THE MODERN LIBRARY OF THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC TURN TO THE END OF THIS VOLUME FOR A COMPLETE LIST OF TITLES IN THE MOD- ERN LIBR\RY By HONORE DE BALZAC THE MODERN LIBRARY PUBLISHERS : NEW YORK MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOR THE MODERN LIBRARY, INC., BT H. WOLFF CONTENTS PAGE DON JUAN .... . 1 CHRIST IN FLANDERS 35 IN THE TIME OF THE TERROR .... 52 MADAME DE DEY'S LAST EECEPTION . . 80 A PASSION IN THE DESERT .... 105 LOST BY A LAUGH 127 GOLD 137 DOOMED TO LIVE 159 AN ACCURSED HOUSE 176 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 208 A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA . 235 20J244SO DON JUAN; THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE ON a winter's night, in a sumptuous palace at Ferrara, Don Juan Belvidero was entertaining a Prince of the house of Este. At this period a ban- quet was a wonderful scene, possible only for the riches of royalty and the power of Princes. Round a table lit with perfumed tapers sat seven joyous women bandying sweet talk. About them the noblest marble of the greatest masters gleamed white against walls of crimson stucco, and formed a con- trast with the gorgeous colors of carpets brought from Turkey. These women, clad in satin, glittering with gold, loaded with jewels only less brilliant than their eyes, told each her tale of overpowering passions, diverse as their own charms. But among them was no dif- ference either of thought or expression; a movement, a look, a gesture supplied their words with commen- taries wanton, lewd, melancholy, or scoffing. One seemed to say: "My beauty can rekindle the ice-bound heart of age." 1 2 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC Another : ' ' I love to lie couched among my cushions and think, drunk with the passion of those who adore me." A third, a novice at such feasts, would fain nave blushed. "Iri the depth of my heart," she said, "I feel remorse ! I am a Catholic, and I fear hell. But I love you so much, so so much that for you I can sacrifice eternity." The fourth cried, as she drained a cup of Chian wine: ''Joy, joy forever! Each morning dawns for me a new existence; each evening I drink deep of life, the life of happiness, the life of desire!" The woman who sat by Belvidero looked at him with eyes of flame. She was silent. "I should not need a bravo to kill my lover if he deserted me!" She laughed; but her hand crushed convulsively a comfit box of wonderful workmanship. "When shall you be Grand Duke?" asked a sixth of the Prince, an expression of murderous pleasure in her teeth, of bacchic delirium in her eyes. "And you, when will your father be dead?" said the seventh, throwing her bouquet at Don Juan with a gesture of maddening playfulness. She was a girl, young and innocent, wont to laugh at all things acred. "Ah! do not speak of it," cried the young and handsome Juan Belvidero. "There is only one eter- nal father in the world, and as ill-luck will have it, he is mine." DON JUAN 3 The seven courtesans of Ferrara, the friends of Don Juan, and even the Prince himself, cried out with horror. Two hundred years later, under Louis XV., the most cultivated society would have laughed at this sally, but perhaps also, at the beginning of an orgy, the soul still sees with clearer eyes. In spite of the flame of candles, the fume of wines, the sight of gold and silver vessels ; in spite of the cry of passion and the presence of women most ravishing to look upon, perchance there still brooded in the depths of their hearts a little of that reverence for human and divine things which still struggles on, until it is drowned by debauchery in the last sparkling waves of wine. Nevertheless, their flowers were already faded, their eyes already clouded, and drunkenness possessed them, after the saying of Rabelais, "Down to the heels of their boots." During a moment of silence a door opened, and, as at the feast of Belshazzar, God revealed Himself. He appeared under the form of an old servant, with white hair and wrinkled brow, and tottering footsteps. He entered with an air of sadness, and withered with one look the garlands, and the bowls of golden plate, and the pyramids of fruit, and all the brightness of the banquet, and the flush on the scared faces of the banqueters, and the colors of the cushions pressed by the white arms of the women ; lastly, he cast a pall upon their revelry when with hollow voice he murmured these solemn words, "Sire, your father is dying." Don Juan rose, mak- 4 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC ing a sign to his guests which might have been in- terpreted thus, "Excuse me, but this is not a thing which happens every day." Does not a father's death often startle a young man in the midst of the splendors of life, in the very lap of frenzied debauchery? Death is as sudden in his whims as is a courtesan, but he is truer he has never deceived any man. When the door of the hall was shut, and Don Juan was passing through a long, gloomy gallery, where the cold was as great as the gloom, he bethought him of his part as a son, and strove to wear a mask to fit the filial character ; for his mirth he had thrown aside with his napkin. The night was black. The silent servant who led the young man to the chamber of death lighted the way so dimly that Death was able, by the help of the cold, and the silence, and the gloom and perhaps too of a recoil from drunkenness ' to insinuate certain reflections into the mind of the reveller. He examined his life and grew thoughtful, as a man at law with another, on his way to the court. Bartolomeo Belvidero, the father of Don Juan, was an old man of ninety years, who had spent almost all his life in the mazes of commerce. Having often travelled over the magic countries of the East, he had there acquired immense riches, and knowledge more precious, he. said, than gold or diamonds; indeed for these he now cared scarcely at all. "I prefer a tooth to a ruby, and power to knowledge," he sometimes DON JUAN 5 cried, and smiled as lie spoke. This kind father loved to hear Don Juan relate his youthful frolics, and would say jestingly, as he lavished his gold upon him, ''My dear child, only commit such follies as will really amuse thee. " He was the only old man who has ever taken pleasure in the sight of another man's youth; his paternal love cheated his white hairs as he contemplated the brilliancy of this young life. At the age of sixty Belvidero became enamored of an angel of peace and beauty; Don Juan was the only fruit of this late and short-lived love. Now for fif- teen years the old man had deplored the loss of his dear Juana; it was to this affliction of his old ago that his numerous servitors and his son attributed the strange habits which he had contracted. Shut up in the most incommodious wing of his palace, he very rarely left it, and Don Juan himself could not pene- trate into his father 's apartment without having first obtained his permission. If this voluntary anchorite walked in his own palace or through the streets of Ferrara, he seemed to be searching for something he had lost. He walked as though in a dream, with un- decided steps, preoccupied, like a man at war with an idea or a memory. "While the young man gave the most sumptuous banquets and the palace rang with bursts of merri- ment while horses champed their bits in the court- yard and pages quarreled over their dice on the steps Bartolomeo ate seven ounces of bread a day and 6 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC drank water. If he required a little game, it was only to give the bones to a black spaniel, which was his constant companion. He never complained of the noise; during his sickness, if the sound of the horn and the baying of dogs startled him while he slept, he would only say, ' ' Ah ! it is Don Juan returning ! ' ' So complacent and indulgent a father was never met with before ; thus the young Belvidero, being wont to treat him without consideration, had all the faults of spoilt children. He lived with Bartolomeo as a capri- cious courtesan lives with an old lover ; he gained in- dulgence for impertinences by a smile; he sold him his good humor, and only allowed his love. As Don Juan reconstructed in thought the picture of his youth, he perceived that it would be difficult to find the kindness of his father at fault. Feeling a sort of remorse arise in the depth of his heart at the moment he was passing through the gallery, he almost felt he could forgive his father for having lived so long; he returned to some sentiment of filial piety just as a robber turns to honesty when the enjoyment of a successfully stolen million becomes a possibility. The young man had soon passed through the cold and lofty halls which composed his father's apartment. After having experienced the effects of a damp, chill atmosphere, and inhaled the dense air and the musty odor given out by the ancient tapestries and dusty presses, he found himself in the old man's chamber, before a bed of sickness close to a fire almost extinct. DON JUAN 1 A lamp, placed upon a table of Gothic design, shed its light in fitful gleams, now brightly, now faintly, upon the bed, and thus displayed the old man's face under ever-varying aspects. The cold whistled through the ill-fitting casements, and the snow-flakes made a sullen murmur as they scourged the panes. This scene formed so striking a contrast to the scene Don Juan had just left that he could not restrain a shudder. Then he grew cold, for as he approached the bed an unwonted flood of light, blown by a gust of wind, lit up the head of his father: the features were distorted, the skin clung closely to the bones, its greenish tint rendered still more horrible by the whiteness of the pillow whereon the old man lay ; the open, toothless mouth was drawn with pain, and let slip between it sighs whose dolorous depth was sus- tained by the echoing howls of the tempest. In spite of these signs of dissolution, there beamed from this head an incredible character of power; a mighty spirit was at war with Death. The eyes, hollowed by sickness, preserved a strange steadfastness; it seemed as though Bartolomeo would have slain with his last look an enemy sitting at the foot of his bed. This look, fixed and frigid, was the more frightful because the head remained as immovable as a skull upon a physician's table. The entire body indicated by the bedclothes showed that the old man's limbs also lay as rigid as the head. The whole was dead 8 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC except the eyes. Moreover, the sounds that issued from his mouth had something automatic in them. . Don Juan felt a certain shame at coming to his father 's death-bed still wearing the bouquet of a har- lot in his breast, and carrying thither the perfumes of a banquet and the odors of wine. ''Thou art enjoying thyself," said the old man, when he saw it was his son. At this moment the clear, light voice of a singer, who held the banqueters spellbound, sus- tained by the harmony of the viol on which she ac- companied herself, rose above the rattle of the hurri- cane, and rang even in this funereal chamber. Don Juan affected not to hear the answer thus brutally given in the affirmative to his father. "I blame thee not, my child," said Bartolomeo. The kindness of these words caused a pang to Don Juan ; he could not forgive his father for the poignancy of his goodness., "My father, think of the remorse I must feel," said he hypocritically. "Poor Juanino," replied the dying man in a muf- fled voice, "I have always been so kind to thee that thou couldst not desire my death?" "Oh," cried Don Juan, "if it were only possible for me to restore life to you by giving you up a part of my own ! ' ' ("One can always say that sort of thing," thought the reveller; it is as though I offered the world to my mistress.") He had scarcely conceived this thought when the old spaniel barked. The in- DON JUAN 9 telligence of this voice made Don Juan shudder; it seemed to him as if the dog had understood him. "I knew well, my son, that I could count upon thee," cried the dying man. "I shall live. Thou shalt have thy wish. I shall live without depriving thee of a single one of the days allotted thee. ' ' ' ' He is delirious, ' ' said Don Juan to himself. Then he added aloud: "Yes, my dearest father, you will live, assuredly, as long as I live, for your image will be always in my heart." "I was not speaking of that sort of life," said the old noble. He collected all his strength and sat up, for he was troubled by one of those suspicions that only rise from under the pillows of the dying. "Listen! my son," he replied in a voice enfeebled by this last effort; "I am no more ready to die than thou art ready to give up thy falcons, and dogs, and horses, and wine, and mistresses, and gold." "I can well believe it," thought his son again, as he knelt down by the bedside and kissed (me of the corpse-like hands of Bartolomeo. "But," he an- swered aloud, "my father, my dear father, we must submit to the will of God." "God is I," muttered the old man. "Blaspheme not," cried the reveller, when he saw the look of menace which his father's features as- sumed. ' ' I beseech you take care ; you have received Extreme Unction; I could never be comforted if I saw you die in sin ! ' ' 10 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC "Listen to me, wilt thou?" cried the dying man, his mouth drawn with anger. Don Juan held his peace. A horrible silence reigned. Across the dull whir of the snow the har- monies of that ravishing voice and the viol still travelled, faint as the dawn of day. The dying man smiled. ' ' Thou hast bidden singers, thou hast brought music hither; I thank thee. A banquet! Women, young and beautiful, with white skins and raven locks ! all the pleasures of life! Bid them stay; I am about to be born again." "The delirium is at its height," thought Don Juan. "I have discovered a means of bringing myself to life again. Here! Look in the drawer in the table; it opens by pressing a spring hidden under the griffon. ' ' "I have found it, my father." "Good! take out a little flask of rock crystal." "It is here." * ' I spent twenty years in ..." At this moment the old man felt his end approaching; he collected all his strength and said, "As soon as I have given my last breath, rub me entirely all over with that water and I shall come to life again." "There is very little of it," answered the young man. Though Bartolomeo could no longer speak, he still retained the faculties of sight and hearing; at these DON JUAN 11 words his head turned round toward Don Juan with a sudden spasmodic start, his neck remaine'd stretched out like the neck of a marble statue condemned by the thought of the sculptor always to look to one side, his eyes were dilated and had acquired a hideous stare. He was dead, dead as he lost his last, his only illusion. He had sought a refuge in the heart of his son; he found it a charnel-house more hollow than men are wont to dig for their dead. Thus it was that his hair stood on end with horror, the convulsion in his eyes still spoke. It was a father rising in rage from his tomb to demand vengeance at the hand of God upon his son ! "Hm! The old man is done for," said Don Juan. In his hurry to hold up the mysterious crystal be- fore the light of the lamp, like a drunkard consult- ing his bottle at the end of a meal, he had not seen the pallor fall upon his father's eyes. The dog gaped as he gazed alternately at the elixir and his dead mas- ter, while Don Juan glanced to and fro at his father and the phial. The lamp cast up its flickering flames, the silence was profound, the viol was dumb. Belvi- dero shivered; he thought he saw his father move. Terrified by the set expression of those accusing eyes, he closed them as he would have shut a shutter shaken by the wind on an autumn night. He stood erect, motionless, lost in a world of thoughts. All at once a sharp sound, like the cry of a rusty spring, broke the silence. Don Juan, startled, almost dropped the 12 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC phial. Sweat colder than the steel of a dagger broke from every pore. A cock of painted wood rose on the top of a clock and crowed three times. It was one of those ingenious machines which the students of those days used, to wake them at a fixed hour for their studies. The dawn already glowed red through the casements. Don Juan had spent ten hours in meditation. The old clock was more faithful in its service than was he in his duty toward Bartolomeo. The mechanism was composed of wood, and pulleys, and cords, and wheels, while he had within him that mechanism peculiar to man which is called a heart. Not to run any risk of spilling the mysterious liquid, Don Juan, the sceptic, placed it again in the little drawer of the Gothic table. At this solemn moment he heard in the galleries a stifled commotion ; there were confused voices, muffled laughter, light footsteps, the rustling of silk in short, the din of a merry troop trying to compose themselves. The door opened, and the Prince, the friends of Don Juan, the seven courtesans, and the singers appeared in the quaint disorder of dancers surprised by the light of morning, when the sun struggles with the paling flames of the candles. They were all come to offer the customary consolations to the young heir. ' ' Ho ! ho ! poor Don Juan ; can he really have taken this death to heart?" said the Prince in La Bram- billa's ear. "Well, his father was very kind," she answered. DON JUAN 13 The nocturnal meditations of Don Juan, however, had imprinted so striking an expression upon his features that it imposed silence on the group. The men stood motionless. The women, whose lips were parched with wine and whose cheeks were stained with kisses, fell upon their knees and tried to pray. Don Juan could not help shivering at the sight; splendor, and mirth, and laughter, and song, and youth, and beauty, and power, the whole of life per- sonified thus prostrate before the face of Death. But in this adorable Italy debauchery and religion were then so closely coupled that there, religion was a debauch, and debauchery a religion ! The Prince pressed Don Juan 's hand with unction ; then, all the faces having simultaneously assumed the same gri- mace, half sadness, half indifference, this phantasma- goria disappeared and left the hall empty. Verily, it was an image of life. As they descended the stairs the Prince said to La Rivabarella : ' ' Who would have thought that Don Juan's impiety was all a sham? Yet it seems he did love his father!" "Did you notice the black dog?" asked Brambilla. "Well, he is immensely rich," remarked Bianca Cavatolino, smiling. "What's that to me?" cried the proud Veronese, she who had crushed the comfit box. "What's that to you?" cried the Duke. "With his crowns he is as much a prince as I am." At first, swayed by a thousand thoughts, Don Juan 14 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC wavered between several plans. After having taken count of the treasure amassed by his father, toward evening he returned to the mortuary chamber, his soul big with a hideous egoism. In the apartment he found all the servants of the house busy collecting the ornaments of the state bed, on which their late lord was to be exposed on the morrow, in the midst of a superbly illuminated chapel ; a grand sight which the whole of Ferrara would come to gaze at; Don Juan made a sign and his servants stopped, trembling and discomfited. " Leave me here, alone," said he in an altered voice ; ' ' you need not return until I have gone. ' ' When the steps of the old serving man, who was the last to go out, only sounded very faintly on the flagstones, Don Juan barred the door precipitately; then, certain that he was alone, he cried out: "Let us try!" The corpse of Don Belvidero was laid on a long table. In order to hide from every eye the hide- ous spectacle of a corpse of such. extreme decrepitude and leanness that it was almost a skeleton, the em- balmers had placed a cloth over it, which enveloped it entirely, with the exception of the head. This sort of mummy lay in the middle of the room; the cloth, naturally flexible, indicated vaguely the gaunt, stiff, sharp form of the limbs. The face was already marked with large livid stains, showing the necessity of finishing the embalming. In spite of his armor of scepticism, Don Juan trembled as he took out the DON JUAN 15 stopper of the magic crystal phial. When he had come up close to the head, he was compelled to wait a moment, he shivered so. But this young man had been early and skilfully corrupted by the manners of a dissolute court ; an idea worthy of the Duke of Urbino gave him courage, and a feeling of keen curi- osity spurred him on; it even seemed as if the fiend had whispered the words which re-echoed in his heart : ' ' Anoint one eye ! ' ' He took a cloth, mois- tened it sparingly with the precious liquid, and rubbed it gently over the right eyelid of the corpse. The eye opened. "Ah ! ah !" exclaimed Don Juan, pressing the phial in his hands as in a dream we cling to a branch by which we hang over a precipice. He saw an eye full of life, the eye of a child in the head of a corpse; in it the light quivered as though in the depth of a limpid pool ; protected by the beau- tiful black lashes, it sparkled like those strange lights that the traveller sees in a desert country upon a win- ter's night. This eye of fire seemed eager to start out upon Don Juan; it thought, accused, judged, condemned, menaced, spoke; it cried aloud, it bit. Every human passion pulsated in it; the tenderest supplication, a kingly wrath, the love of a maiden entreating her tormentors, the searching look on his fellows of the man who treads the last step to the scaffold. So much of life beamed in this fragment of life that Don Juan drew back in terror. He walked 16 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC up and down the room; he dared not look upon this eye, yet he saw it on the floor, in the tapestries. The room was strewn with spots' full of fire, and life, and intelligence. Everywhere gleamed those eyes; they seemed to bay at his heels ! "He would certainly have lived another hundred years," he cried involuntarily, at the moment when, brought back by some diabolic influence to his fa- ther's side, he found himself gazing at this luminous spark. All at once the intelligent eyelid shut and opened again hastily; it was like the look of a woman who gives consent. If a voice had cried out, "Yes!" Don Juan could not have been more terrified. "What am I to do?" thought he. He had the courage to try and close the pallid eyelid, but his efforts were useless. ' ' Tear it out ? That might be parricide, perhaps, ' ' he pondered. "Yes," said the eye, quivering with astounding irony. ' ' Ha ! ha ! " cried Don Juan, ' ' there is sorcery in it." And he drew near to tear out the eye. A large tear rolled down the hollow cheeks of the corpse, and fell on Belvidero's hand. "It burns," he cried, as he wiped it off. This struggle was as tiring as if, like Jacob, he had been wrestling with an angel. DON JUAN 17 At last he rose, saying to himself, ' ' If only there is no blood!" Then summoning up all the courage necessary to be a coward, he tore out the eye, and crushed it in a cloth; he did not dare to look at it. He heard a sudden, terrible groan. The old spaniel expired with a howl. "Could it have been in the secret?" thought Don Juan, looking at the faithful animal. Don Juan passed for a dutiful son. He erected a monument of white marble over his father's tomb, and entrusted the execution of the figures to the most celebrated artists of the time. He did not feel per- fectly at his ease until the day when the statue of his father, kneeling before Religion, lay, an enormous pile, over his grave. In its depth was buried the only remorse which had ever, in moments of physical weariness, touched the surface of his heart. As he reviewed the immense riches amassed by the aged orientalist, Don Juan grew careful ; had not the pow- er of wealth gained for him two human lives? His sight penetrated to the depth and scrutinized the ele- ments of social life, embracing the world the more completely in his gaze, because he looked upon it from the other side of the tomb. He analyzed men and things only to have finished, once and forever, with the Past, shown forth by History; with the Present, represented by Law; with the Future, re- vealed by Religion. He took matter and the soul, he 18 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC east them into the crucible, and found Nothing. From thenceforth he became DON JUAN ! Young and handsome, master of the illusions of life, he flung himself into it, despising yet possessing himself of the world. His happiness could not con- sist in that bourgeois felicity which is nourished on an occasional sop, the treat of a warming-pan in the winter, a lamp at night, and new slippers every three months. No; he seized on existence as an ape snatches a nut, but without amusing himself for long with the common husk, he skilfully stripped it off, in order to discuss the sweet and luscious kernel with- in. The poetry and the sublime transports of human passion did not seem worth a rap to him. He was ever guilty of the fault of men of power who sometimes imagine that little* souls believe in great ones, and so think to exchange high thoughts of the future for the small change of our transient notions. He was quite able to walk as they do, with his feet on the earth, and his head in the skies; but he preferred to sit down and parch under his kisses the fresh, tender, perfumed lips of many women ; for, like Death, wherever he passed he devoured all with- out shame, desiring a love of full possession, oriental, of pleasures lasting long and gladly given. In women he loved not themselves, but woman. He made irony the natural habit of his soul. When his mistresses used their couch as a step whereby to climb irto the heavens and lose themselves in the lap of in- DON JUAN m 19 toxication and ecstasy, Don Juan followed them, as grave, sympathetic, and sincere as any German stu- dent. But he said 7, while his mistress, lost in her delight, said We! He knew perfectly the art of being beguiled by a woman. He was always strong enough to make her believe that he trembled like a school- boy at a ball, when he says to his first partner, "Do you like dancing ? ' ' But he could storm too, on occa- sion, and draw his sword to some purpose; he had vanquished great captains. There was raillery in his simplicity, and laughter in his tears for he could shed tears at any moment like a woman, when she says to her husband, ' ' Give me a carriage, for I know I shall go into a consumption." To merchants the world is a bale or a heap of bills of exchange; for most young men it is a woman : for some women it is a man; for certain minds it is a drawing-room, a clique, a district, a town; for Don Juan the whole universe was himself. A model of grace and high breeding, with all thB charm of wit, he moored his bark to every bank, but when he took a pilot on board he only w r ent whither he chose to be steered. The longer he lived the more he doubted. By studying men, he discovered that courage is often rashness; prudence, poltroonery; generosity, diplo- macy; justice, iniquity; scrupulousness, stupidity; honor, a convention; and by a strange fatality he perceived that those who are truly honorable, of fine feeling, just, generous, prudent, and courageous, gain 20 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC no consideration among men "What a heartless jest!" thought he; "it cannot be made by a God." So he renounced a better world, never doffed his hat at the sound of a Name, and looked upon the stone saints in the churches as works of art. But compre- hending the organization of human societies, he never did too much to offend their prejudices, because he knew that he was not so powerful as their execu- tioner. He deflected their laws with that grace and esprit so well described in his scene with Monsieur Dimanche; in fact, he was the type of the Don Juan of Moliere, of the Faust of Goethe, of the Manfred of Byron, and of the Melmoth of Maturin, grand fig- ures drawn by the greatest geniuses of Europe, to which the lyre of Rossini will some day perhaps be wanting, no less than the harmonies of Mozart. Ter- rible images, perpetuated by the principle of evil ever existent in man, images of which copies are found in every age; whether the type enters into treaty with man and becomes incarnate in Mirabeau; whether it is content to work in silence like Bona- parte, or squeezes the world in the press of its irony like the divine Rabelais ; or again, whether it jests at beings, instead of insulting things, like Le Marechal de Richelieu ; or better still perhaps, mocks both men and things at once, like the most celebrated of our ambassadors. But the profound genius of Don Juan Belvidero summed up in advance all these geniuses. He made a jest of everything. His life was one DON JUAN 21 mockery which embraced men, things, institutions, and ideas. As to eternity, after having talked famil- iarly for half an hour with the Pope Julius 11., at the end of the conversation he said to him, laughing : "If it is absolutely necessary to choose, I would rather believe in God than the Devil; power united to goodness always offers more resources than the genius of evil." "Yes, but it is God's will that we should do pen- ance in this world ..." "Ah, you are always thinking of your indul- gences, ' ' answered Belvidero. ' ' Well, I have a whole existence in reserve wherein to repent of the faults of my former life!" "Ah! if you understand old age in that sense," said the Pope, ' ' you run a chance of canonization. ' ' "After your elevation to the papacy all things are credible." And they went to watch the workmen building the immense basilica dedicated to Saint Peter. "Saint Peter is the man of genius who built up our double power, ' ' said the Pope to Don Juan ; " he deserves this monument. But sometimes at night I think that a deluge will pass its sponge over it all, and the world will have to begin again " Don Juan and the Pope began to laugh; they un- derstood each other. A fool would have gone the next day to enjoy himself with Julius II. at Raphael's or in the delicious Villa-Madama ; but Belvidero went 22 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC to see him pontificate, in order to be convinced of his doubts. At an orgy, Delia Rovere would have been capable of criticizing or confuting the Apocalypse. However, I did not undertake this legend to fur- nish materials to those desirous of writing memoirs of the life of Don Juan ; it is designed to prove to all decent people that Belvidero did not die in a duel with a stone, as some lithographers would have us be- lieve. When Don Juan had reached the age of sixty he went and took up his abode in Spain. There in his old age, he married a young and lovely Andalu- sian, but he purposely made neither a good husband nor a good father. He had observed that we are never so tenderly loved as by women for whom we scarcely care at all. Doiia Elvira had been piously brought up by an old aunt, in a castle some few leagues from San Lucar, in the wilds of Andalusia; she was a paragon of devotion and grace. Don Juan divined that this young girl would make a wife who would fight against passion for a long time before she yielded, so he hoped to be able to preserve her virtu- ous until his death. It was a grim jest, a game of chess which he had determined to reserve to play dur- ing his old age. Forewarned by all the mistakes of his father Bartolomeo, Don Juan resolved to make the least actions of his old age contribute to the success of the drama which was to be played out upon his death-bed. With this end in view, he buried the greater part of his riches in the cellars of his palace DON JUAN 23 at Ferrara, which he seldom visited. As to the other half, he devoted it entirely to purchasing an annuity in order that his wife and children might have an interest in the continuance of his life, a kind of roguery which it would have been well for Don Bar- tolomeo himself if he practiced; but for Don Juan this Machiavellesque speculation was scarcely neces- sary. The young Felipe Belvidero grew up as con- scientious and religious a Spaniard as his fathei was impious, in virtue perhaps of the proverb : "A miser breeds a spendthrift son." The Abbot of San Lucar was chosen by Don Juan to direct the consciences of the Duchess of Belvidero and of Felipe. This ecclesiastic was a holy man, of fine figure, admirably proportioned, with beautiful black eyes; in fact, he had the head of a Tiberius, fatigued with fasts, pale with penance, and tempted daily as are all men who live in solitude. The old noble hoped perhaps still to be able to kill a monk before finishing his first lease of life. But whether it was that the priest was as strong as Don Juan him- self, or that Dona Elvira possessed more prudence or virtue than Spain usually bestows upon her daugh- ters, Don Juan was constrained to spend his last days like an old country cure without a single scandal in his house. At times he took pleasure in finding his son or his wife at fault in their religious duties, for he willed despotically that they should perform all the obligations imposed on the faithful by the Court 24 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC of Rome. In fact he was never so happy as when he was listening to the gallant priest, Dona Elvira, and Felipe engaged in discussing some point of conscience. However, in spite of the prodigious care which the Senor Don Juan Belvidero bestowed upon his per- son, the days of his decreptitude drew on; with this age of trouble came the cries of impotence, cries the more heartrending because of all the rich memories of his turbulent youth and voluptuous manhood. This man, who had reached the last degree of cynicism to induce others to believe in laws and principles at which he scoffed, slept at night on the doubt of a Perlwps! This model of fine breeding, this aristocratic athlete in debauchery, this paragon of gallantry, this gra- cious flatterer of women whose hearts he had twisted as a peasant twists an osier band, this man of genius, was plagued with catarrh, pestered by sciatica, a martyr to the agonies of gout. He saw his teeth depart, as the fairest and most beautifully dressed ladies depart one by one at the end of a festival and leave the halls empty and de- serted. Then 'his sinuous hands trembled, his graceful legs tottered ; at last one evening apoplexy squeezed his neck with her icy, crooked fingers. After this fatal day he became harsh and morose. He found fault with the devotion of his wife and son, asserting sometimes that the touching and delicate care which they lavished upon him was only given because he DON JUAN 25 had sunk all his fortune in an annuity. Then Elvira and Felipe would shed bitter tears and redouble their caresses upon the malicious old man, and then hh voice would grow affectionate to them and he would say: "My dear, my dear wife, you forgive me both, do you not? I tease you a little. Alas! good God! why dost Thou use me to try these two heavenly creatures? I, who ought to be their joy, I am their scourge. ' ' In this way he chained them to his bedside, making them forget whole months of impatience and cruelty by one hour, when he would display for them ever new treasures of favor and false tenderness. This paternal system brought him infinitely more success than the system formerly used in his case by his father had brought him. At last he reached such a pitch of disease that, in order to put him to bed, they had to manoeuver him like a felucca entering a dan- gerous channel. Then the day of his death arrived. This brilliant and sceptical personage, whose intel- lect alone survived the most horrible of all destruc- tions, found himself between his two antipathies, a physician and a confessor ; but even with them he was gay. Was there not for him a light shining behind the veil of the future? Upon this veil of lead to others, but transparent for him the joyous, ravish- ing delights of youth played like shadows. It was a beautiful summer evening when Don Juan felt the approach of death. The Spanish sky was ex- 26 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC quisitely clear, the orange trees scented the air, 1he stars shed their bright and freshening beams, nature seemed to give him sure pledges for his resurrection, a pious and obedient son watched him with looks of respect and affection. About eleven o'clock he de- sired to be alone with this ingenuous youth. "Felipe," said he, in a voice so tender and affec- tionate that the young man trembled and shed tears of joy. Never before had this stern father thus pro- nounced the word ''Felipe." "Listen to me, my son," continued the dying man. "I am a great sin- ner. So during the whole of my life I have thought of my death. Formerly I was a friend of the great Pope Julius II. That illustrious Pontiff, fearing lest the excessive excitation of my senses should cause me to commit some mortal sin between the moment of my receiving the holy oils and my latest breath, made me a present of a phial in which there is preserved some of the holy water which gushed out of the rock in the desert. I have kept the secret of this diversion of the treasure of the church, but I am authorized to reveal this mystery to my son, in articulo mortis. You will find this phial in the drawer of the Gothic table which has always stood at my bedside. The precious crystal will serve for you too, my beloved Felipe. Swear to me on your eternal salvation to execute my orders exactly." Felipe looked at his father. Don Juan understood the expression of human feeling too well not to die in DON JUAN 27 peace on the credit of such a look, just as his father had died in despair on the credit of his. "Thou deservest another father," replied Don Juan. "I must confess to thee, my child, that at the moment the worthy Abbot of San Lucar was adminis- tering the viaticum to me, I thought of the incom- patibility of two powers as extensive as God's and the devil's." ' "Oh! my father!" "And I said to myself that, when Satan makes his peace, he will be bound, unless he is a wretched scoundrel, to stipulate for the pardon of his adher- ents. This thought haunts me. I shall go to hell, my son, if thou dost not fulfil my wishes." "Oh! tell me, father, quickly!" "As soon as I have closed my eyes," replied Don Juan, "which will be in a few minutes, perhaps, take my body, even while it is still warm, and stretch it out on a table in the middle of this room. Then extinguish this lamp, the light of the stars will be sufficient for thee. Strip me of my clothes ; and while thou recitest Paters and Aves, and raisest up thy soul to God, take care to moisten, with this holy water, my eyes, my lips, my whole head first, then all the members of my body in succession ; but, my dear son, the power of God is so great, thou must not be astonished at anything!" Here Don Juan, who felt death approaching, added in a terrible voice: 28 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC ' ' Hold the phial tight ! ' ' then expired gently in the arms f a son whose tears ran in copious streams over his pale, ironical countenance. It was about mid- night when Don Felipe Belvidero placed the corpse of his father upon the table. After having kissed the menacing brow and the gray locks, he extinguished the lamp. The soft glow cast by the moonlight lit up the country with its strange reflection, and allowed the pious Felipe to see but indistinctly his father's corpse a something white amid the shade. The young man steeped a cloth in the liquid, and ab- sorbed in prayer meanwhile faithfully anointed the venerated head amidst profound silence. He cer- tainly heard an indescribable shivering, but he at- tributed it to the play of the breeze in the tree tops. When he had moistened the right arm, he felt him- self closely embraced round the neck by a young and vigorous arm, and yet it was his father's arm! A piercing shriek burst from his lips, he dropped the phial, it broke; the liquid evaporated. The servants of the castle came running in armed with torches. This cry had terrified and astounded them; it was ,as if the trumpet at the last judgment had shaken the universe. In a moment the room was full of peo- ple. The trembling crowd found Don Felipe in a swoon, held by his father's powerful arm which clasped him round the neck. Then, marvelous to relate, the assistants saw the head of Don Juan, as young and beautiful as Antinoiis ; a head with black DON JUAN 29 hair, and brilliant eyes, and ruddy mouth straining horribly, and yet unable to move the skeleton to which it belonged. An old serving man cried out, "A miracle!" The Spaniards all repeated, "A mira- cle!" Too pious to admit the mysteries of magic, Dona Elvira sent for the Abbot of San Lucar. When the Abbot had seen the miracle with his own eyes, being an Abbot who asked for nothing more than a chance of augmenting his revenues, he resolved to profit by it, like a man of sense. He declared at once that the Sefior Don Juan would undoubtedly be can- onized, and appointed the ceremony of his apotheosis at his monastery, which, he said, would be called henceforth San Juan de Lucar. At these words the heail made a very funny grimace. The taste of the Spaniards for this kind of solem- nity is so well known, that it ought not to be difficult to imagine the religious fripperies with which the Abbey of San Lucar celebrated the translation of the Blessed Don Juan Belvidero into its Church. Within a few days of the death of this illustrious Senor,, the miracle of his incomplete resurrection had been passed on so briskly from village to village within a radius of more than fifty leagues round San Lucar, that al- ready it was as good as a play to see the sightseers on the road; they came from all sides scenting the deli- cacy of a Te Deum chanted with flambeaux. The an- cient mosque of the monastery of San Lucar a mar- velous edifice built by the Moors, whose vaults had 30 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC heard for three centuries the name of Jesus Christ substituted for the name of Allah could not contain the crowd come together to witness the ceremony. Packed as close as ants, Hidalgos, in velvet mantles, armed with their good swords, stood upright round the pillars, finding no room to bend knees that bent in no other place but there; bewitching peasant girls, clad in basquines which displayed their charms to advantage, gave their arms to old white-haired men; young men, with passion in their eyes, found themselves side by side with elderly decked-out women. Then there were couples tremulous with happiness, curious maidens brought thither by their sweethearts, brides and bridegrooms married but a single night, children shyly holding one another's hands. Such was the company, rich in color, bril- liant in contrast, laden with flowers and enamel, mak- ing a soft hum of expectation in the silence of the night. The wide doors of the Church opened. Those who had come too late remained outside, and saw from afar through the three open portals a scene of which the vaporous decorations of our modern operas could not give the faintest idea. Pious women and unholy men, eager to gain the good graces of a new saint, lit thousands of tapers in his honor throughout the vast Church interested lights which made the building seem as if enchanted. The black arches, the columns with their capitals, the deep chapels glittering with gold and silver, the galleries, the Saracen carving, the DON JUAN 31 most delicate particles of this delicate sculpture were outlined in this excess of light, like the capricious fig- ures formed in a glowing furnace. It was an ocean of fire, dominated, at the end of the Church, by the gilded choir, where towered the high altar rivalling in its glory the rising oun. But the splendor of the golden lamps, the silver candelabra, the tassels, the saint and the ex votos, paled before the shrine where- in lay Don Juan. The corpse of that impious person glistened with jewelry, and flowers; and crystals, and diamonds, and gold, and feathers as white as the wings of a seraph ; it replaced upon the altar a pic- ture of Christ. About him glittered numberless tapers, which shot into the air their waves of lambent flame. The worthy Abbot of San Lucar, vested in full pontificals, wearing his jewelled miter, his rochet, and golden cross, was enthroned on a seat of imperial splendor above the choir. All his clergy, aged and passionless men with silver hair, clad in albs of fine linen, were gathered round him, like the holy con- fessors whom painters group about the Eternal. The precentor and the dignitaries of the Chapter, deco- rated with their brilliant insignia and all their eccle- siastical vanities, passed to and fro in the shadowy depth of the incense, like the stars which roll through the firmament. When the hour of triumph was come, the bells awoke the echoes of the country, and this vast assembly raised to God the first cry of praise with 32 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC which the Te Deum commences. It was indeed a sub- lime cry voices clear and joyous, the voices of women in ecstasy, mingled with the deep, strong voices of men, those thousands of voices in so stupendous a chorus that the organ could not surpass it with all the roaring of its pipes. But amid this tumult of sound, the penetrating notes of the choristers and the sonorous tones of the basses evoked a train of gracious thought, representing childhood and strength in an impassioned concert of human voices blended in one sentiment of Love. Te Deum laudamus! From the midst of the Cathedral, black with the kneeling multitude, this chant rose like a light that bursts forth suddenly in the night, and the silence was broken as by the roar of a thunder-clap. The voices ascended with the clouds of incense as they spread their blue, transparent veils upon the fantastic marvels of the architecture. All was splendor, per- fume, light, and melody. At the moment when this anthem of love and thanksgiving rolled upward to- ward the altar, Don Juan, too polite not to return thanks, and too humorous not to understand a joke, answered by a terrible laugh, and drew himself up in his shrine. But the devil having put it into has head that he ran a chance of being taken for an ordinary individual, a saint, a Boniface, a Pantalovn, he threw this melody of love into confusion by a howl- ing to which were added the thousand voices of Hell. DON JUAN 33 Earth spoke her blessings, and Heaven uttered its curse. The ancient Church trembled to its foun- dations. "Te Deum laudamus!" cried the assembly. "Go to all the devils, brute beasts that you are? God, God ! Carajos Demonios, idiotic creatures, with your silly old god ! ' ' And a torrent of curses rolled out like a stream of burning lava in an eruption of Vesuvius. "Deus Sabaoth! Sabaoth!" cried the Christians. "You insult the majesty of Hell!" answered Don Juan, grinding his teeth. Presently the living arm succeeded in getting free out of the shrine, and menaced the assembly with ges- tures eloquent of mockery and despair. "The saint blesses us," said the old women, the children, and the maidens betrothed a credulous peo- ple. Truly, we are often deceived in our worship. The man of power mocks at those who compliment him, and sometimes compliments those whom in the depth of his heart he mocks. At that moment when the Abbot, prostrate before the altar, began to sing, "Sancte Johannes, ora pro nobis!" he heard quite distinctly, "0 coglione." "What's going on up there?" said the sub-prior, seeing the shrine move. "The saint is playing the devil," answered the Abbot. Then the living head detached itself violently from 34 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC the body which lived no longer, and fell on the yel- low skull of the officiant. "Dost thou remember Dona Elvira?" it cried, fas- tening its teeth in the Abbot's head. The Abbot uttered a terrible shriek, which threw the ceremony into confusion. All the priests ran up together and crowded round their superior. ' ' Idiot, say at least that there is a God ! ' ' screamed the voice. Just at that moment the Abbot, bitten in the brain, was about to expire. CHRIST IN FLANDERS AT a time somewhat indeterminate in Braoantine history, connection between the island of Cadzant and the coast of Flanders was kept up by a boat used for passengers to and fro. The capital of the island, Middleburg, afterward so celebrated in the annals of Protestantism, counted then hardly two or three hun- dred hearths. Rich Ostend was then an unknown harbor, flanked by a village thinly peopled by a few fisherfolk, and poor dealers, and pirates who plied their trade with impunity. Nevertheless, the borough of Ostend, composed of about twenty houses and three hundred cottages, cabins, and hovels made with the remains of wrecked ships rejoiced in a governor, a militia, a gallows, a convent, and a burgomaster, in fact, all the institutions of advanced civilization. Who was reigning at that time in Brabant, Belgium, and Flanders? On this point tradition is mute. Let us admit that this story is strangely imbued with that vagueness, indefiniteness, and love of the 35 36 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC marvelous, which the favorite orators of Flemish vigils love to intermingle in their legends, as varied in poetry as they are contradictory in detail. Told from age to age, repeated from hearth to hearth, by grandmothers and by story-tellers night and day, this chronicle has received each century a different color- ing. Like those buildings planned according to the architectural caprice of each epoch, whose dark, crumbling masses are a pleasure to poets alone, this legend would drive commentators, and wranglers over facts, words, and dates, to desperation. The narrator believes in it, as all superstitious souls in Flanders have believed in it, without being for that reason either more learned or more weak-minded. Only in the impossibility of harmonizing all the different ver- sions, here is the story, stripped perhaps of its ro- mantic naivete for this it is impossible to reproduce but still, with its daring statements disproved by history, and its morality approved by religion, its fantastic flowers of imagination, and hidden sense which the wise can interpret each to his own liking. Let each one seek his pasture therein and take the trouble to separate the good grain from the tares. The boat which served to carry over the passengers from the island of Cadzant to Ostend was just about to leave the village. Before undoing the iron chain which held his boat to a stone on the little jetty where people embarked, the skipper blew his horn several times to call the loiterers, for this journey was his CHRIST IX FLAXDERS 37 last. Night was coming on, the last fires of the set- ting sun scarcely gave enough light to .distinguish the coast of Flanders or the tardy passengers on the island wandering along the earthen walls which sur- rounded the fields or among . the tall reeds of the marshes. The boat was full. ' ' What are you waiting for? Let us be off!" they cried. Just then a man appeared a few steps from the jetty. The pilot, who had neither heard nor seen him approaching, was somewhat surprised. The passenger seemed to have risen from the earth on a sudden. He might have been a peasant sleeping in a field, waiting for the hour for starting, whom the horn had wakened up. Was it a thief, or was it some one from the Custom House or police? When he arrived on the jetty to which the boat was moored, seven persons who were standing in the stern hastened to sit down on the benches, in order to have them to themselves and prevent the stranger from seating himself among them. It was a suduen instinctive feeling, one of those aristocratic instincts which suggest themselves to rich people. Four of these personages belonged to the highest nobility of Flanders. First of all, there was a young cavalier, with two beautiful grayhounds, wearing over his long hair a cap decked with jewels. He clinked his gilded spurs, and now and again curled his mustache, as he cast disdainful looks at the rest of the freight. Then there was a proud damosel, who carried a fal- 38 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC con on her wrist and spoke only to her mother or an ecclesiastic of high rank, a relative, no doubt. These persons made as much noise talking together as if they were the only people on the boat. All the same, next to them sat a man of great importance in the country, a fat merchant from Bruges, enveloped in a large mantle. His servant, armed to the teeth, kept by his side two bags full of money. Beside them was a man of science, a doctor of the University of Lou- vain, with his clerk. These people, who all despised one another, were separated from the bows by the rower's bench. When the late passenger put his foot into the boat he gave a swift look at the stern, but when he saw no room there he went to seek a place among the people in the bows. It was the poor who sat there. At the sight of a man bareheaded, whose brown cloth coat and fine linen shirt had no ornament, who held in his hand neither hat nor cap, with neither purse nor rapier at his girdle, all took him for^a burgo- master a good and gentle man, like one of those old Flemings whose nature and simple character have been so well rendered by the painters of their coun- try. The poor passengers welcomed the stranger with a respectful demeanor, which excited mocking whis- pers among the people in the stern. An old soldier, a man of toil and trouble, gave him his place on the bench, and sat himself at the end of the boat, keep- ing himself steady by putting his feet against one of CHRIST IN FLANDERS 39 the transverse beams which knit the planks together like the backbone of a fish. A young woman, a mother with her little child, who seemed to belong to the working-class of Ostend, moved back to make room for the newcomer. In this movement there was no trace either of servility or disdain. It was merely a mark of that kindliness by which the poor, who know so well how to appreciate a service, show their frank and natural disposition so simple and obvious in the expression of all their qualities, good or bad. The stranger thanked them with a gesture full of nobility, and sat down between the young mother and the old soldier. Behind him was a peasant with his son, ten years old. A poor old woman, with a wallet almost empty, old and wrinkled, and in rags a type of misery and neglect lay in the prow, crouched upon a coil of ropes. One of the rowers, an old sailor, who had known her when she was rich and beautiful, had let her get in for what the people so beautifully call "the love of God." "Thank you kindly, Thomas; ' ' the old woman had said ; ' ' I will say two Paters and two Aves for you in my prayers this even- ing." The skipper blew his horn once more, looked at the silent country, cast the chain into his boat, ran along the side to the helm, took the tiller, and stood erect; then, having looked at the sky, called out in a loud voice to the rowers, when they were well in 40 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC the open sea, ' ' Row hard, make haste ; the sea smiles evilly the witch! I feel the swell at the helm and the storm at my wound. ' ' These words, spoken in the language of the sea a tongue only understood of those accustomed to the sound of the waves gave to the oars a hastened but ever-cadenced movement, as different from the former manner of rowing as the gallop of a horse from its trot. The fine people sit- ting at the stern took pleasure in seeing the sinuous arms, the bronzed faces with eyes of fire, the dis- tended muscles, and the different human forms work- ing in unison, just to get them the quicker over this narrow strait. So far from being sorry for their labor, they pointed out the rowers to each other, and laughed at the grotesque expressions which their ex- ertion printed on their anxious faces. In the prow the soldier, the peasant, and the old woman, regarded the mariners with that kind of compassion natural to people who, living by toil, know its hard anguish and feverish fatigue. Besides, being accustomed to life in the open air, they all divined by the look of the sky the danger which threatened them; so they were serious. The young mother was rocking her child to sleep, singing to it some old hymn of the church. "If we do get over," said the old soldier to the peasant, ' ' God will have taken a deal of trouble to keep us alive." "Ah! He is master," said the old woman; "but I think it is His good pleasure to call us to Himself. CHRIST IN FLANDERS 41 Do you see that light, there?" and by a gesture of the head she pointed out the setting sun. Bands of fire streaked vividly the brown-red tinted clouds, which seemed just about to unchain a furious wind. The sea gave forth a suppressed murmur, a sort of internal groan, something like the growling of a dog whose anger will not be appeased. After all Ostend was not far off. Just now the sky and the sea showed one of those sights to which it is impossible for words or painting to give longer dura- tion than they have in reality. Human creations like powerful contrasts, so artists generally demand from nature its most brilliant aspects, despairing perhaps to be able to render the great and beautiful poetry of her ordinary appearance, although the human soul is often as profoundly moved by calm as by motion, by the silence as much as by the storm. There was one moment when every one on the boat was silent and gazed on the sea and sky, whether from presentiment or in obedience to that religious mel- ancholy which comes over nearly all of us at the hour of prayer, at the fall of day, at the moment when nature is silent and the bells speak. The sea cast up a faint, white glimmer, but changing like the color of steel ; the sky was mostly gray ; in the west long, narrow spaces looked like waves of blood, where- as in the east glittering lines, marked as by a fine pencil, were separated from one another by clouds, folded like the wrinkles on an old man's forehead. 42 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC Thus the sea and the sky formed a neutral back- ground, everything in half tints, which made the fires of the setting sun glare ominously. The face of nature inspired a feeling of terror. If it is allow- able to interweave the daring hyperboles of the people into the written language, one might repeat what the soldier said, "Time is rolling away," or what the peasant answered, that the sky had the look of a hangman. All of a sudden the wind rose in the west, and the skipper, who never ceased to watch the sea, seeing it swell toward the horizon, cried, "Ho, ho!" At this cry the sailors stopped immediately, and let their oars float. "The skipper's right," said Thomas. The boat, borne on the top of a huge wave, seemed to be de- scending to the bottom of the gaping sea. At this extraordinary movement and this sudden rage of the ocean the people in the stern turned pale, and gave a terrible cry, ' ' We perish ! ' ' "Not yet," answered the skipper quietly. At this moment the clouds were rent in twain by the force of the wind exactly above the boat. The gray masses spread out with ominous quickness from east to west, and the twilight, falling straight down through a rent made by the storm-wind, rendered visible every face. The passengers, the rich and the noble, the sailors and the poor, all stopped one moment in astonishment at the aspect of the last comer. His golden hair, parted in the middle on his tranquil, serene forehead, fell CHRIST IN FLANDERS 43 in many' curls on his shoulders, and outlined against the gray sky a face sublime in its gentleness, radi- ant with divine love. He did not despise death; he was certain not to perish. But if at first the people at the stern had forgotten for an instant the tempest whose implacable fury menaced them, they soon re- turned to their selfish sentiments and lifelong habits. "It's lucky for him, that dolt of a burgomaster, that he does not know the danger we are all in. There he stands like a dog, and doesn't seem to mind dying, ' ' said the doctor. Hardly had he completed this judicious remark when the tempest unchained its lesions; wind blew from every side, the boat spun round like a top, and the sea swamped it. "Oh, my poor child! my child! who will save my child?" cried the mother, in a heartrending voice. "You yourself," replied the stranger. The sound of this voice penetrated the heart of the young woman and put hope therein. She heard this sweet word, in spite of the raging of the storm, in spite of the shrieks of the passengers. "Holy Virgin of Perpetual Succor, who art at Antwerp, I promise you twenty pounds of wax and a statue if you will only get me out of this," cried the merchant, falling on his knees upon his bags of gold. "The Virgin is no more at Antwerp than she is here," replied the doctor. 44 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC "She is in heaven," said a voice, which seemed to come forth from the sea. "Who spoke?" "The devil," said the servant; "he's mocking the Virgin of Antwerp." ' ' Shut up with your blessed Virgin, ' ' said the skip- per to the passengers; "take hold of the bowls and help me get the water out of the boat. As to you," he continued, addressing the sailors, "row hard, we have a moment's grace, and in the devil's name, who has left you in this world until now, let us be our own Providence. This little strip of water is hor- ribly dangerous, I know from thirty years' experi- ence. Is this evening the first time I have had a storm to deal with ? ' ' Then standing at the helm, the skipper continued to look alternately at the boat, the sea, and the sky. "The skipper mocks at everything," said Thomas in a low voice. "Will God let us die with these wretched people?" asked the proud damosel of the handsome cavalier. "No! no! Noble damsel, listen to me." He put his arm round her waist, and spoke in her ear. "I can swim don't say anything about it; I will take you by your beautiful hair and bring you safely to the shore; but I can save you only." The damosel looked at her old mother; the dame was on her knees asking absolution from the bishop, who was not listening to her. The cavalier read in CHRIST /.Y FLANDERS 45 the eyes of his beautiful mistress some faint sentiment of filial piety, so he said to her in a low voice, ' ' Sub- mit yourself to the will of God ; if He wishes to call your mother' to Himself, it will be doubtless for her happiness in the other world," he added, in a voice still lower, ' ; and for ours in this. ' ' The dame Rupelmonde possessed seven fiefs, besides the barony of Gavres. The damosel listened to the voice of life, to the interests of love, speaking by the mouth of the handsome adventurer, a young mis- creant, who haunted churches, seeking for prey either a girl to marry or else good ready money. The bishop blessed the waves and ordered them to be calm, not knowing exactly what to do; he was thinking of his concubine awaiting him with a deli- cate feast, perhaps at this moment in her bath per- fuming herself, or arraying herself in velvet, and fastening on her necklaces and jewels. So far from thinking of the powers of the church, and consoling these Christians, and exhorting them to trust in God, the perverse bishop mingled worldly regrets and words of lust with the sacred words of the Breviary. The light, which lit up the pale faces, showed all their varying expressions, when the boat was borne up into the air by a wave, or cast down to the bottom of the abyss; then, shaken like a frail leaf, a play- thing of the autumn wind, it cracked its shell, and seemed nigh to break altogether. Then there were horrible cries alternating with awful silence. 46 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC The demeanor of the people seated in the prow of the boat contrasted singularly with that of the rich and powerful in the stern. The young mother strained her child to her bosom every time that the waves threatened to engulf the frail bark; but she held to the hope with which the words of the stranger had filled her heart: each time she turned her eyes toward this man she drank in from his face a new faith, the strong faith of a weak woman, the faith of a mother. Living by the divine word, the word of love, which had gone forth from this man, the simple creature awaited trustfully the fulfilment of the sort of promise he had given her, and scarcely feared the tempest any more. Sticking to the side of the boat, the soldier ceased not to contemplate this singular being, on Avhose impassibility he sought to model his own rough, tanned face,, bringing into play all his intelligence and strength of will, whose powerful springs had not been vitiated in the course of a pas- sive mechanical life. He was emulous to show him- self tranquil and calm. After the manner of this superior courage, he ended by identifying himself in some measure with the secret principle of its interior power. Then his imagination became an instinctive fanaticism, a love without limit, a faith in this man, like that enthusiasm which soldiers have for their commander when he is a man of power, surrounded with the glory of victories, marching in the midst of the splendid prestige of genius. The poor old woman CHRIST IN FLANDERS 47 said in a low voice, "Ah! what a miserable sinner I am ! Have I not suffered enough to expiate the pleas- ures of my youth ? Miserable one, why hast thou led the gay life of a Frenchwoman ? Why hast thou con- sumed the goods of God with the people of the Church, the goods of the poor 'twixt the drink shop and the pawn shop? Ah! how wicked I was! Oh! my God ! my God ! let me finish my hell in this world of misery. Holy Virgin, Mother of God, take pity on me." ' ' Console yourself, mother, God is not a Lombard ; although I have killed here and there good people and wicked, I do not fear for the resurrection." "Ah! Sir, how happy they are, those beautiful ladies who are near the bishop, holy man!" the old woman went on ; ' ' they will have absolution from their sins. Oh ! if I could only hear the voice of a priest saying to me, 'Your sins are forgiven you,' I could believe him. ' ' The stranger turned toward her, and his look, full of charity, made her tremble. "Have faith," he said, "and you will be saved." "May God reward you, good sir," she answered. "If you speak truly, I will go for you and for me on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Loretto, barefooted." The two peasants, father and son, remained silent, resigned, and submitting to the will of God, as people accustomed to follow instinctively, like animals, the convulsions of nature. 48 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC So on one side there were riches, pride, knowledge, debauchery, crime, all human society such as it is made by arts, thought, and education, the world and its laws; but also on this side, only shrieks, terror, the struggles of a thousand conflicting feelings, with horrible doubt, naught but the anguish of fear. And, towering above these, one powerful man, the skipper of the boat, doubting nothing, the chief, the fatalist king, making his own Providence, crying out for bailing-bowls and not on the Virgin to save him, defying the storm, and wrestling with the sea, body to body. At the other end of the boat, the weak: the mother, holding to her bosom a little child, who smiled at the storm : a wanton once gay, now given over to horrible remorse : a soldier, scarred with wounds, without other reward than his mutilated life, as a price for indefatigable devotion; he had hardly a morsel of bread, steeped in tears; all the same, he laughed at everything, and marched on without care, happy when he could drown his glory at the bottom of a pot of beer, or was telling stories thereof to won- dering children. He commended gaily to God the care of his future. Lastly, two peasants, people of toil and weariness, labor incarnate, the work on which the world lives ; these simple creatures were guileless of thought and its treasures, but ready to lose them- selves utterly in a belief ; having a more robust faith, in that they had never discussed or analyzed it; vir- CHRIST IN FLANDERS 49 gin natures, in whom conscience had remained pure and feeling strong. Contrition, misery, love, work had exercised, purified, concentrated, disculpated their will, the only thing which in man resembles that which sages call the soul. When the boat, piloted by the marvelous dexterity of the skipper, came almost in view of Ostend, fifty paces from the shore, it was driven back by the con- vulsion of the storm, and suddenly began to sink. The stranger with the light upon his face then said to this little world of sorrow, "Those who have faith shall be saved ; let them follow me. ' ' This man stood up and walked with a firm step on the waves. At once the young mother took her child in her arms and walked with him on the sea. The soldier sud- denly stood at attention, saying in his rough lan- guage, "By my pipe! I follow you to the devil." Then, without seeming astonished, he marched on the sea. The old prostitute, believing in the omnipotence of God, followed the man, and walked on the sea. The two peasants said, "As they are walking on the sea, why should not we? " So they got up and hastened after the others, walking on the sea. Thomas wished to do likewise; but his faith wav- ered, and he fell several times into the sea, but got out again; and after three failures he too walked upon the sea. The daring pilot stuck like a leech to the bottom 50 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC of his boat. The merchant had faith, and had risen, but he wanted to take his gold with him, and his gold took him to the bottom of the sea. Mocking at the charlatan and the imbeciles who listened to him, at the moment when he saw the stranger proposing to the passengers to walk on the sea, the man of science began to laugh, and was swallowed up in the ocean. The damosel was drawn down into the abyss by her lover. The bishop and the old lady went to the bot- tom, heavy with sin perhaps, heavier still with un- belief and confidence in false images ; heavy with de- votional practices, light of alms and true religion. The faithful troop, who trod with firm, dry feet on the plain of the raging waters, heard around them the horrible howling of the storm; great sheets of water broke in their path; irresistible force rent the ocean in twain. Through the mist these faithful ones per- ceived on the shore a little feeble light, which flick- ered in the window of a fisherman 's cabin. Each one as he marched bravely toward this light seemed to hear his neighbor crying through the roaring sea, "Courage!" Nevertheless, absorbed each in his own danger, no one said a single word. And so they reached the shore. When they were all seated at the hearth of the fisherman, they sought in vain the guide who had a light upon his face. Seated upon the summit of a rock, at the base of which the hurri- cane had cast the pilot, stuck to his plank with all the strength of a sailor in the throes of death, the CHRIST IN FLANDERS 51 MAN descended, picked up the shipwrecked mar al- most dashed to pieces ; then he said, as he held out a helping hand over his head, "It is well this once, but do as thou hast done no more; the example would be too bad." He took the mariner on his shoulders, and carried him to the fisherman's cottage. He knocked for the unfortunate man, that one should open to him the door of this humble refuge; then the Savior dis- appeared. In this place the sailors built the Convent of Mercy, where were long to be seen the prints that the feet of JESUS CHRIST had, it was said, left on the sand. Afterward, when the French entered Belgium, some monks took away with them this precious relic, the testimony of the last visit JESUS ever paid to the earth. IN THE TIME OF THE TERROR ON January 22, 1793, about eight o'clock in the evening, an old lady was walking down the steep in- cline which ends in front of the Church of Saint Laurent in Paris. It had snowed so hard all day that her footsteps were scarcely audible. The streets were deserted, and the feeling of fear which silence naturally inspires was increased by the remembrance of the terror under which France then groaned. The old lady had met no one on the way, and her eye- sight, which had long been failing, did not allow of her distinguishing in the lamplight the few passers- by, scattered here and there like shadows along the immense vista of the faubourg. She went on bravely alone through the solitude, as if her age were a talis- man to preserve her from all harm. When she had passed the Rue des Morts, she thought she could dis- tinguish the firm, heavy tread of a man walking be- hind her. She fancied it was not the first time that she had heard the sound. She was afraid, thinking 52 IN THE TIME OF THE TERROR 53 that she was being followed, so she tried to walk faster than before, in order to reach a shop-window in which the lights were bright enough for her to test the truth of her suspicions. As soon as she found herself in the gleam of light which streamed out horizontally from the shop she turned her head suddenly and perceived a human form in the mist. This indistinct glimpse was enough; a feeling of ter- ror fell upon her; she tottered for a moment under it, for now she felt certain that this stranger had ac- companied her from the first step she had taken out- side her own house. Her desire to escape from this spy gave her strength; incapable of reasoning, she walked twice as fast as before, as though it were pos-- sible for her to distance a man necessarily much more active than she. Aftt: running for some minutes, she reached a pastry-cook's shop, went in and fell, rather than sat down, on a chair which was standing before the counter. As her hand rattled upon the latch a young woman seated at her embroidery raised her eyes from her work, looked through the square pane of glass, and recognized the old-fashioned violet silk mantle which enveloped the old lady; then she hurriedly opened a drawer, as if to take out some- thing that she had been keeping there for her. Not only did this movement and the expression of the young woman's face betray her desire to get rid of the stranger as soon as possible, as a person whom she did not want to see, but she even let a gesture of im- 54 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC patience escape her when she found the drawer empty. Then, without looking at the lady, she went out hastily from behind the counter into the back part of the shop and called her husband ; he appeared at once. "Wherever have you put ?" she asked, myste- riously, glancing in the direction of the old lady, and not finishing the sentence. The pastry-cook could only see the old lady's head- dress, a huge black bonnet, trimmed with violet ribands, but he looked at his wife as much to to say, "Do you think I should leave a thing like that in your counter?" and disappeared. His wife, surprised that the old lady sat so still and silent, went close up to her ; when she saw her she was seized with a feel- ing of compassion, and perhaps of curiosity too. Although the old lady 's face was naturally pallid, like the face of a person who practices austerities in secret, it was easy to see that some recent emotion had ren- dered it even more pallid than usual. Her head-dress was so arranged as to hide her hair, which was white, no doubt from age, for it was evident that she did not wear powder, as there was no sign of it upon the collar of her dress. This absence of ornament gave her face a look of religious severity. Her features were proud and grave. In former times the manners and habits of people of rank were so different from those of the other classes that it was easy then to dis- tinguish a noble. Thus the young woman felt sure IN THE TIME OF THE TERROR 55 that the strange lady was a ci-devant, who had at one time been attached to the Court. "Madame?" said she involuntarily, forgetting, in the respect she inspired, that the title was proscribed. The old lady made no answer; she kept her eyes fixed on the shop-window, as if some terrible object were depicted on the glass. "What is the matter, citoyenne?" asked the shop- man, returning at that moment. The worthy pastry-cook awoke the lady from her reverie, by handing her a small cardboard box wrapt up in blue paper. ' ' Nothing, nothing, my friends, ' ' said she in a gen- tle voice. She raised her eyes to the pastry-cook, as if to thank him by a look; but seeing a red cap upon his head, she cried aloud ' ' Ah ! you have betrayed me ! ' ' The young woman and her husband answered with a gesture of horror ; the stranger blushed, either with relief, or with regret at having suspected them. "Forgive me!" she said at once, with childish sweetness. Then she drew a gold louis out of her pocket and gave it to the pastry-cook. "That is the price we agreed upon," said she. There is a state of want recognized instinctively by those in want them- selves. The pastry-cook and his wife looked at one another, interchanging the same thought as they glanced at the old lady. The louis was evidently her Co SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC last. Her hands trembled as she held out the coin to them ; he looked at it sorrowfully, but without grudg- ing, though she seemed to be conscious of the full ex- tent of the sacrifice. Hunger and misery were en- graved upon her face in as legible characters as her ascetic habits and her present fear. Her clothes still bore the traces of past richness. She was dressed in faded silk, with carefully mended lace, and an elegant though worn mantle in fact, the rags of former wealth. The shop-keepers, wavering between pity and self-interest, tried to soothe their conscience with words. "Citoyenne, you seem very poorly." ' ' Would Madame like to take anything ? ' ' asked the woman, catching up her husband's words. ' ' We 've got some very good broth, ' ' said the pastry- cook. "It's so cold, perhaps you have caught a chill, Ma- dame, coming here ; you are welcome to rest a bit and warm yourself." "We are not so black as the devil," said the pastry- cook. Reassured by the friendly tone of the charitable pastry-cook, the lady admitted that she had been followed by a man, and was afraid to go home alone. "Is that all?" replied the man with the red cap. "Wait a minute for me, citoyenne." He gave the louis to his wife ; then, moved by that 57 sense of acknowledgment which steals into the heart of a vendor who has received an exorbitant price for goods of slight value, he went and put on his uniform as a guarde national, took his hat and sword, and re- turned under arms. But his wife had had time to reflect. . As in many other hearts, reflection closed the hand which benevolence had opened. The woman had got frightened ; she was afraid her husband would get into some scrape, so she plucked at the lappet of his coat to detain him. However, in obedience to an instinct of charity, the good man offered on the spot to escort the old lady. "It looks as if the man whom the citoyenne is afraid of were still prowling round the shop," said the young woman sharply. ' ' I am afraid he is, ' ' frankly admitted the lady. ' ' Suppose it were a spy ? or perhaps there is a con- spiracy! Do not go and take the box away from her." These words were whispered into the pastry-cook's ear by his wife; they froze the extempore courage which had inflated his breast. "Eh ! I '11 just go and say a word to him, and he'll be off in a minute," he exclaimed, opening the door and going out precipitately. The old lady sat down again on her chair as passive as a child ; she looked almost silly. The honest shop- man speedily returned ; his face, red enough to begin with, and further inflamed by the fire of his oven, had 58 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC suddenly become livid ; he was so overcome with ter- ror that his legs tottered under him, and his eyes looked like a drunkard's. "D'you want to get our heads cut off, wretched aristocrat!" he cried, furious. "Come, take to your heels, and don't ever show yourself here again. Don't expect me to furnish you with the elements of con- spiracy!" As the pastry-cook finished these words, he tried to snatch back the little box, which the old lady had put into one of her pockets. But scarcely had the impudent fellow's hands touched her clothes, when the strange lady preferring to face the dangers of her walk unprotected save by God, rather than lose that she had just purchased regained all the agility oi her youth ; she sprang to the door, opened it sud- denly, and vanished from the gaze of the pastry-cook a lid his wife, leaving them trembling and stupefied. Ay soon as she found herself outside, she set off at a quick walk ; but her strength soon failed her, for she heard the heavy footsteps of the spy who was follow- ing her so pitilessly, crunching the snow behind her. She was obliged to stop; he stopped too. Whether from fear or lack of intelligence, she did not dare either to speak or to look at him. She went on, walk- ing slowly; then the man slackened his steps, always keeping at a distance from which he was able to watch her. The stranger seemed to be the very shadow of the woman. Nine o'clock struck as this silent pair IX THE TIME OF THE TERROR 59 passed again before the Church of Saint Laurent. It is in the nature of every heart, even the feeblest, that a feeling of calmness should succeed to violent agita- tion, for, if feeling is infinite, our organization is limited. So the strange woman, as she experienced no harm from her supposed persecutor, was inclined to look upon him as an unknown friend anxious to protect her. She summed up all the circumstances attendant on the apparitions of the stranger with a view to discover plausible corroboration of this con- soling theory; she was bent on finding out good in- tentions in him rather than evil. Forgetting the ter- ror with which he had inspired the pastry-cook just before, she passed on with a firm step through the higher parts of le faubourg Saint Martin. After walking for half an hour, she reached a house situated at the corner formed by the principal street of the faubourg and the street which leads to la barriSre de Pantin. Even now this is still one of the loneliest places in the whole of Paris. The north wind blows over les buttes de Saint Chaumont and de Belleville, and whistles through the houses or rather hovels sprinkled over a nearly deserted valley, divided by walls of mud and bones. This desolate spot seemed the natural refuge of misery and despair. The man, implacable in his pursuit of this poor creature, who was yet bold enough to traverse those silent streets by night, seemed impressed by the scene that rose before him. He stopped to consider, standing upright in SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC an attitude of hesitation. A lamp, whose flickering flame could scarcely penetrate the mist, cast its faint light upon him. Fright gave the old woman eyes. She thought she could descry a sinister look upon the man's features. She felt her fears reawakening, then, taking advmta^e of a sort of uncertainty ^vhich seemed to make him linger, she glided through the darkness to the door of the solitary house, touched a spring, and was gone swift as a dream. The man stood motionless looking at the house. In a certain measure it might have served for the type of the wretched dwellings of this faubourg. The crazy cabin was built of ashlar smeared with a coat of plaster, so rotten and with such big cracks that it looked as if the least puff of wind would blow the whole thing down. The roof, covered with brown moss-grown tiles, had sunk in several places, and seemed on the point of falling in under the weight of the snow. There were three windows in each story, the frames mouldering with damp and starting with the action of the sun ; it was evident that the cold must find its way through them into the rooms. The house was as isolated as an ancient tower that time has forgotten to destroy. The attics at the top of the wretched building were pierced with windows at irregular in- tervals, and from these shone a dim light, but the rest of the house was in complete darkness. The old wo- man had some difficulty in climbing the rough awk- ward staircase, up which a rope served for a handrail. IN THE TIME OF THE TERROR, 01 She knocked mysteriously at the door of a lodging in the attic; an old man offered her a chair; she sat down in it precipitately. ' ' Hide ! hide ! ' ' said she. ' ' Though we only go out so seldom, they know everything we do, and spy out every step we take." "What is it now?" asked another old woman who was sitting by the fire. "The man who has been prowling round the house since yesterday morning has been following me this evening. ' ' At these words the three inhabitants of the garret looked at each other; they did not try to conceal the signs of profound terror visible on their faces. The old man was the least agitated of the three, perhaps because he was in the most danger. A brave man, under the burden of great misfortune or under the yoke of persecution, has already so to speak begun his self-sacrifice; he looks upon each day of his life only as one more victory gained over fate. It was easy to see from the looks of the two women which were fastened on the old man that he and he alone was the object of their intense anxiety. "Why should we cease to trust in God, sisters'?" said he in a hollow voice, but with much earnestness ; "we sang His praises amid the shouts of the murder- ers and the cries of the dying in the Carmelite Con- vent; if He willed that I should be saved from the massacre, it was doubtless to preserve me for a des- G2 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC tiny that I must endure without murmuring. God protects His own, He can dispose of them according to His will. It is you we must take thought for, not for me." "No," said one of the two old women, "what is our life compared with the life of a priest ? ' ' "When I was once outside the Abbaye de Chelles I looked upon myself as dead," exclaimed the nun who had not been out. "Look," said the one who had just come* in, "here are the Hosts." "But," she exclaimed, "I can hear some one coming up the stairs." At these words they all three listened; the noise ceased. "Do not be alarmed," said the priest, "if some one tries to find you. Some one, on whose fidelity we can count, was to take all necessary steps for crossing the frontier, and will come for letters which I have writ- ten to le Due de Langeais and le Marquis de Beau- seant, asking them to consider means for rescuing you from this terrible country, and the death or misery which await you here." "But will you not follow us?" whispered the two nuns eagerly, with a sort of despair. "My place is where there are victims," said the priest simply. The women looked at their guest in silence, with holy admiration. Marthe, " said he, addressing the sister who L\ TUE TIME OF THE TERROR 63 had gone out for the Hosts, "this messenger will an- swer Fiat voluntas to the word Hosanna." ''There is some one on the stairs!" exclaimed the other nun, opening a hiding-place contrived under the roof. This time, in the profound silence, they could easily hear the steps. Avhich were covered with lumps of dried mud, creaking under the tread of a man. The priest squeezed with difficulty into a sort of ward- robe, and the nun threw some clothes over him. "You can shut the door, Sceur Agathe," said he in a muffled voice. He was scarcely hidden when there were three raps at the door. The two holy women trembled; they took counsel by looks, not daring to pronounce a single word. They appeared to be both about sixty years old. Cut off from the world for forty years, they were like plants accustomed to the atmosphere of a greenhouse, which die if they are put out of it. They were so habituated to convent life that they could not conceive any other. One morning their gratings had been broken down, and they had shud- dered at finding themselves free. It is easy to pic- ture the sort of unnatural numbness that the events of the Revolution had produced in their innocent hearts. Incapable of reconciling their monastic ideas with the difficulties of life, they could not even under- stand their own situation ; they were like children who have been once cared for and then abandoned by 4 SHORT STOItTES BY BALZAC their special providence their mother, praying in- stead of crying. Thus in the face of the danger they foresaw at this moment, they remained mute and pas- sive, knowing no other defence than Christian resig- nation. The man who had asked for admittance in- terpreted their silence as consent; he opened the door at once and presented himself. The two nuns shud- dered when they recognized him as the person who had been prowling round their house for some time past collecting information about them. They sat motionless, looking at him with apprehensive curios- ity, like a shy child silently staring at a stranger. The man was stout and of lofty stature; there was nothing in his bearing, his manner, or his physiog- nomy suggestive of an evil nature. He imitated the stillness of the nuns, while his eyes slowly examined the room he had just entered. Two straw mats, placed on the bare boards, served as beds for the two nuns ; there was only one table, in the middle of the room ; on it stood some plates, three knives, and a round loaf; a small fire burned in the grate ; some pieces of wood piled up in a corner bore further witness to the poverty of the two recluses. The walls were covered with a layer of very old paint, showing the bad condition of the roof by the stains upon it, which marked with brown streams the in- filtration of the rain. A relic, no doubt rescued from the village of the Abbaye de Chelles, was placed like an ornament upon the mantelpiece. Three chairs, IN THE TIME OF TUB TERROR 05 two chests, and a wretched cupboard completed the furniture of the room, but a door near the fireplace suggested that there might be a second. The person who had introduced himself under such terrible auspices into the bosom of this family did not take long to make an inventory of their cell. His features assumed an expression of pity as he cast a look of benevolence upon the two women ; he was at least as embarrassed as they. The strange silence which they all three kept did not last long, for presently the stranger began to comprehend the moral feebleness and inexperience of the two poor creatures, so he said to them in a voice which he tried to make gentle: "I am not come to you, as an enemy, citoyenties He stopped short, and then went on: "Mes s