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 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC
 
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 By HONORE DE BALZAC 
 
 THE MODERN LIBRARY 
 
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 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<ntrs, 
 if any misfortune should happen to you, believe me 
 it is not I who will have contributed to it. I have a 
 favor to ask of you." 
 
 They still kept silence. 
 
 "If I intrude upon you if I annoy you, tell me so 
 freely I will leave you; but I hope you will under- 
 stand that I am entirely devoted to yon ; that if there 
 is any service I could render you, you may command 
 me without fear, for I alone, perhaps now that there 
 is no king am above the law." 
 
 There was a ring of truth in his words. So?ur 
 Agathe, the nun who belonged to the family of Lan- 
 geais, and whose manners seemed to show that she 
 had formerly been familiar with brilliant society and
 
 66 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 had breathed the air of a court, hastened to point to 
 a chair, as if to invite their visitor to sit down. The 
 stranger showed a sort of pleasure mingled with sad- 
 ness when he saw this gesture; then he waited to sit 
 down until the two worthy ladies had done so tbem- 
 selves. 
 
 "You have given refuge," he went on, "to a ven- 
 erable priest who has not taken the oaths, who escaped 
 miraculously from a massacre of the Carmelites." 
 
 "Hosanna\" said So?ur Agathe, interrupting him, 
 and looking at him with nervous curiosity. 
 
 "No, I do not think that is his name," he replied. 
 
 "But Monsieur," said Sreur Marthe eagerly, "we 
 have not got any priest here ; and 
 
 "Then you should have been more prudent and 
 wary, ' ' answered the stranger, stretching out his hand 
 and taking a breviary from the table. "I do not 
 think that you are likely to know Latin, and 
 
 He did not go on ; the extraordinary emotion ex- 
 pressed by the faces of the poor nuns made him 
 afraid he had gone too far; they trembled, and their 
 eyes filled with tears. 
 
 "Do not distress yourselves," he said frankly. "I 
 know the name of your guest and your own; three 
 days ago I learned all about your distress, and your 
 devotion to the venerable Abbe de 
 
 "Sh !" said Sreur Agathe simply, putting her finger 
 to her lips. 
 
 "You see. mes sofurs, that if I had conceived the
 
 /2V THE TINE OF THE TERROR 67 
 
 horrible plan of betraying you, I might have already 
 accomplished it more than once." 
 
 When the priest heard these words he extricated 
 himself from his prison, and appeared in the middle 
 of the room. 
 
 "I cannot believe, Monsieur," said he to the strange 
 man, "that you are one of our persecutors; I trust 
 myself to you. What is it that you want of me?" 
 
 The holy confidence of the priest, the noble fervor 
 expressed in all his features, would have disarmed a 
 murderer. The mysterious person who had thus 
 brought excitement into this scene of misery and res- 
 ignation sat for a moment looking at the group of the 
 three before him : then, assuming a confidential tone, 
 he addressed the priest thus: "Mon pere, I came to 
 entreat you to celebrate a requiem mass for the repose 
 of the soul of of a of a consecrated person whose 
 body will never rest in hallowed ground." The priest 
 shuddered involuntarily. The two nuns, not yet com- 
 prehending to whom the stranger referred, remained 
 in an attitude of curiosity, their necks stretched out 
 and their faces turned to the two speakers. The 
 ecclesiastic scrutinized the man ; genuine anxiety was 
 visible in his face, and his eyes expressed ardent sup- 
 plication. 
 
 ''Eh bien! Come back to-night, at midnight; I 
 shall be ready to celebrate the only funeral office we 
 can offer in expiation of the crime of which you 
 speak. ' '
 
 68 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 The stranger trembled, but he looked as if some 
 feeling of satisfaction, at once solemn and sweet, had 
 triumphed over some secret sorrow. After respect- 
 fully saluting the priest and the two holy women, he 
 departed with an expression of mute gratitude under- 
 stood by these three generous hearts. About two 
 hours after this scene, he returned, knocked cautiously 
 at the outer door of the attic, and was received by 
 Mademoiselle de Beauseant, and led into the second 
 room of their humble retreat. Here all had been pre- 
 pared for the ceremony. Between the two pillars of 
 the chimney-piece the nun had pushed up the old 
 cupboard ; its antique shape was hidden under a mag- 
 nificent altar frontal of green moire. A large ebony 
 and ivory crucifix was fastened to the yellow wall, 
 making the bareness only more apparent, and of ne- 
 cessity attracting the eye to itself. The sisters had 
 managed to set up four little slender tapers upon this 
 temporary altar, by fastening them to it with sealing 
 wax. The tapers cast a pale light, almost absorbed 
 by the dead walls, their feeble flicker scarcely reach- 
 ing the rest of the room ; it cast its beams only upon 
 the Holy Instruments, as it were, a ray of light fall- 
 ing from heaven upon the naked altar. The floor was 
 reeking with damp. The roof sloped rapidly on both 
 sides like the roof of the other garret, and was scored 
 with cracks through which came the icy blast. Noth- 
 ing could have been less stately, yet nothing was more 
 solemn than this mournful ceremony. Profound si-
 
 IN THE TIME OF TEE TERROR 69 
 
 lenee, through which the least sound arising from la 
 route d'Allemagne could be heard, cast a veil of som- 
 ber majesty over the midnight scene. Indeed the 
 grandeur of the action contrasted strongly with the 
 poverty of the instruments ; therefrom arose a feeling 
 of religious awe. On each side of the altar, regardless 
 of the deadly damp, knelt the two aged nuns upon 
 the tiling of the floor, and prayed together with the 
 priest. Clad in his sacrificial vestments, he set out a 
 golden chalice adorned with precious stones, no doubt 
 one of the sacred vessels saved from the pillage of the 
 Abbaye de Chelles. By the side of this ciborium, re- 
 calling by its richness the splendor of the monarchy, 
 were placed two glasses, scarcely good enough for the 
 lowest inn, containing the water and the wine for the 
 Holy Sacrifice. For want of a missal the priest had 
 placed his breviary upon the corner of the altar. A 
 common towel was put ready for the washing of the 
 innocent and bloodless hands. The whole was infinite 
 yet little ; poor but noble ; at once holy and profane. 
 The stranger came and knelt down devoutly between 
 the two nuns. The priest had tied a piece of crape 
 around the chalice and the crucifix ; having no other 
 means of showing the intention of this requiem mass, 
 he had put God Himself in mourning weeds. Sud- 
 denly the man noticed it; he was seized with a mem- 
 ory that held such power over him, that the sweat 
 stood in drops upon his wide and lofty brow. The 
 four silent actors of this scene looked at one another
 
 70 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 mysteriously. Then their souls, rising with one an- 
 other in their mutual influence, communicated one 
 to another their own sensations, and were melted to- 
 gether in religious pity. It seemed as if their thought 
 had called up the martyr whose remains had been de- 
 voured by quicklime, and that his shadow rose before 
 them in all its royal majesty. They were celebrating 
 an obit without the body of the dead. Under these 
 gaping laths and tiles four Christians were about to 
 intercede before God for a King of France, were 
 about to celebrate his funeral without the coffin. Here 
 was the purest of all devotion, an astonishing act of 
 fidelity performed without one thought for the future. 
 Doubtless to the eyes of God, it was as the glass of 
 water which weighs in the balance as heavy as the 
 greatest virtues. The whole monarchy was present in 
 the prayers of a priest and two poor women ; perhaps, 
 too, the Revolution itself was represented in the man, 
 for his face betrayed too much remorse not to cause 
 the belief that he was fulfilling the vows of a bound- 
 less repentance. 
 
 Instead of pronouncing the Latin words, Introibo 
 ad altar e Dei, etc., the priest, by some divine inspi- 
 ration, looked upon the three assistants the symbols 
 there of Christian France and said to them, as though 
 to blot out the wretchedness of the garret: "We are 
 about to enter into the Sanctuary of God ! " At these 
 words, uttered with thrilling earnestness, the server 
 and the two nuns were filled with re! inn" on s awe. God
 
 71 
 
 would not have revealed Himself in greater majesty 
 under the vaults of Saint Peter at Rome, than He 
 revealed Himself then to the eyes of these Christians 
 in this refuge of poverty. The truth is so perfect- 
 that between Him and man every intermediary seems 
 useless, and that He draws His greatness only from 
 Himself. The stranger's devotion was real, the senti- 
 ment too which united the prayers of these four serv- 
 ants of God and the King was unanimous. The holy 
 words rang through the silence like heavenly music. 
 There was a moment when the stranger was over- 
 come with tears; it was at the Pater Noster. The 
 priest added, in Latin, this petition, which the man 
 no doubt understood : Et remitte scelus regicidis sicut 
 Ludovicius eis remisit semetipse. (And forgive the 
 regicides as Louis himself forgave them.) The two 
 nuns saw two great tears roll down the stranger's 
 manly cheeks and fall upon the floor. The priest 
 recited the Office for the Dead. The Domine salvum 
 fac regem intoned in a low voice, went to the hearts 
 of the faithful Royalists when they remembered that 
 the child-king, for whom their prayers ascended to 
 the Most High, at that moment was a captive in the 
 hands of his enemies. The stranger shivered at the 
 thought that a new crime might still be committed, 
 wherein he would no doubt be forced to take part. 
 When the funeral service was over, the priest made a 
 sign to the two nuns, and they went out. As soon as 
 he found himself alone with the stranger he went up
 
 72 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 to him with a sad and gentle air, and said in a fa- 
 therly voice : ' ' My son, if you have stained your hands 
 in the blood of the martyr-king, confide in me. There 
 is no sin which cannot be effaced in the eyes of God 
 by repentance as touching and sincere as yours seems 
 to be." 
 
 At the first words pronounced by the eccle- 
 siastic the stranger let a movement of involuntary 
 terror escape him ; but his face recovered its calmness 
 and he looked at the astonished priest with confidence, 
 
 "Father," said he in a voice visibly affected, "no 
 one is more innocent than I of the blood shed 
 
 "I must believe you," said the priest. He paused 
 while he once more scrutinized his penitent ; then, per- 
 sisting in the belief that he was one of those tim- 
 orous Conventionnels who betrayed an inviolable and 
 consecrated head in order to save their own, he replied 
 in a grave voice: "Consider, my son, the fact that 
 you have not co-operated in so great a crime is not 
 sufficient to be absolved from it. Those men who were 
 able to defend the King, and left their swords in 
 their scabbards, will have a very heavy account to 
 render to the King of Heaven. Oh ! yes, ' ' continued 
 the old priest, shaking his head impressively from 
 right to left "yes, very heavy! for, by remaining 
 aloof, they became the passive accomplices of this 
 terrible crime." 
 
 "You think," asked the stranger in amazement, 
 "that indirect participation will be punished? The
 
 IN TEE TIME OF THE TERROR 73 
 
 soldier commanded to fall into line is he then re- 
 sponsible ? ' ' 
 
 The priest hesitated. 
 
 The stranger was glad of the embarrassment into 
 which he had thrown this puritan Royalist, by plac- 
 mg him between the dogma of passive obedience 
 which, according to the Monarchists, was the essence 
 of all military law and the equally important dogma 
 which magnifies into sanctity the respect due to the 
 royal person, in the priest's silence he eagerly des- 
 cried a solution to the doubts which tormented him. 
 Then, in order not to leave the venerable jansenist 
 time for further reflection, he said to him : ' ' I should 
 blush to offer you any fee for the funeral service you 
 have just celebrated for the repose of the King's soul 
 and the relief of my conscience; one cannot pay for 
 a thing of inestimable value except by an offering 
 also above price. Will you deign, Monsieur, to accept 
 the gift of a holy relic which I offer you? The day 
 will come, perhaps, when you will understand its 
 value." 
 
 As the stranger finished these words he presented 
 the ecclesiastic with a little box, which felt extremely 
 light. He took it, as it were, unconsciously, for the 
 man's solemn words, the tone in which he spoke, and 
 the respect with which he held out the box, struck 
 him with the profoundest astonishment. Then they 
 returned into the room where the two nuns were 
 waiting.
 
 74 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 ''You are in a house," said the stranger, "belong- 
 ing to a man Mucius Scaevola, the plasterer, who 
 lives on the first floor who is well known in the sec- 
 tion for his patriotism ; but he is secretly attached to 
 the Bourbons. He was formerly huntsman to Monseig- 
 neur le Prince de Conti, and owes all his fortune to 
 him. As long as you do not go out of his house, you 
 are safer than any other place in France. Stay here ; 
 there are pious souls who will watch over your wants, 
 and you will be able to wait, without danger, for less 
 evil times. In a year, on the 21st of January" (as 
 he pronounced these last words he could not hide an 
 involuntary shudder) "if you do adopt this wretched 
 place for your refuge, I will return to celebrate the 
 expiatory mass with you 
 
 He did not finish his sentence. Then, saluting the 
 silent inhabitants of the attic, he cast a last look on 
 all the signs of their poverty and disappeared. 
 
 For the two innocent nuns-, such an adventure as- 
 sumed all the interest of a romance. As soon, then, 
 as the venerable Abbe had informed them of the mys- 
 terious gift which the man had made him, so solemnly, 
 they placed the box on the table, and their three anx- 
 ious faces, faintly lit up by the light of a tallow dip, 
 betrayed an indescribable curiosity. Mademoiselle de 
 Langeais opened the box, and found a very fine batiste 
 handkerchief, soiled with sweat ; when they unfolded 
 it they found that there were stains upon it. 
 
 "It is blood!" said the priest.
 
 IN THE TIME OF THE TERROR To 
 
 "It is marked with the royal crown!" exclaimed 
 the other sister. 
 
 The two nuns dropped the precious relic in horror. 
 For these two simple souls the mystery which envel- 
 oped the stranger became inexplicable ; as to the priest, 
 from that day he did not even attempt to account 
 for it. 
 
 The three prisoners soon perceived, in spite of the 
 Terror, that a powerful hand was stretched out over 
 them. First, they received provisions and fuel ; then, 
 the two nuns discovered that there must be a woman 
 co-operating with their protector, for linen and clothes 
 were sent them which enabled them to go out with- 
 out exciting remark by the aristocratic fashion of the 
 dresses which they had been obliged to continue to 
 w r ear; finally, Mucius Scaevola gave them two cartes 
 civiques. From time to time warnings necessary to 
 the safety of the priest reached them in roundabout, 
 ways. These counsels came so opportunely that they 
 were convinced they could only have been given by 
 a person initiated into secrets of State. In spite of 
 the famine which weighed over Paris, these outlaws 
 found rations of white bread regularly brought to 
 the door of their cabin by invisible hands; however, 
 they thought they had discovered in Mucius Scaevola 
 the mysterious agent of these benefactions, which were 
 always both suitably timed and ingeniously carried 
 out. The three nobles then, who continued to dwell in 
 the same attic, could not doubt that their protector Avas
 
 76 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 the person who had come to celebrate the mass of ex- 
 piation during the night of the 22nd of January, 
 1793; thus he became the object of their special de- 
 votion; he was their only hope, they lived through 
 him alone. They had added to their prayers special 
 praj^ers for him; night and morning the pious crea- 
 tures offered their vows for his happiness, prosperity, 
 and safety ; they besought God to keep far from him 
 every snare, to deliver him from his enemies a)id 
 grant him a long and peaceful life. To their grati- 
 tude, renewed so to speak every day, was necessarily 
 allied a feeling of curiosity which grew each day more 
 intense. The circumstances that had attended the 
 stranger's apparition were the subject of their con- 
 versations; they formed a thousand conjectures con- 
 cerning him; even the mere distraction of thought 
 which he caused was a fresh source of advantage to 
 them. They promised themselves to make sure of not 
 letting him escape from their gratitude the evening 
 he would come back, according to his promise, to 
 celebrate the sad anniversary of the death of Louis 
 XVI. That night, so impatiently awaited, arrived at 
 last. At midnight, the sound of the stranger's heavy 
 footsteps was heard upon the old wooden staircase; 
 the room had been prepared to receive him, the altar 
 was vested. This time the sisters opened the door 
 to greet him, and both hastened to the stairs with a 
 light. Mademoiselle de Langeais even went a few 
 steps down in order to see their benefactor the sooner.
 
 IN THE TIME OF THE TERROR 77 
 
 "Come," she said kindly, in a voice broken by emo- 
 tion "come, we were expecting you." 
 
 The man raised his head, cast a somber look at the 
 nun, and made no answer. She felt as if a mantle of 
 ice had fallen upon her; she was silent. Gratitude 
 and curiosity expired in their hearts at the sight of 
 him. Perhaps he seemed to them, whose hearts were 
 excited by sentiment and disposed to expand into 
 friendship, more chilling, taciturn, and terrible than 
 he really was. The three poor prisoners compre- 
 hended that he desired to remain a stranger to them, 
 and resigned themselves. The priest fancied he saw 
 a smile upon the man's lips at the moment he per- 
 ceived the preparation that they had made for his 
 reception ; but he immediately repressed it. He heard 
 mass and prayed, then he departed, after having re- 
 plied with a few polite words of refusal to Mademoi- 
 selle de Langeais's invitation to partake of the little 
 collation which they had prepared. 
 
 After the 9th of Thermidor, the nuns and the Abbe 
 de Marolles were able to walk through Paris without 
 the least risk. The first expedition which the Abbe 
 made was to a perfumery shop, at the sign of La 
 If cine des fleurs, kept by a citoyen and citoyenn# 
 Ragon, late perfumers to the Court, who remained 
 faithful to the royal family, and whom the Vend6ans 
 made use of to correspond with the Princes and the 
 Royalist Committee in Paris. The Abbe, dressed as 
 the times required, was just at the doorstep jf this
 
 78 SHORT STOKIKS BY BALZAC 
 
 shop, which was situated between Saint Roche and la 
 rue des Trondeurs when a crowd that filled la ru 
 Saint Honore prevented his going out. 
 
 "What's this?" said he to Madame Ragon. 
 
 "It is nothing," she replied; "only the tumbril 
 and the executioner going to la Place Louis XV. Ah ! 
 we saw it often enough last year; but to-day, just 
 four days after the anniversary of the Twenty-first of 
 January, one can look at the ghastly procession with- 
 out any pain. ' ' 
 
 "Why," said the Abbe, "what you say is not 
 Christian." 
 
 "Ah! but it is the execution of Robespierre's ac- 
 complices. They defended themselves as long as they 
 could, but now it 's their turn over there, where they 
 have sent so many innocent men." 
 
 The crowd filled la rue Saint Honore, and passed 
 by like a flood. The Abbe de Marolles, yielding to an 
 impulse of curiosity, looked, and saw above the heads 
 of the crowd, standing erect on the tumbril, the man 
 who had heard his Mass three days before. 
 
 "Who is it?" said he; "the man " 
 
 "It's the executioner," answered Monsieur Ragon, 
 calling the executeur des hautes ceuvres by his title 
 under the monarchy. 
 
 "Mon ami, mon ami!" cried Madame Ragon; 
 ' ' Monsieur d 'Abbe is dying ! ' ' and the old lady got a 
 flask of vinegar to bring the priest to his senses, for 
 he had fainted. "No doubt what he gave me," said
 
 IN THE TIME OF THE TERROR 79 
 
 he, ' ' was the handkerchief with which the King wiped 
 his face when he was going to his martyrdom. Poor 
 man ! The axe had a heart in its steel when none was 
 found in all France!" 
 
 The perfumer* thought the poor priest was de- 
 lirious
 
 MADAME DE DEY'S LAST 
 RECEPTION 
 
 "Sometimes they saw that by some phenomenon of Vision 
 or Locomotion he could abolish Space in both its moods 
 Time and Distance whereof the one is intellectual and the 
 other physical." Louis LAMBABT. 
 
 ONE evening in the month of November, 1793, the 
 principal inhabitants of Carentan were collected in 
 the salon of Madame de Dey, who held an Assembly 
 every evening. Certain circumstances which would 
 have attracted no notice in a large town, but were 
 such as to mightily interest a small one, imparted a 
 peculiar importance to this customary gathering. Two 
 days before, Madame de Dey had closed her doors to 
 her visitors on the ground of indisposition, and had 
 also announced that she would be unable to receive 
 them the following evening. At an ordinary time these 
 two events would have produced the same effect at 
 Carentan as a relaclie at all the theaters produces in 
 Paris; on these days, existence seems in a sense in- 
 complete. But in 1793, the action of Madame de 
 Dey was one which might lead to the most disastrous 
 
 80
 
 MADAME DE DEY'S LAST RECEPTION 81 
 
 consequences. At that time, a step involving a noble 
 in the least risk was nearly always a matter of life 
 and death. In order to understand properly the keen 
 curiosity and petty craftiness which on that evening 
 animated the faces of all these respectable Normans; 
 and still more, in order to share the secret perplexities 
 of Madame de Dey, it is necessary to expliv'n the part 
 she played at Carentan. As the critical position in 
 Arhieh she was situated at this time was no doubt the 
 position of many during the Revolution, the sympa- 
 thies of not a few of my readers will add their own 
 color to this narrative. 
 
 Madame de Dey was the widow of a Lieutenant 
 General decorated with several orders. At the begin- 
 ning of the Emigration she had left the Court, and 
 as she owned considerable property in the neighbor- 
 hood of Carentan, she had taken refuge there, in the 
 hope that the influence of the Terror would make 
 itself felt in those parts. This supposition, founded 
 on an exact knowledge of the country, proved cor- 
 rect, for the ravages of the Revolution in Lower Nor- 
 mandy were slight. Although, formerly, when she 
 came to visit her property she had only associated 
 with the local noblesse, now, out of policy, she opened 
 her doors to the principal townspeople and the new 
 authorities of Carentan, exerting herself to flatter 
 them by the compliment of her acquaintance, and at 
 the same time to avoid awakening their hatred or 
 their jealousy. Kind and courteous, gifted with an
 
 S2 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 indescribable sweetness of manner, she knew hov: to 
 please without recourse to cringing or entreaty, and 
 had thus succeeded in winning general esteem. This 
 was due to her exquisite tact, which by its sage 
 promptings enabled her to steer a difficult course and 
 satisfy the exigencies of a mixed society; she neither 
 humiliated the tetchy self-conceit of the parvenus nor 
 shocked the sensibilities of her old friends. 
 
 At the age of about thirty-eight, she still preserved 
 not that fresh buxom beauty which distinguishes 
 the girls of Lower Normandy but a slender, so to 
 speak, aristocratic type. Her features were delicately 
 chiselled and her figure pliant and graceful; when 
 she spoke, her pale face seemed to light up with fresh 
 life. Her large dark eyes were full of kindly cour- 
 tesy, but an expression of religious calm within them 
 seemed to show that the principle of her existence lay 
 no longer in herself. She had been married at an 
 early age to an old and jealous soldier, and the false- 
 ness of her position in the midst of a dissolute court, 
 had no doubt done much to spread a veil of grave 
 melancholy over a face which must once have beamed 
 with all the charm and vivacity of Love. Obliged to 
 repress unceasingly the instinctive impulses and emo- 
 tions of woman, at a time when she still feels rather 
 than reflects, with her, passion had remained virgin 
 in the depth of her heart. Thus her chief attraction 
 was derived from this inward youthfulness, which be- 
 trayed itself at certain moments in her countenance,
 
 MADAME DE DEY'S LAST RECEPTION 83 
 
 and gave her ideas an innocent expression of desire. 
 Her appearance commanded respect, but in her man- 
 ner and her voice, impulses toward an unknown fu- 
 ture such as spring in the heart of a young girl, were 
 continually showing themselves. The least susceptible 
 men soon found themselves in love with her, and ye! 
 were impressed with a sort of fear of her, inspired 
 by her courtly bearing. Her soul, great by nature but 
 rendered strong by cruel struggles, seemed to be raised 
 too high for common humanity, and of this men ap- 
 peared to be conscious. To such a soul, a lofty pas- 
 sion is a necessity. Thus all Madame de Dcy's af- 
 fections were concentrated in one single sentiment 
 the sentiment of Maternity. The happiness and pleas- 
 ures of which she had been deprived as a wife she 
 found again in the intense love she bore her son. 
 She loved him, not only with the pure and deep devo- 
 tion of a mother, but with the coquetry of a mistress 
 and the jealousy of a wife. She was miserable when 
 he was far from her, anxious when he had gone out ; 
 she could never see enough of him ; she lived only in 
 him and for him. To give an idea of the strength 
 of this sentiment in Madame de Dey, it will be enough 
 to add that this son, besides being her only child, was 
 the last relation left her, the only creature on whom 
 she could fasten the hopes and fears and joys of he" 
 life. The late Count was the last of his family, and 
 the Countess the sole heiress of hers, so that every 
 worldly calculation and interest combined with the
 
 84 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 noblest needs of the soul to intensify in her heart a 
 sentiment already so strong in the heart of woman. 
 It was only by infinite care that she had succeeded 
 in rearing her son, and this had endeared him still 
 more to her. The doctor had pronounced twenty times 
 over that she must lose him, but she was confident 
 in her own hopes and presentiments. So in spite of 
 the decrees of the Faculty, she had the inexpressible 
 joy of seeing him pass safely through the perils of in- 
 fancy, and then of watching with wonder the con- 
 tinued improvement of his health. 
 
 Thanks to her constant care, her son had grown 
 into a young man of so much promise that at the age 
 of twenty he was looked upon as one of the most ac- 
 complished gentlemen at the Court of Versailles. 
 Above all, happy in a crown unattained by the efforts 
 of every mother, she was adored by her son; they 
 understood one another, heart to heart, in fraternal 
 sympathy. If they had not been already bound to- 
 gether by the bonds of nature, they would have in- 
 stinctively felt for each other that mutual friendship 
 between men which is so rarely met with in life. 
 
 The young Count had been appointed sub-lieuten- 
 ant at the age of eighteen, and in obedience to the 
 code of honor of the day had followed the princes in 
 their Emigration. 
 
 Thus it was impossible for Madame de Dey, being 
 noble, rich, and the mother of an Emigrant, to hide 
 from herself the dangers of her cruel situation. With
 
 MADAME DE DEY'S LAST RECEPTION 85 
 
 no other aim than to save her large fortune for her 
 son, she had given up the happiness of accompanying 
 him; but when she read at Carentan the stringent 
 laws under which the Republic was confiscating every 
 day the property of Emigrants, she exulted in her 
 act of courage, for was she not preserving her son's 
 wealth at the risk of her own life? Later on, when 
 she heard of the terrible executions decreed by the 
 Convention, she slept in peace, knowing that her only 
 treasure was in safety, far from danger and the scaf- 
 fold. She congratulated herself in the belief that she 
 had taken the best means of preserving both her treas- 
 ures at once. By consecrating to this secret thought 
 the concessions which those unhappy times demanded, 
 she neither compromised her womanly dignity nor her 
 aristocratic convictions, but hid her sorrows under a 
 cold veil of mystery. 
 
 She had grasped all the difficulties which awaited 
 her at Carentan. To come there and fill the first place 
 was in itself a daily tempting of the scaffold. But 
 supported by her motherly courage, she was enabled 
 to win the affection of the poor by consoling the 
 misery of all without distinction, and to make herself 
 indispensable to the rich by ministering to their 
 pleasures. 
 
 She entertained at her house the Procureur of the 
 Commune, the Mayor, the President of the district, 
 the Public Prosecutor, and even the judges of the 
 Revolutionary Court. Of these personages the first
 
 86 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAO 
 
 four were unmarried, and paid 'their addresses to her. 
 Each of them hoped she would marry him, either 
 from fear of the harm thai it was in their powder to do 
 her, or for the sake of the protection which they had 
 to offer her. The Public Prosecutor, formerly an at- 
 torney at Caen, employed to manage the Countess's 
 business, adopted an artifice which was most danger- 
 ous for her. He tried a generous and devoted line of 
 conduct, in the hope of inspiring her with affection. 
 In this way he was the most formidable of all her 
 suitors, and as she had formerly been a client of his, 
 he alone knew intimately the condition and extent of 
 her fortune. His passion was therefore reinforced by 
 all the desires of avarice, and further supported by 
 immense power the power of life and death over the 
 whole district. This man, who was still young, pro- 
 ceeded with so fine a show of generosity that Madame 
 de Dey had not as yet been able to form a true esti- 
 mate of him. But despite the danger of a trial of 
 craft with Normans, she made use of all the inventive 
 wit ar.:l duplicity bestowed by nature on women, to 
 play off these rivals one asramst the other. By gain- 
 ing time, she hoped to reach the end of her difficul- 
 ties, safe and sound. At this period the royalists 
 of the interior went on nattering themselves from day 
 to day that on the morrow they would see the end of 
 the "Republic; it was this persuasion which brought 
 many of them to ruin. 
 
 In spite of these difficulties, by the exercise of con-
 
 MADAME DK DftTH LAST RECEPTION 87 
 
 siderable address, the Countess had maintained her 
 independence up to the day on which she had deter- 
 mined, with unaccountable imprudence, to close her 
 doors to her guests. She inspired such a real and deep 
 interest, that the people who had come to her house 
 that evening were seriously perturbed when they 
 heard it was impossible for her to receive them. 
 Then, with that barefaced curiosity which is ingrained 
 in provincial manners, they immediately began to 
 make inquiries as to what trouble, or annoyance, or 
 illness, she suffered from. To these questions an old 
 housekeeper named Brigitte answered, that her mis- 
 tress kept her room and w T ould see no one, not even 
 the members of her household. 
 
 The semi-claustral life led by the inhabitants of a 
 small town forms a habit of analyzing and explaining 
 the actions of others, so germane to them as to be- 
 come invincible. So after having pitied Madame de 
 Dey, without really knowing whether she was happy 
 or unhappy, each one set himself to discover the 
 cause of her sudden retirement. 
 
 "If she were ill," said the first inquisitor, "she 
 would have sent for advice; but the doctor has been 
 at my house the whole day playing chess. He was 
 joking with me and saying that there is only one 
 disease nowadays . . . and that's incurable." 
 
 This jest was hazarded with caution. 
 
 Men and women, old and young, set themselves to 
 scour the vast field of conjecture; each one thought
 
 88 PHORT KTOMfifi 7?V BALZAC 
 
 he spied a secret, and this secret occupied all their 
 imaginations. 
 
 By the next day their suspicions had grown more 
 venomous. As life in a small town is balanced up 
 to date, the women learned, the first thing in the 
 morning, that Brigitte had made larger purchases at 
 the market than usual. This was an indisputable 
 fact. Brigitte had been seen very early in the Place, 
 and marvelous to relate ! she had bought the only 
 hare there was to be got. Now the whole town knew 
 that Madame de Dey did not care for game, so this 
 hare became the object of endless speculation. Then, 
 its the old men were taking their usual stroll, they 
 observed a sort of concentrated activity in the Count- 
 ess's house, betrayed by the very precautions that the. 
 servants took to conceal it. The valet was beating a 
 carpet in the garden ; the evening before no one would 
 have noticed it, but as every one was constructing 
 a romance of his own, this carpet served them for a 
 foundation. Each person had a different tale. 
 
 The second day, the principal personages of Caren- 
 tan, hearing that Madame de Dey announced that she 
 was unwell, met for the evening at the house of the 
 Mayor's brother, a retired merchant. He was a mar- 
 ried man, honorable, and generally respected, the 
 Countess herself having a great regard for him. On 
 this occasion all the aspirants to the rich widow's 
 hand had a more or less probable story to tell, while 
 each of them pondered how to turn to his own profit
 
 MADAME DE DETS LAST RECEPTION 89 
 
 the secret which obliged her to compromise herself in 
 the way she had. The Public Prosecutor imagined all 
 the details of a drama in which her son was to be 
 brought to the Countess by night. The Mayor be- 
 lieved that a priest who had refused the oaths had 
 come from La Vendee, and sought refuge. The Presi- 
 dent of the district was convinced it was a Chouan or 
 Vendean leader, hotly pursued. Others inclined to a 
 noble escaped from the prisons in Paris. In short, 
 everybody suspected that the Countess had been guilty 
 of one of those acts of generosity, denominated by the 
 laws of that time "crimes," and such as might bring 
 her to the scaffold. However, the Public Prosecutor 
 whispered that they must be silent, and try to save 
 the unfortunate lady from the abyss into which she 
 v:as hurrying. 
 
 "If you publish this affair abroad," he added, "I 
 shall be obliged to interfere, search her house, and 
 then !" He said no more, but every one under- 
 stood his reticence. 
 
 The Countess's true friends were so much alarmed 
 for her, that, on the morning of the third day, the 
 Procureur Syndic of the Commune got his wife to 
 write her a note, entreating her to hold her reception 
 that evening as usual. The old merchant, bolder 
 still, presented himself during the morning at Ma- 
 dame de Dey's house. Confident in his desire to 
 serve her, he insisted on being shown in, when to his 
 utter amazement Le caught sight of her in the gar-
 
 90 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 den, engaged in cutting the last flowers in her bor- 
 ders to fill her vases. 
 
 "There's no doubt she has given refuge to her 
 lover," said the old man, struck with pity for this 
 charming woman. The strange expression of her face 
 confirmed his suspicions. Deeply moved by a devo- 
 tion natural in woman but always touching to us 
 because every man is flattered by the sacrifices a 
 woman makes for one of them the merchant in- 
 formed the Countess of the reports which were going 
 about the town, and of the danger she was in. ' ' For, ' ' 
 he concluded, "if certain of our functionaries would 
 not be disinclined to pardon your heroism, if a priest 
 were the object, no one will have any pity on you, 
 if it is discovered that you are sacrificing yourself 
 to the dictates of the heart." 
 
 At these words Madame de Dey looked at him in 
 such a strange, wild way, that, old man as he was, 
 he could not help shuddering. 
 
 "Come," said she, taking him by the hand and 
 leading him into her own room. After making sure 
 that thej were alone, she drew from her bosom a 
 soiled and crumpled letter. 
 
 "Read it," she cried, pronouncing the words with 
 a violent effort. 
 
 She fell back into her easy chair completely over- 
 come. While the old merchant was looking for his 
 spectacles and wiping them clean, she raised her eyes 
 to his face, and for the first time gazed at him curi-
 
 MADAME DE DEY'S LAST RECEPTION 91 
 
 ously ; then she said sweetly, and in a changed voice : 
 "I can trust you." 
 
 "Am I not going to take a share in your crime?" 
 answered the worthy man simply. 
 
 She shuddered. For the first time in that little 
 town her soul found sympathy in the soul of another. 
 The old merchant understood immediately both the 
 dejection and the joy of the Countess. Her son had 
 taken part in the expedition of Granville, he had 
 written to his mother from the depth of his prison to 
 give her one sad, sweet hope. Confident in his plan 
 of escape, he named three days within which he 
 would present himself at her house in disguise. The 
 fatal letter contained heartrending adieux in case he 
 should not be at Carentan by the evening of the third 
 day. He also entreated his mother to remit a con- 
 siderable sum of money to the messenger who had un- 
 dertaken to carry this missive to her, through in- 
 numerable dangers. 
 
 The paper quivered in the old man's hands. 
 
 ' ' And this is the third day, ' ' cried Madame de Dey. 
 
 Then she rose hastily, took the letter, and began to 
 walk up and down the room. 
 
 "You have not been altogether prudent," said the 
 merchant. "Why did you have provisions got in?" 
 
 "But he may arrive dying with hunger, worn out 
 with fatigue, and She could not go on. 
 
 "I am certain of my brother," answered the old 
 man ; " I will go and get him on your side. ' '
 
 92 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 The merchant summoned up all the keenness which 
 he had formerly employed in his commercial affairs. 
 He gave the Countess the most prudent and sagacious 
 directions, and after having agreed together as to 
 everything they both were to say and do, the old man 
 invented a plausible pretext for visiting all the prin- 
 cipal houses of Carentan. He announced in each that 
 he had just seen Madame de Dey, and that she would 
 hold her reception that evening, in spite of her indis- 
 position. In the cross-examination which each family 
 subjected him to on the nature of the Countess's 
 malady, his keenness was a match for the shrewd Nor- 
 mans. He managed to start on the wrong track al- 
 most every one who busied themselves with this mys- 
 terious affair. His first visit did wonders; it was to 
 an old lady who suffered from gout. To her he re- 
 lated that Madame de Dey had almost died from an 
 attack of gout on the stomach, and went on to say 
 that the famous Tronchin having formerly prescribed, 
 on a similar occasion, the skin of a hare flayed alive 
 to be laid on the chest, and for the patient to lie in 
 bed without stirring; the Countess, who was in im- 
 minent danger two days before, after having scrupu- 
 lously carried out Tronchin 's extraordinary prescrip- 
 tion, now felt sufficiently convalescent to receive any 
 one who liked to visit her that evening. This tale 
 had an enormous success, and the doctor of Carentan. 
 himself a royalist in petto, increased its effect by the 
 earnestness with which he discussed the remedy. How-
 
 MADAME DE DEY'S LAST RECEI'TION 93 
 
 ever, suspicion had taken too deep root in the minds 
 of certain obstinate or philosophic persons to be en- 
 tirely dissipated; so that evening the guests of Mad- 
 ame de Dey were eager to arrive at her house at an 
 early hour, some to spy into her face, some out of 
 friendship, and most from astonishment at her mar- 
 velous cure. They found the Countess sitting in her 
 salon at the corner of the large chimney-piece. 
 
 Her room was almost as severe as the salons of Car- 
 entan, for, to avoid wounding her narrow-minded 
 guests, she had denied herself the pleasures of luxury 
 to which she had been accustomed before, and had 
 made no changes in her house. The floor of the re- 
 ception-room was not even polished ; she let the old 
 dingy stuffs still hang upon the walls, still kept the 
 country furniture, burned tallow candles, and in fact 
 followed the fashions cf Carentan. She had adopted 
 provincial life without shrinking from its cruellest 
 pettiness or its most disagreeable privations. But 
 knowing that her guests would pardon her any ex- 
 penditure conducive to their own comfort, she neg- 
 lected nothing which could afford' them personal en- 
 joyment; at her house they were always sure of an 
 excellent dinner. She even went so far as to feign 
 avarice to please their calculating minds, and led them 
 on to disapprove of certain details as concessions to 
 luxury, in order to show that she could yield with 
 grace. 
 
 Toward seven o'clock in the evening the upper
 
 94 SHOUT SfOm&a BY BALZAC 
 
 middle-class society of Carentan was assembled at her 
 house, and formed a large circle round her hearth. 
 The mistress of the house, supported in her trouble 
 by the old merchant's compassionate glances, submit- 
 ted with unheard-of courage to the minute question- 
 ings and stupid, frivolous talk of her guests. But at 
 every rap of the knocker, and whenever a footstep 
 sounded in the street, she could scarcely control her 
 emotion. She raised discussions affecting the pros- 
 perity of the district and such burning questions as 
 the quality of ciders, and was so well seconded by he: 1 
 confidant that the company almost forgot to spy upon 
 her, the expression of her face was so natural and her 
 assurance so imperturbable. However, the Public 
 Prosecutor and one of the Judges of the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal kept silence, watching attentively the least 
 movement of her features, and listening, in spite of 
 the noise, to every sound in the house. Every now 
 and then they would ask some question calculated to 
 embarrass her, but these she answered with admirable 
 presence of mind. She proved how great a mother's 
 courage can be. 
 
 After having arranged the card tables and settled 
 every one to boston, or reversi, or whist, Madame de 
 Dey still remained talking with the greatest noncha- 
 lance to some young people ; she played her part like 
 a consummate actress. Presently she led them on to 
 ask for loto, pretended to be the only person who knew 
 where it was, and left the room.
 
 MADAME DE DEY'S LA&T RECEPTION 05 
 
 "Ma pauvre Brigitte," she cried, "I feel almost 
 suffocated. ' ' 
 
 Her eyes were brilliant with fever and grief and 
 impatience as she dried the tears which started quickly 
 from them. "He is not coming." she said, looking 
 into the bedroom into which she had come. "Here 
 I can breathe and live. But in a few minutes more 
 he will be here ! for he is alive, I am certain he is 
 alive. My heart tells me so. Do you not hear some- 
 thing, Brigitte ? Oh ! I would give the rest of my 
 life to know whether he is in prison or walking across 
 the country. I would give anything not to think." 
 
 She looked around once again to see if everything 
 was in order in the room. A good fire burned brightly 
 in the grate, the shutters were shut close, the furni- 
 ture was polished until it shone again ; the very way 
 in which the bed was made was enough to prove that 
 the Countess herself as well as Brigitte had been 
 busy about the smallest details. Her hopes too were 
 manifest in all the delicate care that had evidently 
 been spent upon this room. The scent of the flowers 
 she had placed there seemed to shed forth, mingled 
 with their own perfume, the gracious sweetness and 
 the chastest caresses of love. Only a mother could 
 thus have anticipated a soldier 's wants, and prepared 
 him such complete satisfaction of them. A dainty 
 meal, choice wines, slippers, clean linen in short, 
 everything necessary or agreeable to a weary traveler,, 
 were collected together, that he might want for noth-
 
 96 
 
 ing, and that the delights of home might remind him 
 of a mother's love. 
 
 The Countess went and placed a seat at the table as 
 if to realize her prayers and increase the strength of 
 her illusions. As she did so she cried in a heartrend- 
 ing voice, "Brigitte!" 
 
 "Ah, Madame, he will come; he cannot be far off. 
 I am certain that he is alive and on the way, ' ' replied 
 Brigitte. "I put a key in the Bible, and rested it on 
 my fingers, while Cottin read the Gospel of St. John - 
 and, Madame, the key did not turn." 
 
 "Is that a sure sign?" asked the Countess. 
 
 "Oh, Madame, it's well known; I would stake my 
 soul that he is still alive. God would never deceive 
 us like that." 
 
 ' ' In spite of the danger he will be in here ; still, I 
 long to see him." 
 
 "Poor Monsieur Auguste," cried Brigitte, "no 
 doubt he is on the roads, on foot." 
 
 ' ' Hark, that is eight striking, ' ' exclaimed the Count- 
 ess in terror. 
 
 She was afraid that she had stayed too long in the 
 room, but there she could believe that her son still 
 lived when she saw everything bear witness to his life. 
 She went downstairs, but before going into the salon 
 she waited a moment under the colonnade of the stair- 
 case, and listened for some sound to awaken the silent 
 echoes of the town. She smiled at Brigitte 's husband, 
 who kept watch like a sentinel ; his eyes seemed stupe-
 
 MADAME DE DEY'S LAST RECEPTION 97 
 
 fied with straining to catch the murmurs of the Place 
 and the first sounds of the night. Everywhere and 
 in everything she saw her son. 
 
 A moment afterward she had returned to her guests, 
 affecting an air of gaiety, and sat down to play at loto 
 with some girls. But every now and then she com- 
 plained of feeling unwell, and went to recline in her 
 easy chair by the fireplace. 
 
 Such was the situation, material and mental, in the 
 house of Madame de Dey. Meanwhile, on the high 
 road from Paris to Cherbourg, a young man clad in 
 a brown carmagnole, a costume in vogue at this pe- 
 riod, directed his steps toward Carentan. 
 
 In the commencement of the Requisitions there was 
 little or no discipline. The exigencies of the moment 
 scarcely allowed the Republic to equip its soldiers 
 fully at once, so that it was nothing unusual to see 
 the roads full of requisitionnaires still wearing their 
 civil clothes. These young men arrived at the halting- 
 places before their battalions or remained there behind 
 them, for the progress of each man depended on his 
 personal capability of enduring the fatigues of a long 
 journey. The traveler in question found himself con- 
 siderably in advance of a battalion of requisitionnaires 
 which was on its way to Cherbourg, and which the 
 Mayor of Carentan was waiting for from hour to hour 
 to billet on the inhabitants. The young man walked 
 with heavy steps, but still he did not falter, and his 
 gait seemed to show that he had long been accustomed
 
 98 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 to the severities of military life. Though the moon 
 shed her light upon the pastures around Carentan. he 
 had noticed a thick white bank of clouds ready to 
 cover the whole country with snow. The fear of be- 
 ing caught in a hurricane no doubt hastened his steps, 
 for he was walking at a pace little suited to his weari- 
 ness. He carried an almost empty knapsack on his 
 back and in his hand a boxwood stick, cut from one 
 of the high thick hedges which this shrub forms round 
 most of the estates of Lower Normandy. 
 
 The towers of Carentan, thrown into fantastic relief 
 by the moonlight, had only just come into sight, when 
 this solitary traveler entered the town. His footfall 
 awakened the echoes of the silent streets. He did not 
 meet a creature, so he was obliged to inquire for the 
 house of the Mayor from a weaver who was still at 
 his work. The Mayor lived only a short distance qff, 
 and the requisitionnaire soon found himself under 
 shelter in the porch of his house. Here he applied 
 for a billet order and sat down on a stone seat to 
 wait. However, the Mayor sent for him, so he was 
 obliged to appear before him and become the object 
 of a scrupulous examination. The requisitionnaire 
 was a foot soldier, a young man of fine bearing, ap- 
 parently belonging to a family of distinction. His 
 manners had the air of gentle birth, and his face 
 expressed all the intelligence due to a good education. 
 
 ' ' What is your name ? ' ' asked the Mayor, casting a 
 knowing glance at him.
 
 MADAME DE DEY'S LAST RECEPTION 99 
 
 "Julien Jussieu," replied the requisitionnaire. 
 
 The magistrate let an incredulous smile escape him. 
 
 "And you come 
 
 "From Paris.'' 
 
 "Your comrades must be some distance off,' 7 re- 
 plied the Norman in a bantering tone. 
 
 "I am three leagues in front of the battalion." 
 
 "No doubt some sentiment draws you to Carentan, 
 citoyen requisitionnaire?" said the Mayor with a 
 shrewd look. "It is all right," he continued. The 
 young man was about to speak, but he motioned him 
 to be silent and went on, "You can go, Citoyen 
 Jussieu!" 
 
 There was a tinge of irony discernible in his accent, 
 as he pronounced these two last words and held out 
 to him a billet order which directed him to the house 
 of Madame de Dey. The young man read the address 
 with an air of curiosity. 
 
 "He knows well enough that he hasn't got far to 
 go ; when he 's once outside he won 't be long crossing 
 the Place!" exclaimed the Mayor, talking to himself 
 as the young man went out. ' ' He 's a fine bold fellow ; 
 God help him ! He 's got an answer ready to every- 
 thing. Ay, but if it had been any one else but me, 
 and they had demanded to see his papers it would 
 have been all up with him. ' ' 
 
 At this moment the clocks of Carentan struck half- 
 past nine. In the antechamber at Madame de Dey's 
 the lanterns were lighted, the servants were helping
 
 100 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 their masters and mistresses to put on their clogs and 
 houppelandes and mantles, the card players had set- 
 tled their accounts, and they were all leaving together, 
 according to the established custom in little towns. 
 
 When they had exhausted all the formularies of 
 adieu and were separating in the Place, each in the 
 direction of his own house, one of the ladies, observ- 
 ing that that important personage was not with them, 
 remarked, "It appears that the Prosecutor intends 
 to remain. " 
 
 As a matter of fact, the Countess was at that mo- 
 ment alone with that terrible magistrate ; she waited, 
 trembling, till it should please him to depart. 
 
 After a long silence, which inspired her with a 
 feeling of terror, he said at last, "Citoyenne, I am 
 here to carry out the laws of the Eepublic. ' ' 
 
 Madame de Dey shuddered. 
 
 "Hast thou nothing to reveal to me?" he asked. 
 
 "Nothing," she replied, in astonishment. 
 
 "Ah, Madame," cried the Prosecutor, sitting down 
 beside her and changing his tone, "at this moment 
 one word could send us you and me to the scaf- 
 fold. I have watched your character, your mind, your 
 manners too closely to share in the mystification by 
 which you have succeeded in misleading your guests 
 this evening. You are expecting your son, I have not 
 the least doubt of it." 
 
 The Countess made an involuntary gesture of de- 
 nial ; but she had grown pale, the muscles of her face
 
 MADAME DE DEY'S LAST RECEPTION 101 
 
 had contracted under the necessity of displaying a 
 coolness she did not feel ; the pitiless eye of the Prose- 
 cutor had not lost one of these movements. 
 
 "Well! receive him," replied this magistrate of 
 the Revolution, "but do not let him remain under 
 your roof after seven o'clock in the morning. To- 
 morrow at daybreak I shall come to your house armed 
 with a denunciation which I shall get drawn up." 
 
 She looked at him with a bewildered, numbed look 
 that might have drawn pity from a tiger. 
 
 "I shall demonstrate," he continued sweetly, "the 
 falsity of this denunciation by a careful search. You 
 will then be screened by the nature of my report from 
 all ulterior suspicions. I shall speak of your patriotic 
 gifts, your civism, and we shall be saved." 
 
 Madame de Dey suspected a snare; she remained 
 motionless, her tongue was frozen and her face on 
 fire. The sound of the knocker echoed through the 
 house. 
 
 "Ah," cried tne motner as she fell in terror upon 
 her knees, "save him! save him!" 
 
 The Public Prosecutor east a passionate glance at 
 her. 
 
 "Yes, let us save him," he replied, "even at the 
 cost of our own \ives." He raised her politely. 
 
 "I am lost," she cried. 
 
 "Ah, Madame!" he answered, with an oratorical 
 gesture, "I would not owe you to anything but to 
 yourself alone. ' '
 
 102 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 "Madame, he's ' cried Brigitte, thinking her 
 
 mistress was alone. 
 
 At the sight of the Public Prosecutor, the old serv- 
 ant, who had burst in, beaming with joy, grew pale 
 and motionless. 
 
 ''Who is it, Brigitte?" asked the magistrate, with 
 an air of gentle intelligence. 
 
 "A requisitionnaire sent us from the Mayor's to 
 lodge," answered the servant, showing him the billet 
 order. The Prosecutor read the paper. ' ' True, ' ' said 
 he ; "a battalion is coming to us to-night. ' ' He went 
 out. 
 
 At that moment the Countess had too much need 
 to believe in the sincerity of her former attorney for 
 the least doubt of it to cross her mind ! 
 
 Though she had scarcely the power to stand, she 
 ascended the staircase precipitately, opened the door 
 of the room, saw her son, and threw herself half dead 
 into his arms. "My child, my child," she sobbed, 
 almost beside herself, as she covered him with kisses. 
 
 ' ' Madame ! ' ' said a stranger 's voice. 
 
 ' ' Ah, it is not he ! " she cried, recoiling in horror. 
 She stood upright before the requisitionnaire and 
 gazed at him with haggard eyes. "My good God, 
 how like he is !" said Brigitte. There was a moment's 
 silence; even the stranger shuddered at the sight of 
 Madame de Dey. 
 
 The first blow had almost killed her, and now she 
 felt the full extent of her grief. She leaned for sup-
 
 MADAME DE DEY'S LAST RECEPTION 103 
 
 port on Brigitte's husband. "Ah. Monsieur," she 
 said, "I could not bear to see you any longer. Allow 
 me to leave you for my servants to entertain." 
 
 She went down to her own room, half carried by 
 Brigitte and her old man-servant. ' ' What ! Madame, ' ' 
 cried the housekeeper, as she led her mistress to a 
 chair; "is that man going to sleep in Monsieur Au- 
 guste's bed, and wear Monsieur Auguste's slippers, 
 and eat the pasty that I made for Monsieur Auguste ? 
 If I was to be guillotined for it, I 
 
 ' ' Brigitte ! ' ' cried Madame de Dey. 
 
 Brigitte was mute. 
 
 "Hold thy tongue, chatterbox," said her husband 
 in a low voice. "Dost want to kill Madame?" 
 
 At this moment the requisitionnaire made a noise 
 in his room as he sat down to the table. 
 
 "I cannot stay here," cried Madame de Dey. "I 
 will go into the conservatory; I shall be able to hear 
 better there what goes on outside during the night." 
 
 She was still tossed- between the fear of having lost 
 her son and the hope of seeing him come back to her. 
 
 The silence of the night was horrible. The arrival 
 of the battalion of requisitionnaires in the town 
 when each man sought his lodging, was a terrible 
 moment for the Countess. Her hopes were cheated 
 at every footfall, at every sound; presently nature 
 resumed her awful calm. 
 
 Toward morning the Countess was obliged to re- 
 turn to her own room.
 
 104 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 Brigitte, who was watching her mistress's move- 
 ments, not seeing her come out, went into the room 
 and found the Countess dead. 
 
 "She must have heard that requisitionnaire," cried 
 Brigitte. "As soon as he has finished dressing, there 
 he is, marching up and down Monsieur Auguste 's bed- 
 room, as if he were in a stable, singing their damned 
 Marseillaise! It was enough to kill her." 
 
 The death of the Countess was due to a deeper sen- 
 timent, and doubtless caused by some terrible vision. 
 At the exact hour when Madame de Dey died at Car- 
 entan, her son was shot in le Morbihan. 
 
 We may~ add this tragic event to all the evidence 
 of sympathies ignoring the laws of space, which has 
 been collected through the learning and curiosity of 
 certain recluses. These documents will some day serve 
 as the groundwork whereon to base a new science a 
 science which has hitherto lacked its man of genius.
 
 A PASSION IN THE DESERT 
 
 whole show is dreadful," she cried, coining 
 out of the menagerie of M. Martin. She had just 
 been looking at that daring speculator ' ' working with 
 his hyena" to speak in the style of the program. 
 
 "By what means," she continued, "can he have 
 tamed these animals to such a point as to be certain 
 of their affection for 
 
 "What seems to you a problem," said I, interrupt- 
 ing, "is really quite natural." 
 
 "Oh!" she cried, letting an incredulous smile wan- 
 der over her lips. 
 
 "You think that beasts are wholly without pas- 
 sions ? " I asked her. ' ' Quite the reverse ; we can com- 
 municate to them all the vices arising in our own state 
 of civilization." 
 
 She looked at me with an air of astonishment. 
 
 "Nevertheless," I continued, "the first time I saw 
 M. Martin, I admit, like you, I did give vent to an 
 exclamation of surprise. I found myself next to an 
 
 105
 
 lOfi SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 old soldier with the right leg amputated, who had 
 come in with me. His face had struck me. He had 
 one of those intrepid heads, stamped with the seal of 
 warfare, and on which the battles of Napoleon are 
 written. Besides, he had that frank good-humored 
 expression which always impresses me favorably. He 
 was without doubt one of those troopers who are sur- 
 prised at nothing, who find matter for laughter in the 
 contortions of a dying comrade, who bury or plunder 
 him quite light-heartedly, who stand intrepidly in the 
 way of bullets; in fact, one of those men who waste 
 no time in deliberation, and would not hesitate to 
 make friends with the devil himself. After looking 
 very attentively at the proprietor of the menagerie 
 getting out of his box, my companion pursed up his 
 lips with an air of mockery and contempt, with that 
 peculiar and expressive twist which superior people 
 assume to show they are not taken in. Then when 
 I was expatiating on the courage of M. Martin, he 
 smiled, shook his head knowingly, and said, 'Well 
 known. ' 
 
 " 'How "well known"?' I said. 'If you would 
 only explain me the mystery I should be vastly 
 obliged.' 
 
 ''After a few minutes, during which we made ac- 
 quaintance, we went to dine at the first restaurateur's 
 whose shop caught our eye. At dessert a bottle of 
 champagne completely refreshed and brightened up 
 the memories of this odd old soldier. He told me his
 
 A PASSION n THE DESERT 107 
 
 story, and I said that he had every reason to exclaim, 
 'Well known.' " 
 
 When she got home, she teased me to that extent, 
 and made so many promises, that I consented to com- 
 municate to her the old soldier's confidences. Next 
 day she received the following episode of an epic 
 which one might call "The Frenchman in Egypt." 
 
 During the expedition in Upper Egypt under Gen- 
 eral Desaix, a Provencal soldier fell into the hands of 
 the Mangrabins, and was taken by these Arabs into 
 the deserts beyond the falls of the Nile. 
 
 In order to place a sufficient distance between them- 
 selves and the French army, the Mangrabins made 
 forced marches, and only rested during the night. 
 They camped round a well overshadowed by palm 
 trees under which they had previously concealed a 
 store of provisions. Not surmising that the notion of 
 flight would occur to their prisoner, they cortented 
 themselves with binding his hands, and after eating 
 a few dates, and giving provender to their horses, 
 went to sleep. 
 
 When the brave Provencal saw that his ersmies 
 were no longer watching him, he made use of his 
 teeth to steal a scimitar, fixed the blade between his 
 knees, and cut the cords which prevented using his 
 hands; in a moment he was free. He at once seized 
 a rifle and a dagger, then taking the precaution to 
 provide himself with a sack of dried dates, oats, and
 
 108 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 powder and shot, and to fasten a scimitar to his waist, 
 he leaped onto a horse, and spurred on vigorously in 
 the direction where he thought to find the French 
 army. So impatient was he to see a bivouac again 
 that he pressed on the already tired courser at such 
 speed that its flanks were lacerated with his spurs, 
 and at last the poor animal died, leaving the French- 
 man alone in the desert. After walking some time 
 in the sand with all the courage of an escaped con- 
 vict, the soldier was obliged to stop, as the day had 
 already ended. In spite of the beauty of an oriental 
 sky at night, he felt he had not strength enough to 
 go on. Fortunately he had been able to find a small 
 hill, on the summit of which a few palm trees shot 
 up into the air; it was their verdure seen from afar 
 which had brought hope and consolation to his heart. 
 His fatigue was so great that he lay down upon a 
 rock of granite, capriciously cut out like a camp-bed : 
 there he fell asleep without taking any precaution to 
 defend himself while he slept. He had made the 
 sacrifice of his life. His last thought was one of re- 
 gret. He repented having left the Mangrabins, whose 
 nomad life seemed to smile on him now that he was 
 afar from them and without help. He was awakened 
 by the sun, whose pitiless rays fell with all their force 
 on the granite and produced an intolerable heat for 
 he had had the stupidity to place himself inversely 
 to the shadow thrown by the verdant majestic heads 
 of the palm trees. He looked at the solitary trees
 
 A PA881OX IV THE DESERT 109 
 
 and shuddered they reminded him of the graceful 
 shafts crowned with foliage which characterize the 
 Saracen columns in the cathedral of Aries. 
 
 But when, after counting the palm trees, he cast 
 his eye around him, the most horrible despair was 
 infused into his soul. Before him stretched an ocean 
 without limit. The dark sand of the desert spread 
 farther than sight could reach in every direction, and 
 glittered like steel struck with bright light. It might 
 have been a sea of looking-glass, or lakes melted to- 
 gether in a mirror. A fiery vapor carried up in 
 streaks made a perpetual whirlwind over the quiver- 
 ing land. The sky was lit with an oriental splendor 
 of insupportable purity, leaving naught for the im- 
 agination to desire. Heaven and earth were on fire. 
 
 The silence was awful in its wild and terrible maj- 
 esty. Infinity, immensity, closed in upon the soul 
 from every side. Not a cloud in the sky, not a breath 
 in the air, not a flaw on the bosom of the sand, ever 
 moving in diminutive waves ; the horizon ended as at 
 sea on a clear day, with one line of light, definite as 
 the cut of a sword. 
 
 The Provengal threw his arms round the trunk of 
 one of the palm trees, as though it were the body of 
 a friend, and then in the shelter of the thin straight 
 shadow that the palm cast upon the granite, he wept. 
 Then sitting down he remained as he was, contem- 
 plating with profound sadness the implacable scene, 
 which was all he had to look upon. He cried aloud,
 
 110 SIIORT STORIES RY BALZAC 
 
 to measure the solitude. His voice, lost in the hollows 
 of the hill, sounded faintly, and aroused no echo the 
 echo was in his own heart. The Provencal was twenty- 
 two years old: he loaded his carbine. 
 
 ''There'll be time enough," he said to himself, 
 laying on the ground the weapon which alone could 
 bring him deliverance. 
 
 Looking by turns at the black expanse and the blue 
 expanse, the soldier dreamed of Prance he smelt 
 with delight the gutters of Paris he remembered the 
 towns through which he had passed, the faces of his 
 fellow-soldiers, the most minute details of his life. 
 His southern fancy soon showed him the stones of his 
 beloved Provence, in the play of the heat which 
 waved over the spread sheet of the desert. Fearing 
 the danger of this cruel mirage, he went down the 
 opposite side of the hill to that by which he had come 
 up the day before. The remains of a rug showed that 
 this place of refuge had at one time been inhabited; 
 at a short distance he saw some palm trees full of 
 dates. Then the instinct which binds us to life awoke 
 again in his heart. He hoped to live long enough to 
 await the passing of some Arabs, or perhaps he might 
 hear the sound of cannon ; for at this time Bonaparte 
 was traversing Egypt, 
 
 This thought gave him new life. The palm tree 
 seemed to bend with the weight of the ripe fruit. 
 He shook some of it down. When he tasted this un- 
 hoped-for manna, he felt, sure that the palms had
 
 A PASSION IN THE DESERT 111 
 
 been cultivated by a former inhabitant the savory, 
 iresh meat of tlie dates was proof of the care of his 
 predecessor. He passed suddenly from dark despair 
 to an almost insane joy. He went up again to the 
 top of the hill, and spent the rest of the day in cut- 
 ting down one of the sterile palm trees, which the 
 night before had served him for shelter. A vague 
 memory made him think of the animals of the desert ; 
 and in case they might corne to drink at the spring, 
 visible from the base of the rocks but lost farther 
 down, he resolved to guard himself from their visits 
 by placing a barrier at the entrance of his hermitage. 
 
 In spite of his diligence, and the strength which 
 Ihe fear of being devoured asleep gave him, he was 
 unable to cut the palm in pieces, though he succeeded 
 in cutting it down. At eventide the king of the desert 
 fell ; the sound of its fall resounded far and wide, like 
 a sigh in the solitude ; the soldier shuddered as though 
 he had heard some voice predicting woe. 
 
 But like an heir who does not long bewail a de- 
 ceased parent, he tore off from this beautiful tree the 
 tall broad green leaves which are its poetic adorn- 
 ment, and used them to mend the mat on which he 
 was to sleep. 
 
 Fatigued by the heat and his work, he fell asleep 
 under the red curtains of his wet cave. 
 
 In the middle of the night his sleep was troubled 
 by an extraordinary noise; he sat up, and the deep 
 silence around him allowed him to distinguish the
 
 112 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 alternative accents of a respiration whose savage en- 
 ergy could not belong to a human creature. 
 
 A profound terror, increased still further by the 
 darkness, the silence, and his waking images, froze 
 his heart within him. He almost felt his hair stand 
 on end, when by straining his eyes to their utmost 
 he perceived through the shadows two faint yellow 
 lights. At first he attributed these lights to the re- 
 flection of his own pupils, but soon the vivid brilliance 
 of the night aided him gradually to distinguish the 
 objects around him in the cave, and he beheld a huge 
 animal lying but two steps from him. Was it a lion, 
 a tiger, or a crocodile ? 
 
 The Provencal was not educated enough to know 
 under what species his enemy ought to be classed ; 
 but his fright was all the greater, as his ignorance 
 led him to imagine all terrors at once; he endured a 
 cruel torture, noting every variation of the breathing 
 close to him without daring to make the slightest 
 movement. An odor, pungent like that of a fox, 
 but more penetrating, profounder so to speak filled 
 the cave, and when the Provencal became sensible of 
 this, his terror reached its height, for he could not 
 longer doubt the proximity of a terrible companion, 
 whose royal dwelling served him for shelter. 
 
 Presently the reflection of the moon, descending on 
 the horizon, lit up the den, rendering gradually visi- 
 ble and resplendent the spotted skin of a panther. 
 
 This lion of Egypt slept, curled up like a big
 
 A PASSION IN THE DESERT 113 
 
 dog, the peaceful possessor of a sumptuous niche at 
 the gate of an hotel; its eyes opened for a moment 
 and closed again; its face was turned toward the 
 man. A thousand confused thoughts passed through 
 the Frenchman's mind; first he thought of killing 
 it with a bullet from his gun, but he saw there was 
 not enough distance between them for him to take 
 proper aim the shot would miss the mark. And if 
 it were to wake! the thought made his limbs rigid. 
 He listened to his own heart beating in the midst of 
 the silence, and cursed the too violent pulsations 
 which the flow of blood brought on, fearing to dis- 
 turb that sleep which allowed him time to think of 
 some means of escape. 
 
 Twice he placed his hand on his scimitar, intend- 
 ing to cut off the head of his enemy; but the diffi- 
 culty of cutting the stiff, short hair compelled him to 
 abandon this daring project. To miss would be to 
 die for certain, he thought; he preferred the chances 
 of fair fight, and made up his mind to wait till morn- 
 ing; the morning did not leave him long to wait. 
 
 He could now examine the panther at ease; its 
 muzzle was smeared with blood. 
 
 "She's had a good dinner," he thought, without 
 troubling himself as to whether her feast might have 
 been on human flesh. "She won't be hungry when 
 she gets up." 
 
 It was a female. The fur on her belly and flanks 
 was glistening white; many small marks like velvet
 
 114 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 formed beautiful bracelets round her feet; her sinu- 
 ous tail was also white, ending with black rings; the 
 overpart of her dress, yellow like unburnished gold, 
 very lissom and soft, had the characteristic blotches 
 in the form of rosettes, which distinguish the panther 
 from every other feline species. 
 
 This tranquil and formidable hostess snored in an 
 attitude as graceful as that of a cat lying on a cush- 
 ion. Her blood-stained paws, nervous and well- 
 armed, were stretched out before her face, which 
 rested upon them, and from which radiated her 
 straight, slender whiskers, like threads of silver. 
 
 If she had been like that in a cage, the Provencal 
 would doubtless have admired the grace of the ani- 
 mal, and the vigorous contrasts of vivid color which 
 gave her robe an imperial splendor: but just then 
 his sight was troubled by her sinister appearance. 
 
 The presence of the panther, even asleep, could not 
 fail to produce the effect which the magnetic eyes of 
 the serpent are said to have on the nightingale. 
 
 For a moment the courage of the soldier began to 
 fail before this danger, though no doubt it would 
 have risen at the mouth of a cannon charged with 
 shell. Nevertheless, a bold thought brought daylight 
 to his soul and sealed up the source of the cold sweat 
 which sprang forth on his brow. Like men driven 
 to bay who defy death and offer their body to the 
 smiter, so he, seeing in this merely a tragic episode, 
 resolved to play his part with honor to the last.
 
 A PASSION IN THE DESERT 115 
 
 "The day before yesterday the Arabs would have 
 killed me perhaps," he said; so considering himself 
 as good as dead already, he waited bravely, with ex- 
 cited curiosity, his enemy's awakening. 
 
 When the sun appeared, the panther suddenly 
 opened her eyes; then she put out her paws with 
 energy, as if to stretch them and get rid of cramp. 
 At last she yawned, showing the formidable apparatus 
 of her teeth and pointed tongue, rough as a file. 
 
 "A regular petite maitresse," thought the French- 
 man, seeing her roll herself about so softly and 
 coquettishly. She licked off the blood which stained 
 her paws and muzzle, and scratched her head with re- 
 iterated gestures full of prettiness. "All right, make 
 a little toilet," the Frenchman said to himself, be- 
 ginning to recover his gaiety with his courage; "we'll 
 say good morning to each other presently," and he 
 seized the small, short dagger which he had taken 
 from the Mangrabins. At this moment the panther 
 turned her head toward the man and looked at him 
 fixedly without moving. 
 
 The rigidity of her metallic eyes and their insup- 
 portable luster made him shudder, especially when 
 the animal walked toward him. But he looked at 
 her caressingly, staring into her eyes in order to mag- 
 netize her, and let her come quite close to him; then 
 with a movement both gentle and amorous, as though 
 he were caressing the most beautiful of women, he 
 passed his hand over her whole body, from the head to
 
 116 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 the tail, scratching the flexible vertebrae which divided 
 the panther's yellow back. The animal waved her 
 tail voluptuously, and her eyes grew gentle; and 
 when for the third time the Frenchman accomplished 
 this interesting flattery, she. gave forth one of those 
 purrings by which our cats express their pleasure; 
 but this murmur issued from a throat so powerful 
 and so deep, that it resounded through the cave like 
 the last vibrations of an organ in a church. The 
 man, understanding the importance of his caresses, 
 redoubled them in such a way as to surprise and 
 stupefy his imperious courtesan. When he felt sure 
 of having extinguished the ferocity of his capricious 
 companion, whose hunger had so fortunately been 
 satisfied the day before, he got up to go out of the 
 cave; the panther let him go out, but when he had 
 reached the summit of the hill she sprang with the 
 lightness of a sparrow hopping from twig to twig, 
 and rubbed herself against his legs, putting up her 
 back after the manner of all the race of cats. Then 
 regarding her guest with eyes whose glare had soft- 
 ened a little, she gave vent to that wild cry which 
 naturalists compare to the grating of a saw. 
 
 "She is exacting," said the Frenchman, smiling. 
 
 He was bold enough to play with her ears; he 
 caressed her belly and scratched her head as hard as 
 he could. 
 
 When he saw that he was successful, he tickled her 
 skull with the point of his dagger, watching for
 
 A PASSION IN THE DESERT 117 
 
 the right moment to kill her, but the hardness of her 
 bones made him tremble for his success. 
 
 The sultana of the desert showed herself gracious 
 to her slave; she lifted her head, stretched out her 
 neck, and manifested her delight by the tranquillity 
 of her attitude. It suddenly occurred to the soldier 
 that to kill this savage princess with one blow he 
 must poignard her in the throat. 
 
 He raised the blade, when the panther, satisfied no 
 doubt, laid herself gracefully at his feet, and cast up 
 at him glances in which, in spite of their natural 
 fierceness, was mingled confusedly a kind of good- 
 will. The poor Provencal ate his dates, leaning 
 against one of the palm trees, and casting his eyes 
 alternately on the desert in quest of some liberator 
 and on his terrible companion to w T atch her un- 
 certain clemency. 
 
 The panther looked at the place where the date 
 stones fell, and every time that he threw one down 
 her eyes expressed an incredible mistrust. 
 
 She examined the man with an almost commercial 
 prudence. However, this examination was favorable 
 to him, for when he had finished his meager meal 
 she licked his boots with her powerful rough tongue, 
 brushing off with marvellous skill the dust gathered 
 in the creases. 
 
 "Ah, but when she's really hungry!" thought the 
 Frenchman. In spite of the shudder this thought 
 caused him, the soldier began to measure curiously
 
 118 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 the proportions of the panther, certainly one of the 
 most splendid specimens of its race. She was three 
 feet high and four feet long without counting her 
 tail; this powerful weapon, rounded like a cudgel, 
 was nearly three feet long. The head, large as that 
 of a lioness, was distinguished by a rare expression of 
 refinement. The cold cruelty of a tiger was dominant, 
 it was true, but there was also a vague resemblance 
 to the face of a sensual woman. Indeed, the face of 
 this solitary queen had something of the gaiety of a 
 drunken Nero: she had satiated herself with blood, 
 and she wanted to play. 
 
 The soldier tried if he might walk up and down, 
 and the panther left him free, contenting herself with 
 following him with her eyes, less like a faithful dog 
 than a big Angora cat, observing everything, and 
 every movement of her master. 
 
 When he looked round, he saw, by the spring, the 
 remains of his horse; the panther had dragged the 
 carcass all that way; about two-thirds of it had been 
 devoured already. The sight reassured him. 
 
 It was easy to explain the panther's absence, and 
 the respect she had had for him while he slept, The 
 first piece of good luck emboldened him to tempt the 
 future, and he conceived the wild hope of continuing 
 on good terms with the panther during the entire 
 day, neglecting no means of taming her and remain- 
 ing in her good graces. 
 
 He returned to her, and had the unspeakable joy
 
 A PASSION IN THE DESERT 119 
 
 of seeing her wag her tail with an almost impercep- 
 tible movement at his approach. He sat down then, 
 without fear, by her side, and they began to play to- 
 gether ; he took her paws and muzzle, pulled her ears, 
 rolled her over on her back, stroked her warm, deli- 
 cate flanks. She let him do whatever he liked, and 
 when he began to stroke the hair on her feet she drew 
 her claws in carefully. 
 
 The man, keeping the dagger in one hand, thought 
 to plunge it into the belly of the too-confiding pan- 
 ther, but he was afraid that he would be immediately 
 strangled in her last convulsive struggle; besides, he 
 felt in his heart a sort of remorse which bid him re- 
 spect a creature that had done him no harm. He 
 seemed to have found a friend, in a boundless desert ; 
 half unconsciously ho thought of his first sweetheart, 
 whom he had nicknamed ''Mignonne" by way of con- 
 trast, because she was so atrociously jealous that all 
 the time of their love he was in fear of the kiiife with 
 which she had always threatened him. 
 
 This memory of his early days suggested to him the 
 idea of making the young panther answer to this 
 name, now that he began to admire with less terror 
 her swiftness, suppleness, and softness. Toward the 
 end of the day he had familiarized himself with his 
 perilous position; he now almost liked the painful- 
 ness of it. At last his companion had got into the 
 habit of looking up at him whenever he cried in 
 falsetto voice, "Mignonne."
 
 120 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 At the setting of the sun Mignonne gave, several 
 times running, a profound melancholy cry. "She's 
 been well brought up," said the light-hearted soldier; 
 "she says her prayers." But this mental joke only 
 occurred to him when he noticed what a pacific atti- 
 tude his companion remained in. "Come, ma petite 
 blonde, I'll let you go to bed first," he said to her, 
 counting on the activity of his own legs to run away 
 as quickly as possible, directly she was asleep, and 
 seek another shelter for the night. 
 
 The soldier waited with impatience the hour of his 
 flight, and when it had arrived he walked vigorously 
 in the direction of the Nile; but hardly had he made 
 a quarter of a league in the sand when he heard the 
 panther bounding after him, crying with that saw- 
 like cry more dreadful even than the sound of her 
 leaping. 
 
 "Ah!" he said, "then she's taken a fancy to me; 
 she has never met any one before, and it is really 
 quite flattering to have her first love." That instant 
 the man fell into one of those movable quicksands so 
 terrible to travellers and from which it is impossible 
 to save oneself. Feeling himself caught, he gave a 
 shriek of alarm; the panther seized him with her 
 teeth by the collar, and, springing vigorously back- 
 ward, drew him as if by magic out of the whirling 
 sand. 
 
 "Ah, Mignonne!" cried the soldier, caressing her 
 enthusiastically; "we're bound together for life and
 
 A PAS81OX IN THE DESERT 121 
 
 death but no jokes, mind!" and he retraced his 
 steps. 
 
 From that time the desert seemed inhabited. It 
 contained a being to whom the man could talk, and 
 whose ferocity was rendered gentle by him, though 
 he could not explain to himself the reason for their 
 strange friendship. Great as was the soldier's desire 
 to stay upon guard, he slept. 
 
 On awakening he could not find Mignonne; he 
 mounted the hill, and in the distance saw her spring- 
 ing toward him after the habit of these animals, who 
 cannot run on account of the extreme flexibility of 
 the vertebral column. Mignonne arrived, her jaws 
 covered with blood ; she received the wonted caress of 
 her companion, showing with much purring how 
 happy it made her. Her eyes, full of languor, turned 
 still more gently than the day before toward the 
 Provencal, who talked to her as one would to a tame 
 
 "Ah! Mademoiselle, you are a nice girl, aren't 
 you ? Just look at that ! so we like to be made much 
 of, don't we? Aren't you ashamed of yourself? So 
 you have been eating some Arab or other, have you? 
 that doesn't matter. They're animals just the same 
 as you are ; but don 't you take to eating Frenchmen, 
 or I shan't like you any longer." 
 
 She played like a dog with its master, letting her- 
 self be rolled over, knocked about, and stroked, 
 alternately; sometimes she herself would provoke
 
 122 SHORT STOltlES KY JtALZAC 
 
 the soldier, putting up her paw with a soliciting 
 gesture. 
 
 Some days passed in this manner. This companion- 
 ship permitted the Provencal to appreciate the sub- 
 lime beauty of the desert; now that he had a living 
 thing to think about, alternations of fear and quiet, 
 and plenty to eat, his mind became filled with con- 
 trast and his life began to be diversified. 
 
 Solitude revealed to him all her secrets, and envel- 
 oped him in her delights. He discovered in the ris- 
 ing and setting of the sun sights unknown to the 
 world. He knew what it was to tremble when he 
 heard over his head the hiss of a bird's wing, so 
 rarely did they pass, or when he saw the clouds, 
 changing and many-colored travellers, melt one into 
 another. He studied in the night time the effect of 
 the moon upon the ocean of sand, where the simoon 
 made waves swift of movement and rapid in their 
 change. He lived the life of the Eastern day, may 
 veiling at its wonderful pomp; then, after having 
 revelled in the sight of a hurricane over the plain 
 where the whirling sands made red, dry mists and 
 death-bearing clouds, he would welcome the night 
 with joy, for then fell the healthful freshness of the 
 stars, and he listened to imaginary music in the skies. 
 Then solitude taught him to unroll the treasures of 
 dreams. He passed whole hours in remembering 
 mere nothings, and comparing his present life with 
 his past.
 
 A PASSION IN THE DESERT 123 
 
 At last he grew passionately fond of the panther; 
 for some sort of affection was a necessity. 
 
 Whether it was that his will powerfully projected 
 had modified the character of his companion, or 
 whether, because she found abundant food in her 
 predatory excursions in the deserts, she respected the 
 man's life, he began to fear for it no longer, seeing 
 her so well tamed. 
 
 He devoted the greater part of his time to sleep, 
 but he was obliged to watch like a spider in its web 
 that the moment of his deliverance might not escape 
 him, if any one should pass the line marked by the 
 horizon. He had sacrificed his shirt to make a flag 
 with, which he hung at the top of a palm tree, whose 
 foliage he had torn off. Taught by necessity, he 
 found the means of keeping it spread out, by fasten- 
 ing it with little sticks; for the wind might not be 
 blowing at the moment when the passing traveller 
 was looking through the desert. 
 
 It was during the long hours, when he had aban- 
 doned hope, that he amused himself with the panther. 
 He had come to learn the different inflections of her 
 voice, the expressions of her eyes ; he had studied the 
 capricious patterns of all the rosettes which marked 
 the gold of her robe. Mignonne was not even angry 
 when he took hold of the tuft at the end of her tail 
 to count the rings, those graceful ornaments which 
 glittered in the sun like jewelry. It gave him 
 pleasure to contemplate the supple, fine outlines of
 
 124 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 her form, the whiteness of her belly, the graceful pose 
 of her head. But it was especially when she was 
 playing that he felt most pleasure in looking at her; 
 tht agility and youthful lightness of her movements 
 were a continual surprise to him; he wondered at 
 the supple way in which she jumped and climbed, 
 washed herself and arranged her fur, crouched down 
 and prepared to spring. However rapid her spHng 
 might be, however slippery the stone she was on, she 
 would always stop short at the word ' ' Mignonne. ' ' 
 
 One day, in a bright mid-day sun, an enormous 
 bird coursed through the air. The man left his pan- 
 ther to look at this new guest; but after waiting a 
 moment the deserted sultana growled deeply. 
 
 "My goodness ! I do believe she's jealous," he cried, 
 seeing her eyes become hard again ; ' ' the soul of Vir- 
 ginie has passed into her body ; that 's certain. ' ' 
 
 The eagle disappeared into the air, while the sol- 
 dier admired the curved contour of the panther. 
 
 But there was such youth and grace in her form ! 
 she was beautiful as a woman! the blond fur of her 
 robe mingled well with the delicate tints of faint 
 white which marked her flanks. 
 
 The profuse light cast down by the sun made this 
 living gold, these russet markings, to burn in a way 
 to give them an indefinabTe attraction. 
 
 The man and the panther looked at one another 
 irith a look full of meaning; the coquette quivered 
 when she felt her friend stroke her head ; her
 
 A PASSION IN THE DESERT 12& 
 
 eyes flashed like lightning- then she shut them 
 tightly. 
 
 "She has a soul," he said, looking at the stillness 
 of this queen of the sands, golden like them, white 
 like them, solitary and burning like them. 
 
 ''Well," she said, "I have read your plea in favor 
 of beasts ; but how did two so well adapted to under- 
 stand each other end?" 
 
 ' ' Ah, well ! you see, they ended as all great passions 
 do end by a misunderstanding. For some reason 
 one suspects the other of treason ; they don 't come to 
 an explanation through pride, and quarrel and part 
 from sheer obstinacy." 
 
 "Yet sometimes at the best moments a single word 
 or a look is enough but anyhow go on with your 
 story." 
 
 "It's horribly difficult, but you will understand, 
 after what the old villain told me over his cham- 
 pagne. 
 
 "He said 'I don't know if I hurt her, but she 
 turned round, as if enraged, and with her sharp teeth 
 caught hold of my leg gently, I daresay; but I r 
 thinking she would devour me, plunged my dagger 
 into her throat. She rolled over, giving a cry that 
 froze my heart ; and I saw her dying, still looking at 
 me without anger. I would have given all the world 
 my cross even, which I had not got then to have 
 brought her to life again. It was as though I had
 
 126 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 murdered a real person; and the soldiers who had 
 seen my flag, and were come to my assistance, found 
 me in tears.' 
 
 " 'Well, sir,' he said, after a moment of silence, 
 'since then I have been in war in Germany, in Spain, 
 in Russia, in France; I've certainly carried my car- 
 cass about a good deal, but never have I seen anything 
 like the desert. Ah ! yes, it is very beautiful ! ' 
 
 " 'What did you feel there?' I asked him. 
 
 " 'Oh! that can't be described, young man. Be- 
 sides, I am not always regretting my palm trees and 
 my panther. I should have to be very melancholy for 
 that. In the desert, you see, there is everything, and 
 nothing. ' 
 
 " 'Yes, but explain 
 
 " 'Well,' he said, with an impatient gesture, 'it is 
 God without mankind.' "
 
 LOST BY A LAUGH 
 
 "DURING the campaign of 1812," said General 
 Montriveau, "I was the involuntary cause of a ter- 
 rible calamity. You, Doctor Bianchon, who study 
 the mind so carefully when you study the human 
 body, may perhaps find in this story a solution to 
 some of your problems on the Will. 
 
 ' ' It was my second campaign. Like a simple young 
 lieutenant of artillery, I loved danger and laughed at 
 everything. 
 
 ' ' When we reached the Beresina, the army as you 
 know was utterly disorganized and without any idea 
 of military discipline. In fact, it was a mere crowd 
 of men of all nations moving instinctively from north 
 to south. The soldiers would drive away a ragged, 
 bare-footed general from their camp-fires if he did 
 not bring them food or fuel. Even after the passing 
 of this celebrated river the confusion was as great as 
 before. 
 
 "I had come quietly through the marshes of Zem- 
 bin all alone, and was walking on, searching for a 
 
 127
 
 128 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 house where some one would take me in. Not find- 
 ing one, or being driven away from those which I did 
 find, toward evening I was fortunate enough to light 
 upon a wretched little Polish farm. Nothing could 
 give you an idea of the place unless you have seen 
 the wooden houses of Lower Normandy or the poorest 
 metairies of La Beauce. These dwellings consist of 
 one single room divided off at one end by a partition 
 of boards, the smaller portion serving as a place to 
 store fodder in. Although the twilight was growing 
 dim, I had descried in the distance a thin line of 
 smoke arising from this house. Hoping to find com- 
 panions more compassionate than those to whom I 
 had as yet addressed myself, I marched on bravely to 
 the farm. I went in and found several officers seated 
 at table, eating horse-flesh broiled over the coals, 
 frozen beet-root, and potatoes. With them no un- 
 usual sight was a woman. I recognized two or three 
 of the men as artillery captains belonging to the first 
 regiment in which I had served. They greeted me 
 with hurrahs and acclamations that would have sur- 
 prised me indeed on the other side of the Beresina: 
 but just then the cold was less intense, my comrades 
 were enjoying rest and warmth and food, the floor 
 strewn with trusses of straw, and altogether there 
 .seemed to be a prospect of passing a comfortable 
 night. After all it was not much that we asked for 
 then. My brother officers were philanthropists, when 
 they could be so for nothing ; by the way, one of the
 
 LOST BY A LAUGH 129 
 
 most usual modes of philanthropy. I sat down upon a 
 heap of fodder and fell to. 
 
 "At the end of the table, on the sile of the door 
 communicating with the little room full of hay and 
 straw, sat my former colonel. Among all the motley 
 crowd of men whom it has been my lot to meet, he 
 was one of the most extraordinary. He was an Ital- 
 ian. In southern countries, whenever human nature 
 is fine, it is sublime. I do not know whether you 
 have noticed the wonderful whiteness of Italians when 
 their complexion is fair it is marvellous in the sun- 
 light especially. When I read the fanciful portrait 
 of Colonel Oudet which Charles Nodier has drawn us, 
 I found my own impressions in every one of his pol- 
 ished sentences. An Italian, like the majority of the 
 officers of his regiment otherwise drafted by the Em- 
 peror from the armee d' Eugene- my colonel was a. 
 man of lofty stature, eight or nine pouces high, ad- 
 mirably proportioned, a trifle stout perhaps, but of 
 enormous strength, and as agile and wiry as a gray- 
 hound. In contrast with a profusion of black curls, 
 the whiteness of the skin gleamed like a woman 's. He 
 had small hands, beautiful feet, and a gracious mouth ; 
 his nose was aquiline and finely formed, naturally 
 pinched in at the point; in his frequent outbursts of 
 passion it grew perfectly pallid: 
 
 " Indeed the violence of his temper was so incred- 
 ible, words would fail to describe it; but the sequel' 
 affords abundant proof. No one could remain un-
 
 130 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 moved before it. Perhaps I myself was the only per- 
 son who was not afraid of him ; but then he had con- 
 ceived an extraordinary friendship for me. \Vhatever 
 I did was right. When this passion was apon him, 
 the muscles of his brow contracted, and formed a 
 Delta, or rather the horse-shoe of Redgauntlet, in the 
 middle of his forehead. This mark struck you per- 
 haps with even more terror than the magnetic sparks 
 which flashed from his blue eyes. Then his whole 
 body quivered, and his strength, ordinarily enormous, 
 became almost boundless. He spoke with a strong 
 grasseyement, and his voice, at least as powerful as 
 the voice of the Oudet of Charles Nodier, threw an 
 incredible richness of tone into the consonant or sylla- 
 ble on which the grasseyement fell. If at certain 
 moments this Parisian vulgarism of pronunciation 
 was an additional charm in him, you must actually 
 have heard it to conceive what a sense of power it 
 canveyed when he gave the word of command or 
 spoke under the influence of emotion. When he was 
 calm his blue eyes beamed with angelic sweetness, 
 and his clear-cut brow bore an expression full of 
 charm. At a parade of the armee d'ltalie there was 
 not a man who could compare with him; and at the 
 time of the last review which Napoleon held before 
 we crossed the Russian frontier, even d 'Orsay himself 
 the handsome d 'Orsay was surpassed by our 
 colonel. This favored being was a mass of contra- 
 dictions. Contrast is the essence of Passion. You
 
 LOST BY A LAUGH 131 
 
 need not ask me then whether he exercised over 
 women that irresistible influence before which our 
 nature yields like liquid glass beneath the blower's 
 pipe. However, by a strange fatality which perhaps 
 a keen observer might explain, the colonel failed or 
 refused to make more than a very few conquests. 
 
 ' ' To give you an idea of his violence, I will tell you 
 in a few words what I saw him do in one of these 
 paroxysms of rage. One day we were ascending with 
 our cannon a very narrow road that had a deep cut- 
 ting on one side and a wood on the other. In the 
 middle of the ascent we met another regiment of 
 artillery headed by its colonel. This colonel tried to 
 make the captain in command of the first battery of 
 our regiment give way. Naturally enough the cap- 
 tain refused ; so their colonel made a sign to his own 
 first battery to advance. Notwithstanding the care 
 which the driver took to keep as close to the wood as 
 possible, the wheel of the first gun-carriage caught 
 our captain's right leg and broke the bone clean in 
 two, hurling him off his horse on the opposite side. 
 It was all done in a moment. Our colonel, who was 
 only a little way off, guessing what the whole quarrel 
 was about, gallops up at full speed, right through 
 the wood and our artillery we thought every instant 
 his horse must have gone down, head over heels and 
 arrives on the scene in front of the other colonel, just 
 at the moment that our captain cried out 'Help,' 
 and fell. Well, our Italian colonel was no longer a
 
 132 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 human being! Foam burst from his mouth like the 
 froth of champagne he growled like a lion. In- 
 capable of articulating a syllable, or even a cry, he 
 made a terrible sign to his opponent, pointed to the 
 wood, and drew his sword. The two colonels entered 
 the wood. In a couple of seconds we saw the ag- 
 gressor stretched on the ground, his head cleft in two 
 by our colonel's sword. The men of the other regi- 
 ment fell back; the Deuce! and pretty quick too. 
 Our captain who was almost killed, and lay moaning 
 in the mud where the wheel of the gun-carriage had 
 thrown him had a wife, a most charming Italian, 
 from Messina. She was not altogether indifferent to 
 our colonel. It was this circumstance which had 
 added fuel to his fury. Her husband was entitled to 
 his protection ; it was his duty to defend the man as 
 much as the woman herself. 
 
 "Now in the cabin beyond Zembin, where I had 
 reeeived such a warm welcome, this very captain sat 
 opposite me, and his wife was at the other side of the 
 table, opposite the colonel. She was a little woman, 
 this Messinian, and very dark; her eyes were black 
 and almond-shaped, within them glowed all the fer- 
 vor of the Sicilian sun; her name was Rosina. Just 
 at that time she was pitiably thin; her cheeks, like 
 fruit exposed to all the rough chances of the wayside, 
 were stained with dust. Though she was worn out 
 with travelling, scarcely covered by her rags, her hair 
 matted and in disorder, muffled in the fragment of a
 
 LOST BY A LAUGH 133 
 
 shawl, yet there was still somewhat of the charm of 
 womanhood about her. Her graceful gestures, her 
 curled red lips, her white teeth, the outline of her 
 face, the form of her breasts, these were charms which 
 cold and want and misery could not quite efface; to 
 men who still could think of women, they still spoke 
 of love. Besides, Rosina possessed one of those na- 
 tures apparently frail, but in reality full of nerve and 
 power. 
 
 ''The face of her husband, a Piedmontese, sug- 
 gested (if one can combine two such ideas) a sort of 
 mocking good-nature. He w r as a gentleman, brave, 
 and well educated, but he appeared to ignore the re- 
 lations Avhich had been existing for nearly three years 
 between his wife and the colonel. I used to attribute 
 this indifference to Italian manners, or to some home 
 secret of their own. Still there was something in the 
 man's face which always inspired me with an involun- 
 tary distrust. His lower lip was thin and very flex- 
 ible, and turned down at the corners instead of up; 
 this feature seemed to me to betray an undercurrent 
 of cruelty in a character apparently indolent and 
 phlegmatic. 
 
 "You may easily imagine that the conversation 
 when I arrived was not of a very brilliant order. My 
 comrades were worn out, and ate in silence. Of 
 course they asked me a few questions, and we told 
 each other our troubles, interspersing our stories with 
 remarks on the campaign, the cold, the generals and
 
 134 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 their mistakes, and the Russians. A moment or two 
 after my arrival, the colonel, having finished his 
 meager repast, wipes his mustache, wishes us good 
 night, looks with his dark eyes at the Italian, and 
 says to her: 'Rosina.' Then without waiting for an 
 answer, he goes to pass the night in the little store- 
 room where the fodder was kept. 
 
 "It was not difficult to guess the meaning of the 
 colonel's summons. Besides, the young woman al- 
 lowed an indescribable gesture to escape her, which 
 expressed not only the displeasure she must have felt 
 at seeing their connection thus proclaimed abroad 
 without any respect of persons, but also her conscious- 
 ness of the insult offered both to her own dignity as a 
 woman and to her husband. But more still the 
 twitching of all her features, and the violent contrac- 
 tion of her eyebrows, seemed to betray a sort of pre- 
 sentiment ; perhaps she had some instinct of her fate. 
 She sat on quietly at the table. A moment after- 
 ward, probably as the colonel lay down in his hay or 
 straw bed, he repeated 'Rosina. ' The accent of this 
 second appeal was still more brutally interrogative 
 than the first. All the impatience, the despotism, 
 the Will of the man were expressed in that grasseye- 
 ment of his, and his Italian elongation of the vowels 
 and consonants in those three syllables. Rosina grew 
 pale, but she rose, passed out behind us and went to 
 the colonel. 
 
 "All my comrades preserved a profound silence;
 
 LOST BY A LAUGH- 135 
 
 but I unhappily, after looking at them all round, 
 began to laugh, and then my laughter was repeated 
 from mouth to mouth. 
 
 "'Tu ridi,' uaid the husband. 
 
 " 'Ma foi! ti'on camarade!' said I, becoming seri- 
 ous again, 'I acknowledge that I am in the wrong; I 
 am sure I beg your pardon most heartily, and if 
 you are not content with my apologies I am ready to 
 give you satisfaction.' 
 
 " 'It is not you who are in the wrong, but I,' he 
 replied coldly. 
 
 " After this we lay down for the night in the room 
 where we were, and soon were all sound asleep. 
 
 "The next day, each man, without waking his 
 neighbor or seeking a companion for the journey, 
 started off again as his fancy led him. It was this 
 sort of egoism which made our retreat one of the most 
 terrible dramas of selfishness, misery, and horror, ever 
 played out under Heaven. 
 
 "However, about seven or eight hundred paces 
 from our lodging, we all met again almost all and 
 marched on together, one same necessity impelling 
 us. We were like geese driven in flocks by the blind 
 despotism of a child. When we had reached a mound, 
 from whence the farm where we had spent the night 
 was still in view, we heard cries like the bellowing of 
 bulls, or the roaring of lions in the desert; but no 
 it was a din that cannot be compared to any sound 
 known to man. However, mingled with this omi-
 
 130 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 nous, horrible roaring, we could distinguish, the feeble 
 cries of a woman. We all turned round, a prey to an 
 indescribable feeling of terror. The house was no 
 longer visible; it had been barricaded, and was 
 nothing but a pile of flame. Volumes of smoke, car- 
 ried away by the wind, bore toward us these hoarse 
 and hideous sounds, and with them a strong, unspeak- 
 able odor. 
 
 ''A few paces from us came the captain, walking up 
 quickly to join our caravan. We all looked at him 
 in silence, no one dared to question him ; but he, divin- 
 ing our curiosity, pointed with his right hand to his 
 own breast and with his left to the fire, and said, 
 'Son' io!' 
 
 ' ' We continued our march without making a single 
 remark. ' ' 
 
 ''There is nothing more horrible than the rebellion 
 of a sheep, ' ' said de Marsay.
 
 GOLD 
 
 AT this time I was living in a little street which no 
 doubt you do not know, la rue de Lesdiguieres ; it be- 
 gins in la rue Saint Antoine, opposite a fountain 
 near la place de la Bastille, and ends in la rue de la 
 Cerisaie. The love of science had thrown me into a 
 garret where I worked all through the night ; the day 
 I spent at a neighboring library, le Bibliotheque de 
 Monsieur. I lived frugally, accepting all the con- 
 ditions of monastic life conditions so necessary to 
 men at work. When the weather was fine, the farthest 
 I went was for a walk on le boulevard Bourdon. One 
 passion alone drew me out of my studious habits; 
 but even that was a study in itself. I used to go and 
 watch the manners of the faubourg, its inhabitants; 
 and their characters. As I was as ill-clad as the 
 workmen and indifferent to appearances, I did not in 
 any way put them on their guard against me; I was 
 able to mix with them when they stood in groups, 
 and watch them driving their bargains and disputing 
 as they were leaving their work. With me observa- 
 
 137
 
 138 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 tion had even then become intuitive ; it did not neglect 
 the body, but it penetrated further, into the soul, or 
 rather, it grasped the exterior details so perfectly, 
 that it at once passed beyond. It gave me the faculty 
 of living the life of the individual upon whom it 
 exercised itself, by allowing me to substitute myself 
 for him, like the dervish in the Thousand-and-One 
 Nights, who took possession of the body and soul of 
 people over whom he pronounced certain words. 
 
 Between eleven and twelve o 'clock at night I might 
 fall in with a workman and his. wife returning to- 
 gether from the Ambigu Oomique; then I would 
 amuse myself by following them from le boulevard du 
 Pontaux-Choux to le boulevard Beaumarchais. First 
 of all, the good people would talk about the piece they 
 had seen; then, from the thread to the needle, they 
 passed on to their own affairs. The mother would 
 drag along her child by the hand without listening 
 to his cries or his questions. Then the pair would 
 count up the money to be paid them next day, and 
 spend it in twenty different ways. Then there were 
 details of housekeeping, grumblings about the enor- 
 mous price of potatoes, or the length of the winter and 
 the dearness of fuel ; and then forcible representations 
 as to what was owing to the baker ; at last the discus- 
 sion grew acrimonious, and each of them would be- 
 tray his character in forcible expressions. As I lis- 
 tened to these people I was able to enter into their 
 life ; I felt their rags upon my back, and walked with
 
 GOLD 139 
 
 my feet in their worn-out shoes; their desires, their 
 wants everything passed into my soul, or else it was 
 my soul that passed into theirs. It was the dream 
 of a man awake. I grew warm with them against 
 some tyrannical foreman, or the bad customers who 
 made them return many times without paying them. 
 To be quit of one's own habits, to become another 
 than oneself by an inebriation of the moral faculties, 
 and to play this game at will this formed my dis- 
 traction. 
 
 To what do I owe this gift? Is it a kind 
 of second sight? Is it one of those qualities which, 
 if abused, induce madness? I have never sought to 
 find the cause of this power; I possess it and I use 
 it, that is all. It is enough to know that, at that time, 
 I had decomposed the elements of the heterogeneous 
 mass called the People that I had analyzed it in such 
 a w r ay that I could set their proper value on its quali- 
 ties, good and bad. I knew already the possible use- 
 fulness of the faubourg, that seminary of Revolution 
 which contains heroes, inventors, men of practical 
 science, rogues, villains, virtues and vices, all op- 
 pressed by misery, stifled by poverty, drowned in 
 wine, worn out by strong drink. You could not im- 
 agine how many unknown adventures, how many for- 
 gotten dramas, how many horrible and beautiful 
 things lie hidden in this town of sorrow. Imagination 
 will never reach the truth that lurks there, for no 
 man can go to seek it out, the descent is too deep to
 
 140 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 discover its marvellous scenes of tragedy and comedy, 
 its masterpieces which are born of chance. 
 
 I know not why I have kept the story I am about 
 to relate so long without telling it ; it is part of those 
 strange tales stored in the bag whence memory draws 
 them capriciously, like the numbers of a lottery. I 
 have many more of them, as strange as this and as 
 deeply buried ; they Avill have their turn, I assure you. 
 
 One day my housekeeper, the wife of a workman, 
 came to ask me to honor with my presence the mar- 
 riage of one of her sisters. To make you understand 
 what this marriage must have been like, I must tell 
 you that I gave the poor creature forty sous a month ; 
 for this she came every morning to make my bed, 
 clean my shoes, brush my clothes, sweep the room, 
 and get ready my dejeuner; the rest of her time she 
 went to turn the handle of a machine, earning at this 
 hard work ten sous a day. Her husband, a cabinet- 
 maker, earned four francs. But as they had a family 
 of three children, it was almost impossible for them 
 to get an honest living. I never met with more 
 thorough honesty than this man's and woman's. For 
 five years after my leaving the district, la mere Vail- 
 lant used to come to congratulate me on my name 
 day, and bring me a bouquet and some oranges, and 
 she was a woman who could never manage to save ten 
 sous. Misery had drawn us together. I have never 
 been able to give her more than ten francs, often bor- 
 rowed on purpose. This may explain my promise to
 
 GOLD 141 
 
 go to the wedding; I relied upon effacing myself 
 in the poor creature's merriment. 
 
 The marriage feast, the ball, the whole entertain- 
 ment took place on the first floor of a wine shop in 
 la rue de Charenton. The room was large, papered up 
 to the height of the tables with a filthy paper, and 
 lit by lamps with tin reflectors ; along the walls were 
 wooden benches; in this room were twenty-four peo- 
 ple, all dressed in their best, decked with large bou- 
 quets and ribands, their faces flushed, full of the ex- 
 citement of the court-Hie, dancing as if the world were 
 coming to an end. The bride and bridegroom were 
 embracing to the general satisfaction, and certain 
 hee-hees! and haw-haws! were heard, facetious, but 
 really less indecent than the timid glances of girls 
 who have been well brought up. The whole company 
 expressed an animal contentment, which was some- 
 how or other contagious. However, neither the physi- 
 ognomies of the company, nor the wedding, nor in fact 
 any of these people, have any connection with my 
 story. Only bear in mind th. strangeness of the 
 frame. Picture to yourself the squalid, red shop, sniff 
 the odor of the wine, listen to the howls of merri- 
 ment, linger a while in this faubourg, among those 
 workmen and poor women and old men who had given 
 themselves up to pleasure for a single night ! 
 
 The orchestra was composed of three blind men 
 from Les Quinze-Vingts ; the first was violin, the sec- 
 ond clarionet, and the third flageolet. They were paid
 
 142 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 seven francs for the night among the three. You may 
 imagine they did not give Rossini or Beethoven at 
 that price; they played what they chose or could; 
 with charming delicacy, no one reproached them. 
 Their music did such brutal violence to the drum of 
 my ear, that, after glancing round at the company, I 
 looked at the blind trio, I was inclined to indulgence 
 at once, when I recognized their uniform. The per- 
 formers were in the embrasure of a window, so that 
 you were obliged to be close to them to be able to 
 distinguish their features; I did not go up immedi- 
 ately, but when I did get near them, I do not know 
 how it was, but it was all over, the wedding party 
 and the music disappeared; my curiosity was excited 
 to the highest degree, for my soul passed into the body 
 of the man who played the clarionet. The violin and 
 the flageolet had both quite ordinary faces, the usual 
 face of the blind, intense, attentive, and grave; but 
 the clarionet's was a phenomenon such as arrests and 
 absorbs the attention of a philosopher or an artist. 
 
 Imagine a plaster mask of Dante, lit up by the red 
 glow of the quinquet lamp and crowned with a forest 
 of silver-white hair. The bitter, sorrowful expres- 
 sion 1 of this magnificent head was intensified by blind- 
 ness, for thought gave a new life to the dead eyes ; it 
 was as if a scorching light came forth from them, the 
 product of one single, incessant desire, itself inscribed 
 in vigorous lines upon a prominent brow, scored with! 
 wrinkles, like the courses of stone in an old wall.
 
 GOLD 143 
 
 The old man breathed into his instrument at random, 
 without paying the least attention to the measure or 
 the air; his fingers rose and fell as they moved the 
 worn-out keys with mechanical unconsciousness; he 
 did not trouble himself about making what are called 
 in orchestral terms canards, but the dancers did not 
 notice it any more than did my Italian 's two acolytes ; 
 for I was determined he must be an Italian, and he 
 was an Italian. There was something great and des- 
 potic in this old Homer keeping within himself an 
 Odyssey doomed to oblivion. It was such real great- 
 ness that it still triumphed over its abject condition, 
 a despotism so full of life that it dominated his pov- 
 erty. 
 
 None of the violent passions which lead a man 
 to good as well as to evil, and make of him a convict 
 or a hero, were wanting in that grandly hewn, lividly 
 Italian face. The whole was overshadowed by griz- 
 zled eyebrows which cast into shade the deep hollows 
 beneath; one trembled lest one should see the light 
 of thought reappear in them, as one fears to see brig- 
 ands armed with torches and daggers come to the 
 mouth of a cave. A lion dwelt within that cage of 
 flesh, a lion whose rage was exhausted in vain against 
 the iron of its bar. The flame of despair had sunk 
 quenched into its ashes, the lava had grown cold ; but 
 its channels, its destructions, a little smoke, bore evi- 
 dence to the violence of the eruption and the ravages 
 of the fire. These ideas revealed in the man's appear-
 
 144 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 ance were as burning in his soul as they were cold 
 upon his face. 
 
 Between dances the violin and the flageolet, 
 gravely occupied with their bottle and glass, hung 
 their instruments on to the button of their reddish- 
 colored coats, stretched out their hand toward a lit- 
 tle table placed in the embrasure of the window and 
 on which' was their canteen, and offered a full glass 
 to the Italian; he could not take it himself, as the 
 table was always behind his chair ; he thanked them 
 by a friendly gesture of the head. Their movements 
 were accomplished with that precision which is always 
 so astonishing in the blind of Les Quinze-Vingts, it 
 almost makes you believe that they can see. 
 
 Presently I went up nearer to the three blind men, 
 so as to be better able to listen to them; but when 
 I was close to them they began to study me, and 
 not, I suppose, recognizing a workman, they remained 
 shy. 
 
 "What country do you come from, you who arc 
 playing the clarionet?" 
 
 "From Venice," replied the blind man, with a 
 slight Italian accent. 
 
 "Were you born blind, or did you become blind 
 from ?" 
 
 "From an accident," he replied sharply; "it was a 
 cursed cataract." 
 
 "Venice is a fine town; I have always had a long- 
 ing to go there."
 
 GOLD 145 
 
 The old man's face lit up, his wrinkles worked, he 
 was deeply moved. 
 
 "If I went there with you," he said, "you would 
 not be losing your time. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Don 't talk to him about Venice, ' ' said the violin, 
 "or you'll start our Doge off; especially as he has 
 already put two bottles into his mouthpiece has our 
 prince 1" 
 
 "Come, let's go on, pere Canard," said the flageolet. 
 
 They all three began to play ; but all the time they 
 took to execute four country dances, the Venetian 
 kept sniffing after me, he divined the excessive curi- 
 osity which I felt about him. His expression lost the 
 cold, sad look; some hope I know not what enliv- 
 ened all his features and ran like a blue flame through 
 his wrinkles; he smiled and wiped his bold, terrible 
 brow ; in fact he grew cheerful, like a man getting on 
 to his hobby. 
 
 "How old are you?" I asked. 
 
 "Eighty-two!" 
 
 "How long have you been blind?" 
 
 "Nearly fifty years," he replied, with an accent 
 which showed that his regrets did not arise only from 
 his loss of sight, but from some great power of which 
 he must have been despoiled. 
 
 "Why is it they call you the Doge?" I asked. 
 
 "Oh, it's their joke," he said. "I am a patrician 
 of Venice, and might have been Doge like the rest." 
 
 "What is your name then?"
 
 146 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 "Here, le pere Canet," he said. "My name could 
 never be written on the registers different from that ; 
 but in Italian it is Marco Facino Cane, principe di 
 Varese." 
 
 "Why! you are descended from the famous condol- 
 tiere Facino Cane, whose conquests passed to the 
 Duke of Milan?" 
 
 ' ' E vero, ' ' said he. ' ' In those days the son of Cane 
 took refuge in Venice to avoid being killed by the 
 Visconti, and got himself inscribed in the Golden 
 Book. But now there is no Cane, any more than 
 there is a book." And he made a terrible gesture 
 of extinct patriotism and disgust for human affairs. 
 
 "But if you were a Senator of Venice, you must 
 have been rich; how did you come to lose your for- 
 tune?" 
 
 At this question he raised his head toward me -with 
 a truly tragic movement as if to examine me, and 
 answered, "By misfortune!" 
 
 He no longer thought of drinking, and refused by 
 a sign the glass of wine which the old flageolet was 
 just at that moment holding out to him, then his 
 head sank. These details were not of a kind to ex- 
 tinguish my curiosity. While these three machines 
 were playing a country dance, I watched the old 
 Venetian noble with the feelings which devour a man 
 of twenty. I saw Venice and the Adriatic ; I saw her 
 in ruins in the ruins of his face. I walked in that 
 city that is so dear to its inhabitants. I went from
 
 GOLD 147 
 
 the Rialto to the Grand Canal, from the Quay of the 
 Slaves to the Lido; I came back to the unique, sub- 
 lime Cathedral ; I examined the casements of the Casa 
 d'Oro, each with its different ornament; I gazed at 
 the ancient palaces with all their wealth of marble; 
 in a word, I saw all those marvels with which the 
 savant sympathizes the more because he can color 
 them to his liking, and does not rob his dreams of 
 their poetry by the sight of the reality. I followed 
 back the course of the life of this scion of the greatest 
 of the condottieri, and sought to discover in him the 
 traces of his misfortunes, and the causes of the physi- 
 cal and moral degradation which rendered yet more 
 beautiful the sparks of greatness and nobleness that 
 had just revived. 
 
 No doubt we shared the same thoughts, for I be- 
 lieve that blindness renders intellectual communica- 
 tions much more rapid, by preventing the attention 
 from flitting away to exterior objects. The proof of 
 our sympathy was not long in showing itself. Facino 
 Cane stopped playing, rose from his seat, came to me, 
 and said one word 
 
 "Sortons!" 
 
 The effect it produced on me was like an electric 
 dom-he. I gave him my arm and we went out. 
 
 When we were in the street, he said to me: "Will 
 you take me to Venice, will you be my guide, will 
 you have faith in me? You shall be richer than the 
 ten richest houses in Amsterdam or London, richer
 
 148 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 than the Rothschilds, as rich as the Thousand-and- 
 One Nights." 
 
 I thought the man was mad ; but there was a power 
 in his voice which I obeyed. ^1 let him guide me; 
 he led me toward the trenches of the Bastille, as if he 
 had eyes. He sat down on a very lonely place, where 
 the bridge connecting the Canal Saint Martin and the 
 Seine has since been built. I placed myself on an- 
 other stone in front of the old man, his white hair 
 glistened like threads of silver in the moonlight. 
 The silence, scarcely broken by the stormy sound? 
 which reached us from the boulevards, the purity of 
 the night everything combined to render the scene 
 really fantastic. 
 
 "You speak of millions to a young man, and dc 
 you think he would hesitate to endure a thousand 
 evils in order to obtain them ! But you are not mak- 
 ing fun of me?" 
 
 "May I die without confession," he said passion- 
 ately, "if what I am going to tell you is not true. I 
 was twenty just as you are now I was rich, hand- 
 some, and a noble. I began with the greatest of all 
 madness Love. I loved as men love no longer: I 
 even hid in a chest at the risk of being stabbed to 
 death in it, without having received anything more 
 than the promise of a kiss. To die for her seemed to 
 me life itself. In 1760 I became enamored of one of 
 the Vendramini, a woman of eighteen, who was mar- 
 ried to a Sagredo, one of the richest senators, a man
 
 GOLD 149 
 
 of thirty, and mad about his wife. My mistress and 
 I were as innocent as two cherubim when il sposo 
 surprised us talking of love. I was unarmed; he 
 missed me ; I leaped upon him and strangled him with 
 my two hands, wringing his neck like a chicken. I 
 wanted to fly with Bianca, but she would not follow 
 me. It was so like a woman ! I went alone. I was 
 condemned, and my goods were confiscated to the 
 benefit of my heirs; but I had rolled up and carried 
 away with me five pictures by Tizian, my diamonds, 
 and all my gold. I" went to Milan, where I was left 
 in peace, as my affair did not concern the State." 
 
 "Just one remark before I go on," he said, after a 
 pause. "Whether the fancies of a woman when she 
 conceives, or while she is pregnant, influence her 
 child or not, it is certain that my mother during her 
 pregnancy had a passion for gold. I have a mono- 
 mania for gold, the satisfaction of which is so neces- 
 sary to my life that, in all situations I have found 
 myself, I have never been without gold upon me. I 
 have a constant mania for gold. When I was young 
 I always wore jewelry, and always carried two or 
 three hundred ducats about with me." 
 
 As he said these words he drew two ducats out of 
 his pocket and showed them to me. 
 
 "I feel gold. Although I am blind, I stop before 
 jewellers' shops. This passion ruined me. I became 
 a gambler for the sake of gambling with gold. I was 
 not a cheat, I was cheated ; I ruined myself. When
 
 150 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 I had no fortune left I was seized by a mad longing to 
 see Bianca ; I returned to Venice in secret, found her 
 again, and was happy for six months, hidden in her 
 house and supported by her. I used to have deli- 
 cious dreams of ending my life like this. She was 
 courted by the Provedittore ; he divined he had a 
 rival. In Italy we have an instinct for them. The 
 dastard played the spy upon us and caught us in bed. 
 You may guess how fierce the fight was. I did not 
 kill him, but I wounded him very severely. This 
 event shattered our happiness; since then I have 
 never found another Bianca. I have enjoyed great 
 favors ; I have lived at the Court of Louis XV. among 
 the most celebrated women ; I have not found any- 
 where the noble qualities, the charms, the love, of my 
 dear Venetian. The Provedittore had his servants 
 with him; he called them; they surrounded the pal- 
 ace, and entered. I defended myself that I might die 
 before Bianca 's eyes she helped me to kill the Prove- 
 dittore. Before, this woman had refused to fly with 
 me ; but after six months of happiness she was ready 
 to die on my body, and received several wounds. I 
 was taken in a large mantle which they threw over 
 me; they rolled me up in it, carried me away in a 
 gondola, and put me into a cell in the dungeon. I 
 was twenty-two. I held the stump of my sword so 
 tight that they would have been obliged to cut off 
 my wrist in order to take it away. By a strange 
 chance, or rather inspired by some instinct of precau-
 
 GOLD 151 
 
 tion, I hid this fragment of metal in a corner as a 
 thing of possible use to me. My wounds were dressed, 
 none of them were mortal; at twenty-two a man re- 
 covers from anything. I was to die by beheading. 
 I feigned sickness to gain time. I believed I was in 
 a cell bordering on the canal; my project was to 
 escape by undermining the wall, and risk being 
 drowned by swimming across the canal. My hopes 
 were founded on the following calculations. Every 
 time the jailer brought me food I read the notices 
 fastened on the walls, such as The Palace; The 
 Canal; The Subterranean Prisons. Thus I succeeded 
 in making out a plan which caused me some little ap- 
 prehension, but was to be explained by the actual 
 state of the ducal palace, which has never been fin- 
 ished. With that genius which the longing to re- 
 cover one's liberty gives a man, I succeeded, by feel- 
 ing the surface of a stone with the tips of my fingers, 
 in deciphering an Arabic inscription, by which the 
 author of the work warned his successors that he had 
 dislodged two stones of the last course of masonry 
 and dug eleven feet underground. To continue his 
 work, it would be necessary to spread the fragments 
 of stone and mortar caused by the work of excavation 
 over the floor of the cell itself. Even if the jailers 
 and Inquisatori had not felt satisfied, that, from the 
 construction of the building, it only needed an ex- 
 ternal guard, the arrangement of the cells, in which 
 was a descent of several steps, allowed the floor to be
 
 152 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 gradually raised without attracting the jailer's no- 
 tice. This immense labor had been superfluous at 
 least for the unknown person who had undertaken it ; 
 its incompletion was an evidence of his death. That 
 his exertions might not be lost forever, it was neces- 
 sary that a prisoner should knoAV Arabic. Now I had 
 studied the oriental languages at the Armenian con- 
 vent. A sentence written behind the stone told the 
 unhappy man 's fate ; he had died a victim to his im- 
 mense wealth, which was coveted and seized by 
 Venice. It would require a month to arrive at any 
 result. While I worked, and during those moments 
 when I was prostrate with fatigue, I heard the sound 
 of gold ; I saw gold before me ; I was dazzled by dia- 
 monds! Now, listen! One night my blunt sword 
 touched wood. I sharpened the stump, and began to 
 make a hole in the wood. In order to work, I used to 
 crawl on my belly like a snake. I stripped myself 
 and worked like a mole, with my hands in front, and 
 using the rock itself as a fulcrum. Two nights be- 
 fore the day I was to appear before my judges, I 
 determined to make one last effort during the night. 
 I bored through the wood, and my sword touched 
 nothing. You can imagine my amazement when I put 
 my eye to the hole! I was in the panelled roof of 
 a cellar, in which a dim light enabled me to see a 
 heap of gold. In the cellar were the Doge and one 
 of the Ten. I could hear their voices. I learned from 
 their conversation that here was the secret treasure of
 
 GOLD 153 
 
 the Republic, the gifts of the Doges and the reserves 
 of booty called The last hope of Venice, a certain 
 proportion of the spoils of all expeditions. I was 
 saved ! When the jailer came, I proposed to him to 
 help me to escape and to' fly with me, taking with us 
 everything we could get. He had no cause to hesi- 
 tate ; he agreed. A ship was about to set sail for the 
 Levant; every precaution was taken. I dictated a 
 plan to my accomplice, and Bianca assH'ed in carry- 
 ing it out. To avoid giving the alarm, Bianca was to 
 join us at Smyrna. In one night we enlarged the 
 hole and descended into the secret treasury of Venice. 
 What a night it was! I saw four tons full of gold. 
 In the first chamber the silver was piled up in two 
 even heaps, leaving a path between them by which to 
 pass through the room ; the coins formed banks, which 
 covered the walls to the height of five feet. I thought 
 the jailer would have gone mad ; he sang, he leaped, 
 he laughed, he gambolled about in the gold. I threat- 
 ened to throttle him if he wasted the time or made a 
 noise. In his delight he did not at first see a table 
 where the diamonds Avere. I swooped down upon it 
 so skilfully that I was able to fill my sailor's vest 
 and the pockets of my pantaloons. My God ! I did 
 not take a third part. Under this table were ingots 
 of gold. I persuaded my companion to fill as many 
 sacks as we could carry with gold, pointing out to 
 him that it was the only way to avoid being discov- 
 ered in a foreign country. The pearls, jewelry, and
 
 154 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 diamonds, I told him, would lead to our being found 
 out. In spite of our greed, we could not take more 
 than two thousand livres of gold, and this necessi- 
 tated six journeys across the prison to the gondola. 
 The sentinel at the water-gate had been bought with 
 a bag containing ten livres of gold; as for the two 
 gondoliers, they believed they were serving the Ke- 
 public. At daybreak we departed. When we were 
 out at sea and I thought of that night, when I recalled 
 the sensations which I had experienced, and seemed 
 to see again that immense treasure, of which I calcu- 
 lated I must have left thirty millions in silver and 
 twenty millions in gold, besides several millions in 
 diamonds, pearls, and rubies; a feeling of madness 
 rose within me ; I had gold fever. We were landed at 
 Smyrna, and immediately re-embarked for France. 
 As we were going on board the French vessel, God 
 did me the favor of relieving me of my accomplice. 
 At the moment I did not think of all the bearings of 
 this mishap; I was greatly rejoiced at it. We were 
 so completely enervated that we remained in a state 
 of torpor, without speaking, waiting until we were in 
 a place of safety to play our parts at our ease. It is 
 not to be wondered at that the fellow 's head had been 
 turned. You will see how God punished me. I did 
 not consider myself safe until I had disposed of two- 
 thirds of my diamonds in London and Amsterdam, 
 and realized my gold dust in negotiable species. For 
 five years I hid myself in Madrid ; then in 1770 I
 
 GOLD 155 
 
 came to Paris under a Spanish name, and lived in 
 tfie most brilliant style. 
 
 "Bianca was dead. 
 
 "In the midst of my pleasures, when I was enjoy- 
 ing a fortune of six millions, I was struck with blind- 
 ness. I concluded that this infirmity was the result 
 of my sojourn in the prison and my labors in the 
 dark, if indeed my faculty for seeing gold did not 
 imply an abuse of the powers of vision and predestine 
 me to lose my eyes. At this time I loved a woman 
 to whom I had resolved to link my fate. I had told 
 her the secret of my name ; she belonged to a power- 
 ful family, and I had every hope from the favor 
 shown me by Louis XV. ; she was a friend of Madame 
 du Barry. I had put my trust in this woman; she 
 advised me to consult a famous oculist in London; 
 then, after staying in the town for some months, she 
 deserted me in Hyde Park, robbing me of the whole 
 of my fortune and leaving me without resources. I 
 was obliged to conceal my name, for it would have 
 exposed me to the vengeance of Venice. I could not 
 invoke any one's help; I was afraid of Venice. The 
 spies whom this woman had attached to my person 
 had made capital out of my blindness. I spare you 
 the history of adventures worthy of Gil Bias. Your 
 Revolution came; I was obliged to emer at Les 
 Quinze-Vingts ; this creature got me admitted after 
 having kept me for two years at Bicetre as insane. 
 I have never been able to kill her, I could not see to,
 
 156 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 and I was too poor to pay another hand. If, before 
 I lost Benedetto Carpi, my jailer, I had consulted 
 him on the situation of my cell, I should have been 
 able to find the treasury again and return to Venice 
 when the Republic was abolished by Napoleon. How- 
 ever, in spite of my blindness, let us go to Venice ! I 
 will find the door of the prison, I shall see the gold 
 through the walls, I shall feel it where it lies buried 
 beneath the waters; for the events which overturned 
 the power of Venice are such that the secret of the 
 treasury must have died with Vendramino, the broth- 
 er of Bianca, a doge who, I hoped, would have made 
 my peace with the Ten. I addressed notes to the 
 First Consul, I proposed an agreement with the Em- 
 peror of Austria ; every one treated me as a madman ! 
 Come, let us start for Venice, let us start beggars; 
 we shall come back millionaires ; we will buy back my 
 property, and you shall be my heir, you shall be 
 Prince of Varese. " 
 
 I was thunderstruck at this confidence, at the sight 
 of that white head ; before the black waters of the 
 trenches of the Bastille sleeping as still as the canals 
 of Venice, it assumed in my imagination the propor- 
 tions of a poem. I gave no answer. Facino Cane no 
 doubt believed that I judged him, like all the rest, 
 with disdainful pity; he made a gesture expressive 
 of all the philosophy of despair. Perhaps his story 
 had carried him back to those happy days at Venice ; 
 he seized his clarionet and played with the deepest
 
 GOLD 157 
 
 pathos a Venetian song, a barcarolle in which he re- 
 covered all his first talent the talent which was his 
 when he was a patrician and in love. It was as it 
 were a Super flumina Babylonis. My eyes filled with 
 tears. 
 
 If some belated passers-by chanced to be walk- 
 ing along le boulevard tt^nrdon, I dare say they 
 stopped to listen to this last prayer of the exile, this 
 last regret of a lost name, mingled with memories of 
 Bianca. But gold soon got the mastery again, and 
 its fatal passion quenched the glimmering of youth. 
 
 ' ' That treasure ! " he said ; " I see it always, waking 
 and in my dreams; I take my walks there, the dia- 
 monds sparkle, I am not so blind as you think; gold 
 and diamonds lighten my night, the night of the last 
 Facino Cane, for my title passes to the Memmi. Good 
 God ! the murderer 's punishment has begun betimes ! 
 Ave Maria!" . . . 
 
 He recited some prayers which I could not hear, 
 
 "We will go to Venice," I exclaimed, as he was 
 getting up. 
 
 "Then I have found my man," he cried, with a 
 glow upon his face. I gave him my arm and led him 
 back ; at the door of Les Quinze-Vingts he pressed my 
 hand; just then some of the people from the wedding 
 were going home, shouting enough to blow one's head 
 off. 
 
 "We will start to-morrow?" said the old man. 
 
 "As soon as we have got some money."
 
 158 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 "But we can go on foot; I will ask alms I am 
 strong, and when a man sees gold before him he is 
 young." 
 
 Pacino Cane died during the winter after lingering 
 for two months. The poor man had caught a chill.
 
 DOOMED TO LIVE 
 
 THE clock of the little town of Menda had just 
 struck midnight. At this moment a young French 
 officer was leaning on the parapet of a long terrace 
 which bounded the gardens of the castle. He seemed 
 plunged in the deepest thought a circumstance un- 
 usual amid the thoughtlessness of military life; but 
 it must be owned that never were the hour, the night, 
 and the place more propitious to meditation. The 
 beautiful Spanish sky stretched out its azure dome 
 above his head. The glittering stars and the soft 
 moonlight lit up a charming valley that unfolded all 
 its beauties at his feet. Leaning against a blossom- 
 ing orange tree, he could see, a hundred feet below 
 him, the town of Menda, which seemed to have been 
 placed for shelter from the north winds at the foot of 
 the rock on which the castle was built. As he turned 
 his head he could see the sea, framing the landscape 
 with a broad silver sheet of glistening water. The 
 castle was a blaze of light. The mirth and movement 
 of a ball, the music of the orchestra, the laughter of 
 
 159
 
 100 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 the officers and their partners in the dance, were 
 borne to him mingled with the distant murmur of 
 the waves. The freshness of the night imparted a 
 sort of energy to his limbs, weary with the heat of the 
 day. Above all, the gardens were planted with trees 
 so aromatic, and flowers so fragrant, that the young 
 man stood plunged, as it were, in a bath of perfumes. 
 
 The castle of Menda belonged to a Spanish 
 grandee, then living there with his family. During 
 the whole of the evening his eldest daughter had 
 looked at the officer with an interest so tinged with 
 sadness that the sentiment of compassion thus ex- 
 pressed by the Spaniard might well call up a reverie 
 in the Frenchman's mind. 
 
 Clara was beautiful, and although she had three 
 brothers and a sister, the wealth of the Marques de 
 Leganes seemed great enough for Victor Marchand 
 to believe that the young lady would have a rich 
 dowry. But how dare he hope that the most bigoted 
 old hidalgo in all Spain would ever give his daughter 
 to the son of a Parisian grocer? Besides, the French 
 were hated. The Marques was suspected by General 
 Gautier, who governed the province, of planning a 
 revolt in favor of Ferdinand VII. For this reason 
 the battalion commanded by Victor Marchand had 
 been cantonned in the little town of Menda, to hold 
 the neighboring hamlets, which were dependent on 
 the Marques, in check. Recent despatches from Mar- 
 shal Ney had given ground for fear that the English
 
 DOOMED TO LIVE 161 
 
 would shortly land on the coast, and had indicated 
 the Marques as a man who carried on communication 
 with the cabinet of London. 
 
 In spite, therefore, of the welcome which the Span- 
 iard had given him and his soldiers, the young officer 
 Victor Marchand remained constantly on his guard. 
 As he was directing his steps toward the terrace 
 whither he had come to examine the state of the town 
 and the country districts entrusted to his care, he 
 debated how he ought to interpret the friendliness 
 which the Marques had unceasingly shown him, and 
 how the tranquillity of the country could be recon- 
 ciled with his General's uneasiness. But in one mo- 
 ment these thoughts were driven from his mind by 
 a feeling of caution and well-grounded curiosity. 
 lie had just perceived a considerable number of lights, 
 m the town. In spite of the day being the Feast of St. 
 James, he had given orders, that very morning, that 
 all lights should be extinguished at the hour pre- 
 scribed by his regulations, the castle alone being ex- 
 cepted from this order. He could plainly see, here 
 and there, the gleam of his soldiers' bayonets at their 
 accustomed posts; but there was a solemnity in the 
 silence, and nothing to suggest that the Spaniards 
 were a prey to the excitement of a festival. After 
 having sought to explain the offence of which the in- 
 habitants were guilty, the mystery appeared all the 
 more unaccountable to him, because he had left offi- 
 cers in charge of the night police and the rounds.
 
 162 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 With all the impetuosity of youth, he was just about 
 to leap through a breach and descend the rocks in 
 haste, and thus arrive more quickly than by the ordi- 
 nary road at a small outpost placed at the entrance 
 of the town nearest to the castle, when a faint sound 
 stopped him. He thought he heard the light footfall 
 of a woman upon the gravel walk. He turned his 
 head and saw nothing; but his gaze was arrested by 
 the extraordinary brightness of the sea. All of a 
 sudden he beheld a sight so portentous that he stood 
 dumbfounded ;he thought that his senses deceived him. 
 In the far distance he could distinguish sails gleam- 
 ing white in the moonlight. He trembled and tried 
 to convince himself that this vision was an optical 
 illusion, merely the fantastic effect of the moon on 
 the waves. At this moment a hoarse voice pronounced 
 his name. He looked toward the breach, and saw 
 slowly rising above it the head of the soldier whom 
 he had ordered to accompany him to the castle. 
 
 "Is that you, Commandant?" 
 
 ' ' Yes ; what do you want ? ' ' replied the young man 
 in a low voice. A sort of presentiment warned him 
 to be cautious. 
 
 ' ' Those rascals down there are stirring like worms. 
 I have hurried, with your leave, to tell you my own 
 little observations." 
 
 "Go on," said Victor Marchand. 
 
 "I have just followed a man from the castle who 
 came in this direction with a lantern in his hand.
 
 DOOMED TO LIVE 163 
 
 A lantern's a frightfully suspicious thing. I don't 
 fancy it was tapers my fine Catholic way going to 
 light at this time of night. 'They want to eat us, 
 body and bones ! ' says I to myself ; so I went on his 
 track to reconnoiter. There, on a ledge of vock, not 
 three paces from here, I discovered a great heap of 
 faggots." 
 
 Suddenly a terrible shriek ran through the town, 
 and cut tht soldier short. At the same instant a 
 gleam of light flashed before the Commandant. The 
 poor grenadier received a ball in the head and fell. 
 A -fire of straw and dry wood burst into flame like a 
 house on fire, not ten paces from the young man. 
 The sound of the instruments and the laughter ceased 
 in the ballroom. The silence of death, broken only 
 by groans, had suddenly succeeded to the noises and 
 music of the feast. The fire of a cannon roared over 
 the surface of the sea. Cold sweat trickled down the 
 young officer's forehead; he had no sword. He un- 
 derstood that his men had been slaughtered, and the 
 English were about to disembark. If he lived he saw 
 himself dishonored, summoned before a council of 
 war. Then he measured with his eyes the depth of 
 the valley. He sprang forward, when just at that 
 moment his hand was seized by the hand of Clara. 
 
 "Fly!" said she; "my brothers are following to 
 kill you. Down yonder at the foot of the rock you 
 will find Juanito's andalusian. Quick!" 
 
 The young man looked at her for a moment stupe-
 
 164 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 fied. She pushed him on; then, obeying the instinct 
 of self-preservation which never forsakes even the 
 bravest man, he rushed down the park in the direc- 
 tion she had indicated. He leaped from rock to rock, 
 where only the goats had ever trod before ; he heard 
 Clara crying out to her brothers to pursue him; he 
 heard the footsteps of the assassins; he heard the 
 balls of several discharges whistle about his ears ; but 
 he reached the valley, he found the horse, mounted, 
 and disappeared swift as lightning. In a few hours 
 he arrived at the quarters occupied by General Gau- 
 tier. He found him at dinner with his staff. 
 
 "I bring you my life in my hand !" cried the Com- 
 mandant, his face pale and haggard. 
 
 He sat down and related the horrible disaster. A 
 dreadful silence greeted his story. 
 
 "You appear to me to be more unfortunate than 
 criminal," said the terrible General at last. "You 
 are not accountable for the crime of the Spaniards, 
 and unless the Marshal decides otherwise, I acquit 
 you." 
 
 These words could give the unfortunate officer but 
 slight consolation. 
 
 ' ' But when the Emperor hears of it ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 "He will want to have you shot," said the General. 
 *' How ever But we will talk no more about it," 
 he added severely, "except how we are to take such 
 a revenge as will strike wholesome fear upon this 
 country, where they carry on war like savages."
 
 DOOMED TO LIVE 165 
 
 One hour afterward, a whole regiment, a detach- 
 ment of cavalry, and a convoy of artillery were on the 
 road. The General and Victor marched at the head 
 of the column. The soldiers, informed of the massa- 
 cre of their comrades, were filled with extraordinary 
 fury. The distance which separated the town of 
 Menda from the general quarters was passed with 
 marvellous rapidity. On the road the General found 
 whole villages under arms. Each of these wretched 
 townships was surrounded and their inhabitants 
 decimated. 
 
 By some inexplicable fatality, the English .ships 
 stood off instead of advancing. It was known after- 
 ward that these vessels had outstripped the rest of the 
 transports and only carried artillery. Thus the town 
 of Menda, deprived of the defenders she was expect- 
 ing, and which the sight of the English vessels had 
 seemed to assure, was surrounded by the French 
 troops almost without striking a blow. The inhabi- 
 tants, seized with tcrrur, offered to surrender at dis- 
 cretion. Then followed one of those instances of de- 
 votion not rare in the Peninsula. The assassins of 
 the French, foreseeing, from the cruelty of the Gen- 
 eral, that Menda would probably be given over to the 
 flames and the whole population put to the sword, 
 offered to denounce themselves. The General accepted 
 this offer, inserting as a condition that the inhabitants 
 of the castle, from the lowest valet to the Marques 
 himself, should be placed in his hands. This capitu-
 
 166 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 lation agreed upon, the General promised to pardon 
 the rest of the population and to prevent his soldiers 
 from pillaging or setting fire to the town. An enor- 
 mous contribution was exacted, and the richest in- 
 habitants gave themselves up as hostages to guarantee 
 the payment, which was to be accomplished within 
 twenty-four hours. 
 
 The General took all precautions necessary for the 
 safety of his troops, provided for the defence of the 
 country, and refused to lodge his men in the houses. 
 After having formed a camp, he went up and took 
 military possession of the castle. The members of 
 the family of Leganes and the servants were gagged, 
 and shut up in the great hall where the ball had 
 taken place, and closely watched. The windows of 
 the apartment afforded a full view of the terrace 
 which commanded the town. The staff was estab- 
 lished in a neighboring gallery, and the General pro- 
 ceeded at once to hold a council of war on the meas- 
 ures to be taken for opposing the debarkation. After 
 having despatched an aide-de-camp to Marshal Ney, 
 with orders to plant batteries along the coast, the 
 General and his staff turned their attention to the 
 prisoners. Two hundred Spaniards, whom the in- 
 habitants had surrendered, were shot down then and 
 there upon the terrace. After this military execution 
 the General ordered as many gallows to be erected 
 on the terrace as there were prisoners in the hall of 
 the castle, and the town executioner to be brought.
 
 DOOMED TO LIVE 167 
 
 Victor Marchand made use of the time from then 
 until dinner to go and visit the prisoners. He soon 
 returned to the General. 
 
 "I have come," said he, in a voice broken with 
 emotion, "to ask you a favor." 
 
 ' ' You ? ' ' said the General, in a tone of bitter irony. 
 
 "Alas!" replied Victor, "it is but a melancholy 
 errand that I am come on. The Marques has seen 
 the gallows being erected, and expresses a hope that 
 you will change the mode of execution for his family ; 
 he entreats you to have the nobles beheaded." 
 
 "So be it!" said the General. 
 
 "They further ask you to allow them the last con- 
 solations of religion, and to take off their bonds ; they 
 promise not to attempt to escape." 
 
 ' ' I consent, ' ' said the General ; ' ' but you must be 
 answerable for them. ' ' 
 
 "The old man also offers you the whole of his for- 
 tune if you will pardon his young son." 
 
 "Really!" said the General. "His goods already 
 belong to King Joseph; he is under arrest." His 
 brow contracted scornfully, then he added: "I will 
 go beyond what they ask. I understand now the im- 
 portance of the last request. Well, let him buy the 
 eternity of his name, but Spain shall remember for- 
 ever his treachery and its punishment. I give up the 
 fortune and his life to whichever of his sons will fulfil 
 the office of executioner. Go, and do not speak t 
 me of it again."
 
 18 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 Dinner was ready, and the officers sat down to table 
 to satisfy appetites sharpened by fatigue. 
 
 One of them only, Victor Marchand, was not pres- 
 ent at the banquet. He hesitated for a long time be- 
 fore he entered the room. The haughty family of 
 Leganes were in their agony. He glanced sadly at 
 the scene before him ; in this very room, only the 
 night before, he had watched the fair heads of those 
 two young girls and those three youths as they circled 
 in the excitement of the dance. He shuddered when 
 he thought how soon they must fall, struck off by the 
 sword of the headsman. Fastened to their gilded 
 chairs, the father and mother, their three sons, and 
 their two young daughters, sat absolutely motionless. 
 Eight serving-men stood upright before them, their 
 hands bound behind their backs. These fifteen per- 
 sons looked at each other gravely, their eyes scarcely 
 betraying the thoughts that surged within them. Only 
 profound resignation and regret for the failure of 
 their enterprise left any mark upon the features of 
 some of them. The soldiers stood likewise motion- 
 less, looking at them, and respecting the affliction of 
 their cruel enemies. An expression of curiosity lit 
 up their faces when Victor appeared. He gave the 
 order to unbind the condemned, and went himself to 
 loose the cords which fastened Clara to her chair. 
 She smiled sadly. He could not refrain from touch- 
 ing her arm, and looking with admiring eyes at her 
 black locks and graceful figure. She was a true Span-
 
 DOOMED TO LIVE 169 
 
 iard ; she had the Spanish complexion and the Spanish 
 eyes, with their long curled lashes and pupils blacker 
 than the raven's wing. 
 
 ' ' Have you been successful ? ' ' she said, smiling upon 
 him mournfully with somewhat of the charm of girl- 
 hood still lingering in her eyes. 
 
 Victor could not suppress a groan. He looked one 
 after the other at Clara and her three brothers. One, 
 the eldest, was aged thirty; he was small, even some- 
 w T hat ill made, with a proud disdainful look, but there 
 was a certain nobleness in his bearing; he seemed 
 no stranger to that delicacy of feeling which else- 
 where has rendered the chivalry of Spain so famous. 
 His name was Juanito. The second, Felipe, was aged 
 about twenty; he was like Clara. The youngest was 
 eight, Manuel; a painter would have found in his 
 features a trace of that Roman steadfastness which 
 David has given to children's faces in his episodes of 
 the Republic. The old Marques, his head still cov- 
 ered with white locks, seemed to have come forth from 
 a picture of Murillo. The young officer shook his head. 
 When he looked at them, he was hopeless that he 
 would ever see the bargain proposed by the General 
 accepted by any of the four; nevertheless he ven- 
 tured to impart it to Clara. At first she shuddered, 
 Spaniard though she was; then, immediately recover- 
 ing her calm demeanor, she went and knelt down be- 
 fore her father. 
 
 "Father," she said, ''make Juanito swear to obey
 
 170 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 faithfully any orders that you give him, and we shall 
 be content." 
 
 The Marquesa trembled with hope; but when she 
 leaned toward her husband, and heard she who was 
 a mother the horrible confidence whispered by Clara, 
 she swooned away. Juanito understood all ; he leaped 
 up like a lion in its cage. After obtaining an assur- 
 ance of perfect submission from the Marques, Victor 
 took upon himself to send away the soldiers. The 
 servants were led out, handed over to the executioner, 
 and hanged. When the family had no guard but Vic- 
 tor to watch them, the old father rose and said, 
 ^Juanito." 
 
 Juanito made no answer, except by a movement of 
 the head, equivalent to a refusal; then he fell back 
 in his seat, and stared at his parents with eyes dry 
 and terrible to look upon. Clara went and sat on his 
 knee, put her arm around his neck, and kissed his 
 eyelids. 
 
 "My dear Juanito," she said gaily, "if thou didst 
 only know how sweet death would be to me if it were 
 given by thee, I should not have to endure the odious 
 touch of the headsman's hands. Thou wilt cure me 
 of the woes that were in store for me and, dear 
 Juanito, thou couldst not bear to see me belong to 
 
 another, well " Her soft- eyes cast one look of 
 
 fire at Victor, as if to awaken in Juanito 's heart his 
 horror of the French. 
 
 "Have courage," said his brother Felipe, "or else
 
 DOOMED TO LIVE 171 
 
 our race, which has almost given kings to Spain, will 
 be extinct." 
 
 Suddenly Clara rose, the group which had formed 
 round Juanito separated, and his son, dutiful in his 
 disobedience, saw his aged father standing before him, 
 and heard him cry in a solemn voice, "Juanito, I 
 command thee. " 
 
 The young Count remained motionless. His father 
 fell on his knees before him; Clara, Manuel, and 
 Felipe did the same instinctively. They all stretched 
 out their hands to him as to one who was to save their 
 family from oblivion ; they seemed to repeat their 
 father's words "My son, hast thou lost the energy, 
 the true chivalry of Spain? How long wilt thou 
 leave thy father on his knees? What right hast thou 
 to think of thine own life and its suffering? Madam, 
 is this a son of mine?" continued the old man, turn- 
 ing to his wife. 
 
 "He consents," cried she, in despair. She saw a 
 movement in Juanito 's evelids. and she alone under- 
 stood its meaning. 
 
 Mariquita, the second daughter, still knelt on her 
 knees, and clasped her mother in her fragile arms; 
 her little brother Manuel, seeing her weeping hot 
 tears, began to chide her. At this moment the al- 
 moner of the castle came in ; he was immediately sur- 
 rounded by the rest of the family and brought to 
 Juanito. Victor could bear this scene no longer; he 
 made a s^ign to Clara, and hastened away to make one
 
 172 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 last effort with the General. He found him in high 
 good-humor in the middle of the banquet, drinking 
 with his officers ; they were beginning to make merry. 
 An hour later a hundred of the principal inhabi- 
 tants of Menda came up to the terrace, in obedience 
 to the General's orders, to witness the execution of 
 the family of Leganes. A detachment of soldiers was 
 drawn up to keep back the Spanish burghers who 
 were ranged under the gallows on which the servants 
 of the Marques still hung. The feet of these martyrs 
 almost touched their heads. Thirty yards from them 
 a block had been set up, and by it gleamed a scimi- 
 tar. The headsman also was present, in case of 
 Juanito 's refusal. Presently, in the midst of the pro- 
 foundest silence, the Spaniards heard the footsteps of 
 several persons approaching, the measured tread of 
 a company of soldiers, and the faint clinking of their 
 muskets. These diverse sounds were mingled with 
 the merriment of the officers' banquet; just as be- 
 fore it was the music of the dance which had con- 
 cealed preparations for a treacherous massacre. All 
 eyes were turned toward the castle ; the noble family 
 was seen advancing with incredible dignity. Every 
 face was calm and serene ; one man only leaned, pale 
 and haggard, on the arm of the Priest. Upon this 
 man he lavished all the consolations of religion upon 
 the only one of them doomed to live. The executioner 
 understood, as did all the rest, that for that day 
 Juanito had undertaken the office himself. The aged
 
 DOOMED TO LIVE 173 
 
 Marques and his wife, Clara, Mariquita, and their 
 two brothers, came and knelt down a few steps from 
 the fatal spot. Juanito was led thither by the Priest. 
 As he approached the block the executioner touched 
 him by the sleeve and drew him aside, probably to 
 give him certain instructions. 
 
 The Confessor placed the victims in such a posi- 
 tion that they could not see the executioner ; but like 
 true Spaniards, they knelt erect without a sign of 
 emotion. 
 
 Clara was the first to spring forward to her brother. 
 ' ' Juanito, ' ' she said, ' ' have pity on my faint-hearted- 
 ness; begin with me." 
 
 At that moment they heard the footstep of a man 
 running at full speed, and Victor arrived on the 
 tragic scene. Clara was already on her knees, already 
 her white neck seemed to invite the edge of the scim- 
 itar. A deadly pallor fell upon the officer, but he 
 still found strength to run on. 
 
 "The General grants thee thy life if thou wilt 
 many me, ' ' he said to her in a low voice. 
 
 The Spaniard cast a look of proud disdain on the 
 officer. ' ' Strike, Juanito, ' ' she said, in a voice of pro- 
 found meaning. 
 
 Her head rolled at Victor's feet. When the Mar- 
 quesa heard the sound a convulsive start escaped her ; 
 this was the only sign of her affliction. 
 
 "Am I placed right so, dear Juanito?" little Man- 
 uel asked his brother.
 
 174 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 "Ah, thou weepest, Mariquita !" said Juanito to his 
 sister. 
 
 ' ' Yes, ' ' answered the girl ; " I was thinking of thee, 
 my poor Juanito; thou wilt be so unhappy with- 
 out us." 
 
 At length the noble figure of the Marques appeared. 
 He looked at the blood of his children ; then he turned 
 to the spectators, who stood mute and motionless be- 
 fore him. He stretched out his hands to Juanito, and 
 said in a firm voice: "Spaniards, I give my son a 
 father's blessing. Now, Marques, strike without fear, 
 as thou art without fault." 
 
 But when Juanito saw his mother approach, sup- 
 ported by the Confessor, he groaned aloud, "She fed 
 me at her own breast." His cry seemed to tear a 
 shout of horror from the lips of the crowd. At this 
 terrible sound the noise of the banquet and the laugh- 
 ter and merry-making of the officers died away. The 
 Marquesa comprehended that Juanito 's courage was 
 exhausted. With one leap she had thrown herself 
 over the balustrade, and her head was dashed to pieces 
 against the rocks below. A shout of admiration burst 
 forth. Juanito fell to the ground in a swoon. 
 
 "Marchand has just been telling me something 
 about this execution," said a half -drunken officer. 
 "I'll warrant, General, it wasn't by your orders 
 that " 
 
 "Have you forgotten, Messieurs," cried General 
 Gautier, "that during the next month there will be
 
 DOOMED TO LIVE 175 
 
 five hundred French families in tears, and that we 
 are in Spain ? Do you wish to leave your bones here ? ' ' 
 After this speech there was not a man, not even a 
 sub-lieutenant, who dared to empty his glass. 
 
 In spite of the respect with which he is surrounded 
 in spite of the title of El Verdugo (the execu- 
 tioner), bestowed upon him as a title of nobility by 
 the King of Spain the Marques de Leganes is a prey 
 to melancholy. He lives in solitude, and is rarely 
 seen. Overwhelmed with the load of his glorious 
 crime, he seems only to wait the birth of a second 
 son, impatient to seek again the company of those 
 Shades who are about his path continually.
 
 AN ACCURSED HOUSE 
 
 (A Story related by Horace Bianchon) 
 
 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 tanyards and the 
 wretched taverns found on the outskirts of almost all 
 small towns have no place here ; the isolation is com- 
 plete. 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 bound- 
 ary with their rapid growth, .and almost hide the 
 house ; plants which we call weeds make the sloping 
 bank beautiful 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 hill 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. 
 
 170
 
 AN ACCURSED HOUSE 177 
 
 It is said that this strip of land was once at a date 
 difficult to fix exactly the delight of a gentleman who 
 spent his time in the cultivation of roses and tulips; 
 in fact, in horticulture generally, especially 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 nega- 
 tive enjoyment of life spent peacefully in the coun- 
 try, just as one guesses at the story of a successful 
 merchant 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 re- 
 minder of its somewhat matter-of-fact Christianity. 
 The roofs of this house are utterly ruinous, the shut- 
 ters are always closed, the balconies full of swallows' 
 nests, the doors forever shut; tall grasses etch with 
 their green outline the cracks in 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 martins 
 roam here unmolested, and fight their battles, and 
 prey upon each other. Over all an invisible hand has 
 written 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
 
 178 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 road, you would notice a wide-arched door, through 
 which the children of the neighborhood have made 
 plenty of peep-holes I learned afterward that this 
 door had been past repair ten years before and 
 through these irregular chinks you could see the per- 
 fect harmony there is between the garden front and 
 the front looking on to the courtyard. Here is the 
 same reign of disorder the flagstones are edged with 
 tufts of grass, enormous cracks run like furrows over 
 the walls, the blackened coping is interlaced with fes- 
 toons 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? 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 clue. 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 pleasures. It was more than a ruin ; to a ruin 
 are attached at least some remembrances of incontest- 
 able 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
 
 AN ACCURSED HOUSE 179 
 
 caprice. Many a time of an evening I resolutely ap- 
 proached the now wild hedgerow which protected the 
 enclosure. I braved the tearing thorns, and trod this 
 garden without an owner, and entered this possession 
 no longer public or private. I stayed there whole 
 hours gazing 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 
 Yendome. There I composed charming romances; I 
 gave myself up to little debauches of melancholy which 
 delighted my heart. If I had known the cause of this 
 desertion (perhaps a commonplace story enough), I 
 should have lost the intoxication of these my unpub- 
 lished 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 cemetery without the dead and all their 
 chattering 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 involuntary terror 
 when I heard above my head the dull whir of the 
 wings of some belated 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 Na- 
 ture. Above all, you must not mind the cold ; at cer- 
 tain moments you feel as though a mantle of ice were
 
 180 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 east npon your shoulders, like the commandant 's hand 
 upon Don Juan's neck. 
 
 One evening, just at the moment I was finishing a 
 tragedy by which I was explaining to myself the phe- 
 nomenon of this sort of woe in effigy, the wind turned 
 an old rusty weathercock, and the cry 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, "Monsieui, 
 Monsieur Regnault is here. " ' ' Who is Monsieur Reg- 
 nault?" "Why! does not Monsieur 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 unlike a 
 glass of dirty water ; he might have passed for a min- 
 isterial 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 on a chair, arranged him- 
 self before my fire, placed his hat on my table, rubbed 
 his hands together and said, "Ah! it's very cold. 
 Monsieur, I am Monsieur Regnault." I bowed, say- 
 ing to myself, ' ' II bondo cani ! let 's see. ' '
 
 AN ACCURSED HOUSE 181 
 
 "I am," said he, "a notary in Vendome." "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, raising his 
 hand as if to impose silence. "Allow me, 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, repeating 
 his gesture; "this of itself constitutes an actionable 
 offence. Monsieur, I am come in the name and as 
 executor under the will of Madame, 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 
 ignorant of the circumstances which oblige me to allow 
 the finest mansion in Vendome to fall into ruins. How- 
 ever, Monsieur, you appear to be a man of education, 
 and you ought to know that the laws forbid trespass 
 on an enclosed 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, since 
 the opening of the will I have not myself set foot in 
 that house, though it belongs as 1 had the honor 
 of informing you to the estate of Madame de Mer-
 
 182 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 ret. 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 destined 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, understanding perfectly that 
 the estate of Madame de Merret was the most impor- 
 tant event in his life his whole reputation, his glory, 
 his restoration. Then, after all, I must say good-by 
 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 indiscreet if I 
 asked you the reason for this eccentricity?" 
 
 At these words a look expressing all the pleasure 
 of a man accustomed to mounting 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 my refusal 
 seized a large pinch himself. He was happy! 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 mo- 
 ment I understood that charming expression of 
 Stern's in all its meaning. I had a complete idea 
 of the joy with which, by the aid of Trim, Uncle Toby 
 bestrode his chargei. 
 
 "Monsieur," said Monsieur Regnault, "I was for-
 
 AX ACCURSED HOUSE 183 
 
 merly senior clerk to Maitre Roguin, in Paris an 
 excellent office. Perhaps you have heard speak of it? 
 No! Well, a most unfortunate bankruptcy rendered 
 it notorious. Not having sufficient capital to carry 
 on business in Paris, considering the price to which 
 practices went up in 1816, I came here and purchased 
 the office of my predecessor. I had relations here in 
 Vendome, among others a very rich aunt who gave 
 me her daughter in marriage. Monsieur," he con- 
 tinued after a slight pause, "three months after I 
 had been enrolled before Monseigneur le Garde 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 chateau, le Chateau de 
 Merret. Her lady's maid, a fine young woman, now 
 servant in this hotel, was at my door in Madame le 
 Comtesse 's caleche. Ah ! just one moment ! I ought 
 to have told you, Monsieur, that Monsieur le Comte 
 de Merret had gone to Paris, and died there two 
 months before I came here. He died miserably, hav- 
 ing given himself up to every kind of excess. You 
 understand? The day of his departure Madame 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 1he goods 
 and chattels generally whatsoever adorning the prem- 
 ises now in the tenancy of the said sieur (Dear me, 
 what am I saying ? Beg pardon, I was thinking I was 
 drawing up a lease.) Yes," he repeated, "they say
 
 184 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 she had them burned in the meadow at Merret. Have 
 you been to Merret, Monsieur ? No, ' ' said he, answer- 
 ing 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 received any one; Madame 
 lived on the ground floor and Monsieur on the first 
 story. 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 chateau. She was already very much 
 changed when she left La Grande Breteehe and went 
 to live at Merret. The dear woman (I say 'dear' be- 
 cause 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 any doctors to be 
 called in; indeed, many of our ladies here thought 
 that she was not quite right in the head. As you may 
 imagine then, Monsieur, my curiosity was especially 
 excited when I Avas informed that Madame de Merret 
 needed my assistance 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 Merret. On the road 
 I addressed a few questions to the lady'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
 
 AN ACCURSED HOUSE 185 
 
 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, glogmy apartments, cold and damp 
 enough for the devil, I reached the principal 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 diffi- 
 culty to discover at all where she was, in the great 
 bed in which she lay. True, she had one of those an- 
 tique Argant lamps for light, but the chamber was 
 enormous, with an ancien regime frise so covered with 
 dust that the very sight of it made one cough. Ah ! 
 but you 've not been to Merret ! 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 furni- 
 ture; it wouldn't have filled ten lines of an inven- 
 tory. 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 transported into a scene 
 of a romance come true. It was icy, more than icy 
 funereal," he added, raising his arm. with a theatrical
 
 186 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 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 sit- 
 ting up, though she seemed to do so with great diffi- 
 culty. 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 fieshless, mere bones covered with a 
 fine, tender skin ; all her veins and muscles stood out 
 prominently. She must have been very beautiful once, 
 but at the moment I was seized with a feeling I don 't 
 know how at the sight of her. The people who laid 
 her out said they had never seen a creature so utterly 
 fleshless alive. She really was terrible to behold ! Dis- 
 ease had made such ravages upon her she was nothing 
 more than a phantom. Her lips were a livid purple ; 
 they seemed motionless even when she spoke. Al- 
 though my profession takes me now and again to the 
 bedsides of the dying in order to ascertain 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 
 woman in her vast chateau. I could not hear thn
 
 AN ACCURSED HOUSE 187 
 
 faintest sound, I could not even see the least move- 
 ment of the bedclothes from the breathing of the 
 sick woman ; I too stood perfectly motionless, absorbed 
 in looking at her, in a sort of stupor. I could fancy 
 I was there now. At last her great eyes moved ; she 
 tried to lift her right hand, but it fell back on the bed, 
 and these words passed out of her mouth like a sigh 
 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. ' Madame, ' I said. 
 She made me a sign to be silent, and at the same mo- 
 ment the old housekeeper rose from her couch and 
 whispered in my ear : ' Do not speak ; Madame la Com- 
 tesse is not in a state to bear the least sound; if you 
 spoke you might agitate her.' I sat down. After a 
 few moments Madaine de Merret gathered up all her 
 remaining 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 entrust my will to you,' she said. 'Ah, 
 my God, ah ! ' This was all. She seized the crucifix 
 which lay on her bed, raised it quickly to her lips, 
 and died. The expression of those motionless eyes 
 makes me shudder still; she must have suffered ter- 
 ribly! 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.
 
 188 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 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 individual 
 legacies. Her directions relative 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 
 whatsoever, and also the least repair; she even set 
 aside the interest of a certain sum wherewith, if neces- 
 sary, to engage keepers, in order to insure the fulfil- 
 ment of her intentions in their entirety. At the ex- 
 piration 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 returns to the heirs-at-law, 
 with the charge that they are to fulfil the conditions 
 indicated in the codicil annexed to the will, which 
 codicil is not to be opened until the expiration of the 
 said fifty years. The will has never been disputed, 
 
 and so ;" at this word, and without finishing his 
 
 sentence, that oblong notary surveyed me with an air 
 of triumph, and I made him quite happy by address- 
 ing 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
 
 AN ACCURSED HOUSE 189 
 
 made me afraid ; I shall dream of her to-night. But 
 you will have formed some conjectures concerning the 
 dispositions contained in this eccentric will ? " " Mon- 
 sieur, " said he, with comic reserve, "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 scrupulous notary, and he 
 communicated to me, amid long digressions, all the 
 observations made by the profound politicians of both 
 sexes whose judgments are law in Vendome. But 
 these observations were so contradictory and so dif- 
 fuse, that, in spite of the interest which 1 took in this 
 authentic history, I very nearly fell asleep. The no- 
 tary, no doubt accustomed to listen himself, and to 
 make his clients and fellow-townsmen listen too, to 
 his dull voice and monotonous intonation, began to 
 triumph over my curiosity, 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 mo- 
 ment ! ' ' and he put the first finger of his right hand 
 to his nose, as if to say, ' ' Pay great attention to this, ' ' 
 and said, in a sly way, "To get as far as that, one 
 must start before sixty." I was drawn from my 
 apathy by the last sally the notary thought it pro- 
 digiously witty ; then I shut my door, sat down in my 
 armchair, and put my feet on the fire dogs of tLe 
 grate. I was soon deep in a romance a la Ann Rat>- 
 cliffe, founded on the juridical hints given by Mor
 
 190 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 sieur Regnault. Presently my door, handled by 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 re- 
 peated 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 ! as sure as my name 's Lepas. ' ' 
 "No, don't swear to i^t; your eyes are big with a se- 
 cret. 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, '11 avait la tete prcs du bonet.' He paid 
 everything with ready money, so that he might never 
 come to words with any one ; you see he was a bit quick ! 
 Our ladies here all thought him very nice and pleas- 
 ant." "Because he was quick?" said I. "Likely
 
 AN ACCURSED HOUSE 191 
 
 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 lady in all Vendome ; she had near 
 on twenty thousand livres a year. The whole town 
 went to see the wedding. The bride was a delicate, 
 winning creature a real jewel of a wife. Ah! 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 hobnob with such as we. Mad- 
 ame 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, 
 you know "Then there must certainly have 
 
 been some catastrophe for Monsieur and Madame de 
 Merret to have separated so abruptly?" "I never 
 said anything about a catastrophe, Monsieur. I don 't 
 know anything about it. " " All right ! Now I am 
 certain that you do know about it." "Well, Mon- 
 sieur, I am going to tell you all I know. When I 
 saw Monsieur Regnault go up to see you, I felt cer- 
 tain that he would talk to you about Madame de Mer- 
 ret, with reference to La Grande Breteche. This put 
 it into my head to consult Monsieur, for you seemed 
 to me to be a comfortable man, who would not betray
 
 192 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 a poor woman like me that has never done harm to 
 any one and yet find myself tormented by my con- 
 science. I have never up to now dared to open my 
 mouth about it to the people in this place: they're 
 all a pack of gossips, with tongues like vinegar. 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 thousand 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, 
 interrupting 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 depository ; however, I settled my- 
 self 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 Government, a young Spaniard sent to Vendome 
 on parole. In spite of his parole, he had to go every 
 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, you can read it. Ah ! he was a 
 handsome young man for a Spaniard, who are all 
 ugly so they say. He couldn't have been more than 
 -five feet two or three inches, but he was well made.
 
 Ay ACCURSED HOUSE 193 
 
 He had the smallest hands ! which he took such care 
 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 complexion 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 'Abrantes, 
 Monsieur Decazes, and the King of Spain. He did 
 not eat much; but one couldn't be angry with him, 
 he had such gentle, courteous 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 conversa- 
 tion 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 do you think he knelt? (we noticed this after- 
 ward) 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 
 country Spain is nothing but mountains, so I've 
 heard. From the first days of his detention he was 
 always late at night. I was anxious, when I saw he
 
 194 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 didn't come in until just on the stroke of midnight; 
 but we all got accustomed to his fancies. He took 
 the key 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 warned him to mind the weeds. 
 He seemed annoyed at having been seen in the water. 
 At last, Monsieur, one day or rather one morning, we 
 found he was not in his bedroom ; he had not returned. 
 After hunting about everywhere, I saw some writing 
 in the drawer of his table, and with it fifty of the 
 Spanish gold pieces they call portugals, equal to about 
 fifty thousand francs; and afterward 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 
 husband with me, and he ran out to search for him. 
 Now comes the oddest part of the story. He brought 
 back the Spaniard's clothes, which he had found un- 
 der a large 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 accord-
 
 AN ACCURSED HOUSE 195 
 
 ing to Count Feredia's desire that he had escaped. 
 The sub-prefect set the whole gendarmerie at his heels ; 
 but, pooh ! they never caught him. Lepas believed the 
 {Spaniard was drowned ; but I don 't, Monsieur. I be- 
 lieve he had something to do with that affair of Mad- 
 ame de Merret, seeing that Eosalie told me that the 
 crucifix which her mistress was so fond of that she 
 had it buried with her, was made of ebony and silver. 
 Now during the first days of Monsieur Feredia's stay 
 here he had a crucifix of ebony an 1 silver, which I 
 never saw among his things again. Now, Monsieur, 
 you don 't really think I need have any remorse about 
 the fifty 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 knows something, 
 but there 's no getting anything out of her. ' ' 
 
 After talking to me for a few minutes more my 
 hostess left me, tortured by vague and gloomy 
 thoughts. I felt a romantic curiosity, and yet a sort 
 of religious 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 shuddered. La Grande Bre- 
 teehe, with its rank w r eeds, its worn-out casements, its 
 rusted ironwork, its deserted chambers, its closed por
 
 196 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 tals, rose up suddenly, fantastically before me. I 
 would try to penetrate into this mysterious dwelling, 
 by seeking for the knot of its solemn history, the 
 drama that had slain three human beings. Rosalie 
 was now the most interesting person to me in Ven- 
 dome. In spite of the glow of health which beamed 
 from her chubby face, I discovered, after close scru- 
 tiny, the trace of hidden thoughts. She held within 
 her the elements either of hope or remorse; her be- 
 havior suggested a secret, like those pious women who 
 pray to excess, or a girl who has killed her child and 
 is always hearing its last cry. Yet her attitudes were 
 simple and awkward. There was nothing criminal 
 in her broad, foolish smile, if only at the sight of 
 her sturdy bust, covered with a red and blue cheek 
 kerchief, and enclosed, impressed, and enlaced in a 
 violet and white striped gown, you could not have 
 failed to think she was innocent. "No," thought I, 
 "I shall not leave Vendome until I know the whole 
 history of La Grande Breteche. I will become Rosa- 
 lie's lover, if it is absolutely necessary, to gain my 
 end." "Rosalie," said I one day. "Yes! if you 
 please, Monsieur." "You are not married?" She 
 gave a little start. "Oh, I shan't want for men, I 
 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 eve:*y woman, from a fine lady to a tavern drudge 
 inclusively, has a sang froid especially her own.
 
 AN ACCURSED HOUSE 187 
 
 "You are fresh and attractive enough not to lack 
 lovers! But tell me, Rosalie, how was it you took a 
 place at an inn after you had been with Madame de 
 Merret? 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 which judges and 
 barristers call dilatory. It appeared to me, with re- 
 gard to this romantic story, that Rosalie stood on the 
 middle square of the chess board ; she was at the very 
 center both of the interest and of the truth of it ; she 
 seemed to be bound up in the knot. It was no ordinary 
 seduction 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 the 
 women whom we make our chief thought a number 
 of good qualities. She was neat, diligent, pretty of 
 course that goes without saying ; in fact, she was soon 
 endowed with all the attractions which our desire 
 attributes to women, in whatever situation they may 
 be placed. A fortnight after the notary's visit, one 
 evening no, one morning; in fact, it was quite early 
 I said to Rosalie: 
 
 "Come, tell me all thou knowest 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
 
 198 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 you wish it, I will tell you ; but whatever you do, keep 
 the secret!" "Done! my dear child; I will keep all 
 thy secrets with the integrity of a robber, which is 
 the loyalest that exists." "If you don't mind," said 
 she, "I had rather you 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 necessary 
 to reproduce faithfully the diffuse eloquence of Rosa- 
 lie, 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 pro- 
 portion bear to the extreme, I have nothing more 
 to do than to tell it again in 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 circumstances 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
 
 AN ACCURSED HOUSE 199 
 
 talk politics with the country gentlemen) two hour^ 
 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 exciting one, 
 and he had lost forty francs. This was an enormous 
 sum at Vendome, where every one hoards and morals 
 are kept within bounds of most praiseworthy modera- 
 tion; perhaps this is the source of that true content- 
 ment which Parisians do not appreciate. For some 
 time Monsieur de Merret had contented himself with 
 inquiring from Rosalie whether his wife had gone to 
 bed, and on her always answering in the affirmative, 
 he went straight to his own room with that simplicity 
 which comes of habit and confidence. But that night, 
 when he came in, the fancy took him to go and tell 
 his ill luck to Madame de Merret, and also perhaps 
 receive her sympathy. Now during dinner he had 
 observed that Madame de Merret was very becom- 
 ingly dressed ; and he remarked to himself as he came 
 from his club that his wife's indisposition must have 
 passed off, and that her convalescence had made her 
 more beautiful 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 
 difficult hand at brisque; so instead of calling her, 
 Monsieur de Merret placed his lantern on the bottom
 
 200 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 step of the stairs, and by its light directed his steps 
 toward his wife's bedroom. His footsteps were easy 
 to recognize 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 men- 
 tioned shut ; but when he came in Madame de Merret 
 was alone, standing before the fireplace. Her hus- 
 band in his simplicity thought to himself that it v;as 
 Rosalie in the wardrobe, but yet a suspicion jangled 
 like a chime in his ears and made him distrustful. 
 He looked at his wife ; he saw in her eyes 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 thunderbolt 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 timidly, while Rosalie undressed her. 
 He kept silence. "You can go," said Madame de 
 Merret to her lady's maid; "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 corridor 
 Monsieur de Merret came and sat down before his 
 wife, and said coldly, "Madame, there is some one 
 in your wardrobe." She looked calmly at her 1ms-
 
 AN ACCURSED HOUSE 201 
 
 band, and said simply, ' ' No, Monsieur. ' ' 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 mo- 
 ment. 
 
 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 ex- 
 treme emotion, "Remember, if you do not find any 
 one there, all will be over between us ! " The incred- 
 ible 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, Jo- 
 sephine," said he, "I will not go. In either case we 
 should be parted for ever. 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 death. ' ' At these words Madame de Mer- 
 ret 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 trust you I will never open that door. ' ' Mad- 
 ame de Merret took the crucifix and said, "I swear." 
 "Louder," said her husband; "and repeat, 'I swear 
 before God there is no one in that wardrobe. ' ' She 
 repeated the phrase unmoved. " It is well, ' ' said Mon- 
 sieur de Merret coldly. 
 
 After a moment's silence: "That's a very fine
 
 204 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 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 fulfilled the 
 conditions of our bargain. For this sum you must 
 keep the most absolute silence about what you are 
 going to do to-night. As to you, Rosalie, I will give 
 you ten thousand francs, not to be paid over to you 
 until the day of your marriage, and then only on con- 
 dition 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 unloading his bricks, and 
 her husband was at the end of the room, Madame de 
 Merret seized the opportunity of saying to Rosalie: 
 "A thousand francs a year for thee, my dear child, 
 if thou canst tell Gorenflot to leave a chink near the 
 bottom." Then she said aloud, and with perfect com- 
 posure, "Go and help him!" 
 
 Monsieur and Madame de Merret remained silent 
 during the whole time Gorenflot took to wall up the 
 door. With the husband, this silence arose from cal- 
 culation; he did not wish to give his wife a chance 
 of saying anything which might have a rlouble mean-
 
 AN ACCURSED HOUSE 205 
 
 ing. With Madame de Merret, it was prudence or 
 pride. When the wall had reached half the necessary 
 height, the cunning mason seized an opportunity 
 when Monsieur de Merret 's back was turned, and 
 gave one of the two panes of glass in the door a blow 
 with his pick. This made Madame de Merret under- 
 stand that Rosalie had spoken to Gorenflot. 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. By this sign 
 she would have said to him, ' ' Hope ! ' ' 
 
 At four o'clock, just before daylight, the wall was 
 finished. The mason remained in the house, guarded 
 by Jean, and Monsieur de Merret went to bed in his 
 wife's room. The next morning, while he was get- 
 ting 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 trem- 
 bled with delight. "He is going to Duvivier's," she 
 thought. As soon as he had gone out, Madame de 
 Merret rang for Rosalie. "The pick, the pick!" she 
 cried in a voice of terror; "to work! I saw how 
 Gorenflot began yesterday; we shall have time to 
 make a hole and stop it up again." In the twinkling 
 of an eye Rosalie had brought her mistress a sort of 
 marline, and she began to set to work to pull down 
 the wall with an energy of which no words could give
 
 206 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 the least idea. She had already dislodged 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 dur- 
 ing his absence, he had laid a trap for his wife. 
 He had really written to the mayor and sent for 
 Duvivier. In fact the jeweller 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." 
 
 "Thank you, I am much obliged." He darted the 
 look of a tiger at his wife, and she returned 
 it. "Jean," he added, "have my meals served 
 in Madame de Merret 's room, as she is very ill. I 
 shall not leave her until she has fully recovered her 
 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 Jo- 
 sephine began to implore him to have mercy on the 
 dying stranger, he prevented her from saying a sin- 
 gle word by answering, ' ' You swore upon the crucifix 
 that there was no one there."
 
 AN ACCURSED HOUSE 207 
 
 After this narrative all the ladies rose from 
 the table, and the charm under which Bianchon had 
 held them was dispelled. Nevertheless some of them 
 had felt a sort of chill when they heard the last, 
 sentence.
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 
 
 DOCTOR BIANCHON, a physician to whom science 
 is indebted for a grand physiological theory, and who, 
 though still a young man, is considered one of the 
 celebrities of the School of Paris (itself a center of 
 light to which all the physicians of Europe pay hom- 
 age), had practiced surgery for a long time before 
 he devoted himself to medicine. His early studies 
 were directed by one of the greatest of French sur- 
 geons, a man who passed through the scientific world 
 like a meteor the celebrated Despleins. As his ene- 
 mies themselves acknowledge, an intransmittable 
 method was buried in his tomb. Like all men of 
 genius he had no heirs; he carried and he carried 
 away everything 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 appreciable 
 after they have disappeared. Actors 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 himself is a proof 
 
 20S
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 209 
 
 of this similarity between the destinies of these trans- 
 itory geniuses; his name, yesterday so celebrated, is 
 to-day almost forgotten; it will last only in his spe- 
 cial sphere, and will not pass beyond it. But are not 
 unheard-of circumstances required for the name of a 
 savant to pass beyond the domain of his science into 
 the general history of humanity ? Had Despleins that 
 universality of knowledge which makes a man the 
 Word, the Expression of an age? Despleins pos- 
 sessed a divine glance ; he penetrated into the patient 
 and his disease by natural or acquired intuition which 
 enabled him to seize the diagnostics peculiar to the 
 individual, and taking into consideration the atmos- 
 pheric conditions and the peculiarities of the temper- 
 ament, to determine the precise time, the hour, the 
 minute for an operation to take place. In order thus 
 to proceed in concert 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 orQer that he may draw from them a pecu- 
 liar expression? Did he proceed by that deductive 
 and analogical power to which the genius of Cuvier is 
 due? However that may be, he made himself the 
 confidant of the flesh; by relying on the present he 
 comprehended it in the past and the future. But did 
 he sum up all science in his own person as Hippoc- 
 rates, Galen, and Aristotle did? Has he led a \vrMle 
 school to new worlds? No. If it is impossiW*" *o
 
 210 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 deny that this perpetual observer of human chemistry 
 possessed the ancient science of magism 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 everything in him was personal; he 
 was isolated in his life by egoism, and to-day his ego- 
 ism is the suicide of his fame. Upon his tomb rises 
 no sonorous statue proclaiming to the future the mys- 
 teries which genius seeks at its expense. But per- 
 haps the talent of Despleins was part and parcel of 
 his belief, and consequently mortal. To him the ter- 
 restrial atmosphere was a generative bag; he could 
 see the earth like an egg in its shell, and not being 
 able to decide whether the egg or the fowl came first, 
 he admitted neither the shell nor the egg. He believed 
 neither in the animal anterior nor the spirit posterior 
 to man. Despleins was not in doubt, he affirmed. 
 In his frank, unmixed atheism he was like so many 
 savants, the best men in the world, but invincible 
 atheists, such atheists as religious men will not ac- 
 knowledge can exist. This opinion could not be 
 otherwise in a man accustomed from early youth to 
 dissect the being par excellence before, during, and 
 after his life, to search him through all his organiza- 
 tion, without finding that single soul which is so 
 necessary to religious theories. Recognizing in man 
 a cerebral center, a nervous center, and an aerosan- 
 guineous center, the two former supplying each
 
 THE ATHEISTS MASS 211 
 
 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 necessary for hearing, 
 nor the sense of sight absolutely necessary for seeing, 
 and that the solar plexus could replace them beyond 
 suspicion of any change ; Despleins, I say, finding two 
 souls in man, confirmed his atheism by this fact, al- 
 though it still proves nothing on the subject of God. 
 This man, it is said, died in the final impenitence of, 
 unhappily, so many fine geniuses; may God forgive 
 them ! The life of this really great man betrayed 
 many pettinesses, to use the phrase of enemies anx- 
 ious to dimmish his reputation, 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 con- 
 tradictions in order to draw up an indictment on 
 which they obtain a momentary verdict. If, later on, 
 s access crowns the combinations they have attacked, 
 by demonstrating the relation of the preparations to 
 the results, still a few of their advance guard calum- 
 nies 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 necessary to explain 1804 and the flat- 
 bottom boats at Boulogne. 
 
 In the case of Despleins, his reputation and scien- 
 tific knowledge being unassailable, his enemies found
 
 212 
 
 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 "ec- 
 centricity." At times he dressed superbly, like Cre- 
 billon, the tragic writer, then all at once he would 
 affect a strange indifference in the matter of clothes ; 
 sometimes he appeared in a carriage, sometimes on 
 foot. He was by turns brusque and kind, though ap- 
 parently hard and stingy; yet he was capable of 
 offering his fortune to his masters when they were in 
 exile, and they actually did him the honor of accept- 
 ing 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 busi- 
 ness 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 expressions in the midst of the most 
 serious and of the pettiest actions of life. The quali- 
 ties 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 pre- 
 supposes intuition ; 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 courtier whose life he has saved, "How is the
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 213 
 
 Emperor?" and answers, "The courtier is recover- 
 ing, 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 be- 
 lieve him as he believed himself to have been as 
 capable of making quite as great a minister as he was 
 a surgeon. 
 
 Among the enigmas which the life of Despleins 
 offer, to the eyes of his contemporaries, we have 
 chosen one of the most interesting, because the point 
 comes at the end of the story, and will answer accusa- 
 tions which have been made against him. Of all the 
 pupils that Despleins had at his hospital, Horace 
 Bianchon was one of those to whom he was most 
 warmly attached. Before going into residence at the 
 Hotel Dieu, Horace Bianchon was a student of medi- 
 cine, and lodged in le quartier Latin at a wretched 
 pension, known under the name of La Maison Vau- 
 quer. At this place the poor youth experienced 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, like diamonds 
 which can be subjected to any shock without break- 
 ing. In the violent flames of passions, just freed 
 from restraint, they acquire habits of the most un- 
 swerving probity, and accustom themselves by means 
 of the constant labor wherewith they have baffled and 
 confined their appetites to those struggles which
 
 214 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 await on genius. Horace was a straightforward 
 young man, incapable of double-dealing in a question 
 of honor, going straight to the point without palaver- 
 ing, and as ready to pawn his cloak for a friend as 
 to give him his working time or his evenings. He 
 was one of those friends who do not trouble them- 
 selves about what they receive in exchange for what 
 they give, being certain of receiving in their turn 
 more than they have given. Most of his friends had 
 that inward respect for him which unobtrusive good- 
 ness inspires, and many of them were afraid of his 
 censure. But Horace displayed his good qualities 
 without priggishness. He was neither a Puritan nor 
 a preacher; and he swore with a will when he gave 
 advice, and was quite ready to take his slice of good 
 cheer if the occasion offered. He was good company, 
 not more prudish than a trooper, open and straight- 
 forward not like a sailor a sailor nowadays is a 
 wily diplomatist but like a fine young man who has 
 nothing 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 poverty with that gaiety which is perhaps one of 
 the greatest 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 conduct were equally unwavering. The happiness
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 215 
 
 of Bianchon's 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 
 young man under his wing, that young man has, as 
 they say, his foot in the stirrup. Despleins did not 
 fail to take Bianchon with him as his assistant to 
 wealthy houses, where some present almost always 
 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 employment 
 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 cer- 
 tain time, the despot of surgery had a se'id. These 
 two men, one at the height of his celebrity and at the 
 head of his own science, enjoying an immense for- 
 tune and an immense reputation ; the other, a humble 
 Omega, without either fortune or fame became in- 
 timates. The great Despleins told his assistant every- 
 thing. He knew if such and such a woman had sat 
 on a chair by the master, or on the famous couch 
 which stood in the study, and on which he slept. He 
 knew thoroughly the great man's temperament half 
 lion, half bull which at last developed and amplified 
 his bust to such a degree as to cause his death by en- 
 largement of the heart. He studied the strange cor-
 
 21.0 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 ners of that busy life, the projects of its sordid ava- 
 rice, the hopes of the politician hidden 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 Despleins that a poor 
 water-carrier of le quartier Saint Jacques had a ter- 
 rible illness caused by fatigue and poverty; the poor 
 Auvergnat had eaten nothing but potatoes during the 
 great winter of 1821. Despleins left all his patients; 
 he flew, at the risk of breaking his horse's wind, fol- 
 lowed by Bianchon, to the poor man's lodgings, and 
 himself had him carried into the private hospital 
 founded by the celebrated Dubois, in le faubourg Saint 
 Denis. He went and attended the man, and when he had 
 cured him gave him the necessary sum to buy a horse 
 and a water-cart. This Auvergnat was remarkable 
 for an original trait. One of his friends fell ill, so he 
 promptly brought him to his benefactor, saying, "I 
 could not bear 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 Auvergnats, 
 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 very strange in it.
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 217 
 
 One day as Bianchon was crossing la place Saint Sul- 
 pice, he caught sight of his master going into the 
 church. Despleins, 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 master's opinions, 
 and was un cabaniste en dyable (with a y, which 
 seems in Rabelais to imply superiority in devylrie), 
 slipped also into Saint Sulpice. He was not a little 
 astonished at seeing the great Despleins that atheist 
 without pity for the angels, because they offer no re- 
 sistance to the bistoury, and cannot have either fis- 
 tulas or gastritis; 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. "He can't be come to 
 throw light on questions relative to the parturition 
 of the Virgin," said Bianchon, whose astonishment 
 was boundless. "If I had seen him holding one of 
 the tassels of the canopy of Corpus Christi, it would 
 only have been a joke ; but at this hour, alone, with- 
 out any one to see ! it certainly is something to think 
 about." Bianchon did not like to appear to be spy- 
 ing upon the first surgeon of the Hotel Dieu, so he 
 went away. It chanced that Despleins had invited 
 him to dinner that very day, not at his own house,
 
 216 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 ners of that busy life, the projects of its sordid ava- 
 rice, the hopes of the politician hidden 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 Despleins that a poor 
 water-carrier of le quartier Saint Jacques had a ter- 
 rible illness caused by fatigue and poverty; the poor 
 Auvergnat had eaten nothing but potatoes during the 
 great winter of 1821. Despleins left all his patients; 
 he flew, at the risk of breaking his horse's wind, fol- 
 lowed by Bianchon, to the poor man's lodgings, and 
 himself had him carried into the private hospital 
 founded by the celebrated Dubois, in le faubourg Saint 
 Denis. He went and attended the man, and when he had 
 cured him gave him the necessary sum to buy a horse 
 and a water-cart. This Auvergnat was remarkable 
 for an original trait. One of his friends fell ill, so he 
 promptly brought him to his benefactor, saying, "I 
 could not bear 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 Auvergnats, 
 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 very strange in it.
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 217 
 
 One day as Bianchon was crossing la place Saint Sul- 
 pice, he caught sight of his master going into the 
 church. Despleins, 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 master's opinions, 
 and was un cabaniste en dyable (with a y, which 
 seems in Rabelais to imply superiority in devylrie), 
 slipped also into Saint Sulpice. He was not a little 
 astonished at seeing the great Despleins that atheist 
 without pity for the angels, because they offer no re- 
 sistance to the bistoury, and cannot have either fis- 
 tulas or gastritis; 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. "He can't be come to 
 throw light on questions relative to the parturition 
 of the Virgin," said Bianchon, whose astonishment 
 was boundless. "If I had seen him holding one of 
 the tassels of the canopy of Corpus Christi, it would 
 only have been a joke ; but at this hour, alone, with- 
 out any one to see ! it certainly is something to think 
 about." Bianchon did not like to appear to be spy- 
 ing upon the first surgeon of the Hotel Dieu, so he 
 went away. It chanced that Despleins had invited 
 him to dinner that very day, not at his own house,
 
 218 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 but at a restaurant. At dessert Bianchon succeeded 
 by skilful maneuvering in bringing the conversation 
 round to the subject of the mass, which he pro- 
 nounced a mummery and a farce. "It's a farce," 
 said Despleins, "which has cost Christianity more 
 blood than all the battles of Napoleon, and all the 
 leeches of Broussais ! The mass is a Papal invention, 
 based on Hoc est corpus, and does not go back further 
 than the sixteenth century. What torrents of blood 
 had to be shed in order to establish the observance 
 of Corpus Christi ! By the institution of this feast 
 the Court of Rome was determined to mark its vic- 
 tory in the question of the real Presence a schism 
 which troubled the Church for three centuries. The 
 Waldenses and the Albigenses refused to accept the 
 innovation, and the wars of le Comte de Toulouse 
 and the Albigenses are the conclusion of the whole 
 affair. ' ' In fact, Despleins revelled in giving vent to 
 all his atheistic caprices; he poured forth a flood of 
 Voltairian pleasantry, or to be more exact a horri- 
 ble parody of Le Citateur. 
 
 "Ho! ho!" said Bianchon to himself. "What has 
 become of my morning devot?" He kept silence; he 
 doubted whether it was his chief that he had seen at 
 Saint Sulpiee. Despleins would not have taken the 
 trouble to lie to Bianchon ; they knew each other too 
 well ; they had already exchanged thoughts on equally 
 serious subjects, and discussed systems de natura 
 rerwm, probing or dissecting them with the knives
 
 THE ATHEISTS MASS 219 
 
 and scalpel of incredulity. Three months passed; 
 Bianchon did not follow this up, although the fact 
 remained stamped in his memory. One day during 
 the year, one of the physicians of the Hotel Dieu 
 took Despleins by the arm in Bianchon 's presence, 
 as if to ask him a question. 
 
 "What were you going to do at Saint Sulpice, mon 
 cher Maitre?" said he. 
 
 "I went there to see a priest who has caries of the 
 knee, whom Madame la Duchesse d'Angouleme did 
 me the honor to recommend to me," said Despleins. 
 
 The doctor was satisfied with this excuse not so 
 Bianchon. 
 
 " Oh ! he goes to see bad knees in the church, does 
 he? He went to hear his mass," said he to himself. 
 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 year following at the same day arid hour to see if 
 he could catch him again. If he did, the regular re- 
 currence of his devotion would justify a scientific in- 
 vestigation, for it would not be becoming 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 cabri- 
 olet stopping at the corner of la rue de Tournon and 
 la rue du Petit Lion ; from there Despleins crept 
 jesuitically along the walls of Saint Sulpice, and
 
 220 SHORT 8TORIE8 BY BALZAC 
 
 again heard his mass at the altar of the Virgin. It 
 certainly was Despleins ! the chief surgeon, the atheist 
 in petto, 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 invest the chapel, and 
 asked him whether the gentleman was a regular at- 
 tendant there. 
 
 "I have been here for twenty years," said the sac- 
 ristan, "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 Bianchon, as he 
 walked away. "It's as great a mystery as the Im- 
 maculate Conception a thing enough of itself to 
 make a doctor incredulous." 
 
 Some time passed by before Doctor Bianchon, al- 
 though he was Desplein'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 confidence 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 Republi- 
 can 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 sedi-
 
 THE ATHEISTS MASS 221 
 
 tion stalked the streets, Bianchon caught Despleins 
 again going into Saint Sulpice. The doctor followed, 
 and took a place near his friend without his making 
 him the least sign or showing the leasi surprise. They 
 heard the votive mass together. 
 
 "Tell me, mon cher," said Bianchon to Despleins, 
 when they were outside the church, "what is the 
 reason for this capucinade of yours? I have now 
 caught you three times going to mass you! You 
 must give me a reason for this mysterious proceed- 
 ing, and explain the flagrant inconsistency between 
 your opinions and your practice. You don't believe 
 in God, and yet you go to mass! My dear master, 
 you are really bound to answer me." 
 
 "I am like many devots, men profoundly religious 
 in appearance, but quite as much atheists as we are, 
 you and I." 
 
 Then came a torrent of epigrams on certain politi- 
 cal personages, the best known of whom represent in 
 this century a second edition of Moliere's Tartuffe. 
 
 "I did not ask for all that," said Bianchon. "I 
 want to know the reason for what you have just been 
 doing here; why did you found this mass?" 
 
 11 Ma fois, mon cher ami," said Despleins. "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 hap- 
 pened to be in la rue des Quatre-Vents, one of the 
 most horrible streets in Paris. Despleins pointed to
 
 222 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 the sixth story of one of those houses like an obe- 
 lisk, with a side door opening into an alley, at the 
 end of which is a tortuous staircase lit by inside 
 lights, well named, jours de souffrance. It was a 
 greenish-colored house ; on the basement lived a furni- 
 ture 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 hommes.' 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: hunger, thirst, 
 want of money, of clothes, of boots and shoes, and 
 of linen all the hardest phases of poverty. I have 
 blown on my numbed fingers in that 'bocal 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 as you 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
 
 THE ATHEISTS MASS 223 
 
 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 temperament stood in my way. No one was 
 willing to see in my irritability the labors and diffi- 
 culties 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 you; before you I have no 
 need of disguise I had that foundation of noble 
 sentiments and vivid sensibility which w r ill always be 
 the appanage of men who are strong enough to climb 
 to any summit whatever, after having trudged for a 
 long time through the sloughs of poverty. I 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 be- 
 fore, or the evening before that. This I crumbled 
 into some milk; so my morning meal only cost me 
 two sous. I only dined every other day, at a pension 
 where the dinner cost sixteen 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 mock- 
 ing grin of a shoe that is coming unsewed, or at the 
 sound of a split in the lining of an overcoat. I
 
 224 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 drank nothing but water. I had the greatest respect 
 for the cafes. Zoppi seemed to me a sort of Promised 
 Land where the Luculli of the pays latin alone had 
 rights of presence. 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 car- 
 ried into my work the fever with which my poverty 
 inspired me. I tried to acquire positive details of 
 knowledge, that I might possess an immense personal 
 value, and so deserve the place I was to reach on the 
 day when I passed out of my state of nothingness. 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 order to make friends, a young man must mix 
 with his fellows, possess a few sous to be able to go 
 and drink with them, and go with them everywhere 
 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 betray my pov- 
 erty, I experienced that nervous contraction of the 
 gullet which makes a patient believe that a ball is ris- 
 ing up into the larynx 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?
 
 THE ATHEISTS MASS 225 
 
 Why did you contract such onerous obligations?' 
 They remind me of the princess who, knowing that 
 the people were 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 operating yes, I should like to 
 see him alone in Paris without a sou or a scrap of 
 baggage, without a friend and without credit, forced 
 to work with his five fingers to live. What would he 
 do? Where would he go to stay his hunger? Bian- 
 chon, if you have seen me sometimes hard and bitter, 
 it was that I was laying my former troubles upon the 
 callousness and egoism of which I have had thousands 
 of proofs in high quarters ; or I may have been think- 
 ing of the obstacles that hate and envy and jealousy 
 and calumny have raised between me and success. 
 At Paris, as soon as certain 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 up to shoot you, with the muzzle of his pistol 
 close to you. You have enough talent, mon cher en- 
 fant, to know very soon the horrible, incessant war- 
 fare 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 friends will say that the night before
 
 226 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 you lost twenty-five thousand francs. If your head 
 is bad, you will pass for a lunatic. If you feel ir- 
 ritable, you will be unbearable. 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 everything, that you think you have a right to 
 domineer and play the tyrant. In short, your good 
 qualities will become faults, your faults will become 
 vices, and your vices will be crimes. If you have 
 saved a man, you will have killed him ; if your pa- 
 tient 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 with, 
 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 extremi- 
 ties when, you know, a man says, 'I must enlist.' 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, under the idea that with thirty francs a month 
 their nephew lives on ortolans. The trunk arrived
 
 THE ATHEISTS MAiSS 227 
 
 while I was at the school; the carriage cost forty 
 francs. The porter, a German shoemaker, who lodged 
 in a loft, had paid the money and kept the trurik. 
 I went for a walk in la rue des Fosses Saint Germain 
 des Pres, and in la rue de 1'Ecole de Medecin, but I 
 could not invent a stratagem which would deliver me 
 up my trunk, without my 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 surgery. 
 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 ; tlieir talent is 
 chance; they do not seek they find. 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 lodgers get to know each other who have 
 rooms on the same landing and hear each other sleep- 
 ing, coughing, and dressing, until at last they get 
 used to one another. My neighbor informed me that 
 the landlord, 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 to? 
 I asked myself these unanswerable questions again
 
 22S SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 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 crum- 
 bled into milk, Bourgeat comes in and says in his 
 bad French: 
 
 " 'Monchieur I'Etudiant, 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 you 
 neither; you've not got anything to speak of. Look 
 here, I've got a hand-cart down below which I've 
 hired for two sous an hour. It'll hold all our 
 things ; if you 're agreeable, we '11 look out for a place 
 where we can lodge together, as we're driven out of 
 this. After all 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 containing linen with 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.' 
 
 " 'H'm! I've got some chink,' he answered cheer- 
 fully, showing me a filthy old leather purse. 'You'd 
 better keep your linen.' 
 
 "Bourgeat paid for my three terms and his own, 
 and settled with the porter. Then he put our furni- 
 ture and my linen onto his barrow and pushed it 
 through the streets, stopping before every house
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 229 
 
 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 wandering about le quartier 
 Latin without having found anything. The 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 my humble friend. 
 We dined together. Bourgeat, who earned about fifty 
 sous a day, possessed about a hundred ecus. He 
 would soon have been able to realize his ambition and 
 buy a horse and water-cart. When he discovered my 
 situation, for he could draw out my secrets with a 
 depth of cunning and a kindness the memory of 
 which even now touches my heart, he gave up for 
 some time the \mbition of his whole life. Bourgeat 
 had worked in the streets since he was twenty-two; 
 he sacrificed his hundred ecus to my future." 
 
 Here Despleins pressed Bianchon's arm. 
 
 ''He gave me the necessary money for my exami- 
 nations. He understood, mon ami, that I had a mis- 
 sionthat the needs of my intelligence exceeded his 
 own. He took charge of me; he called me his petit; 
 he lent me the money necessary 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
 
 230 HIIORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 me that a mother would that T might be able to have 
 wholesome nourishment instead of the bad and in- 
 sufficient food to which I had been condemned. 
 
 ' ' Bourgeat was a man of about f ortj', with the face 
 of a medieval burgher, a prominent 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 that 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 at- 
 tentive of mothers to me, the most delicate of bene- 
 factors in short, the ideal of that virtue which de- 
 lights in its own work. If I met him in the streets 
 he cast on me a look of intelligence full of inconceiv- 
 able nobleness. On these occasions 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 people, the love of 
 the grisette, carried into a higher sphere. He did 
 my commissions, woke me at night at certain hours,
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 231 
 
 cleaned my lamp, and polished our landmg, 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 in a simple 
 way of his own without ever compromising his dig- 
 nity, 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 my 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, you would see that it was 
 dedicated to him. During the last year of my term 
 of residence I had earned enough money to repay tin 
 noble Auvergnat all I owed him, by buying him a, 
 horse and water-cart. He was furiously angry to 
 think that I was depriving myself of the money, and' 
 yet enchanted at seeing his wishes realized; 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 absolutely insisted on buy- 
 ing me the case of instruments mounted, in silver
 
 232 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC' 
 
 which you have seen in my study; to me it is the 
 most precious thing I possess. Although elated at 
 my first success, he never let the least word escape 
 him or the least sign that implied: 'This man is due 
 to me.' And yet without him poverty would have 
 killed me. The poor man was killing himself for me ; 
 he had eaten nothing but bread rubbed with garlic, 
 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 great- 
 est 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 everything he possessed by a will 
 he had had made by a scrivener, dated the year when 
 we went to lodge in la cour de Rohan. He had all 
 the faith of a charcoal 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
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MAS& 233 
 
 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 I 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 only 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, think- 
 ing 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 year said there. As the only thing I 
 could offer Bourgeat in satisfaction 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 re- 
 cite 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
 
 234 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 he may enter more quickly into what is called Para- 
 dise.' That, mon cher, is all that a man of my opin- 
 ions can allow himself. God must be un bon diable; 
 he could not be annoyed with me. I swear to you I 
 would give my fortune for the belief of Bourgeat to 
 enter into my brain." Bianchon, who attended Des- 
 pleins in his last illness, dares not affhm now that 
 the celebrated surgeon died an atheist. Those who 
 believe 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 hommes la 
 patrie reconnaissante.
 
 A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA 
 
 (From a Letter written by Louis Lambert) 
 
 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 the print 
 of the horses' hoofs. However, our guide's practiced 
 eye was able to discover it by the track of cattle and 
 sheep dung. 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 followed the direc- 
 tion 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." 
 
 235
 
 230 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 The man murmured these words in a low tone that 
 suggested mystery. 
 
 "Is it a robber then, or a murderer?" 
 
 Our guide's only answer was a deep, hollow ex 
 slamation, which "redoubled our curiosity. 
 
 ' ' But if we do go by, will anything happen to us ? " 
 
 "Oh! no." 
 
 "Will you go by with us?" 
 
 "No, Monsieur." 
 
 "Well, we will go, if you can assure us that there 
 i& no danger." 
 
 "'I could not say that," answered the fisherman 
 quickly. "I only know that he who is there will not 
 nay anything to you, and will do you no harm. Good 
 Clod ! 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 tragi6 
 i;one. At that moment we were about twenty paces 
 from a creek in which the sea was tossing. Our guide 
 vook the road which skirted the rocks; we went on 
 straight in front of us, but Pauline 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 circum- 
 stance inflamed our curiosity, which then became so 
 burning that our hearts beat as if we had been struck 
 by a feeling of terror.
 
 A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA 237 
 
 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 pleasure 
 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 emotion 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 will 
 cry aloud with grief when you see it struck to ^ the 
 heart by the iron claws of a hawk and borne away 
 with murderous speed, swift as powder drives a bullet 
 from a gun. 
 
 We 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 plat- 
 form, 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
 
 238 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 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 casting 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 thunderbolt. 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 nat- 
 ural 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 
 earthen 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 a picture of grander religion or moro
 
 A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA 239 
 
 terrible repentance. Even you, my dear uncle, who 
 have experience of the Confessional, have never per- 
 haps 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 why. Had those 
 eyes wept? That hand, like the hand of a rough- 
 hewn statue, had it struck? That rugged brow, 
 stamped with fierce integrity, whereon strength had 
 left the impress of the gentleness that is the her- 
 itage of all true strength that brow, scarred deep 
 with furrows, was it in harmony 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 anticipated, we passed on quickly 
 in silence. When we met he must have seen that we 
 were filled with horror and astonishment, 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 fisherman at these words! 
 He was a simple man ; he understood our mute inter- 
 rogation, and this is what he told us. I try to pre-
 
 240 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 serve his own words and the popular character of the 
 story. 
 
 "Madame, people at Le Croisic, and Batz too, be- 
 lieve that this man has been guilty of some crime and 
 is performing the penance given him by a well-known 
 rector whom he went to confess to beyond Nantes. 
 Others believe that Cambremer 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 peo- 
 ple 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
 
 A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA 241 
 
 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. Cambremer's name is 
 Pierre; he is her godfather) 'Tell me, Perotte,* he 
 went on, ' what does uncle say to thee ? ' she '11 answer. 
 ' He says nothing to me, never nothing at all. ' ' Well, 
 and what does he do ? ' ' He kisses me on the fore- 
 head, 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 servant to the Justice to whom Cam- 
 bremer 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 overheard Cambremer without intending to, 
 because the Justice's parlor was next the kitchen.
 
 242 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 She heard it, and she is dead, and the judge who 
 heard it, he too is dead. My mother made us prom- 
 ise father and me never to speak of it to the peo- 
 ple 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 fellow; v, r e will 
 not mention it to any one." 
 
 The fisherman looked at us and continued thus: 
 "Pierre Cambremer, whom you saw there, is the eld- 
 est of the Cambremers. They have all been seafarers, 
 fathers and sons, for generations. As their name 
 shows, the sea has always 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 gr sardine fish- 
 ing, and he even fished for deep sea fish for the deal- 
 ers. 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 splen- 
 did she was and a kind heart too. She was so fond 
 of her husband that she could never bear him to 
 leave her longer than was necessary for the sardine 
 fishing. Stop ! They lived down there there, ' ' said 
 the fisherman, going up onto a mound, in order to 
 point out an island in a sort of little mediterranean 
 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 Cambre- 
 mer had only one child, a boy, whom they loved
 
 A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA 243 
 
 how much shall I say? Dame! like an only child; 
 they were quite mad about him. If their little 
 Jacques had done something into their broth excuse 
 me, Madame they'd have sworn it only made it all 
 the sweeter. 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 anything 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 and 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 young 
 whelp would fight every one he met; he'd wring the 
 fowls' necks and gut the pigs for sport. I'll swear 
 he wallowed in blood like a pole-cat! 'He'll make a 
 splendid soldier, ' said Cambremer ; ' he has got a taste 
 for blood.' 
 
 "You see, I remembered all this afterward," 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 play the fool and kick up his heels at Gue- 
 rande and Savenay. Next he wanted coin ; so he set 
 to robbing his mother, and she didn't dare to say a
 
 244 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 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 last, one day his mother was plundered of 
 everything 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 where is 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 journeys there on foot (it's quicker than 
 by sea), lays hands on his son, and brings him back. 
 He doesn't ask him, 'What hast been doing?' He 
 only says, 'If thou dost not stay here for two years 
 with thy mother and me, and keep thyself straight, 
 and go fishing and live like an honest man, thou 'It 
 have me to deal with.' The mad fellow, counting on 
 his parent's folly, goes and makes an ugly face at his
 
 A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA 245 
 
 father. Thereupon Pierre gives him a cuff on the 
 side of his head that lays up Master Jacques for six 
 months. Meanwhile the poor mother was pining away 
 with grief. 
 
 "One night she was sleeping peacefully beside her 
 husband when she hears a noise ; she raises herself in 
 bed, and gets a blow from a knife in her arm. She 
 cries out; they fetch a light, and Pierre Cambremer 
 sees that his wife is wounded. He believes it is 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'd got 
 there. Pierre goes to look for Jacques, but he can'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 you 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, 
 counting 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 help him to gain a living he employed him
 
 246 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 at his fishing, for Joseph Cambremer was reduced 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 wife too owed as much as a hun- 
 dred francs to different people, for the little one, for 
 linen and clothes, and for two or three months' wages 
 to big Frelu, who had a child by Simon Gaudry, and 
 nursed Perotte. Well, Cambremer 's wife had sewn a 
 Spanish coin into the wool of her mattress, 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 sees a bit of paper floating on the 
 water; he picks it up and takes it to his wife; she 
 recognizes the words in her own writing, and falls 
 down on the floor. Cambremer says nothing, goes to 
 Le Croisic, and hears there that his son is playing bil- 
 liards ; then he asks to see the woman that keeps the 
 cafe, and says to her, 'Jacques will pay you with a 
 certain gold piece which I told him not to pay away ; 
 if you will return it to me I will wait at the door 
 and give you silver for it instead.' The good woman 
 brought him the coin. Cambremer takes it. 'Good,' 
 says he, and returns home. The whole town knew 
 that much. But this is what 7 know, and the rest can
 
 A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA 247 
 
 only just guess at. He tells his wife to set their 
 downstair room in order ; lie makes a fire in the grate, 
 lights two dips, and sets two chairs on one side of the 
 hearth and a stool on the other. Then he tells his 
 wife to lay out his wedding clothes, and bids her rig 
 herself out in hers. He puts on his clothes, and when 
 he is dressed he goes for his brother and tells him to 
 keep watch outside the house, and warn him if he 
 hears any sound on either of the two beaches this 
 one and the one by the marsh de Guerande. When 
 he thinks his wife has dressed herself, he goes in 
 again, loads his gun, and hides it in the chimney- 
 corner. Presently Jacques comes home; he is late; 
 he had been drinking and gambling up till ten 
 o 'clock ; he had got brought across at Carnouf Point. 
 His uncle hears him shouting on the beach by the 
 marshes and goes to fetch him, and brings him over 
 without saying anything. When he comes in, his 
 father points to the stool and says, 'Sit thee down 
 there. Thou art before thy father and mother whom 
 thou hast offended ; they must be thy judges. ' Jacques 
 began to howl, because Cambremer's face had a 
 strange, 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, taking 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
 
 248 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 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 
 paper floating on the water when I landed ; thou hast 
 just given this very evening this Spanish gold 
 piece to la mere Fleurant, and thy 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 Nantes. ' So much 
 the better,' said Pierre. 'How canst thou prove that 
 to us?' 'I had it.' 'Thou didst not take thy moth- 
 er'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.' Cambremer 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 min- 
 ute,' 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 
 anything about what thou hast done before, but I 
 don't choose that a Cambremer should die in the 
 Market-place at Le Croisic. Say thy prayers, and 
 let 's make haste. There's a priest coming in a minute
 
 A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA 242 
 
 to hear thy confession.' His mother had gone out; 
 she could not stay to hear her son condemned. When 
 she was gone, Cambremer, the uncle, came with the 
 Eector of Piriac ; but Jacques would have nothing to 
 say to him. He was a cunning one; he knew his 
 father well enough to be sure he would not kill him 
 without confession. 'Thank you, Monsieur,' said 
 Cambremer, seeing that Jacques was obstinate; 
 'please to excuse us, but I wanted to give my son a 
 lesson; I beg you not to say anything 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 rights 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 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 refused. Cambremer put him in by 
 himself, 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 he 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, 'Mercy,'
 
 250 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 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 j 
 as there was no wind she heard Pish! then nothing, J 
 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 brothers to carry 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 didn't know what he wanted. 
 When he walked, he staggered like a man who can'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 story, and told it even more simply 
 than I have written it. The people make few reflec- 
 tions when they tell a tale; they relate the fact that 
 has impressed them, and only translate it into words 
 as they feel it. This narrative was as keen and in- 
 cisive as the blow of a hatchet. 
 
 "I will not go to Batz," said Pauline, when we 
 reached the upper side of the lake.
 
 A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA 251 
 
 We returned to Le Croisic by the salt marshes. 
 Our fisherman, become as silent as ourselves, led us 
 through the bewildering paths. Our souls had under- 
 gone a change. We were both plunged in gloomy- 
 thoughts, saddened by this drama which explained 
 the sudden presentiment we had felt at the sight of 
 Cambremer. 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 before us as plainly as if we had seen them 
 in 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 began to darken, 
 the sky, and a mist rose on the horizon while we 
 walked through the most gloomy and melancholy scen- 
 ery 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 encased in a 
 deep cutting of gray earth, and each full of brackish 
 water, on the surface of which the salt collects. These 
 artificial pits are divided within by borders, 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 vege-
 
 252 SHORT STORIES BY BALZAC 
 
 tation, and where no one is to be seen, except here 
 and there a few paludiers the name given to the cul- 
 tivators of the salt. These men, or rather this class 
 of Bretons, wear a special dress, a white jacket, not 
 unlike a brewer's. They marry only among them- 
 selves ; there is no instance of a girl of this tribe hav- 
 ing married any other man than a paludier. The 
 horrible appearance 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 Cambremers 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 
 during the night. The next day we were at Guerande. 
 
 THE END
 
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 I 
 
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