UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES BROWSING ROOM THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES I^onorc tic Bal^^ac J^onore tic Balzac PARISIAN LIFE VOLUME VI LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND COMPLETE COPIES 1 '^ NO. i ^^ t> <>j^yUj/-Au,i iSyff^-f "^.J^ 9'- Jlin. .^- ---^i ^ a » > PRINTED ONLY FOR SUBSCRIBERS BY GEORGE BARRIE & SON, PHILADELPHIA COPYRIGHTED, 1 896, BY G. B. * SON , C- 4 • • « • • ' t • « t « * « •> t Vq ^ o m O HISTORY OF THE THIRTEEN 189961 PREFACE There were brought together under the Empire and in Paris, thirteen men all equally possessed by the same sentiment, all of them endowed with sufficient force to remain constant to one idea, suffi- ciently honorable not to betray one another, even when their individual interests conflicted, suffi- ciently politic to conceal the sacred ties which united them, sufficiently strong to maintain them- selves above all law, courageous enough to under- take anything, and fortunate enough to have almost always succeeded in their designs; having encoun- tered the greatest dangers, but never speaking of their defeats; inaccessible to fear, and having trem- bled neither before the prince, the headsman, nor innocence; accepting each other for such as they were, without taking into account social prejudices; criminals undoubtedly, but certainly remarkable for some of those qualities which mark great men, and recruiting their number only from men of distinc- tion. And, finally, that nothing might be lacking to the sombre and mysterious poetry of this history these thirteen men have remained unknown, though all of them have realized the strangest chimer- ical ideas which are suggested to the imagina- tion by that fantastic power wrongly attributed to (3) 4 PREFACE the Manfreds, the Fausts, the Melmoths; and all of them are to-day crushed, or at least dispersed. They have quietly returned to the yoke of the civil law, as Morgan, the Achilles of pirates, transformed himself from a destroyer to a peaceful colonist, dis- posing without remorse by the light of his own fire- side, of the millions gathered in blood by the red glare of incendiarism. Since the death of Napoleon, an accident con- cerning which the author should still preserve silence, has dissolved the bonds of this life, as secret and curious, as the darkest of the romances of Mrs. Radcliffe. The permission, sufficiently remarkable in itself, to relate, in his own manner, some of the adventures of these men, always with respect for certain proprieties, has only recently been given him by one of these anonymous heroes to whom all branches of society were secretly sub- ject, and in whom the author believes himself to have discovered a vague desire for celebrity. This man, in appearance still young, with light hair and blue eyes, whose voice, soft and clear, seemed to reveal a feminine soul, was pale of com- plexion and mysterious in his manners; he con- versed affably, pretended to be only forty years of age, and might have been a member of the highest class of society. The name which he had assumed appeared to be a fictitious one; in the gay world his person was unknown. Who is he ? no one knows. Perhaps, in confiding to the author the extra- ordinary things which he revealed to him, the PREFACE 5 unknown wished to see them reproduced in some manner and to enjoy the emotions which they would be certain to awaken in the bosoms of the populace; some feeling analogous to that experi- enced by Macpherson when the name of Ossian, his creation, was inscribed in all languages. And it was, certainly, for the Scottish lawyer one of the keenest sensations, or at least one of the rarest, that man can give himself. May it not be said to be the incognito of genius? To write the Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem, is to take one's part in the human glory of a century; but to endow one's country with a Homer, is it not to usurp the privi- leges of God ? The author is too well acquainted with the laws of narration to remain in ignorance of the engage- ments which this short preface causes him to assume; but he also knows sufficiently well the story of the Thirteen to be certain of never falling below the interest which this programme would seem to promise. Certain dramas blood-curdling, certain comedies full of terrors, certain romances through which roll human heads secretly struck off, have been confided to him. If any reader has not been satiated with the horrors coolly served up to the public recently, he could, if but the slightest desire to hear them were manifested, reveal to him quiet atrocities, marvelous family tragedies. But he has selected in preference the mildest adventures, those in which pure scenes succeed the storms of the passions, in which woman is 6 PREFACE radiant with virtue and beauty. For the honor of the Thirteen, such scenes may be met with in their history, which perhaps some day may be judged worthy of being published as a pendant to that of the buccaneers, that race apart, so curiously ener- getic, so attractive despite its crimes. An author should disdain to convert his recital, when that recital is truthful, into a species of jack- in-the-box, and to lead his reader, after the manner of some romancers, from one subterranean crypt to another through four volumes in order to show him a withered corpse and to say to him, by way of con- clusion, that he has been keeping him in constant terror of a secret door in the tapestry or of a dead man left inadvertently under the floor. Notwith- standing his aversion to prefaces the author has felt obliged to place these sentences at the beginning of this fragment. Ferragus is a preliminary episode which is united by invisible bonds to the his- tory of the Thirteen, whose power, naturally acquired, alone can explain certain energies, appar- ently supernatural. Although it be permitted to story-tellers to have a kind of literary coquetry, on becoming historians, they should renounce the benefits which they might derive from strangeness of titles, which in our day procure certain slight successes. Therefore the author will explain here briefly the reasons which have obliged him to ac- cept certain titles for his books which at first sight may not seem quite natural. Ferragus is, according to an ancient custom, a PREFACE 7 name taken by a chief of Devorants. The day of their election, these chiefs adopt for themselves those of the names of the devorantesque dynasties which please them, just as, of the pontifical dynas- ties, the Popes do, at their installation. Thus the Devorants have Trempe-la-Soupe IX., Ferragus XXII., Tutanus XIII., Masche-Fer IK, in the same manner as the Church has its Clement XIV., Gregory IX., Julius II., Alexander VI., etc. Meanwhile, who are the Devorants? Devorants is the name of one of the tribes of "companions" that issued formerly from the great mystical organization formed among the workmen of Christendom to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem. The compagnonnage still exists in France among the people. Its traditions, powerful for the unthinking and for those who are not sufficiently-well educated to break these oaths, might serve for formidable enterprises if some rough-hewn genius were to seize the direction of these various societies. In fact, there, there is no lack of blind instruments; there, from one town to another, has existed, for the compagnons, from time immemorial an ohade, a species of halting-place kept by a mother, an old woman, half gipsy, having nothing to lose, knowing all that passes in the country, and devoted — either from fear or from long custom — to the tribe which she lodges and feeds in detail. Finally, these people constantly chang- ing, yet submitting to immovable customs, may have eyes in every locality, execute everywhere a will, without a judgment thereon, for the oldest 8 PREFACE companion is still in an age when one believes in something. In addition, the entire body professes doctrines sufficiently true, sufficiently mysterious, to electrify patriotically all the adepts, if they but receive the slightest development Then the attach- ment of the companions to their laws is so passionate that the various tribes wage bloody combat among themselves in order to decide some question of prin- ciple. Fortunately for the existing public order, when a Devorant becomes ambitious, he builds houses, makes a fortune, and leaves the compag- nonnage. There would be many curious details to give concerning the "Companions of Duty" — com- pagnons du Devoir — the rivals of the Devorants, and all the different sects of workmen, their customs and their fraternity, the relations which exist be- tween them and the Freemasons; but these details would be out of place here. Only, the author will add that, under the ancient monarchy, it was not un- known to find a Trempe-la-Soupe in the king's service, having secured a place for a hundred and one years in the galleys ; but from there still direct- ing his tribe, still consulted religiously by them, and if he quitted the chain-gang, certain of finding aid, comfort and respect everywhere. To see its chief at the galleys is, for a faithful tribe, only one of those misfortunes for which Providence is responsible, but which in no way relieves the Devorants from the duty of obeying the power created by them, above them. It is the temporary exile of their legitimate king, always a king for PREFACE 9 them. Here may be seen, then, the romantic pres- tige attached to the name of Ferragus and to that of Devorants completely dissipated. As to the Thirteen, the author feels himself suffi- ciently strongly supported by the details of this history, almost romantic, to renounce again one of the finest privileges of the novelist of which there can be an example — and which, on the Ch^telet of literature, would be awarded a high prize — and to impose on the public as many volumes as have been given them by LA CONTEMPORAINE. The Thirteen were all of them men of the same quality as was Trelawny, the friend of Lord Byron and, as it is said, the original of the Corsair; all of them fatalists, men of heart and poetical, but wearied of the monotonous life they led, strongly drawn to- wards Asiatic enjoyments by those forces which awoke in them all the more furiously, having been so long suppressed. One day, one of them, after having re-read Venice Preserved, after hav- ing admired the sublime union of Pierre and Jaffier, fell into contemplation of the peculiar virtues of those who find themselves thrown outside the social order, on the probity of the bagnios, on the fidelity of thieves to each other, on the privileges of exor- bitant power which these men know how to con- quer by concentrating all ideas in a single will. It appeared to him that man was greater than men. He thought that society in its entirety might belong to those distinguished ones who, to their natural abilities, to their acquired enlightenment, to their 10 PREFACE fortune, would join a fanaticism furious enough to cast into a single jet all these different forces. Thus equipped, immense in action and in intens- ity, their occult power, against which the social order would be defenceless, might overthrow in it all obstacles, overwhelm all wills, and give to each one of them the diabolical power of all. This world isolated in the midst of the world, hostile to the world, admitting none of the ideas of the world, recognizing none of its laws, submitting only to the conscience of its own necessity, obedient to devotion only, acting altogether for one of the asso- ciates when one of them claimed the assistance of all; this life of buccaneers in kid gloves and in car- riages; this intimate union of superiors, cold and mocking, smiling and cursing in the midst of a false and mean society, the certainty of being able to make everything bend under a caprice, of contriving a vengeance skilfully, of living in thirteen hearts; then the continual satisfaction of having a secret of hatred in the face of men, of being always armed against them, and of being able to retire into one's self with one idea more than even the most re- markable men could have; — this religion of pleas- ure and of egoism fanaticized thirteen men, who reconstituted the Society of Jesus for the profit of the Devil. It was horrible and sublime. And in fact the compact was made; and in fact en- dured, precisely because it appeared impossible. There were then, in Paris, thirteen brothers, who belonged to each other and who did not recognize PREFACE II each other in the world; but who came together in the evening, like conspirators, hiding none of their thoughts from each other, using alternately a power like that of the Old Man of the Mountain; having a foothold in all the salons, their hands in all the strong-boxes, elbow-room in all the streets, their heads on any pillow, and, without scruple, making everything serve their fantastic will. No chief commanded them, no one could arrogate to himself the supreme power; only, the most vivid passion, the most exacting circumstances, assumed the initia- tive. They were thirteen unknown kings, but really kings, and more than kings, judges and executioners who, having made for themselves wings with which to traverse society from the top to the bottom, disdained to be something in it because they could be all. If the author should learn the causes of their abdication, he will relate them. At present, he is permitted to commence the recital of the three episodes which, in this history, have most particularly attracted him by the Parisian flavor of the details and by the extravagance of the contrasts. Paris, 1 83 1. FERRAGUS, CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS (13) TO HECTOR BERLIOZ (15) FERRAGUS CHIEF OF THE D^VORANTS * There are in Paris certain streets as dishonored as can be any man convicted of infamy; then there are noble streets, also streets that are simply hon- est, also young streets concerning whose morality the public has not yet formed any opinion; then there are murderous streets, streets older than the oldest possible dowagers, estimable streets, streets that are always clean, streets that are always dirty, workingmen's streets, students' streets and mercan- tile ones. In short, the streets of Paris have human qualities, and impress us by their physiognomy with certain ideas against which we are defence- less. There are streets of bad company in which you would not wish to dwell, and there are others in which you would willingly take up your resi- dence. Some streets, like that of Montmartre, have a fme head and end in a fish's tail. The Rue de la Paix is a wide street, a grand street; but it reveals none of those gracefully noble suggestions which surprise an impressionable soul in the midst of the Rue Royale, and it certainly lacks the majesty which reigns in the Place Vendome. If you walk 2 (17) l8 FERRAGUS about in the streets of the He Saint-Louis you will require no other cause for the nervous sad- ness which oppresses you than the solitude, the gloomy air of the houses and of the great deserted houses. This island, the corpse of the Farmers- General, is like the Venice of Paris. The Place de la Bourse is chattering, active, prostituted; it is only handsome by moonlight, at two o'clock in the morning; in the daylight it is an abridged presentation of Paris; at night, it is like a dream of Greece. The Rue Traversiere-Saint-Honore is it not an infamous street? There are in it wicked little houses with two window-casements, in which, from story to story, may be found vices, crimes and misery. The narrow streets facing north, into which the sunlight only comes three or four times in the course of the year, are streets of assassina- tion which kill with impunity; to-day, Justice does not interfere with them ; but formerly the par- liament would perhaps have summoned the lieuten- ant of police to reprimand him accordingly and would at least have issued a decree against the street, as one was directed formerly against the per- niqiies of the Chapter of Beauvais. Meanwhile, Monsieur Benoiston de Chateauneuf has demon- strated that the mortality of these streets is double that of others. To sum up all these ideas in one example, the Rue Fromenteau, is it not at once mur- derous and profligate? These observations, incom- prehensible outside of Paris, will be doubtless appreciated by those men of study and thought^ CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS TQ of poetry and pleasure, who know how to gather, whilst idling in Paris, all those enjoyments which float continually within her walls; by those for whom Paris is the most delicious of monsters; — there, a pretty woman; farther off, old and poor; here, brand-new, like the coinage of a new reign; in that corner, elegant as a woman of fashion. A monster so complete, moreover! His garrets, a species of head, crowded with science and with genius; his lower stories, comfortable stomachs; his shops, veritable feet, — from them issue all the comers and goers, all the busy people. And what a ceaselessly active life is that of the monster! Scarcely has the last rattling of the last carriages from the ball ceased in his heart when already his arms are moving at the barriers, and he shakes himself slowly. All the doors open, turning on their hinges, like the members of a great lobster, invisibly set in motion by thirty thousand men or women, of which each one lives in a space of six feet square, possesses there a kitchen, a workshop, a bed, children, a garden, does not see very clearly, and should see all. Imperceptibly the limbs begin to creak, the movement spreads, the street speaks. By noon everything is alive, the chim- neys smoke, the monster is eating; then he roars, then his thousand claws are in motion. Beautiful spectacle ! But, Oh ! Paris, he who has not admired thy sombre passages, thy gleams of light, thy gloomy and silent culs-de-sac; he who has not heard thy murmurs, between midnight and two 20 FERRAGUS o'clock in the morning, still knows nothing of thy true poetry nor of thy great and curious contrasts. There is a small number of amateurs, people who never walk heedlessly, who taste their Paris, who possess so completely her physiognomy that they can perceive on it a wart, a mole, a pimple. For others, Paris is always this marvellous monster, an astonishing assemblage of movements, of machines and thoughts, the city with a hundred thousand romances, the head of the world. But to the first, Paris is sorrowful or gay, ugly or handsome, living or dead; to them, Paris is a creature; each man, each fraction of a house, is a lobe of the cellular tissue of this great wanton, of whom they know perfectly the head, the heart, and the fantastic manners. Thus these are the lovers of Paris: they elevate their noses at such a corner of the street sure of finding there the face of a clock; they say to a friend whose snuff-box is empty, ^'Take such a passage, you will find in it a tobacco shop, at the left, near to a pastry-cook who has a pretty wife." To ramble through Paris is, for these poets, a costly luxury. How to avoid spend- ing precious minutes before all the dramas, the disasters, the figures, the picturesque accidents, which continually assail you in the midst of this moving queen of cities, clothed with displayed posters and who, nevertheless, has not one clean corner, so complaisant is she to the vices of the French nation ! To whom has it not happened to set out in the morning from his lodging to go to the extremity CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS 21 of Paris, and to find himself at dinner time still un- able to leave the centre of the city ? These, then, will know how to excuse this wandering introduc- tion which, however, may be summed up in an observation eminently useful and novel— as much so as any observation can be new in Paris, where there is nothing new, not even the statue set up yesterday on which a street-boy has already scrawled his name. Yes, then, there are streets, or ends of streets, there are certain houses, un- known for the greater part to people of social dis- tinction, in which a woman belonging to society could not enter without giving rise to the cruelest suspicions concerning herself. If this woman be rich, if she have a carriage, if she go on foot, or disguised, into some of these defiles of the Parisian country, she compromises her reputation as a vir- tuous woman. But if by chance she should come there at nine o'clock in the evening, the opinion that an observer would permit himself to form might have the most serious consequences. Finally, if this woman be young and pretty, if she enter some house in one of these streets; if this house have a long and dark passage-way, damp and ill- smelling; if at the bottom of this passage-way may be seen trembling the pale light of a lamp, and if under this light may be perceived a horrible visage of an old woman with long and lean fingers, — then in truth, let us say it, in the interests of all young and pretty women, such woman is lost. She is at the mercy of the first man of her acquaintance 22 FERRAGUS whom she may encounter in these Parisian mo- rasses. But there are many streets in Paris in which this meeting might become the most fright- fully terrible drama, a drama full of blood and of love, a drama of the modern school. Unfortunately, this conviction, this dramatic possibility, will be, like the modern drama, comprehended but by few; and it is a great pity to have to relate a story to a public which does not appreciate all its local merit But who may flatter himself that he is ever un- derstood? We shall all die unrecognized. It is the plaint of women and authors. At half-past eight o'clock one evening, in Rue Pagevin, at the period when Rue Pagevin had not one wall that did not echo an infamous word, and in the direction of Rue Soly, the narrowest and the most impassable of all the streets of Paris, not excepting the most frequented corner of the most deserted street; in the early part of the month of February, this adventure came to pass about thirteen years ago. — A young man, by one of those chances which do not present themselves twice in a lifetime, was turning the corner of Rue Pa- gevin on foot to enter Rue des Vieux-Augustins, on the right, precisely where Rue Soly is. There, this young man, who lived in Rue de Bourbon, thought he recognized in the woman a few feet behind whom he was walking quite care- lessly, a vague resemblance to the prettiest woman in Paris, a chaste and delicious being with whom he was secretly and passionately in love, and in love CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS 23 without hope, for she was married. In a moment his heart leaped, an intolerable heat seemed to develop in his diaphragm and to pass into all his veins, he felt a chill in his back and in his head a superficial trembling. He loved, he was young, he knew Paris; and his perspicacity did not permit him to ignore all that there was possible of infamy for a woman, elegant, rich, young and beautiful, walking in this locality, and with a crim- inally furtive step. She, in this mud, at this hour ! The love which this young man bore for this lady may well seem romantic, and all the more so that he was an officer in the Garde Royale. If he had been attached to the infantry, the thing might still appear possible; but, a superior officer of cavalry, he belonged to that arm of the service which desires the greatest rapidity in its conquests, which finds food for vanity in its amorous affairs as much as in its uniform. However, the passion of this officer was genuine, and to very many young hearts it will seem noble. He loved this lady because she was virtuous, in her he loved virtue, modest grace, and imposing sanctity, as the dearest treas- ures of his unavowed passion. She was in truth worthy of inspiring one of those platonic loves which may be met with, in the history of the Middle Ages, like flowers growing in bloody ruins; worthy of being secretly the inspiring principle of all the actions of a young man ; a love as high, as pure, as the sky when it is blue; a love without hope, and to which we may attach ourselves because 24 FERRAGUS it will never deceive; a love prodigal of unbounded enjoyments, especially at an age when the heart is burning, the imagination keen, and when the eyes of a man see very clearly. There may be met with in Paris very singular night effects, weird and inconceivable. Those only who have amused them- selves by observing them can know how fantastic may become through their means a woman in the dusk of evening. At moments the creature whom you are following, accidentally or with design, seems to you light and slender; again the stock- ings, if they are very white, convince you of the fme and elegant limbs; then the waist, though enveloped in a shawl, as in a pelisse, reveals itself young and voluptuous, in the shadows; then the uncertain lights of a shop or of a street lamp give to the unknown a fleeting illumination, nearly always deceptive, which awakens, lights up the imagination and carries it beyond the limita- tions of fact. The senses are all excited, every- thing takes color and animation; the woman assumes an entirely novel aspect; her person be- comes beautiful ; at certain moments she is no longer a woman, she is a demon, a will-o'-the-wisp, which entices you, by a magnetic attraction, to follow all the way to some respectable house where the poor boiirgeoise, terrified by your threatening step or the sound of your boots, shuts the door in your face without looking at you. A vacillating gleam, thrown from the shop-window of a shoe- maker, suddenly illuminated just below the waist CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS 25 the figure of the woman who was before the young man. Ah! surely, she alone had those curves! She alone possessed the secret of that chaste gait which so innocently reveals the beauties of the most attractive forms. That was her shawl and that the velvet bonnet of her morning promenades. On her gray silk stocking not a spot; on her shoe not a splash of mud. The shawl was drawn tightly around the bust, it disclosed vaguely the delicious contours; and the young man had seen the white shoulders at balls, — he knew well what treasures that shawl covered. By the manner in which a Parisian woman wraps herself in her shawl, by the way in which she lifts her feet in the street, a man of quick intelligence can divine the secret of her mysterious course. There is something, I know not what, of quivering, of lightness, in the whole person and in the gait; the woman seems to weigh less, she goes, she goes, or, rather, she glides like a star, and floats carried on by a thought which is betrayed by the folds and by the motion of her dress. The young man quickened his step, passed the woman, and then turned to look at her — Pst ! she had disappeared into a passage-way, the grated door of which and its bell still rattled and sounded. The young man turned on his steps and saw this lady mounting, at the end of the passage-way — not with- out receiving the obsequious salutation of an old portress — a winding staircase, the lower steps of which were strongly illuminated; and Madame ascended buoyantly, quickly, like an eager woman. 26 FERRAGUS "Eager for what? " said the young man to him- self, drawing back to flatten himself like a grape- vine, against the wall on the other side of the street. And he watched, unhappy man, all the different stories of the house with the close attention of a police agent searching for his conspirator. It was one of those houses of which there are thousands in Paris, a house ignoble, vulgar, narrow, yellowish in tone, with four stories and three win- dows on each floor. The shop and the entresol belonged to the shoemaker. The outer blinds on the first floor were closed. Where was Madame going ? The young man thought he heard the tinkle of a bell in the apartment on the second floor. In fact, a light began to move in a room with two windows strongly illuminated, and suddenly lit up the third window, the darkness of which showed that it was that of a first room, evidently either the salon or the dining-room of the apartment Imme- diately the silhouette of a woman's bonnet showed itself vaguely, the door closed, the first room became dark again, then the other two windows resumed their ruddy glow. At this moment the young man heard, "Look out there," and received a blow on his shoulder. "You don't pay attention to anything, then," said a rough voice. It was the voice of a workman carrying a long plank on his shoulder. And he passed on. This workman was the man sent by Providence, say- ing to this investigator, — "What are you meddling CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS 2/ with? Think of your own duty, and leave the Parisians to their little affairs." The young man crossed his arms; then, as no one saw him, he suffered tears of rage to roll down his cheeks without drying them. At last, the sight of the shadows playing on the two lighted windows gave him pain, he looked by chance toward the upper part of the Rue des Vieux-Augustins, and he saw a hackney-coach standing before a wall, at a locality where there was neither the door of a house nor the light of a shop. Is it she? is it not she? Life or death for a lover. And this lover waited. He remained there during a century of twenty minutes. After that, the woman came down, and he then recognized her whom he secretly loved. Nevertheless, he wished still to doubt. She went toward the coach and got into it. "The house will always be there, I can search it at any time, " said the young man following the carriage at a run in order to dissipate his last doubts, and very soon he no longer had any. The coach stopped in the Rue de Richelieu before the shop of a florist, near the Rue de Menars. The lady got out, entered the shop, sent out the money to pay the coachman and came out herself after having selected a bunch of marabouts. Marabouts for her black hair! A brunette, she had placed the feathers close to her head to see the effect. The officer fancied he could hear the conversation between her and the florists. 28 FERRAGUS "Madame, nothing is more becoming to brunettes, brunettes have something a little too precise in their contours, and the marabouts lend to their toilet a softness which they lack. Madame la Duchesse de Langeais says that they give to a woman something vague, Ossianic, and very comme ilfauL*' "Very good. Send them to me promptly." Then the lady turned quickly toward the Rue de Menars, and entered her own house. When the door of the hotel in which she lived closed on her, the young lover, having lost all his hopes, and, a double misfortune, his dearest beliefs, walked away through the streets of Paris like a drunken man, and presently found himself in his own room with- out knowing how he got there. He threw himself into an arm-chair, put his head in his hands and his feet on the andirons, drying his dampened boots until they burned. It was an awful moment, one of those moments in human life when the char- acter is modified, and when the conauct of the best man depends on the good or evil of his first action. Providence or fatality, choose which you will. This young man belonged to a good family, the nobility of which was not very ancient; but there are so few really old families in these days, that all younger ones pass for ancient without dispute. His grandfather had purchased the office of Coun- sellor to the Parliament of Paris, of which he after- wards became President. His sons, each pro- vided with a handsome fortune, entered the army and through their matrimonial alliances became CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS 29 attached to the Court. The Revolution swept this family away; but there remained one old dowager, obstinate enough to refuse to emigrate, and who, thrown into prison, threatened with death, and saved on the 9th Thermidor, recovered her prop- erty. She recalled to France at the proper time, about 1804, her grandson, Auguste de Maulincour, the only scion of the Carbonnons de Maulincour, who was educated by the good dowager with the triple care of a mother, of a woman of rank, and of an obstinate dowager. Then, when the Restoration arrived, the young man, then eighteen years of age, entered the Maison Rouge, followed the princes to Ghent, was made an officer in the Gardes du Corps, left it to serve in the line, was recalled to the Garde Royale, where at twenty-three years of age he found himself chef d'escadron of a regiment of cavalry, a superb position, and one which he owed to his grandmother, who, notwithstanding her age, knew her own world exceedingly well. This double biography is a compendium of the general and spe- cial history, barring variations, of all the noble families who have emigrated, who had debts and property, dowagers and shrewdness. Madame la Baronne de Maulincour had for a friend the old Vidame de Pamiers, formerly a Commander of the Knights of Malta. This was one of those undying friendships founded on sexagenary ties, and which nothing can destroy, because at the bottom of such intimacies there are always to be found certain secrets of the human heart, delightful to divine 30 FERRAGUS when we have the time, but insipid to explain in twenty lines and which might furnish the text of a work in four volumes as amusing as le Doyen de Killerine, one of those works about which the youth talk, and which they judge but do not read. Auguste de Maulincour belonged therefore to the Faubourg Saint-Germain through his grandmother and through the vidame, and it sufficed him to date back two centuries to assume the airs and the opin- ions of those who pretended to go back to Clovis. This young man, pale, tall and slender, delicate in appearance, a man of honor and of true courage moreover, who would engage in a duel without hesitating for a yes or for a no, had not yet found himself on any battlefield, and wore at his button- hole the cross of the Legion of Honor. He was, as you perceive, one of the living errors of the Res- toration, perhaps the most pardonable of them. The youth of those days was the youth of no epoch ; it came between the memories of the Empire and those of the Emigration, between the old traditions of the Court and the conscientious education of the bourgeoisie, between religion and the masked balls, between two political faiths; between Louis XVII!., who only saw the present, and Charles X., who looked too far into the future; it was, moreover, obliged to accept the will of the king, although royalty deceived it. This youth, uncertain in all things, blind and clear-seeing, was counted as noth- ing by the old men jealously keeping the reins of State in their palsied hands, while the monarchy CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS 3 1 might have been saved by their retirement and by the accession of this Young France of which to-day the old doctrinaires, the emigres of the Restoration, still speak slightingly. Auguste de Maulincour was a victim of the ideas which at that time weighed upon this youth, and in this manner. The vidame was still at sixty-seven years of age a very brilliant man, having seen much, lived much, a good talker and man of honor, a gallant man, but who held with regard to women the most detestable opinions; he loved them and he despised them. Their honor, their feelings? Ta-ra-ra-, trifles and nonsense! When he was in their society he believed in them, the Ci-devant monster; he never contradicted them and he made them display their brightest qualities. But among his male friends, when they were brought into question, the vidame laid down the principle that to deceive women, to carry on several intrigues at once, should be the sole occupa- tion of young men, who would be wasting their time in occupying themselves with anything else under the government. It is unfortunate to have to sketch so hackneyed a portrait. Has it not figured everywhere.!* And has it not become literally as threadbare as that of a grenadier of the Empire.? But the vidame had upon the destiny of Monsieur de Maulincour an influence which it is necessary to depict; he lectured the young man after his fashion and endeavored to convert him to the doctrines of the great age of gallantry. The dowager, a woman tender-hearted and pious, sitting between her 32 FERRAGUS vidame and God, a model of grace and of sweet- ness, but gifted with that well-bred persistency which triumphs in the long run, had wished to pre- serve for her grandson the beautiful illusions of life, and had educated him in the highest principles; she gave to him all her own delicacy of feeling and made him a timid man, a coxcomb in appearance. The sensibilities of this young fellow, preserved pure, were not worn by contact without, and he remained so chaste, so scrupulous, that he was keenly offended by actions and maxims to which the world attached not the slightest importance. Ashamed of his susceptibility, the young man con- cealed it under a false assurance and suffered in silence; but he scoffed with others at things which when alone he reverenced. Thus it happened that he was deceived, because, in accordance with a not uncommon caprice of destiny, he encountered in the object of his first passion, he, a man of gentle mel- ancholy and a spiritualist in love, a woman who held in horror the German sentimentalism. The young man distrusted himself, became contempla- tive, absorbed in his griefs, complaining of not being understood. Then, as we desire all the more violently the things which we find it most difficult to obtain, he continued to adore women with that ingenious tenderness and those feline delicacies the secret of which belongs to them alone and of which they perhaps prefer to keep the monopoly. In fact, although women complain of the manner in which men love them, they have nevertheless but little CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS 33 liking for those whose souls are half feminine. All their superiority consists in making men believe that they are their inferiors in love; therefore they quit willingly enough a lover when he is suffi- ciently experienced to rob them of those fears with which they seek to deck themselves, those delight- ful torments of feigned jealousy, those troubles of hope betrayed, those vain expectations, in short the whole procession of their feminine miseries; they hold in horror the Grandissons. What can be more contrary to their nature than a tranquil and perfect love? They want emotions, and happiness without storms is no longer happiness for them. The feminine souls that are strong enough to bring the infinite into love constitute angelic exceptions, and are among women what noble geniuses are among men. The great passions are as rare as masterpieces. Outside of this love there are only arrangements, irritations passing and contemptible, as are all things that are petty. Amid the secret disasters of his heart, while he was still searching for the woman by whom he could be comprehended — a search which, let us say in passing, is the great amorous folly of our epoch — Auguste met in the society the farthest from his own, in the secondary sphere of the world of money where banking holds a first place, a perfect creature, one of those women who have about them I know not what that is saintly and sacred, who inspire so much reverence that love has need of all the help of a long familiarity to enable it to declare itself. 3 34 FERRAGUS Auguste then gave himself up wholly to the delights of the deepest and most moving of passions, to a love that was purely adoring. It was composed of innumerable repressed desires, shades of passion so vague and so profound, so fugitive and so actual, that one knows not what to compare them to; they are like perfumes, like clouds, like rays of the sun, like shadows, like everything which in nature can momentarily shine and disappear, spring to life and die, leaving in the heart long emotions. While the soul is still young enough to nourish melan- choly, distant hopes, and to know how to find in woman more than a woman, is it not the greatest happiness that can befall a man to love enough to feel more joy in touching a white glove, or ever so lightly the hair, to listen to a phrase, to cast a single look, than the most rapturous possession can ever give to happy love? Thus it is that rejected persons, the ugly, the unhappy, the unrevealed lovers, women or timid men, they alone know the treasures contained in the voice of the beloved. Taking their source and their principle from the soul itself, the vibrations of the air, charged with fire, bring the hearts so closely into communion, carry so lucidly thought between them, and are so incapable of falsehood, that a single inflection is often a complete revelation. What enchantments can be bestowed upon the heart of a poet by the harmonious intonations of a soft voice! How many ideas they awaken in it! What freshness they shed there ! Love is in the voice before the glance CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS _ 35 avows it. Auguste, poet after the manner of lovers — there are poets who feel, and poets who express, the first are the happier — Auguste had tasted all these first joys, so vast, so fecund. She possessed the most pleasing organ that the most artificial women in the world could have desired in order to deceive at her ease; she had that silvery voice which, soft to the ear, is ringing only for the heart which it stirs and troubles, which it caresses in overthrowing. And this woman went by night to Rue Soly, through Rue Pagevin; and her furtive apparition in an infamous house had just de- stroyed the grandest of passions! The vidame's logic triumphed. "If she is betraying her husband, we will avenge ourselves," said Auguste. There was still love shown by that z/— The philosophic doubt of Descartes is a politeness with which we should always honor virtue. Ten o'clock sounded. The Baron de Maulincour remem- bered at this moment that this woman was going to a ball that evening at a house to which he had access. He immediately dressed himself, set out, arrived there and searched for her with a gloomy air through all the salons. Madame de Nucingen, seeing him so thoughtful, said to him: "You do not see Madame Jules, but she has not yet come.** "Good evening, my dear," said a voice. Auguste and Madame de Nucingen turned round. Madame Jules had arrived, dressed all in white, 36 FERRAGUS simple and noble, wearing in her hair the very- same marabouts that the young baron had seen her selecting in the flower shop. That voice of love pierced the heart of Auguste. If he had won the slightest right which permitted him to be jealous of this woman, he would have petrified her by saying to her only: "Rue Soly!" But if he, a stranger, had repeated a thousand times this name in the ear of Madame Jules she would have asked him in astonishment what he meant. He looked at her with a stupid air. For those malicious people who laugh at every- thing it is perhaps a great amusement to detect the secret of a woman, to know that her chastity is a lie, that her calm face hides some deep thought, that there is some frightful drama hidden under that pure brow. But there are certain souls to whom such a sight is truly saddening, and many of those who laugh, when withdrawn into their inner selves, alone with their consciences, curse the world and despise such a woman. Such was the case with Auguste de Maulincour in the presence of Madame Jules. Singular situation! There was no other relation between them than that which the social world establishes between persons who ex- change a few words seven or eight times in the course of a winter, and yet he was calling her to account for a happiness unknown to her, he was judging her without informing her of the accusation. Many young men have found themselves thus, re- turning to themselves, in despair at having broken CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS 37 forever with a woman adored in secret; condemned, despised in secret. There are hidden monologues, said to the walls of some solitary lodging, storms roused and calmed without ever having issued from the bottom of hearts, admirable scenes of the moral world, for which a painter is wanted. Madame Jules sat down, leaving her husband who was making the tour of the salon. When she was seated she seemed uneasy, and, while talking with her neigh- bor, she watched furtively Monsieur Jules Desma- rets, her husband, the broker of the Baron de iNucingen. The following is the history of this household: Monsieur Desmarets was, five years before his marriage, in a broker's office with no other means than the meagre salary of a clerk. But he was one of those men whom misfortune early instructs in the things of this life, and who follow the straight line with the tenacity of an insect making for its nest ; one of those dogged young men who slay be- fore obstacles and who wear out all patiences with their own tireless patience. Thus, young as he was, he had all the republican virtues of poor peo- ples; he was sober, saving of his time, an enemy to pleasure. He waited. Nature had moreover given him the immense advantage of an agreeable exte- rior. His calm and clear brow; the shape of his placid but expressive face; his simple manners, everything in him revealed a laborious and resigned existence, that lofty personal dignity which is im- posing, and that secret nobility of heart which can 18996J. 38 FERRAGUS meet all situations. His modesty inspired a sort of respect in all those who knew him. Solitary more- over in the midst of Paris he saw the world only by glimpses during the brief moments that he spent in his patron's salon on holidays. There were to be found in this young man, as in most of the men who live in this manner, passions of amazing pro- fundity, — passions too vast to permit him ever to compromise himself in petty incidents. His want of fortune compelled him to lead an austere life, and he conquered his fancies by hard work. When he grew pale over his figures, he found his recrea- tion in striving obstinately to acquire that wide and general knowledge which to-day is so necessary to every man who wishes to make his mark in soci- ety, in commerce, at the bar, in politics, or in literature. The only peril which these fme souls have to fear is their own uprightness. Should they see some poor girl, and fall in love with her, they marry her, and they wear out their lives in a struggle between poverty and love. The finest am- bition is quenched in the book of household ex- penses. Jules Desmarets fell headlong into his peril. One evening he met at his patron's house a young girl of the rarest beauty. The unfortunates deprived of affection and who consume the fine hours of their youth in long labors, alone know the secret of these rapid ravages which passion makes in their lonely and misunderstood hearts. They are so certain of loving truly, all their forces are concentrated so quickly on the woman who attracts CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS 39 them that, at her side, they receive the most delightful sensation while inspiring frequently none at all. This is the most flattering of all egotisms to a woman who knows how to divine this apparently immovable passion and these emotions so deep that they have required a great length of time to reach the human surface. These poor men, anchorites in the midst of Paris, have all the enjoyments of anchorites and may sometimes succumb to their temptations; but more often deceived, betrayed and misunderstood, it is rarely permitted to them to gather the sweet fruits of this love which to them is like a flower dropped from heaven. One smile from his wife, a single inflection of her voice, sufficed to make Jules Desmarets conceive a passion without bounds. Happily, the concentrated fire of this secret passion revealed itself ingenuously to the one who inspired it. These two beings then loved each other religiously. To express all in a word, they took each other by the hand before all the world like two children, brother and sister, who wished to pass through a crowd where all made way for them admiringly. The young girl was in one of those frightful positions in which human selfish- ness places some children. She had no civil status, and her name of Clemence, her age, were recorded only by a notary public. As for her fortune, it was insignificant. Jules Desmarets was the happiest of men on learning these misfortunes. If Clemence had belonged to some opulent family, he would have despaired of obtaining her; but she II 40 FERRAGUS was a poor child of love, the fruit of some terrible adulterine passion; they were married. Then began for Jules Desmarets a series of fortunate events. Every one envied his happiness, and his enviers accused him thenceforward of having nothing but good fortune, without recalling either his virtues or his courage. Some days after the marriage of her daughter, the mother of Clemence, who passed in society for her godmother, advised Jules Desmarets to purchase the connection of a broker, promising to procure for him the necessary capital. At that time these connections could still be bought at a moderate price. That evening, in the salon of his broker, a wealthy capitalist, as it happened, on the recommendation of this lady, proposed to Jules Desmarets the most advantageous transaction that it was possible for him to conclude, gave him all the funds that would be required for this purpose, and the next day the happy clerk bought out his patron. In four years Jules Des- marets had become one of the richest members of his profession; many new clients had come to aug- ment the number of those whom his predecessor had left to him. He inspired a boundless confi- dence, and it was impossible for him not to be con- scious, by the manner in which his affairs prospered, of some secret influence due to his mother-in-law, or some hidden protection which he attributed to Prov- idence. At the end of the third year Clemence lost her godmother. By that time Jules, so-called to distinguish him from his elder brother whom he CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS 41 had established as a notary in Paris, possessed an income of about 200,000 francs. There did not exist in all Paris another example of the domestic happi- ness enjoyed in this household. During five years this exceptional love had only been troubled by one calumny, for which Monsieur Jules exacted signal vengeance. One of his former comrades attributed the fortune of the husband to Madame Jules, ex- plaining that it came from a high protection dearly purchased. The calumniator was killed in a duel. The deep passion of this couple, mutual as it was, and which survived marriage, obtained the greatest success in the social world, though some women were baffled by it. The charming household was respected, everybody feted it. Monsieur and Madame Jules were sincerely liked, perhaps because there is nothing pleasanter than to see happy peo- ple; but they never remained long in any salon, and escaped as if impatient to regain their nest in haste, like two wandering doves. This nest was, moreover, a large and handsome hotel in the Rue de Menars, where a feeling for art tempered that lux- ury which the financial world continues, tradition- ally, to display, and where they received magnifi- cently, although the obligations of social life suited them but little. Nevertheless, Jules submitted to the demands of the world, knowing that sooner or later a family has need of it; but his wife and he always felt themselves in its midst like greenhouse plants in a tempest. With a delicacy that was very natural, Jules had carefully concealed from his wife 42 FERRAGUS the calumny and the death of the calumniator which had well-nigh troubled their felicity. Madame Jules was inclined, by her delicate and artistic nature, to love luxury. Notwithstanding the terrible lesson of the duel, some imprudent women whispered to each other that Madame Jules must frequently be embarrassed for money. The twenty thousand francs which her husband gave her for her dress and for her fancies, could not, according to their cal- culations, suffice for her expenses. In fact, she was often found more elegantly dressed in her own home than when she went into society. She loved to adorn herself only to please her husband, as though wishing thus to prove to him that to her he was more than all the rest of the world. A true love, a pure love, happy above all, as much so as can be a love which is publicly clandestine. Thus Monsieur Jules, always a lover, and more loving each day, happy to be near his wife, even in her caprices, would have been uneasy if he had not found any in her, as though it would have been the symptom of some illness. Auguste de Maulincour had had the unhappiness of clashing this passion, and of madly falling in love with this woman. Never- theless, though he carried in his heart a love so sublime, he was not ridiculous. He complied with all the demands of military manners and customs; but he wore constantly, even when drinking a glass of champagne, that dreamy look, that silent disdain for existence, that nebulous expression, which, for various reasons, the biases wear, those dissatisfied CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS 43 with hollow life, and those who believe themselves consumptive, or who please themselves by imagin- ing an affection of the heart. To love without hope, to be disgusted with life, constitute in these days a social position. The enterprise of invading the heart of a sovereign might give, perhaps, more hope than a rashly conceived love for a happy woman. Therefore Maulincour had sufficient rea- sons for remaining grave and gloomy. A queen retains the vanity of her power, she has against her her lofty elevation; but a pious bourgeoise is like a hedgehog, like an oyster, in their rough envelopes. At this moment the young officer was beside his nameless mistress, who certainly was not aware that she was doubly faithless. Madame Jules was seated in a naive attitude, like the least artful wo- man in the world, gentle, full of a majestic serenity. What an abyss is human nature after all ? Before beginning the conversation, the baron looked alter- nately at this lady and at her husband. How many reflections did he not make? He recomposed / Young's Night Thoughts in a moment. Mean- while the music was sounding through the apart- ments, the light was poured from a thousand candles, it was a banker's ball, one of those insolent festivities by which this world of dull gold endeav- ored to scorn the gilded salons in which laughed the fine company of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, not foreseeing the day when the bank would invade the Luxembourg and take its seat upon the throne. The conspirators were dancing at this moment, 44 FERRAGUS as indifferent to the future bankruptcies of power as to future failures of banks. The gilded salons of Monsieur le Baron de Nucingen had that peculiar animation which fashionaole Paris, joyous in appearance at least, gives to the festivals of Paris. There, men of talent communicate their wit to fools, and fools communicate that air of hap- piness which characterizes them. By this exchange everything becomes animated. But a festival in Paris always a little resembles a display of fire- works; wit, coquetry and pleasure all sparkle and all go out like rockets. The next day, every one has forgotten his wit, his coquetries and his pleasure. "Well, then !" thought Auguste by way of con- clusion, "women are, after all, just as the vidame sees them.'' Certainly, all those dancing here are less irreproachable than Madame Jules appears, and Madame Jules goes to Rue Soly. " Rue Soly was his malady, the very word con- tracted his heart. "Madame, you never dance then ? " he asked her. "This is the third time that you have asked me that question since the commencement of the win- ter," she answered smiling. "But you have perhaps never answered it." "That is true." "I knew very well that you were deceptive, as are all other women — " And Madame Jules continued to smile. "Listen, Monsieur, if I told you the real reason, it would seem to you ridiculous. I do not think CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS 45 that it is deceiving not to tell secrets at which the world is in the habit of laughing." "Every secret demands, in order to be told, a friendship of which I am doubtless unworthy, Madame. But you could not have any but noble secrets, and do you think me then capable of jest- ing on worthy things .'' " "Yes," she said. "You, like all the others, you laugh at our purest feelings; you calumniate them. Besides, I have no secrets. 1 have the right to love my husband in the face of all the world, 1 say it, I am proud of it; and if you laugh at me when 1 tell you that I dance only with him, 1 shall have the worst opinion of your heart." "You have never danced, since your marriage, with anyone but your husband?" "Never, Monsieur. His arm is the only one on which I have leaned, and I have never felt the touch of another man." "Your physician, has he never felt your pulse?" "Well, now, you are laughing at me." "No, Madame, I admire you because I compre- hend you. But you let us hear your voice, you let us look at you, but — in fact, you permit our eyes to admire you — " "Ah! that is one of my griefs," she said, inter- rupting him. "Yes, I would have had it possible for a married woman to live with her husband as a mistress lives with her lover; for, then — " "Then why were you a few hours ago on foot, disguised, on Rue Soly?" 46 FERRAGUS "What is Rue Soly ? " she asked him. And her voice so pure betrayed no sign of any emotion, no feature of her face quivered, she did not blush, and she remained calm. "What! you did not go up to the second floor of a house situated in Rue des Vieux-Augustins, at the corner of Rue Soly ? You did not have a hackney- coach waiting ten paces away, and you did not return to Rue de Richelieu, to a flower shop, where you selected the marabout feathers that you are now wearing? " "I did not leave my house this evening." In lying thus, she was smiling and imperturbable, she fanned herself; but if someone who enjoyed the right had passed a hand under her girdle, in the middle of her back he would perhaps have found it moist. At that instant Auguste remembered the instructions of the vidame. "Then it was someone who strangely resembled you," he said with a credulous air. "Monsieur," she resumed, "if you are capable of following a woman and detecting her secrets, you will permit me to say to you that that is wrong, very wrong, and I do you the honor not to believe you." The baron turned away, took his stand before the fireplace, and appeared thoughtful. He bent his head; but his look was covertly fixed on Madame Jules, who, not thinking of the reflection in the mirror, cast at him two or three glances that were full of terror. Presently she made a sign to her CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS 47 husband, whose arm she took as she rose to walk about the salon. When she passed close to Mon- sieur de Maulincour, he, who was speaking with one of his friends, said, raising his voice, as if he were replying to a question : "There is a woman who certainly will not sleep quietly this night — " Madame Jules stopped, threw upon him an impos- ing look full of scorn and continued her walk, with- out knowing that one look the more, if surprised by her husband, might put in danger her own hap- piness and the lives of two men. Auguste, the prey of a rage which he smothered in the depths of his soul, presently left the house, swearing to pen- etrate to the heart of this intrigue. Before leaving, he sought Madame Jules in order to see her once more, but she had disappeared. What a drama cast into that young head so eminently romantic, like all those which have not known love in the wide extent which they ascribe to it ! He adored Madame Jules under a new aspect, he loved her with the fury of jealousy, with the frenzied anguish of hope. Unfaithful to her husband, this woman became common. Auguste could now give himself up to the joys of a successful love, and his imagination opened to him the immense career of the pleasures of possession. In fine, if he had lost the angel, he had found the most delicious of demons. He went to bed building a thousand castles in the air, justify- ing Madame Jules by some romantic fiction in which he did not believe himself. Then he resolved 48 FERRAGUS to devote himself wholly, from the morrow, to the search for the causes, the motives of the intrigue which this mystery concealed. It was a romance to read; or, better, a drama to play, and in which he had his part. * A very fine thing is the trade of a spy, when it is followed for one's own benefit and in the interest of a passion. Is it not to give ourselves the pleas- ures of a thief while remaining an honest man? But it is necessary to resign one's self to boiling with rage, to roaring with impatience, to freezing the feet in the mud, to be benumbed and to burn, to devour false hopes. It is necessary to go, on the faith of a mere indication, towards an unknown goal, to miss our stroke, to fume, to improvise for ourselves elegies, dithyrambics, to exclaim idiotic- ally before an inoffensive passer-by who stops to admire you ; then to knock over old apple-women and their baskets of fruit, to run, to rest, to mount guard beneath a window, to make a thousand sup- positions. — But it is the hunt, the hunt in Paris, the hunt with all its chances, less the dogs, the gun and the tally-ho! It is not to be compared with anything but the lives of gamblers. But it needs a heart big with love and with vengeance to ambush itself in Paris, like a tiger waiting to spring on its prey, and to enjoy thus all the possibilities of Paris and of a quarter, in furnishing them one interest the more to those in which they already abound. For this must we not have a multiple soul } Shall we not have to live in a thousand passions, a thousand simultaneous sentiments ? 4 (49) 50 FERRAGUS Auguste de Maulincour plunged passionately into this ardent existence, for he felt all its unhappinesses and all its pleasures. He went disguised through Paris, watching at all the corners of Rue Page- vin or of Rue des Vieux-Augustins. He hurried like a hunter from Rue de Menars to Rue Soly, and from Rue Soly to Rue de Menars, without obtaining either the vengeance or the reward with which would be punished or recompensed all these cares, these efforts and these ruses! However, he had not yet reached that impatience which wrings our entrails and makes us sweat; he roamed about hopefully, calculating that Madame Jules would not venture during the first few days to return to the locality where she had been de- tected. So he had devoted these first days to acquiring a knowledge of all the secrets of the street. A novice in this trade, he dared not ques- tion either the porter or the shoemaker of the house into which Madame Jules went; but he hoped to be able to establish a post of observation in the house directly opposite to the mysterious apart- ment. He studied the ground, he endeavored to conciliate prudence and impatience, his love and secrecy. During the first days of the month of March, in the midst of the plans by which he thought to strike a decisive blow, leaving his post after one of those patient vigils by which he had as yet learned nothing, he was returning about four o'clock in the afternoon to his own house to which he was CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS 5 1 recalled by a matter relating to his military service, when he was overtaken in Rue Coquilliere by one of those heavy showers which instantly flood the gutters, and of which each drop splashes loudly in the puddles of the roadway. A pedestrian in Paris, under these circumstances, is forced to stop short and take refuge in a shop or in a cafe, if he is rich enough to pay for the forced hospitality or, according to the urgency of the case, under a porte- cochere, that asylum for the poor and the shabby. How is it that none of our painters have ever attempted to reproduce the appearance of a crowd of Parisians grouped during a storm under the dripping portico of a house? Where could they find a richer subject? Is there not, first of all, the musing or philosophical pedestrian, who observes with pleasure all he sees, — whether it be the stripes made by the rain on the gray back- ground of the atmosphere, a species of chasing something like the capricious threads of spun glass; or the whirlwinds of clear water which the wind rolls in luminous dust along the roofs; or the capri- cious overflowings of the gutter-pipes, crackling and foaming; in short, the thousand other admirable nothings, studied with delight by the idlers, not- withstanding the strokes of the broom with which they are regaled by the occupant of the porter's lodge? Then there is the talkative pedestrian, who complains and converses with the porter's wife while she leans on her broom like a grenadier on his musket; the needy pedestrian, curiously flattened 52 FERRAGUS against the wall, without any regard for his rags long accustomed to the contact of the streets ; the learned pedestrian, who studies, spells or reads the posters without finishing them; the laughing pedes- trian, who amuses himself with those to whom some accident happens in the street, who laughs at the muddy women and makes grimaces to those of either sex who are at the windows; the silent pedes- trian, who studies all the windows, all the stories; the laboring pedestrian, armed with a satchel or furnished with a package, who is estimating the rain as so much profit or so much loss; the good- natured pedestrian who arrives like a bomb-shell exclaiming, "Ah! what weather. Messieurs!" and who salutes everybody ; and, finally, the true bour- geois of Paris, a man with an umbrella, an expert in showers, who has foreseen this one, has come out in spite of his wife, and who is now seated in the porter's chair. According to his character, each member of this fortuitous society contemplates the sky and finally departs, skipping so as not to splash himself, or because he is in a hurry, or because he sees other citizens marching along in spite of wind and tide, or because, the archway of the house being damp and mortally catarrhal, the bed's edge, as the proverb says, is worse than the sheets. Each one has his own motive. No one is left but the prudent pedestrian, the man who, before he sets out again, waits to spy some bits of blue in the midst of the rifting clouds. Monsieur de Maulincour took refuge then, with a CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS 53 whole family of foot passengers, under the porch of an old house, the court-yard of which resembled an immense chimney flue. There were along its plas- tered, saltpetred and mouldy walls so many lead pipes and so many conduits from all the floors of its four main parts that you would have said it was like the Cascatelles of Saint-Cloud. Water flowed everywhere; it boiled, it leaped, it murmured; it was black, white, blue, green; it cried aloud, it multiplied itself under the broom of the portress, a toothless old woman accustomed to storms, who seemed to bless them as she swept into the street a thousand bits of rubbish of which the curious inventory would have revealed the life and the habits of every dweller in the house. There were scraps of printed cotton, tea-leaves, artificial flower petals faded and worthless, parings of vegetables, papers, fragments of metal. At every stroke of her broom the old woman laid bare the bed of the gutter, that black crevice, cut out in squares, over which the porters are so exercised. The poor lover examined this scene, one of those thousands which agitated Paris presents daily; but he exam- ined it mechanically, like a man absorbed in his thoughts, when, raising his eyes, he found himself face to face with a man who had just entered. This man was, in appearance at least, a beggar, but not the Parisian beggar, that creation without a name in human language; no, this man formed another type, outside of all the usual ideas suggested by the word "beggar." The unknown was not 54 FERRAGUS distinguished in any way by that character, origi- nally Parisian, which strikes us so frequently in the unfortunates whom Charlet has sometimes rep- resented with a rare happiness of observation, — coarse faces rolled in the mud, with hoarse voices, reddened and bulbous noses, mouths deprived of teeth, although menacing; humble and terrible beings, in whom the profound intelligence which shines in their eyes seems like a contradiction. Some of these bold vagabonds have blotched, cracked, veiny skin; the forehead covered with wrinkles; the hair scanty and dirty, like that of a wig thrown into a corner. All of them gay in their degradation, and degraded in their joys, all of them marked with the stamp of debauchery, cast their silence like a reproach; their attitude reveals frightful thoughts. Placed between crime and beg- gary they no longer have any remorse, and circle prudently around the scaffold without mounting it, innocent in the midst of vice, vicious in the midst of their innocence. They often cause a smile, but they always cause reflection. One represents to you civilization stunted and repressed, he compre- hends everything; — the honor of the galleys, coun- try, virtue; then it is the malice of a vulgar crime, and the fine craftiness of elegant wickedness. Another is resigned, a deep mimic but a stupid one. All of them have faint indications of order and of work, but they are pushed back into their mire by a society which does not care to inquire as to what there may be of poets, of great men, of intrepid souls CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS 55 and magnificent organizations among these beggars, these Bohemians of Paris; a people eminently good and eminently wicked, like all the masses who have suffered; accustomed to supporting unheard-of ills, and whom a fatal power always keeps down to thei^ level of the mud. They all have a dream, a hope, a happiness, — cards, lottery or wine. There was nothing of all this strange life in the personage lean- ing so carelessly against the wall before Monsieur de Maulincour, like some fantastic idea designed by a skilful artist on the back of a canvas turned with its face to the wall in his atelier. This man, long and dry, whose leaden visage betrayed a deep but chilling thought, dried up all pity in the hearts of the curious by his sarcastic aspect and by his black looks which announced an intention of treat- ing every man as his equal. His face was of a dirty white, and his wrinkled skull, denuded of hair, bore a vague resemblance to a block of granite, A few straight and gray locks on each side of his head fell to the collar of his greasy coat which was but- toned to the chin. He resembled at once Voltaire and Don Quixote; he was a scoffer and melancholy, full of disdain, of philosophy, but at least half de- ranged. He seemed to have no shirt. His beard was long. His rusty black cravat, quite worn out and ragged, exposed a protuberant neck, deeply fur- rowed, with thick veins like cords. A large brown circle like a bruise was strongly marked beneath each eye. He seemed to be at least sixty years old. His hands were white and clean. His boots were 56 FERRAGUS full of holes and trodden down at the heels. His blue pantaloons, mended in several places, were whitened by a species of fluff which made them offensive to the eye. Whether it was that his damp clothes exhaled a fetid odor, or that he had in his normal condition that smell of poverty which belongs to the Parisian dens, just as offices, sacris- ties and hospitals have their own, a fetid and rancid smell, of which no words can give the least idea, the neighbors of this man moved away from him and left him alone. He cast upon them and then upon the officer his calm and expressionless look, the so celebrated regard of Monsieur de Talleyrand, v^ a dull, cold glance, a species of impenetrable veil beneath which a strong soul conceals profound emotion and the most exact estimation of men, things and events. Not a fold of his face quivered. His mouth and his forehead were impassible; but his eyes lowered themselves with a noble and almost tragic slowness. There was in fact a whole drama in the movement of these withered eye-lids. The aspect of this stoical figure gave rise in Mon- sieur de Maulincour to one of those vagabond rev- eries which begin with a common interrogation and end by comprising a whole world of thought. The storm was past. Monsieur de Maulincour saw no more of the man than the skirt of his coat as it brushed the outside wall ; but as he left his place to depart, he saw under his feet a letter which had fallen and which he supposed to have belonged to the unknown, as he had seen him put back in his CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS 57 pocket a handkerchief which he had used. The officer, who picked up the letter to return it to him, read the address involuntarily: "A Mosieur, Mosieur Ferragusse, Rue des Grands-Augustains, au coing de la rue Soly, PARIS." The letter bore no postmark and the address served to prevent Monsieur de Maulincour from returning it; there are besides few passions that, in the long run, will not come to be lacking in probity. The baron had a presentiment of the opportunity of this windfall, and determined, by keeping the letter, to give himself the right of entrance into the mysterious house to return it to this man, not doubting that he lived in this suspected dwelling. Already suspicions, vague as the first gleams of daylight, caused him to establish relations between this man and Madame Jules. Jealous lovers sup- pose everything; and it is by supposing everything and then selecting the most probable of these con- jectures that judges, spies, lovers and observers, arrive at the truth which most interests them. "Is the letter for him ? Is it from Madame Jules ? " His unquiet imagination tossed a thousand ques- tions together at him at once ; but at the first words he smiled. Here is, textually, in all the splendor ■of its artless phrases and its ignoble orthography, this letter to which it would be impossible to add anything, just as nothing should be taken away. 58 FERRAGUS unless it were the letter itself, but it has been nec- essary to punctuate it in reproducing it In the origi- nal, there are neither commas nor stops of any kind indicated, not even notes of exclamation, — a fact which tends to demolish the system of points and punctuation by which modern authors have endeav- ored to depict the great disasters of all the passions : "Henry, "Among the many sacrifisis which I imposed upon myself for your sal