the verge of an abyss, have you enough 
 left to answer without hj'pocrisy or eva- 
 sion the following- question ? 
 
 '•'Would you have written the letter I 
 now hold in answer to mine — would your 
 ideas, your lang-uag-e have been the same 
 — had some one whispered in your ear 
 (what may be true). Mademoiselle O. 
 d'Este M. has six millions and does not 
 intend to have a fool for a master Y 
 
 " Admit the supposition for a moment. 
 Be with me what you are with j^oui*self ; 
 fear nothing. I am wiser than my twenty 
 years : nothing that is frank can hurt you 
 in my mind. When I have read your con- 
 fidence, if you deig-n to make it, ,you shall 
 receive from me an answer to your first 
 letter. 
 
 •■ Having admired your talent, often so 
 sublime, permit me to do homage to your 
 delicacy and your integrity, which force 
 me to remain always, 
 
 " Your humble servant, 
 
 '• O. d'Este M." 
 
 When Ernest de la Briere had read 
 this letter he went to walk along- the 
 boulevards, tossed in mind like a tin^' 
 vessel by a tempest when the wind is 
 blowing from all points of the compass. 
 An ordinary young- man, a true Parisian, 
 would have settled the matter in a sing-le 
 phrase, "■ The g-irl is a little hussy." But 
 for a youth whose soul was noble and 
 true, this attempt to put him upon his
 
 368 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 oath, this appeal to truth, had the power 
 
 to awaken the three judges hidden in the 
 conscience of every man. Honor, Truth, 
 and Justice, getting on their feet, cried 
 out in their several ways energetically. 
 
 "Ah, my dear Ernest," said Truth, 
 "j'ou never would have read that lesson 
 to a rich heiress. No, my bo.y; you would 
 have gone in hot haste to Havre to find 
 out if the girl were handsome, and you 
 would have been ver^' unhappy indeed at 
 her preference for genius; and if you 
 could have tripped up your friend and 
 taken his place in lier affections. Made- 
 moiselle d'Este would have been a di- 
 vinity." 
 
 " What ? " cried Justice, " are you not 
 always bemoaning yourselves, j'ou penni- 
 less men of wit and capacity, that rich 
 girls marry beings whom you wouldn't 
 take as your servants. You rail against 
 the materialism of the centurj"^ which 
 hastens to unite wealth to wealth, and 
 never marries some fine young man with 
 brains and no money to a rich girl. Hei-e 
 is one wlio revolts against that very spirit 
 of the age, and behold ! the poet replies 
 with a blow at her heart ! " 
 
 " Rich or poor, young or old, uglj^ or 
 handsome, the girl is right ; she has a 
 mind of her own ; she has tripped the 
 poet into the slough of self-interest," 
 cried Honor. " She deserves an answer, 
 a sincere and noble and frank answer, 
 and, above all, the honest expression of 
 your thought. Examine yourself ! sound 
 j'our heart and purge it of its cowardice. 
 What would Moliere's Alceste say ? " 
 
 And La Briere, who had started from 
 the Boulevard Poissoniere, walked so 
 slowly, absorbed in these reflections, that 
 he was more than an hour in reaching 
 the Boulevard des Capuciiies. Then he 
 followed the quays, whicli led him to the 
 Cour des Comptes, situated at that time 
 close to the Sainte-Chapelle. Instead of 
 beginning on his accounts, he remained at 
 the mercj- of his perplexities. 
 
 " One thing is evident," he said to him- 
 self ; " she hasn't six millions ; but tliat's 
 not the point — " 
 
 Six days later, Modeste received the 
 following letter: 
 
 "Mademoiselle— You are not a D'Este. 
 The name is a feigned one to conceal your 
 own. Do I owe the revelations which you 
 solicit to a person who is untruthful about 
 herself ? Question for question : Are you 
 of an illustrious family ? or a noble fami- 
 ly ? ora middle-class family ? Undoubt- 
 edly morality cannot change, it is the 
 same everywhere ; but its obligations 
 vary in different states of life. Just as 
 the sun lights up a scene diversely and 
 produces differences which we admire, so 
 does morality conform social dutj' to rank, 
 to position. The peccadillo of a soldier 
 is a crime in a general, and vice versa. 
 Observances are not the same for the 
 gleaner in the field, for the gii'l who sews 
 at fifteen sous a day, for the daughter of 
 a petty shopkeeper, for the young bour- 
 geoise, for the child of a rich merchant, 
 for the heiress of a noble family, for a 
 daughter of the house of Este. A king 
 must not stoop to pick up a piece of gold, 
 but a laborer ought to retrace his steps to 
 find ten sous ; though both are equally 
 bound to obey the laws of economy'. A 
 daughter of Este, who is worth six mil- 
 lions, has the right to wear a broad- 
 brimmed hat and plume, to flourish her 
 whip, use the spur, and ride like an 
 amazon decked in gold lace, followed hj 
 lackeys, into the presence of a poet and 
 say : ' I love poetry ; and I would fain 
 expiate Leonora'^cruelty to Tasso ! ' but 
 a daughter of the people would cover her- 
 self with ridicule by imitating her. To 
 what class do you belong ? Answer sin- 
 cerely, and I will answer the question you 
 have put to me. 
 
 "As I have not the honor of knowing 
 you personally, and yet am. bound to you, 
 in a measure, by the ties of poetic com- 
 munion, I am unwilling to offer you any 
 commonplace compliments. Perhaps you 
 have ah'eady won a malicious victory by 
 thus embarrassing a maker of books." 
 
 The 3'oung man was certainly not want- 
 ing in the sort of shrewdness which is 
 permissible to a man of honor. By re- 
 turn mail he received an answer : 
 
 " To Monsieur de Canalis — You grow 
 more and more sensible, my dear poet.
 
 MOD EST E MIGNON, 
 
 369 
 
 My father is a count. The chief glory of 
 our house was a cardinal, in the days when 
 cardinals walked the earth by the side of 
 kings. I am the last of our family, but I 
 have the necessary quarterings to make 
 my entry into any court or chapter-house 
 in Europe. We are quite the equals of 
 the Canalis. You will be kind enough to 
 excuse me from sending j'ou our arms. 
 
 " Endeavor to reply as truthfully as I 
 have done. I await your response to know 
 if I can then sign myself as I do now, 
 " Your servant, 0. d'Este M." 
 
 " The little mischief ! how she abuses 
 her privileges," cried La Briere ; "but is 
 she frank ?" 
 
 No young man can be four years pri- 
 vate secretary to a cabinet minister, and 
 live in Paris and observe the carrying on 
 of many intrigues, 'with perfect impunity ; 
 the purest soul is more or less intoxicated 
 by the heady atmosphere of the imperial 
 cit3^ Happy in the thought that he was 
 not Canalis, our young secretary engaged 
 a place in the mail-coach for Havre, after 
 writing a letter in which he announced 
 that the promised answer would be sent 
 on a certain day — excusing the delay on 
 the ground of the importance of the con- 
 fession and the pressure of his duties at 
 the ministry. 
 
 He took care to get from the director- 
 general of the post-office a note to the 
 postmaster at Havre, requesting secrecy 
 and attention to his wishes. Ernest was 
 thus enabled to see Frangoise Crochet 
 when she came for the letters, and to 
 follow her without exciting obsers^ation. 
 Guided by her, he reached Ingou\ille and 
 saw Modeste Mignon at the window of the 
 Chalet. 
 
 "Well, Frangoise?" he heard the 
 young girl say : to which the maid re- 
 sponded : 
 
 '•Yes, mademoiselle, I have one." 
 
 Struck by the girl's great beautj', 
 Ernest retx'aced his steps and asked a 
 man on the street the name of the owner 
 of the magnificent estate. 
 
 " That ? " said the man, nodding to the 
 villa. 
 
 "Yes, my friend." 
 
 " Oh, that belongs to Monsieur Vilquin, 
 the richest shipping merchant in Havre, 
 a man so x'ich he doesn't know what he is 
 worth.". 
 
 " There is no Cardinal Vilquin that I 
 know of in historj'," thought Ernest, as 
 he walked back to Havre to return to 
 Paris. Naturally he questioned the post- 
 master about the Vilquin family, and 
 learned that it possessed an enormous 
 fortune. Monsieur Vilquin had a son and 
 two daug-hters, one of whom was mar- 
 ried to Monsieur Althor, junior. Pru- 
 dence kept La Briere from seeming 
 anxious about the Vilquins ; the post- 
 master was already looking at him sus- 
 piciously. 
 
 "Is there any one staying with them 
 at the present moment," he asked, "be- 
 sides the family ? " 
 
 "The D'Herouville family is there just 
 now. They do talk of a marriage be- 
 tween the young duke and the youngest 
 Mademoiselle Vilquin." 
 
 " There was a celebrated Cardinal 
 d'Herouville under the Valois," thought 
 Ernest, '^nd a terrible marshal whom 
 they made a duke in tlie time of Henry 
 IV." . 
 
 Ernest returned to Paris having seen 
 enough of Modeste to dream of her, and 
 to think that, whether she w^ere rich or 
 whether she were poor, if she had a noble 
 soul he would like to make her Madame 
 de la Briere ; and he resolved to con- 
 tinue the correspondence. 
 
 Ah ! you poor women of France, try to 
 remain hidden if you can ; try to weave 
 the least little romance about your lives 
 in the midst of a civilization which posts 
 in the public streets the hours when the 
 coaches arrive and depart ; which counts 
 the letters and stamps them twice over, 
 first with the precise moment when they 
 are thrown into the boxes, and next when 
 they are distributed ; which numbers the 
 houses, prints the tax of each tenant on a 
 metal register at the doors (after verify- 
 ing its particulars), and which will soon 
 possess one vast register of every inch of 
 its territory dow'n to the smallest parcel 
 of land, and the most insignificant feat- 
 ures of it — a giant work ordained by a
 
 370 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 giant. Try, imprudent young- ladies, to 
 escape not only the eye of the police, but 
 the incessant chatter which takes place 
 in a country town about the veriest trifles 
 — which counts how many dishes the pre- 
 fect has at his dessert, how many shces 
 of melon are left at the door of some 
 small householder, which listens to catch 
 the chink of the gold a thrifty man lays 
 by, and spends its evening's in calculating 
 the incomes of the villaj^e and the town 
 and the dei)artment. It was mere chance 
 that enabled Modeste to escape discovery 
 through Ernest's reconnoitering expedi- 
 tion — a step for which he was already 
 reproaching himself ; but what Parisian 
 wants to be the dupe of a little countiy 
 giri ? Incapable of being duped ! that 
 maxim is the dissolvent of all noble sen- 
 timents in man. 
 
 Wc can readily guess the struggle of 
 feeling to which this honest young fellow 
 fell a prey when we read the letter that 
 he now indited, in which every stroke of 
 the flail which scourged his conscience 
 will be found to have left its trace. 
 
 This is what Modeste read S. few days 
 later, as she sat b^' her window on a fine 
 summer's day : 
 
 # 
 
 •' Mademoiselle — Without hypocrisy, 
 yes, if I had been certain that you pos- 
 sessed an immense fortune I should have 
 acted dilTerently. Why? I have searched 
 for the I'enson ; here it it. We have with- 
 in us an inborn feeling, inordinately de- 
 veloped by social life, which drives us to 
 tlie pursuit and to the possession of hap- 
 piness. Most men confound happiness 
 with the means that lead to it ; money 
 is in their eyes the chief element of hap- 
 piness. I should, therefore, have en- 
 deavored to please you, prompted by 
 that social sentiment which has in all 
 ages made wealth a religion. At least, 
 I think I should. It is not to be expected 
 of a man still young that he can have the 
 wisdom which substitutes good sense for 
 the pleasure of the senses; within sight 
 of a prey the brutal instinct hidden in the 
 heart of man drives him on. Instead of 
 a lesson, I should have sent you compli- 
 ments and flatteries. Should I have kept 
 
 my own esteem in so doing ? I doubt it. 
 Mademoiselle, in such a case success 
 brings absolution : but happiness ? that 
 is another thing. Should I have dis- 
 trusted my vvife had I won her in that 
 way ? Most assuredly I should. Your 
 advance to me would sooner or later have 
 come between us. Your husband, how- 
 ever grand your fancy might have him, 
 would have ended by reproaching ;\ou 
 for having abased him. You, j^ourself, 
 might have come, sooner or later, to 
 despise him. The strong man forgives, 
 but the poet laments. Such, mademoi- 
 selle, is the answer which my honesty 
 compels me to make to you. 
 
 " And now, listen to me. You have 
 the triumph of forcing me to reflect 
 deeply — first upon .you, whom I do not 
 sufficiently know ; next upon myself, of 
 whom I knew too little. You have had 
 the power to stir up many of the evil 
 thoughts which crouch in all hearts ; but 
 from them something good and generous 
 in me lias come forth, and I greet j^ou 
 with my most fervent benedictions, just 
 as at sea we hail the lighthouse which 
 shows the rocks on whicli we were about 
 to perish. Here is my confession, for I 
 would not lose your esteem nor my own 
 for all the treasures of earth. 
 
 '•I wished to know who you were. I 
 have just returned from Havre, where 
 I saw Francoise Cochet, and followed her 
 to Ingouville. You are as beautiful as 
 the woman of a poet's dream ; but I do 
 not know whether jo\x are Mademoiselle 
 Vilquin concealed under Mademoiselle 
 d'Herouville, or Mademoiselle d'Herou- 
 ville hidden under Mademoiselle Vilquin. 
 Though all is fair in war, I blushed at 
 such spying and stopped short in my in- 
 quiries. You have roused my curiosity ; 
 forgive me for being somewhat of a wo- 
 man ; it is, I believe, the privilege of a 
 poet. 
 
 " Now that I have laid bare my heart 
 and allowed you to read it, you will be- 
 lieve in the sinceritj' of what I am about 
 to add. Tliough the glimpse I had of you 
 was all too rapid, it has sufficed to modifj' 
 my opinion of your conduct. You are a 
 poet and a poem, even more than you are
 
 MOD EST E MIGNON. 
 
 371 
 
 a woman. Yes, there is in you something' 
 more precious than beauty ; you are the 
 beautiful Ideal of art, of fancy. The 
 step you took, blamable as it would be in 
 an ordinary young- girl, allotted to an 
 every-day destiny, has another aspect in 
 one endowed with the nature which I now 
 attribute to you. Among' the crowd of 
 being's flung- by fate into the social life of 
 this planet to make up a generation, there 
 are exceptional ones. If your letter is the 
 outcome of long' poetic reveries on the 
 destiny which conventionality reserves for 
 women, if, constrained by the impulse of 
 a lofty and intellig'ent mind, you have 
 wished to understand the life of a man to 
 whom j'ou attribute the g'ift of g'enius, to 
 the end that j'ou may create a friendship 
 withdrawn from the ordinary relations of 
 life, with a soul in comumnion with your 
 own, disregai'ding: thus the ordinary tram- 
 mels of your sex — then, assuredl\% you 
 are an exception. The law which serves 
 to measure the actions of the crowd is too 
 limited for you. But in that case, the re- 
 mark in my first letter returns in greater 
 force — you have done too much or not 
 enough. 
 
 "Accept once more my thanks for the 
 service you have rendered me, that of 
 compelling me to sound my heart. You 
 have corrected in me the false idea, only 
 too common in France, that marriage 
 should be a means of fortune. While I 
 struggled with my conscience a sacred 
 voice spolce to me. I swore solemnly to 
 make my fortune mj'self, and not be led 
 by motives of cupidity in choosing the 
 companion of my life. I have also sought 
 to repress the blamable curiosity you have 
 excited in me. You have not six millions. 
 There is no concealment possible in Havre 
 for a young lady who possesses such a 
 fortune ; you would be discovered at once 
 by the pack of hounds of great families 
 whom I see in Paris on the hunt after 
 heiresses, and who have already' sent one, 
 the grand equerry, the .young duke, 
 among the Yilquins. Therefore, believe 
 me, the sentiments I have now expressed 
 are fixed in mj' mind as a rule of life, 
 from which I have abstracted all influ- 
 ences of romance or of actual fact. 
 
 "Prove to me, therefore, that you have 
 one of those souls which maj' be forgiven 
 for its disobedience to the common law, 
 by perceiving and comprehending the 
 spirit of this letter as you did that of my 
 first letter. If you are destined to a 
 middle-class life, obey the iron law which 
 holds society together. As a superior 
 woman, I admire 3'ou; but if you seek to 
 obey an impulse wliich you ought to re- 
 press, I pity j'ou. The all-wise moral of 
 that great domestic epic '' Clarissa Har- 
 lowe •■ is that legitimate and honorable 
 love led the poor victim to her ruin 
 because it was conceived, developed, and 
 pursued beyond tlie boundaries of family 
 restraint. The familv, however cruel and 
 even foolish it maj' be, is in the right 
 against the Lovelaces. The family is 
 Society. Believe me, the glory of a 
 young girl, of a woman, must iilways be 
 that of repressing her most ardent im- 
 pulses within the narrow sphere of con- 
 ventionality. If I had a daughter able to 
 become a Madame de Stael, I should wish 
 her dead at fifteen. Can you imagine a 
 daughter of yours flaunting on the stage 
 of fame, exhibiting herself to win the 
 plaudits of a crowd, and not suffer anguish 
 at the thought ? No matter to what 
 heights a woman can rise by the inward 
 poetry of her soul, she must sacrifice the 
 outer signs of superiority on the altar of 
 her home. Her impulse, her genius, her 
 aspii-ations toward the good and the sub- 
 lime, the whole poem of a young girl's 
 being, should belong to the man .she ac- 
 cepts, and the children whom she will 
 bring into the world. I think I perceive 
 in you a secret desire to widen the narrow 
 circle of the life to which all women are 
 condemned, and to put love and passion 
 into marriage. Ah ! it is a beautiful 
 dream ! it is not impossible ; it is difficult, 
 but if realized, may it not be to the de- 
 spair of souls wlio are — forgive me the 
 hacknej'ed word — misunderstood ? 
 
 '•'If you seek a platonic friendship it 
 will be to your sorrow in after years. If 
 3'our letter was a jest, discontinue it. 
 This little romance is to end liere— is it 
 not ? It has not been without fruit. My 
 sense of honesty is aroused, and you, on
 
 372 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 your side, will have learned something of 
 social life. Turn your thoughts to real 
 life ; throw the enthusiasms you have 
 culled from literature into the virtues of 
 your sex. 
 
 •'Adieu, mademoiselle. Do me the honor 
 to grant me your esteem. Having geen 
 you, or one whom I believe to be you, I 
 have known that your letter was simply 
 natural ; a flower so lovely turns to the 
 sun — of poeti-y. Love poetry as you love 
 flowers, music, the grandeur of the sea, 
 the beauties of nature; love it as an 
 adornment of the soul, but remember 
 what I have had the honor of telling you 
 as to the nature of poets. Take care not 
 ^o marry, as you say, a fool, but seek 
 carefully the partner whom God has made 
 for you. There are souls, believe me, who 
 are fit to appreciate you, and to make 
 you happy. If I were rich, if you were 
 poor, I would lay my heart and my fort- 
 une at your feet some day ; for I believe 
 your soul to be full of riches and of loj'alty; 
 to you I could confide my life and my 
 honor in absolute security. 
 
 " Once more, adieu, fairest daughter of 
 Eve the fair." 
 
 The reading of this letter, swallowed 
 like a drop of water in the desert, lifted 
 the mountain which weighed heavily on 
 Modeste's heart ; then she saw the mis- 
 take she had made in arranging her plan, 
 and repaired it by giving Francoise some 
 envelopes directed to herself, and telling 
 her not to come to the Chalet again. 
 Henceforth Francoise, after returning to 
 her own house, could put the letters which 
 came from Paris into these envelopes, 
 and post them again, secretly. Modeste 
 resolved to receive the postman herself 
 on the steps of the Chalet at the hour 
 when he made his delivery. 
 
 As to tlio feelings that this reply, in 
 which the noble heart of poor La Briere 
 beat beneath the brilliant phantom of 
 Canalis, excited in Modeste, they were as 
 multifarious and confused as the waves 
 which rushed to die along the shore while, 
 with her eyes fixed on the wide ocean, she 
 gave herself up to the joy of having (if we 
 dare say so) harpooned an angelic soul 
 
 in the Parisian sea; of having divined that 
 hearts of price might sometimes be found 
 in harmony' with genius, and, above all, 
 for having followed the magic voice of 
 intuition. 
 
 A vast interest was now about to ani- 
 mate her life. The wires of her cage were 
 broken. Her thoughts took wings. 
 
 " Oh, father ! " she cried, looking out 
 to the horizon. " Come back and make 
 us very rich." 
 
 The answer which Ernest de la Briere 
 received five days later will tell the reader 
 more than any elaborate disquisition of 
 ours. 
 
 IX. 
 
 " To Monsieur de Canalis : 
 
 "My Friend — Sufi"er me to give you 
 that name — 3'ou have delighted me ; I 
 would not have you other than you are 
 in this letter, the first — oh, may it not be 
 the last ! Who but a poet could have 
 excused and understood a young girl so 
 delicatelj' ? 
 
 " I wish to speak to you with the sin- 
 cerity that dictated the opening lines of 
 your letter. And first, let me sny that 
 fortunately you do not know me at all. 
 I can joyfulh' assure you that I am neither 
 that hideous Mademoiselle Vilquin nor the 
 very noble and withered Mademoiselle 
 d'Herouville who floats between twentj' 
 and forty years of age, unable to decide 
 on a satisfactory date. The Cardinal 
 d'Herouville flourished in the history of 
 the Church at least a century before the 
 cardinal of whom we boast as our only 
 family glory — for I take no account of 
 lieutenant-generals, and abbes who write 
 trumpery little verses. 
 
 " Moreover, I do not live in the mag- 
 nificent villa Vilquin ; there is not in m^' 
 .veins, thank God, the ten-millionth of a 
 drop of that chilly blood which flows be- 
 hind a counter. I come on one side from 
 Germany, on the other from the south of 
 France ; my mind hns a Teutonic love of 
 reverie, my blood the vivacity of Provence. 
 I am noble, both on my father's and on
 
 MOD EST E MIGNON. 
 
 373 
 
 my mother's side. On my mother's I de- 
 rive from every page of the Almanach de 
 Gotha. In short, my precautions are well 
 taken. It is not in any man's power, nor 
 even in tlie power of the law, to unmasl< 
 my incog'nito. I shall remain veiled, un- 
 known. 
 
 "As to ni}' person and as to m}' 'be- 
 longings,' as the Normans say, make 
 youi'self easj'. I am at least as hand- 
 some as the little girl (ignorantly happy) 
 who attracted .your notice, and I do not 
 call myself poverty-stricken ; although ten 
 sons of peers may not accompany me in 
 my walks. I have seen the humiliating 
 comedj'^ of the heiress adored for her mil- 
 lions plaj'ed on my account. In short, 
 make no attempt, even on a Avager, to 
 reach me. Alas ! though free as air, I 
 am watched and guarded — by myself, in 
 tlie first place, and secondly, by peojjle of 
 nerve and courage who would not hesitate 
 to put a knife in j'our heart if you tried to 
 penetrate my retreat. I do not say this 
 to excite your courage or stimulate your 
 curiosity ; I believe I have no need of such 
 incentives to interest you and attach you 
 to me. 
 
 "I will now reply to the second edi- 
 tion, considerably enlarged, of your first 
 sermon . 
 
 " Will you have a confession ? I said to 
 myself when I saw you so "distrustful, and 
 mistaking me for Corinne (whose improvi- 
 sations bore me dreadfully'), that in all 
 probability dozens of Muses had already 
 led .you, rashly curious, into their valleys, 
 and begged .vou to taste the fruits of their 
 boarding-scliool Parnassus. Oh ! you are 
 perfeGtl.y safe with me, my friend ; I maj' 
 love poetry, but I have no little verses in 
 my pocket-book, and mj'' stockings are, 
 and will remain, imma;culately white. You 
 shall not be pestered by 'slight pieces ' 
 in one or more volumes. And, finally, 
 should it ever happen tliat I say to you 
 the word ' Come ! ' you will not find — 
 you know it now — an old maid, poor and 
 ugly. 
 
 " Ah ! my friend, if you only knew how 
 I regret that you came to Havre ! You 
 have lowered the charm of what you call 
 mv romance. God alone knew the ti-eas- 
 
 ure I was. reserving for the man noble 
 enough, and trusting enough, and per- 
 spicacious enough to come — having faith 
 in my letters, having penetrated step by 
 step into the depths of nxy lieart — to come 
 to our first meeting witli the simplicity of 
 a child : for that was what I dreamed to 
 be the innocence of a man of genius. And 
 now you have spoiled my treasure ! But 
 I forgive you ; you live in Paris and, as 
 you say, there is alwa.ys a man within a 
 poet. 
 
 "Because I tell you this will you think 
 me some little girl who cultivates an en- 
 chanted garden full of illusions ? Do not 
 amuse yourself by throwing stones into 
 the broken windows of a long-ruined cha- 
 teau. You, who are witty and wise, liave 
 you not guessed that when Mademoiselle 
 d'Este received your pedantic lesson she 
 said to herself : ' No, dear poet, my first 
 letter was not the pebble which a vaga- 
 bond child flings about the highway to 
 frighten the owner of the adjacent fruit- 
 trees, but a net carefull.v and prudentl.y 
 thrown by a fisherman seated on a rock 
 above the sea, hoping for a miraculous 
 draught.' 
 
 " All tliat 3-ou say so beautifully about 
 the family has my approval. The man 
 who is able to please me, and of whom I 
 believe m.vself wortliy, will have my heart 
 and my life — with the consent of my 
 parents, for I will neither grieve them, 
 nor take them unawares: liappily, I am 
 certain of reigning over them ; and, be- 
 sides, they are wholly without prejudices. 
 Indeed, in every way, I feel myself pro- 
 tected against any delusions in my dream. 
 I have built the fortress with my own 
 hands, and I have allowed it to be forti- 
 fied by the boundless devotion of those 
 who watch over me as if I were a treas- 
 ure — not that I am unable to defend my- 
 self in the open, if need be ; for, let me 
 say, circumstances have furnished me 
 with well-tempered armor on which is 
 engraved the word 'Disdain.' I have 
 the deepest horror of all that is calculatr 
 ing — of all that is not pure, disinterested, 
 and wholly noble, I worship the beauti- 
 ful, the ideal, without being romantic ; 
 though I have been, in my heart of hearts.
 
 374 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 in my dreams. But I recognize tlie ti-uth 
 of tlie various tilings, just even to vul- 
 garity-, which you have written me about 
 Society and social life. 
 
 " For the time being we are, and we can 
 only be, two friends. Why seek an un- 
 seen friend ? you ask. Your person ni:iy 
 be unknown to me, but your mind, your 
 heart I knoiv ; they please uie, and I feel 
 an infinitude of thoughts within my soul 
 which need a man of genius for their con- 
 fidant. I do not wish the poem of my 
 heart to be wasted ; I would have it 
 known to you as it is to God. What a 
 precious thing is a true, comrade, one to 
 whom we can tell all! You will surely 
 not reject the unpublished leaflets of a 
 young girl's thoughts when they fly to 
 you like the pretty insects fluttering 
 to the sun? I am sure you liave never 
 before met with this good fortune of the 
 soul — the honest confldonces of an honest 
 girl. Listen to her prattle ; accept the 
 music that she has heretofore sung only 
 to herself. Later, if our souls are sisters, 
 if our characters warrant the attempt, 
 some day a white-haired old serving-man 
 shall await you by the wayside and lead 
 3'ou to the cottage, the villa, the castle, 
 the palace — I don't yet know v>'hat sort of 
 bower it will be, nor what its color, nor 
 whether this conclusion will ever be pos- 
 sible ; but you will admit, will you not ? 
 that it is poetic, and that Mademoiselle 
 d'Este has something in her. H;is she 
 not left you free ? Has she gone with 
 jealous feet to watch you in the salons of 
 Paris? Has she imposed upon you the 
 labors of some high euiprise, such as 
 paladins sought voluntarily in the olden 
 time? No, she asks a purelj^ spiritual 
 and mystic alliance. Come to me when 
 you are unhappy, wounded, weary. Tell 
 me all, hide nothing; I shall have balms 
 for all your ills. I am twenty years of 
 age, dear friend, but I have the sense of 
 fifty, and unfortunatelj- I have known 
 through the experience of another all 
 the hori'ors and the delights of love. I 
 know what baseness, what infamj', the 
 human heart can contain ; yet I myself 
 am the most honest of girls. No, I have 
 no illusions ; but I have something bet- 
 
 ter, something real — I have beliefs and 
 a religion. See! I open the game of our 
 confidences. 
 
 "Whomsoever I marry — provided I 
 choose him for myself — may sleep in 
 peace or go to the East Indies, su)'e 
 that he will find me on his return work- 
 ing at the tapestry which I began before 
 he left me ; and in every stitch he shall 
 read a verse of the poem of which he has 
 been the hero. Yes, I have resolved 
 within my heart never to follow my 
 husband where he does not wish me to 
 go. I will be the divinity of his hearth. 
 That is my religion of humanitj^. But 
 why should I not test and choose the man 
 to whom I am to be as the life to the 
 body ? Is a man ever impeded by life ? 
 \^'hat can that woman be who thwarts 
 the man she loves ? — It is illness, not life. 
 Py life, I mean that joyous health which 
 makes each hour a pleasure. 
 
 "But to return to your letter, which 
 will always be precious to me. Yes, jest- 
 ing apart, it contains that which I desired, 
 an expression of prosaic sentiments whicli 
 are as necessary to family life as air to 
 the lungs; and without which no happi- 
 ness is possible. To act as an honest 
 man, to think as a poet, to love as 
 women love, that is what I wished for 
 in my friend, and it is now no longer a 
 chimera. 
 
 "Adieu, my friend. lam poor at this 
 moment. That is one of the reasons why 
 I cling to my concealment, my mask, my 
 imi^regnable fortress. I have read your 
 last verses in the ' Revue ' — ah ! with 
 what delight, now that I am initialed 
 in the austere and secret grandeur of 
 jour soul. 
 
 " Will it make j'ou unhappy to know- 
 that a young girl praj-s for you ; that 
 you are her solitary thought — without a 
 rival except in her father and her mother? 
 Can there be any reason why you should 
 reject these pages full of ybu, written for 
 you, seen bj- no eye but yours? Send me 
 their counterpart. I p.m so little of a 
 woman yet that j'our confidences — pro- 
 vided they are full and true — will suffice 
 for the happiness of your 
 
 "O. d'Este M."
 
 31 ODES TE MlGXaN. 
 
 375 
 
 " Good heavens ! can I be in love al- 
 ready ? "-cried the 3'oung secretarj\ -when 
 he perceived that he hid held this letter 
 in his hands more than an hour after 
 reading it. "What shall I do? Slie 
 thinks she is writing- to the great poet I 
 Can I continue the deception? Is she 
 a woman of forty, or a girl of twenty ? "' 
 
 Ernest was now fascin:sted by the great 
 gulf of the unknown. The unkno^\Ti is 
 the obscurity of infinitude, and nothing 
 is more alluinng. In that somber vast- 
 ness fires flash, and furrow and color the 
 abyss with fancies like those of JIartynn. 
 For a busy man like Canalis, an adven- 
 ture of this ki:id is swept away like a 
 harebell by a mountain torrent, hut in 
 the more unoccupied life of the young 
 secretar3', this charming- giil, whom his 
 imagination persistently connected with 
 tlie blonde beauty at the window, re- 
 mnined in his heart, and did as much 
 mischief in his regulated life as a fox in 
 a poult i-y -yard. Ernest allowed himself 
 to be greatly preoccupied 'by this mysteri- 
 ous coi'respondent ; and he answered her 
 last letter with another, a pretentious 
 and carefully studied epistle, in which, 
 however, passion began to reveal itself in 
 spite of him. 
 
 '•'Mademoiselle — Is it quite loyal in 
 you to enthi'one yourself in the heai.t of 
 a poor poet with a latent intention of 
 abandoning' him if he is not exacth' what 
 you wish, bequeathing him endless re- 
 grets — showing him for a moment an 
 image of perfection, were it onlj' assumed, 
 and at any rate giving him a foretaste of 
 happiness? I was xery short-sighted in 
 soliciting this letter, in which you have 
 begun to unfold the elegant fabric of 
 your thoughts. A man can easily be- 
 come enamored with a mysterious un- 
 known who combines such fearlessness 
 with such originality, so much imagina- 
 tion with so much feeling. Who would 
 not wisli to know you after reading 3'our 
 lirst confidence ? It requires a strong 
 effort on my part to retain my senses in 
 thinking of you, for you combine all that 
 can trouble the head or the heart of man. 
 I therefore make the most of the little 
 
 self-possession jom have left me to oflfer 
 j'ou ray humble remonstrances. 
 
 "Do you really believe, mademoiselle, 
 that letters, more or less true in relation 
 to the -life of the writers, more or less in- 
 sincere — for those wliich we write to each 
 other are the expressions of the moment 
 at which we pen thein, and not of the 
 general tenor of our lives — do you believe, 
 I say, that however beautiful they may 
 be, they can at all replace the representa- 
 tion that we could make of ouiselves to 
 each other by the revelations of daih- 
 intercourse ? Man is dual. There is a 
 life invisible, that of the heart, to which 
 letters may suffice ; and there is a life 
 material, to wliich more importance is, 
 alas, attached than one would believe at 
 your age. These two existences must, 
 however, be made to harmonize in the 
 ideal which you cherish ; and this, I may 
 remark in passing, is very rare. 
 
 "The pure, spontaneous, disinterested 
 homage of a solitarj' soul which is both 
 educated and chaste, is one of those celes- 
 tial flowers wliose color and fragrance 
 console for everj' grief, for eveiy wound, 
 for every betrayal which makes up the 
 life of a literary man ; and I thank you 
 with an impulse equal to j-our own. But 
 after this poetical exchange of m^" griefs 
 for the pearls of your charity, what do 
 you expect ? I have neither the genius 
 nor the splendid position of Lord Byron ; 
 above all, I have not the halo of his fic- 
 titious damnation and his false social 
 woes. But what could you have hoped 
 from him in like circumstances? His 
 friendship ? Well, he who ought to have 
 felt only pride was eaten up by a sickly, 
 iiTttable vanity wliicli discouraged friend- 
 shi|i. I, a thousand-fold mors insignifi- 
 cant than he, may I not liave discordances 
 of character whicli make life unpleasant, 
 and render friendship a burden heavy 
 indeed to bear ? In exchange for your 
 reveries, what would you gain ? The 
 dissatisfactions of a life which would not 
 be wholly yours. The compact is mad- 
 ness. 
 
 "Let me tell you why. In the first place, 
 3'our projected poem is a plagiarism. A 
 young German girl, who was not, like
 
 376 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 3'ou, semi-Germaa, but altogether so, 
 adored Goethe with the rash intoxication 
 of her twenty years. She made him her 
 friend, her religion, her god, knowing at 
 the same time that he was married. Ma- 
 dame Goethe, a worthy German woman, 
 lent herself <to this worship with a sly 
 good-nature which did not cure Bettina. 
 But what was the end of it all? The 
 young ecstatic married a man who was 
 younger and handsomer than Goethe. 
 Now, between ourselves, let us admit 
 that a young girl who should make her- 
 self the handmaid of a man of genius, his 
 equal througli comprehension, and should 
 piously worship him till death, like one 
 of those divine figures sketched by the 
 masters on the shutters of their mystic 
 chapels, and who, when Germany lost 
 him, should have retired to some solitude 
 away from men, like the friend of Lord 
 Bolingbroke — let us admit, I say, that 
 that young girl would have lived forever, 
 inlaid in the glory of the poet as Mary 
 Magdalene in the cross and triumph of 
 our Lord. If that is sublime, what say 
 you to the reverse of the picture ? As 
 I am neither Goethe nor Lord Byron, the 
 colossi of poetry and egotism, but simply 
 the author of a few esteemed verses, I 
 cannot expect the honors of a cult. I am 
 not disposed to be a martyr. I have am- 
 bition, and I have a heart; I am still 
 young and I have my career to make. 
 See me for what I am. The bount3'^ of 
 the king and the protection of his minis- 
 ters give me sufficient means of living. I 
 have the outward bearing of a very or- 
 dinary' man. I go to the soirees in Paris, 
 like any other empty-headed fop; but in 
 a carriage whose wheels do not rest upon 
 a foundation which is solidified, as the 
 present times demand, by property in- 
 vested in the- funds. But if I am not 
 rich, neither do I have the reliefs and 
 consolations of life in a garret, the toil 
 uncomprehended, the fame in penurj% 
 which belong to men who are worth far 
 more than I — D'Arthez, for instance. 
 
 "Ah! what prosaic conclusions will 
 your young enthusiasm find to these en- 
 chanting visions. Let us stop here. If 
 I have had the happiness of seeming to 
 
 j'ou a terrestrial paragon, you have been 
 to me a thing of light and a beacon, like 
 those stars that shine for a moment and 
 disappear. May nothing ever tarnish 
 this episode of our lives. Were we to * 
 continue it I might love you ; I might 
 conceive one of those mad passions which | 
 rend all obstacles, which light fires in the 
 lieart whose violence is greater than their 
 duration. And suppose I succeeded in 
 pleasing you ? we should end our tale 
 in the common vulgar way — marriage, 
 a household, children, Belise and Hen- 
 riette Chrysale together ! — could it be ? 
 Therefore, adieu." 
 
 " To Monsieur de Canalis : 
 
 " My Friend — Your letter gives me as 
 much pain as pleasure. But perhaps we 
 shall soon find nothing but pleasure in 
 writing to each other. Understand me 
 thoroughly. The soul speaks to God and 
 asks him for many things ; he is nmte. I 
 seek to obtain in you the answers that 
 God does not make to me. Cannot the 
 friendship of Mademoiselle de Gournay 
 and Montaigne be revived in us ? Do you 
 not remember the household of Sismonde 
 de Sismondi in Geneva ? The loveUest 
 home ever known, as I have been told ; 
 something like that of the Marquis de 
 Pescaire and his wife, who were happy to 
 old age. Is it impossible that two hearts, 
 two harps, should exist as in a symphony, 
 answering each other from a distance, vi- 
 brating with delicious melodj' in unison ? 
 Man alone of all creation is in himself the 
 harp, the musician, and the listener. Do 
 you think to find me uneasy and jealous 
 like ordinary women ? I know that you 
 go into the world and meet the hand- 
 somest and the wittiest women in Paris. 
 Maj' I not suppose that some one of those 
 mermaids has deigned to clasp you in her 
 cold and scalj' arms, and that she has in- 
 spired the answer whose prosaic opinions 
 sadden" me? There is something in life 
 more beautiful than these flowers of Pa- 
 risian coquetry ; there grows a blossom
 
 MODE ST E MIGNON. 
 
 377 
 
 far up those Alpine peaks called men of 
 genius, the glory of humanity, which they 
 fertilize with the dews their loftj^ heads 
 draw from the skies. I seek to cultivate 
 that flower and make it hloom ; for its 
 wild 3'et gentle fragrance can never fail — 
 it is eternal. 
 
 " Do me the honor to believe that there 
 is nothing low or commonplace in me. 
 Were I Bettina, for I know to whom you 
 allude, I should never have become Ma- 
 dame von Arnim ; and had I been one of 
 Lord Byron's many loves, I should be at 
 this moment in a cloister. You have 
 touched me to the quick. You do not 
 know me, but j'ou shall know me. I feel 
 within me something that is sublime, of 
 which I dare speak without vanity. God 
 has put into mj' soul the roots of that 
 Alpine flower born on the summits of 
 which I speak, and I will plant it in an 
 earthen-pot upon my window-sill and see 
 it die. No, that glorious flower-cup, sin- 
 gle in its beaut^^, intoxicating in its fra- 
 grance, shall not be dragged through the 
 \'nlgarities of life ! it is yours — j^ours, be- 
 fore any eye has blighted it, yours for- 
 ever ! Yes, my poet, all my thoughts are 
 yours, the most secret, the most foolish 
 ones, even ; my heart is yours without 
 reserve and with its infinite affection. If 
 you should personally not please me, I 
 shall never marry. I can live the life of 
 the heart, I can exist on your mind, your 
 sentiments ; they please me, and I will 
 alwaj's be what I am, your friend. Yours 
 is a noble moral nature ; I have recog- 
 nized it, I have appreciated it, and that 
 suffices me. In that is all my future. 
 Do not laugh at a young and pretty 
 handmaiden who shrinks not from the 
 thought of being some day the old com- 
 panion of a poet — a sort of mother per- 
 haps, or a housekeeper ; the guide of his 
 judgment and a source of his wealth. 
 This handmaiden — so devoted, so precious 
 to the lives of such as you — is pure, disin- 
 terested friendship, to whom you will tell 
 all, who listens and sometimes shakes her 
 head ; who knits bj' the light of the lamp 
 and watches until the poet shall return 
 home soaked with rain, or vexed in mind. 
 
 " Such shall be my destiny if I do not 
 
 have that of a liappy wife attached for- 
 ever to her husband ; I smile alike at 
 either fate. Do you believe France will 
 be any the worse if Mademoiselle d'Este 
 does not give it two or three sons, and 
 never becomes a Madame Vilquin-some- 
 thing-or-other ? As for me, I bhall never 
 be an old maid. I shall make myself a 
 mother, by taking care of others and by 
 my secret co-operation in the existence of 
 a great man, to whom also I shall carry 
 all my thoughts and all my earthh' 
 efforts. 
 
 " I have the deepest horror of common- 
 placeness. If I am free, if I am rich (and 
 I know that I am young and pi'etty), I 
 will never belong to some idiot, just be- 
 cause he is the son of a peer of France, 
 nor to a merchant who could ruin himself 
 and me in a day, nor to a handsome 
 creature who would be the woman of the 
 household, nor to a man of any kind who 
 would make me blush twenty times a day 
 for being his. Make yourself easy on that 
 point. My father adores my wishes ; he 
 will never oppose them. If I please my 
 poet, and he pleases me, the glorious 
 structure of our love shall be built so 
 high as to be inaccessible to any kind of 
 misfortune. I am an eaglet ; and you 
 will see it in my eyes. 
 
 '• I shall not repeat what I have already 
 said, but I will put its substance in the 
 least possible number of words, and con- 
 fess to you that I should be the happiest 
 of women if I were imprisoned by love as 
 I am now imprisoned by the wish and 
 will of a father. Ah ! m.Y friend, let us 
 reduce to the truth the romance that has 
 come to us through the first exercise of 
 my will : — 
 
 " A young girl, with a lively imagina- 
 tion, locked up in a tower, is wearj' with 
 longing to run loose in the park where 
 her eyes only are allowed to rove. She 
 invents a way to loosen her bars ; she 
 jumps from the casement ; she scales the 
 park wall; she frolics along the neigh- 
 bor's sward — it is the eternal comedy. 
 Well, that young girl is my soul, the neigh- 
 bor's park is your genius. Is it not all 
 very natural ? Was there ever a neigh- 
 bor who would complain of the pretty
 
 ><0 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDl' 
 
 feet that broke down .liis Irellises? So 
 much for the poet. 
 
 " But docs the lofty reasoiier after the 
 fasliion of Moliere want still better rea- 
 sons ? Well, hei-e they are. My dear 
 Geioute, marriag'cs are usually made in 
 defiance of common-sense. Parents make 
 inquiries about a young- man. If the 
 Leander — who is supplied by some friend, 
 or caught in a ball-room — is not a tiiief, 
 and has no visible rent in his reputation, 
 if lie has the necessary fortune, if he 
 comes from a coUeg-e or a law-school and 
 so fulfills tlie popular ideas of education, 
 and if ho wears his clothes with a gentle- 
 manly air, he is allowed to meet the 
 young lady, whose mother has ordered 
 her to guard her tongue, to let no sign of 
 her heart or soul appear on her face, 
 which must wear the smile of a danseuse 
 finishing a pirouette. These commands 
 are coupled with instructions as to the 
 danger of revealing her real character, 
 and the additional advice of not seeming 
 alarmingly well educated. If the settle- 
 ments have all been agreed upon, the par- 
 ents are good-natured, enough to let the 
 pair g'et acquainted during the rai^e mo- 
 ments when they are left alone together ; 
 they talk or walk together, but always 
 without the slightest freedom, for the^' 
 know tliat they are already bound. The 
 man is as much dressed up in soul as he 
 is in body, and so is the young girl. This 
 pitiable comedy, mixed with bouquets, 
 jewels, and tlieater-parties is called '•' pay- 
 ing one's addresses." It revolts me: I 
 desire that actual marriage shall be the 
 result of a previous and long marriage 
 of souls. A young girl, a woman, has 
 throughout her life only tliis one moment 
 when reflection, second sight, and expe- 
 rience are necessary to her. She plays 
 her liberty and her happiness, and she 
 is not allowed to throw the dice ; she 
 risks her all, and is forced to be a mere 
 spectator. I have the right, the will, 
 the power to make my own unhappiness, 
 and I use them, as did m^' mother, who, 
 won by beauty and led hy instinct, mar- 
 ried the most generous, the most liberal, 
 the most loving of men. I know that 
 you are free, a poet, and noble-looking. 
 
 Be sure that I should not have chosen 
 for a confidant one of your brothers in 
 Apollo who was already married. If my 
 mother was won by beauty, which is per- 
 haps the spirit of form,, why should I not 
 be attracted by the spirit and the form 
 united ? Shall I not know you better by 
 studying you in this correspondence than 
 I could through the vulgar experience of 
 ' receiving your addresses ' ? That is the 
 question, as Hamlet says. 
 
 " But my pi-oceedings, dear Chrysale, 
 have at least the merit of not binding us 
 personally. I know that love has its illu- 
 sions, and every illusion its to-morrow. 
 That is why there are so many partings 
 among lovers who believed themselves 
 bound to each other for life. Tlie proof 
 of love lies in two things — suffering and 
 happiness. When, after passing through 
 these double trials of life two beings have 
 shown each other their defects as well as 
 their good qualities, when thej'have really' 
 observed each other's character, then they 
 ma^' go to their grave hand in hand. My 
 dear Argante, who told you that our little 
 drama was to have no future ? In any 
 case shall we not have enjoyed the pleas- 
 ures of our correspondence ? * 
 
 " I await your orders, monseigneur, 
 and I am, with all my heart, 
 "' Your handmaiden, 
 
 "O. d'EsteM." 
 
 " To Mademoiselle O. d'Este M. — 
 Yon are a witch, a spirit, and I love you ! 
 Is that what you desired of me, most 
 original of girls ? Perhaps you are only 
 seeking to amuse your provincial leisure 
 with the spectacle of the follies which a 
 poet can commit. If so, you have done a 
 bad deed. Your two letters have enough 
 of the spirit of mischief in them to force 
 this doubt into the mind of a Parisian. 
 But I am no longer master of myself ; 
 my life, my future depend on the answer 
 3'ou will make me. Tell me if the cer- 
 tainty of an unbounded affection, given 
 in ignorance of all social conventions, will 
 touch j'ou — if you will suffer me to seek 
 you. There is anxiety enough and un- 
 certainty enough in the question as to 
 whether I can personally please you. If
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 379 
 
 your reply is favorable I chang-e my life, 
 I bid adieu to many irksome pleasures 
 which we have the folly to call liappi- 
 ness. Happiness, my dear and beautiful 
 unknown, is what you dream it to be — 
 a fusion of feelings, a perfect accordance 
 of souls, ihe im[)rnit of a noble ideal (such 
 as God permits us to form here below) 
 upon the trivial round of daily life whose 
 habits we must needs obey, a constancj' 
 of heart more precious far than what we 
 call fidelity. Can we say that we make 
 saciifices when the end m view is our 
 eternal good, the dream of poets, the 
 dream of maidens, the poem which, at 
 the entrance of life, as soon as thoug'ht 
 essays its wings, each. noble intellect has 
 pondered and caressed only to see it shiv- 
 ered to fragments on some stumbling- 
 block as hard as it is vulgar? — for to 
 the great majority of men, the foot of 
 reality steps instantly on that mysteri- 
 ous Qi^g so seldom hatched. 
 
 '•' I will not yet sjaeak to jou of myself, 
 of my past life, of my character, nor of 
 an affection almost maternal on one side, 
 filial on mine, which you have already se- 
 riously changed, and whose effect upon 
 my life would explain my use of the word 
 'sacrifice.' You have already rendered 
 me forgetful, not to sa.y ungrateful ; does 
 that satisfy' you ? Oh, speak ! Saj^ to 
 me one word, and I will love you till my 
 ej'es close in death, as the Marquis de 
 Pescaire loved his wife, as Romeo loved 
 Juliet, faithfully. Our life will be, for 
 me at least, that ' felicity untroubled ' 
 which Dante made the very element of 
 his Paradiso — a poem far superior to his 
 Inferno. It is strange, but it is not mj-- 
 self that I doubt in the long reveries 
 through which, like you, I follow the 
 windings of a di'eamed existence ; it is 
 you. Yes, dear, I feel within me the 
 power to love, and to love endlessly — to 
 march to the grave with gentle slowness 
 and a smiling eye, with my beloved on 
 m\' arm. and with never a cloud upon 
 the sunshine of o\ir souls. Yes, I dare 
 to face our uuitual old age, to see our- 
 selves with whitening heads, like the 
 venerable historian of Ital\', inspired al- 
 ways with the same affection but trans- 
 
 formed with the spirit of each season. 
 Hear me, I can no longer be ^-our friend 
 only. Though Chrysale, Geroute, and 
 Argante re-live, you say, in me, I am 
 not yet old enough to drink from the 
 cup held to xny lips by the sweet hands 
 of a veiled woman without a passionate 
 desire to tear off the domino and the 
 mask and see the face. Either write me 
 no more, or give me hope. Let nie see 
 you, or let me go. Must I bid you adieu ? 
 Will you permit me to sign myself, 
 
 " YouB Friexd ? " 
 
 "To Monsieur de Canalis — What 
 flattery ! with what rapidity is the grave 
 Anselme transformed into a handsome 
 Leander ! To what must I attribute 
 such a change ? to this black which I 
 put upon this white? to these ideas 
 which are to the flowers of \nj soul 
 what a rose drawn in charcoal is to 
 the roses in the garden ? Or to a rec- 
 ollection of the young girl whom you 
 took for me, and who is personallj'- as 
 like me as a waiting-woman is like her 
 mistress ? Have we changed roles ? 
 Have I the sense ? have ydu the fancy ? 
 But a truce with jesting. 
 
 "Your letter has made me know the 
 entrancing pleasures of the soul ; the first 
 that I have known outside of my familu 
 aft'ections. What, says a poet, are the 
 ties of blood which are so strong in ordi- 
 nary minds, compared to those divinely 
 forged within us by mysterious sj^rapa- 
 thies ? Let me thank you — no, we must 
 not thank each other for such things — 
 but God bless you for the happiness you 
 have given me ; may you be happy in the 
 joj' you have shed into my soul. You ex- 
 l^lain to me some of the apparent injus- 
 tices in social life. There is something, I 
 know not what, so dazzling-, so virile in 
 glory, that it belongs only to man ; God 
 forbids us women to wear its halo, but Ho 
 makes love oui- portion, giving us the ten- 
 derness which soothes the brow scorched, 
 by His lightnings. I have felt nw mis- 
 sion, or rather you have now confirmed 
 it. 
 
 "Sometimes, my friend. I rise in the 
 morning in a state of inexpressible sweet-
 
 380 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 ncss ; a sort of peace, tender and divine, 
 gives me an idea of heaven. My first 
 thoug-ht is then like a benediction. I call 
 these morning-s my little German wak- 
 ings, in opposition to my Southern sun- 
 sets, full of heroic deeds, battles, Roman 
 fetes and ardent poems. Well, after 
 reading your letter, so full of feverish im- 
 patience, I felt in my heart all the fresh- 
 ness of one of these celestial waking's, 
 when I love the air about me and all 
 Nature, and fancy that I am destined to 
 die for one I love. One of your poems, 
 'The Maiden's Song,' paints these de- 
 licious moments, when gaj'ety is tender, 
 when prayer is a necessity ; it is one of 
 mj'^ favorites. Do j'ou want me to put all 
 my flatteries into one ? — well, then, I 
 think 3^ou worthy to be me! 
 
 " Your letter, though short, enables 
 me to read you. Yes, I have guessed 
 your tumultuous struggles, your piqued 
 curiosity', your projects ; but I do not yet 
 know j'ou well enough to satisfy your 
 wishes. Hear me, dear; the mj^stery in 
 which I am shrouded permits me the free- 
 dom which lets you see to the bottom of 
 my heart. I& we once meet, adieu to our 
 mutual comprehension ! Will you make 
 a compact with me ? Was the first one 
 disadvantageous to you ? It won j-ou my 
 
 fsteem, and it is a great deal, my friend, 
 o gain an admiration lined throughout 
 with esteem. Write me your life in a few 
 words ; then tell me what you do in Paris, 
 day by day, with no reservations, and as 
 if you were talking with an old friend. 
 Well, having done that, I will take a step 
 myself — I will see you, I promise you 
 that. And it is a great deal. 
 
 "This, dear, is no intrigue, no adven- 
 ture; no gallantry, as you men call it,. 
 can come of it, I warn you frankly. It in- 
 volves my life, and more than that — some- 
 thing that causes me remorse for the 
 many thoughts that fly to you in flocks — 
 it involves my father's and my mother's 
 life. I adore them, and my choice must 
 please them ; they must find a son in my 
 friend. 
 
 " Tell me, to what extent can the superb 
 spirits of your kind, to whom God has 
 given the wings of His angels, without 
 
 always adding their amiability — how far 
 can they bend under a family-yoke, and 
 put up with its little miseries ? That is 
 a text I have meditated upon. Ah ! 
 though I said to my heart before I came 
 to you : Forward ! Onward ! it did not 
 tremble and palpitate any the less on the 
 way ; and I did not conceal from myself 
 the stoniness of the path nor the Alpine 
 difficulties I had to overcome. I thought 
 of all in my long meditations. Do I not 
 know that eminent men like you have 
 known the love they have inspired quite 
 as well as that which they themselves 
 have felt ; that they have had many ro- 
 mances in their lives — you particularlj', 
 who send forth those airy visions of your 
 soul that women rush to buy ? Yet still 
 I cried to myself, ' Onward ! ' because I 
 have studied, more than you give me 
 credit for, the geography of the great 
 summits of humanit}', Avhlch you tell me 
 are so cold. Did you not say that Goethe 
 and Byron were the colossi of egoism and 
 poetry ? Ah, my friend, you shared there 
 the error into which superficial minds are 
 apt to fall ; but in you perhaps it came 
 from generosity, false modesty, . or the 
 desire to escape from me ? Vulgar minds 
 may mistake the effects of toil for the 
 development of personal character, but 
 you must not. Neither Lord Byron, nor 
 Goethe, nor Walter Scott, nor Cuvier, 
 nor any inventor, belongs to himself, he 
 is the slave of his idea. And this mys- 
 terious power is more jealous than a wo- 
 man ; it absorbs them ; it makes them 
 live, and kills them for its sake. The 
 visible developments of their hidden ex- 
 istence resemble egotism in their results ; 
 but who shall dai'o to say that the man 
 who has abnegated self to give pleasure, 
 instruction, or grandeur to his epoch, is 
 an egoist ? Is a mother selfish when she 
 immolates all things to her child ? Well, 
 the detractors of genius do not j^erceive 
 its fecund maternity, that is all. The life 
 of a poet is so perpetual a sacrifice that 
 he needs a gigantic organization to bear 
 even the ordinary pleasures of life. There- 
 fore, into what sorrows maj' he not fall 
 when, like Moliere, he wishes to live the 
 life of feeling in its most poignant crises j
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 381 
 
 to me, remembering his personal life, 
 Moliere's comic writings are horrible. 
 
 " The generosity of genius seems to me 
 half divine ; and I place j'ou in tliis noble 
 family of alleged egoists. Ah ! if I had 
 found self-interest, ambition, a seared 
 nature where I now can see my best 
 loved flowers of the soul, you know not 
 what long- anguish I should have had to 
 bear. I met with disappointment before 
 I was sixteen. What would have become 
 of me had I learned at twenty that glory 
 is a lie, that he whose books express the 
 feelings hidden in raj heart was incapable 
 of feeling them when they were unveiled 
 for him alone ? Oh ! my friend, do you 
 know what would have become of me ? 
 Shall I take you into the recesses of my 
 soul ? I should have gone to my father 
 and said, ' Bring me the son-in-law 
 whom you desire ; my will abdicates — 
 marry me to whom you please.' And 
 the man might have been a notary, 
 banker, miser, fool, dullard, wearisome 
 as a rainy day, common as the usher of 
 a school, a manufacturer, or some brave 
 soldier without two ideas — he would have 
 had a resigned and attentive servant in 
 me. But what an awful suicide ! never 
 could m}' soul have expanded in the life- 
 giving rays of a beloved sun. No mur- 
 mur should have revealed to my father, 
 or my mother, or my children the suicide 
 of the creature who at this instant is 
 shaking her fetters, casting lightnings 
 from her ej'es, and flying toward jo\i 
 with eager wing. See, she is there in the 
 corner of your room, like Polyhymnia, 
 breathing the air of your presence, and 
 glancing about her with a gently curious 
 eye. Sometimes in the fields where my 
 husband would have taken me to walk, I 
 should have wept, apart and secretly, at 
 sight of a glorious morning ; and in m.\ 
 heart, or hidden in a bureau drawer, I 
 might have kept some treasure, the com- 
 fort of poor girls ill-used bj' love, sad, 
 poetic souls. — But I believe in you, my 
 friend. That belief rectifies all the 
 thoughts and fancies of my secret ambi- 
 tion, and sometimes — see how far my 
 frankness leads me — I wish I were in the 
 middle of the book we are just beginning ; 
 
 such persistency do I feel in my senti- 
 ments, such strength in my heart to love, 
 such constancy sustained by reason, such 
 heroism for the duties for which I was 
 created — if indeed love can ever be 
 changed. 
 
 '•' If you were able to foUow me to the 
 exquisite retreat where I fancy ourselves 
 happy, if j-ou knew my plans and proj- 
 ects, the dreadful word ' folly ! ' might 
 escape you, and I should be cruelly pun- 
 ished for sending poetry to a poet. Yes, 
 I wish to be a spring of waters inexhausti- 
 ble as a fertUe land for the twenty years 
 that nature allows me to shine. I want 
 to drive away satiety by charm. I mean 
 to be courageous for my friend as most 
 women are for the world. I wish to vaiy 
 happiness. I wish to put intelligence 
 into tenderness, and to give piquancy to 
 fidelity. I am filled with ambition to kill 
 the rivals of the past, to conjure away all 
 outside griefs by a wife's gentleness, by 
 her pi-oud abnegation, and to take all my 
 life such care of the nest as birds can 
 only take for a few weeks. This wealth 
 of love belonged to some great man, and 
 did not deserve to be wasted in some 
 commonplace transaction. 
 
 '• Do you now think me to blame for my 
 first letter ? The mj-sterious wind of will 
 drove me to you, as the tempest brings 
 the little rose-tree to the pollard willow. 
 In your letter, which I hold here upon my 
 heart, j'ou cried out, like your ancestor 
 when he departed for the Crusades, ' God 
 wills it.' 
 
 "Ah ! but you will cry out, 'What a 
 chatterbox ! ' All the people round me 
 say, on the contrary, ' Mademoiselle is 
 very taciturn.' O. d'Este M." 
 
 XI. 
 
 The foregoing letters seemed very orig- 
 inal to the persons from whom the author 
 of the " Comedy of Human Life" obtained 
 them ; but their interest in this duel, this 
 crossing of pens between two minds, while 
 the strictest incognito masked the faces, 
 may not be shared. For every hundred
 
 382 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 readers, eiglit\' might weary of the battle. 
 The respect due to the majority in every 
 nation under a constitutional government 
 leads us, therefore, to suppress eleven 
 other letters exchanged between Ernest 
 and Modesto, during- the month of Sep- 
 tember. If, later on, some flattering ma- 
 jority should arise to claim them, let us 
 hope that we can then find means to in- 
 sert them in their proper place. 
 
 Urged \)y a mind that seemed as ag- 
 gressive as the heart was lovable, the 
 truly chivalrous feelings of the poor secre- 
 tary gave; themselves free play in these 
 suppressed letters, which seem, perhaps, 
 more beautiful than ihe}'- really are, be- 
 cause the imagination is charmed by a 
 sense of the communion of two free souls. 
 Ernesfs whole life was now wrapped up 
 in these sweet scraps of paper, as a miser 
 lives only in his banknotes ; while in Mo- 
 deste's soul a deep love took the place of 
 her delight in agitating a glorious life, 
 and being, in spite of distance, its main- 
 spring. Ernest's heart was the comple- 
 ment of Canalis's glory. Alas ! it often 
 Irakes two men to make a perfect lover, 
 just as in literature we compose a type 
 by collecting the peculiarities of several 
 similar characters. Howiiiany a time a 
 woman has been heard to say in her own 
 salon after close and intimate conversa- 
 tions : 
 
 " Such a one is my ideal as to soul, 
 and I love the other who is only a dream 
 of the senses." 
 
 The last letter written by Modeste, 
 which he7'e follows, gives us a glimpse of 
 the enchanted isle to which the meander- 
 ings of this correspondence had led the 
 two lovers. 
 
 "To Monsieur de Canalis — Be at 
 Havre next Sunday; go to church ; after 
 the morning mass, walk once or twice 
 round the nave, and go out without speak- 
 ing to any one, or asking a single ques- 
 tion ; but wear a white rose in your 
 button-hole. Then return to Paris, where 
 you shall receive an answer. I warn j^ou 
 that this answer will not be what you 
 wish ; for, as I told you, the future is not 
 yet mine. But should I not indeed be 
 
 mad and foolish to say yes without hav- 
 ing seen you ? When I have seen you I 
 can say no without wounding you ; I am 
 sure of remaining incognito." 
 
 This letter had been sent off the evening 
 before the day when the abortive struggle 
 between Dumay and Modeste had taken 
 place. The happj' girl was iu»patiently 
 awaiting Sunday, when her eyes were to 
 vindicate or condemn her heart and her 
 actions — a solemn moment in the life of 
 any woman, and which three months of a 
 close communion of souls now rendered as 
 romantic as the most imaginative maiden 
 could have wished. Every' one, except 
 the mother, had taken this torpor of ex- 
 pectation for the calm of innocence. No 
 matter how firmly family laws and relig- 
 ious precepts may bind, there will always 
 be the Clarissas and tlie Julies, whose 
 souls like flowing cups will overflow under 
 some spiritual pressure. Modeste was 
 glorious in the savage energy with which 
 she repi'essed her exuberant youthful 
 happiness and remained demurely quiet. 
 Let us say frankly that the memory of 
 her sister was more potent upon her than 
 any social conventions ; her will was iron 
 in the resolve to bring no grief upon her 
 father and her mother. But what tumul- 
 tuous heavings were within her breast ! no 
 wonder that a mother guessed them. 
 
 On the following day Modeste and Ma- 
 dame Dumay took Madame Mig-non about 
 mid-day to a seat in the sun among the 
 flowers. The blind woman turned her 
 wan and blighted face toward the ocean ; 
 she inhaled the odors of the sea and took 
 the hand of her daughter wlio remained 
 beside her. The motlier hesitated between 
 forgiveness and remonstrance eie she put 
 the important question ; for she compre- 
 hended the girl's love and recognized, as 
 the pretended Canalis had done, that Mo- 
 deste was exceptional in nature. 
 , "God grant that your father return in 
 time ! If he delays much longer he will 
 find none but you of all those whom he 
 loves. Modeste, promise me once more 
 never to leave him," she said in a fond 
 maternal tone. 
 
 Modeste lifted her mother's hands to
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 U83 
 
 her lips and kissed them gently, replying- : 
 " Need I saj' it again ? "' 
 
 "Ah, my child! I left my father to 
 follow my husband ; and yet my father 
 was all alone ; I was all the child he had. 
 Is that why God has so punished me ? 
 What I asK of you is to marry as your 
 father wishes, to cherish him in your 
 heart, not to sacrifice him to j'our own 
 happiness, but to make hiui the center 
 of your home. Before losing- my sight, I 
 wrote him all my wishes, and I know he 
 will execute them. I enjoined him to keep 
 his property intact and in bis own hands ; 
 not that I distrust you, my Modesto, for 
 a moment, but who can be sure of a son- 
 in-law? My daughter, was I reasonable? 
 One glance of the eye decided my life. 
 Beauty, so often deceitful, in \\\y case 
 spoke true: but even were it the same 
 Avith you, my poor child, swear to me that 
 you will let your father inquire into the 
 character, the habits, the heart, and the 
 previous life of the man j^ou distinguish 
 with your love — if, by chance, there is 
 such a man." 
 
 "I will never marry without the con- 
 sent of my father, '^answered Modeste. 
 
 The mother was perfectly silent after 
 receiving this reply, and her death-like 
 face showL'd that she was meditating after 
 the manner of the blind, studying every 
 accent of her daughter's reply. 
 
 "You see, my darling-," she said, after 
 a long pause, " that while I am d^'ing by 
 inches through Caroline's wrong-doing, 
 your father would not survive youi's, no, 
 not for a moment. I know him ; he would 
 put a pistol to his head — there could be 
 no life, no happiness on earth for him." 
 
 Modeste walked a few steps away from 
 her mother, but immediately came back. 
 
 " Why did you leave me ? " demanded 
 Madame Mignon. 
 
 " You made me crj', mamma," an- 
 swered Modeste. 
 
 "Ah, my little darling, kiss me. You 
 \ love no one here ? you have no lover, have 
 you ? " she asked, holding Modeste on her 
 lap, heart to heart. 
 
 "No, my dear mamma," said the little 
 Jesuit. 
 
 " Can you swear it ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " cried Modeste. 
 
 Madame Mignon said no more ; but she 
 still doubted. 
 
 " Well, if you do choose your husband, 
 you will tell your father ? " she resumed. 
 
 "I pi'omiscd that to my sister, and to 
 3'ou, mother. Wliat evil do you think I 
 could commit while I wear that ring upon 
 my finger and read those woixls : ' Think 
 of Bettina ' ? Poor sister ! " 
 
 At these words a truce of silence came 
 between the pair ; the mother's blighted 
 eyes rained teai's which Modeste could 
 not check, though she tlirew herself upon 
 her knees, and cried, " Forg-ive me ! oh, 
 forgive me, mother ! " 
 
 Just then the excellent Duniay was 
 coming up the hill of In3j)uville on the 
 double-quick— a fact quite abnormal in 
 the present life of the cashier. 
 
 Three letters had brought ruin to the 
 Mignons ; a single letter now restored 
 their fortunes. Tha't very morning Du- 
 may had received from a sea-captain just 
 arrived from the China Seas the following- 
 letter containing- the first news of his jia- 
 tron and only friend. 
 
 " To Monsieur Anne Dumay : 
 
 " My dear Dumay — I shall quickly fol- 
 low, except for the chances of the voyag-e, 
 the vessel which carries this letter. In 
 fact, I should have taken it, but I did not 
 wish to leave nn'own ship, to which I am 
 accustomed. 
 
 " I told you that no news was to be good 
 news. But the first words of this letter 
 oug-ht to make j'ou a happy man. I have 
 made at least seven millions. I am bring- 
 ing back a large part of it in indigo, one 
 third in safe London securities, and an- 
 other third in good solid g-old. Your re- 
 mittances helped me to make the sum I 
 had settled in my own mind nuich sooner 
 than I expected. I wanted two millions 
 for each of my daughters and a compe- 
 tence for myself. 
 
 "I have been engaged in the opium 
 trade with the largest houses in Canton, 
 all ten times richer than I. You have no 
 idea, in Eui^ope, what these rich Chinese 
 merchants are. I went to Asia Minor and 
 purchased opium at low prices, and from
 
 384 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 thence to Canton, where I delivered my 
 cargoes to the companies who control the 
 trade. My last expedition was to the Phi- 
 lippine Islands where I exchanged opium 
 for indigo of the first quality. I may have 
 five or six hundred thousand francs more 
 than I stated, for I reckoned the indigo at 
 what it cost me. I have always been well 
 in health ; not the slightest illness. That 
 is the result of working for one's children. 
 Since the second year I have owned a 
 pretty little brig of seven hundred tons, 
 called the Mignon. She is built of oak, 
 double-planked, and copper-fastened ; and 
 all the interior fittings were done to suit 
 me. She is one piece of property the 
 more. 
 
 "A sea-life^nd the active habits re- 
 quired by ray business have kept me in 
 good health. To tell you all this is the 
 same as telling it to my two daughters 
 and my dear wife. I trust that the 
 wretched man who *took away my Bet- 
 tin a deserted her when he heard of my 
 ruin ; and that I shall find the poor lost 
 lamb at the Chalet. My three dear women 
 and my Dumay ! All four of you have 
 been ever present in my thoughts for the 
 last three years. You are a rich man, 
 now, Dumay. You share, outside of my 
 own fortune, amounts to five hundred and 
 sixty thousand francs, for which I send 
 you herewith a check, which can only be 
 paid to you in person \ij the Mongenods, 
 who have been duly advised from New 
 York. 
 
 "A few short months, and I shall see 
 you all again, and all well, I trust. My 
 dear Dumaj', I write this letter to you be- 
 cause I am anxious to keep my fortune 
 a secret for the present, and because I 
 wish to leave to you the task of prepar- 
 ing my dear angels for the joy of my re- 
 turn. I have had enough of commerce ; 
 and I am resolved to leave Havre. The 
 choice of my sons-in-law is a matter of 
 great moment to me. My intention is to 
 buy back the estate of La Bastie, and to 
 entail it, so as to establish an estate yield- 
 ing at least a hundred thousand francs a 
 year, and then to ask the king to grant 
 that one of my sons-in-law may succeed 
 to my name and title. You know, my 
 
 poor Dumay, what a terrible misfortune 
 overtook us through the fatal reputation 
 of a large fortune. It cost me my daugh- 
 ter's honor. I brought from Java one of 
 the most wretched of fathers. He was a 
 Dutch merchant, worth nine millions, and 
 his two daughters were stolen from him 
 by scoundrels. We wept together like 
 two children. I haA^e thei'efore resolved 
 that the amount of my present fortune 
 shall not be known. I shall not disem- 
 bark at Havre, but at Marseilles.' I shall 
 sell my indigo, and negotiate for the pur- 
 chase of La Bastie through the house of 
 Mongenod in Paris. I shall put n\y funds 
 in the Bank of France and return to the 
 Chalet, giving out that I have a consider- 
 able fortune in merchandise. My daugh- 
 ters will be supposed to have two or three 
 hundred thousand francs. To choose 
 which of my sons-in-law is worthy to suc- 
 ceed to my title and estates and to live 
 with us is now the object of my life ; but 
 both of them must be, like you and me, 
 honest, loyal, and firm men, and abso- 
 lutely honorable. 
 
 " My dear old fellow, I have never 
 doubted you for a moment. I have been 
 sure that you and your wife^ together 
 with my own, have erected an unassail- 
 able barrier around my daughter, and 
 that I shall be able to pub a kiss full of 
 hope upon the pure forehead of my re- 
 maining angel. Bettina-Caroline will have 
 a fortune. We have gone through wars 
 and commerce together and now we, will 
 undertake agriculture; you shall be my 
 bailiff. You will lil\e that, will you not ? 
 And so, old friend, I leave it to your dis- 
 cretion to tell what you think best to my 
 wife and daughters ; I rely upon j'our 
 prudence. In four years great changes 
 may have taken place in their char- 
 acters. 
 
 " Adieu, my old Dumay. Say to my 
 daughters and to vay wife that I have 
 never failed to kiss them in my thoughts 
 morning and evening since I left them. / 
 The second check for forty thousand 
 francs herewith inclosed is for my wife 
 and children in the meantime. 
 
 "Your colonel and friend, 
 
 "Charles Mignon."
 
 MODEST E MIGNON. 
 
 385 
 
 "Your father is coming'," said Madame 
 Mignon to her daughter. 
 
 i'What makes you think so, mamma?" 
 asked Modeste. 
 
 " Nothing' else could make Dumay hurry 
 himself." 
 
 "Victory!" cried the lieutenant as 
 soon as he reached the garden gate. 
 "Madame, the colonel has not heen ill 
 a moment ; he is coming back — coming 
 back on the Mignon, a fine ship of his 
 own, which together with its cargo is 
 worth, he tells me, eight or nine hundred 
 thousand francs. But he requires secrecy 
 from all of us ; his heai-t is still wrung 
 'bj the misfortunes of our dear departed 
 girl." 
 
 "He has still to learn her death," said 
 Madame Mignon. 
 
 " He attributes her disaster, and I think 
 he is right, to the rapacity of young men 
 after great fortunes. My poor colonel 
 expects to find tlie lost sheep here. Let 
 us be happy among ourselves, but say 
 nothing to any one, not even to Latour- 
 nelle, if that is possible. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," he whispered in Mo- 
 deste's ear, " write to your father and 
 tell him of his loss and also the terrible 
 results on your mother's health and eye- 
 sight ; prepare him for the shock he has 
 to meet. I will engage to get the letter 
 into his hands before he reaches Ha\Te, 
 for he will have to pass through Paris on 
 his way. Write him a long letter ; you 
 have plenty of time. I will take the 
 letter on Monday ; Monday I shall prob- 
 ably go to Paris." 
 
 Modeste was so afraid that Canalis and 
 Dumay would meet that she started hast- 
 ily for the house to write to her poet and 
 put off the rendezvous. 
 
 " Mademoiselle," said Dumay, in a very 
 humble manner and barring Modeste's 
 w;!}-, " may your father find his daughter 
 with no other feelings in her heart than 
 those she had for him and for her mother 
 before he was obliged to leave her." 
 
 " I have sworn to myself, to my sister, 
 and to my mother to be the joy, the con- 
 solation, and the glory of my father, &.nd 
 I shall keep my oath! " replied Modeste 
 with a huughtj- and disdainful glance at 
 
 Balzac — M 
 
 Dumay. "Do not trouble my delight in 
 the thought of my father's return with 
 insulting suspicions. You cannot prevent 
 a girl's heart from beating — you don't 
 want me to be a mummy, do 30U ? " she 
 said. "My hand belongs to my family, 
 but my heart is my own. If I love any 
 one, my father and my mother will know 
 it. Does that satisfy j'ou, monsieur ? " 
 
 " Thank you, mademoiselle ; you have 
 given me back my life," said Dumay, 
 " but you might still call me Dumay, 
 even when j'ou box my ears ! " 
 
 " Swear to me," said her mother, "that 
 3'^ou have not exchanged a word or a look 
 with any young man." 
 
 "I can swear that, my dear mother," 
 said Modeste, laughing, and lookmg at 
 Dumay, who was watching her and smil- 
 ing to himself like a mischievous girl. 
 
 '•■ She must be false indeed if you are 
 right," cried Dumaj', when Modeste had 
 left them and gone into the house. 
 
 "My daughter Modeste may have 
 faults," said her mother, " but false- 
 hood is not one of them ; she is inca- 
 pable of saying what is not true." 
 
 " Well ! then let us feel easy," con- 
 tinued Dumay, "and believe that mis- 
 fortune has closed his account with us." 
 
 " God grant it ! " answered Madame 
 Mignon. " You will see him, Dumay ; 
 but I shall only hear him. There is 
 much of sadness in my joy^" 
 
 XII. 
 
 Modeste, happy as she was in the re- 
 turn of her father, was, nevertheless, 
 pacing lier room as disconsolate as Per- 
 rette on seeing her eggs broken. She 
 had hoped her father would bring back 
 a much larger fortune than Dumay had 
 mentioned. Nothing could satisfy her 
 new-found ambition on behalf of her 
 poet less than at least half the six mil- 
 lions she had talked of in her second 
 letter. Agitated by her double joy, ajid 
 by the grief caused by her comparative 
 povertj-, she seated herself at the piano, 
 that confidant of so manj' young girls, 
 who express their wishes and desires on
 
 386 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 the keys, by the notes and tones of their 
 music. Dumay was talking- with his 
 wife in the garden under the windows, 
 telling her the secret of their own wealth, 
 and questioning her as to her desires and 
 her intentions. Madame Dumay had, like 
 her husband, no other family than the 
 Mignons. Husband and wife agreed, 
 therefore, to go and live in Px-ovence, 
 '\i the Comte de la Bastie reallj' meant 
 to live in Provence, and to leave their 
 money to whichever of Modeste's chil- 
 dren might seem to need it most. 
 
 "Listen to Modeste," said Madame 
 Mignon, addressing them. "None but 
 a girl in love can compose such airs 
 without having studied music." 
 
 Houses may burn, fortunes be engulfed, 
 fathers return from distant lands, em- 
 pires may crumble away, the cholera 
 may ravage cities, but a maiden's love 
 wings its flight as Nature pursues her 
 way, or as that alarming acid which 
 chemistry has lately discovered, and 
 which will presently eat through the 
 globe, if nothing stops it at the center. 
 
 Modeste, under the inspiration of her 
 present situation, was putting to music 
 certain stanzas which we are compelled 
 to quote here — albeit they are printed in 
 the second volume of the edition Dauriat 
 had mentioned — because, in order to adapt 
 them to her music, which had the inex- 
 pressible charm of sentiment so admired 
 in great singers, Modeste had taken lib- 
 erties with the lines in a manner that 
 may astonish the admirers of a poet so 
 famous for the correctness, sometimes too 
 precise, of his measures. 
 
 THE MAIDEN'S SONG. 
 Heart awake ! the lark already 
 
 Shakes his wings that heavenward rise ; 
 Sleep no more ; the waking violet, 
 
 Watts her incense to the skies. 
 
 Flowers revived, from sleep awaking, 
 See themselves in drops of dew 
 
 In the calyx of each blossom, 
 Liquid pearls their mirror true. 
 
 In the night, the gpd of roses, 
 
 Paused to bless their dewy bloom ; 
 
 See 1 each bud grows brighter for him ; 
 Yielding up its rich perfume. 
 
 Then awake I the lark already 
 Shakes his wings that heavenward rise. 
 
 Naught is sleeping — Heart 1 awuking, 
 Light thine incense to the skies. * 
 
 "It is very prettj'," said Madame Du- 
 may. " Modeste is a musician, there's no 
 mistake about it." 
 
 " The devil is in her !" cried the cashier, 
 into whose heart the suspicion of the 
 motlier forced its way and made him 
 shiver. 
 
 "She loves," persisted Madame Mignon. 
 
 By succeeding, through the undeniable 
 testimony of the song, in making the 
 cashier a sharer in her belief as to the 
 state of Modeste's heart, Madame Mignon 
 destroyed the happiness which the return 
 and the prosperity of his master had 
 broug-ht him. The poor Breton went 
 down the hill to Havre and to his desk 
 in Gobenheim's counting-room with a 
 heavy heart ; before returning to dinner, 
 he went to see Latournelle, to tell his 
 fears, and beg once more for the notary's 
 advice and assistance. 
 
 "Yes, my dear friend," said Dumay, 
 when they parted on the steps of the 
 notary's door, " I now agree with ma- 
 dame ; she loves — yes, I am sure of it ; 
 but the devil knows who it is ; I am dis- 
 honored." 
 
 " Don't make yourself unhappy, Du- 
 may," answered the notary. "Among 
 us all we can surely g-et the better of the 
 little puss ; sooner or later, everj' girl in 
 love betrays herself — yon may be sure 
 of -that. But we will talk about it this 
 evening." 
 
 Thus it happened that all those devoted 
 to the Mignon family were fully as dis- 
 quieted and uncertain as they were before 
 the old soldier tried the experiment which 
 he expected would be so decisive. The 
 ill-success of his past efforts so stimulated 
 Dumaj-^'s sense of duty, that he deter- 
 mined not to go to Paris to see after his 
 own fortune until he had guessed the rid- 
 dle of Modeste's heart. These friends, 
 to whom feelings were more precious than 
 interests, well knew that unless the daugh- 
 ter were pure and innocent, the father 
 would die of grief when he came to know 
 the death of Bettina and the blindness
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 387 
 
 of his wife. The distress of poor Dumay 
 made such an impression on the Latour- 
 nelles that they even forgot their parting 
 with Exupere, whom they had sent off 
 that morning- to Paris. During dinner, 
 while the three were alone, Monsieur and 
 Madame Latournelle and Butscha turned 
 tlie problem over and over in their minds, 
 and discussed every aspect of it. 
 
 " If Modeste loved anyone in Havre she 
 would have shown some fear yesterday," 
 said Madame Latournelle ; " her lover, 
 therefore, lives somewhere else." 
 
 " She swore to rher mother this morn- 
 ing," said the notary, "in presence of 
 Duma}', that she had not exchanged a 
 look or a word with any living soul." 
 
 " Then she loves after my fashion ! " 
 exclaimed Butscha. 
 
 "And how do you love, my poor lad ? " 
 asked Madame Latournelle. 
 
 "Madame," said the little cripple,"! 
 love alone and afar — oh ! as far as from 
 here to the stars." 
 
 " How do you manage it, you silly 
 fellow ? " said Madame Latournelle, smil- 
 ing. 
 
 " Ah, madame ! " said Butscha, "what 
 you call my hump is the socket of my 
 wings." 
 
 " So that is the explanation of your 
 seal, is it ? " cried the notary. 
 
 Butscha's seal was a star, and under 
 it the words Fulgens, sequar — "Shining 
 One, I follow thee " — the motto of the 
 house of Chastillonest. 
 
 " A beautiful woman may feel as much 
 suspicion as the ugliest," said Butscha, 
 as if speaking to himself ; " Modeste is 
 clever enough to fear she may be loved 
 only for her beauty." 
 
 Hunchbacks are extraordinary crea- 
 tions, due entirely to society ; for, accord- 
 ing to Nature's plan, feeble beings ought 
 to perish. The cui'vature or distortion of 
 the spinal column creates in these out- 
 wardly deformed subjects as it were a 
 storage-battery, where the nerve cur- 
 rents accumulate more abundantly than 
 under normal conditions — where they de- 
 velop, and whence they are emitted as if 
 in lightning flashes, to vivify the interior 
 being. From this, forces result which 
 
 are sometimes brought to light by mag- 
 netism, though they are far more fre- 
 quently lost in the vague spaces of the 
 spiritual world. It is rare to find a 
 deformed person who is not gifted with 
 some special faculty — a whimsical or 
 sparkling gayety perhaps, an utter ma- 
 lignity, or an almost sublime goodness. 
 Like instruments which the hand of art 
 can never fully waken, these beings, 
 highly privileged though they know it 
 not, live within themselves, as Butscha 
 lived, provided their natural forces so 
 magnificently concentrated have not been 
 spent in the struggle they have been 
 forced to maintain, against tremendous 
 odds, to keep alive. This explains many 
 superstitions, the popular legends of 
 gnomes, frightful dwarfs, deformed fair- 
 ies — all that race of bottles, as Rabelais 
 called them, containing elixirs and precious 
 balms. 
 
 Butscha, therefore, had very nearly 
 guessed the puzzle. With all the curi- 
 osity of a hopeless lover, a vassal ever 
 ready to die — like the soldiers alone and 
 abandoned in the snows of Russia, who 
 still cried out, " Long live the Emperor " 
 — he meditated how to capture Modeste's 
 secret for his own private knowledge. So 
 thinking, he followed his patrons to the 
 Chalet that evening, with a cloud of care 
 upon his brow ; for he knew it was most 
 important to hide from all these watchful 
 eyes and ears the net in which he should 
 entrap the j'oung girl. It would have to 
 be by some intercepted glance, some sud- 
 den start, as when a surgeon laj's his 
 finger on a hidden sore. That evening 
 Gobenheim did not appear, and Butscha 
 was Dumay's partner against Monsieur 
 and Madame Latournelle. During the 
 few moments of Modeste's absence, about 
 nine o'clock, to prepare for her mother's 
 bedtime, Madame Mignon and her friends 
 spoke openly to one another ; but the poor 
 clerk, depressed by the conviction of Mo- 
 deste's love, in which he also now believed, 
 seemed to pay as little attention to the 
 discussion as Gobenheim- had done on the 
 previous night. 
 
 " Well, what's the matter with you, 
 Butscha?" cried Madame Latournelle;
 
 388 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 " one would really think you hadn't a 
 friend in the world." 
 
 Tears shone in the eyes of the poor fel- 
 low, who was the son of a Swedish sailor, 
 and whose mother had died of grief at the 
 hospital. 
 
 " I have no one in the world but you," 
 he answered with a troubled voice ; " and 
 your compassion is so much a part of your 
 relig-ion that I can never lose it — and I 
 will never deserve to lose it." 
 
 This answer struck the sensitive chord 
 of true delicacy in the minds of all present. 
 
 "We all love you, Monsieur Butscha," 
 said Madame Mig-non, much moved. 
 
 "I've six hundred thousand francs of 
 my own," cried Dumay, "and you shall 
 be a notary in Havre, and succeed La- 
 toumelle." 
 
 The American wife took the hand of 
 the poor hunchback and pressed it. 
 
 "What! you have six hundred thou- 
 sand francs ! " exclaimed Latournelle, 
 pricking up his ears as Dumay let fall the 
 words ; " and you allow these ladies to 
 live as they do ! Modeste ought to have 
 a fine horse ; and why doesn't she con- 
 tinue to take lessons in music, and paint- 
 ing, and — " 
 
 "Why, he has only had the money a 
 few hours ! " cried the little wife. 
 
 " Hush ! " murmured Madame Mignon. 
 
 While these words were exchanged, 
 Butscha's august mistress turned toward 
 him, preparing to make a speech : — 
 
 "My son," she said, "you are so sur- 
 rounded by true affection that it never 
 occurred to me how my thoughtless use 
 of that familiar phrase might be con- 
 strued ; but you must thank me for my 
 little blunder, because it has served to 
 show 3'ou what friends your noble quali- 
 ties have won." 
 
 " Then you must have news from Mon- 
 sieur Mignon," resumed the notaiy. 
 
 " He is on his wa^' home," said Madame 
 Mignon; "but let us keep the secret to 
 ourselves. When my husband learns how 
 faithful Butscha has been to us, how he 
 has shown the warmest and most dis- 
 interested friendship when others have 
 given us the cold shoulder, he will not let 
 you alone provide for him, Dumay. And 
 
 so, my friend," she added, turning her 
 blind face toward Butscha; "j'ou can 
 begin at once to negotiate with Latour- 
 nelle." 
 
 " He's of legal age, twenty-five and a 
 half years. As for me, it will be paying 
 a debt, my boy, to make the purchase 
 easy for you," said the notary. 
 
 Butscha was kissing Madame Mignon 's 
 hand, and his face was wet with tears as 
 Modeste opened the door of the salon. 
 
 " What are you doing to vny Black 
 Dwarf? " she demanded. "Who is mak- 
 ing him unhappy ? " , 
 
 " Ah ! Mademoiselle Modeste, do we 
 luckless fellows, cradled in misfortune, 
 ever weep for grief? They have just 
 shown me as much affection as I could 
 feel for them if they were indeed my owyn 
 relations. I'm to be a notary ; I shall be 
 rich. Ha ! ha ! the poor Butscha may 
 become the rich Butscha. You don't 
 know what audacity there is in this abor- 
 tion," he cried. ' 
 
 With that he gave himself a resounding 
 blow on the cavity of his chest and took 
 up a position before the fire-place, after 
 casting a glance at Modeste, which shpped 
 like a ray of light between his heav^^ half- 
 closed eyelids. He perceived, in this un- 
 expected incident, an opportunity of in- 
 terrogating the heart of his sovereign. 
 Dumay thought for a moment that the 
 clerk dared to aspire to Modeste, and he 
 exchanged a rapid glance Avith his friends, 
 who understood him, and began to ej'e 
 the little man with a species of terror 
 mingled with curiosity. 
 
 "I, too, have my dreams," said But- 
 scha, not taking his eyes from Modeste. 
 
 The young girl lowered her eyelids with 
 a movement that was a revelation to the 
 young man. 
 
 " You love romance," he continued, ad- 
 dressing her. "Let me, in this moment 
 of happiness, tell you mine ; and you shall 
 tell me in return whether the conclusion 
 of the tale I have invented for my life 
 is possible. To me wealth would bring 
 greater happiness than to other men ; 
 for the highest happiness I can imagine 
 would be to enrich the one I loved. You, 
 mademoiselle, who know so many things.
 
 MODEST E MIGNON. 
 
 389 
 
 tell me if it is possible for a man to make 
 himself beloved independentlj' of his per- 
 son, be it handsome or ugly, and for his 
 spirit only ? " 
 
 Modeste raised her eyes and looked at 
 Butscha. It was a piercing and ques- 
 tioning glance ; for she shared Dumay's 
 suspicion of Butscha's motive. 
 
 " Let me be rich, and I will seek some 
 beautiful poor girl, abandoned like my- 
 self, who has suffered, and who knows 
 what misery is. I will write to her, con- 
 sole hei', and be her guardian spirit ; she 
 shall read my heart and my soul ; she 
 shall possess my double wealth — my gold, 
 delicately offered, and my thought robed 
 in all the splendor which the accident of 
 birth has denied to my grotesque body. 
 But I myself shall remain hidden like the 
 cause that science seeks. God Himself 
 may not be glorious to the eye. Well, 
 naturally, the maiden will be curious; 
 she will wish to see me ; but I shall tell 
 her that I am a monster of ugliness ; I 
 shall picture myself hideous." 
 
 At these words Modeste looked intently 
 at Butscha. If she had said aloud, " What 
 do you know of my love ? " she could not 
 have been more explicit. 
 
 " If I have the honor of being loved for 
 the poeui of my heart, if some day such 
 love may make a woman think me only 
 slightly deformed, confess, mademoiselle, 
 that I shall be happier than the hand- 
 somest of men— as happy as a man of 
 genius beloved by some celestial being 
 like yourself." 
 
 The color which suffused the young 
 girl's face told the cripple nearly all he 
 sought to know. 
 
 " Well," he went on, " if we enrich the 
 one we love, if we please the spirit and 
 withdraw the body, is not that the way 
 to make one's self beloved ? At any rate 
 it is the dream of the poor dwarf — a 
 dream of yesterday ; for to-day your mo- 
 ther gives me. the key to future wealth 
 \iy promising me the means of buying a 
 practice. But before I become another 
 Gobenheim, I seek to know whether this 
 dream could be really carried out. What 
 do j'ou say, mademoiselle, yow?" 
 
 Modeste was so astonished that she did 
 
 not notice the question. The trap of the 
 lover was much better baited than that 
 of the soldiei', for the poor girl was ren- 
 dei^ed speechless. 
 
 "Poor Butscha !" whispered Madame 
 Latoui'nelle to her husband. "Would he 
 make a fool of himself ? " 
 
 "You want to realize the story of 
 Beauty and the Beast," said Modeste at 
 length; "but you forget that the Beast 
 turned into Prince Charming." 
 
 " Do you think so ? " said the dwarf. 
 ' ' Now I have always thought that that 
 transformation meant the phenomenon 
 of the soul made visible, obliterating the 
 form under the light of the spirit. If I 
 were not loved I should stay hidden, that 
 is all. You and yours, raadame," he con- 
 tinued, addressing his mistress, " instead 
 of having a dwarf at j^our service, will 
 now have a life and a fortune." 
 
 So saying, Butscha resumed his seat, 
 remarking to the three whist-players 
 with an assumption of calmness, "Whose 
 deal is it? " but within his soul he whis- 
 pered sadly to himself : " She wants to 
 be loved for herself ; she corresponds 
 with some pretended great man ; how 
 has it gone ? " 
 
 " Dear mamma, it is a quarter to ten 
 o'clock," said Modeste. 
 
 Madame Mignon said good-night to her 
 friends, and went to bed. 
 
 They who wish to love in secret may 
 have Pyrenean hounds, mothers, Dumays, 
 and Latoiu'nelles to spy upon them, and 
 not be in anj^ danger ; but when it comes 
 to a lover ! — ah ! that is diamond cut dia- 
 mond, flame against flame, mind to mind, 
 an equation whose terms are mutual. 
 
 On Sunday morning Butscha arrived 
 at the Chalet before Madame Latour- 
 nelle, who always came to take Modeste 
 to church, and he proceeded to blockade 
 the house in expectation of the post- 
 man. 
 
 " Have you a letter for Mademoiselle 
 Mignon? " he said to that humble func- 
 tionary when he appeared. 
 
 "No, monsieur, none." 
 
 " This house has been a good customer 
 to the post of late," remarked the clerk. 
 
 " Yes, indeed/' replied the man.
 
 390 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 Modcste both heard and saw the little 
 colloquy from her chamber window, where 
 she always posted herself behind the blinds 
 at this particular hour to watch for the 
 postman. She ran downstairs, went into 
 the little garden, and called in an impera- 
 tive voice — 
 
 "Monsieur Butscha ! " 
 
 "Here I am, mademoiselle," said the 
 cripple, reaching- the gate as Modeste 
 herself opened it. 
 
 " Will you be good enough to tell me 
 whether among your various titles to a 
 woman's affection you count that of the 
 shameless spying in which you are now 
 engaged?" demanded the girl, attempt- 
 ing to crush her slave with the glance 
 and gesture of a queen. 
 
 '•Yes, mademoiselle," he answered 
 proudly. "Ah! I never expected," he 
 continued in a low tone, "that the grub 
 could be of service to a star — but so it 
 is. Would you rather that your mother 
 and Monsieur Duraay and Madame La- 
 tournelle had guessed youv secret than 
 one, excluded as it were' from life, who 
 seeks to be to you one of these flowers 
 that 3'ou cut and wear for a moment ? 
 They all know yoi^ love ; but I, I alone, 
 know how. Use me as you would a 
 vigilant watch-dog ; I will obej^ 3'ou, 
 protect you, and never bark ; neither 
 will I condemn you. I ask only to be of 
 service to you. Your father has made 
 Dumay keeper of the hen-roost, take 
 Butscha to watch outside — poor But- 
 scha, who doesn't ask for anything, not 
 so much as a bone." 
 
 "Well, I will give you a trial," said 
 Modeste, whose strongest desire was to 
 get rid of so clever a watcher. "Please 
 go at once to all the hotels in Graville 
 and in Havre, and ask if a gentleman 
 has arrived from England named Mon- 
 sieur Arthur — " 
 
 "Listen to me, mademoiselle," said 
 Butscha, interrupting Modeste respect- 
 fully. " I wUl willingly' go and take a 
 walk on the seashore, for you don't want 
 me to go to church to-day." 
 
 Modeste looked at her dwarf in silent 
 astonishment. 
 
 " Mademoiselle, you have wrapped your 
 
 face in cotton-wool and a silk handker- 
 chief, but there's nothing the matter with 
 3'ou ; and j'ou have put that thick veil on 
 your bonnet to see some one yourself 
 without being seen." 
 
 " Where did you acquire all that pene- 
 tration ? " cried Modeste, blushing. 
 
 "Moreovei", mademoiselle, you have 
 not put . on your corset ; a cold in the 
 head wouldn't oblige you to disfigure 
 your waist and wear half a dozen petti- 
 coats, nor hide your hands in these old 
 gloves, and j'our pretty feet in those 
 hideous shoes, nor dress 3'ourself like a 
 beggar-woman, nor — " 
 
 "That's enough," she said. "How 
 am I to be certain that you will obey 
 me?." 
 
 " My master is obliged to go to Sainte- 
 Adresse. He does not like it, but he is 
 so truly good he won't deprive me of my 
 Sunday ; I will offer to go for him." 
 
 " Go, and I will trust you." 
 
 " You are sure I can do nothing for you 
 in Havre ? " 
 
 ' ' Nothing. Hear me, mysterious dwarf 
 — look," she continued, pointing to the 
 cloudless sk3' ; " can you see a single trace 
 of that bird that flew by just now ? No ; 
 well then, my actions are as pure as the 
 air, and leave no stain behind them. You 
 may reassure Dumaj' and the Latour- 
 nelles, and my mother. That hand," she 
 said, holding up a pretty delicate hand, 
 with the points of the rosy fingers, 
 through which the light shone, slightly 
 turning back, " will never be given, it 
 will never even be kissed b^'- what people 
 call a lover until my father has returned." 
 
 " Why don't \'ou want me in thechurch 
 to-day?" 
 
 " Do you venture to question me after 
 all I have done you the honor to say, and 
 to ask of you ? " 
 
 Butscha bowed without another word, 
 and departed to find his master, in all 
 the rapture of being taken into the ser- 
 vice of his goddess. 
 
 Half an hour later. Monsieur and Ma- 
 dame Latournelle came to fetch Modeste. 
 who complained of a dreadful toothache. 
 
 " I really have not the courage to dress 
 myself," she said.
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 391 
 
 " Well, then," replied the worthy chap- 
 eron, "stay at home." 
 
 "Oh, no!" said Modeste. "I would 
 rather not. I have bundled myself up, 
 and I don't think it will do me any harm 
 to go out." 
 
 And Mademoiselle Mignon marched off 
 beside Latournelle, refusing to take his 
 arm lest she should be questioned about 
 the outward trembling- which betrayed 
 her inward agitation at the thought of 
 at last seeing her great poet. One look, 
 the first — would it not decide her fate ? 
 
 xm. 
 
 In the life of man there is no more de- 
 lightful moment than that of a first ren- 
 dezvous. The sensations then hidden at 
 the bottom of our hearts, which are find- 
 ing their first expression, can never be 
 renewed. Can we feel again the name- 
 less pleasures that we felt ' when, like 
 El-nest de la Briere, we looked up our 
 sharpest razors, our finest shirt, an irre- 
 procichable collar, and our best clothes ? 
 We deif3^ the garments associated with 
 that all-supreme moment. We weave 
 within us poetic fancies quite equal to 
 those of the woman ; and the day when 
 either party guesses them they take 
 wings to themselves and fly away. Are 
 not such things like the flower of wild 
 fruits, bitter-sweet, grown in the heart 
 of a forest, the joy of the scant sun-rays, 
 the joy, as Canalis says in the " Maiden's 
 , Song," of the plant itself whose eyes un- 
 closing see its own image within its 
 breast ? 
 
 Such emotions, now taking place in La 
 Briere, tend to show that, like other poor 
 fellows for whom life begins in toil and 
 care, he had never yet been loved. Ar- 
 riving at Havre overnight, he had gone 
 to bed at once, like a true coquette, to 
 obliterate all traces of fatigue ; and now, 
 after taking his bath, he had put himself 
 into a costume carefully adapted to show 
 him off to the best advantage. This is. 
 perhaps, the right moment to exhibit his 
 portrait, if only to justify the last letter 
 that Modeste was still to write to him. 
 
 He was of a good family in Toulouse, 
 and allied by marriage to the minister 
 who first took him under his protection ; 
 he had that air of good-breeding which 
 comes of an education begun in the cradle; 
 and the habit of managing business af- 
 fairs gave him a certain sedateness which 
 was not pedantic — though pedantry is 
 the natural outgrowth of premature 
 gravity'. He was of ordinary height ; his 
 face, which won upon all w'ho saw him by 
 its delicacy and sweetness, was warm in 
 the flesh-tints, though without color, and 
 relieved by a small mustache and im- 
 perial a la Mazarin. Without this- evi- 
 dence of virility he might have resembled 
 a 3'oung woman in disguise, so refined 
 was the shape of his face and the cut of 
 his lips, so feminine the transparent ivory 
 of a set of teeth, regular enough to have 
 seemed artificial. Add to these womanly 
 points a habit of speech as gentle as the 
 expression of the face ; as gentle, too, as 
 the blue eyes with their Turkish eyelids, 
 and you will readily understand how it 
 was that the minister occasionally called 
 his young secretary Mademoiselle de la 
 Briere. The full, clear forehead, well 
 framed by abundant black hair, was 
 dreamy, and did not contradict the char- 
 acter of the face, which was altogether 
 melancholy. The prominent arch of the 
 upper eyelid, though ver3' beautifully cut, 
 overshadowed the glance of the eye, and 
 added a physical sadness— if we may so 
 call it — produced when the lids droop too 
 heavily over the eyeball. This inward 
 doubt — which is called modesty— was ex- 
 pressed in his whole person. Perhaps we 
 shall be able to make his appearance bet- 
 ter understood if we say that the logic of 
 design required greater length in the oval 
 of his head, more space betw^een the chin, 
 which ended abruptly, and the forehead, 
 which was reduced in height by the way 
 in which the hair grew. The face had, in 
 short, a rather compressed appearance. 
 Hard work had already drawn furrows 
 between the eyebrows, which were some- 
 what too thick and too near together, like 
 those of a jealous nature. Though La 
 Briere was then slight, he belonged to 
 the class of temperaments which begin.
 
 392 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 after they are thirty, to take on an unex- 
 pected amount of flesh. 
 
 The young- man would have seemed to 
 a student of French history a very fair 
 representative of the royal and almost 
 inconceivable figure of Louis XIII. — that 
 historical fig-ure of melancholy modesty 
 without known cause ; pallid beneath the 
 crown ; loving- the dang-ers of war and the 
 fatigues of hunting, but hating work; 
 timid with his mistress to the extent of 
 keeping away from her ; so indifferent as 
 to allow the head of his friend to be cut off 
 — a figure that nothing- can explain but 
 his remoi-se for having avenged his father 
 on his mother. Was he a Catholic Ham- 
 let, or merely the prey of some incurable 
 disease ? But the undying worm which 
 gnawed at the king's vitals was in Ernest's 
 case simply distrust of himself — the tim- 
 idity of a man to whom no woman had 
 ever said, " Ah, how I love thee ! " and, 
 above all, the spirit of self-devotion with- 
 out an object. After hearing- the knell of 
 the monarchy in the fall of his patron's 
 ministry, the poor fellow had next met in 
 Canalis a rock covered with exquisite 
 mosses ; he was, therefore, still seeking a 
 power to love, and this spaniel-like search 
 for a master gave him outwardly the air 
 of a king who has met with his. This 
 play of feeling, and a g-eneral tone of 
 suffering in the young man's face made it 
 more really beautiful than he was himself 
 aware of ; for he had always been annoyed 
 to find himself classed by women among 
 the "handsome disconsolate" — a class 
 which has passed out of fashion in these 
 daj's, when every man seeks to blow his 
 own trumpet and put himself forward. 
 
 The self-distrustful Ernest now rested 
 his immediate hopes on the fashionable 
 clothes he intended to wear. He put on, 
 for this sacred interview, where every- 
 thing depended on a first impression, a 
 pair of black trousers and carefully pol- 
 ished boots, a sulphur-colored waistcoat, 
 which left to sight an exquisitely fine shirt 
 with opal buttons, a black cravat, and 
 a small blue surtout coat which seemed 
 glued to his back and shoulders by some 
 newly-invented process. The ribbon of 
 the Legion of Honor was in his buttonhole. 
 
 He wore a well-fitting pair of kid gloves 
 of the Florentine bronze color, and carried 
 his cane and hat in the left hand with a 
 gesture and air that was worthy of the 
 Grand Monarch, and enabled him to 
 show, as the sacred precincts required, 
 his bare head with the light falling on its 
 carefully arranged hair. He stationed 
 himself before the service began in the 
 church porch, from whence he could ex- 
 amine the church, while watching the 
 Christians — more particularly the female 
 Christians — -who dipped their fingers in 
 the holy water. 
 
 An inward voice cried to Modesto as 
 she entered, '■ It is he ! " That surtout, 
 and the whole bearing of the young man, 
 were essentially Parisian ; the ribbon, the 
 gloves, the cane, the perfumed hair, were 
 not of Havre. So when La Briere turned 
 about to examine the tall and imposing 
 Madame Latournelle, the notary, and the 
 bundled-up (expression sacred to women) 
 figure of Modeste, the poor child, though 
 she had carefully tutored herself for the 
 event, received a violent blow on her heart 
 when her eyes rested on this poetic figure, 
 illuminated by the full light of day as it 
 streamed through the open door. She 
 could not be mistaken ; a small white 
 rose nearly hid the ribbon of the Legion. 
 Would he recognize his unknown mistress 
 muffled in an old bonnet with a double 
 veil? Modeste Was so in fear of love's 
 clairv'oyance that she began to stoop in 
 her walk like an old woman. 
 
 "Wife," said little Latournelle as they 
 took their places, "that gentleman does 
 not belong to Havre." 
 
 "So many strangers come here," an- 
 swered his wife. 
 
 "But," said the notary, "strangers 
 never come to look at a church like ours, 
 which is less than two centuries old." 
 
 Ernest remained in the porch through- 
 out the service without seeing any woman 
 who realized his hopes. Modeste, on her 
 part, could not control the trembling of 
 her limbs until mass was nearly over. 
 She was in the grasp of a joy that none 
 but she herself could depict. At last she 
 heard the foot-fall of a gentleman on the 
 pavement of the aisle. The service over.
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 393 
 
 La Briere was making a circuit of the 
 church, where no one now remained but 
 the punctiliously pious, whom he pro- 
 ceeded to subject to a shrewd and keen 
 analysis. Ernest noticed that a prayer- 
 book shook violently in the hands of a 
 veiled woman as he passed her ; and as 
 she alone kept her face hidden, his sus- 
 picions were aroused, and then confirmed 
 by Modeste's manner, which the lover's 
 e^-e now scanned and noted. He left the 
 church with the Latournelles and followed 
 them at a distance to the Rue Ro\'ale, 
 where he saw them enter a house accom- 
 panied by Modeste, whose custom it was 
 to stay with her friends till the hour of 
 vespers. After examining the little house, 
 which was ornamented with scutcheons, 
 he asked the name of the owner, and was 
 told that he was Monsieur Latournelle, 
 the chief notary in Ha\Te. As Ernest 
 lounged along the Rue Royale, hoping 
 for a chance to enter the house, Modeste 
 caught sight of him, and thereupon de- 
 clared herself far too ill to go to vespers, 
 and Madame Latournelle stayed to keep 
 her company'. Poor Ernest thus had his 
 trouble for his pains. He dared not wan- 
 der about Ingouville ; moreover, he made 
 it a point of honor to obe^' orders, and he 
 therefore went back tq Paris, previously 
 writing a letter which Frangoise Cochet 
 duly received on the morrow, postmarked 
 Havre. 
 
 It was the custom of Monsieur and Ma- 
 dame Latournelle to dine at the Chalet 
 every Sunday when they brought Mo- 
 deste back after vespers. So, as soon as 
 the invalid felt a little better, they started 
 for Ingouville, accompanied by Butscha. 
 Once at home, the happy Modeste forgot 
 her pretended illness and her disguise, 
 and dressed herself charmingly, hum- 
 ming as she came down to dinnei* — 
 
 " Naught is sleeping — Heart ! awaking. 
 Lift thine incense to the skies." 
 
 Butscha shuddered slightly when he 
 caught sight of her, so changed did she 
 seem to him. The wings of love were 
 fastened to her shoulders ; she had the 
 air of a^nymph, a Psyche ; her cheeks 
 glowed with the divine color of happiness. 
 
 " Who wrote the words to which you 
 have put that pretty music ? " asked her 
 mother. 
 
 " Canalis, mamma," she answered, 
 flushing rosy red from her throat to 
 her forehead. 
 
 " Canalis ! " cried the dwarf, to whom 
 the inflections of the girl's voice and her 
 blush told the only thing of which he 
 was still ignorant. "Does that great 
 poet write songs ? " 
 
 "They are only simple verses," she 
 said, "which I have ventured to set to 
 German ah's." 
 
 "No, no," interrupted Madame Mi- 
 gnon, "the music is your own, my 
 daughter." 
 
 Modeste, feeling that she grew more 
 and more crimson, went off into the gar- 
 den, calling Butscha after her. 
 
 "You can do me a great service," she 
 said. " Dumay is keeping a secret from 
 my mother and me as to the fortune 
 which my father is bringing back with 
 him ; and I want to know \\'hat it is. Did 
 not Dumay send papa when he first went 
 away over five himdred thousand francs ? 
 Yes. "Well, papa. is not the kind of man 
 to stay away four years and only double 
 his capital. It setjms he is coming back 
 on a ship of his own, and Dumay's share 
 amounts to almost six hundred thousand 
 francs." 
 
 " There's no need to question Dumay," 
 said Butscha. " Your father lost, as j'ou 
 know, about four millions when he went 
 away, and he has doubtless recovered 
 them. He would of course give Dumay 
 ten per cent of his profits ; the w;orthy 
 man admitted the other day how much 
 it was, and my master and I think that 
 in that case the colonel's fortune must 
 amount to six or seven millions — " 
 
 " Oh, papa ! " cried Modeste, crossing 
 her hands on her breast and looking up 
 to heaven, "twice j'ou have given me 
 life ! " 
 
 " Ah, mademoiselle ! " said Butscha, 
 "you love a poet. That kind of man is 
 more or less of a Narcissus. Will he 
 know how to love j-ou ? A phrase- 
 maker, always busy in fitting words to- 
 gether, is very tiresome. Mademoiselle,
 
 394 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 a poet is no more poetry than a seed is a 
 flower." 
 
 "Butscha, I never saw such a hand- 
 some man." 
 
 " Beauty is a veil which often serves to 
 hide imperfections." 
 
 "He has the most ang-elic heart — " 
 
 "I pray God you may be right," said 
 the dwarf, clasping: his hands, " — and 
 happy ! That man shall have, like you, 
 a servant in Jean Butscha. I will not be 
 notary' ; I shall give that up ; I shall 
 study the .sciences." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Ah, mademoiselle, to teach your chil- 
 dren, if you will deign to make me their 
 tutor. But, oh ! if you would only listen 
 to some advice. Lst me take up this 
 matter ; let me look into the life and 
 habits of this man — find out if he is kind, 
 or bad-tempered, or gentle, if he com- 
 mands the respect which you merit in 
 a husband, if he is able to love utterly, 
 preferring j^ou to everything, even his 
 own talent — ". 
 
 " What does that signify if I love 
 him ? " she asked naively. 
 
 "Ah, true ! " cried the dwarf. 
 
 At the same moment Madame Mignon 
 was saying to her friends — 
 
 " My daughter saw Ihe man she loves 
 this morning." 
 
 " Tlien it must have been that sulphur 
 waistcoat which puzzled you so, Latour- 
 nelle," said his wife. "The young man 
 had a pretty white rose in his button- 
 hole." 
 
 " Ah ! " sighed the mother, " the sign 
 of recognition." 
 
 "And he also wore the ribbon of an 
 officer of the Legion of Honor. He is a 
 charming young man. But we are all 
 deceiving ourselves ; Modeste never raised 
 her veil, and her clothes were huddled on 
 like a beggar-woman's — " 
 
 "And she said she was ill," cried the 
 notaiy ; "but she has taken off her muf- 
 flings and is just as well as she ever 
 was." 
 
 " It is incomprehensible !" said Dumay. 
 
 "Not at all," said the notary ; "it is 
 now as clear as daj'." 
 
 "My child," said Madame Mignon to 
 
 Modeste, as she came into the room, fol- 
 lowed by Butscha, " did you see a well- 
 dressed 3'oung man at church this morn- 
 ing, with a white rose in his button-hole?" 
 
 " I saw him," said Butscha quickly, pei'- 
 ceiving by everybody's strained attention 
 that Modeste was likelj' to fall into a 
 trap. " It was Grindot, the famous ar- 
 chitect, with \^•hom the town is in treaty 
 for the restoration of the church. He has 
 just come from Paris, and I met him this 
 morning examining the exterior as I was 
 on my waj' to Sainte-Adresse." 
 
 "Oh, an architect, was he? he puzzled 
 me," said Modeste, for whom Butscha 
 had thus gained time to recover herself. 
 
 Dumay looked askance at Butscha. 
 Modeste, fully warned, recovered her im- 
 penetrable composure. Dumay's distrust 
 was now thoroughly aroused, and he re- 
 solved to go to the mayor's office earlj' in 
 the morning and ascertain if the architect 
 had really been in Havre the previous 
 day. Butscha, on the other hand, was 
 equally determined to go to Paris and 
 find out something about Canalis. 
 
 Gobenheim came to plaj' whist, and by . 
 his presence subdued and compressed all 
 these fermenting feelings. Modeste await- 
 ed her mother's bedtime with impatience. 
 She intended to write, but never did so 
 except at night. Here is the letter which 
 love dictated to her while all the world 
 was sleeping : 
 
 " To Monsieur de Canalis — Ah I my 
 friend, my well-beloved ! What atrocious 
 falsehoods those portraits in the shop- 
 windows are ! And I, who made that 
 horrible lithograph my joj' !— I am hum- 
 bled at the thought of loving one so 
 handsome. No ; it is impossible that 
 those Parisian women are so stupid as 
 not to have seen their dreams fulfilled in 
 you. You neglected ! you unloved ! I 
 do not believe a word of all that you have 
 written me about your lonely and obscure 
 life, your devotion to an idol — sought in 
 vain until now. You have been too well 
 loved, monsieur ; your brow, white and 
 smooth as a magnolia leaf, reveals it ; 
 and I shall be neglected — for who am I? 
 Ah ! why have you called me to life ?
 
 MODESTE MIONON. 
 
 3&5 
 
 " I felt for a moment as though the 
 heavy burden of the flesh was leaving 
 me; my soul had broken the crystal 
 which held it captive; it pervaded my 
 whole being-; the cold silence of material 
 things had ceased ; all things in Nature 
 had a voice and spoke to me. The old 
 chui'ch was luminous. Its arched roof, 
 brilliant with gold and azure, like those of 
 an Italian cathedral, sparkled above my 
 head. Melodies such as the angels sang 
 to martyrs, quieting their pangs, sounded 
 from the organ. The roug-h pavements 
 of Havre seemed to my feet a flowery 
 pathway ; the sea spoke to me with a 
 voice of sympathy, like an old friend 
 whom I had never truly understood. I 
 saw clearly how the roses in my garden 
 and hot-house had long adored me and 
 bidden me love ; they lifted their heads 
 and smiled as I came back from church. 
 I heard your name, 'Melchior,' chiming 
 in the flower-bells ; I saw it written on 
 the clouds. Yes, I am living, thanks to 
 thee — my poet, more beautiful than that 
 cold, conventional Lord Byron, with a 
 face as dull as the English climate. One 
 glance of thine, thine Orient glance, 
 pierced through my double veil and sent 
 thy blood to my heart, and thence from 
 head to foot. Ah ! that is not the life 
 our mother gave us. A hurt to thee 
 would hurt me too at the very instant it 
 was given — my life exists by thj^ thought 
 only. I know now the purpose of the 
 divine faculty of music; the angels in- 
 vented it to utter love. Ah, my Mel- 
 chior, to have genius and to have beauty 
 is too much; a man should be made to 
 choose between them at his birth. 
 
 " When I think of the treasures of ten- 
 derness and affection which you have 
 given me, more especially during the last 
 month, I ask myself if I dream. No, but 
 you hide some mystery ; what woman can 
 yield j'ou up to me and not die ? Ah ! 
 jealousy has entered my heart with love 
 — a love in which I could not have be- 
 lieved. How could I have imagined so 
 miglitj' a conflagration? And now — 
 strange and inconceivable revulsion ! — I 
 would rather you were ugly. 
 
 " What follies I committed after I came 
 
 home ! The yellow dahlias reminded me 
 of your pretty waistcoat, the white roses 
 were my friends ; I bowed to them with 
 a look that belonged to you, like all that 
 is of me. The very color of the gloves, 
 molded to hands of a gentleman, your 
 step along the nave — all, all, is so printed 
 on my memory that sixty years hence I 
 shall see the veriest trifles of this fete 
 day — the color of the atmosphere, the 
 ray of sunshine that flickered on a cer- 
 tain pillar ; I shall hear the prayer your 
 step interrupted ; I shall inhale the in- 
 cense of the altar; and I shall fancy I 
 feel above our heads the priestly hands 
 that blessed us both as you passed by 
 me at the closing benediction. The good 
 Abbe Marceliu married us then ! The 
 happiness, above that of earth, which I 
 feel in this new world of unexpected emo- 
 tions can only be equaled by the joy of 
 telling it to j'ou, of sending it back to 
 him who poured it into my heart with the 
 lavishness of the sun itself. No more 
 veils, no more disguises, my beloved. 
 Come back to me, oh, come back soon. 
 With joy I now unniask. 
 
 "You have no doubt heard of the 
 house of Mignon in Havre? Well, I am, 
 through an irreparable misfortune, its 
 sole heiress. But you are not to look 
 down upon us, descendant of an Au- 
 vergne knight ; the arms of the ' Mignon 
 de la Bastie will do no dislionor to those 
 of Canalis. We bear gules, on a bend 
 sable four bezants or ; quarterly four 
 crosses patriarchal or : with a cardinal's 
 hat as crost, and the fiocchi for supports. 
 Dear, I will be faithful to our motto : 
 Una fides, unus Do minus ! — the true 
 faith, and one only Master. 
 
 " Perhaps, my friend, you will find some 
 irony in mj' name, after all that I have 
 done, and all that I herein avow. I am 
 named Modeste. Therefore I have not 
 deceived you by signing 'O. d'Este M.' 
 Neither have I jnisled you about our fort- 
 une ; it will amount, I believe, to the sum 
 which rendered yo\x so virtuous. And I 
 know that toj'ou money is a consideration 
 of such small importance that I speak of 
 it without reserve. Let me tell you how 
 happj' it makes me to give freedom of
 
 396 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 action to our happiness — to be able to 
 say, wlien the fancy for travel takes us, 
 ' Come, let us g'o in a comfortable car- 
 riag-e, sitting side by side, without a 
 thought of monej^ ' — happy, in short, to 
 tell the king, ' I have the fortune which 
 you require in j-our peers.' Thus Modesto 
 Mig-non can be of service to you, and her 
 gold will have the noblest of uses. 
 
 "■ As to your .servant herself — 3-ou did 
 see her once, at her window. Yes, 'the 
 fairest daughter of Eve the fair ' was 
 j-our unknown ; but how little the Mo- 
 desto of to-day resembles her of that 
 long past era ! That one was in her 
 shroud, this one — have I not told you ? 
 — has received from you the life of life. 
 Love, pure and sanctioned, the love my 
 father, now returning rich and prosper- 
 ous, will authorize, has raised me with 
 its powerful yet childlike hand from the 
 grave in which I slept. You have wak- 
 ened me as the sun wakens the flowers. 
 The eyes of your beloved are no longer 
 those of the little Modesto so daring in 
 her ignorance — no, thej^ are dimmed with 
 the sight of happiness, and the lids close 
 over them. To-day I tremble lest I can 
 never deserve my fate. The king has 
 come in his glory ; my lord has now a 
 subject who asks pardon for the liberties 
 she has taken, like the gambler with 
 loaded dice after cheating Monsieur de 
 Grammont. 
 
 " My cherished poet ! I will be thy Mi- 
 gnon — happier far than the Mignon of 
 Goethe, for thou wilt leave me in mine own 
 land — in thy heart. Just as I Avrite this 
 pledge of our betrothal a nightingale in 
 the Vilquin park answers for tliee. Ah, 
 tell me quick th^t his note, so pure, so 
 clear, so full, which fills my heart with 
 joy and love like an Annunciation, does 
 not lie to me. 
 
 " My father will pass through Paris on 
 his way from Marseilles ; the house of 
 Mongenod, with whom he corresponds, 
 will know his address. Go to him, my 
 Melchior, and tell him that you love me ; 
 but do not try to tell him how I love j-ou 
 — let that remain forever between our- 
 selves and God. I, my dear one, am 
 nbout to tell everything to my mother. 
 
 Her heart will justify my conduct ; she 
 will I'ejoice in our secret poem, so ro- 
 mantic, luiman and divine in one. 
 
 " You have the confession of the daugh- 
 ter ; you must now obtain the consent of 
 the Comte de la Bastie, the father of your 
 
 "MoDESTE. 
 
 " P. S. — Above all, do not come to 
 Havre without having first obtained m.y 
 father's consent. If you love me you will 
 find him as he passes through Paris." 
 
 " What are you doing at this time of 
 night, Mademoiselle Modesto?" said the 
 voice of Dumay at her door. 
 
 " Writing to my father," she answered ; 
 "did you not tell me you should start in 
 the morning ? " 
 
 Dumay had nothing to say to that, and 
 he went to bed, while Modeste wrote an- 
 other long letter, this time to her father. 
 
 On the morrow, Frangoise Cochet, ter- 
 rified at seeing the Havre postmark on 
 the envelope which Ernest had mailed the 
 night before, brought her young mistress 
 the following letter, taking away the one 
 which Modeste had written. 
 
 " To Mademoiselle O. d'Este M. — My 
 heart tells me that you were the woman 
 so carefully veiled and disguised, and 
 seated between Monsieur and Madame 
 Latournelle, who have but one child, a 
 son. Ah, my love, if you hnd only a 
 modest station, without distinction, or 
 importance, or even money, you do not 
 know how happy that would make me. 
 You ought to understand me by this time ; 
 why will 3'ou not tell me the truth ? I am 
 no poet — except in heart, through love, 
 through you. Oh ! what power of affec- 
 tion there is in me to keep me here in this 
 hotel, instead of mounting to Ingouville, 
 which I can see from my windows. Will 
 you ever love me as I love you ? To leave 
 Havre in such uncertainty is to be pun- 
 ished for loving you as if I had committed 
 a crime? But I obey you blindly. Let 
 me have a letter quickly, for if you have 
 been mysterious, I have returned you 
 mystery for mystery, and I must at last 
 throw off my disguise, show you the poet 
 that I am, and abdicate my borrowed 
 glory."
 
 MODESTE MIGSON. 
 
 397 
 
 This letter made Modesto very uneas}-. 
 She could not get back the one which 
 Frangoise had already posted, before she 
 came to the last words, whose meaning' 
 she now sought hj reading them again 
 and again ; but she went to her own room 
 and wrote an answer in which she de- 
 manded an immediate explanation. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 While these little events were taking 
 place, other little events were occurring 
 in Havre, which caused Modeste to forget 
 her present uneasiness. Dumay went 
 down to Havre early in the morning, and 
 soon discovered that no architect had 
 been in town the day before. Furious at 
 Butscha's lie, which revealed a conspira- 
 cy of which he was resolved to know the 
 meaning, he rushed from the mayor's 
 office to his friend Latouraelle. 
 
 '• Where's -your Master Butscha ? " he 
 demanded of the notary, when he saw 
 that the clerk was not in his place. 
 
 " Butscha, my dear fellow, has gone to 
 Paris on the steamer. ' He heard some 
 news of his father this morning on the 
 quays, from a sailor. It seems the father, 
 a Swedish sailor, went to the Indies and 
 served a prince, or something, and he is 
 now in Paris." 
 
 "Lies ! it's all a trick ! infamous ! I'll 
 find that devilish cripple if I've got to go 
 express to Paris for him," cried Dumay. 
 "Butscha is deceiving us; he knows 
 something about Modeste, and has not 
 told us. If he meddles in this thing he 
 shall never be a notary. I "11 roU him in 
 the mud from which he came, I'll — " 
 
 " Come, come, my friend ; never hang 
 a man before you try him," said Latour- 
 nelle, frightened at Dumay's rage. 
 
 After having explained upon what his 
 suspicions were founded, Dumay begged 
 Madame Latournelle to go and stay with 
 Modeste at the Chalet during his absence. 
 
 "You will find the colonel in Paris," 
 said the notary. "In the shipping news 
 quoted this morning in the ' Journal of 
 Commerce,' I found under the head of 
 Marseilles — here, see for yourself," he 
 
 added, offering the paper. "'The Bet- 
 Una Mignon, Captain Mignon, arrived 
 October 6;' it is now the 17th; the 
 colonel may be in Havre at any moment." 
 
 Dumay requested Gobenheim to get 
 along without him, and then went back 
 to the Chalet, which he reached just as 
 Modeste was sealing her two letters, to 
 her father and Canalis. Except for the 
 address the letters were precisely alike 
 both in weight and appearance. Modeste 
 thought she had laid that to her father 
 over that to her Melchior, but had, in 
 fact, done exactly the reverse. This mis- 
 take, so often made in the little things 
 of nfe, occasioned the discovery of her 
 secret by Dumay and her mother. The 
 former was talking vehemently to Ma- 
 dame Mignon in the salon, and revealing 
 to her his fresh fears caused hx Modeste's 
 duplicity and Butscha's connivance. 
 
 " Madame," he cried, "he is a serpent 
 whom we have warmed in our bosoms; 
 there's no place in his wretched little body 
 for soul ! " 
 
 Modeste put the letter for her father 
 into the pocket of her apron, supposing' 
 it to be that for Canalis, and came down^ 
 stairs with the letter for her lover in her 
 hand, hearing Dumay speaking of his im- 
 mediate departure for Paris. 
 
 " What has happened to my Black 
 Dwarf ? why are you talking so loud ? " 
 she said, appearing at the door. 
 
 "Mademoiselle, Butscha has gone to 
 Paris, and you, no doubt, know why — to 
 carry on that affair of the little architect 
 with the sulphur waistcoat, who, unfort- 
 unatel\' for the hunchback's lies, has 
 never been here." 
 
 Modeste was struck dumb ; feeling sure 
 that the dwarf had departed on a mission 
 of inquiry as to her poet's morals, she 
 turned pale, and sat down. 
 
 "I'm going after him; I shall find 
 him," continued Dumay. " Is that the 
 letter for your father, mademoiselle?" 
 he added, holding out his hand. "I will 
 send it to the Mongenods. Provided the 
 colonel and I maj' not pass each other on 
 the road." 
 
 Modeste gave him the letter. Dumay 
 looked mechanically at the address.
 
 398 
 
 THE HUMAN 00 MED Y. 
 
 " ' Monsieur le Baron de Canalis, Rue 
 de Paradis-Poissonniere, No. 29 ' ! " he 
 cried out; "what does that mean?" 
 
 " Ah, my daughter ! that is the man 
 you love," exclaimed Madame Mig-non ; 
 "the stanzas you set to music were 
 his—" 
 
 " And tliat's his portrait that you have 
 in a frame upstairs," added Duinay. 
 
 " Give me back that letter. Monsieur 
 Dumaj'-," said Modeste, rising like a lion- 
 ess defending her cubs. 
 
 " There it is, mademoiselle," he replied. 
 
 Modeste put it into the bosom of her 
 dress, and gave Dumay the one intended 
 for her father. 
 
 " I know what you are capable of, Du- 
 may," she said; "and if you take one 
 step against Monsieur de Canalis, I shall 
 take another out of this liouse, to which I 
 will never return." 
 
 "You will kill j'our mother, mademoi- 
 selle," replied Dumay, leaving the room 
 and calling his wife. 
 
 The poor mother was indeed half-faint- 
 ing — struck to the heart by Modeste 's 
 words. 
 
 • " Good-by, wife," said the Breton, 
 kissing the American. " Take care of 
 the mother ; I go to save the daughter." 
 
 He left Modeste and Madame Dumay 
 with Madame Mignon, made his prepara- 
 tions for the journey in a few minutes, 
 and started for Havre. An hour later he 
 was traveling post to Paris, with the 
 haste that nothing but passion or specu- 
 lation can get out of wheels. 
 
 Recovering lierself under Modeste 's ten- 
 der care, Madame Mignon went up to her 
 bedroom leaning on the arm of her daugh- 
 ter, to whom she said, as her sole re- 
 proach, when thej' were alone : 
 
 " My unfortunate child, see what you 
 have done ! Why did you conceal any- 
 thing from me ? Am I so harsh ? " 
 
 "Oh ! I was just going to tell it to j'ou 
 myself," sobbed Modeste. 
 
 She thereupon related everything to her 
 motlier, read her the letters and their an- 
 swers, and shed the rose of her poem 
 petal by petal into the heart of the kind 
 German woman. When this confidence, 
 which took half the day, was over, when 
 
 she saw something that was almost a 
 smile on the lips of the too indulgent 
 mother, Modeste fell upon her breast in 
 tears. 
 
 " Oh, mother !" she said amid her sobs, 
 " you, whose heart, all gold and poetry, 
 is a chosen vessel, chosen of God to hold 
 a sacred, pure and celestial love that en- 
 dures for life ; you, whom I wish to imi- 
 tate b^^ loving no one but my husband — 
 you will surely understand what bitter 
 tears I am now shedding. This butterfly, 
 this dual soul which I have nurtured witli 
 maternal care, my love, my sacred love, 
 this living mystery of mysteries, is falling 
 into vulgar hands, and they will tear its 
 wings and rend its veil under the miser- 
 able pretext of enlightening me, of dis- 
 covering whether genius is as correct as a 
 banker, whether m^' Melchior is capable 
 of saving- his money, or whether he has 
 some entanglement to shake off; they 
 want to find out if he is guilty to bour- 
 geois eyes of yout/hful indiscretions — 
 which to the sun of our love are like the 
 clouds of the dawn. Oh ! what v,-ill come 
 of it ? what will they do ? See ! feel my 
 hand; it burns with fever. Ah! I shall 
 never survive it." 
 
 And Modeste, really taken with a cliill, 
 was forced to go to bed, causing serious 
 uneasiness to her mother, Madame La- 
 tournelle, and Madame Dumay, who took 
 good care of her during the journey of 
 the lieutenant to Paris — to which city the 
 logic of events compels us to transport 
 our drama for a moment. 
 
 Truly modest minds, like those of Ernest 
 de la Briere, but especially those who, 
 knowing their own value, are neither 
 loved nor appreciated, can understand 
 the infinite joy to which the young secre- 
 tary abandoned himself on reading Mo- 
 deste's letter. After tliinking him lofty 
 and witty in soul, his young, artless mis- 
 tress now thought him handsome. This 
 is supreme flattery. And why ? Beauty 
 is, undoubtedly, the signature of the mas- 
 ter to the work into whicli he has put his 
 soul ; it is the divine spirit manifested. 
 And to see it where it is not, to create it 
 by the power of an inward look — is not 
 that the highest attainment of love ?
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 399 
 
 And so the poor j'outh cried aloud with 
 all the rapture of an applauded author, 
 "At last I am beloved!" When a wo- 
 man — ^be she maid, wife, or widow — lets 
 the charming- words escape her, "Thou 
 art handsome," the words may be false, 
 V)ut"the man opens his thick skull to their 
 subtle poison, and thenceforth he is at- 
 tached by an everlasting' tie to the pretty 
 flatterer, the true or the deceived wo- 
 man ; she becomes his particular world, 
 he thirsts for her continual testimony, 
 and he never wearies of it, eVen if he is a 
 crowned prince. Ernest walked proudly 
 up and down his room ; he struck a three- 
 quarter, full-face, and profile attitude be- 
 fore the glass ; he tried to criticise him- 
 self ; but a voice, diabolically persuasive, 
 whispered to him, "Modeste is right." 
 He took up her letter and re-read it ; he 
 saw his fairest of the fair ; he talked with 
 her; then, in the midst of his ecstasy, a 
 dreadful thought came to him : 
 
 " She thinks me Canalis, and she has a 
 million of money ! " 
 
 Down went his happiness, just as a 
 somnambulist, who has attained the peak 
 of a roof, hoars a voice, awakes, and falls 
 crushed upon the pavement. 
 
 " Without the halo of fame I shall be 
 hideous in her eyes," he cried ; "what a 
 maddening situation I have got myself 
 into ! " 
 
 La Briere was too much like his letters, 
 his heart was too noble and pure to allow 
 him to hesitate at the call of honor. He 
 at once resolved to find Modeste's father, 
 if he were in Paris, and confess all to 
 him, and to let Canalis know the serious 
 results of their Parisian jest. To a sen- 
 sitive nature like his, Modeste's large 
 fortune was in itself a determining rea- 
 son. He could not allow it to be even 
 suspected that the ardor of the corre- 
 spondence, so sincere on his part, had in 
 view the capture of a dot. Tears were 
 in his eyes as he made his waj"- to the 
 Rue Chantereinc to find the banker Mon- 
 genod, whose fortune and business con- 
 nections were partly the work of the 
 minister to whom Ernest owed his start 
 in life. 
 
 While La Briere was inquiring about 
 
 the father of his beloved from the head' 
 of the house of Mongenod, and getting 
 information that might be useful to hira 
 in his strange position, a scene was tak- 
 ing place in Canalis's study which the 
 ex - lieutenant's hasty departure from 
 Havre may have led the reader to fore- 
 see. 
 
 Like a true soldier of the imperial 
 school, Dumay, whose Breton blood had 
 boiled all the way to Paris, thought of 
 a poet as a poor stick of a fellow, of no 
 consequence whatever — a writer of gay 
 refrains, living in a garret, dressed in 
 black clothes that were white at every 
 seam, wearing boots that were occasion- 
 ally without soles, and linen that wa* 
 unmentionable, and whose fingers know 
 more about ink than soap ; in short, one 
 who looked alwaj-s as if he had stumbled 
 from the moon, except when scribbling 
 at a desk, like Butscha. But the seeth- 
 ing of the Breton's heart and brain re- 
 ceived a violent application of cold water 
 when he entered the courtj'ard of the 
 pretty house occupied by the poet and 
 saw a groom washing a carriage, and 
 also, through the windows of a hand- 
 some dining-room, a valet dressed like 
 a banker, to whom the groom referred 
 him, and who answered, looking the 
 stranger over from head to foot, that 
 Monsieur le Baron was not visible. 
 "There is," added the man, "a meet- 
 ing of the council of state to-day, at 
 which Monsieur le Baron is obliged to 
 be present." 
 
 " Is this really the house of Monsieur 
 Canalis," said Dumay, "a writer of 
 poetry ? " 
 
 "Monsieur le Baron de Canalis," re- 
 plied the valet, "is the great poet of 
 whom you speak ; but he is also the 
 president of the coui't of Claims at- 
 tached to the ministry of foreign af- 
 fairs." 
 
 Dumaj', who had come to box the ears 
 of a scribbling nobody, found himself 
 confronted by a high functionary of the 
 state. The salon where he was told to 
 wait offered, for his meditations, the in- 
 signia of the Legion of Honor glittering 
 on a black coat, belonging to Canalis,
 
 400 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 which the valet had left upon a chair. 
 Presently his eyes were attracted by 
 the beauty and brilliancy of a silver- 
 g-ilt cup bearing the words " Given by 
 Madame." Then he beheld before him, 
 on a pedestal, a Sevres vase on which 
 was enj»-raved, " The gift of Madame la 
 Dauphine." 
 
 These mute admonitions brought Du- 
 may to his senses while the valet went 
 to ask his master if he would receive a 
 person who had come from Havre ex- 
 pressly to see him — a stranger named 
 Dumay. 
 
 " What sort of a man ? " asked Canalis. 
 
 " He is well-dressed, and wears the 
 ribbon of the Legion of Honor." 
 
 Canalis made a sign of assent, and 
 the valet retreated, and then returned 
 and announced, ''Monsieur Dumay." 
 
 When he heard himself announced, when 
 he was actuallj' in presence of Canalis, in 
 a study as gorgeous as it was elegant, 
 with his feet on a carpet far handsomer 
 than any in the house of Mignon, and 
 when he met the studied glance of the 
 poet who was playing with the tassels of 
 his sumptuous dressing-gown, Dumay was 
 so completel}^ taken aback that he allowed 
 the great poet to have the first word. 
 
 " To what do I owe the honor of your 
 visit, monsieur ? " 
 
 "Monsieur," began Dumay, who re- 
 mained standing. 
 
 "If you have a good deal to say," in- 
 terrupted Canalis, " I must ask you to be 
 seated." 
 
 And Canalis threw himself into an arm- 
 chair a la Voltaire, crossed his legs, raised 
 the upper one to the level of his ej'e and 
 looked fixedly at Dumay, who became, to 
 use his own martial slang, "bayoneted." 
 
 "I am listening, monsieur," said the 
 poet ; " vay time is precious — the minister 
 expects me." 
 
 " Monsieur," said Dumaj^, " I shall be 
 brief. You have gained an influence — 
 how, I do not know — over a young lady 
 in Havre, who is beautiful and rich ; the 
 only hope of two noble families ; and I 
 have come to ask your intentions." 
 
 Canalis, who had been busy during the 
 last three months with serious matters of 
 
 his own, and was trying to get himself 
 made commander of the Legion of Honor 
 and minister to a German court, had com- 
 pletely forgotten Modeste's letter. 
 
 " I ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 "You ! " repeated Dumay. 
 
 "Monsieur," answered Canalis, smil- 
 ing-; "I know no more of what you are 
 talking about than if you had said it in 
 Hebrew. I lead a young girl astray ! I, 
 who — " and a superb smile crossed his 
 features. " Come, come, monsieur, I'm 
 not such a child as to steal fruit over the 
 hedges when I have orchards and gardens 
 of my own where the finest peaches in 
 the world ripen. All Paris knows where 
 my affections are set. Even if there should 
 be some young girl in Havre full of en- 
 thusiasm for m\' verses — of which the^' are 
 not worth}^ ; that would not surprise me 
 at all ; nothing is more common. See ! 
 look at that lovely cofl'er of ebony inlaid 
 with mother-of-pearl, and edged with that 
 iron-work as fine as lace. That cofl"er be- 
 longed to Pope Leo X., and was given to 
 rae by the Duchesse de Chaulieu, who re- 
 ceived it from the king of Spain. It con- 
 tains the letters I receive from ladies and 
 young girls living in every quarter of 
 Europe. Oh ! I assure you I feel the 
 utmost respect for these flowers of the 
 soul, cut and sent in moments of enthu- 
 siasm that are worthy of all reverence. 
 Yes, to me the impulse of a heart is a 
 noble and sublime thing! Others — 
 scofTers — light their cigars with such 
 letters, or give them to their wives for 
 curl-papers ; but I, who am a bachelor, 
 monsieur, I have too much delicacy not 
 to preserve these artless offerings — so 
 fresh, so disinterested — in a tabernacle of 
 their own. In fact, I guard them with a 
 species of veneration, and when I am on 
 my death-bed they will be burned before 
 my eyes. People may call that ridiculous, 
 but I do not care. I am grateful ; these 
 proofs of devotion enable me to bear the 
 criticisms and aniioyances of a literary 
 life. When I receive a shot in the back 
 from some enemy lurking under cover 
 of a daily paper, 1 look at that casket 
 and think — here and there in this wide 
 world there are hearts whose pain has
 
 MOD EST E MIGXON. 
 
 401 
 
 been healed, or diverted, or soothed by 
 n:e ! " 
 
 This bit of poetry, declaimed with all 
 the talent of a great actor, petrified the 
 lieutenant, whose eyes opened to their 
 utmost extent, and whose astonishment 
 amused the poet. 
 
 " I will permit you," continued the pea- 
 cock, spreading his tail, "out of respect 
 for your position, which I fully appreciate, 
 to open that coffer and look for the letter 
 of your young lady. I know I am right, 
 however; I remember names, and I as- 
 sure you you are mistaken in thinking — " 
 
 "And this is what a poor child comes 
 to in this gulf of Paris ! " cried Dumay— 
 "the darling of her parents, the joj^ of 
 her friends, the hope of all, petted by all, 
 the pride of a family, who has six persons 
 so devoted to her that they are making a 
 rampart of their hearts and fortunes be- 
 tween her and sorrow. Monsieur," Du- 
 may resumed after a pause, "you are a 
 gi'eat poet, and I am onh^ a poor soldier. 
 For fifteen years I served my country in 
 the ranks ; I have had the wind of many 
 a bullet in my face ; I have crossed Siberia 
 and been a prisoner there ; the Russians 
 flung me on a kibitka, and God knows 
 what I suffered. I have seen thousands 
 of my comrades die — but you have given 
 me a chill to the marrow of my bones, 
 such as I never felt before." 
 
 Duinay fancied that his words moved 
 the poet, but in fact they only flattered 
 him — a thing which at this period of his 
 life had become almost an impossibility ; 
 for his ambitious mind had long forgotten 
 the first perfumed phial that praise had 
 broken over his head. 
 
 "Ah, my soldier ! " he said solemnly, 
 laying his hand on Dumay 's shoulder, and 
 thinking to hims*5lf how droll it was to 
 make a soldier of the empire tremble, 
 " this young girl may be all in all to you, 
 but to societj'^ at large what is she ? noth- 
 ing. At this moment the greatest man- 
 darin in China may be yielding up the 
 ghost and putting half the universe in 
 mourning, and what is that to you? The 
 English are killing thousands of people in 
 India more worthy than we are ; why, at 
 this very moment while I am speaking to 
 
 you some ravishing woman is being burned 
 alive — did that make you care less for 
 your cup of coffee this morning ? Not a 
 daj' passes in Paris that some mother in 
 rags does not cast her infant on the world 
 to be picked up by whoever finds it ; and 
 yet see ! here is this delicious tea in a cup 
 that cost five louis, and I write verses 
 which Parisian women rush to buy, ex- 
 claiming, ' Divine ! delicious ! charming ! 
 food for the soul ! ' Social nature, like 
 Nature herself, is full of forgetfulness. 
 You will be quite surprised ten years 
 hence at what you have done to-daj-. 
 You are here in a city where people die, 
 where they marry, where they adore each 
 other at an assignation, where young girls 
 commit suicide, where the man of genius 
 with his cargo of thoughts teeming with 
 humane beneficence goes to the bottom — 
 all side by side, sometimes under th» same 
 roof, and yet ignorant of each other. And 
 here you come among us and ask us to 
 expire with grief at this commonplace 
 affair." 
 
 " You call yourself a poet ! " cried Du- 
 may. "' Do you not feel what j^ou write ? " 
 
 " My good sir, if we endured the joj's or 
 the woes we sing we should be as wornout 
 in three months as a pair of old boots," 
 said the poet, smiling. " But stay, j^ou 
 shall not come from Havre to Paris to see 
 Canalis without carrying something back 
 with you. Warrior ! [Canalis had the 
 form and action of an Homeric hero] 
 learn this from the poet : Every noble 
 sentiment in man is a poem so exclusively 
 individual that his best friend cares noth- 
 ing for it. It is a treasure which is his 
 alone, it is — " 
 
 " Excuse me for interrupting you, " said 
 Dumay, who was gazing at the poet with 
 horror, "but did you ever come to 
 Havre ? " 
 
 " I was there for a day and a night in 
 the spring of 1824 on my way to Lon- 
 don." 
 
 "You are a man of honor," continued 
 Dumay; "will you give me your word 
 that you do not know Mademoiselle Mo- 
 deste Mignon ? " 
 
 " This is the first time that naiae ever 
 struck my ear," replied Canalis.
 
 402 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 " Ah, monsieur ! " said Dumay, " into 
 what dark intrig-uc am I about to plunge ? 
 Can I count upon you to help me in my 
 inquiries? — for I am certain that some 
 one has been using- your name. You 
 should have received a letter yesterday 
 from Havre." 
 
 " I received none. Be sure, monsieur, 
 that I will help you," said Canalis, "so 
 far as I have the opportunity of doing- 
 so." 
 
 Dumay withdrew, his heart torn with 
 anxiety, believing that the wretched But- 
 sclia had worn the skin of the poet to de- 
 ceive Modeste ; whereas Butscha himself, 
 keen-witted as a prince seeking- revenge, 
 and far clevei-er than any paid spy, was 
 ferreting out the life and actions of Cana- 
 lis, escaping notice bj' his insignificance, 
 like an insect that bores its way into the 
 sap of a tree. 
 
 The Breton had scarcely left the poet's 
 house when La Briere entered his friend's 
 study. Naturally, Canalis told him of 
 the visit of the man from Havre. 
 
 "Ha!" said Ernest, "Modeste Mi- 
 gnon ; that is just what I have come to 
 speak of." 
 
 , "All, bah!" cried Canalis; "have I 
 had a triumph by proxy?" 
 
 "Yes ; and here is the kej' to it. My 
 friend, I am loved by the sweetest girl in 
 all the world — beautiful enough to shine 
 beside the greatest beauties in Paris, with 
 a heart and mind worthy of a Clarissa 
 Harlowe. She has seen me ; I have 
 pleased her, and she thinks me the great 
 Canalis. But that is not all. Modeste 
 Mignon is of high birth, and Mongenod 
 has just told me that her father, the 
 Comte de la Bastie, has something like 
 six millions. The father has been here 
 three days, and I have asked him through 
 Mongenod for an interview at two o'clock. 
 Mongenod is to give him a hint, just a 
 word, that it concerns the happiness of 
 his daughter. But you will readily under- 
 stand that before seeing the father I feel 
 I ought to make a clean breast of it to 
 you." 
 
 "Among the plants whose flowers bloom 
 in the sunshine of fame, "said Canalis, im- 
 pressively, "there is one, the most mag- 
 
 nificent, which bears like the orange-tree 
 a golden fruit amid the mingled perfumes 
 of beautjr and of mind ; a lovely plant, a 
 true tenderness, a perfect bliss, and — it 
 eludes me." Canalis looked at the car- 
 pet that Ernest might not read his eyes. 
 "Could I," he continued after a pause to 
 regain his self-possession, "how could I 
 have divined that flower from a pretty 
 sheet of perfumed paper, that true heart, 
 that young girl, that woman in whom 
 love wears the livery of flattery, who 
 loves us for ourselves, who offers us fe- 
 licity? It needed an angel or a demon to 
 perceive her ; and what am I but the am- 
 bitious head of a court of Claims ! Ah, 
 vay friend, fame makes us the target of 
 a thousand arrows. One of us owes his 
 rich marriage to an hj'draulic piece of 
 poetry, while I, more seductive, more a 
 woman's man than lie, have missed mine 
 — do you love her, this poor girl?" he 
 asked, looking up at La Briere. 
 
 " Oh ! " ejaculated the young man. 
 
 "Well, then," said the poet, taking his 
 secretary's arm and leaning heavily upon 
 it, "be happy, Ernest. By a mere acci- 
 dent I have been not ungrateful to you. 
 You are richly rewarded for your devo- 
 tion, for I will generously further your 
 happiness." 
 
 Canalis was furious ; but he could not 
 behave otherwise, and he made the best 
 of his disappointment by making a pedes- 
 tal of it. 
 
 "Ah, Canalis, I have never really known 
 you till this moment." 
 
 " What did you expect ? It takes some 
 time togo round the world," replied the 
 poet with his pompous irony. 
 
 "But think," said La Briere, "of this 
 enormous fortune." 
 
 "Ah, my friend, is if not well invested 
 in you?" cried Canalis, accompanj'ing 
 the words with a charming gesture. 
 
 "Melchior," said La Briere, "I am 
 yours for life and death." 
 
 He wrung the poet's hand and left him 
 abruptly, for he was in haste to meet 
 Monsieur Mignon.
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 403 
 
 XV. 
 
 The Comte de la Bastie was over- 
 whelmed with the sorrows which lay in 
 wait for him as their prey. He had 
 learned from his daughter's letter of 
 Bettina's death and of his wife's in- 
 firmity, and Dumay related to him, when 
 they met, his terrible perplexity' as to 
 Modeste's love affairs. 
 
 " Leave me to myself," he said to his 
 faithful friend. 
 
 As the lieutenant closed the door, the 
 unhappy father threw himself on a sofa, 
 with his head in his hands, weeping: those 
 slow, scanty tears which gather between 
 the eyelids of a man of sixty, but do not 
 fall — tears soon dried, yet quick to start 
 again — the last dews of the human au- 
 tumn. 
 
 " To have dear children and an adored 
 wife — what is it but to have many hearts 
 and bare them to a dagger ? " he cried, 
 springing up with the bound of a tiger 
 and walking up and down the room. " To 
 be a father is to give one's self over, 
 bound hand and foot, to sorrow. If I 
 meet that D"Estourny I will kill him. 
 To have daughters I — one gives her life 
 to a scoundrel, the other, my Modeste, 
 falls a victim to whom ? a coward, who 
 deceives her with the gilded paper of a 
 poet. If it were Canalis himself it might 
 not be so bad : but that Scapin of a lover! 
 — I will strangle him with my two hands," 
 he cried, making an involuntary gesture 
 of furious determination. "And what 
 then ? suppose my Modeste were to die 
 of grief ? " 
 
 He gazed mechanically out of the win- 
 dows of the Hotel des Princes, and then 
 returned to the sofa, where he sat mo- 
 tionless. The fatigues of six voyages to 
 India, the anxieties of speculation, the 
 dangers he had encountered and evaded, 
 and his many griefs, had silvered Charles 
 Mignon's head. His handsome soldierly 
 face, so pure in out line, was now bronzed by 
 the suns of China and the southern seas, 
 and had acquired an air of dignity which 
 his present grief rendered almost sublime. 
 
 " Mongenod told me to have confidence 
 in the young man who is coming to ask 
 
 me for my daughter," he thought at last; 
 and at this moment Ernest de la Briere 
 was announced bj' one of the servants 
 whom Monsieur de la Bastie had attached 
 to himself during the last four years. 
 
 " You have come, monsieur, from my 
 friend Mongenod ? " he said. 
 
 " Yes," replied Ernest, looking timidly 
 at the face before him, v'hich was as 
 somber as Othello's. " M3' name is 
 Ernest de la Briere, related to the fami- 
 ly of the late cabinet minister, and his 
 private secretary during his term of of- 
 fice. When he went out of office, his 
 excellenc\- put me in the court of 
 Claims, to which I am legal counsel, 
 and where I maj' possibty succeed as 
 chief—" 
 
 " And how does all this concern Made- 
 moiselle de la Bastie ? " asked the count. 
 
 " Monsieur, I love her ; and I have the 
 unspeakable happiness of being loved by 
 her. Hear me, monsieur," cried Ernest, 
 checking a violent movement on the part 
 of the angry father. " I have the strang- 
 est confession to make to you, a shameful 
 one for a man of honor; but the worst 
 punishment of mj' conduct, natural enough 
 in itself, is not the telling of it to you ; no, 
 I fear the daughter even more than the 
 father." 
 
 Ernest then related simply, and with 
 the nobleness that comes of sincerity, all 
 the facts of his little drama, not omitting 
 the twenty or more letters, which he had 
 brought with him, nor the interview 
 which he had just had with Canalis. 
 When Monsieur Mignon had finished 
 reading the letters, the unfortunate lover, 
 pale and suppliant, trembled beneath the 
 flery glance of the Provengal. 
 
 "Monsieur," said the latter, "in this 
 whole matter there is but one error, but 
 that is all-important. My daughter will 
 not have six millions; at the utmost, she 
 will have a marriage portion of two hun- 
 dred thousand francs, and very doubtful 
 expectations." 
 
 " Ah, monsieur ! " cried Erne-st, rising 
 and grasping Monsieur Mignon 's hand ; 
 "you take a load from my breast. Per- 
 haps nothing will now hinder my happi- 
 ness. I have influence ; I shall certainly
 
 404 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 be chief of the court of Claims. Had 
 Mademoiselle Modeste no more than ten 
 tliousand francs, if I had even to make a 
 settlement on her, she should still be my 
 wife ; and to make her happj' as j'ou, 
 monsieur, have made your wife happy, to 
 be to you a real son (for I have no father), 
 are the deepest desires of my heart." 
 
 Charles Mig-non stepped back and fixed 
 upon La Briere a look which entered the 
 ej'es of the young' man as a dag-g-er enters 
 its sheath ; he stood silent a moment, 
 recog-nizing the absolute candor, tlie pure 
 truthfulness of that open nature in the 
 light of the young man's inspired eyes. 
 " Is fate at last weary of pursuing' me ?" 
 he asked himself. "Am I to find in this 
 young' man the pearl of sons-in-law?" 
 He walked up and down the room in 
 strong' ag-itation. 
 
 "Monsieur," he said at last, "you are 
 bound to submit wholly to the jud.g'ment 
 which you have come here to seek, other- 
 wise you are now playing a farce." 
 
 "Oh, monsieur ! " 
 
 "Listen to me," said the father, nail- 
 ing La Briere where he stood with a 
 g'lance. " I shall be neither harsh, nor 
 hard, nor unjust. You shall have the 
 advantag-es and the disadvantages of the 
 false position in which you have placed 
 yourself. My daughter believes that she 
 loves one of the great poets of the day, 
 whose fame attracted her in the first 
 place. Well, I, her father, intend to give 
 her the opportunity to choose between 
 the celebrity which has been a beacon to 
 her, and the poor reality which the irony 
 of fate has flung at her feet. Ought she 
 not to choose between Canalis and your- 
 self ? I rely upon your honor not to re- 
 peat what I have told you as to the state 
 of my affairs. You may come, you and 
 your friend the Baron de Canalis, to 
 H-avre for the last two weeks of October. 
 My house will be open to both of you, 
 and my daughter shall have an oppor- 
 tunity to study you. You must yourself 
 bring your rival, and not disabuse him as 
 to the foolish tales he will hear about the 
 wealth of the Corate de la Bastie. I go 
 to Havre to-morrow, and I shall expect 
 you three days later. Adieu, monsieur." 
 
 Poor La Briere went back to Canalis 
 with a dragging step. The poet, mean- 
 time, left to himself, had given way to a 
 current of thought out of which had come 
 that secondary impulse so highly praised 
 by Monsieur de Talleyrand. The first 
 impulse is the voice of Nature, the second 
 that of society. 
 
 "A girl worth six millions," he thought 
 to himself, "and my eyes were not able 
 to see that gold shining in the darkness ! 
 With such a fortune I could be peer of 
 France, count, embassador. I have re- 
 plied to middle-class women and silly 
 women, and crafty creatures who wanted 
 autographs ; and I grew weary of anon}-- 
 mous intrigues — at the very moment 
 when God was sending me a soul of price, 
 an angel with golden wings ! Bah ! I'll 
 write a sublime poem, and perhaps the 
 chance will come again. Heavens ! the 
 luck of that little La Briere — strutting 
 about in my luster — plagiarism. I am 
 the model, and he the statue ! It is the 
 old fable of Bertrand and Raton. Six 
 millions, a beauty, a Migiion de la Bastie, 
 an aristocratic divinity loving poetry and 
 the poet ! And I, who showed my muscle 
 as man of the world, who did those Al- 
 cide exercises to silence by moral force 
 the champion of physical force, that old 
 soldier with a heart, that friend of this 
 very young girl, whom he'll now go and 
 tell that I have a heart of iron ! — I, to 
 play Napoleon when I ought to have been 
 seraphic ! Good heavens ! True, I shall 
 have my friend. Friendship is a beautiful 
 thing. I have kept him, but at what a 
 price ! Six millions, that's' the cost of it ; 
 we can't have many friends if we pay all 
 that for them." 
 
 La Briere entered the room as Canalis 
 reached this point in his meditations. He 
 was gloom personified. 
 
 "Well, what's the mutter?" said Ca- 
 nalis. 
 
 " The father exacts that his daughter 
 shall choose between the two Canalis — " 
 
 " Poor boj' ! " cried the poet, laughing, 
 " he's a clever fellow, that father." 
 
 " I have pledged my honor that I will 
 take you to Havre," said La Briere, 
 piteously.
 
 MOD EST E MIGNON. 
 
 405 
 
 "My dear fellow," said Canalis, "if it 
 is a question of your honor, you may 
 count on me. I'll ask for leave of 
 absence for a month." 
 
 " Modeste is so beautiful ! " exclaimed 
 La Briere, in a despairing' tone, " and you 
 can so easily crusli me. I wondered all 
 along' that fate should be so kind to me ; 
 I knew it was all a mistake." 
 
 " Bah ! we will see about that," said 
 Canalis, with inhuman gayety. 
 
 That evening, after dinner, Charles 
 Mignon and Dumaj', were flying, by 
 \'irtue of three francs to each postilion, 
 from Paris to Havre. The father had 
 eased the watch-dog's mind as to Mo- 
 deste and her love affairs ; the g-uard 
 was relieved, and Butscha's innocence 
 established. 
 
 " It is all for the best, my old Dumaj'," 
 said the count, who had been making 
 certain inquiries of Mongenod respecting 
 Canalis and La Briere. "We are going 
 to have two actors for one part ! " he 
 cried gayly. 
 
 Nevertheless, he requested his old com- 
 rade to be absolutely silent about the 
 comedj' which was now to be pla^'ed at 
 the Chalet — a comedy it might be, but 
 also a g'entle punishment, or rather a 
 lesson given 'by the father to the daugh- 
 ter. 
 
 The two friends kept up a long conver- 
 sation all the way from Paris to Havre, 
 which put the colonel in possession of the 
 facts relating to his family during' the 
 past four years, and informed Dumay 
 that Desplein, the great surgeon, was 
 coming to Ha\Te at the end of the pres- 
 ent month to examine the cataract on 
 Madame Mignon's eyes, and decide if it 
 were possible to restore her sight. 
 
 A few moments before the breakfast- 
 hour at the Chalet, the clacking of a pos- 
 tilion's whip apprised the family that the 
 two soldiers were arriving ; only a father's 
 joy at returning after long absence could 
 be heralded with such clatter, and it 
 brought all the women to the garden 
 gate. There are so manj"^ fathers and 
 children — perhaps more fathers than chil- 
 dren — who will understand the delights of 
 such an arrival, that literature has no need 
 
 to depict it. Perhaps all gentle and ten- 
 der emotions are beyond the range of 
 literature. 
 
 Not a word that could trouble the peace 
 of the family was uttered on this joj-ful 
 day. Truce was tacitly established be- 
 tween father, mother, and child as to the 
 so-called mj-sterious love which had paled 
 Modeste's cheeks — for this was the first 
 day she liad left her bed since Dumay's 
 departure for Paris. The colonel, with 
 the charming delicacy of a true soldier, 
 never left his wife's side nor released her 
 hand ; but he watched Modeste with de- 
 light, and was never weary of noting her 
 refined, elegant, and poetic beauty. It is 
 'by such seeming trifles that we recognize 
 a man of feeling. Modeste, who feared to 
 interrupt the subdued joy of the husband 
 and wife, kept at a little distance, coming 
 from time to time to kiss her father's 
 forehead, and when she kissed it over- 
 much she seemed to mean that she was 
 kissing it for two — for Bettina and her- 
 self. 
 
 " Oh, my darling, I understand you,' ' 
 said the colonel, pressing her hand as 
 she assailed him with kisses. 
 
 "Hush!" whispered the young girl, 
 glancing at her mother. 
 
 Dumay's rather sly and pregnant si- 
 lence made Modeste somewhat uneasy as 
 to the results of his journey to Paris. 
 She looked at him furtively every now 
 and then, without being able to get be- 
 neath his stolid imperturbability. The 
 colonel, like a prudent father, wanted to 
 study the character of his only daughter, 
 and above all consult his wife, before en-, 
 tering on a conference upon which the 
 happiness of the whole famil3' depended. 
 
 " To-morrow, my precious child," he 
 said, as they parted for the night, "get 
 up early, and we will go and take a walk 
 on the seashore. We have to talk about 
 your poems, Mademoiselle de la Bastie." 
 
 His last words, accompanied by a smile, 
 which reappeared like reflection on Du- 
 may's lips, were all that gave Modeste 
 any clew to what was coming ; but it was 
 enough to calm her uneasiness and keep 
 her awake far into the night with her 
 head full of suppositions ; the next mom-
 
 406 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 ingr, therefore, she was dressed and ready 
 Ions' before the colonel. 
 
 '• You know all, my kind papa?" she 
 said as soon as they were on the road to 
 the beach. 
 
 "I know all, and a good deal more 
 than you do," he replied. 
 
 After that remark father and daughter 
 went some little way in silence. 
 
 " Explain to me, my child, how it hap- 
 pens that a girl whom her mother idolizes 
 could have taken such an important step 
 as to write to a stranger without consult- 
 ing lier." 
 
 '• Oh, papa ! because mamma would 
 never have allowed it." 
 
 " And do you think, my daughter, that 
 that was proper ? Though 3'ou have been 
 educating your mind in this fatal way, 
 how is it that your good sense and your 
 intellect did not, in default of modesty, 
 step in and show you that by acting as 
 you did, you were throwing yourself at 
 a man's head ? To think that my daugh- 
 ter, my only remaining child, should lack 
 pride and delicacy ! Oh, Modeste, you 
 made your father pass two hours in hell 
 when ho heard of it ; for, after all, your 
 conduct has been the same morallj' as 
 Bettina's without the excuse of the heart's 
 seduction; you were a coquette in cold 
 blood, and that sort of coquetry' is head- 
 love, the worst vice of French women." 
 
 "I, without pride!" said Modeste, 
 weeping ; ' ' but he has not yet seen me." 
 
 "He knows j'our name." 
 
 "I did not tell it to him till my eyes 
 had vindicated the correspondence, last- 
 •ing three months, during which our souls 
 had spoken to each other." 
 
 " Oh, my dear misguided angel, you 
 have mixed up a species of reason with a 
 folly that has compromised your own 
 happiness and that of your family." 
 
 " But, after all, papa, happiness is the 
 absolution of my temerity," she said, 
 pouting. 
 
 " Oh ! your conduct is nothing but 
 temerity, is it? " 
 
 '• A temerity that my mother practiced 
 before me," she retorted, quickly. 
 
 " Rebellious child ! your mother, after 
 seeing me at a ball, told her father, who 
 
 adored her, that she thought she could be 
 happy with me. Be honest, Modeste ; is 
 there any likeness between a love hastily 
 conceived, I admit, but under the eyes of 
 a father, and your mad action of writing 
 to a stranger? " 
 
 '• A stranger, papa ? say rather one of 
 our greatest poets, whose character and 
 whose life are exposed to the strongest 
 light of day, to detraction and to calumny 
 — a man robed in fame, to whom, my dear 
 father, I was a mere literary and dra- 
 matic personage, one of Shakespeare's 
 women, until the moment when I wished 
 to know if the man himself were as beauti- 
 ful as his soul." 
 
 " Good God I my poor child, you are 
 talking poetry about marriage. But if, 
 from time immemorial, girls have been 
 cloistered in the bosom of their families, 
 if God, if social law puts them under the 
 stern yoke of parental sanction, it is, 
 mark vay words, to spare them the mis- 
 fortunes that this very poetry which 
 charms and dazzles you, and of which 
 you are therefore unable to judge, would 
 entail upon them. Poetry is indeed one 
 of the pleasures of life, but it is not life 
 itself." 
 
 " Papa, that is a suit still pending be- 
 fore the Court of Facts ; the struggle is 
 forever going on between our hearts and 
 the claims of familj^." 
 
 " Alas for the child that finds her happi- 
 ness in resisting them," said the colonel 
 gravely. " In 1813 I saw one of my com- 
 rades, the Marquis d'Aiglemont, marry 
 his cousin against the wishes of her 
 father, and the pair have since paid dear 
 for the obstinacy which the young girl 
 took for love. The family must be 
 sovereign in marriage." 
 
 "M^Y fiance has told me all that," she' 
 answered. " He played Orgon for some 
 time ; and he was brave enough to dis- 
 parage the personal lives of poets." 
 
 "I have read your letters," said Charles 
 Mignon, with a malicious smile on his lips 
 that made Modeste uneasy, " and I must 
 say that j'our last epistle was scarcely 
 permissible in any woman, even a Julie 
 d'Etanges. Good God ! what harm 
 novels do ! "
 
 MOD EST E MIGNON. 
 
 407 
 
 " We should live them, my dear father, 
 whether people wrote them or not ; I 
 tliink it is better to read them. There 
 are not so many adventures in these days 
 as there were under Louis XIV. and Louis 
 XV., when fewer novels were published. 
 Besides, if you have read those letters, 
 you must know that I have chosen the 
 most ang-elic soul, the most sternly up- 
 right man for your son-in-law, and you 
 must have seen that we love one another 
 at least as much as you and mamma love 
 each other. Well, I admit that it was 
 not all exactly conventional ; if you will 
 have me say so, I did wrong- — " 
 
 "1 have read your letters," said her 
 father, interrupting her, " and I know 
 exactly how far your lover justified you 
 iu your own eyes for a proceeding which 
 might be permissible in some woman who 
 understood life, and who was led awaj'' \>y 
 strong passion, but which in a young girl 
 of twenty was a monstrous piece of wrong- 
 doing." 
 
 '"'Yes, wrong-doing for commonplace 
 people, for the narrow-minded Goben- 
 heims, .who measure life with a square 
 rule. Please let us keep to the artistic 
 and poetic life, papa. We young girls 
 have only two waj's to act ; we must 
 let a man know we love him by mincing 
 and simpering, or we must go to him 
 frankly. Is not the last way grand and 
 noble ? We French girls are delivered 
 over by our families like so much mer- 
 chandise, at sixty days' sight, sometimes 
 thirty, like Mademoiselle Vilquin ; but in 
 England, and Switzerland, and Germany, 
 they follow very much the plan I have 
 adopted. Now what have you got to say 
 to that ? Am I not half German ? " 
 
 "Child ! " cried the colonel, looking at 
 her ; " the supremacy' of France comes 
 from her sound common sense, from the 
 logic to which her noble language con- 
 strains her mind. France is the reason- 
 ing power of the whole world. England 
 and Germany are romantic in their mar- 
 riage customs — though even their noble 
 families follow our customs. You cer- 
 tainly do not mean to deny that your 
 parents, who know life, who are respon- 
 sible for your soul and for your happiness, 
 
 have the right to guard you from the 
 stumbling-blocks that are in your way ? 
 Good heavens!" he continued, "is it 
 their fault, of is it ours ? Ought we to 
 hold our children under an iron yoke? 
 Must we be punished for the tenderness 
 that leads us to make them happy, and 
 teaches our hearts how to do so ? " 
 
 Modeste watched her father out of the 
 comer of her eye as she listened to this 
 species of invocation, uttered in a broken 
 voice. 
 
 "Was it wrong," she said, "in a girl 
 whose heart was free, to choose for her 
 husband not only a charming companion, 
 but a man of noble genius, born to an hon- 
 orable position, a gentleman ; the equal of 
 myself, a gentlewoman ? " 
 
 " You love him ? " asked her father. 
 
 " Father ! " she said, laying her head 
 upon his breast, " would you see me die ? " 
 
 "Enough ! " said the old soldier. "I 
 see your love is inextinguishable." 
 
 '•Yes, inextinguishable." 
 
 " Can nothing change it ? " 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 " No circumstances, no treachery, no 
 betrayal ? You mean that you will love 
 him in spite of everything, because of his 
 personal attractions ? Even though he 
 proved a D'Estourny, would 3'ou love him 
 still ? " 
 
 " Oh, my father ! j'ou do not know 
 your daughter. Could I love a coward, 
 a man without honor, without faith .'' " 
 
 " But suppose he had deceived you ? " 
 
 " He ? that honest, candid man ? You 
 are joking, father, or else you have never 
 met him." 
 
 " But you see now that your love is not 
 absolute, as you said. I have already 
 made you think of circumstances that 
 could alter your poem ; don't you now 
 see that fathers are good for something ?" 
 
 " You want to give me a lecture, papa; 
 it is positively I'Ami des Enfants over 
 again." 
 
 "Poor deceived girl," said her father, 
 sternly ; " it is no lecture of mine ; I have 
 nothing to do with it except to soften the 
 blow." 
 
 " Father, don't play with my life," ex- 
 claimed Modeste, turning pale.
 
 408 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 " Then, my daughter, summon all your 
 courage. It is you who have been play- 
 ing- with your life, and life is now making 
 sport of you." 
 
 Mocieste looked at her father in stupid 
 amazement. 
 
 " Suppose that the young man whom 
 you love, whom you saw four days ago at 
 church in Ha^Te, was a deceiver? " 
 
 " Never !" she cried ; " that noble head, 
 that pale face full of poetry — " 
 
 " — was a lie,"' said the colonel, inter- 
 rupting her. " He was no more Monsieur 
 de Canalis than I am that sailor over 
 there putting out to sea." 
 
 " Do 3'ou know what y6u are killing in 
 me ? " she rejoined. 
 
 " Comfort yourself, my child ; though 
 accident has put the punishment of your 
 fault into the fault itself, the harm done 
 is not irreparable. The young man whom 
 3'ou have seen, and with whom you ex- 
 changed hearts by correspondence, is a 
 loyal and honorable fellow ; he came to 
 me and confided everything. He loves 
 you, and I have no objection to him as a 
 son-in-law." 
 
 " If he is not Canalis, who is he then ?" 
 said Modeste in a changed voice. 
 
 "The secretary' ; his name is Ernest de 
 la Briere. He is not a nobleman ; but 
 he is one of those plain men with fixed 
 principles and sound moralitj'' who satisfy 
 parents. However, that is not the point; 
 you Iiave seen him and nothing can 
 change j^our heart ; .you have chosen him, 
 you comprehend his soul, it is as beauti- 
 ful as he himself." 
 
 The count was interrupted by a heav^' 
 sigh from Modeste. The poor girl sat 
 with her ej^es fixed on the sea, pale and 
 rigid as death, as if a pistol shot had 
 struck her in those fatal words, a plain 
 man, with fixed principles and sound 
 morality. 
 
 '-Deceived ! " she said at last. 
 
 "Like your poor sister, but less fatally." 
 
 " Let us go home, father," she said, 
 rising from the hillock on which they 
 were sitting. "Papa, hear me, I swear 
 before God to obey your wishes, what- 
 ever they maj' be, concerning my mar- 
 riage." 
 
 " Then you don't love him any longer ?" 
 asked her father. 
 
 '• I loved an honest man, with no false- 
 hood on his face, upright as yourself, 
 incapable of disguising himself like an 
 actor, with the paint of another man's 
 glory on his cheeks." 
 
 "You said nothing could change you," 
 remarked the colonel, ironically'. 
 
 "Ah, do not trifle with me !" she ex- 
 claimed, clasping her hands and looking 
 at her father in distressful anxiety; 
 "don't you see that you are wringing 
 my heart and destroying my beliefs with 
 your jests ? " 
 
 " God forbid ! I have told you the 
 exact truth." 
 
 " You are very kind, father," she said 
 after a pause, and with* a kind of solem- 
 nity. 
 
 "He has kept j'our letters," resumed 
 the colonel; "now suppose the rash ca- 
 resses of your soul had fallen into tbe 
 hands of one of those poets who, as 
 Dumay saj'S, light their cigars with 
 them ? " 
 
 "■ Oh ! — ^\-ou are going too far." . 
 
 " Canalis told him so." 
 
 " Has Dumay seen Canalis ? " 
 
 "Yes," answered her father. 
 
 The two walked along in silence. 
 
 "So this is why that gentleman," re- 
 sumed Modeste, " told me so much evil of 
 poets and poetry ; why this little secre- 
 tary said — But," she added, interrupt- 
 ing herself, " his virtues, his noble qual- 
 ities, his fine sentiments are nothing 
 but an epistolary costume. The man 
 who steals glory and a name may very 
 likely—" 
 
 " — break locks, steal purses, and cut 
 people's throats on the highway," cried 
 the colonel. " Ah, you young girls, that's 
 just like you — with your peremptory opin- 
 ions and your ignorance of life. A man 
 who is capable of deceiving a woman is 
 either on his way down from the scaffold, 
 or about to die on it." 
 
 This ridicule stopped Modeste's effer- 
 vescence, and again there was silence. 
 
 " My child," said the colonel, presently, 
 "men in society, as in nature everj'where, 
 are made to win the hearts of women, and
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 409 
 
 women must defend themselves. You 
 have chosen to mvert the parts. Was 
 that wise ? Everj'thing- is false in a 
 false position. The first wrong'-doing 
 was yours. No, a man is not a monster 
 because he seeks to please a woman ; it 
 is our right to win her by aggression 
 with all its consequences, short of crime 
 and cowardice. A man may have many 
 virtues even if he does deceive a woman ; 
 if he deceives her, it is because he finds 
 her wanting in some of the treasures that 
 he sought in her. None but a queen, an 
 actress, or a woman placed so far above 
 a man that she seems to him a queen, 
 can go to him of herself without incur- 
 ring blame — and for a young girl to do 
 it ! Whj', she is false to all that God 
 has given her that is sacred and lovely 
 and noble — no matter with what grace 
 or what poetry or what precautions she 
 surrounds her fault." 
 
 " To seek the master and find the ser- 
 vant ! " she said bitterly, '' oh ! I can 
 never recover from it ! " 
 
 "Nonsense! Monsieur Ernest de la 
 Briere is, to my thinking, fully the 
 equal of the Baron de Canalis. He was 
 private secretary of a cabinet minister, 
 and he is now counsel for the court of 
 Claims ; he has a heart, and he adores 
 you, but — he does not write verses. No, 
 I admit, he is not a poet ; but for all that 
 he may have a heart full of poetry. At 
 any rate, my dear girl," added her fa- 
 ther, as Modeste made a gesture of dis- 
 gust, "you are to see both of them, the 
 sham and the true Canalis — " 
 
 " Oh, papa 1—" 
 
 "Did you not swear just now to obey 
 me in everything, even in the affair of 
 your marriage? Well, I allow you to 
 choose which of the two you like best for 
 a husband. You have begun bj' a poem, 
 you shall finish with a bucolic, and tvy if 
 you can discover the real character of 
 these gentlemen here, in the countrj^ on 
 a few hunting or fishing excursions." 
 
 Modeste bowed her head and walked 
 home with her father, listening to what 
 he said but replj'ing only in monosyl- 
 lables. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Modeste had fallen humiliated from 
 the alp she had scaled in search of her 
 eag'le's nest, into the mud of the swamp 
 below, where (to use the poetic language 
 of an author of our day), " after feeling 
 the soles of her feet too tender to tread 
 the broken glass of reality. Imagination 
 — which in that delicate bosom united the 
 whole of womanhood, from the flower- 
 strewTi reveries of a chaste young girl to 
 the passionate desires of the sex — had led 
 her into enchanted gardens where, oh, 
 bitter sight ! she now saw, springing 
 from the ground, not the sublime flower 
 of her fancy, but the hairy, twisted limbs 
 of the black mandragora." Modeste sud- 
 denly found herself brought down from 
 the mystic heights of her love to a straight, 
 flat road bordered with ditches, path of 
 the commonplace. What ardent, aspir- 
 ing soul would not have been bruised and 
 broken by such a fall ? Whose feet were 
 these at which she had shed her thoughts ? 
 The Modeste who re-entered the Chalet 
 was no more the Modeste who had left it 
 two hours earlier than an actress in the 
 street is like an actress on the boards. 
 She fell into a state of numb depression 
 that was pitiful to see. The sun was 
 darkened. Nature veiled itself, even the 
 flowers no longer spoke to her. Like all 
 young girls with a tendency to extremes, 
 she drank too deeplj' of the cup of disil- 
 lusion. She fought against reality, and 
 would not bend her neck to the yoke of 
 family and conventionality ; it was, she 
 felt, too heavy, too hard, too crushing. 
 She would not listen to the consolations 
 of her father and mother, and tasted a 
 sort of savage pleasure in letting her soul 
 suffer to the utmost. 
 
 '■ Poor Butscha was right," she said 
 one evening. 
 
 The words indicate the distance she 
 traveled in a short space of time and in 
 gloomy sadness across the barren plain 
 of reality. Sadness, when caused by the 
 overgrowth of hope, is a disease — some- 
 times a fatal one. It would be no mean 
 object for physiology to search out in 
 what ways and by what means Thought
 
 410 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 produces the same internal disorg^anization 
 as poison ; and how ifc is that despair af- 
 fects the appetite, destroys the pylorus, 
 and changes all the physical conditions of 
 the strongest life. Such was the case with 
 Modeste. In three short daj-s she became 
 the image of morbid melancholy ; she did 
 not sing, she could not be made to smile. 
 Charles Mignon, becoming uneasy at the 
 non-arrival of the two friends, thought of 
 going to fetch them, when, on the evening 
 of the fifth da.y, he received news of their 
 movements. through Latournelle. 
 
 Canalis, excessively delighted at the 
 idea of such a rich marriage, was deter- 
 mined to neglect nothing that might help 
 him to cut out La Briers, without, how- 
 ever, giving the latter a chance to I'e- 
 proach him for having violated the laws 
 •of friendship. The poet felt that nothing 
 would lower a lover so much in the eyes 
 of a young girl as to exhibit him in a sub- 
 ordinate position ; and he therefore pro- 
 posed to La Briere, in the most natural 
 manner, to take a little country-house at 
 Ingouville for a month, and live there to- 
 gether on pretense of requiring sea-air. 
 As soon as La Briere, who at first saw 
 nothing amiss in the proposal, had con- 
 sented, Canalis declared that he should 
 pay all expenses, and he sent his valet to 
 Havre, telling him to see Monsieur Latour- 
 nelle and get his assistance in choosing 
 the house — well aware . that the notary 
 would repeat all particulars to the Mi- 
 gnons. Ernest and Canalis had, as may 
 well be supposed, talked over all the as- 
 pects of the affair, and the rather prolix 
 Ernest had given a good many useful 
 hints to his rival. The valet, understand- 
 ing his master's wishes, fulfilled them to 
 the letter ; he trumpeted the arrival of the 
 great poet, for whom the doctors ordered 
 sea-baths to restore his health, injured 
 as it was by the double toils of litera- 
 ture and politics. This important per- 
 sonage wanted a house, which must have 
 at least such and such a number of rooms, 
 as he would bring with him a secretary', 
 cook, two servants, and a coachman, not 
 counting himself, Germain Bonnet, the 
 valet. The carriage, selected and hired 
 for a month by Canalis, was a pretty one ; 
 
 and Germain set about finding a pair of 
 fine horses which would also answer as 
 saddle-horses — for, as he said. Monsieur 
 le Baron and his secretary took horseback 
 exercise. Under the eyes of little Latour- 
 nelle, who went with him to various 
 houses, Germain made a good deal of 
 talk about the secretary, rejecting two or 
 three because there was no suitable room 
 for Monsieur de la Briere. 
 
 " Monsieur le Baron," he said to the 
 notary, ''makes his secretary quite his 
 best friend. Ah ! I should be well scolded 
 if Monsieur de la Briere were not as well 
 treated as Monsieur le Baron himself ; and 
 after all, you know. Monsieur de la Bi'iere 
 is a lawyer in my master's court." 
 
 Germain never appeared in public un- 
 less dressed in black, with spotless gloves, 
 well-polished boots, and otherwise as well 
 appareled as a lawyer. Imagine the ef- 
 fect he produced in Havre, and the idea 
 people took of the great poet from this 
 sample of him ! The valet of a man of 
 wit and intellect ends by getting a little 
 wit and intellect himself which has rubbed 
 off from his master. Germain did not 
 overplay his part; he was simple and 
 good-humored, as Canalis had instructed 
 him to be. Poor La Briere did not sus- 
 pect the harm Germain was doing to his 
 prospects, and the depreciation of him- 
 self to which he had consented ; for some 
 inkling of the state of things rose to 
 Modeste's ears from these lower regions. 
 
 Canalis had arranged to bring his sec- 
 retary in his own carriage, and Ernest's 
 unsuspicious nature did not perceive that 
 he was putting himself in a false position 
 until too late to remedy it. The delay in 
 the arrival of the pair which had troubled 
 Charles Mignon was caused by the paint- 
 ing of the Canalis arms on the panels of 
 the carriage, and by certain orders given 
 to a tailor ; for the poet neglected none 
 of the innumerable details which might, 
 even the smallest of them, influence a 
 young girl. 
 
 "It is all right," said Latournelle to 
 Mignon on the sixth day. " The baron's 
 valet has hired Madame Amaury's villa 
 at Sanvic, all furnished, for seven hun- 
 dred francs : he has written to his master
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 411 
 
 that he may start, and that all will be 
 read^' on his arrival. So the two grentle- 
 men will be here Sunday. I have also 
 had a letter from Butscha ; here it is ; 
 it's not long- : ' M.j dear master — I can- 
 not g-et back till Sunday. Between now 
 and then I have some very important in- 
 quiries to make which concern the happi- 
 ness of a person in whom you take an 
 interest.' " 
 
 The announcement of this arrival did 
 not arouse Modeste from her gloom ; the 
 sense of her full and the bewilderment of 
 her mind were still too g-reat, and she was 
 not nearly as much of a coquette as her 
 father thought her to be. There is a 
 charming- and permissible coquetry, that 
 of the soul, which may be termed love's 
 politeness. Charles Mignon, when scold- 
 ing his daughter, failed to distinguish 
 between the mere desire of pleasing and 
 the love of the mind — the thirst for love, 
 and the thirst for admiration. Like every 
 true colonel of the empire, he saw in this 
 correspondence, rapidly read, only the 
 young girl who had thrown herself at the 
 head of a poet ; but in the letters which 
 we were forced for lack of space to sup- 
 press, a better judge would have admired 
 the graceful and modest reserve which 
 Modeste had substituted for the rather 
 aggressive and light-minded tone of her 
 first letters. The father, however, was 
 only too cruelly right on one point. Mo- 
 deste's last letter had indeed spoken as 
 though the marriage were a settled fact, 
 and the remembrance of that letter filled 
 her with shame ; she thought her father 
 very harsh and cruel to force her to re- 
 ceive a man unworthy of her, yet to whom 
 her soul had flown. She questioned Du- 
 may about his interview with the poet, 
 she inveigled him into relating its eveiy 
 detail, and she did not think Canalis as 
 barbarous as the lieutenant had declared 
 him. The thought of the beautiful casket 
 which held the letters of the thousand and 
 one women of this literary Don Juan made 
 her smile, and she was strongly tempted 
 to saj"- to her father : " I am not the only 
 one to write to him ; the elite of women 
 send their leaves for the laurel wreath of 
 the poet." 
 
 During this week Modeste's character 
 underwent a transformation. The catas- 
 trophe — and it was a great one to her 
 poetic nature — roused a faculty of discern- 
 ment and also the latent malice in her 
 girlish heart, in which her suitors were 
 about to encounter a formidable adver- 
 sarj-. It is a fact that when a young 
 woman's heart is chilled her head be- 
 comes clear ; she observes with great 
 rapidity of judgment, and with a tinge of 
 pleasantry which Shakespeare's Beatrice 
 so admirably represents in " Much Ado 
 about Nothing." Modeste was seized 
 with a deep disgust for men, now that the 
 most distinguished among them had be- 
 trayed her hopes. When a woman loves, 
 what she takes for disgust is simplj- the 
 abilitj"- to see clearly ; but in matters of 
 sentiment she is never, especially if she 
 is ^ young girl, in a condition to see the 
 truth. If she cannot admire, she de- 
 spises. And so, after passing through 
 terrible struggles of the soul, Modeste 
 necessarily put on the armor on which, 
 as she declared, the word " Disdain " was 
 engraved. After reaching that point she 
 was able, in the character of uninterested 
 spectator, to take part in what she was 
 pleased to call the "farce of the suitors," 
 a performance in which she herself was 
 about to play the role of heroine. She 
 particularly anticipated the satisfaction 
 of humiliating Monsieur de la Briere. 
 
 "Modeste is saved," said Madame Mi- 
 gnon to her husband ; "' she wants to 
 revenge herself on the false Canalis by 
 trying to love the real one." 
 
 Such in truth was Modeste's plan. It 
 was so utterly' commonplace that her 
 mother, to whom she confided her griefs, 
 advised her on the contrary' to treat Mon- 
 sieur dela Briere with extreme politeness. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " Those two young men." said Madame 
 Latournelle, on the Saturday evening, 
 " do not suspect the number of spies they 
 have on their track. There are eight of 
 us on the watch."
 
 413 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 "Don't say two young men, wife; say 
 three ! " cried little Latoumclle, looking' 
 round him. " Gobenhciin is not here, so 
 I can speak out." 
 
 Modeste raised her head, and everybody, 
 imitating Modeste,raised theirs and looked 
 at the notary. 
 
 " Yes, a third lover — and he is some- 
 thing like a lover — offers himself as a 
 candidate." 
 
 " Bah ! " exclaimed the colonel. 
 
 "I speak of no less a person," said 
 Latournelle, pompously, " than Monsieur 
 le Due d'Herouville, marquis de Saint- 
 Sever, due de Nivron, comte de Bayeux, 
 vicomte d'Essigny, grand equerry and 
 peer of France, knight of the Spur and 
 the Golden Fleece, grandee of Spain, 
 and son of the last governor of Nor- 
 mandy. He saw Mademoiselle Modeste 
 at the time when he was staying with 
 the Vilquins, and he regretted then- — as 
 his notary, who .came from Bayeux yes- 
 terday, tells me — that she was not rich 
 enough for him ; for his father recovered 
 nothing but the estate of Herouville on 
 his return to France, and that is saddled 
 with a sister. The j'oung duke is thirty- 
 three years old. I am definitively charged 
 to lay these proposals before j^ou. Mon- 
 sieur le Comte," added the notary, turn- 
 ing respectfully to the colonel. 
 
 " Ask Modeste if she wants another 
 bird in her aviary," replied the count ; 
 "as far as I am concerned, I am willing 
 that my lord the grand equerry shall pay 
 her attention." 
 
 Notwithstanding the care with which 
 Charles Mignon avoided seeing people, 
 and though he stayed in the Chalet and 
 never went out without Modeste, Goben- 
 heim had reported Dumay's wealth ; for 
 Dumay had said to him when giving up 
 his position as cashier : "I am to be 
 bailiff for my colonel, and all my fortune, 
 except what my wife needs, is to go to 
 the children of our little Modeste." Every 
 one in Havre had therefore propounded 
 the simple question that the notary had 
 already put to himself : " If Dumay's 
 share in the profits is six hundred thou- 
 sand francs, and he is going to be Mon- 
 sieur Mignon's bailiff, then Monsieur Mi- 
 
 gnon must certainly have an immense 
 fortune. He arrived at Marseilles on a 
 ship of his own, loaded with indigo ; and 
 they say at the Bourse that the cargo, 
 not counting the ship, is worth more than 
 he gives out as his whole fortune." 
 
 The colonel was unwilling to dismiss the 
 servants he had brought back with him, 
 whom he had chosen with care during his 
 travels; and he therefore hired a house 
 for them for six months, in the lower part 
 of Ingouville, where he installed his valet, 
 cook, and coachman, all negroes, and 
 three mulattoes on whose fidelity he could 
 relj'. The coachman was told to search 
 for saddle-horses for mademoiselle and 
 for his master, and for carriage-horses 
 for the caleche in which the colonel and 
 the lieutenant had returned to Havre. 
 That carriage, bought in Paris, was of 
 the latest fashion, and bore the arms of 
 La Bastie, surmounted by a count's coro- 
 net. These things, insignificant in the 
 eyes of a man who for four years had 
 been accustomed to the unbridled luxury 
 of the Indies and of the English mer- 
 chants at Canton, Avere the subject of 
 much comment among the business men 
 of Havre and the inhabitants of Ingou- 
 ville and Graville. Before five days had 
 elapsed the rumor of them ran from one 
 end of Normandy to the other like a train 
 of gunpowder touched by fire. 
 
 "Monsieur Mignon has come back from 
 China with millions," some one said in 
 Rouen ; " and it seems he was made a 
 count in mid-ocean." 
 
 " But he was the Comte de la Bastie 
 before the Revolution," answered an- 
 other. 
 
 " So they call him a liberal just because 
 he was plain Charles Mignon for twenty- 
 five years ! What are we coming to ? " 
 said a third. 
 
 Modeste was considered, therefore, not- 
 withstanding the silence of her parents 
 and friends, as the richest heiress in Nor- 
 mandy, and all eyes began once more to 
 see her merits. The aunt and sister of 
 the Due d'Herouville confirmed in the 
 aristocratic salons of Bayeux Monsieur 
 Charles Mignon's right to the title and 
 arms of count, derived from Cardinal
 
 MODESTE MIQNON. 
 
 413 
 
 Mig-non, for whom the cardinal's hat and 
 tassels were added as a crest. They had 
 seen Mademoiselle de la Bastie when they 
 were staying at the Vilquins, and their 
 solicitude for the impoverished head of 
 their house now became active. 
 
 " If Mademoiselle de la Bastie is really 
 as rich as she is beautiful," said the aunt 
 of the young- duke, " she is the best match 
 in the province. She at least is noble." 
 
 The last words were aimed at the Vil- 
 quins, with whom they had not been able 
 to come to terms, after incurring the hu- 
 miliation of staying in that bourgeois 
 household. 
 
 Such were the events which, contrary 
 to the rules of Aristotle and of Horace, 
 were to introduce another person into our 
 stor^- ; but the portrait and the biography 
 of this personage, this late arrival, shall 
 not be long, taking into consideration his 
 own diminutiveness. The grand equerry 
 shall not take more space here than he 
 will take in history. Monsieur le Due 
 d'Herouville, offspring of the matrimo- 
 nial autumn of the last governor of Nor- 
 mandy, was born during the emigration 
 in 1796, at Vienna. The old marechal, 
 father of the present duke, returned with 
 the king in 1S14, and died in 1819, before 
 he was able to marry his son, who was 
 Due de Nivron. He could only leave him 
 the vast chateau of Herouville, the park, 
 a few dependencies, and a farm which he 
 had bought back with some difficulty ; all 
 of which returned a rental of about fifteen 
 thousand francs a year. Louis XVIII. 
 gave the post of grand equerry to the 
 son, who, under Charles X., received the 
 usual pension of twelve thousand francs 
 which was granted to the pauper peers of 
 France. But what were these twenty- 
 seven thousand francs a year and the 
 salary' of grand equerry to such a family ? 
 In Paris, of course, the j'oung duke used 
 the king's coaches, and had a mansion 
 provided for him in the Rue Saint Thomas 
 du Lou\Te, near the royal stables ; his 
 salary paid for his winters in the city, 
 and his twenty-seven thousand francs for 
 the summers in Normandy. 
 
 The fact that this noble personage was 
 still a bachelor was less his fault than that 
 
 of his aunt, who was not versed in La 
 Fontaine's fables. Mademoiselle d'Herou- 
 ville made enormous pretensions, wholly 
 out of keeping with the spirit of the times ; 
 for great names, without the money to 
 keep them up, can seldom win rich heir- 
 esses among the higher French nobility, 
 who are themselves embarrassed to pro- 
 vide for their sons under the new law of 
 the equal division of property. To mar- 
 ry the 3'oung Due d'Herouville, advanta- 
 geously, it would have been necessan,' to 
 conciliate the great banking-houses ; but 
 the haughty pride of the daughter of the 
 house alienated these people' by cutting 
 speeches. During the first years of the 
 Restoration, from 1817 to 1825, Mademoi- 
 selle d'Herouville, though in quest of mil- 
 lions, refused, among others, the daughter 
 of Mongenod the banker, with whom Mon- 
 sieur de Fontaine afterward contented 
 himself. 
 
 At last, having lost several good op- 
 portunities to establish her nephew, en- 
 tirely through her own fault, she was just 
 now thinking that the property of the 
 Nucingens was basely acquired, and that 
 she did not desire to lend herself to the 
 ambition of Madame de Nucingen, who 
 wished to make her daughter a duchess. 
 The king, anxious to restore the D'Herou- 
 villes to their former splendor, had almost 
 brought about this mari'iage, and when 
 it failed he openly accused Mademoiselle 
 d'Herou^nlle of folly. In this . way the 
 aunt made the nephew ridiculous, and 
 the nephew, in his own way, was not less 
 absurd. When great things disappear 
 they leave crumbs, frusteaux, as Rabelais 
 would say, behind them ; and the French 
 nobility of this century has left us too 
 many such fragments. Neither the clergy 
 nor the nobility have anything to complain 
 of in this long history of manners and cus- 
 toms. Those great and magnificent social 
 necessities have been well represented ; 
 but we ought surely' to renounce the 
 noble title of historian if we are not im- 
 partial, if we do not here depict the pres- 
 ent degeneracy of the race of nobles, as 
 we have done elsewhere — in the character 
 of the emigrant, the Comte de Mortsauf 
 (m "The Lily of the Valley"), and the-
 
 414 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 very nobleness of the nobility in the Mar- 
 quis d'Espard (in the "Interdiction"). 
 How then could it be that the race of 
 heroes and valiant men belong-ing- to the 
 proud house of Hei-ouville, who gave the 
 famous marshal to the nation, cardinals 
 to the church, great leaders to the Valois, 
 knights to Louis XIV., was reduced to. a 
 little fragile being smaller than Butscha? 
 That is a question which we ask ourselves 
 in more than one salon in Paris when we 
 hear some of the greatest names of France 
 announced, and see the entrance of a thin, 
 pinched, undersized young man, scarcely 
 possessing the breath of life, or a prema- 
 ture old one, or some whimsical creature 
 in whom an observer can with great dif- 
 ficulty trace the signs of past grandeur. 
 The dissipations of the reign of Louis 
 XV., the orgies of that fatal and egotistic 
 period, have produced an effete genera- 
 tion, in which manners alone survive the 
 nobler vanquished qualities — forms, which 
 are the sole heritage our nobles have pre- 
 served. The abandonment in which Louis 
 XVI. was allowed to perish may thus be 
 explained, with some slight reservations, 
 as a wretched result of the reign of Ma- 
 dame de Pompadour. 
 
 The grand equerr^', a fair young man 
 with blue eyes and a pallid face, was not 
 without a certain dignity of thought ; 
 but his thin, undersized figure, and the 
 follies of his aunt, who had taken him to 
 the Vilquins and elsewhere to pay his 
 court, rendered him extremely diffident. 
 The house of Herouville had already been 
 threatened, with extinction by the deed 
 of a deformed being (see the Enfant 
 Maudit in "Philosophical Studies"). 
 The grand marshal, that being the 
 l?mih^ term for the member who was 
 made duke by Louis XIII., married at 
 the age of eighty. The young duke ad- 
 mired women, but he placed them too 
 high and respected them too much ; in 
 fact, he adored them, and was only at 
 his ease with those whom he could not 
 respect. This characteristic caused him 
 to lead a double life. He found compen- 
 sation with women of lesser morals for 
 the worship to which he gave himself up 
 in the salons, or, if you like, the boudoirs. 
 
 of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Such 
 habits, with his puny figure and his mourn- 
 ful face with its blue eyes turning up- 
 ward in ecstasy, increased the ridicule al- 
 ready bestowed upon him — very unjustly 
 bestowed, as it happened, for he was full 
 of wit and delicacy ; but his wit, which 
 never sparkled, only showed itself when 
 he felt at ease. Fannj^ Beaupre, an 
 actress who was supposed to be his 
 nearest friend, called him " a good 
 wine, but so carefully corked that all 
 the corkscrews break." The beautiful 
 Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, whom the 
 grand equerry could only worship, an- 
 nihilated him with a speech which, un- 
 fortunately, was repeated from mouth to 
 mouth, like all such pretty and malicious 
 sayings. 
 
 "He always seems to me," she said, 
 " like one of those jewels of fine work- 
 manship which we exhibit but never 
 wear, and keep in cotton-wool." 
 
 Everything about him, even to his ab- 
 surdly contrasting title of grand equerry, 
 amused the good-natured king, Charles 
 X., and made him laugh^although the 
 Due d 'Herouville justified his appoint- 
 ment in the matter of being a fine horse- 
 man. Men are like books; they are 
 sometimes understood and appreciated 
 too late. Modeste had seen the duke 
 during his fruitless visit to the Vilquins, 
 and many of these reflections passed 
 through her mind as .she watched him 
 come and go. But under the circum- 
 stances in which she now found her- 
 self, she saw plainly that the court- 
 ship of the Due d'Herouville would save 
 her from being at the mercy of either 
 Canalis. 
 
 "I see no reason," she said to Latour- 
 nelle, "why the Due d'Herouville should 
 not be received. I pass, in spite of our 
 poverty," she continued, with a mischiev- 
 ous look at her father, " for an heiress. 
 I shall probably end by keeping a list of 
 mj' conquests. Haven't you observed 
 Gobenheim's glances ? They have quite 
 changed their character within a week. 
 He is in despair at not being able to make 
 his games of whist count for mute adora- 
 tion of my charms."
 
 MOD EST E MIGNON. 
 
 415 
 
 "Husli, my darling!" cried Madame 
 Latournelle, '• liere he comes." 
 
 "Old Althor is in despair," said Goben- 
 heim to Monsieur Mig-non as he entered. 
 
 •'Why?" asked the count. 
 
 '•' Vilquin is going- to fail ; and the 
 Bourse thinks you are worth several mil- 
 lions. What ill-luck for his son ! " 
 
 " No one knows," said Charles Mignon, 
 dryly, '•' what my liabilities in India are ; 
 and I do not intend to take the public 
 into va.y confidence as to m3'^ private af- 
 fairs. Dumay," he whispered to his 
 friend, " if Vilquin is embarrassed we 
 could get back the villa by paying him 
 what he gave for it." 
 
 Such was the general state of things, 
 due chiefly to accident, when on Sunday 
 morning Canalis and La Briere arrived, 
 with a courier in advance, at the villa of 
 Madame Amaury. It was known that 
 the Due d'Herouville, his sister, and his 
 aunt were coming the following Tuesday 
 to occupy, also under pretext of ill-health, 
 a hired house at Graville. This assem- 
 blage of suitors made the wits of the 
 Bourse remark that, thanks to Made- 
 moiselle Mignon, rents would rise at 
 Ingouville. " If this goes on, she will 
 have a hospital here," said the j'ounger 
 Mademoiselle Vilquin, vexed at not be- 
 coming a duchess. 
 
 The everlasting comedy of "The Heir- 
 ess," about to be played at the Chalet, 
 might . very well be called, in view of 
 Modeste's frame of mind, "The Designs 
 of a Young Girl; " for since the over- 
 throw of her illusions she had fully made 
 up her mind to give her hand to no man 
 whose qualifications did not fully satisfy 
 her. 
 
 On the following evening the two rivals, 
 still intimate friends, prepared to pay their 
 first visit to the Chalet. They had spent 
 Sunday and part of Monday in unpacking 
 and arranging Madame Amaur^^'s house 
 for a month's stay. The poet, always 
 ' calculating effects, wished to make the 
 most of the probable excitement which 
 his arrival would cause in Havre, and 
 which would of course echo up to the 
 Mignons. Therefore, in his role of a man 
 needing rest, he did not leave the house. 
 
 La Briere went twice to walk past the 
 Chalet, though always with a sense of 
 despair, for he feared he had displeased 
 Modeste, and the future seemed to him 
 dark with clouds. The two friends came 
 dow^n to dinner on Monday dressed for 
 the first call, which would be the most 
 important one of all. La Briere wore 
 the same clothes he had so carefully 
 selected for the famous Sunday ; but he 
 now felt like the satellite of a planet, and 
 resigned himself to the uncertainties of 
 his situation. Canalis, on the other 
 hand, had carefully attended to his 
 black coat, his orders, and all those 
 little drawing-room elegances, which 
 his intimacy with the Duchesse de Chau- 
 lieu and the fashionable Avorld of the fau- 
 bourg had brought to perfection. He had 
 gone into the minutias of dandyism, while 
 poor La Briere was about to present him- 
 self with the negligence of a man without 
 hope. Germain, as he waited at dinner, 
 could not help smiling to himself at the 
 contrast. After the second course, how- 
 ever, the valet came in with a diplomatic, 
 or rather, an uneasy air. 
 
 " Does Monsieur le Baron know," he 
 said to Canalis in a low voice, "that 
 Monsieur the Grand Equerry is coming to 
 Graville to get cured of the same illness 
 which has brought Monsieur de la Briere 
 and Monsieur le Baron to the seashore ? " 
 
 " What, the little Due d'Herouville? " 
 exclaimed Canalis. 
 
 "Yes, monsieur." 
 
 "Is he coming for Mademoiselle de la 
 Bastie ? " asked La Briere, coloring. 
 
 " So it appears, monsieur." 
 
 "We are sold ! " cried Canalis, looking 
 at La Biiere. 
 
 " Ah ! " retorted Ernest quickly," that 
 is the first time you have said * we ' since 
 we left Paris : it has been ' I ' all along." 
 
 "You understood me," cried Canalis, 
 with a burst of laughter. " But we are 
 not in a position to struggle against a 
 ducal coronet, nor the duke's title, nor 
 against the waste lands which the Coun- 
 cil of State have just granted, on my 
 report, to the house of Herouville." 
 
 "His grace," said La Briere, with a 
 spice of malice that was nevertheless
 
 416 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 serious, "will furnish you with a scrap 
 of compensation in the person of his 
 sister." 
 
 Just then the Comte de la Bastie was 
 announced ; the two j'oung- naen rose at 
 once, and La Briere hastened forward to 
 present Canalis. 
 
 " I wished to return the visit that j'ou 
 paid me in Paris," said the count to the 
 young lawyer, " and I knew that by com- 
 ing- here I should have the pleasure of 
 meeting- one of our great living poets." 
 
 " Great ! — monsieur," replied the poet, 
 smiling, " no one can be great in a cent- 
 ury prefaced by the reign of a Napoleon. 
 In the first place, we are a tribe of would- 
 be great poets; moreover, second-rate 
 talent imitates genius nowadays, and 
 renders real distinction impossible." 
 
 " Is that the reason you have thrown 
 yourself into politics ? " asked the count. 
 
 "It is the same thing in this sphere," 
 said the poet; "there are no statesmen 
 in these days, onlj' men who handle events 
 more or less. Look at it, monsieur; under 
 the system of government that we derive 
 from the Charter, which makes a tax-list 
 of more importance than a coat-of-arms, 
 there is absolutely nothing golid except 
 that which you went to seek in China — 
 wealth." 
 
 Satisfied with himself and with the 
 impression he was making on the pro- 
 spective father-in-law, Canalis turned to 
 Germain. 
 
 "Serve the coffee in the salon," he 
 said, inviting Monsieur de la Bastie to 
 leave the dining-room. 
 
 " I thank you for this visit, Monsieur 
 le Comte," said La Briere ; " it saves me 
 from the embarrassment of presenting 
 my friend to you in your own house. 
 With a kind heart you have also a quick 
 mind." 
 
 "Bah ! the readj' wit of Provence, that 
 is all," said. Charles Mignon. 
 
 " Ah, do you come from Provence ? " 
 cried Canalis. 
 
 "You must pardon my friend," said 
 La Briere ; " he has not studied, as I 
 have, the history of La Bastie." 
 
 At the word friend Canalis threw a 
 searching glance at Ernest. 
 
 " If your health will permit," said the 
 count to the poet, " I shall hope to re- 
 ceive you this evening luider my roof; it 
 will be a day to mark with a white stone. 
 Though we cannot duly receive so dis- 
 tinguished a man in our little house, yet 
 3'our visit will gratify the impatience of 
 my daughter, whose admiration for j^our 
 poems has even led her to set them to 
 music." 
 
 " You have something better than 
 fame in your house," said Canalis ; "you 
 have beautj', if I am to believe Ernest." 
 
 " Yes, a good daughter ; but you will 
 find her rather countrified," said Charles 
 Mignon. 
 
 " A country girl sought, the3' say, by 
 the Due d'Herouville," remarked Cana- 
 lis, dryly. 
 
 " Oh ! " replied Monsieur Mignon, with 
 the perfidious good -humor of a Southern- \ 
 er, " I leave my daughter free. Dukes, 
 princes, commoners — they are all the 
 same to me, even men of genius. I shall 
 make no pledges, and whoever my ]yio- 
 deste chooses will be my son-in-law, or 
 rather my son," he added, looking at La 
 Briere. " It could not be otherwise. Ma- 
 dame de la Bastie is German. She has 
 never adopted our etiquette, and I allow 
 mj'self to be led by her and my daughter. 
 I have always preferred to sit in the car- 
 riage rather than on the box. We may 
 make a joke of all this at present, for we 
 have not yet seen the Due d'Herouville, 
 and I do not believe in marriages ar- 
 ranged by proxy, any more than I believe 
 in choosing m^' daughter's husband." 
 
 "That declaration is equally encourag- 
 ing and discouraging to two young men 
 who are searching for the philosopher's 
 stone of happiness in marriage," said 
 Canalis. 
 
 "Don't you consider it useful, neces- 
 sary, and even politic to stipulate for 
 perfect freedom of action for parents, 
 daughters, and suitors ?" asked Charles 
 Mignon. 
 
 Canalis, at a sign from La Briere, kept 
 silence. The conversation presently be- 
 came unimportant, and after a few turns 
 round the garden the count retired, urging. 
 a visit from the two friends.
 
 MODESTE MliJtNON. 
 
 417 
 
 "That's our dismissal," cried Canalis ; 
 " you saw it as plainly as I did. Well, 
 in liis place, I should not hesitate between 
 the g-rand equerry and either of us, charm- 
 ing as we are." 
 
 "I don't think so," said La Briere. 
 " I believe tliat frank soldier came here 
 to satisfy his impatience to see you, and 
 to inform us of his neutrality while re- 
 ceiving us in his house. Modeste, in love 
 with your fame, and misled bj' my per- 
 son, stands, as it were, between the real 
 and the ideal, between poetry and prose. 
 I am, unfortunately, the prose." 
 
 "Germain," s:i id Canalis to the valet, 
 who came to take away the coffee, "order 
 the carriage in half an hour. We will 
 take a drive before going to the Chalet." 
 
 XVIIl. 
 
 Thk two 3'oung men were equally im- 
 patient to see Modeste, but La Briere 
 dreaded the interview, while Canalis ad- 
 vanced to it with a confidence full of self- 
 conceit. The eagerness with which La 
 Briere had met the father, and the flat- 
 tery by which he had caressed the family 
 pride of the merchant, showed Canalis 
 his own raaladroitness, and determined 
 him to select a special role. The great 
 poet resolved to pretend indifference, 
 though all the while displacing his se- 
 ductive powers ; to appear to disdain the 
 young huh', and thus pique her self-love. 
 Trained by the handsome Duchesse de 
 Chaulieu, he was bound to be worthy of 
 his reputation as a man who knew wo- 
 men, when, in fact, he did not know them 
 at all — which is often the case with those 
 who are the happy Aictims of an exclu- 
 sive passion. While poor Ernest, silently 
 ensconced in his corner of the caleche, 
 gave wa.y to the terrors of genuine love, 
 and foresaw instinctivelj' the anger, con- 
 tempt, and disdain of an injured and of- 
 fended young girl, Canalis was preparing 
 himself, not less silently, like an actor 
 making ready for an important part in a 
 new play ; cei"tainl_y neither of them pre- 
 sented the appearance of a happy man. 
 Important interests were at stake for 
 
 BALZA.C— N 
 
 Canalis. The mere suggestion of his de- 
 sire to marry would bi'ing about a rupt- 
 ure of the friendship which had bound 
 him for the last ten years to the Duch- 
 esse de Chaulieu. Though he had given 
 as an excuse for his journey the common- 
 place pretext of fatigue — in which, by- 
 the-by, women never believe, even when 
 it is true — his conscience troubled him 
 somewhat ; but the word " conscience " 
 seemed so Jesuitical to La Briere that he 
 shrugged his shoulders when the poet 
 mentioned his scruples. 
 
 "Your conscience, my friend, strikes 
 me as nothing more nor les^ than a dread 
 of losing the pleasures of vanity as well 
 as some very real advantages, by sacri- 
 ficing the affections of Madame de Chau- 
 lieu ; for, if you succeed with Modeste, 
 you will renounce without anj"^ regret 
 the wilted aftermath of a passion that 
 has been mown and well-raked for eight 
 years. If you simply mean that you are 
 afraid of displeasing your protectress, 
 should she find out the object of your 
 stay here, I can easily believe you. To 
 renounce the duchess and yet not succeed 
 at the Chalet is too heavy a risk. You 
 take the anxiety of this alternative for 
 remorse." 
 
 " You have no comprehension of feel- 
 ings," said the poet, irritably, like a man 
 who hears truth when he expects a com- 
 pliment. 
 
 " That is what a bigamist should tell 
 the jury," retorted La Briere, laughing. 
 
 This epigram made another disagree- 
 able impression on Canalis. He began to 
 think La Briere too witty and independ- 
 ent for a secretary. 
 
 The arrival of an elegant caleche, 
 driven by a coachman in the Canalis 
 liverj', created great excitement at the 
 Chalet, for the two suitors were expected, 
 and all the personages of this history 
 were assembled to receive them, except 
 the duke and Butscha. 
 
 " Which is the poet ? " asked Madame 
 Latournelle of Dumay in the embrasure of 
 a window, where she stationed herself as 
 soon as she heard the wheels. 
 
 " The one who walks like a drum-ma- 
 jor," answered the lieutenant.
 
 418 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 "Ah ! " said the notary's wife, examin- 
 ing Canalis, who was walking- like a man 
 who knows he is being- looked at. Al- 
 though too severe, Dumay's criticism had 
 a certain amount of justice. The fault lay 
 with the great lady who flattered him in- 
 cessantly and spoiled him, as all women 
 older than their adorers invariably spoil 
 and flatter them ; Canalis in his moral 
 being was a sort of Narcissus. When a 
 woman of a certain age wishes to attach 
 a man forever, she begins by deifying his 
 defects, so as to render all rivalry impos- 
 sible ; for a rival is never, at the first ap- 
 proach, aware of the superfine flattery to 
 which the man becomes so easily accus- 
 tomed. Coxcombs are the product of this 
 feminine maneuver, when they are not 
 fops by nature. Canalis, chosen when 
 young by the handsome duchess, vindi- 
 cated his affectations to his own mind 
 by telling himself that they pleased that 
 grande dame, whose taste was law. Such 
 shades of character may be excessively 
 faint, but it is not impossible to point 
 them out. For instance, Melchior pos- 
 sessed a talent for reading which was 
 greatly admired, and much injudicious 
 praise had given him a habit of exag-gera- 
 tion, which neitlier poets nor actors were 
 willing to check, and which made people 
 say of him (always through De Marsaj') 
 that he no long-er declaimed, he bellowed 
 his verses ; lengthening the sounds that 
 he might listen to himself. In the slang- 
 of the green-room, Canalis " dragg-ed the 
 time." He was fond of exchanging ques- 
 tioning glances with his hearers, throwing- 
 himself into postures of self-complacency 
 and practicing those tricks of demeanor 
 which actors call balangoires — the pict- 
 uresque phrase of an artistic people. Ca- 
 nalis had his imitators, and was the head 
 of a school of his kind. This habit of de-- 
 clamatory chanting had slightly affected 
 his conversation, as we have seen in his 
 interview with Dumaj\ The moment the 
 mind becomes ultra-coquettish the man- 
 ners follow suit, and the great poet ended 
 by stepping rhythmicallj% inventing at- 
 titudes, looking furtively at himself in 
 mirrors, and suiting his discourse to the 
 particular pose which he happened to have 
 
 taken up. He was so preoccupied with 
 the effect he wished to produce, that a 
 practical joker, Blondet, had bet once or 
 twice, and won the wager, that he could 
 disconcert him at any moment by merely 
 looking fixedly at his hair, or his boots, 
 or his coat-tails. 
 
 These graces, which started in life with 
 a passport of flowery youth, now seemed 
 all the more wornout because Melchior 
 himself was waning. Life in the world of 
 fashion is quite as exhausting to men as 
 it is to women, and perhaps the twenty 
 j'ears by which the duchess exceeded Ca- 
 nalis's age, weighed more heavily upon 
 him than upon her ; for to the eyes of the 
 world she was always handsome — with- 
 out rouge, without wrinkles, and without 
 heart. Alas ! neither men nor women 
 have friends who are friendly enough to 
 warn them of the moment when the fra- 
 grance of their modesty grows stale, when 
 a caressing glance is but a tradition of 
 the stage, when the expression of the face 
 changes from sentiment to sentimental- 
 ity, and the artifices of the mind show 
 their rust3^ edges. Genius alone renews 
 its skin like a snake ; and in the matter 
 of charm, as in everything else, it is 
 only the heart that never grows old. 
 Peoi^le who have hearts are simple in 
 all things. Now Canalis, as we know, 
 had a shriveled heart. He misused the 
 beauty of his glance b\' giving it, with- 
 out adequate reason, the fixity that 
 comes to the eyes in meditation. In 
 short, applause was to him a business, 
 in which he demanded too much profit. 
 His style of paying compliments, charm- 
 ing to superficial people, seemed insulting 
 to others of more delicacy, hy its triteness 
 and the cool assurance of its flattery, 
 which betrayed a i^urpose. As a matter 
 of fact, Melchior lied like a coui'tier. He 
 remarked without blushing to the Due 
 de Chaulieu, who made no impression 
 whatever when he was obliged to ad- 
 dress the Chamber as minister of foreign 
 affairs, "Your excellency was truly 
 sublime!" Many men like Canalis are 
 purged of their affectations by the ad- 
 ministration of non-success in little doses. 
 
 These defects, slight in the gilded
 
 MODESTE MIGNOJS. 
 
 419 
 
 salons of the Faubourg Saint Germain, 
 where every one contributes his or lier 
 quota of absurdity, and where these 
 particular forms of exaggerated speech 
 and affected diction — magniloquence, if 
 you please to call it so — are framed by 
 excessive luxury and sumptuous toilets, 
 which are to some extent their excuse, 
 were certain to be far more noticed in the 
 provinces, whose own absurdities are of a 
 totally different type. Canalis, by nat- 
 ure oV'Crstrained and artificial, could not 
 change his form ; he had had time to 
 grow stiff in the mold into which the 
 duchess had cast him ; moreover, he was 
 thoroughly Parisian, or, if you prefer it, 
 truly Frencli. The Parisian is amazed 
 that everything everj^where is not as 
 it is in Pans ; the Frenchman, as it is 
 in France. Good taste consists in con- 
 forming to the customs of foreigners 
 without losing too much of our own 
 charactei" — as did Alcibiades, that model 
 of a gentleman. True grace is elastic ; 
 it lends itself to all circumstances ; it is in 
 harmony with all social centers ; it wears 
 a robe of simple material in the streets, 
 noticeable only by its cut, in preference 
 to the feathers and brilliant flounces of 
 middle-class vulgarity. Now Canalis, 
 counseled \>y a woman who cared for 
 him more on her own account than on 
 his, wislied to lay down the law and be, 
 everywhere, such as he himself might 
 see fit to be. He believed he carried his 
 own public with him wherever he wenli — 
 an error shared by several of the great 
 men of Paris. 
 
 While the poet made a studied entrance 
 into the salon of the Chalet, La Briere 
 slipped in behind him like a pupp}' who 
 expects a whipping. 
 
 •' Ah ! there is my soldier," said Cana- 
 lis, perceiving Duraay, after addressing 
 a compliment to Madame Mignon, and 
 bowing to the other ladies. " Your 
 anxieties are relieved, are they not ? " 
 he said, offering his hand effusivety ; •'• I 
 compreliend them to their fullest extent 
 after seeing mademoiselle. I spoke to you 
 of terrestrial creatures, not of angels." 
 
 All present seemed by their attitudes to 
 ask the meaning of this speech. 
 
 " I .shall alwaj-s consider it a triumph," 
 resumed the poet, observing thut every 
 body wished for an explanation, "to have 
 stirred to emotion one of those men of 
 iron whom Napoleon had the eye to find 
 and make the supporting piles on which 
 he tried to build an empire, too colossal 
 to be lasting : for such structures time 
 alone is the cement. But this triumph — 
 why should I be proud of it ? — I count for 
 nothing. It was the triumph of ideas 
 over facts. Your battles, my dear Mon- 
 sieur Dumay, your heroic charges. Mon- 
 sieur le Comte, war itself, was the form in 
 which Napoleon's idea clothed itself. Of 
 all these things, what remains ? The sod 
 that covers them knows nothing; har- 
 vests do not betray their hiding place ; 
 were it not for the historian, the writer, 
 futurity would have no knowledge of 
 those heroic days. Thei-efore your fifteen 
 years of war are now ideas and nothing 
 more ; that which will preserve the Em- 
 pire forever will be the poem that the 
 poets make of them. A nation that can 
 win such battles must know how to sing 
 them." 
 
 Canalis paused, to gather by a glance 
 that ran round the circle the tribute of 
 amazement which he expected of provin- 
 cials. 
 
 "You cannot imagine, monsieur, the 
 regret I feel at not seeing you," said 
 Madame Mignon; "but you compensate 
 me with the pleasure of hearing you." 
 
 Modeste, determined to think Canalis 
 sublime, sat motionless with amazement ; 
 the embroidery slipped from her fingers, 
 which held it only by the needleful of 
 thread. 
 
 "Modeste, this is Monsieur Ernest de 
 la Briere. Monsieur Ernest, my daugh- 
 ter," said the count, thinking the secre- 
 tary too much in the background. 
 
 The young girl bowed coldly, giving 
 Ernest a glance which was meant to 
 prove to every one present that she saw 
 him for the flret time. 
 
 "Pai'don me, monsieur," she said with- 
 out blushing; "the great admiration I 
 feel for the greatest of our poets is, in 
 the eyes of my friends, a sufficient excuse 
 for having seen onlv him."
 
 420 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 The pure, fresh voice, with accents hke 
 the celebrated ones of Mademoiselle Mars, 
 charmed the poor secretary, already daz- 
 zled by Modestc's beauty, and in his sud- 
 den surprise he answered by a phrase 
 that would have been sublime, had it been 
 true. 
 
 "Ho is my friend," he said. 
 
 "Ah, then you pardon me," she replied. 
 
 " He is more than a friend," cried Ca- 
 nalis, taking Ernest by the shoulder and 
 leanins- upon it like Alexander on Hephses- 
 tion, -'we love each other as though we 
 were brothers — " 
 
 Madame Latournelle cut short the poet's 
 speech by pointing to Ernest and saying 
 aloud to her husband, "Surely that is the 
 gentleman we saw at church." 
 
 "Why not?" said Charles Mignon 
 quickly, observing that Ernest reddened. 
 
 Modeste coldly took up her embroidery. 
 
 " Madame may be right ; I have been 
 twice in Havre lately," replied La Briere, 
 sitting down by Dumaj'. 
 
 Canalis, charmed with Modeste's beau- 
 ty, mistook the admiration she expressed, 
 and flattered himself he had succeeded in 
 producing his desired effects. 
 
 " I should think that a man of genius 
 had no heart, if he had no devoted friend 
 near him," said Modeste, to pick up the 
 conversation interrupted hy Madame La- 
 tournelle's awkwardness. 
 
 "Mademoiselle,Ernest's devotion makes 
 me almost th ink myself worth something, " 
 said Canalis: "for my dear Py lades is 
 full of talent ; he was the right hand of 
 the greatest minister we have had since 
 the peace. Though he holds a fine posi- 
 tion, he is good enough to be my tutor 
 in the science of politics; he teaches me 
 to conduct affairs and feeds me with his 
 experience, when all the while he might 
 aspire to a much better situation. Oh ! 
 he is worth far more than I." At a 
 gesture from Modeste he continued grace- 
 fully : " Yes, the poetrj'^ that I express he 
 carries in his heart ; and if I speak thus 
 openly before him it is because he has the 
 modesty of a nun." 
 
 "Enough, oh, enough!" cried La 
 Briere, who hardly knew which way to 
 look. " My dear Canalis, you remind me 
 
 of a mother who is seeking to marry off 
 her daughter." 
 
 "How is it, monsieur," said Charles 
 Mignon, addressing Canalis, "that you 
 can even think of becoming a political 
 character? " 
 
 " It is abdication," said Modeste, " for 
 a poet ; politics are the resource of mat- 
 ter-of-fact men." 
 
 "Ah, mademoiselle, the rostrum is to- 
 day the greatest theater of the world ; it 
 has replaced the tournaments of chivalry; 
 it is now the meeting-place for all intel- 
 lects, just as the armj' has been the rally- 
 ing-point of courage." 
 
 Canalis stuck spurs into his charger 
 and talked for ten minutes on political 
 life : " Poetry was but a preface to the 
 statesman." "To-day the orator has 
 become a sublime reasoner, the shepherd 
 of ideas." "Although a poet may point 
 the way for nations or individuals, can he 
 ever therefore cease to be himself ? " He 
 quoted Chateaubriand and declared he 
 would one day be greater on the political 
 side than on the literary. " The forum 
 of France was to be the pharos of human- 
 ity." "Oral battles supplanted fields of 
 battle : there were sessions of the Cham- 
 ber finer than any Austerlitz, and orators 
 were seen to be as lofty as generals ; they 
 spent their lives, their courage, their 
 strength, as freely as those who Avent 
 to war." " Speech was sui'ely one of 
 the most prodigal wastes of the vital 
 fluid that man had ever known," etc. 
 
 This improvisation of modern common- 
 places, clothed in sonorous phrases and 
 newly invented words, and intended to 
 prove that the Comte de Canalis was be- 
 coming one of the glories of the French 
 Government, made a deep impression 
 upon the notary and Gobenheim, and 
 upon Madame Latournelle and Madame 
 Mignon. Modeste looked as though she 
 were at the theater, in an attitude of 
 enthusiasm for an actor — very much like 
 that of Ernest toward herself ; for though 
 the secretary knew nil these high-sound- 
 ing phrases by heart, he listened through 
 the eyes, as it were, of the young girl, 
 and grew more and more madly in love 
 with her. To this true lover, Modeste
 
 MODESTE MIGXON. 
 
 421 
 
 was eclipsing all the Modestes whom he 
 had created as he read lier letters and 
 answered them. 
 
 This visit, whose length was predeter- 
 mined by Canalis, careful not to allow Ins 
 admirers a chance to i;et surfeited, endeil 
 by an invitation to dinner on the follow- 
 ing- Monday. 
 
 "We shall not be at the Chalet," said 
 the Comte de la Bastic. " Dinnay Avill 
 have sole possession of it. I return to 
 the villa, having bouglit it back under 
 a deed of redemption wiihiu six months, 
 which I have to-day signed with Mon- 
 sieur Vilquin."' 
 
 '■I hope," said Duuiay, "that Vilquin 
 will not be able to return you the sum you 
 have just lent liim, and that the villa will 
 remain yours."' 
 
 " It is an abode in keeping with j-our 
 fortune," said Canalis. 
 
 "■ You mean the fortune that I am sup- 
 posed to have," replied Charles Mignon, 
 hastily-. 
 
 "It would be too sad," said Canalis, 
 turning to ]\Iodeste with a charming little 
 bow, "if this Madonna were not framed 
 in a manner worthy of her divine per- 
 fections." 
 
 That was the only thing Canalis said to 
 Modesto. He affected not to look at her, 
 and behaved like a man to whom all idea 
 of marriage was interdicted. 
 
 "Ah ! my dear Madame Mignon," cried 
 the notary's wife, as soon as the gravel 
 was heard to grit under the feet of the 
 Parisians, " what an intellect ! " 
 
 "Is he rich? — that is the question," 
 said Gobenheim. 
 
 Modeste was at the wandow, not losing 
 a single movement of the great poet, and 
 paying no attention to his companion. 
 When Monsieur ]\Iignon returned to the 
 salon, and Modeste, having received a 
 last bow from the two friends as the car- 
 riage turned, went back to her seat, a 
 weight^' discussion took place, such as 
 provincials invariably hold over Parisians 
 after a first interview. Gobenheim re- 
 peated his phrase, "Is he rich?" as a 
 chorus to the songs of praise sung by 
 Madame Latouruelle, Modeste, and her 
 mother. 
 
 "Rich !" exclaimed Modeste; "what, 
 can that sig-nify ! Do you not see that 
 Monsieur de Canalis is one of those men 
 who are destined to occupy the highest 
 places in the State ? He has more than 
 fortune; he possesses that which gains 
 fortune." 
 
 "■ He will be a minister or an embas- 
 sador," said Monsieur Mignon. 
 
 " That won't hinder tax-payers from 
 having to pay the costs of his funeral," 
 remarked the notary. 
 
 " How so ? " asked Charles Mignon. 
 
 " He strikes me as a man who will 
 waste all the fortunes with whose gifts 
 Mademoiselle Modeste so liberally endows 
 him," answered Latournelle. 
 
 "Modeste can't avoid being liberal to 
 a poet who called her a Madonna," said 
 Dumay, sneeringh'. He was faithful to 
 the repulsion with which Canalis had in- 
 spired him. 
 
 Gobenheina arranged the whist-table 
 with all the more persistency because, 
 since the return of Monsieur Mignon. 
 Latournelle and Dumay had allowed 
 themselves to play for ten sous points. 
 
 "Well, my little darling," said the 
 father to the daughter in the embrasure 
 of a window, "confess that papa thinks 
 of eveiything. If you send j'our orders 
 this evening to your former dressmaker 
 in Paris, and all your other furnishing 
 people, you shall show yourself eight 
 days hence in all the splendor of an 
 heiress. Meantime we will install our- 
 selves in the villa. You already have a 
 pretty horse ; remember to order a habit ; 
 you owe that amount of civility to the 
 grand equerry." 
 
 "All the more because there will be 
 a number of us to ride," said Modeste, 
 whose cheeks were regaining the hue of 
 health. 
 
 " The secretary did not say much," re- 
 marked Madame Mignon. • 
 
 "He is a little fool," said Madame La- 
 tournelle ; "the poet had an attentive 
 word for everybody. He thanked Mon- 
 sieur Latournelle for his help in choosing 
 the house ; and said to me that it seemed 
 as if had consulted a woman of taste. 
 But the other looked as gloomy as a Span-
 
 422 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 iard, and kept his cj-es fixed on Modesto 
 as llioug-h he would like to swallow her 
 whole. If he had looked at me I should 
 have been afraid of him." 
 
 "He had a pleasant voice," said Ma- 
 dame Mignon. 
 
 " No doubt he came to Havre to inquire 
 about the Mignons in the interests of his 
 friend the poet," said Modeste, looking 
 furtively at her father. "It was cer- 
 tainly he whom we saw in church." 
 
 Madame Dumay and Monsieur and Ma- 
 dame Latournelle accepted this as the 
 natural explanation of Ernest's joui-ney. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 "Do you know, Ernest," cried Canalis, 
 when thej^ had driven a short distance 
 from the house, " I have never seen a 
 marriageable woman in society in Paris 
 who compares with that adorable girl." 
 
 "Ah, that ends it!" replied Ernest, 
 bitterly. "She loves you, or she will 
 love you if you desire it. Your fame won 
 half the battle. You will have every- 
 thing your own way. You shall go there 
 alone in future. Modeste despises me ; 
 she is right ; and I don't see an3' reason 
 why I should condemn mj'self to the tort- 
 ure of seeing, admiring, desiring and 
 adoring that which I can never possess." 
 
 After a few consoling remarks, dashed 
 with his own satisfaction at having made 
 a new version of Csesar's phrase, Canalis 
 confided to him a desire to break with the 
 Duchesse de Chaulieu. La Briere, totally 
 unable to keep up the conversation, made 
 the beauty of the night an excuse to be 
 set down, and then rushed, like one pos- 
 sessed, to the seashore, where he stayed 
 till past ten, half crazy, walking liurriedly 
 up and down, talking aloud in broken sen- 
 tences, standing still or sitting down, 
 without noticing the uneasiness which he 
 was giving two custom-house officers who 
 Avere on the watch. After loving Mo- 
 deste's wit and intellect and her aggres- 
 sive frankness, he now joined adoration 
 of her beauty — that is to saj', love with- 
 out reason, love inexplicable — to all the 
 
 other reasons which had drawn him, ten 
 daj-s before, to the church in Havre. 
 
 He returned to the Chalet, where the 
 Pyrenees hounds barked at him till he 
 was forced to relinquish the pleasure of 
 gazing at Modeste's windows. In love, 
 such things are of no niore account to the 
 lover than the work which is covered by 
 the last layer of color is to an artist ; yet 
 out of them arise the great painter and 
 the true lover whom the woman and the 
 public end, often too late, by adoring. 
 
 "Well, then!" he cried aloud, "I will 
 sta^', I will suffer, I will love her for my- 
 self alone, egotistically. Modeste shall 
 be my sun, my life ; I will breathe with 
 her breath, rejoice in her joj'S and bear 
 her griefs, even were she the wife of that 
 egoist, Canalis." 
 
 " Is that what love is, monsieur ? " said 
 a voice which came from a shrub "by the 
 side of the road. "Ha, ha, so all the 
 world is in love with Mademoiselle de la 
 Bastie?" 
 
 And Butscha suddenly appeared and 
 looked at La Briere. La Briere checked 
 his anger when, by the light of the moon, 
 he saw the dwarf, and he made a few 
 steps without replying. 
 
 "Soldiers who serve in the same com- 
 pany ought to be better comrades than 
 that," remarked Butscha. "You don't 
 love Canalis; neither do I." 
 
 "He is ray friend," replied Ernest. 
 
 " Ha, you are the little secretary ^ " 
 
 "You are to know, monsieur, that I am 
 no man's secretary. I have the honor to 
 be counsel to one of the supreme courts of 
 this kingdom." 
 
 "I have the honor to salute Monsieur 
 de la Briere," said Butsclia. "I myself 
 have the honor to be head clerk to La- 
 tournelle, chief councilor of Havre, and 
 my position is a better one than j-ours. 
 Yes, I have had the happiness of seeing 
 Mademoiselle Modeste de la Bastie nearly 
 cYdvy evening for the last four years, and 
 I expect to live near her, as a king's ser- 
 vant lives in the Tuileries. If they offered 
 me the throne of Russia I should answer, 
 ' I love the sun too well.' Isn't that tell- 
 ing you, monsieur, that I care more for 
 her than for myself, in all honor ? Do you
 
 MUDESTE MIGSON. 
 
 423 
 
 believe that the proud Dnchesse do Chau- 
 lieu will cast a favorable eye on the hap- 
 piness of Madame de Canalis, since her 
 Avaiting- woman, who is in love with Mon- 
 sieur Germain, already uneasy at that 
 charming' valet's absence in Havre, has 
 complained to her mistress while brush- 
 ing' her hair — " 
 
 •' How do you know all this ? " said La 
 Briere, interrupting' Butscha. 
 
 " In the first place, I am clerk to a no- 
 tary," answered Butscha. "But haven't 
 you seen my hump ? It is full of resources, 
 monsieur. I have made myself cousin to 
 Mademoiselle Philoxene Jacmin, born at 
 Honfleur, where my mother was born, a 
 Jacmin — there are eleven branches of the 
 Jacmins at Honfleur. So my cousin Philo- 
 xene, enticed by the bait of a highlj' 
 improbable fortune, has told me a good 
 many things." 
 
 •'The duchess is vindictive?" said La 
 Briere. 
 
 " Vindictive as a queen, Philoxene says ; 
 she has never yet forgiven the duke for 
 being nothing more than her husband," 
 replied Butscha. "She hates as she 
 loves. I know all about her character, 
 her tastes, her toilet, her religion, and 
 her meannesses ; for Philoxene stripped 
 her for me, soul and corset. I went to 
 the opera expressly' to see her, and I didn't 
 grudge the ten francs it cost me — I don't 
 mean the play. If my imag'inarj^ cousin 
 had not told me the duchess had seen her 
 fifty summers, I should have thought I 
 was overgenerous in giving her thirtj'- ; 
 she has never known" a winter, that 
 duchess ! " 
 
 "Yes," said La Briere, " she isacameo 
 — preserved because it is stone. Canalis 
 would be in a bad way if the duchess were 
 to find out what he is doing here ; and I 
 hope, monsieur, that you will go no 
 further in this business of spying, which 
 is unworthy of an honest man." 
 
 "Monsieur," said Butscha, proudly; 
 " for me Modesto is my country'. I do 
 not spy ; I foresee. The duchess will 
 come here if it is desirable, or she will 
 stay tranquilly where she is, according 
 to what I judge best." 
 
 "You?" 
 
 a T >> 
 
 " And how, praj- ? " 
 
 " Ha, that's it I " said the little hunch- 
 back, plucking a blade of grass. "See 
 hei'e ! this herb believes that men build 
 palaces for it to grow in ; it wedges its 
 way between the closest blocks of marble, 
 and brings them down, just as the people, 
 forced into the edifice of feudality, have 
 brought it to the ground. The power of 
 the feeble life that can creep everywhere 
 is greater than that of the mighty who 
 rely upon their cannons. I am one of 
 three who have sworn that Modeste shall 
 be happ3', and we would sell our honor for 
 her. Adieu, monsieur. If you truly love 
 Mademoiselle de la Bastie, forget this 
 conversation and shake hands with -me, 
 for I think you've got a heart. I longed 
 to see the Chalet, and I got here just as 
 she was putting out her light. I saw the 
 dogs rush at you, and I overheard yowv 
 words, and that is why I take the liberty 
 of saying we serve in the same regiment 
 — that of loyal devotion." 
 
 "Monsieur," said La Briere, wringing 
 the hunchback's hand, "would you have 
 the friendliness to tell me if Mademoiselle 
 Modeste ever loved any one with love be- 
 fore she wrote to Canalis ? " 
 
 "Oh!" exclaimed Butscha, in an al- 
 tered voice ; "' that thought is an insult. 
 And even now, who knows if she really 
 loves ? does she know herself ? She is 
 enamored of genius, of the soul of that 
 seller of verses, that literary quack ; but 
 she will study him, we shall all study 
 him ; and I know how to make the man's 
 real character peep out from under that 
 turtle-shell of fine manners — we'll soon 
 see the petty little head of his ambition 
 and his vanity ! " cried Butscha, rubbing 
 his hands. "So, unless mademoiselle is 
 desperatelj' taken with him — " 
 
 " Oh ! she was seized with admiration 
 when she saw him, as if he were some- 
 thing marvelous," exclaimed La Briere, 
 letting the secret of his jealousy escape 
 him. 
 
 •'If he is a loyal, honest fellow, and if 
 he loves her ; if he is -worthy of her ; if he 
 renounces his duchess," said Butscha — 
 " then I'll manage the duchess ! Here,
 
 424 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY 
 
 my dear sir, take tlris road, and you will 
 get home in ten minutes." 
 
 Butscha almost immediately turned 
 back and hailed poor Ernest, who, as a 
 true lover, would gladly have stayed 
 there all night talking of Modeste. 
 
 '• Monsieur," said Butscha, " I have not 
 yet had the honor of seeing our great poet. 
 I am xevy curious to observe that magnif- 
 icent phenomenon in the exercise of his 
 functions. Do me the favor to bring him 
 to the Chalet to-morrow evening, and 
 stay as long as possible ; for it takes 
 more than an hour for a man to show 
 himself for what he is. I shall bo tlie 
 first to see if he loves, if he can love, 
 or if he ever will love Mademoiselle 
 Modeste." 
 
 "You are very young to — " 
 
 " — to be a professor," said Butscha, 
 interrupting La Briere. '• Ha, monsieur, 
 deformed folks are all born a hundred 
 years old. And besides, a sick man who 
 has long been sick knows more than his 
 doctor ; he knows the disease, and that is 
 more than can always be said even for 
 the best of doctors. Well, so it is with a 
 man who cherishes a woman in his heart, 
 when the woman is forced to disdain him 
 for his ugliness or his deformity ; he ends 
 by knowing so much of love that he be- 
 comes seductive, just as the sick man 
 recovers his health ; stupidity alone is 
 incurable. I have had neither father 
 nor mother since I was six j'ears old ; I 
 am now twenty-five. Public charity has 
 been my mother, the procureur du roi my 
 father. Oh ! don't be troubled," he add- 
 ed, seeing Ernest's gesture ; " I am much 
 more lively than my situation. Well, for 
 the last six years, ever since a woman's 
 insolent eye first told me I had no right 
 to love, I do love, and I studj-- women. I 
 began with the ugly ones, for it is best to 
 take the bull by the horns. So I took my 
 master's wife, who has certainly been an 
 angel to me, for my first study. Perhaps 
 I did wrong ; but I couldn't help it. I 
 passed her through my alembic and what 
 did I find ? this thought, crouching at 
 the bottom of her heart, ' I am not so 
 ugly as they think me ; ' and if a man 
 were to work upon that thought he could 
 
 bring her to the edge of an abyss, pious 
 as she is." 
 
 '■'And have you .studied Modeste?" 
 
 "1 thought I told you," replied But- 
 scha, " that my life belongs to her, just 
 as France belongs to the king. Do you 
 now understand what you called my 
 sp\ing in Paris ? No one but me really- 
 knows what nobility, what pride, what 
 devotion, what mysterious grace, what 
 unwearying kindness, what true religion, 
 gayety, wit, delicacy, knowledge, and 
 courtesy there are in the soul and in the 
 heart of that adorable creature ! " 
 
 Butscha drew out his handkerchief and 
 wiped his eyes, and La Briere pressed his 
 hand earnestly. 
 
 '• I live in the sunshine of her existence ; 
 it comes from her, it is absorbed in me ; 
 that is how we are united — as nature is 
 to God, by the Light and the Word. 
 Adieu, monsieur ; I have never talked so 
 much in my life ; but seeing you beneath 
 her windows, I knew that you loved her 
 as I love her." 
 
 Without waiting for an answer Butscha 
 quitted the poor lover, whose heart had 
 been comforted by his words. Ernest re- 
 solved to make a friend of him, not sus- 
 pecting that the chief object of the clerk's 
 loquacity was to gain communication with 
 some one connected with Canalis. Ernest 
 was rock 3d to sleep that night by the ebb 
 and flow of thoughts and resolutions and 
 plans for his future conduct, while Canalis 
 slept the sleep of the conqueror, which is 
 the sweetest of slumbers after that of the 
 just. 
 
 At breakfast the friends agreed to 
 spend the evening of the following daj' at 
 the Chalet and initiate themselves into 
 the delights of provincial whist. To get 
 rid of the day they had their horses sad- 
 dled, and started on a voyage of discovery 
 round the country, which was quite as 
 unknown to them as China ; for the most 
 foreign thing to Frenchmen in France is 
 France itself. 
 
 By dint of reflecting on his position as 
 an unfortunate and despised lover, Ernest 
 went through something of the same proc- 
 ess as Modeste's first letter had forced 
 upon him. Though sorrow is said to
 
 MOD EST E MIGNON. 
 
 425 
 
 develop the virtues, it only develops them 
 in virtuous persons ; that cleansing of the 
 conscience takes place only in persons who 
 are naturallj' neat. La Briere vowed to 
 endure his suffering's in Spartan silence, 
 to act worthilj', and give waj' to no base- 
 ness ; while Canalis, fascinated b_y tlie 
 enormous dot, was promising himself to 
 take every means of captivating the heir- 
 ess. Selfishness and devotion, the kej-- 
 notes of the two characters, therefore 
 took, by the action of a moral law which 
 is often very odd in its effects, certain 
 measures fhat were contrary to their 
 natures. The selfish man put on self- 
 abnegation ; the man who thought chiefly 
 of others took refuge on the Mount Aven- 
 tinus of pride. That phenomenon is often 
 seen in political life, also Men frequently 
 turn tlieir characters wrong side out, and 
 it sometimes happens that the public is 
 unable to tell which is the right side. 
 
 After dinner the two friends lieard 
 through Germain of tlie ai-rival of the 
 grand equerry, who was presented at the 
 Chalet the same evening by Latournelle. 
 Mademoiselle d'Herouville had contrived 
 to wound that worthy man \)y sending a 
 footman to tell him to come to her, in- 
 stead of sending her nephew in person ; 
 thus depriving the notary of a distin- 
 guished visit of which he would certainly 
 have boasted for the rest of his natural 
 life. So Latournelle curtly informed the 
 grand equerry, when he proposed to drive 
 him to the Chalet, that he was engaged 
 to take Madame Latournelle. Guessing 
 from the little man's sulk^' manner that 
 there was some blunder to repair, the 
 duke said graciously' : — • 
 
 "Then I shall have the pleasure, if you 
 will allow me, of taking Madame Latour- 
 nelle also." , 
 
 Disregarding Mademoiselle d'Herou- 
 ville's haughty shrug, the duke left the 
 room with the notary. Madame Latour- 
 nelle, half-crazed with joy at seeing the 
 gorgeous carriage at her door, with foot- 
 men in ro3'al livery letting down the steps, 
 was too agitated on hearing that the 
 grand equerrj^ had called for her, to find 
 her gloves, her parasol, her absurditj', or 
 her usual air of pompous dignity. Once 
 
 in the carriage, however, and while ex- 
 pressing confused thanks and civilities to 
 the little duke, she suddenly exclaimed, 
 good naturedly — 
 
 " But Butscha, where is he ? " 
 
 "Let us take Butscha," said the duke, 
 smiling. 
 
 When the people on the quays, attract- 
 ed by the splendor of the royal equipage, 
 saw the three little men with the spare 
 gigantic woman, they looked at one an- 
 other and laughed. 
 
 " If you melt all three together, they 
 might make one man fit to mate with 
 that big cod-fish," said a sailor from 
 Bordeaux. 
 
 '• Is there any other thing you would 
 like to take with you, madame ? " asked 
 the duke, jestingly, while the footman 
 waited his orders. 
 
 "No, monseigneur," she replied, turn- 
 ing scarlet and looking at her husband 
 as much as to say, "What did I do that 
 was so wrong?" 
 
 "Monsieur le Due honors me by con- 
 sidering- that I am a thing," said But- 
 scha; "a poor clerk is usually thought 
 to be a nonentity." 
 
 Though this was said laughingly, the 
 duke colored and did not answer. Great 
 people are always wrong in joking with 
 their social inferiors. Jesting is a game, 
 and games presuppose equality ; it is to 
 obviate any inconvenient results of this 
 temporary equality that players have the 
 right, after the game is over, not to 
 recognize each other. 
 
 The visit of the grand equerry had the 
 ostensible excuse of an important piece of 
 business ; namely, the retrieval of an im- 
 mense tract of waste land left by the sea 
 between the mouths of the two rivers, 
 the title to which had just been adjudged 
 by the Council of State to the house of 
 Herouville. Tlie matter was nothing less 
 than putting flood-gates with double 
 bridges, draining three or four hundred 
 acres, cutting canals, and laying out 
 roads. When the duke had explained the 
 condition of the land, Charles Mignon 
 remarked that it would be necessary to 
 wait until the soil, which was still mov- 
 ing, should settle naturally.
 
 426 
 
 THE HUMAiSr COMEDY. 
 
 "Time, which has providentially en- 
 riched your house, Monsieur le Due, can 
 alone complete the work." he said, in 
 conclusion. "It would be prudent to 
 let fifty years elapse before you reclaim 
 the land." 
 
 "Do not let that be your final word, 
 Monsieur le Comte," said the duke. 
 " Come to Herouville and see things 
 for j-oursclf." 
 
 Charles Mig-non replied that every cap- 
 italist should examine such matters with 
 a cool head, thus g-iving- the duke a pre- 
 text for his visits to the Chalet. The 
 sight of Modeste made a vivid impression 
 on the young- man, and he asked the 
 favor of receiving- her at Herouville, 
 saying- that his sister and his aunt had 
 heard much of her, and wished to make 
 her acquaintance. On this the count 
 proposed to present his daughter to 
 those ladies himself, and invited the 
 whole part}^ to dinner on the day of his 
 return to the villa. The duke accepted 
 the invitation. The sig-ht of the blue 
 ribbon, the title, and, above all, the ecs- 
 tatic glances of the nobleman had an 
 effect upon Modeste; but she appeared 
 to grreat advantag-e in carriage, dig-nity, 
 and conversation. The duke withdrew 
 reluctanth', carrying- with him an invi- 
 tation to visit the Chalet every evening- 
 — an invitation based on the recog-nizcd 
 impossibilitj'^ of a courtier of Charles X. 
 existing for a single evening without his 
 rubber. 
 
 The following evening, therefore, Mo- 
 deste was to see all three of her lovers. 
 No matter what young girls maji- say, 
 and though the logic of the heart may 
 lead them to sacrifice everything to 
 preference, it is extremely flattering to 
 their self-love to see a number of rival 
 adorers around them — distinguished or 
 celebrated naen, or men of ancient lineage 
 — all endeavoring to shine and to please. 
 Although it may not be to Modeste's 
 credit, yet it must be told she subse- 
 quently admitted that the sentiments 
 expressed in her letters paled before the 
 pleasure of setting three such different 
 minds at war with one another — three 
 men who, taken separately, would each 
 
 have done honor to the most exacting 
 family'. Yet this luxury of self-love was 
 checked in her by a misanthi'opical spite- 
 fulness, resulting from the terrible wound 
 which, however, already seemed to her 
 oulj' a disappointment. So when her la- 
 ther said to her, laughing, '' Well, Mo- 
 deste, do you want to be a duchess?" 
 she answered, with a mocking- curtsey — 
 . "Sorrows have made me lihilosoijhical. " 
 
 " Do you mean to be only a baroness ? " 
 asked Butscha. 
 
 "Or a viscountess? " said her father. 
 
 "How could that be?" she asked 
 quickly. 
 
 " If you should accept Monsieur de la 
 Briere, he would have enough influence to 
 obtain permission from the king to bear 
 my titles and arms." 
 
 " Oh, if it comes to disguising himself, 
 lie will not make any difficulty," said Mo- 
 deste, scornfully. 
 
 Butscha did not understand this epi- 
 gram, whose meaning could onlj' be 
 guessed by Monsieur and Madame Mi- 
 gnon and Dumay. 
 
 " When it is a question of marriage, all 
 men disguise themselves," remarked Ma- 
 dame Latournelle, "and women set them 
 the example. I've heard it said all my 
 life that ' Monsieur this or Mademoiselle 
 that has made a g-ood marriage ; ' — does 
 that mean that the other side had made 
 a bad one ? " 
 
 "Marriage," said Butscha, "is like a 
 lawsuit ; there's always one side discon- 
 tented. If one dupes the other, certainly 
 half the married people in the world are 
 playing a comedj^ at the expense of the 
 other half." 
 
 " From which you conclude, Sieur But- 
 scha ? " inquired Modeste. 
 
 " To pay the strictest attention to the 
 maneuvers of the enemy," tinswered the 
 clerk. 
 
 " What did I tell you, my darling ? " 
 said Charles Mignon, alluding lo their 
 conversation on the seashore. 
 
 " Men play as many parts to get mar- 
 ried as mothers make their daughters 
 play to get rid of them," said Latournelle. 
 
 "Then you approve of stratagems?" 
 said Modeste.
 
 MODESTE MIGNOy. 
 
 427 
 
 " On both sides," cried Gobenheim, 
 "and that brings it even." 
 
 This conversation was carried on inter- 
 ruptedly, in the intervals of cutting- and 
 dealings the cards, and was Interspersed 
 with appreciative remarks upon the merits 
 of the Due d"Herouville, who was approved 
 of by little Latournelle, little Dumay, and 
 little Butscha. 
 
 "1 see," said Madame Mig-non with a 
 smile, "that Madame Latournelle and 
 my poor husband are giants here." 
 
 " Fortunately for him, the colonel is 
 not very tall," replied Butscha, while his 
 patron dealt the cards, "for a tall and 
 intelligent man is always an exception." 
 
 Witliout the foregoing discussion on 
 the lawfulness of matrimonial tricks, the 
 reader might possibly And the forthcom- 
 ing account of the evening so impatientlj' 
 awaited hy Butscha somewhat too long. 
 
 Desplein, the famous surgeon, arrived 
 the next morning, and stayed only long 
 enough to send to Havre for fresh horses 
 and have them put-to, which took about 
 an hour. After examining Madame Mi- 
 gnon's ej-es, he decided that she could re- 
 cover her sight, and fixed a suitable time, 
 a month later, to perform the operation. 
 This important consultation took place be- 
 fore the assembled members of the Chalet, 
 who stood trembling and expectant to 
 hear the decree of the prince of science. 
 That illustrious member of the Academy 
 of Sciences put about a dozen brief ques- 
 tions to the blind woman as he examined 
 her eyes in the strong light from a win- 
 dow. Modesto was amazed at the value 
 which a man so celebrated attached to 
 time, when she saw the traveling-carriage 
 piled with books which the great surgeon 
 proposed to read during the journey ; for 
 he had left Paris the evening before, and 
 had spent the night in sleeping and travel- 
 ing. The rapid itj'^ and clearness of Des- 
 plein's judgment on each answer made by 
 Madame Mignon, his succinct tone, his 
 decisive manner, gave Modeste her first 
 real idea of a man of genius. She per- 
 ceived the enormous difference between 
 a second-rate man, like Canalis, and Des- 
 plein, who was even more than a superior 
 man. A man of genius finds in the con- 
 
 sciousness of his talent and in the solidity 
 of his fame an arena of his own, where 
 bis legitimate pride can expand and ex- 
 ercise itself ■nithout troubling anj' one. 
 Moreover, his perpetual struggle with 
 men and things leaves him no time for 
 the coquetries of fashionable heroes, who 
 make haste to gather in the harvests of 
 a fugitive season, and whose vanitj' and 
 self-love are as petty and exacting as a 
 custom-house which levies tithes on all 
 that comes in its way. 
 
 Modeste was the more enchanted by this 
 great practician, because he was evidently 
 charmed with her own exquisite beauty — 
 he, through whose hands so manj' women 
 passed, and who had long since examined 
 the sex, as it were, with magnifier and 
 scalpel. 
 
 " It would be a sad pity," he said, with 
 an air of gallantry which he knew well 
 enough how to use, and which contrasted 
 with his assumed bruskness, "if a mo- 
 ther were deprived of the sight of so 
 charming a daughter." 
 
 Modeste insisted on serving the simple 
 breakfast which was all the great surgeon 
 would accept. She, with her father and 
 Dumay, accompanied the great surgeon, 
 who was longingly expected by so many 
 invalids, to the carriage stationed at the 
 garden-gate, and said to Desplein, her 
 eyes shining with hope — 
 
 " And will my dear mamma really see 
 me?" 
 
 "Yes, my little sprite, I'll promise you 
 that," he answered, smiling; "and I am 
 incapable of deceiving you, for I, too, have 
 a daughter." 
 
 The horses started and carried him off 
 as he uttered the last words with unex- 
 pected grace and feeling. Nothing is more 
 charming than that unexpectedness which 
 is peculiar to persons of talent. 
 
 XX. 
 
 The visit of the great surgeon was the 
 event of the day, and it left a luminous 
 refiection in Modeste's soul. The young 
 enthusiast ardentlv admired the man
 
 428 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 ■whose life belonged to everj- one, and in 
 whom tlie habit of studying: physical suf- 
 fering had destroyed tlie manifestations 
 of egoism. That evening, when Goben- 
 heim, the Latournelles, and Bntscha, 
 Canalis, Ernest, and the Ducd'Herou- 
 ville were assembled in the salon, they 
 all congratulated the Mignon family on 
 the good report given by Desplein. The 
 conversation, in which the Modeste of her 
 letters was once more in the ascendant, 
 turned naturally on the man whose gen- 
 ius, unfortunately for his fame, was ap- 
 preciable onlj- by the faculty and men of 
 science. Gobenheim contributed a phrase 
 which is in our day the sacred chrism of 
 genius in the minds of loublic economists 
 and bankers — 
 
 " He makes a mint of money." 
 
 " Thej- say he is very grasping," added 
 Canalis. 
 
 The praises which Modeste showered 
 on Desplein disturbed the poet. Vanity 
 acts like a woman — they both think they 
 are defrauded when love or praise is be- 
 stowed on others. Voltaire was jealous 
 of the wit of a roud whom Paris admired 
 for two days, just as a duchess takes 
 offense at a look bestowed upon her maid. 
 The avarice excited by these two senti- 
 ments is such that a fraction of them 
 given to the poor is thought robber3\ 
 
 "Do you thinl<, monsieur," said Mo- 
 deste, smiling, "that we can judge gen- 
 ius by ordinary standards ? "' 
 
 "Perhaps it would be necessary, first 
 of all, to define the man of genius," re- 
 plied Canalis. " One of the conditions of 
 genius is invention — invention of a form, 
 a system, a force. Napoleon was an in- 
 ventor, apart from his other conditions 
 of genius. He invented his method of 
 making war. AValter Scott is an in- 
 ventor, Linnajus is an inventor, Geoffrey 
 Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier are inventors. 
 Such men are men of genius of the first 
 rank. Tliey renew, increase, or modify 
 both science and art. But Desplein is 
 merely a man whose vast talent consists 
 ill properly applying laws already known; 
 in observing, by means of a natural gift, 
 the limits of each temperament, and the 
 time appointed by Nature for performing 
 
 an operation. He has not founded, like 
 Hippocrates, the science itself. He has 
 invented no system, as did Galen, Brous- 
 sais, and Easori. He is merelj' an execu- 
 tive genius, like Moscheles on the piano, 
 Paganini on the violin, or Fai-inelli on 
 his own lai'^aix — men who have developed 
 enormous faculties, but who have not 
 created music. You must permit me to 
 discriminate between Beethoven and La 
 Catalani : to one belongs the immortal 
 crown of genius and of martyrdom, to 
 the other innumerable five-franc pieces ; 
 one we can pay in coin, but the woi'ld re- 
 mains forever a debtor to the other. 
 Each day increases our debt to Moliere, 
 but we have more than paid Baron." 
 
 "I think, my friend, that you lay too 
 much stress upon beautiful ideas," said 
 Ernest de la Briere, in a quiet and melo- 
 dious voice, which formed a sudden con- 
 trast to the peremptory tones of the poet, 
 whose flexible organ had abandoned its 
 caressing tones for the strident and mag- 
 isterial voice of the rostrum. " Genius 
 must te estimated, first of all, accord- 
 ing to its utility ; and Parmentier, who 
 brought potatoes into general use ; Jac- 
 quart, the inventor of silk looms ; Papin, 
 who first discovered the elastic quality of 
 steam, are also men of genius, to whom 
 statues will some day be erected. They 
 have changed, or they will change, in a 
 certain sense, the face of the country. 
 Iia that sense, Desjilein will alwaj's be 
 considered a, man of genius by thinkers 
 who see him attended by a g'cneration of 
 sufferers whose pains are stilled by his 
 powerful hand." 
 
 That Ernest should give utterance to 
 this opinion was enough to make Modeste 
 oppose it. 
 
 " If that be so, monsieur," she said, 
 " then the man who could discover a way 
 to mow wheat without injuring the straw, 
 by a machine that could do the Avork of 
 ten men, would be a man of genius." 
 
 "Yes, my daughter," said Madame 
 Mignon ; " and the poor would bless him 
 for cheaper bread — and he that is blessed 
 by the poor is blessed of God." 
 
 "That is putting utility above art," 
 said Modeste, shaking her head.
 
 MODESTE MIGNOy. 
 
 429 
 
 "Without utility what would become 
 of art?"' said Charles Mignon. "What 
 would it rest on ? what would it live on ? 
 Whei'e would \o\.\ lodg-e, and how would 
 you pay the poet ? " 
 
 " Oh ! my dear papa, such opinions are 
 fearfully flat and commonplace ! I am 
 not surprised that Gobenheim and Mon- 
 sieur do la Briere, who are interested in 
 the solution of social problems, should 
 think so ; but j'ou, whose life has been 
 the most useless poetry of the century — 
 since the blood you shed all over Europe, 
 and the horrible sufferings exacted by 
 your colossus, did nob prevent France 
 from losing ten departments acquired un- 
 der the Republic — how can you give in to 
 such excessively pig-tail notions, as the 
 idealists say ? It is plain you've just come 
 from China." 
 
 The impertinence of Modeste's speech 
 was heightened by a little scornful and 
 disdainful tone, which she purposely as- 
 sumed, and which fairly astounded Ma- 
 dame Mignon, Madame Latournelle and 
 Dumay. As for Madame Latournelle, 
 although she opened her eyes wide, she 
 did not understand it. Butscha, whose 
 alert attention was comparable to that of 
 a spy, looked at Monsieur Mignon, signifi- 
 cantly, as he saw him flush with sudden 
 and violent indignation. 
 
 " A little more, young lady, and you 
 will be wanting in respect for your fa- 
 ther," said the colonel, smiling, and un. 
 derstanding Butscha's look. " See what 
 it is to spoil one's children ! " 
 
 "I am your only child," she replied, 
 saucily. 
 
 " Child, indeed," remarked the notarj-, 
 significantljr. 
 
 " Monsieur," said Modeste, dryly, " my 
 father is delighted to have me for his 
 governess ; he gave me life and I give 
 him knowledge; he will soon owe me 
 something." 
 
 '' Thei'e is a lime and a manner for 
 everything," said Madame Mignon. 
 
 "But mademoiselle is right," said Ca- 
 nalis, rising and standing before the fire- 
 place in one of the finest attitudes of his 
 collection. " Grod, in His providence, has 
 given food and clothing to man, but He 
 
 has not directly given him art. He says 
 to man : ' To live, thou must bow thyself 
 to earth ; to think, thou shalt raise thy- 
 self to Me.' We have as much need of 
 the life of the soul as of the life of the 
 bod3- — hence, there are two utilities. It 
 is true we cannot be shod by books. An 
 epic song is not, from a utilitarian point 
 of view, as useful as the broth of a chai-itj' 
 kitchen. The noblest ideas would scarcely 
 replace the sail of a ship. It is quite true 
 that the cotton-gin gives us calicoes for 
 thirty' sous a yard less than we ever paid 
 before ; but tliat machme and all other 
 industrial perfections will not breathe the 
 breath of life into a people, will not tell 
 futuritj' of a civilization that once ex- 
 isted. While Egyptian, Mexican, Gre- 
 cian, and Roman art,^with their master- 
 pieces — now called useless ! — reveal the 
 existence of races in the vast space of 
 time, where the great intermediary na- 
 tions, denuded of men of genius, have 
 disappeared, leaving not a line nor a 
 trace behind them ! The works of genius 
 are the summum of civilization, and pre- 
 suppose utility. Surely a pair of boots 
 are not as agreeable to your eyes as a 
 fine play at the theater ; and you would 
 not prefer a wind-mill to the church of 
 Saint-Ouen ? Well, then, nations are 
 imbued with the same feelings as indi- 
 vidual men, and a man's cherished desire 
 is to survive himself morally just as he 
 propagates himself pln-sically. The sur- 
 vival of a people is the work of its men 
 of genius. At this very moment France 
 is proving, energetically, the truth of 
 that theory. She is, undoubtedly, ex- 
 celled by England in commerce, indus- 
 try, and navigation, and yet she is, I 
 believe, at the head of the world — by 
 reason of her artists, her men of talent, 
 and the good taste of her products. 
 There is no artist and no superior intel- 
 lect that does not come to Paris for a 
 diploma. There is no school of painting 
 at this moment but that of France ; and 
 we shall reign far longer and perhaps 
 more surely by our books than by our 
 swords. In La Briere"s sj'stem, on the 
 other hand, all that is gloiious and lovely 
 must be suppressed — woman 's beauty-, mu-
 
 430 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 sic, painting, poetry. Society will not be 
 overthrown, it is true, but, I ask you, who 
 would willingly accept such a life? All that 
 is useful is ugly and forbidding. A kitchen 
 is indispensable, but you take care not to 
 sit there ; you live in the salon, which 
 you adorn, like this one, with things 
 which are perfectly useless. Of what 
 use, let me ask you, are these charming 
 wall-paintings, this carved wood-work ? 
 There is nothing beautiful but that 
 which seems to us useless. We called 
 the sixteenth century the Renaissance with 
 admirable truth of expression. That cent- 
 ury was the dawn of a new era. Men 
 will continue to speak of it when all 
 remembrance of anterior centuries has 
 passed awaj-— their only merit being that 
 they once existed, like the million beings 
 who do not count in a generation." 
 
 " We maj' be rubbish, but my rub- 
 bish is dear to me," said the Due 
 d'Herouville, laughingly, in the silent 
 pause which followed the poet's pompous 
 oration. 
 
 '•' Let me ask, "said Butscha, attacking 
 Canalis, " does art, the sphere in which, 
 according to you, genius is required to 
 evolve itself, exist at all ? Is it not a 
 splendid lie, a delusion, of the social 
 man? Do I want a landscape scene of 
 Normandy in my bedroom when I can 
 look out and see a better one done hy 
 God Himself ? Our dreams make poems 
 more glorious than Iliads. For an insig- 
 nificant sum of monej'^ I can find at Va- 
 logne, at Carentan, in Provence, or at 
 Aries, many a Venus as beautiful as 
 those of Titian. The police gazette pub- 
 lishes tales, differing somewhat from 
 those of Walter Scott, but ending trag- 
 ically with real blood, not ink. Happi- 
 ness and virtue exist above and bej'ond 
 both art and genius." 
 
 " Bravo, Butscha ! " cried Madame La- 
 toumelle. 
 
 "What did he say ? " asked Canalis of 
 La Briere, ceasing to gather from the 
 eyes and attitude of Mademoiselle Mignon 
 the charming signs of artless admiration. 
 The contemptuous indifference which Mo- 
 deste had exhibited toward La Briere, and 
 above all, her disrespectful speeches to her 
 
 father, had so saddened the young man 
 that he made no answer to Canalis ; his 
 e^-es, fixed sorrowfully on Modeste, were 
 full of deep meditation. The Due d'Herou- 
 ville took up Butscha's argument and re- 
 produced it with much intelligence, saying 
 finally that the ecstasies of Saint-Theresa 
 were far superior to the creations of Lord 
 Byron. 
 
 '• Oh, Monsieur le Due," exclaimed Mo- 
 deste, ''hers was a purely personal po- 
 etry, whereas the genius of Lord Bj'ron 
 and Moliere benefit the Avorld." 
 
 " How do you reconcile that opinion 
 with those of Monsieur le Baron ? " cried 
 Charles Mignon, quickly. "Now you are 
 insisting that genius must be useful, and 
 benefit the world as absolutely as cotton 
 — but perhaps you think logic as flat as 
 your poor old father ? " 
 
 Butscha, La Briere, and Madame La- 
 tournelle exchanged glances that were 
 more than half derisive, and drove Mo- 
 deste to a pitch of irritation that kept her 
 silent for a moment. 
 
 "Mademoiselle, do not mind them," 
 said Canalis, smiling upon her, " we are 
 neither beaten, nor caught in a contra- 
 diction. Every work of art, let it be in 
 Uterature, music, painting, sculpture, or 
 architecture, implies a positive social 
 utility', equal to that of all other com- 
 mercial products. Art is pre-eminentlj' 
 commerce ; it presupposes it. A book 
 nowadays brings an author ten thousand 
 francs ; the making of books means the 
 manufactory of paper, a foundry, a print- 
 ing office, a bookseller — in other words, 
 the employment of thousands of men. 
 The execution of a symphony of Bee- 
 thoven or an opera by Rossini requires 
 an equal number of human arms and ma- 
 chinerj' and manufactures. The cost of 
 a monument is an almost brutal case in 
 point. In short, I may saj'^ that the works 
 of genius have an extremely costly basis, 
 and are, necessarily, useful to the work- 
 ingman." 
 
 Astride of that theme, Canalis spoke 
 for some minutes with a fine luxurj' of 
 metaphor, and much inward complacency 
 as to his phrases : but it happened with 
 him, as with many another great speaker.
 
 MODESTE MIGNOX. 
 
 431 
 
 that he found himself at last at the point 
 from which the conversation started, and 
 in full agreement with La Briere, without 
 perceiving- it. 
 
 '■'I see with much jileasure, my dear 
 baron," said the little duke, slyly, "that 
 you will make an admirable constitutional 
 minister." 
 
 '• Oh ! " said Canalis, with the gesture 
 of a great man, "what do we prove by 
 all these discussions ? Only the eternal 
 verity of one axiom : All things are true, 
 all things are false. Moral truths as well 
 as human beings change their aspect 
 according- to their surroundings, to the 
 point of being actuallj- imrecognizable." 
 
 "Society lives upon settled opinions," 
 said the Due d'Herouvillc. 
 
 "What laxity!" whispered Madame 
 Latournelle to her husband. 
 
 "He is a poet," said Gobenheim, who 
 overheard her. 
 
 Canalis, who was ten leagues above 
 the heads of his audience, and who may 
 have been right in his last philosophical 
 remark, took the sort of coldness which 
 now overspread the surrounding- faces 
 for a symptom of provincial ig-norance; 
 but seeing- that Modeste understood him, 
 he was content, being- wholly unaware 
 *hat monologue is particularly disagree- 
 able to country-folk, whose principal de- 
 sire it is to exhibit to Parisians the man- 
 ner of life and the wit and wisdom of 
 the provinces. 
 
 " Is it long since you have seen the 
 Duchesse de Chaulieu ? " asked the duke, 
 addressing- Canalis, in order to change 
 the conversation. 
 
 "I left her about six days ago." 
 
 "Is she well ? " persisted the duke. 
 
 "Perfectly well." 
 
 "Have the kindness to remember me 
 to her when you write." 
 
 "Do thej' call her charming-," asked 
 Modeste, addressing the duke. 
 
 "Monsieur le Baron can speak more 
 intelligently than I, upon that point," 
 replied the grand equerry. 
 
 ' She is more than charmini 
 
 said 
 
 Canalis, making the best of the duke's 
 perfidy ; " but I am partial, mademoi- 
 selle ; she has been a friend to me for 
 
 the last ten years ; I owe all that is good 
 in me to her ; she has saved me from the 
 dangers of the world. Moreover, Monsieur 
 le Due de Chaulieu launched me in my pres- 
 ent career. Without the influence of that 
 famih' the king- and the princesses would 
 have often forgotten a poor poet like me ; 
 therefore my affection for the duchess 
 must always be full of gratitude." 
 
 His voice quivered. 
 
 "We ought to love the woman who 
 has led you to write those sublime poems, 
 and who inspires you with such noble 
 feelings," said Modeste, quite affected. 
 " Who can think of a poet without a 
 muse ! " 
 
 " He would be without a heart," re- 
 plied Canalis. "He would write barren 
 verses, like Voltaire, who never loved 
 any one but Voltaire." 
 
 "I thought 3'ou did me the honor to 
 say, in Paris," interrupted Dumay, "that 
 you never felt the sentiments you ex- 
 pressed." 
 
 " The shoe fits, my soldier," replied 
 the poet, smiling: "but let me tell you 
 that it is quite possible to have a great 
 deal of feeling both in the intellectual 
 life and in real life. It is possible to 
 express fine sentiments without feeling 
 them, and to feel them without being 
 able to express them. My good friend 
 here. La Briere, is madly in love," con- 
 tinued Canali.s, with a fine show of gen- 
 erosity, looking at Modeste. " I, who 
 certainly love as much as he, could, unless 
 I deceive myself, give my love a literary 
 form in harmony with its power. But I 
 dare not saj*, mademoiselle," he added, 
 turning to Modeste with too studied a 
 grace, "that to-morrow I may not be 
 without any wits at all." 
 
 Thus the poet triumphed over all ob- 
 stacles. In honor of his love he rode a-tilt 
 at the hindrances that were thrown in his 
 waj% and Modeste remained wonderstruck 
 at the Parisian wit that scintillated in 
 his declamatory discourse, of which she 
 had hitherto known little or nothing. 
 
 "What an acrobat I " whispered But- 
 scha to Latournelle, after listening to a 
 magnificent tirade on the Catholic religion 
 and the happiness of having a pious wife
 
 43? 
 
 THE HUMAX COMEDY. 
 
 — served up in response to a remark l\y 
 Madame Mignon. 
 
 Modeste's eyes were blindfolded ; Ca- 
 nalis's elocution and the close attention 
 which she was predeterinined to pay to 
 him prevented her from seeing- that But- 
 scha was carefully noting- the declama- 
 tion, the want of simplicity, the emphasis 
 that took the place of feeling-, and the 
 curious incoherencies in the poet's speech 
 which led the dwarf to make his rather 
 cruel comment. At certain points of Ca- 
 nalis's discourse, when Monsieur Mignon, 
 Dumay, Butscha, and Latournelle won- 
 dered at the man's utter want of logic, 
 Modesto admired his suppleness, and said 
 to herself, as she drew him with her 
 through the labyrinth of fancy, " He 
 loves me ! " Butscha, in common with 
 the other spectators of what we must call 
 a stage scene, was struck with the radical 
 defect of all egoists, which Canalis, like 
 all men accustomed to perorate, allowed 
 to be too plainl.y seen. Whether he un- 
 derstood beforehand what the person he 
 was speaking to meant to say, whether 
 he was not listening, or whether he had 
 the facultj' of listening when he was think- 
 ing of something else, it is certain that 
 Melchior's face wore an absent-minded 
 look in conversation, which disconcerted 
 the ideas of others as much as it wounded 
 their vanity. 
 
 Not to listen is not merely a want of 
 politeness, but it is a mark of disrespect. 
 Canalis carried this habit too far ; for he 
 often forgot to answer a speech which re- 
 quired an answer, and passed, without 
 the ordinary transitions of courtesy, to 
 the subject, whatever it was, that preoc- 
 cupied him. Though such impertinence is 
 accepted without protest from a man of 
 marked distinction, it stirs a leaven of 
 hatred and vengeance in many hearts ; in 
 those of equals it even goes so far as to 
 destroy friendship. If by chance Melchior 
 forced himself to listen, he fell into an- 
 other fault ; he merely lent his attention, 
 and never gave it. Though this maj^ not 
 be so mortifying, it shows a kind of semi- 
 concession which is almost as unsatisfac- 
 tory to the hearer and leaves him dis- 
 satisfied. Nothing brings more profit in 
 
 the commerce of society than the small 
 change of attention. He that heareth lot 
 him hear, is not onl^^ a Gospel precept, but 
 an excellent rule ; follow it, and all will 
 be forgiven, even vice. Canalis took a 
 great deal of trouble in his anxiety to 
 please Modesto ; but though he was com- 
 pliant enough with her, he fell back into 
 his natural self with the others. 
 
 Modesto, pitiless for the ten martyrs 
 she was making, begged Canalis to read 
 some of his poems ; she wanted, she said, 
 a specimen of his gift for reading, of which 
 she had heard so much. Canalis took the 
 volume which she gave him, and cooed 
 (for that is the proper word) a poem which 
 is generally considered his finest — an imi- 
 tation of Moore's '-Loves of the Angels," 
 entitled ViTALls, which Monsieur and Ma- 
 dame Dumay, Madame Latournelle, and 
 Gobenheim welcomed with a few yawns. 
 
 " If you are a good whist-player, mon- 
 sieur," said Gobenheim, flourishing five 
 cards held like a fan, "I must say I 
 have never met a man as accomplished 
 as you." 
 
 The remark raised a laugh, for it was 
 the translation of everybody's thouglit. 
 
 " I play it sufHciently well to live in the 
 provinces for the rest of my days," replied 
 Canalis. "That, I think, is enough, and 
 more than enough literature and conver- 
 sation for whist-players," he added, throw- 
 ing the volume impatiently on a table. 
 
 This little incident serves to show what 
 dangers environ a drawing-room hero 
 when he steps, like Cnnalis, out of his 
 sphei'e ; he is like the favorite actor of 
 a second-rate audience, whose talent 
 comes to grief when he leaves his own 
 boards and steps upon those of an upper- 
 class theater. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 The baron and the duke were partners, 
 and Gobenheim and Latournelle played 
 together. Modesto took a seat near the 
 poet, to Ernest's deep disappointment; 
 he watched the face of tlie capricious 
 girl, and marked the progress of the 
 fascination which Canalis exerted over
 
 MODESTE MI6.\0iV. 
 
 433 
 
 her. La Briere ad not the g-ift of se- 
 duction which Melchior possessed and 
 which Nature frequently denies to true 
 hearts, wlio are, as a rule, timid. This 
 gift demands fearlessness and a vivacity 
 of wa^'s and means that mig-ht be called 
 the trapeze of the mind ; a little mimicrj' 
 g-ocs with it ; in fact there is alwaj's, 
 morally speaking-, something of the come- 
 dian in a poet. There is a vast difference 
 between expressing sentiments we do not 
 feel, though we may imagine all their 
 variations, and feig-ning- to feel them 
 when bidding for success on the theater 
 of private life. And yet, though the nec- 
 essary hyiiocrisj' of a man of the world 
 may have gangrened a poet, he ends by 
 carrying- the faculties of his talent into 
 the expression of any required senti- 
 ment, just as a g-reat man doomed to 
 solitude ends by infusing his heart into 
 his mind. 
 
 " He is working for the millions," 
 thought La Briere, sadly ; " and he can 
 imitate passion so well that Modesto w411 
 believe him." 
 
 Instead of endeavoring to appear more 
 amiable and witty than his rival, Ernest, 
 like the Due d'Heronville, was g-loomj', 
 anxious, and watchful ; but while the cour- 
 tier studied the freaks of the young- heir- 
 ess, Ernest simply fell a prey to the pains 
 of dai'k and concentrated jealousy. He 
 had not yet been able to obtain a glance 
 from his idol. After a while he left the 
 room with Butscha. 
 
 "It is all over!" he said; "she is 
 caught by him ; I am more than dis- 
 agreeable to her, and, moreover, she is 
 right. Canalis is charming- ; there is 
 wit even in his silence, passion in his 
 eyes, and poetry in his rhodomontades." 
 
 "Is he an honest man?" asked But- 
 scha. 
 
 "Oh, yes," replied La Briere. "He is 
 loyal and chivalrous, and capable of g-et- 
 ting rid, under Modeste's influence, of 
 those affectations which Madame de 
 Chaulieu has taught him." 
 
 " You are a fine fellow," said the hunch- 
 back ; "but is he capable of loving — will 
 he love her? " 
 
 "I don't know," answered La Priere. 
 
 " Has she said anj'thing- about me ? " he 
 asked after a moment's silence. 
 
 "Yes," said Butscha, and he repeated 
 Modeste's speech about disguises. 
 
 Poor Ernest flung himself upon a bench 
 and held his head in his hands. He could 
 not keep back his tears ; he did not wish 
 Butscha to see them ; but the dwarf Avas 
 the very man to g-uess his emotion. 
 
 " What troubles you ? " he asked. 
 
 " She is right ! " cried Ernest, suddenly' 
 lifting his head ; " I am a wretch." 
 
 And he related the deception into which 
 Canalis had led him, carefully pointing- 
 out to Butscha, however, that he had 
 wished to undeceive the young g-irl be- 
 fore she herself took off the mask, and 
 apostrophizing his luckless destiny. But- 
 scha sympathetically understood the love 
 in the flavor and vigor of his simple lan- 
 g-uage, and in his deep and genuine anx- 
 iety. 
 
 "But why don't you show yourself to 
 Mademoiselle Modesto for what you arc ?" 
 he said ; " why do you let your rival do all 
 his tricks for her benefit ? " 
 
 " Have you never felt your throat 
 tighten when you wished to speak to 
 her? "cried La Briere; "is there never 
 a strange feeling in the roots of j-our hair 
 and on the surface of your skin when she 
 looks at you — even if she is thinking of 
 something else? " 
 
 "But you had sufficient judgment to 
 look sorrowful when sh(' as good as told 
 her excellent father that he was a dolt." 
 
 " Monsieur, I love her too well not to 
 have felt a knife in my heart wben I heard 
 her contradicting her own perfections." 
 
 " Canalis .supported her." 
 
 " If she had more self-love than heart 
 there would be nothing for a man to re- 
 gret in losing her," answered La Briere. 
 
 At this moment Modestc, followed by 
 Canalis, who had lost the rubber, came 
 out with her father and Madame Dumay 
 to breathe the fresh air of tlie stariy 
 night. While his daughter walked about 
 with the poet, Charles Mignonleft her and 
 came up to La Briere. 
 
 " Your friend, monsieur, ought to have 
 been a lawyer," he said, smiling and look- 
 ing attentively at the j'oung man.
 
 434 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 " You musl not judge a poet as severely' 
 as you would an ordinary man — as you 
 would me, for example, Monsieur le 
 Comte," said La Briere. ''A poet has a 
 mission. He is obliged by his nature to 
 see the poetry of questions, just as he 
 expresses that of things. When you 
 tliink him inconsistent with himself, he 
 is really faithful to his vocation. He is a 
 painter copying with equal truth a Ma- 
 donna and a courtesan. Moliere is as 
 true to nature in his old men as in his 
 young ones, and Moliere "s judgment was 
 assuredly a healthy one. These wittj' 
 paradoxes miglitbe dangerous for second- 
 rate minds, but they have no real influ- 
 ence on the character of true, great men." 
 
 Charles Mignon pressed La Briere's 
 hand. 
 
 "That adr^ptabilitj-, however, leads a 
 man to excuse himself in his own eyes for 
 actions that arc diametrically opposed to 
 each other ; above all, in politics." 
 
 "Ah, mademoiselle," Canalis was at 
 this moment saj'ing, in a caressing voice, 
 in rcph' to a malicious remark from 
 Modesto, '• do not think that a multi- 
 plicity of emotions can in any way lessen 
 the strength of feelings. Poets, even 
 more than other men, must needs love 
 with constancy and faith. You must not 
 be jealous of what is called the Muse. 
 Happy is the wife of a man whose days 
 are occupied. If you heard the complaints 
 of women who have to endure the burden 
 of an idle husband, either a man without 
 duties, or one so rich as to have nothing 
 to do, j'ou would know that the highest 
 happiness of a Parisian wife is freedom — 
 the right to rule in her own home. Now, 
 we writers and men of functions and occu- 
 pations, we leave the scepter to our wives; 
 it is impossible for us to descend to the 
 tyranny of little minds ; we have some- 
 thing better to do. If I ever marry — 
 wliich I assure j'ou is a catastrophe very 
 remote at the present moment — I should 
 wish my wife to enjoy complete moral 
 freedom." 
 
 Canalis talked on, displaying the 
 warmth of his fanc\- and all his graces, 
 for Modestc's benefit, as lie spoke of love, 
 marriage, and the adoration of women, 
 
 until Monsieur Mignon, who had rejoined 
 them, seized the opportunity of a slight 
 Ijause to take his daughter's arm and 
 lead her up to Ernest de la Briere, whom 
 he had been advising to seek an open ex- 
 planation with her. 
 
 "Mademoiselle, "said Ernest, in a voice 
 that was scarcely his own, " it is impossi- 
 ble for me to remain any longer under 
 the weight of your displeasure. I do not 
 defend mj-self ; I do not seek to justify 
 vay conduct ; I desire only to make you 
 see that before I'eading your most flatter- 
 ing letter, addressed to the individual and 
 no longer to the poet — the last which j'ou 
 sent to me — I wished, and I told you in 
 my note written at Havre, that I wished 
 to correct the error under which you were 
 acting. All the feelings that I have had 
 the happiness of expressing to you are 
 sincere. A hope dawned on me in Paris 
 when 3'our father called himself poor — but 
 now, if all is lost, if nothing is left for mo 
 but endless regrets, whj' should I stay 
 here where all is torture ? Let me carry 
 aw^ay with me one smile, to live forever 
 in my heart." 
 
 "Monsieur," answered Modeste, who 
 appeared cold and absent-minded, " I am 
 not the mistress of this house ; but I cer- 
 tainly should deeply regret to retain any 
 one where he finds neither pleasure nor 
 happiness." 
 
 She left La Briere and took Madame 
 Dumay's arm to re-enter the house. A 
 few moments later all the actors in this 
 domestic scene, once more assembled in 
 the salon, were surprised to see Modeste 
 sitting beside the Due d'Herouville and 
 coquetting with him like an accomplished 
 woman of the world. She watched his 
 plaj^ gave him advice when he asked for 
 it, and found occasion to say flattering 
 things by ranking the merits of noble 
 birth with those of genius and beauty. 
 Canalis thought he knew the reason of 
 this change ; he had tried to pique Mo- 
 deste by calling marriage a catastrophe, 
 and showing that he was aloof from it ; 
 but like others who play with Are, he had 
 burned his fingers. Modeste's pride and 
 her present disdain frightened him, and 
 he endeavored to recover his ground, ex-
 
 MODESTE MIGXON. 
 
 435 
 
 hibiting a jealousy which was all the 
 more visible because it was artificial. 
 Modeste, implacable as the angels, tasted 
 the sweets of power, and, naturally' 
 enough, abused it. The Due d'Herou- 
 ville had never known such a happy 
 evening ; a woman smiled on him ! At 
 eleven o'clock, an unheard-of hour at the 
 Chalet, the three suitors took their leave 
 — the duke thinking Modeste charming, 
 Canalis belie^^ng her excessively coquet- 
 tish, and La Briere heart-broken by her 
 cruelty. 
 
 For eight days the heiress continued to 
 be to her three lovers very much ^vhat 
 she had been during that evening ; so 
 that the poet appeared to carry the day 
 against his rivals, in spite of freaks and 
 caprices which from time to time gave 
 the Due d'Herouville a little hope. The 
 disrespect she showed to her father, and 
 the great liberties she tpok with him ; her 
 impatience with her blind mother, to 
 whom she seemed to grudge the little 
 services which had once been the delight 
 of her filial piety — seemed the result of a 
 capricious nature and a heedless gayety 
 indulged from childhood. When Modeste 
 went too far, she turned I'ound and open- 
 ly took lierself to task, ascribing her im- 
 pertinence and levity to a spirit of inde- 
 pendence. She acknowledged to the duke 
 and Canalis her distaste for obedience, 
 and professed to regard it as an obstacle 
 to her marriage ; thus questioning into 
 the nature of her suitors, after the man- 
 ner of those who dig into the earth in 
 search of metals, coal, tufa, or water. 
 
 "I shall never," she said, the evening 
 before the day on which the family were 
 to move into the villa, "find a husband 
 who will put up with my caprices as vay 
 father does : his kindness never flags. 
 And no one will ever be as indulgent to 
 me as my precious mother." 
 
 "They know that you love them, 
 mademoiselle," said La Briere. 
 
 "You may be very sure, mademoiselle, 
 that your husband will know the full 
 value of his treasure," added the duke. 
 
 "You have more than enough spirit 
 and resolution to discipline a husband," 
 cried Canalis, laughing. 
 
 Modeste smiled as Henri IV. must 
 have smiled after drawing out the char- 
 acters of his three principal ministers, 
 for the benefit of a foreign embassador, 
 by means of three answers to an insidious 
 question. 
 
 On the day of the dinner, Modeste, 
 drawn on by the preference she bestowed 
 on Canalis, walked alone with him up and 
 down the graveled space which lay be- 
 tween the house and the lawn. From 
 the gestures of the poet, and the air and 
 manner of the young heii'ess, it was easy 
 to see that she was listening favorably to 
 him. The two Demoiselles d'Herouville 
 hastened to interrupt the scandalous 
 tete-a-tete ; and with the natural clever- 
 ness of women under such circumstances, 
 they turned the conversation on the court, 
 and the distinction of an appointment un- 
 der the crown, explaining the difference 
 that existed between appointments in the 
 household of the king and those of the 
 crown. They tried to intoxicate Modeste 's 
 mind by appealing to her pride, and de- 
 scribing one of the highest stations to 
 which a woman could aspire. 
 
 "To have a duke for a son," said the 
 elder ladj', " is an actual advantage. The 
 title is a fortune that we secure to our 
 children without the possibilit3- of loss." 
 
 "How is it, then," said Canalis, dis- 
 pleased at his tete-a-tete being thus 
 broken in upon, "that Monsieui' le Due 
 has had so little success in a matter 
 where his title would seem to be of 
 special service to him ? " 
 
 The two ladies cast a look at Canalis as 
 full of venom as the tooth of a snake, and 
 they were so disconcerted by Modeste's 
 amused smile that they were actually 
 unable to reply. 
 
 "Monsieur le Due has never blamed 
 you," she said to Canalis, "for the 
 humilitj'- with Avhich you bear your fame ; 
 why should you attack him for his mod- 
 esty?" 
 
 " Besides, we have never yet met a 
 woman worthy of my nephew's rank," 
 said Mademoiselle d'Herouville. "Some 
 had oii\y the wealth of the position : 
 others, without fortune, had the wit and 
 birth, I must admit tiiat we have done
 
 43G 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 well to wait till God granted us an oppor- 
 timit3' to meet cue in whom we find the 
 noble blood, the mind, and fortune of a 
 Ducliesse d'Hcrouville." 
 
 ••JIj- dear Modeste," said Helene 
 d'Herouvillc, leading- her new friend 
 apart, "there are a thousand Barons de 
 Canalis in the kingdom, just as there 
 are a hundred poels in Paris, who are 
 worth as much as he ; he is so little of a 
 great man that even I, a poor girl forced 
 to take the veil for want of a dot, I would 
 not take liim. You don't know what a 
 young man is who has been paraded for 
 ten j-cars by a Ducliesse de Chaulieu. 
 No one l)ut an old woman of sixty could 
 put up with the little ailments of whicli, 
 they say, the great poet is always com- 
 plaining — a habit which, in Louis XIV., 
 became a perfecth' insupportable annoy- 
 ance. It is true the duchess does not 
 suffer from it as much as a wife, who 
 would have him always about her." 
 
 Then, practicing a well-known maneu- 
 ver to her sex, Helene d"Herouville re- 
 peated in a low voice all the calumnies 
 which women jealous of the Ducliesse de 
 Chaulieu were in the habit of spreading 
 about the poet. This little incident, com- 
 mon as it is in the intercourse of women, 
 will serve to show how hot was the chase 
 after Modestc's wealth. . 
 
 Ten days saw a great change in the 
 opinions at the Chalet as to the three 
 suitors for Mademoiselle de la Bastie's 
 hand. This change, which was much to 
 the disadvantage of Canalis, came about 
 through considerations of a nature which 
 ought to make the holders of smj kind of 
 fame pause, and reflect. No one can deny, 
 if we remember the passion with which 
 people seek for autographs, that public 
 curiosity is greatly excited by celebrity. 
 Evidently most provincials never form an 
 e.Kact idea in their own minds of the way 
 in which illustrious Parisians put on their 
 cravats, walk on the boulevard, stand 
 gaping at nothing, or eat a cutlet; be- 
 cause, no sooner do they perceive a man 
 clothed in the sunbeams of fashion or 
 resplendent with some dignity that is 
 more or less fugitive (though always en- 
 vied) than thej' cry out, "Look at that !" 
 
 "How queer!" and other depreciatory 
 exclamations. In a word, the mysterious 
 charm that attaches to every kind of 
 fame, even that which is most justly due, 
 never lasts. It is, especially with super- 
 ficial people who are envious or sarcastic, 
 a sensation which passes off \vith the ra- 
 pidity of lightning, and never returns. It 
 would seem as though glory, like the sun, 
 hot and luminous at a distance, were cold 
 as the summit of an alp when it is ap- 
 proached. Perhaps man is only really 
 great to his peers ; perhaps the defects in- 
 hei-ent in his constitution disappear sooner 
 to the eyes of his equals than to those of 
 vulgar admirers. A poet, if he would 
 please in ordinary life, must put on the ly- 
 ing graces of those who are able to make 
 their insignificance forgotten by charming 
 manners and complaisant speeches. The 
 poet of the Fauboug Saint Germain, who 
 did not choose to bow before this social 
 dictum, was made before long to feel that 
 an insulting provincial indifference had 
 succeeded to the dazed fascination of the 
 earlier evenings. The prodigality of his 
 wit and wisdom had produced upon these 
 worthy souls somewhat the effect which 
 a shopful of glassware produces on the 
 eye ; in other words, the fire and bril- 
 liancy of Canalis's eloquence soon wearied 
 people who, to use their own words, 
 "cared more for the solid." 
 
 Forced after a while to behave like an 
 ordinary man, the poet found numerous 
 unexpected stumbling-blocks on ground 
 where La Briere had ah'eady won the suf- 
 frage of the worthy people who at first 
 had thought him sulky. They felt the 
 need of compensating themselves for Ca- 
 nalis's reputation by preferring his friend. 
 The best of men are made thus. The 
 simple and straightforwai'd young fellow 
 jarred no one's self-love ; coming to know 
 him better they discovered his heart, his 
 modesty, his silent and sure discretion, 
 and his excellent bearing. The Due d 'He- 
 ron viUe considered him, as a political 
 element, far above Canalis. The poet, 
 ill-balanced, ambitious, and restless as 
 Tasso, loved luxury and grandeur, and 
 ran into debt ; while the young law- 
 yer, whose character was equable and
 
 MODEST E MIGXOX. 
 
 437 
 
 well-balanced, lived soberlj% was useful 
 without proclaiming it, awaited rewards 
 without begging for them, and saved his 
 money. 
 
 Canalis had moreover laid himself open 
 in a special way to the bourgeois eyes 
 that were watching him. For two or 
 three days he had shown signs of impa- 
 tience ; he had given way to depression, 
 to states of melancholy without apparent 
 reason, to those capricious changes of 
 temper which are the natural results of 
 the nervous temperament of poets. These 
 originalities (the provincial term) came 
 from the uneasiness caused him by his 
 conduct toward the Duchessc de Chaulieu, 
 which he was daily less able to explain. 
 He knew he ought to write to her, but 
 could not resolve on doing so. All these 
 fluctuations were carefully remarked and 
 commented on by the gentle American, 
 and the excellent Madame Latournelle. 
 Canalis felt the effect of tliese discussions 
 without being able to explain them. The 
 attention paid to him was not the same, 
 tlie faces surrounding him no longer wore 
 the entranced look of the earlier days ; 
 whUe at the same time Ernest was evi- 
 dently gaining ground. 
 
 For the last two days the poet had en- 
 deavored to fascinate Modesto only, and 
 he took advantage of every moment when 
 he found himself alone with her, to weave 
 the web of passionate language around 
 his love. Modeste's blush, as she list- 
 ened to him on the occasion we have just 
 mentioned, showed the Demoiselles d"He- 
 rouville the pleasure with which she was 
 listening to sweet conceits sweetlj' said ; 
 and they, uneasj^ at the poet's progress, 
 had immediate recourse to the ultima 
 ratio of women in such cases, namely, 
 those calumnies which seldom miss their 
 object. Accordingly, when the party 
 met at the dinner-table the poet saw a 
 cloud on the brow of his idol : he knew 
 that Mademoiselle d"Herouville's malig- 
 nity allowed him to lose no time, and he 
 resolved to offer himself as a husband at 
 the first moment when he could find him- 
 self alone with Modeste. 
 
 Overhearing a few acid though polite 
 remarks exchanged between the poet and 
 
 the two noble ladies, Gobenheira nudged 
 Butscha with his elbow, and said in an 
 undertone, motioning toward the poet 
 and the grand equerry — 
 
 '• They'll demolish one another ! " 
 '• Canalis has genius enough to demoUsh 
 himself all alone," answered the dwarf. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 DUEING the dinner, which was mag- 
 nificent and admirably well sers'ed, the 
 duke obtained a signal advantage over 
 Canalis. Modeste, who on the previous 
 night had received her habit and other 
 equestrian equipments, spoke of taking 
 rides about the country. A turn of the 
 conversation led her to express the wish 
 to see a hunt with hounds, a pleasure she 
 had never yet enjoyed. The duke at once 
 proposed to arrange a hunt in one of the 
 crown forests, which lay a few leagues 
 from Havre. Thanks to his intimacy 
 with the Prince de Cadignan, Master of 
 the Hunt, he saw his chance of displaying 
 an almost regal pomp before Modeste's 
 eyes, and alluring her with a glimpse of 
 court fascinations, to which she could be 
 introduced by marriage. Glances were 
 exchanged between the duke and the two 
 Damoisellcs d'HerouviUe, which plainly 
 said, "The heiress is ours!" and the 
 poet, who detected them, and who had 
 nothing but his personal splendors to de- 
 pend on, determined to hasten and obtain 
 some pledge of affection at once. Mo- 
 deste, on the other hand, half-frightened 
 at being thus pushed beyond her inten- 
 tions by the d"Herouvilles, walked rather 
 markedly apart with Melchior, when the 
 company adjourned to the park after 
 dinner. With the pardonable curiosity 
 of a young girl, she allowed him to sus- 
 pect the calumnies which Helene had 
 poured into her ears ; but on an exclama- 
 tion from Canalis she begged him to keep 
 silence about them, and he promised to 
 do so. 
 
 •'•' These stabs of the tongue," he said, 
 "are considered fair in the great world. 
 They shock your upright nature ; but as 
 for me, I laugh at them ; I am even
 
 438 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 pleased. These ladies must feel that the 
 duke's interests are in great peril, when 
 tliey have recourse to such warfare." 
 
 Makitife' the most of the advantage Mo- 
 desto had thus given him, Canalis brought 
 to his defense such warmth, such eager- 
 ness, and a passion so exquisitely ex- 
 pressed, as he thanked her for a confi- 
 dence in which he could venture to see the 
 dawn of love, that slie found herself sud- 
 denly as much compromised with the poet 
 as she had feared to be with the grand 
 equerry. Canalis, feeling the necessity 
 of boldness, declared himself plainly. He 
 uttered vows and protestations in which 
 his poetry shone like a moon, invoked for 
 the occasion, and illuminating his allu- 
 sions to the beauty of his mistress and 
 charms of her evening dress. This coun- 
 terfeit enthusiasm, in which the night. 
 the foliage, the heavens and the earth, 
 and Nature herself played a part, carried 
 the eager lover beyond all bounds ; for 
 he dwelt on his disinterestedness, and 
 revamped, in his own charming style, 
 Diderot's famous apostrophe to "Sophie 
 and fifteen hundred francs!" and the 
 well-worn " love in a cottage " of every 
 lover who knows perfectly well the length 
 of the father-in-law's purse. 
 
 " Monsieur," said Modeste, after listen- 
 ing with delight to the melody of this 
 concerto, so well executed upon •' o well- 
 known theme," "the freedom granted 
 to me by my parents has permitted me 
 to listen to you ; but it is to them that 
 you must address yourself." 
 
 "But," exclaimed Canalis. "tell me 
 that if I obtain their consent, you will 
 ask nothing- better than to obej'them." 
 
 " I know beforehand," she replied, 
 "that my father has certain fancies 
 which may wound the just pride of an 
 old family like yours. He wishes to 
 have his own title and name borne by 
 his grandsons." 
 
 " All ! dear Modeste, what sacrifices 
 would I not make to commit my life to 
 the guardian care of an angel like you." 
 
 " You will permit me not to decide in a 
 moment the fate of my whole life," she 
 said, turning to rejoin the Demoiselles 
 d'Herouville. 
 
 Those noble ladies were just then en- 
 gaged in flattering the vanity of little 
 Latournelle, intending to win him over 
 to their interests. Mademoiselle d'He- 
 rouville, to whom we shall in future 
 confine the family name, to distinguish 
 her from her niece Helene, was giving 
 the notary to understand that the post 
 of judge of the Supreme Court in Havre, 
 which Charles X. would bestow as she 
 desired, was an office worthy of his legal 
 talent and his well-known probity. But- 
 scha, meanwhile, who had been walking 
 about with La Briere, was greatly 
 alarmed at the progress Canalis was 
 evidently making, and he waylaid Mo- 
 deste at the lower step of the portico 
 when the whole party returned to the 
 house to endure the torments of their 
 inevitable whist. 
 
 " Mademoiselle," he said, in a low voice, 
 "I hope that you do not yet call him 
 Melchior." 
 
 "■ I'm very near it, mj^ Black Dwarf," 
 she said, with a smile that might have 
 made an angel fall. 
 
 " Good God ! " exclaimed Butscha, 
 letting fall his hands, which struck the 
 marble steps. 
 
 " Well ! and isn't he worth more than 
 that spiteful and gloomj' secretary in 
 whom you take such an interest ? " she 
 retorted, assuming, at the mere thought 
 of Ernest, the haughty manner whose 
 secret belongs exclusively^ to young girls 
 — as if their virginity lent them wings to 
 fly to heaven. "Pray, would your httle 
 La Briere accept me without a fortune ? " 
 she said, after a pause. 
 
 "Ask your father," replied Butscha. 
 walking a few steps from the house, to 
 get Modeste at a safe distance from th.e 
 windows. " Listen to me, mademoiselle. 
 You know that he who speaks to j'ou is 
 ready to give not only his life but his 
 honor for you, at any moment, and at 
 all times. Therefore you may believe in 
 him ; you can confide to him that which 
 you may not, perhaps, be willing to say 
 to your father. Tell me, has that sublime 
 Canalis been making you the disinterested 
 offer that you now fling as a reproach at 
 poor Ernest ? "
 
 MOD EST E MIQNON. 
 
 439 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Do you believe it ? " 
 
 '•'That cxuestion, my manikin," slie re- 
 plied, giving- him one of the ten or a 
 dozen nicknames she had invented for 
 him, "strikes me as undervaluing- the 
 strength of my self-love." 
 
 " Ah, you are laughing, my dear Made- 
 moiselle Modeste ; then there's no dan- 
 ger : I hope you are only making a fool 
 of him." 
 
 "■ Pray what would you think of me. 
 Monsieur Butscha, if I allowed myself to 
 make fun of those who do me the honor to 
 wish to marry me ? You ought to Icnow, 
 Master Jean, that even if a girl affects 
 to .scorn the most despicable attentions, 
 she is always flattered by them." 
 
 "Then I flatter you?" said the young 
 man, looking up at her with a face that 
 was illuminated like a city for a festival. 
 
 "You? "she said; "you give me the 
 most precious of all friendshiiDs — a feeling 
 as disinterested as that of a mother for 
 her child. Compai-e yourself to no one ; 
 for even my father is obliged to be de- 
 voted to me." She paused. "I cannot 
 say that I love you, in the sense which 
 men give to that word, but what I do give 
 you is eternal and can know no change." 
 
 "Then," said Butscha, stooping- to piclv 
 up a pebble that he might kiss the hem 
 of her garment, "suffer me to watch 
 over you as a dragon guards a treasure. 
 The poet was covering you just now with 
 the lace-work of his precious phrases, the 
 tinsel of his promises ; he chanted his love 
 on the best strings of his Ij're, did he not ? 
 If, as soon as this noble lover finds out 
 how small your fortune is, he makes a 
 sudden change in his behavior, and is cold 
 and embarrassed, will you still marry 
 him? shall you still esteem him?"' 
 
 "He would be another Francisque Al- 
 thor," she said, with a gesture of bitter 
 disgust. 
 
 " Let me have the pleasure of produc- 
 ing that change of scene," said Butscha. 
 " Not only shall it be sudden, but I believe 
 I can afterwai'd change it back and make 
 your poet as loving as before — nay, it is 
 possible to make him blow alternately hot 
 and cold upon your heart, just as grace- 
 
 fully as he has talked on both sides of an 
 ai'gument in one evening without ever 
 finding it out." 
 
 " If you are right," she said, "who can 
 be trusted ? " 
 
 " One who truly loves you." 
 
 " The little duke ? " 
 
 Butscha looked at Modeste.. The pair 
 walked some distance in silence ; the girl 
 was impenetrable and not an eyelash 
 quivered . 
 
 " Mademoiselle, permit me to be the 
 exponent of the thoughts that are lying 
 at the bottom of your heart like sea- 
 mosses under the waves, and which you 
 do not choose to gather up." 
 
 " Eh ! " said Modeste, "' so my intimate 
 fi'iend and counselor thinks himself a mir- 
 ror, does he? " 
 
 "Xo, an echo," he answered, with a 
 gestui-e of sublime humility. "The duke 
 loves you, but he loves you too much. If 
 I, a dwarf, have understood the infinite 
 delicacy of your heart, it would be repug- 
 nant to you to bo worshiped like a saint 
 in her shrine. You are eminently a wo- 
 man ; you want neither a man perpetually 
 at your feet of whom j'ou are eternally 
 sure, nor a selfish egoist like Canalis, 
 who will always prefer himself to you. 
 Why? ah, that I don't know. But I will 
 naake myself a woman, an old woman, to 
 find out the meaning of the plan which I 
 have read in your eyes, and which per- 
 haps is in the heart of everj' girl. Never- 
 theless, in your great soul j-ou feel the 
 need of worshiping. When a man is at 
 your knees, you cannot put j-ourself at 
 his. You cannot go far in that waj^, as 
 Voltaire might say. The little duke has 
 too many genuflections in his moral being 
 and the poet has too few — indeed, I might 
 say, none at all. I have guessed the mis- 
 chief concealed in j^our smiles when you 
 talk to the grand equerry, and when he 
 talks to you and you answer him. You 
 would never be unhappj- with the duke, 
 and everybody will approve your choice, 
 if you do choose him ; but you will never 
 love him. The ice of egotism, and the 
 burning heat of ecstasy both produce in- 
 difference in the heart of every woman. 
 No such peri^etual worship will give you
 
 440 
 
 THE HUM AX COMEDY. 
 
 tho infinite dclighuS which j'ou are dream- 
 ing' of in marriage — in some marriage 
 •where obedience will be j'our pride, where 
 noble little sacrifices can be made and 
 hidden, where the heart is full of anxie- 
 ties without a cause, and successes are 
 awaited with eager hope, where each new 
 chance for magnanimity is hailed with 
 ■joj% where souls are comprehended to 
 their inmost recesses, and where the wo- 
 man protects with her love the man who 
 protects her." 
 
 " You are a sorcerer ! '"' exclaimed Mo- 
 deste. 
 
 "Neither will you find that sweet 
 equality of sentiments, that continual 
 sharing of each other's life, that cer- 
 tainty of pleasing which makes marriage 
 toleral.le, if you take Canalis —a man 
 who thinks of himself only, whose ' I ' is 
 the one string to his lute, whose mind is 
 so fixed on himself that he has hitherto 
 taken no notice of your father or tho 
 duke — a man of second-rate ambitions, to 
 whom j'our dignity and your devotion 
 will matter nothing, who will make j-ou 
 a mere appendage to his household, nnd 
 who alreadj'^ insults you by his indiffer- 
 ence to 3'our behavior ; j-cs, if you per- 
 mitted 3'ourself to go so far as to box 
 your mother's ears, Canalis would shut 
 his eyes to it, and deny your crime even 
 to himself, because he thirsts for your 
 money. And so, mademoiselle, when I 
 spoke of the man who truly loves you I 
 was not thinking of the great poet who 
 is nothing but a little comedian, nor of 
 the duke, who might be a good marriage 
 for you, but never a husband — " 
 
 " Butscha, my heart is a blank page 
 on which you are yourself writing all 
 that j'ou read there," cried Modeste, in- 
 terrupting him. " You are carried away 
 by j'our provincial hati'ed for everything 
 that obliges you to look higher than your 
 own head. You can't forgive a poet for 
 being a statesman, for possessing the 
 ^ft of speech, for having a noble future 
 before him — and you caluumiate his in- 
 tentions." 
 
 "His! — mademoiselle, he will turn his 
 back upon you with the baseness of an 
 Althor." 
 
 " Make him play that pretty little corn- 
 ed}', and — " 
 
 "That I will ! ho shall play it through 
 and through within three days — on Wed- 
 nesday — recollect, Wednesdaj' ! Until 
 then, mademoiselle, amuse yourself by 
 listening to the little tunes of the lyre, so 
 that the discords and the false notes may 
 come out all the more distinctly." 
 
 Modeste ran gaylj' back to the salon, 
 where La Briere, who had been seated 
 by a window, where he had doubtless 
 been watching his idol, I'oso to his feet as 
 if a groom of the chambers had suddenly 
 annoimced, " The Queen." It was a 
 movement of spontaneous respect, full of 
 that living eloquence that lies in gesture 
 even more than in speech. Spoken love 
 cannot compare with acts of love ; and 
 every young girl of twenty has the wis- 
 dom of fifty in applying the axiom. In 
 that lies the great secret of attraction. 
 Instead of looking Modesto in the face, as 
 Canalis, who paid her public homage, 
 would have done, the neglected lover fol- 
 lowed her with a furtive look between his 
 eyelids, humble as Butscha, and almost 
 timid. The young heiress observed it, as 
 she took her place by Canalis, in whose 
 game she proceeded to interest herself. 
 During a conversation which ensued. La 
 Briere heard Modeste say to her father 
 that she should ride out for tlie first time 
 on the following Wednesday ; and she 
 also reminded him that she had no whip 
 in keeping with her new equipments. The 
 young man flung a lightning- glance at the 
 dwarf, and a few minutes later the two 
 were pacing tho terrace. 
 
 " It is nine o'clock," cried Ernest. " I 
 shall start for Paris at full gallop ; I can 
 get there to-morrow morning by ten. My 
 dear Butscha, from you she will accept 
 anything, for she is attached to you ; let 
 me give her a riding-whip in your name. 
 If you will do me this immense kindness 
 3'ou shall have not only my frindship but 
 my devotion." 
 
 '•' Ah, you are very fortunate," said 
 Butscha, ruefully ; "you have money." 
 
 "Tell Canalis not to expect me, and let 
 him invent some pretext to account for 
 my absence."
 
 MOD EST E MIGSOX. 
 
 441 
 
 An hour later Ernest had ridden out of 
 Havre. He reached Paris in twelve hours, 
 where his first act was to secure a place 
 in the mail-coach for Havre on the follow- 
 ing- evening-. Then he went to three of 
 the chief jewelers in Paris and compaz'ed 
 all the whip-handles that they could offer ; 
 he was in search of some artistic treasure 
 that was regally superb. He found one 
 at last, made by Stidmann for a Russian, 
 who was unable to pay for it when finished 
 — a fox-head in g-old, with a ruby of ex- 
 oi'bitant value ; all his savings went into 
 the purchase, the cost of which was seven 
 thous-md francs. Ernest g-ave a drawing- 
 of the ai'ms of La Bastie, and allowed the 
 shop-people twenty hours to engrave them 
 in place of those which were already there. 
 This handle, a masterpiece of delicate 
 ■workmanship, was fitted to an india-rub- 
 ber wliip and put into a morocco case 
 lined with A-elvet, on which two M.'s in- 
 terlaced were stamped in gold . 
 
 La Bi'iere got back to Havre by the 
 mail-coach Wednesday morning in time 
 to breakfast with Canalis. The poet had 
 concealed his secretar^'^s absence by de- 
 claring that he was busy with some work 
 sent ti'om Paris. Butscha, who met La 
 Briere at the (oach-door, took the box 
 containing- the pi'ccious work of art to 
 Francoise Cochet, with insti'uctions to 
 plac ' it on Modeste's dressing-table. 
 
 " Of course you will accompany Made- 
 moiselle Modesto on her ride to-day ? " 
 said Butscha, when he went to Canalis's 
 house to let La Briere know by a wink 
 that the whip had gone to its destination, i 
 
 •'•'I?" answered Ernest; "no, I am { 
 g-oing' to bed." | 
 
 '•' Bah ! " exclaimed Canalis, looking- at 
 him. "I don't know what to make of 
 you any more." 
 
 Breakfast was then served, and the poet 
 naturally invited their visitor to stay and 
 take it. Butscha complied, having- seen 
 in the expression of tlie valet's face the 
 success of a trick in which we shall see 
 the first fruits of his promise to Modesto. 
 
 '•'Monsieur is very right to detain Mon- 
 sieur Latournelle's clerk," whispered Ger- 
 main in his master's ear. 
 
 Canalis and Germain went into the 
 
 salon at a sign that passed between 
 them. 
 
 "I went out this morning to see the 
 men fish, monsieur," said the valet — " an 
 excursion proposed to me by the captain 
 of a smack, whose acquaintance I have 
 made." 
 
 Germain did not acknowledge that he 
 had the bad taste to play billiards in a 
 cafe — a fact of which Butscha had taken 
 advantage lo surround him with friends 
 of his own and manage him as he pleased. 
 
 " Well ? " said Canalis, " to the point- 
 quick ! " 
 
 ''Monsieur le Baron. I heard n con^■er- 
 sation about Monsieur Mignon, which I 
 encourag-cd as far as I could ; for no one, 
 of course, knew that I belong- to you. 
 Ah ! monsieur, judging b^^ the talk of 
 the quays, you are running- your head 
 into a noose. The fortune of Mademoi- 
 selle de la Bastie is, like her name, mod- 
 est. The vessel on which the father re- 
 turned does not belong to him, but to 
 rich China merchants lo whom ho renders 
 an account. They even say things that 
 arc not at all flattering- to Monsieur Mi- 
 gnon 's honor. Havmg heard that joxx 
 and Monsieur le Due were rivals for 
 Mademoiselle de la Bastie's hand, I have 
 taken the liberty to warn you ; for of 
 the two, it would be better that his lord- 
 ship should gobble her. As I came home 
 I walked round the quays, and into that 
 theater-hall where the merchants meet ; 
 I slipped boldly in and out among them. 
 Seeing- a well-dressed stranger, those 
 woi'thy fellows beg-an to talk to me of 
 Havre, and I got them, little by little, 
 to speak of Colonel Mig-non. What they 
 said only confirms the stories the fisher- 
 men told me ; and I feel that I should 
 fail in my duty if I keep silence. That 
 is why I did not get homo in time to 
 dress monsieur this morning." 
 
 " What am I to do ? '" cried Canalis, 
 who remembered his proposals to Mo- 
 desto the night before, and did not see 
 ho\v he could g-et out of them. 
 
 "Monsieur knows my attachment to 
 him," said Germain, perceiving that the 
 po't was thrown quite ofi' his balance; 
 '• he will not be surprised if I give him
 
 443 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 a word of advice. There is that clerk ; 
 try to g-et the truth out of him. Per- 
 haps he'll unbutton after a bottle or two 
 of chanipag-ne, or at any rate a third. 
 It would be strang-e indeed if monsieur, 
 who will one day be an embassador, as 
 Philoxeno has heard Madame la Duchesse 
 say time and time again, could not get to 
 the bottom of a provincial clerk's knowl- 
 edge." 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 At this instunt Butscha, the unknown 
 author of the fishing party, was request- 
 ing the secretary to say nothing about 
 his trip to Paris, and not to interfere in 
 any way with what he, Butscha, might 
 do. The dwarf had already made use of 
 an unfavorable feeling lately roused in 
 Havre ag-ainst Monsieur Mignon. The 
 latter had completely ignored those of 
 liis former friends who during his ab- 
 sence had neglected his wife and children. 
 When they hnd learned that he was about 
 to give a great dinner, they had expected 
 invitations, but when they found that 
 Gobenheira, the Latournelles, the duke 
 and the two Parisians were the only 
 guests, a great clamor arose concerning 
 the merchant's pride and affectation, 
 which were attributed to scorn, and 
 Havre took its revenge by questioning 
 the amount of the fortvme which had 
 suddenh' come to the Mignons. The 
 persons who were most bitter against 
 liim even declared calumniously that he 
 had made over a large amount of prop- 
 erty to Dumay to save it from the just 
 demands of his associates in China. But- 
 scha took advantage of this state of feel- 
 ing. He asked the fishermen, who owed 
 hitn man^' a good turn, to keep the secret 
 and lend him their tongues. They served 
 him well. The captain of the fishing- 
 smack told Germain that one of his cous- 
 ins, a sailor, had just returned from Mar- 
 seilles, where he had been paid off from 
 the brig in which Monsieur Mignon re- 
 turned to France. The brig had been 
 sold to the account of some other person 
 than Monsieur Mignon, and the cargo was 
 
 only worth three or four hundred thou- 
 sand francs at the utmost. 
 
 "Germain," said Canalis, as the valet 
 was leaving the room, " serve champagne 
 and claret. A member of the legal fra- 
 ternity of Havre must carry away with 
 him proper ideas of a poet's hosiiitality. 
 Besides, he has got a wit that is equal to 
 Figaro's, "added Canalis, laying his hand 
 on the dwai'f's shoulder, "and we must 
 make it foam and sparkle with cham- 
 pagne ; you and I, Ernest, will not spare 
 the bottle either. Faith, it is over two 
 years since I've been drunk," he added, 
 looking at La Briere. 
 
 "Not drunk with wine, you mean," 
 said Butscha, looking keenly at him, 
 " yes, I can believe that. You get drunk 
 every day on yourself, 3'ou di'ink scJ many 
 praises. Ha ! you are handsome, you are 
 a poet, 3'ou ai'e famous in your lifetime, 
 you have the gift of an eloquence that is 
 equal to your genius, and you please all 
 women — even my master's wife. Ad- 
 mired by the finest woman that I ever 
 saw in m^'^ life, you can, if you choose, 
 marry Mademoiselle de la Bastie. Good- 
 ness ! the mere inventoiy of your pres- 
 ent advantages, not to speak of the fut- 
 ure (a noble title, peerage, embassy!), is 
 enough to make me drunk already' — like 
 the men who bottle other men's wine." 
 
 "All such social distinctions," said Ca- 
 nalis, "are of little use without the one 
 thing that gives them value — Avealth. 
 Here we can talk as men with men ; fine 
 sentiments only do in verse." 
 
 " That depends on circumstances," said 
 the dwarf, with a knowing gesture. 
 
 "Ah ! you writer of conveyances," said 
 the poet, smiling at the interruption, 
 "you know as well as I do that cottage 
 i-hymes with pottage — and who would 
 like to live on that for the rest of his 
 days?" 
 
 At table Butscha played the part of 
 Trigaudin, in the Maison en loterie, in a 
 way that alarmed Ernest, wlio did not 
 know the waggery of a law\-er's office, 
 which is quite equal to that of an atelier. 
 Butscha poured forth the scandalous gos- 
 sip of Havre, the private history of fort- 
 unes and boudoirs, and the crimes com-
 
 MODEST E MWyON. 
 
 443 
 
 mitted code in hand, which are called in 
 Kormaudy, '"getting- out of a thing as 
 best j-ou can." He spared no one ; and 
 his liveliness increased with the torrents 
 of wine which poured down his throat like 
 rain througli a gutter. 
 
 "Do you know, La Briere," said Ca- 
 nalis, fdling Butscha's glass, "that this 
 fellow would make a capital secretary to 
 the embassy ? " 
 
 " And oust his chief ! " cried the dwarf, 
 flinging a look at Canalis whose insolence 
 was lost in the gurgling of carbonic acid 
 gas. '"I've little enough gratitude and 
 quite enough scheming to get astride of 
 your shoulders. Ha, ha, a poet carrying 
 a hunchback ! that's been seen, often seen 
 — on book-shelves. Come, j'ou look at 
 me as if I were swallowing swords. M3' 
 dear great genius, j-ou're a superior man; 
 you know that gratitude is the word of 
 fools ; it is in the dictionary, but it isn't 
 In the human heart ; pledges are worth 
 nothing, except on a certain mount that 
 is neither Piudus nor Parnassus. You 
 think I owe a great deal to my master's 
 wife, who brought me up. Bless you, 
 the whole town has paid her for that 
 in i^raises, respect, and admiration — the 
 very best of coin. I don't recogijize any 
 service that has an income of self-love. 
 Men make a commerce of their services, 
 and gratitude goes down on the debit 
 side — that's all. As to schemes, they are 
 my divinity. What?" he exclaimed, at 
 a gesture of Canalis, " don't you admire 
 the faculty wdiich enables a wily man to 
 get the better of a man of genius ? It 
 takes the closest observation of his vices 
 and his weaknesses, and the wit to seize 
 the happj' moment. Ask diplomacy if its 
 greatest triumphs are not those of craft 
 over force ? If I w^ere your secretary. 
 Monsieur le Bai'on, you'd soon be prime 
 minister, because it would be my interest 
 to have you so. Do you want a specimen 
 of my talents in that line ? Well then, 
 listen ; you love Mademoiselle Modeste 
 distractedly, and you've good reason to 
 do so. The girl has my fullest esteem ; 
 she is a true Parisian. Sometimes we get 
 a few real Parisians born down here in 
 the provinces. Well, Modeste is just the 
 
 woman to help a man's career. She's 
 got that in her," he cried, with a turn of 
 his wrist in the air. " But j'ou've a dan- 
 gerous competitor in the duke ; what will 
 you give me to get him out of Havre 
 within three daj-s?" 
 
 " Finish this bottle," said the poet, re- 
 filling Butscha's glass. 
 
 "You'll make me drunk," said the 
 dwarf, tossing off his ninth glass of cham- 
 pagne. "Have 3'ou a bed where I could 
 sleep it off ? My master is as sober as the 
 camel that he is, and Madame Latour- 
 nelle too. They would be unkind enough, 
 both of them, to scold me ; and they'd 
 have the rights of it too — there are those 
 deeds I ought to be drawing ! — " Then, 
 suddenly returning to his previous ideas, 
 after the fashion of a drunken man, he 
 exclaimed, " and I've such a memory ; it 
 is equal to my gratitude." 
 
 "Butscha I " cried the poet, "you said 
 just now you had no gratitude ; you con- 
 tradict 3'ourself." 
 
 "Not at all," he replied. "To forget 
 a thing means almost always recollecting 
 it. Come, come, do you want me to get 
 rid of the duke? I'm cut out for a secre- 
 tary." 
 
 "How could you manage it?" said 
 Canalis, delighted to find the conversa- 
 tion taking this turn of its own accord. 
 
 "That's none of your business," said 
 the dwarf, with a portentous hiccough. 
 
 Butscha 's head I'oUed between his shoul- ■ 
 ders, and his eyes turned from Germain 
 to La Briere, and from La Briere to Ca- 
 nalis, after the manner of men who, know- 
 ing they are tipsy, wish to see what other 
 men are thinking of them ; for in the 
 sliipwreck of drunkenness it is noticeable 
 that self-love is the last thing that goes 
 to the bottom. 
 
 " Ha ! my great poet, A'ou'i-e a pretty 
 good trickster yourself ; but \o\i are not 
 deep enough. What do you mean b^- tak- 
 ing me for one of your own readers — you, 
 who sent your friend to Paris, full gallop, 
 to inquire into the property of the Mignon 
 family ? Ha, ha ! I hoa.x, thou hoaxest, 
 we hoax — Good ! But do me the honor to 
 believe that I"m deep enough to keep the 
 secrets of mv own business. As the liead-
 
 444 
 
 THE HUM Ay COMEDY 
 
 clerk of a notary, my heart is a locked 
 box, padlocked 1 My mouth never opens 
 to let out anything about achcnt. I know 
 all, and I know nothing. Besides, my 
 passion is well known. I love Modesto ; 
 she is my pupil, and she must make a 
 good marriage. I'll fool the duke, if need 
 be ; and you shall marry — " 
 
 " Germain, coffee and liqueurs," said 
 Canalis. 
 
 " Liqueurs ! " repeated Butscha Avith a 
 wave of liis hand, as if to repel seduction. 
 "Ah, those poor deeds ! one of 'em was a 
 marriage contract ; and that second clerk 
 of mi!ie is as stupid as — as — an epithala- 
 mium, and he's capable of digging his 
 penknife right through the bride's para- 
 phernalia ; he thinks he's a handsome 
 man because he's five feet six — idiot ! " 
 
 " Here is some creme de the, a liqueur 
 of the West Indies," said Canalis. " You, 
 whom Mademoiselle Modesto consults — " 
 
 " Yes, she consults me." 
 
 " Well, do 3'ou think she loves me ? " 
 asked the poet. 
 
 •' Loves you ? yes, more than she loves 
 the duke," answered the dwarf, rousing 
 himself from a stupor which was admir- 
 al)l3' played. "She loves j'ou for your 
 disinterestedness. She told me thnt for 
 3'ou she was capable of any sacrifice ; to 
 give up dress and spend as little as pos- 
 sible on herself, and devote her life to 
 showing you that in marrying hor you 
 hadn't done so [hiccough] bad a thing for 
 yourself. She's as right as a trivet — yes, 
 and well informed. She l<nows every- 
 thing, that girl." 
 
 '•■ And she has three hundred thousand 
 francs ?" 
 
 " There may be quite as much as that," 
 cried the dwarf, enthusiasticalh". " Papa 
 Mignon — mignon by name, mignon by 
 nature, and that's why I respect him — 
 well, he would rob himself of everything 
 to marry his daugliter. Your Restora- 
 tion [hiccough] has taught him how to live 
 on half-pay ; he'il be quite content to live 
 with Dumaj' on next to nothing, in Havre, 
 if he could rake and scrape enough to- 
 gether to give the little one three hundred 
 thousand francs. But don't let's forget 
 that Dumay is going to leave all his money 
 
 to Modeste. Dumay, you know, is a Bre- 
 ton, and a Breton always keeps his word; 
 and his fortune is equal to the colonel's. 
 But I don't approve of Monsieur Mignon's 
 taking back that villa, and, as they often 
 ask my adAice, I told them so. ' You 
 sink too much in it,' I said ; 'if Vilquin 
 does not buy it back there's two hundred 
 thousand francs which won't bring you 
 in a penny ; it only leaves you a hundred 
 thousand to get along with, and it isn't 
 enough.' The colonel and Dumay are 
 consulting about it now. But neverthe- 
 less, between you and me, Modeste is sure 
 to be rich. I hear talk on the quays 
 against it; but that's all nonsense; people 
 are jealous. Why, there's no such dot in 
 Havre," cried Butscha, beginning to count 
 On his fingers. " Two to three hundred 
 thousand in ready money," bending back 
 the thumb of his left hand with the fore- 
 finger of his right, " that's one item ; the 
 reversion of the villa Mig-non, that's an- 
 other; fer^fo, Dumay 's property!" dou- 
 bling dovi/n his middle finger. " Ha ! little 
 Modeste may count up her six hundred 
 thousand francs as soon as the two old 
 soldiers have got their marching orders 
 for eternity." 
 
 This coarse and candid statement, in- 
 termingled with a variety of liquors, so- 
 bered Canalis as much as it appeared to 
 befuddle Butscha. To the latter, a young 
 provincial, such a fortune must of course 
 seem colossal. He let his head fall into 
 the palm of his right hand, and, putting 
 his hand majestically on the table, blinked 
 his eyes and continued talking to himself — 
 
 " In twenty years, thanks to that Code, 
 which pillag'es fortunes under what they 
 call 'Successions,' an heiress worth a 
 million will be as rare as generosity in 
 a money-lender. Suppose Modeste does 
 want to spend all the interest of her 
 own money — well, she is so pretty, so 
 sweet and pretty; why she's — you poets 
 are always after metaphors — she's a 
 weasel as tricky as a monkey." 
 
 " How came you to tell me she had six 
 millions?" said Canalis to La Briere, in 
 a low voice. 
 
 "My friend," said Ernest, "I do as- 
 sure you that I was bound to silence by
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 445 
 
 an oath ; perhaps, even now I ought not 
 to say as much as that." 
 
 "Bound ! to whom?" 
 
 "To Monsieur Mignon." 
 
 " Ernest ! you who know how essential 
 fortune is to me — " 
 
 Butscha snored. 
 
 '• — who know my situation, and all that 
 I shall lose in the Ducb^sse de Chaulieu, 
 by marrying, you coldly let m'e plunge 
 into such a thing as this I " exclaimed 
 Canalis, turing pale. " It was a ques- 
 tion of friendship ; and ours was a com- 
 pact entered into long before j'ou ever 
 saw that crafty Mignon." 
 ' "My dear fellow," said Ernest, "I 
 love Modeste too well to — " 
 
 "Fool ! then take her," cried the jioet, 
 "and break your oath." 
 
 " Will you promise me on your word 
 of honor to forget what. I now tell you, 
 and to l)ehave to me as though this con- 
 fidence had never been made, whatever 
 happens ? " 
 
 "I'll swear that, by my mother's mem- 
 ory." 
 
 "Well then," said La Briere, "Mon- 
 sieur Mignon told me in Paris that he 
 was very far from having the colossal 
 fortune which the Mongenods told me 
 about and which I mentioned to you. 
 The colonel intends to give two hundred 
 thousand francs to his daughter. And 
 now% Melchior, I ask j'ou, was the fatlier 
 really distrustful of us, as you thought ; 
 or was he sincere ? It is not for me to 
 answer those questions. If Modeste, with- 
 out a fortune, deigns to choose me, she 
 will still be my wife." 
 
 " A blue-stocking ! educated till she is 
 a terror ! a girl who has read everything, 
 who knows everything — in theory," cried 
 Canalis, hastily, noticing La Briere's gest- 
 ure, "a spoiled child, brought up in lux- 
 ury in her childhood, and who has been 
 without it for five years. Ah ! my poor 
 friend, take care what you are about." 
 
 " Ode and Code," said Butscha, waking 
 up, "you do the ode and I the code; 
 there's only a C's difference between us. 
 Well, now, code comes from coda, a tail 
 — mark that word ! See here ! a bit of 
 good advice is worth your wine and your 
 
 cream of tea. Father Mignon — he's cream, 
 too ; the cream of honest men — he is going 
 with his daughter on this riding party; do 
 you go up frankly and talk dot to hira. 
 He'll answer plainl3% and j-ou"ll get at 
 the truth just as surely as I'm drunk, 
 and j'ou're a great poet — but no matter 
 for that ; we are to leave Havre together, 
 that's settled, isn't it ? I'm to be your 
 secretary in place of that little fellow who 
 sits there grinning at me and thinking 
 I'm drunk. Come, let's go, and leave 
 him to marry the girl." 
 
 Canalis rose to leave the room to dress 
 for the excursion. 
 
 "' Hush, not a word — he is going to 
 commit suicide," whispered Butscha, 
 sober as a judge, to La Briere, as he 
 made at Canalis's back a gesture fa- 
 miliar to the gamins of Paris. "Adieu, 
 m.y chief ! " he shouted, in stentorian 
 tones, " will you allow me to take a 
 .snooze in that kiosk down in the gar- 
 den ? " 
 
 "Make yourself at home," answered 
 the poet. 
 
 Butscha, pursued by the laughtep of 
 the three servants of the establishment, 
 gained the kiosk by walking over the 
 flower-beds and round the vases with 
 the perverse grace of an insect describ- 
 ing its interminable zig-zags as it tries 
 to get out of a closed window. When 
 he had clambered into the kiosk, and 
 the servants had retired, he sat down 
 on a wooden bench and wallowed in the 
 delights of his triumph. He had com- 
 pletely fooled a great man ; he had not 
 onl3' torn off his mask, but he had made 
 him untie the strings himself ; and he 
 laughed like an author over his own 
 play — with a true sense of the immense 
 value of this vis comica. 
 
 "Men are tops!" he cried, "j'ou've 
 only to find the tw-ine to wind 'em with. 
 But I'm like my fellows," he added, 
 presently. "I should faint away if any 
 one came and said tome, 'Mademoiselle 
 Modeste has been thrown from her horse, 
 and has broken her leg.' "
 
 446 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY, 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 A FEW moments later, Modesto, charm- 
 ing'ly equipped in a bottle-gieen cassiniere 
 habit, a small hat with a green veil, buck- 
 skin g-loves, and velvet boots, and mounted 
 on an elegantly caparisoned little horse, 
 was exhibiting to her father and the Due 
 d'Herouville the beautiful present she had 
 just received ; she was evidently delighted 
 with one of those attentions that particu- 
 larly flatter women. 
 
 •' Did it come from you. Monsieur le 
 Due ? " she said, holding the sparkling 
 handle toward him. " There was a card 
 with it, saying, ' Guess, if you can,' and 
 some asterisks. Francoise and Dumaj' 
 credit Butscha with this charming sur- 
 prise ; but my dear Butscha is not rich 
 enough to \>\\x such rubies. And as for 
 papa (to whom I said, as I remember, on 
 Sunday evening, that I had no whip), he 
 sent to Rouen for this one" — pointing to 
 a whip in her father's hand, with a top 
 sown with turquoises, a fashion then in 
 vogue which has since become common. 
 
 '«I would give ten j^ears of my old age, 
 mademoiselle, to have the right to offer 
 you that beautiful jewel," said the duke, 
 courteously. 
 
 " Ah, here comes the audacious giver !" 
 cried Modeste, as Canalis rode up. " It 
 is only a poet who knows where to find 
 such choice things. Monsieur," she said 
 to Melchior, " my father will scold you, 
 and say that you justify those who accuse 
 you of extravagance." 
 
 " Oh ! " exclaimed Canalis, with appar- 
 ent simplicit}', ' ' .so that is whj' La Briere 
 rode at full gallop from Havre to Paris ?" 
 
 " Does your secretary take such liber- 
 ties ? " said Modeste, turning pale, and 
 throwing the whip to Francoise with an 
 impetuosity that expressed scorn. " Give 
 me your whip, papa." 
 
 "Poor Ernest, who lies there on his 
 bed half-dead with fatigue ! " said Cana- 
 lis, overtaking the girl, who had already 
 started at a gallop. " You are pitiless, 
 mademoiselle. ' I have ' (the poor fellow 
 said to me) ' only this one chance to j-e- 
 main in her memorj\' " 
 
 "And should vou think well of a wo- 
 
 man who could take presents from half 
 the parish ? " said Modeste. 
 
 She was surprised to receive no answer 
 to this inquiry, and attributed the poet's 
 inattention to the noise of the horse's 
 feet. 
 
 "How you delight in tormenting those 
 who love you," said the duke. "Your 
 nobility of soul and your pride are so in- 
 consistent with your faults that I begin 
 to suspect you calumniate yourself, and 
 do those naughty things on purpose." 
 
 " Ah ! have you onl^' just found that 
 out. Monsieur le Due ?" she exclaimed, 
 laughing. " You have the sagacity of 
 a husband." 
 
 They rode half a mile in silence. Mo- 
 deste was a good deal astonished not to 
 receive the fire of the poet's eyes. The 
 evening before, as she was pointing out 
 to him an admirable effect of setting sun- 
 light across the water, she had said, re- 
 marking his inattention, ""Well, don't 
 you see it?" — to which he replied, "I 
 can see only your hand;" but now his 
 admiration for the beauties of nature 
 seemed a little too intense to be natural. 
 
 " Does Monsieur de la Briere know how 
 to ride? "she asked, for the purpose of 
 teasing him. 
 
 "Not very well, but he gets along," 
 answered the poet, cold as Gobenheim 
 before the colonel's return. 
 
 At a cross-road, which Monsieur Mi- 
 gnon made them take, to go through a 
 lovely valley to reach a hill overlooking 
 the Seine, Canalis allowed Modeste and 
 the duke to pass him, and then reined up 
 to join the colonel. 
 
 "Monsieur le Comte," he said, "you 
 are an open-hearted soldier, and I know 
 3'ou will regard my frankness as a title 
 to your esteem. When pmi^osals of mar- 
 riage, with all their brutal — or, if you 
 please, too civilized — discussions, are car- 
 ried on by third parties, it is an injurj' to 
 all. We are both gentlemen, and both 
 discreet; and you, like myself, have 
 passed beyond the age of surprises. Let 
 us therefore speak as intimates. I will 
 set you the example. I am twenty -nine 
 years old, without landed estates, and 
 full of ambition. Mademoiselle Modeste,
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 447 
 
 as j'ou must have perceived, pleases me 
 extremely. Kow, in spite of the little 
 defects which your dear girl assumes 
 occasionallj' — " 
 
 " — not counting those she really pos- 
 sesses," said the colonel, smiling-— 
 
 " — I should gladly make her my wife, 
 and I believe I could render her happy. 
 The question of money is of the utmost 
 importance to m3' future, which hangs 
 to-day in the balance. All young girls 
 expect to be loved luhether or no — foi't- 
 une or no fortune. But you are not the 
 man to marry your dear Modeste without 
 a dot, and my situation does not allow 
 me to make a marriage of what is called 
 love unless with a woman who has a fort- 
 une at least equal to mine. I have, from 
 my emoluments and sinecures, from the 
 Academj' and from my .works, about 
 thirty thousand francs a year, a large 
 income for a bachelor. If my wife 
 brought me as much more, I should 
 still be in about the same condition that 
 I am now. Sliall you give Mademoiselle 
 Modeste a million ? " 
 
 "Ah, monsieur, we have not reached 
 the point of figures yet," said the colonel, 
 jesuiticalh'. 
 
 " Then suppose," said Canalis, quickly, 
 "that we go no farther. You shall have 
 no cause to complain of me, Monsieur 
 le Comte ; the world shall consider me 
 among the unfortunate suitors of j^our 
 charming daughter. Give me your word 
 of honor to saj' nothing on the subject to 
 any one, not even to Mademoiselle Mo- 
 deste, because," he added, as if in search 
 of consolation, " my circumstances raaj' 
 so change that I can ask you for her 
 without dot." 
 
 "1 promise you that," said the colonel. 
 "You know, monsieur, with what assur- 
 ance the public, both in Paris and the 
 provinces, talk of fortunes that are made 
 and unmade. People exaggerate both 
 happiness and unhappiness ; we are never 
 so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people 
 say we are. There is nothing sure and 
 certain in business except investments in 
 land. I am awaiting the accounts of my 
 agents with very great impatience. The 
 sale of mj' merchandise and of mj^ ship, 
 
 and the settlement of my affairs in China, 
 are not j'et concluded ; and I cannot know 
 the full amount of my fortune for at least 
 six months. I did, however, say to Mon- 
 sieur de la Briere in Paris that I would 
 guarantee a dot of two hundred thousand 
 francs in ready money. I wish to entail 
 my estates, and enable my grandchildren 
 to inherit my arms and title." 
 
 Canalis did not listen to this state- 
 ment after the opening sentence. The 
 four riders, having now reached a wider 
 road, went abreast and soon reached a 
 stretch of table-land, from which the eye 
 took in on one side the rich valley of the 
 Seine toward Rouen, while on the other 
 horizon the e\-e could distinguish the sea. 
 
 "Butscha was right, God is the great- 
 est of all landscape painters," said Ca- 
 nalis, contemplating the view, which is 
 unique among the manj- fine scenes that 
 have made the shores of the Seine so 
 justly celebrated. 
 
 " Especially do we feel that, my dear 
 baron," said the duke, " on hunting- 
 days, when nature has a voice, and a 
 livel^y tumult breaks the silence ; at such 
 times the landscape, changing rapidly 
 as we ride through it, seems really 
 sublime." 
 
 " The sun is the inexhaustible palette," 
 said Modeste, looking at the poet in a 
 species of bewilderment. 
 
 A remark that she presently made on 
 his absence of mind gave him an oppor- 
 tunity of saying that he was just then 
 absorbed in his own thoughts — an excuse 
 that authors have more reason for giving 
 than other men. 
 
 " Are we really made happy by carry- 
 ing our lives into the midst of tlie world, 
 and swelling them with all sorts of 
 fictitious wants and overexcited vani- 
 ties ? " said Modeste, moved by the as- 
 pect of the fertile and billowy country 
 to long for a philosophicallj- tranquil 
 life. 
 
 " That bucolic, mademoiselle, is always 
 written on tablets of gold," said the 
 poet. 
 
 "And sometimes under garret-roofs," 
 remarked the colonel. 
 
 Modeste threw a piercing glance at
 
 448 
 
 THE HUMAM UUMEDl'. 
 
 Canalis, which lie was unable to sustain ; 
 she was conscious of a ringing in hereais, 
 darkness seemed to spread before her, 
 and then she suddenly exclaimed in icy 
 tones — 
 
 "Ah ! it is Wednesday ! " 
 
 " I do not saj' this to flatter your pass- 
 ing- caprice, mademoiselle,"' said the duUe, 
 to whom the little scene, so tragical for 
 Modeste, had left time for thought ; "hut 
 I declare I am so profoundly disgusted 
 Willi the world and the court and Paris, 
 that had I a Duchesse d'Herouville, 
 gifted with the wit and graces of made- 
 moiselle, I would gladly bind myself to 
 live like a philosopher at my chateau, 
 doing good around me, draining my 
 marshes, educating my children — "' 
 
 " That, Monsieur le Due, will be set to 
 the account of your great goodness, "said 
 Modeste, h'tting her e^'es rest steadily on 
 the noble gentleman. '•' You flatter me 
 in not thinking me frivolous, and in be- 
 lieving that I have enough resources with- 
 in mj'self to be able to live in solitude. It 
 is perhaps my lot," she added, glancing 
 at Canalis with an expression of pity. 
 
 '•' It is the lot of all insignificant fort- 
 unes," said the poet. "Paris demands 
 Babylonian splendor. Sometimes I ask 
 myself how I have ever managed to keep 
 it up." 
 
 " The king does that for both of us," 
 said the duke, candidly-; "we live on his 
 majesty's bounty. If my family had not 
 been allowed, after the death of Monsieur 
 le Grand, as they called Cinq-Mars, to 
 keej) his office among us, we should have 
 been obliged to sell Herouville to the 
 Black Brethren. Ah, believe me, made- 
 moiselle, it is a bitter humiliation to me 
 to have to think of money in marry- 
 ing." 
 
 The simple honesty of this confession 
 came from his heart, and the regret was 
 so sincere that it touched Modeste. 
 
 "In these days," said the poet, "no 
 man in France, Monsieur le Due, is rich 
 enough to marry a woman for herself, 
 her personal worth, her grace, or her 
 beauty—" 
 
 Tiie colonel looked at Canalis \\ith a 
 curious eye, after first watching Modeste, 
 
 whose face no longer expressed the slight- 
 est astonishment. 
 
 " For persons of high honor," he said 
 slowly, " it is a noble employment of 
 wealth to destine it to the reparation 
 of the ravages of time and destiny, and 
 to restore the old historic families." 
 
 "Yes, papa," said Modeste, gravely. 
 
 The colonel invited the duke and Cana- 
 lis to dine with him sociably in their rid- 
 ing-dress, promising them to make no 
 change himself. When Modeste went to 
 her room to make her toilet, she looked 
 at the jeweled whip she had disdained in 
 the morning. 
 
 "What workmanship they put into 
 such things nowadays I " she said to 
 Fi-an^oise Cochet, who had become her 
 waiting-maid. 
 
 "That poor young man, mademoiselle, 
 who has got a fever — " 
 
 "Who told you that?" 
 
 "Monsieur Butscha. He came here 
 this afternoon and asked me to say to 
 3'ou that he hoped \-ou would notice he 
 had kept his word on the aijpointed day." 
 
 Modeste came down into the salon 
 dressed with royal simplicity. 
 
 " M3' dear father," she said aloud, 
 taking the colonel by the arm, "please 
 go and ask after Monsieur de la Briere's 
 health, and take him back his present. 
 You can saj' that my small means, as 
 well as my natural tastes, forbid my wear- 
 ing ornaments which ai"e only suitable for 
 queens or courtesans. Besides, I can only 
 accept gifts from a bridegroom. Beg 
 him to keep the whip until you know 
 whether you are rich enough to buy it 
 back." 
 
 "' My little girl has plenty of good 
 sense," said the colonel, kissing his 
 daughter on the forehead. 
 
 Canalis took advantage of a conversa- 
 tion which began between the duke and 
 Madame Mignon to escape to the terrace, 
 where Modeste joined him, influenced b^' 
 curiosity, though the poet believed her 
 to be led by her desire to become Ma- 
 dame de Canalis. Rather alarmed at the 
 indecency with which he had just executed 
 what soldiers call an about-face, which, 
 according- to the laws of ambition, every
 
 MODESTE MlGNO?i. 
 
 449 
 
 man in his position would have executed 
 quite as brutaUj', he now endeavored, as 
 the unfortunate Modeste approached him, 
 to find plausible excuses for his conduct. 
 
 '• Dear Modeste," he began, in a coax- 
 ing- tone, ' • considering the terms on which 
 % we stand to each other, shall I displease 
 you if I say that your replies to the Due 
 d'Herouville were very painful to a man 
 in love — above all, to a poet whose soul 
 is feminine, nervous, full of the jealousies 
 of true passion. I should make a poor 
 diplomatist indeed if I had not, per- 
 ceived that 3'our first coquetries, your 
 little premeditated inconsistencies, were 
 only assumed for the purpose of studj'ing 
 our characters — " 
 
 Modeste raised her head with the rapid, 
 intelligent, half-coquettish motion of a 
 wild animal, in whom instinct produces 
 such miracles of grace. 
 
 " — and therefore when I returned home 
 and thoug'ht them over, they never misled 
 me. I only marveled at a cleverness so 
 in harmony with your character and your 
 countenance. Do not be uneasj', I never 
 doubted that your assumed duplicity cov- 
 ered an angelic candor. No, your mind, 
 your education, have in no way lessened 
 the precious innocence which we demand 
 in a wife. You are indeed a wife for a poet, 
 a diplomatist, a thinker, a man destined 
 to endure the chances and changes of life ; 
 and n\y admiration is equaled only by the 
 attachment I feel to you. I now entreat 
 you — if yesterday you \fere nob playing 
 a little comedy when you accepted the 
 love of a man whose vanity will change 
 to pride if you accept him, one whose 
 defects will become virtues under your 
 divine influence — I entreat you do not 
 excite a passion which, in him, amounts 
 to vice. Jealousy is a noxious element in 
 ray soul, and you have revealed to me its 
 strength ; it is awful, it destroys every- 
 thing — Oh I I do not mean the jealousy 
 of an Othello," he continued, noticing Mo- 
 deste's gestui'c. " No, no ; my thoughts 
 were of myself : I have been so indulged 
 on that point. You know the unique 
 affection to which I owe all the happi- 
 ness I have ever enjoj^ed — very little at 
 the best [he sadly shook his head]. Love 
 
 Balzac — O 
 
 is symbolized among all nations as a 
 child, because it fancies the world be- 
 longs to it, and it cannot conceive other 
 wise. Well, Nature herself set the limit 
 to that sentiment. It was still-born. A 
 tender, maternal soul guessed and calmed 
 the painful constriction of my heart — for 
 a woman who feels, who knows, that she 
 is past the joys of love becomes angelic in 
 her treatment of others. The duchess has 
 never made me suffer in my sensibilities. 
 For ten years there has not been a word 
 or look that could wound me ! I attach 
 more value to words, to thoughts, to 
 looks, than ordinary men. If a look is 
 to me a treasure beyond all price, tho 
 slightest doubt is deadlj-^ poison; it acts 
 instantaneously, and ray love dies. I be- 
 lieve — contrary to the mass of men, who 
 delight in trembling, hoping, expecting — 
 that love can onlj' exist in perfect, infan- 
 tile, and infinite security. The exquisite 
 purgatory, where women delight to send 
 us by their coquetry, is a base happiness 
 to which I will not submit : to me, love is 
 either heaven or hell. If it is hell, I will 
 have none of it. I feel an affinity with the 
 azure skies of Paradise within my soul. 
 I can give raj'self without reserve, with- 
 out secrets, doubts or deceptions, in the 
 life to come ; and I deraand reciprocity. 
 Perhaps I offend you by these doubts. 
 Eemember, however, that I ara only 
 talking of myself — " 
 
 " — a good deal, but never too much," 
 said Modeste, wounded by every stab in 
 this discourse, in which the Duchesse de 
 Chaulieu served as a dagger. " I am in 
 the habit of admiring you, my dear poet." 
 
 " Well then, can you promise me the 
 sarae canine fidelity which I offer to you ? 
 Is it not beautiful ? Is it not just what 
 you have longed for ? " 
 
 " But why, dear poet, do you not raarry 
 a deaf-mute, and one who is also some- 
 thing of an idiot ? I ask nothing better 
 than to please my husband. But you 
 threaten to take away from a girl the 
 very happiness you so kindly arrange for 
 her; you are tearing away cA'^ery gest- 
 ure, every word, ever3' look ; you cut the 
 wings of your bird, and then expect it 
 to hover about you. I know poets are
 
 450 
 
 THE HUM AX COMEDY. 
 
 accused of inconsistencj- — oh ! very un- 
 justly," she added, as Canalis made a 
 g'esture of denial; "that alleg-ed defect 
 comes from the brilliant activity of their 
 minds which coniuionijlace people cannot 
 take into account. 1 do not believe, how- 
 ever, that a man of jrenius can invent such 
 irreconcilable conditions and call his in- 
 vention life. You are requiting' the ini- 
 possibli! solely for the pleasure of putting- 
 me in the wrong — like the enchanters in 
 fairy-tales, who set tasks to persecuted 
 young girls who are rescued by good 
 fairies."' 
 
 " In this case the good fairy would be 
 true love," said Canalis in a cur-t tone, 
 aware that his elaborate excuse for a 
 rupture was seen through by the keen 
 and delicate mind which Butscha had 
 piloted so well. 
 
 " My dear poet, you remind me of those 
 fathers who inquire into a girl's dot be- 
 fore they are willing to name that of their 
 son. You are quarreling with me without 
 knowing- whether you have the slightest 
 right to do so. Love is not gained by 
 such di-y arguments as yours. The poor 
 duke, on the contrary, gives himself up to 
 it with the abandon of Uncle Toby ; with 
 this difference, that lam not the Widow 
 Wadnian — though widowed, indeed, of 
 many illusions as to poetry at the present 
 moment. Ah, yes, we young g-irls will 
 not believe in anj'thing that disturbs our 
 world of fancy ! I was warned of all this 
 beforehand. My dear poet, you are at- 
 tempting to get up a quarrel which is un- 
 worthy of you. I no longer recognize the 
 Mrtchior of yesterday." 
 
 "Because Melchior has discovered a 
 spirit of ambition in you which — " 
 
 Modeste looked at him from head to 
 foot with an imperial eye. 
 
 " But I shall be peer of France and em- 
 bassador as well as he," added Canalis. 
 
 "You take me for a bourgeoise," she 
 said, beginning to mount the steps of the 
 portico : but she instantly turned back 
 and added, "That is less impertinent than 
 to take me for a fool. The change in your 
 conduct comes from certain silly rumors 
 which you have heard in Havre, and which 
 my maid Francoise has repeated to me." 
 
 " Ah, Modeste ! how canyon think it ?" 
 said Canahs, striking a dramatic attitude. 
 " Do you think me capable of marrying 
 you only for 3'our money ? " 
 
 " If I do you that wrong after your 
 edifying remarks on the banks of the 
 Seine you can easily undeceive me," she 
 said, annihilating him with her scorn. 
 
 "Ah!" thought the poet, as he fol- 
 lowed her into the house, "if you think, 
 my little girl, that I'm to be 'caught in 
 
 that net, you take me to be younger 
 than I am. Dear, dear, what a fuss about 
 an artful little thing whose esteem I value 
 about as much as that of the king of Bor- 
 neo. But she has given me a good reason 
 for the rupture b3' accusing me of such un- 
 worthy sentiments. Isn't she sly ? La 
 Briere will get a burden on his back — , 
 idiot that he is ! And five years hence it 
 will be a good joke to see them together." 
 
 The coldness which this altercation pro- 
 duced between Modeste and Canalis was 
 visible to all e3'es that evening. The poet 
 Avent off early, on the ground of La 
 Briere's illness, leaving the field to the 
 graiKl equerry. About eleven o'clock 
 Butscha, who had come to walk home 
 with Madame Latournelle, whispered in 
 Modeste"s ear, "Was I right?" 
 
 "Alas, yes," she said. 
 
 " But I hope you have left, the door half 
 open, so that he can come back ; we 
 agreed upon that, you know." 
 
 "Anger got the better of me," said 
 Modeste. " Such meanness sent the blood 
 to my head and I told him what I thought 
 of him." 
 
 "Well, so much the better. When you 
 are both so ang-ry that you can't spealc 
 civilly to each other I engage to make him 
 desperately in love and so pressing that 
 j'ou will be deceived yourself." 
 
 "Remember, Butscha; he is a great 
 poet ; he is a gentleman ; he is a man of 
 intellect." 
 
 "Your father's eight millions are more 
 to him than all that." 
 
 " Eight millions ! " exclaimed Modeste. 
 
 " My master, who has sold his practice, 
 is going to Provence to attend to the pur- 
 chase of lands which j'our father's agent 
 has suggested to him. The sum that is 
 to be paid for the estate of La Bastie is 
 four millions ; your father has agreed lo 
 it. You are to have a dot of two millions 
 and another million for an establishment 
 in Paris, a hotel and furniture. Now, 
 count up." 
 
 "Ah ! then I can be Dnchesse d'Herou- 
 ville ! " cried Modeste, glancing at But- 
 scha. 
 
 " If it hadn't been for that comedian of 
 a Canalis you would have kept his whip, 
 thinking it came from me," said the 
 dwarf, indirectly pleading La Briere's 
 cause. 
 
 "Monsieur Butscha, may I ask if I am 
 to marry to please 3'ou?" said Modeste, 
 laughing. 
 
 " That fine fellow loves you as well as I 
 do — and you loved him for eight days," 
 retorted Butscha; "and he has got a 
 heart." 
 
 " Can he compete, pray, with an office
 
 MOD EST E MIGNON. 
 
 451 
 
 under the crown ? There are but six, 
 grand almoner, chancellor, g:rand cham- 
 berlain, grand master, high constable, 
 gcand admiral — but they don't appoint 
 high constables any longer." 
 
 " In six months, mademoiselle, the peo- 
 ple — who are made up of \vicked Butschas 
 — could send 'all those grand dignities 
 to the winds. Besides, what signifies 
 nobility in these days? There are not a 
 thousand real noblemen in France. The 
 D'Herouvilles are descended from a tip- 
 staff in the time of Robert of Normandy. 
 You will have to put up with many a vex- 
 ation from that old aunt with the fur- 
 rowed face. Look here — as you are so 
 anxious for the title of duchess — you be- 
 long to the Comtat, and the Pope will 
 certainly think as much of you as he does 
 of all tliose merchants down there ; he'll 
 sell you a duchy with some name ending 
 in ia or agno. Dou't play away your hap- 
 piness for an office under the crown." 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Canalis's reflections during the night 
 were tlioroughly matter-of-fact. He saw 
 nothing worse in life than the situation 
 of a married man without money. Still 
 trembling at the danger he had been led 
 into by his vanity, his desire to get the 
 better of the duke, and his belief in the 
 Mignon millions, he began to ask himself 
 what the duchess must be thinking of his 
 stay in Havre, which had been aggra- 
 ravated by the fact that he had not writ- 
 ten to her for fourteen days, whereas in 
 Paris they exchanged four or five letters 
 a week. 
 
 "And that poor woman is working 
 hard to get me appointed commander of 
 the Legion and embassador to the court 
 of Baden ! " he cried. 
 
 Thereupon, with that promptitude of 
 decision which results— in poets as well 
 as in speculators — from a lively intuition 
 of the future, he sat down and composed 
 the following letter : — 
 
 " To Madame la Duchesse de Chaulieu : 
 '•My dear Eleonore — You have 
 doubtless been surprised at not hearing 
 froua me ; but the stay I am making in 
 this place is not altogether on account of 
 my health. I have been trying to do a 
 good turn to our little' friend La Briere. 
 The poor fellow has fallen in love with 
 a certain Mademoiselle ]\rodeste de la 
 Bastie, a rather pale and insignificant 
 little tiling, who, by the way, has the 
 vice of liking literature, and calls herself 
 
 a poet to excuse the caprices and humors 
 of a rather sullen nature. You know 
 Ernest — he is so easy to catch that I 
 have been afraid to leave him alone. 
 Mademoiselle de la Bastie was inclined 
 to coquet with your Melchior, and was 
 only loo ready to become your rival, 
 though her arms are thin, and she has 
 no more bust than most girls ; moreover, 
 her hair is as dead and colorless as that 
 of Madame de Rocheflde, and her eyes 
 small, gray, and very suspicious. I put 
 a stop — perhaps leather brutally — to the 
 attentions of Mademoiselle Immodeste ; 
 but love, such as mine for j'ou, demanded 
 it. What care I for all the women on 
 earth — compared to you, what are they? 
 
 "The people with whom I pass my 
 time, and who form the circle round the 
 heiress, are so thoroughly bourgeois that 
 they almost turn my stomach. Pity me; 
 only fancy ! I pass my evenings with 
 notaries, notaresses, cashiers, provincial 
 money-lenders — ah ! what a change from 
 my evenings in the Rue de Grenelle. 
 The alleged fortune of the father, lately 
 returned from China, has brought to 
 Havre that indefatigable suitor, the 
 grand equerr\', hungry after the millions, 
 which he wants, tlaey say, to drain his 
 marshes. The king does not know what 
 a fatal present he made the duke in those 
 waste lands. His grace, who has not 
 yet found out that the lady has only a 
 small fortune, is jealous of me ; for La 
 Briere is quietly making progress with 
 his idol under cover of his triend, who 
 serves as a blind. 
 
 " Notwithstanding Ernest's romantic 
 ecstasies, 1 myself, a poet, think chiefly of 
 the essential thing, and I have been mak- 
 ing some inquiries which darken the pros- 
 pects of our friend. If my angel would 
 like absolution for some of our little sins, 
 will she trj' to find out the facts of the case 
 by sending for Mongenod, the banker, and 
 questioning him, with hei' own dexterity, 
 as to the father's fortune ? Monsieur Mi- 
 gnon, formerly colonel of cavalry in the 
 Imperial Guard, has been for the last 
 seven years a correspondent of the Mon- 
 genods. It is said that he gives his daugh- 
 ter a doto[ two hundi'ed thousand francs, 
 and before I make the offer on Ernest's 
 behalf I am anxious to get the truth of 
 the story. As soon as the atfair is ar- 
 ranged I shall I'eturn to Paris. 1 know a 
 way to settle everything to the advantage' 
 of our young lover — simpl\' by the trans- 
 mission of the father-in-law's title, and no 
 one, I think, can more readily obtain that 
 favor than Ernest, both on account of his 
 own services and the influence which you 
 and I and the duke can exert for him.
 
 452 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 With his tasles, Ernest, who of course 
 will step into my office when I g-o to 
 Baden, will be perfectly happy in Paris 
 with twenty-five thousand francs a year, 
 a pernuinent place, and a wife — unfortu- 
 nate fellow ! 
 
 " Ah, dearest, how I long for the Rue 
 do Grenelle ! Fifteen days of absence ! 
 when they do not kill love, they revive all 
 the ardor of its earlier days, and you 
 know, better than I, perhaps, the reasons 
 that make my love eternal — vay bones 
 will love thee even in the g-rave ! All ! I 
 cannot bear this separation. If I am 
 forced to stay here another ten days, I 
 shall make a flying' visit of a few hours to 
 Paris. 
 
 " Has the duke obtained for me the 
 thing- we wanted ; and shall you, my dear- 
 est life, be ordered to drink the Baden 
 waters next year ? The billing and cooing 
 of the ' handsouu! disconsolate,' compared 
 with the accents of our happy love — so 
 true and changeless for now ten years ! — 
 have given me a great contempt for mar- 
 riage. I had never seen the thing so near. 
 Ah, dearest ! what the world calls a 'false 
 step ' binds two beings closer than the law 
 — does it not? " 
 
 The concluding- idea served as a text for 
 two pages of reminiscences and aspira- 
 tions a little too confidential for publica- 
 tion. 
 
 The evening before the A:\y on wliich 
 Canalis put the above epistle into the 
 post, Butscha, under tlie name of Jean 
 Jacmin, had received a letter from his fic- 
 titious cousin, Philoxene, and had mailed 
 his answer, which thus preceded the letter 
 of the poet by about twelve hours. Ter- 
 ribly anxious for the last two weeks, and 
 wounded by Melchior's silence, the duchess 
 herself dictated Philoxene"s letter to her 
 cousin, and the moment she had read the 
 answer, rather too explicit for her vanity, 
 she sent for the banker and made close in- 
 quiries as to the exact fortune of Monsieur 
 Mignon. Finding herself betrayed and 
 abandoned fortlie millions, Eleonore gave 
 way to a paroxysm of anger, hatred, and 
 cold vindictiveness. Philoxene knocked 
 at the door of the sumptuous room, and 
 entei-ing found her mistress with her eyes 
 full of tears — so unprecedented a phenom- 
 enon in the fifteen years she had waited 
 upon her that the woman stopped short 
 stupefied. 
 
 '•■ We expiate the happiness of ten years 
 in ten minutes," she heard the duchess 
 say. 
 
 "A letter from Havre, madame." 
 
 Eleonore read the poet's prose without 
 noticing the presence of Philoxene, whose 
 
 amazement became still greater when she 
 saw the dawn of fresh serenity on the 
 duchess's face as she read further and 
 further into the letter. Hold out a pole 
 no thicker than a walking-stick to a 
 drowning man, and he will think it a 
 royal road of safety. The happy Eleonore 
 believed in Canalis's good fiaith when she 
 had read through the four pages in wliich 
 love and business, falsehood and truth, 
 ojstled each other. Slie who, a few mo- 
 ments earlier, had sent for hef husband 
 to prevent Melchior's appointment while 
 there was still time, was now seized with 
 a spirit of generosity that amounted 
 almost to the sublime. 
 
 " Poor fellow ! " she thought ; "he has 
 not had one faithless thought ; he loves 
 me as he did on the first daj^ ; he tells me 
 all — Philoxene ! " she cried, noticing her 
 maid, who was standing near and pre- 
 tending to arrange the toilet-table. 
 
 •' Madame la Duchesse ? " 
 
 " A mirror, child ! " 
 
 Eleonore looked at herself, saw the fine 
 razor-like lines traced on her brow, which 
 disappeared at a little distance ; she sigh- 
 ed, and in that sigh she felt she bade 
 adieu to love. A brave thought came 
 into her mind, a manly thought, outside 
 of all the pettiness of women — a thought 
 which intoxicates for a moment, and 
 which explains, perhaps, the clemeni-y of 
 the Semiramis of Russia, when she mar- 
 ried her young and beautiful rival to 
 Moinonoff. 
 
 " Since he has not been faithless, he 
 shall have the girl and her millions," she 
 thought—' ' provided Mademoiselle Mi- 
 gnon is as ugly as he says she is." 
 
 Three raps, elegantly given, announced 
 the duke, and his wife went herself to the 
 door to let him in. 
 
 " Ah ! I see you are better, my dear," 
 he cried, with the counterfeit joy that 
 courtiers assume so easily-, and by which 
 fools are so readily taken in. 
 
 " My dear Henri," she answered, " why 
 is it you have not yet obtained that op- 
 pointment for Melchior — you who sacri- 
 ficed so much to the king- in taking a 
 ministry which you knew could only last 
 one year." 
 
 The duke glanced at Philoxene, who 
 showed him by an almost imperceptible 
 sign the.letter from Havre on the dressing- 
 table. 
 
 " You would be terribly bored at Baden 
 and come back at daggers drawn with 
 Melchior," said the duke. 
 
 "Pray why?" 
 
 " Why, you would always be together," 
 said the former diplomat, with comic good- 
 humor.
 
 MODESTE MIGNOX. 
 
 453 
 
 "Oh, no," she said; "I am going to 
 get him married." 
 
 "If we can believe d'Herouville, our 
 dear Cinalis stands in no need of j^our 
 help in that direction," said the duke, 
 smiling. " Yesterday Grandlieu read me 
 some passages from a letter the grand 
 equerry had written him. No doubt they 
 were dictated by the aunt for the express 
 purpose of their I'eaching you, for Made- 
 moiselle d'Herouville, always on the scent 
 of a dot, knows that Grandlieu and I play 
 whist nearly every evening. That good 
 little d'Herouville wants the Prince de 
 Cadignan to go down and give a i-oyal 
 hunt in Normandy, and endeavor to per- 
 suade the king to be present, so as to 
 turn the head of the damozel when she 
 sees herself the object . of such a grand 
 affair. In short, two words from Charles 
 X. would settle the matter. D'Herouville 
 says the girl has incomparable beauty — •" 
 
 " Henri, let us go to Havre ! " cried 
 the duchess, interrupting him. 
 
 "Under what pretext?" said her hus- 
 band, gravely; he had been one of the 
 confidants of Louis XVIII. 
 
 "I never saw a hunt." 
 
 " It would be all very well if the king 
 went ; but it is a terrible bore to go so 
 far, and he will not do it ; I have just 
 been speaking with him about it." 
 
 " Perhaps Madame would go ? " 
 
 " That would be better," returned the 
 duke. " I daresay the Duchesse de Mau- 
 frigneuse would help you to persuade her 
 from Rosny. If she goes, the king will 
 not be displeased at the use of his hunting 
 equipage. Don't go to Havre, my dear," 
 added the duke, paternally, " that would 
 be giving yourself away. Come, here's a 
 better plan, I tliink. Gaspard's chateau 
 of Rosembi-ay is on the other side of the 
 forest of Brotonne ; why not give him a 
 hint to invite the whole party ? " 
 
 " He invite them ? " said Eleonorc. 
 
 "I mean, of course, the duchess; she 
 is always engaged in pious works with 
 Mademoiselle d'Herouville ; give that old 
 maid a hint, and get her to speak to 
 Gaspard." 
 
 " You are a love of a man," cried Eleo- 
 nore; "I'll write to the old maid and to 
 Diane at once, for we must get hunting 
 things made — a riding hat makes one 
 look so young. Did you win last night 
 at the English embassy ? " 
 
 " Yes," said the duke ; " I cleared my- 
 self." 
 
 " Henri, above all things, stop proceed- 
 ings about Melchior's two appointments." 
 
 After writing half a dozen lines to the 
 beautiful Diane de Maufrigneuse, and a 
 short hint to Mademoiselle d'Herouville, 
 
 Eleonore sent the following answer like 
 the lash of a whip through the poet's 
 lies. 
 
 " To Monsieur le Baron de Canalis : 
 
 "My deak Poet — Mademoiselle de la 
 Bastie is very beautiful ; Mongenod has 
 proved to me that her father has mil- 
 lions. I did think of marrying you to 
 her ; I am therefore much displeased at 
 your want of confidence. If you had anj' 
 intention of marrying La Briere when 
 you went to Havre it is surprising that 
 you said nothing to me about it before 
 you started. And why have you omitted 
 writing to a friend who is so easily made 
 anxious as I ? Your letter arrived a 
 trifle late ; I had already seen the 
 banker. You are a child, Melchior, and 
 you are playing tincks with us. It is 
 not right. The duke himself is quite in- 
 dignant at your proceedings. 
 
 "I desire to see things for myself. I 
 shall, I believe, have the honor of accom- 
 panying Madame to the hunt which the 
 Due d'Herouville proposes to give for 
 Mademoiselle de la Bastie. I will manage 
 to have you invited to Rosembray, for 
 the meet will probably take place in Due 
 de Verneuil's park. 
 
 " Pray believe, my dear poet, that I 
 am none the less, for life, 
 
 "Your friend, Eleonore de M." 
 
 " There, Ernest, just look at that ! " 
 cried Canalis, tossing the letter at Er- 
 nest's nose across the breakfast-table ; 
 "that's the two thousandth love-letter I 
 have had from thai, woman, and there 
 isn't even a ' thou ' in it. The illustrious 
 Eleonore has never compromised herself 
 more than she does there. Marry, if you 
 like. The worst marriage in the world is 
 better than this sort of halter. Ah, I am 
 the greatest Nicodemus that ever tumbled 
 out of the moon ! Modeste has millions, 
 and I've lost her ; for we can't get back 
 from the poles, where we are to-daj', to 
 the tropics, where we were three daj's 
 ago ! Well, I am all the more anxious 
 for your triumph over the grand equerry, 
 because I told the duchess I came here 
 only for your sake ; and so I shall do my 
 best for you." 
 
 " Alas, Melchior, Modesto nmst needs 
 have so noble, so grand, so well-balanced 
 a nature to resist the glories of tlic court, 
 and all these splendoi's cleverly displayed 
 for her honor and glory by th(' duke, that 
 I cannot believe in the existence of such 
 perfection — and yet, if she is still the 
 Modeste of her letters, there might be 
 hope ! " 
 
 "Well, well, you are a happy fellow.
 
 454 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 you young Boniface, to see the world and 
 your" mistress through sucli i?reen spec- 
 tacles ! " cried Canalis, niarchins;- off to 
 pace up and down tlie gartien. 
 
 Caught between two Ues, the poet was 
 at a loss what to do. 
 
 "Play by rule, and you lose ! " he cried 
 presently, sitting down in the kiosk. 
 "Everyman of sense would have acted 
 as I did four days ago, and got himself 
 out of th(? net in which I saw myself. At 
 such tiuu!s people don't disentangle nets, 
 they break through them ! Come, let us 
 be "calm, cold, dignified, affronted. Hon- 
 or requires it; English stiffness is the 
 oidy way to win her back. After all, if I 
 have to retire finally, I can always fall 
 back on my old happiness ; a fidelity of 
 ten years can't go luirewarded. Eleonore 
 will arrange some good marriage for me." 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 The hunt was destined to be a rendez- 
 vous of all the passions excited by the 
 colonel's millions and Modeste's beauty ; 
 and it came as a truce between the ad- 
 versaries. During the days required for 
 its arrangement the salon of the villa 
 Migiion presented the tranquil picture 
 of a united family. Canalis, cut short 
 in his role of injured love by Modeste's 
 quick perceptions, wished to appear 
 courteous ; he laid aside his pretensions, 
 gave no further specimens of his oratory, 
 and became, what all men of intellect can 
 be when they renounce affectation, per- 
 fectly charming. He talked finances 
 with Gobenheim, and war with the 
 colonel. Germany with Madame Mignon, 
 and housekeeping with Madame Latour- 
 nelle — endeavoring to bias them all in 
 favor of La Briere. The Due d'Herou- 
 ville left the field to his rivals, for he 
 was obliged to go to Rosembray to con- 
 sult witli the Due de Verneuil, and see 
 tliati the orders of tlie Royal Huntsman, 
 the Prince de Cadignan, were carried out. 
 And yet the comic element was not alto- 
 gether wanting. Modeste found herself 
 between the depreciatory hints of Canalis 
 as to tlie gallantry of the grand equerry, 
 and the exaggerations of the two Mesde- 
 inoiselles d'Herouville, who passed every 
 evening at the villa. Canalis made Mo- 
 deste take notice that, instead of being 
 the heroine of the hunt, she would scarcely 
 be noticed. Madame would be attended 
 by the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, daugh- 
 ter-in-law of the Prince de Cadignan.by 
 the Duchesse de Chaulieu, and other 
 
 great ladies of the court, among whom 
 a little girl like her could produce no sen- 
 sation ; no doubt the officers in garrison 
 at Rouen would be invited, etc. -Helene, 
 on the other hand, was incessantly telling 
 her new friend, whom she already looked 
 upon as a sister-in-law, that she was to 
 be presented to Madame ; undoubtedly 
 the Due de Verneuil would invite her 
 father and herself to stay at Rosembray ; 
 if the colonel wished to obtain a favor 
 of tlie king — a peerage, for instance — the 
 opportunity was unique, for there was 
 hope of the king himself being- present 
 on the third da^' ; she would be delighted 
 with the charming- welcome with which 
 the beauties of the court, the Duchesse 
 de Chaulieu, de Maufrigneuse, de Lenon- 
 court-Chaulieu, and other ladies, were 
 prepared to meet her. 
 
 It was in fact an excessively amusing 
 little warfare, with its marches and coun- 
 termarches and stratagems — all of which 
 were keenlj^ enjoyed by the Dumays, the 
 Latournelies, Gobenheim, and Butscha, 
 who, in conclave assembled, said horrible 
 things of these noble personages, cruellj'^ 
 noting and intelligently studying all their 
 little meannesses. 
 
 The promises on the d'Herouville side 
 were, however, confirmed by the arrival 
 of an invitation, couched in flattering 
 terms, from the Due de Verneuil and the 
 Master of the Hunt to Monsieur le Comte 
 de la Bastie and his daughter, to stay at 
 Rosembray and be present at a grand 
 hunt on the seventh, eighth, ninth and 
 tenth of the following November. 
 
 La Briere, full of dark presentiments, 
 enjoyed the presence of Modeste with an 
 eagerness whose bitter joys are known 
 only to lovers when they feel that they 
 are parted fatally from those they love. 
 Flashes of joy came to him intermingled 
 with melancholy meditations on the one 
 theme, "I have lost her," and made him 
 all the more interesting to those who 
 watched him, because his face and his 
 whole person were in keeping with his 
 profound feeling. There is notliing more 
 poetic tlian a living elegy, animated by a 
 pair of eyes, walking about, and sighing 
 without rhymes. 
 
 The Due d'Herouville arrived at last to 
 arrange foi- Modeste's departure; after 
 crossing the Seine she was to be conveyed 
 in the duke's caleche, accompanied \)y the 
 Demoiselles d'Herouville. The duke was 
 charmingly courteous ; he begged Cana- 
 lis and La Briere to be of the party, as- 
 suring them, as he did the colonel, that 
 he had taken particular care that hunt- 
 ers should be provided for them. The 
 colonel invited the three lovers to break-
 
 MODES TH MIGNON. 
 
 455 
 
 fast on the morning of the start. Cana- 
 lis then began to put into execution a 
 plan that he had been maturing- in his 
 own mind for tlie last few days ; namely, 
 to quietly reconquer Modeste, and throw 
 over the duchess. La Brierc, and the 
 duke. A g-raduate of diplomacy could 
 hardly remain long in the position in 
 which he found himself. On the other 
 hand. La Brien; had come to the resolu- 
 tion of bidding- Modeste an eternal fare- 
 well. Each suitor was therefore on the 
 watch to slip in a last word, like the de- 
 fendant's counsel to the court before 
 judgment is pronounced ; for all felt that 
 the three weeks' struggle was approach- 
 ing its conclusion. After dinner on the 
 evening befoi-e the start, the colonel had 
 taken his daughter by the arm and made 
 her feel the necessity of deciding. 
 
 " Our position with the d'Herouville 
 family will be quite intolerable at Rosem- 
 bray," he said to her. " Do you mean to 
 be a duchess ? " * 
 
 "No, father," she answered. 
 
 " Then do you love Canalis ? " 
 ' " No, papa, a thousand times no ! " she 
 exclaimed with the impatience of a child. 
 
 The colonel looked at her with a sort 
 of .loy. 
 
 " Ah, I have not influenced you," cried 
 the true father, "and I will now confess 
 that I chose m_\ son-in-law in Paris when, 
 having made him believe that I iiad but 
 little fortune, he grasped my hand and 
 told me I took a weight from his mind — " 
 
 "Who is it you mean?" asked Mo- 
 deste, coloring. 
 
 " The man of fixed principles and 
 sound inorality,'" siud her father, slyly, 
 repeating the words which had dissolved 
 poor Modeste's dream on tlie day after 
 his return. 
 
 "I was not even thinking of him, 
 papa. I beg of you to leave me at lib- 
 erty to refuse the duke myself ; I under- 
 stand him, and I know how to soften it 
 to him." 
 
 " Then your choice is not made ? " 
 
 " Not yet ; there is another syllable or 
 two in the charade of ray destiny still 
 to be guessed : but after I have had a 
 glimpse of court life at Rosembray I will 
 tell you my secret." 
 
 "Ah! Monsieur de la Briere," cried 
 the colonel, as the young man approached 
 them along the garden path in which 
 they were walking. " I hope you are 
 going to this hunt? " 
 
 "No, colonel," answered Ernest. "I 
 have come to take leave of you and of 
 mademoiselle : I return to Paris — " 
 
 "You have no curiosity," said Modeste, 
 interrupting, and looking at him. 
 
 " A wish — but one I cannot expect — 
 would suffice to keep me," he replied. 
 
 " If that is all, you must stay to please 
 me ; I wish it," said the colonel, going 
 forward to meet Canalis, and leaving his 
 daughter and La Briei'e together for a 
 moment. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," said the young man, 
 raising his eyes to hers with the boldness 
 of a man without hope, " I have an 
 entreaty to make of you." 
 
 "Of me?" 
 
 " Let me carry away with me your 
 forgiveness. My life can never be happy: 
 it must be full of remorse for having lost 
 my happiness — no doubt by my own 
 fault ; but, at least — " 
 
 " Before we part forever," said Mo- 
 deste, interrupting him, and speaking in 
 a voice of emotion, "I wish to ask you 
 one thing ; and though you once dis- 
 guised yourself, I think you cannot be 
 so base as to deceive me now\" 
 
 The taunt made him turn pale, and he 
 cried out, " Oh, you are pitiless ! " 
 
 "Will you be'frank?" 
 
 " You have the right to ask me that 
 degrading question." he said, in a voice 
 weakened by the violent palpitation of 
 his heart. 
 
 "Well, then, did you read m\' letters 
 to Monsieur de Canalis?" 
 
 " No, mademoiselle ; I only allowed 
 your father to read them to justify my 
 love by showing- him how it was born, 
 and how sincere my efforts had been 
 to cure you of your fancy." 
 
 "But how came the idea of that un- 
 worthy' masquerading ever to arise ?" she 
 said, with a sort of impatience. 
 
 La Briere related truthfully the scene 
 in the poet's study which Moileste's first 
 letter had occasioned, and the sort of 
 challenge that resulted from his expre.ss- 
 ing a favorable opinion of a j-oung g-irl 
 thus led toward a poet's fame, as a plant 
 seeks its share of the sun, 
 
 "You have said enough," answered 
 Modeste, restraining some emotion. " If 
 you have not my heart, monsieur, you 
 have at least my esteem." 
 
 These simple words gave the young 
 man a violent shock ; feeling himself 
 stagger, he leaned a.gainst a tree, like 
 a man deprived for a moment of reason. 
 Modeste, who had left him, turned her 
 head and came hastily back. 
 
 "What is the matter? " sheasked. tak- 
 ing his hand to prevent him from falling. 
 
 " Forgive me — I thought you despised 
 me." 
 
 " But," she answered, distantly, " I 
 did not say that I loved you." 
 
 And she left him again. But this time,
 
 456 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 in spite of her liarshness, La Brielre 
 tiiouii-lit he wulkeci on air ; the earth 
 softened under his feet, tiie trees bore 
 flowers ; the skies were rosj', the air 
 cerulean, as they are in the temples of 
 Hymen in those fairy pantomimes which 
 finish happily. In such situations every 
 woman is a Janus, and sees behind her 
 without turning' round : and thus Mo- 
 deste perceived on the face of her ]over 
 the indubital)ie symptoms of a love liUe 
 Butscha's— surely the tie plus ultra of 
 a woman's hope. Moreover, the great 
 value which La Briere attached to her 
 opinion filled Modeste with an emotion 
 that was inestimably sweet. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," said Canalis, leaving- 
 the colonel and waylaying Modeste, " in 
 spite of the little value you attach to my 
 sentiments, my honor is concerned in ef- 
 facing a stain under which I have suf- 
 fered too long. Here is a letter which I 
 received from the Duchesse de Chaulieu 
 five days after my arrival in Havre." 
 
 He let Modeste read the first lines of 
 the letter we have seen, which the duch- 
 ess began \)y saying that she had seen 
 Mongenod, and now wished to marry her 
 poet to Modeste ; then he tore that pas- 
 sago from the body of the letter, and 
 placed the fragment, in her hand. 
 
 "I cannot let you read the rest," he 
 said, putting the paper in his pocket ; 
 "but I confide these few lines to your 
 discretion, so that you mux verify the 
 writing. A young girl who could accuse 
 me of ignoble sentiments is quite capable 
 of suspecting some collusion, some trick- 
 erj'. Ah, Modeste," he said, with tears 
 in his voice, "your poet, the poet of Ma- 
 dame de Chaulieu, has no less poetry in 
 his heart than in his mind. You are 
 about to see the duchess ; suspend your 
 judgment of me till then." 
 
 He left Modeste half bewildered. 
 
 "Oh, dear ! " she said to herself; "it 
 seems they are all angels — and not mar- 
 riageable ; the duke is the only one that 
 belongs to humanity." 
 
 " Mademoiselle Modeste," said Butscha, 
 appcai'ing with a parcel under his arm, 
 "this hunt makes me very uneasy. I 
 dreamed your horse ran away with you, 
 and I have been to Rouen to see if I could 
 get a Spanish bit, which, they tell me, a 
 horse can't take between his teeth. I en- 
 treat you to use it. I have shown it to the 
 colonel, and he has thanked me more 
 than there is any occasion for." 
 
 "Poor, dear Butscha ! " cried Modeste, 
 moved to tears by this forethought. 
 
 Butscha went skipping off like a man 
 who has just heard of the death of a rich 
 uncle. 
 
 "My dear father," said Modeste, re- 
 turning to the salon ; " I should like to 
 have that beautiful whip— suppose you 
 were to ask Monsieur de la Briere to ex- 
 change it for your picture by Van Os- 
 tade." 
 
 Modeste looked furtively at Ernest, 
 while the colonel made him this propo- 
 sition, standing before the picture which 
 was the sole thing he possessed in mem- 
 ory of his campaigns, having bought it 
 of a burgher at Ratisbon ; and she said 
 to herself as La Briere left the room pre- 
 cipitately, •• He will be at the hunt." 
 
 It was curious, but Modcste's thi-ee 
 lovers each and all went to Rosembray 
 with their hearts full of hope, and capti- 
 vated by her manj' perfections. 
 
 Rosembray — an estate lately purchased 
 by the Due de Verneuil, with the money 
 which fell to him as his share of the 
 thousand millions voted as iudenmity for 
 the sale of the lands of the emigrants — 
 \^s remarkable for its chateau, whose 
 magnificence compared only with that 
 of Mesniere or of Balleroy. This impos- 
 ing and noble edifice was approached by 
 a wide avenue of four rows of venerable 
 elms, from which the visitor entered an 
 immense rising courtyard, like that of 
 Versailles, with magnificent iron railings 
 and two lodges, and adorned with rows 
 of large orange-ti'ees in their tubs. Fac- 
 ing this courtyard, the chateau presented, 
 between two fronts of the main building 
 which retreated on either side of this pro- 
 jection, a double row of nineteen tall win- 
 dows, with carved arches and diamond 
 panes, divided from each other by a series 
 of fluted jDilasters surmounted by an en- 
 tablature which hid an Italian roof, fi-om 
 which rose several stone clnmneys masked 
 by carved trophies of arms. Rosembray 
 was built, under Loviis XIV., by a fer- 
 mier-general named Cottin. The facade 
 toward the park differed from that on the 
 courtyard by having a narrower projec- 
 tion in the center, with columns between 
 five windows, above which rose a mag- 
 nificent pediment. The family of Marigny, 
 to whom the estates of this Cottin were 
 brought in marriage by Mademoiselle Cot- 
 tin, her father's sole hen-ess, ordered a 
 sunrise to be carved on this pediment b^' 
 Coysevox. Beneath it were two angels 
 unwinding a scroll, on which was cut this 
 motto in honor of the Grand Monarch, 
 Sol nobis henignus . 
 
 From the portico, reached by two grand 
 circular and balustraded fliglits of steps, 
 the view extended over an immense fish- 
 pond, as long and wide as the grand canal 
 at Versailles, beginning at the foot of a 
 grass-plot which compared well with the
 
 MODEST E MIGNON. 
 
 457 
 
 finest English lawns, and bordered with 
 beds and baskets, then filled with the 
 brilliant flowers of autumn. On either 
 side of the piece of water two gardens, 
 laid out in the French style, displayed 
 their squares and long straight paths, 
 like brilliant pages written in the ciphers 
 of Lenotre. These gardens were backed 
 to their whole length by a border of near- 
 ly thirty acres of woodland. From the 
 terrace the \iew was bounded by a forest 
 belonging to Rosembray and contiguous 
 to two other forests, one of which belonged 
 to the crown, the other to the State. It 
 would be difQcult to find a nobler land- 
 scape. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Modeste's arrival made a certain sen- 
 sation in the avenue when the carriage 
 with the liveries of France came in sight, 
 accompanied by the grand equerry, the 
 colonel, Canalis, nnd La Briere on horse- 
 back, preceded by an outrider in full 
 dress, and followed by six servants — 
 among whom were the negroes and the 
 mulatto — and the britzka of the colonel 
 for the two waiting-women and the lug- 
 gage. The carriage was drawn by four 
 horses, which were ridden by postilions 
 dressed with an elegance specially' com- 
 manded by the grand equerry, who was 
 often better served than the king himself. 
 As Modeste, dazzled by the magnificence 
 of the great lords, entered and beheld this 
 lesser Versailles, she suddenl3' remembered 
 her approaching interview with the cele- 
 brated duchesses, and began to fear that 
 she might seem awkward, or provincial, 
 or parvenue ; in fact, she lost her self- 
 possession, and heartily repented having 
 wished for a hunt. 
 
 Fortunately, however, as the carriage 
 drew up, Modeste saw an old man, in a 
 blonde wig frizzed into little curl% whose 
 calm, plump, smooth face wore a fatherly 
 smile and an expression of monastic cheer- 
 fulness which the half-veiled glance of the 
 eye rendered almost noble. This was the 
 Due de Verueuil, master of Rosembray. 
 The duchess, a woman of extreme piety, 
 the only daughter of a rich and deceased 
 chief-justice, syrare and erect, and the mo- 
 ther uf four cliildren, resembled Madame 
 Latournelle — if iraauination can go so far 
 as to adorn the notary's wife with the 
 graces of a bearing like that of the 
 duchess. 
 
 "Ah, good morning, dear Hortense ! " 
 said Mademoiselle d'Herouville, kissing 
 the duchess with a sympathy that united 
 
 their haughty natures ; " let me present 
 to you and to the dear duke our little 
 angel. Mademoiselle de la Bastie.'' 
 
 •■ We have heard so much of you, made- 
 moiselle," said the duchess, " that we were 
 in haste to receive you." 
 
 " And regret lost time," added the 
 Due de Verneuil, with courteous admira- 
 tion. 
 
 " Monsieur le Comte de la Bastie," said 
 tlie grand equerry, taking the colonel by 
 the arm and presenting him to the duke 
 and duchess, with an air of respect in his 
 tone and gesture. 
 
 " I am glad to welcome a'ou. Monsieur 
 le Comte ! " said Monsieur de Verneuil. 
 "You possess more than one treasure," 
 he added, looking at Modeste. 
 
 The duchess took Modeste under her 
 arm and led her into an immense salon, 
 where a dozen or more women were 
 grouped about the fire-place. The men 
 of the party remained with the duke on 
 the terrace, except Canalis, who respect- 
 fully made his way to the superb Eleonore. 
 The Duchesse de Chaulieu, seated at an 
 embroidery-frame, was showing Made- 
 moiselle de Verneuil liow to shade a 
 flower. 
 
 If Modeste had run a needle through 
 her finger when handling a pin-cushion 
 she could not have felt a sharper prick 
 than she received from the cold, haughty 
 and contemptuous stare with which Ma- 
 dame de Chaulieu favored her. For an 
 instant she saw nothing- but that one wo- 
 man, and she saw through her. To un- 
 derstand the depths of cruelty to which 
 these charming creatures, who arc deified 
 by our passions, can go, we must see wo- 
 men with each other. Modpste would 
 have disarmed almost any other than 
 Eleonore by the involuntary admiration 
 which her face betrayed. Had she not 
 known the duchess's age she would have 
 thought her a woman of thirty-six ; but 
 other and greater astonishments awaited 
 her. 
 
 The poet had hurled himself against a 
 great lady's anger. Such anger is the 
 worst of sphinxes ; the face is radiant, 
 all the rest menacing. Kings themselves 
 cannot make the exquisite politeness of 
 a mistress's cold anger capitidate when 
 she guards it with steel armor. Canalis 
 tried" to cling to the steel, but his fingers 
 slipped on the polished surface, like his 
 words on the heart : and the gracious 
 face, the gracious words, the gracious 
 bearing of the duchess hid the steel of her 
 wrath, now falltni to twenty-five below 
 zero, from all observers. The appearance 
 of Modeste in her sublime beauty, and 
 dressed as well as Diane de Maufrigneuse
 
 458 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 herself, had fired the train of gunpowder 
 which relioclion had been laj-ing: in Eleo- 
 nore's mind. 
 
 All tlic women had gone to the win- 
 dows to see the new wonder get out of 
 the royal carriage, atteudeil by her three 
 suitors. 
 
 " Do not let us seem so curious," Ma- 
 dame de Chaulieu had said, cut to the 
 lieart by Diane's exclamation, "She is 
 divine ! "where in the world does she come 
 from ? " -and with that the bevy flew 
 back to their seats, resuming their com- 
 posure, though Eleonore's heart -was full 
 of hungry vipers all clamorous for a 
 meal. 
 
 Mademoiselle d'Herouville said in a low 
 voice and with much meaning to the Duch- 
 csse de Verneuil, " Eleonore receives her 
 Melchior vei-y ungraciously." 
 
 " The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse thinks 
 there is a coolness between them," said 
 Laure de Verneuil, with simplicity. 
 
 Charming plirase ! so often used in the 
 world of society — how the north wind 
 blows through it. 
 
 '•Why so'i" asked Modesto of the 
 pretty j'oung girl who had lately left 
 the Sacre-Cwur. 
 
 " The great poet," said the pious duch- 
 ess — making a sign to her daughter to be 
 silent — "left Madame de Chaulieu with- 
 out a letter for more than two weeks after 
 he went to Havre, liaving told her that 
 he went there for his liealth — " 
 
 Modesto made a hasty movement, which 
 caught the attention of Laure, Helene, 
 and Mademoiselle -d'Herouville. 
 
 " — and during that time,'' continued 
 the devout duchess, •'she was endeavor- 
 ing to hav.e him appointed commander 
 of the Len'ion of Honor, and minister at 
 Baden." 
 
 " Oh, that was shameful in Canalis ; he 
 owes everything to her," exclaimed Made- 
 moiselle d'Herouville. 
 
 " Why ditl not Madame de Chaulieu 
 come to Havre?" asked Modeste of He- 
 lene, innocently. 
 
 " My dear," said tlie Duchesse de Ver- 
 neuil, "she would let hei'self be cut in 
 little pieces without saying a word. Look 
 at her — she is regal ; her head would 
 smile, like Mary Stuart's, after it was cut 
 off; in fact, she has some of that blood 
 in her veins." 
 
 "Did she not w^ite to him?" asked 
 Modeste. 
 
 "Diane tells me,'* answered the duch- 
 ess, prompted by a nudge from Mademoi- 
 selle d'Herouville, "that in answer to 
 Canalis's first letter she made a cutting 
 reply a tew days ago." 
 
 Tliis explanation made Modeste blush 
 
 with shame for the man before her ,• she 
 longed, not to ci'ush him under her feet, 
 but to revenge herself by one of those 
 malicious acts that are sharper than a 
 dagger's thrust. She looked haughtily 
 at the Duchesse de Chaulieu — 
 
 "Monsieur Melchior!" .she said. 
 
 All the women snuffed the air and 
 looked alternately at the duchess, who 
 was talking in a low voice to Canalis 
 over the embroidery-frame, and then at 
 the young girl so ill br'ought up as to 
 disturb a lovers' meeting — a thing not 
 permissible in any society. Diane de 
 Maufrigneuse nodded, however, as much 
 as to say, " The child is in the right of 
 it." All the women ended by smiling at 
 each other ; they were enraged with a 
 woman who was fifty-six years old and 
 still handsome enough to put her fingers 
 into the treasury and steal the rights of 
 j^outh. Melchior looked at Modeste with 
 feverish impatience, and made the gest- 
 ure of a master to a valet, while the 
 duchess lo\-ered her head like a lioness 
 disturbed at a meal : her eyes, fastened 
 on the canvas, emitted red flames in the 
 direction of the poet, which stabbed like 
 epigrams, for each word revealed to her 
 a triple insult. 
 
 " Monsieur Melchior ! " said Modeste 
 again in a voice that asserted its right 
 to bo heard. 
 
 " What, mademoiselle ? " demanded the 
 poet. 
 
 Forced to rise, he remained standing 
 half-way between the embroidery frame, 
 which was near a window, and the fire- 
 place where Modeste was seated with tlie 
 Duchesse de Verneuil on a sofa. What 
 bitter reflections came into his ambitious 
 mind, as he caught a glance from Eleo- 
 nore. li he obeyed Modeste all was over, 
 and forever, between hio:self and his pro- 
 tectress. Not to obey her wns to avow 
 his slavery, to lose the chances of his 
 twenty-flve days of base maneuvering, 
 and to ^disregard the plainest laws of 
 decency and civility. The greater the 
 folly, the more imperatively the duchess 
 exacted it. Modeste's beauty and money 
 thus pitted against Eleonore's rights and 
 influence made this hesitation between the 
 man and his honor as terrible to witness 
 as the peril of a matadore in the arena. 
 A man seldom feels such palpitations as 
 those which now came to Canalis, except, 
 perhaps, before the green table, where 
 his fortune or his ruin is about to be 
 decided. 
 
 "Mademoiselle d'Herouville hurried me 
 from the carriage, and I left behind me," 
 said Modeste to Canalis, "my handker- 
 chief—"
 
 MODESTE MIGXON. 
 
 459 
 
 Canalis shrug-ged his shoulders signifi- 
 cantly. 
 
 '•'And,"' continued Modeste, taking- no 
 notice of liis gesture, "I had tied into 
 one corner of it the key of a desk wiiicli 
 contains tlie fragment of an important 
 letter ; have the kindness, Monsieur Mel- 
 chior, to get it for me." 
 
 Between an angel and a tiger equally 
 enraged Canalis, who had turned livid, 
 no longer hesitated — the tiger seemed to 
 him the least dangerous of the two ; and 
 he was about to do as he was told, and 
 commit himself ii'retrievahly, when La 
 Briere appeared at the door of the salon, 
 seeming to his anguished mind like the 
 archangel Gabriel tumbling from heaven. 
 
 '•' Ernest, here. Mademoiselle de la 
 Bastie wants you," said the poet, hastily 
 returning to his chair by the embroidery 
 frame. 
 
 Ernest hastened to Modeste without 
 bowing to any one ; he saw only her, 
 took his commission with undisguised 
 joy, and darted from the room, with the 
 secret approbation of every woman pres- 
 ent. 
 
 " What an occupation for a poet ! " 
 said Modeste to Helene d'Herouville, 
 glancing toward the embroidery at which 
 the duchess was now working savagely. 
 
 '■ If you speak to her, if j'ou ever look 
 at her, all is over between us," said the 
 duchess to the poet in a low voice, not at 
 all satisfied with the very doubtful ter- 
 mination which Ernest's arrival had put 
 to the scene; "and remember, if I am 
 not present, I leave behind me eyes that 
 will watch you." 
 
 So sa^-ing, the duchess, a woman of 
 medimn height, but a little too stout, 
 like all women over fifty who retain their 
 beauty, rose and walked toward the 
 group which surrounded Diane de Mau- 
 frigneuse, walking daintily on little feet 
 that were as slender and nervous as a 
 deer's. Modeste, together with all the 
 other antagonists of the duchess, recog- 
 nized in her a woman of whom they were 
 forced to say. '•' She eclipses us." In fact, 
 Eleonore was one of the grandes dames 
 now so rare. 
 
 Madame de Chaulieu bowed her head in 
 salutation of Helene and her aunt : then, 
 saying to Diane, in a pure and equable 
 tone of voice, without a trace of emotion, 
 "Is it not time to dress, duchess ? " she 
 made her exit, accompanied by her daugh- 
 ter-in-law and Mademoiselle d'Herouville. 
 As she left the room she spolce in an un- 
 dertone to the old maid, who pressed her 
 arm, saying, "You are charming," — 
 which meant, " I am grateful for the ser- 
 vice you have just done us." After that, 
 
 Mademoiselle d'Herouville returned to the 
 salon to play lier part of spy, and her 
 first glance apprised Canalis that the 
 duchess had made him no empty threat. 
 When Ernest returned, bringing Mo- 
 deste 's handkerchief, the poet seized his 
 arm and took him out on the terrace. 
 
 "My dear friend," he said, "I am not 
 only the most unfortunate man in the 
 workl, but I am also tlie most ridiculous ; 
 and I come to you to get me out of the 
 hornet's nest into which I have nin my- 
 self. Modeste is a demon ; she sees my 
 difficulty and she laughs at it : she has 
 just spoken to me of a frag'ment of a let- 
 ter of Madame de Chaulieu, which I had 
 the folly to give her; if she shows it I 
 can never make my peace with Eleonore. 
 Therefore, will you at once ask Modeste 
 to send me back that paper, and tell her, 
 from me, that I make no pretensions to 
 her hand. Say I count upon her delicacy, 
 upon her propriety as a young girl, to 
 behave to me as if we had never known 
 each other. I beg her not to speak to 
 me ; I implore her to treat me harshly — 
 though I hardlj' dare to ask her to feign 
 a jealous anger, which would help my in- 
 terests amazingly. Go, I will wait here 
 for an answer." 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 When he re-entered the salon Ernest 
 de la Briere found there a young officer of 
 the company of the Guard d'Havre. the 
 Vicomte de Serizy, who had just arrived 
 from Rosny to announce that Madame 
 was obliged to be present at the opening 
 of the Chambers. We know the impor- 
 tance then attached to this constitutional 
 solemnity, at which Charles X. delivered 
 his speech, surrounded by the royal fami- 
 Ij' — Madame la Dauphine and Madame 
 being present in their gallery. The choice 
 of the emissary charged with the duty of _ 
 expressing the princess's regrets was an " 
 attention to Diane, who was then an ob- 
 ject of adoration to this charming young 
 man, son of a minister of state, gentle- 
 man in ordinary of the chamber, only son 
 and heir to an immense fortune. The 
 Duchesse de Maufrigneuse permitted his 
 attentions soleh' for the purpose of at- 
 tracting notice to the age of his mother, 
 Madame de Serizy, who was said, in those 
 chronicles that are whispei'ed behind the 
 fans, to have deprived her of the heart of 
 the handsome Lucien de Rubempre. 
 
 "■ You will do us the pleasure, I hope, 
 to remain at Rosembray." said the severe 
 duchess to the young officer. 
 
 While opening her ears to every scan-
 
 460 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY 
 
 dal. the dovoui ladj' shut her ej^es to the 
 derelictions of lier g:uests who had been 
 cai-efuliy selected by the duke ; indeed, it 
 is surprising' how much these excellent 
 women ^viH tolerate under pretense of 
 bring-in.a- the lost sheep back to the fold 
 by their indulg'ence. 
 
 '•■ We reckoned without our constitu- 
 tional g-overninent," said the grand 
 equerry ; " and Rosembray,. Madame la 
 Duchesse. wdll lose a great honor." 
 
 '•We shall be more at our ease," said 
 a tall tbin old man, about seventy-five 
 years of age, dressed in blue cloth, and 
 wearing his hunting-cap by permission of 
 the ladies. This personage, who closely 
 resembled the Due de Bourbon, was no 
 less than the Prince de Cadignan. Master 
 of the Hunt, and one of the last of the 
 great French lords. Just as La Briere 
 was endeavoring to slip behind the sofa 
 and obtain a moment's intercourse with 
 Modeste, a man of thirty-eight, short, 
 fat, and very common in appearance, 
 entered the room. 
 
 "My son, the Prince de Loudon," said 
 the Dilchesse de Verneuil to Modeste, who 
 could not restrain the expression of amaze- 
 ment tluit ovei'spread her young face on 
 seeing the man who bore the historical 
 name that the hero of La Vendee had 
 rendered famous by his bravery and the 
 martyrdom of his death. 
 
 "Gaspaixl," said the duchess, calling 
 her son to her. The young prince came at 
 once, and his mother continued, motioning 
 to llodeste, " Mademoiselle de la Bastie, 
 my son." 
 
 Tlie hcii" presumptive, whose marriage 
 with Desplein's only daughter had lately 
 been arranged, bowed to the young girl 
 without seeming struck, as his father had 
 been, with her beauty. Modeste was thus 
 enabled to compare the youth of to-day 
 wit h the old age of a past epoch ; for the 
 old Prince de Cadignan had already said 
 a few words which made her feel that he 
 rendered as true a homage to womanhood 
 as to roj'alty. The Due de Rhetore, the 
 eldest son of the Duchesse de Chaulieu, 
 chiefly ren^arkable for manners that were 
 equally impertinent and free and easy, 
 bowed to Modeste rather cavalierly. The 
 reason of this contrast between the fathei's 
 and the sons is to be found, probably, in 
 the fact that young men uo longer feel 
 themselves great beings, as their fore- 
 fathers did, and they dispense with the 
 duties of greatness, knowing well that 
 they are now but the shadow of it. The 
 fathers have still the inherent politeness 
 of their vanished grandeur, like the 
 mountain-tops still gilded by the sun when 
 all is shadowy in the valley. 
 
 Ernest was at last able to slip a word 
 into Modeste's ear, and she rose at once. 
 
 "My dear," said the duchess, thinking 
 she was going to di'ess, and pulling a bell- 
 rope, '"'they shall show you your apart- 
 ment." 
 
 Ernest accompanied Modeste to the foot 
 of the grand staircase, presenting the re- 
 quest of the luckless poet, and endeavor- 
 ing to touch her feelings by describing 
 Melchior's agony. 
 
 " You see, he loves — he is a captive who 
 thought he could break his chain." 
 
 " Love in such a rabid seeker after fort- 
 une ! " retorted Modeste. 
 
 "Mademoiselle, you are at the entrance 
 of life ; you do not know its delUes. The 
 inconsistencies of a man who falls under 
 the dominion of a woman much older than 
 himself should be forgiven, for he is really 
 not accountable. Think how many sacri- 
 fices Canalis has made to her. He has 
 sown too much seed of that kind to re- 
 sign the harvest ; the duchess repi-esents 
 to him ten years of devotion and happi- 
 ness. You made him forget all that, 
 and unfortunately, he has more vanity 
 than pride ; he did not reflect on what he 
 was losing until he met Madame; de Chau- 
 lieu here to-day. If you really imder- 
 stood him, you would help him. He is 
 a child, always mismanaging his life. 
 You call him a seeker after fortune, but 
 he seeks very badly : like all poets, he is 
 the victim of sensations; he is childish, 
 easily dazzled like a child by anything 
 that shines, and pursuing its glitter. He 
 used to love horses and pictures, and he 
 craved fame — well, he sold his pictures to 
 buy armor and old furniture of the Re- 
 naissance and Louis XV.; just now he is 
 seeking i^olitical power. Admit that his 
 hobbies arc noble things." 
 
 "You have said enough," replied Mo- 
 deste ; then, seeing her father, whom she 
 called with a motion of her head to give 
 her his arm, she added, " come with me, 
 and I will give you that scrap of paper ;• 
 j'ou shall carry it to the great man and 
 assure him of my condescension to his 
 wishes, but on one condition — you must 
 thank him in my name for the pleasure I 
 have taken in seeing one of the finest of 
 the German plays performed in my honor. 
 I have learned that Goethe's masterpiece 
 is neither Faust nor Egmont — " and then, 
 as Ernest looked at the malicious girl 
 with a puzzled air, she continued : " It 
 is Torquato Tasso ! Tell Monsieur de Ca- 
 nalis to re-read it," she added smiling; 
 "I particularly desire that you Avill re- 
 peat to your friend word for woi'd what 
 I say ; for it is not an epigram, it is the 
 justification of his conduct — with this
 
 MOD EST E MIGNON. 
 
 461 
 
 trifling' difference, that he will. I trust, 
 become more and more reasonable, thanks 
 to the folly of his Eleonore." 
 
 The duchess's head-woman conducted 
 Modeste and her father to their apart- 
 ment, where Fran(joise Cochel had al- 
 I'eady put everything in order. The 
 choice elegance of the rooms astonished 
 the colonel, more especially after he 
 heard from Francoise that there were 
 thirty other apartments in the chateau 
 decorated with the same taste. 
 
 " This is what I call the right kind of a 
 country-house," said Modeste. 
 
 " Tlie Coaite de la Bastie must build 
 you one hke it," replied her father. 
 
 "Here, monsieur," said Modeste, giv- 
 ing the bit of paper to Ernest; "carry 
 it to our friend and put him out of his 
 misery." 
 
 The word our friend sti-uck the young 
 man's heart. He looked at Modeste to 
 see if there was anythin.i;- real in the com- 
 munity of interests which she seemed to 
 admit, and she, understanding perfectly 
 what his look meant, added, '• Come, go 
 at once, your friend is waiting." 
 
 La Briere colored excessively, and left 
 the room in a state of doubt and anxiety 
 less endurable than despair. The path 
 that approaches happiness is, to the true 
 lover, like the narrow waj^ which Cath- 
 olic poetry has well named the entrance 
 to Paradise — a dark and gloomy passage, 
 echoing with the last cries of earthly an- 
 guish. 
 
 An hour later the illustrious company 
 were all assembled in the salon; some 
 were playing whist, others conversing- ; 
 the women had their embroideries in 
 hand, and all were waiting the announce- 
 ment of dinner. The Prince de Cadignan 
 was drawing Monsieur Mignon out upon 
 China, and his campaigns under the 
 empire, and making him talk about the 
 Portendueres, the L'Estorades, and the 
 Maucombes, Provengal families ; he 
 blamed him for not seeking service, 
 and assured him that nothing would 
 be easier than to restore him to his 
 rank as colonel of the Guard. 
 
 " A man of your birth and your fort- 
 une ought not to belong- to the present 
 Opposition," said the prince, smiling. 
 
 This society of distinguished persons 
 not only pleased Modeste, but it enabled 
 her to acquire, during her stay, a perfec- 
 tion of manners which without this reve- 
 lation she would have lacked all her life. 
 Show a clock to an embryo mechanic, 
 and you reveal to him the whole mechan- 
 ism ; he thus develops the germs of his 
 faculty which lie dormant within him. In 
 like manner Modeste had the instinct to 
 
 appropriate the distinctive qualilies of 
 Madame de Maufrigneuse and Madame 
 de Chaulieu. For her, the sight of tliose 
 women was an education ; whereas a 
 bourgeoise would merely have ridiculed 
 their ways or made them absurd by 
 clumsy imitation. A well-born, well- 
 educated, and right-minded girl like Mo- 
 deste fell naturally into rapport with 
 these people, and saw at once the ditTer- 
 ences that separate the aristocratic woi-ld 
 from the bourgeois, the provmces from 
 the Faubourg Saint Germain ; slie caught 
 the almost imperceptible shadings; in 
 short, she perceived the grace of the 
 grande dame without doul)ting that she 
 could herself acquire it. She noticed also 
 that her father and La Briere appeared 
 infinitely better in this Olympus than 
 Canalis. Ernest de la Briere, without 
 ambitions, was able to be himself ; while 
 Melchior became, to use a vulgar expres- 
 sion, a mere toady, and courted the Prince 
 de Loudon, the Due de Rhetore, the Vi- 
 comte de Serizy, or the Due de Maufri- 
 gTieuse, like a man not free to assert 
 himself, as did Colonel Mignon, who was 
 justly proud of his campaigns, and of the 
 confidence of the Emperor Napoleon. 
 Modeste took note of the strained efforts 
 of the man of talent, who was alwaj^s 
 seeking some witticism that should raise 
 a laugh, some clever speech, some com- 
 pliment with which to flatter these grand 
 personages, whom it was his interest to 
 please. In a word, in Modeste's eyes the 
 peacock plucked out his tail-feathers. 
 
 Toward the middle of the evenmg the 
 young girl sat down with the grand 
 equerry in a coi-ner of the salon. She 
 led him there purposely to end a suit 
 which she could no longer encourage 
 if she wished to retain her self-respect. 
 
 "Monsieur le Due, if j'ou really knew 
 me," she said, "you would understand 
 how deeply I am touched by your atten- 
 tions. It is because of the profound re- 
 spect I feel for your character, and the 
 friendship which a soul like yours inspires 
 in mine, that I cannot endure to wound 
 your self-love. Before your arrival in 
 Havre I loved sincerefy, deeply, and 
 forever, one who is worthy of being 
 loved ; my affection for him is still a 
 secret ; but I wish you to know — and in 
 saying this I am more sincere than most 
 young girls — that had I not already 
 formed this voluntary attachment, you 
 would have been my choice, for I rec- 
 ognize your noble and beautiful qualities. 
 A few words which your aunt and sister 
 have said to me as to your intentions lead 
 me to make this frank avowal. If you 
 think it desirable, a letter from my mother
 
 463 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 shall i-ecall ine, on pretense of her illness, 
 to-morrow niorning before the launt be- 
 g-ins. Without your consent I do not 
 choose to be present at a fete which I owe 
 to vour kindness, and where, if my secret 
 should escape me, you might feel hurt and 
 defrauded. You will ask me why I have 
 come here at all. I could not withstand 
 the invitation. Be srenei'ous enough not to 
 reproach me for what was almost an iire- 
 pressible curiosity. But this is not the 
 chief, nor the most delicate thing I have 
 to say to you. You have firm friends in 
 my father and myself— more so than per- 
 haps you realize ; and as my fortune was 
 the first cause that brought you to me, I 
 wish to say — but without intending to use 
 it as a sedative to calm the grief which 
 gallantry requires you to testify — that my 
 father has tliought over the affair of the 
 marshes : his friend Dumay thinks your 
 project feasible, and they have already 
 taken slepsto form a company. Goben- 
 heiin, Dumay, and my father liave sub- 
 scribed fifteen hundred thousand francs, 
 and Ihey imdertake to get the rest from 
 capitalists, who will feel it their interest 
 to take up the matter. If I have not the 
 honor of becoming the Duchesse d'Herou- 
 ville, I have almost the certainty of en- 
 abling you to choose hex', free from all 
 trammels in your choice, and in a higher 
 sphere than mine. Oh ! let me finish," 
 she added, at a gesture from the duke. 
 
 "Judging by my nephew's emotion," 
 whispered Mademoiselle d'Herouville to 
 her niece, "it is easy to see you have a 
 sister." 
 
 " Monsieur le Due. all this Avas settled 
 in nw mind on the day of our first i-ide, 
 when I heard you deplore your situation. 
 This is wluit I have wished to say to 
 you. Tliat day determined my future life. 
 Though you did not make the conquest of 
 a woman, you have at least gained faith- 
 ful friends of Ingouville — if you will deign 
 to accord us that title." 
 
 This little discourse was said with so 
 mucli charm of .soul that the tears came 
 to the grand equerry's eyes ; he seized her 
 hand and kissed it. 
 
 " Stay during the hunt," he said ; " my 
 want of merit has accustomed me to these 
 refusals : but while accepting your friend- 
 ship and that of the colonel, you must let 
 me satisfy my.self, by the judgment of com- 
 petent scientific men, that the draining of 
 those marshes will be no risk to the com- 
 pany you speak of. before I agree to the 
 generous offer of your friends. You are 
 a noble girl, and though my heart aches 
 to think I can onlj^ be your friend, I will 
 glory in that title, and prove it to you at 
 all times and in all places." 
 
 " At all events, Monsieur le Due, let us 
 keep our secret. My choice will not be 
 known, unless I betray myself unwit- 
 tingly, until after my mother's complete 
 recovery. I should like our first blessing 
 to come from her eyes." 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 "Ladies, "said the Prince de Cadignan, 
 
 as the guests were about to separate for 
 the nigiit, " I remember that several of 
 you propose to follow the hounds with us 
 "to-morrow, and it becomes my duty to 
 tell you that if you will be Dianas you 
 nmst rise, like Diana, with the dawn 
 The meet is for half-past eight o'clock. I 
 have in the course of mj^ life seen many 
 women displaj' greater courage than men, 
 but for a few seconds only ; and you will 
 need a strong dose of resolution to keep 
 you on horseback the whole day, with the 
 exception of a halt for breakfast, which 
 will be taken in the saddle, as it were. 
 Are you still determined to show your- 
 selves trained horsewomen?" 
 
 " Prince, it is necessarj' for me to do 
 so," said Modeste, adroitly. 
 
 " I answer for m3'self," said the Duch- 
 esse de Cliaulieu. 
 
 "And I for my daughter Diane ; she is 
 worthj' of her name," added the prince. 
 "So, then, you all persist in your inten- 
 tions ? However, I shall arrange, for the 
 sake of Madame and Mademoiselle de 
 Verneuil and others of the paity who stay 
 at home, to drive the stag to the further 
 end of the pond," 
 
 " Make yourselves quite easy, raes- 
 dames," said the Prince de Loudon, when 
 the Royal Huntsman had left the room ; 
 " that breakfast ' in the saddle ' will take 
 place under a comfortable tent." 
 
 The next day, at dawn, all signs gave 
 promise of a gioinous day. As the hunting 
 party left the chateau, the Master of the 
 Hunt, the Due de Rhetore, and the Prince 
 de Loudon, who had no ladies to escort, 
 rode in the advance, noticing the white 
 masses of the chateau, with its rising 
 chimneys relieved against the brilliant 
 red-brown foliage which the trees in Nor- 
 maiuly put on at the close of a fine au- 
 tumn, 
 
 " The ladies are fortunate in their 
 weather," remarked the Due de Rhe- 
 tore, 
 
 "Oh, in spite of all their boasting," re- 
 plied the Prince de Cadignan, " I think 
 they will let us hunt without them ! " 
 
 " So they might, if each had not a 
 squire," said the duke.
 
 MODESTE MIGNOli. 
 
 463 
 
 At this moment the attention of these 
 determined huntsmen — for the Prince de 
 Loudon and the Due de Rhetore were of 
 the race of Niinrod, and the best shots 
 of the Faubourg- Saint Germain^was at- 
 tracted by a loud altercation; and they 
 spurred their horses to an open space at 
 the entrance of the forest of Rosembray, 
 famous for its mossy turf, which was ap- 
 pointed for the meet. The cause of the 
 quarrel was soon apparent. The Prince 
 de Loudon, afflicted with anglomania, had 
 broug-lit out his ovm. hunting- establish- 
 ment, which was exclusively Britannic, 
 and placed it under orders of the Master 
 of the Hunt. One of his men, a little 
 Englishman — fair, pale, insolent, and 
 phlegmatic, scarcely able to speak a 
 word of French, and dressed with a 
 neatness which distinguishes all Britons, 
 even those of the lower classes — -had 
 posted himself on one side of this open 
 space. John Barry wore a short frock- 
 coat, buttoned tightly at the waist, made 
 of scarlet cloth, with buttons bearing the 
 De Verneuil aruis, white leather breeches, 
 top-boots, a striped waistcoat, and a col- 
 lar and cape of black velvet. He held in 
 his hand a small hunting-whip, and hang- 
 ing- to his wrist by a silken cord was a 
 brass horn. This man, the first whipper- 
 in, was accompanied by two thoroughbred 
 dogs — foxhounds, white, with liver spots, 
 long in the leg, fine in the muzzle, with 
 slender heads, and little ears at their 
 crests. The huntsman — famous in the 
 English county from which the Prince de 
 Loudon had obtained liim at great cost — 
 was in charge of an establishment of fif- 
 teen horses and sixty English hounds, 
 which cost the Due de Verneuil, who was 
 nothing of a huntsman, but chose to in- 
 dulge his son in this essentially royal 
 taste, an enormous sum of money. 
 
 When he ari"ived upon the ground, Jolin 
 found himself forestalled by three other 
 whippers-in, in charge of two of the royal 
 packs of hoimds, which had been brought 
 there in carts. They were the three best 
 huntsmen of the Prince de Cadignan, and 
 presented, both in character and in their 
 distinctively French costume, a marked 
 contrast to the representative of insolent 
 Albion. These favorites of the prince, 
 each wearing full-briranied, three-cornered 
 liats, very flat and very wide-spreading, 
 beneath which grinned their swarthy, 
 tanned, and wrinkled faces, lighted by 
 three pairs of twinkling eyes, were no- 
 ticeably- lean, sinewy, and vigorous, like 
 men in whom sport had become a passion. 
 All three were supplied with the immense 
 horns of Dampierre, wound with green 
 worsted cords, leaving only the brass 
 
 tubes visible ; but they controlled their 
 dogs b^- the eye and voice. Those noble 
 animals were far more faithful and sub- 
 missive subjects than the human lieges 
 whom the king was at that moment ad- 
 dressing : all were marked with white, 
 black, or liver spots, each having as dis- 
 tinctive a countenance as the soliiiers of 
 Napoleon, their eyes flashing like dia- 
 monds at the slightest noise. One of 
 them, brought from Poitou, was short in 
 the back, deep in the shoulder, low-jointed, 
 and lop-eared ; the other, from England, 
 white, fine as a. greyhound, with no belly, 
 small earis, and built for running. Both 
 were young, impatient, and yelping eager- 
 ly, while the old hounds, on the contrary, 
 covered with scars, lay quietly with their 
 heads on their forepaws, and their ears to 
 the earth like savages. 
 
 When they saw the Englishman, the 
 royal dogs and huntsmen looked at each 
 other as tliough they said, '• If we cannot 
 hunt by ourselves his majesty's ser\ice is 
 insulted." 
 
 Beginning with jests, the quarrel pres- 
 estly grew fiercer between Monsieur Jac- 
 quin la Roulie, the old French whipper-in, 
 and John Barry, the young islander. The 
 two princes guessed from afar the subject 
 of the altercation, and the Master of the 
 Hunt, setting spurs to his horse, brought 
 it to an end by saying, in a voice of 
 authority : 
 
 '' Who drew the wood ? " 
 
 '■'I, monseigneur,'- said the English- 
 man. 
 
 "Very good," rephed the Prince de 
 Cadignan, proceeding to take Barn,-'s 
 report. 
 
 Dogs and men became silent and re- 
 spectful before the Royal Huntsman, as 
 though each recognized his dignity as 
 supreme. The prince laid out the day's 
 work ; for it is with a hmit as it is with a 
 battle, and the Master of Charles X.'s 
 hounds was the Napoleon of forests. 
 Thanks to the admirable system he in- 
 troduced into French venery, he was able 
 to turn his thoughts exclusively to sci- 
 ence and strategy. He now quietly as- 
 signed a special duty to the Prince de 
 Loudon's establishment, that of driving 
 the stag to water, when, as he expected, 
 the royal hounds should have sent it into 
 the crown forest which oiitlmed the hori- 
 zon directly in front of the chateau. The 
 prince knew well how to soothe the self- 
 love of his old huntsmen by giving them 
 the most arduous part of the work, and 
 also that of the Englishman, whom he 
 employed at his own specialty, affording 
 him a chance to show the fleetncss of his 
 horses and dogs in the open. The two
 
 464 
 
 THE HUMAN COMEDY. 
 
 national systems were thus face to face 
 ami allowed to do Ihcir best under each 
 other's eyes. 
 
 '•Does monseigneur wish us to wait 
 any longer;'""' said La Koulie, respect- 
 fully. 
 
 •• I know what you mean, old friend," 
 said tlie prince. *' It is late, but—" 
 
 "Here come the ladies," said the sec- 
 ond whipper-in. At that moment the 
 cavalcade of sixteen riders was seen to 
 approach, at the head of which were the 
 g-reeii veils of the four ladies. Modeste, 
 accompanied by her father, the grand 
 equerry, and La Briei'e, was in the ad- 
 vance,' beside the Duchesse de Maufri- 
 giieuse whom the Vicomte de Serizy es- 
 corted. Beliind them rode the Duchesse 
 de Chaulieu, tlanked by Canalis, on whom 
 she was smilins- without a trace of ran- 
 cor. When they hatl reached the open 
 space where the huntsmen with their red 
 coats and brass bugles, surrounded by 
 the hounds, made a picture worthy of 
 Van der Meulen, the Duchesse de Chau- 
 lieu, who, in spite of her embonpoint, sat 
 her horse admirably, rode up to Modeste, 
 finding it best for her dignity not to 
 avoid that young person, to whom on the 
 previous evening she had not spoken a 
 word. 
 
 When the Master of the Hunt finished 
 his compliments to the ladies on their 
 amazing punctuality, Eleonore deigned 
 to observe the magnificent whip which 
 sparkled m Modeste's little hand, and 
 graciously asked leave to look at it. 
 
 " I have never seen anything of the 
 kind more beautiful," slie said, siiowing 
 it to Diane de Maufrigneuse. " It is in 
 keeping with its possessor," she added, 
 returning it to Modeste. 
 
 "Yon must admit, Madame la Duch- 
 esse," answered Mademoiselle de la Bas- 
 tie with a tender and malicious glance 
 at La Briere. " t iiat it is a rather strange 
 gift from llie hand of a future husband." 
 
 " I should take it," said Madame de 
 Maufrigneuse, " as a declaration of my 
 rights, in rejuembrance of Louis XIV." 
 
 La Briere's eyes were suffused, and for 
 a moment he dropped his reins ; but a 
 second glance from Modeste ordered him 
 not to betray his happiness. The hunt 
 now began. 
 
 The Due d'Herouville took occasion to 
 say in a low voice to his fortunate rival : 
 "Monsieur, I hope that you will make 
 your wife happy ; if I can bo useful to you 
 
 in any way, command my services ; I 
 should be only too glad to contribute 
 to the happiness of so charming a pair." 
 
 This great day, in which such vast in- 
 terests of heart and fortune were decided, 
 caused but one anxiety to the Master of 
 the Hunt — namely, wliether or not -the 
 stag would cross the pond and be killed 
 on the lawn before the liouse ; for hunts- 
 men of his caliber ai^e like great chess- 
 players who can predict a checkmate 
 under certain circumstances. The happy 
 old man succeeded to the height of his 
 wishes ; the run was magnificent, and the 
 ladies released him ivoxn his attendance 
 upon them for the hunt of the next day 
 but one — which, however, turned out to be 
 rainy. 
 
 The Due de Verneuil's guests sta.j'ed 
 five days at Rosembray. On the last day 
 the " Gazette de France " announced the 
 appointment of Monsieur le Baron de 
 Canalis to the rank of commander of the 
 Legion of Honor, and to the post of min- 
 ister at Carlsruhe. 
 
 When, early in the month of December, 
 Madame de la Bastie, operated upon by 
 Desplein, recovered her sight and saw 
 Ernest de la Bi-iere for the fli'st time, 
 she iDressed Modeste's hand and whis- 
 pered in her ear, " He would have been 
 my own choice." 
 
 Toward the last of February all the 
 deeds for the estates in Provence were 
 signed by Latournelle, and about that 
 time the family of La l^astie obtained 
 the marked honor of the king's signature 
 to the marriage contract and to the ordi- 
 nance transmitting their title and arms 
 to La BrierCj who henceforth took the 
 name of La Briere-La Bastie. The estate 
 of La Bastie was entailed by letters- 
 patent issued about the end of April. La 
 Briere's witnesses on the occasion of his 
 marriage were Canalis and the minister 
 wliom he had sei-Aed for five years as 
 secretary. Those of the bride were the 
 Due d'Herouville and Desplein, whom 
 tlie Mignons rewarded with gratitude, 
 as well as more substantial proofs of 
 their regard. 
 
 If we again meet Monsieur and Ma- 
 dame de La Briere-La Bastie, those who 
 have the eyes to see will then behold how 
 sweet, how easy, is the marriage 3'oke 
 with an educated and intelligent woman ; 
 for Modeste is the pi'ide and the happi- 
 ness of her husband, her family and all 
 who surround her. 
 
 END OF VOLUME ONE.
 
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